Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live at News Dance Studios from Rockefeller Center here in Midtown, New York City. Joined as usual with Nastasia De Hammer Lopez. How you doing? Good.
Yeah? What's going on over there? What do you what do you what's good today? What do you look at? Nothing's good today.
Nothing's good today? No. It's John's birthday. Ah, see? Yeah, something good today.
Yeah, John, how you doing? Doing great. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Jack.
Do you like being called out uh for your birthday or dislike it? Happy birthday. Thanks, Joe. Uh indifferent? Indifferent?
Yeah. It's fine. Yeah. What is your favorite? Okay, first of all, we got Joe Hazen.
How are you doing? I'm doing great. How are you guys? Doing well. And our roving correspondent, Jackie Molecules, is in Mexico again.
I think. Yes, I am. Hello. All right, now back to the birthday question. Are you a c are you a birthday cake person?
No, not really. I mean, I'll eat it, but I'm not, I don't think I'm having any tonight. No. No. Yeah.
Hmm. Stas, you like a birthday cake, right? Yeah. Because you like the ritual or because you like the cake? A ritual, I think, yeah.
Booker is obsessed for some reason. He's been asking for the past like four months. He wants me, he wanted to buy the milk bar birthday cake. He's obsessed with it. He's like, Dad, are you ever gonna talk to Christina Toesy again?
I'm like, I'm like, I don't know. Life's never guaranteed, son. I never know what's gonna happen. You know what I mean? I could get hit by a bus tomorrow, and then I will never talk to her again.
He's like, why don't you make me the so now he'd been pestering me, he pestered me maybe once a week about making him this milk bar birthday cake. And I I gotta say, I'd rather just buy it. It's very expensive. What are you, booker? It's really expensive.
It's his birthday cake. So I gotta go buy acid cake. Yes, but this is part of his complex of things. He's he's he thinks constantly about it. He thinks constantly, but he I think he wants me to I don't know what he.
I don't know, man. What about what about you, Joe? Are you a cake person on your birthday? Yeah, I love Carvel cake. Oh, yeah.
I grew up as a Carville. Oh yeah. I was all about that interview. Yeah, man. Carvel, I have to say, for those of you people who never had the Carvel, I'm sorry for you, man.
Because here's the other thing. If you grew up in the in in uh on the eastern area where we had it, the difference between the Carvel cake, which is the frozen hard Carvel, and Carvel out of the machine. I always love that kind of like that uh counterpoint between the two. What about you, Mr. Molecules?
What are where are you on the birthday cake continuum? I'm the kind of guy that's like, no, I don't want a cake, but then if someone brings me one, I'm very happy about it, you know. Well, is it how far does that go? Are you like, don't bring me a cake, but then if they don't bring you a cake, you're like, no cake. Okay.
No, no, no. No, no, no. Are you one of those guys that asks for people to not bring you presents, but then when they don't, you're mad? That's what I'm trying to find out. Are you one of the people?
He's okay with Merlot. Oh, it was Polski who was okay with Merlot. Oh, come on now. Come on, stop. I'm not okay with Merlot.
Right. Barefoot Merlot. No relation to the barefoot Contessa, different people. Hey, listen. Like real, like well-made real Merlot.
I'm gonna like let's like let's not poo-poo. Merlot the grape is a fine grape. And there are a lot of fantastic. That's true, yeah. Fantastic, you know, uh single, you know, varietal Merlot wines.
Many like that, you know, well above what I could afford to pay for them and worth the money that they cost. However, the swimming pool made Merlots, right? The ones that you, you know, the ones that you know are distilled into uh sandy wipes for use during the pandemic, those are trash. Right? I think we can all.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, man. Man, this shows how long you haven't lived in New York City to think you can go buy a Merlot and a bodega. Listen, for all of you like not New York people who come to New York City, go to a supermarket, stay away from that bottle of quote unquote wine in the supermarket. That is not wine.
I don't know what the hell it is, but that is not wine. Here in New York, you are not allowed to sell wine in a grocery store. All you Californians, all you know, come here and you want to go to Nastasia's like house or whomever's house, and you go to the grocery store and you're like Chateau Diane. I've never had it, but I will buy it. And then you buy the has anyone ever come to your house with the Chateau Diane?
Thankfully, no. Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. Did you did you even taste it before you broke it over their head?
No, no. I mean, they were from France. They had no idea. You Americans with your wine, Chateau Diane is garbage. And then, like, and then like they think that that's how what we think wine is.
Yeah. Instead of like, that's just the laws. Did you bring out the laughing cow cheese slice? Yeah, you remember that? Who remembers the laughing cow?
It's like, it's like processed cheese in a foil bag, the shape of a of a wedge of cheese. Yeah, we used to eat that all the time in Paris. So that's a Parisian thing? Yeah. Definitely.
As a kid in middle school ate that all the time. So that's the American version of I'm sorry, the French version of American cheese. I guess. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, it's wipable. Certainly is. Yeah, very spider map. I'm sure it'd be fine on a burger.
I I enjoy it. It's a good cheese. What's your favorite trash can cheese? Palio cheese sticks. Ooh.
Yeah, you like the string cheese. Do you know the Palios family related to, not because of the name thing, DiPalos? They were like cousins. Like a lot of those uh like little Italy, because Palio, the that family was originally like, you know, the downtown little Italy here in Manhattan. Yeah, like they're cousins.
Isn't that crazy? Yeah, that's wild. Yeah. So you like a Palio string cheese, huh? Yeah.
But how much do you like like a Oaxaca and string cheese? I don't know if I've ever I've had Oaxacan cheese. I don't like a big, you know, ball of it that I grated up, but I don't think I've just got it. You never done the shred? You never shredded it?
Oh my god. Yeah. Oh my God. You need to get yourself a ball of Oaxaca and string cheese and start shredding that stuff. First of all, it's very uh, it's very cathartic, just because it's so much longer because you unwind the ball, and it's like imagine like the people at Palio were like, let's not let's not ever cut this off.
Let's never pinch off the log. You know what I mean? It's like long. How long would you say one of those things is, uh, guys, the the Oaxaca and string cheese balls? Feet, right?
Isn't there like an Armenian rolled string cheese kind of thing that you can get at the supermarkets? I think it's Armenian. Not at my supermarkets. There's a Turkish string cheese, which is freaking fantastic. Several Turkish string cheeses that are fantastic.
I think we can all agree that a string cheese is a fun thing. Yes. Yes. And delicious. Yeah.
Yeah. I love I like a string cheese. And anyone who's gonna poo-poo it, I mean, I think it's that's more on you. Speaking of on the Twitter. Well, we'll talk about it later.
Uh, what about my favorite uh like 1970s style garbage American cheese, boursin? Love Borson. Love it, right? I love it. It's so good.
Yeah. What about what about you guys? Where are you guys on the boursan? You ever had that? It comes in a in a I don't think I've had it.
