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Please gamble response. Muckle shoot. This episode is brought to you by you. Go to Heritage Radio Network.org slash donate to become a member today. 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 pretty damn close to 12, actually this time. From Rupert Sabia. Ah, Robert. Rupert of Space Rambus with Brooklyn! Joined as usual with Nastasia Lopez.
How you doing? Good. You're hammering it up this weekend. Yeah, getting ready for the Christmas. Nastasia Lopez has stolen, stolen, she asked for it.
It wasn't stolen. I wish it was stolen. It'll be a little bit better if it's stolen, but get this, people. She stole some bows from the official Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. And so in the next week, the next couple of days, actually, if we can ever be in the same room long enough, Nastasi and I are going to distill Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.
So what's this? What's the tagline? Oh, I forget. What was it? Something good, right?
Get lit on. What? What is this? You'll think of it in a second. But the whole point is is that if you want the opportunity to actually be drinking the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, suck it, because it's only us people.
Right? We're not gonna get really well. I mean, like, how are we gonna get it to actual listeners? Oh yeah, no. Well, you know, we got Matt in the booth.
How are you doing, Matt? I want to taste that tree. Bring it. Alright. You're gonna have to come to us.
Whoa. Wow. Wow. All right. Styles real rough.
It's not like we have a weekly thing that we both attend. We're not gonna see you till January. It's so true. Yeah. Uh that's right.
This is the last show before the hot. No, we'll bring a little taste, a little taste, a little taste. We're gonna distill it because Nastasi was like, that's so hot. Maybe we should make a syrup. And I was like, Well, don't you want it to be really, really good?
Because the syrup's not gonna be as good. Syrup's gonna be not as good. You know what I mean? No, no, what do you think, Sas? Yeah.
Nastasi and I have a long history of distilling Christmas trees. Yeah. People were like, did you, did you make sure that the tree that you distilled was organic? We're like, come on, man. Come on.
Come on. We washed it. No, we didn't bave. We haven't distilled it yet. Oh, the old trees we never washed.
We washed that, didn't we? Mm-hmm. Eh, it was for MTV. You always told people you did. It was for MTV people.
Speaking of uh people, we have a full studio today. We have like so today is like the the Oura King salmon, right? Which is, you know, the famous salmon from New Zealand. We have the team in uh along with with Maisie here, who's a friend of Nastasia's, and also just a pro not a publicist for Oura King salmon, just a professional lover of Oracing Salmon. That is correct.
Yeah, yeah. Uh and then we have so I'm Dave, if you're listening. We have Dave Vid, and say hi. Hi. Now, what is your relationship to the Oricing salmon?
So I'm the uh sales manager for the East region of North America. Now it's nice to know that they hire, I mean, I mean, whatever, but like they don't force like a New Zealand person to be the sales rep in North America. They they have an honest to God North American doing it. Unless you're a spy. You can do like different accents so perfectly that I can't tell.
Well, David Smith would be a perfect spy name, right? Yeah, yeah, it's true. It's true. Be perfect, be perfect. Alright, so and then uh over here, I'm gonna I remember them because they've arranged themselves in the Saturday Night Live name order.
We have Lauren. Hello. But Loren, not Lauren. Lauren. Two syllables.
Yeah, and and uh what's your relationship to the Oracle? I am David's counterpart, so I am the West region sales manager. So any kind of question you have over any part of North America, where does it divide? Is it divide at the Mississippi or at the Rockies? Chicago.
Chicago, not even to the Mississippi. So wait, who gets Chicago? Um it has fallen in my territory. Uh listen, uh for those of you that aren't from the United States, Chicago ain't in the West. I'm just gonna go ahead and say that.
It's a bone of a contention. Yeah, I mean, I mean Denver, Western City. Chicago? No. No, not so.
Not so much. Yeah. But whatever, you're like, I'll take it. Why? Is that where you're based?
Is that why that happened? No, I'm based in Sacramento, California. Ooh, sat down. You like Sacramento rap? Um, I don't think I've I don't know if I'm so familiar with Sacramento.
There's a lot of rappers out of Sacramento. Yeah. I know that East Bay has a lot of rappers, but um, but in terms of how is Chicago in the West region, um, if you look at the US as a whole and think about the amount of consumers that would be using Oura King from basically outside of California in the Midwest. Um there's not a whole lot in the Midwest, so it made sense to add Chicago to my territory in terms of just big cities. Number of humans who buy salmon.
Yeah, it's it's not so much in Wyoming and North Dakota, South Dakota. Plus, I really wanted Texas, so. Oh, that's why so it's so it's a crooked. It's a crooked line. I traded Texas for Chicago.
All right. Chicago for Texas. All right. All right. Okay.
Lauren also gets Hawaii. Oh. Yeah. Oh, uh we'll get back to the West Coast in in just just an itty bitty, itty bitty minute, right? Because uh it's gonna be an interesting problem with the King Salmon and New Zealand and like introduction in the early 1900s, etc.
etc. We'll get into this in a minute. But we also have uh another uh Aura King uh human, we have uh Michael with us. How are you doing? I am well, thank you.
Yeah, so and what is your relationship to the Oura King? Uh I'm the vice president of sales for the North America market. So you're kind of the overlord of salmon for the New Zealand King. Overlord. Overlord.
All right. So call in all of your salmon-related questions to 7184972128. That's 7184972128. Let me just say at the very beginning that my older son Booker has since he was a tiny boy been a fan of Russ and Daughters appetizing shop. And which, if you've never been to Russ and Daughters, bring your wallet.
Uh like I love it, but let's just say they know how to charge and they're not afraid to do so. But the quality is top-notch, and by the way, if you've never had if you've never had uh salmon cut by an expert, freshly cut by an expert, and you're only now if all you can get is pre is pre-packaged, pre-cut, I'm not saying that you're like, you know, a terrible person, right? Because you just don't live where there are Jews. But if you have been to a place where you can go get freshly cut cured salmon and you taste that, you you really can't go back. Really, you really can't go back.
And Russ and Daughters, even though, yes, I know it's true, you know, most everything everybody gets is from Acme, blah, blah, blah. But, which is a fish curing place uh here in New York, uh, their product is consistently top-notch, their slicers are top notch, and they are a slice of New York that you should not miss if you come to New York. Now, the reason I bring this up is that uh with the exception of some weird little Scottish things and some other like you know, little bizarre nuggets of stuff they get in every once in a while, the top shelf of uh Russ and Daughters salmon panoply, and by the way, they have more than six types of salmon that you can cut. I just made it up, but it's true. More than six.
The top, the very top, it's not called Aura King there, it's called New Zealand King, but I verify that it is in fact an Oura King salmon, and this has been my son Booker's favorite since he was a small child. Now, uh I also, because you know, who wants to pay that kind of money to feed at the time like a seven-year-old, right? You know, with like like a an extremely picky, autistic spectrum child who wants to shovel ridiculously expensive salmon down their throat to the tune of like a half pound at a time, right? Because I mean, who who wants to do that? Not me, right?
So, you know, uh no offense to the Norwegians, but the Norwegians have a relatively low-fat Atlantic salmon that they farm salmon that they cure, and it's fine, but it's on the cheaper end of the Russ and Daughters salmon list, right? Not a bad product. Uh New Zealand King though. So I remember when he was about seven, maybe seven or eight, I bought uh New Zealand King, and I bought the Norwegian, and I blinded him on it, and he just pounded literally, I was like, What you know, what do you think of these two salmons? And he just pounded the entire New Zealand king.
It just ripped through the New Zealand King. So my so Booker, from a very early age, has not only loved this product, but consistently been able to choose it in blind taste tests. So after he, by the way, after he did that, I was like, oh, buy it. Okay, fine. You know what I mean?
Like, fine. You know, he's the same thing with uh fish row. He loves, he he loves uh you know, salmon, specifically Ikura. He eats that by the half kilo roughly. Oh, he's gonna love you so much.
He eats that by the half kilo. So he'll buy a half kilo and then just kind of eat it. Uh but at Russ and Daughters, he buys the it's not your product, but he buys the French trout row, and he's only limited in by that by money, because there's only so much I will spend. Nastasia once bought how much did you buy from for his birthday that time? I don't remember.
It was an absurd amount. Yeah. He ate it in one sitting. Like, Nastasi was like, Oh, he can get like $50 worth of it, or something ridiculous. And so he got the tub of it because I always walk in, I was like, I will buy you exactly $10 worth.
