Hello and welcome to Cooking Asian. This is Dave Arm, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of New York City and a Rockefeller Center at Newsstand Studios. Joined as usual with Nastasia of the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing? I'm good.
Yeah? Mm-hmm. Anything anything fun happening? No, just Joe from Connecticut. Oh, wait, Joe from now.
Wait. Joe from Connecticut? Yeah. Who's Joe from Connecticut? Me and Joe from Tro.
Oh, Drove. Nastasia's life's full of Joes. She's got like 8,000 Joes on the line. So if I, you know, for all I know, there could be a Joe from Connecticut. Got as usual, uh working the panels here.
Joe Hazen, how you doing? I'm doing great. How are you? You look a little hot and sweaty. Oh man, it's just one F up after the next.
You know, I uh by the way, is John on the horn or is he too sick to get on the horn? He's too sick to join us tonight. Yeah, John. Please, please, Booker and Dax people, give our customer service representative uh a little bit of a break for a day or two. Let him let him heal his his uh his meat sack.
He needs to, you know, uh get back to get back to health. Uh, but we do have Jackie Molecules, right? Yes, sir. I'm here, and exciting. I'm watching you on YouTube's live stream that our all access patreons can also get.
Well, crap, what am I doing right now? What am I doing right now? Well, you're uh slightly delayed. You have your hand up now. Stas just turned her head.
Now you just looked at the camera. Alright, I believe you did. It's a nine second delay. I timed it up. Now you're doing like a up and down thing with your hand.
I don't know what that is. Okay, okay. That was me trying to see if you could see what I was doing. All right, right, all right, enough. No, I gotta I gotta keep your I gotta keep your Connecticut Joe's name out of my effing mouth.
You keep my Connecticut Joe's name out of your effing mouth. Nastassi and I decided we're gonna use that all the time. So, like, so like uh watch this. I was making pizza, I was making some pizza. Oh, keep pizza out of your pizza.
No, then you have to insult my pizza, and then I have to say, keep my pizza out of your effing mouth. Like that. I think it can be used for anything. You know what I mean? Too soon?
No, not too soon. Uh okay, so back to why I'm so hot. I'll tell you this. Today is the second closest I've ever come to not actually making it in because of a bike accident. Nastasia almost didn't make it home once in Brooklyn when she used to bike, because she hit a pothole that would have swallowed a freaking tank in Brooklyn.
Brooklyn's the land of potholes. Yeah. It's bananas. That's true. Anyway, she got swallowed by a pot.
Because the thing is this you look over at the car that's trying to kill you, you hit the pothole, you can't win. There's no winning. Anyway, remember that uh, so anyway, so I'm going down the street, and for those of you that bike in New York, right? There are these cars that they get as close as they can to like the Jersey barriers or whatever during the construction things. And it's like, yo, we're still here.
We're still here. You know what I mean? And so I'm biking next to one, and I'm like, you know what? F it. I'm gonna take it.
And you're on a city bike, which is like a giant kludge of a piece of garbage, right? And so you're like, I got like two, three millimeters. I got two, three millimeters between me and this guy's window, right? Bam! I clock his his rear his rear view, his side view with with my uh with my hand, right?
I don't think I did any damage. But if you've ever hit someone's side view with your handlebars, it's like you're in a Jerry Lewis movie all of a sudden. And like, meanwhile, I'm in between like all these cars, so I'm trying not to hit any other cars because if I hit another car, I'm going down. If I go down, I get this. Door opens, whoop.
You hit my car! And then not not coming in. That's it, it. It's over. You know what I mean?
So thank God I kept the thing on its wheels, and there was so much traffic. The dude whose side view I punched, his fault, by the way, never caught up to me. So there you go. Silver linings. Silver linings.
What was that movie about? Doesn't matter. Let's go on to questions. Well, uh, if you're listening on Patreon, uh, are you are you doing the book? Usually John says what's coming up next and stuff.
Are you gonna do that? What's coming up next? Uh I think it's the mushroom guys next. I can figure it out. No, great.
I mean, I may be late, but it's also good that at least one of us is prepared. Uh calling your questions to 917-410-1507. That's uh 917-410-1507. Listen, a little tip for you guys. And maybe we should do something better about this on the Patreon.
Nastasia and I don't go out as much as we should. Nastasia goes out more than I do. But whenever I ask her for recommendations, she clams up and looks at me like I'm an a-hole, right? Right? Well, where I go, no, none of our people want to go.
Right. Where do you go? Just like weird, really weird places. Uh, isn't that they want like the tasting menu at the blog. Why do you always assume that you that that I know our people?
Yeah, because you you're often wrong. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think that's true. For uh April 1st.
Anyway, while you're trying to figure out April 5th, James Hoffman. Is that next week? Yep. And then the coffee master. April 12th, Adam DiMartino and Phoebe Tran, the mushroom people.
The mushroom people. And then April 19th, Oliver Milman. You sound enthused, man. You should do this for a living because. Well, that's the insect guy.
That's cool. You should just uh, you know, you should do this for a living. You're you should be not as enthusiastic. I want to I want to imagine Nastasio Lopez, world's worst hype man. Like you could you could make any rapper, like the audience just be like, uh John is is John like is John 10,000 times better?
I didn't realize I don't know. Johnny, Jack, what do you think? No coffee, James Hoffman. No comment. Wait, he's not gonna drink coffee or he can't come on.
No coffee, James Hoffman. No James Hoffman, therefore no coffee. All right, well, okay. All right. Anyways, so what else are we?
We're we were talking about something else first. By the way, very quickly, um immediate comments from the Discord about people listening that would be interested in weird places. Because after all, this podcast is weird as hell to begin with, says uh, the places I go though, like you usually can't it's like a weird night, you know? Yeah. But that's what they love best.
But that they'll that'll never happen again. I'm testing live feed for Joe, so I'm temporary. Okay. Yeah, again, good information for everyone to know. Uh what John does.
