Hello, and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, New York City. New Stan Studios joined as usual with John behind me. How are you doing, John? Doing great, thanks.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Your restaurant uh temperance there in the uh in the holiday spirit.
Yeah, it's been very slow though, I'll say. Like Saturday was probably the slowest service I've ever had in my career working in restaurants. I wanted to gouge my eyeballs out. Yeah. And I think maybe people don't realize this who aren't in the industry.
Uh it's not just the money. We hate being bored. Yeah. You know? Uh the kitchen's clean, everything was prepped like there's nothing else to do.
Yeah, you know what they say. If you have time to lean, you you're gonna die. Yes. Uh rocking the panels, we have Joe Hazen. How you doing?
I'm doing very well, man. Good to see everyone. Packed house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh over there in California, we are we are hammerless.
We have no anastasia today because she's in transit. But I believe we have uh Mr. Molecules. Uh Jack, you there? Yes, I am.
What's good? How are you doing? Everything good? Yeah, yeah, you know, I'm getting ready to come east for the holidays. So you sound super stoked.
You sound just psyched and come out of it. You know, it's 60 degrees out here now. Do you know that the the magnolia? Yeah, the magnolias, I mean, it's windy and rainy, but the magnolia in my uh we're gonna have a terrible spring. So come now because our spring is hosed.
You know what I mean? Yeah, awesome. Yeah. Uh in the upper, upper left, left, left, we have uh Quinn. How you doing?
You have been fulfilled. Yeah, well, you know, you're uh you're you're jumping the gun. I gotta introduce him, but uh in the uh in the studio today, we have, we're very uh psyched to have after what a year and a half we've been trying to get you on the show? About that, yeah. Yeah.
So Chris Young. Chris Young, everybody. Uh, you know, X everything. We'll talk about it in a minute. But the original idea, Chris, uh, you say hello.
Hello, good to be here, Dave. Yeah, was to have you on to talk about the uh the creamy because you did an early first look at the code. Yeah, the creamy ninja creamy review, first look at that, right. And let me ask you this before we go into the so normally we're just gonna shoot the breeze for a little while about non-related stuff. But could you imagine a worse product name than creamy?
You'd have to work at it, I think. Yeah. Yeah. It ranks right up there with the Ford probe. It makes me slightly uncomfortable.
And the number of times I had to say that word in the YouTube video, yeah was was awkward. I felt like I needed to be on some kind of registry after saying it that many times. You should like hire someone with a really smooth voice to just be like creamy. Like the entire time. Creamy.
Back to the probe. You know, that they literally, literally, this was, and for people who aren't old enough, that was a Ford, mm the the probe. And literally one of the commercials was like some exec saying, nothing's hotter than a hot new probe. And I was like, Whoa. Whoa, dude.
That was a formative childhood experience for you. Yeah, you gotta chill, you gotta chill on that on that probe talk, my man. Same with the creamy, gross. Uh it it's it's unpleasant. Yeah.
It's not a nice word in the English language. No, I mean, like you can use it to describe like uh a soup or something, but not like as a standalone thing. I I mean, I kind of get what they're gonna do. This thing's for making ice cream. I mean, it does other things, of course, but yeah, so does the Paco Jet.
I sort of see the logic, but there's so many better words. Yeah. You know, th this was almost certainly a marketing agency that came up with this, right? Um not a very good one. Yeah, yeah.
By the way, for what it is, and we're gonna talk about it later, I'm sure ad nauseum. But we gotta get to other stuff first. But the so the creamy, for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, is the three $300? Uh I think it's uh $250, often on sale around $200, but I think $299 is the retail. Oh, yeah, but if you can get it for that's a substantial discount, $250, $200, that's a lot.
Yeah, no, and they they discount pretty regularly. I think I I looked because people ask me, I think I paid $200 when I bought it on Amazon. Right. So Paco Jet, who is the original person, these Swiss weasels who came up with this idea of, you know, well, they bought the they bought the idea from an inventor, right? Right, right.
But they they were the company. Yes. Yeah, yeah, that made this you know, where you feed a blade at a very measured rate into a completely frozen block and create ice cream texture. I mean new. That's the theory.
Yep. Yeah, of operation. Patton runs out. Yep. And Shark Ninja is like, our blender sucks.
Let's try to make this other thing. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I'm not though. I hate that blender. I mean, it's not that I hate it, it's just I don't like it.
Let me put it to this way. When I see one and they're like, this is the blender you're using, I'm like, oh really. It's not a bad blender. It just doesn't do what I want to do. We need to come back to Shark Ninja after this because it I agree with you, and yet they have changed.
I have their vacuum cleaner I have one of their vacuum cleaners. I think it's product to product. I don't like is maybe the blender's better. Nothing irritates me. Don't isn't it?
Isn't theirs the blender where you have to put the picture down one specific way for the thing to work? I don't have their blender. So I I actually common. Oh, because why would I have a Vitamix? Um, you know, I don't need anything else, and and you know, that's what I've used in the restaurants.
And I and I have the old school Vitamix with just the knobs. Of course you do. Nobody needs a digital interface on your blender. Oh, no, no, no. And I don't want no, and I don't want my blender recognizing anything.
Don't recognize my picture. I know the picture I put on my blender has DRM. I know it. It's the one with a subscription. So like literally, I'm redoing the liquid intelligence, and I'm still, you know, even 10 years later, I'm like, get the Vitamix.
Yeah. I'm like, don't get the Blend Tech. It's a got a fine motor. I don't like the picture. I don't like the interface.
Like. The Blend Tech is a look, and the Pantheon, the blenders. The Blend Tech is a completely reasonable blender, optimized for the pro market, the smoothie market where they just want to just want somebody running programs. That's right. The Vitamix is the workhorse of kitchens.
And to be honest, wearing makes a completely reasonable one too. You could quibble. Okay. Everything else sucks. Yeah.
Well, so for instance, like uh uh I was using uh a vacuum blender, right? So like uh a vacuum blender. Yeah, yeah. As you do. Yeah, well, you know, so vacuum blending's the new thing among so what's cool to me is is that like a lot of new technology that is important to me, it actually comes by way of people who have health theories that I don't ascribe to.
Right. One of them is is that you know, oxidation is gonna kill all the vitamins in your in your food, and so you need to remove the oxygen from the blender, but it has other good benefits from a cook's perspective. I mean, yeah, not air ready in your mix. I I I I get the logic. Yeah.
So like I'm always looking for people who believe things that I don't believe who might make a piece of equipment that I would enjoy. So this company Void makes uh a picture that thankfully fits on my on my Vitamix, right? So I can use a vacuum pitcher on my Vitamix. Unfortunately, you have to swap the rubber. Oh, so you you basically pull a vacuum on it first and then blend.
That's right. It's really just a lid. Okay. And and a decent bearing. So like I've heard that the new Vitamix bearings are actually vacuum tight and that you can build your own lid.
I attempted it back at WD50 in the early aughts, and those bearings, especially after what Wiley was doing to those things, those bearings were not vacuum tight. And so you'd see oil and filth and and and getting sucked up. The bearing. You don't even need to explain what's going on. The bearing grease.
That's that's the secret sauce. Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because it's half anchovy grease and half packing grease. Anyway, so like, point being like, uh, so I still, you know, I was right rewriting the thing, and I had to write in it, you know, that yeah, I still use just a Vitamix.
I wouldn't recommend any other blender. However, you have to be careful because even Vitamix now, they have all of these blenders with all these programs and all of these things where they recognize what picture you're using, and no. Two, two, three. No, and they've got and they've got reduced cost ones to hit a Costco target, right? Like the one in Costco is is cheaper because that's what you have to do to get into Costco, but it's not as good.
I haven't used it. But like uh It's castrated a little bit. The nice thing about uh the Vitamix, and here's the other thing I had to write about because like uh so the this company Void, I use their pitcher. They also sent me one of their bases, and it's powerful enough. That's not the thing.
No low end, no low end. People don't think about they're like they only look at the top end speed of a blender. But a good kitchen blender needs a decent mixing low end. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, I actually spent uh some time with an engineer at a company I won't name who engineers blenders, and he showed me the torture test for a blender, because it's the hardest thing on the motor, is really low speed grinding peanuts for hours and hours of it.
He's like, that will kill a blender faster than anything because the motor's not operating anywhere near its peak efficiency. Oh, yes, terrible. So it's getting overheated and you're putting it under a lot of load. This this actually bears talking about, and because I'll say this. If you actually talk to the Vitamix people or to whoever your blender person was, what they really want you to do is ramp the speed up to infinity as fast as possible and then flick it into full high.
Because it's actually most efficient at cooling itself when it's screaming like a demon. Because it's got to pull the the air through and it's using a fan blade attached to the same spindle so they don't have independent cooling. So yeah, that is what they want to do, which is why the low and slow. Yeah, worst. Yeah, all right.
