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Find us at heritage radio network.org. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive on the Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting every week from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 at Roberta's Pizza We and Bushwick. Brooklyn. Joined as usual with Nastasia of the Hammer Lopez, who's back from her birthday/slash vacation in Rome, Italy.
How was it? Good. I gotta go back next week. Next week? To Rome.
To Milan. Why? Separate reason. For business? Yeah.
Business? Milano? Just for two days. Is uh okay. So do you already have the itinerary of who you're dealing with?
No. Okay, my theory, I've told you this, is that like, is that three out of four men in Milan's name is Luca. Oh. Oh, yeah, no. I'm not dealing with you.
Not dealing with no Lucas. I don't have an it. Yeah, no. No, all right. And we got uh Dave in the booth.
How are you doing, Dave? Good. I love Milanos. Yeah, uh, those cookies. Here's my theory on Milano's, right?
Milano's, the original Milano is like a gift from God. The mint Milano, not as much. And then they have all these other flavors of the city. What? How do you do that?
How do you break a Milano apart? No, I take I like scrape the cookie off both sides. That is straight up gross. What are you? Like a like a free.
Not in front of anybody. It must be really difficult. It is. It's like a bunny rabbit. She's sitting there like gnawing on the speaking of a or I try to like, you know.
Yeah, I say well, she's doing the little uh the teeth bite thing. She's uh trying to strip it to chocolate covered crumbs, I guess. Yeah, really good. Nice. All right.
So uh speaking of how was your airline flight? Been a banner week in airline travel. I was fine. Yeah, did you see all the awesome airline stuff that happened this week? No, I heard something on the radio this morning.
Well, recently there was a huge fist fight that broke out on a on a plane on an expensive probably A flight back from Tokyo to LA, like a fist fight, like before they took off. Of course it was two American dudes. Like fight like one guy ripped the other guy's Hawaiian shirt, like basically half off of his body. And like people were like, What? What?
He tried to choke out a flight attendant. There was a guy we heard about that, remember? Well a friend. A friend of a oh, wait, who was it? Not really a friend, but like a friend of a friend.
But then my favorite story that more relates to cooking issues is have you heard of Simon the Bunny? This happened, I think, during the last week. So United Airlines, you know, in battled airline than it is. This story took me so by surprise. Killed.
All right. Killed, and then would not return the body of Simon the Giant Bunny. Now. You're like, what? Like when this new story came up, this one flew under the radar, what?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so Simon the Giant Bunny was now is dead, but was already over three feet long. Okay. Like three and a half foot long rabbit. Yeah, yeah.
Nastasi's making the three and a half foot rabbit arms. Huge. Was still growing and was slated to be the world's record largest bunny. Like they calculated they they the guess was it was gonna come in at over four, maybe four and a half feet, to be the world's largest rabbits. Bred by this lunatic woman, ex Playboy model.
And this story just gets crazier and crazier. Ex Playboy model with every detail. Yeah, in England, right? Takes Simon the Giant bunny, sells it to some extremely rich rabbit fancier here in the United States, right? Gets on an airplane, flies all the way from London Heathrow to Chicago O'Hare Airport.
Here's where it gets weird. O'Hare. Oh, boom! I didn't even get that, Nastasia. You're on fire.
Wow. On fire, Nastasia. Wow. So that's a daily newser. Yeah, right there.
O'Hare, boom. So makes it all the way over there, right? And then all of a sudden, they're like, no rabbit. And then she's like, where's Simon? They're like, uh it's dead.
And they're like, what? What the hell happened? It died on the plane. What? It had just gotten a veterinary exam like three hours before it had flown because it's an expensive giant bunny.
They want to make sure this sucker could fly. You can't put a price tag on that. You can't. Well, apparently somebody did. Some rich buyer bought it.
Anyway, but here's the thing. So turns out, uh they don't return the body. They don't return the body. Oh no, no, I mean, no, no, no, no, it doesn't get a seat. It should just get a seat, just buckle in.
Doesn't, uh they don't give back the body, they're like, uh, we we cremated it. Oh my god. Yeah, it's don't tell us. So finally, the story comes out. It made it to Chicago Hair Alive, gets off, and some knucklehead puts the crate in a freezer and just kills it.
Just freezes this freaking giant rabbit to death. Simon the bunny just freezes him to death. Oh my god. How the heck does that happen? You know what I mean?
How does that happen? Like he's like, hey, hey, for Christ's sakes, Tommy, is that box moving? Tommy, Tommy, is that box moving? Put it in the freezer. Put it in the freezer.
Slow it down. And you know what I mean? The thing is, it's like, what the heck happened? They didn't return the body. If it was me, here's what I think.
I think that Tommy and the other guy whose name, I don't know, I'm making it all up. Yeah, Chuck. Yeah. Chuck. Yeah.
So Chuck and Tommy, I think they they ate this freaking giant rabbit because they're thinking, when am I gonna get a chance? They're both fans of rabbit. They like rabbit to eat. And they're like, when am I gonna get such a giant freaking rabbit? I'm kind of curious what it tasted like.
But I think that like cremate is some sort of like, yeah, some sort of uh what's the word I'm looking for? Euphemism for eating it. What do you think, Stas? Yep. Tommy.
Put it in the freezer. Somebody ate that thing. Yeah, somebody ate that. I mean, I have to be honest, I'm kind of curious. You know, a three-foot rabbit can't move that much, right?
