Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on Newstand Studios, part of Manhattan. Radio City. How you doing? Everything good?
Yeah. Good. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Good. Yeah. Friday. Friday afternoon. Oh yeah.
Uh yeah. For those of you that we're recording this on a Friday. So we got to see how the Friday vibe is. What we got uh, of course, John. How you doing?
Doing great thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunate for you having to show up to the show before a service on a Friday, but yeah, whatever. I mean, it's just so slow that we have a an influencer coming tonight.
Oh, geez. Oh my God. You know who loves influencers? Is this Nastasia the Hammer Lipis? Just kidding.
Influencer. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So uh yeah. Yeah, you influence some people.
That's true. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes for the worse. Yeah. Well, that's Jackie Molecules.
Where are you right now? Uh LA. Back home. All right. All right.
And Nastasia, where are you right now? I'm going somewhere with Alexis. Okay, what state are oh, wait, what state are you in? Just tell me what state you're in. Why does it matter so much?
I'm in California. All right, man. California. All right. And we got uh Joe Hazen Rocking the Panels.
How you doing? I'm doing great, man. Yeah, yeah, good. We do not have, unfortunately, Quinn today. Uh hopefully we have to record again on Friday next week.
So hopefully, you know, he can be back with us next Friday. So uh any of you guys have anything uh good over the past how long has it been? It's been two weeks, right? I think so, yeah. I did uh what what are those what are those things called live?
What are those things called where you're uh for the Patreon? I did a live stream for them from from my house. Oh nice. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if it was nice.
Oh well. I have no idea if it was nice. Uh but I might do that again because we're also postponed until next Friday. Next week maybe I'll do one live from London because tomorrow I have to fly out from Newark to London, a place I have not been since, you know, well before the pandemic. So I'm assuming it's still there.
I'm assuming it's still pretty much the same, you know. Would assume? Uh uh Joe, you're uh you're you go to London quite a bit. How is it? Is it still there?
Is it still the same? It's still the same. Yeah, I haven't been since uh I've been haven't been in a couple years. Oh. Honestly.
Oh, that's right. Your trip was cancelled when you're airplane kind of broke down on the tarmac. Oh my god. Nastasi and I were talking about this. Every well, your airplane actually broke down on the tarmac, right?
Yeah, something to do with the brakes. Yeah. I just don't think they hire enough crew and pilots now so that they they cancel flights constantly. It's crazy. Constantly, I know.
It's nuts. Yeah. So you have to like book anyway, whatever. Everyone knows this. Not interesting.
Uh so what do you guys got over the past uh couple of weeks? Anything? Anything? Stayed at Nastasia's in Stanford. That was nice.
Did you uh the old apartment swap? Did you leave a half empty bottle of uh Alize on the counter? Or what was your what was your power guest move? No, I was very considerate guest, left it very clean. Um I think uh yeah, uh I did a 24 hour um cardnique test at the house, which went extremely well.
All right, now the big hit. So in and uh what was your technique? Uh oh I think I think it was one twenty-nine. We did it in a bag. Yeah, yeah, the big a big old gallon Ziploc bag, which is like packed to the gills and kind of precariously just submerged.
So it's always without like a really big zessal or a vacuum deal, it's always a little precarious, but I pulled it off. No, okay. Now hold a second. So 129, you say? What uh what is that?
What is that in uh in Celsius Land, John? Anyone can anyone do that math for me? That's not one of the ones I know off the top of my twenty-nine. Is that uh 50 something, right? What is that?
Oh, that was not correct. 57, no, 57 is 135. Oh, almost I'm lying. I'm sorry. What?
I'm sorry, it was 160, it was 74 Celsius. I'm I'm crazy. Okay, yeah, I think that was something else. No, yeah. Yeah, all right.
74, 74. And the texture was good. Oh yeah. What made you choose 74? Um seriously it's recipe to be honest.
They give you three options. And what were their three options? Because to me, 74 is kind of an in-betweener. Like I'm not sure. In other words, 74 is yeah, it's an in-betweener.
Like it like, it's like not like a traditional, but it's higher than a low type. It's like in that kind of weird zone. Yeah. The three options they list are 63, 74, and 85. 63.
I used to do 63. 63. 63 is like 48 hours. Uh and seventy-four shouldn't take twenty-four, but I mean I don't know how much what what difference is going to be. So 12 to twenty-four, but they're I would say 12 is more accurate.
Yeah. And then um, yeah. And but like I like I just when I'm doing that, I you know we just do a side by we'll do that, we'll do the side by side. Whenever I used to do side by side of those kinds of things of like long cook things, like I would get the entire room of people together, right? And then we would do short ribs that I put into the bag.
I never did it with uh shoulder, but short ribs in a bag, boneless, come on. And then uh we would just basically boil them at braised temperature, right? And then we would do, you know, for short ribs, you don't typically go that high. So an in-betweener would be like 60 for short ribs, but you go lower like 57 Celsius, something like this, and and you cook them long enough so that all the textures are the same. And the vast majority of people prefer the traditional, vast.
Uh side by side. Everyone likes all of them. Everyone likes all of them. But the va in in some ways it's easier to do the long temp. And I haven't done it with carnitas, by the way.
I have not, so let's just stipulate that. I mean, pork b everyone knows that low cooked pork pork belly is delicious. But uh, and that's also typically an in-betweener temperature. A lot of people go in like 69, 70, although I used to do it like 63, 64. Anyway, point being that uh uh you know, I need to do more of those kind of uh side by sides, because I used to do them all the time when I was at the French Culinary Institute, but I don't know.
It is what it take it take it for what it is, but I'm glad that everyone enjoyed it. And the cool thing is is that you can just let it rock and then pull it out and like you know, crisp the hell out of it whenever you want to. So it's super convenient. You know what I mean? Yeah, extremely convenient.
Did you acidify it at all? Were there any was there any acid or was it a salt, pepper, and like whatever cumin or whatever in the hell else you put in oregano, what uh garlic? What orange, no, the orange, orange juice, like a fresh squeeze orange and then leave the peel in there and uh some onion and cinnamon and so the uh the uh the other question I always have in long cooked situations with like super long cooks, by the way, I go the opposite direction. Typically, when I do like that this style, any porky stuff like this, I'm way behind the eight ball, so I pressure cook it. And it's I mean, pressure cook the ever loving snot out of it.
And it's it's real good because it the pressure cooking at a high temperature amplifies the kind of meaty flavors of it. So what we should do is it because that we never did at the French Culinary State. We never did standard braise, right? Or whatever you want to call what they do to Carnite Tessel cook, whatever. Standard braise, pressure cook, and then two different uh sous videos.