Anyway, my point is this is that like, okay, so like yeah, I'm invited to weird stuff. So yesterday, uh La Maison du Whisky, La Maison du Whisky, I don't have John here to pronounce it for me, like did a launch of this thing called artist series, where these guys, they're in Paris, they go and they buy individual casks from some well-known and some not as well known different distilleries around the world, and they bottle like the single cask. So I went to their the launch of this product, and it was great, but how the hell is anyone gonna buy it? Because literally, I walked up to the to the you know, one of the people who runs it, and I asked her, I was like, how the hell do you guys, how is it that you even fly all of these people to New York and have this event when like some total of the number of bottles of this thing's 143? And you just poured one of them.
Like, what the hell is this? And she was like, I don't know. You know, no say. Well, I don't know what they. How do you say it in French?
How do you say I don't know in French? Uh you shouldn't say pa. There you go. You didn't say pa. And I'm like, I don't know.
We don't do it to make money. I'm like, well, why do you do it? I wish we could have a business where we made no money and it was okay, right, sauce? Then you, yeah. I mean, we don't make any money, but it's not okay.
Yeah. Yeah. Anyways. Uh congratulations to uh Questlove on his uh on his what's it called, right? Yeah.
Oscar. Nice. A little uh a little overshadowed maybe by what happened just before he got it. Anyway, okay. So if you're gonna call and ask for a recommendation, well, here's what I recommend.
I recommend we put these things out on the Discord so that people who go out more than we do to kind of normal restaurants, like, like I'm more like, I'm better at uh, you know, where do I buy weird ingredients? Or you know, like if you're in a town that I've been to a lot, like what's the good cheese shop? Like, that's what I'm good at. You know what I mean? Like, uh Nastasia's good at like, you know, where's the fun place where weirdos hang out, or like, you know, how do you find X, Y, or Z, like, like uh strange happening in in a particular locale?
That's what she's good at. But like But that doesn't happen twice, you know. Yeah, but the hottest, the hottest restaurants, like I don't really I don't really go that often to the hottest restaurants anymore. Use us? No, I do not.
Do you enjoy going to the hottest restaurants? I do not. Okay. But the Patreon people, I'm sure a lot of our Patreon people know it. What?
Like the hottest new restaurants. Why? I don't know. Kind of gets tired. Wow.
Wow. Wow, we just we're just a bunch of mopey moes here today, huh? Yeah. Man. In case we have time, which we won't, uh, if we need to unmope, my my cousin James told me a fantastic joke, and it's not even uh it's not even offensive too much.
Anyway, uh, but I doubt we'll have time. Okay. So, uh again, and this is this goes back to the first question that's on my list. We had uh last week from Dale Harris. Get this out on the Discord.
This is something that should be handled on the Discord. Uh Boston, New York City, best places for non-alcoholic beverage program. I actually put this out to Derek Brown, uh, who uh is currently or just formerly of Columbia Room, uh who does a bunch of amazing non-alk stuff, uh, and also uh Jackson Cannon in Boston. I haven't heard back the names of the programs yet. Uh so I don't know what to tell you, Dale.
I uh I you know, like I want people in the uh who are who are uh who are you know listening in the in the in the um Discord to help out, you know? Biff Ditt writes in, hey Dave, have you had we I've always think it's pronounced Ouija, but I don't know. W E G E. I've always since I was a kid pronounced it as Ouija. What do you think?
Ouija or Ouija? Ouija sounds bad. So I'm assuming it's Ouija, right? Yeah, it's not Ouiga. No.
No. And it's not real German. It's not Veg Vege, right? It's it's Ouija, right? Yeah.
Ouija. Uh have you had Ouija pretzels from Hanover, Pennsylvania? If not, uh, where can I send a bag to their top drawer? Well, uh, Biff, I have had them many times. Uh, so we it they don't really sell them that much around here anymore.
The brand of record that you get here, you still get uh Schneiders every once in a while, but for some reason for the past 20 something years, Schneiders have been impossibly stale. I don't know why. Schneider's is also the only brand that uses the clear salt. You know what I'm talking about? The clear pretzel salt.
Are you a clear salt or a white salt gal? Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. All right. Are you remember when we were uh at the bar and I was serving hard pretzels and a friend of yours, like uh uh a restaurant a restaurateur came in.
He's like, You should serve soft pretzels. What did I tell him? No. I said, get your own place, jerk. And he's like, he's like, he's like, I have my own place.
I was like, then serve soft pretzels there and leave me alone. Uh I like soft pretzels, but I love hard pretzels. I'll put that way. Uh so I used to get them. Uh, and you know what?
They're good. I used to be like very much more of a purist on pretzels than I am uh today. Um so you know, I like them. They're good, but they contain a small amount of fat. Uh and I used to be a hundred percent against any fat at all in a hard pretzel because uh it tends to make the texture of the pretzel a little more cracker like.
So a little bit, a little bit less shattering on the tooth. And the way that you don't like if you're gonna use all purpose flour and you don't use uh uh fat your host because it's gonna be too hard because of all the protein. But if you use Slavelli's, which is what you're supposed to use, soft pastry flour, uh, you know, not bleached, but soft pastry flour, then you're gonna be fine. Uh they use a little bit, but you know what? It's not cracker like like Bachman's is, uh, which is always disappointing.
So I do actually enjoy their pretzels, and they are very old school. And my I believe, I forget whether it was that one or one very close to it that uh my great uncle worked for in the depression, was very close to that. My great uncle Luke. Uh so yes, I do appreciate them. But my real appreciation for fat containing pretzels, if you go to Dietrich Dietrich's, I think, meats in uh out out past uh Allentown uh in Pennsylvania, near where Nastasia's mom comes from, um, there's a meat store right on the road there, and they have this pretzel's name I can't remember, but it's like coated in butter and then dried hard.
