Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center, New York City, New Stand Studios. Special Thanksgiving holiday edition, where we're gonna do two separate things, an hour and a half. First, we're gonna start with Matt Sartwell from Kitchen Arts and Letters doing a classic in the field and then we're gonna do the Butterball Turkey Hotline expert herself. Barbara Robinson's coming on for the last half hour of our special hour and a half.
So let's get cracking. Uh John, how you doing? Doing great. Yeah, reading. Yeah, so listen, I don't know if you know this, but people who can listen live on Patreon, did you know that uh for the last half hour, this hour and a half, they can call in and have their very own uh one-on-one with like a supervisor from the Butterball Turkey Hotline, not just like you know, the normal calling in, which they could do anytime.
Did you know that? I didn't, but I'm really glad I know that now. Would definitely want to make me be a member, yeah. I know, I know. What else do they get if they join the Patreon?
Access to the Discord, uh, you know, with a great community of like-minded listeners, uh discounts from books at Kitchen Arts and Letters, and really just a whole bunch of other great things. So you should all join Cooking or uh Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Love it, love it. Uh on the panels we got Joe Hazen. How you doing?
I'm doing great, man. Getting ready. Yeah, getting ready for the Thanksgiving. I am happy holidays. Yeah, you doing it uh at your house.
Uh what are you doing? I'm doing it at our house. We have about ten people, uh including two children under two years old, so it should be quite fun. So eight adults, two kids. Uh, exactly.
Nice. Good mathematics. Yeah, yeah, that's good. It's a good number. Yep.
Should be fun. I like that. And then coming back, special guest, Matt Sartwell. Good to have you back. Thank you.
Yeah. Happy to be back. Yeah. I'm happy to be on Patreon too. I'm a Patreon member there.
We appreciate uh mutual sub mutual support, which I appreciate. I think that's important. Uh now, going uh all the way across the country on their side in Los Angeles, we got not in the same room though. We have Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing?
Good. Yeah? Yeah. Jackie Molecules, what's up? Hey, hey, I'm good.
Yeah, and then holding it down in Canada. Quinn, how you doing? I'm doing good. All right, right. So now, before we get to our classics in the field, and we know we have obviously plenty to talk about because there are many classics in this field.
Let's be you know clear. Uh what what are we all uh miss assuming that all of us do the you know some form of the Thanksgiving thing? What what's what's going on with people? What do you got going? Anyone?
Anyone? How about you, John? You doing anything at the restaurant? You close down? Uh we're closed Thursday and Friday, but running pretty barebones stuff up until then.
So you decided not to do the whole. So what do you think about that thing where people like uh Maria Guarnicelli, Nastasi, you'll remember this, never did Thanksgiving in her house, always Jean Georges. Yeah. Yeah, which is kind of a baller move. Like, I don't want to cook.
You know what I'm gonna do? You know, daughter's a famous chef, right? She's, you know, world-renowned cookbook editor. Jean-Georges. Every Thanksgiving.
I'm sure it was a great meal. I haven't been to Jean George in over a decade, but Jean Georges for the longest time, my favorite of the super high ends. Just in terms of fun. Really? Yeah, I used to love going to John George back when I used to do that.
Anyway. Uh so you decide not to do that, John, huh? In the restaurant? No, not at the restaurant. I mean, it's a wine bar.
People don't come enough yet for that kind of a meal. So you gotta plan so far in advance and build up a group of customers. Like we would always be like, we're gonna do a new year's at the bar, and then we don't sell it until like a month before, and then everyone already has a plan. Exactly, and it's a complete dud. Yeah, and then everyone loses money and they're all ticked off.
Yep. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. That's when your staff get crazy and saber champagne bottles with iPads and break them.
I was not new staff. I was an owner. Uh and to be fair to me, I didn't know that we didn't have Apple Care. One. And uh, because who doesn't have Apple Care?
And two, uh I shouldn't have broken. And three, the bottle did savor and everyone enjoyed it. Good. You know? Good.
So much for Gorilla Glass. What about you, Stas? What do you got going on? I'm going to my parents' place. My sister's gonna be here.
Yeah. I want I want some sort of a uh a live uh you know, not publicly, but I want some sort of text as it's happening, because it'll be after I'm eating, right? Because I'm eating East Coast time. I want like some sort of moisture check on the turkey. I'll yeah, I'll get a sound.
I'll give you sound so you can hear how. I like a turkey that's so dry that it's a like a sound. I'm trying I'm trying to think about it like the best we well look, look like the best it could be is like the crunch of the skin, right? But then you're like, no, that's the breast meat. Oh my god.
Nothing worse than like a you know though, I have to say, a very thin slice and a lot of gravy can make up for a lot. And a dry dry turkey breast with a boat ton of mayonnaise is fine on next day's sandwiches. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Sure. Yeah. What about you, J what about the you uh senior molecules? What are you doing? Well, uh double double duty.
We're doing Boston for my girlfriends, family, and then the next day in Connecticut with my brother. Oh, where in Connecticut? Norwalk. Oh, Norwalk, Norwalk. You get it like what do you do after Thanksgiving, by the way?
Are you one of these let's go see a movie kind of people or what? Like, what do you do? No. No, me either. No, just not just so tired because I eat like the dinner lasts so long.
I don't have to do much this year, which is blessed. My mom is for the first time since the pandemic, my mom's letting people back into her house. And so we're having it at my mom's house. And, you know, she's got the the stuffing recipe to beat all the, you know, so says Dave Chang, so say we all, I guess, that my mom's stuffing recipe is the best. I mean, I agree, obviously.
Uh but so usually like the last time I had Thanksgiving with you know that side of my family, they didn't make enough. I didn't get leftovers, right? Or like even when I used to cook Thanksgiving a lot, other people would take all the leftovers, I wouldn't have leftovers. A couple of Thanksgivings ago, I had to make a whole second Thanksgiving. So I told mom bluntly, I'm like, I'm so happy to come back to your house and make enough stuffing.
Make enough stuffing. Don't make me make another batch the next day. Make enough turkey. Don't make me cook a whole nother turkey the next day. Because I will, and then I'll I'll get bent about it.
You know what I mean? Anyway. Uh plus all my brothers and sisters now are old enough that they can, you know, if they can afford their own food. So hopefully there's some leftovers for all of us, you know. Uh what about you, Matt?
What do you got going on? Uh restaurant with friends. Yeah, yeah, which uh which uh we're going to Dante on McDougal Street in the village. I didn't know they did Thanksgiving. Uh seems like the first year, but uh we have to sort of accommodate a variety of expectations.
So a restaurant seemed to be the best way to do that. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Am I allowed to ask more? Because it sounds like an interesting problem that you're navigating. Or would you prefer not to?
I I like the Scrivener, you would prefer not to? I I think yes. Like Bartleby, I will uh I will not elaborate further. We're really happy to be getting together with this group of people, and this was the easiest way to make it happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So all right, Quinn, what do you got going? What what what uh Thanksgiving? Yeah, they do. Oh, yeah.
I forgot. Don't you have some sort of like pseudo thing that you oh you already did it, right? Yeah, we no, we have Thanksgiving. It's in October. Okay.
Sneaking up on us. Yeah. Yeah. You're so close right across the border. We'll probably cook some big meals just because.
Yeah, yeah. So when do they eat turkey in Thanksgiving? I mean, uh in Canada. Like when's the is there a big turkey holiday in in Canada? I mean it's Thanksgiving in October.
Okay. All right. And like uh, do you get like good deals on like turkey from across the border, like right after Thanksgiving, or no? Across the border. Yeah, us.
Um I eat us. Like you gotta remember, can't you like like America is only like 500 feet from like the you you you get on the water and America's right there from Vancouver. Again, maybe maybe uh on the mainland, but yeah, not on the island. I have to say, I'll say I said this every year. I love turkey.
I'm gonna talk about this later, I guess, with uh Barbara Robinson, but a lot of people uh say bad things about turkey as a bird, and uh I love turkey. Taste of turkey, smell of turkey, turkey gravy. Please don't make me please don't make me chicken gravy and call it turkey gravy. It's not right. That's mean.
Yeah, it's just bad. Yeah. Oh, oh that's uh terrible. A little bit of a double stock. Free start with chicken stock, reinforce with turkey.
I'm okay with I I'm okay with it because most time when you're starting with a quote unquote stock, it's really just like college broth bullion, which is, you know, relatively bland. And so like if you do enough reinforcement, especially if you roast off the bones and uh have some crusty outside bits with some fat in it, you get enough. The turkey is such a strong thing. I don't mind a little, a little undercurrent of chicken. Uh just the same way that I use I use crappy chicken stock as my base for most meat, most meat-based things, because I don't really keep uh meat stock in my in my freezer.
I don't have like a thing full of veal stock. I'm not like John here who has freaking freezer full of freaking veal stock in two different colors. I wish. Yeah. Some vegetable stocks, but yeah.
Really? You're a veg stock? Oh, yeah. Well, just for recipe testing and things right now. But the plan is once my combi oven gets fit fixed, I have many stocks.
