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Go to Rackiton.com or get the app. That's R A K-U-T-E-N. 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 WholeFoodsmarket.com. This is Chef Emily Peterson, host of Sharp and Hot.
You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for thousands more. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live in Roberta Pizzeria on Heritage Radio Network in Bushwick Brhooklin. Joined as usual with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez.
And uh we got Jack over there at the engineer booth. Do we not? Yeah, we do. Wyatt there? I thought it was a white.
Wyatt's here. Goodwight, how you doing? How are you guys doing? We're good. Yeah.
So I have something for you, Nastasia. Uh wait, is this mine? Yeah. Oh. I signed it.
Everything. On the blue page. I'm handing her, for those of you that can't see because this is the radio. Oh, that's so nice. I'm handing her uh her personal copy of uh Liquid Intelligence, the new book, which is not officially out, but will be out soon.
We're gonna we're gonna do a signing tomorrow at uh or the day after tomorrow in Madison because we're going to Madison, Wisconsin. You want to talk about what we're doing over there? Uh fundraiser for MoFad, and you're doing a lecture on food science. Doing a lecture on food science. Uh and uh we have another book signing at Starship, which is next week.
Can you believe it? Yeah, can you believe it? No, Starshif is here. Oh. You're she's messing with somebody else.
Yeah, pay no attention, Nastasha. Nastasha loves like the so inside joke that it's not funny for anyone else. Yeah, oh, just for me. All right, so by the way, uh I don't know whether you guys know this, but I'm sure you do. Like uh here at the radio show, Nastasia is uh the hammer, right?
But her official like job description is uh she keeps the wheels on the bus at Booker and Dax. Now I was thinking about this, right? How is because that to me that always implied that you were the bus driver, right? So then I was like, well, how is it mechanic? Well well, yeah, but I just assumed you were also driving it, which I was always wondering like how is it that you end up underneath the bus so often?
And I think it's because the bus uh, you know, is so rickety, the wheels are always falling off the dang bus, and you have to go underneath. You're under fixing it, and then as soon as you get the wheel on. Yeah, the jack flies out. Yeah, or there's like, oh, wheel seems to be working now. Boom, boom, boom.
Oh, what was that? I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure it's fine. Right? Yeah.
And I'm starting about that, like, you know, on the way over. I was like, that's how that's how this stuff happens. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
So listen, I'm gonna tackle some of the questions from uh last week, and then we'll get some of the questions from uh this week. Uh we did we didn't do liquid smoke, did we? I wasn't here for the I don't think we did liquid smoke. I don't think so either. Yeah.
Brian wrote in about liquid smoke. Hey y'all, hack happy October. Because he said happy October, I had to get it now before it's not October anymore. You know what I mean? Oh, by the way, next week, the uh the book signing is during the radio show.
So we either have to like we either have to do a live uh from Starchefs and then like you know, pipe it in like beforehand, maybe, or or postpone. It's up to you. We could probably get in there and do Star Chefs if you want to do it from Starchefs showing. Man, it's too bad we couldn't do the book signing here at the radio show. Well, uh you could like answer questions and sign books at the same time.
Yeah, I mean Star Chefs is like it's with Kitchen Arts and Letters, which as everybody who's been there knows is like the most awesome food bookstore like ever. Uh and every year they have a booth at Starchefs, and so they do book signings there. So I'm gonna do in there, but you have you guys ever gone to Starchefs? Mm-hmm. I've actually never been.
No, but I mean, has the radio show been there? I mean, not our radio show, but the radio should be a bunch of our hosts have, yeah. Yeah, next week. It's the uh International Chefs Conference, which is unfortunate that it's the same as ICC, which is International Culinary Center. Always some problem.
Always some problem. Always gotta be some problem. Brian writes, thanks for all your tips on helping me prevent another allergic reaction. Uh do you sure we didn't do this? Anyway, uh shout out to Michael Nakkin for underscoring the severity of allergies.
