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 HeritageFoods USA.com. This is Chef Emily Peterson, host of Sharp and Hot. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradio network.org for thousands more.
Hello and welcome to Cooking News. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Crooking New Jersey coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network from Bushwick, Brooklyn at Roberta's Pizzeria, almost every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Not joined in the studio uh today with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, no fault of her own. Do you have any weepy sad track on your uh thing, Jack? Let's see.
I got that. That's not like, oh, you're sad she's here. It's like a wa on her. It's really not her fault. No, like on the airline, maybe.
On yeah, Turkish, yeah, and on Turkish, yeah. She uh she got delayed coming back from Istanbul. For some reason, her flight from Greece was connected through Istanbul. No one told uh those folks that that's the wrong way. That's the wrong way to get back to America to fly to Turkey via Greece.
Uh which is a shame because we I wanted to should I wait, Jack, for next time to talk about uh Greece trip. Yeah, I think so. I actually made it to Turkey for a day because I was on the same flight, but yeah, but I came back uh a day early so that I could uh hang out in Istanbul for a day. Really cool food in uh Turkey. Really did you know that Turkish cheese is really interesting, Jack?
No, why? I don't I mean, I just hadn't expected it. They have this um I need to look up the translations because I, you know, I don't speak any uh, you know, I don't speak anything other really than English and a smattering of German and you know enough French to get me by in the kitchen, but uh I guess the same Spanish, just enough to like just kitchen. Anyway, the point is they have this like crazy string cheese thing, but it tastes like beer almost, like it's yellow. They have like a white string cheese, it tastes fairly neutral, and then they have a yellow string cheese, it tastes kind of like fermented, yeasty beer kind of a situation.
They have a sheep's milk cheese that's aged, you get ready for it, aged in a goat skin. What? Yeah, they have a I'll say it again, they have a sheep's milk cheese aged in a goat's skin. Good, very good. Uh they have some like incredibly light, like buttery cheese.
They have some they have some really really good cheeses. Uh also uh had some really uh they had you know that they had some very good cured fish in uh in Turkey. Did you know this? I did not know that either. We'll talk about it later.
They have this uh I forgot the name of it, oh, Lakerta is the name of it. It's this uh it's this bonito that comes through the Bosporus that they catch, and then they salt, they like salt it and lightly bring it and serve it raw. It's like the most velvety with onions, it's like the most velvety textured fish like ever. It's awesome. Anyway, uh so big surprise.
I didn't even get to go to any. I was in Turkey. I had the Selepton Derma. You familiar with that, Jack? The stretchy ice cream?
Yeah. Well, it's the first time I've had it actually there, you know, proper, uh, which is nice. Um you know you can bring it home. It's not quite the same. They're lying.
They say that it's gonna be the same, it's not quite the same when you bring it home. I think it needs to be manipulated a little bit. Didn't have quite the bite because I paid some ungodly amount of money to do you also know that you can bring dry ice on an airplane as long as nobody asks you. Well, yeah, sure. Sure.
Well, I mean, they sold it to me on the airplane. Oh, okay. And it's actually uh when I got home at JFK, it's the first time I've ever been able to actually rationally uh talk somebody at customs out at anything. They're like, Well, you can't bring that in because it's it's uh it's you know it's not cheese, so it's not fermented, it's dairy and it you know may contain eggs. And I said, Well, you know, it's cooked.
And he's and the straight faced guy looks at me and he's like, when I make ice cream at home, it's not cooked. Really, he said this to me. I was like, Real we're gonna get in this conversation. I said, Okay. I said, Well, I said what I said, there's uh two basic kinds of ice cream that we eat here in America.
You got your Philly style ice cream, which is uh does not have egg yolks, uh typically, and is not cooked. And I was like, This is probably what you making at home. This is a briar style of ice cream. I said, the other and more typical kind of ice cream is uh something uh familiar to more like a Haganda's or a Ben and Jerry, which contains egg yolks and is in fact cooked and pasteurized before it's uh before it's made. I said this I said this particular ice cream that I'm bringing home from Turkey, not only was it sold at the airport for transport into into foreign countries, but uh contains a uh uh a powder uh from uh from an orchid that must be cooked in order for it to work.
So I can guarantee that this ice cream has been cooked up to temperatures that are gonna kill anything that's in it. You know what the guy said? Okay. Okay. Sure.
Yeah, sure. All right. I mean, you seem to know what's going on. That didn't save me the last time I tried to bring something uh through. Yeah, what was that?
You got stopped last time. Well, that was different. So customs, right? Customs job, I mean, I guess they're supposed to ensure the safety. They have a couple things, right?
They're supposed to ensure that you're not breaking the law, like you're not bringing in rhino horn or anything like that, right? Um they're also supposed to ensure that you're not gonna bring any deadly new pathogens in, like you're not gonna bring the next uh, oh, I don't know, Asian longhorn beetle or something like this, right? Or chestnut blight or or or citrus green, and you're not gonna bring in the next by the way. Speaking of blight, you have been hearing about the uh bird flu? Oh, just a little bit.
Tell me more. Forty, forty million birds so far uh slaughter uh killed here in in the uh in the US with the with the bird flu. Price of eggs going through the roof. Price of eggs, which you know, no one ever talks about. Everyone says, you know, talk about the price of eggs, like that's like the you know, the standard like what's the bull crap, the price of eggs, right?
Price of eggs actually now an interesting subject. Yeah. For the first time in in who knows how long. Yeah. So uh usually this bird flu hasn't struck kind of commercial uh uh you know hatcheries, not hatcheries, what's the word?