So, like that like was so far in the fat dry pretzel thing that I was all of a sudden I was like okay. Okay. Okay. And I'm getting older so I'm actually getting softer in my old age about some things. Can you believe that, Sas?
Aren't you isn't your birthday tomorrow? My birthday is tomorrow. What are you doing? Uh well I was planning on getting up in the morning, puttering around, doing some work, like uh maybe taking a shower, shaving, doing some more work. Then I was gonna like uh go shopping for dinner, cook it, and then maybe go to bed.
Wow. Exciting. For all of your like family, you know, gatherings and all the family stuff. I I cook at all of those. Okay.
And it's during the week. Are you gonna at least cook something exciting? Jen's like, Jen's like, you want to go out? I'm like, where? I'm going out on Friday anyway, because like one of her friends is coming into town as you know our friends actually.
So I'm going out on Fridays. I don't want to go out like three times what am I? What am I? 20? Going out three times a week?
I had to go to this event yesterday. Am I gonna cook something special? I don't know. I have some magic pork in the freezer. I might cook myself some magic pork.
Okay. You know what do you what should I have with the magic pork people? Anyone? I might use my new waterless cookery. I don't have time now to go into the ins and outs of waterless cookery but these like weird aluminum pots from the 30s that I have I've been doing all of my mashed potatoes in them and cooking them without water.
So you just clo you literally it's the craziest thing in the world you just put dry potatoes into it washed with the peel on into a dry pot. You with me so far? Dry potatoes into a dry pot. And the trick is is you have to almost fill the pot. Like as full as the pot is can go, that's how much you should use.
Then you put the lid on and you turn on the heat until you can feel the steam hit the top of the of the lid. And then as soon as that happens, you turn it way down just so that the lid stays hot. And as long as the lid is hot, you have enough flame to be vaporizing the water, but not enough to have the steam leaving it. And the potatoes are cooked in their own water, but they don't dry out like they do in an oven. So you can let them rock for a long, long time.
And all that happens is the part of the skin that get that is actually touching the bottom of the pan gets brown and thick, but not bad actually, because I've eaten it. And then what you do is you you do you guys own grill grill gr grill gloves? Grill gloves? No. So I like these grill gloves.
I use them at I you have some, Jack. No, I don't. You should get some. Uh don't be worried about the fact that they're black, because it turns out that most of the heat from the grill isn't is not in uh not in a range that matters anyway. So a white glove might as well be black in the infrared, which is where the heat is.
So don't think that that they're not that good just because they're they're black colored. Don't think that they need to be. I mean if they're reflective, that's better because they'll take on less stuff. But once it's not reflective, it doesn't matter anymore what color the glove is. And um they're like two, three layers.
So, but they're they're there's not a lot of liquid on the outside of the potato, right? So I can literally put on these grill gloves, go right into the pot, pick up the like steaming hot potato, and then just take the peel off with a petty knife, right? And just that little bit of peel that I'm holding on to with the with the petty doesn't burn my thumb. I mean, my I also don't feel very much heat with my thumb. And so I can peel these potatoes like while they're steaming hot, leave the jackets on, so I lose very little, and you know, I yeah, I think it tastes maybe better.
I don't know. I haven't done a side by side, but I think it's a good way to cook the potato. So maybe I'll do that tomorrow, Nastasia. Okay. Is that enough of a what kind of gravy should I have?
I don't know. I don't know. I've been making a lot of mushroom gravy, so I'm kind of sick of it. What kind of gravy should I make? I don't know.
What kind of gravy do you like? Do you not like gravy? I don't usually make it, no. What about you, Jack or Joe? What's your gravy preferences?
Mushroom gravy sounds good. But I just made a mushroom gravy. I make a really good mushroom. I don't know. I don't really know.
What about just like a pan gravy? Yeah, but I do all low temp cooking, so there's no pan stuff no pan stuff left. No. No. This is why I like when I, whenever I do um like birds, boys, I like to uh like to bone them so I can make a gravy with the bones before I bother cooking them.
You know what I mean? I like to I like a two-front thing, but I don't think I want a chicken gravy with a pork. I mean, I have a bunch of chicken bones in my fridge. Freezer, rather. I mean, who doesn't, right?
Anyway. Do you save your chicken bones in the freezer? No. You don't have chicken bones. You don't like to cut up animals when you're alone.
I don't, yeah, I don't cook a lot. Okay. Uh from uh wait, did we get this? Oh, there's another one. Josh Kaplan.
I'm uh fine dining chef in DC, headed to New York City for a pizza tour. I built a list from uh Mike Portnoy's reviews and asked some chef friends about their favorite spots. Are there any places not to be missed? I mean, I'm not a free, I'm not on point. I'm I'm useless.
I'm I'm a useless person. You guys gotta ask me questions like I know the answers to, like exactly what's the difference between like uh a soft pastry flour, an all-purpose flour, and a bread flour. Hey, or I can help you out. Best pizza in New York, I can't help you so much. Jack, you used to eat pizza in New York.
And and and Joe, you eat pizza in New York. What do you like? Are you fancy pizza people or cheap pizza people? I could tell you a good dollar slice. What's your dollar slice?
Wait, I'm interested in that answer. I mean, it's not good. It's good for a dollar. It's like, you know, like uh like uh uh a kia is a terrible Bentley, right? But it's not a bad Kia.
You know what I'm saying? It's like you know, if if you're walking into a place and you and you're like, I want a slice, I'm gonna hand you one dollar bill. They're gonna hand you like a sallow piece of garbage with like a lot of potato starch mixed in with the cheese so that the cheese is stretched, and you're like, I get it. That's fine. You know what I mean?
And the one on Sixth Avenue, I think is decent for that. Sixth Avenue and uh eighth. Yeah, it's good, right? You like that one, right, Sas? Caller, you are on the air.
