Today's program is brought to you by Heritage Foods USA, the nation's largest distributor of heritage breed pigs and turkeys. For more information, visit HeritageFoods USA.com. This is Chef Emily Peterson, host of Sharp and Hot. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit HeritageRadio Network.org for thousands more.
Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live, but on a telephone, somewhere in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Uh on the Heritage Radio Network. My uh train went out of service, so we're doing a uh Stas, you there? Yeah, I'm here.
Yeah, we're we're we're doing uh do you remember that video for uh uh that Bruce Brinkstein did for the uh streets of Philadelphia? Yes. Only Philadelphia doesn't have an elevated railway that's gonna drown out any noise that I can make. Like how much background noise is there for real? Just a little bit of wind.
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, that always my big old iPhone uh six plus is like, you know, it's like a billboard. Uh so you know, it's trying to shield me from the wind. Like I try to get off the main drag here, maybe be a little quieter. All right.
So Stas, we're gonna have to do a little bit, uh, not what we normally do. You can still call your questions in two, 7184972128, that's 718497-2128. How are you doing over there, Jack? Can you hear me? I can hear you.
Yeah, we have the the chat room too, so I'm able to actually communicate with people directly. Nice. And uh, and by the way, you wanted to tell everyone while uh what we're walking to today is the beginning of the live, the live tweet a thon madness, at least for cooking issues. You've been live for a couple of days. Yep in general, but you want to explain how that how that crud works?
Yeah, I think if you're tuning in live right now, you can see the chat room. I've got uh a bunch of people in here now chatting with me. Uh they say that the L train is the enemy of quality, but they wasn't on the L. It wasn't the L, yeah. It was what?
Yeah, I was on the JMZ line. Yeah, whatever they call that thing now. The L is the enemy of quality. Yeah. It's just it was one of those things where like the the train had a problem, and so anyone who lives in New York is familiar with this.
The train's already extremely late and it stopped all the other trains from going, but they don't take out of service as soon as they have a problem. Instead they make the train be 15 minutes late and then they pull it out of service so that you're a half hour late. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Yep.
My favorite, my favorite people, uh, which is why uh Emmanuel Kant never went more than two miles away from his house. I like that. This is why he never visited the mountains. You know why? He went he once went on a carriage ride.
You know, the famous philosopher, who's by the way, like a a complete nutbag and a weirdo. But uh he this is what people read people read these people's uh works today, and they're like, you know, they they they no never take the time to realize that these people were freaking lunatics. So he takes a carriage ride one day, and there's a problem with the carriage, like the uh you know, the axle breaks or something, I forget exactly what happened. And he is late for an appointment. So he jots down in his book, uh, don't take carriage rides.
They might make you wait for appointments. And so the guy never like left within a couple of miles of his house. Freaking weirdo. And yet people for hundreds of years are like, this is the person I should base like how, you know, what I what I think about thought on a freaking like clear loony bin. You know what I'm saying?
Anyways, uh I don't want to get any I don't want to get any hate down from philosopher people, but he's yeah, I never really enjoyed reading Kant. Do you guys ever have to read that stuff? No, what was his big point? Well, it's kind of a big dense, like uh uh well it's a big dense kind of school of thought. We'll we'll get into it.
We'll get into some of that. We should probably get some questions. Oh, before we do that, um there's something else that we had to talk about. No, I don't know. I don't know.
Uh okay, so Stas, uh you got the questions up or no? No. Well, get the questions up. Remember back when I said you're gonna read the questions? No, you never sent that.
I did. Remember I said we're gonna do it differently today. Nastashi's gonna read. Oh, you weren't listening. Jack, do you have the qu does anyone have the questions up?
There was a question on the Did you get that email there? What? No, you didn't. There was a question on Mastiha, Mastika there, uh, but I can't look at it because the only instrument that I would have to look at the question is currently against my ear as I'm uh talking. I do have a question from Josh Weinstein about enzyme soak.
Uh he's yeah, he says in episode 112, Dave said he now prefers a half inch fry. The enzyme soak was originally uh 25 C one hour. What time and temperature does Dave Arnold now use for his enzyme soak? Same. The reason I like uh the bigger fry is because, okay, it's the same basic uh procedure with the exception that uh the larger fry might actually require some dry time, whereas the uh thinner fries didn't require a lot of drying.
