This special program was brought to you by the Dairy Farm Families of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. Did you know that today Wisconsin produces more than 600 varieties, types, and styles of American, international style, and original cheeses that win more awards than any other state or country? To learn more, visit Eat Wisconsin Cheese dot com. This is Chef Emily Peterson, host of Sharp and Hot. You're 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 on the Heritage Radio Network in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Every Tuesday from late, really late today, huh? Son of a gun.
Well, supposed to be around 12 to about uh 1245. Speaking of uh or 1250, I don't know. What what time 1250, Jack? Yep, 50. Well, we got uh 50 fifty-five.
5055. We got uh we got our boy uh the uh fearless leader of our uh of our network, Patrick Martins, has a book coming out soon. Yeah. And he's uh he's coming in to talk about it around twelve forty or so, right? Around twelve forty.
So we'll round out the uh we'll round out the program with a little bit of discussion of the uh of Patrick's new book. So I'll do that for later. Also, uh we're being we're being brought to us by uh Wisconsin Cheese right now. Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, yeah. Wisconsin You know, like I was thinking about if you were to actually count all the cheese heads as like a separate cheese variety, you'd have hundreds of thousands of varieties of cheese in Wisconsin.
You know what I'm saying? That's right. Yeah, sweet cheese heads. Everyone loves it. You know, I used to have a cheese head hat.
I don't know what the hell happened to it. Remember that we used to have the cheese head hat at at uh FCI? It was originally Jeremy's, who was from Wisconsin, Chef Jeremy, who then like kind of donated it to us, and then somehow I think someone stole the cheese head hat. You can't keep one around. People love the cheese head hats so much, even though they're viciously uncomfortable because foam rubber hats are just like so uncomfortable.
You ever wear a foam rubber hat for any length of time? You want to take that on as uh something you're gonna do, like wear the foam rubber hat for a long time? Yeah. We shouldn't spend too much time on it, but I did learn recently that cheesehead is a racial slur toward the Dutch. Ooh, well they make some Dutch they make some Dutch style cheeses in uh in Wisconsin, so maybe that's I don't know.
But uh in Wisconsin it's no parts racial slur. Who said it was a racial slur against the Dutch? The internet. The internet. And did was there any actual like angry Dutch person somewhere?
I mean, I'm sure somewhere, yeah. It's just you know, there's like a database of racial slurs and it was listed. I mean like uh German soldiers used to call the Dutch cheese heads. Well in in in German uh Kazakulpf. Oh, we got a caller.
Yeah, all right, caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, uh it's David from California. How you doing? Got a Yeah, good. I I got a question about pressure cookers.
Um I'm up at altitude and uh I can't use uh I really can't use an electric pressure cooker, so is there some way that uh is there some way that I can uh get a setup without getting too DIY uh that I can uh I can sort of have a setup that I can walk away from that I can, you know, set for um uh my my my pressure that I need and then walk away from it uh but have that extended uh pressure that I need at my altitude. Right. So first thing you have to do, so I mean, so obviously at altitude, you can use even like an electric pressure cooker to get to the temperatures that we can down here on our on our you know low altitude setting, right? The first thing you need to do is you need to calculate the uh the pressure difference between where you are and uh and sea level, right? I mean what you need to what you need to do is you need to figure out how many how much excess PSI you need to get to that same temperature.
What? Three PSI. Three? So you so you need to pull about eighteen, you need to do about eighteen PSI, uh relative PSI to be getting to my to my atmospheric levels down here where I am. Yeah.
Okay. Now there's a couple of ways uh you can do this. Um all of them are obviously not recommended uh by the manufacturers, right? So on the electric pressure cookers like uh the Cuisinart, you can they're not actually sensing uh pressure, they're sensing uh temperature, so you can mess with it, right? And I I posted an article on that once.
I don't necessarily recommend you go and do that because you know risk of danger, etc. etc. Yeah, I've I've seen that article and uh that's it's that's above my head anyway. So then the the next two, like like depending on I I don't know of a good way to alter the uh Fagor style uh pressure cookers that have the little twist knob on them. I don't know, I don't have a good way to modify those.
But if you use uh old-style jiggler weight pressure cooker, so Iwatani used to make them, uh, American pressure canner still makes them, right? American pressure canner is interesting, like the problem with it is it's aluminum, and so if you're gonna do a lot of acidic work, uh some people don't don't like it, some people don't like cooking in aluminum, and also like a lot of them are very big. But uh the American pressure cooker canner corp corporation, they're the only people that have a gauge that I really trust, right? Now they're an old jiggler style, which means that it's gonna be venting, which is not ideal, right? Because you know, if you've read my stuff on pressure cooking I don't really like pressure cookers that vent if you're gonna do things like stock that said that said what you can do on any sort of jiggler style is just um what they're fundamentally doing is they have an orifice of known size and then they put a weight a certain weight on it and and by doing that they know kind of at what pressure the steam is going to force the weight off the top and then have it sprayed down right so what you can do is increase the weight.
