Whether you're a homeowner creating your dream space or a pro managing multiple projects, discover a new way to shop at Ferguson Home, where great ideas become stunning spaces. Visit FergusonHome.com to explore the best selection of bath, kitchen, and lighting products. Or book an appointment at one of our showrooms where you can experience products firsthand and get personalized expert support every step of the way. Bring your vision to Ferguson Home, where it all comes together. Shop top brands like La Cornew or find your local showroom at Ferguson Home.com.
Today's program was brought to you by S. Wallace Edwardson Sons, producing the country's best dry cured and aged hams, bacon, and sausage using 100% pasture raised, certified humane Berkshire cuts. For more information, visit Edwards Vaham.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more.
Hello, happy new year, and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Hatches coming to you live from a Burton's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly one, right? One o'clock. Uh on the Tuesdays, joined as usual with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing?
Good, how are you? Alright, we got Jack and the Oh, sorry. Oh, we do not have we have no Jack. Jack hates us. We have Joe in the booth today.
I got you confused because you have a new haircut, Joe. Yeah, actually I've been called Jack several times now because I have short hair. Really? Yeah, a couple times. You know, uh I shouldn't say this, but since uh Jack's not here and I know I know he's not listening to the program because uh he's totally sick of us.
Every time uh uh Nastasha sees someone with the like the roughly Jack facial hair and like that kind of like you know he has like a He wears a beanie thing. Yeah, like a beanie ski cap kind of a thing with Jake. Whenever she sees that look, which is becoming ever more common, he's like, Yo, is that Jack? I'm like, I'm like, you're so you're so racist against and he's a Manhattan guy now. Yeah.
So you know you can't be you can't call him a the Brooklyn, like I don't know the Brooklyn cool hipster look anymore because like he's now from Manhattan. Yeah. And since I feel like he's like, you know, like Jack is the model for all that look, like, you know, once he switches to Manhattan, like it's over. It's now it's now it's a Manhattan look. Yeah, soon everyone in Manhattan is gonna be dressing like Jack.
Yeah, right. Scraggly little beard and everything. Whoa, scraggly. No, I mean that I don't mean that in a bad way. It really works for him.
It really does. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Alright. So calling to questions two, 7184972128.
That's 784972028. Nah, Joel. Come on, man. I'm gonna get fired. Scraggly.
Jack's listening. That's my my that's that should be your next band. Like when you do a side project, it should be called Scraggly in a good way. Maybe that's the album. Jack's listening.
The album's. Jack should be here, right? Like Jack's not listening. Yeah, exactly. The last one.
I'm hoping Jack calls in from the office. This would just be great. Wow. So uh what uh what happened we haven't been back in in a long time because we hit on Christmas and then we hit on the New Year's. So uh what's been going on, Stas?
How was uh where were you in the California? California for Christmas, Connecticut for New Year's. Yeah, how was that? It was okay. Yeah?
Mm-hmm. It's okay. Yeah, how was yours? Good. Uh, you know, I made uh oh, we haven't spoken.
Have we spoken to people since the Sears Hall thing is done or no? Uh no. No. No, yeah, well, our Sears All thing is over. Uh for those of you that uh I don't know, don't, you know, first time listening to something.
We we made a uh a product called the Sears All, and uh Nastasha hates this, so I'm gonna make her do it. Stas, do you does it search? Does it sear only some things? No. Most things?
No. Everything? Yeah. All? Yes.
Sears all? Sears all. Anyway, so uh we had a Kickstarter for this, and uh we we sold like something on in the on the order of like uh 2,800 of them. Uh and it was actually uh the eighth, we looked this up yesterday, the eighth largest food kickstarter of all times. Food Kickstarter.
Uh Jack would have um hit the applause button. Yeah, yeah. Oh right. Damn, no game, no game. And uh yeah, so we did we did well, and uh and you know I'm especially proud of uh what we raised considering that the individual donations, it only costs like sixty-five dollars to do it.
So stuff for those of you that missed it, uh Nastasha has set up a an online shop where you can buy it called uh so the shop starter or something like this. We'll announce it in a couple days. Uh all right, whatever. So it didn't happen. I was made that crap.
No, no, it's ready to go. Yeah, all right, whatever. So anyway, so here's the thing. So uh I did the prime rib for uh for the for the Christmas. My mom, right, and I've said this before, I love my mom.
Mom's a great cook. My mom's the reason why, you know, I cook. Duh. Everyone's mom is the reason why they exist. She's also the reason, kind of, you know, why uh uh I think I like to cook so much.
Um, but uh her kitchen is extremely poorly outfitted. Like, so I mean, and this is gonna sound like I'm a complete like jackwad. She has no low temperature cooking, which is not part of the poor outfitting. Stas is giving me the Euro jerk jerk look. Uh, but like she shouldn't have a low temperature thing, so I tell you, so I brought my low temperature rig, which is a half-lexan.
I brought oh by the way, we got the Nomiku in on the break. I haven't gotten a chance to use it yet. Anyway, so we we got the low temperature rig. Oh, I cooked some deer the other day, low temperature. Oh.
I don't have it. This New Year's resolution and not beyond tangent. Well we'll we'll talk about deer in a minute. Anywho, so I uh so I did the the prime rib. My mom bought the entire freaking prime rib, which was so big it wouldn't fit in a half lexan.
Wow. So I had to, and you know, the the butcher did that thing where they cut the bones off, then they roll the individual they roll the prime rib and then retie it to the bones. You know what I'm talking about? Whatever. Old school technique.
So uh anywho, I pulled, I I cut, I took, I disassembled the butcher's work, cut the bone into three plates, cut two of the rib sections off of the prime rib, bagged them separately, bagged the whole thing in one of those. You know those ziplocks that are intended for and uh not food gray, please, no calls on this. You know the ones that are meant to like roll up comforters and and stuff for like camping? That's the only thing she had big enough to hold this giant prime rib, and I wanted to present it basically whole. So I did the whole sucker at 55 for like five hours, uh five or six hours, then dropped it, then cooled it off, cooled it off, then threw it in a 500 degree oven to overcook the outside a little bit and give it that, and then finished off with dual searzals.
So Stas, I put that, I put that picture up. You it'll be up on the site where you can buy the Zeers all in a couple of things. The dual seers alling. Gotta go, gotta go, you know, dingling ding ding ding ding ding ding. Dueling Sears all, you know?
Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. Um stupid. Yeah, big dumb. Oh, I also did some low temperature deer. Uh, not the one Lucas sent, because that one is uh at the at the headquarters there.
