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 Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more.
Hello and welcome to Cooking Introduces. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking News coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Joined again uh after her, you know, airplane uh nonsense last week. We uh have uh Nastasia Lopez, the hammer back in the studio today. Hey Stas.
Hi. Hi. And special guest from uh you might know him uh from such things as uh running the website for uh popular science, ball adults. What do you use? At Pote?
Is that your Twitter? At Pote? No, that's your eat at PopSai Eats. At PopSiEats.com. I don't know because it's like I can recognize the picture, so I never have to like yes.
The cat. What? Isn't the cat nose? Yep. Is that your cat nose or someone else's cat nose?
My cat nose. Yes, I'm I start tried using someone else's cat nose, but they gave me a cease and desist, so I had to use my own cat nose. I know that's he's not lying. That's very Paul. Uh by the way, uh, for those of you that don't remember, Paul has been a uh guest on this show uh before, most recently for the hot girl tasting, right?
Weren't you here for the hot girl tasting? Yes. Yes. And uh Paul and I both agreed that uh Stas, you were here for hot girl, right? Wait what do you think?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that was the one that Don Lee. Yeah. Yeah. The rotten shark.
Yeah, it wasn't that bad as the one that you loved in the park. The Sir Surstrawing. And we told the story about Sir Surfstrawming, for those of you that uh didn't hear that episode, is the it it is the most hardcore thing I've ever eaten, pretty much. Pretty much. It turns out that when you eat Hawcarl in the radio and then take the leftover Hawcarl home and wait for six months and then reopen the canister, it gets stronger.
Surstrawming strong? No. But it emptied a room. Well, for those of you that don't remember, uh we talked about it, I think we originally had the tasting and then also brought it up on a hot girl tasting. Uh Paul, uh you know, although he, you know, goes out to I think the Catskills, right?
Or something like this. You have a place in the Catskills or his family has a place somewhere outside of New York. Don't you have any family have a place? No, I wish. Well, anyway, he's a New York City, like born and bred kind of a guy.
Upper West? Upper West. Upper West. I thought you uh used to no, you have someone I've rented places in the past. Ah, renting.
Uh, anyways, brought the surfstraueming. Now, Surstrawing, here's how you make Surstrawing. You take yourself uh some herring, small ones. Yeah, and you don't put enough salt on them to stop bacteria from growing. You stop some bacteria.
Some but you allow the salt loving bacteria to the fun thing is you can it, right? Without pasteurizing it, right? So then uh it the can inflates with uh noxious gases and you and you open it and it's rotten. I mean it's quite literally rotten. Uh, you know, and you know, I don't want to hear any cultural like, oh, but it was smells rotten.
No, this stuff stink. This stuff stinks. Anyway, Paul took it on a taxi ride home. Remember that? He took the leftover.
We didn't even have like a vacuum sealer or even a quart container. He took an open can of Surstroming and its attendant, like, you know, uh, you know, retinue of of flies with him in a cab. And the window. And the cab windows didn't open. And the cab windows didn't open.
That's gotta be the best cab ride ever. Yeah. But it wasn't a cab to the cat skills. No, it was just about a mile. No.
Yeah, but the question is is like, did someone try to get in right afterwards? Did the cabbie say anything? The cavity did not say anything, but he kept looking at me. He probably thought it was just my personal smell. That's true.
That'd be pretty hardcore. If that was your personal smell. I mean. You're a corpse. Yes.
And I was canned. Yeah, canned corpse. You know, uh my wife once uh met a guy and was like, this guy smells like he's rotting from the inside out. He died two days later. Yeah.
Look at Santa's little hipster today. Did you see him? Uh well, you know, well, look, you can't start making like you Stas is not happy. Oh, by the way, uh, who do we got over there in the engineering booth? We got Jack today.
Uh hi Howdy. Hey there. I was I was gonna make a fake voice and say I was Santa's little hipster, but I didn't. Yeah, but you notice if Stas always has to have someone at Robertus that she that she like, you know, grooves on there. I mean, Indy Jesus was awesome, aka Dante.
Let me tell you something. Indy Jesus and Santa's little hipster, both really, really nice guys. I'm sure. Yeah, you know, Stas doesn't care about like someone as a person. That's not what she's about.
That's true. It's appearances. That's what's important. Appearances. So anyway, uh Paul was here because later on in the television program we're going to be uh uh the tasty, they're dead.
I don't want to hear any like entomologists like rushing, you know, like uh that I'm gonna destroy the ecosystem of New York City or anything like this. Uh some dead fancy uh uh ants from Mexico. I guess we'll do it, we'll do the ant tasting maybe after the commercial break, yeah? Sounds good. And we have some anti-gin.
Ant get it? Get it, anti-gin, like anti gin, but ant flavored gin. Oh no, I didn't get that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's what it is.
I was thinking like your aunt who drinks a lot of gin. Oh. Well, yeah, no, when uh so uh Jonas from the Nordic Food Labs came and did their thing in Greece, and we'll talk about Greece maybe after the commercial break. Nerd! We gonna do that now?
Yeah. Nerds! Alright, so uh it did it. I'm the only one that actually probably saw that. Can you do that again?
Nerds! Remember that show? Oh, yeah. Well, who was the name what was the name of the guy who did that in uh in Revenge of the Nerds? I remember not thinking that was funny because like that was my life.
