Today's program has been brought to you by S. Wallace Edwards and Sons, third generation Cure Masters producing the country's best dry cured and aged hams, bacon, and sausage. For more information, visit SurreyFarms.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more.
Cooking issues! Cooking issues! Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cookie Issues coming here live! What every Tuesday is the second time I've done that to you, sorry.
No problem. From Roberta's Pizzeria in Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba Bushwick, Brooklyn! We are not joined with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez. She is calling Oh, but we are. Well, no, but not live, not in the studio.
She has called in too. 718497218. That's uh 7184972128. And you can too, with all of your cooking related questions. So, Nastasha, uh Jack and Joe are here in the uh in the engineering booth as always.
Hey, hey gentlemen. Hello. So uh Nastasha has lost all credibility with uh the cooking issues in the Heritage Radio uh team because we've heard her talk a big game about how much she hates uh springtime weather. No, no. Springtice we're gonna be hello.
Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. Well. Hates the springtime weather, hates springtime people, hates people when they like the springtime weather. And where are you right now, Nastasha? I'm at the beach, but I'm so happy that I'm not in New York because I don't have to see everybody in their flip flops and the hipsters on their bikes and all that stuff.
You're at the beach seeing all that. What the hell's the difference? No, there's no hipsters here. Zero hipsters. So uh are you so she is in uh Rhode Island, and are you familiar with the actual full name of Rhode Island, Nastasha?
No. Uh well it is the well, it's the smallest state in in our union. Uh however, it has the longest official name. It is the state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Were you aware of that?
Whoa, no, I wasn't. Yeah, it's like it's like it wasn't enough just to be the smallest. They also had to like tag the biggest name. And then they shafted they shafted Delaware. Delaware's like almost.
Well, almost the smallest, but we got no sales tax. I think that's kind of what Delaware said, right? Uh because they couldn't change their name to like Delaware of Delaware and the Delaware Delaware plantation, because that would just be copying. Right? Right, yes.
So uh is it uh I assume it's nice over there, although you know I would hate it. Yeah, you would hate it. I'm not on it. I'm I'm away from the sand. So yes.
Uh for those of you out there um big I like the idea of a beach. I love the beach in the wintertime, but the sun is my mortal enemy. Anyway, uh, okay, we got some questions in from Ryan Santos regarding centrifuge. Hey, Dave and Nastasha, uh customer who recently retired from medical equipment sales, gifted us with an unused centrifuge he had in his storage. It's small and runs fine, but is missing the containers for the inside.
Though some research uh through some research, the maximum uh this machine can take is four by fifty milliliter conical tubes. And as you're probably aware, those four small tubes and adapter are not cheap. Four to five hundred dollars in total. Obviously, with the quantity limit, we won't be able to use uh, you know, the qu the amount they can spin it in at one time. Uh we won't be able to use it for any real practical production use because four times fifty milliliters, as you guys can uh do in your head, maybe is two hundred mils, which is a small amount.
Um is there any small specialty use that would warrant spending this kind of cash at that quantity? Uh will it hardly yield anything, even just for fun personal use? Well, four to five hundred dollars is a lot to spend on uh the tubes for a 200 um mil machine. Now, if uh I didn't get a chance, it's a thermoscientific IEC centrist CL2. I didn't get a chance to look at the specific specs on that machine.
Uh, but let's just say for the sake of uh for sake of argument that it can do, you know, three to four thousand G's uh and it has uh it doesn't have the word like an R anywhere in it. Usually refrigerated center if you just have like a letter R in it somewhere, so it doesn't have a fridge. So you're gonna be spending $500 to be doing 200 mils. Now a 50 mil tube is a lot for th for 250 bucks or 200 bucks or whatever, you can go on Amazon.com and buy one that does uh that does a hundred mils at a time, half that for like half the price. But those small tubes that it that it uses, the small one, what's the one that we use, Stas?
What's the name of it again? You have one too. Do you remember? Oh, uh yeah. Uh I'll have to look it up.
It's like champion something, right? It's like champion something. Anyway, look it up. Um, that one's only a couple hundred bucks uh and it's new and you can almost like get rid of it when it's done. 200 mils is not going to be enough for large production runs.
I would see if you can get it cheaper. If you actually have the the uh metal tubes and you're just looking for the bottles, then you know you can get away with cheaper not using it all. But I personally would be hesitant to invest $500 uh in something that can do 200 mils if you have the space to get a larger size one because you know for a thousand dollars you can get a really good condition uh three-liter unit, uh you know, like a thousand to twelve hundred dollars. So I you know I would be hesitant, but on the other hand, if all you have is five hundred dollars and you want to get into centrifuges, is the kind of thing where you know, if you don't have a centrifuge yet and you want to take the plunge, then you know anything you can do to get you into the centrifuge business is going to uh eventually be good for you because I've never had someone who's gotten a centerfuge. It's like there's a couple things like that.
It's like the vita prep, it's like an immersion circulator. No one's ever like, damn, I didn't use that. That sucked. You know what I mean? It doesn't happen.
There are other pieces of equipment where I can see a little buyer's remorse when you're when you're done with it. But if you're buying a centrifuge for commercial use in a restaurant or at a bar, uh it will pay for itself as so long as you um use it right and and you know uh use it for menu items where it's gonna save you big money on yield on your expensive items. Uh it's gonna make money back. So if it takes four hundred dollars to get you into the into the centrifuge uh thing so that you can then eventually go buy your three-liter, then I think in the end you win. What do you think, Stuz?
Yeah, I think that's good. And it is called the champion E33 bench top centrifuge on Amazon. We gotta get uh we gotta get uh Buju uh Buju Banton to rep that singing like uh champion, walk like a champion for that centrifuge. You think we can put those two guys together? They're down in Georgia or Florida somewhere, and I think when he's in the U.S., he's down there somewhere.
Well, but I'm saying I think that's where he got arrested down there, so maybe they can arrange something. Does anyone know is Bootchu Banton still in jail? Were those cocaine charges trumped up? Does anyone know? Does anyone even know who I'm talking about?
I'm gonna Google it. Alright, very good. Uh okay, so there you have it. Now, uh folk, by the way, for those of you uh out there, uh, we decided for the torch to go with the name Sears All because uh Nastasha, does it sear some things? No.
Most things? No. So if you have anything, choose anything. If you have that, will it sear that? Uh yes.
So it's pretty much a Sears All. Yes. Sears all. Yeah. All right.
That's the name. Yeah, not Searsum. That would be a terrible name. Searsum would be like the worst name in the world. But Sears All, that's a strong name.
However, uh uh Nastasha still has a soft spot for uh excuse me for uh all searing eyes, so she says it under her breath all the time. Yes. She just walks around mumbling it. She you know, i in uh in you know 30 years, she's gonna be that she's gonna be that lady wandering around the Lower East Side mumbling or Hell's Kitchen mumbling Oh Searing, I'll Searing Eye, I'll Searing Eye. That's gonna be her.