Many stocks, you're the man of many stocks? Beef, duck, yeah, a whole bunch. Let me ask you a question. Escoffier style. Right.
Does anyone still mix that little bit of tomato pasting with their stock? Yes. Really? I do, yeah. I thought that was like I've done that for a I've done that for a veg stock.
Yeah. But it used to be that was like one of the main bases. He they would stir a little bit of tomato paste in, right? Yep. Yeah.
And I never understood it. Just like seems like it makes it harder to. Ah, whatever. Yeah. You know.
What if's uh all right? Did I miss anyone? Stas, I got you. We're gonna get the we're gonna get the sound cam, but not for public consumption. I'm sorry, people.
It's like uh what was the old face that you used to make that people always wanted a picture of and you would not oblige? Vegan. Oh, yeah, the Nastasia's vegan face. Yeah, it's this is gonna be like that. Like people are gonna be asking for, you know, for years, they're gonna be like, What's the what's the sound of the turkey?
And we're like, Don't you wish you knew? Don't you wish you knew? You know? So I mean if it's truly dry, it would just be the sound of like mouth noise, I guess. Oh god.
Remember when someone threatened mouth would have to make a remember when someone threatened us all because of mouth noises on the radio. They I believe they uh Paul Adams, our friend Paul Adams from America's Test Kitchen. I believe they threatened his life specifically because he made extra mouth noises when we were tasting something. And someone was, you know, people are triggered. It was me in disguise.
Uh all right, I'll just say this. Uh I'll report back. So my mom says all I need to make uh is uh bread for the cheese because we do, you know, cheese either we do it before and after. Back to Maria Guarnicelli for a minute, my cookbook editor, mother of Alex Guarnicelli, you know, famous chef. Uh she hated, I didn't never told in the same way that I never told her that uh, you know, the photographer for the for the book was my is my brother-in-law Travis, because she wouldn't allow me to work with family, so we just never told her.
Uh you know, aside from that, the other thing I never told her was uh that I eat cheese both before and after the meal. She hated people who had cheese before the meal. If cheese came out before the meal, she thought you were the lowest form of pawn scum that was available. If cheese is an aftermeal situation. Any thoughts?
If that is the first time I have encountered that particular point of view. Um I think I'm Pon scum. Yeah, I think well, I think she thought it was like an extremely American way of eating, as opposed to like the kind of you know, French restaurant tradition of cheese or dessert. And the correct answer is everybody? Both.
Both. That is the correct answer. Both. The answer is always both. I like it, but I like it both before and after as well.
So that would be three. I'll take the dessert. I'll take the after dinner cheese and the before dinner cheese. For instance, I think blues after dinner are lovely with a dessert one. Lovely.
But I'll also eat cheese before. Anyway, I'm making bread for the for the cheese course, uh, Parker House rolls for their Parker House rollness and dessert. And this year I'm trying to do uh, you know those checkerboard cakes? You know, with the rings. So I'm I 3D printed an extra tall three uh three and a half inch set of rings so that I can do a full height New York cheesecake alternated with uh pumpkin pie in a ring form, but like super tall.
See whether it works. Are they gonna like cook in the same amount of time? Well, I'm gonna use a combi oven. I'm gonna use the uh a Nova Precision Steam oven. So since they're both custard based, I'm just gonna fundamentally let it cook for like three hours at like uh, you know, like 180 Fahrenheit or something like this.
So the outside won't get overcooked while the inside is undercooked. I'm gonna pre brown the butter for the uh graham cracker crust so it doesn't need to get any sort of heat on it. So I'm not gonna have to do a water bath, right? Because I got the steam oven. So we'll we'll find out.
Yeah. And then I'm gonna do uh I always forget who did it, but whoever recommended the uh acid adjust key lime pie. I'm gonna do a pomegranate version of that as the other thing. And it's gonna be uh it's gonna be fantabulous. You know what I'm saying?
That sounds very attractive. Yeah, it yeah. Well, I want to go red, but not cranberry, because we're already gonna have the cranberry with the thing, right? So, you know, we were like, no, even though cranberry would be delicious, just not on Thanksgiving. You don't want a cranberry pie on Thanksgiving, right?
Not if it's a lot of cranberry with uh turkey. Their head better be. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Their head better be. Okay. Oh, speaking of this, get this. So I'm at this wedding in uh Houston uh over the over the weekend. Uh my sister got married.
Gets I didn't my sister runs the space space trash section of Houston Mission Control. She finds all the space space trash and tracks it. Guess the smallest thing they can see from uh the ground, like a like a thousand kilometers away. Guess what size object they can track? Uh license plate.
Peppercorn. Whoa. Peppercorn. Serious technology. And she said you would be extremely surprised how much damage something that's peppercorn uh size can do when it's going 18,000 miles the wrong way.
You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Like 18,000 mile an hour. Anyway, yeah, space trash uh checker. Anyway, I got a line on a cranberry sauce recipe.
But then I asked for the recipe, and it was not it was not forthcoming. So I think I will never get it. I can't talk about it in case they do give it to me, I don't give it away, but it is the craziest cranberry sauce recipe because the cranberries are not cooked. They're ground. I will say only this they are ground mixed with a bunch of other things and lime jello.
Anyone heard of anything like this? Never. Like me. Like activated lime jello? Like you're yeah.
Not like well, not yet, but you know what's an uh a non, as you call it, activated lime lime jello recipe? Uh a recipe from the 60s slash 70s that was awesome. Is you would buy a pre-made angel food cake, you would shred it up, you would toss it in three different colors of jello, and then get uh three different kinds of uh two or three different kinds of fruit and then pack it in with the with the jello soaked thing and ice cream. Have you ever had this? I have not.
It's good. You pack it back into the angel food cake pan and then you refreeze it and you unmold it, and it is good. I will rate it as good. All right, so what do you what have you do you want to do user question? User, do you want to do Patreon questions first or do you want to do ones you've brought?
Let's do the questions first because I feel like people who are who are in for the money ought to get their money's worth. Do you know who likes you a lot? Is Joe Hazen behind you? Joe Hazen is like we hang out. We were it was just last weekend.
Joe, Joe, it's like get to the questions, you jerk. All right. Uh all right, so uh from uh Hubay uh peasant, just came across a section uh about a book called How to Cook and Eat Chinese in Ken Holmes Autobiography. And it apparently introduced the term stir-frying to the English lexicon. I'd be much obliged if you could discuss this with Matt on the next classics in the field episode.
So um I am aware of uh of that assertion, and I don't know anything that says uh otherwise. Uh I did go looking through some older Chinese cookbooks from the early part of the 20th century, which are a relatively scarce item, and I couldn't find any uh examples of the, you know, to the contrary. Uh it's always difficult to prove prove a negative in that case. Um the book itself is pretty highly regarded by people who are serious students of Chinese cuisine and of uh Chinese American food history. Um so it sounds like a credible assertion.
Um but it's it is a technique that has a very specific place in Chinese culinary culture, and then it's not something that sort of readily applies to what we know from a lot of Western cooking. So it makes sense that somebody would have had to come up with a with uh a hybrid word to help get the point across. And it seems, you know, the fact that it has stuck, yeah, uh says that it does a job that no alternative phrase could have has done so far. Well, the first edition came out in 1945. And uh, you know, they were in uh so it was like uh it was like uh the the woman who wrote it was I I think she was teaching English to people uh in I think around Cambridge, because that's where the forward from the book is, uh, you know, teaching American officers uh I think Chinese for serving overseas.
I think that was one of her jobs. But uh it's so colored by I was flipping through it beforehand, it's so colored by the time, and it got published a billion times, right? Um and stayed in publication even past uh, I believe past when, you know, um deeper looks into Chinese cuisine came into vogue after the Nixon uh administration when he visited China, which is when you know there was a huge resurgence in kind of different kinds of uh Chinese cuisine that had nothing to do with emigration from different places. Anyway, I digress as usual. Uh but it's got a lot of the hallmarks of old, uh older, i.e., you know, earlier 20th century kind of uh like kind of learned writing by women, in that she gives a lot of credit to her husband uh in in the book, and then also says something that's very indicative of the way people who were highly educated when they wrote about food would say kind of negative uh things.
So uh by the way, Pearl uh Pearl Buck wrote the intro to one of the later uh editions. Uh author's note. Uh uh this uh this is you know by the author. She says, I'm ashamed to have written this book. First, because I am a doctor and ought to be practicing instead of cooking.
Secondly, because I didn't write the book. The way uh I didn't was like this. You know, I speak little English and write less. So I cooked my dishes in Chinese. My daughter Rulan put my Chinese into English, and my husband, finding the English dull, put much of it back into Chinese again.
That's when I call a dish mushrooms stir shrimps. Rulan says that that's not English and that it ought to be shrimps fried with mushrooms. But Yen Ren says that if Mr. Smith can go to town in a movie, why can't mushrooms stir shrimps in a dish? So mushrooms stir shrimps, you uh you shall have, or what have you.
