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Find us at heritageradio network.org. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network, roughly from roughly 12 to roughly like 1245 every Tuesday from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Br Brooklyn! Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas?
Good. We got Dave in the booth. Good. And good. I like that.
Don't even ask. Just following suit. It's just good. It's good. You do anything interesting, uh, Dave?
In what? In life? Well, in this that's food, not food related, some sort of issue that you had over the past week. Um, let me get back to you. All right.
And uh we have with us today, for the first time ever, the entire Booker and Dax current Booker and Dax team in the studio with us. We have yeah. We have Matthew, whose last name I'm gonna withhold because he's the customer service representative for Booker and DAX, and I don't want you to be able to dox him and find him in the real life. You know what I mean? Unless he so chooses to out himself.
Booker and Docs. Oh, Booker and Doxing. What's up, uh Matthew? How are you doing? How's it going?
How the how's that uh Spins All Customer Service treating you? Roughly looking answer for him. How's it how's it going over there? Rough. I see it.
Yeah. Yeah. Wait, are you seeing the life melt out of him? Yeah. Nice.
So uh how did you come to Booker and Dax? What were you doing before? What was I doing before? I was working in data science. Data science.
Wow, what's that French for? Like uh what can just explain to people what data science? Because to me, data science can either be like what I used to do, which is uh design databases for lawyers, or it could be I'm gonna troll data to try to make up some new uh uh epidemic that doesn't really exist. It could be either of those things, or it could be a good use of data science. Uh it wasn't the best use.
It was credit cards. Oh, credit cards. Were you mining it so that you could get more money out of the people, or so that you could find people who weren't paying so you could get them to spend more money? All those and fraud. Fraud.
Yeah. Fraud. That was the only one that felt redeeming to do. Yeah? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, so uh what do you do you have a word for people who believe that credit card fraud is a victimless crime? Probably right. Wow.
You used to work in that business and you don't have like a good like so the businesses I used to work in, I can still instantly spit out like all of the all of the rhetoric. You can't there was no fun lingo, no? No? They didn't instill in you a hatred of credit card fraud? Just working on it.
Yeah? Yeah. I mean, for my years of working with uh for my years of working with lawyers, I can tell you I still hate asbestos companies to this day. I still hate them. More than you hate asbestos?
You know, it's getting philosophical. I don't. It was called the magic mineral. You know why it was called the magic mineral? Give you wings.
Ooh. No, but uh who knows? Maybe uh Red Bull will also turn out to be as horrible as asbestos. No, it uh I think too late. It doesn't expand, it doesn't contract, it lasts virtually forever, it's fairly cheap, it can be molded into you know almost any variety.
It's a it's a mineral that comes in fiber form already. It's as though God made fabric out of rocks, you know, and it's heat proof. It's amazing stuff, except it kills you, uh, which is the problem. Okay, now we also have the reason why any of you have a spinzall at all, we have direct from Hong Kong and Shenzhen. We have Chris Witters, who is the Booker and Dax representative in China and in Hong Kong.
How you doing, Chris? Fantastic. Yeah? And so Chris, I'll let him tell a little bit of his story, but Chris uh, you know, is now like uh, I don't know what you would describe what you do. You beat people's heads together until they do what they need to do, is kind of what you do.
Lone shark? Well except you don't need to you only need to pay back that guy because he's gonna break your knees otherwise. I mean, like it's Chris more like takes people who should be doing their job and aren't, and then just sits there and like harangues them until they do it. Is that I mean, like what do you what is that even called? What's that job title?
Like how would someone find someone like you if they needed to find you look up in a directory for an asshole. Family show, Chris. Family show, a hole. A hole. And uh, but before that, uh Chris was a chef uh in like in New York, at Walt Disney World.
What did you do at Walt Disney World? Uh regional chef. Yeah, nice. All right. So how do you get from chef into product?
Is most of your product design on the kitchen side, or or or not product design, but product shepherding, whatever we call this job that you do? Mainly kitchen? Mainly kitchen. Massaging. Sometimes it seems like it.
It's like uh, you know that where we're gonna open the new bar is all massage parlors, but it's it's it's uh foot massage parlors. And so like you're actually like Matthew, you would be sitting next to Nastasia, like like in close proximity, both of you getting your feet massaged. And for me, that's unpleasant. I would not want to do that. Doesn't sound great.
Would you want to do that? Would you want to do that, Nastasia? It doesn't bother me. You wouldn't you wouldn't want to sit next to what about if it's next to May? Yeah no.
Yeah, right. You don't get to choose. Women get pedicures. How's that different? A pedicure is like a more like a functional They also massage your feet.
Uh I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know. You can add up the number of pedicures I've gotten in my life on zero hands. You know what I mean? And the number of manicures I've ever gotten, you can add up on zero hands.
But I do enjoy a head massage at the at the at the hair salon. What about uh people do foot massage over there, like straight up regular foot massage over there in Hong Kong or no? Oh, yeah, it's quite a bit. Yeah. Quite a bit.
You can see massage parlors everywhere. Well, yeah. But I mean like regular feet massage, just feet? Yes, more or less. All right.
So call in all of your spinzall related questions, uh, booker and dax related questions, equipment manufacturing questions, or really any questions. Two seven one eight four nine seven two one two eight. That's seven one eight four nine seven a two one a two eight. We do have a caller on the line. Caller, you're on the air.
We did have a caller. Hey, sorry about that. No, I had uh the mute button on. Yeah, yeah. Uh first off, great that the spindle guys are there because this is a spindle question.
Ah yeah. Uh first off, big ups to Matthew because he helped me with spin doll problems via email. So so uh well well well picked. Um but my my question regards um an old recipe from uh from the bar, which was the champion houstino. Yes.
Um I've done I've done, you know, the various uh uh Houstinos from Liquid Intelligence, but uh obviously the mushrooms don't have uh pectin, so how do I how do I work with that? What's the technique? That is an excellent question. Uh as a true politician would say that's an excellent question. I'm glad you asked that question.
