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. It's middle, middle of the road. You kind of split the difference there. Yeah, what do you think?
It's pretty good. Yeah? Yeah. Alright. Alright.
Although most people like the loud, crazy one. Yeah, but then a lot of people said they liked kind of like, you know, like mixing it up. I think middle of the road might be fine. You know, it's I think generally people like surprises. Oh.
You know? Except me, hate surprises. Do you? No, it's not true. I like it.
I don't know. I mean, how was the last time you were truly surprised by something, Jack? That's a great question. I can't think of an answer off the top of my head. You think about it, we'll get back to it later in the show.
Meanwhile, call your questions in to 718497-2128. That's 718497-2128. Got uh Nastasia the Hammer Lopez next to me here with her vegetti. Wow. It's yours.
Oh. So Stas, open up your vegetti here on Air. Let's hear it. Wow. I need this guy.
So Claire sent us this uh bodicis uh vegetti, which for those of you that haven't been following the Vegetti Chronicles. Tear that sucker open. Is a a vegetable spiralizer. Now, it looks like um kind of like a an hourglass. It's got two sets of teeth.
Two sets of fajti teeth in different uh one's fine and one's coarse. And it's got a little pusher so that you don't get your fingers sliced off in the vegetti. Now, uh, Styes, why don't you go ahead and shove a cucumber into your vegetables? Zucchini. Start small.
She's now twisting it like a pencil sharpener. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Good sound, guys.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, we are foley experts. Um, let me see. That sound experts for you folks.
Yeah, I mean, it tastes like uh tastes like look, it's good. It doesn't get that. Well, Stas is trying to avoid the middle part, the seeds here. I mean, I could see these being used in a salad. I could see Guys, it tastes just like spaghetti.
It it's amazing. It's like you use starch. It's amazing. Um the cucumber is kind of cool. Let's try it, let's try it.
All right, hold on a second. Let me see. I bet you the texture. Oh, maybe we should have peeled it first there, Stas. Let me see here.
All right, all right. Let's see. Ready here? This is this is uh sampling the cucumber vegetti. I mean, look.
It's not a bad product. All the shots. As a topping or something. It's nice. Yeah.
I mean, I wouldn't cook that zucchini because it's gonna turn into like a mess of mess. Oh, she fries it. Which makes no sense because it's a sponge. For salads, that's good. Yeah, for the cucumber part, it's good.
But look at the it all gets compacted. Yeah, yeah, there's uh there's a bunch of stuff compacted into Stas's vegetti here. She better get out. All right, so what? We don't have a carrot.
No, I didn't know. Maybe they have a carrot in the kitchen they can bring to us later in the show and we can spiral up. That would be good. Like Fred topping. What?
Shredded carrot? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean look, obviously, like, you know, I got Asian on the microphone. Yeah. Oh, caller, you're on the air.
Hi, Dave. Um, Nasasha and Jack and everybody. Um my name's Bradley, I'm from San Francisco, and uh I had a couple questions for you. Um I found this podcast about seven weeks ago. Um and I'm unemployed, so I've listened to a hundred and four episodes in the last seven weeks.
Oh my god, get a job, man. But um you don't want to listen to that much cooking issues. It's gonna rot your brain. Well, uh I'm I'm I'm helping a refurb uh uh do a fan some family handyman projects, so I'm I'm listening to it while working. But um I I um my family does this thing called meat fest every year for my mom and my uncle's birthday.
They were born on the same day, and we get a whole ribeye, and um you know, you grill it all up. And so my goal this year was to um build a dry curing chamber and um dry age uh a ribeye that I got. Um and I had seen online that um like at GoPound salt that they put they had suggested using a tray of of rock salt uh or I uh of sea salt down below um as like a desiccant. And I was wondering if as long as um my humidity and temperature are controlled, if that's helpful or if that if that is just a a kind of um a bad way of cu uh keeping uh humidity uh relatively uh the same throughout the process. Yeah, that's a great question.
So um yeah, as far as my understanding of it is the salt is more for uh like you say stability of of the humidity, right? Because it's like the salt is gonna add saturation is gonna want to maintain a specific um humidity. I had always read so if you the first time I ever read this was, you know, decades ago in a now outdated book, what's it called? The sausage the sausage maker or something was was by Rytek Kutas, which was made oh it's got the book's gotta be from the eighties or something like that. But he was the first one I s you know saw recommending uh the salt in the curing in the in the aging or curing uh chamber as a as a humidity modifier.
But my memory serves me, he actually has a huge amounts of salt and some water there so that you know you could evaporate water into it or absorb it as needed, right? So it it would only be a desiccant until it turns completely to liquid if you were in an extremely humid environment. Otherwise it could be you know used the other way. It's it just keeps it's something at the same relative humidity. I forget what it is 'cause it's been a long time, but it's somewhere in the mid seventies, I think.
