Cooking issues will be starting shortly. Please stay tuned.com to check out our unique collection of everyday reusable products designed to help you do more with less. 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 Futures coming to you alive on the Heritage Radio Network from Robert's Pizzeria in Bushwick.
How are you doing, folks? Call in your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718497-2128. Joined in the studio as usual with Nastasia. Lopez, how you doing, Stuzz?
Good. Yeah, everything good? And and of course, in the booth, we got Jackie Molecules. Hello, hello. Now, Jack.
Molecules. Now, Jack, it's gonna be sad times for cooking issues because good news for you, you're gonna go out on tour pretty soon, right? I am, yeah. There's a lot on the horizon for me right now. But if you're on tour, that means that you're not gonna be in the booth.
Well, you know, they'll be the ghost of Jackie Molecules. Um, I I I I do hope to kind of call in from some of these cities. I'll be in uh, let's see, I'll be in London, I'll be in the east of England, some weird little town, Ipswich, I think. Then I'll be in Paris and I think Barcelona and Iceland. Ooh.
Yeah. I'm gonna go to Iceland. Me too, yeah. I'm excited about that one the most. We're playing shows in like the weirdest places in Iceland, so that'll be fun.
Yeah. Yeah. If the listeners want to check out the music, it's Odeta Hartman 222, which I think I've shamelessly plugged on the show before, but that's the record that I produced. I play with her live, and um we're hitting the road. So what's up with the 222?
What's the meaning of the 222? Well, let's see. Her birthday is the 22nd, her number is two, that's just where it starts, and then uh we had this thing where we would always send each other screenshots when it was 22 p.m. on the phone back and forth, just as a kind of like whatever thing. And then it turns out she researched the number 222, and it's some weird like numerology, it's like an angel number of it it the meaning behind it is like a divine collaboration kind of thing or something.
So I don't know. There are all these coincidences with with the twos. So we just went and then the record itself is 22 minutes and 22 seconds long. By chance. That first of all, you're lying.
Well, okay. The final mix down. Listen, the final mix down was like 21 minutes and 40 seconds, and I was like, I'll be damned if this isn't 222. It was close enough, you know. Yeah, that is not by chance.
Yeah, shave it. It was close. No, it was close enough by chance. It was close enough by chance. Right, thanks.
Yeah. Uh it's wait. So how many twos are in the album? Only three. What did you got a fourth two there?
Yeah, I know. It's just kind of uh hanging two. Hanging two. All right. All right.
Well, anyway. Uh yeah. The out my last show in the studio will be the week of uh the 24th. So I don't know, what day would that be? The 19th or something?
June 19th. That'll be a sad day. Yeah. That'll be a sad day. We'll pop champagne.
Oh. Oh, and uh me is the one. For Stas mostly, not for me. Mimi Me's in the back uh provided by Peter Kim, the director of the museum of uh food and drink, coming off of his uh uh I'm sure you went on some huge bender because you just finished your the uh spring benefit. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, well, actually, no, I I the next morning Alice Waters came and visited the museum, and then I had to do this shoot for CBS Sunday morning uh the Chinese takeout box. You didn't uh lick yourself up for the uh Alice Waters meeting? No? I think that was a yes. Yeah, that was a yes, that was a secret yes, yeah.
That's right. He was actually he wasn't using liquor, he was chewing cot. Is cot actually illegal here in the It is highly legal, so I know nothing of it. Yeah, yeah. Your old lawyer day is coming back.
All right. So we got some uh interesting stuff uh we're gonna do here on the uh program today. We're gonna we're gonna call into Harold McGee. He's he's on the line. All right, well, and Daniel Gritzer's gonna come in later to help answer someone else's question on next mosaic.
But Harold, how you doing? I'm doing well, thanks. How about you guys? Oh, good, good. Harold was the uh the twenty twenty sixteen recipient of uh what was the exact MoFed Honoree.
Yeah. 2016 Honoree. Yeah. Yeah. Uh uh you might know him as the person who knows everything about the science of deliciousness, or at least has taught us everything about the science of deliciousness.
If you haven't uh already purchased uh on food and cooking, uh the keys of good cooking and gone on Bookfinder and also purchased uh the Curious Cook uh off of someone else's used bookstore that do that now. Stop listening to us and go buy that right now. Um I know like you have excerpts out there. Yeah, I should really do something about that, shouldn't I? Yeah, because it it doesn't even it's not like uh it's not like republishing the old information from on food and cooking in the first edition, which I know you're like I'd have to go revisit it.
This is more about just experiments. You could write literally like a two-paragraph addendum being like this is no longer a hundred percent what I think, but this is how I went through the experiment at that time, it'd still be useful for people, no? Yeah, yeah, that's true. Just my just my personal feelings. All right, so I met someone at uh Booker and Dax Um recently, and she had said that uh her, I think it was her mom, uh had just had a virus and it knocked out her olfaction.
