Today's program was brought to you by Mood Magazine, a new international quarterly publication about music and food. For more information, visit Mood Music Food.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwood Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues.
It's Dave Morgan, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on Tuesday, every Tuesday at 12. Well, not if we weren't here last week because we were embarrassing ourselves at Starchef's. Boom! Anyway, today we're here at Roberta's Peter in Bushwick, Brooklyn with Jack and Joe in the engineering booth, and as usual, Stas the Hammer Lopez here in the studio. How you guys doing?
Good. Good. I just told Nastasia I ran into Indy Jesus in the street. What'd you say? You say hey, Indy Jesus.
I didn't call him that, no. I said hey Dante. Oh, uh well. You didn't like have a glass of water and try to turn it to wine, anything awesome like that. Next time.
Next time. He's not here anymore, though. He left? He's gone. That's it.
All right, all right. So listen. Today we have a very special. Are they both gonna be on or is or is just one? Both.
Sweet. Both here? Sweet. We have uh we have the the you know, what do you call it? The the the unique group, ideas and food.
Um uh Aki Kamazawa and uh Alex Talbot, uh, you know, the kind of like the how you call them, the O the OG new tech food folk on the on the on the line on the internet, and they're they're today have released a new book called Maximum Flavor. Maximum. Recipes that will change the way you cook. Uh and if you go and order that thing right now, today's the first day, you can have a shiny fresh copy uh on your doorstep tomorrow, or if you still live in a place where there are real bookstores, you could probably go buy it right now. Uh welcome guys.
What's going on? What's going on with you? Uh it's good to chat. Yeah, so uh why don't you guys uh you know oh by the way, you can call in your questions to uh the ideas and food crew or us if you have any questions, you know, for for us shlumpy folks over here. Uh to 7184972128, that's 7184972128.
Before we start with uh some of the questions, I'm gonna actually one of them references you, so I'll hit you with that later. But um why don't you tell us a little bit about the book? I mean one thing I noticed when I looked at this book as opposed to the first book is this is a full color extravaganza of a book. Novel idea, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, so why don't you talk about uh talk about it for a minute? Oh okay. Well decided that we needed to have photographs in this book because every time anyone opened the other book, they looked at us and went, Where are the pictures? Yeah. People are so people are so visual, the weasels, the weasels.
Well, what's what's really interesting, uh you know, from uh I guess from an outside perspective is that for um you know, for many years your blog was known uh for you know having being very photo heavy, having a lot of photos. So I guess it probably just was a surprise to people to see something come out that wasn't that way. Do you know what I'm saying? Certainly. I mean the the first book, the first book is really a handbook for the kitchen.
Um and without without pictures, people are gonna look, you know, we're looking for you know, what what's it supposed to look like? My am I on the right path? Uh and I think that's probably the the big the biggest hiccup we came across with ideas and food. Uh the book. Uh so this one we we we wanted to uh face that front on and and photograph the bejesus out of it.
And there's supposed to be only I think seventy five pictures in it, and I think we have probably double that. Yeah, no, it's it really helps tell the story. And it's like you know it's all all big color splashy stuff. I leaf through it. It looks great.
I didn't get a chance to read it because uh I saw you right before my ill-fated Starchefs demonstration uh which is where we you know where the cooking issues crew was last week instead of doing our real job of being here on the radio we were at Starchefs uh having things not go our way uh but uh you know uh that aside I got to flip through it it looks great I can't wait to get uh a hold of a copy but uh but it's true it's I looked at it this morning on Amazon and I don't are you guys pro Amazon or anti-Amazon or do you not want to come out for or against on the on you know in public. Yeah well no we we used to live in Colorado in the mountains in the middle of nowhere and we could not have gotten any books there if it were not for Amazon. So while we are pro indie bookstores we are also pro Amazon. Sometimes we just can't get things any other way. Alright and then you want to give a pitch for like if they already own the first book like what you know why should they go get this it's all new all different correct all new all different totally different um the the first book as we said was was one that it is is the house and wise it is the it is you know the the the the thing the reference material that you'll need and then recipes that support it.
Whereas this is recipes that you really want to eat there's a lot of information jammed into each one and then it's a lot of things to uh to really then extrapolate from so you know it's a great jumping off point, and then it's also just a great eating point. Alright, and for people, you know, who aren't necessarily super tech or equipment savvy, although I guess you know a lot of people who listen here are, like, there's still going to be a lot in for them, correct? There's fun. I think the whole point of this as we talk over each other. The the whole point of this book was we had a lot of fun with it, and the science is still there, but it's almost hidden.
So it's kind of scattered through the recipes and it's in the head notes and it's layered more into stories as opposed to the first book where the science was kind of front and center, and the recipes are behind that. Here we were more about like really, really delicious food and then explaining how we did it. Sweet. Well secondly, I can't wait to get uh a copy of it. I'm sure it's gonna do well.
Why don't we answer some questions for the folks? Uh we have we get writing questions beforehand. I have a little bit of a of an advantage over you guys that I got the questions this morning, so you know, I had a chance to look at it. But no, but that's it. We're we're all we'll all go for it here, okay?
So uh Aaron Will writes in. He said, Recently we've been making shrimp stock at our restaurant, Scratch. Uh and we've uh noticed that unfortunately when we let the stock come to a full boil, a stable form uh foam would form uh and it would boil over vigorously. This obviously has never happened to a fish, poultry, or land mammal stock that I've ever made before. And this leads me to hypothesize that there is some sort of stabilizer in the shrimp meat or shells that would cause this foam to form.
If there is, could there be a way to use this in an advantageous manner to suit the needs of somebody or some entity? Uh also I never got to thank you for giving us a shout out on the show a while back. Can't wait to get some mofad gear and represent Aaron Will. Well, I mean, I'll just put my two cents in really quickly. One thing I need to know beforehand on the foaming, I mean, is you guys, as anyone knows, if you cook uh whole uh crustaceans, especially things like lobsters, they foam like demons.
Uh and i'm the humolence. Yeah, right. Yeah, come I mean, it's my my presumption, right? So I would assume that you wouldn't get that much foaming for uh if you were buying headless shrimp do you know what I mean? But if you were buying whole body shrimp I would assume that you could get some decent foaming out of it because there's lots of um I'm reminded of a very old uh like uh dual language Chinese American cookbook that I have that one of the recipes uh calls for like foaming egg whites by hand and then putting it in front of the cooked crab on the plate and it's and it's called for crab spittle effect in English translation crab spittle effect.
And so you know it's right I mean it's it's well known that there's all kinds of protonaceous crap that you know sea creatures uh produce especially crustaceans. In fact when you have uh you know animals that produce uh waste nitrogenous products constantly in aquarium tanks you have protein skimmers to remove them because otherwise and the way that they work is by foaming the protein stuff that's there. So my guess is is that there's some sort of uh protein crap there that comes out the only other guess I have is that some of the you know the shrimp shells are made of a product called chitin which is one of the most common biopolymers in the world and it's um it's a nitrogen containing um kind of poly polysaccharide like thing uh that you know I use the broken down form of it called chitusan for um for clarification and and other things but that stuff foams so maybe you're getting some of that too. You guys ever had any any issue with uh this stock or anything to say on crustacean stocks uh I mean whole whole shrimp shells stock certainly foam same with lobster, but we do everything now in the pressure cooker, so for the most part, we're not getting any of that that boil. Uh and and we're doing it, you know, again, real fast to concentrate the flavor.
