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Visit Heritage Radio Network.org/slash donate to become a member now. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cookie Issues coming to you live from the Burns Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Oh yeah! We're back.
Hey guys. How are you doing? It called in your questions too. 718497-2128. That's 718-497-2128.
God, as usual in the studio, Nastasio the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing? Good. You mean you missed me the past two weeks? No.
No. No. We got uh Dave in the booth. How are you doing? Good, I missed you.
Oh see. You know why he missed me? Because I took the zoom with me, the zoom microphone. Oh, yeah. And and he needed it back.
I'm like, I'm working over here, I'm working. I'm in Pittsburgh. No, I knew you had one. That was just a call for all the other ones that I forget where they went to. Where are people storing these things?
That's a good question. I don't want to think about it. Uh and we have a sp we got a question in on uh pasta machines, and for that reason, my favorite uh fiddler of pasta machines, uh Alex Talbot from uh Ideas and Food, uh, you know, famously uh Alex Naki Ideas and Food is on the line. How you doing, Alex? Good, Dave, how are you?
Doing well, doing well. So I have him in on the line. So I don't know whether he's gonna stick around past this initial question, but you know, if he does, you might want to call in your questions, you know. You know, you don't always get to ask Alex questions uh live on the radio. But Alex, let me give you the question.
Um so for those of you that don't know, uh the ideas and food, uh, you two have been working with the uh how do you pronounce that anyway? Arcabolino or Arcaboleno, how do you pronounce that thing? Arco Boleno. Arcaboleno. Yeah, sure.
So I think you know, you guys were maybe the first people that I was aware of that were normal humans, you know, uh well, not normal humans, obviously, you know, you like a well-known like food people, but I mean in other words, not like a a a restaurant or production facility that started using this um kind of sm smaller format pasta extruder, and it's it's awesome, right? You love it? It's phenomenal. I mean, they've got uh a number of of levels of pasta extruders. Uh you know, they uh they uh it is it is the machine I think that changed what is possible for restaurants and restaurant kids.
Right. You know, so what's the throughput? What's a throughput on a thing? Again, you you know, the more people that start working with it and and and tinkering and exploring what's possible with pasta, it it it it has more people saying, okay, what if we did this and what if we did that? And then the the demand for creativity and I think the demand for uh better grains and the demand for uh really exploring uh the entire landscape of noodles uh and pushing the boundaries of of possibilities and the search for really the most amazing uh pasta you can put together is is is growing and developing.
All right, so let's just get some stuff out of the way so people know what we're talking about here. Your machine like costs roughly how much? So the tabletop, the AX 18, uh costs about $5,000. So yeah, that's a lot. Go ahead.
Look, you put it on the same scale as a Paco jet. And a Paco jet is for ice cream and a few other things, and I think they're phenomenal. But I think with a pasta machine, you are actually printing money. Well for a restaurant. You will have your return on your investment in less than six months.
Oh no, no, no. For a restaurant, a hundred percent. Uh, like uh I think the person who wrote in the question, I think is just an avid person at home who really wants one. So that I mean that that's the market that's really you know not really being uh addressed because there's like it's a lot for someone at home. So that said, they've actually retooled and and created a uh a pasta machine for that market.
Still, still it's expensive, but it's it's it you can you can do 500 grams, 500 grams of uh dry matter. Okay. Uh it's the it's the AEX five. Uh and that that that comes in into the lovely price tag of what, like two thousand dollars. And what is that?
Like seven seven hundred and fifty grams of pasta or so? Uh you're gonna end up with uh six hundred fifty grams a batch. So you know, five hundred grams of flour and the hydration at roughly thirty percent, hundred and fifty grams of that. So you can you're kicking out six hundred and fifty grams of pasta at a shot out of the AEX five. Which by the way, is enough for a house.
That's it, totally enough for a house. In fact, I've got some friends that have small restaurants and are using pasta as as as just a uh an accompaniment. They've actually gotten a five they can make you know, twelve, fifteen orders a night of beautiful pasta. So it it it's small, but it is a workhorse. It makes unbelievable noodles.
Now let's let's just get some of the stuff out of the way. All of the inexpensive pasta machine extruders rather on the market, like that attached to stand mixers uh or that were made in the seventies, these are all garbage. They they don't work well. Look, they'll make a noodle. We we understand that.
But part of it is is like I used to have a Delongi years ago, like two thousand and what, three, two thousand no, it's two thousand four, two thousand five when we were out at Kia Grande, I found one of the Delongis on eBay and bought one and made noodles. Uh mind you, I was I was working on both uh flour based and also exotic noodles, and it worked, but it wasn't something that made like made it it didn't produce. So you're sitting there just dicking around waiting for things to to happen. Right. I mean it's hilarious actually looking at them how slowly the pasta comes out.
It's like f it's like a joke. It's like a bad joke. Yeah, I mean it it's it's painful. I mean it's it's look you sure you can do it like I I I used the Kitchen Aid attachment because I thought that was gonna be my solution. Nightmare.
Horrible. Horrible. Horrible. Horrible. I mean I I guess it it's you know, you're not gonna use a Yugo to race, you know, in a car race.
That was my mistake the last time I tried to race car stars was I got the Yugo for 400 bucks and I thought I could win the race with it, and you just can't. Can't win the race with a Yugo. Um here's the thing though, right? So uh there's a couple of reasons that those uh those things don't work, right? One, they're just not powerful enough, right?
