Today's program is brought to you by Kane Vineyard and Winery, a Napa Valley winery committed to respecting the soil and dedicated to the creation of three Cabernet blends. For more information, visit Kane5.com. I'm Damon Bolte, host of the Speakeasy. 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 on the Heritage Radio Network at Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick. Brooklyn Live usually with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? Are we having a show next week?
What day? What what what day is that? What what what month day is that? Um I don't know, but I don't I know we're not having a show. We're not doing this is our Christmas show?
Sure. What you're gone, is that what you're telling me? Or mine? I think. I think we're both gone.
Jack, what day what I'll be here, but I mean You'll be here? Yeah. Gee, should we do a hammerless show? Why are you still gonna be here, Dave? I'm always here.
Yeah, you know. It's not it's not it's not me, actually. My wife is uh an architect, and you know, she's like hyper hyper busy. I don't think she's gonna be able to leave until Christmas. Until Christmas.
God bless us, everyone. She's gonna be like She'll be there all the earlier the next morning. It's like she's her own screw. She's her own Scrooge and her own uh uh Bob Crabit. So you're okay.
I don't know. I don't know what day it is. We'll figure it out. Well, this may or may not then be our uh Christmas uh our Christmas show. We can still make it a Christmas show.
This show? This show right now. Christmas slash home. Oh, yeah, no. That's the twenty-fourth.
Oh, wait, the Tuesday's the twenty fourth? Yeah. Come on. Twenty third. Oh twenty third.
Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. We'll talk about it. I'll tweet it out if we're gonna do it. Yeah?
Yeah. Okay. I know one person who will not be here. Who? You.
I don't know. I really don't know. I don't remember when I'm leaving. Where are you going? You going somewhere nice?
No, I'd already told you. Yeah, but they don't know where you're going. Do you not want to talk to us? Staying here. So you're not going any well, you're going to Connecticut.
Yeah, but I don't know what day. I will also be in Connecticut people. But thankfully we will not be together because we need our alone time. Am I right? Am I right?
Yeah. Tell me about it. So you want to talk about our uh twelve by the way, calling your questions to 7184972128. That's 7184972128. Got Jack in the booth today.
Who else we got over there? I didn't look when I ran in. Why it's here. Hey, why what's up? Uh can I just jump right before the show starts?
It's uh I I I hate to keep doing this, but it's the big fundraising drive. We're almost done, end of the year. Um and this week we have a generous donor who's gonna match donations. So it's like double bucks. Double bucks?
Yeah, it's a fairway market. It's gonna match donations. I heard that they were like no other market. Is that true? That's absolutely true.
Yeah? Yeah. Stas true, like no other market. She's like, what do I know? I don't live anywhere near a fairway.
I'm in the Hills Kitchen. I don't make it to the upper west side. Might as well be in Venus. Right. Right?
Anyways. Uh wait, but I had a question for I don't forget whether it was for Jack or for Nastasi. Now I forget what the the question was. Maybe I should just answer like, you know, real people's questions. Yes.
Oh, I know. Before I do that, uh Stas, you wanna are we we're doing our twelve days of searing. You want to explain the twelve days of series? Oh, yeah, we're calling it Sears and Greetings. Yeah?
Yeah, not twelve days of hearing. But um you send in your videos of you and and your Sears all searing something. And we may post it online. And then the prizes if you're gonna get uh Burnsmatic T S eight thousand for ten people and then grand prize winner gets one of those with a signed stairs all by you. And we're figuring out a way to post them before the thing ends, right?
There's that's there's one up right now. Yeah? Mm-hmm. Yeah, nice. I'll I will check it out.
You can go to Searsall dot tumbler dot com. Net dot splat.org. We don't exist.me dot yeah. Do you know I own nobody likes dot me. I don't know if you still own it.
Oh, I didn't pay? Yeah. Nobody likes me. There you go. Okay.
Uh these questions in. Uh this is from uh BJD. May I have a rundown of the full Gousot for optimum cooling and storage of vacuum bags sous vide meats. By the way, Bruno Gousseau is like the so you know, Gousseau and Joel Robouch, no sorry, not Joel Robichon. Like Gusot worked with Joel Robouchon for um uh you know, to come up with the first kind of uh kind of widespread application of Sous vide at the SNCF, which is the railway in France.
Anyway, so that's kind of how he got into like the low temperature sous vide on the high end cuisine side of it, although it was for a mass market application of high end cuisine with the Joel Robichon. But Bruno Gusseau uh was kind of the uh he's kind of the granddaddy of low temperature cooking, whereas if you actually talk about sous vide, you're talking about Georges Pralu's the charcuterie who did the uh the foie gras for the uh Trogra brothers back in France. So it's like you know, they they compete, they're both, you know, like I I don't really know Pralu, I've met him once or twice, but I know Gousot pretty well. And so like, you know, he I think they kind of maybe they give each other a good natured ribbing, but I think they actually uh they might actually dislike each other. I don't know.
What do you think? I don't know. You know, anyway, they're both like like, you know, hardcore like French dudes. I love I love Gousseau, though. He runs uh he runs a company or it's you know big part of the company called Cuisine Solutions, uh, which they work here in the U.S.
Anyway, Gousot. So Gousseau has this theory. Well, I'll finish the question first. Okay. Uh I've listened to the back catalog twice, but don't recall the exact process of the full Gousot.
Uh my A Nova circulator I shipped, and I'm uh particularly worried about the safety of my toddler and pregnant wife. Uh and then have you finished the low temp primer? No. And believe me, I'm not. I'm not gonna do it.
But I will answer any questions regarding it. You know, someday what I should do, you know what I should do, Stas? I should just do a because I'm not gonna I don't have the time to write down this stuff. But what I could do someday if people actually wanted it, is I could do like a low temp primer podcast where I literally just talk you through all of the aspects of low temperature cooking that there would be in a you know on the primer if I had time to write it. Um and then we could you know update it as necessary, switch in or out.
