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 chefsteps.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 every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Uh from Roberta's Pituia in Bushwick Brooklyn. We got a banner day today. Nastasia the Hammer Lopez is not sitting right next to me because she is delayed on the ever problematic L train, which was gonna cease to exist pretty soon. Yeah, yeah, we got Dave in the booth.
How are you doing, Dave? Good, how you doing? Yeah, what at uh are you s uh what do you know are you a p uh uh Easter person, Passover person, a nothing person? What are you? Well, as a matter of fact, I just celebrated Passover in LA, but I grew up an Easter person on the East Coast.
Yeah, well, anyway, then if you celebrate Passover, sorry to have you out during the Passover time working. You know what I mean? Yeah, I should go home. Yeah, I mean, like I wouldn't until after this show, but then right after this show, I would just hightail it out of here and just like, you know, peace, I'm out. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Um I need to drill in my house, Dave. Exactly two drills. I need two holes in the ceiling of my apartment, and there is a complete moratorium on any sort of drilling. Literally two holes, and I would have gotten it done before Passover, but I had lent someone my hammer drill.
And so like I had to wait, and now I have to wait. There's nothing more frustrating for someone like me than having to wait to drill two lousy freaking holes. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. Alright, so we got we got a banner day today.
Uh while we're waiting for Nastasia, I'll introduce the three countum three guests uh that we have. Uh I'll go first. First, I'll say we have the uh often present Peter Kim. Wow, wait a way to take me for granted, Dave. I feel very really special.
Peter, I'm really happy to see you. Thank you. Thank you. Peter. Somebody.
I'm in Peter too. Yeah, yeah. And uh Yes, thank you all very much. Thank you. And uh Peter Kim, channeling his uh days of being a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon has purposely turned off the air conditioner in this box so that we're roasting to death because he can take pretty much anything.
I also have a bunch of yucca cassava, because I'm working on making uh baton de manioc, you know, those sticks of uh cassava, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I am particularly camera needed. The thing about the those kinds of tubers really are like they're I mean, I cook with them, but they're disturbing looking, right? They look like something out of an alien movie.
I guess. Now I'm missing my man Bill Paxton and it's game over, right? Yeah, I think for a lot of people it just looks like food. Did you know Bill Paxton? I'm pretty sure I didn't look at the credits, was in the Terminator.
I did not realize this until you know Dax, my youngest, wanted to see the Terminator, and I was like, all right, you're ready. And uh I saw it at the beginning when Arnold Schwarzenegger comes down and is like, give me your clothes like that. One of those punks. Yeah, well, he's one of the punks. I was like, Oh my god.
Yeah, awesome, amazing. Also, uh, we have in the studio with us uh JW Rogers from El Paso, who took Peter and I to uh Juarez in El Paso a couple of weeks ago. Here we go, El Paso, Texas, shout out to the border. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Slim in some Sotal Sats.
Now listen, I don't want you guys calling in and asking him whether he's visited the old El Paso factory. Because like he has a rope. It's not because I think it's a bad question. I've asked him literally every time I've seen him. I was like, have you visited the old El Paso factory yet?
And no, he has not visited. He doesn't even know if that factory is in El Paso. My son, Dax, again, has become addicted to old El Paso taco sauce. I just can't get down with that. Fair enough, yeah.
It's cause it's not a nostalgic flavor for me, it just tastes like produced. Well, it's because you're from New York City. New York City! For any of you who remember that commercial, there's a bunch of cowboys sitting around, like, I don't know what they're eating, like beans and they're poop farting or whatever they're doing, like a la blazing saddles, and they say, Where's this here taco sauce mite? And they go, New York City, like that, and then they just like they don't want to.
It's time to switch to the concept. Yeah, yeah. But we also have here with a miraculous taste. Now, listen, people, when you're tasting today, no mouth noises into the microphone. People get very mad with the mouth noises into the microphone.
You might know him as at our cook quest uh on the Twitter. It's um and Instagram. And Instagram. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you prefer?
It's the same. Mostly Instagram, because uh, you know, Twitter's gone a little bit commercial and uh kind of what does that mean, commercial? I I just can't interact with it. Well, hold on. This is Rich, this is this is Rich Shi from Boston, engineer, friend of the museum.
Uh helped us a lot with the flavor exhibition, came in to help us a lot with menu development during the Chow exhibition, uh, and uh is otherwise known uh just to me actually as Captain Koji. So uh he's here with a bunch of uh he's been working, I don't know, what, three years? Yeah, yeah, a little under three years, probably about two and a half on Koji, but uh like kind of gone kind of uh Koji crazy. Like he'll put Koji on anything, like you know, like a mouse dies in the cupboard, he'll cover that some gun with Koji and see what happens to it. And so he's brought us uh a bunch of Koji um products, and uh so you know I think there's a good number of people, especially on this show, who are kind of hip to the hip to what Koji is.
But why don't you give us the 30 second on Koji? So Koji is uh basically a mold inoculated rice. Uh the mold, this very specific mold is called aspergillosporzi. Uh it's used to power uh uh sugar production as well as uh enzymatic activity to create amino acid. Oh, sorry, to create amino acids in uh uh with protein mediums.
Uh so kind of the world is your oyster in terms of what you can do with it, but primary uh ideas in terms of what's out there, um, primarily Japanese are sake, miso, and um you know, in terms of just in general soy sauce. Those are the primary known mediums. Yeah, it's also used on uh katsuchi, right? Yes. Yeah.
So but basically, if you're Japanese and you don't have uh aspergillas, you are hosed. You're just hosed. Yeah. You're ruined, ruined, destroyed. So why don't you give us the again the quick the 30 percent 30 second on like uh inoculation in general and what you do?
So in terms of inoculation, what you need to do is basic basically take a grain, uh turkey take it to a certain level that uh, for lack of a better term, uh is al dente, such that the mold will grow on the surface of the grain and then be able to proliferate. Not to be too sticky or wet because other uh microorganic organism will grow outside of that. And then if the grain isn't uh moist enough for the and soft enough for the uh aspergillus to penetrate, um it won't. And uh it'll just basically not grow and and uh sporulate and give you something that you don't desire. You're lucky that Nastasia's not here because you said sporulate, and that would like she would just like rip the microphones out and wobble it.
Like she hates the word spore. Imagine sporulate, that's the worst. Now, actually, we had a question uh a couple weeks ago on uh wild uh on wild kind of molding with uh Koji. You ever had or read about uh uh pathogenogenic aspargillus uh showing up on uh wild type fermentation of Koji? I've read some studies that say odds are that you're gonna get a regular, like healthy one.