Remember, French fry, like good French fry uh work is all about uh managing with care, right? So you have the main problem with uh French fries is either there's too much moisture in in the center and you haven't developed a good enough crust, and if you haven't developed a good enough crust, they go soggy conversely if you focus all of your energy on a super good crust uh you can create what we call the hollow fry so it's like super crunchy on the outside the hollow in the middle so what you want to do it's a very difficult balancing act and the enzyme soak is one of the things you can do to um kind of skew that balancing act in your favor now because we've in you know my opinion gotten um successful enough uh with the French fry recipe that you could have both a good exterior and interior I then wanted to up the amount of interior that was there because the whole French fry was enjoyable right whereas if really all you can do is make a good crust and anything on the interior is just messing up your fry well then you go thinner right which is why people make those shoestring fries which by the way I don't like I mean I like them I don't like to make them you guys like shoestring fries no I don't mind them. You don't mind them are you like no let me ask you a question. If yeah no no no definitely not you don't mean no no no no they're either gonna usually poorly done shoestring fries are either greasy or just like fried crunchies. Right.
Now no I'm not insulting a fried crunchy by the way I like a fried crunchy. But um anyways so I think in general uh the larger fries are also technically more uh interesting to tackle uh I don't like the giant giant fries though like those giant like I don't like those giant fries you guys like those no I'm not really a fan of them anyway so the answer is uh the same. But you might need a little dry time uh to get a little more moisture out than you would if you were using a uh three eighths uh uh three eighths uh inch fry. Is that a was that a good answer to I answer that? I think you got it.
Uh this is an easy this is an easy one I got from Joan Zuckerberg. Is there a culinary book which Dave Arnold would recommend above all others? Well of course you should buy liquid intelligence simply for its use as a coaster I'm kidding. I'm just kidding. Um you know I buy like I don't buy books um because I'm gonna use them for recipes usually I usually buy books because I really um wanna see somebody's point of view.
Sometimes I'll get them for uh you know like a specific culture learn about a specific culture. Um so it's kind of tough. It's like if you ask me a particular area then I'm like oh you gotta get that book. If you're interested in sauces like even though it's you know very old at this point, you should go pick up a copy of uh Peterson's uh sauce book because it was seminal now would I say that's the first cookbook you should go buy? No, but if I was doing uh sauces, it's also really interesting I like old books because they're a window into uh somebody else's uh like a different a different time a different frame set so you look at those recipes in that book for instance and there's a lot of reduced cream sauces because that was very i invoked in and it can give you kind of a slice of what was happening um at a particular time.
Um you like Harold McGee's yeah yeah I don't get yeah okay. If you gotta go buy on food and cooking you need to own that. That's like saying, you know, do you breathe? You know, do you buy liquids? You know what I mean?
But like I mean like cookbooks. Like what like what style? Italian. Ooh, that's interesting. What do you like for Italian stuff?
I don't. Oh, God. Do you love Italian food? I know. I I don't use I don't use the cookbook.
No. You don't like to read cookbooks, right? Because you don't care what people think about things, right? Right. Yeah.
I used to really enjoy uh when I was starting to, you know, cook seriously, like, you know, 25 uh or so years ago, uh, Giuliano Buggiali's books because he's such a nut on uh what he thinks is authentic and what he's not. He's like classic, like old school northern Italian, uh where like if it deviates even slightly from what he considers to be authentic, it's crap. And although I don't cook that way, I think it's kind of hilarious to like to read a book that's written from that perspective. So I like, oh, the cement truck is coming by, the one that always tries to kill me on my bicycle. Are you walking aboard here or are you?
Yeah. Oh I'm gonna show up in the studio at some point, at which point I will be able to read the questions off of my phone. Uh so I like his stuff for that. Uh I really liked, uh I don't know whether it's still dated or anyone reads it. I liked cooking by hand, Bertoli's book, because it was the first book that I had that you know went through the procedures uh pretty in depth for curing.
This is way before uh the charcuterie books came out. Uh it went through the production of uh Balsanic vinegars. It went through a bunch of stuff. I thought it was a really good book, but I don't know if people read it anymore. I mean, I like some of the old classics, like uh, you know, my the first uh cookbook that someone bought me uh to cook out of was uh Julia Child's uh Way to Cook, which I like.