And so you have to use a relative, even to get the slow rate out of it, you need to use a relatively high hydration dough, so your noodles are never going to be as good, right? Right. I mean, so you've you you've got you're increasing the hydration and you're not you're not as dry, you're not as as as as as as compact and put together. You know, again, noodles want to be the least amount of of moisture possible. That's and and so when you're extruding it and you you can really cut down the hydration, your noodles don't stick together.
People are always amazed, you know, because when you when you make uh an extruded dough, it looks like strusel in the in the hopper when you're mixing it. Right. And it gets compressed in there and and you know, there's there's a ton of pressure. Right create you know, turns it into a noodle proper. And the problem with the high hydration along with the low force of the kind of crappy extruders, is that e even if you could dry it out properly, the surface just isn't very good of those things, correct?
Uh a lot of it you're not seeing the same surface, but you're not seeing I mean it's really hard to extrude a wet dough. It doesn't want it doesn't I mean it's it's like it's like trying to push uh you know jello through a screen. I guess jelly through a screen actually works. Yeah. Uh I guess it'll be more like, you know, the uh silly putty through a s a screen.
Ooh, that's ugly. I don't want to clean the screen after I push a silly putty through it. Um now, so for those of you that don't know how these machines work, you should check out the uh videos. But basically it does the mixing for you and then after you do the mixing you start extruding. So it's like a all in one kind of a a machine, right?
It is. Yep. Okay. Oh hey, by the way, have you ever used uh I was considering buying one, but they're like 300 bucks and I'm on a complete spending freeze until uh we start shipping the uh spinzalls as you know when when that works but the uh have you ever used one of those like uh bigly presses that you like actually like like screw down to a bench and then you use what looks like a wine press to extrude those things. You ever use one of those?
Yeah I mean that look the they they have the the the beautiful uh allure of yesteryear uh I I am sure you would figure a way to retrofit it with some sort of drive train so that you weren't sitting there being the the guy sitting there twisting it. Right. I mean it it it produces a noodle but you are you are the you are the force. That's not what Nastasia says. But the uh yeah the the uh I think I mean that's the kind of thing you kinda want to do a couple of times but you don't want to do every uh you're not gonna you're not gonna be like hey let me make uh bigly tonight right no I mean I mean so I mean to to go back to it I mean like I will rip out the the the the pasta machine with you know a half an hour before dinner and make pasta.
Right. Now what is the deal with the machine with the extrud with the extrusion it's not the same as with uh as with the regular uh, you know, sheeted pasta dough, right, in terms of rest times. That that stuff just doesn't apply in one of these machines, right? It's not. Again, and and really I I think there's a lot of uh misinformation, even about with uh, you know, sheeted pasta and and rest time.
You know, a lot of what's happening is is we're we're paying attention to hydration. So, you know, with the extruder, you're you're looking at it and you want the the moisture to be absorbed by the semolina or the Durham or whatever grains you're working with. Uh again with with sheeted pasta, that I mean that's why I I say, you know, if if you got a vacuum sealer, you vacuum seal your dough and you can roll it right away. Because you're expediting the hydration. It's it's not it's not like the glue has to completely relax.
It's it's not. It's the the power has to properly hydrate. And that's why you go from that opaque to that nice rich dark color that you get by the vacuum sealing of the dial. Right. I always, when I want to do things kind of quickly at home, I always cheat into a higher hydration and then just and then just flour the hell out of it the first couple of times passes through the uh through the sheeter until it stops being tacky.
And I know that that's probably not the best way to do it, but it is the fast way to do it at home. You know what I mean? Exactly. I mean, then that you're you're cheating the system. But that dough, you better be cooking it right away, as opposed to I'm gonna roll it out and put it in the fridge.
Because you're rolling out and put it in the fridge and it's gonna it's gonna keep hydrating and you're gonna have a big dough mass. Yeah, no, no, no. That's uh it's a it's a right-away cook and you gotta keep everything really separate because it wants to stick together, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I mean, talk about pasta is like like like one of the like moisture, like moisture management, the miracle of moisture management problems that there is.
But anyway, so this is all about the machine. And so uh the reason I'm prefacing all this to the question that this uh that uh poor poor guy from Montana wrote in, is that the a miracle of these machines is uh not just the extrusion, but that they also facilitate the proper mixing of the dough and that to make the dough in a separate machine and then feed it into an extruder might be more difficult if you had let's say a kitchen aid as your primary mixer do you find do you think that's true or or do you think that's false I I think it is it's actually you can actually do it and uh I know uh a number of chefs uh drawn craft out of pastorilla he's got some larger arcobolenos and he's you know he makes what 200 pounds of pasta a day in his restaurant so he he uses a larger Hobart and and and dry mixes his dough and then just drops it into the hopper so he he's always he's staying one step ahead and and can do it so on a smaller scale yeah you can do it you can you can mix your your your your your dough in a kitchen aid and then kick it into something else and extrude it. And again he's doing that so he he he has so much production that it makes sense for him to just go from one to the other. Right. And he's he's just constantly feeding it.
Oh because he doesn't want to waste the time to have it mixed instead of just being extruding 100% of the time. Exactly so he's got his extruder literally extruding all the time and he's just adding more dough to it as as as it continues to run out. So he can go nonstop. Right. Now you know uh you know Johnny Hunter out of Madison Wisconsin right chef?