But uh we will. Do you know what cut he gave us? Do you remember? Thigh, I think. Thigh?
Yeah, I did loin, which is tough, but I did it uh low temperature. It worked uh worked great. So like these uh these two friends of uh Dax's girlfriend were you know, we're over he's he's eight. Anyway, so they were over and they're the cousins. So this 12 year old, it's it's her and her and her sister are there eating.
And so we thought that dad had shot the deer. They brought it from Illinois. They're from Southern Illinois, like near the border down there. And uh, so like halfway through the meal, they're like, So, you know, uh, so who sh who shot this deer? She's like, I did.
I was like, Whoa! Like this like like 13-year-old, like you know, girl shot this deer. I was like, that's awesome. I was like, how how you know what size would she like? Six-pointer.
I was like, Whoa! I love that. Love that. Anyway, uh, we should we gotta get on some questions. We're never gonna finish this stuff on time.
Although I have to say, I I I don't know what made me think of this, because Stas, you were over yesterday because it was cold and you didn't want to open the gate to the uh the lab by yourself. So you're over at my house because I live near where I work, thank God. Uh I hate commutes, I hate them. Anyway, me too. Yeah, the commute's well, hey, look, your choice.
Nastashi used to live down near where we worked, and she was like, I hate it down here. I'm moving back to Hell's Kitchen. So, two words, your choice. Your choice. Your choice.
Uh, anywho. So uh I moved apartments, and I'm gonna talk later about it because someone asked about a kitchen. But uh I moved and uh I used to have black floors and I have a black lab dog. So I didn't think the dog shed so much. I'm moving to a place with gray floors, and I was like, oh my god, dog shed so much.
And so like I bought a robotic vacuum cleaner and uh the the room, but the new one, which is pretty sweet. And like here's the thing, right? Everyone's like, oh, maybe that's ridiculous, whatever. I love this damn thing. I love this robotic vacuum cleaner.
It's a little loud. No, it's much less loud than a normal vacuum cleaner. And you have to run it longer. Well, but yeah, but you can program it to run when you're not there. Anywho, it runs around the house and it it plugs itself back in when it's done, and so it gets rid of all the dog hair, and I love it.
And I was thinking, you know what? What reminded me of it, and the reason I'm bringing it up today, is that uh you know how we always get these questions about and we whatever out damn because we do uh we do technology and food, right? What about 3D printing food? What's the future of food? Future this, future that, right?
You know what I'm saying? Right? Stash. Stas is like, hey, future this! Come on.
It's uh that Stas is doing the point, the jersey point. But the uh, oh, so uh she said, um, you know, it's like everyone always asks us these questions, and you know what they fundamentally don't get is even though we use a lot of new techniques and technologies, like you know, we like cooking, right? You know, we like human beings that make food that they think is delicious, that they are proud to serve to either their customers or their guests, or they're proud to make that they've created something. It's a pr it's a product that comes from themselves, and that's you know why good cooks like to cook, right? I mean, that's that's really the the impetus.
Is it you can make something that's high quality, you get to do it every day, you can constantly hone your skills, and it and it gives a little bit of of yourself to someone else, right? Isn't that why we like to do it? So obviously, you don't want a robot making your freaking food. Like, I mean, whatever, fast food, yes, yes, whatever, fine, industrial food, yes, great. Yes, we all love Twinkies.
But but like what I'm saying, you don't want a robot making your food on a daily basis. I was thinking, but like the vacuum robot is perfect, and here's exact the crux of it. And this is why I don't want my food 3D printed regularly. I mean, there are applications, right? But the vacuum cleaner is a good idea.
It's no one says this. That thing does vacuuming just like my mom used to do. If I could only find someone that can vacuum in the same way that my mom used to vacuum, then life would be great. You know what I'm saying? It's a freaking vacuum.
Nobody cares. They just want it to run, they want it to get underneath the damn thing. You know what I mean? Anyways. Uh, not a clapping day.
Yeah, not for our stellar Kickstarter. Uh Christian from Denmark writes in on vacuum reduction. Hello, Nastasha. I hope this is the right place to send questions for cooking issues. It was, because here it is.
If so, uh tell the whole crew from yet another fan from Denmark. Well, we are another friend from Denmark. We are Legion by Danish standards anyway. I've never been to Denmark. I was supposed to go to Denmark too, O'Denn's, like uh home of the home of the uh Marzipan, which by the way, Marzipan, delicious.
Delicious. Do you like Marzipan? I don't really like it right now. Why? I don't like almond paste.
Caller. What? Alright, we'll get back to this question. Caller, you're on the air. Hey, my name is Johnny.
I'm from Madison. How you doing? Um Wisconsin? Yeah, where Madison is there. Oh, yeah.
How cold is that right now? Uh it's only like 14 below right now. It was 23 yesterday, though. See, here's what I love, right? Like here in New York, we're like griping about this, like, you know, whatever it is, like five cell five Fahrenheit or whatever.
And you guys would be laughing at us like fake northern people, as like a real northern person if you weren't getting slammed so hard right now yourself. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I definitely uh there's not much else to concentrate on. Um Do you have good winter gear? I was once in uh Sweden, and although I was uh wrecked, I was above the Arctic Circle, the dog sled lady who was running the sh the musher, she said there's no such thing as bad weather, just bad coats.
Oh I was like, very Zen. I I I do I think there is like once you've lived here for a while, there's definitely that opinion. Like you just like don't complain, just get a better setup. Yeah, nice. All right.
So what are you cooking today up there? Well, I I you we actually interacted on Twitter because I sent you the picture to the broken centrifuge. Oh, that's you, holy crap! How much do so for those of you that obviously if like uh I have this Twitter account at cooking issues if you want to go to it, and uh got uh got a question in, like, you know, like well, not really a question, more just like a photo. I bought a centrifuge and the buckets broke, and the inside of the thing got hosed.
So I was I wanted to know what the damage was so give us a little bit of background on what's going on here. So I um there was a second photo that I sent you had the the the inside of the centrifuge but uh yeah so basically got a centrifuge through the university pretty cheap uh had to check out it was a a Beckman one a little bit older and had a glass had a glass cover which was awesome because you could see inside uh also terrifying um but uh anyway so I uh I got actually I ordered a new rotor uh that I that I was using but I was using the the old buckets right and uh the the bucket broke and it flew into the side and stopped the centrifuge right away. I I bet. I bet I've never were you in the room when it happened uh I wasn't but there was someone else in there and like he said it scared the living crap out of them. I bet like how loud was it did did they say?