So far, so good for me. I'm keeping my flour in the freezer, but I have another question. You did this. I did this? Yeah.
Yeah, you did the week before that. Yeah. About liquid smoke? Yep. Well, for those of you that didn't listen to the last here, I'll give you the five second redux on liquid smoke.
Liquid smoke is an actual honest to God uh product. It's been around uh a long time. There's a lot of places you can look up uh on how to make your own liquid smoke. The problem with the liquid smoke that you buy in the store is most of it is just like kind of monotonic and and not that good, but it is derived from uh real smoke, and they most of the time uh ri uh remove a lot of the carcinogenic uh stuff. So uh are you sure?
Yeah, I'm right, because I remember that intro. Yeah, we think it's from like three weeks ago. Really? Yeah. Wow.
Well, did that talk about uh salad nichois? Yeah. If I discuss what my ideal salad nichoise is? You know, the weird thing is like so stuzz, do you like salad nichois or things? I do, I do.
So so when you think about it, like what do you think of most? Like, what's the first thing you think of when you think of tuna, right? So, and if you go to the uh, you know, Wikipedia, which you know, are they thinking have they got their money yet? Are you allowed to go with them without them pitching money, or is it still always like give us money, give us money? I think that's over.
Okay. Uh so if you go to the Wikipedia, uh, it says that a salad nichoise is composed of tomatoes, tuna, hard-boiled eggs, nichoes duh, uh niche uh and anchovies dressed with a vinaigrette is served variously on a plate, platter, and a bowl with or without a bed of lettuce. The tuna may be cooked or canned. Uh, and then a bunch of other stuff. The salad may include raw red peppers.
No. No, it may not. Raw red peppers? No. First of all, the beans in there?
Where are the beans? It needs beans. Anyway, may include uh shallots and artichoke hearts. Uh, but according to many sources, excludes cooked vegetables except for green beans and potatoes, which I think have to be there. The boiled potatoes and the green beans have to be there.
If it's not, like what the hell? Like, first of all, you need the potato to go with uh with the anchovy and the tuna and the hard boiled anyway, whatever. It needs the potato and the green beans, all that other stuff, artichoke hearts. Listen, I love artichoke hearts, but don't be putting the artichoke cart in the in the nichoise. But anyway, I figured, what the hell do I know?
I just know what I like, right? I don't know, like, you know, like it's an actual thing that you can go kind of try to figure out what it is. So I went to Escoffier, right? Escoffier. And then uh Escoffier, interesting, I have all these pictures in my phone.
Let's see whether I can get to. I just literally, like, on the way over here, took pictures of the uh recipes. So let's see what uh what my man uh Escoffier wrote. Now, Escoffier says uh that it is uh equal quantities of string beans, potato dice, uh, and uh something with tomatoes. Decorate, I can't see because it got cut off because I'm an I'm a jerk.
Uh oh, there is uh and quartered tomatoes, which I don't know, whatever. Decorate with capers, small pitted olives. Small pitted olives, what the hell kind of translation is small pitted olives? I mean, like we're such brutes that we can't like get the actual kind of olive. Like, first of all, like this was translated in the 70s, I think.
This is a really old copy I have. So that I like, you know, whatever. Like, you know, we were a different country back in the 70s. But if you uh first of all, pitted olives, have you ever had pitted olives in a nicho's? You ever had someone pit out the nichoise olives for you?
No. Me neither. Do people how do you I I I wouldn't want to go I feel that you would mutilate a nichois olive by pitting it, right? Anyway, uh pitted olives. And first of all, back in the 70s, like you'd be like, we got the two kinds of olives.
We got the green ones with the pimento, and we got the black ones. Which one? Once you're gonna say small, you might as well just call out the olive. Because back then it was the same amount of impossible, same impossible anyway. Uh and anchovy fillets, uh, seasoned with oil and vinegar.
What's that recipe missing? Uh fish. Tuna. Yeah. There's no tuna in that, right?
