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Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwig Brooklyn on Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday, except for next Tuesday and the Tuesday after that because this is our Christmas and New Year's episode. Uh here as usual with uh Nastasha Hammer Lopez, joined in the studio with uh at least temporarily Aaron from Heritage Radio. Jack and Joe. How you guys doing?
We're great. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, Jack, how was the how was the Puerto Rico? That was awesome.
Yeah, what do you do besides drinking and and eating? What do you eat? Uh what did I eat? I ate a lot of uh chicken and rice, obviously. But I went to Viecas, which was which was amazing.
What is that? It's an island off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico, which was it's mostly a wildlife refuge, and it was protected by the government up until 2003, and then it became open to tourists, so still not too many people have caught on. It's pretty remote and incredible. Is that the one where the other half of it's a shooting range? Uh Navy testing grounds, sort of.
Yeah. Bomb, yeah. So we've saved the wildlife on half of the island and then bombed them into oblivion on the other half? There was a hilarious sign that said no swimming in this area. Live explosives.
Nice. It's like okay. Well, you know, we used to have that over here for those of you that haven't visited our coast when I was a kid. It used to be uh they were still finding World War II munitions off the coast of Sandy uh what is it, Sandy Hook in uh New Jersey. Any uh New Jersey that's out there?
Know what I'm talking about? Yeah, there used to be all sorts of explosive stuff left over from World War II just sitting in the middle of the uh in the middle of the bay there uh because I guess they would drop them off the shifts when they were loading them. Nice. You know, quickly I had a I had a question. I almost called into cooking issues.
All the red wine I was served in Puerto Rico, right? Right. Was all served chilled. Like well, how chilled? Like pretty chill like white wine chilled.
Really? Yeah, and and it was across the board, everywhere we went. Was it hot was it hot as hell? No, not really. No.
Well, you know, the French typically serve uh red wine much colder than we like we have a habit in the U.S., you know, except at the like, you know, even at even at the higher levels of dining here in the U.S., we have a habit of serving our red wines a lot warmer than they would in, let's say, France or another other parts of Europe. And you know, certain red wines like the first couple times I went over there were actually very it was kind of difficult for me to get it uh accustomed to. Like for instance, over there, you know, Gigandas, they serve much, much colder in uh France than we would have here, so much so that I got an argument. Don't get an argument with a French waiter. It's not it's not gonna help you out any.
But um But yeah, I mean I wonder whether or not it's particular. I mean, you know, have you had like the red wine in France and thought it was too cold? Or no, yeah, I have had red wine in France, and it was not like this. So this is just like a Puerto Rican thing. I think.
Was it overly tannic? Uh no. No, not necessarily. Was it enjoyable? It wasn't bad.
I just I I like my red's room temp. Yeah, I mean, I like it, you know. I like it on the coast. My wife likes it a little colder than I do, the red wine. Like, you know, she'll she'll pull a pull a Cesare and drop an ice cube in to kind of like you know, if it's at 'cause my house gets really freaking hot because I have the old uh, you know, the old radiator heaters that uh that make it like a million degrees in inside your house in the winter time, so you have to open the window.
You know what I'm talking about? Yes. Yeah, anyway. Sorry, we got a caller. Oh, got a caller?
All right, caller, you're on the air. Okay, hello, Dave. This is Nell from the Brooklyn Pharmacy. How are you? I'm doing all right.
Oh, good. I have a question for you. Shoot. Okay, I'm trying to make red velvet whoopee pies without using a ton of nasty red food coloring. And I've purchased online beet powder, which is a beautiful sort of vermilion fuchsia color.
But I'm trying to figure out how to boost the color in my in the my little whoopee pie cakes. I have what I read online was that um part of the reason they started calling them red velvet is because it was a chemical reaction between cocoa powder and an acid. So we have cocoa powder, and we're using natural rather than Dutch process. Um, and buttermilk. Hmm.
Well, I mean the yeah, the color of the Dutch process is actually because of the alkaline nature, right? The super dark thing is uh is uh a result of the alkali processing in in the dut in the Dutch process stuff. Yeah, yeah, so red I've never thought about it. The the beet powder doesn't add a flavor to it. No.
And how much chocolate how much chocolate do you have in it? Uh it ha like a cocoa, yeah. Yeah, it's a substantial amount, enough that you can taste it, but it's not it's not like a devil's food. It's not overwhelmingly chocolatey, but you can taste that there's cocoa in there, which I like. So I'm I kind of don't want to ease off the cocoa powder either.
And what's the liquid in it? Is it is buttermilk? Buttermilk, yeah. Right. And but there's soda in it, correct?
Yes. Uh and baking powder. Two two to one baking powder to soda. Right. I mean the recipe.
Typically for every cup of buttermilk or so, you're gonna have about a teaspoon of soda and then probably twice that of powder. Is that true or no? No, in this instance, it's a half teaspoon of soda and a teaspoon of powder. Per cup of buttermilk? Yes.
Yeah. Well, okay. Well, so here's what I mean, obviously the the soda is neutralizing the buttermilk. I mean, that's what that's what the whole soda buttermilk reaction is, right? But okay, right.
Right. So but beets, I'm assuming that beets, the more alkaline they go, I think beet beet coloring is an anthocyanin, like most of those other pigments like that. So the more acidic they are, the redder they are, right? This is why, you know, in uh in a in a pickled beet, they're so bright, bright red, right? Yeah.