And I still refer to it as the as the Sally Sears All because I like the word Sally, but you know, there you have it. So uh that's the name. Uh and uh we shot some videos, so look for some video up on the blog soon showing uh techniques on on how to use it and kind of what it's good for. Uh now, Ken Ingber, longtime listener, uh supporter of MoFed, uh I don't know if he's a supporter of the radio uh network or not. I don't know.
But a supporter of the Museum of Food and Drink and a long time uh listener. Writes in and is excited about the Sears All, but has these questions. One, what does this product do that an inexpensive, widely available and time tested electric paint stripper will not do? Uh if uh if a lower temperature is key, is it possible that a home cook might be better off with the lower temp on a paint gun? I have used uh the paint gun, and um I think it's it's uh it's eight there's a couple things I don't like about it.
One, they're actually not cheap. Like paint stripping guns are like, you know, uh you'd think that they're like 20 bucks, they're not. They're like 80 bucks or or more. And so they're actually uh we we mean they're more than what we hope to sell this unit for. We don't know what we're gonna sell it for because a lot depends on uh how much it costs for insurance and shipping and boxing and all that other stuff.
But we're hoping to have it be uh price competitive with those guns. Uh secondly, those suckers uh require a cord, which I detest having a cord running around. They don't heat up as quickly as you'd like. And it's uh kind of hard to judge. I've used them before.
They just don't do the same thing. It's just not the same thing. They're just not the same, uh, having having used those things. Now I like those hot air guns for uh for other things. For heat shrink tubing, man, those things cannot be beat.
I used to have one. Someone stole it. Have you ever noticed that happens with me? I'm like, I lend something to people, stas, and then they just steal it from me. Yeah.
Equipment, techniques. I'm kidding. So the latter makes me the most angry. Yeah, I'm just kidding. I'm just messing around with you.
That's not uh you're not kidding. You're not kidding. Uh whole whole in jest half in earnest there. Anyway, okay. Uh two.
This is uh Ken asking more questions. Would I get the same effect if I held an $8 replacement camping light gas mantle with tongs in front of a torch? I mean, leave aside the bonus thorium on my chicken skin. Well, uh, for those of you that don't know, uh they what they do is they take a uh, I think it's I don't know what the fiber is, but it's a fiber net uh it's a fiber that they uh weave into cloth. This is how they make those really bright uh gas lanterns for camping.
They take a uh a cloth, they put some like a very high temp refractory fiber in it, and they dope it with thorium, which is uh, you know, a substance. And then uh when they when they light fire to it, the fabric burns away and the mantle becomes exceedingly fragile, and then the whole sucker incondes like a weasel when you when you light it on fire. And that's how those mantle-based gas lamps work. Now, trick with that is besides the awesome thorium, as you point out, mantle's quite small and exceedingly fragile. Uh, and also like you know, they're they're not uh yeah, it's uh excuse me, wouldn't work the same way.
The uh I bike today, which is why you hear the incredible hacking and coughing every once in a while, and I inhale some more of that cement. You know that cement place does? Yeah. It's like you make it all the way here and you're fine, and then like a block from Robert's you inhale like a lung full of cement dust, and then you're hacking and wheezing for the rest of the day. Um anyway, so uh uh I don't think it would work for for that reason.
Secondly, uh when you have tongs and you're shooting at something, uh, you know, you tend to lose a lot of heat to backspray, which is why we have the cone. The real trick of the whole uh device here is uh an incredibly low thermal mass such that the sucker heats up very, very quickly, but doing that with a material that maintains its structural integrity and strength at the elevated temperatures that we're talking about. And they're quite hot. The inner screen, the outer screen probably only gets up to like oh, I don't know, like uh like 1300 Fahrenheit or something like that. Uh but the inner screen probably gets up closer to like 1700 Fahrenheit or something like in that range.
Uh so it's right at the upper level of even what the metals we're using can do. And in fact, we're still playing with the alloys there, so uh those mantles are extremely fragile. This thing needs to be more kind of bulletproof for kitchen uh use. Yes, does number three. Are you doing anything about stability?
A hardware store propane canister is comfortable to hold and has a large capacity, but it's inherently unstable. Don't I know it? Which is why we have a patent pending on a clamp that not only holds uh the propane canister when you're using uh the Searsol, but also holds it uh when you're using a regular torch, which I think is inherently dangerous in any effect, uh in any way. Anyway, okay. Uh hardware store propane canister is uh uh comfortable to hold large capacity, but inherently unstable with a small base and a high center of gravity.
The heat of the usual burn somatic nozzle is dangerous, but I suspect that the ignition level temperature dissipates pretty quickly. Adding this uh salamander, the sears all to the top makes the total package tippier and perhaps retains a dangerous temperature level. Uh that is a serious risk in a busy commercial kitchen and a nightmare for consumer use. Uh well, I'll just finish the whole thing and then I'll go into it. But this is like one of the main things that we're addressing.
So, I mean, it's good that someone asks and I can talk about here. Okay. So, as to the last point on the danger. I'm of two minds when it comes to Dave's tinkering. The Heath Kit customer, by the way, for those of you that, you know, I don't know, if we have young listeners out there, Heathkit was a company back in the day uh that became well known after World War II for uh supplying uh parts that you could build things like, or kits you could buy things like oscilloscopes.
When I was a kid, they sold a robot. They have like, you know, anyway, so like amateur electronics, like what you know, what all the Arduino kids are doing now, like used to be Heath Kit, but you know, anyway, whatever. Okay, uh the Heath Kit customer is amused by what Dave uh by Dave's hacking of say an electric pressure cooker. Uh what could go wrong uh in joking parents? But the lawyer in me is more than a little apprehensive, especially when you post instructions on the back to that's back on the pressure cooker.
Although, to be fair to me, I said do not do it. Remember that, Stas? Yeah, that was the first sentence you wrote in that story. I was like, do not do this. It like, you know, you know, do not do this.
Uh by the way, that pressure cooker still runs well. I've not had a problem uh with it. Uh so again, don't modify your pressure cooker to get to the actual 15 PSI that God wants it to be at. Uh, even though I highly recommend only cooking with 15 PI si pressure cookers, and it's theoretically possible to take the Queas Nart electric pressure cooker and make it do 15 PSI. I I have to urge you to not actually modify it according to the instructions I post on the blog, right, Sas?
Right. Right. Um I have two things. So Bouju Bantan is in jail until 2000 or yeah, 2019. And uh also you have a caller.
Oh. Uh all right. Well, let me just finish this question and then I'll take the caller and then I'll answer the question. Okay, great. Poor Booju.
Uh what was what was it? Was it cocaine? Yeah, it was cocaine. Yeah. In Florida?
