This episode brought to you by Appeal, helping you to enjoy your fruits and vegetables at peak freshness and reduce food waste. Learn more at appeal.com, APEL.com. This week on Meet and Three, we're spotlighting the people, dishes, and ingredients decolonizing food. We're looking at our Thanksgiving plates and beyond to explore efforts to reclaim food sovereignty in Native American culture, the African diaspora, and Puerto Rico. I believe that oisted dressing is like the consummate side dish for an amazing fried turkey.
What we're doing there is just working the land and we're laughing and we're creating a space for joy. And it's in that that healing occurs for us. Tune in to Meet and Three, HRN's weekly food news roundup wherever you get your podcasts. This is Dave Arland, your host of Cookie Issues coming to you live, sort of. I mean, I'm sort of live, I'm sort of in a mood.
From the Lowery side of Manhattan, we got Nastasia the Hammer Lopez joining us from an undisclosed location in Southern California. We got John from Customer Service up in the great nutmeg state of Connecticut and Matt in his hidey hole booth in Rhode Island. Was that all accurate, folks? Yes. Yep.
Nastasia, do you move every like 24 hours as though you were a CIA agent? Or I'm almost in my permanent place in a week. Wait, what? You're almost at what? A new place.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, she's uh, yeah, she's like Because my my original place cancelled on me like two days before I landed, so I've had to, you know, finding it. Yeah, which unbelievably is something that Airbnb is allows to happen. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. Yeah, because they're like, we find you another place that's comparable, and when you're as picky as me, it's like no.
Also, I booked it back in like late August. So also, like so picky, you want a bathroom inside. So picky. Indoor bathroom, indoor plumbing, so picky. Yeah, your first place that they found that was comparable.
Had you had to walk like a block in the desert to a bathroom. Yeah. Did it have toilet paper in the outhouse? Was there water in the outhouse? It was a really nice, no, it was a really nice nice.
So you weren't you weren't pooping on coconut. But I was in a canyon, so there's like owls hooting and coyotes doing their thing and that sounds great. You know what Nastasia doesn't want when she's in the bathroom? Coyotes. Coyotes poking their head up to another house.
So instead, oh, there was there was a shower in my place, so I would just squat over the shower drain during. Wow, that's a lot of information. That is a lot of information. That's yeah. Yeah, so this is our Thanksgiving episode.
That's all give thanks for the year that it's almost over. Let's give thanks that this year is almost over. But it will end. Yeah, it will end. But that's what I don't like.
It's not like 2021 is gonna be better. It's not like when you roll over to a new year, everyone's like the year knows it's supposed to be better. It's just another day into a day. You know, it but it just so happens that like you know, a lot of things like are hopefully coming to a head. I mean, you're right, it's coincidental, so we shouldn't focus it around the year, right?
That's like how believing in the horoscope, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right, you're right. You're 100% right. But like, listen, just don't take this away from me, Nastasia.
There's no idea you're right. You gotta give him 2021. You can't take 2021 away from. Yeah, you're you're right. But you know what I mean?
Like, oh, January 21st. That's true. Yeah, not a political show, yeah. No, it is a political. Hey, also a fan of the show, listen.
This is just because you're depressed because you've been in like isolation for like eight months doesn't change what we've been doing for 10 years. I'm not that it is political in this school. All I'm saying is I am happy about January 20th, and I will never support Trump, and I want to make that very clear. You guys can say whatever you want. Of course, of course.
But the show's not about that. Listen, okay. Someone can cook something and be interested in like technical cooking and like what we're doing, like, like regardless of what they believe outside of that fact. So, like, there is no reason to alienate people. What?
Okay. Well, what? Human rights, human rights and we and I'll say that all day. Like, certain things are not moral issues, right? Like, here's the thing.
Like, I don't believe that the vast majority uh the effect of what like people who support Trump does is a lot of human rights abuse. But if you were to have a conversation with them, do they believe that people's rights should be abused and that kids should be separated from their parents? They would say no. They would say no. So then the question is, how do you have a reasonable conversation with that person, right?
And it isn't by like driving them off into their own echo chamber or retreating to your own echo echo chamber, especially when we're here to talk about how to cook turkeys. That's all I'm saying. All right, get into this ears all because let's get it. So the the, you know, look, Amazon, who like let me put it to you this way their hands are so far up our butts that when they're when they have to like you know itch their hand our mouths move let's just put it that way their hands will be eating our turkey this Thanksgiving Yeah that's right that's right their puppet hands will be eating all of our turkey good news is we can eat a lot because they'll just snarf it down because that's how far their hands up are our backsides now some person do you even know the name of this person? Can we call them out?
No, it's can we can we dox them? What? No, it's it's a fake name. It's a fake name. All right, all right.
It's uh doxing's bad. I'm sorry I said that. Yeah, I was just gonna do that. I'm sorry I said I'm angry, Matt. I'm angry, man.
Can't you cut me some slack? I'm angry. A guy's allowed to get angry. Yeah. And I I already apologized.
Not even 30 seconds after I said it, I apologized. If I did know who this guy's name was, though, I would plaster him. It's a woman, actually. So it says. So it says.
So we've been selling this thing. Maybe you've heard of it. It's called a steerzole. We've been selling it for what now, six years, Nastasia, something like this. War on the thing.
On the order of, I don't know. No, I was looking at the documents. I think it's like 2014 or something like this. Okay. All right.
So we've been selling this thing. Uh what do you attach it to, Nastasia? Did blowtorch. To a blowtorch. Yes.
Right. But the blowtorch has a big old flame on it, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, it's a torch, right? Mm-hmm.
It's got a flame on it. Yes. Yeah, okay. And uh, so you would expect there to be some fire involved, right? Yeah.
I mean, it's not like uh it's not like uh some sort of like uh like torch knot, right? It's not like a like a cap that you add to your torch that turns it into a paperweight that's not a torch anymore, right? It it's meant to like have flame in it. All right. So we're clear, that's what we sell for a living and have sold, right?
For six years, right? And by the way, we as a company are extremely safety conscious. We have spent so much money on our products to make them as as safe as we can, considering that it's dangerous because it's fire, right? But within that parameter, right? Make it as safe as you can.
Same with the centrifuge, right? We we've lost so much money because we won't do projects that we don't think are safe, etc. etc. Is that right or wrong, Stas? Yeah, right.
So, you want to read the quote unquote complaint? Oh, geez. Um, yeah. So last night I got a complaint that Amazon forwarded to me. And it hold on, I forwarded it to so many people that I need to okay.
It is funky smell coming from the head unit, wire mesh is already bubbling. It stays on fire after the unit has been turned off. Almost dangerous. Actually, that should be our poem of the month for the newsletter. Almost dangerous.
I don't know that we want to look. Can we have two poems of the month? Yeah, we can do whatever we want. All right. Uh now listen.
First of all, first of all, uh, I'm just thinking about the poem of the month now. Do you have Kompachi there? I need to be calmed down. John, can you call up the newsletter and read it? Because I just need to be, I need to be calmed down.
So as a result of this complaint, which I will go into in a second, Amazon unilaterally removed Searsols from Amazon. And they're the only ones that purchased them. And they're the only ones that purchase them. They own them all. They removed them.
