This episode is brought to you by Fair Kitchens. Learn about the Fair Kitchens code and join the movement at Fairkitchens.com. Welcome to Processing, a show about the intersection between food and grief with your host Sarah Tingora and Bobby Conforto. On this show, we're gonna really explore where grief and food intersect, how they go hand in hand, different people's experiences with their specific traumas and how food played a part from the beginning to the end of that experience. And how as individuals we uniquely process life's traumas and losses through either the longing for, the creating of, the avoiding of, the obsessing over, and the eating of food.
I remember right after Michael died. I still miss him, but I missed him so badly that night that I stopped at the convenience store on the corner and I bought a container of Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia. It's too sweet. You know, it's too everything. And I went home with it, and I took it to bed, and I thought to myself, gee, so this is my first menace à toi after Michael's death.
Me, Ben, and Cherry. And I ate the entire thing. What do you think your relationship to food was during times of crisis? I think that um my sister and I use food to reward ourselves. I wish I had something more interesting to say, but definitely like spaghetti and meatballs and chocolate cakes.
My mom still can't eat Rugola, it makes her too sad. I've also experienced a lot of loss, as has Bobby, and I think we really wanted to find a way where we could like work together. There's something that feels very compelling about doing a project with you, mom. Um, as just kind of a missing piece in life, and just something we've always wanted to do, but not known quite how. I can't think of anything better myself.
I think that I mean, any conversation about grief, I think prepares everyone for grief because there are so few conversations about grief. That's why I think that what you guys are doing is so important. Hello and welcome to Cookie Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live on the Average Radio Network from you know, whenever. To whenever from a birthday's pizza remote rookly.
Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing? Good. You're good? Mm-hmm.
Yeah. You're still dressed in your parka. It's cold. I feel that you have a special pass to wear your Christmas hat. I feel you should have your Christmas hat on.
No. Like maybe it's just like a tree hat with decorations. Like maybe it's like timeless for you. No? No.
All right. Uh, Matt in the booth, as usual. How are you doing, Matt? I'm doing good, but I've had I had the door open to the studio while you did that. It's just downright frightening.
Yeah? Yeah, I've never I've never had the door open before. Yeah. Well, uh, so it's you're like not enjoyable. I get it.
I get it, I get it from all sides too, because coming out of the speakers is coming out that way. I can't, man. Not doing that again. Wow, sorry for you. Sorry for you.
Uh so I once had to do it on the street for somebody. Here's the worst. Like, I've uh I don't do it anymore because Stas and I decided that in general we don't like to do it, but I've done it in a hotel room when I'm by myself. Why? Because it had to call in.
You know, all the times I used to have to call in, like if when I was in Germany, I did it once uh on a street corner in some other country. I forget where I was. And it's just like it just feels really weird not doing it in the context of the booth. You know what I mean? Like in a hotel, like two rooms down, someone's like, can't you just have sex like a normal person in the room and buy them and you're not how you do it.
That's not right. Imagine? That's horrifying. That's horrifying. Uh so anything uh good happened in your world of food and drink this past week?
Food and drink? No. No? Well, didn't you just bring me some nice food and drink from like the I gave you Meyer lemons and grapefruits from my parents' backyard. Nice.
And uh what kind of grapefruit are they? I don't know. What color are they? White. How long ago were they on the tree?
Five days ago. Five days? Nice. Did you keep them in your fridge? Nope.
Alright. Uh like Nastasia grew up with a Meyer Lemon tree, so she has a special love for them. I've never developed this love, so she's bringing me her childhood Meyer Lemons in the hopes that I can develop a similar love. Now, I hope you guys know that for her to actually like something from her childhood is like like a crazy thing. I'm like, Nastasia, why do you hate lemongrass?
She's like, because I grew up with it. Because I grew up with it, so I don't like it anymore. And like all the stuff from your childhood you don't like, except for Myer Lemons. Yeah. Yeah.
How's come? How come that's the one? No, they're good. They're not as waxy as what you're used to, I don't think. Are you don't like the waxiness?
Is that what it's the waxiness? I mean of the peel? Yeah. I mean, they smell good. Yeah.
Fragrant. Um, oh, and this is from we're now exchanging gifts. This is from uh our friend Bitteress Girl who gives me the MREs and comes to the Heritage Radio Network events. It's is glassware for you. Oh.
She thought you would like to show the things that you're putting out of so she's unwrapping it now. That's what's happening. Like a tree trunk. Well, if a tree was a big thing. Are they all the same?
If a tree was an octagon, I don't know, they're yours. I didn't open it. I did not open it. Anyway, cool. Uh thank you.
Um, you said nothing good in food and drink happened to you. No. At all. Nope. See, what did I do?
I had to do so I had parties, but not food. The parties had no good food and drink? No. Did you throw any parties? No.
Just going to other people's parties? Alright. I had to throw the uh Booker's yearly sushi party. Uh so my son Booker, who, you know, is a lover of only candy and sushi and cured New Zealand King salmon, which by the way, turns out our guest from the New Zealand King Salmon, uh, I've seen him at the bar a couple of times, Michael. He uh he used to be working with our classics in the field from two weeks ago, uh Paul Bertoli at Framani, his sausage thing.
So he knows, so it's like all of the cooking issue stuff is coming together. Isn't that weird? Cool. Anyways. So Booker, of course, had to eat his half kilo of Ikura, but then every year I do the like, you know, they all want to make you know, sushi rolls, like America style sushi rolls like Californian and salmon all stuff.
So I have to make all all the stuff. And so every year I have to, you know, Morimoto style, like rotary cut uh veg, and then into sheets and then hack those sheets into sticks so that they can be placed inside of the sushi roll. You know, you know how you do. So I typically I'll do, you know, cucumber, carrot, daikon, uh, and pickled daikon. I think that's and scallions, and that's it.
Anyway, for veg. Uh avocado, but I don't do the same thing. You can't rotary cut an avocado. What are you? Weirdo?
Rotary cutting avocado. Do you know what the uh old English D-bag name for avocado is? You familiar with this, Matt? No. And it does not make sense until you've tasted other kinds of avocados.
Okay, wrap your mind around this alligator pear. Oh. Alligator pear. Now, for those of us that grew up having the image of the avocado in your mind be the Haas avocado, right? Uh, or like, you know, weirdos in grocery stores call it Mexican avocados, right?
But Haas, because in Mexico they have so many more varieties of avocado than Haas, right? But anyway, the Haas avocado is kind of that bumply bumpy one that is delicious and soft and high in oil, right? So you can get the alligator part out of that, because it's all looks like an alligator, and that makes sense. And I g I guess it's kind of pear-shaped too. Maybe that's why they call it an alligator pear.
But the texture is nothing like a pear, but if you have some of the other non oily varieties of uh avocado, like Colombian avocados, then I could see more closely how they're like, oh, I get it. It's kind of like maybe I because it's not just like a vehicle for like oil and creaminess and uncuousness, it's like something that you might eat, not like bite it like a pear, but it makes more sense, other than just the shape and the skin, alligator pear. You know what they call Asian pears in stupid old apple? No, no, no. Uh sand pears.
Which is not a nice thing to call it. And they're not pears, neither are they apples. But I like uh do you like an Asian pears? No. Why?
I don't know. What is it about all of it? Texture, flavor. You don't like the texture? Mm-hmm.
Huh. Huh. What about you, Matt? Uh I feel like no. I haven't had one in a long time.
