The following program has been brought to you by Rolling Press, a family-run, eco-friendly printing company. For more information, visit Rolling Press.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more. Cooking is the questions to Cooking Issues.
Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming live in the back of uh Roberta's Peter here in Bushwig Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly twelve, now to roughly one, right, Jack? Yeah, exactly. We're rough over here. We're rough, we're rough.
Uh well, you know, when you're in a uh, you know, in an old container in the back of a pizzeria, you're you know, you're a little rough. Right? Right? Yeah. Okay.
Joined as usual with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez and with uh a special guest who uh Jack, you want to explain the uh the contest here? Yes, John Sisson, I hope I pronounced the last name right. Uh he won an auction at just food to spend a day with me here at Heritage Radio Network. So he's sitting in for cooking issues. Yeah, nice, nice.
And uh John uh uh was a chef uh retired how long ago? Oh uh fifteen years ago now. Yeah, and uh where were you uh where were we shoving in for our I was at the old town bar on eighteenth street uh for about ten years. Nice, nice. How are you enjoying your day so far?
It's been great. Heard two or three shows and uh really enjoying it and uh loving the back of Robert is here. Yeah, yeah, it's nice. I mean, it's interesting seeing the people eating their well, I guess they're just now eating their lunch. You'll see some some weird folks.
I've had we have people doing their hair while looking at us, right? Like it's a one-way mirror. Very strange. Very odd stuff, odd business. Uh Dave, before we start the show, I have two big shout-outs.
John Riper, uh listener, and he submitted a few questions, made a very nice donation to Heritage Radio Network. So thank you, John. And today, Yeah Malka, and I hope I said that correctly, became a member of Heritage Radio Network.org as well. So cooking issues fans showing their support. Beautiful.
We have a question from both of them, and it is uh Yehuda from Silver Spring, Maryland. Give some give some love for Silver Spring. You ever been to Silver Spring, Maryland? My car broke down there once. Joe has.
Yeah, Joe, nice. Uh yeah, Joe as usual. And uh Nastasha, this is your first full week of having a Twitter account, so what do you think? Uh I like it. Yeah?
In fact, you're looking at it right now, or just texting Zappos. Is that the first time she said I like it on the program? Uh it might be. It might be. Uh speaking of, we have some uh we have some Nastasha related questions uh today.
Justin Bray went into uh into the Twitter and said, How did Nastasha get the nickname the Hammer? Well what what do you think? You gave it to me. Yeah, but what but I mean, like what's your interpretation? Um because I'm tough on people.
Why don't you tell them why you eat it? I don't know, because uh well, you know the the whole point is that look we we have this thing where I'm supposed to be nice to people other than her. And she is supposed to be mean to people. And see, this is the way most, you know, kind of business teams work, right? Where you have the one person who's always kind of you know friendly, right?
So they never appear to be the the jackass, right? And then you have the other one, the hammer, who basically is like, no, you all that stuff he said that you could have or that he was gonna do, he's not gonna do that, and you can't have it. She's supposed to do that, but it turns out, people, that she's actually only mean to me. That's so not true. Well, you're actually you're mean to other people.
Every time I try to be mean to people, you are not happy about it. And you're like, what are you doing? That's not that's not okay. Right. And and also she has all the subtlety, the fine subtlety of a hammer.
But no, but no, but also, you know, hammer, boom, strength. Yes. Right? Yes. Yeah, right.
What was the other one? Uh oh, the other one uh was uh I'm trying to find oh yes, from John Powers Kirk, uh must be to you, although you erased it and said, Can you tell Dave that you're smarter than him, but uh then with an emoticon afterwards, that kind of like also I would believe him, except he used the wrong your. See, I was gonna see, that's why she's the hammer. I was gonna leave that out. I was leaving that out of the equation.
Well, how do I take that seriously? Uh and well, and how do you use the name the hammer unless you bring it up? It's strong, Nastasha. I look Nastasha can do it. She can do what she likes.
She can do what she likes. Uh, but you know what? Like, uh that is the that is the occasional show of strength that makes me appreciate the uh the Lopez uh a little bit. Okay, call your questions to 7184972128. That's 7184972128.
Let's go to the question we already have questions we already have from John Riper, new uh donor and member. Thank you. And uh as uh we said, I guess a couple of weeks ago, apples are better when picked riper, right? Wasn't that how it how it worked? Okay.
Deer cooking issues peeps. I often hear chefs say that roasting meat on the bone gives it more flavor. Is that true? Or is it the same kind of perceived wisdom uh as searing the meat to seal in the juices is when we're in and for those of you that oh my god, Indy Jesus is back on Tuesdays. Yes, I know, I know.
You know, I wish that everyone who could hear our voices could see the glory. The glory that is Indy Jesus. Listen to this back to the table. And we're not allowed to play uh other people's music anymore, but I need a little bit of what's the buzz, tell me what's happening going on. For your little Andrew Lloyd Weber action, maybe just for us to listen to during the break so that I can have some indie Jesus.
We'll credit them or whatever we need to do for the Yeah, I'm sorry, John, of that for the for the tangent here, but now I got into Indy Jesus on my mind. Okay. Uh so as we all know, uh searing the uh you know, searing the meat uh to seal in the juices is uh an old an old thing that uh chefs and cooks say that dates back to uh Justice von Liebig and it was uh this is one of Harold McGee's great uh kind of personal hangs his hat on this fact is that he was the first to call uh what's the what's the plate way of saying BS? Just horse hockey or whatever, yeah. The first to call crap on that.
Crap on searing. Uh and uh in fact, searing is just uh something that is uh makes incredibly delicious crust uh on a meat and has nothing to do with sealing in the juices, right? Okay. I mean, searing, still obviously good practice, just doesn't happen to seal in the juices. So back to the question.
