This piece was brought to you by S. Wallace Edwards and Sons, SurreyFarms.com. Hey, hey, hey, I'm Jimmy Carboni from Deer Assassins Radio. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwood, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more.
Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you live on Heritage Radio Network at Roberta's Pizzeria, where in Bushwick, Brooklyn, joined as usual with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Stas? Good. Yeah?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, Stas has been busy these days working on marketing stuff for this. All's it going there, Stas? Fine.
Fine? Yeah. It's doing alright, actually, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Should be getting another shipment in hopefully like March, right? Yeah, March. I hope so. And uh hopefully, no promises, because I can't promise anything because I'm not building the stuff myself. Like Stas and I don't have the ability to build them ourselves, which is why we can't promise dates.
But hopefully in that shipment will also come the steak decorators people, for those of you that we owe steak decorators to, so I'm very excited about that. Um anyways. We also are joined with our master blaster of engineering, Jack Insley. Hello. Oh, nice.
You see, when you're actually running it, you can put the reverb on whenever you want. How are you doing, Jack? Yeah, I can. I'm feeling a little under the weather, but I'm all right. Yeah?
Is that why you need the reverb? You need the reverb to get yourself uh pumped up there? I can do a lot of things with my voice on here. Did you know that? No, let's see somebody.
What the what? Wait, do that again. Hello. Whoa. Oh man.
Yeah, yeah, I got some tricks left. Wait, now so like what's interesting about that one is it's not temporally shifted. It's just pitch shifted. So it's not like what they used to do with it like Funkadelic, where they actually would just speed the track up by like one or two. You know what I mean?
Right, right, right. Oh man. Can you can you go the other way? Can you go helium? Or can do it while I talk.
Well my God, you can be the Yonkers raceway guy now. That's true. Oh my God. We're gonna need to uh okay, we're not gonna do this to you people, like live while you're listening, but we're gonna come up with a choreography of craziness that we're gonna we're gonna start uh you know cooking issues. We're just gonna do like like up and down, like oh my god, we can do all sorts of parliament arrangements.
Mm-hmm. Oh god. We have to come up with our own kind of peafunk style mythology. Like, you know, Stas is like vegan face devoid of funk. Devoid of funk.
Uh so anyway, uh all right. So uh this week, what do we have? Do we have anything s we don't have anything special going on this week? It's Melbourne Week. Nice.
Although uh I am gonna be asking uh requests for people because over the next couple of months before the spring, I am going to be finally, finally, after like twenty years, I'm finally gonna be building an outdoor kitchen. Ooh. Yeah, right. So I need some I need well, first of all, there's gonna be a deep fryer out there 'cause I I put my fryer where my mouth is. You know what I'm saying?
I tell other people to put an outdoor fryer and I am gonna put an outdoor fryer in. But I think that might be the only gas fired thing I have out there. I'm gonna maybe put a gas assist on the fire pit, but check out what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna have a uh I'm gonna have a a fi a standard fire pit, right? But I also want integrated into this big thing, a tandoor.
You know, Lucas, longtime listener, Lucas, a museum supporter, he's building a tandoor right now. And a uh and a bread oven. Maybe, as much as I rib them, maybe Quebecois style bread oven. So a bread oven, you know, masonry, w retained heat, masonry oven, fire pit, tandor, and here's the last one. This is the unusual one because everyone's a everyone builds a tandoor outside.
I'm gonna put a curticula in that son of a gun. So a curticula is the Roman uh kind of cooking platform. So that what it's weird, it's outdoors, it looks like a fireplace, right? So it's like looks like uh like a mantle, like a flat thing, and underneath it is a is an arch-shaped thing that looks like a fireplace, right? Right?
So it's like it's like imagine like a little mini arc de triomphe with like a flat tabletop on top without all the you know little ornamentation and crap, right? But here's the weird Roman thing is that they don't build a fire in the arch and cook in the arch. They store wood in the arch and they build the fire directly on top of the table surface. And they cook on this table surface. And um years ago, Johnny Azini and I did a uh um like a v video shoot where we were imitating Roman cooking and we built one, like a curticula, and we were cooking on top of it.
And I actually really liked it. It's kind of fun because you know, like instead of like uh reaching into a fire pit or reaching into an oven, it's like the fire is literally right there and you can move around it and like all the way around it, and you can like shift stuff around in kind of a cool way. So I kind of liked it. So I'm gonna do that. Because you know what?
Because I can. And another thing I'm doing, uh, we talk about uh before I get to the questions. Oh, by the way, should you have questions, you can always call them in too 718 497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. So I like espresso.
Um I love espresso, espresso is good. You do you like espresso styles or but do you drink it straight? No, you drink like lattes or you drink like macchiato? What do you drink? I drink from the Mr.
Coffee. No, no, espresso. You said espresso. When you're gonna have an espresso beverage. But do you like straight espresso?
Okay. So anyway, I don't really like uh uh it's not that I don't like it. I'm not I don't go out of my way for like super drip or like you know, pour overs or pour over sounds like homeover to me. I know it's like super popular now. We had a good one at that uh Japanese style coffee place.
