Today's program has been brought to you by Heritage Foods USA, the nation's largest distributor of heritage breed pigs and turkeys. For more information, visit Heritage Foods USA dot 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, and welcome to Cooking Issues.
This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network, every Tuesday from roughly twelve to roughly twelve forty-five. Call in your questions to 7184972128. That's 718497-2128. Joined in the studio with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing?
Good. Jack, the headphones are really loud. Well Maybe just yours. Oh, actually I'm not, I think mine are too, but normally I don't complain. I just suck it up.
I just suck it up. I wonder who was here before you. Someone Someone who's deep? Is that better, guys? Yeah.
So listen, uh, Jack, you uh well, you don't are not from Brooklyn anymore, but you still you know the Bushwick news, right? So uh I'm I asked. Oh the chickens? Yeah, so here's the thing. I want you guys to know Heritage Heritage uh Meets, whose offices are right here in Bushwick over on Siegel Street, not involved with the largest cockfighting ring in New York history that was just broken up, uh was it yesterday, the day before you read about this does?
They uh the biggest cock writing thing what do you know about it, Jack? I mean, I used to live near some of those places, so I'd see all the live poultry markets kind of walk by, but I didn't realize those live poultry markets were also, you know, underground cockfighting rings. Yeah, yeah. And they they busted a farm in upstate. Oof.
And you know, that was uh that was a uh a component of the farm bill that passed, actually, included some some language and legislation on uh being tougher on on animal fighting circuits. So maybe that has something to do with that. Really? I I didn't I did not know that. Yeah.
Do you have do we have any good uh references for people to go to on our website for uh our feelings as a as a network on uh the farm bill and what's going on? Absolutely. Yeah. Uh tomorrow on our front page we're gonna run a piece that has opinions from Marion Nessel, uh, Michel Nishon, the folks over at Just Food and a few others. So we kind of sourced a whole bunch of opinions and broke down the farm bill.
So check the home page tomorrow. That would be Wednesday. Nice. February twelfth. Nice, good leading.
Am I right? Yeah, nice. Nice strong. Okay, uh so we had a question in on the Twitter from uh Matt Schuster saying, uh at Cooking Users, hey Dave, any suggestions for a food dehydrator with a timer for a small fifty-seat restaurant. I want to de-moist things.
Well, okay. Uh I don't really have any like m the one I use, I use almost exclusively is uh the Xcaliber, uh which, you know, uh m most restaurant folks that I kn know also use the X caliber. But the question is, how much stuff are you gonna dehydrate uh and and on what kind of a consistent basis? Now the Xcaliber doesn't have a timer on it, but like I say, I haven't used ones with a timer. My main experience comes from either using the Xcaliber or the crappy round ones.
Now the Excalibur just beats the pants off of the crappy round ones. Uh and the reason is because it can hold a lot more than the crappy round ones can. And because the way the airflow works in it, it's not coming up through the center, it's kind of passed along all the racks from the back, it's a lot more even rack to rack. But and and the Excalibur is good because it's relatively small for the amount of stuff it can dehydrate. So you know you can dehydrate you know a in the small excaliber, which is when I have you can dehydrate like two pounds of pasta, right?
In in one go, uh or you know things like that. Now back w the the kind of kings and queens of dehydration that I have met are the folks at uh pure uh at Pure Food uh and wine, Sarma Mel and Gaius's joint. Uh and back in the day they used to run did you visit that kitchen with me, Stuzz? No. They r they ran the entire kitchen was it was like a library of excaliburs, like excaliburs stocked on X calibers, like w like whole walls of excaliburs.
And that I was joking with her when I visited years ago that it was the hottest kitchen I had ever been in in my life, even though it was like raw raw cooking and they didn't have anything because of all those freegan dehydrators running all the time. Excalibur I believe I haven't had time to check it because I just got the tweet in, but Excalibur makes a uh much larger uh version now. Uh and I know some people that have used the Cabela's the Cabela's uh dehydrator, you know, Cabela's the folks that uh you know they sell outdoor gear. Although I hear that I I've never been to a Cabela store. I hear that they that they used to be like the life changing sports store, but now Stas has a new one that we need to go to what's it called?
Big bass fishing or something's like in the most amazing store you've ever been in, right? The one in Foxboro. Where's Foxboro? In the stadium, Gillette Stadium. Where what state?
Massachusetts. Massachusetts, yeah. And you said it was like the greatest store you've ever visited in your life, right? It is. It had like what what it had that you could get mauled by a bear or something if you wanted it or something.
They had shooting, fishing. They had shooting in the store. But w one of those like where you hit the target with the with the not the crappy ones from the uh from the carnival where you they shoot all in different directions and you can't actually knock the star out. No. This was yeah, it was really cool.
I took Booker and Dax uh last summer to one of those things and they had to try they wanted to try and shoot that pellet. You know those horrible pellet guns at the Carney things? And like there's one little bit of star left and they don't get the prize. I'm like, kids, that's how it works. You're not supposed to win.
This is like learn like kids don't learn. I I still have a twins that I want to do those kinds of things. Did you used to play carnival games as a kid? Because your parents didn't let you, or because you just like even back then, you're like, I hate the garnival games. I don't know, I just never did.
No? So anyway, so uh ask yourself why you need uh Matt a timer on your uh dehydrator. Here's what I typically do when I'm dehydrating. And um I'm sorry that my my uh recommendations can't I don't have any personal use of larger ones. You know what I always want to do for really large stuff?
Now 5060 seats if you're only doing a couple garnishes, excalibur is great. And then even up to the point of buying two excaliburs, I would do it that way, and here's why. You can have two different excaliburs set to two different drying regimens, uh, and you don't then need to um the brain just turned off. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, that happens sometimes, huh?
The brain off. You don't need uh to worry about whether or not two things are different. You can have two things that want to go at different temperatures going at the same time if you just have two excaliburs. Um I've always wanted to someone to do large scale stuff, and I believe the guys uh at uh Pure Food did this. Also Feel Food, uh, you know, Galen and Fernando's place down uh that we did that event at they had uh they have like a bunch of dehydrators.
I think they had the larger excaliburs, right? Did you notice back in the kitchen? Yeah. Um, so the what I would do is get a couple of those. When you're using a dehydrator, I don't know that a timer is strictly speaking so necessary.