Next question. No, uh that that uh that recipe was actually uh Nick Bennett's. That wasn't uh my recipe. And um and because I made it a habit to only ever do demos of like my specs, my personal specs, like whenever we had to do a demo of it, he always did it. And I honestly I don't know how they did it.
I'm pretty sure they started with uh dried shiitakis. Um and I think honestly, it was less of a Houstino and more of an infusion. So they and then so what they would do, I don't think we bought powdered shiitake. I think we bought just regular shiitake and maybe did like a pulse blend into it and infusion and then just spun out the solids. Because the the trick with um so as you rightly point out, mushrooms are not made of uh pectin, they're made of chitin.
Um and I don't believe they did a like a Kiesel salt uh chitosan thing and plus also chitin is not charged in the same way that Kitusan is because it hasn't been uh uh treated. Um so I th my guess is is that it works much more just like a settling out the same way that if you were clarifying a bitters, for instance, like or a spice oil, which by the way is not something we push a lot, but it's a good use. So if you're making like a curry oil or something like this to get the spices out. Because you're not really solubilizing uh when you blend a banana, you're putting banana juice into it or dates, and you're putting solubilized pectin into it that you need to knock out. And in this, I think it's much more of a uh suspension slash infusion, but that's just a guess.
Um next time I um next time we have Jack uh Shram on the show, I'll uh I'll try to remember to ask him to put out the or Nick Bennett, we can call Nick Bennett and have him give the uh the straight spec for it. Um at some point I want to post all of the old Booker and Dax recipes up. Uh I owe actually Bloppins, who gave me some beer to spin in the spinz all uh a recipe. I think he wants the Thundernut, which also is not one of my specs, but I have to post that. Thunder nut.
Was the stirred bird from um one of the menus your your recipe or no? Stirred bird was not my recipe. Stirred bird was what who was that? That was either I can't remember whether it's Jack or or Nick. I mean, remember Nick, any time something is stirred, I want to say Nick Bennett worked on it because Nick Bennett's whole like mission in life was to take all uh drinks and unshake them.
And so like he did stirred versions of everything. But that might have been a bar wide thing as well, because the entire bar was interested in kind of the, you know, as everyone was at that time, the jungle bird and different um ta takes on it. But in general, I mean that's not like it's a delicious drink, but it's not my ment that's not my mental it's not my it wouldn't be my go-to mentality jump off point. Not that I I mean I'd be proud if it was my spec. It's delicious, but in general, like uh, you know, I'm not a I'm not a let's see if we can dork with this to get that.
I'm more of a, you know, I'm more of a I have this weird ingredient, what am I gonna do with it? Kind of a kind of a guy. But I can also get you that spec. I really think like really my roundabout way of asking you for the spec, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's not uh not your drink.
During during the break. During the break, I have this. One quick technical note for whoever runs the board. Um, everyone sounds fine on this phone interface, except for Dave, who sounds like he's running through a cheap fuzz pedal. Oh man, it's because he's really loud.
Um here, how about this? I'll tell you what, I love it. I love a cheap fuzz pedal, is like who makes those? PV? Remember PV?
I would probably go with the like the cheapest boss ones from the 90s. Yeah, yeah. Thanks, guys. I appreciate it. Do you know you know what was a really not good uh base uh bass pedal is uh I used to have you know the wawa pedal?
You familiar with Wawa pedals? Yeah, they feel good, wah wa pedals. I had a base wa, and I just never like I never loved it. Like it took too much chunk out of the bottom of my base for me to actually enjoy it. Even though I wanted the wawa on the bait.
You like wahwa, don't you, Matthew? Go for a good who doesn't like Wawa. Chris, are you a Wawa fan? Not Wawa Hot Dogs, not Wawa at the store from Connecticut. Connecticut.
Is that where that's not where it originated? Well, I don't know where it originated, that's where I used to go to it. Yeah, anyway. Caller, you're on the air. Dave.
How are you doing? It's Matt from Mystic. Oh, Jesus, Matt from Mystic. We owe Matt from Mystic a freaking spinz all cr. Okay, Matt.
Matt. Okay, so Matt from Mystic. There are a couple of people in the United States where it got delivered, but then someone stole it, or it got delivered, but the person was in another country at the time. We have one or two people like that. But Matt from Mystic.
Matt from Mystic, who I have personally met and spoken with, enjoyed, had a beer with, I think. I think we had a beer on the 4th of July. That's right. For some reason, it is his spinzall that is sitting in freaking Carson, not Carson City. I was m incorrect.
And we don't know why it hasn't been shipped from Carson. Now, what I'm gonna do, Chris Witters, when are we gonna get uh more units into the country? It should be uh October third. Right, but we're uh like uh we should just we're just gonna ship you one from the from the like we have the first next group of ones that we can send, so we'll just send you one direct from Hong Kong on a separate thing because I don't know what the hell happened. We I liter quite literally every day I send an email to the shippers in China and I say to them, what is up with this order?
And then they somehow conveniently never respond to that question. Uh Chris, am I right on this? That's right. And I'll personally ship that product for you. There you go.
So we we don't have like it's like um it's it's not even an issue of like uh it the frustrating thing about it is we they like we literally don't have any more or didn't have any more units to to send other than like you know the protos that I have, you know, uh, you know, that we have uh at the at the house. And so we haven't been able to um send like so there's some people who also who need repairs, we haven't been able to uh you know, uh RMAs on units that have things wrong. And so we literally in the past couple of days, Chris has been here in the US, but his office in China has gotten a hold of a a a batch of like ten from the factory that we're gonna use for returns that people need to fixings on, and for you, because it's just freaking ridiculous. Am I right? That's correct.
