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. I'm Laura Stanley, host of Inside School Food. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for thousands more.
Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from a British Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, every Tuesday on the Heritage Radio Network from roughly 12-ish. A little late today. 1212. 1212 is a nice number though.
To roughly 1245, 1250, depending on when we get we only start the show on nice numbers. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well we should start at 8, and then we can always have it start at 808, and we can have a sweet the sweet. Cowbell?
No. I like the boom. The kick, yeah, go ahead. Of course. But that's that's that's that's so mainstream though, like the 808 base.
The cowbell is the onside. That's a great point, Peter. Well, no, Peter has betrayed his his oldness. I would say that the average young person has no idea what an 808 is, doesn't remember who the Beastie Boys were when they started name checking the 808 or anything about it. Oh, you're wrong.
808 has had a a good uh r renaissance and resurgence. Well, nothing sounds quite like an 808. Can we hear that? Do you have it? I can pull up an 808.
Yeah, give me a second here. We'll make it happen. What's Da's laughing at? This guy is enamored with Dave. Nah, not even can't take his eyes off you.
That's because I'm a freak. All right, so listen. This is your thing. This is just the 808 beat we're gonna play. 808.
Let's see. Make no mistake. Well, this is what happens when you pull up YouTube. You never know. Oh, there's uh oh yeah.
See, like that's that's like that's like the 80s 808. That's like run DMC style 808. Yeah, exactly. Oh, too bad Dave can't rap over this. Well, you know, apparently Peter Kim from the Museum of Food and Drink, who's here with us again today, uh, used to do freestyling.
Yep. Known rapper, but known liar. Oh wow. Out was that your rap name, known liar? Known liar.
Exactly. Wow. Damn. Wow. Stop.
You know, Peter called me at 9 50 p.m. on Monday. Yeah. Being yesterday. Do you know why that's important?
No, why is that important? It's bachelor season. Do you know what happens at 950? A rose ceremony. Yeah.
Well, I think you can hear that Nastasia Hammer Lopez is with us today, as usual, with her love of The Bachelor, which is New Season. Is The Bachelor as bad for America as the Jerry Springer show? I don't think so. No. No, I don't think so.
And joined as usual in the engineering booth with Jack Jackie Molecules Insley. What do you think, Jack? Um, I I have to I have to say something. Somebody just tweeted at us like 15 minutes ago, and uh they sent me this. They said this is for Jackie Molecules, and I have to play it.
It's 10 seconds long. Ready? The molecular man! Wow. Right?
Wow. Wow, what is that? It's a Conan O'Brien sketch, the molecular man. It's got the same voice as uh Will Farrell from um Mega Mind. Remember that movie?
No, I've never seen it. Get some freaking kids. Not yet. Alright. Uh wait, so what the hell else were we talking about?
808s. Peter's rapping. Peter's rapping. 808s, heartbreaks. Oh, see, now he's starting his freestyle career again.
No, it's a Kanye West reference. Oh, really? Come on. Come on. Wait, it must is it more recent, Kanye?
Not so recent. I mean, is it after you stop being good? Circa 2008, nine. Yeah, it was a while ago, man. Whatever.
Peter Kim does not care about Kanye West. Okay. Here we go. Dear Dave, Nastasia, and Jack. And actually Peter had a uh Peter had a uh comment on this earlier.
This is last week's question. Cooks Illustrated recently ran an equipment test on carbon steel pans and concluded that they were a better choice than cast iron for home cooks. But none of the chefs I read and listen to have ever mentioned carbon steel skillets. You and Kenji Lopez Alt both seem enamored with your cast iron. I'm enamored strong.
I mean, you know, like, you know, if there was a fire, first of all, the cast iron would survive, but I would save my family first. You know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? I was about to go on to a parmigiano Reggiano rant for my honeymoon, but I won't do it. Uh I won't do it.
Uh it won't have to be. You like the Parmigiana, you love your wife. That's what the guy said to me, because I couldn't know how in Italian to say that, you know, I was like, I love the Parmigiana Region. Whatever. We got a lot of free hats and Parmesan knives.
Anyway, uh, can you comment? Uh flush with cash from Christmas. I am trying to decide whether whether to buy a large cast iron pan or the carbon steel pan, Cook's Illustrated recommends from Motfur. Uh Motfer Bourgeois. You want to pronounce that with your fake French uh accent too?
Uh do it Cameroonian French. I guess it would be uh But to Vuin Poil Matfou. Peter K, of course, lived in Cameron. Well I lived in Cameroon, guys for two and a half years. No liar.
Wow. This one is currently sold out because of the demand generated by their review. Please advise uh Alex. So here's the d here's my issue. Here's my point on the Dil Dilio.
Uh current no offense to the Lodge folks, because didn't we meet them once or something like that? I wish that Lodge would come out with a set of cast iron um a set of cast iron pans that had the uh inside sanded so that it was smooth, like the old school polished cast iron. Because those suckers are uh awesome. But um in my opinion, uh trying to compare the two uh trying to compare the two styles of pans, cast iron versus uh black steel, is kind of like missing the the point. It's like not like I wouldn't use them for the same for the same things.
