Today's program has been brought to you by Whole Foods Market, a dynamic leader in the quality food business, a mission-driven company that aims to set the standards of excellence for food retailers. For more information, visit Whole Foods Market.com. I'm Greg Blaze, host of Cutting the Curd. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwood, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more.
Hello, and we're back after a one week week uh hiatus on Cooking Issues. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you live from Berth's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Joined as usual in the studio with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez. Hey does that. And uh we have uh Jack in the engineering booth and also for the first time in the engineering booth, uh Wyatt.
How are you guys doing? We're great. Yeah, so why what is it that you uh that you do here at the Heritage Radio Network? Hmm, nice. Sweet.
Awesome. And do we by the way, Jack, did we ever get uh did we ever get uh cutting the curd uh scheduled to call in and have a cutting the cooking issues uh yeah, hopefully he's gonna come on the second half today. Oh, nice. All right, so yeah. All right.
So uh this last week I was gone because I was in uh Nastasia's home state. Actually, my home state. Yeah. But we moved out, you know, I moved out when I was uh three, and uh Nastasia had to stay in Covina long enough to see the filming of Goodburger before she came out uh to the sweet sweet East Coast. I had no idea that Goodburger was uh filmed in uh your hometown.
Yeah. So for like years did you walk around going buggity buggedity buggedity buggedity buggity boogity? Or no? No, I think it was when it was in elementary school. So it's like ninety-six, right?
97? Yeah. Yeah. Freshman. Classic, Sinbad.
Do you remember the movie at all? Sinbad. Sinbad is uh in, I think it's a relatively late role for Sinbad, but uh he is the uh teacher who's a little bit crazy who gets hit by like hit by uh the the car by Dexter's car. And he's got these heat lapels and a sweet, sweet fro in that movie. Uh my kids are now obsessed with Goodburger.
White points out George Clinton also in that movie. George Clinton was one of the dancing crazies in the uh in the institution. Uh yeah, you're like, holy crap, that's the actual yeah. The movie has like like lots of like little kind of classic nuggets in it, you know. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Classic, classic uh good good Goodburger style movie there. But my the problem is I can't get my kids to stop imitating and repeating portions of it. There's a good burger like in Union Square or something, right? They're not related, really. They're not really they must be somehow related.
I mean, I don't know. I I mean I don't know. The movie must have come first. Oh, yeah. Right.
Yeah. But the question is, is like, you know, can you start a restaurant called Good Burger and like not worry about infringing on Goodburger the movie? I mean, obviously it's helping you. If if people assume that you have Ed's special secret sauce, you know, in your burger, then I assume you are ripping off some of the IP of the movie, and you know, you should kind of be punished for that. We have to do some research on that.
Yeah, yeah. Someone check into this for us and tell us whether Goodburger, the restaurant. I mean, uh I mean, I don't know that I want to be associated with a restaurant where you know one of the employees takes a bath in the running strawberry milkshake machine, and I also uh don't uh really get the wisdom of having strawberry be your only flavor of milkshake. I mean, for for years, uh, you know, Wendy had the had the frosty in only one flavor, chocolate, and I'm always a vanilla shake kind of kind of a guy. But you ever had the frosty stuff?
No. Jack? Wyatt, ever had the Wendy Stross. Yeah, here's the deal. Why the hell do they give you a straw with that thing at all?
Oh, I know. It doesn't work. Never, never, never, never. I mean spoon. Yeah, spoon meal.
Those of you that have seen me in like uh like a full like spitting red-faced rant know that I have lungs. And like I can suck strong enough to completely collapse the straws under the force of vacuum from when I'm sucking on them. Even a perfectly round one that I haven't mashed with any sort of pre-anger, I can just like take a perfectly round straw, like even if it had a protective casing on it, and suck that sucker flat in a frosty. And what this means to me is that the frosty should just be served in an open cup with a spoon. Yeah.
You know? Anyways, but uh I'm told now that they have vanilla frosties. I mean, I don't know what that's all about. Like they have extra space in a Wendy's restaurant now, or they that they just have an extra flavor of frosty. I don't know.
I don't know. But if you guys were gonna pick one flavor of shake, would it be strawberry? No. I mean, not as your personal flavor, but as like you have to sell to customers. No.
No. And this is why Mondo Burger almost took Good Burger out of business. I mean, because they just think about stuff like that. Whereas, you know, all those other guys have is Abe Vagoda. By the way, I would go to any restaurant.
Is Abe Vagoda still alive? Oh, it's a good question. That's a look. I kinda love me some Abe Vagoda. Even back then in the 90s, they were saying that he was about to die, which is kind of rough to say to your fry cook.
But anyway, good good times. Do people in Covina talk like that, Stas? I I don't know. I haven't seen the movie. Fast food!
Abe Good is still alive. Sweet. He's 93. I love Abe. I love me some Ape Vagoda.
You know who Avigota is, right, Styles? Do you love Abe Vagoda? Abe Vagoda, one of the one of the people name checked in uh, I think was it Hello Nasty that the BC's uh checked Abe Vagoda? I don't know. Anyway.
Love me some Abe Vagoda. Okay. So uh, oh, but yeah, so where was I? I was in California, and it turns out I went to some places in California that I visited when I was like a very, very small boy, the coastal redwoods, which are sick amazing. And by the way, that's where they filmed uh Return of the Jedi.
Like the Ewok Forest. So if you've never been to the coastal Redwoods before, don't worry, the forest moon of whatever it is. What is it? Endor? Endor?
