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. I'm Damon Bolti, host of the Speakeasy. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradio network.org for thousands more.
Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you live from a British Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday, this time exactly at freaking 12. How do you like that, Jack? Incredible. Yeah.
On the Heritage Radio Network. We could stay probably till what? Like 1250 till we get the evil stairs. Yeah, you got a full show today. Yeah.
Well, we need it because we have so many dang questions, and we haven't been able to establish a catch up episode. Although someday we should literally do an episode about the condiment ketchup. Yeah, so many of you were gonna sponsor. Ketchup sponsor was gonna sponsor. Yeah, but then we had all kinds of like turmoil about that.
Too fast turnover. Too fast a turnover. Joined, as usual, with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. Howdy. Hi.
And uh we got Jack in the engineering booth today. Who was that? I didn't see uh who the other person in the engineering booth was from the back of her. Wow. We'll have her say hi.
Dumping it right in. Hey Maggie. Hello. Yeah? Where where where are you uh where do you hail from, Maggie?
Brooklyn. Uh, Brooklyn. Are you hipster Brooklyn or old school Brooklyn? Like suburban mom Brooklyn or ex suburban mom Brooklyn. Wait, so you like you are an ex suburban mom?
No, my mom is. Oh, so you moved here from the suburbs. Yeah. Yeah, which ones? New Jersey.
Ah, the great state of New Jersey. The garden state. Like uh nice jersey or uh Turnpike jersey. Uh nice jersey. No offense to Turnpike Jersey.
Call your questions in too. Uh 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. I have we have a plethora of questions to answer. Going to London, by the way, on uh on uh Monday, we have an event at Imbibe Live 2015 uh on Monday at the hotel dandelion, which is not spelled like we spell it.
Is that how the Brits spell dandelion, you think, Stuff? Maybe. It's like dandelion, right? Dandelion. Like a lion.
Wait. It's like a lion. We spell it like a lion. They spell it like Lyon. Yeah.
Like Dandy Lyon or something like this. Maybe that's maybe it's French. I thought it was like it sounded like you were saying dandeloin. Dandelion. Like a dandelion.
Oh, a dandelion. That would be kind of a gross thing for us to talk about here on the it would fit quite well with the uh with the vegetti monologues though that we went through. Yeah. Not to reopen old wounds. Okay.
Uh so uh let's what? What? Nothing. What? Nothing.
Yeah, nothing. No, no, no. By the way, uh, but before we start, even though I don't have time to talk about anything other than uh straight cooking issues, Nastasia and I are devotees of uh the illegal firework, and Nastasia just found out that she will have access. I didn't buy I I made the trek to the great state of New Hampshire where one can live free and die and purchase almost any kind of firework with the exception, Jack. No bottle rockets in New Hampshire.
Really? No. No. You can buy a you can buy uh uh 500 grams worth of uh black powder packed into tubes in a box that shoot 200 feet into the air and explode in in balls of fire. But a bottle rocket, that's dangerous, bruh.
Wow. Yeah. Like it makes no sense, right? Does not. It makes no makes no damn sense.
Like the rules are so crazy. They also don't allow this does make sense. They don't allow MA's and cherry bombs. They don't want little kids like blowing their fingers off, I guess. Bottle rockets, why?
Because kids shoot them at each other? I mean, that's what we used to do. I don't know. So Stas, uh, I found out though that uh that Pennsylvania, the rules in Pennsylvania are so by the way, for those of you that don't live near the New York area, like New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and I think Delaware are like the firm block of uh stick in the muds regarding uh fireworks and their enjoyment. Like there's just not available here.
Connecticut recently changed their laws, allowed fireworks again and then disallowed some again. So now in Connecticut, you can only buy like we you can't buy roaming candles, you can only buy fountains, those things on the ground that shoot up sparks, and you're like, man, I wish this would blow up in the air. Right, Stas, isn't that what you're thinking when you see it? Yeah. Man, I wish this would blow up inside the air.
What about Rhode Island? No, Rhode Island is part of the it's part of the uh like block of evil. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, imagine if Rhode Island Rhode Island, here's a suggestion to you, Rhode Island, our smallest state. Why don't you allow first of all you have like lots of great places to like fireworks in Rhode Island.
Why don't you make them legal in Rhode Island and then literally the entire New York, Connecticut metro area, instead of having to drive all the way to to New Hampshire, could go to the great state of Rhode Island to buy their fireworks. Anyway, Pennsylvania, Jack, you might find this enjoyable. The the place uh closest place is uh right near Port Jervis, New York. It's only an hour fifty outside of uh of New York or something like this. No, Rhode Island is the same as Connecticut.
Oh, you can buy the ground sparklers. Yeah, okay. But anyway, but my point is uh in Pennsylvania, it is illegal. If you are a Pennsylvania resident, it is illegal for you to buy the big bad aerial fireworks that we all want, right? However, if you show up in Pennsylvania and provide an out of state license, they will sell you anything.
Anything. Yeah. That's what's messed up. They don't care if it's legal in your state or not. I mean, how do they know where you're gonna light it?
But for some reason, if you show up with a Pennsylvania license, even though you swear on a on a stack of Bibles that you're gonna light these things off in a state where it's legal, right? If you are a Pennsylvania resident, you are, as we like to say, S O L. You can apply for a permit as a Pennsylvania resident to purchase them. It's uh it's laws are so so weird. You know what I mean?
I mean, I realize that fireworks are dangerous. Lots of things are dangerous. Fireworks are also, what's the word I'm looking for? Awesome. Awesome, yeah.
Yeah, awesome. I think that's the word else. Do you know that uh I looked it up? The National Fire, uh, the NFPA, National Fire Protection Agency or Prevention Agency. Anyway, the people who make the fire codes, they have a uh uh a whole campaign.
