This episode is brought to you by Robert's, home of Heritage Radio Network for 10 years. Learn more about Roberta's at Roberta's Pizza.com. This week on a special bonus episode of Meet and Three, we're celebrating Mardi Gras with an ode to the King Cake, the most delicious custom of carnival season. This is kind of like terrible comparison, but it's kind of like a braided New Orleans babka, if you really think about the actual technique of it. Do we know why they put a baby in the cake yet?
You'd better be careful where you get that cake because your friends and co-workers in New Orleans are gonna have an opinion about it. Tune in to Meet and Three, HRN's weekly food news roundup available wherever you listen to podcasts. From Roberta's Pizzeria and Bushwigrrr Brooklyn. We are joined with Nastasia, but she is using the ladies' room. Got Matt though.
Hello. How you doing? Um feeling great. Yeah? Yeah.
Anything anything good happened in the past? I was not here last week, so there was a convergence of your at least internet presence and my real life. Uh I saw that paella cooker that you had put up on the gram, and I was at a wedding at San Francis in San Francisco this weekend, and paella was the main dish, and they had these enormous you know, griddles that they did them on. And then I then I get on the Instagram and you're you're popping off about the paella. Yeah.
Well, I mean, maybe there's some sort of like uh like along with the coronavirus, maybe there's some sort of like paella inducing bug that's going around. You know what I mean? Yeah. What a delicious thing to get bitten by. Probably should not joke about the coronavirus.
Um it's too late. That's we're on the record. Yeah, yeah. Um, how was the paill at the event? Were you able to pick around the sausage bits?
Uh there were two. There was a veggie one. Um it was fine, although I was at the last table to be served, and I gotta be honest. It was a little cold by the time I got to it. Yeah, you know, once and also like once rice like once the paella starts getting too cold, it's gonna start kind of soliding up on you.
Yeah. Yeah. So then you're gonna want to make the balls and refry it. You know what I'm saying? So I'm thinking table one's paya was like, but table twelve's paya was yeah, it was a it was fine.
Yeah. So yeah, my mom, like it's uh, I was kind of shocked because it's not like usually what she does. I mean, she has a tandoor because she has my tandoor, right? She has a big green egg because she has the big green egg I have. Yeah.
But then she goes and buys this like 8 billion BTU paella cooker with this giant pan, and I was like, well done, Ma. Yeah. Well done. Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's what's nice is it's rather lightweight, but it's it's big.
If you buy it, it's the Mabel brand, right? The one the one issue with it is that uh the you need to really regulate the flame way down. It's like when it comes from the thing, I think the I don't know whether the regulator my mom had was mismatched, and and she was uh because there's you know, there's two different I don't know if you notice there are two different kinds of propane regulators depending on um two different kinds of like barbecue style propane regulators, one that delivers it at like you know, a quarter of a PSI or a half PSI, something like this, and one that delivers it at like eight PSI. And it was like the holes were made for like the quarter PSI, and we had it felt like we had the the like you know, eight PSI or five PSI thing. Because when you jacked it, it's just the flames shot up off the ring and out.
And it's more of a gentle flame than let's say like a walk burner flame. So it's not like a it's more just like a this like giant sheet of flame that you put the the big old pan on but yeah. Yeah you know you're cooking things efficiently when the flyer is just like fly flaring up around all sides to an extraordinary degree. Yeah well you're gonna be just right you know what I mean the thing is is that I mean I always say this I always say you know there's no such thing as having uh too much power but it's the problem with too much power in in gas appliances anyway it's with electric it's true you really can't how you gonna have too much you know what I mean but with um with gas implements the problem with very high powered gas is that it they often can't be throttled down low. Do you know what I mean?
So in fact when I'm working on the V8 one of the things I'm gonna have to look at is is this too dang powerful you know what I mean? Is it just too much power because um I mean I guess I could also just throttle it with different orificies and whatnot. That's the thing you it's hard like you can change like once you decide kind of the geometry and the flow it's it's hard to get something that's meant to have a big old flame have a tiny little flame and have it not get blown out. You know what I mean? Because it's just not getting the same kind of flow of gas.
If you want to have a small flame you should design for a small flame and then it's easy to keep it stable but if it's designed to do you know 4000 BTUs then it's hard to get it to do you know five. You know what I'm saying? Yeah that makes sense. Yeah yeah. Uh we do by the way there was a caller who called in like right before we even got started.
