Today's program has been brought to you by White Oak Pastures, a five generation Georgia based beef and poultry farm determined to conduct business in an honorable manner. For more information, visit WhiteoakPastures.com. This is Michael Harlan Turkell, host of the food scene. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradio network.org for thousands more.
Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Dissues coming to you live from Robertus P3 in Bushwick Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Joined not with uh Nastasha the Hammer Lopez. She is not doing well today. So instead, not as a not not as a consolation prize, but you know, in your own rights and as awesome folks, we have a Peter Kim and Emma Bose from the Museum of Food and Drink.
Yo, so hey, uh by the way, I need to provide a visual for what we just saw. When when Dave does that intro thing, he has like sweat beating on his forehead. And do you know that scene in Total Recall when Arnold Schwarzenegger goes out on Mars and his eyes start like bugging out? I was gonna hope I got I got to be Quattle. I'm just gonna get to be Arnold Schwarzenegger with his eyes bugging out me.
Quattle is the guy to be. I'm like in buried in someone else's chest. I thought No, no, no. This is this is more like your your eyes are bugging out like Arnold Schwarzenegger in total recall. But that's the image that I saw when you were doing that opening thing.
Do you know I've used that reference uh like countless dozens of times teaching uh Sue Vid and vacuum work. Like the whenever like I try to talk about what happens to a piece of meat when you put it in a vacuum machine and it's warm, for instance, close to body temperature, even room temperature. I always try to bring up uh the total recall where Schwarzenegger's eyes are pupp puffing out, but can do do you remember the noises he was making? No. He's holding his he's going back and forth.
It's like halfway between a person and a pig. And it sounds very unlike the uh the Schwarzenegger that we all know and love. By the way, I had a weird Schwarzenegger dream like two nights ago. I was hanging out with him and I was totally surprised that he in the dream also uses all of his own catchphrases like at random, just at random times. He would just say, get to the chopper.
Like randomly. So we're I bet you I wonder in real life whether he does that or not. I think my favorite source of uh Schwarzenegger quotes is from kindergarten cop. Oh, not a tumor? Yeah, not a tumor.
Um I can't remember else there's uh uh well I mean that's the the best one, not a tumor. Who is your daddy? What does he do? Yeah. That's not a good one.
Uh who is your daddy, what does he do? All right. Um joined in the engineering booth by Jack Insley and why why what's your last name? It's Wyatt Burns. Whyot Burns.
Like why whenever I hear Burns, I think Mr. Burns. Do you get that a lot? You don't look like him. I don't know why I would think of that.
Uh Emma can do a great Mr. Burns impression, actually. Uh I wouldn't say the whole impression, more just the kind of uh shudder. Oh yeah. I see that.
I see that. Uh all right, so why don't we uh Yeah, I've got a c a caller right out the gate. Alright, call her right out the gate, you're on the air. Hey, what's up, how are you, Dave? Doing all right.
Uh I got a question about um backtofer for salami curing. Sure. Um I'm using uh I think FRM. I mean I started with uh Paul Steen's book. I think he recommends FRM 52.
I don't recall off the top of my head, but basically, as you I'm sure I already know, it it calls for uh like a twelve or so hour incubation period. Uh right now what I'm doing is I actually have a a light bulb on a timer that I close in my oven door with all the salumies that goes on like X amount of minutes per hour. I keep between eighty and a hundred. But my question is, um, is there any reason I can't um put it in a water bath sealed up to do that? Or d uh does it need to kinda have that drying out as well?
Well, it's not just a drying out, is that uh Huh. I've never had anyone ask me that before. Uh I mean, you're trying to you want the pH to drop. Now the lacto the lactic acid bacteria are anaerobic, so you shouldn't need the oxygen. Maybe the thing is to stop the ox maybe the thing is to stop the exterior uh bacteria that are not um that are aerobic from uh growing during the initial period of drying out.
You know what I'm saying? Like Yeah, I was worried about the moist environment inside the bag somehow being a safety issue, but I don't know how if it would be that much different than being inside the dry oven or hanging in a in a warm box, like a proofing box or something. Well, I mean remember it's it's more it's it's inside the bag is not only is it uh, you know, not drying and out. Remember, your humidity at the beginning of this stuff is super high anyway. You know what I'm saying?
