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Find us at heritageradio network.org. Hello and welcome to Cooking It Choose. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Two's coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from this time pretty late, 12, like 20 to like 1245, one o'clock from Rapunzel's Pizzeria in Bushwick, br br Brooklyn. Got Nastasia the Hammer Lopez on the horn because she's uh, you know, she's busy doing catering again for her favorite people who are. Saturday night live.
Yeah, yeah. She's uh, you know, pasta flyers doing it. That's like my favorite. This is like my life goal. And I reached it, so I can die now.
And you know, yeah, I mean uh as as uh as Dave says, if uh you know, as Dave in the booth says, how are you doing, Dave? Good, how about you? Uh good. As Dave likes to say, if you've reached your goal, die now. Yeah, yeah.
That's right. It's very Roman. Yeah, it's like, you know, you've done it, do it. Goodbye. You know what I mean?
Like if like you reach the avenue. Yeah, who wants to look? You know, how much fun is it? Remember back when I was cool. Remember back when I was at the top.
Glory days. Yeah. Oh, are you saying some glory days? Yep, yep. Well, is that the first time we've ever sung on the show?
Uh I don't know. I'd have to check the archives. Uh, so the uh, although that's that's from a guy that never passes glory days. He just gets better and better, that guy. What?
I mean, no, listen, nothing against Bruce. That's the first concert I ever went to. Love Bruce. I wouldn't say he's in his prime anymore, but I don't think that he's also not like clinging to it the way like the Rolling Stones are, you know. No, look, Bruce Springsteen, like, yeah, okay, like if you had to choose one era of Bruce Springsteen, it wouldn't be right now.
But the guy is like still working doing other stuff. Yeah, yeah, no doubt, no doubt. He's in a different phase of his career, and I I respect that. He's not just trying to do what he was doing 20, 30 years ago. Yeah, I mean, like, you know, I don't know.
I gotta look. Nastasia probably hates Bruce Springsteen because he's cool. No, I would love to see, I would love to see him before he goes. Really? I would before he goes.
Like he's on his deathbed. Like you never know, like I said before. Uh my man Neil Diamond retired like right before I was gonna get a chance to finally go. I had like, you know, I had over 30 years of being conscious of his music and didn't go, so bad on me. Same with Bruce Springsteen.
But you know, the problem is Bruce Springsteen concerts is they sell out in like 13 seconds. You know what I mean? Yeah, the scalping has gotten out of hand. Yeah, scalping's gotten out of hand. Oh, so bots and all that.
So I was noticing something on the subway that bothers the heck out of me. All right, so like so uh what's the ordering application to people, the uh like the delivery app that people use that aren't from New York City? Grubhub. They use Grubhub. That's the one that they use elsewhere.
But here we use most people I think use seamless here, right? I use we use seamless. What about you guys? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So seamless, so for those of you that aren't from New York, seamless, I guess is like your version of Grubhub or whatever. Uh, they have the most irritating subway ads. They just really bug the hell out of me. It's all of these.
Oh, are they the ones that ask you to tell you you can order whatever you want with your order? Yeah, it's like it's like, yeah, like add, add like a, and it's like all of these like pseudo-witty notes that people have added to their food or like instructions. Oh, yeah, you don't know what you're talking about. Draw a whale on the bag. The bag doesn't need to be the whale doesn't need to be eating bread.
He just needs to look confident. Or like, go tell my neighbor to stop stealing my Wi-Fi. Not funny. Listen, like, may it okay, okay. Yeah, Wi-Fi theft is no joke.
No, it's cute, right? I guess it's cute, but my feeling is is that everyone involved, no one involved in that advertising campaign has ever had a job delivering food. That is my that is my guess. Absolutely zero people involved in that ad have been delivery people. And I guess you know what?
To be honest, the vast majority of New Yorkers who are ordering stuff have probably never worked delivery before. Uh I have worked delivery before. And let me tell you, like, we are not your playthings to F with. Like, we are delivering you your food, and we're hustling out to deliver the next like order of food. We just want to get our freaking job done and be left in peace.
