Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on New Stand Studios at Rockefeller Center in New York City, joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer. Lopez, how you doing? Good. Doing well?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. We got uh over here in our uh in-house booth, Joe Hazen. What's up? Hey, how are you guys?
Good morning. Morning. Doing all right, doing all right. And back from Mexico in Long Island. We don't know why, because he does not live there.
Jackie Molecules. How you doing? My mom lives here. Oh, yeah? Hello.
Yeah. I forgot. I forgot. Where I'm from? Long Island.
My hometown. All right. Which which uh hometown is your hometown in Long Island? You want to call it out? West Babylon.
West Babylon. So what percentage of cars growing up in West Babylon was Camaro's? Oh my god, I don't know. Like 50% or like 80%? Is that like Camaro?
Is that Camaro Long Island or is that BMW Long Island? More Camaro, Long Island. I had a Buick growing up at a Buick Skylark, you know, like from my cousin Vinny. Oh, Buick Skylark. Yeah.
That's that's pretty strong. I like that. I just went to the uh Automania show at uh at the MOMA. If you like cars, European cars, but you don't want to see a lot of cars. If you want to see like an art museum's interpretation of what's interesting about cars, it's worth going to.
Yeah. They're not very big on American cars there. They only have one American car and it's c in their collection, and it's a Jeep. Really? Yeah.
I like Jeeps, though. Jeeps are nice. They have a freaking smart car. No Skylark. How about that?
Crazy. Yeah. How old? How far does it go back? Uh, well, that's the thing.
It's not like, so. If you're a car lover, it's not like going to a car museum, right? So it's it's basically it's kind of more about uh mid century modern design, mid last century modern design. So it's like, you know, um little sports job guys, like a like a really pretty jag, like a Citroen Deus. Uh what about like those uh the what's it the Corvair?
Remember this Corvair? No, you know my my freaking yeah, so the Court Vare, well known for being uh blowing up blowing up, right? That was what Ralph Nader kind of made his bones on, right? Wasn't it? Wasn't it the one of the early Yep, exactly?
It was like the Pinto of its day. My grandpa owned one, and I remember do you remember the Pinto was the car where like you just touch the bumper and it explodes? You remember that? I do remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And uh the movie I referenced about three three or four shows ago with Val Kilmer called Top Gun, one of the gags in it, not Top Gun, um Top Secret. One of the gags was like all these guys are in a pinto, and then like someone like pulls up behind them and just goes, Tink, and it the whole thing just explodes. So I like I think of that. I I I I believe it was that movie. I love 80s, like stupid 80s gags.
Like I love them. I love them. Uh Nastasia and I can talk about uh my favorite Gregory Hines gag uh later if we want, but right now we have a caller, caller you're on the air. Oh, no, you don't. We lost our call.
We lost our collar. Well, if you want to call back or if you're listening live on Patreon, call in your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917 410 1507. Uh so anyway, Gregory Hines is in a movie with Chevy Chase called Deal the S. Oh, we got the caller back.
Caller, you're on the air. Hey, what's up? Hi, Dave. How are you? Well, good.
Uh so I have a kind of a weird cure syndrome that I was hoping you could help me with. Uh my oven is broken, and I'm taking it apart and trying to fix it. But in the meantime, I don't have like a toaster oven. I have my burners, I have my I have a couple inductions, I have a couple sears all, I have a microwave. But how do I like properly heat something without the use of that convection?
You know, barring like lighting my grill, you know? Well, how long it how wait so you're saying the convection on your oven is broken, but the oven itself still operates? No, sorry. J just the range. Just the just the burners operate.
The oven itself, like I don't get lights on, which means it's probably something early on, and like there's some wire loose that I have to find. But in the meantime, I don't have that, nor do I have a toaster. And so but yeah, barring like, you know, like firing up my grill, which I love to do. Right. How do I properly like reheat or cook or toast something, you know, without an oven.
Well, I'm contractually obliged to tell you the search all can do all of those things, right, Nastasia? I'm obliged to tell you that. Yeah. But um Which I've done. Which I've done, uh but it it's kind of a travail to you know, take something from cold to cook.
Right. So your oven is electric, right? Correct. Right. So uh and the range is the range is gas.
Oh nice. Um listen, I i you you could go around and do like a uh a bunch of crazy nonsense, like you could get like uh a Dutch oven, put a rack on it, and then build it into an oven by insulating the top and putting it on a ring. You could do all of this nonsense. That was yeah, that was my thought. Yeah, or just get yourself like a brevel smart air like uh toaster oven, and here's here's why I'm gonna say that uh the large oven is great to have it's awesome that sucker is like uh probably on the order of uh somewhere between somewhere around five kilowatts of power going into that thing right so it's kind of an energy hog and it's heating up like a large block.
Now as we go into the winter it's not going to be such a big deal that you're heating up your place but it's just a lot more energy efficient to use a smaller oven uh like a like a toaster oven right so the the the ANOVA is like a little bit big right the like the brevel smart air is big for a toaster oven but what's nice about it is is that when you are cooking when you get your oven fixed it can operate like a normal oven and it can take like a full chicken. You know what I mean? And it has a very it has a very fast convection. So like they I hesitate to use the word because I hate it because it doesn't exist but the air fry setting on it has a pretty high right it's not real has it has a high convection rate and so it's really good for doing things like dehydrating uh you know not dehydrate it does dehydrate as well so you can use it as a dehydrate does it go low enough to like dehydrate it works great as a dehydrator the only issue with it is is that it you know it doesn't have as many racks as an X caliber but as soon as I got that I moved my X caliber into storage because I don't have room for an excaliber and it's also great as like a it's like a warming oven as well and you can broil and you have the bagels. Okay.
It can proof yeah all right I'm gonna look into one of those it can proof. And so then for for sub 200 bucks, you have a a backup there, right? And it's, I mean, I find it useful when I had to move it out for a while because you know, I was doing a lot of tests with the uh um with the steam oven with the ANOVA steam oven, but you know, and I love the A Nova, but it's just not as nimble. So my family was like, bring the toaster oven back. And I have a giant oven and it worked fine, you know what I mean?
They don't talk that way, but yeah. For sure. Well, you know, um, so sorry, just one last thing. Does it does it have a steam setting? Because I also dehydrate, I also proof, but okay, so there's no, but I could just you know, throw some cubes in a tray.
Yeah, and when I when I uh when I when I proof, I I I prove covered in it. I prove always proof covered in it. Right, okay, great. Well, thank you very much for the advice. I appreciate it.
Hope you all are staying safe. All right, and be careful when you fix your oven, don't zap yourself. Nastasia Lopez. I already did. Oh my god.