What I tend to do is I start my dehydrators fairly high because uh there's a huge temperature gradient that forms as you 'cause as you're evaporating liquid off of your foods at the get go when they're still fairly high water, uh, you get a lot of evaporative cooling around the surface of your product. And so to speed dehydration, I always start the dehydrator uh at a higher uh temperature. And then I turn it down. So a lot of times when I'm doing puff snacks, uh the main problem is you don't want to over dehydrate because then you don't have enough moisture left in the in the stuff to puff properly. So what I'll do is is I'll I'll jack it to like a hundred and thirty-five, uh, which I don't know what that is in Celsius, but like 135 Fahrenheit uh for a couple of hours, and then I'll just turn it down to low, down to like a hundred or something like this, uh, and then let it ride overnight.
Now when the fans are going, it's not gonna pick up a lot of moisture unless it's extremely humid in your kitchen. And it'll slowly equilibrate and come down. And then in the morning, if it's still a little bit too soft, it won't be too dry at this point, but if it's still a little bit too soft, then I can jack the temperature for another hour or so. But I just leave them running on low overnight, is typically what I do. But you have to really low so you don't uh overdry uh your products.
If you wanted a project, the Excalibur is a fairly good case, except the plastic on it tends to break, is the only issue with it. You could put a PID on it. I've never done it, but you could get uh uh like you could get some way of measuring humidity at those low temperatures and kind of measure the humidity in the box, or maybe even uh if possible, you could I guess do it on liquid and then drive it with uh with a PID controller so that it would ramp itself down. I haven't done it, uh, but it's technically feasible, and I'd say you could probably do it for under 200 bucks, uh, even with the weird stuff you'd be measuring. Uh trivially less if you just want to put it on a a timer and ramp soak, you can go to uh Albert Instruments or anything like that and buy a uh a controller that you could put on a timer and ramp soak the temperature uh if you didn't care about external measurements, and that would be a trivial problem.
That would cost you like on the order of like 45 bucks to do. And you know, if you've never done one before, it would take you probably a couple hours to figure it out. But I always wanted to do that with a bread with a bread proofer. We were gonna do that. Remember years ago we were gonna do that?
We never did it. We're gonna convert a giant bread proofer into a dehydrator. I think someone probably does that commercially because it's a good idea and it makes sense. Anyway, uh so much for dehydrators. I was doing a bunch of what was I doing on my dehydrator?
Bell pasta recently I was doing. Yeah. Hey, we got a caller. Caller, you're on the air. Hi, Dave, Nastasha, Jack, everyone, it's Brian.
How you doing? Doing well. Yourself? Good. Um, so two things.
One is I have a question about uh bread, but uh first is that uh never heard heard the final answer about making my own koji from the uh the other week. I know, dude. I have not gotten a hold of Ryan yet, is the reason why you haven't gotten the information yet. I need to get a hold of those guys. I've like they've been kind th they haven't been MIA, I've been MIA, which is why you don't have the final answer yet.
So we'll start with the other one, and I still owe you that answer. Well, thank you very much. Uh I'll hold on for that. Um but this one has to do with with with bread baking at home. So um I don't have a deck oven uh here, you know, so um I have no possibility of um, you know, injecting steam into into into my oven, you know, through the oven it itself.
And so my question is, you know, I've been doing a little bit of reading and I'm looking at uh a couple different books, and one is uh the tartine bread book, which says um uh they they use a um a combo cooker uh it's kind of like a Dutch oven basically um in which the kind of the smaller part um they they kind of bake essentially on the lid um so it's basically like a a Dutch oven um as a way of kind of capturing the steam and then the other one You mean like like la like Leahy style? Lake Leahy style exactly all right so uh except that if you use what's called a combo cooker it makes it easier to to to not burn yourself. Um and then the other other thing and they're made by loads by the way and then the other thing I'm looking at is the Bouchon Bakery um uh a cookbook from um Thomas Keller and Sebastian Ruxell and they're saying basically um take a ridiculous amount of um river stones and chain and put it in in the in the bottom of the of the oven as a way of of catching all the heat and then take a super soaker and inject a huge amount of water into the oven so it all kind of uh turns to turns to steam and I'm kind of wondering what's the best way to get steam into the oven. Which of these two methods would be most effective for bread baking. Okay now your oven is under fired gas oven?
Yeah. Okay. It's a standard standard home gas oven. Right but the the heat comes from then from below. Correct.
Yeah because you can't pull that like if you have like a an electric oven with uh upper elements and stuff like that you can't pull that lower chain the reason that the chains and whatnot on the bottom of the oven is because that's where the heat is most intense. So that's like an old school uh, you know, bread baker's way to kind of um you know, do you know, clutch uh having not having, you know, real steam injection. And it works the way that it obviously sounds it's gonna work, by um literally you s you put a bunch of you know, st stuff in the bottom with thermal mass, let it heat up, right? And then and the the use I look stones I'd be a little bit wary of because I everyone says like river stones aren't gonna break. I've put stones that I thought were pretty smooth in fires and had them blow up before.
Now the ovens probably maybe not be violent enough to blow a stone apart, but I don't know. You know what I'm saying? Uh you know, I've I've put I've put many stones on fires before for various reasons and had them explode, kind of expectacularly explode. Now it's inside of an oven, but you wouldn't want to be lowering your oven and putting your face in there when you're loading something to you know, just to have something explode on you, you know what I mean? Um so I don't know.
I think that's the super soaker where you could do it from a distance. Yeah, oh yeah, good idea, super soaker. I forgot super so when you said super soaker, you know I was in my head I was thinking spray bottle because that's what I'm used to. Uh so super soaker, interesting. My my kids would love it if I had to bring a super soaker home to cook with.
They would absolutely love it. Um but the um so I mean that works, right? Um the you know, I've never done a lot of the like Leahy style, by the way, that thing you call a combo cooker, is that like their camp oven? Is that the Loge camp oven? Like their old school Dutch camp oven.
So basically it's um it it's got uh like what the lid would have a handle and I think you can cook on it separately. It's kind of like the lid would be the skillet and then you put the the pot kind of right over it is is the is the technique. Yeah. Um in in in this case. Oh inverted.
Inverted, yeah. Gotcha. You're not having to like try to jam the your dough into a hot Dutch oven. Yeah, I think that's like the old camp cookers that you could flip the lids on and do stuff like that. They're pretty cool.
Is do you like it? I don't have one. I'm I'm trying to figure out whether or not I should get one or if um you know I should go with the with the the Bouchon method. Well do you like the leahy st it do you like that Leahy style, like the no need kind of very loose like uh large internal or regular bubble stuff cooked in a Dutch oven. Do you like it?
Um I've I've tried it in a in a Dutch oven at a friend's house and the dough and it tasted fine but the problem is is you gotta shape it into a bowl. Yeah. Right. So you can't have other shapes of bread. Well I mean that dough so loose anyway that you're gonna ha it's gonna be problematic I think to do I mean at least the recipes of it I've tried is very loose.