Yeahs gave a pfft because it just took forever. It took for freaking ever, but I'm fine with that. You know, I enjoy all this stuff and I enjoy, but really my heart's in espresso. Uh but I haven't had a chance to update my espresso game in many, many years because I had a spending kibosh dropped on me, you know, and because I already had a fairly decent setup. So now I'm also, and you guys will I'll regale you with the stories.
When it happens, um I'm updating my espr my espresso rig. Now the trick with espresso, the mistake that people make, right? Espresso, and I've said this a billion times, is all about uh control and repeatability of a fairly small range of variables, but it turns out it's more difficult than you'd think to control them all uh very well. Um so I updated my uh my roasting setup because you know how I roast coffee styles? You know I'm trying to save money now, so I went back to roasting my own coffee and uh I use what's called a whirly pop.
So you know the you know the popcorn maker that you put on the stove and you twist it and it goes and it pops and it's this aluminum whirly pop thing. So a lot of people I went I used to pop with air popcorn poppers, I had dedicated air roasters, and I burnt out every single one that I ever had, every single one I burnt out. The whirly pop, it don't ever burn out. It just doesn't burn out. You know what I mean?
And they've they've superseded that, you know, you know, with home roasters now. They have home roasters now that almost act like mini drum machines. They're awesome, but I can't afford them. Whirly pop is like 15 bucks, right? But you know what I hate about the whirly pop?
The whirly pop, you have to crank it all the time. So, like let's say all of a sudden your nose starts to run. Can you go get a Kleenex? No. No.
Because you have to turn it all the time. Because if you don't turn it all the time, it's gonna burn. If something else happens, if the phone rings, can you answer the phone? No. No, you can't.
Because if you do, it'll burn. Can you make a cup of coffee while you're doing it? No. Like can you take the last of the stuff that you had while you're roasting the new stuff and make no, right? Which sucks.
It's it's terrible. And and and it's like 10 or 12 minutes of time when you can sit there and do nothing else, and then another couple of minutes cooling it down afterwards, like putting the beans back and forth after you roast them. So uh I took, you know, Stas and I have a an Ultimaker for Booker and Dax for prototyping. So I probably should I went off the reservation. I mean I didn't really use it for work in this application, but I printed out uh a little housing, I chopped off the end of the whirly pop thing, left a little little bit of the handle that you crank on it.
Uh it chopped off enough so I could get a straight piece, you know, because the handle's bent, if you could picture it in your head. Chopped it off, and then I put a little like 12 volt DC motor I got on Amazon for like six bucks and put it on there, printed a like a case that fit around and held it onto the handle so it wouldn't spin. Now that sucker's electric. Oh yeah. So now like for like eight bucks or something, I have an electric whirly pop, and now I can, you know, you listen, never roast, never roast coffee on a stove and leave it unattended.
I'm not saying you do that, but I can now blow my nose, make a cup of coffee, move around, like get a drink of water while I'm doing it. It's just so much more civilized. I can't believe it. It took me years to do this, but it's all because you know how you know how you don't do anything for a long time, you stay in say stasis, right? And then all of a sudden you get a kick in the butt and you just do everything all at once.
Well, it's like that with the coffee. So because I'm getting this new place, I need a new coffee grinder, right? Now the coffee grinder I have is called the Ranchillio Rocky, and it's like at the time it was, you know, I couldn't believe I was spending that kind of money on a on a grinder. It was like 300 bucks or 350 or something. And it was the highest kind of level grinder that any home jockey was getting, because this was like 12 years ago, 10, 12 years ago, something like this.
Uh make 12 maybe. And um, maybe more. Jeez. Hmm. I might have gotten it before Booker was born.
I don't remember. Anyways, it was kind of like it, you know. Uh, but now people are getting much kind of higher level grinders, but no one is well, that's not true. There's plenty of rich people out there, but not very many people now are buying the highest level of grinder, like the Titan series are called grinders, like the very large ones with the very large burrs in them. And it turns out they make uh just you know, everyone who uses them says they make superior espresso.
They're all they're huge and they're expensive, like thousands of dollars, right? So am I gonna buy that? I don't know. No, I'm not gonna buy that. What am I crazy?
I'm gonna buy, but it, you know, everyone spends all their money on the espresso machine, but not on the grinder, which is a huge, huge error because the world's greatest espresso machine with a crappy grinder, you're very limited in what you're gonna produce in terms of quality espresso. So it turns out that there is this lunatic company called Orphan Espresso out of Idaho, right? And it's a husband and wife team, I think they're husband and wife, and they just make these crazy grinders that have really high quality burr sets in hand grinders. So they make unfortunately it's always out of stock because they don't really give a crap. It's called the Ferro's, and I can't get one right now because they're out of stock, and what happens is is that they get the parts in for like 40 or 50 of them.
They put it on and they sell out like like this, and then when they're gone, it's like you, and they never tell you it's gonna happen. And people, I understand that because you know what? They probably hate doing customer service. I'm with them. You know what I'm saying?
