2%, 2%, 2%. Uh, the 2%'s right over here. Oh, hey, Jenna. I didn't know you shopped here. Uh yeah.
Anything to support local food. Know what I mean? I definitely do. Though that's not the only thing you do in the name of good eats, obviously. Well, true.
I also host Eating Matters every Wednesday at 5 p.m. where we talk about food policy and how it impacts all of us. Be sure to tune in. Alright, yeah, gotta get the plug in there. I get it.
Yep, I'm hashtag shameless. You know what else you can do to support the local food community, right? Well, yeah, make a donation to Heritage Radio Network, the world's pioneer food radio station. That's right. And I gotta call you out on the whole local thing.
What do you mean? Well, the farm report, a taste of the past, Japan Eats. Those are shows that take you around the country and the world. Oh, I'll give you that. So how can listeners give their support?
It's pretty easy. Just go to Heritage Radio Network.org and click on the big red heart in the top right corner. It's pretty easy from there. Thanks. Hi there.
I'm Greg from Capal. Visit us at Kapow.com to check out our unique collection of everyday reusable products designed to help you do more with less. C U PPOW.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 HeritageRadio Network.org for thousands more. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from like, I don't know, what is it, like 1215, something like that? To like one o'clock, you know, from a bird's pizzeria in Bushwick. Br Brooklyn.
Joined as usual with Nastasia of the Hammer. Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? Good. Yeah?
Mm-hmm. Everything good? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And we got uh Dave Id in the booth.
How are you doing? Good. How you doing, man? All right, doing all right. Uh it's uh it like I was flying home from New Orleans, and this is the only time of my life I fly home to a place freaking hotter than I was when I'm flying from New Orleans in the middle of the summer.
I just got back from Tales of the Cocktail. Tales of the Cocktail, which is now, I don't know, like 11 years old or something like that. I've been going since I think like year two, the year right after Katrina is the first year I I went. And uh originally they started down there because they had no money, right? And so they wanted to have it in New Orleans, which is a big cocktail town.
But they're like, what time of year does nobody but nobody want to go to New Orleans? Right now. Like the height of July. It's like, you know what, you know what the other convention was? Like like maybe the second year I went down there at the same time?
Swingers. The only other people they're like, like it don't it don't matter. Like, you know, I don't got I don't gotta take them out somewhere nice. We're all just gonna like you know meet up afterwards. Yeah, we can meet in the hotel room.
Weird, huh? Whoa. Whoa. Anyway, uh so just got back from there. Uh I demonstrated the centrifuge to uh the uh group of the caps, which they call them cocktail apprentices, but really they're this group of people um, you know, uh that take care of all the behind the house stuff at Tales of Cocktails.
So there's something like I forget what it was, it was something like 200,000 uh drinking cups that they they they with all the seminars and all the parties and events and stuff like that. So they do all the batching, the juicing, the the coordination, getting it done. So I demonstrated to those guys. I think they liked it. I made some banana justino, which was good.
Uh and I made a um lime cordial. Uh sorry, I made an orange cordial. So I took you know how you know how I always say orange juice when you clarify it, it tastes like sunny D, right? And so it's not that useful because it doesn't taste that good. Well, I've been fermenting it at home, like I told you.
Maybe if I I'll next time I try a bottle, if I like it, I'll bring it in and we'll try it on air, okay? Uh it needs to age a little longer, I think. But uh so I I use it um I'm trying to ferment it, but then the other thing I do is uh I take the uh clarified orange juice, I acid adjust it and turn it to a cordial, like lime cordial. And unlike lime cordial, you don't have to heat it because uh it doesn't go off as fast as a lime cordial, so it doesn't have to have that heated taste because a lot of people do like, I want my what are you doing? Just lime cordial, it doesn't taste like it's fresh.
Well, it's not fresh, you dunce. It's cordial. It's like a traditional flavor that's supposed to taste like it's been cooked, and you're supposed to like bring it on board a ship and keep yourself from getting scurvy, you moron. That does not supposed to taste fresh. Not every freaking drink with a citrus in it has to taste like it was made uh third like the ingredients were made 13 seconds ago.
That's not the freaking point of the cordial. But anyways, this uh orange stuff, it lasts a long time. But let me tell you, I don't know if have I mentioned my like double acid cordial. I have? Mm-hmm.
What is it then? Explain the way I know. You haven't freaking mentioned it. You don't even know what it is. You can't even describe it.
That's what I live in. I don't listen to you on the show, but I'm sure. All right, yeah, no, I don't think I have mentioned it. So the point is is that when you mix uh when you make lime cordial, typically it's one to one lime juice and sugar, right? Just like simple syrup.
That's what people do. They add peel to it, and then they heat it up to a boil, and then they strain it and then they bottle it, and that's cordial. All right, now uh the inherent problem with that is oh, by the way, is your sister gonna call in today? No, she said she hasn't made anything this past week. Oh my gosh.
Just a key lime pie. Talk about dump meal. Just tequila? No, just a key lime pie. You don't make a key lime pie in a freaking.
I said, but it wasn't in a in a who the hell makes key lime? You can't make key lime pie in a slow cooker. I know. First of all, key lime pie is perhaps the simplest dish on earth to construct. I mean, please tell me she at least made her own graham cracker crust.
I'll ask her. I mean, for God's sakes. Did she actually use it? Did she use that bottled key lime juice? People, people, people!
You are better off using regular Persian slash beer slimes than bottled key lime juice. Do you agree with that, Nastasia? Mm-hmm. I like key limes. They're a pain to juice, though, huh?
