Today's show was brought to you by molecular recipes.com, the world's number one source for modernist recipes, techniques, ingredients, and tools. I'm Damon Bolti, host of the Speakeasy. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradio network.org for thousands more. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues.
This is Dave Hardold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network and Robert's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, joined as usual with this Dasha Hammer Lopez and Jack in the engineering booth today. How are you doing, guys? Isn't it our 200th? No, not yet. No, because we skipped last week.
Oh. This is like, what is this? 99 or 98. Pull this up. Oh, it's 98.
No, it's either 199. Oh, 199. 199. 199 episodes. And we're on next week, right?
Yeah, well, I mean, you tell us. Oh, nah, nah. Poo-poo. I forget what we were. Oh, yeah, we had that.
What should we do for 200? I don't know. Like, there's people like tweet by the way. Should you have any questions? I have a lot.
I know I have a huge backlog, people. I don't want to hear it. We might have to do a catch-up before 200. Well, then that would technically be 200. I would upload it and it would be 200, you know.
So you're saying we have to do ketchup after 200. Right. All right. Listen. Will there be champagne next week?
Yes. Oh, nah Stas is going to show up. I just confirmed. I'll just do that. Right before the show, Stas was like, you know what?
I'm just not going to do it anymore. I'm not going to show up. And then she's like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. What? Champagne.
And listen. Here's the question. Are we actually talking champagne? Who do we have? I think it matters.
Are you any bubbly? Yeah. Really? No preference? Kava.
I was ready to take your preference. Whoa. No. Just give it away. I mean, it's 200.
Come on. Well, that's true. It is 200. Stasel stuff. Listen.
So we can get Krug. Call in your 200, me and Stas can host the show we've been wanting to host for 200 episodes. It's called Issues. Yeah, just where we talk about our issues and solve your issues unrelated to cooking. Like my personal issues?
Anybody's anybody's, yeah. Just issues in general. Just issues. That's a wide-ranging show. You could just take the three of our issues and fill a whole show.
Anyway, listen. So call your questions to 718 497 2128. That's 718-497-2128. And I also want you guys to maybe come up with some sweet, sweet ideas for the uh 200, right? Yeah.
Send us some uh email. I got some listener emails with some some ideas, but keep them coming. Yeah? Yeah. All right.
All right, very good. Okay. Uh so some updates. Uh we had uh M Rack on the he is at Test Tube Waltz. That's his uh his or her.
Actually, I don't know. M. Her, her. Test at test tube waltz uh wrote in because someone had asked about um how to suspend citrus oils. Remember this question a couple weeks back?
And so uh his her suggestion is uh used uh leveraged Esther of Wood Rosin is a new brominated vegetable oil. There's and not polysorbate, but maybe, maybe, because you're not gonna be able to get the leverage Esther of uh wood uh rosin, try lessithin. Um and also uh cyclodextrin might work to carry citrus oil, and it's clearer. Uh the c uh the carrying capacity is lower, however. So there you go.
That's a follow up for I forget who it was that asked about that, but I love it when people follow up on the Twitter. I try to read it back. And then we had one, someone tried to ask about mushroom oil. Remember that one? Someone's gonna make mushroom oil because they couldn't have the mushrooms necessarily, I think was what it was.
And I forgot, I'm sorry, whoever tweeted this into me, I forgot to copy who it came from, but uh I think this was at Clef's, maybe. Maybe this is at Clus did this. Uh to make mushroom oil, take a neutral oil, dry mushrooms in a two to one ratio, blend for about eight minutes until very or until very fine. Cook at 80 degrees Celsius in 24 hours for 24 hours in a water bath, strain it, or don't. It's up to you.
Strain a note. I don't know where I don't know where they come from. So that's how I assume they sound like. In my head, that's how everyone sounds like until I hear you. Pretty much right, right, Stuzz?
Yeah. Okay. Um I feel like I need to answer Max uh Max's questions about outdoor kitchens because like it's been like I don't know, a month and a half or something. So I want to build an outdoor kitchen with a big barbecue. Not the right time of year in our part of the woods, by the way.
Uh so like I'm definitely gonna but anyway, okay. Uh I'd like to bu uh build an outdoor kitchen with a big barbecue, a smoker, and maybe a rotisserie. You like rotisserie stars? Yeah. You like rotisserie cook things?
How about you, Jack? Are you fan of the rotisserie? Oh, yeah. Why why is it do you know why the rotisserie is good? No.
Okay. I would assume because it's even. Well, it's it's it it works in in okay. So McGee and I have this thing, and it's like, you know, the kind of like the law of why the rotisserie works good. Well, good.
It works good. So like the reason why is um it has a very high instantaneous heat input, but a very low average heat input. So you develop that nice crust with uh or nice surface with the high instantaneous uh heat input, but because your average heat input is low, it acts almost like a low temperature kind of uh cooking situation. So it's a very old way to achieve kind of modern results if you want. See?
See? See what I mean? See? I built a rotisserie once. Did I did too?
How how did you build your rotisserie? I built several. How'd you build yours? Over uh spit with ropes, and then I would turn it. Oh, you turned it by hey, you were the power.
I was the power. Right. Well, you know, uh, I did we did this TV show thing once where I had to, we they had to they used an actual dog to power the spit because they used to have turn spit dogs that would run a little hamster wheels. No, no, uh Tudor, tutor era. Oh.
This was time machine. Time machine chief. Yes. Uh, but also like the root I built a rotisserie once that fit into my salamander, but I had to pull out the dripping grease dripping trade, otherwise the chickens wouldn't fit into it. And I was like, you know, I don't want to just do cornish hands, so I've got to do the chicken, so I had to drop it down and get rid of the grease tray.
But the other best rotisserie I ever did, you know what the problem with rotisserie motors is? People, rotisserie motors suck, and here's why. The average rotisserie motor you can get is really a just a POS, and here's why. Uh they don't have uh zero backlash gears. So what's happening is a rotisserie needs to spin slowly.
