Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center, New York City. Joined in the studio with holy crap, I just got dizzy. For the first time in a long time doing this, I like I clenched my body so tight that like the blood went out of my head for a minute, and I almost just passed out. Anyway, joined as usual with John sitting here in front of me.
How are you doing? Doing great. Got Joe Hazen running the panels over here. How you doing? I'm doing very well, man.
Good to see you guys. Good to see you. This is a no tangent Tuesday, by the way. Yes, sir. That means only tangents.
Only tangents. Uh in the I don't know. Okay, so I know that there was like over the weekend possibility of molecules in Connecticut with uh Nastasia, but I didn't hear any explosions coming from the direction of Stanford, so I don't know. Where where are you now, Jack? I'm still in DC, but I was indeed uh at Nastasi's over the weekend.
Yeah. You had good weather. Yeah, it was fantastic. For normal people. We had Peter Kim there.
It was. All right, nice, nice. I hated it, the weather. I was in New Haven, and I forgot to bring my hat. So every time I walked outside, I was like, like vampire action went off.
You know what I mean? Yeah, I hate that good weather. There's nothing worse than good weather right at the right at the water, too. There's no protection. You know what I mean?
But everyone else thinks the exact opposite. Very hot take, dude. I'm not saying that you should hate it. I'm just saying this is what the my worst thing is. See, I think most hot takes they try to tell other people what's good or bad.
I'm just saying what's bad for me. You know what I mean? Fair. Yeah. And how much was it take about being hot, technically, so it was.
It's not even just heat. Like it doesn't have to be hot. It's just, you know, uh, it's like I it's weird because I like garlic. You know what I mean? And I'm fine with wooden crosses, but the sunlight just burns straight into me.
Just burns. Like I just like, even if it's not hot out, it just really just nukes me. It's no good. Uh how about you, how about you, Nastasia? How are you doing?
And you're in Stanford right now, I assume. No, remember I'm in Portland, Oregon. Oh. With your brother? I don't remember that.
But I knew you were going at some point, but I don't know what day is what day. So I don't know where I am day to day, Nastasia. How can I remember? How can I remember where you are day to day when I can't remember where I'm going to be from day to day? Because we talked about meeting up with Aaron.
Yes, I'm like the but the point is that I don't remember what day anything happens in my own life. Never expect me to remember what's happening in your life, right? That's fair. Well, I mean not fair, but so you're very close to where uh where my man Quinn is in the upper upper left. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. How far is it from Portland to Vancouver? It's gotta be like, but it's got it's still far. It's still gotta be like six-hour drive or some crap. Right?
Seven, seven. Some of it. Whole state of Washington can't go through. Right? Whole state.
I remember my grandpa drove me from Portland, Oregon, to Mount St. Helens in an extremely underpowered early, early 80s Dodge motorhome. Now, my grandfather, being uh cheaper even than I am, right? Got the tiniest motor. My the this motorhome, and this is when I was going up the coast of uh the west coast of the United States uh with my grandma, my grandpa, their two daughters, including the one dog that uh my stepfather says is the only dog model he's ever seen for uh for schizoaffective disorder, because he just really the reactions this dog had were nuts, and the parrot, all in this like underpowered motor home.
The motorhome had fundamentally a sewing machine motor. So we drove from Portland up to Mount St. Helens, and this was to give you a thing. This was the year of the eruption. So it was like maybe two, three months after the eruption, and it was good.
So I don't remember how long the drive was. How far is Mount St. Helens from you, Quinn? Probably I have no idea. Yeah.
That's true. I always know where you are, Quinn. That's good. You're always, always gonna be holding down that upper, upper left, left quadrant, you know. I have I'll have to say this also.
I've never been on on our continent, I've never been north of you ever. I've been to Vancouver. Does anyone I guess Alaska? Alaska's north. I've never been.
I would like to go. Stasia, maybe someday, if we ever make it, we'll get on a plane and go steal one of Steve Hubachek's giant cabbages. What do you say? Yes. Yes.
Well, what do you think would happen? I bet you Steve Hubachek, even though he's just like, you know, kind of a well, not a regular Alaskan dentist because he grows the world's largest cabbages. So that's not regular, right? He can't just be your bog standard dentist, even in Alaska. I bet you there's some alarms on those suckers.
I bet you. I bet you even within the giant cabbage community, there is sabotage. And so Steve Hubachak probably has his giant cabbage. For those of you that don't know, Alaska grows the biggest cabbages anywhere because they have huge long periods of sunlight during the period where the cabbages are growing bigger. And Steve Hubachek, last time we checked, which was what like eight years ago, was the best or the the largest grower of uh grower of largest cabbages.
I bet you those things are protected. What do you think, Stas? I don't know. It doesn't look like it online. I'm looking.
I I it doesn't seem yeah. Is he still the last time he went 16? So yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Wait. So wait, so you're saying he's no longer on the internet as like someone has surpassed him. There's like uh there's a pretender to the Hubachek throne. I don't know. I'm can't find anything right now.
Listen, if we can find anyone in uh in that part of Alaska, I forget the name of the valley where they all the all the great cabbages in the world are from this valley. If you grow a very large cabbage, we would like to ship it to us and power saw that thing into the world's largest single cabbage coleslaw. We want to make let me ask you this. Should we do the world's largest single cabbage coleslaw or the world's largest single cabbage batch of sauerkraut? No, I want the cabbage stuff with the with the meat.
The world like with a whole cow. That'd be huge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So you're a turkey, turkey cabbage roll wrapped in a giant fermented reef. Well, but a giant fermented cabbage leaf, you mean. Yeah. So we would have to somehow. Okay, here's the issue.
Here's the issue. We need to get salt into the whole thing, right? But we don't want the leaves to break, and I'm assuming they're pretty brittle, right? So we might, and this is not what you should do. So don't get angry at me, people, but we might have to like steam pre-wilt the leaves so that we can get them off.
But I've never fermented steamed, par steamed cabbage before. I don't know whether it's going to be good or bad. I've I've never seen it. Well, it's just so how? It's huge.