It's gotta be pretty tender. I mean, how much there are pictures on the web of this lady with her other giant rabbits. So sucks to be her giant rabbit self. Oh, speaking of uh uh cooking and eating things that I enjoy very much. This week I had my first of the year, even though I think it's late in the season, Shad.
You ever have the Shad to ever get you Shad? Not Shad Row. Everyone here is like, oh Shad Row, Shad Row. I like Shad Row. Love the Shad.
Yeah, Shad, Shad the Fish. Yeah. Oh is Freaking, it's my f there's a whole festival devoted to it in Philly. Really? Yeah, Shad Fest.
I and you do go eat the it's a it we've talked about this every year. We talk about it. It's a it's a almost lost art boning out shad. It's got an extra set of Y bones that go into the meat, and so it takes like a like a fish boning ninja who can like do it and they bone it out and then they reassemble the fillet so it looks whole, but if you lift it up, it falls apart like a piece of lace work. You know what I'm talking about, Dave?
Yeah. Anyway, and you like the meat too, right? It's like a giant herring, it's so delicious. Oh, I love it, yeah. And well, I bought uh I bought a boatload of I bought a boatload of this stuff the in Connecticut in in Haddam where I buy shad there's like one lady left who knows how to bone these things and so like you know once she's gone like the shad's gone as far as I'm concerned no one wants to eat the bones you know what I mean anyways so uh where was I going with this so cooked uh eight tons of uh shad on the on the cowboy grill but here's the problem Stas I went to you know I'm doing it I do it my super high heat multi multi-step tandoor style like I always do now which I have something that you'll enjoy later that I can't say on the air it's not safe for not safe for uh public consumption but uh Family show family show what so this is this is my review of the pit mit grill uh glove watch the hell out right so like I've been using this grill mit which I bought so I could work on the tandoor and grill and so I had my uh all the shad I had it in those you know those like uh they're almost like clamshell grill holders that are meant so you can just like put a bunch of stuff so it doesn't you don't have to put a spatula underneath it because that's the only way to move fish off and on multiple times because you don't want it to break apart so I have it like in the in the thing and I put it uh off on off on but like damned if that glove didn't have a giant like it just like burned through on the side went right into my thumb was like wow I also got the freeze dryer working I got the freeze dryer working freeze dried a lot yeah freeze dried a lot oh here's another thing you're gonna like this one Nastasia about shad so shad's an oily fish right like herring right and uh they can hear you talking so uh Nastasia whispering on the air people can still hear her anyway the um so I had the uh you know bluefish, right?
You like blue fish? Dave, are you a bluefish fan as well? Yeah, sure. Yeah. So when I was a kid, right, in the 80s, no one ate bluefish.
You just didn't eat bluefish, right? It was everyone liked to fish for bluefish because bluefish is a real, you know, it's a tough fight. It goes close to the shore, so it's good. It's also good fish from both, so it's a real tough fight. Sharp teeth, mean suckers.
Like if a bluefish run is going up the up the shore and like you wade out into it, it'll take like a hunk out of your out of your ankle. You know what I mean? Like there's they're they're but they're delicious. So everyone fished for them forever, but no one ate them. And so this is the cooking tip that I've never actually tested, but to this day, like like 30 years later, I still do.
When I was like 12 or 13, we were in Cape Cod, and this guy was like, Hey, you want some free you want some free fish? And they were like, What? So he's like, he caught all these bluefish, and he basically filled the trunk of our car with bluefish. He's like, I'm gonna tell you a secret. He's like, put mayonnaise on it before you grill it.
And then this is what he said these words which ring in my ears 30 something years later. Grease gets out grease. And that's all he says. Wow. And so, like whenever I grill like an oily fish, I coat the sucker with mayonnaise, salt pepper mayonnaise.
It's just like I I don't even know how to do it otherwise. It's like it's like when you're a kid and someone says to you, kid, bluefish has to be real fresh or it smells bad. So that works. Grease gets out grease. I don't know.
Who knows? I mean, my I like my bluefish the way I cook it. You know what I mean? I don't know. That would be the last thing I would reach for when cooking fish.
Mayonnaise? Yeah, I hate I kind of hate mayo. What the what? You're from what? You're from the snack food like capital of the of the east?
You're from Philadelphia? Yeah, so what? I mean, you have to like mayonnaise if you're from Philadelphia, don't you? I don't think so. I think Mayo is revolting.
You know what? You want you you're getting ready to you're gonna you might bring it on, chat room. You might jump in here and punch me in the in the head, but I put mayonnaise on cheeseburgers. I mean, not cheeseburgers and cheesesteaks. I put mayonnaise on a cheesesteak.
Oh I like mayonnaise. Well, I don't know. You know, Greece could sell Greece. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
Greece could sell Greece. You know what another thing about mayonnaise. I argue with that logic. Another thing about mayonnaise is uh it doesn't actually go bad. You know, my grandma used to if like a sandwich with mayonnaise on it was out of the fridge for more than like two point two seconds, she'd be like, uh uh oh and she'd throw it away.
Yeah. What, because of the vinegar? Why is it stay? It's so much oil, there's so little water in it that like you know the stuff doesn't. This is why if you go to New Orleans, which I think we've talked about this on the show.
If you go to uh New Orleans and you uh and you know, you the their mayonnaise is just out. You know what I mean? And it's eight billion degrees there. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, cultural thing.