Was that you know Johnny Hunter out of Madison Wisconsin the chef in uh from underground meats in uh Madison I lost that bit a little bit I'm sorry I did you're a bit static on my end oh yeah Johnny Johnny Hunter the uh the chef from underground meats, friend of the show out in Madison, Wisconsin. He uses this is more preface to this question. See, I'm a big believer in pre like multiple prefaces to every question. He uses his uh large Hobart meat grinder as a masa grinder, which I've never tried, but I know a couple other people that have done it. They basically what I'm prefacing here is that the actual real Hobart meat grinder is strong enough to extrude masa dough, probably and grind probably strong enough to extrude pasta dough, right?
So here are my questions. Cause here I'll read I'll read you now uh poor guy from Montana's question. Um since you guys are professional restaurant equipment uh producers, designers, I want to ask you a question that has been driving me crazy. Why doesn't anyone make brass plates to stick into a meat grinder and extrude pasta with? A uh number 12 hub meat grinder is cheap.
I wouldn't I would use the anyway. Um a pasta extruder is expensive. Could I get a machinist to fabricate some brass plates from my cheap Chinese Hobart attachment and extrude pasta to my heart's delight? Poor guy from Montana. All right, now here's here's here's my thoughts, and then you just go off.
Ready? One meat grinder auger, slightly different from a pasta auger. The pasta augers I've looked at on the web have a constant pitch rather than uh kind of an accelerated pitch like a meat grinder has. That's one. Two, you're gonna want to remove the cutting blade off of the end of the meat auger, uh, meat grinder auger and replace it with just a spacer because you're not gonna want that cutting force right behind your extruding die.
But other than that, I think it might actually work. What do you think? I I I think it'll work pretty much without a problem. I mean, you're again, you're you're you're you're fixing the problem, sort of. Uh so I guess you're you're allowing yourself to get to where you want to go, but if if at the end of the day you want to actually make pasta, you want to get the pasta machine.
If you mean if you want to adapt it for a couple of days or you know, a year or so to see if it works, but I think if you're gonna start to make pasta, you're gonna have a such a demand for it that to be jerry-rigning your meat grinder to be extruding pasta dough is is uh not a long-term solution. Oh, yeah, yeah. In a in a restaurant, 100%. But like let's say you're let's say that your your handle is literally poor guy from Montana, and you know, you already own the grinder because like, you know, like two, three times a year you grind a whole elk through it because you know, the elk, you know, the elk the elk is running through trampling on your garden anyway. So you shoot that elk right in the heart, you grind it through your hobart.
You have the hobart sitting there, you know. You don't have a couple of grand. I would bet that you could find uh because here's the other thing. Like, I don't know a lot about the plate sizes in in pasta extruders, but there's there's several different plate sizes, and on eBay, you can get individual pasta plates for like uh the dies for like, I don't know, I forget like a hundred bucks, right, Alex? Something like that.
Yeah, it seems to me that you could probably have someone make an attachment for the hobart that would at least let you try it. And obviously, if you were gonna do this professionally, you know, obviously, you know, you you'd want to go professionally, but I think I think you might be able to get some tests, but I do think you'd need to remove the blade. Do you think so? Or do you think the blade wouldn't be a problem? No, I mean, I look, I mean, if if you look at the small meat grinder attachment anyway, the small, the smallest die that they make, that's almost like a beagle, right?
Right. So if you have one of those kicking around, I'd throw dough through it first and see and see what happens. I think it'll work. But on the on the die on the dies for those things, don't they uh they're um what what's it? They're uh they're chamfered, aren't they, to kind of like gently excr extrude to the to the face surface.
Like they're not it's not like uh it's not like uh a deep through all the way through, isn't it? Or no? They're not I mean the no you say the pasta the pasta dies kick out, yeah. They're they're they they stick out so you can cut smoothly. Right.
I mean in other words, like I think it's a little bit more difficult to extrude um in other words, like if you were going to extrude something through a plate and it went from it went from being you know completely unextruded to the final hole size and then had to traverse the entire length of the die at that diameter, I think that's gonna be a lot harder for the machine to handle than if it's champ chamfered in the back and then like only has to pass through that thin place once through a small, you know, a th a small uh distance of going through that thin area, don't you think so? Uh so it it it depends on the shape. So like a spaghetti die, on the back of a spaghetti, yeah, it's it's it's it's just all those holes. Huh? It just pushes the dough through it.
But for let's say shells or something like that, it's got that smaller bit, so it it downsizes the dough. So it can actually come out as a shell. Huh. Now, do you think that uh I mean I know that like for various texture reasons, yada yada yada, uh, you know, brass is the material of choice or bronze is material of choice for these dyes, but do you think that the stainless uh steel uh plates would work just as a test to see how well it would work? Absolutely.
I mean, look, you're already you've you've already decided that you're gonna run pasta dough through a meat grinder. I I don't think we need to, you know, get meticulous about getting a bronze dye. Alright. So as a first test, poor guy from Montana can like take the blade out of the back, just put a bushing on it to to take up the slack and see whether or not he can push it through a you know through the uh you know the medium or the or the I don't know how fine the plate plate he has, but just test it to see whether it works. Exactly.