Also, I don't see the was a hard boiled egg in there. I don't see the hard boiled egg. Right, which so I was like, first of all, I was like, this made me doubt everything else in this book. I was like, this book is is a load of malarkey. Like, you need we need to throw this book away.
I need to burn it and go buy a new copy of a scope, right? So then where did I go next? I went to uh Pella Pratt, which is one of my favorite uh old school um books. And in Pella Prat, you got uh string beans, potatoes, tomatoes, hard boiled eggs, anchovy fillets, green pitted olives, green, I don't consider nichois green, do you? I consider them like kind of grayish.
Kind of grayish brownish, maybe greenish, grayish, brownish, and vinaigrette dressing, right? Peel the potatoes cooked in their jackets, cut them into small dice. Okay, whatever. They're not doing the nice little footballs. Do you like the footballs?
Boiled footballs? You like the football shape? Like I think at the FCI they used to do the football shape. You know, they used to turn the potatoes. Anyway, cut the beans in squares.
I don't really know what that means. Cut a bean in a square. Anyway. Uh cook them in salted boiling water, uh, cool and drained, mixed vegetables, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Guess what?
No freaking oh, wait. And then it said, if like, if liked, neat chunks of tiny fish preserved in oil. So that's like, like, that's like putting it as like a uh, what's it called? As, you know, a uh, you know, maybe you can have it, maybe it maybe you can't. I then looked in Herring's Dictionary of Classical Modern Cookery, another old school one that has a lot of French stuff, and there as well, although they call it Nice salad, like why would you translate the town?
Oh, whatever. Um that's like that's like uh like Milanese translating it as Milan. Yeah. Who the hell would do that? Uh anyway, it's like uh uh French beans, quarters of peeled tomatoes, and fancy fancy shaped potatoes.
So they have the turned potatoes, by the way. That's what fancy shaped potatoes means. You know what I'm talking about? The footballs? No.
I like football. You do like football. You like football? Well, you know, if you actually went through the FCI, like you spend the first week just turning potatoes into like little footballs, and they make you go home and like like convert like 50 pounds of potatoes into little footballs. I hope they still do that because that was the whole point of going to the schools making the footballs.
Uh garnished with anchovy fillets, olives, capers, uh, and original French dressing, whatever the hell that means, right? That's some sort of OG French dressing. No tuna. And finally, I went to the source, uh, LaRous Gastronomique, and uh there they also have no freaking tuna. But they say sprinkle with chopped chervil and tarragon, which sounds nice.
I like shovel and tarragon together. So there you have it, like all these old school stuff from the 60s, like some of it closely related to the fresh that coming out, with tuna at most uh an optional thing. So I wonder at what point nichoise became a tuna heavy thing. Or you prefer fresh tuna like seared, or do you prefer the canned tuna? Uh either.
I think I like the canned with hard boiled eggs. I think with hard-boiled eggs, I like the canned. Yeah, that's true. With eggs canned. And uh do you go for that fancy, the flot stuff, the Italian stuff?
Yeah, yeah, that stuff's good. Do you spend the extra money on like Ventresca or do you not you're not that kind of a spending spell? But you know, like the one yeah, yeah, it's good stuff. But anyway, I also like it with fresh tuna, but apparently they're both bastardizations. Yeah.
Strange, huh? Weird, weird, weird. Okay. Uh enough about nichois. Uh let's see what else.
Okay, Christopher Bass, uh Christ Christoph wrote in his name's not bass, about bass. Uh, and I don't think we talked about this. We've been cooking uh black bass fresh from the lake for two hours at 128 Fahrenheit, which by the way, for you Celsius folks out there is 53.333. Uh it turns out more tender, delicious. Uh it turns out tender, delicious, and cooked to perfection.
I did not realize that some fish benefit from longer cook times. Usually fish doesn't hold up well to long cook times, even at lower temperatures. I would add, especially at lower temperatures. Uh here are my questions. Uh I'm not sure what to call this effect that happens there.
