Today's show is brought to you by Bob's Redmill, sharing nothing but the best in whole grain nutrition and committed to their mission of good food for all. Learn more at Bob's Redmill.com slash podcast. This episode is brought to you by Jewel, the immersion circulator for Sous V by Chef Steps. Order now at Chef Steps.com slash J-O-U-L-E. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues.
This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 in Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwig Brooklyn. Call in all of your cooking-related questions or otherwise really. To 718497-2128. That's 718497-2128. Joined as usual in the studio with Nastasia of the Hammer Lopez.
How are you doing, Nastasia? Good. How are you? Alright, it's been a while, right? Two weeks is uh we missed last week.
What was I? Was I I was away? You were I was away. Here I was here? I was not here.
Then I would have been here in the studio. You weren't here here. You weren't here here, but you were in New York. I was not in New York. Yes.
You stepping out on us, Dave? No. I was not in New York. Oh, wait, there's some no, I had to I had to go to a doctor. That's it.
I had with my son. I had to take my son to it. That's what it was. And uh Dave, join as usual in the booth with uh Dave. How are you doing?
Good, how about you? You know what the problem is is that like uh you have no catchy nickname. You have no catchy nickname. Maybe someone in the You haven't given me one yet. I know, but like oh Nastasia's microphone's wandering away.
Like I know that Nastasia enjoys not speaking into the microphone so that no one can hear what she's saying. But this microphone in particular is conspiring against her today. And like that noise you hear is Nastasia trying to tell her microphone what what. And look, it's just like curving away from her, throwing the hate down on Nastasia. You know what?
Nastassi, that's a wise microphone. That is a wise microphone moving away from you. I don't know, Dave, that that's good. Wow. That's Dave just did a serious, like like spit and bubblegum solution.
He pulled the microphone out of its socket and then jammed it into the socket sideways. What? That's pretty good. Yeah, well, gotta love it. That's why I get the big bucks.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. He really wanted Peter Kim on. Who did, Dave? Why?
He didn't need a whipping boy? Uh Miss Peter, you know. I'm sure Peter will come on. He's a good foil for you, of course, too. Yeah.
Nice. And he'll actually say things, unlike someone I know, Nastasia. I think he would hate it more if I said a ton of things. I like how you say hate it more. Like the baseline is hate.
Yeah, the baseline is hate. I think we should try though. I mean, we'll never know unless you try, right? That's right. Oh, he would it would drive him crazy.
We've had people on who checked out. All the more reasonable take away from him. What do you mean take away from you? You're such a jerk, Nastasia. That's like that would take it away from you.
I don't consider it like that. I enjoy having people on, and I enjoy talking to people. That's when you start mouth mouth uh see people, Nastasia. Nastasia just is one big pile of explain that evil feelings. It's a funny story.
Why can't we do it? Because because it also deals with somebody else. No, we never we never have to bring that part up ever. Look, I'm intrigued. So when you're talking, when someone's talking to you and you're really mentally nervous and you're or not nervous, uh nervous is not the right word, but like mentally excited, like your brain's churning really quickly, and the other person is saying something, and you've in your mind like anticipated everything that that person's gonna say, and you can't wait for them to stop saying it so you can say something else.
Even if you're listening to them and absorbing and enjoying what they're saying, it's like you like want the conversation to already be like three or four minutes ahead because you know what that person in your well, and also in your head, like the you know, in your head that like you've mapped out the whole conversation. Sometimes it changes, but I've seen this not just in me but in other people. Uh so it's this mouth puppeting where you're literally like, in order to stay focused on what they are saying instead of racing ahead, you literally mouth the words that they are saying as they are saying them. And so it's incredibly irritating to people when when you know anyone does it. So, like Nastasia's caught me doing it on several occasions.
And so she's supposed to do punch me right in the face. She's supposed to punch me right in the face when I do it. Right in the face. Right? Yes.
Anyway. Uh so but Nastasia just being like evil. I'm not being evil. No, no, no. See, that's the thing.
She has this idea that like I want people on, and then like I get mad somehow when they say something because she thinks I care about like my voice time, which is not the case. If I sat here and didn't just spew a continuous line of words, Nastasia would just sit there with a look on her face and say not one thing. Who said that? You know, it was you! You're just an evil person or it was.
Dave Chang did not say that. Dave Chang has never listened to this show even one time. Or it was at an event that you were all co-hosting. That's just you're just like, first of all, also Nastasia will take an offhand comment. Like, seriously, if this dude out here with a baseball hat that's eating a pizza right now came in, met us for the first time, and make a comment.
If it was to Nastasia's liking, she would bring it up for the next 15 years in defense of some crazy idea she has or the other. It's just a case. Okay. It's just true. Oh, now she's doing the okay.
I'm just, you know. Okay. Go home to mom. Go home to mom. Wow.
Wow. Wow. Just kidding. Wow. Jesus.
Anyway. So a little bit of sad news, but I'm not gonna do the sad part of it. My grandpa died uh over the weekend. He was almost 98. He was 97.
This is the one in Florida? Yeah. He was David Eugene Arnold the First, the first of the line. I'm the third and last in that in that line, because my wife was like, it's gotta stop somewhere. It's gonna stop with you.
So like I'm like, I'm David Eugene Arnold the third. Of course, my dad's number two. But um, yeah, so he was uh 90, uh he was 97, almost 98, and uh sharp, sharp up till the end. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see him. I just old age, he was in his sleep, he just died.
Uh he had been he'd he'd broken some um bones over the past year, and so he he no longer get around a lot, and so like once you're like lying in bed most of the time, like you it you know, you tend to degenerate fairly quickly. But you have to go to Florida? Um the funeral hasn't been I'm gonna have to go to Florida. But the um anyway, I didn't get to see him as much as I'd like in the past ten years or so. But it's one of my uh I'll share some food stories.
