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If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your hook of what? Your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from a birth pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, joined as usual with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez. We got Jack and Joe in the engineering booth.
How's everyone doing? See what happens when you miss two weeks? Can't even do the intro. I didn't miss I miss one week. Oh yeah.
Well. But you know, of course you're gonna trip up on the word host. I scared literally, like these guys, like at the there's a table that sits right by the radio window, and they're like, what the what the and they're they're gone. Call negotiations to 7184972128. That's 7184972128.
And I haven't said this in a while, but uh true. Uh remember, you can call us with pretty much any question, right, guys? I mean, it doesn't have to be technical. I mean, usually is, but uh Nastasha, speaking of technical right now, this is like a very meta Nastasha moment. She's reading, uh, as we say, we she noticed because she looks at things, believe it or not.
The uh they have a book that was shipped in to us, not us, but uh the radio, the radio station, called the Vegan Stoner Cookbook. So Nastasha is gonna have a definition of the vegan stoner, which is one who satisfies the munchies with resourceful creative, instinctive cooking without using animal products. Wait, say it again. One who satisfies the munchies with resourceful, creative, instinctive cooking without using animal products. Are you are you can you do instinctive things when you're stoned out of your mind?
Or is it pretty like I like look, I'm not I'm not a stoner, but mo most of my f friends who like who hit up quite a lot, uh they don't necessarily make their best cooking decisions when they're stoned out of their mind. Just saying. And all their fruits and vegetables are have a stoner face going on in this. Yeah. Well, you know, look, hopefully pretty soon.
Uh I mean, look, I have some friends who are kind of very deep into um cooking and making liquor products with uh with cannabis. And um, you know, maybe soon it'll be legal for me to work on those things as well. But uh I mean I I've never I've never really tried tried that stuff out. You uh she's looking at these vegetables are they like the vegetables in the book are quite they're they they look it's not Nastasha's vegan face, I'll tell you that. These guys are much different vegan face.
Much different vegan face. They're all their eyes are all at half mast. It's pretty yeah. I predict at least three write ins or call ins related to this subject now. Yeah, so we'll see.
Well, why don't you call out the uh authors of the book here who we don't know these guys? We got a call coming in right now, hold on. Hello, caller, you're on the air. This is John Doe calling in uh talk to me today. How are you doing?
It's me, it's Dave. What's up? Hey, what's up? Nothing online? Yeah, yeah, you were on air.
Uh by the way, uh John Doe, uh big help at the puff party uh event that we had last Tuesday. I thought well based success, didn't you think so? Yeah, it was awesome. It was uh really cool to be able to puff the stuff I brought as well. And yeah, you learned everything all about the puffing gun and the moisture tester and all that stuff.
It was a blast. Your mix of uh it was Teff, uh what was it, what was the th it was Teff, Tapioca, what was the third? And millet. Millet. Man, that was the I think the best puff we had uh of the evening.
Uh I thought that that stuff was delicious. Although later, by the way, for those who don't know what we're talking about, we're talking about an explosive puffing gun that the Museum of Food and Drink has as their first kind of temporary exhibit. And uh when we so uh you know, John Doe uh came and uh puffed a bunch of stuff with us, including that mix I just told you about. And it was the best, by far far and away the best. So then when we did the Saturday public event, we got some tapioca pearls and puffed them just on their own, and they turned into giant like like cumulus cloud styro balls.
It was the weirdest thing ever. It was not as good the tapioca when we did it without the full mix of stuff. Really interesting. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah.
So um kind of wanted to call the follow-up and uh um give you guys the shout out, ex especially uh Piper and Nastasha for showing me such hospitality. And also uh headed over to uh BDX and got some rye drinks from Nick and uh he uh cooked me up some uh pretty amazing stuff. Nice. Nice. But uh I also had some questions.
Uh kind of wanted to follow up on uh suggestions for puffing. Um we had talked, um Piper and I kinda uh concocted some possibility of uh throwing some cocoa nibs in with um some rice uh to be able to make, you know, cocoa puffs, uh auto cocoa puffs. Um I was just wondering what your your thoughts are on our um on that. Well I mean my feeling is i it like when we put things in that are weird, like for instance the last puff of the day that we did on Saturday, we threw in uh almonds and um lobster and and uh what? Lobster shells.
No, that was on the party day. And then uh sunflower seeds and a bunch of stuff. Didn't puff. Uh I don't know that cocoa I I'd have to look up cocoa nibs. My f my strong feeling is something that high in oil will tend to melt out.
I mean I know maybe not though, in the present in the lack of water. I mean, we'll try it someday, but as you say, we'll try it in an absence of um i mean sorry, i i in with a multitude of other stuff so that it's the minor constituent. This way, if it goes horribly wrong, the horrible wrongness can be absorbed uh by the rest of the batch and not all over the inside of the gun. Like we notice that when we make mistakes, the mistakes tend to melt themselves onto the inside of the gun and then require require kind of a uh bit of a hardcore cleaning. That happened in one of our tapioca batches actually.
We had to run a clean uh mid event on Saturday because the tapioca completely melted itself to the inside. And once it when it's melted and open, it carburizes very quickly but doesn't solidify fast enough to flake it off, and so you get this kind of sludge in the gun. Which but but but more and uh again I couldn't find our c our green coffee because I know I want to puff green coffee uh as well. But a lot of that has to do with the starch content. I don't know if you know, but Sweet Maria's has a pretty cool site.
It it pretty much you know breaks everything down. It's it's a ridiculous information gathering site for anybody who wants to roast coffee. Yeah, I used to I used to buy my green beans from them. But back when I used to roast uh I used to roast my own all the time. Uh it was, you know, for years that was my ritual.
That I used to buy beans from them. Yeah. Okay, cool. Um I I just had a side question on a project I'm working on. I'm trying to make fish sauce bacon.
And, you know, basically I've been um, you know, doing the standard uh dry cure plus adding a little bit of fish sauce. I can't seem to get enough fish sauce bump into it. I mean I can kind of feel that there's extra umami, but I want to really juice it up and I was thinking about doing um, you know, basically uh boiling off the liquid and creating you know, uh creating a fish salt to do the curing process and add the nitrates afterwards. Right. And I'm wondering if I'm gonna lose anything in terms of flavor when I do that.
