Today's program is brought to you by Heritage Foods USA, the nation's largest distributor of heritage breed pigs and turkeys. For more information, visit Heritage Foods USA.com. I'm Damon Bolti, host of the Speakeasy. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for thousands.
Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from a bird of Speezer in Bushwick of Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from about 12 to about 1245. Joined as usual, with Nastasia, the hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? Good.
Yeah, got Jack in the engineering booth. Hello. I'm slow. Hey. Hey, what's up?
And we have uh Michael and Andrea who are here joining us in the studio today because what'd you guys do? What was it? Michael, right? Andrea, right? I got this right?
Here. If you're here, you gotta you gotta join in. So what do you what did you guys tell tell us how you arrived here? Uh we put in a bid for uh for to come here and watch you guys at uh a rock in the boat. Uh at an at a charity octon to help support Rockin' the Boat, which is a uh Bronx based organization where they teach uh inner city kids about sailing and boat building.
Help them build out their uh you know confidence and uh uh team building skills. And where do you sail to? Uh well they from what I know they they sail just basically up there up uh I'm trying to think what the waterway is that they're actually in up in the South Bronx, but I know they they they build the boats out of their out of their boathouse and they launch their boats and sail in that in that bodily water out there. But uh the two of us are actually sailors as well. Uh we we sail out of another club out in New York City.
Right, because I know there's a lot of crazy currents up by like Spite and Duval, right? Isn't that the old like legend up there at the tip of Manhattan that you know that guy tried to row across there and got stuck down in the current and eaten by a fish and he was gonna do it in spite of the devil? I mean, it's not exactly you know where the Hudson and the East River come together if they're not exactly the most yeah, not the most friendly of places to be boating around for those who are just learning, right? Yeah, well, the interesting thing is they also have another fundraiser where they uh they row around Manhattan in these old style whaling rowboats. Um so they have uh crews that decide to join to join up and there's three legs, and for each leg you have to raise like X amount of money.
Um but they're out there and they're just rowing constantly all day long. And uh it's it's a really good time and it's a really great organization. Yeah, you know, I've never been out on the on the other than on the freaking circle line. The last time I was in the circle line, the cat the captain in quotes, the guy who was talking, was like unbelievably drunk and spewed nothing but lies and misinformation about uh New York City. But uh I need to go back out there because I hear you can get some unbelievable stripers right in the East River, that there's like a couple channels running up to East River where you can get some great like great stripers, like right near Roosevelt's Island.
It's possible. I know the guys I know that that fish out of Staten Island uh sheep said that they they definitely love going fishing for stripers out in the waters there. I don't know about the East River, but maybe the old guys that are along the water along the East River with their fishing pools, maybe that's what they're looking for. But there's so many people here in freaking New York City that I don't anyone who actually knows where there's gonna be a big striper in the East River is not gonna say a dang thing about it. No, no, no.
I mean, come on. It's like mushroom hunting, right? It's like no one's gonna tell you where the good mushrooms are. They'll tell you, hey, the good mushrooms are at the top of the Empire State Building. Because they don't want you to eat.
There's only there's eight million of us, and there's only so many mushrooms. Anyways, the same with stripers. Jack, I hear we got a caller on the air. That's true. Caller, you are on the air.
So Dave, Nastasha, Jack, guests. It's uh Antoine from Volcraton, Florida. Call it. How are you doing? Hopefully you're not back on uh on juices and vegetables.
I mean, I like to mix it up. This is just to hit the niche the niche group of people, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's up? What do you got what do you got for us today?
Today's questions are um is there any benefit to ever using beach bleached flour and is there any disadvantage in milling your own? Huh. Well, uh uh now look it. So everyone that's ever done I have not done the side by sides myself, but for anyone that's ever uh done the side by sides on cake flour versus not cake flour for cake applications. Everyone always says the cake flour is better and cake flour, I mean I guess there's brands that aren't, but the ones that we use like Swan's Down and the other ones.
What's the other one? Stas, you remember? You don't you don't like cakes. To make them she eats them, but I don't want to hear anything. Uh no one call and say she doesn't like cakes.
I mean she doesn't like many things like she doesn't like biscuits, but she likes cakes, just doesn't like to make, right? Right. Yeah. Um they're all bleached. And so I don't know whether the I don't know whether the bleaching per se does anything.
I had once researched it, um, but I don't kind of remember. The bleaching remember also oxidizes it changes the properties of it, but I'd have to go back and do uh I'd have to go back and redo the research to figure out uh exactly kind of what I thought. What are you thinking about? Uh I mean I just wanna uh I'm gonna I'm thinking of going in the investment of buying a stone ground mill. Right.
And I just want to see if I can generally apply it to pretty much a little bit of everything I'm gonna be doing. I mean, even I I I don't know, but I mean I imagine I could probably do uh corn flour on there to do tortillas, imagining. Oh no, no, no. Eventually no. No?
No. No. No. No. Look, I uh what I want to, I want to get look, there's a bunch of research on uh I recently did a bunch of research on grinding because I was when I was going to Mexico, I was gonna get the Nix Domatic grinder for doing MASA.
And uh all of the kind of high end uh flower mills here, the stone ones, like if you're what are you looking at? You're looking at like a red cell, or are you looking at like which which company are you looking at? Uh I don't remember the name of it. It's one that I've seen Dan Barber also uses at his place that it's just it's automatic. Yeah.
And it's like around $400 or so. Yeah, I forget all the prices. There's a bunch of different ranges, and uh so none of those are designed to do wet milling of masa. So just don't even I there's a one or two I think that sell that will maybe sell you a stone that's designed to do masa, but I think you're much better off getting if you're gonna do masa is getting like one that's made for it. You know what I mean?