So, whatever. Now look at you. Now look at me. Nerds. Anyway, so we're shutting down the uh 54 Eldritch uh lab, and we have uh and I've uh I've moved my lab to an undisclosed location in Connecticut.
Um but bigger and better? Much bigger. Better, meh, doesn't have air conditioning. It's a garage. Let's be honest about it.
It's the garage, it's a garage. I notice you're selling an air conditioner in your nerd sale. Yeah, well, Stas wants me to throw away everything and just buy new. I'm like, I don't know where she thinks I'm getting the money from. From the nerd wave.
From the nerd sale. From the yeah, no, so she wants me to sell a microwave, which I'm not selling the microwave. She wants me to sell a microwave for like five dollars to someone who's gonna come pick it up on the street so that I can buy a new one for $80. No, I never said five dollars. So anyway, we're why don't you describe the nerd sale stuff?
We're selling a bunch of really cool equipment uh at the nerd sale at fifty four Eldridge next Tuesday between 2 and 7 p.m. Cash and Carry, cash only. We're not moving anything. That's about it. As they say in the auction business, as is where is.
Yes. As is and we take real responsibility for what happens after it leaves. For instance, we have uh unless Peter like claims it beforehand, we have a uh the small Chinese puffing gun. It is inherently dangerous. It is being sold as an object d'art.
It is not an object of art. Uh object d'art. It's not a it is not a functional. I will never recommend that someone use it to puff grains. It is wholly and entirely unsafe.
It is merely an object of admiration to have on a little piece of cereal history to have on your on your mantle. It is not to be used to puff cereal. Let me be more clear. Do not use it to puff cereal. Do not seal it and heat it.
Right? Is that pretty clear? Right. It's very much like the ones that Chinese street puffers use. It is in fact that it is not to be used.
Yeah, it is not to be used. Right. Because I don't consider it safe, right? And I'm this is not one of those nod nod nudge nudge wink wink things. Like I built an entire encasement unit so that I could use it, and it turned out to be very difficult to operate it in this encasement unit, and I still felt nervous when I was using it.
So I'm gonna go ahead and say don't use it. And I the reason why I'm selling it, if I was comfortable using it, I would be using it all the time. Yep. Yes. But because I am not comfortable using it, I am telling you not to use it.
Okay, so then we have a 3D printer. Oh. This 3D printer, its name is Bruce. State of the art. It's name is Bru it was like six years, seven years ago.
At least. It's a Z Corp. Color-ish printer. Yeah. The Z Corp 450?
Uh yeah, but it's context brand. It's the one that was labeled as uh anyway. It's never been uh it never had uh fake stuff put in it, so you know it's never had, but Z Corp, I don't think supports it directly anymore. It can be made to work. Uh it's as is where it is.
So you can see all this stuff at Bookerandacks.com slash nerd sale. We have a pallet jack. We have a pallet jack. We have a s a small step funnel. We have street razors, we have a Bucher Buchner funnel.
Yep. Don't get the Buchner, but the SEP funnel is useful. Yeah. I don't like Buchners. But you can come by.
People think they're useful. Yeah. We have a small dishwasher, a life-size Santa. A life-size Santa, not just a life-size Santa, but a life-size Santa that was featured at a uh that was it was designed by uh Nastasia and Piper to pump out um hot uh Christmas uh mold wine and it spews Christmas mold wine out of its mouth into a bowl as though it's puking. Now, you need to supply your own circulator to make it work, but it's still got the piping and the place in Santa's butt to load up the uh the the mold uh wine, right?
So you supply a circulator. Is the piping still there? Or no, like the the flexible hose? I mean it's easy to it's easy to re-right, but you know, such famous people as Mario Batali have drunk, right? Wasn't it?
Was that at Del Posto or was that it was Lucky Peach? Lucky Pete. So, like some some some Momofuku people and their like fancy folks all drank uh holiday cheer out of Santa's mouth. From that was puking out of Santa's mouth. Does it come with the tape deck or is that gone?
With the little thing that's gone. So there used to be a voice recorder and you know, dirtbag friend of the show, uh Phil Bravo with the deep voice, had lots of uh pithy sayings that Santa would say about him puking up too much uh too much mold wine. Oh, too many cookies, and then he would be throwing up mold wine. So that's in the sale. Uh so if you go to the website, you can see photos and a list of things.
Straight razors are sharp. Did I mention this? I don't know. Should we sell those? They're really sharp.
I mean, they're straight razors. Yeah. What are you using for in the lab? Uh no, what happened is is that like when we opened the lab, I took all of my tools out of my apartment because it's unreasonable to have that many tools in my apartment, and I used to use straight razors. And then I picked it on my face.
One of these used to be used on my face. The other ones I picked up at a uh at a at a sale on the on the I think I don't think they were my grandpa's. Otherwise, I wouldn't sell them. I think that I've picked them up at a sale. We have a carbonation rig that you built?
No, no, no, no. We have an actual McCann carbon. Uh, which I think it might need one or two things uh tweaked on it, but it should it should work. We have uh uh yes, a roofing torch without the hose. We have uh a Manitawak ice machine with a cold plate installed in it, by the way, so you can use it directly for sell serve.
Now there's a hole drilled in the side of it for the cold plate, which I consider a feature. Anytime I buy an ice machine, I uh immediately drill a hole in the side of the ice machine so that the cold plate will fit inside. If you buy this ice machine, now I have one at home, which is why I didn't take it home. Uh and mine has a hole drilled in the side of it. Uh if you take this, I'll tell you this, I'll throw in the condensation pump.