We don't want to be a pawn in your freaking game. We don't none of that. You know what I'm saying? It's like I gotta say, I gotta say, it has really like it is really effed up the way that delivery is seen now because we've been doing delivery of Hopsifier and people write stuff. Yeah, whatever uh notes like that on their delivers.
Yeah, it's because of this freaking seamless campaign. Everyone's like, that's not thing. Oh, we're so oh, we're hip, we're friends with you. No, you're not. I'm delivering you food, right?
Look, it's gotta be a little bit different now. Look, when I was doing it, it was also like the the hyper anger crapshoot of not knowing whether you were gonna get tipped. Now, I think the vast majority of people are tipped ahead of time, which is kind of bizarre. Like, you know, you know, you know what you're gonna get tipped in advance, so you know whether or not you hate the the you know the person, or remembering back to Rod Feiner who I worked with in delivery, whether or not they were gonna spit in that person's pizza, which PS people happens in the real life. If you really mess with your delivery person, they're not all like super friendly to you.
You know what I'm saying, Stas? Not that no one to Postifier is gonna do that, but why would you mess with someone who is like working hard and like trying to get like they're they're going out in the freaking rain, they've probably been T-boned by a car. Like who the hell knows? You know what I'm saying? It's just leave them alone.
Yeah, you know what I mean? I I try to explain this to my dad too. Like when we're at a restaurant and you know, he is trying to be like really clever with the server. I'm like, they don't they don't like that. You know, they're pretending to like you right now, but they don't they don't need this in their day.
You know, they've got enough going on. Yeah, it's my cousin James, who you know was work worked front of house for a long, long time, is like basically everyone comes in starting at about a C and can go down. Like you can't go up. You know what I mean? It's like you start at a C and you can go down.
That's really good. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's like, and it's just like uh, you know, like never under, like don't underestimate, right? The fact that, like, yeah, this person is being paid to be pleasant to you, doesn't don't abuse that. You know what I mean?
Like, don't abuse it. Whatever. So, like, what's some stupid stuff people? Stripper is not your girlfriend. That kind of mentality.
Wow. Wow. All right. Uh so Nastasia, like, what are some stupid things people have recommended? Restaurant workers just strippers, just to clarify.
Yeah, just all right, yeah. Styles, what are they? It's just like adding on things. Like as if it's free. Like, can you add some of the the three of the different sauces on there because my my boyfriend likes it?
Something like that. And you're like, crap, now I gotta do it, but they're not paying for it. You know, so they put everything in the notes so that they don't have to pay for it. Well, is there a slot to buy extra sauce? Yep.
There's a slot to buy extra sauce and they don't use it. Yep. Wait, so why do you have to do it? Or they'll say, can you put some lobster on it? What?
There's no lobster. Yeah. And it's like, no. You're like, no, I gotta go down to like Chelsea Market. I gotta buy a lobster.
But wait, but but let me ask you this. Does there some mechanism whereby you can be like, yeah, sure, and charge them extra? Not on we have like three different ones, so not on two out of three of them. Huh. Hmm.
Yeah. Can you remove the uh you guess you can't remove the notes section? No. Yeah. Yeah.
So I so out of curiosity, because I've never had to deal with these people, like how much are they charging you? Like what like how much so if if I put let's say I order I'm not allowed to you know what? F that. I'm gonna open the space so that everybody knows because you know, restaurants don't like to tell because they have a deal or whatever. Okay, so I'm let's not talk specifics.
Let's say I was ordering from another restaurant and I ordered fifty dollars worth of stuff from you. How much how much does like the seamless equivalent get? If you want to have like good placement on their site or like it pops up as one of the first ones, they take 50%. Wait, how much? 50.
50. What the hell? What? Yep. Whoa.
What? 50%. What? Wait. Yeah, it's crazy.