Is that right? Have you looked it up recently? It's like seventy-seven percent or something like this. Yeah, I I saw like eighty to eighty-five is what I saw. Um around there.
Yeah, I mean, some people just believe in the mystical power of salt in the aging room, period. So David Burke, you know, uh when he years ago did uh his steakhouse in Chicago, did uh an aging room and he literally tiled on the walls giant blocks of salt, which were pretty impressive, I have to say. And I think he was serving stuff on that, you know, on that Himalayan salt block stuff. Yeah. I have some of that.
Yeah, and it was pretty impressive. I don't know if it made a bit of difference or not, because you know, obviously, you know, there was no side by sides, but um it was impressive look cool. So so my setup is I've got uh a four point four cubic foot, Kenmore um mini fridge that I've um I'm rewiring to um include a temperature controller and and I I'm taking out the thermostat for the fridge and rewiring it to an Arduino along with a fan and a humidifier. But so if I have like that kind of setup and they're all you know with you know maintaining within normal range the salt is like a a fun extra but not necessarily something that I need. Well yeah except for this what so what is the if you're running the coils in the fridge right that that will automatically remove enough humidity to keep your humidity low enough right then if you have a humidifier to add back in then you can achieve any humidity you want without the salt right?
Right. Uh I mean a salt can maybe act as a as a buffer there but it's not necessary. The um if you weren't running cooling coils that were going to automatically dehumidify the the i i if you didn't have some way of removing humidity and adding humidity then whether or not salt would be helpful would depend on what the ambient relative humidity of your area is right. I forgot where you said you were calling from but it's San Francisco. Oh yeah.
So I mean you're pretty I mean like you're just air is pretty nice there right yeah um I mean it's it's pretty pleasant. It's it's a little damp um just because of the fog, although you know it's been nice recently. Um I guess it depends on what block you're on, right? Everything's a microclimate in San Francisco. Exactly.
Yeah, I I I I moved from the the the foggy side of the city to the warm side of the city. Um and it makes a huge difference of about five to seven degrees depending on the day. Yeah, that's so crazy to a New Yorker. You know what I mean? That whole concept is so crazy to a New Yorker.
Anyway, um so yeah, I would say that you know, it if in the in the f in the fridge you have the like uh it it will it dehumidify the fridge as it's working or is it some is it totally sealed? Like what is it old style so you can see the coils or is it new style so you can't see the coils? Um so I I haven't taken it fully apart yet. It's about half taken apart and I'm like in the process of building this. And one of the reasons why I was asking was because um, you know, if I have to put a Pyrex pan full of salt at the bottom, that's gonna change the way I configure it.
Um but it it it doesn't really ha it's pretty it's pretty sealed in there. Um there isn't really you know, there there's there's like um there's the uh there's the freezer component of the refrigerator that's got like two coils. But I was gonna try to take that out. Right. Well, except remember though, uh these units usually have like the single compressor and they're running everything off of the one.
So if you take the you're not gonna use the you're not gonna use the chilling of the fridge at all. No, no, I'm gonna use the chilling of the fridge, but I was gonna try to take the it's got like one of those like mini freezer components. Yeah. Usually that mini freezer component is actually what provides the chilling for the entire fridge. And it's just yeah, and it's I mean if it's the one I'm thinking about, and then um what happens is is they they concentrate and insulate the freezer area so that it stays frozen and then the rest of it kind of doesn't.
And that's why stuff that's up near that freezer box sometimes freezes over, like things like lettuce and ice. Um throughout the box. So um you know, the the you can shield off like the coil there a little bit so that it's not really chilling too much if you don't want to chill too much, but it's condensation onto those coils and then the melt off and you gotta drain the water out from those coils that's gonna dehumidify that chamber for you. Because if anytime you're freezing, anytime you freeze water out of the air onto a coil and then, you know, put it through a saw thaw cycle and drip out, that's how a dehumidifier works. You know, I mean that's literally what they are.
And so um, you know, having that in some like in contact with the air in the box is gonna definitely provide uh the dehumidification that you that it you know, therefore that you could add the humidity back. Otherwise, um I mean otherwise if and if you if you can't use that to hit the numbers that you want, then the salt might be something that's useful for you. Okay. Great. Well that's that's really helpful.