And so like Russ and Daughters would sit there with a little scoop and make him his little bit of French trout row. He walks and said, I'll take $50 worth. And then he just Hoovered. Anyways, so lover of your product. On a side tangent, which we'll talk about here, and I'm gonna let you guys talk about it as soon as I tell you what I'm interested in talking about.
Uh I came to my attention, I don't know, in 2009, 2010, that New Zealand was at the forefront of fish anesthesiology in a product called Aqui S, which is an isousional usionol-based fish anesthetic. This fish anesthetic, uh, I ran many, many tests on it uh because I was able to get it on kind of just a you know, here play with it, even though it's not technically allowed for use as fish fit as fish anesthesia for food in the United States. It is, I believe, for moving high value marine animals around. And ran test after test of anesthetized fish, fish that were anesthetized before they were slaughtered, and consistently across the board, less uh less gaping in the fillets because the rigor is l is less hard, uh, firmer flesh throughout because it's just less damaging stuff through rigor, and as a side benefit, the salmon are freaking out less when they're getting you know bled out in the water by the bushel film. Okay.
So uh I was like, huh, this product is from New Zealand, it can't come into the United States. And then I remember once at a trade show, I went to your booth and I was like, yo, you guys use the aqueous, and they were like, yes. And I was like, whoa! So I took that as information that this is maybe the only I know that some people pump gases into the water stream for uh an you know, let's say calming the fish before they get slaughtered, but at least back then it was my impression that you are, and you could tell me is the only people that are using this uh kind of anesthetic, which is known to me to make a better quality fish for a uh commercially sold product. Is that still true or was it ever true?
It it was true. It is no longer true. Um all those things you just said, all the benefits are accurate. And we did use it as a uh anesthesia to uh to help with a humane harvest, reduce the stress on the fish. It's it's based on clove, right?
It's a clove essence. So if you think about it, like if you have a toothache, what was the old traditional way that you would deal with the pain on your tooth? You'd put clove oil on it. Especially if you watch the Marathon Man and were really afraid of Nazis. Yeah.
Great movie. Um, yeah, so Aquies was uh basically kind of taking that uh and applying it in a setting where fish were going through a stressful moment and trying to calm them. Um so there was ethical reasons behind it, you know, being humane harvest, and then there was also qualitative reasons where you get better flesh quality um through the use of it. And the regulations here in the United States uh honestly were all they were never clear. Uh it was generally regarded as safe, G-R-A-S.
As a spice. Uh I mean, like usually and isousionol were generally regarded as safe for use in foodstuffs. Yeah. Yeah. The sticky thing was whether or not it was rated as a medicine for fish, right?
Wasn't it this some stupid that was my impression at the time. Go ahead, sorry. My impression, and this is, you know, I'm on the sales side, so I'm I'm not the compliance guy, but my impression was it was all very vague and open-ended, um, and there were no regulations against it. Uh but a few years ago, we got some pushback um um from uh one of the agencies here, and we're like, well, you know, it's not really clear. We were under the impression this is approved and there's all these great benefits from it.
Uh there's no harmful benefits that were harmful effects that we're aware of. Uh but the agency said no, we just want you to stop using it, you should stop using it. Bloodheads. And so uh and so we did. Yep.
So listen, uh so do we so and did you stop using it across the board, or do you just stop using it in stuff that you ship to the US? Uh across the board. Son of a gun, stupid. Like, so in other words, like something that is clearly better. You were supposed to write the article on it.
What article? For the uh I wrote a I wrote an extensive blog post on it. You were supposed to write an article. For who? No, that was on lobsters.
Same. It was the same thing. Same. No, we used Eugenol on lobsters because the Aquies people were like, you should try it. They don't talk like that because they're from New Zealand.
You should try it on lobsters. So I was like, we did, and it worked. You know what I mean? But uh lobsters, when they get anesthetized, they get all they get wacky. They start walking kind of you know in the wrong direction.
They're weird. Anyway, yeah. Uh but uh again, there's a a benefit to it. Um the only one that we didn't get a benefit was with eel. It just because the eel is so bad.
When you buy live eel in like Chinatown, here, at least the places I used to buy live eel in Chinatown, it's just been swimming in its own filth so long. It's just such a filth fish. You know what I mean? I love and I love eel so much. Like eel eel good eel, I love good eel, but like filth fish eel, like dirt basket, like you know, like recirculated poop eel, not the money.
We got some good eel in New Zealand. I bet you do. I bet the second clearest water in the world, we can pull some eel out of. It's because you guys won't let us bring our ships and nukes over there. I'm just messing with you.
Uh it's true though, you won't. Uh but so you know, my grandfather, my late crazy grandfather, uh, who motorhomed around the country and lived in my driveway for three years, uh, and my parents drive it really, I didn't, you know, I wasn't paying the mortgage. Uh he visited Australia and New Zealand one year. I think it was right after my grandma died, and he was like, I love New Zealand. Australia, not so much, they're a bunch of ripoff artists.
Agree or disagree. I don't know. He wouldn't be more specific. He just did not enjoy the people in Australia, but really like the people in New Zealand. I have Australian colleagues, so I think it's I'll just take a pass on that.
So you agree. What I'm getting is that you agree. I've never been to either of them, and you know, I kind of have equal feelings about Australians in New Zealand. No, no, no. I've been I've been to both.
I've I've lived in New Zealand for a hot second doing hop harvest. New Zealand Kiwis are amazing, and if you want to go to Australia, just go to LA. It's the same and it's closer. Ooh! Wow.
Ooh! Damn. Sorry. Wow. Like what part of what part of LA?
Well, no, uh, Sydney in particular seems a lot like I mean, well, it has it has the diversity of places that LA contains, too. It's just they're the same city. Okay. Alright. Yeah.
All right. Okay then. So you you don't have to say it, Michael. We got Matt for you. Say what you clearly believe by the look on your face.
Uh Devin in the chat has a question about fish. Let's do it, Devin. Uh Devin was wondering what the what their take on the differences in customer perception of farm fish is in the US versus the rest of the world. Um he says lots of vitriol against farm fish amongst sports people and environmental types in the US, some for good reason, some misguided. Uh and he's not a fan of writing off all farm fish as bad as some do, so yeah, he's wondering about that.
And a quick summary of War King's environmental policy. Thank you. Yeah, so um This is David, by the way. Yeah. So so farm fish, yeah, you know it does have a lot of people have um, you know, bad thoughts on it, I I would say, but I think it's just goes back to education.
So educating these people about the right uh farming practices, which we do down in New Zealand, so um I think if you educate people in the States, um, I think they're more inclined to uh you know go for farmed fish. And then as far as or as far as the rest of the world goes, I'm not really sure on their outlook. Um I know in New Zealand it's it's really aquaculture is really a a big um big industry and it's really looked looked upon as a a good thing and um New Zealand's kinda leading the way as far as aquaculture goes. So yeah, that's um I mean if we're gonna get into it, let's just get into it then. So I mean specifically people get bent about uh overfeeding and therefore kind of eutrophication of the water underneath the feeding thing and then also the high amount of inputs to feed a carnivorous fish uh versus I don't know, just eating vegetables.
I don't know. So like like those are the two are the two things. So it's like don't fight. And you know, and and uh th there's some other issues too that we'd be happy to talk about, but I think you the first thing you said was overfeeding and possible uh impacts on like the seabed or the uh fit uh immediate environment. So uh at our farms uh we feed uh our salmon.
Um it's like a spinner that spins out a uh pellet, and that pellet I can talk about the components of the pellet later, but that pellet goes into the water, the salmon comes up uh they take the feed, uh some of it trickles down, they take the feed. And we have underwater monitors. So uh in there's a guy in the booth watching the monitor, and the king's salmon will feed until they're satiated. And as soon as he sees that they stop taking the feed, the um the feed gets cut off. So you don't have anything settling to the bottom.
You're not having any build-up um of feed, excess feed in the water. Which also can impact other species. So that's that's the way we control that aspect and and don't have an issue with it. And what's it what's like what what what are the pellets made of? So um it's made out of uh marine uh oils and proteins.
So these would be pelagic species, sustainable species like anchovy or mackerel or uh sardine. Right, because people get bent on the over like the like the indiscriminate overfishing of what would be garbage on saleable fish and turning them into feed for higher value fish. So that's called uh a FIFO ratio, so fish in, fish out. So the amount of feeder fish you use to produce the same amount of so one how many pounds of feeder fish do you need to produce one pound of of uh salmon? So our FIFO ratio is actually 0.8 to 1.2.