Like so at at the beginning, you know, uh if especially if you're doing it like in in a in a converted fridge thing, your humidities are I mean, it's been it's been years since I've looked up the numbers, but your humidities are in the nineties, uh, when you're doing your initial uh fermentation. But if you put it in a bag, you've shifted it from the exterior being uh uh an aerobic environment to an anaerobic environment. And I don't know uh I mean, you know, you you might be putting yourself uh at risk for various things that way, but uh I mean I can suspend it over the water on a rack oh that's at least and then cover it with a towel right I mean that would definitely work but you'd be putting yourself then in a hundred percent humidity environment now whether or not that's a problem or not I don't know I mean like it look I'll tell you what Peter next week we're going out to hang out in Madison that's right aren't we gonna next week are we gonna meet with the uh curing folks in Madison when we're out there the guys yeah I'll ask them how about I ask them when I see them you know maybe they have some experience I mean obviously I've never heard of me obvious look obviously there are some lactic acid uh things that take place entirely aerobically underwater i.e almost every pickle and every sauerkraut um why not do why not do it in a bag uh for sausages I frankly don't I don't I don't know what I'm doing is working but I just figured it's as a matter of convenience and absolutely stable temperature for a very specific amount of time I just figure you know I just got the circular I'm trying to use it for every thinking thing I can think of as you as you know how that goes. Yeah I mean look if you bag it you're definitely gonna get blow off in that time because uh you know and that's another interesting uh point is that uh but of course you're putting you're putting a uh a culture in it so I don't know I mean I've had very very very unpleasant fermentations take place in vacuum bags uh you know uh in the mid to in the low fifties Celsius overnight like hyper unpleasant uh smells uh in in uh specifically in uh pork so you know we used to do uh whole pork shoulders in fat and I remember because fat uh fat you know is not obviously it's thicker than water so it doesn't circulate as well it's also not as good of a uh uh conductor uh you know uh it doesn't have as high a specific heat so it doesn't you know s put as much energy out so if you circulate fat you have to be really super careful that you get really good circulation all the way around and I had some stagnant points in my uh fat bath that I had these pork shoulders in and not only that the pork shoulders were uh touching each other in a couple places and so there was total uh not only a dead spot but you had something that was roughly the size of a Chevy engine that you know is trying to get warm and then you know couple that with the fact that even when it was regulating temperature right it was only at 57 which is just a a mere like like six degrees above or seven degrees above like kind of growth for this and so I had a 10 degree temperature delta over the over the you know the span of this bath and the next day it walked in it was like someone had taken like like a really bad blue cheese and just you know put it into a pressure washer and sprayed the whole room with it. I mean it stank to high heaven and while I love the smell of blue cheese with the rare exception of some uh of a child of a Chinese ham that I had once and the uh and I think the really good like uh Colonel Newsom's ham some blue cheese is not usually a note you're shooting for in meat and when it when it when it commingles with like that slight kind of putrescence that you get out of some fermentations like unless you're eating Scandinavian fish and I'm talking to you Sir Stroming not to the hockerel which we all know did not smell that rotten from last week I think you can I mean I know for a fact that unpleasant things happen in that.
But if you're just using a starter culture, I don't know. I'd have to just talk to some some uh people who have more than theoretical ideas about it. You know what I mean? Yeah, man, I'd love it if you could get to get to the bottom of that for me. That'd be awesome.
Sure, no problem. And also, uh that email about the uh turkey uh porchettas from meat too. So I hope you guys get the chance to address that today. That'd be sweet. Did that just come in?
Because Nastasha is like I say, she's not she's not here, so I didn't get there's apparently I had three questions, but from uh this past couple of days, but I didn't get it. You want to just tell me the question now? Well, I was already told there's only one question for caller. I will I will tell you anyway. All right.
Um uh Kenji, you know, Kenji, he had uh uh experiment he did where he b and and I did this with a chicken, not with a turkey, and I'll make it break. Basically break it down, brind the breasts, pound them out, grind all the dark meat in the sausage, roll it up into a perfect torpedo, you know, with saran wrap, um, and then uh wrap it in the skin, souve it or whatever, and then um and then deep fry the whole thing and then serve slices of it, which sounds amazing. I I used to do that like all day, every day. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
So uh my question is that uh since I'm gonna be serving it at a different home other than I'm preparing it in, is it gonna suck if I fry it at my house and then try to rewarm it? I mean, I'm not too sure about the the properties of skin that's been low temp and then fried, if it's gonna hold a crisp like the uh like the Korean wings do with it. No, it won't. No, absolutely it will not. It will not.
Okay, so it's gonna suck. Uh no, it's not gonna suck. It's just not gonna be like that. I mean, first of all, uh usually when I do it, I I couldn't can't remember exactly what you do. Usually I put the dark meat around the outside, because it's the most then you don't even need to brine the the the white.
Usually, I mean, I do the opposite. Look, when you think about it, right, tech from a technical standpoint, you want the dark meat to cook to a higher temperature than the white meat, right? I mean, it's just fact. By about two degrees. So usually what I'll do is I'll pound out the dark.
I can't remember which way you said it, and then I'll put the white on the inside. I you look, I used it as one of my as my standard demo. Nils and I used to do like a uh what's it called? Turduck in this way, right? The way that you're describing with the skin on the outside.
But one of my standard demos was to bone out a whole chicken, put the breast in the center, pound out the dark meat, uh wrap it in the skin with meat glue, roll it into and by the way, there's a skill and an art to uh doing torchons with plastic wrap, and you know, I learned it from Nils Norin, and I'm not saying that like it's a good way to learn, but cooking issues in the low-temp primer, cookingissues.com, which we're not updating anymore, but still exists, has a like a like a good visual thing on how to wrap a nice uh stiff torchant, which you which should uh by the way sink. That's how you know you've done it right. If the sucker floats up at the top, I'm gonna have to check that out because mine are a little sketchy. I keep going back and forth between the freezer just to keep everything where it's supposed to be, you know. Yeah, if you use the look, Nils Norin may will make any any anything into a tube.
I've seen him make the least tube-like things into tubes. And uh so you know, I learned his technique and it's really good. And then Hervé, also from the French culinary, his magical secret sauce was he would um after you put the normally what would be the last wrap of plastic around the torchon, he would do one more thin layer of plastic and get this with a couple of butter knives rolled into it, and the butter knives just sink the torchon straight to the bottom of of the uh circulator, which is a sweet trick, right? All right, sweet trick. Uh now, but back to your your other thing.
