Today's program has been brought to you by S. Wallace Edwards and Sons, a third generation Cure Masters producing the country's best dry cured and aged hams, bacon, and sausage. For more information, visit SurreyFarms.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more.
Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you live from Aberna's Pizzeria on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from around 12 to around one o'clock. Nastasha the Hammer Lopez, a little bit late to the studio today, a victim, I think, of the New York City subway system. But call your questions to 7184972128. That's 718497-2128.
And uh don't worry. Who's the program brought to who's doing it today? It's uh S. Wallace Edwards and Son. Oh, yeah!
S. Wallace Edwards, home of one of my favorite American country hams. Now, uh, you know, Sam Edwards, who is, I don't know, like billionth generation uh ham carrying guy. He uh, you know, he he and I have this one disagreement, and every time I mention him on the air, and every time I see him in person, I say this. He markets his uh one of his excellent um, you know, uh at least one year old age kind of you know, not not semi ambient cured uh hams, meaning that uh they're refrigerated um during the curing, the actual curing process so that they don't spoil, but then are allowed to age ambiently, you know, for upwards of a month, uh, which I think are you know delicious.
Uh and and he makes them actually with Heritage uh foods, uh uh what's the word I'm looking for? Heritage Breed Pork. And they're delicious, but he markets those as Surianos, Surrey being the county in Virginia where they are, you know, uh, you know, kind of the classic, you know, one of the classic places for American country hams. By the way, all American country hams, almost all American country hams, are fundamentally derived from the culture of uh uh Tywater, Virginia, because uh it started there and then, you know, rem remember like everything or everything from there over, like through Kentucky was V Virginia back in the day. And most of these, you know, a lot of these families have curing roots that date back to um at or prior to the uh American Revolution.
So I mean it's there's a long history of it there. I don't know where that could start with. So anyway, so he's calling it Suriano as like Serrano and uh and Surrey because, you know, well over a decade ago, gosh, it's gotta be we well over a decade ago, you know, uh, you know, he decided that uh the kind of hams that he was producing in America uh were not receiving their just due and thought they were most like uh some of the ham mountain hams. Serrano just means mountain ham, you know, uh in uh in Spain, and so kind of you know was kind of joining the idea of this American ham with kind of this quality of mountain ham that he had had in in Spain. And uh, you know, my feeling has always been uh American ham is an American ham, sell it as an American ham, and Sam Edwards uh, you know, as much as I love and respect uh his products and he you know he's a good guy, just call it American.
What do you think? Anyone? Anyone? No, not anyone cares. Only me.
Uh but anyways, that wasn't what we were talking about. We were talking about what were we talking about? We were talking about uh oh, Steve Jenkins last week from Fairway, who is our sponsor last week, and uh we'd had a bit uh a little discussion uh about like what voiceover actor uh he sounded like, and so the other John Stewart writes in uh regarding Steve Jenkins from Fairway and who does he sound like to me, he sounds like Alec Baldwin, who does lots of voiceover work, which is weird because you mentioned Alec Baldwin only minutes later, uh, and it didn't make and I did and didn't make the connection. So perhaps you disagree. I threw audio of the two into this link, pretty similar, but perhaps not who Dave was thinking of.
And then uh there's a lake, which maybe we can play later with playing uh, you know, Steve Jenkins side by side with Alec Baldwin, or maybe we can just call that up somehow. And you know what, uh John, you're dead on, man. Those that's exactly what it is. It's Alec Baldwin, but it's kind of one of those things. Voiceovers freak me out a little bit.
Like uh, you know, I was watching this stuff and uh, you know, commercial commercials come on because I have a TV now and the kids watch it. I watch it. Come on, come on, please. Uh but the um commercials come on, I'm like, oh my god, is that Magnum P.I. is Tom Selleck doing voiceover work?
I mean, it's not like it's there's you know it and Morgan Freeman, by the way. I don't know if any of you guys watch the Olympics, Morgan Freeman literally like I think he was like sitting around on call waiting for people to win medals because he would congratulate them on the medal that they won like 10 seconds after, or did he record every permutation of every American winning every medal? He's like, Congratulations on your bronze. You know what? Anyway, whatever.
Voiceovers. Amazing. So, uh, John, you're totally right. Alec Baldwin is uh the call. Alec Baldwin, of course, whose voice is amazing.
Uh, but uh John also has a question. I've been bagging all of my low temp food using your Ziploc method for years. The food saver uh vacuum never looked like it had much advantage over the Ziploc technique and doesn't really seem to pull a hard vacuum. Therefore, it never seemed useful for bagging where you want to uh uh use a vacuum to pull your marinade into a product, for example. But I just ran across the Thrifty Vac, uh, which you can see on uh the YouTube.
It's a thrifty vac, I think one word and vac is VAC. Thrifty is spelled thrifty as in someone who is thrifty. Uh, and it's cheap. It's on the Amazon.com, uh, and you can look at it's like 22 bucks. Uh what fundamentally, uh, well, I'll finish the question.
And it looks like this might be able to pull a harder vacuum uh than uh he's saying, I guess presumably than a food saver. Do you think this looks useful as a uh poor person's vacuum chamber, or is it not likely to pull a hard enough vacuum to be any better than the Ziploc method, thanks the other John Stewart. Yeah, okay. So I took a look at this uh device, and for those of you out there uh who you know haven't seen it or you know aren't on the internets right now, though, although how you listen to us if you're not on the internets, um, the what it is is is it's a one-way valve and a little kind of like a like a boxy piece of plastic and a one-way valve that you put onto uh a large bag, you know, Ziploc or other, uh, and it punctures the bag and then it comes with a little little uh you know like uh sucking device, almost like a larger version of a vacuvan uh pulling thing. And you stick a a ziploc inside of the other bag that's f almost seals.
So it's the same as the as the the technique, the dun the water technique, by the way, which is what I use at home because I don't have a vacuum machine at home, is I seal almost entirely seal a vacuum uh ziploc bag. Ziploc, by the way, when you buy a Ziploc bag, first of all, like GLAD bags work, I'll admit, but like I always buy the brand name bags because off brands suck. Never get the ones that have two layers of plastic, get the single layer. Get also the freezer uh ones because they're much better gas barriers than the regular ones, and never get the ones with the slidey doodles. I do not trust the sealing capability of the sliding doodles.
