Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cookie Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan Rockefeller Center, New York City, News Dance Studios, joined as usual with John behind me. How you doing, John? Great, thanks. Yeah?
Great. Got Joe Hazenrocking the panels. What's up? Hey, how you doing? Nice.
Nice, nice to have everyone in the studio today. Yeah. Did I uh fade back okay on the mic that time? You did wonderful. Thank you, Joe.
In the upper, upper left, we got Quinn. How you doing? Hey, I'm good. Hey, you know what? My uh son, like next week, my son's flying out to uh Juno, and he's gonna be even more upper and left than you.
Maybe we should get him to call in to get the upper, upper, upper left, left. I don't think we've ever gotten any Alaska questions. Yeah. Even though Nastasi and I love Alaska cabbage and Steve Hubachek, the famous dentist who grows the world's largest cabbage. Speaking of Nastasi the Hammer Lopez, how you doing?
I'm good. Yeah? Yeah. You're uh coming up on the end of your uh current Los Angeles residency, are ya? I don't know yet.
Oh loving it too much, huh? You're doing the Randy Newman, you love LA, you love it. Well, I hear I can hear what the weather's like out there, and it's like one day where it's great, and then the rest is all crap. I don't think we get a full day. Oh, sorry.
Yeah, it used to be we it used to be New York City had like five perfect days a year. And now it's like, nah. But the New York is about being irritated. If you like the weather, you don't belong here. You know what I mean?
In my opinion. Anyway. Uh and uh also I would never leave out my man Jackie Molecules. How you doing? Well, he's not here.
He's gone. Oh, he's sick. Oh. I thought we had him all. I thought we had everybody.
My man Jackie Mollicals is a sick. He had to he had to abandon ship for some reason. No. So he was here and then he abandoned ship. The molecules weren't vibrating properly.
Yeah, I guess they are. This is a good time, by the way, to remind everybody that all we really are are sacks of chemicals. Right? Anyway. And uh today's special guest from Mush Foods and 50 Cut, formerly from Quisine Solutions, the reigning royalty of the Suvian Empire.
We have AJ. How are you doing? Thanks for having me. That was great. Yeah, I've never done that announcement of a guest before.
What do you think? You like that? Yeah, strong. Like I you know what? I feel like I could have at some point in my life been the monster truck guy.
Not the driver, because I don't like speed or like any I don't like any of that. Like I don't like roller coasters, I don't like speed, but I feel like I could have been the announcer guy. You know what I mean? Yeah, you've got the cadence and the voice for it for sure. Yeah, and just like the lack of self-awareness, I think is the most important, uh most important thing.
Anyway, uh if in your listening live uh on the Patreon, call in your questions to 917 410 1507. That's 9174101507. And John, why don't you tell him how to become members of the Patreon? Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Uh there are a bunch of different uh levels of membership, different price points.
Uh at each one you get different perks, uh, but all of them you get access to our Patreon discounts from a lot of the awesome folks we work with. Yeah, check it out. Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Speaking of the Patreon, we have some uh fun former guests joining occasionally. I think I saw AJ just joined the Patreon the other day.
And we also have Kev from uh Noma in the Discord occasionally. Well, we we appreciate it. We appreciate all of our Patreon members. And remember, if you're a member of Patreon and you want uh something that we have not provided, ask us for it, and we will try to provide it. Uh all right.
Um by the way, uh more on that. Uh what we just what I just did post is I did post or when I say me, I mean Quinn, posted our giant jigger uh file. So anyone who is a member of our Patreon group and wants to print giant jiggers, they can go do so now as long as you have any form of FDM uh printing, 3D printing uh apparatus. That went up, right? Can you tell whether anyone's actually actually downloaded those things?
You can't, right? Uh I can check. Maybe I can. I'll have the I'll check the drop box. Yeah, I'm just curious if anybody at all cares.
I mean, I think people care in theory about things, but I don't think people care in actuality. You know what I mean? Anyway. So AJ, uh now is the time on the show when we just uh shoot the breeze over anything that happened to the last week. Usually culinary, not always.
Anyone got anything? I know Quinn always has something, so what do you well Quinn? We'll start with you. What do you got? Yeah.
Um, I can do a little on camera taste test if you like. I got a box of tropical fruit. Oh, it came from Florida. Yeah. A little uh a little bit of uh of uh of a hate stare to Canadian customs, right?
They held it up in uh in customs for an extra day, right? Because uh the the company, wait, we talked to company, they are sending us a replacement because some of the stuff got moldy. Because not only did we um get delayed in customs, but then FedEx didn't notify me about the duty charge, and we missed the Freddy delivery. Oh Canada. Oh man, you guys are the worst.
Like the ship too, you guys are the worst. This is why like I tried to turn off Canadian shipment for like all of our products because people would order our stuff on on Amazon. It would get delivered through delivery and they'd be like, I don't want to pay the extra duties. It's like, yo, that's not on that's not we what? And then they would return it and we would pay all the fees and get no money.
So I was like, nope. Nope. Nope. Anyway. Normally with DHL, I get a notice to pay the duties ahead of time, so they'll just leave it.
Yeah. FedEx is like, no. We'll give you the option to pay online after you fail to pay out the door. And we've already taken it back. Okay.
Wait, so the so wait, you had the best of all scenarios that you paid and didn't get it. I think until the the Monday. Yeah, that's the best. I uh I once uh they wouldn't tell me. I thought my car had been towed by New Haven, because crap on New Haven and their towing system.
I mean, I like New Haven, but you know, crap on them. They've you know, pre predators, those those towing folks in New Haven. Anyways, so I go to the place and I'm like, where's where did you tow it? Who towed my car? And they're like, I won't tell you till you pay your parking tickets.
I'm like, come on, who told my car? And then finally, after because I didn't have any money, I had zero money. So I like, you know, took almost all of my money, paid like the 120 dollars in parking tickets, whatever, which was like two weeks' groceries for me at the time. This is in the you know, early nineties. And um they're like, Oh, yeah, we didn't tow your car it was stolen.
I was like, I wanted to murder the hell out of them. So I paid my parking tickets on a stolen car. Worst. Worst. Wor You don't steal someone's car, especially like not in like where it's clearly not like a fancy car it's clearly their only car they need it to get around anyway whatever don't steal people's cars people don't do it uh so what kind of fruit was it's just I'm just tasting right now it's called an apple banana or a mandano apparently um yeah it's good I would say and you don't sound like you love it as different I'm gonna guess as I was I'm just gonna guess that it needs acid they all need acid all tropical fruits slightly more acidic than a regular banana yeah but that's not saying very much that's like saying it's slightly more acid than a base I mean bananas have almost zero I mean banana's one of the rare like no acid fruits where you're like yeah I like that you know what I mean like every other fruit that I can think of you want acid maybe it could even be maybe it could even be rape or maybe it could I should have stayed a few more days in a phytics or healthy you know really ripening.
