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This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? Good. We got Dave in the booth.
Or maybe not. I don't know. He was in the booth. I'm here, good. Oh, nice.
All right. Your mic was acting up on you. Yeah, you know, things. This is why we need your money. Uh, you know, we gotta we gotta get new things to keep the operation rolling here.
They're actually like swap like Nastasi's like running into the other room with the extra mic. That's how much that's how uh you know much money they need here. How much are you at right now? David. Dave in the booth.
I think that's confidential. Uh really. No, actually, I don't I don't know off the top of my head. I mean, are we doing well? I I really don't know.
Should people give money? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And what you heard from there was our special guest of the day, Paul Adams, who is the wait, the editor and editor. What's your title over there?
I can never get title. You know I hate titles. Yes. It it's more difficult because my title is different every day. Today I am senior research editor at Cooks Illustrated.
Oh, not at America's Test Kitchen anymore. America's Test Kitchen owns Cooks Illustrated, or vice versa, or something. Exactly. Exactly, but they they are two separate names, are they not? I mean, in other words, like they're just yeah.
If you look at them closely, they're not the same name. Yes, yes. Letters don't map one to one. I deal with mostly the print magazine Cooks Illustrated. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Since when? I thought you were on their website. Now you're on their print side all the time. Every day it's different, Dave. Well, you're not here to talk about that.
Although I have to say, Cooks Illustrated, when it came out in 1993, I believe was the first year. You know, I have that. I was I had all the initial first ones. And those works money. Really?
Yeah. I also have them bound. I have the bound ones. Like 10 bucks. Wow.
For the whole the whole year's work. Go on eBay. All right. Well, uh, no, instead, Paul is. Donate a percentage to Heritage Radio Network.
Oh, there you go. Instead, Paul Adams is here to promote his new cat. I have a brand new kitten. She is adorable. Her name is The Bat, because she resembles a bat.
And you can see her at my Twitter account, which is Salad Puma. So uh do you want to hear a story about bats? Yes. So I I can't tell. Actually, I it's I can't tell this story.
It's not that you I can't tell the story, is that I should not tell the story. Is it guano? No, although one of my favorite words, guano. Is it a culinary story about bats? No, I'll say this.
If you late at night, this is not about me. This is not one of those things where I'm not talking about myself because I like I'll embarrass myself, right? You know, at the drop of a hat. Uh so if late at night you should find uh a bat swimming about in your toilet, like what not to do is just pee on the bat, close the toilet seat, and then go to bed. Who did that?
I'm not gonna say. Because the next day, right, if you haven't like if you haven't like maintained uh the bat's gonna drown if you close the lid. This is just an FYI. Bat's gonna drown if you close the lid. But uh you then have to fish the bat out and they have to test it for rabies because you that you haven't like uh what's the word I'm looking for?
You haven't uh fully accounted for all the time the bat was in the house, and you know, some bat bites you can't tell if you're bitten by the bat because you can't tell. So you might have to fish the bat out of the toilet after you've peed on it. So first fish it out and then pee on it. The correct answer is first fish it out. First fish it out and then.
But rabies can't swim up the urine stream. No, no, no. They they can do it. So the problem might be if you I mean definitely don't poop on the bat, because then it can bite you in the behind. How are you able to pee on it without it flying?
No, no, no. The question is that maybe it was flying around the house prior to this because it ended up in your toilet. So it was clearly in your house without your knowledge because it ended up in your toilet. How did it get in your toilet? In the middle of the night.
You know what I'm saying? So you were at some point sleeping with a bat. You went to bed, and presumably there was no bat in your toilet. You wake up, you go to the bat. Right.
Well, you don't know that. That's the thing. You don't know if you got, you know, if you were bitten in the meantime, uh, you know, odds are you aren't. So the the the moral of the story is fish the bat out prior to peeing. Or maybe test yourself for bat bites at that second.
I don't know. So how do you fish the bat out? Uh I don't I wasn't there for it, and that's you know, a question that I never asked. So I don't know. I will ask.
I will ask when I when I next see the person who who's there. Yeah. And what and their name again was? Uh that that is the confidential part because I don't know if they wish me to share the story of uh I have so many people that I see over Thanksgiving and then the wedding I just went to uh two days ago. By the way, I thought I was gonna get my Christmas tree, Nastasia, on Sunday, and then I realized I so I spent, you know, uh my uh elementary school years in um New Jersey, most of it in New Jersey, in a place called Bergen County.
Bergen County is right across the river from the George Washington Bridge from Upper Manhattan, right? And so in the 70s they had these things called blue Laws, where none of the stores were open on Sunday. You couldn't buy anything other than food, basically, foods on the setting in the county. What? That's how they talk in the county.
Uh no, no, no. It's uh it's I'm still in my mind quoting uh Wesley Willis songs. It's uh don't a don't ask me for for sugar honey iced tea is one of his songs is don't ask me to pay for your foods. Anyway, so like uh Dax can t I stupidly put Dax on to Wesley Willison's now he whenever he's in the car alone with me, he just plays Wesley Willis songs constantly over the over the radio. Which just shows what a bad parent I am to like it's inappropriate, whatever.
That's not the point. So the point is I'm like, I'm gonna get my Christmas tree because obviously these blue laws have been repealed since, you know, nineteen seventy you know, eight. Nope. Nope. They're still there.
If you go to Mitsua Market, which is the amazing Japanese market in Edgewater, New Jersey, if you go on a Sunday, the appliance aisle is barricaded because you can shop in the market, but you can't shop the appliance aisle. Which makes a lot of sense because um, you know, the internet's closed on Sundays. So yeah, yeah. I mean back in the 70s the argument was, well, if everybody's closed on Sundays, then it just gives everyone a a day off and we're not in this kind of mutually assured destruction rate. I mean, it started with you know, blue laws, like you you shouldn't be shopping on the Lord's Day.
