Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Earl, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from Rockefeller Center and New Stan Studios. Call in your questions if you're listening on Patreon live to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez.
How are you doing, Stas? Good. We'll get into each other's mutual Thanksgivings in a minute. We also got uh John as usual. How are you doing?
Doing great, thanks. You uh back on the customer service train for Booker Index? Indeed, I am. Loving it, loving life. Loving it, loving the colour.
Great, great. We got as usual Joe Hazen in the booth. How you doing? Doing great. Oh, thanks.
Yeah, we know semi-arrested. Yeah. We got Hassan, who's also gonna be around in the future coming on uh as uh engineer sometimes. You know, just letting you guys know Joe's gonna have to take some time off in a little bit, you know, and we're gonna have Hassan instead. That's fine, right?
We got uh Jackie Molecules who left Mexico, but is taking the long road back to California, and we got a freaking hilo running in our studio. For those of you that don't know, a hilo is a machine that goes up and down from the floor to the ceiling, and every time it moves, it has to make a wretched beeping noise. Right? Has to make a horrible beeping noise. All right, he I think he's left the high low.
All right, so I can stop. No, no, no. Oh, son of a gun. And Jackie Molecules, is that you crumpling up paper in the background? No, no, sir.
That is not me. All right. Okay, okay. Jackie Molecules left Oaxaca. Did you drive?
Well how are you in Marfa, Texas? Where did you where did you enter reenter the country? He's spreading that in the crowd. Yeah. New York for Thanksgiving.
And then uh I'm I'm taking a scenic route back to LA. Um through Atlanta, New Orleans, Austin. El Paso tonight is where I hope to end up. How do you how do you pronounce that town? El Paso?
Yeah. Isn't it El Paso for us American folks? El Paso Pass. Paso, right? Or no?
Sure. All right. Well, but before we get too far into that, because I you have to have there's a turkey dish you have to have when you go through El Paso. Uh the best turkey dish you're ever gonna have, you're gonna have very close to El Paso. But before that, we have uh our two special guests, our post-Thanksgiving guests are Dave Chang and Chris Ying from uh the Dave uh Dave Chang podcast.
What do you call that? Dave Chang Show? Nice name, Dave. Yes. It doesn't really matter.
And yet, and yet you've only been doing it for like three days, but you already have 295 episodes or something crazy like this. You do it like eight times a week or something like this? Well what yeah, they're they're micro episodes, so that's how we can just pump them out. They're an hour long. They're an hour long.
Micro episodes. Uh all right, so all right, so let me get back to Jack so I don't forget this, and then we'll go through our various Thanksgivings, right? And then we got a bunch of questions that you guys have to answer. And if I don't get to it, people will drop us on Patreon, and then it's it's bad news for us. All right, so first, when you're going through El Paso, go across the border to Juarez, right?
Go to Ciudad Juarez and get Polito Ti Pavo turkey butts. First, buy a whole roast turkey butt and eat that so you get an idea for the what the here in the US we call them turkey tails, and then get the torta, get the turkey tail, the turkey butt sandwich, and tell me that's not the way that God intended turkeys to be eaten. This freaking high low. I'm gonna lose my mind. All right.
So uh have you has anyone else besides me had the turkey tail sandwich? The Colito di Pavo. Are you guys familiar with you guys familiar with the fact that uh okay? So turkeys, like a uh I am going to go out, Nastasia. Can you go out and punch that person in the face?
No. They're doing a very important art installation. They're not. They are though. They're not though.
It's not that important. I guarantee you, as soon as it's time for them to take their like allotted break, they will just like walk off the job, even if the art literally falls to the ground because they haven't installed the turnbuckle properly. Anyway. So a male turkey when it's slaughtered weighs between 40 and 50 pounds. All right, between 40 and 50 pounds.
So they have giant turkey tails on them, much bigger than the ones that you get, the you know, the the turkey butt that you get on a commercial turkey that we get in the in the supermarket. So nobody wants to buy these things. So what they do is what we do in America is we used to ship them all to American Samoa. And everyone in American Samoa and other places in uh in Micronesian Polynesia would just eat all of these things, and then they got a reputation for being unhealthy, and that's the same thing that happens in Mexico. They all get shipped to Juarez, where they're turned into turkey tail things, and so they're seen as kind of low class, something being foisted on to people, which is why it doesn't make it out of its region.
But the truth of the matter is it's the most delicious part of the turkey. I'm just gonna say that. Wow. All right. Yeah.
I'll have it. Dave Harnell, I have a question for you. All right, all right. Shoot. No, go ahead, King.
What do you got? Isn't isn't poultry butt, poultry ass the best part of the chicken anyway? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
I like that you've identified that the males have like specially especially thick butts though. Yeah. This is a wonderful revelation. Well it's like it's like everything it's it's it's like birds are the opposite of people. Like the male birds are like the are like the good looking birds and they got the best butts.
You know what I mean? It's like and like the the turkey Nicki Minaj would be a male turkey. Yes. Oh yeah for sure. For sure yeah sure sure sure yeah yeah yeah so if I've never been to El Paso Juarez border is like is that border so easily permeable that you can recommend to your friend if he's in El Paso he should popped into Juarez to get these turkey butts is it that is it is it a quick jaunt for a turkey butt or is it an all day affair?
Look I haven't gone post Trump but yeah you used to be able to walk across it. I I used to just walk across I mean it's like it's one city like Juarez and El Paso is one city that like a government split into two right and so there's people there's people that work on both sides. There's like really fun bars in Juarez like um I mean I had a great time there's some good cooking going on like in the desert outside of Juarez at least you know but I it was about it was pretty close to right before Trump when I went so I haven't it's been maybe five years five and a half years since I went but you know it was after a lot of the violence had died down, and so it was a relatively good time for an American to to go. But uh, you know, I don't I loved it. I thought it was I thought it was uh a great place, you know.
I would go back. I'll report back. Yeah, yeah. Uh all right. So what did uh Chris what did you have for Thanksgiving?
What did I have for Thanksgiving? Yeah, we had uh turkey leg stuff with sticky rice. We had all the normal stuff. Yeah, it's normal. In addition to the and then I had a uh fork shoulder that I roasted because we you know man cannot survive on turkey alone.
What did you do with the tendons in the turkey leg? You know, I sort of messily pulled them all out with a fairing knife after you cooked it or before you cooked it. Did you bone roll it? Before. So you boned it, you boned it in the middle.
No, I boned it out. I boned it, and then I was like, oh, maybe I can do this in like a neat way. Yeah. And then it turned into just like a real Frankenstein, just you know, butcher's twine to save my life. It held together okay.
Yeah. But sort of removing all those tendons with the uh I'm gonna I'm gonna make you really mad right now. You ready for it? Yeah, of course. Okay.
So uh when the turkey still has its foot attached, right? Like when they slaughter it, right? There is a machine that exists. There are patents, you can go look it up, right? Where what it what they do is is they they have like a U shape, and they put what you consider the end of the drumstick, that little bone, in one side, and then another thing grabs the leg and rips the leg off.
And if you rip the leg off that way while you hold the the the drumstick solid in this machine, it removes all the tendons and the groove prevents the meat from the drumstick from coming out. So they have a machine, and I've seen it, the videos of it. It's literally, it's literally a two a two and a half second operation. They do both legs at once, they throw the two legs into the machine, it goes boop, and it rips all the tendons out. They could make they could make every turkey leg insanely delicious instead of like uh like you the kid takes it and then like leaves that drumstick and like all the meat is attached to the tendon and it gets thrown away.
