Today's program was brought to you by Catskill Provisions. Located in a small corner of Northwest Catskill Mountains. They specialize in creating raw, all natural handmade food products. For more information, visit Catskillprovisions.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwright Brooklyn.
If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more. Cooking issues. Cooking issues! Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues, coming to you live but late in the back of Roberta's Pizzeria on Tuesday in Ba Bushwick, baby. Tramming a little bit.
Yeah, chairing a little uh Bootsy. Bub Bushwick, baby. Yeah. So what happened today? Why am I late?
Yeah. It was like my normal, like it's normal. Okay, it was not because it was not because of uh last night's Booker and Dax one year anniversary party, which was crazy. Crazy party. We had uh we uh Booker and Dax, which is the bar, you know, that I have uh attached to Sambar, you know, the uh uh the Momofuku restaurant of great repute.
And uh anyway, uh, we had our one year, uh, one year we've been open one year, so we cleared away uh like all of the chairs. We had a pinata full of airline bottles of Saint Germain and Haribo. That was crazy I I beat it with our baseball bat. We have a baseball bat at uh Booker and Dax there that everyone who works at or has worked at Booker and Dax at any point signs the baseball bat in Sharpie. And it is uh, you know, it's it's up there as kind of a customer relations tool, but also uh also for pinatas, which you know, my dream is to have uh regular piñata service at the bar.
We can't do it now because we don't have an area where we can just just devote it to pinatas. You know what I mean? Wow. You you'd probably be the first. I mean, imagine if you could go.
This is my dream. You go and see, you know, is it look if you do it at your bar or restaurant, all you gotta do is say, you know, just give a little give a little props back because here's here's everyone would want to go to their on their birthday and and beat a pinata while they're drinking that's full of like cool things, not like necessarily the crap that you got when you're a kid, although the odd Hot Wheels car would not be bad in an adult pinata as well, you know. Uh, but uh, you know, kind of like adult candies, doesn't have to be full of airline bottles of booze. It was provided by a booze company, and that's why you know ours was full of airline bottles of uh plastic airline bottles, by the way. Total we're we're safety conscious folk.
But anyway, uh that's not the reason uh I was late. I was trying to find some information. I couldn't find my copy of Lowry's Meat Science, and by the time I finally found it, I missed the subway that I normally get. That's the actual reason. Nice.
Yeah. But anyways, uh unfortunately, today not joined in the studio with uh the hammer. She is uh she has some non cooking issues that she has to take care of today, so she won't be joining us. And so, you know, Jack and Joe, thank thank God, are here with us today, but you know, I don't yell at them because they don't uh irritate me on a consistent basis. They don't they don't spend like like their their entire waking moment figuring out new ways to uh get me bent out of shape.
Joe's been working on it. Yeah? Yeah, he's been he's been doing some research. Do some research, like uh do has he developed some sort of crazy you know food aversions, or does he believe in some sort of uh nutritional BS hype that's just gonna get me all spooled up and and and blasted out or no? I'm shopping for shoes right now.
Oh man, are they like are they cool shoes anyway? Really cool. Wait till wait till next week. I'm gonna have some new kicks. Alright, cool.
Well, if you if you really want to tick me off, like you know, buy 'em, wear them once and return them. That's the that's the st that's the star's jam right there. Although she hey, I think she's grown out of it. Look, we all have the things that we do, you know, when we're growing up, and sometimes it takes some of us longer to grow out of those habits than other people. You know what I mean?
That's all. That's all I'm saying. Call it your questions live to 7184972128. That's 7184972128. Follow-up from uh one of our questions before.
We were talking, I think a week or two ago on um seasoning cast iron pads, a subject that comes up uh quite often, and I had mentioned that I'd read a blog by uh my her name just went straight out of my brain. That's all right. Uh because you could go look it up on the last show. But uh she recommended using linseed oil, uh aka flaxseed oil, uh a food grade version of it, of course, uh, because it's obviously uh from a painter's perspective, the drying oil par excellence, so it's going to polymerize much faster and uh uh, you know, I guess at lower temperatures, although I'm not uh I don't I don't have the numbers in front of me. Uh it's gonna make a nice coating in your in your pan.
Uh now, according to Dan, whatever it is, 76 LA, blah blah blah. I don't know whether it also has good carbon residue content, right? Which is not just adding to the polymerization, but is going to create the nonstick stuff. I'm not gonna get into that again. All I'm going to say is our good buddy, uh Michael Natkin uh from Herbavoracious, uh wrote uh wrote in uh with his two cents saying that he has tested that with uh with uh flaxseed oil, and he says that it's complete baller, awesome, super hard, awesome coating in his pants.
So, you know, we trust him, so take his advice. I have not I have not tested it. I want to start calling him, I wonder whether he'd be offended if I called him Captain Vegetable. Anyone remember that it was a little known Sesame Street character called Captain Vegetable. You guys remember this guy?
I do not. Captain Vegetable, like he's like Sesame Street went through this phase where they're trying to get, I guess, kids to eat their vegetables, and so they had this this vegetable guy who's like, it is our Captain Vegetable, but he's like ne he never became popular, like all the other like weird little Sesame Street craps, like the like the two dudes with the clock, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Remember those guys? Yeah, I got those guys. I thought they turned Cookie Monster into like the Veggie Monster, though.
