Today's program is brought to you by Heritage Foods USA, the nation's largest distributor of heritage breed pigs and turkeys. For more information, visit HeritageFoods USA.com. I am Patrick Martins, host of the main course. You are 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 Agencies. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Israel's coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network at Robertus Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn for the Thanksgiving Day episode, calling your questions to 7184972128. That's 7184972128. Uh along with my usual uh, you know, crew here of Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. Hi, Sus.
Hi. And uh Jackie Molecules, Jack Eansley in the booth. Hey there. And Rebecca on the live tweet machine. We have via phone Chris Young from Chef Steps, who has a big thing to announce.
And Patrick Martins, uh founder of our great network and of Heritage Meets, uh, who's going to talk a little bit about turkeys in a minute. But Chris, thanks for calling in. Uh, what do you got for us? What's going on with the Chef Steps world? By the way, for those of you that don't know.
I think we're announcing today that Chef Steps has had a secret. We've been uh we've been working on better SUBI tools for a couple of years now, and so we're announcing Jewel today. Nice. Okay, so for the one person who might have found our broadcast somehow who doesn't know what Chef Steps is, it's very easy to find out. The simplest thing to do is to just go online to Chef Steps.com and register, and it's uh uh, you know, you'll get like a bunch of tips, not only on modernist stuff, but on the kind of the new analytical way of of thinking about cooking in general, whether they're using new techniques or not.
It's a very analytical mindset, which of course I appreciate. And aside from their awesome videos and uh tips and whatnot, you'll find a forum, which is very uh which is very helpful for cooks all over the world. Is this accurate or inaccurate? Uh I'd say that's pretty accurate. And we're also taking questions on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and other social networks that I don't even know about yet.
Nice. Alright, now so Jewel, by the way, it's not spelled Jewel as in the Alaskan singer. Sorry, Patrick, it's not the Alaskan singer. Yeah. But uh pointing, I know.
Yeah. Jewel as in uh as as in the unit of uh energy. Uh and uh just goes to show that if uh you were wondering whether Chris Young and the Chef Stev's people are metricized, whether they are metric folk, I think you now have your answer because of the unit of measure that they are choosing to uh to use there, right? You you ever have any uh any thoughts on going uh Imperial with the naming of the unit thing or no? You want something that's vaguely female sounding, maybe?
I don't know. What do you think? What's the what's the origin of Joule? Uh the origin of Joule is that uh you know, Sous vide's really about adding a measured amount of heat uh to your recipe so you don't over or undercook it. So it seemed appropriate to name our nice compact little unit after what Sue's really about, which is heat.
That's that there you go. Now uh describe now uh uh m most everybody here or who's listening to to us now knows what an immersion circulator is. It's uh but for those like who don't, it's it's a a device uh of any sort really that both circulates water, so uh or it doesn't have to be water, but circulates a liquid. So in this case, uh static water baths like the Sous Vide Supreme would not count as a circulator. Uh and also uh has a heater and sometimes chilling, although very few of us have one device, so that you can very accurately maintain a temperature in said liquid.
And it ranks right up there. It's like the it's the it's the newest, most different kind of most important cooking innovation since probably refrigeration, is my guess. Um what do you think, Chris? Yes or no? The accurate control of temperature in general, the most important thing since refrigeration, I would bet.
Well, you know, I I really think uh Sous vide's the first uh real cooking technology that's likely to really change the mainstream kitchen since the microwave, which is like really World War II technology. So it's time we do something different. I think it's bigger than the microwave, though. In other words, in terms of its final impact, I think bigger than the microwave. I mean, not maybe not as gonna be as ubiquitous as the microwave, but in terms of like for instance, when your microwave breaks, you're like, I gotta get around to buying one sometime, right?
But it doesn't really change what you can do in the kitchen. You're just like, ah, now I gotta dirty a pot when I melt butter. Am I right? Yeah, I mean the microwave uh is is a tool that's all about convenience. Sous vide's is gonna give you just quality and and and creativity.
You can't get any other way. Right, okay. So now we're all familiar with what an immersion circulator is. Now, for again, for the three people that don't already know this saga, uh, I'll give you the saga. So this is originally a piece of laboratory equipment.
We're talking now prior to about 2004. This is a piece of uh or three. It's primarily with the exception of very few high-end chefs uh around the world, scattered around the world. It is a piece of laboratory equipment. It costs roughly we're talking only 10 years ago, a little more than 10 years ago, they cost 2,000 bucks.
That's what they cost. Uh and not a lot of chefs have them. Uh only like uh very top-flight uh people who are also interested in modern techniques. Right around 2004, five, you see a price drop down to about a thousand dollars, where it stays roughly within two hundred dollars of that until roughly three years ago, when uh I think it was Nomiku actually uh broke the price barrier down below 500, and it's been driven down steadily since with various levels of robustness and quality in the equipment, uh, along with also a uh a robust DIY market of people building their own now. Uh so it's driven down to the sub-200 or in the 200 between 150 and 200 range, you can get a circulator that's going to uh work.
Now, I think a lot of these like low price circulators have kind of uh crushed a lot of the DIY spirit, except for those people who've always just want to build their own stuff. These are the same people that in the 70s would have been buying those Radio Shack kits to make radios that aren't nearly as good as the radios you can buy for nickel. But uh there will always be those people out there, and by the way, God bless those people. Polar catalog people. Yeah, I'm I'm one of those people.