Yeah. And I don't think it's helpful, but I personally hate the people who are shipping, and I wish them ill, and I hope that they don't have success in life, and I, you know, I want bad things for them. I'm not gonna go so far as to say I want bad things for their family, because I don't believe that that's a good thing to do. I don't think you should blame people's families for what people do, but um close, close to that. Um what do you think, Chris?
We're in the same path. Yeah, yeah. So were you do you just want to make me feel bad, uh, Matt from Mystic, or did you have another question? I wasn't calling you up to give you the paper. All right.
But do you have a question or you just want to know where you're rightly want to know where your where your spin's all is? No, I figured you'd let me know, but uh no, I was uh uh are you familiar with the concept of like the Vitamix whole fruit juicing? The Vitamix what? It's like they call it whole fruit juicing. Basically, I'm wondering if a Vitamix is good enough to juice certain things for the spinzall when it eventually shows up at my door.
Okay, so first of all, when you say good enough, I'm trying to crush it into that share mentally. I'm trying to crush that sentence into the share song, but I don't think I can maybe Dave in the booth can do it for me. Somehow get that share song into that. Wait, what song? Oh, you know, are you strong enough?
You know, that that share like whenever anyone says the word strong now, share pops into my head. You know, I shouldn't probably say this. What's wrong with share? You don't like share? I I don't really have a strong opinion.
Nastasia has some share story stories. That's what I'm saying. You probably shouldn't talk about it. Yeah. I I shouldn't say it.
So I didn't. I just let people know that there is a story there, which is you know, good. Lee, you know, you're still the international woman of mystery there, Nastasia. Um so the answer is both yes and no. I mean, when you're juicing citrus, you want to use a citrus press, like period.
Right. You know what I mean? When you're juicing apples, vita preps are not the way to go. Uh it's for some reason apples are so high in pectin that when you just just juice them, like they don't clarify as well for some reason. I just never had good luck with blending apples in a in a blender.
Uh I always use a champion for apples, but almost everything else, right? I guess ginger, I use um ginger, I use the uh champion. If you're doing straight horseradish juice, I used the champion, but I actually recommend uh horseradish Houstino in vodka over doing straight horseradish juice. It's much better. And then you can just use the vita prep.
So um I also don't recommend Vitapepping, or really, if you're gonna clarify, I don't really recommend juicing ginger. Ginger juice doesn't clarify very well because of the starch starch that's in it. But for most fruits, right, with the exception of apples and citrus, yeah. I would say, you know, I mean, if you if you if you were thinking, should I get a vitaprep? The answer is always yes.
Um they're great to have. You know, I've never, as I've said, I think on the air several times, I've never met anyone who was like, you know what I should not have bought? I should not have bought that vita prep. That was a bad, that was a bad move. You know what?
It turns out I don't like blenders. That doesn't happen. I've never I've never heard of that happening. Like maybe, you know, if someone bought a vita prep and they went bankrupt the next day, they would have been like maybe I should have waited before I bought the vita prep. But let me give you another hint.
Like when someone closes a restaurant, right, with very, very few exceptions. Like they they have auctions is what happens. When you have very, very few exceptions, you go in there and there's no vita preps. So if you just go to restaurant auctions, you might think, well, maybe these restaurants didn't have vita prep. No, they could because nobody leaves the vita prep behind because everybody wants one.
You know what I mean? It's like, Chris, what do you think? The Vitapep, everyone wants a Vitapep. One wants a good blender, right? Of course they do.
Yeah. Uh it's why you also never find Paco Jets. I literally once bought a Vitapep at a restaurant auction because what happened is they they just they didn't really close the restaurant so much as they took the entire team, picked them up, and shipped them to Vegas to open a restaurant on the double quick, and so like all the stuff was left in the kitchen. And I was like, All right, I'll buy the Vitapep. And that's how I got my very first Vitaprep.
60 bucks. It was a great deal. Bad bearing, but guess what? I know how to fix bearings. Um anyway, so the answer is yes.
For many things, the Vitaprep is a fantastic juicer, but uh the champion's also a good thing to have around because champion's really good for if you ever want to like grind cocoa nibs to start doing kind of chocolate, it's a very good pre-grind. Uh the champion is very good for uh for a pre-grind on nut butters, nut butters. Umastasia hates making nut butters. Remember when we used to just sit there for hours at the French culinary, like first robo cooing and first like champion picking out all the things. First picking out the bad nuts.
Here's another secret for you, Matt from Mystic. Here's what people do. They buy nuts, right? And then they just take the can of freaking nuts and they dump the nuts into whatever processor they're gonna use it. And if you ever take the time to look at a batch of nuts, every batch of nuts has a bunch of bad nuts in it.
And it only takes a couple bad nuts, bad nuts, to ruin the whole batch, especially pistachios. So if you're gonna buy pistachios, literally I I I spent the money on this because I wanted people to know. I was like, just take a b take a can of nuts, dump it and make uh make a you know uh nut milk with with that, and then take a can of nuts, pick out all the nasty, shriveled, yellow, crappy tasting ones, and make a batch with that, and tell me that there's not a dramatic difference between the two. And of course there is. So you should always pick over, you should always pick over your nuts before you're going to uh use them, right, Stas?
Exactly. Anyway. Uh so I mean, I don't want to get you in trouble over there in Mystic uh with buying a bunch of equipment, but I would definitely go for the Vitaprep. Yeah, no, I got a Vitamix. I was wondering if if uh the champion, if you thought the champion would be necessary for spinzole use.
Well, you're already in it for a spinzall and a vita prep. What the hell? Champion is like, you know, the least of your problems, brother. Just like, you know, what is the champion cost now? A hundred and it's a hundred and fifty dollars, right?
Uh but I think it's closer to two, but uh it's more a space issue for me. Right. The thing about I'm a f I'm um I'm a big believer in keeping as much equipment on the on the counter as you can because it's gonna you're gonna use it more if it's on the counter, which is true. However, for something like the champion juicer, you never have like a refrigerator full of apples and you'd be like, you know what? I'm either gonna juice this or not.
