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 Stand Studios. No one in the studio just me and Joe Hazen. How are you doing? I'm doing well, man.
Great to see you. Thanks for coming out on Tuesday. Yeah, on a nice and toasty warm day. It's so cold out there. I love it.
Actually, I don't mind this cold. Do you mind it? No, not at all. I love it. Yeah.
Like when you breathe in and your nose gets all spiky. Oh man, that kind of stings. Yeah, crisp. Crisp. Uh up in Connecticut for the first half of the show.
We have uh John, how are you doing? Doing great. Enjoying the cold as well. Yeah, yeah. Uh nice out here.
Great state of Connecticut. Small state, best state. Indeed. Uh over there, uh, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez is still uh MIA. We know where she is, actually, but she's just not here.
Uh on the phone lines. But uh in the lower left, we got uh Jackie Molecules. How you doing? Yep, good. Yeah, yeah.
And in the upper left off the coast, we got Quinn. How you how are you doing today? I'm good. Good. Uh and if you uh if you choose to you and you're a member of the Patreon, you can call in your questions to 917-410-1507.
That's 917-410-1507. And why don't you tell them why they might want to be a Patreon? But who's gonna do who's gonna take this? John or Quinn. Oh, see, I guess.
Listen, I just I just made the biggest faux pas of all time. When someone's injured on the street, you don't say somebody call EMS. You point to an individual and you say call EMS. You know what I mean? That's right.
True. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, anyway. Cookie mistake.
Yeah, rookie, rookie mistake. It's like I was talking to a stunt man at the bar. I was at the bar with uh Mike Capafari and a friend of his, also a bar owner, also a stunt, also an ex-circus performer, ex stunt man. Uh, we were talking about getting lit on fire, right? And uh he was saying, I was telling him how when I caught on fire, I tried to run away from myself, you know, as one does when you're not trained.
He's like, listen, even when you like trained, when you first catch on fire, you don't necessarily do what you're supposed to do. Like your body just doesn't necessarily do what you're supposed to do when you catch on fire. So now I don't feel quite so bad. You know what I mean? Good.
Good. Glad he helps you feel better. Yeah, I mean, the second third time you catch on fire, you probably know what to do. You know what I mean? I would hope so.
Yeah, the run of show, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, because every other time I've caught on fire, and I have caught on fire like, you know, more than three times, it's always been like just the hair, and it's over real fast. There's nowhere to run. There's nothing to do.
You know what I mean? Like when your hair catches on fire, like it's like whoosh. Just happens. Yeah, it just happens. As long as you don't have too many like fire sustaining hair care products like Michael Jackson had in the Pepsi commercial.
As long as you're not like that, like it's over real quick. You know what I mean? Anyway. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, go to Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Uh, you can find a couple different membership levels there. Each membership level has uh different perks. You all of them get prioritized questions being answered. You get access to our Patreon where you've got a community of like minded members to have discussions with.
You get access or access to discount codes like Kitchener Letters and Glass and a whole bunch of other companies. So check it out. Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Yeah, uh speaking of uh uh questions from the Patreon, we have a lot of like carbonation related questions today, so it's kind of a good day for Nastasia not to be here because we all know how much she hates carbonation questions. You know what I'm saying?
Hates it. And I think one other baking question. And there's what'd you say? Like one other um baking flour question, too. Oh, do I?
Did I see that? Oh, speaking of flour, uh the uh the uh flower city folks from uh Rochester uh were at the bar the other day, and uh shout out to them. And uh I wore the hat last week. So they they gave me a bread hat, and I think a flower hat, but I wear the bread hat all the time, and people are like, what is that? I'm like, it's bread.
And then they stare at me for a while because I don't say anything else, and then they're like, Well, where is it from? Because there's apparently like a famous graffiti artist in Brooklyn named bread, and they're like, Is it related to him? I'm like, No, it's uh it's Flower City up in uh up in Rochester. But then um biscuits, someone in the my elevator was like, Biscuits, huh? I'm like, Yeah, biscuits.
And that's it. I just try to say nothing afterwards, you know what I mean? I thought there was a blue, uh like a bluey uh reference. Bluey, the the cartoon. Oh, I don't watch that.