Uh, you know, ban commer ban consumer fireworks, right? Because people are injured and some people are killed every you know what the majority of uh the the one single thing that causes more injuries with fireworks than any other Jack? Any guesses? Um, like I don't know, drinking? No.
Well, yeah. No, uh sparklers. Oh, oh, I see. Sparkles. Really?
Yeah. How do you injure yourself on a sparkler? Well, like the classic case is uh some parent gave their three year old a sparkler and then turned away, turned away. She walked into their into their house, dropped it in a trash bucket, burned down the house, and killed somebody. Yeah.
There's a funny moment once where my girlfriend, we were at her country house, and she wanted to light some incense in the kitchen, or or in the living room rather, and she uh lit a uh sparkler instead. Wow, that that's different. They look kind of similar, I guess. They do, they look exactly the same. Yeah.
So you so like then do you have all sorts of evil ideas of pranking temples? Yes. Go to go to like a uh, you know, a temple and put a bunch of uh like what what? Supposed to be peaceful, calm, spark sparklers are nice. It's crazy that most fireworks are allowed in southern and midwest states.
You would think that's the same. No, no, no, no. It's it's it's every state but like like the New England stick in the mud states. And you know, New York and California. Mid-Alantic.
California allows some, I thought. No, they're the same as Connecticut and Rhode Island. First of all, like California, like irresponsible in a lot of places to light fireworks because of the immense like uh fire hazards because of the tremendous drought going on. I mean, a lot of it has to do with the fact that wherever there's a lot of people in close proximity, and the assumption is no one has any common sense, and you can hurt a lot more people when you're you know, I'm not saying fireworks should be legal in New York City. Which is even more dry, but I guess it's flat.
And like desert. Not that you don't have trees. Whatever, I'm not gonna get into it. Not gonna get into it. Like, you know, uh where am I where you know, where I used to go where my uh wife's family was living in in Arizona, I mean, what are you gonna burn down?
You know what I mean? Yeah. Burn, you know, burn some teddy bear choya down? Thank God. Those things are the devil.
You know what I mean? Anyway, Tom wrote in, no offense if you like teddy bear choy. Jeez. Uh like you know, someone's gonna be like, I like teddy bear choya. Well then go kick one and have it go through your freaking foot and like try to have fun, get all those spines out.
Nobody likes teddy bear choya. I don't know. You know what choyas are? They're little cactus, like really fuzzy ones that the teddy bears are the ones that are so insidious that the claim uh not true is that they kind of jump out and get at you because you brush up near it, they'll go through like leather shoes. These those spines will somehow work their way through.
It's you know how choy is spelled, right? It's spelled chala. Okay. Yeah, anyway. Uh Tom wrote in about apparently I missed the peas question.
So uh unfortunately you missed answering my question on centrifuging uh peas. He also had the hundred-hour oxtail question where the uh bag was inflating. I haven't figured out so the the thing was he was cooking the the oxtails at a fairly high temperature, high enough to kill bacteria for like a hundred hours, and the bags blew up kind of like one day into the process. So but uh what I don't recall, you should write back. I don't know whether the it's weird when bags, when sous vide bags blow up way down line in the process.
So it could be a couple of things going on. Like one, if you like if there's bones in this in the thing or uncooked veg, like air could be coming out of that over time and inflating, but usually that's gonna happen relatively early in the process, like a couple of hours in, not like you know, 20 or 30 hours in. It's also, I guess, possible that like some thermophilic thermophilic bacteria are surviving and blowing up, but I don't know. I'm gonna have to do more research on uh thermophilic uh uh bacteria. For teddy bear choya, I got an actual teddy bear sitting at a Shabbat with a hollow bread.
You wrote teddy bear hala? You wrote teddy bear hala. No, I got S-C-O-L-L-A. S-C S-A-S-I-S-C-I-A-S I mean sorry, C-H-O-L-L-A. Not well though, teddy bear hala is my new imagine if you wanted a teddy bear hala and someone sent you a teddy bear choya and you opened up the package and got all those spines embedded in your like face somehow, like it came off into your face.
That'd be a complete nightmare. Uh second question I had on centrifugees. Um via my university. I had the fortune of using a centrifuge to make some pea butter. I used fresh peas and didn't get them to blend too thoroughly.
I assumed two hours at 16 uh thousand and a half G's should be able to puree the peas, but unfortunately that didn't change their integrity. Um blending should have been done better, but is there something else I should have taken into account? The recipe calls for frozen peas, which might have destroyed the cell structure and allowed better blending, perhaps. Uh what is worse is that one of the containers broke mid uh midway through centrifuging, destroying the goodwill on their side, forever using the centrifuge again, and I'll have to look for another place. Would this be caused because I used something solid, uh E.G.
peas instead of the usual liquid, or is this just wear and tear and unfortunate to happen uh with me. Yeah, you just got some bad luck. The other thing that can happen is um if uh if you use the wrong bottles, um if you use a flat bottom bottle that's not meant to go into centrifuge, or you use a sharp conical bottle and you put it into a round bottomed uh rotor, uh you know, any time you have to deform the bottom of it, like you want the bottle shape to match the uh shape of the bottom of the rotor. So if you don't do that, then yeah, it could be your fault for using the wrong uh you know, flask or vial, but presumably they gave it to you, right? So, or maybe you bought it.
I don't know. The other thing is you could use one with the wrong composition, but again, uh the fact that it's a solid shouldn't uh matter um because you know the bottle is supposed to get smashed against the bottom of the rotor and stay that way for the rest of the thing. But they do have wear and tear and they do eventually break. So I don't know, but you know, uh that I don't know. Regarding uh uh the other problem you had of it not working, sixteen thousand G's, seventeen thousand G's is not nearly, not nearly, not even close to being enough G's to actually rupture the cell structure of uh, you know, or to break apart uh the you know the plant structure of a uh of peas.