That's negative profits. You're losing money everything you're buttons. So if you drop it, then how much does it cost if you're just like you know, Schlumpy McSlumpenstein on it? Between 17. 17 is the lowest.
And like 22 is usually where people fall. So you're telling me, you're telling me that it's as much as the food cost. Yep. Yeah. It's as much as the food cost.
We don't have our own delivery people, so we're using their delivery people. Oh. What if you have your own delivery people? Uh I'm not sure. I mean, it must be less, but yeah.
Yeah, it's gotta be less. But wait, so then how did how are tips handled? They go directly to their delivery people? Direct, yeah, exactly. They get the percentage and they get the tip.
Do they steal the tips from them? Or does it work under the same tipping laws that we have? Uh I'm not sure. That's crazy. Well, yeah, but if you have your own deli because here's the thing, right?
All right, let's do it. That's why you don't want to mess with that. Right, but let's say if you were big enough and it was a big part of your business, right? It doesn't cost that much to hire a delivery person because they're tipped wages. So you're paying them, you know, whatever you're paying the the tipped, you know, tipped uh workers.
So then it's just a question of like um uh yeah, I guess the the workers' comp insurance. Right. Speaking of, when I was working on a Booker and Dax prototype I uh I uh was sanding something yeah yeah and a piece of sorry so I was sanding something with a Dremel and I didn't put my safety glasses on because literally I was sanding a piece of plastic with a Dremel and the sanding the sanding slash cutting disc that I had on must have had metal from the last time I was cutting metal with it on it threw off a piece of metal right in my freaking eye. Now Dave when I was a young man my eyelids were good they could close fast and stuff wouldn't hit my eye but now you know now that you know I'm getting on here apparently my eyes have slowed down and the sucker went straight into my eye directly next to like on my cornea next to my pupil right okay so I'm thinking pretty much so I'm thinking to myself this sucks but what am I gonna do? Same thing I would always do I'm gonna blink it out right I'm gonna blink it out.
So I'm just blinking it out and like by the time like you know midnight rolls around I'm like maybe overnight my eye will swell up and the extra mucilage and pus will cause this object to come out of my eye and when I wake up I'll be fine right as as I do. Because Nastasi because I'm what I'm I'm a I'm an animal right an animal an animal so anyways so I wake up and at this point when I wake up I not only can I not open my eye but even shining a light on my closed eye causes I didn't know you went to bed first, dude. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah. Even shining a light on my closed eye is intensely painful because here's what's interesting.
When your eye swells up uh or like has like a like internal irritation, um, every time your iris moves to accommodate to light level, it's intensely painful. That's what like light sensitivity is. So every time I pass in and out of a zone with different lighting, I go through ah, you know what I mean? Oh my god. So, anyways, so I had to go in and it's a tiny piece, so you can be completely incapacitated by this tiny piece of metal.
So, yeah, so they had to like strap my head down and flick the thing out of my eye with a needle. And then they had to-like what, like when you get a splinter out, they were basically like tink tink tinking it out of your eyeball, right? Yeah, with a needle. Yeah. And then they get another, and the the ER attending did that, and then they wait for the uh for the eye doctor to come in, and he does the same thing to remove, get this, Dave, you'll enjoy it.
The rust ring around where the metal was. Oh you like that? And then I had to get a tetanus shot uh booster. Because I couldn't remember. No, I wish.
But you know what? Luckily, the very next day, I got stabbed with a piece of rusty metal. So like I was like, hey, I know I have my tetanus booster, so I'm good. You know what I mean? I didn't even I completely ignored the stab wound the next day with the rusty piece of metal because I'm, you know, I was set.
Yeah. One of the one of the roblings lining. Yeah, silver lining. There's a there's a, you know, uh, you know, around around every cloud is the sun waiting to blind you. Um anyways, where were we going with that though?
What why why did I even bring that up? What were you talking about? We were talking about bad things happening. Who knows? Where your safety glasses, people.