Let's say it does, I don't know, three, four RPM, something like that, four RPM, right? Let's say it's around there. I don't know. I gotta look it up. But anyways, uh so you put the shaft on it and you've weighted your whatever, uh, hopefully, so that it doesn't uh so that it's even and doesn't like you know move around on your skewer on your spit too much, right?
Now here's what happens. Uh you never ever load it exactly right. There's always some sort of imbalance. So what happens is is the motor goes. You've heard them, right?
And then it gets to the point where that top load goes over and then it goes into free fall for you know a good a good like seven, eighth degrees. And it goes k-chink, and then it goes again as it goes around and and you can hear it. And and so what's the problem with this? Well, one, one section of your thing isn't getting hit for the same amount of time as the rest, which is stupid. But also, it puts like not only did it start out in balanced, but it puts a k-chink k-chink k chink load on it every freaking time it spins around.
And so every freaking time it spins around, it has a little bit of force added to it, and as it gets more and more uh soft or cooked or you know hot, it has a tendency to spin out. So you get all these things where it runs all right for a while and then craps out on you unless you're used to it and do a really good job. Or you have the side, you know what I'm talking about, the side chinks that really sit in there and really crush that stuff. I hate that. I hate it.
And so um, you know, the first rotisserie I ever built, I used a zero backlash, really expensive motor because I stole it. Like we had like a pile of motors that the uh Columbia University had, and they didn't know what they didn't know because like they were shutting this department down, so it's just a huge pile of motors there. So we used a sweet old bowdine motor with an awesome gear shaft, like a long thing. We cut a 55-gallon drum in half, incinerated all of the uh carcinogenic paint off of it so it was dry. Cut a sheet of expanded metal in half, four by eight sheet of expanded metal in half that we also stole, put it over the thing, welded some legs on it, and put like a giant pig on this uh rotisserie.
It was awesome. And you know what? That motor had no backlash. Anyway, so in terms of rotisseries, what I would suggest is either hire Nastasia to come and be the power for the rotisserie, but it's some of these things cook a long time. I know.
You know what I mean? I know. Yeah, what about the you ever do the vertical one, the one in the fireplace with the spinning thing where you use the just the no? Anyway. Uh hire uh Nastasi to come, and you know, she gets her energy from spite and hate.
So you'd have to like, you know, if you stand there, then I'm sure she'll have enough energy. Oh my uh but get a zero backlash motor when you're making a rotisserie. And the other thing is if you're gonna have a rotisserie there that's powered, you're gonna need to obviously get electricity. Now, there's two kinds of uh kind of outdoor uh kitchens. Now, the the question actually was: do I have any good literature and or blogs on the subject that I can recommend?
Answer no. Uh because uh because I you know, I haven't done like the full research on it. First, I've been researching right now just what's the best way to pour the concrete for the slabs, uh the refractory, bricks, and uh you know, and and things like this. So I've been looking at individual things because remember in my outdoor, so there's various kinds of outdoor kitchens. Outdoor kitchens are extremely popular now, so even like Quick Crete, the concrete people have a book that they put out that shows you you know how to lay it out and you know do the coursing and and stuff to to build it.
But most people fundamentally want just you know an outdoor kitchen, i.e. they want their uh they want their fridge, they want you know a bunch of stuff electric and gas at it. I'm gonna have gas there as a gas assist for the fire pit, but I'm primarily building an outdoor wood-fired uh kind of cooking station uh and not like mm, may maybe a traditional one, except for I am gonna have gas to it to run the gas assist and to run the deep fryer, which is gonna need to be covered because my deep fryer is gonna be outside in Connecticut. So I don't have anything uh right now except for like I said before, I'm gonna build a uh curticula, which is the Roman style thing, like a uh like a high heat surface, a bread oven, a tandoor, and a fire pit. I'm gonna maybe I'll build a rotisserie thing uh into it, and I will probably want a fridge, right?
And a fryer, you want a fridge? Because why? Because you need a fridge, because why not? And work surfaces. So as I do it, I will talk more about on the show, but I don't have any specific references right now.
But uh, you know, obviously I love telling people where I get ideas, so as I do it, I will come up with with information. And it's too cold. You're in Sweden for for Christ's sakes. How are you building an outdoor kitchen in Sweden right now? Although I remember when I went to Stockholm, I think I talked about this on the show.
I'd like I went in January or February, January, and the people in Stockholm were so baller. Because they're just they're sitting outside in Stockholm in the wintertime having drinks, and everyone just like has blankets on, like giant blankets, and they're standing under heat lamps outside, and they're like, what? What? What? Anyway, so Swedes, love them.
Okay. Um Jesper, you also wrote in a question uh from Sweden on uh road of AFs, but it's long and complicated, so I'll get to it. I'll get to it later. And it's about uh chilling. So uh did I answer that one already, actually?
I don't know. Jack will figure out whether it did. Stephanie wrote so. All right, Stephanie wrote in from Sydney, Australia. You ever been to Australia?
No, you know this. What about you, Jack? I have not, no. No. I want to go to Australia someday.
Want to go to New Zealand someday in Australia. So far away. So far. Uh I'm Stephanie from Sydney, and I love listening to your podcast. Uh, I have a slow juicer that I use almost daily.
Slow juicer sounds like a dance, doesn't it? Slow juicer. Yeah. Over the last year, a white film has built up all over um all over the internal surfaces, even though I wash it properly every time. I've been trying to look up what causes this and how to get rid of it.
Most articles on uh the internet tell me it is caused by the oils in the fruit and the vegetables, and to clean it with a bicarbonate plus vinegar solution. So, like, well, that's just making foaming, right? Bicarbonate maybe. Uh I've tried this and it works on the lighter bits of white film, whoight, right? White film.
Uh, but some of the buildup, especially in the nooks and crannies. Ooh, nooks and crannies. Now I'm thinking of Thomas's English muffins. You like Thomas's English muffins? Who doesn't like them?
You know what, you know how you kill a Thomas' English muffin? Slice that sucker in half with a knife so that you cut all the crannies. You gotta fork split them. Yeah, it's gotta be a fork. Gotta be fork split.