You know what I mean? But uh at this point, you know, they should switch it to Saturday anyway, and then you know what I mean, like it's like none of it makes any sense anymore. Yeah, the internet is competition. You can go to malls. It used to also be Bergen County was the county of malls, like Paramus was where all the malls were.
Uh, you know, and you're like, I'm what am I gonna drive? A whole county away just to go shopping? By the way, New Jersey counties are not like, you know, big state counties. New Jersey counties are like the size of this table. So anyway, uh, interesting fact that the blue laws are still there.
Why are they called blue laws? I don't know. I don't know. To give you a blue something else. Uh a blue what?
A blue like a singing, you're not singing uh I'll have a blue Christmas without you from uh A Year Without a Santa Claus, are you? Nope. Because I watched that last night. I haven't watched Rudolph yet, though, Nastasia. Have you watched?
How many times have you watched that? I haven't watched. I haven't watched it. I think someone needs to take a picture. Nastasia is wearing the Christmas hat that I want to be the prize for some of our contest.
I don't know where to get it. Well, I'm sure one of our intrepid, you know, listeners, if we take a picture of your Christmas picture. There's a good one of us eating a pizza with you looking at me angry on the internet. If that's any picture of us eating pizza together. Yeah, that checks out.
Yeah. Um, so how was your bird, Nastasia? Uh good. Yeah, you cooked a uh a heritage bird. Oh, it was pretty tough.
What? Yeah. See, this is what Nastasia is always into the brutal honesty. Wait, Dave, how are your two stop and shop birds? Wow.
Brutal honesty. I'll tell you what they were. First of all, it was three shop and stop birds, and they were how many people? What? You did three turkeys?
I did three turkeys. How many people? Uh what's 18 and 8? Uh 26. 26.
26 people. I did I did three turkeys. Uh seems excessive, but go on. Uh there. Is it there's no such thing as excessive turkey.
Like I said before, I happen to be in the small, correct, smart percentage of the people who think that turkey is a delicious bird and then delicious meat, and you can't have too much turkey. Everyone's like, oh, turkey, no flavor. We talked about this before at Thanksgiving. Oh, it's good, but it's great. It's great.
It's not a good thing. What? In what way is it revolting? First of all, wild turkey is very smart. Everyone also says turkeys are stupid.
Go hunt turkeys and tell me turkeys are stupid. Why is it so hard to get a turkey if they're so damn stupid? Turkey turkeys, right? Unlike you know, a dumb chicken, which I love, right? Turkeys like sleep on the tops of trees, come down and eat and go back up.
That's so polar. Turkeys, like that giant bird goes up and sleeps in the top of a tree. Think about that. And uh, you know, turkeys are uh a delicious and they smell delicious, and people should eat more of them. That's what I was trying to tell Patrick before is that he needs to tell people that turkey is not just for Thanksgiving, although he's like, it's one of the only seasonal meats, it's turkeys, they only have sex one time of year.
You want to get a turkey around Thanksgiving, uh it's the best time to get the turkeys, but the fact that that's my Patrick Martin's voice, by the way. And by the way, he does sound like that. So, unlike my normal voices where they sound nothing like the person, that sounds kind of like it's actually not even my imitation of Patrick Martin's. It's Peter Kim from the Museum of Food and Drinks imitation. Everyone's favorite.
I am Patrick Martins, host of the main course. That's his more measured tones. I am Patrick Martins. Uh so, anyways, so uh I did uh yeah, three turkeys, and it was not excessive. I didn't actually have that many leftovers, but uh I did two, I did uh completely uh boned out and chicken fried, right?
So for that one, you completely bone them out, uh, you chop up the bones, roast them, and do a double stock in the pressure cooker, which means that you know, while you guys are sitting there using your canned chicken broth and your freaking pan drippings to make gravy. Meanwhile, I have like you know, ten cups of a very rich double stock to turn into a gravy. So all I need to do is uh, you know, thicken it and add some freaking sherry. That's all I have to do to get a nice kind of a gravy, right? Unlike you, chumps.
I'm pointing at you two in the room. Although how was your turkey? I'm not a connoisseur of turkey. My parents make the turkey. Okay.
And it always tastes just fine to me, like a Thanksgiving turkey. And one then a few days later I get the feedback from my parents. That was not a very good turkey, was it, Paul? Really, I didn't notice. I was just there for the companionship.
Wow. That I'm and the stuffing. I am ne oh, stuffing, yeah, I love stuffing. I was I am never there for the companionship. Right.
Right. It's not true. That sounds right. What's your ratio of meat to gravy? Uh when I'm eating it.
When you're I don't put gravy on the meat. I put gravy on the stuffing and on the potatoes because I try to not overcook the meat to the point that I need to put gravy on it to eat it. Hmm. So better with gravy no matter what degree it's cooked to. Actually, I do the same thing, actually.
I don't like gravy on my turkey. Yeah, I don't like I'm gonna do it. I also like gravy gravy ruins the stuffing. Stuffing is so perfect without gravy. I like it, but but what about what about what about gravy on your potatoes?
Hmm. I like gravy on the turkey meat. I don't, I don't. I I don't like I I don't put sauces typically unless it's a braise, you know, uh, on my meats, on my roasted meats. I don't put sauces typically.