Not enough at all. You need to blend it a lot better. I would use frozen peas, as they said, or freeze your fresh peas, which is going to shatter some of the cell structure due to um the action of the ice crystals. And in fact, uh, you know, you might uh I've done even for some things repeat freeze thaw cycles. Um because each time you freeze and thaw it, you destroy the structure a little more.
Make sure you blend the hell out. Remember, like 20,000 G's mean well, 4,000, 5,000 G's isn't even enough to pop air bubbles, you know what I mean, uh on the surface of some center fusing stuff. 20,000 G's i is is not even enough to clarify lime juice on its own. So it's not even enough to to pull cloudiness out of lime juice, right? You need like 27, man, 20, 27,000 G's to do that, and that doesn't even pull everything else down.
So 16,000 G's seems like a lot, but in fact is not enough to uh completely obliterate the structure. And remember, if you're actually talking about really obliterating cellular structure, they go to many, many, many higher uh higher G's than that. I would have guessed that like 50,000 G's would be enough to do what you want, but you know, um I don't know. Because uh it's a guess. But again, I I wouldn't say I would just say that you you know your solution would be better blending.
Uh Alex wrote in uh from Toronto regarding carrots. I have it, dear Dave, Nastasia, and Jack. I have a question about carrots. Very see, I like that. Someone says right about what it's about.
Carrots. In a recent Cooks Illustrated, I haven't read this one, you know, I I was subscriber for like decades. I don't know somehow like it was always given to me as a gift. I don't get it anymore. You ever happen?
Like someone's like, I'm just not gonna give this to him as a gift anymore. And then it just disappears. Does that happen to you on magazines? New Yorker. Mm-hmm.
Do you buy it now? No, I make somebody else get it for me. Why don't you oh, but you could join NPR and get it. But you don't want to join NPR. You just want someone to get it for you for a gift.
Well, anyone out there who likes Nastasia, just get her a gift. No, my sister's already taking care of it. Oh, she did, yeah. So you're you're a covered in the future. It's so weird.
Like, like so many things like that other people like, you hate. How is it that you like the New Yorker? I don't know. Is it because you liked it before you knew other people liked it? Maybe.
Maybe. Yeah? Yeah. Very unusual for you to like something that's well liked. S NL.
Yeah, I guess that's true. Especially both of those things are kind of New York. Well, SNL is not New York centered. I mean, it happens to be here, but it's not like a New York thing. But the new you hate almost anything associated with New York that's popular.
Mm-hmm. Because you have to look at the people around you every day that like it. Yeah, but I can do I can read the New Yorker and watch SNL by myself. What happens when you're on the subway and you see someone reading the New Yorker? You're like, oh, don't ruin it for me.
Is that what happened? Yeah? Uh in a recent Cooks Illustrated, I think it was three or four issues ago, they published a recipe for braised carrots that involved you like the word braising? Mm-hmm. Neutral?
Neutral embracing? Okay. Uh braised carrots that involved par cooking them at a low temperature, then finishing them in a hot pan. They say that holding the carrots between 120 and 160 will induce enzymatic activity that will firm up the structure of the carrot. They call it persistent firmness, and they exploit it in this recipe so that even when the carrots are subsequently overcooked in the pan, they still come out with some texture.
I have tried this using my circulator, and as far as I can tell, it does make a difference, making for a more meaty texture in the final product. Is this a known thing? If so, will it work with other vegetables, presumably at other temperatures? Are you aware of any easily accessible resources that could tell me more? Yes, it does work uh on other things.
Uh oh, also I'd like to say I was able to crush the saltine challenge with 10 saltines, not six. No, you're not going to be able to do that No, this is Alex from Tomorrow. I just being like, you know, I figured like he's gotta feel pretty good about that. So I was giving him some. And a minute?
He was able to eat ten saltines in one minute. That's why I figured you have to use a announcer voice for it. Whoa, it's a call out, Alex. It's a call out. Film yourself, pounding the tent.
And the question is, I don't understand like what version of uh the saltine challenge gets you to ten. Unless you did two, two, two, but five twos is a lot harder than my guess four, four, and three. I mean, four, four, and two. Four, four, and two, right? Four cracker, four.
Because the only way to really challenge it is to do multiple crackers at once. So much. Has Jack Jack, have you done the saltine challenge? No, but I'm going to. Of course you are.
Yeah. But you gotta film it. I will. It's not real. I think I can crush 10.
No, you can't. The most I've seen, I think the most I've seen is either 10 or 12 is the most I've seen. Well, I guess 60 seconds is a short amount of time. The guy I think the guy the most I've ever seen is 12, and he did 444. That sounds like what my strategy would be.
Jack, uh you must show an open mouth before the end of the open mouth. Yeah. I'll have it by next week. The rules are there can be like particulate matter jammed into your molars, but there can't be like a bunch of stuff rolling around on the inside of your mouth and definitely. You can't shove a whole cracker in the side of your face.
No, but like if it's like plus you're gonna look like a chipmunk. I'll see it. No chipmunking. No chipmunking. Yeah, although I enjoy the I enjoy this, like this like cheating strategy.
Uh you know, Yale had a a drinking game, and uh I used to kind of use the the we I used you can't chipmunk on that either, although people tried. Anyways. I have a collar, by the way. Okay, what's it? Well, let me finish.
Uh yes, yes, call it. Wait, but hold on a second. Rather than trying to generate more saliva, I just forced down the dry crumbs. It hurt, but it worked, and I won the bet. Yours, Alex from Toronto.