No one has a vacuum chamber that big. I mean, what we could do, I mean, uh barring having a huge we it's not just the middle, it's the individual leaves we need to wilt. We could just submerge the whole thing in an above-ground swimming pool of salt water. That will desiccate it, right? Then we can pull the leaves off, then they would ferment in a reasonable amount of time, then we can make the giant stuffed cabbages, right?
But like this are we talking like do we like grind up one whole animal and then put it inside of a turkey and then wrap that in a stuffed cabbage? But think of the number of tomatoes we would have to buy to make the tomato sauce to go on that. It would be absurd. Yeah, but you could do just a few, a few leaves of the giant cabbage. You have to make the whole thing.
Yeah, I mean, like, what do you want us to do like a bunch of different things? Like I'm just saying, one of the benefits of fermenting the cabbage is it's gonna last a while. So you can make, you know, a cabbage roll party of giant stuffed animal cabbages. You know, yeah, one night. Originally the concept was I mean, like, you know, we have like uh uh a a single party, you buy a uh a new chainsaw that's never been used, and for bar oil you use salad oil, right?
Because you don't want you know, you don't want non food grade oil in your in your thing. And then we like and then like a large crowd eats it. It's not like we're not putting it down for the winter, Quinn. You know what I mean? Like we're we're trying to consume this sucker as fast as it's humanly possible.
I also have no idea how I have no idea how tough the rib of a cabbage that size is I because I cut out a portion of the rib when I'm doing the cabbage things, even when they're fermented, you know what I mean? You know how you have to cut out a lot of the rib if you're if they're not fermented? Yeah. I cut out some of the rib, even when they're fermented, even then. You know what I mean?
You know what I'm saying? A little bit, a little bit. But like when a cabbage leaf is the size of your whole circuit. Yeah, that'd be yeah. You know, it's gonna be toothome.
That is a good word, toothome. It's gonna be toothsome for sure. Uh yeah, but I mean, Nastasi, can't you see it now? Like a like a like a chainsaw cabbage party at uh in Stanford? Yeah, that would be fun.
Yeah, it'll be fun. Uh so you could you could ship it here and be a shorter distance. Yeah, but then we wants it for him. Yeah, but then we'd have to ship ourselves there too. It's 901, 12 or the other, as they say.
Yep. Dave. I have um yesterday we drove down to the beach in in Portland or in Oregon, and uh we stopped by a jerky shop, and I got uh kangaroo jerky, alligator jerky, and elk jerky. Uh okay. Are you have you already eaten them or are you gonna eat them live in front of us and give us a comparison?
No, I was gonna bring it to the studio when I'm back. Oh, okay. All right, we'll do a comparison. I like that. I like that.
Uh was was there a particular shtick that this uh game jerkyist had? Like something like a a story behind them? Just jerk you walk in and you're like, what do you got? Person's like jerky. And you're like, like what?
He's like, name the animal. Jerker. You're like, yeah. Like what's an animal, what's an animal that you would eat jerky of that you've never seen? Kangaroo.
True. And I'm super happy that we're gonna have that kangaroo jerky. Uh I'm it's gonna be, it's gonna be the worst meats that I've ever eaten are raccoon, terrible. The bear I had, because the bear was old, terrible. Uh though I hear bear is quite delicious.
Uh, when it's, you know, whatever, the Hokkaido bear and or whatever, the young bear, whatever. Uh what else did we make that was terrible? So uh I've had really bad alligator. I've had neutral alligator and I've had bad bad alligator. I've never had alligator where I'm like, all right, you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah. But I'm interested in the alligator jerky. Oh, the lion. Did you hate the lion? I didn't hate the lion.
By the way, we did not cover the lion tastes like overly tough pork. You know? Yeah. Uh but the raccoon I remember being terrible. The beaver tail.
Smell. Wait, what? Beaver tail was good. Beaver tail smell. That was smell.
Oh, uh the flapper, yeah. When we were so anytime you're rendering skin to make uh chicharones, so like, you know, not like classic ones, but like, you know, pork rind style, right? So in other words, you cook the skin for a long time, you know, in water. You you do you gelatinize the skin, you pull it, you scrape the excess fat, you dehydrate it, and then you fry it to get puffed, like store-bought pork pork rind texture. And you can do that with beaver flapper.
The smell of pork skins cooking is not good. Uh the smell of you after you scraped all the fat off the back side of cooked pork skins is unpleasant at best. It's worse, I think, than like that I've been butchering salmon smell. You know that I've been butchering salmon smell that you can't get out of your freaking hands. Yeah.
And like even one salmon and booker freaking butchers salmon pieces on my board all the time and doesn't properly clean it. It drives me freaking nuts. First of all, he pulls out a freaking bread knife and cuts fillets with a bread knife on my board and then leaves this like smear of fish on my board. Makes me so bent. I get so bent.
And then when he does clean it, he does a terrible job, so it still smells like fish. So I have to clean it anyway, but I feel like I am obliged to make him clean it because if I don't, then I'm not setting him up for later in life. Anyway, so uh the smell of the pig skin is nasty when you're when you're cooking it. And I like pig. And I like, I like how do we say it in a sense?
Brothel, a brushole with the pig skin like rolled up. But uh, although my family didn't really make it with pig skin. The pig skin and the what about you, Quinn? You brojole family or no? Uh are you more of a chili family?
No, but yeah, like nowadays, lately, lately, my dad'll make uh various pig skin uh rigors and stews. Well, I don't think we ever did the rolled pig skin. Yeah, what we used to do is all the rolled like slices of Yeah, that's what we did. That's that's what that's what we did that way. Although I have to say, my trick, my my special trick for uh when I pressure cook uh pork shoulder is to remove the skin, pressure cook the pork uh sh uh the skin with the meat, pull it, and then blend this the uh cook skin into the sauce, and it's like uncuous city.
It's like shabang. You know what I mean? The sauce just gets like that, not over, you know, it's not overly gelatinous, but it gets that and then that it sets up like hard as a rock, like a ping-pong ball. When you make a stock and it cools and it's doesn't set, aren't you like, oh very sad, yeah. It's sad, yeah.
Yeah. Like to me, it's like a a mark of success. You know what I mean? You've made it. Absolutely, yeah.