And again, the fresh cooker keeps the uh the foam, I would say, at bay. Um Right. I mean, you know, the thing also, uh as opposed to shrimp, let's let's just not on the not on topic really, but shrimp as opposed to lobster. So I think like you know, one of the common problems with uh I mean, shrimp shell, there's like uh look, an American like a a shrimp shell that we get from a farmed shrimp, like even if you cook the hell out of it, like there's only so much crap that's there, right? If you're just using the shell and not the head and all that stuff in terms of I mean it's so paper thin usually, and there's not much.
So I don't really find a lot of problems, not not foaming problems, taste problems. But I do find, and I'm curious about pressure cooking since I haven't pressure cooked this one. If you were to pressure cook like a hard shell lobster, you know how when you overcook a lobster stock to make a bisque, it gets the only thing I don't really know what it is 'cause I've never analyzed it, but what I consider to be kind of like a a shell taste, almost like a calcium-y taste to it. You ever notice that? It's it's funny you mention that.
We uh we haven't gotten it that way because all we use is the heads. So we just take the insides. Oh yeah, there you go. Because when you when you make when you're doing like, you know, uh an oil infusion or if you're making a stock of like from straight shells on lobster, like it's like good good up you roast them, right? And then you cook 'em up to a point, and then when you over extract them, you're like, this crap's done.
You know what I mean? It's like shells. Yeah, it tastes like shells. Yeah. Well, that's the but I mean, uh if you're making a shell oil, it it's it's great.
But if you're making lobster oil, you probably just want to use the you know, the the head part. Yeah, yeah. So back to your question, Aaron, they're well known that there are proteins in there. Uh try the pressure cooker. Um do you guys believe my story that your pressure cooker shouldn't vent or no?
I still believe it very very wholeheartedly. You don't want it to vent. Why why would you vent it? No, no, I mean, in other words, like I believe that the pressure cookers that constantly vent to regulate their pressure produce a lower quality stock than ones like the Coon Recon that don't, even though I just had terrible experience with a coon recon exploding in my kitchen. It was freaking nightmare.
Really? You haven't exploded? Well, here's what happens. There's a you know how like you know how you know how I'm lazy? You know me, I'm lazy.
So, like, you know, the the gas the gaskets deteriorate over time because they're silicone, they deteriorate, and um and so you know uh it's my personal pressure cooker. I brought into work because I needed to do something, and I'm you know, every day I'm like, oh I'll repr I'll replace the gaskets, I'll replace it, you know, next time I'll replace it next time, next time. And there's a little there's a little secondary pressure uh relief on the top of the pan next to the valve. And uh the silicone there wasn't sealing properly, so it was always spitting out a little steam. So Piper who works with me is like, hey Dave, it's steaming.
Don't you say that ruins the flavor this time? I'm like, all right. So I go over there to start fiddling with it, right? And then and then I'm trying to set the damn thing. So I think maybe there's like some grit in it or something.
So I'm trying to set it. I take a uh uh a butter knife, the back end of a butter knife, and I go pap pap on the top of the thing to seal it, and I blew it through the lid of the uh of the thing. Now this sucker was full, three quarters full of rendering like full chicken with the fat in it and everything, stock, at 15 PSI. Like I'm talking like uh like like five liters of chicken six liters of chicken stock at fifteen psi, and I all of a sudden I punch a quarter inch hole through it, and it was like old faithful. It's like a freaking geyser.
It flies up, hits the ceiling, chicken fat, like everywhere, and you know, Piper runs up, he's gonna put a uh a towel over I'm like Piper Man. That's like, you know, that's like whatever, urinating in the ocean to raise the tide. Like you're we're done here. And like, so we just have to sit there for a minute watching the damn pressure cooker vent chicken fat and chicken stock all over the entire lab coated with a fine mist of chicken products. My dog loved it.
The dog thought it was fantastic. Uh I I have since replaced the gaskets. Uh so anyway, okay. Uh next So it wasn't the pressure cooker that failed, it was more of a user error. Yeah, I'd have to go say I'd have to go user error with that.
Uh yeah. I mean, first of all, like, you know, just a note to Vene out there, you know, regularly replace the uh rubber parts in your uh in your pressure cooker because they do uh lose their ability to seal over over time. This is you know, this is not the first time I've had issues like this. Uh, you know, the main gasket around the around the rim. I'm always late in replacing that one.
And uh modern pressure cookers have a safety override where um if you look at the lid of a of a modern pressure cooker, there are uh there are gaps cut into it. And the reason those are there is so that if you build up too much pressure, it will literally extrude the main ceiling gasket out of these holes and then vent out of the thing. But if you don't replace your gasket, they just extrude under normal 15 psi pressures. I uh, you know, as Bell uh raised back, you know, at Starships when he was doing this stuff, I vented twice in one day coffee, pressure cooking coffee rye beans, uh rye berries, all over his Chef White's twice because I didn't replace the freaking gasket. Uh nice.
Yeah, okay. A little too much information for the folks out there. Alright, next question. Uh Johnny writes in about uh about fermentation and about beans. And uh I don't really have an answer for the beans, so I'm hoping you you will.
Um he goes, uh thanks for the egg advice a few shows back, cracking them on a flat surface, Jacques Papin style has reduced the amount of shell in my scrambled eggs. Uh I now have some questions about lacto fermenting vegetables and fruit lately. I've been getting some really kick-ass results. Well, kick butt will say kick butt results with simple countertop uh countertop ferments. Uh I did some experimenting and found that even crappy, low-quality, flavorless tomatoes, both canned and fresh, become delicious with some bubbling on the counter, uh fermenting bubbling.
Uh also puree chilies with a bit of salt left to ferment, turn into a dynamite hot sauce. That's true. And my underwhelming sauerkraut tastes delicious, fried up with some potatoes. Although there's no reason for sauerkraut to be underwhelming because sauerkraut's inherently delicious. Anyway.
Anyway, uh not so sure what ingredients or dishes it'd be good with or added to. Any ideas? Do you have any favorite lacto ferments? Uh well, sauerkraut actually literally is mine, but boring as that is. Um, can you uh use them like stocks?
Uh can you use them like stock, or does the acidity totally change? How do you uh how do you think about using them as an ingredient? Alright, so um I'm gonna it's a long, yeah, it's alright, complicated, but I'm gonna let you weigh in. The corn, by the way, uh I you know right now when anyone asks me a fermentation question, I literally just pick up my my copy of uh The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz and just see what because the research in that is so thorough that you know I just yeah, there's no reason to reinvent the wheels sometimes. I just go because I'm sure he's researched it.