I'm gonna do my pre-roll ad right now. What do you think, Dave? Oh, I would love that. Today's program is brought to you by Modernist Pantry, providing magical ingredients for the modern cook for free uh videos, recipes, tips, and tricks. Visit blog.modernistpantry.com.
All right. Do we have any callers or should I crank some questions? Yeah, crank some questions. We're we're uh behind on that, right? We are totally behind on that.
Now that Nastasia has left the room momentarily, we can't. She's momentarily left the room. She'll be back. Um Darren writes in uh I'm a student uh uh with free access to scientific and technical literature. That's good, good, kudos to you.
Uh, what have you learned in terms of finding reputable information quickly? Authors are increasingly under pressure to publish and are sometimes funded by institutions with specific commercial interests. Furthermore, conclusions and abstracts are sometimes worded misleadingly, making scan reading rather difficult. Uh yeah, so it means it depends on what you're trying to do. If uh I don't trust uh in almost any health uh related um news that I get uh in the scientific literature.
And you can usually look for those things for um, you know, the letters that are written to kind of attack them right away. Like, especially if they're gonna make a like a particularly outlandish claim, there'll be um letters in in the in the actual issue where the stuff comes out that you can kind of uh look at. But when it comes to uh and and the other thing I do when I'm looking something up, is I I print, I you know, I do a search and I'll I'll PDF out like hundreds and hundreds of documents. And then uh in general, uh yeah, the abstract is only gives you a general idea of what you're doing, and then I usually hit uh the methods real quick to see what's going on, and then I skip uh almost everything, go to the discussions conclusions, and then if it warrants it, go back and see whether I agree with uh how it got there. But uh for actual cooking ideas and and uh techniques, um, you know, it's it's a lot I think easier to scan because you can get a really you know quick idea whether uh something for instance if they're like 15 a lot of times they'll they'll be like, oh, I bought 15 lamb to do this experiment, and it's sponsored by someone who grows lamb.
You're like, okay, they're just focused on on lamb, but sometimes you can see the articles are really, really um interesting. Another way you can do it is you can go to like review articles on things like meat texture, for instance, something I've done recently. Go to the review articles and then instead of trying to go forward, burrow backwards. If you find a recent review, you can burrow backwards into the articles that they cite. And so usually if you read a good review article by a good person, um, sometimes they just do like a poop spray of citations, but sometimes they give a nice kind of focus citations, or in the body of the paper, they'll reference what they're talking about, and so you'll hit the links on those, go back and get those papers.
And then furthermore, you can see kind of who cited the review, and you can go forward a little bit that way, find something you trust, and then kind of work backwards. But yeah, it's hit or miss and it takes a long time to research anything. I have like a couple thousand pages of uh stuff on meat texture. Maybe 50 of those pages are useful. Um and so it just takes like a lot of sifting through a bunch of garbage, you know, unfortunately.
Uh and second question is what do you think of the uh big green egg barbecue? I can't afford one yet, but I'm pretty intrigued by the design, and they seem to be all over the place. Yeah, I'm not like uh you know I I have uh Nastasia and Mark's uh big green egg up at you know my place in Connecticut, but I don't use it that much because um uh I'm not much of the stored I'm I'm not doing a stored heat uh kind of cooking binge right now, uh you know, uh a steady, even kind of thing. I'm more into the uh either very low, like low temperature stuff or kind of jet engine screaming uh radiant heat and or actual exposed fire. Like you should see I have a picture of the shad I might put up, Nastasia, where it's like like literally like fire is licking up around it so high because of all the grease getting out the grease that it's like you know, threatening to light light me and my cocktail on fire, which is good.
Yeah, cocktail. I was hoping it was something else. Oh family show, Nastasia. Family show. Uh Jesse wrote in uh what can I do to make salsa have a nice consistency besides just pureeing it more in a Vitamix?
Now, first of all, it's a very specific kind of salsa that you want to be that you know, that pureeed out on, right? I mean, Stasa, when you think of salsa, what are you thinking? Like you're you're from Los Angeles. What what's your stuff? If you just if someone just says to you salsa, what do you think?
Chunky like chunky, like pico de gallo kind of stuff. Yeah. Anyway, this is not that. So roasting tomatoes and tomatillos create a nice smooth emulsion-like consistency. What do you think of the word emulsion?
Right. Fine. Okay. Was wondering if you had any recommendations. I pureeed serranos, onions, poblanos, and pineapple, and it came out like little small granules of fruit and wanted to have a sexier texture without adding another flavor.
My question is, is the pineapple roasted? Um, and I you know, the thing is if you got a good texture with the tomatillos, which uh tomatillo skins break pretty easily, but tomatoes, depending on which tomato you're using, has you know a skin. I'm wondering whether the texture is from the pineapple primarily or from the skins on the peppers, if they were tougher than the ones you were using before. In either case, if you really want to uh, you know, I would take like not all of it, I would take some of it, like the pineapple, hit it with like an enzyme like SPL, blend the hell out of it, let it like kill itself down like that, then you don't want to use it straight like that because it'll settle out, it'll self-clarify. Uh then uh heat it to kill off the um and oh by the way, if you didn't cook the pineapple, like that's also gonna lead to a grainier texture.
So cooking the pineapple is gonna help cook it off. Then uh then blend it, maybe it's smoother. But let me know. I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to go for here, so you know, give me some more information. Uh Sundeep wrote about uh ice.