Like egg egg production things. Um this time, yeah, 40 million birds. I mean, we have a lot more than 40 million birds, but the price of eggs has gone, gone, gone way up. Now, I was reading recently that they think they're gonna get it under control by by September, but that's still that's pretty far away. You know, summer away.
Yeah, although I was also reading, luckily, that this virus uh doesn't like it when it's hot out. It's much like me and doesn't like it when it's hot out, and so uh the the prevalence is probably gonna go down over the summer. Uh we'll see. And how did I get on that? Oh, yeah, customs.
So the other guy was uh when they st I had all these powders that I had labeled, right? So uh, you know, I had citric acid powder, malic acid powder, all this stuff labeled. Guy comes up to me and says, uh, they didn't identify it, so they called in the explosive expert who has this like little doodad that can actually detect kind of what products you have with you. And it was able to pick up the malic acid and the citric acid, uh, and uh I think one other tartaric acid. And it's like, yeah, it's exactly what he said.
Couldn't pick up first of all, this guy is like super susp one of these super suspicious types. You ever meet these guys who like goes through their whole life super suspicious all the time? Yeah. I understand it's their that's their job because they're trying to catch people who are doing bad things, you know what I mean? But you know, in general, like, you know, uh who the hell wants to be like that?
They walk through life treating everyone like they're a potential threat. Realize it's his job. Anyway, so he says to me, you know, uh acids and then he couldn't identify two acids that I had, right? He couldn't identify uh lactic acid, I don't know why, and he couldn't identify uh agar agar powder, which is a seaweed powder. Obviously he can't identify it's a huge, like you know, uh polymer, right?
Uh, you know, sugar polymer, you know, uh polysaccharide. Of course you can't identify. How the hell are you gonna be able to identify that? Uh so I said, uh I said, well, I said, okay. Uh I don't understand this because half the stuff on my body you can't identify, but whatever.
You know what I mean? Like you can't identify a block of wood either because it also can't identify cellulose, because it's a large chain powder, but okay, and I have something wood that you're letting bring through that you can't identify. But but sure, and the other things that I labeled were the things I labeled. He goes, Well, and he goes, Well, you have to throw all of it out. I was like, All of it.
But you are able to identify the the these things. He's like, Well, but I couldn't identify these, so I have to throw out everything that I couldn't identify. Uh and I the guy was just a a freak, a freak. You know what I mean? It's like how because I was like, you know, look at he and he says he looks at me straight face, he says, Acids can be used as oxidizers in explosive reactions.
I was like, I can be used as an oxidizer in a freaking explosive reaction. Like, what the hell are you talking about? Like, where on your little computer database do they say citric acid should be regulated because of its potential use in explosives? And if so, where's all the other stuff that I'm gonna combine with the citric acid to make into a bomb? But you can't even say those words in an airport, you know what I mean?
Or or or you'll get you'll get instantly instantly annihilated. And the guy said to me, he goes, You have you have two choices. Surrender all of this, or I'll just turn you over to the Port Authority Police. I was like, turn me over to the Port Authority police. For what?
For what did I do that? I need to be turned over to the police? So, you know, typically you can't reason with that's like the last time I tried to bring medler jelly in to uh from England, and the lady goes, Um, you can't bring that uh medler jelly in. It's uh a liquid. I said I said, Oh, it is, huh?
And I unscrew I uh I unscrew the lid of the medler jelly and turned it upside down and held it there for like 30 seconds. Of course, nothing came out because in fact it's a solid. And she's like, Well, it can be melted uh into a liquid. And I pulled out a piece of plastic and I said, This can be melted into a liquid. Furthermore, I can be melted into a liquid.
And she's like, and she's like, We well, we have to let you on the airplane. We don't have to let the jelly on the airplane. I was like, You are a bad human being. You're just a poor quality person. You know what I mean?
It's just like you know, because it doesn't make any sense. Like, like I can't make solid things that can light on fire or explosives, but like somehow medler jelly uh, whatever. I don't even want to get into it. I already did. You did.
I did. I didn't want to get into it, but I did. The rules are so nutty bags. You know what I mean? It's like whatever.
I'm on pro safety. I don't want anyone to think that I'm anti-safety. You are pro-safety, man. I'm pro-safety. As much as you know, I got I got uh hold on a second, I'll move the mic for one second.
We're filming in here, and so they're you know, moving around in our spacious studios. Uh I actually did get two really boneheaded because I wasn't being safe injuries this weekend. Two separate ones. Uh-oh. Two separate Memorial Day stupid dad uh injuries.
I hit my foot with an axe. Oh man. Yeah, which was entirely my fault. I hit a punky piece of wood and it glanced the wrong way, and guess what I was wearing on my feet instead of safety boots? Freaking sneakers.
Oh. Well, at least wasn't sandals. Uh uh, well, thanks for that, Jack. But yes, I so I wasn't I wasn't uh, you know, yes, I wasn't beach bomb stupid, but I was incredibly stupid. And the other one, installing an umbrella.
And you know I hate umbrellas, right? You know that, Jack? I did not know that. I hate umbrellas. How come?
They're ridiculous. I get poked at that they're all like umbrellas are like the prime example of I'm importing crap on you. You know what I mean? It's like they're all about poking other people in the face, or getting out of a subway and standing there at the entrance while while someone else is trying to get out, fiddling around with your umbrella, or trying to walk into an entryway and poking somebody in the eye or dripping on someone's head and under an overhang. I'm with you on this one.
Yeah, they're crap. They're they're you know, just deal with it. Wear a hat like I do. Get a raincoat. You know what I mean?