Boom! That's a steal. Boom! Manitawok. Monitawak.
Under counter. Ice. Nice. Strong. It's very str it's strong.
It's good. And an aluminum cold plate. Anyway. Okay, enough on the nerd sale. Yeah.
Next next Tuesday. There's a broken printer. There's a broken printer, lots of toner. There's a lots of toner and a broken printer that Nastasia melted one day because she was cold because it was a billion degrees below zero. We had no heat, man.
The thing is, is that Dave designed the layout of the lab. I did not know this is crap. Nastasia pushed the printer up against the heater and then flipped it on full blast. Whose desk was it under? Whose desk?
Okay. Who designed the layout? The layout. I put it one place, you pushed it in. Okay.
And melted it. Whatever. Doesn't matter. It's melted. At the end of the day, it's melted.
It still works. It's an overj dark. It's an OJ. Yeah, it's an OJ of Nastasia's distaste for electronic equipment. Uh you know, and her ability to uh melt it.
Anyways, enough on the uh on the nerd sale. Wait, we didn't tell them how to get to it, did we? No, no. Booker and Dax.com forward slash nerd sale one word. I'm putting an early bid on the broken printer.
No bidding, all cash. Okay, fine. Foist cum foyer. Yeah, we're not holding items for anybody. Wow.
Sass. But how are people gonna here's the problem? If it's gonna run like this, how do people know if they've missed it? Like like they could show up and someone already took the 3D printer. Uh well, that's what a yard sale is like.
I'm gonna tell you something. I'm gonna go ahead and recommend that if you buy the 3D printer, you might want to get the pallet jack. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wise. Yeah.
Yeah. That's what we got it for, right? Yeah, but somehow we didn't end up using it, and then we just threw the pallet jack into that room. We also had something else really heavy. Oh, uh, did you uh what's the story on the vac machine?
Yes or no? Uh I think yes. I need to make sure. Alright, we have a vacuum uh machine. Don't worry, Paul.
The freeze dryer, we're still gonna fix. That's up in Connecticut. You and I are gonna fix that. Okay, good. All right.
No, the vacuum machine is uh from Del Posto, has sealed meats for the likes of Mark Latner and Mario Batale. Uh but it currently has uh an issue. The vacuum pump has, I think, a seal in it that needs to be kind of uh fixed. And uh, you know what, Stas and I just never did it. Anyway.
Enough on the nerd sale. Uh so we have uh some questions in. This one I'm gonna deal with last. Oh, by the way, you can call in your questions too. 7184972128.
That's 7184972128. Uh Kylie Bennett wrote in from um Blackberry Farm. They sent us some stuff before. Nice people. Nice people.
Uh I'm interested in making jello shots from scratch uh of the GNT uh Kampari, etc. variety, and I'd like to use bronze sheets gelatin. Is there a basic ratio you can provide uh or help otherwise uh thanks uh Kylie Bennett? Okay. Uh are you a uh jello shot aficionado, Paul?
I don't think I've ever had one. Come on, really? I've had jello. And I've had shots. But you've never had a jellyfied shot?
Not really. No. Alright, well, here's the thing. If you're using uh leaf leaf gelatin, right? Uh you're using bronze leaf gelatin.
The interesting thing about leaf gelatin is that the weights of all the different grades of gelatin are different. Because the assumption is that a leaf should gel the same amount regardless of kind of what grade you use, is but a leaf of bronze gelatin weighs a lot more than a leaf of like uh like gold or platinum or silver gelatin. Uh also you can't go straight based on that. I mean, they're designed to kind of uh set the same, but I've only ever really done uh gelled uh booze style things. Like I used to, like years ago, we made I made a champagne jelly that I would carbonate in the bottle and super high PSI and then cut open after it gelled and it would have carbonation on the inside.
Yeah, it's kind of fun. But you have to choose kind of what texture you want. There is in fact, and I forgot her name, but there's a there's a literally a cookbook devoted to uh jello shots, and I believe it has a name like Jell O Shots or something like this. It came out in 2011, uh, and they you know they have uh and she has a website, the person who did it, and they have a bunch of uh recipes there. Also, Kevin uh Lou from the Craft Cocktail book, yeah.
He did a post on Sirius Eats about uh jello shots. Unfortunately, he was using actual jello. Uh Knox, by the way, people knock Nox because it's not some fancy sheet gelatin. It's it actually an incredibly high like strength quality gelatin. It's like it's like right in between uh kind of gold and platinum.
It's like got a very, very high bloom strength, right? So it's actually 240? Uh something like that, yeah. 220s, 220s, I think. It's into 220s.
But it um, and here's something else I like a lot about uh Nox is that you can weigh it very easily so that it it's just super easy to weigh because it's a powder. Whereas what whenever you're using sheet gelatin, you have your best bet if you're gonna use sheet gelatin. That's why I guess why pros have not not don't have a lot of problem with it. You don't need to weigh it because it's already there in sheet format. If your recipe calls for some integral number of sheets.
But most of the time when I'm doing uh gelatin work, I don't know exactly how much liquid I'm gonna have uh because let's say I I'm trying to clarify strawberry juice back in the day, back when I used to use gelatin to clarify. And so I always hated having to snip pieces of the gelatin off to try to get it to uh work right. You know what I mean? Yeah. There's also a sense that sheet gelatin is more cool because pros use it, but in fact, sheet gelatin is made from powder.