See, swallow through the pain is another interesting strategy. It might work well for me. Uh all right, so I'm gonna take this collar and then I'm gonna get back to the informatic. Well, what did you what did you get? I got them all in but not swallowed.
How many? I'm not gonna get into that. Okay. She wasn't able to make the six. Anyway, call her, you're on the air.
Hey, this is uh Bradley from San Francisco, and uh I wanted to call back. Uh you given me uh some advice on uh uh meat curing chamber and uh coffee uh Zapaka uh a couple months ago. Oh yeah, it's a copy, yeah. And uh both both turned out really well and uh the advice is super helpful. Um the one thing that um so when we when we were making the the coffee drinks, instead of using cream, um I had some non dairy friends.
Um and we had some almond milk horchata that was like Khalifa Farms almond milk marchata, and so we substituted that and people actually preferred the almond milk horchata version of the cafe toba instead. Um but it was it was a huge success. So I wanted to thank you. Do you think that's a re you think that's a a regional thing, or do you think that they did they actually prefer the taste or you think that's a San Francisco thing? No, no, I I preferred the taste.
Like it it um it added kind of like a a nice like cinnamony note to the the coffee thing. Um which was which which was really nice. Um and uh it's it I I don't think it was a regional thing, um, because it was like the overwhelming choice. But what if you had added cinnamon to the cream? Do you think that would have changed?
Right. That are younger people aren't actually from San Francisco. So you think it was just the spiciness of it though? Like do you think adding cinnamon to the recipe in general would uh make it better or no? Um maybe.
Um I I mean because I I think that um we didn't I I I didn't try it, but um, you know, it uh I think if you have like a latte and you add s you know cinnamon on the top, it's like a nice flavor to it. So uh but uh but I I think that that was like the the the kind of flavor that came through with the the orchata that um really worked well. That's right. Um and uh so um I'm planning a um a an all oval dinner party and I I had a question because in the past you talked about feeding clams um you know to kind of change their flavor. And I I'd read that you can feed mealworms in all in order to kind of like enhance their flavor before doing it.
And I wanted to do like a mealworm toffee for for dessert. I was wondering if you'd had any experience with that. Well, I've never prepared mealworms. Let me ask you. Oh, by the way, uh you know the old legend that mealworms can uh eat their way out from the insides of uh lizards uh and stuff that you feed them to.
You know that that you know that old legend, right? Uh I I I mean I've worked in a pet I could my only like you know, I've worked in a pet shop and that's never happened to any of the lizards that I've fed mealworms to. Yeah, I know, but you're familiar with the urban lead. It's been proven false, by the way. Like uh in the book in the book uh by Mary Roach uh Gulp, she like goes with some scientists, I think, and they disprove it.
So it it doesn't happen. Although I personally thought it happened to me when I was a kid, it's just that my lizard happened to die. I happen to be feeding a meal worms and something happened to eat its eye, but they're like, you know, not related as it happens. Right. But uh, but to go back to just straight meal worms.
So in other words, no one should worry that in eating a a meal worm that it's going to somehow burrow out through their body because uh it just it it doesn't actually happen. This is not a thing that actually happens. All right. Yeah, I mean well the the the idea that I had was I was going to cook them, um, add them to a toffee and then kind of break it up and then put it at the bottom of panna cotta, so it gives it like a little bit of crunch um when it when it gets unmolded. Um and I wanted I I had heard that you could do it with like you like cinnamon was like something that like you could feed them and then you purge them for a couple days and then cook them.
Well I see that's the thing. If you're gonna purge them, if you're gonna purge them, then like I don't know whether or not like they're actually gonna get the I mean I unless you're just ta I mean maybe they get it on the outside of them, I don't know, but are they washed? Is the idea that you can feed them, purge them, then wash them and they still have the flavor? I mean it's possible. At that point you fry them.
But I mean in other words, but they're never they're they're fried basically live without going through a rinse. So the question then my mind is is there cinnamon on the outside of these guys, or do they actually flavor themselves from the inside out? Remember, like my whole fascination with this stretches back to uh the Henry Winkler movie uh night shift, right? Where uh you know, one of the characters well, who is in that movie? Look that up, Stas.
One of the characters in that movie used to always carry a tape recorder with them and be like note to self, one of which was note to self, feed the mayonnaise to the tuna before you kill it, right? Before it so that it makes itself into tuna salad. So I've had this idea in my head since I was like a little kid. Um but with mealworms, I mean, you'd have to like try it because i in any event it makes a great story, right? Uh but um the other thing is if you're feeding it only food grade stuff, is there a need to purge it?
Um I mean, I I I don't know. Like what what I'd seen on the internet was mostly, you know, if if it was like a solid thing that had you know, that didn't have too much water, if you fed it to them for a couple of days before, it would they would your body would taste slightly like that. Yeah. Similar to your clams. Yeah, the the other one is obviously famous is the idea of feeding snails uh specifically things like rosemary for use in uh paella.
I've tried it on three separate occasions, all miserable failures. It left my my bathroom stinking like dead snail and rotting rosemary. Uh so I've never had any luck with snails. But I would give it a shot and see what happens. I would try some I would try I would just for your own for giggles, I would I would uh try some purged.
I would try some unpurged, right? And I would also uh take some and rinse them off in water and pat them dry before you fry them to see whether or not it's really just cinnamon that you fed them that sticks to the outside of their bodies that's that's doing it. You know what I mean? But in any event, like if the cinnamon flavor comes through, it it would be a uh it's a good it's a good story. You know what I mean?
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, uh hopefully mealworms in general are just like a good, like talk about dessert kind of thing. So you know what's interesting? Nastasia didn't give you the scrunch up face on uh on the mealworms, but she did give you the scrunch up face on the word ofal.
Which isn't to say that she doesn't like the meats. She just hates that word. Ofel. Yeah. Right, stuff?