So, you know, oh the juicer's out. I'm gonna juice all those freaking apples. That doesn't happen. So what happens is is you're like, I'm gonna go make uh apple cider today, and then you go and you juice it. So what you do there is you go get you know, you're gonna pull it out of storage.
So it's okay to have something that you know is only for certain tasks in storage because you know, it's never like, ah, am I gonna make pasta today? I don't know. I always have flour, but if my machine's not out, I'm not gonna make it. It's not one of those kind of a situations. I will say this I have used for apples side by side the brevel juicer and the champion juicer, and the brevel juicer has it's easier to use than the champion, 'cause the champion you the champion is also like a good like forearm and like, you know, um if you ever seen the movie Over the Top with Sylvester Salone, it's a good it's a good kind of over the top workout because you're like shoving apples in like one after the other.
In fact, like I've said it before on the air, I once Nastasi and I just for fun did so many apples in a row that remember Nastasi, it burned the unit out, and you were just putting wet towels over the champion and they were like s like boiling hot, and then when we finally turned it off, the magnet had been melted out, so it didn't have a safety on it anymore, and that sucker still kept on going. That's why I love the champion. I love anything that's willing to melt itself into oblivion just to produce juice for you. I mean, it's just like it's like to me, like everything in the world should be like that. Everything should be willing to just turn itself into a melted puddle of mess while it's still producing juice anyway.
Uh, and I think all things should produce juice. Um, where was I? Champions, apples. Oh, the brevel is easier physically to use, uh, but it produces a juice with more pulp in it. So it has uh so on the one hand you might like that because it's a higher body of juice.
The juice has like a like a more of a kind of a viscosity to it. But I found that when we were doing when I was making cider, so I'd make a five-ballon gatch uh five-ballon bat a ga a batch of cider out of a brevel versus a five uh gallon batch out of uh out of a champion because I don't have a traditional press, uh that I got a higher clear yield out of the champion than I did out of the brevel because it had a much higher um uh amount of pectin in it, if that's helpful to you. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, and also well, we're on the subject of old Booker and Dex, top tail specs.
Uh the struggler was one of my favorites. So maybe I'm gonna I'll take that off the air. Ooh, the struggler. Okay, so maybe during the break, if I have time, I have the specs on my phone. If I can find them on my phone, I can try to get the specs.
So, what do we have now? We have the stirred bird, the struggler, and the championistino as requests. Yeah, you know what? We should just get the old, like we should we should get like a cross section of the old Booker and Dax bar team on the radio sometime and just go over it. It'd be fun.
Get like Nick, get Jack, get like a bunch of people who are still in New York. And those guys. Anyway, Souther Teague, who was he's supposed to come on this show, and I'm supposed to come on his show, but he's always working during this. Anyway, whatever. We'll work on it.
Alright, so Struggler. It's on the list of ones. Maybe I'll try to find it over the break. Hello? He's gone.
He took it off the air. Alright, cool. Alright, uh, so Dave, you want to take a break and come back with more cooking issues? Uh sure. All right, here we go.
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All right, we're back. I'm not that good. Like I was hoping I could be like I could just go into my phone and type specs and then have the specs come up, but uh no su no such no such love. So uh you want to answer some actual questions, Nastasia? Yeah, you gonna go back two weeks?
At least two weeks. I mean, I don't know how I don't know, I have questions on my machine, and we'll we'll answer them. So Scott wrote in, uh, I own a smokehouse with the ability to smoke a at a wide range of temperatures. I've read a lot of Marianski's home production, which is the home production of quality meats and sausages. I like that.
I've never read that book though, so I can't comment on on that book. But uh I have a love-hate relationship with the word quality because quality can be low quality, as in all of us, low quality individuals, right, Nastasia? Yep. That's the kind of quality we have. Yeah.
Low quality individual. You know, we uh we saw someone in Boston with a low quality individual shirt and with an enemy of quality shirt. Really? Like in yeah. At Harvard.
At the Harvard, yeah. Uh Dax actually wears the uh low quality individual shirt all the time. And you know that I got it I got an Instagram that there is a taco place in Milwaukee that has an enemy of quality taco. Which I I What's in it? Uh it's basically it's just you choose uh I don't know why the name of it went out of my head because I know the name.
Uh when uh it just has like it's like meat meat and cheese of your choice. You don't want what they chose because you don't like good things because you're an enemy of quality, which is fantastic. I need to go back to Milwaukee Stas. We'd like to go back to Milwaukee sometime, shouldn't we? Yeah.
By the way, I'm gonna just say this uh off the top uh, you know, right uh right at the get-go. Um for like meat curing questions, we should just have, because we have so many of them, and I'm not like you know, an expert in it, we should just have like like either like call in or in the studio our meat curing buddies in and just do a you know, let everybody know like two weeks in advance. We're gonna do a meat curing episode. Call in all of your meat curing uh stuff, and and you'll see why as I as I talk about this. Because I think that even if I don't know the answer, I could probably elicit some good answers out of people who actually do it for a living.
Um so we're talking now about uh Mariansky's book, Home Production of Quality Meats and Sausages. But unless the book outlines an exact procedure that I want to follow, I have trouble using that book. It varies from densely technical to vague and often seems uh contradictory. Now, this is a problem I think that all technical cookbooks uh have. Like having written a book that has like technical stuff in it and dealing with technical issues all the time, like you're if you're a real practitioner of something, right?
You kind of know what you know, you know what you do, uh, and you're probably pretty good at it. If you know if you're good enough at it that someone's asking you to write a book about it, you're probably pretty good at it. Um but when you're writing a book, you feel the need to say a bunch of external stuff to what you do all the time. And a lot of times you know so much about something that it's even kind of difficult for you to write about it, and because there's so much nuanced information in your head, it's very difficult, very, very difficult, and thank God I have my wife to help me do this, but like to draw a coherent through line through your knowledge to help somebody else um uh learn. So things can be contradictory, and if you had the dude or you know, whoever, if you had them in front of you for a half hour, they could explain to you why it's not a contradiction.