Nastasia Lopez is deathly afraid of LR of electricity, such that like I could be whole, I could be holding up like I I could be holding a pin and attached to that pin is 500 pounds, it's gonna crush me. And I'm like, Nastasia, hand me the pliers, I'm gonna die. She's like, Will the pliers shock me? Will they shock me? Right or wrong.
Yes, yes. Why are you so afraid of getting shocked? I really hate the feeling. I hate the feeling. But you're more than hated.
There's lots of things that you hate that you do daily, like talk to me. Yeah, but like, why is it what is it about electricity? I don't know. I don't know. I really hate the feeling.
All right, so people, I'm gonna go on a slight. And you used to threaten me with the uh I didn't threaten you. I said, come on. I wasn't a threat. I was saying, come on.
No, you said I'm gonna shock you. I didn't say I'm going to shock you. I said, why don't you let me shock? There's a big difference between threatening you, but you would never agree to do it. No.
All right, so here's what we're talking about, people. All right here here's the thing. So uh Ikijime is the uh Japanese fish killing technique. And I'm proud to say that in the United States, we were some of the first people who were researching that crap. Am I right about that, Staz?
We were some of the first people way back in the day researching uh Japanese fish killing techniques in in here in the US, trying to read as much of the Japanese material as we could, talk to his made Japanese chefs. But the the basic concept of it is well, I'm just fish killing, but the the the sh the the um I believe the term is Shinkanuki, but it's a long time, the spinal ablation technique where you run a rod uh through the uh spinal cord of a fish and zap its spinal cord as a way to improve the uh quality of the of the of the meat of the flesh. We did a lot of work on it, so such that a company sent us a muscle tester. So for those of you that took high school biology, you when you dissect the you you euthanize the frog and and you get the muscle, the gastrochnemius or whatever you pronounce it, gas, you know, the the the leg muscle out of the frog, and then you put you zap it with electricity. Joe, you done this?
Jack, you done this? Anyone? No, I've never done that. No, all right. So you so you zap the frog muscle and it goes and it and it like pulsates when you put the electricity on it because you're exciting the muscle.
And so uh, you know, one of the claims was with the you know, the ikijime that we were doing with the spinal ablation is is that the muscles retain their ability to to jump more, they take their they keep their potential longer. So they sent us this little muscle shockometer that's like a let you're supposed to stick on to the fish and see whether the fish contracts at all when you know the dead fish contracts at all when you put it on the muscle. All right. So I would shock myself with it. Because what else am I gonna do?
You know what I mean? And and I and uh Nastasia never agreed to let herself get shocked with it. No. Not one time. No.
I I used to work in the the garage with my dad, like on stuff, and he would do a lot of our electric work. And I remember being He's trained, by the way. He he's not a you know, he's uh an alignment. Yeah, yeah. But like electrical is different.
He won't do hardcore electrical, you know. Well, what's hardcore? Doesn't he climb telephone poles? Yeah, like how much more hardcore does it get? That's real hardcore.
But yeah, I remember being shocked on like oof things. I really hated it. Shocked with what? With one twenty. In this house I grew up in, um, there's a it in our garage, maybe we have a refrigerator, like an extra refrigerator, and growing up every single time I would go to turn the light on in the garage, it would shock me.
And it's like I would never learn my never learn my lesson. But then it came to kind of like not enjoy it, but it was like it was just light enough to be like, oh, that's kind of cool. I don't enjoy the taste in my mouth after you get shocked. No, I hate that too. Oh no, yeah, that is weird.
So I'll tell you two two shock stories that I had because it really is dangerous. You can get there was a kid killed. Did we talk about this like uh a couple weeks ago with lightning? A whole like a group of kindergartners got hit with lightning, and one of them died. Really?
Yeah, so um so couple couple of times I got shocked, memorable times I got shocked. When I was a kid, I used to uh find and disassemble oscilloscopes, so like old oscilloscopes from like the the you know the 50s, like the that look like you know, those 50s movies. I had storage oscilloscopes, I had all sorts of really cool. So I I don't know how do you describe an oscilloscope to someone who doesn't know an oscilloscope is um it's good question. It's like when you look at the screen, there's a line like radar, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's cool, it's clean. It's cool, yeah, it's green, yeah, shows you uh frequency waves. Yeah, yeah. So when I was a kid, they used to watch this thing called Marvin and the Magic Movie Machine, where the computer was an oscilloscope, right? And you in you and it makes that like line that you know anyway.
So I used to play with them. And uh I remember they they had these ones from the 60s with modular units in them, and I was completely unattended. Nobody was paying attention. I don't know what the heck my parents were doing. My mom was being a doctor, you know, hoping I didn't kill myself.
My dad was being an engineer. I know, whatever. So I pulled, I pulled them open and I put my finger right up against uh like a 400 volt terminal in the back of the oscilloscope. It's like BLAM! And I got blown across the button kill me.
I guess it wasn't very much current, it just hurt like hell. Like 400 volts hurts like hell. The other, the other shock one I used to love was uh you guys uh you know, Joe and uh Jack have been you know done been around music people, right? So when I was in uh college, obviously I had no money, so I bought uh an old, so I was in college in the in the 90s, right? And I was buying uh equipment from the 70s used and used equipment was free back then, no one wanted old equipment, especially unless it was like some special tube crap.
So I bought this thing called uh custom with a K amplifier that was have you guys seen these? They're vinyl. Yeah, of course. It has the uh the soft the soft uh padding on the outside. Yeah, yeah, it looks like Eddie Munster's car great base amplifiers.
That's what I had. I had a custom with a K bass amplifier, a head, and I had uh twin fifteen EV cabs that I was running. I was loud as you know I mean, I was loud, dude. Anyway, uh of course the problem with being a bass person is you have to lug all that freaking equipment everywhere. So anyway, so I got my custom with a K amplifier for like $110 at a youth shop in Hartford, uh, Connecticut.
But that sucker was not grounded at all. So every time I touched the cabinet, I got blown back. Every single time that I had my bass and I went to go flick the metal switch on the front of the custom, I would get blown back. Worth it though, because who had the money to buy a properly grounded uh amplifier? You know what I mean?
Yeah, they do the same thing when you're like, you're using like a laptop and you go to touch the laptop and you're like, you're done. You're like, you're gonna fry something. Yeah, well, well, again, because nowadays you're worried about the equipment. Back then they were just worried about you. Well, I mean, no one was really worried about me.
No one was really worried about me. Especially Randy Scott, the jerk who became a math professor who uh stuck a drumstick on purpose through our speakers because he chose to live in the housing unit right above the music practice room. It was a known thing. You know what I mean? It's like the idiot who moves in above a bar and complains.
Don't you hate that guy? I hate that guy. I hate that guy. The bar is here. You moved above the bar.
That's your problem. Yeah. Yep. I still don't forgive him. Randy Scott is a psychopath.
