Today's program is brought to you by Physical Culture Collective. For more information, visit their website at Physical Culture Collective.com. Hey, hey, hey, I'm Jimmy Carboni from Beer Sessions Radio. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more.
Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues Coming T live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245, 1250, sometimes one. Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick. Br br Brooklyn. Not with uh Nastasia the Hammer Lopez today, unfortunately.
She cannot be here. She is doing she is taking a Nastasia day. So in the place of Nastasia, the place of Nastasio Lopez will be taken by our good friend Paul Adams, the head of all web empires for popular science. How you doing, Paul? I'm good.
The sidekick chair is so comfortable. Oh, no, yeah, more than mine. Yeah, yeah. Well, you uh so Paul, uh, you might know him from his Twitter uh handle at Popsi Eats, correct? Is that your Twitter?
That's correct. You uh do you not use uh the other one's your email, so I won't give that one out. So people won't send you random emails. So call in all of your popular science related or other or food or whatever, or Fourth of July related questions. Two seven one eight four nine seven two one two eight.
That's 718 497 2128, and with more enunciation, 7184972128. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. What was that number again, Dave?
I can't remember. I can't remember what that number is. Um, yeah. So anyway, we got a boatload of questions because we missed last week. I forget what was going on last week.
Oh, yes, Dax was graduating from elementary school. Yeah, Dax. He won a uh he won a leadership award. Do you know what's do you know what's garbage, Paul? What?
When when I was a kid, so presumably, you know, w when you had the awards at the end of school, it was that one freaking kid that won everything. Yeah. They had all those freaking medals around their neck, and they they were like weighed down with like a the the weight of medals, and just showing you how crushingly superior they were at charming the school uh administration than you were, and or at taking tests, or maybe they did their homework. You know what I'm saying? Those kids are now our leaders.
Yeah, uh I don't know, sometimes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Uh anyway, but point being that they don't do that anymore in the New York City public schools, they sift the awards out so that no one child earns all the awards. So is that person who got the science award really the best at science?
Or is it just that the person that got the English award they decided to give her the English award instead of the science award? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Let me put it this way.
So is Dax actually a leader? No, he really is leader because first of all, like they also give like multiple, like when I was a kid, one kid got the citizenship award. Yeah. Guess who it wasn't? Uh Dave?
Yeah. Did you win that award, Paul? The citizenship award? I don't think we had that. No?
David in the booth, did you have a citizenship award growing up? No, I don't know what that means. Did you have any awards in your elementary school or any of this crap? I don't think so. No, we don't have a graduation ceremony.
What are you are you from a hippie commune? Where are you from? No, but this was before like everybody had to be exceptional or whatever. Dude, dude, I was born in 1971, dude. Before what?
My point is is it's not about being exceptional. Awards, this is why you should give them all to one kid. Awards are about punishing the people who don't get awards. They're not about awarding the people who get the awards. Right.
It's about saying, Why are you so worthless? That's what it's all about. And so like that like nowadays, I think you're right. Like they're trying to make every so like, you know, they're spreading it all out, and I think it was probably good for me to realize that somehow I wasn't kind of working within their system. You know, you know what I mean?
Yeah, that's a good realization that you're talking about. Uh oh, I'm a great citizen. I help people cook things. You you're a great citizen, but not award-winning. No, I know.
Well, uh, uh, huh? The book. The book. The book is a better citizen than you are. Yeah, the book is a much better citizen I am.
Anyway, point being he won a leadership award, which is he deserved, and he was the only kid that won it. Wasn't like the citizenship where there was like five five kids. But let me put it to you this way the valedictorian, which is his, you know, one of his dirtbag buddies, is the valedictorian of the of the school. Yeah. And the only award she won was Valedictorian.
Does that make any sense? That you'd be the valedictorian of the school, but you don't happen to mop up one of the math or science or English or social studies awards? Does that make any freaking sense? Like the Oscars where you win like twelve Oscars. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, right. But like at least, I don't know. It just seems to me that you should just let the one kid have all the awards and that's it. Right? Yeah.
Well, in your school. What? In your school, that's how you can do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It might it won't even be the best kid.
I'll just randomly assign all the awards to one child. That's the really baller way to do it. Just randomly assign all the awards to one child. Chat room saying don't be part of the system. Yeah.
No, but like, don't you think do they think that random assignment is the way to go? Just randomly assign the awards out. It's more like I say, it's about punishing people, not about rewarding people. Uh at least that's the way it felt. Right?
Right. So we have a lot of questions because uh two weeks ago uh we had um Meathead on. Do you have do you have his book? Yeah, I have three copies of his book. Yeah?
Do you have them in three different locations? Are they all the same? Okay, do you have them in three separate locations on three different heat levels? Do you have like uh like one of the books over direct uh flame and one over the indirect flame to see like yeah? Nice.
I have the advanced review copy, the regular review copy, and then uh how much change is there between the uh I have multiple copies of your book too. Uh yeah, when you're an editor. Yeah. There's a lot of changes actually between the advanced. There was a lot of I mean, yeah, even in the finished one, there was a couple of errors that I hoped it got this problem fixed.
Yes, yeah, which you caught from me actually, right? Yep. Yeah, nice. See, this is why people, if you write books, give them to people to read ahead of time. So because once you've like written something and read it eight billion times, you can't stand to look at it anymore for a while.
You need to put it down. And so you can't catch that somebody has like mislabeled all the fractions or something like this. And it's it's more difficult than you think. It's not just a matter of the spell check. Although that does help.
Editors are important. Editors are extremely important. They're extremely important. So listen, let's get to some questions. And then later, uh Paul uh a long time ago, Paul got uh in the um in his uh popular science, you know, mail bucket, uh, one of these new uh Breville, what do they call it again?
They call it the control freak. The control freak, which is uh, you know, a uh uh an induction hob that okay. I'll give you the quick story now. We're gonna talk about it later on in the program. But uh quick story is is that Breville, I don't know how much of this is I'm sure it's public, it's all public knowledge, right?
Breville bought the uh I don't know whether it was a controlling stake or a big stake or the entire uh culinary business from um poly science. So they bought like the culinary wing. I think a good portion of it. I don't know whether it was all of their circulator line or just some of it, but they bought it. Yeah.
