Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on New Stan Studios from Rockefeller Center in New York City. Joined as usual with Nastasia of the Hammer. Lopez, how are you doing? Good.
Yeah? Mm-hmm. Ah, nice. All right, sweet. I can't wait.
I can't wait. We got uh well, we'll go through who we got, and I'll tell you what I can't wait for. We got we got John, got John. He's uh we've we've switched position. Nastasi's in the John position, and because we didn't know Nastasia was gonna be here because we pushed till later in the in the thing.
Anyway, so we're glad to have both people. But how you doing, John? Doing great, thanks. Yeah? Yep.
Yeah. We got uh, of course, uh as usual on the controls, Joe Hazen. How you doing? Oh, doing great, guys. How are you?
And for the last time as our roving Mexican correspondent, we have Jackie Molecules live from where you where are you? Mexico City or Oaxaca again? Oaxaca, still in Mahaca. Last day in Mexico. Oh, last day in Mexico.
It's gonna run. Let me ask you a question. Oh, uh, if you're listening live on Patreon, call in your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. Uh, before I ask you this, Jack, here's what I'm happy about.
The next time I see Nastasia Lopez, it'll be Christmas hat time. And I wait all year for the Lopez Christmas hat. It's true. And are you gonna are you gonna just be mean to me, withhold the Christmas hat this year? No.
Next Tuesday. It's it's more important for her to have the Christmas hat than it is to make me sad. I like that. That's strong. Didn't you get me the Christmas hat?
No, I'll remember I was gonna get No, I don't know. You had it and you lost it for like a month It was in a suitcase. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You lost it for a short period of time, and I saw it and I didn't know you had lost it, and I'll I sent you a picture of it, and I was like, and then you were like, Did you buy it? I was like, no, why?
I lost mine. Remember, I was like, we were all like, we were both super sad, and I went back and it was gone. They didn't have any more of them. And so maybe it was Mark's. I can't remember.
Yeah, it's the best hat. Doesn't light up, doesn't need to. No. What are your thoughts? What are your general thoughts on lit?
Literally lit, not like lit, like the kids say, like lighted sweaters. Like them. You like them? Mm-hmm. At the appropriate party, I think.
I.e. an ugly sweater party. Yeah. I don't go to I mean, I'm not invited to those kinds of people. No, you're invited to things, you just don't go.
What? You just never have anything, actually. That's not the case. Okay. This is your theory of May.
John. He did something last night. Oh really? What'd you do? Uh there was a I don't know what it's called, Friends.
Look, Montenegro. Friendsgiving. Okay. Uh Montenegro bought out uh pouring ribbons for the night. So I went there and got to see.
It's weird. I've it's like I've seen like a lot of bar people. There have been a bunch of bar events recently. So uh you know, I go out, I was like, wow, it feels like an actual community again. Strange.
Strange. Uh okay. Oh, you know who's who we might see is Nick Coleman, olive oil man. Oh yeah? Soon.
Uh sometime. On the show? Not well, I could have invited him on today, but then that would have been a wasted opportunity. What do you mean? To take oil home?
I'm he's giving me oil for Thanksgiving. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So uh if you guys are interested, uh Nastasi was like, we could get him on, and then I'm like, yeah, let's get him on. Because like the what this guy does is he travels around the world looking for awesome olives, right? Uh uh olive oils, then buys them all from particular producers and then distributes them under his own own brand. It's called Grove and Vine. And it comes in magnums and now in like boxed wine magnum.
I like a boxed wine. Well, it's not it boxed olive oil, whatever. But I love boxed oil. Boxed olive oil is though is is money in the bank, right? Because it never has to see anything.
It never gets expensive. Buy that as your Christmas gift for people because it's everyone loves olive oil. But just to give you an idea to go back to what Nastasi said earlier that I don't go out or do anything. Nastasia says we should get him on the show. And I'm like, yes, do it.
And then she'll be like, Dave, why don't you want him on the show? I'm like, I said yes, do it. I said let's get him on the show. Well, we're booked like through the year. So yeah, he's gonna come on.
Uh okay, so back to back to uh Jackie Molecules in Oaxaca. Have you in in anticipation of Thanksgiving time, have you had any delicious uh Wajalote turkey dishes while you're in Mexico? Yes, absolutely. Talk to us about them a little bit. Go go full waxalote on just like a big turkey leg in in a pool of mole.
That's basically the entire dish. I think they called it fiesta mole. And um, I guess it's like something that they serve at weddings and celebrations and stuff. And I was kind of expecting a pretty showy dish, right? You order something called fiesta mole, and I don't know.
That's what I was expecting. Yeah, the fiesta's in your mouth, man. Fiesta's in your mouth. That's right. Yeah, the fiestas and the flavors.
It's it's just a turkey leg in this in the middle of a plate in a pool of mole, and that's it. No garnishes, nothing else. When you were back at the in Mexico City at the Merced, did you go to the uh mole spice dealers? Oh my god, yeah. It's it's so intense.
There's you if you don't know what you're doing, it's just impossible. There's so many different pastes and powders and it's crazy. The paste game in Mexico is so on point. The paste game is out of this world because like you got it like they are the uh so like every culture has had a what's called quote unquote saddlestone grinding technology at one point, but obviously, like you know, Mexico and the rest of Mesoamerica, it was like where the matate mano became like the the the ultimate expression and like the food and this like grinding implement are are linked, right? So chocolate would be ground on a matate, masa would be ground on a matate, and the moles would be ground on it.
So now they're using different technology, of course, but you go to the Mercedes and you know, it's like Jack said, these like these paste dealers, it's just this rich, like reddish brown, like fragrant, crazy, and the density of these pastes, it's like I don't know how to describe it. It's like it's like I don't know, like somewhere in between like a peanut butter and a halva. You know what I mean? It's like got some fiber because of all the stuff in it. But yeah, but it's like, and they're just but they're not then it's not those colors.
There's like this dark richness to them, and they're just so good. There's a lot. You know what else I saw? I went to this awesome kind of more rural market outside of Oaxaca, and there were so many people selling like rocks of sodium bicarbonate, which was just really cool to see in an open market. Really?
Of bicarb? Yeah. Huh. Yeah. For the, you know, tortillas.
Well, that would be calci uh. Oh, I'm sorry. Calcium hydro. Yeah, calcium hydroxide. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, cow. So originally, I'm I've, you know, I was looking into this because it takes a lot of uh takes a lot of heat to convert uh shells or mined um calcium carbonate to calcium hydroxide, right? So I've always thought that originally, and some people who do like old school uh nixalization, like the people at Macienda, like that originally maybe it was done with uh pot ash, right? So like like ashes from the fire soaked with uh you soak the those with water, let it sit for a long time, and then evaporate that down to a salt like pearl ash. Um I'm guessing the initial stuff before they figured out how to because that's an that's a relatively advanced technology.