Get the ones that have the old school just zipper, you know, the just the you not a zipper, but like just you know the the seal without the slide doodle, right? So you seal it almost all the way up uh and then you just leave the very corner unsealed. You put your finger in it, lift it by that corner, it now forms a diamond, and you immerse it under the water. As you immerse underwater slowly, you kind of you know force the air out from around it, and and presumably your product is surrounded by some form of liquid on the inside of the bag, oil, sauce, whatever. And uh and the air, once excluded, never comes back in because the water, the pressure of the water excludes it, and then at right as the tip of the bag goes underneath, you seal it with your with your uh you pinch it sealed, and it's done.
And this is the way I do almost everything. It makes a fantastic seal. It doesn't create a vacuum, but it does exclude air, which is 99% of what we want to do when we're doing low temperature cooking, unless you're doing a vacuum effect. Okay. So what this thing does is it allows you to put a ziploc inside of uh another bag with a one-way valve.
Uh, but in other in other ways, it's similar. You leave a little corner of the ziploc un unpressed, you pull the vacuum, you push the uh seal shut while it's inside of another bag, and then you pull it out and it's sealed. Uh it's not really that kind of a vacuum pump that they're using, that piston vacuum pump is never gonna pull a uh a decent um vacuum. Anyway, so we have a caller. I'm gonna get the caller and then I come back and talk more about uh the the the this vacuum machine and kind of what I think it's good for and what what it doesn't do.
Anyway, caller, you're on the air. Hello, this is Martin from Vienna calling. Oh, hey, how you doing? Um I'm fine, thank you. How are you?
Doing well, I love Vienna. I've only been to your town for a couple of days, but it seemed very nice when I was there. Uh yeah, it is. Have you been to a Wurstelstand? Uh did you dict uh the famous cheese sausage?
No. No. The only so I was there literally, I was there for uh EC, the company. I was doing work with them with uh Rapid Infusion and uh I was only there for uh I was only there for like literally like a day and a half, not even two full days. The only thing I got to do, we went to we had a uh we had a you know Schnitzel at the what what's the name of the place that's uh it's a couple blocks from the it's a couple blocks from the opera house.
It's like famous for its uh schnitzel. What the heck's the name of it? Like Oapfair something. Uh there is the Fiegelmüller where you get the huge ones. Yeah, I don't think it was that.
Or uh the other one is the Plachuta. I have to remember. But it was good, you know, with the lemon wedge and everything. I enjoyed the Viennese potato salad. I did get to visit the market, that long outdoor market that you guys have.
What's that called? This mark. Yeah, Nash Mart. That was really cool. And like there's a lot of people there selling uh because I only wanted Austrian products because why would I buy a different product when I'm in Austria, right?
So I went through there searching various different kinds of uh uh cured meats and uh cheeses and and different products and thought it was uh it was really nice, but no, I did not get to have the cheese sausage next time. Well no, I did get to have no I didn't. Yeah, yeah. I know we had a sauce. No, I did because when I showed up at lunch for the first day, I showed up and like had to go right to work from the airplane, and they were like, What do you want for lunch?
I was like, Wurst, and so they brought a bunch of one. I think one of them was cheese. It was good, but I can't recall the name because they just put it in front of me. They didn't tell me what I was eating. But there was one with cheese in it.
What's the name of the what's the name of it? Kesekreiner. Oh yeah, case Krainer. Yeah. Vaspitoid Kraina.
Yeah. What does Kriner mean? Well uh Kreiner uh it means it means a sausage coming from Krain, which is uh in Slovenia called Krantska Goda. So that's where where the the the original sausage is coming from. And then the Austrian added the cheese to it and uh made it a Kesekrainer so cheese Krainer, cheese sausage.
Well my if my memory serves me that was uh it was a good call adding the adding the case. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so what's your question? Yeah, yeah.
But I have a I have a question about uh uh hydrocholy is about gelatin actually uh because I'm trying to do uh kind of uh uh vodka panakota right and uh I have problems to to get it like stiff freely so and then and no of course that that uh adding alcohol to gelatin uh decreases the the stability of the gel you have in the end but uh I just when I when I when I get it lower uh and the the gelatin sets really nicely uh you cannot taste the vodka anymore so and uh my one uh my question is about how uh high can I get that uh still if you have like a ratio that uh I can still have a a set gelatin with uh with vodka. Well most um most sources that you read usually for uh and and I it's not really based in any sort of reality right they they put they put the upper it's based on kind of rules of thumb they base the upper limit for most um alcohol sensitive hydrocolloids and most of them are because remember it's not water right and the hydrocollides require water to do their work um they usually place the upper limit for normal function somewhere in the range of twenty percent somewhere in that range uh so in general when you're using and that would be like the pure pure alcohol uh range or or or the vodka like twenty percent uh pure pure but but that's but that that's like the upper limit but like the more alcohol that you add to any system right the more uh it depends on the hydrocolloid too the more hydrocolloid that you're you're gonna have to add to get the the same um result so like what give give me your give me your recipe how much uh how much vodka was in there as a percentage of the total uh there was about like uh I I took uh two two parts cream and one part uh part uh vodka so so one third was vodka which would be like one sixth a bit less though almost something like twenty percent uh uh uh alcohol I guess in the end so that should be fine well remember those cream isn't all water either right so you got you got cream which is not all water although it's not it's the it shouldn't affect it the same way but um what and and what percentage more than the normal gelatin did you use? Uh I I just like uh I I use the the the kind of sheets that I would normally use, like uh uh I don't know, uh six teats on on half a liter. No So I mean I would just I mean if you haven't tried up like and and it was too it was too soft, right? Or did it not set at all?
Yeah. Did was it with the it it was too soft because my my idea is that in the end I I put uh a liquid shell of uh of cough in it. So basically it's a reconstruction of uh of a white Russian. Uh and and uh whenever I try to get uh the liquid shell in it, uh eventually it would break uh because it's just not brittle enough. Uh so that or not not stiff enough.
Right. A couple of things you can do. You can up the gelatin concentration, right? I mean that's the first obvious thing to up the gelatin concentration. Yeah.