But here's the fun part. The knockoffs, the actual unsafe knockoffs that are being sold by people who are infringing our patent. Can you still buy those, Nastasia? Oh yes. Any iteration of the knockoff is available.
Any. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah.
And they also somehow preemptively also took the spinzall ASIN offline, even though we're out of stock because we're trying to get a factory to build more. We're more on that later. We just sent off the new model to China for them to work on. The entire country. When we say China, just China gets it, right?
Our factory in China. We have one factory in China. So, you know. Sorry, I'm shorthanding our factory in China. But it is true, we have the entire country working on the problem.
So it's crazy that we can't get it done. Yeah. Because the whole country is working nonstop on it. So they they send this thing. They they they turned off the they turned off the sales of the sp.
But it's not like people buy things right after Thanksgiving, right, Stas? Yeah. It's like the slowest purchasing time of the year. Also, like they get this one like complaint, which who knows, generated by a bot by like, you know, Russian troll farms or whatever. And not that I wish Russian troll farms cared about us.
They don't. Uh speaking of Nastasia, are you familiar with the Ukrainian carved candle as part of your heritage? What did you grow up with those carved candles? Yeah. Multicolor?
Yeah, yeah. What do you think? Uh, I thought they were pretty as a kid. I haven't seen one in a long time. But back to it.
Jen and I went Jen and I, my wife, Jen and I went into a deep YouTube hole yesterday watching Ukrainian people carving the multicolored candles. And we were like both ugly and awesome at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. Like we kind of want them, but like they take a long time to show up.
Isn't there a bunch of Ukrainian stuff in uh East Village? No, I hadn't thought about that. That's true. But like if you go on Etsy, because this is an Etsy sort of thing, if you go on Etsy, there's all these people, Gandals by Yuri. There's like literally candles by Yuri.
But it takes, he like, you order one, you tell him what colors you want, and then Yuri sits there and carves them, and he sends them to you in like six weeks. Or it takes them like a week to make it, and then like, you know, eight years to show up from the Ukraine. Anyway. It's not some sort of fake thing. It's legit.
Yeah, it's legit. Star shaped and then cut with the things with the petals and the stuff. Maybe get your mom to post a picture of the candles if she still has any. Did you burn them? Uh I don't think we ever burned it now.
Jen and I decided that if we get them, we're gonna burn them. If you had them, would you burn them? I think so, yeah. The reason I mention this, remind me candles later. Uh anyway.
What? Sears all Amazon. So, yeah, so they took it off. So this person who we don't know, we can't verify. Yeah, one person, one person emails Amazon and sends them this like three sentence thing barely, and they like shut down our whole thing.
I email them constantly for a million different things, and they're like, you're just gonna have to wait. Yeah, well, this is like the first day we ever were gonna sell the Sears all. Yeah. We added they they like right on like Thanksgiving, literally on Thanksgiving, right before we were about to flip the switch, they flagged the word fire in our description because we had updated a description, so they flagged it. And remember, they took us off sale for like they took us off sales, so we had to do all of those original Black Friday sales on our own account because Amazon would no longer sell it.
Do you remember that? Yep. Yeah, that cost us many thousands of dollars. So these bots, right? So a bot, not a human, is probably responding to this.
What that means is now a human has to look at it, and guess what the humans at Amazon don't? Care. Care. The humans at Amazon don't care at all. So only God knows when Sears all will be available again.
But where are they available? They're available on Ben to Table.com. But there's not that many of them. Uh yeah, but literally, there's like a handful. So if you really want to Sears all for Christmas, you gotta buy the gift box.
Don't email me saying you don't want the gift box. You want a Sears all, you gotta get the gift box. Yeah, you know, maybe they'll turn it back on. Who knows? Who knows?
Uh but anyway, so here's the the the complaint was makes a funky smell. John, what is the instruction manual say? To burn off the organic coating that's on the inside for two minutes by holding the search all screen per or uh parallel to the ground or whatever it is you're gonna be searing and then burn it off for two minutes. Then what might happen during that time? What will happen during that time?
A little bit of funky smell and a little bit of flame. Yeah. In the instructions! Yep. In the instructions!
And then, so if you don't sear it for the full two minutes, there's still organic binder in there. Which means if you turn it off, hey folks, what does the organic binder continue to do? Burn, burn off and smell. Burn with with what kind of smell, Matt? Oh, I would say a funky smell.
Funky smell. Yeah, but funky smell. The most frustrating thing about this whole thing is we don't even know if this person who complained is actually using our search or purchased our serzol. So it may not have come with instructions because it came from another factory that copied us and did it follow this here. Here's another thing.
Here's another thing. Screen was quote unquote bubbling. Now listen, folks, how do you even make a bubble on a fine wire mesh screen? I mean, it's not mozzarella on top of a pizza. It's not like a paint coating.
It's it it it's it's made of a single material, Canthol D, which has a melting point of roughly 1,300 C. Uh Seerzol face never gets above a thousand C. So what this person is saying is physically impossible. What actually happens when your screen fails isn't melting, it's oxidation. All right.
I'm just telling you, like, and this has been we've been testing this for years and years and years and years and years. So the fact that this person said that the screen was bubbling, right? Maybe they don't understand what a bubble is. Maybe like it's like I say, it's not soup. It's not, it's not like, oh, I I bought I brought my conthal screen to a rolling boil and it bubbled.
You know what I mean? Like, what does that mean? If sh it it if if the person means that it bowed out a little bit, well, it's a little thing called expansion due to temperature change. Jerk! Anyway.
So very hard, you pegged it almost dangerous because the search all does look almost dangerous to me. Well, that's unhelpful, Matt. Yeah. But like I'm saying. There's fire.
There's fire involved. There's fire involved. It's a known thing with the fire. It's like, and we go through all this stuff. It's like if I sell you a knife, I'll be like, yo, sharp.
Yeah. You know what I mean? I'm selling you something to make your torch into a broiler with using flame. Yeah. Uses fire is stocks.
Still a torch. It's yeah. Yeah. Unbelievable. So now, instead of working on what we should be working on, which is talking to, you know, like reading all the questions you find folks have sent us about what to do for your uh presumably micro Thanksgivings.
Um, you know, we've been like gathering documents trying to say that something that is used as an insulation in furnaces can't catch fire. I mean, it's like it's crazy. It's like what do you think? Any anything else to add? Well luckily, Van Groff is in the chat with a question about this if you'd like, or you can just ignore this one and go with something else.
No, no, no. Long time, long time uh follower there. What happens to all the inventory Amazon has? Have they even paid you for that yet? Oh, interesting question.
No. No, they have not. Apparently, they're paying us on Thursday of this week, like a portion. But what's Thursday, and what do you think is not gonna happen? Oh, geez, Louise.
Here's the thing, dude. Like, Amazon, Amazon has all these quote unquote teams. None of these teams have telephone numbers because they don't want you to reach them. In fact, you don't even get a direct email line to these team teams, teams. Most, many of these teams are not in the United States, so they don't care about our standard holidays.
But believe you me, right? If they see that it is a standard holiday, they're like, well, they're not going to be waiting for the check because it's a holiday. And our bank won't process it. Right. Right?
Right. Yeah. It's so. It's well planned. It's so well planned.
