Hi there. I'm Greg from Capal. Visit us at Kapow.com to check out our unique collection of everyday reusable products designed to help you do more with less. C U P P O W dot com. I'm Linda Palacio, host of A Taste of the Pass.
You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network in Brucewood, Brooklyn! Out of the back of Alberta's pizzeria in what looks to be a container that was uh pasted over with wood.
Jack, why did they like faux wood this container up? Why not? Well, I mean, like it's a container, like, you know, live in a raw container? Like corrugated. It's got like, you know, five billion year old reused, like, you know, upstate barn beams.
Well, it looks nice and it probably diffuses the sound a little bit, because if you just had the container, it would kind of sound like maybe being in a shower or something, you know. I don't know. I don't know. What do you think about the faux wood finish stuff? I like it.
Yeah. It's like a cabin. In a cat yeah. Excavating for a mine. You got your uh sweet sweet clementine in your head.
You're joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer. Lopez, how are you doing? Good. Yeah, and in the engineering booth today we have the intrepid Jack Inslee. We also have Rebecca, the uh what's her official title with the Booker and Dacks?
She's a Booker and Axe intern, but she's focusing very heavily on social media, which is what she's doing now. So you should all tweet at us, please. Yeah. At what handle? At Cooking Issues and Heritage underscore radio.
What's with the underscore Jack? You couldn't get it away from those like weird, like, you know It's a constant battle, Dave. The underscore. If if somebody in the Cooking Issues Army can can like, you know, reconquer the regular Heritage Radio Twitter handle. Take some.
We'll do something for them. Listen, I'm not saying you should find these people and threaten them. I'm just saying if you did find them and threaten them, we would gladly accept the handle without the underscore. But we're not advocating that you threaten them. You know what I'm saying?
Correct. Uh by the way, call in your questions to 7184972128. That's 7184972128. I actually had to call in yesterday. I was on the uh cutting the curd program.
Yeah. Yeah. Plastic wrap. Hey, I have to do something before we start the show. Okay.
I have to give the biggest shout out ever to Kevin Scott, who gave us a very generous donation. Thank you so so so so so so so so much, Kevin Scott. Is that you uh vaporizing his enemies? Yeah, that's that's what just happened. They're gone.
Yeah, all Kevin, all your enemies, totally, totally vaporized. By the way, speaking of uh uh not speaking of vaporization, but who's it who's kapow? New Yeah. Yeah, they're new. And it's spelled with a C like Capow.
Like company pow. Not like when I spell Capow, I spell it Batman style, which is K A. C-U-P-P-O-W. Wait, like cup. Pow, yeah.
Like take take the cup that you're drinking out of and don't don't smash into smithereens, because that would be against the mission of reuse, reduce. Actually, I guess it's reduce first, then reuse, then recycle. Those are that's the order that we're supposed to do everything, right? Yeah. It's a cool company though.
Check them out. Capow.com and you'll hear more on the break from them. So what are they what do they sell? Coffee socks. What coffee socks?
A coffee sock. What the hell is a coffee sock? What is a coffee sock? Well, they've got travel mugs and we tell you something about coffee. I mean something about coffee.
No feet, no feet on coffee. Don't require socks. What is that? Is that like a coffee mug sock? Yeah.
So you don't have to throw away the freaker. What's a freaker? Coffee freaker. What's a freaker? I don't know.
That sounds like something. What's a freaker, Jack? This sounds like something you would know what it is. Um I could guess, but speaking of which, what what was that country Sufi music you let us in with? I'll play something on the break.
That is actually thanks for the free plug. I just produced a record for my wonderful girlfriend Odetta Hartman. It's called 222. It's like psychedelic uh banjo bluegrass weird stuff, and it just came out last week and it's gotten some nice reviews and yeah, check it out. Odetta Hartman.
Odeta Hartman. 222. Did she own Odeta Hartman.com? She does. Nice.
But it does have like a little bit of Sufi twang to it, don't you think? Oh, yeah. A little bearn beern beer. I used to listen to so much uh koali music back in the day. So much koali music.
Alright. So let's get to some questions. I know we had a lot left over from uh from last week. Um I don't I gotta remember what they are though because uh, you know, because I'm a bad human being. Right?
Uh and because I've spent almost every single waking moment working either on the new Booker and Dax project, which I was gonna announce today, because someone asked us to announce it today, but I don't think I'm quite ready. Maybe maybe next week. You out there we're twittering in. Some people know already, because in private I'll tell you what I'm doing, but I don't want to announce over the air because I mean not like it, whatever. And what do you think, Sas?
I say announce it two months ago, but well, why? Liability. No, why announce I don't know. Why? Because it's gonna happen.
Yeah. Regardless. Is it we do we have the uh not the next project coming in soon? Do we know what the ETA is on that? The the the minor one, the cube.