I should try I should try it again. Yeah, you should. There are many, many varieties of Asian pear, right? But uh but I think maybe nostasias, and tell me if this is your gripe on them. They're mainly about the kind of crunch and the water explosion texture with like kind of a mild florally and sweet taste, but they're not kind of rich or complicated that way.
I in general. Oh my god. Yeah, I told you my wife hates water chestnuts. Jen hates water chestnuts. And she also, by the way, sorry, hates me talking about it.
Because she thinks she's like, why you gotta bring up like the the one thing I don't like? You know what I'm saying? She's like, you're a jerk. You make me look like a bad guy. Just the one thing I don't like.
But it's like, you know, I feel that there's like a a community of people out there who hate water chestnuts out all out of proportion. And uh for me, I don't understand the hatred. Now remember, people, I don't like melon other than watermelon. So we all have our issues in life, cooking issues specifically. But uh water chestnuts, to me, it's just like some sort of like it's like crunchy water.
Like, what is this? Is that is it that I that weird, it's not fibrous, but that weird, like mealy crunchy that you don't like? Yeah, I guess so. Where are you on water chestnuts, Matt? Uh I have not had a water chestnut.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What? What year were you born? Uh 86. Yeah.
Man, maybe it's like a generational thing. What year were you born as that? So, like somewhere between eighty two and eighty six. They disappeared? We had a lot of Chinese food growing up.
Yeah, but I feel like even like you saying Matt hasn't had Chinese food? Wait. Okay. Yeah, hold on. Well, okay.
I gotta look at the internet for a second. The water chestnuts are the ones that uh what is the thing that sort of has like a bunch of circles? Almost looks like you're eating the plastic that uh a soda uh six pack would come. Are you thinking of bamboo shoots or are you thinking of lo of lotus root? Probably lotus root.
It's got holes in it, it's like a big disc with holes in it. You know, cream colored that's lotus root. That's lotus root. Okay, yep. Still no on the water chestnuts, I think.
You don't you mean you see that thing I feel like in the 70s, like every pseudo Chinese restaurant uh sorry, every pseudo Chinese recipe that like Whitey McWhitington would make at home had water chestnuts. What? And baby corn. Oh, I I do not like baby corn. I I'm gonna go on record as saying baby corn is not good.
You know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. What about baby corn, Matt? I don't I mean I'll eat it if someone puts it in a thing, but it's not I would not by choice purchase it. Do you know what's delicious?
Corn. Corn is amazing. Oh my god, corn tastes good. Oh my god, is corn good. You uh you also have to do almost nothing to make it taste so good.
Oh, corn tastes so good. Also, like like sweet corn tastes good, corn meal is great, like almost every aspect of the corn. So baby corn actually is sort of genius because it's much worse than corn, but also much smaller, so you don't have as much of the bad food. Yeah, but you took that corn, well, okay, so they do grow smaller varieties, but really it's immature corn and you're eating the cob. When was the last time you were eating corn and you were like, damn, I wish I could eat that cob.
Does that happen to you? Never. No. So then they like cook it and like can it. It's not even usually interestingly pickled.
It's in that kind of like water, in that baby corn water. You know what I'm talking about, Nastasia? Yeah. And it's just like that was a 70s thing. I feel like people have tried to bring it back a bunch, but I'm like, why?
Why? Like, why? Like, I don't understand it. Something that I'm try I've tried to love many times is canned hearts of palm, too. Now, Hearts of Palm I like, kind of.
I've had good hearts of Palm, but like I've tried to make myself love Hearts of Palm, and I'm always like, what's to what's to love so much? What about you, Nastasia? I don't like it. You also don't like giant beets, red beets. I like red beets.
I just don't like this is a long discussion. I told you the best beets I've ever had were those dehydrate roasted beets. Anyway, here's the here's the flip for you. So, like, of vegetables that come in just kind of like flavorless like water, right? You got your baby corn, right?
And then uh you got your canned artichoke hearts. Now, canned artichoke hearts are a pale comparison to an actually well done, nice, like you know, artichoke heart, whether you like raise it, whether you you know fry it. I usually fry them, not deep fry, but you know, like pan fry to get it crisp on the one side. Uh but like that's a huge difference between the canned stuff, but I haven't yet had that huge difference where like I'm like, I now understand hearts of palm because I've grown up on the water variety. Because when you look at a canned artichoke heart, you're like, nah, you you you usually buy if you're gonna buy pre made, you buy oil pack, right?
Yeah, yeah. But you've had the the canned water ones, right? And you're like, meh, right? Mm-hmm, meh. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. And uh, don't you feel that hearts of palm might be that way? That there might be some sort of genius inside of a heart of palm the way there is inside of artichoke, or the way artichoke is. There isn't. Why?
You've experimented? No, I just don't like hearts of palm. I don't know. Well, have you ever had anything other than the canned? No.
Okay. Um and you like it not canned? I'm trying to say I've never had the experience. I don't feel like I know enough. I don't know.
I don't know. I don't have enough experience with hearts of. Anywhere where they grow, like what is it? It's the center, like if you strip off the top of the palm, it's the growing shoot in the middle of the palm. Yes, usually small palms.
But the the thing is is that they there's a couple of different varieties of uh of thing of palm like of aircasey thing that they harvest the hearts of palm. And some, uh when you harvest it, like they're dead. That's it. You knock off the thing, and then the palm tree is dead, dead, dead. Muerto, finished, over.
And then some you can reharvest a couple of times. But you're basically just harvesting that. The worst meal would be baby corn, water chestnuts, cantaloupe, ambrosia salad. I like ambrosia. And giant red beads you don't like ambrosia?
Okay. We have a collar. Caller. I didn't even finish the thing, but we'll get to it later. Ask me about sushi.
Ask me about sushi party. Uh caller, you're on the air. Uh hey Dave, this is Josh, uh coming from Sarasota, Florida. Hey, I know. Just looking good.
How are you? All right. Uh looking for some uh some advice on doing like a uh long cook, like a low temp cook on uh chuck roast. Okay. Like 24 to 48 hours.
Right. Um I did I did a 24-hour cook on one like a couple weeks ago. It came out pretty good. The temper the texture was it was a little chewy still. Um and so I'm planning on doing a 48-hour one this coming weekend for some friends, but I didn't know if you had any input before I put myself out there with with friends.
You know what I'm saying? What temperature did you use? Uh I did 60 Celsius because I was doing it for my in-laws who don't like things to be too rare. I was gonna go a little bit lower, like 58, 59. Yeah.
But sometimes my friends kind of get a little squeamish with if things are too too rare, you know? Right. I mean the the okay, so like part of the problem with like a a chuck, tell me whether you had this happen. So at 24 hours at 60 trying to think of uh trying to think of uh because I've never done that exact temperature. Um I mean it should have started to get we should have broken down quite a bit of the collagen by 24 hours at 60.
Like yeah, it was definitely it was definitely pretty good, but it was like a little chewyer than what I was looking for. So I don't know if you know. By the way, before I go into this, are you on the Tampa side of Sarasota or the Venice side of Sarasota? Um I actually live in Bradenton, but but um I'm more of the yeah, the Tampa side. Yeah, all right, yeah.
Uh so do they still find sharks' teeth on the beaches down in Venice and Nicomis or no? As far as I know, I haven't been down that way in a long time. Yeah. But uh but as far as I know. Yeah.
