Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Usues coming to you live on Newstand Studios from Rockefeller Center. Calling all of your questions to 917 410 1507. That's 917 410 1507. Joined as usual in the studio, again, together in the studio again with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez.
How are you doing, Steve? And by the way, uh, you like for those of you that can listen live, because you've joined our Patreon, first of all, I don't want to hear anyone saying that they can't get to our show. It's free Friday. I don't want any gripes. Free Friday, right?
Yeah. But for those of you that are are paying for the live access and for the callings, yada yada yada, you have the distinct pleasure of having Nastasia Lopez hanging up on you. So what I think you should do, I think everyone should try to see if they can interest her enough to try to get that second question in before she gives you the goodbye. Goodbye. Anyway, right, size?
Yeah. Yeah? Yeah? Yeah. Joined with our dueling engineers, we got Joe Hazen.
How are you doing, Joe? Hey, I'm doing great. How are you? Doing well, doing well. And uh back there in uh well, it's sunny enough here.
Man, I'm melted on the way over here. What a 8 billion degrees. It's not that, it's the humidity, I think. It's not your heat, it's your humidity. Don't I have permission to like flush you down the toilet when you say stuff like that?
Don't you hate those words? 65%, yeah. It's only 65% humidity. If I'm ever that person who's like, I'm gonna go outside because it's nice, or if I walk up to you and say, it's not the heat, it's the humidity. Actually, it says it's 86, but it feels like 93.
Oh. And, well, if it did it feels like as soon as your sweat doesn't evaporate anymore, it's just a filth pot, no matter what. Anyway, and uh for our West Coast engineers crews, for our West Coast engineering fun. We got Jackie Molecules. How you doing?
It's uh hot, not humid here. No, I mean me. I'm in LA. Boop boop B, B. Hey, you know what?
It's good for the body and bad for the soul. Suck it. Wow. That's all you know, whatever. Well, yeah, yeah.
I mean, look, I like LA. Uh, you know, I'm fine with it. Um, you know, I'm kind of tied to this coast, probably forever. Forever. Uh, whether I want to be or not.
If I could live anywhere, if you guys could live anywhere, where would you be? Yeah, you just know it. I would live like in the redwoods, and the way I would die was have one of those suckers fall on me. Just like that's your if you could live anywhere, that's where it would be. I like being in the forest because I like I like moist-ish but cool.
I like ferns and pine needles on the ground, I like the smell of evergreens, and I like feeling like an ewok. So that's build a house or you'd camp. I'd I build a house. I build a house. I uh you know, I'd build a house.
The problem is is that honestly, if you want to live up there safely, you do have to build it in such a way that if a tree falls, it's not gonna hit you. And since the trees are 300 feet tall, yeah, you can't really be, you know what I mean? Safely in the in the thing, you know? Yeah, anyways. Uh what about you stuzz?
I think in one of the canyons in LA. Yeah, yeah, that's right. She's yeah. Oh, yeah, all right. One of the northern ones?
No, like you know, Laurel Canyon. Oh. One of the Malibu Canyons. She a fancy lady. Yes, you know that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, except our work, I haven't been paid in four weeks, so nice. That's not true. Today. No, we don't get paid today.
We aren't taking money. Oh, you're I not. I thought we went back. No. Whatever.
We'll we'll figure it out later. What about uh what about you, molecules? Tokyo. Really? Really?
Huh? Yep. Huh? Wow. Forever.
Wow. I mean, it would put me in Japan, so I I could move around, you know. I could start in Tokyo and then end up somewhere like up in Hokkaido, maybe. You're gonna like move like a fungus? What do you mean?
You mean you're just gonna use that as your home base and then just kind of go around? Yeah, yeah. You know, exactly. Huh. What about you, Joe?
Carolinas. Oh. Because of the James Taylor song. Um, no, not because of James Taylor's song at all. Wilmington, North Carolina's gorgeous.
Oh, yeah, you're you just want to tour that battleship again and again. Uh, you know, I did some work over there at the uh movie studios. Uh I worked on Dawson's Creek for a second. Oh, is that the I don't want to wait for my life to be over? Is that uh yeah, I think so.
Yeah, yeah. Um, so um it's just beautiful land of you know, beach and mountains are super close by. Ah, so not like northern outer banksy stuff, more like close to the South Carolina border. I will definitely hit the outer banks for some fishing. Yeah, yeah, I love fishing.
So you're gonna appreciate this. Can I talk about this, Estas? No, come on, please. No, we've done it already. We move on about it.
We move on. We have we have I know somebody who was trying to move to the outer banks to escape the humidity. Let's put it that way. And then Nastasi and I looked up on the internet because we were like, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard. It's like humid as all hell there.
And then the person was like, uh said that they were having uh a trouble because they were trying to to reel in the bass that they were catching out of a tree. Yeah, the bass was chasing a squirrel up a tree because it was so humid. Jeez, Louise. I do like the outer banks, though. You know, I haven't been since the mid-80s.
I'm sure it's way different. Probably. I don't know. All right. So, what's going on?
Uh, so next week on the show, uh, for those of you that that hear this, get your questions in because we have our good buddy, friend of the show, and it's I'm pretty sure he's coming in live. Uh, Matt Sarchwell from uh Kitchen Arts and Letters is gonna be on. So it's time to get, we're gonna bring classics in the field back for the first time uh in um at the newsstand studios. We're gonna bring back classics in the field. Uh, and ask us all of your like cookbook related questions, get them in early so I can get them to uh Matt and he can have although he's gonna have good answers off the cuff, let's be honest, right?
He always does, he knows all this stuff. He's gonna have good good answers off the cuff. Uh, and then also um start getting your questions in. Uh by the way, we were supposed to have Pierre Chiam earlier, but we're pushing him because he's gone now. He's in he's in Dakar, he's in uh Senegal.
So we wanted to have him, we'll get him once he comes back. Uh but pretty soon, I haven't told you this yet, Nastasia. We have we're gonna have on uh Larren Thomas, who is uh one of the most the foremost knife engineering blogs out there, and his book, Knife Engineering, check it out, is fantastic. So, for all you knife nuts out there, we're gonna do a whole episode just on the ins and outs of slicing and dicing and knives and myths and hoo-ha's. So start thinking about your knife related questions.
Mm-hmm. Knife steel nerds. What do you think about that? Yep. You're like, Nastassi's like, checks out.
He's from Pittsburgh though. Cool. What's the name of that sandwich from Pittsburgh that everyone likes? I don't know. You know what I'm talking about?
That sandwich that everyone likes in Pittsburgh? All right. All right. So, uh, oh, and this week is the week that the French Fry movie that Nastasi and I. So for those of you that follow.
This is the worst. What's the movie? I mean, this. I don't know if you it's a good movie. I've watched it.
Oh, you've watched it? I've watched it. What makes you think it's bad? No, I don't think the movie is bad. So what's the worst?
Uh there's just a lot of emails coming in. Oh, I have to look at email. Anyway, point is it's like high level and then like the lowest level. What's the lowest level of email? You want to know?
Yeah. You want to know? Yeah. Okay, talk about the thing. Talk about that.