I like uh Jacques Papin. We call him Jackie Peeps, but I like Jacques Capin's uh he has a two volume color work that was put out by uh Knopfs back when they didn't know any better that literally showed you how to skin a baby lamb so obviously it went out of print very quickly because no American back in the you know late 70s or 80s whatever it was uh wanted to learn to skin a baby lamb. Um I don't know I really like old versions of uh Peliprat the ones with the weird crazy sixties photos I really love the time life uh encyclopedia of uh foods of the of the world I think that's an amazing reference anyway I don't know I could go on and on and I probably shouldn't what's the next question ask your question Jack. Oh yeah I was uh speaking of cookbooks I tried to cook out of the Zahav cookbook this Moroccan carrot recipe and uh they wanted you to kind of cook the carrots in a uh in a pan with water just covering the carrots for about twenty minutes and then you take the carrots out of the water and they want you to reduce that carrot water into like a syrup and it's said to cook it for about 15 minutes more and it should turn into a syrup but it never turned into a syrup. Uh it just stayed like boiling water, you know?
And it stayed the consistency of water. Yeah okay okay that's good let's get into this here. So how do you slice the first of all like what are we talking? What's the ratio of carrot to water? About six carrots in a uh saucepan just barely covered with water.
So like you know the you know just covering the carrots but six whole carrots. Yeah how tall is the pan. What's that? How tall is the pan? It was probably I don't know six inches deep.
Yeah, you see, let's see, I'm looking at it. So, but it was it it was one of those ones that's like roughly six by six, so it was as tall as wide or taller than wide? Oh, no, it was definitely more wide than tall. Yeah, so you're adding probably more water than you would need to, um, because you're probably not getting the packing density that you want to get the so you probably started out with a higher level of water, which in and of itself isn't gonna give you problems. Except for you probably have to reduce it much more than uh than you think.
So there's there's a couple things that are going on. If it's reducing to a syrup, what that means is you've extracted stuff out of the carrots. So if your carrots aren't very flavorful, they're not very sweet, you're not gonna have a lot of stuff to extract, and there you have it. So you should be able to taste the water at the end of boiling, and you'll know, well, you know, like this doesn't have much flavor, so I'm gonna have to reduce the the living hell out of it, right? So in that case, you know, you might have to reduce it.
Also, it's it's impossible to say how many minutes you need to reduce something. Like uh, if I was gonna do this for a bar or or something, you would reduce it to a particular solid content, right? Like that's how you make like uh jellies, you know, you you take things down to a certain bricks level because you need a certain solid content to get the bodies. You need x percentage of sugar in the water. So and once you get to, you know, so the difference between like something that's uh let me put it this way 66% sugar by weight is maple syrup.
82 is honey, right? Uh 50 uh is 50% sugar even still pours uh you know almost like water. Uh do we already talk about whipped creams corn like a waterfall? We already talked about pizza, uh C C A. Anyway, um remember that song?
Anyways, so uh it doesn't take that much less sugar in a product to all of a sudden make it uh much less um viscous. Did it taste good or no? It tasted fine, yeah. Yeah, it was just kind of soupy, you know, it's very watery. All right, Bushwick, man, I'm at uh borum and McKibben.
I want to go towards McKibben, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I think that was probably your problem.
So it tasted good, but it wasn't syrupy. You just need to reduce it more. Because look, they don't know how powerful your stove is. Like how are you gonna tell someone to reduce something for 15 minutes? You know what I'm saying?
I don't know. Like m you know, maybe maybe I have a s in fact I do have a stove that's poorly uh regulated and I could I could boil a cow. You know what I mean? Because that's how much energy comes out of my uh burners. You know what I'm saying?
It's like almost like it is like a wok burner. My regular stove is like a wok burner. So if I crank that sucker, I can reduce it, uh, you know, if I can reduce anything almost instantly. The problem is you might scorch things. Whereas, you know, you might be in a situation where you have a low output stove and it could take you twice as long easily to reduce it.
So it really needs to be reduced on a consistency. Maybe you should have stuck with it longer. Or maybe you didn't cut your carrots small enough so you didn't get full extraction out. Is that possibility? That's no, I think more likely I should have just reduced it for longer.
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Dave. Yeah, because if you're doing a short cook, also uh how much is extract I mean, if you cooked it per the recipe, then presumably you cooked it for the recipe. You know that uh back in the day, are you a fan of uh vegetables that are on the crunchy side or vegetables that are cooked through?
