This episode of Cooking Issues is brought to you by Bob's Red Mill, an employee owned company that has been offering organic stone ground products for decades. Their flowers and whole grains are the highest quality and are minimally processed at their stone mill in Oregon. Visit Bob'sRedmill.com to shop their huge range of products. Use the code Cooking25 for 25% off your order. I'm Southern Teague of Amoria Margot and co-host of the Speakeasy right here on Heritage Radio Network.
You know, my favorite thing to do every week is to come here and be on the show. I have lots of jobs. I am a very busy person. Um and I do this because I love it. I get to sit down and talk to all my heroes for about an hour every week.
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And you can also choose a recurring monthly uh gift. Uh and for all that we'd be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much. 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 I don't know, like 12, 12, 10, to like, you know, like one, like one ish one-ish from a bird's pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn!
Not joined as usual with Nastasia De Hammer Lopez. She's in an investor meeting, but not in the business that we have together. Her other business, which is apparently more important than you folks out there, so there's that. Uh we got Dave in the booth. Yeah, take that to the bank.
Yeah. How are you doing, Dave? I'm all right. How about you? All right, how's your week?
How's your week been? Yeah, so far so good, I guess. I think Nastasia said she may come later. And thankfully she will never listen to the back, so she won't hear me talking about her like a dog. That's true.
But we do have today uh in uh in in the studio a an interesting guest. We have uh Joshua Applestone. Hello. Hello. The uh founder and owner of uh Applestone Meets and uh Fleischers, as in one who cuts up flesh, as in a butcher.
Yes, one who cuts up flesh is like a butcher. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you in fact are a butcher. Yes. Yeah.
All right. We also have in the studio with us the chief uh chief creative officer of Apple Stone. I'm the CO and then creative director. Creative Director. COO.
So COO Sheep Operating Officer, right? Indeed. What the hell does that mean? It means I do everything that Josh wants me to do. Something I don't want to do.
Yeah, but okay, but like, so uh I've always been curious. There's all these like C's and then some O's and stuff. Like, I understand what a CFO does. That's the money person. Not that they have the money, they move the money around, right?
CEO basically, I guess does whatever they want to. They're the C C E O. C O O like do all institutions have a C O O? I mean, I know we don't have a C anything of O. We have just like you know, Booker and Dax, we've got Ripity Doo-da.
You know what I mean? So it's Nastasia and myself, but I like to quote one of our employees on this. He gave us an employee feedback review, and he said that Josh was kind of like a wild animal like energy in the world, and that I was the prism that channeled all of his wild ideas into reality. So in our case, anyway, the COO is the person who just like makes the crazy ideas happen and then oversees everybody else who's also really making it happen. I like that.
So and by the way, people, when you're starting a business, you know, you should find people who have the skills you don't. Oh god. Just hire people. Yes, exactly. You know, I have made this mistake before.
You can't hire all the same personalities, you can't hire all everyone with the same idea. You need a well diverse staff. Yeah. And then also in the booth we have uh Rebecca who I've worked worked with uh years past uh at uh Momofuku. How are you doing, Rebecca?
I'm good. How are you? So what's your what's the what's your official story right now? Uh I am working with these fine folks and with you. Nice, yes.
But so you're not you're officially not involved with the the Momofuku anymore, or you are? I I left Momofuku in May, although they will always be family. I can never tell what's official and what's not because what happens is people first of all, I can't even keep my own name straight, or like, you know, birthdays in my family. So people was as soon as someone says don't say anything, for me that's like forever. So like Rebecca tells me, like, you know, don't say anything because I'm gonna do something on my own, maybe.
And so for me, that's a forever. Don't say that forever. That is for forever, Dave. You're breaking that right now. You blew it, Dave.
All right, so listen, people, you're gonna want to call in your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Because if you didn't know it, the one of the really cool things about Apple Stone uh meets, meats, meats, meats, is uh that I didn't know whether it was meats or meat company. It's a meat company, we have meats. Right, but is the Apple Stone Meat Company?
Yes, the official name, yeah. Yeah, Apple Stone Meat Company. So the cool thing about this, and you know, I I'm actually pretty curious to talk to you guys about what the the the impetus for it and kind of what the positives and negatives are. Uh the idea here is that you have this uh you you have this desire to sell uh very high quality, well raised, well butchered meats, right? And then you have a group of people that wants to buy that, but uh they might want to buy that at a time in which you don't feel it convenient to sell it to them.
We the idea of a brick and mortar being open on a traditional nine to five doesn't fit everyone's everyone's schedule. And to play with the hours of availability is almost not fair. So we are 24-7 and seven days a week. And so just to say it, because I haven't said it yet, these guys put their meat in vending machines. Now, for those of you, I know this is a this is a podcast, so you can't see what I'm talking about.
So I'm gonna help you picture what kind of vending machine. We're not talking about like uh a soda vending machine where you just see a picture of the soda. We're talking about, and no one's gonna remember this because I don't know, because no one out there is old enough, but they used to have these vending machines for sandwiches in like 1970s and early 80s, like cafeteria. Really? Yes, because that's the machines we use currently.
Yeah, well, I saw the picture of it, but I didn't know I thought maybe you refurbed old ones. I didn't know they still made them. When we started this years ago, we couldn't find those machines that current uh accepted credit cards because those type of machines were only used in institutional use that worked off of debited accounts. So we had to not only take what we needed uh with existing technology, we had to turn it to what we needed to do to see if it would work. Because you know, we've been doing this for four years.
We started with the idea of how this would be great if we could do this to how can we, how can we do this, and to uh now we're into designing and patenting our own machines because what's available now still is not what we need is not readily available now in the marketplace. So you're still customizing constantly. Yeah, I mean it's it's it's a faceless transaction. Although we have someone there, the hours are 11 to 6, I believe, seven days a week. So you can always talk to someone if you have questions or any issues that might pop up.