I believe so. All right. Uh okay. Um Okay. But the lawyer in me is more than a little apprehensive, especially when you post instructions.
The Sears all will probably be considered a consumer product and the manufacturer and seller assume some serious liability, or at least the likelihood of consumer injury lawsuits win or lose. Good luck, and I expect to invest, but just in time, as BAM's Nomi Ku immersion circulator seems to have overcome some design to manufacturing issues and is on the verge of production now, delayed from last December. Uh as I write verge, listen carefully and you will hear the derisive laughter I get from my wife and friends. Wow, is that a slap down on on uh weepop? That is a slap down.
On the weepop. Hey, you know, I'm a big fan of the weepop. We pop's chilling in uh in uh where is he in Thailand now? Uh anyway, so I'll get back. I'll answer that question on safety and the Sears all after this caller, caller you're on the air.
Uh yeah, Dave. Uh two or three unrelated questions here. Cool. First one on pickling. The reference everything I read about it.
I gotta change room so you're not gonna be able to hear me over the cue. Um everything I read on Pickling says that if you hit four point nine on the pH, that that's sort of an intrinsically safe pickle. Okay, you mean regardless of salt content or anything? Well, that's or at least you can if you get to 4.9, you can go with a reasonable salt content. Right, okay.
Um I mean, clearly if you put enough salt in it, anything's sets. Oh yeah. Um but uh does anybody make a test strip for that? Oh, for that ex for that explicit number? Yes.
Jeez, you know, that's a that's a a good question. Uh you'd think that they would. Uh I mean, but the thing is with the test strips pH meters are really not that uh they're not that expensive anymore. I think you can get one now, like I think you know, you know, are you familiar with XTech? Uh well, I mean, I'm very familiar with Fluke.
XTEC is sort of the lower line company. Um, so like is there a you're telling me that um fluke's pH meter or somebody's like that is no longer the price of a decent used car? No, well, no, fluke is. Okay, like that's the thing. Like, so you're gonna pay for you're gonna pay for quality.
You know what I mean? So if you're gonna use it, if if you were gonna use something like I know more about multimeters than I know about uh uh pH uh test, you know, pH testers, right? But if if I'm if I'm an engineer and I'm gonna go out on the job site and I know things are gonna get dropped and my buddy who doesn't know how to do anything from a hot rock is gonna take it and is gonna stick the probes on something weird, I'm gonna go with the fluke. Right? Now, if I'm just at home, for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, fluke is a well known and trusted brand of test equipment.
Uh uh, you know, and they have a characteristic look, and you know a fluke when you look at it across the room, right? Okay, so we're on the same page. Uh now, I used to be the kind of guy that uh would only ever, only ever buy uh quality equipment because I knew that if I didn't buy quality equipment, uh it was going to come back to bite me somehow. That's at some point I would assume that I own something that worked and I would need it right then and it wouldn't work and I'd be let down and it would be worse than having nothing at all. That's just my general experience.
However, as I age, uh I realize that sometimes it's okay if you have one application, you know it'll work for it, and you know you can be ginger with it, you're not gonna take it out on a job site, and it gets relatively good reviews, then you can go ahead and get the cheaper one. And so with something like a pH meter, uh, I think you could probably get away with something from XTEC at like less than less than half of uh what you would pay for, you know, the brand you trust. Is that we mean I don't know whether you can believe I don't know whether you can go that same route or not, or like whether it's not in you to buy a piece of equipment that you don't trust. But it at any rate, X Tech is generally adequate for the the once a month I'm going to do this. Yeah, right.
And and uh and I I think you know, I I've owned a couple of their products, and I I I try to remember if I ever had a problem with one, or whether I've ever heard that they were unresponsive if the stuff breaks. The problem with pH meters in general, if you've never had one, is that you you need to keep the what goes wrong with them is that the especially the inexpensive ones you use. I don't have the glass tip ones, which is you know the kind that like a lot of people have. I have the ones with the little two like the metal thick thing, and it's and it's uh and shield at the bottom. It actually does a couple different things.
It also do TDS uh and uh you know a couple other measurements on it. You have to keep the cap wet at all times. If the if the probe dries out, the probe's shot, and then you have to buy another replacement tip for it. So that's the one caveat. You need to buy the probe and you need to buy uh the buffer solutions.
And if you calibrate it right, uh, you know, it's it's a good investment, and you just gotta make sure that you there's a little sponge inside the cap, and you gotta make sure that sponge stays wet so that the probe doesn't dry out and get and get ruined. And I, you know, I don't know of any reasonably priced one where that's not the case, but I've had one for several years and it's it's still working for me. So, you know, take uh again, I wouldn't do it if I was doing it professionally, but it's served me okay. All right, and then the the the specific thing that led me to this question. I'm I make this Vietnamese hot sauce basically.
It's one third fish sauce, one third lime juice, one third sugar, and then I just uh mandolin some form of hot pepper in there until there's no more room left. Right. And if you leave it in the fridge for a week or two, it seems to pickle beautifully. Other than buying a pH meter, is there any way to like be relatively sure that's not going to kill somebody? Um Yeah, so it's like one one third lime, you said, and one third.
One third lime, one third sugar, one-third fish sauce. The fish sauce is 1,500 milligrams of sodium per tablespoon. Yeah, well, you know that you know the fish sauce isn't gonna go anywhere. Uh lime juice is not gonna support too much growth. Sugar is gonna be reducing the water activity.
So the real question is is what's the weight ratio of the product to the um to the pickle. Now, you know, uh I don't know whether the salt level there is sufficient to inhibit anything but lactic acid. Does it get a lactic taste after a while? Are you getting some actual fermentation? Yes, yes.
And and like you can you can see the peppers, you know, the peppers go from bright green, it's like they absorb the fish sauce and just get a very subtle different flavor to them. Right, but then it it does it does actually ferment out and you get lactic acid bacteria in there? I think so. And you're f probably fine. I mean like you're you're just jumpstart.
You know, by lowering the pH initially, you're then selecting for more for lactic acid bacteria to grow rather than other nasty stuff. So, you know, I think you're I mean, I look again, like I would get the pH meter and test it, but I I wouldn't feel too nervous about it. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna come out and say that's a safe thing 'cause I haven't run the numbers or looked at the system or gone and checked any data on the on the web. But uh I mean I feel I would feel comfortable serving it to my family is put that way. Okay, so that's fair enough.
Uh a completely separate question. You were talking the other day about pizza steels. Oh yeah, yeah. You know, I've never used one. Now Chris Young was talking to me about it and they have someone in Massachusetts making it.
Uh and I I I'm really interested in buying one, but if I do, I'd like to use it for a few things besides pizza. Sure. Is it thick enough not to warp if it's heated unevenly, or is it um you want to you want to use it on the range? But like I can get my grill up to ridiculous temperatures. Right.