The nice thing about the about the non-in-betweener sous vides is that the meat, the the connective tissue renders into gelatin, but it doesn't fully liquefy. So you can cut the meat into perfect cubes. To me, that was the cool thing about it, is that you could fabricate the low temp uh kind of braises into kind of perfect things that could be skewered. They wouldn't like shred themselves in the pot like uh like a traditional braise would. And so, you know, you could do these like awesome things where you would like make these like blocks or cubes and then like and like perfectly sear them on the outside and then hand them in, you know what I mean?
Anyway, you did the roast off. Do you ever do the uh you ever do the uh pan finish on them where you like let them sit in their own juices and reabsorb all their juices, then like you drain some of the juices off and then you pans like after you shred it, right? You shred it, you pan sear the hell out of it, scrape it off, get all the crusty bits, and then pitch it back with the the juice again and let it soak up, and then you put it in the keyboard. Yeah, it's good. It's real good.
And you know, that's what I do typically. Anyway, umrigy. What about you, Stas? You got anything? Uh no, I didn't really.
It was really hot in LA. I didn't cook anything at Jack's place. Did you eat? Did you I didn't want them ruined his kitchen? Uh all of his stuff was oh, what stuff?
Like cooking stuff. Wait, you're saying that Jack has like some like really like pristine cooking stuff and you're afraid to touch it for fear of messing it up? Because I kind of want to know this. Like I've never been to Jack's kitchen. Oh nice.
Like what kind of like what kind of stuff? What do you got there, Jack? What's what's your what's your like everyone has the one thing in their kitchen where they're like, ooh, that's my that's my thing. Like, you know, that only you appears all pro. Oh.
Yeah. I'm getting some good feedback on the pro. The pro really is better. I wish we could get more of them in the country. I love the pro.
I use the pro at home. Really? Anyway. No, I shouldn't use that much. They should almost be back in the country.
Oh, they actually they're actually on the water now. They should be on the water next week, yeah. Pro on the water. You got that in my head now. It's not my fault, man.
Everyone knows. What's up? I got fishbowled by a kid wearing the old school, like you remember like in the in the 90s, in the like the early 90s when everyone had the super high hat, the super high baseball hat with the hyper flat brim and the sticker on the side. It's coming back. I just saw like a nine or a 10-year-old rocking the rocking the super flat, super crisp Yankees hat, like way the heck up high on his head.
I kind of like that look. I've always loved that look because I'm like, how is that thing not blowing off your head? I love it. Um it's always good. Like I hate it when like crappy things come back.
Well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess. Not good.
Yeah. Well, you know what the problem is when it comes back, the people who it's coming back with, they don't have the referent of what the people were like the first time around. Right? True. So they, you know, they can't know, oh, only D-bags did that back then.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway. Uh, but I don't think that tall hat, that wasn't a D-bag move. No?
No. I don't think so. Oh. Oh, Nastasia. Nastasia disagrees.
Well, I I didn't, I wasn't part of it in LA. I only saw like East Coast people doing it. You're saying in LA, like they were uh not your favorite group of. No, that was me chiming in with 5050. I was saying 5050 on that.
I think it could be it could be that. But I also grew up in Long Island, so I mean, maybe that's just all the time. That was your first mistake. That was your first mistake. Yeah.
Listen, no offense, Long Island, but everyone who's from around here knows, like, you're either like a Westchester person or a Long Island person. And, you know, the only thing we can agree on is Jersey Nah. That's the only thing we can agree on. You know what I mean? True.
Yeah. Yeah. Although, you know, my elementary school years were spent in Jersey. So I feel like I feel like I can play both of those sides, but I I definitely can't play the Long Island side. So, you know what I mean?
Uh lucky you. Oh, yeah. So, how many North Face jackets do you own? Everyone from Long Island owns like 30 North Face jackets, am I right? I did, yeah.
I won't lie. Yeah. Yeah, good. I'm glad you're not, you're not, at least you're not a liar. All right.
Uh John, do you already you have anything? I've been messing around with corn lately. And if you puree it and then slowly heat it up, it starts to set. It's interesting. Like fresh corn?
Yeah. Huh? And is is the is the fresh corn already in the farmer's market? It's just starting to be, yeah. Yeah.
Started last week. What are you? Uh Silver Queen? What are you? Bicolor?
What are you? Bicolor, but I probably haven't tried enough. Right now it's only the bicolor that I've noticed, at least on Wednesdays. But and what is your sh what is your de kerneling method? Since you're gonna blend it, it doesn't matter, right?
Yeah, it doesn't really matter. But I mean, I don't know, I'm big bowl, small bowl, flipped over inside the bowl, and then like you know. You're vertical. Yeah. You're not a rotary.
No. I mean, when I'm when I'm cutting it, right? Not eating. When you're getting the kernels off. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're you don't do the you don't do the you're like use Yusuba style rotary. No, no. Yeah. No. You're just like shump, shump, shump.
Basically, yes. And then do you milk the cob with your knife? A little bit, yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna make a stock with that.
And I add folded that back in, and yeah, I don't wanted to do it for a pasta, but it's not good in that application, or at least in the way it currently is. So tell me how tell me how this works. So there's enough starch left in it that if you just puree it and then heat it slowly, the starch sets, you don't have to bind it at all. Yeah, no. And then what level of gel are we talking about?
Like, what are we I've taken it to like soft butter kind of consistency? Um, and I even just left it in the Vitamix the other day and just let that heat it up and do it, and it. It's good. Oh yeah, yeah. I'm sure everyone around you loved you.
Oh, geez. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, no, it's interesting, so I don't know. Gonna see what I can do with it. Now I'm getting more of your kitchen.
I had to whatever crap on them. Who cares? That's what they think. Ah yeah. I'll try your corn.
You know what I like? That's kind of a it's not corn pudding, but you put it in my head is a spoon bread. I love spoon bread. Very good. Oh my god.
You know, I've never had spoon bread out. I've only made it myself. You ever had it out? Who's serves a cornbread? I think my mom's made it.
That's the only way of maybe like other family gatherings. Yeah, I don't know. It's good though. Yeah, real good. Uh oh yeah.
You think about corn cobs? I've I know we said this before. Does anyone on earth like baby corn? No. I don't.
No. No. It's Jack, are you gonna be like you're not chiming in? So does that mean that you actually like it and you're just embarrassed to say so? No.
No. Yeah. No, right? Why does it exist? Like, what's it for?
I don't know. Like, the texture's not good. The flavor's not very good. I mean, like, what what is it? Why does it exist?
Anyone? Like, conceptually, it's cute. I'll give it that. It's cute. Like, why why else does it why?