Is that true? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I don't particularly I mean I I use I think sheet gelatin is sometimes easier to use because you can bloom it, pick it up, and throw it in. But powder gelatin is great for measuring.
I mean, that's what I use when I'm cooking, I use Nox brand powdered gelatin. I buy it in big cans. And uh there you have it. Um but back when I was at the uh French Culinary Institute, we stocked sheet gelatin, and I used sheet gelatin, and it was also good. Uh but of course we stocked the high end, the platinum, so it was very kind of close, like the the um the Nox and the platinum were pretty close weight for weight, so you could kind of substitute them back and forth because they had the same kind of a thing.
So, since you're using bronze, uh the the jello shot lady recommends uh for a jello shot that is firm enough to cut mold, stand on its own, and look crisp, i.e., a very kind of a hard jelly. She is a uh two packets of Nox, which is 14 grams of Nox, to um a uh 500 bout mL recipe, two cups, right? Total base, including the sugar, everything, right? Two cups. Now, uh what does that translate in terms of sheet gelatin?
Well, according to some people, like modernist pantry, uh they say about three sheets of gelatin equals a packet of Knox, but uh according to the Jell O Shot woman who tested it in jello shot recipes, she uh used about three and a half, and that looks more accurate based on calculations I did trying to do uh bloom strength and weight to uh to Knox kind of converting back and forth. I would say you're looking in the you're looking in the three and a half sheet per um cup range. Yeah? Sounds right. Yeah, three and a half sheets per cup in that area in that range.
Four jello shots. That's gonna make a firm jelly. All right. Yeah? Okay.
Uh and I forgot to set my phone to not turn off. Here we go. Okay, next question. Uh did I already answer last week, uh, Jack, the Ziploc question? I don't believe so.
Okay. Uh hello, lovely people. I did some insight. I think I mentioned it. Uh Michael had some problems with uh with uh Ziploc's uh breaking.
I think he just got a bad batch. Uh Ziploc freezer bags, you ever had a problem with those breaking? Do you use those to cook, Paul? I use them. Low temp, you ever had a problem?
Time and temperature. He's only cooking in the 50s of Celsius. And so it should last an infinite amount of time in the 50s of Celsius. You had a bad bag. You had a bad bag.
The off-brand or Ziploc storage bags will fail at higher low temperatures. Yeah. Storage bags I've had fail. Um other brands I've had fail. Cisco, food safe, Cisco brand like bags, fake Ziplocks, I've had a uh I had a like a hundred percent failure rate on those.
They fail. Uh but an actual ziploc, an actual branded Ziploc freezer bag with the not with the fake slider on top, but a standard Ziploc freezer bag, uh, very, very rarely fail. Very rarely. So uh you you got a bad batch and you should go yell at somebody. But the second question was do you need a puffing gun to make puffed rice cakes?
The quite light, airy, bland, tasteless uh style of food item. Well, uh you give such a uh such an enticing description of it, I can see why you want to make them, right? Um the when you're making those puffed rice cakes, they uh in uh they have a special machine for those things that uh decompresses inside of a mold, and that's how they do it. However, you can look up on the internet, there are papers on how to do it in a microwave. What you do is is you take uh cooked and then dehydrated starch.
Uh you then uh lightly mist it after it's you have to cook it, overcook it, dehydrate it, right? Not totally, but to I forget what the moisture content is, but you just end up knowing after a while. Actually, cooking issues, you can still look up the post. Uh that one's not selling Cialis, I think at this moment. So you can still look up.
Oh, really nice. Oh, wow. It's no longer WordPress. Where am I going to buy my Cialis? I thought you stocked up.
Oh, yeah, yeah. So uh so anyway, so you can go look at the puffing uh section and it'll tell you, it'll show you pictures and you can get because uh you know even though I wrote it many years ago, it turns out puffing hasn't changed much. But uh, if you take uh salted water and lightly, lightly mist the grains uh of uh dehydrated grain and then uh toss them together and then put them inside of a mold and puff them in a microwave, you can get them to bond. This is a a known uh unknown thing, but uh your results may vary. Uh Yuriel wrote in on glycemic uh load.
He goes, dear uh Dave, Nastasia, Jack, and anyone else uh that I may have forgotten unintentionally, like for instance you, Paul. Me. Yeah. You forgot Paul. God.
Yeah. Uh I have a question about glycemic indexes, retrograde starches, and resistant starches. My wife is on a low glycemic index diet, and I am in charge of cooking. A low GI diet really isn't that bad, with one notable exception. Potatoes.
Potatoes. Potatoes have a glycemic index of 80 to 100, depending on the method method of preparation and a high glycemic load. This is very unfortunate because potatoes are delicious. Correct. Potatoes are delicious.
I find them to be delicious. Uh I've read all sorts of conflicting information on the interweb saying that certain techniques can lower the GI of potatoes by converting the starch to resistant starches when you cool them and reheat them after cooking. Alternatively, some sites say that the glycemic load is lowered when serving potatoes with saturated fats, which makes no sense to me at all. I haven't been able to find an explanation of what's going on from a reputable source. Most sites that deal with nutrition read more like religion than science.
I'm hoping that Dave might be able to explain what the deal is and whether I can make delicious stuff uh with potatoes without compromising my wife's diet. Thanks. Uriel uh PS does nostasia like potatoes. Uh-huh. Oh, nice.
