Open Table is a proud sponsor of Heritage Radio Network. For more information, visit their blog, Open for Business at Openfor Business dot open table dot com. Hi, this is Celia Cutcher, host of Animal Instinct, and you are listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradio network.org for thousands more. Hello and welcome to Cooking Intro.
This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking is just coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network. Uh broadcasting where Stas. Bushwick. Where Brooklyn. Where Roberta's.
Oh, yeah. See, Sas, this is why I don't let you do the beginning section. You know, it's like you always say live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. I say Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick. Brooklyn!
Like that. That's how you gotta do it. Right? Calling your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128.
Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer. Lopez, how are you doing? Good. Yeah? Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Anything anything good happened? No. Nothing good. For real.
Nothing good. Anything bad? Anything terrible? No. Just the same old, same old.
Same old same old. How about you? Me? Mm-hmm. Uh oh, I got a lot of new stuff, but uh I can't talk about most of it.
Are we joined as usual in the booth with uh Jack Jackie Molecules Insley? Or is he still outside coming in in a minute? Yeah, Jackie Molecules is having a field trip right now. Oh my goodness. I've seen him.
We might we might be blessed with a little bit of a little bit of Jackie Molecules in there, but it's gonna get back. Yeah. Because otherwise it's gonna get confusing. Because it's gonna be Dave, David confusing stuff in the booth. Anyway.
Uh my point being. Did I what did I do? Oh, yes. Remember last week I said that I was going to build a chicken cannon? Mm-hmm.
Again, I can't talk about the specifics yet. But let me just say, that it is not that complicated to launch a chicken at over 200 mile an hour. However, I'll say this. Quarter inch thick, like polycarbonate, Lexan polycarbonate, is not up to the task of stopping said chicken. Oh my god, Stas.
We built this frame. Oh, you saw it? Who should who sent it to you? I get your email. Oh, if you didn't see the good one.
Anyway, so it's like it oh my god, that the frame it basically just evaporated. I tried to pick up all the chicken off the ground, but I had forgotten to put a big enough tarp underneath the area. And like it like when when I took it back inside, all the pieces and tried to wash the gravel and like you know, oak leaves and stuff off of it. It was just like everyone was like, I'm not gonna eat what are you doing? I'm not gonna eat that.
No one eat that. That's the whole point of shooting the chicken stars is to eat the meat afterwards, like that janitor did. Why are you shooting it though? Well, I told you, like ever since I was a kid, my grandpa would tell me about when he used to go to uh the testing facilities because he was doing radar work, right? For airplanes, how he would see them shoot the chickens into windshields, or you know, and birds into windshields to test the windshields.
This was in the 50s, I guess. Um, and he said that the janitor would pick them up and take them home and eat them. And I was like, oh man, oh man. You know, and then like I've always been kind of fascinated with this guy picking up these chickens and eating them afterwards, and so I wanted to kind of see what the meat would taste like. But I have yet to I have yet to taste meat fired from the chicken cannon.
But not that hard, frankly. I'll tell you this. If you are going to build one of your own, which I do not recommend for obvious reasons, because if you hurt yourself, you're gonna say that I told you to do it, right? So I'm not gonna Amazon.com has some fantastic deals on large uh on large cast iron butterfly valves. I'm talking like six hundred dollar valves on sale for like a hundred and twenty dollars, like prime delivery.
I don't know what the hell I think someone made a mistake. It's like some idiot at a company was like just like was like, yeah, $500 for that? And they put in like $150. So you know what I mean? It's like it's like they're charging for uh an uh an eight-inch valve, they're charging what you should charge for like a four-inch valve.
It's crazy. So anyone who wants to build a crazy chicken cannon, go look up uh cast iron butterfly valves in the eight-inch variety on Amazon. There's only a couple left when I bought them, so you know, your chance might be limited. Anyways, uh did I cook anything good? Did I get did I cook anything good?
I don't think I cooked anything good. I think I just I wanted to cook that chicken and then failed miserably. I cooked some really good stuff yesterday, but again, I cannot talk about it until May. Because we shot a little thing in the jig for the uh Playboy network. You want to know something else interesting?
Maybe interesting. Somebody m bought Playboy TV.com, and that is not affiliated with the Playboy uh network, and they haven't gotten the news yet that Playboy is now safe for work. And so if you were to go to Playboy TV.com, apparently not at all safe for your works, your workplace. Anyways. Dave, what's going on, man?
Well, I was saying that uh I shot something uh along with I'm not allowed to give the particulars yesterday for Playboy, and they're gonna release it sometime in May on on the on the internet. Right, that's exciting. Yeah, so more more we'll talk more about that in you know in the middle of of next month. But it was a lot of fun. Uh shot back at my uh where I used to teach there at the French Culinary Institute, the International Culinary Center.
Nice. Yeah. Sorry, I'm late. How are you doing, Jack? I'm good.
How are you doing? All right. Did you have anything interesting happen over the past week to you? Uh I want to say yes, but I no, not really. I was at a wedding this weekend.
Oh, yeah? How bad was the food? How bad was the food? Yeah. It was great, actually.
It was pies and thighs. Oh, okay. Pies and thighs. It was good stuff. Nice.
Yeah. I heard that uh there was an old remember pies and thighs, like went through a reincarnation? Yep. And uh one of the old cooks back in the first carnation came and worked here for a while. That's right, Carolyn Bain, yeah.
Yeah, and brought the fried chicken recipe. And their fried chicken recipe, I've mentioned this before on the show, but you know, it's been a long time. This goes completely against everything that I've ever known about fried chicken. I have yet to do the side by side, but they take directly from brine into flour and fry. Probably a self-rising flour or something.
But that right in the It's delicious, I have to say. Uh please tell me you like fried chicken, right? Okay. Well, well, what what style of fried? I said, well, you know, I have to ask because it's like so many preposterous things.
It's kind you you know come out of her mouth. Yeah, the fear in your voice was real. Yeah, real. Real. That would be, I don't know.