I don't know if you want to was it with who I know Alex Talbot's from it was not it was not Alex I don't think it was Alex Talbot. Alright well Alex is gonna call in in a minute let's I'll take the caller caller you're on the air hey Dave it's uh Dave from California how are you doing? All right how you doing good hey I actually uh wrote in to you about the uh a few weeks ago about the Sears all and the power intensity right um a kind of a follow-up to that uh maybe a tangent is uh deep frying what what do you think is kind of the bare minimum of uh power for doing good deep frying um obviously uh given a uh a certain volume of oil I guess right well um well it's okay I mean look are you talking an electric fryer or a gas fryer uh I've got to go electric uh in my case um indoor I know they're indoor yes yeah so if you're if you're not gonna permanently like if you're not gonna permanently put it into the wall or you know since you're in California if you're not gonna have a 220 plug you're completely limited to about 1500 watts like that's it like that's the maximum you're gonna get the the most I can find and yeah it's for uh 240 is uh 3,000 watts. Ah now that's a much nicer number. Yeah like the issue with um the issue with fryers I've and I haven't researched them in a long time.
Is uh I'm assuming this is a drop-in electric element uh like how much of a cold zone does it have underneath. It's not just the power, right? So it's the the it's the power versus the the oil amount you have. So, you know, a 40 pound, it's been a while, but a 40-pound fryer, i.e. it holds 40 pounds of oil, is a 40 to 50 pound fryer.
It's somewhere in the range of like I think 60 to 80,000 BTUs, somewhere in that range, I think. It's been a while since I've uh looked at the numbers and they're not the top of my head. Um so I mean that's kind of a that's in BTUs though. I don't know how many watt, I'd have to do a watt conversion. I don't have the conversions in my head, I have to go on an Excel spreadsheet and do it.
But um, you know, uh I would just do a test. If you're if your unit heats up in five to seven minutes, I'd say you probably have adequate power, right? But the the the there's it's not just a power, right? The problem with um you want to buy a fryer that has the biggest possible elements, right? So you want, so I could have something that's 3,000 watts, and I mean you would never build this, and a quarter of an inch, you know, stick, just a little small stick, right?
And the problem is if I'm putting out that much wattage into a very small area, uh, I don't have that much area to conduct the heat to the oil, and it's gonna radically overheat the oil in that range. This is why tube fryers are so good, because the gas that's in them is a it has a very large surface area on which to heat the oil, so it's not radically overheated at any one place. And good electric fryers mimic this by having instead by having either two like larger tubular elements or sometimes ribbon elements in them, so that you have a larger heating surface area, a metallic heating surface area, than you would if you used, let's say, thinner coils that you might find in a toaster, let's say. Something that looks like more of a toaster element. Um so not only raw power, I would look at kind of what the surface area of the heating element is, and then whether they've developed any like sort of trough underneath it to develop a relatively colder zone so that you the particles that are in it don't burn onto the bottom.
So the worst are underfired fryers, because it it it it actively scorches the stuff that's on the bottom of the pan. And this is why can't this is why stovetop frying is so problematic. Yep. Yep, I know. I've been stovetop frying for forever.
Yeah. Uh so the there aren't a lot of options, obviously, uh in the residential uh units. Um there is a Gaganao, that's the 3,000 watt fella, and it does ha have a cold zone. Uh the heating element flips up and all that. Um it's uh 3.7 quarts, so just shy of a gallon.
Of oil, or that's the volume of the unit. It holds that much oil. That's not bad. That's not terrible. The thing just says capacity, so I I I don't know how to read into that.
I mean, that's not terrible. So, like uh, you know, imagine I mean I I would just look at the manual and see how much oil they say to add, whether or not because I don't know how they rate capacity, you know what I'm saying? But like if you imagine taking a whole gallon of oil and pouring it into a pot, you would rarely do that at home. Uh yeah, that's that's a lot of oil for home use. Okay.
I I'm I'm not above doing that. No, more oil the better. Always. The more oil that your fryer takes, the better off you are. Like uh like as long as there's adequate power, more oil equals better, equals less oil in your food.
The more oil you use, and the better your your heater is, and the better maintained the oil is, the less stuff you're gonna get in in your food. Yeah, right. So I so there there is a drain, so you can uh strain your uh oil and reuse it. And I uh even with my stovetop frying right now, I mean I'm I'm no stranger to uh filtering my oil, but that's that's fine. Yeah, and once you get a real fryer, just like you're gonna be like, did I really sit here and try to adjust the freaking temperature of this pot and worry about boil over and blah blah blah blah all this time?
That's what you're gonna say to yourself. Get a good vent, near the put it near the window. Yeah, but like I like I said, the the residential units. I don't want I don't I'm not Dave Arnold, I'm not gonna go hack something or get a commercial unit and put it in. I I really wanna stick with a residential electric.