So I'm guessing slake lime. So I'm guessing that like the first uh the first stuff was probably done with pearl ash, but I've never nicked my lized with pearl ash before. Someday. Someday I'll get back on the I'll get back on the Nixtamal uh uh train. Um turkey domesticated in Mexico.
Didn't know that. Interesting. Turkey domesticated in Mexico, taken. I just was talking about this on the I was did a uh interview on the NPR the other day. Uh West Coast NPR though.
KQED, yeah. Yeah. So like uh taken from Mexico back to Europe by the Spanish. Spanish were like, look at this, a new bird. And then I mean they don't talk like that.
And then uh reimported by the English who didn't understand that we already had turkeys here. Yeah. So the turkey that and then it was recrossed uh, you know, at some point um, probably in the in the 17 or 1800s, recrossed with native wild turkeys. So this Mexican goes to Spain, gets, you know, done in Europe, comes back, is then recrossed back with our wild turkeys from here, and that's where the American commercial kind of turkey breed started started coming from. Uh I love me some turkey.
I love turkey. I you know what I hate? Stoz, what are your feelings on turkey? Uh it's okay. I love it.
I uh when I was growing up, everyone was like, oh, oh, turkey, uh, it's not that good, but I have it on Thanksgiving. No, no, I love it. I love turkey. I love the smell of turkey. I love turkey gravy.
If someone tries to hand me some chicken gravy, and I'm like, yo, that's chicken gravy. I want turkey gravy. What are your thoughts, John? Yeah, I agree. Love turkey.
It's great. It should be around more than uh than just for Thanksgiving. Yeah, yeah. Turkey club, delicious sandwich. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. No, do you want a chicken club? No. No. No.
Turkey. Yeah. Joe, what's your feeling on the turkey? Turkey club all the way too. Meat.
Yeah. I can't wait. By the way, I don't eat the breast meat on Thanksgiving because I could give a rat's behind about hot breast meat. I eat the dark meat, the skin, the tail, right? Turkey tail is money in the bank.
Turkey, turkey tail, turkey tail. Uh, so like it's so funny. If you if you Google search turkey tail, all you hear about is American Samoa and Polynesian Islands, because when you hack up, first of all, I don't do you know how big commercial turkeys are, not the ones that they sell to us whole, but how big like a Tom turkey is an eight in 18 to 20 week. You ready for it? You ready?
50 pounds. 50 pounds. Oh my god. It's a big bird. So the birds that we normally eat are females, right?
Because they're more in the market weight range. And even like a female at 18 weeks is still like on the bigger size. Like 18 to 20 weeks, a female turkey is like 27, 28 pounds. Of course, that's live weight. That's live weight.
All right. But like, yeah, so you get this like Tom turkey that's like 50 pounds and it's still really young. We don't see those birds in a supermarket. You know what I mean? Those are the ones that are busted up.
That's why when you look and you when you buy just the turkey breast, that double breast, and you're like, how the hell did you get this so big? You know what I mean? It's like uh it's because it's the it's it's that. But the tails, they don't sell here. And for a long time, they ship them all to uh Polynesian American smoke from like a U.S.
producers, and so got those folks addicted to them, and then the health people who believe that anything that tastes good is unhealthy, was like you're shipping them these things that are unhealthy for them, and there's a big, and you know, look, they're you shouldn't eat only turkey tails. They're very high in fat, there's a gland there. But like uh, so they got they turned into a stigma food. Like turkey tails turn into a stigma food. And to me, they are intensely delicious.
You like braise a turkey tail and then you deep fry it and cut it up. And the first time I ever had it this way, other than at Thanksgiving, eating it, right? The one that you get. And sometimes you don't even get them on your birds now. Sometimes they chop off the tail.
If you someone gives you a turkey and they've chopped off the tail beforehand, you just gotta like do something mean to them. Do something mean to that person to make up for the fact that they they've stolen the best part of the turkey from you. Anyways, uh, the only place I ever had them, and I've mentioned it on the show before, is in Juarez. I went to Juarez, and they have, you know, that's another thing that they eat only in in Juarez. It's like a local thing, Colita Ti Pavo, which is like turkey tail that they then shred up and put into a sandwich.
So like they'll braise it, roast it or fry it off, and then like hack it up and put it in. Oh my God. I tried to get it for XCON, and the chef was not able to source them for me because they're all shipped elsewhere. And it's like, it's one of those things where there's a stigma against it, uh, but it's tastes better than the stuff that we eat. Anyway, I don't eat the breast meat.
Uh, I try to save as much as I can for sandwiches because the answer is the leftover turkey sandwich to me. Do you at least like a leftover turkey sandwich and Sasha? Yeah, yeah. I do. What's your and how do you like yours?
Um my mom makes this like green cilantro sauce and then puts that on bread. Do you have that sauce also on the Thanksgiving or do you just for the leftovers? I appreciate making something for the leftovers. Yeah. I also like cilantro a lot.
I would try it, except for the fact that like I know exactly how I want it. I want it the mayonnaise, the lettuce, the turkey, the slightly toasted crappy white bread, and a slice of onion. And then I'm no stuffing or gravy on there? No, although listen, uh, I'm not gonna go hate on what anyone else wants. I also don't put cranberry sauce on my turkey sandwich.
My wife, Jen, appreciates the, you know, having the, you know, the other things on them, but no, I I want a sandwich and then I want a big old plate of the stuffing. I want a big plate of the stuffing. One year for Thanksgiving, I made all this extra stuffing, and my brother came over to Thanksgiving, and then he had to get up. He got up early in the morning, and he ate half the stuffing and took the other half home. And I was like I was like, yo, man.
I was like, yo, yo. I was like, it's not, I don't know why we don't make it all year, because we all love the stuffing we grew up with, right? All of us, pretty much. Even Nastasia. Do you like the stuff you grew up with?
No. Wow. Uh like it's so funny. I never know with you. It's like I grew up with it, I love it.
Or I grew up with it, therefore I hate it. And it's just like, it's just like everything falls into a bucket. There's like uh, it's like Nastasia's childhood is like a some sort of like like like mile-high butte, and you fall either into the pit of I love it or into the pit of I hate it. But nothing just stays on that butte. You know what I mean?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. What kind of stuffing do that does uh your mom make that you don't like? Uh I think it's just stofers. Yeah, same here stuff.
That's why I never really had any affinity for it. Oh, yeah. John, what was your stuffing? Nothing special. Stuffing uh breakfast sausage, a lot of sage, uh rehydrated cranberries, dice cranny Smith apple, onions, carrots, celery.