Um super crispy skin either happens from long frying, right? Or uh, you know, like double frying, typically in a in a in the Korean thing, usually in the presence of uh extra starchy crap that can because it's all the water management. Like crispy skin is all about managing the water, right? So in in some of the in like the in what I think is like the super awesome Korean drum stri stick technique, because really I could give uh rats behind about the rest of the rest of it. Like for me, like that, like the old style, like whatever you want to call it, kyoshan style, banchan style, whatever you want to call it.
You know, Peter, what do you like to call it? Which style do you would you you don't care? He's what? Speak. Korean fried style.
But uh but the the one the one that for the one that forms like a maraca with the meat, like that's about like setting the skin at the right temperature. The meat kind of drifts away from the skin, which maintains this thing, and then you have awesome water balance. So and then they put it with that kind of uh sugary craft, it also helps it keep kind of crunchy because it's like it's basically like uh, you know, a candied shell of awesomeness. I think that stuff's fantastic. But in a low temperature environment where you've meat glued the skin to it and you're getting all of your texture off the final fry, it's never going to be that crispy unless you batter it and deep fry it.
Now, if you batter it and deep fry it, then you might have some uh good luck, but you're still you're then you're relying on the fact that you have a thick crust to deal with the moisture management problem. Because when you're doing low temp, you're never overcooking the meat, and because you're never overcooking the meat, you're always having something moist in contact with the skin, and so it never lasts that long. However, like these torchons can be really good even as a cold prep for a buffet, and the skin looks nice because you stirred it once. And I I did that once for uh, you know, my wife had to throw a baby shower for someone, and I wasn't allowed to be there because I'm a dude, and apparently, like some people like they don't let dudes at their baby shower. I wouldn't complain.
If you've ever been to a baby shower, you're not missing out. Uh, all right, good. Well, uh, so anyway, so like she didn't want to do much cooking, and I wasn't allowed to be there to finish stuff off. So I did a bunch of cold prep with uh chicken and turkey, which is fantastic because no one's used to having a cold prep that doesn't suck. All right, I'll agree with that.
Yeah. Yeah, actually, one of the uh one way I do uh roast chicken at home is I sort of dry out the chicken over a few different days for over three days, so it becomes this like mummy-like appearance. Yeah, actually. And then when it's super dry and looks almost desiccated, then I roast it and you get a super crispy skin out of it. Right, and that's a good point.
Like when I do low temperature on turkey for Thanksgiving, I'll do the low temperature and then I'll just leave it uncovered in the in the fridge for a while to flash off. And if you pull it out of the torchant when it's hot, you'll get more flash off on the skin and you're liable to get crispier skin anyway. But I don't think you're ever gonna make it to Korean fried chicken land with that. Well, no, I was just using that as an example, but I mean I could always just low temp it and then refrigerate it and then finish it in like a 500 degree oven, like right before I mean I'm sure I can get some oven space. They have like three ovens at the time.
Oh, that's uh that's always a good call. That's always a good call because then you're doing what I always call uh low temperature cooking for insurance purposes, meaning the sucker's cooked through, so you don't need to worry about it. It's gonna get kind of mildly warm in the middle, so nothing really matters. And then you cook it like you were gonna normally cook it in somebody's crappy oven, but you no longer have to sweat it because the inside's already cooked. I mean, that's a genius move.
That's like then you then you don't have to like ask them for anything fancy, you don't have to fry, you don't have to look like you're high maintenance, you just throw it in their oven and it comes out and they're like, why can't I cook like this? And it's because well, because you're not thinking straight. That's why you can't cook like this. And then I'll I'll be the hero of Thanksgiving. Exactly.
Hero of Thanksgiving. That's what I like to hear. Dave, I love the fact that on the one hand, you are no longer a high maintenance guest. On the other hand, you're telling them the host of your the host of they're not thinking straight. So no, that's only if they ask.
It's only if they ask. Yeah, no, you know what? The thing is also, like, if you're bringing something kind of like that major to the to the event, like they're seeding, like they're seeding anything to you. You know what I'm saying? Like they're like, I'll make some sides, and then you're gonna have like the big old turkey thing.
It's like, look, you get to save basically whatever you want, but it still is mega cool to walk in there and not mess with the fact that they are still rushing around to get their mashed potatoes done, walk into the kitchen for about 25 seconds, throw the thing in and come back like like 35 minutes later and pull out something delicious. They're like, no, man. You don't even have to talk to them about it. You know what I mean? It's just like drop the mic.
Did I tell you about that business idea I had? Check this out. I'm never gonna do this, so someone do this. Here's what I want to do. Someone do this.
I want to make disposable, like really like like inexpensive, recyclable, maybe, disposable microphone things with just a simple accelerometer in it. You just keep them in your pocket, and they have a little speaker in them, right? And then when you do something, you just you pull it out of your pocket, no one knows it's there, you drop it, and it goes and you walk away from it. And you buy like a pack of five of these, like drop the mics, and then you know you just always have one with you for when it's time to drop the mic and walk away. I think I hear your new Kickstarter, dude.
I know. Well, someone, you know, look, uh it's like before. It's like, look, I've just handed someone like a like a small, like a wheelbarrow full of money. Just like send us something. That's all I'm saying.