And obviously I don't have a rotary evaporator, but um what you had in terms of thoughts on that. Yeah, you're gonna lose a lot. I mean, like depend look, you're gonna lose a lot anyway on the cook off of the bacon, right? But I mean so much of uh so much of fish sauce, I mean look, fish sauce is a couple of different things. It's salty, right?
It's it's high in uh umami because of uh protein and lipid breakdown product. Well, not not um because of lipid but protein breakdown products, but it also got a lipid breakdown products in there, right? Uh and so but it has a huge volatile component as well. So my feeling is is you'll be able to get you know, a lot of the more stable stuff in there, but you're gonna lose a lot of the volatile um characteristics of it. I don't know what the salt content of a standard fish sauce is, but they're w they're widely variant depending on brand.
I remember that from my research years ago. Um but um you don't want to just you don't want the high liquids content. Is that the is that the problem? I would just Yeah, I mean I I l I like the fact that when you dry chur it stays flat and you don't lose a lot of liquid. I mean, I realized that I could do an injection method uh like they do in industry, so I could try that too, right?
Well, I mean what you could do is you could dry it, right, and then you could just have you you could sorry, you're right, inject it wet, but then just go through a little bit of a uh relatively high um a relatively high uh uh humidity dry down period in the fridge before you smoke it out. You know what I'm saying? Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. Flash off some of the extra moisture that you put into it by injecting, but my my feeling is is that if you really want that flavor uh of fish sauce, which you know, every every you know uh some people they don't like the smell of it, but they're just mistaken. This you know the stuff is delicious.
Uh if you want that, then you know, I I would go with uh I would use very little else uh because my guess I mean it depends on the fish sauce you use, but it's probably pretty close to what you need, right? I mean uh I mean is it uh I I gotta remember the percentages of it, but then and and then just let a little bit of the moisture uh flash off under controlled uh conditions of temperature for a while prior to smoked down. Okay, sounds good. So just as a close out, uh I was wondering if you had a chance to try uh the IPA I dropped off at BDX. I haven't.
I'm going there I'm going there tonight. I'm gonna hopefully get a hold of it tonight and we'll give you a shout out next week. Awesome. Well, that's if it's well, let me know if it's good or bad. Um we thought it came out pretty good.
Alright, well, what was your uh what was your uh uh initial gravity on that? Alright, cheers. Wait, wait, wait, what was the OG on the IPA? Do you what would what was the uh what was the uh OG? What was the specific gravity on the wart?
Do you remember? Uh we didn't really um go through that whole process. We were kind of drinking and smoking things um in terms of meat. Right. Uh so we were just kind of doing uh uh quick brew, so we didn't pay attention too much to that's how smoking meats not smoking what the vegan stoner is smoking, presumably.
Exactly. All right. All right. Well uh we'll uh we'll we'll let you know what happens. All right, cheers.
Uh cheers, thanks for calling in. Uh okay. Oh, by the way, back to the vegan stoner thing. Did you see the uh did you were you watching the CNN Sanjay Gupta's weed thing? Oh yeah, I saw that.
You saw I thought I was really interested by that. Why don't you give a synopsis? Uh unless we did not watch it. Well the synopsis is that uh you know, remember when um remember when Peter Tosh said legalize marijuana in in a Jamaica. Remember this?
He has a song, he has several songs actually on the subject, but you know, it goes through the medicinal uh the medicinal benefits of uh marijuana and turns out that it's probably true. You know? Anyway. Uh so uh Landon Young writes uh writes in on the Twitter. He's at Food Geeky.
Uh cooking issues, planning a Vitamix versus the competition blend off. What tasks would show off slash reveal the blender's strengths and weaknesses. I like that it's uh Vitamix versus everybody else. Now listen. Listen, here's the deal.
There's a couple of things that that it are hard to judge. And and uh, you know, I remember I think it was I forget who it was, it was either Consumer Reports or um what's it what's the one that uh from Boston, the magazine from Boston. I I was an initial subscriber, uh Cooks Illustrated. Uh did a uh did a I was I was one of the I was a charter I had the charter issues of that. That's awesome.
Yeah, it's good it was yeah. Anyway, it's wrong. But the uh the point is is that people often do the wrong things with blenders and don't really show off why uh Vitaprep is such a piece of butt kicking machinery, right? Now uh for instance, w most of the time when people review it, they're like, Does it make a smoothie as fast as uh some of the other blenders? Is it smoothie?
Nobody cares. Uh in a kitchen, a professional kitchen, nobody cares about a smoothie, right? What was it? What? You have a collar.
Oh, all right. We'll get back to the blenders in a second. Caller, you're on the air. Hi, Dave and everyone else. Um I just wanted to call in and ask um a little more information about Ikmay.
Oh nice um, which I understand a little bit about. I know it's the process of you know, killing fish and inserting rods into their spinal cord to prevent or I guess um kind of delay rigomortis. But right. What is the real reason people do it? Um I guess I heard like firmer flesh, but like what are the upsides and downsides?
And why not more people do? Okay. That uh excellent questions. By the way, you wanna do you wanna call out your name or no? Oh, hi, I'm Kate.
Hey Kate. So the uh f first of all, e ikajime in general is the whole battery of uh Japanese fish killing techniques, okay. And then the specific technique of uh destroying the spinal cord is uh they've told me is called uh uh Shinke Nuki, which means like no spine, I think, right? And it involves running uh a a wire up the spinal cord. So all the Japanese fish killing techniques are designed, whether or not you believe they work or not, are designed to uh increase the quality of the uh of the of the fish flesh.