Okay, I have a good one. So this I'm it's actually, I've seen it. And for those of you that are interested in seeing Harold McGee floating on a French fryer raft in a CGI pool of bubbling oil. And really, who isn't? Right?
I mean, who isn't interested in that? Like, you gotta see the movie. It it it has it has some Belgium, it's got some America, it's got some McDonald's, it's got some uh it's got some Hemings, it's got some, it's got it's got it's got all this stuff. It's got me, unfortunately. Yeah.
I use in it, by the way, it's an early, because remember, this was shot what, like three years ago? Two years ago? 2019. Yeah. It's got an early reference to moisture management.
And by the way, I still believe everything that I said in the movie. I I watched it and I still believe everything I said. So anyway, the premiere of that movie is uh is this week, and it's being brought to you by Sir Kensington. And by the way, here's something you might not know. Sir Kensington was acquired recently by Unilever.
So in the past couple of years, so now they've got big mayonnaise behind them. Unilever is the company behind uh Hellman's and Best Made. You know what the difference between them is? No. Where you come from in the country.
Were you did you grow up best made because you're a Western? Yeah, probably, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's the same freaking mayonnaise. Best made in Hellman's, same thing.
So the people who try to get all bent. It's the same, it's the same damn thing, different label, right? It's like uh it's like the it's like the Mexican Coke thing I told you about, remember? You know how everyone swears Mexican Coke is this is different, Joe. I love it.
Yeah, you know what I did? I sat next to the CEO of the Coca-Cola Corporation at a dinner once when I was making cocktails. They're like, yeah, sit next to the CEO of Coke. I'm like, eh, sure. So I sat next to the CEO of Coke, and he's like, it's it's it's hilarious, it's awesome.
It's the same. He's like, it's the same. Okay, I was like, but what about using the sugar? He's like, eh, yeah, no one could actually tell. It's all garbs.
It's fine. We love it. I'm like, all right, good to know. Now, people that's not me talking. That's the CEO of for maybe former, I don't know.
It was a while ago. The the CEO at the time of Coca-Cola saying this, I am merely quoting, so I don't want to get any nasty comments about it. All right, Styles, what do we got? What's the lowness is the lowest job? What is the low?
What is the lowest jobs that that you know of that you that you you have respect for, but not much? Okay, hold on a second. This is very, this is very specific. I have low respect for, I have some respect for, but not a lot. So it needs to get done.
It's not a dishonorable profession. It's just something that I'd rather gouge out my own eyes than do. Yeah, I'd rather go full Oedipus than then. Okay. Uh big difference, big difference.
Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're not worthless emails. Because some people's job is just to send worthless emails. You're like hitting it. You're hitting it.
You know exactly what it is. Oh, I'm I'm being dense. Oh, oh, I look. You're the one that you're the one that has uh the issue with uh PR. Okay.
I mean, I have my issue, like I just any PR person that deals with us has to know that we're gonna laugh at them and be mean. That's all they need to know. They just need to have a little bit of a a thick skin. I that you know, their job is to try to get us to do things that we don't want to do, and the correct answer is gonna be between what they want and what we want, right? Yeah, isn't that how it's supposed to work?
Anyway, go ahead. Sorry. So give me so yeah, so I'm I'm dealing with APR person. And she says, and she thinks, you know, because John's out of town that I'm the second assistant in a row. Uh second assistant, love it.
Almost 40. And uh she says, Hey, you know, we wanna we want to share this with some foodie press and influencers, your um French Fry recipe. Right. She said, but we'd also love to hear Dave's top tips if possible. And so I was like, so my response was just sure.
That sounds like you. That sounds like you. And then she says, Great, let me know when you're able to take a stab at those tips, and we'll liaise back to our PR team. And I said, No. Yeah, that sounds like you.
Uh, here's something you may or may not know. I'm not gonna like here's the reason we're not gonna be able to do that. This is the reason we're not successful in life as as much as we could be, is because people only come back to people that respond quickly to them and just give them what they want. They don't they it it's not her job to like spend her life trying to figure out like the ins and outs of what of what we think. So the next time they'll just use somebody else.
But that doesn't matter. In fact, I spent 45 minutes on the phone between eight calls. Yes, between 8 30 and 9 15 this morning, I did nothing but talk to her about you directly. Wow. Yes, you did.
And she did. That's so great. So I love that you're complaining. I love that you're complaining about it. I just spend 45 minutes this morning.
That is true. Yeah. Uh and I just didn't like the take a stab at like what? I.e. freaking do it.
I either I e no rational person would send back the email that you sent back to someone. But in essence, no, I'm not sure. Because she's like, anybody can do what Dave was gonna say, so why don't you just do it? And it's like, no, if you knew Dave, you'd know that it's very specific. Yeah, I I appreciate what you're saying.
I appreciate the movie or whatever. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I appreciate what you're saying. It's so like hello, it's like if she's seen the movie.
Man, the the sign of a republic is knowing who you're talking to, though. You have to know who you're talking to. I think they make. I have you say I'll have you know this is that she was very game because I don't think she was recording what I was saying to her, and I went in the weeds on French Fry. So for those of you, so those of you that don't know what's gonna show you.
I don't know, I don't know. But listen, people I spoke to her, I spoke for like 45 minutes. The French fry recipe that they're using. So here's the problem. They're they're they have a the problem and hopefully the solution.
They have a French fry truck that they're running this weekend, right? Now, the truth of the matter is if anyone tells you there's such a thing as a perfect French fry, they're they're jokers. They're idiots. There's no such thing. There is the fry, first of all, that you want to make right now is what you're trying to achieve.
And there's what systems you have to achieve it. So I tried to write a recipe that would work for the French fry truck, right? Because the recipe that I put on the blog, I would actually change that now. By the way, I've done a lot of research since then. Oh my God, which I don't even have time to talk about.
It would take more than this whole episode. But um the the truth of it is is that for professional use, my recipe where you water blanch for a long time for like I think it was like 12 to 15 minutes. I forget styles. It's a long time, right? Since we wrote that since uh the fries get too beat up.
They almost turn to mashed potatoes. So in the rough handling of a commercial establishment, they turn into nubbins. And most people don't want to serve French fry nubbins. They want to serve intact fries to the majority of the fries. They want to have them be intact, right?
So what that means is I had to cut down on the water blanch time, or make a very precise recipe for just doing uh the oil blanch fry, but that's more difficult. So I did a shorter blanch, a shorter water blanch, which means I also had to move to a smaller diameter, a a twin millimeter fry, even though my personal favorite is a 12 millimeter fry. All right. So I wrote this recipe and I was trying to explain like why this recipe is the recipe I chose for this. So instead we just gave it a number.
The recipe that they're making at it at the Tribeca Film Festival on is that Friday or Thursday? Right. Friday is called Dave Arnold's French Fry Recipe number 27. I have you know, we didn't count. I was gonna choose something in the 30s, and Nastasia goes, that's a crap number.
Yeah. How about 27? Also, they said they can't use the potatoes that you. I just asked for a high gravity russet. That's literally any russeted potato.
That's literally all the potatoes. Like they said they might not be able to find it. I didn't specify look, the truth of the matter is is that You just scared them. I asked for an Idaho, I asked for an Idaho russet potato. Do you know what the difference between most potatoes is?