Yeah they said the dishwasher was like 30 feet away and he said he felt the felt it move. Wow and it moved it moved three feet. Wow and it was do it was doing about four thousand RPMs so yeah so for those of you that don't know we're talking about a little background so we're we're dealing with um we're dealing with uh uh bench top desktop centrifuge th I think like some that with the Beckman Coulter with the with the plexi top is somewhere in the somewhere in the three liter range right it holds roughly three liters. Yep, three liters. Yeah.
Swinging bucket centrifuge. Uh, and I've never dealt with a rotor failure, uh, or even really seen pictures of rotor failures on the swinging buckets, but my point of contention has always been that these units, even when they fail, are much safer than the larger, faster ones because the G forces involved are are comparatively low. So it's just very interesting for me to hear now. The buckets that actually interestingly, your buckets were not aluminum, right? Doesn't the Beckman Coulter have stainless steel uh press buckets or no?
Yeah, these ones were stainless steel. I actually have aluminum as well. Right. Um so I mean aluminum buckets, aluminum when you're in so a centrifuge, uh, again, for those of you I don't know, it uh they spin and they separate things based on density. However, usually the in a swinging bucket rotor, the buckets they're they swing and they're buckets, hence swinging bucket rotor.
And this is what we use mostly in the kitchen because they have a much larger capacity for their size than uh what's called a fixed angle rotor, which normally uses tubes or bottles. And um the problem is most buckets are made out of aluminum, and aluminum uh tends to fatigue over time with flex, and so you get cracks and then they can c catastrophically fail. And when they do, so uh think of this. If you have a uh a swinging bucket rotor, each rotor has its own each bucket has its own weight plus an extra uh you know, seven hundred and fifty grams of product in it. That's 750 grams, if you're doing 4,000 G's, i it is has the equivalent weight of of like three thousand uh uh kilos or something like this.
So it's it's no joke. So when that thing flies off, it's it's really no joke. I'm very surprised uh that the Beckman Coulter stainless steel buckets broke because they don't typically show fatigue failures the way aluminum does. What was the failure mode of the bucket? Do you know?
I uh I can't it's like seven thousand, eight thousand. I I have to look at it, but I I remember just taking a peek at it. But no, but what did what happen how did the bucket actually break? Like what part of it broke. Oh at the top, right?
I mean, exactly where you would think it is. It's kind of like at the point where you latch it onto the rotor. Right. So yeah, so in a normal in a in a normal aluminum bucket, it's I it's probably machined, right? And then there's these two like big things where these pins, these fat pins from the rotor fit in, and the buckets slip onto 'em.
And in the stainless one, it looks like it's made out of sheet metal, right? I've never used the stainless ones. I I'm frankly, i is it possible that those the stainless ones are meant to only work with inserts and that they kind of flexed in under the force and popped out? I mean, that can be the only thing I could think of. Did it actually tear at the pin or did it flex and pop out at the pin?
I have no idea. It's probably too many, yeah. Literally like it like broke off. I'll send you another photo, but yeah, get a close up. I'd like to see a close-up of where you think the failure started.
So I can figure out on to your question. Enough enough of peppering you with questions. What's your what's your question? Well, okay, so I I had a bunch of questions. I mean we started using it and it it's been pretty useful and I figured out quite a bit.
But yeah, I was one of the questions was you know what we talked about right now, is like do different buckets need to use the inserts, you know? So maybe we don't know. Yeah, I mean I've never used this the one of the reasons I stayed away from the Beckman Coulters specifically is that the insides of their buckets uh are uh square. Right? Is that uh no, these are round.
Oh, they're round insides? Okay, so some of them have the square buckets, and I don't like square uh I don't like square buckets without inserts. The reason being that if you if you were to if you were to take a uh a tack, a strobe tack, which you can buy, I've done it with mine, which is a terrible idea, and you but you put a uh because I don't have a glass top on mine uh and you um put a in fact I think with someone beckling coulter somebody makes one that's meant to do this, and you just fire a strobe tack at it, you can you can get it to fire correctly either by tuning it by hand with it with a strobe tack or by uh putting a little reflective piece of tape on to trigger the attack and um uh with an external signal, you can freeze it, and when you freeze it, you'll see that as the thing is spinning, the liquids inside are rotating and scouring on the inside of the bucket. So my feeling has always been that in a square bucket where you have those uh side seams, that as it slows down, rather than settling, any like kind of less well-formed parts of the puck at the bottom of the of the thing are gonna are gonna get refluffed up to the top. You know what I'm saying?
Mm-hmm. So that's why I've always thought round bottoms were good. But anyway, so go ahead. Yeah. Um but mostly what I questions were is just about using clarifying components.
Like obviously the pectin's is pretty useful, but do you find that if stuff sits for a day that it goes cloudy again or stuff like that? I thought like I did banana juice and onion juice, and it both got cloudy. Right. So here's what happens. So you use the pectin X, and typically, especially on onion juice, I've noticed this, you you like we'll we'll do like a double spin on it because uh it doesn't knock out the pectin X doesn't get rid, and I I don't even know frankly whether it's all pectin or there's other kind of suspended uh hydrocolloids there.
But what you'll do is you'll do an initial clarification run and the sucker will look clear. The same thing happens, by the way, when you do uh quick agar clarification and things like this. So it looks pretty clear, and then you let it sit in the fridge, and then all of a sudden it kind of gets these wispy things and sometimes even goes full cloudy, or sometimes you get a precipitate or settle out. And what's happening is is that over time uh you know the the these things that are are soluble are in solution and therefore not making it cloudy, will agglomerate together, uh coalesce, and then become large enough to partially drop out of solution and make it cloudy again. So the solution there is just to uh or the answer I should say is to uh re-spin.
And uh we do we I do that uh a lot, and uh what I what I don't know, because I've never done uh a lot of testing on it because I just haven't had the time to really sit out and do it, is it's like, okay, if you do the onion juice and you just let it sit for two days before you do your first spin, would you still need to do a second spin? I don't know. You know, I don't know whether or not like removing all of that massive stuff is what allows these other things to that or that other pectins, whatever to to uh agglomerate together, or whether or not you would get a better or a simpler result if you just let it sit for a couple days before you spun it out. I I don't know. But it's a fairly common phenomenon to get some flock out and have to do a respin.
Okay, so it if I re-spin it, I'm not gonna see the cloudy again. No, you're done. Yeah. And so I noticed that you do it for about 15 minutes normally on a lot of stuff. Is there a benefit to do it longer or shorter or uh well I mean the longer you go, so again, when you turn on if if you were to if you were to get a strobe tack, which I would if I were you, that by the way, if what I'm talking about, guys, is a uh it's a strobe light that's that you can uh adjust how the rate of firing, and it allows you to freeze things like centrifuge buckets, like visually freeze them so you can see what's going on.