You know what the dumbest fruit did they ship you a Monstera no we ordered two types of bananas bread fruit tree tomato goldenberry and a pink pineapple okay pink pineapple I'm trying to remember whether I liked the pink pineapple. I don't think I liked the pink pineapple. Did you like the pink pineapple? Did it didn't have enough acid was my gripe. My gripe with it, what I yeah, it didn't have enough acid.
Which bananas did you order? Again, these uh little apple bananas. And then they're actually bananas, though. They're actually a moussa species. Oh, so you expect them to be low acid.
So you don't, they don't necessarily want acid. How starchy are they? Um maybe these ones could have been a little riper. They're like medium stretchy. Listen, listen, anyone who can hear this, there was a person who got the you know the big mic, the grom Michelle, the original uh the original banana that uh the United States used to ruin bunches of uh Central uh American countries, central South American countries, you're familiar, the Grom Michelle?
Every candy tastes like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But but I really I've never had one and I know that they uh actually exist. They are commercially extinct, but they are not extinct. Wouldn't you like to do a side-by-side Cavendish gromichel taste?
That'd be really interesting. Yeah. And there's a new one coming out because Cavendish is starting to get killed. There's a couple, they're trying out some new bananas, but I don't remember the names of them. But, you know.
I mean, that's kind of the miracle of the banana, isn't it? I mean, like if you'd like a Cavendish, which by the way, if you don't if you're not a into bananas, that's the standard banana is the Cavendish banana. It's beyond standard, it's the banana. You know what I mean? And they're all clonal.
So they're all identical, right? So there might be some terroir difference on bananas, but pretty much a banana is a banana once you let it ripen. You know what I mean? A Cavendish banana is again. Uh anyhow.
So have you tried any other bananas? Not yet. No. But what were the other things you got? Oh, the reason I hate Monsteras, by the way, isn't that they taste bad.
It's just anything that like ripens three little pips at a time and you have to keep on your counter and it ripens from one end to the other. And it just it's just a nightmare. You have you guys ever have it? The Monstera deli deliciosa. It's like a little weird looking like thing, and it ripens unidirectionally on your counter, and you don't get to eat the whole fruit at once.
Nightmare. Nightmare. Yeah. Anyways, what were the other things you said? I forgot already.
Uh-huh. Tree tomato. Oh, yeah, I don't like those. Goldenberry. Did you like it?
The treat tomato? Uh my dad tried that yesterday. Yeah, we just processed the box and got rid of what was moldy. Yeah, I'm not gonna say I I don't like it, it's too strong. I tasted it and I was like, why do I want this?
That's what that was my reaction. Was that also your dad's reaction? He liked him. He thought they tasted like a cross between a tomato and uh and a um persimming. Hmm.
I like tomatoes. I like the word tomate de arbol. That's good. You know what I mean? Anyway, uh and what was the other one?
Was there one that I'm missing that you uh said that I cut you off? Uh golden berries, but I think we had to throw those out. I don't know what a golden berry is. Is that one of those Peruvian things? Um, I think it's related.
It must be related to like tomatillo and greaseberry. Uh the little like um little sheep on it. Oh, okay, yeah. So it's like a new chuva or something. I like those.
Can be blicci, but I like them. I like any kind I like tasting fruit. I don't know if you know this, AJ. I like tasting fruit. That's cool.
You know why? Fruit delicious. Built for us to like it. You know what I mean? Absolutely.
Yeah. Uh although, for those of you that uh so when Mads was on, did I talk about this yet uh a couple weeks ago? So uh Mad's Wrestling was on and he was talking about, you know, he because he loves spruce tips because he's you know Nordic, right? And so like I'm walking around my neighborhood, and you know, you, you know, taxodium, you is deadly poisonous, but it sends out these beautiful green shoots in the springtime, and they look very much like the edible kind of pine and like spruce shoots. And I'm like, I wonder, like they must not have this in Scandinavia because like if you just made a habit of like picking evergreen crap and chewing on it in my neighborhood, you'd be dead.
You know what I mean? Like it would be it'd be real bad. You know what I mean? But like I maybe they don't have that. I mean, like uh because when I looked at it with does it look appetizing, I was like, yeah.
If I like pine chewing on pine needles, which I do, this looks appetizing, and yet this will destroy me. You know what I mean? I have tasted the berries bad. You in a you, you it's me, I guess it's not technically a berry because they're not angiosperms, but it's got like a little fleshy red thing that looks like a cup with a seed in it. The fleshy part won't kill you.
Edible, not delicious. Seed, kill you if you crush it. I think you can eat it and poop it out. I think that's what birds do. But if they crush the seed, they die.
Anyway. Maybe it doesn't grow where he is. Maybe it doesn't grow where he is. I mean, the British uh grow it, right? That's what they used to make good bows out of you, but they were much bigger.
For us, it's a shrub. I'm pretty sure it's the same plant. All right, who else got some cooking crap? What do you got, AJ? While we're waiting for John.
Uh well, at home, we went to the Forsyth Farmers Market in Savannah this weekend. So grilled up some nice asparagus. And it was purple asparagus, which is like interesting because I'll try the two, you know, purple, white, green, and I don't really taste much of a difference except for the white, of course. We had this discussion just two weeks ago. Yeah, really?
The purple, the purple just a thing. It's not noticeably sweeter. Is it noticeably sweeter to you? It just tasted good. You know, it was nice and in season.
But um had the color go after you cooked it. Did it go greenish? Well, I peeled the ends a little bit because, you know, French cooking. Um so it was like green and purple, but they kept both of the color uh on the whole stock. Did you have to shock them?
No, just curled them. You know, they were pretty tender. And uh yeah, made some chicken and potatoes, and then for work I'm working on a mushroom gravy, which is pretty cool. So yeah, that makes sense. Definitely.
All right, we'll get into mushrooms in a minute. John, are you is your uh mic working yet? Uh yeah, I've been doing some recipe testing for the new menu. Got uh getting pretty close on some bitter ballin, which is uh stewed veal kind of uh croquettes, which is really good. Spice with uh nutmeg and mace and a couple other warm spices.
Nutmeg and mace, huh? Yeah. Um but I don't know if that's what the recipe's called for and trying to trying to do that. When in the old school, they're like, I don't know if I could get this off of the nutmeg. I'm gonna grate the whole thing.
Yeah, exactly. Is that what happened? Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah, I I don't know.
Um what do you like better? Nutmeg or mace? Nutmeg. Really? Thank you.
Okay. Yeah. All right. All right. So uh what do you call them?
Bitterballen? Bitterballen, yeah. Like bitter, like bitter? Yep. Do you add something bitter to them?