Frankly, like, but besides the skin and the color and the flavor, right? In terms of their performance with frying or boiling or baking, is literally just the specific gravity. And the specific gravity, i.e., how dense is the potato. Because a non-dense potato has fewer starch, uh, fewer starch um granules in it per per cell and more water. So when those things cook, they don't rupture, right?
Which is why when you can them or make a potato salad with a low gravity potato, right, they stay intact. And why it's harder to make a good potato chip with them, because in a potato chip, your idea is to get all of the water out. So if you get all the water out, you have less potato chips. So you get more oil and you get you have to cook it longer, and it's more of a pain in the butt. Um, same thing with a potato with a baked potato.
You want your if you want your baked potato to be fluffy when you push on it, and who doesn't besides a jerk, right? You need it to not have a lot of water so that the individual starch granules, when they puff up, absorb all the water, and then when you push on it, you get that mealy grainy thing, right? So all I'm asking for is a high gravity low sugar potato, which is all of the properly handled Idaho russets. I didn't say you have to get a Burbank russet. I don't care.
What I'm saying is get you a relatively large G-pod style, like Idaho made, no offense, Maine. You make delicious potatoes. I'm just saying, just get you a high gravity russet potato. Is that all? I saw they got those little red ones.
You're being you're just trying to troll me. You're just trying to troll me. Nastasia Lopez is the queen of the trolls. You know what I'm saying? I can see her smirk through the phone.
By the way, red, it's one of those things. It's like I was talking before with uh wheat and hardness. Like the the red skin is one of those things that happens to correspond a lot of the time with lower gravity potatoes. It's not necessary, right? You know what a good all-purpose potato is?
No. Like a medium, a meat, like a lot of Yukons, especially the like the bigger Yukons that are like, you know, kind of more developed, they're a decent, medium, all-purpose potato. They taste good. I don't mind having a. Well, would you do if they got sweet potatoes?
And they were like, we're well, so Nastasia Lopez has had the great pleasure of watching what I consider to be horror shows happen. Like on the reg. You know, anything we do in another place, basically. Or somebody else is doing it, right? Or like I don't have control over it.
Like the worst was I was doing somebody's wedding once. I made the drinks for their wedding. I pre-diluted everything. I put them in bottles. I I was like, I was like, I gave them to the decaterers.
I was like, whatever you do, all the only thing you need to do, you don't need to think, you don't need to measure. You just need to get these things on ice cold two hours prior to the event. That's all you need to do. And please don't pour it over a lot of wet ice. What do they do?
Wet ice. Warm over wet ice. Womp womp. Yeah. And so like I think the worst that we did was when Cliff was our intern, and he said he was just serving the drinks.
And it was like the habanero like distillate, right? Like just pouring it straight? Straight. And he thought you said it was diluted and people were getting shellaced. Not to mention, you know how hard that stuff is to make?
Yeah. That's that's real hard to make. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Good times. Uh good times. Anyway. Um, yeah, wow, you're hurting me just to think about it.
So my current French fry recipe, here's the deal, right? Someday, if you guys want, we'll do a whole episode, and Nastasia can put her earmuffs in like at old school. Old school is a movie with earmuffs, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Earmuffs, you can put it on and we can talk just about the ins and outs of all of the different operations for uh French fries. Um, but it would just take it would just take too long, and I get I get I get in the weeds real fast. So that's what you were telling the person this morning. I I went in the weeds. I was like in the weeds.
I was like, well, in Belgium, they're the fruit shops aren't really frying a lot of other stuff in their oil, so they can dedicate very low temperature and specific temperatures to the fries. And I was like, you want me to give tips for home people? I was like, do you have any idea how fast a commercial fryer heats up? You know what I mean? I was like doing all of the math for, and I was like going all this stuff.
I was like, this is why it's hard to give tips. One of the reasons to do a water blanch, right? The Belgians don't do a water blanch. The Belgians do a very long, very low first fry. Like, depending on the size of the fry, anywhere between like seven and ten minutes at a very low temperature, right?
And and it stays blonde and they until it just tacks up, right? The advantage of not doing any boiling or doing anything like that is you do maintain a lot of the potato flavor, right? Because it goes directly into the oil. It's sliced, maybe rinsed off the starch directly into the oil. Um the problem is is that you need to get those numbers kind of exactly right, or on your second fry it's not going to be crispy enough.
They also in Belgium, I think, tend to fry the second fry at a lower temperature for longer than we do, which works if all of your frying is fries. But if you're frying a bunch of other stuff, you kind of want to keep your fryer at the same temperature. So a way to get around having to have these kind of exact temperatures, especially if you're at home and you can't really control the temperature very well, is to do a water blanch, and the water blanch also salts the fry as it's doing, so I don't need to add salt to it afterwards. I wonder how much they retained and what it's gonna say. I mean, she seems smart, so I mean, hopefully a lot, but I mean, like, I would not have retained it that you know, like it's like it's like uh Zoom learning.
It's like Zoom learning at school. It's like, you know, is Dax learning anything via Zoom at school? No. You know what I mean? All right, let's get to some questions.
You have to wait until the miracle of moisture management comes out. By the way, for those of you that do go see this movie or somehow see it, I don't know how it's gonna be streamed out. It's an early use of the term miracle of moisture management in the movie. In the movie, I say it. So there you have it.
By the way, for those of you I remember I said Laron Thomas, the knife guy? You have to check out his blog Knife Steel Nerds. It is very deep. I was like, I was looking at the reason I found him, I was I was I was looking up knife sharpening stuff because I was gonna maybe put something about it in the book, but I haven't researched it in years, right? So I was like, well, how much new information can there be?
Holy, oh my god. I love when I find someone who's so deep into something that you're like, I can't even, I can't even. I just have to have them on the show. You know what I mean? I can't even.
All right. We actually got a comment in the stream from uh cat code car. I don't know if I'm saying that right, but it's knife nerds, definitely a core cooking issues demo. Yep. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Uh 100% true. Yeah, yeah.
So here we got a Patreon question. Uh a while back when equipping my home bar, I purchased a jigger from Cocktail Kingdom called the Jig. Is that the jigger or the gigger? The gigger. Gigger?
I don't know. Jigger? I mean, it's a jigger, but it's spelled with a G. Gigger? Oh, because Giga.
Like Giga, like I thought like we would take it to a gig. Like Giga, Giga. Oh, uh, huh. I can see it either way, but but with the next sentence, it's comic, it's a comically enormous jigger that measures three ounces and uh three three ounces and three and three. Hmm, I don't know.
Three ounces and three quarter ounces. Oh, four to one ratio. All right. So one side is three ounces and the other side's three quarter ounce. Kind of a strange mix, right?
Mm-hmm. Um producing drinks with a four to one ratio. It is allegedly based on a historic design, but I haven't been able to find information on that design or its intended use. I'm also not familiar with many drinks that have a four to one spec, and it basically relegated it to my Gin Martini duties. Any insight into the history of this gigantic uh gigantic jigger or thoughts uh on drinks for which it might be well suited.
Thanks, Brandon Byrd. Well, listen, uh Greg Bohm, who is the uh head of Cocktail Kingdom, has the most extensive collection of vintage and antique barware that I have personally ever seen. Uh so if if they say that it's based on an historic design, it it is. You know what I mean? Um I don't know of very many modern specs that are a four to one.