And if you were to if you fire up the centrifuge and you look at it with a strobe, you uh what you see is is that the the juice clarifies very very quickly. And then um once you once it's settling out. Now there are some things that take a long time to clarify out, and you have to spin for a long, long time. But in general, most of the products that we use are clarifying relatively quickly. But what you need to do is run it long enough to compress the puck so that it doesn't resuspend as it starts uh coming back uh as the as the speed starts slowing back down.
So, you know, a lot of times I'm doing um, you know, for events we're doing a lot of product, and so I try to get my spin times down as as low as possible without compromising quality. And so usually 15 is good enough, and so I don't try to go longer. Sometimes if I'm really in a bind, I'll I'll you know, I'll cut it to 10. Anything below 10, and I have a lot of times I'll have a lot of resuspension problems. I mean, some things are easier than others.
Bananas drop like a rock, you know what I mean? Like once you hit them with pectanex, banana pulp just like slams to the bottom of your of your thing, and it's you know not not a problem, whereas other things, you know, they they take a little more spinning. Like tomato usually throws a flock. And you know, if you want to also reduce your problems with that de aeration before you spin, makes it settle a lot faster because you don't have as many problems with air bubbles having to pop before it goes down. Surprising fact, you know, four 4,000 G is not enough to pop like kind of the micro air bubbles, and that's why a lot of times you'll get, especially on something like tomatoes, where you're blending it in a blender and it it it traps so much pulp, you'll get a mat on the top.
And I don't think that mat is caused by things that are inherently less dense, like oil. I'm pretty sure that that mat is just a trapped air mat. Do you cook the bananas first or do you uh to do that? Yeah, no cooker. No cook, but you have to make sure to use um ripe bananas, because raw bananas contain starch and the starch will not settle out on a centrifuge to get us to in our centrifuges anyway.
Like to get it to settle out, you need to you know you just wait a long, long time, and the starch will eventually settle out, or you could probably eat the starch with enamylase. But the issue is uh I I'm not sure whether the amylase starch can it withstand the alcohol environment that we do in a typical kind of banana Houstino situation. You know what I mean? Um I I pressure cooked them first with uh some baking soda and like caramelize them, and it turned out really good. I was that was my favorite thing.
Nice. Nice. Um and then just I uh I I I picked up two centrifuges because they might contact the university had it. But the other one is uh pretty is not quite as fast as about 2,000 G's. Right.
Is there much I can do with that or you're gonna have to probably is it fixed angle or swinging bucket? Uh fixed angle. Okay. So the good news for you is that fixed angle uh fixed angle rotors uh tend to get uh a better uh level of clarification at uh lower G forces and a swinging bucket does. So you can get good results with a uh a fixed angle running at 2,000 G's.
You're gonna probably have to spin a little longer, and obviously, you know, you probably don't have the same capacity in it. But if you look at a fixed angle rotor, a fixed angle rotor is holding uh the tubes at a relatively steep angle. And what that means is is that the average particle that you need to clarify out of solution needs to only travel a very short distance before it hits the uh side of the tube. And then it's scoured down towards the bottom where it pellets and forms a puck, but they have very strong pelleting uh capabilities, which means that you can do the kind of work that we're doing at relatively lower speeds and still get good results. So I'd say it should work for a lot of the recipes, not all of them.
Um I noticed you use the wine clarifying um uh chemicals as well. Do you is that helpful or is it I mean obviously helpful, but like how helpful? Oh, incredibly helpful. Like so, you know, when I'm doing lime juice or grapefruit juice, I usually use it on citrus products. Um you know, it uh it the stuff almost auto clarifies.
If you let lime juice sit around and you do the Kiesel salt and chitasan, which are the two wine finding agents I use in in conjunction with SPL, it'll settle just like apple juice will. And the only reason I centrifuge it is to increase my yield. I mean, I'd probably only get a without a centrifuge, I'd only and someone asked me this question later, I'm gonna get to it, hopefully, but you only get a yield of about 50%. Whereas uh, you know, with a centrifuge, I get something like 98% yield off of lime juice. Oh, very good.
Alright, well, I think the thing I I'm glad that it broke in some ways because now I know like your worst case scenario. That is the worst you you have experienced the worst case scenario. It's all uphill from here, my friend. But great. All right, well, thanks so much.
Alright, thank you. Stay warm. Alright. So back to Christian Hall from Denmark. Um thanks so much for your hugely inspirational radio show and blog.
Very nice. We like to hear comments, right, Stas. Uh I have university background in philosophy and literature. Well, I have philosophy. You have literature.
Yep. Yeah. Me, I don't read fiction because I'm a jerk. I miss fiction. I'm gonna start reading it again.
Yeah. You know, my my wife, who is editing, edited my uh, you know, well, I have an editor, Maria Gorna Shelley, but who like my wife is like, you know, read, and is the reason why I'm considered a writer is because my wife reads all this stuff. She goes, Dave, you need to read fiction so that your writing doesn't suck so much. Ah, that's what you're doing. She's so hard.
My wife's so hardcore. Uh anyway, uh, philosophy and literature and learning about the analytical approach to cooking that's at the center of the modernist movement, viewing a dish as a series of problems to be understood and solved was what convinced me there might be a point to putting my 30-year-old self through cooking school. And today, four years later, I'm running my own catering company. We've got versions of your gel and ice cream on the menu at least once a week, and are running our centrifuge based on your recommendations every day. Nice.
I like that. And you know, oh, I like I said before, I've never been to Denmark. Someday. Actually, it's not true. I flew into Denmark to go to Sweden, but we didn't stay.
Doesn't count. That's like saying I was in blah blah, I was in the airport. No, you weren't there. All right. Uh here are my questions.
For a while now, I've been experimenting with vacuum reductions using the aspirator slash stirring hot plate method outlined in modernist cuisine. But I'm finding that running the aspirator is too much of a hassle for us to really start making proper use of it. Could I switch to a diaphragm pump instead? And if so, what would some of the advantages and disadvantages be? I've also been toying with the idea of adding a cold finger.
Cold finger. I love that word cold finger, don't you? Cold finger. Cold finger condenser and uh receiving flask in between the boiling flask and the pump to try out distillations. Would this work even remotely well, or should I just hold off until we can afford a proper road of app, aka rotary evaporator?
Keep up the great work. Looking forward to getting my Sears all. Thanks. Christian Hall. Okay.