Ewoks, anyone? Anyway, so if you look at Return of the Jedi, where they're flying through on the speeders and smashing into the trees and crap, like that's where they filmed it. And these trees are I mean, I'm my wife took all the good pictures because she's got the iPhone 5 and I'm on like a like a flat four with like a like a cracked out camera. But like I saw I'll put some pictures up, but uh holy crap, they are some impressive sons of guns. They're I live in a 20-story building, and these these trees are uh almost twice as tall as my building.
The tallest tree I saw was like topped like 375 for the Redwoods, and it makes like these awesome Douglas firs that are only like 300 feet tall look like puning tins. You know what I mean? Meanwhile, any tree here would look like a shrub compared to the ones you have over there. I also visited the Sequoyas in Yosemite. Yosemite amazing, obviously.
But what I didn't know is kind of how awesome the kind of Sierras are. I went to and also we went to Lawson Volcanic Park, which is a national park in California that nobody knows about, and nobody was there. Like nobody. Nobody. Like we like saw like maybe one car, two cars in the hour and a half drive we were driving to get to where we were going in Lawson State Park.
And when I told the person at Lawson, I was like, oh, you know, my friend McGee told me I should, you know, come and check this out. She's like, You didn't know about Lawson? I was like, no. She's like, it's a national park. I was like, but I don't live in California.
She's like, it's a national park, we're a national park. I was like, oh my god, they have such a chip on their shoulder. If you go to Lawson, which is in like uh like upper uh upper east of California, do not mention that you're going to Yosemite. Because I went to Yosemite. The uh the the lady at the at the visitor center was like, I was like, Yeah, yeah, we just got from Lasin Lassen.
She's like, Lassen? I was like, it's a national park. She's like, nope, doesn't ring a bell. I'm like, it's in California. Nope.
Like say, like Lassen is like the forgotten state park. But it's pretty cool for those of you that are in that area. And uh I was just uh really, you know, surprised and amazed at the variation in beauty in California, especially your coniferous forests. Anyways, so uh that's what I was doing. Uh oh, I cooked some good stuff on the camp, by the way.
I cooked a crap ton of stuff with the sears all. Boat ton of stuff with the sears all. Made pizza with the searsol, because I was in one camp uh for two days, so I did a 24-hour uh rise on the dough and then flashed it off with the searsol, and I had with me some some schmortza, some smoked schmorza, and you know, instead of mozzarella and some uh parmigiano and some tomato paste and anchovies, some oil, crushed it all up, and the next day, Stas, the ultimate camp food, by the way. Uh risotto a la a la a la uh with porcinis. Wait, so risotta alfungi.
And so I had like the super expensive dried porcinis, which are like, you know, super expensive but super lightweight. Some Parmigiano, which doesn't need to be refrigerated, obviously. Uh I bought the you'd be happy, Stas, the Italian Brodo cubes, like the little like, you know, stock cubes that I normally won't use, but for camping are great. And it's just busted that crap out. The kids didn't like it because I don't really like mushroom risotto, but to hell with them.
You know what I mean? I made them like leftover grilled cheese sandwiches. By the way, was on the did a picnic with the Searzol only. Did grilled cheese sandwiches on the banks of the Smith River with a Searsol. Sweet.
And now you know how on the first night when you go camping, you have ice, so you have that's when you have your steak. Or whatever. Yeah, I see some sweet steaks. See steaks. Sweet sweet steaks.
Anyway, okay. Two uh what'd you do this last week? How are this? How are the sears all doing? Are they in the air?
Yeah, they are. They're in the air. Alright, so that's uh that's the that's the current update. They are in the air from China on the way to the good old Eta'uniz here. Uh anyway, let's get some questions.
Uh Nick Mallon writes in. Uh, and thank you, Nick, for providing the name Mal in. I like that. M-A-L-I-N. Uh he spells his name like Fallon, but writes it like the Anyway, whatever.
Uh about green meat. Hey Dave. Uh uh, I'm writing on behalf of sh a Chef Steps Forum question that is seemingly gone unanswered. After 72 hours in a circulated water bath at 54 degrees Celsius, and what is 54? I can never remember what 54 is.
It's like 129, 130 or something like that. Somewhere in there. Uh the vacuum-sealed short ribs were green on the outside. No smell, no funk, just the color was off. I did not add any uh salt or oil to the bag pre-cooking.
I simply had dried off the shorties before bagging them. Then uh after I sealed them, I place them in simmering water for a few seconds to rid any surface bacteria that can cause funkiness uh with long cooking times, and that was it. I gave them a quick sear, which I will assume be doing with my sears all and enjoyed them. People in the forum have suggested air leakage or pre-salting effect, but uh like I said, I added nothing to the bag and there was no leak, so uh would love to hear from you. Thanks, uh Nick.
Uh P.S. Thanks for hating wraps as much uh as I do. Eat a damn sandwich, people. Alright, this is an interesting question. And uh I will start by saying uh that I have some links to point to, but I don't have a definite answer, but I will say this.
Uh in the many, many years that I cooked uh boat tons of uh short ribs, uh suns sauce and with sauce uh sous vide, because that was one of the standard things that we would uh cook in the uh low temperature uh class, we would cook short ribs eight billion different ways and sear them off because it's kind of a it's one of the classic low temperature things and whatever. Anyways. And also, not just with short ribs, but with uh steaks and other whole whole pieces of meat, whole cups like this, is they often do take a greenish tinge, uh take on a greenish tinge on the very outside of the meat uh that goes away when you sear it the second time. And it looks really, really bad. In fact, you know, one of the arguments that I always uh would say to people, because you know it used to be a big argument, do you sear before or do you do you sear after?