Uh tenderization, or is it just not getting mushy for some reason? I mean, I think that's it. But the problem is when you're cooking fish, here's the thing that like, you know, uh when you cook meats, you're looking to make them more tender. Fish starts out tender, and what you're looking to do is have it not go mushy and not go dry, right? So fish, there's kind of two things that can happen to it.
It can stay moist but turn mushy, that stinks, or it can uh go dry. Oh, I hate dry fish. Stas, what do you think about like overcooked swordfish? Not look, I know you're not supposed to, whatever, you're not supposed to have any more, but back when I was a kid, everything was swordfish steak this, swordfish steak that we didn't care if like you know, giant worms came by. I didn't give we didn't give it rat's ass.
Everyone rats patoot rather. Uh we didn't care. Everyone had this swordfish, but you know, you would douse that sucker in oil and cook the hell out of it. Just cook the hell out of it. Like sometimes like in a freaking oven.
Just cook the hell. Remember how like you used to have all these recipes for fish that you would cook in an oven? Just throw the fish in a freaking oven. Uh, and and uh just like stringy blah, like like hardcore, overcooked sword fish, so many memories. And then and then they're like, well, if we're gonna overcook it, why not overcook shark?
Remember when everyone used to eat shark? They like back in like the eighties, like like shark steaks, like overcooked freaking shark steaks. They were good because you salted the hell out of them. But they were otherwise. Do you remember the night well you you were too young, but do you remember the 1980s pork chop?
Uh the thin overcooked dry pork chop. My mom did those. Did you call it like the new white meat, right? Yeah, it was the new it was the new white meat, the new crap meat. Like everyone like always like this overcooked swordfish, over whatever.
I don't know how I got out of this. But so the point is is that you're always in this race. When you're doing low temperature, you don't have to overcook it so that it gets uh dry, but the problem is it can get mushy and it can also get squeaky. So like overcooked uh swordfish is not only dry, well I don't know why I'm talking about swordfish. I don't I haven't had a swordfish in like years.
You're not supposed to eat it anymore, right? I don't know. I didn't know that. I don't know, Jack, is that on the uh do not eat list? I mean I've I'll go check Monterey Bay and see what they say.
Yeah, I mean I haven't eaten it in years, so I don't worry about it. I do avoid tuna when I'm out. I do uh avoid the bluefin, though I love it. Does everyone avoid the bluefin now when they go out? I don't know.
When you eat sushi, do you avoid the bluefin? Uh I haven't, no. I mean if someone orders it and it shows up, like I'll eat it, but I would never order it, even though I love it. Why can't you shouldn't you eat it? 'Cause it's gonna be extinct.
I mean they're they're ruining, it's ruined. Like, you know, it's it's it's you know but the whole like the all the fish are gonna get the the Japanese What? The Kindai people? No, the um the the radiation anyway, so you know. Stas just saying might as well eat it now because I think that's going a little bit overboard.
I mean, uh like hopefully we'll get some sort of Godzilla tuna that will uh you know, come on land and eat us all, breathe fire, some sort of giant Godzilla tuna. It's kind of like weird, isn't it? I hadn't thought about it that the monster films like are predicated on like this excess radiation, like after Yeah, well, it's all like these things come out of Japan, you know, after you know, we dropped the atomic bomb and they're kind of obsessed with you radi radiation. Godzilla is a product of radiation. And so, you know, now they have actual other kind of sources of radiation over there.
I wonder whether it's going to spur some sort of you know gamera of the sea. Swordfish is okay, by the way, unless you're getting longline caught imported swordfish. You don't want that. Yeah, or unless you overcook it. You definitely don't want to want that.
Definitely, definitely don't want that. Anyway, so back to Christoph and his best. This is a this is a lake fish, so I don't even know what what the heck we're talking about all these. Anyway, so uh or is it just uh not getting mushy for some reason? So a lot like look, uh I don't have a lot of experience with uh with uh freshwater fish uh sous vide, uh with the exception of trout.