So my and I've said like a lot of these on air already, but you know, in in honor of him, I'll I'll say, you know, say them again. The um he he grew up uh in uh kind of Pennsylvania, and so his brother actually worked in a pretzel factory during the depression, and it was from like that branch of the family that you know all Arnold's true Arnolds love pretzels and hate fake pretzels, hate like non like hate pretzel sticks because they're not pretzel shaped, hate pretzels with added fat in them because they taste like crackers, they don't taste like pretzels. And so, like, you know, from him I've inherited kind of that kind of side of you know love of love of pretzels. But uh he also used to tell me stories about how he and his brother, who died at like the age of like uh 101, would like during the depression, like uh people in the neighborhood would cut open pumpkins and just ferment them. And one of my great food regrets is that uh something like 20 years ago when I went to visit him uh once, he was making uh dandelion wine and all these like weird wines that were like you know hearkening back to his youth.
And I was too stupid and snooty at the time, maybe it's 25 years ago, to like enjoy them, and so I was kind of a dick about them. And if I could only go back and like taste them with an open mind, I would be such a better human being than I am now. You should always take into account like the culinary heritage of your uh of your you know um of those who have come before you. But anyway, a couple more things about him. So he uh was a radar uh designer, and during uh before World War II was working for Westinghouse.
It was actually uh, I think running or on the design team that designed the famous uh radar at Pearl Harbor that was ignored by the military as the as the Japanese were coming in to attack. So his radar actually saw the wave of uh of uh planes coming in that was ignored. Interesting fact, but he kept on doing radar design over the years, and from that, I have several food-related stories. One, he would tell me about the people, and my dad I think also knew about this because he did some radar work, you know, when he was young, uh, just like his old man. Uh, how they would at Thanksgiving in the early warning uh in the early warning radar stations, uh, you know, way out up in the boons, they would put a turkey at the focus point of the um of the big uh radar dishes, the giant early warning radar dishes, and fry not fry, but you know, microwave turkeys with the giant radar dishes.
He also said that uh so the the thing that runs a radar is a magnetron, which is the same thing that runs a microwave oven. And the the the lore is that a Raytheon tech, uh, you know, the company Raytheon, a Raytheon Tech noticed that a candy bar in his pocket was melting when he was getting close to these microwaves, and that's how he kind came to think of the microwave oven as being a kind of good idea. Anyway, so the other story, and this is not food-related, that related to the microwaves, is that um is that the story, and this may not be true, but that uh so young soldiers used to fry like this flash fry their nads when they would go out at night as a way of like temporary birth control. But that's got to be apocryphal because who would do that? What lunatic would do that?
Uh what else? He um he was the one who I wanted to try years and years ago to convince to help me build a room-sized microwave, and he always refused to help me, just like my dad always refused to help me build lasers that were actually gonna damage people. Now you can buy them on eBay. Uh what more food. So he was the one that told me about the chicken gun.
Have I talked about the chicken gun on air before? Yes. Yeah, so I'll say again briefly. So in in the they used to use um a compressed air cannon to fire birds into windshields. This has been covered on Mythbusters, but he used to fire birds into windshields to test the windshields for impact resistance.
And I forget why Mythbusters cared about it, but the thing that always intrigued me, as I said before on the show, is that uh grandpa said that the uh the um janitor would come take the birds and cook them afterwards. And so I've actually built, I have it sitting in Connecticut, and once it warms up again, I'll start firing it again. I built a chicken gun so that I could fire uh last year I built it for that pilot that I never got used for anything. So I have a chicken gun. If anyone wants to like me to fire stuff out of the chicken gun, uh I'm pretty sure I can do whatever I want with the footage now.
We can fire stuff out of chicken guns and cook them to see what kind of nice tenderizing effect firing a bird out of a chicken has. Wow, is it the chicken sound effects? Uh you know, so there's that. When I was in grad school, I built a chicken gun based on a Delta 88 spring. That's a car for those of you that don't know old cars.
Uh it didn't work so well. Compressed air is really the way to go. Anyway, I now own a compressed air cannon. Um what else? Last but not least, almost every day, or not second to last, but not least, almost every day he would mix himself a drink that he called the Bonnie Prince Charlie, which he uh assured me was uh a kosher name for this drink.
It was actually uh a rusty nail, which is scotch and drambue. And if you want to, if you've never had drambue, drambue is a is a mixture, it's a scotch base with uh honey, they say heather honey, and some spices. Although in reality, what a rusty nail is, or as my grandpa called it, or Bonnie Prince Charlie, is essentially a scotch old fashioned. So you can whip yourself up some honey simple syrup if you don't want to go out and buy the drambuy and make yourself a scotch uh old fashioned. He had it built, he he always built built it on the rocks, and you can do that.
You could stir it down if you wanted a little more dilute. The standard recipe for uh rusty nail or Bonnie Prince Charlie as he called it, is three quarters of drambooey in an ounce and a half of scotch, which is preposterously sweet, especially if you're gonna drink it as an old fashioned, if you're not gonna stir it down. So I would shade that drambuy back or up to scotch or both. Uh and last but not least, he was the person who said to me uh in his mid to late 90s that if God wanted you to drink skim milk, he would have made it come out of the cow that way. Anyway, uh and so he lived to be.
I always thought he'd be a hundred stars, but he never made it to a hundred. I always assumed, like we always assumed, oh, we don't need to go down to Florida this year because he's obviously gonna make it to a hundred. I was wrong. You know, add it to another long list of the things that I'm wrong about. Um so do you do anything cool uh this weekend?
No. No? Nothing? Nothing good. You, Dave, anything?
Any food-related anything? Food related. No, not really. No? So I've been doing some interesting food-related stuff, which maybe if I have time I'll talk about later.
