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Find us at heritage radio network.org. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick. No horn. Wow, nice.
Join us. Dave's pissed at me, people, because I'm effing with the microphone here. Because stop touching it. You already broke it. Oh, I did not break it.
Did you see that epoxy on the shock mount? That's because of you. Why can't the mic point from the why can't the back of the mic point down and the front of the mic point up? It can if you loosen the screws properly. No, look, what?
Just twisting it. No, no, because it does the back court. You're just nostalgia's works. So sit in her chair. Oh, hell no.
He doesn't want to. Oh, hell no. Hell no. We're in the ongoing battle of the of the We Are the Road Crew. Lemme.
What is that? Oh, those screws. Oh my god. What's up, technical genius, Dave? Although this.
I went to college too. Uh wow. All that time. So easy, Mr. Technology.
Dave's like, don't touch the shock mount again. You jerk. Or it's gonna give you an electric shock. Oh, I wish. Wouldn't that be awesome?
That would be so so Robert Plant of made again. I got a list of people I want to shock. Yeah. Did he get electrocuted? He got wicked electrocuted.
They uh they used to have non-isolated equipment, and he was out playing, I think in the rain. Is it plant or was it Daltry? One of those guys. Dave, do you know? I think it was Roger Daltrey, actually.
Yes, Adultry, I think it was Doltree, right? Because he's spinning that microphone, probably stressing the hell out of that XLR. Yeah, yeah, and then it's just like like rain, like on a non-isolate. Well, if you if Dave, you ever played with like really old amplifiers? Uh yeah.
Yeah. I used to have like a 1970s vintage custom with a K vinyl uh upholstered like Eddie Munster style bass amp. Okay. And that mother, that mother used to throw 120 volts across my uh across the barrels of my connectors, like on the regular. So I would just be like, oh, like even just like normal without water.
That old 70s equipment wasn't uh, you know, safe. You know what I mean? I don't think it was Robert Dalton. Wasn't about safe though. Wasn't about safe, it's about rock and roll, right?
That's what I'm saying. Uh speaking of which, Nastasia, uh the Hammer Lopez, how you doing? Good. So this is not cooking related, but I'll get it out of the way now. For those of you that uh, and by the way, Johnny Hunter's gonna call in in a couple of minutes to is this gonna be a fun personal story?
No. Well, Nastasia Lopez hates, hates, hates country music, right? Yeah, she hates country music. Well, no, that's not true. She met Merle Haggard and was like, so what?
Literally, we flew to California to meet Merle Haggard. Yeah, but you meet like one of the like the let like the all-time legends, and you're like, meh, but I did it for you. Anyways. I don't like country music because Dave loves oh, because he does this annoying thing where every time this a song that he likes that's a country song plays, he will be like, God, can you believe he she left him? Can you believe she left him with the kids?
And I'm every single thing. Okay, Nastasia hates Nastasia hates story songs. And the only thing she hates more than story songs is discussing story songs. But he discusses the same song. Well, because it's it's the same story.
It's like song. Any song. Any, any song. Any. So anyway, so there's a lot of things.
Like uh Turner. What's that one? Where's the Midnight Train to Georgia? You're like, what? Why is she gonna go back down with him when he's bringing her down and she has a good job in New York and he wants to go back to Georgia like a loser?
It's a mistake. It's a mistake. Yeah, why are you putting it all on her? I know. Well, no, I'm saying she shouldn't give up her dreams just for how good can this guy be.
Odds are they're gonna break up when they go back to Georgia anyway. Yeah, true. You know what I mean? They can't even afford the daytime train. It's no good.
Anyway, that that's not my point. But so she hates story songs. There's a famous uh David Allen Co. song, he didn't write write it, but it in which he jokingly tries to hit everything that a country music song is about. So it's it's uh trains, trucks, prison, uh, drinking, uh, mama, and rainstorms.
So this one verse hits all of that. But I found, and he did that on purpose as a joke. I found a song, it hits almost everything that Nastasia hates. It's by a guy named Johnny Paycheck, who the only song you might know by Johnny Pacheck is uh uh The Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised. He also wrote uh I'm gonna take this job and take this job and shove it.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Anyways, so Johnny Paycheck has a song that Nastasi would hate more than anything. It's hyper twangy, bad production value, like white dude music. Already she hates it. Then, already done.
It's a story song, done. But get this. Get this. It's a story about him on a train. It's called Billy Jack Washburn, right?
And he finds this guy almost dead. He's hoboing on a train when he gets out of jail. So that's everything right there. He's drinking. He finds this guy almost dead in a boxcar.