Uh by like I wouldn't, you know, don't do anything drastic like double it because you don't have that much alcohol in it. So I would up it, I would up it like um I would up it like maybe twenty-five percent or something like this, and see whether or not that adds enough. Were you close to getting it? Was it close to the right texture or not? Uh it it I mean it's not bad.
It is it is stiff, it is it is like uh a set gel, but it's it's just it's it's not easy to handle in in like when I try to put in the the liquid gel itself. So uh I just it it would eventually it would I I have like a failure of almost fifty percent of pieces when I cut in in cubes that would fall apart. Right. So and that uh just it's just not stiff enough. Maybe maybe just to raise uh the the gelatin would would help or then I gelatin's good that way in that erasing it doesn't so like a lot of other hydrocolloids when you raise their percentages uh you get a lot of nasty kind of textural effects and you get a lot of nasty kind of taste effects when you up them uh to the point where you get their like the functionality right, whereas gelatin is pretty friendly that way.
I mean, if it they mean once you start getting very high percentages on uh any hydrocolloid, you get a lot of flavor masking because you know a lot of the water which is delivering the like you know, some of the water b you know the water-based section of the flavor component is locked up in uh in a hydrocolloid matrix. And so you tend to get very poor flavor release. And the reason why gelatin is so good and why it's used in these is not just because its texture is awesome, but because it tends to mount melt at uh mouth temperature and um you know and thereby you know, r release and s almost get like a hundred you know, hundred percent flavor release. The only other ones that have kind of such excellent flavor release are ones that are used in kind of very in very low um quantities, like gel-an, right? But if you were going to switch to a different gelling medium for this like gel-an, the problem you're gonna run into is you have to um you have to ensure that um you you know you're gonna have to uh you're gonna have to heat it to a high temperature and then get your alcohol in before it gets down at set temperature, right?
Because the gel-an's like a snap set, but the other problem is is that at really high temperatures that you need to hydrate things like gel- and you can't get alcohol that high. Now you can get around it. I've made alcohol fluid gels all the time with both agar and with and you know, an agar might be another thing too, because you can make agar you can make agar um a lot softer if you put uh locust bean gum in it or some some a modifier like that. And you can you can get um you know, or a kapac capacaraginin L B G is the classic one that people use to do gelatin analogs, and you might be able to harden that one up more and have you know uh and it you know you'll definitely know faster because it sets a lot faster than gelatin does. And I've done plenty of agar gels at twenty percent alcohol, plenty.
Uh because I used to do, you know, as for for demos, I used to do um I used to do like fluid like alcoholic fluid gels, you know, all the time that were you know right around twenty percent. So I know that I know that that system works well, but I think the gelatin will probably work well for you if you just up the percentage slightly. And uh well, slightly like 20, 20 try twenty percent and see whether or not you get because you what you really want is you want it to be just at the failure point, right? You want it to hold itself, you want to be able to handle it, move it around and plate it, but you don't really want any more than that, right? And then that's what gelatin's so good at, it's is its seeming delicacy uh when it's you know, you know, there.
But the yeah, but then you you run into the other issues if it's breaking and and then if your kitchen's hot or whatnot, I don't know how well a control you have over the temperature in the kitchen, but you know, when gelatin gets close uh to being too soft and then it gets warm, it's like you know, you're done, you're you're done. You know, it's and you're never gonna be able to handle the product. But I think you should be able to do it by just by increasing at those levels. If you were saying that you were going to do straight vodka, I'm saying, well that's you know, problematic. But you know, I've done plenty of uh you know, up to 15% alcohol with gelatin just by upping the gelatin, even ones that have to withstand fairly uh you know rigorous you know conditions, like uh I've done carbonated alcohol uh gel regular gelatin gels up at those percentages.
Uh at least 14 because I've done you know pretty high high uh alcohol wines that way. Uh just but but by jacking the gelatin somewhat. Yeah. Uh by the way, when when I when I would like put the cream, the uh with gelatin and and and vodka and everything like still warm into uh ISI and then spray it like to make like whipped cream, would the gelatin hold the shape or or would it be uh well so I mean gelatin by the way also like with cream if you get well like anything over about 20% the cream's gonna start being in danger of breaking. Like that's kind of like the magic place of cream uh cream liquors without any sort of added protecting uh things in it.
You could protect the cream, obviously, uh, you know, with various agents to stop it from breaking, but uh including gelatin, that's what the Kemique thing is made out of. But anyway, uh gel yeah, gelatin can be used as the foaming agent in an ISI with that. However, like if you want it to hold, if you want to do like a if you want to make this recipe in an ISI and have it hold indefinitely, really dense, cre like dense, dense, dense texture. Um what percentage cream is it to the to the fluid gel? I mean to the gel?
Is it like you'd say a third? The uh full uh uh what percentage cream is it a third you said to the vodka you mean? Or yeah, no, it's like it's like three parts, three parts, uh two parts vodka mix, one part cream. Yeah. Yeah.
No, two parts cream and one part vodka. Oh, yeah, okay, no problem. So what I would do is I would lower, I would lower the this should be fine. Like you you're down, you're down more like you know, fifteen percent or something like this. You should be okay just by upping the jet.
But try this, right? Yeah. Take your take the the vodka, do uh make a I think it should work at around one one one percent. Take let I'll just give you some random numbers to try. Take uh 500 mils of water, uh yeah, do 500 mils of water and then um uh 10 10 grams of don't you don't have to make the full recipe, I'm just giving you numbers that are easy to remember.
500 grams of water, 10 uh 10 grams of agar, uh cold, obviously, hydrate the the the agar, you know, whisk it in cold, bring it up to heat, simmer it for two minutes, temper in 500 mils of uh vodka, right? Uh let it set into a uh 1% uh gel. It should be fairly firm, even at that, even at that 20%. If it's not, you can uh try it at a slightly higher agar percentage, right? Now blend it in a blender.
So now you have a vodka fluid gel. Now that's only 50% vodka, right? But instead of doing two cream to one, lean it make it a little leaner and do one to one cream with that vodka stuff in an ISI. And as long as the fluid gel worked, which I'd have to test it to make sure that it exactly at 20 that the agar works, that is going to be dense, dense, dense. So a lot of times when I'm trying to do very dense ISI foams, I do fluid gel reinforced uh cream bases, and they work they work really well.