For any of you that have Randy Scott as a professor, he's the one person on earth I will just call out here right now as a psychopath. And I don't think you can change, right? I mean, you can change, right? You could change. You can get better, you can get worse.
If inside you're at your core, if you're a good human being, you can change if you're presented with things, right? But if if if your core is that you're a psychopath, right? You can't change that, I don't think, right? You're not gonna grow. If you didn't have a conscience in college, you're not gonna grow one.
Apparently, very good mathematician, though, very smart guy. You know? Just goes to show. But what happened to that? What happened to your speaker academy?
You put a drumstick through it. I mean, that does change the sound in a cool way. I mean, yeah, but I mean, I'm not freaking, you know, Nervana, I'm not doing this stuff on purpose, you know. I put duct tape on the cones. I didn't have the money to recone those things.
Uh but you know what? Like, my equipment, I played so loud, everything was so distorted anyway. And then anytime we would play in a in a club, back then, nobody cared about the bassist at all. They would talk to the guitarist. Oh, what do you want?
We're gonna mic, you're gonna mic ramp, all this stuff. Bassist, put it through the direct box. For those of you that okay, so the direct box is something you plug your bass into the direct box and it goes right to the board where the sound guy who universally had a mullet back then, so much so mullet wasn't a term that people used for that kind of haircut back in the 80s and 90s. So we just called it the sound man haircut. You know what I mean?
Anyway, I digress as usual. Uh again, uh, we didn't talk about it that much last week because uh, you know, uh Dorothy Calens was on. But Alexander asked, when we're gonna make spinzalls again. Alexander, I do not know. I do not know.
If we do it, it will be with a um a Kickstarter because we don't have the money to pay for a whole round to bring in, and it's months out. We do not have any word from the factory. You would not believe how hard it is to get something like that um produced once the factory stops making it, right, Stas? Yep. We would like to.
We would like to. And uh, okay, I spoke about Miguel with his graphite pans a little bit, right? I spoke about that. Yeah. Uh if you have any more questions.
I also talked uh about a little bit about Bill's Shag Bar Kickory problem, but I'll go more into detail. So the Shag Bark Hickory is uh a fantastic hickory tree. Uh I believe it's karia ovata, I think. And uh you can recognize a shag bar kickory because the bark on it, hence its name, Shag Bark, looks like it's peeling off in like long strips, right? It looks like it's coming off in long strips.
Um, and it also happens to have other hickories have very good nuts, but the the Shag Bar Kickory is considered the uh it is the royalty of northern nuts, right? So, like I, you know, we don't really grow pecans here. So pecans and shag bar kickeries are close cousins, right? The the difference is is the pecan is relatively easy to shell, and a hickory is incredibly difficult to shell. And so the hickory, therefore never became, and they're also they they they take a long time before they become uh nut bearing age, and then you have to fight with the freaking squirrels.
They're tall trees, so you have to, it's uh it's a whole thing. So hickory nuts are expensive, uh but delicious. Um but the shag bark hickories, which grow a lot around here, and in fact, uh, I don't know how far south they grow. They go, I know they grow all the way down to southern Pennsylvania and probably even further down. Uh, and then they grow all the way west.
I think I know they go all the way through to Ohio. They might go all the way through uh the plains up north, all the way over to the Rockies, for all I know. And uh when you peel the bark off, the outer bark is sloughing off, right? So the stuff it's peeling off, it's not gonna hurt the tree. Don't peel it all the way down, just like peel some of it off the outside, break it into tiny pieces.
If you have a vacuum, rinse it with cold water. If you have a vacuum machine, uh, you know, break up the little pieces and do a vacuum infusion just to get the water into it quickly, then uh use like you know, a bunch of water, bring it up to the boil, and then let it steep. And then if you, you know, once you remove the wood, if you find that it's not concentrated enough for your flavor, well, hell, you can just reduce it because why not? Right? Reduce it to the flavor you want and then take it to 50 bricks and you're done.
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Uh all right. Um, okay.
We also talked a little bit about what Micah should do for his large format, uh meets, then we said it's gonna be tough and no one really cares what it tastes like, so just make it fun. I would like some, you know, I've never done an underground cook. You ever been in an underground cook, Nastasi? No. Joe?
Or Jack, you been in one of those underground cooks? I have never even done an underground, like in the earth seaweed clam bake. You ever done that? Was it good or was it just fun? Just fun.
Yeah, right. Yeah. Not good, but fun. Yeah. And then like because everything was viciously over or viciously under?
Under. Oh, so you didn't build enough of a retained heat, huh? So then, yeah, and then Ariel had to fix it all by building an actual fire. And then yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. That's the classic thing. Look, uh, sometime it's it's since I don't have an outdoor, like I, you know, I'm not uh, you know, I don't do this, but some someone has to just do the calculations on how much energy you need to dump into the earth in order to use the entire earth as a retained heat masonry oven. You know what I mean? Yeah.
And then, you know, then you would know. Yeah. Yep. You know, because like I feel like if you did this like four times, by the third time you'd be good at it. Then the fourth time would be good the fifth time, then you wouldn't do it for 10 years and you'd forget and you'd come back and you'd be bad at it again.
You know what I mean? It's like, it's like, it's like, you know, no one, no one uh no no one is great at bowling when they first start. You have to bowl some first. I'm terrible at bowling. I hate bowling.
Why? I don't like sports where you have to wait your turn. Golf, bowling. So what's a sport where you don't have to wait your turn? Like a like a flag football, you know.
You're allowed to do it. But then if no one throws to you though, then you're just usually waiting. Yeah, but you're still there's a chance you could get the ball. But if you're playing soccer, oh, so you just want the chance. Yeah, you don't need to have it.
So if you're that person just standing there and no one's passing you the ball, you're fine with it because theoretically you're in it to win it. Yeah. I like tennis because the ball. Well, tennis, I mean. Yeah.
Yeah, tennis. I mean, you're always playing. What about Batman? That's a good game. Yeah, I like that.
You know what's a great game? You know, you know what I would like to you up on sometime? Ping pong. Let's go. Dude, haven't we done that?
My place? Yeah. I mean, like, just so you know, I'm sure you can all imagine this. Nastasi and I get real aggressive. Things like ping pong.
You know what I mean? Yeah. You know what we should do? We should do engineers versus uh versus us. We should have Jackie Molecules and Joe on one side and doubles.
We would suck at doubles. We would we would like we would be the worst doubles. Oh, yeah. I don't know. I don't know.
No, we have to know whether our desire to F with each other would be stronger or weaker than our desire to win. We our desire to win we'd win. All right. You hear that? You guys are on notice.
You're on notice. All right. They don't care. Okay. All right.
