This episode is presented by Forever Cheese. This week on Meet and Three, we're exploring the intersection between food, agriculture, and competition. Learn how a chicken raising contest in the 1940s led to the poultry industry we have today. And they were gonna run a contest and try and develop what they would call the chicken tomorrow. We'll also venture into the world of agricultural video games, where a new set of tractors is making a lot of fans happy.
The biggest addition to 19 was the John Deere's. That's what everyone was hyped for. And we pay a visit to a group of Indian restaurants that aren't on the friendliest of terms. Usually they wait for my restaurant, but after long wait, they'll go to next door or downstairs. But this is how they do business.
They completely copy whatever we do. Embrace your competitive spirit and be the first to listen to new meet and three episodes by subscribing now. That's meet plus sign thr e available wherever you listen to podcasts. Brooklyn. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez.
Matt in the booth. Meeting me. I said the hammer. Dana. And we got Jack Shram, head bartender at existing conditions.
Hello, good afternoon. With us has our special guest, Colin That News. What? You why did the energy get sucked out of the room when you talk about Jack? Hey Martinger at existing conditions on West Eight Street in New York City.
Hello. Better? Okay. So uh call in all of your questions to 7184972128. That's 718497 uh 2128.
So when they announced Nastasia, I know you probably weren't listening, but now that now that you are theoretically listening, she's got one earphone on. Yeah. We're being sponsored today by Forever Cheese. I think that's Forever Cheese. Don't you have the Rod Stewart Forever Young song in your head now?
But with the word cheese in it? I'm not gonna sing Forever. Jack will sing Forever Cheese. For cheese. Forever Cheese.
Forever Cheese. Right? Four Ever Cheese. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying?
It's like, I think they should they they should pay Rod Stewart. He seems like a friendly sort, friendly sort of fellow. And like allow themselves to do a Forever Cheese parody of Forever Young. What do you think? That's a good idea.
Winning? Winning? Winning. I also, Matt, had some comments to make on the meet and three uh topics for this week, but I forget what they are. So I can't.
I am eagerly awaiting them. What? There's a caller. There's a caller. There is a caller.
Alright, caller, you're on the air. What's up? Uh uh. A couple questions about smoking. Okay.
And then uh also uh the eggs with the big yolks. Eggs with big yolks. Go. Go. So eggs with big yolks.
I've got chicken. I can make eggs with really big yolks, and do you think there's a market for it? Let me ask you this. Are you willing to say what it is that you do, or is this like a like some sort of technique that you have that you want to have be a competitive advantage? I know I like a big yoke because there's something I don't like as much.
The whites. Unless I am making an aged food cake, which P.S. Ange food cakes are delicious. Not because they're fat-free, because that would make them seem like they're garbage. But in fact, they taste good.
They taste good. But uh but I would always prefer in a post egg scenario, I would prefer if you're eating an egg, you want more yolk. You want more yolk. You definitely want more yolk. Yeah, yeah.
So, but anyways, are you are you willing to say how you accomplish this, or is this just a good thing? Yeah, nothing proprietary. I'd be happy if it if it caught on and like these higher quality eggs at the market. In my mind would be a positive thing. So, how do you do it?
Um, so if you imagine like foie gras. Yes. Except the goose would go willingly and eat as much food as it can. And that that's kind of what chickens do. Are you a Spanish liar?
Am I what? Are you a Spanish liar? No. Okay. Because you imagine it was something willful, right?
Well, that but that's what the Spanish say. The span there's this guy in Spain who says that he's it wants. He wants, but you have to not. No, I'm not even using a Spanish thing. He's like, you have to tell it.
The theory is he goes, if you look at the goose, it won't eat everything to get a foie gras. So if you look at it, it's not gonna make a foie gras, but if you don't look at it, I didn't force feed it. That's that Spanish guy that Dan Barber profiled, where he says that he has these geese that just they love it. They love it. You know what I mean?
And yet, and yet I know a lot, I don't know if you know this. I know people in the food industry. I don't know anyone, not one human who has tasted this foie gras. It is miraculous foie gras that requires no force feeding. Alright, go ahead.
But you're saying you got chickens, you got chicken feed that is just so freaking good that these chickens just jam it all in. Is that what you're telling me? So i i it's more of a and and I'm hoping this works out because I just invested in 150 birds, uh, to try and get this up and going, get the product to market. But so if you imagine chickens have such like a an impulse to eat and the way that their system works with their their crop um is they're constantly digesting all day. So I can go out and I make like a lard or a tallow depending on what I have.
Uh render it all down, mix in a little bit of feed into that, and then put it in the freezer and chop it up. And then so I can go out three, four, five times a day, and I can feed these chickens and throw it down, and no matter how much they've eaten, because I'm showing up and is new, they continue to eat. Now I I know ch I know chickens are not vegetarians. Chickens are not vegetarians. Everyone should get this out of their head.
Chickens eat worms and bugs, all sorts of stuff. But do people give you crap about feeding uh beef fat to chickens or do they not? I just don't know what the current I don't I haven't really shared it that much that I'm doing it, that it that anyone would give me crap and if they did, I mean that's too bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Okay, go ahead.
I mean they they eat meat. I got a like two questions. I I fell on this by getting bigger yolks in the winter when I was feeding more tallow on on, you know, up in Vermont here when it's negative twenty five, um giving more fight to process and then the the next day the yolks would be just humongous. I like this. Um so it it's just it's a high labor process, um, meaning you it can't be like an automatic feed system.
