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Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live, actually at 12 this time. 12 o'clock. I was here at 12. Whoa!
On Heritage Radio Network in Bashwick, Brooklyn. Call your questions live to 718497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Joined as usual with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez. How are you?
Good. Yeah? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jack?
I'm doing great. Yeah? Yeah. Uh, we're gonna uh well to plan, we're gonna have a special guest caller after the break, Nils Norin, formerly of the French Culinary Institute, now heading up uh Marcus Samuelson's restaurant group, and we'll ask him how many restaurants he's opened this week because like whenever you're like Oh I'm you know, I actually well we used to just do fake Austrians, so I can't really imitate the actual Nils accent, so I won't even try. But anywho, he's like every time you call him, he's like, Yeah, I'm headed off to somewhere crazy to open like 13 restaurants.
I'll be back in like a month, right? That's true. Yeah. I think that he he and you were guests together the first time you came on Heritage on Patrick Show, like years and years ago. That is entirely possible.
Yeah. That is that is. I mean, I'm not gonna say uh plus or minus whether that's the case, but he he's gonna come on actually to talk to us about bone marrow to answer Justin's pressing questions on bone marrow. Because you know what? I've uh I I used to like yeah, I'll talk about a little bit now.
I you know I've cooked plenty of bone marrow in my life, but it's always just been kind of home style in Asibuco. You know, you like usbuco right, stuff? Finally, something we like together. Jeez. You know, Asabuko when I was a kid was cheap.
It wasn't expensive back in the day. So, anyways, uh I used to cook it anyway, and then I'd take out the bone marrow and put it on my risotto. But you know, that's about the extent. I've never I've never cooked at restaurant Estelle. So uh, you know, for service.
So anyway, so Nils are gonna come on because the man is uh cooked more bone marrow than uh I care to eat. Okay, so uh let's answer some other questions. By the way, Dave uh Kleiman had a question a long time ago. He is at I am fractal on the uh on the Twitter, and he says, uh dear at cooking issues, reminding uh reminding you to talk about infusing clams slash oysters. And then he says sous V tricks, but I don't really know any sous vide well flavor tricks I know.
Sous V tricks I don't know for for oysters. You know any C V tricks for Oysters? No. I mean, I'm sure that like uh I believe the Rokas have like a razor clam recipe. I think I'm sure but although you know what?
Like you know who's got a really good low temperature recipe is the modernist cuisine recipe for gooey duck. For those of you that have never had the gooey duck before, I mean, for those of you that don't know what gooey duck looks like. Yeah, I feel like Stas will hate this. I mean, do you like gooey duck sauce? I don't think I've ever I've had it at Mirabold thing.
It's sp it's spelled geoduck for those of you that don't. So who the hell knows why it's pronounced gooey duck? And um uh what's his name? Yule Gibbons in stalking the blue-eyed scallop, which is a classic of foraging, by the way. Uh he you know, he does stalk in the wild asparagus, stalking the blue-eyed scallop, a couple other books.
Anywho, like he talks about going to get it like at the super low, low tide, like running out on the on the Pacific coast and getting I don't I don't know whether it's true or false, but he you know he has a uh an article on it. Anywho. It is um let's just say it's suggestive as a as an animal. Am I right? Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's uh imagine you took uh like uh like a a steamer's shells, inflated them huge, then spread them open, and then and then went on the set of a porn movie with it and used it used it as a some sort of anyway, uh it's it it's horrific sight and even more so when you prepare it because you have to peel the outer skin off, which is possibly the most suggestive thing I've ever done in a kitchen. Like, hands down, you know, taking the skin off of uh off of a gooey duck outside is like banana rams. But uh so then it's it's very tough.
That you know, that siphon we'll call it, is very tough. And so, you know, one of the things you can do is just slice it really, really thin on a bias and and sauce it and then eat it like that. It's got kind of a nice crunch to it. Uh or or but Nathan and uh Chris and uh you know uh Maxime, these guys in the modernist cuisine, I don't really know whose recipe it was. They put it in a in a in a CVAP and cooked it very quickly, very low.
And it was the most tender gooey duck I've ever had in my life. It's delicious. You had it. You liked it, right? That's good.
I've only had it like crude, I think. Yeah, crude, where it's kind of crunchy. It's nice. But anyways, so on to flavor infusion. So here's uh Wait, really quick.
I just have to add this. The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Yeah. Their school mascots, the gooey duck. You're lying to me.
I'm not lying to you. I'll show you uh I'll show you over the break. Who the hell would do that? They call it Speedy the J the Gooey Duck. Well, I'm sorry that he's so speedy.
Goodye the gooey duck. Yeah, so you yeah, speedy. That's what she said. Anyway, what college? Uh it's it's uh Evergreen State College.
And they couldn't have chosen like something out of their like amazing temperate rainforest up there. They had to choose the gooey duck? There's a gooey duck fight song. Uh-huh. I'm not kidding.
There's a whole yeah, how does the mascot look? Like like a gooey duck. Well, what direction is the siphon point in? Uh oh Jesus. God.
Like, what what kind of asexual dean and or president of the university allowed this to happen? Either that or what kind of just nut job would be like, if that's what the kids want, if that's what the kids want, gooey duck it is. You'll have to live with it, kids. I don't. I don't go to the football games.
You know what I mean? Is that gotta be how it happened? Oh man, this can't be real. The fight song lyrics. I don't even know if I can.
Alright, Jack, yeah, you give me some of your musician skills. Give me the fight song lying. I'm not gonna sing it, but I'll say goo. I can't even do that. Do it!