You remember when I bought that miniature juicer in Mexico and I brought it back and I and I did an angry juice and I broke it on day one before we could ever use it at the at the bar? Mm-hmm. Anyway. Oh, by the way, someone sent us mead. Oh, really?
At least I hope it is. Oh yeah, the mistake. The meatery in New Jersey, Noah's Vice. They sent that over for you. Alright, well, we're gonna taste it.
Uh maybe we'll crack it open during the break and start tasting it then. But uh so it's wait, what's it called? The place? Noah's Vice. Noah's Vice.
I thought Noah enjoyed grapes, and that was the problem where he got naked and his kids had to cover him up. Yeah, I think that's what the name comes from. But this is made from honey, not from grapes. Noah got crunked out and dropped his drawers in front of his kids on account of wine. So they're saying that that they're off of Noah's vice and they're on this mead action.
Maybe Noah had more vices than we knew about. Hmm, Noah had more vices than we knew about. Is that like that's that's like uh it's somewhere in the liner notes for for some band that I don't that I don't know. I haven't thought of the name yet. But right is my right or wrong.
Someone correct me on my Bible here. Noah got wasted on grape wine. Chat room, any Bible experts? Got wasted on grape wine, dropped his drawers, and the kids like look the other way so as not to become abominations and like drape stuff over, and we're like, yo, dad, sleep that one off. I believe that is exactly what happened.
That that's that's in the Jersey Bible, which someday Nastasi and I are gonna do. Yo, Dad, sleep that off. You know what I mean? It's like someday we're gonna do it. You know what I'm saying, Nastasia?
Oh, yeah, caller, you're on the air. Colour, are you there? Color. Don't think so. Color.
Hey. Hey, how's it going, Dave? Going all right, what's up? Good. I have a question for you about um liqueur extracts and aging.
Hmm. So I've been making some extracts using uh 195 proof uh grain alcohol. And the recipes I've looked at, uh most of them require or recommend that the uh excuse me, the extract uh after adding the simple sugar be aged for a couple months uh in a dark place. I'm wondering why that would be, if that's just an old wives' tale or what the case for that. What kind of bottle is it in?
I'm sorry, you're you're barely coming in. Oh, well, there's a couple of things here. One, many many products are actually photosensitive. It's not just um I mean, very few products have the extreme reaction to light that um uh you know the uh humulones in um hops have, right, where they just go skunky on you. But many, many things uh are very reactive to UV light.
So in general, unless you know that something specifically is uh light stable, uh it is a very good idea to store it in the dark. Uh sense, but it's it seems to be more for some kind of flavor development or flavor maturation or some kind of smoothing of the flavor out over time uh after the extract, sugar, and water have been kind of combined. It's basically uh a limoncello sort of recipe, except I've made it made it with raspberries or uh basil. Uh and it says add uh you know, after you add your simple syrup, uh, you know, store it for a couple months before drinking. Right.
I have okay, so I have more I have never made uh this kind of thing with raspberry, but I've dealt with basil quite a lot uh and aging, and I can tell you for sure that um the day you make it, right, it has uh one taste, the fresh kind of basil taste, and then it does go through a period of it being not in my opinion not as good, right? Uh but you know different and uh changes, and then after basil in particular stabilizes uh somewhere between three and six months. I can't pin the exact date because I didn't taste it every day. But uh and and that's at you know 40 or uh 50 proof, you know what I mean? Uh and yeah, and so the uh and that that's for a distillate though, not for an infusion, but I'm assuming that it's a similar kind of a similar kind of uh of an issue.
And um it's a it's a myth that high-proof um high proof uh spirits don't age in the bottle. It's a complete myth. It it it depends. Some high-proof spirits don't really age in the bottle, so whiskies tend to stay pretty stable in the bottle. Vodka clearly stays stable in the bottle.
Gins tend to stay stable in the bottle, but uh I mean Saint Germain does not stay stable in the bottle. Um chartreuse is you know stable ish, but if you taste uh chartreuse that's like you know, 15, 20 years old, it's definitely different, and it's not because the recipe has changed, but it's because um it's because it's aged. Now the interesting that the thing about it, the thing that like so as a consumer who goes into making their own, the the reason it's not apparent is because uh you know, all commercial spirits have been developed to stay stable so that their customers kind of know what to expect, right? Right. Uh and so you know, we're really only exposed to things that have been either stabilized or are made stable, which is why a lot of uh like you know, vodka flavors, no offense to them, but they all taste fake because they have to be fake because the real ones would be horribly unstable if they actually made it for real.
You know what I mean? Uh and so like a lot of the flavors that are used are in in liquors are dried dried herbs or things like citrus peels, things that have like after some initial movement after they're made, and they can usually be held by the companies long enough for that initial movement to happen, they eventually you know meld everything, gets along fine, and they're real relatively stable. Uh but part of the joy of making something yourself is to make things that uh are not stable now. Right. Uh one thing one thing I will also say is that um a lot of things are delicious.
Some things just are wretched while they're going through their awkward phase. It's like you know, it's like the middle school of uh of infusions. But it's uh, you know, a a lot of things taste good uh kind of all along, but just are different at er every step of the way. Usually you you love something when it's fresh because that's why you made it because it was delicious when it was fresh, right? I mean that's kind of what happened.