And in fact, he found um I don't know her personally but uh April McGregor has a a website called Farmer's Daughter and she doesn't sell those uh on the website but she sells uh fermented corn uh in her stand in North Carolina and she's like yeah they get really sour. Presumably you're using sweet corn sweet corn has a lot of sugar it will ferment very quickly and make very sour results. Um but as for salt you know that and I'm gonna let you guys w weigh in here because it's people ask me this all the time and I always say the same thing. You can do ferments without salt. The problem is that they're not can they're not going to be uh consistent and you know i the the short answer is that tastes good well yeah I mean look like uh you know McGee was telling me that there's these crazy amaranth ferments in China that's that smell like like the worst smell in the world but people you know eat it without dying.
You know um my feeling is is that it you know if it gets sour you're probably safe and if it doesn't get sour you're probably not gonna want to eat it because some crazy stuff's gonna be growing in there. Um you know you guys any any any thoughts there on this on the salt free sermon? Yeah go ahead. So so I mean I'll I'll kick in on I mean you don't need salt and again that's referencing one one Sandor Katz as well. But the salt the salt is certainly the flavoring agent.
So we we want it there to help peak everything. Fermentation certainly we found fermented foods just taste better. It you're you're developing flavors and the and and the the ingredients are broken down to release uh more aromatics. So you know, anything fermented is good for the most part. Anything ranched, that's a whole other story.
Salt levels? Yeah. It it ranges. I I mean we what was it? I I think we've seen as low as one point five percent, but we usually s have our salt brines and a way based brines or something like that.
Roughly around what five percent I say. Yeah, that's pretty that's pretty that's pretty standard like, you know, uh not not but you know all these things are crazy. It's like some people they they write in and they take into account their theoretical water base for their veg and some don't. The fact of the matter is is i I think only if you are gonna do this the same thing a lot, right? Like let's say you were gonna make uh fifty five gallons of uh sour pickles, right?
Well and then it behooves you to who's gonna do that at home. Right, right, exactly. But I'm saying but if you're gonna do it then it behooves you to get the stuff right. You know what I mean? And get get something to measure salinity and figure out exactly what's going on and measure the water where you can but i in you know in reality at home I think you know eyeballing it in general is okay.
You know what I mean? I yeah I mean look anyone that's listening to this show, unless you have a very unless you have a specific dietary restriction, right, knows that I believe that salt is not it is not harmful to people that it's not harmful to, right? So you should probably put the salt level where it tastes good to you. Like that's my feeling. What do you guys think about this?
I would agree with that. I think that it depends on how long you want to keep your pickles too. If you're gonna eat them in you know relatively quickly then you don't have to worry as much about the bacteria levels. And I also think that with pickle making it's usually pretty obvious when things have gone wrong. And I think actually Sandor says that in his first book that you know, if it smells bad, if it looks bad, don't eat it.
Start over again. But you know, pickles are it's it's it's clear when things have gone awry. Things start growing and things get soft and mooshy, and as long as your texture's good and your flavor's good, you're you're good to go. Mmm soft and mushy. All right.
Uh his second question is submerging it though. Oh yeah, that was our biggest problem for the longest. If it doesn't matter, as long as you're underneath the brine. Well, that's why, like, you know, that's why the like the easiest way to do it if you don't if you know, is to just vac the crap down and then put it inside of a second vac a vac bag in case it blows and tie the second bag down. You know what I mean?
It's like boom, suck suckers insto submerged. Uh, you know, that's you know, it's like such an easy way to to get if you have a vac machine, it's such an easy way to get uh high quality uh I've never tried it just in zipping without a vac, but I'm sure it would work. But the zip bags will blow once it starts fermenting, is the only problem. You know, a a good vacu actually interestingly, a not so good vacuum bag that has slight gas permit, you know, uh that can diffuse a slight amount of gas through it. They they don't blow.
I've never really had one I've had them turn into really tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight pillows, but I've never had one explode on me. And uh and the the good news about that too is you get that nice little kind of petillon from the the CO2 that can't leave. Do you ever do that in the vacu do you like doing it in the vac bags? We actually don't. You don't like jars, weights, boom, done.
You don't like the vac? I don't I know I don't like the bubbles. Oh, I love the bubbles. You know, I like anything carbonated. If you know me, I like anything carbonated though.
Any any damn thing, carbonate any damn thing. Especially kimchi. I love kimchi with some carbonation in it. You have to like kimchi with some carbonation. You hate that?
I love that. I hate that. I chop it all up so that the bubbles dissipate. Really? So you're like you're like you're like you're like putting it throwing a vacuum down on it to pull any CO2 out of it right before service.
You're like pull the CO2 out. All you have to do is slice it up, because you know, once you slice it up, it evaporates naturally. But yeah, I'm not I'm not a fan. Wow, this is i interesting point of difference. And this just goes to show this is why it's good to make your own crap because then you know, if you like it to bubbles, you can make it a bubbles.
If you don't, you don't. Um then if you do make them you can always get rid of them. That's true. That's true. So uh Johnny's second question.
Sometimes I cook uh dried beans and despite an overnight soak and long all capitals, so it must be very long cook time, several hours. I cannot get them to finish cooking with a soft interior. Now here's the kicker. I don't add salt or acid. Just cooking them at a boil and uh then at a simmer in water.
I got them from a popular green market venue vendor that seems like they have a high turnover, so it's not like a five-year-old bean. Could the beans be so old that they just won't cook all the way through, or am I just doing it wrong? I don't have a pressure cooker and would that solve it? Well that's an interesting question. I don't know what would cause them to stay hard if you're not adding any acid to it.
Yeah, that's weird. No, I mean he needs is seaweed, combo. Yeah. You put at least a combo in your beans. It it helps tenderize, yeah.
Yeah. What's the agent? There's you know, I don't have it in front of me, but there's actually an enzyme in the combo that softens the skin of the beans. So you and helps them absorb water more more easily. So you put it in during the soak?
You can put it in during the soap soak and leave it in during the cooking time, or if you have like grease soaked beans there, you can always just put it in during the cooking time. Right. It's like you know, a two inch square for every cup of dried beans. Right. Yeah, nice.
Go buy the book, go buy the book. But you know, my only question you know, um, the one thing I d I don't know where Johnny lives or what his water quality is like. I mean, most typically Yeah, that could have something to do with it. Right. I mean Oh yeah.
If he lives in Plano, Texas, he's toast. Why? What's the what's the pH of uh water in Plano? No, the ki the calcium in the water that down there. Oh, they have a lot of c yeah, super hard water if you have calcium will strengthen the pectin and you're done.
You're done. You're done. That's gotta be it. It's gotta be the water he's using. It's always the water.
Yeah. So, you know. No, I that's right, yeah. Super hard water. We we were doing a demonstration down there a number of years ago.
And we were making a uh a pectin bath and didn't account for the calcium in the water because we didn't know about it. The stuff in instantly gelled. And it wasn't even sequestable, you couldn't even hit it with shimp? No, I uh we did afterwards. But at first we didn't even didn't cross our mind to sequester the uh the water and then.