So it's a great, you know, it's it's interesting, you know what I mean? Uh, and it's got a lot of interesting little nuggets. Like, for instance, at the time, uh, she says that the most common starch used in China is uh water caltrop starch, which is, you know, that form of bat nut water chestnut. You know, that that water chestnut that looks like a bat's, like looks like the devil, like a devil nut, like water caltrop, uh, as opposed to cornstarch. And she calls out uh cornstarch, which she calls corn flour, like she's been hanging out with English people.
Worst. English people wake up. Flat corn flour is not cornstarch. Wake up. Okay?
Corn flour is when you grind corn, corn. Corn starch is when you wet mill corn and just get the starch. Wake up. But she calls it corn flour. I'm not going to get mad about it.
Um, so uh so it's really interesting book. There are, uh, by the way, she it's uh it's also classic in in the sense that uh being written in 1945, an extreme hatred of Japanese people. Uh she she uh uh miss uh and she says this again, but this is in the foreword, not written by her. Miss Uh Bue Yang Chao uh had never cooked an egg until she went to Tokyo's women medical college, right? This is how where she became a doctor.
This had to be in the 30s, right? Uh or late 20s, early 30s, 20s, yeah. Probably not 30s. Uh there she found Japanese food so unpalatable that she began to cook her own meals. And by the time she qualified as a doctor, she'd also qualified as a cook.
It's like zing, you know what I mean? Like, wow, it's so hardcore, right? Um, so the stir fry uh that's oh, but she calls uh she she does use the uh Japanese word uh uh Ginamoto for uh MSG, but she just calls it taste powder, which is kind of an interesting attractive, yeah. Taste powder. What do you what are you adding to that, John?
I don't know, it doesn't need much else. Taste powder, taste powder, yeah. Um so yeah, I forget, I don't think I have it here. What the stir frying is a direct translation of, but it's uh it's hilarious. Like it that you know, uh uh and she also I must not have copied this part out because I thought I did.
Uh, she says that it's one of the seven great regrets of the world that Shad has so many bones. Shad, my favorite fish. And I was like, you are correct. Wow it is one of the seven great regrets of the world, not like death or war. You know what I mean?
Shad. Shad with all those bones. Speaking across the decades. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Someone from the the 40s coming back and being like, you're right. It does. It sucks. Anyway, I wish I could introduce her to the 80-year-old lady who still uh fillets the shad for me in uh Connecticut, you know. Not in Norwalk though.
Sorry, Jack. Not gonna get good Shad in Norwalk. Sorry. Uh you're not. No.
Although you do have a good aquarium there. It's true. Oh, John, throwing shade on your aquarium. Wow. He's like I prefer to go up to Mystic when I do my aquarium work.
Mystic Aquarium is definitely better. Okay. I mean, it's nice to have the normal aquarium. Of course. Okay.
Oh, Mystic's better. That's yeah. All right, Mystic's a good aquarium. Designed uh the new edition there designed by Caesar Pelle. He just died recently.
My wife used to work for him. That was her first architecture job. Yeah. And uh I went to his 90th birthday party, which was kind of cool. And he was still with it, still sharp.
Interesting, you know. I guess be an architect, keep keep active, keep your brain active. Oh, going back to um uh the the book again. Um I was flipping through it also to see whether uh so that she uses the term defisher for any sort of thing that you add, like vinegar or ginger to cover up the aromas of fish. But I was looking for specific techniques that are very in vogue in terms of Chinese cooking now.
For instance, velveting prior to stir-frying on meat, and wasn't able to find anything in my quick kind of perusal. So I don't know whether it wasn't current in her group of cooks or whether that was like uh but it would be interesting to note kind of when that became part of the common lexicon of Chinese cooks when they were writing about it in Chinese, which is something I will never know. You know what I mean? But unless somebody who speaks Chinese tells me. Yeah, it's you're always at a disadvantage uh trying to understand something uh in a language you don't speak.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because you're never gonna be you're never really gonna be part of it. You know what I mean? Uh all right. Uh William writes, I enjoy reading cookbooks and cocktail books.
I also suffer from a finite amount of bookshelf space. Uh I now prioritize uh prioritize only buying physical copies of books from Kitchen Arts and Letters, of course, that are, and they said that by the way, I'm not adding that. Uh that are really special or that I or that I think I will reference frequently. The rest I've been buying as ebooks because they don't take up shelf space, and I can read them wherever I want. They are also hideous though.
I prefer PDF books to uh Kindle books. I mean, Kindle's probably better for reading for portability, but in terms of the layout, I I've said this before on air. The publishers don't necessarily consult the author when they butcher it into a Kindle book. And so, like, I have no control over the layout of my book in Kindle format, and it's a horror show. Anyway, uh is there any way to purchase cookbookslash cocktail ebooks in such a way that it benefits indie bookstores or more directly authors instead of using something like Kindle?
If not, do you think there's any chance that opportunity might exist in the future? Uh there are a couple of different factors in that. Uh Kitchen Arts and Letters doesn't sell uh electronic books uh in any form, mostly because the uh publisher arrangements are sort of like they don't allow you to be selective. If you sign up to to do it, you have to do everything. Uh we are very much not that kind of bookstore.
Um I am ruthless and always telling myself I'm not sufficiently ruthless in what we choose to carry and not carry. So coming on board like that is uh and go doing everything would would be unattractive for us. Um there are also, as you have identified, issues with formatting and um and electronic books and PDFs have strengths, they have weaknesses. Um it's it some format may come along someday that makes it more satisfying. But you know, I I own some electronic books.
They're almost always simply books of text, nothing with illustrations because the illustration stuff just starts to go completely wonky um in ebooks, depending on what type of reader you're using. You know, am I looking at it on my phone, on an iPad, on a specialized device. Um I wish I had a better answer for that. But um that part of the industry sort of favors the big players. I mean, most of the industry favors the big players, but um in that particular one, I just don't see Kitchen Arts and Letters making an effort to get into it and a and um adapting ourselves and trying to reinvent everything from the ground up in order to make it a satisfying experience.
So in my apartment, what we did in our bedroom was we carved out an additional three feet of like basically space where the bed is, and in front of the bed, like w instead of a instead of a headboard, there is a floor to ceiling faced in the opposite direction bookcase. So that goes like the width of the bed, so that now I have the entire bookshelf wall that is behind the bed, and then the bookshelf itself kind of like double width, and it is hard to navigate in there, but it you know almost doubles your book storage space if you don't need that extra room around the foot of your bed. And what do you really need that extra room around the foot of your bed for? Uh to be honest. You know what I mean?
Like what are you gonna do with it? Nothing, right? Uh other things, um books, I think are it's not fun to have books kind of stored away, and I do have a lot of books stored away. But um, you know, if you have if you're a project-based person like like I am, sometimes you can have like uh a book bookshelves that are brought out for projects, almost like your own kind of like current reading library, and that's another way to kind of dense things up because you can put things away in bankers' boxes by uh title or not by title, by um subject, or by project, and then you you kind of know where they are. Uh so there are ways to um there are ways to not uh inconvenience everyone in the house with your horrible book habit.
But um I have to say I haven't fully solved it because there are books everywhere in my house, but uh you know, they stuffed in every cranny books, but you have any other like storage solutions? I'm a terrible person to ask that question of because I own a bookstore and I have 2,000 square feet of of book storage, so the the lines between my personal collection and the source collection are um are pretty nebulous. Um you're like the president of a university, you get to all the art that's not on display, you can just put in your office and everything. Exactly. Yeah.
Um so uh yeah, I I do keep a lot of books at home. Um but I sort of use the finite space that is allocated for food books there as a kind of limiter, and things go back to the store, things come to my house. Um so yeah, I'm I'm not helpful there. Yeah. Uh also like I think a lot comes down to like um I think there's a huge divide between people who cook out cook physically cook out of books, like books in the kitchen versus reading books and then not having the book in the kitchen when you're cooking.
I'm pretty much that. I don't hardly ever I know you're the other way, right? You keep you bring books to the kitchen sometimes. I don't it depends on the book. You know, if it's something that I haven't no experience with, yeah, it's gonna be with me uh in the kitchen.
But there are lots of books that I, you know, I'll I'll read the recipe, put the book back on the shelf and go in the kitchen and cook. It all depends on my comfort level with the particular type of cooking. Um I I keep a stack of books at home that are books that are new that I want to spend time with because I I feel that they could be really something interesting and I want to be able to talk to people very specifically about them. And if I'm gonna cook, say, out of the new Nick Sharma Vegetable Book, I'm not gonna like close that book and put it on the shelf and then go in the kitchen and do it my way because I need to understand Nick's way. So I will for a book that I'm working from the first time, it's definitely gonna be in the kitchen and used.
But lots of other books, it's like, oh, I remember that. I did that before. It was great. It needed more hot sauce or you know, more butter. Is that usually the answer?
More hot sauce, more butter. I mean, those are good answers. It's it's uh it's a pretty common pair of techniques, yeah. Yeah. So uh from uh Will Robinson, who um coincidentally it's his mom who's the butterball expert who's going to be able to do that.