Used to be a shelf off the coast there, and then whenever storms would come up, like in that shelf, like is where all the prehistoric sharks were dead, and the storms would come up and just wash all these prehistoric sharks sharks' teeth up on the beach. And so you'd wait for the waves to crash in, and then like before they rolled back out again, you'd you'd yank 'em. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, I was down there about fifteen years ago when we did that, and and you know, they were still washing in, but I I don't know recently if they I'm assuming it still happens.
Yeah, who knows. Uh okay. So the uh I mean that's a fun thing for a kid. If you take a kid down, kids like collecting sharks' teeth. You know what I'm saying?
Yeah. I mean those little weird sand fleas you have down there, not a giant fan of, but the shark's teeth. Very pro, very pro. Uh yeah. So uh can you think you could cook a sand flea?
Could you capture another or whatever they are? You know those little things that jump around? Can you eat them? Did you know in Belgium do you know in Belgium they have like these seashore shrimp where you used to have horses and the horses would drag these like nets in the sand and pick up like zillions of these little gray shrimp, and then they would cook them and then sell them all over Belgium. Isn't that a weird isn't that a weird thing?
Weird thing. I'm gonna go experience that. I'm going to Belgium for the first time in February. So for any of you with ideas of Belgium, let me know. Anyway, back to your problem.
One of the issues with low temperature cooking in general versus high temperature cooking and what I like to call multi-muscle meats. So when you're dealing with chuck, you're dealing with something where there's a lot of different muscles, right? And in any sort of like mass group of muscles, more certain muscles have more connective tissue and certain muscles have less connective tissue. So let me know if I'm on base here. Even with something like pork belly, right?
It's not one continuous muscle. There'll be different uh pieces of muscle that that'll go in and out. So what'll end up happening in general is that one section of the uh meat will be kind of dil, you know, delicious, you know, good texture, and another one will be strangely dry, doesn't respond well, turns mushy, and it's could be construed as chewy slash mushy at the same temperature just because the two muscles are very different, right? And so in situations like that, right, especially if people are used to kind of more traditional cooking methods where let's say the gelatin renders out of every like all the collagen turns to gelatin. Because in low temperature cooking, the collagen does get converted into gelatin, but because the temperatures aren't so high, it doesn't really render out.
It stays almost like a single piece of meat where the gelatin is kind of the gelat is kind of compacted in, you can actually see the connective tissue doesn't kind of melt out, and you don't get those like stringy textures that you get uh in kind of a slow-cooked braise, right? And so the problem with that is is that that stuff then doesn't render out and moisten what would otherwise be overcooked non-connective tissue muscles in the same sort of area. Does that make sense? So it can be problematic when doing these things, especially if you're going in the range of let's say once you go over about 57, right, or 57, once you're into 60, certain of the muscles are gonna start tasting uh like relatively toothy, right, until they go mushy because the proteins of them have been overcooked, and then you're not rendering out a lot of the gelatin into uh into the rest of the meat as you would with a traditional thing. So you're caught in kind of like a strange in-between land, right?
Now, in something that is like a braised short rib where there's kind of connected tissue throughout, then when you you can cook at really almost any temperature you want. I don't really see much of a tr uh reason to go over about 62 when you're doing uh short ribs, but uh anything from like 55 for rare, which I don't really like, but people, it's kind of a thing people do, like all the way up to 62. What happens is the texture changes, and uh uh incidentally, the higher the temperature in that range, things get beefier and beefier tasting, right? So people tend to uh appreciate the beefiness of it more. Uh and this is another thing you have to realize is that um slow cooked chuck like this is never gonna have the intensely beefy flavor that a high temperature uh braise one is because the high temperatures create some of that beefy flavor, right?
But anything between about 62, 63 and traditional brazing temperatures in the 80s, right? Uh I don't really have much use for them. You know what I mean? I don't think that they're providing the best of either of the two worlds. So I tend to stay either in the lower range or higher.
Now, if you're feeling from tasting it was that certain muscles tasted chewy because they were overcooked, right? Then lower the temperature down to like a 57, but some of your friends not might not be happy. If you're feeling that the connective tissue hadn't fully rendered yet, then go longer. But you have to be able to distinguish between the two different kinds of things which can almost masquerade for each other at certain times. You see what I'm saying?
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. So I'm I've I've got one going right now at home at 59. It'll be tonight, it'll be just shy of 48 hours. I guess I'll see how that goes and try to distinguish the two and then and then go from there.
But I'll probably try the 57 and see how that goes. So in muscles that don't have a lot of connective tissue, what you should notice for what I consider to be like they what happens is is that when you bite into it, the fibers will have started to break down and it will taste somewhat mushy. Now, some people, it this is my opinion, mushy. Some people actually love that flak that that texture. They love it because they think of it as tender.
To me, in my mind, there's a difference between tenderness, which is the can there is a lack of or it that connected tissue has been broken down, and the actual what the fibers are like, are they mushy or not? And you so they separate between those two kinds of concepts, and then once you separate between those two kinds of concepts, you can troubleshoot like which way you want to go. Do I want to drop the temperature or do I want to increase the time? See what I'm saying? Yeah.
But uh shoot me something on cooking issues on Twitter. Let me know uh let me know how it turned out after it comes out tonight. I will do, thank you. Cool. And you actually have one other one on the line as well.
All right, caller, you're on the air. Yeah, hi. This is uh Patrick Cullen from Brooklyn. How are you guys doing? How are you doing?
So I've got a question about steaming, but first I have a just a brief comment on your uh atomic blast conversation from a couple weeks back. You said steaming, correct? Yeah. Okay, okay. Steaming nostasia.
Jeez Louise. All right. All right, what was your comment? Is that apparently um a lot of the blast calculations that the the the uh militarily do not take into effect the damage from incineration of buildings by the initial uh uh range and whatever the uh the flash, whatever the beginning thing is called. Yeah, that the effects are vastly understated in all the yield calculations out there.
So basically it'd be a lot worse than you think. Immediately. Well everywhere. Conversely, it could be a lot uh let me explain I'll give you this, right? So most of the like standard highly flammable substance tests were like the the live, you know what what we did in in Japan, right?
And and it's true that a lot of the the blast tests that were done in the US were done on military they did like some house-based stuff, right? But they also did military institution and concrete structures. And I don't know exactly which one of those things they relied on the most, right? But it is true and I've read that things like fires are undercalculated by their blast and the damage that's involved. But another thing that they did not test on was the effect of giant urban metropolises that are so dense.
If you look at all of their calculations, none of them were done in like massive modern urban environments, which is kind of weird because they existed at the time. You know what I mean? But I guess you know they weren't gonna build like four city blocks with skyscrapers on it and then you know attempt an air blast and a ground blast uh you know next to it. It's just impracticable. So you know I always thought that like it could be worse in some ways like you say, but in other ways it could be better because no one's expecting you to be in the shadow of the Empire State Building.
You know what I mean? Well so hopefully we don't get to the real real world test. Yeah at all just throwing throwing that out there. Yeah. Um so so my scheming question is that I purchased and now the now defunct Cuisinar countertop it's like a steam coaster oven it's basically like a combi I think a consumer combi.
Yeah, I owned one oven yeah I I used to own one. Yeah. So I am curious about on a steam alone setting, since the temp goes from I think 120 to 210, of fooling around with with steaming, mostly mostly animal protein. If there's any guidance on you know low temperature steaming or even where to start or use are tents and time for studying relevant. I my only real experience is using bamboo steamer baskets, and I'm not even sure what temperature that's steaming in in the basket when you have it above above a walk.