Uh but you know I I know that certain fish get really crappy when they're cooked for a long time and certain don't. And uh, you know, you referenced um I think you referenced the blog post where I did the uh stripers and stripers can stand for a long time. I think it's maybe because they're relatively firm so they don't go mushy on you. Like they they are relatively firm fish, which is why I think when they're overcooked, they're like even stripers when they're do you like it? You like stripers, right, Stuz?
But when they're overcooked, they're a little hard, right? That's why I think like it can stand up to it. It's got a little more structure to it because it's a strong freaking fish. You know what I mean? Uh anyway, so uh and I tried to look up for you because there's two things that go wrong.
One, there's connective tissue that gets broken down overcooking, right? And two, there are uh enzymes in uh in fish that uh break down the flesh, which is why some things like shellfish, for instance, goes super mushy when you cook at low temperature. So those are the two things that you're uh that you're you're looking at, but I wasn't able to find any actual um any listing of fish. What you're looking for is uh the the the two proteases that are in it are uh cat uh Cathepsins, which I can't pronounce in cow pain, I can't pronounce it, but like uh these are what's breaking down um the fish. And I couldn't find any listing of which ones have more enzymes in them and which ones don't.
I think McGee might have just a ready reference of which ones get mushier in on food and cooking. I should have looked there, but stupidly uh I did not. Anyway, um so that's uh so that's that that's it. What do you think? Anything, right?
It's hard to know. You just have to know. So if you know that that the black bass is uh can take a long time without going mushy, then that's good to know. Just watch out for squeakiness. Man, I hate squeakiness.
Um, uh also, by the way, I was while I was researching that question, I found an interesting uh article that you guys might be interested in. Um called see if I was stupid enough to I was too stupid to write it down. But it's uh there's a a table I found called Slaughter Conditions on the Glycate uh glycogen concentration three minutes uh postmortem in chicken breast muscle, which is a fantastic looking article because they anesthetized they they did anesthetizing of the chicken, stunning of the chicken, a struggling chicken, and it's adapted from an article I wasn't able to find by uh person named Defremy in 1966. But it's the only reference I have to anesthetized slaughtering practices in a chicken. So if anyone can find that article and sent to me, I'd be I'd be super happy.
I think I found that in uh in maybe I found that in the biochemistry of foods, which is uh the Shahiti's 2013 version of the code. I can't believe you didn't explain Hustino. It was just like, and I came with up with the name. Stas is reading the book Liquid Intelligence. Here's why.
So like the technique is called Houstino, it's where we blend uh you know, we blend a product, like most often like a fruit or sometimes a dried fruit, sometimes vegetable, Nick Bennett does mushrooms, into a liquor with uh pectin X Ultra SPL. We spin it in a center fusion, it goes clear again, and you get these like awesome liquors. So we call them Hustino. And I originally in the book wrote the whole story about how fabulous, and we were running around screaming Justino at the top of our lungs, which is actually just a bastardization of a chef we knew named Justin. And so we just used to walk around the kitchen going, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, stino, like this.
Let's running around. This reporter calls and asks for, because we're stupid. And this reporter comes and says, What's the name of this drink? This banana drink that you did, you know, because we need to write about it. And we were like, banana, banana, banana, woo-hoo!
Hustino. Whoo! Stino. And then, like, they printed it, and then that was it. It was called Houstino, and it was too late to go back.
But then when I wrote this story, Jen's like, this is the dumbest freaking story in the world. This is so freaking stupid. Like, you can't put this in the book because A, it like there's no context to it. Like the rest of the book isn't about you running around like an idiot. It's about you running around like trying to figure out how to make things better.
And it's just it's coming out of out of nowhere. And so it's better just to be like called Hustino. I don't know why. I don't know why it's called Hustino. I see.
Okay. See? Yeah. All right. Fair?