I mean, I guess some people like a four to one uh martini. I'm trying to think, four to one. It's that's so that's two half, right? So actually, like I like gin sours as two halves, but you're making double, right? So you'd be doing you'd be doing um four to one.
No, four to one now. Yeah, two half. Right? I don't know, Dave. Wait.
Th three and three quarters ounces. So it's like it's it's like almost, it's almost two cocktails, but not quite. Is that what we're talking about here? So yeah, so you could make gin sours that are a two half half ratio, right? So that's what I like.
I pull back to two half half for that. So you could do a gin soury kind of a thing uh with it, uh, but you're making slightly less than uh a full drink. Also, it's not quite one and a half, half, half, half, which is my the Corsair spec. Anyway, so uh I think uh what you have there, Brandon, is uh a novelty jigger. Yeah.
Novelty jigger. I hope it's pretty. Uh Derek wrote in, is it pretty? Right? Or as uh, I don't know.
Yeah, we've talked about that before, right? On the air. What's it do? That's how you said the spinzall, what's the spinzel do? Yeah, yeah.
So like the explaining it as well. The story is is that you know, when I go over to my in-laws' house, they they, you know, around the holidays time, they play the old uh Super Eight movies that they used to take, you know, and the the projector is 50 years old. So when it's still cold, everyone's moving in slow motion, and then once it gets warm, it's like brrrrrrr, then it's like going. And then they have these old tapes that they that they, you know, like real to real-to-reel cassettes things that they like um that they had of the kids, which you know, it's my wife and all that. So they're all sitting around opening stuff on Christmas, and they lived in the south at the time, so they had southern accents.
And so, like, they opened some sort of chotchkee, and the doll used it. If there's a doll, what's it do? And and they go, it's just pretty, and that's it. And so, like, when people are like, this finz all, what's it do? It's just pretty.
Yeah. Brandon says that the jigger is not pretty, also. Yeah, yeah. It's a little too hey, hey, bud Bud Vase. What do you what are your thoughts on a bud vase?
Love a bud vase. And for those of you that uh someday we'll do Nastasia Lopez will hire the La Grenouille or hire, call the La Grenouille person in and we'll talk about flowers for the table. What do you think about that? Yeah, you want to do that? Yeah.
What's that person's name? Uh maybe there's a newer person that you can find that's also good. Anyway, you want to hear a sad story? This weekend I went to the Hamptons to see someone that's very rich. Sounds sad.
And wow, horrible. Well, uh, have lunch at their house, and so I brought flowers because there was a bunch of stuff at the farmer's market there, like Delphinians and stock and these broccoli flowers and stuff. And so then I was assembling the bouquet, and then I get to the house, and they have like the most amazing bouquets everywhere. They even have a cutting garden just for the little bud the bud vases. Wow.
Yeah. And I was like, yeah. And then they were like, just put it there and someone will take care of it. And I was like, Wow. Yikes, yeah.
It's good to be rich. What are your thoughts, Nastasia, on pin frogs? Is that the correct term? I don't know. You know, the little the little real heavy things with the nails that you stick in the bottom of vases so that you can make sure the flowers don't move around.
No, I don't like those. Really? Yeah. I like those things. Very Japanese though.
Yep. I like them. I think because like we don't like like a lot of our vessels are kind of too wide, and so you get too big of a spread. And if you have those things, you can like you put them in and you can get uh some good um anyways. So sorry, Brandon, it's not even sounds good for a bud for a bud vase.
I mean, because it's probably pretty wide, huh? Yeah. Throw it away. Just okay. Don't throw it away.
Next question. By the way, when we're making things, like we seriously try to think about we don't want everything to just become landfill. You know what I mean? Like, since my wife's an architect, but was a product designer as well. And so like we're always thinking, like, as soon as I make something, we're like, well, that thing is like destined for the landfill before it even shows up at my house.
You know what I mean? It's like future landfill. I think it's like we try not to build things that are future landfills. So yeah, well, right. So listen to this.
So we're on the phone uh on last week at like, you know, midnight, because that's when, you know, you know, both I guess Nastasia and I are expected to be working, and and the factories in China are working. And uh there was an electrical explosion at my house, and the built the my apartment building and the building caught on fire. It's fireproof, so it's fine, I guess. But the everything was full of smoke and we had no power and everything was flashing off and on, and like so. I started asking Nastasia, can you check the blogs or whatever to see if like because I didn't know terrorists, whatever, because it was the loudest explosion I had heard in a long time, right?
It didn't sound like something that was just in our basement. And uh they thought we were joking. They the factory thought we were uh joking around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good times.
Uh Derek wrote in, I have a big lovage plant. It has a fairly assertive flavor. What are some good foodslash bev uses y'all have found for lovage? Uh first of all, uh lovage seeds are also good. If you can let it go to seed, the seeds are good.
For those of you that have never had lovage, lovage uh aptly is assertive. It's a more assertive celery taste. Okay. It's also greener. So if you have Chinese celery, Chinese celery is like a more bitter version of the celery leaf, right?
But it's not necessarily that much greener. The lovage that I've had is also like intensely green. So think a mixture of celery, Chinese celery, and parsley, all in one kind of like powerhouse uh thing. Now, so you can use it for a lot of the same things that you would use those for. You can use them in, they're great in soups as a fine, uh, as a fine dice over like uh uh, you know, not dice, uh what do you call it when you you know you mince the herbs up real fine.
You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I don't remember. Over like uh risotto or things like that. You like parsley on your risotto? No, I don't like parsley that much.
Really? Yeah. Do you like anything minced up over the top of your Zoto? No, just cheese. Even like a porcini risotto?
That's fine. Yeah. Oh, yeah, no, just cheese. Just cheese? Just cheese.
Cheese and pepper. What about adding uh what was the cheese? What was the thing that they wanted to add cheese to in Big Night and uh Shalub goes ballistic on them? I don't remember. It's a criminal, it's a criminal.
Anyway, uh so it's good for that kind of application. Uh it's good in soups, right? So any place you would uh use celery leaves and celery leaves are not uh available anymore. But it's also delicious in gin drinks. So blender muddling, it's it's very sturdy, so it's not gonna kind of um get swampy on you.
It lasts for quite a long time. So uh, like uh anything with gin, anything with orange, uh anything with gin and orange, uh you're gonna get uh good results. So that's kind of what I would do with it. Yeah, and the seeds are delicious if you can get the seeds. Uh if you know, if you can raise it.
I don't know how to do that, but if you can do that, that'd be great. Uh someone uh Dan wrote in and said uh that John, when he's going to Italy, should go to Astuni uh and the Pulia region. I don't know that John gets to choose where he's going, but I don't think so. You ever been down there? Either of you have been down there?
Anyone been in there? No. I've never been to the south. Again, I've never been south of Rome. It's kind of ridiculous.
Uh Sicily, I've been to. How was it? It's fine. My family, I have family there. Fine.
Fine. We gotta Jack just sent me something from the chat. Uh congrats on getting the Sears all back on Amazon. I notice the listing now is a prominent warning, choking hazard, small parts, not for children under three years old. I'm all for child safety, but that's not the first reason I wouldn't hand a Sears all to a toddler.