This is why, like, I favor styles of uh barbecue where the meat tastes good on its own, as opposed to, and I'm not a huge fan of this is why everyone gets pissed uh mad at me, is uh because like you know, I I'm like, can I taste the meat before you slather it with vinegar and tomato products? You know what I mean? Can I just taste it before you slather it with sugar tomato, which by the way, all that stuff tastes good. Like I think barbecue sauce tastes great on French fries, you know what I mean? Or maybe you know, a little bit on the meat, but do you are you a big fan of that stuff too?
No. All right. So I the trick with the with the breaking the uh turkey apart is uh cutting the pieces into individual sized pieces into the size pieces that they would be word a chicken. And the other thing that's a pain in the butt, and I've said this a couple years ago, but I didn't say it this year, is that when I was a kid, you could buy turkeys, and Nastasi won't remember this. I don't think Paul, you won't remember this.
You could buy turkeys where they had taken the tendons out of the legs. So you used to be able to buy uh unless this is some sort of dream I've had that's been reimprinted on my path they used to make a machine where butchers could go pop up, rip the tendons out of the leg and still have the leg there, which is why I detest the the um I detest the Disney World uh turkey leg that they sell you. Uh not because the turkey leg tastes bad, I mean it's you know, I think it's just a smoked kind of overly dry thing, because they don't remove the tendons, and so you have that stick with all those freaking tendons sticking out of it. It's the tendons in the in the legs that are the unpleasant part of dealing with turkey. Uh true.
Yeah. What happened to the detendonizer machine? I don't know. I don't I think it was just a dream. No, it was not a dream.
It was real. So I remember you used to be able to buy quartz of turkey tendon. What? No. Yeah.
Anyway, so uh well, they don't render out nicely like a beef tendon does. You know what I mean? But so anyway, the point being that uh what you do there is you cut the uh especially the leg parts apart, make sure that you cook the legs separately in a bag. I cook them in a in a I cook them in a milk brine. I do the low temp cooking in a milk brine, and I take it a couple degrees higher than I would do for myself, just so that everyone's super happy.
Like I do like a 67 and a 65 for the white anyway. So you cook the legs separately, pull them out, let them flash off and cool, and then rip the tendons out before you bred them. Don't try to remove the tendons from the legs prior to cooking them because there lies anger. You know what I mean? More anger.
More anger more anger than it's necessary. But interestingly, this year, I have a policy with Thanksgiving and any large event where you're gonna let people bring food of a no oven policy. A no oven. What about Peter Kim's stew? Well, in other words, I won't use the oven.
So like my oven is entirely for the guests. Oh. Because guess guess in fact, I bought a separate oven just so that guests could use it, and I had a toaster oven. It's like it's like I want to use as little of my equipment when people are in my house as is humanly possible because everybody is like, well, I'm sure I can just throw in these rolls at 400 degrees for 20 minutes right before we eat, right? You know what I mean?
Although my but my mother did a dishwasher. My mother-in-law brought the rolls and she doesn't do that. She brings them all done and nice and stuff like this. No, but dishwashers, Nastasia, take an hour and a half to two hours ago. Oh, I wish I had.
That my dream is someone who makes, and by the way, I mentioned this before on the radio. Louis Armstrong, uh uh, my wife uh at the firm she used to work at had a project at Louie Armstrong's house in Queens, and uh and they were looking at it because they're they're, I guess, preserving it. I don't know whether it's a museum, but the house is preserved. Louie Armstrong's house in Queens is preserved. Yes.
And his dishwasher, this was their Christmas card one year. His dishwasher had a button. Remember how old dishwashers used to have buttons on them, like similar to an Oysterizer blender, still has to this day. Those little click buttons. Yep.
And one was party. And so they they just took a picture of his dishwasher control panel, and then they were like, and then the title was set to party. And that was their Christmas invitation to the architecture firm that year. Yeah. So the reason why, you know, uh home dishwashers uh don't work uh quickly is because they want to A save energy, uh, and B, they want to be quiet, and C, they don't want to be too rough on your dishes, right?
These so commercial dishwashers, A, take a lot of energy, uh B are relatively rough on your dishes, right? Uh and they're B is they're loud and C. B is they're loud. Yeah, and they're rough. C is they're rough, yeah.
And so, but the only real difference, you could take, you know, pick your quiet dishwasher of choice, Bosch, whatever, uh, and all you all you need to do, by the way, Hobart could do this because they make it is put a boiler unit in it, right? And then say, you know what? I want this sucker to run like a commercial dishwasher for the next, you know, three hours. Heat up that boiler, and the other problem with commercial dishwashers is they don't automatically uh get rid of all of the gunk you have to like drain it once you put solids in, so that's why you have to pre-rance better for those things. But you could you could have a home dishwasher that runs like a commercial during a party and be doing like minute cycles, you know, minute and a half cycles where they're coming out blazing hot and going bang, bang, bang.
It would be so amazing. Wouldn't you love that, Paul? With a party button, I would. With a party button. Well, yeah, you wouldn't call it set to commercial because that doesn't sound fun.
No. You said set to party. And then, you know, in party mode, the boiler comes on, it, you know, you know, your energy usage goes way up, it's loud as all get out, but who cares because you're at a party. You know what I'm saying? Yes.
So no one's setting it to party. You know, it's you're not having the Carthusian monks over, and like, you know, everyone has a vow of freaking silence and you're interrupting it with your dishwasher, you know. Sometimes I do have the monks over. Yeah, no, Paul's like, you you want to drink, and they're like, they don't answer. And you're like, oh yeah, I forget.
You only drink like two days a year when you're toasting, you know, like uh like Good Friday or whatever, like yes, but yeah. They're not heavy drinkers, those Carthusians, even though they make the chartreuse. Did you know that? They only have two times. Uh well, no, they didn't come.