Okay. So um then they were gonna come out with this new induction uh hob. I hate that word hob. Yeah, hob isn't that good. What do you use?
I say cooktop. Cooktop? It's not a good word. At least when you say cooktop, people who've never heard the word before can sort of piece together what it might mean. Yeah, but seriously, like if I just walked up to these people who are eating their lunch over here and I was like, hey, would you like an induction hob?
They'd be like, Hob? Hob? Yeah. Is that something the British? Is that a British thing?
It sounds Anglo-Saxon. Hobby. Yeah, it doesn't. It sounds like something that a Brit would say that an American would never say. Induction, but burner's not right.
Induction. Burner is close. Hmm. Anyway, let me think about it. Anyway, induction thingamajiggot.
And uh the idea of this induction thingamajigot is that it's a much more accurate uh and has more control and more whiz-bangery than other induction thingamajiggots. And uh we'll talk about it later. But the interesting thing about it uh about it, the interesting thing about it is they teamed up with uh Philip Preston, who is the guy, you know, who owns uh poly science, the guy who brought circulators to chefs originally, the like you know the one, you know what I mean? Who uh was and he actually just came out with a uh some sort of uh I if you look on the on the Twitter, uh you someone will look it up for me. He just came out with a new kind of sous vide documentary that he put out in a book or something like this.
But anyway, they teamed up with him on um on some of the control algorithms for the uh unit, so it's also co-branded poly science. Yes, it is a long way to say that it's Breville co-branded poly science. Did I mention that I've recently did I tell you this, Paul? I'd have no idea why, but recently I have become like most favored nation status for Breville. So they sent me a bunch of things to test as well.
So I've tested the unit myself. That's great. Uh it's fantastic. Anyone that wants to make me most favored nation status for testing equipment, yeah, I will love you forever, and my wife will hate you forever. So it's kind of a, you know, but she's not in the food business.
So if you're in the food business, you know, probably better to have her hate you and me not hate you. I don't know. Or maybe the other way around. I don't I don't know. But anyway, we can talk about it.
Uh we could talk about it later uh in the show. Uh also I have a request. Paul, do you know of a good mead? A good mead. Yeah.
No. Me neither. Here's the thing. I want a good mead. There has to be a good mead.
I have had bad mead, but not in many years. The meads that I've had are I've also read a lot about, you know, making meads, and they tend to get stuck because um I guess people don't put enough nutrients in. Uh and I think also people are trying to ferment it out to too high a uh too high an alcohol level. So they're shooting for like 20% or something like this. I've never had a dry mead, really.
Yes, what I want to try is a dry mead that clocks in at like, you know, like eight to ten percent alcohol. That's what I want to try. I want to try like an eight, somewhere between eight and thirteen percent alcohol dry mead. Here's the other problem with mead. People uh have you know written, oh me, you know, honey is very acidic.
It has a pH of three point high threes somewhere, right? It's like people, there's not that much water in in honey. So like when you dilute it down, I guarantee that the that the whatever you're gonna call it, mead must, whatever you're gonna call it when you dilute it down, is not is not in the in the in the threes somewhere. You know what I mean? Right.
Mead is simply pro unless you have unless it's infected with some bacteria that's gonna create uh a sourness like you would get in a um in a sour beer, like some sort of lactic acid bacteria or something like this. Oh, now I have, oh my god, I have uh leucano, you know, you know the bacteria leucano stock, uh mesarantheroid is or however you pronounce it? Yes. Whenever I say lactic acid bacteria and the word leuconostock goes through my head, I've said this before, I have the song Lucanbach Texas goes through my head, but it's Lucano stock, Texas. And it just keeps looping through my head.
And I'm hearing with Willie and Wayland and the boy, it's over and over and over. Thank God you're the only person that happens to. I mean, well, maybe someone else out there feels mean like, yeah, uh, no, give me a second to get the song out of my head. Wait. Wait.
Okay. So it's not like sour, right? So it doesn't have enough acidity to back it up, right? Isn't that going to be a problem? They say it drinks like uh a white wine, but a white wine has like a lot of acidity, you know?
This is why I'm doing these experiments now with fermented orange juice, and I'm hoping to try because the fermented orange juice has a like the orange juice itself has a fairly good acidity for something like uh uh uh a wine. You know what I mean? Yeah, it might be a little high. I had to test it. I bought a titratable acidity kit so I could actually test it and see what's going on when it's done, see where it hits, and all this stuff.
But uh like I want to mess around with that, and also people tend not to make when they make fruited meads, they're shooting on the sweeter side, they're not adding enough to make it really acidic. Right. Anyway, I'm working on these problems, but uh what I want to taste is a good commercial mead, a good, preferably dry, a little residual sugar is okay, but preferably dry because I want to see what it tastes like. Mead. So someone can say, hey, this, this is what mead should taste like.
I suspect that is out there. There's a meadery in New Jersey that was uh on the network not too long ago. Yeah, well, why don't they sell their freaking product in New York City? I called Aster, I call warehouse, I call Garnett, I called uh Discovery Wine, I call all of these like little shops here in New York. I called, I'm like, do you have mead?
They're like, meat, meat? I'm like, no, mead, mead, mead. And they're like, no. Except for Astor has a couple, but they're sweet meads. Yeah.
I don't want a sweet mead. I don't want something that is like something that just crunk up kids that can't take the alcohol. You know what I'm saying? Right. Tell me if I'm wrong.
Does someone tell me a place in New York City where I can walk into a store and buy delicious mead? That's all I want to know. What did these guys bring meat onto the uh onto the radio when they came? They did. It was delicious.
Oh, thanks, buddy. It was dry, it was crisp. Thanks. Who was it? Noah's Voice Meatery.
Noah's Vice. They're talking about Noah getting naked and his kids covering him up after the flood? Yeah, it was like a biblical reference. Noah's voice was meat, I guess. Yeah, yeah.
All right. Well, uh, although I thought it was grape juice. I thought very specifically it was grape juice, wasn't it? Grape juice? I don't know.
