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 Bushwith Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more. Hello, and we're back with Cooking Issues live on the Heritage Radio Network.
I'm Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues here with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez and uh new new person joining us in the studio, Ben, who's trailing Jack for Engineering here on the Heritage Radio Network. Ben, why don't you tell us a little bit about something about yourself here? Uh just quit my job uh to work as a radio producer. Yeah, and I and I heard tell that uh prior to uh this you were a corporate attorney. I was, sadly.
Yeah, what kind of any any particular kind of corporate law? Like chopping them up, gluing them back together. Uh picking up the bankruptcy pieces. Ooh, fun. Fun.
Fun. We got Jack over there, and uh Jack has kindly given us a bottle of Prosecco to celebrate. Congratulations. Oh, yeah. Uh yeah.
Uh so uh last Friday, the James Beard Awards uh uh said that Liquid Intelligence was their favorite uh cocktail book of the year. Nice. Or as I texted Nastasia, because it was her birthday, by the way, so she was off in Brantford partying like a rock star, right? True or false? True.
Yeah. Uh so uh while she was partying like a rock star, I I sent her a text saying that I had won best hot food cold separator, which is the only thing she uses liquid intelligence for is separating the hot side and the cold side. That's all she cares about. She's like, but is it gonna keep I don't want my lettuce to get wilted. By the way, for those of you that are listening to me, like you can tell what Nastasia sounds like because you've heard her, and that's my invitation of her.
So you can see that my invitations of people bear no relationship to kind of what's going on. Uh hey Jack, are we gonna saber this? I don't even know if this Proseco will saber. Do you want me to open it like a person? I think you can open it like a person, maybe like.
You know, last time we sabored a bottle in the studio, it got all over the equipment and it was bad. Oh, Mimi, I'm a musician, and I don't want my equipment ruined. Yeah. Is that what I'm hearing from you? That was that was the voice I used.
By the way, by the way, Jack, uh, I noticed that even though today is sponsored by uh our our buddies, the you know, the molecular recipes, but you didn't play Jackie Molecules. Oh, we'll get there. Middle of the show. Uh I just don't want to miss it. I don't want to miss the Jackie Molecules.
It's been two, it's been two weeks. So what's been going on for these two weeks? Well, the first week, heritage oh, this is by the way, this is the sound of this is the sound of Nastasia suddenly getting happy, ready? Uh you want to pour that out, Stas? Um somebody somewhere just got a real shock in their headphones.
Oh, speaking of shock in the headphones, if you want to call in live, call in your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. So anyway, we've been gone these past two weeks. Uh the first week, uh Heritage Radio was shut down. I don't really know why, but it was.
And last week I was in Mexico. Mexico, Mexico. For the first time ever. Because does anyone consider the border towns to actually be Nex Mexico? No, right?
I mean, no offense to those of you that live in like Juarez and Nogales and Tijuana. Like, no offense to you. But I mean, it's like, you know, Mexico City is pretty awesome. You Stas, you've never been there, right? No.
Even though you're half Mexican, you've never been to Mexico. Yeah, I have been to Mexico. Like, where you haven't been there. Where in Mexico are you? Uh I've been to Cancun and TJ.
TJ. I like that. TJ. It's like it's a dude, TJ. Anyway.
Uh so what were your thoughts on Tijuana? It's gotta be better than Nicolas. I was like five. It's gotta be better than Nogales anyway. Yeah?
Yeah. Anyway. Mexico City, amazing. In fact, the food, obviously, you know how everyone's like the food, the Mexican food here in New York blows, like the average Mexican food. I mean, I'm not talking about Cosme or any of the other stuff, but the average Mexican food here blows, and they're like, oh, it's so much better in California.
So much better in Mexico. I mean, it makes sense, right? I mean it being Mexican food. Uh so you know, I I guess I don't really have the time because I'm gonna run out before I get to all the questions to go through. But I did purchase, for those of you that, you know, are in the way back machine on uh the cooking issues, you know, many, many years ago I did uh uh a post on nixtamalization, which is the process of uh taking corn, uh, you know, soaking slash cooking it, par cooking it in um lime water, calcium hydroxide, right?
Lime cow cal, they call it down there, uh, and then uh soaking it and then uh grinding it to make nixtamol, which is the base of masa, I mean make masa, which is the base of you know, corn tortillas, right? Right. And for those of you that paid attention, the hardest part about the whole nonsense is grinding the stuff because oh, by the way, you know, it's like you know, the traditional grinding method styles is you know, the Matati Mano, the big stone, and I bought a crappy one on 116th Street, and it was useless. It was like a child's toy, it was so small, it was ridiculous, absurd. Like I don't even know.
So I was gonna buy one there, but they're so damn heavy, like a real one. Like the guy, this other guy who's gonna sell me one, swear to god, it was like 10 bucks, something like this. Like really nice. I was like, where's the the mono? Where's the you know the the the actual like rolling pin style wooden thing that goes?
I mean, uh uh you know, it looks like a rolling pin, but it's made of stone. And he goes, Well, here's one, and he gives me like a small, and I was like, I was like, dude, dude, I know that I'm like, you know, white as the driven freak in snow, like super gringo, but for Christ's sakes, you know, that mono is not matched to that, you know, matate. It's not gonna work. It was like stats. It was like a six inch mono and like this giant and like you know that if it had fit, I would have just duct taped to my back and told the airline that it was like a it was like I would have told the airline that it was like some sort of growth.
You're weak. What do you mean I'm weak? They didn't have the right stuff. The guy didn't have the right stuff. I gotta go to the right I gotta go to the right neighborhood next time.