But if there's any if anyone wants the equivalent of like books on tape of the uh the what what do they call those things now that they're not on tapes anymore? Audio books, audio books. If anyone wants audio books. If anyone wants the equivalent of a it'll be more like this because I'll be off the top of my head and I'll be like, you know, going on tangents constantly, but I could do a hey, would you record it, Jack? And then maybe somebody could do a slideshow to it, you know.
Yeah, somebody, yeah, somebody with a YouTube video. YouTube. Anyway, uh I got a caller on the line whenever you're ready. Oh, okay, okay. Let me let me sure okay.
Listen, I'm gonna I'm gonna come back, I'm gonna talk about the full Gousot. Let me just get this caller and then uh we'll come back. All right, caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, it's uh David from California. How you doing?
Yeah, good. Hey, uh I wanted to get some strategies from you uh on infusing French fries. French fries with flavor. Okay. What flavor?
I've done the exact opposite recently, by the way. I finally made French fry liquor and it was delicious, but it went stale the same way. So like after it was stored for a while in the refrigerator, when it came out, it it like you know that you know that cold stored potato smell after it's been cooked? Like you know how like when you get the fr the person's like, Do you want to take the French fries home? And you're like, I don't really want to, but I don't really want to have them have to distinguish between the leftovers, the rest of the leftovers in the plate and the French fries are on the plate, so you stick it all in that styro and you're tired when you get home, because whatever.
So you throw it in the fridge and the next day you smell the french fries. We all know what we're what I'm talking about here. I that happened to the liquor, so I'm working on trying to get rid of that. But anyway, go ahead. So you want to you want to do the opposite.
You want to infuse some sort of liquid flavor into a french fry, right? Yeah, well I I make uh a baked potato stock that I uh use with mashed potatoes, and I wanted to get something like that into a French fry, give it that real roast potato taste. Okay, do you own a vacuum machine? No, I I just a food saver. See the vacuum machine would have been the easy cause I I I've done that uh, you know, a lot with different flavors like uh most notably uh vinegar, which also does a lot to change the texture of the fry because the uh it it delays the um softening of the potatoes, so they they're a little harder.
But and so if you had a vacuum machine, you would just uh cut the potatoes off, I would and uh throw them directly into the stock, not into water, because they'll absorb a lot uh of water there and that's like stealing part you like some of your flavor, right? So um i the one downside of course of this, you might want to what I would hmm okay, let's think about this. Because you don't want the starch, you want to do the wash of the starch. So what I would do, probably is cut them, do a quick rinse in water, uh, and then like salad spin them dry to get them as dry as possible. That way you wash that initial layer of starch off the outside.
And then and then I would stick them uh directly into the stock and let them and let them kind of soak. Now, that way though you're also gonna, you know, because they're underwater on our stock, you're not gonna have uh the oxidation, you're gonna be okay. Now, what I would do is then suck a vacuum on these things, like a pretty hard vacuum. Um, and that would kind of allow me to um that would that would instantly infuse the uh infuse the flavor into the French fries. Now, I would say that you could do an ISI variant, but think of how many ISI cartridges you have to go through to infuse a reasonable number of French fries.
Too many. Um so what I would do is probably uh uh get one of the um you know your food saver bags, how you can you can get them uh on a roll so you can make your own length? Oh yeah, I got that. Yeah, I would make a really long one and stick the potatoes in the bottom, and now the the thing is is that you're gonna have to figure out uh uh you know, you're gonna need some sort of um anti-crush thing in there so that it doesn't think it's reached a vacuum before it has, because that's what typically happens in one of these in one of these situations is that you're it's very hard to get a good vacuum on liquids in one of these bags. But I'm trying to think of what you could stick into it that would prevent it from kind of instantly self-sealing as soon as the l first little bit of liquid starts sucking up into those little straws.
I don't know, you're gonna have to play around with it. And then I would just cut it and suck it, cut it and suck it, cut it and suck it, cut it and suck it and keep on trying to get the flavor in, even though you know I've said up a million times that the that the food saver is not really ideal for vacuum infusion. It's really kind of the only it's kind of the only thing you've got here. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Well, I guess I could buy the machine then. Uh-huh. Well, that's kind of pricey. Unless you can return it.
Or you know what you could do is uh it the cheapest way if you want to do infusions, if you want to do a bunch of these things, is to get a refrigeration vacuum machine, uh vacuum pump, like uh the equivalent of like a Robinair, one of the kind of larger ones, or you know, uh there's a bunch of different companies that make them. And uh then you can just put a hose, you know, crush proof uh hose uh you know onto a piece of uh uh uh uh you know like Lexan or or or even acrylic, really, because you're not gonna be doing alcohol in this situation, and then seal it over a round Bane Marie with uh like a sheet of rubber, suck a hard vacuum on it, and that thing is as good as uh it works as well as uh as a pro vacuum machine. I mean the vacuum's pump's not as robust and it's not as fast, but it will suck a serious vacuum, and you can do it on like a three or four five gallon Bain Marie all at the same time, which is pretty awesome. And then you're only looking at like, you know, you can get one of those on eBay for like 150 bucks, brand new. So the the short answer is that vacuum infusion is the way to go with with French fries.
Yeah, because they're porous, and so then what you do, right, is the flavor gets in, right? And then you of course, you know, you boil it in the stock, not in water when you're gonna do your initial uh boil, and then as you dry, the moisture will evaporate out and they'll leave all that excess flavor in. Uh and so yeah, you should get it a good result. Maybe the other way to do it is to drink you know, dry completely desiccate the stock out and then make a spice powder out of it, but that's a real pain in the butt. Yeah, that was the other strategy I thought might work, but I didn't I didn't know if you played around with that sort of stuff much.
Uh no, I haven't. But you the trick is remember to boil it in the flavor that you want it to taste like. And also, and that might actually, frankly, why you know, before you go off and get all crazy, since you're going to be cooking these potatoes until they're kind of uh falling apart anyway, right? Because when you're making French fries, you do your initial uh you do your initial uh blanch. Uh you're really looking to uh you know cook them until they're dead, you know.