So I was just looking for some general guidance, and it seems to be that there's very little written about this as far as I can tell. About like steaming and com well, it in com okay, okay. So when you're above a walk in a steamer basket, you're pretty much doing uh, you know, 212, you're doing steam, right? The main issues when you're using steamer baskets that I think people don't think about a lot is that uh in l you know, unless you're being extremely if you're extremely vigorous, you're getting massive amounts of condensation, which can be problematic, although steamer baskets are pretty good at handling that. But if you're using multiple steamer baskets, you're not necessarily getting the same heat output into the top basket as you are on the bottom basket.
And so that kind of needs to be calculated for. Unit, uh, and my friend John Darragon has one and he loves it, is the idea of uh lower temperature steam. Now, when you're creating the steam, it's being created at the high temperature, right? But it's being injected into the oven in such a way that you're not raising the oven temperature all the way up to the temperature of steam, right? And so the reason to do that in a low temperature thing is that one of the reasons why ovens are so terrible at doing low temperature cooking is that there's massive amounts of evaporation off of your product as it's cooking.
So you can never really regulate the temperature. Once something becomes 100% humidity inside of the box, and this is the theory of the CVAP oven, where there's a bain marie in it, and you're heating the bain marie up until the water is the same temperature that you want the oven to be, is that once you're in a hundred percent humidity environment, even if it's not quote unquote steam, right, then you're getting actual temperature on the surface of the meat because you've gotten rid of evaporative cooling, and you've also increased the heat transfer rate of the medium by saturating it with moisture, right? So you got this double thing where you can be more accurate, you're not having a uh evaporation off of your off your product and you know, all this, but you don't have to put it in a bag. And that's the theory of like a CVAP oven or of low temperature combi, is that I'm still getting decent heat transfer, not as much as you would in a bag necessarily, and I'm getting decent accuracy because I've mitigated the effects of evaporative cooling. And that's what you're looking to do.
Now, whether or not the cuisinart is able to do that, I have never run any tests, but it may be. Now, here's my problem. So, and the the bigger a piece of meat is, the less accurate it needs to be. Now, I've measured my brevel toaster oven on uh temperature accuracy over time and also power output over time. I don't remember off the top of my head what the answers were, but I've measured it, like with equipment.
Uh I have not measured uh the um the cuisin art. But you know, people who like back when Chris Young was doing uh modernist cuisine with uh, you know, Miravold and Grant and uh Maxime, you know, they were measuring combi ovens and they noticed that there was uh like a lot of uh porpoising up and down of the temperature, that it averaged the right temperature and that the average was good, but that it went up and down by you know several degrees over the course of a couple of minutes. And so they use that as a knock against the these ovens. And my point was always, well, it depends on how long the cycle is, because as long as your average is 100%, you're only uh accurate, you're only ever over or undercooking, right? The amount of meat that is affected during the time at which it ex goes excursed above uh the excursion of the temperature is above your set point.
Does that make sense? So the question is aesthetically if if if at the end too you were doing a high temperature finish, that same meat affected by that could it could be the same zone of the meat that's gonna get in the high temperature finish at the end in any way. So it doesn't really matter whether you overcook the outer layer of the meat. Now on a thinner product where the the temperature excursion is enough to to like cause an effect all the way through the meat, well then you're hosed, right? So it it all depends on how good the average is and then how thick your piece of meat is that you whether you can withstand uh whether whether whether you're gonna overcook with your finish the outside anyway, and it and it doesn't matter.
So this is just something that has to be tested. I haven't tested it with that oven. Now, I will say this: my problem with that oven was twofold. One, the freaking rack that they give you is garbage. It's so garbage.
The cooking rack is such a POS. Oh my god, I hate it. That the wire they make it out of is so thin that it like cuts into things, and then the wires themselves are so far separate from each other that like, you know, unless your bread is stiff as hell before it goes in, it flops down around the thing, or like heaven forbid you try to reheat a freaking pancake. Steam is great for like reheating. Let's say you make pancakes and you have you make extra ones, right?
What are you supposed to do with those? You're supposed to freeze them and then you can reheat them later, right? Or you know, if you're gonna throw them away. But the best way to reheat something like that is with steam because you're not drying it out as you're reheating it, and it meant to be cooked to a high temperature anyway. So a little bit of a steam hit with then with a little bit of toasting effect to do it out, great.
But the problem is is that those things curl around the freaking edges of that stupid grit grate that they give you. The grate is the worst piece of great technology I've ever used in my whole life. I hate it. There's nothing in between this and a commercial TV app at this point, right? Uh no.
Dave, Dave from chat chimed in to say that you should know that a Nova is producing a consumer combi oven. It says it will be out in 2020. Oh, nice. Now, the other problem I have with the QuisNart is that particular QuisNart is that uh I don't like the control system at all. Like I wish they would just give you like a different way to control it.
There's a the dial spinning and the different things that they have. I find it I find the control scheme unpleasant. That part not fun. So so so two two two quick things to wrap that up then is that so for like a traditional like uh like uh city ham time and text time temperature and time, what would you suggest starting starting with on that? I I I it got so many different suggestions.
I'm curious what you think of of where you would at least start on, you know, just about the size of pork that could fit in that thing. Well, remember a city ham's already cooked, right? So what to cure to cure to cure and then do the first cook. Oh, oh, okay. Uh yeah, I mean, like it's like it depends on on what you like.
I I don't know actually what temperature I used to know, what temperature they take them up to, but I would probably end uh going somewhere in for a traditional kind of texture on uh city ham, somewhere like north of 60 and south of 65, probably, like in that range, uh, just to get that same kind of texture. Anything over, you're gonna be killing it. Anything under 60, and you're gonna not necessarily have the texture that people associate with it, you know what I mean? It's gonna be too soft. Well, people don't want rare-ish ham.
You know what I mean? Unless it's like country ham, like I eat raw, you know what I mean? Ain't nobody eating a city ham raw. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Uh and there obviously they're you know, people love a rosy rare uh pork chop, but uh here's what they I don't think they like. People, I think some people hate a rosy rare pork chop, by the way, but you know, they they've become more in fashion, you know, since when I was a kid, when you ordered a pork chop, a they were thin, and b, you cooked the ever loving snot out of those things until they were like pieces of shoe leather because that's what everyone was told to do, and no one wanted anything other than like a shoe leather pork chop. And I grew up in the exact worst time for pork chops because this renaissance of like the not as cooked pork chop or the the like the rosy in the middle pork chop uh had not yet happened yet, but they had bred all of the fat out of pigs by the time that I was kind of a kid, and so the thin pork chop of the 80s was also dry, which is a nightmare. You grew up with dry pork chops, Sassy?
Yeah. The pork chop of the 80s was a dry, like a dry, sad pork chop, right? The pork chop of our grandparents' era was greasy anyway. But sponge on the counter and then forget about it sort of had that texture entirely. Yeah.
Um I just and then to completely wrap it up. I'm just curious with like duck or poultry like that that help you you can't it helps to have some sort of initial cooking before the roast with the at least with the the with the fat and the skin. Is the steam do you need a dehydration step after that initial cook to dry it out, or can you go straight from a steam into the oven, or is there really a good model for like a duck or two steamed black roast? Uh people love people love cooking that stuff in combies. I don't have that they love it.
They love it. I don't have that much experience. I you know, typically any dehigh you do, you do before your roast step, and then your injection would be done, your steam injection would be done uh at the outset to kind of like jump start uh and because it's not actually making the surface moist, it's just increasing your heat transfer. You see what I'm saying? And and stopping a certain uh amount of evaporation off and and just jacking your heat transfer up.