Here's the thing, Dave. In order to properly pitch the idea, you need to have the mic to drop at the end of your pitch. Well, that's what I'm saying. Someone who has it, someone has the time to go make someone who has the time to go make the mic. Yeah, you know what I'm saying?
Like, they should just make it. And I'm just saying, send us something, that's all. You know, I'm a generous dude. I don't I don't have time to to it's not, it's not in my it's not in my uh, you know, the range of things that we work on, Booker and DAX. I can't really devote the time to it that it deserves, that it merits.
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, good luck with the turkey. Yo, thanks for your help guys. All right cool.
I got another caller. Sweet caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, how are you doing? Doing all right, what's up? I work at a manufacturing company and recently they tasked me with uh designing like a full service kitchen for all the guys that work on our shop floor.
Sweet. And um and the owner of the company um I presented my initial layout to him and he thought it was great. I'm actually making use of some sous vide machines and stuff. And uh but he wants me to uh reuse some old equipment that we have lying around which makes complete sense. He's got like two or three three comp uh three compartment sinks that he wants to uh use for a sous vide.
Right. Um I I told him just to use polycarbonate bins because I know they're cheap and it's versatile you can stow them and stuff. I was just curious how would you like how would you mount the controller to a three comp sink and have like one per compartment and plus you got like like water baths that are sharing you know walls in the sink and stuff like transmitting heat between different temperature baths um like what are your thoughts on that? I mean his thought is that you can actually drain the sink when you're done with your sous vide and you're not dumping out a big bin of water and all that. Sure.
Well I mean like okay so um Girard uh Philip Preston from PolyScience built one of built something very much like that for uh Girard Bertelon from Cuisine Solutions and and he loves it right so you know it's obviously feasible. The thing is you're gonna be dealing typically with the sink, you're gonna be dealing with a much larger uh water um water situation than you would be with a with a regular circulator which tops out at around so a regular thousand watt heater and a circulator tops out at around 28 liters worth of water. So you need to measure kind of how much your your big your sink is and and kind of figure from there how much power you're going to need. Secondly it a lot depends on how you're going to mount the heating head. So some people have done it uh where they mount they like mount a standard circulator into a uh into a sink and if you're going to do that what you have to be careful of is that you get full circulation from top to bottom right so a lot of people just worry about you know is the pump above the water and is the heater above the water but that is you because think about it this way this the pump typically circulates straight out and cold colder water tends to sink so if you have um something that's circulating over at the top you can have stagnation at the bottom and all the cooler water is floating to the bottom so you're never heating all the way down to the bottom of your tank especially if you have product in there.
So typically if you're gonna have something if you're gonna do something like let's say weld what kind of shop do you guys metal plastic what do you do we do everything we need metal wood plastic I mean like a ton of different things. So you're good to go so what you what I would do is like have like weld like a bracket so that you could put the circulator pump in the sink if you need to this is the simplest way. You can go much more complicated and really internal so you can mount a controller and a circulator and you could like weld a pump into it so that you never have to have something on the outside. Depends how much you want to put into it but um you know I have seen people weld brackets and then have the circulator fit in that way if there's a problem you're not ripping a controller that's built in out of the sink. It's less work you have to do.
It's a little more not as built in, so it's a little bit bigger of the pain in the butt, but it's also easier to sanitize because you can remove all of the units. You don't have to worry about a flow-through pump. Now, back to the sink itself. Usually in a depends on what kind of three compartment sink that you have, but most of the time it's not like an actual partition, in other words, just a piece of metal. Typically, uh, you know, you'll have is it, or is it like three uh things that are sunk into it and you have like a good like half, three quarters of an inch uh lip in between the compartments?
Uh I don't think there's an air gap. I think it's just metal and then it's just a metal divider or something. Right. Um I don't think it's actually like uh like a U-shape or anything. Right.
Well you then you could always just make, if you want, uh like an insulated metal kind of saddle that you can mount the two circulators to that'll slip over the panel and that'll provide enough insulation to stop too much crosstalk between the two and provide an easy way to drop two circulators into the sink without modifying the sink. Do you understand what I'm saying? Like a almost and that you know, that's gonna be maybe the easiest way because it doesn't require any kind of actual modification of the sink unit itself. It can stay where it is, and like everything else can be done in the shop. What I would recommend is putting some spray insulation on the inside under the other parts of the sink so that you're not losing too much through the bottom of the cabinet.
Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. And then for evaporation, just do some custom lids with a cutout for the controller. Yeah, exactly. I wouldn't use those ping-pong balls.
I think they're a pain in the butt. I've never met anyone who's been like, you know what, I'm really glad I used those ping-pong balls. Uh you know. I think like those, like uh, I think were sold as a bill of goods to chefs as something that was good. I think that's really awesome when you're doing stuff that like is really nasty with really nasty volatiles, like if you're electroplating or something, fantastic.
But for cooking, no. Like a like a, you know, just like a modified like Lexan uh lid. And you know, depending on how fancy you want to go, uh you can, you know, like I've seen people make little like hinged portions of it, so you could go in and get portion by portion. Uh, you know. But the nice thing about sinks is you can drain some water and then you can just pitch ice into it and and uh and uh drop the temp down, or you can uh you know, what you should typically do is uh is drain the water, let it sit for a couple minutes, add uh regular room temperature tap water to it, let it sit for a couple of minutes and then ice it down.