Oh, seriously. Yeah. Uh wants to say, uh recently been rereading Alfred Russell Wallace's The Melee Arch Do you say art how do you I never say the archipelago? How do you say it? Archipelago?
I would have said archipelago. Archipelago. Any other alternative pronunciations here? Nope. Okay.
Uh the Melee Archipelago for the first time since college. And I'm wondering if there are any broad modern text dealing specifically with the culinary biodiversity in the Indonesian region. That's a mouthful of a sentence, Will, to get out without stumbling. Um looking at uh Pikafeta's Philippine picnic on your web store, and it will probably have to pick that up. And we'll probably have to pick that up.
What do you think? You have the book here, what do you think? I did, I brought it along. It is a fun little book. I this is a piece of scholarship I really admire from a Philippine uh Filipino writer named uh Felice Santamaria, who is engaged in sort of a vast exploration of the interaction between the Philippines and that part of the world and and the new world.
She's particularly interested in the connections between uh Manila and Acapulco because of the Spanish galleons going back and forth. This is you know, obviously a tangential subject. But getting back to Will's question, I'm not aware of um of anything current that sort of tackles that subject. In part, I think it would be a pretty vast project given the the biodiversity in that part of the world. And the books that I can think of that even try to get to burrow into that tend to get into the weeds very quickly, even for more refined areas.
So like Virgilio Martinez's books about um indigenous uh foods in Peru. Um he's done two at this point and um two and a half. Um and they're all incredibly focused on a limited number of ingredients, even though there's a lot more out there that he could be talking about. It's how he can keep coming back and doing more books. I think Indonesia's got to be just so loaded with uh possibilities that it would be a multi-volume encyclopedia.
And no one's done it yet. Not in English. It could be, you know, it could exist in any number of um other languages, but um I haven't seen it in English. All right. All right, sorry, Will.
Uh Monty says, I really enjoy the well, not sorry, but I mean like, you know, it's not your fault, Matt. Well, I mean, somebody may be out there and say, actually, Matt's wrong and and type up and say so. I need to hear that kind of thing, though. I mean, because that's how we make discoveries. We rely on customers coming to us and saying, I can't believe you didn't know about this.
Well, we used to do stump Matt. We never could stomp you. No. I mean, we we did find um about a year and a half ago about a 600-page book on Jamaican food, just on Jamaica. Um, and it's a serious ethnological, biological study of all types of finished dishes, of local crop plants, of forage plants, and so forth.
And Jamaica versus Indonesia, I mean the scale of things is such that I think anybody who really tried to do a serious job would need six, seven books. How's that Jamaican book? It's good. It's strong. I'm sorry I can't remember the author's name.
The title is simply Jamaican food. Um and it's published by the University of Jamaica Press. Um Good Provenance. Good proven. I mean, yeah, I mean he sort of passed muster with with people who who would have been there knowing this all the time.
It wasn't like it came from the University of Wyoming Press, which might have taken the subject very seriously, but Wyoming. No offense. Less likely to have somebody on staff with uh with the knowledge. So um, yeah, I was really impressed. Um my shout out to my colleague Laura Jackson, who found the book and said, God, we have to have this.
Nice. All right. Uh Monty writes in, I really enjoyed the book, All the Tea in China. Who wrote that again? That was uh it's called it's not that's not the full title, right?
All the tea in It's all the tea in China. Blah blah blah. Like I can think of like three How England stole the world's famous drink and change history by Sarah Rose. Yes. Okay.
Uh let's assume that that's the one. Uh that was when was that? That was let's see. I forget. 2010?
Yeah. Uh about the history of tea. Uh any other similar uh books about spice spices and such. I brought my uh old school uh Frederick uh Rosengarten just because I'll push those books whenever I can, especially the Nuts book. The Nuts book is uh there is nothing that comes close to to rivaling that book still after what 35 years?
I mean, just 40 years? Just the description of people getting killed by uh Brazil nuts falling out of trees is worth the price of admission. Like, you know, he's a every year some people die from nuts falling out of trees from like a hundred feet in the air and killing them when it hits them on the head. I'm like, wow. It's a brutal world.
Yeah, for not for not a great nut. I mean, let's be honest. Brazil nuts, fine. Wait, Joe, are you the one that loves Brazil nuts? You're the Brazil nut freak, right?
No, no, someone's a Brazil nut freak, but I mean, it's not the best nut, right? I mean, it's a big nut. Is anyone think Brazil nuts are the best nut? Anyone? Not even top ten.
No. Well, top ten. I uh that's hardcore. 10's pretty wide. I don't know.
I mean, like, you know, I would say macadamia better than Brazil for a high fat nut that's texture based. If you're gonna go for a high fat texture-based nut that's not a flavor-based nut, macadamia. Right? I mean, is it you would think? I mean, that's a good textured nut to macadamia.
Yeah, yeah. Not that my not my top flavor nut, but you know, agreed. Yeah, yeah. Uh like what else? I mean, pistachio is great.
Yeah, pecan, great, hickory, great, walnut, great. So, how many have we done there? They then cashew, great. Uh, you know, then almonds, almonds can be great. Love love a good almond.
Almond is a really great cooking nut. Almonds are fantastic, and also it's very diverse almond. Uh, what else you got, Quinn? Give me some more nuts. We gotta get to 10.
What? Hazelnut? Oh, yes. What's the difference between a hazelnut and a filbert? Is there a difference between a hazelnut and a filbert?
When I was growing up in Oregon, they said no, but they said no? Yeah. Yeah. It was just a matter of nomenclature. Yeah, no one in America says filbert, am I right?
Oregonians say Filberts. Really? Yeah, everybody there grew the people I know who had orchards grew filberts. Wow. That may have changed.
Did they grow filberts but sell hazelnuts? Yeah. You know, I I can remember driving past the orchards. I they all said filberts. Nobody ever said nobody ever said we the uh raised hazelnuts.
When you get the Bazini can of nuts, like the 10 pound can, they say filberts on the side. Really? They're uh as far as New York City nut vendors go, they're old old school. Yeah. You know?
Big company. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And guess what didn't make this?
Oh, we're counting peanuts. No. Yes, but no. I mean, obviously they're eaten like a nut, but clearly not a nut, but also amazing and diverse. Well, aren't aren't walnuts or peach cans also not nuts?
No, they're both. What do you mean? They're both nuts. I don't think there's a botanical definition of them. Although they're from a group.
Well nuts from a group. They're nuts. They're nuts. Pretty sure. Someone someone checked me on it.
Those are nuts. Peanuts grow under the ground, not a nut. You know what I mean? Like a nut, you know, ground nuts. You know what I mean?
These ground nuts. Well, nuts, nuts are like spices. It's sort of uh, you know, you call something that because you describe the way it gets used. Right. Um, but that I I thought this was a really interesting question because there is a new book called The History and Natural History of Spices by a British geologist.
Of all things named Ian Campbell. It's just come out in the last two months from something called the History Press, which is a small British publisher. He is an organizational compulsive, which actually makes access to the book really interesting. He has the book is full of charts about what do we know about the first uses of this. When did we, you know, when is the earliest sign of the spice trade?
And again and again, as you flip through the book, you can see these tables in which he's leading you off into all kinds of different research rabbit holes. And his citations are strong. He's done a really good job of of presenting you with the information to go even deeper. But he's um systematic in his approach to families of spices, those which come from, say, the ginger family. Um while he's not the world's most compelling pro-stylist, he's also um a clear, understandable writer.
He's not um it's not one of those cases where someone's enthusiasm for the subject leads them to just sort of tumble on and on and on. Uh he can write a good clear declarative sentence and pair it well with the next one. Um and I'm I'm really impressed with the book. It's it's on my table for further indulgence. So uh well, not the snappiest, also not long-winded.
Yeah, no, he's he he he understands how to get a point across in a way that is. There are people who whose writing you become very conscious of them as a writer. He's not that person. He is a, you know. One sentence follows the other in a clear and logical order that makes it easy to read.
You're you're not indulging in flights of lyrical fancy. Um and spice is a subject that could easily lend itself to that. Because uh a lot of other people have been led down that path, and and as a writer, you might also be tempted to do that. He resists it, and I think he it allows him to convey a great deal more information. Here's something uh so uh I'm just a asking.
So when you read things, descriptions of flavors, and this spices made me think of this. Like, what the he what the heck are you supposed to do as a writer? I just tasted like um recently 30 different infusions, right? For you know, because I'm right, you know, redoing. And uh after a while I'm like, it just tastes like friggin' infused stuff.
Tastes like roots. I mean, like I can't think of new things to say. Like, what are you supposed to do as like a uh like how am I supposed to explain to you what Valerian tastes like? You know what I mean? Like, I'll taste one that I'm really familiar with.
I'm like, oh, you know what this tastes like? It tastes like hibiscus. You know what I mean? Like because it's so crappy just to say, well, it's bright and acidic, kind of red, you know what I mean? Like what do you what are you supposed to do?