Nope. Why are they bitter balls now? I have no idea. I don't speak Dutch. Or Flemish, rather.
Oh wow. But yeah, yeah. So I need to. Well, I think bitter ballin are technically more Dutch like Netherlands than than Flemish. Um what kind of sauce do you say they were again?
Uh so it just gets you reduce the braising liquid down after and folded in with the meat, uh, parsley, lemon juice, and a cup and the spices, and then deep fry that, and then you serve it with like a whole grain mustard. I think I'm gonna do like a whole grain mustard Aily. Mm-hmm. So now, hold up. Yep.
Straight veal, no pork. It's originally uh Jewish dish in the area, so there's no pork. I've been you're in my head. I've been thinking about adding pork. You know why?
Because it's delicious. Yes. And veal on its own is dry. Yep. Yeah.
Yeah. What about beef if you want to keep it, you know, you could you could put some beef fat up in that. That too. That too. Um if you don't want to if you want to keep it, you know, moderately kosher, although then there's no dairy in it then either, right?
No dairy. No cream in the sauce, no nothing. Nope. All right. Nothing.
I mean, just put some beef fat up in there. Yeah, that's true. Complain around. I do have some beef out right now. Yeah.
Although that'll change the color. I think that's the nice thing about pork is that pork is going to keep it looking like it. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we'll see. Decisions.
Yeah. Was it dry when you tested it just veal? No, not really, because uh the that kind of brazing liquid that you reduce and fold into it, super gelatinous and yeah, it just didn't uh didn't break apart either, so it was uh it worked out. Do you bread crumb the beejesis out of it on the inside? Yeah, double coating on the outside, yeah.
Oh no. Nothing with no fillers? No. Really? Yeah.
And it's still moist, no fillers. Yeah. Onion? Uh in the brazing liquid, but not added after. So the meat is just meat.
How hard is it compacted? Is it more meat loafy or is it are they loose loose bitter balls? It's a little looser. Yeah. Yeah, it's still like stringy, pulled apart kind of meat from uh from the braise.
And they're set by the braise or they're preset by frying and or panning? Preset with the liquid in the braise. So after you form them, you kind of chill them and then they set right there. Wait, wait. You drop them, you drop raw balls into the braising.
Oh no, no, it's uh No, no. So it's it's like cubed veal stew braised. Oh, then bald. Then I pulled up, pull it apart, then bald with the reduced brazing liquid. And they hold together.
Yeah. I completely misunderstood the order of operations. Probably my fault for not explaining it better. But yeah, there you go. It's me.
You know how I am. Yeah. Sometimes I miss important important things. Also, by the way, people should note uh that uh you still get 10% off uh of uh glass fan glasses if you use the uh special checkout code word Dave Arnold No Space. Uh I've been using them, they're good glasses.
Do you uh checked them out? Is he come into your restaurant yet, John? He has not. No, not yet. But I've heard great things about them, yeah.
Yeah. I know some people on the Discord have bought some too. Hopefully they're happy. Yeah. Yeah, I hope they're happy as well.
Uh so I'll tell you what I did uh when I got home. Uh so after the last week's show, uh, I got home and my kitchen was like Versailles. Water everywhere. And I was like, uh, you know, I was like, oh my wife, she was on on a business trip, so I was like, I'm gonna get some work done. I'm gonna blah instead like I was like, ah so I like uh uh my espresso machine sprung another leak again.
So this is the problem with being in a house and having a plumbed espresso machine. My espresso machine is from the kind of early 80s, so it's like 40 years old, basically. And um so the water was spraying everywhere. I I I kind of start ripping the panels off of it, and I see where I think the leak is. I try to tighten it down, and it doesn't stop.
So I shut the water off, and then I just start taking everything apart. Once I I take off this one thing where I thought the leak was, and it does need to be replaced, these tubes. Nothing is standard. I would have to solder it and stuff and get it's weird shaped, like sized, like you know, metric tubes. Nothing you can buy here in New York City on on the street.
Flare fittings, all bizarre. So I was like, oh man, I need I need coffee, like now. You know what I mean? Uh and so then I took the entire machine apart to see kind of what I needed to get to. And then there was a bunch of fittings that looked like at any minute they could blow.
So, like on the side of the boiler where I had where where the main kind of water goes in, there's a brass fitting that goes into the boiler, and it was surrounded by like a big efflorescence. And what that means to me is that there was a pinhole leak in my boiler at one time, and the only thing sealing it is like a bunch of calcium that somehow boiled out and sealed itself shut. And so my feeling was is that this 40-year-old machine needs a complete revamp, and I don't have the time to do it right now. Thankfully, for me, I have an old ranchillo Sylvia that I had loaned to my brother-in-law when his machine broke and it still exists. So now I am not plumbed, and I think I might not go back to ever plumbing my espresso machine in my house.
I don't know, what do you think? You think it's a mistake to give up on the pro espresso machine because of the heartache that it would cause my wife if she came home to Versailles? If my wife had come home to Versailles, it would have been a much, much worse. And the other thing that happens is a hundred percent of the time, if anything is gonna go wrong in the house, it goes wrong when I'm not there. You know what I mean?
This is the only time anything's ever gone wrong when I'm not when I'm actually there. And so then, like, you know, if Booker's home alone and there's water everywhere, he's just gonna call the cops. And I'm more like, Why the cops? He's like, I don't know. Who am I gonna call?
I'm like, anybody but the cops. Like anybody. You know what I mean? Like, meanwhile, I've got freaking, I've got map gas, I've got torches everywhere, I've got all this stuff. I'm like, no, no one goes into my house.
You do not let people into my house. You know what I mean? Unless they're my family or friends. So I mean, can you imagine? No.
Anyway, so yeah, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go unplumbed. Here's another one, another marginally sad. See whether you think I made the right decision. Cooked a whole bunch of beans. I have a bean pot.
I tell I tell everyone, everyone should get a bean pot because bean pots are great. Get a bean pot, make sure it holds a full pound. That's 454 grams for you metric people. Or five half a kilo. Let's say, you know, it holds that many beans plus the onions and whatever, so it's gonna cook.
Bean pots are great. But uh I cooked a whole bunch of beans and it just got left on the counter. I thought it got put away because usually they un-bean pot it and put it in the fridge after family dinner, but it just got left out on the on the counter. So the next day I was like, can I heat it and eat it? Can I heat it and eat it?
And I decided that it was not worth the risk. I'm getting I'm getting cautious in my in my old age because there are heat stable and terotoxins. I even stuck a pH meter in it, five. Five. So like five and change.
So I was like, not acidic enough. Not acidic enough. If if I had hit four, five, if I had had enough acid in that that it was down to like four or five, and I had high hopes because there's plenty of tomato in it. You know what I mean? And I was like, I was like, I feel like this could work.