He becomes like a father to him. Then the guy falls in between the trains and gets crushed and dies. He picks up the body, only then does he look at the ID and finds out is his long-lost brother. Yeah, you like that? That's everything you hate.
I'm gonna play it constantly. And discuss it. And discuss it constantly. I'll be like this. Can you believe this?
What's there to discuss? How do he knew it wasn't his own brother? He'll go into the entire guy's life. I'm like, how old was the mom? The guy says he hasn't been home in 22 years, doesn't even know he has a brother.
What are the freaking odds that 22 years later he's on the tracks and he becomes a mentor to his own brother? What are the odds? What are the odds? Yeah, it's like an ESPN, like play by play, but every time the song comes on. Oh my god, by the way, uh, I don't know how to find it, people, but uh the Seattle, one of the Seattle play-by-play people, right, did a play-by-play of a drunk person trying to break into a truck with a broom handle, or at the end he like falls off of a roof, but it's it's the funniest like sports play-by-play ever.
Nastasi is very angry by the way that the Patrick. No, I am not. Really? I thought you were here as Pat. Nobody likes the Patriots.
Nastasia does. They won a lot. They've won a lot. I think it was good. Did you cook anything for the Super Bowl?
I did, I did chili. Well kind of chili cheese. Tom Brady wouldn't eat that because he doesn't need nightshades. What? That's true.
That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of my. That's so stupid. He's the male goop. He's a he's a moron. Like the fact of the matter is, he's wearing a helmet all the time and like full body armor for playing football.
Maybe that's why he thinks he doesn't need any sunscreen. He's wearing a make America Great Again hat. Oh, Jesus. So listen, my point is is it doesn't eat nightshades. So no potatoes.
Isn't he also a vegan? Yeah. What the hell does he eat? He's not gonna eat potatoes, which are semi-related, right? Tomatoes.
Eggplant, tobacco, eggplant. I mean, just like Goop, he pushes this whole health lifestyle that you need to have a lot of money to actually live. What? Gwenneth Peltra. Gwyneth Paltrow, pseudoscience.
Her name is Goop? No. No, she her company. Oh, she has a company called Goop? You don't know about this?
I feel like you would explain it to him just. I feel like you would rail against this. I w I'm I'm willfully ignoring it, because apparently Nastasia has explained it to me. And I I must be willfully ignoring its existence. You know what I mean?
Um as people who listen to the show for a long time knows Nastasia does not actually make chili. Nastasia makes tomato beef. Yeah, but what I did is I bought that powder, the McCormick chili. What the hell's wrong with you? Why the hell would you use that?
You know. Making chili is so freaking easy. Like making chili, all you get all you need are dried chilies, some tomato products, cumin, a couple other spices, garlic, and meat. You know, onions. What the hell you then I hid the pack deep into my trash before my friends came.
But that's so ridiculous. Well, at least, thank Christ, your uh your chili had cumin in it, which you don't normally And I made Philly cheesesteaks. Oh, I love those. Okay, how'd you do it? What how do you make it?
I had these bags of sous vide steak. From whom? That's a little too fancy for a full cheesesteak. Um somebody. Somebody who you shall not name.
Voldemort, Voldemort major. Alright. Uh, how are those? Good with Provolone. Provolone?
Yeah. All right. That's legit. It doesn't have to be whiz. I say that as a Philadelphian.
Okay, uh, yeah. So I hear something I I will say that is not standard, not approved, but I like anyway. When I make cheesesteaks, I'm a Gruyere guy. I like that. That would be good too.
Fancy. I should do it. Oh, yeah. Now like Dave's too fancy. Can't make cheesesteaks with Dave.
Uh I don't know if that's some sort of like no half French, half gump. Full ass to gump. Johnny is on the line. We got Johnny Hunter on the line. I gotta find uh Nastasia's uh questions.
Hold on a second. Hey Johnny, how you doing? How's it uh going up there in Madison? This is Johnny Hunter, the underground meats, underground food, and basically anything that you can like make or age underground. Johnny Hunter will do.
Have you ever actually aged anything underground? Made anything underground? No, have you ever like shark or anything? What? We've like, I mean, I mean we've buried vegetables to ferment them and such, but how was it?
Uh good. Yeah. Kind of green. You never made anything. We've done like the whole like whole pig.
Oh, cooking in them underground, sure. You know what the thing is, like is it really advantageous or is it just fun to do? Because I mean you can't it's hard to control the temperature of the earth. You know what I mean? Like it's it's just a fun thing to do.
Yeah. All right, yeah. I I buy that. You know what? Like I as I'm getting older, I'm okay with things that are just fun.
