Hello and welcome to Cookie Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center, News Dance Studios, joined as usual with John in the studio with me. How are you doing? Doing great. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Extra Ker pal. Yeah. Yeah, rocking the panels. We got Joe Hazen.
Hi guys. Yeah. Everything good? Everything's great. All right, going down the Eastern Seaboard.
We got Jackie Molecules in DC. Hey. Yeah. How you doing? Everything good?
I'm good. Going back up a slightly east. Nastasia Lopez in Stanford, Connecticut. How you doing? Do good.
You hammering things? Things being hammered. Yes. Nice, nice. And then holding down the fort way over in the in the west, west, west, north.
Uh, Quinn, how you doing? Hey, I'm good. Hey, question for you, Quinn that I got on the uh, what's that called? Instagram. Uh have you done I've been doing a lot of frozen drink posts recently, and so and a lot of people have been testing the stuff in creamy.
Have you tested any of these recipes? And if you have not, will you test them in the creamy so that I can report to people that whether or not the it is a decent frozen drink maker? No, but uh, yeah, I will. The uh the sea rich and the frozen twine apple. Yeah, or you can go frose.
You can go froze right. But the the interesting thing about those three is they all want to be served at slightly different temperatures. Uh Sea Witch is the one that wants to be served at the coldest temperature, so it's probably the best way to go. Absolutely, I do not. I do it by texture.
I do it by texture, Quinn. All I know is that all of them are too hard in uh in a freezer, right? So Yeah, but I'm saying like the the creamy drops it by like eight degrees Celsius or upset, I guess. Yeah. Well, I don't know.
I mean, it might also depend uh I mean they have different whatever specific heats because whatever. Just you know, we've tested, you know, test it. Just test it and let me know, though. Just test it and let me know. That's all.
Uh all right. So we'll report back to people. Uh and when are we gonna do the big creamy fest anyway? When's uh Chris Young coming on and creamy the hell out of the room? Creamy's a girl.
I'm saying creamy and John's going, uh God. I I've been I've been ready for like nine months. We've just been waiting for Chris Young to come on. So what you're doing is you said you're you're you're blaming somebody else's what's happening. Run them under the bus.
Yeah, that's what's happening. Like publicly you're throwing them under the bus. Yeah, I'm just saying we have all been collectively waiting for him to be on to all the third disco. So now you're co-signing us on throwing them under the bus. Now it's not just you throwing them under the bus.
Now we're all throwing them under the bus too. All right. I see how it is. I see how it is. We like his uh we.
I like his thermometer, I have to say. His combustion engineering thermometer, I think, is quite a nifty little gadget or a piece of kit, as those weirdos say over there. Uh it's good. I like it. Uh I I recommend it.
Um you know why? So if you're d if let's say you're using like uh the APO precision or any sort of combi oven, right? And you don't want to wait forever for your fish to poach through. Right. I I talked about the fish I was doing l like a couple weeks ago, right?
The all the bronzitos. Yeah, when I destroyed my my yeah. So you you can put it like three or four degrees higher, right? And do a delta T, which is so much faster without viciously overcooking it because it'll tell you when the internals hit the right temperature, and it does it, you know, even with a fish, you just jam it through the whole fish and and it just tells you that tells you the answer, which is nice. Yeah, it is.
Gives you some predictive. Yeah, it's good. And it's the only wireless uh thermometer, it's like that like seems to like work. The one can downside of this thermometer is somebody is going to dip it into oil to use it or candy and use it as a candy or an oral thermometer, and they will ruin it. They will they will destroy it.
You know what I'm saying? Yeah. That's that's gonna happen. Might happen to me, because you know how I am. Very true.
I wonder whether he sells just the just the the probe. I don't know, whatever. Anyway, so what has happened in the past week, other than so Quinn and Nastasia and I are diligently working on our pre-sale for the uh Spinzall 2.0. Quinn thinks it should be 2.0 and not just two. What do you think, John?
We tend to we we've agreed with him at this point, but what do you think? I think 2.0 is not what we call the series all. I don't know. No professional. Oh, there shows all internally we did say 2.0.
I'd go with a point oh. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Again, my my other concern is that that's what you kept saying in all the videos. Oh, well.
There you go. Put it to yourself. There will not be a 2.1. If we if we if we do it, if we do another spinzall after this, it's gonna be spins all XP, like Windows XP. Not really.
Not really. Uh anyway, we're diligently working on it, and we hope to have it soon, right, guys. Yeah, yeah. If it's not soon, we're in deep doo-doo. Deep dude.
Hey, uh, one though note, we got a note from the factory that we think we're gonna, so for those of you that don't know what a spinz all is, it's a centrifuge that Booker Index had built in the past and hopes to build again the only centrifuge that is uh good for bars and restaurants, and uh we were able to get the factory to accommodate some user feedback. Uh we are gonna be able to increase the pump speed. So for those of you that use use the pump, the uh uh the external peristaltic pump for other kitchen tasks, we think we're gonna be able to up the speed like almost to double and keep the low speed the same. Nice, huh? Yeah, it's good.
Yeah, that is good. Good. Yeah, yeah. Because one thing that people don't realize, you don't have to spin everything. If you let's say you have like a 23-liter cambro full of, I don't know, watermelon juice or grapefruit juice, and it like like 80% of it is settled down, right?
So if you pour the stuff off the top, you're apt to like make a mistake and like make it cloudy again. You can just put the tube in and pump it out, but it takes forever at only 250 milliliters a minute. But at like half a liter a minute, you could pump, you know, pretty quick. And you don't have to look at it. And then you can just spin the residue at the bottom, batch by batch.
That's the fastest way to get the clearest product with large amounts of volume. Anywho, this is all gonna be eventually in the videos, although those won't be in the initial videos when we launch, right, guys. Yeah. Yeah. Uh so anything interesting happened to any of you over the past week?
Preferably food related. Preferably food. I had a really, really good omakase last night at the DC Nakazawa, which I finally feel okay going to because as you know, it was in the Trump Hotel, which is now the Waldorf Astoria. So is he no longer involved with it? As I understand, he is no longer involved.
You know, most of those things were just licensing bills anyway. You know what I mean? Of course. Of course. It was a big deal in DC when it happened, though.
Everybody like uh hated them for taking that deal and opening there. Yeah. Um I'm sure that the new owners that you know nothing about are the best people on earth. I'm kidding. Oh, yeah, for sure.
The famously humanitarian theme behind the Waldorf Astoria. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, do you know that when I was uh the very first anniversary of going out with so we're still you know going out with uh Jen? I took her to the Waldorf Astoria, like you know, for a 22 or 21 year old guy.