That's the thing. They didn't come and party. They're not about partying. They don't even care whether you like the liquor or not. They're like, we sell it.
They used to, they used to make iron. They were iron workers, and then when the iron ran out, they were like, well, we could uh make uh booze. Although they didn't say that because they don't talk. Right. You know what I mean?
They thought it. They thought it to each other. I don't think they have telepathy, but if they did, they would use that accent for their telepathy, whatever the French version of that accent is for their telepathy. It's a weird thing, those guys, because they make a high really high quality product, but they really don't care about it in the way that you and I care about products. You know what I mean?
They care that they're doing a good job because it's through work that they become closer. One of the ways they become closer to God is through work, right? But like the Mennonites, like the Martins Brothers pretzels, which are some of my favorite pretzels on earth, right? Uh, but uh they don't care whether you like it or not. It's not, it's not doesn't factor into their equation.
Isn't that weird? Do they get married? No, they're monks. Can we get a monk on the show? No, I mean, they can sit there.
Oh, we do have a monk. Yeah. Hello. They have the best, like the Carthusians have the nicest wool habits, like so nicely made, the wool habits. Apparently, when you join the Carthusians, you have to choose whether you're gonna go the father route or the brother route.
And they have different kinds of jobs. What are the jobs? Well, one's I guess more of a priestly route, and the other one's more of a monkey mount route. Anyway, like one's more working and the other one's more sit around and contemplate. Which I'm terrible.
What yeah, you what? I would work. Yeah. Well, for you and I sitting around contemplating, please poke my eyes out. I can't imagine anything I'd less rather be on earth than some sort of a Zen person.
You know what I mean? Like, like I could, you know how some people are like, oh, Zen, you know, it's like when you're working, it's like Zen. Well, I don't know, if in that way, maybe I could do that, but just like sitting and like contemplating. What are you gonna do when you become leather man? He walks and contemplates.
That's what I'm saying. Like, people are like, it's like my worst nightmare is going to the beach, right? Because unless I'm searching for clams, love that. Going caw hogging at the beach, awesome. What about reading?
Can't you read at the beach? It's too bright. It's too freaking bright. Why would I do that? I would go inside and read or go to the woods and read.
Or yeah, sit on a deck and read. But I don't like the sand to touch me. Whatever. My point is is that like, and plus, when you have kids, Nastasia, you're supposed to watch the kids. So I'm literally pretending I'm dead at the beach, watching the kids to make sure they don't drown, and being like, why why am I here?
I'm not, I'm not gathering food. I'm not cooking food, I don't have a margarita in my hand, and I'm not reading, right? You like being in the seed? Yes, I like being in the sea. That's why I go to the beach.
Yes, I like being in the sea. You could buy that cooler with the margarita maker on it. Uh my wife is not so much on me watching the kids at the beach while I'm pounding margaritas. It's not considered, you know, it's not considered father of the year. Yeah, yeah.
Oh, that's that dad. Yes. Ooh, that dad. Yeah, you want to take a call? Yeah, sure.
Caller, you're on the air. Hello, how are you? Doing well yourself? Doing well. Good.
So I have a quick question. Um I bought one of the instant pot electronic uh uh pressure cookers, and I've got one of the ones with the yogurt buttons. And uh a lot of people seem to like to do it without doing the usual 180-degree boil step of uh of cooking if they use uh the fair life hyper uh ultra pasteurized milk. And I'm wondering, is this safe? It it seems like uh an odd choice.
Plus, it's lactose-free, and I always thought that was what the bacteria was eating in order to make yogurt. That those are all excellent questions. Paul, do you know anything about this? I don't know fair life. I bring my milk to about 165, and it's all about texture.
What happens if you're gonna do it? If I don't do that, it's a much thinner, runnier yogurt, which I don't enjoy. And is it be well, so presumably, right, heating the milk does a couple of things. One, you're killing off anything that was there that's not what you want, right? That's one.
Presumably. And if you're pitching in a culture, right, then you can probably fairly easily swamp anything that is already in there, right? Because it's not there that long. And those things are gonna be even if you heat it, right? The odds that you get zero other stuff in are low.
And so really with yogurt, you're you're counting on competition to win and the drop in pH to also ward off any nasties that might be uh present, right? Right. I mean, and in fact, like in the old days, prior to milk was pasteurized, it's it's inherent beasties were enough to drop the pH. So like old sour clabbered milk does not taste anything like uh modern uh pasteurized milk that's gone bad in your fridge. It's an entirely different uh set of uh uh microbes.
Anyway, so there's that. And then the other thing, as Paul is saying with texture, is as you heat it, you will be denaturing uh some of the proteins and therefore altering how they agglomerate. And that must be what you're getting on the texture. Have you done any research on it, Paul? I haven't done research.
I've done experimentation at 165, 170, 175, and 180 because I make a lot of yogurt at home, and 165 gives me the thickest, tangiest yogurt. 180 gives a thinner, blander yogurt. And what about this whole thing about the yeast having the uh the bacteria uh you know having the the having enough to eat if there's if the lactose has been removed? I have no idea. I've never tried making yogurt with lactose-free milk.
It sounds like it wouldn't work. Sounds like it you I mean, well, yeah, we have the thing it works, right? So I mean there's obviously other stuff in there that they can eat. You know what I mean? So you're actually bringing it to like one ninety ish.
Um it it definitely sets up nicer and it sets up fine. I I don't even need to strain it in order to make a a pretty thick yogurt. Um but I I was just curious because again I I always thought that it was eating the lactose maybe it likes it that it's already broken down. I don't know. Oh oh yeah I mean I don't even really so like uh I haven't even looked at so what they're doing is they're pre-adding the enzyme to break it down, right?