But when it was over five, I'm like, nah. Right? Even though I could have heated it for a long time. I mean, like, am I gonna give my family the sprays? I mean, I'm not gonna kill 'em, right?
But am I gonna put my family on spray for a pound of beans? Yeah, we risk it. Right? Yeah. I mean, what cost of item would it had to have been for you to be like, I'm gonna go for it?
Like, what would it have to have been for you to be like, I'm gonna do this? Maybe if I had something really nice and imported, like a really good like tar bay bean or something like that. But again, I think if it didn't add acid in it, then Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, what about you, John? What would you r what would you risk your butt for? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.
I don't know. Definitely no beans. I definitely wouldn't risk it for beans. Uh yeah, no, it would have to be I don't know. Not even fancy beans, pintos.
Yeah. Oh, jeez. I like pintos. That's my favorite. That's my favorite cheap bean.
I think to cook all around her. If you had to if I had to pick one all-around cheap bean, I think it would be pinto. I can see that. Or kidney, maybe. I don't like kidney.
No. It's not my thing. I don't like kidney. Maybe because I've been making chili lately. Yeah, no, they're fine for that.
But you could use other beans for chili. That's true. I mean, like, why is kidney traditional for for chili? Because people beat the hell out of chili? Could be.
First of all, when you say chili mean, I like to call it chili beans to distinguish it from chili, which is of course a meat-only proposition. Yeah. Uh but not for your company. Right. Well, I mean, we do like all different kinds of versions just to compare side by side.
So let's get into it. Uh why don't we talk about your company and then we'll get to some questions. Uh so why don't you talk about uh so your company that you're working with now used to be a cuisine solutions, and uh I'm surprised nobody I guess we didn't tell them, but no one knew to ask any kind of Bruno Gusot slash, you know, all like both Brunos and Gerard. That's a great team, the cuisine solutions team. They are.
Uh and you were there for a number of years. Eight years. Yeah. That's a that is quite a number. And you were there when when they were doing freeze con you were doing they, you were doing freeze concentration before that got co-opted by bartenders and renamed something else.
What do they call it now? They call it flavor swapping. Well, yeah, we called it cryoconcentration. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, which is definitely different from like gel freezing and other things that you can do to clarify and so on.
Right, right. Yeah, it's concentration. And we focused on using food waste. So peelings and trimmings, cooking sous vide first. There's a sous vide element in it.
And then cryoconcentrating. So using centrifugal force or something like that when it was in an ice crystal state, um, came up with some really interesting things. It would increase functional properties. You know, I think we're just scratching the surface on it. Yeah.
Well, you know, uh, removing water is something people want to do. You know, removing water without adding heat, definitely s something people like doing. Uh and it's real relatively not it's not that, you know, yes, you can do it. But you know, now what they're the bartenders are doing it. What they're doing is they're just they're basically apple jacking things and then getting rid of the getting rid of a lot of the water.
Um, you know, jacking the proof and then and then replacing it with a different liquid. Yeah. They call it swapping, I think. There's a term that everyone uses that I think they call it like liquid swapping or flavor swap, boo swap. I don't know what they call it.
They call it something. Yeah, I mean, really all we did was make a really flavorful broth, but of course without vapor because of uh the sous vide element. And um the the ice crystals, there's like kind of two for schools of thought. You could either have really big crystals or small crystals. And to me, that depended on like the pectin levels.
So if you had a lot of pectin in the liquid that was being extracted, then smaller was better and easier to force out. Um, but I think it's interesting because you can get a lot of flavor from things that you wouldn't necessarily eat, like artichoke leaves and mushroom stems and peelings, like stuff that really shouldn't go to waste. So if you have sous vide equipment in your professional kitchen, you can definitely do a cryo concentration, which is neat. And an easiest way to do it is to basically let it strain overnight. And you don't like the you don't like the big like quiescent like the big quiescently frozen cry crystals of one like the big big crystals that you get when you like let things freeze really slowly.
So that that bigger crystals are good for something like maybe mushroom, because there's uh a lot less uh volume like you know, viscosity in the liquid. Um we would use slushy machines. Uh that works really well. But I learned really quickly that it had to be pretty sugary liquid for that to work, or else the auger would freeze. So um, yeah, I mean we it's like every single different part of the vegetable has a different flavor.
So um sometimes the stem and the peel and you know the leaves taste better than the the flesh itself. So it's really interesting. I bet you I could rig a spinzall to really get all of the crap out of an ice crystal. I've used a spinzall. Yeah, we had a spincil in the kitchen.
We'll talk off, we'll talk off air. We'll talk off air. Uh all right, what are you doing now? Just talk about the company mush right now. Yeah.
Uh mush foods is a new uh food company. So we're a startup and uh just went to market as in a couple of months ago. And we grow mycelium or mushroom root, and it's a local meaning upstate New York natural product. Um all of the mushroom strains that we grow from are wild, or you know, you would find them, you know, growing on a log in the forest. So things like oyster trumpage, shay, lion's mane.
But we do it in a way where it mimics underground. So what we have is this like big puffy balloon, which you saw. And um, from that we make a product called 50 Cut, which is basically a duck cell, a mushroom duck cell, but without any seasoning or anything added to it. So chefs can use it in their recipes to replace part of the meat. So although the product works really well in vegetarian dishes, um, our play is to combine it with meat because it has a lot of like great functional properties where it can, of course, boost nutrition, it's helping cut down on your uh environmental footprint, but also it tastes really good because we're using only culinary mushrooms and um increasing yield.
So plus plus mushrooms once they're cooked, hold water and don't shrink anymore. You know what I mean? Like they've already done their shrinking and they and they hold liquid like like a like a like a mother, right? Yeah, yeah. But also it's the there's an increased fiber in the mycelium and over regular mushrooms, you mean?
Yes. And um we use like saprophilic mushrooms, so you know, the oysters and the trumpets and stuff. If you ever cook side by side like buttons or those type, they're not really giving off a lot of water. So it's a combination of those two things or three things really. It's cooked, there's more fiber, and they're naturally like more absorbent.
So for example, if you have a burger with 50% of the mushroom, you get a really good yield, like 90%, even if you cook it well done. So yeah, for those of you like I've handled the product, and if you think mushrooms are not dense, this isn't wet when it's raw, when it's when it's when it looks like the shaving cream on the top of a hotel pan, what I say, when it looks like shaving, not like the like there's never shaving cream on top of a hotel pan, but it looks like it looks like spray foam, but not yellow, like it rose out of the hotel pan and you just went shump, but it's like super light. Mm-hmm. And like it feels it doesn't feel like you know how a mushroom has like a tautness to it. Mm-hmm.