Where your safety glasses. Uh so let me see. So last week we didn't have a show because I was in uh London and visited Stonehenge and Bath. Gotta go back to Bath. Bath was a nice place.
Uh I didn't really get to eat out that much any fancy places because I was with uh uh a bunch of kids, but I did indulge my favorite English confection, which is toffee. I love English toffee. You like that stuff, Dave? Uh sure. Should be sure.
You don't what about you, Nastasia? I don't have a strong feeling. Uh not really. You don't like like Worders original? Like that's not.
No, no. Do you know like um you know caramel, right? I'm familiar with caramel. You like do you like craft brand caramels? Uh do you like the flavor of freaking caramel?
What? What? Um I only like those bullseye ones. Those are gets caramel creams, which are delicious. That's my favorite all-time candy.
So, but that that same kind of flavor, but like 30 times harder is what like traditional English toffee is. And like I like it because I like things that fight me on a constant basis when I'm eating them. You know what I mean? Oh, Dave, tell them that you met my anger teacher. Oh, I did.
Nastasia, uh, the day I flew back from London was like, you're doing a talk. So I gave a talk to the uh because Nastasia, for as much as she's like, I can't afford a microwave. I don't have space for a toilet, right? Like for all of that talk, she's a graduate. You know, Nastasia's always claiming poverty on everything, right?
Or like lack of space. But she is uh like a an organizer of the Stanford entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs. I don't get paid for that. What ev?
So we did a uh thing at at Tesla. Uh because you know Nastasia's on the list. She's buying one of these Tesla's new case. Everybody knows. Yeah, yeah.
But again, you know, so you know, quit with the quit with the oh, poor me. I also Nastasia gets free cable. Anyway, I don't even want to talk about it. Yeah, I know. Are you stealing cable?
No, free. It's like legit. Like the whole building was like, hey, everybody here gets cable. Wow. Anyways.
So uh yeah, we had I had to talk about uh what it was like to start a business, and I met Nastasia's anger teacher, and she was like, Yeah, you're angry enough, you should come. Just to clarify, is it teaching you how to be angry or how to manage your anger? Or how to use anger as a way of manage it, how to exercise it. Right, okay. Not exercise in the Linda Blair sense, right?
Exercise in theger there. I mean, that's demonic possession. I mean, is there a difference? It's just a slight matter of degree. You think?
But the crappy thing about this whole thing was that Dave completely like uh massacred our business, like told everyone that we don't, you know, that it's not worth anything, that never to start an equipment business, that we're a uh trailing edge equipment business. It was we seemed really stupid up there. No, keeping it real, Stas. Like, I'm proud of what we do. We do a good job, but like, but imagine if you did like uh it's like when it's like uh when my wife went into architecture, everyone tries to dissuade her from doing it because if you really want to do it, you're gonna do it anyway, but it's not a good business to get into unless you really want to do it.
You know what I'm saying? It's like yeah, it's you know, I would caution anybody about going into the uh any media industry. Yeah, unless you really want to do it. You know what I mean? Like, because the odds of uh of massive success are minimal, right?
But like so, it's like the return has to be the work itself. If the work itself is a return to you, then do it. It, you know, but you know, if you just are looking for something uh some way to make money, like you know, learn blockchains. Anyway, um learn blockchains, learn block. Everything now is blockity chain, blockade block block, blockade chain.
Uh Jordana Rothman, by the way, friend of the show, and Don Lee, friend of the show, are starting a blockchain related uh fake business together. But I can't discuss it because they would sue me. That's fake. I mean, as of now it's fake. Uh, you know, knowing Don Lee, he's already registered the name.
It's one of those things where it's all about the name. Uh it it next time he comes on, or if Jordana comes on, we'll see if they'll if they'll tell you about it. All right. So uh let's get to some uh oh, and by the way, I probably will not be here next week because I need to fly to I need to fly to Denver, Colorado. Because I'm gonna I'm gonna be filming another teaser for yet another television show that will never get picked up.
