Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center at New Stan Studios, joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing? I'm good. Yeah?
Mm-hmm. Doing well? Yes. We have also uh work in the panels, Joe Hazen. How you doing?
I'm doing great. How are you guys? Good, good. Uh we're supposed to have Jackie Molecules in the California booth, but we're worried maybe the big one hit because we can't raise them. So this is not going out live to the Patreon people.
I'm sorry. But uh if somehow uh you're uh on the Discord you want to call in questions to our guest at 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And of course, our special guest today is uh fan of our um uh fan favorite for from our listeners. Fan of the show.
Oh, nice, nice. Uh Kenji Lopez Alt. How you doing? I'm good, how are you? Doing well, doing well.
Uh like I said, I'm good. Good I meant good. Yeah. Uh so all right, so you know, you might know uh the food lab, right? Which sold, I don't know, what, like uh a copy for every person who lives in the United States, something like that?
Something like this. Something like like there's enough copies for like every you know person uh to have one in the country, uh, which is great. To have 50 pages of one. Yeah, part of one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I like how you've calculated it. That's very good. Uh, but you come out with a new book, and I'm kind of surprised. I it you know, I was surprised when I learned it was a long time ago that I learned what you're doing, but uh on uh the walk, just on the walk. And you say in the intro, uh you're like you felt kind of weird because it's the pan that you use the most.
Right. And that you kind of left it out of your first book. Yeah, I mean, not not totally by choice. You know, it was my first book. Yeah, I mean, you worked with Maria, but uh uh the my first book when I turned in the manuscript to her, she kind of you know took took the axe to it because it was way too long.
Um and so all all you know, most of the stuff that stayed in was kind of the American stuff and American adjacent stuff. And then so there was a whole chapter on the walk in that book, um, among other things that got cut. Um the only thing that remained in that first book is in the is in the chapter is in the introductory chapter on uh equipment where I said you should buy a walk, and these are the things you can do in a walk, and then I didn't mention a walk again in the rest of the book. Right. So yeah, so I mean I remember in uh you remember like uh so across the way from Maria was you know, whoever her assistant was at the time.
Right, right. Yeah, I mean, she you know, in the time that we were writing, she had I think like two or three. I don't know which one you had for the l like the longest length of time. I don't remember. Yeah, but in that side in the side uh cabinet was your stocks of paper.
Because you submitted like eight billion pages of stuff for the first book. I mean, every time and Maria would every time I showed up, she would waltz me across the room and be like, look at Kenji's stack. Where's your stack of paper? Where's your stack of paper? I'm like, I don't have one, Maria, I don't have it.
So yeah, anyway, uh yeah. Good times. But uh one thing I think it's interesting and um I think gonna be interesting for like a lot of our listeners if they don't already have the book. And when did it come out, by the way? Uh March eighth, officially.
Yeah. So uh oh, congratulations. Thank you. Yeah. Um you were a very early advocate and continue to be of the flat bottom walk.
Yeah. And and I think like this is gonna be interesting for a lot of our listeners and might solve maybe some of their problems in that uh a lot of people who poo-poo the flat bottom walk as being, you know, a scare or air quotes, depending on. I actually asked my wife yesterday, I was like, what's the difference between a scare quote and an air quote? She's like, it's scare quote when you write it, but it's air quote when you make it in the air. I was like, but do they have the same meaning?
And she's like, well, they don't have to have the same meaning. Anyway, uh, yeah, so it's in quote unquote inauthentic. As though authenticity really has meaning anymore. But uh, you know, like what is really authentic mean? But the but the point is is that uh you say it just flat out cooks better, does what on the kind of burners that we use, unless you have an actual walk burner.
Exactly. Yeah. Which is it's cooks better, it's also it also cooks safer, right? It's like you know, there's a big chapter on deep frying in here because I think you know, a walk, I think is the best vessel for deep frying. Because it expands.
For well, for a number of reasons, yeah. But um, yeah, because it expands so the bubbles don't go over and out. It catches you're able to get under there more easily, you can maneuver food more easily. A number of reasons why I think is the best tool for deep frying. But a flat uh round bottom walk, I don't want to fill that up with like two quarts of hot oil and have it kind of teetering on a western style burner designed for a flat thing.
So, you know, part of it, part of it is performance because you're getting more of the pen closer to the closer to the fire. And the and you know, and and the ring on a Western burner is designed to spread heat outwards. So when you're when the sides of the walk are elevated up, they're the the flame spreads out even more, so you end up kind of heating up the sides of the walk instead of the bottom, which is what you want when you have a round bottom walk. Yeah, because I have an extreme, and I was surprised because there's also different, there's different levels of flatness, right? There's those ones where it's just a little bit flat.
Right. But that's not what you're talking about. You're like almost have like a four-by seven inches. Yeah, like a six or seven inch thing. Yeah.
So it's almost like a real, it's almost like uh like a two quart saucepan's bottom or something like that. But with much wider sides. Much wider sides. But I'm in terms of the flat. In terms of the flat part, yeah, yeah.
I'd say so. So it feels safe on like a regular spider. Because I have to say, I actually kind of agree with you on this. I have extraordinarily high output burners at my house. Oh, just because that's the way I live.
Yeah, but what what's the number? Oh, it's hard to technically measure because um the person who installed the stove didn't put a regulator on it. Okay. Okay. And so our gas comes in at slightly higher pressures.
And I'm not saying that I have a commercial stove because that would be illegal for me to tell you that I have a commercial stove. But commercial stoves require regulators. Yeah. Uh otherwise their output's not regulated. Right.
You know, and so they don't explode. Yeah, and so um it's real high. It's above, it's it's it's around they're they're over 35. They're like 40, you know, like the it's under context, like in most homes, the the like my I have like a kind of semi-fancy regular home range, and I think the highest burner on that is like 18,000. Yes, this is ridiculous.
Yeah, yeah. So um the problem with it is as you say that uh and in fact I easily overdrive even like an an eight, an eight-inch uh skillet. I'll overdrive it and you'll the flames will come out like the side. You know what I mean? If you go ape crap on it, right?
But it's true that the that even with all of that output, I still have and this is the problem I think you're gonna have with the round walk, and you I want you to talk about it because you you talk about it in the book quite a bit. Is that I get water problems in the bottom of my round bottom walk because I have enough power that I can use a ring, right? Right, but it hits it hits it it does like a fryer tuck. You know what I mean? I get like a fryer tuck situation in my walk, and it's a problem.
Uh yeah, I mean, for yeah, for some certain dishes, it's definitely a problem. You know, actually, on the cover of this book, the the illustration, the illustration here, um, you know, I I did a sketch of this and then the artist went at it, and the in the initial illustration, all these flames are pointing outwards. And that was the only comment. I was like, make the fun like make the flames point towards the middle of the wall, because that's where it's supposed to get hot. Um yeah, it can be it can be a problem.
I certainly I certainly run into that problem. I, you know, I think having a flat bottom helps there, especially because you can, you know, you can move it around, you can slide it around the stovetop more, whereas, you know, with a round bottom, generally most burners have like a it'll it'll settle into a place that's naturally in the middle of the burner and it's difficult to keep it stable by moving it around and um getting it in there. But yeah, you you know the th those problems are mainly issues when you're doing specific types of stir fries, right? The kinds, the kinds where you particularly want to like capture a lot of woke and get that kind of that specific kind of stir-fry flavor. For a lot of like, you know, home-style dishes or simpler dishes or or dishes from you know that aren't from like southern China where you don't need these gigantic flames um or non-restaurant style dishes, it it doesn't pose as much of an issue, you know, because you don't um you know, as long as you're cooking in batches and as long as you're not letting everything just sit there and steam in its steam itself, um it's not it's it's you can work around it.