Is that true? Oh God. Someone find out whether this is the case and get back to me. That's like uh that's a deal breaker right there. Yeah, that's a veggie monster?
That's the worst. The veggie- you know what? Hell no. No. You know what I mean?
God, no. Veggie monster. Unacceptable. This is not right. Uh Don Rollins writes in.
Hello at cooking issues. I'm going to start uh working in a bar that uses thin half moon ice. What can I do to keep the ice from over diluting my drinks? Alright, well, here's the deal. Uh the half moon ice, uh, I mean, it depends on the machine.
I'm assuming if you're using a commercial machine that uh well here here's the issue. A couple issues. So uh ice and dilution is related to uh a number number of factors. If you're shaking, the main problem from the half moon ice is going to be uh shards that are broken off in the uh in your shaker. Uh and those shards that are broken off actually aren't gonna uh dil over dilute your product right away, but when you strain them through your uh regular hawthorn strainer, which is the one with the spring going around it, uh those crystals make it through and those things will melt quite quickly and then they'll produce it uh uh in your glass, right?
Because normally when you're shaking a drink, you don't serve it with with ice, so the dilution is fixed from the moment it's poured out of the shaker, except for these crystals that are gonna melt out. And so the solution around that is to um is to just dump um is to just you know uh put it when you're pouring it, pour it through a double tea strainer, and that's gonna get rid of those crystals of ice. It will hurt somewhat the foamy head that you can get out of a shaking drink, but you know, there you have it. Uh also uh when you're stirring, right? When you're stirring a drink, uh it doesn't really matter what kind of ice you're using, except for things look nicer or don't look nicer, as long as you realize that the smaller the cubes and the faster you stir, the faster you're gonna dilute.
So all you have to do is adjust your uh your your times, your stirring times, uh according to the type of ice that you're using. So you can do a stirred, I mean it's if you use very, very fine ice when you're stirring, the chilling is so rapid that it's difficult to get a consistent stir out of it. But with any normal size ice, it's possible to uh get a nice consistent stir. If it's uh it's probably wet ice, in which case you should probably make it a practice to um when you put when you pack ice into something you're gonna stir with, put a strainer top over and shake the excess water out of it, snap the excess water into the sink before you do your stir. This can help uh alleviate some of the excess uh water of dilution you have on the outside, if that's a problem for your drinks.
Or just assume that you're gonna use the relatively similar amount of ice every time, and therefore the water load from the uh water on the outside of the ice is going to be the same every time you do it. It's all about consistency. With a stir drink, it's all about consistency. So as long as you can make it repeatable, you can make it good. Uh with the shake-in drinks, I really feel that a large cube is going to produce a better result.
Actually, what you really want to do is a large cube with a small cube, a couple small cubes in there. Uh, and I think we've talked about it, so I'm not gonna you know go into it again unless somebody writes it and says, please go into it again. Uh but uh you know what you can do is usually in a bar or a restaurant, there is some freezer space, and uh depending on how many shaken cocktails you make a night, it could be economical from a space standpoint, definitely from a resource standpoint, because it does cost very little to freeze ice cubes if you have the time and space. Is uh go get uh the ice cube molds, the two inch by two inch ice cube molds, get the ones from Cocktail Kingdom, which are made from uh, I believe they're made from a polyurethane, not from a silicone uh tests that I've not verified myself, but that were done by Evan Freeman, uh, you know, uh famous bartender years ago, where that certain silicone molds can impart a taste to the water uh that the ice cubes, uh that when you freeze ice cubes, it can impart a taste to them. I've never done this test myself, but this is what he says.
Uh and so that is a feasible way to generate cubes for shaking. However, when it comes to beautiful presentation ice, my friend, you are S O L. Then you'll have to do some uh either like buy ice to have it brought in, which is expensive, which is what we do, or uh start a freezing campaign with uh igloo coolers and whatnot. We could talk more about that uh if if someone's interesting. But if you're just interested in over diluting, it's it it's not going to be much of a problem.
Just make sure that you strain your shaking drinks through a tea strainer. Caller. Caller? Oh, reverb! Caller, you're on the air.
Hey Dave. My name's Nick. I'm calling from Seoul Korea. Oh, hey, Nick, that's awesome. Uh my question is about cold smoking bacon.
I've been cold smoking bacon in this large old file cabinet with uh smoke daddy attached to the side of it. Smoke that it generates and uh pumps smoke into the cabinet chamber and hence cold smoking the meat, I suppose. Uh it's been working pretty good, actually. I've been able to produce fairly good bacon with it. What concerns me though is that uh even with cold smoking, the wood still combusts.
Right. Incinerated, sending all sorts of undesirable nasty elements into the air and ultimately in onto my bacon, I suppose. So I was wondering if there's a way to prevent or drastically reduce that. Yeah, here's the the problem is is that uh the smoke flavors that you know that we all love are due to the pyrolysis of the meat, which is taking place at uh elevated temperatures, right? And so I mean there are definitely you know, if you go way over on temperature, then you can you produce more of those nasty things, then you get more also more of those burnt acrid uh, you know, those burnt acrid kind of flavors that that none of us like.