Yeah, I don't know. You don't even have conjecture, right? That's how little it should exist. Okay. Have any of you ever bought, I'm gonna answer no for me.
Like, why would you buy canned boiled potatoes? Yeah, I don't care. I don't know. I mean, like, why would I mean have any of you ever bought that? Why would you buy that?
Now, I do have from being a child, a soft spot for the disgusting pasty canned sausages. You know what I'm talking about? Like Vienna fingers. Yeah. Where like they're literally like sure.
Yeah, it's halfway between a sausage and a pat take that's been canned so hard. And you know, the two the two cut ends, they look, you know. Yeah. I do have a soft spot for that. And I also loved, I haven't had it in years.
The um like devil would the devil the potted meats, the deviled meats, the ones that are like halfway between a riette and dog food. You know the ones I'm talking about? I love those. You know what I mean? Back in the day.
Anyway, I don't know. I don't know how I got on this. Uh all right, so I have so much crap to talk about that we should probably talk about it later and just do some questions first. What do you guys think? Anything else I'm missing pressing stuff?
Any uh business stuff, Stas that we need to talk about? Um what we have two more months of Benzol sales. Is it a full two? I thought it was like like a month and change. Um what kind of cool stuff have you figured out about the spinzel?
All right. Well, since you asked John, uh I we've been messing with the with the program, right? So it's now going like it's going faster now. So 4330. I don't know if I'm gonna try to push it even higher because it's spinning a lot better now, but the upshot is that you know, uh four minutes is now like my standard go-to spin on pretty much anything.
Yeah. And I've also increased the acceleration on it. So now it gets up to speed in 30 seconds. And I just uh, you know, yesterday was running some tests on faster deceleration time. So if you decelerate too quickly, it rips the puck apart.
And so uh I was testing, you know, uh tomato because you know it's got a pretty loose puck and anyone else wants to tweet me and tell me something else to test something that they have trouble with they want me to test before I lock this in but 30 seconds is still the puck doesn't break up at all on tomato and uh so yeah so now a full cycle from start to stop five minutes flat five minutes flat from from shut to open five minutes flat and uh the other thing is is that the pump now goes super fast on the high speed so you could it's always advisable to fill when you're doing continuous work it's always advisable to fill the rotor uh with the pump because what happens is the crap that floats on top if you just dump it in the rotor that stuff will get pushed out first and cloud everything up if you feed it into the into the with the pump that floaty crap gets uh filtered out by the by the tube feeder right so but now it used to be it would take like minutes to fill your thing even at fast speed but now it's like under a minute to fill it with with the pump or it's exactly a minute almost it's a 475 a minute and then the slow now is super slow so slow that like I was getting almost batch level clarity on um continuous mode. So all in all great changes the only negative thing that's happened recently is the uh safety lab would not allow so in the in the old one uh it was they deemed it too easy to push down and and start it so the old one if you put if you just take your finger and push real hard where on where the lid lock thing is supposed to go. Uh, you can kind of engage the you can make it think that the motor is there. And they didn't have a problem with that because the shaft at the top was smooth, but now that it's got a heck shape, they they they're not happy with that. So they're making us make the lever arm in the bowl a little bit longer.
Uh, and the upshot of that is is that the the only negative is that the bowl is no longer backwards compatible. So you can no longer use a 1.0 bowl in a 2.0 and vice versa. So that's the only negative. The lids already weren't compatible. Yeah.
And the rotors are still compatible in the tube feeders. Uh, I'm investigating changing the tube feeder, but that will not be in this run, probably won't be for another year or so. But that will be backward compatible. So people can get a new lid and a tube feeder should I ever change it. Uh that's it.
That's good. Uh I've been doing a lot with ginger and magnesium carbonate. People, there are two different magnesium carbonates out there. Uh, I got to do some testing on the second kind. There's heavy magnesium carbonate and light magnesium carbonate, and you can really tell the difference.
Light magnesium carbonate is like uh enzorbit level lightness. It's like super non-dense, it's like super fluffy. And the dense stuff is dense. So I haven't tested the dense stuff to see whether it works as well. I'm hoping I can test it this afternoon before I pack up to fly out.
Um just because I want to know whether you need to worry about it. Uh, I've already mentioned lactic acid on the show, right? That I was wrong about that all these years. Did I already mention that? I don't think so.
Oh, jeez. Get this, people. So in liquid intelligence version 1.0, I say this is one of those rare situations where if you making a mistake, two mistakes canceled each other out. And those two mistakes canceling each other out has led me to 10 years of wrong thinking, right? But the recipe worked.
This is why you have to be open to like observation of what's going on. So I always didn't like buying liquid acids, like for instance, phosphoric acid and lactic acid are both available as liquids, right? Phosphoric acid is the only way I know to get it as a liquid. Uh so but I always recommend, and I wrote it in liquid intelligence. I was like, get the powdered lactic acid because I like being able to measure it.
I don't, you know, I want them to ship me a powder. I want to carry powders with me, make my own solution, blah, blah, blah. At the exact weight. No lactic acid powder says on it that it's not pure lactic acid. I did mention this.
Yeah. So it's only like 50%, the one I measured that I got at Calustin's is only 55% pure. So the upshot is that my champagne acid, which is one to one tartaric to malic at six percent, ends up being about as sour as lemon or lime juice. So I always assumed that it was because they all had relatively the same sourness at the same concentration. But no, it's because tartaric acid is in fact more sour than malic and citric, and lactic acid is a little bit less, but I was also using impure lactic acid.
So now I have to re-mentalize all of that for the second go-around on the book. Anyway. Turns out I'm gonna do nothing. All right. Uh so I have on my sheet here, John, promote the Patreon membership and mention upcoming guests.
So do you know who they are and what I should promote? Uh I can find out who the upcoming guests are, but in the meantime, Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Um, as always, you know, there's different levels of membership, uh, three different levels, and you get perks at every level. You get to have your questions answered uh, you know, as quickly as possible. Dave prioritizes answering those you get access to fun live streams on Patreon, which Dave has started doing, wants to keep doing.
Yeah, I'm gonna keep doing that. Like the question is trying to figure out a time people can get on, you know. And the other problem with it, maybe someone can let me know is uh like it's weird because like uh I can read what people type into the thing, but there's no kind of give and take. I tried to have Quinn on for a little while. We couldn't figure it out because I wasn't doing it on my phone.
We'll try to figure out a better, a better mechanism. But anyway. Um like I said, maybe I'll do one from London. All right, do what did you already say who what guests are coming on? I think we need to schedule a little more.
Um yeah. So any suggestions for guests, let us know and we'll try and uh and make some things happen. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know what?