I spent my whole money on their like uh Sunday brunch with the and at the in the peacock room, right? And so it's like this all you all you yeah, it's that's all you can eat brunch, it's you know super fancy for you know, this is like 1993, right? So it's like fancy for me in 1993, you know, fancy. And uh I go there and I suddenly realize that at the Waldorf, the champagne is not unlimited. And it's quickly gonna like triple our bill.
You know what I mean? So I felt bad. She self limited to two glasses, which was nice. Didn't bankrupt me. Very romantic, very romantic.
Yeah, yeah. Anyway, um, I I had sex with a famous rock star at the Waldorf when I was 19. You s wait, you sat with or served? What happened? You what you wait.
Did you say had sex with? Yeah. Which famous rock star are you allowed to say? Why would I ever say? I don't know.
Well, let me ask you this. Was the room nice? Was it in the room? Yes. Okay, okay.
Not in the peacock room. All right. No. Which one's the best? There wasn't cock.
Wait, so what era is this? Uh nine I was nineteen. You can't do that kind of math. Yeah. Yeah.
I don't know, ninety, two thousand. Alright. That's a decent year. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah.
Good times. A lot of good rock stars around then. Yeah. Who's your favorite? Yeah.
All right. So now I I can feel if we were all just alone and not on the radio, Jack would start the guessing game now. He would just keep guessing. Absolutely correct. Jack would know.
Yeah. He he would look into Nastasia's eyes and just throw names out. You know what I mean? So he and I have talked about this before. Yeah.
All right, all right, right, all right. And so since you know, without telling me any information, good rock star or garbage? Are we like I don't think I know. All right. Oh.
Like like shading towards Nickelback or I'm just curious. Like what you know, what the Nastasia, the 19 year old Nastasia was a nickelback head or what? You know what I mean? No, no, no, please. What was the one last question about it?
I like the bird chirping. That's very nice, whoever has it. Yeah. Was the rock star too old for you at the time and you ignored it because you liked their work? All right.
No, no, no. He was like seven years older, but that's not that old. No, I mean, well, nine nineteen to twenty six, that's a lot. I mean, not a lot. No offense.
I'm just saying it's a lot, but whatever. Uh nice. Well, this is an interesting start. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh what about you, Quinn? Any good foodie foods stuff? Uh, made some bread. Uh?
Me too. What was your bread story? I did a sourdough, yogurt whey, uh, milk bread. So why do you need both sourdough and yogurt whey? Uh, because I have yogurt whey.
But I'm saying, if you have the yogurt whey, which is acidic, then why are you also doing the sourdough? Isn't that just acid on acid? And by the way, do you know that if you read all of the bread literature prior to the sourdough explosion, you know, in the in the 20th century, everybody hates on sour bread. They all hate on it. They're like, by the way, because they were worried about it being somehow poisonous.
I'm talking like the 1800s. They were like, and there's no trace of sourness. None, no trace of sourness. Sylvester Graham is so worried about sourdough bread that he he likes sour bread, he writes passages about how you know the best bread is sweet and not without sugar, not sour. So anyway, so like uh, so what was the what was the double sour?
And was it good? I mean, it was very good. Honestly, could have been more sour. Well, all right. So, like you're saying it wasn't so sour that the dough went slack and it had that like weird slack slackness that like chewiness.
I also I also did mill uh some flour for it. What kind of flour? Bishop. Ah, yeah, that's Canadian, good Canadian uh hard spring wheat. I was doing uh I have my test this week, uh one of my tests this week, because I've you know had to make bread several times this week, is uh was I did a red fife with a spring wheat and a red fife with uh winter wheat, because red fife can be grown either.
And you know, in general, uh people with the kind of milling I do seem to prefer um the taste of winter wheats, like a little bit softer winter wheats, like Rouge uh, you know, Belle de Rouge, Rouge de Belle, whatever it's called, and uh Rouge de Bourgogne and uh Belle de Bourgogne, whatever. Anyway, something with like pretty red, whatever, French, something. You know what I mean? Which is a which is a moderately soft, hard winter wheat. Uh, anyways.
So I did red five spring, red fife winter. You can see it on my Instagram, and I I put them in two different colored baskets, and I was like, tell me the difference between these. And people were like, they taste the same. They're the same. I was like, no, that's not kind of what I was hoping for, but whatever.
It is what it is, right? You don't get to choose what the results will be. You just get to choose the test. And it's a one-off, so it doesn't matter because they're from different farms. I mean, whatevs.
Whatevs. Anyway, whateves. Typically a spring wheat's gonna have a higher protein, but it used to be they were a little harsher. Whatever, I digress. So uh what about what about uh what about you?
Uh what about you, John? Did uh you already say anything? Uh I've got a new pasta coming on the menu. So I don't know, asparagus, uh blanched and puree to keep some, you know, little coins to throw in at the end, rust some spring onions, some spring garlic, mix that in there. Uh do you use uh what do you use a stock base to puree it like chicken?
No, it's just let it just as is, and then I tammy it, which I'm Oh, what a jerk. Even after even after you vite up Vitamix it, you tammy it. Yeah. Oh, what a jerk we I am uh I am so continental, I'm so franch. I must put it through the tummy.
Yeah. That's so weak. Oh my god. You don't have to do you do that? Are you that more on this like I'll do it because no one else is gonna sit here with a squeegee and push it through this stupid thing?
I mean, I do it because it's what comes off my station. Uh huh. Oh yeah, all right. Well, at least you're just punishing yourself. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You but you do you do the old school uh like uh refresh to keep it green and all that nonsense? I don't know if I know about that.
You know, you when you put you blanch it hard, yeah, and then you immediately ice water it to freeze the green in place. That is what I do, yeah. Yeah, because if you some people, like Nils used to do what he would do is he would blend it quick and then put the puree into sheet trays on ice, and it was fast enough to get it to not go um and it didn't require the big like going back and forth into the water, but I don't I don't know that it makes much of a difference. But uh man, the Tammy, and how much is left on the other side of the Tammy? Not as much as I wish.
Yeah, exactly. So quit doing it. It's God that wasn't an that was something that was invented prior to the the Vitamix. Yeah. Well the problem with I feel like the problem with the Vitamix is if you let it go long enough to get it to that level of puree, you're gonna heat it up and then it's gonna affect the color.
No. Well, okay. So like, I mean, depends on how hot you're gonna get it again. I mean, uh I mean you're not gonna make it steaming, right? No.
Yeah. Yeah. My old uh the the uh the Giuliano Buggiali pasta recipe is I believe with chicken stock and asparagus. Okay. Delicious.
Yeah. And that's the one where I would make it with broccoli because broccoli is cheap and available year round. Yeah. And he almost spit my eye when I told him. I was like, what do you think?
He's like, terrible. Awful. But people like it. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Yeah. Broccoli, also easier to keep green. Yeah. You know? Yeah.
Anyway. I'm trying to do like the whole spring thing, you know. Oh, yeah? Yeah. All right.