Uh just you don't want them to shatter apart because you want them to stay whole while you fry them, but you don't want them al dente. You know what I mean? That's not how you're gonna get the best texture out of it. And if you make a really rich stock and boil the potatoes in a very rich stock, maybe, you know, the French fries, maybe that's enough. Maybe you don't need to infuse it all.
So what I would do is take a little bit of your stock and just cook a couple of uh French fries in it, you know, and see whether or not uh you get a good enough result. And if you do there, then you're done, then you don't have to spend any money at all. Okay. Because potatoes are pretty dang porous. That's why when you boil them in salty, salty water, they get salty, salty, salty.
But of course, salt, salt is a tiny molecule, so maybe the stock stuff doesn't make it through. I don't know, run a test. Okay, that's enough for me to run with. Alrighty, good luck with it. Let us know how it works.
All right, thanks, Dave. Appreciate it. No problem. Okay, so we're back to the gousot. Now remember, where we last left off, Bruno Gusseau, like the you know, the granddaddy of uh low temperature cooking, as opposed to Pralu, kind of granddaddy of sous viv.
So Gusot is working on this stuff now. Learned many years ago, probably well, you know, many, many, many years ago, uh, like the first time that he did a presentation at uh WD-50, and this is I think this is before I was working at the French culinary. I don't know. Gousot uh did a presentation where uh you know he he basically said, Hey, look at when you're cooking um a protein uh most most proteins I think he's talking about like muscle meats and more specifically you know kind of mammal muscle meats and also birds but not s I don't I don't know how he feels about fish although he probably says he's specifically like you know weird cuts like foie gras he doesn't you know discuss. But anyways in fact says won't help doesn't matter.
But uh when you're cooking it you bring it up at a you ramp up the temperature and then the way he explains it to chefs is more of like this kind of holistic uh business where he's like and you want to ramp it down at the same temperature as though that as though that makes a difference to me as though I care about that. Really the real argument if you talk to him uh you know you just kind of accost him about it is that uh the slower the ramp rate of uh chilling when you're working the um more liquids are reabsorbed by the meat uh as it cools so there's an in Gousot's opinion or Gousseau's uh research he's seen that there is a kind of an optimal temperature of the meat for reabsorbing uh any liquids that have been expelled during the cooking process and that optimum uh temperature is lower than the cook temperature but higher than a chill temperature. So if you rapidly rapidly chill a piece of meat then uh you're uh not giving that meat the opportunity to reabsorb some of the liquids that it expelled and you'll have a less juicy piece of meat. That's the Gousot theory. And so what Gousot wants to do is have a more gradual cool down but still get it cool within the time parameters of safety.
All right now this is not going to make a difference for things like eggs, for things like foie gras for anything like that. For those things, you can just chill them, you know, whatever you want. But we used to run tests where we would, and so here's what Gousseau says. Gousseau says just pull your product out of the bath and leave it on the table, depending on the thickness. Let's say it's like you know, an inch and a half, you know, or an inch and a quarter rib steak or something like this.
Leave it on the counter for uh you you choose it's like depending on the thickness, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. I think up to, I think he says you can go up to 20. I never do 20, but like that's what you can go up to. Leave it on the counter, right? Uh, and that's gonna slowly let the temperature go down, right?
Because the air is a very bad conductor of heat. Now I actually put it on racks so that it's getting air all around it, right? So that's the first section. Then this next step that you do is you put the meat, uh the bags into uh tap water. So tap water isn't refrigerator temperature, it's usually somewhere close to room temperature in the you know, in the in uh in the 20s somewhere, like 20 uh or like 65, you know, if you're in Fahrenheit land, and uh you want to put them in the tap water and you can let it run slowly so it stays at that, and that's gonna rapidly bring them down to room temperature, and that's the second part of the curve.
And then the third part of the curve is to throw them directly into ice water. And uh and the ice water, uh, you know, agitated ice water is going to rapidly, rapidly drop the suckers down to uh down to you know safe fridge storage temperatures. Much okay, now that's how he does it, and it guarantees uh, you know, for reasonably th you know sized cuts of meat, it guarantees that the inside core is gonna get um uh cold enough fast enough, but it does the initial ramp down in a way that allows it to uh chill. So typically you do like 15, 15, 15, so 15 on the counter, 15 in tap water, and 15 in ice water. Now, you know, could you do like 20 on the counter and then ice water?
Probably, but any time you ramp it, he's gonna say you're gonna increase the uh you're gonna increase the amount of moisture that's reabsorbed. And we I used to laugh at it, but then we ran tests and and uh you know it turns out like you know side by side mo most people pick full good so in terms of uh the taste and that's why we call it a full gousot. Um another way to do things is if you just throw it in the fridge it's gonna ramp down slowly because in a fridge you have very low uh you know heat you know transfer because of the it's just air but there's a bunch of problems there. A, you're shafting everything else in your fridge because you put a hot load in your fridge and B, there's no guarantee really that the stuff's gonna get down to refrigerator temperature in a reasonable amount of time. You know, there's just not especially if you're stacking bags on top of bags.
So if you're really worried about safety, I wouldn't worry about doing the full gousot in terms of uh like whether it's going to get safe in time. I think that's gonna be a lot safer than it is just throwing the bags in the fridge and and having done with it. Good. Yeah. Uh okay now uh he also he also writes um thanks for answering my questions last week I did not put any angostura turd balls in my punch bowl.
Remember we were talking about like yeah so he did not do any turd balls. Um he's and then he says as my other question I feel I wasn't clear enough on my aviary and uh maraschino ice question remember there was a maraschino liqueur ice question that we had um I think Dave thought I meant the drink that comes in a hollow ice balloon I did think that uh though a cool presentation it wasn't what I was after the Martinez I had came with pebble ice which seemed to be made from marischino liqueur when this ice melts it dries the drink out as it makes it taste driver, I guess from marischino. Would Dave happen to know how they freeze the liqueur? And is that in fact what they're doing? Well, you could look, you can freeze, you can freeze any dang thing.