Yeah. And then we Yeah. Johnny, I'm uh I'm gonna go ahead here and say that uh we've discovered your problem. You have uh hard water, and you're gonna want to uh use a water softener or get uh like a gallon jug of spring water or something like that. You think we got you think we got it?
Or s or at sodium hexametophosphate. Yes, that that would be another solution is to sequester your bean water. Although I've never that's interesting. This might be the first time any human being has ever said I'm going to sequester my bean water. Uh I've not done that yet, but I might have to try that now.
What to go you get next time you're in Plano, you're gonna go get some water and add some shimp to it to cook beans? All right. Yeah. All right, sweet. Um should we take a commercial break and then come back?
Yeah. We're gonna come back right back with ideas and food, cooking issues. Like what you hear so far? Support the network and become a member. Membership helps us bring you the best food radio in the world and gives you access to thousands of dollars in discounts at the sustainably minded businesses that support us.
To become a member, visit Heritage Radio Network.org today. What's Mood? Mood is a quarterly magazine about music and food. For its creators, not many things can beat a good record and a delicious meal. Maybe a well-written story or a gorgeous photo.
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And welcome back. So uh what is mood? Just kidding, I'm just messing with you, Jack. Anyway, uh, so uh we're back with ideas and food. Uh, you still have time to call in your questions to 7184972128.
That's 718497-2128. So the uh folks at uh May May Street Kitchen, uh, who we met when we uh or whom we met when we went up to Harvard, uh, wrote in a question. I think they must have sent it uh before, but I just got it. They said, hello from the crew at May May Street Kitchen. Uh, we are so amped up from watching Dave burn up a bunch of rice at the Harvard Lecture.
I when I last time I puffed in a lecture, it's I shouldn't do this lecture wise anymore. We uh for those uh you know we we had an issue and we cleared out a science building at Harvard, uh, but it did make a big explosion, which was which was nice. Um anyway, uh we are so amped up from watching Dave burn up a bunch of rice at the Harvard Lecture that we had to write and say how much we love you guys, was very pleasant. The bar, the podcast, uh the blog, everything. It was so fun to see you in action in person, especially Nastasha sitting in the corner like a boss.
And honestly, we couldn't think of a better end of the night than watching Dave set off the fire alarm in a cloud of black brown smoke, and subsequently getting Harold McGee to sign our books while sitting on the lawn like a friendly and wise woodland creature. Seriously, we think of burn uh we think of burnt rice and it's great. You gonna be I've never heard of McGee described as a woodland creature before. Woodling creature. I'll have to talk to him about that.
Uh so uh they have a question from two of uh uh their cooks, Emily and Caden, and uh uh the question is it started when we tried to figure out if the and this is one where they reference you guys specifically, so I'm gonna let you guys just take this sucker and run. You ready? Because they're referencing something that you that one of your techniques. Uh Emily Emily and Caden's question. It all started when we tried to figure out if the air in a fridge is wet or dry, and if a thing placed in that fridge will dry out or absorb moisture.
We had a peanut brittle on the menu at the time, and we were trying to decide whether we should keep it in the fridge to avoid it melting. It gets hot on a food truck in August, or leave it out to avoid it absorbing moisture and becoming horribly disgusting and gummy. Uh we noted that if you're drying out the skin of something that you want to crisp, you can put it in the fridge, like Dave Chang does in the Momo Fried Chicken Recipe, or Heston does in his home cooked version of triple cooked chips. That's French fries for real people. Uh I'm kidding, British people.
You know, whatever, we call them French fries. Uh other things that you put in the fridge so they absorb moisture, other things you put in the fridge so they absorb moisture, like on the ideas in food blog, Aki and Alex rehydrate uh dehydrated beets by putting them in the fridge. What gives? So now we're thinking about the relative humidity versus absolute humidity. I don't know what those things mean, but my staff does.
And whether we should be thinking of the fridge as an open system or a closed system. I don't even know what our question is anymore, but maybe you can just wait you can just wax poetic about humidity and refrigerators and lila like for as long as you deem appropriate. All the best, and thanks again for coming to Boston, Irene and Max and Caden and Emily and Alex, Caitlin and uh Olivia and Peter. Okay. Uh so uh why don't you guys talk about that for a minute?
All right. Okay. Um the the the bells. Yeah. So we we we pressure cook the beets until they're they're cooked at bejesus, then we dehydrate them until they concentrate and develop a s a nice dark skin.
Then we we take them while they're still warm. We actually there's there's a missing point there. We put them in in the zip top bags. Well, the warm seal in the zip top bags and then throw them in the fridge. So they steam in the bag in the in the environment.
So there's your your moisture. So you're just re-equilibrating, really. You're just re equilibrating. Exactly. Yeah.
So one of the issues with all with all food cookery that involves surface phenomena. So that's frying, uh panning, grilling, uh, par dehydrating, anything, is that uh you develop uh a situation where the inside typically the inside of the food has a much higher moisture content than the outside of the food, right? And so sometimes, and uh, you know, I don't really um you know the inside outside your technique, you know, you'll tell me about tell me about but the sometimes you can form a uh a skin that skin is can be then permanent because the cells have collapsed but you can get moisture back so that they can equilibrate so that the texture changes back to something that you like just by letting the moisture come in from the outside correct or no bingo yeah bingo the uh you typically and this can be a very good thing for this kind of a technique very bad thing with fried chicken horrible with fried chicken right um but you know a a lot of what cooking is uh especially if you want things to last for a while after they're cooked is moisture control and moisture migration from the center of a product to the outside of a product and much time is thought about that especially on the on the pro level this is why people add so much to their tempura. This is why tinpura is actually not good a good product. This is why it actually is bad.
Like t tenpura I've I've had like some of the supposedly best tenpura chefs in the world make tempura and I've eaten it and it was it wasn't bad. I mean it wasn't bad and that's that's very that's hyperbolic but it's not as awesome as as it could be because it's it's um the the the the the the moisture balance is shafted. I mean if you eat it directly as it comes out you know yeah it's good but I don't know I don't think I ever prefer it and it can't last the way that it's made what do you guys think on tempura? Well but they like to soak it in sauce. So it's sort of the combination of the crunchy and also the soggy.
Yeah. It's not really only about the crisp. It's not my thing about peanut brittle oh no so what they're saying is is that they have a situation where where uh look i where they put stuff in the fridge and they're having uh they they want to know whether the the the environment in a fridge is adding is is adding moisture to or removing moisture from things. So you put it in a Ziploc bag so it's moisture neutral, but it it adds moisture to the skin by re-equilibrating. In general, fridges are a uh dehydr what?
Yeah. I think they're moist. Yeah, freezers dehydrate, right? And fridges, you get a lot of recondensation of crap on them. You know, I th I because the thing is like I think if you it depends on the fan speed.
