Today's show was brought to you by molecular recipes.com, the world's number one source for modernist recipes, techniques, ingredients, and tools. Hey, hey, hey, I'm Jimmy Carboni from Beer Sessions Radio. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues.
This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly really late this time, though. Roughly 12. Roughly, yay, 1245, 1250, 1255. Depends on, you know, whether someone's coming in to record after us. Joined, as usual, in the studio with Nastasha, the hammer Lopez, and Jack Insley in the engineering booth.
How are you guys doing? Good. Good. I'm all alone back here. Oh my.
Is that why you didn't have the time to put the Jackie Molecules on? Yeah. Or is that gonna go on during the uh Jackie Molecules? Call in your questions too. Cooking.
Not maybe not cooking. Anything, right? Anyway. We'll take them all. We'll take any questions.
I mean, look, there's some questions that we'll probably refuse to answer, but test us out. Call in to 718 497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Do you guys remember that like for the first year I could not remember the number? Yes, I was just thinking that in my head.
Yeah. And you guys would have to literally, like I couldn't remember the number, and they uh Jack and or Nastasia would have to write the number on a piece of paper. Yeah, and hold it in front of my face. I had like a mental block on the telephone number. Crazy.
Maybe, you know, it's like, well, I don't know if I'm sticking around. I'm not gonna not gonna commit this number to memory. Yeah. I think so. Wow.
Wow. You haven't committed my number to memory. That's because it's typed into my phone. Like I I know how to know yours. What?
I know yours, though. Oh, me, me. Well, you're better than me, me, my memory. Dave, how many numbers do you have memorized? Yeah.
I have like the my like the number I grew up with in junior high, high school, and college. Wow. My my uh yeah, my my mom's house number. It's still the house. It's the same house.
Yeah, okay. Yeah. And the the first telephone number I had in New York City, I remember, 21266 typo. Awesome, right? Nice.
Two one two six six six typo. I remember I remember numbers that existed prior to like when your phone stored all the numbers. You know what I mean? So like I remember very early cell phone numbers. Like my cell phone number, uh, it's been around a long time.
My wife's cell phone number, and her sister's cell phone numbers have been around forever. So I remember those. My dad's house. Yeah. That's it.
That's pretty much it. I don't know my own house number. I don't know any of that stuff. I have to ask Booker what my house number is. But I do know the number of the Heritage Radio Networks call in line.
And that is 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. So you got any good uh cooking things happened to you this past week? No. Nothing?
Mm-mm. No? No. You didn't cook anything? You haven't cooked?
Yeah, every night, but nothing worth talking about. Wow. That's kind of depressing. No, I mean, you know, I make food. Last time I made eggplant farm, like it's nothing.
Eggplant Parm is not is not nothing. Did you make it from scratch? Yeah. So you well, how do you prepare the eggplant? What do you do?
Oh, I just salt it so it sweats and then How long? Uh not long because it's usually late. Do you press on it? No. You know what?
No. Oh yeah. Yeah. You know why? Okay, look.
The salting, right, starts drawing the liquid out, right? But you still have a really spongy, like a spongy thing going on with the eggplant. So when you squish the hell out of it, well, the salting also helps you squish a little bit. When you squish it, you're you're getting rid of some of the porosity that's gonna lead to the increased oil absorption. I don't put oil in the pan.
What the what whoa whoa, you uh what? I just uh heat the pan and then put the eggplant in there and like bread isn't no. So this is not what I would consider eggplant plant. No, no, it wasn't breaded. I didn't have time.
This is the whole That's why I said nothing interesting food wise. This is more like an eggplant casserole. You say eggplant parm, I'm like, holy crap, she's gotta press the eggplant, gotta bread the eggplant, gotta fry the eggplant. No, but it was the bachelor finale last night. No, how how'd that go?
Good. Did he choose the lady you wanted? Yeah. You watch The Bachelor, huh? Yeah.
Yeah. It's like Christmas. It's like it brings people together. Please do not compare The Bachelor and Christmas. Please do not compare.