I guess. Fair. Uh okay. Uh we already did the uh do we did the Hashi Food Truck one, right? With the sausage.
Did we do it briefly last week? Hashi Food Truck wrote in and said, Remember an issue where you covered brats or sausages uh immersion with beer? Can you share tips again? We did that one, right? I wasn't here last week, Jack.
I think we did that. Wait, you keep saying you're not here this week. How am I supposed to remember that? How am I supposed to remember that from one from one second to the next? Oh, yeah, you were waiting, hacking up lungs last week or something?
You're like, you're like hacking your lungs up all over the floor. Nice. That stuff's going around. Sam wrote in this one. I know I haven't gotten to.
Can you discuss the merits of an auto-lyce step uh in bread making? I find it much easier to mix the salt in with the flour initially uh rather than mixing into the dough after an autolysse step. Thanks, Sam. Okay, so autolyser. Autolisa, or however you're pronounced autolisa.
Is that is it French? Anyway, lice meaning breaking up. And so the the original this comes from uh a dude, dead dude, by the way, died in 2005, named uh Raymond Calvel, uh, who was kind of one of the best known kind of teachers and authors uh of about bread in his era. I mean, like everyone kind of read uh you know his book. Um and uh I think according to the my reference, he was a professor of baking.
That's pretty sweet. Professor of baking. I kind of want to be a uh not really, but I mean it's a good title. Would you take that title? Mm-hmm.
I mean you don't even do you like to bake? No, I hate it. But you still would take it, right? Professor of baking. Yeah.
You could be like on the on the anti-side. You could be like, you could be like that uh divinity professor that's in atheist. Yeah, she'd be radical professor of baking. Yeah, right, right. Like she'd be the one that everyone kind of moved away from at the at the at the baking professor conferences.
Um anyways, yeah, you know that person. You've seen them. It's does. Um so anyway, he taught uh Julia Child and Simone Beck. So there's a good pedigree, right?
Anyway, dude came up with this idea of an autolysse step. And so what he thought was happening, so oh, what is it? What are we talking about? Okay, so uh you mix together uh like the water and the yeast and the flour, not the salt, and you do an initial mix, right? And you let it sit around before you need it, right?
So you don't need it right away, right? With a K, need with a K. Uh and uh so what he thought was happening there was that um, and I forget, maybe it's done as a higher hydration. I can't I can't remember whether it's done as a higher hydration because I actually uh let me see. Uh well we'll we'll look at it anyway.
So uh what you're he thinks is happening is that amylase enzymes in the uh starch are breaking uh in the uh flour are breaking down some of the starch into sugars for food for the yeast, right? I think that's why it's called auto-lease. The thing is, like performing like uh lice means to break apart, right? So things are being broken down in it on its own, and then you need it and then you let it go. But uh, I mean, I I think that's the the origin of the term, but I don't think anybody really uh does that anymore, right?
I don't think that's the reason why people do uh that rest anymore. So it should probably come up with a different name. I think what's happening, what most people say they're doing when they do it is they let it rest, and by the way, the reason you don't put the salt in and you let it rest without the salt is you're giving the yeast and the other stuff a chance to get started in a zero salt environment because the salt is a yeast inhibitor, right? Now remember, this autolysse step is not being done on breads typically that are you know, like a lot of people now when they're doing their breads, especially like higher hydration stuff, are doing some some version of less or no need lahey style, like with uh although remember Chas already said that's my style. Remember that?
Yeah, anyway, uh no, you know, no need or or less need super long fermented breads. And for those, I mean I think it's probably ideal to put the salt in at the beginning because you're trying to prevent the yeast from working right away. Anywho, whatever. So you uh are doing it without the salt, and these things are happening, and then uh and then you go. But the the advantages I think are really beyond uh any sort of enzymatic action that's happening there.