And the doctors, you know, said that uh you know, it might come back a hundred percent, it might come back partially, it might take weeks, it might take months. And I told her that I know someone, uh, you know, you, Harold, who uh had a similar a similar um problem, and so I just thought I'd have you on to talk about kind of what that was like, especially for someone who, you know, is uh food is such a big part of their life and kind of how you made it through it and kind of what the whether there was any sort of thing you could do to help yourself out while it was going on. Yeah, it was uh not fun. And I I think you might remember it because it was a couple of years ago when um uh we had just finished lecturing at Harvard and I was coming down to New York City to participate in a country ham tasting where the whole point is to taste and notice qualities and uh uh like a week or ten days before I came out to Harvard, uh I just woke up one morning, made a cup of coffee and realized I couldn't taste my coffee or I couldn't smell it. Um and uh that was scary because I'm in the middle of writing a book about smell.
And uh so I have a friend who uh w was at the time the director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, you know, center that specializes in taste and smell. And I wrote him immediately and said, uh, yeah, oh what do I do about this? And he he basically said uh it's a very common problem that lots and lots of people over the course of their lifetime do lose their sense of smell for a period of time, that it's happened to him, and that uh there's really nothing that specialists in the field can uh do to help or to uh uh comfort you, you know. It uh there's just no predicting when it's gonna come back and how. So he said just relax and uh uh try to enjoy the other qualities of foods, and um so I I did that and uh what I found, I did find that my um my interest in eating really declined, you know.
It's uh smell is such a big part of it that I would just uh not see the point of working really hard to make something nice for dinner anymore. Um so what I did end up doing though is uh just noticing that uh the uh uh when when you can't smell food, then the other qualities become that much more important. So I found that um if a food was uh undersalted or if the meat was kind of you know tough and dry and not very interesting, that I just uh it made that particular dish really unappealing, and I just didn't want to eat any more of it. Uh so uh my my feeling is that uh uh you know uh investing in the idea that it's gonna come back at some point and you have to keep yourself healthy in the meantime and eat reasonably, uh then what you do uh if you're cooking for yourself or if you're cooking for someone else who has this uh problem is just to make the food as appealing in all its other aspects as possible. And so that means uh the seasoning, it means uh I found myself using lemon juice and lime juice a lot more than I would have in the past.
Uh I liked crunchy things and really smooth silky things, uh, but stuff that kind of dried out my mouth, you know, just uh that that didn't do it for me anymore. So tannins, you like laid off tannins and a lot of tannic stuff? Uh yeah, yeah. Um one thing I remember doing that sounds a little uh well, it is kind of peculiar, but uh, you know, I uh I live in California. There's a lot of citrus around all the time.
And so I was trying to, you know, eat uh my oranges, uh get my vitamins. Um and I noticed one day when I peeled my orange and then it took me a few hours to get around to eating it, I got distracted by something else. You know how the um the skin around each segment dries out. Uh and it turns out if it dries out enough, uh instead of being chewy, which i was not something that I was interested in without any sense of smell, it it becomes really crisp. And then you get this kind of burst of flavory when you bite into it that made eating oranges, something as simple as eating oranges, uh much more interesting to me.
This was on like a naval or like a setsuma, like a more of a commentine kind of a situation? Actually, it was to begin I first found it in um uh in the smaller ones in tangerines, uh clementines, things like that. But it also works for navel. And then I discovered that uh MFK Fisher actually wrote about this, you know, decades and decades ago. She was living in France, she she wasn't getting uh she didn't have the money to uh eat uh spectacularly well, but she found that if she left uh a man peeled a mandarin orange, left it on her radiator until it dried out, uh she got that wonderful release of flavor.
Anyway, so little things like that I found could could make a really big difference. And then I also uh am a believer in the idea that you know the the more effort you make, the more you kind of uh uh make your olfactory system think that it's uh expectations are high for it, that it'll come back faster. So I would just really concentrate on trying to smell things even when I wasn't really getting anything. And uh I don't know if that makes a difference or not, but at least you you have the feeling that you're uh again m making an effort exercising the system even if it's not responding the way you want it to yet. Now uh to be so people know at the beginning this wasn't like, oh, I have a stuffy nose.
This is like nose clear knocked out though, right? Like knockout. Yeah, yeah. No, I that that was the scary thing, is that I had no other symptoms. If I'd had a head cold, then sure, it kind of makes sense that my sense of smell is a little impaired, but uh I had had no other issues whatsoever, just just realized one day I was drinking my coffee and I wasn't tasting coffee.
Was there any moment during this time when you uh found anything delicious? Uh well, yeah, in a in a kind of um, you know, partial way. I mean, potato chips, because they're they're salt uh and actually potato chips uh sea salt and vinegar potato chips. And the the crispy, crunchy piece of it uh was really wonderful too. That was sort of my my go-to uh, you know, just to to get calories because I really wasn't interested in uh in eating.