Look I was by the way, I spent most of my time in um the Merced, which is like you know one of the main main markets in Mexico City with these with this group of uh women who were making um they weren't hand padding the tortillas so they weren't like full abuela but they were like making like they were pressing out with the fresh masa the the squash blossom quesadillas there are ridiculous. Like a we like we were all sitting around like a bunch of us were sitting around saying how much would this cost in New York right? So you go to the farmer's market, you buy a little plastic thingam crap of squash blossoms. How much is that thing stas? You shop for that kind of crap.
Seven. Yeah right okay so imagine this lady had what amounted to a like it was clear so it wasn't gross but a like large garbage bag full of them full of them right and remember she bought it like 50 feet away because they're at a market right rough chop she has a giant comal she just throws a giant like giant like cheese well so here's what she does she throws a giant giant pile of the stuff on the comal and just starts it going she has like a spatula and like a thing of like fresh oil because you know they also her fryer next to it for doing like gorditas and stuff, looks like an upside down sombrero. So it's got a big flat rim and then just like a basin that if imagine a walk with a giant wide brim on it. So like a like a gardening hat, you know what I mean? But upside down.
And so that's what she was like frying in. So she had a thing of fresh oil there, so she just went hip, and like like with the spatula, put a little bit of oil on the uh on the Florida calabasa, a little salt, right? And then she and this other lady were like the ma mystical masters of shredding like wax and string cheese, because they literally they picked up a block of the cheese and just like and was like these like threads of cheese. So like they cooked it down. She made the she she also was like super quick and consistent on making these very kind of long, very long, like foot-long, uh, like kind of narrow um uh tortillas that she would like put on the commodity, and then that's it.
She would slap the cheese on the thing with the Florida Calabasa, put the thing as salt, and that's it. And that's really all it needs. That's I mean, like, but you're not used to having squash blossoms like this because you need to stretch them. So you stuff them with things, or you uh you know, you dip them in batter and you fry them like a pancake, or you know, any any one of these numbers that they but who the hell can afford it? Why is their taste?
Is it a zucchini taste? Like what is it's so much better. You know how I feel about zucchini. I know. But what yeah, but like how do you describe it?
I mean, it's kind of I don't know, I can't really describe it. Delicious. First of all, it exudes juices, it's juiciness, but it's not watery, and it still maintains some of its crunch. I mean, that's what's so disgusting about zucchini, right? So it's like you know, I don't know, it almost has like a it's like a savory, it's not meaty because it's not that kind of chunk, but it feels substantial considering we ate like eight bazillion of these things, and plus like this the the cheese that they were putting on it was like so much nicer than the crap that we get in the supermercado, as they call them at my fine local fine fair, which is not necessarily a good place to buy this sort of product, but anyway.
Here in here in New York, it would have been like, you know, a $20 freaking quesadilla. And that's the thing, you know what? It'll be worth it, but no one would pay it because it's not high-end food. Like no one wants to pay that kind of money for something just because no one can afford to have the squash blossoms in it. I hear there's some places here that have very cheap squash blossoms, but I don't know.
Maybe okay, honestly, maybe each quesadilla had like one and a half of those containers. So you're looking at like seven and a half dollars worth of squash blossoms in each quesadilla. It's crazy though. But that's the way you want to do it. And I said to the lady, well, through an intermediary, because I don't speak Spanish.
I was like, I was like, hey, you know, do you uh, you know, do you get these all year or is this a spring thing? Because it was later spring. She was like, Oh, you're I was like, oh you bastards, you bastards. And uh another thing, try this in New York. So, like at a different market at the uh Mercado San Juan, where they have this, like they have the place that called Los Cayotes that sells all the weird meats and stuff.
I had the uh Jack, you're not drinking your per seco, you're making me angry. I'm sorry. Um they had the uh the ant eggs, the Escaval and like all the other weird stuff. So I bought some because I went there thinking that they were uh going to prepare them because they I was led to believe that they had them prepared in in you know tacos and whatever. And no, so I had to buy them raw, but I'm not not gonna buy it, right?
So then they're burning a hole in my refrigerator, like for a day, and as I'm leaving, I'm like, you know what? I bet you those ladies will cook it for me. Oh wow. Yeah. So imagine doing that in New York.
I walk up, they're like making this stuff. First of all, these late for those of you that like you know are professionals out there, you would love these people. I walk up to them, they have nothing going, none of the equipment's on, they have none of their meas, nothing. Nothing. At like eight in the morning, right when they open.
So I'm like, how long should I come back? She's like, 15 minutes. I'm like, really? So 15 minutes, we go back, and they're screaming. They already have stuff out of the out of the door.
They already have people being served. There's a lot to be said for the Mexican street kitchen. Amazing, amazing, mate. Anyway, so uh so I was like, you know, puedes cocinar with my best, you know, kind of gringo accent. So she yeah, she freaking cooked them for me.
They were good. Look, I talked to Rick Bayless about it uh on Friday because he was at the Awaris Award ceremony because his his um podcast won. Uh and uh, you know, he was like, Look, you know, they're good, they they're a little mealy like that, like if they've previously been frozen. Like next time I go, he says he has the source of like the hyper fresh, like the hyper hyper real, the verdad. You know what I'm saying?
So like next time I go, we'll get she also made us like these awesome, because I bought at the market like a whole boatload of wheat like coche, like nice wheat la coche, and so she cooked that. Great, great place. Love Mexico. Oh, reason I brought it up, I bought um a nix a nixtomatic grinder. The hard part about uh making uh masa is grinding it.