You you know that, you know, I know Nasasha hates hipsters, but what is the group of people that hates things because other people like them? Hipsters. Whoa. What are you? True story.
Wow. That's like that's like so much. That's like the nuclear microphone. Yeah, boom. All right.
Well, get loving it. Let us know how it works out. Did you want to know about Night Shift? Uh, yes, tell me about Night Shift and then we'll You want to take a commercial break after Night Shift? Yeah.
All right, we'll take we'll we'll talk about Night Shift and then we'll go to commercial. Michael Keaton. I love Michael. It looks like a romantic comedy, is it? I don't know.
I don't know. I will purchase it with my corporate card. All right, and we'll come right back with cooking issues. Hello out there. It's Steve Jenkins.
I'm with Fairway Markets. White Leghorn. Red Wattle. 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 HeritageFoods USA.com for more information.
And welcome back. Hey, you know what, Jack? The one line in that that kind of creeps us out a little bit, Stas and I were talking during the break. Sound genetics. Why?
That's creepy. It sounds sounds eugenic, like it sounds crazy. I mean, I I know in the in the sense of animal breeding, it doesn't play that way, but like whenever I hear sound genetics, I'm like, you know. I think about like the genetics of sound. Ooh.
You know. That's what that's a very Jackie Molecule statement. The genetics of sound. By the way, speaking of Jackie Molecules, I have to interject with this. So we uh as a Kickstarter reward, I was uh tasked to make three ringtones that we were gonna send out to the people who donated to the Kickstarter, and we got a whole bunch of people right in saying they wanted a Jackie Molecules ring tone.
Do we have one? So we do. Hold on. I'm gonna I'm gonna find it. That's not it.
Let's see. I'm just gonna put it up to the mic and maybe that'll work. Let's see. Well, actually, I can plug it right in. There we go.
So here we go. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Ringtone. Jackie Molecules. Oh.
Jackie Molecules. Wait. Jackie Molecules. That's a real thing. Wow.
I'm gonna put that on put that on my phone. Yeah, I'll send it to you. Yeah, send it to me. And Stephanie. How much is it if people want to purchase it?
Oh, it's it's free if you donate it to Kickstarter. Wait, wait, one more thing. And that's that's you at the end. That's so good. Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh. All right. So for those of you that remember before the commercial break, we were talking about Alex's question on carrots and persistent firming. Yes, the answer is yes. It's a known uh fact.
The enzyme that we're talking about is a pectin, a methyl esterase. And so the reason you have to raise uh the temperature is you ha and there's numerous studies on different uh veg on what temperatures to to use. And you gotta remember, I think it was a peckin' pectin methylesterase trick that Jeffrey Steingarten was using to do the firming of uh potatoes in his very famous and very very influential uh article on uh Mash Taters uh in his uh first book, uh The Man Who Ate Everything, um, which I encourage if you if you don't own that book, like you kind of need to go out and buy it. Like it's right now, just go on Amazon and and Amazon Prime that book and read it. And if you've never read it before, if it doesn't change kind of the way you look at food writing and food, then you I don't know.
I mean the fact of the matter is is that I can't erase like that whole the whole dialogue of how he works from my head. Important book, uh super important book, and I think has uh really changed the way like a lot of food writers have approached uh what they do. Anyways, um so yeah, so I think that the potato trick is a pectin methyl esterase trick. Uh we've tried it with uh with other things as well. There's also other enzymes that you can activate.
The trick is the reason you need the elevated temperature is you need a temperature that's going to not denature the enzyme but disrupt the cell structure enough that the enzyme is liberated and can do its business. And so that's typically uh what's happening, and uh there have been studies on various different veggies at various different temperatures uh to kind of figure out uh where where to hit them and how to treat them for how long. Uh also you can enhance this effect if you dope calcium into the water. I don't know if uh Cook's Illustrator did that, but adding calcium to the water while you're working can also uh increase uh the amount of uh firming you get out of it, but I don't know if they did that. Anyways, um so there you have it, right?
Seth wrote in. Uh good afternoon. My name is Seth Warshaw. I own a restaurant. Do you want to get this caller quickly before that?
Sure. Caller, you're on the air. Hey, uh got a question about ice cream. I am um kind of accused of being a freak about ice cream and well, just a freak in general, anyway. Nice.
Um so and I love the taste of ice cream without egg, but it's tough to get the texture right. Yep. So the the question is kind of twofold. One, is there any way to dope it up with any kind of hydrocolloid or anything crazy like that? Or two, is it am I better off spending some money on a uh you know a liquid nitrogen doer or trying to get a a really nice um ice cream machine that can get the batch times down under 10 minutes or even 15.
What's your what okay? A bunch of questions. Where did you grow up? Pardon me? What what part of the what part you sound American?
What part of the country did you grow up in? Oh, um uh bright and sunny southern California. Okay. Because like Philly people and people on the East Coast like are very familiar with Aeglis ice cream, right? The whole style of Aegless ice cream in the US is known as Philly style ice cream, right?
So there's a long rich history. But for those who grew up around here, you know that you know the the kind of classic Philly style ice cream used to be Briars, right? And that it didn't contain uh eggs. It also used to contain no stabilizers, and that's why also all of us know that if you get Briars when it's incredibly fresh, it's it was good, but it never as smooth and creamy as like you know uh an egg style, uh you know, like uh French vanilla style, but good, but that it goes icy really quickly, right? Because it's not stabilized and it doesn't have uh the eggs in it.
Briars has since relented and added a bunch of stabilizers to their ice cream, I guess because they realized that you know less and fewer and fewer people uh kind of you know were devotees of that style or kind of understood like what that style was supposed to be. Uh so that's it. What style of ice cream machine do you use? Uh well, right now I just have the cheapy hundred dollar freeze the canister and and churn it. So salt and oh, freeze the canister, okay.