So uh person who listens on the radio, Nick Devlin in uh the UK has introduced me to the idea of this software, ComSol, which is a physics modeling program. So I've been doing some um, I've been doing some um modeling, some heat heat modeling on low temperature cooking. If we have some time later, I could talk about some of my preliminary um problems and results, because what I really need from the cooking issues crew, it meaning you guys who are listening, is uh so I have to write this book. Maybe I'll talk about it now really briefly. I have to write this book on low temperature uh cooking.
Now, the book is supposed to be specifically low temperature cooking for that's useful uh in in a in a home, right? So not like the crazy stuff that you know I was doing back uh at the French Culinary Institute, and not stuff where it's a billion steps to get a result. Like, you know, like my motto has typically been massive amounts of work for marginal amounts of improvement, right, Stas? Like that's my motto. Massive work, minimal improvement.
Improvement, but minimal compared to the amount of work I put in. And uh so this book has to not be that. So the mental theory of this book is going to be massive amounts of kind of thinking, research, thought, hemming and hawing at the outset, and then to use to make simplified recipes that people can do at home. And a lot of a lot of it is what is I'm gonna focus on things like kind of like party tricks, right? So like how to cook like your holiday roast or your um or like a crown roast of pork, things like this that really kind of you know have died out because they kind of suck traditional well that roast not, but like crown roast to pork, because they kind of they're never quite right.
You ever had one, Stas? Crown roast? You know what they look like though, they look awesome. You've seen them in 70s pictures, no? Maybe.
So you take the whole, like so. Imagine like a rack of lamb but pork, but Frenched out and then turned into a tube, so it's like a like a monarch's crown, and then you stuff it full of stuffing in the middle, and then you like roast that sucker up and you serve it, and like it's just it's a super baller 70s, I mean, and previous, but like you know, I remember it from the 70s, it was like a thing people did back when A, pork was a little fattier, and B, people were okay with things that were just cooked into oblivion. You know what I mean? So you'd have this thing, but the problem is is that remember when I used to do the whole fish? Yeah, fried whole fish.
So the problem with frying a fish, uh a whole thing, or frying anything that's bent, or cooking anything that's bent, is not only that it's large, and so you're gonna tend to overcook the stuff on the outside uh or undercook the stuff on the inside. The problem once something is bent is that you have very, very uh different um kind of thicknesses, so the outside gets overcooked way before the inside does, especially if there's like a lack of air circulation on the inside of let's say a crown roast, or at the bent part of like a whole fish. Let's say if you've bent a whole fish into a U-shape, which is something that I do a lot. So one of the great things about low temperature cooking is you can pre-cook the whole thing all the way through to a low temperature, right? And then you can let it cool down, and then you can roast it on high heat, and you're just looking for the color on the outside.
We call this like low temperature or sous-view for insurance purposes, and you can do something like a crown roast really easily and not worry that you're either gonna overcook or undercook the middle. It's great, right? Um problem is is that I've been trying to figure out exactly how to tell people to cool it down. Similarly, even if you're doing like the classic, like every every night low temperature that I do is like steak. Not every night, obviously, I don't have steak every night, but like that's my kind of usual like every day I'm gonna use a circulator meal is like steaks, right?
So with steaks, I always tell people, and I've said this before on the air a little bit, I tell people to, you know, cook the steak, whatever you're gonna do, 55 degrees, then let it cool down. Uh you know, I I've I actually force the circulator down to about 50 degrees so that when I sear it, it doesn't go too high in temperature. Now, the problem with this technique in general is that if you're gonna if you're gonna do it, you have to use relatively thick steaks, like inch and a quarter, inch and a half. Anything thinner than that, and even if you drop the temperature from let's say 55, which is what I cook to Celsius, you drop it down to let's say 50 Celsius, you're still gonna overcook the center if you um if i i if it's thinner than that. So already like you're kind of limited because you have to use these thicker meats if you want to do this kind of a technique.
So, I mean, in the past I've done techniques for smaller cuts of meat, uh where you low temp it and actually chill it down, keep it in the fridge, then bring it out and like flash fry it a couple of times or pan it a couple of times, and the inside comes up to temperature. The other problem with a thick steak, if you drop the whole thing down to five degrees, let's say to fifty, is that once you sear it, yeah, you haven't overcooked it, but the inside's a little cool and uh you've had it before, Stas when people do low temperature meats and like one of the issues is it's not warm enough on the on the on the plate, right? Because when you integrate the temperature across the whole thing. Anyway. So it turns out that fish we saw that was fried that was still alive?
Terrible. That's a gross. That's a separate story. We could talk about that. That's a classic preparation where you keep the animal's head alive and its gills alive, you wrap it in moist towels and then you fry its body so that its head's still alive while its body's cooked, which is probably the worst thing that's a good thing.
Sounds pretty cruel. What? In person. That's probably the worst thing I've seen in person. Yeah, all uh like let's let's forget the cruelty.
I also don't like the texture taste. Okay. Right? I mean, but in other words, like, no, no, no, look, I know. I'm just thinking straight up like I'm I don't mean to be like horrible about it, but like not only is it a h not only is it horrific, right?
Not only is it horrific, it doesn't even get a good It's not even like Yeah, what's the point even if it doesn't taste good? Yeah. There's a huge cultural difference though because like uh, you know, there's uh, you know, hundreds of millions uh of people who want their fish like crunchy like that. You know what I mean? Like what's the point of keeping it's just a trick?
It's just a party trick to show like freshness, right? It's just a party trick. Uh to play God. Yeah, it's like a party, it's like a cruelties party trick. I mean, look, um whatever.
It Yes. Sorry, I didn't mean to derail you at the end. So no, so like uh no, Nastasia's the one that brought up the Nastasia brother. So she was just thinking about that. Uh yeah.
Uh that w I first saw that when I was a kid on an on a uh episode of a show called That's Incredible. It was either that or Ripley's Believe It or Not, which was an 80s show. And in that one, it was a little bit different. They didn't fry it. What they did was they filleted it, left the body there, and then they replaced the fillets on the living body of it.