I think like the comparison, which I think also Cooks Illustrated makes, is between the uh black steel pan, as I always call it, and the um in a regular non stick uh nonstick uh skillet, right? And so you know, I think they're good. I think they're they're very good. They the cast iron and and the black steel are both uh steel, right? I mean not steel, they're iron fundamentally, but they this the the surface of them both form nonstick uh finishes in exactly the same way.
So in in the same way that a wok, which is in essence a black steel pan, right, in the same way that a walk becomes nonstick over time, uh as it's seasoned, uh, so will uh black steel. What? They're staring at me like in a very strange way. See, okay, I have to go on a tangent. I'm sorry, Alex, for not answering your question in in total before I go off on this tangent.
But Peter Kim cannot uh like uh sit in in an auditorium or in front of a group of people and have Nastasia and I near him making faces at him because he just breaks up. He's like freaking uh he's like one of those Saturday Night Live characters that like can't not laugh during a freaking uh so he's trying to do something like that, but it's not even phasing me. You don't understand that like my whole family is partially autistic, so I cannot be phased. I'm unfadable. You know what I mean?
One quick knowing glance. We have a caller that's been really patient on the line after. Alright, caller, call okay, okay, okay. We'll take the caller and then we'll finish the black and iron. Anyway, caller, you're on the air.
I did Andrew from Pittsburgh here. How you doing? Uh I'm doing well, how are you? Good. You know who I found out lives in Pittsburgh?
You know who Betty Davis is, the uh the musician from the seventies? Yep. Yeah, she lives in Pittsburgh, I think. I think after she dropped out of the music business, she just like was like, crap on it. I'm moving I think that's where she lives, Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh was named the top food city by Zagat, I believe recently. Over in New York? Yeah. Really? What do you think about that?
Uh I mean there's a bunch of really cool restaurants and stuff in Pittsburgh. I don't know, it's definitely not better than New York. I mean New York is the food capital of the world, but this would be awesome. Thank you for just crushing the Zagat on your own. I like that a lot.
All right, so where are we going? What do we got? Uh the question that I had related to frozen margaritas out of uh kind of a frozen margarita slushing machine. Yep. Um all the mixes for those are garbage.
And I'm trying to figure out how to make uh a delicious frozen margarita um while having something that you can batch and have and I'm sorry, I'm a bartender, and so having something you can bash and have around for a while, because limes go bad so quickly, even though they're very delicious. How do you make a um frozen margarita mix that you can that you can hold for some period of time to be realistic to serve in a restaurant? How long? First of all, I like the use of garbage, exactly right. They're a garbage.
We should have a garbage noise, Jack, as part of our New Year's thing, just garbage. Garbage sound effect? Garbage. They like you know, the margarita mix is a garbage. Like it's just be like, you know what I mean?
Anyway. I mean you could do the red garbage. No, you want I know something better. I'll work on it. Anyway, it's a Sega guy, but garbage.
Garbage. Anyway, but like uh so how long do you need it to last? Uh I I mean not super super long, but uh several days. You don't have to kind of sit there and babysit it all the time. I mean, probably no longer than three or four days, but um big that you wouldn't really need to worry about.
Uh the thing that I'm kind of chasing down right now is just doing the lime acid that you do with citric malic and secinic acid, and then just do water, triple sec, tequila, uh, agave, a little bit of salt, and then do like a lime acid uh kind of mix for that to get you the lime taste. Um what do you think about that versus doing straight lime? I mean, obviously I would prefer to do lime, but yeah. Uh I mean here's the here's the issue, right? I mean, lime uh lime changes, obviously.
The good news about frozen specs is frozen specs typically have less because they're more diluted, um, and because the you know, just because of their structure, they typically have less lime in them than let's say a uh shaken margarita would, right? And so the the less lime, actual lime is in there, the the less of the detrimental nonsense you're gonna have based on uh lime degradation. Right? That that said, you know, it's a hundred percent gonna be noticeable. So here's the other problem you're gonna have is that if you make a batch on day one and let's say you're gonna keep it for three days, the batch will taste fairly the same on day two as it does on day three, but it's not gonna taste the same as it does on day one.
And so, you know, one thing you could do is you're gonna say, okay, listen, like I'm just gonna balance these all these drinks around uh like one and two-day old lime juice, right? Because then probably the difference between two and three is not gonna be that big big of a deal either. So if you just keep some lime juice around uh and then run some uh batch tests on uh like doing your bat doing your initial batch with day old lime juice and get it to taste where you want. And then you could put just the amount in that you uh that you desire. Another thing you could do, it's it's not gonna taste like a margarita, it's gonna taste uh different is to base your specs around a uh cordial, right?
Cordial lasts forever, right? So then you take your lime juice and heat it uh with sugar and do your you know, do your batching around that, and it won't be the same because it's gonna lack some of that the uh brightness, right? But you could pop, you could pop back in um, you could pop back in some of that brightness from uh fresh lime. Here's another thing you can do. You can use regular lime, right, to give some of that li limeiness, and then use a uh orange with lime acid added to it, and that'll give keep because the orange, sour you know, like uh acid-adjusted orange juice keeps its brightness longer than um than lime does, right?