So you you have to go out and like appear and spread the chickens. The chickens are out free ranging, and they I mean they just they just they see me coming and they just scram to chop chock chalk all that fat and and uh and then you also get really nice fricacy chickens when they start stop laying. So because they're on such a high fat content, when they're they're done laying uh older hens, they're like dynamite stew hens. Here's something Nastasi doesn't, I'm sure does not like the word of spent layer hens. He should send this one.
Uh but so what you're saying is you want it alive or dead. The taste of the taste of a spent hen, right? Obviously good from an old school chicken soup kind of a situation, but uh some people I know some people are put off by the texture of old birds. I I don't mind the chewiness because I know that they're gonna taste delicious. Does it does the feed ratio with the high fat actually like affect the texture too, or just increases their flavor profile?
Uh increases its flavor profile. It's almost like it it just makes a really um you you end up getting like really big fat pads inside the bird um that I I just leave them and cook and just don't eat them. Um but it it flavor profile I think is a lot better. Okay, so now I've also never researched uh I've never researched the fat content of poultry, the fatty acid profile of poultry based on the uh fatty acid components of the food that they eat. I have researched it in pork and in cows.
So I'm curious you're feeding uh you know hydrogenated fats to the the No, not not hydrogenated. Well, not hydrogenated, that's not what I meant to say. Solid. Solid fats. That's what I meant.
Saturated is the word I meant to use. Sorry. Correction. So you're feeding them saturated fats. Does that affect the fatty acid profile of the yolk?
Is the yolk have a different kind of action to it aside from size? Uh I would say it's deeper in color and it's definitely fattier. But in other words, have you tried feeding them some sort of more liquidy fat if that's possible to see whether you get a different texture of the egg yolk? No, because up up where I am, uh, you know, everyone in their neighbor does raises their own meat, you get farm fresh meat everywhere at grocery store prices, and uh the the tallow and the lard, your average homeowner doesn't know what to use. So I go up to people I know and they'll have like a whole chest freezer.
Your average homeowner is a jerk. Why don't they use it? True. Why don't they use it? Anyway, well I'm glad you're using it.
Yeah. And so I get it for a song. Okay. Um So if it takes a pound of feed to make X number of eggs normally, forget the labor for a minute. It takes a pound of feed to make X number of eggs, how much more pound typically.
What? Third of a pound of feed. Okay. So how much in this new technology does it take to get a an egg? You know, I haven't done the math because I just kinda go out and fro and they eat what they eat.
Right. I'm just trying to figure out how much more these are gonna have to cost. Oh, good question. Um so when I'm doing the fat, the feed their their feed production goes down, but their foraging production their foraging goes up. So when I'm doing when I'm into heavy into the fat, um they eat next to no grain.
And but they eat a ton more grass to compensate, I think, for the the high fat content. Okay. So you're saying naturally. So you're saying that the feed is not necessarily the the issue in price? Right.
It's it's the labor. Okay. Because like in order to do this, I've got to be on location. It's the labor that goes into it. You you've got to be attentive to them to get the really really really big yolks.
Okay, so give me a baseline for like farmer style eggs where you are and then what you want these to sell for these would probably end up wholesaling for probably five five fifty six bucks a dozen once I factor in the labor rate. You know, 150 birds are gonna give me roughly um you know ten dozen eggs a day. Uh and so you're you're being attentive to these birds for 10 dozen eggs a day. Wait so you're telling me that they I for under fifty cents an egg because you're not going to use this for baking or cooking. You're only going to use this for showing off the egg, right?
So it's not so bad. Right. So the the the the target market is actually like uh you know mom and pop country store that does breakfast sandwiches in the morning and they just want to up their game and and give a a really solid product. So like I don't know what uh uh I don't know what a dozen so uh obviously there's there's garbage eggs which are you know I don't know what they're what they go for like a dollar a dozen less yeah up here most people there's uh company called maple meadows they're kind of a I'd say a medium sized egg producer that's local here people pay about two fifty a dozen for them um but they're they're commercial the commercial ones you know they're your your uh oh commercial pack I can't think of the word right now but anyways what they buy in bulk are usually the odd sized eggs and then they have the uh regular eggs going into or the the two ounce eggs you know the perfect two ounce eggs going into the retail packs and you'll get a mixture of big and small eggs in the wholesale. So with this I'm hoping to push the uh all uniform jumbos out as the wholesale product.
Um for it's probably gonna end up being twice the cost. Yeah. Which when we're talking about a dozen dozen eggs. I would pay for that for like a Benedictose. I would like to see one of these eggs.
I'm interested in the technology. An odd size egg was my nickname in high school. No, no. All right, all right. So the the the only hiccup that I've had in this is is when the birds get really scared there's an increased rate of heart attack.
Well because they're fat. Yeah all right. Right. All right. But like we got hawks and you know there's the the the hawk will dive bomb and the heads have good protection.
They'll scare the crap out of them and I've had a couple drop dead from it. Um but besides that healthy bird and there's no force feeding. Yeah you you l you lost Nastasia until scared to death by a hawk and then she was like okay okay. Well you know it happens by a regular regular chickens too they just kind of die. Yeah.
Well you know it's a known fact that with uh um like things like pigs when they have like doubled muscles like double like like very lean and well actually it's the reverse they're lean but they're doubled muscles they get frightened and they keel over and die. They're like Yeah anytime you force something beyond its normal kind of parameters it's like living on the edge and then it like you know can keel over dead. Alright Nastasia's gonna rip my head out of stress bam so like we have to do if you have a smoking question it has to be within 10 seconds. I have to be able to answer within 10 seconds. Awesome.
Uh hot coast versus uh hot smoke versus cold smoke. Uh when you're cooking sous V before or after sous V, um what's the best technique? Uh I mean they hot smoke and cold smoke taste obviously very different. When you're cold smoking, you have to worry about um you have to worry about uh food safety. With hot smoking, you don't need to worry about food safety because you're increasing the safety as you go.