You your your palate was geared to making something fresh, especially you're not used to tasting with a mind uh six or eight months from now because you don't know what's gonna happen, right? So you like this stuff that's fresh, and then as it changes, almost invariably you like it a little bit less as it starts to change uh initially if you really liked it at the get go. And that's when you need to like uh keep in your in your like in your mind and your in your heart that this stuff might get good again later. Um I think that the when people write recipes, I think that they make uh uh huge mistakes when they talk about um uh things that need to be aged, with the exception of things that are kind of dangerous until they age out. I think uh, you know, they know because they've made it a million times, uh, that you know, they might as well not taste it between now and you know, in a couple of months when it's when it's ready.
The truth of the matter is when you're learning, you should taste a little bit uh as you go so that you can kind of get a feel for kind of what's changing and then get a feel for what you like and what what the stability is, because that's really the only way to to learn. If you you know, if you if you just put something down and then don't taste it again and then y y you don't know what's happening. No, that makes sense. And what I was planning on doing is actually letting it uh letting this batch age for a couple months uh and taste it as it goes and then make a fresh batch in a couple months from now and then actually be able to taste them side by side uh two month old versus a fresh uh extract and uh mature. So uh Okay, so it's not uh it's not an old life's tale that uh that something's happening to even just a simple syrup and uh and an alcohol extract happening over time.
Yes, some things are pretty dang stable, but a lot of things move. So it's also recipe by recipe. And I'll and I don't know whose recipe you're you're following, but you know, it's also a habit that you have if let's say you make a lot of infusions and it's been your experience that these things like move around and aren't really stabilized for um you know like a couple of months, then you just start writing into all of your recipes to do that, whether or not you've actually tested it for that particular item or not. You see what I'm saying? And the same thing, by the way, goes for every recipe that cooks right, uh chefs right, or even you know, like uh like bloggers, anything like this.
Once you have some experience in your life that leads you to believe uh you know that X, Y, or Z procedure is what you need to do, then even if you don't maybe even sometimes do it yourself, you just include it in every recipe you ever write so that uh nobody comes back and like, but you can tell people to age it and it needs to be aged. Even if you haven't tested, I swear, like I do this, you know what I mean? It's uh it's just a sad fact of the way uh the world works that you have to present these complete recipes to people for everything for foods, for drinks, and and uh and you have to guard against these kind of uh attacks or or worse, like having someone think that your recipe is bad. And so you include things in in recipes that you haven't actually tested on that particular recipe. Or if you have tested, you haven't tested an A B where you left that step out.
It's just uh the it's the nature of the beast. Awesome. All right, well, thanks so much. All right, let's know how it works. Talk to you later.
All right, so back back to this cordial. So you so uh where we left off was this. If you take 50% uh lime juice, right? Now lime juice is uh we clarify first, obviously, it's six percent acidity, okay? And now you add uh sugar, you add the equal uh weight of sugar, assuming that the lime juice has no sugar in it, which is a little bit of a lie, you have a 50-50 simple syrup that's acidic, right?
It's a cordial. Uh now what's the inherent problem in that? Since you weren't listening to me, I'll tell you. Right? Uh the problem is that if what you want, when if most a lot of the drinks that I make have roughly equal amounts of uh one-to-one simple syrup and uh like lime or lemon juice in it, right?
One to one. If anything, there's a little more acidity, a little more lime juice or a little more sugar than there is uh sorry, a little more lime juice or a little more lemon juice than there is simple syrup, right? Right. Problem is if you if you put a half ounce of that cordial into a drink, it contains the same amount of sugar as a half ounce of uh of simple syrup, right? Does that make sense?
Okay. Okay. Does it contain the same amount of acid as a half ounce of lime juice? No. No, why?
It's more? Because it's more. No, because there's more sugar in there. The sugar is taking up some of the space. So you have to add some extra acidity in the form of citric and malic acid back to the cordial to get the acidity such that the uh that it has the actual acidity of lime juice.
So what we do is we dope this or orange juice. Normally you have to add uh 32 uh grams of uh citric acid and 20 grams of malic acid to every liter of uh orange juice to have it have the same acidity as lime. Uh but you have to add a little more to make up for the space that the that the sugar is taking up, and then when you pour uh an acid adjusted or double adjusted in the case of orange uh cordial, every half ounce of that stuff is the same as pouring half ounce of simple syrup and a half ounce of um of like acid, like lime juice. Uh but uh you've only you you've added half ounce ounce less of total liquid. Get it, get it, got it, good.
You know what else? I had a question about New Orleans. Should I just deal with the question about New Orleans now? Yep. You didn't do anything interesting?
No cooking interesting, nothing? Nina? Nada? Nothing. Did you did you leave the city?
No. You were trapped in the city with this like dead heat? Yeah. You couldn't borrow borrow your buddy's car that you paid to fix? No.
All right. So uh Steve from Los Angeles is going to uh New Orleans, and he said, uh, I'm going to be in New Orleans this coming weekend. Unfortunately, I'm missing out on Tales of the Cocktail. Are there any new, new, the key here is these new bars or restaurants you saw this year that I should check out? Steve from Los Angeles.
Well, I actually only went to one um new restaurant because I only had really I had two dinners there. One was a spirited award where it's not like a normal spirited uh uh dinner where it tells the cocktail you go and like it's paired with like it's not a normal dinner, right? Uh but the second one I went to was at a new place. Get this. It's uh I didn't even know he had done this.