It's like very few uh poncho, that's a lot. Yeah, poncho. There are many other, you know what? You're just as important as I am kind of situations to handle the rain, right? Don't get me started on parasols.
What happened with the umbrella this weekend? Oh, well, this, you know, is a deck umbrella, which formerly I was for because I hate the sun. But you know, this one uh uh aspire, you know, it tried to try to kill. But my fault, the walk up there's like the umbrella's not fitting into its pole properly. I'm like, okay, let me turn this so it rotates.
So I rotate it and chunk. Oof. Took a big chunk out of my pinky. Oof. My fault.
My fault. Stupid. So uh I guess the point saying is that is that it's the things that you don't think like you're going out and you're splitting a little bit of wood, you don't think you're gonna get damaged. Of course, when I was a kid, I was severely injured splitting wood. I don't know what the heck is wrong with me.
Like I should be thinking about it. You know what I mean? Or uh or uh, you know, installing an umbrella. That's it's not it's not when you're using a chainsaw or like using a deep fryer that you get hurt because you're on your toes. It's when you're doing something stupid.
That's when you get tagged. You know what I mean, Jack? Oh boy. Anyways, this is not have anything to do with cooking issues, so I should probably get off. But Alvin, Alvin Schultz, uh you know Alvin Schultz, uh Jackie.
Oh, yeah, long time listener. Yeah, yeah, good friend of the show. Uh wrote in with a another thing to add to our uh Vegetti monologues. He says uh this is his quote. Uh at cooking issues.
Uh are you tired of getting things jammed up in your vegetti? And he goes, try this from the trusted folks at KitchenAid. KitchenAid now sells a spiralizer attachment for your kitchen aid uh for your kitchen aid. That's more of really taking off, huh? It's more of an open air spiralizer, Jack, so you can't get anything kind of jammed into it.
You know what I'm saying? I do. Yeah. Because who's not tired of getting things jammed up in their vegetes? Um Joe Hanley wrote in.
Hey Dave, what's the best way to defrost hard frozen vac pack steak and chicken? Easy. Water. And uh if you have a vac pack, uh you probably also have a circulator. So the easiest way is to uh set your uh set your circulator at like four or five degrees Celsius, uh, and then just run it at four to five degrees Celsius, it'll keep heating the water and circulating it.
That's the most gentle way. If you're gonna cook it right away, you know, and you don't mind the fact that it's gonna go into the uh you know danger zone for a little while, then you can jack it all the way to like eighteen Celsius or something like that, and it'll take it up, you know, e even quicker. But yeah, a circulator uh in water is by far the best way to thaw a product that's been uh vacpacked. Like in in no in no question. You know what I mean, Jack?
No question. You know what I'm saying? Can you think of a better way? Nope. No.
You know what they used to sell for uh thawing things out? They used to sell large blocks of aluminum. You ever see those at the as seen on TV things? Yeah, actually, yes. Yeah, they're large blocks of aluminum with uh I think typically with fins on the other side, and it's it's a tip.
But even that is not gonna beat just like, you know, sitting in a water bath with like circulating all the time. You know, just won't work. Just won't beat it. Anyways, uh okay. Uh it's sad that Stas is not here, huh?
We had to do it one other time. What was wrong with Stas the other time we couldn't do it? Uh she was in California, maybe on the phone. Oh yeah. She usually joins us by phone.
Well, she can't because she's literally in transport. And that's like last week. Yeah, I was spinning stuff in a centrifuge and couldn't do it. And someone's gonna ask a question later. Hopefully I get to it about like uh centrifuges.
So we'll get to that later as we're going. Uh Simeon Priest wrote in and basically just said uh that uh they they like the book and and they like the show. Well, thanks. It's a very long I I don't like reading long, long, praiseful things, so I'm not gonna read it, but uh thanks. Anyway.
Uh oh, and he says uh my wife and I will be traveling to NYC next week for a short vacation, celebrating the end of the semester. And we'll most definitely be making Booker and Dax one of our mussees. Can't wait to get that first uh liquid nitro chilled glass in front of me. Well, thanks, and uh, you know, hopefully uh we'll see you there. By the way, Jack, did you know this?
Istanbul, formerly, or Istanbul, I guess, formerly Constantinople, right? Yep. Familiar with this from the They Might Be Giants song. Uh did you know that? Okay, so for those of you that aren't from New York City, we have kind of an irritating habit of wherever we are, New Yorkers, and you know, back me up anyway, New Yorkers, right?
Yeah, New Yorkers. Yes. Uh when you say that you're going back to New York, you don't say I'm going back to New York City. You just say, I'm going back to the city. It's super irritating for other people because you could be in a city as large as yours.
You're like, you could be in Mexico City, which is like much bigger than than New York, you know what I mean? And you could say, Oh yeah, I'm going back to the city like tomorrow. And you're like, what it which what city? Which one? And you're like, Well, the.
Uh, and it's like super irritating New York have it. But strangely, I looked up that uh Istanbul or Istanbul is roughly translated as a variant, just meaning the city. So they're the same way we are. They're like, they're the same thing. What arrogant?
I I wasn't gonna put it that way. Say extreme love of their city. Or that, or that, or that. Extreme extreme love of their of their city. I have uh caller on the line, by the way.
Oh, caller, you're on the air. Hi, Dave. This is uh Justin from California. How are you doing? Uh good.
How are you? Alright. A little sweaty, biked over, but alright. Also inhaled something on the street. It never fails, uh it never fails that when I'm biking.
As soon as I go a little bit over the limit of what I can do where I was breathing through my nose, I breathe once through my mouth and I suck some sort of particle into my lungs and spend the rest of the bike ride hacking and wheezing all the way over. Invariably. Anyway, go ahead. All right. Um so my uh cooking question is uh but I just got a centrifuge, the CR412 of eBay.