But you know, but because of that, in some cases, you know, you find that um an electron or uh an electric or an induction cooktop actually works sometimes better, you know, if if the ring is even the right if if the ring is not the right shape on a gas cooked up and it really spreads out the flame wide, um an induction or or a um uh resistive coil is always gonna have the heat right in the center down there. So that can sometimes work better. But if you know, if you're really serious and you really want to get this like restaurant style cooking, you're you know, you're gonna you're gonna invest in like an outdoor burner. You're you're gonna need the space. But yeah, they're pretty sick.
Those real outdoor burners are are pretty sick. They're pretty nice. Yeah, they're fun. They're fun if you have the outdoor space. Yeah.
And if you live in New York, you can just go buy the real thing. You don't need to go on the internet and buy it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Just go to Chinatown and pick up the burner. Yeah, the real cheaper you know what I mean.
Like uh and so let's but well, before we get into it, let's get into it. That said, I do want to clarify that like 95% of the stuff in this book is doesn't matter what kind of cooktop you have. Like it's designed for home use. Like you shouldn't fall into this trap, which I often see, especially on the internet of people saying, Oh, I can't cook in a walk because I don't have a restaurant range, right? That's that's clearly not true.
But I think I think it is helpful to say, honestly, like it, you know, try the flat bottom. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? Try the flat bottom. If you're having bad results on your stove, try the flat bottom.
Yeah. Um, another thing. So uh I don't know if you whether you keep track of this, but in New York, uh, there's a proposal to uh limit or to basically stop having gas being put into new residential stuff, right? In Northern California, same thing when I was living there, yeah. Yeah.
And so uh a couple of people who you know I interact with on the Twitter are huge into uh Chinese cooking, and they're like basically say, look, that's it's racist. So like you know, it's bracist because you their position is that induction sucks for walk cooking. Sucks, in their opinion. You know what I mean? Now, I've used, and I had this argument with them, I was like, I've used the five kilowatt enough.
So just for so you guys know in case you don't, the average uh uh high power in induction burner that you plug into a regular wall socket maxes out at about 1700 watts. Right, which is the equivalent of around I think 6,000 BTU. If it if your gas was actually efficient, it's it's as good as a 20k burner. About it's about this, it's about equivalent to the power out of a 20k burner. And you know, and a fo if if it there's a lot of efficiency things, but they're pretty damn good.
You know what I mean? Uh like uh the the real ones, the ones that um the cheap induction units, like the thin cheap ones, they throttle down as soon as they get warm. That's the reason to buy the expensive induction burner, is that it keeps putting out its power forever without throttling down. Like the the cheap ones throttle down without even telling you. So you wouldn't even know.
Right. Right. You can hear it. Yeah, yeah. So then uh anyway, but if you've ever used like a five kilowatt like walk burner where the actual induction unit is shaped like the walk, they are ridiculous.
They are ridiculous. They're so you need special wiring for those. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, if that's what you want to do and you have electric, and then he was like, No, they're no good. I was like, listen, man, I don't know whether he's actually used these super walk burners, because they'll cherry it, they'll cherry a walk in like what I mean is so uh induction people can't heat uh metal past what's called the Curie point as soon as um as soon as the iron heats up to the cherry red point, it loses its uh uh hysteresis loss wins on the induction stuff, and so it it self-limits.
Right. But when it's glowing, you know what I mean? So it's like but it would be hotter than you need. Oh, so much hotter than you need. It would cherry up that walk like that.
Yeah. And I was like, Th no one needs this much power. It's crazy, it's crazy amount of power. I mean, on my you know, on my trip here, um, you know, I'm traveling around doing some live demos and stuff. Um and I'm packing I have I pack a a case with an induction, uh, an induction walk burner.
So it is, you know, rounded to fit the bottom of the walk. Um and it was like five hundred bucks on uh on Webster on the R. But it goes into a regular socket? Yeah, eighteen hundred watts, and it's perfectly perfectly fine to cook on. Well, it's gonna do it's gonna do any recipe as well as any h normal home stove wood.
Yes. And so if your aim with your book is typically to allow people at home to do you've never focused on the crazy, you focused on things that people can do at practical. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um it does, you know, it it it it works differently, right?
So it's it it's cupped to shape the walk, but the induction element only heats up, you know, the bottom, maybe what I don't know what diameter is, 10 inches, uh eight inches, something like that. So if you want to heat the sides up, you kind of gotta like roll it around a little bit, but the same as you might want to do on like a gas flame. So, you know, so for things like when you're stir-frying and you want to add like a sauce around the edges and you want it to immediately sizzle, um, you kind of have to heat up those sides. So you you work with it a little bit differently than you would a powerful gas flame, but um, but you can certainly get good results with it. And do you use a Cantonese in that or do you use the uh handle lock?
I I use a handle walk, yeah. I mean I recommend a handle walk for pretty much anyone just because Cantonese walks, like yeah, the Cantonese chefs use them, but I think for home home cooks, like having that handle um is has a layer of safety to it, you know. Cause you know, as a as a chef, if you're if you're cooking in Cantonese or if you've ever worked in a restaurant, right? It's like it's an automatic thing. You have a towel and you're always touching things with towels, whereas I most home cooks um, or at least a lot of home cooks don't do that.
So I I always recommend a handled walk anyway. Yeah, I uh I cook I have Cantonese at home. Okay. I don't know why. That's because it's round, I think.
Okay. Yeah. But maybe I'll go get a flat one. After reading your book, I was thinking, he's like, you know what? You can get round flat, you can get round handled walks as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But uh, I mean, but yeah, but I used to have one. I was like crap on this because like when you touch it, because uh my ring is not big. I don't have a professional burner, and so I always felt more stable with a Cantonese walk. Okay.
Because I'd always been like, I'm gonna use the round bottom because I'm shopping in Chinatown where I live, and I'm gonna buy you know what I mean. It's so like, you know, uh uh, but maybe I'm after you're doing a book, I'm like, maybe I'll go get a flat one. Well, I mean, whatever is more comfortable. Maybe I'll get with a handle, you know, I'll start doing the tossy toss. Speaking of the tossy toss, you do mention the old uh modernist cuisine thing about the steam doing extra cooking on the toss, and I have to take some issue with that.
Okay. I just don't believe it. A lot of people talk about steam in cooking, and I think by and large, it's hocum. I think because you me you so you're talking about the idea that when you toss, so the the thing that they said in Modern Cuisine, which I quoted and I think I quoted directly in my book, or I might have referenced it anyway. Paraphrasing, yeah, you referenced it, yeah.
Is that um when you toss when you're when you're cooking in a walk, there's this hot column of steam that's coming off the food, and when you toss your food through it, um, some of the steam recondenses on the food and gives it additional heat. Yeah. And then it falls back down and steams again, and so you're you're kind of cooking it extra fast. Like a re a reclaimed reclaimed heat kind of a situation. Right.
Okay. So what's the issue you think about it? Because I just don't believe that that's the case, because as soon as the surface temperature of the food is uh is uh above the temperature uh of boiling water, then the it's it's a wash. Steam only it adds heat in when the thing is not actively uh expelling water. Right, right.
But is the food you think the food when you're tossing it in the in the air, you think it's going fast enough that it's not cooling down, and then you you don't think there's a chance that it's cooling down when it comes out of the walk enough that the steam is going to reheat it again, even a little bit. If it does, I think that at that point, first of all, people anytime you see steam, that's not steam. Steam that's water droplets. Yeah, that's water droplets. That means it's already condensed, it's already given up all of that massive amount of latent uh heat.
So as soon as you see steam, it's over. You know what I mean? That's why, and I write this well in the book, in case I ever finish my book, my that I'm writing, right? What I say is that the most dangerous is the steam you don't see because that's actual steam. Anyone who's ever opened, yeah, right.