It doesn't have that tautness. Yeah. It like feels like you could push on it. Not like cotton candy soft, but like it has a it's different. It's different because it the the the mushroom, sorry, the the fungus isn't like I'm making a fruiting body now.
It's just like doing whatever, right? I mean that's but it does have orientation. Yeah. So there's like three types of mycelium uh growth uh strains. So there's some that are like really uh like taut rope that grow, some of them that are sort of more wavy, and then there's like the aerial ones, which is what we have.
And this all started with a culture that we began working on, we meaning the scientists on our team began working on a couple of years ago. So um it's it's want to like puff up, like even in the the petri dish of the culture that we have. Um so it it is in the substrate, but it's growing above like a cloud and it's really easy to just kind of lift off. And there's a lot of other cool things about the growing process, like, you know, it only takes eight to ten days versus, you know, most domestic mushrooms are a couple weeks. Um no light because it's not growing the above ground stuff.
No hydroponics needed. Um we even control the oxygen, so it's like a really sealed room. So as the uh mushrooms produce like CO2 as they're growing, or the mycelium I should say, um, we don't let it escape because it wants that to uh mimic what it is like underground when the mycelium would be growing. Right. So you're tricking these f fungi into just growing like a mother without making a fruiting body, like it's underground, even though it's escaped into the into the non-substrate.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Exactly. Uh all right. And uh Nastasi, you know, I'm surprised that you never I would have guessed if I had to guess, i I would have guessed that you would have gotten into mushrooms, but no, huh?
You don't like you you're not like a forager. I would imagine that you would go to people's houses and take their mushrooms. No, I'm too scared of choosing the wrong ones. Yeah. You know what?
I get that. Because we've never lived in a place where that like that was a thing. I feel like if you live somewhere and you just hired uh um an expert to come out and go with you once, then you'd be like, Yeah, I'm good, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Because like because then like it's like all this like free awesome stuff. You know what I mean? You and I both like free, awesome stuff. We like truffles.
Yeah. Yeah. I do. I don't like to pay for them. Remember remember we're you were like Nastasia, I'm pretty sure it was you, was hanging out with a truffle expert and she was drunk.
And like a giant tr not Nastasia, the truffle expert. And a giant truffle. Was this you, Nastas? And she looks at you and goes, That's frozen. That's previously frozen.
And then just went back to her champagne. Was that you? I don't think so. We ran an auction. I'm pretty sure we were not at an auction and they brought out one of these giant truffles, uh, white truffles that they found and they're gonna sell it for a bajillion dollars, and this expert wasted was just like, ah, just looking at it.
That thing was frozen. Don't buy it. I'm like, I'm not gonna buy it. You were in when you and McGee were in Portland? No.
No, it wasn't that. It was no, it was no, it was an Italian truffle. Huge. And you know, everyone was making a big deal out of it, and she was just like, I wouldn't poop on that truffle. You know what I mean?
Like, I was like, man. Yeah, I guess if you tell by the color, maybe it gets like darker. Well, I mean she's an expert. You know, like there's a lot of things that like I can look at and just know. You know what I mean?
And that's the way she was with truffles. You know? She was like, you know, all you idiots can get scammed by this, fools, tools, idiots. You know what I mean? I was like, man, have some more champagne.
Tell me more. You know what I mean? Um anyway. So uh Kevin Statemeyer writes in and says, uh, looking forward to this episode as I just started growing some oyster mushrooms and lion's mane mushrooms myself. It looks like your mycelium is just pure mycelium without spawn or other typical substrate that is used by others.
Is that right? Can you share more about the process? If so. Sure. So it it if you call spawn culture, it's kind of the same thing like when you inoculate the the substrate.
So it's sort of similar in the sense that our spawn is a uh proprietary um culture that we developed, um, which actually has uh higher uh dietary fiber, uh including beta glucan, which is really good for you. So it took some time, you know, like doing different cloning and techniques to get the the culture of the spa. It does go into a substrate, which is upcycled material, soybean shells and oats and things like this. And the difference is how it grows. So a lot of these home kits, you've got a bag or maybe like uh something with mesh and it's growing out from the sides.
So you need a lot more height and you need um d like more surface area to grow them. Where ours are like I mentioned, aerial, so they're just going straight up. And there is, you know, macylum in the substrate that's growing on top as well. So it's similar in the sense that yes, we do start with the spawn in in a substrate, but the um but the the meat is just the mycelium. So when you shave it off, does it just grow again?
Like how often can you shave one batch before you have to dump the substrate and start afresh? So we do one at a time. Um but it doesn't take long. You know, it only takes eight days to grow and you know, the um the inoculation and fermentation is about two weeks leading up to that growth period. So we just always have a cycle going.
And then when the substrate is um once it's removed, that goes to animal fodder or feeds. So it's like a fully sustainable cycle. Right, but it's not like grass, you can't cut it like three times. Mm-mm. No.
We do it once. That'd be cool if it was like a fuzzy pumper barber beauty shop and it would just like come up and be like shump, shump, shump. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Well, it's interesting too, because you know, it grows about three, four inches. Um you can fit more in the growing rooms because it doesn't take a lot of surface area. It doesn't go out, it just goes up. How deep is the substrate? What what size pan is?
Two inches. Yes, you're using two inch hotel pans. Mm-hmm. And that's how you know. Because you're literally now growing them in hotel pans, right?
Or gastronorms to the euro weasels. Yeah. Yeah. Um gastronorm is a really dumb word, right? So stupid.
Yeah. Gastronorm? Yeah. Europeans, you know. Yeah.
Um, but sure. Yeah, no, I mean it's it's uh it's very similar to to the type of uh mushroom growing that you do at home, except it's indoors, there's barely any air, there's no light, uh, and you can definitely use less land. And it takes eight days, so it's exactly the same but entirely different. In some ways, yeah. Yeah.
And you can and you, and I know, I don't know if I'm allowed to say it's but like I heard that you are like growing all sorts of things for when they become legal, like you guys know how to do psilocybin already. That sounds like uh maybe Shalom shared that with you. That's our founder. Um but you know, I think the possibilities are endless. We're just really scratching the surface right now.
You know that's Nebraska's motto, or at least it used to be. Is it? Yeah. They changed it to something really dumb like hello, or something really stupid. It used to be possibilities endless, which is like the best thing ever, because Angela Garbutt's from uh Goldenrod, who's like, you know, one of our friends, uh you know, she's from Nebraska and her dad uh reps Nebraska beef.
And it was so we used to walk around and be like, possibilities endless. You know what I mean? And then like they changed it. Why would you change possibilities endless? Yeah.
Well, I mean, if you think about it, like out of, you know, the 1.5 million types of fungus, like only 20,000 of them you can grow mushrooms from. But those are the same ones that and then you knock it down to um the ones that can grow on wood, and that's what we're working with. But that includes psilocybin. So you don't specifically they can't do uh ascomite, like they can't uh they I guess I have some of them. They can't do like truffles though.