I've read studies about it was years ago. Do you have any update to information on that? Yeah, I haven't really looked into it. Um I just feel like you know you can easily accessible it's easily accessible to buy spores that are specific to what you need. And in terms of the flavor conversion or whether it's focused on proteins or carbohydrates for sugars, I feel like it's so easy to just buy it.
Yeah, I mean, but they're you know, uh on the meat front, so many people have tried to um look every everything in life now, especially in fermentation world, uh in in any of these food worlds is a point of difference, and so everyone's trying to make their own products. So I know a lot of people have branched out in uh obviously in beer with different yeast strains or in um cured meats with different um you know bacterial and or you know, they're they're basically a shotgun. There's a bunch of different stuff, bacteria yeast and everything, strains for their fermentation in um sausages and whatnot, but you don't see that giant a difference in like different exact strains of of uh aspergillus for koji versus let's say oh yeast for beer. I I wouldn't imagine so. I think any of the other flavors that you get are from other micro no microorzy organisms doing their jobs.
Mostly what aspergillus in terms of what I've been investigating is uh the ability to create amino acids. And if you're just creating amino acids, you know, maybe some have different ways of creating enzymes for different proteins, but in terms of a difference in umami, I I don't know if you can parse that. Okay, cool. Uh so just buy your spores, people. Just buy them.
Yeah, or get a small package and generate your own. Yeah, all right. Generate your own. Well, you make it like like by the way, it's not just for rice anymore. You do every I don't know if you mentioned that because I was opening up the questions I have to answer later on, but you do you inoculate everything, like you inoculate like your family.
Yeah, um I uh so I brought some examples of things that uh um that I've actually applied koji to. But yeah, I mean uh in terms of you bring the koji koji cheese, that's what I heard. I should I should try some of the things. Yeah, so so I have the the Koji cheese, which is basically um what I'm calling a a miso method cheese, because I'm already taking finished koji uh and using and mixing it with ricotta and a little bit of salt, and basically you create a particular cheese-like substance that you can get on the order of the flavor in two months, due to the enzyme activity, and then uh but I'm looking at people, it looks like a praline. It looks like uh like a uh praline's uh uh multi-use term.
It looks like a chunk of brown, like cooked brown sugar, yeah. Like it might contain almonds or some or uh or pecans, but it uh oh by the way, JW, are you a pecan or a pecan? I'm a pecan. You're a pecan? Pecan.
He's from the south of Texas though. You're from the south. West uh, west, west Texas. All right. Just eat that sparingly, it's pretty concentrated like Parmesan.
So anyway, and it breaks up and it looks almost like uh like a cooked through like uh soda bread, but it's one color all the way through. And it's it's kind of it's nuggetized. It has a very it has more of a Romano nose than I would say uh Parmigiano nose. What do you think, guys? Maybe.
In between. I get some parmesan. I'm getting some parmesan. You don't get Romano? I get the smell of Romano, but I'm tasting some Parmesan.
Have you seen the movie Quirky Romano? See what it is. Oh, here goes my mouth noise, sorry. Hold up. Yeah, okay.
So Peter, what do you think? I mean it's incredible. Yeah, I'm trying to rem. So it has the protein breakdown flavor in it to me, honestly, is closer to like a Romano. Because to me, especially like uh the Romanos you get, like a Locatelli style Romano here in in the in the US, are kind of heavily enzyme.
They have a lot of breakdown, a lot of breakdown flavors, so I'm getting a lot a lot of breakdown flavors in it. What do you think? No? You think it's closer to a Parmigiano style finish than a Romano style finish? Closer to Romano.
Yeah. Yeah. So maybe the nose is more interesting. How long does this take? Uh three months, start to finish.
So only two months. And also uh for for those of you who work in restaurant kitchens, uh, it takes about two months in uh a reach-in or a walk-in. So you can do this under refrigeration conditions, safe, controlled, uh, in a way such that you know you don't have to worry about the environment fluxing. Um also I I've I've pretty much um put it in an environment where it's totally miso. Nice.
Um doesn't reach in sound dirty? What? Reach in sounds dirty, doesn't it? Well, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Kind of like reacharound. Yeah. Oh, bangles are there. I mean, it was all implicit. Rick?
Ridge. Rich, you were the new line stepper. Peter was our habitual line stepper. Yes. You were the new line stepper.
Hold on, let me give him the line stepping scepter. Here we are. Because usually Peter's the guy that, like, you know, once just one step too far. Like you take it up to the brink, such that if someone who doesn't already know. I like to leave a little to the imagination, though.
You know, yeah? Yeah. Alright. Okay, so what do we got next, boss? So uh since we're already talking about misos, uh, one of the things uh in terms of Al Paso, a buddy of mine who works uh at Commonwealth uh restaurant in Cambridge, shout out uh my buddy Nico uh Muratory that I've been working with for a very long time on projects.
Uh we dropped a whole bunch of koji into the kitchen, we started experimenting, and I said you can pretty much add any protein to Koji and create a delicious miso. So he pulled out this re-fried bean can of refried beans. There we go. And we made re-fried bean miso. What brand was it?
Was it Goya? No, it was El Paso. Oh yeah, yeah, the segue right there. So uh I also had I love how JW brings out the accent. So I have some of that.
Um, but I added so we did it, we added to uh we had it on a um a dinner we did over the course of a few days on a workshop dinner tour of Koji. Uh so we added some apple butter to make it kind of like a hoysen sauce. Uh next to it, we have a uh basically a full-out whey uh whey protein powder with a little bit of water and koji and salt to create a crazy umami bombed uh processed cheese. And then on a lark, even though I'm I'm big on proteins, I took avocado and I made a miso with it. Uh and it tastes pretty cool, even though it doesn't have a whole lot of protein, it's got a pretty crazy flavor and texture.
So pass this around. We'll do straw on it so that we don't make mouth noises with the crackers, and then during the break, we can take bigger uh chunks with with uh crackers. So hold on a sec, you guys talk for a second while I taste here. Good job talking. So um so I found all this stuff in terms of if you're looking to create misos uh short term, you know, on the course of a couple months, uh, what you look at is if you have some sort of animal protein, it seems like uh in terms of the enzyme enzymatic action, it it occurs much faster.
Uh so if we're talking about uh meats, you know, in terms of what's uh the folks of NOMA had been doing for a while, making you know fish sauces and meat sauces. Uh but dairy was one of those discoveries I came upon, you know, a couple years ago when I was first playing around, thinking about what has protein, what has you know a minimal amount of fat. I actually just the easiest way that I found to originally track it was I would just look at nutritional facts and match it against soybeans. Yeah. And then I just went on a lark and just went crazy and started adding everything.