I mean there's an I think there's an eighth of an inch which is which will be like a thick bigly so I I'll give that a shot. I mean on the on the on the on like the they also they also make one for for juicers right for like the uh the the the the slow revolution juicers they make pasta plates for those again home style but so it's that's not too much of a difference than a meat grinder as well. Right but I'm assuming poor guy from Montana wants to use the like an actual proper hydration dough. The other thing I'm concerned about is isn't your pasta auger longer for its diameter than a meat auger is I think it depends on your your darn machine. I mean the auger's pretty big but it again it's it's that's because it's it's it's a pretty big hopper so it's it's taking dough from the whole space.
Right but in other words part of the actual compression and hydration is happening in the augering procedure. So the I think it's I I think it's pulling it in and but you I think it's only in in the in the neck of the the machine where you're having having it happen. I think it's it's literally the dough is just dropping in earlier on. Right, right, right. But is the neck longer for the diameter of the auger than it would be because like a KitchenAid meat grinder which I'm no fan of I love the KitchenAid by the way but I'm zero fan of their meat grinder.
The auger is extremely short on that and also plastic. So I don't know that you're gonna be able to generate I don't know that you have the time to get the dough in the proper consist uh consistency from that crumbly thing to being perfect dough, uh, you know, in the traverse time of that of that particular meat grinder because the auger is so short, even if you had enough power to, you know, overcome it. You know what I'm saying? I do. Um I'm trying to try to think so the our meat grinder that we use, we use uh one the the Lem Meat grinder.
Right. Which is which is got a it's got a big auger. I mean, you know, uh but it it spits meat out super fast. So I I think it'd be interesting to see how it how it kicked out dough. Yeah.
I think it would grab it. But I I wonder if it's almost too fast. You want something moving a little bit slower. Uh, and you can't, they're not meant to be changed. Here's another thing, by the way.
So poor guy from Montana is using a Hobart knockoff from China. And something I will tell you about motors is that uh a lot of motors really, really, really, really do not enjoy being loaded beyond their stated capacity, right? And so I guarantee you the f the good people at the Hobart Corporation have taken into account the fact that everyone and you know and their sibling is going to completely and utterly abuse their product. Uh in most commercial, like actual name name brand commercial restaurant equipment that I've ever used, you can beat the ever loving crap out of it. And you might you you might you know flip a thermal, you might melt a safety off, you might, you know, boil water, you might burn your hand on the motor, but afterwards it's gonna come back to life.
Um like knockoff versions, like I often find like, you know, they use cheaper gears, so you might break the gear in in a situation if you 'cause a pasta dough is a lot of freaking force. You know what I'm saying? Um and so you want slow extrusion with extremely high force. And uh, so you know, you might run into problems with the with the Hobart uh with the Hobart knockoff there. Whereas as you're saying, you know, with with like the real ones, it's either it's gonna work or it's gonna not not.
It's gonna be too fast or it's not. But I wouldn't worry that I'm gonna destroy the machine because I'm presuming it's built with a level of quality that can withstand that. Whereas, you know, i you know if if the thing if the the thing might be like a complete champ on meat but then uh you know you try to shove something that's really hard into it and you and you fry it. It's like my nickstomatic my masa grinder you know churns through masa like a champ because that's what it's designed to do. But you put um you put like uh peanuts with sugar.
You know how you know how when you uh process sugar and nuts together it turns into like basically concrete Alex you ever done that one? Like it like the paste turns to like concrete because I was doing it to try to get maximum oil extraction and uh and it it seized the machine and then like the giant puff of smoke out of the back. It came back to life thank goodness but you know you ha you have to you know w when you overload something you have to be careful especially if it hasn't been designed with thermal protection in mind. Just a you know little little tip. You want to take another call Dave?
Uh yeah we can keep Alex on the on the caller you're on the air. Hey this is uh Scooter in Montana how you guys doing all right hey are you are you poor guy? No I'm not poor guy. All right. Well I love that we have at least two people in Montana that are listening.
That's amazing. All right what's your question you got more than that. So I I have a bag juice question. Um, I like to do my burgers, low temp. I throw a little butter in the bag, maybe some garlic.
Uh when they're done, I have delightful bag juice, which is usually about half oil um or fat and half liquid. Um then what I tend to do is brush it on the buns and grill the buns. Um and it's delicious, but there are two problems. One is sometimes using the brush, you end up with just oil and just water. So I solved that one.
I added a little lecetin and blended in a multiply, but it's still really, really rummy. And so it makes the buns really soggy. Um, what I was wondering is is there a way to get that juice into something resembling a mayonnaise or a spread that I could spread on the buns before hitting them on the grill. Well, I mean, uh, Alex, I'm gonna let you chime in for a second, but uh in a second, but like uh a lot of the um a lot of this, especially if you're doing this in kind of uh service restaurant situation, it would when I was working with uh juices out of bags or anything like this, sauces on on braises, etc. Typically what I would do is I would use yesterday's bag juice to work with today's product.
And what what that does for you is it gives you some extra time. So then if you if you have that, you know, uh fat from yesterday, then sure, you can make a mayonnaise out of it, you know, like traditionally, like with egg white. You can do whatever you want. You know, you can pre-boil the bag juice to get rid of the extra scummy proteins, strain it all through with the liquid, um, you know, take an egg yolk, mayonnaise it, or use any of the kind of more modern techniques to do it, and then use yesterday's product on today's burger. And like that's the easiest way, because I find that most of the interventions that are gonna let you do anything rather than just brush it on, aren't a I'm just gonna do this while this thing is uh, you know, finishing or getting ready to go out, because it just takes a little more, it's just a little more franc frantic or hectic if you do it that way.