So we're considered net producers of biomass. So you're but so then you must be fluffing it with some kind of veg protein too. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I mean they they have they have to have proteins and oils to live. So if you're reducing your bio biomass, your marine biomass input, you need to supplement with something, right?
So we use land-based oils and proteins. So uh canola canola oil could be an input. And do you guys grow that or do you get that from Canada? Uh I do not know the country of origin. Um our feed suppliers uh can be like in Australia.
I think our main feed suppliers are in Australia, actually. But um I do know all of our feed components are GMO free. Um so uh canola oil can be one, uh there can be soy as a protein base. Um there can also be some um some poultry meal fit for human consumption, poultry meal, but salmon are omnivores. Um so that's how we're able to uh keep in balance our fish in fish out um ratio and also have healthy salmon.
This is a a big issue with a lot of the um NGOs that assess farms on their sustainability. So, like for example, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has a seafood watch program, and your fish-in-fish out ratio is a big part of your score. We've been very fortunate that they've come to assess us and the other New Zealand salmon farms. And we've, you know, we did very well. We got their top green uh best choice rating.
Um that was one of the components. They look at quite a few. They look at how you the environment, the immediate environment, um, wild species impact. Um, I'd have to look at my notes. There's probably like a scorecard of about 10 to 12 different elements that they they score you on.
But we we did well on all of them, and we got the the top rating. And when you go take it away from fish in, fish out to just feed conversion ratio, like how many pounds of feed makes a pound of salmon about. Or is that not something it's monitored the way it is for like chickens? I'm not sure if it's yeah, no, it is, yeah. FC FCR is a big a big ratio because it's also feed is your biggest cost in the industry.
It's so you know, being able to control that has you know, there's sustainability issues, but it's also just sustainable means like, well, we need to be a sustainable business. Um we need to control our our feed costs. So I think we run uh um about at a one-to-one ratio in terms of um F FCR conversion. Well, unless there's a lot of stuff swimming through your nets, it can't be that low, right? Chicken's the lowest in the world, isn't it?
Or no? I don't know. I'll look it up. We'll look it up. I don't think so.
I'll look it up later. I don't think any land animal could be lower than a uh uh animal that lives below the water. Gravity is the enemy for land animals. They they use a lot of energy to stay upright. Remember though, a chicken's only alive six weeks.
I mean, you know what I mean? Like we kill them real young. Like how old is one of these salmons when they get when they get uh typically about two and a half years. And that like what about yay? Uh not quite that big normally.
They'd be somewhere between 10 and 12 pounds, typically. I was holding my hands out as one might when they're thinking about fish. Uh I can't think of fish in pounds. I really think of them in yay. You know what I mean?
Like it's about yay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We got a yay one in the box here. Oh my god.
Okay, so listen, here's some more questions for you. So I already told you that my son Booker uh can you know pick your product out of a lineup, enjoys it very much. Uh, but you have a whole category of people who are like, the farm salmon doesn't taste the same because it doesn't have the diversity of diet that you get when you're getting a wild salmon. Go. Um, I disagree.
Yeah. I think it's um I think our salmon is really I I prefer it to wild salmon. I think it's cleaner, um, it's got more fat. It's it's less fishy, if you want to say. So it's our you'll try it here in a second.
Wait, so you say it's got more fat and is less fishy, because that seems like it's counter. Although it's eating less fish fat, it's eating you know relatively neutral fats like canola. Right, right. And you know if you want to talk about while you're while you're answering, if you want to talk about the relative uh importance of the feed to the flavor of the animal, I mean go ahead. Um, I was just I was gonna follow up on David's comment about wild versus um farm um profile.
So you first of all, you have to make sure you're if you're gonna really compare it, compare the same species, right? So we raise king salmon. Which you know comes by its name honestly, am I right? Okay. You said an ummy.
Um you'd have to, you know, compare it to a wild king, right? So uh wild fish um you know have a uh if if you have a look at like a normal distribution of flavor, you get a lot of range, right? You have and you can have the most beautiful, perfect, wonderful wild king salmon and flavor. You can also get one that was caught late in the season, it's making its way up river, it's starting to get a little beat up as it's going up the spawn and it's breaking down. And that one's gonna not taste so great.
Might be a little muddy, it might be a little dirty, flesh might be a little uh a little soft. The stuff that would ordinarily get canned. It just well is later. It was just caught late in the season, you know. Um it you know, it's not it's just it's just different.
You get a a wider spectrum of flavors if you're eating a wild king. Uh but a a great wild king is is awesome and it's beautiful and it tastes great. Uh and I love it. Um with a farm king like we do, it's a tighter distribution, right? So uh each fish is gonna taste more like the other one.
You won't get as much uh on the on the um extremes. But uh but without doubt, our fish has more fat. So we've bred them that way, um, and we've raised them that way. We have about a 25% fat to lean ratio, with a typical wild king will be somewhere between twelve to fifteen. So that's a pretty pretty big difference.
And uh and king king is one of the fattier of the salmon breeds anyway. Yeah, right? It is the fattiest. Yeah. You know what?
Nobody likes a dry salmon. Am I right about this? Uh I'm with you. Yeah. Nobody enjoys it.
Yeah. I don't think so. Well, that's what's it's so it's really hard to dry this one out. It's all that fat. Like we call those please don't overcook it just because you said that, please.
Please. We call this the wagyu of salmon. I mean, it's it really does have that like luxurious quality to it. But like in a hot smoke application, therefore, right? So hot smoked salmon, the taste, everyone likes the taste of hot smoked salmon, but let's be honest, it's like, you know, so dry, so dry.
You know what I mean? Like, so you're saying that this is good hot smoke application salmon? This is the best hot smoke application salmon, in my opinion. And do you think, going back to what you said before, because uh when you said that the feed that you give them is partially marine um based oils, which you know, let's be honest, fish oil is fish oil, you know what I mean? And uh taste-wise, uh, that the fact that you are feeding, you know, hopefully deodorized and not rancid terrible canola oil.
Does anyone guys old enough to remember how crappy canola oil used to taste? It was so garbage. I I people be like, it's healthy, and I'm like, it's garbage, but like now it's completely deodorized, it's fine. I can use it, it's fine. Uh but anyway, so I don't know whether or not that transfers through, but do you find that by using plant-based oils in addition to the fish oils that you get a milder taste on the fat, so you can have something that's less kind of overtly fishy but still have that uncuous fattiness, or does it not play a role?
It's a good question, and I don't know if we really have the detailed research and data to answer that. This is a project of ours to develop very complex sensory analysis on our fish, which I think would, you know, we'd be one of the first in the industry to do that. Where we do, you know, objective, quantifiable uh sensory analysis at some institution that does this all the time, whether it's for coffee or wine or or whatever food product, um, and really drill into like the specific flavor profiles, what could be driving the the variables in each element um and really get much much much precise on that. But it is a fairly new industry and uh we're not quite there yet. Right.
Well you need but we want money behind those like in other words there needs to be a we want to get there. Yeah there needs to be a money there needs to be money behind the potential answer to the question in order to answer any question that has to do with taste. You know what I mean? Well going back to that I know um when we did use that aqueus to uh that did leave a bit of a flavor like you could pick up some of the clove if someone told you about it. When I was running tests if I told you I used clove oil you'd pick it a little bit.
But like also I mean like I mean you remember you were doing the taste test it's like it also depends on the dose rate of that stuff. This stuff is incredibly it smells like cloves and then you're dosing it at a certain rate per gallon presumably you guys in a in a in a flow through tank because you were also then bleeding them out right I mean like they were dosed in tank you I don't know how it works but I guess you put them in a pen and then they'll you keep the water running and you bleed. How how does it work exactly? Well when we were using it it was a little different. So we we all we harvest at su on site at the farm.
So we uh would corral them in in nets, get them into smaller groups smaller groups mean less stress, get them into smaller groups and then uh put some aqueous in the water at the recommended dosage. They would get kind of like calm and a little bit a little bit sleepy. And then uh and then you would gather them up in a in a basket, and then they would go through this um kind of a a ramp where you would get them to kind of like make their they would start to like swim up this little ramp that get to the top where there was a percussive stunner and a and a bleeder. So first the percussive stunner knocks them out so that at that point they're out cold, they're not gonna feel anything. Right.