So I would say you probably continue doing it the traditional way and then with a steam injection. But I personally don't have like when I used combis, I you know, most of my combi work was kind of special effect combi work. Like I was never like on a line just like throwing you know a bunch of chickens or a bunch of ducks into a combi and and letting her rip. So I don't I don't personally have that much experience with it, but I know people love cooking duck in a combi. Okay, cool.
Well, I'll let you let you know how it goes. Look forward to the better model that works well. Yeah, cool. Yeah, I'll be looking out for it as well. Um we actually have an up yet another caller.
All right, caller, you're on the air, what's up? Hey, I got an easy question for you guys. Um so I just started cooking like three or four months ago, and I started listening to your guys' uh podcast, and I've been making fresh noodles, which is way better than any noodles that I've ever tasted. But the problem I'm having is they keep clumping up together. Yeah.
Um how do I like sometimes it's clumping up, sometimes not, and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong to cause it to clump up. So you're you're you're doing like Italian style noodles? Yeah, just uh Italian style noodles, spaghetti noodles, angel hair, stuff like that. And you have an Atlas style pasta roller? Yep, exactly.
Okay. So this is a common problem. What are you using to mix the uh to mix the uh the pasta? Um a fork. Oh, so you you're not using like a kitchen aid or anything like that?
No, I don't have I don't have anything like that. Okay. So your problem is one of hydration, right? So pasta dough is like Italian pasta. Are you doing egg or not egg?
Egg. Egg. So uh pasta dough is one of those things where you know it's almost like you want for you almost want it to be such low hydration that you're like, this is never gonna be a dough. Do you know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying, Stas?
So it's like she's just she's mouthing words but not speaking them. Just don't like fresh pasta. Well, fresh pasta is different from dry pasta. They're different products. You don't like it at all?
At all. Rabioli, yes. Cavitelli? No. You don't like cavitelli?
Cavitelli. You don't like it. Not really a fresh pasta, but gnocchi you don't like? Potato gnocchi, yes. Where it's purely made out of potatoes.
There's no such thing as pure. With no flour in it. Like a little bit, but not the majority. The majority is potato. Who makes who makes like real Italians?
Real t you're real Italian. Did you ever live in Italy by yourself? No. Why are you questioning me? Because what you're saying all real Italian.
You know. Hey, family show. First of all, and you made it with your family you were living with? Yes. And how much flour did they use?
I don't remember, but a lot. Well, I'm not saying it should be all flour, but like you're saying like it's like no one makes it with all potatoes and a teaspoon of flour. It's mostly potato. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Well, what doesn't matter?
You don't believe me. Go on with his question. I just want a recipe. Okay. Otherwise it's mashed potatoes and egg.
Needs some flour. Yeah. Geez, Louise. And I don't appreciate the hatred of fresh pasta. But I understand you're you're you're in the al dente pasta business where you like you want it dried, you need that hard center.
Uh but when you're making a pasta, whether you're making it, whether you're gonna dry it or not later, like you need to have a very low hydration dough. And so the problem you're having is there's just too much water in the dough, and that's why it's clumping together. So there's a couple things you can do to rectify that. You can either try to get like a harder, like a heavier mixing environment to like mix it so that you can mix a lower hydration dough. It might also be the flour that you're using.
But another thing you could do is do what I used to do, which is cheat. And the way that you cheat, okay, is is that you make the dough as kind of stiff as you can, and then uh you know how you so when you're rolling it through the rollers, you you know, you you take the piece that you're gonna do, you roll it through like once, twice, three, and then it starts to kind of look like dough before you start rolling it and then reducing the size of it. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, okay. So uh flour it in between the rolls, and then as you're rolling it, the flour will get um get get kind of into it and will stiffen it somewhat.
So especially like I don't think anyone ever uses number seven on those rollers. It's like you all or whatever it is, the highest number is seven, whatever. I only ever really go to the second to highest one, the other one's like so thin it's crazy, right? But the the thinner you go, the less apt it is to clump. And if you're dusting it with flour in between, another thing you can do is uh pause so like once you get it down to your final uh place, you can put a light dusting of flour on it, let it sit, uh, and let it air out a little bit, and then when you cut it, it won't clump nearly as much.
Now, one of the problems is is that most of the rollers on the pasta things, they um the the two cutting like thingamajigs kind of don't really intersect that much, they barely touch. And so sometimes if you have very thin or very dry doughs, they tend not to like even necessarily get cut, but that's a machine to machine because the tolerances on the machines aren't that high, if if that makes sense to you. So I don't know whether if your machine's always cutting like a dream, realize also with a drier dough, you're gonna have to like feed in a little harder to get it to grip, but that's actually good because it's gonna clump less as it comes out, and then like lay them out in in strips or over. You know, I remember I used to jam wooden spoons into things and then like drape the stuff over the wooden spoon and get them to go in. But it's it's mainly just a hydration problem.
And a little bit of cheating, you know, uh a little bit of cheating with flour dusting in between your roller steps, I think is gonna help you out tremendously. Yeah, super helpful. Appreciate that. This episode is brought to you by Fair Kitchens. The food service industry faces a challenge.
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Yuri writes in about Methassell. Hi, hope this is still the correct email address for questions for cooking issues or so. Dear Dave Nastasia, esteemed guests of the podcast. No guests today. No guess.
No. No. Nastasi's shopping for shoes. Are you looking for gnocchi recipes or you're shopping for shoes? Gnocchi recipes.
Alright, cool. I'm looking for resources slash guidance on how to do you believe in that fade in the spoon book? I don't really like it. The book that apparently every Italian house has a copy of that was translated into English like 15 years ago, and it's just got the spoon on the front of it. Do you know the book I'm talking about?
It's like the joy of cooking for Italy. It's the most popular cookbook in Italy. You know what I'm talking about? No. It's translated into English, like, whatever.
Look up their recipe, see what they do. Because that's the like you're looking for the joy of cooking equivalent of gnocchi. Um, oh, you know what I never talked about? The carrots. That's what I was getting to this whole time with the sushi.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I bought a sheeting, a vegetable sheeting attachment, and then I put on Insta Instagram a picture of me doing these carrot sheets. And the way you're supposed to do it is take like a sharp knife and hold it still and then rotate the carrot. Helps if you I don't because I never have this patience, but it helps if you soak it a little bit in salt water to kind of dehydrate a little bit so it's a little softer.
But carrot, you just rotate it through carrot, cucumber, uh, dicon, all that, and you get a long sheet, then you hack that sheet into smaller sheets, you stack the sheets up, and then you slice it into the little strips that you put inside the sushi. But I happen to own a kitchen aid sheeter that I got on super sale on eBay that I bought so that I can I talked about it on the air before, so I could do like potato lasagna where it's like just like a like l like almost like a pot like a mashup between like a lasagna and a gratin with these like sheets of potatoes, and I was like, you know what? Crap on, I'm gonna use it. And so I made these like veg sheets with the uh stuff for this sushi party, and people accused me of going vegetti. People accused me of being uh a vegetiman.
That's that's rude of them. My my I have nothing against vegetis, by the way. I I don't like I uh or as they call spiralizers. I feel like you know, did we come off as being negative against the vegetti? Yeah, and Claire's never coming on the show again.