Um and then I I had another question. You had um on episode I think it was like ninety six, you uh were talking about uh coffee cocktail called a shake nado. Um and um you you said you were cold you were cold brewing the coffee directly into the liquor. And I was wondering if that was uh just grain spirits or what or like, you know uh as close to that as you can get um yeah and I was wondering what what liquor you were doing the cold brew in the extraction in the ISI. Um it we it depends kind of on uh my mood m what I use most often is uh a uh a dark rum the one that I and of those the one I use most often is uh called Ronsa Kappa which uh it it's called twenty three it's not twenty three years old they use like a Solera system so like you know one microliter in a bottle is probably twenty three years old but it's a it's a good nice um it's a good nice dark rum and I like it because it goes it goes well with the coffee.
But I you know that said I've done it into totally neutral as well. It depends on what you're shooting for. Like we're shooting for like a cocktail and the coffee flavor is extremely intense so you know two ounces of the uh but I also wanted a little bit of that kind of rum sweetness on the nose. But if you don't want that you could use you know you could use a a neutral a neutral spirit but we were using regular 40 proof um 40 proof liquor. In fact the uh the the recipe for the ISI the one I always use is the one that's in um in the liquid intelligence and if you the book and if you don't you know if you don't I I'm pretty sure you could do a look inside on Amazon and and s snag the recipe um for the I think it's called cafe za Kapa is what I call it in the book.
Uh and it's just um but you could substitute any kind of liquor you want. The key there is that a coffee infuses so quickly uh into the alcohol that you just have to be um pretty accurate with your grind, you know, um and pretty accurate with your timing. Otherwise it can just go intensely bitter. Just intensely bitter. You know.
And the whole idea of doing it that way is so that you don't need to add like a boat ton of sugar back to it to make it to make it um good. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah, um there's a uh a race in San Francisco called Beta Breakers. Um it's like uh the most San Francisco of San Francisco holidays.
Everybody wakes up at uh you know 7 a.m. and does and pre-drinks for the race and then gets in costume and runs this race completely drunk and it's uh a complete mess. Um but I do a a pre-breakfast. So I was thinking about drinking or like making this as the cocktail. Uh last year we did a Kentucky breakfast.
Is it is it gonna be something that like you said being precise with is that gonna be something that is too difficult you think is gonna be too difficult to do um a la minute for a bunch of people um, you know, at at seven in the morning kind of thing, or is that is it gonna be um would that be a good application of that? Yeah, I would make the coffee liquor the night before, let it sit. Okay. And then, you know, and and it's it's no I I've done well just we did that cigar event, how much of that stuff do we bust out? A lot.
A lot lot, right? So it's no problem. You can bust out like a lot lot of it. Um it's and and it'll hold overnight, no problem. Um and then just shake it, shake it in the morning.
Uh, you know, and then you could do the either the milk the the version with milk or the version without milk, depending on, you know, kind of what you feel like. But already, like I, you know, man, running when you're drunk, that's painful. Why do people do that to themselves? Oh no, it's so much fun. So, like what we do is so, like last year I made strawberry buckwheat pancakes with bourbon uh whipped cream and had Kentucky breakfastes.
And you're only going like two miles, and you don't like actually run. You more like walk and drink more. It's like uh like it's like a it's like a two-mile, it's like a bar crawl, except there's no bars, and you just bring all of your alcohol and everybody's drinking in public, and it's the one day of the year where the nudity ban is like is um not in effect. So, you know, there's costumes and naked people and people throwing up, and it's it's it's the most San Francisco of San Francisco events. This is like Santa Con.
This is like this is like our version of Santa Con without frightening the children, or maybe with frightening the children without frightening the channel. Well, we do SantaCon. So like, you know, we we we're on that bandwagon too. This is like our own special thing. Um, but you know, you it's it's it's it's just this massive, they shut down the streets and they like have like, you know, um it's it's just massive.
And I know you hate block parties and being outside, but um it's it's it's it's really, you know, if if you ever wanted to, you know, people do all sorts of weird stuff, and it's just kind of insane. Um collective insanity. A quarter of a million people show up every year to do this. So listen, try that try that recipe out and tweet us at cooking issues. Let us know how it worked out, and let us know how this the uh your uh curing chamber worked out.
Uh yeah, I will. Thank you uh for letting me bogart the show. All right. Uh uh. All right, we got another call.
Actually, a few more calls. Yeah, so let's take the next one. All right, cool. Caller, you're on the air. Hey, I just wanted to give you a little bit of encouragement and don't let anybody tell you otherwise.
You have to continue the intro with your show in the full New York WWE introductory fashion, because that was the first time I heard your show. In fact, I think I I just happened to find your podcast, and I the first episode was one that uh Nastasha stole Christmas trees. Oh, yeah. But the intro, I'm sitting in my bed listening to the intro, and I'm thinking, what in the Sam hell is this? And then of course it turns into a great show with ransomware.