Well, I think everybody's ability to describe flavors depends on it something of a common frame of reference. I mean, if you you're writing for somebody who hasn't already tasted a number of things, it's really difficult to say, I mean, how do you describe cinnamon to somebody who has never had an encounter with much in the way of spices at all? If somebody whose in entire palate is grown up, say, in a cuisine that is herbally focused, something like a spice is it's it's it's tough sledding. So I mean you can't not resort to comparisons. Right.
You can't, and also like at a certain point, yeah, at a certain point, it's it's difficult, right? I mean, certain things also like are very clear, but also very hard to describe. How do you describe gentiin? You know what I mean? Like d dirty, we like there's a a gention, like a dusty, there's a gention flavor.
How do I describe genshin? If you don't know what it tastes like, how the hell am I gonna tell you what it tastes like? You know what I mean? Well, wine writers come across that same thing too. And sometimes I think they isn't that why people hate wine writers.
They overdo it, is what I was striving at. Yeah. I mean, like I have very rarely detected all the flavors in a in some glasses of wine that are that are attributed to it. Um and I'm you know, I'm content to believe that maybe my palate is simply not um developed enough to to spec to detect all those things, but I also think that it's just they're probably some pumps some some poor soul on a deadline. It's like, okay, I have to write 15 more of these, and no one's gonna know the difference.
Right. If I say it tastes like civet. Uh because who's tasted Civet? Right. That's kind of what I'm re being reduced to on these things, but I don't want to do that because I hate that.
You know what I mean? I don't like I I'll if something tastes like civet to me, I'm gonna tell you. Like my favorite used to be this tastes like giant water bug essence. You know what I mean? Not real giant water bug, because I'm not an expert.
I'm just an expert in the artificial giant water bug essence that you buy at the local mart. You know what I mean? But anywho. Uh all right. But in the remaining 14 minutes that we have left before we need to talk turkey.
Uh what do you what'd you bring? Okay. Um I brought a variety of classics today. Uh one of them I think we'll start with is the old Waldorf Astoria Bar Book by Albert S. Crockett.
Uh Crockett was a journalist who sort of eased his way into being um a press man for the old Waldorf uh Astoria Hotel. And um this is a book that was published just after the end of Prohibition. Um he had done an earlier version during Prohibition that was a collection of uh sort of recipes for things that people couldn't make. But in this case, he f uh once it was legal to actually make cocktails again, uh he fleshed it out with more stories about people who were patrons of the hotel and of the bar. Um and it's a interesting book because it's part of an effort to restore in the United States the idea of cocktail making as a serious craft.
It's been 13 years since people could make a living publicly making cocktails and at least, right? 1919 to 33. Yeah, 14 years. So it's um there's been a real fall off. And he is in part trying to uh reinvigorate the idea that that there's an art here that needs to be picked up and practiced.
Um it's an interesting book because the recipes themselves would are very surprising to somebody who's used to contemporary American cocktail recipes. Uh some ingredients like vermouth predominate in a way that they're um they're just not that common now. So the sort of the current joke that uh, you know, if you you like a martini, you sort of wave a the vermouth in the direction of the glass and then just drink the gin. Some of these cocktails are are 50% vermouth. Right.
Well, you know, uh in the intro, he you know he started, I guess, either working for them or being a patron in, you know, what was known as the gay 90s, right? Which was only 30 years or so after the original bar manuals were being written. They're all extremely vermouth heavy, right? Um, I didn't get a chance to look through it, but like uh I think also this is the one where everything let a lot of things have like a dash of absinthe and and and stuff like this. I'd be curious to go back and look at the recipes.
A lot of those super vermouth heavy recipes I really enjoy. So um I think I called you or we discussed at some point some of the early kind of maybe I was talking about it with one rich, some of the early bar compendiums that were just written by an editorial team. Um I forget the name name of them, but uh I was making a bunch of the early Manhattan variants that are very heavily vermouth, and I kind of like them a lot. They're kind of good, yeah. Uh but so one thing a question I have about this, and as you say, I think this was kind of the first or the most famous anyway, of these kind of lost art things that became the driving force behind the cocktail renaissance in the early 2000s, in, you know, at least in the United States, in New York at least.
Um this narrative that something is lost and could not be regained, but did exist in other places. And I wonder how many other people before this were pushing that narrative, or whether this was to be kind of beginning of that narrative, which still is the dominant narrative today, interestingly, or at least 15 years ago. Do you know of any other people that were pushing that narrative that hard? Um, I don't, in part because I think a lot of the other books were not as narratively driven. Right.
As this one, I mean, here, uh, what are we he's got the first 20, 30 pages of this book or background, and he often stops and diverts himself with stories about people. So he he makes that point and returns to it uh in numerous places through the book. And I think part of also what he's doing, because let's be honest, he was a press man for the old Rodolf Hart story is putting forth the idea that something magical is be is being recreated at the old Wald Arfastoria. Exactly. And it's in, you know, it snappy writing.
Yeah, snap, snap, snappy writing, good writing. Um He's a great storyteller. Yeah, you know, like any time someone pines over something lost, it makes me a little bit nervous. You know what I mean? Anytime hates the current because they're pining for something lost, right?
I'm sure that often it's true, but you know, given what people typically pine for as things that are lost all throughout the different periods of my own actual life, things I've seen. Like so in the 80s, people pining for things that were lost. In the 90s, people pining. 2000s, you know, you know, we all know. Anyway, my point being that it's interesting that this narrative of something lost because of prohibition because of this kind of law, I think, never got re-evaluated as something.
In other words, he his opinion was never reevaluated as something that needed to be reevaluated. Someone's saying, no, actually, you know, the drinks in the late 30s in in uh in America were good. You know what I mean? Like uh, I mean, because everybody thinks post-war American drinks sucked. You know what I mean?
So I think it all kind of gets lumped in. It's like prohibition was over and we didn't get good again, with the exception of certain kind of tropical drink recipes until you know the 2000s, which is uh, I don't know, it's it's interesting, right? That that there hasn't been a critical reassessment of that. Well, I mean you always have to ask who's telling the story. Uh you know, is it somebody who's gatekeeping?
Like I have knowledge that was entrusted to me through some secret connection I have to peep somebody who was there. Uh is it somebody who's say, I have knowledge and now I'm sharing with you, and therefore you should regard me as an authority. I mean, all of those things are factors in any book that you're getting, no matter what the subject matter is. Um how much is this worth by the way, the original? A lot.
This is an expensive book. Um, there are reprints around. Uh they're not beautiful pieces of reprint. You could probably pick one up for less than $20. I'd look to see if Cocktail Kingdom has this.
They don't. Um they might want to think about that because they do good reprints. 33 is not public domain though yet, is it? I have to check. It's on the cusp.
Yeah. But this is a first edition from 1934, and it's $1,350. And this is one has it was actually rebound before we got it. So a copy that was not rebound uh would probably be more worth more. That was rebound?
Yeah. Yeah. You can see that it's been what relationship does this have to the 2016 Waldorf Astoria book that came out. Uh again, is any of the original in the new one or no? I don't think so.
I think that's all. All right. And in the 20th century material. In the in the small amount of time we have left, um, you wanted to uh call out some other books, but we're gonna have to I think do them quickly. What what other books did you want to uh call out?
Uh a few things worth paying attention to if you see uh come across them in the world, Pop and Sustenance by Mary Taylor Semeti, uh, which is uh a book about the history of Sicilian food. It starts with Homer and goes on. Um she is a trained historian. She's also a really uh gifted writer, and um she makes a great case. This this book has also simply been called Sicilian Food in some formats.
It's had several different editions. Still in still in print? It is, but not easy to get because it's a small publisher with weak distribution. But maybe maybe I could find it at a store like Kitchen Arts and Letters. Kitchen Arts and Letters has it.
I pulled this off the shelf today on my way here. And it's it's really worth reading, you're saying. It's a great book. It is a really wonderful piece of scholarship, and it's the kind of thing that will make you wish you had a similar book for other parts of the holidays. Maybe people should think into uh getting this book because it's one I haven't read it, I don't know it.
Really? You didn't know? No. I didn't think I could surprise you with that. Um it's a it's a really smart book.
She's done some other writing about Sicilian food as well. There's a book called On Persephone's Island, also by her that is in print from Canaf uh in a vintage paperback book. That is a year of living in Sicily and going through the harvests and the festivals and things like that. So no recipes, but very much contemporary Sicilian culture, but still um a lot of historical context. Really really pay attention to anything she writes.
Joe, you're gonna want to check this one out, huh? Uh all right. What else? What if we gotta hurry? Flavors of the Riviera by Coleman Andrews.
This is a book about the stretch between Nice and the Tuscan border. So a lot of Liguria, but also some French. I mean, control of that area switched back and forth between different countries for a long time. So he's treating it as a more of a unit. Um not sort of saying, oh, well, the French do it this way and the Italians do it this way, because it doesn't make sense in that part of the world.