Especially if it's bogging. If it's if it's super anytime it's bogging down, it's hurting. But if you're bogging it down at a lower speed, that's toast. Bogging, you're talking like air bubble cavitated blades or free spending. Oh no, no.
I mean like like literally like hogging into it, like like so like I used to do that with uh we used to uh back at the French Culinary Institute, we like we would do these events where we had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, and we they would be like, We're doing nut butter. I'm like, okay. And so like, you know, we just line up all the all the Vitamixes and boom, and we put them in hotel pans and just start pouring LN into the hotel pans to to like cool them as they were going because they would be popping like flies. Because there's a thermal, by the way. If you overheat your Vitamix, there's a thermal in it that cuts and comes back in.
But no one wants to wait around for their pre and blender to come back to life. You should obviously mod it with you know a GPU fan or something like that. Liquid cooled Vitamix. That's the thing we're gonna do. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's a huge market for it. Yeah, yeah. They're all three of us. Yeah. That's another thing.
People are like, why don't you build this? Because only three people want it. You know what I mean? Yeah. No, I I I I very much know what you mean.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I need at least four people to want it. That's a that's uh that's a special market. Yeah.
Uh also, you know, Booker and Dax's motto is is that like uh we're just gonna make it a little bit better. We're gonna do a lot of work. We're gonna make it a little bit better. Anyway, like marginally better. That was the cocktail cue.
Remember that, John? Yep. Like makes every cocktail you make a little bit better. You could live without it. Marginal results, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Margaret Razut's for for 10 times the price. Yes. Well, no, but the cocktail cube was actually pretty cheap. Like, you know, I use it, but like it's like a it's like a repeatable but marginal improvement.
That's my I don't know what this is. What is this? Oh, so like the like uh years ago, uh I've you know, I was it was brought to my attention, people said that you get better texture in a shaken cocktail when you use a a big like two and a quarter two inch ice cube instead of small stuff. And I was like, it's garbage. You know, I don't believe you.
And uh I ran the test and sure sure enough, it's true. But it's just the shape of the it's just having something big in the shaker makes the we don't I don't know why, but my theory is is that the it makes it um zip around in the tin and it like whips more air into it. So the little balls don't the little like like cat toys don't do anything. You just want a big object in there. And you also want it to weigh roughly what ice weighs, otherwise it's not gonna work, right?
It's not gonna feel right, it's not gonna work right. So I patented it. So now you can buy this. Well, you can't because I don't sell it anymore, but this fake ice cube that has the same weight, uh, you know, as the same density as ice. You can keep this in like the freezer and then throw it in, or no, it doesn't chill.
That's the other thing people don't understand. No, it's like you throw in crappy ice and this. So like the the reason it came about was because I was going to events and I would order in advance of the event big ice cubes so that I could shake with them. First of all, never do shaking drinks at an event. It's just dumb.
Uh, you know what I mean? It's just dumb. It's dumb. It's like it's like when you're doing cater. What's the worst thing to do at a catering?
What's the worst thing? Anything all a minute. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm doing I'm doing omelets at a catering event for a thousand. What are you dumb?
You know what I mean? Like, just don't choose that. You know what I mean? It's a shaking cocktails or similar kind of stitch, but so anyway, so I was like, the ice they're giving me is garbage, so I can't get the right texture. So I invented this thing so that I could just have something in my bag that would mimic the texture of good ice cube with the crappy ice they had it in.
Got it. Yeah. All of those things, like those things where you they chilling things don't work because you know, melting ice is amazing. You know, from a from a uh thermal transfer standpoint. It's just fancy.
Hard to beat. Yeah. Uh all right. So this is the section on the show, by the way, where we kind of almost skip past it where we does anyone have any interesting food uh food experiences or c or semi-related experiences of the week? Anything?
I went to Coloman the other weekend, which was very really excellent spot run by Marcus Glocker. I was there on Friday night and it was superb right delicious. I I am a fan of a of a solid schnitzel, and when somebody makes the point of calling it a a a a Viennese style, they know what they're doing. Yep, it was 100%. I highly recommend.
I also like a schnitzel. Yeah. Yeah. But do you like yours VN? Do you like yours puffed or not puffed?
Uh I like a little bit of puff, but the puff is the kind of crust lifting off, not well. So like first of all, like uh I'm huge I like like uh like standard, like kind of like bread/slash cracker crumb schnitzel stuff, not like any sort of modern or like tanko or yeah, no, no. Oh cod. Yeah. Tastes good.
Yeah. Not a shortcut. Not I'm in agreement. Uh and I have to say, um do you like are you guys purists on what it's fried in or no? No.
I don't think I'd go. I I don't think I'd go puris. I think that's an area where I'd I'd I'd probably use clarified butter, and I'm I might be tempted to throw a little pork fat in there. Clary butter is nice. Yeah.
Expensive. Nice. Yeah. But like uh I don't mind when a sh I like it uh I don't want my schnitzel shattering. I want just the right texture on the schnitzel breading.
But I love it. Big big fill your plate schnitzel. Yeah. Yeah. I think that would be my my one criticism.
It was a nice size portion, but I like sort of like the obscene. It's larger than your plate. Yeah. On a lemon to squeeze over it. Some nice muslin over the lemon.
Yeah. And I and a little bit of a little bit of lingenberry jam. Oh, you know, um, so like uh what kind of accompaniment? I really like like a Jaeger Schnitzel, like a little mushroom gravy with it. You like that stuff?
Uh yeah, I can I can get on board with that. I think to me, I almost like. I like a little potato salad. I like the the German cucumber salad. But you know, I lived in Germany as an exchange student, so that's that that's kind of a nostalgia thing for me.
Schnitzel. Yeah. Dave, this place also was the place I text you to that had the full portfolio of those O de V's. Oh, the uh stuff. Oh, yeah.
Oh my name just went out of my head. I can't remember his name. Oh, gosh. He he sells through Skarnik. Yes.
I like a little horseradish with mine. Yeah? Mm-hmm. You know who I like. Fresh grated or creamed?
I like the cream, the Austrian style. Do you know that I raised a son who doesn't like horseradish? The hell's wrong with me. I was gonna say, where did you go wrong in life? Many places, Chris.
Hans Ristabauer. Ah, Rista Bauer, yeah, good products. Yeah, you're like Carado de V, who needs Carodie. Turns out you do. Yep.
Turns out it's you. Uh Jack, you had some. What do you got? Uh yeah, Doz and I went to this Korean place called Liga that does um like oxbone soup. It was very, very, very good.
So anybody in the LA area, uh highly recommend that. What was it called again? I'm a West Coaster, so I need to know. Oh, oh, Liga. Liga.
L-L-E-E-G-A. Yeah, Liga. Fantastic. What part of town is that in? Uh three, damn.
Okay. All right. Always always like to have another option there. Can't get into parks anymore. Yeah, no, truly.
Did I do anything? I made another acid adjust uh we gotta come up with a term for these fake key lime pies, these non-key lime key lime pies. But I made another one. Cranberry this time. Real good.
Real good. I cheated. I added a little bit of red food coloring. Does that make me terrible person or a smart person? Well, you were you were gonna do that with the uh with the pomegranate too, weren't you?
Yeah, pomegranate came out gray. Nobody wants gray. Came out gray. Well, like I was just using pomegranate. So the theory of operation here is you adjust the juice.
You don't use lime juice at all, and you adjust the acidity of whatever juice you use up to key lime, which is not six, it's closer to seven. And then you would uh account for any extra sugar. Pomegranate has a bunch of sugar, cranberry doesn't, has some, but not as much pomegranate. And so then you make your key lime pie that way. So usually when I'm doing it, I go like you know how so per can of sweetened condensed milk, like a lot of key lime pie recipes are a two-yoke recipe.
I prefer a three-yolk recipe because it allows me to still get a good set when I use a little more juice, if that makes sense. Because especially if you have something like pomegranate that has more sugar in it, if you want to add the same amount of actual juice and then sugar, you're adding more sugar to it, so you need to add even more acid. So I like a little extra yolk in there. That's all I'm gonna say. I'm a three yolk fella.
All right. Yeah. Uh anyway, so I did cranberry this time. Real good. This is a great technique.
I forget who wrote in about it, but like they deserve some sort of medal or prize for best idea of the year. Because like I've done, I've done passion fruit, I've done pomegranate, I've done cranberry, and they all everyone loves it. One thing I'll say about this your standard key lime pie recipe, I guarantee you, whoever writes them is lying. I guarantee you, for if you look up Joe Stonecrab's recipe, there's no salt in the mix. You know they add salt.
You know they had salt. What kind of moron doesn't add salt? You know what I'm saying? I know some French chefs who would disagree, but you know. Like I said, what kind of moron doesn't add salt?