Yeah. And then the more alkaline it's gonna go, the the more purple and more blue it's gonna shade. Now you're always because of the brown countershading of the powder, cocoa powder, you're always gonna stay on the redder side rather than the more blue and purple side. But I mean, I'm wondering whether or not you're shading it. I wonder whether or not you're shading it more towards the um more towards the alkaline, but that ratio that shouldn't do it too much because typically you're adding a lot more soda than that.
Me t uh typical ratio in like a pancake batter would be like a teaspoon of soda per per uh per cup of butternil. Right. So, you know, and that that you know, I've usually, although I've never done the experiments, taking that as a fairly, you know, like you know, one-to-one kind of swap. Now, um, you know, on the other hand, it's like you know, if you have a lot of residual acid left over from the buttermilk, it can taste weird, you know. You're you're unused to actually drinking buttermilk uh uh straight, but I'm wondering whether any residual acid wouldn't I don't have to think about it.
Like it be you've tried adding some extra acid to it to see whether or not just it whether it shades up or down or no. No, but I I was thinking the next thing I might do is is add a touch of vinegar. Just a little tiny bit, like not enough to flavor it, but perhaps enough to boost the acidity a tiny bit. Right. I mean vinegar i obviously is uh is um what's the word I'm looking for?
It's volatile. So you know some of that's gonna uh volatilize off during the during the the the bake. Of course, I don't know, you know, I don't know, you know, when the when the business is done. I mean, like typically anthocyanins, when you mess with them, you can shift their color even after they've been uh uh messed with quite quite substantially. Also, I am not sure.
I mean, obviously beets retain their color when they're cooked. So yeah. So we just want to like you just want to keep it on the on the acid acidic side. I've never actually made the red velvet uh per like actual instructions. It takes a boatload of color, they put a a whole boatload of red in that.
Oh, it takes so much. It's really yeah. Yeah. It does. Yeah, I mean I was well, that was how I re read something online.
That was how they it came about. Is it was a means by which they could show um extracts from food coloring. Right. Right. So you were meant to, you know, I think the original recipe, you can find this online somewhere.
You were meant to dump an entire bottle of red food coloring into the tape to make it red. That's great. That's great salesmanship right there. That's you know. Uh yeah.
You know, it's like you know, when you enter contest, it's all about you know how many boxes of rice crispies can you dump into a recipe, you win, you know. If your recipe requires thirteen boxes of rice crispies, then you've won. Um But if I was if I was gonna do this, uh I would A, I would test, I would make uh regular vanilla cakes flavored with beet powder, not even vanilla, just like white cakes, flavored with uh or or uh with the addition of the beet powder. I would probably do three different ratios and then uh you know, for for flavor to see where you are, then take the the highest one that you could do without a major flavor impact, uh, and then I would push the acid uh over three. So I would bake probably a total of six cake uh cakes in a in a white cake recipe.
Like small, like you don't have to bake a whole batch, you know what I mean? Like in fact, you could make one batter and then you know, do you know three at a time and do a small test. And then uh and then uh uh uh on the basis of those results, you know, try try to do one that's a that you think is gonna be way too little, one that you think is gonna be way too much, and one that you think is somewhere in the middle, and then usually within a couple of iterations of recipes like that, you can hone in on exactly where the magic uh number is, which is a technique that we use when we're testing out low temperature cooking recipes the same way. We you know, we try to make sure that oh that one's too weak, and oh that one's too strong. Once you once you establish the the boundaries, then you can hone in very, very, very quickly.
It's just like that old game of uh uh what's that game called, Nastash, where you have to guess a number and you have to guess you guess higher and then lower. Is there a name for it? I don't know. Anyway, but no, it's it's like a yeah, a county fair game where you count, you know, you can't guess the number of beans in the jar. Right, right.
Or but you but you're you you know you try you want to go in the in the least number of steps. So you want to make sure that you that you go too high, too low, then you cut that in the middle and find out where that is, and then you you keep you keep going. And and it usually you can get very accurate uh you know results on one or two variables within about three or four tests. Do you know what I mean? Okay.
Assuming they're normal variables and it's not like some strange hydrocolid interaction. Um but I'd be curious. Tweet at cooking issues and tell let us know uh what happened, because I'm I'm curious about the results of the of the beat test. Okay, all right. All right, thank you.
Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Have a good one. You two, good luck. I think the game's called Guess the Number.
Oh, you know, Jack Jack always likes you know, is the the the backhand the backhand slap. He's just mad at me about the cold wine. Coal wine. Okay. Did you you didn't have any good pork over there?
Don't they don't all yeah, of course. Do they do the zinc cook pork there, or is that a Jamaican thing? I think that's a Jamaican thing. But they're like these beachside shack things, and we had a bunch of crispy pork skins. What do you what do you call it?
Why am I forgetting? Chicharone? Yeah, thank you. Chicharron. Well, how do they do it there?
Do they do it hyper crispy or fatty, fatty crispy? Pretty fatty crispy. Yeah, I like that. I like them all. I like there's no there's no real kind of kind of any sort of crispity, crunchity pork skin product that I find objectionable.
I kind of unless they're you know poorly done. Uh but there is delicious. All right. Well, welcome back, Jack. Thanks.
What are you doing for uh what are you doing for the holidays here? I'll be sticking around here, not too much. Yeah, what about you, Nastasha? Uh I'm going home for three days. To home home is not.
See, that's the thing. Like at what point in your life are is home New York? Yeah, I know. To the place that I grew up. Ah, yes.
Yes. All right. Okay. Uh we have some questions in. Uh this was actually to Nastasha.