Like it's it's worse than biscuits. Wouldn't you agree that not liking fried chicken is worse than not liking biscuits? I listen, I like biscuits a lot, so but yes, I'll agree with you. Fried chicken would be worse. You still don't get the biscuit thing, though.
Nobody's. I feel like maybe Stas, you haven't had a great biscuit. No, I bet you she has it. But you know, you know, this is where Jack, you've known Nastasia long enough. Yeah, no, it's true.
If she decides she's not gonna like freaking biscuits, like like God could come hand her a biscuit, and she'd be like, this sucks. But I don't believe in him, so you don't believe in him. He gotta he's got a you know, he's got a gender all of a sudden now. But like but like my point is that like no matter like what, like literally, I could genetically I could put electrodes in Nastasia's brain that literally made her think that when she was eating a biscuit, it tasted exactly like the finest caviar on earth, which is one of her favorite foods. And she'd be like, nah, because it's a biscuit.
You see what I'm saying? That's like Stars for you. Just she's decided she's gonna hate on the biscuit. Yeah. And that's it.
It's over. You know what I mean? She's the same way with people. True or false, Doz. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. And she's like, uh, you'll get it later. She's like, I'm gonna let you say this on here now, and then I'm gonna get you later. Uh got this in from uh Jeffrey Given and Costa Mesa. Where's Costa Mesa against us?
Don't know. It's in California. Don't you know the whole damn state? No. Yeah, man.
I come from a long state. We didn't like to play this name. Uh hello, Stas and the Fun Bunch. I like that you did not put Nastasia into the fun bunch. Anyway, I don't also people are not allowed to call me Stas.
So it's Nastasia. Well, that's about it, right? For a stranger, it's just Nastasia. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, she gets particular about this kind of stuff. Me, you know, call me jerkwad. Whatever you want. They would never do that to you. Oh, me, me, me, me, me.
Okay. Uh hello Anastasia and the fun bunch. Uh, this is a word uh uh shout out to uh Culture City. Uh it's been encouraging to learn about Culture City by way of heritage radio support. I whollyheartedly agree with Dave that it's equally important, if not more so, to um uh than researching a cure for autism is the broadening uh of acceptance and understanding uh of uh without limiting expectations of potential ability for individuals on the spectrum.
I don't yet have any children of my own. Just wait. Uh I don't yet have any children of my own. My wife's an elementary school teacher who specializes in gifted and talented education. Uh these are students who think and learn differently and benefit from multiple and specific uh teaching methods.
While they tend to be highly creative and bright, they also often lack some of the social cognizance their peers might already possess. Ain't that the truth? You know what I'm saying? Uh what uh where's our peers? Sorry, my my phone went really tiny, guys, and my and my old eyeballs can't uh uh adjust.
Anyway, um sorry, sorry. I get the opportunity to be in these classrooms regularly, and one of the most rewarding things to witness is the way my wife has helped to provide them with the space, resources, and confidence to thrive as individuals while learning to accept each other's quirks and behavioral idiosync idiosyncrasies. Idios what's wrong with me today? I can't read you know it's because of my freaking bike ride. I'll more of that later.
I'm still angry about my bike ride. Uh idiosyncrasies uh in a loving and supportive way. So before I get to the question that they ask, that's a nice shout-out, right? We're still working with the culture city movement. Yeah, they're the best people.
Like really some of the best people I've ever met. I actually went to their uh I spent some time on their on their website. Hey, they like uh they're they're totally worthy of support. What do we do with them? Do they just like support us or do we do stuff for them?
What? Um, both. I mean, they they've definitely supported us. Basically, the story with Culture City is Julian um got in touch with us through a charity auction where he got to come here and meet Tom Calicchio and interview Tom Calicchio in the studio. That was the auction.
It's like come meet and interview Tom Calicchio. And he asked him all about um some of these autism initiatives, like putting iPads in restaurants and stuff. It was like a way for him to kind of get Culture City out there and start getting it in people's ears. So we did we did some work with them. We produced uh a whole radio documentary about what they do, and then we went down to Birmingham at their annual gala.
Um and then I actually DJ'd their junior gala, which was a lot of fun. It was a Halloween party. Yeah? Yeah. It's Culture City with a K, by the way.
Why? Why K. That's a great question. I I couldn't tell you. I have to say, like, I hope I'm not offending anyone out there, but I really don't like spelling C words with Ks.
Cars for kids? Uh you know, I found out about that. You know that uh well, I don't want I'm not gonna I'm not gonna blow up but anyway, like but like I don't know, so it's it's specifically I don't like country kitchen with two Ks. Whenever I see country kitchen with two K's, it makes me feel that you're one K short of being KKK. And I just don't like it.
You know what I mean? I just get like first of all, uh I mean I hate to, you know, I'm not I don't want to like dive into stereotypes here, but when you're seriously, when you go country kitchen two K's, you're one step away, people. Don't do it. But we'll accept Culture City. We'll accept Culture C because there's the second the second C, yeah.
They didn't go two thirds of the way to KKK. And so, you know, it's still kind of acceptable. What do you think about the country kitchen stuff? I hate it. Hate it, right?
I also don't like I don't like extra P's and E's on my shoppies and my I don't like any of that stuff. Do you like any of that stuff? Two E's, I'm not into that, no. None of that's oh the oh the shoppy, I see what you're saying. Just the E at the end of the shop.
That's kind of cool. That's like old timey. Really? Yeah. Shoppy?
Depends on where we are, right? I don't know, man. If someone opened a shoppy over here, I'd be like, get out of here. Yeah, oh my god. If if Nastasia, I'm I'm just gonna guess.
What would you do if you walk past a shoppy here? Would you spin on it? I don't know what a shoppy is. Like ye oldie shoppy. It's like like would you like be like in Brooklyn?
I met a guy, I can't talk about who I met yesterday. Anyways, okay. Uh should I mention so I can get it out of my system real quick the bike ride? Another freaking jerk on the freaking Williamsburg Bridge, going downhill, no hands on his freaking handlebars, earphones in, weaving back and forth. I didn't want to pass the guy.