So don't let anybody change your introduction. Because when I started listening to the backlogs, as soon as I told the backlog, it was like, Hello, this is Dave, and this is like your MPR, and it was like, is this the same show? This is not right. There's so much more uh aggressive ideology here that I want to hear. So don't let anybody change that.
Uh anyway, my question was how do you uh clean your um cast iron? Do you use soap is the uh is the question? Yeah, I use soap. Uh you know, I use regular kind of uh, you know, the dishwashing stuff like uh like you have on the uh on the counter. Not the not the powdery stuff, obviously, but just like regular kind of hand dishwashing soap.
I mean, I don't let it soak there forever, but I use uh I just use Scotchbrite and uh and that soap and then wash it, give it a rinse, and then I I always, almost always, throw them back on the burner for like uh fifteen seconds on high heat just to heat it up, get all the water off of the pan so that it's dry, uh so it's not like sitting and do it. And I've never had a problem, you know, my you know ever. I mean it's I think it's the old the old uh cleaners like alkali-based cleaners uh or alkaline cleaners can hose it because it can start breaking down the surface. But that polymerized oil surface isn't isn't you know, Dawn ain't cutting that grease. Do you know what I'm saying?
Totally. Um, and you know, I think aggressive scrubbing can probably be uh m might be able to cause you a problem, but like the regular, like uh, you know, I don't use steel wool on it, but I use Scotch Brights and you know, chore boys and stuff like that on them. And um, because otherwise they get all gunked up, you know. Yeah, exactly. And mine stay like pretty pretty slick, and I've I've used it on I have old uh polished pans, like uh an old I have an old griswall that's polished, and um, you know, that I've had for oh probably you know, t twenty-five years, and and it was probably 40 years old when I bought it, and I've never had a problem with that, and um and I have a bunch of uh lodge stuff that you know is newer, the kind of pebbled surface that's not polished, and it's also fine that way.
Of course, that the you know that those newer pans take a lot longer to build up to a complete like awesome non stickness than the old school ones, but my seasoning never comes off. In fact, they're the ones that pans I use most often, so I ha I scrub them all uh all the time because I have um I have like six of those uh like fajita pans and they just like they're they stack so easy, and so they I keep them right on a ledge above my my burners and spam a bam, but they're easy to get to, so I use them a lot, but all the wear down that grid. But uh yeah, you know, if you're gonna be an excitable New Yorker and frustratedly excited when somebody tells you that they don't like biscuits, there's no way you can go back to the MPR intro. Because eventually you're gonna get all excited. So just stay with the excitement.
Alright. Fair enough. What do you think, Jack? Sounds good. I got another call waiting, so it's yeah.
So all right. Well, thank you. Thank you for the uh call. What do you think, Stuzz? Stas is shaking her head.
Even though this is radio, not TV, she is merely shaking her head up and down, which is classic stuzz. But thank you for calling in and uh No, next time, we'll go back to cooking issues. Um caller, you are on the air. Hey, how's it doing, Dave, Nastasha, Jack, and the rest of the crew? Hope everyone's well.
Yeah, doing well. We're enjoying the nice weather, but Nastasia hates nice weather. Do you know why Nastasia hates nice weather? This is nice weather. What do you mean it's not raining?
It's gloomy. But oh, you like gloomy. Nastasia hates nice weather because she doesn't like it when people enjoy going outside. I I used my Twitter and I was feeling great and it was sunny out, and I said something on Twitter. I was like, I'm a change man in the sun, and then somebody tweeted at me and they were like, Don't tell Stas that.
Yeah, because she hates when people enjoy the outside. Especially hipsters. Anyway, sir, go ahead. Sorry. I'm also a vote for your your enthusiastic opening, but that's that's a side note.
Awesome. Um if you're aware of any other modernist technique that you can make black garlic outside of the long and slow method. Did you write in the black garlic question? Okay. Just how would you go about making garlic if there's a quicker way of doing it?
Because the world is so crazy. This happens so often. Like we have a question someone sent us on black garlic, uh, which is totally separate. So and you know what's unfortunate? We have to get I don't know if you can get Johnny Hunter on the um uh on the phone, Jack.
But he has I was t literally talking to Black Gar, but he was on the show a couple of weeks ago, and uh I was talking to him about black garlic, because they make it, and then he said, Yeah, someone makes it in like in like a couple of days, and I think they just do it by jacking the temperature higher. But I couldn't remember what the protocol was that the guy used. So for those of you that don't know, uh who are listening to the program, so black garlic is something, and like uh uh from all accounts that I can read, it was fairly recent in invention. Um but the basic principle is you keep uh whole garlic cloves, uh whole garlic heads rather, uh, you know, skins on and everything, sealed in a container so that it doesn't they don't dry out. Uh and you you let them go for at like 60 degrees Celsius, like 140 or thereabouts, you know, like within plus or minus uh five five, six five, ten degrees, and you keep it for like a month or a little longer.