Like I in in a in some of the pro fidge fridges I've used that have a fan speed that's too high on the circulation, you can get a real pellicle on the outside. I think a lot I think a lot depends on a lot. You know what I mean? Well, it depends on the ingredient too, I think. Because if you're you know, if you put chicken thighs on a rack, they're gonna dry out a little bit.
The surface is gonna dry out in no matter the fridge. But if you throw peanut brittle in the fridge, the sugar's gonna absorb all the moisture in the air. Right. Well, you know, that's uh even like in the sealed they this is why like you're never supposed to store coffee and and chocolate and what this in in the fridge. There are several reasons, but but to me the reason isn't necessarily that the sucker's gonna get moist while it's in the fridge, it's that as soon as you pull it out, you're gonna get condensation from the air and you're toasted, unless you live in Arizona.
You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So that it makes that makes all the sense in the world. Yeah. No, no, but again, you know, you know, peanut brittle, yeah.
I would I would use desiccant in a in in a closed container at you know room temperature or in the in the truck. No, a hundred percent. Yeah, desiccant's the way to go, or vac sealed. You know what I mean? Vac sealed in a hard container or you know, vac sealed in a uh in mason jars if you don't have access to a hard container that can hold a vacuum.
Hey, here's another one for you on refrigerators and moisture content. If it's some uh of the hardcore, in fact, I think all the hardcore Japanese sushi chefs, I only talked to one of them, you know, when he was uh years ago when he came to the FCI. Uh, those guys all have commercial refrigerators and then they're they've never plugged them in, not one time. Uh they just throw giant block of ice into the bottom of the fridge and then keep their fish in there because they want to maintain the temperature, but they don't want the air circulation to mess with the water content at the surface. Presumably, I guess they don't want it to, I would say in the f in a case of fish with very high moisture product, you know, they want to dry and by the way, you know, now that we're now that we're talking about it, you're talking about peanut brittle, which has a moisture content below probably six percent, right?
Like once it's cooked up, when you say it's like below six, and a fish which has a content probably above eighty or around eighty. You know what I mean? 75 to 80. So, you know, if the fridge is anywhere in between those things, it's gonna shaft both of them. That is true, but peanut butter brittle crusted fish is tasty.
Yeah, is I've never tried it for real? So it was a made like a peanut brittle and put it on on on uh homachy and then baked it in place. Smoked peanut brittle. And does it does it form like a little snappy like uh you know, like crocante thing on the outside? Yeah, not not quite as crocante as you'd want, but you get that the nice texture of the uh the peanut brittle, the sh uh the the the second, you know, the caramelized the second time.
You get the nice toasty notes, and then we we use smoke peanut brittle. So anything smoked tastes better. Uh smoked peanuts are in fact delicious. And while we're on the subject of peanuts, I just want to give a shout out to uh the Virginia peanut. Virginia peanut, and the uh you know, I don't get anything from the Virginia peanut people.
But if you've never Virginia peanut, by the way, it's a variety. It's uh it's a type of peanut. And there's people from uh, you know, North Carolina and South Carolina will tell you that the that the Virginia peanuts that are grown there are just as good, if not better than the ones grown in Virginia. However, it is called a Virginia peanut. That's all I'm gonna say about that.
But Virginia peanuts, you guys play with Virginia Peanuts at all. No, we have not that I know of. Holy crap. You need to go buy yourself a high quality bat batch of Virginia peanuts. Cause once you have a Virginia peanut, you're like, I can't believe I've been eating this other drek, no offense, planters.
I can't believe I've been eating this other drek for so long. Virginia peanut is just a superior product. Taste, texture. You know how like a really good Frankfurter has that snap when you bite into it, and you're like, damn, that's what a good Frankfurter tastes like. You know what I'm saying?
As soon as you bite into one of these giant Virginia peanuts, a good one that's properly roasted and everything, it's like pop, it snaps, it's so awesome. Virginia peanuts. Smoke those suckers. Yeah, get some Virginia peanuts. I got an easy one here for you.
Uh Mike uh Chicheski, uh by the way, Mike, thank you for phonetically writing out your name. At first I thought it was like some strange name that I can say, oh, he's helping me with the phonetics, because he write Chachevsky. Mike Czecheski writes in about ham hocks. Hello everyone, question about cooking ham hocks. I usually braze uh in a typical uh mirapoi slash water stuff, uh my ham hocks so that the meat gets tender enough that I can pick it off the bone and shred it.
However, I find that much of the smoky, salty pork flavor is too often leached into the breezing liquid. Do you have a recommended cooking method which will render the meat tender but not rob it of its characteristic uh smoke and flavor? Thanks, Mike Czecheski. Yes, put that sucker in a bag and cook it. Um you might want to add a little bit of liquid because it takes an unbelievably long time to uh render out collagen if there's not a little bit of excess moisture um in with the product.
Uh but it does it does not take much. Uh and uh pressure steam it actually. So it'll be the fastest way. Oh yeah, that's true. Yeah.
So you put it uh the hawks into you know, a bowl inside your pressure cooker and then and do it then do it that way. You'll have them forty five minutes of perfectly broken down, tear the butches out of 'em, and you go from there. But they'd be salty. Bang. I mean this they have they they won't be salty.
Yeah, but if you're gonna shred it and use it as an ingredient, it doesn't matter. You know what I'm saying? Do you remember when they used to sell I'm dating myself here, but they used to sell this plastic bag full of seasonings and you would like stick your pork chops and some liquid in them and tie the bag shut and bake them in the oven. Is that like sh not is that like shake and bake? Is it some sort of shake and bake very shake and bake, but it wasn't because it was sort of like this this brace and the bag would puff up in the oven and it would just anyway.
That sounds fun. You know, when I when I was a kid, you know how like every twenty years or so there's a renaissance of paper bag cooking? Yeah, and I have paper bag uh cookbooks that date back to like the teens. Um, you know, Alexis Sawyer, the famous uh English uh chef, well, French English chef who wrote the gastronomic regenerator in the eighteen hundreds and was kind of like, you know, extremely well known. M FK Fisher loved his stuff.
His grandson, I think it's in the teens, wrote a book on paper bag cooking that I own. So that comes back. So the only bag stuff I used to do is we used to do I used to do paper bag chicken like once a week. Like that was my jam. When I was a kid in the seventies, like that was like, you know, uh once a week, like I would handle dinner and I would bust out the paper bag chicken, you know, complete with you know all the 70s crap you had in here.
I would rub it with the butter like you're supposed to, and put the you know, crappy, you know, curry powder from the from the Grand Union on top of it, and shove that sucker in a paper bag and go. You know? That was my stuff back then. And brownies. No one messes with my brownies, man.
Those are the things I cooked when I was a kid. Um when are you gonna mix brownies? Well, here's the problem. Now that I'm older and I think more about it, it's like, you know, what kind of brownie do you want? Do you want the dense brownie?
Are you a dense or a fluff? Right. Dense, chewy. I like chewy. Okay, are you a cocoa powder or a chocolate brownie?
I'm a mix. I used to hate cocoa powder. I was a ch I was a full chocolate brownie because that was my my great grandma and my grandma's recipe was a chocolate brownie. And then I like cocoa. Yeah, right.