I did I've done bacon, I've done butter. How is bacon? Uh it's actually crazy. Actually, added umami, um, it's not right. Umami overload.
Yeah, it's umami overload. Yeah, I mean you could add it to a stock or you know, to mount a sauce or something. Yeah. What about what are what other other failed misos? That's my nice.
So uh if you take butter, because it's pretty much full out fat and you leave it out really hot in under normal like miso uh fermentation conditions. Uh because the uh because uh uh Koji actually creates uh uh enzymes to break lip ases is to break down fats, you get rhinocery anxiety pretty easily. Well, so like breakdown fats, fat breakdown products in cheeses, I can always tell a full fat cheese its age because those uh lipid breakdown products like make my my taste buds pop like little mushrooms. I can always tell. Hold on a second.
Nastasia the hammer Lopez has has uh graced us. Yeah, you saved your seat. Thank you. That's pretty nice. Uh Peter tried to get JW to sit there so that you would yell at him, and I was like, you know, Peter, why would you enjoy somebody else's pain so much?
It's not it's not accurate. Well, I'm just taking a page from the Stasbook. Yeah, yeah. All right, so Stella, you can go back and taste the uh the other stuff uh in a second. So what else was what about this uh cheddar block?
Tell me about your uh supermarket cheddar block. So supermarket cheddar block, uh basically I took some super because um a good friend of mine uh named Jeremy Umansky has been uh experimenting a lot with curing meats and aging meats with uh growing aspergillus uh with a rice flour pack uh under the same conditions you would grow um aspergillus on a grain uh to create this uh basically this enzyme pack such that you can cure um meats faster and create aging flavors really fast. Uh so on the order of you know a third less time that you would normally uh hang to dry. Uh so what I did in in terms of seeing what he was doing is because I was on this cheesecake, I just took some supermarket cheddar and I did this this um you know Koji Kin aspergillus pack on the outside. And basically when you do that, it just has this enzymatic action, but uh not so much in adding flavor to this particular piece of cheese, but it kind of petrified it.
So it has this interesting drying effect through the through the enzyme activity that I don't quite understand. So maybe if we have some scientists out there, that would be really helpful to to try to understand this. Now, Peter, you tried this before, so when you try it, you can tell me what's going on, right? Yeah, of course. All right.
Yeah, so uh in terms of uh one of the investigations that I was thinking about, because um there's a lot of you know, talk about whether you should do the um koji growing on the on the surface of the meat, or you should pack koji on the outside. So I just kind of went on a lark and decided because I had some brazolo I was working on, um, to basically put a how are you actually supposed to say it, Dave? Uh you say it. You're the you're the Italian Brasola. Like I don't know, but like but oh no, the way we say it, no, it's different.
Like, so when I say like Boston style, are you from Boston, Rich, or just went there because of school? Just uh went there because of school, but um well actually I I went to school in Amherst, but I like like but that's different. That's the different hands. That's the bracciole. That's like brajol.
Like you know what I mean? Like you gotta say it like it's in the s it's in the it's in the gravy. You you roll up the the pork and you put it in the gravy and you get brajol. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah.
Anyway, Brazil, go ahead. So what do you got here? So uh so I just decided so I figured, you know, instead of growing the um the particular aspergerless orzai on the surface with the rice pack, I would just take some finished koji, mix it in with a little bit of salt, like three percent salt to ensure that other microbes wouldn't come into play. And I packed it around a brazola, and then uh and then I cared it. So uh it only took 12 days to get to the final uh it actually got over the 30 percent, it got to 33%.
And it creates this interesting um it's a lot moister than uh traditional uh air cured brazola. It's good too. What's the spices you put on that? Uh I just put a curry spice in the koji pack. You're a weird dude.
Cur curry curry curry dried beef. I like that. Yeah, I like the curry though. What do you guys think about the curry? Like it a lot.
Curry brizoli. You know he made um uh miso fortune cookies with our Fortune cooking machine as well. Yeah, I didn't get to have one yet, huh? It's actually Koji Chong. Oh, Koji Chong.
Sorry, sorry, yeah. Because we had it, yeah. Peter, don't give us your alternate translation, alright? Because Peter's got inappropriate alternate translations for anything. Oh, right.
Yeah, I know. Yep, you all know what go to means in uh Korean. Yeah, yeah, I know. I've been told that like you use a slightly different version of the word when you mean the slang word that you're talking about. Yeah.
But I don't know. Well, just let that work. What might what might never mind, never mind. All right, all right, all right. I gotta get to some questions.
Let's let's do this here. By the way, call in your freaking koji questions now, like technical questions on how to use koji. Why do you have beats here? Why beats? Can you spray it with extra Jasmine?
Yeah, no. No, uh basically, so I was, you know. Stan's just giving you the beat eye with this. You're not too. I don't like beats.
No, I like beats. It's just I like a particular kind of beat. Right. First of all, you're like, Well, that was a Patrick Martin thing for a second there. Yeah, so you should love beets.
You should be swimming in beet juice on a constant basis. I had a lot of beats growing up. Yeah. So uh And you just hated them? No, okay.
So I can deal with uh thin sliced, like so pretty chill gap beats, right? I can deal with that. I can deal with fully cooked beats. Yeah. It's that in-betweener.
Also, I really love par dehydrated beats. Um love par dehydrated beats. It's those in betweener beats where like you get a giant chunk of beat and it's like not cooked and it's not not cooked, and then somehow they manage to cook the dirt flavor into the beat instead of getting the. Like here we get three big baseballs of beats as a ditch. I can't I can't plow my way through a baseball of beat.
Yeah. But like beat in chunks I can deal with. What are your guys' thoughts on on baseballs of beats? I was actually just exposed to beats when I came up to New York at Lupa, and I had to cook about like 60 pounds a week of beats. And so I had a lot of baseball beat experience.
To be honest, I I am a I'm a baseball beat fan. Yeah? So you would just pick up like a beat that's crap's running down your arm, ruining your whites, and you take a big old shawl, your teeth are all stained, running down the sides of your mouth, and uh you're like, yeah, I'm down. That's what I should know. Rich Rich, we had that uh salt baked beats at uh what was it called?
Eggar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds good. One of my one of my earliest uh memories, a nightmare memories, is that we did a salt-cooked fish. My mom decided to do it, and the salt crust collapsed, and we couldn't get all the salt off the fish.
And so it was more like death. Yeah, and like my mom, who's a fantastic cook and a pediatric cardiologist, like world-renowned for starting the transplant program at Columbia, the first pediatric heart transplant ever, and the only thing that my stepfather gives her constantly reminds her of is that one freaking fish with the fish. So she saved lives, but saves so many lives. Like, literally so many lives that no one no one else would have transplanted these kids, and and yet that's what that's what she's gonna be remembered for, that one fish. Uh so what do we got with the beats?