Um gotcha. But they're supposedly fantastic at at flour milling, and I didn't get a chance to read the kind of um super technical stuff on it, but the um a lot of people are bent out of shape because most of the stones now are composite stones made from uh aluminum oxide, and so like some people are anti-aluminum oxide because of the old uh you know, kind of the old now discredited uh Alzheimer's theories about aluminum. So people got freaky deaky about having aluminum oxide uh grinding wheels. But that said, I think 99.9%, uh unless they're going and buying like uh French stone, cutting it and like doing it, they're all composite stones that are being made by a Brazil's corporations. Now, you know, it's again, like it's been a while since I researched it, but you you know, look into that.
But uh, you know, the the research that I saw uh shows that there's a kind of a different kind of a shearing effect that happens in some of these kind of um old stone grinders, but I've never done a side-by-side with an equivalently dressed uh stone grinder versus an equ you know equivalently sized uh metal one. So I don't have any way uh of saying. But most of the jockeys who do it, they like their stone grinders. The other thing is that now there's um relatively inexpensive kind of uh, you know, like bursting grain, like micronizing grills that use like uh intermeshed teeth that can supposedly do uh a very good job as well. But I mean, and again, I haven't looked at the at the you know uh micrographs, pictures of the flour milled in the different ways, but I assume they're probably different.
Yeah, because I was thinking of whether I wanted to get the stone ground one or just the kitchen aid attachment. I don't like the Kitchen Aid. I I mean I love the Kitchen Aid, but I hate the I hate the you it's gonna be nothing but disappointment to you. Unless you're just making beer, in which case it does a fantastic job of like, you know, crushing up uh barley to you to to make beer with. Like making flour with the kitchen aid is just gonna be a source of frustration.
It heats the flour up like a monster. It clogs if you put anything oily into it. It doesn't have a very high throughput, it's loud. It's like I I I there's just n I I bought it thinking it was gonna change my life years and years ago, and it just sits in my drawer making me angry. All right, thanks for that.
I mean, that saved me some money on that for sure. Yeah, I mean, look, maybe they've redesigned it. I don't know. And I don't no offense to the KitchenAid Corporation, because I'd love it if they gave us some free mixers, right, Stas? Couldn't you use a Kitchen Aid?
I have one. Yeah, well, meh, meh, meh. You can use another new ones, the big ones. You know what I really want from them? I want their po I want the pasta, not the extruder, which doesn't work.
I want the rollers. Because this way I don't have to bolt down the pasta roller. But they charge like it's it's over a hundred bucks for the roller, just for the roller. Does that seem to make any sense to you? Hunt over a hundred bucks for the roller?
Seems high. Anyways, uh I would wait and invest your money in a real standalone uh grinder that's gonna do uh a good job for you. And I wouldn't believe a lot of the hype uh i it it's hard to cut through the hype on the on the grain mills because most of the uh a lot of the I'm not gonna say most a lot of the grain mills review sites are like doomsday preppers and or um like you know people with uh dubious kind of health and diet beliefs and so uh uh it's hard to kind of sift fact from fantasy and some of the claims that are made uh about them. So it that's one of the reasons why it's difficult. So I would go mainly on build quality and what people say about the quality of the breads they can make with the flowers that they do.
And uh go back, you'll be able to grind corn fine, just not masa for tortillas. Gotcha. Yeah. Otherwise I'd have to go the hand route, I guess. Yeah, no matter now listen, so like I was talking to uh Jorge at Macienda, because I made another batch of uh tortillas actually over the weekend.
This time I cooked them in the tandoor and my grinder, my nixtomatic is is uh is wearing in, so it's actually producing every time I make masa with it, it gets a uh a little bit a little bit better. But what he was saying is is that even if you have a substandard masa grinder, then if you go and manually uh work it on a matate afterwards, it can like bring it up to the level of excellent masa, even though so you have to use kind of a two step technique. He even said that maybe if you had a big mocojete that you could probably like work the masa in a mocojete a little bit to get that kind of uh extra textural thing. He said he knows some people that have done that with good results. But I'm I'm still working on getting my just my nix d'ematic grinder, you know, producing exactly what I want.
By the way, sorry to but I just don't want to leave without saying it, but like uh certain uh mills are known for doing better with certain uh products. So certain mills are are known for like uh you know, having the stones glaze over if you put certain grain products through them versus others. So I would like try to figure out what you want to do most and then find reviews from people who do that with it all day. Excellent. I didn't know if there was like one that was all purpose across the board that you could use for all of them.
But I again it's been a while. I w I I kind of want uh I think it's Red Cell is the company, but they're like kind of a nut job, so like that look kind of like me, you can't get in touch with them, you know what I mean? And they make grinders whenever they feel like it, and they ship it whenever they feel like it, and they have like some hand crank ones and some a lot of people want hand crank ones because they still want to be able to bake bread when the when the world is over, right? So uh so like you know but presumably, you know, uh uh Florida's gonna be a tough place to live if the if if the world ends because you know, like probably we'll be flooded there anyway. So you might want to say, uh you know, I'm gonna assume that I have electricity.
It might be an assumption that you're gonna make. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Very good.
I also wonder though, what are your feelings and thoughts on people starting to eat insects or that little trend to come out? I think if you think they're delicious, you should eat whatever you want. I've never had an insect where I was like, damn, that was delicious. You know what I mean? It's like grasshoppers are crunchy, uh, but they're not delicious.
You know what I mean? Uh and like the legs get kind of caught in your in your teeth. I had the ant eggs, those were quite good. You know what I mean? In in Mexico.
