Today's program is 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. I'm Damon Bolti, host of the Speakeasy. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more.
Cooking issues! Hello, and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you live from Music. What was that music? Oh, that was the next song on the playlist.
Seriously, seriously. Oh, you know what that is. Um, the cheese song. All cheese. Oh yeah.
All cheese all day here on the Heritage Radio Network with the cheese song. Hey, speaking of, uh, you know, I met the guy who co-wrote uh George Clinton's new autobiography. Wouldn't that be sweet if we like what like what would it take to get George Clinton to show up at the Heritage Radio Network? Oh man. I I don't know if I should say.
I mean, I don't know. I mean I would pretty much do anything to get George Clinton here in the studio. We'll work on it. You know what I'm saying? I mean, can you think of anything?
I mean, like, that would be like the most amazing coup ever, right, Stas? Yeah. But he would hate it because I would just sit there and like freak out the whole time and be like, I love you, I love you. You know what I mean? It'd be embarrassing.
It's kind of bad when I meet people like that, actually. Yeah. I should probably not meet them. No. Uh joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez.
You got Jack over there in the engineering booth. And uh we were missed last week because I was at the Star Chiefs, so we didn't get a chance to send a special thanking shout out to uh Johnny and all the guys at the Underground Food Collective at uh University of Madison. We haven't been on the air since that, right? Yeah. Seems like a billion years ago, doesn't it?
Yeah. Seems like a long, long time. Uh those guys are great. We had a fantastic time in Madison. You?
Do you like it? They got those two lakes. What are they called? Don't remember. They're named after the Judge sisters, right?
Like Winona and something like this. No, it's uh Mendota and Mendona, I think are the two lakes. Really pretty up there. Yeah. Nice place.
People are nice. Okay. Milwaukee, nice too. Oh my Milwaukee, Stas, Stas and I and Peter from the Museum of Food and Drink, we were all up there doing a, you know, a museum of food and drink thing. So Stas is like, I'm not driving.
We drove from Chicago. Why? We didn't fly into Milwaukee, only God knows. We drove from Chicago to University of Madison because, you know, I've missed demos before where I have like eight billion connector flights, and like the one that we could take, like there was like, I don't know, some some ping pong of flights that we needed to take, you know, via Omaha or some crap to make it to Madison. And I was like, I'm gonna miss a demo.
So, no. So we drove we flew to Chicago and then we drove up. Stas is like, I'm not driving through Milwaukee without having some bratwurst. I'm not doing it. Isn't that pretty much what you said?
Yeah. Pretty much just like that. So we found this crazy place. What was it called? The old German beer hall or something like that.
It's modeled on the uh Hofbräu house in in uh in Munich. And um, holy crap, what a great place, right? Yeah. Usinger sausage or whatever it is. And they have this game that we played that Stas, you like this game as much.
It's called Hammer the Nail or something like this. I guess so. Like hit the nail. It's called like something like hit the nail. Anyways, for 50 cents, first of all, you go in there and you dr you s and uh you know, the the waitress who's very nice didn't understand why I didn't understand this concept.
But if you were to buy a bratwurst with one side, right, that's six bucks, six dollars, right? If you order a beer for five dollars, the bratwurst comes free. With a side, right, with a side. And so I said to the lady, I was like, is it the same Brattwurst inside, or like some sort of factory seconds or some sort of miniature bratwurst that comes with the with the with the beer or soda? But only root beer, not seltzer.
How nuts is that? So the lady ended up giving me a root because I was driving, giving me a root beer that I gave to you or Peter, and then also a seltzer for free. But she's like, No, it's the same exact. It's a f it's but it's cheaper than free. It's negative money.
It's negative money. And it made no damn sense to me. But she she thought that I was crazy for not understanding it. But anyways, back to this hit the nail thing. So they have a giant stump.
What do you think, Stas? Like three feet across, three and a half feet, maybe across, giant stump at like, you know, uh kind of like chest height, a little bit lower, like you know, work surface height, like counter counter height stump, big stump. And you buy for 50 cents a cut nail, an old fashioned, like you know, triangular shaped cut nail, and then they have a steel hammer, like like you know, Thor style hammer chained to this freaking stump, and then you have to go around each taking a turn whacking at the nail, and whoever sinks it last, they uh, you know, they buy the next round. Well, or so, you know, so we told Peter. I don't know, he didn't he wasn't believing the story I'm not saying anything about Peter.
I'm not saying that he lost twice Peter to us. I'm not saying that but he did. But the interesting thing about it is is that like in New Can you imagine this in New York like how many times did we hit the nail wrong and it went flying across the room. Yeah. It's like a bunch of eyeless people but apparently like you know those folks with their giant moss beers they have Stein clubs where you can buy the Stein and have it sta sit in the club there.
Sweet. Anyway, those guys can apparently hit that sucker in one whack. Anyway Milwaukee. Hey before we jump in um just wanted to maybe hear your thoughts on um you know the guy from Car Talk passed away this week. I didn't know that.
Yeah like when? Um yesterday. Oh yeah because I just heard him on Sunday or whatever or was Saturday, whatever whenever it's on the NPR. Yeah were you a fan? I mean I w you know I'm I'm uh I mean I really respect what they did.