And so yeah. So it's a better zuke preparation. Uh traditionally, it's done with uh daikon. So I just took the recipe straight out of um the book of Miso. Uh shirt leaf, call out, shout out to shirtleaf.
Yeah, it's my goal to bring that back into publication. I told it's not in publication? No. I told you I called him on the phone and he picked up and insulted me. What?
I saw I was like, listen, this is a long time ago. And he literally picked up the phone. I was like, okay. Because like I thought I was gonna get like, you know, somebody somebody dot peon at soy organization. Yeah, so whatever.
And he picks up and I was like, um, have you had I was trying to do alternate tofus. Sure. And this was way, way before. My band name. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is like long, long time ago. And I was like, Can you make it with Enamame? And he almost like, if he could have like choked me with peace through the phone, he would have like choked me out with peace. He's like, that is such a waste of edamame. Why would you try to make tofu out of that mom?
And I was like, my people have a lot of money. It's not about saving the world through protein. It's just about food. You know what I mean? I was asking trying to ask him about alternate things.
He was just like, look, soybeans are for tofu. Edamame is for eating. Boop. That's it. You know what I mean?
He was not having it. He so shortleaf, the guy who wrote the book of tofu and the book of Miso, we've talked about it many times on the air. And his wife, whose name I can never pronounce, which is why I never say her name. Yeah. Uh I feel you on that one.
Yeah, yeah. And so uh which I feel bad. Like I would give her like the credit she is due if I could pronounce her name or and because I can't pronounce her name, I can't remember it, which is a freaking nightmare. It's horrifying. I should like anyway, whatever.
And she didn't pick up the phone. If she had picked up the phone, I would have made the you know the conscious effort to uh remember. Anyway, that's not the point. The point is is that he wanted to save they wanted to save the earth through um uh protein. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Didn't work so much though. I think they should have I mean, if people knew what umami bombs were back then, then it would have been a totally different story. Yeah, so the two of them wrote two books, uh the Book of Tofu, the Book of Me Miso, please do not buy there is a pocket version that's reasonable, and then there's a pocket version that's mutilated. Please get when you're getting it, make sure you get the full-on edition.
When they hacked up uh one of one or two, I forget I've seen several editions of their books that have been hacked up in such a way that they don't flow well and they're kind of unreadable. If you can get the large format one, they're the they're the easiest on the eyes and the best to read. Rich, agree? Yeah, can't say I own four copies. What's her last name?
I don't know. Not shirtleaf. Okay. Uh anyway. So on those pickles, basically, I took I took that technique.
Uh you you just make a slurry out of uh co koji you've made or koji you've bought. You add cooked rice and a little bit of sake and salt, and then you have this pickling slurry and you let it ferment out for about a week. And then you just add um you add typically root vegetables to it because they can hand kind of handle the the uh the environment and hold up. Uh and then I've just found it to be delicious. The other crunchy, they are crunchy.
Is that bad or good? Well, in my normal realm, that's not so good. But I'm remembering now I'm thinking of them now more as sucamono as pickles, and so I can uh it's good. It's good. Nastasha does not like them at all.
What's the face? What is the face? That's the most polite I've ever seen Nastasia be in her life. A look of horror with it fine. No, but listen.
Must document. Nastasia, Nastasia, like you need to rearrange your your mind. Like you and I have an idea of what something's supposed to be. So just rearrange your mind. This is now a soup, we're now in Tsukimono land.
We're not in like Western Beetville. One thing I will say is that um I can taste starch more in this beat than I normally can taste in beets. I wonder why that's the case. So like when you eat an apple that has some residual starch, it's got a note, and usually in an undercooked beet or non cooked. I guess it's non cooked, it's not undercooked, or it is a cooked.
It's park. It's raw. It's raw oh yeah. So yeah, okay, so that's why. I'm not used to having a raw beat of this texture, so I get a little bit of that starch note, which the lovers of pea shoots will love.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of those beets. Yeah. Are you a lover of pea shoots? I do like pea shoots. Why?
Just messing with you. You're allowed to like whatever you want. Alright, also let's get some questions before we have to go to break. And then we'll talk more about uh Koji, but if I don't get to some of these questions, Nastasia is gonna be see when I get off the air, Nastasia's just gonna be like, you didn't answer any of those damn questions. Because it's like three weeks behind, right?
Uh yes. Details. But I'm gonna handle one from the uh this week uh because it needs a bunch of people talking about it. All right, wait a minute. Let's do that.
Let's do that and then take the break, huh? Alright, uh, Rich, you got a couple more things for us to taste we'll talk about after the break? Yeah, we'll we'll do it after break. Okay. Andrew from Los Angeles writes in regarding toast.
Greetings, Dave, the hammer and family. I consider myself a knowledgeable amateur cook and I'm comfortable with a variety of techniques and cuisines. I say this first because my question is super basic. How do you make toast? Lately I feel like my toast game is lacking.
The bread doesn't get crunchy enough unless it's buoyed. I've had some pretty delicious toast out at various breakfast spots, but it can't seem to replicate that at home. I know enough to avoid sogifying the toast by say putting on a plate directly after toasting. Oh my god, even thinking about that freaking toast steaming itself on a plate is making me angry. Uh it's just making me virulently angry right now.
But I could use some more pro wisdom. Should I look into a new toaster? I don't know. You didn't tell me what kind of toaster you're using. How do I know?
I don't know what you have. Uh although the toaster does make a huge difference. Um if I'm not getting the uh should I look into a new toaster if I'm not getting the desired outcome? Toaster oven versus standard slotted toaster, uh, you know, etc. Is this entirely about the brand of bread?
Uh do I have to be a crazy person and leave sliced bread on the counter every night to get it appropriately stale? Any and all thoughts would be appreciated. Love the show, Andrew from Los Angeles. First of all, you should go and read. Oh my god, what's uh so the wife name is Matt.
What's his name? John Thorne had a book, several books. They write in Maine. I think it's um I forget, they have a bunch of books. Look them up.
One of them has an essay on toast that's quite good. Um, but I can't remember the name of uh which one it is. They have I can't even remember the name of any of their books now, but it's all like pig, fire, stuff like this. But like what like one has an essay on toast, which is definitely worth the read. Toast is an underappreciated uh uh product, and the the there is no one toast.
It's not like Highlander where there can be only one. There are multiple toasts. And so the question is, what are you looking for in a slice of toast? And I would say that the average American in a s in a slice of toast wants a crispy but not burnt exterior, but a sil still soft interior. Am I right?