I brought home some of the ants, I shouldn't say this because it's illegal, but I brought home some of the ant like bodies for Booker because and he liked them. But I think if something is delicious, then eat it. But you know, and most things that aren't are like fads that end up going away anyway. It's like most people don't actually like absinthe, which is why like the trend went crazy for a while when people thought they were gonna get all uh impressionistic, messed up, like to loose Latre Trek out on the green, you know, ferry or whatever it's called. And then when they realize that uh, you know, it's mainly the alcohol that's messing you up, they're like, wow, I don't like absinthe.
Why why am I drinking it? You know, and then it went and then the consumption level dropped down back to those people who like it, you know. Yeah. Yeah. All right, very good.
Thank you as always. Super beneficial information, and I'll be talking to you later. Yeah, tweet tweet on in, and when you decide to buy a flour mill, let us know how it worked out. You get it, you got it, man. All right, cool.
I got the police on the line about ant legs. Uh well, it was the it was the uh, you know, it was the back end of the ants, and there are these six I couldn't speak the Spanish. There are these fancy, I think they're Oaxacan ants. And uh I I'll look it up. I'll look it, I'll look it up.
I'll look it up. But um, yeah, you're not supposed to bring ants back into the country. I said I brought candy back, which is kind of true. Snacks for the kids. They're dry.
They're dead. They're not gonna, they're not gonna like, you know, it's uh look, I'm not gonna cause the next Asian longhorn beetle infestation. These suckers are dead as doornails, like dried, desiccated in a sack. You know what I mean? Uh Stas, you like the grasshoppers?
I haven't had them yet. No? You what about you guys? You guys eating the grasshoppers? Nah, I've never had any of the bugs.
No, would you mean you I've eaten the agave worm, but I don't remember it. It's like I'm not like well, not because I was too drunk, but I'm saying it doesn't have much of a flavor. You know what I mean? Like these things, uh, it's an extra source of protein, right? Yeah, you're not you're really supposed to chew them, you just supposed to swallow them and also go.
Yeah, I think you're supposed to bite it in half to prove that you know that it's in your mouth rather than just letting it wash down, I think. I don't know. But yeah, I haven't had one of those since I was in college. You know? That's no they're no good.
Jack, what about you? You uh you an insect eater? Yeah, I'm I'm down with it. I mean I've had like the the cricket bars, like those protein bar kind of things. I even had cricket bitters at an event.
Yeah, I I had the bars once. But they're just flour. It's like cricket flour. Right, exactly. I but I don't think that they're I mean like I I wasn't like, you know what?
W when you're cooking something, like, you know what this needs? This needs a pinch of cricket flour. You know what I mean? Like d has that come up? Not for me.
No. I have another caller. Caller, you were on the air. Fantastic, big fan. Uh so I have a constrained cooking challenge, which is uh gonna be at a beach house and can't bring much lard with me apart from, you know, the few powdered collections I have.
Looking for something interesting to make uh for a crowd uh other than just, you know, the modernist cheese dip to show that I can do a better cheese dip than what comes in a jar. Right. Uh curious if you have any fun thoughts, uh apart and I've got the frozen fruit from Liquid Intelligence. But uh any other ideas? Hm.
That's a good one. To whip out of it. Well, what what are the parameters? Like what first of all, do you have a particular course that you're doing or is there uh no, I just uh one night. I've traditionally been uh you know, one of the better cooks in this social circle and like to have a lot of fun.
Uh I've brought down circulators in the past, but uh and you know, the sears all, but uh can't do that this year. Um but uh was thinking of doing you know, doing a jury rigged rotisserie over a beach fire. That's fine. Um but you know, that's that's fun, but uh not particularly flashy. Right.
Uh I was curious if you have any fun thoughts. Hmm. Well, I usually I usually when I'm gonna go to an event and I know I can't bring my equipment, I'll cheat and I'll cook everything ahead of time, bring it and then just do the finishing there. Right. So I'll do all my low temping back at the house, seal the stuff down in ice packs, bring it, throw it in the fridge, and then you look like you look like some sort of like like you know, genius because everyone else is working and doing all this stuff, and you're like, don't worry, you know.
I'm gonna start cooking like about 30 minutes before it depends also on like how what do you mean by flashy? Flashy, you should bring some liquid nitrogen. Now I know you said you can't, but like if you're liquid nitrogen at a beach party, you know, as long as you follow the safety regulations, that's like pretty much a win. You know what I mean, depending on how hot it is out there. Um we could find a welding supply place nearby.
And so, you know, it's uh it's uh slept down for a week on the beach, so I can't uh can't really pre-cook too much. Oh yeah. Um but uh I like the idea of finding a welding supply place and just uh you know, renting a doers. Yeah, here's something don't do this, but I've always wanted to. Don't do this.
Don't. I don't want to hear anyone saying that they've done this. But uh have you guys ever gone on to YouTube and looked at the videos of the engineering um professor guy who uh starts his c uh his uh grills with uh liquid oxygen. Anyone? None of you guys seen this?
So he's that sounds awesome. Oh my god, you have to see the video. It's so what he did was he took this hibachi like grill, like we know, one of the round flat ones, sticks it on the ground, puts a mound of coal, like the size of like a whole small like Kingsford bag. Then he puts like a lit, like I think it's like something like a lit stick or cigarette on top of it, and then dumps liquid oxygen onto it and goes. And the whole thing is like the entire grill is melted, and there's a small pile of perfectly ready coals left on the ground in like under five seconds.
Talk about flashy. You know what I mean? And like that's the one where you're like, you know, right at the end, you're you know, you're you're you're you know, cooking. That's like the good way to go. Well, speaking of though, that I I've been doing a lot of high heat work recently because I've been working a lot with the tandoor, and uh really really good results with the tandoor for kind of outdoor fast uh heat cooking.