Except for in the new bar, I'm having Johnny. See what you think. I'm having a uh like a vicious, like almost drawing blood coming to blows argument over ice in cocktails. We'll get into it later when we actually open the bar. I'll have Don Lee on, we'll have Jack, and we'll just discuss the merits and demerits of uh ice and cock.
Nastasia is like scooting across the There's a SpaceX launch at 1.30. I need to charge my phone. Nastasia is charging her phone instead of listening to you, Johnny. I don't know how that makes you feel. Anyway, we have a what?
SpaceX launch. Oh, there's a yeah, there's a huge rocket launch later today that apparently is like some sort of deep space equivalent. And everyone knows Nastasia is a huge fan of the Musk family Robinson there. Yeah, wait, aren't they shooting a Tesla into space or something? What happens?
Why would you do that? What happens if it re enters the atmosphere and crushes a city? Where's the charging station in space? No, it's just gonna get in the orbit. Why would you want a car in space?
Cool. Like, won't it eventually come crashing down to Earth again? And it'll burn up. It'll burn up. You gotta design it to burn up.
You know what I mean? It's like they probably did. It's like, although like old school. The thing is, like when you throw like like big objects into space, now everyone on Earth has to track that sucker and be like, let's not hit that when we launch something. I mean, it's kind of like a real it's a real pooping on everybody's like it's like the you know, it's like pooping on somebody else's lawn, really.
You know what I mean? I mean, I want a Tesla. Nastasia, by the way, I don't know if you know this. Nastasia is going to take delivery of a Tesla sometime in the summer. It sounds like I'm rich, but I waited in line for the thousand dollar deal to be to pre-order your Tesla.
And those are the people, by the way, Nastasia like makes all of these stories. I can't, I can't afford cable. I don't deserve cable. You guys must have sold a billion Sears all. Oh, Jesus, Sears all's back off stock again.
It's so irritating. People, like, I can't control it. Nastasi and I have a set of uh we have a a bunch of them coming in that we will own and that we will sell in a month. And Amazon, I don't know what the people, I want you to know Amazon is literally Jeff Bezos spends all of his time making Super Bowl commercials right now and not enough time worrying about what the hell's going on. That was terrifying, by the way.
Right, right. They lost, they lost, lost, lost, over a thousand Sears alls that by the way, they have not paid us for. True or false instance. True. But we paid for them.
We paid. We we paid. Yeah. Customers angry at us, even though we've paid. Amazon not paid.
Weak. All right, so Johnny, this is why you're on. Someone, uh, somehow uh a question came in to for the show that you did, and somehow it didn't make it through. So I'm gonna read it now. You ready?
Yep. All right. Fairly new to charcuterie, so I was excited. What? I sent him the question, so he knows it too.
Oh, well, I have to read it anyway because the people who, you know, aren't Johnny or you. I'm just letting you know. Okay. I'm fairly new to charcuterie, so I was excited to hear about a potential curing-focused episode. Well, we're doing the, you know, we're doing the extended extended.
Because that was an extended episode, which I think people enjoyed, Johnny. Uh I got a lot of really positive feedback on that. Yeah, it the extensions are always the best. For some reason, we're sitting there like, you know, eating pizza, just talking garbage anyway. Uh below are a few questions I have.
Uh I've included pictures of my curing chamber, which I can't see here, and my Panchetta. Uh, although, okay. Uh they're not on there? Uh I don't know. It doesn't matter because people on the radio can't see it, so it doesn't matter.
It could be a picture of a goat, or it could be a picture of SpaceX. It doesn't matter because people on space can't. Johnny, did you see the photos? Yeah, I see the photo. All right.
If you scroll down, you'll see it. The chamber has a simple PID for uh temperature and a humidifier is outside the chamber on a humidity controller. There's an IP 57, by the way, IP 57 people is just a like a splash, uh splash and dust rating kind of thing. Uh fan on the same controller output that pulls the humidified air. Uh I added a chute to guide the mist, yada yada.
So it's, you know, it's not a it's a it's a fairly well set up uh and sounds like a fairly well set up system. The fan brings in like major props to Tom on setting up a really nice chamber. Yeah, right. The fan brings in freshest basement air uh and allows the chamber to be uncluttered. I didn't want to refill the humidifier, so it's plumbed into my water line uh with copper.
I mean that's that's badass right there. Uh and a float in the humidifier. Yeah, Tom, you but what you gotta do is you gotta like like rent yourself out now because the truth of the matter is, Tom, that people who like and you know, Johnny, you tell me the majority of people who do this for a living don't have time to go find a float switch and like take copper lines and plumb it in and get it all working. So if you want like uh I don't and all but unfortunately, chefs don't have a lot of money, but they will buy the stuff. If you show up and set this up, they will give you free whatever for like a long time.