Anyway, so why don't you, Chris, explain where the jewel fits into to this to the to the range of uh immersion circulators that's already out there? Yeah, well, so you know, I I'd say we're we're comparable in terms of uh of cost, and uh we're we're obviously giving our community a big discount today um for pre-orders, and because they got us to this point. But you know, the there was a bunch of things that we've found over the last few years that the Sue Beat experience really isn't as as great as we'd like it to be. At the end of the day, everything else out there is still really just laboratory equipment that's been rescanned, and uh it tends to make it more of a gadget than an actual uh cooking tool. And as a chef, you know, I take a lot of pride in my tools.
I like them to be reliable, I like them to be uh uh useful, I like them to be convenient. So we really sat down to rethink both the hardware but also the user experience. So, you know, on the hardware side, we shrunk it down where, you know, when we started, most of the stuff weighed around nine pounds, and and ours got all the way down to a pound and a quarter. Um, you know, we wanted it to be small enough that you could fit it in your top drawer, which if your top drawer is anything like mine, it's pretty crowded. So, you know, we we shrunk the diameter down by like a factor of four or five over the competition.
So it's it's only an inch and three quarters in diameter, and it's about 11 inches tall. So it's this really compact unit. Yeah, for those of you that haven't seen it, it it uh it visually references devices for other uses if you get my drift. It's that sort of general shape and size. Is that what we'd say it's accurate?
Yeah. You you you mean a rolling pen. Yeah, that's what I mean. Um so you know, there's a bunch of things there where we wanted it to be convenient, but we also wanted it to be really durable and reliable. It's gonna last you years.
So all of the all of the parts that are metal we forged and machined out of out of uh uh surgical grade stainless steel. We put a neodynium rare earth magnet in the bottom so that if you're using like a cast iron or a uh an induction ready pot, rather than sort of fiddling around with a big bulky clamp, you know, you just set it down and it grabs onto the pot with six pounds of force. Um it's hard to describe how great that experience is, but you know, we use these all day in our kitchen, and and that's really wonderful. But I think the the thing that are is certainly going to be uh I think uh it's been described as bold already on the uh internet today, was we actually took the controls off the circulator and put them into your phone. We put them into iPhones, tablets, Android phones.
Uh we're gonna put it into things like watches, where, you know, you can easily set the temperature. In fact, we made that unbelievably simple and intuitive and quite a bit faster than buttons on the device. But we were trying to solve a problem that we've found over and over after trying to teach Sue Beat cooking for, gosh, I guess I've been teaching it for about a decade, but really the last three or so years with Chef's tests. When which when somebody gets into Sue Bead and is new, they don't really know where to start. You know, what temperature are they going to like?
You know, how do they prefer their steak? We tend to think in terms of rare and medium rare and medium well. But those are really imprecise words that mean different things to different people. So we invented something that we call visual doneess, where we actually show short film loops in our app of what you're going to get and how to get there so that you don't have to translate your preferences as a cook into engineering parameters. You can basically express your desires in a very human way and say, well, that looks like exactly what I want.
And the circulator, Joule is going to do whatever is necessary to get you that outcome. So that's I I think streamlining the app, uh connecting it to mobile devices and leveraging the power that of what we can do in the phone and in the cloud really has the opportunity to start to change the kitchen and put humans back at the center of the cooking experience. Now, now, okay, so let's let's just hash this out for a sec. I'm an old phogie, right? Yep.
And actually, you agree with me. You hate membrane switches like I hate membrane switches, right? Yep. Yeah. We're both haters of the membrane switch.
That makes you guys old old poesies. Well, because everything's moving that way. But uh I prefer actual I'm also an analog control guy, so like I detest ovens with membrane switches where you have to sit there and like hold your finger on a membrane switch to set a number of friends. For instance, I have an oven that every freaking time I turn it on, it comes on at 350, and yet uh like 90 times out of a hundred, I'm using it as a warming oven for stuff that's coming off, and so I'm punching it down to 170 instantly. This is a Fahrenheit, sorry, Chris.
But the uh but you know what I'm saying? It's like I detest that whole strategy of control. So I I also makes me nervous to take controls complete and indicators completely off of the machine. But uh what has your reaction been so far with your beta people on this? Are they mostly not old folies?
You know, it was I think uh even when we first started really ex uh exploring taking the controls off the device. It was a you know, it was certainly a controversial discussion even within Chef Steps. But the more we started testing it, the more we started realizing what we were able to deliver in terms of the user experience on an app, uh, the more confident we got. And the funny thing is we kind of expected uh a lot of people when we just sort of gave it to them and said, hey, turn this on and use it, you know, while we kind of stand around and watch them. We kind of expected a lot of people to ask, you know, where are the controls, where's the on button?
And like it it got asked, but but very quickly, they didn't care. And it just was very natural. And in terms of how quickly they figured out how to use it and what it did and the way they discovered um some of the benefits, we've become really convinced that uh people are gonna love it. Um it it you know, it is gonna be a bit different, but this is the direction things are going, and and somebody's really got to be first um to to take this plunge, and that's gonna be us. Now it's it's Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, correct?