Because you don't want that lactic acid release. That's really critical. So that's your equivalent of the brain kill of the of like an ikajime spike, but yes, yeah. Exactly. It's like it's a ekimi like concept.
Yeah. Uh and then you would cut it, cut it. And go bleed it. Start to start to bleed out, goes in an ice slurry, heart's still pumping, and uh it continues to bleed out. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Sorry, people, that's what happens when you eat a fish. Right. Gotta bleed out. And that that like to me, like stress at kill is one of the primary drivers that has not been adequately addressed commercially in terms of and one of the problems with wild caught, frankly, fish, is that they is that even if the taste is fantastic because they've been eating whatever, but like, but seriously, the stress at kill for a wild fish can be enough.
That's why a lot of wild farm stuff you see, a wild uh fit caught fish you see, you have a lot of uh, you know, gaping problems in the fillets because of the intensely hard rigor they go through because of the huge amount of lactic acid buildup and loss of ATP during the capture process. Um we work with a uh company in New Zealand that does w wild catch called Lee Fisheries, and they have really built their company on how they catch and harvest the fish. They ekajime every fish they catch. And their quality is outstanding. Yeah, I mean look proper kill method is like I say, the problem in the US is that there's no way if you're going if you're selling to a chef and you're selling like a large quantity and you're like the fish purveyor, you can sell on stuff like that, but at a market to like an at to a person, like how are you gonna just you can't justify to someone unless you build a name around it, like Oracing's building you know, built a name around itself.
But you know, how do you get someone to pay that extra three you know, three, four dollars a pound if they don't even know what the heck you're talking about? And that's why when I used to do the Ikajime demos at the school, you know, people were like, Well, are you trying to get people to you know go Ikajima their own fish? I'm like, well, not really, because you know, to buy live fish to get brought into your restaurant is fantastically expensive. So unless you culturally need to do it, plus that that fish is living in stress in one of these circular tanks at the holding place for however long. And so, you know, you know, really it's just you know, r in those demos, I was testing fish held in a tank killed without Ike Jame versus fish killed with IKJM held in the tank.
So the variables were the same across it, but I wasn't really advocating that people necessarily do it in their restaurants. I was more like more people should know that this is something to do so that they will ask their fish mongers and pay more for it. You know what I mean? I think that's the answer to it. Hey Dave.
So we have a caller on the air. It is not a fish question, but uh it's like holiday related, I think. It has some level of urgency. You want you want to take that or no? Urgency, I like that.
Like someone needs to use the restroom. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Hello, Cody. How you doing?
I'll turn it into a fish question, by the way. What do we got? All right, awesome. It's the Ultra from DC. Um it's uh feel free to turn this one in the fish craft question.
It's actually about uh I wanted to see if you could talk about uh food trucks a little bit. Um getting one designed and equipped. Um more like a you know, like a a trailer, food trailer. Um and uh just to get your thoughts on like you know if if you were doing it what what were some things that you know you would say are uh utmost importance things to watch out for uh if you have any knowledge on it at all since Nastasia has actually done this I've done it Dave has not done this so what do you what do you what do you say don't do it it's awful it's it's horrible there's like we're there's permits there's water tank problems there's BTU problems there's God well what do you she was doing pasta so she needed like she needed fundamentally like high BTUs right because you were front but did you have a gas based fryer or electric fryer? We weren't frying we were just boiling water.
You didn't use fryers to boil the water? No you had specific pasta boilers but they were like fryers. Yeah yeah it took a lot yeah but then the tank or electric gas but the water tank can only hold so much then you gotta go dump it in like a specific sewer area that is made for food trucks that could be like you know miles and miles away. And I used a trailer not a food truck. Okay so right we have a facility already with all that stuff equipped like the issue of where where it's gonna be and how it's gonna be cleaned and stationed and all that is less of a problem for us.
And uh it's kind of like an offshoot of an existing catering business. A lot of the infrastructure problems that surround people are just starting like straight with a food truck we're trying to get around does that make sense? Yeah, so what's your question? She still hates it. You're not gonna get I don't understand that.
You're not gonna get in a state. I'm not gonna be like, oh, that's great. Yeah so but like for from a power standpoint, that was a good point to bring up. Like the the ones that I'm seeing now, we're looking at an 18-foot trailer, and it comes with like a hundred amp uh box for the electrical stuff, two hundred-pound propane tanks. But I I don't know as far as like power requirements, what that is gonna satisfy, uh, you know, like how crazy we can get with that.
So so for propane specifically, you need to look at your entire gas consumption over like all of the hotline stuff that you have in there, and all of that stuff for propane is rated typic unfortunately, typically in BTUs per hour. So then, and I forget what the numbers are. I I used to have it at the at the tip of my fingers because you know Nastasi and I have worked with torches quite a bit, which are done in BTUs per hour. It's a relatively easy conversion to convert pounds of propane per hour into BTUs per hour. And then you can determine how many hours of burn time you get out of your tanks.
Now, the caveat is is you said you had hundred-pound tanks. I hope you're not going over any bridges. No, you're gonna be stationed or through any tunnels. Uh, because that's a huge nightmare, even with 20-pound camper style tanks. But I will caution you against using anything smaller than the hundred-pound tanks because as you vaporize propane, it gets colder through evaporative cooling.
And a 20-pound tank, even through a regular, like, you know, uh like a regular my regular fryer, which I think is about 60,000 BTUs or something. No, it's more, it's like a hundred thousand. Anyway, my a standard fryer, I forget how many thousand BTUs it is. It's it's 90, I I gotta look it up. It's been a long time since I had to know all this, but it would chill my 20-pound tanks down to the point that um they would no longer deliver propane adequately to supply the fryers.
And so I needed to wrap a heat blanket around my propane tanks to to get them to go. Now, if you're doing something um with a hundred-pound tank, a hundred-pound tank should be, especially in DC, which is a sweltering hellhole. Just kidding. Uh no, yeah, yeah. Uh it should maybe be warm enough to be able to a hundred-pound tank should be warm enough to not get too cold as it's delivering the propane.
You shouldn't require a heat blanket for that. Whereas if you attempted to run them off smaller tanks, you would definitely need a heat blanket. What are you cooking? Uh trying to keep it you know versatile. So it's not like it can be any one concept.
Be, you know, catering for different events and um a rotating menu. So I was I was thinking of like getting a small combi in there, two fryers, uh a griddle, and a stove. A combi is the biggest hog of energy in the entire planet. Like, if you actually need a combi, you could try to put a combi in there, but seriously consider getting a CVAP, which has a much lower energy input. Like, energy is gonna be your nightmare.
If you're like pumping the like the energy management's gonna be your nightmare. You know what I'm saying? Uh even when it's gas-related, like a combi, even a gas-fired combi uses more uh in its convection stuff, uses more electricity than you would probably think about. And the electricity is gonna have to be provided from a generator. That generator is gonna need to be running all the time.
So you need to get one of those really nice quiet RV generators. No quiet generator. This is why people don't like when when you're camping, they don't like camping next to the RV section. You should just do you should just do cured Oricing salmon. There you go.
There we go. There we go. We bring it back around. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. We got a whole how-to how to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, you do? Well, I have a curing question.
All right. Well, think more about it. And like Nastasia is never, like, I will never be able to give you any in-depth stuff on this. I have never personally done the food truck. Maybe someone in the chat room has it, but Nastasia is so vehemently against it.
Also, remember with Kickstarter, yeah. Also, she did she did a Kickstarter in conjunction with a truck. No, no, no, I'm saying the equal level of hatred. Oh, but she was also serving gluten-free pasta through a Kickstarter thing in a truck to college students. These are all things that she hates.
Every single aspect of this is something that she hates. And so, you know, as she is my co-host, I can't really, you know, I'm not gonna because I'll pay if I say anything positive, I will pay for it later. You know what I'm saying? And so, you know, she has and by the way, you know, Nastasia, like, you gotta love it. She, once she says, I hate this, it doesn't matter.
Someone could be like, I'll hand you a giant break of cash. You just gotta stand in a food truck for one more day and serve gluten-free pasta to college students. She's like, no. And they're like, a giant break of cash. Like, you need a forklift for the cash, you like, no.
Like, that's just the way she is. Yes. Maisie, you know. Am I wrong? You're not wrong.
Yeah. That's exactly how she is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. All right.