Joe, you had that stuff? Pour so. It's like imagine like amped up cream cheese with like all kind of like herbs and garlic and some herbs. Yeah, I don't think I've ever had it. And it comes in like a foil muffin cup kind of thing.
Yeah. And the power move, the power move, this is what I used to do when I was a kid. So when uh after my parents got divorced, when I would go to visit my dad on the weekends, uh I would always want the same kind of appetizer plate, and it was this. It was super craft used to make a hyper sharp cheddar in a black package, right? So it was that breadsticks, sesame, duh, like the the breadsticks with the sesame.
Am I right, guys? Yeah. Sesame on the breadstick. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Sardines, undrained, but like so I would have the sardines separate and then the oil, right? And then the boursant. And what you do is you would take the, you would take the breadstick, you would dip it in the in the in the boursant, then you would dip that in the sardine oil, then you would put on a thin slice of cheddar and then the sardine on top of that and pop that. That was that's the Dave Arnold childhood appetizer right there. That's the money.
Pikafine dining right there, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know who else really likes Kansas Sardines or did when he was alive? The Leatherman. The Leatherman.
Someone sent me that there's a Leatherman podcast. Yeah, yeah. Uh for those of you who, I don't know, this is maybe this is the first time you're hearing of this show. It's actually difficult to search for information on the Leatherman because the the multi-tool comes up quite often. But he is the vagabond that I wish that I could uh be.
His his leather clothing weighed 60 pounds. Do you know his bag still exists? As does a single mitten and a couple of his tin pipes. The Connecticut Historical Society has them squirreled away somewhere in Hartford. We should go find them.
Tell us about who this leather man is, because I I mean, first thing that comes to my mind is Texas Chaw Massacre. Yeah, no, this guy didn't murder people. What he I mean, that we know of, like he like people liked him. So he he uh, first of all, he looks like he's eight million years old, even though he died like in his 50s, they think, right? That's the estimation.
And he used to just walk like a several hundred mile loop around Westchester and like Fairfield and like New Haven counties. Uh, and every 34 days, he would make this loop on foot, and he would sleep in these kind of talus rock, they call them caves, but they're not, they're just kind of like jumbles of rocks. And he would stitch together a la leather man, but instead of humans, he would take like discarded pieces of boots and whatnot, and he would stitch them into clothes and a hat and a bag, and uh, you know, he would never talk. He would just people he would show up at your house, you would give him some food, he would eat the food and he would leave. And he liked sardines.
Incredible. Yeah, that is crazy. Incredible Halloween costume. I'm looking at it now. I'm posting these pictures in the Discord live chat.
And I emailed you at Wikipedia line. It would be so expensive. A couple of people have made the we need to find some sort of culinary reason, some sort of cooking issues reason for us to make the pilgrimage to the Connecticut Historical Society and have them actually drag Leatherman's bag out of storage so we can look at Leatherman's bag. I'm not gonna put my hand in his mitten. That's gross.
But I want to say, I mean, like, I'll look at the mitten. I'm not gonna let you put your hand in his mitten. Yeah. Well, I mean, true. Fact.
The most famous picture of the Leatherman looks like like uh it's like Nastasia's uh what are you talking about face? And it's because he didn't like having his picture taken. So they hid the camera underneath like a uh a picnic cloth and then gave him some food. He sat down on a stump to eat the food, and they were like, surprise! And they lifted off the thing and took his picture.
So that's why he's like, you know, he's like, you know that look? I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's got that. He's got like he's got like food in his mouth, and he has this like, he wasn't a menacing character, but in that photo, he looks menacing because he, you know, didn't like having his picture taken so much.
Yeah, that's the look. That's the that's the what the heck are you doing there? Look. Love it. Love it.
And every part, and the reason that we talk about it all the time, people, I apologize, is that every place where I have lived or have relatives is on the Leatherman loop, right? So like I like, I feel like my whole life, I just keep kind of traveling around the Leatherman loop, but not living the Leatherman life. And for those of you that have been to this area of Connecticut Westchester in your life, it's all kind of scrubby second growth forest at this point, right? Yeah. In the 1870s and 80s, when he was doing his his leathermanning, uh, it was more recently cleared.
It had more recently been farmland, and so it would have been a different walk than it than it is now. So, like you can't, you can't relive the leather man walk just by, you know, donning some leather clothes and you know, hiking around, you know, along I-95 and down the Connecticut River. It doesn't work like that because it's just it's a whole different landscape than it used to be. Oh boy, the leather man. Uh so we have a new feature that I was forcing Jack to do, and that is he's now our roving correspondent.
What do you have for us in Food News in Mexico, Jack? Hey, can I first give us a plug and shout out for being the top 15 podcast in Apple Food rankings? That's a great accomplishment since we have the second RSS food that's pretty a struggle to get to the top of the search results. So wow, that's great. I didn't even know that was humanly possible, considering that every day I get like five tweets saying, Where'd you go?
Why'd you stop doing podcasts? And I have to say 15 on Apple surgery. I have to say, Jack, it is freaking irritating because uh somehow you have to actually go in and type a you have to go into your podcast thing and type cooking issues out full to get it. Like Google still hasn't like gotten hip to the fact yet. You know what I mean?
But copying machine and apple is a good sign. So hopefully that. So anyway, I had um my my Mexico food reports here. I may have mentioned this place once before, but I had a much fuller meal here at a place called Expendio de Nice. Um they do like a kind of street omakase thing where you just sit down and they'll keep bringing you dishes until you say stop.
Do they have the coin coined? Do they have the the the red green like the the Argentinian coin? I love those things. No, no, no. It's it's kind of elevated.
Like if it were inside, it would, it would, you know, it's like modernist in its approach. Um, however, they they have polka there, right? So it had a lot of polka. And I'm curious if you know why. How much?
I don't know, two glasses. Oh, okay. Not a little bit. A lot. They were adamant though about me not having it with beer.
They're like, no, no, you can't do that. I was like, what? No, you can't do that. Like they react. Really?
And it didn't make sense to me. Well, what what is that? I don't think that makes any physiological sense, Jack. I think it's just they wanted you to stick on poke. I think like once once you're in the pool came thing, they want you to keep doing pool cake.
I don't think I ever got into this on there. They said you could have mezcal and polque, but beer and polka. Well, that's all agave-based. Ah. Oh, we have a you have a poke story here?
Well, not a poke story, but uh similar being told what I can't do at a restaurant. I don't think I ever mentioned this. I told you when I was in Italy, you know, over the summer I went to Rome and I went to this uh this great restaurant that two of the listeners recommended and got the fried artichoke and asked for it to go with a a wedge of lemon and I was refused. They said, No, you cannot do that. Yeah.
Oh yeah, you told me about that, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and then everyone started laughing and it was uh and you're like, no, really bring me the line. Yeah, and then she didn't bring it. I didn't get the wedge of lemon.