How show me with your show me like which one of your fingers is the right width of the asparagus that you're using. I know like I'm not gonna get an argument with everyone about like what with width of asparagus to use. Some people like the skinny asparagus. No. Yeah.
No. No. No. I hate it. But there are some people who say that they get uh thin asparagus that isn't like uh dental floss.
And if you could buy find one, unless you're using asparagus as dental floss, I would say moderate. I don't need the giant ones. No, but I prefer the large thing like between medium and XL. Yeah. So as a Belgian, what are your feelings on the on the on the white?
I haven't I don't know if I've ever had good white asparagus to judge, yeah. You had bad white asparagus. Yeah. And what made it bad? Stringy.
But you gotta peel the hell out of it. I know I did. Um, and it's just still wasn't good. It was bland. I don't know, just not what I was hoping.
Not what you were hoping for? You were hoping for uh yeah, exactly. It's kind of got that rep. If it's not that the dumbest thing on earth would be to puree white asparagus. Yeah.
That would be dumb. Yeah. Yeah. I've had very good white asparagus, but what that really means is very good Hollandaise sauce. Because asparagus is a holiday sauce.
They friends. They good friends. Yeah, yeah. Uh Hollandaise sauce, by the way. Like when I was growing up, everyone was like, oh, Hollandaise sauce.
Just hot mayonnaise. Hollandaise sauce, different ratio, right? Different ratio. But if you can make a mayonnaise, you can make a holiday sauce. Yeah.
There's no no mystery to it. Yeah. Right. One of the people who worked at the restaurant before I started, back when we they had brunch, there was a Hollandaise on the menu. And this guy didn't feel like going downstairs to get lemons to add to it.
Oh god. He just did butter and eggs. God. Terrible. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, why would he think that that's okay? I don't know. To use Booker's, that's Booker's phrase. Why did he think it was okay?
He says that all the time. That's one of his favorite things to say. Next to uh if you ask Booker how much he likes something, he says, not as much. And that means no. No, that's his polite way of telling you to F off.
Not as much. He won't say as what? Not as much as anything else I like, basically. Yeah. Yeah.
What about you, Joe? You got any good food? Uh let's see. I was actually cooking with asparagus yesterday. Um, making my son food.
Uh found this recipe, blended uh cantalone beans, um, a little bit half a lemon, and you saute up some asparagus, very, very like what half your pinky, and uh some garlic, a little white wine added there for him, put up some gamelli pasta added in the the the cantaloni beans. It was delicious. Starting the kid on wine early, I appreciate this. Yeah, it's nice to cook with wine. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. That's a good give them a little sip. You know what I mean? It's you know, it's like I have to finally I have to constantly find food that doesn't require any egg. Yeah.
Um, our meatballs are eggs, they're great, but you know, they're not like real meatballs. Well, so what so that's a good question. What would be a good binder for uh an a non-egg protein binder for a meatball? We use flaxseed. Yeah.
Yep. Works very well. How much salt do you have in your meatball? Uh well, we don't like to add salt in for his meals. So we very I mean, just a small pinch.
Okay. So if you don't have a lot of salt, right? Yep. And uh he's okay with casein, you could try a small amount of uh transglutaminase that'll hold the meatball together. But if you do it with salt, it'll and you knead it, then it'll get hard like a like a like sarimi, right?
And so like that's why I asked how much salt is in it. So like salt, if you put salt into a meatball and you mix it without egg, and you mix it enough, it will turn into kind of a meat loafy dense thing, right? The proteins will come out and in general, you not looking to do that, so you don't do it, right? But uh even without that kneading with enough salt and meat glue, that that's gonna happen. But if you're doing a low salt version anyhow, uh a little bit of meat glue is gonna hold that together.
Um gluten's okay? Gluten's fine. So yeah, so the bread crumbs will help soften it up a little bit, and you can moisten the breadcrumbs with some non egg thing. All right, give it a shot. You can get you can get that from Modernist Pantry.
I think even Modernist Pantry sells their version on Amazon. I think they call it moo glue or something like that. Moo glue. Moo glue. Moo glue, which doesn't make a lot of sense because you can glue anything together, not just things that go moo, right?
Oink, tofu, and it doesn't really make a noise, but you can glue it together. Um, you know? Yeah. Fishes. Yeah.
Like what's a fish noise? Right? I guess if they if they take if they take air in, right? But like, you know, unless they just caught a fly, you don't really see bubbles coming out of a fish, right? Like when they come to the surface and they go shlap, then they have to get rid of that air.
But anyway. We again digress considering that this is a what, John? Supposed to be a no tangent Tuesday. These are not tangents though. These are all food related situations, more or less.
Did I miss anyone? Did I miss anyone's food stories? No? No. All right.
All right. So uh you want to uh if you have a question and you're listening on this no tangent 2J and you're a Patreon member, call your questions in to uh 917 410 1507. That's 917 410 1507. And John, why don't you tell them what they get uh for being a Patreon member and what's coming up in the next couple of weeks? Uh first off, you should go to Patreon.com slash cooking issues to sign up.
There's a bunch of different level uh tiered memberships and you get great little perks at every level. Uh prioritized question answering um when we don't have guests. Yeah, we're gonna answer the guest questions. We have to, right? And then we s we're saving your questions.
So there's a couple questions I know here that are late, but I'll apologize. All right, go ahead. Sorry. We'll always get to them. Yeah.
Um discounts at Kitchen Arts and Letters with uh authors that we have on board, and obviously a great slew of uh of guests. You know, we just meant we're talking about uh Chris Young. He's gonna be coming on at some point, hopefully soon. Next week we have the Filipino American Baker, correct, Quinn? Yes.
Whose name I'm getting. There we go. Yeah, I got a new book coming. And speaking of books coming out, today is the published day for uh Garrett Richard Ben Schaefer's Tropical Standard. They were on a little while ago when they were still pre pub.
They might come on again. I don't know. Hopefully. Yeah, go buy it. Yeah, we got them scheduled for after their little book tour.
Okay, I'm sure that they're gonna book's gonna be a Kitchen arts and Letters. So uh I don't know I don't know if we can I don't know if we can put it on a Patreon discount uh beforehand. Hey, did we ever get a discount with uh Edward's Age Meats for our Patreon folks? I think we did, yeah. Again, their product is good.
Yeah, yeah. Edward makes some really great, great stuff. I've been meaning to order from him. I'm gonna order from them because uh Dax is gonna have his uh his uh I'm graduating from high school dinner. Yeah.
He's like, I want steak. Yeah. His pork products also look really really good. Yeah, and he ships it frozen, so like it like the to get around the high shipping, what I would do is order a bunch and then like keep some in the in the freezer. It comes still hard frozen, so you don't need to worry about it.