Hey, this is Jacob calling from Des Moines, and I have a moisture management question. And since Dave is the master of moisture, I figured this would be a good place to ask. There you go. All right, what do you got for me? Okay, so I am really curious about the method of making puffy crispy skin roasted pork.
Oh, yeah. And I have I have seen many, many iterations of it. I've seen the Marco Pierre White one where he literally just rubs some oil on it and puts it in a low oven and it gets insane. I've seen uh a Chinese method where they prick it with like the Chinese equivalent of like a chicard and then brush it with vinegar and then put a layer of rock salt on it and then roast it and then broil it. I've seen some random guy on TikTok who essentially shallow braises it uh and smokes it and then finishes it under the broiler, and I am just curious about what's going on.
Can you kind of tell all the nice folks at home how to succeed at this process? And then ultimately, what my main question is, what I really want to figure out is can I cook the pork ahead of time? If I were to do, for instance, an event off site, cook the pork ahead of time without puffing the skin, and then bring it to the site and puff the skin on site. Absolutely, you can. Uh now it's so it's funny.
It's a it's a good it's a good question. Most of the jacquarding and uh like uh pricking or the way that uh the uh modernist cuisine guys used to do it with a dog brush, make sure you get a fresh dog brush. You know what I'm talking about with the dog brush, right? The one with all the tiny wires on it, yeah. Uh that they use on duck breasts, but I think they also use it on pork.
Or if you look at like um a lot of the um, you know, Chinese language uh pork uh YouTube, you'll see them like like multiply stabbing the skin a bunch of time. And that's really just to kind of like help it um help it render, but you render the fat, right? Render, right. The interesting thing comes like salt, obviously is gonna draw some moisture out as well as make it taste uh good, right? Um the the interesting question is always like some people are painting it with an acidic paint on top, and some people are painting it with a basic paint on top, right?
Like baking soda, for instance. And uh I have never like so what's funny is is that anytime you take uh most of those things aren't affecting the fat itself, they're affecting the connective tissue under the fat, right? And so um anytime you and that which is protein based, and any time you shift a a protein away from what's known as its isoelectric point, uh, you induce changes, right? So the the other thing is that baking soda will shift it towards uh brown because it also shifts Myart and Browning reactions into high gear, whereas shifting it towards acidic will keep it blonder. So like the more acidic it is, and I'd I I haven't tested exactly which effect is gonna be better on the collagen to break it apart and cause it to to puff up much.
But it's interesting that both are used and it just goes to show how uh like the same chemistry in two opposite directions can have kind of similar effects. But I again I haven't run it down on pork skin. It is something that I was gonna do for the book, but then so many other people are working on it, and I figured that if I tried to tackle crispy pork skin, I would be accused of like going outside of my wheelhouse. So I kinda stopped. Yeah, yeah.
So I kinda stopped looking into it. But um whether or not you can cook it ahead of time, for sure. The issue is really just drying that skin out uh in advance, right? So what I would do is um I would if you're gonna let's say let's just say we're doing belly. I don't you didn't say you were, but let's just say we're doing belly.
Yeah, yeah. Keep the piece as big as you can. Right. Also, um just be aware that uh you know how like there are certain muscles in the belly that tend to dry out more if you're gonna low temp. If you're gonna do a traditional brace, uh then kind of the gelatin uh from the connective tissue kind of weeps all over everything and tends to moisten the drier muscles.
But in a low temp cook where the the collagen uh becomes soft but doesn't actually completely bleed out into the entire mass of meat, those muscles can end up tasting a little drier than you would like in in a pork belly. So but I would keep the piece as big as you can, right? Low temp it and then chill it all the way down until it re-gels, okay, until it's a solid mass again and the skin is isn't is soft. And not me, sorry, re-gelled, not soft. Uh and then I would cut it into whatever portions you're gonna crisp on and then.
And then I would air dry the skin with and you know try to protect the meat somewhat from from drying out and air dry the skin and then do it. And I then, you know, I mean I've always wanted to, I didn't do it, do a side by side where, you know, one side has nothing, once, you know, well, three sides. One is one is the vinegar and one is the baking soda. My my guess is that it's going to be differences of uh just texture on the on the outside, you know. Um and then of course you have a question are you going to pan it in oil?
Because that crisps up real nice or is it just going to be a broil, right? Or are you just going to throw it in the oven. The oven's the most dangerous in terms of overcooking the meat at the bottom, drying out the meat. You know what I mean? Sure.
Sure. Right. I've got options there. And that's kind of what um I I guess another great point that I'm glad you brought up. So the the site that I'm thinking about doing this at has a wood-fired pizza oven, basically.
And if it's possible, I mean that could be a thing. Could impart some nice flavor onto it perhaps. I also have the camp chef portable. It's basically like a pizza oven that you stick on top of a propane burner. But like one of the big like the the the bigger like what do you call it?
Almost like a stove that's got like three propane burners on it that you'll see like a lot of people make like pho with or whatever outside. Right. So I have I have it's basically like a pizza a pizza attachment that they recommend running around 600 to 650 600, 650 degrees, which I think for this purpose would be great. Um, but then I also have like a big walk that I can take with me outside and then just do the oil over the top of it too. Yeah, I mean, look, all I I again the I would test all of these.
I think any one of these could make a good product. Just realize that like a wood fired oven where the let's say the dome of it is getting over 800. And if you do the math, right the difference between 900, 800, 900 degrees and 500, 600 degrees, the difference in radiant energy coming off that thing is a lot because it doesn't go up linearly. It goes up um you know, to uh what is it? Oh my god, it just went out of my head, six uh fourth power, right?
So it's like and well, and I'll say too, we can we can control the temperature on that oven. Like usually I do um more of a I'm not gonna call it Neapolitan style, but it's more of a Neapolitan style pizza that cooks in like two minutes because we're running it between 70 and 800 degrees. But then I also at the same site did um Detroit style pieces, so I was running that between five and six hundred. So like I can control the temperature. It's it's literally I'm building a fire inside of this thing and like controlling the temperature that way.