Christine doesn't care what we think by what I think. But anyway, she says, uh, how's it going? Uh this is uh an email I guess sent to actually to Aaron, right? Yeah. I'm hoping to get some advice from Dave as a Christmas present for my husband because uh apparently I'm an influence on him, which is, you know, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, Christine. Uh anyway, uh Ryan has my 27-year-old husband, has been a musician and teacher for the past ten years. But food has always been a big part of his life, and he's recently realized that it's a passion he wants to pursue. He's been tearing through days podcasts, learning and experimenting with local and regional cuisine. We live in Singapore and volunteering at soup kitchens to try out his chops.
I've really always wanted to go to Singapore. Yeah. Singapore here has like amazing. Really? Mm-hmm.
I mean, Singapore uh apparently has like, you know, obviously has like great uh you know street food. Like apparently it's amazing. And apparently very, you know, easy to visit so long as you don't uh spit gum on the street, in which case you're gonna get whipped with a uh with a you know whip dipped in horse urine. Anyway, uh he has endless resources, but the biggest question on his mind right now is whether or not to go to culinary school. We might be heading to Sydney in six months, and the most respectable, uh most reputable school he's found there is Lacordum Blue.
And I don't know anything, by the way, about uh Lacordum Blue in uh in Australia, right? So I don't even know whether it's run by the same people or whether it's licensed out or anything like that. Just you know, word, I don't know. Although we have some Australian uh we know, I don't know if we still do. We had some Australian listeners.
Maybe they can tweet into cooking issues and see you know see what they what they think about that school and and how it is. Anyway, uh while he's still trying to find his niche, he really enjoys using molecular gastronomy techniques and is partial to comfort diner t uh type food. Now listen, uh Christine, you know, I don't know, you probably don't, but yeah, like for all you out there, you know I dislike the word molecular gastronomy in intensely. Just like I know what you mean, though. I know what you mean.
I know what you mean when you say molecular. She's just like, answer my freaking question. I'm not into this stuff. Stop at the assay. Yeah, she's like, I don't really care.
My husband wants to know, I don't really care. Right? Yes. This is the equivalent of like my wife asking this question. Yeah, my presence.
Oh, geez, Sas. Stas loves to give it to me, I tell you what. Anyway. Uh wait, okay. Okay.
The biggest question is whether or not to go to culinary school. Okay, let's let's let's just handle that right now. So uh your husband is a uh a musician and a teacher. Now, uh here I don't again, I don't know how it works in uh in Australia, but here in uh here in the US, there's a you know, obviously I you know taught at a culinary school for many years, uh specifically technology at the French Culinary Institute, now the International Uh Culinary Center. Uh, and many of my good friends uh and relatives and you know business partners like Dave Chang and and Wiley Dufrein actually went to that school.
Uh and uh it's an argument that I get into uh constantly with chefs about whether or not you should go to culinary school. Now there's a huge generation of chefs here that say, no, you shouldn't go to culinary school because it costs a lot of money and you can just go work your ass off instead, right? And that that's the argument. And so, you know, and to which I always reply to them, yo, name someone in your generation, and by your generation I mean between 35 and 45, right? Name someone in that generation that's you know made a uh a huge name for themselves here in the U.S.
who didn't go to culinary school. And the f the fact of the matter is that almost all of them did. Right? Almost all of them in that generation did. Uh now, uh just take that, take that that where it is.
So there's a huge group of chefs who have gone anti-culinary school mainly because of the giant price tag associated with it. So they assume that the price tag is just too high. And here's the truth. Like if you expect to go pay a huge amount of money and somehow make that back as a line cook, then you know, I don't know that that necessarily is money well spent unless your parents are gonna pay for a vocation that you're gonna have for the rest of your life. Right?
Would you say it's fair styles? The other issue I think that a lot of chefs here have uh in the US who are, you know, uh at the top top level, uh, you know, I'm not gonna name any names in this, but you know, you've spoken to a bunch of them, is that a lot of people coming out of culinary school now are going into it because of the c popularity that food has in the media these days. And so there's an expectation uh among uh this is not me talking, because this isn't it's not me talking, but you know, that there's an expectation uh among the younger generation or even among career changers who are going to culinary school that they're gonna go to culinary school, they're gonna come out, all of a sudden they're gonna be doing interesting work in a kitchen, and they're you know, or they'll get a TV show, or they'll get a this or they'll get a that, uh, when really most of the time it is a crazy, grueling, brutal job that, you know, uh nine times out of ten is it isn't glamorous. In fact, the glamour of it comes from, you know, just getting uh brutalized day in, day out with large amounts of work for very small remuneration. So uh that's the kind of argument I think that uh that you know, a certain group of chefs will make against cooking schools.
Uh but however I don't think they see the other side of it, which is there are a whole group of people, for instance, who might not necessarily want to be a line cook, want to be exposed to a professional cooking school for another reason. Maybe they want to own a restaurant without having to go through all this stuff and they have the money to start a restaurant, right? It's a valid reason to go to cooking school. Maybe uh my sister-in-law Miley, who now runs the Food Network magazine, uh, you know, decided to go to cooking school so that she could be a better um food journalist. And it certainly has, you know, served her in good stead.
She's had you know been nothing but, you know, going up since the moment she went, she was going up beforehand because she's an incredibly driven and talented person. But in other words, but the the school served her in good stead. So you just have to really analyze why it is you want to go to cooking school and what you hope to get out of it and go in there with your eyes wide open of what exactly you're paying for. Uh and I think that's the you know, that's the the the key to it. We think fair?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh okay. Uh kind of a long-winded answer. But uh it's a qua it's an important question.