Did you uh did you do any of the texture only uh kind of famous dishes like uh bird's nest or any of that stuff? No, no. Um that I should have done that. I should have done that. Hopefully you will not have the chance to do it again.
And now the other thing is did did uh did it come back uh slowly or or my memory serves it came back somewhat gradually over the course of like a week or something, right? Uh or even longer than that. I mean it was several months before it came back. Uh and then one day uh as I say, you know, I would try to make an effort to smell things. I would just kind of snort uh trying to get the air rushing through my nasal passages harder.
And uh one day I just noticed that there seemed to be a little bit of a hint of um uh flavor. I think it was again in my in my morning cup of coffee, and it would then just go away and I wouldn't get anything at all, and I was thinking, well, maybe I hallucinated it. Uh and uh over the course of several weeks, it slowly came back to the point where I didn't have to snort. I I would actually get it just by uh normal breathing. Huh.
Scary. So uh do you want to I actually have a question that you probably have some uh answers to. You want to stay on with me or do you have to scoot off? It's up to you. I could stay on for another ten, fifteen minutes or so.
Alrighty, here we go. I got a question in on uh Nastasia's uh favorite, and uh she didn't actually punk you with this, Peter, but Peter also likes it. We actually got a caller for uh you and Harold. All right, we'll we'll do that. We'll we'll take the caller first.
Cool. All right, caller, you are you are on the air. Good? I was wondering if there's any way to make cream unturnable. Unchurnable or unchurnable.
Harold, you know of anything? Uh unchurnable. Well, uh, I I mean uh starting with homogenized cream helps. That makes it a lot harder, but I think it it would still, you know, if you if you went at it hard enough, it would still it would still churn. I mean, c like you could probably stabilize the ever loving crap out of it, right?
I mean, if you were to dope it with uh I mean it's got what? It's uh 70, roughly 70% water, 66, 60, 65, six somewhere between sixty and seventy percent water in the cream that you have. So you could probably boil that a little bit to extract out some of the water, take pure water, hydrate some sort of uh like uh some sort of thickener, and maybe that would help protect it in the way that uh in the way that starch prevents um yolk from um uh from curdling when you when you cook it. I don't know, Harold. Do you think anything like that could help like sterically hinder the uh the um fat uh agglomerating or no?
Yeah, no, I think I mean the the f fat globules themselves are pretty stable to heat. So uh yeah, just uh putting enough interfering material in there to get in the way of the the globules touching each other, that's that would that would probably be it. Right. I mean you could probably turn the entire thing into a fluid gel, right? If you wanted to.
And then if you did that, I wonder whether or not um I wonder whether or not you could prevent it from uh I mean the texture would be weird, it wouldn't be cream, but uh you might be able to stop it from having the ability, because the individual I think that the particles that you would have, you know how big the uh fat globules are, like uh Harold, like like roughly in micrometers. I have no uh micrometer, I have no idea. I think it's on the order of ten. Uh un unhomogenized. Right.
So if you homogenize it smaller? Yeah. Okay. So the limits of your tongue are roughly twenty, right? Which means that uh if your fluid gel particles are somewhere between the order of ten and twenty, right, you should be able to lock a number of uh fat globules inside of the particles in the fluid gel and maybe prevent them from agglomerating because they they'll just be kind of trapped up in something that stays as a coherent unit.
That's just a this is a complete guess, right out of my right out of my behind. I have no idea, but it's uh something to try. Uh you know, what do you think, Harold? Is this any of this reasonable or no? Yeah, yeah.
No, that that that sounds reasonable. Sounds like a good experiment. Yeah, right. Um it's going in a proxy factory, so I don't know if the I'm sure the constant movement is gonna affect those uh the like fluidity of the fat in it at all. And that was my only concern.
Oh, if it's in a fact, if it's in a fact, yeah, sure you could just use uh some sort of steric inhibition or something uh stabilizer, but yeah, you'd have to worry about uh you'd have to worry about whether it's still gonna flow fluidly or not. The fluid gel will flow fluidly if it's a low enough fluid gel, but I think the the le the lower the concentration on the fluid gel, the more it's a regular liquid with some particles in it that are stabilizing it versus particles with some liquid around them, you know. Uh but again, this is you're you're stretching way back on my memory banks for how to dork with things. Yeah, um well I appreciate help guys. All right, let us know uh uh tweet on in, let's know uh what happens.
Ooh, look, and we're joined. We have which is like a full house here. We got Daniel Gritzer in, because I had a question later. Uh so Harold, so uh Daniel, how how do you Daniel have a seat? Uh this is a question.
Congratulations, thank you. Oh, what happened? What happened? He got married. Oh, he got married?
Oh, yeah. How's that? How the hell do you like being married? I like it. It's good.
Yeah, it's all good. All right, uh You know what else, Dave? What it's episode two hundred and fifty today. Yeah, nice. Nice nice even number.
Sorendipity here. Yeah, nice. It's a good way to celebrate two fifty. It is turn McGreat, man. Yeah.