And uh when are you going to announce the new project slash Kickstarter? You tease something on the air and then radio silence. I don't know when, Stas. In August, right? Yeah.
It's not a Kickstarter. It's not. Stas is like, it will not be a Kickstarter, but we will announce the new thing. We have something we're going to announce before then, the Cube. We've even talked about the Cube, but that's not the next major project.
I don't consider that next major project. And uh he's waiting for the enemy of quality t-shirt. I know. We're working on it. We're working on it.
Okay. So here's the uh short answer. One, if uh uh you know the old uh Joe Robouchon slash uh Wiley Dufrein for uh Jeffrey Steingarden, Jeffrey Steingarden brought it back, tech potato cooking technique. The super buttery one? Yeah.
Yes. Yeah. So that one, uh I look, I would you're I don't know. This would have to be measured by a scientist, right? Uh and they have techniques for measuring it.
Uh by what they do is they take enzymes and they break it down and see how much starch remains after they break it down. I think I think uh the one that they use is called termomil from Novozymes is the standard for like testing resistant starch, although I could be wrong. Uh so those potatoes are cooked to set the starch granules first, right? Which is going to make more of the stuff uh resistant to uh um uh digestion uh at a low temperature. They're set, I think somewhere in the mid 60s of Celsius or something like this.
You remember? I do not remember, but that sounds right. Yeah. They are then uh cooked, right, and then uh mashed. Now then the starch granules form little beads.
It's very kind of bead formatted. And then Robochon then takes that, and Wiley used to do this as well, and fortifies it with obscene amounts of butter. Obscene, like 50% butter, and then it's chilled in a fridge to form to coagulate back to a solid mass. When that happens, you should get a lot of retrogradation over time. The advantage is here is that then you just scoop it up and reheat it, and the stuff that has retrograded won't um won't, you know, re won't unretrograde in that.
And so you should have more resistant starch, but I don't know what the actual uh answer is. The fat thing, um, you know, there was that article on uh rice. Remember that, Paul? Didn't you send that to me? I even tried it.
Did you try it? Yeah. How did you test whether or not it made more resistant starch? I didn't. I tested whether it tasted okay when it was reheated.
I'm sure, did it? It did. Yeah. Well, so the the deal with uh oil is that remember uh so in it when you're looking at resistance is all like glycemic index is all about how quickly your body or how effectively your body can break down the starch in there, right? So amylopectin is easier to break down than amylose, so a starch that has more amylopectin versus amylose.
And I don't know how it works in potatoes, do you? I don't. I know, but like I'm sure it's fluffy versus uh waxy, it's gonna be different, right? So you're gonna want to select a potato that has less I mean we can look this up. I don't know, I never forgot to look that up.
But anyway, so a mylopectin is gonna in a higher millipectin' is gonna increase your uh glycemic index. Also, how literally available it is to your digestive enzymes is gonna affect the index. Also, things like fats in your body are gonna like slow down uh the rate at which you break things down and so can uh decrease the uh index. So all these things affect uh what's going on. Retrogradation uh affects what's going on.
Uh but what's going on with the rice when they were cooking it with the oil is um uh amylose forms a uh a helix when it's uh right, a double helix when it's na native. Uh and oil can get into that and form a complex, which then they say is more resistant. Now I don't know whether that's true or not, but that's what they wrote in the paper. But that's how uh tapioca uh enzorbit brand tapioca maltodextrin works, is that it's this short chain fluffy um uh you know um looking for maltodextrin, which is starch breakdown product that complexes with oil. So we know it happens, right?
Right. Yeah, so I don't know. The answer, short answer, I don't know. Needs more testing. But I don't have the facilities to test it, but it's possible.
Like the stuff in the nutrition, this I mean like like the facts are the facts. Whether or not something is gonna be more or less healthy is a different story. That I can't comment on. Right? Right.
Yeah. It seems likely that fat promotes retrogradation. Or pr prevents prevents the enzymatic breakdown of the starches if it's complex. I th but the thing with the rice is they're complexing it before it's cooked. Right?
While it's cooked. While it's cooked, but in other words, before it's before it's denativized, I guess. I don't know. Another interesting question is I wonder what happens with the oil in like uh in in like an arboreo when you're or not an arboreous, rather, uh in a risotto when you do the pre-fry. Hmm.
Does that do anything? Who knows? Not me. Uh, should we take our break? Sure.
And we'll come 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 and 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 Heritage Foods USA.com for more information. And we are back for the uh ant tasting slash grease talking slash whatever. So we have a caller. We went to break, but the caller I hope is still waiting patiently. All right, caller, you were on the air.
Hello. Hi. Hi, this is Claire. Hey Claire, how are you? Hey Claire.
Good, how are you? All right. Dave, I wanted to tell you that at 2 o'clock PM today, uh, office wide saltine challenge is going down. So for those of you that don't know, the saltine challenge is um where you uh see whether you can consume without any uh form of liquid, six uh salted top, not don't get the unsalted top, because that's for wussies, uh saltine crackers in sixty seconds or less. And by consume, I mean you have to get it down your throat.
Yes. Yeah, and I know so we did it last night, no one was able to do it. It's do you know anyone that can do it? Uh I only tried it once, and I could get within about 10 seconds of it, but I've I saw it done on the internet, and uh it the you know, the successful people use a technique uh called uh chunking, uh, where you do multiple uh multiple crackers at once, and uh the most favorable number seems to be three. I also noticed uh some of the successful people did some head tilting.