I wasn't like a longtime listener but I you know my stepfather was who can't like who can't you know barely you know work a mechanical pencil. He used to like listening to it. I mean like uh I definitely enjoyed do we cheat 'em and how right which is like their their I guess fictional but maybe now real law firm do we cheat him and how because you know they had a c you've listened to Card Talk before right Seth you never listened to it once? Mm-hmm. Oh my god they were on for like twenty five years or something like that, weren't they?
Yeah. Wow. That's too bad. It's funny because sometimes I call cooking issues like the car talk for food. I wish I wish.
Now we need to get like snappier like you know things at the end and I don't know. Wish you know we have to have our listeners only ask one question on the phone. Well, what is but the car talk guys, they talk to they talk to like one person for like eight years and then they just the thing is is like the thing about them is that they can do really well or you know did really well is like completely make fun of the listener, right? We don't do that. We don't make fun of our listeners the way they did.
But it's good natured what they were doing. But they're basically called everyone incompetent who called in, right? I mean, pretty much that's what they did. You big fan, Jack? Um yeah, I was a fan.
I mean, absolutely. I mean, we do make fun of maybe like Roberta staff members, though, right? Yeah. You mean you're talking talking about Santa's little hipster? And and heesus.
Speaking of which, you know, we have a question in today, Jack, on uh maybe we can get it during the break on Roberta's pizza dough. Cool. And uh we need to find whoever like the current, like not when I mean current, like all time, but like the actual this second, like resident expert on the pizza dough. We'll get somebody on the line. Yeah, because I want to like I want to answer this question properly.
I think I have the answer, but you know, it's since I'm in Roberta's freaking pizzeria and the guy calls to ask me about uh you know Roberta's pizza dough, it would be dumb for me to, you know, speculate, right? Yeah. All right. I do have a caller on the line that's probably not gonna ask about Roberta's pizza. You never know.
You never never know. Caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, how you doing? Doing well. Hey, um, I have a question about making uh homemade soda and actually bottling it in glass bottles with one one of those wing style cappers.
Sure. Um I I want it to be shelf stable at room temp, preferably with no benzoate or any additives or anything. Not that I'm against using that. I just it's kind of my stick. I want it to just be water flavoring since CO2.
Um so how do you recommend going about doing that? Is it even practical without some crazy equipment? Um yeah. Well, you're pretty much hosed. Um how many do you need to make?
Uh I would like to make a bunch, like for the holidays. So like how much is it? A good good size run, like probably upwards of a hundred bottles. Yeah, and how much here's the thing, right? Um you need to kill yeast on the inside of that thing.
Right. And uh it's been a long time since I've researched it, but you know, your two main problems, there are some, I think there's nothing dangerous that will grow in it, but uh, you know, there are um certain um there are certain yeasts that will grow in it and will ferment the sugar out, or that will there, I think there's also I forget it's been a long time since I've researched it because I've I've had to research self-stability in sodas before. Um, you know, there's uh I think there's some bacteria that not nothing dangerous, but stuff that's gonna ruin the flavor of the soda and also make it not clear anymore, uh assuming that it's clear. So like all of these things are gonna cause you uh problems, right? Um so there's a couple ways around this.
I don't remember what the percentage is, but you could probably hit it. I mean, well, of course they're not sodas anymore. I mean you could hit it with alcohol to stabilize it, but you need a relatively large amount of alcohol, like so it's nowhere near soda anymore. You know what I mean, to try and stabilize it. Or you could attempt to pasteurize it.
Now, I don't know what the increase so for instance, if you were to heat to pasteurize on the inside of a bottle, uh, you're gonna get extremely high internal pressures on the inside of that bottle, like very high pressures on the inside of that bottle. So, I mean, so one of the limitations when you're gonna pasteurize a soda is you'll notice that a lot of the you'll notice if you go to like uh let's say you go to a supermarket like Whole Foods, it only sells sodas that don't contain uh preservatives, right? Okay. Right. So you go to one of these places and you buy a a soda there, you'll probably notice that most of those natural sodas are relatively um undercarbonated compared to let's say coke or 7 up, right?
Sure. And um one of the reasons is is because it's more difficult for them to um pasteurize the higher the level of CO2 that's in the bottle, the more difficult the pasteurization becomes. So, you know, you could try you could try, I mean, I don't know what temperatures you need to reach, but you could put the suckers inside of a pressure cooker and like see if they blow. You know what I mean? Um are you doing bottle conditioned or not bottle conditioned?
What's that? Are you bottle conditioning it or are you force carbonating it? Uh it would it would be coming out of like a uh liquid bread setup, you know, two liter. I'd just be throwing it through a funnel into a cold bottle. Right, so you don't need the yeast to be alive or anything like that.
Okay. So yeah, I mean there are some other natural uh it's been again, it's been like over a year since I've had to research, I don't remember, but there are other like uh natural slash preservatives that kind of dissipate inside the bottle over time. Uh, you know what I was looking at actually recently, uh, but I haven't, is it but it affects the flavor of it is uh uh Rowan berries, which are mountain ash, uh, are used in liqueurs and they're astringent and red. Uh they contain naturally sorbic acid, and sorbic acid is a preservator, a preservative with antimicrobial and I believe anti yeast uh activity that you could just say that you made roanberry flavor. And then if you, you know, and then I I don't know whether there's enough levels in a standard decoction of this stuff to actually um prevent yeast growth but I mean it's at least it's from a fruit but it contains the actual stuff that's you used as a a preservative just in natural form so that you can just say I use row and berry.