There's always someone there to talk to a decent window of time every day. But to have a faceless transaction, to have a transaction that you become a brand that's trusted because you know no matter what you get out of the machine, you're gonna you're good to go. Has been a process and a study, and um for my previous company working that for 10 years and being the food industry forever, seeing what we're doing now, although it doesn't seem like such a big deal has really been amazing because where we started at where people thought no, we we're every kind of company I basically do, people think we're crazy to start it. When we started and people give me the look, like, you know, how could that be? And buying something, that's like I said, buying something out of the vending machine.
We're going towards the idea of not concentrating about buying out of a vending machine, but having a sales experience or a retail sales experience, not only is quick and efficient, but it was on their schedule, which is really crazy. I mean, it is crazy. It's awesome. I mean, who the hell wants meat at 10 p.m.? And of course, we were just at an engineer's office recently, and this woman came up to us.
She's like, I gotta tell you, I have diabetes, you've saved my life because I get out of the gym at 9 p.m., I need to go home. There's nothing open upstate, and now I can get fresh meat from you, or sometimes it gets frozen or whatever it is, and she's good to go. She has exactly the balanced meal she needs when she needs it. And we have firemen, fire people, we have people commuting. It's just people don't all work the same hours.
It's something that's such an old concept that you that what you should only be open nine to five or under. And anyone out there in retail understands the cost involved with running a brick and mortar to ch to have these sales in the certain window. Well, also like like everyone in the country, especially especially everyone in the you know who's not living in uh you know who's living kind of in the suburbs has become accustomed to 24-7 major big groceries, and so basically what happens is is if they want food outside of what you're saying, like that nine to five uh hour range, um they are they're buying supermarket product. The people what we've seen with Amazon and other more convenient platforms for selling the direct to consumer sales, people in a way will sacrifice quality for convenience, and it's almost a punishment that if you you want to be able to get this at any time, you're only gonna have this many uh products to pick from. It's it's a common problem where even people don't have enough selection, they don't have enough choice, and things are getting more and more expensive.
How do you get more for your dollar without losing money? Or how can you give a consumer more more more convenience, more quality for the same amount of money without having to cut prices? And to us it was about the time that people have access to it. Right. Well, I think also there's like a you know, I mean, obviously, this is not like anything new, but there's a there's a a much uh a fast growing segment of the population with enough money to buy decent quality products, but not so much money that they're completely price insensitive.
And no one is price insensitive, I don't believe that. Right. And so but so like to be able to, you know, not have to deal with like the loss and the problems of distributing to let's say a local supermarket that's open 24-7. You know, I think that group of people, like, you know, I'm one of those people, we also like thinking that the person that we're buying from, even if we don't get to see you in person, somehow gets to lead a decent life. You know what I mean?
It it goes beyond that, where I think it's it's not only do you want your butcher, your convenience person to have a normal life, you want to see them at ball games, you want to see them out in a weekend, not behind a counter. But people really want to believe that they're supporting a local ecosystem. Even if if you had a super if you had a small mom papo Dega that doesn't have anything local, people still believe, and they are, they're supporting a local economy, even though the products don't come from New York City or Brooklyn or wherever it is, that there is different ideas of local, there's different ideas of locale that supporting a small business is literally doing that. A local economy, uh, and it's important is that the 24-7 was such a gift in a way to consumers that we didn't realize because it was one of the final things, final hurdles people had that to buy meat out of a machine is a big deal, but really to be able to buy it anytime you want at a high quality. We I was just talking about where I was at the store, and these guys are talking, one guy's a weightlifter and the other one's uh some big MMA star and talking about how they constantly go to our place, you know, late at night because they work out, it's an easier thing.
And you realize that people need clean food everywhere, they need a safe zone everywhere. That we hear about food deserts, we hear about um just shops being too expensive or just not you know not carrying the quality, it's very hard to appease everyone. But when you start picking and choosing your battles really carefully and focusing the store on that, it seems to work. Like, you know, right now we just do meat, we're trying to stay with that. To do other groceries to me, kind of takes away from the purpose of what we're doing.
But there's still items. I mean, it's like milk. We l where we have our first store, which is Stone Ridge up in the Hudson Valley, and really the whole place closes down at 10 p.m. You know, you have to feed your, you forget about picking up dog food late at night. You have uh you need milk for the morning.
There's just something really convenient about a model like this that doesn't tax you between the the quality and the price. The thing about meat though is that I mean, almost anybody meat is still, even with the absurd relative cheapness of meat these days in supermarkets, meat is still seen as kind of like the big buy of the day. You know what I mean? Check this out. When we we go to Vegas every year to go to the vending shows, because we're always looking for new technology technology, which is why we're doing our own machines because there's just nothing out there.
That we were at one last year, and these guys sell like three thousand dollar computers, and like, yeah, we can sell this many computers, no problem a day, it's no big deal at all. But someone's gonna buy a six dollar pack of ground meat, you gotta really think about that. And we realized that we were really on to something because just with my background and my ease with this type of product, I know it better than anything. That it's easy for me to sell this, and it's it's not easy for me to sell it faceless, but it's that's shorter of a gap for me to make that for people to get people to understand. Because people are so used to buying computers, they're so used to these things, and it's I think one of the reasons it hasn't been done is because there has not been a name out there that's so trusted with such a particular type of safe zone.
Right, right. And that's why, and you know, it just sounds so stupid, but the 24-7 is what really was like, dink. We because we realized that, like, you know, it success not everyone's successful working tons of hours is making tons of money, but there's like a little theme here. You realize like, oh, everyone's working tons of hours, no one has any time. Tell me about it.
I know. Well, even my Yeah, but that's what it is. And you know, it's funny, with our staff, we work five days a week. We work Monday to Friday, you know, we start seven, they are off by three. And one of the things that they people would come to me, our employees would be like, oh, it's only amazing to have off on the weekends.