Also, and so you're sitting there and the gills are like, bep up, bit bub. You know what I mean? And the fish is like, what the f you know what I mean? Like, ah man. Oh my god.
Anyway, so back to the food. So here's the issue, I need your help with people. Um it turns out that the technically best way, so when you're cooking a piece of meat, uh the rate at which uh something heats up is dependent on the temperature delta, okay? So the difference in temperature. That's why like, you know, it takes a long, long time for the inside of a meat to get up the last couple of degrees, because once the meat's once the the main body of the meat has started heating up, you have very small temperature difference between, let's say, the part of the meat that's in the very center from the part of the meat that's that's right next to it.
And once the temperature difference is very small, the heating, the temperature increase rate goes down and down and down. So you're the rate at which temperature can increase in a piece of meat is related to the difference in temperature between the heat you're supplying and I mean uh between the temperature you know region that you're supplying heat from and the temperature region you're you're putting heat into. So um when you push a piece of meat down only five degrees, right? You're pushing it down and you haven't pushed it down that far. Then when you're searing it, you put a very high temperature delta onto it, right?
Uh, you know, the the surface of the meat's gonna get up very quickly to about a hundred degrees C. You know, it won't go above it until a crust forms, but that piece of meat there is gonna be about a hundred degrees C. So you're going, you've reduced the the inside of the hole inside of the meat by five degrees, but you're applying an X an excess of 50 degrees temperature delta to it, and that forces a pretty big temperature spike through the meat. So you have to chill the meat down quite a bit in order to have it not overcook when you're searing it. So the correct answer is to actually force a large negative temperature delta into it.
In other words, put the meat into cold water uh for a couple of minutes and then pull it out of the cold water and then sear it, and then it all averages out. The problem is is that it's technically, right? That sounds like technically more of a pain in the ass. If I have to pull out uh a piece of meat out of a circulator and then throw it into uh, you know, a pot of water in the sink with the cold water tap on drizzle and then time it for three minutes, then pull it out and then sear it, that seems like a huge pain in the ass, right, Nastasia? So the question I have in my mind is is that if this is the technically best way to do it, and it doesn't require thermometers or measuring anything, just requires timing, is that too much for people to do at home, or is that a reasonable step?
Is that still like something that people will be like, oh yeah, I'll go do that? Or is that like uh I'd rather just not do that? You know what I mean? Like that's the so I'm gonna have to run a bunch of tests, and I need some mental advice from people out there over what is considered reasonable steps for people to do on an everyday kind of uh cook. What do you think, Stas?
Yeah. No? I mean, also, like, you know, how do people want to fit it? Assuming that people aren't gonna go buy a sears all, uh, or even if they are, like, what's the best way? Like, do people have a problem with deep frying finish?
Do people not want to deep fry at home? Do people want to pan their stuff when they're finishing? Do people want to be able to oven finish this stuff? I gotta figure out what people want to do, because I have to separate out in my head what I would do from what I think other people want to do and then just provide them with the best protocol for what they want to do. Does that make sense to S anyways?
Because you're willing to do a lot. I'm willing to do a lot for something that's only a little bit better. You know what I mean? And and also like I have access to like I have access to stuff that most people don't have access to. So I'm gonna assume that just because I've organized my life that way.
You know like I'm assuming that in in warmer weather months people can finish on a grill. So then you know I'll have a lot of grill stuff in there. I'm assuming people are going to want to finish some stuff in an oven but you know panning because it makes so much smoke is kind of a pain in the butt and also uh deep frying although it's technically superior I just don't know what people are gonna say. We got we got Robert in the chat room saying sear using searzole or in a pan never fried. You well who said that Robert in the chat room.
Okay so what does Robert have against frying? Robert what do you have against frying? See the issue with frying is remember for meats that don't have a crust the only issue with frying is if you have uh once your fry oil becomes even a little bit degraded it leaves a uh kind of a uh a a fry taste on the outside but like nice not hyper fresh because then it doesn't have good uh properties but like oil that's in perfect condition has no kind of off flavors to it you deep fry like a rack of lamb like you do a rack of lamb and you deep fry it for about I don't know a minute and a half, uh two minutes, you deep fry that rack of lamb, and the crust is perfect all the way around. So nice. But then you have to, like, if you don't like it i if there, you know, you then you towel it, you paper towel it, then you can brush with you know butter or whatever else you want.
Same with steaks, like a good steak that's like deep fried all the way around, gets a perfect kind of crust all the way around it. But um if your oil is even a little bit bad, it's no good at all. Um anyways. Robert's listing his reasons. He says, uh it's messy.
What do I do with the oil? Dangerous, kids around, expensive, I'm lazy, wife won't go for it. Those are all good reasons. Fair. Do you remember uh do you remember when Lucy threatens uh Lionel in I think it was the the Peanuts the Christmas special when he's like why you know why should I listen to what you say?
And she goes, I'll give you five reasons and puts up her fist, and he goes, Those are good reasons. Yes, remember that? Love that. Dave Peter just said he got you a middle seat on your flight to El Paso. Is there anything you're doing in El Paso that you can tell people about?
I don't know what I'm doing in El Paso. I'm going to El Paso pretty soon. Uh middle seat, that's brutal. What? Middle seat, that's brutal.
Uh it's a it's a it's a a fun fact that anyone who works with me, any time anytime people want to send me somewhere, they like to put me in the middle seat in the back of the airplane on the seat that doesn't recline. You know that one seat on the airplane that doesn't recline? They like me to be in the middle in the back, and if they were able to, they would always organize it for rough weather flights. They they can't, but they always would if they could send me through a cell of thunderstorms. Why do you think that is?
Uh because people hate me. Like it turns out Nastasia once booked me on this. I still told the story before on the air, but Nastasia sent me on Spirit Airlines, right? When somebody else was paying. When somebody else was paying.