It it's gotta be family-oriented, it's a college fight song. Go gooey ducks go through the mud and the sand. Let's go. Siphon high, squirt it out, swivel all about, let it all hang out. Oh.
This is real. Oh my Washington State. Oh my god. Yeah. Oh my god.
I'm sorry. That is horrific. It's bad. It's terrible. Oh my God.
You you have defiled Washington. What is it? Washington, what is it? Washington State. Washington State.
Evergreen State College. Evergreen State College. You have defiled a delicious animal with your innuendo. Anyways, so on to flavoring oysters. Actually, the by the way, I'm just gonna say this up front.
Uh this is news to Nastasha as well as myself, because I just thought of it just now. Uh flavoring oysters using uh flavored uh seawater analogs was the very, very first post on cookingissues.com. Uh it was uh in fact I came up with that trick, and then I'm like, we should have a blog to write this stuff down. So it's the very, very first post on the cooking issues. And you know what I realized, Stas just now?
And I'll talk about a second thing, but it's like um I'm never going to have the time again in my life to write cooking issue style posts. It's just not gonna happen. How many times have I said I want to try and do it? And I can't, because all those posts are like two and three thousand words, right? And more sometimes, four or five thousand.
And they're all like I you know, we had to do extent extensive research, and really I was only capable of doing that when my job was to come up with that kind of stuff at the French Culinary Institute. So, you know, nowadays I don't really have the time to um to devote to just writing that length of even if I were to come up with the idea, writing that length of dialogue on stuff. So I shouldn't pretend that I am. We should just close cooking issues, like archive it, never pretend that it's gonna go live again. It was what it was, and you know, we have the content, it's there, the content will stay up.
And then if ever, you know, I decide to have some sort of online presence other than the radio show and uh and Twitter, then we'll do some some new concept, some new new format, because we won't be able to do the cooking issues, and rather than change what that was, just kind of leave it as uh a document. What do you think? Sounds good. So all right, R.I.P. Cooking Issues blog.
Well, Paul can Paul can continue it, but I think like if Paul Paul Adams, by the way, who's uh uh the our good friend who is the uh I guess he's the head like like chief online editor, I don't know what his title is. I don't know, popular science. He runs he runs their web presence fundamentally. And uh he's a really good guy. You know, maybe we'll do something someday, me, you know, with with uh with Paul, because he he's a good guy.
But I think we should change the format. You know? Something less, something more spontaneous, less less. We tried that. It didn't work.
No, I mean, not as cooking issues. Just like, you know, just like a random thoughts thing that anyone that's working with us can put stuff up or something like this. Something I don't need to devote. I mean, I it's whatever. Anyway, I think we should just have it be what it was, and that's it.
Yeah. You know what I mean? Cooking issues lives on in the radio show, Jack. Did you know that? Yeah, exactly.
Okay, so back to oysters. It was the very first post uh on uh Oh, that used to be my iPad. It was the very first post on uh cooking issues. And the concept was this. I read uh somewhere that oysters don't I I was reading about the physiology of oysters, because that's the kind of crap I do, and uh, you know, it it came to my attention that oysters won't feed in a refrigerator, it's just too cold.
That you need to be in a uh kind of a mid-range uh temperature for it to feed, but you also don't want it to feed over, I forget what the number is, I'm gonna make it up. Let's somewhere in the fifth sixties, 50s or 60s, because then you start having uh problems of growing Vibrio toxin it, right? So it's this middle line thing. And then I realized, well, look, look, if I can get oysters to feed at a temperature that's just above refrigeration temperature, I can maintain that temperature with a with with uh either a circulate or just a standing bath. And it turns out you don't need the circulator, but you can maintain it, right?
And I was like, well, what do they feed on? They feed on seawater, so I can get aquarium salt, because at the time I had a uh a saltwater aquarium and I had a bunch of aquarium salt, and you could just mix up, you could take whatever you want, and the the thing we settled on was carrots and cardamom, like carrot juice and cardamom. Uh and I you have to put it through a very fine filter because if you clog, if you clog an oyster's uh gills with particles, and it's a small particle size, it's some some I forget exactly what it is, but it's somewhere in the range of 10 microns, 10, 15 microns, something like this. And a vitapre's not going to get anything below about 20 microns in that range. I don't know what a champion sieves juicer plate is at, but anyway, we I have a rotor stator homogenizer, so I use that to get the particle size down really low.
You could probably just do a decent filter on it and get it through, then added uh aquarium salt to get it up to the base salinity that I wanted, and then you place the oysters in it and you let them feed for a couple of hours, and then uh you ice them down again. You don't want to uh keep them in the bath for too long because even it's possible, and I spoke to an oyster physiologist about this, it's possible for the oyster to grow bacteria that are not harmful to it, so the oyster will still appear healthy, but could be harmful to you. For instance, you know, vibrio, but that's not gonna grow in the conditions that that we that we we have here. Anyways, so uh so we chose that and we did it also with clams. Uh we did what do we do, size?
Bacon, onion or something like that. We did like a bacon, onion and clams. And uh once you practice, you practice a bunch, you can get to the point where like 75% of your oysters are eating the stuff. And you want to spread them out in a layer and you don't want to disturb them because if you disturb them they shut up like like a clam or an oyster does. Yeah.
That's what they're that's what they do. And then what you do is you wash them off, right? And then you pack them on ice and then when you shuck them they're bright orange on the inside which is awesome. And a couple other people have tried this. I don't know if anyone's ever done it for service in a restaurant but it was like kind of my first uh trick not my first trick cooking trick obviously but the first one we wrote up on the blog.