Uh, did we talk about uh did we talk about this question that Zachary had? I don't know. Uh we talked a little bit because they uh we we so listen, I'm gonna get in touch with uh they they want a list of Maria Guarnicelli's books. I'm gonna try to get in touch with uh my uh editor, uh which I owe her more work, uh, Melanie at Norton and see whether or not we can get uh a person on. Oh, but also there's an author I want to have on, but there's no reason for me to have her on.
So is I need someone to make up a reason for me to have her on. I will. Who is it? Uh Mary Roach just came out with a new book. She's like one of my favorite science writers.
She wrote Gulp. She wrote Stiff, and she has a new book called Fuzz that's about like animal human run-ins where the animals are doing things that are technically illegal, like monkeys stealing things from people. And she has a story where monkeys pull out people's IVs and then suck on the suck on the solution. Strong, right? Then how do you respond to that?
You know, you know what the answer is? They hire a bigger, meaner monkey to pee all over the property of so like if you're rich and you have a macaque problem, you can hire someone to bring their langers in to pee all over your property so that the macaques were like, I ain't going where the langer pee is. Anyway. So I need an excuse because it's not a food book. I mean, it's interesting.
We can do like, I don't know. Well, like there's that tree ring scientist, Valerie Thule. I want to get on because I love dendrochronology, but I can't think of a food-related reason to have a dendrochronologist on the show. Trees produce food. Yeah, all right.
Anyway, somebody think about it. So uh also uh Zachary said, I don't know if I talked about this. Uh Kenji uh Lopez Alt suggested removing the cap from a household gas range to get a more focused flame on a walk. Does this deliver more heat and is this dangerous at all? Well, uh, I'm trying to think.
When the I mean, I have a serious, we're getting fishbowled. I have a serious uh burner at my house that doesn't have a cap. So it's been a long time. Do either of you have the thing with the cap on it? No?
I had one with a cap on once. When you pulled it off, it didn't change the flame at all. Anything that you could do to change the flame, it's not gonna be uh it's not gonna be dangerous. If you can remove the cap, it's not gonna be dangerous. Um I don't know how much it's gonna help.
I think the thing that you can do most to help with a with a crappy home range is to uh you know make a ring to keep the flame inside if it's coming out. The other thing you can do is just go buy a walk burner. They're amazing. You can get a standalone outdoor if you have outdoor space. You can get a standalone walk burner, and they are ridiculous.
They're so awesome. Do that. Uh all right. Uh wait, did you say we don't have a caller, right? You didn't say all right.
Uh now. Gotta figure out which questions we haven't answered yet. Okay. Uh Stefan Razil called in uh by Instagram. Howdy, I have a question about cocktail preparation using my Hatsuyuki ice shaver.
My plan is to pour the cocktail over shaved ice in a coop glass. Should I dry shake all my ingredients before I pour over the ice? Or should I just measure out the ingredients and pour them without shaking? How did you do it at Booker and Dax in existing conditions? Thanks.
All right. It's a good question. By the way, uh I need to get my ice shaver back out. Now now that it's gonna get cold, right? Jerk.
What a dummy. I have mine in storage. I love my eye shaver. Anyway, I have two now. Ridiculous.
Um here's the problem. So you guys like uh do you like what are your guys' feelings on shave ice in general? Love. Yeah? Which style of shave ice do you like?
Soft. But I mean, like uh, do you like it with like the the uh coconut milk and like uh condensed syrup? Or you like it like you like like the Spanish guy with the blue with the giant block and the scraper and then like the things uh like juice? The things of juice? Yeah.
What about you, Joe? You a shave ice guy? I love shaved ice. Yeah, what style? That style, like with the little block on the on the street, that guy?
Love those. They're kind of crunchy, too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like those guys.
Uh about you. What where are you sitting with that, Jack? Where are you where where's your shave ice head at? No, Jack right now. Oh no, we lost Jack.
Oh, that's what that was. We lost Jack. Jack went from uh he's in Long Island. They don't have the internet in Long Island yet. It hasn't made it all the way out to uh to Babylon where he is in uh in the Long Island.
Anyway, so the shave ice that we're talking about is uh is a Japanese shave ice machine. There are some inexpensive versions of the Hatsuyuki that you can buy now for like like a quarter of the price. Um there's a company in Hawaii, because that's where it's the most popular that ships them out, and they're I've I have one of the cheaper ones, and I have the real Hatsuyuki. So I will tell you this. Uh the cheaper one is not as nice.
It will make shaved ice fine. So if you're rich, buy the good one, which Nastasi and I found it, and I carried it on my back while we were lost in Tokyo and kept on. We had a we were in Tokyo, we went to the chef's district. Remember this, Nastasia? And I found the and it came in a flat thing, it's heavy as hell, and I had it like on my back, and then you just kept showing the business card of the hotel to anyone on the street who had tried it, and we were just asking them to point us in the direction of the hotel.
I remember Mark was with us, and he's like, You guys like doing this kind of stuff. We're like, we hate it. We hate it. And also, Nastasi and I are so cheap that we didn't turn on data. So we had no way to find because this was back before you could just pay like $10 a day and get data, and they were like, if you even look at your phone, it's like a hundred dollars a day.
We took the bus eventually with it. Yeah, that's how we got it. And we had no idea. We were just looking for the hotel out of the bus windows. It's kind of a nightmare.
Anyway, uh, so I got a very good deal on it, which is why I got it, but they're much more expensive here. Anyway, I digress as usual. The problem with um shave ice and cocktails is alcohol is an incredibly powerful ice melting uh thing. So if you listen back to the episode when Quinn came on to talk about his uh gelato obsession book, you'll remember that alcohol uh has a huge amount of uh anti-freezing power. And so in cocktails, it melts ice tremendously quickly.
So what you need to do, what we used to do at Booker and Dax, uh, is uh we would put half of the cocktail, we would pre-mix it, we would put half of the cocktail into the coop glass, then we would shave ice directly into the coop uh glass and it would start melting and create a slush, and then we would make a giant mound of it. Uh so it would come looking like a mountain out of the out of the ice shaver. Look real pretty. And then you can change whether you like it crunchier or softer on the ice, like Nastasi likes it, depending on, you know, you got you, we got your Joe who likes the crunchy, we got your Nastasi who likes the soft. And then you bring it to the table, and then you pour the rest of the cocktail over the top, and it instantly melts all the ice down and drops it right to the flush line on the um on the drink.
If you want to have substantially more um ice left over, then you're gonna need something bigger than a coupe glass. You're gonna need like a bowl, and it's gonna get real slushy and soupy. Um, but just experiment. That's how we used to do it. That good enough answer, Sas?
Yep. All right. Uh Seagrade wrote in, uh, please explain the science of stirring. Uh, in other words, why does stirring help prevent my sugary barbecue sauce from spilling over the lip of the pot when bringing my sauce to a hard simmer? Hard simmer, what do you think about that as a phrase?