You can do all of that under circulation, which makes it a lot more uh efficient. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I'm actually really stoked about it. So that's that's really good uh helpful information.
I just found out too that we have like an endless supply of liquid nitrogen, so I'm gonna check with our supplier, make sure it's food grid, and then go to town with that too. Yeah, you know, most of it it like uh uh most of the people who supply it supply it also to kind of medical places. So the product itself is all good. It's a question of the filling apparatus and the tank they put it into is usually what the what the dealio is. But most of the time you're actually okay because it'd be harder for them to you know give you something that's ruined than not.
In most cases, not always, always check with them. They they don't usually call it food grade, they call it medical grade. Okay, all right, awesome. Thanks so much. Super.
Uh let us know how it works. All right. So I have another call. All right, all right. Well we'll take the well caller, you're on the air.
Hi Dave, how's it going? Going all right. Hey, um, I'm looking to try and uh make the the duck prosciutto in Roman's book. Sure. And I think it calls for you know hanging it somewhere between fifty and six feet.
Uh where the heck would you do that in New York apartment? The fridge is gonna be way too cold. I feel like the rest of my apartment's way too hot. Um can I can I try it either way, or what what would you suggest? Try it.
What do you have access to? Right? What do you have access to equipment-wise? Um a circulator. Um I think that's kind of the main thing.
But yeah, just in terms of the hanging, I guess. Yeah. Okay. Well, I don't actually frankly know how uh how um what's the word I'm looking for? I don't know how sensitive uh it's gonna be to the temperature.
Like so you know, a lot of times what'll happen when you're doing when you're hanging something is that or when you're f fermenting or curing or any anything you're doing, right, is that uh a number of things are going on. You're drying the product out. In some cases there's bacterial fermentation going on, but there's also a lot of enzymatic activity that's going on. And in in any of those situations, you're gonna be affected by both the heat and the humidity, and it can affect not only the length of time, but also the flavor that's going to come out of it, which is why American country hams, where we're talking about a lot of enzymatic activity in the meat along with the drying, you the higher temperature products are gonna have a kind of a different, you know, more robust, kind of more American uh flavor. Now, uh so point is you'll probably be able to get it done at at a lower temperature, but it might not be the same.
Also you won't uh you know what humidity does he recommend, do you know? Sorry? What humidity does he recommend? Do you know do you do I forget I don't remember and I'm not sure if if it's even noted, to be honest. Yeah.
So I mean, depending on how, you know, I mean uh I I feel you probably don't have the space to get a wine cooler and use it for uh and use it for curing meats, although it works quite well. Like uh like one of those little vino tub kind of things or yeah, like you know, one of the ones that hold like I I have one that holds, I think like, I don't know, like fifteen, sixteen bottles, and I use it like I use it f I never have that much. Actually, maybe it's two cases. I don't know. I never have that much wine in my house because I don't collect like expensive wines, but I also use it to store my cheeses when they come in, because I don't like to refrigerate my cheeses.
Uh, and I'll use it for uh meats that I'm you know holding. Um and you so you could use something like that. You might be able to literally just uh like throw some ice in the bottom. How long do you have to do it? How long do you have to keep it?
Uh I think they'd say about a week or so. Maybe maybe two. I mean you could build something. Depends also on how handy you are. Like you could build easily build like with a Pell T, like a thermoelectric, because you don't need to move that much energy out, right?
So you could probably pretty easily build something that would hold the right temperature inside of like a cooler or even something you made out of styro. It's just a question of like where you would keep it. Like would you like hide it in a closet somewhere? But it it would be you know, it wouldn't be that difficult for it wouldn't be that difficult for you to do. Uh I'm trying to think of a way that doesn't shaft I mean you could easily do it if you shaft your fridge, but then you can't keep anything else.
That's not really a valid solution. Uh I wonder if there is any commercial enterprise that you could sort of tip them tip money their way to be able to use a little corner of their like walk-in or something. The problem is is you can't put as something that they don't nah, the the laws are all are all nutty. Yeah, if you have the space for it, like that's a great way to go, uh, Elliot. The like you know, you get one of those little fridges, it's not gonna hold that much.
But then from Alberinstruments.com, you can get really cheap kind of humidity and temperature control stuff and just kind of keep it but you know, you'd be putting it in the cooling phase rather than the warming phase. So you wouldn't have a heater on it, you'd have a uh cooler on it. Then if you you know are really slick, like if you wanted to raise the temperature above ambient later, you could throw a heater into it as well. But like, yeah, that would that I mean that would clearly work if you have the space for it. Like the thing is dedicating a closet to it.
You know, uh it's not gonna be going on that often, so you might be able to get away with it in the closet. The closet's not gonna get too hot. I mean, I know that for a fact with the wine cooler, because I've kept a wine cooler in a closet for you know over a decade and it worked fine. Yeah, I mean, I think it I think the question just comes down to how much am I gonna be doing this? Am I gonna get really into it where there's something that I'm gonna you know constantly be doing, and then it's like, oh yeah, just buy the fridge, that's no problem.
But yeah, I mean that's a good point that you can store cheeses and and other stuff in it to um that might kind of make it worth the the space. Also, fall's coming on. So what I would do is do it like fairly close to a place, maybe you can crack a window. If you're anything like most people in New York apartments, it gets hot as heck because they have those radiators and the radiators can't be adjusted, and so like you have to open your windows in the middle of the winter. Are you like that?