You know what I mean? You go there. No, but uh, well, you know, come on. The the French salt they're creme anglaise, they're not dumb. Yeah.
You know what I mean? That's one of those things that I think the that they're like, you know, we're not gonna tell them about the salt. We're just gonna add it. I'm I'm just not gonna get involved into an international incident here over salted, not salted. But you come away, would you make a pie filling without salt?
Personally, no. I like I like some salt. Yes, of course. Uh, because that's the way it's my kidneys work. Yeah, it's intended to do that.
I mean, if you can't have the salt, great, fine. You know what I mean? Yeah. Uh, but you know, come on, dude. Also, like graham cracker crust needs a little salt.
Uh, you know, if you use unsalted butter, which everyone says you should. But I don't. I've switched to salted butter. They do. It's better.
Hey, guess what, people? They add the right amount of salt to the butter. It's delicious. It tastes really good. Here's another secret.
Just buy fresh salted butter. Everyone's like, oh, salted butter, salt is there to you know, hide the spoilage. No, I don't buy spoiled butter. I just buy good salted butter. Suck it.
You know what I mean? Uh look, y y you've somehow convinced a very large fraction of the American population that salt is an an evil. You know, and and we will eventually recover from this in the way we're sort of coming back from hey, maybe this low fat wasn't such a good idea, but you know, it'll take twenty years. Yeah. Salt.
Well, some people can't have salt. Yeah, but that's like two percent of the population. And they shouldn't. Right. But if if you're that person, you know it.
So don't eat salt. You should know, you would hope. Uh you would hope for their sake that they do. Uh anyways. So uh the other thing I did that cheated was I did add some citrus zest to it, even though it was not a citrus pie.
I added some zest. It's being fancy that way. I love zest. It's a little little green zest. You know, contrast nicely with the uh the the red.
It's it's very Christmas of you, very festive. I uh oh my god, I go through so much zest when I do Christmas cookies. So much zest. It's like I'm just like microplanting, like I don't I don't need I don't eat this many oranges and lemons normally. I don't know what I'm gonna do.
I want to believe your apartment's like filled with citrus trees and you know that's your other hobby. Don't I wish? Imagine your hand pollinating the flowers every winter. I would have to have only grow lights because we live on the fourth floor in a 20-story building, and we get about as much light as we get here in the studio. You know what I mean?
So like uh you know who used to grow like uh hot house uh citrus is uh Alex and Aki. I don't know if they still do it, but they had like a bunch of Yuzu and I think some Sudachi trees that they would bring in and out. This is like in Pennsylvania, right? Yeah. Yeah, there's they have they have like they're landed gentry.
Yeah. Yeah, nice. Must be nice. Must be nice. Yeah.
Well, you live in Seattle, and Seattle is like like uh you could grow genius like small fruit and plums and whatnot. Your plums in Seattle, like on the street, street plums are good in Seattle. No, we have we have we have great fruit in Washington State. It's you know, it makes up for a lot. There's other things that are not so great, but the fruit is good.
Uh tomatoes, I mean, yeah. Okay, there's always somebody who's like, Oh, I grow perfect tomatoes. Like, yeah, whatever. But they're tomato, no, they don't. Um corn, mediocre.
Uh, all right. You know, these these these are these are great things. But mushrooms and and fruit, we do that well. Oh, yeah, mushrooms. Although uh you ever met Paul Stametz?
No. No, me neither. Uh if uh it's not true. I did uh a lecture series he was doing once and said hello, he will not remember it. Um if you have any questions for Chris, call them in live to 917-4101507.
That's 917-4101507. If you're listening on Patreon, and if you're not listening on Patreon, how do you start listening on Patreon, John? Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Go check it out. There's a bunch of different levels of membership.
You get perks at uh all the levels. You get discounts like Kitchen Arts and Letters, discounts with other people that we work with. Um yeah, just uh just join access to the video feed, um Discord, just great stuff. So check it out. Patreon.com slash cooking issues.
Speaking of Patreon folk, uh, don't Patreon get uh discount from the Toronto Panetone Corporation? Yes, well, the people living in the Toronto the greater Toronto area for right now until he ramps up operations. But yeah, he sent us. No, no, he's got he does l local delivery for now. This is his first year like with his packaging and everything like that.
He's uh stepping up his operations. All right. So uh he has sent us this. Now I don't describe where uh Chris, you like Pantone? I do like Panatone.
Well, what about you, Joe? Love it. All right, so we're gonna taste this. This is the this is with the one that was sent specially to cooking issues. Do we have salted butter for it?
You butter your pants up. Let me ask you this. I've been known to to toast it and put a little salted butter on it. I don't mind toasted panatone. Yeah.
You know what uh I really like though for like kind of like toasting is uh the um slightly well, it's completely different product, but the the Pandoro? Yeah, yeah, they're good. They're good toasted. Do you like fried, like like pan fried pound cake as much as I do? I don't think I've ever pan-fried a pound cake.
Oh my gosh. We're talking like we're talking like proper Sara Lee pound cake, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I am I am fairly confident I could get on board with that.
I think that's gonna be. Anything in that shape can be fried. Scrapple, pound cake. Oh, it smells delicious. That is a good looking pan at once.
So uh let me see it. Hold it up to the camera. We don't know where the camera is, so I don't know whether you're holding it up to it or not. I have no idea. Uh so what what flavor is this?
Uh it says classic on the bag. So classic. All right. Candied orange peel, raisins, white chocolate. Seem to be distinguishing things there.
All right. So why don't you cut this open while I talk to Chris about other stuff and then we'll we'll we'll taste that. But if you were a Patreon member, you could get a discount on that. But if you're not, you can, you know, you can go uh listen to us eat it. Yeah, yeah, listen to us eat it.
Yeah, we're gonna have some uh anti-ASMR uh eating stuff. Um although I'll say Chris, you we a friend of ours was on the air in the old network and came on and made so many mouth noises that uh one of our listeners threatened his life. Who is this? Uh Paul Adams from uh America's Test Kitchen. Yeah, he purposely made mouth noises, and so the the listener called him a sociopath and threatened his life.
Yeah. I mean, it seems like both of them have problems. Is there a pre existing incident between those two? I mean, I did not ask, although that's possible. I mean, I I kind of get it.
The mouth noises, but like it's a podcast. You can turn it off. I guess that's true. All right. Let's uh let's tear it.
You are in control of your life. Yeah, you you'll control you. All right, so listen. Uh I'm trying to figure out what order we're gonna do everything in while we're waiting. Oh, all right.
Well, we're gonna pass this down. We'll pass. So, Chris, let's do let's do your current business last. That way we can spend all the rest of the time on it. Sound good?
That's fine. Okay. Uh you want should we do a quick overview of uh Chris Young's life while we're you want to do that? You want me to do it? I don't know.
Do you want well it depends on how fast you want to Yeah, Blaze, Blaze, you want to blaze through or do you want me to tell you what you your life? Yeah, ask ask me a question. So I for I first met you when uh in the early uh early, early aughts when you were still at Fat Duck. Harold connected that. Yeah, Harold McGee.
So you were what was your title there? Research uh head development chef. Head development chef. And so, you know, like all those like, you know, famous like sounds of the sea and all that stuff, you were involved in all of that, McGill, right? Or you were around that time.
I was around that time, Kyle Conna uh Conaten, who now runs the amazing restaurant uh uh single thread, he was actually the lead on Sound of the Sea, but hot and cold tea. Oh, that yeah, famous one by the ones. Yeah, you know that Johnny Zini made me build a a special syringe to do a up down hot cold prep for him big based on that. I mean, it it doesn't surprise me that you would do that. And that you would do that kind of thing.
Well, you know, that was my job at the time. That's right. Um anyway, so then after you uh after you deduct, you unduct, you uh I don't know, I don't know if you anyone's heard of this cookbook. Uh Modernist Cuisine. It's uh door stop.
Have you heard of this thing? I'm familiar. I'm familiar with it. Yeah. So when uh Nathan said, I'm gonna do this, you were he, you know, he I think he approached you at the Fat Duck, right?
I'll do the I'll I'll do the quick run through here just to to make this easy. Yeah, so I was at the Fat Duck for five ish years, a little over, depending on exactly when I count, because I was involved in writing the book um after I left. But uh so yeah, did did the fat duck. Um and Nathan was a friend. We had a I was from Seattle.
Uh Nathan had been a guest of the fat duck. I remember I think I told him uh theory he was peddling on e-gull, it was a bunch of garbage, and we struck up a friendship. So I sent him a courtesy email when I was leaving the fat duck saying, Hey, new new new email address if you want to stay in touch going forward. And he sent me an email saying, Hey, crazy idea. Why don't you come write a book with me?