Uh just so you know the background for John's question. Okay, uh I can see how the bones could affect the shape uh of a roast and influence heat transfer into the flesh, but I'm missing how a bone generates uh much flavor even to adjoining meat, let alone how a bone affects the flavor of roasted meat that's further away. Uh John, I think you're you're you're dead right here. I think uh what the bone is, is the bone is a a moderating, it's a moderating element uh from a heat transfer uh for standpoint. Uh also, I mean, I guess you can make an argument that the more you hack into a piece of meat to get rid of the bone, the more you spread it out and the less it's a whole piece of meat.
Uh but uh yeah, I I think it's mainly it's it's in terms of actually adding flavor, other than the fact that I love Louis Prima's song, The Closer to the Bone, the Sweeter is the Meat. The last slice of Virginia Ham is the best that you can eat. Uh, you know, aside from that, I don't think there's much to it from an actual uh flavor standpoint. And uh assuming equal cooking, uh, if you took a cube of meat that was far away from the bone or close to the bone, other than the inherent uh uh muscular differences between them, uh I don't think there'd be much difference in flavor. What do you think?
I agree. Yeah, see? Yeah, I mean it's a it's uh it's yeah, it's it's I mean, like, is that one of the things you still believe, Nastasha, in your in your kind of like, you know, panoply of uh the meat closer to the bone? Oh, you don't think about it, you don't get it. I don't care.
He's like, what does it have to do with Zappos? Nothing. Has nothing to do with Zappos, so I don't care. Uh by the way, the other uh thing I had back on you being smarter uh uh the smart one of the two, which I'm not denying, by the way, but my feeling I just get a secret feeling that John Powers Kirk is in fact just another biscuit hater like you. It's another hater of biscuits.
Um, I actually like questions like that. I mean, and I would love someone to call in and tell me I'm an idiot, moron, that in fact the bone really affects the flavor, but I don't think so. What? It's not gonna happen. Wait, oh, we're getting a picture of Indy Jesus and she's gonna tweet.
She's not gonna get a good one, though. It looks like the Messiah is delivering pizza. Look at that. Okay, well, tweet it out. I would just like to go on record and say Dante is a really great guy.
Before I do this, Jim. Wait a second. There's no denying that he's a uh uh I mean, like, would Indie Jesus make him a bad person? No, no, just in case listeners think we're po you know, that's what I'm trying to put it up there. Craig eye.
All right. I mean, I don't know the man other than that. I wish he would deliver me pizza. Oh, he might! He's working our station.
Oh, this is awesome. Okay. Uh Tom writes in. Hi, Joe, Joe, you get the call out first. Jack, Nastasha, and Dave, my family wants more bread than my wife and I can bake, and so she's wanting a bread machine.
But these are bulky and expensive for a grad student in a small apartment. I'd have trouble justifying the purchase if the machine only makes bread. Are there other uses for bread machines like low temperature baking, curing, sous vide, etc.? Alternately, uh, could I use some other device to bake bread? Uh and if it turns out you're a fan of bread machines, what's your favorite?
Thanks, Tom. Tom, I am not uh a fan of bread machines. Uh my grandpa had one, and and it was kind of sweet. He always used to bring over these like strange square loaves of bread with the bottom ripped out where the little mixing thing was in the bottom of the bread machine. Uh I I never was such a fan of my grandpa's loaves, and so I never developed a deep abiding love for uh bread machines.
I will say this. When I was an undergraduate, one of the ways I wooed my wife was I went to the uh thrift store and I bought you can't buy them that the old don't buy the old ones if you have a family because you know all of the insulation is made out of asbestos and the cords are made out of asbestos, and I'm sure they're fire hazards. But uh they used to sell these old things called uh turkey ovens because the idea was on Thanksgiving that you had uh very little oven space and you need to cook a bunch, so you would cook your turkey in this separate oven. And it amounts to a cross between a crock pot and an oven, and it looks like a giant Dutch oven with a plug coming out of it. Uh and turns out they get hot enough and they can make a passable uh loaf of bread.
You have to uh uh cut a special plate to fit into the bottom so you can pull it out in and out easily. But you can even uh put like a quarry tile into one if you knock the edges off the quarry tile and fit in. And they get hot enough to make a decent loaf of bread, and they're small, somewhat portable, cheap. Uh they can they can still be had at thrift shops if you want to dare the old uh plugs or rip the old plug off and put a new one on. And that's how I used to bake bread.
I was an idiot, moron, and I didn't go get a stone. I used to uh rip the backs off of notebooks, the cardboard backs off of notebooks, and bake my bread on noses my sheets. And yes, the bottom had a slight cardboardy taste, but I was 18. I was eighteen. Anyway, uh you're a fan of bread machines, uh, John there.
You ever use one? Um mostly for the dough only. Oh, because it's a good mixer of the dough? Use it for the mix and dough. And uh actually I'm a big fan of the uh no need recipe.
Oh, yeah, the uh Leahy No Need recipe. Yeah, and that's uh great with uh the steam that's generated in in a cast iron pot. Yeah, I mean, I think uh a lot of us nowadays uh a lot of us nowadays are are shifting towards the super long like whether or not you're a firm uh advocate, and we're talking about uh Leahy's uh book, uh what's it called? Bread My Way, uh and uh and also Bittman, who wrote a bunch of articles in the Times about it, and he kind of you know, and Stasha worked for him for like 25 seconds. Thirty seconds?
How long was it? I think a month. Oh, yeah. Anyway, so uh, you know, uh fabulous bread maker. I mean, I mean I've if anyone lived in New York prior to when Leahy opened Sullivan Street Bakery, like you know that when his bakery hit, we were all like, wow, that's good bread, right?
Right. We're all like, wow, that was good bread. It still is good bread. Uh but uh it's kind of a miracle in uh in kind of uh bread. I think it you know was a harbinger of a lot to come in the way of not that there wasn't good bread here in New York, there was good bread in here in New York, but I mean I think his style of bread uh was kind of new and we really in here and we I think everyone really appreciated it.