So if you're gonna have like an American pressure canner situation you can just you know add weights to their jiggler weight and in fact the American pressure canner is nice because uh the jiggler weight has like three different uh holes that you can use and they have three different weight settings depending on kind of uh you know how hard it needs to push that to go up so you take the highest one and then you add enough weight has to be down low so it's not off center or anything and then you look at the gauge when it starts venting and you can set it to since you only need three pit psi over pressure right you can do that because none of the safeties on a pressure cooker are going to start engaging until well over three PSI over their limits. Alright? Yeah. Now you yeah you've talked about the the the pressure sterilizer before and I I was looking at that um is it have you ever tried to control that uh with a uh with uh an induction burner um yes but not I didn't try very hard right so yeah you can you can uh put a pressure cooker in uh in a in a in a temperature controlled oil bath on an induction burner and you can do it, right? So the question is is if your if your induction burner is is good, is pretty good, right?
Then you, you know, let's say it can with you know it can maintain you know plus or minus four or five degrees, then you could just use uh the sterilizer uh or even uh you know like a like a heavily modded uh regular one with the jiggler and just uh yeah and have it just go to that temperature and you can verify that it's reaching the the temperature you need by looking at the gauge. And I have had I would say moderate success. I was using it because I wanted very even heat transfer when I was doing custards on uh I was trying to do pressure cooked uh durian custard, and I was never able to succeed and remake the one batch that I made by accident one day, which is still a lifelong disappointment for me. But um, yeah, you can do it, but I think you know you're gonna be easier um like on a repeated basis just being able to try and do it on a stove top uh by modifying that that jiggler weight. Now, if you if you're moving to something like a coon recon, right, in a coon recon the uh the pressure is determined by the um spring.
There's a there's a spring that um there's a spring that force it that you push down, right? Uh sorry, there's a spring that pushes the uh the valve down, and as it as the pressure increases, it pushes from the inside against the spring up up, and you see first ring, and then you see second ring, and then after the second ring, you still have more pressure, and then after another you know amount of time, then psh the coon recon starts to vent out through that valve, right? My guess is that that venting doesn't happen until around three PSI over pressure over the 15. So I'm guessing you could probably get 18 out of a coon recon before it starts venting, although I'm not sure. Now here's where things get hinky, right?
You could uh you could put a stiffer spring into that coon recon thing, or and I'm not saying I recommend this, you could perhaps stretch that spring to give it a little bit of a permanent set so it's a little bit bigger so that you have to put more compression on it to get it uh to the uh right pressure levels. But unless you have some adequate way of measuring, let's say using an oil bath for measuring purposes beforehand, right? Then if you had an oil bath to measure beforehand, you could set it to a temperature that you knew was 18 PSI, which I I forget, the number's gonna be somewhere around 250 something Fahrenheit, right? Uh you could see where it hits, you could stretch the spring out a little bit, reassemble it, and then uh put it at 250 and see where it hits on the valve and figure out roughly how much you've adjusted the pressure that way. Is that make sense?
Yeah. Okay. I mean, I don't not I can't recommend any of this crap, but if you have a good induction burner, I would set it to about uh do you remember, do you happen to remember offhand what the temperature is for uh atmospheric for sorry for uh 15 PSI at uh at uh sea level, it's like two fifty something, right? Yeah, it should be two fifty pretty much on the dot, right? Yeah, somewhere around there.
So I would say if you have something like let's say you even have a s uh well you hard you could do with a circulator actually, set it to just don't do it in plastic, right? Set it to uh two, don't mean if you have an old metal circulator, I should say, uh set it to two fifty Fahrenheit and uh you know put the thing in the oil bath and just wait a while and see. Well, well, let me start this way. What kind of pressure cooker do you have? Uh I have a coon recon.
Okay, good. So set it uh set it, you know, in in that bathroom. If you have an induction burner that can do a pretty accurate two fifty, set it uh with you know, with like you know, it's not a lot of water because you don't want it to take a long time to heat up, you know, like you know, like you know, a finger or so of water. Wait for it to heat up and see where the where the pressure thing hits. And if it hasn't made it to vent level yet, if it's just like you know, it's it's it's over the second ring but not quite venting yet, then you can kind of figure out where you are, then obviously let it cool down and do your modifications.
The good news is if you hose it, you can buy that spring and it's not that expensive. Like that spring you can buy it from Coon Recon. I I've had to buy parts from them. I forget whether you have to email them directly or not. But you know, an interesting thing, you know, we maybe we should ask someone like Coon Recon to make a special spring for people who cook at altitude.