Yeah, it can come out by Christmas. Oh, really? Well, we do have a product coming out that's not that's not a big deal, though. It's I uh people will like it. Okay, okay, so listen, explain it.
Listen, listen, listen. Listen, it's this is very difficult to wrap your head around, okay? Listen. So uh okay, when you shake a cocktail, right? It's been known for a long time among kind of higher end bartenders that shaking with a large cube, and by large, we're talking like two inches across, right?
Uh creates a uh better texture, right? So I was doing a I do events a lot, and uh what would happen is is no one would ever bring the big ice cubes to the event, right? We would have them at the bar, and but we wouldn't have them at the event, and then I would lose my mind, right? Because Nastasi's heard me say this a billion times. Does it make any sense to donate your time to get people to donate product and then show up and not do the best job you can just because of an ice cube?
No. Does it make any damn sense? No sense. Rebecca, does that make any sense? She's not on the mic right yet.
It doesn't make any sense. This is a quote, so I'm not this is not my curse. Makes no goddamn sense at all. That's him talking about the New York Post, which he he detested back in the day. Anyway, so uh you shake with the big ice cube uh and you get a better result, but the big ice cubes aren't necessarily sitting around.
So it struck me that it's not the actual ice cube that's important. In other words, it doesn't need to be ice, it's just the shape. So then I started looking at uh building fake ice cubes, right? But they're not ice cubes, they're just texturizers, right? Are they cold?
They're Stas. I love the I love you for this because it did No, they are not cold. They are not ice cubes. Neither do you put them in the fridge. They are unlike or the freezer.
They are unlike a whiskey stone. They are in fact designed to have almost no effect on the dilution of your cocktail at all. Right? No effect. Let me say this again.
They have no effect on the dilution of your cocktail at all. And you still have to put ice. But the good news is uh you don't have to freeze the big ice cubes for shaking anymore. So like at a at a at a at a at a well, like so if you come to our ice well and look at it at Booker and Dax, it's full of ice cubes, big ice cubes, that you're basically throwing away after it one shake, and they're melting into nothing, right? So it takes up a bunch of freezer space, and you have to melt all this ice.
Whereas you could just use the small crappy ice and get the same uh same texture as if you had a big ice cube just by throwing in this what are we calling it? Cocktail cube, this like texturizing cube that has no freaking chilling ability. Get it through your head. It doesn't have a rock. No, because a rock will affect the dilution.
But think of it as like it does not think of it as not existing other than as a texturizing effect, okay? It it and it oh, it has the same density as ice, it has uh it feels the same in a shaker as ice, but it has no chilling effect one way or t'other. Okay? All it's doing is making it better. Justin wants to know how can it not mess with your dilution?
Ah, that's an excellent question, Justin. Uh, because it uh it has very low, in other words, it will mess with it slightly. It will uh theoretically, uh, if it is warm, it will slightly cause slightly more dilution, and if it is cold, it will cause slightly less, but it itself has very low uh specific heat, so it doesn't store a lot of energy, and it's also an incredibly poor conductor insulator as i as well, so it doesn't uh transmit heat or suck heat in readily. So it's it's it's an insulator and it has a low specific heat. So it it has almost no effect, no noticeable effect on uh dilution.
But excellent excellent question, uh Justin. So anyway, so before Christmas, those are gonna be uh in in town, but uh the big goal is to launch the big product on a pre-sale by Black Friday. You think we're gonna do it, Stuz? You think we're gonna make it? You a Black Friday fan?
Uh am I the last three years. No, we no, our Thanksgivings have been ruined like three times straight, but like the the th the fact of the matter is is that anyone in retail knows you d you do like huge numbers at the end of the at the end of the year. You know what I mean? Sure do. Yeah.
BJD wrote in, uh, hey, uh, Hammer Dave and J Mall, which is your which is your nickname for the molecules. Is that the second time I got a J Mall? No, we just didn't get to the question last time. Oh, okay, good. Yeah.
I've seen nitrogen push cold toddy coffee around. Is that something I could do with my EC whipper? If so, what's your suggested procedure? Uh send for my iPhone BJD. Okay.
So, um, look, there's a couple different things. When people say peop I wish people get over listen, I want you next time you see someone and they m and they d they're not clear. Uh is it cool to tell people to like lightly smack people in the face? Like a little bit? Probably not.
Well, like punch them in the arm. Do it with your eyes. Oh, give them uh like an eyeball smackdown. That's what Stas does a hundred percent of the time. If Stas's eyeball smackdowns are effective, I would be like crushed into like a a disc on the ground, like a like a thin pasty disc.