So I feel after especially after having successfully done these Detroit style pizzas, I feel like I can do anything out of that out of that oven now. But yeah, that was just just another option that I'm gonna do. Yeah, I mean, I would look if you're comfortable with a particular piece of equipment, that's nine tenths of the battle. Especially like, you know how many times I've seen people show up at events, it's usually events, right? And they're like, I'm gonna use this piece of equipment and I'm sure it's fine.
I've never used it before, but I'm sure it's fine. It's never fine. Have you had do you know do you know anybody who I mean that's that's one of my points with my business um is that I want to be able to execute uh a certain a certain level of of execution anywhere. And so I have what I lovingly refer to as a completely mobile kitchen. I have all of this propane cooking equipment or electrical stuff that I can take with me and use because yeah, you go do catering events and stuff and they don't have anything.
It's like, but I I don't I'm not the type of person that has quote unquote catering equipment. I'm not going to warm everything up, put it in a hot box and then drag it out there and put it on a plate. I would much rather bring cold product and then warm it up on site or finish it on site. So yeah that's that's part of the reason that I have so many toys is because I want to be able to execute a high level of quality uh anywhere. Yeah.
Well I mean it's also like I mean I think the mistake people make right all the time is they start in the wrong place. Like you know the equipment that you have right and you know where you're going to be making the food, right? So design the menu around that around how you're gonna make it. You don't design the menu around what you want. You know what I mean?
I mean that's my first question when I have bigger events too I'm like what kind of equipment do you guys have there? Like what can we because this that's gonna dis dictate what's on the menu, you know yeah yeah listen don't don't promise your customer an item until you know the particulars of the situation unless they have infinite money. If they have infinite money, fine. Right. Infinite you know money as Cindy Lauper famously said, money changes everything.
Love her. Yep. All right well listen good luck. Let us know uh tweet me back uh with some pictures of your test. I'd love to know what you uh came down with and how it came out tweet me tweet me back to cooking issues.
I appreciate it. Hey I'll give it a shot thanks for the insight. All right cool. All right and now we're gonna go uh to an ad for our favorite fish, Aura King Salmon, and we'll be right back with Cooking Issues. Today's episode brought to you by Oura King Salmon, everybody's favorite fish.
Today in the studio we have Michael Fabro from Oura King Salmon to talk about it. And I was curious about sustainability. You guys have the highest certification possible from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch. Is that true? Yeah, that's absolutely true.
It was important to have a third-party certification to verify that our practices were sound. Really, the one that most consumers or most uh Americans look to is this Monterey Bay Seafood Watch program. And they have a a very simple way to judge it. They have a green-yellow-red system. Green meaning it's a best choice.
Yellow is a good alternative, and red is something you should avoid. They look at everything from your feed, your impact on the water and surrounding environment, fish-in-fish-out ratios, any impact on wild fisheries. Like Aura King was actually the first marine farmed salmon in the world to score the green or best choice rating. So that was a really significant achievement for us and kind of validated what we've been saying all along. There you go.
The only best green choice for salmon aquaculture, Aura King salmon, everybody's favorite fish. And we're back. Okay, so we have a question here. Um this is a classics in the field question from Zachary Stewart. I don't know if I have the answer today, but let's see here.
Uh my sister-in-law is cooking for uh is looking for a book uh that talks about all the cuts of meat from as many animals as possible, uh, at least pork and beef. It should give the characteristics of the cut, how it is best used, the kind of dishes, and how best to cook it. Trying to learn the things a butcher would know without becoming a butcher. Uh, how to be an informed meat consumer, et cetera. Thanks for the show and keep up the good work.
So, I don't know if there's one book that deals with all of that. The uh what is it called? The North American Meat Producers NAMP uh old picture guide of various cuts. And I think we talked about it when Matt was on the show briefly uh a couple of weeks ago. Um it's maybe a little outdated, um, but it's an awesome picture book.
It's spiral bound, and you can take it into the shower with you because it's meant to be like washed down, and like in case you accidentally cut open a cow next to it and like it bleeds all over the book, your book's gonna be fine. Uh, and that's an amazing book. Everyone I know uh likes it. Uh, but find it used and don't buy, don't spend a lot of money on it. Uh I think the you know, for one that's a little bit now long in the tooth, it's a little bit old, but the old River Cottage meat book uh I think is good.
Uh gee, you know, John reads this kind of crap. And next time we have Matt on, I'm gonna have uh I'm gonna have I'm gonna put a pin in it and ask uh Matt when he comes back on the show because he's gonna be coming on semi like once every other month, right, Sas, something like that? Yep. Yeah. Uh someone in Discord said on the last call, this is a long ass call.
Okay. I'm keeping up with the comments. Yeah. Well, thanks for slowing down the show for telling me that. Awesome.
Uh licensed magician 69 at AOL uh writes in Dave once mentioned that he knows why. Wait, that's the guy. Nastasi, Nastasi goes this. Nastasi's like, that's the same thing. That call was long, and here I am.
I'm gonna make it longer. That's a guy that just commented this. Really? Awesome. So here I am spending time on your stuff.
See? See? See? All right. Uh Dave once mentioned that he knows why electric uh multi cookers, aka the instant pot, etc., aren't made to reach a full 15 PSI.
He did not say specifically why. What's the reason? Okay, so Nastasi and I used to hang out with occasionally someone who made these things professionally for one of the big name manufacturers. I won't say, I won't say who it is or what it is. And literally, some of it is this following fact.
They're like, Well, what do you need the extra, what do you need the extra pressure for, right? So there's a whole range of people who like are engineering and making this that aren't necessarily cooks and don't really understand why you would want the extra pressure. Because in truth, right, it doesn't necessarily take that much longer to cook something at 10 PSI than it does to cook it at 15 PSI. It does take a little bit longer, 5 PSI. But uh they're not sitting down in a kitchen like they would be in the 1910s or 1920s.