If I turn the rotisserie burner on too. So the tissue burner's radiating down from above at the same time the the grills going full up from below and I mean it gets hot in there, like seven hundred and something degrees hot. Right, right. Uh if I can um but I'm I'm worried if I do I'm afraid to do it to a ceramic pizza stone that way, 'cause I know the dang thing will crack. Oh, you you've tried it?
No, but I mean just ceramic they're typically not like to be heated unevenly. Yeah, no, I mean that's true. It's a it's a fi it' and it's a fifty fifty dollar experiment I've refrained from doing. Right, right. So I mean now clearly the steel's not going to crack.
Do you how do you have any feel for how likely it would be to take a permanent warp? Uh okay. Uh I haven't thought about it. Uh however, I'll I'll say this. Uh you're gonna buy it from the guy in Massachusetts making it with the modernist cuisine label on it?
Yes, but th uh that that is my intention costs about 75 bucks. Okay. So uh I don't remember exactly how thick it is, but remember the whole the whole McGill on that sucker is that it's thick enough to store up enough uh thermal energy to put a wallop into your crust, right? Right. So you're you're gonna have some inherent stiffness from just the fact that it's a thicker material.
But the other the the other good news is is you're not heating it up to like a cherry red. You're not like putting on uh like an oxyacety flame on it and uh melting it out. It's probably gonna take quite a bit of energy to warp that out as opposed to like you know, a black steel pan, which is incredibly easy to warp on a range, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Been there done that.
Yeah, and you're probably gonna have a more widespread out heat pattern than you would uh on a range if you're doing it on a grill. But the good news is this. I don't know that guy in Massachusetts and never met him, never spoken to him. However, I have spoken to Chris Young about him when they were starting that project because he was here on the radio show I think a year or so ago talking about it. And the fellow that's doing it is an engineer.
And uh my uh, you know, uh and I I'm biased because I got a family full of engineers, but um my my feeling is uh that uh it's probably something that he's tested. Because uh, you know, engineers are like that. You know what I mean? So it's worth calling them and asking them the questions. I would call I would call him personally and ask a question.
My i my impression is he's not like some giant conglomerate, he's a human being. But I mean he ha he has a real company that does other stuff, like a bigger company. I believe he's a metal fabricator or something like that, or has some sort of large shop. But the guy who spearheaded that at that company might be the owner or not, is an actual human being. And it works fantastic, and I love it.
But basic food safety question. If it's been in 180 degrees, you know, a reasonable size bag been in 180 degrees Fahrenheit for, you know, eight, ten hours. Is it essentially, I mean, canned? I mean, no need to worry about the big ice water bath and yeah, no, it is not uh it is not canned. And yes and no.
Here's the deal. So uh the original old school com fee recipes, right, have uh uh a fairly extensive uh salting regimen prior to the comfi process. They also have uh, you know, a classic uh bunch of uh herbs that gets packed into it. Those herbs, time and whatnot, are you know are bacteriostatic uh have some bacteriostatic effect. And um salt is there uh to provide um to provide you know some bacterial protection.
So now I don't know of any cases of someone getting what you're worried about is spore forming bacteria here. You're gonna kill all the vegetative stuff, but you're not gonna wipe out the spores. So the question is is the water, and and here's the other problem. When you're when you're doing a traditional comfi, you have first the salt, that gets rid of some moisture and increases the salt level. That's inhibiting bacteria.
You have the uh putting of the of the herbs on, that's somewhat inhibiting bacteria, although it's hard to quantify. You then have uh the traditional comfy in an open uh roaster, let's say, or on a pot in a stove, and that sucker is uh is also getting rid of moisture because moisture is evaporating off and can get out. When you're doing it in the bag, most modern confie recipes don't have as much salt, so I can't guarantee there's bacteriostatic. Uh, you're not necessarily using the same herb profile, so can't guarantee bacteriostatic there. And also, you're not evaporating the moisture out of the bag.
The moisture stays in the bag, which is why you get a little gelee in the bottom of a bag confie item. Now, I like all that in terms of taste, but I wouldn't trust it for uh I wouldn't trust it for room temperature and for not having uh spores in it. Okay. So I would, you know, if you want to do it that way, you know, you got to get a retort bag, and you can buy retort bags, and then just you know, you could pressure you could pressure of the retort bag, and then those suckers are sterile, they'd be shelf stable at that point. Okay, so all right, so I I need to be caught more caucus on this than on than on the pickle question.
I would, yeah. Okay, fair enough. Um, that was my question. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Have a good one. You too. All right, Jack, let's go to our first commercial break. I'll come back with some safety issues on the Sears All Cooking Issue. Today's program has been brought to you by S.
Wallace Edwards and Sons. Edwards Suriano hams are aged to perfection for no less than 400 days and hickory smoked to achieve a deep mahogany color. The Edwards name is well known for its world-class aged and cured meats. Their exclusive curing and aging recipe produces a unique flavor profile that enhances the quality characteristics of Berkshire pork. Optimum amounts of pure white fat marbling contribute to a flavor that's a delicate, perfect balance between sweet and salty.
For more information, visit www.surrifarms.com. Did you know Heritage Radio Network.org is a member supported nonprofit organization. If you like what you're listening to, go to our website and click that donate button. Become a member and get special discounts, invites, VIP treatment, t-shirts, and more. Support us in our mission to bring you the freshest food content in the nation.
Glad to see Sam Edwards is supporting the show. You know I like the S. Wallace Edwards ham. Joe, you like that stuff. I do enjoy the Suriano ham.
And Dave, you have another caller. I do? Yep. Suriano, S. Wallace Edwards.
Great product. I don't like the name. Caller, you're on the air. Hey, Dave, it's Aaron Warren calling from uh Edmonton, Alberta. Just had a question for you about uh solar streams.
About what? About soda streams? Oh, cool, alright. Okay, so I I purchased uh just a cheap I'll use soda stream online and uh did some research previous to it and noticed that there's a company that uh basically is able to uh provide you with a clip so that you can put uh a CO2 cartridge onto the soda stream without purchasing it or exchanging it directly through them. But upon further reading, I noticed that the CO2 actually isn't food grade, it's uh paintball CO2 or designed for paintball guns.
Is that a concern? Well, that's an interesting question. So uh you know, uh if you go to the big restaurant shows, there are companies that only supply CO2 for the beverage industry, right? Um and also if you buy your gases from people like ISI, let's say in the small cartridges, you know, they make a lot about the purity of uh of the gases that go in it. Um I have always and everyone I know purchases CO2 not from paintball suppliers but from uh welding suppliers.
Uh including at you know restaurants and you know most of those unless you're getting your gas directly from Coca-Cola or Pepsi or whoever you deal with, you know, Universal Beverage or Coke, whoever you deal with. Um, you know, pretty much we're all using the welding gas and that's it. I've never noticed any taste problems or anything like that. I mean the stuff is, you know, it's it's high purity. I don't know uh I can't I can't say as I've studied it too much, except for I don't ever worry about it.