So I don't I'm not blaming them. It's just I wish I could get one, you know. So they have a grinder set. First of all, this grinder called the the Ferro's, the Orphan Espresso Ferros, it's only $245, which seems like, oh, that's a lot. But the group the I can't buy just the burrs, because I looked into DIYing one.
I can't buy the burrs for less than like 150. So I don't know how they're building the whole grinder for two 245 dollars, because they're building a grinder that has the same burr set in it. It's called the Coney is the name of the grinder, Maser Coney. And it's it's like uh I think it's like a $4,000 grinder or something like this, and for $245, you can get that same grind quality, it just put a little elbow grease into it. I got their next down in line one because that one's always in stock called the Leto 2, and I have to say my espresso quality has jumped up.
I might have to get one from my home rig. Anyway, uh later I'll talk about because I'm finally gonna pimp out the uh Ranchillo Silvia, which is you know, the the kind of um it's kind of the 39 Merc of espresso machines in that everybody um you know, everyone kind of tricks out the the Sylvia because it's really easy to trick out. So everyone's done PID, which is you know the temperature control loops, and people have done everything to it. So I'm never I'm not gonna be treading on any new water in it, but I'll go through the kind of modifications that I've done to the Sylvia and I'll report back as it happens. But that's probably gonna take a couple of months because I'm only gonna be doing it in drips and drabs here and there.
Anyway, so that's my coffee report and my uh my other report. Should we get on to some acquestiones? Yeah. Okay. Uh Steven Hoppy, he says last name pronounced hope, if you care to know, which I do.
I like that. Hoppy. But like hop like with a capital E, which which I also like. Like because if it's H O PE, that the capital E means it's pronounced E like easy E, right? Hoppy.
Anyway. Uh from Chicago. Uh writes in about centrifuges. Hey, Dave, Nastasia, Jack, and anyone else who might be present. No one.
Only got the hard course. Hard course. Uh I'm hoping to purchase a centrifuge that I hope to use in a bar I'm in the process of developing and found what looks to be a decent one for sale at a good price. It's uh for those of you that know, it's a uh made by Fisher, and it's uh you know, there's Fisher is really a catalog, they don't really make anything. Um I don't I think that's my impression of them, but um it's about a thousand bucks, which for a three-liter centrifuge is pretty good.
Anyway, so here's here's the question. There are a couple of things about this model that give me pause. For one, as you can see if you follow the link, you can't because you're on the radio. And and I'm not gonna give you guys the link because if I give you the link, then maybe someone else would buy it out from underneath Stephen, and that would not be fair. Would that be fair?
Would not be fair. Uh it only does 3,000 times the force of gravity, and I know that you use a centrifuge that gets to 4,000. On top of that, this model is not refrigerated. I think that the lower G force will just mean the product will take more time to form a puck, but I don't know how much longer and if this will be a problem. If purchased, this will be used in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Never been. You ever been? Mm-mm. I'd like to go. Wouldn't you like to go?
Someone I know it was just in Puerto Rico. Hyper. I didn't know he was in Puerto Rico. When was he in Puerto Rico? When he worked with us.
No, no, but I mean I know someone who just like literally just got back from Puerto Rico. Um someone in Book Garden Tex, maybe. Anyway. And I have a slight concern about the product heating up too much uh in Puerto Rico. I get you.
Uh if it's going to take uh much longer for a puck formation in a hot, humid environment. Does this seem like too large a caveat to make the purchase? Thanks for the help and for everything else you do, listening to cooking issues has inspired and emboldened me to give up cabinetry and take on bar management. Well, cabin, I think cabinetry is a great profession. I mean, I'm not saying you should go back to it, but a lot of honor in doing good woodwork.
You know what I mean? Yeah. I like good woodwork. Uh cheers, Steven from Chicago. Although I guess in the future, shortly, you know, we'll be in San Juan.
So here's my thoughts. Um so for those of you out there that don't have the link. This is a spinning bucket centrifuge. Remember, centrifuge is separating um products based on density. It spins around really quickly, and um the denser stuff goes to the outside of the spinning rotor, and the lighter stuff gets pushed up to the inner side of the spinning rotor where the forces of gravity uh well, the centripetal force is less, right?
Now, there's what you need to to know. First of all, on refrigeration, the spinning from the rotor does generate a significant amount of heat. So if you're gonna be spinning, things get pretty warm. Now, that said, I know plenty of people like Wiley Dufrein, his centrifuge is not refrigerated, and he's had good luck with it, but you do need to do a couple of things. You need to uh chill your buckets down beforehand.
So sometimes I would put ice water in them when I used a non refrigerated centrifuge um and just get everything cold beforehand. You can store a little don't don't ever put anything into the um into the cabinet while it's spinning because it can get kicked up and just it's a nightmare. Don't ever do that. But you can put um you can put ice into the uh like bags of ice into the centrifuge cabinet while it's not spinning to get it nice and cold beforehand, and that can help a little bit. So if you buckets start cold and your product starts cold and your centrifuge starts cold, and you might not need to do all of those things, you have a a good chance of having the stuff not get too hot.