So if you're throwing a light smoke on it, you're gonna cook the hell out of it anyway, it's relatively big piece. I would just hot smoke it for for less time, pull it out before it gets overcooked and then cook it through on the on the sous vide. If you're doing it for a crust development, obviously anything you put in a bag is gonna get wet and soppy, it's gonna need to be crusted up afterwards. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
So can I safely do uh sous V and then do a cold smoke after? No. Not I mean, in other words, like if you if you do a co if you do a cold smoke, you're putting it in a situation because you haven't wiped out any of the anaerobic stuff that is going to be on it, right? You've out you've wiped out the vegetative cells, but you haven't wiped out anything. So if you put it in any sort of situation where there's a possibility of uh spores uh turning back into vegetative cells and producing toxin, then sous vide is not gonna help it unless there's a surface treatment that uh precludes uh botulism growing or or other or other things.
So no. Uh you aren't, I mean, obviously you're killing vegetative cells, so you're enhancing safety, but you're not making cold smoking on its own safe. Does that make sense? Yeah. So uh my the other part of that is is when we harvest our meat birds.
I've got I just got a cabinet pellet smoker, and it fits 12 birds at a time, 12 big birds at a time. Things monstrous. And can I do a cold smoke on them and then and then not worry about the growth and do a deep freeze to like negative fourteen to kill the bacteria? No. And then pull them out smoked, not raw.
No. Deep deep freeze will not kill bacteria. Deep freeze will just I mean it might kill some, but it freezing is only considered a kill step for uh worms and parasites, not for bacteria. So it stops them from multiplying, but doesn't stop them from existing or be or being there. So the the only way to if you're gonna cold smoke it, if you can actually keep it cold, i.e.
at 40 degrees, right, then it's just like storing it or you know, 40 degrees or below in Fahrenheit land. Then, you know, okay, now you can smoke it as though it was in a vacuum bag prior to cook. So you have it for as long as you would have in a vacuum bag prior to cooking to smoke it, then you can low temp it. But if you're if you're cold smoking it for hours and hours and hours at a temperature in the quote unquote, which I don't believe, but the quote unquote danger zone, then um you're you're in a in it for a world of hurt unless you actively stop the bacteria from growing. But smoking after, so jumping back to the cooking, smoking after sous V won't swamp out the sous V texture.
Uh smoking no, I mean it depends. Uh if you're cold smoking it and you're keeping it cold. Hot smoking. Oh, yeah, hot, yeah, yeah, yeah. It depends.
It depends on how big it is and how long you're gonna smoke it, right? So, I mean, again, everything depends, but like a big hawking piece of meat, if you're gonna smoke it for like 20 minutes at a hot temperature, then you're not gonna overdo it. You know what I mean? Like probably. If it's a small piece of meat, you could overcook it easily in 20 minutes.
I mean, if you ha if you can't if you look, if you're gonna do it industrially to chickens, or not semi-industrially, then I would just invest in keeping them um, you know, actual refrigerator temperature. I'd make sure they're salted properly. I might even nitrate them a little bit so that no one gets pissed off at you, and then do it for a couple of hours at refrigerator temperature and then so veed it, you should be fine. So no nitrates. My wife's so allergic to nitrates and lightshades.
So I don't do uh my life sucks when I have to cook for her. Yeah, yeah. Sorry about the whole nitrate thing. Nitrates are delicious. Yes.
Yeah, absolutely. Uh last time I called in, I was talking about reverse osmosis, milk, maple sugar. Um, so I've got like three or four farmers that are interested in it, and a couple of people with sugar houses. Uh, we're waiting until after season. I think we're gonna run some and see what happens.
All right, call us let us know. This episode is presented by Forever Cheese, a passion for great taste. Forever Cheese sources the highest quality and most unique cheeses and other products from Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Croatia, and imports them to the United States. Many under the Mitika brand. If it's Mitika, it's got to be incredible.
Learn more at Forevercheese.com. Are you enjoying this podcast? Heritage Radio Network has plenty more. My name is Michael Harlan Turkell, and I'm the host of the food scene here on HRN. This show explores the intersection of food, art, and design by talking to people who inspired by these ideas.
The show features food photographers, food stylists, interior designers, and so much more. All the players that make the world so visually delicious. You can find the food scene wherever you listen to podcasts and on heritageradio network.org. Hey, Dave, I actually emailed Saz a few days ago that was question too, but then I got a chance to call in. Um so my sister is getting married in August, and there's gonna be like 50 people there.
And she wants me to cater her wedding, which sounds like fun. Um it's gonna be outdoors. We'll have an oven, a stove, a barbecue, um emergent circulators, no deep fryer, um, and we'll have plenty of other equipment as we need. Um any general suggestions would be welcome, but also um we're gonna be doing a like a first course before the wedding, which we hope to be kind of prepping our mains during that time, um, during when people are are cycling in so that we can actually participate and be at the wedding. And so something that is um full prep ahead of time, doesn't need to be monitored in terms of temp, is not going to weep out uh and just kind of easy to have out so that we can do other things while people are munching on it.
Do you have any thoughts? Uh well you live in the Pacific Northwest, so if you're not worried about poisoning people, and I mean you do have to get temperature because it's crushed ice, but everybody loves a raw bar, and you got all that kind of crazy good raw bar stuff up there. I would love a raw bar. My sister doesn't like oysters. Um see, and you're in your question, you said there were no dietary restrictions.