It is both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi because there's pros and cons to both. Um we're able to deliver a much more reliable, seamless pairing experience uh with Bluetooth. You just need to bring your phone near to it, and we use proximity to basically know what you're trying to pair with and and judge which phones uh controlling the device. Um but if you want to be out at the store, if you want to remotely uh uh turn the device on before you come home, if you want to get a notification of that your waters reach temperature um or your food is done while you're out in the yard playing with your kids, Wi-Fi is much better for that. So we included both because we don't think the user actually cares about the technology.
All they really care about is the experience working flawlessly and seamlessly. Right. Now, is there any sort of like nod to old people like me? Like, is there any visual representation from across the kitchen that you've reached temperature, or do you have to just have your phone up? Is that do I have to just explain?
No, uh uh you do need a way of indicating that it's on, that it's working, that that it's cooking away, and and that's where we we have we do have an indicator LED um that very simply sort of breathes to let you know that it's it's cooking, and at a glance you can tell that it's at the temperature and that everything's fine. Oh, thank God. I'm a mortar and pestle guy. I only use a mortar and pencil. That's old school.
Well, luckily for you, you can use it. But you can use this as a pestle. You know, with solid stainless steel parts, I'm not gonna stop you from using Joule as the uh pestle. Yeah, yeah. And it's got a little uh indent in the top so you can put your thumb on it and to get good leverage while you use the bottom end as a pestle.
So it's it's sturdy. Oh yeah. It's it's it's it's unbelievably solid. Um, and and that was one of the real goals that that it's in fact it's totally sealed. Um I've at least on two occasions uh over my career dropped an immersion circulator into a water bath, both times at a very inconvenient time since I had to serve like a uh dinner uh the little most recently at a wedding party.
Um and you shorted it out. So, you know, accidents are gonna happen. The you know, the kitchen is covered in goo. So we entirely sealed the jewel up so that it if it falls into the water, nothing bad's going to happen. It's just gonna keep working.
Um and that was actually a really big engineering challenge because that meant we had to get all of the waste heat into the water rather than having a way to ventilate it into the air. Um so that that was one of the real big challenges, but it ultimately actually made us much more energy efficient when we achieved that, so that we actually preheat the water faster because all of the waste heat is also going into the water. Right. Now uh now you don't recommend it, I assume, but you could make a hot tub with this. Sorry, I didn't I didn't say that.
I said you don't you don't recommend it, but you could like like there's no shock ability here. It's like is it med grade isolation? Can I use this for a hot tub heater if I wanted to? Uh you absolutely could. Um you know, those those are our our our certification requirements and and just good engineering requirements.
Um we built the thing to be uh safe, durable, and and basically uh a a professional grade tool. Now here's the here's the last one because I know that like you can't possibly because I don't know that anyone makes plugs for this, but if the plug could be certified, could you certify it for dishwasher? Um yeah, I don't know anybody that makes plugs with it. Uh if you threw it in the dishwasher, I don't think anything bad would happen. That's not a test I've done, but having been intimately involved in engineering this, y the the sanitation cycle, um uh you know uh I really don't think anything bad would happen.
I guess I'm gonna have to try that. I just don't think the uh any standard plug uh plug that I know of is certified to be immersed for that long in the Yeah, no, right now there's probably uh uh one of our liability uh lawyers listening to this radio show just completely like ripping their hair out, and I'll I'll hear about it later. That's what I'm for, yeah. Uh but you know, it's not gonna fail. Um and in fact, that was one of the other things is the way we engineered the the heater, there's no nooks and crannies.
Um you don't you're not gonna need to put it in the dishwasher to wipe it clean because there's nowhere for goo to stick. So you're saying nook and cranny advantage for a Thomas's English muffin, but not so much for a circulator? Uh yeah. Yeah. Uh and uh cleaning, I I actually saw uh the uh uh one of the beta units uh last week, and you can uh uh unscrew the bottom that Patrick is going to use for uh a pestle.
By the way, uh clockwise only as you're pestling, or you'll unscrew the base, by the way, right? I mean uh the the but will you undo it and you can pull the uh the uh impeller out, similar to like an aquarium pump motor, right? Yep, and and then the inside of the heater is just a seamless uh stainless steel polished tube. You can stick a sponge in there and just wipe the surface clean if anything were to scald onto the heater. All right, and uh take us through an 18-pound turkey process.
Uh uh, what's the breakdown? Uh uh we'll go through that in a sec. I'll leave we'll if Chris has time, I know he's like announcing everything, we'll keep him on. But let's just finish the the business here first. Like they uh wait, I had oh, and the part of the reason that you can sell it for a reasonable price is that you guys decided to go big.
You think you're gonna sell a lot of these things, right? Um, well, to do the things we wanted to do, you you really had to make a commitment to to mass production. I mean, there's parts that are ultrasonically welded, you're gonna start forging massive amounts of stainless steel. Um, you know, to make a real consumer product like that, you have to make a bet that that people are gonna want it um and that you're going to sell enough of them to justify, you know, your investments into robots and and and uh massive production tools. And by robot you don't mean that you're just buying a bunch of Roombas?
No, uh I mean this thing has been designed to be mostly assembled in a very automated way. And that's so that the thing's reliable. Um, you know, you you want everyone to have a great experience, and it turns out you're gonna get a better result if you let robots do most of the manufacturing. Nice. All right, and uh if we pre-order it now, when do we get it?