Mm-hmm. I mean, obviously my livelihood was based on cooking schools. And so when you go we like w if you take my course, for instance, on low temperature and sous-view cooking at at the cooking school, you know, I think that was worth it. I think that what I don't forget what we charged for it or what the school charged for it. I mean, it wasn't cheap, it was expensive, but we gave you a lot of value for it.
I mean, the other thing is, you know, uh the reason cooking school is so expensive isn't really that people are getting uh I mean th that I know of, people aren't getting astoundingly rich off of the cooking school per c it's that there's was a lot of bodies that have to be hired to to, you know, uh produce a lot of food that isn't necessarily getting sold at, you know, market rate. And you know, we gotta buy a whole boatload of chickens, and we gotta buy a whole boatload of you know, it's just uh it costs a lot to run it. It's not that uh cooking schools typically, with the exception of something like CIA, which is actually a dot EDU, are typically uh for profit, but that doesn't mean that they are rapacious, right? Mm-hmm. Okay.
Uh other questions uh include uh is there such a thing as too old to become a chef? Uh hey, let's hold real quick. We have a caller. Okay, caller, you're on the air. Hey, this is Josh.
Uh, there's actually two of us here. We're calling to settle a dispute. Maybe you can help us. Uh oh, okay. Um, so at your suggestion, we're now using the DMT sharpening stone.
Okay. I feel like it does okay for me. My buddy has a what's it, a glazed thing? Yeah. Right.
He feels like it gets sharp, but it doesn't stay sharp with this stone. What is there any beef to that? Or would you cause that? So, okay, so for the for those of you that uh don't know what the hell we're talking about, um the DMT is a diamond uh sharpening stone, and I use it uh you're using the interrupted uh red green. I'm sorry?
You're using the the two-sided red green with the interrupted pattern? Yes. Yeah. Okay, so we're talking about a f a fine slash extra fine, which doesn't really have much meaning, but you can go look up the equivalent micron values of the abrasives on it. Sharpening stone.
Uh and what I like about this particular stone is that it's extremely lightweight, it stays flat forever, doesn't need to be true, and it's just it in my mind, extremely easy to have and use. Uh so it's not not something that you have to like worry about and soak or like that's not really heavy in your kit. Uh doesn't you know, so it's very low maintenance, and I think does a good job. The question we have here is it someone is sharpening with it and s thinks that they can get the stuff sharper, doesn't necessarily stay sharp. The only way to really tell is the question is what were they sharpening on before?
Were they using like a Japanese, like a very, very fine grit Japanese water stone? What were you using? That's what we were using before. And my theory is that it gives like the illusion of sharpness by microcarating it more than actually owning the edge, much like a razor steel. Right.
So I mean this is the the big the big argument in sharpening is what do you what are you trying to trying to accomplish? Right. So for most rough and ready kitchen work, what you really are doing is not taking it to a super hyper fine polished grit. And there it are it's very sharp, but there are some kind of uh micro imperfections in the uh in the blade that help when you're cutting things like tomatoes. And so um, you know, there and so in fact you can have something that is uh that cuts very well, even that's not done uh sharp, you know, sharpened to uh the same grit, let's say, as you know, it's not a polished grit.
Is this making sense? Uh so however, the hyper polished ones, I have my doubts that most people with their hand are accurate enough to do uh to get an edge that is super, except for on like a traditional Japanese knife where it's fairly easy to get the the angle exactly right, but you know, are good enough to get a hyper polished edge that's so true along it that is also at the right angle that it's not gonna get rolled if you take it to a a hyper hyper polished edge. I don't know, it's an interesting it's an interesting fact. We like, you know, someone someone would have to settle it with a microscope and just look at it. I mean, I I I became several, you know, years ago, especially as people started ruining my knives by picking them up and using them for brutal tasks, that uh I was fine uh only going to the level of grit that you have on the uh on the on the you know the finest part of that DMT uh DMZ or whatever it is the diamond stone right because um it's easier for me just to do two three swipes at the beginning of a prep session than it is for me to worry about the the hyper polish.
Now I used to go I used to use an edge pro I don't know if you know that system uh uh edge pro you can go down to extremely fine highly polished grits and have with very very accurate edge angles. Do you ever use that system? It's like a guide, right? That you can use Yeah it's a guide on a rod and you set the angle extremely precisely uh and then you just go through all of your knives that are at that at those edge ratios and you can take it down to you know what it that you take it down to base basically to almost like to below toothpaste. You can go up to mirror polish on that thing very quickly.
And I used to use that except for I found that I just wasn't sharpening my knives as much because I had to bust the equipment out and do it and yes you know you'd have those crazy hair splitting stuff and I also I used to do I used to leather strop everything as well after I was done because I was also using a straight razor at the time and you know and so it's just something that was part of part of my repertoire but I found that it was just it was too much for me to keep going all the time doing it and then I moved to the diamond stone and found that my average sharpness was increasing just because my maintenance sharpening was so fast. Does that make sense or no? What is the leather strapping do exactly? Is that removing metal as well? I think so.
I think I think what it's actually doing uh more, and I've never really uh had anyone, you know, I just it was something I started doing because you know, some old timer told me to do it. Uh I think what it's actually doing is, you know, what if you were to look at the edge, um, it would be fine kind of breaks in it. And I think remember when you're stropping, you're stropping the opposite direction that you would normally sharpen. You're s you're strapping, you're you're scraping the blade, uh, you're scraping the edge. You know, uh you you know what I'm saying, it's the opposite direction.