Instead of that, every turkey leg could be like insanely delicious, and yet they don't do it because people hate people hate humanity. The pe the people who know how to make the world better hate us. Yeah, yeah, because I would make millions of people happier, and I gotta say, I did not do a neat job. I got a lot of loss pulling the tendons out. I would have worked on turkey there.
Yeah, it's impossible. It's so hard to do that. Like, if you do like uh you ever do like the mock turkey asabuko, you ever cook that? No. Yeah.
So in the mock turkey asabuco, you you you slice the turkey on a band saw, but then you pull the tendons after it's cooked. So you do like the turkey like it's a subuco, and then you pull the tendons after it's one of you is boiling soup in a crowd. Uh David Channing is cooking. I imagine that's what it's like. What are you boiling, Dave?
What are you cooking? I I I can't I can't believe you can hear the boiling. Yeah. That's like supersonic hearing. Do you think you're being very quiet right now?
Do you think you're like sneaking around making food right now? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like I have got headphones on, and um I got my head over the donate that I decided to make my my uh turkey garbage. Yeah, and uh I can't believe that you can hear it. So apologies.
Well, let me uh let me let me let me ask you this: iPod Pros. Yeah uh iPod Pro, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those things. They magnify kitchen sounds like nobody's business. I can't wash my hands when I'm talking to someone on the phone.
Nastasi's like, what are you in a waterfall? What are you? What are you? And I'm like, I'm just washing my freaking hands. It's like something about the sound canceling.
They're so good at picking out the ambient noise around them so that they can cancel it out of your ears that they make it like impossibly clear for everybody else. It's kind of like a it's a it's a bug. It's a bug. Uh oh terrifying. Yeah.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry, everybody. Yeah, yeah. So Dave, uh, I know that you had 14 people apparently over for uh Thanksgiving and that you were trying, but unsuccessful in just buying everything. What ended up happening?
What was the what what do you end up doing? Well, I I had some guests that had never experienced Thanksgiving before. And uh it was not something I anticipated. I thought I was going to buy Thanksgiving and and cook nothing. That was my goal.
That's my philosophy in life at home in general, anyway. And then says the man who's cooking a turkey pie pie right now. Well, now because I have it and I was like, I don't want to, you know, I gotta do something with all this crap. Yeah, Dave Chang hates waste, by the way, people. Dave Chang hates waste.
I I do hate waste. And I uh I uh I also had somebody from Korea that had never experienced Thanksgiving. So it was like six of the wound up being 16 people have never had turkey for Thanksgiving. Have never had a proper Thanksgiving. So I had no choice.
And then my son, Hugo, who's you know, three in March, has only been asking about turkey. Yeah. Uh turkey and pumpkins. And I had no choice. So I I succumbed to being a good friend and parent, and I made a traditional Thanksgiving.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You hate you made or purchased a pumpkin pie? No. Oh, he said he was asking about pumpkins. That did not happen.
No, no, I know, I know. I know. We even still will go to the park near in Pasadena where there are pumpkins, just so he can play with pumpkins, but there's no pumpkins being brought home. Okay. So for those of you that don't know, we're gonna get it, we're gonna get into this because I have questions about literally about pumpkin pie.
Chris and Dave did a four-part Pie Mageddon thing on their podcast. Now, Dave, Dave and I both always kind of think that we're right, and we almost never agree on anything ever. So, like some like there's I think he just he just threw something down in disgust. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Um, like uh Dave hates pumpkin pie. Chris, you like pumpkin pie, right? I like pumpkin pie just fine, yeah. All right, Dave detests it won't even say the words pumpkin pie. He won't he'll say the word pumpkin and he'll say the word pie, but he won't say pumpkin pie.
Correct. It's a spicy gourd, spicy sweet gourd pie. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so like first of all, I think one of your issues is is that you're just eating it completely wrong. Like pumpkin pie.
Oh pumpkin pie is a garnish for whipped cream. Oh. Yeah. The question just eat the just eat the whipped cream. No, no, no, no.
The question is does the pumpkin, does the small amount of pumpkin pie that you're gonna eat make the whipped cream taste better? And the answer is yes. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It does.
It totally does. It totally does. No. There's no reason. There's so many other pies to eat than spicy sweet gourd pie.
Sweet spiced gourd pie, however you want to pronounce it. Sweet and spicy. There's many. The one correct thing you said is that sweet potato pie and pumpkin pie might as well be the same thing. If you don't like one, you're not gonna like the other.
You're not gonna like regardless. Somebody brought two pies. One was a buvet sweet potato pumpkin pie. It was a double mix. I I was so upset.
And a regular pumpkin pie. And to my complete, complete shock and dismay and horror. Guess which pie was consumed? The pumpkin out of like the five pies. The pumpkin.
God damn it. Yeah. Pumpkin. People like that stuff. Good.
Yeah. Here's the other thing Dave hates pecans, which are, by the way, God's nut. Like next to Hickory, which is actually God's nut, pecan is freaking God's nut, dude. It's like every once in a while. My favorite Drake song.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, yeah. Listen. Listen. Dave Chang, every once in a while he has a little sense of mental clarity, and he's like, listen, I realize other people like pecans and I don't, so I shouldn't be judging pecan pies.
Who picks the pecans off the top of the freaking pie and just eats the goop? Dave, I like nuts all the way through my pecan pie. And of course, he's like, I didn't like the pecan pie very much. I don't know, man. I I Dave's second favorite pie type of pie.
I've never had. I don't eat cream pies. I don't dislike cream pies. I don't dislike them. I just don't eat them.
I did like if I'm given a list of pies, I'm not going like, oh, I I want I want that cream pie. This doesn't happen to me. It just doesn't happen. I'm not saying it's bad, so I've never had a banafi pie. Ever.
Wow. Wow. Well, I don't know if we can speak anymore. And and Chris, this is this is like buzzard, right? This is very weird.
It's like we entered some multiverse and we got the the evil we got the evil, less intelligent Dave Arnold rather than the open-minded, highly intelligent, empathetic Dave Arnold. I think when we picked up this phone, we went down this multiverse and we got the evil, less intelligent Dave Arnold. What do you think about that? I don't know. I don't know.
Yeah. Listen. Right? He's like, oh, definitely the phone. We're like, are you sure?
All I'm saying is I'm not hating on cream pie. I just don't ever order it. If like if if someone said to me, you could have like all of these other pies. Here's a pie with acid in it. I'm gonna take that pie.
I like pie with acid in it. Okay, okay. Citrus citrus pie we've all decided is number one. Also, but apple pie should have acid. Apple pie should have acid in it.
Not like from the apples, right? All the fruit pies have acids in them. You know what I'm saying? All right. Pumpkin pie is the one pie that doesn't have acid.
Put your top category pie categories in order for us then one to five. I mean, uh apple pie, apple pies, apple pie is my favorite. Are you in trouble? Are you in trouble? Because you're not accidenting where you normally are in the high load there.
You know, I remember the safe word you told me many years ago. You can tell me this, and we'll get on the thought situation. Listen, listen, I've gone down such a pie hole in the past couple of months, not the way you guys have, just like consuming pies. I've been consuming the history of pies. And by the way, you guys missed in all of your delicit.
We have a question, uh, by the way, that we'll get to in a minute, but like the the place that pie became like super important in the in the in the early to mid 20th century is actually LA. LA is like the South has it. I love the South. The South hasn't done anything interesting with pies in 150 years. Okay.
Like the East hasn't done anything interesting with pies in the last 150 years. It's it's Los Angeles. And then spreading out from Los Angeles, one guy, one guy, Monroe Boston Strauss, who would have fallen completely off the radar if it wasn't for Shirley Corriher in Bakewise in 2008, like resurrecting his butt from the from the from the ashes, right? And now, you know, I don't even know, people don't even talk about Shirley Corhair anymore because she gets short triffed too. I don't know why.