So you definitely want to control temperature, but I mean, the unfortunate truth is is that uh there are you know what are you know deemed to be carcinogenic and unhealthful components that are generated purely as as a result while the same things that we like are being produced. Now you you can filter the smoke, right? Which is I guess how they do when they're making liquid smoke, they can um they can they they recondense the smoke back to a liquid and then they can fractionate that into uh its different parts, and then um then they can separate out some of the things that are carcinogenic. But the um but it's you know very would be very difficult for you in in the way you're doing it. However, you know, you I don't know, I haven't done my my research uh you know re recently.
I probably I probably should as what the current feeling is of the actual level of risk or whether anyone's done uh risk uh you know risk increased studies based on smoke in meats and consumption. I don't know if those studies have been done yet because I haven't uh I haven't read them. My feeling is is that in the near future, and by that I mean like the next 10 or 20 years, that uh you know, air quality is becoming a lot more important. Not just food club, but air quality in kitchens is becoming more important. And uh, you know, the the research that came out you know several years ago on um the deleterious effects uh of uh wok oil smoke in uh in women in China in particular and uh increased cancer rates because of it, I think like more of those kind of studies about uh kind of airborne things in your kitchen are are going to become i important.
So I mean I would definitely invest in some good ventilation in any rate, but it's gonna be difficult to eliminate, I think, all that stuff entirely. Does that makes sense or no? Uh it does. Uh I've looked at uh vaporizers. I don't know if that's a step in the right direction or yeah.
I mean the problem is if the vaporizers are not, I mean, the whole point of the vaporizer is to try and is they're distilling they're they're they're releasing things without the burning, right? So I mean, right, they're built for they're built for liberating THC from marijuana to be blunt. Uh but the you know, I don't I've I obviously have I put wood chips in them before. I have one, uh, but I I you know, but I haven't used it. It's it's it's in years, it's packed away in my in my storage closet.
I get one out. I can get one out and test it. You want me to test it? I just don't think it's gonna generate I don't think it's gonna generate the the temperatures needed to make the smoke because I mean the whole point of the vaporizer is to have a controlled heat so that you're not getting that kind of combustion. And the flavor, the actual flavor components that we're making in wood are due to a high temperature pyrolysis uh you know, you know, reaction where that is taking place like in you know, not at like 400 F, but like at 400 C, you know, 400 Celsius, which is like what's a lot higher.
Uh I could try to dredge up at some point uh some literature on um the difference in uh the relative things that are being you know released from uh from wood smoke at different temperatures. But the issue is I think that you I think that they're inherently linked that you're making the stuff that you don't want while you're making the stuff that you do want, that you get, you know, that they come kind of hand in hand. Um but and I don't know of any good way to uh filter it except I wonder whether you could draw the smoke through water and get rid of some of something. I don't know. I'd have I have to do some uh research.
It might be it might be possible, but I think you're not gonna you're not gonna be able to generate the flavor you want without generating the unwanted stuff that you know that you don't want. That's my feeling. I could be wrong. I'd like to get some other input on it. I have to do some more research.
Alrighty. Alrighty. Well, listen, uh shoot me back on Twitter with anything you find. And I'll and if I if I if I can find anything interesting, I'll talk about it on the next show. All right, thanks.
Thank you for calling in from South Korea. You want to take our first break? We have another caller. Oh, we have another caller? All right, caller, you're on the air.
Hi, Dave. This is uh Nick from Denver. How's it going? Going all right. How's Denver doing?
Good, good. Nice. Um so I had a question about um it was uh Nasin Mirvald's new book. Um it was Modernist Cuisine for Home. Right.
Um, and I was going to do his short ribs recipe and um he commented on uh using zip top bags for uh I think a long period of time with low temperature cooking. And he mentioned that for um safety and reliability issues, he recommended only using um a vacuum sealed bag. And I was just wondering if you could comment on that. Mostly for the safety issue. Well, why did he say it was unsafe?
Do you remember? I don't have the book. Uh so he he just mentioned that it was unsafe, and then he uh on his uh on his recipe page and then he referenced another page in the book, but it didn't really go into any more detail on what on why it would be unsafe. What temperature are you cooking? Um it was going to be 60 degrees Celsius for about two days.
Yeah. So it's an it's an interesting point. Uh I've heard other people say that there is some sort of a safety issue with it. Now, here's here's something I know for a fact. Uh Grant Aikitz, maybe four years ago, posted a video online using Ziploc bags uh and got uh an angry call from S.
C. Johnson Wax, a family company, and saying that they're not uh they're not set up to be used for that uh XYZYZ because they haven't tested it, right? And so I don't know where this the safety issue on zippies came in uh regards to cooking because they're rated for reheating. They're made from polyethylene without plasticizers. Uh so and they're rated to be in constant contact with your food at normal ambient temperatures f indefinitely.