They're like, yeah, just book your flight, whatever you want. She could have flown me first class on like a real airline. Like, you know what I mean? It wouldn't have mattered. They wouldn't have blinked.
She spent she sent me Spirit back when, like, and I sat next to a woman who had a fake service dog that was like all over like I was like, what the hell? Like Spirit's the one where they'd know it was fake. Because she told me. Oh, she told you. She's like, you just say it's a service dog, and if they argue, you sue them.
I'm like, alright. And the dog didn't the dog run to take your seat. Dog, yeah. I was like, I was like, uh I was like, why am I here? Why does this exist?
And the only reason she did if Nastasia had been going with me on that trip, which she was supposed to, we would have had nice flights. We would have had nice flights. She's like, I don't know why. Oh, I don't know why I got that flight. Because you hate me.
No, that was a real dumb move. Oh. Okay. Anyway. Uh we have a question in from Gordon.
Uh I've heard Dave talk glowingly uh about squid-based Japanese fish sauce uh ishiri. Not that they're not all squid-based. Some of these shoes that are uh they're all from Ishikawa, uh, some are mackerel based, but the one that I happen to like is not just squid, but they use the squid bodies is the squid guts and the squid blood, and it's uh delicious. Anyway, uh I've heard him talk about it, a shiri many times on the podcast. I've been trying to find a way to buy it, and I am stumped.
Dave, is there any way for me to get my hands on this stuff? I'm a regular Joe consumer, not a restaurant or slash business in the US Seattle. Thanks. Okay. So um there is a store in that I have not tasted this one.
Uh, but there's a Japanese fish sauce. I don't know what it's made out of. It's not one that I've tried, but it's a Japanese style fish sauce. Uh that the Courti Brothers, uh C O R T I Brothers.com, they sell it. They call it uh Shaturu S-H-O-T-T-U-R-U, but I've never tried it, so I can't really say much about it.
I will say that the the company that used to bring in the two my two favorite Japanese fish sauces. The one is uh Ishiri, which is fantastic. Although I've tried some ashiries that I didn't like as much. So, you know, uh this particular one, I don't even know if they carry any more of they carry one that looks similar to it. Um and the other my other favorite fish sauce is is Ayu, uh Ay U, which is a Japanese freshwater fish, um, typically served like you know, grilled on skewers to look like it's swimming.
We had that when we were in Japan. Uh that fish sauce is incredibly delicious. Um it's Mutual Trading Company. Now, there's a New York Mutual Trading Company. There's they have branches all over the country.
There's a New York Mutual Trading Company that has a um that has a uh a showroom here in New York. I called them and they don't have stock on the IU and they don't have a PO in for it, and they're out of Ishiri now, and they're not gonna get it back in until April. However, the Los Angeles uh one, the Los Angeles Mutual Trading uh Company, they might have it. Uh, because I asked and and the woman said that they have entirely different systems, and so they might have it in stock. Uh so I would I didn't have a chance to call them um because I was on my way out and they were just opening as I was leaving the house, uh, you know, because I'm on New York time and they're in LA time.
So I would call Los Angeles Mutual Trading. Uh they have a showroom in Los Angeles, so they might be willing to send it to the showroom and then ship it to you from there. But just so you know, the IU fish sauce, which I highly, highly, highly recommend. Their uh stock number on that is 1604, and the Ashiri, which looks similar to the one that they used to carry, but might not be the exact brand. I mean, I can't read any kanji on it, is item number two zero three four zero uh on the mutual trading company.
But check the LA branch and they might ship it to Seattle out of their Los Angeles showroom. Anyway. Um you even you like those fish sauces, Nastasia. They tasted good. Yeah, they're good.
Um a question in from uh UM. I'm assuming that's UM and not um, right? Yeah. That'd be an amazing name. Um what's your name?
Um Towards the end of last week's cooking issues, uh what's two weeks ago now. Dave started talking about collagen and meat texture. I find this topic fascinating and would like to add my vote to have him speak more on the topic. I of course want to hear more about the new bar, seeing as Booker Dax was my favorite bar, and I felt dejected and alone since it closed. Uh thanks for the show, UM.
Well, uh the we're at the same place with that with the dang bar, figuring out a new place to open. I never thought I knew it was hard to find a space in New York City, in you know, in the in the area that I want to, but I didn't know kind of how hard it was gonna be. Like it's frustrating that you literally have people who are willing to pay for something and know space to put it into. It's so frustrating. New York is such a pain in the butt.
Maybe you should not look outside of East Village. Like where? I don't know. Like where? Like what neighborhood would you go to for a bar?
Only Hell's Kitchen. Oh, yeah. Like this is not a Hell's Kitchen kind of a bar. I know. Nastasia frequents a bar called the GAF.
The GAF. The GAF. Sounds like a college bar. You would be right. It is, except for there's no college students in that area.
So what it is is reaching recent college grads. Or really old ones that wish they were still in college. Wow, that's rough. It's not a finance pro bar, though, right? You used to.
I used to a lot. But it's not a finance pro bar. No, no. Just losers. Those are my favorite kind of bars.
Do you ever go to my you ever go to my old bar, the Holland? No. You gotta go to see I I want to know whether I I want to know whether it's still good. It's frightening to look into the Holland. Super frightening, but super friendly, at least it, you know, it was a decade ago when I used to go, decade and a half now.
Uh anyway, so we're looking we're looking for that. As for collagen, I mentioned it uh briefly, um, and I'm gonna mention it in uh in regards to another question that we have. But I'm uh I've been doing a lot of research on um muscle structure, texture, and taste for the upcoming book. And um it so and I think I mentioned this briefly on the air like a couple weeks ago, is that um everyone always says, Oh, the collagen in meat is what makes it tough, right? You've heard that a million times, Stas, right?
Yes. Yeah. But you know, it kind of if you don't think about it, you're thinking more about like connective tissue you can see, aren't you? Most of the time, Sas. Yeah.
