Today's program is brought to you by S. Wallace Edwards and Sons, third generation Cure Masters producing the country's best dry cured and aged ham's bacon and sausage. For more information, visit EdwardsVaham.com. I'm Erica Wyatt, host of Let's Get Real, the cooking show about finding, preparing, and eating food. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn.
If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting every week from on from when? About 12? Time's it now.
1209? 1209 to roughly 1245 on the Heritage Radio Network in Bergerwick Brooklyn! Robert's Pizzeria. As usual, joining the studio with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. I'm good.
We got uh Peter Kim from the Museum of Food and Drink. How are you doing, Peter? Yet again. Hey, what's up? You become like uh you become like the third co-host.
I kind of like that. You know, on the chat room, you should uh write in whether you enjoy having you know Peter here. He called himself um before the show started an abuse sponge. Remember that, Stas? An abuse sponge.
And Nastasi and I noted, Nastasi adding the salient point, of course, that uh the problem with a sponge is is that whatever you soak up with a sponge, in this case abuse, gets wrung back out on you onto you again in the sink, but plus that nasty smell from the sponge. Yeah, and it gets progressively worse until the sponge just falls apart. Yeah, and you try to wash it in the dishwasher, you try, and somehow it the stank never fully goes away. Nope. You know what I mean?
Stays with the sponge for the rest of the sponge's life. Well, where are you in a sponge's life? Then, first of all, what kind of sponge are you, Peter? Do you have that like abrasive layer on the one side that gets all peeled up and nasty? The fake Scotch Bright.
Are you a real Scotch Bright or a chore boy or equivalent? Or are you the kind that you buy in large plastic sacks that are fake? You know, abrasive on one side, yellow on the other. Oh, soft sponge. Whoa.
For those of you that don't know Peter's Chinese. So racist. Peter's actually. Peter actually Korean. Anyways.
And joined not today in the in the engineering booth. There's no Jackie Molecules in the engineering booth. But we have Liz, which is uh which is very nice. How you doing, Liz? I'm great.
I'm I'm glad that we're getting off to a grand start today. Yeah. Well, at least it's a start, right? You know, at least we're not dead yet. Right, Stas?
True. Yeah. Never know. Never know. Remember, like my favorite.
Uh remember back when people say, like, uh, you know, uh, what kind of dishwasher? Like, yeah, we have a dishwasher. His name is Carmelo. I loved Carmelo. He was my favorite, like one of my favorite human beings at the FCI.
His favorite thing to say was you'd say, How you doing, and he'd say, Fine for now. And because, you know, and he would always say, Tomorrow you never know. And he died. Yeah. Awkward silence.
Well, I mean, you know? It happens. The good news is not only is it happened to the best of us, it also happens to the worst of us. Call your questions in to 718497-2128. That's 718497-2128.
Uh big news, Stas. Right. An actual friend of mine, right? Who's like, you know, not in the food business, an architect, in fact. Uh, you know, our kids hang out together.
Came over to my house. You ready for this? Mm-hmm. Cooked a meal with a Videtti. Whoa.
Yeah. First of all, he bought some weird like knockoff Chinese vegetti. That's the exact one. He came over. He's like, I bought this thing that cuts vegetables into like little strips.
I mean, I'm like, you mean uh vegetti? I'm like, I'm familiar. And uh he goes, uh, no, no, no. It's like it's like a peeler that was modified to be vegeti-like. So I was like, look, look, I you know, I have the real there's no use, you don't need to like because it couldn't spiral, it couldn't make a continuous spiral, it could only go the length of the zucchini or the length of the cucumber because it didn't rotate, it had no rotating facility.
So you still had a middle. Worse even than that. You basically it's like a peeler. You're just like shunk, shunk, shunk, shuck, shunk. So unless you were like, unless you were a rotational genius, unless you were doing it the way, for instance, that like you use an usuba to cut a vegetable into sheets, you would always end up with a very short noodle.
So he and he came over and cooked a dish with my least favorite vegetable, which is squash. Yeah. Like blossoms, great, vegetable crap. He literally came over to my house and cooked noodles with a and he's like, I was like, listen. I was like, listen, I don't have any cheese.
So he's like, it the recipe doesn't need cheese. And I was like, no, not only are you gonna give me zucchini noodles, there's not gonna be any like cheese or anything on it. So what was it? So what was it? Well, thankfully, he is not one of these anti-carb nut jobs, and so it was a mixture of zucchini and actual pasta.
Oh. Which is actually an interesting idea because the zucchini is soaking up the sauce and the flavors and stuff, and he fried it. So like the like he fried the zucchini. That's what you're supposed to do. That's what the vegetti people say to do.
I doubt the vegetables fry stuff. It's like, I just fry it because it's healthier. Like you're eating a healthy squash and it's fried, so it's okay. Because it's squash and it's fried. What?
What? Wait, wait, yeah. Do that again, but have it make sense. It's okay if it's fried because it's squash and squash is healthy, no matter how you prepare it, is her reasoning. Squash is solidified water.