Peter Kim. Oh, yeah, Peter Kim, yeah. Wow. Okay. So uh speaking of the Curious cook and the fact that you should republish it, Harold.
Uh, we have a question on uh and it's written this way Jerusalem Fartichokes. Jerusalem fartichokes. I will read the question. Uh this is from David in Ottawa. Uh we've been making uh confied jay chokes at the rest.
I like J chokes in the yeah, it's a good night. It's a great rap name or song. Yeah, Jay Chokes. Uh Nastasi, of course, uh listeners will remember that Nastasia once uh gastrointestinally poisoned her friends by feeding them quarts of uh mildly cooked Jerusalem artichokes in like a salad format at a picnic thing. Literally she knew no bathroom around anywhere.
Literally she knew that this was like, you know, uh fur fermentation, like uh you know, extravaganza gonna happen in their guts in the you know within the next couple of hours. The reason she knew is because she had done it to herself. Uh smiling right now. Yeah, she just so you know what I deal with, people. Anyway, uh basically we just uh poached the j chokes and clarified butter.
When we cook them, a sticky white scum floats to the surface. That's my next band, sticky white scum. Uh as the line cooks are wont to do, we ate some. It's uh sticky, sweet, sticky, and uh delicious. Here's the question Do you think this scum could just be purified uh uh these are in quotes, Harold.
Small chain uh fructosant and starch like inulin, uh that McGee uh describes politely as causing abdominal discuffer uh uh discomfort. When we ate it, there was no noticeable effect. But also, we're the kinds of people who eat the scum raft from the top of a pot of poaching j chokes. So perhaps we don't make the best control group. Uh any thoughts?
I guess I could munch down on a full glob of this stuff and see what happens, but I'd rather have an educated guess before risking uh dinner service ruinations. Regards, David, in um Ottawa. Okay. Well, it's interesting that they're poaching it in butter. I know you know inulin is really soluble in uh water, and that's why you know you say boil them in a big pot of water after you let them age uh for a while.
But you guys got any uh thought you got any thoughts on this, Harold, Mr. Inulin Man? Uh well, I mean, the uh scum rising to the top, that sounds to me like it's uh it's going to be probably as rich in stuff other than inulin. I mean proteins and uh you know surface active materials. Um, you know, my my sense is it's not gonna be especially uh enriched in stuff that's gonna cause trouble.
I mean it's well, yeah, except for Jerusalem Archokes themselves. I looked it up because I had the benefit of knowing that I was gonna be asked this question like you know, an hour or two ago. But it uh they're like 20% inulin or something crazy like that, right? They're like they're high inulin. And inulin itself forms uh or can in certain circumstances form a gel.
I didn't read it carefully, I didn't realize it was in butter. Um so that's a different that they're doing it in butter, so that the I mean obviously the scum flowing to the top is probably water soluble stuff expelled from the chokes, right? The other thing is is like you like everyone can tolerate a certain amount of this garbage. Not garbage, you know what I'm saying, in their system, right? It's a it's a soluble fiber.
That's the that's the dealy deal. It's soluble fiber, so you can't digest it. But the definition of fiber, I think basically is that you can't digest it, right? That's really it doesn't have to be fibrous, doesn't have to be uh a fiber, as long as it's oh my god, I just uh in my mind now I'm thinking of the sand lot because whenever I s fibr, fiber. You know for those of you know that you know the sand lot, David?
No, no, I'm missing the replica. Forever. You never seen this movie, Jack? Anyone seen this movie? Of course, forever, yeah.
Forever. Anyway, so the um point being that it goes into your gut, and then uh the microbes in your gut uh they can digest this stuff just fine. They produce a whole boatload of gas, and there you have it, right? But the more you eat of it, probably the more accustomed you get to it, the less of a big dose the your gut microflora get, and the more you can handle it. Wouldn't you say that's true, Harold?
Uh yes, that's that's certainly the the fact when it comes to uh beans, that's been studied in uh bean flatulins. Not not to my knowledge with uh inulin flatulins. The other thing to to know about the the particular bugs that you're feeding is that uh it's the befida bacteria that are especially fond of inulin and fructosans and things like that. And they're uh of of all the bugs in our gut, apparently the ones that are uh doing us the most good most of the time. So I actually think that you know, throwing a few slices of Jerusalem artichoke into your daily uh your daily diet is probably a really good idea.
Yeah, that's the those are the uh bacteria that they dope into Jamie Lee Curse's uh Jamie Lee Curtis's feminine poop yogurt, right? I uh uh don't know about that, but maybe it's activia, right? Is am I wrong about this? Yeah, uh huh. Yeah, yeah.
Uh I think that's what they do. I think that's what they put in. The uh I don't know why all it's only for women. Like why can't can't men also benefit from this? Is is there some sort of a gender no from the the the bacteria uh doped yogurt to make you poo?
Is there is is there an actual difference between the genders in the what the yogurt does to your body? We clearly we have not studied this. Yeah, this needs to be looked at. Clearly nobody knows. Stasi, do you know anything about this?