Anyone that's ever opened a combi oven too quick, you know, some of the old ones that don't have locks, uh huh, and you put your hand in, or anyone that's like immediately lifted off a steamer basket and tried to go in and it looks okay, toast. You know what I mean? Because like that's the steam that's gonna get you. Yeah, because it's way hotter than the vapor you'll you're seeing. Oh, yeah.
Well, and it has all of its latent heat energy in it. You know what I mean? So anyway, but yeah, so I just never I never believe, like there's also people who believe that steaming things, and I know you know this is wrong, steaming things is faster than boiling them. Uh-uh. No, it's not.
It's just not the case. And I I never understood the argument. Is that is that they're saying because the steam can get hotter than water? Is that the argument? It's all the latent heat.
So, like, so like when steam condenses, right? Right, this is why it takes so much energy to boil water, right? Which either you make steam or it condenses, it's a lot of energy. And so it's true that the most rapid transfer of heat energy is steam condensing back on a cold surface. Right.
But as soon as the surface is at the same temperature as the steam, all of that massive heat loss and gain is over. Is over. And then it's just, oh, what's a better heat transfer mechanism? Water. I mean water is denser, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh so I've always hated that argument. Yeah. I mean, you know what?
What I think is fair to say, and and I I mean, I get it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, um, you know, we uh we we we talked briefly about this, and I and that was one of those parts um in the book where I was like not a hundred percent sure I should include this, but it's like all right, modernist cuisine, that's a pretty good source. I can, you know, I can they can back it up. Um, you know, but but uh, you know, I believe more more more data is needed.
I believe nobody ever about anything. We can never write anything because everyone's wrong. Um, you know, but but the thing that I think you can say for for certain is that you know, one of the reasons why you toss food um and and one of the reasons why a walk is so useful for stir-frying as opposed to you know a uh saucier or a or a skillet um is that you know the wide shape and getting the food out into the air does encourage um the evaporation of moisture from its surface. You're giving it more convection, you're giving you're giving it more opportunity for that moisture to come off. Um, and that's that's really what's important as far as getting the food to cook rapidly right kind of a natural uh fluidized bed kind of a situation I believe that that I believe all right uh now uh another thing uh just recall the book yeah yeah I'll take I'll take uh I'll take a little bit of umbrage in your torch choices you uh okay you like the Iwatani yeah I will say this so having done a I mean obviously you know that we do a lot of torches yeah we do a lot of torch work here uh the Iwatani so you recommend so the Iwatani is a butane torch the the the nice thing about um butane torches is uh you can get them anywhere and they're cheap they're relatively cheap yeah they're relatively the canisters are like a buck ninety nine yeah yeah you can get them anywhere like in other words when I say anywhere I mean any country of the world like whereas like our propane cylinders here or you know like uh whatever map um you you can't like that they're country by country they're country specific right you you can get um uh certain other gases but they're they're they're not very good for torches at this point.
Yeah okay I mean they're also even within you know even within the US they're they're harder to get I think they're less less widely available than the than the butane cans. Right. And if you're going to get the a portable gas burner for picnics and by the way you the Iwatani that you recommend for the the the picnic burner was what I call them. I don't know what you call it or the three horsepower whatever the three ZP or 15K. Yeah.
They're great. Yeah right and those take butane and that and that would be one of the recommendations for people who are who have induction who do want to work with gas um is to get a yeah the Iwatani there's a couple of manufacturers that make 15k uh yeah 15k BTU butane burners I got the one from the other manufacturer because it's half the price. Okay. Yeah but like you know what I mean but uh yeah the 15k and by the way people don't be fooled there is a there is a 7000 roughly BTU picnic burner there is a 12,000 roughly BTU picnic burner and there is a um 15 and most 99.9 you can't walk in on the street and buy one of the 15s almost everyone is maxing out at the 12s and a lot of them have the sevens and it's not clear which one you're gonna get especially if you buy from like the less fancy brands like like the not Iwatani brands you have to really look up and see what you're getting and don't listen to the salesperson. They are the worst.
I almost like I got an argument I walked into a store that claimed they had the 1500 on their website I walked down I was like yo where's the 15 they're like this isn't the 15th like it's the same gas I'm like I'm not asking what gas it takes I'm asking I want the the one that with the right amount of power and they're like because I need it for the book because I'm doing tests. You know what I mean? By the way you can measure the BTU output of your of your stove just by uh turning it on for a specific amount of time weighing it before and after you can see exactly how much gas it's consumed you do the math and then you can calculate the efficiency based on how much water you boil. If you want to know what my life's like that's what my life is like right now. Anyway uh so make sure you're getting the right one and don't believe someone that they're all the same because they ain't they ain't so but back to back to propane versus butane is that uh so on the Iwatani pro uh butane torch they're not a bad torch with this proviso I can't tolerate having something in my kitchen that requires two hands to turn on and turn off.
And so the Iwatani, you have to turn on the gas. Right. Then click it on. And then you have to, if you're very good, if you have good dexterity, you can use like the the where your thumb and your hand come together and you can turn the gas off with one hand. Yeah.
But it stays on. And I want my tor my kitchen torches to be either off or on. You mean the you mean the the gas the g even after you let your finger off the trigger the gas keeps coming out. The trigger all it does is it has the electric starter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. And to me that is like, but where it is good is that it's a bushier flame. And so as opposed to the uh burn somatic torch and you say the 4,000, come on, man, if you're going to get the torch, get the 8,000. Come on, man. Come on.
Uh but uh the bushier the flame, the less of the that and kind of nasty torch tastes you'll you'll create. So you do want a bushier flame. Iwatani does have a bushier flame. And you also don't need that much power for what uh you're doing with it. So but and and I uh you know we've been speaking to our torch manufacturers and asking them why had no one has built a and I know why but I don't have the time it would take the rest of our time together to talk about it.
Uh it's just stupidity but why they don't make a um a a butane that just turns off when you let go of it. Right. Right? Um I mean you know for me the recommendation for the the Iwatani it's it's mainly about practicality right it's like if you want to if you want to learn if you if you want to go down a torch rabbit hole like you can read your stuff right yeah or talk to you and you and you'll go down a rabbit hole and there's a lot of things to choose from. For me like the Iwatani it's like as far as like the combination of of the ease of accessibility to the can canisters and just being able to order like a 40 or 50 dollar thing off of Amazon or wherever.
Like I think for most home cooks, like that's the most practical approach to take. And it's what I do at home. Like I don't, I I got, I have a, you know, I ha I have a, I think I think I have an 8,000 at home now. I'm pretty sure I do. Yeah.
Um, but it, you know, it's in like a plastic case. I don't leave it at sitting out of my kitchen all the time. Oh, yeah. I always have it out. The Watani, it's just like in my, it fits in my cupboard easily.
I just pull it out when I need it, and it takes a second, and I just find it a lot. I mean easier storage-wise and you know, shopping-wise and and all that stuff. But but everybody's different. Obviously, I always have my torch out and all of my burners are standing pilots, and I always the first thing I do when I get a standing pilot burner is I kill the pilots. Uh-huh.
And then I just I mean, I know I shouldn't. But I I kill all the pilots and then I I torch light them. Yeah. Because I just I just don't need all that extra heat in my house all the time. Got it.
I have I my um my stove, my my house came with a broken stove um and it doesn't have any ignition. So I have like a little uh like a piezo. I hate those things, clicker thing. Oh, I love it. I hate them.
Why? Uh because they're all like they're all poorly made, so that uh is it just a piso unit? Uh it's got it's got like a little gooseneck. Yeah, yeah, I hate them. Because a battery.
This is the this is the part of the design that's terrible, is that if you look at it, it has the same technology as like piezo lighters. Uh-huh. And so unlike a piezo lighter in a torch that's buried with so the gas comes out and it's lit actually away from the service. If you uh use your if you use that clicker in a dirty environment, the end where the piso is gets oxidized. Right and then it doesn't freaking light anymore.