It's so well planned. Yeah, geez, Louise. They're like, oh yeah, we'll just uh reschedule this for uh December 25th. Yeah. Well, Anastasi, it's not like we don't need the money.
Right. Yeah. Uh uh. You want a quick question that's not about this? Sure.
91Ax asks if you have any experience with the Vitamix E310 because he's got a chance to get it pretty cheap this week. I'll look it up. The Vitamix E310. What are the things about it? Like what makes it different from any stuff?
It's just smaller. Um also in case it's good, what are some good things to do with a new Vitamix? Is it the same motor? Uh doesn't specify. First of all, like I'm a fan of dumb names, but check this out.
The Vitamix Vitamix E310 Exploring Blender. What does Exploring mean? Sounds like a power source on Star Trek. It does. It does kind of.
I'm looking at a picture of it. The question is really uh two horsepower. Yeah, I mean, look, what does that even what does that really mean? Does it mean 1400 watts? Let me tell it to you this way.
It does mean 1400 watts, 1200 to 1400 watts. Yeah, so like a horsepower is I forget exactly 750 something watts, right? That's what a horsepower is. So anytime someone sells you something that you're gonna and uh plug into the wall, and they say that it's like you know, eight billion horsepower, like vacuum cleaners used to say this. Like, ask yourself, how many amps can you really suck out of the wall?
How much power can you really suck out of the wall? And the answer is out of a regular non-dedicated plug, like most appliances try to stay at 1500 watts or below, and uh, you know, which is uh about two horsepower, and uh certain things like induction burners can go up to like 1750 or 1800, but anything over that, and you're getting close to tripping um circuits on the regular, and so they they don't like to do it. So if you were to just do a little math here, 120 volts uh times, assuming that we're working on 120 volt standard and you're not calling it 115 or 125, and let's say you're in a 15 amp circuit, then the maximum possible wattage you could take out of that circuit would be 1800 watts. And anything over than that, anything larger than that would not be allowable in a uh standard non-20 amp dedicated plug, right? So unless it in vitamin Vitamixes, Vitapeps, or whatever you're gonna call them, they don't take standard, they don't take 20 uh amp dedicated plugs.
Any of the higher ampereage stuff requires a 20 amp dedicated plug, and because UL is gonna force you to go 10% power over under, right? They're not even gonna allow you to probably get all the way to 1800 before they're going to start getting pissed off about blowing the 15 amps. Alright. So that's like the maximum, that's like about the maximum you can do. Let's divide 1800 by 750, which it's roughly what a horsepower is.
And the magical answer is 2.4. So in reality, no one's actually going to suck more than 2.4 amps out of a wall, uh 2.4 uh horsepower out of a wall for a blender. Now Vitapep, I forget the name of it, I'll find it, you know, someday. But Vitapep actually does a fairly decent job about not lying about their blender power. I gotta give them that, right?
As opposed to a lot of other people, like like all the stick blenders, the all lies, right? All complete lies. Uh, if you want to see how powerful a Vitapep can actually be, don't blend water in it. Blend like uh like maple syrup, something real thick. That is the like the one of the hardest things it can blend because it's thin enough that your blades can engage, but thick enough to give some real hardcore resistance, right?
Once you get too much thicker, you have things like starch and you start cavitating out, the blades start hitting error and the power actually goes down. Uh so the Vitapep actually will put out quite a bit of power. Um, I would just look at you know this the standard RPM. I have not tested that particular blender. I'm sure I'm sure it's fine.
I've been using the standard Vitapep for years. I don't have the three horsepower one, which again obviously is a lie. It's not gonna put out that for sustained periods of time. Um, but that's my two cents. I.e.
I don't know. But I tell you what, if you have standard countertops, the original Vitamix is a little bit too high, right? So you have to you can't store it fully assembled under your counter. So if it's smaller and that floats your boat, I think it's probably still gonna be a good blender, but I've never used it, so I can't personally recommend it. What good?
Good. Yeah. All right. Now, uh, have we said enough about how much uh Amazon is uh is uh pooping in our ice cream sundae. Don't don't poop in my ice cream sundae and tell me it's ice cream Amazon.
Don't do it. You know what I mean? It's like and buy from Ben to Table. Yeah, buy the three whatever. Yeah, it's like, you know, you know, I just can't, I just can't like for the number of times we're just a small company.
You're listening to the whole company. Say hello, company. Hello, hello. That's us. Why shaft us so hard?
You know what I'm saying? Yep. Uh speaking of companies having a tough time, everyone's having a tough time. But you familiar with the company Flying Tiger Anastasia? Mm-hmm.
They have that store, they're out of Denmark. Yeah, you know, Denmark, land of the land of the mink. We already talked about mink meat burgers, right? Yep. Yeah.
Uh that was my brilliant idea years ago. No one ever used it. I guess because no one wants to eat a mink uh burger. But anyway, so Denmark, the land of uh the COVID mink murder situation, um, has this company called Flying Tiger. There's only 13 stores in the US, they're closing them all, even though apparently this doors are popular in Europe.
Unbeknownst to us, Jen goes there and we buy things like candles because you know Jen likes candles. This is why we went into the candle hole Nastasia. So they had a sale literally everything in the store is 50 cents for going out of business sales. So it was, but they were only because they're social distancing, only 10 people are allowed in the store. So it was an hour and a half wait to get into the store, Nastasia.
So what does that mean for me? Um I don't know. Yes, you you know me a long time. What does that mean for me? For you, hour and a half.
I don't know. I really don't know, Dave. It means that uh as part of my get out plan, I had purchased a Kelty Tyoga frame backpack, which is by the way, frame backpacks, like they may look dumb, but they are freaking amazing. That's gonna be on our love list in the uh in the newsletter. So this frame backpack, which looks like you know, like a 1980s backpacker's dream with an external aluminum frame backpack.
I went in there and I bought uh 55 pounds worth of candles. In retrospect, I wish I had bought 75 pounds because biking home with 55 pounds of candles on my back and the Kelty Tyoga felt like nothing. I could easily have done 75. I feel like I could have done like 8500 pounds worth of candles in that thing. I stupidly bought a bunch of light stuff there, like you know, art supplies for the kids and stuff like that.
But the lady was like, This is a lot of wax. How you gonna get it home? It's like my problem, that's my problem, and got on the city bike and took that sucker home. Awesome. Love the Kelty.
So we have a lot of candles, and that's what put us in the candle holes, does. Okay. She's astounded. Yeah, yeah. But I figure she would have thought about that with me because she knows how like A, I don't like to wait, so if I do wait, I'm gonna put a ridiculous amount of stuff, and Nastasia also knows that if it can be placed on my back, it will go on my back.
Yes. Frame backpack, like the like an exoskeleton type thing. No, nothing that cool. Like hiking backpack normally has a metal. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Imagine a 70-year old man with a beard down to his crotch and like and like a a canvas hat with like a big smile on his face, like marching around in Birkenstocks in a mountain. And the backpack that that guy is wearing is the one that I'm using. Oh. So the brand is frame. No, the brand's Tyoga.