Listen, you're not cool. Put your hands on the handlebars. What if someone like me isn't as cautious? And if you think I'm cautious, me, come on. Like someone who's like like less cautious than me goes to pass you, you swerve and clip that freaking guy because you're texting your idiot buddy, and you all go flying down that bridge at like 25 mile an hour onto pavement and skinning yourself like a freaking grape because you know that stupid bastard wasn't wearing a helmet.
You know what I'm saying? Dumb. Dumb. And then you've used to ride here, right? Back before you hated riding in Brooklyn so much.
Speaking of nostasia now. You know when you're driving up Grand on the way here, and there's that like long line of parked cars, and then there's all that traffic next to you, so you're in like this tube, this corridor. Guy jumps out, walks out into it, like right out freaking into it, not looking. I'm doing like 18, you know, 19 mile an hour below the speed limit. But like, you know, and like I'm like, oo!
Like that to him, you know what I mean? And like he yells at me, he's like, use your brakes. And I'm like, you're in a bike lane. You know what I mean? I was like, what the hell, people?
I would have felt bad if I had wiped that guy out a little bit, but I'm more angry at him. It's one of those things. And then you know what? The concrete plant today that you have to drive past. People, New York is not pleasant.
I love it here. I love it, I love it. But is there anything pleasant about New York City? No. Jack, what do you think?
Anything ple I mean, I love it. I love it deeply. Do you use? Devuse. I got a caller on the line, that's what I think.
All right. But you're not gonna you're not gonna, you're not gonna make a statement. I I missed you. I had to pick up the phone. I said, Is there anything like like literally the word pleasant?
Is there anything pleasant about New York City in general? About New York City? Yeah. No. You to live here, you have to like constant beat downs.
No, no, I wouldn't say there's anything pleasant. I think if you were like mega rich, maybe you could just squash all the people in front of you and then maybe have some sort of pleasant experience. It might be pleasant if I had more money, that's true. I don't know. I don't know.
Caller, you're on the air. Hi, I have a question regarding baby food. Ah, okay. So we just had a baby, he's about three months old now, and he'll be starting solid food in a couple months. Congratulations.
So I promise it's only one question, but I want to make sure the food tastes good and it's safe, but I don't want it to taste like canned baby food. So I want to do something a little bit more creative. Well, good news is, I mean, again, remember, not a uh not a professional, look into it. The good news, obviously, and since you're, you know, uh have a a newborn relatively, um, you know, you probably looked at all the current research, which means that unlike when I was having children, they basically say that you can and can I encourage you to give kids a wide variety of uh things early on, thank goodness. You know what I mean?
Uh so you're extremely lucky in that regard. Uh you're a couple of main concerns that you're gonna have, uh, and I don't know if they still say this, is you're gonna have to watch out for um certain foods that um can are potentially toxic to infants, right? So you're not gonna sweeten with honey, right? If you were gonna sweeten something. Um and also uh and this is again, I haven't done the research in a number of years, but you're gonna uh you'd be wary of saying large amounts of uh certain leafy greens like um spinach because of potentially I believe it's potentially high um uh nitrogen nitrate levels but I don't know if they still have that uh I I don't know if that's still a recommendation but they used to basically things like that like Gerber's pitch and maybe Gerber was paying people to do this was saying that they very tightly monitor the um like the levels of these things in their products and so they can um they can adjust whereas like the the ratios of those things can be very very variant in a naturally produced item because the plants take up a lot of that stuff from the soil so a lot depends on fertilizer lay down and you know how much rainfall they had prior to harvest and etc etc.
So like those are the only two caveats. Now on that obviously you're not gonna want to feed anything that's going to cause any sort of food poisoning but you're not gonna have to cook things to the same kind of level that you would have in a canned environment where for instance like a lot of um a lot a lot of vegetables can take on that canned kind of v vegetable taste right now I'm preserv presumably you're if you're gonna do this you're gonna make the investment do you already own a vita prep you said a vita prep? Yeah do you what is do you mean like a Vitamix or yeah yeah yeah so like a Vitamix is sorry the the commercial version of the Vitamix is a vitaprep. It's the same thing. Uh yeah you own you own one of those yeah we have like a professional Vitamix at home but we don't have the commercial version, obviously.
Well, they're the same motor. The the only difference is is they expect people in a commercial kitchen to beat it to death. And so they put a different label on it and they give you a different warranty. But it's this it's it's literally the same people. It's not it's one of the rare instances where the commercial version isn't any beefier than the home version.
It just costs more because they know they're gonna have to like uh uh you know, have a lot of warranty issues on it. Whereas like, you know, 99% of people at home aren't gonna abuse um their blenders the same way that a uh a commercial kitchen will. So yeah, you're in good shape. So if you have that, um, you know, uh with with those two caveats, I'd say go for it. I don't know, like, are you guys vegetarian?
You eat meat or or or what? Hello? Did we lose them? Yeah, and we have a little bit of a bad connection, it's muffled. I apologize.
Do you uh do you guys eat meat? Because one of the great things about a vita prep is you can blend uh meat like like like nobody's business. I would use meats, uh I don't know if you eat meat, but like you can do i anything like that. I don't know whether people are like uh gonna get mad at me for recommending feeding meat to a kid, but you I I I did. I fed the kids ev everything.
You know, it's just you you want to beware of choking and and uh I would say look into those things that I mentioned, like certain leafy things. I think spinach was the one that they really talked about. I bet you celery is the same, but who's gonna feed their kid pureeed celery? That sounds kind of gross, right? You're gonna feed your celery.
So is there anything like one idea I had was like in from Modernist Cuisine where you caramelize the carrots and do something like that so that you make the food taste a little bit better. Is there do you have any other recommendations like that? Yeah, you know, you look, you could take stuff that you're making for yourself, just like you don't even like if you're roasting carrots, which are delicious, just roast extra and then just use a little uh stock or something to be able to blend it into the right texture, and it's gonna be a lot more uh delicious. Do you know what I'm saying? I obviously I would adjust the texture.