Alex, what do you think? Well, uh since we're speaking with you about uh and on on the line about it, that actually sounds like a a a prime use for your spinzall, in the sense that I would take all the juices and run them through the your centrifuge, have the fat, have the liquid and have the scum, take the fat and the liquid, and then be able to make my beautiful mayonnaise with the fat and the liquid and then get rid of the scum in one shot and then be just have this great production. Right, sure. But but you you would use yesterday as product, you'd use yesterday. I mean there's there's no way you're you're pulling it and going you you've got to get at least one day ahead.
So the the the first day somebody gets screwed. They don't get the quite the the the same experience. So I'm I'm just I'm just at home here um and uh uh so I understand that that's you're saying that that's maybe not uh possibility for same-day service, but what would be your technique? Let's say I do have some some bag juices from yesterday and you're talking about some more modernist uh ways to or just traditional ways to whip up the mayonnaise. What would what would be your technique there?
Well, if you were if you let's just go back to your actual problem for a sec. So if you're trying to do it with today's with today's product, right? Yeah. Uh what I would do is I would uh the the issue with mayonnaise in general, other than it is delicious, is that um you wanna stay within the within the proper ratio of um of uh fat to liquid. So you're gonna want to stay about eighty percent fat or thereabouts.
If you go if you go too much more uh liquid than that, it's gonna get too thin. If you go too much, a little, you know, a lot more fat than that. Isn't that right now? It's about eighty percent, right? And then uh if you go too much above that, it could break, you're gonna get that shimmery look at the top and break.
So what you could do if you want to do this on the quick is you could pre-start a mayonnaise, right? So if you pre if you take an egg yolk and you know, you pre-start a mayonnaise, but don't don't like let it stay thin, but not not broken. Don't fully mount it up to its full capacity. Uh then you can dope uh you can dope your fat from the bag back in along with the mixture. Alternatively, because uh, you know, if you read Harold McGee, an egg yolk can really with can really take a lot more oil than we're we're used to.
Let's say your bag juice to fat ratio is around 80% in that range. Then you can pre-make a mayonnaise fully mount it up, right, to mayonnaise uh texture, then just whisk your your whole garbage together and then into the mayonnaise, and it should hold it. I mean, uh I would test it. You know, Alex, what would you add to stabilize? Would you add anything to stabilize it, or do you think this would work?
I think it would work. Do we lose Alex, Dave? Sounds like it. Oh, maybe he'll call back in. I think it'll work.
Mayonnaise is a little bit uh hopefully you'll call back in. When we used to teach the class with uh Harold McGee at the FCI, we would we would make a gallon of mayonnaise out of one egg yolk, and it's always a little bit trying, like you know, it's like we always get like really close to gallon, and then it would finally break. But um, you know, like uh you can you can do pretty well. It's just about keeping your liquid to uh to um fat ratio proper. And also, uh, you know, you obviously you have to add salt and whatnot, or mayonnaise is is god awful, and it's nice to have a little acid in it, or again, mayonnaise.
I you know, I don't like mayonnaise without some acid in it because it's just then it's in kind of insipid garbage. Um I've never made a mayonnaise with butter. Uh I don't know why, maybe because I'm a low-quality individual. By the way, Dax is working on the low-quality individual shirt, Nastasia. Uh so we can sell another three t-shirts.
Yeah. But the um, but there's a famous recipe, his name just went out of my head, but he was the uh might still be for all I know, the head uh chef of uh Valrona chocolate, famous guy. I don't know why I can't remember his name. And one of his like kind of famous recipes is a mayonnaise made with uh cocoa butter, with like chocolate and cocoa butter. And uh he has to keep that mayonnaise kind of at the right temperature because uh once um the cocoa butter solidifies, the mayonnaise breaks.
And so it's like keeping it warm, but it's a warm mayonnaise, and so I you know, butter takes longer to solidify than um than uh cocoa butter does, but you're probably gonna want to keep it in the range where um the butter is going to be fluid because mayonnaise is built around a fluid oil, obviously, but not so hot that you curdle the egg yolk, you know what I'm saying? R right, and well, especially because some of the fat in there too is the rendered beef tallow. Right, right, right. And so, and that's that stuff gets waxy real quick. So, in fact, by the way, this is one of the reasons that I really like to so low temperature uh meats in general, um steaks specifically.
I often like to finish with liquid oil like olive oil. One because I find it delicious, like a finishing oil, like a you know, Italian style styles. You like that, right? Like a like a steak with olive oil on top. But also because uh just adding a little bit of liquid fat on top of the steak uh helps prevent that waxiness that can happen if you let pure stake on stake action like sit around too long and congeal, and nobody likes I mean I don't know, maybe somebody likes that waxy.
I guess on a roast beef sandwich that wacky waxy texture is what you're looking for. But I hope not. Yeah, but no, but you know what I'm saying? You know what I'm talking about, that waxy, you know what I'm talking about, that waxy. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean something that I like when I you know cook potatoes or something in in tallow, but uh but yeah, obviously why don't I have a steak. Yeah, no, you don't want a steak. So anyway, well uh I want you to try that. Hopefully sometime you'll try that, and then like uh I'd like you to let us know whether or not it worked, and then uh we can uh futz around with it more. It's difficult.