No, crunchy. Yeah, yeah. So you're extracting less. Like the crunchier the vegetable is, the less you've broken this stuff down, the less you've extracted out. You see what I'm saying?
So like if you're if you're pulling them early, then even no matter what, you're in a situation where you're gonna have less sugar than you would otherwise because you haven't extracted as much out. I mean the Frenchy French is uh, you know, back when I was at the French Pulgaring Institute, they when I first started there, everyone was still very, very old school French. So they would get all pretzeled out if you gave them uh, you know, a crunchy vegetable that you know they just said this is parcooked, this is not you know what I mean? Like they were like it's not cooked. They want it, they want it basically cooked all the way through, not mushy, but cooked all the way through.
Whereas the average American taste now, I think skews towards um slightly undercooked. We know Stas likes freaking raw rice and pasta, basically. She's a freaking animal, a barbarian. Well, how how is it that you're the opposite of everything always? I love it.
I'm on more street, people. We're getting close. Let's squeeze in a few chat rooms. I got a few chat room questions we'll we'll get to. Uh Elliot wants to know if he grinds nixtimalized corn in a food processor.
Will it suck? Uh will it suck. So for those of you that like, you know, aren't hit to the fact nixamalizing corn is when you treat corn uh with uh calcium hydroxide, usually you treat with other alkali, and it takes on the uh the uh it changes the structure and the flavor uh and the nutritional properties actually of the corn, and when you grind it properly in uh in a Nixtaval grinder, uh you get masa, which is the thing from which uh corn tortillas are made. Okay. Uh will it suck?
And the problem with making uh nixamalizing corn uh is that it's very hard to grind it properly. I now have a grinder I like. I have made it in a food processor. The problem with it is you have to add more water than you should, right? So it'll work.
You're gonna burn out. The last time I I did it, I didn't burn it out, but I ran my cuisine art so hard that it never was quite the same again. Because you have to have to sit there and just grind the ever loving crap out of it until you get the uh right texture. And you also need to um you need to uh like I say, add more water. So then sometimes, I'm not saying to do this, but sometimes if it's too watery when you're done, don't add a lot.
Take a little bit of extra water. You can add some solids back in, cheat it back to the right uh moisture content uh to get it right. That's what I would do. I have done it, it's not ideal, it's not the best, but it works. And I'm in the studio.
All right. Did you ever get the questions upstairs? Yeah. Okay. And I'm back.
Does that sound better? Wow, that was really cool. Yeah. I like how like uh I was able to get a Beastie Boy reference uh in there on the uh on the way. It's like a magic trick.
It is. And here you are. Here I am in the studio. Wow. Not just calling in anymore, like a incredible, like a freaking chump.
What if one of our callers did this one day? Just showed up. I would stop. Listen, if you do like, I'm not saying don't do this, but Nastasia will probably stab you. Because she'll assume she'll assume that you mean her harm.
Right. That'd be like a scene in a scary movie, and like you think it's a bad guy, but it's not, but then she stabbed them anyway. And well, one thing like anyone that knows her knows. Nastasia, not so much a wait and see kind of a lady. You know what I mean?
Not even just gut. It's like, oh, uh, we're we're stabbing this dude now. Okay. You know what I mean? Like you see the beginning of that movie uh Three Kings with uh Ice Cube and Mark Wahlberg back in the day?
Uh no. You didn't see that? You should see it. It's a good movie. At least I remember it being a good movie.
But the point is, is that you know, Mark Wahlberg sees someone and like he's like, Are we shooting people? You know what I mean? Like that's how the movie starts, and they're like, yes, and so he shoots the person. Stas is like that. It's like, oh, so that's that's what's happening.
I'm just saying you're likely to get stabbed. If you show up unannounced, Jack won't stab you, I won't stab you, Nastasi will stab you. Not out of hate. Not out of hate. Just instinct.
Let's take a quick little break so I can get the sponsor message in and you can catch up. All right, we'll be right back live. This is not an advertisement. I promise. This is not an ad.
Cooking issues listener, you're already cooler than most people for listening to this show. And if you do listen to the show, then you know I'm Jack Insley, aka Jackie Molecules, aka the man behind the booth. I need you to make us look cool against all the other shows. Let's make cooking issues the most supported show on the network. $1, $5, $20, $50.
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Even Nastasia will appreciate it. I promise. Give something today. Do it. Do it.