I would buy a couple of cans of the of the of the jars rather of the Gerber stuff just to check the consistency on it to see whether you're in the in the kind of realm of consistency. Because if you go, obviously, if you go too gluey, you just want to be you know careful that they're not gonna choke or or aspirate or anything like that. Of course. But yeah, so like I I mean I I would say almost any like the great thing about the vita prep is you could take almost anything that you like and then turn it into the texture of a uh baby food. Most people who are making it are mainly worried about kind of trying to go like hyper healthy on uh on a baby, which to me it's like, you know, I don't know, like uh I don't don't please don't get me started uh on that.
But it's like uh you know, like I wish to God that I could go back and have ignored my doctor's recommendations about what not to feed my children early on. Uh but you like I said, as a parent, you just can't do that. Uh you can't ignore what the doctor says because then if you're wrong, you know, you're you're you're a big jerk. You know, you're you've ruined your kids, you know. Uh but you know, you know, you live in a in a permissive time, so it's uh you know, you're you're very lucky.
One thing I will say is that um, and this you know, something that I've noticed uh that there's no way to judge from um a baby what your child will turn into when they get older in terms of their eating habits. So uh I know for instance, like my older son who uh is on the he's on the autistic spectrum, so a lot of those kids have um a lot of those kids have issues with being very, very picky, not liking things mixed, right? Not liking things that are mixed together, being very sensitive to certain flavors, etc. etc. And who knows whether these things develop?
It's hard to know if these things are gonna develop. In fact, it's impossible. But the um but the funny thing is is when he was a baby, he would pound things that tasted like very adults would never think that you would like. So he used to eat fistfuls of capers. There's fistfuls and fistfuls of capers.
He still has some strange tastes. Like he loves like fish eggs. He and Nastasia would be like right up the same alley pounding, you know, uh cured fish eggs. Uh so you you never you never never can uh judge. I mean, you know, I you know, my hope for you is that you're lucky and you get a child who uh likes everything on an early age and maintains that love their whole life.
I mean, that's a freaking joy as a parent. But you know we don't always get lucky. And you always don't you don't always get to choose what you're that's the thing. I thought when I was a parent that if I just expose my kids to all this stuff, that of course they're gonna like it the same way I do. Nope.
No, they're their own people. They'll choose what they want. You know what I mean? Yeah, definitely. All right.
Well, thank you so much. All right, no problem. And uh check up on the chat room, because I'm sure some people in the chat room uh who've had more recent uh children have some probably good advice on uh on that. Wouldn't you say, Jack? Absolutely.
Yeah, all right. Okay, I'll have to take a look at that. All right, thanks very much. Uh thank you. Okay, so back to the uh Jeffrey Givens cooking.
Oh, we had a question? All right, got it. Caller you're on the air. Sorry about that. Yeah, no problem.
Caller you're on the air. What's up? Oh, hi, Dave. Um, I traded a tweet or two with you last week about tandoors and what you're looking for in one. Ah, yeah.
And want to uh follow up on that because there seems to be you got the idea of uh I mean I want to do high heat grilling, and I was looking at like kibachi likes, and you got the idea of tandoors in my head, and I've been following up on it, and there's a lot out there. I figured that one tandoor is the same as the next, but they make them out of all sorts of different things, different sizes, no clue what's useful or not in a tandoor. Okay, so here's here's I really have experience in the one that I have, right? And uh, but I have you know a good bit, and I did look into uh a lot of them. So the the typical tandoor um that uh you know that you read about is kind of this, and mine was made in Delhi, right?
And so like a lot of those is uh I I'm pretty sure and it's been a while that they're done um kind of rope style, they're built up, smoothed out. There's some form of hair fiber mixed in with the clay uh as uh a binder, right? Then those basic shells are kind of the standard tandoor that they make in Delhi, and then at least for the one that I have, and then they're lined in various different kinds of casings and they're made in various sizes and shapes, right? There are other people, for instance, there's a a relatively I think well well regarded tandoor maker in um the United States, I forget his name. He's not he's not Indian, but he makes a lot of tandoors for uh ovens and for you know some kind of fancier establishments that uses a very different kind of clay makeup, and I think, although it's been a long time, I think he might throw them.
In other words, like it's like a traditional um like a traditional pot. So I like when it comes to composition like that, I don't really have a lot of experience. So it's not like you know, like using a million different kinds of ovens that I can come down and say, well, this person's full of crap, this one's not. When I did it just for price, and also for um for price, and I figure it's very traditional. I just went with the one that was made in Delhi, right?
Uh, because I figured those guys, they know from tandoors, right? And so then, you know, there are some companies that sell uh tandor shells or you know, the the ovens, uh uh some people do two parts and they ship them, and then you can encase them in your own sort of refractory. Initially, I was like, look, I just want to use this sucker right away. And so I got one where the guy gets it, they put it inside of a uh stainless steel bucket, you open it from the bottom, and that's that's it. But beyond that, you have to choose what size you want, right?
So the you know, the size I got was the larger of the ones that are recommended for for home people, because the guy was like, unless you're gonna do really, really big parties, um, the bigger ones just take a lot more fuel to fire. So you're just gonna go through a lot more coal, uh, you know, and it's just gonna be kind of a bigger headache that way. And you know what? I think he was right. There are some times I wish I had a lot more space in it, but really I've you know, unless you're gonna cook for more than 15 people a lot and cook exclusively in the tandoor, I think the size that I have is good.
And in fact, if I was gonna up it, if I was gonna get one of the really big ones, I would probably rather have two tan two smaller tandoors than one big one. So my small one, so if you go to tandors.com, which is in Summit, New Jersey, I have the larger of the two ones that they kind of recommend for home that's on wheels. It's fairly easy to move around if you're a giant hawking person. But I can put one, two, three, four, I could put four nons on the inside at once, which is about as much as I can put in before I have to start removing the other one because I'm not that fast. And so um, you know, I think it's it's pretty uh good.
But so like once you choose the construction and how it's made, then the size is the next thing. I wanted a freestanding one because I wanted to be more flexible. If you're gonna build it in, then maybe you can get your own liner and just fill it with a refractory around, you know what I mean? I'm assuming you want coal and not gas, right? Um, it's open.