That I learned later about the cocoa brownie. I don't like a hundred percent cocoa brownie because the texture is always weird to me on a hundred percent cocoa brownie. I guess I could just add more fat. Whatever. I don't know.
So now I do a mix. Anyway. So you like the Rolo inclusion, actually, into the brownie. You like what? A Rolo inclusion.
Rolo the brown. I have not heard the word or thought about Rollos in decades. Rolos. Do they still they still make rollos? They sure do we do damage to rollers in this house.
Alright, listen, listen. Stas is a is a candy aficionado. What are your thoughts on Rollos? Yeah? Pro, you're pro Rolo?
Oh my god. Ideas and food have found something that Nastasha enjoys. The Rolo. I might have to go out. Do you okay?
Do you like the fro you like frozen candy? Remember the Charleston chew to used to freeze those suckers? Oh, you shatter it. Yeah. Have you powdered Charleston Chew with nitrogen?
No. Good. Wouldn't that be awesome? That would be good. Well, now I'm thinking about Rolos.
Would roll those be good frozen? Yeah, they'd be able to do that. Yeah, they are good. Yeah, that's where we're going to be able to do that. But they'll break your cheese.
Yeah, well, you know, that's why that's why you can go to the dentist and get new ones. That's what Stas does all the time. She like put puts a dentist through uh kids through college every day. The kid the dentist can have a new kid every day and put it through college the way Stas gives that person money. Anyway.
Um we have another question in. Uh by the way, uh, thanks for that pressure cooker tip. I don't know why the hell I didn't think of that. We were just talking about pressure cookers and everything. I didn't think of pressure cooker.
This is why it's useful to have uh guests on the program. You know what I'm saying? I provide nothing. Uh what? Uh oh anyway.
So we have another question in. Uh Nick, who's writing in from Seoul Korea, uh, has a couple of questions, a couple of statements and then a question about halloumi. I actually like Halloumi, but you know, in my neighborhood, uh what we'll talk about in a second. Okay. Uh thanks for addressing my tofu questions a couple of weeks ago.
Uh the tofu soup which you uh suddenly developed a hankering for is uh Sundubu uh G guy. I cannot pronounce any uh words in any language except for German. Uh which I actually only Austrian German. I was uh did I tell this story on the air? I went to Austria uh a little while ago and I told I said this story on the air?
Anyway, yeah, so I can do Austrian accents because I listened to too many Arm Force Negro movies growing up. Anyway, uh Dubu is a Korean iteration for what is known in the West as tofu and uh J guy's umami rich soup, often made with feisty elements and served in boiling clay pots. By the way, I love myself. The clay pots aren't my favorite. I love the tollsot, the uh the the stone bowls.
I have nine of them. I have nine of them at my house. And they like if it wasn't for liability issues, every Applebee's in or TGI Fridays in the US would be serving everything in these hot stone bowls because hot stone bowl plus a little bit of oil, some rice, anything you have in your fridge and an egg on top is delicious. Delicious. Um I'm surprised that this thing's harmful.
Is there a brand of of hot stone bowls that you like? Well, there no I've never had a br I've never seen a brand on them. I just, you know, I go to the big bowl.com. Yeah, you go in there and you buy them. There's there's there's three fundamental sizes, and I have like some of each, like the big one, and you know, I've only ever had one fail on me, and it didn't 100% fail, but it's developed cracks.
I can still use it if I have to. But they develop an amazing kind of patina over time. Um I, you know, this my standard procedure, they're made of a rock that may or may not contain asbestos. Uh they call a I think serpentine or something like this. And uh, you know, you put it on your burner, and literally I put it right on my burner and I just shoot it with an IR until it hits uh 600, 615 Fahrenheit, then I kill all the burners and just ladle a little oil into them, smack the rice in, and done.
I mean, like literally, like if someone's if like a bunch of people are coming over and you know, I just need something to be good now. I do the quick cook on my rice cooker, 20 minutes out while that's cooking. I blast out like you know, whatever I have in my fridge, I'll cut it up, make some sort of quick sauce, bang, done. Like if everyone should own a set of the hot stone bowls, uh, in my opinion. Anyway, okay, so back to the question.
Um, but that technique with the burning rice doesn't work as well on the clay pots because the clay pots can't hold nearly as much uh energy as those stone bowls can. Um you don't get the crust. No. No, not with rice. I mean, look, they're great.
I like the I have a couple of the clay pots too, but I I thought I could get them because they're like a third of the price or less of the stone. And I thought that like I could get away doing, you know, the uh the rice trick in the clay pot, and it just wasn't the same. So then I was like, Well, I'll take the clay pot so that my guest can have the crunchy rice. I was like, you know, crap on it. I will just go buy more stone bowls.
And so that's what I've done. Um okay. So then he adds, I've just had uh landed uh Andrea and Wynn's book. Do you have that book on tofu? Is that good?
Yes, it's a good book. Okay. Uh and the book of tofu, the short leaf one, the famous shirt leaf one, uh, is en route. Once I get my basic tofu skill, uh tofu making skills down, I hope to experiment with mixing in some non-traditional flavors into the soy milk as well as working and some textual surprises. I also look forward to making tofu skins, which I've done.
That is great. I you know what I really the amazing thing about uh making um you know tofu skins, yuba, is uh is the difference in the first couple skins and that tasting them as they go down. I've never had to do it kind of uh on mask. I've never done it for an event. I just do it for myself at home, but like tasting the difference in the sheets as they come off, isn't that kind of like an like a fun, fun, awesome thing to do?
You guys you guys like that, right? That's awesome, no? I mean, there's no. So stuff's good. Well, we haven't yet.
We might have to do that. Yeah, you should do it. We won't be shortly, apparently. You should do it. Uh, like the first couple that come uh off are like a much darker color and they have a completely different flavor because of the first stuff, I guess it settles up to the top and then they change as they as they go down, and um, you know, just like you know, warm with some uh you know, some sort of salty crap put over the top of them, they're delicious.
Okay, anyway. Um I also look forward to making tofu skins, cut the way handmade soba slice, they'd make wonderful gluten-free noodles. Eh, I never thought about that. And I've never seen one chunk of tofu that's not stored in water here in Korea. I think every commercial, everywhere, every country people store it commercially in water.
I just happen to not like to not do that. I happen to make it right before I'm gonna eat it, and then I just eat it without ever leaching all of the stuff out with water. Uh my guess here is folks uh like their tofu mild and subtle. Uh I have another question for you today. So that was just a statement.
I have another question for you today. Can you explain the science behind grilling cheeses such as halloumi or finish and it's gonna kill me? Lipae giusto. Uh which I don't, I'm not familiar with that. I'm familiar with Halloumi.
And uh and oh, you might not be familiar with this because if you don't live in an area that has lots of Latin markets, uh queso queso potafrier is a version of uh queso blanco, which is firmer even than queso blanco, and you can deep fry that sucker without a crust. It's even more kind of resilient than uh Halloumi is. But anyway, uh what keeps them from melting with heated or or would it be possible to achieve this non-melting property with other cheeses? Thanks, Nick. Um so the the main the main thing about Halloumi is that uh they cook the ever-loving crap out of uh out of halloumi.