I've noticed it most most pronounced in um in the firmness and the texture of of the fish although there are some taste differences we've noticed as well and uh also the you know we have found that the it's more it's makes more of a difference in raw prepped as opposed to cooked prepped although some people disagree with me but that this but so that that's what it is but the the idea is this it in an in a nutshell is that the standard Western style killing technique of just whacking it something over the head or bleeding it out while it's alive or letting it suffocate to death uh in a well of a boat uh is puts a lot of stress on the fish as it's dying and the stress from the the fish dying whether it's you know because of hypoxia because it doesn't have enough oxygen or whether it's uh you know blunt trauma and bleed out all this stuff or you know just uh what you know whatever's pumping through the fish's system as it's as it's in its fight or flight uh mode uh the all of those things have uh deleterious qualities on the quality of the flesh from an eating standpoint now the ekigime especially the spinal cord destruction right so equijime starts with uh severing the brain's connection to the rest of the of the fish right so you're shutting off all of the you're shutting off all of the transmissions from the brain to the muscles of the fish and presumably therefore shutting off the ability of the dying fish brain to make changes to its uh body chemistry now they so the the way that I was taught originally was just to sever the spinal cord, but on larger fish, I really think it's a better idea to, and they make these special curved knives, that you actually take out the brain of the fish prior to severing the spinal cord, right? Now, when you when you sever the spinal cord, this the spinal cord severing it both at the tail and at the front is also a bleeding technique because uh you know the belief in Japan, and I think you know, it's pretty much borne out that you want to get most of the blood out, and by severing the uh the arteries uh near the head and at the tail, you get a fairly efficient pump out of blood into water. So that's why you'll see in these techniques the fish will be cut and then bled in water often to get most of the salt water, usually isotonic, hopefully, to the fish's blood system, pump out the blood to get a well-bled fish. Okay. Now, so the then the real question is, and it seems fairly easy to understand that you're going to influence the quality of the fish flesh by uh quickly killing the brain or severing the spinal cord.
The interesting question is this extra step of shoving a wire up the spinal cord, well, what the hell can that accomplish, right? Right. Well, it turns out that uh the spinal cord continues to send electrical impulses to the muscles uh even in the absence of uh you know uh central nervous system control from the brain. So what what happens is is that uh if you don't destroy the spinal cord, especially in very uh kind of long swimming, like pelagic style fish like tuna, striped bass, these kinds of things, um, the the spinal cord will continue to send messages to the muscle to contract, and therefore the muscles will uh the muscles will use more ATP, which is the energy store of the muscle, uh, than they will if you destroy the spinal cord. And the faster the ATP is used up, the faster the fish goes into rigor mortise, and usually the harder the fish goes into rigor mortise.
And fish flesh is so delicate that hard rigor can actually do damage such that when it comes out of rigor mortise, that fish is um it starts having uh gaping in the in the in the in the flesh that the flesh is softer and not as firm as it would be had you delayed rigor mortise. And so that's kind of the the those are the overarching reasons for the techniques. Okay. Um and I guess is it primarily um I mean the texture but also like is it so people can keep the fish longer or something? Like can that I mean so so s what we used to call Western style fish killing when we did it was you know it it does deteriorate more quickly, but the interesting thing about Ikajima look fish actually isn't best the second you catch it, regardless of what you know anyone's going to tell you.
Very few preparations taste good with I mean there's a there's whole nations of people with billions of people that will disagree with me on this. But you know most of us in uh either a Japanese style preparation most Japanese style preparations or in a western style preparation prefer a fish that's come out of rigor mortise, right? And and everybody knows you have to either you have to either eat the fish before it goes into rigor, which means instantaneously after death you have to cook it or you have to wait for it to go through rigor. And even if you do it before rigor sets in, uh you know it's still going to be a lot firmer and almost crunchy for a lot of preparations and you can use that to your advantage. But um you really kind of want the fish to come out out of rigor.
So it's true that when you have something that has had the spinal cord destroyed, it takes longer for it to come out of rigor. So its optimum eating point usually happens after the optimum eating point of a standard Western style kill fish. But uh that fish at its best is usually for the ones where it responds well to this technique, uh, is usually at its its best is usually much better than the Western style variant, and the Western style variant will get softer and mushier much faster than the um than the spinal cord uh ablated one will. And as to your other question I didn't answer, which is why don't more people do it, well, part of it is education and part of it is is high cost. Um and the and the other thing is that you know if you if you take a fish and you um and you pull it on a boat and it's had a huge fight, right?
It's already gone through a lot of the problems that are going to cause it to, you know, it's it's exhausted most of its ATP. It's uh, you know, it's it's gone through a lot already, and so the benefits might be marginal at that point. You know, when you're when they're killing a very high value fish like tuna, uh, especially in farm situations, they will uh electrostun so the fish doesn't know anything that's happening, pull it up on deck and and put the spinal cord uh do the spinal cord ablation because they know that the market value of the fish is so high. Uh you know, there's also experiments in um there's experiments in uh Australia and New Zealand, not experiments, they're commercial, where uh in New Zealand you're allowed to use uh fish anesthetic aqueest, which is based on clove oil, isousinol, and they use that to anesthetize the fish prior to bleed out because they've seen that the uh a less afraid or less uh, you know, whatever you want to call, you know, what's going on in the fish's brain prior to slaughter, is that if there's less of that going on, that the quality is uh is better. And so those guys, it's not approved, or at least wasn't last time I looked here in the US, strangely, but uh it's an ongoing area of research, and most of it's driven by economics.
Cool. Um yeah, I guess I guess that explains it. I just heard the term recently and looked it up and thought I should call an ask. Yeah, well, please. Uh you know, I I love it.
I haven't had a uh I haven't had the opportunity to do a lot of experimenting with it uh recently. My hope was always that the more we bring attention to it as a technique, the more um you know, fish sellers will start to you know to demand this process both side and then uh demand a premium price for it. And then if you people start calling it out, then you'll see more of it in the marketplace, especially for things that we intend to eat as sushi grade. And so it's you know, the the idea isn't that most of us are ever going to practice it or that restaurant-wise, you should practice it because by the time a live fish makes it to a restaurant, it's been pretty abused, usually. You know what I mean?
Um the idea is is to uh have people um accept the general um ex accept the the benefits of the practice and pay more pay more for it, and then it'll happen more, I think. Great. Cool. All right. Well, thank you.
Thank you. Thanks for calling in. All right, so back to the Vita Prep. So about a quick break. Oh, all right.
Uh we'll take a quick break coming up. We had a shout out Chris Hubbing, who became a member, listener of cooking issues. Thanks for the support. Thank you. Thank you.
We're coming back with cooking issues. The International Culinary Center is a proud sponsor of the Heritage Radio Network.org. The ICC with locations in New York and California provide cutting edge education to future chefs, restaurateurs, and wine professionals. We're proud to claim Dan Barber, Bobby Flay, and David Chang among our honored alumni. This is Dorothy Can Hamilton from Chef's Story.