You didn't want you didn't feel compelled once you saw it last week. I felt compelled to never see it again. I felt compelled to never see it again. We did. You watched The Bachelor too?
Well, how it happened was last week. Did we talk about this on the radio? All right. So we had the maker of the Sears All and the soon-to-be mailed steak decorator, and then the next two products actually, which you'll hear about in the next couple of months from Booker and Dax. You know, our manufacturer, I had him over at my house, and we made him use the Searsol on a st on the prototype steak decorator, by the way.
Because this guy didn't understand why he was making this product. We ever mentioned this on the air? No. Charles, the the name of the guy is the project manager at the manufacturer we use, was like, I don't really, I don't get it. I don't know why you want it.
Useless, useless. I don't want who wants this. Anyways, so like we got him over and we made him cook a cook a steak. But Nastasia was like, Well, I'm not coming over unless I can watch The Bachelor. And I told her, you don't turn on the TV when someone's over at your house for dinner.
This is like, I'm a human being 101. You know what I mean? This is like I haven't grown up in a cave. I wasn't raised by TV owning wolves. I know how to behave around other human beings, right?
So I was like, look, I am a believer in technology. She's not a believer in technology. Nastasia does not have any form. Nastasia only receives television that is broadcast to her through the air. She will not accept any other form.
She won't get it over the internet. She has internet. She has it, but she won't get TV via the internet. She like won't spend the $30 and no extra money ever on a Roku stick or on an Amazon fire. I don't know why.
She's a Luddite. It's the same reason why she only listens to music that's picked by people that she doesn't know on the radio. Wow. Rather than, yeah, she like Jack, you, you're music professional, right? Yeah.
Right. If you made a playlist, she wouldn't want to hear it. Any jerk.com who happens to like be, you know, get a get a DJ slot on any random, like, you know, radio station along some highway in some crap hole, right? That person's opinion on what should play next in the radio, valid. Yeah, valid.
Valid. Anyways, so that person also probably a computer at this point. Yeah, yes. Yes. So anyway, the point being that uh I said, okay, look it.
I have the ability to record this uh onto onto a computer, and you can watch it at later at a later point. So I recorded The Bachelor for her to watch, but it was at my house, so she had to watch it at my house. And so then I had to see it. Sorry. But you had a book and you couldn't not watch it.
That's not true. I couldn't pay attention. I could it was hard to pay attention. It's like. Yeah.
Because you're sitting there like making all kind of comments about people I I don't care about. These people are like compellingly stupid. I don't really see the difference between this. I mean, it's you're basically kind of making fun of humanity with this. Which I don't think it's kind of a base, it's base.
I don't know. I'm not for it. Not for it. I get it. I don't really care what you watch.
I mean, like, you watch what you like. Yeah. You know what I mean? Well, I don't care. Not my thing though.
But how do we get on this? Cooking. Oh, yeah. So The Bachelor was on last night, so you couldn't make it. You know what?
There's an interesting no fry uh recipe from uh the you know, the new Hit Pressure Cooker. I don't know if it's out yet, the Hip Pressure Cooker book. I don't know if it's out yet. But anyway, there's an interesting kind of pressure cooked eggplant parmy style thing. Maybe I'll look up the recipe.
I don't know if it's out, I can share it. Uh, and then uh we'll talk about that. And you try that next time. Do you own a pressure cooker? The hell is wrong with you.
You know what, people, listen. Like, we're we're doing this here. This is a 201st episode, right? How many times I talk about like saving time, efficiency, throughput with something like a pressure cooker. Nastasia's sitting next to me every single time.
Every single have you missed one? One. I think one. There was one show you weren't here for. She called in for it.
No, yeah, I think there's one that she missed. There's one. I totally missed. Yeah, one in Germany. Yeah.
And uh and you just no pressure cooker. Why? I don't know. I don't know. Why are you so resistant?
I'm not resistant. I just have limited space, and that's a big it's a no, throw away another crappy pot you have and use the pressure cooker instead. I use my pressure cooker about half the time as a regular pot. Oh. You know, and usually if you get a decent one.