But it's not that at all. It's like every muscle has uh three basic layers of connective tissue. They have the the silver skin, which goes around the whole muscle, and that you take off, right? Then they have the um connective tissue that goes around each individual muscle fiber, right? And both of those things are pretty constant.
The one because you take it off, and the other one because mu like different muscle fibers, the you know, the the uh the amount of uh connective tissue around the individual fibers varies but doesn't vary, and the cross links in it vary, but don't vary that much as much from muscle to muscle. What does vary quite a bit is that is the intermediate uh kind of connective tissue which is around what's called I don't know how it's pronounced but I'm gonna say the par uh paramycium right and so that's the individual bundles what paramycium now paramycium is the protozoan animal and paramycium like although I assume that because it's myofibral uh is the is the muscle thing I assume it's myo like myosin like muscle but it's like um so the paramycium is the is the connective tissue that goes around uh the bundles of muscle fibers and so when you cut across a piece of meat and you look at it and it looks like little columns you know I'm talking about styles right the grain uh it's the actual connective tissue that surrounds that uh grain and that connective tissue that collagen is extremely variant between different muscle types right and so you have very weak uh slash you know lower amounts of total um uh paramycial collagen in let's say a tender piece of meat versus a a non-tender uh you know piece of meat and so it's breaking down that collagen which is uh important and so part of what I'm gonna be looking at when I'm doing the book is um kind of different ways to mitigate the effect of um the uh paramycium's uh collagen on it and that's why I said before that while like a lot of people's studies on the effects of uh salting or of marination or of various different things um take into account uh some effects like for instance if you're doing studies for marination or salting on chicken breast chicken breast has a very different um structure for the you know the um the intramuscular connective tissue than does uh chuck meat and so what I want to look at is can and I've always been an advocate like I said a couple weeks ago for uh not salting meat uh if it's gonna be eaten a eaten like a steak and B cooked for a long time because of the firm texture but this might all get overridden because most of my tests all of my tests were on relatively tender cuts of meat and so what I want to look at is the effect of marination and salt penetration on meats that have very large amounts of um uh I don't know how you call collagen collagen in the paramycium because maybe if you break those down in the larger grain things you can actually have a larger effect on those pieces of meat than you would in something that has uh like a a finer structure of uh muscle bundles anyway so that's what I'm looking uh at in collagen uh right now but I have no results to report back but I better soon or my editor's gonna tear my freaking head off. I have to finish with all of my research soon. So I I'm doing these like parallel researches Nastasia on one on temperatures and techniques in terms of uh with my physics modeling and then on uh marination salting structure and collagen structure on the other so I'm working on those two kind of things simultaneously but they better in a couple of months end up in a book or I'm hosed. Hosed people hosed.
Also on the subject uh the people are asking me all questions about stuff I'm researching which is lucky. Eric writes it about grass fed beef I recently bought a quarter share of grass-fed beef from a local rancher. Should have bought it from Hearst Ranch grass-fed grass-fed beef abattoir. Unfortunately, it tastes very strongly of that gamey off flavor that grass-fed bees so often seems to have. Vegan face, Nastasi.
Have you ever made your vegan face? Oh my god. I I hate to go off on a tangent, but I love going off on tangent. You know this. So for some reason, uh I was I don't know why.
I think it was because of something that uh I saw on the news this morning. Uh you know, Morning Joe was on. He started talking about Lennon. I don't know why. And they say, so I I went on Wikipedia for a minute.
I did, you know, you know, every couple of years, you have to re-up yourself on knowledge that you used to have. So someone's like, Lennon. I'm like, okay, I've forgotten most of the stuff I know about Lennon. So I did a quick week Wikipedia on them. And for those of you that want to know what it's like, I forget her name.
I can't believe look it up, Nastasia. Lennon's wife. Lennon's wife. So Lennon's wife, I looked her up, and the face that this lady has in every single picture is Nastasia's standard face when she's looking at you. It's true.
Like, it's just her standard, not like her facial features, but just the look in the mouth and the eyes. Is if you want to know what it's like to have Nastasia sitting across the table while you're trying to explain something, or while you're trying to like figure out what's going on in life, that's the look. That's the look. What's her name? Nadesh uh Krupskaya.
Yeah? Yeah. Classic, right? Yeah. That look on her face, oh my god.
Like that's that one she's smiling, though. If you saw the picture that Nastassi was showing me and said that that that she's smiling, it's like there's one picture I saw of her with Lennon where she has like a pissed-off smile on her face, kind of. But like, like some of the pictures that she has, like that's it's like her suppressed vegan face, I think. Anyways. Hey Dave, actually, before we get to the question, you want to take a quick break?
Uh, sure, we'll take a quick break, come back with more cooking issues. Bob's Red Mill has been milling whole grains since 1978. When you mill whole grains, you get all three parts: the bran, the germ, and the endosperm. The bran, or the roughage, makes up about 14% of the whole grain. It's the outer skin of the edible kernel.
It contains large amounts of B vitamins, some protein, trace minerals, phytochemicals, but most importantly, dietary fiber. The germ is only about 2.5% of the kernel. It's actually the sprouting section of the seed, what's going to grow into a plant. It's usually separated during milling process because it contains most of the fat and therefore has a shorter shelf life. The endosperm is the main energy storage unit of the seed.
That's where the growing plant gets its energy before it can start photosynthesizing and making its own. It makes up a huge portion of the grain, about 83%. And it's the main source that's used for white flour. When you make white flour, you get rid of the germ and the bran and just have the white endosperm left. It contains almost all the carbohydrates.
It also contains protein and iron and some of the other B vitamins as well. It's kind of what you classically think of when you're thinking of flour. So all that's there when you're milling with whole grains, but when you mill with whole grains, you also get the bran, which is the kind of rough edge and gives that that's what gives that that kind of color to it. Also gives you extra fiber that uh helps you to be regular, and you also get the germ, which adds the fat and the flavor, which we all like from whole grains. Learn more at Bob's Redmill.com/slash podcast.