Wow. Yeah, just adamantly refused to to get me the lemon. And uh, you know, it's like they did to me, yeah. I'm okay with them being like, Can you try without a lemon? Just try it and then I'll bring you a lemon.
You know what I mean? Yeah, no, but no, that wasn't even an option. Yeah. Yeah, no lemon, only option. People uh people are the worst.
People suck. Yeah. I don't think I think it's just uh they didn't want I don't know, it's like some sort of thing. They didn't want to mix. A lot of people are like that.
Have you ever heard my uh the the way I remember what you can do? Have you heard? Have you ever have I told you one? No. It goes like this: beer than wine, fine, liquor than wine, fine.
Liquor than beer, fine. Beer than liquor, fine. Beer then wine, fine, wine then beer, fine. Did I did I miss any combinations? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a polka wasn't on the list. You know what I mean? So it's like, but that's that's how I try to remember which combinations are okay.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh I mean, look, I I think the the the where that uh all those, what's it called? All those uh, you know, I don't want to say superstitions, but all of those like things come from the idea that if you get yourself liquored up on something lowproof and then switch to hard, you no longer have your uh full uh ability to judge what you're doing in packed, and then you go way over the edge, is probably where it is. But as long as you maintain your ability to judge this drink is a drink, this is how much alcohol I am consuming, then it doesn't matter what order you do it.
I can also eat my dinner in reverse. Can you guys eat your dinner in reverse? What do you mean start with dessert? Yeah, you don't like you can't do a reverse dinner, Joe? I have no problem doing a reverse dinner.
Yeah. You know what else I like? I like breakfast for dinner. Yeah, don't I don't do that enough. I don't know if I'd be able to do dessert, then a salad, and then the second chorus thing would have to literally be the uh the dolce, then the second, then the primi, then the antipaste.
Do you know what I appreciate a lot about what you just said, Joe? Is that is that by you're saying you can't do the full reversal, you have your salad at the end. Do you hate the American custom of the salad coming out first? Do you like your salad after the meal? I like a salad after the meal before.
I love a salad after a meal. Yeah. I love it. We never always did it, but we did occasionally do it. Well, it's like uh we never did it.
Salad was always with the meal for regular days, but on like holidays and like you know, celebration days, you'd have your main thing, then the salad would kind of like mellow your stomach out before the cheese and the and the desserts and whatnot came. My mother always did because she was like she was amazing at making this the the linguinia of angular, and then our salad came after linguine of angole. There you go. So you're like, I could have a cake when I start, but no, no, no. Not cake than salad.
I won't do that. What is it that you uh what is it that we won't do, Stas? Can't say it, right? Yeah, only when it's uh male comedian. That was all bleep, Stas.
Was it really? Yes. We bleeped again? But I don't know why you don't know. Jack did.
You did, Jack? No, no one bleeped anywhere. No one bleeped in. Jack said he was gonna bleep it out. This is the problem with doing interviews when the person's not with you.
I can't be like, it's hard when you're when you're over a thing, but somehow Nastasia somehow is bending this into me being a bad person. I don't really know how. Maybe she'll explain it to me later. Or now I don't know how this makes me a bad guy, but you know, whatever. Whatever.
Uh so uh, so how was the pool case? Delicious. The meal is incredible too. They had this this dish where they served. I don't know what kind of bug it was, because my Spanish is horrible.
I knew there are bugs. They kind of look like the roly poly, like they're kind of circular, like I don't know if those are beetles or what they are. I mean, they look like like a like a potato bug? Maybe they're like dark, small oval shaped, like kind of smooth, if that makes sense. And they were actually good, not just crunchy.
No, they were good. They added this kind of like earthiness to the dish, and they're they were crunchy. It wasn't like the like I didn't feel good, Nicky like bugs just for the sake of it. I was like, oh, it's definitely added a new flavor. I mean like honestly, I would always rather have a potato chip than a grasshopper because potato chips don't get caught between my teeth.
Like the legs that potatoes don't have don't get caught between my teeth. You know what I'm saying? I mean, do you love grasshoppers? I mean I eat them here. But do you love grasshoppers?
Are you like, oh my god, that's what I'm gonna buy a pack of? No. Yeah, I mean. Yeah. And and when someone's like, you know what?
This energy bar, it's even better because we've chummed up a bunch of grasshoppers and put it in. Are you like, oh yeah, I need that one? No. No. Yeah.
Uh but these roly pulleys, you'd be like, I want to sprinkle those on my salad again. No, I don't think I would trust myself to know how what application to use them for, but whatever dish this was, it made sense in the context of the dish. But I wouldn't be like, nah, get a big bag of those. Yeah. I had the uh the ant eggs.
Those were good, but they're kind of pricey. Yeah, those are good and pricey. Real pricey. Why are they so big? Ants aren't that big.
Why are they so big, those ant eggs? Great question. It's like, you know, you're like, oh my god, the egg, well, what's gonna come out? Ant. You know what I mean?
It's like it doesn't make sense. They're so much bigger than you'd think. How big are we talking about? Like the size of like a ro like a like row? Uh they look like a like like a small white bean.
That's big. Yeah. Yeah. Like oval shaped. Yeah.
Yeah. And uh the one time I had the ants, like the ones that are like kind of dried, they're supposedly real good. By the way, people, if you go get the ants, get them real fresh. Cause by the time that remember we tasted them on air, didn't we, Stas? Didn't we have Paul Adams over from uh from Popular Science?
And we ate, I'd saved those ants from when I was in Mexico and we ate them, and he was the only person that could eat them, not just because they were bugs, but because they're, I guess, real fatty. But I don't know. I think the fat goes rancid very, very quickly. They tasted like just straight rancid grease, like freaking grease trap. Like if you've ever worked with rancid grease in the past, you know what I'm talking about, right?
It's like, you know what I'm talking about when they don't clean out the grease crap and you got that smell, and you're expected to somehow like do prep in that room. Yep. And and people are like, oh, the guests can't smell it. The guests can't, the guests can smell it. They can smell that.
I don't know. I I mean Paul on again. We haven't seen him in a while. It was his birthday last weekend. Yeah.
Um, by the way, if you were listening live on Patreon, call your questions in too. 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. Uh, so you're not gonna have a cake tonight for your birthday, huh? I don't know.
Maybe. What's your what's your favorite uh what's your favorite birthday dessert? I don't know. No, no real favorite dessert. I don't know.
I'm gonna go to Ernesto's tonight's or whatever they have on the dessert menu. Yeah, in my neighborhood. I know, yeah. Right across the street, basically. Yeah, you can work on a Kickstarter.
Ernie's Ernie's Ernie's toes. Ernie's toes. Yeah. Uh or I call it sometimes I call it Burton Ernesto's, sometimes I call it Ernie's Toes. Okay.