Uh you know how old I'm getting. I forgot who saying looks like we made it yesterday. And Jen was like, Barry Manilow, you idiot. You idiot. Anyway.
Um, all right. So uh this isn't no tangent Tuesday, so before we do any any culinary stuff from last week, that you guys want to get out before uh you forget it. I mean, we should probably talk about the spinzel again. Okay. What do you want to say?
What are we allowed to say? What do you got for me, Quinn? Well, I mean uh something I realized about last week's uh discussion of it. We didn't tell people where to go. Oh, yeah.
Okay, this is the worst website name of all time. All right. I'm ready. This is dumb diddy dumb diddy dumb dum dum dumb. You are dot cool forward slash spinzall.
Now it's like Oh wow, it works. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It should be. But it's not even it's it's the letter U, the letter R.
Letter U, letter R. Cool. Now, I think I should say that if you have to say that you're cool, you are not cool. Right? I mean, I would have been happier if it were UR.dumb forward slash uh slash.
By the way, they just say I know that everyone just says slash now, but like I'm old, so I will continue to say forward slash or uh as opposed to backslash. Uh and you can't stop me. I guess that's not true. You could come here and beat me up. But I'm gonna say forward slash.
Yeah, that's a dumb Sas. When when you heard what that URL was, weren't you like, what'd you say? I well, I read it that that was what it was gonna be, and I groaned. Yeah, you're like shaking, shaking your head. I could hear, I could hear the waves from you shaking your head.
No, no. Why did you think say something, Dave? Because it was already set up. You know? What am I gonna do?
Anyway, so uh we that's why I was asking about the Barry Manilo thing, because it looks like it looks like we're very close to saying looks like we made it, right? Yeah, I think. Yeah. And uh Nastan. People can also go to either your Instagram or the Booker and Dex Instagram or Booker and Dex.com.
And there's also links to in all of those places to the pre-sale. All right. Well, if we're gonna talk spinz all for a minute, uh I'm we were supposed to put out a bunch of content, but luckily we had a bunch of people who knew about it already, and so that's why you know we're close to making it. By the way, Stas, in the I two things you're gonna hate. First of all, what's your favorite Barry Manilo song?
Um I don't know right now. Yeah, yeah. Uh, I'm gonna throw some out. Copacabana overplayed, correct? Yeah, I don't like it.
Okay. Mandy. That's pretty good. It's a good song. Gave and gave without taking.
I love it. Anyway, uh, so maybe we'll, you know, we'll do a cover version of that uh for the Patreon group. We won't, but that would be amazing. Imagine if we did uh looks like we made it or a Mandy cover. If we started doing karaoke for the Patreon, we would lose all of our patrons.
Yeah, I don't do karaoke, so I don't usually do karaoke. In fact, okay, so I was at my 30th reunion, and by the way, the majority of the people there looked awesome. I went to college in New Haven, i.e. Yale, and I went to the uh the reunion and they did a karaoke. And if you're my age, which is 52, if you're my age, uh there are certain songs you will hear when people play songs for people your age.
And everyone has different ones, right? So for us, you can't get out of an event without hearing Groovis in the Heart by Delight, and I love that song. That's great. You can't overplay Bootsy ever, right? That's not possible to overplay Bootsy Collins.
That's just nothing happened. But if I never hear Come on Eileen by Dexie and the Midnight Runners, and I had to hear it twice, and it's not that it's a bad song, it's just I'm done. You know what I mean? And someone they they had a karaoke thing. I stepped in and they were doing Dexie and the Midnight Runners.
And I'm not saying that I hadn't had anything to drink because that would be a lie, but I was told that I was being a little bit aggro with my uh I think I used the words basic and that you know Dexie needs to fall off the face of the earth. I just went ape on them because it just why would anyone need that? What do you think, Stas? I hate that song. Yeah.
What so when you're at these kind of events for people your age, what's the song that you ha that's gonna happen that like you can't get around happening it? I don't go to reunions, you know this. I hate that stuff. You've never been to something with people your age and people are playing songs to pander to you? Ever?
Wow. All right. Anyone else? Anyone else got their their age, gonna age themselves with the panda songs? I don't keep in touch with people, right?
I don't keep in touch with people, so it's my opportunity to say, Oh, you're still alive, isn't that nice? You know what I mean? And I went to uh I went to uh, you know, in New Haven, there's a place called Louie's Lunch, which is one of the famous new um um Connecticut burgers, right? And the thing about Louie's Lunch is is that they put their burgers on white toast, and the white toast is in a vertical toaster, they put cheese whiz on it and a slice of onion, and then they put their burgers in what amounts to these vertical crematoriums. So it's like these like crematorium doors open, and you know, that you see the flame coming out of it, and they put the little they put it on the gurney and they put it into the crematorium and they shut it and it comes out, and then they slice it.
And it used to be that they would kick you out if you asked for ketchup and like threaten you with weapons and stuff. I don't think they do that anymore. They also used to literally only be open for lunch, and now they're open until 1 a.m. But two years in a row I've tried to go to it and uh they've run out of meat, and I was un I was unpleased. I was like, hey, how about this?
You buy more meat. Yeah. How about that? How about you buy enough freaking meat? I mean it is a pretty tiny place where they're gonna store it.
I don't care. You get an extra delivery in the middle of the day. I mean like you know it's true. Money is money. And then someone was like someone my friend was like well you you think you think you know you deserve it and the people who came earlier don't serve it.
I'm like no we all deserve the burger. I would like to hand them money and in exchange I would like to have a burger. And it's not like freaking barbecue places don't make the comparison with like the hill country barbecue places where they should also buy more meat. But on the other hand it's like there, you know the cook time is like you know 12 hours or whatever. So it's like I get it you know you you you make what you want and then when it's over it's over a burger is like whap whap boom whap whap whap boom you can make more you can make more it's much more of an Alamanude situation.
Oh the toaster's tired no suck it buy more meat anyway so I didn't get to have uh my reunion burger I'm displeased and then I've sucking this guy his kid right he's uh he's you know he's it's he's college age right because he's and he's like I don't like that burger I'm like okay he's like I'm from Oklahoma and we season things differently in Oklahoma as though like it's the seasoning that matters on that burger. I don't understand it. Anyone from Oklahoma who can hear me tell me what is an Oklahoma burger that makes it so Oklahoma. Well I think we're gonna have a guest on soon who will be able to discuss that yeah yeah yeah every night my honey lamb and I, we sit alone and talk, watch a hawk. That's no talk no talk no gawk?