Uh you know John Besch out of New Orleans? Yeah, so John Besch teamed up with Aron Sanchez, you know, from here, and they have a restaurant called Johnny Sanchez. Johnny Sanchez. And uh uh Miles Landrum, who is uh knows Nick Wong, our are you know one of my favorite interns of all time who's at the French culinary is now at Sambar, uh is they went to school together, and so he's the uh exec there, so uh I went there. It was good.
You know what they had that I like? First of all, for some reason in New Orleans, like uh ever since uh Cushon, which is like one of the famous uh uh you know favorite restaurants that we you know go to down there down there, like pig ears and like they're big on pig ears and pig parts. So you know chili killis, right? Mm-hmm. So these guys, instead of using tortillas, they do like a pig ear chili killis.
What do you think? I don't know. What do you think? That's a good thing. I thought it was good, what chillichillis?
No, pig ears. I love pig ears, and uh I I love chilli killers. So, like doing an interpretation, like a chili killis interpretation with pig ears, I thought was good. I enjoyed it. Yeah, that we also had uh we had some squash blossoms, and we were we were we were we were saying how ridiculously uh you know how squash blossoms here, it's like so sad when you go down in Mexico and there's billions and billions of squash blossoms for almost nothing, but it was good, very good.
Yeah. So that's the only new place I recommend, I I can recommend it. I didn't get to go to um uh what's it called? Shaya, the uh which is not named after Shia LaBeouf, which is the place where they make their own pita everyone goes crazy for. I didn't get to go.
But uh, you know what I like? Do you like tourist things in Stasia? Like sometimes? Sometimes. Do you know what?
Like everyone, when they go down there, there's a place called I don't even remember the name of it. I go to the central grocery that they make them the muffoletta that that's the one that all the tourists go to, right? And all the locals, they're like, You're a jerk. Why are you going to the place that all the tourists go? You gotta have our mufflet, our this, that, blah, blah, blah.
Muffletas is sandwich they make in New Orleans, and it's all about the chopped up olives and and you know, pickles and stuff that goes in the in the in the it's all about that with this giant, giant huge loaf of bread with the sesame's on top. It looks like a giant overgrown sesame bun with like uh, you know, the meats and the cheeses and then the chopped up olives, olives and petbus, and like uh pickle stuff on it, right? But you know what? Freaking, it's good. A crap on you.
I enjoy it. Crap on all of you haters out there who just because, like, you know, since, you know, since whenever this has been the place people go, so what? It's still good. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying?
Here's another thing. I don't know whether you knew this. New Orleans, Louisiana, is possibly the like apogee, the height of personal injury lawyer advertising. I turned on, uh I was waking up in the morning getting dressed, so I turned on the TV, and it was one of these shows where everyone's trying to figure out who the dad is and nobody knows. There's like eight guys up on stage and nobody knows which one's the dad, and they have a paternity test, and there's all sorts of screaming and yelling and bouncers and stuff like that.
Moripovich. And uh and the commercials for the personal injuries attorneys are just amazing. It's like almost like uh it's an art form. The my favorite, there's a there's a guy Morris Bart, which is the one that that remember it was in the news a while ago that this kid was obsessed with this personal injury attorney and they wanted him to come to his birthday party, but he wouldn't come, but he sent a life-size cutout of himself and like a pen. You know what I mean?
So this kid's birthday party. But there's a there's uh an attorney there named Chip Forestall, who's got like this like polished, like bald head. And go online and look up Chip Forestall videos. He's hired all of these local Louisiana uh musicians to sing various renditions of Chip Forstall Chip Forestall, he's a man of integrity, and he wants to be your attorney. He knows the law, Chip forestall, takes care of it all, personal injuries, big or small.
But he do it, they do it in Dixie Land jazz. There's a rap one that's not on the line yet because that's the one I saw down there. There's like uh there's like some sort of like Mardi Gras version. They have like uh they have a gospel version of Chip Forestall takes care of it all with like real musicians. It's the craziest thing.
Like I went down there thinking that Selino and Barnes was kind of the height of personal injury uh attorney advertisement. Because Nastasi and I, to give you an idea of what our actual life is like, we never discuss anything serious. We just we'll sit down uh we'll silence for like an hour or so, like staring into the distance with dead eyes, and then all of a sudden we'll just start singing the Seleno and Barnes song. Seleno and Barnes, right? Injury attorneys, right?
Give me some 800 what? 777 No! 888888. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we'll sing it.
Call late. Anyway, so uh anyway, so I feel bad. Yet another thing that in New York you think you're the best at something, and you go somewhere else, and it turns out that we are mere infants, children, like weaklings when it comes to personal injury lawyer advertisement. And I found out I think why. In uh in New Orleans, I looked it up, I was so intrigued by it that I looked it up.
And when you it turns out that in New Orleans, uh and in the parishes down there in uh Louisiana, the judges that are hearing these cases are elected, right? Right. So they need to have campaign and get this. Unlike any other state in the union, the threshold for a jury trial for this stuff is fifty thousand dollars. So any case that's below fifty thousand dollars, let's say 49,999, people like Chip Forestall get to go directly in front of a judge who they're allowed to contribute to their campaigns regularly, and they need to get elected and be like, hey, yo, judge, why don't we settle this for like 4995?
You know what I mean? Like 49k, then you know, I'll give you some money, we'll all get out of here. This guy'll get his money, boom. Hence uh you have such awesome uh advertisements. Uh I think it's worth it.
Anyway, I don't know. A little bit, a little bit of legal aside for break. Wait, you want to take a break? We'll drink some meat and we'll come back with more cooking issues? Yeah, we gotta call her then too.