Uh by the way, big shout out to those people at Ernesto's, which is a fine dining uh establishment uh on the corner of Samuel Dixtein Plaza. Well, I forgot the name of what they actually, but that's the actual plaza, and East Broadway, not Broadway. East Broadway. East Broadway. You know how many times a tourist shows up at like right outside my house and is like, this is Broadway?
And I'm like, uh, no, this is East Broadway. Have you seen Mr. Robot? More like that. You know what I mean?
Like, not like, yeah, not Broadway. Uh so big shout out to them. They know why. Uh, but their service was super on point when I was there last time. Life savers.
And if any of them ever listened to this program, they know why. Thank you, Ernesto's. Uh right. Yeah. And our uh our good friend, uh, what day of the week is it?
Tuesday. Oh. I don't think uh we have a good friend who uh works bar there. Oh. A artisanal dice maker, Robert Saxey.
Oh. Yeah. Is he doing that with Karen? Yes, Karen Stanley and Robert Saxe. You can look them up.
Does anyone know the name of their company, their artisanal dice corporation? Death Rattle. Death Rattle is a good name for an artisanal Dungeons and Dragons dice menu. And uh Robert Saxey is uh always kind of the most confounding person for Nastasia Lopez to deal with because he he can. So we haven't talked about it in a while, so I feel like it's okay.
Nastasia Lopez likes bananograms. She likes bananograms. And by the way, so do I. It is a good game. Bananagrams, bananograms is like less boring scrabble.
Would you say that's accurate? Because it's fast, it's all it's over pretty quick. Nastasia has certain uh rules about it. For instance, uh, what do you hate in bananograms, Tess? Two that are words uh with Q.
Like key. Yeah. You hate that. Oh, yeah. Hates it.
She hates all two-letter words, in fact. No, that's not true. If someone pulls an or an atweak, yeah, right. Sometimes it's neat. But you don't, but you will not allow a two-letter Q word.
Yeah. There's another specific one you hate too, right? I forget. I forget what it is. No, I can't think of it.
But Robert was at my house last weekend and we played on the lawn, like the lawn bananograms. He won. So, yes, of course he did. He always beats you. He always beats everybody.
But the thing that pisses Nastasia off the most about it. Cheating. Well, no. Well, like we have a different friend who cheated, and was it you that flipped the table or he flipped the table? I flipped the table.
Yeah. Nastasia actually flipped the table on this table. What's his name? Um I'm not gonna call someone out that you flip the table on. Why?
I will. All right. Daniel Krieger. Yeah. You know, food photographer.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This he would did he do a two-letter against the rule or did he. He was throwing letters underneath the table that he didn't like.
And he just flipped the table. Drop one, pick three, people. Drop one, pick three. Them's the rules. Yeah.
Uh anyways, but the reason Nastasia gets perturbed by Robert is Robert has developed this ability to be completely placid as he is working. And Nastasia is much more used to people like me who are loud and like we yell at each other back and forth when we're bananogramming. You know what I mean? You're in my area, you're in my space! Like, like like Nastasia is the queen of building her bananogram, like like letters, like encroaching on the other thing.
Oh my gosh, do you know what we have next Friday? Are you gonna be able to go to the whole thing? Wait, I only know about the one thing. Billy Joel? It's rich girl.
No, sorry, that thing we're all knows. Yeah, my brain just went off for a second. But yeah, we're gonna go see Billy Joel, right? What's the rest of it? Well, are you able to stay for the whole concert?
How do you stay for half of a Billy Joel concert? Your Dave Arnold. You gotta cook dinner. I mean, like Billy Joel is Billy Joel. Okay.
Oh, I know what we'll do. Instead, let's get a job working at a non-alcoholic vegan juice shop. Yeah, no, let's do it. Because that's what we did last time when we were supposed to see Billy Joel. No, and then we were supposed to see him last year, remember?
Or why we were planning on it and then COVID. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Like that's the worst thing that happened because of the pandemic, right? Yeah. Uh all right. Let's do some questions, people. Uh Bra wait, dude.
Do you have any more on your corn table? Wait, one of the tickets is water got waterlogged, so I don't know if it works. Well, I mean, it's not a machine. The barcode is off. Oh, geez, Louise.
We're gonna have some issues. You know what? This totally checks out. If listen, if anyone who can hear my voice in the next week works at the garden, right? If any of you work at the garden and can help us with our barcode issues, let reach out to John and see whether or not somebody out here knows how to be like, that's a legit ticket.
That's legit. It got sunfaded and then like toilet water dripped on it from the toilet water. There was enough for that's what we're dealing with, Dave. Why is this not surprising? This is the worst.
This is the worst. Listen, listen, people. You can tweet a photo of it. Listen, listen to me, people. If the toilet is clogged, wait, don't immediately flush again.
No, no, no. It did it overnight. Like it overflowed overnight while I was sleeping. Oh, it's a rear tank. Yeah.
Oh, that's slightly less gross than it's a rear tank overflow is, you know, not user error. Although it's not never supposed to flow that fast because the overflow tube must have gotten uh you know that house. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I wonder. Oh never mind. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna think anymore, but I'm just thankful. Uh my roommate in college once did what we called pooping through the ceiling, where you know when you go to somebody's house and you clog up their toilet, right? And for whatever reason, they don't have a plunger right there.
You want to take care of it right away. This is why in your house, you should always in your guest bathroom have a visible plunger and brush. Listen to me, people. You want to be a good host. You think it's making sure that you have enough wine, have that too.
But in the bathroom, make sure there is a brush so they don't have to leave streaks on your toilet and be embarrassed, and make sure there's a plunger there. Agree with me? Yep, definitely. Yeah. So he he clogs Yeah, right?
So he clogs the toilet, and then he he can't find the plunger. And so he doesn't wait long enough for the drop-down before he hits the second flush. It goes out of the toilet and then threw a light fixture on the first floor. So it's dripping filth toilet water through this person's light fixture onto their dining room table in that, like, and we call that pooping through the ceiling. And I think of Lionel Richie whenever I, whenever I it's what a feeling when you're pooping through the ceiling.
That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Wait, Joe, did you have a story relating to that? I heard someone say something.
No, no, no. I just kept thinking about the upper decker, but I've never actually fully seen one happen. Yeah, I don't find that like, I don't find that to be a good joke. I don't think you should do if if anyone does that in my house, I will never speak to you again. And I don't have the power to kind of like harm people's career in any way, but if I could, I would.
To me, like upper decking me is like, don't ever do that. Joe, Joe, did you do you know about the Dave's vacuum? No, I don't know. Tell us about your vacuum, please. Short, short version.
Go. But we told that on the on that other network. Just do it. This short version. So I have a robot vacuum.
Her name is Xiaomi. Is it the Rumba? No, no, no, no. Come on, man. Like Rumba is like three times the price for the So you buy this one from China, Xiaomi, and it's got all the same features, but it doesn't work unless you tell it.