It's not a big thing. I have a four-year-old, so you know, like instead of cursing the kid the those dogs the pups say, oh biscuits, biscuits. I'll tell you what, I was in the I was in the bar the other day, I forget who I was talking to, and I told them, which is true, is that most everyone in my life, if you were to give them a choice between biscuits and rolls or biscuits and bread, they would all choose the bread or the rolls and not the biscuits. Yeah, which I think is kind of weird. You know what I mean?
And especially because I you know, I leave it wide open. I'm like, you can have a flaky biscuit or you could have a fluffy biscuit. Like I'll I'll give you any kind of biscuit, but you know, you have to what kind of bread are we talking though? Um it matters what what the bread option is. Yeah, well, in general, like, so if it's dinner time, it's gonna be a Parker house roll versus a biscuit.
Everyone goes Parker House. Everyone in my family is Parker House head. You know what I mean? Um for breakfast, I don't know. It's like people are always like, I like the biscuits.
And by the way, I've done exhaustive tests of the biscuiting and and I thought was a garbage idea, but grating the frozen butter with a box grater is super money. It's super money. Yep. Super money way to do it. Just like works every time.
And by the way, I don't want to get into a huge unless there's a pie question, I forget. I don't want to get into a huge pie situation right now. But I've been doing some pie tests because I made uh a turkey pot pie about a week ago because I had some frozen turkey. I went out from Thanksgiving, I've I sliced up a bunch, I froze it down, I made a turkey pot pie. You guys like pot pie, right?
Lervis. Of course. Yeah. Pope pie. Good, right?
I just had a tr chicken pot pie today for lunch. Good, right? Delicious. Love it. And the secret, Miley does this.
I'm sure John does this. Uh, my sister-in-law Miley, you know, who's on the show, and uh, you know, is the uh great grand, you know, you know, the leader of uh all of her lifestyle magazines at this point, but started the Food Network magazine among many other magazines. Anywho, the whole pearl onion, a whole pearl onion in the pot pie. Love it, right? And like I forget who it was, whether it was John was like, you could buy frozen pearl onions that are already ready to rock and roll.
I was like, uh for years I was like, I'm not gonna use a pearl onion. Hell with that. What am I gonna buy that sack of pearl onions and sit there all day peeling them? No. You know what I mean?
But the fact that you can buy, yeah, I wonder how they do that. You think they use lye to melt off the outside layer and then and then like they do is like uh like uh alkaline peeling? How do you think they do it? You think they tumble it? You think they abrade the outside off?
What do you think they do? I don't know. And then a tumble? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know.
Because they're also getting the root off. Yeah. They're getting the root off, right? So with Garden. That's a good point.
Yeah. I don't know. Like they've got a really good point. I didn't think of that, yeah. Melt it.
We need to get we need to get, we need to find somewhere in our circle of of uh cooking issues uh crew, our cooking issues people, who's uh someone who's worked for like Green Giant or Bird's Eye, and just be like, listen. Uh you know, all the all the things we're interested in. You know, Bird, for those of you who don't know, Birdseye, I don't even do people still buy bird's eye? Clarence Birdseye. Yeah, Clarence Birdseye invented invented the technology for flash freezing uh frozen vegetables in like a high quality way.
And uh, you know, when I was a kid, they were still Kolansky wrote a pretty good biography of interrupts, but Mark Kalansky wrote a good biography about him, yeah. Nice, nice. And for years, even in the 70s when I was a kid, bird's eye was like the Sinequa non of frozen vegetable quality. You know what I mean? This was in the days before IQF though.
I think IQF like Bird's Eye was originally so the old school bird's eye were the ones that were block frozen, right? Uh between plates, uh like super cold. But I don't know, now everyone's I mean for good reason people are IQF I IQF happy. IQF means individually quick frozen for those who don't speak stupid frozen food lingo. And uh because obviously they're free-flowing, so you can just like take however much you want out of the sack.
Whereas when you were a kid, they stacked nicely in your freezer, but the frozen blocks, you gotta use the whole thing. What are you taking to take an ice pick and break all the spinach apart? You know what I mean? Yeah, I know about the spinach. Blocks of spinach.
Blocks of spinach. And by the way, I have to say, uh, at least if you use frozen spinach, because it's already been so damaged by the freezing and thawing process, at least you're like likely to get the all the crap out of it before you put it on the plate and have it leak all of that like vicious awful juice out onto the plate. True. How much do you hate that, John, when someone serves you a plate of something with spinach on it and then you tilt it and you get that filth, that filth water coming out of it? You know what I mean?