I don't know if that's helpful. Right, yeah I mean well I guess what I'm trying to figure out is that if I sterilize all the equipment and then uh purge the bottles of CO2, fill them really quickly and then cap them immediately, presumably there's really no oxygen in the bottle. I mean is is that correct? Um is that a good way to handle it or just are you going to give people the liquid bread carbonator cap? No.
Yeah. Because one way to do it is to um you basically you would fill the bottles hot so that the yeast would be dead. You'd heat the you'd heat the um yeah I see you'd heat the the product right pasteurize it beforehand and then carbonate it once it's been pasteurized so that you don't have to worry about pressure problems. And you could do that in the soda bottle. Now presumably everything that's inside of the bottle is pasteurized but you know no matter how hard you work there probably be some yeast columns.
Will it last a lot longer? Yeah probably in other words it'll probably make it sta the answer is it's probably going to be a lot more stable if you do it that way. If you if you put the stuff into the plastic bottles that you're going to carbonate with with liquid bread, you like totally you know you know sterilize the you know uh sanitize the bejesus out of the glass bottle, store them upside down uh and then uh you know with a cap over them or whatever or upright set up with a cap over 'em pasteurize the stuff in the plastic bottle, chill it, then carbonate it without opening it to the atmosphere and decant it in. I mean, that's probably your best bet, but it's not a guarantee. You know what I'm saying?
Okay. Yeah, yeah. Does does benzo weight just remove that hassle? Yeah. Okay.
All right. Fair enough. But a lot of a lot of people don't like it, but you're only using it in like a small amount. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
Okay. All right. Thanks so much. All right, thank you. Good luck with it.
All right. All right, thanks. Bye. All right. Uh, and speaking of uh carbonated stuff, we got a couple of carbonated questions in my as well take them, right?
Uh did we deal with the pear cider last time? Jim? Can't remember. It's been so long. Uh hey, Dave.
Yeah. I do have Anthony Falco, the head pizza guy from Roberta's on the line if you want to do that. Sweet, let's do that. Yeah. All right.
You there, Falco? Hey, yeah, how's it done? Hey, thanks for thanks for talking to us. I'm just gonna scroll down in my questions and find the Roberta's related question. Kevin is using your uh recipe from the book here.
And here's here's what uh Kevin says. Uh I have a question on sourdough starter and pizza. I currently use Roberta's sourdough starter pizza dough recipe from the book, presumably, with a kettle pizza wood charcoal burning pizza oven. For those of you don't know, it's like a it's like a ring that converts like a Weber style grill into like a uh into a pizza oven that you can load in and out of without lifting the top. Um and I don't get the same oven spring with that as the crust as I as I do with a regular yeast dough recipe.
So he's saying that what he's getting is a fairly flat, dense crust, and he says that he's feeding a sourdough starter only weekly with 45 grams of AP and 35 grams of water. And both recipes are two-day cold ferments, and he brings them up before baking them, blah, blah, blah. My my feeling is is it is that it's too acid, right? It's like he's he's he's allowing a starter to get too acid, so it's going slack because uh of too much acid. Because remember, is that you think that's it?
Yeah, I mean, you c the if you're feeding your uh flour or sourdough starter weekly, it's not it's not um gonna do anything. Um he's gonna need to I mean it's fine to speed your sourdough weekly. Uh to keep it alive. That's like uh life support. If you want it to be awake to like actually, you know, do the heavy lifting of the of the leavening of your of your bread, which it sounds like it's not doing, is he's gonna need to feed it um a couple days twice a day a couple days before um he he makes the pizza and and the way he'll know it's ready to go is it will be like bubbly and frothy and light.
You know, if it looks like just soupy wet flour, then you know, it's it's somewhere dormant inside that uh mixture is is the the ye the combination of the yeast and the bacteria that he needs to to leaven it go. But unless it's actually, you know, there's a the percentage of those yeast and bacteria that are awake and ready to fucking rock and roll are excuse me, sorry, um is is gonna be really low. And so he needs to bring that percentage up by feeding them, you know, multi waking them up. Because if he's I'm assuming he's if he's feeding it weekly, he's keeping it as a refrigerator. That's what I feel he doesn't say, but I assume and and like I'm super glad I'm talking to you because I didn't even think that the sucker wasn't rising at all.
Like it was like not active enough. I thought it was probably inactive because they were dying and his dough is too acidic, so the gluten was was not uh, you know, was not as uh extensible. It was losing some power out of that. You know how like when sourdough goes too sour, it like, you know, it it it can flatten out and the c but then the crust would also be too would be too white, right? It wouldn't look right if he was actually going too acidic on it.
Yeah, I mean it would just a lot of things would be off. Um but to me if it's when he says dense and and lack of spring, I mean I you know, I'm assuming that he's cutting it open and there's no crumb, you know, when he says it's dense, but it's like and the crumb would be the those little holes in the indication that like fermentation is happening. Yeah. Um I think it's exactly what are your thoughts for someone like this who's not gonna you're not you know, probing, doing it feeding it once a week and keeping a relatively small amount. What are your thoughts on keeping it at a higher hydration level so that it kinda wakes up faster and then like doing like the uh yeah, his his his he's retarding his yeast.