But I'll just give you an idea when something spins for like fifteen or twenty minutes without a refrigerator and it starts everything starts out at room temperature, you can get, you know, up above, slightly above body temp, um, you know, up into like yeast proofing temperatures when you um spin. So that the the temperature rise is appreciable, and though the longer it stays in, obviously, the higher the temperature is gonna go. So that's you know what you're dealing with if you if you're talking about um uh talking about not having a refrigerator. It's not insurmountable. It's not something that uh, you know, I would w if I could choose refrigeration, would I have it?
Yeah. Uh you know, would I not buy a centrifuge because it didn't have a fridge? No. And the advantage of not having a fridge is the centrifuges with fridges are a lot heavier, they cost more, uh, and they're a lot bigger. They take up a lot more space and they take more power.
So these are you know three things that aren't necessary, and they throw more heat off into your kitchen because remember, uh any refrigerator in your kitchen is throwing off heat. That's how it's making things cold on the inside. Okay. Um so that's that. Um and if you're a real DIY moder, um I'm not gonna recommend that you modify a centrifuge.
What the crazy? What am I? What am I crazy? Nuts? Dave said I could modify the centrifuge and it blew up and killed everyone in my restaurant, you know?
Yeah. See now that I deal with these corporate weasels all the time, like I I I have to think like a corporate weasel sometimes, which is kind of depressing. Stas is like, who who are you? I don't even know you anymore. I can't believe you moderated something you were gonna say based on corporate weasel think.
Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, we all get worse as we get older, I think. You know, we're not like fine wines as it happens. So the other question is about the uh the G forces involved. Okay, here's the thing.
On a spinning bucket centrifuge, um I find that you need a higher G force than you do in a fixed angle rotor. So a fixed angle rotor is one where you have tubes or vials or whatever, and they're kept at a fixed angle, right? Duh, fixed angle uh rotor. And what happens is is at that fixed angle, uh particles that are um that are getting uh spun out of uh the solution, they're not in solution, but getting uh desuspended, let's say, and turn into a puck, they hit that side wall of the fixed angle rotor, and then they scour themselves down that angle and compact into a nice pellet, right? So fixed angle rotors can form a nice pellet uh at fairly low G forces.
Whereas a spinning butt and there's typically less distance that um that the particles have to travel before they hit that wall, so it spins out faster. Spinning bucket rotors, um, they can separate fairly quickly, but they don't compact as hard when they're hitting because they're they're basically just settling onto a flat thing and then they have to push. There's no kind of scouring action down into it. So when a spinning bucket rotor slows down, which is when the problems happen, they tend to kick stuff back up into the um product and they tend to cloud. So back when you know when my centrifuges are running closer to 3,000 G's, like when the bearings are getting shot, things tend to be a little cloudier.
Is it still gonna work? Yes. Do you can you still carbonate with it? Yes. Does it make me super happy?
Do I wake up with a big smile on my face thinking about a centrifuge that can only run at 3,000 G's? No. You know what I mean? But that said, uh, you know, it's definitely going to be worthwhile. Um, and certain things are going to clarify at 3,000 G's no problem, like Banana Houstino, which is a clarification monster.
But other things that are on the verge of not clarifying or that have very fine sediment that tends to kick up, you might have some problems, and spinning longer might solve them or it might not. But you know, it seems like it's a fairly small centrifuge and it's you know might be worth the money if you can get it for a thousand dollars. The ones that I used to get uh for really cheap um DeJuans don't seem to be as available as they as they used to be. But here's the other thing I'm gonna recommend. If you're going to buy a used centrifuge for a bar program, uh don't count on it to survive.
You must get a backup unit, okay? Uh you must get a backup unit, or you must train your bar staff to be able to do alternate techniques like agar clarification. But agar clarification is not going to work if you're doing things like Houstino. So, you know, a new centrifuge, is it gonna break? Probably not.
It's eight grand, right? That's just that's just facts. But uh a used centrifuge, don't think you can get away with a $1,000 one use centrifuge because that sucker will break. I'm telling you from experience, it will break. And the odds that someone at the bar, if you're not there, it is able to fix it themselves, is low for two reasons.
Not that many people are trained in fixing centrifuges, or have the kind of kind of mechanical, I'm just gonna freaking do this thing and fix it. And even if they did, what are the odds that someone who's working for you feels comfortable ripping apart your centrifuge? Because what if they mess it up? You know what I'm saying? So it's very hard to get someone at the bar to be able to do something like fix a centrifuge for you.
So if you're not willing to fix it or you're not able to get there instantly to fix it if it goes down, or if you don't have some sort of, you know, way that you don't need those menu items on a regular basis, then get it back up. Yeah? Did you fix it yesterday? Yes. We had one that was broken yesterday.
The brushes, it was the brushes that went bad. And I might have need to replace it again, but I was able to get it to run, no problem. Look, there's a it's the kind of thing, it's like, you know, I know that Stas and I said that we weren't gonna be, you know, you know, duct tape and bubblegum. Is that when it was like balancing on two things and you had it like it was underneath? It's still like that.
Yeah. Well, this is like on the sheet tray, yeah. That did it didn't fit on. Right. Yeah.