It's just uh it's not going to you know, it's gonna melt unlike a normal ice and it's gonna be really cold. I haven't seen this presentation, so I don't know what they do. But you know, obviously the more you water down uh a liquor or liqueur, the more you are, you know, the the less you have to overcome the you know the the fact that it doesn't want to freeze. So, you know, you can use any combination of cryogens to uh chill um liqueur down to the point where it's frozen, you know, LN. It's possible to do it with dry ice, but it's a real pain in the butt.
Um so you could you do it? Yeah, you could do it, but um I don't know. I'd have to I'd have to see someone will have to email me a picture of the uh of the presentation. So I have to see how it looks. If I saw how it looked, I could determine how they did it because I can see how kind of how the melt melting down worked, but I don't I don't know specifically.
Anyway, uh next question we have in from Chris at the UNC School of Medicine. Can I use dry ice to cruddle uh cryo mudd if I don't have access to liquid nitrogen? Well, if you are at the school of medicine, I would say go steal yourself some liquid nitrogen instead of trying to use some dry ice. Um right, wouldn't you say? I mean, here's my problem with dry ice.
First of all, I love having dry ice, and I love putting dry ice into stainless steel containers because it makes this horrible death squeal that drives uh Nastasia completely bonkers. Remember that that that death squeal? So you s you stick the dry ice into the container and it goes like a like a like sticking a like sticking a thousand pigs. It's like that squeal of that horrible but with metallic, it's crazy, it's awful. Love it.
Because I can barely hear it. You know what I mean? Like for me, it's like, you know, I mean, it's not like I would sign up to have someone play that at a concert. You know what I mean? But, you know, like the high register stuff doesn't make me cringe anymore.
Uh, you know, it's too damn old and I've abused my ears too much with uh with the with the loud music. But um anyways, so there's that. There's that awful noise. And then there's the so and then there's the fact that it's very difficult to um it's very difficult to freeze things with dry ice because dry ice is not a liquid. So you don't get complete surrounding of your of your leaves, of your of your leaves with uh cryogen, right?
So here's how you can do it if you really uh in other words, I'm not necessarily I'm not recommending it, is what I'm saying. But if you were gonna do it, here's how I would do it. Uh if you absolutely had to do it, I would uh take uh dry ice, I would get nugget form because it breaks easier, uh, as opposed to the blocks, which are really hard. I would shove a nugget into the bottom of your of your tin and I would smash the hell out of it to a powder with a um with a muddler. Then you're gonna add spirit to that.
Uh and it has to be pretty high-proof spirit, so it doesn't um in fact you'd have to get like 95%. Like you need something that's not going to to solidify with the dry ice. So you need like, you know, almost technically pure liquor there. Then once that's at super cold freezing temp, then you could use the liquid alcohol as the cryogen. Then you could stick the herbs in, and then assuming you didn't have too much liquid in there, they'd probably be brittle enough to shatter, right?
Uh, at which point you could at which point you could go, you could go ahead. Another way you might be able to try it is to uh pellet ice straight. Now you could probably use 40%, you know, like regular like liquor. Uh just turn it into a slushy, and you could use a blender for this, right? Turn it into a slushy with the dry ice, right?
So now it's really, really, really, really, really cold. Uh then you could immerse the herbs in it, wait a second for them to freeze, and then blender muddle, and it'll probably be close probably be better than than room temp blender muddling, maybe not quite as good as actual um uh nitro muddling, then you're gonna have to add your other ingredients and warm it back up to room temp to shake, otherwise you're gonna get your dilutions all messed up. But these are all things you can try. Um, but remember, blender model like room temperature blender modeling is not that bad. It's just not as good.
But do it side by side and tell me what you think. Anyway, uh two, any reason I could not or should not attempt to fat wash a bourbon with brown butter? Absolutely not. I've had delicious uh uh brown butter uh fat washed things. It takes a lot though.
It's a lot, right? It takes a lot. And uh I think you're gonna want contact with uh those milk solids, right? The kind of brown nutty milk solids. So you know, I would brown it and then I would put the entire thing, including the solids together with it, and then uh and then work it.
Didn't Piper used to do make that all the time? Or just regular butter? I don't know. You can do it. I've done it, it works.
Um three, can you talk more about milk washing tea, vodka, and if it's possible to do in the home setting? Uh oh, sure. So milk washing is a technique I have in liquid intelligence, the art and science, and the perfect cocktail. Although, you know, I I hate the subtitle. I know they like it, but I don't like the subtitle.
Shit about it. But you know how I am. There's what I care about, and there's what I don't care about, or there's what I care about right now, and then there's what I end up caring about later. But like we all know that I don't believe anything is perfect. Right.
Right? And so, like, even though, like, you know, uh that's like Cooks Illustrated, right? I mean, like the one of the gripes I have with Cooks Illustrated, although like back when it came out in 93, like you know, I had the all that original charter stuff because I used to reading it back in, you know, back then. Amazing kind of game-changing magazine, obviously. Uh, you know, but like the one gripe I always have with them is they're always like the best this, the blah, this.
And what they really mean is a really well-researched X, Y, or Z that tackles certain problems that we which I really appreciate. I love that, but I just don't like calling it the best. You know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? Caller.
Uh sure. Uh I haven't talked about the milk washing yet, right? So I have to I have to talk to that after I talk about the collar, right? Okay. Caller, you're on the air.
Hey, David, it's Andy from Chicago. How are you doing? Doing alright, how you doing? I'm doing great, thanks. Uh kind of sticking to the cocktail theme.
Uh, we're hosting a little holiday party this weekend, and I wanted to get some ideas from you, maybe on a little cocktail holiday punch kind of thing. Uh got your book, haven't read it yet. I'm keeping it stored away high up in a closet so my uh girlfriend doesn't see it, but uh giving it to her for Christmas. Oh, nice. I thought you'd meant because you didn't, you're like, I just don't want to make any of the recipes.
That's what I think. Yeah, exactly. So I just haven't seen anything yet. But um I had one when I was in uh this great cocktail bar in Austin had kind of like a flamed rosemary. I think it also had some gin and cherry, which would be good, but just kind of wanted to pick your brain about a good uh holiday party cocktail.