And you know, the answer I always have is of course both, but if you had to choose one, you choose sear after because uh the surface of the meat not only doesn't look like it has a nice crust, but often looks discolored and messed up, and it gets fixed by like a quick sear, because as you say, uh like that coloration is not uh necessarily come along with any sort of off-flavor or funky flavor. Now, when you when you cook something low temp for a long time, especially when you get as low as 54 in that range, you often have the problem of super funky blue cheese nasty meat stank, uh, which comes from uh lactic acid bacteria and their relatives that are growing and often cause blow off in the bag if you get floaters. But as you say, you might want to go more than a few seconds, but a dunk in simmering water does a lot to a kickstart the temperature right at the surface of the meat and to stop any bacteria that are at the surface from kind of pen penetrating in. Now, uh when you describe green, you also have to describe kind of what color of green you mean. Because there's also, and I don't think this is what you're talking about, there's the phenomenon of iridescence in cooked meats, specifically cured cooked meats, but it could be in non-cured meats as well.
And this is a physical structural phenomenon that you get. You often see it in deli meats. You've seen that before, stuff, right? Like that's not uh something to kind of worry about, although some people don't like the look of it because they think it means it's spurled, but it's not spurled, it's just iridescent meat. And there's a lot of literature actually on iridescent meat.
But that's not what you're talking about. I'm assuming what you're talking about, it's not um bright green, it's more of like an army blackish green. You've seen that before on the surface of the shorter, right? It looks disgusting. Yeah.
Uh and so then the question is, well, what causes that? Short answer, I don't know. But I did some initial research. There's uh most of the greening in meats is, and I I'll send you to a couple of articles that are available on meat color in general. This one doesn't have so much about greening, but uh you look it up.
It's uh it on Purdue.edu's uh uh site, they have uh a meat color PDF that is pretty uh good review on meat color. And unlike the reviews that I've been using from like four four years ago or whatever, which is the last time I seriously investigated meat colors, this one's available free online. So if you go to uh www.cfs.purdue.edu and search for their a meat color PDF, uh you can you can take a look at that. Um another good resource to look at is uh look up uh the meat industry services. Can you believe that's a corporation?
Meat industry services. They have a uh they have a uh uh thing called color defects in meat. Uh and it's an update uh and it's a good PDF, and you you want to read about that. Because I think you typically it looks like greening colors in meats are due usually to sulfur and uh so sulf sulf myoglobin. Uh and either sulfur or hydrogen peroxide are the two kind of things, both of which uh are usually present as the result of um bacteria that are that are there on uh on the meat.
Now uh some of the bacteria are things like uh Ycella viridescens, which is uh you can look to there's uh an article called uh I guess it's Y cella, maybe it's Vicella. Anyway, um if it's German, it'll be Vicella Vessens in meat products, uh a review by uh Marta Descova, uh which is out in 2012, which talks about it, which causes like kind of very vivid greens um in in meats. Um but and there's also uh uh a specific greening in meats that has a high pH. So I don't know if you had a particular uh piece of meat, for instance, meats that are high have a high pH, i.e. are not uh acidic enough and cooked in and that are stored in vacuum environments, have a known situation where they can have uh greening take place on the on the on the surface, but it can also happen in uh in other environments if bacteria are there and apparently it doesn't take very much sulfur present.
So they form like I guess they form hydrogen sulfide or they break some sulfur off of sulfur containing amino acids in uh in the proteins. That's where the that's where the sulfur's coming from from the from protein breakdown on the surface. Um, and I don't think it's been studied that much in long long-term uh low temperature cooking, but some of these bacteria, uh greening bacteria, if that's it, it is what it is, uh, you know, take a long time to kill, uh, even at relatively elevated temperatures and actually can be strengthened by uh an initial heat shock. So it could be something there. I don't know.
But I know that searing makes it go away. Just check out those articles, and anyone who else who can get back to me and give me a better answer, please ado. Got a caller. Caller, you're on the air. Hey, Dave.
A huge, huge fan of the show. Uh this is Ray, formerly DC now living in Crown Heights. Oh, Crown Heights. I just had a comment. Uh I enjoyed last week when you were talking about raw onions.
I think an emailer called about getting a metallic taste. And I'm not sure if this is uh relevant to what they were doing. But I know Rick Bayless of uh Mexican Cuisine Fame talks about rinsing the the onions after he uh cuts them and serves them raw. And I've noticed a big difference uh in doing that. Well, I would presume that's true because uh, you know, the the the kind of harshness in onions, especially okay, so look, right?
So there's some there's some chefs like uh like you know, um Michael Palambino who's like I remember I saw him like go ape ape crap on someone because they cut their onions beforehand, right? Because you know, the longer an onion sits after it's cut, like the more this kind of problem happens. But the you know truth of the matter is a lot of us have to cut onions beforehand for me's or for whatever, or if you're gonna serve it like in a salsa or it's gonna be cut and served fresh and not cooked again. And um, you know, the like I think m almost all of the stuff that's happening in an onion happens after the tissues are broken, right? And so it's a reaction between um what's going on in the broken tissues and juices and in this case, carbon knives, uh carbon steel knives, or any sort of like non-passivated kind of steel surface or other metal ions for that matter.
And so, yeah, I would bet rinsing helps out because I think it probably gets rid of a lot of the free surface crap that's been kind of liberated. Probably even like a light soak. I mean, the problem is onions are so porous that if you soak them too long, they'll just soak up uh they'll soak up you know, water, which I don't think is what you want, but yeah, I would bet that works. I mean, like Yeah, I usually just give them a quick rinse, and that seems to uh that seems to do it, especially for salsa or anything. Yeah, anything wrong.