That's exactly the problem, yeah. Yeah. So the good news about that is you can find a place in your place that's cold enough by putting it close enough to a window, like you know, in a box with some screen over it, really cheaply, and figure out kind of whether you like it or not, or whether this is something you're gonna do, and then before it gets like really hot again, then you can invest in a uh in a uh you know, in in a more permanent like dorm fridge, rig. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely.
I think that's that's a good idea. Yeah. Always good to test the waters, but or go the other way. The other way, the other way, and I've done this many times, is just jump right the heck in, spend all the cash, and you're like, Well, I gotta do it now. Cause I've I devoted all this time and energy to it.
I got I gotta do it now. That's how I learned to play bass guitar. Like, you know. Oh, yeah. I've done spent the money.
Of course, that was back when I couldn't afford to like lose that kind of money, so it was like, you know, you know, it's like to be a sufficient gamble kind of thing. Yeah, you have to make a big enough investment in time and or uh and or money that it's it it's a personal failure and embarrassment if you don't actually see it through, you know. So Dave's advice is to take a high interest loan or pawn off some very valuable uh you know family duels and then take it up so that the stakes are so high that you must go through with it. Well, I mean that's that's actually interestingly that Peter uh interpreted my uh my uh advice that way because that's exactly what he did with the Museum of Food and Drink, basically, is a He took an extremely uh like huge gamble and like quit a fine lawyering job uh with you know kind of good benefits and salary to uh start the museum of food and drink with absolutely no guarantees, which I forever appreciate. So he did exact he he actually did take my advice that way, and here's here's where he is today, right?
True? Thanks so much. Really appreciate it. All right, thank you. All right, well with that, before we go to break, why don't we uh discuss why uh Peter and uh Emma are here.
So you uh em you Emma, you want to talk? Yeah, sure. I mean I think given all the discussions of sausages and turkeys and turduckins, this is actually a great segue to quickly plug our upcoming event this Thursday here in New York, Mofad Roundtable, uh the future of meat. Uh we're bringing together four panelists uh who represent a wide variety of views on meat eating and uh whether we should eat meat, how we should produce meat in the future. We've got uh Peter Singer.
Or whether we should produce meat in the future. That too. Yeah. Uh we've got Peter Singer, the eminent philosopher and author of Animal Liberation, among many other publications. Uh another philosopher named Mark Budolfsson, who uh is currently working on a volume on food ethics to be published by Oxford University Press.
Uh Isha Datar, who runs a nonprofit called New Harvest. They advocate for cultured meat and various uh varieties of so-called in vitro meat and think about sort of the possibilities of meat futures. And then finally, uh Heritage's own Patrick Martins, who recently published the Carnivores Manifesto and also runs Heritage Foods USA, which is a purveyor of ethically and sustainably raised meats. So And don't forget there's some smuck moderating the whole thing. Oh yeah, this guy who's sitting right next to me, Dave will be there as well.
So if you are in New York or the area, we would love it if you could come. Uh tickets are at meat.mofad.org. And again, it's this Thursday, the sixteenth. Meet like get together or meet like the stuff. Meet like the uh what Jack said.
Yeah. M-E-A-T.mofad.org. Yeah. Uh unfortunately Peter is gonna do the introduction, so I can't go Peter Peter Peter Singer, vegetarian philosopher. Right?
Because he's like he's never probably been introduced that way in his life. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I think you should do it. Yeah, no, it's your job, man.
All right, fair. Yeah. But uh Peter Singer, interesting. Uh yeah, he against eating meat on the grounds that if you don't believe in uh racism, then you also shouldn't believe in eating meat. I mean, it boils down to like you can't distinguish between uh animal suffering.
In other words, suffering is the thing. You can't distinguish between uh the suffering of um animals and of people in terms of value judgments, and then says, Well, back in the day we used to make differences between different groups of people and and we don't do that anymore, so blah blah blah. It's kind of a utilitarian plus bludgeoning you with your own sensibilities kind of argument about uh not eating uh meat, which is accurate or inaccurate. Yeah, I would say so. Interestingly, he doesn't argue that uh the suffering that animals and humans experience is necessarily the same, but he does argue for equal consideration of suffering for living beings.
So it's not that the pain that a human might experience who knows that there's a future to be lived uh upon the knowledge that he or she might be killed is the same as the pain that an animal might experience uh because perhaps the level of sentience differs there, but there's still, he argues, a fundamental interest in life that all living things share. Yeah, sure. And it yeah, definitely not in a not equating the two, right? The animal suffering and the human suffering, but denying us as people the right to draw uh lines of distinction and treatment on when we recognize suffering is occurring, right? Pretty much.
And then, but you know, then he's interesting, he's like, you know, and they're like clearly probably not a food dude, just saying this because, like at a couple of the references in the book, he's like, especially for something as you know not important as eating the animal, you can kill it. You know what I mean? Like he almost seems in some places, it's been years since I've read it, but you know, some places like we're not talking like you know, leather shoes. I can see even more than eating it. I don't know what the guy sounds like.