And uh people mistakenly call this fermentation stars, but it's not really fermentation because it's not it's not a it's not a bacterial or uh or a fungal thing of crap. It's just you know, it's it's this stuff's breaking down over time at this elevated temperature. And what you get is this kind of like awesome sweet black garlic uh that is is is awesome, but it's expensive. So a lot of people make it themselves. But and you know, the the the only way I've ever done it is in my excalib food dehydrator, but people do it in their rice cooker, for instance.
And in the rice cooker, rice cookers are a bit hotter, they're at 165 degrees uh Fahrenheit. And I've heard people say that two weeks in a rice cooker might be enough, you know, on the keep warm function. But uh I forget what Johnny said. Uh I don't know if we can get get them or not, but uh if not I can tweet him and have him tell me what what the other guys were using in in Madison. They're upset today, by the way.
Losing the Madison, the Badgers, they lost yeah yeah yikes. Anyway, oh badgers. It turns out it wasn't badgers, it's mushroom mushroom anyway was that actually done by someone in university of Madison anyway I digress the the point is is that yes there is a way to speed it up I don't know the protocols but it doesn't taste quite the same it still tastes good but it's not the same because anytime you're working with these uh reactions that take place over a long period of time that are very complex whether they be Mired or any other kind of reaction like this the flavor you get depends on every factor involved including the rate at which it happens and so um speeding it up you might get something that looks the same but it probably and according to Johnny doesn't taste the same doesn't taste bad and it's not necessarily a question of better or worse it's just it's gonna be different. Does that make sense? Fair enough yeah but if I can get him on the phone I'll figure out what what it is to speed up because he said that these guys were getting it in like in a couple of days.
Like like I think it was under under a week which would be awesome. I mean it's not like a 10 minute thing but uh and you know what I wonder like what else like what else have people experimented with I know the Nordic food guys lab uh the Nordic food lab folks uh did onions and shallots the same way and they said that that those were um good. You know the thing is is that alliums are so complicated that uh you know a lot of interesting stuff goes on but I have like a rice cooker that'll stay keep warm for like you know weeks and weeks. I should just just keep random stuff in there and see what happens to it. I kept uh I've only kept rice warm for three days.
I was hoping I would get some sort of miracle rice after like three days of keep warm, but it didn't. But maybe I should have left it for like two weeks. Like maybe I'll just like divide up my rice cooker, like have some rice there, some onions, some garlic, and some other random stuff, and just keep it on keep ro warm for like a month and see and like kind of note the changes that happen to a bunch of different food stuffs. You know what I mean? Yeah, totally.
Yeah, I'll give it a shot. Anyway, I'll let I'll uh I'll I'll either tweet it on cooking issues or uh if Johnny gets back before the end of the show, I'll have him uh figure uh you know tell us the fast way to do it, alright. Excellent. Sounds good. Thanks a lot, man.
Alright, thanks for calling. Okay, caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, how's it going? All right, doing alright. I have to say I like the loud intro a lot more.
Nice. Nice. So we know that our c our core folks, the folks that are willing to call in, they like the loud. That's who matters. Yeah.
Yeah. Gotta play to the core, baby. I got two totally unrelated questions for you, so start with the first one. I run a pop-up bar and I do a lot of home infusions and things like that. And I've tried filtering with coffee filters, which are terrible, and Buchner funnels, which are a pain to use, and water filters, which I'm worried strip flavors out to activated charcoal.
They do. But I read all of Liquid Intelligence and read all of Cooking Issues blog, and I understood in your clarification technique, but I don't have a centrifuge. So I'm wondering if agar clarification works on infusions or just blended things like your strawberry gin for the first question. Right. So I have agar clarified liquor, but I'm not super jazzed about it, to be honest, because it strips it just strips a lot of flavor, and um and you you end up having to add some uh water because you gotta hydrate the agar and water, and um because you can obviously the temperatures uh you can't reach the hydration temperature of agar in straight booze.
Uh and so I've done it, but I just don't like it. You know what I mean? It's like uh agar clarifying juices, yeah. But like doing the agar clarified booze, I've never been super I've never been super happy with it. I tried it once because I did uh an event in um in South America once and I couldn't get a centrifuge and I was trying to do I forget what it was, it was something like it was something like strawberry and gin, but uh but a as a whole, you know what I mean?