I didn't go to Bible juice. So one, someone bible me up. Anyway, but the point being that uh what did do we have any around that we can crack open? I'll give them props. Are they gonna can they send us some?
Can we taste it? Can someone get me this? We can reach out. Yeah, please. The other thing is um I want to taste real maple sap beer as well.
And there's a place called Lawson's, I think called Lawson's Puralist Lick, but it that it's it's like you can't get it. It's like the Pappy Van Winkle of fermented beverages. You can find it in Montreal. What maple beer? Yeah.
Solely maple beer. I don't want some sort of like, hey, I made a regular beer and I put a little maple syrup in called a maple beer. I want fermented maple. It has to be reduced first because maple sap is you're supposed to use end-of-run maple sap. It's not good for making sugar.
Yeah, it's gonna be too metallic. You ever had end-of-run maple syrup? The stuff that's beyond B grade? Yeah, C grade. Yeah, it's hardcore, like metallic, like I thought I was gonna love it because I love bees so much.
And then I was like, I I talked to this maple supplier. He's like, yo, I'm not allowed to sell that, man. It's like not like it's like that doesn't fit the US standards for what is maple syrup. I'm like, brother, I don't care. Can I buy it?
And he's like, I can't really Can I buy it? And so he brought a court in for me to try, and I was like, you know, man, you're right, I don't like this stuff. I don't I love B. Do you like the C No I don't like the C. No.
But the C is what you want for maple beer? Well, no, you don't want to take it all the way down to uh you don't want to take it all the way down to syrup. So I think they take it about halfway, less than they have to take it less than halfway, right? So they're doing roughly a 40 to one. They're doing a roughly 40 to one.
That depends on what you want the bricks to be, right? But if so, then if you did it like a quarter of as much, you'd be at uh I'd have to do the calculations, but like somewhere like uh a third of the way, somewhere between a third and a half of the way there, right? Yeah. Uh to probably, if I was gonna guess, I'd say they take it to probably like 15 bricks or something like this. And uh, I think if you're boiling it only to that level, you don't lose uh they call it nitrate, which is like the weird like stuff that scum that forms on the on the maple thing as you're boiling it down that they skim off.
Yeah, that it probably has some sort of protein and nutrients and other stuff that helps the yeast get going. But then you're supposed to ferment it that way rather than just buying syrup and watering it down, although apparently you can do that too. Right. But that's what I want. That's what I want to try.
And it's it's using a product and of run maple sap that is otherwise relatively useless. Yeah. I have consumed a bottle of that in Montreal. How was it? It was interesting.
Oh god, interesting means you hate it. Why'd you hate it? Um did they hop it? First of all, it like did they hop it, and if they hopped it, why'd they hop it? Everybody's gotta.
They did not hop it. It was sort of flat tasting. It didn't have a lot of nuances, I recall. Hmm. Do you think it's because they chose a poor yeast?
I don't have a lot of other maple beers to compare it to. Hard to say. Anyway, if any of you guys out there have a good source for uh a maple sap beer that you think is both delicious and that we can actually get a bottle of, we here at cooking issues would appreciate it. Yeah? All right.
Two bottles? Two bottles. At least two. At least two. Yeah, we got a caller.
Caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, how's it going? It's Anton from Boca. Hey, how you doing? Good.
Yourself? Doing well, doing well. Cool, man. Uh so I had a question here about uh celery juice. Okay.
And uh for some reason it keeps jellyfying, like within either a matter of hours or a few days. In addition to that, I'm also trying to clarify it. Right. Hit it up with some pectinase, and for whatever reason it's not stripping at all, and I put it like in a separatory funnel and not. Hold up.
So give me the exact procedure. You're taking the celery, and then what are you doing to it? Juicing it, straining it, hitting up some pectinase, uh, like a point two percent solution or whatever it is, the two grams per liter. Um, and then nothing separating at all. I wonder whether it's the strands don't get broken up by the pectinase and it's somehow being stabilized by what's in the strand.
I you know, uh uh, so the the you're using the pectanax ultra SPL? Yes. Okay. So Pectanax Ultra SPL wipes out or can wipe out a lot lots of pectins, also does hemicellulose. I haven't looked at the at the uh composition of uh cell celery, but um in other words, I don't know if it contains like lots of actual cellulose, which I don't think it will break down.
It seems like it would. Maybe. In which case you you might be making yourself some like you might be it might be stabilizing itself with like you know, microcrystalline. Well, it wouldn't be microcrystalline, but you might be stable, it might be stabilizing itself. I'm talking right out of my butt here because I have no idea, but I'm just trying to guess of why it wouldn't uh why it wouldn't um stabilize.
Here what I recommend. You you want to do it entirely cold because you want it or no, you're making a cordial, you're heating it. Uh no, I'm not heating it. So the flavor of celery uh infuses fantastically well. I recommend you just uh uh do a very uh fine like fine slivers of celery, boil and strain.
You're gonna get a lot of celery flavor out of it and color, and you're not gonna cloud it out. Wait a understandable how is it you're recommending during that? Well, like when I do gins and stuff, when I'm doing link uh or when I used to do a lot of celery gins, um I would just I would just cut it extremely fine, like you know, cross fiber, because remember it's got a lot of fibers, but it's actually very porous along the length of the celery. So as long as you like check check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, chick, check, chick, check, you'll be able to get just by heating it in the syrup that way and then straining the solids out, you'll be able to get a very strong celery flavor. Gotcha.
Without a lot of the clouding effects, because you're not busting up all of that stuff that would otherwise cause problems, but you're extracting a lot of the flavor. Like you might it it it it it will probably stay almost entirely clear from the get-go. Okay. But you gotta remember when you cook celery a long time, I mean, cooked celery obviously has a different flavor. So remember, if you're doing a celery cordial, also, if you're trying to emulate something like Dr.
Brown's celery soda, Dr. Brown's celery soda, which in my humble opinion is one of the greatest soda flavors all times, all times. Fantastic. Fantastic, all times. Celery seed, celery seed is actually a celery seed soda.