The it's the idea is they can store saliva in one section and masticate the dry thing. The trick is is that uh your throat has a tough time getting something down if the bolus, which is a technical term that you're using for the uh for the you know food wad, uh is completely dry. So you need to somehow segregate a little bit of moisture in your mouth so that you can coat the outside of the inside can be dry as the as the Sahara Desert, but you have to coat the bolus somehow with enough moisture that you can jam it down your throat. So the best technique is to do three at a time. Uh and uh some people do four, but then why?
You have still have to do two more. Right. So three and three, I think is the way, but uh I saw someone consume uh I think twelve in a minute. Wow. He did four, four, and four.
Was he a big man? No, this is the myth, S. Why are you falling into the myth of eating competitions? More stories, you know. No, no, it's all about saliva production.
It's all about saliva. And I would do a little bit of that, you're you know, you can't see me, but I'm going with my mouth. I would do a little pre little pre-formation there of uh the saliva, you know. The main uh issue with uh testing it actually is it is that the dry, salty crap really doesn't do your tongue too much good. Like it kind of hurts a little bit.
Yeah, you know. A little bit. We experienced that last night. Yeah, Paul, are you experienced in this challenge? I've never done it.
Uh-huh. Is this one of these fads that's killing teens? Uh not yet. Uh it became popular a number of years ago, and then uh I like so Dax, my you know, younger son, uh, read about it somewhere and he was like, saltine challenge, dad, saltine challenge. I think there's two.
And so then they then they made me do it. Uh Booker attempted it and failed. Uh Nastasia attempted it and failed. I attempted it and failed. Oh no, Dax attempted it and failed too.
But I'm close. I can I mean I could do it with practice. I right now I feel like saliva's about to drip out of my mouth because my body is gearing up for the challenge. You can see it, right? I'm frothing.
I'm frothing like a like a like some sort of a uh what's that, a rabid dog. I'm sure they can hear it. Yeah, yeah. They can hear the frothiness in my voice. But yes.
So uh that is my I would go on the YouTube and look up some people do who do it uh successfully and then mimic them. That's what I would do. That's a great suggestion. Listen, I have a quick question. Yeah, what's that?
So when you have you know, Stas and I always have these dinner parties, and people always bring cheese. Usually if they bring, you know, everybody brings brie and then we're stuck with 12 wheels of brie. But if they don't, they bring harder cheese. You know, we we wrap it up in plastic at the end. How do you know when it's really really gone bad?
Just aside from smelling it. Well, hard cheese is they don't go bad really. They just dry out and and their texture becomes unpleasant. The um like they'll crack, they'll lose moisture. Occasionally, if the uh humidity of your uh fridge is not good, or if uh somebody, say Nastasia, gets some water on the outside of the cheese when she's wrapping it and then wraps it, you can get a mold uh formation there, which you know might be a mold of questionable.
I'm really salivating like because of my thinking of saltines. Um you you know, you might have some questionable mold there, but that can probably be uh trimmed away. So uh a hard cheese, you're pretty much good until until it gets moldy, uh bad moldy. Uh uh Bree's gonna be okay until it smells like ammonia, and then it's gonna be um unpleasant. Uh but the fun thing about the ammonia smell is that is that you have to uh wait a minute w for it to warm up uh for it uh to Yeah.
What do you what are your thoughts on the big wheel of brie, Paul? Go on with this waiting a minute. What? Yeah technique. Uh yeah, this well yeah.
No, you would wait a minute to see whether the ammonia because when it's cold, the ammonia will be suppressed. And so you have to wait a minute for the ammonia smell to um to kind of become present. Uh so you could think something's okay because a small amount of ammonia is not is is like, you know, almost normal in some cheeses that have been aged a lot. Yeah. And then uh but it can become overpowering as it warms.
This is a mistake. So like if you go to a cheese shop and a lot of cheese shops, because it's better for the cheese, store it kind of at wine cellar temperatures. You should taste cheeses at the temperature you're gonna serve them. A lot of people look when I was growing up, you're s like you know, I my belief was that cheeses should be served at room temp, but then like there's a big kind of backlash against that and that oh cheeses should be served, you know, at different temperatures of some more of closer to a cellar temperature. Uh but uh, you know, I grew up liking my cheese as kind of stinky and on the warm side.
Um but like a uh an ammoniacal cheese, which is an awesome word, ammoniacal uh it you know, the warmer it gets, the more kind of stinky it will get. I guess you could heat it enough to drive the ammonia off. I don't know. Like in the oven? No, you have to make a soup out of it or something like this.
I mean brie if you heat it, it's you know it's a day. You know, it's it's over. But uh, you know, you could do one of those uh you know, y you guys weren't alive in the 70s. Uh but you know, back in the 70s you bought a big wheel of tasteless brie, wrapped it in puff pastry, cooked the hell out of it, and then poured honey over the top of it and served it with the bottom. Well that's that's a cellared family classic recipe from the South, Dave.
I know all about that. Some slithered almonds on top. Yeah, so from the south, do you also eat pimento cheese sandwiches? Oh, you bet. Yeah, nice.
Love it. Cheese straws. Yeah. But let me let me let me just put it this way. Uh I don't know if you're aware of this fact, but uh brie being a French thing ain't got nothing to do with the South.