Now it's hard to mimic in a regular grill because you can't get the the heat from kind of um uh both sides at once. But what I what I'm learning on a tandoor when when you can't do the low-temp stuff, is the wisdom of uh super high but intermediate uh uh um intermittent heat, right? So in it when you're cooking food in a tandoor uh meats, you go in there for like three, four minutes, and it's like 800 degrees from all sides, and then you'll pull it out and you'll hang it and you'll let the meat cool off a little bit, and then you'll do that like two, three times, and it builds up the crust, right? The same way that a rotisserie might, uh, but it doesn't overcook uh the inside. Of course, remember also with Tandoor, you're usually doing some sort of surface tenderization with yogurt or acid or or beating the crap out of it, which is another time honor tenderization technique.
But uh I'm I'm learning the wisdom of this kind of uh multiple cooking and hanging. So remember everything in a tandoor happens on these kind of skewers, and so they'll go in, they'll come out, they'll hang, I'll cook other stuff that can sit around longer, then I'll put them back. But it requires like relatively high heat, so you're gonna need a very big bed of coals like close to your grate. Cool. Is there anything you can do on an open fire on a beach that you can't do on a regular grill?
Clam bake. Well, clam bag, clam or clam bake, you're supposed to build the fire in the ground, then line it with sea. Now that is super baller. Like if like if you do an old school, do you guys do old school clam bakes? I'm talking to the guys in the studio.
You guys done it? Oh no, I grew up in New England, so it's sort of standard protocol. Fourth of July weekend, you do a clam bake. But here's the thing, everything's viciously overcooked, am I right? Yeah, but it's still flashy.
Yeah, it is flashy. But like the idea that you bury everything, but the uh how much seaweed do you have to put over the top to not have it be a problem with sand and crap getting in your stuff? Or do they cheat? Have you ever seen someone do it old school? Seaweed and burlap.
Seaweed and burlap? Yep. Yeah. And and uh what do you throw? You corn, lobsters, clams, like how do you what do you put in yours?
Yeah, sausage, corn, potatoes, uh, clams, lobsters. I think that's it. And the the lobsters aren't just like so way overdone. I'm sure the corn is delicious. I'm sure the corn, the potatoes, and the sausages are good.
And the rest is kind of there for show. But like burying something, yeah, burying something like that is pretty is pretty awesome, I would say. A lot of digging. And a long time. Well, and also how far up above the water line?
You don't put it in wet sand. It's gotta be way up there. And that stuff doesn't hold a like you can't. Yeah, you're above the tide line. Yeah, and how do you get the sand to go out of the way?
The dump angle of sand is pretty low. A lot of digging. A lot of digging. Get a backhoe. Oh my god.
Backhoe clam bake? Oh my god. Imagine that. I want to do that. I in Connecticut, I'm talking to someone, if we ever get something, we're gonna do we're gonna dig pi huge pits in the ground to do big pit cook stuff.
But anyway, pit cooking is good. If you can bring a thermometer, they can get down in the pit. You could probably measure it. You could probably even pull something when it's done, but usually they're done on retained. I think the problem with clam bake cooking is most people don't wait long enough to layer the stuff in, and they're dealing with too high a retained heat.
If you were to judge it just right with a retained heat cooking by using the earth as your oven, I'm sure you could do it without overcooking because you'd put the stuff in kind of right at the point where it wasn't gonna cook anymore. You just let it ride for a long time. So you'd throw your sausages in early along with your corn and your potatoes. You'd wait, right? Then you kind of unearth, throw in your your seafood on top, it would cook, the juices would go down into your potatoes and whatnot, and you'd be good to go.
But I don't think anyone's written the definitive book on how to make a clam bake that doesn't overcook the food viciously. This could be your next project. Yeah. Stasis Stas is putting her don't do that kind of like she's looking at something else. But if I actually said to her I was gonna that we were gonna spend the next three weeks working on clam bake, she would probably you might like it actually.
Yeah, that would be fun. More than what we're supposed to be doing. Well, I you know, I hate beaches is the problem. But I don't hate them. I love looking at them from a deck.
You know what I mean? I don't I don't like the feeling of sand between my uh feet. I hate it. My booker loves to hug me when he's full of sand on the beach, which is a nightmare. And as I've said many times on the air, I'm that guy at the beach with the long pants, the big wide brimmed hat, and the long shirt.
That's me. If you ever see that guy, that's me. Yeah. And well, look at me, white. Anyway, hopefully that helps on the air.
What oh yeah. Any of this information help? Are you still there? I'm still there. That was great.
Alright, cool. Let us know what happened. Let us know what you did. I'd love to hear this stuff. Tweet it on over.
Sure. Alright, or call in. All right, Jack, you want to take a commercial break? That sounds good. We'll come right back with more cooking issues.
Hello out there. It's Steve Jenkins. I'm with Fairway Markets. White Leghorn. Red Wattle.
Bourbon Red. Navajo Churro. Well, these aren't names you're likely to hear at a Fairway butcher counter or any other counter today, but before the rise of factory farming, you would have. And at Heritage Foods USA, you still do. Heritage Foods USA exists to promote genetic diversity.
Small family farms, and a fully traceable food supply. You see, we believe the best way to help a family farmer is to buy from them. And Heritage Foods is honored to represent a network of family farmers, artisanal producers whose work presents an immeasurable gift to our food system and to biodiversity. The meat we celebrate, whether it's heritage turkey, Japanese steaks, Berkshire pork, or Navajo Churro lamb chops, is the righteous kind from healthy animals of sound genetics that have been treated humanely and allowed to pursue their natural instincts. It's a simple fact.
Animals raised according to this philosophy taste better. And as we like to say, you have to eat them to save them. Visit us at HeritageFoods USA.com for more information. Wait, Jack, I wasn't listening at the beginning. Is that Steve Jenkins?
That's Steve Jenkins. And who do we figure out he sounds like? Like a mix between Alec Baldwin and someone else? He's got a little baldwin in him. But it's like Baldwin mixed with like it's like Baldwin mixed with custanza, right?