Uh we are shipping in May. Okay. And uh what's the uh what what do you uh what's the pre-order cost versus what you have to pay if you wait like a chump? So if you're already a Shaf Steps premium member, which uh is a nineteen dollar one-time fee, and I think a lot of people on on your show probably are, they're gonna pay $180 between today and January 15th. To anybody else, it's $199, and we include uh uh Chef Steps premium in there.
And again, like you don't ever pay again, it's once. Um and then uh after that, retail price will be two ninety-nine. So that's a substantial discount, yeah. Uh yep. Uh you know, like we're building these for people in our community.
We want Chef Steps community members to to have a better cooking experience. So uh they're the people that got us to this point. We're gonna make sure we take care of them. All right, and uh, can you stick around even though you're announcing a lot, or do you have to run and do the next uh press thing in the zone? I am happy to stick around if there are questions about jewel or turkey or anything else related to the kitchen.
Um I'm I'm happy to commit. All right, let's do it. Uh we got Patrick Martins here, purveyor of heritage turkeys. Are you the largest heritage turkey purveyor in the country? Uh it depends how you define heritage, but of the true American poultry association poultry, yes.
So who is it that sells what you consider to be Trump Heritage turkeys that is bigger? Well, I wouldn't say who, but they are various degrees of heritage. And actually, we're looking forward to the USDA enforcing breed claims. Best smartest people were the Berkshire people. A lot of cow people do it too.
They just breed in certain physical traits that make it immediately recognizable, like a six-spot of Berkshire, six white spots on the tip of the feet, nose and tail. That certifies that it's a pure Berkshire. All right. Now I will tell you how I'm doing my turkey this year. And Chris, you see what you think on this.
Actually, I have a test right now. I bought a regular uh turkey leg. So, you know, I'm a big fan of uh of making the bird look like it's a whole bird because I'm an American, and anyone who doesn't make it look like a whole bird, somehow it's not very American. You you with me on this, Chris? Uh I'm with you.
Yeah, the guy's got to look like a bird. This is something that a French person can't possibly understand. Norman Rockwell is an American, yeah. The Norman Rockwellan turkey. Yeah, it's gotta be it's like, and the other thing is is that uh, you know, you'd like it if all the different things are done at the at the right thing.
So the simplest way, in my estimation, to do it, the way I've been doing it, is I will uh well, the last time or two, is I will do a simple debone where I cut down the back, rip out the bones. I actually leave, I think, the leg bones in, and then inject uh turkey uh turkey stock brine into the breast meat and just kind of rub salt over it, and then drape it over a plug of very hot stuffing and then throw that in the oven at high temperature so it cooks from inside out. And frankly, that's only an additional like 45 minutes of work for the cook, and it cooks unbelievably fast because you're cooking it from both sides. Uh so that's kind of what I would recommend for anyone who's not gonna do what do you do you have any problems with that technique, Chris, for someone who's not gonna go through all the trouble of of low temping the whole turkey? Yeah, I mean, if you're if you're not gonna low temp it, that's a that's a great way to do it.
Right. It's better than like I've also had like in the old days, like when uh I had once where the turkey was bad, uh and I had to rush out, we didn't have the time, and so pre-heritage. This is a long time ago. This is like maybe in the 90s, like early 90s. And uh uh literally we were like, what are we gonna do?
I was like, I'll tell you what you're gonna do. You're gonna go buy a turkey, I'm gonna spatcock that sucker, break it open, cook it flat on a rack, and then kind of squeeze it back into bird shape for Thanksgiving. And you know what? It was not a bad, it was a good turkey. You know what I'm saying?
Because spreading the turkey out like that or heating it from both sides is already a big win in terms of time. Um this year, what I'm doing is I'm going to uh do the same thing. I'm gonna bone it uh on the back, then I'm going to rip, leaving the skin intact. I am going to rip the legs and thighs out of the bird. Uh, and I am then going to confide said skinless thighs and legs, low temp the breasts and skin like an Edgar suit kind of a thing, and then chill it all down, jam the confied legs and thighs back into the bird casing, drape that sucker over the plug of stuffing, and then I think I'm gonna do I'm gonna try to do two.
I'm gonna try to do one in the tandoor for finishing and one in a deep fryer. What do you think, Chris? You think it's is a good plan? Uh it's a good plan. I can't help but just listen to you and think you would have made uh a phenomenal torturer in in in the in the uh uh mid uh medieval era.
Yeah, well, uh possibly. But I'm going to rip the bird apart, I'm going to rip the legs off, cook them at a low temperature. Um you take a lot of glee in that, but that sounds like a good plan. Well, whenever I'm doing live demos, which I haven't done a live demo of uh of like breaking down poultry in a long time, but back when I I used to teach um at the FCI, and I think one of the things I used to have to do is I forget what I would, but one of the demos that I would always have to do for the students is I'd be breaking chickens down. I think showing them how to go all the way boneless, like you know, break it down.
Not Jacques Popin style, he has his own way. Anyway, people some people would always get discon a little disconcerted because when I'm demonstrating how to uh remove the thigh from the body, I always kind of indicate on my own body, if I don't have a chicken with me, kind of where the knife should go. And people are like, oh, oh. You know what I mean? I'm like, but yeah, it's like you know, it's an animal.