Yeah with some mildly vegetable taste. It is a sponge. It's not like chicken. Fried chicken. No, it's not like chicken.
No, it is most definitely not like chicken. It's it makes no sense. It makes no sense. I don't believe that frying is necessarily unhealthy, but I don't believe that like it's like all these like weird tit for tat things. You know what I mean?
Like well, uh I'm gonna go on the treadmill so that I can pound fifty Snickers bars. The hell is that? Doesn't make any sense, right? Eat a Snickers bar if you want a Snickers bar, work out if you want to work out. They're unrelated.
Fry your squash if you think it tastes good. Don't fry your squash because somehow that lets you fry something as though fried squash is gonna be as good as fried chicken, which it is not. Although uh it was good in this case. Is anyone there, does anyone in the world think that fried squash is as good as fried chicken? Those of you who eat chicken, anyone?
Anyone? No. No, you don't. Like tempura s I mean, like, look, there are like well, okay, look. Like if you if I was gonna deal with zucchini and try to make it as good as possible, right?
I would squish the ever loving hell out of it like you would with an eggplant, right? Right, so that you would get rid of all of the sponginess of it uh if you were gonna fry it, and then I would somehow batter it, try to make a nice texture out of the zucchini and then batter it so it didn't become see, I'm not afraid of oil, but who likes like oil sponges? Who likes to eat non crunchy oil sponges? See, like the batter of uh of a properly fried thing absorbs a whole hell of a lot of oil, right? But it is what?
It is what? What is it? Crunchy, right? It is crunchy, so it is delicious. You know I like zucchini?
Core it. Keep it whole, core it, stuff it with meatball. That sounds good. That's good. That sounds good.
That's good. That yeah, well, it's a it's like a non-bitter version of uh stuffed bitter melon. You like bitter melon? No. Why?
Peter Peter Kim is making his shrug his shrugged shoulder because she's racist. Like that's his little like it, Peter. Look, I I'm showing solidarity with all sponge-like vegetables out there. Today. Well, do you like bitter melon though?
Yeah, I like bitter melon. Do you? I also like zucchini. What? In any in any guys?
Oh, nothing. When someone serves you, when someone hands up and is like, I saw you show up at their house and they go, I sauteed zucchini for you. Yeah, that's my side contribution to your dinner party. Yeah. I know you bought meat or something that tastes good.
Expensive. Yeah. I know that like someone else brought wine, something that's delicious, and it's gonna make your conversation tolerable. But like, but like you're like, you know, what did I bring? I brought burnt on the outside, yet still soggy and oil-soaked, rancid zucchini product, right?
Yeah. How many times out of ten when you get zucchini is that what you get? Always. Always nobody else they don't know what to do. And on that note, we have a caller.
All right, caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, Nasasha, Jackie, everybody. Um Hey, I was just curious if you'd be willing to share maybe some uh weeknight staples for uh for your listeners. Yeah, I'm a uh a father of two young girls and um, you know, always looking for ideas on quick dinners to knock out that are delicious. I'm familiar with your uh you know, your steak and the garlic bread deal and whatnot, but uh yeah, I'd be curious what what you like to knock out.
How old are your girls? Uh I got a a four-year-old and a nine month old, but uh the four-year-old eat eat just about anything. Hey so far. Let me uh well, good. So you're not in a picky situation yet.
I mean that most of my choices are actually based on how picky uh, you know, especially my older kid, but did you how many months is the young one? Uh she's nine, so she's starting to eat eat a little bit of uh some solid foods here. Listen, before I go into your question, have you heard the fantastic new news that now they say that everything they told you go online, don't take my word for it. Everything that they told you about not having of not exposing kids to potential allergens is exactly wrong. The new wisdom so for years, including when my kids were little, I wasn't allowed to uh expose them early on to things that might be allergens, even though at the time I was like, this is a load of crap.
I was like, not only is this a load of crap, intuitively it is a load of crap. Intuitively you want to expose the kids to uh a bunch of everything such that they uh can kind of hack it as we go on. It's just this is the you know, this is the uh, you know, we killed almost everyone on this continent with our with our blankets full of like disease kind of thing. That like constant exposure to low levels of things from a young age seems to make you more invulnerable to them later, right? So right.
So now they've come out and said that yes, in fact, with the exception of honey, uh which you know, you could get botulism from, uh, you know, feed up feed them everything from an even earlier age than we thought before. Uh, you know, we we hate to be the ones here that said we always freaking thought that. The sad thing is is that I couldn't act on it when I had kids because if I was, you know, you're not a doctor. What do you know? You know what I mean?
And then if you're wrong and your kids end up with some hardcore allergy, they're gonna be like, well, it's because dad thought he knew best and didn't feed him freaking peanut butter like you're supposed to. But now they're like, in fact, the allergies are caused by this kind of stuff. Have you been reading this? I have not, but uh, yeah, no, it makes sense though. Yeah, look into it.
Again, like uh do not mistake cooking issues for medical advice. But look it up. You know what I mean? Uh uh, it's uh a fantastic new thing because I have a uh a new niece in the family, and uh yeah, we're all remarking on on that. In fact, last night at dinner.