So you could do a mix with acid adjusted OJ, right? If you only have a little bit of lime in there, uh and orange is a flavor in uh in margaritas anyway, right? So you could do something like that, and then you know you wouldn't have as much of the um day two, day three blues with the margaritas as in fact I've done margarita style specs that have are entirely done with acid-adjusted OJ, just so that I don't have to deal with uh lime juice going bad. Right. How do you deal with the um the orange juice becoming bitter?
I was looking into the the kind of extra chemistry of that a while ago. The I'm totally facing all the names. Yeah, it's totally dependent on the genetics of the particular orange you use. So um, you know, as long as you know you g run a test like you run a test, you juice it, and you see whether or not it goes bitter. It happens within like several hours, right?
So like some some tangerines are like get incredibly bitter, and uh, you know, some uh don't. I mean the the real problem from a bar perspective is that we're getting navels in, right? I mean, at least if you're like me, you're getting navels in because you're using the peel. And you're not and you're not gonna get crappy looking, you know. Okay, listen, everyone knows California citrus looks good and Florida citrus looks terrible, even though Florida citrus is typically the one used for juices because they don't care about peels, right?
So you're not you're not gonna get Florida, and it's just it's just a question of climate. I'm not saying that the Floridians are bad people and they can't grow good citrus, it's the climate. Uh ugly, I mean, you know, so that the so you know, you you're not gonna want to pull in like a bunch of valencias so that you can get like the juice you want, and then have to still throw away the juice from your navel. So like we're very lucky the navels that we get don't go bitter. Uh and you know, it's just a test we've run.
But then, you know, someday some knucklehead might decide to switch the supplier, get a different kind of navel in, and who knows we'll get hosed. Because I have read that some navels will get bitter, although I know ours don't. That's all I can that's I mean, that's basically all I can say about that. But you're definitely gonna want your oranges to do double duty. You know what I'm saying?
Right. Yeah, I mean I I hate throwing all those away, you know, whenever you're talking about that always I love finding ways to repurpose things where you get that. Oh yeah, and so like if you can use them in margaritas, right? So if you have a mach if you have a machine, what that tells me is that you're doing high volumes on margaritas, which means you have a use for a lot of OJ. If if you can purpose your OJ into it, you know what I mean?
You're you're you're probably gonna get good use. And you can put a relatively large amount of OJ into a margarita to good effect because like I said, orange is already one of the flavors that's in there. Right. So that that's the direction that you would go is do lime acid OJ, uh and then make your mixture on that and balance it on day old uh juice. Yeah, or like I say, try a cordial, see whether see whether you like it.
Um But yeah, I would I would yeah, I would I would go that route. And by the way, like uh what I would do is uh, you know, just to save yourself some uh time and headache, I would I would do like two drink versions of all the different batches you want to try, throw them in ziplocks and then throw them in your freezer, uh and then just kind of rough them up to taste them. It'll give you a good approximation for what your slushy machine will do, uh, but you won't have to fill an entire selection machine to do it. Oh, would you do like a dead rabbit where they do the oleo and then sugar and juice? What's say that again?
Uh the way the dead rabbit does their uh cordial where they do uh an oleo with the lime and then they do the juice and do it that way, or would you do a different I mean well like like I'm real uh look, we have a lot of clarified lime juice left over, so when I do a cordial, I want it to be dead clear, like roses. So like I don't necessarily do it as like I would do it if I was gonna have a cloudy cordial from the ground up. So for me it's less I just do clarified lime juice, uh sugar and uh lime peel. Uh so I don't make an oleo and I don't extract any of that extra stuff from it, and um, you know, I just get a little extra punch out of the out of the lime peel. But you definitely don't want to use clarified lime juice for this application.
So I don't know, like you know, uh, you know, taste the dead rabbits, and if it's that's a flavor profile you want, then do it. Otherwise just boil some freaking lime juice with some sugar and and some lime peel in it as a first approximation, see which one you like better. You know what I mean? Uh look, we have we have a tons of leftover lime juice, so and I'm sure you do too. So taking a little bit of that and just, you know, boiling it with some sugar and seeing whether you like it is like, you know, no brainer.
Right. All right. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it. No problem.
Good luck. Thanks. Bye. What if I just play everybody out with an eight oh eight beat today? All right.
Hey, I have to say thanks to Nastasia who got me an early birthday present, which is a DJ cheese grater. It's a cheese grater that looks like a turntable. You want to see it? Yeah, I do. Uh oh my oh.
You're killing me because I need the baseline to come in. Jiggy Jiggy Jiggy. It's just drums today. We'll get there. All right.
I'm like, let's say let me see some here. Uh so you actually wouldn't kill yourself here. You could like just get rid of some, like you could use it for your feet. Yeah. I'm not sure if you could use it for your feet.