Give it. Do it. Do it. Right? Alright.
So should I get to some uh email questions now that uh I have the email questions up? Yeah. Alright. Okay. Uh see who wrote this in.
You know, that was the first question I asked on Cooking Issues ever, I think. Yeah? Yeah. Did I answer it properly? You did.
Oh nice. I'm so stoked. Calling again next week. I mean, sometimes I meet people at the bar, right? Because people at the bar, like Maggie Say, they're like, they're like, oh, I listen to you.
Oh, you ever ask a question? Like, no. I'm like, all right. You don't have to ask a question if you don't want to. Uh Matthew M from the Seattle area.
I like Seattle area, although I'm angry at the Seattle area now because my cousins are slowly drifting to it. So, you know, I'm losing, like, you know, I've basically lost my entire family dinner kitchen staff now. You know, like we had like the crew, we would crank it out, and like one half of the of the you know, the two brothers that would always come over, Ridge and James. They, you know, Ridge is like, tell what this, I'm moving back to Seattle. And I was like, oh man.
And then, you know, the third brother, Kai, he's like, I'm moving back to Seattle. So then you know James is gone. Yep. Worst. Worst, worst.
You know what the sad thing is? Like, you know, look, I'm a New Yorker. I don't know if you know this. I'm a New Yorker. You know what I mean?
My son Booker would like he would murder anyone so that he could stay in New York, probably. I mean, he would definitely like throw me off a bridge if it meant he got to stay in New York and not like move somewhere else. He would. I mean, I'm not saying he doesn't love me. I'm just saying he loves New York more.
You know what I mean? Uh but I think I could I could deal with Seattle. I mean, uh the weather and the looks and like the Pacific Northwest, like I groove on all that kind of stuff, except for the fact that I'm a New Yorker. Yep. You know what I mean?
Yep. What are your thoughts on Seattle, Jack? I've never been, but I got a little brother out there, a little half brother living in Seattle. And you never visited him? I'm not saying I'm not saying I'm not calling you, you know, bad brother or anything.
I'm just saying. Yeah, well. Uh hey, look, you know. Yeah. No, it's one of the few places I haven't been in the country, like that area.
I haven't really been to the Pacific Northwest. Have you say have you been to Portland? I.e. Seattle Light. Boom!
Boom! No, I'm kidding. I love Portland. Portland's nice. You know what?
I think Portland, like at some point, like back in the in the 90s and like, you know, like 2000, 2001, 2002. I think the Seattle guys were like, we are the supreme leaders of this area. You know what I mean? Everyone else is a fake us. And I think Portland was like, no.
No. I think Portland has the mantle now, right? Like, if you were gonna say, What would you think of first? Jack, what would you think of first? If you think of Portland first or Seattle first?
Portland. See? No. But that's a complete reversal. It is, you're right.
Like twelve. This is all Seattle in the 90s. Seattle, Seattle, Seattle, Seattle, Seattle. Well, you know, and not just because of, you know, Soundgarden, Urvana, Pearl Jam. Yeah, although, you know, I don't know.
I think, you know, don't hold on to the past Seattle, you know. Come back to the future. Yeah, like what else do they got? They have salmon, coffee. They're delicious.
They got all, of course, they got Nathan Mirville, they got uh Chris Young, Chef Steps crew, they got uh, you know, Microsoft, they got a lot going for them. How about Chef Steps is in DC? No, Chef Steps is in uh Seattle. Yeah. Well, anyways.
Uh good salmon. Good salmon. Okay. Uh I I should get to the question. I'm a listener since January this year and have worked through most of the backlog.
I find the podcast to be an inspiring resource, so thanks for your great work. Uh one hobby that I picked up through listening to the podcast is homemade liqueurs. You like what do you call it? Liquors? Liqueur.
Do you say you like liqueur? Liquor? Liquor. Like uh booze. Met a guy uh yesterday that smelled like my Uncle Ralph.
Yeah. Where uh billiard, a billiard place. He's the guy that goes, he's like booze. They're like in the store drinking beer. What?
Why are we at a billionaire? Uh outside of my old uh where my apartment is. The neighborhood's totally changed, and one of the downtown billiard places was up there. So I walked in because Dax was like, I want to look at the pool table. So like I'll go into the pool tables, and I'm like, uh these gentlemen smell like Moncle Ralph.