I mean you can thicken the uh water base of the uh uh of of this stuff, right? And then if you emulsify it, the entire thing will be thicker, but it ain't gonna be mayonnaise. You know what I mean? I mean mayonnaise is like you know, a minor miracle. Like I love mayonnaise.
It came to my attention a couple years ago that there's some people that don't like mayonnaise, and I just don't understand that. Like, you know, uh I just don't get it because mayonnaise is like such uh you know a miracle kind of a product. But anyway, let it uh let us know um how your mayonnaise test work. Oh, the main fat thickeners that people use to thicken fat, I don't happen to like them because the ones at least that I have used require a lot of uh a lot to like thicken the stuff up properly. And uh even GMF.
Oh, wait, uh uh wait, you're back, Alex. I am. I I I I kept keeping dumped out. I was gonna say GMS. You can use a small amount to thicken the fat up for sure.
Yeah? Is that available at Modernistpantry.com? Ah sponsor. I'm thinking it's gotta be. Yeah.
Well how what's what percentage do you use? Shoot. It was it w it I think it was at like one percent, if not less. Really? You were able to uh yeah, and you and you can make spread oil mayonnaise, spreadable chorizo oil, uh anything.
Yeah. Oh well, so try that out. 'Cause I yeah, no, I never I never really played around with that. Like, you know, back when I the last time I worried about this was literally ten years ago. And uh, you know, and all all we had then was like mono and diglycerides, and that stuff is nasty to use as a thickener.
I mean it's awesome stuff, but it's nasty to use as a s thickener because you're using like five, six percent of mono and diglycerides to thicken your stuff up. I mean, Alex, are you am I wrong about that? Or have you had any good luck with that stuff? No, right? No, I I I I I uh yeah, I mean the G I mean the GMS is is worked out really well.
I got it uh again I as you said, you about it it was about five, seven years ago we were we were really working with it as a as a thickener. Uh mono diglycerides I haven't used in in forever since um and so as a as a true thickener, but it'll it'll it I look at more as an emulsifier. Yeah, no, it's great for that. But like I remember back in the day when everyone was trying to figure out what to do with this stuff when it first became, you know, available, you know, people were doping it directly into oil at huge rates to actually thicken the oil, but not only is it uh nasty at those levels, but like the texture is wildly temperature dependent. And so, you know, you'd have it would go waxy super quick as it cooled off.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so any of those things could try. So traditional mayonnaise or you know, whatever, you know, you know, w what Alex is talking about.
And how what percent what percentage did you say, Dad? Uh I'm I'm I'm trying at I'm trying to go back to my notes. And if you give me 30 seconds on the uh on this new thing called the internet, I can look on our website. Ooh, nice. I I certainly have it from years years ago.
But let's see. Let me see. While uh while Alex is searching. So hopefully uh this is helpful and you will uh have great success either using a traditional technique or or a modern technique and then let us know how let us know how it works out. Yeah, well in the meantime, uh you guys should come out to Montana.
You got you got fans out here. Really? You know, I've never been to Montana, but I hear it's like intensely beautiful out there. Yeah, we get we'll get some percent. Wait, what'd you say, uh Alex?
One percent? One percent. Yeah. Yeah. So like it melts right into it.
Yeah. So right into the fat. Cool. So theoretically, I love Montana, but I've never been. Stas.
You ever been to Montana? Montana's gorgeous. Yeah, I would love stunning. Where were you guys used to be? You guys used to be in Colorado, right, Alex?
We were we we were we were in Colorado for four years, and then we actually spent the season out uh in white sulfur springs running a private ranch out there as well. So's that. Hey, no kidding. Is that in Montana? Uh uh in Montana, yep.
Are there in fact white sulfur springs there? White sulfur springs. You know, I I don't know. I was uh we we were stuck on the property, so yeah. That that I'm not sure.
We we went from the property to Bozeman every once in a while for ingredients. Nice. Yeah, so no, I'll go sometime. Sometime I'll get to go. Uh excellent.
Anyway, let us know. Let us know how it works. All right, child. Thank you, good both. All right, thanks.
Dave, you want to uh read that thing real quick and then we can take another call? Alright, Alex, are you uh uh Alex, you staying you staying with us? Yeah, we got I got you. Alright, cool. I'm gonna read a little uh I gotta do a little bid naz, do a little bid nas.
Uh today's program is brought to you by Modernist Pantry, providing magical ingredients for the modern cook for free videos, recipes, tips, and tricks. Visit blog.modernistpantry.com. All right. Oh, I meant the longer one. Oh man.
I'll read the long I'll read the long one on uh on the outro. Oh, okay. I'll read the long one now. Okay. Okay, okay, business people.
Uh this is what is uh known in the trade, uh although trade implies that we're being paid for this. That's true. Which is just not the case. But anyway, uh this is called the mid roll ad. Modernist Pantry was created by food lovers and cooking issues fans, just like you.