And like I had the hardship interview. I spent the weekend on his boat and you know, went to El Bui together. And we we basically put together the outline that became the that book. And I think the plan was it was gonna be a year, year and a half project. You know, five years later, high watermark.
I think we had 38 people working on that book. And so, you know, I did that. Question No matter how big your boat is, his boat's always a little bit bigger, am I right? It's a pretty big boat. So yeah, we'd be very nice.
Yeah. Were you on that boat with him when they were doing the I forget it was some stupid expensive wine in the blender? Um he did do it on that trip. I don't know if that was the first time, but yeah, no, he had um who was the winemaker? Um famous Spanish winemaker whose name is escaping me.
But you know, Nathan brought out the blender, brought out his wine, blended it, served it to him, and I just remember this winemaker getting on his phone and screaming in Spanish, blender, blender. You know, just uh thought it was the coolest thing. Um so yeah, that was that was I think the first time I saw that little party trick. Yeah. Yeah.
Do you still believe that there is no difference that steam combi comfy with no fat is identical to fat comfy. I think you need to have fat on the surface of the meat. But if I steam it and have uh uh anointed in a layer of fat, I think that's largely I don't think you'd be able to pick out a difference in a triangle test. This is the kind of thing where you're gonna get people having violent reactions. But my answer is like, well, do a triangle test and and and settle it.
We did one uh for Modernist, and you know, nobody could pick up a difference. And you can sit there and say, well, your palate is shit and Nathan's palate is shit. But it's like a bunch of us tried. You know, I'm just asking whether you still I still I still believe it because I don't ascribe magical properties like uh Alice Waters does to Confi. Yeah, yeah.
Well, I mean old school comfy duck is so delicious. I don't care whether it's magic or not, delicious product. I don't know, you can maybe make it other ways, but it's delicious product. It's magically tasting. I th I think it's delicious.
I think crisp like look, I would uh this is the time of year what I would love some duck confie. But prefer modern under salted confie or old school. No, I like old school. Yeah. Come on.
You know why? Tastes good. It tastes a little because salt. We've covered this. Salt is delicious.
Salted butter, salted confie. It's not supposed to be hyper juicy, it's supposed to be comfy. I don't know if people realize that like not everything has to be the same thing. Not all the things have to be. No, it isn't.
It is that um I don't want it super juicy. Right. Right. I want some chew to it. Yeah.
Ding. Uh the other one that I wish that I could replicate. I wish I had remembered when I went to go see you guys at the at the lab for that dinner is the gooey duck was nuts. Had you not had gooey duck before? Was that the first time?
No, I had a bunch of times, but not cooked that way, not made into pasta and like put in a CVAP. Yeah. It was real good. I'd only had it. I mean, so good you missed your flight over it, as I recall.
That's true. I like uh every time that I've ever slept at the airport. Oh man, if you've never slept at CTAC. Um the don't, just don't do it. Uh I was actually there in time, but your your silly, your silly little mind.
Whatever. I mean, you built it. Okay. Uh so the most of the time I've had gooey duck is just the thing where you know you you you you quick blanch it, rip off the condom, and then slice it real thin. You know what I mean?
But you know, what what was your procedure on that again? I don't even remember how that was prepared at that time. I mean, I know it was cooked um it was either done in the CVAP or it was done Sue B or either way can work, but it was it was cooked really low and slow for a fairly long time so that we could sheet it out and you could you could it was much more pliable and you could sort of but not mushy. No, no, but there's you know it's not pure it's not pure collagen, right? So you're never gonna fully lose that that snap when you cook it down.
I'm gonna go ahead and say this tastes good. This is this is delicious. I'm trying not to chew into the microphone, but this is tasty. I don't know. John, can you uh c listen, you know what uh we would be remiss.
Can you hold up to the camera for the Patreon folk? The everyone all people care about they don't uh people don't even actually care how a panatone tastes now. They just want to see the crumb on Instagram. That's how stupid we become as a culture. That's how dumb we are.
That we we don't even use our mouth anymore. We just use the our phone cameras. You know what I mean? So put that up on the on the what's it called. All right.
So then uh you and like, you know, well, basically you and and who else can't went from Modernist to uh Chesha. You grew up. Yeah, so uh Grant Krilly, who was a uh development chef at Modernist, Ryan Matthew Smith, who was the principal photographer for Modernist Cuisine. Three of us basically said, Hey, you know, this is 2012, not 2008 anymore. Um, you know, we don't really want to do uh an another big book.
And you know, what people don't really remember now is that in 2008 when we started Modernist Cuisine, like blogging was kind of a new thing. Uh YouTube wasn't a thing yet. And all of a sudden by 2012, when the book was done and we'd finished the the the press tours, you know, a couple guys with the uh a Canon uh 5D Mark II could create some pretty cool cooking videos, throw them up on YouTube for free and build an audience. So we started Chef Steps uh in 2012. Back one second.
Why would Nathan never say how much the book cost? What was the reason to not say what the book costs? To this day, still won't say what the book costs. You know, I don't really know what the answer is to that. I mean, I have an idea of what the book costs uh yet I'm not gonna ask you what it is because if he doesn't want it, whatever, it doesn't matter.
I'm just curious why that was such a big thing, like why that was a issue. I mean, you talked about how many pounds of ink it was in it. No, no, he loved talking about all those things. Um hard to predict. I I don't, you know, I don't know, you know, there was nothing nefarious about it.
I think he just wasn't comfortable sharing how much he he might have invested in that. But he's built it into a you know, he's built modernist cuisine into a you know, he's done subsequent books, he's built a publisher around it. It's it's it's a it's a successful business in its own right, and he invested very, very heavily to do it. I I can't think of another having been involved in some high production cookbooks, this was off the charts. And while I think modernist cuisine was was financially very successful, I don't think he really wanted to share how much he personally had invested uh to do it.
And it's not just creating the book. Remember, he had to, you know, he published it as well. So he had to front all the cost for printing books and and you know, it's an expensive book to make. So I I think it may just be he doesn't really want to talk about the money because he's a wealthy individual and and that's private. Okay.
Curious. Yeah. Uh all right. So then uh at Chef Steps, so the the interesting thing about Chef Steps is you go from uh content creation to actual hardware manufacturing. Yeah.
Which is kind of uh an interesting route. Yeah. So I don't know if you want to say anything about that or I mean and the basic idea of it was so first off, Gabe Newell was was the financial backer uh and the only backer for for chef steps. Um I was the original cash in, and then that was not gonna get us in uh you know anywhere near far enough. And Gabe Gabe came in.
And I think Gabe correctly understood the value of YouTube, the value of being able to put your videos online was to find an audience. And one of the challenges most people who've done hardware run into is if you make the hardware, that's not enough. You've got to market it, you've got to distribute it. And like what's your advantage there? It's it's more expensive to do that than it is to develop the hardware at the end of the day.
Gabe was basically doing the same thing over at Valve, and he was pushing us to invert it on uh you know, invert the idea of like the first thing you do is build an audience, build loyalty, build trust, so that when you come out with something, they're all gonna buy it. And that was the basic logic uh is so you'd always planned on doing some hardware. Uh I think there was a little bit of uncertainty for about the first year, but it became very clear that monetizing digital content, you know, wasn't really going to be successful. Um you're competing against free. Yeah.
Free is hard to compete with. Free is very hard to compete with. And I think, you know, Chef Steps, I'm not involved anymore. It's owned by Breble, and they've gone back and tried to monetize the content. I I it it's not obvious to me that it's very successful for them.
You say, God bless. God bless. Um but the the point of it was we could see from our content that there was a lot of interest in Sous vide. And you know, there was still a lot of education to be done, and we had the best content, I think, at the time on Sous vide cooking. We built up a big audience for that.
So when we came out with our Sous vide device, which we put a lot of effort into make a uh to making an excellent product, we were able to sell it very successfully. Um that was that was a huge deal. Um now we were in a a serious competition with ANOVA, but there was also all these knockoffs, and it really turned into it was just us and ANOVA, and there was you know some reasons to choose one or the other. But I think Gabe was fundamentally right of saying you build an audience and then you sell them a product. Um I'm doing a similar thing with my company today.
It's why I do YouTube videos still, it's why I'm I'm creating the content of I can't directly compete for an advertising budget against bigger competitors. But I can build an audience that believes in me and thinks I'm trying to do the best product possible. And to the extent that they believe that's true, hopefully they buy my product. And uh let me just clarify your position is that Sous vide's a trash can idea, it doesn't work, right? Yeah, no, awful.
I was that was that was so 2019. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that yeah, that's something we used to do when we cared about things. I mean, uh you know, I was I was I uh as I said, I saw your brother-in-law before I came here. Wiley and I were talking about look, you know, back in in in 2004, 2005 when we were sort of pioneering a lot of the ideas of Sous vide, you know, we were, you know, we were fighting an uphill battle at the time.