And frankly, they're not hiring someone in a kitchen. So it used to be that the big manufacturers would hire, they would set up a test kitchen, and people who make food like Unilever still do this. But kitchen manufacturers don't have kitchens anymore where they're hiring people to come up with recipes that are awesome with their equipment to sell to you. I just don't think that's as much of a thing as it was in the teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. Uh and so they're not doing like the tests with like you know that we used to do back in the day where you know we we get a pressure cooker and we cook products in it at 10 different pressures and see which ones taste best.
The answer is 15. Like like 20 PSI, not better, worse. Like 15 is the answer. So part of it is just not understanding why you would want that extra pressure. They have to over design it to get it to go to those pressures.
It becomes more of a design problem. And also those electric instapot things, a regular real honest to God pressure cooker, you moderate the moderate it yourself. You set the temperature and you moderate it. Uh in one of these things, there is a pressure relief valve that goes, but they're monitor they're doing the temperature with just uh a temperature sensor, right? With like a thermistor.
And uh, and so what they're doing is they're choosing a temperature that's not that high, it's above boiling but's not that high, I think so that they don't scorch or have any other problems and just make their life easier. And I I really think that's I really think that's why they do it. Interesting fact. Um, you have to to get a pressure cooker to build up pressure, you need to create uh a little bit of steam, right? Obviously, duh.
Uh and it the thicker your item is, the bigger of a temperature differential there is between the bottom of the pan and the actual liquid that is at boiling point. So even though the liquid that's boiling is still just at boiling temperature because you don't really have enough solids in your products to increase the boiling point of the water that much, it can be as much as 15 degrees uh difference in the bottom where the where the heater is and and the product that's actually boiling in a thicker item than in a thinner item. You always need some superheat at the bottom of a pan. And so very thick items at the bottom of your pressure cooker, you have to use a lot of extra superheat. And then if you if you gel, if you make a gel layer on the bottom of your pan, like let's say you're thickening in a gravy and you make a gel layer on the bottom of the pan, then all of a sudden you're creating a layer you have to have conduction through, and that drastically increases the temperature uh you need to uh maintain pressure without scorching.
And so I would very much uh caution you when you're using pressure cookers to make sure that the liquid that's directly touching the bottom of the pan is as thin as possible. That makes sense? Mm-hmm. Okay. Uh Will Robinson wrote in Hey, uh when Dave was talking slash complaining, is there anything do I ever talk about things without complaining about them?
No. Okay. So it's like talking is complaining. You don't need to say both. Right.
Yeah. Uh about the measuring cup that came with his Zojiirushi rice cooker, rice cooker. Uh uh, was he was he fully aware that the Japanese go is a volume of measurement predominant in rice cookers? No. Uh and I I I wasn't.
I was just, you know, I had never really researched where that measurement came from. So then I looked up a go, and a go is uh 180.4 milliliters, according to the Wikipedia, if you can believe the Wikipedia, which is for those of you that are keeping track, 0.76 cup. And so I took my Zojirushi uh cup, which hasn't seen water in I don't know, decades, right? Because I don't get my rice scoop wet. I'm not a crazy person.
And damned if it didn't hold 180 milliliters, but you have to meniscus that sucker like all the way to the top. So it's dribbling everywhere. So thank you, Will, for it's still a ridiculous unit, and why don't they just call it like rice measure or go? Just tell me go. Don't insult me and call it a cup when it ain't.
You know what I mean? Don't insult me. Uh do we answer this question about tap cocktails? I know you're gonna want to say yes because you hate any question about tap cocktails. I don't think so.
All right. Um Joe Waterhouse writes in hey Dave, I've been thinking about tap cocktails for a while now, while now, and wondered if um Oh, this is the one where I keep asking John to reword it because I can't read it on air because it's not you re you read it, you reword it, and I'll I'll read the next question. All right. Steinberg says, still thinking about corn tortillas, can you make nixtamol in a pressure cooker to speed up the process? Uh I have found that it's not helpful.
Uh what happens is that when you're making an so for those of you that, you know, I don't know, haven't been following nixtimalization. So in Nixtimalization, you're using a base, uh traditionally, either uh calcium hydroxide, cal CaOH, or pot ash, uh, even older, uh, because it's harder to make calcium hydroxide, uh, and you boil corn, dry corn, you know, uh, in uh don't do it with popcorn, it's a pain in the ass. Regular, like, you know, field corn, although there's it's delicious when you do it with really fancy varieties. Oh, you know what? I should nixtamalize some of my bloody butcher.
Oh my God. It's gonna be so good. Anyway, you boil it in a in an alkaline solution and it dissolves it does a couple of things. It dissolves the outside of the seed coat a little bit and actually turns that into kind of these uh hydrocolloid-like things that help plasticize the uh masa that you're making. It also partially gelatinizes the kernels uh so that you know some of the starch is is functionalized, which also gives body to the dough, but you have to do it kind of the right amount.
If you overdo it, uh then too much of the starch is gelatinized, too much of the, you know, too much of the outside is is kind of wiped off and it's not good. Then after you you you boil it, then you soak it for a while at a lower temperature, like while it's coming down. Soak it, then you rub off, you know, however much of the outside sea coat you want, then you grind it into masa, and that's what is tortillas and and whatnot. It's masa. You can use it for wherever you want, but it's masa.
If you pressure cook it, it's easy to go too far too fast. You're not really boiling it that long anyway. Uh and so, you know, it's gonna be at a high temperature for so long that uh it's it in my experience, you weren't saving a lot, and the odds that you could go over were too high. That was my uh experience. Anyway.
Okay, so you want this to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You answer you, you ask me the question. Just reword the question so that I can answer it.