Yeah, I'll agree with that. Yeah. Whereas there are uh a host of people when they say toast, they want something basically fully meldified, like a uh you know, crunchy throughout, a desiccated rusk, right? Now, uh so and a lot of this has to do with the with the toasting rate. And I'll say it again, and I've said it a billion times on the air.
This is all about the miracle of moisture management, right? Toast is all a moisture management technique. So uh there is a huge difference in quality between different toasters, that's for sure, right? Uh on evenness, on um on everything on the on the programming. You can in general get decent toast out of any uh any toaster you desire, but in general, if your toast isn't coming out of the way you want it, I would do two toastings on a particular I would do two light toastings with a rest in between rather than a single long toasting to the desired color.
That's gonna give you a little more dehydration on the outside of the bread, and after the very first toasting, when it comes out, you'll flash some of the moisture off and ruin the kind of based initial, very blonde crust that you produced. And then when you put it in for the second time, you're gonna develop a little more of a durable crust on the outside, but you won't have dehydrated it all the all the way through. If you want a very dehydrated internal with a very, very long-lasting crust for let's say you're gonna put something on top like Bosquetta or something like this, then I would say multiple low uh passes or just throw it in the freaking oven at uh a low baking temperature with air circulation. The other thing is as soon as the toaster turns off, open the toaster oven. Uh if you're using an oven, open the toaster oven, let the steam come out.
When you look at your toaster oven, JW, do you not see that freaking condensation on the inside of the toaster oven? Yeah, yeah, I see it. And does that not cause your heart pain? It does, it does it causes a little little tinkle. Right, right.
So, first thing I would say is let's say you're using a toaster oven. I would do a you know a relatively short toast, then I would open it and let it flash off, wait a couple minutes, toast it one more time, light, and you should get a good quality uh toast. That's the answer. On a pop-up toaster, I don't really think I mean maybe moving it slightly because uh if your toaster is particularly crappy, you'll notice that uh it puts banding on your toast and not just banding on where the grates are, but you can literally see the heating elements running along your toast. This is an indication that your toast is probably that it's not uh an even enough um kind of heat.
Perhaps the reflector on the bottom of your thing is is uh very dirty, you're not getting a lot of uh radiate heat back up, or there's a number of reasons, but you know, if you need to move it to even it out, you can do that too, or just get a higher quality toaster oven. Anyone else agree or disagree on my toast technology? Anything further to add on toasting? It sounds like a pain in the ass to get some good toast. It's super easy.
Look, it's the i i i this is like everything else. This is like my new book. If you don't if you're if you're not into this, then just don't buy the new book. It's thinking a lot ahead of time, but making your life easy. Like, in other words, like you're putting your toast in and you're hitting it and you're hitting go and you're walking away and coming back and it's done.
All I'm advocating is that in between that you like turn it off, let it flash off for like you know, 30, 40 seconds, let it cool down a little bit, then run it through another toast cycle. That's all. So are you saying toaster oven's the way to go over a pop-up toaster? No, I think you could do the same thing in a pop-up toaster. A pop-up toaster shoots the toast up and allows pretty good airflow.
So like I would just set your pop-up toaster to a like a lower level than you normally would, and then just let it pop, hit it again, let it pop, and go. And then it's just dialing in how long those short segments are. But you're gonna get a better toast. Look, if you want crappy toast, that's up to you. Well, I'm kind of in a mix right here because I I have my grandmother's toaster, and so it's sentimental, but it's fundamentally produces crappy toast.
So what style of toaster? Toastmaster. Toast but it's pop-up? Pop-up from like 1976 or something like that? Uh yeah, you might like do so.
If it's pop-up, is it like what's bad about the toast? It does like so the knob doesn't really work, so you don't really know how you're gonna if you're gonna overdarken it or if you're gonna lightly darken it. You need to keep that knob in one freaking position. You need to dial that sucker in and then like let her go. Well, Paso's more of a tortilla game, so we never really kind of jumped into it.
You put tortillas in a pop-up toaster? No, no, but I I don't really that's why I guess I don't know the art of toast per se, and haven't really paid attention to the quality of the toast. And so I don't know. Yeah, also I like crappy American bread for toast. I do.
For a sandwich. Uh for a sandwich. Here's something else I would say. I I'm gonna make a small pitch here, uh large pitch, actually. If you're getting a new toaster, one of the advantages of a toaster oven is the bagel setting.
And the bagel setting is the best thing to happen to toasters since toasting. Because there are many things on earth, a bagel is not one of them because I don't toast bagels, but uh, there are many things on earth where you want toasting on the one side only. You guys agree with me on this? Yeah. A hamburger bun, I don't want the part touching my hands to be toasted.
I want the part touching the mayonnaise and or the burger. I want that to be toasted. Prevent sogginess too. Yeah, right. That's functional and delicious, but I want I want the top of my sesame seed bun to be a bun and not a piece of toast.
Uh and there are. Unless you get a patty melt. Fluffy. Uh I would always get a patty melt. If someone says, would you have what like would you have a patty melt?
I pretty much they can just stop. They can just stop. Would you like a patty melt? And as soon as they say the word or I'm like, I'm done, because that's what I want. Patty melt is like God's like what God would do to a burger.
That's why it's not even a hamburger in my mind. It's like it's another category of awesome. Like I love the patty melt. But uh anyway, patty melt, obviously, you don't. That's an interesting question.
Would you pre-toast, would you pre-toast the inside of a patty melt? I don't, do I? No. You want to take a break and think about it? Is that a hint?
Yeah, okay, we'll come right back with more questions on cooking issues. Bob's Red Mill has been milling whole grain since 1978. One of the nice things about Bob's Red Mill is it's the only that I know of, national supplier that's easily available for lots of interesting, hard to get grains and other seed products. So, you know, before Bob's Red Mill became widely available, you couldn't go get something like quinoa very easily, or you couldn't go get spelt easily in small quantities. But now you go to any one of the huge number of stores that carry Bob's Red Mill, and you can get smaller amounts of these really interesting fun things to play with.
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You know you'll get great results, so you can focus on sides and sauces, or just pour yourself a cocktail and chill until you're ready for a delicious dinner. For more information and to order yours now, visit ChefSteps.com/slash J O U L E. And we're back. Uh, we didn't answer Javier about his equipment question, did we, Nastasia? No, we didn't.
Okay. I hope you're doing well. I wanted to send a question for the uh show, but don't have the address. Well, apparently you found it. Okay.
Uh I'm looking at expanding the equipment for my kitchen. I live in a small apartment, so I don't have too much space to put many appliances, and I wanted to get a suggestion on what I should get next. I currently own uh a Nova immersion circulator. Unfortunately, it's not a jewel, I guess because you know, we had Jewel is the sponsor of our program. We had Chris on what, two weeks ago?