Oh, we got a colour. I'll take the caller and then we'll go to the house. Oh, you wanna know? Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Alright, caller, you're on the air. Uh hi, how you doing? Doing all right. This is uh this is Shane here. I'm calling from from Dublin, Ireland.
Oh hey. Good good to hear from you. How's it going over there? Great. It's uh it's gray and cloudy as usual.
Oh my favorite. I love that. Yeah, gray and cloudy, man. I wish I could live in a place that was always gray and cloudy. Yeah.
Um listen, I love the show. You guys are great. I've learned a lot. Thanks. What do you what do you what do you got for us?
What do you what do you uh what are you calling about? I'm um I'm trying I'm looking at uh restaurant equipment and uh I'm doing a lot of low temperature cooking. And I want to um get some equipment in I can't for searing for searing meats and vegetables and I can't use charcoal because fire restrictions and it's difficult. I just wanted to know if you have any recommendations for for other equipment that would be good. Like a a cast iron pan is too small for my for the volume I'll be doing, so like I looked at induction planches and things like this, and I don't know if you have any recommendations for good searing equipment that's not charcoal.
It's hard. So uh are are you allowed to have and I don't know what the economics that are there, but do you have natural gas or or not even natural gas? Uh I might have natural gas. I'm I'm trying to get the lines installed. So I might and I might not.
So I'm I'm I'm interested in both natural gas and electric. Okay, so the the the deal is I mean any time you're gonna do like heavy searing work on on low temperature, no matter what the source of uh uh of the heat is, you're gonna make a a crap ton of uh smoke. And so you're gonna need like regardless of what the regulations are or anything else, you're gonna need really good ventilation. So that's just a given. I'm just gonna stipulate that right there.
Um the i it's it's hard. So like in the in New York where now like they allow certain things they didn't used to, what everyone used to do in the tra uh it back in the day was they would have these uh these gas these gas grill situations, right? And then they would just uh the the manufacturers knew you would do this, you would just throw wood on top of the gas and just get it completely roaring. But then whenever obviously someone was coming in to inspect, it's just a gas, uh it's just gas, you know what I mean? And you would throw on wood in quotes for smoking.
You know what I mean? And then that would uh that's how you kind of get around it and those guys would jack the heat um that way. Um a lot in terms of your I mean if you can get gas, uh and you're gonna do a lot of this work, I would invest in like a deck broiler and the the deck broilers are just like a salamander, but they're stacked like it's like it's like three salamanders stacked together and it's much more than three times as powerful because if you've ever used a salamander, you just have that sweet spot right in the middle and then it kind of radiates out, whereas like the deck broiler, you have a giant sweet spot and it you can they really scream. They really scream. Uh and so I would recommend something like that, but that's only gonna work kind of in an overfired situation.
So if you're looking to finish um you know uh and you want to go electric, I don't have a lot of experience doing um hardcore searing on uh I've never used, for instance, an induction um plancha. I've never used it. Yeah. Um so I can't really um speak to it. I'd say that think a lot about what you're I mean, any electric thing that you use, I've never used, and I've used some of them, I've never used an electric broiler that was worth spit.
You know what I mean? Um there's not enough um power output. I mean the good news about using induction is it's so efficient in terms of heat delivery to the to the pan or or the or the plancher or the griddle if it's specifically built that way, that um you know, even though you know you only have a certain amount of power you can suck out of the wall, it's providing a lot of that power to actually uh to heat the food item that you're that you're talking about. Um now the when you're doing low temperature uh cooking, uh as I'm sure you're aware, one of the main issues on the finish is that uh unlike a traditional pan sear that you do before um before your your cooking, or if you're gonna pan sear and then finish in the oven, traditional style, um the meat when you put it in is pretty or whatever it is, it's is pretty floppy and can make good contact with the surface of the pan and or the griddle or the whatever. And what that means is you get a nice even um even sear off uh on the thing and it makes a lot of smoke.
However, if you're doing a post sear and you put that same piece of meat onto a griddle, then you're gonna have very dark marks exactly where you're touching the pan, but unless you have a pretty hardcore weight on it, right? Uh you're not gonna have an even um an even sear across it. So how do we get around that? We paint a lot of oil on the on the meat, and we try to hope that there's some sort of connection between you know bridging the oil to the meat, but then as soon as you do that, you now have a lot lot more uh smoke than you did back back in back in the day. Back before, you know, back, you know, uh old style.
So i i you can't really mean you can get it to work that way, but you can't really uh win that way. And what happens is is if you're sitting there in kitchen and you have only screaming pans, you're constantly having to wipe it out uh because just the amount of oil that you have to put on it is just uh you know kind of i intense. Now, some people uh you know, like we used to when we're doing duck breasts when we were cooking low temp, we made very, very sure that when we put them in the bag, we flattened it all out so that then when we took the duck breast and put it in the pan afterwards to do the crisp up on the skin, that it was all gonna be in contact and it would it would render right. But if you don't, you're pretty much hosed, right? Some pieces of uh some products, and I know that you know pe people get mad at me about it sometimes, sometimes the best way to do is to deep fry it.
You know, if you're you deep fry it, uh you get like instant sear all the way around. Uh and the problem with it is is that nobody notices as long as your oil is impeccable. But when you do a fry finish on something and like a steak, and the oil is even a little bit over, it's like it gets kind of it gets kind of ugly because they start to taste that oil on the outside. If um if not, then as soon as you pull it out of the fryer, if the oil is good, you have you know, someone wrapped a towel around it, get the excess uh uh uh fat off, you know, grease off the outside, and by the time you cut it, no one ever knows that it's been in oil. They just want to know why the crust is so nice.