Hi, Dave. I've been thinking about tap cocktails for a while now, and I wondered if you could tell me if I'm being very smart or very stupid. If I attached a keg to a cement mixer under pressure, it would be a good one. Oh, we did this. Don't do it with the cement mixer.
We dealt with this one. Okay. The cement mixer, the problem with the cement mixer, remember, is that how are you gonna keep the the tube from getting wrapped around itself and kinking? You're gonna spend so much money on a nice rotary fitting, and then you still have to make sure that the rotary fitting spins on center, right? Because the mistake people make is you can't freaking carbonate unless it's under pressure.
And I highly recommend you do not stick the CO2 tank into the cement mixer with the keg, because if you make a mistake with a keg that's at like, you know, 80 psi, 100 psi, if you're doing it at room temperature, that's 80, 100 psi. If you make a mistake with a CO2 tank and you knock the nipple off the end of a CO2 tank, that's 800 PSI. That's a that's a rocket. That's a missile. That's not uh that's not a good idea.
Uh Nicholas says, asks, would you recommend any resources or books on how to get the most out of your rotovap? I think we already answered this one too. No, I I I don't there are no good books on rotary evaporation just because there aren't enough people doing it. Look at cooking issues. The best thing to do, and I know this sounds like a dick move, either get one and find a chemist who is willing to come to your house, pay them in booths, and have them show you how to set it up, and then go on cooking issues or anyone else who writes about using rotary evaporators for cooking, and then try to learn the difference between what a chemist is trying to do with a rotary evaporator and what you are trying to do with a rotary evaporator, because it's very different.
But learning the nuts and bolts of running one, actually keeping one in good shape is a very different thing from learning how to make it taste good. And usually, like you can't find the same person who's good at both. Does that make sense? Uh question: why do uh why does meat, this is from uh Jay? Why does meat go dry slash mealy if you sous vide for too long, even at low temperatures?
For larger cuts, I notice it continues, uh, even at temperatures lower than desired. Uh, is there a way to prevent this while still breaking down collagen? And if not, does this suggest some steaks are too thick for sous vide? Uh too thick for sous vide. That's my uh that's my that's my mental, my mental capacity, too thick for sous vide.
Let me ask you before I I'm gonna answer, I'm gonna answer your question. I'm gonna give you your time. I have been studying like the long extended history of low temperature cooking, going back way far back. You know what we should do sometime, Stas? Were you willing to do uh how easy is it to dig in your in your backyard?
Easy. Really? So it's not like like where I was in Connecticut where it's all rocks. You want to do some underground cooking? No.
Why? Okay, yeah, let's do it. Why? I'm not curious. If you say no, you said no so quickly.
I've asked you to do that last summer, and you're like, I don't have time, I don't know. I don't, but if I do it for the book, I'm gonna say I don't have interest. You know what? You may pay me to be this terrible person. Anyway, uh here's the issue.
So collagen breaking down, everyone likes to say, everyone likes to think, and I might have even written back in the day, but it's just simply not true. That once meat fibers, the fibers themselves, right, the muscle fibers, reach a certain temperature, that they are relatively static, right? And so then you can keep it at that temperature forever without it overcooking. Simply not the case, right? Simply not true.
So uh what happens is is that it's true that most of the movement in a protein like that happens relatively quickly, but then it keeps on uh, first of all, getting firmer, uh, and then also getting like mushier as it goes forward, right? So the more you can drop a temperature below your target temperature, right, the longer you can keep things running. Uh but certain things it's almost impossible to keep them from going uh dry or stringy. So for instance, like tenderloin has no connective tissue in it at all. And so you start noticing that mushy fibrousness in uh in a filet very quickly, which is why like I try to keep all of those uh cooking times down below an hour on a filet if you're gonna do it, right?
Like all in, I want that like under an hour. And this is why if you read all my a lot of my old stuff on the blogs, I'm like, I really don't like cooking chicken longer meat, low temp longer than an hour because once it's reached cooking temperature and stayed there at cooking temperature for more than an hour, I start to notice some of that mushiness. And this is borne out by tests that we've done, terrible tests. Remember those tests how disgusting they were stuzz? Of just eating skinless, unseared meat, like cubes of meat that have been cooked at various times and temperatures.
And that's when you notice it, not when you're when you're finished. And so those meats really want to only be at their target temperature for a little bit of time and then dropped, sometimes substantially. I think you noted that uh you're dropping down to 125. I don't I can't do that in Celsius, but you need to drop a good five degrees below your cooking temperature to really halt a lot of that progression forward in terms of mushiness. Collagen, on the other hand, uh you need to break down for a long time.
And so a lot of times you have to run a compromise between breaking down of collagen and not making this stuff uh mushy. So it's not necessarily it is it is a thickness question, right? In general, with very thick cuts of meat, all I'm looking to do is hit a target temperature on the very inside for insurance. I'm never doing kind of direct serve on those things. So I'm not really tenderizing those big, big, big cuts.
Uh more when I'm doing tenderizing with uh sous vide, I'm doing smaller things like uh ribs or uh you know, sh short ribs or things like things that are high in collagen that you want to like render out for a long time. Things like roasts, I I tend to just take them up to their target temperature. And even though it takes a long time, uh it's fine because the part that is kind of what you would call mushy on the outside is gonna get overcooked when you roast it at a high temperature anyway when you're doing the actual f finished cook-off. So it's not really a problem. Does that make sense to us?
Mm-hmm. All right. Uh okay. Henry Botz writes in, what's the difference between tomato paste in a tube that says 2X versus a small can and can they be used interchangeably? It's a good question.
I haven't used a l any of that uh 2x tube-based stuff. I'm a can man. You ever you are you a tube lady? Mm-hmm. Anyone uh anyone on the Discord uh jack at the time?
I'm a tube. Yeah. You're a tube? Tubes, yeah. Mm-hmm.