Check out our ICC website at international culinary center dot com. Jack, is that your magical Zamphere stuff in the background? Oh, yeah. I like that. It's like you know, spa it's like a the uh space space center.
It's like it's like music NASA would play. Yeah, planetarium music, basically. Yeah. Yeah, like that. All right, good.
For vegan stoners. V Vegan Stoners Planetarium ICC music. Exactly. I would love to see Dorothy stoned out of her mind. Oh wow.
Oh uh did I say that on air? Anyway. All right. Uh apparently we have a caller, caller, you're on the air. Yeah, hi, this is Patrick calling from Orient New York.
Where's Orient New York? I've been I think I've been there. Where is it? It's at the very, very tip of the North Fork of Long Island. Uh no, I haven't.
Right on there. I'm thinking of Maine. There's an Orient, Maine, I've been to. Go ahead. So I have a question about canning or really preserving fish in oil in jars.
I've sort of I've been trying it without fully curing a fish, just salting it lightly overnight in the refrigerator, then barely cooking it in water and then covering it in oil. And this way I know it's not fully cured, it's not really safe to have it at room temperature, but it seems to last like a week or two in the fridge without any ill effects. Right. Um and it tastes really, really good, even if you just use uh a neutral cooking oil. The question I have is now I have access to a huge amount of bluefish out here that I sort of would like to make a lot of this before the season ends, and I'm wondering if it's suicidal to to use this method, you know, without without doing the full, you know, boil for three hours, pressure tan, etc.
That's sort of the traditional uh fish preservation technique. Right. That's a very interesting question. And you know, uh I can't make any offhand uh I'll I'll say this. If you if you add nitrites to it, right?
I don't know if you want to, but you know look, everyone knows what we're talking about here. We're worried about botulism, right? Uh and and other kind of there are some other, especially in fish actually, some some uh some cold tolerant um spore forming pathogens, I'm pretty sure. I gotta it's been a while since I've looked up this this process. But fish keeping is is a whole science and of it of itself, and people definitely remember preserve things for long periods, think locks, uh in a frid in a fridge environment that haven't been cooked to hell.
Right? Uh but I believe you're gonna want to add there's a couple things you need to know. You need to know what the moisture content of it is and you need to know how much salt you're gonna add. And then you're gonna want to add I would guess for safety's sake s some nitrites to it. And if you um not AIDS ITS, but if and if you if you get the right combination of that and I'm sure this is look upable on the web, then as long as you aren't going to store it at room temperature, if you're gonna keep it refrigerated, you could probably uh make a safe product that's fairly close to what you're doing.
It's not going to be shelf stable. It's not canned. But you could probably make something that will inhibit uh the growth of the of the kind of really nasty uh stuff in the fridge. Uh but I'm I'm a hesitant to give you any actual numerical recommendations over the air without doing a lot of research first. But this is this is I was I was looking up traditional recipes and these sort of you know they have you cook the hell out of the fish for like you know for a long period and then can it that so I guess you know that that will destroy the texture of the fish.
I mean I'm not I don't have access to a canner where I am the first place. Right. It seems like that the best flavor on the small scale extern experiments I've done have been on stuff that's not it doesn't feel fully cured once it's once it's out you know out of the salt. It sort of it has it just has a texture slight texture still fresh fish. So it seems to be that that's what I'm sort of worried about is that the best flavor is not something that's gonna be safe at the cure level with the amount of salt and and like you said, adding adding adding nitrite to it as well.
Right. Well, remember the cooking itself isn't isn't obliterating the really dangerous stuff. It's obliterating the normal stuff. It's the canning that obliterates the normal stuff. And the reason that you probably have to cook the crap out of it first is because you're probably getting rid of water at that point.
You're lowering the water activity through a cooking. I mean, think about how uh confie works. You know? You're you you do a long cook on it, and the meat is salty and dry. You know what I mean?
In a good way. I mean, I happen to love confie. But but you know, you're you're like the cook step isn't just a cook step, it's also a water control measure. Um although you you could do a straight pressure can of the fish without the initial cook step after the curing and get a higher mush, but it's still gonna be cook you're gonna be cooking the hell out of it. I would I mean the the other the other thought I had is this something that once you cover it in oil and let it, you know, I don't know, it's a fl the flavor has pretty much been the same over you know one day versus 14 days in the fridge, so it seems to not really age that much after after the in the cure and the cooking.
Is this something that you could actually put in the freezer covered in oil and safely? Yeah, well if you come out intact. Uh intact-ish. You know, it like you're better off probably doing yeah, I mean, like doing it after the freezing it after the full step. Yeah, botulism shouldn't grow in the freezer.
Yeah you know what I mean? It it should not grow in in the freezer. Um I'm willing to take the you know the experimental loss of you know, a couple giant bluefish, you know, in the in the greater interest of flavor here, because they're just they're so cheap here. They're like two dollars a pound, for really? Yeah.
I mean an eight-pound fish. So I really love bluefish. Just grilled anything. I really love bluefish. Blue fish is really delicious.
Uh yeah, freezing, nothing should grow. Again, double check everything. Nothing of import should grow in uh in the freezer. Remember that I've never actually put a liquid oil pack in the freezer before. Most times when you age uh oil oil oil canned fish, they're aging for years.
You know what I mean? So like uh, you know, a lot of those changes, especially in the canned, you know, hermetically canned stuff, you're talking about years of changes, not you know, days or weeks. Uh you know, and and in comfy when you age it even, it's like you know, like a month or more when you age like a duck confie, which I love that aged duck confie flavor. But um I I yeah, I feel fairly comfortable that if you freeze it, you're gonna be in a safe zone. But I've never I've never frozen a packed product in a liquid fat before.
I've only frozen them in a solid pack. Remember when you freeze, freezing actually can accelerate um uh rancidity of of things. Uh because uh the water fraction that's there is more concentrated, and so you can have things go rancid uh pretty hardcore in the f in the freezer uh if there's any oxygen. So you're gonna want to really pack that stuff without any air at all. Mm-hmm.