And I've actually filled I have a 40 I have a 40-pound or 50-pound siphon tank and I fill up smaller things, including twenty ounce paintball tanks with it. Fill it myself, you know. Although I I don't recommend filling your own tanks unless you do like a lot of reading on the safety, because if you fill your own tank and you do it wrong, you cause a serious uh it's a serious hazard. Uh an incorrectly filled tank is a serious, serious hazard. So I don't you know, I don't recommend doing it unless you've done a lot of research on it.
But yes, I wouldn't worry about it. I think you know, uh the soda stream people have done a great service to the world in that they've brought home carbonated beverages to a large, large number of people, but they are ripping you off for CO2. There is another one. Exactly. And that's yeah, that's kind of why I wanted to go with uh this little mod clip that they have is just so I could basically cheap out a bit more on that without spending the two or three hundred bucks it would cost me to get the you know twenty-pound tank and the regulatory.
That's the thing. Twenty pound tank, a twenty-pound tank and a regulator is not that expensive. Everyone buys it, and this is no offense to any homebrew people that are are listening, but those guys are small shops and need to make uh they that they make their profit off, but but they don't sell that many, right? So the prices on like a uh on a tank are are fairly high in a regulator. You know, if you you can get a five pound tank, which is a lot easier to sling if you're going uh if you're doing it in your house and in twenty.
And I want to say that a five pound tank is it's way under a hundred bucks. And a regulator is like thirty if you get it from uh from Mark Powers in uh in uh the Guntersville, Alabama. I don't know about Canada. I don't know what the rules are up there. You know, I hesitate buying a used tank just because you gotta make sure when you buy a used I mean you can, I have, but you gotta make sure when you buy a used tank that it's still certified, otherwise you're gonna have to get it certified.
Um you know what I mean? But once you get the investment in in once you have that tank, then the CO two is so cheap it's ridiculous. Your price per liter drops to, you know, like a penny. It's ridiculo you know, like a twenty pound CO two tank does like on the order of two hundred gallons of seltzer water. I mean think about that.
And then and let's say it's twenty bucks, which I don't even think it's twenty bucks. So that's twenty bucks for two hundred gallons, you can really get more. That's uh well, what is that? That's uh that's ten dollars, that's a dollar for ten gallons. Is that right?
Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. It's a dollar for ten gallons, so that's ten cents a gallon, uh that's like like two and a half cents a liter. Think about that.
Yeah, yeah. Ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. Plus you're not gonna run out very often.
So no, no, never. Not you know. Once every couple years, probably. I mean, I mean look, once you have it in your house, I go through a lot of so I go through tanks and tanks and tanks, especially, you know, when you first set up your rig, you'll probably have a leaky system and you'll lose your tank a lot faster than you should. But yeah, tank lasts a good long time, even with a family of four that drinks almost exclusively seltzer, it lasts a good long time.
So I would definitely go that route. It's gonna save you money in the long run for for for sure. And then later on, okay if you decide to move on to a different system, you already have the tank. You can you can do anything you want. If you want to get a carbonator cap system and to take a T branch off your regulator and then uh do cocktails that way, which is kind of more flexible than doing it in soda stream style, you can.
That's only another $15, sixteen dollar investment to your system because you can upgrade it right away, and you're not paying for a preposterous amount for the CO two every time you do it. Everyone tries to make their money on the gas. And for me, that's just not a proposition I enjoy. Okay. You know what I mean?
All right, great. Thanks for all the info, Dave. Appreciate it. Love the show. Oh, thanks a lot.
No problem. Good luck with it. Okay. So uh back to the safety on Ken Ingbert's question on the Sears all. So the uh I mean, first of all, obviously, we have lawyers looking at it.
We have uh insurance companies uh we're we're talking to about getting uh insurance, and like I'm sure a good chunk of the cost of the item to the consumer is going to be our insurance for it. Uh but we're doing a lot of work to make sure that the product itself is uh safe. So the you know, the the initial design of it was um kind of operator ease of use and comfort, right? So the cone is the cone was there originally to stop heat from coming back on your knuckles to make sure that everything worked fine there. Uh the second that then after we got initial usability down, uh we focused uh, you know, a lot of our attention is being focused right now on safety issues.
So, you know, the very first thing we said is this thing is too tippy. So we made a clamp, uh clamp that fits on it. Um and the clamp actually is kind of cool because the clamp will fit on uh butane tank, the tall propane tank, uh, and the camping propane tank. It'll also fit on a wine bottle if you want to take it to a picnic. So you're wine, yeah, right?
Woo! So your wine bottle doesn't fall over. That's the that's the only thing Nastasha cares about is that it fits on the wine bottle, right, Stas? That's right. Yeah, yeah.
And what's and what's the name of this thing, Dave? It's the JED clamp. Because why? We're stupid. Yeah, we're stupid.
But what but no one put some people might not get it? Go get the go get the jet clamp, jet clamp it, jet clamp it. Get it? Get it. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's a good one, right? And everyone's like, You're stupid, that's a dumb name. And you're like, guess what? I don't care. I get to name it.
You don't, it's the JED clamp. Anyway, so uh Jet Clamp will fit on a propane tank, butane uh tank, wine bottle, you name it. In fact, eventually we want to sell that sucker just for use with regular torches because I've always thought torches were unsafe standing up there on its own. So that's something we addressed. But Dave Chang, especially was like, people aren't always going to put the um put the clamp on.
So we're trying to engineer it such that it's safe even without that. First of all, the one that has been on the on our web there, there's if we've modified it since then, there's a safety cage around it. And the safety cage is made of wire so that it doesn't uh retain heat very much, and you can uh you can literally knock it over on the table and it won't catch anything on fire. And it's still hot, not gonna lie, but you can you can hit it after it's been on for a long time and not sustain horrible burns as if it uh like you would if if the naked cone fell on you. Uh and we're still right now, before we one of the reasons we haven't kickstarted yes, we're still working on a bunch of different safety tweaks to make it as safe as we possibly can.
Uh, you know, and in addition, of course, it's gonna come with a list of instructions a mile long on what to do and what not to do, but rest assured that uh the safety of the product is um you know, once we came up with the functionality that we liked, the safety of the product is our primary concern. Wouldn't you say that's true, Stas? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
Uh uh that was a good that's enough on that, right, Stas? Bueno, bueno? Okay, bueno. Uh Brendan Hodkins writes in from Phoenix, Arizona. I haven't been to Phoenix in a long time.
Stas, you ever been to Phoenix? Yes, I have. I don't like it. What? What do you have against Phoenix?
What? You don't like it. What is it? No, I think it There's no hipsters there, Stas. What?