I would try that the But it doesn't matter what you know what the what the dough is necessarily. It's a I guess my question has to do with the method. Right. And and and I guess the other problem with that is that you know does it in addition to what it does in terms of capturing steam, how does it change the temperature of of the bread? Because then you have this kind of radiating heat source around around the bread in addition to the oven.
Right. Well I mean I think of it mainly I I haven't thought about the second aspect of it. I've really sp spent most of my kind of the mental energy on thinking about those things about the actual ability of the closed but still vented container to deliver steam to the crust over the initial portion of the bacon before the initial dehydration hits it, right? Right. Um and look it's effective I look I I tend to, you know you know, when I was doing it, I used I didn't use river stones.
I had a lot of masonry at the bottom of my oven and I would throw water on it to cause kind of you know violent steam eruptions whenever you know when when I loaded and when I when I didn't and I always had good luck with doing it that way. Uh I never did the chains because I had a lot of masonry. The reason why a lot of people don't recommend and this is the you know the flip side putting a lot of masonry or you know uh or stones or chains or stuff in chains aren't going to affect the thermal mass of your oven as much because metal heats up fairly quickly. Uh but you know in the my the the first one I did which had a boatload of fire brick in it, it would take uh like an hour and a half to heat up all the way. You know what I mean?
And you know I solved that in the last oven. I haven't modified my current well I did a little bit but I haven't fully modified my current oven. In my last modified oven I did that I put uh secondary heating elements into into my s into my oven and the secondary heating elements allowed me to heat up a mass of masonry fairly fairly quickly. Uh it which now I'm thinking I'm using less masonry as well more nimbly with with the heating elements in it. So you know if you could get away if you like the results by doing the kind of chain uh and steam method the thing I like about that is it g leaves you a lot more open with loading your oven and futzing around because you're not worried about having to fit inside of some sort of Dutch oven or or skillet thing.
You can just have your stone or if you're a a steel person if you if you you know buy the modernist uh uh cooking story and switch to steel instead of stone for your your bottom it gives you much more uh ability to load things in different ways that make sense yeah yeah I mean it just uh it it enables you to to make different shapes I can make baguettes and and things that doesn't have to be round and fit into the into the into the Dutch oven. But as far as steam injection you're not sure which is going to be most effective. No kind of stimulating that okay no but you know look I've had some people say to me hey you know the steam dissipates very quickly when you just put steam in the you know the other thing people used to do is they'd load ice cubes in uh on sheet trays right on the bottom of the hot oven and then they would vaporize fairly quickly because a lot of people complain that the a toss of water on the steam dissipates so quickly that you're not getting the full effect that you would want. That's the argument for the Dutch oven being the better technology because it's going to contain more steam around the bread longer than just throwing the thing in. And that's why some people used to do like kind of ice cubes on the bottom instead of um instead of water because it was guaranteeing like a longer delivery of uh moisture to the to the to the product.
I don't necessarily know I believe that I'll tell you what I'm actually gonna do uh but I don't know how how you know much you're allowed to mod up modify your oven. I'm I'm planning on getting um like uh uh there's a most ovens on the side where the control stuff is have a place uh where you can drill a small hole and I'm gonna I was gonna drill a small hole in into it and then uh have a copper tube feeding up out of it with uh uh like a bottle that you could set like an IV drip and just have it drip uh water in and you could change whatever rate you want and actually add water to the oven with the door closed. And that's what I'm gonna do uh you know fairly soon. Like the my just handed my book manuscript in again, the the copy written, so I have a little more time, so hopefully I'm gonna do that in the next couple of weeks. The other thing, have you bought for for loading, have you bought a super peel yet?
No, I haven't. You've seen it though? I've seen it. It's like uh you kind of pull it and then the um the canvas kind of rolls down. Yeah, it's freaking awesome.
I I haven't got a chance to use it that much, but it's freaking awesome. I got I bought it for my for my kids' birthday party when I was gonna do a bunch of pizza and uh Dag Nabit, it's like I used to style, do you ever do that kind of baking bread and that kind of stuff? I like detest loading stuff off and on peels. So much so that when I used to do pizza, I would make the pizzas on uh parchment paper and then cut the parchment paper out and then just load all of my racks with uh with uh pizza loaded on parchment and then cook them on the parchment paper because it's so easy to load parchment off and on. But the super peel, I like it so far.
Check it out. Um it sounds like it's probably really good for really flat dose. Oh yeah. I mean, you because you're not touching, you're not moving it around. If you look, if you've done it done any bread loading on peels before, put the pros always make it look easy, but I don't bake bread that often, you know, and I hate having to to shake it, and then I hate over over, you know, uh overflowering or over whatever you add, whatever your you know proclivities are.
On the bottom. On the bottom, I hate that. And then you get that little extra crap of like, you know, either flowery or like burn on the butt. I hate it. You know what I mean?
I hate it. And I I hate the thought of it sticking. I hate sitting down there and and scootying around with it near my oven. I hate it. I hate it all.
But the super peel, uh, you know, that's a pretty cool little uh piece of uh kit. You can get it on Amazon now by the way. Yeah. Look into it. What do you think about those baking steals that modernist cuisine recommends?
You think that just getting the river rocks and uh and the um and the chain is is just as good well the the the River Rocks and the chain is not to bake right on top of. That's for literally just for the steam aspect of it. Right? So it's not meant to replace uh it's not meant to replace the way in which uh heat energy is delivered to the bottom of the crust uh on and you know on initial bake in um in breads. And so the old school way of doing it which was based literally on trying to convert your oven into an you know an old masonry oven you know so if you go and you read like the bread builders by um oh my gosh it's by uh Dove and Wing Scott I think I for I forget the names of the authors, but the bread builders which was one of the first, you know, you know decades ago or whatever a couple decade ago like one of the first kind of really cool like here's how to build a bread oven book for folks like us.
And uh you know it's like mimicking a bread oven inside and that's the the baking stone right now the thing about a stone is is that they store heat for a long time but they're very slow kind of at releasing it. It's kind of retained heat kind of technology. Whereas the guys at Modernist Cuisine and I've spoken at length with Chris Young about this who's now running chef steps and I you know I think this was you know in part like his doing uh well at least at least one third in part right because he was you know the second author on that book is you don't need to store up the energy for a long time. Uh you just need to deliver it fairly quickly at the beginning, and so you need a thick enough piece of metal such that it can store enough heat to deliver that heat wall up to your crust. And that is the idea of the steel as opposed to the stone, right?
