Today's program is brought to you by Firesider, a health tonic based on the traditional New England cure all of raw apple cider vinegar and honey. For more information, visit firesider.com. Hey, what's up? This is Jack Insley, host of Full Service Radio. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn.
If you like this show, 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 from Roberta's Pizza Wee and where? Bushwick. Bushwick Brooklyn.
That's that's Bushwick. Give me the face. Give me the Bushwick face. I can't anymore. Ah, it's just she's dead inside.
No, this let me tell you something about Stas. Once she gets to a certain point, she's just dead inside. You know what I mean? You're no longer even worth disdain. Like, disdain takes energy, people.
Does. Calling your questions to 718497-2128. That's 718497-2128. Sadly, we are not joined today in the I don't know where she is. Oh no.
Jack, yeah. Yes, Rebecca. Don't know where our uh our live tweeting guru is uh is not here. She quit already. Wow.
Strong. Uh well, it wouldn't be the first time. Right? Wouldn't be the first time. Um, but we have Liz in the booth today.
How are you doing, Liz? I'm great. I'm just gonna answer your first few calls here and get the get the show on the road, man. You got so many fans, so eager. Oh, let's go fine, so kind.
We have a caller right now. Yeah. So today, Nastasi and I are going to taste uh the cider that I made. Maybe if we have time, talk about how uh, you know, how I made it, how it's a little different from regular cider. Uh I had some other things if we can get to get if we have time to get to it.
I have the new Ferros grinder from Orphan Espresso, the coffee grinder, and I can do a little on-air review of that. Uh spoiler alert, I need to I needed to do some modifications to it to make it exactly kind of the way I wanted to, so we could talk about that later if we have time. But we have a caller right now? We do. Alright, caller, you are on the air.
Hey, Dave, Nastasha, not Jack, unfortunately. This is Antoine from Booker Tone. Are you all good? He will be sad he missed your call. Today's question is about uh simple syrups, how to make them shelf stable.
And then also I took your orja recipe, and unfortunately, whenever I mix it with acid, it like clumps up, and I didn't know if you had any work around with that. Yeah. So the usually when you get clumping on that, and you're using it like in a in a shaken cocktail, right? Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, uh, usually what that means is you have kind of a high uh amount of nut solids left in, which by the way, one of my favorite words, nut solids. You like that one, Stas? That's kind of a good one. That's on the that's a Nastasia approved term, nut solids. But the um there's a couple of workarounds on it.
Um like uh you you put the ticoloid in? Yes. You could hit it with a little more uh you could hit it with a little more Xanthan. I don't really think it's the I don't think the jacking the Arabic's gonna help much. I mean you could try just upping the the level in the in the overall system, but usually it's the um usually it's the Xanthan that you need to uh up a little bit, but not a lot, right?
So there's very little Xanthan in Ticoloid 210 uh or 310, it's mostly Arabic. But uh I think a little bit more Xanthan might might help. Maybe adding a little, maybe upping the entire system uh might might help a little bit, but it's definitely uh a question of like high high nut high nut solids. Um trying to think of what we used to solve it just by post-blending it, right, Stas? Yeah.
Like so, like in other words, like when we originally made our uh like when Stas and I were doing like pecan bourbon sours, we started originally with pure pecan oil. Pure pecan oil will not break at all uh with a ticloid. But when we started adding pecan nut solids back, we would start getting clumping. It would unclump if you just went and like hit it for a second, but you can't really do that at a bar. So I would try to up the I would try to up it a little bit and see see whether you can um see whether you can get it.
Huh. Let me think on it. If I think of anything else, I'll get back to you. Is it but try that and let me know let me know how it works because I hate that the cloudy look, that puffy look on the inside of a drink. Yeah.
I hate that so much. Don't you hate that? Yeah, I do. It's the worst. Yeah, like you, for instance, like in your recipe, you call for like it's uh 1.75 ticloid and then 0.2 grams xanthan.
How much more would you recommend? Like, I guess going up. What was the base? What was the water base? Uh uh just the water.
Like I mean how much water for that much are you talking percentages? It's what 660 of water. Yeah, I mean, look, try doubling the Xanthan and see what happens. It's still a very small amount in the finished drink. You just want the pour ability of the orja to remain uh high.
And you know, obviously, like blend the crap out of the orja before you do it. How are you getting rid of the solids? I'm sterning them like five different times. Yeah, it's kind of centrifuge is really good at this. But I'm just saying, unfortunately, I'm I'm holding out for uh a good one I've heard is on the way.
Yeah, we're we're we're even though we haven't officially announced what it is yet, we're still uh we're already kind of taking suggestions on names. So check out this one. I don't really like okay, so like uh the obvious name is uh clear's all, right? Right? That's the obvious name, clears all.
But the problem is is that unlike a Searzole, which literally sears all, like if it's a food stuff, it is cerebral, right? With a Searsol. I mean, this isn't gonna clear everything, it's just gonna do like a lot of the stuff that we need done. So I wouldn't call it like it clears all because I'm a truth in advertising sort of a fellow, even though it does make a certain sort of you know what I mean? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, uh, so I will try to stabilize eventually. I should try to stabilize eventually some um just plain strained um nut milk or jazz, but it's gotta be just upping the Xanthan a little more. Try upping the Xanthan in the batch you already have and see what happens, and just uh tweet on back and let me know what happens.