No. Hawk? No. Making burgers in the sky. Well, he makes burgers, but not in the sky.
Oh, that's right. We uh he's from he's from Oklahoma. Oh no, he's like it's a specialty. Oh, yeah, yeah. George Motz is coming on.
When is that? Quinton. Uh June 20th. There we go. 1920th.
Okay. All right. So we'll figure out. Oh, guess what else I did in New Haven? Went to Olmo.
Uh Craig Hutchinson was on the show a couple of months ago. Had some bagels in in New Haven. Very good. Enjoy it. Go get uh those high extraction bagels.
Yeah. Anyway. So at the reunion, they just got chain bagels. They got chain bagels. And I'm looking at the bagels, and I'm like, I don't want, I don't want chain bagels.
And people were eating the chain bagels. I'm like, we could just walk two blocks and get a bagel by someone who's doing something interesting. That's interesting. Good. Anyway, I went.
Whatever. Okay. Anything else for anyone? Any uh food uh related McGillikuddies before we get into the questions? No.
No? Uh no. No? Okay. Uh Alexander Talgard writes in uh hey, here again, finally back on Patreon.
Oh, by the way, people should join the Patreon. What do you get? Uh what do you get, John, if you join the Patreon? And you can call your questions in too 917-410-1507. That's 917-4101507.
You get access to a whole bunch of cool things like our Discord, uh access to discounts in kitchen arts and letters, uh prioritized questions getting answered, especially on days like today, no tangent Tuesdays. Um, Edwards Age Meets, who sells absolutely fantastic products. Um yeah, so just cool things. So check it out. Yeah, go ahead and go for it.
The community map. That's right, the community map, too, that everyone hopefully has been uploading to and keeping active. Someone had a hard time finding it, so we're gonna put on the Patreon, I think, an easier way to find it, right? Or Quinn, did you talk to that that patron who had a I mean I gave them a link. Okay.
Yeah. Also, like cool. Bonus videos. Yeah, so the avoiding the warranty video on uh how to make uh a less expensive frozen drink machine work with alcohol, that's upright, Quinn. Yep.
Yeah, and pretty much warranty with David. Yeah, yeah. I've been building a four-ton juice press. And uh the build for that's going up on the Patreon. Now I'm not suggesting that you build a four, you definitely should not build a four-ton juice press the way I'm doing it because at this point I probably should have just bought a used Norwalk, but this is more powerful than a Norwalk.
See, for the book, you know, I'm you're doing this in your apartment? Yeah. How does Jen feel about that? What's uh what's something the opposite of pleased? Well, I'm trying to like uh yeah, it's not the best.
I'm using 8020 extrusions, which are relatively expensive, but I want it to be kind of nice. Four tons for a six-inch square pless plate, uh, pressing about two liters of product, it's good. So I'm getting like I'm getting like 50% or so yield of no more than 50% yield of juice on ginger. I'm getting like off raw ginger, like higher on Apple, like I don't care. And it's good.
Like the stuff that's left has no taste. I honestly I don't believe that cold pressed juice is any better than regular juice, and there is some data backing me up, but I I I don't know enough to say. I originally got the uh press we had at existing conditions for like squeezing grapes and for like squeezing like all of the liquid out of the waffles after we did the waffle infusion or after we did Don did a banana bread infusion, which did a lot or a pumpkin. They're both delicious uh with bourbon. So like bourbon with any of those sweetbreads is delicious.
It's delicious with waffles, it's delicious with pumpkin, it's delicious with banana bread. And when you put it into a press and squeeze it out, you get everything back out of it. Everything. Yeah. So anyway, I've tested so far in the four-ton press ginger juice and carrot juice and carrot apple juice.
Yeah. Now, uh I'll say this on ginger juice. I'm making a video, and you can go see me clarify ginger juice on the modernist pantry thing for the spinzall. But Garrett Richard, you know, Tropical Standard book just came out. He's gonna come on the radio show with Ben later, you know, because the book came out again.
This new technique for clarifying starches is ridiculous. I made a mule, I made a you know, a Moscow mule. Uh Skyvodka sent me a bunch of vodka. I did a Moscow mule with it with a spinzole. And it if it is kind of a life-changing mule.
I handed it to uh, I mean, Dax is now 21. Took it because he was filming it. He took a sip, he's like, oh, this is delicious. This doesn't even taste like there's alcohol in it. I'm like, well, you shouldn't say that.
You should say that it still has body and structure, and so you can taste the base spirit. That's what you should say. But the ginger is so pure. So pure. And you can make it without a juicer.
I did it with ginger juice that I juiced, and I did it with you just a blender. And they both work. Uh, and you'll get the video soon enough, people, especially if you're on the Patreon. Uh, but no, actually, that one I have to put up because it's for you can, whatever. It's a good technique.
Use magnesium carbonate. Magnesium carbonate, I ordered, did I already say this in the air? I ordered two pounds of it. And the bag it came in, I thought two pounds would be like something reasonable. And the bag that it came in, like, there's no place in my house that the bag can fit because it's so fluffy.
It's like so freaking fluffy. And so it looks like you're adding a ridiculous amount of magnesium carbonate to your product when you're clarifying it. And but like it all disappears. It just goes away. You know what I mean?
You're adding quite actually quite a bit, 2% anyway, but like uh it all settles out. It's not soluble. So it's not something that ends up in your product. It's literally acting just like a blanket that just like pushes all of the starch down with it as it goes, and then you know, you chuck it when you're when you're done. But it is a great technique.
I'll tell you this, which because for the video probably won't have time. When you're clarifying with magnesium carbonate, you want to add it, stir it up, and stir it a couple of times, and right before you spin it or do the final settle, make sure that it's looking like it's going clear, stir it up one more time so that it can capture absolutely everything and go down. You don't need to blend it. You just literally stir it in and it's good to go. Alexander Talkard, back to you.