And then you're like click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. You know what I mean? And like clicking a thousand times. Maybe, yeah. Whereas if they just buried the dang piso in the gooseneck, yeah, you wouldn't have that issue.
You wouldn't have that issue. I suppose, yeah. But uh, but the but the way it, but the way it's set up, I can use it to like um I can also use it to like light kindling in the fireplace and I can because it's exposed, I can use it to like light the uh the edge of like a you know a fire log. If people wanted to be a little bit better with their lives in terms of design, if it was not virtually impossible to innovate with factory production, right? You could build one that would last forever.
Yeah. That wouldn't get gunked up and have to be thrown away after after six months. And I get like virulently angry when things aren't working at the moment when I need them to work. Yeah, you know what I mean? Uh like I just I just hate it so so much.
Um, let's talk about seasoning. Because a lot of people have questions on seasoning the walk. When you're talking about like seasoning the walk, we're not talking about MSG yet, right? We're gonna talk about MSG. We have time.
Uh so like first of all, like you mentioned all the materials. Does anyone actually make an aluminum walk? I've never seen an aluminum walk. Uh I've seen aluminum walks. Yeah.
So my old friend um Chi Chi Wang, who was a writer at uh serious seats for a while, she actually owned uh an aluminum wok that she was a very strong advocate advocate for. And back back in the day, like maybe this was twenty or ten or twelve years ago when we were talking about this, but um she was a very strong advocate of aluminum walks. Um and I and I cooked on hers a bunch. It's I don't they're not they're certainly not common. No, no.
Um it it was um I mean hers was like super well, it was it was dark. It was well, you know, it was it was dark and uh you know seasoned. Um I don't know how it came, but I'm assuming it came looking like a northern. Oh yeah, yeah, it was naked. Yeah.
Yeah. It's not like uh one of these, like not clad, not no, no, no, no, no. No, it's like you know, like a restaurant pan. So how light was it? Was it pretty light?
It was like it was maybe I would say close to a centimeter thick. So it was it was pretty thick. Um relatively light though. Yeah. I mean about the same weight as a as a carbon steel walk was.
But it was it was aluminum colored on the outside, but seasoned color on the inside. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how she treated it. Well, this isn't brings us to our other interesting question.
There are two schools of thought. So back in the day day, way day, back when you were, you know, writing at Sirius Eats and I was at the French Culinary Institute and the modernist folks hadn't yet come out with the book, right? Right. There was all these discussions about how seasoning actually let's just say look, listen, get get get get carbon get a carbon steel walk, right? Get a carbon steel walk.
That's the answer. Right. That is the answer. That's the answer. That's the easy answer.
And there's no reason not to. Yeah. There's no reason to get a different thing. Yeah. Unless you already have it and you know unless somebody gave you a $200 all cloud walk for your wedding registry or whatever.
It's not going to do better than a car. A carbon steel walk is going to do better. A clad walk. Why? I you don't want a shiny walk.
If you're walking, if your walk is shiny, you're doing it wrong, right? I agree. Yes. If your walk is shiny, you're missing out on flavor. You're making your life harder than it needs to be.
Uh yeah. Yeah, you're just doing it wrong. Yeah. Right? And so uh, in my opinion, in my opinion, and you know, you wrote the book here on walk, so you tell me I'm I don't think I'm wrong.
I definitely would not recommend buying a shiny clad stainless steel walk. I would not recommend it. Yeah, don't do that. Um so uh yeah, just get the steel. The steel is so bad.
Now is there a huge difference between you think spun versus hammered versus stamped? Uh you know, I I've I have both. So I'm traveling right now with it with a hammered walk. Um, or or at least it maybe it's spun and then has had hammer marks added to it. Um because from what I what I know, there's very few people actually still making really traditionally fully hammered walks.
But um, but I have one that has you know has a hammered finish. Um and that but the one I use at home is spun. Um I haven't noticed a huge uh huge difference here. The main the main difference is that um when you buy a hammered walk, um, at least in my experience, they're pretty much always gonna be relatively heavy gauge. Whereas spun walks, they get them down.
They you can buy a cheap spun walk that's like, you know, that's like 18 gauge, like a millimeter thick, really, really thin, and is going to be kind of flimsy and flex a little bit, which I which you won't get with a hand-hammered walk. But as far as like performance goes, I haven't noticed much of a difference at all. And on the thinness, like uh you're actually an advocate for relatively thin because you want the hot spot. You actually don't want the heat traveling. You want Japan to be reactive, right?
You want to be able to turn down the heat and for the pan to lose its heat. You want to be able to turn it up and for it to get up pretty pretty fast. And you do want there to be you know, unless unlike a Western skillet where you're looking for, um you're frequently looking for very even heating, right? And you're looking for retention of heat and and so that so that when you add food to it, it stays at relatively similar temperatures. Whereas in a walk, it's like you're doing a lot more fast cooking and on-the-fly adjustment of things.
Um, so I recommend um 14 to 16 gauges generally, so like one and a half to two millimeters or so. Um, I think the one I the one I've been I've I've been using for the last 20 years is like I I I measured as like 1.7 millimeters, something like that. 16, I've been measuring so many pans, it sucks. I hate doing it. Um 16 gauge, for those of you that uh care about this, is the only gauge that is roughly similar to its uh fractional dimensions.
About a sixteenth of an inch. All right. Roughly uh old metal worker guy, me. Uh yeah. I mean, you don't want to become a metal worker if you're not already a metal worker, but you know, not for a living anyway.
You don't want to cough out all of that uh soot at the end of every day. Uh all right, listen, Kenji, we're gonna go to a commercial break and then we're gonna come back and talk about MSG. All right, sounds good. All right, we're back with cooking issues. This episode of Cooking Issues brought to you by Oracing Salmon, our favorite fish.
Today we have Michael Fabro from Oura King to tell us more about it. Thanks, Dave. Great to be here. And really excited to talk about Aura King salmon, uh, which we raised down in New Zealand. It's a super premium salmon that's available to professional chefs and home chefs alike.
So coming from a zero waste perspective, Michael, I see that you're now using the fins for dog treats. That's right. Yeah, this is part of a real goal we established a couple of years ago about full utilization of the animal. You know, in New Zealand, we cut uh fillets, we cut portions, we we do smoking. So you have a lot of trim.
So we wanted to find a good home for that trim. So we developed the a line of pet treats. We also do uh oil as well. And we sell these under our uh brand called Omega Plus. Uh Ora King salmon, follow them on Instagram at Oracing Salmon.
Everybody's favorite fish. And we're back. Uh okay, so listen. Yes. We're gonna have the MSG argument, but maybe we should get some questions down because people wanted to ask you questions.
Let's get to it. All right. Is it questions about MSG? Uh no. And we actually we didn't really actually talk about seasoning.
The big difference in seasoning was right. Uh there was the argument is is it the special iron oxide, the black iron oxide magnetite or magnus, whatever it is, the you know, the the special black iron oxide, is that what's really uh causing the seasoning, or is it oil polymerization? Right. And most Western writers have come very hard down on polymerization. Yeah.
And, you know, and in fact, as you point out in your book, if you look at like skillets, right, uh, you know, you build up those layers by layers by layers by layers. Whereas typical wok seasoning, you maybe you do it like once or twice, and it does build up a seasoning, but you're not like layer, layer, layer. It's thinner. Yeah, yeah. And it's because, you know, with walk with wok cooking, you have you have all these big temper temperature differentials, so your metals expanding and contracting at different rates.
And so you it's hard to build up those layers in the first place and they flake off more easily. And then you're also going to be very frequently deglazing with us, you know, with sauces and with acidic things all the time. So with a lot of wok dishes, like when you're done cooking with them, even if you have, you know, I have a 20-year old walk, but even when you're done with them, like very frequently you'll see a little bit of like sort of sort of dull silver metal at the bottom. So there's like there's no real layers of Especially when you overheat them, yeah. Yeah.