We've never had we've never have we ever had a guest on, Nastasi, we ever had a guest on where we were like, it was like almost like pugilistic, where we really just completely disagreed about everything. We almost did, right? You were gonna book someone on once. I think we did. I think we did.
I have to think about it. Yeah. I mean, we used to have uh your buddy used to call in all the time and just like poke the bear, just give me like get me all riled up. Remember that? Those are the those are the good old days of like she would call and just say some sort of crazy bull crap and just get me bent, just get me super bent.
Oh my god. I don't remember that now. Remember you Claire used to call in and like you would just you would get Claire. Yeah, you would get her to call in and just like I mean, just like say things that I could because you know, like, you know me, right? I was like, I'll take it, I'll take it, I'll take it, I'll take it.
And I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? You know what I mean? I just get to that point. So people don't know. Yeah.
People don't know they're reaching that point. Cause all of a sudden I'm like, I can't, I can't, I can't. No. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Yeah. Good times. Good times. Wasn't she also the vegetti queen? Yes.
Having having Nick on is pretty a lot sometimes, you know. Captain Greasy? Yeah. The Oil King? Yeah.
Uh I don't know. I love I love my man Nick Coleman. Like, I think he's good. I think I love it when he comes on, you know. We'll get him to bring a bass next time instead of a band Suri.
How about that? And we'll just have him do like Seinfeld licks, you know, like in the in the back, uh, as as we're doing. He can direct box into Joe's panel and you know? I don't know. I don't know, Joe.
Can he direct box into your panel? Yeah, of course he can. I got DIs. Alright, there you go. There you go.
This is why it sucks being a bassist people. When when you're a guitarist, right? When you're in a small venue, they might not even mic the drums, right? Because your drums are loud. The guitarist, they're like, how do you want your guitar to sound?
And they like care about your amp. They care about all your stuff. When the bass person shows up, they're like, plug it into the panel. You're like, what? You're like, I don't care what your bass sounds like.
Plug it into the panel. They don't care. You know what I mean? At least they didn't used to. Do they care now, Joe?
Yeah, we do. I'm a bass player, so I like to uh DI in. Yeah, but I mean, and you can definitely get, you know, there's gain, but if you want it to sit nice in the mix, like definitely DI. Yeah, but I'm talking like you're like the fifth, you're you're like there, there's like 10 bands playing, every band's doing a half hour set. Sound guy, like, sound guy cares not at all about your band.
You know what I mean? And so, like, they I don't know, as old days. Maybe everything's changed. I mean, most bass players just show up their whole setup. It's like so easy.
You just come DI right off the amp head. Oh, yeah. They never they used to always Y split me and like take my feed direct into the into their into the panel and then just like let my amp be my amp almost as my monitor you know what I mean? They wouldn't even put my crap in the monitor. Whatever.
I don't I don't mind that. I mean if you're gonna Y split you're definitely gonna lose you're gonna lose signal. Yeah. You know what was never satisfying that I bought uh I bought a uh a base Wawa and it just took all the chunk out of the base. Do they now have better base was that don't remove the chunk?
I don't know. You have to ask Eddie Lee. Uh do he uses use a wa? I'm sure he's got it somewhere in his signal chain. I got it because it's just like you know I used to just love the wawa sound so much.
No not into the wall on the bass. Yeah well I I never used it in on the roads yes. Yeah I never used it in I uh like I bought it and I was because I love it the sound in the records I was listening to back then but I don't know I never got at the sound you know if there's only one bass player it you you gotta keep the chunk you know what I mean? Why wa pitches the chunk you probably need a compression compressor after the wa. I don't know I didn't have enough money to buy the I think the Wawa was a was a gift anyway.
It was cool though. Good old petals are cool man they're so strong you know I mean yeah stomp on those mothers uh Dave Kleiman writes in is making golden syrup better in my coon recon what's the process in time is it still okay to cut up a lemon for the acid uh uh oh so that's one question then so on a golden syrup by the way is invert syrup that's been cooked uh long enough and high enough to take on a certain kind of kind of golden kind of color and you invert the syrup by uh adding acid typically. So like some people think that you can just heat it till it turns to a caramel and then water it down. That's not how you make golden syrup. You use acid.
The acid inverts the sugar. So uh an interesting, maybe maybe not interesting to you. Uh regular golden syrup is about 80 bricks, right? So 80 to 81, or right around what honey is real thick. So you can just put that stuff uh in with a little bit of acid.
I don't use lemon. I would, you know, I add like you know, two tenths of a percent or something like that of uh citric. And once it inverts, right, fructose uh uh turns starts turning y brown a lot at a lot lower temperature than either sucrose or glucose does. So the pressure cooker, even at first ring, can brown it up really quickly. And the advantage is if you know if you heat it just so it's like a liquid, then put it in there, is that you can time it pretty well, so it's pretty accurate all the time.
So that's what I would do. I would just dial in exactly how long you want it to go. It doesn't take long, by the way, once it reaches uh pressure cooking temperatures. So you have to kind of dial that in. Um, yeah, is that an answer to that question or no?
Yeah. Yeah. Uh invert syrup is uh is pretty cool. By the way, a lot of people, if you go to the Wikipedia page for invert si sugar, right? Uh it's wrong.
So any of you guys who are Wikipedia uh whatever they call it, editors, right? Uh it's wrong. It says on it that uh sugar will invert just by heating it. So that if you make a simple syrup and you heat it instead of using a blender, which is the way God wants you to make simple syrup, right? It says that it's going to invert.
In fact, it won't. Uh and how do I know this? Uh, because I did it. Uh so I I even pressure cooked it, right? I pressure cooked regular syrup with no acid.
If there's any acid in there at all, sucker's gonna invert, right? Any acid. But remember that the sh like people who make sugar don't want their sugar to invert. So they make sure that the sugar liquor that they're that they're crystallizing the sugar out is not acidic, right? Because they don't want invert, right?
So uh what you do is is uh I did it two ways. One, I actually tested for the optical rotation to see whether there was any inversion or whether it was pure sucrose, uh pure sucrose PS. And then uh I used glucose test strips for uh people who test sodas to make sure that they're getting a diet soda because they can't have uh they can't have glucose diet, you know, for diabetic or whatever, whatever reason you can't, and tested it with that negative. So no inversion on regular heating over normal periods of time. Uh there you have it.
Ums. I saw in the Tropical Standard book a recipe for oleosacarum that included either a refrigeration for a longer time or shortening the time with a sous vide bath. I was curious if flavor is best extracted without heat. I'm gonna stop myself right there, roll feeds. I have not done a side-by-side test.