Um I have some questions about he has some questions about superjuice. Uh, first off, what is your opinion of superjuice? What's your opinion of super juice, John? Like drinking pomegranate juice with blueberries in it, like that kind of super juice? No, no, that's super foods.
Oh. So what's super juice? Ah, well, we'll get in. Super juice. Superjuice, what they do is is they they take they take like peel and they make an oleo, right?
Then they add some juice and then a bunch of acid, and then oliosacrum. They make an oleo directly with acid powder, not sugar. Well, it's all the same. It doesn't matter to me. Like, in other words, that's a mechanical thing.
But in other words, there's sugar, no, there's not sugar. Right. There's there's acid and then there's water and juice and peel. Acid water, juice, and peel. Acid water, juice and peel, juice and peel, right?
So uh that's what uh, you know, that's what's in it. So uh Quinn, good clarification because right, you're not crushing it with sugar, you're crushing it with acid. By the way, everyone thinks that sugar is magic. It's literally a mechanical operation. When you're making an oleosacrum, you're smashing a granular thing into peel to break the peel and release the oil, which then gets wicked into the granular item.
It's not some magic property that sugar has per se, or that acid has per se. Uh okay, so let's finish the question here. What well, first off, what's my opinion of superjuice? Here's my opinion. Um, to the extent that you are stretching juice.
I don't look, I'm not trying to yuck anyone's yum. I'm just saying that in a shake and cocktail, water plus acid provides no texture. In order to have texture in a shaking cocktail, you need actual juice. So to the extent that there is less juice in superjuice, it is going to provide less of a good texture in a shake and cocktail. That's less and less important.
The worse you are at shaking cocktails, or the longer you're gonna wait to drink a shaking cocktail after it's made. But for you could also add a bodying agent to it, right? You could add some, you know, proteins or whatever to it and make it froth as well as a normal citrus does. But so that that that's one thing. Two, there's the claim that superjuice lasts longer.
Well, to the extent that it has less juice in it to go bad, then it lasts longer because there's less of that poison detergent taste that you get from old juice when the majority of the acid is actually just from acid. So there's that. Lastly, the peel covers up some of those uh kind of old juice, which is why oleo, whether it's made with sugar or whether it's made with uh not it's not sacrum, oleo acid acidum. What do you think? Oleoacidum with a quin?
Uh they call it ole oleo citrate. Why? You don't have to use it's not a citrate, citric acid. They're not using sodium citrate. That's a terrible name.
Whoever's calling it that, stop. Because you can use other acids, and the actual component of the acid is completely unimportant. Please stop calling it citrate. You're gonna cause another problem where, like, you know, Ferran's people called mono and diglycerides gliss, and then everyone thought glycerin and mono and diglycerides were the same thing, which they are not. So don't name things, the things that are patently incorrect.
You know what I'm saying, Quinn? Yeah. Yeah. So uh yeah, acid. Yeah.
Oleo acid. There you go. Anyway, so uh the peel notes also cover up the detergent notes of over the hill fresh lime juice. Okay. So all of those things make something that's gonna last longer.
If you like it better, if you actually like the taste of it better, then as they say in the trade, God bless, right? But I don't uh, you know, I I think that you could build a drink where that drink wants to be made with that, as opposed to with regular juice. Um, you know, uh it's not what I use. Is this am I being fair? Yeah.
Yeah. Quince. I've read some pretty good ones. But what good for what? I made a pollen lemon acid.
That was pretty yummy. Well, why not just use lemon juice and pollen? I don't know. What kind of pollen? Fennel pollen?
Well, I've just I think uh bee pollen, like regular. Why don't I just add pollen to why not add bee pollen to lemon juice? Well, I think one, you get an actual. I mean, you know, with the super juice, I would say it's really just a different product. Because with a citrus juice, you're getting the acidity, you're getting the flavor of the juice, but you're not really getting the flavor with a peel.
With the super, but you but you're really getting that like my problem isn't the flavor of the peel. And by the way, it's called squeeze a peel into that thing. That's what we call that in, you know, we we do that all the time. We make a drink, we go Sheboygan, and we put oil on the top of the drink, and there you go. Peel.
You know what I mean? But you you could you don't have to use water and acid to do it. You could use a neutral powder. Yeah, yeah. You could do anything.
Yeah, I'm saying it's it's a good thing. I mean, getting the flavor of the peel in is one thing. My main problem isn't that somebody wants peel in their drink. You know, people who like lemon cello, they they're sucking on peels. You know what I mean?
Like they are peel suckers. But like uh, you know, I'm saying that my issue with it is they that you're lowering the amount of juice that's being used in it. I don't necessarily think for a valid reason other than cost savings. And I my guess is that the product would be better if it had more juice, and the idea that it lasts longer to me means that there's less juice in it. I but I'm not saying it's bad.
If I want lemon juice, I could take pollen, add it to lemon juice. I could get peel flavor into that without having to do an acid adjust on it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I guess. It just it's very, you know, convenient to make a batch of that, and then you have a very highly flavorful acid.
I mean, for cooking or for cocktails? For cocktails. Okay. Well, I mean, like, a lot of times when you do things, what I don't like is here's uh here's the other thing. What I don't want is are you familiar with the law of incremental crappiness?
Uh no, but I can deduce it. Yeah. So what happens is is you're like, oh, here's the drink, like I make it. Now I'm gonna do something that's slightly crappier, right? And by that I mean I'm cutting a corner.
And I can't tell the difference between A and B. So now I start doing B. Now I have B. And I think it's as good as A. And then I make that slightly crappier, and now I have C, which I can't tell the difference between B and C.
Then I have C, and then I make it slightly crappier, and on down the line. And by the time you get to like G, if you ever go back and make A, you're like, oh, right, right, right, yes, right. And so, like things that are incrementally more crappy from a cut cost cutting standpoint. If you're doing it because you think it tastes better, then please do it. If you're doing it to cut a corner, and that's fine as long as you're aware of incremental crappiness because that's how sour mix happened.
Right? That's how bars ended up using sour mix. Also, it's also supposed to be to reduce waste. Yeah, but what are you wasting? Well, the rest of the lemon, I guess.