Uh and they're rated for reheating the food. I don't know of any published data saying that there is anything that's leaching in or out of polyethylene ziploc bags. And by the way, if you smell a Ziploc bag as opposed to smelling polyethylene film, polyethylene film uh has to have uh the thin stuff like saran, it's not saran, but you know what I mean, the the plastic wrap. Uh they have solvents in them to help them uh get them into those thin sheets and roll them out quickly, and those have an odor almost always, uh, whereas uh zippies do not. Uh so you know I always consider them relatively neutral.
I don't really understand where the safety issue comes in so long as your temperatures are down like 60 and and 50, where uh as far as I can tell, polyethylene is fine in those service ranges for continuous duty, right? Now, uh I could be wrong on this because I haven't looked up the studies right now, but this is my feeling. Here's the issue on uh on polyethylene. Is it is polyethylene, unless you have one that has a special vapor barrier in it, like a multi multi-layer uh film technology in it, uh polyethylene not such a great vapor layer. Yeah, that's why I use the by the way, the um the ones that are rated for freezer, because they're supposedly a better vapor barrier.
But you can get oxygen migration through a Ziploc bag because they're not as depending on which one you use, because they're not as um they're not as gas impermeable. So there could be perhaps a quality issue over time. Also, remember there is residual oxygen inside of a Ziploc bag more so than in a vacuum. But you also have to remember that when I'm vacuuming down uh a lot of products, I mean, re red meat's not so much, but like on other things, I'm not sucking a hard vacuum anyway, because I think it's deleterious to the meat quality. So I I don't really I uh look i there is an issue where uh you know someone could take a Ziploc bag and put the temperature too high and then you get melting, right?
At 60, I don't really see that that's a problem. Also, uh there could be an issue with residual oxygen in the bag. However, over a two-day cook period at 140 degrees uh Fahrenheit, 60 Celsius, ain't nothing growing in that thing. Do you know what I mean? You know, perhaps it might be deleterious on on uh on its capability to be stored for a long period of time, but if you're not using it for extremely lengthy lengthy storage, right, I don't see that it's that uh big big of a deal.
You might get uh you know perhaps you know slightly more oxidation in there than you would otherwise, but again, not a safety issue. So I don't I don't really understand where this comes from, and I've heard other people talk about it, unless it's like and Nathan is not the kind of guy who uh so so there are many books, and I I won't I won't name them in particular uh and authors and people in general who they're there are when they write they say things that are untrue uh and they know it's untrue if you go and you call them on it, they say it because, well, it's too complicated to explain what's really going on to the average cook, right? And uh and I don't want them to make a mistake and do something that's dangerous, so I'll just tell them it's unsafe to do something even though it's not true. And I've had this conversation with authors, with chefs and with teachers. And I think that's a cra I think that's a crap way of working.
You know what I mean? I think it's just uh I think it's doing a complete disservice. Nathan's not that kind of a guy. So for all I know, he has a reference somewhere about it being unsafe, but I'd lo I'd love to see it because I consider uh low temperature, and by that I mean kind of sixty even up to sixty-three and below in a zippy to be fine practice. I only do it on short-term cooks, but I don't uh and he I know is fine with it on short term cooking in the range of several hours.
But I don't know uh I don't know what study he's referencing to say that it's gonna be bad for longer periods. It's a long-winded answer, I'm sorry, but it's kind of an important subject. Yeah. Then I feel like I didn't answer your question at all, but it's pretty helpful. It's pretty helpful.
All right. All right. Well, look it try to find it and twit uh you know, tweet on in to the cooking issue, see if you can find his reference for that or uh where he references it from, uh, because uh this is a discussion I'd love to have uh either with him or anyone else uh on it because it's something that I'd like to get to the bottom of because the Ziploc bag is a fantastic tool for all of those people who can afford a circulator, especially at the lower price point now, or who make your own, but don't have the several thousand dollars it takes to make a vacuum machine. And zippies are still the best way to cook uh things like um uh fish that you don't really want to vacuum, or poultry that you don't really want to vacuum. Uh, or if you don't have time to chill down your meat after your initial sear and you want to do zippies to cook a steak, me, zippy, you know, zippies are great.
I love them. Uh, even though the SC Johnson Wax family company does not want me to use them for this purpose, uh, I find them incredibly useful. So I I'd really like to know if I'm doing a bad thing. Sound good? All right.
Uh all right, thank you, brother. Thanks for calling in. Uh, and let's go to our first commercial break. Uh Fish is Fish Is Vodka. You're listening to Cooking Issues on Heritage Radio Network.org.
Cat Skill Provisions has Valentine's Day literally in the bag with their seal the deal gift bag. Start with chocolate honey truffles and then move on to breakfast and bed with their traceable organic pancake mix and New York State maple syrup. Sure to satisfy any ardent local. Check out the Cat Skill Provisions Seal the Deal package at www.catskillprovisions.com. What do you think of that?
Seal the deal Valentine's Day package. Seal the deal. You know, that is a that is an admirable name. Seal the deal. Yeah.
You know what I mean? And it's like even just buying it implies that you know you're gonna seal the deal, right? So it's like if you have any, if you're wondering, are you gonna seal the deal? You get to seal the deal package, you're like, deal is sealed. Right?