You're breaking it down, you know. Is there a difference in technique between hens and toms, like nine, ten-pound birds, you know, especially with the sous-vie machines? Oh, that's a good question. I've I've never cooked that small of a I don't think I've ever cooked that small of a bird. What do you think, Chris?
You ever gone very small on this on these things? Yeah, um, I actually that's probably about the size I'll be cooking. I'm gonna be uh cooking a 10-pound uh heritage turkey myself. And uh what I'll be doing, I'm I'm expecting it to be about five hours um in in the sous vide bath, and then I'll pull it out and uh and give it a couple more hours in my smoker. Are you bagging it or are you uh breaking it?
Um I'll probably bag it. Um I'm not gonna split it down. I'm I'm I'm gonna keep it whole and then I'll hang it from its legs so that the weight of the bird sort of stretches itself out while it's in my smoker. Are you gonna fill the cavity with anything while it's cooking just so that or like how are you gonna make up for the compression? Are you gonna do zip like a large zippy?
Like they make those big zippies. Nice. Now, what temperature are you going to cook it to? Uh I so you know, this is always the compromise because you know you're not just cooking for yourself, and I really don't want to, you know, hear complaints from the rest of the family. So I think I'm gonna end up at about 150 Fahrenheit.
What's that in Celsius? That's uh about what, 65. Yeah. USDA claims it has to be 165. So that's what I'm saying.
That's just wrong. That's just wrong. Yeah. I mean, it's all depends on time and temperature, but let's not get let's not get started. Let's not get started.
Yeah, we can go on a whole rant on this. Let's not let's not start. Let's not start with this. But uh it's you know, it's an interesting question. Uh the the temperature you you cook it to.
It is so it is so personal. But uh on turkey, I would much rather, if I was gonna choose one temperature, shoot for the minimum temperature that's not gonna piss people off on the dark meat rather than trying to hit the optimum temperature on the breast. I mean, yeah, that's a good choice. That's a good call. My answer to it is the second you cut into the meat and the juice runs clear.
Oh my god. You were you you are never allowed on that microphone again, Patrick. Never. Never cooks who cooks like that. Well, uh uh Nastasia comes from a long line of turkey overcookers, not you personally, right, Stas?
But what like how did like uh did you say in your household it was as soon as no more juices ran, that's when you knew the turkey was done? It's like right before the turkey catches on fire. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
You know what's interesting? I haven't spoken to Jeffrey Steingarden in a while, but I think he tried to do one once in a self-cleaning oven, but it couldn't get the interlock off. Oh I think. I don't know. I gotta that is not gonna end well.
No, you have to defeat the interlock before you hit self-clean. That's like, hey, listen, no one out there listening to us, don't go defeat the interlock on your self-cleaning oven. At least don't say that I told you to do it. Do you clean your pans in self-cleaning ovens? I'm so lazy that like when I get like an aluminum baking sheet, like the other day I did a bunch of uh whole uh fish, right?
And it had a bunch of drip-downs and then they got all burnt onto the baking sheet. I was like, the hell with it. I just cook the stuff in the self-cleaning oven. Am I too lazy or is that like okay? No, I I think that's being smart.
Yeah, right? Who likes cleaning crap off of those things? Not me. Don't do it. No, don't do it to your castle.
Do not do it to your cast iron, do not do it to your Teflon. Hey, Tim's got a question in the chat room for Chris. Uh he wants Chris to recommend the max capacity container that he would recommend. Oh, yeah, and give us the wadded heat watch on the jewel. Uh so uh for the jewel.
Yeah. I presume. Uh so uh, you know, with these things, it's always dependent on how well insulated your vessel is, but with a typical poorly insulated pot, I'd be very comfortable recommending up to 10 gallons, so almost 40 liters. If you're using a well-insulated vessel, like a uh like a Coleman cooler, um, then you're gonna get away with a lot more. I I you know I personally heated up 70 plus liters in a Coleman cooler with an even lower powered unit, so you're not gonna have any problems.
Um, you know, at some point, how big do you need to be? In terms of of actual power, uh, the rated heating power is uh is 1100 watts. And remember, over 99% of our power actually goes into the water, which is uh is unusual. The more important thing is like that's about 25% faster at preheating water than uh the competition. Right, just so everyone knows, like there are actually lower powered units now on the market, but for years the industry standard as like as developed by like you know, Philip Preston's original poly science models is 750 watts of heating, roughly 750 watts of heating power uh was the norm.
But the other important thing, and people don't think about this uh is how aggressive the PID programming is because you can make you can make something like laboratory style, which means zero overshoot allowed, or you can go aggressive, which is kind of better for cooks, and you'll get like a couple of tenths overshoot, but it'll quickly settle out on you. I assuming you went more aggressive, right? Uh yeah, we we absolutely teamed it, temp uh uh uh tuned it to be very, very aggressive. Yeah, which is better for cooks. I mean, don't let anyone tell you any different.
Anyone that says any different is just wrong. You can usually I'm very nice about things like this, but anyone who says anything differently other than other than you should go on the aggressive side and allow the couple of tents overshoot, they're just not correct. Uh yeah, no, it it it's it's a better use. I mean, most people, it's just how fast can I get this water preheated? And and we we set up to make it as fast as possible.