That's what they do to lactose yeah so they're adding lactase before yeah so I'm sure you're you're just probably saving them a step. You know they probably don't get uh that much energy from breaking that it's more of the actual uh you know there's probably it doesn't take that much energy to break down um uh because lactose I forget what lactose is do you remember what lactose is Paul? Like what the it's a disaccharide right I don't remember what the two it's a disaccharide right lactose and I don't know what the two monosaccharides are because I don't spend it down into glucose something else but I don't remember the other ones yeah so in other words like the the that's typically not that much energy right so uh yeah if the constituent uh monosaccharides are still in there then I'm sure it it's all copasthetic for the uh for the bacteria. Okay. So safe to give small children.
Oh yeah yeah look if the pH drops, I would say it's safe to give because look, you were willing to you were willing to uh you know drink it prior, and uh you know the pH drop happens probably relatively quickly at those temperatures. Like how long is your incubation period before it starts getting tangy? Uh I I've I like it to let it run because I really like tangy, so I usually let it run 12 hours, so I don't know when it gets tangy. Yeah. Well, Paul, have you done that?
How fast did it start dropping the pH? I do 24 hours. Um eight hours. I mean, you'll you buy commercial yogurt machines and they have an eight-hour cycle and it comes out tangy. Right.
So there you have it. So like it's probably dropped. The pH is probably dropping low enough to start inhibiting some of these off things relatively early, like in the range of a couple of hours instead of in the range of like 24 hours. So I mean, I you know, the the thing is as a not a microbiologist, I can't like give you a specific recommendation, but I can say I would serve it to my kids. Okay.
Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. And let us, you know, if you have any experiments or whatever, shoot me a tweet over at Cooking Issues.
Let me know how it works out. Cool. Thank you. All right, cool, thank you. Uh Instapot.
Since my mom does not listen, I can't uh anyway. The people love in the Instapot. I got it. We had a caller, I think two weeks ago, who was uh gave me the very good tip that you can because the Instapot inserts are stainless steel, you can put them on a burner, and therefore you you can brown it even though they're woefully underpowered for browning. Woefully underpowered uh for browning.
Are you did uh did your sister buy an instapot nostasi? That uh oh, check this out. Uh I forgot to write down who it was, but one of uh the people on uh Instagram, I should have written down who it was. Sent me the like uh the greatest emoji of all time. It's the poop emoji and the plate with the fork emoji.
So what's what's that the emoji for? Poop eat. Dump meals. It's the greatest dual emoji ever. It's good.
Are you giving me the you're giving me the wan was just because you're a dump meal fan, Dave? I never said that. Uh I'm no Natty Lopez. Uh well, excuse you, you're the one that doesn't brown your meats before you throw them into your slow cooker. Slow cooking, but pressure cooking, we do brown the meat.
I always brown the meat. Always brown the meat. Oh, also I put a photo of us with the Christmas hat on my Instagram. Oh, nice. I'll uh I'll I don't know, I don't know how to do that, but I can try it later.
Yeah, Paul knows how to do that stuff. So anyway, so back on the uh so the the whole bird that I did for service for serving, I did very, very traditionally. So back to my I have my no oven policy, right? So I'm not gonna use the oven this way, everyone else can use the oven and I don't have to worry about it. So to get around this, I have an outdoor fryer, right?
I think everyone should have an outdoor fryer. Wiley uh Dufrein, my brother-in-law, he has the Cajun fryer, he actually really likes it a lot. And the nice thing about that fryer is that it has a lid that's meant to go over it, so you don't have to use some sort of aftermarket lid, and it's meant to get rain hitting it directly, whereas mine is not. So mine I have to cover and make sure that rain doesn't get on it because I just have a regular stainless commercial fryer that I have outside that I've converted to propane. Okay.
So a couple of tips. One, if you live in cold weather, and this is by the way, not just for Thanksgiving, this is any sort of outdoor cooking in cold weather. If you're gonna do outdoor cooking and cold weather with a piece of equipment like a walk burner, with a piece of equipment like a deep fryer that is propane, that can't be fired off of wood, right? So, you know, normally outside when it's cold, if I'm gonna grill, I grill with wood, and so, you know, you don't have to worry about it. But propane, uh, especially if you're using a small 20-pound tanks, if you actually almost ruined Thanksgiving with this once, if you use those and it's extremely cold, the cylinders can no longer supply high BTUs, right?
Because at those at those low temperatures outside, there's not enough vapor pressure to push enough propane through your lines and through the orifice that's in, you know, in the in the burners to get uh to get a good result. So years and years ago, like you know, 15, 16 years ago, uh, you know, my mom had a uh fryer and it was below freezing outside when I was uh cooking the turkey and it wouldn't light, and so I had to over drill the orifice. I had literally went into the garage and over-drilled the orifice so that I could get enough propane out of the tank to cook the turkey. The turkey tasted good, but some of the oil flew up, which is you know, your second tip. I didn't dry out the inside of the bird enough.
And the problem with what they sell as turkey fryers in the uh in the hor in the big vertical pot, those six gallon pots that they have, five, six gallon pots, is that when you lower the turkey in, if it's not dry, you have water on the inside forming like a tunnel, like almost like a cannon, and it can fire oil straight up, and oh which it did, and it got and it killed the grass in an area, and my stepfather, you know, was uh displeased with uh with that. Um so, anyways, so what's a solution to this? The solution is you go on uh Amazon or whatever. I mean, I hate Amazon. We could talk about them, but you know, they are they are our only source of income.