That is particularly useful on things like lamb racks, which are very hard to post-finish and hard to get a nice uh crust on the outside without overcooking using um low temperature kind of techniques. So in my mind, things like lamb racks, big bone-in pieces like that work extremely well in the deep fryer, but you just have to I mean, like people don't like to think about it, and also they don't like uh you have to make sure that your oil is impeccable. So those are kind of what what I'd use. There's no question that an induction um an induction range can get cast iron pans hot enough. The problem with the cast iron pan on the induction range is, and I think we talked about this last week or the week before, is you really have to not like have it screaming right away because you'll notice on most induction things that you that you use.
I mean, uh maybe the commercial ones, I haven't checked their burner pattern, but the burner pattern on inductions is relatively small. And so they tend to work well on um things that have a big uh fast conduct uh heat conductive surface. So, like the uh aluminum sandwich pans that have like the slug in them that the induction works with or the stainless that the induction works with, and then they have an aluminum uh big billet, and that aluminum spreads the heat out relatively uh quickly, so you don't get major, major hot spots um with the induction. With it with cast iron, um you're gonna tend to heat the local area and it's gonna take longer for it to be totally even. Now, that point is moot if you have it on the induction thing for like five minutes and heating up, but then you know, you have something that's screaming hot all the time, and unless you're gonna chill it in between or let it cool down in between uh orders, which isn't really feasible in like a heavy environment, like when you're gonna get an order in, you don't necessarily want to have to keep your pan going up and down and up and down.
So most you know, most people want like if they're having a griddle, they want a high heat griddle uh uh uh you know that or a plancha that's running now. You know, the advantage there, uh you know, and the reason plonches are so good is they can stay really hot, but remember plonches drain the grease down and out. So, you know, a quick uh you know, you take your your your spatula and you scrape off the extra grease, and now you're not smoking up your whole kitchen with the extra grease from before while you're waiting for the next order to come in. Um but that said plonches aren't designed for uh searing meats that have already been cooked. You can like a little squeezy bottle of oil.
So you take a little squeezy bottle of oil and then shh, you know, hit it and it can it can work, but you just have to get some practice. If you have a buddy that has one, I would definitely go to use it before you invest in it to make sure it fits your cooking style. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. So just quickly then uh on the I mean I see a lot of a lot of planches and units and giving different surface temperatures, like two thirty degrees, this is Celsius and two fifty degrees, and for a conduction heat source, do you know what kind of what kind of temperature I'd be looking for for a post?
I'll do a pre-sear to help the unevenness of the meat issues. Right. Hopefully. Right. And I'll do a post here.
I did uh so on the cooking issues blog, I think it's there. I might I might not have put that picture up, and I I'll go look at it again. I I once did a test where I was actually testing the cert the temperature of the cast iron uh during the thing to look at what uh and this is on a standard old cast iron pan, you know, like maybe fifty, sixty years old, trying to figure out like what the best initial temperature is. Um Greg Blonder actually, who called into the show his uh his blog with uh you know, he did a test and he has I think I think with Meathead Goldwyn when he was on the show, uh, you know, he did a test with a probe underneath showing that in most cases the temperature drops very quickly right at the surface um you know because obviously it has to boil water off. Um and so you know he seems to think his he seems to think it doesn't matter if that you get that that hot.
My the research that I did shows that an initial very high heat in the pan does help. So I was getting the stuff up into the range of like 500 and or something which is which is uh see 400 is 360 is 200, right? So I was getting I was probably getting up to like yeah two I was probably getting up in you know closer to what were you saying like two sixty two what were you saying? Uh they were it's it's it ranges from two twenty to maybe two fifty is the ones I've seen. Yeah I mean I I never the ability to go hotter is always better because you can always turn it down right but my you know uh it was i I had to wait until these things got very very hot before I started seeing diminishing returns.
I mean eventually you get you know obviously what's called the the Leidenfrost effect and it takes a l you know a little longer for it even to know that it's searing right that's like I can stick my hand in liquid nitrogen and pull it out because um because of vapor forms. But in actuality what tends to happen is is that the your plancha is a slug of uh of metal you put the meat down on it and like you get uh it chills it right there eventually and then you have to wait for the heat to come back in order to get up to its temperature. So they're they're storing heat a little bit. I know some people have moved to very, very thin plonches, which work almost, I guess, like a like a Mexican comal. And those things don't store as much energy.
And so then uh they're relying a lot more on how much energy you're you're combusting in heat to get their incredibly quick recovery rather than a thermal mass that allows it to recover. So you can kind of play either way. But I'll say this, and I might have said this on air, but uh I remember it was well over a decade ago. I interviewed uh Jose Andreas uh relatively uh soon after he had opened um Atlantico and I was doing an article on planches for uh Food Arts magazine at the time, and he said uh I said to him, and you know, I knew all about planches, and I knew that they had this like you know, a central heat, and then it would spread out and it was colder, and so people could then you know spatially arrange the stuff that wanted lower heat uh over on the edge of the plancha and stuff that wanted higher heat or searing heat in the middle of the plancha, right? Sounds familiar, that's how plancha is supposed to work.
And he says, No, I just buy uh a griddle and I set the uh and so uh you know the American griddles have like uh the one he had had four zones, four different burners, right? So I'm assuming he sets one side uh high and then the other side low, and then he has a gradient he can move back because that's the way most people who use griddles, that's how they think, right? So they have this spatial organization of heat, much like a French uh uh flattop hot, you know, uh um and he was like, Oh no, absolutely not. I set the entire griddle to one temperature. I was like, what are we freaking crazy?