This one, it's like I mean, look, uh, if you guys knew the kind of like real dumb way that we have to do things nine times out of time. The funniest thing ever happened, I forget who it was, somebody once like said that they accused us of like having all this like awesome equipment and like like cushy everything. And while that thing came in, I think I was literally lifting a centrifuge by myself, like up to a place over my head so I could go underneath it and work on the motor. Remember that day? Oh my god.
Anyway, you know, uh again, like we're not as duct tape as we were before, though, right? Styles were getting a little better. Yeah. Yeah, but whatever. It's like it's like uh it's like Jack, you know how you we've had this conversation a billion times, but it's always worth having again.
You know how in a band you keep on saying that someday someone else is gonna move your equipment for you? Yeah. Does that ever happen? Yes. Okay, you have other people moving your equipment now?
No, I mean, not fully, but sometimes in some gigs, you know. Really? Yeah. Man, I was all about that it was like, is it I I'm gonna get to the point in my life where someone's gonna carry my bass rig around. No, you won't.
No, you won't. You know, and it's the same thing with our crap. Uh same thing with the cooking crap. You just never get there. Okay.
Brian Haggerty writes in from Minneapolis. And by the way, he says at the end that uh we were wondering about it once that the abbreviation for Minneapolis M P L S. Did you know that? I saw that. Yeah.
See, it doesn't make sense. I don't I don't get Minneapolis. NYC you get. NYC you get New York City. But many.
M N wait M N P S No M P L S. N P L S. M like Minnesota or Minneapolis. Oh, gotcha. P like political science.
Yeah. L like latrine. S like sandwich. Got it. Mipples.
But like the thing is, is like, like, I don't know, like M I P S or something. MIPS. I don't know. Like mini Mipples? There's no N.
To me in Minneapolis is about the ends, right? Minneapolis. Min. This is just Mipples. How about an M N PNP or M N P S?
Minnipus. Minpus. I don't know. I don't know, dude. How about just Minneapolis?
Yeah. I'm looking at the word Minneapolis next to Mipples, and I'm not. I'm not feeling it. You feeling it? No.
It's just not. No. No. No. Right?
No. No. No. No. No.
At first I thought it was like some sort of contraction of like Minneapolis, St. Paul, like a kind of Twin City thing. But it's not. It's literally just Minneapolis. Crap on those St.
Paul people. It's not even in there. You know what I mean? Whatever. Mipples.
I kind of now I kind of like it. Now I have in my uh in my head, um, you know, like at the beginning of a lot of rap songs, they'll be like mipples, Mipples, Mipples, Mipples. You know what I mean? Like uh like Public Enemy used to do that all, but they wouldn't say mipples, they'd be like uh uh uh what's that song? Here come the drums.
It's off uh I'll look it up anyway. But uh that's what I have it going through my head. I have someone like mipping mipping mip. Oh, I know. It's that uh never mind, I'm not gonna get into it.
It's off of uh uh 91 the uh the what is it the 91 the The Enemy Strikes Black or The Empire Strikes Black? I don't know. Remember that album, Jack? Anyway. Uh Brian Haggerty writes in regarding chia.
I recently discovered your show and I'm loving it. I'm wondering if you had any well, thank you. Uh I'm wondering if you had any thoughts about the usefulness of chia seeds. Daz, can you do the chia song for me? No.
Come on. Jack, can you do the chia song? Am I gonna have to do it? I don't want to do it. You're gonna have to do it.
Okay, uh you you did you used to do those things when you were a kid? Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know what the most recently I had a new old stock, uh, this is maybe 10 years ago, uh, Mr. T Chia head.
It's awesome. His mohawk is perfect because it's got the ridges in it to hold the chia seeds. Did you do chia pets when you were a kid, Jack? Why not? What the hell's wrong with that?
I don't know. You don't like cheese? Stas, do you like a classic chia pet? Or do you like some weird chia pets? No, classic.
I had the classic. Not like some sort of Homer Simpson growing hair thing. No, classic. I imagine it seems like a very California thing. They have chia seeds in uh disgusting stuff now.
Like in juices. Well, that's what we're about to talk about. Do you well do you prefer basil seeds? I I had my first one two days ago, and I thought it was disgusting. The texture.
Have you had it? It's it's like mucilage. It's gross. In a beverage. People like it.
I thought it was gonna be like because it was raspberry flavored, that it would be. I like raspberry seeds, you know, so I could like crunch. Yeah, but raspberry seeds, and we're about to talk about this, are very different from chia seeds. I know. I didn't know that.
So hugely different. Gross. Gross. Gross. What are your actual thoughts?
Gross, gross. Are you gonna have a new face just for chia seeds? It's still sitting in my fridge. Still sitting in your fridge. You couldn't convince uh anyone to drink that?
No. No. How like how Xanthan looking is it? Not very Xanthan looking, but the texture is very. Yeah, very Xanthan.
So we'll get into it. So anyway, I recently uh okay, but as you know, okay. I was wondering if you had any thoughts about the usefulness of chia seeds backing up so people know because obviously I went off on a tangent because I cannot help myself. Uh as I'm sure you know, they absorb a ton of water and form a weird gel. Would you say that's accurate, Styles?