I've seen how many times have you seen someone try to bust out a bunch of Thomas's English muffins and they cut it with a knife and they obliterate them? Ridiculous! You need a fork. Yeah. God, God.
Makes me so and my blood boils. People do that. Crazy. Okay. Uh where was that?
Nooks and crannies. Uh the crap. And the nooks and crannies are a lot more stubborn. They wouldn't be if Nastasia did it because they'd just be sliced flat. Anyway.
Um. Okay. Uh it also takes a lot of bicarbon vinegar to get anywhere. Another website says to rub extra virgin olive oil on it. Something about oil dissolving in oil, like oil on oil action.
Like that says? Okay. Uh but this only works superficially. Once the plastic bits are clean and dry, the white film is still present. No one likes a white film.
No one likes a white film. Um I'm wondering if you have any idea what causes this and if you have any better way of getting rid of this stubborn juicer scum. Thanks. Uh regards, uh, Stephanie Go. So the truth of the matter is is that I kind of just put up with things like like films.
I probably shouldn't, right? But I I did some uh look into it. Um, and if they are in fact oil-based, I don't know this is gonna work, and I couldn't find anyone that specifically recommended it, but one of the most stubborn things that I have to get off of anything is uh like uh really baked in coffee oils. They're really a pain in the butt on the internals of like espresso machines um and things like this. And Ernx or like espresso machine or coffee machine detergent is pretty hardcore.
So assuming that your products uh are made of a plastic that can be boiled, then you can just boil those suckers in um in Urnex or whatever like the local equivalent of espresso machine cleaning detergent is, and that stuff is no joke. That like like I put my uh you know, my brass into it that has like all like kind of crap on it from the inside of the espresso machine, like you know, the uh where the group head is, and boom, the chrome stuff comes out shining. Um plastic things. I I'd cook my I cook my uh my coffee brush brushes, which are you know pretty tough. I cook those in it and they come out sparkling.
So uh that stuff's pretty good. Um another uh thing is Nutrafaster, the juicer, which is like kind of like one of the butt-kicking juicers of all juicing time. It's like it's the one that looks like a spaceship on top of a pillar. Um they make a product for cleaning out the metal parts of their juicers in case they get filmed or slimed out. Uh it's proprietary, and it's called clean cut, but you can buy it from Nutrafaster, and that stuff might work.
And then, as a last thing, in case it is some sort of buildup um that is related to uh water, maybe, maybe I don't know, hard water or something. And even I've read some things that things that aren't having to do with this can be solved by using CLR, which is the calcium lime and rust deposit remover. And like maybe there's something in there that's attacked by that. So give those three things a try and let me know what happens, right? Yeah.
Alex writes in, I don't think we got do we talk about Wondra? No. Wondra. Uh hello, Anastasia, Jack, and Dave. Thanks for the show and everything else.
Uh, I've listened to just about every back episode over the past two years, and I haven't heard you comment uh about uh pressure cookers that don't leak any steam as being better, but I cannot recall ever hearing why. I have some guesses, but would rather hear your reason. Um and if it's a slow day and you have time for another question, last week you spoke to a caller about ultra spurs versus uh uh M versus three. Oh, remember ultra spurse are the uh pre-agglomerated um pre-cooked starches that dissolve in easily as opposed to um you know the the ones that are just pre-cooked, but then when you put them in, they can clump very quickly because they they you know they form they form balls because they they they clump that's why you get a pre-agglomerated anyway. Uh I'm unfamiliar with them beyond being pre-gelatinized starch, maize and tapioca respectively.
How are they different than Wundra? Uh which is the you know uh a wheat flour that you can buy, which we'll talk about. And what am I missing out by not using them? Thanks again, Alex. Okay.
Um first to the pressure cooker. I don't know why. I really don't. Like um, it was one of those things that I never anticipated. Um I never anticipated.
So the the the what we did years and years ago, uh I was doing a test on pressure cooked stocks, and I had assumed that pressure cooked stocks would beat traditional stocks like very easily because I had made pressure cooked stocks for years at home with my pressure cooker, which is a coon recon. And I at school they had these uh kind of these phagor pressure cookers, and the phagor pressure cookers, they the way they work by re to regulate pressure is they vent a constant amount of steam to keep the internals of the thing at 15 psi. And what you do is is you just throttle it down so it's only leaking a little bit of steam, and then you know that it is running at pressure. That's how they regulate their pressure. Whereas Coon Recon has a spring in it, and what happens is you can look at it and you can adjust the height of the spring, which says how much pressure there is.
So you keep you just use your your heat regulation to adjust how high the spring pressure is, but it doesn't until it gets old and the seals start getting weak, it doesn't leak any steam as it's cooking. So, anyways, so I'm there making a pressure cooker uh stock in the Fagor, and I do the side by side, and it comes out looking like I expected. Pressure cooker stocks come out browner than regular stocks. Um so you know, everything's as expected. We go do our blind taste test, boom.
The traditional stock, like everyone liked it better. Everyone liked it better. Uh I liked it better. I was like, well, because you don't want that to happen. I mean, you do, but you don't.
And then uh we did it again, and traditional stocks win again. And remember, I had already started writing a blog post of this, but I'm already like a thousand words into the blog post. I don't want it to be for nothing, and I'm gonna have to publish this negative result. So I bring my pressure cooker from home and I make stock and it wins easily over the traditional stock. And then we did all three side by side another couple of times.
And so we just did it empirically. It just turned out that these pressure cookers that were venting a lot as they were cooking were not producing the same taste results as the ones that uh didn't. And so and I don't know why to this day, I've never had someone run GC mass spec on it to see whether we're losing a particular volatile. I have no I have no speculation uh that makes any sense. I just know it from um empirically, and until someone comes back and shows me, you know, that why or what I was doing wrong, I just stick with the coon recon that doesn't vent, or I you can seal stock in jars or cans inside of a venting pressure cooker and get those same results.