This book came out uh mid-90s, uh I think very strong. It's still a tough part of the world to find books out. There's a little bit more contemporary writing about Liguria, but Coleman has always had a great appreciation for history, and it's a rich part of this book. So contrasted super quickly with like, for instance, a Mediterranean feast, which treats the entire Mediterranean, including North Africa and you know, Anatoly and all this as kind of one unit. Like it seems like no one really reads that one anymore, right?
Uh what was it called? Uh Clifford. Clifford Wright, yeah. That's a that's an amazing book. It is big and heavy, and I think it intimidates people sometimes because of its size.
And it's got an he's got an edge verb, like writing. He like at least my memory, it's been 20 years since I've read it. It's been 20 years since I've read it. It doesn't come to me in my memory that way. Um, I mean, I think that was in a very impressive piece of of scholarship.
That's a great book. Um, and the fact that so much unites it. I uh I think it was a strong piece of scholarship, but it was just a little too big, I think, for a lot of people. Yeah. Uh and at the time people didn't want heavy books.
People still mentally heavy books. People still resist it. Yeah. You know, this we speak to it on obviously. I think if that book came out today, it would have a wider readership, though.
Not mean if it was shorter, but the same subject, I think it would have a wider readership. I don't know. I I sometimes despair about books that are um that ask people to uh sort of blur lines. Yeah. All right.
And super quick, the last one. Because this one uh, you know, she's still alive, which I didn't even know. I hear America Cooking, Betty of a Sell. This looks at six specifically American regional cuisines. Um basically New Mexico, there's also the the Delta South, there is the rest of the South, there's New England, there's the Midwest Great Lakes, and then there's the Pacific Northwest.
So 2023 eyes, 26 years later, after this was written, does it still hold together or is it problematic? Have you looked at it recently? Uh I looked at it uh very recently, and I think in some ways it's um it's anticipating things that haven't happened yet. Um she was sort of hoping that certain things would gel. She was her argument about some of these places having really distinctive cuisines was was pretty forward thinking.
Um but particularly her Pacific Northwest sort of ecotopia cuisine point of view. I don't think it's I don't think it took. No, cool. Now uh thank you so much for coming on, Matt. And stick uh if you can, it'd be awesome to stick around because we're uh gonna talk turkey for the last uh last half hour.
But thanks for these these books. And I really I'm gonna I'm gonna check out that pop and and sustenance. How much how much does that one go for on on the website? Can we get a Patreon discount on that one? I I I have to set that up.
Let me uh let me go back to the store and check stock. It's been short. We'll work on it. Maybe for next week. Next week?
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Cool. Uh all right.
So we will be uh starting up in just a minute with Barbara Robinson from Butterball. That's a good word. Butterball. Remember, Harry, it's Marion's first holiday turkey. Not a word if it's dry.
It's her first turkey. It will be juicy. What they don't know is Marion's first turkey is America's first turkey, butterball. It's always juicy because it's specially deep basted, so every slice is moist and tender. Juicy turkey, Marion.
I knew it would be. After all, it's Butterball. Also available fresh. We are Beatrice. And we're back.
Guess what about the turkey? It won't be juicy. Love that. We're joined with super special guest, uh, Barbara Robinson from the Butterball Turkey Talk Line. How are you doing?
Hi, Jay. It is uh great. How are you? Fantastic. It's uh it's an honor to have uh have you on official.
Official, there's a couple of people that we've had on where I'm like super excited. Like we had on the person who invented uh Fudgy the Whale and uh that you know, so like someone who's that was amazing. And so but like actually talking to uh so you're you're you're a supervisor at kind of like World Turkey headquarters at Thanksgiving time, right? How do you get that job? Absolutely, yes.
How do you how do you get that job? All of us here are foodies. We're like like you and your listeners. We all love to cook, we all love to research cooking, we all have education in nutrition and foods. Um we have dietitians and food scientists, um, we have chefs who work here, we have college instructors, um, all of us, uh let's see, dining directors, all of us have a true interest and the education in foods, but we do go through rigorous training, uh all about turkeys, of course.
And uh, I'm one of the trainers now. I'm a supervisor. I've been here for 16 years. All right, so don't answer I'm gonna ask you I'm gonna ask you a bunch of things, and please do not answer them if you're not allowed to answer them or if I ask a bad question. And by the way, anyone that happens to be listening live on the Patreon, call in to 917-410-1507.
That's 917-410-1507 for your personal Butterball Turkey Talk. Um, all right. So, how often when you're supervising, are you like listening to other people answering questions? You're like, no, no, that's wrong. Like, does that happen a lot?
Do you cut in? Do you like stop people when they're saying stuff that you disagree with or or what? Well, um, we as I mentioned, we do a lot of trainings. Uh okay, I do listen to some of our turkey experts answering calls. I can, of course, only hear one side of the calls.
But um, I will periodically just hear something I think that's not quite right. So I I will, yeah. I will mention to them the way they were trained and really the the butterball way. You know, there are a lot of ways to cook turkeys, of course, a lot of ways, uh a lot of different methods of cooking, but we do have the the butterball methods that we do recommend because we're all about food safety here. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So that's one of the things I was gonna ask is uh what what's the temperature that you guys uh recommend that you have to get to in the in the thigh? Okay, we recommend 180 degrees in the thigh, 170 degrees in the breast area. That's frustrating and 165 in the stuffing. Yeah.
Oh, and you guys are okay with stuffing? Do you prefer to? Yeah. All right. Go ahead.
No, go ahead. What do you think? Like you so like uh do you recommend like I do like a hot stuff when I'm gonna stuff so that I don't like so it's already up to up to 10, but how do you guys uh how do you guys guarantee food safety on a stuffed bird? Is it just because they're you don't recommend doing it on the giant birds? I notice you guys mainly recommend smaller size turkeys like sub 22, right?
Um, I would say that's a more common size, yes. And if the turkey is very large, we would not recommend that you stuff it. But people stuffing is very popular, and people do like to stuff their turkeys if they like a moisture stuffing because of all those juices from the bird that go into the stuffing. But you're very wise to to put a warm stuffing in there. That is why we recommend 165 degrees in the stuffing.
We recommend that people do take the temperature of the stuffing. Yeah, now again, don't answer this, but at home, do you really cook it that high? Do you really take it to that temperature? You don't have to answer. Of course I do.
Actually, I prefer uh the crispy stuffing, so I'll generally put it in a casserole on the side. Yeah, yeah. I do both. Personally. I do both.
Do you do you cover it first and then uncover it to crisp up the top? Actually, the the butterball method is two-thirds of the way through cooking time. So if you're cooking your turkey for three plus or minus three hours, after two hours, we would say place a tent of foil, uh, which of course isn't wrapping the the turkey and foil. It's just placing a a sheet of foil that is uh creased down the center, and just place that so that the breast area and the thighs don't get over browned or overcooked. Yeah.
So we say at the end. So something oh no, but I meant on the stuffing though, when you do your stuffing in the casserole. I always cover it for I always cover it for the first like almost until the end and then crisp it up just at the last well, whatever. We're talking turkey, not stuffing anyway. I thought what I thought was interesting.
Sounds delicious. Yeah. I thought it was interesting is that you guys recommend putting a couple quarter onions underneath the turkey on the tray as a way to lift it off, presumably I guess to get the bottom browner, like kind of as a natural kind of lift. Is that what it's for? Um, yes.
And for flavoring too. We actually recommend that you cook your turkey in an open roasting pan on a rack. But if someone doesn't have a rack, then we recommend a coil of foil, which is yeah, and you probably know what that is. They make a snake and then just curl it into a crown shape and place that under your turkey. But of course, onions, carrots, celery can all be used as a rack for your turkey.
And that gives the drippings a wonderful flavor, of course, and the house smells wonderful too. I read in uh an interview you gave that there is a microwave technique that you say is actually delicious, but you also say it's quite complicated. Care to go into it. First of all, what size turkey can I do using the method? All right, you doing the microwave cook, you need to have a turkey that's 12 pounds pounds or under.
And we actually had you probably I'm not sure if I had said that. Um, we had a there was a trend going on where all these college students told their moms they were going to cook in the they were gonna cook their holiday turkey in the microwaves. And the moms were crazy about it. They were all calling us. But um, it is a complicated method.
Uh I just I have it in front of me. You it's where you have to use 30% power for 20 to 26 minutes per pound, dividing that time into four intervals. So um it's it does take a long time. You can't leave the kitchen when you're cooking in a microwave and you need to flip the bird and and turn it if you don't have the turntable in your microwave. So it is a complicated method, but uh it's certainly it actually produces a delicious turkey.
And some people won't have a uh, you know, the actual oven, they'll only have a microwave if they're um in college or in a hotel or you know, just in a small apartment. So it can be done. I like that uh it's Thanksgiving. I'm in a hotel with a kitchenette microwave. I'm like, I gotta cook a turkey.
You know what I mean? And I somehow go to like a store. Yeah, yeah. Uh it's those holiday traditions. Yeah.
I mean, like uh how was how long does it take at the 30% power and all the flipping and and how like how many how many hours does it take of tending your microwave to get the turkey to come out? It's actually pretty quick, depending on the size of your turkey. It takes about an hour and a half to two hours. Uh-huh but very hands on, as I said. It's pretty quick.