They can't do entirely underground McGillas. Right. Yeah, I mean, those are the mycoral mushrooms, but it's the same as like chanterelle and um morelles and trumpet or not trumpet, but uh truffle, if it is meant to grow uh with tree roots, um like meaning it's like this harmonious balance between the two. They need each other to survive, like the mushroom takes sugar from the roots and the tree gets the the uh the food from the mushroom. Um that hasn't quite been figured out for like farming cultivation yet.
So um we're working on it. But you know, maybe one day. Crack that. Imagine if you crack that. Yeah, money would be.
Maybe I already think you can make money. Because this stuff does taste like the mushroom, which is kind of shocking. So which ones are you doing now? You're doing oyster and what else? Mostly oyster and trumpet right now.
Um we are going to be introducing a line of um duck cell or a 50 cut that you can combine with white meat, chicken or fish or what have you. And that has a little bit more lion's mean in it and a little bit more oyster. So it kind of depends on what type of meat we're uh creating the the blend for. So you can grow one strain at a time, but then in the manufacturing process, when we roast it and chop it, we're combining them together to uh complement or even mimic the flavor of the meat that we're mixing it with. Right.
Now right now you're focused on uh chefs and institutions, not on you know regular uh human beings, and you are totally focused on this kind of because it is not exactly you know, ha if they thank by the way for letting me try it, but it's not like cooking a regular mushroom, right? So it takes it's not like something you could just hand a chef and be like, yo, cook it like a mushroom, right? So you because you know it cuts differently. Yeah, and you know, you you pre you pre-dehide a little bit before you cook it, right, didn't you say, or something like that? Yeah, it's more roasting than pre-dehydrating.
So we roast it in a continual motion. So um the cut sides of the mushroom are all the same uh roasted intensity, but there's still a little bit of uh water on the inside, but we roast it exactly to the point where it's the same moisture content level as ground beef. Right. So that's on purpose. So when you cook it together with meat, it's just capturing all the juices rather than giving off liquid like a button or a cremini would do.
Right. Because you guys are focused on this kind of functional ingredient aspect, which I I get it, but I there's so many people who just probably want to dork with the I you know, yeah. I would too. I was gonna try to make sheets, but I couldn't cut a decent sheet. That's why I didn't make sheets out of it.
Like I couldn't figure out a way, like I don't have a good enough slicer. Like if I still had my meat slicer, I would have par frozen it and then sliced them into sheets to try to do it, but I didn't have the ability. So when I was cutting it, I was tearing it a little bit, so I couldn't sheet it. Mm-hmm. But I mean, and there's so many people who are just like, giant mushroom I want.
Yeah. I want to mess with. No? When we started talking about that, it made me like really think about all the things that you could do. But um right now, you know, we have uh one farm in the Hudson Valley, but I really think that we're gonna look at that to see if we can do fresh distribution.
Cause you know, we're um, you know, we do food service and at the moment it's the 50 cut product. But you're right. I mean, there's so many things you could do with it. And I think if it was larger pieces too, it would really um could have more potential for meat replacement, like whole muscle items, right if you wanted. And I thought it was hilarious.
I was sitting at the, you know, one of your events, and the person sitting next to me was a VC, like for like vegan stuff, right? And meanwhile, your founder Shalom was like, crap on the vegans. This is you're gonna, it's still gonna be 50% meat. Crab on the vegans. And I was like, and the guy next to me is like, uh You know what I mean?
So it's this weird thing where like, you know, corporate wise, you're very pro meat, but yet you're selling this kind of vegans and this the vegan, like it's a weird, it's a weird it's a weird mix match of like mentalities. You know what I mean? This like clearly because I think it's a good product on its own. I don't think it needs the meat, yeah, but it's it's being sold as a like mushrooms are considered a high value item, so it's not considered filler, unlike, you know, my man behind me with his breadcrumbs. I'm just kidding.
You did not fill your you did not fill your meatballs, your bitter balls. You didn't fill your bitter balls with breadcrumbs, but you could fill your bitter balls with mushrooms. And that's considered a high value target. So it's not considered like if you had a mushroom burger, but it was actually mushrooms in the burger rather than mushrooms on the burger, I think you could sell that. Anyway.
Well, the product 50 cut right now, like it is a cooked product, so um in small pieces. So I think that the vegan play is like really smart when you use it in something like a chili or gravy or uh risotto pastas, things like that. And it's so interesting because just like when you put the the mushroom with the meat, if you cook with it in a liquid format like that, uh you you know, you toast it with the aromatics and everything as well. But if you had put like wine that you want to reduce, like forget it. It's just gonna soak it up.
So I've actually learned that you need to like reduce alcohol on the side before putting it in the recipe. And the other day I made three versions of chili, like one all meat, one half and half, and one all mushroom, the 50 cut. And the it was a six quart recipe, and with the one exactly the same, the one with the same weight of just the mushroom versus the meat. I had to add two more quarts of water to get the right consistency because it's very like not thickening, but like more like viscous in texture when you cook it. So it I think there's a lot to be looked at there.
Like even sauces. Um, I have a friend that made ketchup with it, you know. They say that like like old school ketchup, like mushroom ketchup. Yeah. You ever had a mushroom ketchup where you're like, oh yeah.
I've never had one where I was like, I made one, and I was like, nah, I'll let professionals do it. He said it was really good. I haven't tried samples, I need to get him to send it, but that was uh Lindera Farms uh the um he makes vinegar or like foraged ingredients, vinegars and stuff Daniel is there enough uh is there enough protein in a mushroom to glue it with transglutaminase no right I haven't tried um our fifty cut is uh nine grams of protein per 100 grams which is twice as much as like a regular mushroom but because of the root button well also TG has got so much uh so much casein in it that I'm sure it would just kind of like turn into a you know what I mean you could probably glue it together you know because it's so porous you could probably get it to clump. Yeah I mean I've done emulsification with it um did hot dog testing with a friend the other day but that was like half and half still died. Yeah it was really good it replaced about 30% of the weight of the meat um and speaking of sausages we have some here cool you know who likes sausages my man Johns is it a good time yeah okay oh while we're passing this out by the way I did go uh I did have another food experience I went to George Motz who was on the show he uh he has uh you know his burger uh burger America hamburger America restaurant and currently he's doing from Lansing Michigan the Cupie and their thing is the olive burger which is just like and they did it like 1920 style like the way that their great grandma used to and grandpa used to make it which was loose meat as they call it loose meat.