Right? Anyways. Uh so do not and do not allow anyone else to confuse the difference between nitrogen, a uh the relatively inert uh diatomic gas that we breathe in and turn to a liquid so that we can freeze things. And nitrous oxide, the uh bubbly, soluble, sweet, narcotic uh um I should say anesthetic uh product that we um used for whipped cream, right? So you could use nitrogen to uh push coffee around, but I would guess that you want to use nitrous.
And the reason you want to use nitrous is because it creates the kind of um nice texture in a coffee drink that you lose when it's not hot, right? When it or when it hasn't been just made, especially espresso, which has that kind of like you know, that liveliness, and so it puts it puts it back in. So sure. I mean you do it, just put it. I have actually a couple of nitrous pus pushed uh recipes in uh in my uh in the book in liquid intelligence.
Uh you just you know, just shake it and shoot it, right? You know what I mean? Unless you unless you're looking to use your EC whipper to push out a larger quantity out of a bottle, in which case you gotta go through a rig and roll and blah blah blah. Does that make sense, Jack? Yeah, I've got a caller on the line when you're ready for it.
All right, caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, this is Devin from uh DC. I uh just got back from my honeymoon in Japan. And uh, of course, uh we went to the Sakiji uh fish market, we saw the Ikajime, which was awesome. Um my wife is an awesome person, so she insisted that I buy a Yanagi when we walk past the Aritsugu um stall in the outer Sahiji market.
Nice. Um and it's one of the you know sweet traditional single bevel uh deals. That's the way to go. And yeah, yeah. Uh I'm really excited to use it.
Um my question is I've never honed a single bevel knife, and I actually don't know if that's even something that you do. I I have the some DMT uh whetstones, but I also have a ceramic um honing um uh steel. And would you just put the flat side against the flat part of the the the honing steel, or do you not even hone uh yinagi at all? Okay, so uh I do things uh compared to what a Japanese person thinks is reasonable, I am uh the worst human in the world, a complete enemy enemy of quality. I do not follow I'm just letting you know straight up, I do not follow traditional sharpening procedure uh on any of my traditional uh Japanese knives.
Which DMT stone do you have? I have a set of three, like uh medium, fine, and extra fine, I think. Yeah, but do you have the interrupted ones? The interrupted pattern? Do you have the interrupted pattern or the solid pattern?
The one with the polka dots, is that interrupted? Yeah, the interrupted pattern. Okay. Do you have the really, really big one? No, they're like uh five inches long, maybe.
Yeah. Well, like for something like this, I find it's uh it's a lot easier. I uh it I know it's an investment, but like the the only one I use really is the the very big one that has uh two sides on it, and uh it's the uh fine extra fine, so that's green and red uh in the DMT colors. And I use the big ones, it's just gonna make your your life a lot easier. But even so, most uh Japanese remember you can't you can't switch you can't mentally switch between European American grits and Japanese grits.
It doesn't work, right? Uh but those guys are all using uh very, very fine grained uh water stones. But you don't need you don't need to do that, frankly. I mean I've been doing it for years, and no one's ever said, hey Dave, your Yanagi's not sharp. Instead they're like, Holy crap, that's a sharp knife.
You know what I mean? Uh and uh the good news is is that even though there's a mystique about this, uh the Japanese knives are the easiest knives to sharpen in the world, which is, you know, w I guess why they can make 'em out of a uh steel that requires so much freaking sharpening because you have to touch it up all the time. You know what I mean? Uh so I would I don't do anything other than uh I finish on the on the extra fine and I just um you know, y on the flat side, I will go almost a hundred percent flat. Like like basically flat.
Like I would but I won't I won't put any force into it at all. Like when I'm going on the green with what when I'm going on the less fine one, I'll maybe lift it up slightly to take any burr off. Like when I'm saying slightly, I mean like like a couple paper, couple pa thickness is the paper off the back edge, just so I'm not putting a mark on the back of my knife and then shump, but then on my last one, it's literally just like gliding over over that thing. It should be almost nothing. You know what I mean?
Uh you're really just taking the burr off on that on that side. And it's um because remember, when you look at the back, it should be slightly con cave on that side anyway. So you should it's not like you should be getting a bunch of scrape alongs a crow on the back of the knife if if if if you're doing if you're doing it right. And you'll find that it's the easiest knife in the world to sharpen. It's so easy to sharpen and it's so freaking sharp.
Sometimes I will um I will run the knife backward. I have a leather strop, so sometimes I'll I'll just uh like lightly d drag it backwards uh on uh a strop to take off anything off the edge that it's done. But I don't I don't go to any hyper fine stuff, I don't do any like honing or polishing of it and because you're doing it like every time you use it. You know what I mean? Every time you bust it out, you the touch it up and you go.
So you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. I I I guess uh I guess it's a commitment. Which is fine. It's like literally it's like it's like a like a minute, especially if you're used to it.