Does this have something to do with your new certification? What's up? Uh, I did not know that. No. And uh I think it's because Nastasia threatened to ram them down their throats that they thought they were a choking.
I actually you did mention children on one of our calls. So I didn't mention that. The thing I mentioned to the Amazon person was that they were in essence messing with my kids' future. Which is true. They were messing with my kids' future.
You know what I mean? Um, yeah, no, uh yeah, I guess you could unscrew parts of it. Well, I guess the matchstick. I mean, again, don't give your kid torture attachments. Stupid.
You know, why why? I mean, yeah. Right. Well, what do we mean? What could go wrong?
Yeah, uh, I don't know who wrote that in. We have no control. We're just thankful that uh that it's back up. Uh, and now, you know, now it's only a full six months of revenue that we've lost. That we have to somehow make up for.
The um, yeah. Do we talk about the guy? Are we allowed to say the guy's name? The guy. I'm gonna say his name, but I'm gonna say that if you heard this guy's name, it's amazing.
He's got the best name. The best, the best. And he's told me to drop his name for other problems that we have. So it must be, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. He's the he's a oh, by the way, do you know that Jeff Bezos is gonna blast himself into space scene? Yeah, I saw that. Yeah.
Good riddance. Yeah. Right? Stay up there. Yeah, give us our money.
Give us our money and stay up there. Anyway. Uh Alexander wrote in, hey cooking issues, people. Uh, thanks for the answer on ginger, and no worries about being late. Remember, he had some sort of event he was doing, and we told him the week after his event about the ginger.
Uh, I love your decision to go on Patreon. I got some of the ginger juice to clarify uh just by time, but it lost all of its ginger cake. So I ended up using a mix of heated ginger and just uh fresh juice giving up some carbonation, and it was excellent. Now, to my question. That was just feedback, Stars.
That wasn't a question. Don't get bent. Okay. Uh I'm trying to recreate a cocktail version of Dalgona Coffee. Dalgona coffee.
Now, I had no idea what Dalgona was, so I asked Nastasia to look it up. It's one of these COVID things, one of these like TikTok COVID things. Korean, starting in Korea, yeah. And for those of you that don't know, every every one of the TikTok things that I've tested has been garbage. Garbage.
Like that. What was the only what was the egg yolk thing we tested? What was that? Yeah, you're at my house. Oh, we can't, yeah.
I was there for that. Yeah. Yeah. Here's the thing like it was really dumb. Nobody, nobody takes the time to vet things anymore.
You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Anyway. Uh so that's what you're here for. Yeah.
So what's Dalgona coffee now, Sas? So people know? Uh those of us that are not TikTok friendly. God. Um looks like a bunch of okay.
It doesn't contain Dalgona. Uh what is Dalgona? I don't know. It is not possible to make Dalgona coffee using ground coffee beans. Instant coffee creates a dense and foaming topping.
And the reason for the name for this has much to do with the drying process of the coffee granules. What? I don't know. Dalgona coffee is a beverage made by whipping equal parts instant coffee powder, sugar, and hot water until it becomes creamy and then adding it to cold or hot milk. Occasionally it's topped with coffee powder, cocoa, crumbled biscuits, or honey.
Okay. All right. Yep. Uh all right. So anyway, so that's what we're trying to recreate here.
I'm trying to recreate a cocktail version of Dalgona coffee and uh so that it actually tastes like coffee and not instant crap. I'm using a mocha pot and uh an easi whipper. I've tried using foam magic, which is maltodextrin methyl cellulose xanthan gum from Modernist Pantry as a foaming agent, and it worked okay. But the foam got that goopy texture from the Xanthan. Uh, is there are there any other agents that would work better to give a lighter but still stable foam?
I'm looking for a texture like an egg white foam on a sour. Thanks and keep up the good work, Alexander. Uh okay, so if it's foam, the methyl cell is probably some version of F50, and the maltodextrin is just there for a whipping agent. So you could try just using F50 and a whipping agent and just dialing back the Xanthan because you can put all like I wouldn't go over a percent of uh F 50 because you're gonna start tasting F50, but um you can go fairly high on the on the meth on the methyl cell and fairly high on the maltodextrin. So if you just jack the so the maltodextrin is there to jack the solids and the methyl cellulose is there to like uh do the the whipping, you could add another stabilizer to it, or you could you could just pull the Xanthan back a little bit in the chat.
And what does the chat say? Sargon says Dalgona was pre-COVID. Thank you. Uh and he also says Hoffman was a video on has a video on Dalgona. Google it.
Uh it actually works. A free-dried instant coffee acts as a surfactant, and it effectively turns it into a foam. And then he says, um, I found that equal parts are suboptimal, five grams instant coffee powder, one gram soy less the less a thin powder, 20 gram sugar, 20 grams water. And then he says the alcohol should be a one-to-one replacement with water. Thank you.
Okay. But but he doesn't want to use instant. So just use something stronger like uh like uh espresso shot, and if you need to add the powder to make up for it. I don't We have some more Patreon questions here. Uh you new ones?
Yeah. Well, these are from Jack this morning. Well, I I I I there's not those the ones I just did. No. All right, give me some.
Hey, cooking issues teams. I'm a mid 30s software engineer married with three small kids, seven years old, three years old, five years old, living in Melbourne, Australia. I do most of the cooking. I've been looking at a bench top induction burner, and of course came across a Brabble control freak, but the price tag is a bit hard to justify at the moment. I want to hack a much cheaper induction burner to add SMARTs, precision temperature control, cooking schedules, programs, etc.
I'm comfortable with electronics, microcontrollers, and programming, but was wondering if Dave had any recommendations on what induction burner to start with, which what components would be best and what kind of thing to watch out for. I own a good intelligence, I'm looking forward to being able to purchase a Sears all once they start shipping internationally. You can, right? Oh, internationally. Well, you can get it on Amazon now.
So uh you know, I don't know what uh like they do what they do. They own it. So if they sell it, they sell it. Like we we have no control. By the way, we have no control people.
Right. So we don't own those. The only ones we own are the ones on deliver. So here's the problem. Shopify.
Yeah. Well, okay, yeah. So um, okay. The problem with hacking induction burners is uh and people have done them. You you can you can look them up.
Um the way the way that they're controlled is you ever you guys ever listen to your induction burner and it's like because what it's doing is it's it's it's hunting frequencies to try to find the right one that resonates with your pot, right? And so they're they're doing a lot of um they're doing a lot of stuff because theoretically you could get um you could get induction to work, by the way, on on even on non-magnetic uh pots, but not the way that induction hobs are using because they're not strictly just using um induction, they're using what's called uh hysteresis loss, uh, which is why you know it needs to be magnetic, and in fact, why you can't heat with a standard induction stove things above uh cherry red, because as soon as you go what's above called the Curie point, the it it stops heating effectively. That said, uh, so there was once I looked into trying to do my own induction once, and you can find this stuff, but I d you know, basically any of the coils is gonna work fine, right? It's just a question of I don't remember if there's any, I don't remember if there's anyone out there that allows you to use the microprocessor that's already on board and then just change the power up or down. But I haven't researched it in years, so I'm sure that there's someone that because really all you need is control of the power.