Who the hell do you like? You don't like hipsters? If I have a new contest, you'll get a free t shirt. If you write in five things Nastasia likes. No one will ever win that.
Yeah. Now, like you you'd have that contest done before the end of the show if you're like tweet in five things she hates. Yeah. It'd be over. That's not the point.
Yeah, yeah. Five things she likes. So what do you have against Phoenix besides the the awesome Sawaro cactuses and the and the awesome smell of the desert? Uh my grandmother lived there. I do like Sedona.
Sedona is beautiful. Have you been there? Whoa. Would you like Sedona? You don't wait.
Hold up. You don't like hipsters, but you like weird hippie freaks? No offense, Sedona? I know. I like the landscape.
I don't like the weird hippie freak part. No offense, weird hippie freaks. We love you. But uh, yeah, no, uh, Sedona's nice. My uh my father-in-law used to fly into Sedona's airport, and that's a bumpy ride in a Cessna 172, let me tell you.
Anyway, uh, I like I like Phoenix. I think it's good stuff. I haven't been out there in a long, long, long time. Probably 13 years. Anyway, uh, I hope they got the pollution problem fixed.
You know, when I used to go out there in the in the 90s, they were like the last place on earth you could still use leaded gas. I hope they've changed that. I have no idea. Anyway, uh Brandon says, I discovered your podcast a few weeks ago and have been catching up on the episode since then. I have a few questions.
I bought a poly science creative series circulator last week, and I've been using Ziploc bags per Euro low temperature primer. Are there any applications where a vacuum sealer is a must have? For example, would I need to vacuum seal short ribs before I cook them for seventy two hours? Uh no, you don't. Uh however, well, we'll get into it.
Uh, would the Vacmaster VP one one two chamber sealer work well enough to also do a quick pickling, or would I need a more expensive chamber sealer for that? So we'll hand let's handle this before we uh before I get on the second question. So here's the deal. You can do, and I say this in the in the, you know, when we used to teach it, um, you know, you can do 90% of what you want to do uh without a vacuum by using Ziploc. However, right?
If you seal something in a vacuum bag, so so that's just from a cooking standpoint. Vacuum shines in food preservation, right? So there's two reasons to use uh there, well, there's many. But the but you know, two of the two of the main reasons to use a vacuum machine are one, you can bag things so you can do low temperature cooking, and for me personally, that's the most important thing. Two, uh by removing the oxygen from the bag, you are uh, and also by removing any sort of gas uh content, if you're gonna freeze, let's say something, if you're gonna freeze it, uh by removing uh air and or oxygen, all that stuff, you are preserving the product in a in a better condition for a longer time.
Also doing things like preventing freezer burn if you're gonna freeze, etc. etc., preventing crystallization uh because there's no surface from which the water can migrate out and form crystals on the surface. Okay. So for preservation, you need uh vacuum. And the better the vacuum, the happier you're gonna be.
I haven't the vacmaster VP112, which is what what you're talking about, is uh I've never used it, but I've looked at it on the web a bunch of times. It is a lot cheaper than the pumps, the the vacuum sealers that I'm used to. And uh what it it amounts, it's a chamber machine, which means that you're not sucking the air out of the bag, you're sucking the air out of a chamber and then sealing the bag. That by far and away is the better system to use than one where you're sucking air out of the bag. I've had nothing but bad luck with the ones where you suck the air out of the bag, with the exception of like 36-inch striped bass, which I can't figure out how to seal any other way.
Uh so anyway, so yes, so the chamber is a good good way to go, but the the vacmaster looks like just kind of uh like a food saver on steroids. And by that I mean it doesn't have a commercial quality vacuum pump in it. All of the kind of all of the big kid vacuum machines, the chamber machines, have in them a bush pump, pump made by the Bush Corporation. And those things are monsters. They're they're always, always work.
They're awesome, right? They suck a very fast vacuum and there's go down to a very low uh number of millibars. So they're they're just a good piece of equipment all the way around. And all of the major ones that that you find, you know, mini pack, multivac, and cotch, they all use that brand because everyone knows they're the best ones out there for normal use, right? Now, this guy has a piston pump in it, which it has its limitations.
It's never going to pump as hard a vacuum as those other things. It's never gonna pump as quickly as those other things. Now, the question is, is it enough? I don't know. You know, when I looked on the web, I looked this morning and I looked at a bunch of reviews online of people that have it.
You know, they buy it at Cabela's, which is you know, the you know, the sporting goods store because you know hunters buy it and things like this. And some of the people that have it like it. However, I never saw this. I never saw, hey, you know what? I'm used to working in a kitchen or in a processing plant with you know uh a real vacuum machine, like a mini-pack.
And I had this one and it's almost as good. Didn't see that once. Didn't see that once. I did not see one consumer uh or one customer review of that machine that's that um that said that it compared to what I would consider to be you know the the commercial machines that I that I'm used to. And I will also say I spoke to a mini pack rep yesterday, and he said that in one of the places they sell a lot of uh vacuum things in Alaska because they have a lot of fish and they're vacing the fish down for uh you know for sh for freezing and shipping.
And he says that literally in their in their uh uh showroom, they have that unit, the vacmaster, sitting next to their unit, so you can make a decision for yourself which way to go. Now, at home, maybe it's enough. I don't really know how high of a vacuum level it can get. If the vacuum pump is no better than a food saver, it's not gonna do as good a job, uh a quick pickles, anywhere near as good a job as a real vacuum machine uh can do, but I don't have any personal experience with it. Uh what do you think, Staz?
Good. Yeah, man, I don't want to be snobby about it. You know what I mean? Like I feel like I'm being a jerk because it is literally a third of the price of the next machine up, one third, you know what I mean? So I don't know whether you can get away with it or not.
No one's ever sent us one, so I so I can't make a uh an informed judgment. If anyone out there in uh in uh Tweeter land has uh used both uh like a regular commercial machine, like a mini pack, a multivac or a cotch or something similar, and one of those vac masters, please just you know, tweet in and tell us what you think, whether or not it was uh whether or not it would do anything. Okay. Second question. Is there a way to make powdered Dr.
Pepper? That's the FCO that's all used, does. Yeah. Wouldn't you put it in uh liquid nitrogen? No, that would just freeze it.
That would just freeze it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, second question. Is there a way to make powdered Dr.
Pepper? I thought it would make a good addition to spice rubs. If it is possible, what would be the shelf life? Well, the shelf life would probably be non-finite. You know what I mean?
If you could do it. Here's the problem. Uh dehydrating things with uh sugar in them can be quite difficult because uh at the more you dehydrate something, kind of the the more the sugar doesn't want to lose that last little bit of water until you crystallize it out. But it's more difficult to crystallize because they're using high fructose corn syrup, etc. etc.