And I just I just wasn't happy with it. Um I'm not saying that you couldn't find something you're happy with, and it will work, right? Yeah. But it's just the flavor is not uh gonna gonna be that that good. Now you could you could uh it you could maybe treat it as something that's pre watered a little bit, right?
But still I think you're gonna strip a lot of flavor out. So like in other words, if you were going to do like a carbonated drink where it didn't matter that it was gonna come out more watery, then sure, you could take an infusion, hydrate the agar in the water, uh, and then like temper it back in, trying to keep the alcohol percentage somewhere around twenty, maybe twenty, thirty percent. Uh well say twenty, and then and then agar clarify, your yield might not be that high. Your proof will probably go up a little bit over your base level because the water's gonna be preferentially held onto the agar a bit, and y it'll clarify and it might taste good for something carbonated where you need like a lighter flavor anyway, but I don't think it's gonna work that well for let's say a stir drink. Do you think that um if a charcoal in a water filter would strip less flavor than agar, or am I just should I just plug down for a century.
Well I mean the charcoal does clearly strip flavor. I mean you know you you can taste it it strips flavor. Right. E even if you take something that's clear for instance so you know you're not removing particulate matter then and you taste it you can taste a difference after it's gone through a charcoal filter uh like a Britta. Um in fact we used to run we used to run all of our smearinoff through Britta's to get rid of the you know any residual hospital nose on it before we were using it to do rotary evaporation back at the back at the school.
Um and uh but I was too cheap to buy the actual Brita holders so we used to take a torch and melt the bottom of core containers and then punch the filters through the bottom of cork containers. That's how cheap we are um some almost like you guys have such great facilities and literally like we're sitting there like melting the bottom of a core container with a torch and punching a brita through because we're too cheap to buy the pitcher for it. But whatever um so uh I mean look centrifuges are great and I think with within a year I will say within a year there will probably be centrifuge there will probably be a centrifuge that normal people can afford to have around within about a year I would say I mean I'm not gonna guarantee it but I would say that that I I mean I would bet on it. If if there's not I'm in big trouble let me put it that way. So, you know, if you can hold out a a uh a bit longer, you know, maybe maybe you should hold out a bit longer for the for the centrifuge.
Cool. Alright and I have another question about something entirely different. One of your favorite subjects, country ham. Ah, love it. So uh I was wondering uh if I want to serve it like a European dry cured ham, is it better to get one of the ones that have been aged for a year or more, or one of the ones that have been gone for like four to six months, okay?
No, no, no. Here's the problem. The four to six month ones are and some of them are like they're not that they're low low quality, right? But the way that the the they they the people who are good at it anyway at doing faster hams, um they they basically um they put it through faster cycles of uh of uh of kind of uh of like it would go through naturally and then they they keep it at exactly the humidity they need to to get the the thing as dry as possible as fast as possible, right? So on first inspection, these hams can look like a like a 12-month-old ham, right?
Um now, someone that's doing it, so okay, let's just back up a second. So if you were to take someone, let's say, like a Newsom's or an Edwards or uh, you know, Finchville or any one of these kind of like style Benton's caliber of hams, like completely traditional style hams, right? Yeah. And you were to open one of those guys up at seven, seven, six or seven months, right? So this ham would be okay then for like traditional American uh cooking, but the inside of the kind of like uh cushion area of the meat, the meaty part, is gonna be really tacky.
You know what I mean? Yeah. And it's gonna be impossible to slice without gumming. Forget the fact that the flavor won't be fully developed yet. But it in terms of sliceability, it's gonna be pretty tacky in there.
Um so one of the hams that's been meant to be released after, you know, a fairly shorter amount of time might seem like it's lost all that tack in there. However, I've noticed on slicing them, when you slice them and then let them sit, they can get kind of gummy tacky. They're not going to have the same texture. And also, there's no there's no way that you're going to get the same kind of um flavor uh in a quick in a quick uh thing as you will in a in a in a slow one because you'll have the drying, but you won't have the flavor development from protein breakdown and whatever else happens, you know, lip you know, lip oxidation or whatever the heck else happens in the ham as it's aging. That stuff just takes time.
And they're not accelerating the aging, they're just really accelerating the dehydration of it. You know what I'm saying? Uh and so, you know, what you know, what a what a country ham uh you know really wants is to go through, you know, um, you know, a full, you know, a full cycle of at least uh a year, sometimes you know, better, two summers, like at the you know, at the at the in the middle of that second summer, man, when they're like 18 months, that's like sweet. That's a sweet spot, you know what I mean? So question if if I have one that's that old and not naturally dried out, does it need to be refrigerated once it's been cut?