It's like a damn good voice, isn't it? Yeah. It's like a castanza baldwin. Yeah, that's uh uh Steve Jenkins is from Steve Jenkins from Fairway doing a heritage foods ad. Yeah.
So it's kind of confusing. So so at the beginning at the outset, you say the Heritage uh Foods is the is the uh largest purveyor of turkeys and what was the other one? Turkeys and in the in the in the promo. What but not goats? You guys aren't the largest heritage goat goat seller.
Sorry, I'll have to check on that. Yeah, it's just like I was like, you know, I was like sell some mean goat though. Yeah, yeah. No goat left behind, right? I once delivered a uh a whole goat in the back of my trunk to a customer.
It was great. Yeah? Had that well, like was it uh we won't say that you did that because I'm sure you don't have a reefer truck. I had a dream once that I did that. Yeah, it was a cool dream.
Yeah. All the street meat guys were uh giving me a lot of funny looks. You know where I learned the term reefer truck from convoy song, convoy song, greatest song ever, Convoy. Stas, you don't even like convoy, right? You hate you hate songs that have stories in them.
Stas hates story songs, she doesn't like the gambler. You have a lot of questions you need to answer. Oh, you see what I'm saying? She just doesn't want to even deal with it. But before we go on, so we're saying uh the question was in the in the studio here was like I didn't really talk about the the person who called before was interested in rotisseries, and we didn't talk about the rotisserie.
I was just thinking that a rotisserie at the beach might be kind of a pain to set up if you don't if if you're not gonna bring a circulator, what are the odds you're gonna bring a rotisserie? And then the point is you could crank it by hand, right? And Nastasia here said that you made a hand crank rotisserie once. What'd you cook? Chicken.
Chicken. Well, chicken doesn't take that long, right? How was it? No, it was like whole chickens, like 30 years old chickens. Like a bunch?
And who actually turned it? You turned it or you made Phil turn it? No, this is back in a better place with lots of boys. To turn it. Oh wait, in Switzerland?
You made your campers do it? She Stas used to be a camp counselor in Switzerland. What? Okay. Yeah, it was good chicken.
Yeah. Another thing you could do if you don't want to turn it, is you could go the uh the vertical, vertical rotisserie where you hang it from a string and then you just like kick it every once in a while. Don't actually kick it with your feet, like poke it with a stick. But then it just automatically rotates and then it's but it's vertical. Do you like the vertical rotisserie?
I've never seen it. No? But you've seen it like on streets. Like that's how like Oh, you mean like yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it works.
Right? You weren't with me in Mexico, right? Mexico, this one place that was making the like the really like the the high-end pastor, the place that Jordana and Alex Dupac, who are you know writing a book on tacos or wrote a book on tacos, actually, it's not out yet. Uh, this is the place they said to go. It's like a gas station or a mechanic shop during the day, and at night it's like an Al Pastor shop.
Those guys, they had flame shooting out of their uh rotisserie, hitting the the meat. And by the way, the way they do the Al Pastor there, it's not like uh some chummed up meat like uh like you know, like a donor is it's like flaps of meat that are stacked all around on the thing. And they had such a high heat coming out that they had a really good crispiness going on, but I realized they can only accomplish that because they make eight billion of these dang things, so they can keep it on real high and they just keep going all the time and it's perfect. I was wondering whether you had like a wahwa pedal for the flame, which would be kind of awesome, right? Then you could like DY it, you know, go rah with the flame.
That's what I kind of wanted to build. Anyway, all right. Alright. Style says I should get to some of these questions. Yes?
Mm-hmm. Yes. Okay. Um this in from uh BJD. Please say hello to Jack.
Jack, hello. Uh um, wait. This is in the middle of the question. Somehow I missed half the question. It just says it starts with also.
The question starts with. Maybe that's how he started. That's how you started it. Also. Usually not.
Anyway. Also, the liquid that leeches from the meat I cook in my circulator, if I'm not using it to make a pan sauce, is it safe to pour over dog food for my dog? Well, let it cool first. But yes. Of course.
That's it how he started it. Yeah. Also, by the way, my dog, super freaking picky, will not eat the dry food unless there's wet food on it now. I thought dogs are supposed to eat anything. That's what dogs do.
They eat any damn thing. Won't eat the dry food. Just maybe show how bad that dry food probably tastes. I've never tried it. I'm sure it's terrible.
Additionally, and not related, if I'm doing chicken low temperature for insurance, by the way, uh before frying, can I bag it with the buttermilk brine? Brine bagged or not, what time attempt should I go uh with for squeamish folk? Okay, so um here's the thing. Um yes, you can bag a chicken uh with a buttermilk brine and cook it. Just realize this.
If you leave it in contact with the buttermilk for a long time, it's gonna get soft. The whole potion the mother, the whole point of uh buttermilk brine is um to soften the meat fibers with uh the acidity. So I don't actually do buttermilk brines because I find that low temperature plus buttermilk makes the stuff too soft for my taste. I've tried it, and to me it's like a little bit mushy, especially if you're vacuum bagging it and you're actually injecting the buttermilk into the fibers of the chicken. Um it's much more uh uh effective at delivering that acid into the inner parts of the chicken than just simple soaking alone.
And so uh you know, I just don't, it's not my thing. I do a milk brine, milk, salt, water, and I don't know if it makes it any better. It's just for years I've always done my brine as a straight milk, not as a buttermilk, and my batter is always buttermilk. I've always done it that way. Um so anyway, so yes, you can do it, um, but just expect it to be a little bit uh mushy.