You know what I'm saying? Because for them it would cost nothing. You know, that would be that would be nice. Yeah. Yeah, but I'm pretty sure you'd be able to tweak it.
But um, why don't you give that a shot? And if you could call back with uh with your results, I'd appreciate it because I like to know whether things like this work. Yeah, I I I'd like my Coon Recon to work. I uh you know, I I'd be willing to get the all American uh sterilizer uh i if I need to. But they're a little harder, they're a little harder to work with.
I mean, uh honestly I've only used the really, really giant one and I use it because it's really giant, but it's not nearly as you know, it's it's a lot more of a pain in the butt because it doesn't have any gaskets or gasket lists, which is good for some things, but not necessarily good for ease of just using a pressure cooker all the time because it it's got these little uh screw dads that you screw down. It looks like you're like a submarine bulkhead or something like this with these like screw dads that you have to screw all the way around. You have to make sure that they're sealing, because if you don't, you know, do it like you do a tire lug nut. If you don't like go across in a star pattern, you can like torque the the lid of it. Um and you know, they are aluminum.
I mean, they're really good at what they're good at, and the gauges are really good, but I don't cook with mine. I use I use it for experiments. So if you can get your Coon Recon to do what you want it to do, I would get your Coon Recon to do it what you want. You might want to buy a spring first and then dork with that spring so that you're not like high and dry in case you do something horrible. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Um it's not an expense. And also, if I don't know if like, you know, I often disassemble my Coon Recon uh for cleaning, so it's pretty easy to get to the my memory is it's pretty easy to get to the spring. You just unscrew the unscrew it from the bottom, hold on to the thing, unscrew it from the bottom, and you should be able to pop the entire assembly out for cleaning. And there's just no way of taking a direct temperature measurement in the Coon Recon.
There is, but it requires drilling a hole through it. Okay. You know, the other the or temporarily disabling one of one of its safeties. So like there's a there's a rubber safety plug in the side of a Coon Recon. It's a little blue uh silicone uh rubber plug.
You need to replace it every once in a while anyway. Mine blew out. That's what I knocked knocked in at the lab like a year ago and like sprayed chicken grease all of a sudden. Remember that stuff? Remember it well, right?
Uh so if you get an extra one of those plugs, you can drill under like drill that plug, but under, like only a little bit, and then shove a thermocouple through that plug down into your product and do a direct measure of temperature. But then you're gonna want to throw that plug away and put a fresh plug in when you're done. I mean, that's a I wouldn't run it all the time that way, but it's a temporary way to get it exactly where you want it. And again, those plugs aren't that expensive. So if you get a rebuild kit from Coon Recon, they'll send you the the if you tell them what you need, they'll send you that plug.
Uh and again, I would I would drill out your old one because it's always nice to have a fresh plug. Then you know they'll probably send you a new gasket at the same time. I forget exactly what I got, but I got a complete rebuild, including the the stem assembly with a spring. I got the uh the plug and everything. Or you could just get a new plug and measure the temperature right before it starts to vent, so that you could, you know, do it without any spring modification at all.
You might be able to get the temperature you need with no modification, you know. Okay. But you see, you know what I'm saying? Do you understand what I'm saying about that plug? That little that little blue plug underneath the if you pull up the uh the coon recons come with a plate that fits over the top, a little like little rattling plate that's meant to deflect steam down, should all crap go wrong.
I lost mine years ago, so I don't have one of those plates, but then you know, on that little thing on the inside is a blue is a blue silicone plug that is uh removable from uh it's removable by popping it out. Okay. Alrighty, let me know how what yeah, I I I know exactly what you're talking about. So okay. All right, let me know how it goes.
Okay, thanks, Dave. Appreciate it. All right, cool. Um Alexander, oh wait, we were talking what were we talking about, Sash? Uh nothing.
We're talking about cheese heads, but cheese heads. Oh, yeah. I think we're done. Uh anyway, my point is my point is is that like it I would like any Dutch person to call to call in and say whether or not they're actually offended by uh by TCS. That's a challenge.
That is a challenge. I want I want someone who's actually legitimately offended by this to call in because I don't think that such person exists. We have a caller and he's in studio with a book. Yeah, all right, hold on a sec. We have Patrick Martin's in the studio.
Hey, what's up? Nothing, and he's uh he's here uh hawking the Carnivores Manifesto, the new book by Patrick Martins, uh with uh with Mike Edison, who, by the way, was the editor in chief, I believe, of High Times. Yes, he was. Yeah, and uh, but then also did a bunch of he'd done a bunch of other good books with right, like uh he wrote uh Joe Bastyanich's Restaurant Man with him, which is the New York Times bestseller. Yeah.