Everyone thought it was nuts. And now it's just become kind of a thing you do. I was in I was in Cuba on vacation last uh spring break, and I was at some nice restaurant in Havana, which, you know, a little iffy, but sure enough, they're cooking Sous vide in Havana. Well, uh the barrier is so low, especially if you're not using the VAC, if you're just doing the temperature control, which is like I say the real point of Sous vide in my word word wise, I lost that battle in like oh pfft, when did I lose that battle? Early on with P Press when Did I ever tell you this story?
So so the Sous vide Supreme, which was neither Sous vide nor Supreme. Yeah, right, was it's just a uh a stagnant water bath. You know what I mean? When that came out, they were the first kind of mass market thing, right? So like my old intern weepop was NomiCo, which was the first sub thousand dollar, sub 800, sub-500.
Was it them or Sanser that was first? No, NomiCoo. Okay. Anyway. Um point being that P Press got Philip, that's Philip Press in PolyScience.
Uh he got real bent because they were making all this money on Sous vide Supreme. And so when he did his the first 800 plastic, you know, $800 plastic one, which dropped to five, I think. Yeah, he called it uh Sous vide professional or something like that. I was like, come on, dude. Why are you because no one not everyone had called the technique sous vide?
And like I was always upset because here in New York City, if it was called Sous vide, the health department would come in and bust your head open. And also it's inaccurate. But lost that battle a long time ago. And now the technique is sous vide regardless of whether you use a vacuum, which is dumb, dumb. I mean, I uh we had this debate at Chef Step Circa 2015 of should we call it Sous V should we It's not though, yeah, it shouldn't be.
But I as I pointed out, so this is where I'd kind of pragmatically disagree with you saying we don't have nearly enough marketing dollars to change the the conversation on that. Well, you know, but that's why I said at a certain point I lost, right? Like it's called what it's called, even though it's you know a bad term for it because it's literally not what it is. You know what I mean? Like but uh yeah, you know, when you lose, you lose.
Yeah, and and my standpoint is like, well, we shouldn't make it hard for customers to figure out what this is and why they'd want it. I don't think we've lost on dry brining yet. It's salting. No, no, hell no. No, no, no, no, no.
This is a this is a blip. This is a blip. We're going here already. This is a blip. You salt things.
So when you when you're when you're at the table and you're like, hey, um, I love these scrambled eggs though, but can I dry brine them a little bit? No, I'm gonna salt them. I'm gonna salt my eggs. Stupid. So dumb.
So dumb. It would make more sense to call brining wet salting. Okay. Neither of them make sense. There's brining and there's salting.
Where does where I was gonna say, where does curing fit into this? Yeah. You can do it either way. Curing is where you're changing the conformation of the proteins in something. Yeah.
That's what curing is. You know what I mean? Which dry brining does, because the concentration of salt at the service was really high in it. Back when people were making hams for the past thousand years, they weren't dry brining. What do you hey?
Hey, Bubba, what are you doing? I'm gonna salting down the hams. Oh, really? You mean you're dry brining them? Pop!
No, I'm salting the hams. You know what I mean? It's like we get the questions with 20 minutes left. So salt. All right.
Uh so we're gonna do creamy first. Okay. So have we already discussed so basically for those of you that don't, again, don't know, Paco Jet invented this thing. There was uh the Nean Mox, which was an Italian company that tried to get around the patent and made a much inferior, I had one fake, I used to call it the Faco Jet. I had one.
It made a decent product, but this it didn't work as well as the Paco Jet. Problem with the Paco Jet, aside from its extreme cost, what does it cost now? Uh I don't know what it costs now, but I think it was around six thousand dollars was the the original. It's a lot of things. I think it's more than three and I think it's closer to four.
Right, and there's there's Paco Jet, not as good, too, right? There's Paco Jet and there's Paco Jet. It's not really mini, and it's not really a lot cheaper. It's sort of like why does this thing exist? Yeah.
Well, so anyway, made in Switzerland, or thereabouts, all the parts inside are you know not standard because I looked because I used to rip them apart to fix them too. Yeah. Don't it's so hard to fix. Like I was the guy that I was the New York guy who knew how to fix Paco Jets. So like they would all come to me to get fixed.
Anyways, so I would try to find belts that I could get standard. Anyway, whatever. Uh hard. Um so it comes out, and then when their patent runs out, we can now have a $300 unit that purports to do the same thing. So Quinn has his perspective on it as a home person, and who, you know, Quinn wrote a book on ice cream, um, you know, using primarily using uh primarily like uh sorry, family show, believe we'll believe that later.
Like uh using the the things that you freeze, you know what I mean? The food panester. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so then he has the creamy. You might be interested, he only, and he I'm sure he had to change for creamy, but he'll talk about it.
Uh he he writes all of his specs so that they are uh scoopable at freezer temp. So like high so really high sugar. So domestic freezer temp, like like twenty twenty below. Yeah, yeah. That's a lot of sugar.
Right, but he's using non-sweet sugars, so they're not uh they're not let's say waste friendly. Oh, okay, yeah. So you're gonna get the shits and giggles. Yeah, yeah. But they No, but he uses a lot of like well, wait, why don't you say what you use?
They're not non-nutrial sweeteners, it's a relatively high ratio of dextros. Okay, but but remember okay, so you're bullying the solids really high. Also, remember, dextrose has twice the anti-freezing power, roughly twice the anti-freezing power of sucrose. Yeah. And it's less sweet, so it doesn't take much dextrose.
You could throw a tiny bit of alcohol in there. I think he does that sometimes. Yeah, some of the recipes too. Yeah. All right.
So, first question, Quinn. On the creamy, uh, don't you have to make them more standard because it requires it to be a certain hardness to blend right? Yes, I have redone all my specs. Okay. Uh, at least on paper.
Okay. Yeah. Uh five, six, seven recipes, and also some original ones. All right. Uh well, so do you prefer the the more standard uh base made in a in a creamy that's uh self uh tempering be or do you prefer the the Quinn style uh extra extra dextrose style?
Hmm, it's hard to say. I think overall you get a better texture with the creamy. But again, I'm coming from a perspective where I try to make pretty bulletproof recipes. So I don't notice a huge difference. Although like it's nice because I I always do an overnight wrist for my bases anyways.
But for this one, the overnight risk is also the overnight freeze. So then you can just spin it in the ninja and then it's running. It's gonna be two uh points. You know, there is a company who used to make they still make it very expensive pasteurized freeze units. I forget the name of the company, Italian company.
You've seen these? Like large, like like, you know, ice cream freezer, like as as big as this studio for like, you know, mid-size ice cream joints. Not a continuous freezer, batch. And uh, but like, you know, as big as you'd get in still use batch. And um the like the engineer slash owner that I spoke to years ago was I was like, Don't you have to age your ice cream?
Why would you want to pasteurize and then freeze right away? Because you know, theory is you I guess build up the you build up the crystal shape so that you get better stabilization. Remember, you desorb some you desorb some proteins off the uh fat molecules. He's like, No, you either want to do it right away or age. You don't want anything in between.
He's like, I go right away, but I don't really know what the science of that is. Someday we gotta have golf on. Uh I have had email, I never in person. I've had some email exchanges with him many years ago because uh César Vega, who was one of his PhD students, uh did some work with us at the Fat Document. Yeah, I know, yeah.
But but was was he was he good on email? Should we try it again? Uh he was yeah, he's fine. It's been a uh 12, 15 years. So he's the one that currently has his name on the R Buckle book.
Yes, I think so. Yeah, yeah. No one even knows our buckle ice cream anymore. When we were, you know, young, that was the book, our buckle ice cream. Yeah, you know, I think by the time I had that, he had Goff had his name on it, but so he's the lead author on the book now.
Yeah, just golf. There's no R buckle. I guess I need to buy uh buy a new copy. Yeah, anywho, um I don't know where I was going with this. So my question here then is uh oh, get this.
You're gonna appreciate this. Can I go on a small slight tangent? Yeah. Like I can stop you. So there's a company now that has a pop-up.
Wiley told me about it in Union Square. Get this. Their shtick is I haven't tasted, I don't know anything about it. Their shtick is you they have make a microwave coffee rooster that roasts just enough for you to use right now, and you're supposed to use it a la minute. And I was like, I don't understand.
Every coffee reference I have ever read says you can't you should not use I I do it actually, but you should not use coffee that you've roasted right away. Like how could they possibly use this as a selling point? Have you heard about this? Microwave coffee roasting? I I haven't heard about this.
This feels like a question for uh uh Jim Hoffman or James Hoffman. Yeah, I'll ask him about it. I don't know if you need to try their stuff. They haven't kick started it yet. They're doing this pop-up in Union Square, but then they're using cameras to look at it.