But it's very, very, very, very, very, very hard to write a book where that's the case. And I think that in general, there's also uh, especially in meat meat curing, especially, because there is uh a health safety aspect involved in it where people are worried that they're gonna kill you with botulism or kill you with something else, uh, or that they're gonna have you use too much of a curing agent or whatever it is they're worried about uh from a l not just a liability in terms of that they're gonna get sued, but a liability that they don't want anyone to misuse the information that they have and get hurt. I mean, I worry about that, you know. Um so because of those two things with meat curing, meat curing is an especially difficult thing to write uh a book about. Um, which is why I think it's probably uh would be f nice to have like like a group of people on who do it professionally and then just kind of pester them about okay, what can you know, what can you say, what can't you say, what do you do versus what you're allowed to, you know, talk about anyway.
Uh because as you say, I have no formal training in science or food, but I usually want to know per meat type per pound uh salt and cure content, like one or two. Although honestly, you're almost always using uh the short acting, the nitrite, unless you're doing like whole cured cuts of meat, you should pretty much always be using nitrite and not nitrate. Uh I mean I think and like you know, you can usually tell if the non-professional older recipes that have nitrates instead of nitrites. So I would be a little leery of anyone that uses a nitrate recipe for anything other than like a ham or you know, a very thick uh cut of meat. Uh how much smoke can I safely apply at what temperature?
And then you say, for example, my favorite and we uh is always smokier than mine. My smoked turkey is very tremendously in moisture and smokiness over the year, but not knowing how all these variables affect each other has prevented me from solving these problems. Uh Brian and Cure would probably protect the turkey enough for me to put it in the smokehouse uh instead of a grill, but I don't know how to make that safe. And by the way, like if so, if you read like uh you remember we had uh Meathead on the show, and he has a thing on amazing ribs, and he is vastly, he's very worried about people doing low temperature smoke outs because he's worried that you're gonna encourage the growth of um of bacteria botulism, specifically in the smoke. And the the real issue with it is, right, well if you nitrate it, it's not you know, nitrite it, it's not gonna, you're not gonna get botulism with nitrites because they can't grow up, but whatever.
Let's just not get into that right now. The real problem is is that it's very difficult to maintain um an actual temperature on a piece of meat because of evaporative cooling. So it's very hard to judge what the actual temperature on a piece of meat is, whether you're keeping it in the in the kind of a safe zone or not, unless you're keeping it high enough to ensure that there's no bacterial growth even with evaporative cooling. So it can be somewhat difficult, which is why they have interesting new uh smokers that are controlling the whole atmosphere, including the humidity that are kind of cool. Anyway, are there any good sources of rules of thumbs for controlling these variables to formulate my own cooking processes?
I get overwhelmed uh when I research these issues and find it hard to believe blogs. Uh I'd like to control for these variables uh like I do for daiquies in a spreadsheet. Sorry for such a general question, I'm still enjoying the show and won't buy a sous vide book until yours is out. Well, you should buy anyone's book, it's gonna be different, don't worry about it. Um but I think we really we should just get some people on the show.
I think that in general uh it is true that different cuts of meat with different fat contents are gonna respond differently to uh salting. They're gonna respond differently to the application of heat in terms of how long it takes the heat to go through them. But in general, there's a relatively small number of bugs that you're trying to kill. Uh when I say bugs, I mean microorganisms, relatively small amount. Uh there's a you know, relatively, you know, uh there's multiple hurdles, right?
You have salt, you have nitrites, um, and you have uh salt, nitrites, and temperature. And like those variables are like, you know, you're you're pretty much always trying to hit similar numbers on those things. And then the question is, like, what's the what's the, you know, what's the right right answer? So I think, you know, we can come and we can say, okay, look at an oily fish, a not oily fish. Uh you know, chopped up meat, not chopped up meat, you know, uh lean like a beef versus like something fattier like pork.
And we could try to hash those numbers out, but I'd rather do it with um some experienced uh cure people. See whether, Dave, uh see whether anyone in the booth wants to have a show like that where we get, I don't know, like uh Johnny uh or like uh Olympia Provisions back on and just do like a cure episode. See whether anyone's interested in that. Yeah, actually, somebody is talking about that right now. All right, we'll try to set it up.
Would like to combine Koji with my sausage and cured meats. No idea how to start. There you go. Well, for that we'd need to get uh Rich back on the uh our cook quest uh back to do uh Captain Koji to do some uh Koji stuff. Captain Koji.
Nastasia's like, Koji. She has her Koji face on. What's your is that what that is? That's her Koji face. It's a smile though.
It's a smile, it's a smile, the Koji face. Uh Tim writes in for my next equipment purchase. Uh I'm looking at DIYing a vacuum chamber for infusions uh primarily, possibly hacking my old crock pot as a low temperature cooking bath and building a carbonating rig for cocktails. Thought on thoughts on which project to tackle first. Do the vacuum chamber.
Actually, you know what? Well, carbonation is so easy, it's not really a project. You just buy the stuff, woman together, and you and it's done. The vacuum, I wouldn't do a crock pot into a into a uh a circulator. It's just I don't see the point.
Like, you know, once you buy a crock pot and you get the PID, and it's never gonna be as uh, you know, as as easy or as much fun as uh using a real circulator, and you can get a real circulator now for a couple hundred bucks. It's just I don't see the return on in on time investment there unless you really, really want to. I mean, it's not like the average person who's doing a DIY on an immersion circulator, it's not like they're learning how to how to you're not even learning how to tune a PID looper, you know, like the the ultimate, like if you want to if you're like, hey, listen, I'm interested in control, and I want to write a PID loop. I want to learn how PID works. I want to like learn the math behind it and like actually like tuning a system and and then yeah, then it's worth doing, like, but you could also just do that like theoretically on the computer, like you know, you can get a version of anyway.