You know, brie cook brie. But the 70s, you know, and in the in the fact that the South probably has preserved good of good old fashioned American 70s fare better than anyone else. Like that's you know, yeah. But I actually I actually have to say I enjoy that crap. That really?
Oh, me too. Yeah. Like the fact that the oil separates from the brie and the puff pastry is greasy, and it's on that cracker. Mm-hmm. You know what we used to do.
On a car's cracker. Yeah, so sometime in like the very early 80s, roasted garlic became kind of big, and then it was roasted garlic with that brie was like the thing to have. So you'd have the roasted garlic on the cracker with the baked brie, and that was that was the shizzy right there. That was what would the with the honey or no honey? Uh the honey became optional at that point.
I think honey became optional at that point. All right. Send us photos from your challenge, Claire. Yeah, I will. I will.
I'm I I've got my eye on one person who I think can do it. Uh look, I'm sure that some cooking issues listeners out there have more than tackled this problem. Because this is the kind of thing that our listeners probably are uh excel at. All right. All right, well, thank you for the the help.
All righty, good luck with it. So we have uh Paul's here to taste some fancy ants and to taste some anti gin. What do you want to do first? You want to taste the real ants or the anti gin? Anti gin was they they take wood ants from uh Denmark and uh they uh crush them up and distill them.
Yes. That's how they make the anti gin. Just so you know. And they add botanicals. Plus botanicals.
Ants and botanicals, anti gin. Okay. Let's have real ants first. Okay, so eat the real ants. Here you go.
I got two kinds of real ants. Do you be able to find the labels on them? No, the labels have rubbed off. One nice. There are big ones and small ones.
Alright, the big ones, I believe are the uh the giant Oaxacan flying ants. And I believe the smaller ones might live in the agave somehow. Those I believe are the are the uh giant ants. I hope those are the giant ones. Yeah, those are the giant ones.
All right, go to it, Paul. No, this is all Paul. This is Paul. No, we all have to have the ants, Dave. What the hell, man?
Alright, Paul first. It's got pretty much no flavor. Is it because they're old or you think they just have no flavor? Maybe old. There's no acidity to it?
Not that one, maybe I'll try a second one. Try a second one. Now, this is the package that was already opened, right? Right. These were purchased at the uh Mercado San Juan in Mexico City.
Hmm. That's got a little more. Acidity? Not acidity. A little like oxidized sherry raisin flavor.
It's nice. Be really good with some brie on a cracker. Seriously. Try it, dude. Oh, Jesus.
These ants, by the way, are enormous. Yeah. Well, someone should take a picture of these things and tweak these suckers out. Do it, Paul. Yeah, Paul.
People. So whatever. Stas, you gotta eat one too. Go do it. Do it.
Oh, they're fatty. Mine wasn't fatty. This was fatty. Oxidized fat. Um.
Yeah, it tastes like cooked brie with stuff. Oh. I think there's a little I think it maybe I think maybe they're a little old and I think the fat's getting oxidized. Could be. When did you get these?
And were they freshly cooked? When I was in Mexico. That was three weeks ago? Yeah. Ish.
Yeah. Alright, next. Maybe longer. Longer. Next are the small ants, which are the size of small raisins.
And they're just the thorax of the ant, right? They aren't the tripartite. The problem is the outside, the uh the chitinous exoskeleton is sticking to my teeth. And it also tastes bad. I like to take you just don't like the taste because of as to what you associate.
I didn't get any battery in mine. I think there's poor quality control. I think the ants each taste different. That is entirely possible. These are very well sealed, so they're hopefully fresher.
Yes. Why don't we do the gin? Well, we have to wait. Yeah. So is that a is that a have again or not a have again, Paul?
I would have one or two more of those. Small ants. Oh no, these have the entire thing with the legs and everything. Eat one of these. This is this is the entire ant.
Hmm. That's nice. Yeah, that's what I hear ass tastes like. This is what you would expect if you're lying in a meadow and an ant crawls into your mouth. Well, I grew up in Manhattan, so never.
Central Park. What what that's a rat. Alright, Stas, eat one. Stas! I don't want to.
These are better ants. Jack, come in here and eat one. Yeah. That's nicer. Yeah.
Alright. Jack, you gonna eat one of these? He's on the phone. I don't know that I would go out of my way to get these. There's Jack.
Alright, Jack. Eat one of those suckers. Yeah. What do you think? It's fine.
I would eat one of the other ones. I'm waiting for like my framework on it. Eat one of the fatty ones while you're waiting. I need some water. Yeah, I need some water, that's for sure.
Yeah. Okay. Let's wash this down with some anti gin. Yeah, you want to Paul, you want to get one of those plastic cups there? Yeah.
Uh it gets worse. Yeah. No, it gets worse. Yeah. No, no.
No, no, it gets worse. But I hear look, the ones that um the ones that uh Alex Atla has, I think are like totally fresh. Like still fatty. Because isn't formic acid gonna uh volatilize because acetic acid? It is.
I don't know how long it would stick around. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I've learned much by eating these. Have you learned a lot by eating these? If I ever prepare ant snacks, I will season them with chili and lime.
Yeah. That would be better. Yeah, but it's supposed to have its own citrusiness from the itself, so like that's just cheating. I could prepare anything. I would just rather have Fritos.
You know what I mean? Fritos are delicious in and of themselves. Add chili and lime, and you've added more delicious stuff to a frito. You know what I mean? Yeah, but Fritos aren't as freely available in meadows.