Jack, that's the beginning of Southern Playolistic, right? Catalag funky music. Oh, it's a bit similar. I think so. Yeah.
Nice. It's one of those YouTube videos. It's like, you know. Alright. Oh, there you go.
Oh, yeah. But this wasn't that wasn't my that's not like that's not like my growing up sound. It's the prior stuff's my growing up sound. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, so back to where we were. We were talking about Alex uh and Cooks Illustrated and uh their their cast iron. So I looked up on Cooks Illustrated's uh website. And uh by the way, Peter, because he's a a francophile, he likes him these kinds of black steel pans, right?
That's not because I'm a francophile. I just I like I like my egg pan a lot. Oh, it's great for eggs. That's why I uh for me the main thing is really it's like the weights, right? And you know, cast iron's great for getting a good sear on, right?
But like I don't want to be flipping around a really heavy cast iron pan to make my sunny side up eggs. So you're weak. That's one way to look at you bastard. Oh man. Yeah.
But that is stuff in the morning. You're gonna use you're gonna use a freaking cast iron pan to make your. Okay, you know what I have? I have because they're incredibly cheap. I have you know the fajita, the sizzles, the sizzle plates, like the uh oblong like uh cast iron things.
I have like six of those sitting right next to my stone bowls, and they seem a whole lot lighter than my Korean stone bowls do. You know what I mean? And so like I drop them on the on the uh on the on my range, and then you know, boom, I'm off to the races. No, look, if you're making an omelet, you're gonna be like moving the pan around. You don't want to have to deal with something super bulky.
No, I think they make great omelet pans. Yeah, that's that's my primary use for it. Yeah, I mean, fantastic omelet pans, and you know, uh for most people, I think uh omelets and cast iron can be difficult because it takes a long time for the heat to spread out evenly. Um let's get back to what uh what Cooks Illustrated specifically said about black steel, and then we'll we'll uh we'll have discussions about it. Okay.
Uh in their opinion, it sears like cast iron. A carbon steel skillet can brown food just as deeply and evenly as cast iron. It also has two advantages, it heats up more quickly, and it's lighter weight makes it easier to handle. What we have here is an oxymoronic station. Yeah, the the two things don't go aware together.
Yeah, that's like saying, like that's like saying, you know, the sky is blue, but really it's not blue at all. Like you can't, you can't like it's just the the two phrases don't fit. It doesn't sear as well as cast iron, but it heats up more quickly. Yeah, it's like when Spock said, I'm a liar, well, Epamenides, I guess, not really Spock. You know, I'm a liar.
I'm lying. You know what I mean? Yeah. You can't, it's a contradiction. Yeah.
Uh a carbon steel skillet cannot brown food as uh as deeply for a given uh uh initial heat input. It's it's not the case. You know what I mean? It's like, and the reason is going back to one of the purported advantages, it's lighter and heats up more quickly. Right.
The fact that it is lighter and heats up more quickly means it is not storing as much heat, right? Because it heated up more quickly, therefore it didn't store as much heat before it delivered it to your food, otherwise it wouldn't have heated up more quick, and it weighs less, so it's not storing as much energy, especially because they are fundamentally similar in their heat storage properties. Now, the carbon steel is a lot better heat conductor, right? Which is why it's gonna be more more even for a given level of quick overheating, right? But if you really want to sear the ever loving crap out of something, right?
Nothing beats uh keeping your cast iron pans in a uh hot oven where it gets incredibly even heat and the whole thing turns into like a searing machine, then throwing it on top of a burner for residual heat and throwing meat in it. Just you can't beat that. You know what I mean? And um not that people necessarily go through that trouble. And I think that if you were searing meat, I think also a lot depends on the burners that you have, right?
So, you know, I have my burners at home are r ridiculous. I mean, they're in fact they're not safe. It's not my fault because it's because uh my you know, my wife said, you know, you're too old for this crap, we're gonna hire a plumber. The plumber didn't install it properly, didn't put the proper regulator on my oven, and so my my burners now are very hard to use on low, but they put out eight bazillion BTUs. You see my burning.
They have a mind of their own. They're crazy, they go up and down, but when they're on scream, they scream. Like I can run a walk like a professional restaurant can because they're so freaking like powerful, too powerful, uh, for most applications, except for walk. Um which I like, I like it to walk. But the um where was I going with this?
So the point is if you have a tiny burner, right? I would prefer to have a pan that heated kind of quickly and more evenly because you just don't have enough power to really get anything up to the temperatures that I'm gonna want to do that kind of work, in which case maybe you should consider getting a cast iron and throwing it in your oven and heating it uh beforehand up to a hot temperature so you can search yeah? Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so we've already seen the very first thing, no offense to Cooks Illustrated because you know, the magazine in 1993 when it first came out was like like changed my life, like honestly. Um, for me it's primarily weight, heat retention, and then the smoothness of the surface.
Yeah. Well, their their next uh point uh about the uh black steel is performs like stainless uh triply, which let's just call it all clad. Let's just say all clad, like an all clad similar devices, right? Uh they say carbon steel heats virtually as evenly as stainless steel triply uh aluminum sandwich between stainless, but can brown more deeply. Our winner costs one third of the price of our favorite triply skillet from Alclad.