Disgusting. It's somewhat appealing. Wow. So gross. What's your what is your guys' favorite application for cooks?
First of all, can we agree that even if you like raw spinach, even if you're one of these raw spinach people, that cooked spinach is good, right? I mean, we can we can all agree on that, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Uh so what's your favorite spinach situation? Sag. Yeah, it's good. It's real good. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. I like a cream spinach though. Like a good cream spinach. I love a cream spinach. Oh my god, I love a cream spinach.
Yep. You know what I mean? Cream spinach, especially when it's when it's cold out. Yeah. Cream spinach and a steak.
Oh, yeah. Cream spinach and a steak? That's good. Oh yeah. That's real good.
Spinach frittata. Ooh, I like that. Yeah. And I like uh I like a you know, you I like a spinach uh uh in a quiche as well. Although, what percentage of quicies that you get are actually delicious versus disappointing?
Very few good quishes. And underseasoned. Overcooked and under seasoned. Our favorite phrase that uh Peter Kim used to insult our host restaurant when we went up to uh whatever college that was in uh in near West Adams. Anyway, uh how was the food?
Overcooked and under seasoned. That's a classic Peter Kim ism there. Uh but anyway, back to the pie. I was making a chicken pot pie and I used uh frozen uh carrots and peas, because what am I gonna do? Sit there and cut those carrots and then cook them?
No, of course I'm not. What are you dumb? You know what I mean? Who's who's gonna do that? Does anyone do that?
Is it is there a reason to do that? No? Anyone? Is there anyone find a reason to buy carrots, turn them into cubes for pot pie, other than to buy them frozen? I don't see a reason at all.
Unless fried rice. No. Yeah, but still, I mean, unless you're going to Pete's Greens in uh in like Upper Vermont and you're getting like God carrots. I mean, that person grows God level carrots. And so, like carrots.
There you go. On the other hand, right? I can turn a kind of you know, medium carrot into a god level carrot with a little bit of sugar. You know what I'm saying? Like, like you can jazz up so like once it's gonna be in a pot pie and you can correct the whole thing.
I don't know that there's a reason to put a god-level carrot into a pot pie. I think it's just throwing away unless you unless all you have is god level carrots and you want to have pot pie. I don't see a reason to use that great of a carrot in a pot pie. Do you guys think it's a mistake people make? Yeah, I mean, like unless like your whole thing is just throwing away work and money unless you want to be profligate with your with your fancy carrots, you know.
Um I mean, I want those carrots again. It's coming on. Yeah, just correct. Correct. Or even just eat like these carrots are so good.
Like uh peace green's carrots, like a certain time of year, like the ones that are like he pulls out right before they're gonna freeze, so they've been in the ground the maximum length of time. That's I mean, that's nature's candy as much as a raisin is, you know what I mean? Anyone remember that ad campaign? Raisins, nature's candy. Yeah.
Uh anyway, so the pot pie. Yeah, right. Back to the uh back to the pop. Also, most carrots that you buy in the store are trash. They really are.
I was doing uh I did uh Booker's uh yearly sushi, you know, sushi meal for his birthday. Every year we've been doing it for like, I don't know, 15 years since he was a little kid, right? And then we always do the same thing. We I go to Aqua Best, I get some Ora King salmon. I got a second sushi grade salmon, the Ora King beat it.
I get a Mikura and uh all this stuff. And uh yeah, and so uh, you know, I buy a carrot so that I can do the roll you you guys know the technique, the Japanese technique, where you take the you take the round shaped, like you take a daikon, you take a carrot, you take a cucumber, anything that's in a tube shape, and you take usually an is an usuba, which is like it looks like uh I don't know, it how someone describe an usuba. It's like rectangular and long, right? Is it the creaver shape? Yeah, I mean ish, but it's thin and long, you know what I mean?
And not that tall like a cleaver. And you you hold the the veg, and if it's a hard veg like a carrot, you should soak it in in some salt water so that it uh it loses it. You want it to be a little uh to you know, loot you don't want it to be super crunchy, right? And the knife has to be ridiculously sharp. And you hold it in your hand and you pr you put it into the side, and then you peel a veneer off of the outside of the of the veg and you make these sheets, and then you slice those sheets into sticks, right?