No, sorry. The brand is Kel Kelty. You know Kelty, they make the baby backpacks. Like they in the 80s made the original like aluminum frame backpacks. Also, like little note, in the early, early 1980s, when frame backpacks became kind of cool, like uh uh like for hiking, like the small, very short, very chubby, super straight hair at the time, butt parted, like like right down the center of the head, butt part, giant photo gray glasses, uh that you know, once the 19 early 1980s uh like photo grays, like they instantly turned dark and never went light again.
That's how it worked. It's like they were they were clear exactly once. So that was me, right? Like with that ensemble was me. Giant buck teeth all crooked like Levalore blinds, and uh this giant frame backpack wearing a uh you know, a blazer, right?
But because it was me, it was all messy, like all the other kids had like, you know, all nicely like you know, I don't know, they had like four or five different kind of like school uniforms that they would wear. I had like the one blazer and like the pants. So that package with the frame backpack walking a mile and a half, like back and forth to school, that is why I am the way I am today. Or I should say I haven't changed much. Well, we talked about how we are the band that tunes our own basses on stage.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Real bands, like they they hire, like the roadie sits there and tunes their stuff off stage and hands a real instrument to the band. We're that one who has to send them being like, I'm sorry, in between songs. That's us.
You know what I mean? And then you're like, it's good enough, just go. And then that whole sound song sounds off. You know what I mean? Because, like, you know, I'm like, you know, a quarter tone off on the on my on my bass note.
Anyway, uh Matt, you know what I'm talking about. Oh, I know what you're talking about. It's pretty embarrassing when it takes you far too long to tune a four-string, like basically never goes out of tune instrument on stage live. But you know, my ear was never that good, right? So, like the guitar, the guitarist was that the guitarist was that guy that would be playing, hear himself go slightly low while he was playing, and in the middle of the song would just do the micro tune while he was playing without even stopping.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you know this. I'm not that guy. Yeah.
I mean, while to make matters worse, I had this bass that like would never go out of tune. So it was just I didn't even get that much practice. So really really couldn't do it. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, and you know, and this was, I guess some people used to have there used to be these really, really cool tuners back in the day that were inline tuners, so they would have a wheel that would rotate, and um you could visually look because it worked, I I forget exactly, it would somehow spin at the rate that your thing was was working, and you could visually see while you were playing, based on like some optical trick that the wheel was doing on stage, what your tuning was.
Now I guess everyone just automatically has machines that tell them and they can probably pitch bend it as you're playing just to make it not sound terrible. But good old days. Good old days. Nastasia, we are gonna be carrying our own gear till we die. I hope not.
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Alright, uh, let me just say a couple of things about Thanksgiving. Uh so this is obviously not a normal Thanksgiving for most of us. We're cooking for you know, the vast majority of us are cooking for much smaller groups than uh we ever had. So then that begs the question: well, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do with all of the leftovers?
Because there are a lot of leftovers. I think you should plan in advance for how you're gonna deal with the leftovers and how you're gonna deal with like the fridge overload. One way is just to not cook as many things, but for me, anyway, there needs to be a like it there needs to be a minimum number of things for it to be Thanksgiving. Otherwise, just don't do it at all. You know what I'm saying?
Do you guys agree or disagree? Yeah. So it's like, um, oh my god, I thought this was because I'm only cooking for you know the two kids and Jen. Like, I was like, oh, we we're we we're not gonna have any, you know, I don't have to make multiple like dietary restriction things anyway, because you know, there's just only there's four of us. But it turns out uh I'm also making Thanksgiving dinner for uh the person who does security at the week because we found out that the guy who does security downstairs, obviously someone has to be working on Thanksgiving, but then he doesn't even have his parents to go home to.
So we're gonna bring him down a plate, socially distanced, of course. But of course, he has some dietary restrictions, so I still have to cook with dietary restrictions. Oh, yeah, I know me, me, me, me. Anyway, um, are you guys still doing turkeys? Yep.
Yeah, I'm gonna I'm doing a turkey. Uh the smallest turkey they had at my local mart was 20 pounds, though. I mean, I recommend doing a small turkey if you're gonna go small. Uh, if you're going to not do a full turkey, I would say get the get the the thigh leg and you know take out uh take out the bones and and and cook it that way. But if you're gonna do the whole turkey, um I would do what I've been doing, which is cut out the back, right?
Take out just the big interior bones, use that to make a stock, right? Because then the smaller bird, it's not just that it's um, it's not just that it's easier to carve and easier to cook, which it is, um, once it's been boned out like that, but um it's the stock is much easier to condense, especially if you make it before Thanksgiving. No one wants to take their cooked turkey carcass and make a stock after Thanksgiving. Am I right? You're spent, no?
You're spent, right? And then who has the time or who wants to sit there and hack a cooked turkey carcass up into chunks that are small enough to fit in your freezer, and then it's just gonna molder in your freezer. I highly recommend that you take the bones, you make uh like a like a quick pressure cooked stock beforehand. It's gonna clearly a turkey makes more than enough stock for its own gravy if you take the bones out. You then have gravy, and if you have any extra, you can save that.
It's much denser and easier to freeze. And then it's much easier at Thanksgiving time to take the turkey and cut it into pieces that can then be refrigerated slash frozen. Remember, if you're gonna freeze, put them in ziploc bags and get the air out of it. The way I do it on a Ziploc bag is I close it all the way down onto a straw, and I suck out the extra, only do this with your family, because obviously you're sucking on it with your with your mouth. Suck on the straw and then you know, put pinch your fingers around the straw at the last little bit, suck it and pull it out.
And this will get you like a decent seal on things that you're not gonna put liquids in, right? And freeze them flat. Um if you're going to wait for things to cool off before you put them in, not just because it'll ruin your freezer to put warm things in, but because as they're cooling and freezing, moisture will come to the surface of your products, and unless you s uh coated them in between, and this is a good idea, it costs a little more, but getting a little freezer paper and putting that in between layers inside of your Ziplocks will make it much easier to take individual pieces out to thaw. Try to keep your Ziplocks under about an inch thick, and that will make the thawing a lot easier, right? Anytime you go bigger, it's gonna take a lot longer to thaw.
Make sure you get freezer ziploc bags. One of the reasons that people use aluminum foil when they're putting things in freezers is because the aluminum foil conforms very well to the outside of the product, right? And conforming to the outside of the product has the advantage that it prevents any time air is there, you get crystallization and recrystallization. The outside of the product can get uh ruined. Problem with aluminum foil is that then you can't see the product, and so you're much less likely to use it, which is why I always say if you wrap something in aluminum foil, just throw it away now, right?
Whereas in Ziplocks, you can kind of see what's going on, but make sure you get a freezer one because it has a much better gas barrier, oxygen barrier than uh regular saran wrap or regular plastic wrap. Okay, so I recommend the freezer ziplocks, getting the air out of them so you don't get a lot of recrystallization, keeping them within about um an inch of thickness, and the reason for that is just your your thaw time. And this is why for something like mashed potatoes, I don't recommend you freeze them in quart containers because it'll take forever. If you're gonna freeze your mashed potatoes, which is a good idea, put them into a gallon zip block, but put them all into the bottom, right? Don't try to spread it, and then put the bottom big plug of it down on your counter and slowly push the mashed potatoes towards the top to try to get the air out.
Seal it once the air is gone, flatten it into a flat pack, label it, and freeze it. Um what else? Uh bread products. You should remember never to if you make Parker House rolls or equivalent, which we're gonna do. Please remember don't refrigerate those things when they're done.