My point is, I would it's I don't think at this point that that's as interesting a project as the DIY vacuum chamber is uh good because if you're a DIY person and you have a DIY vacuum rig, you can use it for food, you can use it for drink, hell, you can use it for plaster, you can use it for uh like degassing like uh urethane if you want to build things or like casting resins. I use my DIY vacuum stuff for all of those things. You know what I mean? Like uh when I'm doing prototypes, um, you know, I now have actually a much fancier uh you've you you guys know about the um you know those um those epoxies that have the long tube with the static mixers in them so that you when you press it it comes out of the tip mixed, it looks like a bunch of blades next to each other, you know what I'm talking about inside of the so I have a super fancy resin gun like that that's like the it's like it's like uh I don't know what what size did you say that is big? It's like you it's like you're holding a big thing.
It's like it's like it's like if I was a two-year-old holding a caulk gun. That's like that's the size of it, right? If you can picture me as a two-year-old holding a full-size caulk gun, that's the thing. And it hooks up to a pneumatic thing and it in and it pre it mixes without adding any air, uh urethane resins, and deposits them without air, so you don't need to do a degas on the resin, and it's hooked up to an air compressor, so it doesn't even take any any any you're you're literally like you're just like and it's like and no nothing. You know what I mean?
I still do pressure casting because you know, whatever. But um anyway, yeah, cool. So I would do a vacuum chamber. Uh the trick with a vacuum chamber is choosing something that won't crush. So uh round bain marie's stainless steel round bane marie's typically do not crush.
Uh square and rectangular Bane Marie's and hotel pants crush like mothers. They just crush, they crumple. In Europe, they make a special one that doesn't crush, but guess what it is? Expensive. Uh so I would stick with round.
Here's some other things that don't crush. All clad pots don't crush. Uh and so what you do is you just get like a you get like a refrigeration vacuum uh machine, they have oil in them, so they kind of stink and they're a little bit loud after they've been running for a while. Put oil in it, and then uh you just stick a rubber tube, you get a piece of uh of like a Lexan and you uh drill a hole in it and you put a a fitting on it with a barb. You put like a little piece of uh like you adhere some uh adhesive uh silicone uh or rubber to the to the Lexan, cut a hole, make make sure you cut a hole in the silicone so you can see through it.
And this is just the easiest way. There's nicer ways, much nicer ways, but then that can fit on any round thing that the that and you can get a uh a one foot square piece of uh Lexan, no, you know, like uh um three-eighths or half inch or something from McMaster Carr or on Amazon that's not you know not hard, and then you put that on and it fits on any lid. Yeah, sorry, it acts as a lid. You can fit on uh any pot or Bain Marie, and I use that all the time. The one square thing that doesn't crush is um uh uh six pans, small six pans tend not to crush, like the six-inch tall six pans, they're so sm small and chunky that they tend not to crush.
Uh and so you can do those, but yeah, I'll totally do that. And you can have a lot of fun with that. I have a lot of fun with that. I still use it because you know what? A vacuum machine, I'm not gonna stick resin in my in my actual uh you know, mini pack machine, and a mini-pack machine is like thousands of dollars, and you can do this whole thing for like a hundred and twenty-five bucks.
Anyway, so that's what I would do. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Um what do you think? Anyone?
Anyone? Any thoughts? No? No thoughts? Sounds good.
All right. Julian wrote in. I'm sure Julian's already gone to Hawaii, but I'm flying to Hawaii with friends soon. This is like five months ago, Anastasia. Somehow this kid's on getting shuffled around.
And detest, detest. I like anyone that doubles up on detest is a friend of mine. If you double up on how much you hate something, that's a strong move. Uh detest the free my and free is in quotes here because it's so detestable that actually they should pay, they should pay him. You know what I mean?
So it's like free in the sense that they're not charging you money, but the aggravation is as though you paid money, right? I feel that's what the why f the word free here is in quotes. The free Mai ties that they give you during the flight. I've never been to Hawaii. Do they give you a free Mai Thai on every flight to Hawaii?
No idea. If you're flying like Pentecostal air, do you get a a free Mai Thai on that? Doesn't seem likely. It doesn't seem likely. Although Nastasia once had to fly to Europe.
We were both flying to Europe, and she flew emirates, and I thought that was gonna be a dry flight, but she came off that plane soaked in liquor. She was like pickled like a freaking cherry when she got off that plane. Wasn't that you that was flying Emirates that time and you like thought like I have to fly Emirates and it was awesome? No, it wasn't Emirates, it was No, it wasn't Emirates. But you know you remember what I'm talking about.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh anyway. Uh I was hoping I could bring some stuff with me on the flight to assist in making a quality, fun, tiki-like cocktail during the flight. However, in order to keep the free world safe, as you know, the TSA is gracious with a few rules. Um so here's the TSA rules, right?
Which I'm sure Chris, you know, as being an international traveler that you are, Hong Kong and US. Uh can't bring booze, uh, need to use what they have on the flight. Now, that's just to be legal. I mean, everybody on freaking earth knows that the actual rule is that you're allowed to bring as many of those little travel bottles that you can fit in a quart container, uh quart uh Ziploc bag. So my general what I do a hundred percent of the time is I go and I buy travel size things, I rinse them, which is hard.
You ever you you ever try to rinse out shampoo bottles, guys? It's very hard. Like the the the uh what's it called? The um the aromas that they put into those things and and you try to buy like opaque bottles so people can't see into it. Head and shoulders is a classic because it's white bottle uh and it seals pretty well.