Well, I mean, that's because she thought she was coming on to be backed up by you and who was who else was on the show that day? And Rebecca, and in fact, you guys ganged up on her just as hard as I would have. So she said she's never gonna come back on. People if you hire Claire to be your life coach, which Nastasia will give you her information again, uh, say that the only way to be a true life coach is to come on cooking issues and specifically ask a question that you know is gonna turn me into a like a raving lunatic. Right, Sas?
Yes. Yeah. Uh okay. This is from Yuri. I'm looking for resources slash guidance on how to use methyl cell for applications other than foaming slash meringues, which are well documented.
Before we get into this, methysol is a hydro hydrocolloids are kind of the new age thickeners that you know I've been teaching about since forever. You know, Wiley Dufresne, my brother-in-law, was the one who started me using me, uh, you know, getting me to use a lot of them. But it's one of those uh kind of new new new era thickeners. It's um methocell is what people think it's short for is methacellulose, right? Methell is a brand name from Dow chemical that of both methocellulose and hydroxypropol methylcellulose.
So it's not a unified thing, methylcel. Like when you say methyl cell, you have to say exactly what you are uh looking to do. Now that the thing, and I'm gonna tell you basically about methacel before I go to the question, uh so that you understand the question better. But methacyl is derived from cellulose, so you pulp up, you know, like plant fibers and uh you know cellulose, and then uh you treat it in a very caustic solution to convert it into this thing, either methellulose or hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, and then there's a wide range of variations kind of between them. Then you hack them up into little particles, and then there you have your powder.
Now, the interesting thing about them, they have a couple of interesting uh characteristics, but the most interesting thing is that they tend to gel when they are hot. So almost every thickener, if it's going to form a gel, forms a gel as it's cooling, right? But methylcel does the opposite. Methocell, if it's in a water solution, as you heat it, it turns to a gel, right? Because what happens is as you heat it, it drops out of solution and forms a gel.
Now, there are 8 billion types, not 8 billion, they're like 19 types of methylcellulose. You need to ask exactly which ones you're looking for. So the main cool things that it does is as you heat it, it forms uh a gel. It can be harder, it can be softer, and it happens at different temperatures, and I'll I'll go into that in a second. But because of that, uh it also has uh foaming ability, which it's used for and can be used in emulsification systems.
Uh it's also not charged, right? In the way that like uh egg proteins are charged, and so it doesn't get affected by salt that much. Something that's not very well documented is it can be affected by milk. All right. So this is what methell is.
Now let's go into Yuri's question. Um I'm looking for understanding of how to use methylcel for stock clarification and for frying to avoid fat absorption. The recipes I find online are somewhat confusing. For instance, there's a donut recipe from Modernist Pantry uh where it's called slam dunk donuts, if you want to search for it, uses methylcel E4M, and there's a Shesteps fish and chips recipe that uses methyl F like Frank 50. How would I adapt either of these for a breaded cutlet, for example?
Uh well, if you well, okay, which methels should I use? What are the pros and cons of each one, and at what percentages? If I wanted to use methyl in my own donut recipe, uh, would I calculate the percentage from the weight of the flour or the finished dough or the liquid component? And then another example is Shesteps did a consume uh where they used methyl, they used F50, I think, for clarification. How would I scale that up down, etc.?
Okay, look, here's the thing. Um what met what they're doing with their uh another caveat from methels, methyl cell is one of the very few hydrocolloids that is not natural, i.e., it is not a naturally occurring substance. It is derived from a naturally occurring substance, but is chemically modified into something that is not naturally occurring, and some people have a problem with that. I don't. So okay.
What's happening in the donut recipe is first of all, when you're looking at the different series, the A series and the SGA, the SGA series is the hardest ging. So if you're looking for special effect gels, like the old heat setting noodles where people will give you like goop in a bottle, you squeeze the goop into soup and it turns into a noodle. They're using SG and A. That's straight methylcellulose, not hydroxypropo methyl cellulose. It gels at the lowest temperature, like sometimes in just plain hot water, like you know, like like mildly hot water, like water you can keep your hand in, and it gels harder and it stays gelled uh longer, right?
That's what the kind of stuff people were experimenting with, their hot ice creams, etc. etc., right? Those are those series. Uh anytime you have a methyl cell, whether it's the E series, the F series, the A series, or the S G series, there's a number afterwards. So F50.
That number 50 is how thick it is, how thick the viscosity of a solution of that is. So 50 is relatively low because if you if you get one that's like has an M in it, like uh E4M, the 4M means 4,000. It's Roman numerals, M, 4,000. So that is 4,000. Uh I believe it's in centipoise at a 2% solution.
That whereas uh F50 is only 50. So it's like orders of magnitude thicker. So when you're looking at any methyl cell, one, the other like the like the A series and the S G series form a stiffer gel and they form at a lower temperature. The other ones form a less firm gel and they form at a higher temperature. And the number afterwards is the viscosity.
50 is low. Things like 4M is are very high. Okay. So on the donut recipe, what's happening is they're mixing some of that E4M in. That's gonna, I think I use E4M, that's gonna increase the viscosity of the batter, which means that it's not gonna bleed out as much.
It's gonna literally the viscosity of the batter will be higher. Once it's hydrated, the way they do it is they mix it dry and then they mix it in. Another interesting thing about methyl cell is if you want to make sure that it's hydrated, you have you should put it into hot water, stir it, and then chill the water and let it go into solution. But we can get into this later. We get you know, at some point we should maybe go through hydrocolloids and do hydrocolate of the week and why you use it and why you don't.
But uh in that recipe, what's happening is is that to the extent that it hydrates in the dough, it's capturing a lot of water, making it thick because of the high viscosity of it once it's hydrated. And two, um, as it's heated, it's forming a barrier to prevent oil absorption. That's what it's there for. In the Chef Steps recipe, they're using F50 because they want a relatively thin viscosity of stuff because they're using it as a pre-dip. They're making an F50 mix and they're pre-dipping into that if you believe in wet dip.
I'm not a wet dip. I'm I'm like chicken or whatnot into dry, into wet, into dry. They're doing wet, dry, wet, which is kind of not what I do, but fine, it's different. It's like a more of a batter thing. Uh I mean, pies and thighs does it that way, and and Roberta's used to do it that way when they had a pies and thighs person here.
Uh, wet, the wet, the start from wet. Their wet dip is a methel mix. Then when you put it into dry, it keeps that stuff there, but that's putting a grease barrier and also an anti-blast-off barrier. So one of the things that methylcel is good at is people used to put methylcel into things like barbecue sauce. You paint the barbecue sauce on your chicken.
Not that I do that, I don't particularly like doing that, but you paint the barbecue sauce on the chicken, and then when you put it on the grill, as it heats, instead of becoming more liquid and running off, it turns to a gel and sits there and doesn't run off. And that I think is mainly what they're doing in this recipe on Chef Steps, is not because it's not in the final batter, it's just in the, it's just in the pre-dip. I think they're mainly using it as a glue so that as it heats up, the batter tends to stick to the fish better and not pop off. I think that's what they're doing in that. So it's using it for a slightly different um, a slightly different uh thingamajig.
And the same thing with their consume recipe. What they're doing is is they're mixing the F50 in with chicken, right? The chicken provides the charge, it's actually doing the adhering, stuff adhering to the top of what they do is they grind up fresh chicken and methylcel and cloudy stock, they bring it up to uh a simmer, they let it simmer and it clarifies like a stock without egg white. The reason is that egg white strips a lot of flavor, which is dang true. I've done the tests, it does, right?