And his book uh made a lot of ways, and but I think in one of the reasons it becomes so popular is that in addition to his no-need uh kind of m uh recipe, which is seen as a low work and therefore American friendly way to do things, uh we're all all of us uh going to much longer, longer, longer rise times in our um in our in our bread baking uh when we have the time to do it. And so I think that most of us now, especially build into our our regimens if we're gonna bake, whether it's pizza or whether it's bread, uh, you know, we're more apt to plan uh a day or two in advance, and so we could do some of these longer. It's not that they take more physical time in the kitchen, it just takes more actual clock time for these things to happen. And so I see a big shift, and I think that's one of the reasons that's become popular. But I never thought of having one just to need the dough.
It's an interesting idea. Because you don't have to like mess with it like you do with it, because the kitchen aid makes a horrible mess when I'm quick and easy. Yeah. And hour and a half, you have dough, and then you can bake it off. Yeah, in your turkey roaster.
In your turkey roaster, some um you know, I bet you could probably get bread machines in the thrift store on the eBay too. Sure. Probably, right? I'm uh I'm a as anyone who's ever heard me before knows I'm a huge fan of the buying stuff cheap on eBay and then uh you know fixing it all with duct tape. Although Nastasha, our new year's resolution, no more duct tape.
Well no more ghetto. Yeah, no more, yeah, yeah, right. I mean, like we don't want to be the people whose box is is is stuck together with duct tape. We want a new box. Right?
Fair? Yes. Yeah, fair. Uh speaking of which, Nastasha, you know, we need to convince uh some company to let us test out a vacuum machine so we can shoot the cocktail book. Okay.
Anyone out there runs a vacuum mini? I happen to like the mini pack. We never got we were supposed to shoot a thing for minipack, and we never did it, right? I can follow up with that. Yeah, all right, all right.
Mini pack. Mini pack makes a good vacuum machine. You know, well, this is the all the vacuum machines work, it's just whether or not you like the people, like the programming and like the features. The mini pack, what I like about, and we're gonna talk about vacuum machines in a minute. What I like about the mini-pack, and I'm not saying that they should ship me one, but what I like about it is it has the it has a really good chamber size uh for the actual footprint of the vacuum, um, which to me is important because and to a lot of our listeners important because uh you know what you end up getting limited by in a vacuum machine is the chamber size of the of the vacuum.
Um, okay. Uh you think I answered Tom's question? Yes. Okay. I don't think they're uh accurate enough to do low temperature cooking, by the way, to go back to your other question, and they're not also meant for I think complete although they can take a merge.
I'm sure the gasket in the bottom, they're probably built like a blender in that way. They could take a full thing of water. I you know, and look, theoretically, you could probably take a bread machine, uh PID control it with a with an external thing, like rip out the plug, put the heating element. I mean, because I've done that too, um you know the Wyatt steam table bass that uh you know we all use like the big electrics that it just click on and off, on and off. I modified one of those to do low temperature cooking once with a with a thermometer and a PID.
And you could do that with a bread machine, and you could probably even rip out the m you know, motor or slow it down somehow so that it could just stir uh and then put a grate over it so that you could throw bags into it, and you could theoretically hack the thing into a into a low temperature cooker. The problem is is that the I mean if you look at the loaf size, it's kind of like tall and loaf-shaped or round and loaf-shaped, I think. I think my grandpa's was square, but I think they're round most of them, right? Now, or they're square-shaped, the the vessel that they bake in. They're square, either a vertical square or the horizontal square like the traditional loaf, but uh the mixing doesn't work nearly as well.
No, I would go vertical if I was gonna get it. So would I yeah. But uh but the but the point being that uh it's not of a large volume for low temperature cooking, and so I think you'd have trouble, not from a power standpoint probably, but from a from a f um uh cooking area standpoint, uh converting it to a low temperature cooking machine. Anyway, okay, okay, okay. Uh now, here here's a here's a long one.
And I c this is uh from um uh Mark Krasnow writes in, who's moving from New Zealand to uh to Hyde Park, I guess I guess. Or not whether he's moving, he's gonna start teaching at the CIA's new culinary science program in Hyde Park. And we're friends with some of the folks that by the way, I don't know whether we did we announce this last week that I'm a actually like the the French culinary or the International Culinary Center and and we have parted ways. I don't think you did. Yeah, yeah.
So uh just so everybody knows, uh my you know, long term tenure at uh, you know, w what what when I was hired was the French Culinary Institute. Like we're now no longer working together anymore, but we're all still very friendly. Right? Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Anyway. So uh I am no longer the c uh director of culinary technology. But uh uh very proud of what we did there. We did a lot of excellent stuff and we wish them all the best. Okay.
Anyway, uh so if CIA wants to hire no, I'm just kidding, I'm just messing around. Uh I don't know, I don't have time. Uh well no I'm not time. Anyway. Uh so Mark Krasnow, I currently teach uh viticulture at the Eastern Institute of Technology in Napier, New Zealand.
I wonder where that is. I wonder where Napier is. Do you know? No. No, no, I've I'm very bad with my New Zealand geography.
But uh love seeing a warrior princess. Okay. Uh I currently teach viticulture at the Eastern Institute of Technology in Napier, New Zealand, but we'll be heading to the States in May to start teaching uh the CIA's new culinary science program in Hyde Park. I very much enjoy your show and I love the fact that you folks know your science. Thank you.
Uh a colleague of mine, Chef Mark Caves, has told me that he noticed the meats fully vacuumed for sous-vide cooking seemed more tender to him than those with less vacuum during sealing. We recently conducted an experiment to test this hypothesis using the gluteus medius muscle uh dissected from whole top sirloins. Triplicate sample uh samples were sealed at three different levels in an audio in an Audion vac uh VMS 53 sealer, and I which I I don't have any uh experience with that. But they were they were done at uh a medium vacuum and full vacuum at the lightest vacuum they could do. Now I'm not allowed to talk about any of the specifics of the paper because it's in review, so I won't do that.