If he's putting it in the refrigerator, he's retarding it. So, you know, if you were following our dough instruction, um we are are mixing and resting and mixing and then we're retarding the dough for for a long s uh fermentation overnight. Um but if it's already retarded, then the whole thing is just gonna be too retarded to work. Yeah. It's I know I know it's all bread baking terminology, but it just sounds funny when you say it that way.
Yeah. Um so he you know, he's got he's gotta get it awake. So he's gotta bring it out to room temperature and it's really a visual thing, you know, and and and y and you can smell it too. So it's a visual and olfactory uh indications are gonna be there before you put your sourdough in. It should be like literally like you know foaming like bubbling up and like you know you can see all the little holes in the top.
When you shake it it's like light and and and like the consistency of foam. It's actually a foam that is is what it is because it's it's a you know a liquid with a lot of uh you know uh air gapped in it so it is a foam and so you know if it's if it's dense and and like a slurry of just flour and water it's just not the yeast and you know they're in there it's just not awake and in my experience as a sourdough starter if I wanted to use it after having it uh in the refrigerator for a week I would give myself two days I would bring it out like you know three days before I was going to start in the morning and you know I would feed it and then and at night and leave it in a warm place like you know preferably 75 degrees 75 to 80 degrees and then uh and then that night I would feed again and then the next day I would feed again and then I that that last seeding that night before I would expect to see some some activity and a lot of like e boozy smell coming out of it by the end of the night. Right. No way to cheat it in one day though back to life out of the fridge. No I I you know I like so you know you're cry like when I use commercial yeast I I'm crossing my fingers you know every time it's like you don't it's you're dealing with these living creatures you know and you're trying to convince them to do something for you on a m you know microbiological scale.
So you know it's a sourdough is is you know it's very tricky and and uh you know I tell people this in uh in my pizza class I'm like just you gotta get you gotta really become familiar with this process with the just commercial yeast before you start playing with sourdough and then once you start playing with sourdough I mean everyone's is going to be different so you really got to get to know yours. Um so yeah I mean that's that would be that would be my guess. I mean if he has uh you know if any of this is wrong if I've just speculated way too much then he should email me at Anthony at Roberta's pizza dot com. And I would love to continue to get him get going on the right path. Well we really appreciate it.
And also uh did Millennium Falco pizza made by you or named for you or both it was it was a uh invention of mine uh from the early days in the pizza kitchen um and it's an homage to my uh Sicilian uh great grandmother who used to make pizza from scratch and she used to make it similar to that you know but not in a round you know kind of neo neo neapolitan kind of way but she used to do it in a pan like a like a thicker crust. But it was like that she put the breadcrumbs and the onion sauce and you know that's that's the way she would make uh pizza. So it's kind of a kind of an homage to that. Nice. Listen, we really appreciate you coming on and uh straightening this out for Kevin.
Hopefully he can get his uh stuff in order. Maybe he can come up with a schedule so that if he's gonna do it every week he could bring it out a couple days before feed it up use it put it in the fridge you know it's not that much harder. No, absolutely not. I mean, he just needs to bring it out. I that's what that's just based on the information I have is bring it out a little early and just get it, get it woken up.
You know, it's a little retarded, get it a little, you know, a little more a little more ready to rock. All right. Well, thanks so much. Let's go to a break. We'll come back with more commercial uh more commercial, more cooking issues.
More commercial Hey, and also if uh, you know, if if listeners want to listen every Tuesday at 7 p.m., Roberta's Radio. They have their own show, Roberta's Radio. You can hear a lot more from Falco. And uh with that being said, we'll be right back. Today's program has been brought to you by Whole Foods Market.
Are you a local? Our Northeast regional forager for Whole Foods Market sure is. She spends her time traveling around the New York City metro area sourcing the best new or interesting artisanal and handcrafted local products for our purchasing teams at the local store level. Part of our commitment to our local suppliers includes assisting them with the process of getting their products sold at our stores. Whether it's suggesting packaging designs, pricing, or distribution methods, she's helping some of the area's best new products reach savvy shoppers at Whole Foods Market stores.
Today, New York. Tomorrow, the world. For more information, visit Whole Foods Market.com. Hey, my name is Sam KB. I just moved to New York, and you're listening to Heritage Radio Network.org.
You recognize that voice? No, who's that? From Underground Meets. Oh, yes, Johnny. Sam.
Sam. Oh, nice. I wouldn't l I wasn't listening. He did say my name is Sam. I wasn't listening.
I was looking at the things. Jeez. Sorry, Sam. I wasn't listening. Now I know what it's like to be Stas.
Boom! Wow. Boom. Boom. Oh my God.
Except you weren't shopping for shoes. I wasn't shopping for shoes. I was looking at the next question. I go to pay less. So that does not require online shopping.
So John Stewart from Madison met us when we were out there and said that he thought that it was at times shocking how mean I am to Nastasia. But let me just say in my defense, you gotta know her. I don't know if that's a defense. I'm just saying that, like, you know, the people are only only hearing what they hear on the radio. Like, you know, like she, you know, when it's like, you know, they can't see that she might be sitting there with like a needle like poking me the entire time.
You know what I mean? Not happening. Not it not a literal needle. No, you people. Everyone, everyone's out.