So for those of you that have no idea what we're just talking about, uh, here's the thing. So uh when you want to do uh reductions of things, let's just say port wine, because everyone wants to reduce port wine, right? Don't you like a port wine reduction? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, shut up.
Uh see uh so it the problem doing normal reductions is obviously they happen at high temperature. So what by putting something under under a vacuum, like in a rotary evaporator or a vacuum still, you can do reductions at um low temperatures. So you get very, very fresh, punchy flavors that haven't been altered by high, high heat. Now, the average bartender, so in a rotary evaporator, that's one of the things you can do. So the average bartender cares mostly about the distillate, right?
And so this aspirator thing that we're talking about, which I'll explain in a second, doesn't really help help with that. Uh but the average uh cook cares mostly about the reductions, what's in the reduction flask. And so for that is the aspirator. So Chris Young and Nathan Miravold, you know, and uh Maxine, when they were writing the miners cuisine, one of the things they said, hey, look, it's not just for rich people is they bought an aspirator. An aspirator is uh uses a kind of like a venturi effect.
You blow water, it doesn't have to be water actually, it could be anything else, but they use water, uh, out of a faucet uh as it goes through uh that entrains air and blasts it down and it creates a vacuum. And this is how uh you know, in high school, you used to make a vacu well, at least me, I didn't because I didn't do it in college. You know, this is how you'd make a vacuum in the lab. You'd have these water aspirators and you'd run, they'd run water into the sink. And now that and they'd work.
Now, the advantage of this kind of a pump, and so then what he did is he he hooked this up to an Erlenmeyer flask, which is a square uh you know, uh uh flat bottom flask uh with a neck. The neck went to the aspirator pump, uh, and then uh you know you have your product in there, you have a stir plate to keep it stirred so it doesn't bubble over, and you heat it a little bit because if you don't heat it at all, it'll just get colder and colder as stuff evaporates. It's evaporative cooling. So you have to heat it, even if you're doing room temperature distillation, and you suck the vacuum, and there you go. You get your reductions at low temperature.
Now, theoretically, this is gonna work. However, aspirators uh have two fundamental problems. First problem, they don't suck a very good vacuum, period. Because the amount of vacuum you can suck is dependent upon the vapor pressure of water at whatever temperature you're using. So if you're heating your product up, right, uh, you know, up to a reasonable level, then you have a good deal of difference between the boiling point of your product and the current vapor pressure of water at your cold water temp.
One of the ways to solve that is to recirculate the water in the aspirator and put ice into it. This lowers the vapor pressure of the water and allows you to get uh higher vacuums. The other disadvantage of aspirators is they have abysmal, abysmal pump rates. So you can, you know, pump very little uh actual volume of air, regardless of how good your um your you know the the ultimate vacuum you can attain is. Now, one way to get around this is to gang multiple aspirators together, like and I you know I've said this many times, but you know, you know, I don't know, ten years ago when I was first looking into or whatever, eight years, whatever it is, looking into doing vacuum distillation.
I turned to whoever, you know, the people who uh you know need vacuum distillation and can't go to normal channels and don't have money. Meth producers. And so meth producers online, they used to, I don't know whether they still have them, had a bunch of websites on how to basically you know set up a meth meth labs at home. And one of the things they're concerned with is vacuum, uh uh vacuum distillation. And so they would take what's called a float, they would go to Home Depot, they would buy a flowjet garden pump, which is like, you know, like to pump water, and they would pump it through multiple gang aspirators hooked up to PVC piping.
And I tried it, and it worked. I wasn't making meth. I was not making meth. Uh, and uh, but they, you know, it worked okay, but still it chokes up. It's not the best thing for it uh for doing a vacuum reduction.
So I really, you know, if you're gonna be doing a lot of it, I think you could play around with the aspirator, but Matt. Uh now, if you're gonna switch to a diaphragm pump, diaphragm, so the the two main pumps, once you throw the aspirator out, the two main pumps that you're gonna be dealing with are either uh a rotary vein pump, oil pump, and the only really affordable ones you can get are the styles for refrigeration. So Robin Air, uh, you know, yellow jacket, um, things like the JB. These are refrigeration pumps, and they make a boatload of them because every refrigeration tech in the country, probably in the world, I'm sure it's done the same way everywhere. Um, they take this uh refrigeration pumps and they pump the old uh refrigerant out of your of your refrigerator, and they have to suck like an amazing vacuum to completely dry down and get all the contaminants out of your refrigeration system before they recharge it.
So there's a lot of them out there, and they're relatively inexpensive. And they have a relatively high pump rate, and they have a relatively good ultimate vacuum uh down in the you know, like you know, a couple of millibars you can get down to, which is pretty damn good. Uh more than you need. Um they also have a fairly decent uh toleration of uh entrained moisture. Now, your problem, now if you're good at the diaphragm pumps, they don't get nearly as good uh uh a vacuum.
They're a lot more expensive, but they don't uh volatilize uh or put oil or smells into your kitchen, and they're a lot cleaner than and they're a lot quieter than uh the rotary vein pumps. So that's that's the kind of the trade-offs. Neither one of them is designed to handle large quantities of vapor. That's the only advantage of the aspirator, is that the aspirator can handle as much vapor as it can pump out, it can handle because it's not getting contaminated by the vapor. It's just shooting the vapor out into whatever, you know, whatever the trough is that you're putting it into.
So, in order to use either a diaphragm pump or a rotary vein pump, you will need a cold trap of some sort. So, in order to do this at all, this is a long answer to your question, you're gonna need the cold finger to uh condense your product back because the secret of distillation, which is what you're doing, whether or not you think of it as reduction or not, what you're actually doing in a closed system, which is what you're gonna need to do to get your vacuum to not choke on you, is to do uh actual distillation, and you need to supply as much cooling power to recondense your vapor as you supplied to um to boil it off in the first place. And there are pumps, uh, you know, like BOC Edwards makes a dry vein pump that I'm I hear can handle large amounts of vapor, but you're talking like three, four, three, four thousand, you know, bucks. Uh so is it worth trying to do distillations that way before you get a roto vap? Let me put it this way.
Uh I did it. Uh I got products I thought tasted good, and but all it did was wet my appetite to buy a rotovap, which I eventually did. And so I think it's kind of uh, you know, it's worth doing as a gateway, and as soon as you start playing around with it, you're gonna say to yourself, damn, I need to go buy myself a rotovap. And you probably will. Let me know.
Anyway, what do you think, stuff? Is that the reasonable answer to the answer the question? Yeah. Alright, let's go to a commercial break on cooking issues. The following program was brought to you by S.