No. Have you seen the Kirsten Wig imitation of Jamie Lee Curtis pooping herself on Saturday Night Live? Um uh the other thing is is that um a lot of this is in small amounts, obviously this isn't gonna do much. It's if you gorge on this stuff and you're not used to it, is when you're really gonna have the uh the hammer come down on you, right? Exactly, yeah.
Yeah. And the the raw er, the the more likely that is. Yeah. So Peter Kim uh is using was using chicory root, which also is extremely high in inulin, uh for making uh tablets for the museum of food and drink, and originally we were worried about the dose level of um uh soluble fiber that these uh inulin these folks would be getting. So Peter graciously uh ate about fifteen times as many pills as the average guest could uh hope to consume, and what happened to you?
I got myself a stack of magazines and candles and had myself a nice little inulin piece. No, it's fine, man. It's fine. Yeah. And I'm uh basically we we uh did some calculations on what typical tolerance levels are for inulin and figured that even if a small child ate a hundred of these, they'd probably still be okay, so um and I indeed was all right.
So uh but yeah. Yeah. Yeah, nice. Oh, here's a question I have for anyone that's ever thought about this. So uh where where else do we uh deal with inulin a lot?
Anyone, anyone? Any first of all, inulin inulin basically long chain fructose, okay? Long chain fructose. Let's just get that out of the way. So agave.
Yeah. Inulin, agave. And artichokes, right? Uh regular artichokes? I don't know.
I don't know. Chicory root, Drusal Martichokes, uh agave. But my point is, has anyone made a a distilled spirit with Drew Slam artichokes? Like a super long bake like you do for agave, for agave piñas, and then uh make them into a a a liquor. No, that sounds like a great idea.
Right? I think I know who's gonna do it too. Well, I don't know. Do you have a like the they grow in rather northern climbs, right? It's not a southern vegetable, isn't it?
Like isn't it can I grow it here? Yeah, yeah. Sure can. So I you know, like uh I don't have a ready access to it. Maybe I'll try it this year.
I'll try to mash some out and do some uh distillation. But anyone out there, I'm sure someone in the cooking issues uh world is that's just a kind of lunatic who's tried it. And so, like, you know, let me know. But I think uh that we could have a new distilled spirit on our hands. What would you what would you call that?
J chokes? J Fartka. Jade. Oh. Well, you remember you gotta defart it because you're gonna you're gonna be cooking the you're gonna be cooking the ever loving snod out of it.
Um anyway. I don't know. Sun sun liquor. Sun Sun booze. Why do they call it sunflower?
Sun Oh, they're related to sunflowers? Yeah, yeah. It's it's uh and it's a nat if if I'm remembering correctly, it's a native of one of the few food uh items that come from North America. There you go. It's our, you know, it's the north, it's the north part of North America, because remember Mexico's North America people.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. But it's the north part of Northern America's native uh it's like Arigave. Only, you know, you don't have to wait so long to harvest it and I wonder whether I wonder whether there'll be a lot of big flavor differences between different I don't know if someone someone's if someone's done it and they're gonna be like Dave the reason no one makes is it tastes like garbage. It tastes like garbage that's why you know what I mean?
But we should probably have like a uh someone who's done a lot of the stilling of raw materials do it first so that we we you know get rid of the control of this person just doesn't know what the hell they're doing with distillation you know what I mean yep yeah anyway uh but I think it'd be much more interesting to do it the old school way actually cook it until it until you get sugar and then ferment it rather than because you can just hit it with enzymes and then that's it. You know what I mean? Also uh like uh inulin breakdown I was looking up today really really rapid at low pH right but the fact of the matter is uh you have to get below about pH four before the hydrolysis uh of inulin to fructose is very rapid um at normal uh cooking temperatures and who wants their Jerusalem artichokes to be you know more tart than a tomato yeah you know you know I mean doesn't sound right to me to so would you would you want that Harold I mean like hey you could speed it up by adding acid but uh on the other hand now all your Drusel artichokes taste like uh acid you know what I mean I don't know I don't know I usually fry mine in in Olestra myself dude don't be going off against Alestro have we had this conversation on the air already are you making me redo a conversation we've already had on the air seriously have we Jack do you remember me ever talking about Olestra I do. You do because you've heard you've lived you work with me in the real life. Have we talked about it on air?
Uh Jack stepped away, but I don't remember it. Yeah, well, we probably have. There's nothing wrong, but there are many things wrong with Olestra, like they bind fat-soluble vitamins, so you have to dope yourself with them because otherwise you poop out all the fat-soluble vitamins. But as long as you're using a solid Oestra, it's not going to run out of your behind without your knowing. Ellie in the chat room remembers.