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For more information and to order yours now, visit Chef Steps.com slash J-O-U-L-E. Holy Stina, what a long break. Yeah, he's got a lot of opinions. What do you think of the word wheat germ? I think it's okay.
Because it's delicious, right? But like normally you would hate it. It's just you're you're you're okay with it just because weed germ happens to be good. Like I love adding wheat germ to to pancakes, muffins and all that stuff. Remember, I keep it in the fridge though, that stuff goes rancid.
Do you buy the big you don't buy it? Do you buy it? No, I don't buy it. I always have it. I use it a lot though.
If you're gonna if you're not gonna use it a lot, you should probably get the smaller container. Um I like that stuff. Uh oh, before I forget, uh Jeff over at Copperworks sent us to the show uh a couple weeks back. I took it home, so you know, Nastasia and Dave never got to try it. But uh Copperworks uh makes this um I think it's called uh it's their whiskey, it's all American malt.
It's like they they basically I looked them up on the and Jeff from there sent it. Uh I looked them up on the internet uh and uh I think this the story, and they'll hopefully you know correct me if I'm wrong, is they actually brew a good tasting beer. So not like uh like uh distiller's water or distiller's beer, like a good tasting like malt, like beverage, and then distill that uh and then age it. And uh so he sent us a bottle of that stuff, batch number two. Uh that stuff is delicious.
Stuff is delicious. I loved it, and uh my wife loved it, and so we s we were drinking it, and then I wanted to get a bottle from my stepfather because it was his birthday, and but it turns out that that they don't ship to uh they don't ship to New York. So how did we get it? So I gave I gave my stepfather the the bottle that we had drunk through through like a quarter of, and I was like, sorry, wamp wamp, but you're gonna like it. But I I'm gonna I'm gonna buy a bottle because you can anyone who lives around New York can get it, right?
You can you can online order it to ship to New Jersey, Connecticut, or uh or Pennsylvania, but whatever. What's going on, Stuart? Yeah, it's whatever. I'm not we're not gonna comment on people's outfits unless it's Santa's little hipster. Yeah, this isn't the Oscars.
Come on. Yeah. Oh my god. Anyway, so thanks so much, guys. Thanks, Jeff at Copperworks.
That you make a delicious product. Uh and not standard American whiskey tasting, which is what I like. Like they're not doing just another riff on a standard American product. You know what I mean? Yep.
It's like not just another bourbon or or uh, you know, it's it's good. Or a fake or a you know, another fake scotch or whatever. It's it's good. It's deli uh not that not that you peep other people are making fake scotch, it's not what I meant. You know what I mean?
I think it's a it's a it's an excellent product. Last Nazi is making that face again. Making that sh that shut up face, that uh Lenin's wife face. What's her name? Too hard to say.
Just say that you're like you're like half Russia Ukrainian. The only the only words you can say are like prostitute. That's the only way fake breasts. And and feminine hygiene products. Yes.
You know all the words for feminine hygiene products in Russian. Yes. And anyway, so um back to the question. Uh so I've uh if you remember back before the break, Eric, uh Eric with a K, by the way, uh, bought uh a quarter uh share of grass fed beef, and it has an off uh flavor that uh he's having a tough time getting rid of. So is there any treatment I can apply to the beef to eliminate or reduce that taste?
I've tried heavily seasoned recipes like chili, but still failed to mask the taste. I've got a freezer full of beef out here, so I'd love to be able to enjoy it. Can't wait for the spinz all. Eric. Um I need to know from you to fully answer this question is what muscle cuts you have um cooked and what what you have so far.
So the bad news is um the bad news is is that game flavors and off flavors in uh commercially raised meats. So typically uh they they vary animal to animal. So a particular animal like might have a much higher score for uh off flavor or gamey flavor than other animals. Uh that are raised in exactly the same way, in exactly the same uh pastures, and so it's really hard to kind of know. Now, I also need to know exactly what you mean by gamey, right?
So a lot of people what they associate gamey flavor with is kind of a a livery taste, right? And that livery taste is often associated, and the literature, by the way, if you've read it, which I don't recommend, because it's it's all over the place. Like, you know, no one seems to agree, and it it's complete it's very confusing, and there's also like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages on it, uh, because people uh care about it. But the only answer in terms of choosing meats is that you can't really know from grass-fed or not whether or not it's gonna have a gamey uh fl or a liver flavor, it's just animal, it's animal to animal. There are effects, right?
Like age of the animal, the older an animal is, the more likely it is to have a a liver flavor or an off-flavor or a game gamey flavor. Um certain diets can increase the range, but really you're you're kind of in a crab shoot animal to animal. But the good news, maybe for you, is that it also depends on the exact muscle you're using. So uh for instance, flat iron steak, which is a muscle in the chuck uh portion, the flat iron and chuck in general has a higher proportion of uh muscles that might have that defect, but a muscle, other muscles in the chuck might not have it. So you might have just been unlucky and cooked uh a couple of the muscles, for instance, the the flat iron, uh the infra infraspinatus that uh have a higher gamey livery off flavor than other muscles, and the rest of your muscles might be better.
Um I've had it happen also, although I don't think there's been a lot of study on it, but I don't know, eye of round, I've had that happen before. I don't know which muscles you have, what muscles you have left, uh, which ones you've already cooked. So knowledge of which muscles you used might a make you feel a little bit better about the muscles you have left. Uh like I don't know, or I don't know whether you're a uh cook the cook the cheaper ones first so you have the fancy ones for later, or if you're cooking the fancy ones now so you have the cheaper ones later. I just don't know, I don't know how you how you're doing.