Right. So it costs less than all clad, but um I don't really think it's gonna heat as as evenly. I've done many studies, but I haven't done it for years, but I've done many studies of different pans over different heat sources, and I think again, a lot of this depends on your uh burner. So, in particular, induction burners, like most home crappy induction burners, where they fall flat, is the fact that the actual heating element is quite small. So, what you should do to any one of your pans, or if you can test them is uh, you know, McGee uses beans and paper.
I use a light dusting of flour, and I put it on the hob and I wait to see what the burn pattern is on the thing, and you can see very clearly how even or not even a particular uh kind of heat transfer um heat transfer uh pattern is. But I mean, I just I like they say virtually carbon steel heats virtually as evenly. What does that even mean? Virtually as evenly. Means not, right?
Means almost as good. Anyway, as slick as nonstick. Carbon steel is as slippery as black brand new nonstick, but it sears better, doesn't have a synthetic coating. Well, it does have it's not synthetic, but it has a coating of polymerized oil. So you mean there is in fact a coating on black steel pants because if there wasn't, it wouldn't be non stick.
Steel, as it comes from the factory, is not in fact non stick. You have to season it. Uh has no uh oven safe temperature limits. Also not true. If you stick it in the oven and you put the oven on uh self-clean, you'll ruin the seasoning on it and have to do it again.
In fact, if you've poorly seasoned a pan, the best way to fix it is to throw it in the oven on self-clean where it gets wiped off. What they mean is no reasonable limits. I think that's what they mean, no reasonable limits uh and last forever. That's true. Here are the problems with uh the only problems you if you go into a professional restaurant and you see the black steel, if it's treated poorly, a lot of times um because they are thinner than cast iron, here's where they don't work as well as cast iron.
Uh because they're thinner, if you uh viciously overheat them, they warp in the center. So, like a cast iron pan, uh I mean, a cast iron pan's never gonna warp, right? Also, they they talk about how cast iron's a problem because it's brittle. Have you ever seen a cast iron pan break in normal service? Nope.
No. At home? No. I've seen cast iron burner spiders break all the time. So I prefer steel spiders in in on an oven.
Uh you know what I'm talking about, the burner covers, you know what I'm saying? I prefer them every day. But uh I don't know. Like I just see them as different. I think if you're gonna make omelets, buy you uh buy you a an omelet pan that's made of black steel, it's awesome.
I'm gonna also go out on a limb here and say that like did I ever mention Jeffrey Steingarden? You know what he always used to say? He's like, uh knives are l are are like puppies, right? You like they're always good when they're new, right? Like it's like it's like how well it works, like after you've had it for a while.
Like, you know, does it resharpen? Does it stop pooping on your floor? You know, stuff like this, right? And I'm gonna extend this out to uh nonstick skillets, right? So nonstick skillets, like when you first get them, you're like, it's awesome.
And then the manufacturer tells you, yeah, you know, you know how like everyone else's nonstick stuff like is gonna wear off over time? Ours isn't. They're like everyone else's like you know how everyone else says you can use metal uh tools, but you really can't? Well, and ours you can. Or you know how everyone else says that you can't dishwash it.
But new voice data. Yeah, nice product spokesman voice. I like that. Yeah, anyway. It's never true.
Like like they uh they're always they're they always crap out. They're the worst. They're worst. And like they're like puppies. They're great when you get 'em and then they turn to crap.
And so you know, I would say that like in general I w unless someone comes up with a nonstick that really freaking works, right? I'm not gonna buy 'em anymore. And the next time I need a nonstick pan, I will probably go out and buy a black steel pan. Um just because those I mean those those Teflon things are nonsense. Now another thing a black steel is never gonna be as good at generating uh give me your give me your Cameroonian French for phone.
For phone. Give it to me. Le phone. Le phone. The crusty stuff at the bottom.
Yeah, you can because you have to add the all the burbling crap beforehand. Like do you want the do you want the phone? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, it's all right. Yeah.
Uh my point being that like uh nonstick is not good when you wanna develop like some crusties, right? So if you want to emulate a ro this is why you don't use nonstick like roasting pants. They won't make sense. You know what I mean? So like if you're going to generate crusties, then I would say, you know, use your uh use your your allclads, you know, or your triplies.
One thing I'll say is that uh I got some bum advice from the interwebs on how to season my black steel pan. No, let's talk about it. Flaxseed oil. Flaxseed oil should like the so the theory of flaxseed oil is that uh it's a drying oil, and therefore you flax the same as linseed, right? Uh I don't know.
Isn't it? Isn't flax the same as linseed? I have no idea. Anyways, it's a drying oil, so it gets like uh it stickies up faster than uh other oils. Uh that's probably that's it's used in if flaxseed oil, and this by the way, I hadn't even looked this up in a million years, but if flaxseed oil is linseed oil, it's the oil used uh it's the drying oil used in oil paints.