You'll like become like you know, most valued customer, you'll get like free crap. So you it's very easy if you have a skill like this to trade this skill for free dinners. Am I right, Johnny? Yeah, absolutely. Tom, keep me a call.
Uh okay. Um questions. How important is it to measure the he says AW? For those of you who don't know what that is, that's water activity. I don't know why it's AW and not WA, but a capital A little W stands for the water activity.
And um, I'll read the question and then I'll say something and then I'll let John talk about it. Uh, how important is it to monitor uh water activity? Is weight accurate enough? I'd like to adjust the humidity early in the cure based on moisture content to prevent case hardening. Uh so what that what that means is is uh if you try to dry uh meats too quickly, you dry out just the surface, and the inside stays very wet, and that messes with the cure for the entire time.
It's like it's it's a big it's a big problem. So that's why you really want to regulate humidity and not dry too quickly. Anyway, but would like some data behind it. Ideally, uh I'd have continuous data logging of the moisture or weight, but I'm not sure of that feasibility. If water content is the best bet, any equipment recommendations.
Okay, now I'm gonna stop here. I'm gonna say my piece and let Johnny go. Water activity without specialized equipment is extremely difficult to measure. Uh most commercial sausage producers are measuring, I believe, water activity. Old school measurements for ham are done by weight just because it's the only thing that's easily feasible, but you do have to worry about uh case hardening.
Now, what are your thoughts, Johnny? Well, that that was what I was gonna say is that you know, weight doesn't necessarily mean that there's not loose water in the product, and that could potentially lead to some sort of bacterial growth that you weren't seeing. So what I would say though, a couple things. One, doing a whole muscle like panchetta is less dangerous than doing something like sausage because you're not having the grind step. Right.
The second thing is um I think you can just take visual cues to whether or not the product turned out. So if you if you recognize case hardening in the product, then that's the problem if it smells off if it's too soft or moist at any point. Um I'd be worried about that. Only question I had was whether or not he used nitrates here, because botulism would be the one thing that would make me a little bit concerned with the rolled up panchetta. Right.
I mean, like one thing I I would s I I'll you know, like and I'd like you to talk about this for a second before I go on to the second part of the question, but I think something that uh people kind of need to go back to the basics on is kind of the two things. One, the concept of multiple hurdles and uh second is like knowing whether or not you're riding on the edge, right? So like if you're if you're in industry, you know, consistency is the most important thing. Uh, you know, there's safety first, then consistency afterwards, and so monitoring uh and and also they're pushing the limits of trying to do things as fast as possible. So they need to get their the water activity measured, uh, because you know, it's consistent, it's you know the answers, blah, blah, blah, right?
But uh if you you know, if you aren't uh uh acting that way, if you're not living at the edge of the envelope of safety, right, you have multiple hurdles protecting you. So Johnny points out nitrates. Nitrates are gonna protect against uh botulism, right? Also most people when they're curing uh non whole muscle cuts are um letting it ferment to a way lower pH than is necessary. Very not that many people are going for that like super sweet, super s low acid, although I do enjoy those uh sausages, right?
So you know, you have your nitrates, nitrites, you have your uh your acid from your initial um ferment, and then most people are also drying it more than is necessary and probably have the one thing that they people probably do mess with in the wrong direction, I would say is the salt. Uh but like you when you have like those m all of those multiple hurdles, the chance that any one thing is gonna sc screw you, I think is relatively low. Now if you're doing a minimally dried product that is uh, you know, not been fermented and it has a you know, if you take away a bunch of those hurdles, well now you gotta start worrying. I mean, what do you think, Johnny? Yeah, I mean, if he was pulling something out that would look too wet and he wasn't using nitrates and you know it smelled off, you know, that's then you start to get concerned.
But if you know the correct saltine and the time that allowed for saltine, and if he's following the recipes from the books that he mentions later, then I'm not too worried about it. The one thing I was gonna mention is you can get a third party to test the water activity if you really are concerned. Um that could happen at almost any food safety lab or you can send off product and it's like a $30 test. I I had this idea, Johnny. You ready for this idea?
And I was never able to get it to work. But yeah, are you tell me whether you're ready? Because I think I think this could work. So the water activity, right? You should shouldn't you be able because the water activity is measuring kind of like how much free water there is in a product, right?
So something something people don't think about is they they they think for instance that something that thickens things lowers the water activity. Not true. Not true at all, right? So like gels and anything you add that all it's doing is making it appear like the thing is drier isn't actually reducing the water activity, right? But shouldn't it be and maybe it's not, and I've been told it's not, so it must not be.