So that that limits me. Yeah, well, I mean if you think Gaganao makes good stuff. I haven't tested it, so I can't recommend it, but Gaganau in general makes good pricey but good stuff. Well, I I may I mean you you sort of answered me. I mean, three if you think 3,000 watts for a gallon of oil is pretty good, then it's probably sufficient.
I have to do some calcul te tweet at me and I'll I'll try to when I'm offline and can look up the calculations, I'll try to do the calculations. Okay. Alright, cool. Thanks a lot. Okay.
Thanks. Hey Stas. Hey. How's you doing? Good, how are you?
I brought you a present from Belgium. This is I can never Tirentin Verlent mustard. Thank you. This is this is the mustard that is unavailable anywhere. So so John Nihul, the our the Belgian, our Belgian friend at the Museum of Food and Drink in the curatorial department there, uh he recommended a bunch of places to go, but literally he was like, You have to go.
He said, It's unsurpassable, not unsurpassed, Nastasia, unsurpassable, in other words, in not able to surpass it, mustard. You have to keep it refrigerated. They make it in the basement, right? So you go into this shop, and by the way, we weren't even gonna go to Ghent. Like, we weren't even gonna, we're like, what's a Gent?
What's Ghent? Matt, you know anything about Ghent? Absolutely not. What's Ghent, right? We're like, you gotta get move that paper a little bit away from the microphone.
We're like, yo, Ghent. And the only reason we went to Ghent was to get the mustard. It was the very first place we went once we arrived in Ghent, and I was not surprised uh uh I was not what's it called, uh disappointed. I bought a hundred euros worth of mustard, filled my entire backpack with it. It's all I brought back was mustard and the kind of the clothes on my back through everything with spicy mustard.
It's nice, right? So this lady, they've been making it since the 1700s, and the what happens is they they grind it in the basement and they won't tell you anything about it. Like nothing. I was like, hey, uh, where do you make it? In the basement.
You can't visit the basement. I'm like, well, I haven't asked yet, but okay, okay, lady. And then uh I guess I mean they never met me, but if you had been there, you'd have been like, lady, you're right. He was gonna ask to visit the freaking mustard downstairs. And then I'm like, I ask her about the grinder, and she goes, My dad built it, I don't talk about it.
That was it. She she did give me a little bit. She said, because I asked her, I was like, Do you have like a stone grinder down there similar to like in like a wet grinder like uh from India for like Idli and and and what and Dosa better? Because you know, we know people who make mustard by grind by using those. Like it's a good technique to make mustard at home.
And she's like, I don't talk about it, and I won't talk about it with you. There is stone involved. That's all she said. And then she has this giant, like wooden, this giant, like it's like head human head-sized wooden ladle. That gets in your nose, right, Stas?
Yeah, it's good. It's really good. So she she has this giant wooden, like head-sized ladle, and then they have all these empty jars. They sell other stuff too, like, but what this is their one thing. They've just whole shelves of empty jars, and then you take the scoop and you go and you scoop it into the jar of your of your choice, and then she warns you to refrigerate it because it's gonna lose its spiciness, and she warns you not to keep metal utensils in it because it's gonna cause it to separate.
Uh-huh. That's it. It's really good. They don't ship it, but here's what there's a there is a there's a bootleg version where one of the words is the same. I can't remember whether it's uh Tarrentian or Verlant, but it's like Fernando, and then the other word, and that one they have in the in the airport.
So you're like, oh, I missed it, I could buy it now. Bootleg! Bootleg, not real. Uh, what else? So uh before I go into waffle craziness.
Is that what you're gonna say, Matt? Do we? Uh well, I was gonna say, so Alex is has called in. I also have 20 second reverse ad to play. We should just do it now.
Wait, the ad or the Alex? The ad and then and then Alex. Alright, yeah. My name is Brandon Boyd, co-owner of Roberta's. A super duper awesome place.
Robert's is a very, very, very, very proud sponsor of the Heritage Radio Network. We're also super awesome. Thank you, Heritage. So that's their appetizing music. That's one.
That's their come eat with us music. It sounds like let me eat. Monster, monster, monster trucks! It's like, it's like off the regular show or something, or or you know. Wow.
It's like yeah, yeah, yeah. Nothing says come have an enjoy. Can you play that again? Just a little bit a little bit of the music. Give me a little bit of the music.
Whoop. My name is Brandon Boyd, co-owner of Louvardis. Come down for an enjoyable meal. That is what it's like here, though. I think it's a reasonably accurate representation of what it's like here.
Yeah. That's funny. It's an assault on the senses. Oh yeah, yeah. I get it.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. So uh wait, we got Alex or no? I am here.
Can you hear me? I can. How you doing? This is Alex Talbot from uh Ideas and Food, by the way, people. Friend of the show, been on a couple of times.