It was about the underbelly of the restaurant world and what it's like to open restaurants, and uh it was a fun book for him to write. He also told me that uh Hugh Hefner hates women. Hugh Efner hates women and he hates Hugh Hefner. Uh he's worked with all of them. Who's the guy from Hustler?
I forgot Larry Flint. He loves him, he loves all those guys, but he never liked Hugh Hefner. Well, he said that you know, for whatever else you think about Larry Flint, right? When there's many things you could think about Larry Flint, he said that Larry Flint legitimately not uh when I say likes women, I mean I don't I mean uh I'm not gonna try to portray Hustler as you know uh a paradigm of uh I'm gonna put it this way Larry Flint enjoys the company of women. That's what I mean to say, not likes them in sort of a you know reasonable way.
I see what you mean. Yeah. Well, yeah, he uh he's really been on that dark, uh dark underbelly of uh of food, uh uh of life, of culture, and that's why I thought he was a great guy to partner with for the book, because I was not looking to do a traditional, oh, this is sustainability, and these are labels that you need to be looking for at the supermarket. There are basic truths out there. Uh, you know, gastronomy, Carlo Petrini always said uh gastronomy is not a strictly opinion thing.
There are facts in gastronomy, some things, you know, that's why 95% of all cheese people think Parmigiano Reggiano is the number one cheese in the world, because there's certain agreement about that. Yeah, although that's although you know that's something that's been cited so many damn times, and I don't You don't believe it. I I don't understand it. The best cheese for what? It's not the best cheese to s to to like to like you know put on a piece of bread when you're eating it.
Right, true. I mean, Parmigiano is an amazing, amazing cheese. I love it. I you know, but I hate all sorts of best, best this or that. Like if you were gonna I mean, what's the best cheese to have with a glass of port?
It's still like I think everyone agrees that the best cheese they have with a glass of port is still well, I do agree that uh certain best top things are bad, but like uh you know, I don't like top ten lists where there if you do top ten restaurants in New York City, the top ten should always that should be the same list every year, with rare exception that someone gets bumped on or comes on or bumped off. And uh so I I do know what you mean about picking the best, but I like to know what's the best terroir for wine in America. We should start ranking those things because if we're ever gonna see ourselves like France does them and Italy does them, we have to look at ourselves as a gastronomic mosaic around the USA and and recognize expertise where it exists. Georgia makes the best peaches, as does Western Michigan, as does OHI. But New Jersey, that's not the best peach.
And by the way, for all the talk about the best tomatoes coming from New Jersey, I don't know if they actually taste it. Whoa. Now you're you're telling me that you've had a better tomato than either the Aunt Ruby's German green or the German uh or the German stripes from uh from Stokes. Is that New Jersey? Yeah.
Um well that's a good question. I I can see I crossed the line here, but I mean I think that's better because it's local, although I do have a chapter in my book that says eat the best, not the local to hell with local. I mean, I think I agree with you, like on like on one level I agree with you in that I think what Europe has done really well is say, look, here is a product that has certain characteristics, and let's let's like enumerate and preserve these quality characteristics, right? So in other words, like prosciutto the you know department, they like we can all agree what the best prosciutto de Parma is in stylistic terms, and let's protect that and like give it a label that makes sense, right? It's not saying it's the best ham in the world.
It's just saying, you know within Parma, there is a hierarchy. Or there is a particular style, it comes from here, we're the best at it, you can't make it. You know what I mean? Is that I mean I think that maybe we're agreeing. Yeah, yeah, maybe we do agree.
I think we agree on most things. So uh and so yeah, so yeah, I think you'll agree when I wrote one chapter was called Alphabet Soup, and it was about your museum of food and drink. And I my last line our museum. Our museum, thanks for making me the vice president. Um I did say it's a giant leap for mankind, and it really is.
Because I was saying uh at the fundraiser the other day, you know, if you had said it was sixteen hundred and two guys like you and me were sitting around and be like, let's do a museum that involves animals and all that. Like, what should we do? Wild animals from Africa, and is that the future? Do you think food museums is the future? Back then, almost everybody would have said food museums is the future.
And yet, not only has it not been the future, there is not one food museum in the world. That can maintain itself, right? That doesn't matter. And there is a natural history museum in every major city in the world. So it's just funny how it's a hundred percent to zero.
There is not one food museum that's like a real big picture food museum. So that's it's a travesty. It is a it's it's crazy. Who would have ever bet their money that there would not be one food museum? But that was just one chapter in the So let's let's talk a little bit about the uh the Carnivores Manifesto.
Is it is it out right now? It comes out on June 10th, and unfortunately you cannot buy it on Amazon because my publisher hatchet is out of our with Bezos. Oh, you're uh just worst time every it's gonna be over soon. Uh it was last time. They you never know, but either way, you can buy it on Barnes and Nobles.com, or most importantly, you could support your local bookseller.