So if you want to emulate some of that, I also recommend throwing a little bit of celery seed into that. I just you know, I just made I never I haven't been on the show since I just made candied celery, which is also delicious. You should try that. Uh in the candy, the candied celery I did the uh the um the gradual replacement method where you you blanch it first, then you peel off the strings, then you put it into a one-to-one simple, bring it up to the boil, let it sit for a day or two, take it, bring it up to the boil, boil it down a little bit, add it back in for a little bit of the boil, and just do that again and again until you get it down to where you know when it cools, it'll get stiff, and then you throw it, you throw some extra sugar on the outside of it, put it in the dehigh until it kind of like gets stiff. Man, is that stuff.
Oh what's the texture like? The texture is like candied, it the texture that I took it to is is like uh not as firm as a as an apricot, but firmer than an Australian glazate apricot. A little bit a little bit less firm than candied pineapple. No crunch left. No crunch.
I've also taken the strings out, so no strings. And also, this is my secret trick. Are you ready for the secret trick? And I would do this with your celery cordial as well if it wasn't going to be acidified. I added a pinch of to the last boil, I added a pinch of malic acid.
Right, brighten it a little bit. Clever. Um, yeah, you know. We were talking on Twitter a couple of weeks ago about is there a genetic predisposition to like or dislike celery? And someone from Monell chimed in saying that andostrenone, androstenone is uh flavor that's present in celery and also in borer saliva.
I like bo I like me some boar saliva. That's good, yeah. So what kind of people like boar saliva and celery? The same people. The same people.
If you don't like boar saliva, you might not like celery. Look, I think we've had this discussion on the cooking issues before, but you know how there is a genetic there's a genetic look, there's a genetic component clearly to certain things like cilantro, right? Like right? But it does, it's not a genetic thing determining whether you're gonna like it or not. It's a genetic marker showing that you're going to perceive it in a certain way.
Yes. There are plenty of people in Mexico who have the gene to have it taste soapy to them and they still love it because they were raised to like it. Yeah, we got on the trail of this because there were a lot of people complaining online that celery is totally watery and tasteless. They're completely wrong. They're completely and utterly like that is wrong.
Are these the same fools that say that bay leaves don't have flavor? Possibly. Fools. Fools. I was gonna add in for you as well.
I don't know if you've ever tried the uh going back to your meat question. There's also have you ever tried the zombie killer? No. Uh bee nectar. No.
Good. So it's a little bit drier. Is it good? That one's good. I I recommend that one.
It's within that 10% that you're looking for. Can you get it in a store? Can you just go buy it? Or do you have to get it shipped to you? Uh I mean, I can buy it down here in Florida, so I don't know how available it would be there.
Yeah, I'll look around for it. The other problem is here in New York we have the issues where no one knows where meat. So I don't think mead can be sold in beer stores here. And so, like uh because that they don't add any malt to it, or there's nothing and it's not cidered. It doesn't fall in any normal category.
So I think it's in a wine category, and the wine stores don't want to sell it because they can't push it, and the beer stores can't sell it, and so everybody gets hosed. But so maybe it's e maybe it's easier outside of New York, you know, someplace that has uh different laws. Maybe somebody needs to open a mead store in New York. Maybe, or you know what else? Like there's a there's a certain minimal malt content that you need to add to things to have them be a malt beverage.
Because it's saying malt beverage on the well, next time you look at it, see whether it says malt beverage somewhere on the bottle. It's a not that a lot. You don't need a lot of malt. So, like some of these guys doing the maple stuff, dope it back with some malt too, so it can be a malt beverage, so it's easier for them legally. It's just another one of these things where the legal stuff gets you into into really ridiculous trouble.
Right. Like we should just have our taxes based on like the fact that it is alcohol and what content alcohol is, not like whether or not it was made from barley or made from whatever. It's just our laws are so arcane and strange, you know. Anyway, might just be. Well, sounds good, Dave.
Thanks once again. Always helping with solutions, man. All right, thanks. Well let us know how it works, alright? Yeah, good.
Thank you. All right. So uh let me see. John Riper uh wrote in, uh, longtime listener. Uh props to you guys for the great series of guests you've had on recently.
Thank you. Does that include Paul? Thank you. Yeah. Uh are there any rules of thumb for the shelf life of various hydrocolloids?
Lessithin, by the way, I hate that word. Lessithin. Do you? Lessithin. Why?
Because it looks like leceth. It doesn't it doesn't look right. It doesn't look English. No, it's fine, Dave. You like?
Yeah. David, what do you think of the word lecithin? Uh kind of makes me uncomfortable. There you go. All right.
Uh lessithin seems to conk out after just a month or so. Uh that month or two. That's because it's like incredibly hygroscopic. So it's like pulling stuff out of the air, it clumps up. You need to store that stuff in completely vacuumed, uh out like low moisture with like silica pack.
The stuff just like sucks up moisture like nobody's business. I don't think it actually goes bad though, does it? Does it suck up moisture? It doesn't like it clumps and becomes even if you store it with silica gel in a vacuum without compressing it, like in a jar. I haven't done that.
I buy liquid lecithin. I don't use it, so I don't have that problem. When I used to use it at the school, we used to just throw it away all the time because people would open it and it would clump and then I would throw it away. I make my own cooking spray out of oil and alcohol emulsified with a little liquid lecithin. And do you call it Paul instead of Pam?
It's a good idea. Yeah. Uh what do you like it better than the one that you just buy? It allows me to vary my oil. But I mean, do you do do you think it makes a difference?
No. Okay. You just want to do it. This is why I love Paul. Okay.
Uh are there any rules of thumbs on the various uh shelf lies of hydroco hydrocolloids? Uh lecithin. We mentioned are there others that need replacing in anything short of five years or so? Look, I think some of these things, they're they're basically they're like, you know, they'll be around for the next ice age as long as they're kept dry. Like I I I have used, I have personally used uh alginates uh that are 10 years old.
You know what I mean? I uh uh gel in, I've probably used gel in that's seven or eight years old. Um, so it's um I you know I just I just don't worry about those things. And certain things like enzymes have a shelf life. But the good news about enzymes, the good news about any of these things is they're kind of like medications.