They're just gonna get ruined. So either freeze them or eat them and try to eat things in reverse order of keeping. Stuffing keeps very well, right? So in the freezer. So freezing stuffing the same way you freeze mashed potatoes is a good way.
And you know what? Like, as long as you eat it before the new year, nobody minds having a meal of like stuffing gravy and mashed potatoes, even if you don't have that much leftover turkey. You guys with me on this or against me on this? Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Uh yeah. Any other any other things people uh need to know about saving or any other problems you think people are gonna have about saving their saving their products that aren't obvious? Hmm. Alright, you it John, you wanna before we go to the other ones, you want to read some of these uh some of these uh Thanksgiving specific questions? All right, all right, from Robert Kantu via email.
Hello, cooking issues crew. I'm looking into cooking my turkey that's here via circulator and getting a very crispy skin by frying it. There isn't much reliable information in Subid Turkey online. I'm assuming uh to do the size to do it in the size of the vacuum machine required. I luckily I found a turkey that will fit in my vacuum machine.
My questions are what time and temperature do I circulate my 9.8 pound heritage turkey. Also, should I hang dry the turkey before I fry it? What time should I fry it? Thank you in advance, Robert. Nine pound turkey.
Oh my god. I believe you've bought purchased a large chicken. Nine pound turkey. Um I'm just I'm just fooling with you. By the way, uh, about turkeys uh versus chicken.
I know some people are doing the chicken instead. Chicken, I love chicken. Chicken does not smell like turkey. Like, to me, the smell of the turkey on Thanksgiving. That I like that by the way, I'm not one of these guys who's like, I don't like turkey, I only eat it because it's Thanksgiving, because it's traditional, I don't really like turkey.
I love turkey. I'm like the dad off of the Christmas story. I love turkey. I love the smell of turkey, I love the taste of turkey. I don't like it overcooked, but I do love turkey.
Where do you guys where do you guys fit on the turkey? Enjoy. Like, good. Yeah. Yep.
Yeah. All right. The problem that you're gonna have with your vacuuming the turkey, and one of the reasons that I don't ever vacuum a turkey, right? Is um first of all, it's hollow, so you're gonna crush it, right? Second of all, it's gonna take a long, long time to get uh the uh heat all the way uh through the turkey when you're doing it.
So what I recommend that you do is this. Cut out the backbone of the turkey. Also cut out all of the ribs or anything that is ridiculously sharp inside of the turkey. Then bag it semi-flat. Okay?
You guys with me so far is my explanation making sense? Yep. Bat bag it as though it was spatchcocked. Is this making sense? Yeah, right?
Then bend it into a turkey shape and circulate it like that, making sure that liquid can get to the inside of what used to be the cavity of the chicken, and leaving yourself like a little hinge that you can kind of open it on uh on on the on the bottom. Be gentle with it. Remove it, make sure that you don't like move it too much, let it get cold. Cold, right? Then cut it out of the bag gently.
It will now hold its shape, right? Then put it on a rack in your fridge and let the skin dry out. If you don't let the skin dry out, bird will not be crispy. I'll repeat this bird will not be crispy. Then fry it and you should be fine.
Right? Now, is it going to be as crispy as a bird that you fried for like 40 minutes? No. You know what I mean? Or as one that's been roasted.
I mean, the crispiness on skin is not just a function of the temperature, but it's a function of dehydration over time. So I would say you're still gonna have to fry it for more than like a minute, because obviously it takes longer than a minute to turn skin from flaccid, like partially cooked skin into crispy chicken skin. I would run a uh turkey skin. I would run a test, I would get a leg. I would just buy a leg, uh a drumstick, and uh like today, and then I would bag it, circulate it, cool it, and you can do the other one at the same time in terms of cooking it, right?
But then I would test frying. This is what we did when we were testing the stuff back at the French culinary back in the day, then uh fry it at different temperatures for different lengths of time and get a feeling for what happens uh to the skin. All right? Because you don't want to be disappointed with the whole bird at Thanksgiving time. What do you guys think?
Sounds good. Alright. All right. We've got Nan's a question from Nancy via Instagram. Hi again.
If Dave has the opportunity to discuss, it'd be great. I know that Dave has a tandoor of them. And this is for she used to. My mom has it now. But of course I haven't seen my mom since the pandemic.
But go ahead. Gotcha. This is for her Thanksgiving. Um I've been experimenting with making naan without great success. My daughter-in-law, who was born in India and spent most of her life there, generously tells me it's tasty, but it lacks a traditional chew.
I'd be grateful for any advice as to ingredients. I tried all yogurt, part water and yogurt, milk and yogurt, and none of the attempts have been as delicious as I desire. Many things in advance. Like most of the recipes that are published online are like cooking a tandoor if you have one, ha ha ha, but they're actually designed to be cooked in a normal oven, right? So um, you know, John, if you remind me later, if we have her Instagram, I can look up the recipe.
If she doesn't already does she own the tandoor book, did she say? If she owns the tandoor book, I can get the recipe out of that book. Uh I I it's hard for me to judge whether or not it's the it's the base recipe that's the problem. And since I haven't fired my tandoor up in a in a year and a half because my mom has it, I can't remember off the top of my head um what what recipe I used. But um I'll try to get uh to you to put out today, uh later today, um Ranjit Rai's uh non recipe that's actually uh done in a tandoor.
Um if it's cooked through and it's an issue of of uh the chew is not right, then it's probably the dough base. But uh I'll I'll get his and and you can see whether it's appreciably different from the one you're using. Alright. Sounds good. Um all right.
Uh you know what? You ever you ever use a tandoor? John? No, I haven't. I'd like to.
Dude, the first time that you go into the thing with the with the little like the poofy thing to put the bread against, man, that that's nerve-wracking. I bet. You know what I mean? Yeah, but it's really hot. And when you make it, you've gone through all this stuff, and then the the bread falls into the coals and catches fire.
Then the fire from the one that fell into the coals kind of scorches the other ones that are already in the tandoor. That's good times. Perfect. Yeah. Nice.
Best. Okay. All right, from Neil Herzl. Hello, everyone, wherever you are now. This year I'm cooking Thanksgiving dinner at an altitude of 8,000 feet.
I know very little about altitude cooking other than that it's different. I'm doing an 11-pound bone-in prime rib roast. I was planning on doing the Kenji reverse sear method. Unfortunately, I will not have. It's not called reverse sear, people.
It's whether you sear it before or after. I don't uh don't don't anyone ever write me a question that uses the term reverse sear. It it ticks me off. Go ahead. Unfortunately, I will not have much more than an oven and a sears all.
You can use this as a gift uh box plug. Very nice. Uh to work with any tips would be much appreciated. Um cooking at Alpha, 11 pound bone-in prime rubber. Yeah, I'm looking up the boiling point of water at 10.9 PSI, which is what will what will be up there.
Um at uh this is positive pressure. I need negative pressure. Um I gotta look it up. That's quite high. Um, let me see.
So what what were the ones what what were they interested in cooking again? Before I before my own. 11 pound bone-in prime rib roast. So look, what you're affecting when you affect um, you're affecting the temperature uh at which water boils, right? So what's gonna happen is it's gonna take uh it's gonna be a like on the inside of meat where it's cooking in an oven, um, you get a crust, and that crust forms because there's evaporation of water.