Uh a Vitamix, uh Kitchen Aid, a copycat EC Whipper, and a pre-order the spins all. Thank you. You have everything you need then, baby. Um I was looking at a vacuum chamber machine, the RE Vacmaster 215. Rich, you ever use that one?
Nope. No, I know JW hasn't because he's got the fancy uh fancy menu pack. Uh but I don't know if I should go for it. Another machine like it or a different type of equipment. Any suggestions?
I would only use it at home, so I'm debating whether I should shell out $500 plus for a machine like that. Thanks for your help. Best Javier. So uh Javier. So here's my issue.
I've never used that. All these years later, I've what? Javier. Javier. Javier, whatever, man.
So I was going French. Anyway. Weak. I'm known weak sauce. I'm the sauce that is weak.
Um so uh my point is this. Uh I've never used that machine. Uh I should probably, since I'm doing this book that has Souvine on it, just bite the bullet and buy or steal one or find someone that has one and use it. Uh now I'm gonna actually go French. Hervé, Chef Hervé Malavere from uh the uh French culinary, well, the ICC, formerly the French Culinary Institute.
He seems to like it, but I've never used it, and uh and I will never I can't ever, won't ever recommend a piece of equipment that I haven't used. Um just because that would be stupid on my part. Um but uh you know, like what you I don't know the ultimate vacuum it can produce. Really, for a vacuum vacuum machine at home is super handy. Most things you can do without a vacuum machine, but I gotta be honest, when like I'm doing chicken marination or any kind of marination, I throw crap in the vacuum machine because it just makes the marination happen faster.
It just does like vacpacking the stuff down. Uh and for infusions and when you're packing stuff to freeze, you want to get all the oxygen out. So vacpacking for freezing is like a really smart idea to maintain quality on long frozen items. Um you can get away with a zippy, but but vacuuming is generally a lot better. I um I only like chamber machines.
I think that this the one you're talking about, I can't remember whether it has a chamber or whether it's uh like a chamber like one or something like this, but I really only recommend chamber machines. Uh I will say this Mini Pack, which is the company who uh makes the unit that I use, uh, and that JW, you're a mini pack, not not multivac, right? Yeah, you know why to get mini pack is because they care about cooks, whereas multivac could give a rat's behind about you. They don't care about you or your problems. Not at all.
Uh I want a mini pack. You want a mini pack? We don't want a mini pack, but they're coming out with a they're coming out with a new uh home unit called uh like the cube in the next six months or so. And so I'm waiting when when that comes out. Unfortunately, I don't think it'll be out in time for my book uh to be in it, but I'm I'm having high hopes for it.
It's relatively small unit, it will allow uh for chamber and for external uh vacuum, but I can't comment on it because they're not using see all the good vacuum machines use what's called a bush pump or equivalent, it's an oil-based vacuum pump, and they just kick so much behind. That's why like uh food savers are you know relatively useless for that sort of stuff because they have those little piston pumps that are like and then like they get they get jammed with uh you know what no one's ever done that I know of? Here's a trick for you uh food saver people. Uh has anyone ever mod modified a food saver for a wolf jar? You know what a wolf jar is?
No. So a wolf jar is vacuum in and vacuum out all from the top, and it collects liquids in the bottom. So like I could imagine modifying a food saver with one of their smaller because it takes a long time to evacuate those things with that crappy little pump. But you could probably handle liquids uh oh no, but you can't because you gotta put the freaking seal bar. Someday I'll just make my own like like uh DIY, I'll just make like a $100 DIY like that.
Not not for production because people already are in that business, but I mean, just like uh, you know, you have access to like a fun fundamental wood shop or a 3D printer, here's a vac machine. Yeah, because you can't wolf jar that sucker, son of a gun. I don't know. Anyway, it would be good if you could. Then you wouldn't need a chamber as much.
But I would I would wait for a chamber machine. What do you think? I agree. Yeah? JW, how do you like your new chamber machine?
I love it. I love it. Okay. I'm still practicing on it a lot, though. Froggy, why don't you take a glass of water?
No, no, no, no, no. Working, working. All right, hold on. Yeah, okay. So listen, hey, I was doing that on the plane, annoying the hell out of people on the plane, but what about that guy that got drugged off the United Airlines?
Like wow and the airline, it's like, what do you mean? What's the problem? I was like, it's like uh it's like once you're seated, that's it. My butt's in the seat. Yeah, you know what I mean?
You got a lot of stones to try and take me out of my seat. You know what I mean? Would you rather have them step over you? I would I would rather them put that crew on another immediate flight or just break. Look, you messed up.
Put them in the cockpit in the jump seat. Like have them stay in the freaking restroom. You just keep upping what you're offering until somebody but somebody's going to at some point. Yeah. Yeah.
They're like, oh, we can't up it that much. Yes, you can. 30 free flights. Get off my freaking plane. Exactly.
You know what I mean? It's like a lot cheaper than what they have to do now. Yeah, right? Yeah. They lost two.
Like, as of when I left uh my apartment this morning, they had already lost like two two and a half to three percent of their entire company value on the stock market based on that decision. So it's like maybe they should have offered a couple more free flights. I'm just saying. Yeah, you know what I mean? But the thing is also like drag somebody off a plane.
Uh yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's not a food-related, not a food related question, so we should probably we have enough food related questions. So uh Shiro Wait, maybe the guy like pea shoots, though, in which case get him off there. Maybe what? Like maybe you like pea shoots, yeah.
Or just like a baseball beat. Oh, oh, I get you. T shoots. Yeah, baseball beats, pea shoots, a uh chicken, a turkey wrap, and uh how about some of the things? Well, you gotta hate on the turkey.
It's not the turkey that I hate, it's the rap that I hate. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of raps, so uh we talked about Juarez and the burrito a little bit. Did we talk about bars? Did we talk about bars on here, Anastasia?
The Juarez bars? No, no, no. So all the old stru well, JW took us to all the old school bars. They all have uh the bar is an integrated urinal, so you just pee where you stand. I have to call this into question, though.
I'm calling this into question. So, so yeah, we we've always thought it was a urinal, but isn't that what the lady said? Someone else called it out and saying that it was something like a trash bin. Like someone like instead of the city. No, so that's what I'm saying.
I've been I've been to lots of bars in Spain where they have the trough under the bar, and that's where you throw your napkins, the ones that really do a horrible job at wiping up anything. Then also you throw like your shells and like uh Do you know Mexico's its own country? Well, I'm saying that it's it's quite possibly something that was brought over from Spain, and I would explain that'd be a much more rational reason. It's a it's crazy to think of dude. Oh, oh, it's so irrational.