I think that's it, and then a mixture of like cornbread stuffing and then you know, regular pepperage farm pepper farm country. That sounds nice. Yeah, what about you? What about you, Joe? What do you got?
Um, I I we definitely had we had no sausage in it, which I really kind of fell in love with later in life. But you know, obviously, you know, the sage and the rosemary, different types of breads, never homemade breads. It was usually like a medley of like some type of peppered farm breading, crouton thing with another type of bread, but I love when the chestnuts are in there. Oh, we never used to do the chestnuts, huh? So for us, we uh I think this is a little bit different.
We only used um f fresh-ish bread. Like, you know, like not like super light wonder, but fresh bread, like loaf after loaf after loaf, right? And then when you say breakfast sausage, we would get like the like I think they were either 12 ounces or one pound, like in tubes, Jones brand, like you know, country sage sausage that you'd you'd par fry and break up. So a bunch of that, sauteed mushrooms, uh canned mandarin oranges broken up into into pieces, celery, eggs, eight buttloads of butter, poultry seasoning, uh Diaries say the sauteed onions. That's though that's the main components, you know, salt, pepper.
And you just toss all that together, and you gotta taste it when it's raw to you know make sure that it's got the right amount of everything, and everyone's gotta sit there and be like, ooh, more of this, more of that. You know what I mean? And then, yeah. Say it's so important to get the moisture level right on stuffing. When it's dry stuffing, it's miserable.
And when it's too wet, also miserable. Yeah, yeah. So you'd think you'd think it would be too wet to use the fresh bread, but we never have a problem, especially because we're not cooking, because I think a lot of people have to add stock to theirs. You know what I mean? To get it up to the right consistency, and we never do because I add some stock to mine.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't need to. Uh do we no, we don't add any stock to it. Uh, all right.
So should we answer some questions before we go back into our own things? Although I will say this, people. If you have the opportunity, buy some turkey bones. Like one of the nice things about uh partially deboning a turkey, like even taking the back out of it, or like I I bone, I bone it and then drape it over a hot stuffing plug. Like when I'm not cooking it this year, I'm going to my sister, she just had a baby, so I'm not cooking the turkey this year.
But like I typically rip all the bones out, and then starting with turkey stock is so much better than starting with a chicken stock or with a canned turkey stock and then reinforcing it with giblets. I grew up with giblet gravy because we didn't make a turkey stock beforehand. So the only real turkey that went in was the giblets. But in my opinion, if you have the opportunity to get some turkey bones and turkey backs and make an actual turkey stock, that it takes your gravy like to next level turkey dumb, which is like if you look, if you need to use turkey to reinforce it, but even if you start with a chicken stock, try to reinforce it with some actual turkey bones or turkey parts so that it actually tastes like turkey and not like slightly modified chicken, because I don't know if you know this, not the same animal. What are you doing with the neck?
That uh I roast it and then I usually throw it into the stock pot when I'm making the turkey stock, or if you were making the giblet gravy. But the problem is is that uh every year when I drain the stuff, it the neck meets there, and then I try to pull it out, but by the time it's gone through making stock, it's fundamentally useless. If you're not gonna make stock with it or the giblet gravy, I love to roast the neck and the skin gets crispy, and then you can eat it. And I I love picking all the little pieces apart, but I'm a little weird that way. But it's a very muscular part of the so what is it adding besides just the texture of the the skin on the neck?
I mean, you just Oh, for the for the to a stock? Yeah. Oh, it's got a lot. Well, that's the thing, it's got a lot of little meat in the in the crannies and stuff. So you're, you know, you're it's a good you know, backs and necks is the classic uh thing to make poultry stocks with just because there's not a lot of like salvageable plate-style meat for it, right?
So, you know, although if you've ever had stocks made from whole birds, they're freaking big. So, like if you so Danny Kay's old uh chicken recipe, which was then used by Jacques Papin and put into his 80s two-volume book in color, Jacques Papin's thing, he his old um chicken salad recipe was to put the whole bird in water, like you were almost making a chicken, old school hen style chicken soup. Bring it up, put the lid on it, and then let it ride. If you save that water and do that a couple of times, it gets really chicken-y from all the stuff. It's good, but it doesn't have as much body as like a a highly boiled like when I make chicken stock, I always I save all my bones.
Every every time I make chicken, I save I save all the bones in a ziploc in the freezer. And then once I have a couple of gallons of chicken bones saved up, I'll pressure cook stock. I'll do like a double pressure cook stock. I'll do like one round, second round. And that stuff is fantastic.
Are you ever dehydrating any of that stock and making like a bullion? Uh well, it's so concentrated at that point that you don't need to. I think the mistake, look, like even back when I used to teach at the FCI, they used a very, very high water to to uh to bone ratio and it's a very light stock, and so to get anything out of it, like you need to do a lot of reduction. When you're doing it at home, I think it's better to use like the minimum amount of water. Like I even have like some bone sticking up out of the water because I know it's gonna cook down a little bit.
And so it's like a very you get a more concentrated first stock, and then if you drain that and you do a double stock based on that, uh like use that same water twice for two levels of bones, you really don't need to do any reduction at all. It's almost ping pong ball hard at that point. You know what I mean? Once it once it cools and settles off. So I tend to use that stuff straight.
In fact, the stuff I make is so concentrated that certain dishes, if you use only that and you reduce it further, like uh, you know, my family was like, that's intense. That's like a lot of like meatiness in a small area. Which, you know, I was like, okay. Just don't eat as much of it then. Sounds delicious.
Yeah. It's good, it's good business. Uh what are you guys' feelings on cranberry? Yeah? The jelly from the canned kind.
From the can. Yeah. So you're not a skins in man. No. No?
Yeah. I like it. Yeah, skins or no skins? Skins. Oh, nice.
Uh, strong. For once. Skins. Joe, where are you? Skins, too.
Yep. So I like the acidity. So, John, so the for John, the sound of Thanksgiving is Love it. You know, when the thing's hitting the uh yeah. With the rings?
Yeah, with the three with the with the little bands ring. How is it that it can maintain that after it slides out? How is it that it maintains that? Yeah. Yeah, no idea.
Love it though. All right, here's the question. Here's the question. Orange, orange juice in the cranberries, yes or no. Yeah, we get a yes on Joe Stas.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh Jack, where are you on? Yep. Yeah.
Here's something that I don't bump there. Here's something I don't recommend, and yet I do it all the time anyway. I always look at it and I'm like, I'm making something that is sweet and tart. I want vanilla in it. And then I add vanilla, but it's a mistake, I think.
It's a mistake. It takes it in a different, it tastes great, but it takes it in a different direction that I don't think is really the right direction. Ditto adding liquor to it. You know what I mean? Like, I'm gonna add a little little.