So I shouldn't say on the air that I hate them, but I loathe them with an intense passion. Sears all are back on Saturday. And spinzalls are on Amazon right now. Literally, like every nickel that Booker Indax makes really comes from Amazon.com and yet still a burning white passion of hatred, as Booker would say. Yeah, anyway, whatever.
So uh go on Amazon and get a pale warmer. Pale warmer. Make sure as in, not as in you know, I am pale, like a pail that will hold liquids. Uh get you know a 110 volt pale warmer with a thermostat on it, and you just wrap that around your propane tank and you're good to go. And you just don't turn it too high.
You know, turn it like basically on its lowest setting, and then it will just keep your propane tank at the right temperature. And this is how I know that no matter what the weather is like, if I want to deep fry, I can go outside and deep fry. So if you're gonna get an outdoor deep fryer, you live in cold weather climates, the first trick is to get uh one of those uh pale warmers. Um that's what we used when we were trying to also if let's say you're gonna run a puffing gun, let's say you're gonna run a puffing. So my deep fryer is 90,000 BTUs, just to give you an idea.
So I can suck it, even though it's below freezing outside, I can suck 90,000 BTUs out of pro uh uh worth of propane out of my pro 20 pound propane tank, no problem. Yeah, right. Let's say let's what'd say? Yeah, that's what you're talking about, right? So let's say you're let's say you have a puffing gun, right?
Puffing gun is more on the order of 200,000 BTUs. Now, how you can't ever suck 200,000 BTUs out of a out of a regular propane tank, uh 20-pound tank. It's not designed for it. You're supposed to pull it out of a hundred-pound tank. So uh what do you do?
And what happens when you s when you take off too much propane out of a tank uh at once, uh, it just cools off radically because you have evaporative cooling off uh off the surface of the pro liquid propane as it evaporates and it cools the whole tank down, and eventually you get down to a temperature where it doesn't deliver propane anymore. So any of you that have sat there and I don't know, uh turned on the Searsol and suddenly gotten tetanus and not been able to release the searsols for five minutes, you'll notice that the tank gets really cold and the searsol stops delivering propane. Uh you know, the tank stops delivering propane to the searsol. So when we're firing the puffing gun, no matter what the weather is outside, even in the summer, we have to use pale heaters to keep it going. Um anyways, so that's one tip.
Uh second tip is if you get a horizontal fryer, they are very good for turkey. So what I did there is I just uh I did a smaller turkey, so uh on the order of 15 pounds, uh salted it, very old school, salted it, didn't bother boning it or anything like that, and just air dried it in the you know, lifted off a rack. People make a mistake when they air dry, they worry about breast up, breast down. Just put it on two racks so that it's suspended well above the pan, right? Get the get the wings way the hell away from the the and the legs way the hell away from the animal so that it's like you know, it's basically like it's gonna give you a hug.
It's hugging you, saying, I'm dead, I'm dead, hug me. You know, like that. Like that's what you want it to look like, right? Why didn't you post any pictures of this? Because I was busy cooking, Nastasia.
That's the thing. Everyone's like photos. What? No one took photos. Um I was cooking by myself.
Sad. That's life. You know, you cook beforehand. Sad. My brother actually was out there helping me, but by the time it's it gets dark at 4:30 here, you know what I mean?
It's all wow. What time did you eat this year? I I ate exactly when they asked. Like, when do you want to eat? They want to eat at seven, so I ate at seven.
It's like, okay. Uh, but people don't believe you when you're doing this. I'm like, because they're like, the turkey is raw, and then when you're frying it the way I fry it, it's done 20 minutes later. So, like, you know, 40 minutes before dinner, the turkey is still raw, like drying out, and people are like, he's not gonna get this dinner done in time. And so they go start doing other stuff, and then meanwhile, I put the turkey on the table.
I'm like, it's freaking ready, right? Because the technique is you fry the turkey as I'm about to tell you to do next, and then you do the chicken fry after, right? So you're outside, you do your breading outside. And by the way, I hooked up my presser pressure washer. I I finally put hot and cold running water on the outside of my house.
I drilled a hole through my kitchen wall and installed uh like uh anti frost uh siphon-proof uh like regular like garden hose faucets through underneath the my kitchen sink, tapped into the lines there, and have hot and cold running water outside that you just attach with a hose to like this IKEA, this like you know, really cheap IKEA kitchen outside. So I did all my breading outside and then afterwards the next day, because I didn't want to clean it, right? But it's not in your house, so who cares? So I left it out there and I took my pressure washer out there, I hooked it up to the hot water, not too hot, people. Oh, not too hot or that happens.
And and then uh I just pressure washed everything. It was so liberating to just pressure wash all of the sheet trays with all of that freaking fry goop all over them. Anyways, so uh so yeah, the whole the whole thing is done in like, you know, 30 minutes. So while the turkey, while the whole turkey rests, you have already low temped all of the meat for the um for the ones that are turkey fried and they're small anyway, so they don't take a long time to heat through. So you just double basket back, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, and just uh pull it all in, and all of a sudden you go from zero to three turkeys, like, and as far as the other people think it's magic.
They're like, boom, it's all there. You know what I mean? Anyways, so uh the nice thing about horizontal frying is that you can put the legs in, right? So you can you can put the backside down in and tip it up so that you have the legs more in the fry oil than you have the breast, and you can just let it rock there, and it's easy to manipulate because you can shove spoons and tongs into what would have been the butt of the turkey, you know what I mean, and flip it around without doing too much damage. It's easy, and if you need to, you can almost pinion from two sides and flip it so you're not like tonging up the skin, and you can manipulate the turkey a couple of times to make sure that it is uh you know that it's good.