Okay, so but you're looking to do you're looking to do like large format. I think so, just for the sake of ease of service. Um I would be willing to do something visual, you know, but I don't want to spend all my time behind the bar. I don't want to be able to hang out myself a little bit. What do you what do you have for equipment?
Uh no, no liquid nitrogen, nothing like that. Pretty standard bar equipment, but uh a good a good variety. Do you have a circulator? I do, yeah. All right.
So this doesn't okay. So first of all, like I don't really in the book, so you're you're not missing anything for this application. In the book, I don't have any really kind of large format drinks there. Um like typically, like when I do large format, I'm doing more like uh figuring out how to do like pitcher at a time stirred drinks, which is like super easy, right? You just put your you put the the undiluted um mix in in uh in soda bottles in like you know, one liter soda bottles, and you squeeze all the air.
Let's say we're gonna do Manhattan's, right? You squeeze out all of the air, uh, and then uh you know, close them off, and then you throw them in your in your freezer, you know, like the day before or two days before, whatever, and then they just chill down, and you just have to figure out the ratios beforehand. I'm pretty sure you can get it from the look inside on Amazon. Uh, and then uh because the the recipe is there, and then uh you just have a like a big picture of ice water, and then you pull out your you pull out your your mixing picture at the last minute, and you're like blam, and now you have like you know, uh a liter and a half of uh Manhattan's that someone can pour out instantly, right? So that's you know one way to do it where you're you know basically you know you're not spending any time mixing drinks, but you're busting stuff out that's at a high caliber like a Manhattan.
But I don't think that's what you're looking to do. I think you're looking to get a bowl that anyone can serve themselves uh stuff. So I don't really have any large format recipes that I make mainly because I had a bunch of friends who were doing it, and so I I didn't like I don't know, I just didn't do it. I I should have done it. So what I would do is read uh David Wonderwich's book on punch to figure out kind of what flavor profiles you want to make, and then I would worry about the problem of chilling, which I could help you out with.
So one of the things that uh you know Nastasia and Backman Piper used to work is uh with us is they used to do this thing called uh the wine zombie, and they also had like other different kinds of zombies, and they had a Santa Claus uh that puked up uh holiday uh holiday beverage. So there's a if you have circuit if you have a circulator, right? So what they would do is we they would take a circulator and they would shove a pipe onto the outlet of the circulator and have it either coming out of a zombie's mouth, in which case it would be puking some sort of red cocktail or you know, blood stuff, or they would stick it into uh, you know, have it coming out of Santa's mouth, and then it would be like Santa puking up all the eggnog because he ate too many cookies, right? I mean, this is the theory of operation. So you don't need to go through all of that of having like a Santa head.
Am I accurate, Stas? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Puking Santa. And you actually recorded uh your friend uh Phil uh doing like kind of deep like Grinch-like Santa vomiting noises. I'm not recommending you do this for your holiday party, by the way.
Anyways, but uh this is a technique we use all the time to keep things cold without diluting. So what you do is is you take uh your circulator, you drop it into the bucket with a couple chunks of dry ice, and then you set the circulator at whatever temperature you want the cocktail to be, and it will just keep it at that temperature. It won't get too cold and it won't get too hot, and you can just keep your punch at the accurate level that you want it to have. Now, if you really want to go through it, you could have a bowl with a drain and you can have it coming like a fountain, so someone could put a cup under it, and then they wouldn't necessarily see the dry ice or any of that. It wouldn't look all high-tech or anything like this, right?
So that's that's a technique you can do. Um, or another good thing is if you want to do a hot beverage, like if you want to do like a mulled wine, right? It's cold in Chicago, right? So circulator is great for a mulled wine. So, you know, you just do like a like a glug, right?
So there you can take like, and it's great for parties. You take uh uh you take your red wine. I think we usually use like something that's pretty dry, like a cab, uh, and you and you know, and port, right? So you're mixing port and something like a cab, uh, and you throw all your spices in. If you want it to taste sweetish, make sure that you that make sure that along with the allspice and cinnamon and clove, make sure and and orange peels and all that, make sure you throw in a hell hefty dose of cardamom, right?
Otherwise, you know, what the hell's wrong with you? You know what I'm saying? So you cook that, you cook that stuff down, uh, and then you know, you you boil it, and then you re-fortify it afterwards with you let it sit overnight, and then you re-fortify it with Aqua Vete or with, you know, vodka if you're so inclined, uh, and that and then you correct for salt and any kind of sugar balances that you want. Uh, and then that is great, you know, with a circulator just keeping it hot, uh and and just you know keep keeps it going, and that that's a that's another good one. These are any of these uh good suggestions, I can't tell.
Yeah, sure. Any uh the the sort of medium format was good. I hadn't thought about yeah, yeah, medium format's great because then you know they'll stay actually pretty good. The Manhattans will stay pretty good, especially it depends on how nice you want the service to be. You can you can make large format Manhattans out of your freezer like that and then pour them into Stanley thermoses and they'll stay pretty close to service temperature.
Uh if you've pre-chilled the Stanley, that is. You know what I mean? Like they'll stay pretty close to service temperature for a long time. So if you have a couple of Stanley pitchers there, you can have like thermoses of Manhattan that stay at pretty much the correct Manhattan temperature for a good while. Yep.
Yep. I didn't even mention that in the book, but I should have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Another good one? Give you one last good one. Here's another good one. If you're gonna do something like uh bottled drinks, right? So you can bottle a drink that's not necessarily uh punch, right?
And then um, like you know, cap it like you would a and this is also means you don't have to have as much glassware if you're will willing to let people drink it out of the bottle. Depends on you, right? And then uh you have like individual cap bottles and you uh do salt and the ice, right? Don't do too much or you'll freeze them, right? So you have to like you know, kind of measure it out or do a test beforehand, and then just throw all the bottles into the salted ice like they were beer, and then people pull the cocktails and and then they're great.
You know what I mean? That's cool. Yeah. Cool. Yeah.
Cool. Well, uh, you know, tweet on out. Let us know what happened. Let us know how it worked out. Thanks, Block.