I've never, literally never in 20 years not off on weekends. I've always worked at restaurants. And you realize that it satisfies the front of the house because we have a convenience, we have a product, and we have a locations that we're working on that people are very willing to try it out. And on the back end with our employees, that we can pay them a little bit more, we can give them more time off. And just like you said, it's like it's all of a sudden you realize that it brings more of a human factor to everything.
When we came up with this originally, my whole thing for talking to other butchers was that you can now close your slowest day and just have this machine packed, and you don't have to even worry about being open. You're only gonna do a certain amount anyway, you know that you sell these things to these regulars, and all of a sudden having a day off, it's like having a real day off, especially when you have a kid. That's that's a big deal. Yeah, and now, okay, so a couple of things about about the experience and a couple of questions. So when Rebecca first told me, hey, you know, meet vending machine like me.
Why the hell would anyone do that? Sure. But uh, I have to say, like, you have to Google, you have to Google it uh and look at the look at the the vending machine, and you can see right away that I am one of those people that I must see the thing I am buying. This is why I I know I'm a complete Luddite, strangely, because I'm known for kind of technical cooking stuff, but I don't use delivery services for my groceries because I like to see the food that I'm gonna buy. Even if I go to my local fine fair, you know, garbage supermarket, I like to pick out my produce, I like to pick out the products I'm gonna use.
Specific cuts, specific pieces. I want that piece because I'm going to cook it a particular way. And this the vending machine, it's like a stack of carousels. So you have like a column with carousels on it. Eight rows.
Yeah, eight rows. And you can see, and I don't know how many, how many in each segments in each depends on the size of the of the uh pocket, if you would. But enough. A lot. And you can rotate through, and you can pick exactly the thing you want.
You're not like pushing a button and like, you know, you know, like in a vending machine, this is because this is what I was thinking. You're buying uh like uh those Ritz crackers, even though they have salmonella now, the uh Ritz sandwich crackers, and there's that screw thing, and the one that's in the front is mangled, but the one that's in the back is nice, and you're like, ah, I want the rich cracker, but I don't want the mangled one, I want the one behind it. In this situation, you get to choose exactly which one you want, right? You get to choose your piece of meat, like you can choose whichever column you want. No?
Yes. This is this is yeah, yes. But it's a whole long conversation. I'm sure Sam's giving me the look. Don't get in.
It it having a convenient shopping experience with a as guarantee as you can perfect product, there are compromises. And the new machines were developing that the thing that you just said, the reason I pick these machines now that we use currently for the past two and a half years, is because you can rotate them to see different stakes and it'll be different prices. But when you really haven't been there, so when you look at it, you can't really see them though. You can see them, but you can't see them the way what you just said. Now, you're the type of person when you walk into a butcher shop saying, Can you take that tray out?
I want I want to see that one third in the back or second. And that's fine. That type of customer with the new machines might not be as satisfied now, but I'm betting that it works out anyway. And we did this on purpose because the way vending machines are built today, you can't make it as displayable as you would in a butcher shop. For safety for food safety reasons, or it's not food safety reasons, it's packaging reasons, it's integrity of the product reasons, it's the setting up of the machine reasons.
And for you for one to have to literally mimic a butcher shop 100%, it can be done. It most likely would make the same amount of profit margins that a modern butcher shop does, which are small. I can I interject though. Hey, this is a sure, you can say whatever you like, Rebecca. Um, however, you do have someone there, and one of the things that I like about the store is say you do want to see exactly what you want to pick out, they can go pull and you can look at a variety of pieces, which they do, you know.
So I think it's and the new machines will do the same thing, except it does it in a different way. And the reason I say is because I'm a butcher and because my entire background is in I want to see that third steak in the back. Yeah, that's that's the way I live. But there's a way there's a percent when you walk into a sort of in the back. Right.
Well, that's I gotta tell you you're saying this, Mike. Oh, I know exactly where you are. The when you walk into a butcher shop, you expect certain sounds, feet, smells, feeling of the air. The reason that you feel so empowered to say I want the third in the back is because this is a routine that you've been trained to accept and know that you know your limitations with and this is what it is, and also Dave Arnold is Dave Arnold. I'm not gonna say that.
So the situation of someone walking into a shop like ours with new machines and saying, I want to feed three people, I want to do three bone-in stakes, the machine will show them a series of stakes to pick from, just like you want. So it provides guidance, the new thing. But guidance at the sizes, the pricing of each one, the whole Michigas, how thick it would be with a ruler next to it. But that's not yet. That's not true.
No, that's the new one. There's no way right now you can see them. But I'm talking about like the way the way the future is going, the way I can see it, the way I can see um pricing staying lower, accessibility getting better and better, and quality staying there without being taxed on price. That we have to be retrained how we look at things. And the same way when we when you said people come in, they buy out a machine, they're so thrilled and it's done.
My next generation of machines, I hope people not to think about buying out of a machine rather than saying that was the coolest fucking experience I ever had. I just bought this stuff. And by the way, everything I got there was amazing. Like every time I go there, it I you know, I want the same, I want the same size flat iron. I get it every time.
I want the same ground beef that taste the same has the same mouthfeel. And that's what people are really looking for. They're looking for a consistent, steady product they know is good for them that's not gonna kill them in the pocketbook. Isn't that uh, but isn't I mean a consistency is always when you're dealing with kind of like higher end meats is the hardest thing to achieve in general, whether you're an shopper. I mean, for in the market in here in New York, like it that's so variable because the supplies aren't as things really, yeah.
I swear to God. Nice. Uh it's just it's a matter of um how one conducts their business. Not that one's better or worse. It's just that I know that what I have done throughout time, I know what I who I work with, I it's just what I do.
So my job is sourcing and execution, and uh the we're just talking about I was talking about these guys. I was talking to you yesterday about the idea of how being a butcher is such an art because there really is like you know, muscles are different, you have to trim them a certain way. You know, going back to the idea of the faceless transaction, it's really important for us to have consistency. It's really important for us to have knowing that someone's gonna buy something out of the machine. Although there's someone there, you can always kibbish with, you can if you buy something you don't like it, you can turn around and return it, and like you know, just exchange it.