Or if anyone else in the Twitter universe there uh has uh had experience adding some more stabilization to it, um just let us let us know. Also, how do you recommend doing like stabilizing just other simple syrups that I might make as well? Oh, yeah, yeah. Without affecting the flavor. That depends on um well, okay.
So like uh you mean stabilize them. Look. Like self-stabilizing. Right. The main the main problem in simple syrups is the is uh is kind of y yeast and mold formations, right?
So, you know, it's all a question of what you want to add. Like a little bit of benzo it will kill like most of the yeasty stuff and stop that from happening. But you know, how long do you want them to last? Uh a few months at least. But like if like make them like and what what are we talking?
Like how like can they take heat? Can you throw them in like a vac bag and just like poach them at a low temperature to kill the yeast and then keep them in your fridge? Nothing dangerous is gonna grow at fifty percent sugar. Do you know what I'm saying? So like so like what I would do is like throw them into a into a bag, like circum at a relatively low temperature that's not gonna mess with the with the flavor, but is enough to kill, you know, any kind of yeast kind of stuff, like you know, mid mid fifties somewhere Celsius, and then uh throw that in the in the fridge and then refrigerated uh, you know, uh once it's been pasteurized, it should last.
You know, I don't think I mean someone can get back and tell me I'm wrong, but nothing bad should grow and uh no molds will grow after you do that because they're not gonna survive that and no yeasts are gonna grow. And I've never had I've never been contaminated with any sort of like vile bacteria. It's all been kind of yeasts and molds and uh and that little bit of heat'll do it, or you could just hit it with something like uh benzoit, but then you've added benzoit to it. You know what I mean? It's and so then like, you know, uh some people will say they can taste it, or some people will think that you're an evil human being for doing it, so they're you know, just you know, go the other way.
What do you think about adding like the tablespoon of vodka around? Oh, I don't know if that's enough. Is it did have other people had good luck with that? Uh I haven't tried it out yet. I didn't I don't want to ruin it here.
I mean experimenting with them. Uh I mean I don't think it's gonna r ruin it. I just don't know if it's enough. You know what I mean? Like so you're looking for hurdles and so if you figure I mean you have to figure out how much of your I mean, ru ha half of the syrup by weight is by weight is um water.
But uh but you gotta calculate how much water is in it because the density of a regular simple syrup is roughly one one point two one point two three, roughly. And so like a liter of that, a liter of the product will be uh will weigh one point two three kilos, uh half of which is water. So there's roughly six hundred and change mils, six hundred and fifteen mils of water in every liter of simple syrup. Okay, I can't. And so and so then you'll know what your alcohol content is, and so like you know, a couple tablespoons and you know, is not ever gonna get you too high up.
But the question is is is a little bit of alcohol enough to kill uh or to prevent yeast and mold from growing so long as the sugar content is so high. And that I don't know because I don't know how close you are to the threshold. Now you could you could make rich simples, right? And those those are even more stable, but mold as anyone who has stored maple syrup for long periods of time not in the fridge will tell you uh mold will grow on the top of maple syrup. Okay.
Solid. And it makes it disgusting. You ever had you ever had moldy maple syrup? I have. It's gross.
Maple syrup? Moldy maple syrup. Oh no, I've never had moldy maple syrup. It's the worst. It you know, as good as maple syrup is, that's how bad moldy maple syrup is.
I would say like I would say here's how I think I would I would rank these kinds of things. Rotten pistachio is the top, right? That's the worst thing in the world, a rotten pistachio. Stas, do you agree? Gross.
I've never had one of those uh bad pine nuts that wipes out your palate for a million years. But a rotten pistachio is way way up there. Maple s like moldy maple syrup, not that bad, but pretty damn bad, especially considering how good you you think it's gonna be. Liz, what's your least favorite bad thing? Uh I I would have to go with when you when you get like the bad pistachio.
Yeah, that's like disgusting. It ruins your whole day. I would agree. I would agree. And you know what?
It's always like you've eaten a lot of pistachios, and then you get that one, and you were happy, you get in that kind of choo-choo choo-shoe-trained rhythm of eating pistachio pistachio nuts, and then you get that one and you're like, ah! But you know the thing is is that you can kind of look at them and know. So, like we used to buy like the canned shelled pistachio nuts, and always our syrups were never like as good as they could be. And so then we like would dump I would I made this is why one of the reasons everyone hates me, is I would say, okay, you net from now on, you're dumping every pistachio nut onto a sheet tray and you're putting eyeballs on every last pistachio nut because you can look at them. They look, first of all, the color's not right.
A lot of them get a little yellow and oxidized and whatever, they're still okay. But you the you know the wrinkly, it's the wrinkly ones. When you're shelling them yourself and you look down, you see that wrinkly pistachio nut, just don't eat it. Don't eat that nut. You know what I'm saying?
I just want to blindly shovel them in my mouth though. So I I appreciate that. So what you need to do, what you need to do, uh Liz is is you need to become rich enough that you can have someone who pre-sifts your pistachios for you, and then you can blindly shovel them into your art. Do you feel the compulsion to break them open? Or do you can you just have shelled pistachio nuts and you're okay?
I I think I'm okay with the shell. I mean, no, but I mean you but you you know you m you don't mind having someone pre-shell them for you because. Oh no, I wouldn't mind that either. I mean, it's life goals right here. Right, right.