And clearly it's more versatile, but I've just haven't really had an opportunity to use it because by the time that had come out I'd already invested in a bunch of stone and it cooked a bunch of it. But I I have one now. I haven't really used it yet. I'm gonna see whether or not I like it when I fire up my oven neck next time. But you know, they they did a lot of testing and they have a lot of testimonials around it and people are now selling those uh those metal uh things at the at the houseware store.
So, you know, clearly clearly it must have some e efficacy. Yeah. Um sounds like it, but I'm wondering if it's too much for it. Sounds good for pizza where you want it want it quick and and and band to to deliver all that heat, but I'm wondering if for bread it might be too much and it would uh w would char the bottom, do you think? I don't know.
You know, I don't think it'll char the bottom because it's never gonna reheat up over the top of your initial of your oven temperature. So, you know, if you're if you have uh, you know, depending on how you cook, how you bake, you know, if you uh you know, w if if if you use a ramping temperature, so if you're one of those people that starts a little bit higher and then ramps down a little bit, they the stone will never I mean the uh metal will never heat above your oven temperature. Do you know what I'm saying? What what it will do is deliver that initial oven temperature for uh longer to the bottom of your crust than any other technique will. Uh a stone will deliver a more uh will deliver heat for longer, but once it's depleted will not heat back up to oven temperatures as as quickly or at all.
You know what I mean? Right, right. Okay, this has been really, really helpful. Um I'll I'll let you know what I end up going going with and and see what happens. Alright, cool.
Let us know. All right. All right. Thanks for a good week. Bye.
All right you too. Bye. Uh Thomas Vowe wrote in at cooking issues clarifying with Agar. Agar, my favorite clarification seaweed. You ever notice agar is like the one thing where like we say agar, but like a lot of people technically say agar agar.
Like they say it twice. Mm-hmm the hydrocolloids so nice they named it twice. Agar agar. Stas hates working with agar, don't you? I do.
I do. Remember that time we had to do all that grapefruit and we d did a freestyle on it and then it didn't work and so then we had to do we had to we had to do like quick agar on like gallons and gallons and gallons and gallons of grapefruit. And then we were spinning that sucker in the centrifuge and trying to pour it off and then we kept on having to re spin it to get yield because our yield wasn't good enough and we needed to get that crap out and we had that event. Yeah. And you remember what do you say to me?
I'm never doing this again. Yeah I believe that's a stuff. No. It's like three years ago. Yeah you're like I'm never doing this again.
Yeah. Yeah. You're like, as for clarification, Dave, not me. I won't do it. You don't mind SPL though.
You would do Hustino. Yeah, I'm fine with that. Yeah. Uh okay. Uh clarifying with Agar.
Juice has a funny medicinal taste post clarify. Is this normal from Agar? Any brand name recommendations? Thanks. Well, I only use telephone brand Agar.
Actually that's true. I do only use telephone brand Agar. Uh but that's because you can buy telephone brand Agar from uh grocery stores like uh Asian grocery stores. Now I have that, oh my gosh, I have that Spotify the news thing going away. Asian grocery store.
Anyways, so the uh but the thing is uh, you know, you can use any agar as long as you get used to it. I wouldn't use the prehydrated ones or the ones that don't require boiling because although I haven't used them, I know friends of mine who have had bad luck with them. The I've never had an off taste from agar, to be honest. What I would do is taste your literally taste the agar powder and see whether or not you're getting uh any any sort of off taste. What I think is happening is this.
Uh the taste of juices changes sometimes quite radically when you clarify them. So what's most likely happening, uh, because you you don't specify what kind of juice that you're using, uh, is that um there are some flavor that the this medicinal flavor was present already in the juice, but was being masked by another flavor that was removed by uh uh clearly a a better flavor than was removed that was removed by the agar. So uh just to give you an idea, when you agar clarify orange juice, the remaining orange juice tastes the clarified stuff tastes like sunny D, right? So if you like sunny D, then I guess that's good, but you know, most people want orange juice to taste like orange juice and not like I haven't decided. I think it tastes more like sunny D than like Tang.
Have you tasted as does? No. Do you did you drink Tang growing up? No. What about Sunny D?
Yeah. D do you like sunny D? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because you grew up with it.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh so, anyways, so it uh that's my feeling. So when you clarify grapefruit juice with agar, um it appears to get much sweeter. It's not actually getting sweeter, it's just an Orangeon and some of the bitter components have been stripped from it by the agar.
So my guess is that it's not the brand of agar you're using, it's the fact that there's flavors getting stripped out of it. But I could be wrong. Taste taste the agar. I'm a big believer in tasting a lot of these things at least once to see kind of what's going on. And some hydrocolloids definitely do add a flavor to it.
But think about it. When you're clarifying with agar, you're adding two grams per liter. That's two-tenths of one percent of agar. Uh and you could add you know two graph two grams of straight acid, for instance, wouldn't change uh wouldn't make a liter of product that acidic. You know what I mean?
Lime juice for reference is around six percent acidity, and this is two-tenths of one percent or ten times thirty times less acid that's in in lime juice. It's the equivalent of putting uh an umce of lime juice into a liter of of liquid. Anyway, uh so I doubt that, and that's a very strong acid. So I'm doubting that you're getting the flavor transfer off of it, but I could be wrong. Things like methylcel, you st you tend to tend to start tasting once the percentages get you know up into the one percent range, things like this, you know, eight eight tenths of a percent or one percent.
Things like uh guar, which can have a very beanie taste, guar if you don't get the good one. Uh fracking guar. Uh it it you know, that can have a beanie taste that you can taste when you get over about half a percent, but um not agar, I haven't had a problem with it. Oh, unless you're using those weird, like unpurified like agar flakelets, which might have god knows what kind of like seaweed residue left in them. You bet you like just make sure you're buying the powder, the powder.
Uh white powder. Uh should we take a break? Sure. We'll take a break, come back back with cooking issues, Heritage Foods USA is proud to announce our Heritage Rare Breed Chicken Rotation. We've partnered with Frank Reese, the country's preeminent poultry farmer, to create an alternative market for non-industry bred chicken and show our customers what real chicken tastes like.
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Back with cooking issues. That one excited you, huh? Yeah. Well, good. Anytime you got banjo music, banjo music's the best.
I thought it was the chickens that excited you. Well, it's chickens plus banjos. How do you beat chickens plus banjos, especially coming off of a cock fighting bust? Impossible. Hey, Dave, by the way, uh, we were at the Eat Drink Bloody Mary competition again this year.
Oh, yeah. And I I enjoyed the Booker index uh kind of what was it? Pineapple curry. Did you like it? That's uh I liked it.