I'll just talk about the other parts of it, which are uh important to me. Anyway, um of the pieces of information we needed uh to write up and publish the paper was the actual pressure uh experienced by the food at different sealing levels. I contacted the manufacturer, but they could give me no numbers as to the actual vacuum uh that would be affected by a pump uh strength because it was affected by the pump strength, age, uh size of stuff to be sealed, leaks, etc. What they did tell me was that the number on the dial does not correspond to the percent vacuum, but is rather the number of seconds that the pump runs. Therefore, I had to check the pressures on the dial of the machine in our kitchens during sealing.
What I found was surprising, at least to me. Full vacuum pressure, uh the dial set all the way, occurred at about 30 seconds, regardless of the setting uh on the dial, suggesting that the pump uh has only one speed and that full vacuum would actually be achieved uh at numero 30 on the 1299 setting, which is totally misleading in my opinion. Okay, first of all, let's let's just let me hit that before I go on, because it's a long type thing, and I want people to keep track of what's going on here. Older style vacuum machines, and we're talking about chamber sealing vacuum machines that we use to seal foods in bags, typically for uh for uh low temperature cooking, or if you go into a supermarket and you're buying meats that are cryo bagged or whatever, all right? Vacuum sealing.
Older style vacuum pumps uh have a uh timer in them, and they run their pumps for a certain length of time. After that length of time, uh they uh seal the bag, let the air come back in, and it's done. Newer style uh vacuum, and for those ones, literally it's just a timer on it, and so you're just setting it for a length of time. Uh newer style vacuum machines have in them uh vacuum sensors that are actually sensing the level of vacuum that's being stored. They are still, however, not accurate as to what is being experienced by the food in the bag.
They are accurate about what the vacuum level happens to be right where the sensor is. Now, how can those be different, right? Like they seems like vacuum should be the same everywhere. And on an instantaneous basis, that's true. However, uh many of our foods have trapped air on the inside of them.
Leafy greens have lots of air on the inside of them. Anything with bones, there's lots of air on the inside of a bone. Uh and so many of our foods have trapped air. And you know, one of the biggest uh demos that we used to do for uh low temp sous vide at the at the French culinary in our in our in our classes, and I think we've done it at the Harvard lecture, is you throw a marshmallow into a vacuum machine and the marshmallow expands. And everyone's like, oh, that's cool, the marshmallow expands because the air on the inside's expanding and and it can't get out.
What's interesting about the marshmallow experiment isn't that they get big, it's that they start shrinking again about uh 10 to 15 seconds after you start sucking the vacuum. And what that tells you is is that the air inside the marshmallow is slowly leaking out. And and what that means is that the eventual pressure that your food will, partial pressure of oxygen in an atmosphere that your food will feel on the inside of the bag is dependent on how much of the trapped air that you get out of that food, and that is not measurable by a gauge on the inside of your vacuum machine. Now, in your experiment where you're using presumably whole muscle cuts without uh a lot of slices in them that are not all jammed together in a bunch of different pieces and there's no bones in it, right? Then you can start making assumptions like whatever the gauge is telling you is fairly accurate.
But here's another point, right? So the gauges in a typical vacuum machine uh that have analog gauges are horribly inaccurate and horribly inaccurate. And especially when you get into the range of interest, which is where you evacuated over 90 to 90 and change percent of the air that's available in there. Those gauges are because there's much less for them to measure than there is for them to measure at full pressure. So they're horribly inaccurate in those in those ranges.
And so it's difficult, not impossible, but difficult to gauge with an analog gauge exactly what's going on with the machine with one of these machines. Now you could put a fairly accurate digital gauge in there and measure it, but again, it's not necessarily going to be indicative of what a customer or a user is going to experience on the piece of meat when they're doing it. Uh another thing is that I don't like that some machines measure in percent vacuum. Percent vacuum is a horribly imprecise uh term, even in the imprecise world of measuring the vacuum on the inside of a vacuum machine, because the closer you get to a hundred percent vacuum, right, the more widely variant uh the actual numbers that they're measuring are in terms of millibar. So it's it's difficult uh to measure that way.
Uh so instead, I like uh ones that measure in millibar. Here's another thing that true that a lot of companies won't tell you unless you ask them. Some companies that have gauges on the inside of their vacuum machine will actually measure the pressure up to a certain level and then just throw on a timer. They're like, so you know, the old mini packs work that way. They'll actually measure the vacuum level up to about ninety uh ninety-eight percent.
And then after it's at ninety-eight percent vacuum, it just starts counting off a timer. And you know how I know this? Because I defeated the machine, stuck my finger against the vacuum thing, let it go up to 98%, released my uh thumb so that air was streaming through the machine at atmospheric pressure, and watch the numbers keep taking on up to 99.9% vacuum. This is how I test these kinds of things because back then I had more time than good sense on my hands. Uh so anyway, so that's how it works.
Okay. Uh so back to back to your question, or back to your uh what you discovered. It says we found large and statistically significant differences in the century sensory parameters between the medium and high vacuum levels when compared with the minimal vac uh minimal vacuum levels, but very few differences between the medium and high vacuum samples experience the same pressure. Um this suggests that more time at full vacuum has diminishing returns as far as improvement of sensory properties in a relatively non-porous food like muscle foods. Um and and then you're I have a lot of comments on that, but I'm gonna wait for a second.
Your question after that is is this mode of action typical of vacuum sealers, or do most actually have settings that correspond to the actual pressure in the ceiling chamber? Uh I'm suspecting that my vacuum machine is rather old and not exactly top of the line, and that newer ones might be more adjustable. Uh I figured you guys being experts on the equipment side of things might be able to help me out with this question. I think it would be very interesting to redo this study with uh an actual measured half vacuum around 50 uh 500 KPA. Although I only think in millibars, which is millibars like 1065, 1065 millibars is atmospheric normal, like standard atmospheric pressure, and zero is full vacuum.