And once the evaporation uh leaves, you should be able to get a very nice crust, right? That shouldn't be a problem because as soon as the water is gone, right, you can get the same browning as you would otherwise get. And also radiant heat from the oven is not affected by um by any of these problems. Um the problem is that um under the surface where there is still water, right? So, like if you go into really anytime you're cooking with a high heat, you're cooking at the boiling point of water at some point inside your meat.
And so the rate at which the heat is going to travel from that front, that boiling point front to the center is dependent on the temperature delta between the center of the meat and the outside. And because your temperature delta is appreciably lower, it will take longer to get up to the temperature uh that you that that you want. So I would anticipate it taking longer. I've never cooked something uh at that like that at that altitude either. Uh I'm sure there are some things on the internet about it, and I will think about this because it is something that is uh interesting to me.
You if it is taking longer and you're gonna be evaporating water faster, which means that your uh crust will probably form uh faster, considering compared to the inside, you're gonna have to have a healthy uh uh amount of aluminum foil around you so that you can um uh stop it from browning in areas where there's getting too much radiant uh uh heat um the aluminum foil will block the radiant heat from the outside of the oven by almost an order of magnitude right so uh you know if you're getting X amount of radiant energy you know you'll get roughly like X over 10. You know what I mean? So it's uh it's it's significant. So make sure you have uh some aluminum foil um and there's gotta be somebody who um who has this uh this inf this information on cooking ribs was there anything uh oh else cooking yeah good luck doing rice and and beans and stuff unless you have a pressure cooker um but I can't find what the what the what the temperature that it's gonna boil is up there but it's it's significantly lower um for some reason my my saturated um my saturated tables aren't coming up right now but you're at 10.9 psi there so um anyway all right if I get more we'll put it out there or they can send me a question on uh Twitter cooking issues on Twitter. All right next one from Matt Z via email.
Hi cooking issues crew thoughts on egg replacement for vegan stuffing thanks. Whoo alright so like in stuffing you're using egg for its binding ability not for its um not for its stability. So um what protein is good for binding? So in other words, like it actually kind of sets it, right? So you're not uh it's not something like flax or xanthan, um, which is just like a snottiness to provide structure while something is cooking.
The actual protein provides structure. Hmm. Uh John, do you have any good ideas for this or Nastasia? Have you come across this in your in your you still eat eggs though, so you haven't really worked on that, right? Yeah, I wasn't making vegan stuffing in May.
Sorry. Uh well, that was a very snide attitude you had. But what I'm saying is, as far as I know, you're still eating less meat, and using eggs as a binder isn't just something you do in stuffing. Yeah. So thanks for the snide remark.
But uh was unnecessary and unhelpful. Uh yeah, I don't know. I can't really think of anything. Um you Google that up for a minute and we'll go into the next read the next question and go and Google that up for me. Okay.
Um Capri Sun via Twitter. I really enjoy classic typical pumpkin pie. I make it exactly according to instructions on Libby puree can in a keyboard ram crust. Are there any twists or variations or add-ins that may be interesting? Uh well, you could try, like if you like a standard graham cracker crust, I would say go with a standard graham cracker crust.
If you have not tried Boston Monroe Strauss's uh pie march on uh graham cracker, which is a real crust with uh graham cracker rolled onto both sides. I would maybe try that. I can't remember what he says in his um I can't remember what he says in his um pumpkin pie uh recipe, but he he gives a recipe for making your own uh pumpkin pie filling and I have not been led astray by him yet but I haven't I didn't get a chance to go look at his recipe by the way there's a new pie is it Pete's Pies that came out with a book someone just came out with a with a pie book you should get we should get that we should it we should get them on right do you do do you like the P spies I have friends who love PD's pies I had some of their chocolate chest pie last night and it was really really delicious. Yeah yeah should we get the Pete Spies people on is it a person or is it Pole? I don't know we can find out we should get them on and then and then just like you know we'll pepper them with pie questions about about uh theirs and other people's pie books.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah you can be like with this one fantastic pie book already in existence what justified writing another one you know so I'll tell a little story. So uh other than the fact that I hate writing things um like uh the French Culinary Institute wanted uh wanted to do a book on food tech this was in oh god like 2000 this is before I even started the blog right they wanted to do a book on on food tech and uh I never forget Nathan Miravold showed up at the school one day and you know Nathan Mirable Microsoft billionaire our everyone's favorite patent troll uh he shows up at the school one day and you know Dorothy who was running the school owner of school had me come down and sit and lunch with him because I was her tech guy, and he said he was working on the book, and we had literally just had meetings.
This is the original Modernist cuisine. And we had all these meetings, and I was like, oh hell no, I'm never gonna write a book now. Never. Like, I'm not, no, never. Like, first of all, like, you know, like how the heck am I gonna write anything that can compete with what Nathan Miravold is doing?
And then, you know, once, you know, once he wrote it and it came out, you're like, oh, there's still room in this field. You know what I mean? And like this, like the same when anyone writes like a killer book or does a killer thing. First of all, people always want new things, so there's always a reason to to write things, but um, there's almost always something new to say. But I think you know, authors and creative people kind of get bent or get um they get upset by the idea that like their thunder is gonna get stolen or there'll be nothing left to say, but you know, that hasn't happened yet.
I wouldn't worry about it. So I'm sure there's plenty to say about pies that was not said by Boston Munro Strauss or anyway. Pete's pies. I hear they're delicious. And also you can have their pie and figure out whether you like it, right?
Whereas, you know, the other guy's pies, he's been dead for a long time. There's gotta be some dark story to him because no one can figure out what happened after he was no longer famous. There's gotta be some dark story. No one just five falls off the falls off the pie radar. You know what I mean?
Uh interesting. Yeah. What's the next question, John? Sean has muted himself. I don't know what that means.
Maybe he's deep in a Google Hole looking for the answer. All right, have dogs surrounding me everywhere. Or he's being attacked by dogs. Yeah. Yes, John has a new uh John has a new dog that he got at the at the pound.
It's true. You want to tell him what the name of your dog is? Nastasia loves it. And I'll tell Koji. Yeah.
Start listeners just love that. What are your thoughts, Matt? As an unpoisoned on this discussion individual, what are your thoughts? On that as a dog name? It's fine.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Our friend Jeremiah Stone, the chef, his his new dog's name is Kambu. So it seems to be the season of the stuff.
Like sale named dogs. I know. Exactly. Uh-huh. That's what it communicates.
Yes. Wow. You're just uh, you know, in advance of Thanksgiving, you're just like uh It's funny because you want me to be harsh day, but then when I'm harsh, you're like, oh harsh. But that's what he likes. He likes to be able to play that as part of the role.
Yeah. Oh yeah. It always comes back to me being a bad guy. All right. What do you got?
You got questions. You got questions there, Jared, for me? Uh from Sean Andrews via Twitter. Outsourcing the turkey this year to save on time and space. Just me and my wife this year.