Well, and it's a smaller turkey. I you know, I guess if you only have a microwave, you're not making a lot of sides anyway, right? Because you don't, you know, you have nothing else. Yeah. Uh that's true.
So do or do you guys have to like uh for safety reasons, like tell people not to deep fry their turkeys or what? Oh no. Uh deep frying a turkey is a really popular method, especially in the south, because of course I'm in the Chicagoland area, and we it's cold here, and so um generally people will deep fry outside using their um using their fryer, but um it's very popular. We do have a lot of rules, and let me just mention here for your listeners, you can call 1800 Butterball and we will answer all your turkey questions, or you can text us at 844 877 3456, and we have literally all the answers. We have our our knowledge base uh digital binder where we can give you any kind of information that you would need.
But um yeah, the deep frying, it's it's a very popular method. We just say, of course, make sure your turkey is totally thawed, and then you need to pet pet pat it dry, totally dry that turkey. But sure, it it's actually great results. Yeah, you know, the f the first time I did it uh years and years and years ago, uh the problem I had was uh it was so cold that day where I was. It was in New York State, you know, you know, Westchester, just north of New York City.
It was so cold that the propane tank wasn't delivering uh gas enough to do anything. So I went into the garage and over-drilled the orifice so that I could get enough gas out of it. And I don't know what I did, but I finally got so much flame coming out of that thing. It was ripping, and when I stuck the turkey in, I had like there was a through cave. You know how like most of the time turkeys, you can't actually you can't wear it like a sleeve.
You know what I mean? You most of the time you right. So this one you could wear it like a sleeve. You could, you could, you could put it through your hand and wave it over your head with your fist, you know, with your fist through one and out the other. And it created a Versailles-like fountain of oil because of the convection that could go through the turkey.
And it it it erupted from the fryer uh um, you know, pot and then sprayed oil all over the lawn and completely obli turkey delicious, completely obliterated, completely obliterated the uh the lawn in that area. So that ruined Thanksgiving for my stepfather. And then I, you know, I thought I would never fry another turkey again at their house. I mean, I've done it many times, even in in commercial deep fryers, but um, which, you know, are oriented the other way, so easier. But I did it, he my mom was like, Let's fry the turkey again.
I was like, What are you nuts? I killed the thing. She's like, No, you're gonna do it, you're gonna do it on the patio, but then oil got on the flagstone and it was again freezing, and he was out there hosing down the flagstone like for all of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving completely ruined twice that way, but no fires. No fires.
You guys, good. Yeah, I I yeah. I was just gonna say now, you you you need to mention to your listeners, these these are not recommended. We we don't recommend the the fountain of Versailles coming out of your out of your fryer. Um, you know, we're we're all about food safety.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, if not just food safety for yeah, food safety like uh your house not burning down. I mean, people uh a non-zero number of people's house burn down by frying their turkeys outside, right? Oh, you know, that one I've I've not heard. Yeah.
But uh, you know, you see the videos online, it it makes it a little makes you cautious. Yeah. All right, so we have a question for you. Uh in Australia, we don't do Thanksgiving, but oh, by the way, I have a question. I'm gonna ask this just at the outset.
Do you ask people where they got their turkey or whether it's a butterball when they call in, or can people with non-brand turkeys ask you questions if they if they don't say what brand it is? What how how often does it happen if someone's like it's not a butterball? Can I still ask you a question? Does that come up or not? Sure, sure.
People ask that a lot. Or they'll talk about the pop-up timer, which Butterball does not have. Yeah. So when they start talking about that, we know right away that it's uh the the truth comes out. But that's okay.
We help everyone. We have all kinds of we have recipes for mashed potatoes and stuffing and the side dishes at Butterball.com. So we help everyone. We we are we're the the turkey helpline. We're the 911 for turkey problems.
The pop-up timer's a horror show, isn't it? Oh my goodness. Oh my gosh, yeah. Hey, it's too late. That's what the timer says.
Too late. You know what I mean? Um anyway. Uh in Australia, we don't do Thanksgiving, but for whatever reason, uh, we basically just steal all the Thanksgiving recipe off the Yanks. That would be us, and serve it for Christmas.
In the spirit of that, last year, uh, I did uh my ma my mom, uh uh my mom's Parker House rolls, served it with uh duckriettes and cornichon as the only other thing uh better than a bun overloaded with butter is a shredded duck overloaded with duck fat. It wasn't good, it was good. Uh continuing in the spirit of stealing. Uh turkey help, brine, don't brine, hipster brine, which they call dry brine, which is by the way, that's just salting. That's salting.
Dry brining is salting. Uh yeah. Uh cooking uh crown separate to the legs, I guess, you know, or I guess breaking it apart. Uh I'll add spatch cocking to that. Uh am I that fancy?
Probably not. Uh it's usually about 40 degrees Celsius here. That's hot as heck on Christmas Day, I guess, because they're flipped through us. So not everything translates well, but I love a new idea. You know, if they're not, if they're not American and they don't need to serve the bird presented as a whole bird, I mean, don't you think spatch cocking is a good way to go or what?
What what do you what would you say? What would Butterball say to this Australian? Sure. Well, there are a lot of ways of cooking a turkey, and spatch cocking is a great method because it cooks so much faster once you've got your turkey splayed out. Um, but uh it's when you talked about brining, um the the butterball turkey, we we pre-based our uh the breast area so that it does have a salt solution in it.
It's not necessary, but you certainly can. You can you can brine your turkey. There's so many, there's no right or wrong ways to cook your turkey. Those are they're all good methods. Now, doesn't Butterball, the name Butterball, didn't they used to like in like inject like under the skin some sort of fat?
That's not in the brine that's in the breast, though, right? I'm sorry, underneath the wasn't there some didn't it when I was a kid or did it just seem that way? Because I can't remember. I'm afraid it just seemed that way, yeah. We never actually used butter in the recipe, but it it looked like a butterball.
So it was all about the look, and that's how the name came about. Yeah, Nastasia, I think she had to leave for a minute. Hopefully she's back. Oh, I'm here. I'm gonna go.
Oh, okay. So I have a question on Nastasia's behalf. And so Nastasia, every year we joke that you know the that her mom is going to cook the turkey until it sounds hollow when wrapped, like a loaf of bread. Uh now, how can is there any way that Nastasia can do you have like advice for comfortably telling people not to overcook uh a turkey? Like, is there any sort of like therapy advice that you give to people to so that they can like you know broach this subject without causing family disputes?
You know, we we do a lot of therapy here. You'd be amazed. We we have 50 turkey experts who are all very compassionate and very helpful. Um, you know, that's why we say, and you uh you love it too, I'm sure. Then that's why we say use a thermometer.
We say if you take the temperature of your turkey, look for certain temperatures, you it it's fine. We we often get people who will call and say, Well, I cooked it to 170 degrees, and then I put it in for an extra half an hour just to be sure. So yeah To be sure of what? So yeah, I know, I know. It's uh you know, in the when we were all very young, the turkeys were very large and they were not bred to be to have the all that breast meat and to be tender.
So people did cook their turkeys for a long time and they basted them. Um so times have changed and uh you know, we've uh we try to encourage people to to just take the temperature of the bird and uh and go with that. Now, how much of a rise am I gonna get though? So if like I again I know it a lot depends on a lot, right? So, but with your what's your recommended temperature for the for the main through 350, something like this?
We recommend 325 degrees for cooking uh yeah at 325, if you pull something at 170, how much of a rise am I gonna get on the rest? You know, not much. Uh poultry is is different from beef. With beef, you know, you have that solid chunk of muscle, and poultry is not like that. So it may be two or three degrees, but that's about it.
Oh, really? There's not a lot of we we don't allow for a lot any rise. Yeah. So on the reverse, now even with a full rest, you're saying, right? Yes.
Well, yes, yes. Yeah. And do you guys recommend the the rest like you know, like we always would. The problem with the rest, especially when it's like tented to not get uh is it steams the skin out, which is always kind of unfortunate, right? Mm-hmm.
I mean, like so you guys carve right. Yeah, how long? Yeah, no, we do we say fifteen to twenty minutes because if you as you know, you because I know you're you're a big foodie, um, when you start to carve a a turkey right away or a poultry, um, the the juices come right out. But once it sets for fifteen or twenty minutes, then the the juices will remain in in the cells there. What about the problem of of keeping the skin crispy with the rest?
Do you like do you have some sort of like special like magic trick to like rest it, have it not be cold but keep the skin crispy? Because you y y you get my problem here, right? Like i you keep it you put a aluminum foil over so that it it radiates very little heat and then you know it's sitting there and the skin is not you pull it out and it's like tack tack tack and sounds great. The skin's crispy and then when you get it it's not crispy anymore. Yeah I I I see what you're saying.