I mean for me, there's something about like sitting there and like cracking open the the things that I that I kind of enjoy. Do you are you did I know Nastassi never watches stuff. You ever watch James Bond movies? Sure, yeah. So there was to Topole, the guy who was in the uh one of the fiddleral on the roof movie, Topole, was one of the good guys in one of the James Bond movies where they had to climb up some monastery, I think, in Greece, and he had the habit of being able to throw pistachio nuts into his here's a life goal for you.
He could throw a pistachio nut in the shell in his mouth, eat the pistachio, and spit the shells out. That that, my friend's skill. Wow. Skill. Movie factor.
I called movie factor. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so we should all we should all work on that. Thank you very much.
Uh I wanted to just let you know that Jeremiah Bullfrog does this regard. And he would love to get you down here. Oh my god, he was here. He was in New York, and but the museum exhibit wasn't open yet, so he sent me a picture of the outside. I I I didn't get to talk to him, so hopefully he got to go inside.
Hopefully the machines were running this. By the way, the museum opens tomorrow, people. Museum of food and drink, 62 Bayard in Brooklyn. Uh Jeremiah Bullfrog, excellent, excellent man, as we all know. Museum opens in Brooklyn tomorrow, complete with, and now I'm allowed to tell you about everything in it.
Check this out. We have uh uh it's about the flavor industry. We've talked about this a million times, right? The birth of the flavor industry. We have these machines called like smell synths that let you play like it's like an arcade game where you mix smells in an arcade game fashion.
Like an early arcade game. Like, I don't know, like uh like Space Invaders. You like Space Invaders? Mm-hmm. It's a good game, Space Invaders.
But you're not shooting anything. It's not a first-person shooter. It's not a first-person shooter, but it literally runs off of arcade buttons and it's got LEDs, no noises. It's gonna be fun. Anyway, all right.
Uh so Jack Davis in the chat room likes spin dax as a name for the centerfuge. Spin Dax, but what about Booker? Booker will be so upset. I don't think do you think he'll care? Do I think Booker will care?
I mean, like, I think maybe later in life he'll care. Right now, he obviously doesn't care. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
All right. Okay, we don't wait, we don't like uh okay. Let me get into some questions. Unless we have a caller. I'm gonna get into some questions.
This from Brian in Seattle. Uh hi, Dave, Nastashia, Jack, and Rebecca. Well, Jack and Rebecca's don't like it. Oh, Rebecca is here? Yes.
Oh, nice. All right. And Liz, we'll add Liz to the list here. Uh I remember reading in Liquid Intelligence that Dave uses 200 proof alcohol for some cocktail ingredients, like a Hustinos. Uh, but that it wasn't generally Wait, that's what Stas thought the good name was, right?
I think it is the Hustino 54. Yeah, because 54 Eldritch was our old lab, and a Hustino is like a Houstino. We should at least just informally refer to that. That was actually where I like woke up in the morning and I was like, I said to do it, like eighty. Or the Houstino 54,000.
Yeah, I like that. Anyway, but I think Houstino is. Oh, but it's not, but we could. Yeah, I'll just tell I'll just call up China and be like, yo, China. I know that we had I know that we said it was gonna run in more like, you know, like 5,000 RPM, but how about 5400?
They're like, but no, no, no, no, no. It's a marketing thing. Believe me. Yeah. Believe me.
I think it's good, right? Anyway, Houstino, yeah, because 4958 is not such a good number. No. Right? 5400, yeah.
5400? I like that. Now we'll we'll call we'll after we get off the air, we'll go, we'll call China. Okay. Then we'll wake them up.
Wake them up from sleep. They'll be like, what's wrong? Nothing. We need it to go 5400 IPM. We'll tell you later.
Okay. Uh like Hustinos, but that it wasn't generally available to the public. In looking for some, I stumbled across a California product called Clean Extract. K-L-E-E-N extract. And uh they're at Cleenextract.com, apparently, which purports to be 200-proof food grade ethyl alcohol and available for shipping to the public in many states.
It seems like the product is geared towards making tinctures of various herbs. What do you think about the word tincture stuzz? I think it's kind of a gross word. Tincture. Tinksure.
Tincture. Not as bad as spool. Spool. Uh tinctures. Uh uh of various herbs, herbs, and quotes.
By that we mean we mean marijuana. When someone says herb in quotes, it means pot. Did you know that? Yeah, probably. I don't know these things.
Uh so it comes in large sizes, like one gallon plus. Would there be any problem using it in cocktails? And if not, any interesting doors it opens up that 190 proof everclear does not. I've heard that pure alcohol is hygroscopic, which it is, it absorbs water out of the air. Would this just uh would this just extract water from the air until it hits 190, making it no better than Everclear?
Love the show, keep up the awesome work, Brian from Seattle. Uh well, uh look, once you're up at 190 versus 200, the proof isn't really making that much of a difference anymore. That little bit of water isn't making a lot lot of difference in terms of the flavors you're getting. What it uh the reason I hate Everclear, and no offense to the manufacturers of the product, Everclear, it sucks. It's just a r rancid, awful, poorly made product that no matter how I mean, we've all been to college.
You've had Everclear dumped into Kool-Aid Rice dies. I didn't go to those parties. What about you, Liz and Rebecca? Did you have Everclear in uh in uh Kool-Aid situations? I went to the University of Missouri and we we held Everclear in high regard, so yes.
Yeah, okay. So, okay, so let me ask you this. Uh you even when even when it's diluted in large amounts of uh a grape Kool-Aid, you can still smell the Everclear. From miles away. Yeah.