I was like that was my nickname loose meat. Anyway so it's like loose meat on the grill then they spray water on it they put the little they they spray water around the loose meat put the cheese on it put the little dome you know the steaming dome you know I'm talking about. Put the steaming dome over the top of it, let it steam, pick it up, then they put it onto the the bun, and then they scrape up the other loose meat and put it into the cheese. So I don't think this loose meat thing would work without the cheese because the cheese is the glue. This is what reminded me of it.
And then uh they put the biggest dollop of this like uh like olive, like regular like cut up like pimento stuffed olive, like olive chum with mayonnaise, but I think they had something else in there too because it didn't taste like straight mayo. I don't know what it was, but it didn't taste like straight mayo. If I had to guess, there was a a another white filler item in that wasn't mayo. It was a lot because it would have been a lot of mayo. A lot.
Some sort of cheese, like a white creamy cheese, maybe some. No, no, if I had to guess, because it's really thick. If you made me guess, even though it I don't think they do this at all, I would say that they put some bechamel in it. Well, thick and some. All right, so what do we got?
What do we got going here? So we uh we work with uh Pat Lafrida with the burger patties, which he tried. Um, and then also we are partnering with Dufour Gourmet, so Aurelion Dufour used to work with Shill Bro and Daniel Belude, which I worked with before. Um and this is a breakfast sausage with pork over cheesy grits, and this is actually exactly what we're gonna be serving in the morning at the National Restaurant Association show starting next weekend on Saturday. The other NRA.
Yeah, the other NRA. And then this is uh bratwurst, which is really nice. And then we're also making chicken and Italian sausages with that. Brat first, right? Yeah, yeah.
And I have some on a bun too, if you want, but um trying to be cautious of the mouth noises. So yeah, we're gonna uh if anybody wants uh uh a visit to the booth, we'll be at 1788 at the food show and start a belly. They would definitely say you uh you heard about them here. So this is 50%. This is uh more like 40% by weight of the the dark meat 50 cut.
Um and uh Aurelion uses a beautiful um pork um he's got from Quebec, uh the milk fed pork. Um and there's just herbs and regular botwurst seasoning inside. So um, you haven't had stuff before. What do you think? I like it.
I probably wouldn't know that this was in there if uh if I wasn't told about it. And forgive me, I cooked this like maybe 45 minutes ago before I boogied over here. So um so yeah, this is the cheesy grits that has some of the 50 cut in it. Um it just gets like you could add it to a lot of things that are already liquidy based. Um and the breakfast sausage is again the uh Quebec pork with um a little bit of spiciness, like red pepper flakes and whatnot, and also 40% of the um mushroom by weight.
And are people just using it for Wellington's too and stuff like this? Yeah, that's a really great point. So um we have worked on Wellingtons and it works so well because you don't have to cook it out. You could just combine it with your aromatics, you know. Exactly.
And um we worked with Aurelion, I think you might remember we did a pate on crute with him. And when it was cooking in the oven and we had the mushroom as an ingredient inside, we saw like zero vapor coming off from the chimneys of the dough. And it was interesting. And so he um packed it like he usually does for retail uh in Cryovac and it stayed dry because a lot of times if you have a dough wrapped product and you're selling it after it's chilled and you know reheated, you've got a lot of moisture buildup. So with the Wellington, when the beef tender line is cooking, it's coming into the duck cell.
But because of the moisture holding capacity of the 50 cut, it's holding it inside. So the dough stays like super crispy. You don't have that gum, that gummy gum, gum. Yeah, you know that you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, that's why a lot of people put like crepes around it to keep it from like getting into the colour.
Yeah. Yeah. There's something that's gonna be gummy. But if you put more of the this product around, it's like the like the the Hey, is there an application for it as like uh an intermediate in a fried item? Yeah, I mean I did Arencini with it.
Um empanadas, I think it would work really well well because again, that's like in a dough. Then then mushroom, then bread, then fry. Mm-hmm. Well, actually what I did with that is I substituted some of the weight of the arboreo rice for the mushroom and because it thickens, I wasn't really worried about it getting to like the right consistency because usually the starch from the rice will do that. But um yeah, it just made a really nice risotto and a little less rice just to play with it.
Um but as a filling, you know, combined with other things like a fried empanata or you know, a rabus or something like this, it definitely would work well. Talking about a stuffed cabbage uh application. Uh that would work really well as well. Um I think you like stuffed cabbage? I like stuffed cabbage that's like nicely braised and tender with like a lot of sauce on it.
Name like shower, you should like stuffed cabbage. Yeah. Yeah, no relation, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. I I l I love stuffed cabbage, but I really like uh using uh not fresh cabbage leaves, fermented cabbage leaves.
That's a really good idea. They're so good. I mean, the only issue is that it sometimes it can get so acidic that um if they sit a while before they're cooked, you know, the acid in the meat can like make the meat throw off too much water and get, you know what I mean? Yeah. Um because I don't like m well, you know what?
I've never made sauer bratton. Anyway. Um I don't usually cook m meats in a very high acid environment. But anyway, so uh it's not been a problem with my stuffed cabbage, but yeah, I really love uh stuffed cabbage. But I'm wondering if you could use it as like an absorbent thing in place of meat entirely in a stuffed cabbage situation.
I think you could if you had like more cabbage and maybe some dressing or something that might be a little bit gluey inside. Um rice and all that. You like stuffed cabbage, right, John? Yeah. It's delicious.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh we're actually we're working with um JJ Johnson, who I know was on the show recently. I listened, that was good. I really got into John John mushrooms after that.
Oh my god. They're so good, right? Yeah, they're really good. So expensive, so good. And can you believe you throw them away?
You never eat them. It's wild. Can you grow those suckers? So good. I think.
I'm gonna talk I'm gonna talk to the scientists. You could buy that. Yeah. Because it's yours are so uh loose, right? If you could just imagine, so like if you were to take one of these mush products and dehydrate it, like freeze-dry it, it would be instant infusion because it's so porous.
So like if you like had freeze-dried blocks of John John, people go crazy. Yeah, that would be really cool. People go banana. Well, the five non-Haitians who know about it would be like, yes! And then all of Haiti would be like, thank you.
Yeah. Because it's like, you know what I mean? I wonder whether you could grow it. I'm gonna look into it for sure. Um I wonder whether it would then be edible and you wouldn't have to remove it.
Because I think that it's just because they have the really stringy, I just uh right? Because like, do you think that they themselves are on don't taste good if you eat them, or is it just that their texture's no good? I think people are put off by the texture, but doesn't most of like the the flavor and aerobiotic compounds come at in the liquid? That's what I'm guessing. Right.
But it'd be nice to not have to take it out. Yeah. Like if you had it as a freeze-dried thing and then you powdered it, then you could just John John stuff. You know what I mean? Without using the cube.
You could just be like, and John John. Yeah. But it's such a good flavor. It's really special. Um JJ's using the the 50 cut um which is the oyster trumpet based in a turkey jerk turkey meatball med field trip.