And what they're saying is that the F50 forms a gel, that gel traps the ground up chicken, and then the ground up chicken is what's doing the lean chicken, is what's doing the adhering of the stuff. And so um, you know, I would scale it up exactly as they're doing. Bear in mind that they're using 200 grams of chicken to 500 grams of stock, which is an extremely expensive way to make stock, which is why you're only doing it for like a high-end consume. I read some of the reviews on the website of their recipe, and people do this all the time. Someone's like, it doesn't work.
Of course, I didn't have methyl, I substituted Xanthan gum instead. People, they have very different functionalities. You can't substitute Xanthan gum for methacel. This is why I think a lot of people reach for hydrocolloids without an understanding of why they're using a particular hydrocolloid in uh in a particular application. Because the idea that you would substitute Xanthan gum for methell is patently absurd.
And of course it's not gonna work that way. You ever notice astasi people review books and they're like, I I don't like any of your recipes in the book. Of course, I didn't follow any of them. Buy and like them. You know what I mean?
Hate that. Uh Nastasia might find this interesting. You know what methole is used for that you might actually enjoy? Right. It's the slime in Ghostbusters.
And it's also used to make fake the fake oil in their uh there will be blood. You know, you see that movie? I thought you loved Daniel Day Lewis. I thought I don't. You do.
You love Dan. You don't love Daniel Day Lewis? No. Nope. You do.
You talked to him about me, you talk to me about him all the time off on it. Oh, you're a crazy person. She's doing it for you. She knows you love Daniel Baby. Oh, that's so nice.
Another thing people use it for commercially is in pie filling. Because you ever had a pie, you ever you don't like baking pie, right, Sus? Is there anything you like to bake? No. Mike is here.
She's putting your shoulder into the mic. There's nothing you like to bake? No, I don't like baking. What do you like to cook most? Uh pasta.
But like what kind of pasta? Like sauces and pasta. Alright. What about like, do you like cooking risotto? No.
So it's the only thing you like to cook is pasta. I will cook, but I'm not I've not been cooking lately. I don't think lately, but like what is it like? So pasta is your go-to. Why?
Because it's quick or because you actually enjoy doing it? Enjoy it. Yeah. Pasta is good for quick. Mm-hmm.
Nastasi Lopez hates hates fresh pasta. Anyway, if you put it into a pie filling, people put it there so it doesn't boil out. So, Matt, you ever bake pies? I have baked, I think one pie. Oh, you people.
All right. Uh this is from Brandon. Do you have any recommendations for a spice grinder that will not crap out on me after 10 uses? I've purchased the one recommended by a couple of sources I typically trust, serious seeds in America's Tech Kitchen. However, it is junk.
100% wretched junk. As someone who actually cares about the taste of my food, I buy spices as fresh as possible and whole and then toast them and grind them myself. I've burned through numerous blade coffee grinders now and resort to either mortar pestle or my Vitamix if there's enough volume so that the blades work. What do professional kitchens use to grind tough things like cinnamon? Any recommendations for home use?
Thanks. Uh okay. It is a problem, actually, and people do use, and you referenced like a little Crupps coffee grinder, spice grinder thing. The wearing that I have a wearing blade grinder, and it's it's pretty good. Uh it has like individual like cups that click in and out of it and a thing that fits over it.
It's kind of expensive. But any blade grinder, I kinda they're kind of a nightmare because they they can't produce a good, you know, like for instance, if you're doing pepper in a blade grinder, right? It's always gonna leave like a bunch of whole peppercorns. And then when you're using it, if those whole peppercorns make it onto your product, that's a knife. How much do you hate when like you're cooking something and someone leaves whole peppercorns in, they're not cracked at all, and then you bite into it and you're like, What the hell is that?
You hate that? Crappy. It's crappy, right? So it's hard, so then you end up like kind of half grinding it because you don't want to turn everything to fine particles you want cracked, but then you're like, What the hell am I gonna do? So then you have to put it through a freaking like a like a sieve, you know what I mean?
To get the big big ones out, it's a nightmare. And the problem is that blade grinders are never gonna be good at getting a good consistent particle size. Mortar Pestle, good at that, pain in the butt, right? Uh so like what what are you supposed to do? So, first of all, you can get a higher end uh blade grinder, like a wearing and stuff like this, but there is very there are very few things that are good at taking whole things and making them into a fine or a uniform particle size over a wide range of things.
So, what I typically do, I use my uh coffee grinder, like the Hario style one, but I use the thin one. I've put I put it on my on my what's it called, Twitter uh a couple of times. The thing I can find it again, but then for something like cinnamon, you can pre-smash it or crack it into pieces because the problem with cinnamon is it's hard to feed into the burrs of that kind of a coffee grinder. The other things that a coffee grinder, like a like a burr-style coffee grinder can't do very well, is um things like cardamom. What happens is unless you take the the papery stuff off, the paper can align with the burrs, and then big chunks of fiber and paper come out through the burrs because they can just make it the thin way and they make it out.
And there's really nothing much you can do about that. But uh for the vast majority of things, some things like I say, cinnamon, you need to crack it up first. Then once it's cracked up, you can put it through a burr grinder. Uh, same with uh Star Anis and things like that. But cinnamon is you've chosen one of the tougher ones.
If you don't want a lot, I just microplane it if you only want small amounts, but that can be a pain in the butt for kind of large amounts. Because remember, microplanes are essentially wood rasps. Now, my partner Don at the bar says he read somewhere that the actual like pieces of s wood that are created by microplaning may be injurious to some people, but I haven't read the data, so I don't know, but I'm just letting you know. Um David Gabois wrote in uh per my question to Dave on Twitter, did you guys ever estimate the heat intensity of the Searsol when used with a burn somatic torch? Well, there's two, but uh we're gonna talk about the TS8000.
I'm a Searsol owner and it'll be useful to know about uh what the delivered watts per square centimeter is. This would help me evaluate whether I should even bother with other searing mechanisms, electric broilers on certain high-end wall ovens or outdoor propane broilers like the Auto Wild. Cheers and thanks in advance, David Gabois. Um you do in fact have Nastasia hasn't changed her email on this since 2013 because then she would just have to train people to use a different email address, which would be useless to you, right? Mm-hmm.
Useless. What is that email address? It's my last name. Excellent. That would be my prime my private email.
And Dave confirms that you got his last name pronounced correctly, and he was amazed. Oh, well, you know. Anyway, uh so here's the thing. First of all, power is it's always a lie. Now I'm gonna give you numbers that make us sound really good from a marketing standpoint.
So I took my uh Searsol, I measured it, it's 67.75 uh millimeters across the screen. That is uh 36 square centimeters, which is five point five eight or five point five nine uh square inches. The burn zomatic TS-8000, when running on propane, which is all you should run it on, uh puts out 14,282 BTUs per hour. So BTUs per hour is a measure of power, BTUs is a measure of uh the energy, actual heat energy. Watts is a measure of power uh and watt hours is a measure of the actual amount of energy that you've put in.
So uh so BTUs per hour can convert to watts. So 14,282 BTUs per hour is uh equivalent to 4,185 watts. Uh and so what you have is in centimeters, you have 116 watts per square centimeter or 749 watts per square inch and 396 uh BTUs uh per hour per square centimeter and 2,555 uh BTUs per hour per square inch, which is an astronomically high number, but it's also a lie because a lot of that heat energy isn't being turned to radiation being put onto your onto your food, right? So and everyone who rates uh these things it like they lie and just say you know it's it's impossible to figure out the actual radiant power. Well, you will what you would need to do is get a small, and we could do this actually, I guess get a small unit and put it against it for a certain amount of time and then calculate how much energy has gone into using a FLIR camera or something like this, but just for giggles.