So wait, something I was uh thinking about as you were going back to salmon. Uh something I was thinking about uh as you were talking. Um everyone's worried about uh well, another thing people worried about eating um carnivorous fish in general is bioaccumulation. But since you're at like a fish in, fish out of negative, presumably that means that you guys aren't a bioaccumulator. Like, in other words, your fish is not a bioaccumulation, so you're not gonna have any Jeremy Pivot.
It was the sushi that made me do it. I got mercury poisoning from all the sushi. Remember that? He doesn't tell it like that. But you don't remember that?
Yeah, so like have you ever like done any of these uh kind of like like like is that part of your marketing that's not like a like a highly bio a bioaccumulative uh fish. I'm not that familiar with that concept. So uh well people don't eat because look look, it takes like eight billion pounds of small fish to make a tuna. Right. Right?
And so, you know, all of that stuff has like whatever mercury was in it from the fact that we polluted the universe wor world. I guess not the universe yet, portions of it. And then uh so but all that mercury stays in the tuna, which is why when someone says, by the way, I hope you know this people, when you buy something that says mercury-free tuna, what is actually happening is they are just harvesting tuna that are small, and they are making the o ocean devoid of small tuna before they can grow large, because the only way to get a mercury-free wild tuna is to kill it when it's young before it is eating a lot of fish. FYI. Um, but the we go back to that because there's on farm tuna is another interesting thing because with the exception of Kindai, which I don't even know if they're still around, nobody does closed cycle farming on tuna, unless maybe it's been years since I've looked at it.
You guys are completely closed cycle, you're raising your own fish, right? Right. Now, another problem people have with farmed uh fish, especially in places where the fish is not from, is uh that no closed system is truly closed, escapes, blah blah blah. But king salmon has been um naturalized in New Zealand since at least the early 1900s, and so you have actual like king salmon chilling in New Zealand, right? So you guys aren't that worried about escape.
Like it because I know in that part of the world everyone's worried about escape of you know cane toads and other horrible I mean not New Zealand, right? You guys don't have any horrible invasive stuff in New Zealand, do you? Except people. They're very, very strict on biosecurity in New Zealand. So it's I mean, I don't like like you can't bring in uh you can't even have a snake as a pet in New Zealand.
See listen. Like zoos aren't even allowed to have snakes. I'm not saying that you know that you shouldn't have a a snake as a pet because people do enjoy walking around the city with snakes around their necks, like you know, big kind of I don't know, like like it's kind of like a nice ornament in the way that like uh Gunja Gable Williams, the famous uh lion tamer, used to wear the lion around or the whatever that little tigerette thing was around his uh live, not a not a coat, uh around his uh shoulders. But uh there's one thing that snakes don't is care about whether you're alive or dead. And in general, like I like a pet that kind of cares whether you're you personally are alive or dead, you know.
Um so you know, that's my feeling on snakes. Like, you know, you I don't not anti-snake, like I actually I like the feeling of a snake, like a snake, like it feels nice, it's got that kind of it's drier than you'd think, like holding a snake. But snake's never like, hey, how are you when you show up? It's not even like it doesn't even ignore you in a fun way, like a cat. You know what I mean?
Like a cat at least is like, you know, actively, yeah. A cat is like it knows you're there, it might not be happier there, but it knows you're there. Snake just like doesn't exhibit play, you know what I mean? Like, at least, you know, when a cat like catches a mouse, you can see the vicious nature of the cat as it like tries to, it like lets the mouse get like a foot away from it before it smacks it back down again. Cats clearly play.
Snake doesn't play. Snake with a mouse is just like that's it. Game over. Game over. You know, mouse and snake.
Gone, you know. Uh so snakes as pets, not that interesting. They don't even chew. No, they don't even chew. Who wants to deal with something that doesn't even chew?
I mean, I don't really chew. That's why Nastasi doesn't like dealing with me. I'm kind of the snake of people. I unhinged my jaw and then uh and then the food goes in. That's probably why they never made a cartoon about a snake, did they?
Uh did they make a cartoon about snakes? Well, there's uh, yeah, in uh so here Ricky Tikitavi is full of bad snakes, obviously, because he's a mongoose and he kills snakes. Uh yeah, in the jungle book, uh, what's his name? Ka was his ca is the snake's name. But I mean, as as like a lead character in Looney Tunes, like, you know, there's ducks and there's cats and there's birds.
There's uh snakes are no fun. There's a bad guy snake guitar. No, what does he play? Uh in the River Bottom Nightmare Band, I believe there is a snake in Eminata's shug band Christmas, which is one of my favorite Christmas things. There's a snake, there's a lizard, and there's a fish.
There might not be a snake. Snakes play dead. That's not playing. That's not a game. That's a survival strategy.
I'm looking at them. Are you Googling? Nastasi is like, Nastasi's like, playing dead. She's just like, it's just like banana gramps. Can you teach a few?
Baby plays with Python. Baby human plays with Python. I don't think he's playing that. It's the good parenting website. Yeah, wow.
Oh my god. Alright, so listen, we have a we have a a question on fish cure. Here we go. So uh in actuality, Patrick West wrote in about how to make uh hot sauce because he's he he takes jalapenos are his favorite, which is fine, you get to choose what you like because it's your sauce, right? And he uh puts them in vinegar and and then uh bottles them, but the s and then uh make blends them and then bottles them.
I would recommend if you can, before you vinegarize them, salt them down and let them do a little lacto ferment first, because I really like that flavor. But then, yeah, sure, vinegar it up and bottle it, at which point it should be fairly stable. I don't think you're gonna get a lot of like explosive action after you hit it with the vinegar because the acid I think will be high enough to stop a lot of uh gas. But your problem was the sauce was too thin. And the thickener of uh record in most hot sauces like this, and by that I mean sriracha, is xanthan gum.
And xanthan gum has the benefit that as long as there's no mic microbes will eat xanthan, but if you have a high enough salt and a high enough uh acid ratio, none of that stuff that will eat the xanthan is gonna be there, and so it'll be relatively stable for a long time. Xanthan's just stuff, don't add too much because it'll turn snotty. If you just you can add a little bit of xanthan and also a little guar or LBG, be careful with guar, a lot of it tastes nasty, so uh, but I wouldn't even need to. The problem with LBG is you need to heat it uh uh quite a bit. Guar you don't, but most of it doesn't taste so good unless you get flavor-free uh guar from T I C gums.
But just try a little bit of Xanthan. Please don't add a boat ton of Xanthan. Use like under a quarter of a percent to start, one quarter of one percent uh to start and let it sit for like overnight until you assess the final uh not in meat overnight, I'm just doing that to be you know safe. Uh to assess the final thickness before you start adding more and more uh Xanthan gum to it. And also realize that if you don't work with hydrocolloids a lot, doubling the amount that you add much more than doubles the thickness of the product.
So moving if you're like quarter of a percent is not enough don't immediately go to like half a percent or one percent just go up like in smaller increments because the the effects are more than additive but the question you had about salmon was side note oh side note he just got the okay to purchase uh a Searsol uh and we'll be enjoying it over the house where did he get the okay from his wife Nastasia has Nastasia Nastasia you didn't read it from the misses come on Dave because you have demented gender ideas. Nastasia I thought we were done talking about beta males. Yeah. Who enjoyed by the way the salmon is delicious. Are you they self-proclaimed isn't that the one didn't say beta just said that Oh it's the next guy.
No whatever. Anyway so uh it also says hello to Matt in the booth. Uh I ideas on growing m mushrooms. I don't have any info on growing mushrooms unless you guys are you guys mushroom growers? Forager.
Forager but not he wants to grow morels. I don't know anything about that. Uh but Paul Stamitz is the guy to look at his books. Uh what do you say I've I've grown like oyster mushrooms and shiitake but never morel. I cooked a bunch of oyster mushrooms yesterday.
Uh-huh. How were they? Uh delicious actually. I had the you know the one of the mini one of those mini thinner choy varieties, like something choy. I don't know which choy because it's not written in English where I was and uh yeah I steamed them and then I had uh I had uh sauteed the uh oyster mushrooms uh down and then a little bit of fermented chili sauce, sesame oil, garlic.
I had a little bit of sugar just to kind of round it up. Salt, pepper, check, check, chuck chak. Good. Good. As a side dish, because my son, the one who loves this so much, your product so much, he's like, I want fishball soup.