And in fact, you can do things that would normally curdle cream, like you can do lemon juice and eventually it'll curdle, but because a lot of the lemon juice is locked up inside of a fluid gel, it doesn't break the the cream right away, and the stuff that's foamed out lasts like a long, long, long time. But the one thing I will say is that when you're putting a fluid gel into an ISI, um you you remember it's a fluid gel. So when you when you point the ISI down, it doesn't naturally run down to the bottom of the ISI and dispense. You have every time you dispense it, you have to put your finger over the uh over the dispensing um uh tip and and flick the canister down so that you're sure that you have all the fluid gel packed against the head so that when you dispense it, it's actually there. But it's a fantastic way to do uh reinforced creams.
And I like I do reinforced creams with like very high acid fruits all the time that way, and I'm pretty sure it would work with an alcohol fluid gel as well. Okay, thank you very much. No problem. Uh I am by By the way, I I won I won uh ISI uh um siphon by mentioning you really um because they had they had like this this uh thing before Christmas, they would give out like free ISI uh uh siphons. Just you have to write them why you want to use it.
And I mentioned uh because I like the ignor uh Dave Arnold's uh quick infusion tank and I would like to use it, and that's how I won my ISI. Oh beautiful. I just had another uh idea by the way. You might be able to hydrate the agar in uh in like milk or cream uh and then uh put the vodka into it and dope it, and that way you wouldn't have to have all that water, but you'd have to play around with it to make sure it would work. But I think that might also be a solution that'll stop you from having to uh add the extra water.
But give it a shot, try it. Okay. Yeah, thank you very much. Alright, have fun with the whipper. Thank you.
I will. Uh okay, now back to Stas Stasis like oh yeah, we would we'll come back with cooking issues and Nastasia Lopez. Today's program has been 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. Optimum amounts of pure white fat marbling contribute to a flavor that's a delicate, perfect balance between sweet and salty. For more information, visit WWW dot Surre Farms. Oh man, you guys, you freaking guys. Although, uh, you missed uh I went on a thing about the whole Surriano thing and how I feel about it, but now I can talk about the fact that I'm a guessing, and I've never had this conversation, so I'm just guessing.
Nastash, do you hate the harmonica? No, I don't. Really? I would think you hate it because you hate things that tell stories, and it's like an inherently storytelling kind of an instrument. It like, you know, kind of it speaks from the soul.
You're like, yeah, no, I hate it. No, I don't need it though. Yeah. Yeah. So how are you doing, Stas?
Good. Yeah? Mm-hmm. And uh, Jack? Doing well.
Yeah. So, Jack, you had a question you were going to ask us, right? Yeah, we want we wanted to know your kind of thoughts on some of these new apps coming out that are catered towards um restaurant eaters. Like, for instance, there's one called No Wait, right? And you you you can you can get on a restaurant waiting line at home with the app.
I love well, I mean, I'd love I love that. Yeah? Except for the you know, my f my my the problem I I don't know how it works because I've never used it. As a as a user, I would like that. Imagine if you could just not so I live like two blocks from uh or three blocks from uh Mission Chinese, right?
Uh which is Danny Baum's restaurant. And uh, you know, they don't take the the reservations. Uh and the way it's like a billion years, but uh you know it would be no problem for me to just sit at home, you know, uh, you know, my the wife and I drinking ourselves silly and then waiting for you know them to say you've got ten minutes to to hightail it over here and I can hightail it over there. And yes, that would be a fantastic boon to someone like like me. I don't know how they operate it as a you know as an operator, you know.
I know at the bar that a lot of times when people are on a list, they don't necessarily come back, you know, and so it's um do they have some mechanism to ensure that you're gonna come back? We're interviewing them later today, so we'll find out. Yeah, I mean, so I mean it's the kind of thing that obviously is a boon to uh the to the consumer. Uh the question is, how hard is it gonna hose um how hard is it gonna hose the restaurants that use it? Or do they have some anti-hosing mechanism in the application?
I think all apps need an anti-hosing mechanism. Oh, yeah, definitely I mean so I mean just to let you know you know we we have a lot of situations at the bar where you know we we people come in we're like okay we're full because we you know we only have seats for like 32 or whatever uh and uh we say okay uh you know party of you know five or whatever it is you know we'll we'll text you when um it's free then we text them we put a reserve sign on the seat now we have five seats empty and it's not it's not just that there's five seats empty that we're not turning money around on although that does hurt me deeply the uh the real problem is is then people come in and they see the empty seats and they get pissed off that they can't get seated. You know what I mean? So it's uh it's tricky. It's a kind of a fine dance uh on how to do it.
Bigger places it's easier to deal with because they have more turnover but I wonder how it works in smaller places. Like when you only have like 30 seats, you know it's like it's it's it's hard to ride that line properly. You know what I mean? Yep totally. But um interested to hear what they say I'm interested to hear what the anti-hosing uh mechanism is.
Uh yeah right what do you got going today Stas? Anything good? No? Absolutely not no absolutely not nope. Nothing you know it came in yesterday.
What do you mean? We got the Sears all t-shirts in yesterday. Yes, that's great. They look although Stas couldn't uh didn't get a chance to see them she had to go run an errand before they showed up. The extra large is I'm glad because I'm nervous.
We have most of our T shirt buyers are extra large. You could you could sail a tugboat into the shirt that I picked up. Good. Do we have XXLs? Are they just XLs?
No, just XLs. Man. Dax, you know, Da, so Booker and Dax named after my kids, Booker and Dax. Dax, the small one who only wears a Luchar mask. Although he forgot it this morning on the w on walking the dog.
I think because I kicked him out of bed because my wife was gone, so like both kids had to come out with me to walk the dog this morning. And uh forgot his luchador mask for the first it's the first time I've seen him outside of the house without a luchador mask on in months. Like months. Weird, huh? Mm-hmm I wonder whether maybe he's giving up the Luchador phase.
I hope not because I haven't uh you know he hasn't had his mask yet his custom mask. How do we get into this? What were you talking about? Shirts. Oh shirts.
Uh so he was like I want a Sears all shirt. I was like Dax I guarantee you we didn't order any kid sizes. Am I right? There's only smalls. I mean the price would have been a lot higher if we had kid sizes so just thinking about the company.