I don't have no idea why. But that man invented here's a category that deserved its own the chiffon pie. Delicious style of pie. Delicious style. You could have a citrus chiffon pie.
Delicious. It's a lighter version of the key lime that you uh that you love so well, Dave. All I'm saying is is that you missed out on the man invented graham cracker crust, but he has such a next level graham cracker crust that you guys didn't get into, which is making a standard pie crust and then rolling that into gram crackers so that if there is a real pie crust with gram cracker, and sometimes he does it on the top, and sometimes he does it on the on the bottom. Here's another thing. Wow Boston Montreal Strauss owned a pie company before he became uh an like a national and international pie consultant, okay?
Uh and what he did was he would just watch people all day. He would he would wake up early, make eight bazillion pies, and then all he would do is watch people eat pies. And you know what he realized? He realized that people don't like to saw through their freaking pie when they get down to the plate. He's like, people like when their fork goes into the thing and then goes through it to the plate without having to fight with the pie, right?
And the mistake that everybody makes is making an overly flaky crust on the bottom that you then have to fight to cut through. He's like the average person actually wants to push the fork through the pie and eat the pie. So his solution, Dave, did you back at the French culinary when the when all of the Japanese chefs came for their kaiseki thing, did you come to that event with me? I'm sure I did, but I don't remember anything. Okay, there was a there was a there was a I forget his name, so it's I'm embarrassed, but he is a famous uh tempura chef from Kyoto.
And I don't like tempura, right? I think it's trash can food. Unless it's like served directly to you. Like the idea of an American like making tempura. What is how it's it's the worst fry.
So of all of the fries, of all of the fried foods, it's the worst. Come on. It has one good thing. It has a hot taste. There's one good thing to say about tempura, and that is it doesn't get your oil dirty because everything floats and you can skim it.
That's the one good thing you can say about preparing tempura. But like, if you go to Kyoto and you're seated in front of the person frying it, it's delicious. Any other presentation is garbage. Like anything else, other than direct service from the oil to you is trash can food. Soggy, blonde.
I mean, and you think my and you think my take on spicy gourd pies is bad? Yeah. What is happening, Wild? This is crazy, man. Let me ask you a question.
Let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question. Would you ever, if someone said to you, you can have tempura, pick pick, what's your favorite tempura stuff thing. What's your favorite thing to have done in the style of a tempura batter? Shrimp?
What is it? Shrimp? Some sort of like undercooked vegetable? What? Like, what's your favorite?
Undercooked vegetable, shrimp. What is it that you like the best? Yeah, I couldn't say that. Something of the gore, something of the gourd family, yes. Yeah.
Like a kabucha squash. I like the sweet potato. No, because you guys are very good. Yeah. You guys are human nightmares.
They're overly blonde, water, whatever. I don't want to get into that. That's not the important part. The important part is that this guy whose name I forget, but he looked exactly like Don Knott's and Mr. Limpet, so we just called him Fish Face, and that's why I can't remember his name, because we only called him Fish Face because he looked like Don Knott's from Mr.
Limpet. He did next level tempura, which I had to appreciate. He was doing uh sea eel, a nago, right? And he was like, you need a different batter for the skin side of the eel than you did from the flesh side. So he would draw it through on one side in one batter, the other side, the other batter, and then you know, do the tempura flourish into the oil.
I like the tempura flourish into the oil, by the way. That's a good move. The flourish into the oil, which is shockingly similar to a good fish and chips uh fish flourish because it's also like a batter phenomenon. Do you like a good you like seeing the person do the fish and chips flourish into the oil? I mean, you have to.
Well, that's probably one of the most over overrated foods of the United Kingdom. It's because the chips are bad. There's nothing wrong with it. You're you're just no, the worst food in the United Kingdom is cold eel pie. You can't make it.
You can't be like fish and chips is only bad because the chips are bad. That's 50% of the food. It's fish and chips. That's a fair assessment. But that's a fair assessment.
But did I say to you, did I say to you, I'm in awe of the way that they put a basket of freaking French fries in the thing? No. I said I like the way they put the fish into the batter. I like the flourish of the hand. Obviously, the fries are trash.
Anyway, they're the wrong dimensions. And they put vinegar on them like idiots. Like, why would I want to? Like, if you put vinegar on a fry, it's just proving that it was a bad fry because it's already so soggy and crappy that it doesn't matter that you've just soaked it with liquids. That's what you're saying to me.
With the vinegar. Anyway, I digress. Monroe Boston Strauss had the genius idea. He's like, if you want a flaky crust, make it the top crust. Use two different crusts, a different crust for the top and for the bottom.
So that's what I did for my apple pie this year. I did a flaky crust top and a short crust, short crust bottom. I have it on good authority that Monroe Boston's trust stole that idea from Taco Bell, a double decker taco, though. Yeah, that's uh that's uh what's the word going for the one for incorrect. Incorrect the man the man was a pie genius and he he hailed from the Los Angeles area.
Los Angeles is the nexus of modern American pie hegemony, right? And all the writers, and by the way, I say in that because making fun of them because uh on their podcast, uh you know, Dave and Dave and Chris have a uh had a pronunciation B, but they don't have what we have here. Look, they may be, you know, whatever, like, you know, you guys may be you all big and famous, blah, blah, blah, but you don't have what I have. Watch this. Okay, uh pronounce the word, I watch this.
John, pronounce the word sousang. Soupson. Supson. Yeah, there you go. See, I have a French spe a native French speaker on my on my thing.
So any French word that comes up, give him a word. Dave, give him a word. No, no, no, no. Well, no, what we're trying to ask about the pronunciation V is what it means about the person that tries to pronounce something properly in a room full of people that are not native speakers. That's the worst.
That was the worst thing about Alex Trebet. What? How do you pronounce croissant? Oh, it's it's uh it's it. I just say I did I don't say is that what you're trying to get me to say?
I say like croissant. Yeah, yeah. But here, John. Oh, croissant. Even still John, give it to me again.
That's very French. Yeah, but but like then you have like you gotta have the French guy doing it for you. Watch, John, say battery de cuisine. Batterie de cuisine, like the pronunciation monkey here. Yeah, see that?
You gotta have one of those guys. You know what I mean? I love they don't have that tank. That's insane. Dave, what what what about like what about words in Spanish?
How do you pronounce Barcelona? Oh, that's not even real Span. I can't stand that. Mexicans is the real Spanish. Everybody knows that.
And everyone in Barcelona would rather speak Catalan. Everyone in Barcelona would rather speak Catalan. And that that lispy thing, I like I can't stand it. Give me a Mexican, give me a Mexican or a Colombian speaking Spanish any day. Any day.
What about an individual, right? If you are like uh whatever, somebody asks you in your room with like four friends, do you speak Spanish? And it's like, I went to Barcelona, but someone else pronounces it Barcelona Barcelona. I wince. What do you think about that?
I wince. I wince? Yeah, that's bad. That's horrible. Yeah.
Unless they're Spanish. Yeah, yeah. What about the person that speaks that doesn't speak French? The only word that they pronounce in the proper pronunciation, like croissant, is like that's it. Like what?
Why do you why do you pronounce that properly? And nothing else properly. You know what I mean? It's like, what does it say about a person that thinks that they have to pronounce it like a real French person? Just say it's croissant.
Like every other dumb American. I don't know. I think people feel like they're doing like a good. I don't know. I don't know.
I don't think people do it out of maliciousness, though. What do you do? You were at the page of the case, you're ordering it. You say croissant? No, I no.