You know what I mean? You know, that like slightly sweet, like smoke, sweet drink smoke. Yeah. New Jersey slash. You know what I'm talking about?
Anyways, no one knows I'm talking about. All right. In that vein, I was looking to experiment with some wood infusions uh via uh EC rapid infusion method or steeping as a component for the liqueurs. Uh my main question is do you have any advice in general for wood flavor infusion? Uh e.g., wood format, chunks, chips, dust, spiral, spir, oh wait, uh chunks, chips, dust, and spirals don't seem good for small scale.
Um, I'm gonna hit it piece by piece because otherwise I'll go on tangents, right? So uh wood format, listen. The uh surface area of wood exposed is in any rapid, in any infusion thing, frankly, the amount of surface area exposed is like super vitally uh important. So usually the like the bigger the pieces, the slower the process, but that also means if you're gonna do something quickly, the more controllable the process, right? Also, like sometimes like a larger things can skew things um in different ways.
So for instance, like certain things might extract uh more slowly um from the center of a piece of wood, uh, but you might get more kind of uh overall total extraction of everything once the pieces are smaller because everything makes it out into the into the liquor as fast as possible. Does that make sense to us? So the size is super important. Uh I would choose for rapid infusion, I usually you want to choose a size that is uh not too too rapid because you don't want if you have like a one-minute infusion uh and then you go like 30 seconds long or 20 seconds short, it's it's ruined. Like I like it's nice to have an infusion time that's like you know, three, four minutes because then you have like a bigger window.
Also, if you make things too fine, uh it can be very difficult to um strain the stuff out fast enough, and then while you're straining it, it'll go too too much. That's like coffee is a problem with that, which is why I switched to kind of a coarser grind of coffee than I used to originally, because if your filter clogs, by the time you've gotten it through the filter, and by the way, Nest this is the one thing I hate as much as Nastasia is putting things through coffee filters. Yes, right? I mean I hate it. I hate it.
If there was one thing, there's like a couple things in my life that I'm like, you know what, I don't ever need to do that again. Putting like a bunch of crap through coffee filters, um, drywall, I hate doing drywall, I hate it. I like working with my hands, I like carpentry, drywall. You like drywall? Taking the stuff off garlic.
Oh, I hate that. I don't ever want to do that. You know what the thing is, people come to your house, right? Yeah. And they're like, hey, can I help?
Yeah, peel all this garlic. And they're like, no, no, I mean, can I help doing something that I want to do? And you're like, what the hell is this? You know what I'm saying? Yes.
Yes. You know, because also, like, you're not gonna have them cut something because they're gonna mess it up. And then here's the problem with here's the problem with this. I I'm gonna get back to your question. Don't worry.
But the problem with this is this. You come to me and you say, Can I help? And I say, Yes, cut this cucumber. And then you cut it wrong, right? Now, maybe I didn't tell you exactly how I wanted to cut, but I did tell you what I was gonna use it for, right?
Okay. So then you get mad at me because I have an obvious look of displeasure on my face. Now I haven't said anything mean to you. I haven't called you a bad person or an enemy of quality or any of these things. I just look at the cucumbers and look sad.
Do you know what I'm saying? Does that making me bad? I mean, uh, I'm getting better in my in my old age. Like, I'm like, you know what? Because here's the thing, right?
Here's the problem when you go to somebody's house and you ask them to do something. You're cutting the cucumbers up and you've mangled it, right? But once it goes out, you've completely mangled these cucumbers. You ruined them. All the pieces are all different sizes, they no longer get coated with whatever properly.
There's just a freaking nightmare. I don't know. I don't know what the hell you did to them, but you've ruined them. Now, the problem is is that when the host brings that crap out to the table, what are they gonna do? Everybody, Jocomo cut the cucumbers like a chump.
It wasn't me. You know what I mean? You can't do that. You have to suck it up and make it look like you're the idiot to cut the cucumbers that way. That's the problem.
Maybe this is why your cousins left. No, they know that I've cooked with them for like decades. They know how I want it. They know how I want that stuff. You know?
All right, Jack, are you with me? You're not with me on this. I can tell you not with me. Secretly not with me on this stuff. I'm talking to people in the chat room about browsers.
That's the beautiful thing about this new stream. It cut out for a second, and then uh everyone's like, hey, mine cut out, and the other guy's like, well, I refreshed and it worked, so then everybody can refresh. It's great. I think browser needs to be it like it's a word that needs to be said in a more highbrow fashion. Browser, right?