Here's what you do. First of all, forget using regular Dr. Pepper, right? Forget it. Just go to you can go, you can buy, I saw it on the Sam's Club website this morning.
You can buy uh Dr. Pepper syrup. I couldn't locate the exact bricks, but since uh Dr. Pepper is probably somewhere around 11 bricks, and since it's a five to one syrup uh to soda ratio, that means that you multiply by six to get uh you multiply by six to get the bricks. So it's probably somewhere in the area of 60 to 66 bricks, meaning 66% sugar in the syrup that you get.
So for every kilo of that, you only need to remove uh three, you only need to remove uh 300 mils, 333 mils of water. Now, what I would do is you could try boiling some water out, but it's gonna get sludgy, it's gonna heat up fast. Once it heats up, it's gonna start changing the flavor. You could try spreading it thin and putting it in a dehydrator and then trying to get it down to something more brittle and then pulverizing it with the rest of your salt rub so that your salt or your sh your spice rub absorbs some of the extra moisture and it's gonna turn grainy and sandy. Uh you could do that.
Uh, but you know, short of that, you're gonna need like something commercial like a spray dryer, or what I would more preferably do is freeze dry, because freeze dried, you could get it down to a powder. It would just be like sugar and it wouldn't have any heat damage. But I don't know anyone that makes it freeze dried. And actually, Stas, did you ever find that person who could do uh contract freeze drying? Yeah, I have a guy.
Yeah? In Massachusetts, yeah. I'll tweet it out. Tweet it out. Nastasha on uh uh what's your Twitter there, Hammer BDX?
Hammer BDX, yeah. Yeah, Nastasha will Twitter out uh the person who can do contract freeze drying, because maybe they can freeze dry you some Dr. Pepper syrup and then uh you have Dr. Pepper Powder. Uh they made a Dr.
Pepper gum. When I say uh I forget who made it, but I I saw that on the web too. They made it. Here's an interesting thing about Dr. Pepper.
I looked it up. Uh of course I looked it up. So the the flavorings, did you know Stas does not contain prune juice? What? Dr.
Pepper? You know, for years I always thought it was prune. In fact, there's no prune in it or prune flavor. And like everyone. You know what?
Well, you just mentioned one thing that I like, so that's a free giveaway for someone today. So is that still count though? Oh, yeah, alright. Ah, fair, fair. So, but but still, like naming four naming four things.
We're gonna be waiting for Godot with this thing. So, uh so Dr. Pepper doesn't actually contain prunes. Uh, but that kind of spoils it for me because like I love the whole prune thing. In fact, my favorite, you know how like every soda has like a rip-off brand at the supermarket?
Mm-hmm. You know, like whatever. And the one my favorite Dr. Pepper ripoff is uh Dr. Thunder.
Presumably because of the effect of the prune on your GI tract. Dr. Thunder. Anyway, uh so point is uh it doesn't contain prune. Here are the here, according to there's a uh you uh there's a a fact, an F A Q.
Uh and here you look it up under free new York.net DP fact, standing for Dr. Pepper Fact. Uh and here's what they list. Um they go through a bunch of things. This seems kind of relatively true.
Uh vanilla, almond, right? And this is why it's Almoretto and Amaretto and rum is the flaming Dr. Pepper shot. So because it's vanilla, almond, denatured rum, which they probably means like some sort of rum, dealized rum, uh, oil of orange, and uh phosphoric acid and lactic acid and uh also some citric. So really interesting acid blend in there.
And so uh those flavors explain why the flaming Dr. Pepper, which is amaretto and uh emaretto and rum lit on fire, why that tastes like a Dr. Pepper's because you've hit, if you put a little orange in it, you've hit pretty much all the the high notes in uh especially if you use an age rum, which is gonna have the vanilla notes from the wood, you've hit almost all the high notes in a Dr. Pepper. That's cool, right, Stas?
Yeah, yeah. Really cool. Are you are you a fan of the uh are you a fan of the flaming Dr. Pepper drink? Not really.
You prefer the actual Dr. Pepper? I do. Okay. You know it every lunch, every Tuesday.
Yes, that's true. So I uh I'm not gonna even eat lunch because like what am I gonna by the way, so the r the reason why Nastash and do the and I do this show is not for you fine listeners out there, although I guess it is. For the pizza. It's for the pizza and the salad. We get a pizza and a salad.
That's the that's the that's the pizza. Well, really, that's it. That's the big bucks we make. And getting to talk to Jack and Joe every week. Yeah.
Which is like getting two pizzas in a salad, really. And seeing indie Jesus sometimes. Yeah, sometimes. Although he hates us because, you know, you talk smack about him. Jack and I equal one pizza.
I thought that was good. You want it, I mean, like you think that's that's fine. That's about it. That's accurate. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so like I'm not that guy that's gonna sit here and just eat my pizza by myself in silence. I'm just gonna I'm not gonna have lunch this week. Unless you guys want to eat with me. Do you guys want to eat with me?
Maybe Joe can have a pizza with you and uh yeah. All right, nice. All right, Stas. Stas, you've been replaced. No.
All right. So Chris Anderson from Modernist Pantry writes in. Hey, Chris. Modernist Pantry. Uh hope all is well.
We have just been getting a number of calls lately from your listeners looking for Novo Shape. Uh, just wanted to let you know we are now stocking it based on your recommendation. Chris Anderson from Modernist Pantry. Novo Shape, good call. Uh Stas, let's order some of that stuff for ourselves because I don't think I have any left.
Here's the uh here's the deal with Novo Shape. Novo Shape, uh it's uh the exact opposite of the enzyme that we use almost all the time, which is Pectanex Ultra SPL. Novo shape uh cross links in the presence of calcium. Don't forget to add your calcium, people. Uh you need to add calcium and it cross-links uh pectins in the presence of it and makes fruit and other vegetables a lot firmer.
So, like the ossified uh vegetables or whatever that they you know do at Moogaritza or that they do it NOMA, all that, you can do that uh without using very heavily flavor-mediated calciums by uh using Novo Shape in in conjunction with like a milder calcium. Also, if you want to make yourself some cocktail cherries from fresh cherries when cherry season runs around, or when any of your fresh fruits are coming in and you want to can them and have a real nice firm fruit, you can use Novo Shape and calcium and really firm the fruit up so that it keeps for a long time if you're gonna brand it or something like that. So uh as the spring and summer rolls around and the fruit comes in, consider getting some Novo shape to really just increase the quality of your brandied and candied fruits. How's that for a pitch? Yeah.
Okay. Uh finally, Eric writes in on the red velvet cake. Hey cooking, and uh uh I know we've done we've dealt a little bit with red velvet cake in the past, but uh here we go. Hey cooking issues crew. I've been looking into red velvet cakes recently, uh and I'd love to find a recipe without dye or beets.