There's no special, there's not really much sort of none of the layers of like thick seasoning that you find on a well, like an old cast iron pan. Right. Um, but what what's your um what's your take on it? What's where do you come with? So what's interesting is is there's a lot of recent uh work out of China, some of which has been translated into English for uh, you know, international journals that is focusing on, I mean, and I don't know how much of it is BS, because most science writing is BS.
Uh no, I mean for real. Uh, but like uh iron oxide nanoparticles, so the black stuff, right? And like like that's the magic of the walk. You know what I mean? For them in terms of seasoning.
What do I think? I think it's somewhere in between, right? So like, you know, when you are seasoning, uh I mean, it is true that carbon steel seems to blacken up in a way when you're season it properly, right? In a way that, for instance, we were talking about aluminum before aluminum doesn't aluminum will get brown, it won't get black. If you yeah, it only gets black if you leave the oil, like a if you do the oil, the polymerization over and over again.
Right. And even so, it looks different. It does. You know what I mean? And so what do I think?
I think it's somewhere in between. So like in the Chinese writing, I don't think they have a lot of experience with Western pans, frankly, because of what the way they write about Western cooking, I don't think they have that much experience with Western pans. And so I think they poo-poo our stuff in the way that our scientists poo-poo their stuff. You know what I mean? And so I think I think it would be interesting to actually get like two groups of people together and because I think both are at play.
Yeah. I mean, I I can say for sure that at least from a practical standpoint, um, when you cook something in a carbon steel wok side by side with a stainless wok, um, the flavor is no like you could I've done blind tests on this, and you there's a noticeable difference in flavor, um, which I assume comes comes from some interaction with the metal or with the seasoning. But um Right. I mean, so like you want like your seasoning, you want it to be uh hydrophobic, but you want it to be lipilic, right? Because you want oil to smooth slick out on it and provide good contact.
But you but what's what you know, what the most recent, I should have printed it because I didn't, I was too stupid, but um they've got the the kitchen gods gift is what they I believe if you want to search for it, people. Uh but they're like, well, what's interesting about wok seasoning is is that it is actually sticky in certain regimes, which is useful, right? Like when you're pulling it up on the side, yeah. Certain temperature regimes and uh and nonstick when you need it to be. But again, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, and I think the research hasn't really been done yet.
We need to bring those two groups of scientists together and you know, have some sort of seasoning conference. But nobody cares about this because there's no money behind it. Right. All food science is driven by money. Right.
Well, well, hopefully I'll I'll drive walk sales and people will care about that. People will care about it. All right. Uh let's get to some questions and then we'll uh we'll we'll do our MSG, we'll do our MSG smack down towards the end. Won't be smackdown, but you know.
I mean, there if you hear like things getting flipped over, like yeah, all right. Uh all right, from Patrick Chicone. Uh how should a walk on an induction burner be preheated and seasoned? So we dealt with this a little bit, right? I'm typically using a wide, flat-bottomed walk on a portable induction burner, the ducks top uh 1800.
It allows you to choose between constant output and constant temperature control. I have remember, Patrick, as I said earlier, don't get a kilowatt meter. They're 12 bucks. I swear to God. Go on uh or 14 bucks.
Don't, you know, whatever, the evil empire Amazon, go on, get a kilowatt meter, and plug your induction burner. Make sure you get one that'll do 1800 watts, though. You don't want to blow it out. You don't want to blow it out. Plug it in and monitor your induction burner as you're using it and see what it actually is doing.
And I just I told you, I just returned uh one that I bought because I was like It was regulating without you wanting it to. And without telling me. Yeah. It wasn't like, I'm too hot. I'm too hot.
It didn't say that. It was just like, yeah, I'm putting out 1700 watts. I'm putting out 1100 watts. Big difference. Yeah.
Uh sorry, Patrick, back to your question. Uh I haven't figured out a particularly good way to preheat and not also burn the existing seasoning off. Uh you should use a lower uh lower power setting and let it heat up longer and then crank the power when you're cooking, is what you should do on that. Anyway, or is it better to just start a high temp in this case without much preheating? Yeah, so I I well I I would have the opposite of advice.
So first of all, I wouldn't worry about burning the seasoning off your wok because uh again, like I don't care about the at least the layers of seasoning that are gonna bore burn off the polymerized stuff. That's flak like I I don't have that on my walks most of the time. Like I um it for me, like you know, wok seasoning is more of a per use basis as opposed to like a western skillet where you're trying to build up this thing and make sure that it doesn't come off. Um I would, you know, i I always recommend preheating it as hot as you can until it's smoking hot. Don't worry about what's going on with the seasoning there, then lower it, add your oil, swirl it around, and start cooking.
And then, you know, then if a recipe calls for the highest heat, leave it on the highest seat. But you really want to get your you want to get your oil in and then your food in as rapidly as possible after you put the oil in, because the the danger is that your your pan is so hot you put the oil in there and you're gonna start creating these flavors that you don't want. It's gonna start smoking and you get these flavors you don't want in there. So you need to get the oil and slick it around and then put your food in. Um, you know, if you do it that way, you can you can cook an omelet in a walk and it's a brand new walk, and it's not gonna, it's not gonna stick.
You don't need the heavy layers of seasoning on it. Can I tell you something? Yeah. So uh back in the era when when aluminum cooking was aluminum cookware was uh the the preeminent cookware in the United States. Uh so we're talking just pre-World War II.
Everyone was using straight aluminum, unseasoned, right? And the trick is is they took everything up above the Leidenfrost point. And so if if it's above the Leidenfrost point, right, then your food can't stick to it. Right. Literally, your food cannot stick to it.
So it floats, and then as it's floating, there's enough heat in the float to lightly set the surface stuff so that then when it does settle down and get the super hot, it doesn't stick. Exactly. I mean, but that's also you know, that's also what you know, the layer of oil. If you're if you're one of the reasons why you put oil in a skillet is so that as you're putting food down in it, it it starts to set before it comes in contact with the actual metal. Right, right.
But I mean you can't do that on a flat riddle because it just but but my point being that like you can achieve nonstick results in surprising ways if you're willing to take the heat up high enough. Yeah, yeah. And and that I mean that's typically how you do cook in a walk, and like most if you you know watch videos of most people chefs cooking in walks, they you preheat it really hot till it's smoking, then you add your oil, swirl it, and then you adjust your temperature to to whatever you want it to be, whatever the recipe calls for. With a Western pan though, Patrick, I'll still stand by what I said because an induction burner can wicked overheat if on full power, an induction burner will heat a ring, because induction burners are nine times out of ten ring-shaped. Right.
And you'll burn a ring into the center uh in you know, around your your your skillet. And even on like on the fancy ones like the poly science, the the the freak, it it it measures temperature in the center. Right. And by the time the center of your cast iron pan, because they're so slow, gets up to temperature, you've hardcore messed that ring. So I preheat on a slower setting up to the temperature I want, then jack it when I put the food in.
Can I ask you your opinion on something? Because um, and uh this is a reader question for you from me. Um so you know, so first of all, I want to ask you like when you when you cook on a when you're when you're sauteing or searing or whatever, do you do you pay attention to the surface temperature of the pan before you put the food in? Is that something you do? In real life?
Yeah. In the real life, I mean it depends on I I've been doing a lot of cooking on weird old pans for the book, but like in general, I'll in general I always have a little water and I always just go. Okay, so the more practical method. Yeah. Um I don't know because people thermometers don't work on pans.
So like I've done a lot of tests, uh except for on carbon steel pants, they work great. Yeah, because they're black. Because they're black. Yeah. Uh but I have done a lot of tests where I look at them uh where uh I I've done a lot of tests where I take uh carbon black and I carbon black my pans, and then I look at them with infrared cameras to try to see exactly after I've completely blacked them out uh and looked at them and kind of looked at how the surface behaves and um you know with uses and stuff.