There are no dietary restrictions. I should have said my sister does not like oysters, however. Have you considered getting a new sister? I she's pretty good otherwise. Okay.
All right. I know I would a rah bar would be so good. Yeah, you could do like you could or you could like, you know, you live in like gooey duckville. Can't you get some gooey ducks? You know, rip rip the everyone who's not seen videos of removing the skins off the gooey ducks is like one of the more suggestive cooking procedures.
I like it. I like that stuff. Oh, yeah. Let me see. So like yeah, right now, you because I read the question, I was like, ah, you should do a raw water.
They live in you want to see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then like I should have mentioned that. Yeah, but I should have mentioned that. So there's a lot of things that are good cold.
Right? Like it depends. Also, here's what you didn't say in your question, right? How fancy are the people, right? Because it's like there's a question of like, you know, the the weddings that Nastasia goes to, there's yellowtail on the table.
You know what I mean? I'm just making fun of her. She's making fun of her. I'm making fun of her friends, not making fun of Nastasi. Nastasia makes it.
No, no, no. No, she's hating the yellow tail. So the side joke is that whenever people come over to Nastasia's house, she's like, you brought yellow tail, I cook you a meal. Anyway, and so like the point being, I don't know how fancy your friends are, because you know, there's lots of things that are incredibly simple that can sit out forever, but they ain't exactly fancy. You know what I mean?
So it's like what level of the case. So is it that kind of the it does I think the first cruise doesn't have to be super fancy? So the rest of it's gonna be we're gonna, I mean, it's it's gonna be summertime, so there's gonna be great produce. And so for kind of like the first of the mains, this is gonna be like our charcuterie cheese, fruit, tomato. Oh, wait, wait, your mains is gonna be the charcuterie?
Because I was about to go charcuterie. I jerk, jerk. Uh the self-jerk, strong. Yeah, well, that's gonna be the first main, and then the main main, which is all gonna be at the same time, it's gonna be like some salmon and like uh prime red. Uh because you know what else is really good as uh as uh uh an appetizer is uh cold a cold whole filet of salmon with the dips.
Like it fantastic first. Yeah, yeah. We might we might just go like fancy popcorn, like I don't know. Uh hey, listen. Anyone on the chat room has an idea or tweet it because I get like uh so like my old school's stuff that used to like sit out forever and was fine is you get a table with a obviously any any dips, any dips.
Yeah, just do like a metse platter. Any dips like baba hummus, yeah, yeah, but like vegetables. Uh and I'm actually gonna say something Nastasi enjoys here, like uh artichokes. You like uh prepped artichokes, artichokes are delicious, delicious, and they can sit out forever. Like uh if you're doing salmon for your mane, because blah blah blah, Pacific Northwest, like chicken, a cold chicken roulade, like that you then slice up and you can like lay like fan out and you can have with like little toasts and things like this is nice.
Oh my god, Rhea any sort of rieette. You know what, you know what I like? I like I like a three a three meat choose your riette. Ooh. Where you got the duck riette, you got the pork riette, and then rabbit, you could do rabbit, which I enjoy rabbit.
Um so I you know, but the problem is is like you don't want this to parasit, if you're gonna do a charcuterie thing, you don't want this to parasitize your uh parasitize your your your charcuterie. Here's another thing I'm gonna mention to you. Uh your sister is gonna be freaking busy getting married, so she ain't gonna eat the first appetizer anyhow. You're gonna be lucky if she gets one fork full of food in her face the whole freaking day. You're gonna have to actually force her to eat if she's getting married.
So it wouldn't eat to have some oysters and some raw bar out there for the people who are normal. You know what I mean? For the normal people. Well that's that's uh that's a good point. As long as there's other stuff that she can eat, you know what I mean?
Yeah, and then you can have a nice mignonette, you can have a nice cocktail sauce. You know what I'm saying? Are you doing drinks here? Like a shrimp cocktail. Everyone loves shrimp cocktail.
Well, most people do. I was who is it that doesn't like shrimp? Is it Nastasia that doesn't like shrimp? No, it no, it's not you, or no. Somebody I know doesn't like shrimp.
I don't like that person. Yeah. Well, shrimp is good. Shrimp, though, shrimp is like, whenever you eat a shrimp, you're like, imagine if this was crab. That's true for most crustaceans, though.
Yeah, we have we have I mean we have a ton of dungeoness out here. Yes, I'm familiar with the crabs on your part of the world, but the problem with them is they're a huge pain in the behind to pick. God, are they good? So unless you're gonna pay someone else to pick them for you, like, or you want to spend the entire morning picking the meat out of Dungeness crabs, it's kind of a freaking nightmare. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Oh, I've done it many times. Yeah, many, many times. I once ruined a Valentine's Day dinner by saying it was going to be done in a reasonable amount of time and then deciding to make Dungeon Esque crabs. Like, and my my wife doesn't enjoy like cracking apart decopod crustaceans and ripping the meat out of them.
So I had to crack I had to crack and pick it all, and she's like, Are we gonna uh we're gonna eat now? This is not a sexy Valentine's Day look, waiting for your husband who has crab pieces sprayed all over his face to pick out. That's like aroma too. Oh, it's a sweet, sweet aroma. And the aroma is uh repellent if you hadn't had to do it.
So if you're if you get to eat the crab, that's good, but then you have to go to sleep with the person who's been coated in crabs. Whose like hands have like literally been tattooed with crab stink based on the like shells going through his fingers as he was picking the crab out? Not a good look. Right now around here is $5.99 a pound. And in my opinion, it's superior to lobster.
Oh yeah. Yeah, that's that's that's 100%. Yeah. Look, lobsters, the here's the good thing about lobster people. Like, I I happen to like lobster.