Uh says, I've been fascinated with the innovations. Oh, my phone decided to mess with me. Uh I've been fascinated by the innovations made by tinkering with ice. Its significance has a key ingredient, is largely has largely been ignored until recently. Indeed, high-end bars tend to concentrate on developing uh in-house uh ice program, uh as is common in the US, so this is a non-US question, I would guess.
Uh, or sources, they're crystal clear ice products from special providers, has certainly helped bring ice to the forefront, enhancing both flavor and visual appeal. I was interested to read about your experiences in ice preparation at bars uh across Chicago, such as the famed Aviary. Now, listen, when I went to Aviary, I saw their ice stuff. I mean, obviously, I wasn't involved. I've never like lifted a finger other than to drink a drink at uh at Aviary, but yes, I saw some of their ice production stuff.
I'm trying to understand the types of technology and gadgets that are often used in such bars that constantly create innovative and functional products that complement one's drink. I'd appreciate it if you could provide me with some advice and methods um to take advantage of uh artisanal ice and cocktails. Well, first of all, at Booker In Dax, we you know, we used um three basic kinds of ice. We used what I call crappy ice, and the crappy ice we would use for stirring, the crappy ice we would use to ice things down, uh, and uh, you know, general, you know, dilution related stuff uh like that. We you use something called shake ice, which is a two-inch, uh basically a two-inch, but not very high quality.
In other words, just frozen in the freezer, a cloudy, two-inch or two and change inch ice cubes for shaking, and we call that shake ice, and we'd use that for uh the texture, right? Because it adds texture. But you add that one plus one or two small shak uh crappy ice cubes, almost almost cursed. You hear that stuff? Almost cursed.
Uh one or two uh crappy cubes in it to get the dilution down. And then we used cut ice. And so for cut ice, we would buy sheets and then slice those sheets. I so you can buy fully cut ice cubes that are perfect squares. I don't think they're as nice as the ones that have like you two machine cut sides, but then you cut the last uh four sides with a knife, and it gives it a little bit of irregularity.
I think it looks nicer. What do you think, styles? I mean, I've never actually asked you. What do you think? Which one do you like to look up better?
I like the pre cut ones. You like the look of them or you like dealing with them? I guess I can't separate it. Uh what about when the pre cut ones come and they don't fit in the glasses and you have to cut them all down, which is a hundred percent of the time. Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, I hate them. I don't like the way they look and I like the way they look. I I much prefer the the ones that are partially hand cut. But yeah, for you, someone like you, it is hard to distinguish between what you think is easier and work and although what's weird is I don't understand why you would think it's easier or harder since the number of times I've made you cut ice at an event is let me see, zero. I have cut down the the pre-cut ones.
Yes. I've never cut right, yeah. So like since you hate doing the latter, you should probably order the other one because I'm never gonna uh now at the Aviary they do other stuff like they'll fill a balloon with water, they'll buy something called a um, they'll buy something called a uh a chiller, like uh, you know, a circulating chiller, poly science is I think the one they use, that's the one I had. That's it that circulates either alcohol or glycol or something like this at a very low temperature, and then they'll fill a balloon with water, and then they'll spin the balloon, and then you know Moto used to do a similar thing with other things. They'll spin the balloon uh in the um in the uh in the stuff and freeze a layer of water on the inside of the balloon, rip the balloon off, poke a hole, drain the water out of it, freeze it solid, and then they can fill it with a drink and cap it off.
So that's the kind of stuff that's like a like a presentation ice trick. I never did that stuff, um, because that's not my style, but that's like you know, something something you can do. Other people they buy uh they like spherical ice. I am not a fan of spherical ice. Like spherical ice is not my friend.
Like, I'll tell you why. When you um but anyway, you can buy these spherical ice molds that you take a large cube and then you melt it down using the fact that aluminum like tends to melt things very quickly and you melt them into spheres. Uh and I don't know if anyone ever built it, but you're supposed to build like a little uh it'd be easy to build like a circulating water through the aluminum block to keep it warm such that you could do fast throughput. Here's why I don't like I like if you had a drink and it sat there and it kept spinning the ball so it looked like one of those like sculpture things that you see in Chinatown or founds. Do you like those things, Dust?
The rock ball things? I don't know what it is. You know what I'm saying? It's like a rock ball on a thing and the water goes through hate those. What about waving cat?
You don't like the waving cat? What about the intertwined bamboo? No. You have nothing nice to say about Chinatown Tchotskis. Do not like Totchisky.
Speaking of Tchotchkis, uh you know who passed is uh Joni. Oh. Yeah. You can never make the choke. Joni Cunningham, so I can never make my my show idea that I had for years, which you know it's exactly loves chotskis.
I mean, that was my show idea. I mean, I never met her. Now it's too late, but wouldn't that, Dave? Wouldn't that be have been a great show? I mean, it would have made it for like one good episode, maybe.
Oh more. Oh, so many. I would watch that package. I would watch that. No, I could see that actually on like HD TV or something.
Yes, Joni loves Tchotkis. Yeah. And like, you know, that puts my my punting skills at their you know, highest use. I have another one that's a really good business idea. Uh I'm probably never gonna do it.
If if anyone does this idea out there, you owe Dax like several million dollars. You ready for it, Nastasia? I think I've heard it. What is it? I don't know, just to tell you.
All right. So you make you make peeps, marshmallow peeps. Have I told you this one? Maybe I'm already losing interest. Chocolate marshmallows, right?