I mean, that's it, deal is sealed. You know, uh like I will not name any names, but uh, you know, again, I have uh uh a bar, and one of the functions of a bar uh is to take two people who are looking to find uh other people to do other things with and to meet them to kind of grease the social wheels as they say and then let them go off, right? This is one of the functions of a bar. And uh, you know, I was playing some hardcore seal the deal music last night. I was busting out uh, you know, ignition.
I was yeah. I mean, like I I was doing we did we did about a two hour um kind of like uh dan like dancy dancy kind of like rap anthem set like you know, California love and all that kind of stuff. And then, you know, afterwards I broke into like a couple I went ignition and then a couple other songs like that, and then Barry White at the end of the night went after we did the last call into Marvin Gaye, and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna call you out. You know who you are. We're not sealing the deal.
Why do I go to work? Why do I get up? Why do I eat breakfast and work and breathe air if I cannot help you seal the deal? You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
Man, Barry White into Marvin Gay is like that's like level five seal the deal. I know it. And you know what? You know what the problem was? The individual who I'm talking to, maybe you should have gotten the Catskill provisions sealed in the situation.
Because then, as we say here at Cooking Issues, it's pre-sealed. Right? You know what may not seal the deal? I I love we've got we got an audition video in from Joel Gargano. I wish I wish I could play this.
I mean, it's radio, obviously. We can't see the video, but we've got Joel just standing here with a guitar, kind of looking at the camera, and he's playing an acoustic version of the cooking issues theme song. So let's let's give that a quick run before we move on. Alright, let's do it. One second here.
What's Joel's group again? Uh I don't think he has a name for it. Cooking Issues intro. Go. We're all social creas.
We've got some questions. Jackie Joe 2. They're all here now. So let's say help us. What do you think, man?
I think I think we've got like an American Idol show we can put together now. Definitely. And and and thank you for finally giving Joe, in the song. You know why? You know why, fellow frontman, fellow front men, frontmen always give each other props.
Am I right, Joe? It's it's hard work, man. It is. It's hard work being the front man. Right.
I mean, because you have to be you have to be on all the time. I mean, you do get you get all the benefits as well, but you always have to, you know, pretend that you're like, you know, all juiced up, right? Yeah. There's there's lots of uh, you know, just pretending you're pretending that you're actually excited when you're not. Yeah.
Like you're ready to rock, but you're actually really ready to go to bed. Look, I tell people this all the time. And it's the same with cooking, doing demos, like being here. It's like it, you know, the the average person, like they're there to see you perform. They don't care whether you've had a bad day.
What is that what does that matter to them? They don't they don't give a rat's behind whether or not, you know, you know, your foot just fell off or you know, you you know, your your puppy fell in your meat grinder. That's not important to them. What's important to them, they came to see a show. You agreed to provide a show.
Uh, they came to see the show. So you gotta get amped up. That's all there is. That's why, you know, even as much as I love why I'm not gonna get into discussion of you know Axl Rose and the old Guns N' Roses shows. I'm just not gonna get into it.
I'm just not gonna get into it right now. But uh, right? You'll you're not that you're not the kind of like Joe. You're not the kind of like hat over your head, stare at the floor kind of a front man, are you? No, no, not at all.
Yeah, good. Good. I mean uh uh look. It's a show. Yeah, there's a certain place for that.
There's a certain kind of music where everyone's like, hey, let's let's all let's all you know, let's go see someone who doesn't care whether I'm alive or dead. Yeah, let's let's just be sad and in a room together. Yeah, no. Yeah, let's not do that. Yeah, that was never me.
Like well, I mean you obviously that's not how I like to work. Obviously. Uh anyway, okay. So what's the story? Joel's gonna come in and and serenade uh the Joel's gonna come in in March.
Yeah, he's gonna do the song live. We're gonna record it here, and he he said he really wants to do some commercials like the TechServe one because he feels it may be a life-changing experience. So I'm I'm not gonna deny him that opportunity. Hey, hey man, it's it's it's not it's not my money. Talk to the TechServe people.
I'm for it. That's right. Right? Right? All right.
So uh howdy everyone. Would why would you choose one method of applying Activa RM over another? By the way, Activa RM is the brand name for uh Ginamoto, the MSG people's meat glue, transglutaminase, the enzyme, the miracle enzyme that's used to glue or weld bond uh meat together. Uh uh and so i i it's transglutaminase uh by a Ginamoto is a company Activa is the uh is the brand name for all their transglutaminases and RM is the one that's most commonly used. And it's a mixture of enzyme, uh casein, which milk protein, and um and uh maltodextrin, okay?
And you can either sprinkle it onto things or you can make it into a paste and paint it on. Okay. Uh which is a slurry. It's called the slurry technique. Just so you guys know, in case you don't know.
Uh is a slurry better for some app and you can buy it from modernist pantry.com, even though they're not sponsored anymore. Okay. Uh is a slurry better for some applications, uh, and a sprinkling better for others. Have you done any tests with commercial? Okay, that's one first question.