Wallace Edwards and Sons. Edward's Suriano hams are aged to perfection for no less than four hundred days and hickory smoked to achieve a deep mahogany color. The Edwards name is well known for its world-class aged and cured meats. Their exclusive curing and aging recipe produces a unique flavor profile that enhances the quality characteristics of Berkshire pork. Optimum amounts of pure white fat marble and contribute to a flavor that's a delicate, perfect balance between sweet and salty.
For more information, visit Edwards VA Ham.com. Wow. Wow. Yeah, I think we've been using that one a little bit, but maybe it's a new mix. Jack had to make a never associated uh Sam Edwards' hams with uh Harmonica stands out a little bit more.
But I guess now now I will. Yeah. Uh yeah, all right. Well, yeah, we like we like their we like their product. Make they make an excellent product.
But you have to eat it to enjoy it. Am I right? Yeah. Oh, a caller. We have a caller.
Color you're on the air. Hey Dave and Sasha, happy new year. Happy New Year. Um I have a question about Koji. And um I bought some of the Cold Mountain Koji and I used it to uh make my own uh shio koji and uh make amazake successfully.
And um how was it? Now I want to experiment and get into making some miso and and and some other things. But instead of you know buying the tubs of the of the cold mountain or one from online, what I want to do is make my own um uh you know, Koji sport. So if I let the rice um uh go to spore, I was reading that there might be some risk of creating some um some toxins if it goes too far. So I'm wondering if you have any advice on on on doing this at home and uh how to how to get a good result so then I can culture all kinds of things that aren't are aren't uh aren't just rice.
Right. Okay, so uh first of all, how was the amazake? Was it good? Oh, it's delicious, really sweet. You can take it, put it it actually makes a great ice cream.
Really? I've been at the Yeah, yeah. It's already thick and and and uh just just blend it up and uh in in the blender and stick it in the freezer. It's got great texture. That's really an amazing idea.
I don't know why I never thought of that. That's a good idea. I might try that. Uh if we should if it's a good idea today. So uh not not today.
Uh although you can just walk outside with it right now, just like turn on the the blender and make it. Just kidding. Exactly. So for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, uh Koji uh is uh fundamentally you you you you have an aspergillus, I forget which which aspergillus, it's an aspergillus mold that's grown on uh uh on things like rice, uh, and uh you use that to instead of uh a malting thing as a base to break down carbohydrates for then further fermentation, right? And so you start with a koji base for things like sake for amazake for uh or for things like uh misos or uh other fermented things like this.
And it it's uh the problem being, and this is you know the question here, is there are asparagillus strains that are that do produce toxins. Uh I unfortunately, you know, the real guys to ask on this are the uh Mamafuku uh the Momofuku lab guys, because they you know they're the ones doing all of their own kind of misos and they do all their own koji work and all their own spirulation. If you were to take a something that you had that was already uh inoculated and then just keep that one and keep re-inoculating based on that, I would think your odds of contamination with something that's nasty is pretty low, but I don't have enough experience for me to um go out on on a limb. And so, you know, I ask like having me say something, I would just be respouting stuff from Shirtleaf's Miso book and from Sandra Katz's fermentation book. So I you know I hesitate to give you my own kind of advice on it, you know.
Okay. Um I guess I'll I'll have a I'll I'll send an email to the Mobafuku lab guys and um if I get a response. Yeah, like Ryan over there, right? You know, I I I can ask him. I mean when I when I see him, so you know, fundamentally you just want to know like how to how to tell if something bad has happened.
Well, I want to make my own, you know, what they call Kochi Kin, right? Which is the it's the spores themselves. So then you can sprinkle that stuff on on pretty much anything and then you know, go to town and experiment. Um you can order some spores online, but then you know, you have a finite amount. Right.
Or you can take or I can buy, you know, like the cold mountain um Koji, which is already rice, grow it, and then harvest off the um some of the uh uh some of the spores from from that. Uh you know, so that's that's really that's really the question. Yeah, I mean I don't know that they do it so you so in other words you want something that you can like do once, then save as a dry form for a long time and then do again and like be guaranteed of good results. Exactly. Yeah.
I'll look into it and and and and uh I'll I'll uh because your feeling is if you just save some and just kind of dehigh it, grind it up and then powder that back in that you won't necessarily have the efficacy that you need. That's that's the that's a worry. Or you know, or will that work, I guess is the question. I mean, I think that probably will propagate it. I mean, I probably yeah, all right.
I I'll uh look this is something I should know, and I'm embarrassed for not knowing off the top of my head, so I'll look into it and Stas, write write uh write an email to yourself so that we have it for next week. And next week I'll get the answer for you because if I don't I'm about to able to fan uh answer it, I'll just ask the Momo lab guys myself and we'll we'll we'll get to the bottom of it for you for next week. Thank you kindly. Alrighty, talk to you so uh Joe from Chicago uh writes in about kitchen design. Hey Dave and Cooking Issues Crew.
I currently live in downtown Chicago. Also cold there. Some cold over there. I currently live in downtown Chicago and have plans to move out of the city in the next year or two. In the meantime, I've been obsessing over designing the perfect kitchen.
And given your recent move, I figured I'd ask you the following questions. What's most important to you when establishing uh yourself in a new kitchen space in terms of organization, placement of appliances, maximizing efficiency, etc. I would love to hear a rant on your approach to kitchen design and how will your approach change if you weren't crammed into a tiny NYC space. Alright, well, after the second section of that, how would how would my approach change if I wasn't crammed into a tiny space? I would definitely I would just have more freaking equipment.
It's not even just the space, it's also my power limitations. I live in an apartment and uh, you know, I have relatively unlimited supplies of gas, but I have very limited supplies of electricity, uh, which means that you know my ovens have to fire on gas. Uh I can only have a single group espresso machine. Whoa, pity me, mom. Uh douche.
Uh but the uh I'm a dish. Big douche, big douche, big douche. So uh, you know, so for me in an apartment, space management is a key issue, power management also an issue. Ventilation also an issue. Very hard to get good ventilation in a uh, you know, in a New York City apartment because it's hard to compromise window space and you're not allowed to punch a whole lot of holes in your wall.
Uh, even regular home ventilation that most people get just sucks. It's just so bad. I mean, the thing that I would do, the first thing that I would invest in when you invest in a new kitchen is invest in proper ventilation and makeup air so that you can run your kitchen without smoking it. And when I say run it, I mean beat it hard. You want to fire up all your burners.