Nice. How much did you pay if you don't mind my answer? I paid about 400. Good deal. Good deal.
Nice with buckets. It's uh 100% organ at least from what I can tell. I spun it up to 40, 4500 RPM and working. Beautiful. Um the thing that I'm doing right now is I'm trying to disinfect the unit.
And um I put it through uh concentrated chlorine bath, and then I pressure cooked it. And I noticed that there uh when I poured out the concentrated a lot of red or a purplish uh color uh was pouring out of the bucket. Huh. And it seems like um if I take like a paper towel and I rub it on the inside of the cups, um there's like a purple ish film. It's almost like the color rouge.
Hmm. Um very CSI. Yeah. Huh. Well that has not happened to any of mine.
Now let me let's just make sure we're talking about these are black anodized aluminum buckets, yeah? Yeah. Okay. So there's some sort of like something busted in them once, obviously. And sp all the buckets or just some of the buckets?
Uh all the buckets. Do you know who had it before you had it, what they were doing with it? No, I don't. I was actually gonna call them uh sometime soon, or at least try and get in touch with them. I bought it from a thrift store.
So a thrift store? What the heck kind of thrift stores do you have? That's unbelievable. It was on eBay, and then I offered the person cash since they're a local, and they just happen to be from a thrift store. It's like hey, uh I'm gonna pick up some uh old t-shirts, an army jacket, a belt, and a centrifuge.
It's crazy. Thrift store. Uh yeah, and there's no tags on it, uh, like from like who repaired it before or anything like that. No. Um, I mean, it looks like it's in good condition.
Yeah, that's super interesting. I don't know what the red is. Look, don't use anything highly abrasive on the inside, but get a scotch brite, wear gloves, scrub it, and see whether you can get that stuff to stop coming off. You've killed with the pressure cooking and the bleach, you've killed pretty much uh every bioagent that I can think of. Uh will bleach do prions.
I don't know, and you're soaking it and scrubbing it, but I would make sure that you get all of that, all of the gunk uh out of it. Can you see the gunk when you're just looking at it? Yeah, it's uh it's like a kind of like a powder, powdery, it's like really stuck on there, but it's kind of like a powdery uh sheen that you see if you put it up to the light, you can see like a purple haze. And it's uh purple haze nice, strong. Uh now I got that song going through my head.
You ruined me for the whole day. Uh the um you know uh some of the old Juans used to have uh uh or they still do uh plastic inserts that go into those buckets to hold test tubes. And I wonder whether it's just like years of like that powdered of powdering those things up. Like does it look like it could be plastic dust or it looks like a liquid, like it f makes the whole liquid that color? Uh not sure.
If it could be dust, I don't know. I would just take a scotch bright, okay, and just like gently scotch bright it, see whether you can get that stuff off. Use um a mild detergent, like one that's meant to go onto aluminum. I mean, I obviously don't dishwash these things because the dishwasher detergent will eat the aluminum the same way that they'll eat an aluminum pot. You don't want to weaken the the surface.
But see whether you can get that off, and then you know, a couple more good bleach soaks. The pressure cooking will kill anything um bio with the exception of uh like I say, prions. But scrubbing and uh uh scrubbing and um uh and maybe an extra bleach because the problem is also you want to make sure that there wasn't anything hiding out underneath the gunk that the bleach couldn't get to the first time around. So once it's clean, you want to go with one last kind of bleach a rama. There wasn't this red gunk uh or purple gunk around the inside of the um the stainless uh containment vessel, was there?
No. Yeah, okay. So if that's that's clean, like we know, one one good uh couple good bleachings on that uh propped open to let dry should uh should get you going. But yeah, I would get the gunk off because who knows what it is. Especially it's less of a concern if you're gonna spin in buckets, but I usually spin I mean uh in uh sorry, in uh bottles in the buckets, but I usually spin directly in um the buckets.
But you have to be super super happy with the cleanliness of the buckets if you're gonna do that. Okay. I'll give that a shot. Yeah, but all in all, great find. Let us know uh what happened.
Refrigeration still works. You said it was a C R, right? What's that? You said it was refrigerated unit, right? You said C R?
Yes. Yeah, is it refrigerated? Is the fridge still work? Yes. Okay.
Here's let me this is a couple pointers to anyone that has this uh has this kind of centrifuge out there. Here's what typically goes wrong with it. It's gonna stop spinning as quickly. It's because you probably need to replace the brushes. Make sure that you take like uh an a non-gunking eraser or something and clean off the copper on the rotor uh on the on the um on the motor before you put the brushes back in, or you'll probably eat the brushes down again.
You can get the brushes for a couple of bucks. Ozark Biomedical stocks them, and you can get them also from I think Granger if you happen to know the size. The other um, maybe even McMaster, I'm not sure. Uh I've had on those things the brake units uh go on me and you can just clip them and not have the brake anymore, although it's nice having the brake. Uh sometimes the uh solenoids for the lids go wonky, but you can just take off the front, make sure you put it back on before you do it, and and fix that.
And I've had the refrigeration go on me a couple of times, the actual controller for it, not the refrigerant, in which case you can put a separate controller on or just put the refrigeration on manual. But they're good solid units, should work work for a good long time. Great. Great. Well, thank you.
Alright, thanks. Good luck with it. Uh hey, Jack, should we take a commercial break? Yeah, why don't I just read this text from Stas first? Alright.
Just got out of airport. Hate everyone. That's like except for the airport, that's every day. That's yeah, that's it. Coming back with 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.