That's a really easy. Yeah, yeah. I tell you, like, again, like briefly, that the reason people didn't like the Olestra potato chips was because they were made with hydrogenated fat and they tasted greasy. In fact, they and I've said this before on air, they had to develop a hot air curtain to blow the outside layer of fat off of the potato chips to reduce the greasiness because you're not supposed to fry potato chips in a hydrogenated fat. Not for health reasons, for taste reasons.
It just doesn't taste right. For the same reason that you're not supposed to fry a donut in a liquid fat because it just doesn't taste right. It tastes greasy. Do you like a greasy donut, Daniel? Well No, I don't I don't love greasy donuts.
Harold, greasy, you like a greasy donut? Nope. No. Didn't think so. Um hey, actually, I don't know, Harold, whether you've done it if you have time.
We uh we have uh another uh question that you might have uh done some work on. Um this is from I don't I don't have who it's from. Um I got a bread baking question. In particular, it's about the Tang Zong ru that is used to uh mix bri into a bread recipe to make fluffy bread. Now what we're talking about here is like the water roux where you pre-make a roux and then uh you mix it into the bread.
You know about this, Daniel? I don't. I don't I don't bake much, so this is new to me. It's been getting a lot of it's it's started out in the in the I guess the early 2000s, but it's been getting more and more play. You know the Asian style bread that is really fluffy and lasts a long time.
Harold, you you you've been following this or no? No, I have not. Yeah, all right. Well, so then we'll just I'll just go on. Okay.
So just so you know, what the the basic premise here it well, I'll read the question first. Um while I understand that it produces a fluffier and softer final bread product, could you explain the science of why the roux would have this effect on the bread? In the past, uh I've played with adding some milk into the bread to make it softer as well. How does this roux affect the bread versus just using milk in a recipe? Uh and preliminary research on the webs uh show stuff about superhydration.
Uh thanks for uh such a good podcast. Nice. Uh and by the way, uh oh, this is from Don uh Don Vo in Berkeley, California. He actually calls you out, Peter. He says, hello to Dave Nastasia, not Stas, Nastasia, Lopez, Jackie Molecules, and Peter's sandwich aficionado chem.
So Peter, you get the shout out on this as well. So basically, um what the the uh uh oh and also uh says uh got the BDX cube and he thinks it's fantastic and has made uh an improved clover club for him. Okay. So here's the here's the deal. You take and before but you take a portion of water, typically it's about five to one, so about five parts water, one part flour, and uh it's usually a real you know, not that large amount of the water, but the water, and you uh cook it like you're making a roux.
However, the traditional uh traditional, the way that it's written in recipes, originally everyone's like, oh, keep it to exactly 65 degrees uh Celsius, right? And um, so I made I haven't made didn't have a chance to make bread, but I made one that I took to 65 on the dot and one that I boiled just to see the the difference. Um so what happens is is you're partially when you take it to 65, you're partially pasting, uh partially swelling the starch, but you haven't completely s uh gotten all the sarch uh, you know, fully, you know, uh swelled with water and paste it out yet, right? And so uh what you're really doing is just adding a boat ton more water to the bread than you could do any other way. The same because if you had added that much uh water to it without pre-cooking it, you'd lack structure.
The water by pre-swelling the starch gives you enough structure to form the bread and allow it to cook properly uh without it um that's it. That's basically what it's doing. Wouldn't you guys agree just from the description I've given that that's what's happening? Undoubtedly. So it's like a super hydrated recipe.
Yeah. So you can so you know, you could take something and have the workability of like a 70 or 80% hydration uh dough, uh, but you could be hydrating it kind of much higher. Um now, I don't know what the difference is. I'm passing Harold, you can't do this. This is boiled after it's cooled, and this is basically uh so this is bo boiled and um this is the same ratio, and it's pretty much turned to a gel after it's uh gone back.
So that might be a hindrance to the dough. And then this here is the 65 degree, and that's still more like a pudding or or runny. They are different. They're very different. And so uh my feeling is folks, is that um don't bother.
What you're doing here is you're just allowing yourself to add more water to the dough. I mean, that's basically what you're doing, and maintaining the same workability. That's that's what's happening here. There might be some other like fancy Dan stuff that's happening when it's uh not fancy Dan to grids, but you know, fancy Dan. Uh the um uh as it's as it's coming up, but that's basically what's happening.
As for the temperature, I don't think you have to be too anal because it the f the wheat starch is just gonna start um swelling and pasting uh when it hits about 60, 65 C. So if you just take it off as soon as it goes super like uh thick, put like as soon as it starts to thicken up on you, you're gonna be good. Uh because you you know, I I really wouldn't worry that much uh about you know, and also if you're gonna cool it for a long time, I don't know whether or not you're working on the fact that it's retrograding to get the extra structure or you're getting what's called starch setback to add extra structure, in which case maybe it would make a difference uh if you heated it longer or not. These are all interesting subjects, but I'd have to actually bake some bread to figure that out, and I didn't have time to do that uh this morning. I'm just as curious about the use of the word roux here.