All right. Let me tell you something, people. Hey Dave, tell them about Time Machine Fridge. Oh, God. It wasn't called Time Machine Fridge.
What? It wasn't called Time Machine Fridge. Yes, it was. It was not called, it was called Time Machine Chef. And I was you have to go in the refrigerator to go back to the five.
I don't have to go into a refrigerator. I was merely a judge. I was merely a judge. This was gonna be a show. They actually I think released it.
They did the show, but it it never got bought. But it was for a like a real network. So people, if you're ever gonna do like some sort of TV thing, if they still have TV these days or in the future if they have TV, uh the the money is ginormously bigger on network versus uh cable, right? So um this was a network show, so yeah, but that was years and years ago. But that was, you know, the first time when I was on a situation where I wasn't allowed to like go get my own coffee because they needed to know where everyone was at every second.
Anyway, so that didn't get picked up. Here's the thing. 90 times out of a hundred, no one's gonna pick up the show. So no matter what work you do, the safest thing to do when you're gonna do media work, the safest thing to do as a talent, which by the way, is a uh when they call you talent, that means that they hate you, right? So like uh if someone calls you a talent, it means they hate you.
But like if that if that's your job, the um the truth is uh just assume that it won't happen. Like when you're working, like work as though you know it will work, but assume that nothing will happen because 99 out of times out of a hundred, it doesn't, right, Nastasia? That is true, yeah. Yeah, right. Unless you're already famous, in which case chances are it'll work.
You know what I mean? But like if you're not already famous, or if like your basic pitch is like here's another thing no one in media wants to hear. I'm gonna do things totally different from the way everyone else did it. They're like, no, I don't know how to write a check for that. I want you to do it exactly like this other person did, but just look slightly different, right?
Right. That's why we have all these superhero movies. Hey, saw Black Panther. I liked it. I thought it was a good movie.
Are you you uh talking crap about Black Panther? No, I haven't seen it. I heard it's really good, but I just again I don't I don't really care about superhero movies in general. Yeah, yeah. All right, you hate superheroes.
Um you know what? I like everyday heroes, Dave. Oh, gee, come on. There's no such thing as an everyday hero. This is the thing.
Everyone's gotta be a hero now. Everyone's a freak and everyone's a few. Everybody gets a medal, everybody gets a trophy. That guy, he made such a good sandwich. He's an everyday hero.
No, he's making sandwiches. Yeah, that was I was just kidding. Dave, it's almost 1245. Yeah, we're gonna take a break. We gotta take a break.
I haven't even answered questions yet. That's your fault. We'll come right back. Today's program is brought to you by Corin, supplier of Japanese chef knives and restaurant supplies. Corrin is proud of their Japanese culture and traditions, but they want you to know that their products are not just for Japanese restaurants.
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For more information, visit Corin.com. So the first segment sounded like Jackie Molecules, but this segment did not sound like Jackie Molecules. You know what I'm saying? What are you talking about? Whoever was reading it.
That was Jack the whole time. Oh, really? Didn't sound like him the second time around. First time it sounded like him. Let me tell you something.
Love Corrin. Here's the thing. Uh, like, that's as Miley Carpenter, my sister-in-law, the head of the Food Network magazine, would say, not a range like like American to pan-Asian to French, like those are the three things you pick. I don't think we wrote that. Pan-Asian.
First of all, here's another thing. Sharpening stones, people. I'll say this very quickly. I've said it a million times before. Super expensive, typically Japanese kind of like water stones people work with, like, they're great.
Obviously, they're fantastic, but that is like a religion. That's like a like a religious thing. So if you want to belong to a religion that has to do with sharpening your knives, then by all means, like get the different grits, like soak the stuff, like true them out, you know, you know, get down on your knees and pray to your knife before you sharpen. But you know, for the rest of us, I think diamond stones work fine. It's just me.