I don't know what I just say. Give me that. I just say give me the give me the flaky buttery thing. Yeah, yeah. What about and here's the one?
Give me a crest. I don't know how to pronounce this. What? Uh uh fr French French uh bot on the other end, John. What yeah, what Coogan almonds.
That's how I pronounce it. Coogan almond. Queen amon. Wait, are you literally the voice of Google Translate? This cannot be real.
Cook and almond. Cook almond. Cook and almond. Amazing. I love it.
I love it. I love it. Alright. So uh Nastasia, what'd you have for Thanksgiving? I went to a friend's house.
And what'd they have? Oh, the usual stuff, but no mashed potatoes. No mashed potatoes? No. What?
What? Nope. Nope. I don't know. I don't know.
They had beets. Oh! Nastasia, I think they hate you. I think they probably hate you. Nastasia, what were the dimensions of the beets?
Uh large baseball. Oh. What? Listen, people, after you roast the beet, you have to peel it and cut it into small pieces for it to even go into my mouth. Like, don't serve me a whole beat.
Were they just raw beef? No, no, they were roasted. They were roasted, but they still had like a hard middle, you know. Uh oh, yeah, look. Oh, God.
Listen, beets are one of those things, like until they're dried out, you can't overcook it. Just make it cooked. Make it cooked. Make it cooked. If you're worried about trying it out, wrap it.
Wrap it. Well, no, one better move than that. The better recipe is never cooked down. Don't eat beef. Yo.
Mike, Mike, Mike. Listen, listen. I've had I've had like three, three or four times in my life, someone's handed me a beat, and I was like, damn, that was good. Like Mike Sheeran at WD50's 10th anniversary made a beat dish where he did that par high par dehydrated where the beat got like real chewy. And I was like, I'm enjoying this.
I'm enjoying this. That's the end of the thing. Another WD50 dish. Paul Paul Carm Paul Carmichael had a good beet dish, you know, but but that's about it. Beets to me, Dave.
How do you I'm trying to find moments and places in life and world where we can now agree on where we will be sympathetic. What are your thoughts about the Australian disaster of putting beets and an egg on their burger? That's a huge mistake. First of all, having having a burger anywhere other than the United States is always a letdown. Yeah.
People don't get it. They just don't get it. Like they they do all this stuff to it. I'm like, don't do that. It's a burger.
You know what I mean? Like, just don't do all of those things. Why would you do those things? You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
Yeah. Like, what is the logic? It makes no sense. No, I'm gonna give you the logic. It's when other countries try to be like America and it gets the they don the American football pads, the cleats, the helmet, but they're carrying our lacrosse stick and they're playing lacrosse with football games.
That's what it's like when they try to make American burgers where they think they're making like American stuff, but it's just an embarrassment. Yeah, and they should stop being aware. I want I once for for Giggles got a hamburger in Germany, okay? And they they mixed spices in with the meat, like it was freaking meatloaf, dude. Meatloaf is a different food from burgers.
People are so dumb. People are really bad. Well, Dave, with your logic, they might as well put a uh pumpkin pie in between the bread. Come on, man. That would be good to you.
That would be good to you. Come on. Okay. With whipped cream. As long as the whipped cream, it accentuates the whipped cream.
I can't believe Nastas. First of all, I can't believe Nastasia had to have beets on Thanksgiving. I still, that's going through my head. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
Uh John, what do you have? Uh pretty good Thanksgiving. Grilled spatchcock turkey, some really good stuffing. Uh squash casserole with marshmallows on top, uh green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, lots of great real green beans or canned green beans. Real green beans.
Uh cream of mushroom soup or not cream and mushroom soup. Okay, so halfway. You're halfway. It's a halfsies. Yeah.
Okay. Prefer that to the mushy green beans. Um canned green beans are bad, but I had this discussion with people. There are some times when the worst product makes a dish better. When the product that is the worst product makes the dish better.
And the theory on this, I'm not saying I agree, is the crappy canned beans, the cream of mushroom soup, and the dirky fried onions. And that that combination of three things baked together is that dish. And that then to try to fancy it with beans that taste good is actually making the dish worse. I don't agree. I'm saying that's the argument.
I don't agree with that either. Yeah. Android my green beans, yeah. It sounds it sounds a little bit like moneyball. Those three things equal Jason Giambi.
Right. Right. I mean, like, you know, I don't understand sports references, so I'm just gonna have to agree with you. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Um decent giant jambi. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh Joe, what do you do? What do you have for your Thanksgiving? We want the pastis. What?
Yep. Really? Mm-hmm. My wife, you know, my wife's pretty far very pregnant. Yeah, we didn't want to have anyone over.
Didn't want to have to do the whole spiel of cleaning up, cleaning the house, cleaning up after people, having people over. So we want the pastis. We ate French food. Yeah. What do you have like steak frit?
I had a flamignon. She had a whole lobster. I had to start. Dang. Uh, yeah.
All right. Yo, uh, John John, give me some dandon. Dandon. Yeah, there you go. That's that you could have had a pastiste.
You could have had John with you. He could have gone dandon. Would have been awesome. Hazan, what do you what do you have? You have traditional Thanksgiving there or what?
No. No? Oh, he doesn't have a mic close enough to him. Uh, one of you now is in a fist fight with a bird. All right, there we go.
Uh, I'll tell you what I have for Thanksgiving. Thanks for asking. We know. Pie. That's it.
Thanksgiving, man. So I went to my sister's house, right? But here's the worst part. Ready for it? No leftovers.
They have a new baby, so I went to my sister's house. No leftovers. So on the way home, we stopped by Stu Leonard's. We got a Christmas tree. I ran in while Jen was picking out the Christmas tree with uh with uh Dax and I bought a turkey.
I went home, got home at 4 p.m. or 4 30, had an entire Thanksgiving on the table at nine. Turkey, turkey gravy. I cut the back off of it, broke my kitchen shears, cut the back out of it, made a turkey stock with uh uh pressure cooked turkey stock with the bones, spatchcock. I didn't have time to brine it properly, so I made a mixture of mayonnaise and salt and and broth and injected mayonnaise, salt, broth, and sugar into the breasts to get them all jacked up because I didn't have time to do it right.
And uh the mayonnaise injection actually wasn't so bad. It worked well. Yeah. I made uh cranberry sauce and I made Parker House rolls. I ground flour and made Parker house rolls.
All on the table by nine because I was just so mad that I didn't have leftovers. And the best meal I had was actually Saturday when I got to have my cold turkey sandwiches, which is the only reason to have Thanksgiving anyway, is the cold turkey sandwiches for me. I love a cold turkey sandwich. I don't like an open face sandwich. I don't mind that you like it.
I just don't like it. I don't want gravy, I don't want freaking cranberry sauce on my sandwiches. I just want turkey and mayonnaise and lettuce and mustard, white bread toasted one side. That's what I want. This is crazy, man.
Chris, I have two things. I know, I know, I know. And like thinking about we should be impressed. We should be impressed with what he did. Like, ooh, it's amazing.
Oh, yes. I love this. I love this. No, I I'm I'm gonna be like, why? Why would you do that?
Because I wanted the leftovers. Do you know who said why did you do that? My wife, Jen. She's like, why are you doing this? I'm like, I don't know.
Yeah. Exactly. Secondly, I mean, your pro-turkey-ness is a problem, I think for a lot of people, including myself. Yeah, but you're you're just wrong. Like, look, it's okay to be wrong, Dave.
It's okay to be dead wrong. Turkey is delicious. You know, I'll give you an equivalent. It's like, oh, I'm meeting somebody the first time. It's like, oh, they're pro-choice, they're they're feminine, they believe in all the good things in life, but you're like, you know, you don't believe in the First Amendment.