So you know you don't want to have to write an algorithm to hunt and peck for the uh correct frequency. You don't want to write an algorithm to sense whether the pan is there. You just I assume want to uh change the heating profiles and and and whatnot. So unfortunately I haven't researched it um recently enough but it should be possible if you're good with you know surface mount stuff but trying to do it 100% from scratch is probably going to be a long long and winding road. Save your money.
Hey wait real quick a joke I have a joke for you Dave if I was a techno DJ you know what I'd say I'd do hunt frequencies and see which one resonates with your pot. Yeah I like that explanation Bill on Patreon says I'm also attending the balancing act classes on Gush. I have a jar of Moroccan preserved lemons, a spinzel and a craving for another Corsair will Dave go over the clarified Moroccan preserved lemon ingredient. Okay so this is a good by the way on my Instagram uh go to the in cooking issues Instagram and you should go there anyway because occasionally we tell you things about things there. Um I give the recipe how to make it without a uh spinzole.
Now, with a spinzole, the whole idea of the pro Moroccan preserved lemon is you don't want it a hundred percent cleared because some of the cloudiness is what gives it its um gives the body to the drink. So you just blend the entire thing, blend it all, add pectinex, but don't use uh D1 D2, which are the wine finding agents, and just spin it uh in continuous mode, right? Because you're trying to get the liquids out and let it be cloudy, right? And then strain the stuff at the end. That's that's what you do, right?
Is that good? Yeah, and then Jack sent me from the chat room, Ven Groff says the best place to start hacking, is not at the interface between the logic board and the powerboard, but at the interface between the keyboard and the logic board. Hook up a logic analyzer there and reverse engineer the level controls, then use your own microcontroller and firmware to do it there. There you go. There you there you go.
Good advice. Uh Arn wrote in, hey, uh, what about your day-to-day use of hydrocolloids? I want to know how you guys use hydrocolloids in your daily cooking. Um, well, I'm guessing that you don't, Staz. I don't want to presume I no, I guess not.
I mean, you don't do that kind of cooking anyway, right? You don't make like ruse and sauces. I was just thinking like mac and cheese, right? But I'm not using you didn't do that, right? What was your what was like your old are you allowed to talk about your old recipe, your mac and cheese recipe?
Uh no, no, I'm not. Well, helpful. Uh well, what about you? Joe, Jack, you guys use hydros now? Or is that like to call them fancy?
Yeah, you know what? It's like uh I use a lot, I use very I often use small quantities of Xanthan. Oh. Yeah, but other than that, I doubt they're looking for that. Yeah.
Like they want more. But I use, in other words, like I use Xanthan mostly in baking. Like, I like mostly I use Xanthan in baking because if you're milling your own flour and you want to use other people's recipe for like chlorinated bleached cake flour, you need to add a little Xanthan to get the texture of it, uh the texture of the product right to mimic the to mimic the same um water holding capacity that you would get out of a chlorinated flour. So I do that all the time. Um what else do I do all the time?
Yeah, no, I mean I'm trying to think about it. Hmm. You don't. I'm thinking, I'm thinking. You would know.
I wouldn't necessarily know. I mean, look, the one that I reach for the most is is uh is is obviously Xanthan, right? Um I have a centrifuge, so I don't use Agar that much anymore, right? Because I'm not often making uh gels. Um about when you you do a lot of the sperification though at home, so again, Queen of the Trolls.
Nastasia Lopez Queen of the Trolls. Uh everyone's like, here's my problem with the spheres. Let me ask you this. Do you do anyone out there like other than the color, other than the color? Do any of you guys out there love the pimento in the in the Spanish olive?
Like just the flavor of it. Be like, you know what? If I could just have a jar of just that, would you? I don't think I've ever eaten it. Really?
I mean, you've eaten the whole thing and had the red. I don't think I've ever eaten. You've never eaten a green mass-produced olive with a red thing in it. My whole life. Same way, Saz.
Same here. Yeah. As a kid, you're like, well, no. Really? Yeah.
Disgusting. Yeah. It just looks disgusting. Not into it. Wow.
Have you ever had one though? Hey, beef and tree. Yeah. Wow. Okay.
I can't you find those in also in like the pendimento loaf as well? Like uh, what is it? The meat with the that has the olive in the pinnato. Coming from the Carolina man. I love the pimento loaf.
Do you like pimento cheese? No. Okay, okay. I thought I thought we were gonna have a moment there, Joe. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. I like pimento cheese and pimento loaf. Yeah, it's the same thing. So, like the look, I don't know if you know this people, but like red peppers aren't all the same exact shape, and they don't come in strips that can be punched into olives by a machine. So what they do is is they pulp all of the red peppers, mix it with uh sodium alginate, spray calcium on it in sheets, then they age the sheets for a day so they get nice and firm, cut them into strips, and then those strips are tough as nails and can be shot into those olives without breaking them.
And that's what they are. Uh what any of you guys like the chummed up, chummed up onion rings? The fake onion rings? No. Me neither.
I really I love a real onion ring. What's your what's your idea of onion rings? Uh like what kind of battery? I'm specifically mean what kind of batter. I don't know, dude.
Are you like more of a beer batter or more of like a chicken fried batter? I I like to make more of a chicken fry batter, but I know a lot of people like the beer batter, the puffy hard kind of. Oh, yeah, the other one. The one that's more like chicken. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Joe? Yes, absolutely. The puffy one, the beer batter is like harder to yeah, to manage. I don't know.
I think you know you know why I think people like to do that. It's very difficult to get good adhesion of the more chicken like batter on the onions because they shrink so much. And uh the beer batter one, because it's so puffy, no one notices that you have the onion onion rattling around on the inside of this like freaking crunch tube. I don't like it. I I prefer the other, I prefer the style we're talking about.
Yeah, I don't know which battery I uh I like. Whatever battered that was used at Tony Roma's. Oh, you know, I've I don't know that I've ever actually been. Is that is it a steakhouse or a rib house, Tony Roma? Ribs.
I've never been to one. Oh yeah. You know, I was I was talking to uh I was talking to a chef, this is a long time ago. I had never heard it was the first time I had heard of the macaroni grill, and I was talking to one of the execs of the macaroni grill, and I was like, macaroni grill, what's that? I was like, is that like an olive garden?
He's like, no, we're way, way above an olive garden. I was like, well, I don't I don't understand. Have you ever been to a macaroni grill? Mm-mm. No, neither have I.
Is it way above an olive garden? I we just said we've never been there. But you know how things are positioned. Like if someone said to me, if someone said to me, I don't know. I would think they're the same.
I think it's the same franchise, probably probably the same. It's like maybe like a little bit different ingredients. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not like it's not like one's one's getting Cisco, the other one's getting like older.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's in other words, like in other words, I'm sure like I say, it's an honorable thing, but I mean, like the market is what the market is. It's not like it's not like one is McDonald's and the other one's Jean-Georges. You know what I mean? Like that's not like what we're talking.
It's not like a I don't know. We should I know I've been to Olive Garden. I don't know what I think. Well, first of all, I've always wondered this. What what does a grill have to do with macaroni?