And that was the other question I had for you. Because in my head, it was um coal seems like it would get hotter, and the whole idea here is as hot as you can get it. I mean, that's you know, why I'm not doing it in the oven. It depends on what you're doing, frankly. So the problem with tandoors is well it's not a problem, but like uh the coals at the bottom, and you still have the the coals at the at the bottom, and typically the stuff that's at that coal end of the skewer gets really like almost like burnt.
So it's like like when I have some time, what I'm gonna do, so there's a sweet spot in the skewer above that level where everything is kind of cooked evenly and it's nice and bel, but that's only at medium heat. If you have a roaring hot coals in the bottom, like you're still heating it, then um then there isn't necessarily that much of a sweet spot because you just have such intense radiation from the coals on the bottom. I'm gonna build a little like blast shield for my skewers that can kind of clip on so that like I can like have a roaring hot flame but reflect a lot of that heat back so that that first couple of pieces don't have that like I've just re-entered the Earth's atmosphere look to them. Um putting things on a fencing foil? Yeah, exactly.
Exactly, yeah, like a like a like a reverse fencing foil there. But the um so like what I typically do is just throw something I don't care about on the end, like uh like a half a potato. The other trick is is like getting the um getting the stuff not to slide down to a little a bit of an art. But also not everything wants to cook at the high temperature. So typically what I'll do, and gas, uh, you know, it's probably gonna be more nimble.
I know I think people make one that you can just shove the gas burner in when you're using it, pull it out and fire it with coal, which would probably be a good kind of middle ground. Um, but like non doesn't want to be that hot. If the if your oven's too hot for the naan, um it's just gonna scorch the bottom before the top gets nice and brown because the clay'll heat up so much. So you really, you know, there are there is a sweet spot. It's not just all like intense ripping, ripping heats.
For some things it is. You know, I mean shrimp, like you can't really get it h like too hot to do shrimp. You know what I mean? But uh a a lot uh depends. So there's like um the more you use it, the more you'll get the the the hang of that stuff.
But typically what I'll do is I'll fire the tandoor with a fairly big load of coal. Uh fill the whole thing uh then let it let it come down a little bit. Meanwhile, I'll start a ch a big chimney starter of coals. I'll do my nons when the temperature is kind of mellowed out and the whole thing's relatively even. I'll do my nons, pull them, throw them into the warming oven, like inside, then I'll dump in the chimney and then I'll do the proteins that I want to go ripping hot.
That's typically what I do. All right. Well, thank you. That seems uh gives you some more information to look in on. Yeah, and I look and also like Tandor is just immense fun to work with.
But don't necessarily feel like you need to go traditional. It's but one of the most rewarding kind of like cooking like fun things that I get to do because it's not technical at all. I mean it is, you have to think about it technically, but it's not like accurate technical the way the a lot of stuff that I do is. And so um if you go to like uh one of these uh home you know home improvement stores, they sell all these uh um gadgets for people's normal grills like baskets and stuff, which in general I I don't really use when I'm using a normal grill. But they're really kind of cool to hang in the tandoor.
So like I'll get baskets and you can fill like a you could like put the baskets like that you could do like hamburgers in it and things that are hard to skewer that you don't necessarily want to skewer, you want to get a higher density, and you can expose them very evenly to the radiant heat of the wall by suspending these baskets on a skewer over the thing. Oh, I'll mention this. The other thing you have to get kind of good with is manipulating the the lids and the uh the lid and the uh and the open vent at the bottom to kind of adjust a flow of heat through it. So if you're you know, it's it's all about like putting the skewers around, rot like rotating them and in and out, in and out. I know I've mentioned that before, but like you know, it's like all of my all of my pro breads go in once, duh.
But like most of the other things go in at least twice, sometimes three times to get that kind of surface the way you want. So you're gonna want to, wherever your tandoor is, you're gonna need to have a and it's better to air hang them, to hang the racks. I mean, you can lay them down, but I find it's better to hang the skewers or whatever you're using in between when they're running. So I have a uh uh like a like a rim near my tandoor where I can hang all my skewers in between when they're going in and out, and I spray them with Pam to you want a light oil coat on them, let them dry off before you put in. I hit them with Pam on the second or third go-around to get the sizzle going quickly.
A little pro tip for you. All right. And are you using uh Kingsford here or like something special? I use c I use um well, is it I forget the name of it. It's in a red bag.
It's in a big red bag, and it's not Kingsford. I don't use bricks or briquettes, I use uh hardwood charcoal, so it looks like pieces of wood. And uh and I throw it in. And it's not that expensive, and the big box stores uh sell it, and uh it's great. And you know, you're not you know, it's it's slightly more expensive than the compressed briquettes, but you know, you kind of you know what you're getting, and I don't know, it just feels right and I use it, you know.
Yeah, and lastly, um do you have any special tools for the NAND or like what do you use to get in there? Do you have uh like a welding glove or do you um? Uh okay, so here's the thing. Um the putting the putting it in is not a big deal. You they give you like a coconut fiber stuffed pillow, which when you're learning, you'll accidentally catch on fire if you're anything like me.
So mine has like all the stuffing coming out of it and everything, but I still use it. And uh you have this um this like it looks like a little pillow, like you know, like a like a catcher's mit slash pillow. And you stretch out the you s you stretch out the bread, you wet the side that's gonna go against the tandor slightly. I use my hands, but I guess you could use a mister. Do not wet the side that's on the pillow, and then you put your hand in and whack, you get the you get the thing um on the side, right?
Uh and that's part of the art. When you're learning, you're you're gonna drop a bunch into the fire. Once it touches the coal at the bottom, ignore it's done. It's done. It's over.
Right? Uh then when you get it off, you don't need a glove either because you're using this dual skewer. You're shoving this like pointed stick into the bottom of the of the non and then scraping it off with this like spatula like thing like stick uh with the other. These two skewers typically come with your tandoor, and then it swings down like a pendulum, you lift it out and you're good to go. The but you do want to invest in uh you're gonna have to have some side towels there.