But I mean microwaves are real hard because once starts something starts like up, once something loses all of its moisture and starts going, but it's gonna become a better it's gonna throw it seems to me to be an interesting problem. Let's put it that way. I mean of getting it to absorb evenly ding, yeah and and not get thermal runaway. Right. Unless you can somehow make only the steam and smoke absorb, but I don't see how you can do that.
You know what I'm saying? So it's like it seems to me to be a difficult problem. And also, why would I want to why would why are you swimming against the stream of everyone wants coffee roasted later? Anyway, whatever. Whatever, I digress.
So uh my question, and one of the reason I want to have you two on together to mention the creamy stuff is that um, you know, you've used the the Paco Jet, and I was speaking to, you know, my buddy uh Leo Robichek, and I asked him, Are you using the creamy or Paco Jet? He's like, No, we're using the Paco Jet, we just can't trust the creamy in a commercial environment. So in a commercial environment, is it possible because the price difference is so extreme to use a creamy, or is it what you think would be advisable? Uh so here's the interesting thing, and I kind of wanted to make this comment earlier. Um I took apart the cream, you know, I've taken a Paco Jet apart, and uh a lot of people make the mistake of equating it's expensive and it's heavy with therefore, it's got great parts.
Like, no, these are all bespoke made parts. Um, there's no, you know, they've over time figured out what's reliable, but it's not a high reliability machine. Um, and the failure points are about the same. When I took apart the creamy, uh, actually kind of surprised me. I had the impression that, you know, and I went and bought it with my own money, and I think it was actually Nick Caconis made some comment on on Twitter about how it couldn't possibly be good at that price, but I'm like, eh.
I know a thing or two about mass manufacturing. So you're gonna make a bunch of them. And and this is a you know, Shark Ninja buys a lot of motors, right? Which is the primary thing. And they knew so they have a lot of engineers with deep motor expertise.
The engineering uh is actually very, very, very good. Um, better than the Paco Jet, in my opinion. They made a bunch of interesting technical choices to hit the pricing targets, but it surprised me because I had the expectation of it would be fairly garbagey. And as a result, I ended up going up to like the website for Shark Ninja and just looking at like their job openings and realized they have scaled up their engineering team in four cities massively. And they're putting a lot of interesting stuff out.
I imagine it's uneven, but they do good engineering, was my point. And this was a well thought through product. It made some serious trade-offs to be approachable for a domestic machine that does that that could be a factor in a commercial situation. As an example, I would like it if the diameter was larger. And the reason is the tip speed of your blade, your blade would be larger diameter, and your tip speed would be faster, and you would get more shear force.
And I find for a lot of times the creamy I have to spin it twice rather than once, and that would be annoying. It's smaller than a Paco blade, it is, but bigger than the NeMox blade, which was tiny. Yeah. And and that that turned out to be uh important in in, you know, it's a it's an appreciable difference. I I say it in the video, I don't remember, but I think it's like 30% smaller in diameter.
So that's pretty massive in terms of what you're at this, you know. And it runs at a slightly lower RPM. Those two factors together means your tip speed is like I think I figured out it was like half as fast. That's a pretty big difference on your shear force. And what's its uh time to time to pitcher?
Is it similar? No, it's a little it feeds slower. It depends on the mode. Yeah. Right.
But you can have three of these. But even in the hot even in the fast mode, it does feed slower. The milling operation feeds slower than the the Paco Jet. But the blade, blades made the same way. They're both centered stainless steel blades.
So uh another problem I have with the Faco Jet. Well, yeah. I would also say that mine I've been making again, my heavily stabilized product. The clearance for the blade and the canister could be a little tighter. I get like, you know, a very thin cylinder and the very bottom of the container, sometimes like basically unprocessed.
Yeah. Yeah, that that I I find one, the tip speed makes a big difference there. If the blade tip was moving faster, it would rip that material away from the surface. But the other issue is because it's a plastic container and these are injection molded, they have draft in them. So they're angled, they're not straight-sided like the Paco Jet ones are, which means the clearance of the blade at the top is large relative to the clearance at the bottom because there's an angle to the to the clear.
The FACO jet also had a problem like that. But and it was also plastic. Do they make an upgrade stainless that you can they they uh not that I'm aware of? I did see that they have a new version of it out with a different form factor and the the thing inserts kind of at an angle. I haven't tried it, but um by the way, if you're new and you're working in a professional restaurant and you see something that looks like a Bane Marie and it's got three dimples in the bottom, that's not a Bane Marie.
That's don't touch it. Don't touch it. Don't dent it. Um, so I think I'd say this. Look, I bought mine, I think, for around 200.
They go on sale all the time. Paco jets are really expensive. I can put them on subscribe and save with Amazon. I don't care if I'm going through one or two a week. But here's the thing the motor's not going to like they did a bunch of interesting things where they separated the drive motor from it to use a gearing system and a low-cost DC motor from the that advances the motor.
That is exactly the way they optimize the motor for different jobs. Whereas Paco Jet has some very complex gearing and clutch. Which is a bad idea and it breaks. And it breaks a lot. So I kind of look at this and go, the ninja is very unlikely to break in a commercial environment.
It is inconvenient in that it doesn't process as fast. You sometimes have to spin it twice to get the servable texture. Um you live with these? Well, if you can't, I mean, if look, if you're a linea, you should have a Paco Jet. Probably more than one because they break and you need a backup.
Um, if you're a restaurant where you're like, hey, we're gonna use this occasionally, it'd be a nice to have, then get two of them. Then get two of these. Get three of them. It's it, you know, it's not gonna break you. All right.
Let's see, we have some specific specific questions, but then we got to get into uh thermo thermometers. Uh question from William Savados. Uh I've been thinking about trying to make creamy versions of aperitif sorbet's Negroni or Marrow based. I assume the biggest challenge will be to balance the ingredients that depress the freezing point with ones that don't. Perhaps some of the newer zero-proof cocktail ingredients uh substitutes that have come to market could be useful here.
Any guidance would be appreciated. Any and you guys experiment with that, with that uh genre? Yeah, again, right? I just if you want alcohol, like to use the original ingredients. I basically would not use the creamy.
I would use a conventional churn. I agree. Okay there. If you really want the creamy, then I would again I would use like a small amount of the real thing and then substitute with like some sort of non elk. Here's an idea.
You ready for an idea? Here's another idea. Like just make an alcohol fluid gel and then mix it in with the stuff you spin. Boop, done. Okay.
You know, make the alcohol fluid gel, get it real cold in your freezer. It's never gonna freeze because it's alcohol fluid gel. And just fold it. And just fold it in, baby. Like uh, you know, that's and then so it's like swirl, so it's like freaking Negroni swirl, and now you have the best of all the worlds.
You have a good texture of freaking ice cream. That's my other criticism of the entire genre of style of machine. I could never solely use this a blade-driven machine, because you can only do swirls and mix-ins once. Yep. Unless you want it really mixed in.
Uh Dave Kleiman wants to know has anyone made Italian ices with the creamy? And if so, what settings do you use? Any special considerations? I can't say that I have. I love Italian ices.
I love them. What do you like about them? Uh, I like going out for Italian ice, and you just had a pizza and you're at Libby's in Worcester Square, and you wait in line and they handpack the Italian ice and you choose the two flavors and you sit there eating it. You know, I didn't have that experience growing up, so I just think it's lost on me. I've I've had them.
Yeah. It's never something I would create. Like, I would never detour to go, oh, let me let me get that. Yeah. What about what about where you have the one scoop of I'll I'll be for Quinn so not to get bent here, like gelato and then a scoop of Italian ice next to it.
So you have the creamy and you have the icy. I just don't love the icy texture. Like it's lost on me. Me either. Nice.
Just cold. Yeah, see, I'm I'm I'm I'm on team dent sore base. Dave, they got nothing for you, man. Dave, they these these these guys are not gonna be helpful for you. Sorry about that.
Uh Kevin Stademeyer, uh, finally caught up on her. New question. Got a creamy after hearing the crew talk about it. Does the speed of freezing for the container matter? I.
Is it worth pre-cooling before freezing, or do the blades just annihilate all the ice crystals? I have my guess, but what do you guys think? I don't think it makes much of a bring it to room temperature. I'll say that you're not like warming up your freezer. I will say this about jets.
And if you free there is an issue if you freeze it too fast, you get that little volcano forming in the center, which you gotta chisel down because it causes the blade too. Will that hurt? So I mean in Paco Jets, one of the problems is the the things, the containers are so expensive that people would freeze in quart containers and then pop out of cork containers and jam them in. And then it spins. And then it spins, or if it's off kilter, the blade hits too hard on one side, you can shatter the blade.