But um it they they to get that smell out of the bottle is a pain in the ass. But anyway, put butt, pain in the butt is what I meant to say. Family show. Uh so that's how I bring Kiesel saw with me, Kitasan, SPL when I'm flying around, because I bring them in travel size bottles because I don't like checking luggage. I don't like checking luggage because uh I once had a bunch of checked luggage that I needed for a demo get lost uh by the airline and they didn't get it to me in time for the demo, so now I only like to travel with stuff that I can carry in the carry on to make sure that I can do my you know whatever I'm doing when I land.
So you can't the truth of the matter is is you can bring liquor on the freaking airplane. You're just not supposed to bring liquor on the freaking airplane. That was a long way to say that. That's right. Uh yeah.
So you're any single container is 3.4 ounces, one quart, well, one quart bag. I don't know that you're allowed to bring an actual quart, but you it has to all of your bottles have to fit in a single quart bag, right? Which is not the same thing. Um so with four people, you get four quarts. Okay.
Uh don't want to annoy my airplane neighbors with a lot of stuff or loud noises, ice shaking. You know what? You know, airplanes are so freaking loud that like airplanes so freaking loud that like next time you're on an airplane. Uh do you remember Sam from uh CNN video's handle Anastasia? He would come to the FCI every once in a while.
He did a whole series where he was shaking uh on the airplane. He was using ice and actually just two plastic uh airline cups and using them as a shaker, and he was saying that no one had a problem with it. Yeah, I mean as if I mean the think of what happens on an airplane. People are blowing their nose on you, basically, like you know, like you you can do all sorts of horrible things on an airplane. The sound of shaking a cocktail, I would be like, oh thank God.
You know what I mean? Thank God someone is doing something that I like on an airplane. You know what I mean? It's like I don't think it's gonna bother anyone to have a shaking ice on the on the plane. Um so uh and don't want a bartend, would like for people to be able to make their own cocktails.
So there, that's why you don't want the shaking. If you don't want people to be, if you want people to be able to make their own cocktails, right? So I would go with uh here's what you have. You have a circulator, you have a chamber vac, you have a spinzall, or should have it by now, uh, keggerator, uh, but you're not gonna I mean in the oh to carb you can't bring carbonated stuff because you're not allowed to bring uh you're not allowed to bring chargers on an airplane. And unfortunately, are the ones in the in the in the life vest CO2?
I don't think they are. I don't think they are. I'm not sure. You might be able to get a cracker and to raid the life vest for a charger, but I don't know what gas they use. And you if you did, in the unlikely event of a water landing, you would be hosing whose ever one you took.
There is a way, if you bring your own life vest, by the way, you are allowed to bring the uh you were allowed to bring the chargers for your life vest and one set of spares. That said, you know how many times I I once went through a series where I flew a bunch of things and then only found out later that I had a bunch of chargers stuffed into a secret pocket in my backpack and they never found it. So like, you know, I could have been infusing on that freaking plane or carbonating on that plane. But if you were to pull out a charger and the flight attendant was to see you, then you would be spread eagled on the floor with like you know a Marshall's gun on the back of your head. You know, and you know, maybe rightly so.
Um average bar equipment home kitchen. So here's the thing, but you're not gonna need any of that. Maybe you you use this spinzall. If you don't want to uh have them shake drinks, what you're talking about is a stir drink, right? Or a built drink.
So the easiest thing to do is to just make a really nice syrup for uh old fashions, bring are you allowed to bring a Y-peeler? I think you are allowed to bring a Y-peeler on a plane. Well, you can bring a pack of knife now. Really? Yeah.
Regular one? Uh like I I bring one with no blade, I bring a no-blade, but but if you can bring a Coon Recon Y-peeler, here's what I would bring: I would bring an orange or two. I would bring a coon recon uh uh Y-peeler. Uh if you're a a cherry style of person, I guess you could do bring some some cherries. And then I would make, like, if I was gonna do it, I would make out of my book the coriander syrup, like for a cliff old fashioned.
But you want Mai Thai, you want tiki. Ooh, see, I'd just do old fashions. So nice. How are you gonna have someone make their own tiki style cocktail? Can't be done.
Well, here's what here's what I would do. I would take, I would make a lime cordial so it lasts, right? And so I have a bunch of I gave some recipes I think last week or the week before on lime cordial, especially now that you have a uh because it you what you're gonna have to do is you're gonna have to do a stirred version of a tiki. So you're gonna go heavier on booze, lighter on the uh on the um on the cordial, but cordial, and then if you really want to tiki it out, uh throw like a splash of pomegranate juice in. You can actually clarify.
I have clarified passion fruit and and pomegranate. The issue is you don't want to blend the pomegranate, because if you blend the pomegranate, it gets bitter because the seed parts get blended. So what you do is just buy a passion fruit puree. Just do yourself a favor and buy the freaking passion fruit puree. Then put the pomegranate in a container with it, take a mortar and pestle or like a muddler, smash the pomegranate seeds with Pectanex Ultra SPL, you spin that out, and you can temper that back with uh clary uh lime.
You can make a really awesome, clear, kind of um clear tiki-ish, hurricane ish, like uh uh syrup thing out of that, and then just put that into those freaking bottles and then just you know, glugety glug with the liquor on the thing, it'll self dilute on that freaking airplane, it'll keep you going, uh going and going and going and going. Don't forget to add a little salt. What do you guys think? Think that's all right? Or just go away.
Why can't you just like mix club soda with something? Right. It's a flight. The guy wants a tiki freaking cocktail. He's gonna wait till he lands, can he?
Apparently he cannot. Just get drunk on the plane the old fashioned way. What's the old fashioned way? I don't know, like a gin and tonic and an ambient. Wow.
I don't you know what? I'm not a fan of the airplane gin and tonic. I'm a white wine on airplanes kind of a guy. I'm just give me your crappy white wine and keep it coming. Whoa.