And I would also invest in one of those grill gloves because the skewers are intensely freaking hot, right? And if you ever need to work with them, and the lid can also get it. Now the lid I usually uh pick up with a side towel, but the uh the skewers and stuff, you don't want to use a side towel, and I'll tell you why. The skewers have a little hook shape on the end of them, right? That's how you're hanging them uh when they're in between.
And when you're trying to manipulate that hook around with the side towel, the side towel gets jumbled around in the hook, and it just becomes impossible to do like a lot of fine rotation with it with a side towel. So for the for lifting out the hooks and manipulating them, I use a um I use uh one of those grill mitts, the the I think Weber makes them. And then I use a side towel and to slide the things off of the skewer, typically I'll slide the stuff off the skewer into a butter dish and then throw it in a warming oven if I'm doing a lot before we're we're eating. And when you're sliding food off of the skewers, the bottom part of the skewer typically is red hot from being in the coals. So I s I'll slide it down and get a little bit of that sizzle, drop it into the um, drop it into the bucket, which goes back into the warming oven inside.
And you don't want to try to you don't want to try to strip a whole skewer at once. Like fragile foods like shrimp, if you're stripping a whole skewer, they'll literally just blow themselves apart because the proteins on the on the shrimp have kind of welded themselves around part of the skewer. Potatoes also do this. The heat will travel up the skewer, and the very bottom potato will have this like incredibly hard to scrape off like ring of potato, like kind of melded to the skewer at the bottom. So if you try to pull the whole skewer skewer off at once, you'll just shred everything that's on the skewer.
So what you want to do is kind of like take take the first thing off the bottom and then either one or two things at a time off. The good thing about that is is that if you have a situation where there's a huge temperature delta in your oven from the bottom to the top, you can take off that that bottom one that's gonna get done and then throw the throw the rest of this or the bottom two and throw the rest back in to finish up. You do not have to remove all of them at once, which is a little another pro tip. Nice. Nice.
Well, thank you very much. I think this was um Yeah, you got me all amped up for Tandors now. Nice. Well, uh, you know, write back and let us know. I've never met someone who's like, you know, I got a tandoor, and you know what?
It wasn't very good. Never had that happen. You know what I mean? Sounds good. All right.
Thank you very much. All right, no problem. Okay, so back to uh Jeffrey Givens' question in Costa Makeup. Onto the cooking issue. We recently held a fry fest with our outdoor six-gallon, six-gallon Cajun fryer, uh, about which I spoke with you on air just after Thanksgiving.
It holds 47 pounds of oil. You must must acquire one of these for your outdoor Connecticut kitchen. Well, I have a regular uh 35-pound, I think, uh, you know, commercial fryer. But if I had to go back, I might not get the commercial fryer. I might have gotten the Cajun Fryer, who knows?
Because it's meant to go outside, and mine is not meant to go outside, which means I have to keep it under an Eve, which is a little bit of a pain in the butt. But if I told my wife that I was gonna go spend money on another fryer, like I would be talking out of the other side of my face because she would have slapped it like like right? I mean, like there's no way. Imagine telling Jen that I was gonna buy another deep fryer stuff. No, yeah, no, no, no, no.
All right. Um the little monster could handle every freaking thing we threw at it, and we literally could not keep up with battering and chucking all manner of food into it due to the high heat capacity and recovery. By the way, I did your uh take a whole chicken, break it down and circulate it at two different temperatures with debone meat glued thighs rolled up in their own skin and drumsticks debone by snipping the tendons and popping the thing out with the skin still intact. Incredible. Good.
Well, I'm glad people are still using that technique. I love that technique. I like fried chicken, as we've mentioned before. The only thing that didn't work from a functional standpoint, there were a few flavor disasters, were battered cheese sticks. When you say battered cheese sticks, do you think of like cheesesteaks that have taken a beating, or you think of battered as a Nastasia?
That's why I love Nastasia, because she thinks about like those cheesesteaks taking a freaking beating. Whereas like most people would think like b breaded, right? Right, Jack? Right. Most people would think breaded, I think.
He's gone here. Yeah. Anyway. Right. Uh we tried a smoked gouda, and you like smoke gouda sauce?
Not really. Really? Do you? Yeah. I grew up eating it.
You know, like it grew up getting it in all those like 1970s, like cheese baskets. Mm-hmm. I like so I I grew up liking any kind of smoked cheese. Jack? Thoughts?
He's not there. He's not there anymore? I don't know. Dave? Gouda's great.
Good. You smoked? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, what about other smoked cheeses? Do you like other smoked cheeses?
Oh, yeah, yeah. Um like them all. Yeah. Stas, what are your thoughts on the Italian like a fumicotto like pecorino Saro, those really hard, like like smoked cheeses? No?
No. I do in small quantities. I wouldn't want to eat a lot. What are your what are your thoughts on uh truffled cheeses? Don't like at all.
Wow, nice. Do you? Oh, I don't want to not like them, but I don't like them. Most of my family likes anyway. Truffle tough.
Truffle. Wow, that's all it's almost a rhyme. Truffle truffle tuffle. Getting into a truffle tussle. Yeah, now it looks like it's like a Dr.
Seuss, like a truffula tree. Anyway. Uh the cheese, okay. Okay. We tried a smoked gouda and a pepper jack, cut into sticks and battered, ensuring full coating.
The cheese invariably disappeared, leaving only a thin melted layer stuck to the inside of the battered shell. The rest was hollow. Even cream cheese stuffed peppers with an open top had no problem. So it didn't seem as though simple moisture content was the issue. What gives, and are there other products you found surprisingly problematic in the fryer?
Good question. I too have had this uh problem. I think I mentioned last week that like the worst thing I've ever done was the falafel balls that just like blew themselves apart. So you have a couple of uh issues going on here. Most people, when they're breading and frying stuff, are are overheating their oil because they're doing it at home.