I've I have shattered the blade. It is it is bad. Um the ninja uh creamy appears to do a reasonable amount of software control to say, hey, I'm I'm I'm getting over torqued, I'm getting out of balance and and and shut it down. Um the Paco Jet, I think I think any milling style machine is is prone to this. If you're you're advancing a milling blade through, and if the blade gets too much wobble or the material isn't frozen to the side so it can freeze spin, it's not gonna do anything.
Well, those dimples in the bottom or the in the fake o the paddles I have in the bottom are there to stop spin. What do they have in the bottom of the cream? They have some molded dimples in the bottom. Yeah, to stop spin. Yeah.
Um the other issue that you can have. Now here's the thing. In in the yeah, when they first came out with the Paco Jet, the theory was you could just spin the top two servings and then the leave the rest unspun. In practice, I've never done this. I've only ever spun the whole container.
And if you are freezing something that isn't homogenous, you need to worry that you're going to get floaters if you are only going to process a portion at a time. Um I I've processed portions at the Fat Duck, but it was probably homogenous mixtures. Not like floating on top. They were homogenous mixtures. And I don't think it was something I needed to do frequently.
I think there was a couple occasions where it didn't make sense to process the whole thing. But generally, yeah, I blitzed whole container. Right. Because like one of the things you think you can do is like, I'll just throw in whole peppercorns and it's gonna blend them up. Yeah, uh, yeah.
I would probably grind the peppercorns first before you put them into the mixture, but then they're also gonna float all to the top. Yep. And then if you only grind the top, that's a lot of pepper. Or mushrooms or whatever the hell else you're putting into your by the way, everyone's like, you're gonna use it for moose. No, you're not, right?
You're gonna I mean I think for any of those mix-ins, my strategy always was after blitzing the the smooth base, put it in a plastic container and do a uh and and fold things in and then and then do your quinels or your roches. Oh, you weren't doing it directly out of the out of the thing? Sometimes Does anyone still do that? Is anyone still two spoon hot hot bane? No.
That's dead. That's for savages. It's dead. For Neanderthals. Yeah, but that used to be the thing.
Every restaurant, you sit there, boop boop, scoop, scoopy scoop. I had one dish that we did that because it had to have three sides. I remember like yeah, I had to have I have perfectly round spoons so I could get the nice little three-sided quinelle. Stab me. It was some it was uh, you know, uh tartar sauce.
Yeah, you know, it's like uh what are some other things that are are dead are dead? Uh turned turned vegetables. Yeah, I've seen that coming back though. I've seen some mushrooms. Okay, questions.
I've seen some mushrooms. Uh included mushrooms. Uh okay. Uh this is a slightly ice cream, but not uh this. Uh I was wondering if you any uh one has sage advice for adding soft serve machine to a restaurant dessert program.
I have access to uh the Stolting uh F one eleven three seven one, which is their like roughly I think seven or eight thousand dollar air cool job, two forty. But um uh I'm really just keen to hear thoughts on whether or not to attempt to develop our own base or just try uh to flavor pre-made bases. I thought we answered this once. I don't always love the flavor texture of uh traditional pre-made, but I'm also understanding making your own can be quite challenging. Um any book or human you suggest for a resource, anything you you uh ice cream by Goff uh has a section on stabilizing soft serve mixes, and I think that is the challenge of getting they really need to be h homogenized.
They need to have a good stabilizing system. It's doable, but I've had the soft serve is become very trendy in Seattle. I've had a lot of house made soft serve mixes that just melt. I think you know, one of the things that's nice about so it needs to stand up, it needs to stay dry, it needs to not piss all over the the cone. You can always see a a homemade base because it just melts down too quickly.
But the way around that is not to just include so much air that it's its own insulator. No, no. There's uh I think it's uh usually like calcium sulfate for drying it, and then there's a a good, you know. I would buy a pre-made stabilizer system unless you really know what you're doing. You know what I've always wanted to own?
Like Wiley, I guess has got a stabilizer system. Yeah, come on. Of course he does. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh I've always wanted to own a frozen custard machine. I have no reason to own one. But they're mini continuous freezers. They're amazing. Department's like a museum, isn't it?
Oh my god. I wish I owned one. I don't. I don't. Someday, someday.
If I you know, ever, you know, whatever. I would buy that before I bought the helicopter. They're only twelve grand. I mean only. Yeah, only what are you gonna do with a twelve grand frozen custard machine?
You know what I mean? Put it in your storage and in Stanford with all the other stuff. Open up a pop-up here at Rockefeller Plaza. Yeah, yeah. Come get your custards.
Uh JAH, this is also an old question. I don't know if we answered it. Uh why? And I didn't look it up, so I hope someone here knows the answer. Why is Stracciatella called Stracciatella?
I thought that was cheese in relation to Because Stracciatella means shredded cloth. So in Italian, it is shredded cloth. It's also curds of fresh cheese, and it is also Italian egg drop soup. And it is gelato where it's clean or vanilla spended with um shred threads of chocolate. Yeah.
Shred this. This is just a word to confuse non-native speakers. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Very context dependent.
All right, Trafto writes in. Uh I've done some side-by-side tests of the Paco Jet and Creamy using the same ice cream base at work and have noticed a slight iciness on the finish with the creamy that you don't get in the Paco. You talked about this a little bit. Have you experienced anything similar? If so, how would you troubleshoot a problem like that when developing recipes for the creamy as opposed to uh pocket jet?
Would you just use more invert sugar? For what is worth, I'm using a light custard base with the usual sugars and stabilizers, glucose, glucose powder, milk powder, xanthan, and guar. I would probably start by getting my solid content up. Oh, by the way, Trafto, I hope you're using flavor-free and tea flavor-free uh guar from uh the TIC gums. But go ahead.
I would uh right off the bat, if it's icy, uh it usually points to low solids for me. And and yeah, this is one where the slower cutting speed and uh because it doesn't have as much shear force, the the sides of the container don't get as is as sheared down into smaller particles, and then they get folded in. So you can't. Yeah, that's what I'm more worried about. I'm more worried about the chunks coming off before they're is that why you double double?
That's why you I tend to have to do it double. How hard is it to pop it? How hard is it to pop it like do a do a scrape down before you reprocess? I don't even usually have to do a scrape down, I just hit the button twice. So it won't, so in other words, it rips enough off the sides that you're not going to get some bull crap.
And then how much colder, how many more degrees of cool do you need on it to be able to double process it and still have it be servable right away without having to uh what's it called? Uh re-temper it back down. Because I know in service, whenever we would double spin Pacos, we would throw them back in the freezer for a while before we started serving out. You know, I don't think I can. Temperature drops about You mean raises?
Two degrees for the actual respin button. Because you can do whatever mode you did twice, but then there is also a slightly weaker, faster respin. I think most of my testing, the gelato mode brought things from storage temperature, which is roughly 18 to 20, down to like 12, and then if you re-spin, it brings it down to about 10. What? This is going the wrong direction.
I understand. Yeah, he's talking about minus, minus, minus number. He's doing it in Celsius. Yeah, he's doing it in Celsius. Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah.
No, he's doing it in Fahrenheit. He's just not saying minus 18. Oh, you are getting all confused. It's warmer. It gets warmer by two degrees Celsius on the on the fast spin, is what you're saying.
For a full beak. In the respin. For a big thing. All right, there you go. I mean, that's not that's not nothing.
Paco didn't used to be able to do that. How's this on aeration versus the Paco? Do you still have that fake do you have to? No, it doesn't inject air, so I think it's better in that regard. I hate the air hose on the packet.
I hate it. Uh first. It's part of their patent, though. Yeah, well, we we so first off, if you ever take the thing apart, that thing's a bacteria. Like you can't get that clean.
The air hose section? Yeah, and and you can't take it off to clean it with without being destructive. It is not uh it is not serviceable without a destructive destruction of a part. Everyone I know used to just jam a bamboo skewer in and snap the skewer off. Oh no, when I bought one uh Paco Jet off eBay for for that video, and there was tons of shit up in that tube.
And we're like, oh, we're blowing through like this is this is vile. Yeah. So that hose came right off because that's just a bacterial trap. I think it's a terrible idea. Everybody should nobody should use that on their pocket.
You've been using it on the creamy and you didn't need it. Uh creamy doesn't inject air, and I don't I I I never like that mousy, fluffy texture that you get from air injection. Is it a sealed top the way the Paco is, other than that air hole? I mean, it it's it's not a hermetic seal, but you're just milling down, so there's not a a lot of air entrainment action. Right.
Because if you read the Paco patent, there's a lot about that crap in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was that was key. And I think it's worth waste of time. All right, so if we have time, which we will not all have you ever used a water fryer?
No. Okay, then there's well, I'll save it for later then. Okay. All right. Um if you had used one, you've heard about them though, right?