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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. And we are back.
Hey, you know what I didn't notice before, Jack? What? Steve Jenkins calling off Fairway a little bit. He's like, you're not gonna find us at the Fairway Butcher Counter. Whoa!
Yeah, whoa. Whoa. Calling them out. Now that's what makes an ad effective, though. Yeah, when someone's like, hey, you know what?
You know, like, you know, Fairway, like the place that I I put on the cheese map. Remember them? They don't have this stuff. Shame on them. Big call out.
Had you noticed that before? Yeah, I did. Powerful stuff. Heritage Foods USA, the only place to get it. Yeah.
Wow. The only place. I like the way he says red wattle. I like the way he says Navajo. Navajo.
True. You know, I well, we talked about when I t I tested all of the um all the lamb breed, not all of them, but I tested like four or five lamb breeds for the Easter. We talked about that, right? Yeah. Delicious.
Oh, yeah. Delicious. In the Tandor, world's greatest uh cooking uh well, my favorite current cooking implement. I'm like, look, some point I'm gonna have to do a big study on uh uh on like different kind of uh cooking implements for like different like I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to do a lot of work. It's gonna take maybe I should write that in my next book.
You know I still haven't figured out what my next book's gonna be about, Jack. Really? Yeah. I gotta figure out my next book. We should crowdsource that.
Here's uh speaking of which I have a caller on the line. Oh really? Oh, caller, you're on the air. Yes, I know you're a great love of cured uh meat products. And I haven't I wanted to hear your personal just what your personal opinion would be.
There's such a convoluted argument between nitrates and nitrites and whether or not we should eat them in our cured products because carcinogenic, what have you. There's a ton of stuff out there that doesn't have that, but they have to up the celery whatever to get it to those levels. Do you have any issues or think nitrates or nitrites are safe? Oh yeah, they're safe. I just want to hear your thing.
They're safe. They're yeah, they're safe. Look, the fact of the matter is is that all the stuff that's labeled uh uncured with big old quotes that you get at the Whole Foods, some of which I enjoy. Like like uh Nyman Ranch Bacon, I enjoy it. I purchase it mainly because uh, you know, uh I like the way that they um source the and you know have the pigs pigs race.
That's mainly why I buy it. I think that the um the the nitrates uh uh and nitrites um argument is complete bunk. First of all, uh uh if you're getting if the bacon is pink, right? If it's pink and stays pink when you cooked it, i.e. i.e.
if it is bacon, right, it has uh nitrites in it. So then the question is where are you getting the nitrites from, right? Are you getting it from uh you actually just sourcing nitrates, or are you taking uh celery or some other green thing that is like just soaking up a bunch of it from the ground and then concentrating it from that form to add it? Either way, same effect. Same same product, really, same effect.
It's just hocus pocus. It's more it's more BS on the label of on the level of uh saying that a flavor is all natural just because they haven't synthetically created a new compound where there wasn't another. Do you know what I mean? It's like you're dealing with functional equivalence, both as far as as the meat is concerned and as far as uh your body is concerned. Uh and you know, uh the nitrites uh are there to provide cured taste, cured uh color, uh, and to prevent botulism, frankly.
Uh you know, and um, you know, so bacon is one thing because it's cooked at high levels. So the argument in bacon is one of uh against you know, nitrosamines, right? Because whatever. And I don't know what the current state of of causing cancer with nitrosamines is. I I really don't.
But uh, like I said, if it's pink and if it's bacon, then it's got that stuff in it anyway, and I don't care how it got in there. And furthermore, if you're I don't I don't think that there's you know any research that I think is decent that shows that there's uh a high enough level of worry in eating because frankly, you're not you're not your great-grandpa or great-great-grandpa going off to uh the California gold rush in the 1840s, and the only thing you can freaking survive on is dried cured meats because that's all you can carry in your backpack, right? I mean, I'm presuming that's not the light view lead, which means that uh, you know, the vast majority of your uh food intake is not from uh cured meats. And so you're eating a relatively small amount, especially because as opposed to your great-great-grandpa, all this stuff is fairly highly titrated now, so they're not adding a boat ton extra of this stuff than they used to. And in fact, we're using uh for everything except for country hams, you're using nitrites instead of nitrates.
The nitrites uh dissipate even more quickly and you use in in smaller amounts. So really your overall risk level, even if there is a risk, your overall risk level is relatively low, and I would say don't worry about it. Uh especially if you're eating a lot of cured meats that don't require a lot of cooking, like uh or any cooking for that matter, like salumi uh uh or or or whatnot. But it's one of those things that I think is really overblown, and the whole uncured pink stuff with the celery really just gets me uh it gets me uh ticked off because it what the problem with it I think is is that consumers believe that they're getting something that they're not. Consumers believe that they're somehow buying health and they're not.
You know what I mean? They're just they're just paying extra for someone to have to jump through a hoop to get a label that looks friendly for the exact same result. You know what I mean? And that is an irritant to me. Yeah, it's an irritant to me as well.
Yeah. I hope that hope that helped. Well, that was a fantastic summary. Yeah, and my grandpappy ate way more sodium than I do. Of course they did.
She ate all that. Because they didn't have a fridge. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. Or my great my my grandfather had my great grandfather didn't have one.
You know what I mean? So but it's like I don't know. And I, you know, luckily I think we're coming off of uh if these things go in waves. Like particular hatred for any uh any one of our normal foodstuffs comes in waves, and I think hopefully the the anti-salt wave is crested and crashed and we're you know back into uh real although you never know. Big food companies still spend a lot of uh time and energy um trying to reduce uh reduce sodium for for one or more some reasons valid, some reasons not not valid.