Uh, but it in the pantheon of things, crab is way up high. Much more delicious. Way up high. Then underneath crabs are most shrimp forms, like the larger prawny ones are a little. Then comes lobster.
Yeah. And like carabanero's up there. But like the the nice thing about lobster is it's just big and it's easy to get. It's easy to get to. Like a lobster is the fastest, like, like get full, as long as see I actually eat all the little parts of the lobster.
Oh, yeah, squeeze all the meat out of those legs. So it takes me a while to do it, but the average jerk jerk jerk who just eats the tail and throws the rest away. Like, I can have the tail out of a lobster before I can tell you I'm getting the tail out of the lobster. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Like crawfish, by the way, below lobster. Yeah. But good. They're good. Yeah.
They're good. Crawfish, that's why the thing people mistake about crawfish is it's it's all about the soak after the cook. It's cook and soak because the meat itself is flavorless because they live in fresh water. Most freshwater things, this is actually the failure of many shrimp, is that they're grown in too fresh of a water, right? Because they're farmed.
And so, like, things that live in fresh water, I mean, the exception in certain fish. I mean, like, I like a trout. Is trout really flavorful or is trout good smoked? After you smoke it. Yeah.
So, like, so the point being that you know, uh, lobster is good, but it ain't no crab. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
All right. Well, if you have any other thoughts, throw them out, but thank you for the help. All right. Now let's know how it works out. Uh, Alex wrote in with a uh follow up, asked us about cooking the Canadian geese.
As everybody knows, geese are the devil, and they should all be shot, either turned into coats or comforters, or food. And but we've never I've never eaten a Canadian goose. Uh so this was the follow-up. Uh okay, uh, Alex says we were correct to call the meat squidgy rather than tender. After 45 minutes at 57 degrees Celsius, which is by the way, about 135 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a good number for duck breasts.
It was extremely tough and chewy. After about three hours, it had tenderized somewhat. And after four hours, it was reasonably tender. Although I'll have to say, long cooking something like this to make it reasonably tender, usually just makes it so your teeth can break it up, but it makes it fibrous, fibrous. What do you think about that word, Nastasi?
You don't mind fibers? It doesn't care about anything. She's like, I'm I'm done thinking about this. I know this is my job to think about this, but I don't really care. I just don't care.
You disgust me so much, Dave, that I can't even think about what you're saying for 10 seconds. Uh but it was becoming increasingly sour with a pronounced dog food aroma. The dog food aroma is probably some sort of protein breakdown product or some sort of you maybe it's what I call livery. It's that livery note that things get, which is uh, let's just say uh unpleasant in a in a in a goose breast. These attempts all ended up in the compost.
Since the higher temperature seemed to help, I also tried 60C after which is 140 degrees Fahrenheit for you people who are keeping track of this. After four hours, the results were comparable to 57C, tender enough for dinner. I should note that these breasts came with no skin and fat. The meat was extremely lean, presumably because they lead an active life in the wild. Are these results typical of wild meats?
I mean, usually they're leaner. Uh except for if you get like the official, the official bird, the official wild birds, you eat them when they're in there gorging. Like, so like I've never had an ordalon, but like super fat because it's like eating a lot, or bobble links, which is the rice bird. They eat a super lot and they get fatty, fat, fat, fatty, fat, fat. Hey Nastasia, remember that time I ate a woodcock in front of you?
And I sprayed the guts all over your face. Oh, yeah. The look on Nastasia's face is maybe the best look I've ever had uh while sitting across from someone at dinner. The look was complete discussion, uh disg uh disgust and revulsion. It was like it was like Was that after the pear thing?
Was it? Yes, we went to Hicks. Yes, it was. Uh so anyway, um Daniel from Cleveland from Cleveland, Ohio, writes in about soda. I have a question about making sodas at home.
I have a carbonation rig and a box of bag and box diet coke syrup. Strong diet coke move, by the way, people. I like some diet coke. Uh you know who else likes Diet Coke? My partner Don.
Yeah. Yeah. Don drinks it. Nastasia, you you a diet soda hater? I don't like diet.
Don't like diet. Do you like soda though? Mm-hmm. But you don't like diet. No.
I'm not a diet person. Matt? Oh, he's busy talking to somebody. I like diet soda. I find that uh uh if you are buying, I think I've said this on the air before, if you are a not diet soda uh drinker, right, and you are buying diet soda for a gathering or party, know this.
Diet soda drinkers drink about five times as much soda as you do, as a sugarful soda drinker. So uh if you think that one-fifth of the people are going to drink diet versus regular, then you should get the same amount of diet as regular because they will drink five times as much. Okay? Just letting you know this. Uh because people who drink diet soda consume it as hydration, not as a sweet snack.
We drink it as hydration. Just a little word to the wise. Um so I've been carbonating water to about 50 psi, but when mixed with the syrup at a one to five dilution, which is uh so most like um simple syrup, 50 bricks simple syrup that we like we would use at the bar, like that usually to get a soda-e kind of thing, runs usually in about one to four, right? Uh, but that adds too much syrup, makes it not as carbonated. So most syrups have a higher bricks, and they're running, which is another reason why they like to use corn syrup because it's thinner at those bricks.
Uh they're running higher, so you can do a one to five, just FYI. Uh the end result is still pretty flat tasting since so much of the fizzy water has been replaced by flat syrup. Not just flat, not just flat, Daniel. Warm, warm. Are you are you chilling your freaking syrup?
Because there's two problems you have. One, it is flat. Two, it is probably warm. And the warmness is killing you almost as much as the flatness is. Would you agree, Jack?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um I was thinking about mixing the syrup with still water and carbonating the whole shebang, but I'm worried I'll run into problems there too. You will not. I I yeah, I can't feasibly think of a problem you would run into there.