And uh the corona hand grinder, which is the best thing I was able to get, sucks. The last time I made it out. I threw it out. I I went to make masa the other day out of rye, which by the way, like I say, it's stickier. If you read the post, it's sticky the I forget what the post is called on cooking issues, but apparently it's back.
You can get it, it's not just uh Cialis. Oh, the forum is now Cialis. Oh, okay. Uh anyway, so if you read it, uh, you know, you'll see that I made I mixedamilize rye basically and make it, but rye is a lot stickier than corn is. And so I was trying to grind the rye and the corona.
I was like, you know what? Boop, throw it away. I'm like, I'm done. I'm done with you. I'm done.
And so then I bought the Nix Domatic, but I don't have a good supply of corn yet. So I'm getting the good supply of corn, and I'll give you some updates on uh grinding master with the Nix Domatic and maybe some new stuff. But I will say this the Nixdomatic grinder also makes a ridiculously good nut butter style. If we had had that back at the at the SCI, our lives would have been so much easier. Do you remember like all the times putting those nuts through the champion and then spinning them in the Vitaprep?
This stuff comes out like smooth as silk, like like one shot. You know what I want to make that no one's made for me ever? I want to go to the store. I'm gonna buy planters mixed nuts. You guys planters mixed nuts, fan, Ben?
You like the planner's mixed nut? Yeah, I like I like some nuts. Yeah, yeah. But the mixed nut is like you grow up. If you grew up eating nuts, if you weren't one of the, if you weren't allergic to it, right?
Which when I was a kid, did you know anyone was allergic when you were a kid styles to nuts? Nah, it's new. It's like past 15 years or something. When I was a kid, you know, in the 70s, like every person, the idea that you wouldn't put it in your house. Yeah, well, it's it's always in your house, but the idea that you would not be able to bring a peanut butter sandwich to school, people would be like, what?
What? What? You know what I mean? It's like, you know, like that's not that's it would be ridiculous in the 70s. Now it's common because you know, the rise knowledge is anywho.
Here's what I want to do. I want to take just a straight up can of mixed nuts, straight up planters, pour it in this thing and make mixed nut butter. Wouldn't that be good? Why is no one made the mixed nuts? It's really salty.
Are you saying you don't like salty? No, like overly salty. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You eat the mixed nuts, do you not? Yeah.
So I'm not, I mean, so you're saying you wouldn't like that level of salt as a nut butter? No, no, I don't know. Jack way in? Yeah, I'm I'm torn, but I feel you're where you're coming from, Stas. So it might be maybe a little too salty.
But I'm down. I think it'd be a great idea. I love mixed nuts. It's a very easy thing to freaking test. All I need to do is on the way home, buy a can of mixed nuts and dump.
And by the way, it's in the can. Remember the old official can? Yeah. Yeah. And dump it in and see what happens.
And then I can report back. But but let's say it is salty. I mean, okay, so you want like a cracker with less saltines. Kind of like flavor on it? By the way, do you like you know, like the saltines with the cra with the salt, right?
Otherwise, they't taste like real saltines. What does it tasting? I don't know. It's like the tiny tiny salt. Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Are you talking about okay, okay? There's two things we're looking at here, right? There's the planner's mixed nuts, which are the standard old school kind of processing versus the dry roast, which has the dry feeling on the tongue. Are we talking about the the salt taste of the dry roast? I don't I don't have never had the dry roast.
I mean, I don't know the difference. I have to look it up. By the way, secret, Sta's not a big fan of peanuts. Not peanuts, no. Fair.
She likes pecans. Pecans, almonds, yeah. You're an almond fan? Yeah, but are you from California? We're not supposed to be into almonds these days.
Well, what's wrong with almonds? They take all that water. Oh. Oh. Well, what about Marcona almonds from Spain?
I mean, they don't seem to have a water problem. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know. I mean, that's it's you know, I don't not I'm not familiar with their problems. You know what I mean? Like I I need to research their problems.
But but uh, so a lot of uh what's the what how many gallons of water does it take to make an almond? I uh I don't know, but I think it's like uh it's it's a lot. It's it's like a gallon per almond or something. Something insane. Yeah, yeah, but but the thing is is like let's say you're in almond trees, right?
Let's say let's say you're a sixty-year-old Californian almond farmer, and you have made the mistake of planting a low fat variety, because that's what people like. My feeling about a lot of California almonds, they'll they make some delicious I'm not please don't I don't want to hear about it. But my point is that I like the higher fat almond varieties, right? And this becomes especially apparent once you start grinding them, you can really see kind of remember when we used to make almond oil and all that? We used to get the the those California almonds and we had to supplement the oil in them because they were such a pain in the butt anyways.
But you have all these trees, we can do let them die. I don't know, maybe. I don't know. It's a hard problem, right? Yeah, maybe just cut them in half.
Uh uh, you know what? Uh you know what? I have a connection through McGee to the and uh through labor, right? Oh yeah. Yeah, through whose dad's an almond and an almond farmer, uh, to the California nut board.
Why don't we figure out what their response to this is? Why don't we figure out what the California, like you know, nut almond nut board? Because it's a big business. Let me see what they say about it. They gotta have some sort of rap on it, right?
Yeah, I mean, I don't think any of the water restrictions apply to commercial farmers. Not yet. Um, yeah. So I do have a caller. All right.
But I first want to uh make a pitch here. Uh do you know about our Kickstarter, Dave? I do. Didn't we mention it? Uh we did.
We're 14 days to go though, and it's getting to uh Did we win? Did we win? We have not won. All right. How many want to be winners?