Fine. Uh hard simmer. I was reading uh so I every once in a while there's words that I wonder whether Nastasi is gonna hate them. Close your ears, earmuffs, earmuffs, spores. I was reading about spore prints the other day, and these people are making uh like t-shirts where they they walk around, these are mycological-minded folks, and they put mushrooms on their back and they make spore print t-shirts and they walk around with these spore prints.
And as soon as I saw it, I was like, Nastasi would hate that. She would hate that. Wait, they grow mushrooms on their back? No, no, no, no. Oh, I mean, that'd be awesome.
No, what they do is is like they're walking around the forest, they find an interesting mushroom, they take off their their shirt, they put it down, and they put the gills of the mushroom down and they let it do the spore print thing, and then they put their shirt back on and it develops into like it looks almost like like a like a like a like like they got sucked on by space leeches. You know what I mean through their shirt. That's something that freaks me out, the leech. I don't like the leech. Uh here's this here's the science.
Here's the science for you. Uh, and it's an interesting point because uh I was actually dealing with uh this topic in my book recently. Um so when something is thick, right? Uh what happens is it is it gets kind of superheated at the bottom, right? And uh as it does, it's forming all of these bubbles, but they can't readily make it to the top to disperse.
So you get these kind of large bubbles, and you also have like a much thicker, more viscous solution, and so it has the ability to hold bubbles more. And so they build up and they have no way to get out until they build up kind of violently, and then they woof up and poof out over. That makes sense. So when you stir it, what you're doing is you're allowing that gas that's building up into those big bubbles, you're breaking those bubbles and letting them get to the surface. You're also uh preventing their so in in a thick sauce, right?
In a thick sauce, in water, you have maybe not even like like most one or two degrees difference between the top and the bottom because convection works, right? In a thick thing, like a barbecue sauce, convection doesn't work anymore because uh, you know, the natural convection that happens isn't enough to actually circulate it. It's not moving around. So that means the bottom can like actually build up a little bit of pressure. It gets all the way up to the boiling and sometimes even beyond, which is how you scorch the bottom of the sauce on the pan.
And then all of a sudden, when the bubble gets big enough to make it through the sauce, boom, it comes up. And so it when you stir it, you're getting the entire barbecue sauce to the same temperature. And when you get the entire thing to the same temperature, it can boil more gently and you can uh ventilate it. Was this a decent answer? Did this make sense?
Yeah. All right. Um Nick Robertson writes in what do you truly sacrifice when subbing citric malic and/or tartaric acid solution for true lemon or lime? Is it mouthfeel aromatics uh more? Is it reduce the is it worth the reduced uh cost per uh per item?
Um I mean you lose a lot. It's like it's the difference between, you know, like a real fruit and like uh acid. I mean, look, it it's like fruit is not just acid, it's also flavor, right? So if you look at like one of my favorite techniques, acid adjusting, you take a fruit that doesn't have enough acid and you add acid to it to you know bring up the flavor of the fruit, right? So you can use it as an acidified fruit.
But there's always that fruit flavor there. The flavor of orange is something other than just uh, you know, citric acid. The flavor of a lemon isn't just citric acid. Now, lemons are so high in citric acid that sometimes all you perceive is acitric acid, but there's other flavors there. Lime, especially has a lot of flavor, like in the oils and the in in the fruits.
Um, and you can taste uh remember those uh sweet lemons that we were tasting, Sas at the at the place, and you're like, nah, not as interesting, right? Because it's just lemon, I'm sorry, lemons. Lemons just aren't that interesting as a fruit flavor, you know what I mean, compared to like, let's say, mandarins. But uh they definitely do have a flavor. So you're you're you're losing that real citrus uh note.
The other thing you're losing, of course, is that the pulp that's in there, if you're gonna use it for like a shaken cocktail, you need real, like uh acids have no um no kind of uh uh surface active property. So they don't help a drink stay foamy or make a nice uh texture on it on a shaking cocktail. So that's why, you know, when you're shaking a cocktail, you never want to use clarified or just acid-based things because you're not gonna have the right texture, right? And stir drink, it's uh not as as big a deal on that, but you're still not gonna have um the kind of the depth of flavor. Now, if you like it, you like it, right?
But uh in general, I try to only use acids to augment real uh real fruits or real base flavors. Um, you know, look, uh taste is not in dispute. If you like the flavor of it, I'd say who said that that's dumb. Of course you can dispute somebody's idea of what tastes good, right? It's ridiculous.
It goes to this non-discipline. What's that? What's that phrase? Do you guys remember it? I don't know.
Anyway, it's ridiculous. Of course you can you can whatever. Um Brian wrote in, I'm trying to get around Nastasia's rule of one question per person, but what are all of Dave's French fry recipes? What do you? I mean, Brian, that is a long like I could sp like go on the blog.
Well, the blog Watch the movie. Oh, yeah. You should watch the French Fry movie, which is what's that on now? They just released it on something. I don't know.
I don't agree with some of the, like, one of the people in there says that McDonald's French fries are still good, which they're not. They're not. I mean, they're they're they're good hot. They taste like cardboard when they're cold. Right?
I haven't had McDonald's friends. You don't like French fries, I forgot. I haven't eaten at McDonald's in a very long time. Really? Like years, decades, maybe.
Really? Mm-hmm. You know when's the last time you you eat there a lot? Uh the kids like it. So, like they would like on the drive-thru, they'll ask to go through, but no, I mean, I basically have a milkshake.
I love fake shakes. You know, did we talk about Grimace already on the air? Yes. Um, when I graduated from college, though, I was that guy that went to McDonald's, ordered the cheeseburger, and then individually asked for all the toppings to be put on it, so they were huge, but they cost the same amount. So if you go to McDonald's and you're like, I want a cheeseburger, but I want tomato and I want lettuce and I want onion and I want pickles and I want and like you can ask for all this stuff and they'll completely trick out the cheeseburger for you.
Same cost. Same cost. Like, I was also that guy at Roy Rogers who completely, completely just ran roughshod over their free fixance bar. You know what I mean? They still is Roy Rogers still a thing?
I don't know. I don't know. Uh so anyway, the issue uh with French fries, I'll I'll give you some hints. As Nastasia says, read the read the blog post. Um, you have to choose what size French fry you want to make.
The the recipe is radically different, and different people like different things. Do you want a half inch fry? The answer's the the only things that are valid to me, I like half inch fries, I like three-eighths inch fries. Okay. I don't really like the style of the thinner style of fry.
They're much easier to make. The thinner the French fry, the much easier it is to make and have it stay crispy. That's just the truth, right? You're gonna want to use a high gravity potato. Do you have to use russets?