And I think what you're doing is aligning it better. I think what it's really doing is is aligning it, uh similar but in a more gentle fashion than a steel would, even though you're in a steel, you're going in the forward direction, and a strop you're going in the backward direction. I never used to compound my strop. Like it compounded once and then like over the years I just kept on using it without adding more compound to it. And it really made a huge difference.
Because you know, the the test that I, you know, I always do the same test is I take a uh a relatively flimsy sheet of paper, hold it, and see whether I can just put my knife through the piece of paper and have the paper fall into two pieces. Because it's an easy way to find nicks in your blade. You know, even like micro nicks, you know, you you you would you would take it, but that cutting that paper also can, you know, misalign your edge a little bit. So then what I would do is I would do my sharpening, cut the paper and then strop it right afterwards, and then I was good to go. That's what I used to used to do.
So I always just had a leather leather, you know, a veg tan leather strop hanging uh uh, you know, next to my next to my salamander and just beforehand. So can I can I reiterate the question? Or just phrase it differently? Yeah. Does the tool you're would the tool you're using to sharpen your knife.
Change how your knife held an edge? Uh yes, I think that's true. I think that's true, but I think it depend I think in other words, I think it can be true. I don't think it's necessarily true. But I think it it can be true.
I don't know what I what I don't know is whether or not an edge that's taken to a lower grit that has, you know, what what is commonly called in the in the in the you know sharpening world micro serrations. I don't know whether those edges are any more or less long lasting than an actual polished edge. I think it is true that you can probably shoot for a polished edge versus a micro serrated edge. Does that make sense? Sure.
So I'm kind of taking an in between I'm taking an in between I'm taking an in-between uh uh position there. But you know there's I I agree with what you're saying. So I think that if if you could have a diamond diamond sharpening surface that was as the same amount of grit as a stone a a super fine one and you actually got a fur on it and then shave that fur off it would be the same. Right. Well what I'm saying with this with this the one that we're using it seems like it's really sharp because it's really micro serrated well it And then the micro serrations are easily like eliminated and you're left with like not that sharp of a actual edge.
By the way it is actually really it is a it is a fine grit not as fine as the finest water stone. However they they do make an even finer one that I don't have it's just more expensive and doesn't come in a dual in a dual grit um dual grit scenario. I mean just to throw an extra thing out to throw it into it there's a there's an old book that came out I think in the 90s that is mainly out outdated in terms of the the theory behind it. But it's called the Razor's edge book of sharpening, and it was by uh uh a person who is a consultant to the meat cutting industry, and his his gimmick used to be he would shave himself he would sharpen a double bit axe and then shave with it. Uh and so he held he holds the Guinness record for shaving himself uh in record time with a double bit axe.
He's probably the only idiot that's ever sharpened his face with a double, you know, raised you know, shaved his face with double bit axe, but there you go. Uh and his theory of sharpening is actually if you want long lived edges, and I think people still advocate this, although not as much, is you uh you you do two different angles. Your final sharpening is at a less steep angle. And I don't even know whether people still practice this. I still do it kind of intuitively that you really want two different uh edges.
The one is the hyper the hyper thin uh edge, you know, that you know is down, you know, it used to be like you know, very kind of wide, you know, like you know, 30 or so, but everyone's gone down to like 17 and you know below now and uh on but and then you'd put a slightly more shallow uh one in it that's a lot tougher. Uh you know, and those that sharpening technique was written for the kind of lower quality steels that were at that point still the highest end of knife that most people had in the nineties. So the newer steels probably can take uh an actual finer edge all the way along without shattering and pitting. But, you know, I don't know, take that for what it is. Like th his point was that a longer you're gonna get a much longer lasting ver a sharper edge if your very last sharpening is uh at you know a more uh oblique oblique angle, but a very small oblique angle right at the cutting edge.
Is that makes sense or no? Totally makes sense to me. Yeah. Yep. But you know, you might want to take a look.
I I again I haven't read that book in in a decade or more. Uh, but you know, at the time it was, you know, a revelation to me, but it my feeling is probably it's outdated at this point. Okay. Thank you a lot. Thank you very much.
All right, thank you. Have a good uh okay, so uh questions. Uh again from uh Christine. How about a quick break? Oh, all right, uh come back, we'll come back with cooking issues This is Fish Is Fish Is Vodka by the Meat Ballers on Heritage Radio Network.org.
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And welcome back to Cooking Issues. Okay, more questions for Christine. Is there such a thing as too old to become a chef? Well, no. Uh not.
Uh, you know, I know uh someone uh no. No, but there this take this. There are a lot of chefs out there who are prejudiced against people who are uh starting uh later in their career. And just be aware of uh the fact that there is a lot of prejudice out there in the community because um, you know, there are there's um a lot of chefs want to be able to beat on the people who are in their kitchens in terms of uh time and labor, and their feeling is that you know, people who are getting a later start aren't gonna stand there on their feet for 12 hours uh, you know, and and uh take the heat of the kitchen and you know, take all of that stuff. They're not gonna put up with it as well as you know, as a really young person.
But I think that in general, that's a a bad it's a bad thing to do. It's a bad it's a bad thing to assume about someone. You should take everyone on their own personal merits. You know, my my grandpa who, you know, he was kind of a jerk, but you know, when he was 65, he would go out into the lawn and you know, wrap a cloth around his head, you know, rip giant rocks out of the ground and then do a backflip. He could have kicked the snot out of any 18-year-old uh prep cook coming you know through most kitchens and he would have done it all day uh just to make you look bad, because that's the kind of guy he was.