And so I would be what temperature I wonder do they use? I would be very uh loath to tell you one is better or worse, because also there probably is no better or worse, they're probably different. And then the question is what's better for you? You know what I mean? So I think you know, do a side by side, let me know what you like better.
You know what I mean? Let me know what you like. Uh okay. Uh certain things I thought I was wrong, uh, thought one thing, and then when you do the test, you get a different answer. So for instance, daiquiries, which I have five time later, I'll talk about Tales of the Cocktail and what we did for the daiquiri.
Um, for instance, um, when Nastasi and I were doing oh my god, Nastasia, you remember how many tea infusions we had to do back at the FCI? So many. I I think back on all of the things we did so much work there. I know. So much work.
I know, I know. So uh Emric Harney, the uh, you know, current I current young generation of not young anymore, but whatever, of Harney and Sons, brings us all this tea, and we've already told you the story where he gives us a $400 thing of tea and and doesn't tell us anything, so we just throw it into a bucket of booze and make an infusion, which was good by the way. You know, but you know, $400 good? I don't know. Puer.
It's puer, some fancy poo-air. Um so he wanted to do a tea distillant. This was, I don't know, Stas when, like 2010, 2009, something stupid. And um like way early, way early. So we were infusing and then rotovapping.
And the point of the story is is that we were doing hot infusions and then rotovapping and cold infusions and then rotovapping, right? So not even just um stuff that's being extracted, but how the aromas are affected by the temperature. And there was a marked difference between cold infused and roto vaped and hot infused and roto vaped. And I would have expected the hot would be better because you know, usually hot extracts more of that kind of stuff. But in fact, people enjoyed the cold extracted ones more on the test that we ran.
That's my memory. My memory jive with your memory, Nastasia. I don't remember the that detail. No. You just remember shaking your head at the uh at the interns uh and telling them not to break the roto vap.
I was I was telling someone the other day, do you remember when I when I did that thing, we had a a student named me here, and I was like, we're gonna do roll fall, and we're gonna say, you're gonna say I'm here, and then you're gonna say your name. So just so I could hear him say, Me here, I'm here. Yeah, I remember you doing that. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. That's uh, you know, terrible. Terrible. Yeah, should should not have done that. Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, whatever. So long time ago. Yeah. We're gonna we're gonna give give give you the pass on it. Um, we were just talking about the break.
Oh, by the way, rotovaps. Uh people have been asking dripping trapping rotovap questions in roto. So back back when I was a boy, when we were rotovapping, right? It took a lot of time and energy and like a lot of skill to get it to work properly. And nowadays, if you're gonna buy a roto vap, just make sure you get the good vacuum controller.
The one that can here's specifically what you're looking for. Here's here's my three pieces of roto vap advice. So if you were gonna buy a roto vap, don't bother asking, because I'm gonna then have to muff earmuff, I'm gonna have to, you know, nostasi night earmuff. One, get plastic-coated glass because someone eventually will run that rotovap without wearing eyeglasses, and the ones that aren't plastic coated are dangerous when they implode, which eventually they will, especially if you're cleaning it in the kitchen. Your odds are you're gonna get some breakage and it can be pretty violent when it's under vacuum.
So plastic coated glass. Two, get the biggest distillation flask you can afford. I'm gonna give you four things. Get the biggest distillation flask you can afford because uh they boil up a lot, and you don't want it to fly into your uh condenser column because that sucks, especially when you're doing habanero. As we used to when we used to do habanero and someone would boil it over into the condenser, not only do we have to stop the entire unit, we had to break everything apart, clean all the grease off, and then thoroughly wash it.
Remember three and four times, and then we Nastasi and I would stare at them, whoever did it, and we'd be like, now lick it, lick the whole thing, lick it. And they're like, What? We're like, lick the roto vap. And if it was still spicy, we'd make them clean it again. Remember this, Nastasia.
Yeah, you can't do that now, dude. Well, then lick it. Yeah, I can. That I would totally still do that. And I was like, lick it again.
And then when it's not spicy anymore, then they have to clean it. Then they clean it again to get the licking off. You know what I'm saying? Why can't I make them lick a roto vap? You can you can make them taste their soup.
Why can't I make them lick the roto vap? If I say taste the freaking soup, they have to taste the soup, don't they? Yeah, but it's different between tasting a soup and then tasting like a really potentially spicy thing. They've cleaned it. Yeah.
If it's spicy, it's on them. They cleaned it. I'm not saying I'm gonna clean it and you have to test it. Yeah. I'm saying you're gonna clean it, and then you have to make sure that it's not spicy anymore.
You messed it up. No. Yeah, why not? I don't understand what's wrong here. Like, what's wrong here?
You're licking a piece of equipment, not a food item. It's a piece of glass. It's a piece of glass. You don't you can't make anyone do anything they don't want to do anymore. So even if they don't want to taste the soup, I mean they can quit.
They can quit, but the job is to make delicious food, right? It's not outside of their job purview. John, what do you think? For me, it's it's just like the element of spice being left there. Like, yeah, sure, they could have cleaned it better, but I don't know, like forcing somebody to potentially like burn their tongue off.
How are they gonna burn their tongue off? Didn't they clean it? Ostensibly. Okay, but what if they served it to a guest? And it's like yeah.
Yeah. So like you the I don't understand what's wrong here. Like, we're making a product for another person to consume. You are a cook. You are making a product for someone to eat, right?
Yeah. You have to ensure that it's good, that it's not messed up, right? Tasting is part of that. Yeah. So if you have a piece of glassware, I'm not asking them to lick the cooler or like lick the countertop.
I'm saying, here's a piece of glassware that we are, by the way, pouring a liquid into that you will consume in your mouth. Yeah. Make sure it's not going to cross contaminate. Yeah. Yeah.
No problem here in my mind. Like, but like, are you gonna if somebody chops habaneros on a cutting board after they watch it, are you gonna have them lick the cutting board? Oh, for no cutting board, because it's hard to like that like what I would do there probably is have them like wipe it with like a like a uh bread. I would have them like wipe bread on it real hard and then taste it. That's how I have people t test oil.
Like if I if if the oil's on the edge, right? Yeah, I'm like throw a cube of bread in, like, and then eat the bread. Yeah. And then if they're like, I don't want to do that, I'm like, why are you a cook? Why the hell are you a cook?
You know what I mean? It's like, what is wrong with you? Yeah. Oh, I want to I want to go through the motions, but I don't care whether the food is actually good or not. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Now I understand it if you have like a uh if there's a reason if you have to cook something that you can't consume for religious or moral or allergy reasons. Get it. Yeah, get that. Yeah.