I mean, obviously it's covered in oil, so it's gonna be less of a problem, but you want to get all the air out of the bag. Yeah. And you think just something like canola oil would f freeze it? I mean I've pre I I've frozen you know, like like you said, solid fat pretty well, but it just never you know, it never really comes up of of of freezing. Yeah.
Freezing liquid fat. I mean, most of your liquid fats have been winterized, so they're not gonna freeze at all. Do you know what I mean? In the in the freezer. I mean, like they s uh I would guess that canola is completely winterized and won't go solid, although I've never put it in the freezer.
I mean, olive oil gets sludgy, right? Yeah. Uh and and also tastes good, but the uh costs more. But the uh yeah, canola, and my guess is that canola will stay. I don't I don't I don't remember what temperature canola starts getting sludgy because it's been a long time since I've like you know tried to I've done cold oil certification of agar with something like grapeseed, but you know, so it's been a long time since I've tested the limits of sludginess of those oils.
But they're all winterized, so they shouldn't probably get too solid in the freezer. But it's still it's just the temperature and not and not the consistency that that matters from the food safety standpoint. Yes, that is my guess. All that is my that is my educated guess. Yes.
That is the temperature. I have all this I have this duck fat out there too that maybe I can put the fish in there. Without trying to really uh you know, combination of of of species experiments. I don't know, I like that. Remember like there's that famous uh the famous uh Chinese dish called happy family where it's like all different kinds of animals put together.
No is Arc with the translation of it. Yeah, well I would I've I'll I'll I'll I I'm gonna start this experiment. I'll report back. Yeah, please do. Let us know how it goes.
Thank you so much. All right, thank you. Okay, then bye bye. Orient New York, you ever been there, Stas? You've been out for the tip?
Yeah, no, we're not there though. Have you? No. Alright, listen, I'm gonna get through this Vitaprep thing now. All right.
Now uh we were talking about Vitapreps versus other blenders. There's two things. There's one, there's ultimate blending ability, right? And other blenders, the uh blend tech, for instance, have you know, very good blending capabilities. And there's another one I saw that's a lot cheaper than a Vitaprep that actually has, I think is is blade interchangeable with the Vitaprep called the Omni Blender, also has a three horsepower motor.
Omniblender. Anyway, it has a three horsepower motor and like a really kind of like a good looking blade, actually. In fact, it looks like the blade might be superior to Vitape's. I'm not sure. But uh, and it's a lot cheaper, but when you look at the controls for it, you realize that one of the reasons that cooks love vita preps is not based on, you know, uh making fruit smoothies.
It's the control mechanisms of Vitapeps are amazing. Two paddle switches and a knob. Very intuitive, very good for cooks. So any um any rating of professional quality blenders has to take into account what it's like to use them when you're cooking uh, you know, especially when you're cooking heavy duty in a kitchen over long periods and you need it to have a good touch, a good feel. And I think one of the reasons, other than blend blending ability that uh we all love the vita prep so much is the the way that it becomes an extension of your hands.
Uh the thing we hate about it is that if you lose the plunger, which cooks invariably lose the freaking plunger, you have to beat on it to get it to blend properly. Although they have new, they have a new picture that apparently is much better in that regard, closer to what the uh blend tech picture is like. Here are some things to test out. Can you blend a pound of bacon into a tomato sauce and have it be silky smooth? Right?
That's a good test. Um other things like that. I mean, that what's interesting about the Vitapep isn't that you can make a smoothie with it. What's interesting about it is that you no longer need to use a Tammy when you're making sauces because the Vitaprep can make things that smooth. So those are the things that you want to uh to test.
And then if you absolutely need to, you can see whether or not it makes a decent margarita. Right? Yeah. Although I do like myself a frozen margarita. Me too.
Stuff tastes taste good. I mean what so you know what the thing is, people like some stuff that you grew up with, yeah, it's day class A, stuff delicious, delicious. You know, it's like I'm I'm sick of people hating on things that are common if they taste good. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I'm sick with that. Anyway. Uh Aaron Morin from Edmonton, Canada. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, by the way. Calls in about cooling.
Hey all, just had a quick question about supercooling with a circulator. I soon remember Dave briefly touching on the topic using the circulator to speed along the chilling uh process post-cooking. This got me thinking, can I drop my water bath below freezing without destroying my wonderful circulator? I've noticed it goes below freezing, but I'm too scared to drop it down out of fear of destroying my baby. I think of putting uh unopened bottles of water in the bath for an hour or so.
Uh, should I put some ice or salt in there as well? I have an old school poly science 7306 model. That's this old stainless uh bottom one, the old uh one that's Daz's favorite. She had her happy face on there. Could I do it with other models?
Should I protect the bottles so they're not being knocked around in the icy bath? Thanks in advance. Aaron Marin from Edmonton, Alberta. P.S. Can you answer this on the next show?
Because I'm waiting to do this technique on a dinner party on Saturday. Okay, look it. Look at you. Look, I use this technique all the time with uh my circulator. Uh that circulator, uh, if my memory serves me, can go down to about minus 20 Celsius.
That's the lowest I've ever taken. I don't know if it goes below that. I meant to test it in the newer plastic one before I came in, but I forgot. I forgot to test it, uh, whether or not that thing can be set below zero. But uh, yeah, so here's what you do.
Uh and I do this all the time at events where I want to chill down large batches of cocktails, is one of my favorite cocktail chilling techniques for events because uh it's fairly accurate. You get a big uh tray, uh, you fill it with vodka, uh, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap vodka, and then you throw dry ice into it, and then you set the circulator in on high circulation and you set it to whatever you want your cocktail temperature to be, right? And then you just let it run, and what happens is as the um as the dry ice chills it below your set point, the heater will come on and will heat your the uh vodka back up to the temperature you want it to be, and then as you notice that uh the dry ice is almost gone, you break off a couple more chips of dry ice and you throw it in, and you can keep a very accurate temperature on drinks for hours. And this is my favorite way to do carbonated batch or to hold uh like large batch cocktails for long periods of time. And I've done it many, many, many, many times, and I've never hurt the circulator, not once.
You could probably also do it with salt water, be aware that uh you might eventually pit or corrode the 316 stainless uh that is on it with uh large amounts of salt. Uh but salt water bass can be controlled just on a uh on a salt ice basis. Um, you know, you might not need the circulator, you might need the circulator, but you might not need the heating effect. I typically use dry ice. Uh that's the way I do it.