Yeah, yeah. And and the batch times were between twenty and thirty minutes in the low twenties. And I'm looking at ice cream machines that are the the self-refrigerating kind. Yep. But the batch time still seem to be up near twenty minutes until you get into something that's you know in the thousands of dollars range.
Right, correct. Okay, I'm gonna go a little bit against the grain and I don't how much of this stuff do you want to make? Is this like a family outing thing, or do you want to do this commercial? You want to do this for family, right? Well, just well, for me.
Yeah. So I recommend uh I recommend uh good old fashioned salt and ice. I would buy the motorized one. You don't need to buy the expensive White Mountain one. And in fact, the best ice cream that I have ever personally made outside of using liquid nitrogen or a Carpagani has been with a $2 thrift store rival brand ice cream, which by the way, they're owned by the same people as own White Mountain, but rival brand uh ice cream maker with a motor on it that used uh salt uh and ice.
And um I mean, I guess it depends on uh which model you get. Like the the trick with the with those style of ice cream machines is uh you can decrease the batch time uh by just adding more adding more uh salt, right? And at a certain point, the makers tell you not to do it because they worry that you're not gonna be able to scrape the sides off enough. But I found that at least on my rival, I could jam it pretty hard and get like, you know, 12 minute batch times on it and get incredibly textured ice creams using just milk, cream, sugar, vanilla, and salt without doing anything else. Now, it doesn't store as well, right?
Um, and I would also jack the cream levels to the point where it almost buttered out on me because that's gonna also provide some textural advantages. The problem there is it's really good when it's soft, but when it hardens, it gets a little bit of a buttery, uh buttery texture, which some people find off putting in an ice cream, right? So I I mean I I like this good old-fashioned salt salt and ice uh thing. They they can make a much larger quantity than those self-freezing things can. Uh and in general, they're uh higher, higher quality product.
Um and the other good thing about it is that if you don't want to store your ice cream, you after you're done churning, you pull the motor off and you just add a boat ton of salt to the outside, drop a towel over it and let it cure inside of its own container. You know what I mean? Without unpacking, without agitating, without going back in your freezer. So you don't need to worry about freezer space while you're, you know, while it's curing up while you're cooking the rest of dinner. A lot of advantages.
It doesn't keep so well, uh, but there's a lot of advantages. Now, um, back to the other side. Let's let's go to the stabilization side. On the stabilization side on it, there are a boat ton of things you can add uh to uh to an ice cream like this um that uh that are not, you know, that that make it creamier. For instance, gel-an.
If you were to but it's a little bit more of a pain in the butt. You could take just the milk. I wouldn't do it to the cream, I would take uh just the milk and make uh a gel-an fluid gel with it, right? Then blend it and then add in your cream, blend it down with the the vanilla, and when you freeze that sucker, it will be super duper smooth. Uh you can go look at my stretchy on my stretchy ice cream.
I have a stretchy ice cream post on uh on uh that's also fryable and and you can light it on fire on uh the cooking issues blog that apparently you could still search for. Uh I would omit the guar, just use the gel and I would ignore my instructions to jack the uh gel. I mean you can jack the gel an a little bit, but you don't need to jack it as much as I said at the end of the uh end of that article because I was just guessing. In fact, you don't need to jack it that much. But that makes a supremely smooth ice cream with no eggs in it.
But really, any sort of stabilizer is gonna is gonna help you out, like uh LBG or or s something like this is gonna is gonna stabilize a carragaenin, like adding some carrageen into it will uh like uh I would probably I think most people use iota in small amounts for this is gonna help really smooth it out for you, which is what you want. You don't want to add so much of any of those things that it gets gummy, though, right? That's the that's the the the kind of uh the downside of it. Another thing is do you don't want eggs because you just don't like the flavor of cooked eggs? Or you just don't want the eggs.
I don't know what it is, but anytime I add any number of eggs, it just changes the flavor. And I don't know what it is. Right. Do you want to circle? Do you want a circulator?
Yes. Okay. Uh uh, here's a little trick. Sam Mason Sam Mason didn't used to like his ice creams to taste eggy, but he loved the texture that he got from eggs. And so what he would do is he would put the egg yolks in uh in a bag and uh pasteurize them uh at a low temperature, like uh you could do it at 60, right?
Uh uh Celsius, 140 Fahrenheit, uh for just long enough to pasteurize out the egg yolks, which is not that long really. Uh, and then uh and then stir those in. And then that actually, it's easy then to chill those eggs, and then you can stir those into your mix, and you're not gonna get the the you know, blend them in, and you're not gonna get that uh cooked egg, that egginess that you get from the eggs. And that's what he used to do. And uh ain't nobody ever argued with Sam Mason's ice cream.
Interesting. Yeah. I will have to try that. Yeah, so there's a battery of things you can you can try. Let us know how it works.
Cool. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, now uh wait. So we were talking about about Seth, who owns a restaurant in Teaneck, New Jersey.
You ever been to Teen X? I used to live right next to Teen Egg. Yeah, Teen Egg. Uh a steakhouse. Um we are attempting to introduce modernist techniques into our kitchen.
Some of our ideas have been successful, and others not so much. Our biggest hurdle is that we are a kosher establishment which precludes us from using many ingredients. Most recently, we purchased Activa T I, which does not have sodium caseinate. So Activa T I, by the way, for those of you that you know aren't hip to this, Activa is uh is the brand name of transglutaminase, aka meat glue that we use to uh you know bond different uh proteins, usually meats together. Now the it's an enzyme, naturally occurring enzyme, it's not some sort of horrific monster thing, and you know, I can get into lots of discussions about how awesome it is and how it's been maligned by specifically a couple of uh fake news outlets in Australia, but it don't have time.