So, uh so apparently you're a meat eater. Uh yeah, I do have a circulator. Do you have a rice cooker? I do, I do. Yeah.
So like I use I do a lot of stuff uh with the rice cooker just because it it holds things so well. So, you know, you can bust out at any point, like right when you get home, you can throw uh like any sort of thing that cooks in in the rice cook. In fact, I'm kind of lying. I don't really tend to cook finished dishes in the rice cooker. I tend to have um I have a bunch of Korean stone bowls, the toll soats, and like they're super fast to bust stuff out on.
Problem is they're not kid friendly, you know what I mean? So usually what I'll do is I'll just have like a boatload of rice, and then I'll take whatever I have in the fridge left over from the last couple of days, I'll hack that stuff up and uh throw it into the stone bowl with like a quickly improvised sauce because I always keep in my pantry, like depending on what kind of moods I'm in, cans of coconut milk, cans of tomato paste, like you know, a bunch of stuff that I can just bust out sauces quickly, cracking egg into it with a toll soap, but it requires you buying toll soats, which is probably not what you want to do. And again, your kids can't really have that. I don't know. Stas, what do you like for quick?
Pasta. Yeah, Stas is a pasta queen. It's not like pasta pasta pasta queen. Yeah. But the kids get sick of pasta after a while.
I wouldn't know. Because you never get sick of it? Well, because I don't have kids and I don't get sick of it. You never get sick of pasta? No.
Ever. No. Never. Because there's lots of ways you can do it. Back before back before I had kids, and even when I had kids, one kid, when I was used to live uh on 38th Street and my pasta machine was out, I was in a routine where twice a week I would make pasta.
I mean like make it. Uh and I, you know, I would ignore all the relaxing steps when you were rolling it out, and so I could I could make pasta by the time the water was boiling. That was fun. Because it gives me a sense of accomplishment and it's like a fresh pasta thing, but it can be done in under in under 45 minutes. I mean the the thing is honestly now it's like uh by the time I'm done working and you know my wife is home, I really only have 15 to 20 minutes to cook dinner.
I mean, like, you know, Rachel Ray with her 30 minute meals, I don't know where she has the luxury of such time. Uh you know, it's like 15 to 20 is about the limit. So like that's why a lot of pre cooking is is really good. We got no in a into habit um uh, you know, a couple of months ago, we sadly fell out of it, where like on a Saturday or a Sunday, uh we'd ro or you know, we'd roast two chickens instead of one, right? Because it doesn't take any more energy to roast two chickens than one.
And then um, you know, we would do the old school, rip apart the carcass, make maybe you know, maybe make a broth, do some chicken salads, do some stuff like that. Uh and now even on Sundays, like if I'm, you know, up in Connecticut, I'll bust out the tandoor and I'll always make extra of everything and then use the leftovers like a really good leftover. Uh like, oh, I know I said it before on the radio show, but seriously, like show up at home, throw the potatoes in the oven. Baked potato bars so freaking delicious. So delicious.
And we'd all for everyone has forgotten how delicious the baked potato bar is. I had that last night. You did? I love it. You didn't tell me that.
How was it? Mine, good. You know what I bought a couple weeks ago? What? Okay, you ready for it?
Bakos. I went out and bought the I went full 70s and got bacos. Dax what are bakos? Bake bacon bits. Bacon bits.
Bakos, texturized vegetable protein in in the form of uh bacon bitlets. And it brought back some good memories. Dax, who did not grow up on them thought they were crap, thought they were garbage. I enjoyed them. Anyway, so baked potato bar is good.
And if you do make the baked potato bar, save a couple of extra because if you chip those, they fry fantastically very quickly later without any pre prep, even after they've been, especially after they've been refrigerated. Is any of this helpful? Yep. Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate it. Thank you.
Alright, well, uh, let us know if you come up with anything good. Send it on in uh, you know, to the questions. We'll talk about it on air, etc. etc. Call back, tell us your experience.
And remember, now you can feed your kids everything. Yay! Okay. Uh yeah, you know, like seriously, that's like a big one for me. Anyway, all right, thanks a lot.
Okay. Uh see. I had some unanswered questions. What? What?
I just like looking at Peter. Oh, well, why what is Peter doing with his face? Oh, just mocking me. Well, yes. Um, okay.
So I had some questions that went unanswered last week, and my phone is not wanting me to see what they are. Uh okay. I just moved into a new apartment. A decent, if a little shabby, pre war building. Aren't they all, right?
Aren't they all pre like sh you're are you not in a pre-war building anymore, does? No, nope. 70s. 70s. So does 70s buildings have like all the roaches and stuff that are pre-war?
No. No. No? What about the how what floor are you on? Six.
So it's too high for the giant water bugs. I guess so, yeah. You never see the giant water bugs that high unless I guess it's like a really old building. What about you, Peter? Do you get the giant water bugs?
You're in a shabby pre-war building. You just get the mini roaches? Yeah, I get roaches. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, Liz, while I'm talking about this, is it possible to get Sam Edwards on the phone? Let me work on it. Because I have a question that he can answer. See whether he can.