What about the old thing that you used to hear about people at uh Oktoberfest peeing down their canes? Right. Yeah. Old thing meaning like this happens like now. And I'm pretty sure potentially Kentucky Club might have been an all-male bar when it first opened up.
So I could I could see that. That's what the Lady at Club Quinze said. Yeah. Although I like the idea. Why would you throw a napkin in a trough?
Just so you don't have to throw it on the floor. You are throwing it on the floor. Someone's still gonna have to go down into the trough and lift that napkin out. People are peeing. Someone, some sort of bar expert, please get on this.
Anyway, uh for whatever, they're not they're no longer used, and I'm sure there's no faster way to get your your behind handed to you than to either throw your throw your garbage or your urine in there. First of all, urine is a lot more friendly than your garbage. Dave, I gotta just drop a little hate right now. I I I talked to Doc Scans since that episode when you talked about him filming Nick Wong and Nick Wong just saying. Nick Wong was here during that, so he's I I've seen the video evidence, and your account of the video is uh erroneous.
Straight up erroneous. Wow. Well, okay, so so why don't we erroneous? Well, no, I mean in fact, Nick, yeah, no, Nick Nick says he's knowing he's excited to see Doc Scans, and then um, you know, he's like, I wasn't saying that he was hating on Doc Scans. It's just Nick Nick is a very head-down cook, work, not say anything that he's not authorized to say, kind of an individual.
That's the point. It's not that he's hating on Docs Gans. Is that if you're like, will you make some comments on this kitchen? The answer is going to be no. You know what I mean?
Like, seriously, have you ever met Nick? Do you hang out with Nick? You're like, try to get him to say something. He's gonna be like, no. Because what if he says something that's not what the chef wants him to freaking say?
Duh. Not not at not. Shy writes in. After tasting some, in quotes, grill-flavored snacks, which are obviously not grilled. I wondered how this flavor is created.
I did a quick patent search and got some interesting if confusing results. The concept seems to be uh breakdown of oil and amino acids at high temperatures. Yeah, there's like rancidity, they're like in contact with metal ions, there's all sorts of stuff. It seems uh oxygen or lack uh of it also has some effect. I'll appreciate some explanation of this flavor and the process that produces it, and perhaps also some uses for it in a home kitchen, thanks Shy.
Well, I don't really know precisely how it's done. It's a super dark art what happens in the flavor houses. Did you ever talk to the our flavor guys about uh about that? Did you talk to them about like fake wakay flavors? Yeah, we talked Julie.
I talked to Julie a little bit about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So there's great. They are like what wakay is.
Right. And a lot of it is like overcooked oil, like things that catch on fire, uh reactions of oil in the presence of um ferrous metal ions. Yeah, the car carbon steel. Yeah, so carbon steel. So all that uh plays in.
But also a lot of these quote unquote grill flavors also have the meat flavor thrown into it, and all the fake meat flavors are like very complicated, and this goes to Rich what you're into, very complicated protein breakdown products that happen in large reactors. And so, like a lot of this kind of like reactor-based flavor chemistry is all about the exact feedstock, the exact temperature that they're reacting it at to get break it down. So it's all very super complicated, and the reason you can't find information on it is because they don't want you to know. Like it's all super proprietary how all those kind of uh flavors work, other than the the basics that we can all look at, which is people have done GCMS work on grilled food and kind of seen what has come out, right? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh okay. So let me see. Any any more of uh let's see, we answered that question, that question.
All right, let's go on to this. Daiquai. Dan from Dan with a daiquiri question from Chicago. Do you like daiquiries, Rich? Uh traditional daiquiri.
Yeah, yeah. As opposed to what? I don't know the strawberry crap. That's not even a daiquiri. Don't even call that a daiquiri.
Hemingway daiquiri is another form of daiquiry that I dislike. But like uh those things in New Orleans are not daiquiries. Yeah. I don't know what they are. JW, you daiquiri man?
No, I'm not really a daiquiri fan. What? I don't really know much about daiquiries either, to be honest. Maybe had two in my whole life. What?
You gotta fix this. Yeah, yeah. We could change it up. I'm open. I'm open to it.
You gotta mix one up for them then. I wish that the Greek gods were real so that a thunderbolt can fly out of the sky and strike you down. Strike me down. Take you. Strike me down.
Isn't isn't daiquiries, isn't that like the drink that when you're applying for a bartending job they ask you to make? It's one of them. It's uh it's an indicator drink. So uh like the Manhattan's an indicator drink. Can someone make a decent Manhattan daiquiries an indicator drink?
Uh yeah, it's one of those things. Um anyway. I'm I can't even go I can't even go on, people. Uh Dan writes, I'm working on improving my daiquiri game, which is currently very weak. Uh Nastasia, the daiquiri is weak?
You are weak. Yeah. I love Debbie's doing some selfies. Nastasia. What?
I think I can do that too. What? Did you see your shirt? No, what does it say? Always always be creating.
So that we have more than one Glengarry Glenn Ross reference in the room right now. Anyway, uh shout out to ideas and food. Yeah. Dan, wait, that's uh that's uh an ideas and food t shirt he came with is he a fan of uh are they a fan of Glengarry Glenn Ross? I would imagine so.
Alex Naki or Glengarry Glenn Ross fans. Is anyone not a fan of Glengarry Glenn Ross? Dave, have you seen Glengarry Glen Glenn Ross? Yeah, a long time ago. Do you not occasionally watch Alec Baldwin's monologue on the YouTube?
It's baller. What do you you do it like every so often just to pump yourself up? You have to re-up yourself. Like you have to like get it back. JW?
No, once again, I'm I'm drawing a blank here. Oh you gotta see I'm gonna I have a yet another thunderbolt strikes his pile of ashes. Okay. I will send it to you. Alec Baldwin, regardless of where you stand on Trump and his Trump imitation, one of the great monologues of all times, all times is the speech that he gives to the salespeople in Glengarry Glen Ross, where uh it's just like it needs to be and first of all, like a super sexy 80s Alec Baldwin.
Am I right, Nastasia? Yeah, yeah. Like super hardcore, like, yeah. And it's just like, you know, Baldwin at his best. Gotta go, gotta go see that.
Only closers get coffee. Yeah. Put coffee closers down. Yeah, yeah. Um, I just love that movie.
Anyway, uh so many good people in it. It's not about movies, about food. Uh okay. Uh I'm working on my Dacquiry game, which is very weak, and I was wondering what particular rum brands and types you recommend for the classic Dacquiry versus the Hemweg Daiquiry versus the Tybasil Daiquiry. I have to say, at Booker and Dax, we switched up what um what rum we used for either of those two.