In the shape of poop emojis, with the chocolate with with brown with uh granulated brown sugar on the outside, marshmallow poops, and you sell them in the thing millions of dollars. Millions of dollars. I think you're right, actually. Marshmallow poops. I want anyone make the check payable to Dax Arnold.
I'll give you the address. And like he the that poop is a trademark. No, but he well, the emoji is not a trademark. You can do whatever you want with the emoji. And secondly, I believe that you wouldn't have to pay the I swear to God, this is the name of the corporation, the Just Born Corporation.
You would not have to pay the Just Born Corporation in my non accurate legal mind, right? My my non trained non lawyer legal mind, because it is satire. And as such, would not actually be infringing on their copyright because it is satire in the way that garbage pail kids baseball cards when I was a kid weren't infringing on products like scope and uh everything else. I think you're wading into a gray area of the pool. Hey, uh I I hope it's a brown area of the pool with some sweet marshmallow poops.
Ew. Um how did we get to where were we? What were we talking about? Ice? Should we take a break and come back?
Yeah. Yeah, let's do that. Alright, red back, cooking issues. You have to read that. This episode is brought to you by Jewel, the immersion circulator for Sous Vide by Chef Steps.
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Oh, yeah. You guys, uh you guys missed it. I was doing my not safe for radio stuff. All right, some more uh doing some more business here, more business. Mid-roll ad.
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Can you circular whistle? You gotta go. Like blowing out, sucking in. Yeah. Yeah.
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They are our friends. They're selling the spinzall. They're gonna make an enzyme kit. They're making uh hear that people? Enzyme kit.
Enzyme kit. Enzyme kit, spinzole and enzyme kit. Okay. Nick wrote in uh this is a long it says last week's episode, but that was like I feel like it was like last year when they uh when we did this. Uh last week's episode got me thinking about slushy machines, specifically the type that makes frozen beer foam.
Kieran Ichiban makes a machine uh as well as a South Korean company called Ice Tro. I'd like to buy one of these, but as you'd expect, there's very little info available online, and I can't find them for purchase anywhere. Will a standard slushy machine work as an alternative? No! No, no, no.
Uh or these specialized machines doing something differently. Yes. I don't want to risk breaking a standard machine. You will, as the sugar alcohol content of the beer is not high enough to prevent it from freezing solid. Thanks and keep up the good work, uh Nick.
Okay, so I'll I'll tell you a little story. It's not about a slushy machine. Margarita Villa Machine. No, it's about uh it's about a Taylor soft serve ice cream machine. So ice cream, uh ice cream savant, uh um Sam Mason came to the French Culinary Institute, you know, like well over a decade ago.
This is when he was still at uh at WD50. And uh he's like, hey Dave, I want a carbonate ice cream. I'm like, hey, Sam, I don't know, but you know what? Um we have an ice cream machine here, and uh, you know, I mean, let's try it. And so, like, I like take the ice cream machine, I try to seal it up as best as I can.
I shove a uh I shove a you know a CO2 line into it, and we try to carbonate the ice cream mix as it's going. And that sucker, like I blew the gasket off, and like ice cream base went all over the pastry kitchen. This was on the second floor pastry kitchen that they turned into the family kitchen. Remember that place? Ice cream base everywhere, and then the pastry, the pastry chefs never let me, they never let me live it down.
It's like, well, how are you gonna learn unless you fail? You know what I mean? How you gonna learn unless you fail? So the answer is no. You need a special machine that can hold uh the the pressure.
Now, here's another thing to keep in mind. Uh when people want to carbonate things that are that are slushy. You cannot carbonate ice. Let me repeat this again. You cannot carbonate ice, right?
What happens is is you use in a slushie, you have uh a good chunk of the water is still unfrozen, somewhere like like north of 50% of the stuff is still unfrozen, it just has crystals in it. And when it's that cold, right, you can get like a hypercarbonation feeling just because the liquid that's there is very highly charged with CO2. But remember that you can't set your machine to freeze it even close to solid, so close to like I would guess what, like uh, you know, a I don't really know the water percentage uh versus ice percentage on a commercial slushy. I don't really know. Do you know, Stuzz?
No, I do not. Anyway, uh in one of these machines, it's like 10 to 50 percent, but it's all done under pressure, and so you cannot do it with a regular slushing machine. Someone tell me that they've done it, tell me how to do it, and I'd be happy. The easiest way to approximate it is just to do the old school, like uh, you know, super chill it in uh carbonated thing in your freezer, like hit it. And you know who used to have a machine that would do this is um Andy Ricker had a machine from Thailand where they took a windshield washer motor, windshield wiper motor, and they hooked it up to a giant like bucket, like almost like a washing machine bucket, and then you salt and ice and put the beer and it was like a hula dance, ch and then he would pull out the beer, pop it and hit it, and it would just crystallize up like that into a beer slushy.
Andy Ricker likes cats. That is a true, not germane, but possibly interesting fact about Andy Ricker. Yeah. Um, got another question in here, which I can't see because my phone decides that I don't want to see it. I don't know why.
Uh Daniel writes in. Um, I'm I'm in the planning stages of rebuilding our kitchen and had a question. I've heard you talk repeatedly about how Dave's home oven can really crank. Did you install a commercial range? Okay, listen.
Uh okay, I have a second. Uh, or hack a traditional rage to bump up the BTUs. Uh, I've been doing some research about installing a commercial range, but my contractor and family members, Reed the Wife, seem to think I've lost my mind. You might have lost your mind. So they the here's the problem, right?