I'm not saying because I didn't call I didn't know ahead of time that he was gonna be the sponsor, but since Sam Edwards is sponsoring the show, and I have a question on country hams, if he wants to spend a couple of minutes on the phone with us towards the end of the program, we could uh, you know. Let me see what I can do. All right. All right. Uh just moved into a shabby pre-war building in Brooklyn.
The kitchen is new and that's nice, but there's one major drawback. As with most New York City apartments, there is no hood over the stove. And every time I try to um roast a chicken or sear a steak, um oh my god, my phone when I was trying to move it, thought I wanted to define the word steak. I know what a steak is, iPhone. Jerk.
Um every time I try to roast a chicken or sear a steak, the hard wired smoke detectors go off. Uh I thought maybe I could recalibrate them, but no dice. I've opened windows, employed fans, but nothing I seem to do prevents the problems. Do you have any advice short of moving? This is driving me effing nuts.
Uh thanks, uh Matt Bamberry. Okay. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a big big problem. Like the laws are that we have to have uh smoke detectors, but the problem is is that smoke detectors l are not designed with kitchens in mind. And they install them over the stove.
Well, there's I mean, some people's apartments, like you got your stove, you got your bed. You know what I mean? It's like there's no logical kind of separation. Uh, and it's true that some places, even with the windows wide open and like a fan in them, which I recommend, they're still gonna go off. Now, the pr you know, look, there's a couple of ways around this.
You know, you can uh certain manufacturers of uh cooking detectors, as you know I like to call them, uh, have a uh a button on it called a hush button, right? And a lot of them do, and yours might, and you might not know about it. So the thing that says uh the the test button on it, right? So it some manufacturers, and you can look up online, you can look up yours. I know like I think uh the brand Kitty, you know, makes some that do this, where if you press the button once, right, just press it, it will beep, it'll go beep once at you, and for the next eight to ten minutes, depending on the detector, it is not gonna go off, right?
Based on what you're on what you're doing, unless it has what they call, and I'm gonna put this in air quotes that you can't see because you can't see me, but uh excessive smoke. So basically it goes from being a a cooking detector to a yo, this is really messed up detector. Now, the problem is I many times my life would set set this off. And let me just go in a little bit of a rant here for a second, because as I was looking this crap up, uh I was getting so angry about it. The cooking people, people who manufacture these cooking detectors and the and the idiots who talk about them online, assume that the only time you make smoke is when you're doing something improper in the kitchen.
False. False. There are many cooking techniques that, when done properly, create boatloads of smoke. Do you know what I'm saying? Have they been to a traditional kitchen?
Do they only eat bull crap propo like made in like 50s style with no freaking crust, no freaking texture, no freaking Zaz, no freaking life. It is not only when you're making a mistake in the kitchen that you create smoke. And this is the error that causes people to create cooking detectors, because people don't cook. People are bad, right? At cooking.
Dave, I've got two ideas. What? So one is this is a solution I employ at my place. Right. I I have a small Weber gas grill that I got that I use if I need to do some really heavy, like smoky stuff.
And that I can put right by the window and have the fan suck the air right out. That's one thing. You don't put it outside your window, do you? No, I don't put it outside the window. But I I set up a table right in front of the window with you know I have that big window fan.
Right. And then I'll set up a cross uh, you know, a cross breeze thing going from the other side of the apartment, and then grill right in front of the fan, and the smoke goes right out. It's a good also a good point, is that you have to figure out what the um air patterns are in your apartment. So, like my current my current apartment, the air pattern come unfortunately, the the natural direction is it to come into the kitchen. But my old apartment, the natural direction was to go out of the kitchen.
So that that's one of the things to do. I'm lucky that I have my kitchen sits in between two windows on opposite ends of the apartment. So when I have the fan going on one side, then I usually don't have problems with that. But it's generally neutral. Generally there's no flow.
It'll flow through the smoke will be. Which is the same. The smoke will come out of my oven or whatever and go right up there. Yeah, so you're like we have to test which way the the air wants to break, you know, which way your cross ventilation works. So that you know, that's definitely uh one thing.
Here's something I don't recommend doing, although it's all over the internet, is uh plastic bag rubber bands or a shower cap over your uh smoke detector while you're cooking because the part it's it's measuring particulates, right? So you can put that over it and the particulates can't get to it, but you have to seal pretty well for it for it to work. And uh a good number of people have had success with that, but the problem is is that now you're literally shutting down your detector so that when you go to sleep, if something's going on, you have a uh a problem. But back to our other things. Some and yours might already have it, have this thing where you can tell the smoke detector, I'm cooking, don't go off for like only eight minutes.
I don't know who can only cook for eight minutes. But that's reasonable. Most of the time when the smoke's happening, it's like high intensity, short duration stuff, right? Um, Barbara Kafka in her book Roasting, right, which started the kind of super high temperature roasting kind of phenomenon in people's houses, how the hell are you not gonna have smoke when you're busting your oven up at 450, 500? How you gonna do it?