Anyways, uh wundra. So ultra spurse, uh all of those ultra-spurse products are pure starches that are are, you know, they're very highly kind of uh refined uh starches that have very specific um characteristics that are nice, but they're pure starches that are pre cooked, then agglomerated so that they dissolve properly. Wundra, on the other hand, is flour that is pre cooked and agglomerated. So it's not wheat hu eat starch, it's uh wheat flour that that is kind of instantized in the way that these other things are instantized. So in a situation where you would want to bring uh I think it's low protein flour.
If you want to bring uh like the all the characteristics of a low protein flour including the protein into it then you would use uh wondra. So like wondra a lot of people use it um a lot of people use pre uh you know pre agglomerate pre gelatinized uh starches in uh batters for instance I think because they can uh absorb and capture water very quickly I don't know why but I I there's a bunch of studies on it but I I don't really remember the mechanisms of it. Anyways so that that's the difference and that's you know use one where you would want a pure starch and use the other where you would want all the characteristics of a flour just in an instant format. Tom Fisher wrote in about lobster. I don't know whether I answered this dear Dave Nastasha Jack and uh Wyatt not here today.
You see you he just got here later oh hey Wyatt what's up buddy you got called out right in time perfect. I mean uh croissant right now yeah talking with his mouth like a regular croissant or some sort of like nouveau croissant almond almond what do you think about the almond croissant stuff? No. You don't you like chocolate in your croissant but you don't like a regular croissant because you know what Nastasia hates buttery flaky delicious things. Did you know this?
Biscuits she hates it yeah hates biscuits it hates it so there's a new thing that's out I mean we all know about Dominique Ansel's uh crow nut right but isn't there some sort of like new like croissantery going on with some sort of one of the bigger some sort of like croissanification of something yeah it's like they're they're I don't know they're turning a cow into a croissant or something like this. I don't know like very finely layered buttery flaky cow crispy. Anyway someone else should come up with it like a pork rind croissant you know pork pork rind sant well the thing is like you'd have to make like micro layers of pork rinds. That's kind of saying, yeah. Layer them, fry them up in butter and claret clary butter.
Yeah, try it. We'll try it sometime. But I think you know the problem is um you'd have to get it uh like just right, otherwise the layers will fuse together. So when you're when you're making puff snacks, if you toss them in uh like a tiny bit of salt water right before you uh puff them, the starches as they become molten will glue themselves together. That's like uh the principle of making those kind of rice cakes.
And plus even without salt water. That was the pr that's how you can do it in a microwave. You can make like rice cakes in a microwave that way. Please uh don't don't do it because don't do it, but you can. I've done it.
But uh, you know, there's itinerant issues with it. But like uh it or in puffing guns, when it's still molten, if they're touching, they'll glue they'll glue themselves together. So we have to make the pork rind such that the the sheets when they melt and expand, don't glue themselves together. You won't get all the layers like a like in the what would you call the poor poisson? You call it like a poisson, but that'll be more of a fish.
I don't know, we figured out. Someone else so you see Santa's little hipster today. Uh no, is it what is he looking like? Yeah. Yeah.
Nice. Anyway, Tom Fisher writes in, I took your advice from several weeks ago regarding steaming lobsters for lobster rolls. Uh, given that you can't really get a thermopen into the meat, well, you can. You gotta boom punch it through the carapace. Anyway, um, into the meat.
How do you judge doneess? Uh, I got three and a half pound lobsters and guest uh steaming time as the charts all stop at three pounds. Still the range of cooking times is pretty wide. Best Tom. Okay, here's what you do.
Par cook those sons of guns. Don't cook a lobster all the way through in a chill. Par cook the uh those things until they did. Uh like, you know, a couple of minutes, then crack them open, uh, break them apart, and then cook the different pieces of meat separately uh like in butter or in the I actually do it in their own juices. I save the juices when I break it and I bag them and cook them in their own juices.
I like to cook them at high temperature because I kind of like that firmer. I don't like soft, mushy lobster. Do you like soft mushy lobster sauce? You like firm. You don't even like lobster that much.
But when you like it, when you have it. Yeah, but you don't want it to be soft and mushy. You want it to have that traditional cooked texture. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Anyways. So and then it's much easier to judge doneness because you can just sit there and squeeze it with your fingers, pull the bag out, go and you squeeze it with your fingers, and you know the sucker's done. You know what I'm saying? Much easier. Much, much easier than trying to time out.
Because when you're cooking a lobster that large, uh, like, you know, and I've done like six, seven pound normally, and then like, you know, 25, 30 pounds. When you're doing something like that, it's not the bigger the lobster, the more impossible it is to um to cook the inside without absolutely hammering the outside. So you want to break uh the meat into smaller chunks, and then you can you can calculate it with uh you know C V dash or any of those other things. That's how I do it. Anyways.
Uh and it also makes your life a lot freaking easier. It just does because you pull the lobsters out. You can do the Nils Norin. Nils Norin ties a string around their tail, and then you know how lobsters have that uh they have that kind of pointy, like like bow sprit thing that comes out of their face right right in front of their eyes and like sticks out like a pointy you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, Jack, you know what I'm talking about?
Yeah, yeah. So what you do is it doesn't hurt them, so don't want any letters, please. But you like tie string around their tail, like right where the flare is at the smallest point where it like it flares, and then you go over their back and then around the pointy doodle, and you tie it back to itself. So you that first of all, it gives you a little handle, which is nice to pick up the lobster so you don't burn yourself. Yeah.
What do you mean? But after you No. Never done that. No, no, it would take forever to kill them. That's freaking cruel.
I don'm gonna do that. Anyway, so you take and you have you tie their uh nose to their and then and then uh their tail stays straight. So it's an alternative to the to the just shove skewers through its tail while it's alive, or or the knife kill and then skewer it and kill. So it keeps their tails straight, par cook them, throw them in ice water to stop the cooking, then you break them, and then you can take the meat separately and cook each piece to its uh to its own perfection. Yes?
Yes. But you gotta make sure to cook it enough on the par cook, depending on the thickness, like a minute and a half, two minutes. Uh otherwise, uh the claw is a gooey mess and you can't get it out. Gooey mess. You know what I'm talking about.