Weird gel. She's got her weird gel face on, her chia gel face. Her trying to keep it down in her mind face on. Various vegan folks suggest, I like that. Various vegan folks.
It's got a good ring to it. You have uh you have good uh alliterative uh prose, Brian. Uh various vegan folks suggest using a slurry of ground seeds, ground chia seeds, and water. One tablespoon of ground seeds to three tablespoons of water in place of an egg. Yeah?
Okay. Uh I have used chia seeds in turkey meatloaf to good effect. America's Test Kitchen has a turkey burger recipe that calls for gelatin to offset the dryness of the turkey. Or you could just not overcook the freaking turkey, America's Test Kitchen. This is why turkey burgers suck so hard.
They're always are over freaking cooked. Why do people do this? It's like salmon burgers. Like someone serves you a salmon burger and they overcook the piss out of it because if they salmon burgers, like theoretically, a salmon burger is a good idea, right? Except for they always make it too far in advance.
The sucker oxidizes, you get that oxidized salmon flavor, and it's overcooked into a dry puck. And they do the same thing with the turkey burger. So when they order the turkey burger out, I'm like, don't order the turkey burger. Don't do it. You know what I mean?
Anyways. But you can make a good turkey burger without using chia seeds or gelatin if you just take care. Whatever. I'm not going to get into that. We're not talking about that right now.
Okay. I have used back to the question. I have used chia seeds and turkey meatloaf to good effect. America's Test Kitchen has a turkey burger recipe that calls for gelatin to offset the dryness of the turkey. So I figured I'd use chia slurry.
How do you like that word? Chia slurry. Instead of gelatin. I also uh mixed in um ground dry chia seeds on the theory that as the meat cooked and released its juices, juices, those juices might be captured by the chia seeds and thus uh be retained in the loaf. I don't know if this mechanism, this mechanism functioned, but I do know the finished product was juicy and delicious.
Awesome. Awesome. That's good. Uh I used chia seeds in crepe batter in place of eggs to weird effect. The seeds thickened the batter like crazy, so I added a ton of water plus some oil to thin it down, and it cooked up strangely with lots of holes that developed as the water evaporated.
The taste was not bad, but it wasn't much like a crepe. Yeah. So remember, you know, you don't want a lot of like, you know, big like injera style bubbles in a crepe. And uh this kind of xanthan-y effect is gonna have a different water hold. So you should think of chia like a xanthan because it forms a mucilaginous uh slime.
And literally, like technically, they're like it forms a mucilaginous slime, much like Xanthan does. So you're gonna get, you know how like you remember when we used to foam Xanthan foams for demo styles? You get those big holes in them because of the way it holds. I don't know if it technically forms um, I don't know if the gel, because of what I was reading, uh has what's called a yield point, which we'll get to in a minute. But um, so things like Xanthan have a yield point, so they actually act like a solid uh up, you know, a gel up to a particular amount of force being applied, and then they shear thin rapidly.
I know that chia from the research I was doing is rapidly shear thinning, but I don't know kind of how much of a yield point it has. Anyway, yield point is really good for things like eggs. So I'm imagining it does have a yield uh point, uh, because that's why Xanthan is so good at replacing eggs, because it's not a protein, but it has a yield point, so it can hold things uh pretty well. Uh anyways, um so the taste was not bad, but it wasn't much like a crepe. Anyway, anyway, modernist cuisine, uh modernist cooking uses all kinds of weird gelling agents, but I haven't seen very much about chia gel in the modernist cooking related stuff I've read so far.
Uh for instance, uh Science Fair, which is like Naveen and Kevin and those guys, you know, the the the Harvard or X-Harbard guys. Because they're not that hard anymore, right? Yeah. They're gone. Uh they have a long list of hydrocolor and hydrocolor enablers, but chia seeds not on the list.
I'm interested in your thoughts, Brian Haggerty. Okay, so the you know, look, the interesting thing is, oh, by the way, before I get started, uh just take a look at this um document. It's open source, so you can get it on the internet. The International Journal of Food Science, Volume uh 2014, uh article 241053. It's called Chemical and Functional Properties of Chia Seed, Salvia Hispanica Gum by Myra Ruby Segura Campos et al.
It's available online. It's a good read. And interestingly, you know, what uh what they said that I find found interesting is that uh it was used in Aztec ceremonies, chia seeds, for a long time. And their argument, and I haven't researched the history of it enough, is that it's literally because it had religious significance that when the conquistadors came in and wiped out all traces of um religious ceremony that chia was kind of expunged, and that's why it wasn't used uh very much uh in that kind of stuff for for a long time, even though it remained a traditional food stuff. But that chia seeds was an incredibly important uh food stuff.
Like in the words of the article, less than corn, less important than corn, but more important than amaranth. Um interesting. Um all hydrocolloids, almost all hydrocolloids are natural things that are extracted either from um fermentation like xanthan or gel an. So, you know, a bacteria or a fungus is making a slime, and uh that slime is then you know purified and turned into a gum, um, or from things like seeds. Um guar seed, um, you know, the locust bean seed.