No matter how you cook, jerks. Anyway, the other thing is that maybe you can if your smoke detector doesn't have that, maybe you can replace a smoke detector with one that does. Um you know, but I I'm hesitant to tell you anything that's gonna actually shoot your smoke detector in the head permanently, right? I mean, obviously, you know, like I have removed my smoke detectors and uh forgotten to put them back in, like and I've unwired hardwired ones, but it's not really advisable. It's not good.
Don't do it. You know what I mean? Get one that has this um this cooking detect uh undo. You know what's messed up, Stas? I was gonna recommend buying a nest, you know, the nest ones, nest Protect, because they're controlled from your phone.
But what's weird is is from what I can tell, currently, the way the firmware works, when you press uh it it'll go off, and then you press don't, and it will uh it will then stop. But there's no way to say don't go off, I am doing something. You know what I mean? Like antivirus. Like when you have an antivirus, it's like turn off your antivirus for 15 minutes because I'm installing a program.
Like apparently Nest hasn't figured this out yet. And even worse on the Nest is that if you have multiple nests and they and they're interwired, which all hardwired smoke detectors are supposed to be interwired now. So the reason being that if a smoke detector goes off in your kitchen, and because clearly you live in some sort of like four-story suburban mansion, right? You're in your room, you're not gonna hear it at night. They want your smoke detector in your room to go off as well.
So they're all interwired now. That's how the codes are. Um but so if your nest goes off in the kitchen, it'll also go off in your bedroom, which is apparently irritating. Whatever. But Nest is something that could do that.
Like if Nest like thought about cooks a little more, they could have a an I'm you know, I'm cooking now, shut up for 15 minutes, because you don't need a smoke detector when you're awake. Anyway. So do you think we uh gave enough ideas on what to do with this? Yeah? All right.
We do have a caller. Oh, all right, caller, you are on the air. Hey Dave, this is uh Matt from Mystic Connecticut. Oh hey, Mystic Connecticut, where Mystic are you? Uh I am on the so you know technically the Stonington side of the river.
I do. Which is uh, you know, the other side of the drawbridge. Yeah. Yeah. The other side of the Mystic Bascule Bridge.
Say again? The other side of the Mystic Bascule Bridge, yes. That's right. That's right. Yeah.
Uh so I had a question about haggis. Ooh, nice. Because uh my buddy and I throw a big burntine party every year, and we're coming up on it, and typically what we do is we just steam the haggis as sort of like a giant ball of uh loose form sausage in a big colander. Right. But for presentation purposes this year, I bought a beef bung and I want to do it in the beef bung so that we get the whole you know cutting cutting of the haggis open.
And so I'm wondering if there's enough moisture, like is the bung permeable? And if I steam it, is it gonna work in the bung, or should I pre-cook it, you think, and then stuff it? Huh, you know, it's interesting. Uh I've never I've used pig stomachs before and stuffed them, not actually strangely for uh haggis, uh, but um, because I've only done the haggis like um cloth bound actually. But I think it should work.
I mean, is it how big is a beef bung? Uh I mean, you know, it's it's typically I think the type of thing they use for like a mortadella, so it can hold uh it can hold a fair amount. And the haggis we make is huge. You know, I'm talking like, you know, like something you'd strain your pasta with. That's we typically just like pack it in there and then steam it covered in foil so that it, you know, I'm gonna yeah, I'm gonna say it's gonna work.
You think so? Just straighten the bunk? I uh I think it's gonna work. I definitely hey Liz, is is the chat room working right now? It is working.
Is anyone I mean, like there's gotta be a charcuterie expert out there who has who has done this before. We're waiting. We're we're waiting for our expert to tap in. Yeah. Look, uh look, I look, I'm gonna go ahead and say that that's gonna work.
Okay. You know what I mean? All right. Um, yeah. Yeah, definitely.
I'm gonna go ahead and say it's gonna work. Yeah, please let us know how it works. Uh as anyone who is like uh listened long enough knows, Haggis is is deserving of so much respect. It's so freaking delicious. It's just missold.
I mean how exactly right. Yeah, it's we love it. We may everyone uh everyone gets freaked out about it every year, and then uh and then they have it and they say this is delicious. Yeah, yeah. I mean there's a there's things like that, like people have less revulsion over scrapple, although some people don't like scrapple either.
Scrapple mean different obviously, also like incredibly delicious. And yeah, I know they're not the same or even really simple, but like I mean, like uh haggis is delicious. What kind of oats do you use? Uh we use like the quick cutting uh the quick cooking steel cut, if that makes sense. Oh, I've never had that.
Are they still made? Are they come in that tin? Uh no, so it's like a Bob's red mill thing. Huh. Oh, Bob's red mill, yeah.
Yeah, they have ones that are like supposedly quick cooking, and so we just do that and uh and it's always worked out great. Do you notice do you notice the difference between using those and like the standard like Scottish steel cut guys? Uh I I don't think we've ever used like the fully traditional ones. I think we've only ever used the quick cutting one, but uh but they you know like quick cooking in this uh scenario means like I think twenty minutes if you were making it on the stove top or something. So right.