And so that's like how that's one way other than like planking and and keep reducing down to make like you know thin like for for mocky rolls, thin, you know, uh lines of things like daikon, carrot, cucumber. So I was doing all that. But this year, interestingly for me, I did it in uh I did it with uh Scott's uh from Seattle Ultrasonics uh new ultrasonic knife I think we're gonna have him on the show. Quinn are you gonna set that up next time he's in town? Sure.
Have you guys seen this? It's a knife and he sent it to me. I have I have some video content. So it's got a battery in it. You charge it.
It's got a real strong magnet so it sits in the charger and you can sharpen it like a normal knife but it's got a button on it and when you push the button and you go into things it ultrasonically goes and so like it can kind of I'm trying to figure out what it's best at. For instance, like I tried it on bread. It's not a serrated knife but it went right through bread like it was a serrated knife. But it's a regular knife which was kind of cool. I'm getting used to kind of uh kind of having because you have to push the button to make it work.
Anyway, so I tried it with the uh rotating veg instead of my Usuba and uh it worked. It worked. I don't I'm not I don't know if I'm ready to give up my Usubi yet because it makes me very nervous doing that rotary stuff because I'm not good because if you slip at all and you don't know what you're doing blam oops sorry the knife goes right into the side of your hand and your toast. You know what I mean? It's kind of a nerve wracking uh it's a nerve wracking situation.
But very thin slices of cake perfect. I tried to use it in place of my Yanagi for fish slicing and I don't know that I fully have the hand of it. Like because the Yanagi's so Yanagi, by the way, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, Yanagi is the very long slicing uh knife, uh Japanese slicing knife. And I really, really like my traditional Japanese knives, but I figured I'd test the the Seattle Ultrasonics. But you know what it was good at people?
Getting the skin off of uh a salmon fillet, which, you know, I don't know, nobody likes doing that because it's it's only an opportunity to mess things up. You know what I mean? Anyway, so yeah, yeah, for those of you that don't know how to do it, the way that I was taught to do it, and maybe there are much better ways, is you kind of wet your surface a little bit so that the salmon gets a little bit of a jiggle in itself, and then you throw it down, you grab the tail end, right? And you gotta make sure it can it can move around. You put it flat on a board, you make sure the knife can get right underneath it, you make a small incision into the meat right by the tail down to the down to the skin section, and then you hold the skin, and then you keep the knife there, and then you jiggle the skin back and forth as you pull as you pull it towards you, and it just kind of it just kind of rips this cuts the skin off of the salmon.
And if you do it right, you get the entire piece, and then at the end, you kind of have to use the knife more as you get up towards the collar. You have to use the knife instead of the skin to do it. But you can get the whole skin off in one piece without losing a lot of meat. That's mean, John, is that the way you were taught or no? Yep.
Yeah. Uh great. Yeah, hold the knife at a downward angle, not like per not parallel with the cutting board. Yeah, because otherwise, if you hold it parallel with the cutting board, it'll it'll drift up into the fish. And if you hold it down, if you hold it down and you push, then you'll cut the skin.
If you hold it, you just have to it's like it's all about just like the skin wants to do the work. And it did really well at that. It just wasn't quite long enough. So when I got towards the collar section of it, I messed up a little bit. But the first whole section of it where it was the correct width for what I was doing, it worked great for getting the skin off.
So, anyway, uh more on that knife, and we'll get Scott on to tell us what it's actually for, because who knows. Uh anyway, sorry, back to pot pie. So I made a pot pie and I I started retesting my old uh pie uh crust recipes again. So I saw Crisco, you know, who in invented uh this thing you might have heard of called Crisco, right? Uh they have an interesting set of recipes.
And you know, I I looked at them versus my Monroe Baust and Strauss recipe spreadsheet, which yes, Quinn, I know I owe to the Patreon people. But um the the main issue with pie crust is getting one, the flour correct. So if you're not using the correct flour, if you're not using the same flour that the recipe developer used, then your recipe is garbage. That's the first thing to bear in mind. Second, uh you have to choose which one of the three main styles that were popular in the 20s, 30s, and 40s you want.
Those are super mealy, right? Uh super long flake or medium. So I'm shooting for medium. And Crisco had a really good idea, and you guys might enjoy this, is you take half of the fat that you're gonna use and you thoroughly incorporate it in as you would for a mealy crust, because what that does is it stops, there's no long big pieces of fat. Most of the flour is coated, so it's a very short crust, right?