I think of a roux you're cooking flour in a fat, but uh this is essentially is any roux like a s a a slur a flour s slurry that is then cooked, whether it's in a water or a fat. Not that I know of, Harold. Do you know of uh the the why they use this kind of you can you any guesses on this terminology? Or I think Daniel is right that a roux is flour cooked in fat. Yeah.
Not not in water. And then added to, and then liquid added to it to and then presumably the cooking in fat, right, is to prevent clumping when you add the liquid. I mean, the only purpose of the fat, right, is to prevent clumping. That's all it's doing, right? Is there any other reason for it other than it allows you to evenly heat the flour up to a higher stage of cooking?
Oh, I I bet it makes a difference for the flavor. You know, uh even a neutral oil, you're you're gonna get uh reactions to take place that wouldn't happen if it was just dry heat. In uh yeah. Okay. Fair so different flavor from adding the oil afterwards.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah, fair enough.
Um, yeah. Anyway. Uh and this also, obviously, you could do this with non wheat starches and all sorts of other things, as other people have done it. It's an interesting uh thing. So it's worth uh it's worth some uh experimentation.
Uh now, uh I don't know, uh Harold, if you have to if you have to go or if you can stay. Uh, but uh we got a question. Daniel wrote a uh article on uh nixtimalization for the serious seeds, correct? What's your current title there anyway? Oh, culinary director.
Culinary director, okay. And you wrote an article on niximalization, very kindly actually gave a shout out to an article I had written along. Well, yeah, because I I I used I used it heavily for information. So um for those of you that don't know, nixtimalization is the process uh by which you um cook, you can do it with other grains actually, but you par you parcook corn in uh in an alkaline environment. Um parkook in an alkaline environment, it dissolves the uh the coat on the outside of the corn, partially dissolves it, you partially then rub that off.
It changes the taste, it changes the reality of it. Uh originally it was designed to allow you to be able to grind corn uh easily by hand on a stone thing called a matate, but it is the reason that cornmeal doesn't taste like a tortilla, and that a tortilla tastes like a tortilla is the process of nixtimalization. It's also the uh the changes that the corn goes through in terms of partial cooking of the starches, going back to what we were talking about with this with this rue, whatever you want to call it, bread technique, and uh the change of the outside of the seed coat into uh some form of weird hydrocolloid, plus the addition of the fat from the germ because it's a whole corn kind of a situation. All of that together makes masa, which is what makes an awesome tortilla. Uh normally it is a uh a pain in the butt to make.
Daniel, you posted a recipe where you used a food processor, and what was your secret? I know what it is. I'm just asking you to ask is your right. So I mean the big challenge for people at home is is grinding the corn properly. Um and uh lot uh you know you can try a food processor, but that comes with its own challenges.
Mainly that in order to get everything in the food processor to to spin sufficiently enough to grind it to a point where you can form tortillas, you have to add too much water to the mix, and then you have uh then you have a masa that's that's far too wet uh and almost bordering on a batter type consistency. Actually more like a hummus, think of like a like hummus. Uh you can't really make tortillas from that. So then basically adding uh adding some masa arena, masa harina uh uh back in, which is which is the store-bought convenience product of of uh of of masa that what do they do? They they they dry it somehow and turn it into a flour.
They yeah, they have a large production line where they have like continuous basically nixtimalization, it goes through a soap tank, then they uh then they I think I don't know I think they dry it and grind it. I don't think that they Harold, do you know? I don't think that they wet I don't think they wet grind it and then and then dry it. I think they dry it and then grind it. Hmm.
Yeah, I'm not sure. So maybe like ground postole or something like that. Yeah. So like dried. Yeah.
But not hasn't been already been re it hasn't been reboiled up to the large yes, but yes, the um I think that's how they do it. I don't know. I used to know. But uh, you know, it's been a uh a long time. I mean the ma look uh as you point out in your article, like just buying maseka, you look it's Mazzarina, maseka is like the brand name that you know that that everyone gets.
Quaker also makes one. Uh there's a there's a bunch of people that make them. And it is a large step above um a large step above um buying uh pre-made tortillas. Yeah. Like once you heat a tortilla and let it cool down again and then put it in your fridge, you have lost.
You've lost. Yeah, they're horrible. They're good for frying. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you can fry them up.
Yeah, they're good for frying. They're good, yeah. You know, f fry 'em, make chili kiles, do something like this, but like for like actually eating, no freaking bueno, right? Uh now they masa jarina is, you know, or maseka is a very is good. It's much better than a pre made tortilla, which most of the pre made tortillas that you are getting are first insult is they're made with maseka.
And the second one is that they have cooked them like a week ago and added a bunch of stuff so that it can sit basically at room temperature fundamentally, molding in its own like plastic container. Yeah, you ever notice that sometimes they smell like ammonia? Yeah, because they're they're all doped up with stuff to stop them from going off on you. But that's you know, all of those smells go away when you fry 'em. That's why that those are the only chips I use for frying.