And this is the problem I have with a lot of like big systems. So I have uh um one of the um I forget the name of it, but it's very popular uh sharpener that you bolt down and you have like the thing that holds the exact angle and it goes up to like eight million, it goes up to like basically what looks to be it feels like that it's not abrasive at all, like it's like finer than even toothpaste and anything. And you know, you you scrape it along the thing and it maintains the angle and stuff. You're never gonna use it every day because it's a it's it's a it's a thing. It's a it's a rigmarole to to to use it, right?
Whereas I have a big DMT, the big DMT thing that's flat, it doesn't throw off grit. I don't need to soak it like a Japanese water stone, right? So literally I just rinse off any grit that's on it, throw it on my surface, shap, shap, shap, slap, slap, slap, shap, shap, shap, and I'm ready to cut, and then you have a Yanagi where every time you draw it through a piece of fish, you are a happy person, right? So is it worth like you know, forty-five seconds to a minute to prepare yourself when you're gonna cut an expensive piece of fish anyway, such that you get a cut that makes you want to cry. It's so much fun to cut, the single draw through without that line because you had to push the other direction.
Don't you hate that line when you have to push in the other direction? Yeah. Yeah, you hate it. So it's like it's it's totally worth the time. It's so it feels like a commitment when you're starting, but when you're actually using it, it's like so much more fun to cut that way that it's like you're not gonna we're uh you're not gonna think about it.
Yeah. Cool, thanks a lot. Alright, no problem. Uh but I'm sure someone will write in that I'm an enemy of quality and a terrible person for the way that I sharpen it. I have another call that just came in.
Alright, caller, you're on the air. Uh hey Dave. Um, Dan, Seattle, or just south of there anyway. Um I've been doing pork barely at sixty-five degrees uh Celsius for twenty four hours, and as long as I do it with a dry rub, it comes out perfectly. Okay.
I'm I mean absolutely perfectly. But I'm trying to get basically to do um Ivan Raman's pork belly in the sous vide, and I cannot reduce it enough to keep the texture from going completely weird in the bag. Huh. Well, so how reduced is the like w tell me w tell me what what what liquids are going in the bag. Okay, so it's it's it's soy sauce, sake, and I mean I mean he calls for mirroring, but good mirroring is so hard to find in the US, I just add more sake with more sugar.
Okay. Garlic and ginger. It's nothing real complicated. And I mean I reduce it I mean as much as I can reduce it and still and get more of it out of the pot than I leave stuck to the pot. Right.
And it's still what happens to the texture. I mean, just the the texture of the pork comes out completely different. Um so, like more spongy or more like it's poached? Yeah, yeah, it's okay, so like w when I do a dry rub and I've done three di three or four different ones. Um it's one of the b best things I cook.
Um I mean it comes out perfectly firm, but perfectly tender. It's just it's just still sliceable. Right. And you sear it off for, you know, a minute by whatever's convenient that day. Um I just got the uh palladium screens for my cerezol, and that is a very good trick.
Uh you know, and you sear it off, I mean it's just it's just absolutely amazing, but I cannot get this soy sauce socky flavor profile. Um how much liquid is coming out of the regular dry rub bag when you're cooking? Um probably two tablespoons of fat and one tablespoon of liquid. I mean, guessing, I mean that's cooking more or less an eight ounce portion. Right.
So now are you on the dry rub, are you letting it sit for a while before you bag it? Like how much. No, I am um I I I just do a fairly high salt percentage, like one third salt, two-thirds, two thirds of whatever the spice is. I mean five spice works great. And I just, you know, mix that up, pat it on the belly, pat it on there heavy, uh and straight in the bag, and then you know, it's just the the results are too good that you know.
Yeah. And your vacuum level with um your vacuum level is the same in both cases, you think? Uh well, it's exactly the same bag on exactly the same machine, and I mean I've done this with exactly the same piece of pork, because I mean like a Costco sells it will sell you a whole belly, you know, basically five pounds of belly, and you I portion that out and um, you know, uh put two or three or four things on it and put it in the freezer. Well, how much how much liquid would you say is going into the bag uh when you're doing it this other way? Probably two to three tablespoons.
I mean, I'm really trying not to put too much in there. I've been trying to put less and less as I try to get past this problem. And the less you put in is is the therefore the better the texture or no? It doesn't seem to matter. Any any starting liquid at all and it and it just doesn't work.
Um there some people are there's some dry rub has sugar, right? Soy sauce powder? I mean clearly you can't socky oh no, there is. There's there's uh there is soy sauce powder. There's spray-dried soy sauce, and there's um and there's also um yeah, there's granulated soy sauce.
But but your your dry rub has sugar in it or no? Uh my my dry rub what your dry rub also contains sugar or no? Uh I don't think any of my dry rubs contains sugar. I'm just trying to be the whole deal? I don't know.