Anyway. Uh now Stas is giving me the head wag back and forth. Okay. Kevin Scott writes in about freeze dryers. Hey, have you guys played around with the harvest right freeze dryer or heard from anyone who has?
It looks like a reasonable alternative to lab freeze dryer, but it's difficult to tell how well the thing is built and how consistent it will be over time. Uh, thanks, Kevin Scott. Now, uh, Kevin, so I someone asked me once uh before on the uh uh on Twitter, I think actually, and I was a big Twitter, like, you know, back and forth about it. Uh I you know, I have not used it. I did uh look at their website.
This was what was that stuff? It's like a year ago or something. It was like a year ago. I looked at their website. And the layout of the machine is fundamentally fairly similar to the old uh Virtus uh freeze dryers with the with the door that opens up.
Um, you know, and I the things that I was researching at the time were you know, the in any freeze dryer, like some of the important um things you have to look for are the uh how many liters uh the cold trap is, right? Because in order to freeze dry, you need to be able to remove the water from the product. And if you if you can't thaw out your cold trap in the middle of your freeze drying run, it's just you can't do it. So, you know, you're limited, the quantity of product that you uh can freeze dry is not just limited by the size of the chamber that you're freeze drying in, it's also limited by the size of your cold trap. Uh so that's one thing to look at.
And another thing in terms of quality is the uh quality of the product is the temperature of the cold trap. And you know, from everything I've read, colder is better. Now the ideas and food guys, Alex and Aki, uh gave us a a food uh um a freeze dryer, you know, uh before they moved, uh, but we haven't had time to play with it yet because there's a problem with the um there's a problem with the vacuum gauge. So I need to get get that working. So I don't have a lot of practical experience with it, but from what I can look from a purely specification level, the uh the uh harvest rights seems like uh a good deal.
And I'd you know, because it's only I think like maybe three or four grand or something compared to like 20 for a regular one. So if anyone has any experience with it, I'd appreciate a tweet in or a call in uh, you know, to let uh let them know what uh what's going on, right? Yeah. Okay. Uh now Jim wrote in a while ago.
This is for one of the older shows that we're trying to catch up to. Uh tell us if we've done this already. Had a bumper crop of pears this year, so I made a batch of pear cider. Wanted some sparkle in the bottle, so I added a little sugar to each, capped it, and left it alone. One month later I opened the first bottle and it sprayed everywhere.
Spend an hour cleaning the kitchen. That's a lot of spray. I don't want pear. I mean, a pair thing, you know, thank hey. Listen, you weren't making cherry cherry wine, but that would have sucked, right?
Maybe you did add cherries to the pear and it's bright. I don't know. Well, probably not, right? Probably not. Okay.
Uh clearly I added too much sugar, and now they're all too carbonated. Any way to get the rest of these bottles open without an explosion, or are all 20 bottles lost. There is clearly yeast sediment at the bottom of each bottle uh that creates many nucleation sites for uh carbonation to explode. So I wonder if I should try disgorging it first, freeze a neck in cold salt water, etc. Any advice greatly appreciated.
And for what it's worth, what little was left did taste good. Peaceful thoughts, Jim in Durham, North Carolina. Now, uh that's a good question. I've never done uh disgorgment before, but I mean it's been it people do it for hundreds and hundreds of years, so presumably you can uh you can do it. Um, you know, with the salt and ice bottles upside down, you have to rack, but you're gonna have to rack the settlement, you know, you're gonna have to keep the bottles pointed uh, you know, at the angle, and you can look at pictures of where they do it in champagne for reference, and then just keep rotating them uh, you know, over the course of I don't know how however long it takes to get the sediment down in the bottom of the bottle and then do your freeze off and cap and blast it out.
Um and assuming that you have a long enough neck in it to hold all the sediment, you should sediment, you should be able to do it. Um, you know, another way is you the problem is you want to keep, you know, kind of oxygen away from another way to do it is to literally open these things inside of uh inside of a giant plastic bag inside of a bucket, uh, and then um you know, cap it so that you're not so that you know the CO2 is gonna come off, it's gonna form a CO2 layer, uh, and then let it settle over the course of a couple days in a plastic bucket or a carboy, right? Uh, and then um rack the stuff off the top and then force carbonate it instead of bottle instead of like uh instead of conditioning it, bottle conditioning it, force carbonate it back to level it was. And if you're lucky, you know, you're not gonna have uh too much oxidation over that uh period. But that should also work if you don't want to go through the disgorgement.
And that's probably what I would do because I would be so angry and I would want to do it right away that this thought of sitting there and rotating them day after day would like drive me nuts. So I would probably just stick them inside of a plastic bag and go spray. Make sure your plastic bag doesn't smell bad. A lot of plastic bags have weird kind of you ever smell inside of a plastic bag? Yeah.
Yeah. I mean Stas and I do it because we're like, who are you to tell me not to put my face inside of a plastic bag, right? Yeah, yeah. Wow. Wow.
Wow. You know, her oven very small. So I don't even have an oven. Oh come on, you don't have an oven anymore. Yeah.
Well whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. How do I how am I just figuring this out right now? Your most recent apartment has a door person, but not a microwave convection. Microwave confection? How's that?
Not good. I put a pumpkin in and the ceramic cracked. What do you mean? What what's ceramic? The whatever the the microwave has as a base.