There's no excuse to buy tortilla chips in i pre fried tortilla chips. They're not as good. And they're really freaking expensive. Right. Unless you need a a lot.
I mean, I could see an argument if you were doing a party and you need to fill a huge chip bowl for your guac with, you know. But that's when I start frying, is when I do that. Because like think about it this way you're buying uh a 20-ounce bag of like medium quality tortilla chips is gonna run you like four something dollars, I think, at a store, right? And you you could buy one of those like well over like there I forget how much those stacks of tortillas are, but they're over twenty way over twenty ounces, right? And they're thicker, better, and uh they're like a dollar.
And it's so fast to fry them. I most of my home frying now in Connecticut I have my deep fryer, but you know, at home home, I do most of my frying and wok. The reason is is um oil expansion is a lot less dangerous in a walk because it's constantly increasing its diameter as it goes up. So people, as long as you don't overfill your walk, you have a lot of safety room on oil expansion when you're working. And tortillas are the most forgiving thing on earth to fry because all you're trying to do is expel the water and get them crunchy.
So you oil oil and wok. I think I've said this before, too. Take the tortillas out, do the back break, snack, knacks, break them, individually separate them, cut them in six, fry them, done. Like I could crank out in under 20 minutes, I could have you know, big shopping bags, uh 30, you know, but like shopping bags full of tortilla chips. It's way really like it's one of the few things at home that I would recommend frying at home is much easier than doing uh any other way.
Um but anyway, the point is is that uh someone asked me, should I try this recipe that you wrote? And my answer is yes. It's like, is it worth making like making your own Nixtamall, the Nixamal part's not hard, it's the grinding that's a pain in the butt. Definitely. Uh I mean maybe the hardest part aside from the grinding uh issue is is just getting the the corn.
Oh, yeah, buying the corn. You look, you can't, it's not easy, it's harder even to grind. You can literally try it at home with popcorn. It's not as good, but it is doable. It's doable?
Yeah. Oh wow. Uh it's harder even to grind, and they and the endosperm to to skin ratio is not is not ideal. But to just to try it once, you can. I've done it.
The so yeah, but you said you can get the corn now on Amazon, no? Yeah, oh yeah, you totally can. It's just like a 25-pound bag. It's a lot of corn. But you know, I I think if you look around there, there are sources, especially I think even at farmers markets now where you have these people selling, you know, their fancy little bags of of grain, you might be able to find it or yeah, online sources, or I don't know, get go in it, go in on it with a friend and divvy up a large bag.
I mean, the other thing is it keeps forever as long as you keep it in good condition. So it's now you're gonna make me say it forever. I gotta go, I have to see this uh. Um but anyway, uh the hard part is really grinding. If you try to grind, it you just can't grind at the right texture in a food processor, even like you know, as the motor is about to burn out, you can't do it.
It's just like a nightmare. So I think it's entirely legitimate uh to do your nixtimalization and then uh over wet grind it and dope it back with like masa. So like for a like how much moss are you adding back typically? It depends it really depends how much water you add to the food processor, and I was eyeballing it every time because it just I don't know, didn't seem like it needed to be so precise. Even if I got that precise, someone else has different corn, it's gonna have different requirements.
Yeah. Um so it depends, but I would say uh I'm guessing maybe you end up it's ballpark a quarter to a third uh maseka, masa jarina, and the rest is your freshly nixtimalized uh masa, and I and you get you really do get that fresh nixomal flavor, even with the addition of the masa jarina to soak up that excess moisture. All right, so we're about to get kicked off here, but let me just uh say a couple things on the way out. Thank you, uh Harold for uh coming uh on the uh the show. Thank you, uh Daniel and Peter.
I didn't know Peter was gonna be on. Uh you get uh uh a limited edition cooking issues uh blue tape key ring there, Daniel, and hashtag always label. You can fill that up. That's many that's feet of blue tape. And then when you're when you're done with it, you pull this uh quick pin out and this fits.
And it blows up? Yeah, this fits on the on the hex drive of like a uh a you know uh a drill bit like a like a Philips Ed thing, and then you can refill it with tape and you're good to go again. Uh so thanks for coming on and talking about nixtimal and many things. Thanks, Harold. Thanks, uh, thanks, Peter.
A couple tips on the masa. Masa is a uh whole grain, so there is fat in it, so store it like it might go rancid. In other words, don't keep it forever after you've opened it. Do you ever had that problem uh anyone, anyone? Like like if you have it for years open, it's gonna take a musty kind of rancid note to it.
You mean the flour? Yeah, the mas the masseca, the the masa jarina. Like I wouldn't I wouldn't open it and then leave it on your shelf for the rest of time. That's a good tip. I I don't I don't know that I've ever this is the guess.
I've I've smelled some old stuff and it started smelling cardboard y to me, and then I pitched it and got and got new. Uh also don't be too quick to add the water in the food processor, let it grind and add in small increments because a little bit of water goes a long way. You agree with me on that? Yeah, I sure, for sure. All right, thanks everyone.
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