I was like, nah, that's easy. He also loves fishballs. Yeah. He doesn't eat red meat anymore, except for he's like, I really like Fukinese fish balls, even though they have pork in the middle. So I will consider the pork in the middle of a Fukinese fishball to be fish.
He's got an interesting palate. Yeah. I mean, for those of you that don't know, fish balls are kind of like traditional sarimi style products where you need the fish paste so much that they turn into kind of ping-pong balls. The natural transglutaminase inside of the fish causes a hard. I think it's actually is natural transglutaminase.
And plus just the action of salt and like protein manipulation. Maybe it's the recent ones that they actually add transglutaminase to, and that's what I'm thinking of. Anyway, it forms a very strong bond, and so you get very springy fishballs. It's almost like doughy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then you you you boil them like dumplings, and they're like kind of fish dumplings. And so uh Booker loves these things, and but in in in the Fukinese style of fishball has inside of it ground seasoned pork. And it's so it that that kind of fishball is specific to uh like it's Fukinese. And it turns out that where I live is to where Nastasia and I used to have our office is like the the east coast epicenter of Fukinese fishball uh manufacturer. So there are like eight different Fukinese fishball joints in in the neighborhood.
Anyway, uh but uh Patrick writes in and says, uh, I would like to do DIY cold cured salmon, decent locks, it's just too damned expensive in Michigan. So this is your problem, Lauren. It's on you. No, it's on fish. Wait, Michigan?
Chicago, Michigan. No, Maze West. Is that remember? I guess it depends on where. Michigan.
No, she does Michigan. Michigan Lauren. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Lauren.
Gotta get that price down in Michigan Warren. Anyway, hold a second. And you can say where to get it. Decent locks is just too damn expensive in Michigan. But I have lakes full of salmon, trout, and white fish.
So you well, you said you had a good recipe for curing. Do it. Do it. Oh I I was being facetious, but Lauren, you could probably talk about uh curing. Um let's see.
I find the Oracing it holds really well to curing and cold smoking, especially because of the high fat content. Um, but to avoid really masking the flavor and to let the fish be the prevalent flavor, uh, just a simple salt sugar cure is really the best thing. I mean, you can get fancy and do it with some dill or add some gin, but really just a simple salt sugar cure is the best approach for this fish. Yeah, the liquor, like maybe a little, but it's gonna change the it does that weird surface coloring thing. Do you uh are you guys two to one salt sugars?
Are you a two to one people? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh I wish Nils was here. Nils is Nils is my, you know, Nastasi and I used to work with the French culinary, like, and when he lived in Sweden, would like do nothing but cure salmon all day long.
So he has his, you know, he's has his uh you know his salmon cure. I should have texted before I came. Anyway, uh so one more question, uh Lauren, about uh selling in the West and uh salmon. Oh, also cold cured. I'm assuming you don't mean cold smoke.
Cold smoke, if you're gonna cold smoke a fish, first you need to build a cold smoker, and uh the second thing you're gonna need to do in the US anyway. I mean, it really depends. If it's actually cold, like actually actually cold, like refrigerator cold, then you're not gonna have to worry about botulism growth. But if you aren't, like I would worry about it, and then you'd probably have to use in your cure, you'd have to use some nitrites to uh inhibit any kind of uh botulism growth. But anyway, just have to add that.
Uh so what's it like selling uh foreign salmon to people in Oregon? Ah, so yeah. Well, kind of going back full circle to your original question about essentially what people think of farm salmon, I think that comes down to if your area has a natural salmon run or not. So the Pacific Northwest has traditionally been a really difficult sell because I mean that's like the epicenter for wild king um here on the West or excuse me, on the West Coast. And who wants to buy a Pacific King salmon from New Zealand when you have natural run in your backyard?
So originally it was a pretty hard sale, but um as we've been able to educate our customer base and they see that we have like green rating from Monterey Bay Aquarium and that we actually have really great farming practices, it's not such that like redheaded stepchild, um, because I think people are starting to learn that we will need farms in order to feed the growing population of this planet. What do you think the genesis of the redheaded stepchild phrase is? I was thinking about that too. Is it that they are is it that you is it that as as as it says in the Game of Thrones, dark of hair, dark of hair, dark of hair, and this one has red hair, or is it an anti-ginger thing, you think? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say anti-ginger.
Alright. It's also not your child. Well, it's it's one of the two parents' child. Yeah. Anyway.
I'm always curious. Like, I I didn't mean to jump in, but it's just whenever that phrase comes up, I'm like, red-handed stepchild. You know? I think it's one of those no one knows what it means, but everyone knows what it means. Also, whenever someone says it, the song Love Child goes through my head.
Diane Ross? Yeah. Is it going to your head now? Yes. Yeah.
I'm not going to sing it. What? Why? I just don't have it in me. Always second best, Matt.
Different from the freaking rest. Alright, listen. They don't have that's one. What? It's one.
So we're still talking about holding. I gotta, this is our last show before the hold on one second. Oh, and uh listener wanted to know about the existing conditions by uh New Year's Eve, whatever. It's on, do it! Go!
Wait, how much it's live. Where do they buy tickets? Go to the existing conditions uh Instagram and it should say, I think it's like it's you know, it's it's from nine till one, and it's gonna be a lot of champagne. We're getting uh we're getting Charles Hidsack. Now that's Chucky Hidsack, not not like, you know, not his brother Piper or sister Piper, Charles Hidsack.
We're getting some magnums. So they have this rose champagne that is vintage that they specifically devintaged so they could sell it at like kind of a nice price point only to restaurants. And we have a bunch of cases of the because they the guy came to taste us out on it, and he's like, Yeah, I brought these different champagnes. I was like, You got the pank? I need pank.
And then he's like, of course I brought you pank. And so like we're drinking Nastassi also loves the pank. Maisie, what do you think about pink champagne? You like the pink? I like all champagnes.
That's a good answer. It's a smart answer. Uh so yeah, so do that. We're gonna be sabering, we're gonna be, you know, doing all kind of all kind of fun stuff at the existing conditions on the new years. I'll be there, Don'll be there, uh, my wife Jen.
So if you go, uh for those of you that actually because Jen has never been on the radio show. Yeah, but if when is she gonna do? She's like, how am I gonna go on the show? I work for a living. She doesn't talk like that, but that's basically what she says.
And then uh we could get her on sometime. You've said that for years. Okay, why don't you since why don't you do it? Why don't you ask her? She'll listen to you.
Anyway. Uh so uh do you remember um Brain Surgeon Jay? So Brain Surgeon Jay actually just got back from New Zealand and Australia and brought some stuff, went to New Zealand first, then went to Australia, and the Australians brought out the dogs and like like threw away all like a lot of the food stuff that he that he had purchased in the in the New Zealand. So he had to go back to New Zealand before he came out to the case. Uh no, yeah, right.
So then everything got thrown away. So you get nothing. You get nothing. Which is why if you're gonna do it, like I think that the the power move is to buy your stuff and then ship it directly back to the states. Like as long as you're buying stuff that is legal, because as uh, you know, Dave Carp, the uh fruit guy says, don't bring stuff to uh a country where it doesn't belong, because you really can mess up billions of dollars worth of agriculture and you know, or like wipe out, you know, our most important trees for no good reason just by being an a-hole about it.
But if it is legal to bring back, just ship it rather than trying to bring it from one country that has very strict rules to another. And by the way, I mean, if any country has a right to be kind of s snippity about uh snippety about their you know, problems with biological imports, Australia kinda they get that. You know what I mean? Like rabbits. Ooh, I don't even have time to talk about rabbits today.
Son of a gun. I have the best classics in the field here. Hold on a second, hold on second. Uh so hold on. Uh, but anyway, so uh Jay writes in a bunch of stuff, which I'm not gonna have time to do, but I will say this.
One thing I forgot. Remember, if those of you who remember, uh, Jay is building a new kitchen, brain surgeon, so I told him to make sure that he didn't mess up his hands and he has you know plenty of safety for his hands because you know that's his livelihood. Uh one thing I forgot to mention to you, Jay, is uh sockets, sockets, sockets, power, right? So the classic mistake, and architects won't understand you, and contractors certainly will not understand you. But you, when you have your countertop, you're gonna want a lot of sockets, quad, quad, gfi quad sockets along your countertop.
But if let's say you have three socket, three quad sockets going across your countertop, each one of those sockets should be a separate circuit. Listen to me, Jay. Separate circuit. This way, you can run a toaster oven off of one and an induction uh uh burner off of another, and then something like a blender or a vitap off the third, and you're not gonna blow all of the circuits. If, like me, you have your microwave, which by the way, suck it, buy a microwave, people.