And he's like, No, I write all of my recipes such that everything only requires one temperature. And I was like, Oh, all right. You know what I mean? And that kind of makes sense. So when you're doing a lot of low temperature work, you're not gonna need a lot of these little kind of warming zones or places you can let things ride.
You're gonna want a big, even screaming mother of of an object that you can just crank with. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Alrighty. Listen, well uh uh why don't you uh tweet or call on in, let us know uh what's going on.
But I definitely it's a huge recommendation. Don't trust anyone on their sales uh salesmanship uh on buying uh equipment. Go use this stuff. Everybody sells you a bill of goods, and it's almost impossible, especially when you're shopping for something that you're gonna have to cook with for years and years. And this goes whether you're gonna go buy a combi oven or anything like this.
Anyone will sell you anything, and everyone sounds good, and a lot of equipment is good. But the things I would ask your your friends or anyone around, how often does that sucker break with a piece of electrical equipment, especially if you're gonna go induction? Like ask a bunch of people that have used it, not for like a a week or for like you know, as Jeffrey Steingarten says, like, you know, all good knives are good, just like puppies, right? It's like you want to know how is that thing after a year? How many service calls do they have to have?
And if it breaks, like how fast are they gonna come in and fix it? Because you don't want to build your business around uh, you know, some sort of an induction range and then it's gonna die every uh week and a half. Now, old induction units used to die constantly, right? The reason being that no one had adequate cooling in them, and they would try to do things like put an induction range over an oven, and the heat would get so intense in the electronics that they would just fry. Now, I think the the modern inductions of the past you know six, seven years, they've probably uh dealt with a lot of that, you know, fixed a lot of that problem, but you want to make sure that that's not gonna be an issue for you because you don't want to be down unless you have a spare.
Uh also, you know, as um, you know, as they say here, you gotta make sure it's got uh you know enough power. You know what I mean? You gotta make sure that you like co like cooking with it. And so I highly recommend um finding one. Any good big equipment manufacturer has uh has someone that they can send you to to let you cook on it.
You know what I'm saying? And then you you know, like you know, they'll know who bought it in your area, and you can go uh check it out and see whether or not it suits it suits your your cooking style. You you do not want to be saddled with a system like that that and regret it in five or six months because you know you're you might have to live with it for years. Yeah. Great.
All right, well, I hope that's helpful. Very helpful. Thanks a lot. All right, thanks. All right, thanks.
Let's go to a quick commercial break. Nastassi and I are gonna crack some meat and come right back with cooking issues. Americans throw away 58 billion disposable cups every year. A lot of those cups will still be around long after you're dead. Kind of dark, I know.
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And we are back. All right, so uh David, tell me David, you want to come taste this mead? Absolutely. All right, and then bring a cup and then uh tell me a little bit about it. Uh I know nothing about it, so I'll just come and taste it.
All right, you come and taste it. And while you're tasting it, a uh shout out big thank uh big shout out, thank you uh for Neil Wallace for uh donating to uh Heritage Radio Network uh on behalf of the cooking issues uh broadcast. We appreciate it. Um all right, so while we're waiting for David to uh bring a cup in here to taste this, maybe I should I'll take care of this call. Oh wait, there's a call question.
Do I have a call? No, no call. Okay, question. So uh oh, before I do that, Russ, I'm not gonna let you uh let me tell deal with Russ first. Remind me to talk to you about uh Harold McGee and this this thing he's interested in, alright, Nastasia?
You remembering? Mm-hmm. It's gonna have a word that you're not gonna like, which I like. Okay. Yeah.
Uh Russ writes in from California. Uh hey, uh, hey guys. I'm 23, basically broke and love espresso. Been there, right? I mean, like, actually, I didn't really like espresso when I was 23.
I didn't really like it until I was almost 30. I didn't drink coffee in college. I drank tea. What about you? Uh uh I drank coffee in college.
Yeah. Did you like tea or just coffee? Just coffee. Really? Is it because all those people in California drink tea and you hated those people?
No. Just coffee head? Mm-hmm. All right. Um as I understand it, a special machine quality comes down to pressure and temperature control.
I'm glad that you didn't say 100% stability and you said uh control because back in the day when I was first starting, um, everyone thought that the best of everything was complete consistency across the board, right? So you want the temperature to be completely consistent across the shot. You want the pressure to be constent across uh across the shot. And in fact, we now know that um that's not the case and that it in general most people prefer um shots where there's gradients in in those uh things over the course of of the shot. Uh not everyone, most people, and uh the trick is being able to control and repeat it.
So, like certain of the large commercial machines were uh, you know, just made genius cups of espresso, not necessarily because they were um they kept everything the same throughout the shot, but just they repeatedly delivered the same profile of temperature and pressure. Anyway, okay, a little bit of an aside. Not really an aside, it's about the question, right? Unusually it's actually about the question and not about like the price of eggs or something like that. Uh supposedly, Ranchillio makes a machine that does a good job of this for about $700, and the people of the interweb seem to believe that everything cheaper is crap.
I'm assuming you're talking about the Ranchillo Rocky. Uh the Ranchillio Rocky is a good it's a good piece of equipment. I have one. Um it is uh the reason people uh like it is that it the bones of it are good, right? It's got a good boiler on it, it uses a good portafilter, um, and so like that stuff is relatively uh robust.