So that way what you do is is you order whatever steak you're gonna have, and then you just fill the rest of the box with his hi with his uh hamburger mix. Yeah. Which is God it's God's hamburger mix. Yeah. Yeah, you know what I mean?
Order that too. Yeah. Yeah. I think Edwardsagemeats.com, everyone. Very, very good products.
Yeah. And maybe we'll get a we'll try to get him back on the on the Patreon for discount for our folks. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see.
I don't know what his margins are, whether he can accommodate it. Yeah. Or if he's like, uh, he's like Rancho Gordo. I've never discounted a bag of beans in 20 years. I have never discounted a bag of beans.
More than 20 years. Remember that? He doesn't talk like that. No. But he did say that.
Yes, he did. Yeah, yeah. However many years he's been in business. Which I kind of like because the idea is he's he's like beans are undervalued. I'm not undervaluing my beans.
Yeah. Nastassi and I are we look at each other, we're like, hmm, we undervalue everything that we do. Right? Yeah. That's true.
Yeah. I think like, is that why we started working together? Because we're both like, we don't deserve any better. Is that how it worked? No.
When we're working in the trash room. No, I think that you devalue more than I would like you to. Okay. Uh all right. Questions.
Uh from NFTN, what do you think that stands for? Is that some sort of acronym that I should know? I have I have no idea. I'm not looped into that lingo. Oh, you're officially old now.
Yeah. Yeah. NFT No, maybe. What's you mean no NFTs? Like no, yeah.
No, uh what does that stand for again? Non-fungible token or something like that? Yeah, yeah. NFT, comma no. Yeah, NFT.
No. Yeah. Did you Jack, did you ever uh uh get into that? Were you gonna do like NFTs of like whatever? Did was that ever on your radar?
I mean, yeah, yeah, I dabbled. You dabbled? Did you make any money off of it? Did you did? Yeah, you did?
Yeah. Yeah. Huh. Like a picture of a cat? Like what was it?
Basically. Yeah. All right. Nice. Nice.
Well, I'm glad that you were able to take someone else for their money with your cat picture. I'm sure it was a catty cat world. Yeah, yeah. It is. It it totally is.
Do people still like that used to be like the thing that people wanted was cat pictures. Is that still the thing that breaks the internet? Cat pictures? Uh I don't think so. I don't have a cat because uh I like cats, but uh I have too many people in the family allergic to them.
Whatever. Uh from NFT, no. If you don't have a centrifuge, well, sorry, I can't answer that question because I have a centrifuge. Now I'm just messing with you. Uh buy a centrifuge.
You should buy a centrifuge. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. If you don't have a centrifuge, is quick agar still the best at home method for Lime Juice clarification, or is Kesel Sol and Kitosan finding and filtering the way to go, or are there other methods?
All right, let's take this piece by piece. Uh you don'd have to use a mixture of pectin X and then Keselsaw and Chitosan and then filter it settle for a long time. The problem is with that is it if you don't want to get it, it's not gonna get fully clear. You're actually better off doing uh Kesel Sol, uh SPL, Kesel Sol, uh, and then just chitasan. And uh even though it's not gonna get 100% clear, it's gonna get a lot better settling.
If you add the second round of uh of Kesel Sol again, right, the way that we do when we use a centrifuge, then it it's much clearer, but you have a much lower yield, and then you just rack it off of the top because the fact that you've sucked those last little things out means that they float higher in the liquid than they would otherwise. Does that make sense what I just said? So I would go for if you're gonna do that, I would do a less clear, but just do SPL, kesel, and kitosan once. Uh at about four, and I would do about four grams of each per liter, right? 15 minutes in between the the kiesel salt and the kitesan.
Uh that's gonna take like a couple of hours to settle out, right? Quick agar works, you know, and you can get, you know, but the yield sucks, right? Too, because you're losing a lot and you have to heat it slightly, but it's good if you're gonna like carbonate and you can have that done in under an hour. Um, so yeah, that's still still the two best techniques that I know of. Um, maybe we'll come up with some better ones soon.
Um agar is gonna strip more flavor than the SPL will. Um we have some interesting new clarification stuff coming up soon. We uh because of Garrett, maybe you know, we'll talk about it when he comes on. Garrett discovered a way to clarify starches in the centrifuge. So now I'll I'll should I spoil it?
Should I spoil it since this is gonna not come out until Friday anyway? Yes. Yeah. Magnesium carbonate. So magnesium carbonate uh isn't very soluble in water, but it acts as a settling agent, right?
But unlike things like bentonite, which tend to strip a whole bunch of flavor, magnesium carbonate doesn't strip a whole bunch of flavor. So Garrett was using it in uh ginger juice because he was trying to make syrups, and he said it took some of the bite out of it. But what we did was we blended uh ginger, we mixed ginger juice and vodka, like crazy amount of ginger juice and vodka. It was like, it was like uh three to one vodka to ginger juice, so like intense ginger, like and then uh stir-in uh pectin X Ultra SPL and 2% weight of the solution, magnesium carbonate, which you can get on Amazon, Food Grade and Modernist Pantry is gonna start stocking it. You stir the magnesium carbonate in, uh, you know, you let your the pectin X do its work for you know 10-15 minutes, and you spin it out, and it is crystal clear and super strong.
Everyone was like, how strong could it be? They looked at me like I was a jerk. And you tasted it and stuff blew your head off, right? It was amazing. It was so incredible.
Yeah, it would make God and if no, if Nastasia likes it, that is something. Because, you know, and it would make God's mule. It would definitely make God's mule, you know, Moscow mule. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, uh, so that's coming on. I've tested it on sweet potato. I don't know why you would want to make a raw sweet potato liquor, because I don't like the flavor of it, but uh other people seem to like it when we make it. You can make an almost 100% clear sweet potato liquor and you can knock the starch out of starchy bananas.
So if you do a banana Houstino with a non-Cavendish banana that contains uh starch even when it's ripe, you can knock that starch out with magcarb. So magcarb is our new friend in the in the world of centrifuging. So now all that's left for us to figure out is how to clarify meat stocks with it. We haven't figured that out yet. Meat stocks would be good because uh meat stocks would be good because uh raft works, and if you're making like, you know, a giant stock pot, just go old school, right?
Um there used to be amazing ways to to do it enzymatically, but they they are not available anymore. Uh but um it would be useful to be able to do small quantities for very kind of high grade stocks, so then you could make like small amounts. So what we used to do is we would use like a chicken stock, and then we would reinforce the chicken stock with squab bones in a bag, right? So if you want to do that and get like a consume like with something like squab and have it be crystal, like it would be nice to be able to clarify small amounts of stock and then clarify it after the squab's been infused into it. Um that's because that's a great technique to take a poultry stock and then reinforce it with a small amount of high rent bones and and meat in a in a bag.