Uh look, Nils, who uh you know, I I I got my first meat glue from Nils, uh Norrin and from Wiley, because they were the two first people in New York to use it. And I think Wiley might use slurries sometimes, but Nils always hated the slurries because he didn't want to put a lot of liquid into the meats that he was uh gluing. So he always did uh sprinkle. Uh there's sometimes a slurry is okay, but uh, you know, ninety nine point nine percent of the actual gluing of meats together that I do, I do uh with uh a sprinkle technique. Um you know, the the the paste thing is you know fast.
I guess it's easy to dose out, but I just never uh big uh proponent of it uh so much. Okay. And then second, have you done any tests with commercial grade beef cooked sous vide? I was reading up on beef grading recently and never knew uh commercial grade beef is basically beef from older uh animals that are marble that are that are marbled like prime beef. Not technically, but like in other words, primer choice, I think uh it uh any of those are commercial.
Um couldn't a great deal of money be saved and deeper flavor realized by cooking commercial beef sous vide until tender. If so, where would a consumer find the lower grades of beef? Okay, this is a very interesting question. Uh I have never actually run the test. I don't have any um personal experience cooking uh older meats.
But the way meat grading works is uh meat grading is bizarre because it's based uh solely on the goal, the sole goal of beef grading is tenderness. That's it. Uh they don't care flavor or anything like that, except for they also grade much higher for fat, right? So the the way it works is if you look at the beef grading charts and um you see that there on the there's uh an age range and then a fat marbling range, and you have to be in certain things. So older cuts of meat, older animals uh have in general uh tougher meat, and you know, 100% they will have tougher meat.
The same animals' meat will get tougher as it ages, right? Uh and so at a certain point, uh after I think, you know, 24 months or whatever, it it's no longer really labeled as either prime or choice. And but it can be extremely highly marbled, in which case uh it is sold as commercial, right? So standard is what's lower marble. I believe standard beef is lower marbled than choice, right?
But young, right? Whereas commercial can be very highly marbled. In fact, I think it has to be more highly marbled in order, otherwise it would be canner beef or whatnot, but is from an older animal. And it's going to be tougher, and so people don't, but I don't know a good source of getting it. I will say this.
By going to uh Spain and having going to a restaurant whose whose specialty is old, old meat, like seven-year-old meat. And they said the flavor of it was fantastic. Now, as you point out, low temperature cooking might be a good way to tenderize these cuts of meats that are older. Here are the caveats and what I think. In general, what I think you're going to want to do is get a uh a well-finished, highly marbled older piece of meat and then dry age it.
You know, these older cuts of meat, I think you're going to want to dry age them to increase the tenderness because uh my feeling is if you try to tenderize the meat just by doing low temperature cooking, that uh you might have a tendency over time, because remember, when a meat gets older, uh not the it's not just the collagen changing and and the muscles changing, the enzyme uh components are changing, the um you know the darkness of it, the flavor of it. Uh and so I have a feeling that the older the meat is, the more it might get a kind of livery or gamey taste as it's cooked for long periods in a bag. So I might say that a dry aging of it might be a better way to do it. Get like a primal and then dry age it and then do, you know, one of your normal low temperature cooking. Because I, you know, again, I find that low temperature cooking to tenderize tough meats that aren't tough because of collagen, but are tough because the muscle fibers themselves have toughened up.
Uh tends to produce mushy meat when it's cooked for a long time. I really no one ever gets into discussions with me about mushy versus tender, but I think it's something that really wants to be uh talked about. Just a note if you're going to buy muscle meat that's from animals over 30 uh months of age in the United States, uh, you need to make sure that uh that all of the spinal material and any nerve material has been removed because that's uh you know, precautions that are taken for BSE, bovine, spongiform, encephalopathy, acquis Kreutzfeld, new variant, the deadly disease known as Mad Cow. Okay. Um that makes sense, guys?
Or no. Yeah, they don't care. They're like that. Now they're being like Nastasha, like ah, they don't care. They don't care.
Okay. Uh Anna from Budapest writes in, dear Nastasha, Dave, and Jack. Joe, you got shaft on this one again. Uh, I mean, Joe, yeah, I said Joe, right? Uh, I've been listening to your show for over a year now, and in the meantime, I'm trying to listen to old episodes as well.
I still have 14 left, so I'm hesitant whether my question has already been mentioned, but I'll give it a go. Hey, if you only have 14 episodes left, I mean we've had like a hundred episodes, 100 and change episodes, right? I mean, we can we can we can double up on a question, but you I don't think uh you've answered this one yet. In October, we were lucky enough to get an invitation to an Uruguayan wedding. Uh, and during a two-week uh Buenos Aires Uruguay trip, we had a great time.
My fiance had been obsessed with dulce de leche. By the way, I love to call it Dolce Dolce and uh dulce sorry, dulce de leche and piss off all my all all my Spanish friends. But some I won't do that though. Dulce de leche. Uh before uh I got hooked as well, uh while I was there.
We had a chance to stay with locals who actually make their own dulce de leche from scratch, and they told us the recipe, but for some reason it does not work for us. We don't get the right consistency. And ours is runny instead of thick and creamy. I was wondering if you could tell me what we were doing wrong or if we were missing something or have a uh have a recipe, if I have a recipe that really works. Uh our recipe is two liters of milk, uh two liters of water, one kilo of sugar, one teaspoon of soda.