Our bartender, our bartender Austin, that uh that was his uh creation. Only thing uh I uh helped them with is they were having some problem in the uh mid palette, so I hadn't put a little tomato paste in to round out the mid palette. But uh yeah. It did not win. I I heard it did not win.
Who won? Uh the the judge's choice went to Dover and then the people's choice went to extra fancy, which was like it's funny. The people's choice went to the the most classic standard Bloody Mary. And I was like where does the line sit? You know, like w when does what you're making cease to be a Bloody Mary, or for that matter any classic cocktail, right?
Like look, like like the thing is is that anything that you do, this if you're gonna do classic, you know, you're gonna you're gonna do classic. When people want the crap that they're that they're used to. That's why like every year, like last year, you know, we did the we did the tomato soup with the with this grilled cheese sandwich um for uh for the Bloody Mary. Uh people in general want you know, they want what they want, but they what they what they're used to. It's kinda sad.
But like unless they're specifically going someplace to have it reinvented, people in general just kind of want uh the stuff. Well, the one that won, the judge's choice, was it wildly different? It was pretty different. What was it? Uh it had some kind of weird spices in it.
I I don't re there were a lot to taste. I remember it being one of the funkier ones, though. But I mean it's like, is it even a Bloody Mary anymore at that point? You know? Well, I mean, these contests, right?
Like, here's the thing. Look, let's say you were gonna make a contest. People in general, they like a good story. This is a contest now. They like a good story, and you have to reinvent it.
Otherwise, what's the point? Like, it's not about let's get let's get five people in the room, we'll all make the same daiquiri specs and you'll see who makes the best daiquy. You know what I mean? Uh Bloody Mary is a good one for people because everyone has their own, it's kind of like barbecue sauce. Everyone has like, they're like, Well, my barbecue sauce, exactly how much brown sugar and and uh you know other stuff in it do I put in it, you know, whatever, molasses or whatever, vinegar.
It's like because they're all roughly the same, but people are like people are like you know, violently proud of their particular mix of the same ingredients that the next fella uses. Or they're like, I add this one special ingredient that makes mine radically different. It's not really radically different, they're all fairly similar. You know what I mean? Uh and so uh when in contests like that, the there's kind of different ways you can go.
In a Bloody Mary contest, there's the radical difference idea, and then there's, you know, where you take, hey, I'm doing a spicy tomato based cocktail, now where can I go with that that's totally different, you know? Or you could say, I'm gonna go, you know, with a very similar concept, but then I'm gonna add like my special pickle to it. I'm making a little quotes fingers. And that's another way to, you know, that's another way to kind of handle these contests. In general, someone who does something that has a flavor profile fairly similar to uh what people are used to tends to win.
Uh you know, if you have like a little bit of like, you know, flair added to it, like great. But um at least that's been my been my experience. Yeah, funny to see like I don't like Bloody Mary, so all the ones that I was voting for were the ones that didn't taste like Bloody Marys. Wow. You don't like Bloody Mary's what do you have against a Bloody Mary?
I don't know. It's uh too me it's like a meal. Like a meal. Yeah. S you like Bloody Mary's not really.
Right? For real? Mm-hmm. What did I my phone won't up to what don't you like about them? It's like a meal.
It's heavy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I hate most kind of gloopy uh gloopy drinks, but that's the one that gets a pass for me. I don't like uh I'm part of this new th new thing that we're all starting where you don't have to eat them at uh night.
I don't think you necessarily need to have the the the mean sorry in the in the morning. I think you can have one at night even though we started the bar with uh with a a drink called um Lady of the night which was a Bloody Mary that was clarified so that you could drink it at night. I think you could drink it during the day. Let's not forget someone asked me this the other day and uh you know I remember when I was a kid you weren't supposed to have gin and tonics in the wintertime. It was summertime only it was the equivalent of where which is the which is the uh holiday that that ends the uh summer stuff um is it labor or labor day labor day you know how you're not supposed to wear white after labor day anyone remember this yeah yeah so uh it was the same way with gin and tonics you weren't supposed to order a gin and tonic after labor day either it's kind of when you can wear white is when you can also order gin gin and tonic, right?
I mean, I never wear white, but but the the that's the point. But that taboo is gone. I mean, uh no one has a stigma now walking into a bar and ordering a gin and tonic any time of year. People don't even think of it as a seasonal drink anymore. Uh and so I think the Bloody Mary might be going that way where it's not only seen as you know, kind of a uh a morning thing.
I mean, think when you think about it, people can order a Corpse Revivor whenever they want. A Corpse Revivor is meant to uh be a little hair of the dog that bit you for like heavily alcohol infused people in the morning. Anyway. Uh wait, Jack, we got a caller? We do.
Caller, you are on the air. Hey Dave, it's me, Don Lee. Hey, Don Lee. I'm calling in to remind you that you are bar backing for us on Sunday at a MoFed fundraiser at the Golden Cadillac. I uh that is uh that is true.
That is true. From what time? 5 p.m. to 5 p.m. until 7 p.m.
We're gonna do $8 cocktails courtesy of Perno Ricard, and all proceeds will be going to uh the Museum of Food and Drink. Are we getting uh are we getting Missy Elliott to recut uh get your freak on with get your drink on for that, or is that later? Uh I think that's gonna be the next fundraiser. Next fundraiser, get your drink on. Get your drink on.
That'd be great though, right? Yeah, this time you get to come uh harass me and John Daragon bartending together for the first time in three years. And uh he's gonna make some Malibu drinks. I'm gonna make some Kalua drinks, and we're gonna you know, we're gonna apply molecules to make uh bad cocktails taste good. Oh, sweet, sweet.
Well, you know, I hate molecules. I don't like them because I don't like matter. I don't like existence, so I detest all forms of molecules. But uh what was the last time you what was the three years ago? What did you guys do three years ago?
We were at uh PDT. We opened PDT together. That was only three years ago? That was no we opened PDP five years ago. That was only five years ago?
Yeah, yeah. Can you believe that? That was only five years ago? It seems like eight lifetimes ago. Yep.
So yeah, Don Lee and uh John Darragon were the opening team at PDT. And brought you such drinks as the Bentons, what was it, Bentons? What'd you call that drink? The Bentons old fashioned. Yeah, with the with the fat washed uh the fat washed uh with the fat wash bourbon, uh Benton's bacon into four roses yellow label.
And uh and for the record, you're allowed to totally do bacon infuse whatever you want. I'm not gonna give you a shit about that. No, but I'm not uh I will never do it. I won't. Like you guys own that.