You know I'm telling you. You never read that article. What article? Um killing them softly. Well, maybe I'll maybe that's what my next maybe it'll be in my next book.
Who knows what my next book's gonna be about? Tomorrow. I'll have a meeting with my publisher tomorrow to talk about my next book. I'll tell you what, people, it will not be about cocktails. Uh David wrote it.
Let's take a quick break. Yeah. Okay, quick break. Let's do it. We'll come back with some cooking dishes.
Hey, what's up, guys? It's me, Jack, as in Jack from Cooking Issues, as in the guy that's probably been talking on this show. So, here on the break to tell you about molecular recipes.com, which is not only an awesome website and store and resource, but also they support us, which makes them even that much cooler. So I know Dave gives you plenty and plenty of information on the show, but should you need further resource, should you want to get some of the things he's talking about? Molecular recipes dot com has recipes, techniques, ingredients, tools, all in the world of this modernist thing we love so much on the show.
So, you know, explore the world of foams and spheres and invisible foods and mind-blowing cocktails, all that awesome stuff. There's a community of over 400,000 chefs, scientists, and food lovers sharing their favorite recipes, tips, and tricks. Cool photos, tools, gadgets. Again, this is everything you'd be into all in one place. Molecularecipes.com.
And just for being a listener of this show, you'll get 10% off any of their popular kits just by using the promo code Heritage at checkout. That's promo code HERETICE. So again, check them out. Molecular recipes.com. Tons of really awesome stuff there.
Definitely write up your alley. So, Jack, is that your uh that's your mole that's your molecular music? That's my molecular music. Oh, yeah. I don't like it.
Oh, you don't like any molecular stuff. Why do you not like what specifically? I don't know. It's like annoying. Anyway, you should go there.
You know what you should give them? You should give them the promo code. Everyone should go and buy stuff on it and say Jackson. Say Jackson. You say change the name because we all hate molecular.
And they know it. They know it. Uh, but yeah, check them out. Tell them it was the song that really swung you in the direction of bink, bank, bank, bang, ding. That's like Jack Jack Molecular.
Sent to you by Jack Jack and Jackie Molecules. Um, uh a couple of shout-outs before we get back into the uh questions. Uh went to the um pre-opening of uh where Nick Nick Bennett, uh our longest employed bar, our bar captain at Booker Index, left us to go uh help start uh Porch Light uh with uh Danny Meyer Group. Yeah, went last night. Uh looks awesome.
Uh super congratulations out to Nick Bennett. So uh check it out. It's in that there's like an old warehouse building on 28th and 11th. They actually got hit with uh with Sandy, got flooded out, and they rebuilt the inside. They the concept of it is that um it's kind of like when you go there, it's kind of like hanging out in the porch, so you have drinks on the porch and you have some snacks.
Uh and they used all reclaimed wood from the obliterated basement on the inside. That's cool. So check it out. And congratulations to uh everyone involved with uh Porch Light Porch Light and YC. Uh also uh little uh self-plug here.
So my son Booker goes to a school called the Quad uh Preparatory School in Manhattan for check out this term, ready for this? Twice exceptional. Twice exceptional. Why? Well, like it's like you know, give it and take it away.
It's like smart kids who like are on the autistic spectrum. So it's like, hey, twice. It's not really twice, because it's kind of like like on either side, whatever. But uh he goes to the school, and I really like it a lot, the school, and they're having a um they're having a gala event, but that's not why I'm telling you about it. There is a silent auction, and one of the things that we're auctioning off, and I'm gonna make you come with me, Stas.
Sorry. I didn't tell you this. Uh yep, I am sorry. You get to meet Nastasia too. Is she getting auctioned off?
We're what I'm I'm auctioning a cocktail party. That's the only thing that people ever buy. I'm gonna bring you in on personal things too. You do all the time. Remember when I helped you move your freaking house in a freaking zip car?
Yeah, but I win forever for that. No, you're still. Nastasia rented Nastasia rented a tiny truck, by the way, and was like, oh, we're moving a couple of things, and she's moving from like a fifth-floor walk-up to another fifth-floor walk-up. Got a freaking zip car that was too small. It was not a good idea.
Such that we had to like we had to bungee cord ourselves to the freaking bed of it, along with her fake fire place. Whatever. I don't want to hear about it. Anyways, so uh it's a it's a wait, why can the public bid on this if they don't go to the city? It's a silent auction.
Because it's a silent auction. They can just go, they don't have to go to the gala to bid to bid on it. Anyone can bid on it. They don't have a part of the school, they don't bother it. They just have to want us to go, and they want to support this like small fledging school that's using very new techniques to try and um help kids who are very smart but can't be kind of uh dealt with in the normal uh school setting to get out their best potential.
And they're trying to spin this off into other, you know, not just in you know with the small school that they have, but spin these techniques off. Anyways, so uh here's what we're what you would get. So Nastasi and I show up and we make uh three cocktails for you for three hours. If you want snacks, you have to get the snacks. We're gonna show up, we're gonna make some nice cocktails.
You're gonna handle ingredients, and we're just gonna we'll show up. New York City, though. New York City. New York City. Listen to me, New York City.
Or Connecticut. I could do Connecticut. You could do Connecticut? Yeah. All right, but we have to bring all the crap.
Yeah, we guess we could drive all the crap out. All right, so like it, you know, if you're in the zone. Not Tri-Borough. I mean, not Tri-State. Not Tri-State.
She's like, I won't go across the Tri-Borough Bridge. Of course, no, we take Third Avenue in Willis. What are we? Paying money to get out of our own freaking city? No.
For those of you that drive up 95, you'll know what I'm talking about. So the the anyway, so we're having a cocktail party. They're auctioning it off. You can bid on it if you like. Uh, and the website is HTTPS colon forward forward.
W W dot biddingforgood.com. This is a lot of stuff. Forward slash breakthroughs. Breakthroughs. Plural.
Not just one breakthrough, multiple breakthroughs. What's it called? Double, double the knowledge or whatever. What do you mean? You'll have twice exceptional cocktails.