You want more selection. It's you know, we're customer service, we're there to help. But there's there's a there's an hour for that, and the rest of just come freely and do what you want or do what you can. So do you still get to have do you mean like do you miss or do you still get, I guess, that kind of customer. Back when I had a back when I was a real human being, like I used to like everyone that it was like, you know, oh, like 16, 17 years ago, and I was a real human and I had a butcher, his name was Michael, and I would visit Michael, and we would spend like a half hour together, and you know, he would be like, I can get you the illegal lungs, Dave.
And then, like, you know what I mean? And then we talk about his family, and he'd get married, and I'd buy him a bottle of wine for his marriage, and you know what I mean, stuff like this. That definitely still happens. We still it's it's we have shift reports, two two shift reports a day. We're including in these shift reports that Sam's actually set up, that we have communications with customers and special things are happening, bad things, and we still have the same feeling that we've always had uh with what our company I'm doing.
We still we we're really big on community, we're looking at community cookbooks, we're constantly talking to our customers. The the social interaction with people is still there. It's what really blows our mind is how many people do not want to talk to anyone, and they come there late at night, and it's not just people commuting up, it's literally just people like, look, I just want to get in and out and be done. One of my favorite stories is like at 2 a.m. Someone's in there trying to use the machines, and um there's not working.
There's one other per at 2 a.m. There's another person, there's some dude there. And the guy looks over to his right, and the guy's like, oh yeah, I'll show you about something shows him how to do it. The guy's like, thanks a lot. And he looks at him and goes, Thanks a good.
And he's like, that was Daniel Craig. James Bond literally just showed me how to do but it was just interesting. No, no, no, just people traveling through. But the way we see things is that every single person out there needs to shop when they do and when they want to. And the idea that this is hitting anywhere from a fireman to someone famous to the teacher, says that we're on the right path.
You know, what the biggest question I had from people when we started was like, now who who actually shops there? And it was one of those days where I walk in and my my eight-year-old son at the time was talking to some people, probably in their 70s on how to use the machine. And you know, it was one of those clicking moments going, wow, there's really no method to the madness, just that everyone out there needs clean food. How do we get it to them? And how do we make it as easy as possible?
We don't think we're gonna get everyone, but what's really funny is that even the person who wants to pick the third steak in the back is gonna use that place at least once a week because it's convenience. Right. You know, it's it's not everyone wants a $30 bonus steak. Some people just need a pack of ground beef. So we have a we have a caller we're gonna take, but then when I get back, I want to know what cut of meat Daniel Craig bought.
Caller. Oh, you don't remember? Come on, man. I'll be like, he bought what? Anyway, uh caller, you're on the air.
I did this is uh Jeff Given from Custom Af. I met you in the bar last night. We were talking about patents. Yeah, hey, how are you doing? How's it?
Yeah, so he had a question about patents, and he's working. I can say this because he said it on the air before, in the realm of sinks and foot pedals. Do you use foot pedals at the butcher shop ever? Foot pedals and sinks. The foot pills get too schmutzy.
Oh, in the butcher shop. Anyway, go ahead. What's up? Yeah, so um you also we walked over to the you had a bunch of waffles soaking in rum. And you mentioned something about um needing to separate the separate off the starch, and it reminded me that I have at home a cork container of strawberry juice that I couldn't get to clarify in the spinz all.
And I wondered if I warmed it up too much in the vita prep. If you've ever had a problem with that, where I don't know if there's some kind of like methylesterase potato situation where it's like setting the pectants too hard where then they can't they can't break down from the enzyme. I have never had that happen with strawberries. What can happen with strawberries is um if they don't if you don't get the solids to clump hard enough. I understand what you're saying.
You're thinking you're functionalizing the pectants such that they don't drop out or don't get killed by the enzyme. Yeah, I just wondered if that's the way. I would do a little redose of enzyme again, like maybe the strawberries are a little tarder than they were before, and um right around the pH range of strawberries, the um you need to up the uh enzyme load on the uh SPL to get it to clarify properly. Okay. So you could try hitting it with a little more SPL.
You were using wine finding agents or no? Um, I did all of it, yeah. Yeah. You can also just the pack with just the enzyme and then went with the keys all catsan. Right.
So if you're doing like Kesel Sol, aka D1, right, and then uh chitosan and then Keselsaw again. If it doesn't flock hard enough, you can just hit it again with whatever the opposite of the last one you hit is. So if you did D1, D2, D1, you can go back to a little bit of D2. I've never done it more than like one more like addition of D1, D2, and then with a little extra enzyme, and that should drop out. But a good idea as that stuff sits in the fridge overnight, should clump harder and you should see like some cloudy stuff at the bottom of your juice, and that stuff will spin spin right out.
Yeah, I've got that. And so now it's been in there for a long time. So then I'm wondering if I should just turn it into strawberry drink and what what you would actually do for that process. Oh, well, strawberry strawberry, fresh strawberry is gonna have a bricks anywhere between eight and nine and change, depending, unless you have some preposterously sweet sweet strawberries out there. So if if you want to uh and it's very tart.
So I used to use this uh product when I was teaching called genemic acid that would erase people's sense of sweet. And if you remove the sugar from a strawberry, it is a freaking acid bomb. It's just really, really, really sour. So I wouldn't do it. Could I dose back in some simple or something after?
Oh, you could. You could ferment it dry and then hit it with sugar to bring to bring it back. But I would say you're gonna want to add some sugar anyway to take it up. I would take it up to like like 15, 16 uh bricks to ferment it dry, and then it's gonna be really acidic. So you're gonna want to cut it with something, or uh, yeah, I guess you could, you know, turn it to an off-dry to uh do it.