So it's not like uh it's not like the the quick cook uh quick cooking like the flake stuff is like a five minute or less property. Right, yeah. No, it's not like it's not they're not blown out at all. They're still like this big uh little cups, you know. So man, I love haggis.
What day is it? Yeah. Uh it is uh so not this Saturday, but next Saturday. So if you want if you're in Mystic, come on by. I wish I'm gonna like I'm uh I'm gonna be up there uh this weekend, but not uh not the weekend after.
Uh man, I love haggis. Anyway, enjoy your haggis and let us know how it comes out. I will do it. Thanks. Alright, thank you.
Alright, let's take a break and be back with more cooking issues. The following program was brought to you by S. Wallace Edwards and Sons. Edward's Suriano hams are aged to perfection for no less than 400 days and hickory smoked to achieve a deep mahogany color. The Edwards name is well known for its world-class aged and cured meats.
Their exclusive curing and aging recipe produces a unique flavor profile that enhances the quality characteristics of Berkshire Pork. Optimum amounts of pure white fat marbling contribute to a flavor that's a delicate, perfect balance between sweet and salty. For more information, visit Edwards VA Ham.com. And welcome back to Cooking Issues. For some reason, Nastasia and Peter are rearranging the studio as you speak.
So if you hear like all kind of chairs like wheedling around, Stas, for how many years have you sat next to me and now you decided I'm no longer good to sit next to you? It's just that here it's like it's all wires of the springs. Stassius wants to give me the more uncomfortable chair. That makes sense. This question in.
Um I was recently lucky enough to have the electric drop-in combo unit, meaning a stove, uh, fail on me, and with the help of my awesome dad, gas lines were run, holes cut, counters altered, and I am now the owner of a sturdy and simple gas range. Well, congratulations to you. I hate resistance uh fed old uh like gas uh electric ranges. You ever used one of those with a squirrely? Yeah, yeah.
Is that what you had in California? No. You might want to talk to the mic stuff. It's not your first time at the rodeo. No.
You never used one? Yes, not in California. When did you have one? Like in Airbnb's. Oh, Jesus.
What about you, Peter? Uh I grew up with that. Yeah. For real? Yeah.
Champagne Urbana was the land of electric. Yeah. Yeah. The worst is when like stuff gets burned onto it, you know. You can't really get it off.
When I was a kid, we had one when I lived in New Jersey, and uh I leaned on it with my winter coat and like melted my winter coat into it. Ugh. And then after like when you're cooking something, you can't have it stop cooking. No. I mean, you turn it off and it's like, I'm gonna keep cooking this for a few more minutes.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, there it goes. It's especially bad for stuff like uh cooking sugar. Like, oh my god, like making like candies.
Yeah. Because you're like, hey, it's per oh no. Oh. You know what I mean? I guess it's arguably better for keeping a low simmer though.
Who would no? No. Well, maybe. I mean, because it can't it can't flame out at super low temperatures, you mean? Yeah.
I don't know. I just hate the hell out of it. And you know what else I used to hate? I used to hate the way pots and pans, and this is going back to when I was like eleven. We moved when I was like twelve.
But I even now I remember, and I've used them since. The way pots feel on them is just I don't like it. Like pots don't slide right on them, they have that rapid tappy, and like they're like, I just don't like it. Yeah, they're horrible. Yeah.
All around. All around bad. Just bad. Uh I'm the owner of a sturdy and simple gas range. Okay.
After decades using the same thinned bottom sauce pots and thinned bottom stock pot, I'm getting more scorching than I'm used to. So there's an interesting thing. It is more even over the uh space of it because the burner itself is physically larger. Yeah. Right?
Right. Right. Okay. So there's a theoretical advantage. Maybe that's why James Beard liked them.
Maybe James Beard had thin, thin, crappy pots, and so he was getting scorching. And maybe if James Beard had replaced his pots with like mod like a more modern pot or a thicker pot, maybe he would have not liked electric stoves. Yeah. Because it's incomprehensible to me why he liked electric stoves. Yeah.
That's the only advantage I could think of. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, right? Uh I've tried backing off the heat, and I will certainly keep practicing.
But I was wondering if there was any advice you would share on sauce pots, stockpots, etc. Imagine finding yourself with a new gas range and wondering what would uh uh be the best use for it. I love it technical. Of course, my cast iron is more fun with gas down at it. Thanks, Nathan.
Okay. Uh so here's here's the thing. Uh super thin bottom pots with a concentrated gas flame are going to have problems. Uh they're f fine, and don't let anyone tell you any differently, they're fine for boiling stuff, right? So you're always gonna need to have a pot that you can uh boil water for uh pasta in or or you know um anything, anything of of that nature.