Uh since you're in Chicago, I mean, like if you're in if you're abroad, like I really I like Havana 3 is really nice, uh Havana Club 3, but you can't get that here yet, even though Castro's dead, that he still can't get that here yet. I think a lot of that is because um that trademark is is in um contention between Bacardi and a bunch of other people, but that's a good one. Florida Cagna, uh the the white one uh the is uh one kind of one of the standard ones that we um used. Uh I like that. I uh I like any sort of like vaguely fruity, not solventy smelling, not overpowering.
I wouldn't go heavy hogo, although a heavy hogo daiquiri can also be good. Look, Jack Shram, uh you know, formerly a Booker and Dax, uh head bartender now at Nomad, he was uh he loved Super Hogo, which is that ho hard to describe Hogo is that smell in certain rums like Smith and Cross and Ray and Nephew, uh Apple tins and all this. Uh he loved like hogo in a daiquiri, and he even liked like an aged rum daiquiri. I prefer white rum in a day in a regular daiquiri. Uh and what works in a regular daiquiri works in a Thai basil daiquiri.
You should just never make a Hemingway daiquiri, so don't worry about what rum to use in a Hemingway daiquiri. And if you should make the mistake of making a Hemingway daiquiri, add a little extra sugar to it. Additionally, I just purchased a BDX cocktail cube and was wondering when I'm creating a cocktail with egg white, do I use the cocktail cube during the dry shake and the shake with ice or just during the shake with ice? Use it both, Dan. Both.
All right. Uh we have we have more time, right? No, you don't. Uh we have an alkaline noodle question. We have a well, first of all, we don't want to do the Auckland noodle question.
And we have a we have a one more question, Dave. Oh, we have so many though. One more. Choose wisely. All right, Rich, what do you want to do?
What do you want to what do you want to talk about? I like alkaline noodles. You have a lot of alkaline noodles. We also have like a a lot of a lot of questions. And I think that's a good idea.
I have an idea. Why don't we spend this time talking about the question we want to answer? Time second. You know what? You're not a nice person here.
You're just not a nice person. All right. Jesse writes in uh what can um making ramen noodles at home. He also has a question, or she or he uh also has a question on uh on pureeing uh salsas, but we'll get to that next week. Making ramen noodles at home.
Alkaline noodles require an alkaline uh element. Baking soda can be baked uh to change from sodium bicarbonate to sodium carbonate, which is stronger base. On a molecular level, what is physically different about alkaline noodles from other noodles? I'm not a very scientific person, but I remember reading something about the bonds in the noodles and hydrogen molecules. I was hoping Dave could break it down, Jesse.
So what you're talking about is uh hydrogen bonding, but on further research, and you guys are probably uh you know all know this, but in my mind, it's always been you know, gluten network, acidity makes it weaker, which is why sourdough bread is kind of slack sometimes and has problems, and alkaline uh conditions make the gluten network stronger. But as I was researching uh today, just to make sure it turns out it's a lot freaking more complicated than that. And I don't know that anyone actually um has it a hundred I mean I don't know that it's a hundred percent figured out. Uh I think it's mostly figured out, but it's not as simple as alkaline uh situations make the gluten network stronger because there's also starch interactions uh with um the alkaline um with the alkaline um conditions. So I don't know.
Do you know anything about it, Rich? I don't know anything about it, but I know Alex um helped me in terms of accelerating the cook time for uh Koji rice by doing an alkaline bath. Yeah, I mean it's uh what do you mean? Basically you did uh alkaline bath before we did a steaming and it basically powered the cook time to like 15 minutes versus uh almost an hour. Right.
So well what happens is in alkaline conditions uh starch like vegetables and things like that, starches and pectin break down a lot more quickly than they would in a um than they would in an acidic environment, which is why one of the reasons why so you know how like they say that when you add acid to a veg, it um when you add acid to a veg, it like has the problem of uh the acidity uh causes the chlorophyll to go bad faster. Right. But it also takes longer to cook. When I used to do vinegar baked uh vinegar, I used to cook potatoes and vinegar for vinegar fries, and it would take for freaking ever. Yeah.
You ever try that? Takes forever. Um so that's why when you add a pinch of uh baking soda to something to keep it green, right? I think there's two things going on. One, I think that the alkaline conditions help uh preserve the chlorophyll, making it greener, but it also accelerates quite drastically the cooking time, right?
Which is why things go mushy. Which is why the interesting thing to do is instead of adding baking soda to your broccoli water, add calcium hydroxide because the calcium will strengthen the pectin at the same time that the b basic nature of it will uh help the greening. So you get kind of the best of uh of both worlds. So uh on the way out, I know we have to leave. We also tasted from uh Rich some straight Koji, right?
Yeah, jasmine rice koji. Jasmine rice koji. What do you guys what do you think, guys? I liked it. Peanut but peanut butter miso cookies.
What do you think? Peanut bitter miso cookie? Delicious. Alright. And uh we tasted some uh we you said you used uh Tozy's uh uh which was basically I a uh hacked the Toesy recipe on uh her butterscotch, which is basically brown sugar, miso, um, and a little bit of water and butter, and you just pretty much mix it or blitz it, dissolve it out, and then you have uh pretty much a butterscotch without any sort of uh sugar cooking.
Nice. Yeah, nice. All right, so cool. So go on to uh Rich's Instagram, our cook quest. Uh check out all the many things that he makes uh with Koji.
Uh I'm actually pretty surprised at the different range of flavors you get out of all the stuff that you've brought today. What do you guys think? Yeah, I was very surprised. Yeah, and uh thanks Oh, and come party with us at the MoFed after party on Thursday. As soon as you say after party, do we have uh reignition?
No, we have got the guy from Tribe Called Quest is hosting. 85 bucks. And you get a bunch of food, open bar. Dave will be uh really just say the guy from instead of just naming who it is. Hello everybody.
This is Jarobi from a tribe called Quest. Yeah. That's right. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah.
It's gonna be a good time. So that's at the MoFed website. All right, and uh just as a shout-out, I I'm also on the auction. If anybody in New York City wants to have a miso um learn how to make miso, um I'm on the auction site. And and JW will be there as well, so you can go over and talk to J Dub about his lack of love for his own El Paso brand.
He's never even visited their freaking factory. This does he'll be in the corner. Nastasio will be in the corner hating on you. Please come so that Nastasia can hate on you in person. If you've never been hated on by Nastasia Lopez in person, it is something to be experienced.
Am I right, guys? Classic. Yeah, yeah. Cooking issues. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network.
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