So I think, you know, there's no such thing as too old. There are there are people who as they the majority of people as they get older aren't gonna have the stamina, but it's not the age, it's just it's just that's the way most people are. What do you think? Fair styles? Uh two, if there's only one kitchen gadget you can have, what would it be and why?
Well, I'd get an immersion circulator. Uh, you know, bang. I would get an immersion circulator because that's gonna just change the way you cook and it's gonna allow you to do things that you couldn't otherwise do. If you already have an immersion circulator and for some reason you don't own a uh vita prep blender, I would go buy that. Uh if for you know, and those are the two main things uh, you know, that I have at home that most people don't have.
If you're rich, I'd get a Paco Jet. I'd love that thing, or a vacuum sealer. Uh, but even if you're not rich, I would go out and get uh a Vitapep or uh an immersion circulator. You know, you know do you have a Vitaprep yes, S? No.
You want one though, right? Everyone wants a Vitaprep. You know what? If the people the only people who don't want vita preps are people who don't have one. They're like, why do I need that?
Because then as soon as you have one, you're like, oh. Anyway. Uh, you know, and if you have a lot of space, get liquid nitrogen. It's not really a gadget. Uh, but you know, safety, safety with liquid nitrogen.
And three, uh, what are your thoughts on turduckin? Turducing is where you know you stuff uh, you know, a bird inside of a bird, typically a turkey, then a uh uh chicken, then a duck. What are your thoughts on turduckin? Is there a secret to getting to cook more evenly? Yes.
First of all, do not arrange the meats in the way that is standard. It's a bad arrangement of meats. The way that they do it typically is they put sausage in between all the layers of meat and then just overcook the entire thing. Just overcook the hell out of it, uh, and then assume that the grease from the sausage is gonna keep everything tasting good, but with the uh, you know, and and juicy. What you want to do is go turkey, then chicken, then duck.
Uh, and you want to cook it with an immersion circulator, meat glue it together, debone it, meat glue it together, and and cook it at roughly uh 64, 65 until the center of it, Celsius, until the center of it's about 57 where the duck is. Uh you could put a sausage layer in between the chicken layer and the duck layer, uh, and that sausage layer will take up the temperature difference between what you want the chicken to be and what you want the duck to be. And you should be able to get 65 on the turkey, 64 on the chicken, uh between uh 64, 63, and um and like 58 uh on the on the sausage and then 57 on the 57, 58 on the duck. Uh pull it out, fry it off, and you should be good to go. Just make sure that you dry off the skin so that the skin gets all nice and crispity.
Crispity. Uh and uh that's it, right? Good? Okay. Uh uh Eric uh who writes in.
Uh he's uh who pineapple, which is an awesome uh uh what's that called? Twitter handle. Who pineapple? Who? Who pineapple?
You pineapple. Okay. Uh hi Dave. Looking to make the fries from your blog. And by the way, I know the blog is broken.
It is not my fault. We're trying to get control of it, and I've been told that the person who's gonna work on it, swearing on a stack of Bibles, they're gonna get that sucker fixed over the uh New Year's uh thing of a blap, right? Yeah, true? Mm-hmm. Okay.
Uh so I know it. Anyway, uh looking to make the fries from your blog. I recall 14 minutes uh cooking in a in a in a blanch and then two fryings. Uh what's the temp on the fry? Okay, so uh my current fries are uh not the ones I did on the blog.
I still use the enzyme. I do half inch fries now because I like the half inch fry better. Um so I cook it for a little bit longer. I cook it until I can't stand it anymore. Uh first I do well, first you soak it in the enzyme.
I actually, you know, at home I don't have the enzyme as much, so I've been doing it the normal way and they've been good. Here's the issue. The temperature at which you fry depends on how much you overcook uh the the them to begin with. The less you overcook them, and especially if you're not soaking them in enzymes beforehand, you want to do your initial fry at a lower temperature and fry it for longer. Why?
To get more moisture out of the uh out of the initial uh out of the potato. So what you would do is you would take the fries, uh, you would blanch them in uh in in water, right? And then you dry them off with uh a fan uh or in a convection oven to get the surface moisture off. Now, if you're doing a 3/8 uh inch or smaller fry, then the the drying step doesn't need to be force-dried. You can just let it flash off some steam, especially if you've done the enzyme soak.
If you haven't done an enzyme soak, right, you need to get more water out of there to get the to get the crunchiness on it. What you're gonna want to do is make sure that you dry them off, let them cool down under forced air so that the moisture leaves. With a half inch fry, even with an enzyme soak, you're gonna want to blast some of that moisture off. Now, depending on how overcooked the fry is, you're gonna want to adjust your first fry temperature. Now at home, because I don't have the time to do the full procedure necessarily because I never know I'm making French fries until it's too late.
I'll omit the enzyme step, and I will just turn my fryer initial fry temperature down to like uh, you know, 300, 270 uh uh 315 Fahrenheit, right? Uh and then what you do is uh the initial fry, it's not a time on the initial fry, you're waiting for a crust to form. You don't want it to go dark, right? You want them to stay blonde. Uh, you know, they can take a little bit of color, but not a lot, but you want to lift the basket out and keep tapping them.
And as soon as they form a nice hard crust, that's when you pull the fries out of the first fry, right? And the longer you can go, the more moisture you're you're getting rid of, and the crunchier you're gonna get on the second time of the fry. You just want to don't do it too much. In other words, don't get too rid of too much moisture, you could go all the way to what we call a hollow fry, which I don't like, but you know, you probably won't do it on a half-inch fry. Uh then immediately after you pull them out, the crust will get ruined by the moisture from the potato leaving and they'll go soggy, and then you crisp them up on a second fry at roughly 360 degrees Fahrenheit.