But um well isn't it the same thing like with with you know salt products? Correct sodium compound. That is correct. Now there are so the so the things that they can do, uh so let's say you're there are people right who are sensitive to uh to salt and should cut down their salt because they're prone to have uh blood pressure spikes as a result of salt intake, right? That people are right, okay.
And uh so what they can do, like milligram per milligram salt is gonna affect your body the same way no matter how no matter no matter what. I don't care, you know what I mean. If it's harvested by Tibetan monks in, you know, in the in the Himalayas, whatever, it doesn't matter. You know what I mean? Virgin Tibetan monk, right?
Yeah, oh exactly. Well, exactly. You know, although Tibetans, interestingly, uh, Buddhists still still eat meat, right? Because you have to at those high altitudes, right? You need the fat.
So these guys are still eating yak and whatnot, plus yak, but whatever. But it's a whole separate discussion. What I'm saying is the salt is the salt. However, there are people that can engineer salt delivery systems and salt to make the equivalent amount of salt taste saltier to you by uh by altering the way, for instance, on a potato chip, which is a dry salt application, they can form salt into uh shapes like spheres that taste saltier for a given level of salt just because a lot of the salt that you eat you like you might not even ever taste. You know what I mean?
It might just go into your body without it actually hitting your tongue in a way that you can taste it. So they can they can do things like that. They can add also um other things to augment your perception of saltiness in the food without without there being salt in there. Uh they can also add so salt, aside from being salty, clearly um increases your perception of other flavors. It's a flavor, it's not just a uh its own taste, tasting on the tongue, it's an enhancer of other tastes and flavors.
Uh so they have other things that can do that uh that are not salt, right? Um you know, they can boost, for instance, um savory umami and get some of the similar kind of like flavor-enhancing techniques that you can with salt. So there are things they can do to alter the salt in there that aren't kind of hokum. I think that look, all what's hilarious about this is is that most people who are anti-salt are are anti or or anti nitrites, are somehow anti process, anti processed foods, right? But what they don't understand is that the amount of processing that actually goes into creating uh products that are lower in that but are still packaged goods, is higher than if they had just used the the normal crap to begin with.
You know what I mean? It's a yeah, to get the amount of salary you have to have to perform that same ability that a regular nitrite would do would be it's a lot. Yeah, I don't even know what the concentration levels are or how the exact kind of process is. But it's it's just one of those things that people uh they believe, you know, they they they just wanna they want to believe something. And you know, yeah, who honestly, whatever you do next for a book would be a lot of fun to get some of those myths and write on them would be I would enjoy reading.
Well there's a lot of books out now, they're coming out now. It's a tough subject. In general, kind of like the the psychology and the kind of science of what we eat in in this realm is is uh there's a lot of books being written from multiple sides. So like the there's a book called the Dorito Effect that just came out that has uh uh yeah, I mean I have my issues with it, but yeah, I just I just read it and um uh you know the a couple of years ago there was uh sugar fat salt, and which I had a lot of problems with actually because my my ten the I thought the basic tenet of that book was they were like food companies are trying to make their food as delicious as possible. Stop it!
You know, which doesn't make sense to me. But but the the Dorito effect kind of picked up where that took off, right? And kind of the argument of that is showing um the argument of the book, it just came out, right, Jack? Yeah, it did. Yeah, I think the argument of that book is more that um they're making stuff taste good, uh, but that's messing with your biology because it doesn't have the nutrients that those tastes would uh would would normally signify.
Anyway, there's a lot of work on on that side. The problem is a lot of the work that is kind of calling uh calling BS on um on movements like the anti-salt movement or or this or like the fake nitrites are written by um people with a real axe to grind. And there's very it's hard to kind of write something that hits in the middle road that doesn't piss everybody off. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, and they're and they're always selling you the alternative when they grind the axe.
Exactly. That's why they're grinding the axe. Exactly. So, like for instance, like uh the the genetic the genetically modified uh you know the anti-GMO lobby. Let's just take that for for for an example.
Like uh now look, from a scientific standpoint, uh it's pretty damn clear that there is that it's that there's no problems with it, right? And that in fact, people are pushing to regulate something that is much safer than other processes that they might wish to regulate first. For instance, people are pushing for GMO uh labeling on GMO products, but and I'm not saying that I don't want anyone to get mad at me, right? If you want like whatever you want, you want. This is fine.
I'm just presenting kind of w what I think. But there's the uh people who want GMO products labeled, maybe what they don't realize is that in a genetic modification, uh you're putting a specific gene in to uh to an organism because you think that that gene will help do something, and it's a gene that has a known function in another organism, right? That's what we're talking about. Now, uh you know what doesn't ever need GM labeling or can can be labeled as GMO free? Here's something that can be labeled GMO free.
You take and you bombard seeds with high intensity radiation to or mutagens, straight up mutagens. Uh now I'm I'm all for this too, by the way. I'm not against this. I'm just saying that the people who are anti GMO, you'd think they'd be anti this. You can bombard these things uh and and cause spontaneous mutations that may do something you like, they may do something you hate, but here's one thing they are freaking unpredictable because they're spontaneous mutations due to mutagens and radiation.
You grow these things and you get something that you like, and you don't have to label it at all. You can label it organic and you can label it GMO free. Now that makes no freaking sense. And it's not really what the GM the anti-GMO lobby wants. If you actually talk to the GMO, anti-GMO lobby, which uh you know I have in various kind of in the MoFAD debates that we've done and over the years, what their argument actually really boils down to is they're anti-big corporation.