Okay. Uh John Riper writes in about peaches. That's Apropos, right? The name Riper Peach is good, right? Yeah.
Uh Deer Cooking Issues Peace, Pacific Northwest food goo uh food guru. By the way, you like tongue twisters? No, go ahead and do it. Willie's No, you did it last time, actually. What?
I didn't set it, yeah. Uh yeah, anyway. I can't tongue twisters. Pacific Northwest food guru. John Rowley has always preached that getting great peaches.
This is John's giving us all preached grape peach. It's a tongue-twisting uh question we got here. Has always preached that getting great peaches means never having to say they've been refrigerated. But I've never heard why chilling picked peaches screws up their final ripening process. Can you explain it?
Also, I've heard different opinions about whether the sugar content in peaches goes up after they've been picked. What's the truth? John Riper in Seattle. Uh I don't really know much about John Riley, except I went to his uh website there, and he advocates using crappy white bread with tomato sandwiches so that the bread doesn't get in the way, and I wholeheartedly agree. I think you should use crappy white bread for like really good BLTs.
You? Mm-hmm. I freaking love BLTs, man. BLT is so delicious. I think that Martin's white bread is good, yeah.
The potato bread? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean that's like kind of the c well, okay, okay. What what we mean is soft and gets out of the way fast. Yes.
And so Martin's is kind of the epitome of that style of soft and gets away, gets out of any whatever, okay. Uh okay, here it is. So um there is uh an interesting thing about this, and I read so I'm I read uh a bunch of things. Oh, by the way, uh a shout out to At Quantastic on the Twitter, uh AJ at Quantastic, who uh twitter tweeted tweeted me, tweeted to me. What do you say?
Oh yeah, she's stuzz. That's that's a curse, his family program. Uh a while back that uh he had some peaches that had what looked like some patrytis on them, the noble rot, and that they were amazingly delicious. I guess after some of the moisture had evaporated out after the patrol anyway, he's he's he really liked them. Uh and I found out that in fact botritis on peaches is an issue and they treat with uh fungicides.
I like that word. Fungicide. You like that word, Stuzz? No. Well, you hate, yeah, but anyway, fungic fungicide.
Anyway, so uh uh some articles you might want to look at about this whole thing is interactions among cooling fungicide and post-harvest ripening temperature on peaches, 1999, and the influence of cooling and temperature maintenance on the quality of California grown stone fruit, FG Mitchell, 1986. Uh so here's the deal. There's a whole series of things in peaches called chilling injuries. And what happens is peaches are typically, if you want to ripen a peach, you want a peach to ripen at roughly 20 degrees Celsius, right? And peaches will ripen after after they've picked.
I'm assuming that they don't ripen the same way uh when they're picked as they would if you let them sit on the tree. But the fact of the matter is if you let them completely ripen until they soften the tree, they can't be shipped at all. They're like one of the most fragile things that exist, right? So um so you can't you can't do it. So you can't commercially do that.
I mean, if you have your own tree, you can do it, but you can't commercially do it. So uh the tree, the fruits, once they're picked, they want to be ripened at at 20 degrees C. What's gonna happen is you're gonna get probably an increase in bricks, an increase in total dissolved solids, uh, and you get breakdown of the pectins because the fruit softens, and furthermore, there's probably a reduction in uh total acidity, right? And and and the creation of volatile flavor compounds for the ripening that you wouldn't get if you didn't let it ripen continue. Anyway, the problem is peaches are picked usually at like higher than 20 degrees Celsius because they're being picked out in the middle of an orchard in California when it's piss hot in the summertime, right?
Piss hot. And so what you need to do is chill they what commercially, what they do is they try to chill the peaches down very quickly when they get out of the orchard. Now, the and they need to do that because when they're warm and they're being handled and packed, they're much more uh apt to be bruised, destroyed, and the rot and fungus that come in out of the orchards and the different organisms, right? Uh work very rapidly at those high temperatures. So they try to get the temperatures down as quickly as possible, and then if they're going to employ a fungicide or something else, they put it on when they're cooling it.
Then after they've packed it and they're in a stable place where they've been packed, then prior to sale, they ripen them out at the higher temperatures, right? Let them go through their let them go through their business. Problem is that peaches, when they're held between at refrigeration temperature from or like four degrees Celsius to like ten degrees Celsius in that range. When they're held there uh for a long period of time, they have what's called a chill injury, such that they never ripen properly. And I tried to look through what causes this, and it's real it's relatively unclear to me what the actual cause is, but it monkey wrenches the ripening process so that it never happens even after the fruit's been warmed up.
Now, temporary chilling doesn't seem to have this uh effect. So that storage in the refrigerator for uh like a day or two, once you let it come back up, it might throw off the ripening, it might mess it up, but it's not going to prevent ripening from happening. Now, uh I alright, let me finish this and we'll take the collar. So the uh but the the the interestingly, if you take the peaches all the way down to zero, but don't let them freeze in that very narrow window, like zero to two degrees Celsius, they don't necessarily get those chill injuries. And also if you take your peaches and they do what's called intermittent warming, so they have them in cold storage, and every couple of days they bring the t ramp the temperature up to like uh you know to higher ripening temperature and then cool it back down again.
If you do that, you can also stop what's called uh chill injury. But it's a specific, it's a known thing with peaches, and they get what's called a woolly defect where there's almost no flavor, they don't soften right, and they taste kind of woolly and mealy. You like peaches that are woolly and mealy? Oh no, it's the worst, right? Is there anything worse?
This is why I always get nectarines instead of peaches, because the peaches we get here in New York, they suck. They suck. And when you touch it and it's kind of soft, and then you're like, this is gonna be good, but it's it never is. Where uh for some reason they do a much better job getting nectarines to us here in the market. All right, caller, you're on the air.
Hi, Dave, this is Steven from Indianapolis again. I called about two weeks ago for the neutrophenic question. Oh, yeah. So what was the upshot? What happened?
Uh so um it ends up that the hospital has extremely strict rules, and no matter what I give her, I have to microwave it beforehand anyways. So uh, which I think is kind of crap, but uh I mean that's the way it goes. I got the yogurt answer though. Oh, what was it? Um so so uh a pathogen, uh so a pathogen in or a bacteria in your gut is different than a bacteria in your blood.