It depending on your jurisdiction, uh, a commercial range might be illegal in your house, right? And the reason is is that commercial ranges don't have the same kind of insulation on them that a residential range does. Could also have issues with your um with insurance, etc. etc. Uh now, uh what I did is I bought the commercial line of a company that also makes residential ranges so that everyone could say, Oh, he's just putting in a wolf oven.
That's like an oven that people have in their house. It's like some high-end, you know, high-end, like, you know, some sort of like home chef, which by the way is a word I hate. Home chef oven. You know what I mean? Home chef, what does that mean, stuff?
Nothing. Nothing. Means nothing. Home chef. Cook.
Home cook. Love the word cook. Cook has honor, right? Like a chef runs a kitchen, right? Unless you're paying your kids and your family to cook for you, you're not a chef in the kitchen, right?
You might be the best cook in the world. You might kick the pants off of any, you know, actual chef. But the fact of the matter is you're a cook and there's honor in that. Am I wrong about this, Stez? So right.
Anyways. So you have this uh he's putting a wolf in, so I'm sure it's fine. But my wolf really, really, really, really screams. And I did modify it, but don't tell anyone I did. And it is not necessarily smart for a bunch of things because as you note, you will not have a commercial fire retardation system like an Ansel in your place.
Uh so I don't recommend anyone ever do any of the stuff that I do. I mean, I I just don't recommend it. Um, but it is awesome. Uh the results I'm looking for are a broiler that can get as uh close to a salamander as possible and burners that can help pots recover a little more reasonably. Uh been stuck on a on with a puny 5,000 BTU gas range in our NYC rental and really looking for an upgrade.
Yeah, 5,000 is weak, weak. You can get like I'm putting air quotes on like uh like prosumer ranges that'll do uh like upwards of 20. Five is just incredibly weak. Here's what you want to look for though. When you're buying a commercial range, don't modify your range, please.
Don't like don't get like kicked out of your place or like you know, have like get sued or better yet, or worse yet, brought up on criminal charges because you killed someone because your house burnt down, apartment building burnt down. But the um, especially nowadays in New York, you you know, gas work, you know, is really, really, really touchy. Um, but uh when you have a very high-powered burner, a lot of times you lose low-end throttling capabilities. So you want to make sure that um, for instance, like let's say you were going to, which I don't recommend, bore out the uh the orifice on your gas jets to get a and you were able to increase the uh air in such that you weren't uh red tipping too hard. You were getting nice blue flames on it, but you were getting a bigger flame.
Let's say you knew how to do that, right? Um often you'll won't be able to throttle it low to get a good simmer. So, like on my oven, because I told my uh the plumber because I was told that I had to do it legitimately. I with a plumber, I was like, please install this regulator in front of my gas oven because any even semi-commercial oven needs uh a regulator on it. And they didn't install it, even though I told them to, the same way that they didn't install freaking quarter turn ball valves on my on my water plumbing, even though I told them I would pay twice as much, even though they only cost a nickel more.
And they like there's no reason to ever use non-quarter turn ball valves on any water uh fixture in in your house for the shutoff. Uh anyway, I digress. But the point is, didn't install the regulator, and so my oven, my my burners scream, scream, but they don't throttle down. Uh and so I'm thinking of one of these days, like doing it myself, putting the regulator in properly. Uh anyway, uh I think I might have answered this, but uh BJD wrote in and said, I see a lot of recipes for soaking shag bark hickory bark and shag bark, not shad, shag, like shaggy, like the character.
Yeah, uh to uh to make a syrup, but nothing about tapping a hickory tree. A guy in a house down the street uh taps his shag barks. Are you familiar with hickory syrup by a tapping and not an infusion? Any thoughts? I have many shag barks I can tap.
Uses sent respectfully from my phone, be did d. I don't. What I would do is do you hate this person? Uh if you do not hate this person with a passion, right? Go ask for some of their syrup and see or the sap and see how it tastes, and then let me know how it is.
I mean, I have no, you know, I only have one or uh most of the hickories on on uh my property are uh mocker nuts and bitternuts, uh pig nuts. I don't have like uh I have like only a couple uh good um shag barks, so I can't really tap them, but you know, I would be curious to know. I think a lot of our listeners would be curious to know. I've had uh a number of birch syrups, which I think I took talked about recently uh on air, and they tend to be much more acidic. And I think one of the reasons, although I don't know, is that it requires a lot more boil down.
So there's a lot other uh I guess you'd call conjuners in it than there would be in maple syrup. Um anyway. Martin Hudson writes in uh oh no, Martin writes in from Hudson, Wisconsin about uh walks. Hey, uh Dave Nastasi and David, uh and any honored or dishonored in the case of Peter Kim guess. We uh emailed we emailed Peter Kim this morning yesterday when I got there.
Oh, really? Oh, I emailed him again, and he and he finally got back to us, so it's like he's like dishonored guests and then he was like, you know, he's he said something really douchey. He's playing like a thousand like tiny violins for his pity party. You know what I mean? It's like I should be so honored as to be someone's dishonored guest.
You know what I'm saying? Anyways, uh people like the Peter Kim on the show though. Not like love. They love the Peter Kid. They love Peter Kim because I don't know, he you know, he pushes, he pushes the buttons, Peter Kim's.