That's not like when you're telling me when you're like, I like turkey. I don't understand it. I don't know if we can be friends. I I don't know either, because turkey is delicious. Listen, the first fight, the first fight that Dave and I had, you ready for it?
It got ugly, really ugly. Wiley. Well, no, the very first fight was over tongs. Wiley and Chang are on team no tongue for any reason. And I'm like, you're incorrect.
Tongs are useful. And they're like, Tongs are not useful. Whatever. The second one, same night, like I can't believe I made it out of this, like unscathed. I was like, I know that it's a trash can thing made by trash can people for trash can people, but wasabi mashed potatoes taste good.
And you guys lost your minds. Oh my god. Oh my god. Well, again, oh my god. Look humans.
What is this? Look! Evolved and developed an opposable thumb, so we should never have to hold tongues. It's very clear. That's the main purpose for our thumb.
This is insane. To not hold tongs in a kitchen. Okay? Like that's just the truth. Just look it up.
Okay. Secondly, secondly, Wasabi mashed potatoes is one of the most horrific combinations ever invented. And the fact that you like it, I remember that, and I feel like I can't believe this guy's food opinions. Like, what a lot of people are. This is the same freaking argument we had like 15 years ago.
And listen, what I'm trying to tell you is that I understand all the reasons you hate it. It also happens to taste good. This is one of those situations that we're talking about. No, it's not true. You gotta give somebody, you gotta let somebody grow over time, you know.
15 years, Chris. It's 15 years. Okay, listen, listen. It's 15 years, 15 years. I stand by it.
I have not made it, but if someone handed to me, I'd be like, as long as there's enough butter whipped into that sucker, I'd be like, that tastes good. I mean. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. Explain explain to me why horse explain to me why horseradish potatoes are good and wasabi mashed potatoes are bad.
Go. Who says that? First of all, horse. I disagree with it. This is an legal trick review.
I I disagree with the pressure. You guys are the worst. Yeah. You guys are terrible. Why would you make the talk about it's a good one?
Do you like horseradish? Do you like horseradish? No, I don't. I like it fine. Oh my god.
You don't like horseradish? On a roast beef sandwich? What is it good at? You know what's better than horseradish? What?
Any kind of hot sauce? Oh, please. Anything else other than horse. Please, please. You know what's better than horseradish?
You know what's better than horseradish? Fresh wasabi. Oh, so now you want wasabi mashed potatoes, do you? All right, hold on. This is in from Bryce.
I'm gonna trigger you again. Uh because I know you and I agree on this. I don't like eggnog very much. Like, I can have one thimble full of it, but then I'm done. I'm good with it.
Uh Bryce writes in, I used to use Ruman's aged uh eggnog recipe. I've since stopped consuming alcohol. Jeffrey Morgenthaler offers a non-alcoholic eggnog recipe at the link provided. Is there a way to circulate a bagged up Morgenthaler non-alcoholic nog for a time in an attempt that will render the product safe for immunocompromised individuals? Sure.
Yeah. So like uh the problem with his um, so for those of you that are keeping track, it's uh two eggs, whole eggs though, not yolks. Uh so like that's gonna be the issue. The whole eggs are, but they're not gonna set because it's 120 mils of milk and 300 mils of heavy cream and some sugar. So yeah, so just bag that sucker, like just bag it, take it up to like 62 for like, you know, 15 minutes in a bag and you're done.
Or just pre-pasteurize the eggs. Just pasteurize the eggs at like 57 for an hour and 15 minutes and then use them uh pasteurized like that, and then don't worry about bagging the the whole thing. But you do I don't, but I I like I say, I don't really like eggnog that much. I don't know. Or Dave, the better recipe again is don't make it.
Don't drink it. It's an ice cream. Dave Chang, yes. Dave's on record saying that like all eggnog is better consumed as ice cream. I believe Chris, you rightly pointed out that alcohol in uh in uh ice cream can cause textural issues.
Uh I believe that's what happened. All right. Ready for another triggering question from Colton Johnson? Hey everybody, what it's about pies again. Pie Marches On.
Pie March is on, by the way, is the book we were talking about by uh Monroe Boston Strauss, the pie king of uh Los Angeles. Uh invented the chiffon pie when he was only 20 or 21 years old. Amazing, amazing man. Uh now dead. Uh Pie March is on has been one of the best classic cookbooks we've gotten, probably ever.
Oh, by the way, I should mention this. If you are a member of Patreon, I have scan, I went to the New York Public Library and scanned an extremely rare Monroe Boston Strauss cookbook. Him and a guy named Charles Glabau. You can look, read the Glabau just for fun. He was the technical director of Baker's Weekly from like 1911 to like 1933 for 1920 to whatever.
Anyway, so it's half Glabau and half Strauss, but you gotta you gotta read that section. I put the scan up on the for the Patreon people. Uh the pumpkin pie recipe of from Pie Marches On is hands down the best pumpkin pie my husband and I have ever had, and we'll be we will be making it every year. As for the short flake or mealy pie crust recipes, and this is where the question comes in, I can't seem to get it right. So, so Dave and Chris, for your because you haven't been tuning into this.
So that Boston Monroe, Monroe Boston Strauss has three different recipes. What's called the long flake recipe, which is what most 99% of people think pie crust should be, right? The short flake, which is the one that he uses almost all the time when you want the fork to actually go through and hit the plate, and what he calls mealy. And the mealy one, you almost really never want to use because it just kind of falls apart. It doesn't hold its structure.
Uh and so, so what they're what the thing is when I follow the recipes as they're written, it turns into more of a paste to shorten the mealy, and it's impossible to roll out. Have you had any trouble with this? Am I just over mixing uh slash overwatering? I've already rolled some all-butter long flake pie dough in the graham cracker crust and uh dust, and it's by far the best pie crust, but I want to get the full experience with his short flake recipes. Any insight is appreciated.
Love the show, happy holidays. Your problem is this. Boston, uh Monroe Boston Strauss was using commercial, this is one of your problems. He was using commercial pastry flour, right? Everybody now uses AP flour.
AP flour is not the ideal flour for a good pie crust. Everyone is using JV level flour in their recipes, and all cookbook writers write recipes for JV level flour because everybody doesn't want to tell you to go out and buy the right flour for the job at at hand. Myself included, as I'm writing these recipes, I'm trying to write stuff for AP flour. If you've ever gotten your hands on real decent, awesome pastry flour milled from really good soft wheat, soft winter wheat, like it is by far and away a better flour to use in a pastry crust. And this is one of the reasons why I'm sure a lot of your pie crusts you said when you were tasting them over the last month were like universally good is because all professional pie makers get real pie flour for pies.
You know what I'm saying? They're not buying, they're not, they're not going to the supermarket and expecting one kind of flour to make every baked good on earth, right? Because it's just not the way the world works. You know what I mean? Uh but if you want to take AP flour, I would say on a 150 gram basis, I would use about 25 grams of cornstarch and 125 grams of uh your regular AP.
And don't do that to imitate cake flour, because uh it's it's not gonna have a cake flour has been treated to hold water better. So that's a terrible substitution for cake flour, but it's a good substitution for uh pie flour. And I almost guarantee you that you're overworking the butter into the flour. So he says to work it in all the way, but you gotta remember he's writing this recipe uh for 1930, you know, five or six when they were mixing these things, like cutting the the the butter and shortening into giant vats, doing like 10 pounds at a time. And so you're almost certainly using something like a food processor or whatever and overworking the flour into it, and then probably uh if it's not holding together, then you need to add more water.