Um so I had a question that it just wasn't really my place to answer. So I will read you the question. Uh this is from Daniel uh I don't know whether it's Shar Shargel or Sharjil, Nastasi. What do you think? Uh this is uh regarding gluten-free baking.
All right, are you ready? Now, you wanna plug your you want to plug your book so they your your gluten-free books so that they can know where they can go for more information? Gluten-free flower power. All right. Uh where all books are sold.
Easiest is the uh the overlord Amazon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know what? I have to say, Nastasi and I are gonna go visit the Amazon uh pretty soon.
You don't want to commit. I don't want to commit because I don't want to go. You were gonna force me to go. Who's decided that? I've that since when you're not gonna check NA.
But that's a stupid thing to say. Because I tell this to my kids all the time. Like 99.9% of the stuff I have to do in life is stuff I don't want to do. You do all of that. But then you're not gonna do anything.
I'm never gonna shave again. Like I'm gonna have like a leather man outfit. You know who did what he wanted? The leather man. And he wore like an 80-pound suit of leather.
Just do that. You already sort of inhabit a leatherman-like cave uh from you know noon to one on Tuesdays. That's true. That's true. All right, sorry, Alex.
Uh that's all right. All right. We'll also represent my uh my donut shop, right? Curiosity donut. Oh yeah.
How's it going? It's good. We have uh we have three three locations now. Okay, so wait, so you had you had a location and then you switched into a different place. I don't know what tell people the I've heard, I haven't been, but I hear good things.
Why don't you tell people about where the locations are? So the donut shop it started off in the Stockton farmers market four and a half years ago. That's in Stockton, New Jersey. Not Stockton, California, people. Not Stockton, California.
Not in Cali, no. Uh yet. Uh so then we actually opened up inside the Whole Foods Market in Springhouse, Pennsylvania. So that's uh our was our our first shop, or our second shop, I guess. And then we're in Whole Foods in Princeton, New Jersey as well on Saturdays and Sundays.
I've never been to Princeton. Here it's nice. Princeton's nice. And then uh, you know who came visited me there was Nathan. Really?
Mirabold? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Crush just crushed some donuts, which was great to see. It was awesome.
Migoya and the crew, they were they were they were taking donuts. But but but Johnny Johnny was there. Nice. Nice. Uh and then we opened up uh a third shop in Tyson's Corner, Virginia.
Where's that? And aga Tyson's Corner, Virginia's right outside DC. Okay, okay. Uh and I do you do it right across the river. Do you do a gluten free donut or no?
We don't. We uh at Stockton we did for a little while, but there there's so much flour and other ability for cross contamination. Oh so you're like it's like it's like you can't control it enough to make yourself feel comfortable doing it. It's not that you can't make the donut you just don't feel comfortable in your controls. Correct.
Because like in gluten free flour power we got a we have a great gluten free donut. Phenomenal but uh in the space that we have we it's not it's not you know we can't we can't we can't do it well. All right give give me a couple seconds to explain this because you know you guys are doing the you guys are doing the the fancy donuts my brother in law Wiley doing the fancy donut there's what is with the donut explosion in the past eight years what is what is it because like you know 15 15 16 years ago you had a couple of kind of non non just not I don't say non commercial what do you like kind of craft donut whatever you want to call it shops right we'll call it craft donuts. Yeah there you go so like uh you know you had in the New York you know you had donut plant who used to be exclusively a yeast house now they're a mixed cake and yeast house um and you know a couple others and then over the past eight years it's like sh or five even really maybe even three right it's been like boom what is it why uh I don't know I I mean I I think I think a couple of things. One is uh I think as as cooks, right?
We mean we we like s slightly simpler things or the the idea of simpler things and so there's the nostalgia side of it. Uh and then as chefs we become uh we find a need to make things more complicated or or really I find a way to make things more complicated. I mean, our our donut shop, we make we make eleven different styles of dough. Oh yeah? So not just donuts, but doughs.
We have 11 different styles of dough. What is like one of them like uh do you do you have a problem doing uh a high fat enriched yeast like a brioche style? Do they bleed out too much? Or do you like what they don't? I mean, so we that's our our original donut base is the our vanilla yeasted.
That was it's it's modeled after the recipe from uh maximum flavor, which was a no-need, double enriched butter brioche style donut. And it doesn't leak out too much, it doesn't get all crazy on you? No, but the the process is insane. I mean it's it's it's it's a again we we doubled the butter in the in the donut, and and we came across that idea. Francisco was was playing around with our no-need brioche recipe from our first book, and he doubled the butter in it and and served it to us at at a uh an event, and we're like, this is insane.