It's like in fact, in the cocktail book, like the the Maria made me put a fat washed uh that's my editor, maybe put a fat wash drink in. And so I did a take on do you remember um to you know Tona uh Palomino who was a WD50 is now uh doing bar in uh in uh Chicago? He had a drink on the menu at WD called uh old school back in like oh seven. And old school was fat washed uh um what's it called? What's that stuff called?
Peanut butter. But it was uh he did it on flourage style. He would like spread a thin layer of peanut butter on the bottom of a hotel pan and then pour the stuff on top, and then they would let it sit in the fridge forever because he was gonna carbonate it. So he couldn't uh he couldn't mix it in because peanut butter has a lot of stuff that dissolves into the liquid and doesn't doesn't cap out the way bacon does, right? Right.
And so uh yeah, so he did that and then he would mix in uh Welch's grape jelly and then carbonate it, which is awesome, right? So I did I did a take on on that one because I figure, you know, PB and J. And so many other people have ripped on the on the bacon thing that like, you know, I could I couldn't add like another there was there was no places left on the page to tear. I couldn't rip on it anymore. You know what I mean?
Uh so anyway, but yeah, so the for those of you uh you know, you should come and the re teamed original PDT team, OG P D T, right? Don Lee, for those of you that uh don't keep track of Don Lee's career, as I'm sure most of you do, uh, is now uh doing the bar program. With is it cocktail kingdom, uh, but is now doing the bar program. Is that temporary or is that permanent? It's permanent.
And so I'm still at Cocktail Kingdom, and then I'm also doing Golden Cadillac. No, I'm at Golden Cadillac. That's permanent bar program or that's temporary? Permanent bar program. Okay.
So Don Lee is now running the bar program at Golden Cadillac, which is a fine bar on first and first here in uh it's the easiest address to remember in the world. First and first. I couldn't remember what the street was. First and first. Uh Golden Cadillac.
And uh you got the awesome menus with like the with the really poorly done 70 style cutouts of the drinks on the back. I like that. We're trying to keep it classy. It it's totally, totally classy. You can go there and get an overproof daiquari with tell them the garnish done.
A disco ball. It's the disco daiquiri. Yeah, I have I have a couple of those. They're a little the you shouldn't can you like in the future, they're I think they're key rings, right? Can you get them instead with um with like those uh those cheap earring settings on them so that so that the people can wear them as earrings on the way out?
Well, we're gonna get the new uh instead of being the regular key ring, we're getting the key ring that's more like a carabiner, so it'll just clip on the side, so you can clip it on to whatever you want. Oh, nice. All right. Well, I'll have to come back and get some more uh get some more stuff. So come to the Golden Cadillac on first and first on Sunday, Sunday Sunday, where I will be applying my bar back skills between 5 and 7 p.m.
for the Museum of Food and Drink, bar backing for the great John Darragon and Don Lee. Right? Sounds great. Alright, dude. Alright, brother.
Anything else or just doing some business? Uh I got I got one uh thing to chime in on last week's uh podcast or uh show that you guys did. Uh since you give away all your great secrets, I'll give you one of my secrets. For the person who wanted to know how to get to the the different science resources in the on the internet that are behind a paywall. Oh, yeah, okay, good.
I want to know, yeah, okay, good. So if you are part of a uh major city library system like the New York Public Library or you know, Los Angeles Public Library, any of these big city ones, they usually have a sharing system with the university library. So you can usually request a book from a university library and they'll just send it to your local library so you can borrow it for some fixed amount of time. However, if there is a reference book that the library that's at the university does not lend out, they will give you a one-time, one-day pass to go into the university library to see the reference book. So most science um journals are considered a reference book, and so they're not lent out.
But if you look up uh on any university library system, you know, let's say NYU or Columbia, for example, here in New York City, through the New York public library system, they will carry all the journals. Probably not even physical form, probably in digital form. But if you get the one time pass, once you're in the library, now you're behind the paywall. Now you can do whatever you want. You know, what I do is just go in for a day, scrape every article I can, follow all the links, all the different uh references, and then I'll just read them in my spare time later.
Strong advice from Don Lee. Also, by the way, uh Don and well, even John in his current life are kind of uh like date computer data nerds. Am I right about this? Uh, he's pulling me back in. Pulling you back in.
But that's why that's why you should well I'm I'm I'm giving that as a reason why they should know the tip. And by the way, Don Lee, a tip from Don Lee is a guarantee because the man always like whenever whenever there's a question and like you need some sort of hookup, you just ask Don because he's already figured the hookup. Am I right? You know, I'm prepared for the zombie apocalypse. Yeah, dude.
This is one of the things that you guys have to know about Don Lee. If I could give you one piece of advice on this podcast is make friends with Don Lee. Seriously. Alright, Don. I'll see you on Sunday, brother.
See you soon. All right. Okay. So we had a question in from Paris, France. Two or three weeks ago, you had two separate questions on one vegetable canned soup that has to be heated for a lot of pasteurization, which affects the flavor.
And two, how beer and soda cans are better at keeping the carbonation than plastic bottles are. But doesn't soda canning uh require both cold temperatures to preserve carbonations and the same level of hygiene pasteurization as soup. I didn't do that answer this question already? No. Okay.
Uh in that case, uh, it would it be possible to can vegetable soup at a low enough temperature so that we don't kill the flavors and uh respect appropriate food safety procedures. Do I miss some fundamental differences in the two type of processes? Best and keep up the good works, stand B. Yeah, this is very, very different. Here's the deal.
So um when you are when you have uh uh beer uh and and soda, right, in a can, there you st any time you have uh soda, uh the carbonation in the soda is acting to do the vast majority of the work when it comes to um when it comes to killing off bacteria because carbon dioxide is extremely bacteriostatic, right? So in addition to that, a lot of times old school sodas that can't be pasteurized at all have uh benz a little bit of sodium benzoate added to it, uh sometimes potassium sorbate. And they're added as preservatives, primarily not to stop dangerous things from growing, because ain't nothing dangerous going to grow inside of that uh because of the carbon dioxide, but to prevent yeast from growing and converting the sugar uh to alcohol and ha and causing the flavors of the of the thing to go off, right? That's the primary function, and that's why you pasteurize uh products uh like sodas and whatnot. But you don't have to do a sterilization on soda uh or on a beer, uh the same way you would have to, so you don't have to go to the same high pressures or temperatures, which are related to pressure, you don't have to go to the same high temperatures on a beer because it's enough to kill the yeast, right?