So I have looked at it, like what, but in general, when you're cooking, um when I'm actually cooking, no. Right. So like my my job when I'm trying to write this book is to try to figure out how all of this data that I'm collecting actually helps someone else be a better cook, you know. You know? Actually, this photo I did by I use spray proof, like matte black uh heat proof mat matte black paint to get the iron photo.
But um so my but my question is carbon black is harder because it you need a lot of it for it to be infrared uh opaque, uh-huh but it does wipe off your pan as opposed to the okay, yeah, these I had to ditch. Yeah, but um so people ask me like, oh, I'm making I'm making, I'm serious steak, like what temperature should my pan be at? And my answer is always like, well, I mean you temperature is like a material-specific thing in the first place, you know. So it's like uh like a thin aluminum pan at 500 degrees is gonna be holding a different amount, a different amount of heat uh energy than a thick cast iron pan at 500 degrees. And it transmits it differently.
And it transmits it differently. Yeah, so it's like so to me, people if people if someone is asking you like what temperature should my pan be for a specific use, generally like that's that's not the question. That's that's not what you're really looking for. What you're looking for is like the rate of heat transfer and the amount of energy that the pan can store, which is a different number from temperature. Exactly.
And and it's much harder to measure at home as well. It's impossible. So the thing is is that I think like, and that's really what I'm working on in the book, and my wife is like, you're gonna sell exactly 12 of these because like what I want people to under one of the main things I need people to understand is that temperature isn't what does anything. I mean, I mean there are certain things that are temperature. Temperature's useful if you're talking about like water and everybody the you know, everybody's water is is water, everybody's air is air, but a pan is not a pan.
It's like it's like actual heat transfer. Right. You know what I mean? Right. And the same, like, so I've I've been like measuring what's actually, you know, going on with uh in different heat surfaces.
I have these weird anomalous things that are happening in my oven that I can't figure out. And like it's and again, the the the for me the challenge is figuring out how that actually makes you a a better cook. I think people kind of focus on this stuff too much. You know what I mean? Like I think, in terms of what you're saying, I think it's important, like cold oil into a pan because you're gonna break the oil down too much.
If you heat your pan up to where you want to heat it up and you the oil's already in there, good night. You know what I mean? Like the oil's gonna start smelling like dead fish and rancid oil and broken, it's gonna smoke, and the food's not gonna be good. So yeah, cold oil, hot pan, boom. You know what I mean?
And you know, pretty much most home burners can't get you hot enough to be dangerous in any reasonable amount of time. So don't worry about it, right? Um I think the lightenfrost effect is a good thing if you were interested in that. And so, like I've been doing a lot of tests on that at home, like searing burgers without grease on a on a you know, greaseless burner where I've lighten frosted it out, you know, so that what that means, people is the the balls run around like they don't don't boil. They're gonna be able to do it.
When you sprinkle water on it, uh the the water is evaporating, and and the force of that evaporation is holding the water above the surface of the pan so that the heat transfer is actually slow. So there's a point at which when you pour some water into a pan, it'll actually evaporate slower than at a slightly lower temperature because it's not in contact with the pan anymore. Correct. So that's what we're talking about. Uh but on the other hand, right?
Like my old school method that I always used to do, which is I cook the bacon in the pan, pull the bacon out, rip the rip the grease until it's like just starting to turn blue above it, and then put the burgers in that. Is it better the other way? No. Yeah. You know what I mean?
No, it's not. Uh, because talk about surface area, deep frying. Uh-huh. Deep frying people, and you're basically deep frying at that point. Like, because there's a layer of grease that like lips up around the bottom of the thing.
You know what I mean? And the pan's already hot. The thing that deep frying doesn't get you the pan, you know, that saw that searing in a skillet or grilling can get you is that with with grilling and searing, you can you can get hotter than the temperature of the oil, right? You can singe certain bits and you can get some kind of blackening. Or there's a dip frying deep frying, you just get a big if you want to go black.
If you want to go black. I sometimes like going black. I often like going black. If you like going black. But like if you like for browning, I mean, because the the truth is, right?
And have I done that measurement yet? Look, there's a people, there's a big difference. There, there's a I we don't have time to get into it. I have questions about it. Okay, right, all right.
But like the the there's there's there's there's a bunch of different numbers you can look at when you're looking at how heat transfer works. And one of those numbers has to do with what is the temperature going to be right between two things that are quote unquote touching each other but right? And so that where the actual heat is going on the meat is a very interesting place. Anyway, uh let's get to some questions. Uh from uh what do you think?
Ivan or Yvonne? What do you think? Ivan I'll go with Yvonne. Yvonne all right. Uh hey, uh Dave, Kenji and the rest of the crew.
For over 10 years, I've used a trusty, well-seasoned wok that fits the recommendation in Kenji's book for everything except gauge. Uh I'd say that mine is about one millimeter thick rather than two. And you were talking about this, which is why I didn't go into it at the time. I knew how to cook. Okay, got it.
I'm gonna pretend that I remembered that, which I did not. Uh how much of a difference does this really make? Should I buy a thicker one? Which uses and techniques would benefit from uh such a change and by how much? Thanks a lot.
So, yeah, when you're talking about the the thickness of your wok, one versus two millimeter. I mean, there's two things that matter. So, well, so first of all, the most important thing is that if you've had this wok for 10 years and it's well seasoned and you're happy using it, then there's no reason to change, right? Yeah, if you're happy with something, keep it. Well, what are they gonna get from?
Yeah, so there's two things, right? So one of them is of course is just sturdiness, right? So I find that at one millimeter, if you take your wok and you kind of push it around, it flexes pretty easily, you know. So it to me it just feels like it's it's not as easy to get control because it's flexing as you're cooking with it, um, especially when it's when it has a significant amount of food in it. Um so one of them is a slight is a control issue.
And then the other one is a is a heat retention issue, right? And so you're there's there's a bit of a trade-off there, you know, and it depends what kinds of things you tend to cook in it a lot. So um, you know, uh a thicker, the thicker the material is, so a wok that's twice as thick is gonna hold twice as much heat energy at the same temperature, right? So if you preheat it and let it come to the point where the oil inside is smoking, um the one that's twice as thick is gonna have about twice as much energy in it. Um and so that means that you're gonna be able to put more food in it without uh having a rapid, rapid temperature drop.
Um on the other hand, it's gonna be less reactive. So when you make an adjustment in your flame, um it's gonna take longer for that adjustment to reach uh the food. I would say in general, with a with a wok, um, you know, I I find the sweet spot to be around one and a half to two millimeters where you get a good amount of reactivity, but you also have enough heat that you can cook like you know a half pound of something at a time without it completely um using up all the energy. Whereas if you go smaller to like a millimeter, you're just gonna have to cook in more batches. And that's you know, that it's just gonna be cooking a little bit longer.
But it, you know, but if you have a 10 if you have a one millimeter wok that you're and you're happy with the weight and you're happy with how it handles, then there's not really any reason to change it other than just you know adjust the recipe, not the tool, I'd say. All right, see what I'm saying? If you like it, keep it, but maybe it flexes too much. Yeah. By the way, uh, I gotta finish these questions and we gotta do MSG, but but I want some of you, some of you are gonna need to sit down if you're listening on headphones right now.
First of all, Kenji doesn't rinse his rice. Kenji doesn't rinse his rice. Only because I'm lazy. All right, all right. All right, all right.
Do you rinse your rice? Yeah, of course. Always? Yeah. All rice.
All the time. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's just habit.
You put the rice in the rice cooker bowl, you put a boat ton of cold water, you swirl your hand around, you do the the dump, and that's it. You know what I mean? Like, I might I don't think my grandma I ever saw my grandmother washing the rice. Maybe she did, I don't know. I that's a good thing.
I mean, they have rinse-free rice, but I don't buy that. Yeah. I buy I buy mainly I buy mainly calories. Okay. Because my son likes it.