How much do we need to win? So we are $12,000 away from being winners. Out of how much? Out of 35. So we're you know, about 65% of the way there.
We've got 14 days to go. Um there are really, really awesome perks all the way up to having your own radio show. I mean, that's a really, really awesome perk. Has anyone bought that? Yeah, we've had uh we've had uh a few actually.
So that's exciting. Um but check it out. It's on Kickstarter. If you search Heritage Radio Network, you can see the fun little video we made. The website actually will fall apart in the fall, like the coding language.
It was built on Ruby on Rails, and all of the updates are just are not compatible with our version and it's falling apart. You know what you should do, Jack? You should do you should you can create a web address that's like Kickstarter slash heritage radio. Oh, we very well might have one. Anyway, our point is this if you enjoy having the Cooking Issues radio show and enjoy Jack being a a pleasant part of what we're doing instead of hating all of you to death.
What I would recommend is that you uh fund this Kickstarter. Is that more or less accurate, Jack? That's pretty much it. Yeah, I mean, look. How many people do we need?
Like, like what's the average donation here? We would have to crunch some numbers. But I mean, yeah, every every dollar counts, you know. How much did you know? Your own radio show.
Your own radio show, I believe, is uh five thousand dollars for your own season. A whole season? Oh my god, dudes. It's good. You get uh for a thousand bucks, you can record a podcast.
For 5,000, you get a whole season. Let me tell you something. Any of those, any of you people out there with an axe to grind, this is your chance. Can we can we say what we're gonna do soon, Dave? What are we gonna do?
For our listeners. Oh, yeah, for listeners of cooking issues. Uh Stas and I have uh okay, so you guys uh uh have heard of the vegan face, right, Jack? People have heard of the vegan face, Nastasia's vegan face. We haven't talked about it in a while, but she has this these facial expressions that you can't see on the radio that are just different ways that Nastasia has to express her distaste for things like vegans or biscuits or spores.
Spores, fung fungus, like we're like certain things like this that she hates. Um me, for instance. Um so what we're gonna do is also uh and one of our favorite phrases which we haven't used in a while, Jack, is enemy of quality, right? Oh, yeah. So we're gonna make enemy of quality t shirts to have my my character t shirts.
The long sleeve shirt. It's gonna happen, but we're gonna get a caricature of Nastasia's vegan face. And my face, and cooking issues enemies, enemy of quality. Available soon. Right soon?
Caller. You are on the air. Hey Dave, how's it going? Going alright, what's up? Hey, put me down for five grand because of the Jetty Podcast.
Is that for real? Nice. Is that real? Is that real? No.
Okay, okay. Sorry. Thanks. Thanks for your call. Bye.
I was curious about a given tip for uh bottling carbonated cocktail. It seems kind of hard to keep high-level decarbonation. Um just in general, if you have any uh tips for that. Sure. Uh what kind of cocktail do you want?
What kind of carbonated cocktail would you like to bottle? Um, I was trying it with your um party. Champagne acid. Uh do not bottle the it with the acid. It will get very, very bitter.
Oh, okay. Very bitter. Um because uh I don't know why. But but you can add the acid afterwards uh when you're pouring it. But any of the other carbonated ones, uh if you use like a lime acid or something, I haven't tested other types of acid with uh in other words.
I didn't do a side-by-side of the um the the compari soda variant, basically, with lime acid versus with the champagne acid that I use in there, which is a tartaric uh uh lactic blend. So I don't know whether it's a particular acid bottled with the compari that makes it go super bitter, or whether it's uh uh any acid in general. And by the way, Aperol will also go bitter the same way compari does. However, it's less perceptible because Aperol is less overall bitter, so you might be able to get away with it with Aperol. That's just that's just a beforehand before we start.
Another thing, another thing you're gonna want to note is that champagne acid, um, I think it's because uh it's not quite as I don't know why, but it tends to foam more. The things with champagne acid in them, which is again a uh six percent mixture that's half uh six percent acid mixture, half of which is lactic, half of which is tartaric, uh to mimic the same acidity as lime juice or lemon. Uh I don't know why, but it tends to foam more. So that's just a no-tebene for you when you're doing a bottled cocktail. Now, if you're gonna bottle a carbonated cocktail, the first thing you need to do is get uh glass bottles, you need to get uh caps that seal well.
You want to make sure that the insides of those bottles are super clean. So the way to test Oh my god, you gone Darth Vader on the. Uh so the way to test that is to pour uh liquid into the bottle, turn it upside down, and see whether it cheats. If it sheets out, then you got clean. If you see little dots, then there are things that are stopping it from sheeting.
It's not as the my chemistry teacher used to say in in high school, analytically clean. You're gonna want to clean it out. Why? Mean you don't have to, it's not like a safety thing, but any nucleation sites on the side of that bottle are gonna cause a real pain when you're trying to uh uh fill it. Now, another thing.
Carbonated uh cocktails, they foam a lot more than uh than sodas do. They foam a lot more than most other things do. So, what I would recommend, and what Nastasi and I have done, we've had to bottle them in the past. You want to get the smallest amount of head space possible because that's gonna also ruin your carbonation because it's gonna bleed out, right? So get your bottles cold, very cold, not cold enough to freeze any cocktail when it hits, because if anything freezes, that's nucleation sites, right?