The advantages are um you have a period of hydration that's taking place without uh kneading, right? There's also some jump starting of the yeast, but even if you were to add the salt and let it rest, right? What what you're getting there is a period of hydration. And you know, a lot of studies are that the gluten formation is really a function just of hydration, which is why you, if you're letting the dough sit for a long, long time, you like like like many, many, many hours, you don't need to need it, or you need much less kneading because the gluten will in fact form without all of that beating about, right, just by sitting around, especially if the hydration is high enough. So this step is allowing you to get some hydration into it so that you don't need to do as much kneading.
And the and the benefit of not having to do as much kneading is things like less oxidation and other things. So I think that's the reason people uh do it uh now. But I wish we had talked about it um, you know, like a month and a half ago when the question came in and when I was more freshly uh thinking about uh what's going on. But anyway, that's my feeling on it. Um you want to take a can we take a super quick break or are we totally shafted?
We're totally shafted, aren't we? We can take a super quick break. Let's do let's do a super quick break. Let's see if I can do that real quick here. Today's program has been brought to you by Whole Foods Market.
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Tomorrow, the world. For more information, visit WholeFoodsmarket.com. All right. So here's the here I guess is probably the last one we're gonna have time for, right? Uh we're gonna have to do another freaking ketchup.
Like whether or not we do it at Star Chefs, we're gonna have to do it give you till 1 p.m. on the dot, and then the buzzer goes off. Like that? Yeah. Okay.
Uh Josh Swanson wrote in at cooking issues. Could you please give a basic intro into uh vacuum bag fermentation, pickling safety on this week's show? Uh carbonated, and then uh hashtag mmm carbonated kimchi. So um good question. So the the question look, whenever you're doing something like sauerkraut or kimchi, right, you're automatically in an anaerobic fermentation situation, right?
So from a safety standpoint, you shouldn't be any different whether or not that anaerobic uh fermentation is happening uh in uh the bottom of your pickle jar or your sauerkraut jar or whatever your you know, your kimchi jar, or whether or not it's uh happening inside of a vacuum bag. So things like uh, you know, this most of the spore forming uh bacteria they're gonna grow uh, you know, in a in a in a bad kind of a fermentation uh situation, um are going to like they they they're not gonna compete so well if you have a whole bunch of lactic acid bacteria growing in there at the same time because the pH is gonna drop and the um and the salt level is going to uh you're adding salt typically. I mean I wouldn't necessarily do it with super low salt uh just because I don't know and I'm not not that comfortable with it but um so you're you're you're putting salt in and then uh your your the lactic acid bacteria are making a lower pH and this is what's preventing the nasty stuff from growing in there. So the first thing to kind of realize is that there's fundamentally not that much of a difference between doing it the old school way and doing it in a vacuum bag. Now when you're doing um one of the disadvantages of doing it the old school way is that most people let's say you're salting cabbage when you're salting cabbage a lot of people add water because they don't have enough water from the cabbage itself to you know make a nice kraut or whatever.
Now I know I was talking to Lucas actually you know listener uh who uh friend of ours and he like beats the crap out of the cabbage with the salt so that it starts leaking enough liquid so that it can immerse itself in liquid right away so it doesn't have to worry about it. But you know or like I know like if you're making kimchi you're rubbing the salt in and letting it sit for a while it kind of pre-weeps and you have enough liquid to repack into it. So that's one way to to get around it but literally you just throw the stuff in vacuum bags and you suck a vacuum on it and shaboom first of all you've injected uh the liquid and the salt into the uh into the product which obviates the need to beat the crap out of it because you've you're crushing some of the you know you're getting the stuff into the into the pores anyway as it is and uh the other cool thing is is that they're super neat little tidy packages right you don't need to have that giant croc that you push down you don't have to worry about the giant croc that you push down. And it's just really clean and neat the problem with um the vacuum bags when you're doing it is that um they blow up I mean and they can explode so what I always do is I bag it in one I throw it in uh to uh another bag and I lightly bag that one I don't like bother uh you know sucking a huge vacuum on it and so that way and it's a larger bag that that way if the b if the smaller bag on the uh uh on the inside inflates to the point where it blows up it just blows up into your bag not into you know another now this this is conducive to um if you need to do a bunch of portions and have them uh you know like you want to have like you know like a quart at a time the coming out not as conducive if you're doing like 55 gallon barrels because there it's much more efficient to just beat the stuff down put it in a giant 55 gallon barrel and let it rock and roll. Even like a gallon I would say just do it in a normal way.