Look, we've we've pushed Coon Recon enough. With by the way, in my life, you know how I've pushed Coon Recon so much, you know how much we've gotten from Coon Recon? Well, there's Swiss, right? Oh, what's up, busting on the Swiss? What's up, busting on the Swiss.
Anyways, I think Nastasia should get a free coon recon pressure cooker. That's all I'm saying. But the you know, the amount of crap that I mean, I don't I own one already. I don't need it. You know what I mean?
But whatever. Uh so eggplant parm, that's what you did. I know what I think. Let's let's. Oh, how was it?
I didn't eat any. I gave it to my sister. You're such a weirdo. You're such a weirdo. What is wrong with you?
Didn't feel like it. It's like the roast Nastasia show. I well, it's it's I just you know what? After all these years, I still just don't understand. I'm using the thing that we built.
Yes. Like good enough. Yeah, that's true. Uh okay, listen, here I think like everyone, uh a lot of people who, you know, uh you get busy, you don't cook. I think you should we should take the time to try and make one interesting thing a week.
I cook every night. Then why don't you try to make one of those things be new and outside of your comfort zone and then we can talk about it. That's that's your cooking issue. What did you make? Uh I have to go back and uh mentally oh, so this Sunday, what did I do this Sunday?
I mean, I again nothing like like we're I did like you like salt and pepper shrimp? Mm-hmm. I made salt and pepper shrimp. You know where you where you you know the trick is a salt and pepper shrimp? It's like the double fry.
You deep fry, right? Quickly. Don't overcook the shrimp. Uh and uh with a with a little bit of a batter on it, right? You know, you could do the rice flour, corn flour, whatever.
Light, right? Then you add the uh the pepper, the the hot pepper, and more salt, and then you stir-fry it real quick. Right before you serve it, along with like the, you know, I I also put in like chilies and scallions and stuff, stir-fry it real quick. And that's what makes it so crunchy that you just eat the shells. You know what I'm saying?
Because you know, everyone's like, well, if the soda pepper is on the outside of the shrimp, then what's the point? Because it's not on the inside of the shrimp, and the only flavor I get out of it is the stuff from if I like suck on the heads or if I get the stuff on my fingers while I'm peeling the shells, which is gross. If you're telling me that the flavor transfer you're getting is solely because you're licking your fingers after you peel the shrimp, you've just told me that it's gross. Is that gross? Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Uh my point being that like if you fry it right like that, you should be able to eat the shell. Mm-hmm. Which I do. I I consume more than my fare of chitin.
And I made my mom's escarol dish, which is like a go-to on Sundays when I'm super busy. I like it. You like escrow and beans? Mm-hmm. Beans, meat, escarrel, and biscuits, which I know you hate.
Yeah. Anyway. So that's uh that's our New Year's uh that's our New Year's resolution late. Come in. You know, well no, 201 is like a new, it's our new No, yes, our third century of uh of cooking issues.
I like it. Yeah, nice cooking report. Cooking report. All right, let's get to some of the qu uh what about you, Jack? You cook anything interesting?
I made uh it was like a beet facilli with some trumpet mushrooms. Wait, the the pasta was colored with beets? Yes. So it had no flavor. Not any discernible flavor.
No. Here's a little secret. Yeah, here's a little secret. Uh colored pastas, they don't taste any different. My friend just got a vegetti.
That is the grossest word you've ever said ever. Do you know what it is? Yes. Why don't you describe to our It's uh like a spiralizer for for vegetables? I want to know the.
Mostly only squash, though. Like you can't really. No. Well, I mean like squash, including like zucchinis. Yeah.
Yeah. That's all. And then you make like veggie pastas and stuff like that. Yeah, pastas. Uh, what kind of non-English speaker was like vegetti?
That's a good name. Vigetti. Jack, would you ever like knowingly eat something that came out of a vegetti? I'm not gonna answer that question. Not gonna answer that question.