Whatever that means. Twice exceptional. Hey, we even give you a choice. Usually we do like a stirred, we do a shaking, and then uh, and then you know, a lot of times at carbonated we do. Up to 30 people, right?
Yeah, 30 people, three hours. We show up. You get to see Nastasia's vegan face. I'll bring some vegan stuff to have her eat it. You can see the face.
Right? Come on. Depends on how much they bid. Right? Nastashi will bring or not her her, you know.
A game. Her her A game, depending on how she feels in any particular any particular situation. But you know what? If someone from the radio show bids on it, it means it's a real honest to God food person, and so we're gonna have a good time. It's not just someone who happens to have a lot of money but doesn't care.
I think people who have a lot of money are fine too. Yeah, but not if they don't. We've done events before where they just bought it because they got strong armed into buying it, and we show up, and it might as well just be someone pouring beer and you know, and handing out white wine. Two. Those aren't fun.
I mean, I like beer and white wine like the next guy, but you know, I don't, you know, I don't need to, you don't need Nastasi and I to come pour that stuff. But if the price is right, we will. Uh okay. Uh David wrote in about coffee. Um, hey Dave, Nastasha Jack, how are you?
Uh I've just listened to the latest cast. I want a couple things about Dave's half mocking suggestion. We didn't really call it a cast. Cast. Cast is cast.
Yes, we are the cast. Short for podcasts. I like that. Oh. Oh, cast.
No, yeah, you're right. It meant podcast. By the way, we're going back to remember when Johnny was on and we were talking about coffee and sieves? Yeah. This is how far behind we are.
That's what this is in reference to. All right. Uh so you know, Johnny from uh the you know the Underground Cuisine Collective in uh in uh Wisconsin was here, and we were talking about using uh sieves in fractions of coffee to get specific because we're talking about grinders and how um you know the the the particle size distribution in a grinder is very important in the taste of coffee. That's what we're talking about. Uh uh, I wanted to add a couple things about Dave's half-mocking suggestion that Barisa should stack uh two or three lavs sieves together to get a uniform profile for the ground coffee.
Uh in the average or even fancy coffee shop, that's not practical, of course, but I know some people who compete in brewed coffee championships actually do one better. Last year I was at the World Brewers Cup, and I know that during their exhibition, one competitor described how they use four. They discard the top, middle, and bottom piles, and only keep the ones between the first and the second uh and third and fourth um um fractions. Other contestants picked the beans one by one before grinding them, or created their own water by dissolving various minerals into deionized water. Uh uh, Kevin Lewis cra uh craft cocktails at home.
Good book, go check it out. The rationale behind the sieves sieve stack. Now I'm thinking of Reggie Watts, the sieve stack, but it's you know, you can't say it on the radio. Uh, was that by having two controlled ranges of particle sizes in a single extraction, they were able to better control flavor profile, acidity extraction, and so on. Also, Johnny Hunter was right when he said that too uniform a particle size range makes for a comparatively less complex cup in the same way as brewing methods to keep relatively uniform brew temperature and or concentration due, e.g., reverse aeropress, French press uh or relatives.
A great, not just good cup is about carefully controlled over and under extraction. Oh, by the way, I have also put caustic soda on the tip of my tongue, no men omen, it seems. Cheers, uh, David, yes, it's Italian, so you got it right last time, right? David in Italian or David? David.
You said David A. Davidet, is that right? Italian? So I got it right last time, so it's Davide was right, so sorry I ruined at the beginning because it's Davide now. Anyways, uh good.
I love uh you know I love follow-ups like that. Don't you like when people send us follow-ups? Yep. So I was like, no, I really don't care. I don't care.
Um Mr. Gadwa uh regarding the CVAP. We didn't do this yet, right? Uh I pinged Dave on Twitter a few weeks back about CVAPs. CVAP is uh, by the way, was the uh oven invented by uh Mr.
Winston to help uh the Colonel Sanders, who is a real human being, uh figure out how to keep Kentucky fried chicken in good condition uh over the course of you know a a long time while it's sitting after it's fried, assuming that assuming they're not crushed in business and they have their frying like as fast as they can serve it, which is how you want. That's how Popeyes does that stuff. They just are frying stuff all the freaking time. You ever notice that? No.
Do you like Popeye's fried chicken? I haven't been there in a long time. Do you enjoy it? I think I do. Jack, do you enjoy Popeye's fried chicken?
I actually really like Popeyes, yeah. Popeye's is delicious fried chicken. I'm not trying to insult Kentucky fried chicken here. It's better. Okay.
Wyatt, what do you what are your thoughts? Both good. Uh, what's up, diplomat? Moved to Washington, get to get your diplomat, get your diplomat on. Um anyway, so it was invented for that, and the premise of it is is that uh there's a heater in the air, and then there's a a water, a Bain Marie water system, and that by adjusting the temperature that the Bay Marie is being held at versus the air temperature, you can very accurately adjust the humidity uh inside the cavity and the temperature, and that the main problem in holding foods is that uh the humidity inside there's not right.
So you adjust uh the difference in temperature between these two things, and if you do it properly, you can hold almost anything. And I've had actually hot tortilla chips held in it that stay crunchy. So and I've had you know meat in it that's held for a long time, I've had chicken that's held in it a long time. Technology does, in fact, work, but that's what a CVAP is, that's how it works. Uh but Winston, the guy that he's now like 90, I think he's finally stepping aside.
He's like 95 or 96 or something like this. He's a cantankerous dude. Cantankerous dude. Uh anyway. Uh anyway, it looks like this is going back now to the question.
It looks like Winston Industries sadly changed their minds on producing a home CVAP. So give me some Yukon Cornelius. I've changed my mind, Stas. No. She won't do it?
Dax does it all the time. I changed my mind. Anyway, so I'm passing the message below uh along for the benefit of Dave and the cooking issues listeners. I've been using the Cuisinart steam oven. Uh, and while this can turn out great results, it really makes me pine for a real CVAP or a combi.
The solution, of course, is for Dave to introduce the Booker and Dax 5,000 home combi oven. No, no, not on the radar, right, Stas? No. Not on the radar. You can make a DIY um CVAP, though.