Anyway, I've I've never had anyone, frankly, who's used the uh I always forget, is it DMT or whatever, whichever one I always recommend? The big, the big biggity big, big big one, be like, you know what? My knives are dull. No, it doesn't, because they they sharpen great and they take no freaking maintenance. Nastasi, if you were a knife person, would you want to spend half of your time when you're when you're doing knife maintenance?
Do you want to worry about your knife or about your stone? My knife. Yes. Anyway. But but again, they're they're they're awesome.
And like, like if you're doing the whole sushi thing and it's some sort of like, you know, yes sensei kind of a situation, then by all means, like go full water stone, you know, you know, enjoy. Uh okay, so uh Eddie from uh Manchester writes in uh I was after some tips on fermenting and vacuum bags. I'm experimenting with making a number of different flavored misos and was hoping to ferment them in vacuum bags so I can make small batches and save on space and mess. These are good reasons to use a vacuum bag. Um, you remember in uh in uh I think it's the Great Pumpkin when uh Lucy threatens Linus.
He's like, or maybe it was it, no, it was in the Christmas uh one when when uh Linus goes, Why should I? And she goes, I'll give you five good reasons and makes a fist in his face. He goes, Those are good reasons. So, like, like my kids and I say that to each other all the time. Those are good reasons.
Um, uh my plan was to make uh miso batches, vac them, and then store them inside larger bags in case they explode, which is a good thing. I always double bag anything that's fermenting. Uh by the way, as things ferment, if they're producing carbon dioxide, they will inflate and like they get real hard like pillows. Typically, the bags that you use have enough uh gas permeability such that they will vent gas, especially at those high pressures prior to exploding. So I have never I've had them leak because like of bad seals, which happens, you know, depending on your bags, your technique and your vacuum can happen up to one in ten bags can have a small leak in it.
And a lot of that has to do with whether you're not, you know, getting the bag uh exactly flat on the ceiling bar, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Um, but uh, which by the way is uh is a Willy Wonka uh reference anyway. Uh but from the end, memo bis anyway. So the uh the um but typically as they inflate, if the bags are the you know commercial strength ones that we use, they won't rupture, they'll just get real pillowy, real hard, and then they'll slowly vent out their gas as they as they go because they're not a hundred percent uh gas impermeable. So anyway, so there's that.
Um I'll check them regularly, and if the bags pop uh uh puff up excessively, then I'm guessing I could open them to release the gas and revacue them. Eh, I don't think you should. Uh I was uh wondering if it's okay to pull a full vacuum on the miso and have it ferment successfully and safely. I heard a podcast from the Nordic food lab team who mentioned that they were trying to leave some air in the bags when they sealed things for fermenting in order to avoid botulism risks. Any thoughts and tips would be great.
Uh P.S. I'm enjoying my spinz on looking forward to trying more stuff with that too. Cheers, Eddie. Okay. So here's what I'm gonna say about that.
So uh he wrote in and say he's doing sweet miso, and he's in the five to seven percent salt range with with what he's doing, and he's uh eventually those sort of short, short-term fermented mesos. He wants to do some longer-term ones that are in the 20 to 25% salt range. Okay. So here's the thing. So miso is um is a multi-phase fermentation, but if you think about it, there's two main steps, right?
The first step, you're using uh a mold, uh, an aspargillis, um, to you know, to actually put in the enzymes that are doing the you know, the koji step where you're making the koji and doing all that. That obviously requires oxygen because molds require oxygen to survive. And that's why mold is on the top of, for instance, if you're making pickles and you have a pickle crock and water gets into it, you can get some mold, I mean uh air gets into it, you can get some uh mold on the top. So um putting something in a vacuum will inhibit mold, but the mold isn't really uh a big thing in later stages of miso fermentation. Later stages of miso fermentation uh miso fermentations are lactic acid bacteria, typically other bacteria and yeast, both of which can function in an uh anaerobic environment.