So you can go look at it on the cooking issues which is now uh archived yeah so anything good happening this week Stas um are we doing anything huge no I feel like we did a bunch of stuff last week was I away last week did I go somewhere last week no we were here we did some event I know we did some event I can't remember though we uh we got some I I don't want to say this but I feel like I have to or people are going to start getting pretzels I think it was all about that all Sears all the time oh no because last week this is the week I got back from uh Tails right I got back on the Sunday or the Saturday and then last week I feel I feel like we had a big event we always have like it's not like whatever we can't have a week without having a big event we came back from Tales. Yeah anyway my point is is that uh we got word from our factory that they will complete the production now I'm not guaranteeing this this is what they say complete production on the 15th of August of August and we're shipping by air, so it's gonna get here super fast. Well you had your book party last week. Oh yes. Oh, that's true.
My book, uh by the way, uh I've seen the the color stuff. They're pre-printed in China, and I should have advanced color copies in uh in like a month. It arrives in October and then sells in November. Should be fun, right? Well, not really.
It's never nothing's fun. That's exciting. It's exciting. I'll give you exciting. I hear croissant being eaten.
Jack is a croissant. Now you know what it's like, Stas to have you sitting there and do stuff guilty as croissanted. Like uh so Stas, what are your thoughts on Cuisson? I like chocolate-filled croissants. That's it.
You don't like a regular croissant? What? I don't know. What we what do you have against flakers? And all that is just uh plain.
Plain. You might actually be the first person I've ever met that doesn't like a regular croissant. Chocolate filled and PS. P.S. nothing like a biscuit.
If you if your croissant, if your croissant is like a biscuit. No, just like the white flaky thing. You know. So how do you work with me if you don't like white flaky things? Boom!
Burn. Burn. Uh okay. So we got some questions in uh from Sam, whose questions we ask uh answered some of last week. Uh can you run through any tips for excellent sauteed uh vegetables?
What kind of sauteed vegetables do you like? Most. Most? I was about to say, first tip: don't try to saute zucchini. Boom!
Because that stuff sucks. If you want the like the the best way to cook zucchini is to not cook it at all. Throw it out. Yeah, the uh yeah, that's that's my favorite cooking technique for the zucchini. I think if you hollow it out, keep it whole, hollow it out, and stuff it with meat ground beef, yeah.
Oh, that's good. That's good. And then you roast it. Yeah. You don't saute that sucker.
You roast it. That sounds good. Alright. Another way you can do it is if you uh like like dehydrate that thing so that the water's out of it, like cut it thin, par dehydrate that sucker. Uh, but then if you soak, if you saute it in too much oil, suck it's gonna absorb oil like a spiz nunge, and then it's gonna suck.
You know what I mean? So you have to like uh yeah, cr crush it. You know what? I'll talk saute because I know Nils is gonna go crazy on sauteed vegetables. I'll save saute vegetables when we're talking to Nils about the uh about the bone marrow, because that'll be fun to engage him on some sauteed vegetable stuff.
Also, people have different things, like uh another one of the cooking issues posts, like sauteing mushrooms, right? Everyone, like the old sort of, you know, uh I forget who it was, whether it was Robouchon or one of those guys, uh Gagnier, one of those dudes, one of those fancy famous French dudes, was like, the ultimate would be to saute a single mushroom at the time, right? Because everyone's like, everyone's like, you know, look, if you saute the the mushrooms, they're gonna sweat and they're not gonna get uh a nice uh crust. Bull crap. That's crap.
What you want to do is you want to swamp those mushrooms when you're cooking them so that they get rid of their water and they're boiling the water out, getting rid of the water and not absorbing oil. If you saute mushrooms wide open in a pan, they get rid of uh uh the water, sure, but then they're still relatively porous from the water expelling when they start drying out and they soak up a lot more oil. Not that soaking up oil is bad, but most people don't want like a greasy, a greasy mushroom sponge. Do you want a greasy mushroom sponge? No, you don't.
So uh what you do that you know, there is you saute them in a huge in a huge amount, they boil off all the water, and then after they start getting down to the bottom, then they can really color up without getting rid of any water at all, and without absorbing that much oil because they've already densified, which is another trick. Vegetables that are porous that you don't want to absorb too much oil, right? You want to get them fairly pre-densified before you do your saute on them because otherwise they're going to absorb oil as you as you uh saute them. But we'll talk to we'll talk more with uh with Nils as he comes in. Your second question, though, is uh interesting because it's about uh something that Stas hates and then something that both Stas and I hate, and I hope all of you hate as well.
Uh are beets not the tilapia of the vegetable world. Uh how uh what am I doing wrong, or what's a good cooking method for for beets? And uh Stas, what are your thoughts on the beets? I don't like them, you know that. I I do.
That's the only time I haven't seen you finish an entire I'm not gonna call out whose beets they were. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because that's not what's important here. I did have a I did have a say the way that they were served, though. It was like pull it out of the ground, right?
Yeah, wash it off, yeah. And oven for like 15 minutes. You know what I mean? And then like and then like quarters. Yeah.
Not a small beat. Big Stas. Were they beefs the size of like a uh like a supermarket radish? No, no. No.
No. It was like uh like a a large one of those large plastic baseballs. Like a wiffle ball. Like a whip, yeah. It was like and quarter wiffle balls, quarter wiffle balls, no salt, no salt, no salt.