But it's a piece of glassware that we're putting potable liquids through. Yeah. The most sensitive thing that you own to see whether or not you've cleaned it properly is your tongue. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. I don't know. You're you're just making it sound like a little fratty, I guess. It's like, you know, it's not fratty. Yeah, but like having them keep re-licking it until it's not spicy.
Well, how else are you supposed to do it? You tell me another way I can make sure that the next thing that goes through it isn't ruined. That all of the hours of work, all of the money that we've spent, getting the good habaneros, roto vapping everything so that we make a non-spicy distillate, right? All of that work that the entire team is putting in. I get it.
How do we not have that ruined? You tell me a different way to not have that ruined. And by the way, no one was no one was ever like, I'm not doing that. Because it's like no, that's but what Nastasia is saying is that was what, 15 years ago versus now. Yeah, but I don't understand the problem.
Like, what is even the problem? Because it was like this. It'd be like this. It's like interns not paid at French culinary asked to lick equipment headline. Like that's I'll take it.
It's just what I'll take it. I'll take it. All right. Then that's yeah. Okay.
I mean, you know. Uh, you know what? Another piece of equipment that sometimes it gets licked? The tasting spoon. Oh no!
I won't use spoons. No stainless in this mouth. Come on. Let's get real here. You know what I mean?
It's not like it's like you're making it look like they're crawling around on the ground. I'm not like, I'm not like get on your back, go underneath the prep table and scrounge around with your tongue out and your eyes closed and see what you get. You know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway.
Okay. Second question from Dave Kleinman. Uh, I'm making a burner for my homemade Tandoor. Uh, does having a pattern of orifice is in various sizes give me more versatile BTU settings? Will the propane only flow through the smallest holes ignited at the lowest pressure and move to the larger holes as pressure increases?
The burner's made of steel. Should I cover it with a refractory cement with skewers and the holes temperature? Ooh, you know, I don't know. I don't know. I'd have to see it, right?
So, like, uh, you know, to again, it's my favorite thing to quote uh to quote Rosemary's baby. Every burner is different. Or to paraphrase, I guess. And so um people who make burners uh are very careful to try to uh make them work for the particular application at hand. So some people will have like two actual different burners with two different knobs.
It's very hard to get a burner that throttles all the way from I'm going crazy down to I'm being mellow. It's super hard to do. Um and usually if one is flaming out, it's the gas is gonna come out of all the holes all the time. The question is, is it gonna sustain a flame or is it gonna blow out? And I don't know, you ju you just need to test, right?
I mean, like I can't really make any recommendations. Um you just need to test. But when you they don't they make burners for the tandoors? I think they make ones that are built for the tandoor. You know what I bet you?
I bet you those things work because they were built for the tandoor. So I would look at those burners. Um I I only ever used um charcoal and wood in mine. So uh I don't have any experience with gas firing uh a tandoor. Um I would look at what professionals do because professionals don't have time to F about.
I'm sure that works. Like whatever they use works, and even if maybe you can't afford the one that they're getting or can't source it, like see see how similar it is, right? Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah.
Uh all right. Uh oh, no, I didn't finish Railroad Feeds. We just started talking about um uh heat, right? All right. So back to we're back on oleosacrum, all right?
Just to reset your so you know what for those of you that don't know what oleosacrum is, let's just start there. You take uh it's kind of a funny word, right? oleosacrum. Yeah. So you take citrus peels traditionally, like lemon, lime, whatever, uh, although lime, whatever.
Anyway, let's just say lemon or whatever, you know what I mean? And then you you you put the peels in at the bottom of something, then you throw sugar on top, and you scrunch a scrunch of scrunch a scrunch, scrunch, scrunch of the sugar. Now, a lot of people are like, oil and the sugar, that's the whole point. The sugar is an abrasive. The sugar here is an abrasive so that you can smash the peels and just break up the cells and get the oil out, right?
Okay. Uh so you do that and you let it sit for a certain length of time, it macerates. The sugar also uh sucks the water out of the peel. So it you're extracting a lot out of it, but you know, a lot of the effect of the sugar is uh abrasive, and then that's used in various recipes, right? Yep.
All right. Uh so we're back on oleosacrum, and I remember I said uh from earlier in this show that uh I didn't know whether heat was going to be beneficial or detrimental. Certainly too much heat would probably be detrimental, but anyway. Um, although think about it, when you do cordial, you boil the peel. Yeah, but if you boil the peel for too long, so you know when you're making cordial, typically I do one to one uh sugar and uh and lime juice or lem, you know, whatever you're doing.
Oh, by the way, back to the golden syrup question. When you invert, let's say you were to invert syrup or make a cordal inside of a jar in a pressure cooker so it's sealed and nothing can evaporate, right? Right. Whenever there's acid present and you're heating in sugar, remember it's gonna invert. That's the whole point.
So inversion, which I I should have explained this more. Inversion, in case you don't know, sucrose is a disaccharide. It's got a glucose and a fructose together, right? So one of the disadvantages of sucrose is that it crystallizes when you have a concentration greater than uh about 67 uh bricks. So right, so maple syrup is right at that level.
It's almost all sucrose maple syrup, except for the flavor part of it. And if you get it any higher than that in sugar content, it'll crystallize. Honey is invert syrup, typically, almost all invert syrup. So that means it's that sucrose has been broken, either it didn't start that way, or you can take sucrose and break it into a glucose and a fructose. Now, honey can stay liquid all the way up to about 82 bricks.
It will crystallize if you are into those kind of crystallized cream honeys, right? But like even at 82 bricks, it's it you can keep it like a semi-liquid anyway. And you know, if you go even a little bit below that, it's not gonna crystallize because invert sugar can take a much higher concentration before it crystallizes than sucrose can. Okay, okay. So acid is going to invert.
Now, when you invert, and it's called inversion because it in case you guys care, dextrose is the same as glucose, right? The word dextrose, glucose, same word. You know why it's called dextrose? Anyone? Anyone?
No. Well, you know, dexter, like go to the right, like like dexter right as opposed to Levro, right? Dex. So uh when light goes through sucrose, when polarized light goes through sucrose, it's bent to the right. So it's uh so glucose and success, so glucose, which is dextrose, bends to the right, fructose bends to the left when light goes through.
So you can actually measure how much uh inversion has happened with a polarizer. And I've been doing it, it's kind of fun. Uh when you invert sucrose, when you break apart the sucrose, uh the sucrose to make a glucose and a fructose, you add a water to it. So what happens is one water m for every molecule of sucrose that gets broken, one water molecule comes out of your water and becomes part of the sucrose, uh part of the glucose and fructose. So the bricks goes up.