I've always wanted to try one. Are you d describe what you're talking about? So what they do is they have an extra deep cold zone so that uh at the end of the day. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I I I I yes.
Japanese thing. And then they have an ad where there's goldfish swimming around eating the the floaty bits that fall down. Yeah, but so like someone's like, why does it work? Well, it works. If it works I've always wanted to try one.
If it works, it's because the cold zone is big enough so that they the the water portion is never in the uh higher than boiling point section. That is how it works. And if the water were to get to that section, you'd be in deep, deep, deep trouble. You know what I mean? But it's not, so there you go.
Yeah. Anyway. Uh all right. So let's talk about combustion engineering. Your new new new project.
Uh, you know, the reason we want to have one, we only have four minutes to talk about it, but um. So I use this thing, it's awesome. So the you want to give the quick pitch of what we're doing here, what it is. And by the way, this is the new charger. If you have the old one, you need to get the new the new charge.
You want to talk about what this is and yeah. So uh it's a wireless thermometer. Uh it's the thinnest on the market. Um we think it's uh it's got that's the cell thinnest on the market. I'm getting there, Dave.
I'm getting there. Uh so the big the big differentiator is eight temperature sensors. So we measure the temperature everywhere. Because you know, you care about the temperature more than just at the center of your food because you eat more than just the center of your food. I don't, but yes.
Oh, you just you throw everything else away. All right, well, that's cut all the flavor off in just the center. You do you. Yeah. Um, so the basic idea is we're measuring the temperature everywhere.
We let you see the temperature everywhere at the surface and the core everywhere in between. We use all that to feed into our physics engine. We're actually building a full simulation of the food in software on the probe that lets us predict when the food will be done. We are working on being able to predict carryover and barbecue stall because we do actually we're starting to build in the ability to look at water migration and evaporation in our physics model. The other cool thing we do is because we're measuring the temperature everywhere and we have a lot of processor in that probe.
Now we're uh being able to track how much time you've spent at safe cooking temperatures. We're tracking the total pasteurization so we can tell you when you've achieved a six and a half log or a seven log reduction, if that's important to you, so that you can have juicy chicken or pork chops that aren't cooked to 165 but are still meeting the USDA FDA levels. Now, before we spoke of before we get on here, we were talking about this, and what's interesting, you say so one of the things that's nice is because it's your company and you are somebody that likes to have control of the products. You give people eventually the ability to actually see things that they find interesting, even if they are not the typical user. And this is one of the things I really have an open API.
We have a lot of people creating cool stuff with this. Yeah. And so this has how many sensors on it again? Eight. Right.
So here's the interesting thing, right? The actual thinking is not buried in the head where you think it is. The thinking is buried where the where there's going to be moisture. Yeah, we have the we there's a there's about a one and a half inch, uh, 50 millimeter, sorry, it's a little more than one and a half an inch, 50 millimeter zone where we've got the battery. We have all the we have a full-fledged arm coprocessor in there, and that's where it's doing all the thinking.
And we rely on being inserted in the food and the food having enough water to keep it below the boiling point of water. Although I had to say, so like, you know, uh it says all over it, and I haven't tried to abuse it. Um do not uh you know, make sure that that's always inserted in food because that's the one way to kill it, right? If you get it too hot, you can eventually fry the the electronics. Yeah, but I got it up to get this, dude.
Uh I was doing baked potatoes. So you know how, like in a in a baked potato, if you overcrowd your oven, it's kind of unpredictable how long it's gonna take to cook. So I was like, I, you know, I did what I normally do. I wash them, oil them, salt them, jab them, and I went boom, and you just shove the nice thing about this is you just shove it wherever, and as long as you get sharp. Yeah, as long as you hit anywhere near the center, you're good.
Yeah, but um the potato that I chose split a little bit, and so it got hot into the area of the probe and it made it up to like hotter than it should have. The probe is fine. Yeah, no, there's there's margins of safety built in there. We've got to not say to abuse it. Um, you know, we we obviously rate it for 300 Celsius in the upper half, uh 575 Fahrenheit roughly.
There's a margin of safety on that, right? Because flare ups happen. Same with with the with the battery and everything. But uh, I know people like to have uh wires on their thermometer because they love wires coming out of their oven. But why did you decide that like not to have the wires that everybody loves?
No, it's amazing. I'm kidding. It's like you shove this in and you can walk away from it, and sucker works. Um and uh listen. So that's the other thing is we made it really easy to connect, right?
Usually you have to go through this pairing process, you have to get out. You don't have to do any of that. There's a kitchen timer. If you don't want to every there's a cool app, but if you don't give a crap about any of that, you can just use the kitchen timer and it connects out of the box one second, no hassle. And uh, you know, stick it to your fridge or whatever, which is what I do.
I have it on my fridge. Um yeah. So the and this also tells you how much the nice thing about this or the phone app is it tells you how much battery is left in this so that you don't it tells you when it gets low. Right. So we when when it when it says hey, there's low, there's about 90 minutes of battery run time left.
But it only takes uh 15 minutes for a full charge that'll last over 30 hours, and and two minutes will give you like I think two minutes of charging gives you about four hours. Yeah, so here's the cool thing, and this is just becoming just a promotional placement. But the cool thing about this uh new charger, which I haven't used yet, thank you, is that uh this acts as a Wi-Fi repeater or Bluetooth report. Bluetooth repeater, it forms a mesh network, yeah. Yeah, sweet.
Yeah, so we I mean we have a battery in there so now I can go inside. I can have my this in my grill. Yeah, I can put this on my deck, yeah, and then I can be in the kitchen. Yeah, and they just will figure out the most efficient path to hop and get the data to you. Right.
Uh yeah. So again, like the the cool thing is you stick it in and after after there's enough of a curve, right? Which is about to change. We we we right now it takes 30% before it gives you a prediction. We're about to launch the next phase of our physics engine, which will give you pretty good predictions starting at 10%.
Oh nice. But here's another thing. If you're a professional, which I know a lot of you listen are, eventually, once they test this, I don't think you kind of glossed over it, kind of a big deal. So, like everyone's numbers, uh, a lot of people's numbers now are time. Do you hit a specific temperature target, and you're done from a safety perspective, not from a cooking perspective, right?
Yeah. So what you're allowing to do is say, actually, no, uh, bacteria don't like they're not healthy, healthy, healthy, healthy dead. It is more like, well, individual bacteria are, but like uh, you know, they you get up to uh every they start dying at 130 Fahrenheit. Right, and then they die faster as you go higher. So what you're saying is I can choose a target temperature.
It knows from the FDA tables how long it takes to get a certain level of safety, and now it'll do what you said, integrate. We are counting every second at 130, every second at 131, 132, and we will tell you when that that'll hit that level. Right. So all of the things that I've been doing my whole life, I'm assuming I'm only taking the high temperature that you go to and doing my time integration on that. This is taking, as soon as you enter the killing zone, it starts to integrate, which is genius.
But get this. So in the real life, the real way people do this when they're professional, professional professionals, like industry, is they actually have two numbers, D and Z that determine uh for the pathogen of interest, like how much cooking they need to do, right? And you're eventually gonna give us control. We can put our own D and Z numbers in. There will be a commercial version because commercial users have some special needs.
They're gonna need records, they're gonna need to know what the pathogen was, they're gonna need to show their health inspector that this is all legit. But we've essentially distilled the 700 pages of the 2022 FDA food code and annex two of the USDA food uh FSIS guidance, put it in this thermometer so that it's basically saying, look, we will tell you when it's safe. It will be much sooner than you think. Your food meat will still be couldn't be cooked to a much lower temperature, and you're still compliant. So we'll eventually make it possible for commercial users to have all the details and control they want.
Is this even sharper than the Mark One? Uh we've we we tweaked the tip a little bit. It's it's about the same sharpness. There's a slight different shape to it. And uh this thing that looks like plastic, what is it so people don't worry about it?
That is aluminum oxide ceramic, and it is very scratch resistant. You can use when that gets all gummed up in your smoker. Don't worry about using barkeep for another stainless steel, you won't scratch it. Did people dishwash this? You can dishwash it, but if you've got burned, it's like you put a if you put like a Lake Crusade and there's like burned on grease, it's not coming off in the dishes.
Oh, not ever. But everything else is, you know, uh 316L stainless steel. All right, so uh I also use this when I was doing uh stuff for my book because I really like the fact that you can use it as uh a multi-probe data logging thermometer. If any of you folks are like recipe developers or cooking nerds, really you should kind of go get one. So anyway, uh sorry couldn't spend more time on thermometer.
We spent so much time on the code. That's okay. Go to Combustion.inc to learn more. Yeah, yeah. Uh I would say uh from a cooking issues perspective, go ahead and buy one.
Yeah. I appreciate that. Yeah. Cooking issues.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.