And you're like, you know what? No, it didn't want that. It didn't want that. I think a little orange is nice. I don't want to add zest though.
I don't want to add zest, just juice. Maybe I should add zyst. I don't know. I'm not making it this year. So don't have to worry about it.
Don't have to worry about it. I love the cranberry. Yeah. Yeah. You know who do you have to bring?
Dessert. Okay, sounds like you're really not happy about having somebody else cook Thanksgiving. I'm I'm I'm happy with it. Oh, okay. I'm happy with it.
It's just normally, you know, for our Thanksgiving show, we talk about what we're doing, and I I'm making I'm making pies. I'm making Parker House rolls. Everyone loves Parker House rolls. If you don't like a Parker House roll, I mean, Stuzz, you hate biscuits, but you like Parker House rolls, right? Mm-hmm.
Yeah, there you go. All right. Parker House rolls. I'm gonna make a loaf of normal bread because uh my my brother's fiance, Zoe is a cheesemonger. She's gonna bring a cheese thing up, so I'm making like some crusty cheese style bread, bread with which to eat cheese from starting early.
I'm gonna do the Parker House rolls and then like some pies. Three, you know, three pies, pies. Well, where are you getting your pie recipes from? Where well, that is interesting, John. Uh I am I am been reading, rereading, rereading, and reading again all of the Monroe Boston Strauss, Pie Marches on.
Like that book is just I mean, I know I've said it on the air before. That book is just crazy. You know what's interesting? I've been thinking about it a lot. He um, and remember, he wrote this book originally in the 30s, so it's very highly gendered.
It's super gendered. So his enemy, the person that he saw as his absolute enemy was uh the housewife. And he calls, so like not home people, not home cooks, housewives were his enemy. And so, you know, in his mind, he had uh, you know, he had lived through a period where you know, no one was baking bread at home really anymore in the 30s and 40s, right? This was something you've allowed commercial bakers to take over that.
Even cakes had been a lot been taken over by uh kind of commercial cake production, but pies. He was like, he's like, housewives still make pies at home, damn them. And he's like, their pies are garbage. And so he was out to shut down home pie making, which is why his recipes are only for commercial institutions. And I think why he's not more famous today, because all of his recipes were directed at commercial bakers.
And strangely, for his time, he believed that all bakers should band together and give each other good recipes just so that they could put the housewife out of the pie business. Anyway, uh so yes, I've been reading a lot of, and I'm gonna put this, I want to put this in your head, people. Uh you're probably hearing this too late unless you're on Patreon. But listen, uh we as a culture of pie making people, and we are a culture of pie-making people in the United States, right? We love pies in general.
We love pies. Uh, a specific kind of pie. We are obsessed with the flaky crust now. And boss uh Monroe Boston Strauss says, I think, very smartly, that the flaky crust is garbage. He's like, he's like the long flake crust, he's like, it can be good, right?
But he says, most of the time, when I and he used to just sit there and watch people eat pies for like days on end, he would just sit and watch people eat pies. And he's like, on the long flake crust, when your fork goes through the pie, people don't want to have to pick up a knife and be like, and cut through it, right? They want the fork to go through the pie down and hit the plate. And he's like, long flake crust, not very good for that. You know, and and and he was using pastry flour.
So he didn't even have the problem that we have that we're using AP flour for these things with its uh, you know, concomitant extra gluten, right? So he had an easier time of it, and still he believed that a shorter, uh shorter, like shortening, shorter crust that a fork would pass through was actually the superior crust. And he says, if you're gonna do long flake, which is what he called what what we all now call pie crust, he's like, just do it for the top crust. Have the bottom crust have be a shorter flake, and he made a difference, he made a mental difference between um mealy, which he didn't really think was good for most things, and short flake. So he's like, listen, it's not just is it mealy?
And we don't no one wants mealy because it sounds bad. Ooh, mealy, it sounds bad. Ooh, mealy, mealy crust, mealy apples gotta want it. But there's actually this kind of in between land of the short flake pie crust. He says, This is what most people actually want when they when they're actually putting a fork through a pie.
So there you go. Pie. I am making I am making only uh uh I'm also he originated rolling graham crackers into the crust. So now instead of doing graham cracker crust, I do rolling graham cracker crust. So two of the three pies I'm making uh will have rolled in uh graham cracker, uh a short flake, of course.
Come on. Although I am gonna make a standard apple pie. Should I do his thing and do long flake top and short flake bottom? Report back? Yeah, why not?
Do it, yeah, just do it all do it all the way. Yeah, why do it halfway? Exactly. Do it big. Yeah.
Yeah. What song is that? Do it big. What song is that? I have no idea.
Um the rest of it I cannot sing. It is not for me to sing. So from Tarek Rashdi, a question for the Turkey Day episode. I'd like to make individual Cornish hens for people to share instead of a turkey for Thanksgiving. What is the most foolproof method for roasting about five hens at the same time?
Also open to non-roasting methods. Thanks. Okay. So for all of you who don't know, like Cornish hens were like huge when I was a kid. Everyone was like, ooh, Cornish hens.
Cornish hen is just a small chicken, right? It's like literally the same genetics as a chicken, just smaller. So you can cook as for chicken. I'm going to put this out there though. You ready?
I'm going to talk to you. I'm going to give your chicken, I'm going to give your your Cornish game hens their time. But let me just say this. Then you can present the whole turkey and you already have one basically parted out and carved. Now, I've done chicken fried, chicken fried like cut-up turkey is great.
You cut the breast into like three or four pieces, and then you bread and fry them. And you know, you can debone the legs and all this other stuff. But uh, as an alternative to uh the one big bird, like my favorite new alternative is the small bird and then the hacked up bird, because then you can solve the leg problem and the breast problem separately, but still present the big bird, you know, the the whole bird. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Yeah. Uh now, so Cornish game hens, I would just say cook as for chicken. And as for as for cooking that many, it really depends on the size of your oven. If you have a full sheet pan oven, right, then roasting off five hens is not going to be a problem. What uh the the thing that I like to do when I'm roasting birds, if you don't mind filling your house with smoke, uh, is to uh put the birds on a rack and then put the drip pan below the rack and then insulate the drip pan so that it doesn't get uh scorched.
Because it it really depends. Like some people's oven, the heat comes from the top and the bottom. If you're if if all of the heat from your oven is coming from the bottom, then unless the pan uh at the bottom cu has a lot of liquid added to it, it's gonna burn and smoke off, and then you're gonna lose all your drippings and whatnot. But if you suspend the birds a good distance above, and even if you just put a couple of cooling racks on your roasting pan and lift the birds up so that there's more radiant heat hitting the bottom of your birds. And you want to spread the birds out as much as possible so that they're not shielding themselves from the radiant heat from the side of your oven.