Great technique, like wings and stuff. Anyway, I love squab. Well, what are you doing, man? Don't you have the time to do this kind of research and figure that stuff out? Well, I mean, Matt Carb dropped on my plate because Garrett, Garrett, Garrett was reading Darcy O'Neill.
Okay. Right. And uh Darcy O'Neill was talking about the use of magnesium carb carbonate in clarifying uh uh oils, right? Like essential oils, I think, right? Okay.
And Garrett and Garrett was like, I wonder if it would do something for ginger. And he hasn't talked like that. And uh he added it and it did. And so then, you know, he texts me, and I'm like, I'm gonna tell people about it, but I'm gonna give you the credit for figuring it out. Here I am doing that.
Yeah, you know what I mean? And then I applied it to the Houstino technique because it's gonna make people want to buy the uh spins all more. Uh now it you can he's doing it and just letting it settle, and he's racking and he's losing some ginger juice because he's using it for ginger syrup. When you tested it in when I tested it in liquor, my yield wasn't very high with just letting it settle. So I would definitely recommend buying a centrifuge, just saying.
Uh techniques with liquor tend not to work well with agar. It just waters them down too much. You lose too much liquor and you're heating it too much. It's not good. I tend to like whenever I work with liquor, I use a centrifuge, right?
Uh, because you can't afford to. Oh, it must be graduation day. A man in a purple gown just walked back. Unless that could just be his look. Could be, yes.
I mean, I you know, do you know what I've always wanted to own? Uh okay, so you can't. The movie is unwatchable now. 1953 Peter Pan. Unwatchable, hard racist, terrible.
However, Captain Hook's jacket. Since I was a small boy, I've wanted Captain Hook's jacket. Oh my god. I would wear that around the city, if I could have it. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
Yeah. Uh, but there's nothing, there's nothing online. I've every once in a while I'll look. There's nothing online between the $85 crappy costume one, which I would never wear because if you're gonna wear something like that, it better be nice. Like a swashbuckling jacket.
What do you mean? Like, it is based on a like a late 17th, uh, or you know, or eight late 17th or or or 18th century style of jacket, like a like a Charles II or Napoleonic or Regency style jacket called a what's the name of it? It's got Justaccore. And uh it is like like tight, tight around the waist with long flowing, and uh can be made. Uh I think originally it was wool.
Captain Hooks is red with uh with gold uh with gold sashing and piping and like a big sleeves. Uh but I would take it in velvet. I would definitely take it in velvet. But mainly the ones I've seen are either too ornate. I don't want to look like a band leader.
You want to look like Captain Hook. Captain Hook doesn't have a lot of garbage all over his. He's a pirate, not a freaking admiral. And there's almost nothing, nothing in between the $80 crappy costume versions and like $1,200 versions made by people who really know what they're doing. Like I'm in the market for like the $200 real, you know, medium nice Captain Hook coat.
I don't know, man. If it's a childhood fantasy of yours, and you've you've been you've mentioned this a lot. Yeah. Just spring for it, you know, treat yourself. It's a sh treat yourself, not to the a thousand dollar one.
I did it once in my life. I treated myself once, and it was to the Belgian waffle iron, and then our business fell through the floor right after. Well, maybe it was the pandemic and not the waffle iron. Maybe, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Uh now Dave. It was it was Billy Joel.
Remember? Were we allowed to say that on air that we were blaming the whole thing on the fact that we we finally so Nastasia, Nastasia, we were at a vegan juice event. We were working a vegan juice event uh in New York in the in the in the West Village. And all of a sudden, from her station, she used different words. Nastasia looks at me with hate and disgust.
I don't know whether it was towards me, herself, the world, everything. She just goes, crap. I'm like, what? What? It's like I'm supposed to be a Billy Joel right now.
She literally didn't go to her ticketed Billy Joel concert because she had she was working a vegan juice event. And this was a she didn't forgive herself, me, or the world ever, really. And so for years I said to her, Stas, you it's okay. You made a mistake. You can give yourself the Joel concert.
You can do it. You can go to the Joel concert. She's like, no, I don't deserve it. I've ruined it. It's ruined.
Am I accurate so far, Stas? Yes. And then I bought you tickets for your 50th, and then John almost made us miss it because he got it. No, you first you bought a ticket, and then the pandemic happened, then they all got canceled. Oh, right, yeah.
Then my toilet overflowed, and one of the tickets got all mangled. Mangled, i.e., it got toilet water all over it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Anyway. All right, all right. The Billy Joel concert that we finally went to, it was like eight years after she initially missed the concert. Was fantastic. The guy still got it.
Yeah. The guy's still got it. You know what I mean? I highly recommend the Joel. And if you're one of those people out here listening who doesn't like Billy Joel, what's wrong with you?
Just reassess. You know what I'm saying? It's like, it's like I can understand not liking it because maybe the people who listen to it, or because I don't know why. Like, because some of it's super cheesy. But if you just remove yourself from yourself and just listen to it, it's good.
Remove yourself from yourself and just listen to it. Some of us have a lot of long island self-hate we have to get over, you know? I know. That's what I'm saying. That's why you have to remove yourself from yourself.
You're right, though. You're right. You're right. When I remove myself, it is great music. There's no denying it.
Yeah, yeah. All right. Um Shock Meister says, my friends host a dinner for giants. I'm gonna need your help here, guys, because I don't know. Uh I'm I once made an entirely miniaturized Thanksgiving.
Of course. Yeah. It's a pain in the butt. Yeah. Uh my friends host a dinner for giants potluck where all the food and drinks are miniature.
Any ideas for what to bring? Last time I made many foil-wrapped burritos. How do you get the rice small? How do you get the rice small in a miniaturized burrito? I don't know.
Like what's this what's the right? Well, maybe it's just Well, oh, so you're saying it's an actual like Juarez-style burrito? Which isn't like a California burrito. I'm assuming when someone says just when they say burrito or whatever, when they say burrito, but they don't specify, I'm assuming California style overstuffed rice monstrosity. I'm not saying it's bad.
I'm just saying it's it is a monstrosity. I mean, why do they have to make the rice smaller for this? Why can't they just put a smaller amount of rice and a smaller tortilla? Because that's not how bonsai's work. You know what I'm saying?
Like if you're gonna miniaturize something, imagine if someone handed you a burrito and each rice grain was the size of your fist. You'd be like, what is going on here? If your burrito had like five grains of rice in it and each one was like, you know, I don't know, like what what what is even that size? Cut them in half? What?
The rice grains? Right. So if you if you cook brokens, right? The problem with cooking brokens is they leak starch everywhere. So I'm thinking you have to move to a different grain and pretend it tastes like rice.
For instance, amaranth. Quinoa? Yeah. Quinoa. A little, yeah, am I say amaranth.