Oh my god. And uh let me just say that it was not good. I've never seen you not finish it. I was like, man, well, here's the weird thing, because beets for me are like beets for me, like I can deal with a crunchy beet and an al dente beet, but like soft on the outside and hard on the inside with that dirt flavor, which is what we're about to talk about, right? So the problem with beets have several problems, but the main problem is that uh dirt, that dirt earth, dirt earth flavor.
Actually, I like beets. I like pickled beets. Yeah. Well yeah. And and I like a fully roasted beet.
And uh I like uh like apples soaked in beet juice. You know, those red old steakhouse apples. Jack, you know I'm talking about the old yeah, good, right? Anyways, uh I like all that stuff. Um prefer, you know, all the pastry chefs prefer cane sugar.
Did you know that? No. They say that the beet sugar, whatever however they produce it, I don't know whether it's true or false, but they say that it's not as good for candy making. Could be uh horse crab. Probably is.
Anyway, uh, but that's not what I'm talking about. So uh the thing in beets that is probably off-putting to you, other than the fact that it stains your hands if you're using the red ones. It's a horrible stain your hands, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Not as bad as turmeric. Mm-hmm. Which is I'm I could I made that last week at the house and I stained some stuff and my you know, uh Jen was like, my wife was like, uh, you weren't kidding. You stained our you stained the cutting board. I was like, yes, I did.
I was like, I d and whatever. And I did it at the I told did I talk about that already? I did the turmeric drink at the Mont Leon at the tails of the cocktail because all that room at the Mont Leon was a rental. Did we talk about me almost getting arrested at the Mont Leon? No.
Well, if we have time, we'll talk about me almost getting arrested at the Montaleone. Okay, anyway, the chemical in beets is uh geosmin. It's the same chemical, which is apt why you say it that grows in tilapia or that's present in tilapia that makes it taste muddy and some catfish. However, in uh when it comes in fish, it's the product of uh bacteria that the uh it's a it's a bacterial byproduct that they that they eat produced by uh well by bacteria. Beets.
It was not known until very recently whether or not beets produce their own geosmin, or whether or not uh or is it geosmin or geosmin? Who cares? Uh you guys know I can't pronounce anything. It wasn't known until recently whether beets produce it on their own or whether there's bacteria that grow around beets that's causing it to have that flavor. But uh Lou uh et al.
in 2003 in the paper, biosynthetic origin of geosmin and red beets, proved that uh it is produced endogenous endogenously, meaning that the beets actually produce their own geosmin. And here is the first clue for you on how to make beets not suck so dang hard. The geosmin concentration is six times higher in the peel than in the pulp. So when you get rid of the skins, whether you well, if you're roasting, you're probably gonna do it afterwards, right? But when you're getting rid of the skins, get rid of the skins.
Don't just like take a little bit of layer off the outside. Get rid of enough skin to get rid of most of the geosmin. Here's another thing. Do you think there's a reason why beets are often served in acidic sauces or in acidic uh pickles or in things like that? Do you ever think about that, Stas?
The reason is is because geosmin breaks down in the presence of acidity, and which is why you add it to tilapia. Well, it's just to add some flavor to that muddy piece of crap trash. But uh, but anyway, so geosmin if it's heated in acidity will break down. So acidity is gonna help if you want to do like a post-finish with uh like a sucky in a uh in an acid kind of environment, that should help. And also the acidity probably helps cover up the smell of that stanky earth thing.
But the best beat I've ever had was made by uh friend of mine, Mike Sheeran, who uh is a chef out in Chicago, and I don't know whether it was originally his idea or an ideas and food idea or whatever, but he par dehydrated the beets, then sauced them, and then uh roasted them. And they had a kind of a chewy, meaty texture, and that was the best damn beat I've ever had in my life. That's the first time in my life. I like beets fine, you know, when they're prepared properly, not like quarter wiffle balls, you know, like flash, flash cooked quarter whiffle balls. But like this was the first time uh where someone served me like a beet salad, and I was like, holy crap, I could eat as much of this beet salad as they have in the house.
Still waiting for that moment for me. Yeah, but you know how you like like you know, you have to have eaten with me, but like I get in these modes where like I go ape ape list on things, like you know, I've been known to eat like I don't know, like 20 grapefruit. You know what I mean? It's like if I'm like, man, this grapefruit is delicious, like I can just keep eating it. Uh and I felt that way about this beet salad.
Anyway, uh and one more quick question he has, and then we're gonna go to the uh We do have a caller. We have a caller? Yes. All right, caller, you were on the air. Hello, Dave.
How are you? Doing well, how you doing? Doing all right. This is Steve from Indiana and Indianapolis. And I had a few quick questions for you about uh technology.
Sure. Uh one being the VACMaster VP112. Uh do you think it's worthwhile to purchase out if I'm not gonna be doing retexturizations and things? I just want something that I can vacuum uh liquids with the meat or whatever in and sous vide cook at. How much does it cost?
It was five oh nine. I mean, it's just a dry pump. Yeah. It just seems to me to be an in-between cost. You know what I mean?
Like, I've never used it. Someday I'll get a hold of one and I'll use it. Hervay, that I, you know, who the who I used to work with at the French Culinary Institute, they sent the FCI one or the ICC, whatever they're called now. And um they sent him one and he seems to like it. I've never used it.
I mean, by all accounts, it's better than the food saver, but it's just in that for me in that uncomfortable in-between price zone. You know what I'm saying? Like, isn't the comfortable price zone like 2500 for like a decent uh like something that can actually pull 99% plus vacuum? No, closer to 15, I think if you get the if you get the right deal. I haven't shopped one for in a long time, but you can get one, I think, with a decent pump for closer to 15.