And if uh since we have a line of defense in our blood, which is our uh neutrophils, uh that that uh that bacteria uh will be you know, will the the immune response will take care of it, which she can't do. So I mean uh gut bacteria is not necessarily okay to have in your blood. So if if it can get into the into your blood. So that's the reason I got uh I also had another doctor tell me that they would give their patients yogurt if they could, uh, if the hospital would allow it. So I mean it's it's still kind of uh it seems like a gray area, but but uh that's the that's an answer that I received.
So what I what I'm feeling from what I'm feeling from what you're saying is is that hospital policy is super draconian to make sure nothing happens, but the doctor says that's yeah. The only problem with this, I think as we discussed last time, is that it turns out that uh patient outcome is better if they like the food that they're eating. Yeah, definitely. My my mom, uh for instance, my well, my mom is a person that's in the hospital, and she she just won't like she won't eat the hospital food. It's it's crap.
So we uh we end up cooking her soups and stuff that are that hold up well with the microwaving and and she eats that uh eats that well. Right. And by the way you're what you're pointing out is something that I think uh cooks a lot of institutional cooks and even cooks in general and you've hit the nail on the head with this is that if you have a set of parameters that are unvarying, right? I have to cook the crap out of this. Then only choose foods that survive that well.
Don't try to make things that can't have the crap cooked out of them and still taste good. Like like for instance, like I don't know whether you guys can deal with salt. I don't know what the salt issues are with the diet, but like confid would be great. Okay, yeah, definitely 'cause you can eat the hell out of that and it's fine. Yeah, you can beat the price I can say that on there.
No, that's fine, no, it's that's good. But yeah, but you can cook the ever loving, yeah, you can cook you can I mean it's meant to be cooked that way. So people often make the mistake of trying to cook things that can't be um cooked given a certain set of parameters and doing it well and and then serving that. Why? Why?
There are plenty of things out there that taste good when they've ha when they've been uh cooked to death, you know? Right. Well and it it seems like a lot of the parameters that are laid out by the hospital are for the average uh so for the average family that you know they're they don't have uh like a a family member that's super into the science behind cooking. So like shellfish is one of the things that they can't have and I believe that that's because of uh what you discussed a while ago and terotoxins that could be present in in uh seafood that's not treated well. Right.
Uh or something like that. So so they they pretty much just uh assume that that uh that the patients aren't gonna prepare it as well as they should. Is what I'm assuming. And so yeah, you're right, they're they're very hypersensitive to that. Right, but I mean, but that's the thing.
So that's when you have to put on kind of an engineer's mindset. You know, I got plenty of engineers in my family, so it's easy for me to do. You put on the engineer's mindset, you're like, well, let's not think about, you know, we have a set of givens. What are the set of givens? Now, what's the best we can do within that set of givens?
You know, rather than wishing that you could make something that you can't make within your set of givens. You know what I'm saying? And I think it's real it's actually very good practice for cooking in general because um every at every moment in your life, I guess no matter what you're doing, but I think mainly about the kitchen, you always have a you know, a set of limitations that you have to deal with and your ability to do the best possible job with the limitations you have determine how good you are as a cook. You know what I mean? Definitely.
I I completely agree. Uh I know you don't have a lot of time, so do you mind if I ask you the question real quick? Sure. But I I came on the air to to ask you another question. Uh so so I I was curious about the transglutaminates and the uh and the noodles that Wiley Dufrain makes.
Uh you said that he he does like transg transglutaminates and gelatin noodles. Yep. Uh I noticed when I was looking through uh the types of transglutaminates to get, because I know you do like Tiva RM most of the time. Uh w which has the casein, I believe, right? Yep.
Okay. Um one of them has gelatin in it. And I was curious if it did not crosslink or it did not solidify because the concentration of gelatin was so low that they're not actually interacting that well. Well, there's two at least last time I checked, there were two different trans transglutaminase is meat glue, by the way, for those that don't know what we're talking about. It's what you know bonds proteins together covalently, actually.
There's two different and and the enzyme is transglutaminase, and typically there's a helper protein in it that uh that is used kind of to bridge the gaps between what would otherwise be two pieces of meat that on a molecular level are fairly far apart. Okay. So uh in the one that's most commonly used by chefs is called Activa RM, and it's transglutaminase mixed with casein, milk protein. There are two, or were at least last time I checked, two different transglutaminases that had gelatin as a component. There was GB, which stands for greatest bond, and that's been around for a long time.
And a lot of the reason that uh you know Nils and I never recommended using that one is because it it kind of s sets up tachy pretty quickly and it's hard to reposition. So and we didn't necessarily need that huge bond strength that comes from the GB. The because it does cross link. The other one that we used, uh, and so I don't know anyone that keeps GB around. The other one is called GS, and GS is one that has gelatin in it that also has phosphates in it that's designed to sit on the counter as a slurry because the enzyme doesn't work until it's been painted on the meat, because the phosphates in it keep it uh too alkaline for the enzymes to work properly.
So, yeah, they will crosslink, but what you want, I don't know what the specific gelatin characteristics are of the ones that are in G B and GS. Uh Wiley's recipe, he says you can use RM, but I'm almost a hundred percent sure that he uses Activa Ti, which is just activa and uh maltodextrin with no helper protein in it. And the reason why is uh we've had failure of his recipe when we use RM because you actually don't want the gelatin bonding to anything but itself. Okay? So if there's casein protein, if there's casein in there uh or other proteins that the stuff's bonding to when you're making these uh these kind of vegetable-based gel gelatin noodles, uh we ended up not getting the awesome gelatin cross-linking because a lot of the gelatin was cross-linking to other things.
At least that's our theory. So we always had much better results with that his gelatin recipe when you uh use TI. So what he would do is he would hydrate the gelat, he would make this puree, very low moisture content pureees. He would then hydrate r you know regular gelatin, I don't know what he used, like nox or equivalent, nox is fairly high bloom strength. Uh, and then uh make the slurry, let that cool down a little bit, add the TI to that, and then make mix the whole thing together, spread it and let it set.
And that's you know, really what he's looking for is the cross-linking of gelatin there. Am I answering the question or no? No, you you're completely answering the question. Uh I won more one more part to it. I'm sure you're running out of time.