Uh till they are crunch it, crunch it, crunchy and brown, right? Yes. Yes. You know what? Nastasha does not like French fries.
Oh, yours are good though. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Oh, that's very sweet. Are you s is this part?
Are you starting a news? That's here. So we have a New Year's resolution, people. And the New Year's resolution is Nastasha's not going to purposely say things to piss me off, and I'm going to try to yell and scream less. Wait, which one doesn't sound cool?
Both. No, I both find the food. You only get an hour of it a week. That's true. I mean, like, yeah.
You know. You know, I was I was I was six feet four before I started working with Nastasha, and the anger is compressed me into five foot ten homunculus. Anyway, okay. Homunculous. Okay, uh Gene Doe writes in.
Uh at cooking issues, can you carbonate solidified fruit juice gelatin? Yes. Uh when you're doing it, the way to do it is to uh put it into a the way I do it is I put the gelatin into a uh soda bottle, right? I use a ver I use a high percentage gelatin because the reason is otherwise it's gonna get torn apart, right? And then you wait until it gets syrupy, right, but not set.
And then you shake it at a very high pressure. So you're talking like uh 75 PSI or something like that. The bottle is like real dicey, right? So you shake it at those temperatures, uh at those pressures, and you get a very high carbonation level, 75, you know, something like that PSI. Then you chill it in ice water until it sets at that high pressure, and then you cut the bottle open with a serrated knife.
Be careful, uh, you know, you to vent it first, and then uh, but you don't actually, you know, you anyway, cut it with scissors or serrated knife, and then you can get the gelatin out, but as soon as you break the gelatin, it it explodes itself from the internal pressure. But yeah, I used to make a champagne gele like that. But the you know, but sometimes it can be really prickly. The the carbonation at those pressure levels trapped on the inside of the stuff can be very, very prickly. Uh but anyway, uh, yes, you can do it.
Uh Ryan Santos writes in at cooking issues, looking for sous vide temperature and time for wild venison leg. Uh, looking not for a pulled meat result, but more steak-like. Well, have I done wild leg before? I've not done wild leg before. The question is, is uh, you know, how much connective tissue there is in it and uh how easy it's going to be to render out.
And the other issue on the particular piece of meat is whether or not it's going to go kind of livery, uh, gamey. I know I would I would say go low, you know, if you want it to be more more steak-like, go low, and because the longer you cook something, the lower uh, you know, the the the lower the temperature uh that you need to go, obviously. So I would say you could probably be somewhere in the 56, you know, 55, 56, assuming it works, let's say, like uh assuming its toughness level is somewhere near like a short rib and not like a lamb leg, uh, which is a lot more tender, I would assume. Then you could do something like 50, 56 uh Celsius for, you know, like a day. Uh, you know, we did yak, but not the leg.
We did it for a day at 56, and it was good, but it was gamey because uh, you know, the it took on a kind of a gamey, uh uh a gamey note. But I don't have any experience with long cooking on the on the on the leg, but it was not going to get any tougher at those temperatures, it's gonna break down. Some meats that are that are wild stay tough even when you do long cooking. Like I was really surprised at the lion meat, even though we didn't overcook it, but yeah, I don't don't get me started. Don't get me started.
Anyway, but they they they get us lion meat and uh it stayed tough even over long cooking. Bear was but we weren't cooking the leg. So I I apologize that if anyone out there hunters, and I've said everyone who hunts should get themselves an immersion circulator right now, uh before hunting season is over, so that they can just do something other than chili with all of the meat that they get that they otherwise turn into tough uh you know or sausage, that they can actually get some steak cuts out of these things. And I you know, I wish that there was, and there probably is, it's just I'm not connected to it. I wish there was some sort of hunter's blog for uh, you know, low temperature cooking, you know, or some sort of site where hunters You know, we have a hunting show that's gonna debut uh in the new year right before cooking issues.
Really? I have to make that plug, yeah. Wild game domain at 11 on Tuesdays. Do they own a circulator? Potentially.
He's a chef, uh he's a culinary instructor at ice as well. Well, yeah? So yeah, I don't know. He he's been doing some venison recipes. I'm just saying, maybe we can ask him next time.
Yeah, or maybe you know, if he doesn't already oh, see, he probably already knows about low temp cooking then, if he's an instructor at ice, uh our enemy school, just kidding. Uh, but the um uh I should say rival enemies strong. Uh but the uh yeah, I'd love I'd love to know. All right, good. So we'll we'll talk to him.
We'll talk to him uh in the new year. Okay. Uh Ellenasser writes in uh what is the minimum percent alcohol that'll allow me to keep a bottle of whatever in the cabinet versus the fridge? Example, uh uh phalarinum or or violette, things like that. You know, that's a very interesting question.
Um you know, spoilage of certain certain, and I'm working on this a lot actually right now with uh sodas that we're working on. So even things that are fairly high sugar level uh and even things that are fairly acidic, like a philarinum, uh, you know, can spoil on you because there are yeasts out there. Now I'm talking dangerous spoilage, but there are yeasts out there that can survive in fairly acidic environments, that can survive in um in even in in in high CO2 environments like soda, and can survive uh you know, kind of all of those things, and can survive, you know, somewhat mild alcohol. Now nothing is gonna grow above with the with the exception of very few, very few things are gonna grow above uh, you know, 18, 20% alcohol. So if you're doping it up to 18, 20% alcohol, you're you're pretty much, I think you're gonna be safe.