So anyone that wants to discuss in a way that I understand has to go in millibars or my brain just goes, you know there's only so much I can keep track of, people. Okay. Uh back to your other statement. I uh I actually believe exactly the opposite of what uh your paper um uh what you what you're suggesting. In other words, I think that the higher vacuums actually decrease the quality of uh the foods.
Okay. And what you're saying is extremely interesting because and I and you know it we haven't done it in a controlled way, the way you have, but we've done it uh in over many iterations of the sous vide low temperature uh class that we've taught. And what's very interesting is is that it is that the likes and dislikes, because you're talking in your thing, tenderness and juiciness, which are terms that are so loaded that I hate I hate using them. And and the actual whether you like it or not splits kind of down the line, where some people really like the low temperature, uh low vacuum uh pack samples. In fact, Ziplocks I think are the ideal for those people.
I'm in those people. And then uh you have the camp that seems to like the higher vacuum one, and uh whole muscle red meat cuts are the least affected by the vacuum level in terms of uh sensory perception. Uh chicken and fish, like salmon are the ones that are kind of uh affected the most. Here is the deal. When you and this is why tenderness and and uh and juiciness aren't necessarily good indicators.
When you chew into something that's cooked at a uh that's bagged and cooked at a high vacuum level, it explodes with uh juice in your mouth, and then in my feeling turns to mush because it almost has a fibery characteristic that you don't necessarily get at the lower vacuum levels. So in the people that like that, it's that's perceived as being juicy because you get this explosion of juice, and is tender because it's soft. For me, it is lack of structure. And and when the more you chew, the the first three bites, first three chews rather, are extremely filled with juice, but the last three chews are kind of dry and pulpy. So to me, I like the quality better at much lower vacuum levels.
So it's it's difficult to equate like statistic like actual statistically measurable things like how much juice is expressed, or how much uh force it takes to drive a you know uh a probe through a piece of meat. Much harder to do uh uh much easier to do that than to actually say, well, which one's better and which one's worse. What do you think says? Good job. Okay.
Uh and with that, let's go to our first commercial break, cooking issues. This is Fish's Fish is vodka by the meatballers. Rolling Press is a family-run commercial offset print house that brings together environmentally friendly methods, ethical practices, and personalized service. Founded in 1998 by Eugene Lee and his father, Cam Lee. Rolling Press represents the harmony of traditional craftsmanship and green technology.
Rolling press prints using soy and vegetable inks. Uses a variety of certified and recycled papers, and they incorporate a chemical-free production process. For more information, visit rolling press.com. And welcome back. Calling your questions to 7184972128.
That's 7184972128. What do you like better? The crazy or the or the mellow? You like the mellow? Yeah.
Yeah? All right. Uh this is from Yehudo just became a member. Thanks, Yehuda. Uh, in Silver Spring, Maryland.
I don't like that applause in Red Jack because they're they're really tentative about starting it up. I agree. So you can get one where like people are right into it, right? Or like the one clap starts. Like like the like the like the one like the the sarcastic one.
That one? Yeah. Yeah. Or just get like there, baby. Get the old bronze.
You know, the old bronx, like the give him a raspberry, like wah wah. Yeah. Anyway, no. Switch it up, Jack. Nastasha, like, you know what?
She's trying to live up now. Now that someone asks why she's called the hammer, she's trying to live up. She's dishing out. Always been so nice to me, and now now I know. By the way, Jack, did you get the date for Valentine's Day or what?
I went dateless on Valentine's Day. Oh man. Do you have a pity party machine in there? Like a little sound effect board for that? No.
Aww. That was you. Nice. Alright, beautiful. Uh yeah, so what'd you guys do for the Valentine's Day?
I hope Ben cooked a uh a good uh dinner for Anjali there. I don't know whether I gave him good advice or not. I haven't heard back yet, which means I probably didn't, and now he's a hater. Right? Right?
What did you do, Dave? I went to Del Posto, Nastasia. Where so I know that you weren't with your date on Valentine's Day because he was serving me dinner. Excellent dinner at Del Posto. Uh uh, as usual.
Uh anytime Dave can dread it ruin my happiness, he does. Oh yeah, because Mark was gonna be home with you that day. No, he was supposed to be home earlier. It is true. Oh, you know, this is such a loto horse hockey.
That's true. This is so crazy. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, from him that says Dave is still here. I'm not gonna be back by 11.
It wasn't Anthony Wiener two tables over from me. It wasn't Anthony Wiener, two tables over from me. That was the reason that they had a big scroll, and it wasn't. It was a guy that he knows and sees every week sitting at a table, you know, who's like a known that I like his food, like he has to worry about me and stay at the restaurant. That was his excuse.
Please. Oh, well, fair, fair. You know, I'll take that hit. I'll take that hit from Mark. Tell him about Brooks' cookies.
Oh, yeah. So Brooks, uh, you know, look, Brooks, uh, who also signed on in Norton, congratulations, he got a book deal. I'm sure he will actually deliver his book on time. Oh, and this they give him to give him Brooks the Brooks, one of my favorite ones. Yeah, he would actually, being uh, you know, a punk rock musician.
But you know, I I really appreciate his pastries. So here's what he did. So Del Posto, you know, uh what do they got? They got like eight million stars in New York Times or something like that. And uh uh so you know you're eating in a relatively formal environment, right?
It's probably the most formal Italian uh Italian-based restaurant in the city, is that true? Or like Maria, to you know. There was a as formal? Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Okay. Anyway, formal. And so Brooks comes out and it's it's my anniversary, like I said, of going out with uh of uh dating my wife. Uh you know, our relationship is 21 years old now and can drink. Uh and uh so he comes out and literally like takes these cookies, it puts all these like beautiful plated things on the table, and then throws cookies at the like explodes cookies at the table, such that I'm almost positive that some cookie shards hit Anthony Wiener in the head.