I'm trying to figure out what the differences are between them. You would think that like an extra tablespoon of liquid isn't going to necessarily make that big of a difference, right? So I'm just trying to figure out what it is. Yeah. I I I mean, that's why I just been shaking my head about it.
But I mean, you know, I with the dry rub, and I've done at least I've done five spice, I've done this um uh more or less Thai one from Pensies, I've done um Yeah. I've done barbecue. I mean, they all just work amazing, but one drop of liquid and it just goes to heck. Um that's the thing. I wonder if like in other words, like let's say you were to do the I don't know how like willing you are to mess with it, but let's say you were to do your dry rub next time, right?
And you and you were to just throw like a tablespoon or two tablespoons of like uh like what sugar or no stock. Like whatever. Like whatever you have. Okay. Like, and then see whether or not that is uh like also bad.
Because remember also, that like if how much spice are you putting in? Is it such you have to brush it off at the end, or does it all melt melt in? Like the spices are going to be absorptive. I mean, you have a you you're putting an absorptive thing into also something that has less water in it to begin with. So I'm wondering whether or not like the only the so the things is there's there's added water, there's sugar.
I don't think the ginger is making that big of a deal. I guess it's potentially possible, but I don't think the ginger's uh doing too much to the texture. Uh you know, I've been wrong many times, but the it the slight amount of alcohol, I don't think is gonna do anything to it. Um, especially since you've reduced the heck out of it, right? I mean I mean again, you know, I just I try to reduce it until I'm like just terrified of burning it.
Right. And and remember with the amount of sugar and other solids in that, you'd also think that the water activity of that stuff would be quite low with all the added uh sugar. I would run a test to see whether or not just adding a couple tablespoons of neutral liquid to your bag totally ruins the texture. In which case you're in a situation where you might want to go all powdered, and they do make powdered everything, right? Or another thing I would do is you could add a little, like we said before, add a little sugar to one of your dri I would like next time you do it and you portion them all out, I would take one bag, I would add sugar to your dry rub to the sweetness that you think you're gonna get.
Uh I would do another one and throw in a couple tablespoons of water and see whether that what that does to the texture. Obviously the taste won't be the same. And uh and then you could kind of work from there, figure out which one it is. At the same time, you can go um online. I know a lot of uh powdered soy sauce, spray dried soy sauce, granulated soy sauce.
I've seen them, I've seen them all. The um I had one last thing, but I forget what it I have one last thing, but I forget what it is. Oh, yeah. Do they taste both like they have the same level of salt in them when you're done? Um well, I mean, they're just such different taste, it's sort of hard to judge.
Right. Because another thing is that salt in the thing is gonna firm up the meat. So if it's a lack of firmness, it might also be that you're just low on salt. In which case, uh, I would you could like throw salt, but I don't want you to oversalt it, but if the soy sauce one is not as salty as the one that you normally make, then what you could do is salt it down, put in the reduced stuff and go, and it might bring you back to where you once belonged. You know what I'm saying?
Got it. So those are the things that I would try. I would try to try to make a judgment in your head about how salty the uh soy sauce one is when you're done. Uh see whether sugar has an effect. I don't think we have I don't think I've ever really cooked uh a lot of meat in a bag with a lot of sugar.
I don't I don't know that I have. I'm sure someone has on Twitter here, they'll they'll chime in. Jack, is anyone chiming in on this stuff? Not yet. Someone chime in on this chime.
Chime in on the boards. But anyway, uh let us let us know how it goes. Thank you very much. Alrighty. Uh hey, Jackie.
Let's take yeah, let's take a really quick break. I've got a caller on the line, so callers stay tight. We'll get to you in just a second. Uh, first a few words from Capow. Americans throw away 58 billion disposable cups every year.
A lot of those cups will still be around long after you're dead. Kind of dark, I know. But I'm Greg from Capow, and we decided to do something about it. We created the only glass travel mug that's a hundred percent US made. You can check it out alongside our complete line of everyday reusables at Kapow.com.
C-U-P-P-O-W.com. So I had to play a little tiny piece of that because um it's such a it's such a cool coincidence. You you asked about that music before the show started. I told you I produced that album for Odetta Hartman. So the name of the album is two two two.
And it just happens to be episode two two two of cooking issues. What isn't that weird? Two hundred and twenty we've done this two hundred and twenty-two times, Dad. Shockingly, yes. Oh man.
That's crazy, huh? That's your girlfriend's voice. That's it. Dude, you gotta you gotta hang out with the Sabri brothers, man. Yeah.
Sweet sweet Makbull Sabri could do some some uh koali chance with that, it'd be sick. Put put uh, you know that you yeah, nothing. I think he's the dead one. I forget which one of the famous Sabris is dead. Maybe it's Makbull.