Appreciate it. Nice. I wish we were having a uh wish we were having a holiday party. We could. You are the boss.
Yeah. Yeah. Kind of the boss. Not really. Heritage Radio is having a holiday party.
Oh. Just rub it in. Why not? Oh, we're having our holiday party with Peter next Monday. Yeah, we were supposed to have a holiday party, right?
Which is kind of partially Booker and DAX, partially museum of food and drink, and like one third of the party was like, I have a meeting, crap on you. That's our life. That's our life. Can I promote the heritage one? It's uh this it's tomorrow, actually, at a place called Tandem Bar in Bushwick.
Open to the public too. So if anybody wants to come meet the hosts. Tandem? Yeah, no, it's free. Um yeah, tandem.
It's called Tandem Bar. Like one in front of the other. Right. Are there in fact two bars, one in front of the other? Uh no.
Okay. And did you notice how Stas immediately went to negative and was assuming that you were charging people? No, I thought it was for the fundamental holiday fund. No, this is the Oh man, I was going to make a joke. It's the fundraiser.
Oh what's up? We got a new punster. We got a new punster out there. That's good. Yeah.
Oh, by the way. Yeah, okay. I'm not gonna get it. So it's in Bushwick, Tandem Bar. Uh we'll be there from 6 PM until the very bitter end of the night.
Whoa. Yeah, we've got DJs and all kinds of stuff. So at what point does it shift like to 100% hipsters? Uh that'd be like 10 PM. Okay, cool.
So if you want the pre scheduled. Yeah, if you want to if you want to do the if you want to like, you know, miss the hipster rush, come early, right? That's right. That's what you're saying. All right.
Hipster. Are you gonna get your uh I everyone who's listened to the past couple episodes knows that uh there's a new per there's always someone at Roberta's that look, when we're doing this show, basically we're in a shipping container that has been covered with wood to look like you're in a wood cabin on the inside of it. Jack, accurate or not? Accurate. Okay.
Outside, corrugated metal shipping container. Inside, you know, it looks like we could be at that USDA inspected abattoir. Because it's like uh, you know, a totally wood cabin on the inside. Um but there's a giant window that faces directly onto I'm looking at Roberta's Eaters now, and like right now there's you know, there's this date going on, the guy's chewing his thumbnail, and the lady's got her chin on, you know, on her chin, you know, hand, so we're trying to try to figure out I think it's going well, no? He's trying to look like he's paying attention to what she's saying.
They know each other. Yeah, anyways, this is what we like so when we're doing the radio show, like this is what's happening. So we obviously make comments about the people that we see, and especially like, you know, returned people, which are usually the Roberta staff, right? Hitler's little elf or whatever he's called. Well, that's kind of a rough.
So that's we call him Santa's hipster. Oh, right, yeah, wow. Santa's little hipster. Yeah. Hitler's elf.
That's crazy. What's wrong with you? You're brain damaged. Nastasia. This is where you probably guys get some some knowledge from what we're dealing with here.
Nastasia is a deeply damaged person. You just don't get to hear what Dave says off air. What? Uh-huh. No, I said he he might look like he's like got some sort of like whatever.
Whatever. He whatever. I'm not going to get into it. He's got a multicolored beard. He does have a multicolored beard, but he looks, he looks like he's out of the Rudolph, like the red nosed reindeer set.
He kind of looks like Hermy. Yo, he does. A little more Teutonic, which is where Stas is getting that from. A lot more Teutonic. And like, because his beard is very, very neat, but it's dyed.
Santa's little hipster. Anyway. Do you know him, Jack? No. Okay.
I mean, you know, I say hi every day, but. I feel bad. We're talking about him like he's not even a human being. Here he is working. Whatever.
Can you talk more about milk washing tea vodka and if it's possible to do it in the home setting? Cheers, Chris. Okay. Yeah, sure. Yeah.
So if you go to the uh, it's totally easy to do at home. So let's say let's go super home, right? Take your tea, put it into the vodka, let it steep for a long time until it's nice and dark, then add it to the milk, just like it has in the recipe. The milk is going to um bind with some of the polyphenols in the tea and remove some of the astringency, right? Let it sit there for a minute.
Then I add citric acid, right? 15% citric acid solution, but you can add, so I add about uh uh I think it's uh about 15 um 15 uh milliliters of that to a liter uh of uh vodka or to seven fifty, you know, whatever I'm doing, about about 15 mils. So you could get away then with instead of 15 mils of that, you could get away with an ounce, right? Right out of a jigger of lemon juice. And it won't be quite as much acid, but it'll be pretty close.
Make sure you strain it beforehand. Um really strain it. And then uh so you stir, remember always to stir the uh vodka into the milk, otherwise it'll curdle if you do it the other way around. And then remember to wait a wait a little bit and then add the um add the lemon juice, stir it. It should break, you'll see it curdle up, and then just cover it uh and let it sit for like an hour.
And oh, remember in the book I show you to like take the spoon and slowly move the this is a key step that I think people um don't do, and it's not as important if you have a centrifuge, but if you don't, this is super key. Take uh a spoon after you've added after it started curdled and just kind of move, don't stir it like a lunatic, just move the curds around. And what's happening is is it you're sweeping the curds through the liquid, and the curds are agglomerating together and getting bigger and bigger, and you're kind of mopping up the casein that's kind of left and hasn't agglomerated into big particles yet. So just kind of move it, wait a couple of minutes, move it around again, say, move everything together slowly, and then do that for you know every couple of minutes for a little while, and then let it sit. And you'll notice that uh you're gonna start getting a lot of very clear liquid, and you're gonna be getting curds.
At that point, you can just strain it through a paper towel. I wouldn't strain it through uh I wouldn't strain it through uh a coffee filter at the first go because it's just gonna take for freaking ever. I would strain it through either very fine uh you know uh linen napkin or a uh a paper a regular paper towel uh because they're a lot coarser. And then if you want to get it clearer, you can go through a coffee filter. But you're not even gonna lose that much, it works fine.