How often are you grilling your macaroni? Oh, I love macaroni, but that's not even Americans don't call pasta macaroni. Only Italian Americans call it pasta macaroni. And from Boston. Only like Boston.
Because hamburger helper and macaroni and all that. Hamburger helper helps her help her hamburger. Wait, no, hamburger helper helps her hamburger help her. Because dudes aren't allowed to use it. I don't know if you know this.
Like men aren't allowed to use it. And like I think that back in the day you were kind of checking. Yeah, yeah. I think you were kind of cheating on your husband with that hand. I think it's like something was happening in the kitchen.
Yeah, it was definitely aimed for the woman in the in the kitchen. Literally, the song is like straight up, hey, like this is a sexist thing. Here we are. She's cooking. Yeah.
Hamburger helper. I believe it is hamburger helper helps her hamburger, right? So the hamburger doesn't get in on the feeling up thing. The hamburger doesn't get a uh like any touchy feeling. Right.
It's not a hamburger. Hamburger helper, who's the dude. It's a man hand. Yeah, white glove. So you're clean.
It's clean. Comes comes with its claim clean. Hamburger helper helps her hamburger help her make a great meal. That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, uh, I had hamburger helper once. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, has anyone had shake and bake in the last 25 years? Yeah. Really?
Whoa. Pork chop steak and bake or chicken steak and bake? Shake and bake. Pork chop. How was it?
Uh it's always at my parents' house. It's fine. Wow, really? Yep. Yeah.
I haven't had that in a long time. It's shake and bacon. I helped. Remember that commercial? Yep.
Yeah. So for those of you that uh are grooving on these reminiscences from the 70s, and for those of you who are, you know, slightly younger, 80s. Uh okay. When you used to go to kind of like a l what at this time seemed like the height of Epicurean delights, like a bonanza or a Ponderosa steakhouse back in the day, or a you know, Sizzler style place, right? And you went to the salad bar, or when you got your steak, when you got your like you know, three millimeter thick steak, you know what I mean that you got there?
They used to come with these spiced apple rings. Who's with me on the spiced apple ring? They're red and they're like, they look like pineapple rings, but they're apple and they're red. This uh like I'm on a mission to bring these back. Originally, all the old recipes for them, and a lot of them are like fake pen Dutch kind of recipes, you melt red hots and then you steep it in the red hot.
So it's like a cinnamon spiced apple ring. Because when I was a kid, I always thought they were beets, and I thought somehow I was like, well, I won't eat the beet, but I will eat the red apple. You know what I mean? But I don't think it's a beet. Anyway, I'm gonna I'm gonna if anyone out there has like a really good memory of or good recipe for the apple rings, I think it's worth bringing back.
I'm bringing apple rings back. Uh that Sizzler for the salad bar, you know, you pay per head. My parents would be like, the kids aren't eating. Oh wow. I remember those.
Yeah, and then you eat off their play. I'm so glad when I was a kid. I'm so glad when I was a kid that I did not know what I know now about human beings. Because those salad bars, oh my god, what a filth machine that thing was. So of course, but you know, and I I I someone brought this to my attention, like, you know, like Pizza Hut, all those people, all those places that had a salad bar, there was always kale there, not as to eat it, but just as decoration.
Yeah, yeah. So kale's been with uh with us for a really long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we'd never thought to eat it. Well, well, okay, like you're not supposed to eat raw kale.
I get it. You're supposed to cook kale. It was just a it was just an ornamental kale. Yeah, yeah, ornamental kale. Yeah, it's like, oh, I got all this extra kale I'm gonna throw it over here in this little hole, the spot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But why not just make something with it? Yeah, cook it. Cook it. Cook it.
Not like putting it. But it wasn't part of the stuff. No. No, you weren't supposed to eat it. It wasn't washed.
That thing is like straight on E. coli butt splosion if you ate it. Right. You know what I mean? That thing's filth, Joe.
Do you like raw kale? No, I no, I don't. I don't. Does anybody in the real life? But like, would you do that with I want to put iceberg lettuce as an ornamental thing over here in the corner just to fill a hole?
No, you eat that stuff. You're gonna eat it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, why are we why would you there must have been some salad bar expert that was like this? Yeah, it's green.
Yeah, it makes it look like it's you know it's dark green too. Yeah, yeah. Full of sand. Chlorophyll. Yeah, yeah.
I'll tell you what, iceberg lettuce, I like it. I know a lot of people hate on iceberg lettuce. You know what it is? Real crunchy. Real crunchy.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, but that's a but that you like well, you I know you like a bitter, a bitter green, though. I love a bitter green, that's why I said yeah, yeah, yeah. Love a bitter green. Uh back to salad bars for a second.
I can still have very pleasant memories of being like, why does no one else go to the bottom of the blue cheese jaw? I I would take that plastic scoop, that long plastic scoop, and I would go all the way to the bottom of the blue cheese dressing and get the big chunks. The big chunks of the blue cheese that'd settle down. Oh man. Oh, good times.
But again, if I just think about how gross, gross I know those salad things were. Um I probably made them more gross. I mean, honestly, I was probably right up there in in Grossland. Uh salad bar. What about have we talked on the show before about the Roy Rogers?
Probably. The free fixings bar. You familiar with free fixings bar? Oh, wow, yeah. Yeah.
So to this day, when when I'm getting burgers ready at the house, I'm always like, get the free fixing spa ready. Get the free fixing. You know what I mean? And so, like, because what you do is is you order the puniest, whatever the puniest burger is that you could get at the Roy Rogers, and then you use the free fixings bar fundamentally as a salad bar. So it's like it's like a it's like a little when you don't have no money.
This is what you do. So you have like the bun, the burger, and then like a pile of lettuce and BS tomatoes and whatever else they have in like all of the pickles. You know what I mean? Because if you add enough pickles, it's kind of like a dressing. You know what I'm saying?
And then like, you know, whatever mayonnaise is and stuff, and you basically you have a salad with your with your free fixings bar. Yeah, Roy Rogers. The only reason why East Hampton is great is at the beach, they have they had uh snow cone, make your own snow cone station. Wait, wait, you make your own? So they shave the ice, and it's the perfectly fluffy, like perfect like what the same machine we had.
No, I don't know. It's somewhere back in the back. Okay, and then so they hand you the cone shape. They hand you the cone shake, and then there's a wall of every single flavor of juice for your thing. Juice and quotes, air quotes.
You get to put it on. Ah. But can you re can you double dip? Yeah, you can go back in because that's dicey. Go ahead.
Yeah. Anyway, they got rid of it. I see. Because I don't know. Maybe.
Because of COVID. Maybe. What color? That's the only thing. What color?
I used to do cotton candy. Oh, the pink is pink or blue cotton candy. So you like that kind of burnt sugar taste? Yeah. What do you think that burnt sugar taste would work if there was also some acidity to it?
My problem with cotton candy is it just doesn't have any acid back to it. And when I have a shave ice, I need some acid. But that's why that you can mix flavors too, you know? Cotton candy, lime. You don't like the coconut one?
Cut it. That's right. No. I like the coconut one. I always used to, when I was a kid, green.
Go green. Go green. I was green. Sounds like we're talking about like jelly bellies. Like jelly beans.