But you're gonna you're gonna want to go invest in a thick bottomed uh your saucepan should have a a thick bottom, and anything if you're gonna brown or like make uh a roux or um sweat out vegetables, you're gonna want something thicker that uh spreads the uh heat out uh more more evenly that's just my my feeling is that you're not gonna be uh happy uh with uh the thin bottom stuff on um on your range and what do you what do you guys think I'm thinking that you should play that song from Spinal Tap right now the big bottom fat fat bottom isn't that uh that's Queen. Oh it's Queen. Oh big bottoms My Girls bottom that's from Spine that's what I'm looking up is on Spinal T this is Spinal Tap they have that song. Anyway, whatever. So you you consider your pots to be female that's what you're telling me.
It's just interesting facts about Peter. Like for me, like pots and pans are one of the few gender neutral kind of like pieces of equipment that I can think of. What do you what gender do you think your pots and pans have Sas Yeah pots are probably female pans male. Really? Mm-hmm.
Really why long handles on the pans? This is an odd conversation. So I I so I would I would go ahead and say you're gonna want to get uh you don't need a lot keep your thin stuff for um for like I say for boiling. Also I'm gonna say you can get pretty cheaply. Depends on your feeling about them, right?
But the they're relatively thick and they work relatively well. Uh just aluminum pots and they're pretty cheap. Uh they work really well as long as you don't mind uh cooking it in aluminum. I know some people don't like cooking in aluminum. And the truth of the matter is that those pots do get pitted after a long time, especially if you use them in the dishwasher because they get kind of uh the the the dishwashing surgeon kind of eats them out.
But I have a couple of those because they're cheap. I have a couple because I've been collecting them a long time. Really good. Um stock pots, some thin ones that I use for for other things. But if you have a thin potum like like two quart sau like saucepan, like I would take that into the into the garage or something and use it to melt wax for like you know, kids' candle projects or something like that, because that's what that's gonna be good for.
I wouldn't I you it's just you're gonna like it so much more once you get a real uh thing. And you don't have to do it all at once. You can get them piece by piece or find them in thrift shops or or um you know, when people move away. I I like I I've I no longer look, I got married a long time ago. When I got married, we got our set of all clad.
I I can't imagine going out and like forking over the money to buy a full set of pans. You guys? No. No, right? Anyway.
I mean, I guess you can you could also hack things by putting something underneath the thin bottom pan, right? Well, that's the thing. But a flame tamer, then you're back into the same situation you were back with an oven. You don't have your re you don't have your reaction rate. So, like a way to make the thin uh bottom pan um act more like you used to like it used to act is to just put a slug of metal underneath your uh burner and then it'll ride up and down, up and down, it'll act ex almost exactly like your your your uh electric range did, but then you don't have the what you want, which is the off on that uh an electric range has it makes it so so awesome.
Right? No. Okay. Uh we got a question in uh from uh Joan. If it is all possible, can you ask Dave the following question?
Do you ever use a freezing step for your French fry recipe? Does it still yield the same results? Uh and do you alter your processing when freezing? Yes, uh, I like freezing french fries. Freezing French fries can help.
Uh what freezing does is it's an additional dehydration stage. So if your French fries were suffering from holocore, meaning that you didn't have the internal texture of the French fry uh be potato anymore, but just hollow and crust, then freezing will accentuate holocore. If you were not getting hollow core when you were uh doing it, um, then freezing in general will make the uh texture of the X the outside of the fry uh better, right? And it'll also allow you to fry it harder before the potato kind of overcooks because you should fraud uh you should fry directly from frozen. So frying from frozen and freezing in general is it can be extremely advantageous so long as you don't get hollow core.
Now, if you find that you're getting hollow core, also you can keep fries indefinitely once they're frozen, which is nice. Just make sure that you uh let them freeze almost like IQF, like individual, like uh on a pan, then combine them into portions in bags and put them in your freezer. Uh if you find after you're done that you're getting too much holocore on your French fry after the freeze step, then what I would do is if you have a dry step, so it's you're gonna do if you do enzyme, you'll do enzyme. If you don't, you don't. Uh if you're doing the modernist thing, you're gonna hit it with a uh uh ultrasonic uh, you know, uh, what's it called?
Cleaner, right? Or not. Uh then you're gonna do your initial blanch out step where you're you're cooking the potato and putting salt into the potato by boiling or boiling and steaming. I'm just going through it. I'm just saying.
No, you're not, you're just trying to be mean. Anyway, then you then uh you're gonna go through uh uh optionally a drying step, right? And this is where this is where you really get to play with it, right? So it's the length of the boil step and then the length of the dry step is where you're doing a lot of the moisture control, and it's all about the moisture control where you're trying to balance the internal texture of the fry with the external temperature of uh texture of the fry. Then your first fry, now you're gonna do your uh your free step or not.
And I think freezing is almost always beneficial. So, like if it if you get holocore, just decrease your uh just decrease your dry time if you're using it. You conversely, if the texture of the outside of the fry is uh not what you want it to be, and you're not getting holocore yet, then increase your dry time in between your um in between your bl blanch and your fry. I hope that helps without you having to go and sift through the 4,000 words of the cooking issues. By the way, I'm not saying we're gonna do this, but I was talking to Jackie Molecules last week, who's by the way, in New Orleans for his birthday.