My research showed that the anthocyanins, uh that anthocyanins uh would turn the batter red. Uh uh, the anthocyanins that you would turn the batter red with buttermilk and vinegar. The problem is most cocoa in these recipes is Dutch processed and is thus too basic. I'm looking, not looking for an extreme uh blood red, but something more than the brown chocolate cake that normally comes without dye. Any help would be appreciated.
Okay, here's the problem, Eric. Uh all of the natural colorings that I know that are red uh come from one of two uh like styles. There's betylanes, which are from beets and other you know related uh plants, and anthocyanins, which you get in uh things like cabbages or in uh in a bunch of flowers and teas. And all of those pigments are pH sensitive to to one degree or another. Um that said, you can uh you know you can uh cat the cabbage is fairly neutral uh if you want to go anthocyanin and beets, I don't know how how neutral it is.
The problem with beets is it's it beets are extremely concentrated source of color, which is why they're good. But uh a good source, I know you said you didn't want to do uh beets, but if you want to look at a really red cake that's beet-based, go to uh the big bake theory blogs, uh you know, blog. And they uh uh the person there, I don't know who it is actually, uh, but they they did a whole series of tests, and the red velvet cake, their beet-based red velvet cake is freaking red. And for them, you know, they they point out all the things that are important. When you're using a natural, um, when you're using a natural dye, anthocyanin or betylin based, like the things that are important are the pH, and you're gonna want your pH to be lower, which means that you're gonna have to switch away from the Dutch uh Dutch cocoa unless you really, really insist on having the flavor of the Dutch processed cocoa, in which case you're gonna have some difficulty because it's difficult to get a bright red if you're gonna have something.
I mean, the reason that Dutch processed cocoa is the color it is and is the flavor it is, is because of the alkaline processing. And I think, like in other words, I don't think you can just uh add extra acidity to neutralize the Dutch cocoa and have it work, but maybe you can. I have to run some tests. Uh heat. So they found on that website that uh, and I've noticed this as well, that the longer something is heated and the further away it is from raw, the less red it is, and the more you have to use to get it uh to that color.
So on that website, they literally blend in a food processor raw beets and water. That's gotta be one king hell mess, right? It's gotta be some messy stuff. I'm gonna make Nastasha do that if she does it because I'm gonna do it. Hey guys, we we got a tweet in for five with hashtag five things hammer likes.
Oh, let's hear it. Oh wow. I'm ready to disqualify number four, but I'll read it for you guys. All right. We've got uh champagne.
Oh, yes. Check Mark Ladner. Oh, I don't know why they said that, but I'm gonna assume check. Check. California?
Hmm. Check? That's kind of brilliant. Yeah, I guess so. I have to give.
Yeah. Okay. So you hate everything from your childhood, and that includes California. True. Go on, Jack.
All right. Number four, this is where I disqualify, hating hipsters. I don't know if you can like hating hipsters. I know. That's kind of a strong move, though.
Yeah, it is. Yeah. I like hating on hipsters, though. All right. And then number five is Zappos, aka.
So I'll let you, I'll let you give it the yay or nay, Nastasia. Yay, yeah. All right, we got a winner. Who is it? T shirts on the way.
Who is it? Cool. Uh from Twitter, we got it's Elliot Pavanow. Oh, Elliot. There we go.
And congratulations on your t shirt. Doesn't he already have a t shirt? Isn't he a member? I don't know. Email us your size or maybe your girlfriend's size or something.
Nice. We'll get one out. All right. Thanks. Thanks for writing in, Elliot.
Uh, okay, so what I would do, uh, Eric, and I'm gonna try and look more into it. I have a bunch of articles uh that I have backlog, read, uh, backlogged and to read on uh different ways to affect the stability of uh natural based red, red and blue pigments, because I've been doing some anthocyanin work uh for the bar. So I'm gonna try to get back to that. As soon as I figure it out, I'll do it. But go to the Big Bake Theories website and look up the recipe they have there.
They they don't use uh Dutch processed cocoa, and they use uh cream of tartar and buttermilk and fresh beets. Uh so anyway, check it out. I know you said no beat, but check it out. You could probably do the same thing with cabbage as long as you really acidify the sucker so that it goes bright, bright red. Uh now, on the way out, I want to say that, you know, I'm on this, you know Nation's restaurant news.
Anyone know what I'm talking about? Nation's Restaurant News? Yeah. I read it, yeah. Anyway.
Uh uh it's Nations Restaurant News. Set, you know, they send stuff to my inbox every day. So this one caught my caught my eye. KFC. This is what's awesome about the world, right?
Big this is big news. KSC is coming out with boneless chicken. Did you guys know this? Yeah, they're doing away with the regular stuff, right? Are they doing away with it?
I think they the boneless will be the new promoted line above everything else. Don't worry, folks. They're not like raising some sort of like, you know, like, you know, osteo challenged chicken. They're actual chickens that the bones have been removed from. It's not like some like weird sack of growing chicken plasm that they have around.
They're real chickens. Now, I've been saying, by the way, I've been saying boneless chicken for decades because my wife does not like to eat chicken off the bone. First of all, thank God she doesn't listen to a word I say because she hates when I talk about that in public. But she does not like to eat chicken on the bone. And so for years I've boned everything.
You know, bone the legs, bone, just bone the whole bone everything. And it is really, frankly, more enjoyable. It's more enjoyable because I'm not going to call anyone out Nastasha, but she takes three bites off the drumstick and then leaves all the meat around the bone for something. Weak. Very.
Yeah, whereas when you boneless, you eat the whole thing. That's guilty as charge, right, Stas? That is true. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, but it's it's endearing in a way.
No. No. Anyway. So uh, so here's the thing. It's like all of a sudden, it's like huge news that they're gonna go boneless on the on the on the KFC, and all they have to do to make big news is take the bones out of the freaking chicken.
That's all it takes. We're in the wrong, we're in the wrong damn business. I swear to God. But this is what got me, and this is why I'm gonna end with this. Here is a subset of everything that is wrong with the mental process of American food thinking.
Okay. Uh the the one of the one of the firms that was hired by KFC as a senior consumer research manager, said this about why they think the boneless Kentucky fried chicken is going to be popular. Are you ready for this? Uh, this is quoted in in uh Nation's Restaurant News. I think this also has to do with healthfulness.
Because if you see boneless, even if the product is breaded and fried, we tend to think of boneless as less. And so therefore, maybe more helpful. I think the healthful, seriously. Uh, I think the idea of boneless in general is one we'll see a lot more of. Can you freaking believe that, people?
That is how dumb. That is how dumb people think that we are that by just having the word less attached to the word bone, that the fried chicken is going to be more helpful. Not that I like thinking of fried chicken in health terms anyway, because you know what you should eat? A reasonable amount of anything you find delicious and don't go crazy, including fried chicken, bones in or bones out, 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. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritage radio network.org. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today.
Thanks for listening.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.