But no one wants to have yeah, no one wants to have that conversation, right? It's not really the genetic modification because if you're like, what about this genetically modified plant? They're like, well, that didn't work. Like, okay. Yeah, we're particularly against one large corporation, but that's that's part of the issue.
Yeah, but you know, the thing is is like what we should do is we should just have the conversation about Monsanto or or you know, whomever. There's a couple other ones, but we should just have that conversation. But for some reason, no one is willing to have very few people are willing to have there is there there are uh some, I forget the name of the author, I don't know why I went out of my head, but basically he wrote a book that said, you know what, the problem is is that food is too important to have in the control of big uh corporations, right? That's the tenet of the book. I was like, okay, finally someone who's just being honest.
This is that they're anti-big corporation controlling the food supply. But once someone makes that argument, well, then you can have a reasonable discussion about what the alternatives are. You're like, okay, are you really willing to abandon kind of like uh the system that we have now? And what would the alternative be? That's a reasonable discussion versus the GMO, which does it seems to me to be kind of a uh like you're you're trying to squat Monsanto would still be in business if there was no genetic modification.
Let's be clear on this. Monsanto would still be trying to run the seed trade in the U.S. with or without uh genetic uh modification. Like we could talk about patent laws being problematic. There's all these things that can be talked about as being problematic, but very few people are having an honest discussion.
And I don't know whether or not um it's possible to write a book that deals with that or or even partially deals with that without just falling into a flurry of crap from both sides that have access to grind, the corporation, pro-corporation side and the anti-corporation side. It's w it's a kind of a weird space to be in, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's every documentary and blog post you read on the subject. It's just a torrent of crap from both sides. Right, right.
So when you have a torrent of crap from both sides, like where's the market for the middle? And I don't know, because you know, it takes a long time and a lot of energy to write a book. And so there is no there is no market for the middle. That's not what sells. It's either the the you know, the cheaper whatever they're complaining about GMO products that sell, or the non-GMO products that they can, you know, save their save their bodies like they would want to save their souls by ingesting holy foods.
That's their mindset. Right. And you know the pro the real problem is if you read if you read books on either side, and even I'm saying the reasonable books on either side. So like uh take uh um oh I forget the one written by uh by the uh there's a written by uh uh a genetic uh uh you know uh a person who does genetic engineering and her husband who's a farmer, uh organic farmer, that's a you know interesting book. Or uh Mendel in the Kitchen, which is pro uh obviously pro that was written by uh what's her name, Nina Federoff, you know, well known uh uh GMO expert.
Um or if you read on the other side any one of the number of books that everybody reads, uh, you know, it's uh you can see kernels of good arguments in both sides, not really so much on on the hatred of GMO in general. I really don't I don't see the teeth in that. But you know that you but i it's just they always bring their BS baggage with them, you know what I mean? And that's the that's the problem. But you're right, there's no market for the middle, at least not that I can see.
I don't know. I don't know. Well, I appreciate the uh lively lunchtime discussion. Oh well, thanks. Thanks for calling in.
And I've got one more caller here. All right, caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, afternoon. Um I have a friend who really loves mimosas, and I was wondering if you had any kind of like interesting ideas for variations, like doing anything clarified or like forced carbonated. Like if you ever try like forced carbonate white wine or kind of anything like that.
Yes, okay. Uh so you're you're you're crinkling up a little bit, but here's the problem with the mimosa. So your your friend already likes mimosas, right? So here's the thing. Uh you can't change the fact that they already like uh a mimosa.
So a mimosa is lightly carbonated because the orange juice in it can't be carbonated that highly, right? Also, I mean they're not making mimosas with actual champagne, right? Are they rich? Are these friends of yours rich? Not quite.
Okay. So they're probably using kava or prosecco. I'm just guessing. Um the easiest way to do this, here's the other problem though. It now, you can clarify, you can straight clarify orange juice.
But if you straight clarify orange juice, uh it turns uh it tastes, and this I always say this, even though I haven't had it in years, but it tastes like sunny D or Tang. It no longer tastes like orange juice, it tastes like orange drink, right? Right. Right. So uh what you're gonna look for is more of an orangina kind of carbonation level.
And so with with that, what I would do is I would just put your orange juice through the finest filter you can. First of all, obviously, if you're gonna fresh squeeze it, then put it through a fine uh Chinois, and then if you can get it through a paper towel or something just to get rid of almost all uh the big particles, right? Chill it down hard, and then carbonate just the OJ uh and if obviously if you're buying at the supermarket, just buy a no pulp guy. Uh and um just carbonate it like five times. And what you're doing there is so particles do two things.
Particles in your in your juice are their own nucleation sites, right? Um, which is problematic. Also the pectin in the OJ is uh, you know what? You probably could reduce the pectin by putting SPL and not clarifying it and still have the taste be right. Huh, that's an interesting idea.
I've never tested that. Huh. Just thought of it. Anyway, but uh so there's pectin in there, which is causing foaming, but also uh particles have air trapped on them. So you're not gonna get away, change the fact that the particles themselves are nucleation sites.
But by carbonating like five, six, seven times, you'll be blasting the air that's trapped on those particles off of them and making it easier for you to get good carbonation. But then I would have a bottle of carbonated juice and I would have uh your uh bottle of bubbly separate and I would pour them together in this way for those of you who don't want it to be mimosified, it doesn't have to be mimosified, and you're not throwing away a bunch of bottles of um of uh bubbly at the end of the day if you don't finish it all. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Okay, that's cool.
I'll I'll give that a try. All right, and then some other things if you can clarify that are really good with champagne. In fact, I just did it in Greece and haven't done it in a long time. Clarified strawberry juice in champagne. Then you carbonate the strawberry juice.