But I tried once to take uh samples of known water activity, seal them in vacuum bags, and then uh throw throw them into a vacuum chamber and see whether if you put an uh uh an unknown sample in, whether the like okay, so the the one that's driest puffs last. Everyone knows, anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about. When you put a sealed vacuum bag into a vacuum chamber, at a certain point, the um the interior vacuum level of the bag uh of the chamber is such that the moisture in your bag will um start evaporating off the surface of your food and the bag will inflate like a pillow, right? And that I believe is related directly to the water activity of the product. So it would seem that as long as all the temperatures were the same, that you'd be able to take, let's say, a series of known water activities in bags, throw them into a vacuum chamber as like an indicator, and then throw in your sample bag, and then see, you know, oh my sample puffs in between these two, so it must be at that.
Isn't don't you think that should be possible, Johnny? I mean, that makes sense to me. My only thought is you had heart case hardening at any level, then that could potentially like make your perception off on what's puffing and not. Right. You'd have to slice whatever like the sample that's in your vac bag, you'd have to like slice it up.
But I don't know why that wouldn't work. I think someone told me once they didn't think it would work, but I don't know why that wouldn't work. Um here can uh talk about but do you have something to test that stuff or do you just go based on weights? Yeah, so we bought a we bought a water activity meter. Um and so every and if you're if you're doing any commercial production, you have to do it.
So and uh the way those work, right? It's you they have a little chamber, you seal it in the chamber, you let it equilibrate, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? How long does it take to test? Five minutes.
Oh, so it's not so bad. But how much is that piece of equipment cost? The other thing, since he's not making sausage, is to think about is that he does if he he would want to use a pH meter, and it might even be worthwhile to get the pH on the on the product because you do still have a shelf stability factor that matters with um pH plus water activity. How much of a drop are you gonna get on a whole muscle cut? Uh you probably I mean, meat's naturally around five thick, so you're probably dropping down to five, three.
Right. So it's a lot of which is significant. Right. Because everyone remember every single whole number in pH is tenfold is a tenfold increase in uh in uh free hydrogen. Um so the second part of his question was on the the book series.
Right. Let me just read what he said so people know. What literature uh is worth reading uh what w literature worth reading is there that I might not find on Amazon. I've read charcuterie, uh home production of quality meats and sausages and I'm working my way through the art of making fermented sausages. The more technical the better uh though the Mariansky books may have already already have optimized bringing technical instruction to the home producer.
What do you think? Uh yeah so my favorite um charcuterie book that I read kind of starting off was the Cooking by Hand by Paul Botroli which has like some really great essays I think on sausage making and meat processing. All around great book though in general yeah on mentality you know I mean on mentality of cooking and caring about things. Great book. Do people still read that book Johnny I mean I still use it it's uh I go back to it because he just has a lot of really good information.
So his section on on sausage and stuff I think is uh some of the best fundamentals of explaining how to make a product and how kind of the environment affects the drying right the the only but I I mean I haven't read it in a long long time. You have looked at it recently, but the it's it's it's getting on to be about 15 years old, right? That book came out before the original uh Simon's ruhlman charcuterie book did uh at a time when the only available reference that normal people could get at a bookstore, and this is prior to you know Amazon, frankly, I think, or around the time that came out, was Rytek Kutas's uh the sausage maker, if you anyone remembers that old home. Um so it was kind of one of the lone voices in the wilderness in English on how to make uh you know, that wasn't a very expensive um professional book that you could get. So, and you do this it still holds up all this time later?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's it's I think I mean it's better than the Roman book. So wow, right. You know, look, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go there because you know, my old editor is you know, is the editor of that book. And uh so yeah, you I never say anything ever against a Maria Guarnicelli production ever, because you know, lightning, the the sky will open and a lightning bolt will go through my head and strike me dead.
Uh and then I mean I think the Roman book was an important book because it was the first one out there, I just think. Right. The first one out there that well, again, there was the sausage maker, but the thing is like so much of that data is like in the sausage maker, like I just don't trust. You remember that book? You ever see even see that book?
Picture of him on the front. There was like a copy floating around for a while, and it was there's a lot of wrong things in it. First of all, I like I love like the attitude of that guy. The guy was from upstate New York, and the company still exists. That that you know, he he's passed away.
I think maybe one of his sons runs the company now. The dude hard smoked everything. The guy wanted everything to taste like kielbasa. He basically, he's like, You give him any recipe, he's like, How can I make this recipe taste like Kilbasa? You know what I mean?
That's that's basically do you remember this, Johnny? I mean, if you I don't know if you remember the book at all, but yeah, that was it. I was like, Whoa, man, you're throwing some hard smoke on that, brother. You know what I mean? I was like, it was uh yeah, interesting, interesting book there.