And he's like, Yeah, it's called King's Brioche, double the butter. So we we tried that and then I modified it a little bit more to turn it into a donut. Well we put that in. I wonder whether you could double the butter in the Liege waffle recipe. Sure.
I don't know. Why not? I don't know. I mean, I uh more often than not I find most doughs can take take way more fat than that's actually in it. So like we have so we have the the we have a chocolate chocolate yeasted, vanilla yeasted.
We have our angel donut, which is modeled after an angel biscuit. Again, angel biscuit leavened with baking powder, baking soda, and yeast. What's an angel biscuit? So it angel biscuits are old school southern biscuit, and they they would leaven it with with all three things. So it would be yeast leavened and also have chemical leaveners in it.
Uh huh. And it was supposed to be a so so light and fuck, but you get you get the the fermentation from the yeast and then you get the extra lightning from the baking pattern baking soda. Huh. Were they using a sourd milk dough? Did you need the soda just for pH correction?
Uh I I think it was just everyone they would they were just throwing everything in there, but I don't know the specific origin of all three. Because my standard pancake batter is, and even my chicken stuff is a soda, is a soda powder mix, but the soda is there for some primary shebam, but also really just to shift the acid down. You know what I mean? Okay. Otherwise it doesn't brown.
If you're using people, if you use buttermilk or any sort of acidic ingredient in your baked goods, and you don't adjust the pH somehow, you're going to have sallow, a sallow looking crust. Or it could be the the the ingenious, all you know, like fluffy fluffy white pancakes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's not me. It's not me, but I understand what you're saying.
All right, let me get to this question. Uh I have a question about making gluten-free flour mix for bread. Now, here's the problem. You know, this is the here comes the problem. Uh ideally we'd like to create a mix that worked well in hala and sandwich bread.
Although I like yeah, I like sandwich, I like halaphora sandwich. I don't see why, you know, why wouldn't you? What the holl are you talking about? I mean, they're they're slightly different though. I mean, uh, the hala's just a slightly richer.
Sandwich is gonna be a lighter guy. Yeah, but I'm saying, why can't you use like in other words, if except for the shape of a traditional shape of a hala, that dough works, yes, it's richer, but it works fine as a sandwich bread. Yeah. It's not your clutch it's not a pullman, but whatever anyway. No.
Um, our cooking issue is that one of our children can't eat rice or oats. Uh, and those are very common ingredients in gluten free flour. Is there an ingredient that would be still the thing is there's this this this question I think you're gonna take issue with because there's never an ingredient with gluten-free flours. There's always multiples. But is there an ingredient that would be a good sub for rice flour in most recipes?
What structural features does rice flour contribute to a bread recipe? Rice flour doesn't do anything. Rice flour is a filler. Right. So what would you fill it with that's new as neutral as rice?
I mean, anything works. I mean, why not use quinoa flour or um doesn't that have a taste though? Quinoa flour has a taste. Yeah. I mean, they they all have some sort of taste.
Um I mean, I guess rice is the most neutral of them, right? I mean, that's the whole deal. Right, right. Rice is a is a sort of a blank slate, yeah. I mean, but but there's there's there's it's not adding structure very much, or not much.
Right, but what would you what like what what's the most like if you if you could never use rice flour again as the as the filler, right? What would you use? That is lowest in in flavor transfer, lowest in weirdness. I don't want I don't want it to get beanie on me. I don't want it to get all, you know, like I mean that's that's what that that's why you're using all the different varieties, right?
I mean you just you're gonna keep you're gonna keep adding a mix of the mix of the darn things. So you have a little bit of this, a little bit of that. I mean let me go to my book. Because we have we have three flour blends, which I don't have completely memorized anymore. All right, well, you look at that.
Uh sorghum. Sorghum will work. Sorghum though absorbs a lot of liquid and it's dark in color. Do they make a lighter sorghum flour? Not that I know of.
Right? It's like, well, in other words, doesn't isn't it more moisture absorbing than rice, or no? Or about the same? I haven't seen I have I haven't seen it, but I mean, I've done sorghum pancakes, right? And I've subbed uh I've subbed up to half of the of the flour base.
Right, right? I'm talking not gluten-free, but half of the regular sa flour base with sorghum. And then in the sorghum anyway that I was using, A had some residual sugar, which is I think where the where the extra moisture holding crap probably comes from. I don't know. You know what I mean?
And it was just kinda it it had a definite like color cast, and then it was like a little bit intensified and a little bit moist. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I mean, so let's think about we I mean you you got white rice. What about corn flour? That is that illegal?