You know, 20 uh 20 and above, you're good to go. But if you want to have it very low alcohol, you don't want to go high like that. I would, and uh people might get bent out of shape here because everyone's anti-prise preservative, right? But like one tenth of one percent of like benzoit, you know, uh will um prevent yeast from growing. So if you're not against that uh small amount of benzoid preservative, it can do wonders for stopping uh yeast spoilage, which is what you're gonna be looking at uh on on excuse me, on something like that.
Uh so that's it. Otherwise, just dope it up to like 20 and you're good. I th I assume. You know, if I'm wrong, someone will say, You're wrong, and they'll they'll text me and say I'm incorrect, and then I'll correct myself, but I'm pretty sure that's right. Uh uh Mike uh I assuming you pronounce it payez, right?
P-A-P-A-E-Z, paez, pay us? Sure. Yeah. Paz. Paz.
Anyway. Uh have you ever had success experimenting with monoglyceride flakes? Uh and with the with the pound hashtag uh hydrocolloid help? Nice. Uh well, it depends on what you mean by success.
Uh mono and diglycerides are uh so you when you take a fat, right? Fatty a fat is a triglyceride, right? So it's a th it's three fatty acids that are attached to uh you know the glycerin backbone there, right? And so it's triglyceride, right? You break off one of those and you get a diglyceride.
You break off two of them, you only have one fatty acid on it, and you have a uh monoglyceride. What's interesting about them is is they go from being completely non polar, being a lipid, to being a you know, somewhat polar. So they are emulsifiers. They are ampiphilic. They love both water and they love um and they love oil.
Mono and diglycerides are uh are they as emulsifiers go, all emulsifiers are either more oil like or more water like. And when you buy mono and diglycerides, they come as a flake format, uh, they are more oil like. So uh you what you do is is you dissolve them, usually with a little bit of heat, into the oil, and then you emulsify your your water base in. So they're good for uh water, uh water in oil emulsions, right? So that you know that's what I mainly use them for.
So I've made hydrocolloid beads by uh putting mono and diglycerides into uh into oils and then emulsifying uh water dro what flavored water droplets into it. So I've used that. Very high levels of mono and diglycerides can be used in um to thicken oils, but I think it's gross. Like you know, you're talking about like 10% mono diglycerides, and it's gross, don't do it. I mean, you can do it, but I wouldn't do it.
Uh they're also uh obviously used a lot in uh baking applications. But I don't, you know, I I haven't come up with something yet where in other words, it's not part of our normal pantry. I don't reach for it the same way that I would reach for gel and gum or for agar or for uh meat glue or for um you know Pectanex Ultra SPL, like stuff that uh stuff that I use every single day. But that's just because you know I probably haven't spent the time. I'm sure that if I spent the time with it, that I'd think it's you know the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Uh Matt uh Gardner calls uh wrote in and says, hey Dave, what polycyence circulator is best for pop-ups? Uh Creative Series or Chef Series. Maximum 20 guests have a uh $1,000 a drop. Thanks. Uh so okay, so there are three different polycycience circulators that I'm aware of that are out there right now, and I can never remember which isn't the creative is the new one that's 400 bucks, right?
Or 450, whatever it is. Then there's the Sous vide uh professional, which is the $800 plastic one, and then there's the other one that is the $900 or $1,000 old school metal one. Now, here's the issue. Uh if you're doing a pop-up, you might want to have two circulators going, right? In which case, for a thousand bucks, you could buy two of the new creative one.
Now, neither one of them is going to circulate as large a volume. They're as powerful from a heat standpoint, but they're not as uh they're you know, they their pump is not as powerful. So you you know, you're not necessarily gonna get as large a bath moving as you would with the other one. They're also not uh guaranteed for commercial work. So if they break and they were used commercially, their warranty will not be valid.
However, even though you're only cooking for 20 people, you might find that you're gonna do uh in a pop-up scenario two different recipes. It might require two different temperatures, or you might want to run two different baths, in which case, it could be useful to have two circulators running. In which case, the only way to do that for a thousand dollars, uh, you know, with the poly science one is to go with the um with the new creative series. Uh that said, um, you know, both the, you know, I I haven't used the new creative one, so I can't really, really talk about it. But you know, Philip Preston told me that the main difference is the pump is not as strong and it's not warrantied for commercial use.
Yeah? Okay. Um Dave, I hate to do it. We've got an international call on the next show. Uh all right.
Two how many minutes? Two minutes? Like a minute. Yeah. All right.
Uh Elliot Padmot wrote in cooking issues. Didn't hear it before I want to make a cocktail for Christmas theme. Yule log. Any ideas? I'm thinking juniper smoke.
It's gonna take longer, Elliot. I'm gonna tweet you out a multiple tweet for uh for your Yule log cocktail, Stasha. I'm sure we'll think about you like Yule log stuff, right? Uh-huh. And you like Christmas.
We'll work on that. And uh King Amber wrote in uh super quick quick legal lesson on the name uh Kimique, which I made fun of before. Uh David suggested it was a terrible name. Not so. First is an adorable palindrome.
I don't really like palindromes, but okay. And they did a little something with the second cue to make it symmetrical, so it's visually recognizable, but more importantly, in the trademark area. The clients and marketing folks typically want a descriptive name and the lawyers want a non-descriptive name. Uh, and so basically he's saying it's a strong mark because it's both descriptive and non-descriptive. All right, fair, Ken.
Fair, fair. Anyway, listen, to everyone out there, I want to wish them whatever you celebrate, happy that, good cooking, and cooking issues. Bye. 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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