Uh the other thing I was wanted to point towards as far as resource goes, is there's a couple of Facebook groups that are pretty useful. Um, and I can I'll tweet out links to those ones later if people want to know. Yeah, do it. Tweet, yeah, tweet uh tweet. I don't know whether Dave, what's the best way to do this?
Put it on, just have him tweet it on his so what's your Twitter handle, Johnny? Uh we're Johnny Hunter. And tag tag Heritage Radio or tag cooking issues or something like that. Yeah, I'll tag you in in Heritage Radio. So now all of a sudden now you're running out of all your characters, so I don't know, you know, I don't know what you're gonna do with that.
By the way, uh now, you know, Madison, Wisconsin is like somewhat close to Canada, right? So do you have you ever, and I know it's not like you know, you have to go over to Toronto and whatnot, but have you ever done uh a P-meal bacon? Canadian stuff have you made a good one? Yeah. I love that stuff.
Why does no one in America sell the real stuff? Why do we have that horrific see? I think like I've said this before on the show, it's one of those things where you know Americans like to poke fun at Canadians, right? And like, but they shouldn't do it by passing off that crap they sell in the US as Canadian bacon because that's that's not like poking fun at someone. A, that's a bad product, and B, it's slanderous to the actual product.
You know what I mean? Yeah, and the P meal bacon's super easy to make. Yeah. I mean, it's just like a a loin a a bonus loin and a little bit of cure. Now, are you a cornmeal on your P meal bacon or are you a P-meal on your P meal bacon guy?
I mean, I I think the P meal is kind of the traditional. Yeah. I had a sandwich of that uh the last time I was in Toronto, and I was like, oh man, I feel bad. All the insults over all the years that I've leveled at uh this product have been misplaced. Uh so finally Tom wrote, are there lesser known hole cuts that I should be considering for dry cure?
I have access to a butcher that breaks down whole animals so anything's on the table. Yeah, I mean, I think you know, you can cure quite a bit with the pig, but the one thing that I think people might have a good time with is uh spec, which is using the sirloin. Um, which is a pretty cheap cut and easy to cure and gets a lot of that ham flavor and a lot less time. Do you uh are you a fan of the the heavy juniper on that? I know I am.
Yeah, for sure. Do you believe in keeping your spec flat or do you roll that thing? Uh we keep it flat. I like it flat too. I like it flat and pressed up.
Oh, by the way, I shouldn't say this, but Johnny, have you been on Amazon uh Prime video and have you looked up the whore male video? No, I haven't. Oh, I mean, I shouldn't say about this because I think the museum might do a thing on it. Uh, you know, like some sort of a program based around it. But everyone needs to go on their Amazon Prime account.
I like how I'm pushing Amazon even though we hate them. Whatever. They hate whatever. I've like I said, like they're terrible to sell to, but they're awesome to buy from. I'm conflicted.
I'm of two minds. There is a video, Johnny, you must watch it as soon as you hang up. Uh it's a 30-minute video from the I think mid-60s, where it's the very last point in time when it was cool to be industrial meat production. And so there's two kids watching trains go by. Two extremely white children watching trains go by.
I mean like, look at all those whore mail cars. You know what I mean? And they're like, and then they're like, Maybe, uh, maybe dad will take us to the Hormel plant. So they write a letter to Hormel, a woman, because all the secretaries, of course, are women, opens the letter and arranges for the family. Of course, the even though the mom is involved, the dad takes them to the Hormel plant, of course.
Of course. It it is, it is, you don't actually see them sticking the pigs in the cows, but from the minute they're bled out, you see like the automated knife that cuts the pigs in half. You see like the bacon press. You see like this person who uh all they do all day is is uh is bone hams. There's a guy with a uh a face trimmer, so like uh it trims off of the, or actually, I guess off the back side, you know, trims off the uh outside skin of the ham on the top side, and he's got an automatic machine, so he's literally rolling the hams through, like ripping the skins off.
It shows you uh the skin being turned into gelatin, it so shows you the skin being sent off to make footballs out of, it shows stripping the skins off of cows, it shows defleshing the cowhide, it shows making spam, it shows testing spam for uh fat content with like a like an electrical analyzer. The children are like, look at the whore male plant! It shows making dinty more beef stew, it shows cooking things in cans, it shows an entire the entire industrial operation of turning pigs and cows into anything that pigs and cows can possibly be made of in a zero waste phenomenon. There's a guy who's boning out the hams for their bone pressed hams, and the guy is like the guy is like freaking like the Zen monk. Like he just, his hands like move like he's swimming through water, but instead he's just taking the bones out of hams.