Oh god, Vigetti. Moving on. Yeah. But anyways. Answer the question, Jack.
Well, look, uh look, what about Dicon? Dicon would be good in that thing, but not quite. Maybe. But the stupid thing is it's supposed to be like healthy for you, but all the recipes say like use the vegetti and then fry the noodles and then you know. Well, I hate any I hate anything who's pineapple.
No, no, but it's stupid. Yeah. Uh wow, vegetti. You just threw me for a loop. You threw me for a loop.
I'll tell you what I don't like. Uh here's what I okay, I okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. You know spaghetti squash? Yeah. In the 70s, right?
When I first became aware of spaghetti squash, because that's when I first became aware of anything, because that's the, you know, I was born in 71. So uh, what they would people would do, and by people I mean my mom, who's a great cook, great cook. And I actually I just went to her, like uh I went to her anyway, her, she just got honored recently because she started the pediatric heart transplant program at Columbia University. Who by the way, I did not realize this, did the first pediatric cardiac transplant successful anywhere. Yeah.
She did that? Yeah, she's a cardiologist. Look, here's the thing. Everyone, oh, look, if for any surgeons that might be listening, you're not gonna take an insult to this. Everyone's like, oh, it's the surgeon, it's a surgeon.
Listen, the surgeon comes in, they cut the heart out, they put the new heart in, they they they sew it back together, and then they're done. Like the the care beforehand and afterwards, right, is there gonna be whether or not this person lives for a long time or doesn't? You know what I'm saying? Whatever. She's a cardiologist.
Surgeon's a surgeon, cardiologist a cardiologist. I don't know how many times I've had to go through that. Anyway, uh my point is uh spaghetti squash. So my mom used to make the spaghetti squash, but the problem is spaghetti squash can be delicious if you steam the sucker, right? Or whatever, just roast, whatever.
Shred it into its little noodle lips or whatever you call those things, and then like butter, like lots of butter and other stuff, maybe some crunchy stuff in. You know what it's not good as? It's not freaking spaghetti. You don't put a can of uh or a jar of pasta sauce into the spaghetti squash. This is why they shouldn't have called it this.
You know what I mean? Spaghetti squash carbonara. It's gross. It's gross. It doesn't taste like spaghetti.
To go back to what Jack was saying earlier, one of the few things uh I learned about making pasta, I mean, because I I may have made a lot, lot, lot of it, but you know, never I became very good at it, was that you could add anything to it to add color and it doesn't change the flavor. So, you know, originally I would care what I added to it to and then eventually I'm like, ketchup, whatever. I want it to be red, I'm gonna dump a bunch of ketchup in. Because it doesn't matter. Pot like the vast majority of the ingredient is the flour, and there you're not gonna get any flavor out of it, it's all left in.
Agree, Sas? Yeah. Yeah. You know what does taste is like using an alternate flour. Duh.
Like uh, you know, like the whole wheat ones or the faro ones or something. There's one that's made out of garbanzo beans now. And it sounds gross. You have a vegan look on your face. Is it tasted?
Because they were on Shark Tank or something. They put it to you personally? Yeah, because they came to Pastifier when I was working there. Wait, so the dudes who are on Shark Tank the Show. Yeah, they no, no, no.
The the guys who created this Garbonzo bean. Oh, we're gonna go on Shark Tank. They were on Shark Tank. They got chosen, they won money from drug extension, whatever. So they pitched it to me and they were like, I was like, what's it taste like?
And they're like, Do you like hummus? And I was like, no. So it like completely like sometimes I really appreciate you. Uh who doesn't like hummus? No, I do.
I just didn't want to leave into the It's even stronger. What do you think about that, Jack? Yeah, that's great. I have a caller. Oh.
Alright, caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, it's uh Jolly Savito. How you doing? I'm doing good. Hey, um, I have a quick question.
Um I want to build a precision boiler for making coffee. And I started looking at like PIDs and heating elements and all that. Um my plan was to hook up like a like a swivel valve to the bottom of an insulated stainless tank, eat the water, and then just dispense it straight over the coffee. Right. Um, but I started pricing it out.