It's not that it's actually not that hard. All you have to do is um you know, put uh an accurate control on your oven, which is a lot easier in electric oven, uh, and a put a water bath in the bottom and control the difference between a thermocouple that's held in the oven and one that's held in the water bath. I've done it as a test. You can do it. It takes some walking around and working with, but maybe someone out there, look, all you guys out there, you know, one of you just build it.
I've told you how to build it, and then just put the protocol up on one of the internet things. There might already be a DIY CVAP thing out there. And if they're not going to make one for home, then they're not going to get too mad if you build one. And the original patents for that thing have been gone a long time ago because they've been around for a bazillion years. So, you know, go ahead and do it.
You're not, you know, doing anything wrong or bad. Anyway. Anyway, okay. So, and by the way, he sends the uh he sends along uh a note from Winston Industries saying that we're not going to make one. So there you have it.
Anyways. Ellie writes in about fat and about ice. Dave, I understand that suet is beef fat from around the kidney area of the beef. The beef. Uh that is very tough to get a hold of here.
I forget where she is. Uh that is very tough to get a hold of here. Is there any uh reason regular beef fat cannot be used in its place, especially if it's rendered? Uh also thanks for the clear ice technique and liquid intelligence, that alone and how my old fashions look using it are worth the price of the book. Is there any sort of oh, this might be uh might be uh the the Ellie that's a dude.
This might be the other LE. Anyway. Uh also uh thanks for the clear ice technique and liquid intelligence, that alone and how my old fashions look uh using it are worth the price of the book. Is there any sort of shelf life or freezer life, I guess, uh on the clear ice that I've made? Uh best LA.
Okay. Yeah well, yeah, so in your freezer, right, uh bad things can happen if things stick out, like aromas can stick to the surface of the ice, and also during like repeated freeze thaw cycles, you can get some crap on the outside of your ice. The good news is the core of your ice is okay. So if you pull the ice cubes out, let them temper up, and then rinse them off a little bit, then they're good. They're good as new.
And in fact, if you go to Japan, uh the assumption is that the ice that they get, because they're getting big block ice cut is filthy, and so like what I watched them rinse their ice cubes before they used them, and I was like, why are they doing this? And then I asked someone who A speaks English and B is very familiar with Japanese bar technique. He's like, Oh, because the presumption is that the ice is dirty, and so they they rinse it off. So uh, you know, I don't know how much you'd have to get rid of, but once it's tempered and you give it a quick rinse, you could probably do one test by just if it's at home, just lick one of the cubes. And then if it has a flavor, that oh my god, Santa's little hipster is here, and he's dressed in green tights and a green beard.
Woo, Christmas is over, buddy. Never Christmas is never over. He keeps it in his heart, which I appreciate. Uh anyway. So you can go ahead and lick the ice cube if it's for your own consumption, and then rinse it up.
Okay, I have to I have a it's for his own consumption stuff. She's giving me the gross face. Here's another thing. Like when I cook, and I actually tell my like I I shouldn't say this, but so when you're cooking with extremely hot peppers, so we we're in situations where we take like habaneros and blend large quantities of habaneros, like a kilo of habaneros in a vita prep, right? And then we run it through a rotovap, and everything that it touches is poisonously hot.
Poisonously hot. Uh we've done it with Naga Jalokia's, even more poisonously hot, right? And so you have people rinse the stuff off and like clean it because some of the stuff can't go through the dishwasher because you you know you can't put it through the dishwasher. And so they're like, it's clean. And I'm like, oh, really?
Oh, really? And then you know what I do? Because here's it, here's what you gotta remember, people. This sound what I'm about to tell you sounds gross. However, people drink with things all the time and put it to their mouth, eat things with forks, put them in their mouth, and then you clean them and wash them, right?
So my test to see whether or not you've properly cleaned when I do something ridiculously hot, I lick it. I see whether it's still hot. If it's still hot, I know you didn't do a good job and you gotta rewash it. If it's not still hot, I just made it gross. Now you have to rewash it and make it clean because of the fact that I licked it.
But at least I know the next time you've washed it, it's going to come out uh being good. It's not going to affect the next product. So you you always have at least two washes, but uh at least this way you know. Anyways, back to the fat. Um so the difference between the fat, different fats uh from different parts of the beef have different uh fatty acid profiles.
So that internal non-muscular fat that's on the inside around is extremely hard. Uh and uh it's extremely high in the um in the fatty acids like uh that are longer chained and are um just hard as hell. And so they the actual characteristics of the of beef suet, real suet, i.e. that you can grate it into things that has a very high melting point, that it makes a certain kind of porosity and the puddings that that that it's being used in can't really be imitated by using other types of uh beef fat. But if it depends.
I mean, if you're just using, if you're using it and you know you're gonna render it anyway or you know, do something else anyway, then it shouldn't matter. But if you need the particular textural characteristics of suet, then you have to get the real thing. Sorry. Right? Anyway.
I don't know. Then I don't know what to say about that. Like the other stuff's just softer. What are you gonna do? Uh Brandon, I'm actually like like once I get through this, I'll be on this week's questions.
No, so maybe we don't have to do the captured shop. Well, but I still have questions from this week I haven't answered yet. Anyway. Uh that many from today. Brandon writes in, like, I recently got a big green egg.
I missed some from Twitter from last week, which I gotta find out. I recently got a big green egg which I can use as a smoker. I'm hoping to be use it in combination with my circulator to get the best from both techniques. If you were to do something like this for let's say, say ribs or pork shoulder, would you start in the smoker or in the circulator? What temperature and time would you um recommend?
Well once you put the smoke on it, it smokes flavor is going to stay whether it goes in the bag or not. It really it it all depends on like what's kind of the best uh what what your best workflow is. I mean I would probably circ the stuff out I would probably circ it out uh pull it out of the bags let it dry off uh substantially before you smoke it and and then smoke it for for flavor instead of for for doneess and then you can pull it out kind of um whenever it's done that's just kind of what what I would do do you say what do you want to do say what you wanted to do pork shoulder or ribs. Yeah you know what because the the fact of the matter is yeah I mean it it also depends on whether when you're smoking whether you care about getting uh you know if you're doing traditional techniques whether you care about that ring or anything like that. Most of the reason why people don't like um to pre cook things before they're going into barbecue or smoking I think are in general wrong uh wrong headed because you don't need to add a lot of moisture you're not removing a lot of flavor.