There is a shelf life that they have to put on because they have to put it on. But uh typically it's there, it's not like um it's not like uh a balloon that like after a certain date, like it has lost all its airpot was kind of like a balloon, actually. It's slowly degrades. So if something was let's say that uh you were gonna have a hydrocolloid, and let's think of a method where it might degrade. There's some moisture in the air, maybe it hydrolyzes over time, breaks into smaller units, doesn't have the same kind of functionality it used to.
It's possible, right? Sure. Um basically it's just gonna get less efficacious over time. It's not gonna like be good one day. There's no safety issue.
So it's not gonna be like good one day kill you the next. Right. Right? So the only shelf lives that I really worry about are shelf lives that are either due to quality, like this stuff's gonna go rancid on me, but these things in general don't contain fats. And then two, um, is it gonna lose uh if it is it gonna lose efficacy?
The other one that you want to worry about on shelf life is chitosan. Kitosan, anything that comes in a liquid format, like I don't know about liquid lecithin, they are usually, if they're sold as a shelf stable thing, they are mostly shelf stabilized, but they're not permanently shelf stabilized. So things like chitosan, if you don't store them in the fridge, they'll throw uh they'll throw a uh a mold flock after a while and you have to pitch them or or things like this. Um, you know, so I would worry about mostly liquid preps, things like enzymes like Pectanex Ultra SPL tend to uh degrade slowly in terms of their efficacy, so you have to add more. So in general, it's good to keep those things refrigerated and also to use them in a relatively timely uh manner.
But if you're not using them industrially and you're not counting on a gram being a gram all the time, a hundred percent of the time, then what do you think, Paul? Yep. Yeah, transglutaminase is the big one for me. Oh, yeah, that's true. Uh what do they put on it?
Six months? As long as you reseal it though, I've used stuff that's saying a year, but Calustrian sells it unrefrigerated. So I'm always Wiley Wiley Dufrein, uh, you know, uh chef extraordinary, my brother-in-law, goes in and repeatedly tells them not to do that, and they think he's some sort of like insane, like homeless man. He doesn't look like a homeless man, but they think he's like some crazy person. Like, you know, like uh like I don't know, what's the chef equivalent of a cat uh like a cat lady?
Uh transglutaminase refrigeration proselytizer. Yeah, he's like, you have to refrigerate that. And he he's told it to him like 20 times, and they're like, okay, bye. It does still work. I buy it there.
Really? Yeah. Well, what's true is it doesn't need to be uh frozen. It's supposed to be frozen, right? But it doesn't need to be frozen if there is no water present.
So if you have actually packaged it in a place where there is zero water present, then freezing it in theory shouldn't do that much to help it or to hurt it. As soon as there's any moisture present, the freezing prevents the it from gluing itself to itself, you know, or gluing it or like gluing itself to the case, you know, whatever. You know what I mean? Right. Whatever.
Anyone take it? The wet dog test is good. Wet dog test, always good. Famous cooking issues, wet dog test. Sprinkle some on some uh chicken, chicken chicken breast, my favorite, and chicken thigh.
Chicken, I think is the most effective because it's relative neutral. If you put it on there, rub it in, and then uh sniff it. Don't huff the freaking stuff, but if you sniff it, it should smell like wet dogs, or like you don't have a dog like a wet wool sweater. We got a caller? We do.
Caller, you're on the air. Oh, hey, how are you? This is Rob, uh calling from the North Fork of Long Island. Um big fan of you guys. First time calling in.
Um, how are you doing today? Doing well. Doing well. Good, good. Um, I got kind of a kind of a random question for you.
Um, I'm actually out here vacationing with some friends, and um been getting really into the foraging scene and uh made a bunch of stuff that we foraged locally up here. Um we got these really cool uh we made an S Batch of of wild mussels that all of us gathered, probably about a hundred of them. There's really cool little guys that have sort of ridges that I'd never really seen before, but they were like delicious. And uh were they muscles or were they orcshells? What's that?
Were they mussels or were they arc shells? Were they white with ridges or were they the classic like like like blue and and blackish mussels? Pretty classic looking with um just with these little ridges that looked a little different. Um but yeah, classic looking muscle. Uh all right, cool.
Sorry, go ahead. Uh we had that and and some some wild herbs that we found and uh these little wild carrots with these sort of little lacy flowers on the top. Okay, be careful with wild carrots. Do you have an expert with you? Uh we don't, and I'm actually calling uh we don't really have internet access out here, but my phone works and a couple of people aren't feeling so good.
And I just figured you guys. Is it the are you joking? Are you joking with me by the way? Is this a joke? Are you calling to test me or not?
Uh no, I'm I'm I'm serious. Okay, listen, you have to be careful. Uh Paul, look up someone look up carrots right now. Are they uh um belith uh are the what what what family are they um balayf? I can't pronounce it.
Umbrella umbilesia. You have to be extraordinarily careful with with umbilaces because there are some extremely extremely poisonous versions of umbilaces, like things like wild parsley and wild carrots, very, very dangerous to forage. Do you have any left? Uh we got a couple, yeah. You need to take a picture, you need to take a picture of it, and you need to send it to a poison control person to make sure that no one now there are some that are relatively different in terms of what they uh you know what's in them uh or what's not, and I am not an expert, so I cannot diagnose it.
But you want to make sure that someone didn't consume anything related to water hemlock or any one of the other uh umbilacy uh family that are no good for you. In general, any APACA. A P so they're not, they're safe. Yes. Look up look up look up searching, look up searching for we're sort of out here, we don't really have internet and look up searching for the Paul's looking it up for you.
And David, you look it up too. Look for wild carrots dangers. Cool. The APACA, also known as umbilliferae. Yeah, so it is one.
Commonly known as the celery carrot or parsley family. Okay, you need to be careful. So take a picture of this. Can you if you can text it to uh uh me, I don't know how to get uh or just call shoot. What should we do here?
I cannot I I mean I I'll probably just drive into town because I'm worried, you know, that a couple of the girls have diarrhea and uh go get the go go right now. Go right now, please maybe have an iron. Please go right now, bring it with you, have them test it. When you get better internet access, try to get a positive ID. You have to be really careful when you're for uh foraging for wild carrots, wild parsley, and stuff like that.