But the the acidity level of those strawberries is gonna be typically quite high. And strawberry on its own without sugar, because when I ferment stuff, I in general prefer to drink dry fermented things like beers and wines dry. And so like I did some dry mead earlier with uh a bunch of wild honey and some friends' wild grapes. How was it? Cut it as dry as I get it with delicious.
Yeah, so like I like I like dry, but just like beware. I think that's the problem with like a lot of craft ciders and craft fermented stuff in the US these days, is that they, you know, don't take into account how acidic things become when they're fermented dry. And they always like, you know, kill the process when they're still sweet. But let us know how it works out. All right.
And good luck with your patents. Appreciate it. Bye, bye. Uh, we should take a quick break. All right, we'll take a quick break, come back with more cooking issues.
Hey Nastasi, it's time for our Bob's Red Mill moment where we put your cooking improvisational skills to the test. This week's secret ingredient is lentils. Nastasia, tell us what you'd make. I would make lentils with uh co taquino or what was the other one? Uh like they do in Italy for New Year's and serve it up.
Why lentils? Because they cook super quick. No, lentils and new years because lentils is the equivalent of money. Oh, yeah. They shape like little coins.
Yes. And they cook fairly quickly because they're so thin, you don't need to soak them very much. They cook very quickly. It's easy to cook lentils in a very fast manner. Yeah.
Uh thanks to Bob's Red Mill for supporting cooking issues. Visit Bob's Redmill.com to shop their huge range of products. Use the code cooking25 for 25% off your order. That's cooking, no space, the number two, the number five. And we are back talking to Joshua from Applestone Meat Corporation.
What is it? What is it really? Apple, what is it really? A camera? Overstone Meat Company.
Applestone meat Company. I can never get the names of anything right. Even my own company. It's crazy. Applestone meat corporation sounds really bad.
I wanted to make it sound like really like horrible Simpsons S. Yeah. Amalgamated conglomerated meats. Exactly. Exactly.
Conglomerated is like right up there with congealed is a bad thing when you talk about meats. The meat is congealed. No one wants to get it. Yeah, yeah. New business idea.
So is a uh don't give me a story. Is the now here's another thing I had a question. So you said you're moving to new machines. Is it because you one of the things because you want to increase like the density of product you can store in the in the machines? Is it that you can't get enough product into your current machines?
That's one of the reasons. Yeah, I mean, like, because you're limited by, by the way, I don't know if you know this. We had to, we have uh at my bar, uh we have some old Coca-Cola vending machines that we've modified. Yeah, yeah. But we have legal problems because like people are like, you should put these other places.
And I'm I'm actually working on that too. I'm like, it's illegal for me to do that. I don't have the proper license to do that. It's interesting, yeah. We can that's another radio show.
Yeah. Yeah. But uh, you know, specifically in New York State, you know. Liquor laws are tough. Yeah, they're tough.
And so, you know, you you know, we have a license to sell on premise. We are specifically not allowed to sell off-premise. So we in our vending machines, people are like, uh, are you allowed to do that? And I'm like, I couldn't hear you, I couldn't hear what you said. I couldn't hear your question.
Uh but the uh like we're very, very careful. Um catering license. Yeah, well, we're super careful, like we make sure that everybody who takes one opens it, right? Like right if you take it home. Like yes, like Jersey hat.
You can buy, yeah. Yeah. So like as long as we know that it's opened, like it's it's kosher, right? And the other thing is that because it's on premise and it's illegal to over-serve, we only sell token by token to people, not like, hey, can I buy a sack of tokens? And you're like, and you're like machine, the champagne machine is the same way you have to buy tokens.
Yeah, hey, but what if someone comes in every day and they buy one token and they don't use any media? Why are you messing with my business? Why are you messing with my business for? I think you started it already. It's the night.
Yeah, but like an entire show of payback from I mean, obviously, obviously from a business standpoint, if someone wants to buy a token as a uh someone wants to buy a token as a uh a keepsake, man, that's a win, like a s like a like a 50 cent token. Give certificates, man. Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean? Win win win. But uh the buttons.
The thing is also is that like they're the our vending machines are completely monitored. Right. Like there's always a host within 10 feet of that, and then the bartender at the point of the bar can look over and see what's going on. So our last call on the machine too. Uh same.
So like they like, well, if you buy a token, like you we you are not allowed to pull a drink out of that machine after our license is up, right? So like technically, if like on a Monday we close at, you know, our liquor license is till midnight. So as long as they pull that bottle out of the machine before midnight, we're not we probably won't sell them a token after like 11 50, but if they want to pull the bottle out, like if if it gets past midnight, I'll just refund them their money. Yeah. You know, because like if they want to take the token with them, Mazletov.
But if they're like, I want the the well, I'm like, you know what? Here's your money back, you know, with my you know, my blessings come again. So it's the same thing. Like you just tell them, you know, this is the cutoff. In a bar, right?
I mean, the thing about a bar is like a bar, I guess, like a butcher, is it you know, people go there for different reasons. Some people they want to sit at a table, be left alone, and just have the drinks. Some people they want to sit at the bar, they want to have an interaction with the bartender. They're and the same customer could feel you know, like different on different days. One day I might want to be at the bar, one day I might want to be left alone.
I don't know. You know what I mean? Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about. It's exactly how the company runs. We see that.
We see people who like will walk past us nine out of ten times, and then one out of ten times they just want to chat. We have super narrative focused shift reports. We've taught our staff to really talk about like people patterns and things about people in their shift reports so that everybody who's working has an idea of the actual human element rather than just like the logistics of it. So, like we I know certain people by name who I've never even met before, because I'm not working retail, but I know that like art always buys this on this day. Like the reports saying, you know, you're like, art.
Hello, art and did you get worried, you're like, oh my god, we ran out of brisket and art's gonna come. They literally say that. That would be like yeah, we have our regulars, just like any shop. You have people regular some people. Like, we'll know if they had a baby, they'll be like, Oh, so and so came in with so and they finally had their baby, you know, like so.