Oh the power. Oh, and the powder plate. That's so weak. I don't know. Is it yours or is it the landlord's?
The owners. I need to get a new one. I need to ask her for a new one. Look, I are you even allowed to rent uh space in New York that doesn't have like cooking appliances in it? Yeah, that's weird.
Yeah, yeah, you are. I've seen like just a hot plate in some apartments, you know. You mean like a dorm? No. No.
Is there a space for an oven that's now filled with some other stuff? Dishwasher, which is crazy. Why do you need to wash dishes if you don't ever cook? Yeah. I mean I cook a lot.
I found a way to get around the convection. What's that? No, like smaller smaller trays and stuff. So this person was like a raw foodist. No most apartments in the building have this thing.
But yet they pay for a doorman. Yeah. That's very odd. All right. Uh I'm just gonna I'm gonna just ignore ignore it because my brain is uh fried.
So a c a couple of weeks ago we had a uh a couple of people uh give advice on why they we had this issue where this uh you know, I forget who it was, but they were rendering fat using kind of the modernist cuisine uh technique of putting the uh fat in in a jar and then uh rendering it in the pressure cooker with a little baking uh soda, right? Remember that? Mm-hmm. And then I had a speculation and Chris Young said yeah, he didn't know why. Um but then I had a couple other people write in.
But I don't think we've ever figured it out yet. Eric Eric, uh I don't get it, you know, get his last name, uh a lot of interesting uh ideas and some links to some articles about um sp he was specifically focusing on the uh how the uh how a change in temperature can change the um the solubility of gases o over time. Uh but uh you know, and then uh Dave Kleiman wrote in and says when he when he does confit in a jar that it bubbles for hours even after you take it out. So one of the you know what the the thing we're gonna have to figure out if if we can't even figure out is is the stuff actually cold when it's still bubbling or not because that means something you know other than that and and the assumption is is that it's sealed inside of the jar and it's bubbling inside of a sealed jar. Those are the two assumptions.
So I don't think we've gotten to the bottom of it yet. But you know if I ever have enough time on the radio I could read Eric's entire response but I can't because Stas gives me the the the a finger wag. Do you know that you think Stas like you should just mark your finger wag. You know anyway. Andrea Perodi writes in regarding uh sous vide cooking and celepton derma.
Uh I just got my very first immersion circulator an ANOVA in the mail and I'm excited but I don't have a vacuum machine. That's fine. You don't need a vacuum machine to uh do most of the stuff. 90% of the stuff you do I like to say it's my favorite phrase 90% of the stuff you uh you can do with a circulator you don't need a vacuum machine for. Uh can you please recommend some of your favorite must cook as soon as you get a circulator food foods uh thank you very much for the work and knowledge you share on the radio I wish learning stuff could always be as fun as listening to cooking issues.
Well that's very nice. Very nice Stas is giving me I doubt that face. I wish you guys we need like you know what uh can you guys capture some of these faces and then we can just like flash them onto the onto the internet I'd be more interested to see like an artist interpretation you know someone that just listens to the show. Oh yeah. I know that's why it'd be fun yeah who knows what they'd make you look like anyways uh let me eggs right so specifically like you know banging out like a hundred sixty two degree eggs for like a party or a sixty-three degree egg Celsius of course is like the miracle creamy egg that uh you can't otherwise do and then steaks for parties I think is pretty you know a pretty good one uh that it you know I would do like a thick rib steak at at like 55 Celsius uh cool it down to 50 and then well I would hit it with a C resolve.
But uh you know you can finish however you want on a super hot um thing. What Sties you have a circle what are your favorite things to do in the circle use it. Why? What's wrong with it? What the hell's wrong with you?
Brain damage. It's the new one and I just don't like it. You know you you wish you had gotten one of the old ones? Mm-hmm. All right well we'll work on that.
Um so uh those I mean those are like right up there then like reheating like or keeping mashed potatoes warm is a fantastic uh application of it. Uh all depends on what you like to cook. I mean the first thing you know the most people the first thing out of the box that they do with it is proteins or eggs I would say. Right? Some something something like that.
Uh and uh writes PS just came back from Turkey managed to get my hands on a couple hundred grams of Celep the one to make Donderma not the uh less than 10% Celep hot drink mix. I don't know yeah that that hot drink makes it says it's Celep no relation. Like maybe it has some in it but it says it tastes like some sort of a grainy beverage. Isn't that sound gross grainy beverage? Grainy beverage.
For those of you that don't know what we're talking about Celep is the orchid uh the orchid uh bulb powder that is used to make the stretchy Turkish ice cream uh and then wants to know would we like to play with it? Sure, I love playing with it. Uh you know the person who um did the most work on Celep so I first heard of uh Celep from Harold McGee when he was uh doing uh work with us at the French Culinary Institute on alternate uh ice cream textures. So Celep was one and the French pins and Needles ice cream was another one. Uh and uh so he first talked about it, and then Kent Kirshenbaum at the Experimental cuisine collective at NYU did a lot of work on it uh back in the day.
Um so he's actually characterized a lot of the polymers that are in it. He's a polymer chemist. So you might want to look up, he might have published uh something on it, I'm not sure, but you know, he's always happy to talk celep, so you can talk to him about I love it because I haven't had it in a while. I actually just like I like using it, right? So that he so they uh substitute now uh um conjac, which is uh I think it's conjac they use, which is you know another glucamanin.