You need to really be like a hundred percent sure of the diagnosis. I don't want to worry you too much because there's lots of stuff that can just give you a stomach ache and and you're probably gonna be all right, but please don't mess around with it. Hang up now, go. Please text, please, um uh uh please tweet at cooking issues. I want to know that you guys are okay, all right.
All right, yeah, we kind of had to use um the extra well water. It smelled a little funky too. Maybe not today. Well, let's hope it is. Let's hope it is.
Yeah, get going right now. I hope it's the well water. I'm sure you guys are okay, but please take care of it, all right? All right, thank you. Bye.
Forging issues. Yeah, hope they're okay. Saving lives on cooking issues. Well, who knows? I mean, uh, let's hope, let's hope that's hope.
It's the wall well water. I mean, well bad well water will get you really sick. And the odds are that that the stuff that they forage is not poisonous, but the the I've never foraged that stuff, and I've never become an expert in foraging that type of plant simply because there's all these warnings on wild uh carrots and and parsley. So I it's Paul, you also have forage, so you you know you know you stay away from that stuff too, right? Yes.
Yeah. I mean, I haven't had occasion to stay away from it, but I would stay away from it. Anything anything that looks like uh like uh like an umbrella, like I stay away from it. Whether we're the flowers look like an umbrella, I stay away from it, unless I planted it. Let's take a quick break and come back with uh more cooking issues, hey, this is Gavin Van Vlack from Physical Culture Collective, Bushwick Brooklyn.
You are listening to the Heritage Radio Network. Gavin Van Vlack and Jenny Livingston at Physical Culture Collective bring you an alternative gym experience right in Bushwick. It's fun to move around and to move around in a way that you wouldn't normally get a chance to do. So, like a lot of what we do here is um, you know, on the ground or standing. You're not, you know, you're using equipment, but you're not using machines.
I grew up in very alternative cultures. I grew up in the punk rocket hardcore scene. Muay Thai was something that very much resonated to me. And it was like, yeah, this is this is something that I can get around. This is a this is a sport that's for me.
Learn more about classes and membership options at Physical Culture Collective.com or visit them at 857 Broadway in Bushwick, Brooklyn. And we are back. I hope those guys are okay. I'm sure they are. Okay.
Uh let's get to some uh questions. Uh by the way, uh longtime listener uh Brandon Johnson sent in uh a package for us to look at it, but uh I'm gonna talk about it. Not gonna talk what's I'm not gonna talk about today because I don't really know, I don't really understand what to say about it. But Brandon, give me uh give me another email. Let me uh let me know uh let me know what you want to talk about on that.
Uh Quinn wrote in. Uh I've been looking to make an outdoor tandoor oven for home use. This is like safety day on uh cooking issues. I've been looking into making an outdoor tandoor oven for home use. My main problem is that I have not been able to find an ungalvanized trash can needed to contain the clay pots, firebricks, and vermiculate, which is a good word.
It is a good word. Vermiculate. It's weird. Why? Be ver like it sounds like because it's like loose like worms have gone through it.
Is that why it's vermiculate? Probably. Yeah, I feel okay with that word. Yeah, me too. It's the only vermi word that I like.
You don't like vermitelli? Uh it grosses me out because I know it means like wormitelli. You don't like worms? I I like them. I like them in the garden.
Do you like to eat worms? Vermiculture. Uh that's not my thing. I know that you're uh you're a you're uh a true, you've taken Jeffrey Steingarten to his. I mean, I've eaten worms, but I'm not like, oh, you know what?
Worms, that's what I really want tonight for dinner. It just doesn't come up. I like the word vermaculture. It doesn't come up yet. Yeah.
And it won't because it's still not the most efficient way to raise protein. Is it really more efficient than just like agriculture? I mean, you gotta feed them something, right? Yeah, but you don't have to feed them something that you would otherwise use for anything else. Worms go really well with chilled monkey brains, right?
Chilled a monkey brains. You see, you make me like you make me bust out the accent because anytime someone pulls out anything from Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom, I have to go with it. You know what I'm saying? Can't stop once though. Can't stop, yeah.
Can't stop once. Chilled a monkey brains. Snake a surprise. That guy is awesome. I wish I could remember that actor's name.
Let's get him on the show. Oh my god. If he's still alive, I'm gonna get that guy on the show. You know who the my favorite, like uh uh deep, deep voiced dude from the Indiana Jones series, though, is the uh well, his name just went out of my head. The guy who says bad dates in the first one.
Salah. Yeah, bad dates. I love that guy. And then uh she kisses him and he starts singing, I am the monarch of the seas. I am the monarch of the sea.
Remember that? No, I don't. Oh, great. Are you not an Indiana Jones fan, Paul? I am.
Maybe I closed my eyes during that. I remember that. Yeah. Except for Karen Allen kisses him. Yeah.
Yeah. Her, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Dude, uh you didn't close your eyes though when the propeller chopped up the Nazi, right? Of course I did.
You closed your well, uh the one that I saw it when I was entirely too young, and the face melting really like kind of wiped me out. I still haven't seen that. You still haven't seen the face melting? I think you can handle it now, Paul. I think you could take it now.
Uh, my main problem is that I haven't been able to find an ungown. We're back to Quinn's question on Tandors. I haven't been able to find an ungalvanized trash can needed to contain the clay uh pots. Uh I've heard that galvanized metal gives off toxic fumes at high heat. Is this true?
Yes. Uh galvanized, hot, you know, galvanized is uh covered in zinc. Zinc vaporizes at a very a fairly low temperature. Uh it makes kind of like white and yellow, uh weird wispy craps on the outside of the metal, and you get a fume that comes off of it. I myself, uh you get what's called metal fume uh fever.
Uh and I myself have had this. Uh it didn't obviously kill me or wipe me out, but um when I first learned to weld uh in college, they only they limited my access to the welder. So I put all of my money together and I bought one of those like Home Depot 110 volt MIG welders, and then I brought it at college into my dorm room and was welding all night in the bathroom. And I was welding, uh I was making parts, and so I was welding galvanized nuts onto pieces of of metal all night. I was in in my bathroom, communal bathroom.
People would come in and I would stop welding, and they're like, What the what are you doing? And I'm like, they wouldn't let me use the welder at the shop. So I'm there, and like uh in the morning, thank God. Thank God. Well, I got sick, but thank God, not not terribly.