So uh what's added to the enzyme is some bulking agent and also a helper protein. Now the uh the most commonly used helper protein is casein. It's obviously it's not kosher because it's derived from milk and you're gluing meat with milk. Clearly, not kosher. Uh so that's the problem that we're uh dealing with.
Okay. Activa Ti, which is uh the one that they're getting, is uh pure, in other words, it doesn't have any uh helper protein in it. Okay, there we go. Um recently we purchased Activa TI, which does not have the sodium caseinate component, and therefore the bindings does not have the binding strength. The binding strength is much reduced.
I did find a product online called Kavamax. CavaMax, is sound good? Sounds like a car website or a wine website for Kava. Anyway, uh KavaMax, which they claim is a sodium caseinate substitute. As I understand it, sodium caseinate is emulsifier, uh, which is what Kavamax is as well.
Uh, my question is can I use Kavamax instead of the sodium caseinate to add to Activa and get the desired result of being able to glue our meat together? Additionally, how would I introduce the KavaMax into the mix? If this idea is not going to work, is there some other idea that you could point me to? I hope this email finds you well. Uh thank you, Seth.
Yes, it finds us well. Uh look, if it's meant to replace an emulsifier, then I would not use it as a replacement. Uh what I would do is get kosher gelatin. Uh and just mix the kosher gelatin in with the activa because it's gonna provide a different kind, but a very fast bond strength. So Activa G S, uh, which is not kosher because I don't use kosher gelatin.
Activa GS is um is uh the greatest strength, or is it GB? GB, great uh one of those two. Anyway, both of those actually have gelatin in them. One of them is also has phosphates to keep it uh stable at temperature. But if you mix uh gelatin in, you should be fine.
So what I would do, um, I don't know if you have to pre-functionalize the gelatin into like a uh a slurry and then paint it and then sprinkle the meat glue on or whether it'll work just straight sprinkled. But try it both ways. But I would do gelatin. That's what I would do. Uh Ethan Kushner writes in about uh reverse agar uh or reverse uh alginate, I guess, and uh lentils.
Uh a big hello to the folks at Cooking Issues. Called in late last week, but you were tasting ants at the time, so we're on old questions, huh? Uh I'm headed into New York right now, so I thought I'd email in. Just thought you guys might want to post uh the questions uh on the heritage radio page or somewhere else very obvious. What do you think, Jack?
Should we post the questions email on the on our page? Uh it's there on the about us. We have a new website coming too, so make it prominent. My brother is planning on getting engaged in the next couple of weeks. We probably missed it.
Chumps. Uh and wants to do a sick meal for his special lady friend before popping the question. Apparently she loves bubble tea, which I know traditionally uses tapioca starch balls. Tapioca starch balls. What?
Stas said something. I must have said something that they riled her up, but I don't know what it is. Oh, that's good. That's ask you that. Uh, but from his description, the tea she gets in New York, it sounds like they use a reverse alginate flavor pearl, pearl and quotes.
Apparently, it pops it stas, you're gonna get it. It pops and leaks peach juice. I don't like the balls. But what about the word what about leaks peach juice? I don't like anything about them.
No. It's like what about the idea of something leaking? Not good. Not good? Leaking?
Okay. This sounds like a bit much uh out of some random eatery, but maybe they buy them pre-made. Either way, how would I make this? I've looked at Chef Steps and thought about using uh their recipe for reverse uh spherification. Any tips on this?
When using fruit juices, do I have to manage the pH? What's the deal with SHMP, aka shimp? Uh and I know this is a loaded question. Any tips on macaroons? Well, listen, uh oh my god, I forgot the uh the her website just went out of my head.
There's a website you need to read on macaroons. I'll try to remember, and if I can't remember, I'll get it uh next week. Um, okay. I've also been trying to make traditionally coagni coagulated lentil tofu. I soaked the lentils for two days, blenderized it, boiled it for a couple minutes, strained it, heated it to 160 Fahrenheit, and added one T uh tablespoon of Epsom salts.
Far uh, far so far just giant pots of goo. Any thoughts? Um by the way, Ethan also thanks us on our randomness and and thanks you, Nastasia, for your ambivalence. Adds great balance to the show, he says. All right, so let's hit these questions one by one.
On the reverse spherification, sodium hexametaphosphate, aka by the way, here's how reverse spurification works. Normally when you're spherifying uh using alginate to spherify stuff, you put uh your flavor into you add alginate, you know, sodium alginate, which is a hydrocolloid, to your flavor. You drop that flavor into a calcium bath, uh calcium lactate gluconate, it's the least flavorful, but calcium lactate is the easiest and cheapest to get, but it tastes terrible, so you have to rinse it off. Okay. So you drop it in, and instantly uh the uh alginate um uh cross lengths, and you get this uh you get this firm shell around your liquid, and then you pull it out, you rinse off the calcium, and you serve these little uh pearls.
Problem. One two several problems. One, uh you can't use a um uh fluid to do this, it's very low in pH. The reason is is that uh it'll pre-gel ruin the alginate, like acidic things ruin the alginate. So that's one thing.
That's why that's one of the problems you have. Another problem is that the reaction keeps happening and you keep on gelling all the way through, and eventually you get solid balls and they're gross because they have no flavor. Alginate's a flavor thief and also has very bad texture. Okay. So that's two problems.
So solution solution, one of the solutions is problems to use what's called reverse verification. In reverse verification, what you do is you make a neutral, usually alginate bath. You can make an alginate bath that has flavor, but usually it's a neutral alginate bath, and then you drop calcium-laden uh product you know, juices into it, and you get a membrane of alginate around your flavorful products. Okay, here are the and the good news is is that the product you're using can be as acidic as you want. I've done almost straight lemon juice.