Yeah, nice. Nice. Awesome. So uh love the show, and I like all the the side notes, and I don't know, uh I think it's been on the internet for a little while, but the James Brown Miso Soup commercial. Think you might like it if you haven't seen it.
Wait, James, like so someone took which James Brown song did they take? Uh which one? I think it was the one you guys used to use on your commercial breaks a long time ago. I don't know which one it is. They kind of remix it, and it's it's a Japanese commercial, and it's it's it's bizarre, but it's uh highly entertaining.
And it and it makes it sound like James Brown is a huge fan of Miso Soup, not that he wasn't, I have no idea. Oh no, it's him. It's it's him. Hey Dave. Dave, I'm gonna break the rules real quick and just run this.
You used to this. Oh man. How did they I wonder what it sounds like he's saying Liz Khalifa? Yeah, maybe he is. I don't know.
That is awesome. Uh yeah, that's uh that's uh sex machine. By the way, you know who's playing bass on that is Bootsy Collins. Uh Bootsy Collins was a very uh young uh guy on the tour bus when uh James Brown was working on that, and he ended up that was kind of one of his like big early base gigs, was a sex machine, which is maybe why it's got such a s I mean look, all of James Brown's bases were awesome, but I mean I have a special love in my heart for Bootsy, but that is a classic. I would love to like figure out, like by listening, if I can figure out what clips of his voice they took to make him say miso soup.
And I like how it's not really doesn't sound like it was really mixed by a native English speaker, because not exactly how I would have imagined James Brown screaming me so. That's perfect though. I like it. It makes it even better. Jack, you already knew about this and didn't tell me?
I I did not know about this. Alright, well, you've just I'm now gonna probably waste several hours of Nastasha's life once we get back to the lab, like like playing that and then and then figuring out in my head exactly where they chopped it up. So thank you. Thank you for throwing away several of Nastasha's precious. As she bows her head down.
Thanks for your time. I appreciate it. And uh keep going. Rock on, guys. Love it.
All right, Jack, should we take a commercial break? Um, yeah, give me one second here. All right, we'll come right back with some cooking issues. Today's program has been brought to you by Whole Foods Market. Are you a local?
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Tomorrow, the world. For more information, visit Whole Foods Market.com. And we are uh back. Let me get a couple of questions from at Harvard next week. Oh yeah.
Going with uh McGee and I are doing the uh Harvard uh lecture next week. We're gonna do the class lecture, which I normally are you going up this town, Stas? I think so. I'm doing the class lecture, which uh you know McGee and I have done for the past what, like three years now? Four years, three years?
Three? Like for the initial one, like uh, and uh this year we're not gonna blow anything up. Right? I'm not gonna I'm not gonna cause the entire uh Harvard science center to be evacuated. The d remember the depressed looks on those, like on those undergrads fa or grads wherever they were in their lab jackets with like staring at the ground in and like in the dark and cold when we evacuated them from that building.
Yeah. Yeah, good times. Not and uh the um anyway, so I'm gonna do that, which is the normal class we're gonna do. I'm gonna do some pro hopefully some new demos, but I think it's just gonna be rapidly slap you know, demos, so it shouldn't cause too many problems like I normally do. Uh hopefully they're fun.
We got a couple of demos that are are really good for that kind of thing. Like um maybe I won't spoil it if you think anyone's no one's listening is now it's gonna be at Harvard. I don't know, we'll talk about it afterwards. But I have a couple of demos that I really enjoy. Like when you do demos, like the good like the bad thing about doing demos over and over again is that Nastasha tells you that you say the same crap over and over again.
Then no, the same anecdotes. I don't know. I it's not true. It's not true. It depends.
Like certain things, like our. So here's what here's where I'm going with this. So like the deal is is that, you know, uh, you know, when you've been teaching a while, you come up with demos and you see kind of what really demonstrates uh something. And so, like a lot of the things that you think are going to demonstrate stuff, they don't really work, but then other ones that you don't know, they do, like the oil and water. That's such a good demo, the oil and water, heated oil and water.
Anyways, and so uh, you know, like the good news is you with teaching is you come up with these demos that you know you really like people really stick in people's heads, and if you do them for long enough or enough times, you really get to uh get a feel for what it is that sticks in people's heads about it, so you can really kind of like you know, jigger the pedagogy around that crap. Um and so anyway, we're building up we we're building up a list of demos and we're I'm gonna bust some of them out at the at the Harvard gonna be good. But then for the public lecture, McGee and I are gonna do a lecture we've never done before. It's gonna be, although you probably heard some of the same crap because it's the stuff I rant about all the time. So if you're in the if you're in the uh Cambridge area, I think that one's on Monday.
Yeah, Monday, Monday evening. We're doing a public lecture, and the subject of the public lecture is gonna be what the hell's been going on the past kind of 20 years, like what's really going on. You know what I mean? And so it's gonna talk about how um you know the uh use of science is not just related to kind of these new technical and modern cooking things. It's gonna be kind of how you know we don't think that what uh everyone's doing the same, kind of you know, analyzing the difference between kind of like what Wiley does, what Grant does at a Linia, or what what other huckster things are like kind of where this movement is gone and kind of what it means and what people are actually trying to do when they do it, as well as talk about kind of what's different in food now in terms of who's going into it as is going into it before.
So this kind of a discussion. And I'm sure I'll make some digs at my favorite targets like Airvati's and and and whatnot. And I think we've got to find I'm gonna replay that video I did at Portland of the remember the stuff that we that video we made with Piper on like the crappiest cocktail of all time using all like the weak, weak, weak molecular gastronomy techniques that I have no problem labeling as that because I think they're just P.T. Barnum Huckster crap. And just making so I did a uh a lecture at Portland Cocktail, what was that, two years ago?