No. I mean, some people do, it depends on how you how you store it. I used like I say, I used to store mine out in my uh, you know, hanging. Uh the problem is is that you can get certain insects can attack it and you can get mites that hit the um that you know that that create a powdery residue around. That's why some of the old timers they used to spread lard on the on the cut surfaces.
Um but you know, the other thing is that sometimes uh, you know, when you bone it, there's like the you know you create a cavity there and like some molds can grow in there. Um you know, of course you can always trim away mold. Mold that that mold on the outside, as long as you trim it away, uh, you know, isn't going to kill you. You know, you just gotta, you know, like say, you know, tri trim it away. Uh the thing about uh storing it in the fridge is that you can store it in the fridge for even a relatively long period of time, but like I tend to some like get like weird kind of like sticky nastiness on where the paper, like say you were to wrap it in wax paper and put it in your fridge.
I get like some sort of weirdness on the surface of the meat right by the wax paper, and uh sometimes you can pick up odors from your fridge and vice versa. Like for instance, in the country ham fridge at Somme, uh, you know, the Sombar, like uh they put the for some reason they put the milk for the coffee in the country ham fridge, and that milk is like unusable. I don't know how those suckers are using it for coffee. They they must love ham coffee. You know what I mean?
So I mean the other thing is I don't have that much space in my fridge anyway, so yeah, so I wouldn't sweat it. I mean, like the you know, just uh, you know, I wouldn't have it necessarily resting against anything uh because you can get some like weird mold, weird context. I mean, I'd keep the bugs away from it. Um, and if you get if you happen to get mites, again, none of that stuff's gonna kill you. You know what I mean?
Uh you know, just trim away anything you don't like and you're good to go. I mean, this stuff is, you know, this stuff's survival food, man. Yeah, of course. And uh on final question, I know that Edward uses um heritage breed pigs like Berkshire and and whatnot. Are there any other producers using those kind of figs?
Um I think I think uh Newsom's might have bought some stuff from uh Patrick, and there's a there's a I just went out of my head, but there's a there's a company that produces some really expensive and very delicious hams that are all kind of mast fed. I saw them at uh Starchef, so you can look up the uh people who are, but the the name of the company just went right out of my head as I as I went to go think about it. But I think it's more and more ha gonna happen because I mean that's really where that's really where the future of American kind of country ham excellence lies is in um in the feed and and the the the meat itself. Like the like I've always said the curing is there. It's just uh the you know um they hadn't forgotten how to do that right.
You know what I mean? It's just the quality of of the meat that needed to be um kind of brought up. And I think we're getting there. Can I chime in here? Yeah.
I'm Sam Edwards, and I listen to Heritage Radio Network. Oh, nice. I just really wanted an excuse to do that. Nice, all right, nice. Sam Edwards actually one of the original sponsors of of uh the the radio the radio network.
Huge supporter. Yeah, he has sponsored the show from time to time, but uh, but you know, anyway, good man. All right. That answer your question? Hello?
Yeah. All right, nice. Yeah, yeah. That's great. Thanks a lot.
All right, cool. Thank you. Um okay. So uh we're about to get kicked off, but let me just go through what we're not gonna get taken break. Jack's gonna fake insert a break, right, Jack?
Actually, you know, I have another minute for another caller. I just the lines are off the hook today. All right, caller, you're on the air. Hey, is that me? Yeah.
Oh, hey, Dave. Um, on the intro note, go with whatever makes you happy. See, there's the first person that cared about like what we wanted. Stas doesn't care. This is what Stas just made.
Stas is making her head a her migraine head. Alright, I'll go with what's happy. Nice. Do you have a uh but I do have a quick question for you? I made your tea time for Easter brunch.
It was a great hit. Everybody loved it. Uh awesome drink. But there was so much good foaminess left in the bottom of the shaker. Is there a trick to getting that out?
Oh, that's a good question. Uh well, you see, you gotta know your like I don't know your shake technique, right? So when you shake, usually you shake, and then uh kind of like let it drain, and then I'll do a s I'll do a snap, like you know, I'll like uh I'm holding the the the shaker kind of pointed down with my um with my pointer holding the um holding the strainer onto the thing, right? And then I'll give it a s I'll give it a snap down and that'll get some last um little little bit little bit out. Um plus I always reshape strain it out?
I mean that's sorry, I couldn't hear you. What did you say? Was that are you using a hawthorn to strain? Yeah. So so here's the thing with a strainer, right?