Actually, that's not true. He was like three tables over. I was like, Anthony Wiener. Anyway, uh so uh yeah, so shattered these cookies and kind of broke the formal, which I kind of liked. You've had that presentation, right?
No, I haven't, I've just heard about it. And people like it. Because they're not expecting it. First of all, Del Posto, like Del Posto, the guy can't use a crumb scraper. The guy comes out with like uh a napkin folded up between two spoons, which means it takes him 18 freaking years to scrape the crumbs off of your table.
You know what I'm talking about. Like Jen dropped a little spot of wine and they brought out the extra tablecloth that covered the one spot of wine. I hate when that happens. I yeah, here's the thing. For all the like, I understand that's part of the formal code, but you're probably making my wife feel worse that you had to bring out a bib for the table than the little spot of wine.
Yeah, yeah. If you spilled it, then cover it. But you know, whatever. But whatever, I like it. But my wife was like, Man, I'm messy.
I'm like, yeah, you are, because normally I'm the extremely messy one, let's be honest. Anyway, so like there's all this formality, and then Brooks comes out and explodes cookies on the table, and you're like, What? And then you eat the cookies. His stuff's good. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, great for him. I'll like all props. Props, props, okay. Uh Dave and the uh Dave uh and crew, because it dis you know didn't want to get in trouble with the with the no joe, so instead of just say you know saying it all out, just said and crew. Hey, crew.
How are you doing? Anyway, this is Yahuda. Uh, I'm currently transitioning between careers. I've been working as a high school teacher for the past seven years, and I'm now uh back in school for something totally different. While I was still teaching, a friend and I separ uh separately yet simultaneously began teaching ourselves how to be better cooks, mostly via a process of experimenting with recipes and techniques that seem beyond our skill set while also focusing on fundamentals of culinary knowledge.
Joined by a mutual love for cooking, especially uh for others. I guess cooking for others, that means nothing. Who likes cooking for themselves, really? Do you like cooking for yourself, Don? I do, actually.
Really? I'm thrifty and uh it saves a lot of money. Oh, that's true. But I mean, like, you know, whenever my wife's on vacation, I just make poached eggs. Like if my kids aren't around, like if I'm alone, it's just like poached eggs.
And not even like, you know, maybe it's because my wife doesn't like poached eggs, but I like I'll sit and like put poached eggs. Weird. Post eggs toast is toast on sauerkraut, always. So you just eat poached eggs, toast and sauerkraut. That's it.
And weird. I don't know. I'm a weirdo, I'll forget about it. Okay. Okay.
Uh, especially for others. Uh, we started a small catering outfit. We have done in-home multi-course dinners as a hobby/slash side business, interpreting dishes from the books uh from books like uh the French Laundry, which by the way, that you know, people forget how like uh revolutionary the French laundry cookbook was back when it came out, the original French laundry cookbook, like in in English for America, yeah, the giant one. Yeah. Uh uh in English for uh people at home, like there were very f i in American English anyway, very few books prior to that that were literally uh what was going on in the recipes of uh, you know, at that time, probably the top kitchen in the entire uh country and not at all dumbed down.
Like you had to get the anchovies, you had to bone the anchovies, you had to soak the anchovies in milk. Then you had to, you know, rub the anchovies, you know what I mean? It's like every and it was uh all the steps. And so I think people tend to forget uh you know how kind of how groundbreaking that was. Anyway.
Alinea, uh, also excellent, interesting book, uh, published book, you know, Grant almost, I guess, self-publishing that or get or doing it himself and then getting it published. Right. I mean, I think he did a lot of not in the way that uh Mirabol did anyway, whatever. Monas Cuisine, everyone knows greatest cookbook achievement of all times. Uh, and others for kosher uh dinners uh who would otherwise uh diners who would never otherwise get the chance to try the kinds of foods found in those books in those restaurants.
We are still learning, isn't everyone, hopefully, and that's that's so true. If the the day you stop learning, hopefully you don't stop learning until you die. And hopefully you die only a long time from now. Okay. Uh, and love your show.
Both of us had questions answered last week. I'm now working during the day managing the kitchen of a different business while attending college at night, which brings me to my current list of questions. Neither of us has the time or money to attend culinary school. Well, I can to an extent teach myself to cook better by the very act of cooking more, making mistakes, and trying again. I know that I can never effectively run a busy restaurant kitchen.
Is that organization and efficiency taught mostly in school or on the job? What would you recommend I do to build these skills on my own? Well, it's very well, you can learn to cook on your own, uh, but it's very difficult to build the actual skills of working in a restaurant when you say on your own, literally on your own. Uh I mean, working in a restaurant can build those skills, or going to culinary can build those skills. I mean, I think one one of the one of the reasons to go to culinary school, and you know, uh Dave Chang, uh, you know, my my part my business partner is uh, you know, he's he's anti anti-evything now.
Dave Chang is mainly anti-the idea that a whole young generation of cooks goes to cooking school and uh I'm paraphrasing him now, but they go to cooking school and then they think that uh all of a sudden they're gonna become a celebrity chef and get rich and then not have to work the hours on the line. And that's not true. And somehow people think that cooking is uh is somehow glamorous when in fact it's it's grueling. Uh uh back me up on this, John. Certainly is.
Yeah. Uh so and this might be interesting for you as well as a professional to you know weigh in on this. Um but I think school can serve a function for someone who is a career changer who just wants who has the money, right, and just wants to jump in, and your goal isn't to be a line cook for five years and then do XY and G. Your goal is to be an owner sooner rather than later, and to never spend all that time on the line. Maybe going to cooking school is a is a good bet for you.
Or as a parent buying uh, you know, a younger kid a career. I see it as it can be a valuable uh val valuable thing that way. Uh now they a lot of the chefs that um I'm friends with who spend a lot of time saying that you don't need to go to culinary school. The interesting thing about them is that to a person they've all gone to culinary school. Uh in in the generation I'm talking about now, which is you know, uh 25 let's say 25 to 42, that age range.