Year and a half? Two years. Two tears. And uh we did a video that was like all of the crappiest things you could think of, like to do to a cocktail, like just the worst, worst cocktail. And uh and so we went through this whole two-minute video.
I can't remember whether there's music or not. There might have been music. Uh if not, I'll put music on it. Because it needs some sort of stupid demo music in it. And then uh and then at the end, like literally we just flash up this sucks.
This sucks. Remember that? This sucks. This is terrible. This is everything that's wrong with cooking and cocktails.
This is the worst thing in the world. And uh literally after the demo someone asked me for the recipe. It was the worst. Worst one of the worst moments of my life. It's like it's like I always tell people um and should any of you out there who can hear my voice have to do a demonstration uh for a camera that where where someone has the ability to edit you afterwards.
Never show them what not to do because you think you're helping. So like when someone's co showing me in person, like I appreciate it when they specifically do something wrong and show me how to do it wrong so that I know not to do it that way. So like so I show someone how to do it right or what I think is right and then I show someone actually I I'll I'll F it up. I'll make it wrong on purpose so that they can see it happening wrong. And then hopefully let them taste and see how screwed up it is when they do it wrong.
Inevitably editors use the wrong thing and put it up without explanation in video clips. Inevitably. It's just inevitable. So if you are ever in a situation where someone can edit you and you're not in the editing room, never demonstrate what not to do. You've seen how many times have you seen that says?
Yeah. A bunch. And then you're like, no one knows any way to shut up, Dave. That's what you say. You say, eh, I freak out about it, and you're like, nobody gives a crap.
Nobody knows. Anyway. Ruben wrote in about cherry pits. Dear shipping container occupants. I scored some delicious sour cherries this summer and have a couple of questions on putting them to use.
One, I'm planning to make a sorbet with the cherries, puree, sweeten the 28 bricks, chill spin. Sounds good. Any thoughts on what sugar will ensure a good texture? I understand the mechanics of freezing point depression, and I normally experiment but don't have enough fruit left. I've got dextrose, fructose, liquid glucose, etc.
I would just look. I would just look up like a recipe. I don't have kind of the ratios in in my head. I would just uh I I forgot to look this aspect of it up. But uh obviously you can um make something more sweet and make it softer, or use invert and have it be softer uh because of the increased um freezing point depression.
I would just look up somebody else's recipe and see kind of what they add. I wouldn't add, I wouldn't add too much. Uh I'm sorry I forgot to look up the numbers now because that's stuff that I I wouldn't want to quote out of my head. I just don't do it enough. But two, here we go.
Here's what I actually looked into for you. I have a lot of leftover pits. Any tips on working with them to safely make uh how do you even think you pronounce it? Noyo, right? Noyo pit.
Noyo or uh or ice cream. I'd like to extract the most flavor, but I have no idea how to dose them to avoid cyanide toxicity and can't find any seemingly reliable information. I've seen some comments that roasting the pits eliminates the risk, but not much in the way of justification. Uh can't say how much I enjoy the show every week. Thanks you all, Ruben.
So what we're worried about here is that any of the stone fruit, uh, and it's really the kernel, you know what I mean, not the not the not the meat, well, not the meat and not the not the roughly crap. You know what I'm talking about? Mm-hmm. The roughly crap on the pit. You know what I mean?
The kernel. So the when you taste them, and this is like uh, you know, any stone fruit, apple, you know, pips, um, all that stuff. Uh what the problem with it is is that it contains uh amygdalin. Amygdalin, when you chew on it, uh enzymes can uh convert uh the amygdalin into sweet, sweet cyanide, which is poisonous, uh, but also benzaldehyde, which is the aroma we get from um from like you know that all almond extract, benzaldehyde, which is what we like in in an amaredo cookie or something like this. Now, if you're just throwing a couple of uh apricot kernels, which is typically what you buy here in the in the States, uh into a batch of almond cookies, then you know it's not gonna be a problem.
But when you're doing uh a boat ton of uh apricot pits, in fact, the cyanide level can, or whatever, what are we using again? You're using cherries. You can get uh enough uh problematic crap, cyanide, to uh cause problems. So uh man, and there is not a lot of information out there. So I I will defer to uh, you know, uh chemistry drink meister Darcy O'Neill.
So if you're not familiar with uh Art of the Drink uh uh blog, you know, Darcy is a chemist and kind of drink person. He's the person who wrote Fix the Pumps, which is kind of the game-changing book on uh bringing back the art of the soda jerk. Uh and um fix the pumps is uh a sl old slang, soda jerk slang for check out the stacked lady at the uh bar. Fix the pumps. Uh I think that's what it is.
That's my memory. Uh so he in August uh 31st, 2011, put a big post up on uh cherry, specifically I think cherries, uh, but any sort of stone fruit and um cyanide in liquor specifically, and goes through this different steps you can do, and he's a second post on how to get rid of it. His take on it, because he did some calculations based on the number of milligrams per milliliter cyanide in in standard pits that he was able to get off the internet uh and like the amount that's there. That yes, it is possible to um have a dangerous level and that he wouldn't necessarily keep it around and recommend consuming it, even though people have done it for a long time. Here is what he said uh though in the second part where he says how to mitigate the uh problems.
One, if you leave the stuff a long time. So here's what he says. I'll just I'll just read his quote. Uh because he talks about how to get rid of it via distillation, which is possible. He also, by the way, just says buy uh you know, oil of almonds, we always benzaldehyde in it and just have it done with.