But if you're doing like a you know a head of cabbage or two I would say uh vacuum bag is uh a really really uh good way to go and totally safe and uh I've uh done it many many times. Now it will not allow the CO2 to escape as much so it will get lightly carbonated and we spoke to Alex Nackkey from Ideas and Food. They detest it. I love it. Do you like a little carbonation in your uh in your in your pickles or in your or in your uh kimchi?
Do you like kimchi? No I don't choose to eat it. Well that cyber yeah I like Jack. Jack's like really come on. Kimchi.
I see a pizza with salad on top. Do you not like kimchi because everyone loves it? Or do you actually just not like it up? Choose to eat it. I don't mind kimchi.
I just never order it. Yeah. Hmm. Hmm. All right.
So uh I had something we had something else that we were doing like right now that I needed to talk that we needed to talk on air about. That's it. Some people. Uh okay, so listen. Are they almost all done?
How many? Yeah. We have uh three that are shipping. Sears all. Okay, we're talking about the Sears Alls on the way out.
So, first of all, uh, you know, we would like to apologize for how long it took us to get this the stuff out in general. Uh and like Stas and I are talking about the Sears all uh which have shipped. Uh I frankly am shocked at at I I am like so shocked. Like I am beyond shocked and angered at at Amazon how long it took them to fulfill the orders, how long they had those Sears alls in their warehouse and shipping it out. And what's really depressing is that no one believes us.
Yeah. You know what I mean? They're like, it's Amazon. They ship it the next day. And then remember, like, so like we sent them the stuff we they we had some errors in our uh in our addresses, so we gave them an updated address list for, and then date Amazon decided last week to then start suddenly start selling them live.
Live before all of our Kickstarter and Stop Starter people have gotten their orders in, and then Stas like calls me like while I'm working on something like freaks out, and we like losing our minds, and then when we tell people this is this mistake, there's people who don't believe us. Like, why would we want to why would we want to not fulfill the thing? And I said, So Stas very quickly called Amazon, had it pulled, had all those orders uh cancelled. The good news is as as many as she could, some had already been shipped out, but not a lot. Uh the good news is is that all but you said three?
Yeah, three. All but three, do we have the names of the people um or do you not want to read them out really want to read them out we don't want to read them out all but three of you have gotten uh your Sears all notification most of you have it in the mail already we've been checking oh yeah and the internationals you know obviously are gonna take longer because of custom so they've all been shipped the internationals were shipped long ago yeah but it's gonna yeah it has to go through custom service but every everything but these last three Sears alls these three lonely Sears all have been shipped out so we're super excited uh we're gonna have the steak decorator coming uh in soon I hope the proto that we're gonna approve and if you haven't gotten yours or any confirmation email Searsbookerindex.com. Yeah if you have if you have not gotten an email saying you're gonna receive your Sears all like we think you have that's not like that like zero email at all zero from anything GPS U S P S Amazon whatever. Whatever if you have heard nothing email that address. Yeah but I'm also super happy that uh people seem to be enjoying it that have it.
So I'm very gratified uh I love all the Twitter stuff that you guys are sending with the uh with the Sears all's coming in one thing I will say on the way out people are like there's some flame coming out of the front is this normal hell yeah right yes oh yeah doesn't sear some Sears all cooking issues thanks to listening to this program on heritage radio network dot org you can find all of our archive programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at heritage underscore Radio. You can email us questions anytime at info at heritageradio network dot org. Heritage Radio network is a five oh one C3 nonprofit. To donate and become a member, visit our website today.
Thanks for listening.
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