You gotta tell Xiaomi that you live in mainland China, but speak English, and then it works. If you try to tell it that you live in America, it's like I'm not an American vacuum. I can't work here. Sorry. But if you tell it, yes, I do live in mainland China, I just only speak English.
Then it works fine. So I have this, like, and the reason I like it is that like the super expensive Roomba has LIDAR. You guys know what LIDAR is, right? It's the laser radar thing that it's the you know, yeah. It's like in the new iPhones, it's it's fantastic.
Anyway, so I like it because it has LIDAR and it like measures your room. It's not like room, the old roombas are all random. They're just like, ah, did I vacuum here? I don't know. I'm stupid.
And then it just keeps going over everything. Anyway, turns out that a vacuum cleaner that knows where it's going is actually irritating because it knows it hasn't vacuumed a spot where your foot is. And when you're trying to cook in the kitchen, it keeps on going, bang, bang, bang, bang, right into your foot because it's like I haven't cleaned under your foot yet. It's like just get the programming a little better and make it make okay. Anyway, here's the thing: the light are a little too high to see dog poop.
So what happens is my son Booker, who walks the small dog because small dog Watson, right? It's easier to control. So Dax is controlling my big dog major. They go out, and Booker, like basically, basically drags Watson like he's a crumpled up piece of aluminum foil, just drags him around the block and brings him back into the house, and he hasn't pooped yet. I'm like, Booker did Watson poop, yep, and then that's it.
He goes in his room, shuts his door. Watson, meanwhile, small dog, he can't hold it in forever. He's a small dog. So he poops on the floor, and uh and peas, because who can who can poop without pin? In the bathroom, right?
In in the bathroom, in the bathroom. So thank you, Watson. Not on the carpet. Xiaomi is like, I haven't vacuumed in the uh, I haven't vacuumed in the in the bathroom yet. Boom!
Inhales all of the pee in the dog poop into the vacuum and then starts like spraying. No, I think Xiaomi. Didn't Xiaomi close the door in the bathroom too. So you walked it. And it's just like maybe.
I don't know. All I remember is like, what's that smell? What's that? What's that smell? And then you open the door and it's like, you know what I mean?
Because how do you fix that? I hear the new roombas have the technology to avoid that. They have the poop poop avoidance. Yes. They have a little, they have a little nose in front of them.
They're like, nah, I'm vacuuming that. Yeah. I don't do poop. I don't do poop. Well, real quick, while we're on the topic of bodily functions and all that, people want to know was your story last week about peeing in the ice hotel a true story or a hypothetical.
I did not pee in the ice hotel. I don't know, but was that did you experience that? I'll say this. That is not hypothetical. Okay, there we go.
Yeah, that is a true story. Yeah. It turns out that if you go to an ice hotel, even though the sucker is made of ice and ice is theoretically free. If you pee on one of their pre-sculpted blocks, they carve it out and they charge you for that. For the for the uh, you know, repair work on the on the ice hotel.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. You casvari.
You casvari Sweden. Uh all right. So from Brady Vickers. Last weekend I did a pitchfork fondue for a crowd. I used strip steaks.
All right. Uh, what do you guys think? Thought think of about the strip steak. What's your feeling on the strip versus the rib? I'm not sure.
I'm not the biggest fan of the strips steak. I like a strip steak. If someone serves me a strip steak, I'm like, oh, I like strip steak. I'll take a skirt stick over a strip steak. Really?
Love skirt. You like them chewy, huh? I like the butt. What is it? The the the upper flank.
Hanger is my favorite cut. Really? So yeah. Give me give me the give me the French term. Isn't that the same as onglais?
Onglets, yeah, yeah. Onglets, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So save again. It sounds like it.
Onglets. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stas, you're a you're you're a rib, right? You're not a strip, you're a rib. I don't know what I am.
I don't know. Really? Mm-hmm. I don't know. The pandemic's really like blunted your meat sense.
That's true. Used to be you put a steak in front of Anastasia, she dri dives into it like it, like it's a pool. She's like, ah, steak. And then the pandemic happens, and she's like, I don't even know what kind of steak I like anymore. I'm beyond steak.
What is steak? What is steak really? Like it's a chopped-up cow. What about you, Jack? What's your what's your steak?
Ribeye. Yeah, I'm a rib out of that. I like a ribeye. And it's poisoned my mind as to how to cook other cuts because all the cuts cook differently. So all the people that give recommendations based on their like extreme knowledge of one cut, kind of give bad advice when it comes to the other cuts.
This is uh whatever, I have to deal with that later. Okay. I use strip steaks. I vacuum bagged and cooked them low temperature at 54 degrees Celsius. Do the uh do the uh conversion for me there, uh John on the computer, for about two hours.
For service, they were dropped into a fryer for about two minutes, then plated and served with a ribbon fries. Guests started cutting into their steaks, and the steaks are gray from edge to edge. I know they will bloom to a nice red color, but the guest doesn't know that. When they first cut into the steak, they think it is massively overcooked. That would be a good band, massive overcooking.
Or is that an album? It's an album, right? Massive attack is what makes me think of it. Anyway, uh massively overcooked. Is there a way to avoid this when doing low temp for insurance like this?
Uh from Brady Brickers. Okay. 129. Okay. Uh, that's fine.
Skirts, uh, listen, strip steak, rather, has a tendency to uh has a tendency to kind of, I think, kind of go gray and like go a few shades lower, and you don't have time for it to, as you say, cherry up. What I would do for you is depending on how thick your steak is, I think you should do 45 minutes at at 54 and then drop it to like 52 and let it ride. That's gonna preserve the color a lot better on the myoglobin straight out of the bag. So something that's been cooked up to 54, make sure it gets you know up there because that's the texture that you want, and then drop and ridden at 52 Celsius, which that's can you look that up? I forget what that is.
Like that is gonna preserve that color on the inside uh even better. 125. 125. Also, um two minutes on a deep fry is a long time unless the steak is gone like almost all the way cold, right? So, like, and the difference between like a 45 second deep fry on something that's warm and like a two-minute deep fry on something that's warm is like a huge difference because like on a 45 second fry, you're maybe pushing the the center core temperature up of your of your one-inch steak like two, three degrees.
So you're taking it from 52 back to 54 without a lot of uh you know, color change. But if you're pulling it at 54 and then dropping it into that, you're you're pulling it up to like 57 in that range, and so it's gonna look greater. It still won't taste overcooked because you don't have enough time to drive the moisture out of it. So it's still gonna taste fine. But I think you decreasing your fry time unless it's cold or room temperature, in which case fine.
A two-minute fry is fine, right? But uh if you're if you're talking about one that is still almost at service temperature, that's a long time to fry. And I would the drop to 52 and then a drop to 50 before you do your fry, right? So I would drop it from 54 to to get to your temperature, 52 for the ride, that's gonna preserve color, and then drop it to 50 for the fry, and then edge your fry down to uh to like a little bit lower, like 45. Another trick, if you know you're gonna do a lot of them, is um you can, and this is gonna make you not reabsorb as much juice, but it will drive the temperature down.