Speaking of uh the reason I wanted Peter Kim on today, not just because he's a dishonored guest, but because uh Mofad, the Museum of Food and Drink at you know www.mofad.org, just got raided by Grub Street, one of the top, like uh not that I don't even know. We were like number two, so I didn't even know see how long the list was. Chill a museum to take kids to in uh New York. So Booya, just below the American Museum of Natural History, Boo and Ya. That's my favorite museum.
Uh it is a pretty uh butt-kicking museum. I think did you go see the mummies? No. You had to go see the mummies. So crowded.
Uh yeah, go during the week. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Um I think I have a card that'll get you for free. I go through the gift shop.
Whoa, old school cheat. You know, someday Nastasia and I just have to do an episode that is purely like the shady, crappy things that like I had to stop doing once I had kids because I was no longer proud to do them and be a father, but ways to get around paying for X, Y, and Z. Nastasia, Nastasia is like the queen of such tricks. Yes. That's true.
You know what I used to do? Because like this is how like you you're trying to try to maintain some sort of dignity. I used to scrounge around at the Met on the ground for the buttons. Yeah. Do you ever do that?
No. You can go into the gift shop and then you can be like, oh my god, I don't know where it is. Oh, that says lying. That's lying. You want to know what no one has the stones to do?
My suggested price is zero. You know what I mean? Like the ones that which one's the one that's suggested. Is that the like who has you have to look that person in the eye and tell them that you're that cheap that you won't pay anything for what is undoubtedly one of the finest museums in the whole world. Yeah.
You know what I mean? Even though honestly at this point in our lives, we can afford to go to that museum. It's not like we're, but this like being like being like you know, 20 years old and like only not having any money is still in your head, right? When you're going up to pay for it. Like you you can't suddenly jump out.
Someday it goes away. That feeling? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
Uh we had another question in uh uh from Darren. Uh I mentioned I'm an aerospace engineering intern and I'm currently designing a two-phase heat exchanger uh for metal 3D printing. The resolution of these systems is pretty awesome. Think details of less than half a millimeter, which is by the way, pretty good. Uh so the parts can be very complex.
Uh, if you guys, meaning us had access to selective laser centering, what would you like to make for the borrow your own kitchen? I don't know. That's a really interesting question. I'd like to hear from the uh cooking issues uh listeners what they think like the best 3D metal print, because I would just print every damn thing. I would just wake up and be like, this spoon, I don't like it anymore.
And I would print a new one, right? Wouldn't you? Yeah. I would just do all sorts of Christmas village. I would make my I would go on SolidWorks and make a you know a juicer that I could print out of metal for no problem.
Like, you know, finely the ultimate juicer. I would definitely do that. I would print a bunch of metal jiggers because right now I'm using plastic jiggers. I would print, like, you know, there's so much stuff I would print if I had um chat room says a lot of espresso parts. I guess they mean it for an espresso machine.
Oh, to build their own, like what, like a custom porta filter? I guess. Problem is right he right now is printing out of aluminum, but he can print check this people. He can print titanium and magnesium. How sick is that?
Titanium. But in general, people for their porta filters. I think stupidly, by the way, I'm just gonna go ahead and say that. They like brass. Brass is more stable, but it also sucks energy up.
So when it does go out of temperature, it throws all the other temperatures off. I I mean, I could go for a long time about like you know, old school versus kind of what I think a more modern approach to uh certain of those designs. Not that I'm an expert anymore. Anyway, anyway. Um see what else we got here.
Uh John, uh relatively new listener. Um I saw heard a podcast where you talked about soda streams and carbonation, wanted to offer some advice. I'm a brewer, uh, so I know a fair amount about carbonation. For home carbonation, uh, this is John saying this, uh, simplest, cheapest way to go is to buy old soda kegs, a CO2 regulator, and a tank. Carbonate five gallons at a time can be served on tap.
That's what I do. I have four taps at home, one is dedicated to soda water. I say I a slight disagreement with you here. I think if you have a refrigerator that holds kegs, then I would say yes. But otherwise, if you're doing a five-gallon um like corny keg and you're putting soda water in it, you're gonna have to put it through a cold plate, which you have to ice down, right?
So either you keep the water cold and you have to do the carbonation on the five gallons, or you're putting it through uh a cold plate. Cold plate is I think beyond what anyone is gonna do. And I think once you get a cold plate, if you're actually gonna get a cold plate, you might as well just get a carbonator, which is what I have, you know, like a McCann Big Mac carbonator, which is a lot more expensive, but it's pretty sick, and then putting it through a really good valve. Um, you know, I use one with a nice compensator on it. But uh, you know, I think if you have a beer system already with it like a kegerator or a fridge that's dedicated to holding beer, then a hundred percent I think you're right.
Like a five-gallon corny keg is a good way to go. Um, I think for people at home, you know, who don't want to use a soda stream, the good thing about doing it in the bottles with the carbonation cap from the liquid bread people, which is what I use for cocktails, is that you only have to chill the bottles that you're about to use, right? And so pretty much everyone can just stick a bunch of one-liter bottles of water in their fridge and then carbonate it when the when the time comes. Uh, two, uh, that this is John referring to me. You keep saying nitrous, it's not nitrous, it's nitrogen.
Nitrous gets you high, nitrogen doesn't. Uh, then you go on to say nitrogen only stays in solution at very high pressure. So when something is dispensed on nitrogen, it wants to come out of solution, you get beautiful waterfall effect like Guinness. You can have a variety of blends, but Guinness blend is 75 nitrogen and 25 CO2. Yeah, I know that.