Clarify strawberry juice tastes delicious uh and carbonates well. You're probably gonna have to add a little bit of extra sugar depending on uh what time of the summer it is and what the bricks of your strawberries are when they come in. Usually I like to take strawberry juice up to about uh sixteen bricks, somewhere around there, and like uh you know sometimes they come in as low as like twelve, but if you get them up like sixteen, eighteen, and then you do like uh like either a one to three or a one to four with uh bubbly, it should be pretty good. Awesome. Thanks so much.
All right, give it a shot. Let us know how it works. Thank you very much. All right, bye-bye. Okay.
All right, we got running out of time. Just a heads up. Just a heads up. Oh my god. Oh, geez, really?
Yeah. All right. So Uriel wrote about glycemic load. We're gonna have to get to that uh next uh week. Uh uh, Jim uh Guaneri wrote in about cocktails for um uh a wedding for that he has to have to do for his sister.
Now the question is I don't have time to get into it now, Jim. Can it wait another week? Tweet us in. Otherwise, I'll try to put some stuff over on Twitter. Doesn't like carbonating stuff.
And also, I need he he kind of calls Nastasia out, so I need nostasia here so I can call out. But let's make sure make sure we can go another week, have you know, have him write in. Michael wrote this in. Hello, lovely people. I did some inside round in large Ziploc freezer bags at 50 C 56 Celsius, uh, which is not that hot for 24 hours.
The bags broke. Is that time temperature combo too much for Ziplocks? Also, do you need a puffing gun to make puffed rice cakes? The white light, airy, bland, dry, tasteless uh style of food item. Michael, uh one, um they should not that time temperature is not too much for the Ziploc, not at all.
Uh look, if they broke on the side seams, you have a faulty uh bag. If you if make sure you're not using the one with the fake zipper pull thing, make sure it's just a regular seal on top. The other ones always leak. But if you had a leakers in that or punctures, you got faulty ones. You the the Ziploc freezers, which are the only ones that I use, should never fail like that.
Shame on you, uh S. C. Johnson Wax, a family company. Um, who I think is the manufacturer. Uh Russ Bryan uh wrote in and he has some coffee roasting questions.
Uh how do you get good coffee out of a popcorn popper? I'm not gonna have the time to get into that, but go to sweetmaria's.com, which is where I get my beans, and they have uh they have list after list of how to use a whirly pop, which is what I use. Oh, I assume you meant a whirly pop and not an air popper. Air poppers are totally different. But luckily, Sweet Maria's has good advice on both.
They're gonna give you much more detailed advice than uh I can give you. If you read that and you have more questions, ask me specific questions on that and I'll get back to you. Franklin wrote in uh on puffing millet. I want to puff my own millet. Can I use a popcorn machine?
Assuming also you mean a whirly pop and not a an air popper because millet is too tiny to pop in a uh an air pop. It'll just spray out all over your kitchen and be an embarrassment and like little babies all over the ground. Uh can I take it from dry, uh can I do it without oil? Is there a machine I can purchase that is not expensive that will uh do it perfect for me, frankly? Okay.
Uh millet's a bunch of different there's a bunch of different kinds of millet, right? And I don't know whether millet will puff on its own. What you should do, just as a test, is take some of the millet you have, that don't try to do it dry right away, puff it in oil like you would popcorn. You don't even need it, you can just do it in a pan with a lid on it and oil and see whether it pops. If it pops, then you're good.
If it doesn't pop, uh then you can uh cook it. Uh you know, cook it until it lets soak it, then cook it, and then dehydrate it slightly. If you dehydrate it too much, uh it won't pop. If you don't dehydrate enough, it'll pop, you just have to get a feel for it. Then you should be able to pop it either in hot air, microwave, or in uh or in oil like popcorn, uh, either either way.
But like uh one of those should work. And get back to me and let me know if you need more information. Uh do I got another uh 30 seconds or so? Yep. Uh okay.
Owen wrote in, uh, huge fan, without wasting any of your time. I'm curious before I buy what are the advantages of a larger rotary evaporator, say four liters versus a smaller one, say two liters. Also, what is an ideal centrifuge size to get uh for bartending applications? Is seven hundred and fifty milliliters okay? Um, and I'm gonna miss a question on Kaylee Bennett about jello shots.
I'll get that next time. Okay, Owen, here's here's uh what I'm gonna say. Uh larger flasks means you can put more in before it boils over. I would always get the four-liter flask. Your biggest problem with a rotovap is going to be the amount of product that you can put through it.
That's going to be the biggest limitation when you have it. Now, every time you have to break open the machine to clean out the flask, you're looking at another 10 to 15 minutes of trying to get another product. So if you can get a four-liter flask, you're gonna be able to put a lot more into it than a three-liter fast flask, and it's really going to increase your throughput. And in general, it's just the glass that you're changing out because the unit that can handle a three-liter flask can also handle a four-liter flask, right? Depending.
It's not always the case. But uh especially if it's not that much more, the four-liter flask is gonna be a lot better. Also, get the largest neck on the flask that you can get and the vapor duct the largest that you can get because it is a pain to clean that stuff out. On the center fuge, 750 milliliters is marginal if you're gonna do bartending applications for large groups of people. It's fine if all you're ever gonna do is lime juice and if you're only ever gonna make what like half a bottle of Houstino at a time.
But for larger applications, you're gonna want to get a three-liter bench top fuse with swinging swinging buckets that can do four the four thousand G's or so. Or if you can wait, I'm not saying that I'm working on something, but I might be working on something, 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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