Then they Crisco has you put in the rest coarsely like you would for like a long flake or for like a biscuit. Then you roll it out, and it's a good middle ground between the two kinds of pastry, and it also doesn't snap back as much because most of the flour has enough fat around it that it doesn't have a lot of mean. I used I used soft, uh I used soft wheat and then sifted it so I wasn't gonna have a gluten problem anyway. But anyway, so that's the that but I did the biscuit style. So what instead of using Crisco, I used butter and I incorporated half of the butter in, allowed it to soften, incorporated half the butter in fully like I would for a fully short crust, like a tart crust.
And then I grated like for biscuits, and that's why I'm getting back to the biscuit thing. Graded in like I did for biscuits, the other half of the fat into it, and just fork mixed it around and then added the water. Anyway, so that was my pot pie, and I'm a top-only pot pie guy. It's so much easier if you just have a top crust on a pot pie to do it in a casual roll casserole style dish and then reheat it without the bottom becoming garbage. Anyone else with me on this or no?
Wait, isn't it if it's a bottom crust? Isn't it not pot pie? Isn't that just pie? No. I don't think so.
I've had them both ways. I don't know. I've had pot pies that you could pop right out of the pot and and like eat them. You know what I mean? But I don't know.
I mean, like Yeah, but then it doesn't need to be a pot. Well, I mean, you need it. Are you talking like an open-faced pot pie? Well, but it's like just just cr just top crust. Just top crust.
Oh, it's like Boston Market used to do that. Yeah, just top crust. Yeah. The Popeyes I grew up with had two crusts, but like this is top crust situation. What does stofers have?
Does sofers have two crusts or one? Two crusts. Yeah. And listen, if if someone's gonna know who a what a pot pie is, it's stofers. What time's dinner?
What? What's where's the commercial? It's like, oh hey, you gotta come in for dinner. And then it's like, oh, what time is Jimmy having dinner? Okay.
Yeah, yeah, because Chivy's got the Popeye? Well, they both know they go for the stuffing. Oh, stuff. Oh, stovetop stuffing. Do you have never had stove top stuffing?
Get out of here, dude. Listen. Dude, it's they they nail it. I mean, it's it's delicious. I'm sorry.
It's delicious. I mean, I'll try it someday. I've just never had it. You know? So much sodium.
Yeah. You know what I have had, but I don't remember it. I have had hamburger helper, but I don't remember what it tastes like. I don't know if you know this. I love the hand.
Yeah. I always wanted the hand. The hand, like, yeah, it's it's good swag. You know what I mean? Hamburger helper helps her hamburger help her make a great meal.
So it's very gendered, obviously. You know? Hamburger helper helps her hamburger help her make a great meal. Anyone remember this commercial? Real early.
Anyway. Uh, pot pie. Anyway, the Popeye was good. Popeye good. Um, uh, I used uh, I used uh a re I did a regular like milk and roux and then just used a I used a a bullion paste.
I used the better than better than bouillon, which is a good brand. We should get them on board. I do like that brand a lot. It's a good brand. Yeah.
If you're gonna buy their brand better than bullion's no, if you want to make a tomato soup for vegetarians, right? Better than bouillon's no beef base, they're fake, they're not fake, but they're vegetarian beef like makes a ridiculously good tomato soup. Like absurdly good. Their gravy is awesome. They have a really good, like caramelized uh savory onion kind of base too.
That's really delicious. Yeah. Yeah, I've never used it. I use their chicken, I use their and I use their no beef, and I think I've used their no chicken, and I have their veg base, but I never use the veg base because if I'm gonna use the veg base, I'll just use their no beef or their no chicken, depending on which one of those two I want. Because those are the flavor profiles I usually go for in my head, you know?
The fish one is awesome. Really? Yeah. Excellent. It's so good.
Yeah. You know what? Why isn't there stuff more available? It's funny. You know what?
It's actually kind of hard to find. Yeah. But as you know, as soon as you run into it, there's like so many, like, oh my God, there's so many more to explore. I'm just going to go for the organic chicken. Well, they had it at my, they had it, they they carried it for a minute at my local fine fair, which used to be like key foods adjacent, but then like tried to like fancy up.
So they carried it. I went in, I bought it all, and then they didn't re-up. You know what I mean? Way better than the Noor. Oh, yeah.