But uh do has you ever done time-based studies of uh like have you ever done time-based uh uh translutaminase reactions with with uh gelatin to see like the relative rates of cross-linkage to see like if it the melting point just uh increases over time or or is that I'm sure it does because ultimate strength increases over time, so you get like 75% of your bond strength in the first four hours. Um however you get a lot more if you let it sit overnight. And so I'm pretty sure Wiley does his. Yeah, right. And it's the same with a lot of hydrocolloids, actually.
Gel strength changes uh and it's not the same, but in hydrocolloids as well, gel strength changes over time, which is why uh they you know they make the um the pimento strips uh in the center of olives are made from alginate, and uh they age those for a day because their gel strength changes dramatically, and the whether or not they're gonna snap changes dramatically uh after they've been aged for a day. So a lot of these polymerization reactions have the majority of the thing happens fairly quickly, but then there are continued changes uh for a long period of time afterwards. Okay, um and and just just uh one more question. Is there any way that like maybe next time or whatever you could talk about like good articles and stuff to talk about uh like food polymerization reactions and relative like what I'm curious about is hydration rates to see uh how the gel is affected by different hydration uh hydration, you know. On gelatin in particular?
Uh I'm I'm I I'm actually interested in hydrocolors in general. Yeah, I'll come up with some good references uh and some that are like partially, and then we'll we'll give them a shout-out uh or uh or I'll tweet them out uh during the week or something like that. We'll give them a shout-out next week. If you can remember to send in the question about it um to like the email, then it'll it'll help us not forget. Perfect, I'll do that.
Thanks a lot. Cool, thank you. Uh Jason Bazant writes in uh pronounces you would Van Zant. So I guess Bizant. Bizant pronounces you would Van Zant.
I like that. Now I'm thinking of the E Street band. Okay. Jason Bazant uh writes in about high notes and cooking potatoes. Uh I'm your biggest fan.
I think I can make a good case for this assertion. More later. For now, I've heard you talk about the high notes and base notes, etc. when talking about flavor and various preparations. I love this analogy as I'm a musician, but I'm yet to fully appreciate what this means when it comes to putting a dish together.
Are you able to outline the origins of this type of thinking? I imagine it's ultimately a matter of balancing across the whole spectrum, acid, bitter, sweet, sour, etc. It sounds like it's more applicable to beverages than say dishes, but I'm not sure. I'm a savory guy when it comes to cooking. Can you talk about this, please?
Uh and second, I'll just mention both things and then we'll go into them. This way they I have to answer them both, right? Uh my wife cubed a bunch of potatoes and cooked it in the microwave with water until tender and then let it completely cool, much to my chagrin prior to mashing. Her idea was to make mash for our 18-month-old son. Now I know how to make a mashed potato.
Face punchably, so I guess he's punching himself in the face as his wife is doing this. I noticed her mashing the cold potato with a fork into a total gloop, hoping for a good result. I pointed out to her some starch basics. Bad idea. But it also obviously it's a bad idea.
When someone is doing something horrible in the kitchen, like unless you are literally their boss, it's like really a bad idea to tell them what they're doing is horrifying. You know what I'm saying? Because you can't hide it. You can't hide it. The look on your face of horror cannot be hid.
And then they asked. The worst is when you buy the food and take it to somebody's house and ruin it. Oh you know, here's the worst, because you hate it, you know how to do it. And then they look at you and they can tell that you want to kill you don't want to kill your wife. You know what I'm saying?
They can tell that you're upset. You know what I mean? And then they ask you, what's wrong? And you can't lie and say nothing's wrong because you're looking at them and like everything that you feel as a person says that what they're doing is horribly destructive to the quality of the food. That otherwise was cared for quite well until it reached their hands and was destroyed, right?
But it turns out that when you do that to your spouse, bad things happen. I know this is why my wife won't cook with me ever. She says I'm an a-hole in the in the kitchen. That her words. Uh, anyway.
So I pointed out there some starch basics, and she threw up her hands and said, You fix it then, and promptly went to bed. All I wanted to do was throw it out. But then I thought, I'll ask Dave. Obviously, this glooped-out mash deserves to be thrown away, but can you think of any reasonable culinary application for such a ridiculous preparation? Alright, we'll go in reverse.
By the way, can I go a little bit late today, guys? No. He doesn't hear you. No, alright, I gotta write this up. Okay.
Unfortunately. Alright, okay. So the uh so we'll we'll go in reverse. So the potatoes as mashed potatoes are pretty much ruined, right? They're done.
But uh you can mix them into things like croquettes if you're if you're frying things out, or we were just talking about it. Martin's potato bread. Potato bread is a good use for old uh old mashed potatoes, right, Stas? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I wouldn't do gnocchi, and gnocchi, I want I would want it fresh.
Wouldn't you want a fresh yonkee? But potato bread you could probably get away with. But here's another interesting point that you might wanna think about. Nils Norrin, uh, you know, uh used worked with for years at the French culinary, who's a monster cook. He used to make uh a mashed potato, like a glue on purpose.
And it's part of this whole thing that McGee talks about, I talk about, Nils talks about. If you push something that is a defect so far in the defect direction, sometimes it comes around to being good again. So he would overcook potatoes, then add extra liquid to them, if you can imagine this, then blend them in a vita prep to shatter all the starch granules and turn it into kind of a pasty glue, and then flavor it. And the idea was to accentuate that uh potato puree with that kind of interesting, kind of gluey texture, not try to have it be mashed potatoes at all. And I gotta say it's pretty good.
Now, your starch is probably retrograded somewhat, especially if it's old, so it's not going to maybe work the same way, but you could try just pushing the glue all the way, reheat the hell out of it, add extra liquid to turn it into a glue, or use it in the uh use it, use it that other way. Now, as to the high notes, um I'm getting I'm getting the high sign. I'm gonna have uh listen. Listen, I'm gonna answer this uh first thing on the next uh on the next program. I'm also gonna answer Jacob's question about burr grinders uh and coffee.
I'm gonna answer David's question about muffin style mixing, and I'm gonna talk to Dandy about recreating recipes from the Applebee's appetizer uh menu. Anyway, next time on cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. 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.
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