What I and by the way, for those of you that don't know, low temperature for insurance is where you take something like chicken and you cook it all the way through in a circulator, then you let it cool, and then you fry it like it's normal or cook it like it's normal. And the reason to do this is because let's say you're making uh when you're making chicken, I used to have to put in the large pieces of chicken first at the fryer at a low temperature, raise the temperature of the fryer, do the smaller pieces of chicken, then raise the temperature of the fryer again, and then do French fries, right? Or onion rings, right? Uh but if you're if you're doing low temperature for insurance, all of the meats already cook through all the way. So you can just uh cook, you know, everything from the largest breast down to uh the French fries, all in the same temperature of oil.
So it just makes it much more convenient because you can go back and forth between products without having to like you know keep adjusting your fryer to different temperatures or adjusting your oil to different temperatures. So it's a great technique for uh stuff like that. And you can just focus on getting the breading kind of the way you want it. Here are some tips. Uh for leg meat.
Uh if you're gonna bag it, I would bone all of the leg meat, especially because you're gonna get uh pink around the bone that you're not gonna be able to cook away and no one's gonna like it. So I usually bone out uh meat if I'm gonna bag it. If you're not gonna bag it, if you're just gonna ziplock it, then uh you don't necessarily need to bone it out, but I would go on the high side. So I would go like 60 uh like six Celsius, right? Something like there.
Um even though the meat is cooked, tasting and looking around like 64, 65, I would go 66, 67. It's not gonna dry out because it's dark meat, right? Uh and especially if it's brined, it's not gonna dry out and it's gonna get some of that color gone that's that's gonna freak people out. On the white meat, I go a straight 64. If people are gonna be a little bit squeamish, you could do a 65, but don't go above 65 on the white meat.
So here's how I usually do it. I throw the dark meat in at the high temperature in a bag. I bag them separately. I throw the dark meat in at the high temperature, I let that go, I keep everything fairly small, I let that go for about 45 minutes uh to an hour. The temperature soaks through, then I drop down to my white meat temperature, I throw the white meat in, I let it ride out for uh another 45 minutes or so.
Depends on the thickness of your product and how keep them separated. Pull it out, then I unbag them immediately and let the uh let it drain while it's hot so that you get rid of the moisture that's on the surface of the chicken skin. Then the chicken skin can get tacky uh and then it holds on to your uh breading better. So that's the way I do it. A lot of people who let it cool in the bag or they let it sit in the bag and they pull it out when it's cooler, they find that using the pre-cook for insurance means that they have poor uh uh batter adhesion.
And so I just say uh pull it out when it's hot and it'll solve the problem. Yeah? Mm-hmm. Okay. Um what else we got here?
Uh Joel Esposito wrote it. This is like a long time ago that we've never gotten to this question, and now I've forgotten what I was gonna say, so we're gonna have to just wing it. We're gonna wing it. Uh I was thinking about oil dispensers recently as I currently pour straight from the store-bought containers, which inevitably ends up making an oily mess no matter what sort of anti-drip cap they put on the bottles. You should you should come to Roberta's man.
The oil dispensers here are like demons. Jack, have you noticed this? Yes. They're the worst. They're the worst.
They they absolute worst. Uh I mean, that's no offense to the product. I just hate their oil things. We've already had the discussion about their standard uh the standard red hot pepper shakers. Nastassi and I would both Oh, yeah, those are bad.
If I could go back in time and meet one person, it would be the person that invented that and I would slap them in the face. You know what I mean? So bad. It works for like the graded Parmesan cheese, but yeah, but they don't serve that here because that's an enemy of quality. Yeah.
Right? Oh, it is, yes. Yeah, and they don't serve things here that are enemies of quality except for yes, except for that free. Oh someone doing it right now. Right now.
There's this lady out here trying to get red pepper on her pizza. Unscrew the cap. They should just have a solid cap on it so that you have to unscrew it. Oh my god. Anyways, okay.
Uh so I ventured on Amazon to browse the marketing of oil dispensing technology. That's a good sentence. Uh at first I was looking for a machinist style oiler with a trigger and wide base, as I felt this would be a good solution. After a brief search, I can neither turn up said product nor a real deal stainless steel machinist oiler. Yeah, they're all made with regular steel, I think.
Um although you remember what I used to have that okay, so the one the one that uh Joel's talking about is the one with the trigger on it where you it has the long goose thin gooseneck, and you're like shh right, you put it in. But the one that I actually like is the one that has the uh curved bottom that goes you know what I mean? You press on the bottom, and it like it's like it looks like a can, it looks looks like a like a like a like a can, like a like a half dome can with a long spout coming out of the top, and you just press the bottom and it makes that metal noise. I used to love using that thing. I had no good reason to use it as a kid, so that I had oil getting everywhere, but I used to just love pressing on that damn thing.
You ever have one of those styles? You know what I'm talking about though, right? Yeah. You've probably seen them in like old cartoons from the 40s. Uh okay.
Then I thought about what the ultimate dispensing device would be and what sort of challenges would it need to overcome. These are the challenges in bullet point form. No drips down the side of the container, thermally insulated. Now, why does it need to be thermally insulated? Why?
Because you're gonna have it too close to your stove? Maybe just don't keep it too close to your stove, right? Although I do have that problem. Sometimes my oil jug, I have a I have a three-liter jug of uh uh olive oil that I keep a can neck that I keep next to my stove. Sometimes it gets a little warm, maybe thermally insulated.
I don't know. Completely opaque to avoid light-based oxidation. Alright, I get that. Here's the problem, though. If it's completely opaque, you don't know how much is in there unless you do it by weight.
What? You could add like a glass um window so you can see how much is left. Right, and then presume well, because right, because not that much light's going through the glass. Or an oil dipper. A oil dipper, like a car, like a dipstick.