By switch wait hold a second. By swivel you mean ball valve, like a ball valve? Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Um I started pricing out all the different components I'll need, and it almost made more sense just to go ahead and get a circulator like an ANOVA.
And um I emailed their technical support and they said that you technically could do that, but they don't officially sanction it, you know. Um, so what don't they officially sanction? What what don't they sanction? Oh, drinking the water that's circulated through the ANOVA, they don't officially sanction. Ah, gotcha.
I mean they they said that they said it'd be a problem from a standpoint of if your tank gets dirty or the circulator gets dirty, you don't clean it. But they didn't specifically say don't do it because the water isn't good to drink. Um and to my understanding, all the parts are that are on that are submerged in the water are like food grade and metal and except the bottom uh the cap for the um pump is plastic. That's probably not a big deal. You're dealing with you know, everything below 25 degrees.
So um I was just wondering what the deal is there. If that's something that's like even reasonable or I'll give you two deals. Here's two deals. One as the manufacturer of equipment that people use to cook things, and having spoken to many uh people, they will never tell you it's okay because they have to sp you have to spend whether or not an item an item can be pure as the driven snow. But you in order to get it so that they can legally tell you it's okay, they have to pay some some Joe Como a lot of money to look at it and certify that it's okay.
Even if they even if every material that's put into it is known to be food grade, right? They have to like pay a lot of extra money and then keep the certs up to be able to say that it can be in direct food contact. So that's why none of these folks are ever gonna tell you that you can do that. Unless unless for some unless there's a big market for it. If there's a big market for it in a commercial situation where they need direct food contact, then they'll pay the extra money.
But unless they have to for a very small thing, they're never gonna tell you it's okay, right? Now, since I don't manufacture that product, if they say that the stuff that it's in contact with the uh with with the water is food grade, then you're okay. Your obvious points are one, uh, you know, you have to sanitation becomes a big deal because if it's not meant to be food contact, it might have nooks and crannies where bacteria are gonna grow. But that said, you're gonna be circulating at a temperature that's gonna wipe out any uh vegetative bacteria. Obviously, you're not in like sterilization spore stuff, but you could always, in between things, bleach it if you want, right?
So I would say you're okay. Now, uh second point is that uh, I mean, I've used circulators to uh do uh tea seminars where people wanted very accurate tea temperatures. One of the problems with circulators is in general it's not gonna it depends on do you want to do this every day of your life or are you just testing? If you're just testing, then yeah. Get a circulator and like uh, you know, just get a container and like put like a little valve in the bottom and take out of it, make sure you know insulate the container, whatever, insulate the thing you're putting it into so you don't lose a lot of effects.
But on a day-by-day basis, do you want this sucker hanging around in your kitchen with a circulator in a bane with a valve over a thing with the stuff? You know what I'm saying? So uh like a lot of uh the other thing is if you just want to see whether if you just want to see whether or not you like the results, then yeah, womp it up out of a circulator and then figure out how to make it all fan dancey so that you uh you know, so that you get the results you want. Like right now, right? You know, I want to see whether or not the the I know it's espresso and it's not what you're working on, but I wanted to see whether this ranchillio that I was, you know, that I had would, you know, PID'd ranchillo would be kind of where I want it.
So it's kind of opened up all over my kitchen, and it takes a a boatload of time to make coffee because it's a nightmare to work with. I'm trying to figure out whether it's worth it for me to fix it 100% and then put it back together in a way that makes my work streamlined. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. Yeah.
So I wouldn't worry about too much about the f uh the food gradeness. I don't know what kind of plastic that that they they use, but um what do they use? Do you know what they use? Do you know what it is? Is it ABS?
It's probably ABS. But um what I'm thinking is is it's an impeller pump and I just need it to to basically even out the ambient water temperature in the tank. So I could just take the cap off because I don't need directional flow. Right. Right.