I don't know. Anyway, uh caller. Oh, call a caller, yeah, call her, call her, you're on the air. Hey, hey, hey Dave, how are you? Doing alright.
Um, okay, so I uh I had a friend ask me this question, so I'm uh calling you because I couldn't figure it out. So he had about uh 15 leaves of fresh bay that he infused into um some leather bee gin from Chicago. Two ways. Once he blanched it, and the other time he didn't. And both times he stored it in an airtight container and it was a really great green color initially, but then turned to nasty brown after a couple days.
I'm familiar with nasty brown. That's my that's my nickname. That's right. So uh so his question is why did that happen? He thought at least the blanching would have killed those those enzymes and and he could have had a great color.
Well, like uh it like why is it oxidizing over time in straight gin? I mean you a lot of times you'll get oxidation, so I'm trying to figure out how to how to prevent it. You would be you would if you blanched it enough, well, okay. I mean, bay leaves are tough suckers, right? Because they're so thick and waxy.
Like I don't know how long he blanched them. Um but I've never had good luck with I gotta be honest, I've never had good luck with bay leaves because it takes forever to infuse them and they don't nitromble well. Um and they're so they're so tough. Why are they turning brown? I mean, certain things are gonna turn brown, like like uh what if you dried it first?
Dried at first? Yeah, but I guess that kind of kills the fact that you're using fresh, right? But what if you what if you dried it first? Because you know, like that's an easy way to keep mint really, really just to not from turn brown, right? Is to dry it before you before you put it in to the stuff, or um like why is it the chlorophyll from spinach in like chartreuse just never turns brown?
Why? Right. Right. Do you think if he tried a different infusion technique instead of maybe like a vacuum infusion and ISI, do you think it would hold the color better? Or no.
He's just doing natural regular natural infusion, right? So uh I think it would just ex it would accelerate it, but uh but I don't think it would prevent anything uh from happening. And also, bay leaf isn't appreciably uh watering it down, so it's not like you're changing the uh you know the environment of it. Um I don't think of bay leaf as being hyper green anyway. Do you stuzz?
No. You think of it as being olive grab, right? I've used fresh bay. Tastes good, hard to get into uh bo would did it taste good to stuff? Um I don't know.
I haven't tasted it. I think he said it tasted okay. So he's like he's letting you look at it but not letting you taste it? That's so wrong. That's so wrong.
No, no, no. Okay. Uh he he's texting me, he says it it tasted awesome. Oh, okay. Uh and did it taste any different after it turned brown?
Ooh, I don't know. Let's see what he says. Yeah. Because like w most of the time when things are turning brown, there's a there's a concomitant uh uh oxidized taste as well. Right.
Exactly. And uh he says that it doesn't taste any different. Uh yeah, then you know what else? You could also you could freaking cheat. You know what I mean?
You can just add some some like chlorophyll, some green style, go like go chartreuse on that. No one no one accuses no one accuses the Carthusians of being bastards just because they uh put a little spinach juice into their into their product. You know what I'm saying? I didn't know that. Yeah, how do you think they do that?
I never dry brown herbs into it, right? Because I've seen the buckets that they pull the herbs out of and then they you know they make it all nice and green. Well, I guess they distill it, it comes out clear. And then they add, yeah, spin like they they they say it's chloride. They chlorophyll it's chlorophyll.
Okay. Where where would I find that? Modernist uh pantry.com? They probably you know what? If if they if they if they don't have it, they'll probably buy it.
And also there's like all kind of um people who think that chlorophyll is gonna save their their guts from like you know the ravages of whatever they do or do not do to them. So people you can buy it on Amazon. You can buy chlorophyll powder. Oh, okay. And you know, instead of making you you can make it from spinach, right?
And there's plenty of like um what's it called, uh YouTube videos on how to get the green out of spinach without the uh kind of nasty black black stuff to to color things green. Plenty, plenty. Yeah. Uh and that'll probably punch the punch the green up. As long as the flavor of the of the liquor is not going uh oxidized and bad, then I would just cheat with the color rather than like worry your head about it too much.
Okay, awesome. That's uh that's great. Thanks so much, Dave. Hey, no problem. Uh all righty.
So uh another caller. Okay, caller, you're on the air. Hey, it's Elliot Havner from Chicago. Hey hey, Elliot. What's I hear you got in an argument with someone over who is the true Elliot.
Apparently, there's like dueling Elliots. Yeah, there's some uh beef going on in the chat room. I don't know what's going on with that. Nice. Yeah.
I got a question for you about cooking some sausages this weekend. So I made 30 lamb sausages uh last night, and I'm gonna be cooking like a um a Weber grill and Weber charcoal, whatever gas, and I was still probably able to think about doing like a poach and a grill, but I need some advice on timing everything. Okay. Uh what like what what are we talking here? Like Merguez?