So in other words, it's like 99 bucks, 500 bucks, or 1500 bucks. Like those are your choices. Right. And like so for me, but maybe it's closer to two. I don't know.
I have to look at uh, you know, like depends on what kind of deal you can get. Uh and you know, Philip Preston has a new one out, uh, new as of last year, but I still haven't tested it yet. Um that is not the mini pack that he also sells. I have a mini pack and I like it, the small mini pack. Um, but you know, Philip Preston uh he released a uh I think a sub $1000 unit or one that's right around a thousand bucks, but I have never used it.
I I don't know. The question is, why do you want it? If it's just for cooking, right, most things can be done in zips. If it's for preservation, then sure, fine. They're you know, they're gonna be fine.
Like what like why is it you specifically want a vacuum? Well, okay. So um I got uh one of the Santa uh immersion circulators. I used to work at uh at a kitchen shop. Uh and so I got a I I pretty much abused my discount there and got a bunch of kitchen gadgets.
Um and now I'm going into medical school. So I really want something that I can have in the fridge, uh just ready to go and drop into a bath. Additionally, um my brother and my dad had some of the food that I had cooked. Like I did 48 hour or 48, 72 hour short ribs, spare ribs that I you know then grilled and things like that, and they were just fascinated by how convenient it was. But when I went over to my dad's house, I got him one, uh a sansare.
He was uh cooking uh like each steak in like a cup and a half of oil. Uh and so I really wanna like I want to get him something that I could just give him the meat and have 'em drop it in and and not waste like I think he went through uh a half liter of oil that day. Yeah, yeah yeah. I mean people tend to overestimate how much oil you need in the zippy by like a good amount. Like you need And I told him Yeah.
You only need enough to make up the best. What do you say? I told him about the wash well I showed them water submersion technique and he still did the like massive amounts of oil. But go ahead, sorry. Yeah no I'm saying like you know one thing to do is cut it down but in the yeah in those circumstances I've heard that that that that that that VP whatever it is works fine.
Um I've never had any personal experience with it. But I you know as a kind of a mid range vacuum I hear it's a lot better than the food saver. Let's put it that way. Okay. Um but I don't I like I can't you know I won't recommend anything I haven't used personally.
Do you know what I'm saying? But if I'm gonna eventually upgrade to something that I can actually do retexturizations and and and uh things like that, infusions, whatever, I I might as well just go all the way. Yeah, or you could get this one and then give it to your dad. Yeah that's true. That's true.
You know, cut your teeth on this one and then give it to your dad when uh when the you know or I mean I don't know I don't know what your butt your budgets are, but you know um what I find in life is that if I really want a piece of equipment and then I buy the lesser version of that piece of equipment, I'm never happy and I end up always I always always end up getting the good one in the end and then the question is will you be kicking yourself for having also purchased the lesser one? That's what you have to tell yourself. If you're anything like me that that's what will happen to you. That makes sense yeah. Oh okay so uh uh do you have a little bit more time sorry sure what's up okay um I was looking into cryo milling technique because um my girlfriend's gluten free and we were trying to figure out good ways to do super fine flowers without spending an hour you know it's uh like uh tossing an arm or like and so uh I I don't in Indianapolis it's very hard to source liquid nitrogen.
Uh I'm a chemist and I have access to doors and things like that so that's fine. But sourcing the actual liquid nitrogen and not stealing it from work is another uh is another uh situation. So um can I do the same thing with dry ice or am I gonna run into a problem with the moisture content actually contained in dry ice. Well I mean the problem with dry ice as opposed to liquid nitrogen is that you know it's not very good at contact uh you know because you can't just submerge something in dry ice. You know what I'm saying?
So you can get the stuff cold by putting it in a box but then you have the additional problem of you you tend to get a lot of condensation unless the dry ice is unless unless you storing something in a box with desiccant and then throwing a chunk of dry ice in and then letting it chill all the way down and then and then milling it you tend to get a lot of condensation from the air onto anything that's freezing that hard that's not submerged. Do you know what I'm saying? Right, right. Which is one of the reasons why I don't really like using dry ice even for like distillation runs because I tend to condense a lot of stuff out of the air, whereas liquid nitrogen ends up being pretty clean for me that way. Uh, because you can do total submersion.
But the my my real question is is where are you trying to so like why is it hard to source where you are? Because that's something of general interest to me is uh ease or lack of ease of sourcing liquid nitrogen. You tried the welding shops won't won't help you out. I actually uh don't know I guess I don't know where to start. Like I I looked online and I typed in uh liquid nitrogen Indianapolis, whatever.
I mean that's probably not a good way to do it. Yeah, no, no. And I was looking for uh for food grade dry ice, because uh actually at work, uh when we when I use dry ice on my cold finger, my rotovap, uh there's just a bunch of stuff left behind. So you definitely need uh I mean I think that that dry ice is kind of an exception. Uh well liquid nitrogen I think is pretty pure uh regardless from a welding shop.
But I I just um yeah, I need to I need to go and and and investigate a little further, I think. Yeah, welding shop. Welding shop. And by the way, like so, you know, the classic dry ice, uh dry ice acetone bath for rotovaps, I don't particularly like them because um especially in the kind of work that I'm doing, there's a lot of uh water phase in the in in the stuff that I'm distilling. And um the dry ice is so cold that unless I suck a partial vacuum before I chill down the cold finger, I get massive amounts of condensation in because the way that the Bukey cold finger is designed, the vacuum takeoff line is right next to the uh condenser finger.