But because he's thinking that someone is trying to make that flavor, not that someone has a product that they want to get the best use of, right? I mean, I think the reason that you're not going and buying crap to make that flavor is because you have this product, it has other flavors in it besides the benzaldehyde and you want to use these things. So, you know, whatever. So you can't just go buy uh the flavor and have done with it. But here's what it here's what it goes.
Um since distillation method isn't practical for the average person, here's another though much slower method. Think months. Hydrogen cyanide can be hydrolyzed to formic acid and ammonia. Yes, formic acid, the same stuff that fire ants use to piss you off. Hydrolyzation is done in the presence of water.
So if you just infuse apricot kernels in vodka, some of the hydrogen cyanide will decompose. But the process is very slow. Heat will help. It should also be noted that formic acid has a fruity mustard aroma. So aging it for a long time.
Okay, and this is still Darcy. Okay, I understand you're impatient. So here's one more method. A number of sources have indicated that roasting the kernels at 176 degrees Celsius for 10 to 15 minutes will drive off the hydrogen cyanide. This could work, but you have to make sure all the kernels are free from the shell and ground coarsely.
I'd recommend adding enough water to make a wet mass and set aside for an hour or more to ensure that the amygdalene and beta D glucosidase, which is the enzymes that make the sweet smell, uh, can react. Afterwards, spread the mixture on a baking sheet and heat until dry. There is no guarantee that this method will remove all of the cyanide, but it should remove some. Dry roasting is not effective since amygdale is stable at that temperature. Also, the boiling point of benzaldehyde, which is the aroma you want, is 178 degrees Celsius, which is just two degrees higher than the cooking temperature.
So you will most likely drive off some of the flavor component you are trying to capture. So uh so there you have, you know what he says about it. I'll also add that you could probably heat it. The problem is that I don't know, it's an interesting thing. I if I was doing it, I would just age it for like a year.
Do it and age it for a year and kind of see what happens. You know, if you're Darcy, you're lucky enough to have the uh equipment. You could actually test whether or not you've gotten rid of it or not. You guys can't. Uh anyway, so I hope that answered uh some of your uh questions uh on that.
Um right, let's see where we are here. Stan B right wrote in uh we talked about his caramel. So greeting from France. We talked about caramel what, two weeks ago, three years ago? Uh three or four weeks ago, I asked a question about replacing sugar in a recipe with caramel, i.e., the same amount of cooked to a brownness sugar.
Uh I tried to also make meringues with it, and the result is interesting. Um, and to go through the recipe, I I make a dry caramel uh with about 200 grams of table sugar and poured it uh well hot uh on uh 100 grams of egg whites being whipped, almost the same as Italian meringue. After shaping the meringue, I cooked them for two hours at 120 C. Quite a bit of the liquid caramel turned solid when pouring into the egg whites, it got a bit scary scary with caramel bits making the strong clingity cling sound from the electric whip. Maybe a better technique would be add a bit of water into the caramel to turn it into a syrup closer to an actual Italian meringue.
That should lower the amount of recrystallization before the caramel gets mixed into the egg whites or other prep. The taste was good, not great, but good and close to expectations. But soon after baking and once cooled, the meringues had a very brittle texture with a bit of crunch before turning to powder. However, after five or six hours, the meringues turn very soft, almost marshmallow-like. As you had mentioned on the show, the inverted sugar sugar uh the inverted sugars and caramel do suck in moisture.
I would advise to serve quickly or keep in your dehydrator. Um there you go. Update on uh whether or not what we say makes any sense. Uh he also says, I appreciate your thoughts that caramel taste can come from cooked milk salads. It might get some milk powder and toast and brown it or cook it in the oven in butter, as per uh ideas in food blog post from 2008 on that and then see how it goes.
Uh and then as a side note, he gives us an article on uh on like the scientific article on pizza cheese. What do you what are your needs in a pizza cheese? Do you like blistered bubbles on your pizza cheese? Is it important to you? No.
Apparently it's very important. If you look up, here is the recipe for perfectly brown pizza cheese as established by science. It's good interesting, it's really interesting reading for those of you out there that are interested in uh why certain cheeses uh you know bubble and boil not, and I'll give you the short answer. It has to have some fat, but not that much, and fairly high moisture as well as being elastic and cohesive. AKA mozzarella.
But you know, hit you know, Stan's question was: could you use like a modernist cuisine style emulsifying salt technique to make a cheese that acted like that that had a different flavor? And I think quite certainly the answer is yes. Just have to get the fat content right. And in fact, they hint at this in the article, get the fat content right, increase the the stretchiness of it by with proper emulsifying salts, but not enough to make it like melt out totally. And then uh and then just make sure you have enough water multiple should work.
Yes? Yes? So we have one caller that we can squeeze in before the show ends. All right, caller. Well, we have more than one that we can't squeeze in?
No, but I don't think we have time for one call. All right, caller, you're on the air. Hey, Dave, it's Brian here in New York. How are you? Doing all right, what's up?
Good. Um I just want to say thanks for all your uh information on ice cream recently, but I haven't had a chance to implement it. Um in part because um I recently got an allergic reaction and had to go through battery of all kinds of allergy tests. Oh my god, did they do the did they do the armprick? If you look at a pancake syndrome, which is dust mite.
Dust mites getting into flower flowery, powdery substances if if uh if if it's got uh heat or or um humidity. So, you know, here in the New York weather that that might be a cause. So now uh based on this, and the reason it's called pancake syndrome is those people who, you know, put some uh pancake mix in the back of their cupboard and every you know uh every six months bring it out to make pancakes, you know, sometimes come down with the allergic reaction in which they've digested dust mites uh unknowingly and uh therefore um come down with the reaction. So um one of the things is is um got rid of lots of my flowers and now the recommendation from the doctor is to keep it all in the fridge or the freezer. And so what I'm wondering is uh with flowers and sort of powdery stuff, is there any consequence to keeping these items in the um in the cold in the fridge or the freezer?