What? I see Stas always tries to make it seem like I'm being an ogre for no reason. First of all, people, people, people. I was never once consulted on this and I would have said, you know, yeah no we're not going to order kid sizes because it's fundamentally not something we want kids to play with. Small is not like Dax is like he's nine.
He's not like he's not like a teenager. Booker could wear a small no no Dax wants to wear it around Dax wants to wear it like a washer in the dryer. Are you now you're saying that the ones we bought are going to shrink? No like there's a way to shrink shirts on purpose right? Eh I don't know I don't do that kind of thing.
I don't I don't I don't try to buy normal shirts and then shrink them down to clubware because I don't go to clubs. Um okay no no offense no problem clubs so back to John Stewart's the other John Stewart's question. So uh for those of you that don't remember because it seemed like it was a long time ago uh the the issue is is will this new thing, this thrifty VAC uh work um to pull a real vacuum on something as opposed to just using a Ziploc? My feeling is is it's is that it's not going to suck any more uh hardcore of a vacuum than uh a vacuvan thing can suck, and that it's not it's probably useful if you want to, without having a big water bucket around to put things in a ziploc, but I don't think it's going to achieve much more than uh you can do just water dunking in a Ziploc. Um so there you have it.
But it's cheap, and so if you want to do a lot of dry bagging work of stuff in Ziploc bags, you know, maybe it would be useful. But most of the people uh I looked on Amazon, it's got a lot of very positive reviews. Uh, but uh if you actually burrow into the reviews on Amazon, almost everyone who was familiar with the uh the water dunk method of ziplocking was like, I don't really understand the advantages over a water dunk method on ziplocking. So I don't think it's gonna it's not gonna be there, it's not gonna be you know an alternative for kind of vacuum infusion, I don't think. And by the way, the uh you know, a couple of the the one of the people who did a review of it on YouTube that you sent us a link to said that um you know that it's kind of turns it into a chamber vacuum machine, and it does not turn it into a chamber vacuum machine because the minute you displace the air out of the bag, air from the outside pushes on top of the bag.
In fact, that's kind of the MO. It's using the bag to push on the bag, uh, and that that's how it's working. Chamber vacuum machine works entirely differently in that it just removes the air and there's no physical uh compression on the item uh until the air is allowed back in, right? And so that's kind of like that is the that that is how a chamber works. This works much more in the fashion that a food saver works, except for instead of using a food saver bag, they enclose this thing in an outside bag.
Now, what I do think it would be really good at probably is if you wanted to make castings, like if you wanted to do or not castings out, uh I don't know what my my brain is shot today. If you want to do like fiberglass work and you wanted to do or pre-preg work with uh like fibers and stuff, you could uh you know you know, because the one of the problems of doing uh let's say you wanted to make something out of fiberglass uh and resin, right? And you want to put it over a mold, well the question is how do you get it to stick nicely to the mold? And you know, a good way to do it is using uh kind of a vac bag system where you put the entire you you put the the impregnated uh resin impregnated fiberglass, carbon fiber, Kevlar, whatever in the hell you're using, over your mold, you put it into a vacuum machine, suck it, uh suck it. I think this might be a good way to do that if you're but but that doesn't come up very often in the kitchen, does it?
I mean I used to remember remember that remember the Mokumagani thing I did back in the day with the I used vacuum bag molding for that. Um but um that was where you know we took different colors of fish, layered them up with uh transglutaminase, uh, and then par froze them on a mold uh in like a wavy shape and then sliced it on uh on the um Hobart model uh what is it, 3000 or 2000 uh meat slicer so that it looked like wood grained fish. That was a fun trick. Haven't done that in a while. You know why?
Because they gave me that freaking meat slicer and I let stupidly let left it at the FCI because it felt it had been there so long that they kind of like stupid. I should have taken that sucker with me. Yeah, right. Yeah, okay, like that would work. Uh anyway, uh so.
Didn't we have something we're gonna talk about, Sas? We had something we're gonna talk about. I forget. Anyway, uh Joshua writes in from Switzerland regarding ice cream. Hi, Dave and Nastasha, greetings from Switzerland.
I'm a big fan of your show, and Stas is a big fan of Switzerland, as it turns out, right? She loves it a Swiss. She loves it a Swiss. Um, but he doesn't say which Switzerland he's from. Like Switzerland.
I only like the Italian parts, so. Really? Mm-hmm. Like, but how f how like cleanly divided are the different parts of Switzerland? Um they all hang out in like the big cities, they all hang out, right?
So you get everyone in the big cities, right? The Italians don't really they don't move from area, yeah. No. Oh, the German and French do move everywhere. They move everywhere.
So like Geneva, there's no Italian people in Geneva? Not a lot. Not that I saw. None. Not one.
Yeah. Not one Italian speaker. They're like they're Italians. They don't leave their mother's house. Wow.
Wow. All right. Uh we'll talk about that later on. Uh Greens for Switzerland. I'm a big fan of your show.
Lately I've been obsessed with ice cream. I own an ice cream maker which is able to cool to negative 35 Celsius. I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit. I I didn't do the calculation, but uh just for you for your edification, the one I always remember, minus 20 uh Celsius is minus four Fahrenheit. So you're well into the minus range.
Uh well, well into the minus range, probably around minus 20 uh Fahrenheit, something pretty hardcore. Uh anyway. A couple of days ago I made a whiskey ice cream on a recipe by Heston Blumenthal, which by the way, I looked up uh the Blumenthal recipe. So that what what's about to happen isn't a uh like whatever is about to happen, the the results um that Joshua had that he's not gonna be happy with, he's gonna describe it in a minute, aren't due to uh high alcohol content in the whiskey ice cream because what I saw on the internets uh of Heston Blumenthal, he uh burns the whiskey first to get rid of a a lot of the alcohol. So we're not dealing with the softness uh based on a high alcohol content.
Let's just get that out. I don't want anyone thinking that while I'm reading this question because that's not what's going on, right? Were you thinking that, Stas? No. Alright.
Uh I let the ice cream maker uh okay, so um on a recipe with Heston Blumenthal and sage ice cream with egg, sugar, and milk custard. I let the ice cream maker pre-cool to approximately negative 25 Celsius and then poured the ice cream base and let it churn. And here's the thing. Here's what should stick in your head. I let it churn for approximately 30 minutes.