And our limiting factor is is ultimately down to to uh UL certification. Uh the power cord has to get absolutely huge once you go over 10 amps of power. Right. So that's why you're not gonna see uh any any real domestic circulator delivering more than about 1100 watts. Right, yeah.
You're allowed if you're allowed 1500 watts total draw on a plug for normal to do normal stuff. And that's why that's why hair drivers are the way AR, and that's why everything's related. Right? Yeah. And then it and then it goes down to how thick do you want your power cord, and you've got to allow tolerances for not everybody's voltage is what it's supposed to be, but um but um but um bum.
So like technically speaking, I would you know have loved to make it even more powerful, and there's no reason we couldn't have made the heater more powerful. It's down to certification agencies. Hey, buy two, throw them in. Okay. Oh, oh all right, caller, you're on the air.
Hey Dave, this is Adit from New York. I ran into you in the bar yesterday. Nice. How you doing? Doing well, thanks.
Um my question is uh I still have to say hi to everyone else on there, Nastasia and Jack and uh Chris from from Chester. So that's I'm very excited about the tool. So my question is unrelated, unfortunately, to Thanksgiving or circulation. But in uh executing the the will of uh unfortunately deceived old family friend, I've called some old bottles of alcohol, like a champagne, a dom bottle of Dom Perignon from the sixties and a a Takai, like maybe the sweetest variety of Takai uh like Noble Rot wine from the 70s. Nice.
I think they're both I I don't know if any if if they're um good at all. The wine looks like I mean the champagne looks like it's probably flat and might have some sediment in it that may even be like quirk residue. Well I was wondering if you have any ideas what to do with it or Okay, where was it stored? Where was it stored? Uh I think it was stored in the dark, but it's really been long enough that you know at room temperature, but it's been long enough that I'm that I'm not confident.
But it wasn't it was it in a basement? Was it in a cool room temperature situation? Like probably in a in a closet uh or a cupboard for probably most of the time. Like a high cupboard? Like a high cupboard?
Please not a high cupboard. Please tell me it was not a high cupboard. Yeah, yeah. But here's a little known fact people don't think about your high cupboards in your kitchen are much, much, much hotter than your low cupboards are. And in general, high cupboards much hotter than low cupboards.
But um Yeah, uh well, here's some more questions for you. The uh the eulage on the wines, do they look like fairly normal or has there been a lot of uh of uh liquid loss? It doesn't seem like there's been any liquid loss in the Chicai, and there may be some in the champagne, but I haven't compared it against another bottle to now. It does look like it's pretty flat though. Well, it's hard to tell if it's sealed, right?
It is, yeah, they're both still still sealed. You have exactly two options. Drink it with some very good friends and then have an experience, or sell it. These are the only two options. Now I uh my stepfather has a similar problem because he's the owner of some uh 85 uh uh Roman A Conte.
And this bottle of wine that he has is worth, I think it's over 10 grand now. It's like it's like so it's it's you know, uh to me it would be impossible to drink it, but on the other hand, for him, since it's not replicatable, it'd be impossible not to drink it. So he he's put himself in a situation where it's not possible to to not drink it. In your situation, though, since you don't necessarily know how the storage is, I don't know what the price is going to be. Chris, do you have any experience with this kind of stuff?
Uh not a lot. I'm actually kind of uh um enjoying learning something here from you, Dave. Uh but the so like I know for instance, uh, you know, my my stepfather's stuff's been kept like in a super temperature controlled kind of seller environment for since it was new, since 85. Um, and so like his stuff has maintained its value if you wanted to auction, except for he did what they did once have a flood which put a watermark on some of the labels, which you know doesn't hurt the wine, but like freaks some people out. So I don't really know, and I don't know what the market value what year is the uh Don Perry?
Is it vintage or not vintage? Uh it has a year on it, if that's what you mean. I think it's 62. Uh, I don't know anything about years on champagne, but if it's a vintage champagne, uh there are people who all they like to do is go drink vintage champagnes. And so if it's been kept in fairly decent uh condition, you at least have yourself like an amazing party to have with your friends, but at the very least, something like that, you should get it like a serious ownophile in.
And there are, I you know, I don't frequent them, but there are lots of wine discussions where someone can tell you. First of all, on champagne, obviously, uh obviously we know Nastasia's interest has peaked. But uh, you know, they don't make a vintage champagne in l they won't put a year on the champagne unless they thought it was gonna be a good aging uh bottle. Uh the sweet wine, you you're probably gonna have uh really I'm I think you might have really good luck on the sweet wine too, since a lot of those will have uh very, very long aging potential. It's simply a matter of uh the temperature and the conditions in which it's kept.
But if you have if your eulage is good, you know, if the if the air gap in the bottle is good, you have a good shot. You know what I mean? I'm I'm not so worried about the the the the tokai, and I think uh, you know, I'm I think people tend to overestimate the impact of uh the storage temperature too. I think fluctuations in the temperature that are are actually the bigger deal, but uh I think a tokai like uh is is gonna probably be very drinkable. Yeah, I mean the oldest champagne I've ever had was a good bit I mean in terms of like actual time since it was bottled to when it was I I've had them from the early 80s, I think, but I've never had so that's and that was last year.