Yeah, anyway, if you're really super dupe worried about it, I mean like the really baller m the really baller move. Here's the really baller move for you. The really baller move would be to uh also submerse the um you're wait, are you doing uh what what style of coffee are you doing? Is this is this uh are you doing it like stirred and then drained? Are you doing pour over?
Are you doing French press? What are you doing? Uh Kennex and Harrier V60, so basically just pour over. Okay. Because if you were going to do a French press thing, the awesome thing would be to also put the cylinder in the bath that's being circulated so that the temperature although you know look, uh as people have written in, like who knows?
Maybe a decreasing temperature during the steep time is what you want. Maybe what you want is a temperature gradient, in which case you need to figure out a way to continuously change the temperature during the extraction time. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, that's that's another thing I was thinking about is hooking up to like a manifold beneath, and then having like stations where the water is heated to another specific temperature, so I can do an extraction that ranges from you know one ninety five to two oh five and have basically a manifold with three different valves on the bottom and they're all heated to different temperatures. Right.
Right. Huh. Let me think. I think the easiest way to probably do it, I think most people who do coffee, they want to s let's see, they want to start high and go low. They want to start high and go low, right?
You want to lessen the temperature over the course of the extraction, is that true? Um actually I'm not I'm not up on that right now. I need to research that. Yeah. Uh if you want to if you want to lower the extraction temperature over time, then what you want to do is dump the liquid through a uh a block that is hotter than the water.
And then the water as it passes through over the course of the um over the liquid passing through it, the liquid will cool it because the block won't be able to heat it uh at the same rate for uh a long enough period of time, right? So what you'll get is is you'll you'll get a gradient that goes uh initially it'll start at the block temperature, and then if you if you time it right, you know, and if you get all the thermal masses of everything right, it'll end at the temperature of the liquid. And that can be changed obviously also by changing the flow rates and you know various other things, like whether you add extra heat to the block during the period of time when you're doing it. Doing the reverse, I suppose you could also do the reverse where the block is colder than the liquid and and then the liquid comes out um, then the temperature will rise. Um but anyway, the all these things would have to be tested by by testing it.
You'd have to you'd have to do it. You know what I mean? But all of that's easier than actively changing the temperature of the bath over time. Which would be much more complicated. And in fact, we if you look at most coffee machines, um they're they're kind of like the good designs are the ones where uh you know it's not necessarily that the temperature is uh a hundred percent stable, but the gradient during the shot is favorable.
Again, my brain only thinks espresso, so I have to apologize for that. And what's that? I said I said I have to apologize, my brain only thinks it in espresso, but think about it this way in a classic French press shot, uh French press uh uh cup of coffee, right? There's a large temperature gradient between the beginning and the end, and that's a decreasing gradient. So if you like that flavor, whereas I think a clover, which I don't have any experience with running one, I think a clover can maintain the shot temperature.
So I've never done like a side by side press versus clover shot uh without kind of getting rid of the other intervening variables. It's all interesting. It's a question of what what tastes best, what you like. But anyway, hopefully this is somewhat helpful. What's that?
I said hopefully this is somewhat helpful. I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. I said I I said I hope the information helps out a little bit. If you can't hear, if you can't hear well, you have to go back and listen to it on the uh on the iTunes. Yeah, yeah.
Um so I mean it's basically just my way of sidestepping buying a $3,500 uh Marco or um the Uber boiler or whatever. So um yeah, I'm just trying to find a way to hack my way around that. So all right, well, tweeted on IntoCooking Issues uh at Cooking Issues. Tell me how it works out for you. Awesome, we'll do.
Thanks a lot. All right, Jack, you want to take our break? Uh yeah, let's do that. Jackie Molecules. 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? Molecularecipes.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. Molecular recipes dot 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 HERETICAGE. So again, check them out. Molecularecipes.com, tons of really awesome stuff there. Definitely right up your alley. Good news, I got Johnny on.
You got Johnny? Yeah, I'm here. Hey, what's up, brother? Oh, is that was that your is that your Johnny Hunter music? Yeah.