Why? Because Everclear is a poorly made product. It's like Pure. Yeah, uh, well, wow, yeah, Purel, yeah, uh yeah. Well, well that's basically what Purel Pirel is like, like poorly made.
Actually, like like poisonous. They denatured Purelle, I think. Um anywho, so I think it's just poorly made. I think that's that's the issue. So that's my main gripe with it, not the proof.
So if this clean extract is good to go, it's good to go. But you do not require, in fact, at the bar now we use something called technical reserve that's uh made right here in Brooklyn. Uh and uh it's uh 190, and that's what we use for everything just because you know it's pretty clean. You want clean, clean aroma. You could also, like, if you get crappy everclear, you could put it through 18 million uh runs of a of like a Brita to try and strip out all the nasties.
Remember when we used to put like we used to be so cheap that we would buy like you know, smear noff and pop off vodka, and we would just sit there putting it through Brita time and time again, Brita after Brita after Brita until the stank went away, so that we used it when we were rotovapping at the school. Back when we were allowed to rotovap alcohol. Well, not allowed. I mean the government said it was illegal, but no one was stopping me from uh uh teaching, teaching people distillation. Yes, anyways, okay.
Um Hey, you guys want to taste uh you guys in the booth want to taste cider? We need some glasses for us. Ooh, yes. Let's taste some of the cider that I made from my very own tree. We need glasses for us.
Anyway, um let me see what we got here. Truffles, got an interesting question in from Arnie Olsen. Uh I found a couple of small truffles in the forest near my home in Bergen, Norway. I'm sure Bergen, Norway, no offense to New Jersey, but it's the county where I used to live, is Bergen County. And I don't, you know.
Probably looks the same, right? It's probably just the same. Probably just as nice. No, no. No.
Uh no offense to Bergen. Hey, look, you know what we are? Bergen. We're the gateway to New York. We got the we got the uh the George Washington Bridge.
That's what we got there in Bergen. Anyway, Bergen's a fine county. No offense to us. You know what their newspaper is? The Bergen Record.
The Bergen record. Okay. Not Norway, but not Norway. Okay. They're Elaphomyces granulatis, known as deer balls.
Heart's balls, heart meaning deer, not heart mean heart like H A R T, not heart like, you know, corusome. Uh heart's truffles, oh, or uh Lycoperdon nuts. This is that's from Wikipedia, and not regarded as particularly high quality. Still, I would like to make the most of them. And my question is would rapid infusion work to make a truffle oil?
Uh I'm not very fond of truffle oil, but I can't think of any better way to use them, and they're not super aromatic, and the texture isn't great uh great either. Best uh Arnie Olson. Now listen, uh I I tried to look these suckers up, and by all accounts, everyone's like, you know, maybe they're edible barely, maybe they're poisonous mildly. So like nobody seems to know, but I'm reminded back of when Paul Adams, uh our friend from Popular Science, uh came up to Connecticut and found some bitter bowl eat, which doesn't taste that that good, and he made uh bowl eat butter. Remember, and he brought it into the to the radio program, and it was good.
So I would try rather than doing oil, which you know I would maybe do uh maybe do a uh a deer ball butter, right? Deer ball butter. Hmm. By the way, uh the like lycoperdon is a puff ball, and the Wikipedia, if you look that up, actually says that that word comes literally from the uh I think Latin meaning uh wolf farts. Wolf farts.
You ever eaten puff balls? No, you can eat puffballs, you know. You just have to make sure you have to cut through them and make sure that they're not an immature form of another mushroom that could kill you. But it but puff balls themselves, they're okay. They're not the you know they're not the greatest thing in the world.
Oh, but you know what? I went to a Polish store yesterday, and I what I've learned, we need to I need to talk to Lukash, you know, friend of the show, uh, that the poles have forgotten more about mushrooms than we're ever gonna know. So many different pickled mushroom varieties. You know how like we just have like pickled, like, you know, like those, like the like the regular pickled mushrooms, and you're like that. This is like I didn't bring them with me because they need to be chilled, but like you're gonna like this one.
Slippery jack mushrooms. Slippery jack mushrooms, honey mushrooms. Yeah, yeah. When Jack comes, well, I'm glad I didn't bring it because Jack's not here to have slippery jack mushrooms, but I was gonna give him some anyway. I need to learn more about Polish uh mushrooms.
Okay. Uh on the truffle oil thing. Uh uh look, the whole point apparently, and I was doing some research, there is a book uh not for the uh not for Europe, but for America, called um that I didn't get a chance to order because I just saw these questions last night, but it's actually on the list now of things I want to order, called uh Truffle uh Field Guide to Truffles of North America, and this truffle is included in it because it comes from uh North America. And the reason the truffles apparently, and this is interesting to me, have aroma is because they want you to, if by you you mean small mammals, find you, dig you up, eat you, and crap out the spores. So that's why they have aroma.
So perhaps um one of the one of the problems uh with the the particular truffle that you have, the deer ball, is maybe it's not at its best. Because at its best it should have an aroma, but they have a longer persistence than um like tubermelanosparm or things like this. And so they're gonna remain findable in the ground uh well past or before the point when they actually have their aroma. So if they don't have much aroma, I don't think they're gonna have much of anything but try making a butter. Is that a good answer?