Uh also it's like an old school like American car in that when you open up the hood, there's not a lot of junk and garbage inside of there, so you can pretty much do whatever you want. So it became very early on, like you know, well, well over a decade ago, the machine to mod out, right? So the problem, and so then you know, people will put PID controls in, people put dual PID controls in, some people would add a second boiler to it. There's a lot of stuff out there, and there's a lot of people that have already walked down the road. In fact, you can buy kits to mod it.
And I have to say that uh a PID controlled uh Rocky, may I sorry, uh uh Sylvia. Did I say Rocky before? I meant Sylvia. Rocky's the grinder. Uh Ranchillo Silvia is um it's a good machine, it makes a good cup of coffee.
It is a pain in the behind if you also like milk in your coffee. I don't, but my wife's a milk and coffee person, and because it's not dual boiler, you have to uh always like turn it on to steam, let it steam up, and then you have to get the temperature back down by pushing water through the uh through the group head and then let it stabilize again and then blah blah blah blah blah. So you know if you're making you're 23 and you're broke, if you're also single and or and or nobody in your house likes anything but espresso, uh uh the the Sylvia is good, but apparently it's too expensive uh right because you're basically broke. All right. Now, uh so then you say uh you took a question a while back about the rock ROK espresso maker, which goes for $150.
I can't remember what you said about it. Well, I haven't used it, right? Uh I can't remember what you said about it, but the consensus seems to be that it is possible to get a good espresso from it. However, it is difficult, if not impossible, to do so consistently as the pressure is regulated by hand. Uh I'm considering buying one and adding a spring to the system to regulate the pressure.
I have a machine shop at my disposal and can do this with relative ease, but I wanted to get your take on whether or not it would work well potentially before wasting the time and money involved. Uh also any tips on lucking into a professional espresso machine at auction for almost no money as you did would be much appreciated. Thanks, Russ from California. All right. So, first of all, let me let me tackle these in reverse order.
So buying something at uh an auction is a really good way to go. What you need to find is an auction where nobody else there wants a piece of equipment. So usually the way you do that is you find something. So if you go on eBay, you can buy an espresso machine commercial uh that is broken for some reason or another. And then if you're willing to fix it or go through the trouble of fixing it, then uh then you can do it.
I would make a hundred percent sure that the parts are available, like get to know someone, because parts on an espresso machine can get very, very expensive very quickly. But for instance, let's say there's an espresso machine out there and the pump is broken. Most people who service espresso machines know how easy it is to get a new pump, and so you wouldn't get a big discount because they would buy it and just fix the pump rather than give you something for free. But maybe you find some knucklehead who has a machine and just wants to get rid of it at an auction. So you what you need to go into a restaurant auction is patience.
People on the on the web that the general consensus was that home people, you should just forget about making espresso, right? And the only people that were making uh espresso at home with machines that they liked were the people who were using the um uh the Europiccolos, the the hand uh lever machines. Now, um so there you have it. Um the rock, uh I guess it's pronounced rock, what it is is like a dual what would you describe this motion, Nastasia? This um like the Hulk when the Hulk's going ah and he lifts up by his shoulders and then tries to make his pecs huge by going down, it's that kind of emotion.
You're grabbing two handles and you're pushing down to provide the pressure, and you're pushing a piston down into uh into a column of water that's heated and then in in through the uh in through the uh ground espresso. Now uh in actuality, uh some of the best, in fact, still the best cups of coffee that I've had, uh espresso have been out uh some of the best, have been out of lever machines, and they're working on uh springs. So springs are good. The problem with modifying the spring on that machine is that um how would you do it? You have to pull up on it, right?
And then if you have the spring pulling, the easiest way to do it would be to have springs pulling the handles down, but then you're gonna have a difficult time levering them up and then holding them there for the infusion section and then letting them go. So it's possible that you could, I guess, make some sort of crossbow scenario where you just lift it up and then crank something up and use that to kind of pull it down. Yeah, it looks kind of like a bow motion. So you've got like 30 seconds. Oh, geez.
All right, all right, all right. Listen. Uh listen. I'll get I'll get back. Russ, we'll deal again next week because I also talked to you.
You need to spend money on a grinder. We need to worry about grinder as much as you do about machine. So I'll get back to that. So tell me a little bit about the mead. David, tell me quickly about the mead.
Uh it's delicious. Notes of popcorn at the end. Yeah, it's uh it's it's okay. It's not as dry as it uh, but it's not clonally sweet either. I think it's good.
I would have this one after dinner. What about you, Nastas? No, it's what what are your issues? Some flavor, some some flavor in it. I don't like the spicy one.
I like it. It's a it's but you don't think I think it's from the I think it's from the that's the honey. That's you just that's the note of the honey. Give a shout out to the company again, David. Noah's Vice Metery in New Jersey.
Noah's Vice Metery, thank you. And uh I I enjoy it. I'm gonna have some more uh during lunch. And on the way out, let me just say this. I was with Harold McGee.
All of you go on the New York uh botanical garden, uh go to their corpse flower cam. There's a rare corpse flower that's about to bloom any day now, and hopefully Harold and I are gonna go. It smells like rotting flesh. It's a close relative of the same thing that makes conjac. Uh and the name of it is ready for it, Nastasia?
The name of the genus. It's the largest inflorescence in the world, in the world, amorpho thallus titanum. Amorphophallus titanum. Because if your phallus is gonna be poorly formed, you at least want it to be Titanic. Cooking issues.
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