Nastasi, what's your call on an airplane? Yeah, white wine or red wine. Yeah, because red wine, I feel like it's gonna dehydrate me more, and I don't want to be flying around with the red wine lip stain, and I don't want to go into that bathroom. That bathroom is a horror show. Actually, the last time I flew, I did uh red wine mixed with Coca-Cola, whatever the Spanish call it.
Uh what? You never heard of this? No, but I I heard that was a thing, Chris, in China a while ago. It was like Pepsi and red wine, right? Wasn't that a thing like Pepsi and Bordeaux, like uh like 10 years ago in China?
I heard it was a thing. I thought it was like a European thing. It's it sounds like a terrible thing. Where no matter where it comes from, it sounds like a freaking wretched idea. Yeah, it'll get you drunk.
Not as fast as just the wine will make it last. Well, but these are contradictory statements. Like how much red wine do you need to get drunk? That depends on you, doesn't it? I mean, but the thing is like you don't want to get dehydrated on an airplane, right?
So you don't want any like like for me, I tend to feel more dehydrated when I'm having red wine, and so you don't want to get overly dehydrated on an airplane. And like I said, especially on it, I would consider Hawaii to be equivalent to an international flight because of its length. Is there anything more horrifying than an international flight bathroom? Anything? Is there anything worse than like hour eight on an airplane in a bathroom, and like you're like, I made it this far, and everyone else has defiled that bathroom, done all sorts of horrible, terrible things.
You've seen that one dude that shouldn't have eaten what he ate and he's used that bathroom like five freaking times already. You've seen him that one guy. And you know that by time two or three, ain't something something ain't right. You know what I mean? Something's not right with this man's behind that he has to use the bathroom this many times and now I have to use it.
So I just want to stay away from the bathroom at all costs. Nastasia what's your feeling on airplane bathroom I don't care. Really? You don't go in public that's the thing. Do you have a phobia?
He has a huge phobia. I do not like public restrooms. Is it like a germophobe thing or it's not that I'm a germophobe, it's just specifically restrooms. I don't I hate public restrooms where's a social interaction in a restroom? Whereas Nastasia Nastasia doesn't enjoy going to a place unless she uses the restroom.
Like Nastasia Nastasia will show up if she comes to your house for the first time people, she was like, where's the restroom? That's not true. She has to use it. It's good to have a plan. When she shows up at a restaurant she's like you know what I'm gonna use the restaurant.
Everybody uses the case you're like but you just used it on the bus. Do you not wash your hands at a restaurant? What? Do you not wash your hands at a restaurant? Usually they have a thing outside.
You know what I hate is like the the reverse washing hands. If you go into Dave, if you go into a freaking restaurant, right? And you have to touch the doorknob on the bathroom to leave after you wash your hands why don't you just dip your hands and poop? Just hold on you just hold poop hotel is poop to if they have one. That's why hey now all these people are like oh here's a dice in for you here's a Dyson, and then like, you know, just dip your hands and poop.
Dyson suck. Whoa, whoa. Don't be the man's a billionaire. He'll he'll fly over here like SWAT will come in and kill you. You should have him on the show I he could talk probably for hours about his vacuums.
And what do you think about his uh well he I don't know what he cares about most now? Air blades. Uh he's an air moving individual, right? That's his that's his thing. Moving a lot of air.
Moving a lot of air. Um we got like a minute. Ah, Jesus. Um I recently sign off. This is from uh Julian.
Uh I recently put a kegerator together and picked up a small half gallon keg and was wondering if you had any recommendations for a good cocktail on tap, uh, which would do well in the Kegerator type system, not degrade too much. Yeah. So uh if you're gonna carbonate it, you make sure to get all the oxygen out so it's not gonna oxidize. So if you're doing something that has a vermouth in it, do it that way. Also, because it's gonna foam like a mother, uh, choose something that works well with low carbonation.
Like Negroni is a classic one because it can age a little bit as long as it doesn't have a lot of oxygen around it. It works well at various levels of carbonation and at various dilutions, and so it's a good kind of bulletproof uh drink to throw in that. Um and on that question, uh, since we have we have uh you uh Utah Yao rode in and said, I love making cocktails at home, but can't reliably finish even a 375 milliliter bottle of vermouth. I've been just accepting dumping out a portion of every bottle as a sad fact of the single man home cocktail life. Been thinking of buying a chamber vacuum sealer from my kitchen.
Would that be helpful here? Pour half the bottle into a bag, suck out all the oxygen, and throw it in the freezer. How long would you suspect that you could hold it? Also, uh just for Anastasia's uh demographic audience scorekeeping. Yep, another single guy in his forties, no kids, and a kitchen filled with gadgets that reflect uh uh reflect that, including an empty space on a counter for my soon to be delivered spearzall, sears all, spears all.
Ooh, my biggest. Single guy, drinking remove. I'm gonna make a spears all next. Imagine that, a spears all? Wow, like a harpoon machine?
That'd be intense. Um the issue with uh vacuum bagging is that vacuum, as opposed to a glass bottle, vacuum bags are actually quite poor at um quite poor at uh gas permeability. So you actually get quite a bit of oxygen into those bags versus a glass bottle with a cap. So what I would do is get um like eat like sm like much smaller, like almost like eyedropper size bottles, uh, or you know, 175s or something like this, and pour the stuff all the way up to almost the top, and then screw it down, and then you're good. Uh, and you're gonna be you're gonna be good from uh there on out.
So you're not that that's the way I would solve it, because glass is very good uh at gas uh permeability, oxygen permeability. Um that's what I would do. But vacuum bag will work. I haven't run the test to see how long it will stay, but you have to use a vacuum bag that's meant for the freezer and has very low gas permeability. That's the that's the the trick there.
And you don't want to boil it too much, so you have to vacuum it when it's nice and cold. Uh okay, so okay, we have Matthew, thank you, Matthew. Uh Chris is here. Chris, what do you want to tell him about uh the units? Anything you want to say on the units on the way out on spinzalls people need to know.
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