If you really want that look of a two-minute fry, if you just throw them into water for the same amount of time that you fry them, they about equal each other out. So, and speaking of water, if you're gonna deep fry a steak, uh, I've spoken about this on air, but I actually did it again very recently. If you watch, uh I think you should leave season two, they have a thing called sloppy steaks where they pour water all over their steaks on the they cut them up, they get them, they pour water all over their steaks at the steak. Season two of what? I think you should leave.
Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. So it's like, it's it's like Tim, he plays this character who says that he's like a big what used to be a big POS with slick back hair and like tight jeans and like sloppy steaks and like you know, all this other stuff. And so they make up this thing called sloppy steaks, which he says is ridiculous, where they order the steaks at a steakhouse, they then take the water from their water glasses and pour it all over their plates and like start eating it, right? But it turns out that when you're deep frying uh meats, uh those flavors that are characteristic of that high temperature uh fry oil in things with batters and breadings or French fries, where we associate that with kind of goodness, you don't associate that with goodness when it comes to a steak.
So you associate it with tasting fried because of that thin layer of fry oil that's on the outside. Whereas the, it's actually a a great way to do it from a crust perspective. So listen to this. This is gonna sound horrible, but it really, really works. Just rinse them off.
Fry it, rinse them off, slice them, salt them, oil them, or butter them and out. If you really, if this really makes you nervous, then rinse them with beef broth. You know, just like ladle some beef beef broth over it. You just want to get that thin layer of fry oil off. I haven't done a side-by-side ever on rinsing it with beef versus rinsing with water.
I've done both and they they both work. You don't want to do it like a long time, but like literally just like drag it through water to get that oil off the surface, pat it dry, slice it, salt it. Uh you know, I'm an olive oil on steak. Are you guys butter on steak or olive oil on steak? Either.
Depends, I guess. Yeah, same. So I so I made I did sloppy steaks over the weekend, and I uh I for the first time I had some pesto left over. I've never served, I always do chimichuri style stuff. I'd never done pesto.
I'm not a fan of all of the of all of the uh the parmigiano and the pesto with the with the steak. Not a fan. The rest of the family was okay with it. What do you guys think? Pesto with steak.
Doesn't work, right? Chimichuri great, pesto not so great, right? Yeah. Okay, fine. It just wasn't what I wanted.
Yeah. I was like, oh, it looks like chimichuri. I'm gonna be so happy. And then I wasn't. Yeah.
Uh speaking of over the weekend and deep frying, I did sloppy steaks. And the other thing I did was so every day when I'm walking down Canal Street, or most days, I pass by. For those of you that don't live in New York, we have all of these uh like these delis and bodegas that have signs with just like giant white block letters saying the names of foods. You guys know what I'm talking about? It'll say like pizza, bagel.
So, like when I lived when I lived uptown, there was one that said ice cream donut. There's never any punctuation. They just have like lists of words, right? So I was like, ice cream donut. And so, like the very first, one of the very first things I made when I got my first professional deep fryer 20 something years ago, whatever in the 90s, was uh so well more than 20 years ago now, was uh ice cream donut where I made the fried the donuts and then I jammed them full of ice cream.
And it was because of this sign that I constantly pass. So there's this other sign that I pass, and it and it says, it says, pizza fried chicken. I'm like, pizza fried chicken. Ooh, what does that mean? Pizza fried chicken.
I was like, you can't, there's no such thing as pizza fried. There's chicken fried. So I was like, maybe they just got it backwards, and it's supposed to be chicken fried pizza. And then so I was imagining taking a slice of pizza and battering it and frying it, like you know, Mo did in, you know, in the Simpsons. But then I was like, yeah, it wouldn't work so much.
I don't think I would like that very much. But I was like, but what's fried? Panzerati's, you know, and some calzones are fried. What if I chicken fried that sucker? And so on Sunday I made chicken fried calzone, and it was um wah, it was a delicious.
It was so good. It was so good. But I'm wondering whether I should go buy me some meat glue and instead of doing calzone, do actual chicken skin or adhere chicken skin to the outside of the calzone and have all three layers, right? So if you go to my Instagram, it's the last thing I posted was the chicken fried uh calzone. The one thing I would change over what I did was I would lower the oil temperature a little bit and cook it a little bit longer.
Slight, slight bit of doughess in between the layer of the cheese and the uh and the and the and the and the bread. Uh anyway. Okay. This is from uh Kim Yardi Ferrer. Uh I want to do a mid-sized turkey slow roasted in a tightly sealed bag to falling off the bone tenderness.
What temperature and how many hours do you recommend to achieve this result? My guess is 12 hours at 90 degrees Celsius, but this is just a guess. I also plan to brine at 3% and sear uh before and after roasting uh with my Searzal. Okay, listen. If you're in a bag, I'm trying to figure out exactly what you mean by roasting.
You mean like in an oven in like a bag bag? Is that like are we talking like low temperature, low temperature sous v? I'm not sure what we're talking about, right? Well you can give her both. Well, so here's the issue, right?
So, like turkey legs, confit are great. Turkey leg confit is great. Any of you guys any of you guys ever do the mock asabuko with the turkey legs? No. No.
Oh, it's real good, real cheap. So, like uh, like you get the the the turkey legs and they they cross-slice them, you know, get someone to do it for you on a uh, what's it called? Bandsaw, and you use the big pieces, right? And then you uh braise them as though they're asabucos. So you, you know, you flash them off and then you do the braise, and then you pull the tendons out after they're cooked, which makes your life like a whole heck of a lot easier.
I grew up eating ase, like asebuka is one of my favorites. So then when I when I, you know, was out of college and we had no money, I couldn't afford because the price of the veal shanks had already gone like kind of through the roof at that point. This is like 30 years ago. And so we started doing it with turkey legs. And so we always had this kind of mock asabuko with uh with turkey legs.
But turkey legs respond very well to kind of long cooking. So you wouldn't need nine, that's what I'm trying to think. Like I would never, I've never done oven roasting of anything at that low of a of a temperature. I don't know. I don't even know what that would do, right?
So if you're talking like in an I just don't even know what that would do. Like if you're talking about bagging it, 12 hours is a long, long, long, long time to be cooking the breast meat of a of a bird. Now, if you want the the breast to be the breast will get fibery, right? So the turkey breast wants to be cooked somewhere between 62 and 63 or 4 Celsius. That's where the turkey breast wants to be in that range between 60 and 64.
The longer you cook it, the lower the temperature wants to be. Okay. And what happens is is that it just gets fibry. So you chew it and it's not dry, but it just has this kind of fibery kind of texture. Um the leg wants to be at about 55 to 56.