Amaranth. Yeah. If you want to make a scale burrito, it's gotta be with amarillo. No, millet, yeah. Sure.
But they've already done the burrito, right? Is that what they're saying? Or they're saying they're going to do a burrito. Yeah. Also, to have a scale thickness of flour tortilla, you'd be you'd be seeing through it.
Yeah, I think you're overthinking this. Yeah, like what's the what's the scale here? Because I mean, I've seen these. Have you seen those sushi bedrooms? No.
People have made um, they've made sushi, but they turned they've made these mock bedrooms with beds and drawers and clothes in the drawers. Out of sushi? Out of sushi, yeah. It's like, you know, the fish and the rice and the seaweed. They're pretty cool.
Yeah? But the rice is the same size. Everything is made out of press. Yeah, but right, right. But because you're not, you're you're you're making dollhouse furniture out of rice as a material, different problem.
Different problem. And Nori is so thin that I feel like it almost has no scale. Nori is a two dimensional object. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
No scale. Yeah. Unless you can see the pattern in it, in which case, ruined. Ruined. Uh but let's finish this question.
Oh, we did. Uh last time a mini foil wrapperitos and shot glass margaritas with key lime wheel garnishes. Okay, so a shot glass margaritas. Now we have the scale. A shot glass is typically holds about an ounce and a half, right?
So as opposed to like what? Like uh six ounce in a in a margarita. So we're talking like uh talking like four, like four to one on volume, four to one on volume, which means it's only it only needs to be half the linear size if that's what we're doing. Make sense? Yeah.
But I think I think quarter scale is probably better, right? In which case you have a much smaller volume, quarter scale. So what do you think is a food that would be good miniaturized? What do all of you think? What?
I feel like you can do like a fully loaded baked potato with a new potato. Hmm. So when you say fully loaded, I don't want to be have to be the person chopping those onions. Those miniaturized onions. I'm saying you do you do chives.
But it's to make a chive a scale chive. Oh, you do scallions and not chives. I start with chives. Like chives is my starting point. Yeah, but I'm saying.
I mean, chives could stand in for scallions, you're 100% right. But what beast puts scallions instead of chives on a baked potato unless the store has no chives. Anyone out there, by the way, putting long chive pieces on people and we need to come out and find you? Anyone? I'm here to tell you the long chive piece, going back to the dental floss, a long chive piece is sadness on your plate.
You agree with me, John? Yeah. Yeah. I don't like it. I don't like it.
Just like lay a cross on top of something, like some silly garnish. Chives. Listen, listen very carefully with chives. Please dry them before you cut them. Please dry your chives before you cut them.
Just like, you know, get them in, you know, close to one layer, dry them out on a towel, then put them into the bunch and hold them and shunk, shuck, shuc, shuhn, small pieces. Sharp knife. Please, please. Chives don't develop their flavor until they're cut. And their texture is unpleasant in long pieces.
There's nothing good about a long chive piece. Not talking about like the big things called chives that you steam. That's different. Different. Anyway.
I think your idea is good, Quinn. How about the small miniaturized uh uh bacon pieces? I mean, you're just gonna, you know, something smaller game crispy. What do you think about this? What if you take the cheddar cheese, you freeze it, and then you grate it on uh with a parmesan wheel?
Well, I feel like, you know, with the ch with the cheese, you could like do like almost more like a double stuff, like a twice and baked potato, and then it's melted. You don't need to worry about the scale. I think you're cheating, but I see where you're going. Guacamole could be good. Yeah, if you do fully blended, right?
So a lot of times people want a chunky guacamole. People don't like the fully blended, but in the miniaturized case, I would go fully blended. But the tortillas. Oh, wait, but no, we're doing it big because I like guacamole on a potato. You don't like guacamole on a potato?
I have guacamole than anything. And you know what's you know what doesn't have scale? Pinkie. Sour cream doesn't have scale. When you're serving your your potato, please, please provide some extra cheese and extra sour cream.
And salt. The inside of that potato does not have enough salt. The inside of your potato does not have enough salt. Maybe the miniaturized potato you can get enough salt through. Hey, has anyone done this?
You know how you when you bake a potato, you poke holes in it, right? So that it doesn't explode when you bake it, right? And then what I do is I put a gen, I I rub oil on the outside, generous amount of salt, so that it gets that awesome salt crust look, right? Now, it would be bad for the water in the potato, it would get kind of flaccid, right? But what if you jammed holes in it and then vacuum brine salt all the way through the dang potato and then like just let it dry a little bit before you before you baked it?
You think you think you could get salt all the way in? That's how they do salted peanuts. A salted roasted peanut, what they do is they put all of the shells, they put the shell in peanuts into a salt water solution, and then they vac infuse the salt water solution into the peanuts prior to roasting. Then they're roasted and the salt's already in the peanut. That's how they do that.
I wonder if you could do the same thing with a potato. I think you'd have better luck. You'd have better luck with a miniature potato. But of course, miniature potato also, it's only two bites, so you don't have the problem of that big inside unsalted potato. Yeah.
You know what I'm saying? Show me with your hands, John. What's your favorite side of size of baked potato? You too, you too, Joe. So, okay, so, all right.
So you guys are all choosing like medium. So you guys don't like the big as your head baked potatoes that some people hand out. Because there's too much potato, and then you have to keep redressing it, which is why I'm saying if you're gonna do the big potato, make sure you have extra condiments on the table. I'll say this: for those of you that didn't grow up in the right time in baked potato time, like I did, and now it's some sort of novelty that doesn't happen, you know, every week. Please, when you're serving the baked potato, right, take the baked potato out of the oven.
And I don't know, people don't TikTok baked potatoes, I don't think, right? I mean, I don't know, I don't watch TikTok. Take a knife, run the knife, make a line down the cut down the baked potato, about I don't know, half inch and or so. You don't have to go too deep. Don't go, you don't need to go too deep.
Then put your put your your fingers into triangles, like your your pointer, your index and your thumb. Make a triangle. Put them on either side of the potato the long way, right? And then push down and in, schoonp, and the potato will go, thank you. And it will bloom into a beautiful baked potato.
If you cut too deep, it'll just split in half. You just need that little cut, and you push, the jacket won't split. It'll just, it'll just, thanks. And then that's how you serve a baked potato with a generous salt crust on the outside from the roasting. That's the way it's intended to be served, in my opinion.
And I think, Quinn, here's the issue. Ah, you can't do that. How are you gonna get a high high specific gravity, i.e., a starchy, not a waxy small potato? Do they exist? I don't know.
Most small potatoes that you get are relatively waxy. Yeah. Uh, because they haven't had time to fully push the, you know, make all the starch granules. Hmm. Need some practice.
Uh, need some practice, uh, shock meista, but I think this is a good idea. Potato skin, just deep fry it. Hmm. Baked potato skins got baked potato appeal because they're made with potatoes and skins that are real. Do you remember this advertisement?