And if it's not holding, if it's if it's turned to a paste, you probably added too much. But his recipes, I've done them. Use the pastry uh flour substitution I gave you, and don't don't over overwork the uh the butter in. I would say like here's one. Everyone's like, work the butter into the work, work your butter into the the flour until it's the size of walnuts.
What the hell is that? That is a trash can recommend. That is that makes no sense to me. But anyway, I hope that helps. Was that a good answer, guys?
Great answer. Great answer. All right. Good job, Dave. Good job, Dave.
But I think the the the nut size is actually pecan because it's also a trash nut. I'll have you know, Dave. I'll have you know that they are all members of the Jiglin Day CE family, but the pecan and the hickory are more closely related. Walnut is a good nut. Walnut is a good nut.
They're all good nuts. You know what's a you know what's disagree? Okay, what is your favorite nut? Don't say peanut because you know it's not a nut. What's the best nut?
What's the best nut? Pistachio. Peanut's not a nut? No. Legume.
Yeah, come on, man. Of course I know that. Jesus. All right, so what's the best nut? What's the best nut?
Nut. I don't know. Nut. Best nut? I don't I'm not a fan.
I like black walnuts when they're fresh. But that's about it. Mm-hmm. That's about it. I'm not a big fan of nuts.
What about pistachios? Nastasia just busted out the pistachio nut. Too much work. Pretty good nut. It's a good nut.
Too much work. Too much work. Do you know what I don't like? Too much work. When you buy the number 10 cans of pistachios, there's always nasty ones in there.
So you have to go through them. That's what I hate. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's too much work to shell.
And honestly, you're fancy. You could buy those brantes. You could buy the brantes. You could probably have the entire island like send you all of their brantes, dude. Oh no, no, no, no.
It's important, it's important to buy to shell them because you get that extra bit of salt on your fingers, which makes it that much more delicious. I'm not saying pistachios are not delicious. I'm saying there's too much work for me to like them. That's just all. That's just me.
Macadamia. Macadamia. Too fatty. Huh. See, for me, it's like I don't really think they have that much flavor.
They're more of a texture food for me. Well, I mean, again, like maybe that's why it's always in that crappy box of chocolates that someone gets when they come back from Hawaii. And I don't like that either. You know what? You know what nut I don't really like.
You know what nut I don't like very much? Brazil nut. I'm never like, you know what I really want? Brazil nuts. And then when you get the mix in the Brazil nut, you're like, what?
The worst nut. Yeah, Brazil nuts, worse nut. And it kills people. But it takes up so much root, too. You know.
Yeah. They're big for no reason. There's a there's a look like rocks. What's the there's a there's a nut in Australia that's like eight, eighteen pounds of nut. That's not very good.
And then um, what was I gonna say about pistachios? The reason why I can't even get past pistachios, if you got me thinking about pistachios, Dave, you are a wealth of knowledge. What is the reason why pistachios were colored red lipstick from years upon years? Oh uh, I used to know this. I had to look it up once.
I forget the I forget the answer. It has to do with the fact that they couldn't be pro like they would turn to an uh an off-color on storage, and so they couldn't figure out a way to process them right. So, in order to have them not look unappetizing, they just dyed them all red. But I forget exactly what the reason was was. Was it was because they like were they couldn't control the color properly?
They're just like better off that they're all red. But no one who's younger than us even has seen a red pistachio. I always wonder. I I honestly, instead of I think a lot of people would say, like, well, that's the dumbest invention, culinary invention of all time. I think it's probably arguably one of the top three or four best culinary ideas of all time.
Oh coloring the pistachios. Yeah, well, it's just it's it's a huge fuck you to everybody that would eat pistachios. It's like for so many people, they didn't even know that pistachias were not colored red. They have no idea. So when they actually saw a pistachio that was not colored red, that's the one that freaked them out.
In the 70s move in the 70s, the first time I had non-red pistachios, I was like, what is this? What is wrong with these things? Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, because pistachios are red. Yeah, yeah.
All right, I gotta get some questions, you guys. I'm gonna get my head. All right, here we go. Zachary writes in uh question uh for you guys any chance of lucky pinch lucky pinch, lucky peach reprinting or release. It was my favorite food writing, but collecting old issues is getting expensive.
Any chance, guys? Um I probably not ever that I know of. I wouldn't even know where to find those files if I tried. Yeah, you gotta cut my man Zachary a rate, dude. All right, Zachary, send me your address, I'll ship you whatever issues you want, buddy.
There you go. Send you back in. There you go. But only if you're a Patreon, he is a Patreon member. There you go.
All right, uh all right. Oh, and only if you were announce pumpkin pie. All right, so Zach, Zachary, you need to write in renounce pumpkin pie on the Patreon, and you can get the issues you need. That's the that's the deal you have to make with the Oh, and you said pumpkin pie, you're totally busted. I love it.
Uh okay. So uh from uh JM Badger writes in for Chris, what's the craziest story you have from collaborating with others slash providing editorial direction either on books at Lucky Peach or your current major domo media projects? The craziest story I have from collaborating, I feel like the last 15 years has been one long crazy story collaborating with Mr. Chang here. It has not hopefully stopped yet, but it's been uh I mean I think the first time that Dave and I really hung out, he fell out of a second story window.
Ooh. That was pretty crazy. Like that's pretty good. Fell with with quotes around it, or like legit fell. No, like legit fell, but in his defense, if you must remember this, he fell, and I was outside of a bar.
He literally fell out of a second story window into like a little Olympic Simone Biles tuck and roll, and then just started tying his shoe as though he had meant to fall out and roll to tying his shoe, and that's how he always ties the shoe. So that's probably were you on the second floor or were you on the sidewalk? I was on the sidewalk below, and he was inside uh on the second floor and fell out. Again, like I'm not exaggerating. Fell out, and roll, tied his shoe, got up, dusted himself up and walked back inside.
He didn't give you a sub dude. He didn't give you sub, dude. What's up, dude? This is also important. This is also important to note.
It's also important to note that like the the the cultural zeitgeist at that moment in time in the Bay Area. We were on the uh Tony and I had just pissed off everybody in San Francisco by saying the figs on the play comment. Right. We're on the tour and they they canceled us. Every goddamn restaurant, every museum, every auditorium canceled us, so we still went there and we had host our event in a bar.
And and I bought I think 148 Miller Highlight ponies for the audience. And no one showed up except for Chris. And so not even exaggerated. And uh Chris, Chris, did you bring the figs and the goat cheese? No, man.
I was like, BY own figures, B-Y-O-F. BYOF. Bring your own figs to the Dave Chang event. Um I remember that. Yeah.
Uh all right. From Dakota. Uh Dave, what's the wildest thing that cooks better in a nuke? Wish y'all an incredible holiday season, Dakota. Better, better to nuke?
Yeah, better in a microwave. What's better in a microwave? Mashed potatoes. Mm-hmm. What do you mean what do you think about that, Dave Arnold?
Well, I don't know. I don't even understand what that means. I don't even understand what that means. Like, does the microwave mash them for you? Do you have some sort of like next level panasonic?
No, I'm just saying, like, cook the microwave and cook the potatoes in the microwave. The mashed potatoes. Like how many? Like in one of you in one of your bowls so that they steam or like individually so they're semi-baked. It doesn't, it doesn't have to be in the bowls, but certainly it does.
But if you just microwave potatoes, I think it's the best way. See, the thing about the bowls. The thing about the bowl that I like is that then you're developing steam and you're cooking them all. If they're not in a bowl and you're cooking more than one or two, you have to worry about the timing so much. You know what I'm saying?
Correct. Correct. But you can get the timing down if you get to know the water, the your power of your microwave and the you know idiosyncratic nature of everyone's microwave. And um I also believe that microwaving your Idaho potatoes is probably the best way to make gnocchi. Potato gnocchi.