Now, um, if you have, let's say you just had soybean paste with nothing else in it, right? And you were to inoculate it with botulism, and then you were to seal it, as long as you're above about 8.5% um salt in the liquid phase or 10% salt. According to Clostridium botulinum ecology and control in foods by House Child, uh, the water phase concentration for complete inhibition of uh botulism growth and toxin production should be about 10%. But miso, we gotta remember miso is probably only about 50% solid. So anything about above about 5%, 6%, and you should be a salt by weight of total batch, you should be in a pretty safe zone in terms of uh botulism.
Add that to the fact that you have other bacteria in there that are competing with it, other yeasts that are competing with it. Um, and you probably I've never measured the pH of miso, but it's probably somewhat lower than neutral, so that's another hurdle. Uh, and you should be fine. Uh any small amount of air that's in it will probably oxygen that you leave in the bag will probably get consumed relatively quickly by the yeasts in there that can consume oxygen if they want to, they're they're facultative that way. And so I don't think it's gonna be so helpful.
A lot of times, if you're doing straight lactic acid or other things, you can leave a little bit of air in the bag such that um, you know, if there's any sort of aerobic um aerobic uh, you know, bacteria stuff that you want to happen at the beginning and then have it stop, then you can leave a little bit of air in the bag, the oxygen will get used up and then it'll go into fully anaerobic uh fermentation. But short answer is I don't think it's gonna be a problem. If you're really super duper worried about it, you could add a pinch of nitrate to it and uh uh nitrite to it, and uh that should knock it out, but I wouldn't be overly worried. Especially in your later recipes where you're gonna be moving up to uh you know higher salt contents, like really, really, really don't uh don't worry about it. Uh Scott wrote in about hams from uh New Orleans.
I'm about to buy a rarely sold country ham, burgers. I've heard a lot of descriptions on how to carve it on your show and can't wrap my head around. Is there some reason I can't just carve this uh like a Hamony Barico uh gets carved on the YouTube? I figure between uh carvings I'll just cover the carved spot in lard and wrap the ham up in wax paper. Will that work?
Yeah, you where the wax paper is touching it, you can get like probably things growing on it, um, molds and whatnot growing on the actual kind of uh cut surface. Morris burger, uh, I think it was Morris, I forget, was it was it Morris I spoke to? I haven't spoken to the burgers personally in about 14 years. Uh but uh yeah, 14 years. But yeah, they used to just cover the cut surface with lard, but they would leave it hanging, as I've said on the show before, to prevent uh vermin from getting to it and prevent it from drying out.
So covering it in lard should be good. The Hamoni Birico people cover it up uh temporarily with pieces of the of the fat that they've sliced off. So that should work just to prevent. But remember that especially lard that you buy, it goes rancid pretty quickly. So I would wipe like severely, I mean, really wipe off any lard that you put on it and make sure that it doesn't get too greasy and maybe throw away the first slice that you take off of the top uh if it gets kind of rancid uh and nasty.
Now, to your former thing is that the problem with uh, and by the way, when you're buying a burger's ham, you want to buy any any ham that you want to hand slice, right? You want it to be for an American country ham especially, you're gonna want it to be over well over nine months. A year is it's hard to slice a nine month ham, depending depending on how you make it, but if it's traditionally being hung and it's not in a forced drying room, uh you if you slice it any earlier than nine months, that the center of the meat is just too freaking soft to slice adequately. It's gonna gum up on you. It's not gonna look, it's not gonna have that mahogany look that you know that you see in um in like a you know, uh like a really good uh Hamon or you know, even in like uh you know a prosciutto, you know, deparma.
But on and around 12 months is a really good slicing range for American country hams, but because of the way that they're hung and because of the way they're cured, uh the the conformation of them, there's always gonna be a giant difference in texture between the center of the meat and the outside. So the outside meats, especially on the exposed flesh part, are always gonna be a lot harder, a lot harder. So in a 12-month hand, they're gonna be a lot harder there, and still gonna be fairly soft in the like the fat part of the kind of cushion area of the meat. And so it made that also makes it a little bit more difficult to slice it long the way that you would for a Hamone Barico. But the the main challenge here is that they're just cured in a different shape.