Jamie Chris and the Modernist Pantry family share your passion for experimentation and have everything you need to make culinary magic happen in your own kitchen. Professional chef, home cook, food enthusiast, no matter what your skill or experience, Modernist Pantry has something for you. They make it easy to get the ingredients and tools you need and can't find anywhere else so that you can spend less time hunting and gathering and more time creating memorable dishes and culinary experiences. Visit modernistpantry.com today to discover why cooking issues listeners call Modernist Pantry the cook's secret weapon. Be sure to check out their new kitchen alchemy blog at blog.modernistpantry.com for free recipes, tips, and tricks.
And don't forget to follow Modernist Pantry on social media to keep up with what is new and exciting in the world of culinary ingredients and tools. My God, my mouth is so full of spit from not stopping in the middle of that. Alright. Well done. Okay, we have a caller.
Caller, you're on the air. What do you got for us? Hey, Dave. Um, my friend and I are working on a uh mojito. Okay.
Alex, you done a lot of work with meringues or no? Yeah, I mean uh look, the the the salad I'd make I'd make I'd make mint water. Huh. Well how mu how much and use powdered egg whites. Huh.
You hearing that caller? Powdered egg whites. Okay. Here's the trick with powdered egg whites. Powdered egg whites come in various different uh qualities.
So uh like way back in the day, I'm talking like in the 90s, I I haven't researched it recently. Like uh a lot of Chinese, a lot of egg white dried egg white came out of China and it had like very particular properties as opposed to other ones. I forget it was really liked for certain things and not uh for others, but the recently the powdered egg whites that I've seen are all relatively neutral, relatively clean. The issue with the powdered egg white is you want to allow proper time for hydration. Am I wrong about this, Alex?
Or no, I again it it it it's still it still wants to be properly hydrated. But with with when we were when we were flavoring things, for sure, it was it was using uh again, powdered egg whites so we could use a flavored liquid, an intensely flavored liquid. So if you're trying to make like you know, the mint pavlova, I'd be using again a concentrated mint tea or or or liquid, uh, and then and then the powdered egg whites and uh to make the uh make it happen. And by the way, go with the mint tea. It's like buying commercial mint tea is the easiest way to get a relatively stable uh liquid mint flavor and then dope it with mint oil.
Actually attempting to get because mint oil is real and mint tea is real, trying to take mint from uh the garden and getting a stable kind of mint flavor, I find to be exceedingly difficult. Have you ever had any like perfect luck with that, Alex? Or no? I think it's really hard. No, it it it ends up tasting so uh grassy and sorry, like the the it just it doesn't work.
Right. So mint tea has been like good, proper, like you know, like Moroccan style mint tea has been dried. Once it's dried, my impression is is that it's relative it's it's relatively more stable, and then it's being steeped in hot water, which also makes it relatively more stable. Uh, but you will not have the freshness that comes from the oil. It'll be a different flavor, which is why I would dope back in a little bit, a little bit.
Uh, because uh the I guess the oil theoretically will destabilize the egg whites, uh, but a little bit's not gonna kill you, but I would do it in for freshness. Uh what do you think, Alex? I I I I I like I like the two-step process there for sure. Yeah. Again, anytime we can we can layer those those those flavors together, I think we're in a better place.
Um extract or whatever. Sorry. Wait, what'd you say? I couldn't hear you, caller. Peppermint extract, you think that would be the job, or just straight oil?
Uh wait, I I wouldn't use just straight oil. I would use uh because the oil is a certain portion of the mint flavor, and it like in a a lot of that's the flavor that you would lose from cooking the mint from blanching it, which is what's gonna basically what's gonna be happening when you're making the mint tea, you're gonna get more of a cooked mint flavor. I really think if you want an integrated uh mint uh experience, especially if you want that color from the mint, that you're gonna want to um you're gonna want to do two steps. You're gonna want to buy the mint tea, steep it, and then add the oil. If you want just mint flavor, sure, you could just use regular egg whites and uh dope it with a little mint oil, you know, after it's after it's I would say probably after you've whipped it, wouldn't you say Alex?
Probably after you've whipped it, I would stir stir it in and pipe it. What do you say? It's not gonna want to whip otherwise with the yet with the mint oil in there. Right. And it's gonna kill it somewhat, but like once it's stabilized with sugar, you should be able to get a little bit of it in, which is all you're gonna need, uh you know, right you know, prior to piping.
And yeah, you could fake it then with color, but I think you're gonna be just have like a much more integrated experience if you um if you make the tea and then use the powdered egg white. And by the way, like you can have a portion of it be powdered. So like you know uh you know Johnny Azzini used to use a lot of powdered egg white in conjunction with actual egg white when only a portion of the liquid base needed to be highly flavored or need to be bolstered. So you know it's not an all or nothing proposition. Yeah and the other thing you can do is actually is actually dust the uh dust the mering once you've got it piped out with dried mint.
Oh that's a good almost like you do like a green tea but have have your dried beef and powder that guy up and just dust it over it. Okay. And you know and and then I guess another the a final option would be if you uh if you again nitrumuddle your mint right and then fold that into your meringue. Well nitro muddled mint though still unless it's blanched is gonna go really it's gonna go black. So you have to blanch it first and as soon as that mint hits as soon as whole mint hits heat, it loses the magic of fresh mint.