We're told to heat the milk, the water, and sugar together. Once the liquid boils, we should put the soda in it and let it simmer for two hours, stirring once in a while. I use whole milk from the farmer's market. The second time I even added some golden syrups uh because I thought the sugar uh might help the consistency, but there's no difference. In fact, the one with the sugar syrup got runnier.
We tried cooking for four and a half hours and only two hours to see if it thickens, uh, but it didn't. The liquid turns dark, I guess because of caramelization, but doesn't get thick. Uh should we put butter in at some point? If yes, when should we cover the pan with a lid? Should we stir it or let it simmer?
What does the soda do, etc., etc.? Alright, look. Uh I don't know what the water is in there for. I once uh, you know, my typical way of making uh the making the dulce de leche is to use the uh sweetened condensed milk uh uh and put it in a uh in a pressure cooker for between at 15 psi between 45 minutes and an hour. I know that's cheating.
The first time I ever saw someone make the real stuff, and of course they called it a requipe, but uh you know, was in uh Colombia, up in the in the mountains over there in Colombia. They uh this like little old lady you made it by just pouring milk in a pan. I was like, oh, whoa, you can do that. Here's here's what's going on with it. Now, if you look at Indian sweets, uh they have boiled uh milk salads, but they're not as brown as the dulce de leche because they're not adding that uh baking soda.
Now, I uh I've heard some people say the baking soda is not necessary. However, I think it is. What the baking soda is doing is it's not really caramelization that you're looking at. You're actually doing uh Mayard reactions to it with the high heat, right? And that's accelerated by adding uh the baking soda, which is uh alkaline.
So the alkaline stuff is there to help the browning along as it cookings. The thickening of the dulce de leche is strictly due to the concentration of milk solids. And as the milk solids get more concentrated in the presence of the uh the alkaline baking soda, it's gonna get browner and browner and thicker and thicker. To give you an idea, standard a standard practice would be to take I don't I see I think your main problem you need on you need the lid off, by the way, because you need to evaporate water. I think your main problem right there is the uh water.
I don't know why the water is in the recipe at all. I mean, typical thing would be to take uh for every liter of uh of milk to take with add sugar baking soda, take it down to about uh 250 mils. And I think that's gonna be uh your main uh problem. Do it on a volume basis, not on a time basis. What's uh what's up, Jack?
Oh, wow, you you saw you saw me get animated, huh? I didn't even need to say anything. I have a question for for cooking issues, actually. All right. So we we we spoke with Harold McGee on Friday.
We're doing this this series of recordings, and he was one of our featured guys kind of telling his life story. Which, by the way, really interesting, he's uh he's got Indian heritage. I didn't know that. But um he he sort of spoke about avant-garde cuisine and modern cuisine as two separate things. I was wondering how you see those as different.
Well, Harold, you know, uh you know, Harold and I have been having this discussion for a long time before uh, you know, uh Mirvold and Chris and you know Maxime and that whole crew proposed modernist cuisine as the title of their book. And uh, you know, the title of that book was proposed specifically because um specifically because you know no one wanted to use the term molecular gastronomy because everyone hates it. You know, everyone who does that kind of work hates it, pretty much in the in the US. And so prior to that, you know, uh you know, m MG and I a lot of times, you know, he would say avant-garde or kind of cutting edge or new or or or whatnot. But uh, you know, avant-garde is always, you know, it was good because it always just means new, and it doesn't imply technology.
I mean the important thing is that uh you know, a lot of what's going on isn't technology related. Do you know what I mean? A lot of what's going on in terms of kind of new creativity in food isn't necessarily uh technology. You know, Daniel Patterson doesn't use a whole crap load of technology necessarily or even hydrocolloids anymore, but you would definitely consider his cooking to be part of the avant-garde cooking. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah. So I think you know, a lot of it has to do with uh the the focus. I think modernist was, you know, uh, you know, that crews stab at a word that they thought they could get to stick that that that they you know, but my feeling is like every word that describes this is loaded. Avant garde is loaded term, modernist is a loaded t term. You know what I mean?
So they're all they're all loaded. Uh in I prefer any of them to molecular. Fair enough, yeah. Yeah. We I I definitely struck that term from from my vocabulary.
Yeah, you know what? It's like, yeah, we get it. You know, molecular is easy for people to to wrap their head around, and you know, some people made some uh you know were able to write a bunch of articles, and some chefs got some extra customers because of it, but it's just weak term. Kind of like mixology, right? Mixology, I always hated mixology.
Uh turns out that has a longer history, and so I'm getting less and less. I mean, uh I can count on zero fingers the number of times I've referred to myself as a mixologist, but I don't get as angry about the word. I I that that's one of those words that I don't use, but I let it just flow over my head like like water. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Kind of like food scientist. Yeah, that one, another one. Like it's like, you know, it uh it would be nice if I was actually a scientist, but I'm not, you know, I'm kind of uh a cook. So uh, but I can read science. I'm not afraid of science.
Science doesn't intimidate me, but just not being intimidated by science doesn't make you a scientist. You know what I mean? Fair point. Yeah. Uh we've got time for like one more.