No, corn flour sounds like a good uh that sounds like a good is there really any difference between cornstarch and corn flour? Is it just milled differently? Well, one one is the whole the whole thing and the one's just the starch. So corn flour is uh just a finely grilled finely milled corn meal. Yeah, yeah.
All right. I like that. Everyone likes corn. Some people won't admit it, they'll say it's the devil, but is anyone like I hate corn? Um yeah, I mean you've you've got you've you're gonna have allergies there, but yeah, no, we used we used tapioca starch, sorghum, arrowroot.
Um Arrowroots expensive, but nice. Now h here's the thing, it's like if they mentioned that they can't have rice or oats, I'm pretty sure they would have mentioned they can't have corn. I would hope, but uh I mean otherwise becomes a little bit, you know. I mean, the we can mill anything these days. I mean, you see coconut flour, but that's just a filler too.
Yeah, that's not bad. Stuff's not bad though. But it but it doesn't but it doesn't absorb any liquid. Almond flour is a good filler too. But again, d it I mean it and it it absorbs no liquid.
Right. It's also expensive. Correct. Anyway. Yeah, I mean, that's the problem.
Like for cookies and stuff, almond works great, especially if you're gonna use egg whites and whatnot. I mean, hell, whole cookie recipes are basically sugar, almond flour, and egg whites. You know what I mean? But but it's like, yeah, it's not gonna help you much when you actually need structure in a bread, you know. Yeah.
I mean, that's that's that's that's the issue. Uh but again, you you you know, then you're then you're looking at you know, corn starch and tapioca starch to give you your your your elasticity and you know, your jelly. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for talking donuts and flour with us, Alex.
Come uh come to New York sometime to see us, bring some donuts. We'll talk. Absolutely. You should uh make a field trip when you uh go see uh the old Amazon. They're they're near Tyson's corner, my friend.
No, we're going to Amazon in Seattle. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, big Amazon. You're going to like you're going to you're go you're going you're going to the uh the Mecca. Yeah.
Right. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean the thing in Amazon, I'm hoping that I don't know because I've never been, but I'm hoping that the that the front door is shaped like a giant mouth, and that they make you leave through a door on the other side that's shaped like a butt. So it's like Amazon just chews you up and poops you out.
You know what I mean? Better yet, they turn you into a liquid and then and then like shoot you through a small pipe. You know what I mean? Like that's what I'm hoping happens when I go there. But you know, you know what I mean?
I actually think you leave in a you leave in a box. It's they ship you home. Yeah. With a little smile thing and the tape over the top. Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. I that that's that's what's gonna happen. I I hope I get the new drone delivery. At least that way I'll be in an unpressurized I mean uh in a you know, a space with enough oxygen.
Anyway, all right. Talk to you soon, brother. It's a pleasure. We'll talk to you soon. Have a great day.
All right, too. Bye bye. Sergio writes in regarding mayonnaise. Hello, Dave and Nastasia. I think it's Serge or Serge.
Serge Serge. From Melbourne, Australia. Nastasia, you should give Australia a go. We have fun people, great food and produce, and mostly good weather, but not in Melbourne. What do you think?
I don't like your accents, so no. Okay. All right. Okay. So I'm surrounded by Australia haters here.
I was gonna not mention that. Well, because you already got you already got a ding. You're already persona non grata in Australia. Yeah, but this guy, Serge is apparently not aware, so can we not talk about that? Serge did not mention the excellent quality of kangaroo hide for whips.
World's best. Anyway, um my question is regarding the uh mayonnaise seried steak uh seared steak technique that keeps coming up in my conversations with a friend. Was wondering if there's an actual benefit in it and uh what is it that makes it better? What's the science behind it all? My friend swears that side by side the mayo steaks cook faster.
I don't know if it's faster. Anyway, I don't believe it. Any idea of what's going on? Yeah, yeah. So look at this.
First of all, what do you what is mayo? Mayo is, I mean it's a little bit acid, but it's oil, water, and an emulsion, right? Then there's egg yolk, which is like proteins and phospholipids and other stuff, and the phospholipids are emulsifiers. I'm gonna get back to this in a second, and some sugar, typically in mayonnaise, right? So, or sugars, but typically they also just add some sugar to it.
Alright. So, first of all, it mayonnaise is thicker than oil. So when you're wiping mayonnaise onto your steak, you are giving a better kind of a more a gel-like heat transfer mechanism between your pan and the steak. So right there, you're winning over just brushing it with oil, right? Secondly, the phospholipids, first of all, the water is going to conduct heat much faster.