And so it unless you have a unless if you chill it before you suck a vacuum, I c I get a lot of crystallization in the ta in the takeoff from my vac line, and then I occlude my vacuum, and then once that happens, all hell breaks loose loose with your distillation, and it's very hard to get back on track without losing flavor if you're doing it for food, not for lab work. You know what I mean? Right, right. And so liquid nitrogen, because it is actually somewhat less powerful, even though it's uh a lot colder than dry ice, I find to be uh easier and if I make a mistake I can rectify it quickly and it's just not as messy. I've never I've never liked working with dry ice in my roto vap um very much.
Um but yeah so I would go to a welding shop and this the secret is that uh you know at least around here the welding shops also sell to medical places. So they have you know theoretically for instance they have different grades of nitrous. So like m the my local welding shop sells nitrous to doctors. Uh and and a a lot of it isn't really the purity of the supplied gas it's the care with which they purge the tanks and make sure that the lines that they use for transfer aren't contaminated with things like oils or or or other nasty things. Okay.
So a lot of these guys will supply hospitals and clinics and things like this and so you know I wouldn't worry I wouldn't worry overly much in every single chef in in New York City gets from one of two welding shops, McKinney or TW Smith, one of those two that I know of. Okay. Excellent. Oh I'll I'll check into it and if I hear anything uh about where you can get good liquid nitrogen in Indianapolis I'll I'll tweet it to you or something so that so that people other people who listen to you in Indianapolis can know. Cool.
Um and and the last thing is you said that you were a home brewer at one point. Oh, a long time ago, yeah. Um did you ever do water adjustments? Uh what do you mean? So like you would start with RO water and then you would water adjust based on uh oh no, like Burton salts and stuff like that?
No, I mean uh like I like uh most of the stuff, most experiments that I was doing, uh I I was you know, I kind of drew a base level of what I was gonna like deal with. And so like I um my assumption was New York City tap water. And then um I was working mainly on um on uh mash temperatures times and um and like you know the the the grain bill that went into it and you know messing with OG and yeast and things like that like I never I never got to the point where I was messing with the uh with like the salts and the chemistry of the of the water. I was just using uh filtered, you know, de obviously declorinated, filtered New York City tap. But I never I never deionized it or removed our water is very, very soft here.
Um so you know, maybe it maybe it wasn't ideal, I don't know. But then, you know, that would have been something I probably would eventually have gotten into, but I I you know, but by the when my second son Dax was born, it was just like you know, it was just too much to obliterate the house because I was doing all grain stuff and it really wipes an apartment out. I was in a very small apartment at the time. Really makes a mess in the apartment. Well, and see, I have I have half a garage that I have for brewing equipment, and it it fills like the entire half a garage.
So yeah, I completely understand. So I was just curious if you ever heard of anybody using modernist salts in it, like the calcium lactate and calcium lactate glucanate instead of the calcium chloride that people are using. But someone uh someone uh, you know, call or tweet in and we'll uh we'll talk about it, even though it's a little outside of my depth. Excellent. Sounds great.
Thanks, Dave. Alrighty, talk to you soon. Bye-bye. All right, let's go to our first commercial break. Back with Nils Norin.
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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 Edwards VA Ham dot com. Jack, that's like the music from like when like the couple in that, like in that like kind of southern country show, like they're just about to get together, they're headed towards the barn, but nothing kind of raunchy's happening yet. That's what that music is. The pre-love music.
Yeah, it's it's the it's the country western TV, like movie pre-love music. Well, let me give a shout out. That's a band called the Hollows. They're local. They're uh friends of the network.
And all the music we play here is is local and and you know, sourced from friends. So if you're a listener of the show and you have a band or a music project, email us. And submit your music. Especially if you need some pre-love. If you have a barn within about like a uh 200 meter radius of you with like a hay loft, like that's the music to crank.
You know what I mean? It's gonna happen. That's the that's the reignition of being near a barn. Isn't it? Doesn't it hurt in hay though?
I I don't know. Don't you think? I I didn't want to get that it, you know, I'm gonna guess yes. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure there are different qualities of hay.
Probably. But it's it's the proverbial role in the hay. That's where you're hiding away from the the farmer. Dad. Definitely dad.
Well, presumably, you know, back in the day if we're talking stereotypes. Alright. Uh so do we have uh do we have Nils? Yeah, we do. Alright.
Nils! Hey, how are you doing? Going well. So this is uh Nils Norin, uh, you know, who uh did uh some of my best work with Nils Norrin. Now uh running uh the uh Marcus Samuelson restaurant group.
Is that your official title? Running the Marcus Samuelson restaurant group? What is it? Like what's your official title over there? Yeah, official title is uh VP of restaurant operations.
Yeah. And so how many how many restaurants did you open this week? That was the question we had earlier. But this week, but uh this month, about uh three. For real?
Yeah. How many different countries? Uh two. Oh, no, actually, actually three. Uh Muda, Sweden and Norway.
So, which one weren't you counting before? Norway. Norway. Uh Norway, yeah. Oh, Norway.
Uh, you know, for those of you that I don't know, you know, Nils is a Swede, so they have that Swedish Norwegian stuff. Give me the give me give me the Norwegian pronunciation of Mirvold. Uh Mirvold? Yeah. Oh, man.
All right. So Nils, I'm gonna read this question and then we're gonna talk about it. But uh, and then afterwards we'll talk a little bit about sauteed vegetables, because I know you're very opinionated about the saute vegetables as well. Here's the question from Justin. Um I have a question about bone marrow, specifically regarding preparation for service.
I've just taken charge of the kitchen following the resignation of our executive chef. Resignation, huh? Yeah. Yeah, whatever. Nils, we know how that goes, right?