I don't know, I can't tell. You want to try the you wanna do we you want to go to commercial break? Yeah, and then we'll try to. Let's go to commercial break, and as we come back from commercial break, we'll uh try some cider on cooking issues. Today's program was brought to you by Firesider.
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Use their store locator to find one near you and ask for a free sample. For more information, visit firesider.com. Firesider, huh? Do we have any of that stuff in house? We could try?
Liz, do we actually own that product? Um the silence. The silence means no. Silence means no. Well, we'll we'll get it in.
We'll we'll try it, we'll talk about it. But while we're on cider, so what we have here is look. In the back of the of this house that I acquired in Connecticut, uh, there is a standard size, what looks to be similar to a Golden Delicious, but it's not. It doesn't taste exactly like a golden delicious, but it's super high, so you can't get the apples out of it very easily. But I got one of those 12 foot pool poles with a little picker on the end of it and got enough off to make uh uh some you know like like eight gallons of cider.
And uh I wanted to make a very kind of particular kind of cider. So here's what I did that's that's different from normal. First of all, I don't have a cider press, so I juiced it all in a champion juicer. Yes, because I'm that much of a masochist and an idiot. So I juiced it all in a massacreine juicer.
Also, I didn't want to have like a typical kind of oxidized cider taste. So I hit the cider with ascorbic ac I hit the juice with ascorbic acid as soon as it was juiced. I did not add pectinase to the enzyme because uh uh uh SPL to it before fermentation because I knew that apples like this typically lose a lot of their character when they're spun out. They're not like a high, a high like uh flavor apple like an ashmade's kernel where where the juice is delicious even after all the solids are out of it. So I wanted to ferment it on its solids, so I doped it with yeast.
Um I added a small amount of sugar because they were fairly low bricks, and uh put them in five gallon buckets and did a primary fermentation for a couple of weeks at them at relatively cool temperatures because the house is relatively cool. And then here is where I uh differed. After the primary, I added uh SPL and uh swirled them around to drop the stuff uh out. Then I put the uh I put the entire batch through the Houstino 5400 5400 uh to get rid of like a lot of the flock and yeast sediment in it that was left and got a pre-cleared thing. But here is another trick I used, people, that I think is uh you know, I don't know whether anyone else does this, but because I was introducing that oxygen there, I didn't want uh a high vinegar note on it.
I wanted the acidity to stay what it was, and I didn't want it to oxidize. So what I did is I immediately semi-carbonated it while it was warm. I didn't want to highly carbonate it, but I semi-carbonated it in two-liter bottles using a carbonation rig. You could do it in a keg if you had one. Poured them semi-carbonated into bottles that I had added the dosage to, capped them, and then let them bottle condition for a couple of weeks.
So here we have it. Cheers. Cheers, cheers, folks in the booth. Rebecca, Liz. We like it's good, right?
Yep. It's good. Yeah, yeah, very tasty for all you listeners out there, all my chat room friends. Yeah, so this is like it's still very, very tart because it's a fairly high uh acid. I was able to literally beat another batch of apples off the tree that are lower in acid.
So I'm gonna try to make kind of a less uh tart one. But the idea here is like the um for this kind of cider, a minimal amount of oxidation, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's not bad. Yeah.
And the answer, my friends, is ascorbic acid and a little precarbonation before the uh bottle conditioning. I wish I had some cheddar cheese. That'd be good. Wouldn't that be good? Some really super sharp cheddar cheese.
And some crackers. Oh my god. Oh my god. You know what? We're simple people, Nastasi and I.
Like good. I don't even need like hyper expensive. I just need nice sharp like would I would I turn if someone like parachuted in here with a like a wheel of Montgomery's uh, you know, uh cheddar from Neil's yard, like would we turn them down? No. We would kill them and steal the cheese needed.
But you know, I don't even need necessarily that high quality. And on that note, we have another caller. Oh, yeah, caller. You're what are they gonna talk about killing people? Call her, you're on the air.
Hey Dave, this is Colin down in DC. How you doing? Because you got a guy calling this Alex G fellow calling in last week asking about some sweet potato caramel syrup. Right. And uh it was me that called in about that about I don't know, two or three years ago.
Alright, so what happened? Let's know what happened. So just figured I could call in and give uh him and everyone else like just real fast update on that stuff. Um the syrup, right? That I was been able to reproduce pretty successfully.
The biggest key really is start with a really high bricks sweet potato. If you can get heart of gold, those are your best option. Otherwise, just try whatever you can get uh locally and just experiment and see what works. But you get best yields out of heart of gold because they're high bricks, easy to work with. I cannot believe you just put that song in my head.
I'm so angry that that song's in my head. It's like it's never gonna leave now. It's gonna be there like five. Oh man. But uh, I mean, I had the benefit of it.
There's uh just some retired guy, retired professor in Maryland who's got a you know, uh one acre, two acre sweet potato farm, and he put like fourteen tons of potatoes in. So I got them there. I don't know where anyone else will get them, but experiment beyond that, and you'll still get a good product. But we'll just give the procedure really quickly. Just get the procedure.
Yeah, so procedure is juice them out in a you know, cube them up, juice them in champion juicer. Uh kind of uh you're gonna end up with a kind of starchy juice. Add some pectanex to that and some amylase. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head. Which amylase do you use?
Right? Regular uh regular beer house hammelets? Uh I just get the whatever they get at brew shops. Okay. And just use a bunch of it.