You want to be cooking something at a billion degrees in your oven if you want to, and you know, grilling something, and you don't want to have the rest of your family run in there and be like, the house is full of smoke, it's full of smoke, it hurts my eyes. You know what I mean? This is not what you want to have happen. You want to be able to beat on your kitchen and have the smoke go away. And I've said this for a long time.
I think in kitchens, like I hope that in the next 10 years, one of the things people focus on more is air quality in the in the kitchen in terms of ventilation as being a major problem to be dealt with in the average home kitchen. And I don't really know whether it's just because people don't cook enough at home anymore or what, but people aren't concerned enough about ventilation, except for when you're about to cook, and then everyone's concerned about are we gonna set up the smoke detectors? Are you gonna set up the smoke detectors? And so people actually cook in a crappy fashion at home because they haven't bothered. There are people that out there who have like $5,000, $6,000 stoves, right?
And they won't use them to their maximum capability because they're worried about setting off the freaking smoke detectors in their house because they haven't invested in proper ventilation to use their cooking equipment properly, right? Now, second rant about uh cooking equipment is that I use uh exclusively professional uh ranges at home, even though I'm not supposed to. Uh and I'll tell you why. Home ranges don't have the power. They I looked at them like the average like professional style, and you can see my hands making those dumb quote things, but like professional style home ranges, they cost a lot of money, and the burners just don't have the oomph.
They're just not powerful enough to do what I want them to do. Um, you know, so you know, I I prefer, and I don't always use it, but I prefer to have a burner in the you know, I don't need it like mega, I don't need a 35 uh K BTU uh burner, but I like to have a burner that can, if you want to pump up to like in the and I and I know when I say this many times, measuring something based on BTUs alone is dumb because it's a measure of how much energy it uses, not a measure of how much energy it puts into the pan. A good induction unit can beat a uh you know, a 30,000 BTU burner any day. But that said, I'm I'm a mainly a gas person for the reasons I said earlier. Uh and the 30,000 in that range is where I kind of need to be to really get the power I want.
But you want to choose a burner that throttles down appropriately and that has a flame pattern that can accommodate both large pans and small pans without uh uh too much difficulty. Alright. If you're gonna invest, I would invest also in if you can get an electric oven, preferably convection, I would do that. I mean, so the ultimate in terms of unless you're gonna go full induction and go really nice and get used to it, which I've never done, you know, you're gonna want gas range and electric uh of it with good ventilation, right? Uh back in the day when I had space when I lived in a loft and power, you know, it was like three phase power because it was a sweatshop that it used to be before I moved in there.
I had a uh I had uh a blogged commercial convection oven, and that thing was a cookie machine. That thing I could blast out cookies and uh you know, non hearth bread bread styles, like nobody's business. Six pan, uh a six pan commercial uh convection oven, like the baking things, they're monsters. I would definitely recommend one of those. Now, in terms of I would get a commercial espresso machine, but that's me, and a seltzer rig, which you asked about, and I'll talk about in a minute.
I mean, that's kind of you know just stuff that I that I would want. But like once you have an espresso machine that's plumbed, you're never gonna want to go back to something that's not plumbed. Another thing, foot pedals. Put foot pedals on your sink. Let me just say this again.
Put foot pedals on your sink. People don't really know how to install them, so you're gonna have to learn to either get a plumber who's willing to work with you or learn to do a little bit of the plumbing yourself. TNS Brass sells a couple of ones that can have I don't want only foot pedals, I want foot pedals and uh wrist action handles uh as well. Here's something that uh I want you to consider. Why would you ever want to touch the handle of a faucet when your hands are dirty in the kitchen?
I'm gonna repeat this. Why would you ever want to touch the handle of a faucet when your hands are dirty in the kitchen when you could just use a foot pedal? My right stuff? Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, she said I don't care.
But foot pedals, everyone that's ever used them is like, everyone who's like, I talked about like that's ridiculous. Why do you need the foot pedals? And then uh when you when they actually use it, they're like, why have why does everyone not have the foot pedals? Everyone loves the foot pedals. The only problem with the foot pedals is uh cleaning around them can be a difficulty.
They make ones that are mounted high so you can clean under them easier, but I didn't have the capability to put that in. Another thing, unusual, but I think is rec uh a nice thing to have is if you can afford uh a six a standard kick is like three and a half inches, like the two by four on its side uh for things. If you can afford six inches and lift everything off the ground, really nice to clean under. And by the way, the Roomba can get underneath a six-inch thing. So it cleans underneath all of my all of my uh uh stuff, which is nice in the kitchen to be able to clean all the way uh underneath everything.
Another thing in the kitchen you're gonna want to look out for is uh your movement. I unfortunately now have to be in a galley kitchen. Oh, and light. Just tons of light. If you can, uh uh, I used to, in my old place, my kitchen was uh, you know, not was almost a part of my living room, and I had I put uh strong lights with barn doors on them so that I could shield the light from going into the living room and spilling over.
But uh kitchen without light is just it's just stupid. It's just dumb, right? Uh, in organization on it, I mean the way I had it before in my old place, I liked a lot better because it wasn't uh linear right now. Like I said, I'm in a galley. So right now my oven is next to my sink.
If you can arrange it so that two people can fit, if you can have like a good four feet uh you know clear space, have the long sink. I had a long I have a long sink with cutting boards that mount in my sink so I can go directly into the dispose all with cuttings, which makes it nice for like you know, speed. But then you can you can cut and prep and wash and then turn around and be at your stove. I like that a lot. I like that a lot.
Now, another thing on organization that I would say uh here's my cardinal rule, and it got messed up over time. Uh, but now that I'm back in a new place, I'm able to like exert more control over it. Only ever stack like on like. Never stack like on dislike things. What do I mean by this?
I detest nesting bowls where you have a little bowl and a slightly larger bowl, in a slightly larger bowl, in a slightly, and they're all made of heavy glass, and so I want that one in the middle, bah! And I gotta like get it, and then I gotta root around, or you have baking pants. It's ridiculous. You don't need that many sizes of bowl. You really only need, I have let me look in my head.
One, two, three, I have four size of stainless steel bowl. I have the thin, crappy ones that aren't presentation bowls, and I can stack ten of them, and that only takes up like an extra inch and a half of room because they stack so closely together. I have a tiny one I use for tiny mise en plus and for things like olive pits. I have a slightly larger one, a little bit larger one, and a big one that I use for uh salad prep and things like this and and and any time someone puts one inside of the other it's the wrong size I lose my I lose my freaking mind. You know what I mean?