Fair. Uh uh. I'm sorry. I'm gonna wash this ant particles down. Now Paul's tasting the antigen.
I think you need to empty all the vials in. Okay, while while he's getting ready to taste that. Oh, you know what? Before you do anything, water on it brings uh brings the flavor out. I see what you mean.
Yeah. Maybe an ant soda. Yeah, now I'm getting more of the uh now I'm getting more of the citrus, more of the ant tonic and anti gin. Yeah, there you go. All right.
Uh well, okay, you ready to taste this? Taste this. Well, for the record, Stas did not try the other ant. Smells like which one? The fatty one?
No, the little guy. Oh, the fatty one was better. Oh, that's good. Neither was good. The antigen is delicious.
Yeah. Complex. Good ant acidity. Yeah. You so you you can really taste the ant?
I wouldn't name it as ant, but it is a unique flavor. The formic acid, I assume, esterizes rapidly and creates all these interesting complexities. Yeah, well, I don't know how much of the native ant flavor is uh distillable. Yeah. I'm tasting it.
Yeah, I mean it's good. It's made by a uh uh I forget the name of the distiller in Cambridge in conjunction with the Nordic food lab. I think it's called Cambridge Distillers or something like that. Yeah, not our Cambridge, their Cambridge. England.
England, the English Cambridge. Yeah, the one that's closer to Denmark. The one that came first. Although, you know, we don't like to pin it. What do you think of that stuff?
It's good. Yeah. Alright. So see styles pro anti-gin. Oh, oh man.
We don't have that much time, right? Alright. Well listen. Uh Jim uh Guaniri uh called in. And by the way, it's about uh centrifuges and stuff.
I'll I'll I'll get to that. Uh oh no, this one I have to do. We have to do this. Paul, you're gonna try one on this because uh it might run out of time. Um there is a question on centrifuges in from Tom, which I'll get to next week.
Um more San Francisco stuff that we'll get to next week. Uh and uh a question on gimlets, basil gimlets from Jason that we'll have to get to next week. But uh Jim's been waiting, and by the way, pronounced uh uh uh guarniri, which is why presumably he also enjoys Guar the Band. Are you a fan of Guar the Band? I heard of course.
I heard one of the guys died. Yeah. Yeah, what's your favorite guar song? Preschool Prostitute? Hard to pick a favorite.
Hard to pick it up a few. But yeah, Odorous Yurungus died. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Sad.
Sad day for sad day for theatrical hydrocolloid bands. Yeah. Yeah. I uh I told you I heard people, I've never saw them in concert, but people would come back with uh blood under their contact lenses. Fake blood under their contact lenses.
Impressive. Yeah, very good, very good uh spray. Anyway. Uh dear Dave, Nastasia, Jack, uh, and Paul. Uh I've been I still have ant in my mouth.
Yeah. The fatty, do you get the fattiness now? Like lick the roof of your mouth. Do you get that like slickness? Yes.
It's like Crisco slick. Mm-hmm. I have been asked by my sister to come up with a couple of interesting cocktails for her wedding. One of them uh will just be something interesting slash special that one wouldn't normally see at a wedding. The other is specifically for the champagne toast.
The groom cannot stand carbonation. Whoa. And he says, sorry, Nastasi, but really that's an insult to all of us. Can't stand carbonation. Find a new groom.
Right? The groom could pre-dose with acetazolamide. Drug prescribed for altitude sickness that inhibits the sensation of carbonation. This is an excellent idea. We tested it, you and I.
Does it mess uh I forget? It doesn't mess up your sense of flavor for other things, does it? No, not at all. Yeah, this it's perfect. Holy crap.
We have just solved your problem. Give the groom this altitude sickness pill about a half an hour before the champagne toast, and they could just drink them some champagne, and everyone else will be happy and he'll be like, why is this wine a little flat? I mean, uh flat, not carbonation-wise, but why is it like lacking in some of the flavor that I've associated with uh wine and why is it so acidic. Right. But but done and done.
Tell your doctor you're going mountain climbing and you need a prescription for acetazolamide. All right, but forget the trade name. But as uh uh assuming Paul, love you, man. That's what we need Paul here like all the time for this kind of stuff. But let's actually finish in case this is not something that they're willing to do.
Yeah. Uh so the groom cannot stay in carbonation, so they would like a non-bubbly substitute for the toast. I was thinking of pre-batching both and possibly bottling one or both. I have six ounce champagne bottles and a capper. I have two questions.
First, um, I have um liquid intelligence know about your uh liquid nitrogen method for clearing the headspace. Can this be done with a chip of dry ice instead? Probably you might get some residual carbonation. You still have to wait for it to stop volatilizing you pressurize the bottle, which might cause problems. Uh I guess it might have the potential to carbonate, but if the bottle's pretty full, it seems like the volume of CO2 in the headspace wouldn't be enough for perceptible carbonation.
Uh it's possible, but be very careful not to blow the bottle up. Um, second, any suggestions uh for the two cocktails. The only guidance I've been given is that neither can be carbonated. Uh they love bourbon and whiskey in general, and they really like herbal infused liquor, chartreuse, absinthe, benedictine, and they prefer the toast drink to be lighter since it will be had by many who might not typically drink cocktail. Manhattan's duh.
Just make Manhattan's. Right, Paul? That's not light. We gotta go. All right, we'll come back with more light cocktails.
Uh more suggestions, and we'll talk about Greece 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 dot org.
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