A dipstick. I just had to teach Dax what a dipstick was because we got this tractor over the weekend, like an old tractor from the 70s, and I was like, this is a dipstick. It's not something you call your buddies, it's something that measures oil. Uh and showed them how to wipe it down, and yeah. Been a while.
Because, you know, in like a modern car, like I have a Subaru, I've I haven't looked at the oil once. I don't even know if my Subaru has a dipstick. I don't have no idea. Uh anyway. Uh devoid of oxygen to mitigate rancidity.
That's a good call, right? And pressurized for spraying across pan or grill surfaces. Presumably Joel doesn't like uh the well, here's the thing. I think okay, anyway, I'll f I'll finish reading and then we'll go into it. This sounds a lot like a thermal whip to me.
Thermal whip is the EC uh whipped cream maker, but the one that's insulated, right? They're fantastically expensive. They're used typically because you have something hot that you want to keep hot or cold that you want to keep cold, but you don't want to keep your whipper in the fridge or keep it in the in in a hot water bath. So you can either pre-chill or preheat the inside of it, fill it with hot or cold, and it'll stay hot or cold like a thermos for a long time. Right?
Yeah. But they're about twice the size of the equivalent uh EC would be if it wasn't a thermo whip. Anyway. Uh it sounds a lot like a thermal whip to me, uh utilizing non-fat soluble chargers, i.e. CO2.
CO2 is soluble in fat, not as much as N2O, but it is soluble in fat so much. With a stubby narrow piping or injection tip attached, you could charge it once and empty the headspace to provide a gas flush effect and then charge again to pressurize. But what are you using? It's so expensive that you're this worried about it, like argan oil? What are you you're using some sort of like fancy like oil that's like only harvested from a yak like one period of time during Tibet like in Tibet, like at the high regions or something?
Right? I mean like that's some fanciness you're going through for your oil. Anyway, but I mean you I'm sure you have I guess look, there's olive oils out there that are fantastically expensive that would be worth uh saving. Yeah, anyway, okay. Um it would be especially baller to have an atomizer attachment to facilitate misting.
I'm interested to hear Dave's thoughts on this. Any safety issues, oil, gas, mist igniting in a grilling application. Uh have I ever have I ever sprayed Pam over a grill and had it ignite? Yet. No, I haven't yet done it.
Low oxygen, nasties and infused oil, uh, etc. Thanks. Uh, okay. So I looked up uh the oilers that we were talking about. The oil you're looking for, by the way, which are not made of uh stainless steel, is the golden rod, the golden rod pistol pump oiler six-inch model 606.
Uh that's the one you're you're looking for. You ever see the movie Breaker Morant? No, good movie. Any guys see Breaker Morant? I don't think they watched it anymore.
It was about this guy who got uh executed during the Bora War for for anyway, whatever. Whenever anyone says 60 something, I think of that movie Breaker Morant, but no one's seen it anymore. Jack, you seen Breaker Morant? No, I haven't. Everyone's terrible.
You know what? Well, I was dealing with the bartenders and they hadn't seen things like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. That's bad. But they're like 25. What's Jack?
Like 25. I've seen all the movies from the 40s. Thank you. 29. Was I alive in the 40s?
I've seen all those movies. I'm saying. You're a better person than everybody. Me, me, me, me. Geez, nostalgia tries to have a truth.
Nastasia tries to just make me feel bad. Anyways. It's a little taste people of what I have to deal with on a daily basis with nostalgia. It only goes one way. Uh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, sure. Um, but Joel, why do you hate on the uh misto, the misto? I have to admit, I hate you guys familiar with the misto, you know what I'm talking about? You you buy it, it's a like a little aerosol pump for oils. It doesn't do dripping, it only does the mist, right?
I read a lot of I had a bad luck with it because I gotta be honest, I melted one and then and then uh gummed it up. But if you read about it, what they say is that if you store it under pressure, right? It's it's it follows some of your things. It's opaque, right? You could take Argon and like flush argon.
Uh thing you'd have to re-rig it to pump with something other than air. You'd have to pump it with argon or nitrogen or something like this. Nitrogen's really what you want to use, by the way, not nitrous or CO2. You want to use nitrogen or argon. Oh my god, Stas, I know what you want to do.
Here's what you do. What's that thing called that they had that we tasted at Del Posto? I don't know. The wine thing that we tasted at the posto. What?
Mosquito. It's called a mosquito. Anyway, so that's an arg uh an argon purge system. Now you don't want to have to keep wasting argon, right? So you like lightly pressurize something with it in a in like an opaque kind of bottle.
And you could probably jerry rig it so that you could get oil out whenever you want it and just pressurize it every once in a while. So because the argon's expensive in that system, right? But that would work. Anyway, so the misto kind of works, but there's nothing, there's nothing out there. Well, anyway, try what you said.
Tell me whether it's awesome and how many charges you go through, right? I mean, it seems like you know you it seems like you want to run the experiment anyway, so just tell us how it works. Right, Stas? Mm-hmm. That's what you say to everyone.
Like, just do the experiment. Tell me how it works. Uh now, finally, because we're coming in. Oh, I have to I have one more I gotta get before it. Okay.
I didn't get the answer yet, by the way, Jack, uh, from the bar on the stabilizing pina coladas. And Stasi, did you want to ask me about your kitchen before we go? No. Let's go to other people, they can ask you anytime. Oh, see, smarter.
No, that's true. I mean, I hope you do answer. Here's the thing. Okay, now okay, so Ellie wrote in a question, but is it Ely? Because they said it's pronounced Ely Capital E Lee.
But is that eh or E? Ely. Ely. E. Ely.
Like the coffee people, but spelled like E. Anyway. So wrote in. Uh congrats again on the James Beard. Thank you.
Did I already do this? Did I do I didn't do the corn and oil, did I? Did I do this? We talked about it briefly. Um speaking of cocktails, I made two corn and oil cocktails.