But still need gravy without a pan of turkey goodness to deglaze. Any sugg suggestions on how this can be done well. Alright, the pan of turkey deglaze is a good idea if that's all you've got, but honestly, it's a huge pain in the butt to be doing that while you're worried about the turkey resting, right? This that whole part of Thanksgiving has always kind of ticked me off a little bit. The best thing to do, even if you've outsourced a turkey, is just go to the supermarket today and buy some turkey parts, right?
And they don't need to you don't need that many of them. Hack them up, roast the hell out of them, right? And then uh deglaze the roasting pan and just do a stock that way. Make a standard roux. Um by the way, uh here's an instruction that I think a lot of people don't follow, right?
When you make a roux, first of all, I think people are worried about using too much fat in the roux, so the roux are too dry, and that's a lot of the reason people get clumping and burning on their stuff because the roux isn't kind of fluid enough to be able to stir properly. Rux are greatly enhanced from a mental standpoint by doing them on an induction burner with good control because you know you're not going to scorch on that thing, right? Because nobody likes a scorched roux. I mean nobody likes it. Also, you're not doing Louisiana cooking, you don't need to worry about making a dark brown roux.
Just do it until the oil is permeated or the butter or whatever I use butter has permeated the flour and it's all nice and homogenous, right? You're looking for homogenous, right? Now, here's I think the peak thing that people don't take seriously enough. Boil the stock. The stock that you pour into that roux needs to be boiling.
If the stock is not boiling, you add so much stock that if it's cold, it will solidify a portion of your roux. If it does solidify a portion of your roux, that will form lumps. Now you can blend it, right? But why would you want to blend it if you can just avoid forming those lumps in the first place and make sure that the stock that you add to your roux is boiling or hot. At least make it hot.
But boiling better, right? And then you're not gonna have problems with lumps in that gravy. Um after you do your initial, so it like you can do a number of things. You can um do whatever wine spirit or whatever you're gonna add to your gravy. You can do it in the stock by itself, right?
You can do a separate pan where you flash some off so you can de-glaze the the bones. If you're if you have a roasting pan and you're doing the bones in the roasting pan, and if you're not gonna make a lot of it, if it's just you and your wife, I would do the veg and the meat in one roasting pan. Give yourself you know some some leeway there. I do a standard kind of mirapoi, I do carrots, uh onions, and celery. I usually go pretty light on the celery, but I don't mind a little bit of sweetness, so I generally use more carrots and onions than a real Frenchie person would use in a in a miracle.
But I would just hack those big, put them in the roasting pan with the with the turkey parts, then deglaze that with your alcohol if you're gonna use an alcohol uh to deglaze, uh, then add the liquid to that. I usually pressure cook that to make a stock. You don't need to, but uh I usually pressure cook it, which is one of the reasons why I have to use a lot of onion because pressure cooking really knocks down on the onion. If you're a fan of this, um when you're doing the uh before you do the roux, you can sweat if it's a very, very fine dice. You can dice your uh your onion and then throw it into the into the butter and saute that and make the roux with the onion.
As long as you use boiling liquid, you won't get clumps based around that onion, although it does make it more dangerous. But it's nice, I think, to have a little freshly sauteed uh onion in um in when you're making the roux right before you thicken it. I'm sure John uses some sort of freaking like shallot or some card of garbage like this. Do you do you go French on this? What do you what do you use for this?
No, I just do, I don't know. I'll do stock with onion, celery, carrots, some garlic, black peppercorns, blah, bailey pine. Yeah. Oh, oh by the way, we got the black and white peppercorns. And I have to say, on a steak, I think I still prefer the black, but uh, we really like those campot campot.
We really like those campot uh white peppercorns here uh in the Carpenter Arnold household for more delicate pepper applications. Um yeah, I always throw some like parsley and some whatever herbs I have into the and I recommend it been to tables, uh fancy poultry seasoning for um but like that classic kind of like parsley sage. Hey, where'd you get your turkey from? Heritage. You're just trolling me now.
Go for it, Sas. Where'd you get your turkey from? Trader Freak and Joe's. But you're trolling me because we didn't get to turkeys this year. You're just causing issues.
But fine, that's fine. Let's do it. Go for it. That's it. I just I just wanted to know.
I I didn't know. What about you? Where'd you get yours? Um the pirate in the dress is cooking in, and I think he got it from Ralph's. Ralphs!
The only grocery store named after vomiting. Ralph's um who was it that who is it that like what major person called out Ralph's and said we're more of a Ralph's country than a Whole Foods country? Who was it? I don't remember that. We were all talking about it.
It was some politician or or some news cat. Oh, it's Brian Freakin' Williams. Brian Freakin' Williams was like, Well, we're more of a Ralph's you live in New York. What are you calling Ralph's out for? Jerk.
You know what I mean? Sure, I like that. Yeah, anyway. Ralph. Uh I you know what I used to like, okay.
How many of us remember the like well, it's still happening, so it's not remembering, but like when when I used to be in Connecticut for Thanksgiving, like I I don't know, probably I don't know, probably like uh I used to love seeing the ridiculous. I know that they're not as good heritage, yakki yaka, but I used to love seeing how cheap those giant turkeys would be. You know what I mean? Like the the buttermall or whatever? Or like you go into you go into the you know, so it's not Ralph's out here, it's uh it's stopping shop.
Yeah, so you go to the stopping shop and they have a freezer case bigger than your car, right? And it's just full of turkeys, right? And uh, and they're like 10 cents a pound because they want you to buy it, or if you spend like a hundred dollars, you like get free turkey. It's like it's like less than nothing. You know what I mean?
Like the stuff that you're stuffing into it is like infinitely cheaper. You know what I mean? Crazy. Do you ever you ever buy those? And you know what I have to say?
I know they're not heritage birds in that, but they don't taste bad. They don't taste bad, those those turkeys. They don't. Anyway. Um, by the way, if you're cooking a turkey, it like uh remember that the old school saying about uh stuffing a turkey is true, that can cause severe um uh illness, right?
Because it takes such a long time to heat up the stuffing on the inside of the bird. So if you're going to stuff a bird uh and cook it stuffed like that, I feel you should uh do the hot stuff. Removing the bones on the inside and like opening it is one way, but the hot stuff is another, uh, where you preheat the the stuffing in a casserole covered so it doesn't get too dry, and you get it up to you know 212 boiling, then you get two layers of dish uh washing gloves, you know, the old school kind, you know, the yellow or blue kind, uh, ones that like let you pick up things that are hot, and then hot stuff, the hot stuff the turkey so that it's already at temperatures that will kill uh bad beasties as it goes in the oven. Uh it's a that's a much better way to um to not get yourself uh damaged. By the way, what are your guys' thoughts on casseroles?
They're part of Thanksgiving. Really? What kind of casserole? Bean? Rachel's doing a green bean, yeah, and I'm doing the yams with marshmallow thing, which is basically.
Ooh, I love the yams with marshmallows. Or I love the idea of it. Do you like it or love the idea of it? Both, I guess. Was it brown sugar, marshmallows, butter, and cubed sweet potatoes?
And pineapples. Pineapple. Ooh, and pineapple. I've never had that. How's that?
Been eating it forever. That's my mom's thing. Also, my mom bought me a barbecue, and then I was like, I don't really like it after using it for 10 times, and she returned it to Home Depot. And they gave her all her money back. That checks out.
So are you using canned pineapple or fresh pineapple? And of course. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. People are gonna ask. I'm asking for them.