And it's miraculous until you realize that all this man did 24-7 during his work time was bone hams. It's like Simpson, it's like Bart Simpson in that episode where they're trapped in Japan. He's like, knife goes in, fish, you know, guts come out. Knife goes in, guts come out. It is, it is with you must watch it as a piece of Americana, as a piece of if you're pro or anti-industrial agriculture, you must see it for that.
You must see it for a slice of like mid-century American mentality. The gender relation stuff in it is intense because there are these, there's a 60-something-year-old woman working the line, packing, get this, Hormel wieners into packages, right? And this entire line of women who are like making sure that these packages line up, they're all referred to, and Nastasia does this, uniformly referred to as girls. I'm just saying, girls put the wieners into the package. The 60-year-old woman there.
And then later on, there is a person who is uh a woman that they feel has actual skill, who has a skilled job. The only such woman in the entire uh thing. Actually, there's one woman scientist. She's a woman. She's a woman.
What is the skill doing? I forget what her I forget what her skill is. What does it matter? What does it matter? Like she has a what does it matter?
But and then at the end, it's like, look at Hormel's technology. And then they have like these 1960s computers with the giant reel-to-reel tapes, and they're like, we can print our entire payroll in like an hour. So you must watch this if you're interested. Oh, and uh the reason I brought this up is they show they don't have a ham press that they show in it, but they do show the bacon press. So they show like the bacon sides going in.
They show the needlers, they sew like the continuous needling of the bacon sides as they go through, and then they show it being pressed into its bacon shape. Oh, Johnny, if you really want to just be like drool, they show the rotary slicing knife for slicing the bacon into sliced bacon, and it's just like bacon slices coming out. It is intense. They show the spam cookers. I mean, it's about the coolest half hour of what the hell that you can watch for free on Amazon Prime video.
Have I sold this to you yet, Johnny? No, I'm so excited. Yeah. I think Dave, we need to take a break so you can collect yourself. All right.
Alright, Johnny, thanks so much for calling in. Hope to see you soon. Uh we'll be back in a couple minutes with more cooking issues. My name is Brandon Boy, co-owner of Roberta's. A super duper awesome place.
Robertus is a very, very, very, very proud sponsor of the Heritage Radio Network. We're also super awesome. Thank you, Heritage. Alright. Wow.
Alright. So that music that they're playing there is actually what they play in the pizza cooking place. Like literally, like that mixture of drag racing and like space guns and like metal, metal heavy. Not like, not like metal, like not metal in the sense of like uh not like glam metal. Not like long hair.
I mean, they have long hair, but not like glamorous metal, more like lots of double bass drum pedal, like lots of, you know, like just like anger, shouting. Yeah, you know, yeah, uh, mosh pits aren't always like that. But anyway, uh, wait, you're on the air. Uh yeah, Dave. Um I had a sausage question for Johnny, but if we've lost him, I'll ask my other question.
Uh yeah, I don't know. I think he's not on anymore, so yeah. Yeah, sorry. But but he might still be listening, so if you ask it, he might tweet a response to you. Uh I'm trying to sort out how to make the the Chinese style lap song um sausage.
Is there any way to do those without a long slow dry? Or is that just is that just built in? Ooh, I don't know. Johnny, if you're still listening, tweet that up, tweet that on out on the uh on the on the cooking issues and uh call back. We got a line open.
What? Or a call back, yeah. So what's your uh what's your non-Johnny Hunter related question? Um I'm trying to do I'm trying to get a fried noodle to puff. Okay.
Um has it has it already been fried? Are you talking about like ramen? So I'm so I'm making I'm making a fresh egg noodle and and then and then deep frying it. And they come out really crisp and crunchy and otherwise good, but they're just a little too dense, and I would like them to just expand a little bit. All right, here's what you gotta do.
The the the trick is uh anytime you're puffing, what you need is you need to turn the um well, starch in the case of pasta, uh gelatin in the case of uh gelatin collagen in the case of uh of uh pork skin or or chicken skin or fish skin. Uh what you gotta do is you gotta um fully gelatinize that stuff, and then you want to dry it uniformly, uniformly, uh, to a I forget what the percentages are, but a relatively low moisture. I'm making this number up. I don't know, 10%. The way you do it is you just like uh when it looks glassy again, then as soon as it gets glassy, it's usually good.
If you go further than that, it won't puff anymore. So the trick is you wanna cook your pasta, cook it in water. The reason not to fry it at this point is because you're trying to keep uh the structure of the pasta relatively uh intact. If you fry it now, the water will leave, and the the places where the water is will no longer be places that will expand when you puff puff it later. Get me?