We're in the loop on the narrative of our customers, even when we're not there. That's cool. Yeah, I mean, for us, the vending machine was a we could do it, b we we you know, my last bar had a bottled cocktail program. Which is amazing. Thank you.
They're so good. And then you've seen the old machines that did that? The which one? The old machines that were cocktail mixing machines. No, that sounds cool.
Like, actually from back in the day. Yeah, I tr I've just it sounds like a I just travel a lot and I can't remember where the hell I was. It could have been Denver, but it's not in operation anymore, but they just use it as a come in and take a look. Maybe it was sugar. But they work like the old coffee machines used to, where you're like, I want to do it.
If you want like a gin martini, you pull the gin thing and then pit the martini. It's like an old computer where um it was like you punch out certain holes in the in a car and you feed the card to the old Univac work that's in there. How could that not have been Vegas? It just sounds like Vegas. It could have been called Vegas machine.
The reason I don't know, it could be but the reason I don't think it was Vegas is because everywhere we went in Vegas is always like and this one was not. So you're like, it was more like Reno. Uh but like the uh Atlantic City. The thing with the vending machine for us was is that we're look like the the real bartenders, barbacks and prep people who are making the cocktails for you in the real life are making the cocktails that are in the vending machine. So the our hands are still there, you know what I mean?
It's the same thing with us. Just people just sometimes people don't want to talk to you. They don't want to say, I want to throw in the back, they just want to get it and split. And it was one of those it was just one of those moments. We're like, you know, when we start the reason this whole thing came about is that when I started the company, you know, I begged Sam to come aboard, and it was just she and I.
I'm in the back cutting, she's handling the front, trying to figure how we want to structure the company and what we're doing. And you know, I'm constantly being stopped on what I'm doing, come to the front, talk to someone, sell no thing. And it just it was one of those moments like, wow, we're never gonna get anything done. And we started with a machine, and it was it was crazy. And you gotta understand, like when we started versus where we are now, that the acceptance factor is just worlds away.
That you know, how how could anyone want to do that to people are not demanded, but they'd really love to see us in every single town they're in? That there's a lot of areas that need clean, good, safe zones that don't have anything. And it's it's interesting. We're trying to keep up with it. Uh so your first meeting with Market and AG after you start a vending.
Really? Yeah, yeah. And were they like what the vending machines are under the health department. Yeah, that's that's the same thing. Wait, so do we do markets ag DOH and USDA?
Yeah. Oh, that sounds fun. Yeah. It's not well, you know, to be very honest, we run a really, really tight cleaning. Yeah, they love it.
But anytime anytime you do something different, we don't. So the vending machine is like there's there's previous models for this that they understand. In other words, you can point to something and say that. They don't, they just want to know temperature and times and uh monitoring. That's what they're concerned with.
Yeah, because I know in the restaurant, like we have this new machine that makes ice that we're that someone else is making for us. Uh he's make he made one, and we're we have one of the first protos. Uh-huh. And that our code compliance person came in and says, I don't understand this, this makes me nervous. What they don't understand, what makes them nervous is that it doesn't they need you need to show how cold we keep the ice 24 hours a day.
Also, it's water, so they're probably gonna want to know about your water spacing and all that, no? Like ice machines, ice machines, as you as you know, ice machines have biofilm problems. Yes. So when people are when people think it's an ice machine, they think that there's all these internals that can't be cleaned, and so they're deadly worried about biofilms and stuff building up an ice machine. Yes.
So I told the developer, the guy who's making it, I was like, uh, you're not selling an ice machine, you're selling a chest freezer and ice cube trays. And he's like, What? I'm like, trust me, you're not selling an ice machine. Because if you sell an ice machine that's gonna trigger a bunch of bells in this person's head. If it's just a freezer, that's a different set of bells you're triggering.
You know what I mean? They're not picking biofilms anymore. Yeah. But it's it's just that simple. We don't know yet.
We're waiting actually for our first inspection before we fire the machine up again and we're back to buying ice. Uh the the DOH, just like random inspector. That's the thing. The r like a random inspector comes at DLH. You need to hire someone who specializes in HACSAP plans or something like that that can create a I can do it.
Again, it's a guy also Dave was helping with that stuff for a long time. Oh, back in the day. But then the Tozy took it over. Before Christina Tozzi became super famous, Christina Tozi was writing all the hassle plans for all the shows. By the way, people, I want you to know this.
I'm extremely angered. The city of New York has started cracking down on people for using the ziploc technique, the zippy technique in their restaurants because they're like, well, you're excluding the oxygen. Jerks! Plastic wrap is also excluding the oxygen. People, you can't win in this freaking world.
Someone will try to poop on your parade, no matter what you do. You're just trying to make good stuff, and people will try to get you. It's already ROP. You're already doing ROP. What are they going to do?
Well, no, so like okay, so like for years, like here's what happened. Here's what happened. I'll give you a brief rundown. Brief, brief rundown of uh Sous vide and reduced oxygen packaging in New York City. So somewhere in the range of, I can't even remember anymore, like 2006, something like this.
Uh Dave Chang opens uh Momafuku Noodle Bar. I didn't know him yet. I met him four. I met him at the end of the day. Right, I was about to say it's when we did 2000.
Okay, so it was 2005 when they got hit, right? So I was I had just started a French Culinary Institute, 2005. I'm working on the curriculum for teaching low temperature sous vide cooking. And the country got nailed too. Well, yeah, well, country there were the number two got nailed.
So what happened is is that I was, you know, I was there, so I like that's how I met Dave Chang was when he got hit. So the health department comes in, freaks out, says, What the hell are you doing? cuts op makes him cut open all of his bags and pour bleach on of his food and throw it away. He calls me, he's like, What the hell is going on? And like everyone's you know, freaking out over it.