Although listen, Norris and Grand Sabor, I don't know if you know that, but uh they're owned by Unilever. And the interesting thing about Noor is that they uh they customize their flavors for the neighborhoods they're gonna be in. But you're never gonna get, I don't think you're ever gonna get, I mean, unless you use some sort of weird freeze-drying technology, you're never gonna get a uh a fully powderized thing that's gonna be, I think, as good as those better than bullion things. I've I've I haven't had a a base that I like that's that's commercially available to regular humans that I like as much as the better than bullion. Uh I you know, Amazon's sucks for it though.
Amazon charges so much for it compared to what it is in the store because they're they're selling those little jars. And Amazon, I don't think sells the big jars. You know that better than bullion comes in big jars. Haven't seen it. Yeah.
I did not know that. Yeah. That's the money, right? It's like you want a big jar anyway, because it lasts a long time. Very long time.
I use it all, I use it all the time. Yeah. It's my salt substitute. My one gripe, it sticks like a mother to the spoon. So, you know, you can do the old maple syrup trick uh or the old molasses trick where you pam your spoon, pam your spoon, and then stuff slips off of it.
Yeah. But what if it what if okay? Just hear me out better than bullion people. What if not a glass jar? What if it was a squeezy?
Or tube. Oh yeah. Speaking of tubes, uh we had a radio listener, a cooking issues uh listener, who came to the bar, left me some awesome German products, some pumpkin seed oil. I need to open it because I need a good excuse to use it, and I don't want to open it until it's ready to go because you know it's fragile, right? Uh some German, like big German, they look like the shape of lima beans, but they're brown and they're big and they're German.
And this stuff called grill mustard in a big metal tube. Guess what they didn't leave? Their name. I can't give them a shout-out. I don't know who they were.
I walk into the I walk into the bar, I get a bag. Yeah. I walk into the bar, I get a bag. I want to give them a shout-out. Nothing.
You know what I mean? Sad. Sad. Also, I don't mean to take this back in any other direction, but quickly, like the amount of better than bouillon bases is absolutely crazy. I'm looking at that online.
They even have a lobster base. Lobster I mean That's insane. Hey hey, listen, right? We need to hit these people up. Look, we're all fans.
Does everyone in the world already know about this company? If everyone in the world knew about this company, it would be everywhere. Just like the joy almond base should be everywhere. I think it's everywhere, no? Maybe in LA.
No, I can't find it's kind of hard for me to find too as well. Yeah. I mean, they're almost like the d like what's like the Doritos of uh flavors. To me, the thing that's a pain in the butt, because like I I can make chicken stock, right? And but it's just a question.
It's good to have it concentrated. You know, I I can make beef stock and I do, but when I'm I cook a lot for vegetarians. And so what's hard to find, their regular products are hard to find, but they're the ones that are key for vegetarians, the only one that's readily available in in Manhattan is the veg base. But if you want the no beef and the no chicken, it's more of a specialty item. And it's like it's it's definitely a get out of jail free card when you're when you're cooking either vegetarian or vegan for people, but you want that flavor profile.
You know what I mean? Um base too. What? What'd you say? Yeah, this is great.
Ham base. Mushroom base. And adobo. And yeah, ham, right? I made diet I already mentioned that I I I bought a honey baked ham for uh around Christmas time.
I just made the soup. Man, ham bone, using a big old hand bone for a soup, I mean, come on. That's good. You know what I mean? That's good.
That's good. Yeah. Everyone likes a ham bone. That's another that's another thing. People are like, I've used uh and then they list some fancy ham for their hand bone in the soup.
Not smart, right? You don't need a super hyper fancy ham in your soup. Do you think so, John? No. No.
In fact, I don't think so. No, yeah. Sometimes the fancy the most fancy hams, because they're older, right, and funky, I think they're kind of weird in something like that. You know what I mean? Like, I don't necessarily need like, you know, a hyper aged, like, you know, uh ham fat in my in my regular bean soup.
You know what I'm saying? Anyway. Uh great. All right, John. Since you're here now and you might not be here for the entire program, okay.
Okay, do you think do you think this person is K E V A N? What do we think? Kevin or Kivan? Kevin. Kevin?
Kevin. Yeah. All right. I think so. Kevin says, What cooking hacks have you brought home from work?
I'm looking to streamline my home cooking and adopt more of a pro mindset at home. Well, that depends on your household. I mean I don't use them as much as I used to because I was told not to store things in plastic anymore. But like just making the move to core containers is like life better. Life better.