It's a little more complicated than using a centrifuge, but not really. I actually did it at the last demo I did live just to show people that it wasn't that hard. Anyway, okay, there you go. Um Stasia, Dave, Jack, and the rest. How do you like that one?
The rest. The rest. The rest. Uh this is from Brandon Bird in Chicago. Uh this year I did uh an injection brine on our Thanksgiving turkey, and it turned out great.
I know that some folks out there, e.g. J. Kenji Alt Lopez, uh Lopez Alt, uh, are anti-brine because it just adds water. Uh but I was intrigued by Dave's technique of injecting turkey stock rather than just salty water. My question is whether or not Dave uses a high gelatin uh pressure cooked stock or a lighter, more watery version.
I keep lots of gelatinous stock on hand, but I'm curious if injecting a bird with the equivalent of a salty turkey jello, salty turkey jello, or if you want to sell it, if you want to sell salty turkey jello, call it aspic. Although no American, but if you want to sell it in France, you're gonna you sell it as aspic, right? Because but in American, no one wants something that has the word ass and pick together that they're gonna eat. You know what I mean? Ass pick.
Sounds nasty. And you also have to clarify it. Hmm, hmm, aspic. And also in France, I don't know that they'd be eating a turkey aspic. They're like, Dandon, as pique to denton.
I don't think they would buy that. You know what I'm saying? Isn't Dandon turkey in French? I don't know. No, no, someone will tell me if I'm wrong, which I'm sure I am.
Anyway, um, I keep lots of gelatinous stock on hand, but I'm curious if injecting the bird with the coconut salty turkey jello would negatively impact the texture or brine absorption of the meat. Best Brandon Bird Chicago. Well, I don't know. Uh I did, I used a gelatinous hardcore uh pressure cooked stock with like a boat ton of wings, the entire carcass of the of the bird. Um and I started with I start with chicken stock.
I might have started I think I started with water. I started with water. Um but yeah, it was gelatinous, in other words, it's self-set. But I injected it, um I injected it at room temp, right? So I did it uh, or even a little warm.
I did it right, did I do it right before? I did it very soon before I did the cook, right? So I salted the meat uh beforehand, and then I didn't super salty the um the stock. I just salted it a little more than regular stock, which is completely unsalted, right? Uh, and so I injected it and then cooked it very, very soon thereafter.
So I don't know if you did it like days before what would happen, but no one noticed any sort of jellowness to the to the meat, you know, and it tasted delicious. Everyone's I mean, people they liked that injected flavor better than they liked it when I did it all low temp, you know, with the um with the uh what do we call that one? What do we call the exoskeleton bird? Bionic turkey. Yeah, bionic turkey.
So anyway. So I don't know. I don't know technically, but I know my results were good, and I did use a gelatinous stock. Oh, we've never taken a break, have we? No, we're reaching the end.
You want to take a quick break or do you want to blast through? We'll blast through. Let's blast through. Okay. Uh Jeremy writes in Hi, my parents have sent us a giant rib roost for Christmas dinner, but I'm stressed about cooking such a big and expensive piece of meat.
I'm curious if it makes sense to cook it low temp. Uh the center would be done perfectly, but how would the crust be with only a short blast in the oven? I have a circulator, a cerezal, and a normal residential oven. In short, how would you cook it? Thanks very much, Jeremy.
Alright, well, here's what I would do. Um I would. I've told this story a bunch, but one time I did uh a low temp on a on a rib roast and then um just did a quick finish off on the outside, and it was terrible because it's a huge, the huge interior of the meat is all the same doneness, and it turns out that you want you like rib roast, right, Sus? And what's your favorite part? I don't know.
You don't know, Jack, do you like rib roast? Sure. What's your favorite part? But the favorite part would be though. I know mine.
You know the outside part part of it. So like, you know, the rib, there's the eye, and then there's that layer of like fatty, like layered like decaly stuff that goes around it. You know what I'm talking about? Can you picture a rib in your in your mind? There's the the bone, then there's the eye that's attached directly to the bone, and then there's that thing that wraps around it.
Yeah, right. That part, when it's overcooked and all crunchy on the outside, and the fat's all crunchy, that's my favorite part of it. That's good, you're right. It's my favorite part. Is it properly cooked?
No, it's overcooked. Is it my favorite part? Yeah. So, you know, you don't want and a rib roast, you kind of need that, but what you don't want is to lose the ends of the rib because they're overcooked, and you don't want the main eye to be overcooked. In fact, you don't want that eye to be overcooked at all.
So here is what I would do. This is the technique I would use. I would um, and in fact, this is what I do do. I uh usually cut the um cut the roast off of the bone, right? Then I low temp the entire rib roast, and then I I cook the bones down.
Then I uh kind of but you don't have to remove the bone, but I do just because it's I uh the last time I did it, I couldn't fit it all in. Then normally what I'll do is I'll take the low temp cooked uh rib roast and I'll tie it back to the bone, right, after it's cooled down. Now you have the center of the rib totally nicely done. And now I'm not talking a short blast in the oven, just you can turn the oven higher than you normally would, and then you throw the rib roast in there, tied back to the bone, and then you get uh you so it's adds protection. Then you get the roasted flavor of the of the of the rib bones, which all you know, all bone gnars love, right?
Are you a bone gnar stuzz? No, Jack Bone Gnar. Uh yes. Well, I mean, you know, if it's good stuff. Yeah, and also if it's dry aged, you know, you don't want to necessarily like low temp it with the bone on because it's gonna really infuse too much kind of dry edge flavor.
Okay. So then you're looking at just doing instead of cooking it for hours and hours, you're looking at like a 45 or you know, minute or hour at a high temperature. And yeah, you're overcooking the outside of the meat, but that's kind of what you want. And that's what I would do. And then I would pull it out, and if you have any places that don't have a good looking crust on it, when it's all said and done, uh just hit it with the cerez all just to like crust up the outside and and you're done.
What do you think stuff? That's how I would do it. And in fact, how I have done it. Um okay. Uh boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.