He probably doesn't sound like that. Probably not. He's Australian for one thing. Oh, jeez, I can't do an Australian accent. Well, I just do it the same way I do New York.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. But it should be an interesting. When Patrick on the panel, this will be great. Oh my god, what if Patrick's Patrick's gonna be like, meat's so delicious? Like so he's gonna say the whole thing.
That's your Patrick impression. No, Peter does the Patrick impression. Peter, do your Patrick Peter, do your Patrick impression. Well, no, he's just saying, like, if you go over to the stake check, you see the big line of people waiting for the hamburgers. You know, I can tell them to stop eating meat.
It's just not possible. That's pretty good. It wasn't bad. Yeah, Peter's Peter's got that. Peter's got the uh let's take a break so we can squeeze in some more uh questions.
Alright, we'll come right back with more cooking issues. White Oak Pastures is the only farm in the United States that has its own USDA inspected red meat abattoir or slaughterhouse and its own USDA inspected poultry abattoir or slaughterhouse. We partner with Whole Foods to deliver our high quality meat and poultry from Miami, Florida, all the way to Princeton, New Jersey. One family, one farm, five generations, 145 years. A full circle return to sustainable land stewardship, humane animal stockmanship.
For more information, please visit our website, Whiteoop Pastures.com. How how much do you love that commercial? Ten. And I'd like to see Peter Singer come and tell that dude not to use his abattoir. You know what I'm saying?
I'd like to see that happen. I'd like to see Peter Singer come and tell that guy not to not to not to do his beef and poultry. Well, we're hoping some farmers will will come to the debate. So that guy's voice, I would buy like I told you the only thing I don't like about that is why only up to Princeton. What's what are we?
Dirt? What are we dirt? Anyways. Alright, we have a caller. Caller, you're on the air.
Uh yeah, Dave. Two or three weeks ago, you very briefly mentioned your recipe for doing Kambu Dashi in a circulator. Could you give me the actual recipe? Oh, yeah. I mean, look, uh, I would look at the um the key thing with Kambu, there's a couple of key things with Kanbu.
One is obviously the uh the variety you get, because they are very like extremely widely in terms of not just uh the amount of umami they deliver but the the flavor they deliver. Second thing is um the second thing, I mean obviously how it's how it's cut up. I did studies on that as well, but uh temperature and time. So um you have a circulator? Yeah.
Okay. So the best uh I mean the best results I got were in the bag, uh circulated, um, although you could probably do it without the bag circulating. You just gotta make sure that you don't get little pieces sucked up into the circulator. It was it was either sixty or seventy C. I'd have to go back and look at my uh at my numbers, but it was sixty or seventy C, I think, for like in the area of an hour.
I did longer, I did shorter, I did higher, I did lower. But go back on cooking issues and just search for uh combo. Those were the numbers I got that uh and like it wasn't like by a little bit, it was by uh a lot. And we went through also all the different um varieties that we could source here in New York, but my memory is too thin to give you the uh the exact uh the exact stuff on it. But it was uh we have I have like two or three posts on da on Kambu Dashi, all with um numbers and photos so you can kind of see how it looks and then obviously afterwards website you're talking about yeah on cooking issue it's still up there like I like I say we have we haven't like it's all archived so it's you know it's not a living document anymore but it's still there and if it's not there I can go research it just give us a give me a tweet back and I'll go uh figure out the the the exact magic numbers again all right and then yeah I think you just sort of hinted at my second question but what's uh what's your play favorite place at the store is wildly expensive Asian ingredients and have some idea of getting what you're paying for.
Uh well I mean uh for for Japanese stuff for food I mean I used to source well I was getting that stuff directly from kind of uh true worlds who was my seafood supplier so now I you know I don't have any more like a super fantastic uh Japanese source I guess you know for foods I I tend to go to the same markets that we all kind of go to here in uh New York but um I don't know you mean online or in in the city I know if you go out to where do you go for stuff uh Emma Emma lived in Japan for how long a couple of years where do you go I've gone to Mitsuha in New Jersey once or twice and I mean selection is is great there. It feels very much like a grocery store in Japan. But often I don't make it out there so I usually just go to sunrise in the East Village. Yeah but the you know again like what's weird about that if you don't speak like they don't necessarily think that you really care and so they're not really gonna like like worry about whether you get the best this or that. Like I've never purchased a a good uh uh solid, you know, Katsu Bushi here ever.
You know what I mean? Uh you can I've gotten some decent meetos. I've gotten I've never gotten a NATO that I thought was worth spit here in uh in in New York as opposed to the one I had when I was over in Tokyo. You have any good web sources though? I no, I actually don't really buy Japanese food online.
I can look into it, I'm sure there'll be a lot of things. Now why don't you look into it and then tweet tweet uh what you should do is follow also at Mofad, which is uh our Twitter account for the museum, and Emma will tweet out for you a good source for that stuff. We'll maybe or we'll find someone who knows and we'll tweet it out. But please follow at MoFad so that you can see Emma's uh response, right? Yes, please do.
Yeah, all right, so we'll look into it for you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Uh okay. So uh Peter, uh Emma, why don't you plug what you came to plug before we get ripped off the Oh by the way, before you do, uh we did a catch-up show last week on a Friday, and it's now up, right, Jack?
Sorry, yes, it is. And we might have to do another catch up show. We might need another ketchup show, which is fine. You know what though? I I would prefer to do catch-up shows on the questions that are written in and like always always handle the live caller.