Oh man. Well, you know how many shows do I have before Valentine's Day? Uh one next week would be before two, two more. All right. Listen, so Ben from San Francisco, I'm gonna get your question next week on Valentine's because I'm not gonna suggest anything it takes more than a week for you to do, right?
Uh so he had a question on he wants to do like a blowout meal for uh Valentine's Day, and I have a lot of suggestions as someone who's cooked many Valentine's uh meals for my wife. You know, we've been together over 20 years. I haven't been married over 20 years, we've been together over 20 years. So I know a lot about cooking for Valentine's at different stages in your life. I've got a Valentine's Day idea.
Yeah. Seal the deal. Cat Skill Provisions. Boom! Boom!
Uh okay, so we'll handle that one uh next week. Um man, we can tell these questions. I want to devote more time to them. Uh Tim Timothy wrote in about uh some calcium. I have to I'll I'll do this quick.
I'll do this quick. Timothy, I hope this is still a place to email questions. It is, otherwise I wouldn't have it. Uh I bought some calcium citrate after reading a New York Times article in the magazine about pre-sliced apples, and was curious if you or Dave had any experience with it or any recommendations for uses beyond the obvious prevention of fruit surface oxidation. Uh and secondly, Dave's spoken on air a few times about the effects of increased acidity in sourdough, slackness, slightly translucent, glossy crumb, etc.
And was curious if I can balance that acidity by adding some calcium carbonate. Would this totally poison the bacteria and yeast living in my dough? Or would I get a product with some sourdough flavor and a texture more like bread made with regular yeast? Alright, I'm gonna knock these out bing bang. Um the the apple the article uh referenced in the New York Times magazine was about companies that slice up apples and then dip them in something called nature seal uh that causes the sliced apples to both not turn brown and not turn mushy uh while they sit in your grocery uh case, you know, for like a billion and a half years.
But uh actually the calcium is there, not the two main ingredients in nature seal uh are an antioxidant, and it's the antioxidant in it that is preventing the surface oxidation by preventing polyphenol oxidase, which is an enzyme from uh breaking things uh from breaking down um uh you know chemicals in the or agglomerate of them, I guess, in uh in the apple and making it turn brown, right? So that's an antioxidant. The second main active component in uh in the I think it's called nature seal or fresh seal or something like that, is uh the calcium, calcium uh citrate. And calcium citrate is uh is a calcium uh that doesn't have a nasty kind of flavor, it's mildly soluble, but the calcium is primarily there to uh actually craw to uh help stiffen crosslink the pectin. So the calcium is there as a pectin strengthener.
So what's going on, they soak it and the surface of the apple gets strong so that it doesn't get mushy even though it's been cut. So it's not there to prevent oxidation. The calcium is there in that case to prevent uh things from getting mushy. And you can use calcium treatment uh in uh and it's better if you also use it with uh some pectin methylesterase enzyme, aka novo shape. Again, I don't know if anyone carries it yet, to uh harden the outside of things that you want to stay crisp on the outside, even if they're cooked.
And so you can look at things like uh uh mugaritz's ossified uh uh vegetables, or I, you know, you can add a pinch of calcium to boiling water along with baking soda to counteract the two effects, uh so you can get bright green, like really cooked through uh vegetables that aren't uh total mush bags. Anyway, uh this your second uh hit can you add calcium carbonate to dough? Yeah, calcium carbonate is added to dough as a pH as a dough improver, and it will affect pH because calcium carbonate will react with acid uh whether it's lactic or acetic to form um either uh you know a calcium uh acetate or uh a lactate uh and and reduce the acidity. It won't poison it. However, the the whole the whole point of uh the sourdough is that the it depends on when you're gonna add it.
Sourdough starter, you don't want the the pH to be too low for it to be too acidic because it's gonna it's gonna exhaust your uh your bacteria and your yeast, they won't be growing well and they won't be a healthy culture. So you want to maintain the pH uh at the proper level, not just for the flavor of it, but for the health of the actual starter itself. That said, yes, calcium carbonate can be used uh for you know moderate adjustments in uh dough pH. Alright, now on the way out, because I have 13 seconds. Eddie Shepherd writes in from the UK, and uh, I'm gonna let everyone ponder and say what they think on it.
Quick question, because I was musing on this myself today. It's not a tech question, but I hope it's okay. Of course it is. So I uh myself, this is Eddie writing, uh, did a philosophy degree before I uh became a chef, and I know Dave studied philosophy, as did Wiley. Uh, I think also maybe Chang, too.
Then this week I just met two other chefs that share this background, which I had previously thought was a pretty obscure route to have taken to end up as a chef. So I wondered what, if anything, you thought it might be that connects these two disciplines, or why you think they both seem to appeal to some of us. Of course, there may be no connection, and it's just coincidence a few of us share a philosophy background, but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts all the best, Eddie Shepherd. Eddie, this is an interesting point. What's with the philosophy majors in the cooking?
I don't know. I want everyone to think about that if you care. Maybe tweet in some stuff, email us for next week, and we'll have a discussion when Estas back on Cooking Issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network.
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