Uh so the you know, this that's how we come up with hydrocolors. But the the interesting thing is that there are a lot of seeds out there that have hydrocolloid properties in them that have just never been really researched from an industrial standpoint. Sometimes it's because they're there's not enough production out there, and sometimes it's just an oversight. And so uh this article is saying that they believe that chia seeds do have the ability to have some commercialization in terms of their use because they can be grown in places where other things don't aren't necessarily going to grow very well. Uh, and they have some interesting properties.
So, what are those properties? Chia seed forms a slimy uh gel at very low concentrations, as Nastasia knows from her raspberry drink. Um, but also what's interesting about chia seeds is chia seeds were an important dietary uh item because they're very high in oil. So it's a very uh like they're 39% oil, very high uh oil percentage. And if you soak the chia seeds or grind them and you get this mucilaginous sludge, this mucilaginous sludge is mainly formed by a polysaccharide, as all hydrocolloids are, but it also has a large protein component in it, the way that gum arabic does, and a very high oil component in it.
And that combination, that kind of triple threat of uh oil and um you know, oil and polysaccharide and protein means that it not only can hold and absorb water, but it can hold and absorb oil, and they think because of the protein also can uh emulsify. So you can use it as an emulsifier, hence it's a good maybe good replacer for something like eggs. I haven't experimented with this. This is all just this article, but I'm pretty interesting interested in it. Unfortunately, to get the pure um hydrocolloid, and by the way, the yield of this gum is fairly high, like on the order of 10, 11% by weight of the chia seed, right?
So like a good bit of it is functional, then the rest of it you have to deal with is the seed and all that other stuff. Most of the, they think that most of these properties are concentrated in the outer coat uh, you know, near the edge of the seed. Anyways, unfortunately, to produce it the way they produced it in the article, you have to uh soak the seeds, blend them, then you know, then you have to like heat it at 50 C, and then you have to spin it at ten thousand times the force of gravity for like three or four hours to get the to you know separate the seeds out from the gum and then you can dry it and have the gum. So, you know, interesting, but I've never I've never used it. But it is very interesting.
Maybe uh 'cause th they suggest maybe making mayonnaise with it or anything that needs emulsifying or oil holding, but you don't want to use um things like eggs. Anyway. Uh so we got a quick uh quick two questions in. Uh Jared writes in about uh ISIs. With respect to flavor extraction into alcohol and oil, how do chamber vacuums and uh EC uh whippers, ISI EC whippers differ and if you can start with only one, which is preferred, or is there a better option than either of them, especially for long term shelf life uh of the flavor.
Does alcohol percentage or oil type matter? What else should be considered? Thanks very much. Okay. Uh I'm not I'm not he not gonna push my book except for I go into like excruciating detail in the book on this kind of stuff.
And so I'm like I'm not gonna be able to go as in depth here. I will say this, yes, alcohol percentage matters. Uh I mean uh th higher or lower alcohol isn't necessarily better or worse, but higher alcohol is going to extract things quicker, right? So it all depends on what kind of a flavor. It's it's like it's like anything else.
There's no better, there is no good guys, there is no bad guys. Just you and me stuzz and we just disagree. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. She's boffing to that one.
We all know that's a good tune. Anyway, um oil type I don't think is gonna matter as much except for I guess obviously if something's a solid fat or liquid fat. So maybe i it does matter. I don't have as much experience with that. I usually use neutrals or uh an oil whose flavor I particularly like, something like uh olive oil.
With respect to vacuum machine versus EC, um there the fundamental the fundamental point is this the EC is has is a lot more flexible, it has a lot more power to do infusions because the pressure differentials are a lot wider. Uh and you know, you can do things like heat it in the in the EC, you can you know put a much higher pressure differential, it's easier to deal with. That said, um, if you can deal with the lower pressure differentials that you're working on in a vacuum machine, which is only like 15 psi, the advantage that a vacuum machine has is you can do a huge quantity at once, like you know, depends on the size of your vacuum machine. But I've done like gallons at once. Uh that's you know, four liters in units of four liters for eumetric types.
And uh, you know, so it can do that kind of a thing. And to be able to do that with pressure, you would move away from uh an EC and you would get a five gallon Cornelius keg and you'd hook it up to a um nitrous tank or in a pinch of CO2 tank if you had time to let it vent off, and you could do it that way. But um, if you could do it in an EC and you could afford the chargers, then I'd say it's a superior technique to using a vacuum. Uh but and it's a lot easier to experiment with the EC because the the unit quantities are much smaller. So anyway, that's my feelings on it.
But uh I, you know, again, in the in the book I wrote so many, I can't even I like I can't even think about it anymore because of all the words I wrote in that freaking book. Stas won't even look at the book. As you all know, she uses it as kind of a McDLT hot food separator. Like that's she can't doesn't want to open it. I think she might have it taped shut so that she never has to see anything on the inside of it.
And but she says it's just thick enough to make sure that you never get the hot side mixing with the cold side. So it's you know, at least it's pretty flat, right? Yeah. Doesn't bend too much. So, you know, I've done a good job right there.