I have uh two different sizes of Pyrex measuring uh cups that I use and they're stacked only like on like I have Bay and Marie's I have two sizes they stack like on like and here's another one for you when you're designing consider putting in a speed rack you know uh a you know a tray sheet tray pan right because what do you whenever you why is it that when you make I don't know what you celebrate right but why is it that when you make Christmas cookies or whatever why is it your kitchen gets so hosed? It's because or when you're making pizzas it's because you have no place to put the freaking things when they're done or when they're coming out or why is it that everything gets so ruined is because you have no place in your kitchen to put all this stuff as you're cooking. A speed rack is like it lets you uh you know store sheet trays either halves or fulls um in in in like a tall thing with food on them so then you can have I did you know a couple days ago I made Christmas cookies late because I didn't get to make my mom's well they're my mom's they're actually my great great grandma's bonbon cookies that I like so I made them after Christmas and I just put them in my speed rack blep blep blep blep and I was able to put you know eight dozen cookies into the speed rack and I had to go. So those are what do you think? Some good recommendations?
Yes. Now you had one more question and it's regarding seltzer you want to do a seltzer uh rig and use you link to something called soda soda isp so no soda dispenserdepot.com as a turnkey thing. The system they have looks like it will work. I recommend the only valve I recommend currently uh are CM Becker valves for soda. Most valves I don't like, even the style that looked like they emulate the old bash and blessing styles.
Most people don't make a decent one. Go to Fox Equipment, FOXX equipment, and look up their number one two C03-208 Ibis 1 faucet tower. That's the one I have, and it is the balls. I love that thing. It really makes very high quality, it dispenses high quality seltzer, and it's got a really nice compensator mechanism so you can adjust the flow rate, and I lose very, very few bubbles off of it.
I use a McCann carbonator that I put through a coal plate. I use a Manitowoc ice machine. I have their their business, their business luncheon room one that you can shut off the thing when you want and makes really nice ice cubes. I drilled holes in the side, put a coal plate in, goes through the McCann carbonator, which I run at 100 PSI with a 20-pound CO2 tank. I can post pictures later.
But anyway, so that's that's what I use. Kenneth Ing Wait, are we gonna get kicked off the air? Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's been a couple weeks since we've been on.
So I so next week I have to talk about uh uh uh chip and his egg machine. I have a question from Dave Kleiman regarding gummy bears. I have a question on cooking uh spiny lobsters from Josh and Antigua versus uh versus uh uh our lobsters, which you know I haven't actually I could talk a lot about cooking lobsters, but I haven't cooked a lot of spiny lobster. Uh Matt in Akron asked me about lime juice and how to clarify it without a centrifuge. I have answers, but I won't be able to get it to it.
Uh today, Matt McCarrari, your free saw question on gelatin I will get to. Uh and John on a sand bitter and spice question. Uh maybe I'll answer some of these on Twitter if I can do it shortly, or maybe we will get to them next time. But Kenneth Ingber, we'll leave on this. Uh longtime listener and also supporter of the museum, uh, says this.
Uh I was just thinking about the Sears all and came up with this question. Is there any danger associated with the angle of the canister? That is, there's gas phase in the upper portion of the canister and liquid phase in the bottom. When you tip the canister, the liquid could be delivered to the head rather than the gas. Does this pose a safety issue?
Winter backpackers and cold garage tinkerers deal with this issue because propane and butane are not very good in cold weather. I think it's because of not enough uh gas phase pressure in coal weather is true. That's why you have to change the orifice size if you know you're gonna be working in the cold. So the strategy is to sometimes tip the canister and deliver liquid phase. Sometimes this is an effective strategy, and sometimes you see a warning that this can be very dangerous.
Sometimes you see people complaining that the torch flame goes out. I saw in one place that the Burnsomatic talks about needing to use a pressure regulated canister if you're gonna turn it upside down. The literature for the TS 8000 says during use, hold hand torches upright to prevent flare-ups or flashes. So I'm asking about how this might be uh how this issue might affect the sears all. Clearly, burns onatic torches do not regularly explode under common issues.
However, the very high temperature and size the sears all head could pose a special danger. I think I remember Dave saying he recommends using the TS 8000 head, but what if you don't use it and just find that whatever your handy neighbor has in his garage? And this being a consumer product, your average user is not going to dependably take any special precautions. Best wishes to Dave, the crew, and you, Nastasha, for a happy new year, Ken. Alright, so the issue here is delivering liquid out of the uh thing and and some torches, the Burns Matic actually has uh some precautions to uh prevent you from dispensing liquid out of it, which is one of the reasons I like the 4000 and the 8,000.
If you turn them all the way upside down, yeah, they don't work they don't work as well, but they're meant to work fairly well in as a multi multiple position torch, even if they're not recommended. Iwatani, one of the reasons that the Iwitani is such a pain in the butt is they go through very great um uh pains to have and that's why if you look in a newitani torch, they have a thin tube running through that all the butane runs through to pre-volatilize and it warms it before it gets to where the uh orifice is so that it's always going to be a gas when it comes out, no matter what orientation you hold the torch. Now the issue is not so much one of uh safety. When it flames out, it's gonna flame out. But that's why the reason why the if you look at one of the searsols, the reason why it's angled, why it looks like a you know an old like 60s car front is because um we noticed that uh in our first production and our first uh prototypes that had a flat face.
When you turn the torch, the torches we were using all the way uh so that the face was uh parallel to meat or you know, parallel to a table surface, that you would start uh deli would start having problems with liquid delivery, especially when uh not a safety problem, but a problem with the actual flame. And you would get this noise, and you would get a fluttering, and this is especially exacerbated by the fact that you get a lot of um air uh and hot vapor coming back up off of the torch head directly back up in line with the torch. And that's why we angled the searsol head such that the torch would always be slightly inclined, even when the searzole itself was uh perpendicular to or sorry, parallel to uh your work surface. So that's why we did that. Uh it's not prime it it's irritating like like uh those flame mounts and stuff are irritating, but I don't think they particularly pose uh a safety issue.
Now, uh torches that don't have this kind of uh nice dispensing feature, they're not really gonna be high enough power anyway to do what you want with a searzole. I really highly recommend uh and I think pretty for the most part, anyone that's buying one kind of uh and we'll go into paints. Eventually we want to make our own torch or you or like link it with a torch sale. But you know, we we couldn't really for that for the first one around. But um, and if I was going to do one, I would definitely make it possible to fire it in any direction uh uh possible.
But anyway, that's that's my answer on that. So that's is something we think about quite a bit, and that's why the front head of the Sears All is angled. And we'll get those next questions. I'll either answer some of them on Twitter or we'll get them on next week on Cooking Issues, Cooking Issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org.
You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritage radio network.org. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today.
Thanks for listening.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.