It is useful. Don't be that person who doesn't have a microwave in your house. It's you, David. They're good. I don't have a dishwasher either.
Uh well, come on then. Go dishwasher first, more important. I stack my toaster oven on top, uh, one or the other. I forget. I think the microwave is stacked on top of the toaster oven because you know they fit under the counter, blah, blah, blah.
But then you run the power cord down from the mic or the nuke over to the other socket so that you can run the toaster oven and the microwave at the same time because nobody, nobody likes to do appliance juggling where you're like, oh I hit that! Don't turn on the rice cooker, I'm also toasting. Don't it's funny you say my my rice cooker blew a circuit in my house last weekend. Well, was it like some what else was on the circuit? Uh my blender.
See? Yeah. CJ? You're a brain surgeon. You have the money.
Get different circuits, run to your uh to your quads. Now, it is acceptable uh on a 15, no, I mean maybe not by code, but by m me to run LED lighting off of it and also some power equipment because your LED light really is so low that you're not really worried about it. So as long as you are fully LED light, which you should be, and by the way, good lighting in your kitchen, also a freaking must. But you can do like I used to do, and if your kitchen is uh right next to your living space, you can put some barn doors on your lights so that the light just drops like a freaking stone. As soon as you leave the kitchen, it goes into kind of like design-friendly, architecture-friendly lighting.
But in your kitchen, it should be bright as because it is, you know. Bright as an operating room. There you go. Oh, I like this. Anyway, all right.
Uh Anonymous writes in, maybe you guys have expertise in this, you know, uh, especially maybe the West Coast uh contingent. I don't even know what the rules are in New Zealand on this. Anonymous writes in about weed. Uh I'm hoping Dave could do a scientific treatment of a topic mired in pseudoscience, decarbing. So uh taking the carboxyl units off of uh THC, whatever it is, A, turning it into the one that can get you all uh, you know, that has less is psychoactive.
So uh there are all sorts of anecdotal methods floating around, but it's fundamentally a cooking chemistry question that I've never been able to find a serious resource on. My general understanding is a psychoactive compounds in marijuana need to have a carboxyl group cleaved off become psychoactive. This is no problem in smoking, but oral consumption requires or a king consumption. Uh oral consumption requires a pretreatment, usually referred to as decarbing. Recommended procedures vary widely, but generally average out to something along the lines of baking in a 250 to 300 degree oven for about 10 to 30 minutes, depending on source.
Uh, and a lot of this is based on this uh graph that was done in the early 90s. But from all I can read, uh the kind of graph is garbage. I would do research uh on uh pressure cooker usage. I would you pressure cooker can maintain a pretty clean uh 254 to 59, depending on which one you have, degree Fahrenheit uh environment, and you can seal the the weed inside of a glass jar. I would probably do it to get good transfer in the presence of oil if you're gonna cook with it anyway, but I'm not an expert because I actually don't consume any of that stuff.
But uh that's the route I would go for a way that you could actually control temperature at home in an easy way. Uh, because you can an oven, you have evaporative cooling, there's no weight. Like as long as the the weed still has moisture in it, you're never actually gonna get the temperature up beyond 212. And then as soon as the moisture is gone and you start going to those higher temperatures, you're gonna get toasting browning off flavors and kind of loss of volatiles in a sealed system. I think you're gonna be much better.
But like, you know, go look that up on the internet. This episode is brought to you by you. Heritage Radio Network makes your favorite food podcasts. And now we need you to lend your voice to our community and show your support of food radio. Become a member today.
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Josh wrote in about doing a standing rib roast via Chef Steps. I wasn't able to look at their standing rib roast recipe. Your question was Chef Steps was doing a three-rib roast, which is uh five to six inches uh at six hours for 58C, and you plan on cooking a four-rib roast. Uh now the problem is that I don't have a picture in my head of which six inches you're talking about and kind of how big across the rib roast is. It in my mind, like a five to six inch rib roast can be modeled roughly as a cube or a sphere.
It's not longer than it is wide. So it means it'll cook relatively faster. I don't think you're gonna double your time because you're not like so. If you double the size of the sphere that you were cook that you were cooking, you would multiply the cooking time by four. Got that?
You double the width, you multiply by four, because that's how cooking uh works. Uh, you're not adding that much. It will take longer because I think I I just think it will. If you so let's say you had something that was one inch thick and it was one inch by six inches by six inches. Well, there the one inch is drowning everything out, and the six inches doesn't matter.
So then if you were gonna take it from a one inch thick six by six thing to a one inch thick, like eighty by eighty thing, it would still cook in about the same amount of time because it's the one inch that's getting you. But because I think that your product here can roughly be modeled as a cube or a sphere, increasing the length of one of the sides actually probably will increase the cooking time, but it's hard for me to say how much, and I wasn't able to get in touch with the chef's dev people to uh figure it out. Uh Nathan Page writes in from Lexington, North Carolina, which by the way, I know you talk about your barbecue there. I much prefer Eastern, Eastern North Carolina barbecue. No offense to Stamies in Lexington.
No offense to Lexington, North Carolina. You guys do you a North Carolina barbecue? I'm a Texas guy, sorry. All right, so I won't even get it. So you but you but what about pork though?
I mean North Carolina's got a good pork. Uh Alabama for pork. Really? Yeah, I like Alabama. We'll fight later.
Uh you know, we we should get cat here. She's an Alabama girl. I don't know. So what what are you like Hill Country, Texas? Are you like a brisket person, a hot links person?
What are you? Yeah, hill country, so like Austin, yeah, brisket. Like uh it's good over there. It is. You know what I don't like though?
I went to one of the famous places, shall we name this so it was so much freaking black pepper. It was so much I mean, and by the way, I love black pepper. So much! I couldn't taste anything else other than the black pepper. Also, I'm not a sauce guy.
I like to just eat the meat. Yeah, I'm a sauce guy. You're a sauce guy? Yeah. And well then you'd like Lexington because in so North Carolina and Lexington is kind of like the so eastern eastern, like coastal North Carolina is a zero red tinge in the i in the, you know, call it a sauce.
The vinegar hot pepper stuff that you put onto your pulled pork and that your barbecue and then when you get over the Lexington area, which if you've ever sold furniture over near like high point that say big sales thing for furniture and all that stuff is Lexington, North Carolina, that's where you start getting some kind of red tinge in tomato action into your into your product. And I and so you know, I used to go to coastal North Carolina quite a bit because my uh sister-in-law Miley, who now runs the Food Network magazine, she used to write for newspapers down there. So I go quite a bit, and uh was a huge fan of their of their barbecue. And then my wife once went to High Point to sell some furniture, and I did I did maybe six places, seven places in a day. I had a young booker still on my back when I went there, and it's good, but I have to say I'm an Eastern guy.
Well, if you like pork too, you need to go to a uh a boucherie in western Louisiana. Yeah? Yeah, those are those are good. All right. All right.
Uh anyway, wants to know uh what was it? Uh I've had good success this deer season, have several deer in the freezer, so I'm looking to get creative with some of the cuts, such as whole deer ham. I'm from Lexington and I love this style of barbecue. I've smoked pork shoulders before. I know there's no chance of getting a true equivalent from deer shoulder.
I'm wondering though, if I take a whole deer shoulder and uh on the bone and smoke it for a couple of hours before brazing in barbecue sauce, if I can prevent the venison from drying out but still have the feel of a regular pork shoulder. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think it's gonna work. Uh I you know what I've never experimented with, but someday someone could is just injecting a cut like that with liquid gelatin.
Because the thing about you need to add some sort of uncuousness to the deer that I just don't think is gonna be there. Um but I don't know, I've never done any tests with it. Yeah, I I need to I need to we need to have some hunters on the show, some like hardcore hunters on the show who can come in. Like we should get like who used to do the the hunting thing here, uh Dave? Uh Dave, Matt.
Oh wow, we just went back in time. Um I don't I do not know. Huh. Also, we're running out of time. Uh we're one of the second Dave.
Second question. I'm about to I'm about to try uh make garum I'm about to make garum. I'm about to make garum from venison. I usually don't question subbing venison for beef and recipes other than it's considerably leaner, but wanted to double check with someone who might be able to tell me I'm gonna make the Noma beef garum. I uh texted uh uh David Zilber from uh Noma who wrote the recipe for beef garum.