Um and so a lot of the water is out of it uh when it's done, and then they salt the hell out of it. So I think that's the main function of the stabilization of Halloumi, which I I happen, you know, I like I like it a lot. But first they they do um after they make uh the curd, the initial curd. So halloumi I believe is rented. That's what I could get off of the internet.
It's reneted, and then they cut the curd into small pieces, like you know, uh very s fairly small pieces, and then they cook it um to like uh 90, not like in the 90s Celsius, and then uh dump whey on top. They they heat the whey to pull the proteins out so they can make some ricotta-like thing, and then uh they heat it in in in this and press the crap out of it, like press the ever-loving crap out of it, heat it, and then put the blocks in salted whey. So, like all of those things are like hyper-stabilizing the cheese and giving it that kind of rubbery texture. Whereas queso blanco um is uh acid coagulated, but then also acid coagulated very hot and then salted while it's hot, which means that it's gonna be giving up a lot of its moisture. And I think that that's basically all there is to it.
I don't think there's any way to make an actual cheese unmeltable unless you've cooked the curds before you pressed it out. You guys ever made a cheese un well okay you could make a you could do it with gels. Mozzarella noodles. Right, you're using a but you're you're you're what you did it with regular mozzarella. Why don't you describe the process?
Yeah so we uh we uh we puree mozzarella with a little bit of ricotta and we add activa originally we started with yg uh which gives it a nice cheesy note to it again that's the addition of the yeast extract to the YG. Right. You can actually use TI and then we we we spread it thin on acetate sheets, let it set overnight and then you can cut the noodles and they you can boil them and you have these beautiful again you cut them you cut them like tagglatils. We make mozzarella tagliatail. So it's just as stable as uh as like the gelatin uh the gelatin noodles are the ones that are uh set with gelatin and and uh TI I would think so yeah I mean we we've again you're just you've got the they're they're they're they're awesome.
We've got a nice little authentic bite to them but it tastes just like mozzarella. Uh and then we did it with we did it with feta too and it made feta cubes. So we made you know and and we're able to you know saute you know big chunks of feta deep fry you know deep fry them stuff like that. Right so what they're talking about is uh an enzyme transglutaminase and transglutaminase has the property that it covalently binds uh proteins together in this case uh primarily I'm assuming you're using whole milk ricotta not the actual other stuff so there's a lot of casein present uh and the casein in fact, casein, the protein, casein from milk, is the protein that's added to uh most uh the the activa that that is most used uh in um in the biz is activa rm, which is a just a combination of activa, the ends uh or of transglutaminase the enzyme and of uh casein, milk protein. So it's just casein on casein action.
It should work. You said it does work with RM, right? It w it works only gen uh not as much. And uh we we use YG. Right designed for raw dairy applications, and then we s we in a pinch we did TI.
T I works as well, because again we're pureeing it in, so you don't need a protein bridge like you'd have in RM or even in the YG. I'm s I'm super surprised that uh the RM doesn't work 'cause it's just more casein. I wonder why. No, but that what it it doesn't work as well because there's half as much transglutaminase in the guy. Y G has a high level T I okay, so here's the deal.
T I is and I don't know if they still have a kosher app on it, because remember you can't have a kosher RM because it's milk, and so they assume that you it's milk protein, so they're assuming you're binding meat with it and you can't bind meat with milk. That would be a kosher no no. But they made T I which is just transglutaminase and maltodextrin. T I has a higher enzymatic activity per gram than RM does, but I did not know that YG also has a higher enzymatic activity. Yeah, it's it's uh it's a hundred uh parts per million as opposed to fifty.
Hmm for the w for the RM. And so and you don't want to double up on the RM because you start getting uh off off blah blahs or something, or or just then you No, I again I don't think it even crossed our mind really is what it was. I mean we st we s we so we summed across RM and we we saw we it started up years ago with we wanted to make flourless ricotta nudie or gnocchi. Uh and and we we were we're working with that and we you know called the folks at Achin Moto and chatting with them and said we're doing this. Uh we're gonna do try it with RM.
And they're like, Well, I well got this new product out there called YG. It was designed for dairy applications, blah, blah, blah. Right. I'm not very patient, so they they were gonna send us to YG, but I already had some RM, so we started playing with it. And the the RM sets up nicely, but the YG sets up a little bit more firmly.
Uh and it has a has a uh a more uh a fuller flavor. And that full flavor is actually coming from the yeast extract that's also part of the YG formulation that was designed for the dairy applications. Cool. Uh by the way, back to I don't recommend using RM, which is a casein uh protein helper on uh gelatin. I find it doesn't set as well when you're doing the gelatin noodle trick with the RM, presumably because you really just want to link gelatin to gelatin and not gelatin to casein.
Uh I don't know if you guys have also had that uh experience. We have uh actually not got not gone deep into the the gelatin noodle thing because I don't know why. I think we just uh we what we saw we saw it was done. It's going on two other hours. Right.
So not uh not Harold McGee, we have a question in for hard water, but uh William McGee at Los Neko writes in is listening and says, I live in Plano, uh Texas. Are there any are there any times cooking or using hard water is beneficial? Sure, making uh making alkaline noodles, uh it can be helpful, right? Yeah, that is there anything else? Cooking cooking cooking broccoli so it doesn't get mushy.
I mean I uh Yeah maybe you what else? Uh yeah, I don't know. Not much. I got nothing. Yeah.
I mean but it's Oh, unless you unless unless unless you're just encapsulating things and you're just dropping things right into it. Right. I mean, uh most hard water is probably fairly basic, right? So it may be good for I mean, I don't know. I mean, I know it's b it's alkaline and hard water that was the original well water used to make the noodles that were then substituted later for consway, but I don't really know the pH of the water in Plano.
I don't know. So it might not even be helpful for the for the noodles because the the noodles isn't a calcium thing. The noodles is really a pH thing. Uh so probably just stopping broccoli from getting mushy or something like that, right? Anyway.
Um, Aaron Will wrote in saying whole shrimp was used. We have induction only, so not a huge problem. Just curious. I'll push for a pressure cooker for many reasons, especially after you know, hearing the other tips about ham hocks and whatnot. Uh I got uh uh Nastash's giving the snack smack smack a smack up.
Um here's I got some questions in though that these guys are gonna want uh answered. Uh Chris McDaniel writes in uh any ideas for making caviar in quotes, i.e. the I guess the fake caviar with okra seeds. You guys ever done anything with ochra seeds? I guess maybe making them using the mucilage format.
Interesting. Yeah, I have not. We've never done it. I I mean I would imagine that you would soak it the way you I mean I wonder if you could take dried okra seeds and soak them the way you soak like basil seeds or something like that. Oh, and get them to puff up, get them to hydrate and puff up like that.