So the oil is going to get up to, I mean, that stuff has to boil off, obviously, for you to get up to the high, you know, searing temperatures, but it's going to accelerate getting in there because it's going to transfer the heat faster, like going through. That's it, right? The also the egg yolk is gonna cause the oil, the phospholipids in the egg yolk, is gonna cause the oil to adhere better because it's got it's you know, got its amphiphilic, as they say, adhere better to the steak, and you're gonna get a better heat transfer there as well because you're not not just gonna have an oil water interface, you're gonna have a uh, you know, one with that has some sort of a uh uh you know surface active properties, which is why used oil in general is better than brand new oil, right? Because it's it's not just pure oil, it's got some fatty acids in it, so this has phospholipids. That's a win.
Also, the sugar is gonna combine with the proteins and create its own sort of Maillard stuff and gonna crust up on the outside of the steak. So I'm saying all three of those things are gonna be a win. Right? All right. Uh Kieran, let's see, I get to Kieran in a second.
Uh, Christian wrote in regarding gin soda. I currently live on a dry college campus, uh, and I'm also still only 20 years old, so I cannot buy some of the ingredients I would like to make mocktails or cocktails if you're only 20. You can buy any ingredient you want. Don't use the word mocktail, by the way, Christian. Just call them non alcoholic.
Don't mock people. Just drink. Anyway, uh, I don't like the word mocktail. Anyway, I'm not gonna get into it, it's gonna take too long. Uh, 20 years old, so I cannot buy some of the ingredients I would like.
I just heard something about a gin simple syrup made by infusing gin botanicals, and I was wondering if you had heard of this and would know how to make it and use something like this. I'd be curious to hear how you might make a usable replacement for gin. Thanks, Christian. So I wouldn't make a syrup. I mean, you could make a syrup, but uh the way we used to do it is we made a tea.
And the reason is is then you can sweeten it separately depending on what you're gonna use it for. So you make a rather concentrated tea, and then you can add water and or uh sugar to and or acids to your taste. So we used to do um we used to make uh a lemon syrup, so we did basically quinine to make it like a gin and tonic. You don't you can ignore the quinine, but we you made a quinine solution at zero point, we well, I hesitate to give the actual things that we did a juniper tincture, which is just juniper berries, salt, oris root tincture, uh lemon peel, uh I think we did orange peel, a little bit of fenigreek, right? Uh, and then we made teas out of them and then combine them together, and then we added uh clarify we added like clarified either lemon depending or lime uh to it, like cordial, to sweeten it, and then that becomes kind of like a like a gin and tonic.
But you know, we didn't use a million of the different botanicals, we basically just did uh juniper, we did quinine for bitterness, or oris, uh, and then citrus peels. You could go kind of more in depth, but just make solutions. Like, for instance, um you could do but anyway, I I uh I could try to post a recipe later because this is in, I forgot that I left it in kind of our workplace numbers, which don't make sense, but that's that's the basis of it. Um okay. Uh see, I did the gluten-free.
Let me see. Zach C wrote in about plums and pasta. For the past few years, I've been doing a very uh I've been doing a yearly plum harvest with some friends. We ferment it into wine and then distill it into brandy. I know that stone fruit tend to contain uh stone fruit, you know, uh fermented stone fruit, I think you mean, contains more methanol than other fruits, but I don't really know how much.
Do you know of any labs where I can get this accurately tested? Uh well, I put a call into uh Arielle Johnson, our science uh she's not just good eats science person, she's also our kind of go-to science person. And I asked her uh what she thought, because I called. There's an interesting thing, by the way, for any of you food people interested. Cornell has something called the Cornell Food Venture Center, and they'll do lab analysis of pH water activity, bricks, process, nutritional analysis and stuff for very reasonable fees.
I called them this morning, but they don't do um, they don't do um what's the word? They don't do alcohol stuff. So I asked Arielle who she thought we she should use, and she said, uh at UC Davis we'd sometimes use ETS, and that's etslabs.com for routine things we weren't set up for. So give ETS labs a call and they could probably test your distillate for methanol. Now, there's an old tried and true test for methanol versus ethanol, and that is you light it on fire.
Now it's gotta be don't like for instance, if it burns yellow, it's got methanol in it, right? Methanol burns yellow and ethanol burns blue clear. Now, this doesn't work on things with sugar because sugar doesn't burn blue. Uh so this is only in unsugared spirits you can run this test. But if it burns yellow, there's clearly uh enough methanol for it to be dangerous.
If it burns blue, you have a better shot. But uh as Arielle said when I asked her about the efficacy of this test, yellow burning will definitely tell you that it's unsafe. This is her speaking, but I'm not sure what the lower limit is. Like there could be an amount of methanol where the flame test is ambiguous, but the methanol is still harmful. So uh take that for uh whatever it is.