Or pay you can you buy it from Heritage Radio? Uh yes, it will have copies for Heritage Radio, of course. The profit, yes, that's true. That'll be uh huge, huge uh financial So let's but let's talk about this. I'm presuming that this Amazon thing's gonna blow over because that's bad for both Amazon and the publisher.
Well, Hatchet is put down the hatchet. They say we will not tolerate this type of price uh pressure anymore. And so they are, you know, this sounds like one that could last a little longer than the last time. So you're telling me they're mad as well and they're not gonna take it anymore? Yeah, they're just not gonna take it.
So let's uh let's look at uh one of the chapters. You mentioned it a little bit, but when you were writing the book, we were talking, and this is kind of the one that's gonna generate the most heat for you personally, is uh is a third chapter to hell with local, eat the best. And so uh that's my my imitation of the case. That's good, thank you. Uh so I mean this is a really interesting thing because usually people and this is something I I hate uh kind of about all commentary of all subjects everywhere, uh, is uh someone who thinks about you and thinks about uh kind of heritage uh foods in general, is gonna they paint they're gonna paint you with the same brush that they paint everyone uh who is involved in the kind of or was like the for instance the one of the founders of Slow Food USA, which you were, right?
Paint you all with the same brush. That is you're all local, you all believe you you all have a unified uh you all have a unified view of what uh good food is and what's important and you know what we should be doing. Not the case. I think the average person like this person here that's uh drinking some sort of some of uh ice coffee outside the studio, if I were to ask them whether or not you or someone like you would be a uh like a confirmed local or they would say yes, but in fact, no. Slow food was never about eating local.
Carl Pugini founded SoFood if the best anchovies came from Sicily and the best lentils came from Puy France and the best uh, you know, whatever. I mean, he would go anywhere around the world to get the best meal he could. And whereas he always wanted to reward local terroir and local gastronomy. In fact, he was probably the major reason that Barbaresco and Barolo's became so powerful in the mid-80s, early eighties, they were terrible wines, late 70s. He was a big proponent.
So you should always try to reward and improve your local terroir, but by saying that uh, you know, no offense, New Jersey has the best tomatoes when perhaps another region, or let's say peaches, it's just not the case. Um you're actually propping up a third-rate product. You're hurting the farmer, you're hurting your own gastro gastronomic experience, and I just think it's important to be the best and to recognize that each region of this country makes certain things. I mean, uh, would you eat I know pigs that wouldn't even hunt for local truffles in Oregon. You know, they would refuse to hunt for them because they're not very tasty.
Listen, I'm not gonna get in the in the in the throw down on uh on Oregon uh truffle. They're not the same, clearly. It doesn't mean that they're bad. There's not the same. But you shouldn't eat a Loreg Oregon truffle and be like, this is a fantastic truffle, shave these and use them like you would truffles because it's local.
That's ridiculous. They they have a long way to go, and maybe they shouldn't even be focusing on truffles, they should be focusing on other things that the climate is adapted for. Strong words. You know, and I just think uh local is a distance, it's not a guest gastronomic term. Local is just a distance.
So is there any moral problem to buying stuff at a distance if you can afford to pay for it? Well, you know, I mean, it's an interesting thing. I mean, I think uh, you know, money is a big thing. I have a thing, uh, one of my chapters is the 140 dollar turkey. I was gonna ask you about that.
It to claim uh, you know, uh the the 140 dollar turkey, well, let's say the $10 turkey, the two dollar a pound turkey, it a genetically it's been m manipulated. And the most important chapter in this book is called survival of the fattest. These uh big corporations they breed for genetic misfits if it leads to more profit. So they suffer on that level. They are so sick from their bad genetics, they're forced to grow so fast, so much faster than they can that they need antibiotics pumped into their feed just to survive.
Um that's an unhealthy turkey. People shouldn't eat that. And whereas we're not perfect and we know it's always a slow turning of the wheel and it's not an overnight thing. To tell a poor person that they should eat an unhealthy turkey is classist and borders on racism, even. I mean, it's uh it's a classist thing.
The poor person should be told the same thing that the rich person is told. You will be unhealthy if you eat that turkey. Now, everyone eats uh a BLT with bad bacon in it that comes from a cure system. We're not a utopic uh book that you know we understand about reality, but the rich person should be told the same as the poor. You don't have a dual standard for what you tell them.
And if that one that turkey is a sick turkey and is unhealthy for you, that goes for rich and poor. We might have to eat less meat in this country. That's an answer, but we certainly should never make a different argument to someone because of how much money they have in their bank account. An unhealthy m animal is an unhealthy animal. I mean, this is a long and tough argument, which we should have against them.