Yeah. Like all the flavors of jelly, there's it's a pretty incredible flavors. Yeah. Do you do you guys know that like for the past like five, six, seven, eight years, the kids have been eating the gross ones. You know about those?
Real nasty. Oh, yeah. You ever eat the gross ones? What are the gross ones? The black ones?
No, no, no, no, no, no. Like literal They there's like booger, vomit. So they have these ones, I forget what they're called. They're like they're like challenge jelly belly things. So what you do is is it like they have two beans that are identical looking.
Oh yeah. And one is like peach and the other's vomit. Oh wow. Now it's like the garbage pail. Yeah, exactly.
And the thing is, is that is that I know that they coat them with cargo wax or whatever. Bean boozle, you're correct. And I've these have been through my house so. Wasn't it part of Harry Potter? Is that you're thinking of butter beer, which now, by the way, there's a line out the freaking block for butterbeer on Broadway here in this place.
Uh anyway, but you can smell which ones vomit before you put it in your mouth. So it's easy to not get bean. Okay, this is a good thing. I read some of these flavors, they're really rough. Okay.
There's toothpaste, stinky socks, lawn clippings, baby wipes. I like lawns, by the way. I was just thinking. Barf booger, moldy cheese, which could be good. I like it.
Yeah. And then number one is canned dog food. Which basically by the way, people hate on canned dog food. Whenever I open canned dog food, which is not very hungry. I love the I love the potted meat, dude.
The old school potted meat, like those little things. If you like Riette, why wouldn't you like potted meat? Have you tried it? Spam potted meat? No, your dog's no, no.
Spam? I love spam. It's too salty. It's salty, yeah. But I like spam.
Oh, I see the commercials coming back. It's pretty good. Really? Yeah. Yeah.
You know what? You obviously know who consumes the most spam of anybody. The military. No. Hawaiians.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, Hawaii. Yeah. Hawaii. Like they they come by that peep, you know, that pizza that people don't like, honestly.
They consume a boat ton of spam. It's not even close. Like their spam consumption is like by far and away. And that's why, like here in the city, like three, four years ago, Masubi were like everyone was masubiing out their ears, and it's all like that's got like an onigiri with spam in it. Real nice.
All right, you got three minutes. One more question. Well, we gotta finish the Patreon question. We are done. No, we got another one.
That's done. It is. This is Patreon. Oh. Oh, from uh, but it's from last weekend.
Uh this is uh in from Quinn. Uh I'm interested in making shelf stable fruit preserves with as little change to texture and flavor as possible. Style I'm going for is essentially just whole fruits slash large pieces of fruit sitting inside a syrup. Uh as long as I'm using the proper ratios of sugar and the correct acidity for a standard preserved jam, can the actual canning pasteurization happen at a lower temperature? Uh if my fruit uh with concentrated syrup was held at 65 or 70, would it eventually pastize and be stable like a boiled canned preserve?
I cannot find many guidelines about times for lower temperatures because most people use high temperature process to activate the pectin. Um, so the issue with um the issue with this, oh John says to nicomalize the fruit. It's not really nicomalizing. First of all, you shouldn't use nixtomalizing to mean uh using calcium to strengthen the cell walls of fruit because nyxtamalizing is a different procedure that is done to grains to turn the seed coat into a mucilaginous thing and to pre-gelatinize the starch so you can make a masa dough. The cal calcium reinforcing is not of fruits, it's something that goes back a billion years in places like Thailand and you do it with bananas and with a bunch of other stuff.
So if you want to stabilize a fruit, you can use any number of calcium related things to make it happen. We used to use pickling lime, uh, you know, and you can get it in um red lime paste in in a Thai store. And you can use calcium hydroxide as well. Anyways, uh that will make it hard, right? But I think they're asking about uh preservation.
The issue is is that it's gonna be hard, it's gonna take a long time for the syrup to kind of penetrate into the fruit if it's sliced thinly, or if you can get the stuff in. I think half of the boiling is just to make sure that as it's going down, as it's getting more and more concentrated, that you're making the water go away and getting the sugar in. Remember, those old school fruit concentrates are done in stages because if you just throw sugar, if you throw fresh fruit into a high sugar uh situation, all the water leaches out of the of the fruit and and it becomes desiccated because you're in a sense dehydrating it the same way as if you threw it into salt. Um so you could do it, and I would guess that you would be safe once the sugar concentration and the acid concentration was high enough, and then you would just need to do pasteurization. But you know, you can you could use calcium.
I'd be aware if you're if you're if you're using pickling lime or calcium hydroxide to um strengthen the walls of fruit, eventually it does nasty things. So I used to do experiments where like I was strengthening cucumbers and strengthening, and like it's good, good, good, good, good, real bad. So you gotta be careful. You can vacuum impregnate with with calcium to try to make them stiffer, and frankly, you can vacuum impregnate with uh syrups to try to get them to go in faster. And if you actually get the syrup in there and it's not too far away from being isotonic, you could probably start the preservation early.
Anyway, once the inside of the fruit is at a high enough sugar content and uh a high enough acid content, then yeah, you should be able to pasteurize it. But the reason you'll find recipes is ain't no one gonna write a recipe where they're basing your safe like their word and your safety on something that they can't like specifically get behind. You know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. Anyway.
Oh, and John says if you want to look at those people, look at uh uh Andy Dubrava's Instagrams on uh using presume if it says nixamolize, I'm presuming there's using calcium uh hydroxide. Uh Josh Whitlam wrote in oh wait, we're done? Yeah, we're done. And Jackson and read after new Patreon. Yeah, shout out.
Jack's gonna do this. Shout out to the up to 204. So I'm gonna do this as fast as I can. We've got thank yous two Ray Barry, John Hutt, Joshua Hill, Mommy Zukowski, Trafty Kenny, Trafton Kenny, Christopher Hyde, Kevin McHugh, Matt Robbins, Travis Hawkins, Brian McWarter, Isabella D Ghia, uh Wow, I gotta work on my pronunciation. David Harris, Dennis No, and go.
How do you pronounce the NGO name? No, Neo, right? Uh Colin Arneson, Mo Goden, Igni Sigurdson, Annalise Larue. I think that's two or three women there stops for you. Alexander, Jadskak, Q Dragon Lee.
Okay. Michael J. Lee, Andy, Brian Donovan, Lauren Lambert, James Neal, Sandra Nujes, Zachary Stewart, Graham Clark. That is an awesome batch in the last week. So John Hunt, I saw you mention that was the old uh Mofad chef now in Barcelona.
Cool. So yeah, uh made possible by people exactly like you. Thank you. Yeah, there's no way we'll be able to read all the names as this grows bigger and bigger, but let's get us to 500. We're we're at two 204 and we're brand new here, so spread the word.
And tell your buddies who are worried about the Patreon that they can listen to it free on Friday. Like we're not, again, you know, don't get bent at us. You can listen to it free on Friday. We we thank you for your support. And Jack, we're gonna have the uh RSS's so that it'll uh update on the Friday soon, right?
What will end up happening is Patreons will still be able to hear everything on Patreon on Tuesday, and then it will go to a regular RSS in all of the platforms by Friday. All right, and uh tell all your Sears all friends they can go back on Amazon, so no more bad words about Amazon for now. Cooking issues, and I'm gonna be able to do that.
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