Uh but anyways, uh yeah, I mean I always love to love to play with some. Anyway, um Stas is giving me the the the Stas, people don't wear watches anymore. Why is that still a valid thing to do? Taps. Who knows what it means?
I know, but like what if you did that to a kid? Would they have any idea what that means? No, I don't think so. Right? They wouldn't know.
That's weird, but true. Yeah. Uh Jay Travis writes in, hey guys, sorry this is a long one. I've tried my hand on doing a bird porchetta uh on uh in the kit uh on chicken with great results, and this year I am attempting to do a showstopping turkey version for Thanksgiving, inspired by Kenji Lopez's uh my version goes like this. Disassemble the and I haven't seen Kenji's post on this, but I have a lot of experience rolling birds.
Um a lot of experience rolling birds. Uh disassemble bird, brine breast meat, uh grind dark meat into a loose sausage, roll the breasts around the ground sausage and fashion into a roll with cling wrap, then into the freezer. Take it out, wrap it up in the skin. Uh what? Tie off and seal into the bath at dark uh at the dark meat temp.
Take out when done, refrigerate because he's not using TG, right? Not using transglutaminase. I always use TG in this. I would use TG. T G better.
Uh take out when done, refrigerate before opening, reserve pouch juices and fry up to crisp the skin. It's amazing. But my question is to these. When I get to my aunt's house for Thanksgiving, I cannot deep fry this thing in her bustling kitchen. Uh, how much am I going to sacrifice this great skin if I tent it and then gently reheat it uh with uh you know on with roasting it at her house, would it benefit for me to drop the alkalinity uh in the cooking bag a little, maybe serve it chilled with aioli and greens instead, help Jay Travis.
Well, first of all, you can't serve a Thanksgiving turkey uh cold. Sorry, you can't. You know what I mean? You're already pushing your luck by not serving it in whole bird format, right, Stas? Yep.
Right. Now I have done uh tubed uh Thanksgiving rolls with stuffing in them, and they're good. And by the way, this is a good way to get uh actual stuffing on the inside of the bird if you should like that, which I do. It tastes delicious, even if it's microbiologically unsafe because you can roll hot stuffing in and then do a cook right. Not with this protocol.
You there's safe ways to do it. I've you know, and I've done it, I don't have time to get get into it now. But I think your main problem here if you're gonna do a roast off, is that you're gonna overcook the breast meat. This is why there's the fundamental inversion in this technique that you see also in Turduckins and any situation like this. Dark meat should go on the outside.
So instead of sausaging it, right, I would uh I would pound out the dark meat into a thin layer and then roll the uh breast meat on the inside of it. That way, even if you're brining it, right? You don't if if you're gonna do a roast off step, which by the way, by the way, other than frying, roasting is gonna give you, yeah, roasting's gonna give you good uh good skin. So, but you're gonna need to roast it for a lot longer and you're gonna overcook the breast meat. I mean, pretty much.
That's it. Right. Another thing you can do is you well, you could wrap a layer of pork sausage around the outside and then the skin around it. But I would use T G. But I would swap it up and I would have the dark meat on the outside because it can withstand the roasting comparatively better than the uh breast meat can.
Does that make sense, though? Yeah. Okay. And um what? We already have to end?
Yep. Oh man, it's not even 50 yet. Well, what time do we have to leave? What time what time do we have to leave? Jack.
God five minutes. Five minutes? All right. Now four. I'm gonna rip through them.
Brett wrote in about MSG. Hey, Dave Estasa Jack and everyone else who's there today. I have a question regarding MSG, but not the typical one worrying about bogus health concerns. Rather, I'm curious how to make the best use of it. Do you have any general tips or guidelines when it comes to cooking with MSG?
Is MSG a universal augmenter of flavor? Or are there particular types of foods and dishes where it really shines and others where it should be left off? How should I go about balancing it with the salt being used to season the dish? I look forward to your insight. Thanks.
Love the show. Brett from Portland, Oregon. Okay. I typically, the thing with MSG is if you add too much MSG, it's the same kind of feeling you get as when you add too much like seaweed or dashi. Everything to me, and I've said this before on the show, starts taking on kind of a dashy kind of a note.
I've used it in cocktails before, but really only in savory cocktails, and I found that it adds it adds a savoriness to certain cocktails that you're like, wow, that's nah, it's not good, right? But we did I did a bittermelon cocktail that wanted a savory note, and the MSG was good in it. That's what we did that thing that uh somebody dubbed uh Doritos bitters at the uh Mofat event like a year ago. So in things like cocktails, I mean I think it has relatively limited application for things that are savory. In foods, I mean, you just have to be careful that you don't want it to become a prevalent flavor.
If it becomes a prevalent flavor, then you're overdoing it. I tend not to use it in the kitchen except for when I'm making things like snack foods, but uh because they really, really need it. They need to get punched up by by a little MSG. Uh I mean, naturally, you probably could reduce the salt level a little when you add MSG, which is why everyone's rushing to add like like good labeled MSG uh substitutes when they're making low salt things. But like I said, I once had an Alfredo that was low sodium Alfredo, and it had uh other, you know, uh MSG-like things, not sodium versions of it, obviously, because they're trying to reduce the sodium.