You will not run into a problem. Mix it, chill it, carbonate it. Yes. Now, if you're doing it in a keg, the problem you're gonna have is that 999% of the people don't know how to carbonate in a keg properly. They do a wretched job and they suck.
They should be punished for what they have done. It's about getting the air out, and then you can't possibly agitate enough unless you put a very small amount of water in the keg and shake it real hard. Even I read one of the instructions because we ordered one at the bar for one of these recirculating carbonators. Yeah. And the instructions in it are wrong because they don't have you purging out the air that's in there, and the air in a system, unless it's purged properly, is never going to go away because it doesn't dissolve.
So it's where is it gonna go? Jack, where's it gonna go? There, it's just gonna stay. It's gonna freaking stay there. Yeah, and then that makes you a jamoke.
Or as our last caller said, jerk jerk. Okay. Uh Paris wrote in uh about this last week. We mentioned it, even though Nastasi said I didn't mention any of the calls. She's a liar, as usual.
My name is Paris. I have a couple of questions about the use of food grade lye. I'm currently testing out a deep fried pretzel. Remember we talked about this? Oh, now you remember.
Uh so Paris was uh doing a bake, then a lie, then a uh then then the fry. That's gonna saponify your oil somewhat. Reverse it, see what happens. Also, have you seen, I know everyone's been talking about it, but this freaking bagel thing on the on the internets where these idiots have been slicing the bagel in the wrong way and everyone's mad about it. Oh, yeah.
Do you know why that happened? No. It's because it was in first of all, you know why it's St. Louis style? Why they said it was St.
Louis style. For those of you that don't know, just look up St. Louis bagel slicing. It's because that's what Paneras is called in St. Louis, because that's where they're from.
And they're doing it to Panera's bagels. And so the the thing is, they're like, it's a good way to sample a bagel. No, it's not a good way to sample a bagel because it's like it's like the equivalent of not knowing what direction to cut a ham. The difference between the it's a different texture. It's like you can't get the chewiness proper of a bagel by slicing it vertically.
You can't be done. And the issue is Panera, you're just not making your crust chewy enough to have it be an accurate bagel, and this is why you think it's acceptable to cut it the wrong way. In my opinion. Remy writes in. Hold on, wait, we got a question from the chat that's specifically for you and Jack.
So while Jack's here, I feel like we should maybe do that one. Okay. Yeah. Are you fans of incorporating smoke into cocktails? I ask this because there's an ancient Arabian technique of bringing mastic to its smoking point, capturing it in a vessel, pouring water into the vessel, and then sealing it.
When refrigerated, the result is a clean pine slash cedar tasting water 15 to 30 minutes later. You are a clean pine cedar flavored water. That's rude, Dave. I like I like mastic. There's also, are you familiar with the uh Thai funeral candles?
No. No. Yeah. So you take it, you you like these, you like these can these scented candles, and then you put them in a thing with like uh custard, you put a cloche over it, and the the thing gets scented with the with the smoke from the stinking candle from Thailand. I'm paraphrasing.
A Thai person can tell me what an a-hole I am. But uh, but that's roughly what happens. So look, anything as traditional, I mean, I think it's cool trying it. The question is, does it does it taste good? I mean, I think find that most things most times I don't want smoke on my thing.
If it's clean tasting, great. Most smoked cocktail things that I've had are more on the acrid side. Almost exclusively acrid. I've never had a smoked cocktail that I enjoyed. More more than just the cocktail without the smoke.
It's just gonna uh affect the balance in a negative direction. Jack, you like frankincense in a cocktail? Nastasia hates it. I am on the fence. I can't say that about it.
My wife hates it. Nastasia doesn't do you like the smell of frankincense? Do you like the smell of church? No. Is that why you don't like it?
I think I could make a nostalgia cocktail that I would enjoy based on the aroma of church. But only people who have specifically frankincense aroma church as like a uh uh what's it called? Reference. You know what I'm saying? I feel like it's just gonna end up being musty.
No, it's like weird. It's like floral and weird in a weird way. It's weird. It tastes smells like frankincense. Yeah.
Anyway, so you're a Guinness. What about mastic? I like the smell of mastic. I actually too. I like Mastika in a thing, but I've never heard of burning it.
Anyway. I'm I'm I I'll try anything because I'm just saying that I don't often have things that are s quick smoked that don't taste uh acrid. Now, we all not actually, not all of us. Actually, I just lied. Not everyone likes peat.
But like we like smoky flavors when it comes from things like peat, but they tend to be moderated because there's a lot of steps that it goes through after the smoke has been applied to a secondary item, peat. Then you get that burning, then that gets into the malt, then the malt gets fermented, then the sucker gets distilled, blah, blah, blah. A lot of steps to mellow it out. If I'm gonna add smoke to a drink, I'm gonna use a Pedid Scotch or a mezcal. That like a smokier mezcal, not one of the more vegetable ones.
And I'm gonna add, you know, I can add a very controlled amount. Is that your uh high school angst movie? The veg ones? The vegetable ones? Oh, yeah, the vegetable ones.
Yeah. Uh Remy writes in some friends and I are hosting a fundraising dinner, and one of our cooks would really like to work with liquid nitrogen at the dinner, both for desserts and cocktails. We're home enthusiasts with little to no professional experience, but who have uh played around with modernist techniques for years. As a long time, cooking issues listener, I'm familiar with some of the health and safety issues regard uh regarding liquid nitrogen, but I'm looking for a detailed guide to safely using it in a home setting. We found a place that we can rent a doer, and I'm familiar with basics like never sealing a container with liquid nitrogen, never having even the possibility of serving uh cryogens to a guest and not keeping it in enclosed space.