Am I right on this? Can someone Google this crap? Google seems to suggest they're the same thing. Yeah. Uh is like my hands are too cold, I can't even pick up my phone.
Uh it's not even cold outside today. I mean it is, I guess. It is relative. Anyway. Uh point being that uh so what happened?
It gummed up and was a nightmare? Yeah, well then the big the main thing. No, it was actually great at first, but then it's uh starts flaking off. Yeah, if you do big flakes. If you in if you improperly season uh and you get these layers that can separate and it's a freaking nightmare.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Which is why everyone like you know, so what was the advice? How did they say to do it? Well, so there's if there's you can look this up online.
It's a it's a well-visited site, and this woman gives us very long account on the science behind seasoning pans. It's very convincing, and she suggests using flaxseed oil. And I I follow their advice and screwed up my pan. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and say that in my life, I I mean, I can't tell you how many pans I've seasoned, but you know dozens, many dozens, you know what I mean? And um uh I have never purchased in my life a special anything to do it.
Yeah, yeah. You know, I I always do it like uh and uh like in one of two ways, either like on the burner or in the oven. I think one of the main issues that people have is over-oiling, trying to get it all done at once. So, like, you know, get a rag and uh you know soak the rag in oil, do the the wipe, let it sit, wipe it out, let it let it polymerize, and do it again and again and again. And I've, you know, uh it's been a long time since I've ruined it.
I've ruined the initial work uh the initial seasoning I didn't went too thick on a crepe maker that I bought like 15, 16 years ago. Uh because when you buy a crepe maker, the real ones, the crampus ones, they've actually machined a spiral snail-like groove all the way around the um thing that's supposed to build up an oil coating over time because crepe makers have to be incredibly non stick. And I tried to do it too fast, and so I got flakies that never kind of went away. It still works, but it's like a little unsatisfying because you get those little divots and pits in the uh in the non but still works. Uh but yeah.
Yeah. A friend of mine just came, he's like, I messed up my wok. I over seasoned it, and now it's got big, you know, I try to season it with too much oil at once and it's got big drips in the bottom of the pan. He's like, what should I do? I was like, your SOL.
This is why, by the way, if you're buying something that needs to get seasoned, don't buy one that has a handle on it that can't go in the oven. Because by far and away, the easiest way to start from scratch is to just burn off the old old seasoning. And you can't do it. Uh you shouldn't do it with a torch or anything that's uneven unless it's like a cast iron, and you can't do it if there's a wooden handle on it, you can't take off. You can't throw it in the oven and put it on self-clean if it's got a wooden handle, like dirr.
You know what I mean? Hey, I got some clarification of flaxseed and linseed from uh Joel Stubb in the chat room. Shoot it. So they're both extracted from seeds of the plant, linumitasimu. I can't say that word.
Anyway, flaxseed oil is pure and fit for human consumption. Linseed oil goes through a refinement process and may contain additives that improve its paint cleaning properties. So don't cook with linseed oil, but cook with flaxseed. Uh all right, nice. Thank you.
Alright, so should we take a commercial brink and come back with it? Uh yeah, let's do that. Today's program was brought to you by Firesider. Did your grandmother ever tell you to drink raw apple cider vinegar? It's good advice and more common than you may think.
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Alright, we are back. Hey, uh, so Jack, have we ever tasted this stuff? Uh no. I want to try some. Yeah, me too.
I'll tell you something. My grandma never told me anything about apple cider vinegar. She was just like, why don't you go work? Why don't you do some work? Why don't you get same?
Do some freaking chores? How come I didn't have a grandma that gave me apple cider vinegar? No, my grandma's like, you know, why aren't you? If you can sit, like my grandma? Well, one of my two grandmas absolutely hated the act of reading.
And it was like one of my favorite things to do is like read and like learn. And she the thing she could stand on earth least was seeing people trying to learn. And so she would, you know, any time you try to try to sit down with a book, she would like just and my grandpa, one of the reasons he was bitter until the day he died was that uh he he also loved to read and and grandma would never ever, ever, ever let him read. If he had only lived long enough for like, you know, Audible to exist that he could just listen to that stuff while he was toiling away in the freaking uh in the freaking yard for no apparent reason. You know what I'm saying?
I know what you're saying. Like, you know. I know what you're saying. You know, uh anyway, whatever. So anyway, my my grandma, not apple cider, uh, and my other grandma was from West Virginia, so you know, it was more like Oh, really?
Yeah, it was more like uh yeah, so it was more like uh have some uh country ham and some uh and some lard. You know what I mean? That was the kind of cure all country ham and lard. Uh although, you know, they didn't have a lot of lard in the you know, when I was hanging out with her in the 70s, 80s, that was already kind of day class say, but we did have a lot of country ham uh and she did enjoy herself some uh red eye gravy, which is delicious. Okay.
Uh and we have a a note from Ben from last week saying it's loot fisk season in Minnesota. I remember Dave mentioning this slimy fish dish once on cooking issues, and uh and he's pointing out to us that we can go to uh CBS Minnesota did a finding Minnesota taste of loot fisk. So I'm gonna go look that up and see what that you like loot fist? Did you like that when we made it before? I don't remember it.