And uh it helps it out. Uh circ that out at maybe 65 or 70 C for a day. And you'll see that uh you'll get a kind of clear liquid on the top of uh uh and a lot of the starch will settle out at the bottom. And a real key here is you can't that clear liquid, reduce it down into a caramel syrup or just a carrot like actual candy caramel as you would normally. Uh the key here is like not getting any starch in.
If you get starch in, it just sort of turns more into like a pudding, which is also awesome, but not what you're going for if you're trying for the caramel. Uh I think that's about it. If there's if anyone else, I guess has questions, they can follow them up and you could tweet it out or whatever. But I just thought I'd take the opportunity to clear that up. Yeah, are you are you a part of our chat room?
Usually because people might ask you questions right now. If you were to log into the to the chat room, people might ask you questions like right now. Uh yeah, I'm on it. I can uh they can ask questions. I've I'm out and about for like another 20 minutes, but I'll be back if that stays live.
Uh I don't know, Liz. Does it stay live? Yeah, it's always live. Uh-huh. It's ever lively make it.
Well do it. I'm on it and do it. Cool. Uh I'll sign off and yeah. Wait.
Liz, are you saying it's like Tinkerbell and you just have to keep believing in it and it stays alive? Yeah, I mean, minus the whole dust thing, but we don't have dust. We don't have dust. We'd have to Pixie Dust? If only Jack were here, he he would know.
Yeah, we're just like, you know, like we always we get close and we don't quite make it there. We all all we just do, hey, uh I could buy the pixie dust. It's available Amazon Prime, but no, I'm not gonna buy it. Right? Hey, can I give a shout out to a listener?
Yeah. Anthony Scardino. I made his life. What what was that? He was he's missing a clamp screw.
Oh, and you sent the clams screw to me? Well, no, I just responded to his email. Oh, nice. Well, that's that's that's quite nice. Uh oh, by the way, I loved when uh you insulted one of I loved that tweet.
I tweeted at him. Oh my god. Yeah. So he tweeted back his Christmas list to us, the picture of it, and the fifth thing on the Christmas list was get insulted by the co-host of his favorite uh podcast, and he's like, check number five off. That was perhaps the greatest tweet that I have ever received in my whole life.
I like I was on the floor, my wife was on the floor. By the way, Stas and Jack are gonna try to get my wife into the uh into the program. I don't know, like uh for any of you out there that wanna I don't know why you would want to ask my wife a question. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, okay.
Uh question in Would Dave uh use equilibrium uh equilibrium brining uh chicken fingers. Um in other words, brining them, I presume, uh from Joan. I I presume that uh what's meant here is brining the chicken fingers until they are in equilibrium with the brine around them. I have never done that. Uh that would take uh I think quite quite a while.
Um and then the question is is there a refractometer uh that I would recommend? Um I'm enjoying the show, best regards. I don't know. I've never done it that way. Like uh, I mean, definitely that's the way when you're pickling, when you're doing like brine soak on meats over a long period of time, you know, you definitely what you you know you you m you make your brine based on the total weight of brine and uh meat and then you check it with um you can check it either with uh you know one of the uh density based things like uh you know the floating guys or you can get a refractometer.
I don't know because I've never measured salinity with a refractometer. I don't know how accurate they are over the range of interest for meats, because it's not gonna be high. Uh remember, you're you're going probably fairly if you're gonna brine to an equilibrium point, you're down low, like you know, three percent or less. Uh two to three percent in that range. Um so it's gonna be relatively tiny amounts, and so I don't know whether I don't know how accurate a refractometer, uh a regular refractometer is gonna be for salinity at those levels.
But I can look into it. I didn't get a chance to look into it, but I I I can look into it. But I you know, in general what I do is I you know, I only I'm brining for a couple of hours. I don't do on chicken fingers, they they brine relatively quickly, and I don't really do an equal equilibrium thing. You think that's okay?
Yes. Yeah, okay. Uh Randy writes in, what? Someone when you no, we we do have a caller if you're interested. I I'm totally interested.
Caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, how's it going? All right. This is Chris from the Green Zone in DC. Uh, how are you doing?
Good, good, good. So I can't wait for the you know 5400 because it's directly related to my question. Nice. Um I called back a while ago about keeping you know mint from turning green and also clarifying and filters versus whatever else. Sure.
I made another batch of my herbal liqueur and I did it two ways. I did a different thing for the fresh and for the dry ingredients. For the fresh, I just put it in an iSty, like fresh mint and other herbs. And it came out bright electric green. It was awesome.
It was relatively clear. All the gunk that was in there settled out immediately. I could just rack it off. Fantastic. Nice.
And then for the dry stuff, so both spices and herbs, I did it in uh a circulator in the bag. And it came out to be a very dark green. It was a bit cloudy, and I spent a while filtering it in paper towels and coffee filters. Eventually got it pretty clear, dark green. I figured I'd mix the two.
Mixed them together. Got the same, you know, halfway point in the green colors. And then since I'm going, I'm sort of making my own version of chartreuse, which I've heard is sweetened with honey. I added, I made a honey syrup and slowly added it in. It instantly went cloudy and disgusting brown, and I had thought that maybe it had looshed or something, the way like an absinthe or an oozo would.
Right. Uh be but then I left it overnight, and all the stuff that was still making it slightly green had settled on the bottom, and what I got was just a pure brown, clear liquid on top. So in these green infusions and liqueurs and stuff, is the is the di is the chlorophyll dissolved in the alcohol, or is it just really tiny little particles floating around? In coronavirus. Well, chartreuse is colored with uh purified chlorophyll from spinach.