So the bad hawthorns, um, when I say bad, I mean the cheap, like the normal kind of hawthorns that you use. Uh you have to be really be careful, otherwise you get like uh too many of different larger and weird size ice crystals coming out. I like like a couple of ice crystals in a drink because like I like that little crunch. The problem is that it's hard to control with those kind of older hawthorn strainers. That's why most of the um you know, a lot of the uh cocktail people for a long time who were anti-crystal, because there's a huge anti-crystal on the top of the drink movement for years in the cocktail world.
And that's why those folks, you'd always see them straining through a tea strainer, right? So they would have a hawthorn, which why would you use a hawthorn if you're gonna go through a tea strainer, right? Uh don't ask me because I don't know. Um except for the fact that they rest more conveniently. They're easier to hold than a juleup strainer, I think, in a in a tin.
Uh and then they would strain through a um um a tea strainer. Now the problem with a tea strainer, it's fine for a daiquiri, um, but for a milk wash product, which tea time is milk wash, there's a milk washing for those of you that you know, I don't know, go go look it up in the in the liquid intelligence, or it's been on the show before, I think, milk washing. There's a specific foam from the whey proteins in milk washing, and that is destroyed by uh tea strainer. So uh so I never use a tea strainer on that. And so uh that's why I use exclusively the uh cocktail kingdoms like fine m the the fine wired um uh hawthorn because it's like the best balance.
It doesn't let through an inordinate amount of crystals. Uh you don't have to worry about you know clamping the gate of your hawthorn down so hard to the shaker that you know you're you're you're having like white knuckles by the end of the evening and um you know and it doesn't hurt the foam. So that's what I use for it. Yeah, that's what I use as well, and I guess it's just the uh the snapping technique. Well that they go down easy, right?
Uh but the um yeah, just give it a snap and that's gonna get that other stuff out. I have had um bartenders who are used to the kind of older style like uh you know, fat wire hawthorns we'll call them or coarse hawthorns I'll call them, um, say that they that that they're not getting everything out of the shaker and that they're, you know, they kind of upset them, but then if you m if you just give it that last snap on the on the way out, I think you're gonna get most of that stuff back out of there. Alright, well, thank you very much. And that's a great drink for anybody who hasn't had it yet. Oh well, thank you.
Thank you. Good vote for the tea time. We we uh tea time styles, we do a lot at events because people people like them, right? Yeah, you made that for one of our events. It was good.
Oh, nice. All right, so we're gonna get uh ripped off, and we didn't get to any of the written in questions, but I will just describe them too. Which I like. I like that. Yeah.
But okay, so we got uh we had a follow-up on the ricotta, which we'll we'll talk about next week. We're back here next week, right? We're not anywhere, styles, right? Mm-hmm. Okay.
Oh what? We may our company wide meeting might run more of that. No, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna come here uh because it's more important. Uh and we had a question on cooking squirrel from Sam Geiger, which is gonna be interesting, uh, because I've never cooked squirrel, but I will talk about what I think. And we had a question on black garlic and what and uh and making a tea out of the black garlic skins and what and what thickens them.
And real quick, we have a Kickstarter uh for a new Heritage Radio website that will make especially my life really a lot easier. I I do all this like horrible HTML coding every day to get these shows up. It's completely unnecessary. All right, Jack, talk about the Kickstarter. Yeah, quick.
So the code's expiring on our website, it's gonna fall apart uh soon. So we have a new website that's gonna be built. It's gonna be really, really awesome, interactive, modern, mobile friendly. So go to Kickstarter, search for Heritage Radio Network. Every dollar counts.
Please, please, please do it. Well, what do they get all of us? So many perks. I mean, at the highest levels, you can get your own show on Heritage Radio. At the lowest levels, I make you some ringtones.
So what does it cost to get uh get your own show on the Heritage Radio Network? I think a full season is a five thousand dollar donation. So that'd be like a twelve episode, you know, season. That's pretty cheap though. They get they get you doing the production and all this other stuff.
Yeah, you should raise that to ten. Your own radio show. Yes, as well. So you like any one of you out here with an axe to grind and five thousand dollars burning a hole in the bottom of your pocket can come over here. It comes with free pizza at lunch.
Did I mention this? Yeah, we'll do that. Yeah, and uh no travel or accommodations though. And for a thousand bucks, you can do one show. One episode.
Yeah. You can have an hour to say whatever you want. Whatever you want. That's crazy. Whatever you want.
And they'll push it on the they'll push it on the what's it called there? On the website. You can push it on your yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, okay.
Uh that's great. And so we we know we didn't get to talk about uh next week. The Tandoor. I've got a lot of Tandoor stuff. I've been going Tandoor crazy.
Uh maybe I'll cook with Tandoor this weekend too, and uh we'll uh and we'll get back to it. Cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on heritage radio network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at heritage underscore radio.
You can email us with questions anytime at info at heritage radio network.org.
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