Let me hear some Johnny Hunter music. Wow. Wow, I did I didn't know that was your jammy, Johnny. Yeah, we got Johnny from the Underground Meats Collective, Underground Food Collective in Madison, Wisconsin. First of all, uh, how's it going over there in uh Madison?
I hear a lot of a lot of uh protests going on right now, or what's it l what's the what's the feeling like over there? Yeah, it's pretty intense. Um yeah, just uh unarmed uh African American kid was shot last weekend, and uh the city is kind of grappling with it and asking a lot of really good questions. So um the protests have been really good. I mean it's like really engaging and a lot of people participating.
Yeah, well, anyway, it's terri yeah, awful. Um so uh we had a question in on smoking uh meats, and um I thought I'd ask you because I didn't want to answer the question based on my s solely theoretical knowledge, uh, because you know I don't have a lot of uh expertise in what this person asks. So I figured I'd call you. Jason wrote in uh hey cooking issues team. I have a question on cold smoking and smoke absorption.
As I understand, smoke absorption is affected by the relative humidity of the environment and the moisture of the product being smoked. What about temperature? How does environmental and product temperature affect smoke absorption? I'm thinking cold smoking in this case. So if I s cold smoke at 75 Fahrenheit, will I get more or less or the same smoke flavor as if I smoke at forty uh forty degrees Fahrenheit?
Inquiring minds wish to know, Jason. And I figured I'd ask you since you probably tested this stuff. Yeah, let me uh hold on, let me ask the he our head smoker right now. Um I'm gonna find him and I'll just talk about some random stuff about smoking while while you get back. Alright.
So uh that said, like smoking incredibly complicated. I haven't really I haven't really studied it in depth uh in a long time, even from a a theoretical basis. Um but I did learn some interesting techniques. What? We should thank him.
Oh yeah, we should. Yeah. Oh wait, oh wait. Oh yeah, well he's back. I'm gonna let Charlie answer this question.
All right, first of all, thank you for the meats for the 200th episode, by the way. Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. All right. So d who do we have on the line?
Hello? Hello. Hello. Hey, this is Charlie. How you doing?
So the the qu the question was in cold smoking, like uh what's the difference in terms of smoke flavor, more or less smoking at 40 Fahrenheit versus 75 Fahrenheit? 75 degrees Fahrenheit? Yeah. Um there's not gonna be that much difference between 40 and 75. You know, the only real difference with uh smoke doesn't penetrate once meat gets above about 130 to 140.
It stops penetrating at that point. So, okay, so you're saying that like you're gonna get so you're so you're whatever you're doing for if I think forty degrees, seventy-five degrees, I don't think that's gonna make much of a difference. It only it's always gonna affect it once it gets above like that one thirty threshold. Right. Do you think there's gonna be a big difference because the humidity in the box is gonna change a lot if they don't have good control over the humidity in in the box because it's gonna be like a different relative humidity when it's that cold when it's like like fridge temp versus when it's at like room temp, or is it not is it really just gonna be like six and one half a dozen the other?
It's you know, I I don't really think there's much of a difference. Some people really think that there's a huge difference, but I I don't think there's much of a difference if if you're the humidity is is relatively the same. You know what I mean? Right. And so then would your opinion be keep it at like 40 just for safety reasons?
Is it you are you better off just staying low then? Yeah, you know, you you're always better off staying low. It depends on if you have any uh pink salts or any sodium nitrite in the in whatever you're processing, whatever you're cold smoking. Sure. If you have if you have that, then you're not worried about the botulism, not worried about that temperature getting up there.
Right. So you're hearing from a quality standpoint. If you don't have anything, if you don't have any nitrite or anything in there, then I would keep it at forty or below if you can while you're cold smoking. Right. But if you have but if you have cure in there, then you're fine.
And you should be able to to smoke at 75 degrees and then cool afterwards. Sure. So you're saying it's not a quality issue, maybe a safety issue if there's not enough uh botulism inhibition due to cu do due to the cure you've applied. That's yeah, that just going on what you're saying with the what I know from what you're saying just now, yeah. That's what I would think.