So that's uh but you're talking a good 20 years older than that. I'm sure it I'm sure look, I'm sure it has val I'm sure it has value. You might want to sell it. Um if you live in New York, I mean there are laws about it, but there's also a lot of wine dealers who won't necessarily pay attention to the law. Like there are some states where you're allowed to sell the wine back to the same person you bought it from, but nobody keeps records, so nobody knows.
You know what I mean? Uh, but I don't know what the value is on that. You'd have to go go look it up. You know what though? Like I look at something like wine seeker or something like that to try to find out.
Yeah, you know what else I would do if I were you, New Year's or whatever is uh depends. Like, don't open this in the presence of a bunch of like, you know, like like swill masters who are just gonna like you know, pound this stuff like it. Well, what you do is in a situation like this some new friends then. Yeah, you need oh yeah. Well, that's I tell people that all the time.
Your first step is to go get different friends. The second thing you should do is buy a backup bottle of decent but not crazy stuff, that whatever you can afford to have, right? And I take Chris's suggestion in mind. The Tokai is gonna be fine. Uh it the the champagne has a good chance of being sublime, but read up on drinking old champagne so you know what to expect and what to get.
And then have a backup bottle so that if you have a bottle of swill on your hands, you always have a uh a backup. Then nobody's ever gonna be unhappy with that. Chris, what do you think about that? I I I think uh you should never have the regret that you never had enough champagne in your life. Bingo.
Bingo. All right. Well, listen, here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna decide whether you're gonna sell it, you're gonna look up the price, you can decide whether you're gonna sell it, or whether out of deference to uh, you know, your uh past relative that you're going to drink it and have a good time, and you're gonna call us back after the event and you're gonna let us know what happened. All right?
All right, now one more question that's Thanksgiving and Chris related. Okay, okay on the line. Caller, you're on the air. Hello, uh hey everybody. This is Steve from Indianapolis.
Howdy. Um so my question, first of all, uh regarding the circulator and the uh centurifuge coming out. Um shut up and take my money. Wow. Nice, nice.
Thank you. And no problem. Uh, and and secondly, um, I'm uh I'm a med student in in Indianapolis right now, and I'm actually involved in a food uh kind of like a food education program for not only the med students but the local community. Um how what is the easiest like sous vide recipe that you would say to kind of get people on board with circulators? Because I'm uh I'm trying to I'm trying to say, like, hey, it's the best kind of slow cooker for uh like amazing meats and things like that.
You can do really cheap cuts of meat and things like that. So um I'm just trying to to consider how to present it, and I just wanted some suggestions. Chris, what do you got? Well, I I think a couple things. I I I think one of the things I I like people who aren't familiar with Sue B, I don't find it super helpful to to call it like a slow cooker.
Partly because of the slow cooker, you always get the same stewed texture. I mean, that's what a slow cooker does. You get you get stewed food. Um and and with sous vide cooking or an immersion circulator, you know, you can have just basically awesome uh food in of of any sort of texture and style. From for me, usually what convinces people uh is either like a perfectly cooked piece of fish, so maybe if you know out here in Seattle it it would have to be salmon, um, that you know you f you you cook sous vide and then lightly pan sear it so that you know it's it's perfect, it's it's you know, delicious, it's approachable, and you know what what Sous vide really does is take away the fear and risk that you're gonna ruin a piece of fish.
A lot of people in my experience are pretty intimidated with cooking uh uh fish, which is healthy and delicious. Um or the other thing that I I I think is is always great is giving them uh a pork chop that's cooked at a proper temperature. I mean, most people have never had a good pork chop. Everything they've had has just been ruined because of silly USDA recommendations that that aren't scientifically sound. So you take a pork chop it, cook it at sixty Celsius, don't overcook it when you sear it.
Uh finish it on the grill, finish in a pan, and and that you know w the you know, people will be a little freaked out, like is it okay for the pork to be a little pink in the center? But you know, it it's amazing. You never knew pork could be that good. Well, here's a here's an interesting point. If you're gonna do sixty, sixty is fine if like uh like there's uh there's there's two ways, there's always two ways to think well, many, but like two main ways is I'm gonna pull it right from the circulator and I'm gonna sear it, or I'm gonna drop it for a while if you sear it.
I think sixty is good if you're gonna do like a relatively quick fini finish sear on it out of the bath. I would go a degree or degree like a degree or a degree and a half, maybe even higher if you were going to drop the pork chops down to like 50 or 55 and then ride them before you s before you sear them at the end. Do you agree or disagree, Chris? Yeah, no, I think that's that's reasonable. Yeah.
Uh okay. Like when I have med students over just trying to convince people that this thing is really good. Um I've been doing chicken breast 6263 so that I can um kind of not have it be as intimidating. Right. Uh but uh yeah, I like that idea a lot.
Here's what I wouldn't do. So, like some of the special effect textures on things, like uh people aren't ready to wrap their minds around the fact that it's different. So, like one of the classic things people do first is like a short rib. And I think short ribs done uh low temp are delicious. However, they're not the same as what people expect from an actual braised short rib.