You should come back on again to have an argument about this because it's hugely, and this is like one of the museum topics in general, it's like hugely difficult. But on more personal level, I mean I think right now, I mean, I think it's it's obvious that you know the average person, you know, where everyone in the family, if there's more than one adult in the family, has to work, you know, uh uh more than they would have uh, you know, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, for less money, and they want to put food on their table, there's a huge disincentive to spend um just culturally. I'm just talking about meat. This is the carnivore. Is that we have, you know, the meat on the table.
You get the chicken when you want it, you can have the the the beef when you need it. I mean, this is like this is still like the cultural uh, you know, I you know, ideal of what it means to be a semi-prosperous American. So it's very difficult to tell someone that they shouldn't go buy a product that makes them and their family feel like they're doing well or doing okay. You know what I mean? Well, I think it's more important the way you are inside, the health of your body.
I mean, Temple Grandin just came out with the statement that said uh eighty percent of all uh between twenty and eighty percent of all chickens arrive to the slaughterhouse already injured because of how unhealthy their bodies are. Those very same companies dump a lot of the industrial waste from those farms into rivers. So if a poor person eats that chicken, they are complicit in a crime, a crime that I commit too all the time, but they need to know, and everyone needs to kill that elitist argument because we should all strive for the good chicken. And to tell everybody, anybody that they shouldn't. Now I understand you should also strive for meat on your table to be part of the American thing, but we also can't uh unwittingly shield the robber barons from criticism.
The Goldman Sachs's of the world and the Purdues. I mean, look, the problem is that I think nobody argues that there's a whole bunch of externalities that don't show up on the price tag at Walmart. You know what I mean? Uh to producing a chicken, let's say. Uh there's a but the you know the issue is is that I think it's very hard to it's very hard to get people to change uh if the price if the price tag remains the way it is and the externalities to producing the crappy chicken or crappy turkey uh don't like make their way down to the price tag, I think it's a hard problem to solve.
Well, it is a hard problem. I mean, I personally think pasta is, and we we said uh there's a chapter in there, these are all 52-page essays. So, you know, they're very short essays, and uh the meatball shop, they do it. That uh dinner at the meatball shop competes with the dinner at McDonald's if you order one of their value menus, you know, like six six fifty, five ninety-five. Uh meatball shop.
Also, what about pasta with ragoo on it? You're using two amount of meat. Yeah, no, it's yeah, definitely. That's the truth. That's where we have to get.
In fact, I write in the Vegetarians You have Blood on Your Hands chapter that this might be the greatest manifesto for vegetarianism ever written because of how critical we are of fast food. Do you know Temple Grandon works for McDonald's? I know, and in fact, I think that now to be fair to Temple, uh McDonald's has co-opted Temple's good work at the slaughterhouse. And by the way, all those animals are killed very well at McDonald's, but they co-opt her good image to uh give the impression that everything they do is good. When in reality the her real effect is on those last few minutes of the animals, and that's hugely important.
But the rest of the time they're deforesting, uh they're deforesting at the Amazon, they do all these terrible things. Those animals are pushed to grow faster than they can, uh than they should, and naturally that's why they're cardiovascular, skeletal, respiratory systems cannot grow that fast. I've heard stats that a chicken at slaughter weight is the equivalent of a 349-pound human. When we start doing that to our livestock, and that's a lot of the percentage of the meat we eat in this country, 90 percent, 95 percent, something like that. That's a fact, and survival of the fattest, not the fittest, is a real uh issue that I think this book brings up.
And I in fact learned it from Frank Reese, our poultry guy, who was doing this from an ethical perspective, and he's chosen to fight that fight by growing chickens that are not compromised genetically for profit. There's a difference between genetic engineering and you know what farmers do. Farmers breed for certain things too, but they're looking for a balanced animal, one that could survive in nature and reproduce. So this argues for that market. It also does not try to deny the fact that we eat 11 billion livestock.
Uh we eat 11 billion livestock in this country, so we should start thinking about how those animals are raised. So uh to ask you one more quickie before we go. So, you know, one of the reasons that uh you know that the meat that you know you you sell at a heritage costs m more than um than you know cra crap crap meat, not only uh is it is the i the this scale on which it's done. Do you believe that fifteen uh twenty years from now it's it will be cheaper it's yeah not as cheap as not as cheap as the crap meat but do you think it will be cheaper per pound because you'll be able to have bet like better distribution routes things like this things that make that kind of thing more economical no no I don't think it will be I think there might be some efficiencies that come up that bring the cost down but um I learned that from Carlo Petrini he says no to raise fifty pigs they grow slower that's one so that means they live longer that's too so you have to feed them more and just so you know a turkey is normally a very discriminating discriminating eater. So what do they do on the corporate farms?