We do not have a cure for that I'm sorry. I uh you know I would say if you really like that skin to remove the foil um and that that would keep your skin intact you might lose but but you know by the time you carve the whole turkey a bit of time has passed so it won't be steamy hot anyway. Yeah my family like people just rip the skin off and eat it and then the meat gets carved in or like you just cook a whole sep separate bird for the skin. How about you pull it when it's done, rest it or pull it maybe a little before rest it for you know and then just like blast it in like in like hyper convection and like air fry mode just to re-crisp that skin on the way out. You think that's gonna help or no?
Like like five minutes, like ten minutes of like Yeah. You know what I mean? I I yeah. I I I would hesitate only because I would be afraid you're going to continue to cook your turkey if you place it back in your oven. Um you know uh whatever works for you Dave.
Also I noticed that one of the uh things that you guys uh tout on the website is the uh the skin cut leg self tuck sitch right so the legs are self tucked in a in a butterball turkey right you don't so Butterball doesn't believe in the free leg? I'm a free leg man. You guys uh you you know you guys uh like it like the old school tuck or is that for visual or do you guys actually think that it cooks better with the legs drawn in around the bird like that um I don't know if it cooks better it certainly looks nicer. Yeah um when when you tuck the leg I mean I pull my meat obviously before you guys recommend that I pull the meat and if I have it tucked it's get it has that dreaded it has that dreaded like pink stuff down by the uh whatever joint this is that I'm pointing at like shoulder yeah you know or whatever the thigh whatever like the hip hips yeah and uh nobody like nobody likes that everyone hates that you know right right so like well you know that's that's why we tell you to bring it up to temperature that's why we say 180 degrees on the thigh. I just can't I just can't I'm it's not in me.
I can't do it. You know what I mean? It's it's like it's just like my my body like revolts against it. Uh we we've actually we've actually found that the the texture of the meat when you bring it up to one eighty is is is it's more palatable. Let me ask you this though.
What are you like what are the ingredients in the in the brine? Are there phosphates in the salt that h help it keep moisture at those temperatures so that like as opposed to a normal just a straight salt brine that like someone at home might do? Like is it a more effective brine that's in the butter ball that allows it to stay uh you know moist at those temperatures as opposed to you know like a regular salting? Um, well, of course, the ingredients are proprietary, so I'm my lips are sealed. But um I can't really go there.
But um the the reason that we do the basting solution is because these turkeys are very cold. You know, we freeze them, but either they're frozen or the fresh turkeys, which are kept at twenty-three, twenty-six degrees. So because of that, because of that ice, um, that helps them to stay moist as they're I guess they are thawing. So um, you know, I I would say, you know, I I really don't know. I I can't really say I know that.
Yeah. Uh so what everyone's gonna want to know what are the biggest horror stories, right? John, is there is everyone wants another one? Just give us some horror stories. Right?
So, like, you know, everyone's gonna make the mistakes they're gonna make, but give us the worst. Okay, um the worst. Or whatever. So give us some interesting horror horror shows. Okay.
Um there are many heartwarming and funny stories. Um my my current favorite one is where um a young man was having his his new girlfriend's parents over for dinner, and he was he he hadn't met the parents yet. So he was preparing the turkey and he placed the turkey in the oven and he pushed oven clean instead of oven bake. Yeah. And the oven, of course, locked shut.
Yeah. And he would not get the oven open. So he had smoke coming out of his oven. And he called Butterball. 1 800 Butterball.
And of course, the first thing we told him was hang up the phone, call 911. Man. So like did how long do you guys stay on the phone with him in this case? Like, like did you like like I'm like did you tell him how to how to get his oven back open? Did you like did did it did it end up okay, or did they go out to to eat somewhere else?
Did you get any follow-up from these folks? Well, actually, um the my my office mate, she sits right next to me, received that call, and she did say if it's an electric oven, unplug it. And he did, so he was able to open the oven. And was the turkey salvageable or unsalvageable? I don't think it was salvageable, no.
Unfortunately. The thing is how to do it. Yeah, we don't have I've gotten that call. People are looking for an anecdote for I had someone in the again in the south, and he had tre he was cooking turkeys in these in the pits and in a you know pit in the ground. Yeah.
And he said he does it every year. And this year, one of them burned, and it burned to a crisp. So he was looking for an anecdote. He said, My wife is going to kill me. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm sorry, you can't unburn something. No, no anecdote for a burned turkey. You uh you, you know, you'd be you'd be up for some sort of Nobel Prize if you could unburn food there. There that would be a miracle.
Um that would okay, okay, Dave. There's there's your assignment. Yeah. Yeah, I don't I don't I I wouldn't, I would definitely be a lot richer if I could figure out how to uh how to do that. Uh now, what about people doing things like you you're anti jacuzzi thawing, although seems to me it would work, right?
Because your thawing methods they take a long time. The thawing methods take a long time. Yes. Yeah. Yes.
It's definitely a lot of work. Um, especially if it's a large turkey. If it's it we allow thirty minutes per pound changing the water every thirty minutes, uh placing it. You could, you know, people you could put it in the bathtub to do that, uh, in a in a tub and not not really the hot tub, um, in a bucket, but um a a twenty pound turkey, if you think about it, would take ten hours. That's a long time.
That's a long time. Thirty minutes. Yeah. It is a long time. Every time I've ever and it's food safe.
Yeah, because like you recommend how many days to thaw in the fridge? It's like four, right? Well, we recommend four four pounds per day. So again, that twenty pound turkey would take five full days to thaw in the refrigerator. I want everyone to that to sink in because nobody actually thinks about that.
You are saying that to non-forceaw something in a fridge is a five day situation for a twenty pound turkey. Five days. In other words, it is already too late. It's too late. Do you know?
Uh uh you know, you probably can't recommend this, but uh I throw a circulator, I throw I throw it in a circulator and circulate it in its brine at forty to thaw it. Forty Fahrenheit. Okay. Yeah. Okay, that that's that's uh circulators are great.
That's a great use for it. Yeah. Just keep it going. It helps to have one of the old school circulators that is uh sterilizable because it's made of like stainless. But yeah.
Yeah, you know, we do recommend that you leave the turkey in its original wrap when you uh when you saw it like that. Taking it out of the wrapping, that's that opens up a whole lot of problems. So um yeah, I I would definitely recommend leaving it in its original wrapper. Uh give me some more, give me some more weird and like you know, huge, huge mistakes, unr unrectifiable errors. Okay.
Well, you know, uh again, a lot of trends going around. We often get calls about questioning can they thaw their turkey in the dishwasher? Yeah. Uh in the clothes dryer. I actually did receive that call and the as I said no, no, that's that's not a method that we recommend.
She then turned away from the phone and said, to whoever, she said, take it out. Like, now the dryer seems like a horrible idea. Now the washer, you could tenderize it, right? You throw the brine in the in the in a vertical washer and boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. It's very similar to the machines that take the feathers off, right?
You know, tumble brine that thing. That you know, that seems like that's a win. No? You know? And then, you know, just run run it through a cycle and it's good.
Do you remember back in the day when everyone was trying to cook corn in their di in their dishwashers? That was a thing. Yeah, that was a thing. Everyone's like, go and cook corn in the dishwasher. Because they want to cook a lot of corn, and so they would say that, but the dish it just doesn't work.
Your dishwasher is not usually not usually hot enough unless you have a sanitized second or accurate enough. I did once go to a place where they were using steam washers, like like airport steam washers to cook corn, and it was good, but those were industrial hardcore units. I I don't know how food safe that would be. I just have to say. Well, you know.
Yeah, yeah. But it's it's interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I know you can't recommend things that are they're you know, completely completely unsafe. Uh all right.
We only have uh like 42 seconds left. Uh, and I want to thank you so much because I know this is the busiest season of the year uh for you to come on and talk turkey from uh Butterball. Any sort of words of encouragement you can give people uh on the way out other than to text you. I hear 24 hours a day for the next couple of days. You guys are are on text, not live on phone, but on text 24-7, right?
That is correct, Dave. Yes, yes, we're available via text. But we we're super busy, so it may take a little bit of time to get back to you. But um, we also have email, we're on the social networks, we're on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, uh, so many ways, butterball.com. We have a lot of instructional videos on Butterball.com, which may answer your questions, and of course, our website, butterball.com with uh lots of lots of good advice and recipes, and a shout out to my son Will.
Uh, definitely a shout out to your son Will. We uh we appreciate having him as a uh patron. And thank you so much, Barbara, for coming on. Happy Thanksgiving, and I hope your turkey is uh I'm sure your turkey's gonna be great. I don't even have to ask you you run the turkey.
Obviously, your turkey's gonna be great. I hope my turkey's great. How about that? Happy Thanksgiving. Yes.
Thank you, Dave. Happy Thanksgiving to you and all your listeners. All right. Cooking issues. Dark meat, the word is on the street that you're probably getting all thrown out.
I'm sure you had to be before, cause it's better than I am, no doubt. I don't believe that any poultry tastes the way you do. You're also down. I'd start a fighting frozen foods for my people. There are many ways that I would like to serve you up, cause I won't eat time.
I said graving. You make my turkey taste so savory.
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