What else do I need to be on the lookout for? Thanks, Remy. Well, go uh it I'm assuming that it's not a German porn site anymore. Go on CookingIssues.com uh and look for the liquid nitrogen primer. I go through a lot of the safety things there, and most of that stuff is still, you know, still good.
When you're the the main thing I'm worried about you is when you're transporting it, is like making sure that when you're transporting it to that your car isn't sealed up or that you know the best is to have it in the back of a pickup truck. Uh that's the the ideal. Uh and Jack, you want to tell him the the liquid nitrogen uh safety song? Uh all right. Whether you want it or not, you want to get it doesn't it doesn't make sense without the dance, so we can save that for another time.
But there are 10 things to consider when uh handling liquid nitrogen. Uh protecting your hands, not wearing uh baggy or loose fitting clothing, uh keeping a safe distance while someone else is pouring, using a firm grip while you are pouring the the nitrogen. Uh don't wear jewelry because it can freeze and burn you terribly. Uh protect your eyes while you're pouring, at least like don't allow it to splatter into your eyes. Like we never wear eye protection at the bar, but just be be careful, be a person.
Don't put yourself in a situation where splashes could happen. Yeah, have a clear path to the exit. Be in a well ventilated area. Uh don't use it alone. Make sure someone knows that you're using liquid nitrogen and don't leave it unattended.
Remember that time I accidentally spilled liquid nitrogen all over Nastasia at that event? Well, it wasn't really a spill, you threw it directly into her face. I didn't throw it in your eye. It wasn't the side of your face. Okay, so uh Scott writes in about jungle birds.
I need Jack for this one. There's two questions I need Jack for, so we gotta do it. My name is Scott, and I'm a bartender out here in LA. I'm struggling with the jungle bird. Uh give me this, give me a jungle bird spec right now, Jack.
Well, I can tell him right now that the thing he's struggling with is that Cruz Anne's black strap is no longer good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that's what this is about. But give the spec on. Yeah, so it's like two ounces of rum blend, which is, you know, generally at least an ounce of blackstrap, and then I like it with at least, you know, three-quarters of an ounce of Jamaican rum, maybe something else going on there too, usually all aged.
And then so appletons. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no. You know, I'm I'm more of a Smith and Cross in a jungle bird. Okay, so you want some mega hogal.
You want some hogo funk. Okay. Hogo funk, blackstrap. Uh, you know, human recipe is like an ounce of pineapple juice, three-quarter ounce of lime, half kampari, half simple. Okay, there you go.
Enough. That's the standard. Yeah. Okay. I'm struggling with the jungle bird.
A lot of really good jungle birds out there that I've had are based around blackstrap, rum with heavy molasses base to balance out the bitterness, but I don't want to have to rely on that because you can't. Yeah, but you could buy blackstrap molasses. Every experiment I've done to try to balance out the drink without blackstrap breaks apart because the moment you add citrus to bitter aperitivo like compari, the bitterness shoots up exponentially. Uh on the other end of the spectrum, without the citrus, the sweetness is super high, like a Negroni. I work at a bar with more than 90 a morrow and have tried 10 plus aperativos to see if it makes a difference, but all of them are the same.
Do you know why citrus and compari have this reaction? Campari gets more bitter over time when stored with acids like citrus. Uh I remember a hundred episodes, you mentioned this, blah, blah, blah. Is there any research out there to figure out why this happens, or if there's some sort of acid you can add that doesn't have this reaction? Uh no.
Uh so there you have a side note by the way. Eucalyptus oil is considered to be toxic, but eucalyptus itself is on the uh generator regarded as safe list. As someone who does more research, how is this possible? It's because of concentration. It's the same reason why usually, you can't like usionol's not safe, but clove is because it's just concentrated.
Now, Jack, your solution to this problem is You're not adding enough sugar. Well, no, he's saying drinks. You're saying add like buy black strap. Buy blackstrap molasses and add it to a rum and then taste it like that. But it sounds like the the reason that it's too bitter is because you're not adding sugar.
It sounds like you're just doing pineapple juice, lime, kampari, rum. Let's assume they're not. But like what you're saying, add some black strap. I think what you need to do. You ran tests on it.
You literally ran tests on this, and how was it? It becomes delicious. Okay. What you need to do is make sure that the drink is balanced. Yeah, yeah.
But the point is, is that you can just buy black strap molasses. What brand do you use? What's the the yellow? It's the one with that. It's someone with the god dang barrel of it.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would never use that stuff on its own. Garbage, garbage, no, but yeah. Anyway. Uh, all right.
We uh let me see. Isabel from Vancouver, BC, Canada writes in. Uh, thanks for taking my question, Nastasia. If you're still interested in keeping track, I'm a 30-year-old woman married to a 31-year-old man, and I buy all the appliances and kitchen stuff I desire a lot more than he does, in fact. I'm not in a financial place to buy a spinz all yet, but trust me, I will eventually get it.
Every year or so, my friend uh who has an amazing kitchen but doesn't cook, so sad, which is so sad. It's so sad. What's the point? What's the point of having it? It's like say I you know what, I have a really nice bathroom, I don't poop.
Anyway, uh hosts a party for some of our closest friends, and my husband and I cook a meal for everyone. Usually they are themed. Last year we did Mexican food. This year we'll be doing Italian, or as Nastasi says, Italian. We have uh the menu sorted out, but the cocktails are a work in progress.