Now once you know you're in this situation where you already have a cow that has a known kind of, and I'm assuming it's like livery gamey flavor, all that I don't know. See, the interesting thing about grass-fed animals is that you know how Stas, how everyone says, and I've mentioned this on the show too, that everyone says the flavor, I've said it millions of times, the flavor of the uh of the animal is in the fat, right? And so but what people think most of the time, at least me, is that they mean it's in the marbling, right? And so you're gonna have less meat flavor in a less marbled piece of meat, theoretically, right? Because it has less fat in it.
It turns out that the fat uh fat in quotes is very, very important, but uh it's a lot of the flavor isn't ha it doesn't have to do with l those kind of lipids that you see as marbling, but rather the lipids that are actually in the cell membranes of the individual cells, because those are the uh the the poofs, the polyunsaturated fas fatty acids that tend to give a lot of the flavor characteristics to a particular animal or not, right? And so um the you know the the the short story is is that yes, that those characteristic flavors can be different in grass-fed, and maybe you don't like those, but they're also variant depending on exactly what they were eating. So you can't just make a category categorical statement on grass-fed versus not. Now, as to your actual question, which I have not answered yet, how do I get rid of that? Uh the the short answer is I don't know.
But I'm wondering, and I started looking into it, but I haven't been able to run any tests. And if you have a lot of it, I would recommend um, you know, some some basic tests. I I would think that um if these are oxidation, um it it s some people seem to think that some of these reactions can be oxidation reactions. Um so perhaps an antioxidant might help. Perhaps uh you might be able to shift these aromas uh by shifting these things to a more acidic environment.
So actually cooking them or marinating them prior to cooking them in an acidic environment. Like a lot of game people, they recommend uh vinegar soaks and or buttermilk soaks, which are acidic. And so like if the if the you know the old uh wives' tales are to take gamey meats and to do an initial like leech uh of those flavors, either a lot of people do like a quick boil, but I think that's mainly to get rid of rotten parts uh or you know, overly developed parts. Um but like in acids, maybe an acid might help. So I'd look into that, although I don't really understand the mechanism of it.
That seems to be what people do over the years to try to mitigate the effect of gaminess. Um Nastasi's like, you've said enough, jerk. Um for one more quick one. One. One of us a lot, but oh man.
But I have I have Melissa who has a goat cheese question, which I'm interested in, but maybe I'll talk about that next time. She has a problem with goat cheeses because they uh they kind of harsh her palate. I don't have a problem with goat cheeses, I have a problem with other I'll do this one real quick. But then I have some egg questions I gotta get to too. Oh screw the eggs.
They're all my friends. Um, see how Nastasia treats her friends? You see it, people? Uh but I had a lot of good stuff to say about the eggs. Anyway, uh we'll do Melissa real quick.
Melissa from Hamilton, Ontario. Uh hello, uh Dave, Nastasia, and Dave. I enjoy foods of all sorts and generally do not have issues when it comes to trying new things. Goat cheese, however, is the main exception. No matter how hard I try, I can't help have a near visceral visceral reaction whenever I eat goat cheese.
Uh no matter uh the quality or supposed goat cheesiness. Not only does it taste awful, but it blows out my palate for an extended period of time. My question is do you have any idea why this is happening or what would be causing it? Thanks, love the show, Melissa from Hamilton, Ontario. Uh short answer, no, but I will say this.
Um people sometimes have um reactions to specific. I mean, the fact of the matter is is that there are things, uh, you know, many things, fatty acids, for instance, that are different in goat milk and than in other milks. And I'll relate to you a similar experience. And so I've I've come to recognize um specific things that affect my palate. So aged um full fat cheeses undergo uh lipid oxidation, and some of those lipid oxidation products, right, uh affect my palate like in a pretty hardcore way.
They make you we d does this happen to you, styles where like taste buds pop, you know what I mean? Like they'll hurt and like pop out. Yeah. So like uh aged full fat cheeses do that to my uh taste buds. I eat them anyway because they're incredibly delicious, but they literally blow out my palate, i.e., my taste buds pop out and like I'm in pain, but I but I eat it anyway.
And so, like, for me, if someone says, Is this a full fat cheese and an aged cheese or not? I can eat it and be like, that's full fat cheese. I know because I'm in pain. You know what I mean? If I'm eating it anyway.
So, like it's it's very possible that there is some sort of um product in there that you react to uh and you shouldn't be embarrassed. You know what? Like, I hate melon. You don't have to like goat cheese, right, Stas? Exactly.
Yeah. I mean, it's if you're generally, I tell my kids, I'm like, you're allowed to have like one or two things that you don't like, but the problem is is when they don't like everything, you know what I mean? And it sounds like you just don't like it. You know what I mean? That's cool.
Like if you if you don't like something, I I have, you know, I think everyone's problem with people not liking things is when they don't like it for mental reasons. You know what I mean? Is when you like the theory of something bothers you. But it doesn't sound like the theory of goat cheese bothers you. It sounds like actual goat cheese bothers you.
In which case, they're clear of that. What do you think, Dave? Uh, yeah, go with your gut. Yeah. All right.
So I had some questions on eggs, which I'm not going to get to, about like freshness of eggs and then why we refrigerate them versus uh not. And I had a huge rant I was going to go off onto on eggs that we don't have the time for it. Do we have even a little bit left? No, because I know eggs are like your thing. No, no, not for that, but Scott wrote in about his slushing machine.
Do I have time for a quick slushing machine question? No, I'm sorry, we're gonna look at that. All right, so Scott, next week I'll talk to you about uh bricks and uh slushy machine, but I'll give you a short short, I'll give you the short of it now on the way out. He had a question he didn't want to ruin his slushy machine. Uh you want your uh slushy cocktails if you want to do bar style and not like crappy daiquiri, which are only like 7% alcohol.
When I'm doing them, they're between 14 and 15% alcohol, uh, 85 grams per liter of sugar and 0.6 to 0.9 uh percent acidity. Boom, booya. Use those as a ratio. We'll talk more about it next time on cooking issues. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network.
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