Then you asked me, you said um second question. I've got a uh the what are those called? Those those those bigly makers, the torsh the torsh, you know what I mean? Those rotary pasta makers, the presses, the pasta press, like a torshi. It says here torso, but isn't it like torsino or something like that?
Anyway, the rotary pasta thing, the whether you press, it looks like a big screw press. It's like uh it's like a like a King Kong kind of uh of a cookie press. You know what I'm saying? With a screw in it with a die on the end? Anyway, I've always wanted one, but I've never bought one, thank God, because if I have a second, I'll talk about the thing that I did buy.
Oh my god. Uh we actually have two minutes. Hand-cranked manual brass extruder. It's very cool looking, but it's a pain in the behind to use for any real quantity. Uh I really want an arco, uh, an arco boleno who doesn't.
Uh AEX5 home mixer, you know, you know, Alex Talbot has one, the one who just spoke to on the phone. But $1,900 is a lot of money. I recently saw a $200 Phillips pasta extruder. Is uh is that is that cheap thing complete garbage? Yes.
That's it. Yes. Okay, great. Moving on. Uh so they don't work.
They don't work. Uh and go get uh go like use Johnny Hunter's technique and see if you can like repurpose a small but heavy-duty meat grinder. There are meat grinders, and Johnny Hunter. You know, you could text him on uh on the on the Twitter, he will respond, or on the uh what's it called? Uh uh Instagram, and uh he can tell you what dyes fit what uh meat grinders, and those things apparently do a bang up job because that's what he used.
Devin the dude uh I think said something similar that there's modding groups on. This is from the chat room, but also asked, it was unclear uh from a couple weeks ago was my robot vacuum a total loss. No, I was able to resurrect the robot vacuum from the the depths of the dog poop. Um David writes in I've recently started going through, etc. etc.
Rotovaps seem to be very delicate pieces of machinery and often made from glass, always made from glass. As our facility does not allow glass to be in the kitchen. Are there any other pieces of equipment that can be modified or have a similar effect? One of the ideas I had to use was to use a vacuum tumbler and somehow put some sort of collecting device between the tumble chamber and the vacuum pump. This would allow us to do a large amount at a time.
Uh, unfortunately, I've never worked with a rotovap before, so I'm hoping you could tell me if there's anything I'd be missing in this contraption. Uh we have completely replaced uh this is uh David's Spotify playlist, so thanks for the content. So uh me, yes and no. The very first roto vap I ever had was a vacuum tumbler that I modified. It's fairly easy to buy a rotary vacuum fitting off McMaster car that will allow you to take uh and and and you know, basically have a drum on a rotating thing with a vacuum coming out of it and then branch off of it.
And I'm sure your vacuum tumbler, the one I had didn't have a takeoff on it. You just sucked a vacuum and then spun it. It didn't have a continuous vacuum, but if that one does it, that's that's good. But I highly, highly it it never worked great. And I really recommend that you find someone with a roto vap or somehow get a roto vap and get experience on a regular rotor vap first so that you kind of get a feel for how the process works, and then try to build something out of a vacuum tumbler.
But yes, it is possible. The issue is you need to get good heat transfer into the vacuum tumbler, right? And you also need to get uh good chilling and you need a relatively large pipe for the vapors to go through. But assuming you can do all that, yes, should work. Um we gotta get off here, Brazyan.
Oh man, I didn't get to John Denver about cocktails or anonymous thing on hops. I guess I can get to them next time. I also didn't get the Keoran's Okara question, which was gonna be the classics in the field, which was going to be uh William Shirtleff's uh book on Miso. Now, I could also talk about all of the food in Belgium. What should I do, Nastasia?
None, I mean, like I have to talk about while I have like Liege waffles versus Brussels waffles. Maybe I should talk about waffles next week because I have I I'm gonna be doing some work. I'll give you a little bit of a spoiler. I bought the actual waffle iron, like the real one. I had to go to Staten Island, I've got a guy now.
But I bought, first of all, you might be thinking big deals a waffle. I want you to think about this while you're waiting for next week for me to talk about waffles. The difference between the top of the line waffle maker is the top of the line waffle maker weighs 90 pounds. 90 for a regular size waffle maker. 90 pounds, costs $4,000 new, right?
And you gotta put that head to head against a $30 Hamilton beach, and what's the difference? So you can think about that and think about Liege waffles versus Brussels waffles and why you should never use the word Belgian waffle again, because that's like that's not even that does not that's not even a thing. But we could talk about that next week. Should we save the classics in the field for next week, too? Yes.
All right, we're gonna do the Okara question, and maybe I'll do a double classics in the field next week if if we can. Uh we'll come back next week. More cooking issues. Cooking issues is powered by Simplecast. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network.
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