It doesn't matter because uh, you know, the alginate doesn't, it's not gonna hurt or pre-gel because the alginate's not contained in the flavorful stuff, so it doesn't matter. That's the good news. Uh here's what you need to keep in mind. The sodium hexametaphosphate is a as a sequestrant. It's gonna get rid of excess calcium.
So what you want to do is add some sodium hexametophosphate, aka shimp, uh, to your alginate bath to preserve it so that it doesn't go bad while you're repeatedly dropping uh calcium stuff, uh I mean when you're dropping calcium stuff into it, and also in case there's free calcium ions in your uh tap water, right? So that's what the sodium head mexif head uh hexametophosphate is for. Uh you're gonna want to make sure that the alginate bath that you use is as thin as you can make it and still get good um and still get good uh film around the outside. And this is why you want to use a very strong alginate, uh, because uh because a strong alginate is going to get a uh uh a greater kind of bond strength even when it's a little bit thinned out. The reason is is that you need to drop your liquid into it and it needs to drop into it.
So if you have a very thick alginate, it's just gonna pancake on top, and you're not gonna get uh uh decent uh reverse uh spherification. Now you can get around that by injecting it into the thing, but that's it's all a pain in the butt. What you want is to be able to make a nice good drop, unless you're doing larger spoon, in which case. Another way to do it, if you're making larger pearls, like larger tapioca pearls, is you can literally freeze balls of flavor with calcium, and then they can be any thickness you want, because it doesn't matter, and then you can kind of throw them into the alginate and then pull them out and then uh rinse them off. Anyways, so another thing you want to make sure is that you get all the air out of the alginate bath, otherwise there'll be air on the top, and again you'll just get stuff pancaking when it hits the uh air thing, and plus there'll be bubbles and it'll be a nightmare.
Get rid of the air. Um another thing is if you're gonna drop liquid uh and you're not gonna pre-freeze it, you should thicken the juice. I you know, you usually use something like something like a xanthan or something there to keep it together and to thicken it so that it can drop in. Uh, it helps if you densify it, if it weighs more than your alginate bath, so things like sugar can help uh there. So you don't want it floating on top, you want it to sink to the bottom, so it should be denser than uh the alginate bath and slightly uh thick so that it holds together when you when you drop it and you can get nice big uh balls if you're dropping liquid, nice big balls.
Uh the other thing is you want to make sure you get all the air out of that because no matter how dense it is, if it's full of air, that'll float it and it'll float and pancake and be a nightmare. Um frozen is usually the way to go. But then the other thing is that you can't have them touching each other or they'll join together at the bottom. So usually what I'll do is I'll I'll drop a bunch, they'll float to the bottom, uh, they'll rest on the bottom, then you'll immediately dump the entire uh bath of alginate into into something else through a strainer and then flood it with water uh to separate the balls, and then I put it on calcium to set any residual algin on the outside. That's how I do it.
Yeah. On the lentil tofu, uh, a couple things you could do. I've never made uh actual tofu from lentils. Uh you can I don't know whether you're gonna be able to get a firm set. It's a couple things you can do.
You can add uh meat glue actually, uh, and I wasn't able to I didn't have time to look up on the any websites, uh, people that do this, but you can add um activa, and that will bolster any protein to protein interactions and give you a harder set, right? So that's one. Two, you could dope it with soy, so it's a soy lentil uh tofu situation, and that's gonna help out. Or three, uh there are Burmese tofu, right? You can look up isn't really tofu, it's really just kind of cooked uh like it.
They the people who do it say it's closer to like a polenta, so you cook it down and then uh let it set. But it sets almost like a tofu, but it's more of a kind of a starch reaction, the way that like uh polenta is. So you could make like a Burmese style tofu, or you could cheat by adding agar, which is what a lot of people do with their quote unquote tofus that aren't real tofu. But I think you were trying to do traditional tofu, in which case I would either bolster it with some soy or I would uh I would hit it with some Activa and see if that helps. But uh check out the Burmese tofu because people who can't have uh the regular soy seem to enjoy the Burmese tofu.
Yeah? Mm-hmm. Okay. That's about it. What tell the questions you're gonna get to next?
Can I can I do I'll do some real quick ones. Kobe wrote in about a burnsomatic torch. He says he's been listening to the show for a couple of months now uh and he enjoys the Vegetti Dialogues. He would like to order Sears all, but the propane tank does not ship to where uh he lives. He's not sure whether he uh could order uh a compatible burntic torch for where he lives.
Can we talk about one that's sources locally? I can't. Here's the problem. I can't recommend any torches that I haven't used uh because like I can't recommend it. I can't I don't know that they're safe.
I mean, like I would just look and see whether or not um I would look and see whether or not it's possible to find uh a torch that looks and kind of functions like us. Well, you know, we're eventually gonna look in eventually we're gonna look into maybe we'll look into making our own torch, right, Styze? But it's gonna it's gonna be a while. The other other question he had was on uh using saltpeter instead of instacure or prague powder. I'll try to find a source in Israel for curing salts because I would not use saltpeter.
Do not use saltpeter as a substitute. Then we are going to get next week to questions. We made it through an all we're getting closer, right? We have a question about use making noodles with agar agar and the flavor of tequila sunrise. We have a question on making uh your own anti-griddle uh and uh modifying pressure cookers.
We have an urgent question, which I might uh talk on Twitter, or if someone can you know, send me a Twitter question. Chris had on mint and mint. He needs this uh now, so please, and on Turkish coffee, which we'll talk about next week. Quinine and root beer all 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. Heritage Radio Network is a 501c3 nonprofit. To donate and become a member, visit our website today.
Thanks for listening.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.