Anyway, uh the other thing uh on rice is that for a weights man, you do your rice by volume. Did I did I do I not have uh both in here? Uh your big thing is like volume. I don't know, man. I don't know, man.
Yeah, maybe maybe in the there's like a chart in there that has that has volume. You know, again, this is one of those things where it's like you know, you have to know your audience, and it's it's a question of practicality versus precision. And most of the times, like I I weigh down, I come down on the side of practicality for that, you know. And I I when I'm when I'm making rice, I don't I don't pull out a measuring cup, I don't pull out a scale, I pull out whatever cup I have handy. So if like I have a water glass in my hand, that's what I'm using to measure my rice and my water.
I always have uh we have a couple of rices and they're in like big bulk things. Right. And I just keep my rice scoop in the bulk rice. Oh fair. Yeah.
You know what I mean? Uh and so I even though I hate it, yeah, I use the I also go by volume. Uh and uh I use truth comes out. Yeah, I use the the Zoji Rushi rice, you know, cup. I have you know, I have uh, which is a dumb measurement.
And I it the person who said that's a cup needs needs needs to get a special place in hell because it's not any relationship to a cup. So you mean to the actual measure of a cup. Correct. Yeah. And people say, oh, one cup of rice.
You're like, and then how many American cooks have been ruined by thinking that the cup was a cup? No, I mean, I just think of it in ratios, right? So like when I store my rice, I buy in bulk also and I keep it in containers. And the only thing that I have in the container is um, you know, like I have a label maker, I put the the type of the rice, and then I put the ratio of I do like one to one point one or one to one point five, depending on the rice. I'll say what the v the ratio of rice to water is, and that that way, like any time I scoop out of it, whatever vessel I have, um I just eyeball it.
So I'll take a cup, I'll scoop out the rice, I'll pour it in, and then I'll go to the sink, fill it up once, and then a tenth and pour it in, and that's how I that's how I do my rice. I noticed in your kanji that you use uh broth, but you don't add additional salt. You're not that kind of a heathen, are you? To add additional salt to the side. You know, there's the whole argument, yeah.
Don't salt your kanji. I I don't salt my rice that I'm serving at the table. You know, so my my wife and I both come from rice-eating cultures, right? She's Colombian. I'm uh my mom's Japanese.
Um so in Japanese and Chinese traditions, you typically don't salt the rice because the food is very highly seasoned. It's meant as like a kind of bland. You hate people that do salt the rice. At least I don't. Oh, all right, all right.
Um whereas in whereas in Colombia, um the rice is always salted. And I think in a lot of American traditions, this the rice is gonna be salted. Um so we we um we battle about that. But but it's really contextual, right? If we're making Colombian food, we salt the rice.
If we're making Japanese food, we don't. I like that you're flexible. Uh all right. Um from Kevin McHugh, uh digging into the wok, and it's as it it is as impressive as expected. Uh I've been uh cooking Andy Ricker's uh pot thai recipe for a few years now, and I find it regularly removes the seasoning from my wok right at the bottom.
I'm left with a dull gray surface uh that food sticks to. So uh I mean we talked about this, yeah. Right, a little bit. But uh what we didn't talk about is I mean, when I use uh let me finish the question first. Uh other dishes I cook in the wok don't have this problem.
I assume it's the tamarind. Right. Is there anything I can do to avoid losing the seasoning? I'm usually frying on a gas burner with peanut oil, avocado, or bacon fat. Thank you.
I I mean, like I typically, you tell me what you think. I typically, after I use my wok, when I rinse it, I'll spray a little bit of oil and just heat it to dry it, and that fixes it. Yeah, generally what I do is, yeah, I'll rinse it, I'll scrub it if I need to. I have like a bamboo scrub brush that I use. Um I'll scrub it if I need to, use soap if I need to, and then I put it back on a burner, turn on the burner until it dries out, and then rub some oil in it.
Um I rub it, rub oil in and then take a let it let it smoke a little, then take a clean towel and rub it out as if as if I had accidentally put it in there. Um you don't you don't have to worry about that. You know, that happens. Yeah, it's probably the it's probably the combination of the the you know, the tamarind and the amount of liquid that's going in there. You know, that that happens with other dishes too.
Like I cook like, you know, if you braise like chicken adobe or you do like raspberry red braised pork belly, something like that in your wok, it's gonna come away. Some of the seasoning, it's gonna leave that that dull silver color. But you know, if you go out into like uh the the streets of Bangkok and see someone cooking pad thai, they're cooking in aluminum or cast or carbon steel. Um and very often you're gonna see those walks have the same thing. They they lose their seasoning with each cook.
But that's you know, that again, I think the the issue comes from from thinking of that of the use of the word seasoning and and thinking of it in terms of like how one would season a cast iron pan. But you don't have to worry about it. It's gonna happen. Um from Ezra, probably one of the most common questions you'll get, but I'll ask anyway. I need a walk.
What should I be looking for when I pick one up? And we've hit some of this, right? I'm assuming carbon steel, large size, but what else? I prefer not to shop on Amazon. So if I go to my local restaurant supply supply store or Chinese market, what should I look for and how much should I pay?
Carbon steel, at least one and a half, you know, 14 to 16 gauge, so one and a half to two millimeters about. Um carbon steel, I would recommend 14 inches with a flat bottom and a long handle. Um, you know, though the the long handle is really a matter of personal choice, but I would recommend a long handle. Um and uh yeah, that's that's about it. Those that's really the only criteria you need.
Um, and I don't think you should pay more than if if you're at a local shop, you'd probably be paying like looking at like 40 bucks, maybe, maybe. That much nowadays? Maybe less, but yeah. What about in Chinatown? They're not that much.
I I think I think the one at like the walk shop in San Francisco's Chinatown is 40 bucks, something like that. Um if you want to order it online, you can find the same prices. Um, or you know, you can buy it from some modern American manufacturer of carbon steel things and pay 99 bucks if you want. And you ever uh you ever mess around with actually having a like a reel with the with the water surround? The real remote.
No. I've I've you know I've had the chance to like go into restaurants where they do that. Um if you've ever seen, you know, uh you do you know Wang Gong from uh from you from the YouTube? He's uh he's a he's a Sichuan chef who has a very popular and very good YouTube channel. It's all in Chinese, but most of it's dubbed um uh uh that has subtitles.
But he he um he has a really great video about how he's about a new kitchen he's setting up, and he talks about um the water pouring down um the surface under the walk and how important that is for well for all the cooking. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a it's a cool video. You should check it out. It's sick. Uh someday.
Someday. Uh from Jason Gray. Uh heard you bring up induction. Uh we went full induction for our new kitchen based on statements over the years. Let me see.
The uh oh wait, I don't think this is a question for you. Okay. All right. He has this sick uh have you seen it or used it? Like the the thermador like wide induction that like figures out where the pan is.
It's got like 56 different. Oh, right, right, right, right, right. Uh I have where have I I think I've demoed one somewhere. I can't remember. But yeah, I know the one you're talking about.
Those are pretty cool. Yeah, I've never used it. I Electrolux tried to make one years ago, but it wasn't good. Yeah, but I hear the thermodynamics good. You can actually move it and it figures out where yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And and then it has a little touch screen display that shows how many where where things are, and so you can click on it and see what it's like. I mean, I prefer a non-electronic in like interfaces to my cooking. Oh, yeah. Like, I want things that I want things that twist and click. Yeah, yeah, yeah, man.
Even it, even if like under the hood, it's all electronic, give me my tactile business. Um, see if these others are for you or whether we can get into oh Dale Harris wrote a time sensitive thing. I don't know maybe you do know this. I don't know. Uh would be great to have an answer for this week because he's arriving in the United States now.