Um, and so immediately, because no one at that time, Christina Tosey, I believe, wrote the first HACCP plan that was used in New York for uh WD 50, because WD it was WD50 country, um, noodle bar. Afterwards, uh David Boulet had a uh a summit, if you will, that I went to where they invited Georges Praulou, who's famous guy, uh Sous vide guy. Uh Bruno Gousseau came with his crew, Jouard Berlin, Bruno Bertin, all the guys from Cuisine Solutions came, and a range of chefs who were using this technique came, and the health department came, and then they hit all of the places that that were there. So, like per se got hit, yeah, they all got hit, and no one understood, and the the shakedown was that everyone had to have a Hasset plan, and we were fighting very hard for look, look, you don't want to no like you don't understand what you're asking for when you're asking for a real Hasset plan. Because a real Hasset plan is item by item.
I was like, you need procedure-based HACC plans. You know, like we are going to cook a meat. Here is how we do it with the logs and everything, which is eventually kind of the the way it went. Um, but in the meantime, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's everyone figure out ways that we can do things without the vacuum machine so that we can still get all the benefits of low temperature cooking without the hassle of having to deal with a hassle and without freaking out the the health department. This is why I told Philip Press, this is why I got mad.
Sous vide Supreme, the home thing came out. That like water bath that came out years ago, and I was like, I wish they hadn't called it Sous vide Supreme because now like it's gonna give me more of a headache because people are keep attaching Sous vide, the vacuum, the stuff that the health department's mad at with the cooking technique, which is all about temperature control, it's different. Then Philip Preston from Polyscience came out with his uh, you know, you know, eight hundred dollar um immersion circulator and called it sous vide professional. I was like, Do you have to, Philip? Do you have to?
And so I lost this battle, and everything called everyone calls it sous vide, whatever. But we were working very hard on trying to use techniques that were not sous vide to cook things like protein. So we were doing oil baths, circulated oil baths, we were doing uh, you know, brats in circulated beer, blah blah blah blah blah. And one of our main things to get around this was using Ziploc and then um plastic wrap rolled in tubes, right? So now health department, people have been wrapping meats in in uh in wraps since you know, forever, no one gets mad.
And the way Wiley did those boneless chickens, those little chickens, you know. Yeah, those the cannonball techniques. So, like when you're using plastic wrap, there's like two, there's several, but the two basic techniques are the cannonball technique as seen in WD50's chicken thing, where you put the chicken into a thing into plastic wrap, you go twist, twist, twist, twist, twist, you tie off the thing, and you have a cannonball basically that you well, you know, little ones. Bone out of chicken all the way, you you wrap the dark meat with white meat, and then you make into a really tight ball, and what happens is when he poaches it, you slice it, it looks like a breath saver where it's like this perfect little brown center, and like the white and the outside. Yeah, it's nice.
It's actually beautiful when they and then the other way is you do it in tubes. So you lay everything uh flat, you transglutaminase, you meat glue that sucker, you roll it up, you know. You don't have to have the meat glue because meat will self set, but the meat glue makes it a nice when you slice. And so uh, you know, we we do this, and so then our code consultant said, and he blamed literally, he said it's the hipsters in Brooklyn what done it, because the health department saw a bunch of restaurants using the zippy technique, ziploc technique, where you you know you put the meat along with some oil in a Ziploc bag, you put it in water, it pushes away most of the extra air, and you do it. And so I was like the oil evenly distributes the heat, is that why?
Well, the oil takes up the slack in the bag. So, you know, like if you if you just do uh meat in a bag and you put it underwater, the water doesn't have enough pressure to force itself around the meat everywhere. So if you have a little bit of oil, uh, you know, it's it's a liquid, so it conforms to the bag, and you can get a all like almost no extra air uh in it. Anyway, I got real mad at the code consultant, which is stupid because I'm paying him. You know what I mean?
But I was like, I just couldn't believe it that yet another nice thing was taken away from me. Uh so now like the thing is is that when the health inspector comes in, you have to rip open all your ziplocks, because then it's cool. Literally, I had an inspector tell me years ago that I was like, you're telling me that I can put food in a freaking bag, keep it for X number of hours because they were allowing on HACCP for certain things, they were only allowing you 24 hours, right? This is way back in the day, it's gotten a lot better. I was like, you're literally telling me that I can take this food, bag it, cut it open, re-expose it to the atmosphere, bag it again, and you will say it's okay.
She was like, Yup. I was like, oh you know what I'm saying? Do you feel any of my pain? I feel all your pain. I just I know, you know, the reason that they the health department and agon markets and USA loves us, I do whatever the hell they want us, they want us to do.
Right. But you know, if we have to prove the science, otherwise we will, but uh it's education goes a long way. Because we're not doing a lot of cooking right now. So we just keep it simple. And we have trouble.
But they gave us a hard time at first. There was an issue with whose jurisdiction it was, and like the USDA not liking the same. As far as the machines themselves, yeah. Because you have to be USDA, it's not going out of state. Can't you just do state?
Yeah, we can. But you do US, is it better? Um I don't think anyone's better than the other one. USCA to me gives me more of a secure feeling that if and when we want to trap uh cross state lines, we don't have an issue with it. Right, because but there's a it's a higher barrier to entry, right?
USDA, because why is it that all these producers like we have one plant Ag and Markets, we have one plant USCA, and to be very honest, they both work under the same hours, they both work under the same paperwork and the same everything. Not because they require it, because we require it. Right. But is it the same person blessing it, or is it different people blessing it? Different people blessing it.
Yeah. I love the idea that you come in blessing things. Also, you mentioned something that you love being taken away from you. Yes. One thing is coming back, and that is Nastasia's on her way.
Oh, Nastasia's almost here? Yeah. Just in time for this uh the show to be over. So do you do any cooking? Do you guys do any cooking?
We don't right now because we're building out a new one. I mean, in life for oh, yeah, sure. All right. You ever use a caja china? Because I have a cajina question.
Yes, I've burned them to the ground before. Yeah, so many times. Okay, so so okay, so we'll handle the cajina question first. Uh bum bum bum bum bum. Okay.