And to me, it tasted Asian, it tasted like dashi. So I just be careful of it that way. But uh don't be afraid to use it. You know, I would add small amounts of it because you don't want it to become noticeable or overwhelming. Noticeable MSG, I think is more offensive than noticeable salt, right?
What do you think, Stas? Yeah. Stas still thinks she's allergic to MSG. Are you over that now? I'm over it.
Good, thank God. Jacob Farkas writes in about citron. My name is Jacob Farkas. I emailed you last year about a molecular gastronomy class I was teaching at the school I work for. You know how I feel about the term, that's fine, we're not gonna get into it because I don't have time.
I was hoping to have the students uh visit Dave, but you mentioned that his lab was not a place for high school students, definitely not, right, Stas? Or anyone, really, at this point. Uh in any event, I have a question about infusing vodka with citron using the uh nitrogen cavitation method. Although remember, it doesn't use nitrogen, it uses nitrous oxide and the shifting solubilities of nitrous oxide, which is really relatively soluble gas at relatively lower pressures. So I really prefer if you people call it nitrous rather than uh nitrogen cavitation, which is a different kind of lab technique for rupturing cells.
Anyways, and I you know I had someone that kind of misunderstood the technique and was actually trying to measure cell rupture as a function of uh effectiveness in infusion. I'm like, it's not it's not the same. Anyway, nitrous. Uh uh, I have a one-liter whipping siphon. I would like to make a half uh to one liter of infused vodka.
Can I use the method and what ratio of citron to vodka and for how long should I let it infuse? Well, I haven't actually done that infusion uh before, so I can't give you uh specifics, but if you have a standard recipe that you like, in general, when you're doing rapid infusion, what what's happening is is um you're trying to pull less of the kind of bitter and detergent-y notes out of the um out of peel, specifically in citrus, uh, like less of those kind of notes out. And so what you're gonna do is add a lot more than you would normally, and then use the rapid infusion to pull a lot of the top notes out. So I would say that if you have a typical infusion that's gonna last, you know, a week or two weeks uh in a bottle, I would do 50% more of um 50 to 100% more of the citron, and then I would do a rapid infusion with two or three chargers, and I would do it for like four or five minutes, see how it is, and if it needs to go, if if it's not strong enough yet, then I would do another four to five minutes. Now, if it's too strong, then you're gonna want to do like one minute, two minutes.
A lot of my recipes are one or two minutes, especially on things that are extremely bitter, like uh coffee or chocolate. But the you know the thing with uh with citrus is you want to get ride that edge of where it takes on that ugly detergenty note. Now bear in mind I am not a fan of such beverages as lemoncello, and also bear in mind that every commercially available citron flavored vodka you have is flavored with essences and not with straight peels, right? Yeah. Yeah.
So give it a shot. So what I would do is make a small batch, remembering that you can't scale up and down. So you but you can, of course, add more. So you could do a test batch with a small amount and then add more to that batch and rehit it again without without stuff. But if you you know, what I typically will do is I'll I'll make a smaller test batch and then I'll scale it up once, and that'll get me close enough to what I'm doing that I can make a recipe that I can make again and again and again.
Uh okay. Uh Philippe Lament uh wrote in uh book is finally coming out. So stoked. I have a sticky question for you. I'm trying to make an alcoholic ice cream for a Paco Jet.
I want to retain the raw alcohol taste. I've been using cognac and calvados. Do you have any suggestions on ratios or stabilizers I can use to have a nice consistency? All right, so you're gonna have to make a fluid gel with something like a gel an to pump up the consistency of it because you're not gonna get it frozen hard enough. Uh typically for ice creams uh that have a good uh that don't melt down very much when they're warm, i.e.
are gonna have uh you know properties that you like. I like to do a half a percent, one half of one percent, z five grams into a liter of something like Kelka gel F. And that is going that'll stabilize it. But remember, don't heat it with your alcohol because you want the raw alcohol taste. Make a separate fluid gel and then mix your alcohol in, and hopefully that's gonna work for you.
Uh John Cherney uh painted his uh has a Searzole and he says it looks great because he painted his propane bottle gold because he hated uh the green on the uh search. He dislikes the camping green color. So he sent us his pimped out gold uh Searzol, right, S. Uh and then uh LA Nassar, by the way, who said thank you, rhymes with NASCAR, right? Wants to know about carbonating opal vine.
So opal vine is like the higher alcohol version of apple cider where you dope with sugar to get the alcohol content of it higher. Wants to know whether or not uh I've done it. I haven't, but what I would recommend, instead he he was gonna do priming sugar, right, and bottle condition it. Uh Ellie, what I would do is just get the liquid bread set up or use a soda stream, carbonate a small amount of it on on your own right now. Don't any, and then taste it and see whether you like it.
If you do, then you could try the sugar stuff to carbonate it, or you could just force carbonate it and call it uh call it a day. Um Ross. Ooh, that's gonna do it. Ross, I'm gonna read your story about Aruba next time because it goes also with King Inbert uh Ken's story about uh about how there's not enough good information for safety on Sou V, which is an important thing. I can't rush through it, so we'll get it next time.
Uh, along with Daniel's questions from San Jose about rose petals, and that was cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes Store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage Underscore Radio. You can email us questions anytime at info at heritage radio network dot org.
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