What size are we talking? Yeah, well, it's uh it's that's uh kind of mixed, but it's a regular like hog casing. Okay. So what I always do on this, I would go um a a lot depends on like whether you need 'em to look a hundred percent perfect, but I always prefer like the the high the high heat finish. So like they know, if I were you, it's no offense to people in their and the gas grills, but I've never had a gas grill that I was like, yeah, that's really freaking hot.
Like that really makes me feel happy about my life, how hot it is. Have you ever encountered a gas grill that made you feel happy about your life? No, I need some uh serious power for that. Yeah, power. Right.
So I would I would do like the big charcoal and I and I would go like, you know, uh my average temperature to finish things is roughly kind of like as close as I can get it to the surface of the sun. Uh because you can't really over go on uh on a charcoal uh heat like that. It's not like using a blowtorch, you can't go too over on it. So I would go like super hot like that, then I would do uh are the people that you're gonna feed it to at all squeamish? No, not at all.
Okay. Then I would do a hundred and forty degrees, which is uh s oh plus it's lamb anyway, it's not well, but you have pork fat in it, right? But it doesn't matter. It's not gonna be no, you know, I didn't I didn't use any pork fat, I used all lamb fat, but it's a pretty good supply. Oh yeah?
Was it nice and firm the fat? Did you like does uh is the lamb have like a firm enough fat to really Yeah, you know, I I um I weighed out about twenty percent, but I think my yield probably got like somewhere between fifteen and twenty percent at the end, you know, if it just freaked a little bit at the end, but I wait I waited afterward the stuff I took out. Right. I think I'm gonna summer between ten fifteen. If you're doing if you're getting smear and you're uh and like you're doing lamb fat, then like low temp it is a hundred percent the way to go because that way if you were gonna get like a lot of bleed out if it wasn't gonna hold, the then uh then the low temp you're gonna like be a freaking champion.
You know what I'm saying? So norm most normally with any sausage, I'm doing uh I do uh sixty Celsius, which is you know one forty. Uh now I should be able to get that on the stove 'cause I got an electric stove and it's got pretty good temperature controls. I should be fine. Oh, you don't have a circ?
What's that? You don't have a circulator? No, I don't have a circulator. I see assume circular. Yeah, but you can do one for one forty is not that hard.
So but I would I would do it in water in bags. And I would put what I typically do is I put uh oh, you could do a poach. Remember that time? Did we do beers beer that time, Stas? Yeah, you could do it that way too.
You can do a uh a you could do a poach. You can do a poach. All right. But if you made the sausages, man, they have circulators now for like like they're almost free. They're almost free.
Oh, I know I I gotta get one of those. They're almost they're good. I like I like going over the wide fire, so they gotta they gotta keep it uh a little rusty. Yeah, yeah, all right. But anyway, so yeah, so you like uh oh, you know what another thing you could do?
You could do the old school uh the way that people you could get like a a cooler, calculate the weight of sausage and then the the weight of your poaching liquid, and then like dump it in and let it just cook through and settle down, and then you can just pull them out of the out of the vat as they go and go bang bang bang, right? So like if you have like a stock that you like the flavor of and you know that it's like uh well, you just have to calculate what the what the finished temperature is. And there's they're not that big, so it doesn't take that long to cook them through as long as they're submerged. So uh, you know, like you know, like like half hour or something like that. And so and I got lamb stock already too, so I could put that in there and then finish them on the grill to pull them off and put them on the plate.
Yeah, so then you could like take the cooler, like you like a like a couple hours beforehand, you put the water, you know, you put the water in at the strike temperature, which you know any homebrew shop, any homebrew site will tell you how to calculate strike temperature for things like mashes and uh you know, and um it's it's a little bit different because uh you have to you have to assume that the thermal mass of your sausage is roughly the same as water, right? So you figure that uh uh unlike uh I don't know how they calculate, it's been a long time, whether they bother doing the calculations on thermal mass for when they're doing malt. I don't know. But anyway, check it out. But yeah and and a bunch of other people have calculated the strike temperatures uh for um cooking low temp in uh in uh standard five gallon coolers before or whatever you want.
So anyways, so like a couple hours beforehand uh you do that and then the temperature slowly drops over the next um over over the couple of hours, which is actually a benefit to you because it means that you're not gonna overcook on the finish, but they'll still be warm, right? So win win win, pull them right out with tongs, right on the freaking like hotter than the sun grill. Your broth will taste better, you can use it later and make a sauce with it, and as long as it's a very, very flavorful liquid, it's not gonna ruin the flavor of your sausage too much. Yeah, it's gonna be good. But get a circulator.