Because it's it's not that it's not delicious anymore. It just it's not the same. It doesn't have that hyper fresh um you know, but honestly, like another thing you could do is you could do a nitromuttled mint or a dried mint into the meringue straight without worrying about it, and then after it's cooked, missed some of like missed a small amount of the oil on the top to get that, and that'll probably also give you a lot of the mint because it takes a minuscule amount of mint oil to to bring that mintiness out. Um so you know, if you find that like adding even a little bit of mint oil to the uh meringue, you know, makes the meringue because as you know, it's you've seen you I'm sure b you know both of you seen it. You add a you know, a little bit of oil and you s you get a lot of bubble popping.
It's not that it's it's not as much of a disaster as you know the old cookbooks would lead you to believe, but it's definitely not your friend for like a uh meringue that's stable enough to sit there and pipe and then and then bake out. Okay. Well, yeah, I don't have any access to nitro yet. I'm working on that, but hey, uh how what if I brought an ISI into it? Would that do anything or would that be uh is that a waste of uh cartridges?
I mean, I don't really see how the ISI is gonna help you in this situation since it's not really an infusion problem. I think um, you know, uh or it's also not really a whipping problem. I think egg whites are a lot better, you know, except for cocktail style style egg whites, like meringues are a lot better like with a beater, you know what I mean? And uh you know what would be interesting is it I mean you can play it on the base, but if you took fent fresh mint leaves and let them sit in your egg whites for a day in the refrigerator, and see if you can infuse them infuse your egg whites with mint flavor that way. Yeah, you could you could try as long as the the the real issue is like you're gonna want the problem with the mint is is that um right most of the the oil that flavor stuff is on the bottom of the leaves and these little kind of like uh those little kind of like, you know, whatever I forget the name of them, these little like oil things on the bottom of the leaves.
Yeah. And then um the the issue is is that mint is perhaps the most susceptible to leaf damage uh in terms of flavor, that swampy, spinachy, grassy flavor of any common herb. It's the most susceptible. So like, you know, and if there's any oxygen around it when it's doing its thing, then it's gonna go kind of swampy on you. So you might wanna like, if you have a vacuum machine, if you wanted to try an infusion in your egg white of fresh mint, I would definitely try it under a vacuum to try to get the oxygen out because there's enough residual oxygen in a mint leaf to make it go swampy just on its own as soon as it starts getting damaged, because it's gonna get damaged from being under the liquid.
You mean you know what I'm saying? What do you think, Alex? Don't you think so? Vacuum is the way you would to go here? I think so, and I I think you're probably gonna get a maybe some more flavor out of it as well.
Right, but I think But vacuuming egg vacuuming egg whites is a hilarious procedure if you have somebody else doing it. You have to be like really you have to really look at your bag because once an egg white starts boiling, the bubbles don't pop readily. And so uh your bag tends to fill up pretty quickly with uh bubbles. So you're gonna want to use a way oversized bag, and you're gonna want to have plenty of room in your vacuum chamber, uh, and you're gonna want to keep your finger on the stop button so that you don't uh otherwise it's gonna I mean I'm it's it's kind of a a toss as to what's more of a pain in the butt, egg whites or m or milk for this kind of a thing, but you know, they're both kind of pains in the butts in a vacuum machine, at least in my experience. I don't know.
Uh Alex, do you have any tricks on vacuuming those things or just watch out because they're a pain? I'd I'd I'd watch out and I'd have somebody else do it. That way they should that was that way they can clean the machine. Right. And then what you you always what you do is you look at them and you yell at them call them incompetent even though you would have done the same thing and then force them to clean it.
That's always the way. Would you blanch them or anything at before the fresh mint? Could you uh blanch it? No. Well here's why.
If you were going to wrap it up then this if you were gonna blanch it, then you might then you can do anything. Once you blanch the mint, then pff, you know, all bets are off. You can do whatever you want. You could blend it, you could, you know, roll it into a cigarette and smoke it because you know you've already lost the stuff that you're trying to keep in there for have by you know having it be hyper fresh. So I mean I mean Alex you might disagree with me but I would say that if you're you know if you're gonna blanch it then I would just don't sweat it.
Just blend it and add it to your egg white and beat away. You know what I mean? At the end. Like fold it in. I really like the powdered dry idea like really finely powder it in a spice blender and then f and then uh fold it in at the end as though it I I I think that that actually is a nice way to go and then maybe misting with a little fresh uh mint oil afterwards.
Um what do you think Alex? That might be the easiest of all of it without or like your idea of making the mint tea and then with the egg white that's the most integrated but if you didn't want to go through the pain in the ass of doing that your idea of powdering the dry and then maybe with a like a an additional um little bit might be might be good. What do you think Alex? I I think so I I think also if you split it just lightly with the oil and then dust it, that it's gonna adhere to it really nicely as well. Oh, yeah, on the outside.
I was thinking he could do on the inside of the uh Pavlova as well, like in the in the meringue proper, but I guess just the dusting also would be nice. You could yeah, but I mean folding I mean I I think that's both are solid. I think they're they're I mean they're now you you you you've I think delivered uh uh you know a bunch of different ideas to to try and explore. It's it's like you know, how many of them do you want to integrate isn't the question now? Would you say that we've given him some ideas and food?
I I I think some some ideas some ideas and food. He's gonna have to deal with his cooking issues, but he has plenty of ideas and food. All right. Love you both. All right, thanks.
All right. Well, listen, well, uh I didn't get to all the questions today, but thanks so much. Uh I have a question on Tankatsu broth that uh we'll get to next time in Pressure Cooker. Alex, thanks so much for coming on the show. It's always a pleasure to have you.
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