Doesn't it deserve to like bow that's not like Bowser? Browser sounds like Bowser from Shan Anan. Remember Shanana? Mm-hmm. Man, I'm old.
All right. Uh wood preparation, raw, toasted uh chard. Now listen, uh when you're charring like an oak barrel, for instance, let's say you're making whiskey and you're charring an oak barrel. Uh it you're getting a surface char, but then it's also extracting stuff out of uh, you know, it goes through the point all through toasting and trying to say like if you charge small pieces of wood, that's a whole hell of a lot of char. You know what I'm saying?
Yeah. Um but look it, you know, there are people who all they do all day, all night is thinking about uh different ways to toast uh wood. I mean, this is like a field of endeavor that people study like or or practice for decades and never get it right. So it's like, you know, I would I would shoot for uh something that you know you can repeat, right? So if I would first try to settle in on a size uh of wood, and then uh I would try to figure out uh kind of uh some reproducible toasting thing, which is gonna be difficult because if if the moisture content of the wood changes, your your your timing will be different, you know what I mean?
It's very hard to do it by temperature or by color because it's hard, you know. Anyways. Uh best solvent, water, alcohol, blend, and temperature. Well, duh, alcohol, but not straight alcohol, probably alcohol, alcohol and water, as we like to call it, booze. Now the higher proof that you I mean, like look, different flavors, the alcohol's gonna extract a lot faster than the water, a lot of the stuff, and so I think you know, there's an optimum, um, there's an optimum kind of extract, but I don't really know what it is.
I in general work with um pre-watered booze at like 40, 40, but you know, it depends. If you're using a higher proof stuff, you you can, but most of the stuff that we operate is somewhere between 40 and 50% alcohol. And you'd have to search uh far and wide to get a higher, but you know, you could go get this. We use this stuff called technical reserve that's made here in Brooklyn. Brooklyn.
And uh it uh it's like 95% pure and it's pretty clean, right? It doesn't smell too much like a hospital. So you can make a tincture with that. We do that sometimes, but it's like extraction. I've done ISI with straight liquor, but man, you gotta watch out because it's some super hardcore.
Uh web resources for food grade wood and infusion. I can only find uh oak chips for wine making and wood pellets for smoking. I'm assuming the woods for smoking and infusion have different safety considerations. The pellets, I wouldn't do the pellets, but like any piece of wood, like you're kidding yourself if you think that they look, don't use pressure treated woods. You know what I mean?
Like, but like I've used oak from Home Depot. But you know what I mean? Like, you know, just like yeah, you know, get the surface off of it. It's it's wood. You know what I mean?
It's like imagine uh, you know, you go to the store, you buy a cucumber, you go to the lumber yard, yeah, you buy some wood. You know what I mean? Uh I could be wrong. Someone write me in and tell me that I've just told someone to do something uh terrible. Uh are there woods that are generally safe at high extractions, assuming typical barrel oaks, uh not sure what else to use, maybe sugar, maples, birch.
People, um, I mean, there are people that have done a lot of work with uh alternate woods. Uh I I have not. Uh I would want to, I mean, it depends also on what you believe, right? So there are woods, tropical woods that are toxic, but in general, like a woodworker would know that. The other question is is like once you start doing infusions, like you could go get um sassafras uh wood, for instance, right?
But it contains saffron. So you may believe that saffrol is well, the the United States government believes that it's a carcinogen and won't let you put it into food. You may believe that it's not a problem. In which case you could use it. I don't believe it's a problem.
I use it. It's traditional. You know what I mean? But what ev. Anyway.
Uh woods that should be uh widely avoided due to high risks, even at low extractions. I mean, the good thing is, like I say, stay away. I would stay away from any sort of like weird tropical toxic wood that you don't know what it is. Stay away from any sort of uh any sort of um pressure treated or any sort of treated wood whatsoever. Any wood that's ever been painted, any wood that's ever been shellacked, any wood that's ever been finished at all under any circumstances, stay away from.
I would also say that like a lot of pines uh will probably not be a hundred percent pleasant on an extraction basis, whereas like some of their resins uh are good, but I don't know that they'd be good from a wood extraction standpoint. Yeah? Yeah, good. Anyway. Um second related question are you aware of common herbs and spices that become dangerous under high extractions?