People, if you hear this, uh go on our Patreon or go on my Twitter and give answers to Dale Harris. Coming to Boston and New York City for a few days with my closest friend who's hitting 40, both love bars, but he can't drink alcohol. Where should we go that has amazing non-alk beverage programs right now? I don't know. I feel like this is a you question.
I don't know, but like we I felt we don't know. Yeah, I don't I guess I went to one last night, but uh did they have a good non-alk program? No, I've uh they had an okay everything program. All right. Well, if if that's all you say, then we won't uh we won't uh do it.
Oh, here one from Jared uh from Jared Johnson. The other one was from Dale Harris, by the way. I don't know whether I said it right. Uh Jared Johnson writes in any issues uh can you with substituting between ghee, olive uh oil, avocado, coconut, or macadamia. Macadamia is so expensive.
Why would you like it so expensive? Uh would it would be also be good if you guys could discuss a minimum investment for a walk burner? Well, you say you can do it on almost anything, but yeah, if so I th when he says a minimum investment for walk burner, I'm I'm assuming he's talking about if you want to be able to do like certain restaurant style dishes that have a lot of the you know, the woke, um, which are which is not by no means every the every in every dish. You don't need that in every dish. But a walk like that, a walk burner like that.
I mean, if you live near Chinatown, you can pick one of those, you can pick the burner itself up for like 25 bucks and then you just need a place to install it. If you need like an all-in-one thing, um, probably you're looking at probably around 150 to 200 bucks, you're gonna find uh like really bare bones ones. Um, and then you know, they go up from there if you want a professional installation or whatever, you're gonna build an outdoor kitchen, it goes up from there. But the but the burner itself is probably 25, 50 bucks at most. But it's a lot to put it in.
But the ones that you buy that are outdoor on Amazon are still only like you know, 80 or 100 bucks or something like that. Uh depends on I think the I so I did a I did a review on Sirius Seats, you can find it um of a bunch of different models. And I think the uh there is an in relatively inexpensive there's so this one called the uh the big kahuna something. And I think it's like 160. It's okay, right?
It's fine, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That works, that works, it works fine. It's like 65,000 BTU, I think. And then there's um the other one I recommended was called the Power Flamer, which is made by um a guy out of his garage in in Northern California who who told me he could definitely handle volume and then couldn't.
So I don't know how long it'll take to get one of those, but um, but those are yeah, he makes he buys basically, you know, uh stock parts and and and puts them together. Um, and it's just a really inexpensive uh like metal tripod with a with a burner on it, and those, yeah, those those get up to like a hundred, you can buy like a hundred and sixty five thousand BTU models of those, which is more than you need. And uh I don't remember in in uh in the book, because he I heard you say to someone else that uh the mapo tofu is the thing closest to your heart. Do you do the Japanese one or the do you do the channel? Well, in my book, there's two.
There's there's there's both recipes in the book, but the my the Japanese one is the one I grew up with. So that that's the recipe that is closest to my heart. Yeah, yeah. I love mapotofu. It's delicious.
I love both. Uh okay. Uh one last thing before I get we have two minutes and thirty seconds, but I will say this. It's so funny. Like both of us had an experience, I guess, because you actually write it down of like our first kind of street Jinbing thing you know, on the streets in China, and you're like, holy crap, why isn't this all over America?
So this is like they crepe. So they make a crepe, but then they wipe an egg into the top of the crepe, crepe and then flip it and do all the toppings. And what's hilarious to me is that you and I were both like, this needs to be a thing, which it's not, strangely. A couple of people have tried. But you came and did the exact opposite of thing I did.
So you came and used you did a tort like a tortilla to make life easier so you don't have to have a crepe maker and know all that stuff, right? And I came and I did the crepe with the egg, but put Mexican fillings into it. Oh, okay. That sounds good. Yeah, it was good.
But like, but I was like, I was like, I can't even talk about this. That's a double appropriation. Like I'm stealing like a Chinese street food recipe and then putting like Mexican stuff into it. It's a no it's a no-ken do. Yeah, well, that's where having a name like Kenji Lopez helps, right?
Yeah, you can do whatever you can do whatever you want. Uh it's just me that can't. Anyway, so let's talk MSG. So in your book, uh, I'll just say this. I'll say what we agree on.
If someone doesn't want to eat something, don't serve it to them. And don't make people feel bad about what they don't want to eat, ever for any reason. Yes. If somebody doesn't want to eat something, don't give it to them. Yeah.
But we are gonna disagree uh specifically with what you said in the book, uh, where you said that that MSG, don't worry, we still have some time while we're while the music's playing. Okay. Uh the MSG, it's a scientific fact that um that people have reactions to it. I'm gonna disagree with this. Okay.
And and and I think, you know, I think I know where your disagreement's gonna be, which is that the the study that I that I cited in the book 2000 study, yeah. Yeah, um, that uh it wasn't actually blind because people can taste MSG through the orange drink. Is that your is that your equality? Yeah, well, first they can taste MSG through the orange drink because people, let me tell you, it was two, it was uh five grams, five grams of MSG in a 200 milliliter beverage. Okay, for people that were self-selected already, as you know, of people who think they're sensitive to MSG.
Right. And the people who wrote this study, this 2000 study, didn't redo a triangle test on the citrus beverage with the people in their current study. They relied on a triangle test from 1979. That triangle test was not run in triplicate. And so what they didn't do in the 1979 study was see whether or not the seven people who could tell accurately, whether they could repeatably tell accurately.
So to me, the entire idea that this citrus beverage can mask MSG has not been shown. Sure. That's yeah, and I and I think that's a totally fair uh totally fair um uh disagreement. Um, so so for me, the the the issue that I take on the other side, you know, and so I, you know, I've heard you often cite the study where people were given um pills. And this is the one where where people which frequently pe people frequently cite the one where people are give people are given pills, placebos and non-placebos, um, and that uh people who have MSG re reported MSG sensitivity don't get any reaction.
So my quote there is that it's very possible that the the reactions you might get from something like MSG are something that require local, you know, local absorption in your mouth, right? Because a lot of the a lot of the sort of like the whatever. There there's there's many things that could be going on. And my the whole idea that um we know for sure one way or the other. Can we both agree that we don't know for sure one way or the other?
I don't know. I think the overwhelming proponent there is let me put it this way. In the world where we have like our current era's fake facts, like I don't want to give equal weight, I don't see any scientific evidence that there is an effect. Well, there's so I think I think what this largely comes down to is we place different weights on on observation, you know, on the on the on the reliability of a preponderance of anecdotal observable evidence versus versus controlled lab study. And I think there's right now there's very little controlled lab studies.
Well, there's I mean there's a lot, there's none that like there's no way to figure out if I paint your mouth with MSG and somehow knock you out so you don't know what's happened. Right. So that's the difficulty. But I think the odds that like, because it's absorbable everywhere, the odds that the like oral route in your mouth is gonna cause different reaction, I just don't see it. And I find further problems with this 2000 study, which we only have the time because we're about to get pulled off, but like to get into in terms of they didn't even follow the recipe right from 1979.
You know what I mean? Right, right. Like the citrate that was added was added in the wrong way here as opposed to in the 1979. So like I just think it's a bad study. I think it's bad science by bad people.
I don't know that they're bad people. They might be good people. So it's bad science. So is it fair to say that we both agree that there should be more studies? I would like to see the study that proves that this like kind of like tiny window that you give for there to actually still be an issue is wrong.
Yeah. Which I believe there is no evidence to show there is no evidence. In the way that like there there is no evidence that taking the vaccine is gonna make you sterile. Like, I don't need to see that much more evidence that vaccine doesn't make sense. I think it's pretty different.
I think it's pretty different from that. All right. Um we can agree that. We can agree that you shouldn't tell people what what you shouldn't tell people to eat something they don't want to eat. Uh and we can agree that MSG is delicious.
It is delicious. All right. Thank you, Kenji. Kenji Lopez, all cooking issues.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.