The problem with it is it's quite small, so then you have to average it over the entire area kind of where you're cooking. Maybe Nastasi and I someday will, you know, we have an we have other projects that are taking up all of our time, but maybe someday if there's interest, we'll make like my dream is to make a Searsol V8 that is like an absurd number of BTUs over a much larger thing. So the size of a normal salamander burner, but the intensity of a Searsol, uh, just to kind of with the instant on capability. But you know, that's probably what styles. If we ever do it, it's probably still a couple years out.
Uh guess who wrote in uh about grilling? Joey. Joey Lopez! How'd it be the last question? It's 115.
Well, you want me to do the nitro one real quick? Or do you want me to save the nitro one for next time? You should save it if it's not present because there's one pressing one from the chat, which is the can I can I throw this in here? All right. Uh it's probably pretty quick.
Elvin was he's in Tokyo right now. He's like a 10-minute walk away from the Kapabashi Kitchenware street this time. Nice. He's got a near-empty suitcase for this purpose. He's curious if anything, if there's anything in particular, you should be on the lookout for.
Well, I mean, what do you like? I mean, Nastasi and I were there, we bought the ice shaver, and then I carried it on my back back to the hotel, right? So, I mean, like the ice shavers are are great there. It's great for like you you need to go there with an idea. For those of you that don't know, it's like the Bowery of Tokyo, but it's like so hardcore.
And you you at the entrance to the street is like a giant fake chef on the on the on that building. Remember that? Giant fake chef. And it has the goofy, like, the goofy like squashed Italian-style French toque, right? Anyway, uh, on top of the building, and that's where you know you're in the right neighborhood.
A lot of what you can get there is available here, just it's there's more of it there, and the price may be better. But things like ice shavers, although they're quite heavy, I mean, obviously good place to shop for uh knives, but also like Japanese smallwares that you might not be able to get here and like um you know service implements that you might not might not be able to get what you like. Anastasia that's good advice. Anastasia's giving me what the come on question. Just get what you like.
Just get what you like. Anastasia all right so I have a question on uh on uh nitroheads for uh bar taps which I'll do next time in my discussion of uh of uh cascading effects with uh nitrogen uh nastasia's brother Joey Lopez and also all around nice guy where's he living now again Portland back in Portland what's he doing over there bartending okay he has a question about grills not really grill season he can wait a week right Joey can wait a week on the grill all right so in the last three minutes I'm gonna do a classics in the field that you actually have a lot to say about Nastasia. Three minutes okay ready yep okay this week in the field I didn't feel at that time I didn't feel my voice go I didn't feel it in my voice go all right I was gonna do a classics in the field and then when I was rereading it I realized that there were some issues with it and I didn't really feel like getting into the politics of the issues so I chose not to do it. But instead I was jumping from one frying pan into another one of the books that came out in 199 that was a big influence on me and I think a big influence on entire generation of uh cooks. So if you think about 1997.
Cook's Illustrated, which is super important, you know, started by uh Chris Kimball, came out in 1993. I have the original magazines, Cooks Illustrated. I can bring them in sometime too, because that whole year is basically a classics in the field. Cook's Illustrated 1993 should be a classics in the field. I'll bring it in, I have them all.
Uh Cha Damemba Nastasia, oh yeah. And that's like right when I got out of college, and that's right when I started reading that stuff. But uh a scant four years later, uh a guy named Jeffrey Steingarden wrote a book called The Man Who Ate Everything, which I always butcher and combine with the Oliver Sachs books, like The Man Who Ate Everything with a Hat, or The Man Who Mistook His Wife for Everything, because I somehow in my mind are kind of like I guess I was reading them at the same time. Anyway, uh Jeffrey Steingarten, he's still around. Uh what's the one of the reasons I bring this up for Nastasi and I uh kind of, you know, we became friends with him, so you know, we know him.
So Nastasia has a lot of personal stories that she can tell about. And he came on the show once, very early on in our in our in our tenure. But uh Jeffrey was the food editor at Vogue magazine, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense that Vogue would have a food magazine. But he would write a column for Vogue uh and then he compiled them. So he'd been doing them for quite a while.
He'd already kind of uh, you know, uh he compiled them into his first book, which is The Man That Ate Everything. And when it came out in 97, no one had ever written kind of uh a book like this. So he would take an individual subject. He he graduated, he's a Harvard law graduate, and I believe also Harvard. Uh and you know, he wrote for The Lampoon.
So he decided to, you know, quit lawyering and then become a writer. And he's a funny guy, right? He's a funny guy, acerbic and kind of problematic in in some ways. Very problematic, very acerbic, like to insult people, uh, have a lot of issues, but like kind of a very like gifted, talented guy. But what he would do is he would take any particular, and this influenced me very heavily, is that he would take uh any particular subject that he was interested in and then run it into the ground.
And he was the first person, I think. So Cooks Illustrated in '93 was running recipes into the ground with their pursuit for the perfect X, the perfect Y, the perfect Z, which I think is crazy because there is no perfect X, Y, or Z. But that was kind of how they made uh their bones, and they were very good at it, Cooks Illustrated. But the kind of other side of that same coin, the kind of Ur, so these two people, Cooks Illustrated and Jeffrey Steingarden, kind of started this whole deep dive into a subject, like I'm interested in mashed potatoes, so I'm gonna fly to Idaho and meet with O'Reita on how potato flakes are gonna be made, and then therefore, my and that was in this book actually, and therefore, and then that recipe, just to give you an idea, the his uh article on in here on uh potato uh on mashed potatoes and potato flakes ended up being a technique that was taken on by Joel Robouchon like years later, and then Jo uh Joel Robichon's recipe came back to the United States along with the kind of uh with Wiley and all these other guys. So it's like it was an extremely kind of important book, and I think people don't necessarily read it anymore.
I read some of the Amazon reviews, and if if this person, I bought this book at the recommendation of a friend. I like to read about chefs and food, but this book was way too scientific and way too preachy for my taste. I didn't finish it. If this sounds like you, don't read it. Uh, and then another person dislike a lot of people, a lot of the negative reviews of the book kind of dislike the tone, but you kind of just have to get down with his tone uh to get down with it.
And he gave me, I think the best advice uh is you shouldn't say anything about food unless you have eaten and cooked a lot of it. He's very much a believer in eating and experimenting, regardless of uh issues he might have. You want to talk about Snygarn a little bit? No, we don't have time. He's a great guy.
Yeah, he's he's a cervic. He definitely has an issue. His wife, by the way, is amazing. Crazy woman. Amazing.
Yeah, uh, Carol Smith, amazing. Karen Smith, rather. She's an amazing uh art historian. Leave it with that. Leave it with that.
Well, you won't want to explain the other stuff? No. All right, we can talk later if someone asked us questions in private. Come tell us in private and ask us. But she look, she was uh uh is a scholar of Buddhist art, and she was the first um what's it called?
Curator for the uh Rubin Museum here in New York, which is, you know, I I think Tibetan only, or or just all kinds of art around that region. All kinds of art. Anyway, uh, so she had studied uh, you know, Buddhist art and Asian art. She came up to me and she said the things that I use all the time, whenever whenever there's something wrong, something's happening, she goes to me, hey Dave, no choice, no problem. Cooking issues.
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