And because you manipulate it a couple of times, you can make sure the skin gets crispy uh everywhere, and you can make sure it browns everywhere, but you can also take, you know, I don't use thermometers when I'm cooking this kind of stuff. Uh I just use a cake tester, right? Because that's the way I was trained to do it. So you get a cake tester, and you just go you shove the cake tester into the thickest part, you sit there, you sit there, you sit there, you sit there, you sit there. Okay, now you pull it out and you put it against your lip.
If you do it too fast, there's no way to know. You have to let the cake tester equilibrate with the meat that's there. Then you pull it out and touch it right under your under your, you know, I'm pointing what am I what is this, Paul? That's your lower lip, Dave. Yeah, point, yeah, you touch it there, and if it's warm, if it's warm enough, then you're like, oh, now you touch it, Paul.
You people, you're the worst. Anyway, what if you don't have a cake tester? You only have a probe thermometer. Go buy a cake tester and throw your probe thermometer away. No, probe thermometers are great.
I love them, but really, why don't you have cake testers? What don't we think about that while we take a quick break? All right, take a break, come right back with more with cooking issues. Bob's Red Mill has been milling whole grain since 1978. One of the nice things about Bob's Red Mill is it's the only that I know of, national supplier that's easily available for lots of interesting, hard to get grains and other seed products.
So, you know, before Bob's red mill became widely available, you couldn't go get something like quinoa very easily, or you couldn't go get spelt easily in small quantities. But now you go to any one of the huge number of stores that carry Bob's Redmill, and you can get smaller amounts of these really interesting fun things to play with. Learn more at Bob's Redmill.com slash podcast. Paul, do you like dreadlocks? Where did that come from?
What's to like or not like? It's someone's hair. Who cares? Do you like it, Dave? What do you mean, like?
Like it has no meaning to me. Do what I have dreadlocks? No. My hair is too straight. I cannot grow dreadlocks.
Why? They're dirty. What that is wrong. What do you mean they're dirty? You can't wash your hair.
That's incorrect. You can wash your hair with dreadlocks. Yes. Yes. With what?
Shampoo. What? Will someone please like write in on the chat board and school Nastasia on how dreadlocks work? Um anyway. So uh let's answer some questions that were written in.
They are named dreadlocks because they invoke fear in the non-wearer. Well, back in the day. So they're working. Okay. Uh hey, Dave Nastasia, uh, Dave in the booth, and hopefully everyone's favorite punching bag, uh, Peter Kim.
Well, the part of Peter Kim now is being played by Paul. I just can't do it. Can't can't be punched. No. Uncun.
That was a good Peter Kim impression, though. Uh yeah, big big fan of the show. Uh, I got into you guys a few years back and downloaded the entire back catalog and listened to it during a 19-day volunteer mission helping rural rural cacao farmers in Madagascar. Wow. So you like I I can't believe we've been listened to on the island of Madagascar.
It's one of the places I really want to visit. Yeah. You two, you've you been there, Paul? I haven't been. Sounds like the vanilla and the lemurs.
Both? Yeah. I want to go for the vanilla. So wrong. So wrong.
Uh yeah. You would wash dreadlocks like you would a sponge. Just put it in. And you know how I wash sponges? With soap.
Oh my god. Um, uh I'm a cook for the uh now Amazon owned supermarket that everyone loves to hate. That would be Whole Foods. Um we had a special request for a goose this weekend that is to be cooked, chilled, and given to a customer to be customer to be reheated at home. While I've cooked plenty of poultry in my career, I've only roasted one goose and found it to be relatively tough and dry.
I'm contemplating brining it and also using the Chinese prick skin and plunge in boiling water to render fat before roasting it. Uh although I have a circulator at home, uh, I don't have one at work. I do have convection ovens, steamers, and auto sham, and deep fryers at my disposal. Nice. Uh if there is so Whole Foods has deep fryers, huh?
Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Uh if uh there's a can't miss method involving brining uh bringing my circulator from home, I'm willing to do so. But keep in mind I don't have a chamber sealer, only food saver or zippies.
Uh I'm working day shift tomorrow, so I can't call in, but would love to get any advice you can share to help me provide my guests with a quality product, including suggestions on techniques for reheat with common appliances that the guests would have at their disposable. Just disposable. Disposal. Thanks in advance, Jonathan. Here's what you do, you just shove it in the disposal.
So I also have only cooked uh goose a couple of times, and it's been probably 20 years since I've cooked a goose, and I was not super jacked about it uh at the time. It seemed like a uh it seemed like kind of a fattier, less meaty, more pain in the butt duck to me. Like it was kind of like duck minus. Uh, but that was a long time ago. I think goose deserves more.
I've had delicious confit goose, uh not that I've cooked, but that other people have cooked for me. Uh, but I've not had a roasted like Christmas style goose in in well, I say I haven't cooked one in 20 years, but I don't think I've had one in probably 15 years. Nils, so Nils Norrin is being Swedish, like you know, cooking goose for him is like you know, waking up in the morning. Uh but you know, Paul, are you a goose cooker? No, I've never cooked a goose.
I've had extremely good roast goose at the home of uh Chinese American family, and I've had really good smoked goose breast. Yeah. So the problem with goo the the and I think the reason that goose is difficult is that it's it's difficult in well, the other reason I don't cook it uh is it's a lot more expensive than duck, and so if I'm gonna have a better if if the duck is gonna do me more proud than the goose, then why would I pay more for something I like less? It's been my mentality, but I think my mentality is wrong, and I need to revisit it because obviously, if goose was the festive bird for you know uh hundreds of years in places like you know England, then it's gotta be it's gotta have merit, right? The roast goose I had was more flavorful than an average roast duck.