After that, I store the ice cream overnight in a freezer. A taste test the next morning left me unsatisfied. The ice cream was tasty, but it seemed that two large ice crystals had formed because it had an unpleasant mouthfeel and didn't feel smooth. Therefore, my questions How does the churning time influence the development of ice crystals? Or is there a minimum time which you would suggest?
Do you see any flaws in my ice cream making? And can you recommend any good literature on ice cream making and theoretical base? I've read the chapter on ice cream in the book, The Kitchen as a Laboratory, but need more. Thank you in advance for your help, Joshua's. By the way, the word laboratory brings up I have so Travis Huggett, who uh did the photography on my cocktail book, uh, and and I we were in the subway the other day, and uh when I say other day, I mean yesterday, and we had like seriously the idea that could make us like like the new like Angetty slash uh uh what's his name, Wegman, the Weimaraner thing.
But since we're never gonna do it, I'm gonna give this idea out there to somebody. Uh now you're gonna think this is really stupid, but the more you think about it, right? The more you think about it, the better it gets. Ready? The the this could be the hottest wall and desk calendar of 2015.
Labs in labs. We're talking labrador retrievers in laboratory situations with lab coats on. Labs in labs. Now you're like, that's dumb, right? But look at this.
I think it's dumb, even though I came up with the idea, and yet, if I saw that thing on Amazon for 15 bucks, I would own it right now. I would buy it. I would pre-order that sucker right the hell now. Labs in labs. Come on.
Somebody do it. Here's what I want. Travis and I, we need some cut. That's all. Like all I want, or like maybe even a mention, a cut.
You know, when when they come with the barrels of money and drop them off at your house for having done this labs in lab calendar, we like when you're swimming through money, just remember that as you're bailing the boat out so that you don't drown in your own money. Just put one of those buckets of money, you know, our way. That's all I'm saying, right? That's all that's all I that's all I need. Labs and labs.
Uh so uh here's the deal. Uh ice cream, the longer, okay. Ice crystals, uh the faster you freeze something, the smaller the ice crystals are, right? And the reason is is because you uh with rapid freezing, you get many s nucleation sites, right? So ice crystals don't ice crystals l prefer to form on other ice crystals.
In other words, ice crystals prefer to grow rather than than to form entirely new ice crystals, right? It's more energetically favored. So the slower something freezes, the larger the ice crystals are. The more rapidly something freezes, the more different nucleation sites you get, and the smaller the ice crystals are because they don't have time to grow into larger uh ice crystals. So there's a direct relationship between the size of the ice crystals that are formed in in a freezing process and the rate of freezing.
Now, um there are other factors as well. Uh, you know, uh the composition of it, but but for a given ice cream composition, the crystal size is directly related to uh the freeze time. Now here's another thing. Uh typically, when you're freezing the ice cream, remember you're never freezing ice cream until it's a total solid. A good amount of the product uh uh of the ice cream is still in a a liquid state, right?
And um and how much of it is liquid is dependent on what the freezing point of the ice cream is, and that's dependent on things like the sugar content, uh, and you know, and the fat content, things like this. Well, not really the fat content, but the sugar content, right? So you know you're you're looking at there's a lot of liquid water in there. So when you draw out of a machine, you've been churning for 30 minutes, you draw out of the machine, there's still a lot of liquid in it. You already have kind of large seed uh crystals in there because of the long freezing time, 30 minutes.
You then put it in the freezer to harden overnight, and what happens? Those crystals get bigger and bigger overnight as it gets colder and colder. So let's say you have a draw temperature. So forget what the freezing temperature of the of the uh forget what the the minimum possible condenser temperature is in your ice cream uh maker, right? Forget it, because that's not what's important.
What's important is what the temperature, how fast it can put the energy into uh the ice cream, right? So a commercial ice cream machine, even if it's only uh, you know, if it's running at a higher temperature than yours, has enough has enough ability to chill, enough chilling power that it can freeze the ice cream to its draw temperature of somewhere around, I don't know, 20 Fahrenheit, let's say, or 18, what is it between 15 and 20? I forget exactly Fahrenheit, the draw temperature, it can do that in uh 10 minutes or less, right? So the uh LB100, which a lot of people use at Taylor's, depending on the batch size that you put in, you can get down to like a seven minute batch time, right? Anything below like a seven to ten minute freeze time, the the fact that your crystals are smaller, don't doesn't make a damn bit of difference because you can't taste ice crystals that uh like your tongue can't distinguish the texture of ice crystals that are any smaller than that.
So while some people say the texture of liquid nitrogen ice cream is superior to the texture of ice cream that's frozen in a regular machine, because it theoretically has smaller uh you know crystals, that's horse hockey because your tongue can't distinguish anything. But you can very easily tell the difference between an ice cream that took 30 minutes to freeze and an ice cream that only took seven uh or eight minutes to freeze. Now, the flip side is is if you were to take um so so what to do. Um, one thing is is look at the power requirements on the on the back of uh your your machine, and you can kind of get an idea of how much, and you can't really, because things get much less efficient as they get colder in terms of how much uh they can effectively apply to the ice cream when you're when you're making it. But almost all machines are underpowered to actually freeze the stuff in in a relatively quick fashion.
One thing you can do, obviously start with extremely cold mix. Second thing you can do is use less mix. Now, the problem with using less mix is that a lot of machines, if you underfill the machine, it has too much overrun, i.e., too much air gets whipped into it. So this is something you're gonna have to uh address or uh or worry about. The third thing is is if you are gonna have a freeze time of let's say 20 to 30 minutes, then I would recommend only doing it right before you're about to serve it and not try to harden it.
Since since um machines that have like a 20 to 30 minute freeze time, the texture of the ice cream is usually pretty good right out of the machine, but once hardened, then it all starts going to hell in a handbasket uh pretty quickly. Um I don't know, does that seem to answer that that part of that question? Uh as regards references, the best online reference, and it and it really gets you a long way before you buy any books, is um go to uh Google this dairy education series at the University, and I can never know how it's actually pronounced this town. Uh Guelph, you think it's Gel for Guelph. Gelf Guelph, yeah, Canadian, who knows.
But the the professor who wrote that is H. Douglas Goff. And it's a fantastic uh resource, and I use it as my quick and ready resource and have for uh years. Uh and it's a fantastic website with a lot of information. Now, as for books, um the classic, the classic uh in uh ice cream book is called uh, you know, makes sense, uh ice cream.