Okay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the resignation of our executive chef, and have been tasked with creating a bar menu. I want to include roasted marrow bones, but don't have a ton of experience with them, and neither do I. That's why we're calling Nils.
Now, Nils, your big prep, you used to uh you used to serve a lot where you would like uh slow braise them out and then use the fat in things, right? That was your favorite thing to do? Yeah. Yeah. It's delicious.
Yeah. Uh well what we I forget what you used to mix it in with when you were done. Oh, tons of things. Uh I mean, bone marrow in pure, it's delicious. Yeah, you used to w what w it was what was it?
It wasn't the celery root, was it? What do you used to add as uh sunchoke? Sun choke and bone marrow, yeah. You know, um this is hilarious. Uh Nastasha and Piper back in Piper was working with us.
They did a a slow cook on sunchokes and ate all of the sun chokes slow co uh quickly cooked. They only cooked it for like fifteen minutes and they ate like half a pound each. How hilarious is their gastrointestinal distress? Yeah. That's not the great idea.
Yeah, so Nils would like render out the marrow. Now I remember, and he would submerge the sun chokes and cook cook them low and slow long time to turn the stuff into inulin so that it's not a huge fart bomb. But you know, Stas never asked me before she cooked the stuff out, whatever. And then Nils, I don't know if I told you this. But she then did the same thing on purpose and served it to a friend and his girlfriend at a picnic, and she and Piper did not eat it and just watched them eat all the sun chokes while they ate around them.
They did a beef and sunchoke like cold picnic salad and did it to them and didn't warn them, I think that's kind of not cool. What do you think? So they I guess they're not friends anymore. No, they are. Yeah, I mean, they're also kind of low quality people, so anyway.
Okay. So uh uh anyway, uh I've this so we're back to the bone marrow question. I follow the general rule of soaking the bone marrow and uh the bones in cold salt water with multiple water changes, but most recipes I found and do you agree with that? The multiple soak? Yeah, I mean, you definitely get the blood off, right?
Because it's gross. That's why. Yeah. Uh but I you know like how long do you have to do it to get 'em like really creamy? To get them to roast them?
No, no, no. They to get all the blood out. Like how long do you usually let 'em I mean, I don't know. It's a couple of hours usually is enough. Yeah.
That's what I figured. Uh but most recipes I found suggest roasting the bones for around 20 minutes at 450 uh in the Fahrenheit, which is what is that? That's like 220 or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh however, I need a much quicker pickup. Uh is this something I can safely par cook with good results? Or do you know any techniques for a faster pickup? I'm planning on using three inch bones split lengthwise, and uh would like to be able to send them out in under 10 minutes. I do have a circulator and I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of my cerez all, thanks for all you do.
Keep it coming. I mean, I would probably pop them, separate them, use the I mean d are you a believer in like bones for plating versus the bones they come in, or would you leave them in the bones? Or would you p pop them out and then cook them separately and then lay them in the bones for service? No, I would I would keep them in the bones. Why why add an extra set when you don't need to?
That's true. That's true. So what would you do for the par cook? I was just thinking because the bones, you can't really vac a that kind of a bone down because they're so porous, you know what I mean? Or would you just cook keep them in like a CVAP?
Like what would you what would you do for par cooking on that thing? So th to see scenarios, uh if I would do that rooster, which I have at CVAP, I would keep them next to my fried chicken in the CVAP. And then and they're I think they're gonna be perfect. That's what, 140? And then put them in the salamander or your your your turbo uh torch.
Uh or if you do them in a ziploc bag in in the circulator, that probably works well too. And you just use them in some rendered in some rendered keep keep the marrow and rendered marrow and just reuse it a bunch? Yeah. I mean keep the put the whole bone, right? Right.
Figure out what the right temperature is, which I'm not sure. But if you're gonna do it next to the chicken, what do you keep your chicken at? Sixty? Yeah. Yeah.
Uh a little over. Uh like what is keep at. Oh, you you oh you keep it at the cook temperature? Yeah, okay. So you you you hot hold it at the cook temperature.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So um yeah, but that that that's gonna be fine. It's not gonna it's I don't think it's gonna break the structure down at those temperatures.
I think you have to get it hotter to break the structure down, don't you? Yeah, I do. Yeah, I mean I think it's gonna hold. I think it's gonna be fine. And then like a quick flash off on the with the hottest thing that you own, and I think it's gonna be good.
It won't have the look of a roasted bone on the outside though. If just on the top where you sear it off. You think that's a problem or no? No, I don't no, I mean you could. But I mean, no, I think it's fine if you do it on the top.
What does it matter? What does the other roasting do? Well it's it smells good. Yeah, and it also dep it depends on how clean you've gotten the bone beforehand. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Like if i so like you can do a worse job cleaning the bone if you're gonna roast the hell out of it, because no one minds a little piece of like like skin or a silver skin or meat stuck to a bone that's if it's roasted to hell. But nobody wants like a blonde looking piece of junk stuck to the outside of their bone. You know what I mean? No, that's true.
So you clean, you gotta clean it. Yeah, but if you clean it, but you pick up it's gonna be fast. Oh, you're a minute. Two minutes and it's out. Yeah, yeah.
And like, you know, for something like that, like hopefully you have like a deck broiler or a sally. I think a sally is good because you're not worried about overcooking it so much. And so, like, even better than a sears all or something like that, I think is gonna be I mean, I don't think it's gonna bleed out too much on a sally if you have it it right in the sweet spot. Searz all work, obviously. No.