And I think that's gonna help you have all of the birds kind of look nice. If the if all if if the bird, if if if the Cornish game hen, if the skin on the side of one Cornish game hen is only seeing the skin of the of the Cornish game hen next to it, it's never gonna color up because you're you're only gonna be working with the convective uh heat. You're not gonna get any radiant heat on that thing at all because they're rough, they're basically the same temperature, those two pieces of skin. And so there's gonna be no net heat transfer. So you just want, assuming that you have a standard oven with kind of blackish walls where there's good radiation, or even if you have heating elements that provide radiation, if your bird can't see the dark wall or the heating elements, then it's not going to get brown there.
So that's, you know. Alternatively, you could low temp them all and then just roast them off like a mother uh uh at super high, super high uh heats. Remember this also. Um if they start to color too much, but they're not done on the inside yet, then just throw aluminum foil. There's no difference between shiny side and and dull side, okay?
Uh I hate to tell it, I hate look, the the infrared, which is where uh all of the radiant energy is that it that we're worried about in cooking, uh, is so big compared to visible light that both sides of that aluminum foil are polished as far as the aluminum foil is concerned. There is almost zero difference in the emissivity between the dull side and the shiny side. So stop worrying about it. Uh put the aluminum foil over the birds, but allow them to stay in. Uh, do that before they get so dark that you don't like it anymore, because what you're gonna want to do is that's gonna steam out your skin a little bit.
So you're gonna want to for the last five minutes yank that aluminum foil off so you can re uh crisp up the skin on the outside. You agree, you guys? Yeah. Agreed. Yeah.
One thing I will mention though, if you do have your Cornish hands stuck too close together, one way to fix that browning, Dave, you can buy a Searsol. You could buy a Searsol, and this leads me to my next point, which is uh John, we're extending the uh thing. Be why? Because you guys didn't buy enough of them. Not you personally.
I'm sure, like you that listen to this show, I'm sure if you have a need for a Sears All Pro, you've already purchased a Sears All Pro, but not enough other people have done it. So we have to extend because if we don't make the numbers, we can't literally can't afford to build it. Yep. Because that's where we are at this point in our lives. So there's that, people.
The Sears All Pro, I don't know if you know this, John. Stas, I don't know if you I know you're probably not aware of this. 50% more searing area. You don't say. Did you know that?
No. Oh, here, uh Stas, get this. Map gas now. Oh my God. Yeah.
Map gas. Revolutionary. Did you know that? And the thing about the map gas is is that uh that on the original Sears All, it'll burn out the screen. Yeah, but on the new one.
Do we have a China call tonight? No. Yeah, we do. We do? Not that I'm aware of.
Look, I'm gonna I'm getting my booster shot. And as far as I know, booster shot wrecks you. Like booster shot apparently is like, oh yeah, yeah. Booster shot, you're down like three days. If you if you were down one day, if you were down, this is this is what they I'm still getting it, whatever.
But if you were down one day on the second, then on the booster, you're down like three days. If in other words, if you still had good antibodies, right, they're injecting you with this stuff that makes your body think that you're being attacked, right? That's how it works, right? Like you're telling your body that you're being attacked, and so your body doesn't respond. Well, now, right, if you're if your immune system is still good, it's like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
And it makes you feel sick for even longer. Did you get sick with the first two shots at all? I got sick on the first shot I I I didn't get sick on the first shot. I felt like I mean I still worked, but I felt not good the second shot. Two shots.
Who gets two shots? Well, you got Jane. Oh, yeah, you got the you got the headbuster, the J and J. I don't know, I haven't met anyone who's gotten the J and J booster. I heard you can get whatever booster if you have the interchangeable now.
Yeah, but not by the state of New York. In the state of New York, you like they've opened it to all the adults to get the booster, but unless you're immunocompromised, they're still on the websites to make the uh what's it called? The appointment. You still need to tell them which one you got first, and they're like, it needs to be more than six months ago, which is fine. But they they're basically forcing me to get the same one.
Maybe not if you walk into a pharmacy, but if you're making it through the New York State find a vaccine thing, they're like, You gotta get the same one you got before. So I'm all I'm all Moderna all day. I'm all everyone thought Pfizer was the best, but now nobody knows. Yeah. Some people are saying J is the best if you get two, as long as your head doesn't explode, right, Sas?
I guess. I haven't gotten the booster yet. But you're right, you're right in the exploding head demographic. No. Nastasia is solidly in the middle of the exploding head demographic.
It's still a tiny group of people whose head explodes. Reining it back. I met somebody here. Uh I met a friend in Oaxaca, and uh I was like, Are you back? And she said, Yeah, uh in Oaxaca in Mexico.
And I asked her if she was vaccinated, and she said, Yeah, and I said, which one did you get? And she was like, Oh no, my grandma sent me to a shaman and I had the poison of a frog. Oh, well, I don't know if you know this, but like poison poison frogs can cure you of being alive, but they can't cure you from getting COVID. Yeah, I think that's I think that's true. American or not?
Oh no, Mexican, please. No. Definitely. She was very Oaxaca native. Yeah.
But like uh Nastasia has a friend on there that maybe you should uh get these two people to hook up and uh Nastasi's friend can go get the frog juice. Yeah. Go get the frog juice. Yeah. I John, what do you got for me?
I just want to say while we're before we get too far from the Sears All Pro. If you guys follow our Instagram and tag friends underneath the one of the most recent posts, we're doing a giveaway of the Sears All Pro package. So you get a sta uh base stand, you get the torch, and you get the Sears All Pro. Just have to follow us, submit as many times as you want, and we're gonna make that announcement on this Friday. Oh yeah?
Yeah. Well, I will be measuring that. There you go. Yeah, exactly. All right.
Yeah. Nastasia and I, even though we have something going, like, I have to say I'm not gonna talk to any of you guys on the Friday. Unless I have to. I mean, maybe I'll say how you doing? What's up?
Hope you had a good Thanksgiving. But I'm not gonna be business talking at you. That sounds great. I'm getting my tree on Friday. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh from Coleman, do you have any general tips for dealing with a lack of oven space on Thanksgiving Day? Uh we only have one oven. After the turkey is done, there are various items that will need to be baked fresh, like Parker house rolls, oh yeah, or reheated like sides cooked on prior days. I thought about using a gr uh gas grill as an oven, but I've never tried that.