I like having live callers. Yeah, I would I would prefer to do a catch-up show with a catch-up sponsor. That's just me. Well, did you do we have a catch-up sponsor? We we don't yet.
Nothing has come through. I know some people. Uh you know, I just did a side-by-side of uh Hunts versus Heinz yesterday. Oh yeah? Yeah.
What what was the takeaway? Uh well uh the hunts clearly the texture not as good as the heinz. The flavor was okay. But have you had Sir Kensington's? I just met with one of the founders of that company.
Have uh so have you? Uh yes. How was it? Yeah, it's good. You know, I mean I have to admit, I think you know.
Does he wear a monocle? Yes. Wait, guys, I just I I I have to do this real quick. All right. You the lad.
What are we listening to? No, it's a trade network, sir. Very good. I'm Sir Kensington, and you'll listen to the Heritage Radio Network. That's total monocle man.
That's total monocle right there. That's him, he was here. D and did he wear a monocle? Of course. Sweet.
I kind of like I kind of like it. Although it seems like. Did you know, Jack? Because I know these two know it, that in Spanish, the word for Wisheshire sauce is English sauce. What?
Yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
Inglesi. Yeah. I was like, what the hell is sauce inglese? They're like, oh, Wisheshire sauce. Well, and in front, the French sauce, sauce Espanyol, is just called that because there's a tomato in it.
Or there's some tomato in it. Like tomatoes come from Spain? For them, apparently at the time, yeah. French. But you know, the thing is, uh, that like does Kensington's have like a a a dose of Wisheshire like flavors or anchovy in it?
Um I can't remember. Because you know, the the characteristic note in Worcestershire sauce is anchovy. Yeah. Which is just delicious. It is amazing stuff.
You know what I do not like fake Wish like why like the W Wishurette or whatever they want to call the fake one that doesn't have the anchovy in it, like has some of the notes of Worcester sauce, but it ain't real deal homie stuff. You know what I'm saying? Doesn't it isn't there like a tamarind a strong tamarind note in Worcester 2? I feel like I think so. Yeah.
Look, it's a really interestingly complex condiment to be a mainstay in the American pantry. But you know, but that's but people give us a bad rap. You ever have the um the gentleman's relish, the pepper? It's basically uh a compound butter of anchovies, black pepper, and butter. That's a an English thing.
People give the English a bad rap, but they look they love their chutneys. I'm not talking prior to like this whole like kind of you know revitalization of British food over the past, you know, 15, 20 years. I'm talking like old school. Like, even with all the crappy stuff. They still had the the the chutneys, the the sauces, the relishes.
I mean, you know, great sauces put on their crappy food. Wow. Well, that's what you're saying. That's no, that's what you're saying. I'm I'm interpreting.
No, see, this is like this is the same thing that caused you to quit your job. You like you take like three steps beyond like what I'm actually saying. So why don't you talk before they kick us off the air, which is going to be very soon, why don't you tell us like what uh Yeah? So uh for any listeners that are in the Midwest, uh I'm a Midwesterner myself. We've we're going to Madison, Wisconsin next week.
And uh we've got we're doing a fundraiser for MoFad out in Madison uh with two James Beard award winning chefs and the Underground Food Collective, and that's uh October 23rd. Dave will be making cocktails, doing a demo. So if y'all are anywhere near Madison, Wisconsin, um you should definitely get tickets. Uh you can get them at Mofad Fundraiser.eventbrite.com. Uh and you can also go on our Facebook, we put a post up on that.
So at the MoFad Facebook page. All right. And speaking of uh Wisconsin and Bratz, I'm gonna do one quick one on the way out, and then we're gonna have to catch the rest of the ones that I still owe you guys answers on in either a ketchup show, probably we'll have to do a catch up show. But this one goes out to the Hashi Food Truck uh at cooking issues. Remember an issue where you covered brats or sausages in an immersion circulator with beer.
Can you share the tips again? Yes. So uh what you do is uh you can do it in beer, but remember if you're gonna do it in beer, the first couple of ones you're gonna come out aren't gonna taste as bratty as the rest would because you have to get the whole thing tasting like brats. You know what I'm saying? So you want like maximum brat and minimum beer at least at the beginning, so you can get and I've I I don't know if you know this, and uh at Clef's wrote in also about New York hot dog carts.
I've drunk the hot dog water from a New York hot dog cart before, and the sucker tastes more like a hot dog than a hot dog does. And I'm pretty sure they reuse the water day in and day out. And don't worry, it's hot, it's not bad. It's kind of like you know, the like the secret uh, you know, Chinese stocks that are made for hundreds of years because the flavor is like you know, they keep on like reinforcing it with fresh meat. I think that's one of the keys.
And so uh you're not leaching any flavor out. So you have it in the circulator at like 140, right? So now you're not overcooking the the stuff in the brats, you have it go in there 140, pull it out, and put it over a flaming hot grill to put the crust over it, and it's never gonna be overcooking me delicious and beer brats and forever and awesome. It's really good. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, right. We made it for you once at a museum event. Yeah. Yeah. That was some tasty stuff.
Right. And uh, we also had a question in uh that I know I owe you. Don't worry, I know I owe you. I gotta talk about uh fermentation in the bag, and maybe we'll talk about that more when we get more information on meat fermentation in the bag, which I've never done. Uh, next time on cooking issues.
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