Because you're not really worried about the bacteria, but to kill the yeast and any vegetative stuff, because no spores are gonna generate inside of the product now spores, the spools. But on the other hand, if you have soup, right, you need to heat it to a high enough temperature, canning temperatures, so that you can get everything in there dead because you're gonna keep it at uh on shelf uh shelf temperature uh for God knows how long, and you can't have nasty anaerobic things growing inside of there like botulism, which could cause the cans to blow up and whatnot and kill you. Yeah, they can blown up. That's what I'm worried about first. The camp blowing up.
No, it'll kill you. Uh so in general, sodas are acidic, which is gonna prevent things like that from happening, and um fill with carbon dioxide, which definitely is gonna prevent things like that happening. So they're fundamentally um they're fundamentally uh different for uh pasteurization problem from uh the soup. Yeah? Yep.
Yeah. All right, I was like, I got some more questions in on of the Twitter. Uh where is it? Where is it? Oh, so this is from uh EC North America.
By the way, they now go just by EC, not EC or ISI. They just launched the uh rapid infusion kit that uh they say they say new EC rapid infusion kit just launched, inspired by the creator brainchild of rapid infusion at cooking issues. And they sent a Twitter feed out of it, see what it looks like. You want to see what it looks like? Nah, nah, don't really care.
No. No. Inspired. Oh look oh my gosh. You're gonna you're gonna think the look of it, look at take a look at Stas.
You can't see it on the line, but we could post a picture of it. Is that does the little rubber thing freak you out a little bit? Yeah. I mean you know I love the I love the EC, but it's looking a little bit like a sex toy there. Yeah.
Jack, you gotta look at look that up and throw that up on on our thing. Uh last week we had a question, and for some reason I can't find my uh old uh questions, but we had a question on um parchment paper and talking about parchment paper and kind of what it is and what's the difference between all the different kinds of uh parchment paper. So I'll talk a little bit about that now. Uh the the thing about parchment papers is a lot of people and uh no one probably who no one will know that remember that that was uh no one will know that's uh psychic friends network. But who did that?
That was Jay Moore who did the Psychic Friends Network pretending to be Christopher Walken. And Travis, my brother-in-law, is shooting the the you know the cocktail book. He uh he's started saying that to me over and over again. So now like whenever anyone says that, we we we I love like how many times in my life do we i imitate the fake imitation of somebody else, right? So I I'm not even doing Christopher Walken, I'm doing Jay Moore doing Christopher Walking, Christopher Walken.
Todd Bridges can be at your house in your driveway, no one will know. Uh the theory of that w was that a bunch of whack jobs Todd Bridges actually was a nice guy. I met him. Uh when remember when we did that show that time? They're having me doing about safety or something like this and and low temperament, meat glue and safety.
Remember when they're the big thing was going around and everyone was worried about it, and we did some show, so Fox or something like this, and Todd Bridges was on? Sweet dude. Sweet dude. Todd Bridges Willis, by the way, for those of you that don't remember uh the good the uh the different strokes. Do you watch different strokes?
No. Really? Mm-hmm. Not at all? No.
What about you, Jack? Uh sorry, no, I don't. What the hell? Like, like I feel like you guys had entirely different childhoods from the than the one I uh I had. Anyway, so uh parchment.
So a lot of people mistake uh wax paper for parchment. You you guys don't make that mistake. You would never make that mistake, right? If I asked you for parchment paper, you'd never show up with wax paper, right? Right.
Because it's coated with what? Wax. Wax. Parchment paper is meant to cook with. Wax paper is great.
I love wax paper, but I can't tell you how many people confuse wax paper and parchment, which is ridiculous. The other one, you know what people do? People are like, tonic water doesn't have any sugar in it because it's like salsa, right? Wrong. Tonic water has as much sugar in it as a regular soda does.
As much. It's around 10% sugar. You ever make that mistake, Style? You never made that mistake. Nope.
Jack, would you ever make that mistake? No. No. They're like, uh I'm not gonna say it. I don't like the uh they said I don't want to deal with it.
So uh most parchment paper that you buy nowadays, and and by that I mean I buy Reynolds brand typically, uh, is coated with silicone. And that's really where a lot of a lot of the non-stickness of it comes from. Now, what I don't know about parchment paper, I wasn't able to do anything uh kind of big on it, is that I I would use parchment paper on my pizzas all the time. The only issue is is that my pizza oven would get well above the decomposition temperatures of silicone, and so I'm wondering whether or not it was actually kind of a bad idea to put the parchment paper into a place where it's gonna get you know fundamentally incinerated. It used to be if I didn't cut, I would have to cut the parchment paper all around the pizza dough and load it in because the stuff around the sides would catch on fire otherwise.
You know, the stuff right underneath the pizza had the pizza protected, so it's not gonna get burnt and it separates great. But the separate separates great. What am I speaking English? Separates well. But the it's great.
Uh but the uh uh so it's the silicone, the silicone impregnated silicone that that it has it work. All the parchment papers that I use have that silicone. There's a new parchment paper out there that has uh aluminum bonded to one side of it, so it's aluminum foil on one side and parchment on the other, and it's sold as baking pan liners, and the theoretical advantage of it is it lays a lot flatter than parchment paper does, but I can't really tell you whether whether you know how awesome it is. I used it and all I noted was that it was a lot more expensive than uh the other stuff. But in general, I'm a big fan of parchment paper, and I hope that helps a little a bit.
Um, I found my other questions from last week. William McGee wrote in. I didn't answer about French fry cutters, did I? No. William McGee wrote in and said, Do you have any recommendations for French fry cutters for home use?
I've seen models both horizontal and vertical. Also on the Kickstarter for the Sears All, you had a recipe book available to higher level backers. Will you have this recipe book available separately at a later date for purchase? Thanks, William McGee. Stas, will we?
Yes. You've made that up. Yes. Yes. Uh okay.
So French fry cutters. I here's the deal. Uh avoid any plastic French fry cutter. Just avoid them. Because why?
They're gonna break. They're useless, right? Uh I the French fry cutter that I use uh looks hor looks is is the one that's kind of vertically mounted. I use it horizontally unmounted because I haven't had a place to uh mount my French fry cutter in in years. Um but I like that I like that style, the vertical mounted style with the with the thing in the front that looks like uh what does it look like?
It's hard to describe. It's got like a swoopy handle. You've seen my French fry cutter, right, son? It's got a swoopy handle, and it's made of that's made of cast metal, and then the whole thing's bolted together with I think three eighths inch screws and holds the uh cutting plate in the front, and there's uh like a V sa V-shaped um uh like kind of sliding chute and then uh a plunger on it, and the plunger actually engages the blades, right? And you need to replace the blades every once in a while because they get they get dull.