I'd like to offer up Negronis, that's good. Limoncello. Uh, and something with grappa. I have to say I'm not a huge fan of grappa on its own. By the way, it's hard to say you're not a fan of grappa on its own because they are widely variant.
So get some Romano Levi and tell me you're not a fan of Grappa. I like the Nar the Nardini, the one that says aqua vita, that grappa. That's that stuff's good. That's just some good grappa. Anyway, uh so there are very different grappas out there.
Not all grappa is crappa. Uh, but the I see, so I'd like to make it amazing. I'm not a huge fan of grapple, but I'd love to create an amazing cocktail with it. And I'm open to pretty much anything that isn't too sweet. My father, of course, if it's too sweet, you like you just hit a trigger.
It's just not too sweet. You just hit a trigger with Jack. Because of course it's not gonna be too sweet because it's gonna be balanced. There you go. Uh what you mean is you want it on the less sweet side.
That is a valid thing to say. Yes. Yeah. Um this isn't too sweet. My father-in-law brings us grappa and grappa miel, which is like from Uruguay, which is Uruguay grappa with honey in it, which I've never had.
You ever had that yet? No, I'd like to try it. Yeah. Uh as mentioned above, we don't have a spinzall yet, so that's the only tool I can't really use. The party will be in about four months uh to ensure we can use the best in seasoned tomatoes.
Any ideas, thanks in advance. Give me some grappa cocktails. Drink, just drink grappa. Just you're being unhelpful. I know I am, but like uh it's uh it's a category of spirit that I don't have a ton of experience making cocktails with because of a price point issue.
There's one grappa on the market that's reasonably inexpensive. It's called grait. Uh, it's fine. Uh it's good in martini style cocktails as sort of a split-based situation. You can make a sour with it easily that tastes like a sour.
There there isn't really a great way to highlight the character of grappa. Some grappas some grappas are really rough. Yeah. Some grappas are more stemy and seedy, and some are more grapey, right? Yeah.
So like if you're getting a grapey one, then you could you could just do a fiend green. You can just do a sour. But yeah, but like, so the fiend green is Bobby Murphy's uh drink, and it's it's Armagnac, right? Which is uh unaged armignac. Blanche armagnac, so on the grapier side.
Yeah. Right. Well, obviously, yeah, if you're doing a lemon, yeah, chartreuse, a little bit of chartreuse, and then tarragon, uh, a little bit of parsley and chervil, that's delicious. It is delicious. And you could nitro muddle that.
That would be delicious. Do they have access to liquid nitrogen in their home? Uh I I don't know. No, but you could you could blender muddle it. Yeah.
I also, I also once did a a grap a grappa and pumper nickel actually go well together and grapefruit. So you could do like grappa, pumper nickel, soak the grappa. Acid adjusted grapefruit. Yeah. I'm sure it would be delicious.
Yeah. That's what I so I did, I did a I did a I did, I forget what the I forget what the, but I did like an acid, an acid uh grapefruit grappa with I had soaked the grappa in pumpernickel bread and then squeezed it out. It was good. All right, here's here's a spec for you that I'm certain will be delicious. Um so the acid-adjusted grapefruit we're we're talking about is 40 grams of citric per liter of fresh grapefruit juice.
So one ounce of that, one ounce of the grappa of your choice, three-quarter channar, three-quarter Aperol. Okay, so and then okay, so Jeremy, you have a question about liquid intelligence. I will get to that uh next week, because it just takes it takes longer to read it than they will allow me to continue to speak here on the uh on the air. Uh also Sid, uh, how do you pronounce how do you pronounce Thor's hammer? Mjolnir?
Okay. He uh so Sid says, Miss Nastasia, say it again. Mjolnir. Lopez and the engineering crew, you said hello, but uh I'll deal with your big green egg question. Uh actually, you know what?
I'll I'll deal with it. I'll deal with it real quick. So in short, uh you want to use a big green egg. Now, bear in mind that I am not a big green egg kind of a person because big green eggs are all about maintaining a temperature over a long period of time. And I'm all about so I use like a cowboy grill and heat it up to eight billion degrees or a Tandoor and heat it up to 8 billion degrees.
I'm not so much with maintaining, I'm not about maintaining, but the big green egg is all about maintaining. So it's a different style of cooking. And you want to use uh uh an also ran um an also ran uh big green egg. I would do this. Here's something, and this is my last piece of advice, and I could talk more about it next week, Sid.
But the the point is that um I found out something new recently. You familiar with Fake Spot? What is FakeSpot? Justin, you know Fake Spot? So go to FakeSpot.com, go to Amazon, get the URL from Amazon, and then go to Fake Spot, and then Fake Spot does an analysis.
Now it's not 100%, because it's a computer based analysis. Does an analysis of the reviews of that product to try to figure out whether they're real or whether they are a BS and it analyzes the language of all of them, it analyzes the language and everything, and then gives a letter grade based on uh based on like how you know accurate they think the reviews are in terms of whether a human who knows what they're saying has left it and the product that you linked to got a D on fake spot. Now it doesn't mean that they that that's true, but when I went and looked at the negative reviews, one of the negative reviews was someone who said it's fine if you already know how to use a big green egg or other expensive Kamado grill, but it doesn't keep temperature as well, so you have to be very skilled in using it. And a couple other people said the cast iron grate in it tends to be too brittle and shatter with use, and another person said that the bolts melted off. Now they might have just been trying to use it like I would as a jet engine.
Right? Uh, and then I wouldn't blame them or blame that, but just read about it and and and look and check out fake spot for all of your reviewing. And uh, Jack, thank you for your coming on. Always happy to be here. Matt, see you guys next week or listen to you, whatever, whatever we do, cooking issues.
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