You know the internet's a series of tubes. Yes. Why do you be curious to hear your answer to this? Why use it? Um, I don't know.
It's easy to open and close if I only need like a little bit for something. Yeah. When was the last time you only needed a little bit of tomato paste? I'm always like, I use so much tomato paste. Really?
All right. Yeah. I write all of my recipes around uh the six-ounce can of tomato paste. Huh. You know what I mean?
Like I'm always like using. I don't have the tube. I would guess they're the same, though. I would guess that for I I would guess that like maybe they're a little bit different, but I would guess that uh it's just like a dosing thing. You know what I'm saying?
Like maybe like you're saying, like it's easier to dose out the stuff that's in a tube. Like some cultures like like have all of those like toothpaste tubes of stuff lying around anyway, like they're used to cooking with them. The only thing I have in a tube in my kitchen is uh callus caviar. You guys like that stuff? Yeah.
Yeah. I like it. You never had it? Nils used to call it Swedish toothpaste. It's like it's like fish row and salt and like oil, and it's got this like it's got this kid with this preposterous grin on the front.
Like uh like Oh, yeah, I know what you're talking about. It's ridiculous. Yeah, yeah. It's good. You know what's good on?
Crackers. You know what's not good on? Anything you're gonna have, it really ruins wine. You should really have it when you're not drinking wine. It's not wine friendly.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what it is. Smoky? Yeah.
Smoky, salty. Something about cured fish products and most wines, I don't I don't like. Like uh, I love I love cured fish. I don't really like champagne and locks to me is like the worst combo. Like carbonated.
What about you, Stas? You hate that too, right? I don't think I like that. Yeah. I mean, that's maybe the only situation where champagne's not the right answer.
Yeah. Because, you know, every other situation, it is. Uh did I get this one? All right. Uh Timothy Helmet writes in hey, can you talk about cooking with essential oils?
For steam distilled ingredients, what's the difference between food and non-food grade oils? Uh, is it a big risk to consume a minute amount of an edible oil that's not explicitly food grade for some background of assembling the ingredients to make the chili sauce in the Sichuan tofu uh rice recipe, which I didn't click, so I don't know what it is. Uh, they use uh oh my god, I can't pronounce that. Oh, is that cubet? Look up, look up let's say a cubeba.
Is that cubeba cubeba for soap making or for aromatherapy, but nothing explicitly food grade. Thanks for making the show, Timothy. Is it is it cube's? Because I love cube. I love cubebs.
Is that what it is? I don't know, Litsea, though. What? Two questions in a row that I also have. This is this is great.
What's Litse? I have the same question. What's Litseia cube? You guys looking it up? I don't have the internets.
Anyway, um to answer your question. It's very difficult to dose those things. And also essential, if the recipe specifically calls for an essential oil, that means that use the essential oil, try to find a food grade one. They are minute quantities. I remember once we did a thing at the French Culinary Institute where we were trying to make cocktails and dishes with uh the essential oils, and this is back when the school still used styro cups.
We still had styro cups styrofoam cups for like drinking coffee out of and whatnot. And we were we took a dropper and we put dropper in and it melted the styrofoam cup. Were you there for that one, Stas? Yeah. So in other words, like to try it, maybe sure.
I I'm I don't feel qualified to give you an answer. Now, on the way out, because I have a minute and 40 seconds, I'm gonna read you the introduction from the houseware story, a history of the American housewares uh industry by Earl Lilshe from 1973, made by the National Housewares Manufacturing Association, whose managing director, Dolph Zapfel, wrote uh this rather uh breathless uh introduction. And this is the most over the top anyone's ever been when talking about housewares. This is back when it was still cool to ruin the environment and build as much stuff as humanly possible before the first oil crisis. The publication of the houseware story is one of the proudest accomplishments of the National Houseware Manufacturers Association in its 34 years of service to the American housewares industry.
We're sure this lively and comprehensive history of a fascinating business will prove to be of great interest to all members of the industry, veterans and newcomers alike. We hope that further this important first will enrich their understanding of the industry and make them even more proud to be a part of the amazing conglomerate we call housewares. It was 1968 that the industry leaders then serving as NHMA directors determined that the time had come for someone to chronicle this American economic miracle that is housewares. Someone somewhere should write a history of this lusty, sprawling giant that has grown at ever-increasing speed in the years since World War II, reaching an annual volume of over $15 billion in 1972. They felt it was time that someone weave into words the narrative of an industry whose thousands of manufacturing plants stretch from coast to coast, and whose myriad products are found in every room and every home in the United States.
No small job. But of course, the answer was obvious to all. Earl Liffshi, a man whose experience, background, and talent eminently qualified him to take on this major production. Fortunately for the housewares industry, Earl promptly accepted the commission of this exciting undertaking. He immediately began one of the most thorough and painstaking research tasks ever attempted.
Earl's natural curiosity about anything and everything took over. His journalistic intuition came into full play, and he was off on what was later described as the most stimulating challenge of his almost half-century career of editorial and merchandising endeavors in the housewares industry. No one but those closest to him during these past four years can fully appreciate Earl's dedication to the detective work necessary to unearth the people, the facts, and the figures about an industry whose roots literally go back to the first man who cooked a piece of raw meat with a crudely improvised utensil. And no one will ever know the number of hours nor the amount of intense effort Earl poured into producing this sweeping history of a many faceted industry. The houseware story is, of course, dedicated to the thousands of men and women who make up the housewares industry, to those former and present manufacturers, representative, buyers, and trade press editors, and others who've contributed so much to this book.
Without their help, this thorough and comprehensive story could not have been written. The National Housewares Manufacturers Association is proud to have played the initial role in the conception of this history of the American housewares industry, and we hope you will share our pride and take pleasure in the intriguing historical saga that Earl Lipshe has woven in the houseware story, cooking issues.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.