Like most of these people who are really successful actually have gone to culinary school. I think in the generation just above them, you have a lot of success stories that haven't, who just came up through normal kind of an apprenticeship uh situation. Uh but really in that age range, most of the high flyers that I know of uh did go to culinary school. Um but uh you know that said, every cook on earth respects someone who just shows up in a kitchen and says, I will do whatever, I will work as hard as I can, all I want to do is work. I know nothing, you know everything.
Let me learn your way. If you do that, walk into a kitchen, very few people will turn you away. Some people might say, I don't have room for you now, but if you use those exact words, they'll say, I have a slot coming up in X amount of months. Uh especially if you come recommended from someone, like you can find someone that you will will vouch for you that you're a hard worker and you just show up, but you have to be willing to eat crap. I mean, really, not literally, but you know, figuratively, you know, you you have right, John?
I mean, this is how this works. Yeah. Long hours on your feet and uh takes endurance. Yeah, and you know, yeah, you know, those Brussels sprouts, after the first couple of cases, it's not fun anymore. Right?
And you still have to do them, right? I mean, and uh so anyway, so yes, you you know you can learn uh you can learn to be one of the world's greatest cooks uh, you know, on your own through reading, uh, and you know, but in terms of working in a in a restaurant, I think culinary school or actual working in a restaurant is uh, you know, kind of kind of necessary. It's a different skill. Cooking and and running a kitchen and a crew aren't necessarily the same skill. They're intertwined, but they're not the same skill.
I mean, I know plenty of people who are great cooks. Like, I don't want to run a kitchen, I can't run a kitchen. Do you know what I mean? I mean, I'm I'm I think I'm a good cook. Uh I don't think I'm uh necessarily be great at running a kitchen.
You know what I mean? Uh okay. Uh second question for you or any chefs who might be listening or in fact sitting sitting with us right now. Uh have you or would you think what I said before makes sense? Okay.
Uh have you or anyone you know ever worked in a kitchen that wasn't up to your own personal standards but felt stuck there due to a lack of better uh options? As an example, I work somewhere that advertised fresh fish and pasta, but sold four-day old fish and cooked their pasta in lukewarm water. How does one put up with that kind of frustration and is it a common occurrence? Yeah, people are bad. Cooks are bad.
Most most people are bad at what they do. The better you get at whatever you do in life, whatever you do in life, I don't care what it is, whether you're scientist, writer, jockey, whatever. Like it turns out that most people, no matter what they choose to do at a profession, are bad at it because they don't care. It's just because they don't care. And so there's a lot of people who are very bad, uh very bad cooks and they they do very bad things to the food or just not as good at things to the food.
So I don't know how to deal with that frustration. If the person, if you're learning something valuable, then learn what's valuable and don't get poisoned by the other bad things that are going on, be my suggestion. If it's so bad that you feel that you that you can't in good conscience uh serve the food that you're working on to people you have to leave. What do you think, John? I agree with that.
Yeah. I mean, it's tough, right? I mean, a lot of bad cooking goes on, a lot of things that you disagree with. You gotta be true to yourself and your own standards. And if the restaurant doesn't meet it, it's time to move on.
Right. If you're no longer proud of what you're working on, you have to go. You know what I mean? So, I mean, there's a fine line, and I think what I'm reading into what you're saying is is that you maybe you made a commitment to uh a place or uh to a person or to yourself that you were gonna hold on to a job for a particular length of time. Uh and that's also important.
It's important to hold to those commitments uh in in in life and to people that you're working with so that you can prove that you can have stick tutorness and not be flighty. So it can be a difficult decision to make. So uh it's not something to to quit a job isn't necessarily to be taken lightly. Uh especially in the in this business, someone who flits around a lot is not seen as being reliable necessary uh, you know, if they know your complete work history and if you're moving around. If you have a different job every every you know every month, people are going to well, why can't why don't why don't you want to stay in one place?
What's going on here? You know what I mean? The exception being some of the very, very high end restaurants that nowadays it's popular for people to go around to the very high end restaurants and collect stodges in them so that they can say that they've worked in them. And that's a separate thing and I think everyone knows and kind of respects what's going on there. But if you're not holding down uh um the same job for more than a month in a row, people are going to start asking you why.
Uh and so you have to weigh in your heart whether or not uh the commitment you made either to that restaurant or to yourself is uh you know weigh it against the fact that you're not proud of what you're putting out there. Uh and if you're not proud of what you're putting out there figure out a way to get out of it as fast and as cleanly as possible I think. But you should always be proud of what you're working on or you know because all you have is your output. You know all you have is is what you do and and trying to do the best job that you can do at all times. That's all you have.
What else is there? Okay. Finally, and thanks for letting me take up so much of your time is there any good way to keep leftover fried chicken crispy assuming fried temperatures are all spot on and as much oil as possible is removed post-fry. Would silica packs uh work to absorb excess moisture or does the coating become soggy not due to moisture in the air but from oil seeping out of the meat back into the crust uh and thanks uh for being a great resource and for your time okay uh it's not the oil it's uh moisture uh so there's a number of things first of all the question is when you say keeping fried chicken I'm assuming that you don't mean putting fried chicken in the fridge and then taking the fried chicken out later. I'm assuming hot holding fried chicken after frying for service in a catering environment.
That's what I'm that's what I'm taking it, because there is no way that I know of to uh short of under frying and then re-frying for service a cold thing, and it's still never a hundred percent. You know what I'm saying? Uh I'm I'm gonna assume that you don't mean a reheat off of something it's done, right? So that's a separate question, and we could talk about that later if you write back, and that's what you're interested in. Hot holding fried chicken, uh, your enemy isn't oil.