Hopefully he's you know not passed out drunk on the street somewhere. I don't think he is, because it's kind of early in the day, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um considering putting the blog on uh like having it admined by the good folks here at Hit Heritage Radio and perhaps making it semi live again.
What do you think, Staz? Yes. You like that? I really like it. Semi semi live.
Semi live. But like that, like you know, we'll see. We'll see. I don't know. See what the people uh in the chat room whether they want it to ever go live again.
New new things, new information, new cooking issues. Anyway, um I hope that helps. Uh but but do we do we get anything for uh do we get anything for uh from uh Sam or no Liz? No, i I think they knew that we were trying to get a hold of them, and it's a totally automated service, so I I left a very desperate message, but we we have not heard from him. Um but but on the bright side we do have a caller.
All right, caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, uh Nastasha and Peter. Um I'm Justin from Baltimore. How are you doing? Um I was wondering how to cryo fry a scallop.
Ooh, so wait, so when you say cryo fry, you mean freeze, freeze it and then fry it so you don't go over the uh so you don't overcook it? Exactly. So you can get the nice crisp on the outside, but have it still nice and almost like raw in the middle or not very cooked. Right. So I think the modernist cuisine guys, when they're doing that uh for um things like burgers and I think for burgers and that kind of stuff, they might use LN, but for duck, I think that they use dry ice.
Is that true? I can't remember. I can't remember. But I mean obviously one way to try it is to just throw the sucker like the problem is like Ln, right, is gonna freeze the whole thing all the way around. And then if you freeze it that way, you're not going to be it's not gonna be flat when you try to put it on a pan to to uh to rent unless you're gonna deep fry it.
You're not gonna deep fry it, are you? No, no. Yeah, you're just gonna try to get a crust on the surface, right? So then the question is how do you get it like you you almost want to take a nonstick surface like a like uh a Teflon pan, right? And then like rest the Teflon pan in in LN, right?
And then and then put the scallop on the pan until the that surface of it kind of freezes. And then it should freeze and release from the pan. I'm assuming the te I've put Teflon on liquid nitrogen many, many times, and I've never had a problem. I don't know if you're going to get problems with it. Um and of course the scallop itself should release even from regular steel after after a while.
Um so you could try it with regular steel. I don't know if you're going to get delamination problems uh over over time or if you happen to be one of those people that's negative against Teflon. Um But anyway, uh that that's how that's how I would do it. You could possibly get it done even with dry ice if you don't have uh access to uh liquid nitrogen, but you're gonna want to freeze it against a flat surface. Ideally two flat surfaces at once, so you do it.
But I will I will say this also is that I've known uh many people who even if they don't have like uh like uh access to you know fancy stuff, they will do things like uh sear cuts of meat uh so like let's say you buy uh frozen meats, like like a lot of the heritage stuff comes comes frozen, right? Because that's the way they can keep it all all year. So you a lot of people sear it directly from frozen so that you could sear the outside uh without overdoing the inside. And um obviously the modernist guys and uh I think Chef Steps and Chris and all those guys uh are advocates of this technique, but I encourage you to to do a side-by-side taste test because the stuff tastes different, right? So it's not just that there's less drip loss and all this.
Now a scallop it's a different kind of a situation because you're trying to maintain it raw on the inside and get a sear uh on on the outside. I'm not saying you could use a cereizol for that too. But anyway, but my point being that that's what you're trying to do. So like, you know, um, so I think it's a useful thing to to to do there, but I would just encourage you to do a side-by-side taste test because on things like burgers, I actually prefer it standard seared to cryo seared in the tests that I've run. Now it's only been limited tests.
I've only done it like maybe like five to ten times as a test. But like I understand the advantages that they say you get from it. I just happen to prefer the taste of it when it's done um standard searing. So does you should do some side-by-side taste tests. Great.
Thank you. All right, no problem. Um what do you say? We should end in a minute. All right, okay.
Uh quickly, uh AD writes in Does Dave know if anyone is planning to release a homogenizer uh like Booker and Dax or anyone else in the food world. And by that I mean I assume you mean rotor stator homogenizer. No immediate plans. The problem is that the market I don't think is so big on it. Uh Philip Preston is selling uh uh the IKA makes a uh handheld homogenizer, like small one.
I think they're selling it. I'm not opposed to us doing it, it's just we got like a bunch of other projects on our plate uh before that, right, Stuzz? Yeah. Yeah. We've got to get that stuff done before we get that done.
Now, listen, um, we don't have a lot of time left. I'm gonna see if next week we can get uh Sam Edwards to call in to answer the question on ham because we have a question about hanging hams for uh equalization and pest control. And uh I know uh and that question is in from uh Patrick, and I know uh that Sam has a lot of good information on pest control in hams, and we're talking about mites, mites, beetles, and rodents. The stuff and I know Stas doesn't want to get into that now because we don't have a lot of time and Stas doesn't like talking about mites, beetles, and rodents. But uh we'll try to get Sam Edwards maybe for next week.
If not, I'll just answer the question myself. Cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradio network.org. You can find all of our archive programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at heritage underscore radio.
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