So you want to like like quadruple carbonate your your cocktails in your bottles like you do normally, unless you have some better system. Then get your bottles cold and then uh tilt it on its side, pour the stuff in, let it foam up, and then just keep pouring fresh cocktail in until there's no foam anymore. Do this in a tray, then cap it at the last minute and let them settle, and then when you're done doing a batch, recarbonate the stuff that fell into the tray. That's what we do when we have to do it. Like we had to do who do we do that for Jimmy Fallon or something for someone else?
Didn't Dave take a bottle of uh carbonated stuff on Jimmy Fallon or something? And we had to do it. And that's how we did it. We just kept on pouring it in, letting it foam out, and then cap it and then recarb the stuff at the end. It's a pain in the butt though.
You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's what I would do. Oh, in fact, that's what I have done.
Yeah. Thank you very much. Alright, thank you. All right. Um, Sue.
Uh I guess that's enough on the on the Mexico, yeah? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. All right.
Um by the way, uh, I have a question in, thankfully, on the Tandoor, because we haven't talked about the Tandoor at all, right? No, you talked a little bit about it. Yeah? Easter. For Easter?
But have had I already cooked with it yet? Mm-hmm. We've had a show after Easter. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, I love the Tandoor. I'm loving it. So people here's what people keep asking me. They keep asking me, Dave, I hear you love your tandoor, but what do you think about the big green egg?
And the fact of the matter is, the big green e you're familiar with the big green egg, Ben? It's like a ceramic grill, like egg, well, hence big green egg and egg-shaped ceramic grill. The Kamado grill is the is the kind of generic term for this type of grill. And uh they're very well loved uh grills, but the fact of the matter is I don't own one. However, we might rectify that soon.
I may or may not have a magazine that you may or may not have heard of, you have heard of it, uh, who's gonna have me do a side-by-side uh big big green egg versus tandoor and a variety of things. Won't that be fun? Yeah. We come up to Connecticut and play around with that stuff, Stas? I would like to.
Yeah, nice, nice, nice. Tandoor, amazing. Um, okay, but I have a question on the tandoor, which is where I get to it. Michael from Toronto writes in. Uh I bought a it's a multi-part question, as usual.
Uh I bought a palladium searzole and I've been using it for a couple of days with the TS8000. And by the way, I'm not, I'm just gonna go ahead and say you should only use a TS8000. Am I right, Stas? Yes. The 4,000, I was uh doing a benefit for the edible schoolyards, and uh one of Tom Calliccio's cooks was like, the Sears all's not working, so I looked at it, he used the 4000.
I'm like, you're a professional brother. Use the 8000, 8,000. If you're a professional, use the freaking 8000. You know what I mean? That's true.
What the hell? Anyways. Uh I mean it's like over twice the BTUs, like well over twice, whatever. Uh anyway, I bought a palladium sears all, I've been using it for a couple of days with a TS-8000 from Burnsomatic. And I'm wondering about the gas valve on the torch.
Do you find that your valve settings uh are application dependent, or do you just run it wide open all the time? And if any of you have ever met me, the answer is, of course, wide open all the time. I mean, all the time. And the reason is, first of all, on the 8000, I used to think that the throttling was gonna be a good thing, and you can throttle it somewhat. For those of you that don't know, the the Burn Somatic TS 8000 is a uh is like kind of a propane torch that um it's a trigger start.
So you're like you know what I mean? It starts right away. And I use it, I use it pretty much every day, either with the Searsol or as a lighter, right? So I use I use it to light my chimney starter, I use it to light wood, I use it to light my burners in the summer when I turn the pilots off. I use it all you know all the time.
Uh don't turn your pilots off, it's not supposed to be. Anyway, but whatever when you do, like that's what I do. You know, I don't sit there with like wadded up toilet paper or whatever, you know, napkins and lighting my burners. So TS-8000, fantastic, but it's got like a little knob on the back of it that can reduce the amount of gas that goes through it. Now here's the problem: TS-8000 and the TS4000 and this entire style of torch that I use on the Sears All has a what's called like a vortex tip on it.
So if you look at the tip of the torch, there's a piece of brass on the end, and inside that brass are four twisted metal fins. And what those things do is they actually swirl and and I I guess possibly mix, but mainly swirl the gas as it comes out, and it creates a very violent, like uh, you know kind of characteristic kind of f flame coming out of it that's not kind of not bushy, right? As opposed to, let's say, the Iwatani, which has uh like a long flame but more bushy, right? Because it doesn't have that kind of vortex tip on it. So the problem is is when you throttle it down, the vortex doesn't work as well.
It's just straight up. It just doesn't have the velocity out of it, and so you're not getting as good a result on the Searsol. So what happens is it'll work, but it'll tend to flame out more. Not flame out, but if you turn a Searz all the way upside down, um you'll start getting like that kind of a thing, and it's irritating. So I just leave it all wide open.
And if I need to pull back slightly, I pull back slightly. Make sense to us? Second question. PX, PS. Do you wear Nomex sleeves?
Nomex, good good use of Nomex. You know, Nomex the fire retardant material that first I first came to my attention when I was a small child because uh they used to use it in like flight suits to stop people from lighting on fire. But it's like a standard kind of flame proofy kind of a thing. Do you wear Nomex sleeves when you're using your Tandoor? Thanks, Michael from Toronto.
I don't. The first time I used a tandoor, I bought uh a set well, okay. So I was reminded by Nastasia that when we built a tandoor for the uh uh Anthony Bourdain shoot we did like what is that, four years ago or three years ago, whatever, that I insisted that we all use our bare hands to put the the bread in because what am I? What am I? You're not well now you're weak.