Next question. Hammer and the nails. Not sure if this is still the right email to use, but I was listening to the recent episode on making stock in the venting slash non venting pressure cookers versus a stock pot, where we had said that uh, you know, I don't know why the venting pressure cookers um so you know the theory is you know, in my experience, if you use a pressure cooker like Coon Recon that doesn't vent, that it makes a superior stock to traditional stock in an open kettle. Uh, and that if you use a venting pressure cooker, i.e. one that like sprays out uh steam as it goes, that in fact it makes a stock that tastes inferior to even an open kettle and vastly inferior to the Coon Recon style.
Anyway, um I think the answer lies in the higher temperature and the venting pressure cooker, increasing the volatilization of aromatic chemicals, preferably over the rest. In other words, like more than the the getting rid of the nice aromatics more than the other ones. Since by their nature, they tend to have a fairly low boiling points, leading to the flavor venting off to the room. I'm also guessing if you captured the steam and condensed it out, you'd find a rather larger set of flavor-causing aromatics than you would get from the stock pot due to that effect. Anyway, love the show.
Hope you make it back out to Seattle sometime. Mike, I don't know. Don't know. Don't know. Someone will have to run the test and tell me.
All right. Got two questions in from the Twitter that I said I would answer. Here we go. Uh at said walking drunk wrote me and said, Do you have a time temperature recommendation for low temperature lamb hearts? I don't, but I'll tell you uh, you know, I don't cook enough uh mammal hearts, although I love, you know, my I love a chicken heart, does you like chicken hearts?
Jack, chicken hearts? Yeah, actually I I tried them and they're really good. Like on a skewer. Yeah, they are like like, okay, so it like like in terms of parts of a chicken, right? You got in my in my estimation, you got the skins and the hearts are right up there, and then you got like the meat afterwards.
You know what I mean? First the dark meat, then the light meat. Light meat's like down, down. They got the chicken feet somewhere in there near the near the light meat. Anyway, um I love chicken hearts.
But anyway, lamb hearts. Um so here's the issue, right? M heart muscle is n is chewy, right? And that's kind of what I like about chicken hearts because the size of them and duck hearts, the size of them is very nice. So when you eat one, you can get a kind of a crusty thing on the outside and it's chewy.
And it's that chewiness, that very chewiness that I enjoy. Right? So question is like what are you trying to do? You're trying to make it unchewy or not? Because it's gonna be chewy if you low temp it.
So your only choice then is to low temp it for so long that you're actually getting protein breakdown uh in in the muscle. So you're gonna have to cook it for days. You know days to get it to and then it might not taste good anymore because it might not taste chewy. From a temperature standpoint, I think you could cook it at whatever you would normally cook uh you know that stuff at so like anywhere between 55 and 57 depending on how you want it to be I would uh I would probably probably go somewhere like 55 56 for that but you're talking now you're gonna have to I would I do is I would take I would take three bags four bags five bags and I would cook uh one for 24 hours I would cook one for 48 hours one for 72 hours and then one maybe even for whatever four days is in hours and then uh pull them uh chill them and then uh deep fry them all because or roast them because you still need a crust on the outside you know what I'm saying Jack you want you want an an uncrusted uh heart no no but for testing I wouldn't do that. For testing I would just re-therm them and taste the meat to see what the texture taste is like before you make them all taste good by by crusting them up.
But I I would I would I would test that uh and see kind of uh whether or not you get a good result. And if you do do that, I would definitely tweet in and tell me what happened so that I can figure out whether or not it was um whether or not it was good or it was bad. I was gonna say too duck heart, maybe one of the most delicious things I've ever had too. Yeah, you like it the duck heart? Yeah.
Duck heart is duck heart is good. Well I got one more quick one. All right. Uh at Zhang Road in cooking issues. Any tips for keeping buffon cut from getting soggy bottom.
Soggy bottom's gross word, right? Yep. Yeah. Uh venting doesn't seem to help venting the the pastry. So we're talking about beef wrapped in uh in a crust.
Uh cooking issues, uh I I also won't have a circulator with me to avoid moisture loss from the meat. And the duck cells, the duck cells is you know the mixed kind of uh mushroom cooked mushroomslash uh you know shallot or whatever mixture cooked chopped up that you put with these things or with like you know with a beef wellington or with uh you know buffon cut or something like this. Uh the duck sells are cooked as dry as possible. All right. Here are my recommendations for it.
Uh I really would, if you could do a uh pre-cook on the meat uh so that you're not getting as much drip loss. Like that's really the only thing that's gonna save you here is preventing the drip loss out of the meat, which is causing the bottom of the crust to be soggy. So obviously if I had a circulator, I would uh sear the hell out of the outside of the meat. I would then circulate it till it was done, cool it down, wrap it in puff pastry, and then stick that puff pastry in a really, really hot oven just to or not really really hot, but h like like hot enough to cook the puff pastry without really cooking the meat that much, and that way you're gonna get a nicely cooked puff pastry. 'Cause even no matter what, even if you don't get a lot of moisture loss, you're gonna get a little bit of gumminess around it.
Now the duck cells is there to provide a barrier so that you don't have that much problem, right? And it's a thermal barrier. So, like a lot of dry duck cells around is gonna cause is gonna help you. However, they're not that absorbent. So you're not you're still as the juices drip out of a raw piece of meat down into the into the bed of the puff pastry, it's gonna get soggy and no amount of venting is gonna happen help that.
I'm presuming you're saying soggy, you said soggy on the bottom, yeah. Soggy bottoms. Now, this is not traditional and might not even taste good, but if you were to line the bottom underneath it with dry rusks. You like the word rusk? Sure.
Rusks. Like some sort of like dried uh biscuit or bread. It could maybe act like a sponge and a thermal barrier, right? So you could get good cook off of your pastry so it's not soggy, so it's uh starts out life nicely, and then also that could absorb some of the like bloody juices as they come in. Maybe it's texturally good, maybe it's textually bad, but that's the only thing I can think of off the top of my head because that Twitter just came in.
Uh let us know whether you like these ideas or what's going on. Uh do the 12 days of steering, uh join Heritage Radio Network. If I don't talk to you, happy the holidays 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.
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