I think it's I don't know I think it's kind of like a knucklehead way to do it. So if you want to do a low temperature if you want the texture of low temperature cooked product I would probably and you want it smoked in a traditional thing I would probably cook it all the way out you know, like you would for low temp, so for for ribs, um, you know, it well depends. Like for let's say you're doing a beef rib, like a short rib. You know, for you would do low temp, you would do like 57 because you don't want it too rare. 57 for like I don't know, a couple days, uh, a little longer, cool it down, pull it out, unbag it, let it dry thoroughly, and then because you don't want it too moist because that's gross, then throw it in and smoke it until until it's ready.
But I'd probably do it that way. Um, that's how probably how I'd do it. Or you could, if you just want the smoke flavor, but you don't want the texture of something that had just been pulled out of a smoker on the outside, then you can smoke it beforehand. Not gonna kill you, not gonna hurt it. Anyway, uh Quinn wrote in.
This is a good one. We have time for this, Jack? Uh three minutes. Three minutes. All right, so I'm not gonna get to um shoot, I'm not gonna get to the koji stuff.
But I will we'll do Quinn. Quinn writes in. I've got a food safety question. You like food safety questions, Jack? Sure.
Yeah, all right. I've got a food safety question. I often make stock in my pressure cooker, putting protein and bones and vegetables in for a few hours. Uh I don't even do that, I'll do like an hour. I don't never do it longer than an hour in the pressure cooker at second ring 15 PSI.
Anyway, when I'm done, I strain the solids and let the stock cool. I am not a restaurant with an ice machine, so I can't really put the container on ice to cool rapidly. After a few hours at room temperature, uh, the liquid is usually cool enough to stick in my fridge without messing anything up too badly. I know this time spent in the zone, uh, that's the uh danger zone, is suboptimal, but given that the product was pressure cooked, I feel like this is fine. So my question is, uh I've forgotten to put my stock in the fridge after a few hours.
Uh in fact, left it overnight at room temperature. I'm not sure uh about using it as is, but I'm wondering from a food safety perspective, if it would be safe to use if I put the stock back in an empty pressure cooker for a few hours. Uh and I'm hesitant to throw out this beautiful stock, and I figure the chicken that went into the pot in the first place was teeming with baddies, which were eliminated by the pressure cooker. So another trip to the pressure cooker should return to the product to a safe product. Thanks for the show, Quinn.
Okay, look, huge controversy on this with uh Michael Ruhlman, who uh on his blog uh in I think 2011 um said that he basically leaves his stock on the stove for like a week and then just reboils it before he's gonna use it, right? And McGee came in and wrote that, hey, this is unsafe uh because um, you know, be because things can grow in it, and if you don't and McGee actually wrote about it in the New York Times in 2011. So McGee writes, uh, I'll admit to violating the guidelines of the cooling guidelines in my own stock making, though by a few hours, not days. When I cook a roast for dinner, I use leftover scraps and bones to get the stuff uh start the stock, simmer it while I cleaned up, take it off the pot, and heat it right before I go to bed. At that point, it's too much trouble to cool it, so uh it won't warm up the you know everything else in the fridge.
Instead, I cover the pot, leave it at room temperature, reheat it in the morning about eight hours later before straining, cooling, and refrigerating it, and my stock hasn't made me or my family ill either. And then the question is why is ruhlman survived? So he asked a food safety expert, why isn't ruhlman dead? And the food safety expert said, because Mr. Ruman boils the stock before he serves it, uh Dr.
Snyder was the guy who he uh any active bacteria are killed by uh holding the stock for a minute or two uh above 150 degrees, and botules and toxin is inactivated by 10 minutes at the boil. But just quickly reheating and contaminating stock won't destroy the active bacteria and toxins, and you can make people sick. And his point is you can actually grow uh anaerobic bacteria in the bottom of an unstirred stock pot. Anyways, so uh you have to kill the hell out of stuff, like boil the hell out of it if you want to want to do it um not do it that way. But here's the actual truth.
You're not doing it any of this way. You're cooking it in a pressure cooker. Pressure cooker, if you're pressure cooking it for like, you know, 40, 50 minutes, uh, you're actually wiping out at that point the spores. You've in essence canned it. Here's what you need to do.
Don't open the pressure cooker, right? So if you're gonna go to bed or whatever, just don't open the pressure cooker. And if new bacteria can't get in, everything on the inside of that pressure cooker has been hammered. It is dead. So what you do is is you take that pressure cooker, let it let it cool down uh to um you know zero pressure, then you can put it in cold water in your sink if you want to drop it even further and just let it cool down like that for uh a little while.
Then don't let it get too cold because then it kind of jelly up on you. But down when it's closer to room temperature, when you can put it right in the fridge, right? Open it up. Now you it's contaminated because you've let stuff into it. Now you strain it and then you can put it directly in the fridge without worrying.
That's the way to do it with a pressure cooker. In general, at home, if you don't have a lot of ice and you want to get within the window, you're kind of like it's two and two here because you're about to contaminate it more, but at the same time, you know, you kind of win in other ways. What you want to do is get the biggest widest thing that you have and pour your stock into a very thin layer. And that thin layer is gonna cool off a lot thicker than a stock uh sorry, it's gonna cool off a lot faster than uh something thicker is, and so you can get stock cool very quickly if you pour it out into into thin sheets uh and then uh do it. If you ever should need to cool something down really quickly, and then as an alternative, if it's out, you don't need to pressure cook it again for another hour.
Just bring that sucker back up to a boil, boil it for like 10 15 minutes, then uh strain it, cool it quickly, and get it in the fridge. I hope that helps. We'll try to finish the next ones on the second on the 200th uh anniversary episode. Cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org.
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