Well, no, so I'm back. I'm back. So so then, like the first time I fired up the Tandoor uh at home to make bread, I was like, I bought a set of those grill gloves, right? Which are these like giant grill gloves, and I was like, because I was gonna do a lot of stuff in there. And then I got back and Nastasi says, You're half a man, you're strong man, you're you're made of paper, you're weak, you're useless, right?
Is that basically what you said? Yeah. I mean, that's fair. And I was like, you know what, Stas? Fair.
Fair. And so uh so last week I went back and made it God's way, which is just sticking your hand in the damn tandoor and like smacking the the bread onto the side of the thing. I'm getting really good at the non, by the way. I have very little, very little fall-offs. I can't wait to try to do non and the big green egg.
You like non, right? Yeah. Is that your is that like yeah, non, good bread, yeah? Yeah, okay. Wait, so you're getting a big green egg?
Well, I'm I'm not gonna buy a big green egg. But if the big if someone if a magazine wants to get one for me so that I can do an article on like tandoor versus green egg. I can get you one. What? I can get you one.
Well, with the magazine's gonna try. If they can't, you want why, you have an in? Well, yeah, I know someone who wants to get rid of theirs like why? What do they not like about it? Nobody uses it specifically, someone.
Well, who is it? Tell me who you're after. Oh man, you're leaving everyone hanging here. Why would they not use it? What are they?
Well, first of all, let's go through this. Do they live in New York City? Yeah. Okay. So they have it on the roof?
Balcony. Balcony. But it's a low balcony, so it's okay. But do they not use it because someone moved out and it's still in someone's apartment. Well, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
First of all, do they know how much these things are worth? Does the person who's left with it know how much it's worth? I don't think so. Don't tell them. They're like a thousand bucks.
Yeah. I know. The small ones like a thousand bucks. They don't care about money. No, they get a they get a salary sometimes.
What the hell? What? Anyway, like what is it? Do they not like cooking in general? Uh not with a big green egg.
No, but in general, do they like cooking? I'm not sure. You're not sure. Alright, well, listen, yes, we'll take we'll take their big green egg and raise them a whatever. I don't know, we'll cook them something in it.
Uh hey, Jack, is this a good time for our Jackie Molecules commercial break? Ooh, maybe, yeah, I think it is. Let's do it. Let's do it. 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 resources, should you want to get some of the things he's talking about? Molecular recipes.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.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 Heritage. So again, check them out. Molecular recipes.com. Tons of really awesome stuff there. Definitely right up your alley.
And we're back. And we're back. By the way, should you go to the molecular recipes.com, which we recommend. Please enter the code. Let me tell you why.
You gotta let them know that that the money that they put into the cooking issues program is doing something for them. Am I right, Jack? That's how it works. So like you're like, man, I don't know. Well they got good stuff too.
I mean, that's the real reason. No, but my point is though, is that you're like, maybe I don't need the discount. I'm not gonna end the discount code. I'm not gonna bother. Right?
But if you don't bother entering the discount code, then they don't know that the reason that you went there is because you heard that. Who knows where you came from? The hell knows. Who knows? Would you know, Ben?
But who doesn't need a discount? Who do well apparently the person who has the big green egg that we're gonna get a hold of doesn't need a discount. They don't care about money, they don't care about food, they don't care about nothing. They got a balcony in New York and nothing to do with it. Don't want to cook on a big green egg.
Hey, you know what? Do you know how many people would like me? I mean, years I've wanted to be able to cook outside in New York. Years, years, and they have a balcony with a big green egg on it, they don't want to use it. It's freaking unacceptable.
It's not right. I don't care. It just means you're a bad person. It just means you're no good. You know what I mean?
We got a good person on the line. All right, Jack, why don't you tell me who we got on the line? It's Darren from uh MELD. Darren from Meld. Listen, I haven't um uh I haven't spoken to you about it yet.
You're on the line right now, are you with us? I am, yes. Nice. So uh for those of you that don't know out here on the uh on the you know in whatever whoever's listening to this, MELD is a current Kickstarter. How much longer do you have left on the Kickstarter?
Uh we've got about uh nine or ten days to go. Ends next Friday. Yeah. Wow wildly overfunded. Don't mean, but you should do it.
The reason to do it is because you're gonna be correct in line, you're gonna be first in line if you're a Kickstarter backer, right? That's absolutely right. Right. So one of the things, and having done a Kickstarter before, uh here's look, here's the secret of Kickstarters, right? Is that you have to put the number low enough to um low enough so that you think you can make it, right?
But then the people out there in Kickstarter land, they don't understand that what you really want is to wildly, wildly surpass your number. And you already have on meld, which is great. But the point is is that it's as someone who's trying to start manufacturing something, it's vastly easier when you're dealing with uh larger numbers of units. And so not only is it uh it's better for the end, it's better for the end user or the person who's buying a pro. I know the Kickstarter is not a pre-order, but let's be honest, it's pre-order, right?
I mean, let's be honest. Am I right? It's pre-order. Let's stop kidding ourselves. Um, but it's uh it's vastly better to be dealing with manufacturers with larger numbers of units.
You know what I mean, than with smaller numbers of units. Agree or disagree? Absolutely, because there's there's a certain fixed cost up front. It doesn't matter whether you end up making one part or you make 10,000 parts, that same fixed cost for the mold is, you know, fixed cost. Right.
So let me let me let me introduce what the product is, and then we'll then we'll talk about some. You tell me if I'm wrong, right? So MELD is kind of a first of its kind product. So the idea is is that a lot of us have uh well m vast majority of us have ranges, right? You know, like cooking ranges that operate with a knob on the front, right?