Oh, I'm saying you can use the peels. I use peels. You can make bitters with them, you can do a bunch of things. Yeah, but yeah, but again, can every bar always use all of their juice and all of their peel? I mean, my bar definitely can't use that much super juice because I'm not shaking a cocktail with that thing.
You know what I mean? Like I want fresh tasting, fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh. If I want peel, I want peel. I used to save up the whole things and make bitters with them, but you know, I the amount of money people spend on a cocktail is unconscionable. So the idea that I'm gonna save incremental money off of the lemon juice and give someone a product that I think is not inherently superior to me seems unethical.
That's me though. I think people do think it's superior or equivalent. If they think it's superior, like I say, if you think it's superior, if you have actually had a side-by-side drink shaken and you're like, I would take this one every day, then do it. But if you make a super juice with peel and then an actual juice and add peel to it, if peel is what you want, I'm pretty sure you're gonna find the actual juices better. That's all.
And also, uh, you know, a lot of them are kind of like all over the map with the amount of acid they're using, and so I don't actually, know what the acidity is. So what they could be saying is they actually want less liquid in. There's all sorts of problems with it. Um but again, I'm old. I don't want to yuck anyone's yum either.
You know what I mean? But uh do the side-by-side taste tests. And if you actually think, do a triangle test. If you actually think it's better, great. But you know, there are ways to do things that aren't about saving money when you're charging someone a lot.
At home, do whatever you like. I'm saying professionally, if you are giving someone a less expensive product because it's less expensive rather than because it is better. And you are charging them the same amount. I have an issue. That's all.
I don't want to rip people off, neither do I wish to be ripped off. That's all. Uh, you know, it's like people used to get mad about meat glue because the they thought that what you know you were going to do is just take a bunch of scraps of garbage meat and glue them together into a steak and then serve it like, you know, like an expensive steak. That's unethical. That's not what most people did who use meat glue.
But that was the fear of meat glue. And, you know, I think they were right to fear that because to me that's unethical. You know, it turns out it doesn't work because it looks like a freaking quilt. Like when you glue a bunch of stuff together and you send it to someone, it looks like you're sending them a quilt. They're like, this is not a steak.
You you think I don't know what a steak looks like? They think I don't know what a steak looks like. Jerks. Anyway. Um, all right.
So what's my feelings? I feel we've covered and smothered that. Uh from all I've been able to find online, it should not really be possible to extract oils with acid to begin with. Even more so, if you did, this should not really be soluble in water. It would be an emulsion or a suspension.
Uh, in the case of emulsion, we would need emulsifier. Uh is that just present appeals to begin with? Uh, if it's a suspension, it would have separation issues. Yeah, no, it's not, you're you're not dissolving the oil, you're just kind of pulverizing and getting it. And my guess is that it's like uh it's kind of like a suspension, or it's but I don't haven't like analyzed it at all, but I bet you there's some creaming or separation over time.
There's really not that much oil. I mean, there's some, right? There's also a lot of w water soluble things in the peel as well that come out. But oil, when you squeeze a peel, oil that comes out does indeed float on the top of your drink. You can see it.
You can see it, you can see it come out, and you can see it form a layer on the top of the drink. Um bonus question while making super juice at my current bar, I was told that we had to be careful to keep the lid on the malic acid because it's bad to breathe in the gases. My immediate reaction was, what do you mean? It is not volatile. However, I found that it does kind of burn the nose to smell the top of the canister.
Even more so uh once it's uh when it's mixed in with the lime peels, what's going on there? Dust, my friend, dust. Uh my mom always used to get mad at me because I would open containers of tang and put a spoon in it, and I put my face over it because I like to breathe in the tang smoke. You know, like uh, and uh my mom's like, that fine powder is not good for your lungs. And so it's really just an aerosolized powder, is what's going on there.
It is not volatile, but malic acid, more so the malic acid that you buy a lot of times is a finer powder than the citric acid is, and so you probably get more malic acid smoke than you do get citric uh acid smoke. You can get larger crystals of either, by the way. Um and I would guess that the larger the crystal is, the better it is in oleoland, because then it's more of a little grain of sand eating into the peel, which is really what's happening when you're when you're making those oleo XYZs. Does that make sense? Yeah.
All right. Um that cover and smother that guy? Yeah, I'd say so. All right. Uh from Delicious Pear.
Uh, does anyone have by the way? Pears are delicious. Stasia, remember that pear trip we took? Yeah, I do, finally. Yeah, that's good.
And we unlike the second time I went when that guy stopped us from eating everything, jerk. Pear liquor we had at uh Skernick? Oh my god. What's that guy's name again? It it went out of my head, but that guy's pear.
It I don't know what it is, right? But there are certain pair ODVs where when you taste them, do you know how like uh like some pears have a granularity to the flesh? Like they're yielding but granular. I swear to God, some of these ODVs, you can taste that granularity in your mouth, and I have no idea why. You you're like, you eat it, and there's the sensation that you have that texture in your mouth.
I don't get it. I asked the guy, and he was like, I don't care, shut up. But uh, you know what I mean? Pretty much. Shut up exactly.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh I was like, but why should I shut up? This isn't a miracle. Why why isn't why are why are more people not talking about this?
Yeah. Uh does anyone have experience uh making floral infusions slash syrups? Syrups. I live near several groves of wild plums. Uh we talked about this a little bit, but uh we missed the season.
Yeah, we missed the season. Um the blossoms of which I'd like to turn into a syrup or cordial. I see that some recipes call for steeping the flowers first in just hot water, then adding the sugar over a bain marie. You can say that with fancy accent. Uh yeah.
Well, other recipes call for making the simple syrup first and then adding the flowers to infuse. Would you expect a discernible difference between these techniques or are they mostly interchangeable? Yes. The answer is yes. Any infusion, how you do the technique is gonna radically change what's going on.
Because uh, likewise, are there other methods for extracting flavor and aroma alcohol that would be worth a shot? Thanks in advance for the feedback. Listen, every infusion technique is different. It's like Rosemary's baby. Every pregnancy is different.