So if you were to even completely seal a jar at 50 bricks, right? Seal it. Nothing can evaporate with a little acid, heat it so it inverts. And now measure the bricks, it's higher. So it's about 5% higher.
So a 50 bricks syrup, if you invert it without evaporating anything at all, is gonna read about 52.5 bricks, right? So it's just so you know, like when you're heating it and you're gonna invert sugar, all your bricks readings are gonna get tossed off. And every soda manufacturer has to worry about this, except for us because we use corn syrup. But all of the people who don't use corn syrup who use actual sugar and they're trying to hit bricks targets for their uh they have to worry about inversion. Anyway, um back to oleosacrum.
Um I've also seen people heat the oleo after extraction and melt the sugar, and I don't know why you would need to do that though, because you're gonna add liquid to it typically, like juice. Um and I've seen them do it with peels in the mixture and by squeezing the mixture from the peels before heating. Oh, uh, I know what I was gonna say. That's why I got on cordial. When you're when you're making cordial, typically you throw peels into the cordial and heat them as it comes up.
But it tr the way we used to make cordial all the time is you're you're bringing it just to the boil, and then and that boiling kind of produces that stable cooked citrus flavor and also extracts flavor from the peels that you have in the cordial, right? And then you're tasting it to see when the peel extraction is what you want, and then you're straining it all, right? Now, if you've listened to you know me talk about cordial, the the problem with cordial is that there's not enough acidity in it, so it's overly sweet. So it's uh traditional cordial is a little too sweet for my taste, considering how much acid, so I add acid back to it. A way to do it without adding acid to it, to have it be totally natural, is to uh boil it for uh a long time to reduce it down such that once you add the sugar to it, it's at its original volume again, right?
You get me? All right. Now, if you add the peels early on in that boil, because I did it, it is unpalatably bitter from the peel by the time you're done. So you can overheat the peel and extract too much bitterness. So if you're going to heat the peel for an oleum, be aware that the more you heat it and the longer it sits in that hot uh environment, uh, the more bitterness you're gonna be extracting from the peel.
Yeah? All right. Um, does Dave and Co. have any thoughts on the best approach for oleos? Um, I mean, I basically, I don't know, I feel like I've tapped out on oleo, but I've seen oleo recipes listed at one to one peel versus sugar.
I'm wondering if two to one peel to sugar result in better flavor concentration or if that just hurts food safety. I wouldn't do two to one because I mean, honestly, are you ever like I can't add more oleo because it's too sweet? If the answer is no, then you're using the actual abrasive power of the sugar to get the stuff out. I would just stay with the recipe that works. If you're like, I wish I could add more oleo, but it's just too dang sweet, then you know, sure, do that.
Or hell, mix some sand in with it. I'm kidding. I'm not, though. I mean, I'm kidding, but I'm not. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Strain the sand out. Once the sugar melts, strain the sand out. You know what I mean? Yeah.
All right. Uh Justin Sherrill writes in, I've been saving vanilla beans to use them for infusions. Can I toast them and grind them up in the odd blender I have for more. Why is your blender on? Uh for more vanilla effect.
Uh, but they've still been a bit fibrous after blending. Is there a pectanex equivalent that would break them down for uh more or a better way to grind them? I don't think pectinx is gonna break the vanilla down because I think it's a little bit lignified, the fibers. I don't know whether it's lignin or cellulose, probably maybe either one is more difficult to break than pectin, much more. What I would do, were I you, uh, if you had liquid nitrogen, just freeze the heck out of them with liquid nitrogen, then blend them up to uh a powder.
Or uh on the other side, it's really I mean, a lot of the flavor is gonna be gone if you've already done if you've done a good job infusing the flavor is sucked out of that. As we've said before, like the most of the flavor is gone by that time. You could dehydrate them, right? Like uh if you dehydrate them completely until they're like husks, then the fiber is gonna break up a lot easier in uh in a blender. Yeah?
Yeah. And then do the old fashioned. I hate doing this. So I know I'm telling you to do something that I hate doing, but um blend, sift, blend, sift, blend, sift, blend, sift, so that you're not continuously blending the fine particles already. Uh it's a good way to it's a good way to make yourself angry at yourself and the life choices you've made, but it does make for a uh more even powder.
Uh okay. Uh Agos writes in question on pasteurization. I got my hands on some raw milk. What would be the best way to pasteurize it while preserving the flavor as much as possible? I suspect Sous V would be great at it.
I don't know, but uh John looked up some pasteurization temperatures. What do you got? Oh one was it was one 63 Celsius for at least 30 minutes or 72 Celsius for at least 15 seconds. Okay, so if yeah, I wouldn't do the high one, I do the low one. So here's what here's what I would do.
I would um when they're doing pasteurization and they want it to happen quickly, they pass the the milk between like very thin plates or in very like small tubes so that the heat transfer is immediate. So you don't have to wait for the stuff to come up to temperature. So I would do it for this in bags and keep the bags thin and then put the bags between two um cooling racks. So like when I'm in a half lexan, let's say, uh, and I want need to separate my meat out, like I'll have a bunch of quarter cooling racks and I'll use those because they have the little nubbins on them. So you could do uh cooling rack with nubbins down, milk bag, thin, you know, finish milk bag, then uh quarter rack nubbins up, another quarter rack nubbins down, milk bag, uh quarter rack nubbins up, quarter rack nubbins down, milk bag, and then finish with a quarter rack nubbins up, drop in your uh half lexan, and you'll get full water in between uh the things, and you'll be able to because you have to do 30 minutes from the time it comes up to temperature.
So you could do like 35, 36 minutes because if the bag of milk is thin enough, you're gonna heat through it relatively quickly, especially with uh, you know, there'll be some form of convection currents on the inside. Make sense? Yep. All right. Uh JPM, how do you recommend figuring out?
I'm gonna do you last, JPM. Uh Christian Sacco writes in uh looking for some quick tips on good polenta. I've never loved it when I made it, and I need some help with things. Add pork. Yeah.
That's called scrapple. And scrapple is delicious. I love scrapple. Anyone here not like scrapple? I used to not like it, but it's I've grown.
Yeah. I can see some people not liking it if it's heavy liver. Yeah, right, Jack's delicious. If it was just called like porky polenta, people would buy it. They're like, ooh, scrapple.
Ooh, Pennsylvania people. Amish. Who likes that? You know what I mean? Like, people saving money, making you know.
No, like delicious. Yeah. Anyway. I mean, that's the best way to, right? I mean polenta made with like a good, like, good stock and like some pork mixed up in that thing.
Chill, slice, fry. Yeah. You know what I did? Someone mentioned uh to me the other day when I was at Tales of the Cocktail, they reminded me that they had been to this dinner I cooked, oh, I don't know, 20 years ago, 18 years ago, at my old apartment where uh Food Network had asked me to make Halloween creepy foods. Did I ever talk about this?