They cut off its beak so it can't pick. So all it can do is use its beak as a shovel and they keep the lights on on the indoors it never sees the outdoors they're all artificially inseminated so no sex is ever happening on this farm. So they have turned their face in unelective surgery into disconfigured shovel so that it can shovel their antibiotic ridden this is an animal so sick that they need medicine in their food just to survive their life and they arrived at the solderhouse injured. No it will never be that cheap. That is too cheap.
That is plain God that is pushing it like the Nazis did that's a Nazi like thing and I hate to say that word but it's true. Go and go and Hitler on well I mean Purdue and stuff like that and they never say no antibiotics because they can't. Those animals would die in their little uh barns there before they got to weight. So you don't even think it will ever become cheaper. I'm not saying cheap ass.
You don't even think it will be cheaper. No, cheaper, yes. I said some efficiencies would happen, and I hope that uh, you know, uh people get into this idea of buying whole lamb. You know, uh you can't get the best lamb in this country and order it in pieces. You pretty much have to commit to a half lamb, cut into pieces, but you commit to the whole lamb.
So you know what I mean? Yes, uh, it's it's still an uphill battle, although I s uh I don't think it'll ever be as cheap. I do think it will be a little bit cheaper, and you can save money by I say cooking pastas, buying whole animals. And by the way, I think corporate things, I mean uh McDonald's, that's still a six, seven dollar meal. A pasta is a half that price.
So I know that's one's going out and one's eating home. Yeah, but still it's not as much as a depends on whether you how much you know, do you buy the good oil, do you buy the Parmigiano Reggiano price uppity up, uppity, uppity up, you know? No, I mean I just say for meat. So I understand now if I was making the argument that food should be more expensive all around so that we don't do this and that, that would be a problem, and I would be wrong. But I think when it comes to meat, this country just has to eat a little bit less meat.
But the pr the way to do that is to embrace the fact that we eat a lot of meat. Not to try to uh first question at any sustainable meat conference, should we eat meat? We do. Eleven billion livestock. Come on, let's get with the program.
I'm one example. But since heritage food started in 2004, I see dozens of butcher shops and other distribution systems. The answer is starting to push at the gates. And uh I'm gonna I sense that things will be cheaper and uh but never never that cheap. Cheaper but never cheaper.
You will never be cutting off the beaks of turkeys so that they get fat in a third the time as they are intended in nature. That's one of my things. Sex cells. Another thing people forget. Sex, animals that have sex, turkeys are only available for eating in November.
Ducks and geese. How come everyone in Charles Dickens book was always eating a duck and a goose in Christmas? Because that's when cycles of the earth, Earth orbiting around the sun, that's when nature gives us those animals. But we artificially inseminate everybody, and that AI, artificial insemination, is how they're able to control and grow these kind of freaks, is because they find a chicken so disfigured, they pull his genetic, pull them from the flock. Not to remove them from the flock, but to artificially inseminate the next generation with his genetics.
Maybe that's how I was made. And they bred him with another genius. Okay, well, take the caller, but Pat Patrick, one of the things that you mentioned with quickly is that each like this is a pow pow pow pow book. It's like two page essays. 50 page 50 essays, two page, powder.
Middleweight fight. Which is very much like Patrick himself. Why don't you stay around here for because we have a caller we're going to take really quickly? Caller, you're on the air. Thanks, dude.
Hey Dave. Uh it's Brandon from Chicago. Hey, how are you doing? Um, thanks. Uh I've got a question about Suzy, barbecue, and cold smoking.
Alrighty. Um, so I would like to make some smoked products, uh, and I don't have an actual smoker. I do have a smoker box that burns pellets, and it kicks it out pretty well. Like I'm I'm pretty pleased with it. Uh, but I don't really have an environment where I can use that and also keep the heat below, say, 215 because I'm using my gas grill as sort of the uh you know place where all the smoking happens.
So wait, so you have a box that attaches to the grill, like uh like a bron like a whatever they are, Brunson or whatever, that attaches to the side of the grill via via like a port? No, it's uh it's a little tube. Uh it's made by uh Mason products. I don't know if you've heard about them before, but uh you just it's like a drilled out box basically that you you put the pellets in and you just sit it under the grill brakes and uh and just let it go. Right.
Um so it does a pretty good job. So uh my dilemma is that I'm either left to sort of cold smoking at sort of ambient temperatures or going above 200 degrees and getting uh you know outside of uh sort of temperature range where I'd like to get if I'm gonna smoke sous vide meats. So I was wondering if you were gonna do some like sous vide smoked pork belly or like a soa'd pork shoulder, first would you smoke it before you put it in the bag or afterwards? Uh and then if you were gonna do it before, how do you deal with having raw meat sitting around uh for hours just you know, kind of at ambient temperatures doing cold smoking. How long is the cold how long is your uh how much smoke do you want to put on?