Sure. After after it's made, because they're doing a distillation. Right. Then an age down, and then they're just doping it back with uh the with uh you know, it depends on whether you're talking green or yellow, right? Yellow is obviously higher in honey.
Dave, you try did you try doping it with regular sugar? I mean, I wonder what was going on. Yeah, I'm not sure. I I did it, I did it with sugar the last batch I made, and it still ended up being really brown. Like it went from being green and stable.
It went from being green and stable to brown instantly. But what was the original proof before you added the uh syrup? Oh, I mean it was it was everclear, so it was one, you know, close to 190. Oh, so it really? Yeah.
Huh? Huh. So you were adding a good amount of liquid to it, much more, in other words, like, so it's not like you were dealing with something that was relatively low in proof, like 50%, and then you're you're adding almost a liter or a bit more, actually, more than a liter of the uh everclear strength stuff, and then I added almost a liter of honey syrup. So there's something in there that is oxidizable that I mean it couldn't it wouldn't be enzymatic because like uh most of like polyphenol oxidase enzymes are going to be inactivated at that super high uh at that super high proof. Like when I say inactivated and destroyed.
Here's the other thing. The stuff that settled out eventually was actually green. Huh. Yeah. Huh.
And so now I've got a layer of green fludge, and I've got a layer of brown clear liquid. Okay, so the brown is probably the what color it it always probably had that brown in it, and it was just overwhelmed by the green. I'm pretty sure that like that that's what's going on there. So then the question is why did it suddenly flock? Have you tried doing the reverse?
Have you tried adding uh um a small amount of the green to a large amount of water just to see whether or not it stays or whether it flocks together? Like you might, as you go through this small stage where it's still relatively high proof, but now there's some water, like all the stuff might instantly aggregate. You know what I mean? Right, right. No, I haven't tried it like that.
I would try it and see what happens. Does the brown stuff taste delicious or does it not taste the same either? No, it's pretty it's pretty it just doesn't look very attractive. Have you tried especially with the name green zone, have you tried um have you tried um you have you added any to water as though it was a bitters before you added any sweetener to it? Have you ever have you ever used it like as a bitters just adding a little bit to water before it Oh no I haven't I haven't tried that.
I would I'd be interested to see what happens whether it stays clear or whether it flocks together. And someone else in the uh in the on the chat room maybe has some ideas on this but yeah this is a it's some sort of weird thing that's happening as you're adding water to the system. So I would try going in the other direction and see whether or not you can prevent it from happening. Yeah. But something is going from I don't it it could either be going from soluble to not or it could be going from uh stable to all of a sudden flocking.
It sounds like the stuff's flocking together. Most most stuff that looses. Yeah I thought it was a loosh kind of like absence or something but I don't think it would settle out so quickly. Well yeah loosh loosh stuff tends to not settle it tends to float to the top. You know what I mean?
So like if you were to if you were to like uh oozo something out, loosh it and then let it sit for a week you'll get the stuff usually on top, not on bottom. So you're getting something that's heavier than alcohol that's settling out. I mean, I filtered it through like layer after layer of coffee filters. I'm really surprised there's that much solid stuff to settle out. Well, the other thing you know is you could have like solids in there that then they could be charged.
There could be like a charged particle that then uh then uh attaches to the color and then sp spins it out. So you know, you never you never it's hard to say, but I would try to do the reverse experiment, see whether you can stop it from happening. Cool. All right. Well, in the meantime, cannot wait for the uh soda fuse.
Okay, and and also in the meantime, make you some uh make you some spinach do uh juice and do it the way the monks do it. How do how do I do that? Just blend up some spinach and dehydrate it? Uh no, they j uh it's been a long time since I've done it. Like you cook it, you gotta get the initial stuff out, then you blend it, and then you squeeze it and you get the chlorophyll juice, and then that stuff's pretty stable.
I have to go look at the protocol. No. No, not when you're done with it. Not when you're done with it. You want to get just uh just the clear the the clear stuff out.
I made some delicious parsley oil in the Houstino fifty four, by the way, and I want to make I wanna make a drink that it has ticoloid stabilized uh parsley oil in it. Wouldn't that be good? Right. That'd be delicious. Mm-hmm.
And that stuff stays a green. Green for a long time because there's no water in it, it's all oil. Right, right. Anyway, try some of this stuff out and let me know what happens. Uh so in the chat room they want to know uh what you think about that bacon thing from World Health Organization.
Well tell me about it. I I wasn't knowing I I don't know what it is. Do you know, Rebecca? They uh said it's a number one carcinogen now. Number one like, oh bacon is more carcinogenic than cigarettes.
No, no, no. Okay. It's uh in the same level category. That's what they're saying. I mean it's based on what data.
I gotta redo stuff if you want, but I don't have anything to do. I will read it. I will I will read the data, but in general, like I am loath to believe any of that, any of that kind of uh it's just like because why? Because main like if you look at it like some like someone will do a study with a bunch of kind of related risks, and they'll add a bunch of stuff together that doesn't that has no meaning. Like I I guarantee you that there is not some giant cohort study where the only difference between group A and group B is bacon.
And then and then, you know, like you know, half of the people on the bacon side are dropping like flies, right? I mean it's just I guarantee that that's not the case. I will look at the data, but I would be willing to bet a a a chunk of money that if I did look into it, I would come back and say that this is some horse hockey. Horse hockey? Horse hockey.