I don't think so. All right. So I did a bunch of like I did like on my crepe maker, I made like spider web crepes with the crepe maker, you know, which is cool. Well, but uh the one that I was most psyched about is I molded my finger in silicone. Uh, and then I cut, you know, I cut it off.
I pulled my finger out and then cut it in half so I had a mold. And then I took polenta and I was keeping it warm and then molding fingers in polenta. So it with an in in so I was molding all of these fingers in polenta and then uh putting a like a Marcona almond in where the fingernail was, and then deep frying them uh so that they were like crispy because the the movie The Hitcher with Rugger Hauer, one of the scenes in it, I'm spoiling for you guys, sorry, but like is the guy goes down into his French fries and dips in ketchup and he pulls one up and it's a human finger. And so I wanted to do like the hitcher thing. So I had like French fries with the occasional polenta human finger in them.
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. But you know, the Marcona, the almond was key, man.
Gotta go for realism. You know what I mean? Gross yellow fingernail. Um you know what? I think I used a yellow polenta though.
I didn't use a like a because no human is that color, polenta colored. No. Should have gone for like the, you know, whatever. Next time. Yeah.
Although I was deep frying it, so it's gonna get toasty color. Yeah, so it wasn't, yeah. Anyway. Okay. Um looking for some uh quick tips on good polenta.
I've never loved it when I made it, need some help with things. If you could just talk about it quickly, what would be lovely? Things like what courtness type uh coarseness type of cornmeal to buy. You know what you shouldn't do is try to make polenta with uh grits. You don't have to cook it forever.
So like uh I had some delicious uh what's that keeche keepsy boy uh grits, and I made grits with them and they're delicious. The uh, you know, whatever the Jimmy Red or whatever they're called. Yeah. And uh they're delicious. Yeah.
Uh and you're like, you know what? I want to, I wasn't actually making polenta, I was making scrapple. But uh same. So I'm like, you know, and I have these great grits and they're not gonna last forever, so I'm gonna try to keep and it just takes four of err. Eventually you'll get it, you know what I mean?
But it's just like, you know, you think that that kid in the sand lot things are gonna happen forever. Like trying to make polenta with grits, no. So you want like a finer, like more of a cornmeal-y texture, um, and less of a although I guess polenta is closer to Hey Stas, you are you a polenta queen? I like it. I don't love it.
Like, but I mean make making it. Like what do you because like do you use more like uh like a semolina or do you use more like uh closer to cornmeal that most of us buy is actually pretty close to a semolina. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.
But you use regular cornmeal when you make it, or do you buy the fancy? I feel like for the if I'm making it like Nastassi, I'll cut you off. No, I said if I'm gonna make it, I think I buy the or I would have bought the fancy. Yeah. I feel that's what I would do too.
I feel like if you're not getting the good stuff, it's just not gonna taste very good. Yeah. Also, if you're gonna make it Italian style, buy the crap that the Italians got Pellagra with. You know what I mean? Like if it's good enough to give an entire couple of generations of people pilagre because they don't know about nixtimalization and they, you know, don't have enough nutrients because polenta is not a good I mean uh corn's not a good staple on its own unless it's been niximalized, you know, go the way they did.
We have vitamins now. You know what I mean? Yeah. Um, so we got coarseness. Although I look, if you can buy some of these fancy corn meal uh corn meals like uh not grits, but like the fancy cornmeal, they really are quite good.
Yeah, you know what I mean? Um like I like a but Jimmy Red would be Jimmy Red, right? And there's a blue one that they make. Um I think they've changed the name. All right, let's see what they got.
Well, Geechee did. Yeah. Because they're not actually geechy. Yeah. Marshan mill.
Marsh henmill. Marsh hen meal, yeah. Or Anson or any of those folks. Um, all right. I wonder whether I wonder whether Macienda sells any uh that aren't, you know, just cornmeal that's not been effed with.
I know that's not their mandate, but they have such good corn. Gotta hang it back on sometime. Delicious. Uh all right. Uh JPM writes in how do you recommend figuring out the titratable acidity of a fruit juice, especially with fruits that have variable amounts of acidity in a bar setting.
Historically, I have just Googled for titratable acidity and found uh ranges for most fruit. I found uh these methods, pH meter and by color indicator for wine. Would they work for fruit juices? No. Ha ha uh but I'll tell you something.
Uh JPM, I didn't really want to talk about this because I'm working on it for the uh the reissue of uh, you know, in a year or so of uh liquid intelligence. It's actually not that hard to do titration uh at home uh or at a bar. I've been doing it now and it's like super fast. That's how I found out that um that's how I found out that the lactic acid isn't pure. All you need is a scale that is uh measures small amounts that's good to uh a hundredth of a gram, and you need some uh sodium hydroxide and phenolphthalene.
All this stuff can be delivered one day uh from Amazon. I'm gonna write about it in depth. Um I don't know if I'm gonna do it on social before the book comes out, but I am, you know, I've been working on it in depth, and it's pretty simple to do. Uh and it's actually really kind of fun. You need a white piece of paper and some bright lights if you're my age, so you can really see when it but it's not titration with a burette the way that they people used to do it, uh the way they do it in labs.
You can do what's called gravimetric titration, which is titration by weight. And because sodium hydroxide is such a strong base, and these acids that we're using are weak acids, you uh it's a very crisp, clear color change, and phenothaline, which is super easy to source, not food grade though, works fantastically. Um, so that's what I do. Um, you know, do it like a couple of times and you'll be a pro at it. Uh it really does not take long to learn.
You do need something that can measure by the drop though. So, like eyedropper. What do you got? Uh I just want to say if James Wang will get to your Sabayon question next week. And thank you, Andrew Cummings, for looking up those recipes for me during the show.
Although we think, by the way, on the Savillon, I'll say this on the way out. I apologize, Joe. Uh, I used to have problems with Savillon all the time. Of course, I was doing it traditionally in like a bowl, like over a bane, you know, uh over hot water, whisking it. Savillon, you don't know, he's like you take like wine and whatever and egg yolk, you whip it up, you can do it.
He wants to do it, or they want to do a savory one. Uh every time that you don't cook it enough, even a little bit not enough, it's gonna break right away. And that's you're always nervous you're gonna overcook the egg. You didn't cook the egg enough. I guarantee you that's what happened.
You didn't cook the egg enough because it looks like it's great. You're like, oh my god, and then boof it dies, which sucks. So just make sure you cook it enough. And we'll talk to you next week. This time, another Friday episode next week, cooking issues.
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