Okay, I got some answers for you on this. But here's here let me ask you a couple questions first. The test that they did were they were they uh were they bioassays or do they do skin prick tests? Both. I freaking hate skin prick tests.
Let me tell you something. Like, I am like, you know, a pasty white, like northern European mutt, right? And so like for those of you that aren't pasty white, like, you know, pasty white people have very sensitive skin. And so it looked like I was allergic to every dang thing on the skin test just because that little like that little freaking thing that they scrape into your arm, like that gives me a freaking reaction. You know what I mean?
I hate that test. I think it's completely inaccurate and crappy. What do you think? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh I mean I'm I I'm I'm I'm I'm not as tasty as you, but uh I definitely got some bumps and stuff from from all that.
But then they they verified it with like an actual kind of like bioassay. They yeah, they drew some blood, so yeah. That I believe. Like those things I believe. But back when I developed my cherry allergy, they didn't really have all that crap yet.
So like literally they were like, oh, you're allergic to lobster, you're allergic to I'm like, n what? I'm allergic to getting jabbed in the freaking arm, lady. You know what I mean? Uh anyway, okay. And I love the story about the the pancake things, uh, pan pancake syndrome.
Stas, do you ever got pancake syndrome? Yeah, yeah, look it up, pancake syndrome. And my other question before I answer uh your question is is it that the that you're directly allergic to the mites, or is it that the mites trigger a reaction that now you can have even without the mites? It's the that you're directly allergic to the mites. Possibly.
It's it's the it's the m the mites, you know. But it it it's that you know, if you if you it's one thing if you know you're breathing it and they you know might be uh might be you know on your bed or something like that or around your house. But if they're getting into something that you eat and then you're eating them, then it's a higher concentration. Uh and and and that's uh that's the problem. All right, so I lied, I have some more questions.
Yeah, no, it's it's smoking pot versus uh, you know, eating it. Or or oh no, I thought you were gonna say Bill Clintoning it, like but they're not inhaling. But the uh so here's my other here's my my other question which just came into my head. What about cheese mites or like the mites on meat like uh on like ha ham mites and stuff like that? Are those do they do those cross over or is it only flour mites?
I have no idea. I didn't even I didn't they they told me dust mites, uh the the allergist, but you know, I don't know if they can test for all those kind of uh uh different different variables. You know, they can't test for everything. Right. But how bad's the reaction?
Is it hospital reaction? I mean they said it was severe reaction, yeah. So it's hospital. So like what I would do is like the next time you go into uh talk to the allergist, I would stop by, you know, a cheese shop like Murray's or something and get or whatever, and get like a like a like a really mighty cheese that has you know some rind on it. Don't eat it on your own.
You know what I mean? But like when you're in a challenge test situation with your doctor, just or unless they know. Like you do a search of literature and they say no, cheese mites aren't a problem. But uh, you know, get get some of that to you know just so that you can know for a fact whether that's gonna be a problem or not. Because I'm just curious.
You know, I mean this is probably a known thing, but I just wonder how kind of how specific it is to a sp specific kind of mite. And also, you know, if you've ever stored um hams, uh you know, dry aged hams, which we're doing ham tasting next week, um the uh they also can have uh mites and you'll see like a dusty powderiness that's underneath the hams if you've been hanging them depending on kind of what's around. You want to make sure that you're not allergic to to that kind of stuff too if you like you know long cured meat products or if you like like cheeses. Just something just something to check out. Um I've also found that a you know a lot of times you know uh a doctor won't necessarily like think to tell you that they might know it or they might not know it, but either way I would check uh before you have to stab yourself in an epi pen and go to the hospital just for eating something.
You know what I mean? Um Yeah I gotta carry that epic epi pen now. No I know it sucks. And y you know they expire every whatever it is and you have to get a new one and you know what the thing is though dude I don't know how bad uh off you are but uh a lot of times I've had kind of mild reactions start and I always carry with me Benadryl. And so uh and you know I don't know if they still make it but the last time I bought it they uh they used to make like Benadryl and like Listerine strips it gets into your system extremely quickly.
Unfortunately you can't do it if you have to drive home or whatever because it knock you know it makes you super drowsy and knocks you out. And I also feel very strongly that Benadryl destroys my sense of taste for hours. So you know you don't want to have to take it. You know it's I don't take it lightly but it's a lot you know because once you stab yourself at the epi pen, you have to go to the hospital. I mean that's basically it.
But if you uh you know if you just uh slight you know if if you if all you're doing is taking Benadryl and you self-monitor for a little while as long as there's someone there with you, you know, uh I don't feel the need to you know go to the ER it you know because you can start well I don't know what you have but with me my throat closes up and so you can kind of feel when the reaction is happening. Anyways uh now to answer your question do not store it in the fridge and the reason not because you don't that you don't want to store it in the fridge is there's a a boatload of condensation that can happen especially if the thing or freezer. Yeah freezer yes so that's what I was gonna store it in the fridge store it in the freezer. So I buy uh quite often a couple of brands of uh shapati flour and other kind of like uh whole grain soft uh uh Indian flowers because I like them uh in pancakes actually uh and in biscuits because of the flavor that they have but the brands that I buy almost always have uh larva in them that hatch and so eventually they'll get buggy and if you've seen like a flower that has that kind of stuff it gets kind of little ropey threads in it and then if you look closely you can see kind of stuff that's there and then you have to sift everything sucks. And uh so for years like uh and I don't do it with you know gold brand or anything like you know I use heckers actually but you know uh with those because I've never had a problem with those but I store uh all of those kinds of specialty flowers in the freezer always and um and they're fine they're fine uh you know I I what I do is I wrap them I put them in zips and I get rid of all of the uh air in the zip so that there's not a lot of you know um uh you know when if moisture does get in the fridge it doesn't condense an ice cleform on the flour I've never had a problem with it clumping uh I've never had any uh degradation of the quality you you know it's it's been it's been fine.