That's that's all I can hope for. Last in, Alvin Schultz, our good friend Alvin Schultz writes in about eggnog. Hi, Dave. Hammer, Jack, Indie Jesus, Santis Hipster, and friends. I've been inspired by Booker and Dax's Nick Bennett.
And haven't we all been inspired by Nick Bennett to make some aged eggnog for next year and years to come. Uh Bennett just did a tasting recently of like three-year-old eggnog or something like this. I recently had a one-year-old eggnog from Hailpail in PDX. It was delicious, and I didn't die. Good news.
I'm glad you're not dead, Alvin. Dave, what's your thoughts on the safety of the two recipes listed below? Uh, particularly are my final ABV calculations correct, and should the mix be sterile and safe to drink after a year plus if it's sealed in mason jars, not canned or cooked um and stored and wrapped in foil at room temp. I wouldn't keep it in room temp, I'd keep it in the fridge. I keep it in the fridge.
Wouldn't you, Costaz? Why do they have to be room temp, Alvin? I don't know about room temp because all those studies I think were in fridge. Although I have to ask Bennett how he stored it. I don't know.
I I didn't read that when I was reading it. And also, Alvin, your your ABVs didn't come in. Um, but Nick said he shook his a couple of times a month to keep it homogenized. I also plan on shaking it every so often. If it matters, I'll be using farm eggs on pasteurized.
I don't think it matters. The whole point is if it's safe, it's safe no matter what kind of an egg you used. The guys at Rockefeller University who famously did the study, I think in 2008, I think it was 2008, of the eggnogs that they have been making for 65 years based on a recipe that was handed down to them from someone who was born in like 1890 and she got it from her like grandma or something like that. That recipe, um, you know, that recipe they tested by inoculating the eggs and the whole batch with salmonella and seeing if it killed it. So the whole point is is that if it's safe, it's gonna be safe no matter what kind of an egg you use.
Um anyway, if it matters, I'll be using farm eggs and high quality dairy products from a local creamery. I'm also uh at high risk. I'm not at high risk for illnessy, uh illness and or pregnancy. Uh and the two recipes I'll be mixing are Michael Rumens and George Washington's. Yeah, the George Washington.
Washington's recipe omits number of eggs used, so I calculated what Ruman's yolk ratio was and insert it into Washington's booze dairy mix. All right, so I couldn't look at your calculations. They didn't come through on the email album. But what I would look up is Dr. Rebecca Lancefield's eggnog recipe.
That's the one that was tested by Rockefeller University. That recipe is a dozen eggs, uh, whole eggs, not yolks, whole eggs, a quart of heavy cream, one quart light cream, one pint bourbon, one quart rum, nutmeg, and a half pound to three quarter of a pound of sugar. So what you're looking at here, sugar is going to reduce the water activity and make it a little bit safer. Uh, and the eggs water activity is what it is. But in terms of the other things, you're looking at uh a quart of heavy cream and a quart of light cream, which has a lot of fat in it.
So there's actually like, you know, a good deal of not water in that too. But you're looking at for that ratio, a pint of bourbon and a quart of rum. Okay. So a quart and a half of liquid for that level. George Washington's recipe is one quart of cream, one quart of milk, but who the hell knows what that means?
Because that's like 1700 cream. Who the who the hell knows? You know what I mean? It wasn't getting it from the store. One dozen tablespoon sugar, which is like uh, what is that?
A dozen tablespoons. It's like not quite a cup. What is that? I don't know. Well, it's eight tablespoons in a stick of butter, and that's a half cup, right?
Mm-hmm. So not quite a cup. Anyway, one pint, here's where we get the important part. One part, one pint brandy, one half pint rye whiskey, one half pint Jamaica rum. So now we're at pint, half pint, half pint, full pint, quart, uh, and one quarter pint sherry.
Then you mix that and you separate the yolks and the whites, which is interesting, and you beat in the yolks and then whip the egg whites up and fold them in. So you're looking at Washington's recipe is a little less alcoholic than the other one. And he also only lets it sit for a couple of days, tasting frequently. So uh I mean, I don't know whether Washington's recipe as written is safe. It's clearly a little less alcoholic than uh Dr.
Rebecca Lancefield's eggnog, which is guaranteed safe because they ran a challenge test on it. But it's not that much less alcoholic. So you might meh, I mean, might be safe. I don't know. Uh and then Ruman's 12 egg yolks, two cups granulated sugar, a liter of bourbon, only four cups milk and one cup heavy cream, and plus three quarters of a cup of cognac and a half cup of Myers dark rum and a pinch of salt.
A that's like super higher in alcohol content than the other one. So I'm gonna go ahead and say that uh Ruhman's recipe is a hundred percent uh guarantee. Uh obviously Lansfield's recipe is a guarantee because they tested that sucker, and George Washington. I can't vouch for it, but probably if you let it sit around long enough, it you know it's gonna be safe. But I'm not gonna guarantee it.
But good old George Washington, he didn't die. Cooking it, well, he did, but not on that. Cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.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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