But if you cook it at that low temperature, it's always going to be kind of red, almost kind of no matter how long you cook it, even for several hours. So you're kind of in between a rock and a hard place there. So a lot of people will inject the breast with brine, which is helpful, right? Uh, but it's hard to get the leg exactly where you want it and the breast exactly where you want it. So at if you did it low temperature, you could get the legs tenderized, but at 90 Celsius, that turkey breast is going to be hammered.
Hammered. Uh maybe someone in the Discord can uh maybe someone in the Discord has done this style before. I haven't done it exactly like this. Also check the cookingissues.com for old turkey cooking practices. Yeah, but that's all I mean.
Yeah, no, no, no. No one does the robotic. No, no, but it's still a good idea to get times and temperatures and things like that. It's a good starting point. We do have an interesting question in the Discord, Dave from Slim Joe.
Okay. What's up with the new Searsol? Well, uh, that's a good question. So get ready, people for the Sears All Pro. Yeah, we're gonna release in a in uh in a week or two.
Uh we're gonna do a crowdfund. Uh which platform we're using, John? Indiegogo. Indiegogo. Uh, because apparently it's better for things like this.
Correct than Kickstarter, yes. Yeah. So you gotta tell here's what here's what it does. Here's what it does. So one of the things uh that you know a lot of people were like, I like the Sears all, but it's a little bit small, right?
And I like the Sears all, but like I'm gonna use map gas and it burns out, right? So what we did was we made a Sears all with 50% more surface area on the front, right? So 50% more searing area. Now, if you use that with your with on propane, right? Like the the regular Searzol, one of the reasons not to use map gas on a Searsol 1.0 is it'll completely burn it.
The other reason not to use map gas on a Searsol uh one is that it just overfires the Searsol, and you're actually throwing away all that extra heat. This the Sears All Pro can take advantage of map gas, and it's hotter than the Sears All one and also more even because we have this, we completely redesigned it. It's got a cone-shaped screen on the inside, and that cone-shaped screen spreads the heat out evenly, even though this unit is actually sh like more squat. It's it's actually a smaller cone, right, than the Searsol one. And the reason we did that is because it's no higher, it's no higher off of the ground than the old one is.
I didn't want to increase the tipping hazard of it. So it's the same weight as the old Searsol, it's the same height as the old Sears all, but it's just a lot shorter with 50% more searing area, and it uses map gas and it screams. And do you have to pre-season it? You do not have to pre-season it, John, because we're pre-baking all the insulation, and you can use it straight out of the box. So you use it straight out of the box, no pre-seasoning.
You can put it directly on your old torch. We recommend using map gas with it or map pro just because to take advantage of that extra surface area, you you know, you want to move up to map. If you use propane on it, it sears at a it's bigger, but it sears at about the same rate as the as the Gen 1 Searsole. But when you put the map on that thing, it screams. It's so baller when you're when you're using it.
We also changed the front face angle of it slightly, so it's a little bit easier on your wrist. We're gonna be selling our own torches so that you won't have to give the burn somatic money just to give us money. Uh um, and and we're working on it. We're almost 100% sure. For those of you that are listening in Europe or Asia, we're gonna do an isopro version.
Uh so you know, that's camping gas for those who don't know what isopro is. It's not the not the propane camping gas, but the ones that like jet boil uses, and that's a much easier tank to source worldwide than the map gas and propane cylinders uh that that we use. Uh anything else I'm leaving out on that uh Sears All Pro? No, that's it. I think that covers it all.
Yeah. Sears All Pro. And it really just like, I was like, how much better can it be? And then like, you know, with map, right? Oh, yeah.
I mean, yeah. If you go on Booker and Dax's uh Instagram account, you could take a look. There's a of uh infrared, and John didn't really say much about it on the on the account, but you can see an IR image of the pro versus the regular, and it's like it's just like a lot more a lot more, yeah, a lot more even, a lot more, a lot more heat coming out out of the front of that thing, which just means it's also uh I think John, you like this fact, it's the same size as most burger patties. That's true. It's great.
Yeah, yeah. Melt your cheese in one go. Yeah. Perfect. Yep.
And it's just so much faster. It is, yeah. It really is just so much faster. Uh so anyway, keep your eye out for that because when we launch that sucker, we need people to buy it so that other people are like, we need people who know us to buy it, because then people who don't know us will be like, well, this other person bought it, so maybe I should buy it. Exactly.
Yeah, all your friends have get everyone excited. Because what happens if uh people don't buy it, Sas? We won't make it. Here's the thing if you don't buy it, we don't exist anymore. Yeah, I mean, we we're not gonna Well, the show will exist.
Well, no, who knows? Who knows? Dire times, dire times, not dire wolves, not dire straight, not dire straits. Do I like dire straits? Yeah, yeah, you know the new John Mayer album.
Yeah, sounds a lot like Dire Straits. Really? Like Brothers in Arms era? Money for nothing, shakes for free. I like dire straits.
A lot of people my age hate on the dire straits. Weird. I don't know what it is. They're like, you're like, oh, did you like dire straits? They're like, nah, nah.
What? Do you like them, Joe down. Harsh traits? Yeah. Um, I don't love all their tracks.
I love that song Lions. I don't know it. Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. But not a big fan. No? You don't like his uh guitar style. He's not a Knopfler fan.
Mark Knopfler. Noodley. Oh, you hate the noodle? I don't love the noodle so much. Wow.
Yeah. I do like the noodle, but I don't love his style of noodle. Not his particular noodling. Okay. I'd take like a Jerry Garcia noodle over Mark Knopfler's noodle.
Yeah, I wouldn't. Yeah, me neither. I was like, the thing about Knopfler is like he seems like he's like a little bit of a jerk in his the way he sings, which I kind of like that a little bit. Like not like pavement level jerky, although he wasn't a jerk to me in real life. Uh Malcolm?
Yeah. He was actually quite nice to me in real life. I used to listen to him and be like, I love this. I bet he's a jerk. You know what I mean?
I always got a little bit of that. Like the whole like the whole like anti-consumerism, money, you know, the custom kitchen delivery. I was like, he's a little bit of a dick, probably, Knopfler. Yeah. But I like that stuff.
Anyway. By the way, I'm gonna take something back I've been saying for years. I'm not gonna take it back, but I'm gonna moderate what I've been saying for years. For years, like decades, for 30 years, more than 30 years. I have said to anyone that listens that Michael Stipe is a butthead.
Like I've said it to anyone who listened to me. I'm like, Michael Stipe, butthead. I'm gonna go ahead and take it back. He might have been having a bad day the time I met him. He might have been having a bad day.
Heard an interview with him, and I know you can sound nice on an interview, but he seemed, and maybe it's just because he's older, and you know, when I met him, he was still, you know, like 30 or you know, whatever. You know what I mean? Maybe I judged him too harshly. Is he more? Is you think more or less of a dick than Moby?
I mean, isn't I've never met Moby, isn't he just sanctimonious? He's just hungry. It's like this is the new Stas thing. Just like it was like all out of nowhere, just be like, BAM! He's vegan.