You have to be like oh, old movie. A lot of people haven't seen Rosemary's Baby. So like the devil that basically uh who's it who's that? Is that Mia Farrow? Yeah, it's Mia Farrow is having a baby with the devil, but she doesn't know it.
And they're in this fancy New York apartment in the Dakotas, which is where John Lennon used to live. And also Peter Tosh. Bad luck for musicians to live in the Dakotas, as it turns out. Real bad luck. Uh, but um anyway, so the apartment next door is where the devil worshippers get to go.
And so she doesn't know that she's pregnant with uh Satan's baby. And the OB, her OBGYN, right, she's like, I don't feel right. This doesn't feel like it should feel, because it's Satan is growing inside of her. The antichrist is growing inside of her. And so it turns out that your body doesn't respond well to harboring the antichrist in your room.
And what the doctor says is, and I use this all the time, every pregnancy is different. And then just walks out. And she's like, okay. I mean, it was like a long time ago, so people were expected to listen to what their doctors said. Anyway, uh say tangent to stay.
Same thing with uh same thing with infusions. Every infusion is different. So the actual uh what I would do is this there are there are different things you should test. A pure alcohol infusion, i.e. like 95%, is gonna pull out uh there are some things that are very non-water, they're sorry, that are very water soluble that are not very alcohol soluble.
There are things that are alcohol soluble that aren't very water soluble, right? Then if you pull glycerin, which is another infusion thing that you can use, right? There are things that are uh less soluble in glycerin and more soluble in glycerin. So you can up or lower the different uh items that you're pulling out of anything, flowers included, depending on the actual solvent you're using. And every flower is also different, and you're extracting different things from them.
So certain flowers, like tuberos, for instance, are very difficult to do with heat infusions because the heat goes away. So when I wanted the aroma of tuberos, which is like you know, one of the classic lay flowers, we would order, remember, Stas, we would order those lays from Hawaii and they would like overnight ship us lays from Hawaii, and then we would throw them directly into the rotovap. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
It was good. Expensive, but good. This is something you want to do with culinary school money and not with your own money. Uh so we would do distillations of those because it's very difficult. In fact, usually things like that are done with enflourage, which is a like a zero heat thing.
And the kind of more astringent and nasty things in the tube rose aren't gonna get pulled out by the fat. And then when you remove the rose and then put the alcohol on the fat, only the good stuff comes off, right? So it's a game in a flower to only take those things that you want and to not take those things that you don't want. I read up on plum flowers though, and it looks like they're pretty robust, and you can just make a regular simple syrup with them. But flowers in general are all different.
So I used to do, it's linden flower season right now. Lindens have just started blooming here. They make a great uh drink. Next year, I just read a honey locust flowers aren't poisonous. I'm gonna do honey locust flowers.
So I would recommend looking and seeing what other people do. If sugar works, um, use it. And if the aromas are heat stable, some things taste better once they've been heated a little bit. Uh, and some things taste much, much worse, and some things taste different. So I'm not giving you any actual advice.
I'm just saying I would try a very high proof. I would try a uh alcohol. And if you don't want alcohol, I mean, like I try to keep things kind of cool because typically things like that are changed in a direction. I don't like when they're heated, but whatever. Is that answer this question?
Yeah. All right. They could also try a really small batch of like a really simple water distillation hydrosol. I mean, they're very simple if they have distilled well no there's very simple guides for making rose water where you have like a nested, a nested bowl and a pot and then an inverted lid with ice. Yeah, I have seen that kind of distillation.
I have never had a hydrosol that I thought was worth spit. I'm saying is that if you've never done a distillation before, I'm sure you can get a hydrosol that's good. But if you've actually had like a roto vap and done like hardcore distillation, when you taste them side by side, it makes you never want to do that other stuff ever again. Maybe rose water might be different because it's extremely delicious, extremely uh sorry, um, not delicious, uh traditional, right? So there might it might be, you know, fine.
It might be fine. Um the thing about I'll say about hydrosols is is that a lot of the aromas are extremely fugitive when they're in water. And so uh what we used to do is uh when we had to do water-based distillations at Booker and Dax, because we were following the letter of the law on distillations in our rota vap, we would uh as soon as something was distilled, it would be distilled into high-proof liquor. And that way you're fixing it down. If you don't want to use alcohol, glycerin would be another way to fix those fugitive aromas into a product because hydrosols just don't hold on to their aroma very well.
They just don't. That's you know, uh, and they don't necessarily uh extract well uh you know all the time. That's why, you know, you don't have just water-based vanillas. You have glycerin-based vanillas and you have alcohol-based vanillas. And and I think making your own vanilla extract is is a foolishness anyway.
Listen, if you it anything that says that your have you ever, I've been to a flavor house, right? David Michael, and they are one of the they one of their specialities is vanilla, right? And so they showed me a giant vat. I went with the museum. Stassi, did you go with us that time, Peter Kim?
Did you go with us? Yes, I was there. We see it. Yeah, yeah. I can't remember, I can't remember where everyone is.
But so like there's a giant vat of vanilla seeds, like 55 gallon drums full of vanilla seeds, right? And chopped up the the you know, the outside of the husk. And there, and uh Julie Snarski, who was our host, was like, taste it. We're like, what? She gives us a plastic spoon, she goes into this thing, gives us a big scoop of vanilla seeds.
Taste it. So I tasted it. You know what it tasted like? Not vanilla. Like nothing.
Like nothing. So like those folks them. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Julie was saying that she's like, some people, she hasn't talked like that. She's like, some people, they only like vanilla ice cream if it's got the dots.
So we take all of these flavorless dots that are worthless, and we sell them to people to stir back into vanilla ice cream to make people think that someone has scraped a vanilla pod into the ice cream. So anytime oh, such a good call to bring that story up. What? Didn't she say like Hagen Dodd? Oh, yeah.
Hagendas, Briars, all of them. There is no such thing as someone sits there with a knife, splitting open a vanilla pod and going shika shicky shika shick it, scraping it down and adding that crap because that's leaving vanilla on the table. The pod that you're throwing away has flavor. It is sapid, as we say in the trade. So they extract all the flavor and then sell worthless vanilla dots back to people that they can stir into their ice cream to make us all think that somehow someone's been sitting there with a with a with you know their petty knife scraping scraping vanilla pods all day, which is not how it works.