That's what it's called. Uh and it came out in the 60s. It was released by uh company called AVI Press. AVI Press in the 60s and 70s put out kind of the best food technology book series. It was so awesome.
I used to go to the New York Public Library and read them constantly, and zero I would literally Xerox them. Uh, you know, this is like you know, 20 years ago. I'll go Xerox them so I could have them because I couldn't uh afford them. Now they've been superseded somewhat, and AVI is no longer out of business. But uh they uh that that book was called Ice Cream by R Buckle, and Rbuckle was it.
Like the in like in everyone was like Arbuckle ice cream. In fact, they didn't even call it ice cream anymore, they just called it our buckle, and everyone knew that they were talking about the ice cream book. No relation to Fatty Arbuckle, the uh silent film star who may or may not have been wrongly accused of doing that, whatever. I don't want to get into it. But the um Arbuckle Ice Cream.
So uh you familiar with uh Fatty Arbuckle and Silent Film Star stuff? Yeah, I think he did it. Really? Do you think he did it? Um I need to reread it.
I don't remember what I said what I thought. My last impression was I think he was falsely accused. This isn't so off topic. Uh so uh so here's uh what happened. When it got bought, uh they did uh uh a redo of it, right, with a new author, uh Robert T.
Marshall and W. S. R. Buckle, right? That's the fifth edition from 2000, right?
Now already they've they've changed the authorship on it. And then in 2003, they took uh they took our buckle off the book entirely, and then it was Robert Marshall Douglas Goff, right? You know, good guy, and uh Richard uh Hartell, who's not at Guelph like Goff is, he's at Mad Town. He's the ice cream scientist at at uh University of Wisconsin Mad in Madison. Uh anyways, so then our buckle came off.
I got really pissed. I don't really like it when something's like a standard like that, and then they rewrite it, and then they just like they take the original author off. They should have called it our buckle's ice cream with the new authors on it, right? Uh and uh and then now they released it uh in 2013. They just released it as ice cream by H.
Douglas Goff and uh Richard Hartell. So whatever. I don't appreciate the loss of the lineage of like such a a well-known book, but there you have it. That's the ice cream book to get. The other one is called uh by C.
Clark, it's called The Science of Ice Cream. Uh, and it's uh 2004 from the Royal Society of Chemistry. Uh little bits of of it is available on Google Books and on Amazon, and so I looked through it, and it also looks uh pretty good. Cover, there's two covers I saw. Cover looked like crap, it was like scooped out colored lard.
Like, why do people do that when they're shooting ice cream? Just shoot real ice cream and shoot it fast. You know, do you like lard looking ice cream for fake you hate that, right? Mm-hmm. Like I know it, like you know, you're selling you science of ice cream, and then you have l the other one was just a series of tubes.
It's a series of tubes. I didn't really I didn't get that, but I like the tube cover better. Anyway, but that's another alternative. Alright. So uh that's good on that, on on that.
Yeah. Yeah, four minutes. Four minutes? Oh my god. Yeah.
Well, this listen. So Sam wrote in about uh homemade pasta sheets for uh lasagna, and I have my thoughts on it, but I'm gonna try to wait. Uh we we we were gonna try to get uh Mark Ladner on because you know he makes he they make the pasta for that billion layer lasagna, right? It's not a billion layers. How many layers is it?
Hundred. Hundred. So I wanted to get uh kind of his feelings um on it, uh especially on like whole egg versus egg yolk and various things in pasta, and also his feelings on gluten-free pasta and bite and stuff like that, because he knows a lot, so maybe we can get them next week. So uh so Sam, I'm gonna put off your question on that uh till next week. Uh and let's go up to oh and I you know, by the way, I'm sorry, uh Twitter folks, uh it doesn't look like I'm gonna get a chance to any Twitter questions, but I'm gonna tabulate them all.
I'll try to answer some of them on Twitter, and then ones I can't answer on Twitter I'll postpone until next week. Jeff Mays writes in uh just curious if you or Dave were ever able to figure out how best to cook candle nuts so that they're safe to eat. I have a pressure cooker and a circulator, and not sure if there's a foolproof way to parcook so I can keep them in the house without having to worry about them being poisonous. I called uh in a while ago about the question, but I haven't heard the answer yet. Okay, I've only been able to find the stupid stuff on not stupid, whatever, but the stuff on Wikipedia that say that it contains saponin and four ball, and everyone just quotes that as a block text out of that.
Uh, but I haven't found the references on uh relative heat stability, just that they're just that it's inactivated by by cooking, not necessarily in a pressure cooker. Typically, these guys are roasting it. So uh you brought it back to my attention. I haven't answered it, and I'm gonna come back and do some more research on it. But you have a second question, which I can hit a little harder.
Uh, for low temperature fried chicken, if you pre-cook at 64 degrees white meat uh for 45 minutes, the chicken chill, then refrigerate. What is the best fry temperature to ensure that I don't overcook the chicken but still get a delicious crispy crust? I Brian using the ad hoc, you know, Tech Keller's book recipe, then low temp cook, chill, then refrigerate, then remove and fry. I'm using flour, buttermilk, uh, uh I'm using a flour, buttermilk, flour procedure for frying, which is what I use, but I put egg in the buttermilk. Anyway, when I last did this at 365 uh 360 degrees in grapeseed oil, that's Fahrenheit, uh, the white meat was not as juicy as when I didn't pre-cook low temp and did all the frying at 325.
Or is there a different temp I should use for low temperature? I really want to do the chicken quickly so that I can have it fresh out of the fryer for guests shortly after they arrive and don't have to spend a dinner party in front of a fry station. Thanks again for the show every week. Jeff Mays. Okay, here's a couple of questions for you, or a couple of issues.
So typically uh what what may be going on is that you're cooking it brined uh and then allowing it to uh to refrigerate and sit. And I'm wondering if it's firming up a little bit, the way that most salted meats really firm up when they're being cooked, and whether or not when you say it's not as juicy, is it there's a couple of things it could be. Is it that it's not as juicy, but it's still clearly not overcooked? Does it taste firmer, i.e. more cured?