Really? Why? Because you're not adding or subtracting that much moisture? Yeah. Without without anything.
Sand's bull, just you you it just it's just a great way to cook your potatoes, I think. I I'm a big fan of cooking potatoes in the microwave. What are your what are what are your theories on uh on the temperature of the potato into a gnocchi battery? It needs to be warm, but not cold. Right.
Right, not super hot yet. What's yours? Same. It's like this weird thing, it's hard to describe. I uh also like my my gnocchi is horribly inconsistent.
I don't want to talk about it. That's a trigger for me. I I I don't know why I haven't been able to dial it in. It's one of those things where like I just can't I can't get it right 100% of the time and it just pisses me off, and I haven't had the time to like dial dial it in. So it's it's making me irritated.
Let me ask you, Dave, uh uh on your potatoes, what kind of potatoes are you using and how developed are the starch crystals there? It might interest you to know, Dave, that the main difference between a waxy potato and what we call a starchy or mealy potato is literally just uh the density of the potato and not the the variety and all the genetics, that's all horse it. Like if you get a potato, like really it's all about the the density. It's you can base all of your potato recipes on the flavor of the potato itself and on its specific gravity. I but to answer your question, I use uh uh Idaho Russets whenever humanly possible.
Right. But can can I just say that that is the density actually matters in the cooking and the flavor because then it's about drying out your potatoes as much as possible. Yeah, and if you want those mealy things, like oh whatever, uh I have to get these questions or I'm gonna get I'm gonna get in trouble. Real quick, I'd like to remind you, it's a family show. No crazy.
You did. What'd I say? S H I T. Yeah. I said sugar honey iced tea.
No kids. Oh no. Sugar honey ice tea. All right. This is from Quinn.
Uh the premiere season of uh Mind of a Chef is one of my first big inspirations to get serious about cooking. If that show or something similar came back with Dave's involvement, who is a chef that Dave would choose to follow for a whole season. Oh, good question. Um I've probably right now, because I think he's doing really interesting things, is Matt Horn in West Oakland. Um because he's on the precipice of really expanding just as an entrepreneur as well.
He's got like a chicken thing going on, and just what he has with his barbecue operation in West Oakland is just uh there's so much happening there. Talk about noise. There's a like a junkyard, literally right behind the restaurant. So there's a lot going on, and I I would be I would watch a show that sort of sort of took a peek into his mind, not just for the culinary ideas, but just sort of like what it means to be a chef trying to open up multiple businesses right now. Speaking of Oakland, how did you not have don't they have bean pie over there?
How did you not get bean pie in your list? I don't even know what that is. What is that? Bean pie? Bean pie is like how can I how can I order something, Dave, when I don't even know what it is?
Bean pie was like it's like the story you're just making it up right now. Bean pie is the famous Nation of Islam pie. And like I would assume that you know, where the where the Black Panthers were invented, the cradle of the Black Panthers, they would have a decent bean pie somewhere. I've not any here actually. The Reverend Elijah Mohammed believed that the navy bean was a superior bean, and so didn't want people to be eating the sweet potato pie or the pumpkin pie, so the bean pie was developed, and it's a good pie.
It could be your alternative. It could be. But I wonder if it's like it was probably I imagine it was like a specialty of your black Muslim bakery, right? Yeah. In Oakland, that must have been sort of gone.
It might have gone away with them. Dave, it could be very similar, I would imagine, to a lot of the red bean desserts in in A T. It's not though I know what you're saying, but it's not okay, but question for uh Dave. What are your top three favorite pantry items uh beyond the existing line of products you recently launched that are great ways to increase umami, blow up flavor, and introduce a wow factor when aiming to create dishes inspired by Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, etc. eccentric hard-to-finder items uh are are acceptable.
Things you have to make are acceptable. I got three easy. One is um saywood joke, it's Korean salted krill, like very, very small shrimp. Um you almost need to like find a special container just to make sure the smells don't emanate into your house because it is extremely pungent, but a little bit goes a long way. Um the other one is red boat fish sauce.
I go through a tremendous amount in my cooking in everything from vinaigrette to you name it. I think I put red boat fish sauce in like 75% of all the dishes I make, uh regardless of the cuisine. And the third one would be any kind of Shiro Dashi. So which is a it's basically like dashi bouillon liquid. You're okay with the are you okay with the the granules or do you hate the granules?
No, I like I I I like Hondashi's fine, but like I this whole there's this I I would say the past 10 years there's been um you know even longer than that, a lot of American cooks understanding or utilizing Japanese ingredients a little bit more for a muzu, so on and so forth. I would say the past 36 months or maybe a little bit longer, the the the big thing has been the adoption of shirodashi into their cuisine, which is you know, like I don't know. Ying, how would you describe it in layman's terms? The shiradashi or the hondashi? Shira dashi.
I think that yeah, I mean I don't know how to describe it in layman's terms. It's like it's it's it's a little slightly smoky, slightly seaweedy umami. It's like dashi dashi dashi water, dashi sauce. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's flavored, dashi sauce.
And I I think a lot of cooks, professional cooks, are adding it to a lot of dishes themselves. Um, and those are three very, very highly potent umami things that you could add in your pantry. All right. Now, uh change right, Dave. You always talk about like if you it is it's like a delicious flavor the first time you eat it, but then after you, if you just try to use it constantly and you don't use it with sort of a two dishes hand, then you can get tired of it pretty quickly too.
Remember when everybody used ketchup manise and everything? Remember back then when everybody put ketchup my knees and everything? Yeah, that was when that was when every everybody that was a graduate, a less pronounced with the great coons, you know, for like a five-year period was put in ketchup men and saw and everything. Everything. Um we're dating ourselves, Dave, because nobody knows what the hell we're talking about.
Yeah. Uh all right, Chang, can you please help me identify the proper this is from Chris Grady. Uh the proper alkaline salts to buy for homemade ramen noodles. I get lost on the internet trying to understand. And are those uh how do you pronounce this?
Toy roll clay pots that show up in your videos, and uh what wheat berries to use if I want to grind f fresh flour for ramen. Thanks. Dude, I I I I can't answer any of that stuff anymore. I I've forgotten knowledge across the board. Do you buy the liquid conce or do you use salt?
Uh I don't I don't like the liquid conce in small batches. I think it works better in larger batches and it works better um um when you're making tofu a little bit, but I still don't even like it because it just tastes like crap. But I don't make nude ramen. There's certain things as a professional cook. Dave is clearly, I'm not even a professional cook anymore.
I just refuse to make at home. I don't make stuffed pop like pastas with farces in it. I don't make ramen noodles, I don't make soba. I don't do these things at home because I I never want them to be made in my home, ever. So yeah, Nastasia is great agrees with you.
She gets triggered by people making pasta. Chris, I'm gonna get to your I'll get your wheat berries next week, by the way. I'll I'll talk uh because I'll talk too long and Nastasia will take my my head off. What about your clay pots? What's your make?
Is it uh Toyro? Uh I don't know. This one is Japanese, but Toyro had uh the monopoly on all of the good ones. And I have the I've had the same one for like 10 years, and it's chipped up, but it's you know, I I don't you just need to have one that's not gonna crack on you and that has a deep well. That's what I think.
Yeah, the Toy Roll ones are really good. I just honestly I haven't bought anything other than the one I have. All right, Jason, I'm gonna get to your vacuum bagging question uh next week because I don't think Chang and you don't really care about vacuum tricks, right? You're not a vacuum trick guy. Not anymore.