No one in maintenance had any idea. I didn't realize this, but the the the the slag coming off because it was flux cord welding, you know, because I didn't have gas because I really wasn't rich, you know what I mean. I was using flux cord welding. Uh the the slag and the little metal balls pitted all of the porcelain and tiles in the thing, made little melt balls in it. But they had no idea who or what to blame because it's not in the realm of mental possibility that some knucklehead idiot student has gone welding all night in the bathroom.
It just doesn't freaking compute. So I got off Scott uh Scot free on that one. Anyway. Metal fume fever. Metal well, yes.
I meant as far as the administration is. I got my comeuppance because I've I felt very sick. Anyway. Um, if so, perhaps it would be wiser for me to buy a Tandoor oven instead. You can also, what people do with the galvanized ones is they'll do a burnout or buy a bucket that's uh regular steel with paint on it and do like a long hot burnout of the bucket.
It makes really noxious fumes, but usually you can do it away from wherever you are. That's what a lot of people do when they're making like I've done that myself. So, like uh later on at a different location, we were making uh 55 gallon drum uh grills. Different bathroom. Different, well, on a roof, actually.
And we cut them and we were torch cutting them, and that's nasty because the fumes are disgusting. But then you just basically prop them up and you do massive, massive uh burnouts in them, and you burn the paint off, and then usually you're okay, which is another way to go. But you recommend going to get the Gulati Junior Home Tandor Model 100. I have not go go to the next go to the biggest one that he recommends for home. That's what I would recommend.
Uh Quinn. Good luck with that. Um we got a question in about uh from Judy in Maldon Mass. We have time, oh yeah. Uh in Maldon Mass.
Uh, and uh she shares my aversion to the outdoors. It's not, it's the sun that I hate. I like being outside if there's no sun. I like overcast days, I like I like forests. Anyway, she writes uh uh I'm recently uh unemployed for four and a half months and have motored through the episodes.
I only have 33 left to listen to. My goodness, that's uh that's a lot of motoring. Uh it's a font of information unlike anything else. I've certainly had a lot of aha moments. Uh recently I joined um uh sweet green and opening their new store in downtown crossing here, and it's pretty much changed my life.
Up until a week ago, I've always had an aversion to raw kale since a friend a decade ago tried to pass it off as cooked. This is not a friend. This is not a friend. A friend who tries to pass off raw kale as cooked kale, not a friend. Enemy.
Why would you do that? Why would you do that? Umadays I come around on this though, I still can't say I love it. Um so what's the deal? Why is it that it's so damn hard to cook kale correctly?
I'm not sure I've heard of the existence of a wilted kale dish. It's not hard to cook it correctly, it's just everyone thinks that you can just cook it for a couple minutes and then go. It's like collards. You gotta cook it for a long freaking time to have it actually taste good. It's not, it wasn't like when it's developed as a variety, it wasn't d developed to be like, you know, uh uh a spring roll wrapper.
It wasn't, you know, or like a lightly wilted thing. It was meant you you were meant to cook the bejesus out of it, unless it's extraordinarily young. So now people pick all this kale that's extraordinarily young, and then they can do it like lightly on a pizza or in a salad or something like this, and it's not so terrible. But like kale is meant to be a big old tough mother of green that you chop up and you cook the ever-loving snot out of it. That's it's not hard.
It's just it's just for some reason we've forgotten what kale is for. And uh what's her name? Mimi Sheritan, who I often disagree with, uh, just did something about uh on NPR about this. Yeah. Uh yeah, and you can go uh look it up.
But anyway, I think she's sour. Really? Yeah. Anyway, but she's right about the kale, and she blames herself. She's like, I was on the kale bandwagon, but crap on what's happening right now with kale.
That's what she said. Crap on crap on it. And I was like, you know what? Maybe I do like you after all. Well said.
Yeah. It's essentially an industrial garnish. They use it in supermarkets because it never wilts. Industrial garnish. That's like is that an it's more of an album than a band name, right?
Right. Or a hit single. Additionally, uh one thing I've always uh one thing I've always stumbled upon, never been able to successfully extra execute is Christina Tozi's buttermilk cake. It never comes together just right. I try to bake it anyway.
I flip it onto a cutting board and it's all over. I know that anytime I've seen this recipe, Tozy emphasizes the importance of keeping everything chilled. Uh thinking uh on this after listening to cooking issues, I wonder if the cake should be like uh grinding meat where you initially freeze your bowl and beater. Any insight on this is uh would be much appreciated as I'm a fan of pineapple upside down cake and making the um uh milk bar version would be incredible. Uh thanks for the inside, Judy.
And then I asked for more info, and she said it's the cake uh texture that's coming out wrong. I originally tried making Toesy's barely brown buttercake for her apple pie layer cake. I think it came out very loose and messy, even though the surface looked cooked. After uh hours of listening and listening, uh it's simply a little tingle down my spine to be called out on cooking issues. Okay, well, I I emailed Christina and I said that you were having problems.
Uh and she said the secret to the cake is to really value the creaming process and ingredients uh so um step, so uh sort by step. Because the non-fat buttermilk we use in our cake recipes, so listen, because the non-fat buttermil we use in our cake recipes contains so much water that you have to be very careful about streaming it in little by little into the fully creamed butter, sugar, eggs, and oil. The buttermilk often looks to force a separation, but your job as a baker is to force a homogeneous homogenization. It takes longer than most expect, two to three minutes, and it's a crucial step to achieve before adding any of the dry ingredients. XO, XO, Christina.
This in from Steve in Los Angeles. Hey guys, I'm having trouble shopping around for succinct acid. Most of the offerings available online are in tablet form. And there seems to be one uh available on Amazon who has it in powdered form, but the bottle says for lab or RD use only. Uh is this one of those warnings that's just there because of the extreme concentration or is it cool to use?
Um although you say you're gonna use it for champagne acid. I don't put succinct in champagne acid. I put it in lime acid blends, but you know, the champagne acid is tartaric and uh uh and um lactic. Um he also adds, I find it amusing that Amazon tells me the people who bought it also bought liquid intelligence and some more acids. I looked at it, uh, it's reagent grade, um, Steve.