How long do you need to have it in the cold smoker? And are these commodity meats or heritage meats? Like four to six hours maybe. I don't know. I like a lot of smoke on it.
Yeah, I mean you could like what some people do is they'll they'll they'll put the meat on like uh, you know, like or over a bed of like uh ice almost to keep it like even below ambient. Like they'll put like a uh a rack over a sheet tray with ice and then let the smoke go around it, and then uh, you know, the ice isn't directly touching the food, but you can actually keep the temperatures down like to where it's you know fairly safe. Um that's one way to do it. Or, you know, uh but the thing is that if you're gonna smoke cold, I would definitely do a a nitrate or you know, nitrite based cure so that you would inhibit any possibility of botulism uh happening um during a cold smoking procedure. Anytime you're gonna cold smoke uh for any length of time, you want to ensure that you're not gonna have um botulism problems.
Now, if you're gonna do sous vide afterwards, even if you had caused some you know uh some botulism growth on it, you're gonna you're gonna, you know, if you cook it properly sous vide, you're going to destroy the toxins and destroy the vegetative cells. You obviously won't destroy the spores because d you can't do that with sous vide, but that you know that that's one one way around it. But if you actually want the full sous- vide texture of it, then I would do I would do it before and cold. Now, if you if you want to sous vide it all the way through and you can do a hot smoking fairly quickly, right, then you can you'll overcook the outer sections of the meat, but you can get a good smoke on in a very in a shorter amount of time. If you do if you start uh if you do a a s like a sous vide, cool it all the way down, you can have it almost at you know fridge or below temps, pull it out, let it, you know, let it dry off in the fridge so that it gets a little bit of a pellicle in the fridge instead of the smoker, right?
And then throw it in your smoker cold, and then you can throw a hot smoke on it pretty quickly without overcooking through, and then do the rest of the retherm in uh you know in in a lower temp environment and do it that way. So it's all a question of how long you need to smoke it and how cold you can you can keep it. But if you're gonna do any appreciable cold smoking, I would definitely uh nitr nitrate it or nitrite it first. Nitrite it, right? Uh would you do that in a uh so I usually brine stuff before I uh do this and I put in about a gram of uh insecure number one per kilogram?
Uh do you think that'd be enough to to you know kick out the the botulism in the nasty, or should I up the in the brine, should I have the percentage? Uh the the insecure insecure one is the one that's n that's uh it's not mixed. You're using the pink stuff, right? I forget what the I forget what the I forget what the ratios are, but like any one of the charcuterie books has like brine levels, and I would just use the same amount of instacure that you would use in like a bacon-based brine recipe. Um, I unfortunately, like I do it so rarely that I don't have the numbers in my head, but like I would just consult any you know fundamental charcuterie manual.
Don't obviously consult the ones that are advocating nitr nitrate nitr nitrite free stuff because they're probably not then gonna do something like a cold smoke on it. But anyone that has you know uh a brine recipe with instacure should give you like a decent ratio, and I would just stick with that. Yeah, I wouldn't, especially, you know, if you're doing it um, you know, if you're doing yourself, I wouldn't worry about going like a little bit over. It's not gonna not gonna kill you as much as botulism will. All right, well, thanks.
Uh I appreciate it. All right, thanks. Uh let us know, uh, you know, tweet us or call us and let us know how it worked out for you. That's what I was gonna say. All right, well, do you think that's a good thing?
I was gonna answer just like you did. Really? All right, cool. We have the same answer. All right, so listen, we're gonna have to go now, but I will say what I didn't answer that I will answer.
Uh Rob Trapaz uh called about fiddlehead ferns and ostrich ferns. Actually, very interesting, like uh potential poisoning problems with ostrich ferns uh that are undercooked. I've done some research on it, and I'll get to you next time. Nigel Osin, uh Nigel Olson called in. He's gonna do some gluten-free, uh gluten-free like shoe pastry.
And guess who we have on next week, Stas? Lena Clock. Yeah, who is the founder and the chief uh everything officer of Cup for Cup, the uh gluten-free uh flour that is uh that Thomas Keller is also uh selling that their company's called Cup for Cup, and she will be on the show next week. No one will ever call her a quack. So I'll uh I will I will uh I will wait uh to answer your question until then.
And Ken and Gramercy talked about Chewy Crust in his pizza. I have a lot of stuff to say about that, but I'm gonna also try to get either maybe I'll try to get uh Jeff Steingarden to call in on that. What do you think? Because he's the master of the Chewy Crust. All right.
So those are the questions that I didn't get to that I will get to next week. And Alexander Saunders on the way out wants to know what is a word meaning a soul-wrenching need to sear something, but frustration at the inability to do so. Perhaps something German, tweeting your results, cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network.
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