You're not overheating it because you're doing it in a real fryer, right? So they overheat their oil. So this the oil will get ruined very quickly, which yours won't. But on the flip side, their cheese sticks are only in the oil for like uh 30 seconds tops before they're all brown and starting to burn. So they can pull it out before the entire thing turns to a massive goo and sprays out.
In your case, that you probably have a more reasonable temperature of like 360, 350, 360. And if you're doing like chicken that hasn't been pre-cooked, sometimes even lower, like 330, 30 in this 330 in this area. Uh I, you know, I do, you know, anyway. So the point being that the longer the stuff's in the fryer, the more chance you have for a pin leak to happen in your coating, and then those kinds of cheeses will literally pump as opposed to cream cheese, which won't, will pump themselves out under the pressure of the um of the boiling water uh and steam will pump themselves out of the case and leave you with a kind of a hollow shell. And so I've literally done things like candy bars, uh, and I think I've done candy bars, uh, like ice creams, things like this, and you'll see them and you'll be like, it's perfect, it's perfect, it's perfect, and then you'll like at the last minute, you won't pull it out in time.
It'll blast a hole in the coating, and then it will pump all of it out into your oil like almost instantaneously because it's complete liquid on the inside. So I would just say uh take your cheese sticks, double dip them to make sure you've got a really good coating on. Double dip, double dip. In fact, I saw uh a lady on the internet who wrapped a wonton skin around her uh around her cheesestick. What do you think about that?
That's weird, huh? Wonton stick. I think it might be too hard. Anyway, double dip and freeze those suckers for a while so that the outside, not for a long time, don't freeze them all the way through, but freeze them so the outside's really, really cold. There's not a lot of water, not that much water in the breading.
It'll come up to temperature and brown fast enough, and you might be able to get the thing out and do leave them in for the minimum amount of time possible. And uh, you know, that's kind of what I would say about that. What do you think, S. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Anyway, let us know how it works. Um here we go. We get we got a we got a uh okay. Thanks for keeping me company on my commute every day. You guys are awesome.
I've got another technical question, but this one doesn't involve uh Sabbath or Jewish holidays. And uh this is from um this is from uh oh my god, my brain. From uh David uh Statman, aka a Jews Boosh. Stas likes that. I Stas put an I like face on with uh with that uh Twitter handle.
Um anyway, he thinks that that uh I'd make a good Talmudic rabbi. What do you think, Stuz? Yeah. Yeah? Because I'm so well why?
Because like because I like to analyze everything. That's what Stuzz hates about me the most. I'm researching how I can use a CO2 tank to charge my whipping siphon for carbonation of liquids, alcohol, fruit, etc., instead of using CO2 cartridges. What pressure should I set the regulator for for equal charging with one or two CO2 charges? And consequently, would I need a regulator uh for carbonating beer or the higher pressure soda fountain regulator?
Always get the higher pressure one, by the way. Just look right up. I'm just gonna say this to anyone, anyone who's asking, unless all you're doing is beer in a restaurant, get the freaking higher pressure one, please. Don't ever but why would you want to limit yourself? It's not more money, right, Stas?
Stas is like, I don't care. I'm just gonna shake my head so Dave stops looking at me. Uh here's more information I've collected on the setups and pressures, including information from uh EC customer service, which you know, ignore. I plan on making a barb fitting like this guy didn't, and so you don't you can't see what this guy is because you're on the you're you know, this is you know not a visual medium. But what this guy did was he took a hose barb.
Uh so for those of you not familiar, what we're talking about is whipped cream makers uh that uh EC makes, and uh you you screw those little cartridges of CO2 in, right? And it punctures, there's a little needle and a rubber gasket that you push the uh that you screw the cartridge into, it punctures the cartridge, the gasket seals it such that all of the pressure from the CO2 cartridge gets directed into the whipper. That's how it works. So what this it's rather clever actually person did was they took uh like a hose barb fitting, looks like it's about a quarter of an inch hose barb fitting, attached it to their CO2 line with a uh with a little uh ball valve, and you just push it onto the gasket so it seals, and then you let the the pressure into the into the thing. That's what it looks like they're doing.
Um so yeah, it's kind of clever. Like when I did it, I uh when I built it, obviously when I built my uh attachment to my EC, it was like considerably more complicated. I machined a uh mating piece to go onto the um to go on to that thing, which is really complicated. But what my system, what this system does is it acts just like a the CO2 cartridge that you get when you put it in. In other words, you inject a certain amount of pressure and then you pull it away.
You can't inject, and that's the amount of gas that's in your product. This is the key, by the way. Um well, let me finish the question. So the guy in the above reference link, which you don't have because you can't see me, uh carbonates at 140 pounds per square inch. I inquire from EC directly about the regular operating pressure of their siphons, and I've repeated their uh response, etc.
etc. Uh, and referring to N2O whipping siphons, Chris Young said in the comments on a Chef Steps uh infusion process that one is unlikely to achieve pressures of over 80 psi in the whipping siphon. That's not true. Uh listen listen, uh forget forget what anyone told you. Forget what EC told you.
Forget what anyone told you. What's happening to you is you're clouding your mind. Think about this. You're gonna completely erase anything that you've thought and think about how carbonation works. You're dealing with three very different ways of carbonating, and the confusion that you're having is trying to operate between those different ways of carbonating.
One, the way I carbonate, I have my gas tank, my CO2 tank, in always connected to my product as I'm carbonating. So I choose a pressure, right? And typically for cocktails, it's 45 pounds per square inch. I choose a pressure, right? And then I attach, uh I put CO2 at that pressure onto my uh product and I agitate it violently.
As I'm agitating, more gas is supplied from my tank into the bottle until the pressure on the inside of the liquid, uh there's enough CO2 on the inside of liquid to counterbalance uh that 45 psi and no more gas is supplied because it's relatively inequilibrium, right? So I can pressure, I can carbonate at a low pressure, and I get a very consistent, very consistent result. Why? Because the only variable that is really changing is the temperature uh and the composition of the liquid. So as long as my liquid is cold enough, then I know I'm gonna get the same result all the time.