But I don't think it's gonna bleed out too much in a sally. You know what I mean? No, I don't think so. Yeah. I think it'd be fine.
And uh all right, so then uh, and it probably a bone, I'm I'm looking at my hands at the bone, what uh I think it'll probably be ready to serve within like four zero minutes. Don't you think? Yeah, yeah. I mean, but you might as well put it in an hour before because nothing's gonna happen once it's time pressure in that. Yeah, but I'm saying like minimum forty minutes, I would say.
Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Because remember it's only cooking through the one side because the it's not gonna heat up that fast through the bone. But I think once it's in there, it could stay in there like probably all of service. I mean, I've never done it, but I think it could probably stay in there all of service.
I I would bet it can. Yeah. The only thing I'd be worried about is if you cool it and reheat it, it might get like oxidized. I wouldn't necessarily do that unless it's in a bag enclosed. But um Yeah, because but whatever.
I think it would work. Um what I like on my bone marrow? I like parsley on my bone marrow. You like chopped up parsley on your bone marrow, Nils? Parsley is delicious.
And salt. And yeah, and I I also like a little bit of lemon zest, but that's me. Uh okay. So then we had another question. Uh can you run through any tips for excellent sauteed uh vegetables?
And our first tip was don't saute zucchini. Yeah. Because it's horrible. Yeah. I mean, the the only way you're gonna do it is if you gorge them, right?
Take some of the uh the uh water out of it. Right. Then then it can be okay. Yeah, yeah. But let me ask you this.
If you could have a sauteed carrot or a sauteed uh or a sauteed piece of zucchini, would you ever choose a zucchini? Nope. No, you wouldn't. I mean it's like straight up. You know, I think look, I think by and large, and we already talked about uh you know before you were on, we talked about you know what we used to do with the with the mushrooms.
Mushrooms are a special case because they're not uh a veg they're not a vegetable, they're a fungus. They break down differently. So they they maintain their structure even over a long cooking period which is why you can cook them nicely uh in a in a saute without without them losing structure and you can get a nice crust on the outside and you can get the water balance right very difficult to do this with spongy vegetables in general right when you say so Nils like zucchini it is eggplant that's that's why carrot works great. Yeah but the zucchini doesn't no I mean but like also like I'm not a huge fan of like a sauteed eggplant you no the only way I like my eggplant if they're really cooked through if they're not cooked through it tastes like a piece of meat talking about hay before but not in a good way. Tastes like a what your phone fuzz for a second yeah but it it tastes like hay if they're not cooked through.
So again if you want to gorge them you know in density and it might work. Yeah or like we used to do in the vacuum or like people who microwave them but the issue is is the water con see zucchini and eggplant both suffer from the problem like a two part problem. They're spongy, like right out of the gate, they're spongy. So they're gonna absorb oil. And then most people when they're sauteing, they're so worried about the temperature dropping too low that they overheat the oil and the oil takes on those fishy burnt aromas, which I hate, right?
Like unless you're doing wok cooking and you like really do it right, like the overcooked oil on a saute, I think s smells nasty. What do you think, Nills? Well, yeah, I think you know what I think. Yeah, all right. I couldn't agree more.
Yeah. Right, right. So it's spongy to get go and then also anything that's not sponge is water. So it's like it's you can't win. You know what I mean?
Like they have very little structure. So, I mean, I think those things are much better. All those things are much better roasted where you can sit there and let the w like vapor, although not zucchini, but eggplant, better, you know, l let let all let all the water get out of it or whatever. But so those are my tips. Choose the right vegetables.
Do you have any like big tips for like sauteing? I I think like if you're sauteing a carrot, just don't do don't do a bad job. You know, I think is like the big tip. I always cheat. I always throw uh a little bit of water in uh I always cheat, throw the water in the pan, let it let it flash off, par cook, and then saute after the water evaporates.
But is that considered a uh like a a jerks technique? I mean in a restaurant you wouldn't do that, but I mean at home. No, I mean you can, or you just saute them until you have the right color, and then they're finishing up them in the oven. No, yeah, they could do that too. That's probably better because you're not absorbing any water.
You probably keep a more dense, uh you know, you probably keep them more you get get a more dense flavor, saute them for color and then finish them in a not too hot oven, like three fifty or something. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Just throw the pan in the oven. Right?
Just saute it till you get the color you like, throw the pan in the oven and walk away. Just beware that you might take a while for it to finish off in the oven. Yeah, it might, depending on how big they are. It's gonna be fine on that end. You can't then you can park with them and finishing it off later.
Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. Um, all right. So uh I think uh Jack's gonna kick us off the off the radio pretty soon.
I have a couple of questions. By the way, Eric Michael Morris was wrote in last week about sugar free gelato. Didn't didn't clarify what he wants, so we can't uh answer that. Uh and then the rest of stuff we can get to next time. So anything uh anything good going on, Nils in the cooking world?
Come up with any new uh new flavors, new ideas you want to talk about on the radio show. Uh nothing that comes to mind yet. But I'm gonna have some soon, though. I'm actually working on some stuff, but it's too too early. Yeah.
Disclose some. All right. Well, well, why why don't you come back in person sometime and hang out on the radio show? You ever you ever uh free on the Tuesdays around 12? Yeah, for sure.
Alright, cool. And uh Jack, by the way, tells me that we might be switching our times uh next next season, wherever a season is. I have no idea what a season is. But uh we might be switching our times up a little bit. But Nils, thanks for coming and answering all of our bone marrow questions.
We'll see you all next time on Cooking Issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org. You can find all of our archive programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions anytime at info at heritage radio network dot org.
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