No. Well, we didn't actually make the loot fisk. What we did is we made uh we made the lye eggs, remember? And then we served it with regular fish, and it was kind of with nils. It was kind of a loot fisk turned on its kind of head.
You know what I mean? But it's like lye treated, basic treated fish. Speaking of which, if there is anyone who can hear my voice who's an expert on clearing and staining. Remember clearing and staining? We try to get someone to do that.
So in clearing and stating, what you do is you use a base uh base, uh, I believe, well, just much like the one in the 808, only this one's more potassium hydroxide. And you soak uh something like a fish in this base, it like kind of like messes with the proteins. You can leach out all of the color and everything in in something like a fish, right? And then you introduce stains to it, and you can selectively by using different uh like stains that are used also like in slides, you can have like the nervous system suck up a certain color and the skeletal system suck up another and then leach it back out of the muscular tissues, and you have these amazing 3D like fish and other animals. There's a book on it, but wouldn't you love to be able to clear and stain something big like a whole striper so that you could just see all the structure of the striper, that'd be pretty baller, right?
That'd be dope. Maybe for the museum. So if there's anyone out there who knows how to clear and stain. Now, typically they don't do it on such large thing large things, which is why all the pictures are small fish and frogs. But if someone wants to take on clearing and staining or knows someone that can help us out with large clearing and staining, that would be sweet.
Sweet. Oh, by the way, Dave, speaking of bases, you've got your want to plug your program coming up at the museum on February 4. Nice. I love that. On acids and bases.
What am I doing? You're doing bases. He's doing acids, yeah. So yeah, on programs.mofad.org, February 4. Come see Dave.
How much is it? It's forty five bucks. Forty five bucks? What do they get? Tastings, drinks.
Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. So what do we know what Johnny's gonna make? I don't know.
I we've got it down somewhere. It's on the website. Johnny, Johnny, our good friend from Mad Town. Yeah, yeah. Underground meats.
Yeah. Yeah. Good guy. We don't know what he we don't know what he's gonna do. He's gonna do something awesome.
You always just say it's gonna be great. Do we know what I'm gonna do? You know what I mean? Probably not until the morning up. It's gonna be good, people.
Something mad basic, yo. It's gonna be good. I'm gonna maybe I'll bring my nix to matic. Maybe we'll do some nixtimalization. Oh, hey, Patrick.
No, that's not that's not. That's bordering on Patrick. Peter, you're the only guy who's allowed to imitate Patrick on the on the network. That's you know. Okay.
Hello, Dave and crew, longtime listener and fan. I'll cut straight to the change Chase, my fiance and I are planning a wedding this coming fall or perhaps summer, uh, and uh are on a fairly limited budget. We've already identified numerous cost cutting measures, but remain a fair amount above our goal. While I am not suggesting that we personally prepare a full food and beverage program for 140 people, I was curious if it might be possible to make a meaningful dent in the total cost. I have a fair amount of equipment I picked up at auctions over the years listed below.
And power shouldn't be an issue. So let's see what they got here. They got uh this is John, by the way, in in uh Portland. Uh three circulators. Did I say circulator?
Circle circulator. Maine. Maine. Come on. Uh uh, I don't know why I say come on.
But like I don't know, I don't know why I say come on. I don't know. Portland, Maine. It's Portland, Maine. Uh, because Maine was in my head.
That's why I say come on. Uh three circulators, one Randell FX, uh, fridge freezer, one Vacmaster VP one twelve, one twenty pound CO2 tank with regulator, one Paco Jet. Man, there's a high rent. You're like, uh, I got like a I got like a 20-pound CO two tank, uh yep, and a Paco jet. It's like boom, Paco Jet.
You know what I'm saying? Paco jet. I would love to have a Paco Jet. Uh one Sears all, not yet, but soon. One Grindmaster 875 coffee grinder, although I don't know if we're gonna use that, unless they're gonna make a lot of coffee.
Coffee course? Coffee time. Oh, yeah, okay. Uh yeah, but like, but that's you know, that I mean, yeah, I mean, you still need to brew the coffee for everything, unless you're gonna do like some sort of weird anyway. Uh two Vitamixes and like a bunch of Weber charcoal grills.
Well, yeah, I mean you're in good shape on equipment there, except for like you're pretty low on, well, I guess if you do everything on Weber hot side, I see your point. Anyway, we have a good uh number of volunteers who would be able to assist with prep. However, we personally would want to handle the serving and set up on the actual wedding day. I realize this is a potentially disastrous idea. I almost didn't bother asking, but I have the nagging feeling it might be possible to souve eat a good amount of food beforehand and simply reheat it before and during the ceremony or batch some cocktails the day before or not.
No, dude! John, don't do it, brother. Just get married. Yeah, yeah, Jesus. It's not gonna turn out.
Tim in the chat room has an answer to saving money. Stop buying Paco Jets. Oh boom, ba ba boom. Look, here's my point, right? Uh do not, do not cook at your wedding.