And so they require you, the human, to adjust the uh the knob to determine what the the heat level, the gas output tip most typically is going to be on said range, right? Well, what if you were to put a uh a motorized knob that was hooked up to some intelligent electronics and then had something else control it instead, hence meld. Is am I right about this? Is this right? That's that's absolutely right.
Because you're you know, you read a lot of recipes and they'll say, put a pan on medium, right? And we've done the experiment. You put the exact same pan on medium on a you know five or ten randomly selected ranges from you and your friends, and you'll see differences of temperatures of a hundred, hundred and fifty degrees easily. Right. And and here's another thing that you probably uh deal with as well.
Like in my in my building, right? It's actually it's the fault of the person that installed installed my range because they didn't put in the regulator that I asked them to install after the gas. So like so I I I have re I have fluctuating gas uh levels in my range, and so the actual flame I get out of any particular burner is dependent upon whether someone else turns on another gas appliance or burner that's in close proximity. I don't know if a lot of people have that problem, or that's just because the Joker didn't install the regulator on my on my stove is probably I need to go do it. But presumably this would also uh kind of um ease the or or uh level out the vagaries of gas pressure as well.
That's correct, yeah. Yeah. So one so so this is kind of like you can go to the the the Kickstarter, and by the by the way, what's what's your theoretical delivery time after the end of the Kickstarter? Uh October. That's fast.
We we deliberately sort of held off on the Kickstarter. We thought about doing it sort of late last year, but we waited until we've got you know real actual working prototypes, and you can see them in in some of the the videos, but that are, you know, except for a few cases where we're still 3D printing a few parts, uh, these are the final products, and we're cooking on them every day so that you know we we are confident we can deliver versus the sort of standard, you know, well, we've never done this before and we think we can deliver, and you know, we'll tell you later if we're gonna be late. I'm familiar with that process with the Sears all. But um the so let me ask you a couple of questions that I that I was wondering. First of all, I'm not saying anything we would love some time to beta test one.
I'm just saying we'd love to beta test one. Um, but uh, you know, we'll even I mean I'll buy one. I don't mean I would love to beta test one though. Um the not that it's pads past beta, I guess it's too late to beta. But the um the thing I'm wondering specifically, how do you deal with uh things like uh flame out?
So a lot of a lot of burners when they get uh you know on the lower end of their spectrum, they can sometimes go out, and not everyone has a burner with a kind of uh a flame sensor on it to determine kind of uh what's going on. So how does the system deal with that sort of does it notice that there's no more heat input and it throttles it back to light, or what what happens? Yeah, so it's uh yeah, it's a great question, and uh and absolutely something we have to deal with. So what we do is we are, you know, obviously just to make the thing work, we're monitoring the level of gas we think we're putting in and the sort of temperature response in the in the pot at all times. And if we start seeing a scenario where uh it's flamed out, what's typically gonna happen is we're gonna say, oh, well, the you know, we're not getting the additional heat into the pot at the rate we expect it to for for where the gas knob is.
That's a problem. We're gonna alert you on your app back on your phone, and then we're also going to just turn the gas completely off. So there are a number of kind of safety scenarios built into it where you know we think there's something wrong enough or potentially wrong enough going on that we're gonna alert you, and if you don't respond, we're actually just gonna turn off the gas. Okay. So but in other words, is it something that can be tuned to some so presumably when you get it, you tune it to your range, yeah?
Right. So what you do is you put it on your range, you turn it with the app asks you to turn it to the off position, to the low position, to the high position, uh, so that it knows sort of the bounds of where it can turn. And then uh, you know, from there, it's basically uh self-learning. So it'll um, you know, it will adjust the the gas flow to maintain temperature, whether you put you know a great big pot. We've got actually a bunch of people interested in home brewing, which is an application we hadn't even really considered who've kind of come out of the woodwork, and we actually made a video with uh with a home brewer that'll come out in uh in a week or so.
So it's pretty pretty interesting. Or, you know, sometimes you've got a small pot and need a lot less gas for the for the same temperature level, but that feedback loop will actually make those adjustments. Nice. Now uh I had a couple other questions. Let me see what they are.
Um the well, first of all, before we go any further, what's the what's what's your like uh in production MSRP versus like what you're gonna get on the Kickstarter? Uh so kick MSRP uh right now is 149. We did early word Kickstarter at 99, those sold out, and we're doing uh nine uh 129 now currently. So you're getting like you're getting like uh 20 dollars off, which is like something what is that? That's like what is that like 15% off or something?
That uh final. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um now is anything prevent you from using it like a normal gas knob if you just want to just walk up and and use it. Nope.
You can walk up and turn it uh anytime you want. And that was actually one of the engineering challenges was to get a motor and motor driver circuitry such that we could generate enough torque to turn the knob even on kind of an old crappy sticky range. Um, but at the same time, you could still turn the knob and not do you know backdrive the motor in a way that was gonna damage it. So we went through a lot of different uh tests on that before we settled on the right sort of combination of motor, gear train, and driver to make that happen. Nice.
A are you anticipating any aftermarket drop-in circulation devices for pots or I don't I don't remember, I don't think you had one on the Kickstarter, right? Uh we don't. We've uh we've got a number of I think really interesting sort of uh directions to go with this. And uh, you know, part of it's part of how we'll choose kind of which one we do next is is gonna be based on the the feedback from this Kickstarter. So um certainly if that's if if that drop in uh uh circulation is is something you want, you know, hit us up and uh you know we'll we'll certainly respond to to what we hear.