If you look, there are some people who cure their hams, uh, Americans who cure their hams long, you know, stretched out and long, and those ones will probably be easier to slice uh as though it was uh Hamone Barico. Uh you might have to remove some of the bone around the H bone area if they leave it in to try to you know make the slicing more effective. But the ones that are scrunched up tighter and are more cannonball-shaped, I think you're gonna have a tougher time um doing the you know the three-direction slicing like they do with uh with a hamon. But hey, give it a shot and uh and let let me know. Let me know.
I haven't had a burger's ham in a long time. Anyway, what do you think, Stas? Is that good enough answer or no? No. No?
I said yeah. Oh, no. No. Got time for one more. One more.
One more. All right. Well, all right, I'll do uh not a long one. Oh, son of a gun. Because I have I have three more.
Like a yes or no question. What? You hate me. All right, listen, Colin Hunter wrote in, I'm not gonna answer this one right now. Colin Hunter wrote in.
No, he wrote in because I don't know the answer, but I want some answers from people. I want them to email email us in. Collins in New Zealand and he's working with this product called uh Mamakoo, right? When you type Mamakoo into your browser, it thinks you're looking for Mama Say, Mama Sama Makusa from uh, you know, from uh Michael Jackson. But in fact, you're not.
You're looking for Mamaku, which is this fern that they eat in uh in New Zealand, but it's extremely mucilaginous, right? And so Colin's looking for a way to combat mucilage in general in foods. And so I'm gonna leave that out. I want people to text, you know, or write us in and like talk about their mucilage things. He says he's tried to treat it like okra, he's tried to soak it, he soaked it from 30 minutes to three days in various amounts of salt.
He soaked it in acids uh for varying lengths of time, both before and after salting. So these are classic things to deal with uh mucilage, right? Uh he's tried frying it, uh deep frying it, baking it, roasting it, sous vide, high tote, low temp, and he has and he can't get rid of enough of the mucilage to have it be what he thinks is like applicable to most people's like of mucilage, right? So he's hit all these high notes of things that you would typically say to do. Uh I would say I would like to hear some tips on people.
I was looking up mountain yams, because those are some slippery things. Those are those are the ones where you know we were peeling them in front of uh Nastasia and someone picked it up and it shot across the room and and it shattered on the floor. And everyone like was relating it to th things that we shouldn't talk about on air. It was nightmare, it was a complete nightmare. But anyway, I had a non mucil, uh non mucilage uh one of those that was kind of tempurid, and I gotta figure out how the chef unslimed them there.
So anyone that has any stuff on how to get rid of this sort of slime or if they have any experience in particular with this particular slime, I'd be interested to hear it. Just FYI people. Mucilage in plants are typically uh extracellular polysaccharides, okay? So uh, you know, similar to like Xanthan's knot. So the the thing is is that a lot of times if you keep them in the plant product until you consume them, it masks their kind of presence.
That okra works. Sometimes the mucilaginous texture develops and gets stronger as you add it to more liquids because the stuff leaches out and then can functionally slime up a lot more liquid than it itself contains, right? So just not cutting something can prevent a lot of slime. Drying things can prevent slime. If you dry the outside, for instance, and then fry it once the outside is dry.
Perhaps it won't be mucilaginous in in the middle. But this is why salting, why vinegar, because they shift uh how and soaking is because they shift and or dilute this polysaccharide that's in there that's uh slime. But anyone that has any suggestions, uh I'd uh I'd appreciate it. Uh so next week, or not next week, because I won't be around next week, we will get to uh Marlowe's questions about martinis and uh cooling them and uh dilution in martinis because we don't have time to get to it now. This will have been cooking issues.
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