This from Trafton. Uh hey, crew. I'm planning to grill a whole 40 pound lamb in a few weeks and wanted to get your thoughts on the best way to cook it. So 40 pound lamb is what, about three feet long? Uh yeah.
Yeah. Depends on the length of bones and stuff like that. Sure. Yeah, I mean, it's what most like most like small. It's small.
Yeah. Like it's small, but it's not a baby. A baby lamb is like seventeen, 20 pounds. Like a baby lamb. Baby lamb's 10.
10? Yeah. Really? I mean the baby, like the Easter baby ones, but like a small. But like it's a Greek Easter, they use really small lambs, 10 to 15 pounders, uh, 30 pounders.
You know, it just depends on what color. What's the price difference between goat and lamb these days for babies? Same? Same. Same.
What do you like better? I love goat. Yeah. I love goat. Baby goat?
Uh any goat. Back when I was Mark Ladner made a baby goat pasta dish once, and he didn't use pasta, he used the intestines of the baby goat because it was so milk fed. And the intestines themselves, you turned them inside. It was like eating ricotta cheese. It was he didn't did he do it Greek style on a spit or he was.
No, no, no, just in a in a pasta dish. Like you just made it in like a substitute for pasta. It was incredible. I like that Greek style intestine, spit intestine thing. I forget.
Stan. So so wait, so we were talking about we're talking about cajacinas. Okay. So uh there so it's a whole 40 pound thing. Let me wait, I had another question about meats.
Not fair. I'll read the question. All right. Uh anyway, 40 pound lamb in a few weeks and wanted to get your thoughts on the best way to cook it. Open pit.
Uh well, I've looked into a few techniques and I've settled. So he's already settled on this. So we have to recommend based on what he settled on doing. Uh-huh. All right.
Uh I settled on using uh oh well, I remember once goat used to be super cheap, and I used to buy from my butcher. Remember Michael, I told you about Michael? He used to he because he would sell goat hacked up to like you know, Jamaican style restaurants. Yeah, yeah. And he was like, But Dave, I'll cut the racks off of you and sell you the racks of goat at a good price.
This is back when he used to was giving me lamb belly for free before it became a thing. And for free. For free. Anyway, so then like, you know, he gave me the uh the these like racks of goat, and we would uh low temp them and then flash fry those fuck the suckers, and they were, man, were they good. Rack of goat?
Yes. Rack of goat, people, rack of goat. Okay, so back to crafted. Uh I've looked in a few techniques and settled on using a caja china. The game plan is to marinate it overnight and then cook it in the box, which is cottachina is like a box.
And you know, you you put the meat into it and then you cook it from above, but it's sealed around with coals. It's a thing. What? The coals are underneath, right? I thought they put them on top.
They can put them underneath and on top. The caja chinas, I thought it was the one where you layer the book. Yeah, they do on top, sorry. Yeah. Can we phone a friend on this?
Uh the game plan is to marinate it overnight and cook it in the box for about three to four hours. The main downside is that you really can't adjust the heat. That is a downside. Although remember, when you're cooking at high temperatures, like, you know, really, really, the meat is gonna go up to like max temperature like fairly quickly. Uh anyway, uh, can't adjust the heat once it gets going, so I'm worried I'll overcook the loins in the back legs.
You will. Yes, yeah, we definitely will. Um I was thinking I could break down, cook those parts separately, and then cook the rest in the box. But I'm open to other ideas and was generally curious about how you would approach it. Thanks and congrats on the bar opening, Trafton.
Well, my two cents on this is you will definitely overcook those those parts of it. Uh that's why people hack those things up. If you have a really hot fire, you can do a low fire the whole time, it'll be fun. Right. I mean, but look, the fact of the matter is, like uh younger meat doesn't have like it's it's thinner anyway.
You're counting on the fat and the connective tissue melting out to make the mouth feel in that kind of meat anyway, right? I mean, you're gonna inherently I mean, when you're doing those kind of long cooks, you're inherently gonna overcook any like normal dry muscle muscle fibers, right? I mean small animals cook faster, small animals have less fat. Small animals are more delicate to cook, but if they're done correctly, they're quote unquote tastier because they're softer, less connective tissue, less if you would, surprises, uh a caja china and the way it goes. I I would suggest having a set of coals on the side, get something going, you know, check it in an hour or two.
There's many cheap probes that you don't even necessarily have to stick in the lamb. You can leave her ambient temperature. But I would keep that temperature around 300 or 275 and just expect it to go a little longer. The reason that cod chinas works so well, uh, in my idea is that they just cook pigs so freaking fast that you can get a 60, 80 pound pig done in less than three hours. I don't have a mental Yeah, that's a good place to look at it.
Well, I don't have a mental picture of what lamb skin tastes like. There's no skin on them because lamb lambs that you would get are skinned. There's a lanolin film on the fat all the way around, but the skin itself is not like pork skin, doesn't puff up. There's there's no skin to it. They peel them.
So hey, hey, this is important. This is an important point here. The whole point of the Kaichina is the crispy freaking skin. When you do pigs, cooking issues. Right, but my point is, my point is be careful.
Like, be careful. Like, you might you might dry this sucker out because you don't have the father. No, I mean the uh the the baby, the lamb. Lemon isn't the lamb because it's not gonna have the crispy skin. It has a lot of fat to it.
Lambs in general are fattier than pigs. What I've seen, and the lanolin renders a certain way when you cook it and stuff like that, just to make sure you don't have flare-ups because there's more flare-ups with lamb than pig. Remember, the cod gina is gonna separate the coal from the thing, it's using the radiant heat from above and then the retain then they uh all sorts of things. Well, be careful. Good luck, trafting.
Let's know how it works. I got answers by the way to your pickle questions next week. And Quinn wanted to know how hot the tubes can get in a in a spin's all. Real hot. All the way, real hot.
Like uh almost boiling. Anyway, uh, that's 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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