Or do you remember this snack product? No. It was a packaged, quote unquote potato skin that was meant, but they were they weren't like you get at an Applebee's or a TGI Friday's. Which is the one that's famous for potato skins? TGF Fridays?
Yes. All right. They weren't like that in the sense that they were almost like potato chips, but they were made from skin. They were okay, which is why you don't still get them today. Okay.
They they weren't no Frito. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Uh all right.
Anyone uh any other miniaturized ideas people can uh come up with that we can uh work for I just thought about you for a really small scale, you serve what appears to be like a soup in a bread bowl, but it's just a little uh shoe pastry. Okay. I see a French onion soup, miniature. Yeah, although John, you ever use your French onion soup bowls that I gave you? No, not yet.
Yeah, I love French onion soup so much. Gruyere. Yeah, delicious. Bread, yeah, beef, onion. Yeah.
Good. Very good. So good. Very good. Uh I just had one.
Uh so when I was uh what I used to do, uh so uh oh fudge. JB Prince uh used to sell these uh like you know in their Garmanger section, these little vegetable cutters that could make miniaturized cups out of vegetables. So here's how it worked. It had it was an annular cutter. Notice annular.
Don't go, don't go to a bad place. Annular cutter. So what you what you would do is is you would you would cut a uh like whatever potato, diecon, whatever starchy or non-starchy thing. You would cut it to whatever height you wanted, and you would push this annular cutter all the way through it, and it would cut all the way on the outside, and then it would leave like, you know, like uh three sixteenths of an inch at the bottom uncut from the inner thing, and then it had a special semicircular blade that you would push in, and then the core would pop out and you're left with a cup. So you're left with these miniaturized food cups.
And I used to do all sorts of miniaturized food crap with that back in the day. Yeah. Back when I used to do things like this is again the 90s, so don't judge me. But when I used to do like uh dolmas sushi I would make like I would make like uh grape leaf rolls that looked like sushi with the rice and the inside having the color and then you'd slice them and they looked like sushi uh rolls but they were in fact grape leaves. Yeah.
They were good but it's goofy. You never get away with that nowadays. No. People be like, what's wrong with you? Even though it tasted good.
By the way, if none of you have ever made your own grape leaves at home and you think that the stuff that comes in a can is a grape leaf please if uh stuff grape uh please do yourself a favor go find a decent recipe uh remember you you don't cook the rice through all the way before you do it you know you mix it all together you you steam them in the pan you got to put the grape leaves in the bottom so that they don't char in the pan I'm sure there's some modern way of doing it but I don't have a modern technique for you right now. But a freshly freshly made dolmas are intensely delicious. And not now we're talking yeah right this is this is what I eat all the time. Yeah there's so how much better are they or Orlando make the best grape leaves have the they collect the best grape leaves in brine. Really?
Orlando yeah I know for a fact because it's like I've been doing this for years. So someone out there tell them the difference between a real one and one in a can. Well we don't well the ones in the can uh I I find they they they they they break way too easy. The ones in the jar, they're really easy to unfold. No, I don't mean the leaves.
I mean the just the whole the the people who buy the whole pre-made can be a little bit of a dolmas the uh yeah, I mod well, the thing is we always make ours with lamb. Ooh. Lamb, rice, lemon, cumin, um, and they're what we call them japlakis. It's like a Turkish uh sephardic thing that uh we make every every every season. Um they're absolutely delicious.
Just sh tons and tons of lemon. It makes it so nice. Lemon and grape leaves are phenomenal. Yeah, and if you again, if you've never had maybe a little raisin in the middle too. Oh, yeah, yeah.
I like that. A little kick of sweetness in that. Uh-huh. White raisin. If you if if you've never had freshly made stuffed grape leaves, do yourself a favor and go out and start doing that right now.
You know what I mean? Right now. Takes forever, but they're delicious. Yeah. Uh that's like if you've never made stuffed cabbage with uh fermented cabbage leaves, go ahead and try to find some fermented cabbage leaves.
Uh, Ted Anderson, I'm uh helping a colleague find a solution with dealing a lot of espresso martini sales. He believes that the freshness of the shot is what makes his version special. I'm not sure if I believe this statement without testing, which we will do. That's the only answer, Ted, by the way. Testing.
Um I would love to uh I'm I would love to know if you've dealt with this before. Do you know of any way to batch the style of drink to help with execution? It's a classic version with espresso, vodka, and kalua shaking over ice and strain, producing that foamy top that everyone loves. The problem with espresso is a perishable thing, right? And it is gonna auto uh oxidize, uh, uh auto, you know, it's gonna change over time.
So if if you know, if the your colleague only likes it that way, right, it could be that he's wrong. Or she, right? They are wrong. In which case, what you need to do is run the test side by side and see what people like better. If it's impossible to make fresh shots to order, which sounds like it is, right?
Or it's a huge pain in the butt, either charge a lot more for the drink, right? Which is something you can do. And they're like, why is your espresso martini cost so much more than everybody else's espresso martini? Because we're pulling the shots right now, buddy. We're pulling shots right now.
Or my favorite, if you don't like it, don't order it. If you don't want to buy it, don't order it. And then they're like, oh, I'm gonna get one. That always happens. You know what I mean?
And uh, and just do it that way. Or can you know, convince them that you know, by side-by-side taste test and or throw that recipe out entirely and make a different tasting thing that you call an espresso martini that is not even in the same ballpark of flavors, so that that person is not gonna feel bad about the recipe. I think those are the only things. So, for instance, I don't really like cold brew coffee, but we were a cold brew house at existing conditions, and I was like, fine, you're just shooting for an entirely different set of flavor profiles, and that's the way we dealt with it because no one was about pulling fresh espresso shots at existing conditions. Is that a good answer?
Yeah. All right, Kevin, uh, question from TikTok Trends. There is a trend that people are doing dumb things and then it freezes and say a dumb way to die. But the full lyric is like eating a two-week old unrefrigerated pie, dumb way to die. Is any two-week old unrefrigerated pie likely to be deadly?
I thought, not because of the amount of sugar, but maybe like a Boston cream pie would probably mess you up, but what about like pecan or cherry? Well, this is a good question. So if you look up on the internet, there's all sorts of sources uh about um pie and safety, and they're all like pies are safe with the exception of pies that contain milk or eggs. I'm like, uh, and they specifically call out pumpkin pie. But then I looked on the CDC website, and you know how many cases of people dying from a pumpkin pie there are roughly zero.
Roughly zero. In 2000, there was an outbreak in Washington due to pumpkin pie. 31 people became ill, nobody died. There was uh salmonella outbreak in 1954. I don't know if anyone uh died.