In which case, if you're going to pre-cook it a long time before, maybe omit the brining or do a uh a lighter brine so it doesn't taste as as firm or cured. That's I'm not sure. I'd have to test it. I don't have this problem, I'll tell you why. I don't refrigerate my uh my chicken.
When I'm doing low temp chicken, I do it uh fairly soon before the meat is going to be served. I remove it from the ziplocks uh where it's brine. I cook it in the brine, frankly, and then I pull it out and I pull it out hot. And the reason I pull it out hot is so that the skin flashes off and gets tacky so that I get good adhesion of my battery right. Now I know there's a whole pies and thighs, Roberta's uh theory of you know not drying the chicken at all before you batter it, but whatever, I don't do that.
And so and then I fry it uh in the limit of food safety time. So it ne I never chill it down and I never re and I fry it at 360, right? So you know that's kind of how I do it. And what my feeling is is that you're probably uh you're probably getting a uh a lack of the feeling you getting out of a fresh cooked chicken because it was cooked, brined and cooked uh and allowed to sit in the salt uh you know in its own salt for so long and it's pulling on that kind of texture. But I'm not sure.
I have to maybe I could put a call into a couple of people and uh see what I'm working on, or maybe do a side-by-side test. But I would try to do it fresh, uh, i.e. you could still do it so your dinner guests don't get hosed, right? You could do it a couple hours before they show up. But try doing it kind of alimute because 360 is what you should uh do.
I wouldn't do it from cold though, by the way. Uh that might be another problem you're having. You might be trying to warm up the center of the chicken by doing a 360-degree cook. If you try to do that, you're gonna overcook the hell out of the outside of the chicken and and you'll also burn the burn the crust. The optimum thing is to have the chicken be, you know, somewhere, you know, like above room temperature, at or above room temperature, so that when you fry it, you're literally just focused on the crust and everything else is secondary.
Here's here's something you might want to do to uh to to try that as a problem is uh pull your stuff if you're gonna leave it in the bag and refrigerate it, try this. Pull it out of the fridge if it if it's not the salt problem, pull it out of the fridge and circ it for like you know, 25 minutes at like uh 50 Celsius, and then uh pull it out hot, uh let it flash off for a little bit, or even 55 Celsius, let and let it heat up, flash it off for a couple of minutes, then bread it, then fry it, and see whether that solves your problem. Maybe you're just going from too cold and spending too long in the fryer. Anyway, those are my thoughts. We got Peter Kim who shows up late or as last week, never.
Whoa. From the actually, what's interesting is he actually was here in Robertas, but he was at the bar. But that makes sense. That makes sense. Peter Kim, what do you got for us?
Yo, he is president, uh, what are you, president, director, emperor, Emperor of the Museum of Galactic Emperor of the Museum of Food and Drink? Exactly. Nice. All right, what do you got for us? Well, I just wanted to give a shout out to the Golden Cadillac, uh, to Don Lee, the Asian man with the best hair in New York City.
Well, and you know, there's a t-shirt of all the various incarnations of uh Don Lee's hair, and I think his hair deserves the actual legal technical term of incarnation. I believe it has agency. Absolutely, absolutely has a soul. Yeah. And uh I've got the calendar of his hair.
And uh also to uh cocktail superstar John Darragon. The two of them uh put together a great event for Mofad uh a couple weeks ago at Golden Cadillac, and uh yeah, good turnout. Dave, you were there in a mask and a cape. The blue diamond, yeah. Yeah, syringes of jello shots into people's mouths.
Don Lee's jello shots, by the way. They were Don Lee's yellow shots. I take no credit, yeah. I take no blame. I was merely the bar back, the server, the waitron.
Yeah, Patrick was there too, Patrick Martins. And uh what was his quote? Give me give give you Patrick Martin's quote as he self-injected himself with with uh Pina Calada. What was the quote? Give it to me.
I blocked it from my own. Oh, come on, don't wait. Dave, I don't I I don't remember anything. What is it? No, he's like calling him out.
It's not calling him out, it was awesome. It's not calling him out. Hey, how about those flat pizzas that they've got at Subway? Uh don't get me started. Don't get me started.
Don't get me started. We don't have time to get me started. I have a question about MSG though. Oh, geez. Yeah, Peter, Peter.
So why don't you instead why don't you spend the the in you know the few minutes we have left? And that reminded me for now I have called the personality going through my head. But uh for those of you that remember Living Color uh Cultural Personality song? Do you remember that? Yeah.
Good song. Anyway, so what do we got going to the museum soon? Well, actually, so on the Golden Catholic thing, we're gonna make that a monthly thing, and uh so keep an eye out for that. And then we've got a debate coming up on GMOs on I think Sunday, April 27 at the Food Book Fair. And we've got a big MoFed fundraiser coming up in May, and the Stasi and I are putting it together.
It's gonna be amazing. We've got some great chefs lined up for that. Uh May 7 is our tentative date, but we'll be sending out a state of date as soon as we get the details. Are we doing any particular what particular aspect of GMOs are we gonna tackle? Man, I mean, I think one of the first questions is is just gonna be about defining GMOs and what those are and how they differ from conventionally grown crops, if at all.
Why is that really contentious? The actual definition? Yeah, it is. The definition is contentious? Yeah.
All right. Well, I will uh am I gonna moderate this one? Uh yeah. I we'll have you moderate it. Why is the definition oh, I mean how you define it legally in terms of hey hey Stas.
Stas is worried because she's got something else to do. One second. No, it's true, it's fine. I won't discuss what it is. But they the point is is that the the the the I guess the definition of what you actually count as a GMO modified food is quite important as it relates to whether or not you could sell it in Whole Foods in five years when they come in.
Right? That is that what you mean? No one really no one really no one really argues about what what the process of using genetic modification is. It's just whether or not a particular food stuff is labeled as GMO free or not, right? That's what's contentious.
That's true, yeah. And also for regulation purposes, too. Right, sure. Sure. Alright.
So uh yes, a giant thanks uh to the Golden Cadillac, uh John Deragon, Don Lee, Greg Bohm, all those uh guys. They did a uh a real solid service with that. Uh and uh maybe we should have uh, you know, occasionally we should have you come in and just give us a MoFAD update. Yeah, sure. Yeah?
You like that? Yeah. All right. And I'll stand you up. Yeah, nice.
All right. Uh well that was it. Cooking issues, labs in labs. Cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org.
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