And I say, yo, is it gonna be okay with venison? He's like, sure enough. He's like, we make it with deer all the time, it's delicious. My favorite is reindeer. So there you have it.
Uh go uh and do that. Wally uh Wally Gomes wrote in about uh about the fact that he enjoys what we're talking about and somehow we're on the same wavelength that he is with like weird stuff, like Ikajime, for instance. Uh wants to do a fryer with PID. Problem with PID control on a fryer is is that PID control doesn't get as hot as fast because it gets slowly and doesn't overshoot with a fryer. You can maybe uh have it go on a PAD after it hits its top uh thing, but you need very fast recovery, so be wary of using a PID controller on a fryer.
Eric Lopez writes in about javelinas, wants to make uh javelinas are these little like pig-like animals from like you know, Arizona, New Mexico. Uh someone told him not he wants to treat, he wants to take the intestines and make them into intestine casings, sausage casings. But they'd presumably be small because javelinas are small, so it'd be kind of like a lamb casing. Uh there are apparently parasites in javelinas. Uh there's an article, I don't have time to get into nostasium kill me, but you want to look up the article, The Bulletin of Wildlife Disease Association Volume 4, October 1968.
Parasites of the Javelina in New Mexico. Most of the stuff is relevant. They have salmonella and E. coli, but not the stuff that's gonna nuke you. The problem is there is a um there is a uh a parasite called uh trichostrangulus columbiformis, uh, which is rarely transmitted through the skin, so as long as you don't eat it, it should be okay.
But uh, you know, just be careful. Hank Shaw, the person I was talking about, the hunter, writes uh has an extensive section on uh cleaning and cooking and his love of the javelina as a as a food stuff. All right, so I've gotten through uh all of the questions. Speaking of parasites, you guys freeze all the Oricane? No.
We don't have to no. No. Uh so it's still considered sushi grade even though it's not frozen? Yes, correct. Huh.
Talk about it for like give me give me that real quick because my impression was that everything had to be frozen, but I guess if you can prove it's parasite free. It it does. There is a New York City or New York State health code that is a little vague and has been interpreted to mean that you need to freeze before serving a sushi. Right. But if you read the actual FDA guidelines on it, it's clear that you don't.
Um it's a little bit of a overlap, but even everyone's here in the city assumes it needs to be frozen before being served as sushi. That's what we're taught, like straight up, we're taught that. Yeah, if you read the FDA guidelines, it actually uh is Well, how do you guard against parasitic worms in the salmon? Or is it just because they're not going to be able to do that they don't get it? Exactly.
It's because yeah, because they're not they're not raised in the wild, they're not getting it, and um the feed is heat treated to prevent any parasites. But because you know you can freeze fish very well such that you don't get uh I mean the problem with freezing is that freezing light going through a hard rigger, uh the the crystals kind of break the flesh apart, and when they when it thaws again you get drip loss and weep, uh which can lead, especially especially in a fish that's gone through a uh a very hard rigor, severe you I hope you guys know what I mean by gapping or get yeah in i in the in the fillets and and an extreme loss of texture, which is why like the really the the the people who are doing the tunas, which are are frozen, are freezing in like very cold slurries, incredibly fast freezing to get small crystals. Super freezing. Nitrogen tunnels, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um blast freezer. Yeah. So but you but you don't have to, huh? We don't. I mean, we have some demand for frozen products, but it's more more for convenience.
Um, like a cruise ship, for example, wants to have frozen salmon as you know. Yeah. Think about it. And they sprinkle it with legion air sauce. It's messing, dismissing.
That's uh never been on a cruise and now I will never get invited in the wood. Yeah. Uh the or the uh New Zealand king that they have at Rustin Daughters, do you do you sell that raw to a cure house here, or do you guys cure that in New Zealand? Uh in New Zealand, we have our own smokehouse. Um, do all the processing there.
We use Manuka wood. Oh, Manuka. Yeah, yeah. Do you like manuka honey? Everyone makes a big deal over the manuka honey.
You manuka honey person? Sure. It is awesome. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, what's not to like. I mean, uh there's a difference between what's not to like and what's to love. Those are two different things. Uh yeah, okay. Yeah.
They do a cream of manuka that's really good. Yeah, it is it the flavor or is it the health benefits? You know, I don't believe in health. So, like what go ahead, go ahead. The flavor though.
Give me give us a flavor. What are you looking for in your manuka honey? I'm looking for delicious. Yeah. Oh, do I think manuka honey is more delicious than the normal honey garbage clover.
Then really good acacia honey, for example. Or you know, uh I think good honey is good honey, and I don't um but manuka wood for smoking uh does have a lot of really good properties. It's got a lot of antimicrobials, which is what you want when you smoke meat and fish. Um and it has a good flavor. Like I if you pick up shavings of Manuka wood, it kind of has like a little bit of a eucalyptus-y uh hint to it.
So it's unique. It's it's a different kind of wood. But the New Zealand King, cured New Zealand King, though, like for those of you out in California who hate eucalyptus, it doesn't have a menthol y hit. Like they there's no menthol or pininess to New Zealand King. I can say I've eaten a lot of it.
Uh it is it is a very good product. Now you have here the fresh and you have the the roe, which by the way, I have to take some to Booker or he will t tear my head off. He's so mad that he couldn't be here today. Um where where do people uh get the product? Sure.
Uh well, our fresh salmon, um most of it goes to restaurant trade, but there are a few places here in the city you can get the fresh product. Um fresh direct is probably the the most easiest way to get it. Um, that's right. And they they label it too, right? Yep.
Because they also have like lesser priced stuff that's not. It'll say aura king salmon from New Zealand. How come you guys put the put the like is what were people calling it before you put the bar over the O? Um we started with the bar over the Oracle. I started because I feel I don't know, is there any other way someone would pronounce it?
Uh it's just uh Ooh, ooh. I don't know. And also you go by King, you you you don't use the Chinook because that's specifically a Pacific Northwest thing, right? Because Chinook feels American. Great helicopter, by the way.
Yeah. Absolutely. World class. Yeah, yeah. Chinook's a North American word.
It's in di it's a word, you know. So um, first people. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so uh Anastasia and I and the crew have been pounding delicious uh fresh salmon.
And uh is this uh we're dipping it in soy. I haven't had the uh what do you what do you guys call it? Just roe, you don't call it icurie, just call it row, right? Curred row. Yeah, I'm gonna be eating that.
I'll be eating that after the show. Listen, thank you guys. Since this is yeah, thanks. This is the last thing I'm gonna do a like 30-second classics in the field. Ready?
No, uh hold on. Start the classics in the field, yeah! We have to do this every day. Okay, so listen, I don't have a lot of time to tell you about this. Uh Edward H.
Stahl was the only person in the United States, you know, at the time, and maybe even still, that's made a million dollars off of rabbits in a single year. He had the first million dollar a year rabbit business. He uh invented a breed called the giant chinchilla rabbit, which he did as a fur-raising animal, but also does as meat. And he is like, without question, he he invented this breed or developed this breed, I think, in the 20s, like 1921 or 1926. He wrote a bunch of books and was the reason there was, including my crazy Uncle Rick, not crazy Uncle Marty, who jumped out of the window, crazy Uncle Rick, was part of this kind of the there was a craze, uh, I guess just post-war of people trying to raise rabbits for money because they thought that that's how you're gonna get rich quick because rabbits, you know, they breed like rabbits.
Uh, so there's a book called Chinchilla Rabbits, Standard Heavyweight and Giant by Edward H. Stahl. And I will read just the poem in the front. You can stop playing that. That's your 30 seconds hour.
All right. Matt, I will murder you in your sleep if you cut off this poem. This is my Christmas poem to you people. Dedicated to the American Chinchilla rabbit breeder. And just so you know, it's gonna spell out chinchilla.
These aren't chinchillas, the fur dusting things from South America. These are rabbits. They're called chinchilla rabbits. C is for chinchilla, the rabbit supreme. H is for her highness, the chinchilla queen.
I is for investment, which you will not lose. N is for none better if chinchillas you choose. C is for champion, the peer of the lot. H is for hardiness, which chinchillas have got. I is for inspiration for young and for old.
L is for love's labor that never grows cold. L is for Langiera, the source of chinchilla's name. And A is for association that's bringing them fame. Happy holidays, cooking issues. Cooking issues is powered by Simplecast.
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