So I can't tell you whether or not it's it I I wouldn't trust it as safe. Reaging, I would trust only USP grade, which is United States Pharmacobia grade, or the uh FCC like food grade stuff. Um it it's entirely possible that it's safe, but it each chemical has its own way that it's synthesized and the o and and and their own possible contaminants that are in it. So it could be that this facilities and everyone that makes succinic acid makes the reagent grade in a in a purity that's not acceptable for USP, but doesn't have anything that's not gonna hurt you, for instance, heavy metals or other contaminants or poisons. But it's entirely possible that it has some terrible contaminants in it.
So I would not use it, even though uh succinic acid is used in very small quantities. Um I'll have to look and see if I can find a um see if I can find a uh a source of USP succinic acid, it's not uh fantastically expensive. Shoot, they're gonna rip us off the how much time do we have left? Oh, it's okay. You want to take one last call, actually?
Uh yeah, call her, call her. Oh boomer, impatient. All right. So listen, I'm gonna have to deal with John uh Vermylan's fruit trimmings questions, Alex's steaming questions. Um Steaming questions.
You want you okay, you want to take a quick steaming question, or do you want to talk about the Brevo thing? How long do we have? I don't know. Like to get a like two minutes. Two minutes?
Yeah. Two. Two. Your your your your call, my brother. We also have a chibby churry question, which I'll get next time because I found some patents on pesto, which have the most hilarious bad translated English.
People, if you're writing a patent and you're gonna patent it in the English language, just pay someone to translate it properly. This the language is so amazing. It's like so heartfelt on how this person wants you to enjoy this garlic product that they're making. Uh in the in the the English, it's like it's like uh it's like the translations on the Kasukai gummies, which I think are my favorite. Yeah, I mean, yeah, so we'll get to that next time.
And Kiran has a question on uh pork tonkatsu, which we'll get to next time. You want to talk about the Brevel machine real quick? Yeah, what have you done so far with your Breville poly science control freak? Okay, so look it, it's expensive, right? How much does it cost?
1799, I believe. Okay. Here's the thing, and it plugs into a wall outlet, which means the maximum energy it can get. It's 1800 watts of power, is like I think somewhere I calculated it once. The equivalent uh stove BTUs is somewhere between uh like uh 13 or 14,000 equivalent BTUs of uh of uh flame output on a on a pan.
Really? Uh yeah. It's uh the the difference it has with other things is it has a probe that you can control off of, and it has an actual like depressed like metal thing that measures the heat of the pan much more accurately than the glass things do. It's also bigger, it's more robust, it doesn't look like it's gonna break, it's got vents, it's got a lot of controls, not a lot of nice bells and whistles, and it's got a PID controller that can be adjusted for the level of aggression that you want. Backing up, you can set the exact temperature that you want it to heat your pan.
Oh, to the degree, yes, in either Celsius or Fahrenheit. Uh it plugs into a regular socket, and it's as powerful as any unit will ever be that can plug into a regular socket, and it comes in a very nice caterer's case that allows you to carry the thing around. Yeah. Uh the actually the only negative thing I can say about it is that the thing that plugs the probe into freaks me out because it's not at an angle that I can hit a hundred percent every time, and so when I pull it in and out, I'm always worried that I'm gonna ruin it over time. But uh, as uh as the band says, only time will tell.
Uh you know that's uh is that Asia? Anyway, so the uh only time will tell. Is that Asia? Could be. Anyway.
Um so it is I've I uh here's some awesome things you can do with it, right? First of all, I talked to Philip Preston who worked on it a little bit on the thing, but he couldn't get on because he's he's dealing with some people at at Boeing, you know, saving people in airplanes or whatever. Uh but there's a USB on it that is gonna allow for firmware upgrades, and he kind of hinted at the fact that you'd be able to put custom programming in eventually, meaning things like rice cooker programs uh and stuff like that, so that you can actually put profiles in. Now, whether they're gonna let you do uh a ramp on temp or a ramp on rate, or whether they're gonna let you hit a certain temp eventually and then knee it up or down so that you could do relatively different, interesting rice things, only time will tell. I really want a yogurt program that goes to pasteurize and then goes down to that'd be amazing.
Yeah, yeah. And I I think that the unit, if you get it now, we'll be able to do that, but I'm gonna try to get you more stuff. But it is without a question the best uh leftover reheater ever. The day that it came was my brother's birthday, and my mom was making like old school. Did I talk about this already in the air?
Macaroni, uh they call it macaroni and gravy in Boston. It's pasta with you know what we would call spaghetti sauce here, with all the different meats in it, right? Brijole, you know, pork skin, brijola, whole line of meatballs, pork chops, barabs, everything. Cooked. And so she brings the sauce, and for the in like if you burn the sauce in in this family, like literally decades, decades later, I hear the story about someone who's been dead now for two decades, who burnt the sauce once.
And they're like, oh my God, you remember when Annette didn't pay attention and she burnt the sauce? Burnt the gravy. When she burnt the gravy, and you're like, you're like, yes, you know, I wasn't actually alive yet, but I remember you telling me the story of the burnt gravy. You can never fix the burnt gravy. Because once you burn the tomato and it burns in, it permeates everything, you stir it once and the whole thing's toast.
It's done. Like anyway. So you just stick anything of any viscosity on, turn it on to the temperature you want, and it doesn't scorch it or overheat it. So it's the world's greatest reheater of uh leftovers and pasta leftovers, by the way. What?
We got a boogie. Oh, I hear we heated the gravy that way. But also, uh I use it on my pressure cooker to so that like my regular stovetop pressure cooker so that it never goes over pressure. I set it at five degrees above my finished pressure point. And it was what?
Ramps up. I set it at like uh in Fahrenheit, like two, I said it like two sixty-three or something like that. And it goes up to two fifty, and I could put it back down at 259 if I need. But anyway, Paul can come back on some time. We can talk more about the unit.
I'm I'm pretty uh like it so far. Wiley loves it. Really? Yeah. Anyway, we can talk more.
Someone asked questions about it, we'll talk about it. 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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