No. Anything high gravity. So if you like something like a Yukon, a Yukon is relatively high gravity. What does that mean? It means that it has uh uh it's not as high in water, it's higher in in starch than a low gravity potato.
Low gravity potatoes are great for making potato salad. All right. Now the question is how do you make it crispy? You're gonna have to cook it twice, period, right? If you like anyone who believes that they can like just throw something in cold oil and then bring it up and then all of a sudden they're gonna get a delicious french fry, it's possible for it to happen, but it's very unlikely because there's too many variables.
You need to cook it at least twice. My recipe on the blog is cooked three times, blanched in water, then oil fried and oil fried again. It is possible some of the best French fries I've ever had ever in Belgium, in fact, uh, they don't do a water blanch. They just go directly into uh oil. Now, if you want to do it that way, you just have to use the oil at a very much lower temperature and cook it for a lot longer.
And they also use a lower temperature on their finished fry and cook it for longer. And what you're balancing is how much liquid you're getting rid of versus uh the color of the fry. So I'm gonna have some recipes in the book that are that are coming up, but you really have to, there's no such thing as there's how to achieve the French fry you want with the with the equipment you have. Uh and for American style restaurants, you know, uh I thought it was easier to do a water blanch and then two oil fries, but you know, the Belgians, like I say, who are the best at it, only just do two oil blanches. That is that enough to stash or right.
Uh Jonathan Mame wrote in any tips for flavoring a keg of seltzer? Am I better off using a slice of lemon for each glass rather than attempting to flavor the whole batch? Are there options that would hold up over a weekend versus up to a month? Thanks. Well, I'm that guy that thinks that all flavored seltzers taste like poison.
I just like I would rather, I would always rather have a uh fresh uh squeeze of fresh uh stuff in my in my seltzer, even if it's unclarified. That said, um you want to use something that's not gonna uh it's not just that it's not gonna go bad, but it's that it's not gonna ruin the bubble. So anything you add to it has to be clarified. This is why that all these flavored seltzers use kind of poisonous tasting um uh, you know, flavoring things because they also don't want to have sugar. So they have to make something that tastes roughly like a fruit, but doesn't have sugar and maintains that flavor even though it's incredibly diluted, which is a tough thing to do, which is why I think they taste poisonous.
But um, the least poisonous tasting are like lemon and and lime. Uh and for those, you know, you could add a mixture of acids or you could add some cordial and a mixture of acids and get something approaching it. But I would just say squeeze something fresh. What do you think, Stuz? Yes.
Yeah. Uh Elizabeth Wells writes in uh enjoy the podcast, keep up the work. Um, question about blue steel pans. Uh, I'm used to cooking almost everything on nonstick. Do we do this one already?
No. No? I'm used to uh cooking almost everything on nonstick. Please don't judge. But I now have two uh high quality blue steel pans.
Uh I can get decent initial seasoning on them using the serious eats method and basic uh soy vegetable oil, but I have no clue how to maintain it. By the way, don't use soy oil uh for frying. Don't use soy oil for frying. Going back to the French fry thing, I think a huge mistake people make soy oil has uh a lot of uh a specific um uh fatty acid in it called linolinic. Linolinic, not linolaic.
I don't want to hear people saying that linoleic is that I said linolaic is bad, linolinic. And that is the reason why. And so here's a little secret. When they make oil, right? They they have it's called um uh deodorized, uh bleached, like reduced, like you know, they do all this stuff to oil to make it as neutral as possible.
But then it starts going bad, right? And one of the things that goes bad is with linolinic acid is that you get these kind of like terrible fishy aromas, right? You guys have all Stas, you hate that, right? When someone overheats like a soy oil and you get that kind of like gross fish aroma. Yeah.
Even the thought of it makes me kind of right. And that's because soy oil sucks for frying. It's fine, like neutral. Now you're gonna say, but Dave, Dave, some of the best fry oils are soy oils. Yeah, well, industrial fry oils have all of their linolinic acid removed from them.
They also add special antioxidants to those oils and anti foaming things to make them specifically good for frying. Those oils are so heavily tweaked that it doesn't matter what the original ingredients that they made them uh out of are because they're just they're they're basically like frankin oils. You know what I mean? Yes. So uh don't use soy.
Uh you know what? Like for frying, I like, and I know peanuts great if you like peanut. Corn oil is cheap and it doesn't taste like corn oil when it's heated up. So corn oil is one of those oils that tastes like corn when it's raw. And so you're like, why would I use this for frying?
It makes a bad salad oil, right? Corn oil makes a bad salad oil. Yes. Uh but corn oil is good for frying and it's cheap as hell, right? And by the way, just as you know, uh, if it just says vegetable oil, it's probably some mixture of like canola and soy.
And canola I have my problems with too on stinking when it gets uh uh overfried if it's not done right. Remember, uh, you guys probably don't, but like early canola oil smelled real bad. Anyway, uh, so don't judge uh a fry oil by how it tastes if it hasn't been um how it hasn't been cooked. You gotta worry about two things. Like I say, uh is it gonna make those disgusting fishy aromas?
Is it gonna get what's called reversion flavors where it all of a sudden starts tasting like the crap they made it out of? That happens, but not with corn. Anyway, uh but back to your question. Uh I use a soy oil and the serious uh soy oil and the serious seeds method, but I have no clue how to maintain it. My pans never get truly non-stick.
No way I could cook an egg in them without serious sticking. It seems that every time I use and need to clean them using soap and the soft side of a dish sponge, the seasoning comes off. What am I doing wrong? Cleaning them with kosher salt alone seems to help, but it's still a huge pain to have to essentially re-season every time I use them. Am I using the wrong oil?
Am I using the wrong seasoning method? Does it just take a while to fully break them in? And will someone with a soy allergy have a reaction if I use soy all the season? I don't think so. Uh please uh help me use these gorgeous pans.
Thanks. So uh all right, so on Instagram right now, you can go look, Mizen, who is uh one of the companies and they sell some of these blue steel pans, has a really cool graphic up now where they show like a brand new pan, and then like in various stages of seasoning, and you know, it's actually a pretty cool graphic. I think what you need to do is just don't worry about it. It's just gonna take a long time to season. Like, I don't even think about calling one of these things non stick for like a couple months after I keep using it a lot.
Um they should season at roughly the same rate as uh cast iron. The one thing you have to be careful is that because the steel is so much thinner and lighter than cast iron, uh just be careful when you're seasoning it not to like it can quickly overheat, right? Whereas the cast iron, uh it's got so much more mass that it doesn't kind of overheat as f and it doesn't conduct heat as quickly as the steel does. So it's easier to overheat the blue uh steel when you're when you're seasoning it. But I I wouldn't worry about it.