Get them to hydrate and give them a different flavor and kind of you know, or like mustard seeds, you'd make a but I think you probably have to start with dried seeds to start, you know, because how are you gonna That's interesting, we'll have to play with that. Yeah, yeah, we'll give it a the okra seeds they they uh I mean we've played around I mean you if you look at them years ago we we kind of cut okre up and looked at it and looks just like caviar. So you can kind of cook a a a stew of fresh ochra seeds, they get a little slimy and stuff like that. Again, it's just uh what kind of flavor do you want? Any way to kill the slime?
I exclusively eat okra, either fried, whole, or pickled. I never use it as a thickener. I'm not a big slime master. I don't have to big on the slime. I I could have sworn I saw you wearing that t-shirt.
The slime master? Well, different kinds. Different kind of slime. Xanthan. I like, you know, yeah, f hand me some Xanthan.
I'll snot up any s any sauce you got, I'll turn it to snot two seconds with Xanthan. That's my speciality. Um my goodness. Uh Jonathan Panzerman writes in, can you suggest a good stirred cocktail using blueberry for a large group, perhaps mostly advanced prep? Any tips?
Welcome. Stirred cocktail almost always you're gonna want to clarify them. So hopefully you have a uh an ability to clarify blueberry juice. Blueberries are usually fairly low on bricks and acid, so you're gonna need to do probably a pre-chill on it unless you uh dope it with so much sugar that you can use it as a simple syrup, but then you're not gonna have as much blueberry flavor in the finished product. We used to do one with uh mezcal uh lemon and uh I think it was lemon, mezcal lemon and uh blueberry, and a couple other things called melinche that was good.
But you guys ever done a stirred with blueberry? No, we've done we've had muddled, muddled with blueberry, which is you know, like a like a blueberry mash. So it's already been marinated up. Yeah. Another problem you're gonna have with blueberries is I hope you're not trying to get that dark blue color because sucker's gonna turn purple as soon as you go acid, uh, and you're gonna go acid because the blueberries already contain their own acid.
Um but you know, I would try, I mean, that's what we we used to do, uh a light, a lighter mezcal, uh mixed with tequila, blueberry, a little bit of sugar to augment because the bricks isn't so high on that, and that's it stirs very well, but it requires you to have a centrifuge. Otherwise, you could crush muddle strain. Um but you know, you in a stirred cocktail, the the big thing is you don't want it to be uh a soupy mess. You want it to be nice and uh clear um okay also uh christian uh spinilla wrote in have you guys been following uh you know they're gonna rip it rip me off the air in a minute, but you you know, you guys uh are familiar with the uh with the controversy over uh carrageenin and uh acid right you guys been I I get I get bothered about this quite a quite a bit you you know so for those of you listening out there there was some research uh and it's it's been around a long time that you don't want to uh use carrageenins in high acid systems that are heated uh for a long time and the reason being that the carrageenins can be degraded and that degraded carrageenin may be uh may cause uh may have some carcinogenic potential over time and may be an irritant to the stomach called degraded uh kerragena there's a more technical term but I don't forget it uh and then there's uh there's uh this this f it's group called cornucopia something that's been putting out all of these scientific papers I have a link to it which you can you know look on the tweets and tweeted it to me uh that you know there's a a new kind of push out against carrageenin and that you shouldn't use carrageenin and let me just say this uh the the work that was being put out there is kind of the the worst kind of scientific bunk I haven't had the time to figure out whether or not their actual points are right or wrong but the method of presentation is uh leads me to believe that the stuff i is wrong. They for instance use as scientific evidence that someone said I stopped eating carrageenin and then I stopped having the the fodding problems.
You know things like that. You know so kind of like post hoc ergopropter hoc arguments for the efficacy of removing carrageenin from your diet and they uh they focus almost exclusively on the research of a of a certain Dr. Tobachman who has had an axe to grind on carrageenin for a long, long, long, long time. And I think, you know, one of the things is that science is really, really like real science, not like, you know, like, you know, well, you know, what we, you know, what we, the people who are talking here, we you we use the results of science and you know we're voracious I'm I'm talking for you now, sorry. Voracious like consum consumers of this sort of thing.
But actual science is uh a lot different and you know it's extremely hard work and it's a lot of boring, boring, boring, boring keeping track of notes and and and really putting in the time to get your results right. And the key thing to being a really good scientist is to not start with uh with the feeling that your conclusions or your hypothesis is correct. You really have to test your hypothesis and all of the work that uh Dr. Tobachman uh has done that I've seen has led me to believe that she is completely colored by her uh her her her her mind is completely colored by her preconceived notions that carrageenan is this uh you know evil thing and let us not forget that most of the carrageenan we eat we eat in extremely small quantities in fact that is the reason carrageenin is used in dairy applications is because it can be used in extremely small quantities have you guys been following this sort of thing or heard any and like recent anti Carageenan rumblings and by the way it could be the worst thing in the world I just I I haven't had a chance to back it up. I just can say that the writing about it is is is poorly done and and it's done in a junk science way.
Why don't you why don't you guys have the last word on kerageenin and before you do it I'm gonna thank you for coming I really enjoyed having you I hope to have you again and I know the book is going to do extremely well go out and buy it everyone now your last words on carrageenan. Last words on carrageenan before I give that. Tomorrow we will actually be in New York City at the 92nd Street Y at seven o'clock with a cooking demo. So and book signing. So if people want to join us, they can come see us in person.
Where do they where do they get tickets? Tickets are on the YNTA's website, 92nd Street Y. Alright, so go to the go to 92nd Street Y. Shell out, shell out, whatever. What is it cost for them to go see it?
25 bucks. I think it's $25. $25. That's like what it costs to go to a movie in popcorn now. Please go to the 92nd Street freaking Y, you know, and uh go see these guys uh uh tomorrow.
Okay, now Carrageenan. Carrageenan. Uh we just started seeing the rumblings of it. The the funny thing is is keragen and an acid really they don't get along at all. So I guess that's my my my biggest question there is is is why why are they mixing very often together?
Right. But yeah, but the well the point the point is the only time it could ever really be uh an issue if you if you know if the if the degraded carrageenan argument is right, is if you tried to make a high acid system with a boatload of carrageenin, and the only way to do that would be to overload it with carrageenin so that the carrageenin g doesn't get obliterated by the acid. Which you would never eat too much carrageenin anyway. Right, which you would never do. Which you which you would never do.
Right. You know, and the their other argument is that you know that the kerragen can get degraded in your stomach to become degraded carrageenin is bunk because uh the there's you know a very limited transit time and and bless you and and you and you need a certain amount of heat in order for the degradation to take place. You're not getting acid hydrolysis of carrageenin at body temperature, but i i in the transit time that it's in your in your stomach. But you know, that's that that don't that's just me reading the scientific literature. Don't take it to mean anything.
You know what I mean? Uh so when when you when you dive deep into this one, please let us know what the answer is. Alright, cool. Cool. Alright, thanks so much.
It's been a good time. Cooking issues. Thank you. Alrighty. We'll talk to you soon.
Alright, cool. Bye bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network.
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