Yeah, I know why. Yeah, yeah. But I'm like, but it's like that's like the new Stas thing. So it's like out of nowhere, one zing per show. I like it.
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's accurate, right? He's just like, I used to listen to some Moby tracks though. Everyone listened to some. There was that era in like in like 2000.
2000. When everyone was like, I want to listen to Moby now. You know what I mean? That was a good album. Because he got it here.
He got all his rights because of the, you know, the Jason Bourne soundtrack. Oh, I don't remember. I didn't have it in that. Oh, God, that's a terrible song. Wow.
I forget the one I used to listen to, but it was the time, everyone was like, it was like the entire world was just Moby and Sade. Everything in the world was Moby and Sade. And and right, you remember this, Stas? Is this when you were at MTV? Yeah.
Maybe it was just my Napster. That was what it was filled with. Oh my God. I feel so bad. Oh, well, I don't.
No, what am I stupid? No. I I wish, I hope everyone in their life has the feeling that people my age had when Napster happened. Because it was like, I don't know what it would be the equivalent of, but imagine scrimping and saving to try to buy new music all the time and like having it be so much work to get new music and like never having all of these, like access to these songs that you used to have when you were a kid. And then all of a sudden someone's like, it's all free.
It's all free. It's all there. It's all free. It's all free right now. You can have it right now.
And I was like what I stayed in front of my and when we used to dial up the internet you used to have this thing called modem which was like an actual telephone and it would go when you would be downloading and then you get a call and then it would be Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah cut off. Yeah yeah yeah yeah and I I don't remember this but like at the end was there a way to turn off your call waiting so it wouldn't hose your modem did they have a house not in my house. So you're like yeah anyway so like we would download all these songs and it would take like like 20 minutes to download one song. By the way that was Spam Risk calling me our good friend Spam Risk. Uh so anyway so like the joy I know I was stealing but the joy of having all of that music at your fingertips is something I'll never forget ever.
Just like that that I mean wow uh right two minutes. This is from Tyler Hodges. Uh hey Dave Nastasia Jack John Joe and anyone else that's it that's all we are uh do you have any specific times and temperature recommendations for cooking a pheasant low temperature sous vide would it be similar enough to other poultry or significantly different because it is wild game. Thanks I've been listening for years and really enjoy the current version of the show. Tyler well thanks uh say pheasant in French for me I love that.
Pheasant yeah physant. Uh so pheasant is an interesting bird. Uh I guess it depends on whether you're shooting it. I think most people who shoot the pheasant when you actually pluck it you end up ruining the skin so the skin comes off and you don't have it with the skin. Pheasant is a delicious bird.
John, you like it. Yep. Love it. Yeah. The breast on a pheasant tends to be whiter than the than the breast on like a lot of other gamey birds.
And so most people, when they're low-temping pheasant, do it to a temperature closer to chicken, right? So the the whiter the breast is, the closer you shade towards chicken. And the uh the redder it is, that you shade even below duck, right? So the the order of temperatures that I would do for birds is I would do uh squab the lowest at like almost like 55, especially because when you crisp the skin up on a squab, it's gonna jack the temperature up. 55, 56.
Uh, duck, 57. Uh, then like I don't really do anything at like 58, 59. I've pheasant, I would probably do like 61, 62 around where chicken is. And turkey, I usually do it like 62, 63 for the breath for the breast. Now, the problem with pheasant legs is that they're always going to be kind of tough, right?
Have you ever had a pheasant leg that really rendered out? No. No. Pheasant leg's always going to be a little bit tough. So, you know, a lot of times what I'll do is I'll uh break down uh and I'll you'll you'll treat the the two parts of the animal differently.
And I know that that's not as nice as doing it, but the I think the ideal way to do that is to leave the breast as a double split, like press it open and take the legs off so that you have at least that kind of heart-shaped double breast flattened out in the bag. Take the hard bones off of the outside so they don't puncture the bag. And then the best way to do it really is to rip all of the bones out and then re- so you take those bones, roast the bones. Listen to me, roast the bones, then take whatever your standard kind of volai stock is that you have there, you know, your whatever your standard bird birdie stock is, and then reinforce that stock with the roasted bones from the pheasant. Hear me, you with me?
And the easiest way to do that again is in a bag because you don't need that much liquid. So you can put the the roasted bones in a bag. Be careful not to puncture it. You don't want to vacuum it, along with a small amount of stock and like whatever else you're you're you're adding to reinforce it, you know, berries, spices, whatever, and then poach that stock with the pheasant bones as a reinforcement and then low temp the breast and then go higher temp on the legs in a bag and then reassemble uh, you know, crisp off the skin and reassemble. And I think that's gonna make you happy, right?
Yep, sounds good. Gotta go. All right, we got one. Happy birthday done. Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Oh, well, James Stewart, uh James Stewart wrote in, I gotta get this because he's Patreon stuff. Gotta do it. Uh, you mentioned a week ago on the podcast that you were having trouble cooking grits in your rice cooker with milk. I agree that grits should be done with milk, and I found a good way to do it with my Zoji Rushi. He has the pressure three though.
I want man, I want the you know what? Jen was like, what are you guys' thoughts on on using the Teflon pan after the Teflon starts coming off? Does it make you nervous? Doesn't make me nervous, but it makes Jen nervous. Doesn't make me nervous.
It makes Jen nervous. She's like, You should get a new bowl. I'm like, Jen, a new bowl is a hundred dollars. Maybe I should get a new Zoji Rushi. But there's I have a certain honor in the fact that my Zoji Rushi is so old and it's still working, but I do want the pressure.
Anyway, uh I use Anson Mill uh Mill's yellow grits. I prefer the flavor. I use white when cooking bacon rack wrapped shrimp and grits with red eye gravy. I rinse the rinse the normal way, uh, and then I cook with water and a little salt on the 66 minute steel-cut oatmeal setting. Otherwise, yeah, the milk explodes.
Um, so anyway, so like that's the trick. I don't have an oatmeal setting on my Zoji Rushi because maybe it's 20 years old that they didn't they didn't have it. Uh, and then he says, Whose grits uh do you use or prefer? Uh and Jamie just moved back to uh, oh, from Brooklyn to Ohio. That's Nastasia's favorite place, Ohio.
Uh, I like the um it's now called uh Marsh Marsh Hen, right? That mill. I love a Gitchy boy. Yeah, I like their Jimmy Red uh a lot. I like Anson Mills.
In fact, the one that exploded what was Anson Mills uh white. I had Anson Mills white and it exploded. Uh and another thing I've been grinding my own. If you can go buy Bloody Butcher, oh my goodness, if you want to grind your own grits, uh, what you do is you do a coarse grind and then you sift it out and let all the fines go through and just keep the coarse stuff, and you can make your own grits if you have uh a grain mill. Cooking issues.
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