Uh black strap uh rum, phalarinum, uh lime juice. Uh I love those things. Um I measured everything both times. Two ounces of rum, uh, three-quarters ounce lime juice, three-quarters ounce phalanum, pinched salt. So I drank the first, and about 30 minutes later, made the second one and drank that one too.
The second one tasted much more tart than the first. The only difference I can think of is that the limes I used in the second drink were fresher. The first limes were from an older purchase and slightly less juicy. Any evidence that juice from fresher limes is more tart than that from older limes, or is this just a coincidence, maybe? Best Ely.
Huh. I don't know. I've never I've never I've never noticed that. I mean, if I I in general, I have found that sometimes uh the juice from older crappier limes is crappier. Um maybe it's because there's more um pith in it, but also you know how when you cut into a lime and it's kind of brown on the inside?
Mm-hmm. And like can't you know what I'm talking about, Stas? It's kind of brown and crappy on the inside. I find that sometimes the juice from those limes doesn't taste as good. But I don't know how kind of crappy the limes.
I don't know if it's tart or not, or whether it's just kind of less overall everything. I don't know. But I should we should run an experiment. I mean, I'm sure the bar has limes that are sitting around for a long time. I have had people pick up off flavors though in in poorly made limes.
It could just be that you were one drink less sober. Right? Or slightly, slightly less measured, right? That's another another possibility. And um anyway.
Uh he also says I'll end by um. Oh. Now this is a separate question. I'm missing, I'm missing. I think something happened with my with my version where it got all chopped up.
Anyway, I'm gonna read now uh from uh another vegetti, uh another vegetti call-in. We've had a we've had a we should have a new thing called the Vegetti Chronicles. Spinoff show. Yeah, or the vegetti monologues, where we talk about like all the people that write in questions and things about uh vegetis. Uh Hey Hammer Dave and Jackie Molecules.
Nice. After following the Vegetti Chronicles of the past few weeks, I thought I'd send you my thoughts on spiralized vegetables. So I don't have a vegetti. I do have a we talked about some of this last week. We didn't get it to finish it, right?
Jack, we didn't get to finish it, right? No. Okay. I do have a uh Paderno spiralizer. Sounds like a coach, right?
Wasn't that a coach? That's Paterno. Peternal. Not Baderno. Paderno.
Spiralizer, yes. Which, and by the way, uh they those wins were reinstated, right? It's like it's like it's like it's like that person never shot him, right? It's all over. I mean he didn't get shot, but like he didn't pen, he was put he was Penn State, right?
Didn't they give those wins back? They like punished for a while and then they gave the wins back, so it's like nothing happened. They got off scot free. Whatever. I'm not gonna get into sports ethics here because I don't know anything about it.
Uh I do have a Paderno spiralizer, which seems like a more robust and flexible machine. Uh, it's also bulkier. I'm not even gonna start I'm not even gonna start. But the larger size allows you to make ribbons and spirals out of larger, harder vegetables like beets or hickama, which are too girthy to stick in your vegetti. Oh my god.
I'm reading this directly, people. I am not uh I'm not editorializing. Spiralized zucchini noodles are infinitely more satisfying than similar noodles cut on a mandolin. The texture is better, the shape is better, and they blow they blow spaghetti squash out of the water, though they can get soggy or greasy if you cook them for too long. A one minute saute in a hot pan does the trick.
Butternut squash noodles are also delicious when tossed with some brown butter and sage. As proof of concept, I attached a couple photos of spiralized dishes I've made. I don't have those photos. The first is zucchini noodles with shrimp and pistachio pesto recipe from Modernist Cuisine at home. Wait, they were actually spiralizing, they were using a vegetti in Modernist Cuisine at home.
I don't know. I gotta go check it out. Uh the second is pot roast served over a bed of potato, butternut squash, turnip and parsley noodles. Great results all around. I'm still trying to work out a good technique for making ultra crispy curly fries with it.
All in all, it's worthy of the 30 bucks if you have the space for it, especially if you're looking to avoid pasta, eat more plants, or just manipulate vegetables in a new and interesting way. Uh and I'll end by suggesting that anyone interested in these tools should check out the blog Inspiralized. Inspiralized.com, which is the best online source for spiralizing techniques, tips, and recipes. All the best. Brandon Bird in Chicago.
Uh yeah. Well, I mean, yeah. I don't know. Spiralized, inspiralized.com. Didn't Becker just write a cookbook on spiralized vegetables or use it.
He he's into spiralizing. Franklin Becker. Yeah. I don't know. I look, I just can't I can't make myself get all jazzed.
What about you guys? Spiralized. I think it's maybe me, though. I have the I have the vegetti at home. Right?
And so I mean maybe I should. Do you think I should get I have also, like I said before, I think I said this last week. I have the straight blade version of the Paderno Spiralizer that I used to make those potatoes for pizzas. Remember because we were talking about it and you and Jack said he doesn't have someone in the studio said that they didn't have potatoes on their pizza. Oh, you weren't here, Styles.
That's why you don't know. No, I was here. Oh, you came late. Yeah, it was Peter who said he didn't eat potatoes on his pizza and made us feel like jerks for not having had it. And then you said you didn't like it, but you took it back when I asked you about uh Sullivan's, which is delicious.
Anyway. All right. I I I can't, I can't. I was gonna say some other stuff, but I can't get past the vegetti in my head. So we might have to wrap it up because uh it's actually we're gonna end on time because we started on time.
How do you like that? Well, maybe we'll maybe we'll start it. Jack, what do you think about that? It's great. All right, well, thanks you guys for coming in.
Hopefully, you had a good time in the studio today, and we'll see you guys next week on cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes Store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at heritage underscore radio. You can email us with questions anytime at info at heritage radio network.org.
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