So zippies zippies work, not like mason jars that are that are fully sealed. Well you actually in a mason jar you s you have more air because you can't compress them down. I usually keep them in their sack and then put the sack in a zippy, roll the sa and then compress it down and then get rid of it. Because you actually can get more air out of it that way. Do you know what I'm saying?
Now but here's here's the uh I had I had a caveat. Oh yeah. One caveat to remember is that it like I don't know what you're making with it, but it's gonna throw off all of your temperatures. So you know if you're used to things hydrating in a specific amount of time or if you're doing um you know mixing of breads or anything like this, just be aware that you're you know it's not that it has that much thermal energy compared to the water that you're adding or milk or whatever. But if you have a recipe it's uh that where the temperature of the batter uh or whatever or in in yeast on a bread is is uh is critical that you might just need to adjust it a little bit or let the stuff that you're gonna use come up to temperature.
But I haven't had any problems and but you know like I say that stuff I mainly use for biscuits and pancakes so I hope that helps. Great. Great yeah yeah yeah I'm I'm I'm I think by I I might need to get another freezer because uh I don't I don't have enough room for everything that a lot of stick in there you know I gotta put my my Mothra in there I gotta put my uh I gotta put all my my my baking flours I gotta put uh you know all the different uh you know different stuff in there yeah well I mean the thing is if you're gonna if you're gonna use the stuff right away if you're gonna use the stuff I mean it depends on how long you're gonna store the stuff too right here's another thing that is true. Once you get, and I know this for a fact with with uh hams, right? Once you get uh m like a mite there, I mean, like for most of us it's totally harmless, and it's like they're just there.
It's not because it's not like a hygiene thing, whatever. You know what I'm saying? It's just they're there. But once they're there, like I know with ham, like you cannot have a ham for like it seems like eight billion years, and then all of a sudden you get another ham in and all of a sudden they're back. So I don't know whether you're gonna have a problem where you need to kind of de decontaminate your pantry somehow, and I don't really know how to do that to kill them all.
But I mean it might be a situation where you only have to store your long held stuff. I don't know. Do you know what I mean? You also might be able to if it's freezer space is an option, most of these things probably can't grow in a hardcore vacuum atmosphere. So then if you want to go to a uh food saver situation, you might be able to vacuum pack your flowers, uh, not in a bag because that'll compress the hell out of them and a lot of sifting work for you to do.
But like in a hard container, like a vacuum pack, might be able to uh reduce their ability to uh re to reproduce. I don't know. I'm just I'm just saying this is a possibility that I'm thinking of off the top of my head, and it might be easier for you to do dry storage of you know vacuumed containers. You just have to make sure that the vacuum is being maintained maintained over over a long period of time. Or you could just take small samples and vacuum down hard in bags and then just deal with the sifting.
Because I've done that before on on certain things, but just be careful when you're vacuuming uh powders, if you use a strong vacuum to vacuum powders, you can uh I don't know, it's like I've like when you're when you're dumping powders into bags, you can aspirate them, and if you're having a problem, if there's already some mites present, you don't want to be aspirating a lot of this stuff when you're baking or cooking. That's another point I might want to make is that your allergist might not be a cook, and so they might not think about the difference between uh cooking with something and and consuming it. So you you might want to be extra special careful when you're working with flowers not to not to cause a lot of you know uh aspirated particles. Like you like we've all done it where we fire up the kitchen aid a little bit too fast and it goes whap whap whap and throws a floof of flour up in the air. That might be a little more hardcore for you at this point than it would have been like a year ago.
And so you might want to also take care when you're doing that just to minimize your exposure. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, uh gotta get that other freezer because you know, I got my I gotta put the hydrocolloids in there, and I'm not sure, you know, what's gonna grow in in in what for sure. Or or you know, paprika and you know, uh, you know, ground spices.
I mean, I try to grind as much from fresh, but uh you know. Yeah, well, I don't know. Do they grow in that stuff? Well, again, you're gonna have to experiment, but like why don't you get back to us and let us know uh let us know what happened because I'm interested to uh to hear uh what happens, especially Ari the cheese and stuff like that. Alrighty?
Yeah, sounds good. Alrighty, good luck with it. All right, so Jack is ripped gonna rip me off the air uh in a second. So here are the questions I didn't get to, and I'll get to them. Adam Rogers, the uh uh the author of Proof, good book, uh wants to know uh like how high I have to pour liquid nitrogen above your head to to have it uh you know evaporate before it kills you.
Maybe we'll get to that next time. Have a question about fennel from uh Michael wants to know uh if we can make it taste more well anyway, we'll deal with that next week. Uh on uh Keel Clayburgh wrote in about custard. Uh I have answers on that, but we'll have to wait for next week. And also uh a request that we get uh one of the Mamafuku uh uh what's it called fermentation experts in on the show.
We should do that sometime. All right. And a question which would have been perfect after this flower thing from Sam on the uh Autolise uh step of uh of bread baking by uh you know which popularized by Raymond Calvell, famous bread guy. Again, we'll have to get to that next week. This has been Cooking Issues.
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