You could, if you're gonna use a gas grill as an oven, uh what I would recommend is putting down a uh like a layer of aluminum foil directly over the grates. If you put a layer of aluminum foil over the grates, that's gonna stop the radiant heat from coming up from the coals. And then if you put a layer, if you put cooling racks on top of that, close it, and then look at the thermometer that's on your grill, you should be able to get a fairly accurate temperature read of going uh what's going on, but you're not gonna be getting that intense radiant heat from your burner elements. And so you should be able to keep it at a relatively normal uh thing. Also, good opportunity to buy yourself uh uh a countertop oven.
You know what I mean? Like a like uh like uh, you know, look, we don't make any money from them, but like the Breville Smart Air or equivalent, like they are great at the smart air is a good size for keeping a bunch of sides uh like warm. Another thing is uh they they might be sold out now, but go to a thrift store, and people used to have uh all of these like turkey ovens and like all of these other things, and they're really cheap, right? They look almost like slow cookers, but they're meant for cooking turkeys, but they also hold sides really well. And they're they're they're cheap when they're new, they're free at a thrift store.
You might find one because people don't know to just have them, and then you can just pull it out and have it. So that so now, if assuming you don't want to do any of that stuff, uh it's a real problem. The real problem is someone coming to Thanksgiving expecting you to have free oven space. Be a good guest, do not expect to have oven space. Do not expect to have oven space.
Your Parker House rolls, what I would do is unfortunately, yes, everyone knows their best right out of the oven, but I would cook them off earlier in the day, take them out, tent them, then put your turkey in, then you can refresh them uh when the other sides go in as the turkey is resting because you're gonna need to rest a turkey before you cut it anyway. Uh as for the other sides, like you got to tell everyone who comes with their sides, sorry, we're cooking at one temperature today, so everyone goes in at the same temperature, and you can multi-rack your oven. Even if your oven doesn't have multiple racks, if you have little half-cooling racks, you can, as long as you put two racks together so that you can space things out and air can get in between them, you can like multi-stack certain dishes for reheat to uh to keep them in. But yeah, I feel you. I feel your pain.
Have I given any good uh advice on this guys? I don't know. Do you guys have any tips for this? Not really. It's something I'm gonna be juggling as well this year, though.
I'm doing the turkey on the grill, so that's gonna help save oven space. Turkey on the grill, huh? Yeah, that's how my mom wants to do it. So I now have bullet in your head song, uh, the the song Bullet in Yad with Turkey on the grill. A turkey on the grill.
Like, you know, anyway. Um They say jump, you say how high. I was listening to uh yeah, I was listening to uh Rage Against the Machine yesterday as I was walking to the uh Friendsgiving event. And I believe that if you play Rage Against the Machine really loudly in your ears as you're walking around, that it's the equivalent of an extra two or three layers for warmth. I feel like the rage, you throw off so much internal heat that like I wouldn't say it was like Canada goose, but I was like, I was like wearing like a Patagonia puffer level of extra heat from just you know the the intense loudness of the bulls on parade as I was walking down the street.
But if you do walk down the streets of New York City listening to Rage Against the Machine or the functional equivalent, please be aware that you become more well, you, me, I become more physically angry when I'm listening to music that I grew up as like anger music listening to. And so you just gotta be careful not to walk in front of a car and get hit. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Good point.
Yeah. I mean, I remember once I was biking, and stuff, you know, like I'm I'm I'm a one-earphone listener in case calls come in, and sometimes if I have music playing, I'll leave it on, which I shouldn't while I'm biking because I think it's unsafe. But I was listening to like some particularly loud sound garden, and I realized I almost got myself killed because you become more aggressive when you're listening to super loud sound garden when you're biking around, I think. You know? Yeah.
You think it's amazing. Huh, really? I never thought about it. Maybe. Yeah.
So what you should now you're Manilo only when you're driving? Just Manilo. I don't know. No? Or if I'm in the city, maybe maybe it's safest to not blast it.
Yeah. Sometimes especially like the bot manual. Jack, what's your favorite Manilo song? I don't have a favorite Barry Manilo song. Why not?
You like them all? Can't I tell you the last time I listened to Barry Manilow? Oh. You don't like you don't like uh you don't like Mandy. I mean, I can see that, you know, I can see where you're like, I've heard uh what what's that?
What's that one? Uh uh at the Copa. I could I heard it too many times. I could he I could feel it, right? Well, he he does he his is he does uh can't take my eyes off for you or no?
Uh he wrote the songs cover that that makes the whole world sing. Did you know that? Oh no, I didn't know. He wrote the songs of love and special things. Did you know that?
Stas, you like Manilow, right? Uh he's okay. I saw him at the park. That uh Welcome Back New York event. He's had some unfortunate attempts to not not.
And he said when he was singing Mandy, he was like, everyone needs to evacuate. Why? Because that was the the hurricane night. Remember? In the middle of Mandy.
Oh wow. In the middle of Sandy became Mandy. No, no, no, no. The hurricane is in September or whatever that was. Remember the uh Henri.
Say give me some French Henri. Henri. Oh yeah. So it was like this is like, and you gave and you gave. And then he was like off.
In the middle of the song. Yeah, and then we're done. And then de Blasio came out and was like, don't listen to Barry. We're all safe. Stay.
And everyone's like, what? Yeah, cloud. What are we doing? Clown College. He's gonna run for governor.
Did you know that? No. And didn't know that. I'm not we don't talk politics. Anyway.
Again, yeah, I voted for him. What it doesn't matter. But I can't believe in the middle of a lyric, he's like, and we're done. Yeah. Was it in key?
No, it was a joke. And get out and get out. Imagine if you did it, like you're just like. Yeah. Well, because it was lightning.
You can't stay here. Get out. Like we just started like doing it, like the whole song. No. It was lightning and dangerous.
Back in the old days, musicians used to really worry about getting hit with lightning, right? That was a thing. Yeah, or their equipment shocking them. Yeah. Who was it that almost got killed?
Was it plant that almost got like electrocuted on stage? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know. Alright, what?
No questions. Let's keep moving. We got 15 minutes left. All right, all right. You want to do the question that you were gonna read from the thing, or do you want me to do that?
We can we can do that. I'll do these these came in first. I'll do this. Somebody also mentioned using a water bath to keep things warm, like mashed potatoes. Doesn't help with oven space though.
Oh no, but that's the the answer for mashed potatoes. Listen, if you're doing mashed potatoes, you can do your mashed potatoes like well in advance. Well in advance. When you put it into the Ziploc bags, just remember to keep it thin. Keep it thin.
And then they reheat almost instantly, right? It does don't let people see it, because when it slips out of the bag, it doesn't look very good. So you gotta slip it out of the bag, and then you gotta fluff it up a little bit, make it look good. Yeah, a little, yeah, yeah, a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, and then uh then it'll look okay. So don't let them see you do it.