But I use that thing and I can slam through fifty, I can slam through 10 pounds of potatoes with it in like two and a half, three minutes, like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Now, the best, the best is to have it mounted on a wall, right? Here's what you do you have it mounted on a wall, and then you have your peeled potatoes in one container, like a hotel pan full of water, and then you have a hotel pan of water directly underneath the French fry cutter. And this is why the wall-mounted one is great. You have it directly underneath it, and then you load the potatoes and you cut them directly into the water.
Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, and it stops you from getting a lot of discoloration, right? In between the cutting time, or if you're gonna do a soak before you cook them, between the cutting time and the and the and and doing the initial water blanch, assuming you do a water blanch. I'm assuming you do. Uh and you know, also they make different size cutters, but I've never used a shoestring one. I I use uh three eighths uh or slightly larger half inch cutting rings for mine.
I have two plates for mine. Anyways, so uh cutting into water like that is fantastic and it's so neat. It means there's so little mess, right? So typical my whole French fry production for the cutting standpoint is uh put the put them in the sink, fill the sink with water, throw the potatoes in, stir them around with my hands, knock off all of the uh loose dirt, you know, roll them around in there, pull pull the pull the plug, get a hotel pan, peel uh, you know, peel over uh a bowl uh with some with uh some running water, rinse it off, throw them into water. Now they're peeled, and you've made sure you've gotten all of the the reason to peel your fries, by the way, two reasons.
I know it's nutritionally a bad idea to peel fries. Do you peel your stuff before you make fries? You don't like fries, forget you. Do you like baked potatoes? Mm-hmm.
Anyway, so I like the taste of the skin, right? But uh when you're doing French fries, the skin kind of never gets as crunchy as the rest of the stuff. I mean, I like but I like them jacketed fries, but meh, I like potato skins that have been cooked super crunchy. The other problem is is that potatoes, I don't know about the potatoes you guys get, but the potatoes I get potatoes. The potatoes that I get always have some uh like some bad spots underneath that you can't see.
And commercially, they what they do is they spray potatoes with high pressure water and it eats away all the soft parts. Uh, but I hate getting those. So when you peel them, you can see them. Jack, what's your feeling? Skin on or skin off this right?
Nah, man. Sorry. Jesus. Uh but why? Because you like the taste of the skins.
You know they're not as crunchy. You realize they're not as crunchy. And that's okay. You're okay with that. Yeah, I like the tastes.
Yeah? Yeah. Prove me wrong. The taste, the taste. No, I I understand why you do that.
By the way, I'm doing today's show in chaps. Chaps, chaps. I'm wearing cow chaps. I'm gonna steal these suckers, Jack. Yeah, I I think you should.
Yeah. So anyway, so uh you take the potatoes and you uh now you have them in water in a hotel pan, and they're not turning to crap, they're not turning anything because they're in water, and it's getting the last, it's getting the starch off the outside, and it's getting the last of the dirt off and sinking to the bottom. Then your next hotel pan, bat, bat, bap, bap, bap, cut them right into it and you get going that way. Otherwise, it gets messy and things get everywhere, and it's a pain in the butt. That's the best way to do it.
So I would go with the one that's meant to be mounted uh vertically. If you cannot mount it for some reason, like you don't have the space, I still use that style, but you have to develop a certain uh there's a certain skill to using that thing uh when it's not mounted because it's a pain in the butt. You it it involves like holding the handle and then holding the base in such a way that you don't crip yourself and jerking forward and back at the same time and pounding the potatoes out. And I've gotten so used to it that it doesn't really slow me down to not have it mounted, but you know, I'm hoping to mount it in my new my new joint. I haven't mounted it yet.
Still, it's still in the drawer, but I love it. I love cutting French fries, and I love french fries. You know what's not of all the things, biscuits and whatnot, French fries might be the weirdest thing that you don't like. You know? That's true.
Uh I already answered Paul's question on which curious cook one to buy, right? Yep. All right. Let's see whether I well, actually, I'm about to get kicked off the Yeah. Hey, before we close the show, I want to put an open call out for another theme song.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Think about that time. Yeah. All right. It's been a while.
Did I answer last week Rodney's question on coconut flour or not? I don't think so. Do I have time or not? Not really. Oh man.
Unless you can get to it in two minutes. Alright, I'm gonna do it in two minutes. Rodney, Rodney, here you go. This is Rodney from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In a low carb period of my life, I purchased a bunch of coconut flour.
It's not really flour, and I'm glad you're done with your low carb period. I've been trying for a while to make crepes with it, but I've not succeeded so far. Crepe batter with 50% wheat flour and 50% coconut flour works, but anything over that fails. The coconut flour simply can't hold together, and I'm unable to even flip it without tearing the crepe. I'd like to make crapes with just a coconut flour.
The composition of the coconut flour is as follows. And then you give me the moisture 3.6, ash 3.1, fat 10.9, protein 12.1, and then the balance uh carbs. So it contains almost no gluten and almost no starch, plus it absorbs very large amounts of water. My theory is that the carbohydrator protein network cannot be formed because there's too little starch and no gluten at all. So I'm trying adding pure gluten, xanthan gum, and more eggs, not all at the same time, but to no avail.
Do you have any theories? Thanks a lot. Uh yeah, coconut flour doesn't work the same way uh normal coconut flour does coconut does. I would, if you want to cook with coconut flours, uh, there's a bunch of books available specifically for coconut flour. I don't own them, but you can check out cooking with coconut flour, a delicious low-carb gluten-free alternative to wheat, a paperback by Bruce Fife, that you can get on the Amazon.
And he's like the he's the head of like the Coconut Institute. He does everything with coconut. But I looked up a bunch of, and you look on Rob's uh Bob's Red Mill, what's it called? You know what I'm talking about. Bob's Red Mill.
Uh, he has a bunch of coconut flour recipes uh and a video on coconut flour recipe, but having looked up a bunch of them on the thing, stuff just doesn't hold together. So they recommend normally only subbing in about 20% uh to a normal recipe. If you want to go ahead and use only coconut flour, what they're fundamentally doing is making things that are eggs. It's just eggs. It's like set egg loafs, and the coconut flour is just there to make it not taste like eggs and to give it the feeling that it's made like a normal baked good.
So if you want to do crepes or crepe style thing, what I would do is this I would whip up egg whites into a meringue, fold the coconut flour into it, and then if you or and then if you need to, or maybe do this. If you want it a little bit denser, I would uh mix the egg yolks in with the coconut flour, whip the egg whites to soft peaks, stir them in quickly, and then pour them out uh and bake them like that and see if it works. Because everything that I've read relies on ridiculous amounts of eggs. Cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org.
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