Is there is there any difference by the way? It's just a question I have not related uh to the um how uh wet or dry you want the surface of a product to be when you cold smoke versus when you hot smoke. I mean you uh any time you're gonna smoke uh you want to give that give the um whatever you're whatever you're smoking a day to hang um overnight in the cooler so that it develops some some tact to it. Right. But not totally you don't want to you don't want to form uh like a like a c an impervious skin.
You don't want to case harden it though, right? No, you don't want to case harden it, obviously. You know yeah, you don't want it to be completely dried out, but you do want to have uh the a a a decent dry surface. If it's if it's wet, it you know, the s the smoke tends to it can get kind of like an acrid taste to it. Sure.
Now uh there's a there's something I read about which you know you guys like having access to uh all the science folks over there at the university. I just read about it, I didn't know about it, and then they're gonna cut me off the air soon, so I wanna see what you think about whether you you can try this. Have you heard of electrostatic smoking? Um no, I guess not. I mean, I I've I've seen some pretty bizarre smoke designs.
I've I've seen like where it's like a friction smoke, but I don't know what that is. Yeah, friction smoke is cool. Okay, so like I think it's pretty clear that the temperature of smoke generation is super important. Rel like super important, right? So we're not we're we're not talking about that.
This is check out what these guys do. This is like super speed, super speed smoking. What they do is is they have a metal conveyor belt that the food travels on, right? And they travel it underneath a 40 kilovolt electrode, right? And what they they set up a giant electric field in between this electrode and the conveyor belt with the meat in between, and it just wham!
Like accelerates like the particles and the vapor stuff in the smoke onto the meat, and then it rolls away, and so stuff is smoked in like five minutes. But here's the crazy part about it. According to the data I've been reading, like it literally forms like a layer of smoke on the on the uh on on the stuff that you can peel off until it goes through its like cooking and like tempering out procedure, and it at that point the that like it soaks in and and behaves like a normal piece of smoked meat. Isn't that crazy? Uh I guess I'm still confused.
Like a conveyor belt, you said it whizzes the meat through? Well, yeah, so a conveyor belt is moving through, but it also provides like the other side, the electrode, the ground, and then they have smoke going through this chamber, and then they have a giant electrode that like electrostatically slams the smoke into the surface of the meat, like embedding, embedding the not just the particles, right? Because you know, every everyone who's like smokes knows that like there's there's particles which have like a certain like uh the the can you know and and the the actual vapor which is different, right? So there's the vapor and then there's the particles, which is why if you put smoke in a container, let the let the particle settle out and open it, it still smells like smoke because there's vapor and whatever anyway. But it accelerates not just the particles, it accelerates the vapor like with this huge like uh electrostatic force bang right into the surface of the meat and is like instant smoke.
Isn't that nuts? So, but is it so does it penetrate though uh further than or is it just a base level like just the surface? Well, these guys aren't doing it in a cold smoke application, they're doing it, I think, in a hot in a like a pseudo-hot smoke. So what they're doing is is that is that after it goes through that on the conveyor, it goes through its cook process. And during the cook process, like all all the stuff that's been embedded in the surface of the meat will distribute throughout the meat the way that it would in a normal kind of uh situation.
Yeah. So so it it sort of uh that's interesting. So it puts like a heavy dose of it on the surface of the meat, and then that is absorbed through just the regular cooking process. Right, but not but but not so not heavy in the same way that like applying a heavy smoke would make it accurate because it's a different anyway. Check it out, see whether one of those lunatics at the university can like can uh rig one up for you.
I'd love to hear someone who actually could play around with it. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. My gosh. It's really interesting.
Well, anyway, thanks so much. Thanks so much for the answer. They're gonna rip me off the air in about in about 30 seconds. We love you guys at the underground uh food and meat collective over there. Uh all all our you know, love out to Madison, what's going on right now.
Uh got more questions I didn't answer. We'll get them next week on cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on heritage Radio network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes Store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage Underscore Radio.
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