Even if I have if I have a little bit in the bottle, I'm gonna get the same result as if I have a lot in the bottle. Because I keep supplying gas at that same pressure until I reach relatively until I reach equilibrium, right? And I can vent in between and I can keep doing it over and over, very repeatable results. Okay. The way that uh EC does it, right, is they sell you seven and a half gram carbon dioxide cartridges.
It pumps the entire seven and a half gram cartridge into your uh whipping siphon, right? And then the pressures become whatever the pressures become, right? And it depends on a lot of things. It depends on how much liquid is in, what the composition of the liquid is that's in it, and um the temperature involved. So uh, right, and now there's a third way of doing it, right?
And because uh what remember what EC is doing is putting a fixed weight of CO2 into your uh into your thing. When you move to a tank with this fitting that you're gonna make, this hose barb fitting that you're gonna make, you're doing neither of those two things. You are injecting a s a specific weight of CO2, but based solely on the pressure of the CO2 that you're putting in and the um amount of head space that you have. So with EC, it's a fixed weight. With you, the weight is dependent on the head space and the pressure.
Confusing enough so far, Stuzz? Yeah. Yeah, super confusing, right? So but this is why everyone gets all this stuff wrong. Because you have to think about exactly what you're doing.
I will just give you some numbers to make this clear. Now it's gonna apologize, it's gonna be a headache for anyone that doesn't care about it. But look at this. A 500 milliliter EC uh whipped cream maker, right? Holds 500 milliliters, and this chart's in my book, so you can look at it later if you want.
500 milliliters of liquid, right, and has 272 milliliters of head space, meaning it's blank space. When you inject the seven and a half grams of CO2 into that, right? Into water there, the pressure is 197 PSI. These numbers were I they did them in front of me when I was in Austria at EC at their factory where they had uh a head with a gauge on it, right? 197 PSI, that's 13.6 bar for all you Euro folks, right?
Uh now, when you shake it, right? That at with if this is with 20 degrees Celsius water, right? So it doesn't absorb that much CO2, it goes down to 119 Psi, which is 8.2 bar. That's one charger. Now, look at look at what we're looking for saying.
I did some calculations. I went online, use what's called an ideal gas calculator where I determined exactly what was going on. What that pressure means in that head space is that 6.67 grams of that seven of that 7.5 grams of CO2 is in the head space. Less than one gram of that CO2 is actually in the liquid in that point. And what that means is pretty much 100% of the CO2 that you inject, if you're not shaking, is right in that head space.
And remember, the way that you're gonna put CO2 in, you are not going to shake it while it's under pressure. And what that means is is that you're limited with the pressure on how much is CO2 you can inject into your head space. Does this make any sense to us? The good news is is that uh you don't need to have a super high uh pressure, but you might need to keep re-injecting CO2 into the head space over and over and over and over again, right? Um I'll give you another example.
So if you were to do uh 100 milliliters, right? Uh uh sorry, if you had a uh a one-liter whipper and you put uh a full liter into it, there's still only 262 milliliters of headspace in that in that whipper, you're gonna get the same, roughly 200 psi in the head space because not that much is is going into the water, right? When you shake it, the psi drops to a lot lower to 77 psi, because you have a lot more uh liquid in there. Now, if you were to use uh ethanol, pure almost ethanol, right? You get the same about you know, it's only 15% lower.
You get about 170 psi in that thing before and when you shake it, the pressure's over three times lower because it's absorbing so much more uh um uh CO2. So what you're gonna want to do is just choose a pressure. You want to choose 140, choose 140, right? The more head space you put in, the more CO2 you're gonna inject, right? So uh if you were to do 140 psi, you're gonna put 4.7 grams of CO2 into a heads into the headspace of an EC if it's full at capacity, right?
If you were to reduce it, let's say you were to increase the head capacity to uh 500 mils instead of 270 or 250, you'll double the amount of CO2 that's in that headspace, right? So you can you can do that. But let's say you were to you so confusing, I'm sorry. But like what you should probably do is just keep testing, and when you see what you like, weigh the damn thing and figure out how many grams of CO2 you have in it. That's what I would do.
Weigh it. Figure out how many grams. A volume of CO2 is two grams per liter. This is not including the headspace. You have to calculate how much.
And so if you did 140 psi and you fill it all the way to the top, you know that the headspace contains 4.7 grams. Then, if you have, for instance, a liter bottle and you have a liter in there, you're gonna want about four volumes of CO2 to have a really strong carbonation. Four volumes of CO2 is eight grams per liter, and so uh you're gonna want eight plus four point seven, twelve point seven grams heavier than it is when you started, and that should give you the good answer. What do you think? Does that make any damn sense?
Does anyone is this one making any damn sense at all? Do we have 30 seconds? No. 30 seconds. All right.
Uh Brandon Hodgkin wrote in he wants to make some bacon popcorn. Want to know if you have any tips on how to make the bacon bits adhere to the popcorn so the bits don't end up all on the bottom. I was considering using Nsorbit mixed with bacon renderings to make a bacon powder for added bacon flavor. Do you think that would work well? Yeah, here's what you want to do.
Make sure you get like a Benton's bacon, something with very heavy smoke because it's going to have a lot more smoke. When you're using the endsorbit, remember the enemy of Ensorbit is um is liquids. So what you should do is render your bacon out in the oven, right? Save the fat, right? Take the things that are rendered, render them long and low so that you're not burning it.
You can then dehydrate the bacon further. You can blitz the endsorbit with the fat and the bacon solids as long as there's enough ensorbit in there to not let the oil uh go out and ruin the powderiness of it, right? That's gonna what'll gum it up. So you could actually blitz the bacon and the ensorbit together so that you have a lot stronger bacon fave uh flavor that should coat the thing. Remember also you need some liquid oil to get the adhesion, but I'm assuming that you're popping this in the rendered bacon fat anyway, because otherwise why would you air pop bacon popcorn and then make it bacon flavored?
That makes no sense, does it, Stuzz? Cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on heritage Radio network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes Store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at heritage underscore radio.
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