Nutmeg, for instance, uh could become uh psychotropic and toxic, though I doubt it would be palatable at that level. It really is people have to hide it. They mix in with I think peanut butter. Fishbone did a whole uh song and maybe even a whole section of an album on uh trying to trip off of nutmeg. You ever done that, Jack?
Or do you know anyone that's ever done that? No, no, whose name might be Backy Bolecules. Like uh like I haven't. Uh you know, I'll tell you if I did. Oh, the thing about nutmeg is right, I mean, like nutmeg highs are for like uh like 14-year-olds who like are interested in trying something but don't have a source.
You know what I mean? So they go into the pantry and they pound like you know, nutmegs. No, you should never do this. This is not smart because the actual thing about nutmeg is uh from what I've read is that the um first of all, it's terrible in large quantities. Uh uh secondly, uh I believe that the um dose line between psychotropic and toxic is very is not very big.
So I don't I don't think it's necessarily a safe thing to OD on. You know what I mean? But uh like I said, if you want to go look up uh herbs and their effects, there is a whole community. Um it's I I haven't been to it in a long time, but it's called like Arrowwit or the Vault. It's a place where I used to go to get information on extracting stuff from the drug site.
Yeah, but those people are fantastic because they've tested every freaking thing. You know what I mean? Like they're like, how do you get the most uh, you know, uh uh, well, they're interested in psychotropic principles, but how do you get the most stuff out of XYZ herb? And so all these knuckleheads have tried all these uh solvents. You know what I mean?
So most of them not food grade. And then um, and you know, they've tried anything that anyone has ever said has a psychotropic effect, they have uh pounded it. Rue is one you should probably also stay away from. Uh not for psychotropic things, but there's lots of things. I would get an herbal guide.
Uh plenty of those things have uh toxicity levels, and in general, I man, this list is crazy on the site. Of what? Mint, garlic, ginger. I'm telling you, man. Yeah, it's crazy.
These guys are like, like, there are people who what they do is they sit down in the morning when they get up and they're like, what have I not tried to eat in large enough quantities to mess my brain up and will it do anything? And then they report on it. I mean, I think it's a great public service. I don't know. What do you think, Jack?
Yeah, I support it. Yeah, yeah. Uh anyways. Uh also obviously, like um uh spices that are toxic in super high doses, like uh Thujone is toxic in super high doses, and it's very prevalent in like sage extracts. I wouldn't pound sage extract.
I wouldn't pound clove oil extract. It's an anesthetic. There can be other, you know, there's so things that are high in thujone, things that are high in uh usinol, there's there's all sorts of things. These things aren't meant to be eaten in super high quantities. And in fact, uh one of the things that you know we were uh coming across, we didn't make it into the uh exhibition that the museum is doing, but um, you know, most of these uh things are toxic or at least irritants or noxious in super high quantities.
So if you want to see what it's like for an insect, the reason insects don't eat mint, take a like a quarter teaspoon of pure mint oil and put that sucker in your mouth. You you did that with me, right, Stas? It is freaking ban banana lamas. Anyway, what? Wait, we're over?
It's one. Uh all right. Well, sorry about the whole uh streets of Philadelphia issue. Uh I've got propane questions to get to. I've got Wagyu beef.
Listen, Wagyu beef. Uh who wrote that in? Who wrote that in? Kevin from Los Gatos. I'll answer you more in depth, but listen, you already have the beef, so I have to answer you quickly right now.
Listen, listen, listen. The reason you need he had a he's by the way, people, what he's doing is he's aging a uh he's aging a big what does he got? He's got a wagyu, but what does he got? He's got uh a seven rib uh A5 Wagyu beef roast. He wants to dry age it for 30 days, and his fridge that he has it in uh is running at 55, 50 to 55% relative humidity.
And he's wondering does he really needed to get up to 70 or 80 because he doesn't he's doesn't he's like I don't care if it if I lose a little more moisture because that's um just more flavor, right? No, no, no, no. Get the moisture up. Listen, you're gonna case harden. That's what you're worried about.
If you go that low on your moisture, you're apt to case harden the outside of the meat, which is not what you want for proper aging. So take a salt pan, old school, take a pan, saturated salt solution, put extra crystals in the bottom. It should be able to maintain about 80, I think. Someone go look it up for me, tweet it back on out. We'll get you next week on the cooking issues.
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