Um but yeah, that's a fantastic idea, whoever whoever wrote that in. I do that all all the time. If you can have a little water bath, a lot of the sides, the only sides you can't do that for are the ones that like have like French fried onions on top or like marshmallows. Where are you guys with marshmallows on your sweet potatoes? Yes.
Yes, yeah. Nuts, no nuts. No nuts. No nuts, but marshmallows. Yeah.
Do you ever was it Unastasi or someone else? Put the little pineapples in. Yeah, my mom. Yeah. And you're you're pro, right?
Um from Star Craving Mad, I find myself making many varieties of meats and putting a decent amount of effort into making them marinade. You ever marinate is one of those words where I'm always like marinade. I always like like stupid it. I don't know why. I can't help myself.
Uh I tend to cook them out a bit uh and make them into a sauce of sorts, balancing them out uh with salts, acid, sugars, etc. as reduction, of course. Of course, most of the marinades that I I do are so salty and acidic already that if I reduced them. I was on a show, and this person said that she was brining her turkey. Get this.
See what you guys think. Maybe I'm wrong. She was brining her turkey in soy sauce. Now listen, I love soy. Pure soy sauce, not watered down or anything.
Well, I don't know. Okay. She didn't have that long to talk about it. Okay. She made it seem like it was pure soy sauce.
That's, as we say, intense. But the other problem with soy sauce is it burns really easily. So, like, if if I was to stick a turkey in with my normal procedure and it was completely soaked in soy sauce, so the outside had soy all over it, it would burn. I don't know. You guys weigh in, you tell me what you think.
Um, I'm sure she's was very smart and a food technologist. So I'm sure she knew her way around this, but I feel like if you just did that without knowing some extra secret that she wasn't telling you, that you would burn the skin. It will brown nicely if if your ch if your turkey comes out of the oven sallow and gross, then if you start with something that that's why I don't like put too much anyway, you don't whatever, I'm not gonna get into it. Okay. Uh I tend to cook them out.
Um the question is, can the spinzall assist in this process when we try uh try to create these savory sauces, particularly ones that contain grated onions and other large particulates uh that after a cook would not contribute additional flavor. Well, you could probably strain that stuff out, honestly. If you have a spinzall, the the problem with most of these marinades is that you're leaching protein out of the meat during the marinade section. And I and you s you you you address this here, you say uh because you also bag things, so you do bagging. So if you take sauce that something's been lightly cooked in, like in a bag, when you heat it, you get a kind of disgusting gray protein foam on the top of it.
So that's really what you're gonna want to get rid of. And you can strain it or yeah, the spinz all would be tough because usually you don't have that much of it, and the spinz all would be better if you were dealing with like 500 to like a thousand mLs of it, then you could spin it out. Sure, it would work. Hey, look, I'm for it. By the way, apparently uh we have another lead because the the old factory is being such punks that we have another lead on a manufacturer for the uh spinzole again.
All right. And secondly, what's the best way to address off gassing of bones in meat during low temperature cook like ribs, bone in pork shoulder, et cetera. Anytime I end up vacuum sealing these items, I usually have to pull the bag uh after about two hours, deflate it, reseal it, and return it to the bath and weigh it down for any additional off gassing that may occur. Uh thanks. So this is a big problem.
Listen, on your vacuum machine, right? You can usually it depends if you have a commercial or not commercial, but if your vacuum machine is set to seal the bag as soon as it reaches its temp uh its vacuum level, then you're gonna leave a lot of air in the bones. All bones are hollow. Bird bones, especially are hollow. But you any anyone who's cut a bone in half can see it's porous, right?
Because think of how much you would weigh if your bones were solid. I mean, it would be crazy. And then birds are hollow because even the ones that don't fly, they descended from things that flew. So their bones are hollow, hollow, hollow because they want to get it's just like a like like an iron pipe. An iron pipe, all of the strength or steel pipe, all of the strength of that pipe is on the outside.
It wouldn't be that much stronger if it was completely filled in. And your bones are the same way, right? Most of the strength of the bone comes from the diameter of the bone on the outside, and you need some strength in the middle to prevent crushing. But most of the actual like, like, is it gonna snap in half comes from the outside. So there's a lot of air on the inside of a bone.
Uh, you know, in a in a in a mammals and humans, we fill it with stuff that we need, like, you know, marrow and things that make, you know, but in general, that's not strong, and there's more air than than you would have in meat, let's say. So as soon as the vacuum hits its vacuum level, there's still a boat ton of air left. So what you need to do is set your vacuum machine to uh set your vacuum machine to uh suck a lot of extra time, as much as extra as you can. And then when it sucks down, then uh you know you will have gotten rid of a lot more air. So that can solve some of the problem.
Another problem with uh specifically some of these bone in things is bones can put, and I don't think you're having this problem, I don't think, but you can get micro punctures in your bag when the when the uh when it comes back down. So I used to shield uh I used to put like little like shielding, like little like either like wadded up like uh plastic wrap or something, like a little slice of onion or something over where the bone is sharpest, so that when the bag came down, I wasn't getting uh a puncture. And to wait you know for punctures, especially if you have a new vacuum machine and you're not used to using it yet, is uh don't vacuum and cook right away. Vacuum it, put it back in the fridge and inspect your bag after a half hour. Within a half hour, you should be able to see the telltale signs of micro leaks.
So you can get micro leaks in the seal area itself, those will become apparent. Uh, but especially around bones, if you see any lift away on little dots that are protruding out, so like you know, like uh if the butcher or you didn't properly scrape the bone surface after the after the meat was cut, you leave micro fragments there and they can do wonders to puncturing your bag. So just if you wait that half hour and look, and then if extra air has been seeping out then, now remember when you're cooking it, the air expands. And so if you've left air in the bag at all, right, then um it's gonna expand in the cooking. There's nothing you could do about that.
So get as much air out as you can, wait a half hour. Um if you want, you can even vacuum it again then, but then you don't know whether you've ruined it by letting it go and crushing it again. But but but try those things. It is a known problem. This is why also it's a lot, it's unless you need to have the bone on, a lot of times deboning something and then um deboning it and then uh using the bones for something else like stock when you're gonna use the bag is is a good is a good thing to do.
Usually also lower temperatures. If it was a if it was a problem with uh bacteria, it would be at the lower temperature, so you would know and it would also smell weird. So it's probably not that. It's probably just air leaking out of the bones. Things like poultry, I think it's a good idea to get rid of the bone anyway, because when you suck the vacuum on it, let's say you suck enough of a vacuum to actually get the bag to stay down, you're also pulling all of that red crap out of the middle of the poultry bones, and that stuff never turns uh cooked color.