Rings or chunks? Um chunks. Mixed in, not on top. Mixed in. Butter, yes, butter no.
Butter, yes. Alright. So, how thick a layer of pineapple and and sweet potato we're talking about? Like um a standard like nine by whatever uh a disposable foil tray. So whatever that's like.
It's like filled up though? Yeah. Like it's hot. Like it's not like like I can I can't see the tray in between the pieces. Right, no, it's filled.
So it takes like an hour and a half. Yeah. Alright. Uh are you a brown sugar or no brown sugar? Brown sugar.
All right. Are you a light brown sugar family or dark brown sugar family? Light. All right. So light brown sugar and like what what what are we looking at like is it mostly sweet potato with some pineapple or is like a lot of pineapple a lot of pineapple and then the top is all marshmallow of course minis right yes yeah and do you you put the minis in at the end or do you bake them throughout and lift it up and brown them at the end bake throughout lift and brown at the end lift and brown okay uh no almonds right no I'm just checking sauce geez people are gonna ask that's something no no no yeah everybody the chat's just filled with questions one by one ingredient by ingredient about this casserole yeah sweet potatoes sweet potatoes roughly the same size as the pineapple chunks yeah yeah all right I feel like I have a good picture you want to know what my mom's stuffing is all right what okay white bread right Jones you know the sage sausage that comes in a tube that you buy frozen it comes in a plastic tube and you hack it into pack yeah so you saute like a whole bunch of that and break it up into into chunks you reserve it and the grease you melt a whole bunch of butter you reserve that you saute a bunch of mushrooms you reserve that celery oh I did forgot to buy celery chopped up celery then uh shredded uh mandarin or canned mandar and oranges I like everything except for that but go on oh that's you know sorry that's what we have to have in in in our house and then we shred up fresh not the dried stuff fresh white bread like Arnold's not because of my name but just because that that kind of texture, so not quite wonder, but not super dense either.
We shred the hell out of that and mix that all up with egg as a binder, and that's that's been our oh and sauteed onions sorry that does sound good. Except for the mandarin orange. Yeah, well, you could add a different sweet thing if you like, but it's remember like this is the recipe she's been making since like I mean, I don't really know because I never had like I've never had my grandma make it like you know, my mom's mom. I always had my mom make it by the time like I remember my mom was doing the Thanksgiving and grandma would come to our house. Um so I don't know, I'll have to ask her where she got that recipe from, but mandarin oranges was a thing in the 70s.
Oh, yeah. Right, and yeah, and so ever since I can remember those canned mandarin oranges were in the 90s. Really? They were big in the 90s? My mom used them a lot.
I think that's right, yeah. Well, you know, your m uh your mom and my mom pretty much were living very similar lives. My mom grew up in San Bernardino. Mm-hmm. I guess your mom grew up in Pennsylvania, but like how long has she been out in California?
Since she was 17. All right, so yeah, so like they were living in the same area when all this stuff was happening. Yeah. So I don't know. Maybe it's like a maybe it's like a like a Covina slash San Bernardino kind of a situation.
I don't know. Uh if we have any. Wait, John, any more any more pressing Thanksgiving questions? Uh we have uh let's see. Did you come up with any good vegan replacers by the way?
No, and I mean there were a lot of people suggesting like applesauce or fruit pures. Yeah, but that's not gonna bind a protein that binds. You need a you need a protein that sets that's vegan. I mean, I'm sure someone makes some sort of soy based thing. Um, I don't know.
I'll try to look and and John will put it out on the if we have any time in between trying to get Amazon to not turn our business off. Butter replacement is the earth balance stuff. It's surprisingly really great. I've never uh what is it? Is it made from coconuts?
What is it made from? No, it's definitely not coconuts. I don't remember what it's made of, but I made a like a buttercream frosting with it for when my friend gave birth and was doing she had allergy shit. And um it was great. It's freaking fantastic.
Hmm. Hmm. All right. Great. Yeah.
Um I see these two questions that oh, if you're gonna make chicken fried turkey without the use of a circulator from frying raw, any tips you would have? Yeah. Cut the pieces. This is from Max via Twitter. Cut the pieces uh into roughly chicken breast size pieces before you bread them, and then uh follow my temperature instructions on if you look up food and wine fried chicken, Dave Arnold, you can get my old fried chicken recipe, and that's what I use when I chicken fry turkey.
So just cut the pieces small enough. You're gonna have to lower the oil temperature, right? That's the main thing is lowering the oil temperature. That's part of the miracle of moisture management. More on that in my book, but you'll have to wait until the until I'm dead, right?
Yeah, Michael Cunz via Twitter, favorite specs for low-temping duck legs and breasts. The breast I would do at 57 for no more than 45 minutes. Uh, you can go a little bit lower, a little bit higher, like 56 something, but 57 is a nice even number for the duck breast low temperature. I would not do the duck legs low temperature. If you're going to bag them, ain't nothing beating uh traditional comfy uh temperatures for duck legs because they just don't really get tender a low temperature unless you cook them for a really long time, and I just don't like them as much.
And then um Nate Simon wrote in and said uh that his ANOVA countertop combi oven shipped early, have it for Thanksgiving. What's the best approach for cooking a turkey leg roulade net? Uh I look, um, I have never used their, so I don't know, I don't know how it works. Um I can't I can't give any any specifications other than that you're gonna radically increase the heat transfer ratio into uh into the into the product. So just again, make sure that you um you have plenty of aluminum foil around if you need to tent over it uh to block radiation that's coming through.
Uh anything else? Nope. No, I see uh wet market dynamics wrote in and asked whether I have a comparable uh potato chip recipe for my French fry recipe. Interesting. I've been working on it, but it's for my book.
It's for my book, but I might talk about it later. I've been frying a lot of potato chips. You like you like potato chips, Nastasi, more than French fries? Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, I should send you some from Alex. There's this brand out here that's really good. Yeah. Send it in your next care package that you'll never talk about. Uh Nastasia sent me a Buddha's hand, and I don't have a and a bunch of passion fruit because Nastasia is a passion passion fruit aficionado, a conycente of passion fruit, which is why I can't believe you've never been to South America where they have so many passion fruits.
You should just go there just like on a passion fruit trip. Okay. Hey, how about you know how I've dragged you like everywhere to eat stuff that you don't care about? Yeah, well, why don't you drag me to South America and we could do a passion fruit thing? That would be great, Dave.
Let's plan that. Well, once there's no more COVID, um your potato chips, ideal potato chips, people. Do you care whether they're overly brown? Do you require a super blonde potato chip or do you not care? I like them thicker.
But so my question is more brown. More brown. Because a lot of people hate brown. They want the potato chips to basically be thick, but also white. I don't care about that.
You know what I'm saying? All right. Like kettle chicken. A happy Thanksgiving. I'm not getting any feedback from you people.
Happy Thanksgiving. Uh we will sell again. There's series. Look out for our next newsletter. None left.
So you need to. Oh, there's plenty left. There's not some. But like with Ben to Table, there's barely any left. So yeah.
Get them today. Fangaroff. Snap one up during this show. So watch out, people. Okay.
You know, I've never been to Oklahoma. Okay. Bye, everybody. Bye. Happy Thanksgiving.
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