That's cool that is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about nitrous. I specifically do not want nitrogen. Uh, you know, I want nitrus, which is very soluble and allows you to get really interesting texture effects. Commercially, the only things I've ever seen that have been done with nitrous, uh, AW and Sunkis did kind of creamsicle and root beer float drinks that were charged with nitrous.
Uh they didn't really catch on. Now people are doing coffee beverages with nitrous N2O and uh and because it provides uh a very lively effect without having the prickliness of carbonation. So in a nitrogen situation, other than just having the kind of waterfall effect, you also uh you are able to dispense at a higher pressure without having too much CO2 in it, overcarbonate it, right? Like a beer gas situation. But yeah, I'm specifically doing nitrous.
Nitrous is difficult to source because, as you say, it will get you high if you huff it. Back uh the tank I used to have at uh the French Cullery Institute, and we had one at Booker and Dax as well. Like the one rule I really had that was hard and fast with our interns were you may not huff the nitrous. You may not huff the nitrous. It's one of our only uh rules.
But yeah, when I carbonate on a mixed gas system, I am definitely not pushing nitrogen. In fact, if anyone tried to push nitrogen into my water, I'd I'd give them a stern, a stern look and a and a a stern talking to. Nastas, you see my stern look and talking to. Yes. Yeah.
Uh anyways. Uh there's a company called this three. There's a company called AC Beverage who makes a product called Cellurstream. It is used to take still still st still beer kegs, hook them up, uh, and it will nitrogenate them on the fly. This is a great asset to allowers and brewers to not have to worry about getting the proper amount of nitrogen solution to the keg that can simply pull the beer out from fermentation, fill the kegs, hook them up and let the cellar stream do the work.
Interesting. I don't know that product. I am interested, there's a person that makes uh an an inline carbonator that basically just circulates uh a five-gallon corny keg through a carbonation stone uh a bunch of times. Um I forget who makes it. Same people that make the beer gun, which I've never been that happy with.
Anyway. Uh hope this helps you guys have a very informative podcast and I enjoy it. Uh cheers, John. Uh, your sister, what time is this, uh? 55.
Woo! Your sister wrote in. Oh, last question. What do you want to take? Your sister or Claire?
Oh, God. Uh my sister. Your sister? All right. So uh Natty wrote in.
Natty Lopez wrote in, who uh where is she now? She's at at the home and country garden town and country. She's not doing the show anymore. We frightened the hell out of her. She just hung up on you.
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you do. Uh I remember. Yes. W when do you know that eggs are old? That's the that's it.
Yeah, yeah. Now, people, remember family show. We're not talking about like the not talking about the latest. I'm worried for my sister. Yeah, we're not first of all, what is she, like 25, 22?
Something like she. Maybe she should see an OBGYN. Yeah, like listen, you're too young to worry about the quality of the eggs at this point. You don't need to go on a freezer on a freezer binge, like other people who shall remain nameless. Nastasi, true or false.
Like the thing that the the city thing to do now is to like freeze up a pastel of eggs so that you might want to use them later. It's not the cool thing to do? People are scared. Of what? Lots of things.
They don't understand it. The only reason I think it's great is because I understand liquid nitrogen. Ah, I see. So we're not talking about that kind of eggs, people. We're talking about like, you know, eggs in your fridge eggs.
So classically, first of all, if you just look at a package, uh, they have a date on them, and I forget what the number is. I think it's like four months or something like that. But eggs. Yeah, but if you threw it away. If you threw away the package, just uh do the old float test.
If the egg sinks, it means that the air cell at the top is relatively small. What happens is as an egg ages, eggs are porous, and um the gas cell in it will get uh bigger and bigger. So uh an egg that goes to the bottom is very fresh, an egg that stands up in a bowl of water, is meh, and then an egg that floats. It's not necessarily bad, but it's older, so it's gonna have a lot more uh thin white versus thick white. It will have lost live as thick white, and so it won't make as nice of a fried uh egg and it'll have a big big air sack in it, but it still probably is not spoiled.
It's still probably uh the egg is fine. Most eggs are fine, especially you're gonna cook them. You know what I mean? Like most eggs are are fine. Um, you know, when was the last time you had back when I was a kid, if you wanted to throw a rotten egg at someone Halloween time, you had to like store those things for weeks and weeks.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dave, you used to do that when you were hanging out when you were a kid? Sorry, what'd you say? Storing uh eggs to get them rotten for Halloween time? No.
Yeah, yeah, you have to store them a long, long time. Eggs don't want to go back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Uh are we are we are we done or no? Because we have a related quick question. All right, real quick. All right, Claire wrote in uh and said, uh, was reading this uh article uh from February this year in the New York Times from uh Kim Severson about refrigerating uh eggs. And it's like uh our culinary compatriots in Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world leave uh beautiful bowls of eggs on their kitchen counters.
Uh so uh what giz? And actually, I shouldn't have started this, Dave, because it's a whole thing. We've dealt with it before on the Washington eggs versus not. So if anyone wants to hear the whole uh why we refrigerate our eggs uh in this country, like a lot has to do, you know, first of all, with uh I can get into it next time. If anyone's interested in hearing the rant on eggs, email me.
Email Nastasia and see what's going on. Otherwise, we finally caught up on questions. Boom! Cooking issues. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network, food radio supported by you.
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