The vast majority, the CDC did a study uh between 1998 and 2018, uh looking for different cases of salmonella during Thanksgiving and what variants of salmonella, what you know, like actual strains of salmonella were uh causing it, and they were not from pie. They were they're not egg-based, they were from turkey, right? So uh there you go. And they're like, well, uh, if you make a homemade pumpkin pie, you should refrigerate it, which is gonna freaking, you know, actually, I like them cold, but they it's gonna ruin the crust. Like the flavor of pumpkin pie is better cold, but it's gonna ruin the cr, in my opinion.
Uh, but it's gonna ruin the crust. They're like the ones that are in the supermarket have preservatives and are made in a special way. So I looked at Kirkland's label, and they're not made in in a special way. There's some potassium sorbate in a Kirkland pie, but uh that's just gonna kill yeast. It's not gonna stop bacteria from uh from wiping you out.
Um, so really the answer is is that if you make sure that the internals get up to like 180, like your pumpkin pie is even gonna be fine. I was not able to find any deaths caused by pie in the CDC website. Now, I wouldn't not refrigerate a cream pie, right? But I was not able to find any this. I'm not saying it's safe, but ain't nobody died uh so far.
So there you go. Take it, take it, take it from there. We alright. Is that a decent, decent answer? Good answer.
Yeah, all right. Uh, you know, ask uh ask risky or not. Ask them. But all of the freaking websites who say that you have to refrigerate homemade pies because there's a risk. No one's ever like, it happened here.
This is what happened. Yeah. It's never happened, right? Yeah. Um, although they will mold, right?
And mold is not not good to not good to eat. So a two-week old pie might get moldy. Yeah. And that's no good. And a two-week old pie, the crust is definitely gonna suck.
So, you know, you're a bad person for serving it to somebody because you're serving them something that's crappy. You know what I mean? I really like pie like day one, day two. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh Echo Strike's in, what's the best way to store vanilla beans for longest term? I want to buy bulk to get a better price, but then uh it's gonna have to last me a few months. I have crappy but functioning vacuum sealer, countertop, blast chiller, and space in the fridge, in the freezer and in cabinets. In the past I've had luck with using just the freezer, but now I see that it's widely not recommended. Plastic is also a concern for many because they say that the volatile compounds will mix slash degrade with the ones in the vanilla.
So I did not know, Agos, thank you for bringing this to my attention, that there was such an anti-freeze lobby on the um uh on the internets about uh vanilla, but there really, really is. Most of it seems kind of strange, right? So uh I did a lot of did a lot of research for you. Um I wouldn't worry that much about flavor. What we what you're referring to with the plastic is something called flavor scalping, and it is true, uh, there needs to be a better term, it's a terrible term, but it's called flavor scalping, where either the plastic can leach a flavor into the food or vice versa.
The stuff that we use, the plastics we use in vacuum bags, is not going to put flavor into your food. Uh yes, some food flavor will go from the vanilla to the uh plastic, but on the other hand, everyone's like, store it in sugar, and then you can have the sugar. That means you're removing flavor from the vanilla, dirt, right? The arguments against freezing are that it somehow dries out the uh vanilla pod. And it is plausible, right, that when you're free, because freezing is a dehydration process, that the liquid is expelled from the bean and then doesn't readily reabsorb back into the bean, so then the beans get tacky and can mold when they thaw out.
I don't know. If you're pulling them out of the freezer and using them one by one and not thawing a whole batch, I really don't think that would be a problem as long as it's stored in a relatively airtight container without a lot of extra air. Um some people say don't vacuum them because it'll crush them and then you know the it'll ruin the texture. Some people say that don't store them in the fridge or the freezer because they're not gonna age anymore. I don't know about that.
The interesting thing about vanilla, what you need to read is the quality of cured vanilla beans by uh Patrick Dunfey, uh a vanilla consultant at and Krishna Bala at Fermanich US. It's on the uh internet. So here's what the thing moisture content of vanilla beans ranges from 15 to 38 percent. The stuff that they use in extracts is closer to 15 to 20. The stuff that we buy so that's pliable and you can get the seeds out of it, are between 25 and 38%.
At that point, the water activity of it is somewhere between 84 and 89%, meaning that the vanilla bean is gonna want to equilibrate between 84 and 89%, which means your kitchen is almost certainly too dry. So anytime you put new atmosphere in with your beans, you're drying the beans out, and that's why they're losing their plasticity and not going. If you can maintain a relative humidity that's in that range, you'll be fine. The problem is that it's a very, very small amount of water. So you could g use um potassium chloride solution to main to get a nice uh uh you know humidity.
Take your bean out, then cap it, and I would store it with an oxygen. The other problem is is that at those water activities you will get mold eventually if you keep opening and closing your thing. So I would put an oxygen scavenger in there because molds cannot grow without oxygen. Is this helpful at all, John? Yeah.
On the water activity, uh, we got a question from uh Michael who wants to do a pasta production. They live in the desert, but they were having their product crack too quickly. This is also a water activity problem. The way to solve your problem with your drying room is to close your stuff in so the natural humidity that's in the pasta, which should be at around 20, 30% moisture when you're starting, right? Slowly goes off, and then use a uh humidity meter.
They're not that expensive, and then slowly change how much you vent that box in order to dry it out. And because he's interested in not using a heater because it lives in, you know, lives in such a dry climate that he thinks he can get away with it. Uh climbing Nerd Gotta doers. The birthday present was gonna fill it up with liquid nitrogen and try some of the standard things like making ice cream and freezing things and crushing. Was also gonna try nitro muddling some basil.
Anything else fun I should try? I mean, those are the things. Do the marshmallow trick. Those are the things. Chill some glasses.
Uh all right, oh man. Alexander Talgard, listen, I'll hit you. Quinn, hit him up on Patreon. We already missed his plum blossoms, which he was gonna make this year. Uh I would try, oh, you could try a water infusion because he's trying to get the flavor in, but I would also, oh no, that was Deli Spear who's gonna do a flavor infusion with that.
Try glycerin. Try glycerin. Try alcohol and try glycerin. And if the alcohol is getting too much of that kind of flavor out of the flowers, glycerin might be a uh good uh approach. Uh we got most of your stuff done.
Alex, your beans are gonna cook unevenly in a pressure cooker. I'm sorry, that's why uh sand, you know, uh Rancho Gordo doesn't like it. I'll work on it, I'll figure it out. Monty, you know, Quinn's gonna give you his creamy review soon. We already talked about that at the beginning of the uh thing.
And Wizmer, uh, I don't know. If you want to if you want to open a bar, like let us know. But we're not, I don't have any plans on doing anything other than the stuff we're doing now. I'm having enough trouble doing the stuff that we're supposed to be doing. Um wants me to talk about uh what's it called?
Super juice. We'll we'll talk about that because it's gonna take me a little while. Cooking issues.
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