Yeah. All right. So if two things we gotta do. One on the way out, uh, go buy the Sears All Pro. By the way, Dave, you haven't had a chance to actually use it yet.
This thing, it kicks the crap out of the old one. It's like we completely redesigned it. It's completely redesigned, and we're not gonna we're not gonna we're not gonna get to make it. Well, can I ask what what what what are what is everyone's problem? Do they not understand what what this is?
Like, do your listeners actually care about you? I think they do. It knows they understand that this is a good thing. I just want free information. I don't know, man.
Yeah, I don't know. But like the thing is because it's like it's legitimate. Even like it's an amazing, you cannot recreate this heat even in a professional kitchen. So I I I don't understand. Especially the new one.
It's it's nuts. It's it's nutty baggins. I mean, like, but like again, like the thing is like one guy was like, I'll just wait for it to come on Amazon. You're gonna wait a long time, dude. Yeah, if we don't make this indie go go, we don't make anything.
We don't exist. Yeah, there's a good chance that we just don't email John and ask, you know, where all this stuff is. Yeah. Hey hey Jace, this is not this is not my my clearly my my my my uh time to ask this, but why don't you just shame your audience right now? He doesn't like shaming he can't shame he can't shame these guys.
Yeah, but you can, S. No, because then you get mad and I don't wanna I don't want to deal. Oh yeah, I just say this so mad. Just give 'em, give 'em a give 'em. If you shame 'em.
If you shame them, they might care. Yeah. I feel like the people who listen to this probably have bought it. It's just you need you need a lot of people to buy it. We need a lot of people to buy it because we have to pay for the tooling and all that.
They're not doing their job. Yeah. They're not doing their job. If they listen to it, buy it, they're not doing their job because they need to be like starting like a religion right now. They need to have eight to twelve other people.
If you haven't convinced twelve other people to buy the Sears All Plus, you're not a real fan of the show. Yeah, get out of your um get out of your mom's basement and go until we no geez Louise. We should we should do this. We should do this, uh, what's it called? Uh the like uh Ponzi scheme style, whereas like if you bring in three friends, we give you a discount on the one you got.
No. That's a that's hell on earth for John to figure out. Yeah, you can talk about that kind of function. Like that works. Yeah, like like Tupperwares are like uh I saw one of those uh what was that?
Mary Kay, the Pink Cadillacs. I saw one of those on the street the other day. All right, we gotta we gotta. What? Nope.
And then also for our Patreon members, uh, holiday perk coming out, 10% off at Edwards Aged Meets. I'll post the uh discount code in the Patreon uh comments. Don't share it with anybody. Yeah, but check out Edwards Age Meets. Uh I'd like uh I follow them on Instagram, they do some fun stuff.
All right, so on the way out, let's leave it with this discussion. You ready? What this is from Pablo uh Pavlovsky. What are the fewest number of ingredients you need to consider something ramen? Goes over ramen.
It's a question from a user. What noodles and water? Two noodles. I mean, are are you already considered considering the noodles already cooked or not cooked? Do you get to choose, man?
I don't know. I don't know. Okay, how about this? You have brothers, broth and noodles. Broth and noodles come.
You have broth and noodles that you have. Now what? And what are the two ingredients? I think it's probably chives and egg? What?
Chives and egg. No, you need you don't need a broth because you can have a Buddha ramion with you can have some kind of like oil-based ramen. You need some a like flavoring agent and some something to sauce the noodles. So it would be on a on a macro level number, it would be three. If you wanted to like go deeper, I'm sure you could, you know, those three could be broken into like 25 ingredients.
So the minimum ramen is three. Yeah, but you don't I've seen ramen without any toppings. It doesn't have to have topping. Doesn't have to have chashi, doesn't have to have memma, it doesn't have to have a lot of things. I think it's the basic minimum is some kind of sauce and flavoring agent.
The flavoring agent really can't be the sauce itself. Could someone provide you that minimum ramen and ha and have you be happy? No, because I'd be like, What what are you what do you guys been doing all day? Okay, so what's the minimum number? What's the minimum number of ingredients?
What's the minimum number of ingredients where you don't walk out and say, what the hell is that? Are you saying ingredients? You're saying about components of a bowl of noodles. It's like noodles, broth, Chris, you choose, man. You choose.
I don't know. This is not my question. So you get to choose what the answer is. Okay, okay, noodles is one. Some kind of some kind of broth or liquid or fat is another, right?
You have the seasoning, the tare, you can't have ramen without tare, right? The the the salty umani flavoring liquid, which is like a double dip method created by uh Alba ramen shop uh many many years ago. So that's three, right? Then the minimal thing would be one topping. One topping, right?
And that could be, you know, uh a better one. It could be eggs, you could be neggy, you know. I think the most classic thing would might just be neggy, but you know, I I I think for me the bare minimum would just be one topping, like a meat, a vegetable, or something, fish cake, egg. Um that would be my idea. So Chris, what do you think?
Yeah. Yeah, I think that I think that tame, even without broth, you could just have tare and fat, noodles, and at the bare minimum, you need some sort of little alum. You need neggy on there, I think, would be the minimum. You don't need meat. Hey, did you just say aluminium?
No one says that. You need a tare and aluminium, so you can take your baking ramen for takeaway. Yeah. But listen, you don't that's the thing. Like, you need that little bit because you need something at least a little bit texturally different.
You need something a little crunchy on it, no? Need some textual variation. Yeah. What circumstances are we even being forced to live like that? I don't know.
I don't know. I'm being told that I'm being told that this the circumstance I'm living with is that we need to get off the air. That's the circumstance we need to. But uh Chris and Dave, thanks for coming on uh to the show. I I hope uh you enjoyed it.
Can I ask one question? Then you guys can cut us off. It's a real honor. What are your thoughts on Turkish delight, Dave Arnold? Okay.
Okay. Turkish delight. Here, okay. I thought you might ask something like this. There is a Dave Chang hates Turkish food.
I'm gonna say this. He hates Turkish delight. Turkish delight. I love Turkish food. I hate Turkish Delight.
Okay. There's a Turkish, there's a Turkish dessert where you cook, you poach a chicken breast, you beat it, and then you mix it with rice in a pudding form, you chill it, and you eat it. What are your thoughts? See? I'm I I'm trying.
I have to try it. All right. All right. I can't pronounce the name of that dish, and so I'm not gonna try to be that like American white guy who tries to pronounce the Turkish word. So I'm not gonna.
So I'm gonna go one further and call it locum. And even though I hate, I hate flour water as an ingredient in general, which is why I don't drink Ramos gin fizzes. It's like a triple hatred for you because it's a jelly, it's it's got nuts in it, and it's flavored with a flower water, right? So it's like all the hates. But the fact that it comes with powdered sugar on it in snake format that you then cut off of the snake, I think that's a win.
So I like it. No, no, no, no. It's the best name ever for a a food item with the actual worst flavor. Well, but the thing is if you call it if you called it locum, it would be easier for you to hate on. Yeah, but don't waste Turkish Delight on don't waste Turkish Delight on Turkish Delight.
It should be you know, what if like cabals were called Turkish Delight instead of kebabs or Turkey Delight? Let's make a campaign where to kebabs should be renamed Turkish Delight. Let's let's take that name back. Like when when like New Orleans wanted the jazz name back for the NBA team. Also, Chang hates Whoppers, so let's just put it there.
Chang thinks that Whoppers and Turkish Delight are the equivalent candy, which is incorrect. It's just not the correct opinion to have. Whatever. Uh is anyone here gonna back me up on Turkish light? Is anyone gonna say they like it?
Let's get off the air. Uh all right. All right. Thank you. All right, cooking issues.
Love you guys. Bye, Dave.
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