Okay. Now all the vegans and vegetarians are like I told you we were right. Now look, you know, whatever. You know what? And like they say sassafras will kill you too.
You're not allowed, hey, vegans and vegetarians. You should be able to have uh real honest to God saffral root beer, and you can't because someone told you that it's gonna cause cancer. And you know what? I don't know. I think the data is just bad.
I think the data's just bad. I haven't looked at the bacon data, so I have no idea. I'm not like I have no knowledge, but anyway, so let me rip through this real quick before I get ripped off the air. Uh I'm uh this is from Randy. I'm making a bonus leg of land this weekend and wondered if this is a good way to do it.
Cook it uh uh low temp for 55 degrees C for 10 hours, then throw it in a 500 degree oven until it hits the final temperature or 60 degrees C. Uh I want to do it this way because I'm worried that if I were to sous vide at the final temperature, the time it would take to properly brown it will overcook it. Thanks, Randy. Do this instead. Do this instead.
Cook it at uh medium uh medium rare, like fifty seven or something like this, um, and do it for a long time to tenderize it. You know, as long as you have. Then uh for four hours, three two somewhere between three and four hours before you have to serve it, pull it out of the b uh uh the bath, right? Four hours before you serve it, pull it out of the bath. Open it up, let the surface dry off, cool it down in the open air for several hours, right?
Uh, and then, like as it starts cooling down, throw it into your a billion degree oven, and then uh you can brown it and it will have cooled enough that it won't overcook, but you'll also still be good on the inside. And I think that's a better way to go. That's how I typically do uh that kind of stuff. You can, in fact, uh let it cool all the way down and then just roast it in super high uh heat oven and be good. Or you can chill it in water and do it, but that's what I would do.
And uh we have uh I gotta read this or Ken's gonna rip my head off, right? Because we're we're we're about to be we're about to be ripped off the air. There's something else we needed to talk about today. What was it? Oh, the Ferro's coffee coffee grinder.
I'm not gonna get to talk about the Ferris Coffee Grinder. Is anyone interested in the Ferris Coffee Grinder? No. Stas is not interested. I think there are some people who are interested.
It's very good grinder, needs some modifications. I have a uh I have a bunch of uh STL files that people can print that I'm gonna put up on the on my Twitter account eventually so that people can modify their Ferro's grinders. Okay. Uh Ken writes, uh, I was a little disappointed that an entire show is not devoted to my last email on Parmenides and the epistemology, uh the epistemology of the sandwich, although uh I might be a little behind on the podcast. No, we did not go into it on over a whole thing.
Although the sandwich has been brought up several times. I'm not gonna get into it now because I'm just gonna go crazy if I do. Undaunted, I write again and ask, could this idea amount to something? Consider that most slow cooker meat recipes require initial searing in a separate vessel because you cannot get the Mayard reaction in traditional slow cooker, except for the dump and go meals. What are they called?
Dump meals? Yeah, dump yeah. Dump meals. Terrible idea, dump meals. Uh similarly, um usually reverse issue with sous vide cooking.
Uh, we have the ability to add various umami elements to cooking, such as anchovies, marmeat, mushrooms, soy uh sauce, fish sauce, uh, and uh somewhere in the same neighborhood are products like liquid smoke. Uh don't forget coconut aminos. Do you like coconut amino stuff? I don't know. Coconut aminos.
Do you like the name? Sure. Oh, yeah. Uh I have this dim memory of Dave getting some press years ago for a burger, not the ketchup soup dumpling thing, but another process in which he cooked meat separate from the burger to extract some flavor to add later. So with that as a background, could there be manufactured self-stabilized freeze-dried Mayard powder uh or group of powders with a fairly wide utility?
If this is a worthy idea to pursue, then in lieu of a MacArthur Genius Award, I would be happy with a Booker Index, uh, I don't know, maybe uh Booker Index Award. Best Kenningberg. Well, what I used to do is I would make like hyper thick uh I would like roast the hell out of a lot of meat and then just uh make like a hyper broth of that and then reduce that down and then circulate meat in that hyper in that hyper broth. So the entire inside of the hamburger uh tasted like uh this kind of hyper broth. So it was a little bit poached, but it was okay because then I was gonna pull it out and sear the hell out of it anyway.
But the because what I noticed when you're doing a lot of low temp cooking is that you never have a lot of those high heat flavors on the meat, even if you do a post sear on it. So that's why, like, you know, if we're dealing with like uh short ribs and stuff, uh uh there's textual reasons as well, but taste reasons why it's never gonna taste quite the same. So I would do it. People make meat extracts, like the flavor industry makes meat extracts, and we could and and like conceivably you could buy like a hyper meat extract uh that you know was all brown and stuff that didn't have eight boatloads of salt in it, which is the reason why you can't use bullion cubes and stuff like that. Because the bullion cube is MSG, which all of you know I have no problem with necessarily, even though I don't really use it.
Uh, salt, which unfortunately would add a lot, and then the rest of it is like these flavors. So, yeah, someone doesn't someone make meat, straight meat extract. Any of you guys British? What about bovarol? What's bovel?
No one's British here? No. Anyway, I don't know. We'll work on it. Let anyone know, come into the chat room.
Next time I'll talk about Ferros and some other stuff. Talk about the first week of the museum exhibit on cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradio 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.
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