I would just like let it do it, let it do its thing. And as long as you, you know, make sure that no, you know, weird crusty bits get caught on it, it's eventually just gonna get better and better and better and better and better with time. As long as your son doesn't throw it on the burner, walk away and burn the seasoning off, which happened with one of my cast iron. I was so bent. I was so bent.
The other thing is Booker, Stas, Booker has been making freaking been using my cast irons now. I I have all these cast iron sizzle platters at home. You see my sizzle platters, right? So he's been using these freaking things, Stas, to make his salmon. So he he I I I joke, he's like a he's like a bear.
He eats only salmon. He fires up the the ANOVA, low temp cooks his uh his salmon every day and then finishes it in a in a pan. He now puts so much flour on the bottom of these fish because like he wants to basically just eat like a roux, so he might he just floods the pan with flour and but and then he doesn't adequately clean them, so my seasoning is getting gloppy on them. I've had these pants for over 20 years. I've been seasoning them, and it just takes one knucklehead son like going salmon after salmon after salmon to start building up that weird crusty on the coating.
What am I gonna do? Tell him to get in warm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh Patrick wrote in via Instagram.
What springs in Saratoga do you recommend trying? Well, what I recommend you do is uh look, most of the ones that are so Saratoga Springs, if you go to Saratoga Springs, in town there's a couple of springs. And for that one, like Hathorne is nice, but just go to this, go to the park. Go to the uh the Saratoga Springs, the park uh that's right next to SPAC where apparently like everyone there says Dave Matthews plays every year in the entire town waits for Dave Matthews to come play. Are you a Dave Matthews fan any of you guys?
It's okay. Styles, I thought you were. No. No. It's not my style.
It's not my style of music. That's not my thing. No, I don't, I'm not really a fan. My favorite thing about him was his tour bus dropped all that poop over the bridge. Remember that?
No. His tour bus driver. You told this story twice on a year already. All right. Anyway, dropped.
Well, apparently Jack wasn't listening. Yeah, all right. Dropped a bunch of poop on people. I love that. My favorite thing.
Caller, you're on the air. Hi, how's it going? Doing all right. What's up? But I have a question about uh carbonating fruits.
Okay. So I've been experimenting with the dry ice in a cooler. And I was curious if it there's a faster way to do it. Yeah, the issue with dry ice and a cooler is it's never gonna really build up pressure. And to get uh to really carbonate something, you're gonna need to get uh pressure in.
The one thing I'll say about uh carbonated fruit is that, you know, this was something that um you know a lot of people were working on in the early 2000s. Homaru Kantu, I think, even you know, back then tried to make a piece of equipment so that people could uh carbonate fruit. The issue with it is is that um highly carbonated fruit or carbonated fruit tastes like it started to ferment. So what so you have to just bear in mind that like that what's gonna happen is is that you're gonna get something that's tasting kind of like it's fermenting because that's what your mind tells you has happened to fruit that's carbonating. But I would just I would just put it into it look this another reason is people you yeah, you have to use relatively um uh high water fruit and like it's hard to get the CO2 to diffuse all the way in because it's not a liquid, so it takes a long time for the CO2 to diffuse in.
So like I know people were putting things into into EC whippers and then like uh pressurizing them with CO2 and then letting them s like sit in their fridge for like a day or two. You know what I'm saying? To try to get the carbonation in. So I would try that, and it's not gonna help you on larger fruit, but larger fruit is not gonna thing you can do is not gonna suck it in. Not gonna soak it in.
So like things that are like high in water, things that you can get to like watermelon, like that's one of the people used to do berries and they used to do watermelon, right? Uh all all kinds of all kinds of melon. And well, a watermelon tastes pretty good carbonated. But I I would try it in an EC just because if you don't build up that pressure, it's never gonna get super duper carbonated. But I would be very careful of using dry ice in a sealed container unless it's got a pressure vent.
Yep, yep. Yeah. Well, perfect. That kind of answers my question then. All right.
Let us know. Uh tweet me back and let me know how it works. So uh, Patrick, go to the park. You got to try them all. Um, here's the issue.
State seal is the kind of the water that most people locals get, and it's basically rainwater. It's runoff water. But you're gonna need, if you're drinking a lot of the funkier waters, it's very high in salt. I've never had as bad a hangover as when I go to Saratoga and taste waters just because it there's so high in salt. Uh Hathorne 3 is the one that you're gonna want to take for cocktail work because it's so strong that you can use just a little bit of it.
It's great in mezcal drinks. Uh, we did, you know, the Saratoga Paloma we did with Hathorne 3. That's right by the entrance to the park. That is the funkiest of all the waters. Um, but I like one of the new springs they have, shots.
You just need to taste them all. You need to taste them all and realize that the sulfur that's in them will flash off. So don't uh don't judge a water by the sulfur. The sulfur goes away very quickly. That answer the question.
Yeah. Um Nick Robertson wrote in Um the company I'm working for is a beer has a uh beer and wine license at the moment. They're afraid that adding a cocktail program will spoil the golden goose of a restaurant, as they believe cocktails will spoil the table's turn times. Uh, how can I ease their concerns? Obviously, there's value in having a robust program beyond dollars and cents, but I'd like for the acquisition of the cocktail program not to be an uphill battle.
However, uh uh there is skill and craft and therefore labor costs into serving cocktails. What are your thoughts? Um I find that uh look, cocktail program is is usually driven by bar, which is considered the front of the house kind of people, and they're often pushback from the back of the house on programs that are seen to kind of mess with the back of house kind of vibe. Um I mean, look, your your margins are very high. I I don't I don't think you're gonna increase the I mean look, here's what I would do.
I would say, why don't you try it? If your check average goes up, then hey, your check average just went up and you can see whether or not you turn the tables more. It's not it's the kind of thing that you can test out without it being like a big gambit, you know what I mean? You don't have to like, you don't have to freaking change the world to try it out. Um I don't know anyone who you know put cocktails in and then all of a sudden started losing money while they were making money before.
You know what I mean? I know just try it next. Wow. Guy's got a real problem. He's trying to convince you.
Because he has to, he's having a problem because the chef and the and the sh it's I guarantee you it's the chef. And the chef is like, I don't want this messing with the we want, you know, we're we're pump and dump. We want to get the people in and out. You know what I mean? I don't think people linger over over cocktails.
It's not like you're at a bar where they are lingering over cocktails. When you're at a table and you want a cocktail, they order it with the thing. I don't think it's a problem. I mean, I mean, I think if they don't want to share creative, I I I mean, I would look, if if the battle is is that they don't want to share creative input with uh the bartender and they want to have full creative control over everything that puts people put in their mouths, then you've lost that battle before it started, and you're not gonna win. You know what I mean?
If that's what the true problem is. Um I don't know. I don't know what to say. What Anastasi doesn't want me to say anything, so you know. Uh there's no harm in trying something, and then if you're not gonna do it.