So this rice bowl edition downstairs? Uh all the locations. Yeah yeah yeah yeah so you could go right down if you were fish bowling us right now you could go downstairs and have some mush product at uh JJ's restaurant. How about that? There we go.
Um all right I think I have another one. So if you've worked for a mushroom company I hope you have a uh an answer for this but uh El Butz wrote in and said lighthearted question uh what's your favorite mushroom related pun? I think mushroom related humor you ready for it? Exceptional. Get it Seps.
Seps. Get it seps. Yeah. All right you got any? You got any mushroom puns?
You got any we probably use this too often but it uh there's a fungus among us. Oh yeah I think our group chat with the company they're probably rolling their eyes all the time when I say that but what about you? I don't know. I don't uh no I don't do uh I don't do puns. I just I just start cursing.
I don't pun. You know what I mean? Like uh yeah yeah. Nastasia I don't do a lot of puns right no you're not a very pun guy. Not a very pun not pun a pun.
John, you're not a punster. No, I'm not Quinn, you're not a punny man, are you you missed the still Oh yeah I did. What was it? No no no I wasn't trying Quinn really I wasn't yeah well so I guess Quinn is the p the punster, punster among us. Uh but like um yeah, no it's I I never even used the fungus among us stuff because my grandpa, you know, my my grandpa dead, he hated uh he hated mushrooms and he hated uh chicken and he hated all these things.
And so if you see he ate he ate meat and then he ate potatoes, and then he ate more meat, and then he also ate potatoes. And so if you s if you said to him, uh, do you want to, you know, what about chicken, grandpa? He'd be like, Fowl. And if you said to him, you know, what about you know, you want some of this lamb, mutton. So like we if we had lamb, we'd have to make him like beef or pork chop.
So the only two things he would eat, you know what I mean? Sliced impossibly thin because he was also cheap. So cheap. You he used to pride himself on how thin he could slice my grandma's microwaved beef roast, which was a nightmare, the worst food you've ever put in your mouth. And uh if you said, Hey, what about mushrooms, grandpa?
I'd be like, Fungus. Like that. And so like he always had these one word responses, you know. And like if you asked him how he was, he'd be like, vertical, i.e. not dead.
And that was his one response. Or and then if you would say, How are you doing? and he would say, soberly, even though he wasn't, you know what I mean? He wasn't like drunk, but he also wasn't, you know, inherently sober. You know what I'm saying?
And he's just, you know, old school jerk. You know what I mean? Like old school straight up jerk. Um depression era jerk. He grew up in the depression, so he was a jerk.
No, you know what I mean? Like that excuse. Anyway, that's not plenty of people grew up in the depression. Very nice. Uh anyway.
So uh we got some regular technical questions. Do you want to rip through some regular since you're a technical cook? Sure, I'll try. All right. Yeah.
Uh hey, is there a uh resource or guideline for properly setting the crystal structure of beef tallow after rendering? I had some on the top of my beef stock I skimmed off, melted to remove water and then cool. Didn't they answer this question from Mathman? Here so Math Mathman wants to take beef fat that that Mathman has rendered and then use it in place of tallow, but you can't do that because it's actually a different fat. The fat that you're rendering off of meat isn't the same as the hard fat that you want to use to do to do tallow for crust.
That's you want the kidney fat. Totally different fatty acid component. You're never gonna do it. If you do have a spinzall, you can raise the solid fat uh uh the solid fat uh index of of the of the of the fat by freezing out the the crystals that you want, but it's not gonna make what you want. You want to get kidney fat.
That's what you want. Um Christian Sacco, I made a pastry cream following a recipe online. It turned out too sweet. Is there a re any reason I can't cut the sugar in half for next time? I'm not well versed enough with baking and know how it'll affect something else with the pastry cream.
I don't think so. I don't think there's that much sugar in a pastry cream. I think it's mainly the eggs and the starch that are set in that thing. I think you're okay, AJ. You're with me?
I wouldn't be worried. Yeah. Not worried. Well I'm I I would consider swapping some of the sugar. Or at least wheat sugar.
I mean, of course you would. But there's there's not that much sugar in it. I don't think it's I don't in other words, I don't know how much of a functional ingredient it is in pastry cream. You know, I think 99% of the functionality in pastel cream is coming. We got two more minutes, AJ.
That's the noise. Uh is uh 99% of the functionality is coming from the eggs and the starch, I would guess. Yeah, I think so too. Egg, starch flour, whatever you have in it. You know what I mean?
Maybe if you didn't want it as sweet, you could use honey or you know, that would be I don't know. Yeah. Uh all right, wait, these are a carbonation questions. I'm gonna do that later. We got anything that's specifically good for AJ Quinn because there's got a lot of stuff here.
Because otherwise we could save it for no time, no uh no all tangent Tuesday. How about this? Bryce wants to know is there any benefit to making salad in a large wooden bowl as opposed to a stainless steel bowl? I mean, I can't taste the difference unless you can. No, the benefit of a wooden bowl is they're nicer.
Yeah. To serve out of, you know what I mean? Also, like old school, like old old school, if you're gonna take that garlic clove and you're gonna rub the bowl, it doesn't work as well in a stainless bowl. So, like, that's the way they used to do Caesar salad back in the day. That's such a good point because we only had wooden bowls at the Garmer station at Danielle.
Really? Is that what you would do for the like tradition? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I like a wooden bowl. Um what else?
What else we got? Uh what else we got? Uh there's so many questions I don't even know what to do, because I only got 50 seconds left. All right. I've been inspired to try and make some masubi inspired by Latin American dishes, like so Latin American inspired Masubi.
And I'm wondering about rice selection. It's traditionally made with short grain sushi rice. Uh, what factor should I be looking for in my rice to try to dial in stickiness? Is it just starch content? Not starch content, starch style, right?
Amelopectin versus uh amylose. Uh, should I wash off excess starch until the water runs clear? What about the cook itself? I don't know, but like, you know, uh when um Sola was on, she made me feel incredibly uh empowered to use sushi rice for risotto. So I'm gonna say do whatever you like, as long as it's uh sticky enough.
You know what I mean? Um the main thing is masubi is also acidified, right? That's the one thing you want to not do. If you have rice sitting around for a long time, don't grow bee serious in it. Like uh Bacilla series serious.
Like make sure that you acidify it so that you're not gonna poison any of your buddies. That's all it is, right? Just don't poison your buddies. Do you store it in the fridge or outside or freezer? Sometimes I freeze my rice.
That might help with any concerns on that. Just for storage. Huh. No, I've never tried it. I'll look into it.
Anyway, we have to go, AJ. Thanks for coming on. Come back anytime with more mushroom-based products, cooking issues. Thank you.
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