Yeah. Don't. Now, listen, here's the other thing. I'm gonna tell you this right now. Is like, is that it everything, everything is gonna depend on a few decisions that you're about to make in your life, right?
Now, I mean, in terms of the wedding, not in terms of life in general. Once you fall into the wedding trap, like you are you are hosed. You are you are completely, you are hosed, right? So, like the question is how far do you fall in? Here's where you're wrong.
You're thinking, uh, I've thrown parties for large groups of people, so I can just throw this like I'm throwing a party. But remember, the last time you threw a party where you cooked, the best part about that was you didn't have to interact with your guests. That's why cooks like to throw parties, because they can have lots of people around, but they don't have to interact with them. They can sit around cooking and have marginal interactions, like, hey hey, hey, how's the food? Oh, great, bye, see ya.
You know what I mean? And then just get and then just get back to their kitchens and cook, right? I mean, that's like even in an open kitchen situation, when you're sitting there sweating a bunch of pants and flicking around, no one expects more than a five-second response from you at best. It's genius for someone who's a kind of a social moron. You know what I mean?
You get to look social and not be. At a wedding, you actually need to be social. I'm sorry. Clearly, he doesn't want to be. Doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter. It's not about you. The wedding in. You think the wedding's about you, but it's not, right? So here's the thing it's about your family coming in.
Like you're gonna have to spend time going from table to table, even if you don't have it. It's not a look, like, but don't fall the other thing is that you're not even gonna have time to think about food if you fall into all the traps. Like, I gotta get this first of all, you're gonna have some some form of like, you know, man of matron of honor, of people, honor guard, whatever the honor roll, whatever they call the honor roll. Whatever they call these people nowadays who are standing there up on the stage with you. They're gonna have to do a bunch of bull crap, right?
Like right before the wedding, there's all these little gotsies that you have to freaking do to get married, like I gotta get this thing, I gotta have this old thing, this borrowed thing, this new thing, this blue thing. All this crud is going to conspire to make it very difficult for you to focus on the fact that you need to crank out a dinner for a hundred and forty people and it needs to be good, right? Because your m your mom or whatever, you know, is flying in, you know, your crazy uncle Ralph from Jersey's flying in, Diamond. Uncle Diamond, he was dead, but by the time I got married, but yeah, I mean, Uncle Diamond can be coming in, you got to do that. Dave's not speaking from experience here at all.
This is all theoretical. I had enough problems. I made my cake stand because I was like, I'll be damned if I'm gonna buy a cake stand for my wedding. So I was welding my cake stand like a couple days before the wedding, and also underneath the uh the 67 uh Valiant that we drove to the wedding in, like making sure that it wouldn't break down between the church and and and uh you know my uncle's house where the reception was. But even that was like a little bit of a stretch.
Look, if you can pre-batch your cocktails a week in advance, a week in advance, and you have someone you trust who for some reason was not invited to the wedding, and yet you trust them enough to make cocktails for you without pay. Then imagine that. Imagine finding someone that you you would trust to make the cocktails at your wedding that is not invited. Have them do the cliff old fashion. Right.
But I'm saying you still need someone to do it for you. Right? Because don't make the cocktails. But if you can make them a week in advance, yeah, I can give you some recipes that are easy to bust out in like large fashion to go around. But also, here's a secret everyone wants champagne at the freaking wedding.
You know what I mean? Like just pour a lot of freaking champagne, have some cocktails beforehand. Look, when I got married, like like we we we went super cheap. One of the ways we went super cheap was we did uh brunch instead of uh dinner. Because you can put on a decent brunch a lot cheaper than you could put on a decent dinner.
People don't get as hosed, even my friends don't get as hosed, and you just pour like an unbelievable amount of kava, and everybody's everybody's happy. You know, if you have some form of bubbly, pretty much everyone's gonna be happy. And then it's just a question of getting it all uh iced down, and you can just keep eyes on it to make sure it's right. Um, and as to whether or not to do sous vide and finishing, yeah, I mean that's the ultimate way to do it, but don't do it yourself. Don't do it yourself.
Don't do anything that requires you to spend a lot of time that you can't finish more than a week before your wedding. That's my assignment. Save money and make a great playlist and maybe skip the DJ if you're that stress. Oh, Jack telling people to skip the DJ, huh? Well, you know, they get expensive.
Wedding DJs are expensive. I know this. Because I secretly wish I was one. By the way, John also seconds uh having some sort of transcripts for uh the the cooking issues. I'm being told that we're being ripped off the air, however, I do have something next week for uh trying to get around uh uh cooking detectors, right?
So, you know, we all know that we hate uh smoke detectors, but we also hate dying and conflagrations. So we have a question about that, which I'll deal with uh next time, and I guess that's it. I'm not in next week, so uh you'll have Liz. I'll be in New Orleans really drunk. What?
Sorry. Oh my god, we're gonna have a week without molecules. A show with no molecules. What will you do? Frowning face cooking issues.
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