And even I, who know very well that it's safe and cooked, I'm like, eh, it doesn't look so good. So, like that's me. So, like anyone else who who you know hasn't for years been telling people about persistent pinking and the fact is they just can't eat it. They don't want to eat it, they're just not attracted to it as a food stuff. So poultry, most of the time I bone it before I bag it.
Um do you want me to do this question, or you got your question? Uh do that question and then we'll go to mine. From Kim Ferrer, uh, I really want to do a yuzu sauce from my turkey, but I can't find fresh yuzu anywhere. Is it well, you just gotta spend more money. You know what I mean?
Uh I'm not saying it's worth it to spend the money. I'm just saying, you know, it's money money changes everything, as Cindy Lauper said very wisely. Uh is it possible to make something that tastes similar to Yuzu using fresh tangerine, citric acid, and malic acid? I wouldn't say Yuzu really tastes like a tangerine. Here's the problem with tangerines.
Um certain varieties of tangerines are delicious. You make a delicious marinade with tangerines. Problem with tangerines is some tangerines are uh they get bitter after they've been juiced, right? And unless you know that your specific variety of tangerine is juiceable and is not gonna go bitter, I would worry about it, right? Um I think since you're gonna make a marinade and it's gonna be cooked anyway, or you're making a sauce.
Since you're making a sauce, unless the sauce is not going to be cooked at all, just buy a high quality cartoned yuzu juice. So the, I forget the name of it, but the one we used to buy comes frozen in a lime green carton, kind of tall, kind of fancy. Uh, that's really good. Like, I would even use that in drinks. Uh, but even, you know, try to find a uh uh, you know, a yuzu that's been um bottled or cartoned with uh without salt, without too much salt, because that you know, when they're in the salt, they're really put in the preservative in it.
But if you're using it in a sauce anyway, I wouldn't worry, and you're gonna cook it. I wouldn't worry about the fact that it's not fresh if you what you want is the taste of yuzu. What do you guys think? Yeah, I agreed. What's your uh what's your uh what question there, John?
Alrighty. So can you please give me your take? This is from Ian. Can you please give me your take on my Thanksgiving plan? My challenge this year is traveling with a meal to serve to someone who's immunocompromised.
I'm gonna hold you to the safety part, but it's more of a would you be okay serving this if it were you for the dark meat? I'm doing a confite with a four-day cure, one and a half percent salts uh by weight, sealed in vac bags and fridge, then we'll open bags to add fat and revac for 24 hours sous vide at 65 Celsius. All right, let's take that like uh how long do they say again? Twelve hours? Twenty-four hours for the legs cook at 65.
Yeah. I mean, they'll cook. I look I am a fan of traditional comfy flavors. So like I've tested a bunch of comfy, mostly duck, of kind of lower temperature long time, and it seems fine. But like me personally, if I'm gonna go confie, I like like high temperature, like the three-hour high temperature traditional confid, just because that's the texture that I like.
But yeah, that seems fine from a safety standpoint. Yeah, you're you're fine. All right, next. White meat, porchetta style roulade. I had to prep it early because of the four days for the dark meat, so I reluctantly stuck it in the deep freeze.
It's a 10 centimeter cylinder. I want to sleep at some point. So my plan is to put it in the same 65 degree bath for 12 hours, even if that's a bit high. And so a sucker's frozen solid. Yeah.
Okay. I want to pull them from the bath at the same time Thursday morning and hold them hot for an hour drive. I figure a cooler filled with heating pads, then finish on the other end. I'm a bit concerned about the time I spent prepping, the long curing time, roulade freezing time, and time to get up to pasteurization temps and the travel time. Does this all seem risky as it now sounds writing this, or do you think it should work?
Would really appreciate your take. All right. So you're so assuming that when you made the roulade, that it was cold, relatively cold. You didn't like have it out there, you weren't like wrestling around with it in the mud for like an hour, right? So it it wasn't in the in the danger zone too long, and it was relatively cold throughout before you put it back into the freezer.
Right. So this is an assumption I'm making. The reason I'm saying this is that the bacteria didn't have a lot of time to grow as the roulade was being uh fabricated before you put it back, before you put it into the freezer, right? Now, it's frozen all the way through. Let's just assume it's frozen all the way through.
Now it's we did we crunched some numbers. I used my old poly science sous vide calculator program that I have on my uh on my phone, and I put I punched in a 10 cylinder, a 10 centimeter poultry cylinder. I told it that it was thawed but at one degree Celsius, and that you wanted to hit at least 62 degrees, which is kind of the right 62, 63 is where you're gonna want the tech for the texture of it, and that your water was at 65 degrees Celsius. That's what I've typed in. It takes nine hours for that to happen, right?
And so then the question is, uh, how long does it take to thaw? And I think you might actually, from a safety standpoint, be winning here because I think with the temperature delta of 65 to zero, that you're actually going your your the zone where it's not gonna be in a good place in terms of temperature is actually gonna be relatively small. And I think that at those things, I don't think your thaw time is gonna be longer than uh like three or four hours. I think you might actually end up winning. So if at the end of it you stuck your probe in and you had hit, you know, 62, 63, I'm gonna say that you're fine.
I would think you're fine because it takes a lot of energy to melt something versus heating it. And so the temperature gradient is gonna be pretty high and it's gonna heat into that zero point faster than it would if it was uh not. In other words, I think you might be okay. If you had taken a piece of meat that was at room temperature and tried to cook it, then the inside would be in uns at unsafe temperatures for a long time before it got up to pasteurization temperature. And I think that might actually have been more worrisome.
I don't know. What do you think? Yeah. Um, but I don't know. That's just uh my feeling on it.
Uh you could also just fill the cooler with uh 65 degree water in the hour long drive that you go over there, it'll only drop two or three degrees. Just keep it all in the bag, put it in that, you don't even need a heating pads. In an actual igloo, you'll get maybe five degrees drop, and it's not gonna make it below 60. So no one on earth is gonna make you hold stuff uh hotter than uh uh you know hotter than uh 140, which is 60. So you uh that's what I would do.
Yeah. Uh all right, uh wait. What? Question wise, that's it. Two little announcements though.
Okay. One, uh, for everyone, looks like we're gonna have Dave Chang and Chris Ying on next week's episode. So get your questions in. It's gonna be good, not confirmed, but looking very promising. And then also for any of you guys that have not subscribed to our Patreon yet.
We are going to have a nice little membership perk for everyone to be announced next week that I think is pretty neat. So you should um it's only gonna be available to Patreon members, so you should join. Go to patreon.com slash cooking issues and sign up. All right. Well, uh happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
And you know, uh, if you can look out for people that uh don't have enough of either fellowship or food. And uh yeah, happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, so Thanksgiving. Yeah, Jack, happy Thanksgiving, good trip back.
Happy Thanksgiving to YouTube. All righty, cooking issues.
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