So then what you do is you cook it. The longer you cook it the better, although it starts to fall apart. But the longer you cook it the better. I'll cook it with uh some salt in the water so that it has some flavor, then spread it out and let it let it dry. Even just like uh letting it dry almost naturally is good enough if you turn it, turn it once or twice.
Uh but like uh low oven with the door open, best is like a low temperature and excalibur dehydrator. And if you want to, you can push the dehydration a little quicker, like you can keep it up at like 130 for an hour or two to flash off some of the water, and then drop it down to like 110, 115, and just let it ride until it gets, like I say, just gets glassy. This also works with rice, uh it works with uh uh wheat, barley, anything, anything like this. Then uh once it's at that state, you just throw it in the deep fryer or microwave it or use a uh heat gun for paint and they'll puff. But the trick is uh cook, preferably overcook, par dry, and then fry.
Okay. And you can tweak it, right? I had no clue that was the way to go, so I'm glad I called you. Thank you very much. Yeah, yeah, and you can tweak it, right?
So um depending on how much water you leave in the product, or depending on uh uh how much structure is left in it uh by how much you cook, you can make it harder or puffier. You can get it anywhere from barely expanded to like you know, like almost like like pork rinds from a package, even with pasta. Uh so and stasia knows she had to deal with this like week after week at uh at the French culinary. And if you uh old school, if you go on the old cooking issues blog, which might still be available somewhere on the internet, maybe on the archive or something, there's a um there's a a whole post on Puff Snacks, which kind of goes over the parameters back when I had actually studied them. So I'd take a look at that.
Thank you very much. Alrighty, let's know how it works out. Yep. All right. Well, we gotta start wrapping up, Dave.
It's that time. I was like, all right, there's what I got like two minutes. I got two minutes, right? Yeah, you got two minutes. All right.
Hello to the cooking issues gang. My friend has just informed me that he has discovered a jar of what was supposed to be strawberry-infused rum. Apparently, he submerged strawberries and rum in a mason jar, then forgot them for in quotes two or three years. He recently found it again and wants to know whether it's safe to drink. It smells like homemade jam, and there's no mold on it, but the strawberries turn into a gross brown mass in the bottom of the jar.
Uh, Anastasia loves nothing more than a gross brown mass. Um, he's running the liquid through a coffee filter, and so far it seems to be turning out a pretty dark pink color, but the solid stuff looks gross. I'm sending along pictures, which I didn't see. Uh, I'm doubtful that it's safe, but what do you think, Jane from uh Toronto? Uh, there's a underneath that is there's a related question uh from fermenting strawberries on Blake.
Answer uh Jane is that stuff's 100% safe. Look at it this way. Assuming you're using 40% alcohol rum, let's say you used equal weight strawberry to rum, which probably did not happen in this case. You're still over 20%, you're at 20% or slightly over 20% alcohol. And so, as we like to say in French, you're good.
You know what I mean? You're like, it's not, nothing's gonna grow in that that's gonna kill you. So then the question is, does it taste good or not? And if it tastes good, you're good to go. Uh also, I mean, what will grow?
Nothing's gonna grow. As long as like probably it's over 20% alcohol, but if it's 20 or above, you're you're in you're in real good shape there. And as long as it tastes good. Oh, now the the paste may be gross. Uh a lot of times fruit will absorb uh the more discuss, well though, over time like this, it probably is all equilibrated, but a lot of time the solids can taste really nasty uh because it absorbed stuff that you don't like from the rum, etc.
etc. etc. So I would discard the solids and then drink the liquor. Although uh my my stepfather, whose father died, you know, recently, I talked about he was a butcher on the show. Finally, a couple of months ago, they found those like 70 or 80, I don't even, they may be even older now, year-old cherries.
There's three left. So maybe we'll wait to eat them until I can cure my allergy. Or maybe I'll just sit there with an epi pen and like my brother Gerard and I. We did I okay, so I didn't. I was supposed to write, I was supposed to get a magazine, people to get an article together so I could have three generations of Atonesios uh having a Manhattan with this cherry that the fourth or fifth generation put down in the 20s, right?
And yes, I never got it to happen, and now he's dead, and so now I have to wait another 20, you know, something years for Gerard to be old enough to be in that. I'm not gonna wait that long to write this article. You know? And who the hell knows whether my brother's gonna have a kid in time? So, how am I gonna get three generations of Adenasio?
I'm not gonna be able to get three generations of Aanisio together. This took a dark turn. No, well, so uh Blake wrote in about uh fermenting strawberries. Maybe we'll talk more about it next week on Cooking Issues. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network, food radio supported by you.
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