Well, there is, they're saying that they won't let him try. Oh, if he's gonna get fired, then don't try. They're in between roads. He's asking for advice on how to convince them that it's a good idea. Here's a here's why, because you can make something that costs you $2 and you can sell it for $15 or $16.
You know what I mean? It's like it i the the poor cost on a cocktail is very low compared to food costs. And the labor cost of making the cocktail is usually covered by someone who is getting paid front of house wages and gets most of their work on tips anyway, right? So the actual true cost of a cocktail is a lot lower than let's say adding another app to the menu, right? And you know, but uh again, it's like you know, if maybe bring the chef in to like have a creative session on the ideas, get them interested in it, but you know, the margins on cocktails are great, you know.
And anyway. Um Mass Preacher uh 5019 wrote in uh I really okay, good afternoon, sir. This must have come in. John just got this off uh Instagram. I hope you are the author of Liquid Intelligence.
Uh in one section, I am. Uh in one section, you mentioned the surface area of ice is directly proportional to the melting area, and hence there would be more dilution. I think there's getting confused here. A few pages later, it's also mentioned that smaller ice uh with respect to volume provides more dilution. These two theories seem to be contradictory.
I'd be grateful if you could spare a moment and explain this if I got it wrong somewhere. You did get it wrong somewhere. Here's how it works. Um surface area is a function of the uh square of the of the size, whereas the volume goes as the cube, right? So a big, big chunk of ice has much less surface area for how much ice is there for the mass of ice than does uh a smaller amount.
And I'll prove it to you real fast. Take a cube of ice, right? Now, if you cut that cube of ice in half, right? It has all of the surface area it used to have, plus the two new faces where you cut it in half. So you have the same amount of ice, but now you have more surface area because you've created two more planes that weren't there before.
Cut it again, you increase the surface area again. Every time you take a large block and you break it into smaller pieces, you're increasing the surface area. Melting happens at the surface. Therefore, if you uh increase the surface area and it's actively melting, you will increase the dilution. So smaller ice favors more dilution in a given amount of time, right?
Assuming that you're not at equilibrium, right? Large ice has a large ice has less surface area per volume and therefore will dilute less, right? So I don't know like whether you missed something in the in what what I wrote, right? But that that's what it is. Did I explain that accurately, Stas?
Does that make any sense? All right. Uh from Lightbox Digital Studio. Um, I continue to learn uh from liquid intelligence. Thanks.
Uh, I need your advice on something. Do you have a trick to remove the wax from fruits, particularly citrus, prior to using for garnish? Uh cooks say pouring boiling water over the fruits remove the wax, but it seems to kill the essential oils. I'm looking for thanks. Thanks for the book.
I've just never worried about the any wax or or oil coating. I've just never worried about it. I'll have to ask uh, and I don't know if we'll ever talk to David Carp again. Because I don't know, like he doesn't mean like he's not part of maybe you'll talk to him. You're the kind of person that talks to people stuff.
Maybe you'll talk to him. I'll ask him or ask Harold the next time I talk to him, but I've never really thought about it because I've never seen it as a problem, right? So when I'm using a cocktail, look, take your fruit, your citrus, you peel it, right? And then if you squeeze it, it's squeeze so you know you squeeze the peel. If you see that spray, that awesome spray of juice coming out, uh not juice, oils coming out, then that must mean that the wax wasn't enough to stop that from happening.
So I don't like the the wax that they put on on fruits, I don't even know if they wax them all anymore, isn't poisonous. So I don't know that you're helping yourself by getting rid of it, right? Yeah. And online it says pour boiling water on it. So yeah, but if you pour boiling water on it, you will be able to.
Yeah, I know. So I understand why you're saying I don't understand why you would need to do it. I don't understand like what's the reason you hate the wax so much. Maybe he thinks it's poisonous. It's not poisonous.
I know. So then there's no reason to because you were talking about the spray. Using the spray. So if like if if the wax prevents the spray from coming out, that would be a problem. But I've never noticed that being a problem.
Another thing, you know what I can't figure out? So, like, you know how oils uh you know how um eggs uh they're porous, right? Mm-hmm. Right. That's why uh did I tell you what I did the other day?
Oh my god. So you know the pressure cooked eggs that we do all the time? So uh remember years ago at the SCI, I put a bunch of eggs as a test. I put them in the oven. Yeah.
And they they got the brown spots on the pores, and then they turned kind of hameen in in the in the thing. So I did that again in my oven. They exploded. Weird. Like exploded.
And I don't know whether or not the eggs had somehow been sealed or whether or not they just put self-plugged the holes up because they dried out because they had a really high convection on. Now I did it in a convection oven at the FCI too, right? But they sprayed like when an egg explodes, I I'd only ever before exploded an egg in a microwave. Have you ever done that? Yeah.
Yeah. It's ugly. It smells real bad. I used to, like, I once did it at somebody else's house. It was terrible at a party.
Someone was like, hey, what are fun things to do in a microwave? Hey, I threw a bunch of eggs in and you turned it on. And with it, when you throw an egg in the microwave, it's it's not guaranteed that the thing's gonna blow up. You're not guaranteed it's gonna blow up. But when it does, oh my god, is it smelly?
Oh my god, does it smell bad? And I had to clean that all out of my toaster the other day. And it's just like it looks like alien because it it it had already gone hamine, it had gone brown, right? Yeah, and it had just it it's like you know when they when the alien came out of the chest? It was like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Boom! Yeah. I was like, oh my God. All right, you got one minute to wrap it up with something interesting.
Well, I I mean, I don't have anything interesting. There's I've I've never had anything interesting. Jack, what do you got that's interesting in Long Island? No Daniel Jack remember. I thought he came back.
I heard it, I heard it like he came back. Uh I have I'm doing a grill out on Saturday and Dave won't come. Are you inviting everyone to the grill? Zero people are allowed to come. But you are invited.
We're invited, basically. And you always say, I never invite you, but that's not true. You just never you're inviting me to something that's in Connecticut. You go to Connecticut all the time because you're in-laws and your sister-in-law lives there. So I don't know.
So Connecticut is not a problem. Dax has a uh Dax has a meat. I don't know when it is. Okay. Alright, we'll see.
We'll see. Are you gonna do a uh are you gonna do a a I'm gonna do uh a uh underground cook. You are? Yes. You're lying.
I swear to God, actually when I was like gonna say that, and then I was like, Oh, he's gonna think I made it up. Now I don't know whether you're lying to me. I swear to you. I swear to you. It's so hard to n it like I after all these years, Nastasia, I can't tell whether you're lying to me or not.
I promise you. Promise you. What are you gonna cook underground? Ariel's figuring that out. Now you know it's real, because Ariel.
No, oh now. We gotta get Ariel back on the show. All right. All right, all right. Cooking issues.
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