They're like how much they cost now, Stas. Uh well, like one. Yeah, they're like $150, right? Yeah. Well, and look I'm gonna tell you what like uh w whatever holidays you may or may not s uh celebrate, get someone to get it because like it's gonna make your life so much easier with the stuff you're doing.
It'll it can s depending on what how you cook and what you cook, it can save you money in the end because you know you know you'll never get it. Chat rooms going nuts. We got Christmas coming up and my birthdays are right around there too, so we'll be good to go. Get a circulator. But what is the chat room saying about this, Jack?
They can't believe he doesn't have a circulator. Maybe he's not the number of things. I'll say this though. I can solve the real Elliot question. Oh obviously the next donation that comes in from an Elliot.
Oh that'll be the real Elliot. Oh man. Oh man. Alright. Uh okay.
So uh do we did we talk about the uh four minutes. Did we talk about the Did we talk about Mastiha last time? Mastika? Okay, so we got. Yeah, right.
We talked about it. We didn't answer ask George's question because someone else called in about Mastika, right? Very hard to keep track of uh what's uh what's going on. Oh, this one actually uh would be good for um this one would be good for the the the Twitterverse out there that what do what do you call the people on the Heritage Radio site? What what what is that called?
What's the chat room called? Oh, I don't know. We had to come up with a name for that. I don't know. Yeah, you gotta do that.
This one in because like I'm gonna just say right now that my opinion is not good. Here we go. Joel still writes in on chili. Uh hey, Nastasia, Dave, Jack, and uh whoever else is hanging around, which is Rebecca today. Um it's getting to be chili cook-off season.
You fan of chilies, Stas? Yes. What kind of chili do you have? Right. Any kind of chili?
Wait, what do you mean? It's not any kind of chili with curry. Yeah, it's not chili, so let's not get into this conversation. Oh, yeah. Remember, Stas probably makes her chili without cumin.
So, like she's being cumin. She's automatically Wait, you hate cumin? Is that what you said? I just don't put it in. It's not chili then.
I know. It's not freaking chili. Let's get to the question. Okay, okay, okay. Uh and I'm really looking to put some effort into finalizing my recipe this year.
I haven't heard you speak on the topic at all. So do you have any special uh tips, uh tricks or modern or otherwise that might make uh uh make a good chili and put it over the top? I don't know if uh circulator would help at all, but maybe there's something interesting that can be done with the initial chili mixture. Do you have all uh a favorite brand of blend of dried chilies, a favorite uh favorite method of adding extra flavor, beer, chocolate, marmeat, anchovies, tomato paste, beef bones, bourbons. You like using short ribs as the meat.
Any tips would be most appreciated. Love the show. Uh, Joel. Okay, so listen, I'm gonna want people to tweet in because I don't ha I'll tell you how I make it, but I don't think that I have any like my tricks like aren't aren't amazing, right? Like I use a pressure cooker and I over over overdose on uh on alliums, right?
Because uh they they you know get kind of totaled in the pressure cooker, right? I use like hyper reduced uh I what I do it's super it's fast, so I'm not doing like k chili cook off, like I'm not like trying to be like the best human in the world on this. I just I'm going for kind of uh speed. But I used uh like a hyper reduced stock, which I uh blend with um I blend with a mixture of dried chilies. It's usually like whatever I can get, but I like a I like a mixture.
I like I don't like them like hyper smoky, like I like like a I'll put I'll throw a couple of smoky ones in, but I like like you know, like a mixture like uh guajillo and pasilla and like uh some others, and not not that spicy because my family won't won't do it, but I like a good blend of dried chilies. Uh blend that with the stock and the vita prep, uh, and then I'll pre I'll sear off all of the meat in the pressure cooker and then throw it in uh do off the alliance, throw it in with the um throw it in with the uh with the hyper reduced stock blend with the chilies, then I'll pressure cook that down, pull it, reduce the stock, blend in into then I'm gonna blend in the tomato paste, not before, and then oh I also sometimes put in uh beer and or tequila, but then uh then uh uh reduce it, then add it back to the meat and then stir it and go. That's typically how I do. I also I also fold back the chicharrones. Uh uh if I'm using I usually put some pork, by the way, I didn't mention this.
I usually am using some pork in there too, and I fold some crunchy chicharrones back back in when I'm done. Uh but I don't really have any good tricks, but I'm sure the people on the chat room will have excellent chili chili tricks. Is anyone giving us excellent chili trick tricks, Jack? Uh, not yet. All right.
So, uh how much how much longer do I have? Like uh no time. You're the worst Alan from the UK has apples, and we need to think about some apple things uh for him uh for for next week. And then we have all of this week's questions, including ones on chickpea aquafabla, which we will get to the next time on cooking issues. Thank you to everybody in the chat room.
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