Yeah. The meat had more interesting flavor. Yeah. Okay. But Nastasi, you have any goose.
I've had one a couple of years ago. And what do you think of it? I don't remember it that well. Does that mean you didn't like it? Probably.
Okay. So uh anyway, so it has the same sort of problems as duck, but more so. Uh and so I did some I did some research, and the problem is the kind of whole roasting of it, uh, you're not gonna get you're not gonna get the legs and the breast to be in a position uh the way uh that you would want it if you're the kind of person who likes a medium rare breast and a soft leg. It just won't happen. Like the either you'll have the breast meat the way you want it, or you'll have the leg meat the way you want it, but you're not gonna get both uh at the same time using uh normal techniques.
So I looked up like some ways that people get around the the toughness. One, uh hunters, and this will also solve some of your skin rendering problems. So you mentioned the Chinese technique of uh pricking it, but there are hunters out there who do full jackard, so they're jackarding the meat uh prior. Now that sh unfortunately will shred the skin, which I don't think is what what you want, but it's interesting that people are using some people like joke that they'll run over the goose with uh with their with their four by fours, hunters. You know what I mean?
Will run over the goose with their four by fours as a tenderizing. So you might um you might help make the leg meat less problematic by the good old-fashioned technique of beating the ever-loving snot out of it. Uh brining also helps. Hank Shaw, who has, you know, a bunch of stuff on cooking uh hunted uh meats, his favorite technique, which is not necessarily going to be uh what you want, he and it's his favorite bird, right, is he uh will brine that brine the heck out of it for a long time, right, to kind of uh protect it. By the way, uh okay, and then he will roast it, and then uh okay, so if you're f you're familiar with pressed duck, right, Paul?
Right. So in in in a pressed duck situation, you you par I don't know even why I brought it up because it's a different technique, but you you partially roast the bird, pull it off, slice off the breasts, and then you re- you can roast the rest of it to what you want. So that's what he does. He roasts he roasts the birds uh at a regular thing, you know, renders out the the fat on the skin area, which you could probably accelerate by pricking it and doing the hot water like pecking duck style stuff, right? You could do all of that, inflate it, all that stuff will work.
Uh but then he slices the breast off when the breast is done and then throws the uh keeps it warm and then throws the rest of the meat back in on the carcass until the legs are the way you want, then pulls it out, then puts the stuff back. So if your customer is willing to not have a hundred percent presentation mode, you can cook it, slice that stuff off, then relayer it back on. But even if you meet meat glue it back on, which the meat glue will hold, by the way, like if you are chilling it and then like once it gets down to you know uh it's just getting cool enough, you layer the breast back on top, it'll it will re-glue, but you're never gonna get it looking like a uh goose that hasn't been uh cut into. You'll just is not gonna happen. You know what I mean?
But I don'll have that glued goose look. Yes, but if you do do that, if you have that glued uh goose look, as Paul says, um, then that stuff's pretty easy to re-therm, just make sure that the cavity is completely empty and throw it in hot, a very hot oven, and just let it, you know, warm through like this, and you won't get much overcooking on it because you've already cooked it all up. So just let it, you know, come up to room temp uh you know for a little while, throw it in a super hot oven, and boom, you should be able to re-therm it no problem. And it'll recrisp the skin, but it's never gonna look like you know, like it would otherwise. Now we gotta bring this bird in for a landing, Dave.
No, all right. Well I was gonna say like if you want to get super complicated, you could you could inside out rip out the legs and and meet and then comfy them without their skin and then chill them, stuff them back into the raw skin, then roast the whole bird off focusing on just the breast and getting the skin crisped up like almost treated as a raw bird with the legs back in. And then you'd have comfy goose leg and bread, but that's a huge pain in the butt to go through for uh a customer who you can't even trust is going to be you know a friend of quality and not ruin it on the on the uh pickup. You know what I mean Nastasia? Yes.
Yes. It doesn't even require circulator, right? Because you you're doing basically traditional techniques. One last thing because uh Dave's gonna kick me off the uh off the air here um remember that I I don't know this for a fact but my guess is is that long time low temperature cooking on a uh goosebreast is gonna do a very similar thing that it does that it does to a duck breast which is it makes the texture mushy slash grainy and can create liver flavors in it, uh, which is dependent. So some duck breasts will get livery and some duck breasts won't uh on on long cooking.
But this is why typically when I'm doing low temperature on duck breasts, I like to keep the cook time down to about an hour or less. Uh and so uh at roughly 57 is what I typically do a duck breast at chill it and then do the the panning of the skin to crisp it up. So my guess is that goose meat will probably have similar, if not worse, problems with going A, livery, and B getting real texture loss on very long temperature uh cooks. So just bear that in mind if you're gonna do long-term low temperature. Either next week or the week after, Johnny Hunter from Underground Meats is going to come in.
So please send uh your cured meat questions our way, and we'll try to tweet out beforehand whether it's going to be next week or the week after, but definitely before uh the new year, Johnny Hunter from uh Wisconsin from Mad Town is gonna come on and we'll we'll do a uh uh cured meats question. We got uh Paul here who's pushing his new kitten. If you if you want to eat his new kitten, uh, you know, go to his uh website, which is I don't have a website. Well, what is it? Where are they gonna go?
Puma. Salad Puma. Twitter.com slash salad puma. Salad Puma. So I don't really keep updated, but I will post a kitten photo.
Now there you go. All right, cooking issues. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network. Food radio supported by you. For our freshest content and to hear about exclusive events, subscribe to our newsletter.
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