I mean, initially your enemy is oil, but the the way the oil uh uptake works in in frying is this. Uh you fry something, uh, and the oil is primarily on the outside, although there is some seepage into the crust, uh, even initially, and that seepage is related to a number of things. The temperature of your frying, the temperature of the batter when it went in, uh, how porous the batter is, and what the batter is made of, and whether you have any barriers in there like methyl cell, but no one hardly ever does, or crisp coat or some other starch that anyway, there's a number of factors. But uh most of the oil that's absorbed by the product is actually absorbed when you pull it out. And what happens is is that uh as you're frying, you're seeing boiling water, and the boiling water is rushing out, forming the steam and the violent bubbling that you see in frying, which is why a high temperature is important, so that you're constantly having boiling happen during the thing.
Uh that boiling out of water forms uh voids, steam and air pockets in your crust and in the surface of your food, right? And as uh the food cools down, oil is absorbed into those voids. As the steam uh vapor uh contracts, turns back to moisture, and there's these voids, the oil is absorbed in. So your opportunity to get oil off the surface of the food is only during the portion where the food is coming right out of the oil and when it's hot, which is why good fry practice is to pull the baskets out of the fryer, let them drip just so you don't spray oil everywhere, and then give it those violent couple of clack, clack, clack, or not violent, you don't want to hurt the product, but whatever the product can withstand, you give it some some some pan. I'm doing that saute motion, you know, that like twit that flip flipping motion, not flipping, it's hard for me to describe, but you you shake the basket a bit and you tilt the basket up on its corner so that all the grease comes out and all drips off the thing in the basket.
Yeah, you know, get it sometimes you can get it in the air, it depends on how fragile the product is, and get that oil off right away because as soon as it starts cooling down, you've lost your opportunity. So uh that's where oil absorption works in. But crust sogginess isn't due greasiness is due to having excess grease in the in the battery and as it cools, you'll notice the greasiness becomes more apparent, right? It's not that they're right there that the crust is changing, it's that greasiness becomes more apparent as it cools. Especially when things get actually cold and you've used a hydrogenated fat, a solid fat, you'll get greasy mouthfeel in what you're in what you're eating.
This is necessary for foods like donuts. So a hot donut fried in regular oil is gonna taste good because all hot donuts taste good. All hot fried things taste good. Even bad hot fried things taste okay when they're hot. But as it cools, uh a donut fried in liquid fat will taste greasy, whereas a donut fried in hydrogenated fat will taste like a donut, because it's supposed to be a little solid like that.
Whereas a potato chip fried in a solid fat will taste like kind of slick waxy uh in a bad way if you if you fry it in uh and it cools down, right? Which is why they had problems with OLESTRE because in order to get olestra to not run through your system and out onto your underwear without any intervention, they had to use hydrogenated olestra on potato chips. This is a wow, by the way, for those of you that don't remember OLEST. And when they did that, they altered the mouthfeel of the potato chips. That was the reason people could taste the difference in Olestra potato chips, not because olestra itself had a bad taste.
So back to your problem. So when something cools down or is held for a long time, oil can become a problem that way. Also, it's easier to detect flawed oil when the stuff starts cooling down a little bit or when it's been sitting around. The best test for flawed oil, and that when you're frying, is to always keep a cube of bread near where you're working and periodically fry a piece of plain white, like airy, non-crusty bread, flavorless bread in the oil. Why?
Because the bread's going to cool off fast, you can eat it fast, bread's going to absorb a boatload of oil, and you will be tasting primarily the state of your oil at any given time. So you you should always, like when you're using a fryer or anything, and you have any questions, uh dipping your finger and tasting the oil if it's cold is fine, but it a really good test is frying a piece of bread in it. Okay, now, uh so the real enemy to a crust on hot on hot holding is moisture migration from the food into the crust. Especially if you're packing things closely together. Uh you're gonna basically re-steam the crust, the crust is gonna lose its crispiness, and that's where you're gonna get a lot of your losses.
If you want to get around that, especially in a catering environment, I recommend you move to a piece of technology called a CVAP oven. Uh, even though all of my friends at CVAP have since moved on to other things because uh Winston, the owner of the company, who's the guy who was friends with Colonel Sanders and invented the pressure fryer uh and invented the hot holder for Kentucky fried chicken. Literally, this is a piece of equipment, the CVAP oven and the CVAP holding oven that was invented for your problem to keep fried chicken crispy. Uh what it does is it has a Bane Marie in the bottom of it that supplies a certain amount of moisture, and then it has a heating element in the cavity. And by adjusting the temperature differential between the heating element in the cavity and the Bane Marie, they can adjust the humidity of the oven and they can uh what they say is they adjust the I'm making quote marks with my fingers, the crispiness level of the food.
Uh and uh although it sounds hokey and to reading his documents online, it does sound hokey. Crap works. I've seen it many times. I've seen them hold Kentucky fried chicken in it for hours on end without uh bringing the inside horribly overcooked and um without losing the surface of it. I've seen them hold uh crispy fried tortilla chips in it just as a demo uh to prove that they could do it.
So uh CVAP oven is your way to go on that. Uh I don't know if their patents have run out, uh otherwise I would think of a way to hack one on my own, but they're relatively inexpensive compared to something like a combi oven. Anyway, uh I hope that's helpful, and uh they're gonna kick me off here. But on the way out, I want to say that uh the guys that by the way, you you uh UC USC, right? Use the Mary of Southern California, they're the ones that you always make wisecracks about.
Well, someone there and at UCLA, they're developing a pill, uh, and you can look this up online that you can take it, uh, and it's a really new, interesting uh combination of nanotechnology and enzymes where they're packaging multiple enzymes in like a little nanoparticle that you swallow, and it wipes out the alcohol. So it's literally a buzzkill pill. So you can go out drinking, and then before you get in your car, you can pop this buzzkill pill, and it just it's like having like five livers. Anyway, I'm uh I can't wait. It's gonna make it awesome.
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