So if you think you're gonna make a vanilla extract as good as the professionals, a good luck. Because you ain't you also don't have the sourcing. You just don't have the sourcing. Uh all right. Uh Monty Zukowski wants to hear Quinn's review of the creamy.
But here's the thing. Oh. What's your review? I mean, like, how why would you frame the review of the creamy? What I would say is maybe let's put a pin in that till next week.
Because we are recording at a different time. Yeah. And then maybe we'll have a maybe we'll have a lack of questions. All right. So we could circle back to that review.
So if you love it, put a pin in it. Remember that song? If you love it, put a pin in it. Remember that? It's a good song.
No, you put a ring on it. Oh, same thing. Uh Christian Sacco writes in Quinn mentioned getting Macienda products in Vancouver. I tried to get some not long ago, but they don't ship to Canada. Does Quinn have a special connection, some sort of special mojo?
Or does he know a Canadian distributor or a way to get Macienda? Are you one of those freight forward people? Are you a freight forward person? Yeah, yeah, no. The secret, uh, Christian, is paying through the nose for a mail forwarder.
Yeah. How much, okay. So just so people know, how much does a mail forward it cost? Like, like uh, how does it work? I mean, yeah, you pay a small amount to like jewelry.
You pay a small amount for every package, and then you just gotta pay whatever the shipping is. But in other words, like it is. Is it is it like the same is it cost as much to ship from the forwarder as it does to ship from the original person? Like in other words, are you like tripling the shipping price or what? Yeah, basically doubling it, at least.
Okay. All right. But it's a way to get things. In your full, you can feel better whenever the primary shipper or the primary uh merchant offers free domestic shipping. Okay.
So you're you're only paying once. Yeah. And then you just have to sign up with a fake account. You're paying for both. You're paying for both because Reb You only see the one.
Right, you only see the one. Yeah, all right. Uh from Bright. What? What'd you say?
It feels better. Oh, yeah. Well, it's all about feeling. You know what I mean? So many things are all just about signaling just to yourself.
Not all signaling is to the outside world, Quinn. Some of it's just to yourself. Um Bryce Wright saying, question. Uh, and I I apologize, uh, Bryce, I did not read the uh article that you uh linked to because I am a low quality individual. Uh Kenji has a Neapolitan pizza dough recipe that starts with an eight to twelve hour room temperature rise.
Would there be any damage if I forget about it and don't ball it up uh and don't ball it up and refrigerate it until the 16 or 18 hour mark? No. Uh would there be any flavor or texture degradation? No. Um, and then um a link to the thing.
Here's the thing. You know, bread is look, there are a billion ways to slight to make to do bread. There is no such thing as the right answer with uh bread. There really isn't. Um there really isn't.
There really is not. Like everyone is all hyped up, oh, the best bit, but like, especially on uh, and I know like look, I get in my brother Wiley, my brother-in-law Wiley, right? He's got stretch, and people get all bent about being hyper specific. And when you're doing it every day, you need to be incredibly on point. You need it's a real game of golf or both pick your repetitive needs to do the same way every time because it needs to be the same all the time.
It needs to act the way the same way all the time. But the difference between uh letting it rise for an extra four hours off of a 12 hour thing. Uh if it overrises and falls, it's gonna rise again anyway uh when you do it. And really, what you're worried about is dough exhaustion. And I don't think that you're gonna exhaust the dough because of that extra section of rise.
And if you were really, really worried about it, right? Uh using a refrigerator to refrigerate dough, right, is incredibly imprecise. It takes a long time for the center of a ball of dough to go from room temp from ferment temperature down to refrigeration temperature. So really, you should be specifying in any recipe the thickness of the dough ball and how you're getting heat transfer to it. So I was talking to Wiley about how he does his uh his dough retardation in the free.
And so like he has a very specific stacking pattern. So like the things are in the same thing, they're open to the air of the fridge for a certain length of time. The humidity is kept where it is, so that he can have a repeatable cool down period. So unless you're doing that, I think a couple hours plus or minus on your initial rise ain't gonna make uh uh any difference. What do you think, uh John?
Yeah. All right. Fuck Jack, here's a math question. I'm building a chocolate tempering setup by cutting a hole in the lid of a polycarbonate bin and putting a hotel pan in that hole, and then filling the bin with water and using a Nova circulator to heat the water in the pan. I'd like to get two pans going so I can do two chocolate types at once, which means a bigger pan.
How much cubic water can I heat with one ANOVA circulator or with two? I forget exactly what number of liters, but it's uh I wouldn't go much above like uh 24, 24 liters of water all day. That should be fine. You also like obviously don't want to get water in the chocolate, so be extremely careful about uh spillage. You can build like a uh a jacket that like pumps inside of the jacket so that nothing gets up, but it's a little more, it's a little more difficult.
Uh in reality, especially the lower the temperature, which chalk is very low temperature, the more water you can do. So that 20 something liters is to heat up hot. I can I have done whole Lexans, whole full size, how big's a Lexan, John? You remember the dimensions? I don't, but you know, the full food box lexans, you can get one of those well up easily up to temp uh temp chocolate temperature thing.
The issue is is that the more liquid you have and the less insulated it is, the more drift you get. So you're gonna get one or two degrees over it. The less water you have, the more precise you can be, and the less drift you're gonna have. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm.
All right. Ken Ingber wants to know does mixing Vermouth with 80 proof plus spirits extend the shelf life of Vermouth by itself? Or is it only mostly oxidation that is a problem? And does pre-mixing do much for that? Um, it it will extend the life somewhat.
People used to store uh, you know, Manhattan's not diluted Manhattans. Once it's diluted, it's not protected anymore. But I would guess you would get uh some extension in shelf life. But it does change over time. That's why people used to age uh bottled but undiluted cocktails to get the change.
And I can get to the rest of your uh oh, Ken, I'm gonna do I'm gonna come back to you our next no tangent uh whenever we're recording it. Next time we record next week on I'm in Rochester next week, people. That's why I will not be here. I'll be at the Rochester Cocktail uh Classic. Yeah, Rochestering it up.
Eating hot dogs, cooking issues.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.