And if you go into it thinking what I'm about to have is a braised short rib, then the sous vide one will come up short because it won't have the same kind of intense meatiness that a traditional braise is gonna have. Neither will the texture be what they uh uh associate. So most of the time, if you're handing someone who's thinking in their mind traditional short rib, a low temp one and and a traditional braise, and you serve them in the style of a traditional braise rather than as something different and new, most people will choose the the old fashioned. And so like that's what I would not do. Okay.
Excellent. Yeah. I I mean I've been presenting it as a slow cookie because I didn't necessarily know what to say otherwise, but no, I like this a lot. This is really good. I'll recommend one that we found is really popular.
If you're doing chicken, we have a smokerless smoked chicken breast on Chef Steps that's done with sous bead and a and a smoky brine. And uh it'll you know, most people absolutely love it and can't believe it didn't come out of the smoker. Is that the liquid smoke? It does use some of the liquid smoke. Okay.
Excellent, excellent. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, guys. All right, Red of Time, Dave.
All right, I gotta I gotta rip through this. I got some questions real quick that I gotta get to. This is this is from uh John Baker in Dallas, Texas. Uh uh I want to get to it before we go out. Um they says measurement of flour.
It has become common wisdom that volumetric measurement of flour is not the most accurate method due to variances in the packing of flour particles. Measurement by weight is the answer to the problem. True. But how much of an impact does the moisture content of the flour have on weight? I'm not a food professional, but I've never heard anybody make reference to humidity in the flour throwing off their recipe.
Maybe it's an immaterial difference in the end. Okay, uh, since I don't have time to go too deep into it, thank God someone else has done it. And uh everyone he doesn't get enough props, but this guy, Greg Blonder, has a website called Genuine Ideas, which I think is quite nice. Do you like this one, Chris? This this the do you've been that to that blog?
Maybe I lost Chris. And he says brilliant smart things. Yeah, yeah. So uh yeah, so you're gonna go look at him. He has one on flour where he has done all of the measurements, and the answer basically is that in the normal uh range of humidity inside of a house, wal uh flour is fairly stable.
And if you go into like rainforest, it suddenly starts absorbing more water, and if you go into extremely, extremely dry conditions, it will suddenly give up a lot of water, but that it's actually fairly stable in the range that it's mostly kept. But you need to go look at at what uh he says. Your second question is temperature frying oil. Standard procedure for frying is to bring the fry o oil up to a given temperature before adding the food. Let's say 350 or 375.
After adding the food, the oil temperature will, of course, drop and rise again as the vessel is heated. Given that the temperature of the oil drops immediately after the food is added, uh, is because of the heat energy of the oil using to boil water, um, a phase change, uh, as opposed to a linear heating uh for the of the food above the boiling point of water. Wouldn't it be more accurate to specify frying parameters on the heat content of the oil rather than the temperature? In other words, two gallons of oil at 350 would contain far greater thermal energy than two quarts at 375. Uh, best John Baker.
You're a hundred percent right. And that's why anyone who has a brain in their head will use as much oil as is feasible when they're frying uh to get uh a higher uh better stability, and that you have to jack the temperature of lower volumes of oil higher. And that's why uh one of the many reasons why frying at home is often uh not as satisfying as having a professional deep fryer. Uh yeah, I mean, right, Chris, you agree with that? Uh I totally absolutely correct.
And you know, I I generally advocate actually, since you're almost always at home using very fresh new oil, which tends to be more stable and has a higher smoke point because you haven't, you know, abused it yet. Uh run the oil hotter. Um, you know, 200 Celsius is easily doable by a reasonable frying oil like canola, uh, even 210, and you'll be shocked at how much better your fried food is. And just use lots of it. All right, and Aaron has a question that Chris needs to weigh in on because it's a technique.
We gotta be done. Oh, okay. Oh, two seconds, two seconds. Uh last year I did a meat glue turduck and breast loaf for Thanksgiving, and since each year must be a new challenge, I want to add a layer of chicharron on the outside of my poultry roll this year. I was thinking that I would do three birds uh meat glued together wearing a jacket of pork skin.
Here's the process. I hope it might work. Steve, what do you think? Boil scrape and dry the pig skin in the oven. Roll the breasts up wrapped in pig skin with meat glue and let it set in the fridge overnight.
Low temp the whole thing, then dry the skin as much as possible, and then deep fry it and hope the pork skin is dry enough to get poofy and crackly. Will the already boiled pork skin have enough proteins free for the enzymatic action of the transglutaminase? Yes. Do you think it will be dry enough after sitting in the bag to get delicious and crunchy and puffy? Crunchy yes, puffy no.
What do you think? Definitely not, and I would strongly recommend you grind your pork skin so that it's small pieces the size of popcorn kernels, you will be much happier with the result. Sawing through the puff chutron will not not be as delicious as you think. I want to just chime in here with the public service announcement. I saw Dave run through Bushwick to get to this show.
He ran two blocks, and I have it on video. I think Jack's gonna put it on Facebook. It's on Instagram, yeah. It's on Instagram. Morning two minutes, two blocks for the show, and it showed commitment.
And I'm on the board of directors of HRN, and we are now $30,000 towards our goal of raising a hundred thousand by the end of the year. And if you love Dave, consider we just got ten thousand dollars from the Mariposa Foundation, which is a real honor. Aaron just pulled that off. So consider giving even $25 membership counts. And if we could get all of Dave's listeners to give $25, we'd reach our goal.
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