Right. Have uh and so what kind of numbers have you been getting out of let's say like uh oh I don't know like a four quart pot with uh you know like three liters or something of water something like this what kind of stability are you are you getting in there temperature wise uh basically one degree. Come on really that's bananas. One Celsius you know so it's not it's not like you know you're getting a a high end poly science point one degree you know uh I love what what Phil Preston does. We can't do that on a stovetop but we can do about one one degree Celsius.
Let me ask this what about stuff that scorches on the bottom right so the measurement of it is there some sort of is there some sort of way to measure that specifically worries about products that are going to scorch on the bottom so there are yeah I mean basically um you know depending on on i that's mostly a problem in really viscous fluids where you're not getting a lot of uh you know a lot a lot of uh circulation just from the um you know from the natural convection that's happening in the pot um in general we haven't had a you know we haven't had a lot of problem with that um because we I think tend to keep the flame a lot lower and if you've got a decent quality say you know even you know aluminum uh pot that's gonna distribute the heat up this the aluminum sides pretty well. It it hasn't been a big issue for us. Um that being said, you know, if you leave a pot of chili on for 10 hours, you know, and never stir it, uh I'm not so sure we could you know make make a whole bunch of guarantees there. But then you should die anyway. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh you're you're you're ruining your an enemy of quality, as we said. You can go by the, you know, if you're not stirring your chili for 10 hours, like may oh maybe you're sick. Maybe you've fallen and you can't get up, in which case I forgive you, and there's no reason they're saying bad shit happened to your chili. But if you forget that you put chili on for 10 hours, like you're an enemy of quality.
Am I right? You're a bad person. I totally agree. Yeah. One last question.
So uh, and because I'm gonna I have to answer another couple questions before we go, but but uh first of all, super exciting. Like a first of its kind product, amazing no one has done it before. I'm extremely excited for it to be on the market. Um and for those of you that remember MELD, like M E L D Kickstarter, go check it out. But uh, so here's the here's the here's the thing.
Are you gonna put programming into it so that you can essentially turn it into a rice cooker? The uh the the rice cooker application, uh like specifically doing rice, we've done a few tests. I think by the time we release it, we'll have we'll will be, you know, we we will have have pretty thoroughly tested that and and and gotten the programming down. Because how sweet would that be? Everyone with one of these things, all of a sudden they can turn one of their burners into a rice cooker.
It's just looking for the I mean, you're just looking for the knee and the temperature rise, right? You put a certain gentle heat into it, you wait for the temperature rise to mean that the water's gone and you're done. Isn't that how rice cookers work or no? Yeah, yeah. So there's that's that's actually uh a specific example of a really interesting general case that we've seen in in a variety of things we've we've been cooking in in this, which is that you know, when you're cooking uh something that's you know liquid and anywhere at all near the boiling point, the vast majority of the heat that that you're putting in is being sucked out by water evaporating out the top, right?
And so if you have sort of a low-level algorithm whose only job is to keep you at at the same temperature you want to be at, and that low-level algorithm at some point starts saying, Oh, I I can dial back the heat, I can dial back the heat, I can dial back the heat because I I don't need that much heat to maintain the temperature anymore. What that's telling you is exactly what you just said. It's this saying, hey, that we're not getting all that evaporation, sucking all that the energy out. Something interesting has just happened. And so being able to do recipes, you know, that that detect those kind of effects instead of just like put it on medium heat for 20 minutes, right?
That's a that that's a game changer in terms of of how you think about cooking. And it's something that we think, you know, given that we can detect these kind of things and and have the feedback loops, uh, that we can do some really interesting stuff. And so you think you'll be able to have those kind of applications almost at launch? Some of some of those applications almost at launch? Some of them, yeah.
Well, listen, I'm super excited and uh congratulations on already having funded the Kickstarter. Everyone should go on and order one now to secure your place in line because you know it sucks to have to be on the sec second shipment of that thing that they sell on Amazon. Then you're gonna be, you know, six months in the hole probably before the second shipment comes in. Am I right? Yeah, I think I think so.
Yeah. Well, anyway, thanks so much for coming on. It's a super interesting product, and I'm excited for it to be out in the world. Yeah, thanks. Uh, thanks so much for uh for having us on.
And uh yeah, we're we're super excited. Always been a big fan of your show, and uh thanks for having us on. Thanks. All right. What?
I don't have no more time at all. It's time. Zero? Yeah. All right, listen.
I'm just gonna tell the questions that I didn't get a chance to answer, okay? Cool. Okay. So Trudy wrote in and you know, catching up on our stuff uh about hydrocolloids and about the bloodlines in fish. I have plenty of answers, including well, whatever.
We'll have to deal with it next time. I have I have all this stuff. Sam Geiger wrote in about cold pack squirrel, but I thought we already talked about cold pack squirrel. I don't know. Jack, did we talk about cold pack squirrel?
More than I remember. All right, we'll get back to it. Uh and uh lastly, but certainly no, two two other things we didn't get to. Monty from Jacksonville, Oregon wrote in on Douglas Fur and making tea with Douglas Fur. I'll just say this if it's a springtime out there, um, collect some of the fresh uh the fresh green uh uh tips if you can, and then do a side by side with those in the old older needles.
But we'll talk more about Conifertine next week. And in fact, I'm gonna make some tea with my hemlock because I have some Eastern hemlock, which you can do. And we have some interesting comments in on some higher end vegetes from Brandon Byrd and some talking about oil dispensing stuff with Joel Esposito, all for next time 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. You can email us with questions anytime at info at heritage radio network dot org. Heritage Radio Network is a 501c3 nonprofit. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.
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