Core containers, core containers and blue tape. Core containers, blue tape, and a sharpie, right? Then like lids, get some half gallons, and then some pints and some eight ounces, and then like just life becomes so much better. You can have an infinite number of them. You can use them almost forever.
You can freeze them, you gotta be careful because they're they're brittle. Uh they stack so well. They stack so well. You know what I mean? Um I mean, it's just there's not a a lot of that.
Try to have everything open and available to you too. Yeah. Like if you're gonna have to go all the way into your back closet to get your blender out, you're never gonna make anything with a blender. Correct. And then you're just gonna not make that much.
This is another thing though, where you're not gonna mix bowls out, have your top drawer filled with what is most useful, things like that. Yeah, this is another thing though, where you t there tends to be friction between the people who are cooking and the people who are not cooking, because a lot of people don't like the open storage. Like, so like all of my bowls, I've said this before, just like John said, I have them all out, and it's only ever like on like. I never stack two different sizes of bowl together. And I put them away, and I have, and I get cheap as hell stainless steel bowls because they stack very, very well.
They stack almost to the thickness of the metal. So it's like you can have a stack of like five salad bowls. So then if stuff runs away from you, or six salad bowls, if stuff runs away from you, you're good to go. And you can have like a bunch of different sizes and layout. It's super fast.
Um what else? Uh I think also doing your shopping at like a restaurant like supply store, like for hardware for bowls, for tongs, for ladles, all that stuff. Don't go to Williams Penova, don't get the crap at Walmart. Um like that stuff at those stores is gonna last you. And that's where you're gonna find like the stainless steel bowls that you're talking about, too.
Yeah. Sheet pans. Uh, you know, so like, oh, by the way, uh, I'll look it up, but um so for those of you that cook with a brevel or uh an ANOVA uh smart oven, uh all of the pans that you can buy suck. They just are bad. And if you go, there's online there's a bunch of people who like have these websites where they list all of the pans that theoretically are good in a toaster oven.
And what you want in life is a sheet pan, right? So there's aluminum sheet pans, which are great if you need uh if you need something that is uh shiny. They now make aluminum sheet pans that are uh that have a um they're more radioabsorptive, you know, uh um they have a uh a higher emissivity, so you can so you can actually use them to brown things better. So they make those. But aluminum sheet pans are cheap and sturdy, but they come in half full size sheet pans, which most people's ovens can't take, half size sheet pans, which you know fit standard home ovens.
Uh, but they don't fit and quarters, so I use a lot of quarters and a lot of eights when I'm prepping, right? So when you're prepping stuff, I use a lot of quarters and eights, and and I use the and I use the um the racks that go in them so to sort of to keep stuff up off of things and to let things drain. So I use a lot of those. They stack also very well, they're very inexpensive. You have to hand wash them, which is a little bit of a pain in the butt.
But a half sheet tray does not fit in a brevel. And a half sheet tray is a little too small for most home ovens. You wish it could go a little bigger. They make what's alternatively called they're the same size, a two-thirds sheet tray and a three-quarter sheet tray, which you can get on K Tom or restaurant, a webstaurant store. Those fit regular home ovens, but they are expensive.
I forget the number, but Chicago Metallic, which is a fantastic actually company of like high end. Like I had a muffin pan of theirs for decades, and that was the best muffin pan I've ever used in my life, Chicago Metallic. And it's a great name. Could you get a better name than Chicago Metallic? No, right?
Chicago Metallic. Pretty good. Yeah, and they've been in business a long time. They make a pan, and I have to get the the exact number of it for next time, but you can look it up based on the dimensions, right? It's like 15 and a half inches across, and just it I think it's like 10 or something.
It's the almost the exact size of a Breville Smart Air toaster oven and an ANOVA oven, and it is the stiffest pan in the world. I bought some of the stainless steel pans that that you know some people recommend that you buy for the Breville. I got them on Amazon, and here's the thing. I got them, I was like, okay, I pick them up and they warp in your hand. Now, if a pan warps in your hand when it's not even hot yet, right?
You ha you can't yet you have to every pan that you own, you have to imagine pulling it out of an oven that's 450 degrees with a bunch of grease that dripped off of something in it. And you need to control that grease to stop it from pouring down your shoe or down your arm. And you have to expect that there's like 10, 15 pounds of crap on top of it. It's fighting you the whole way. And if your pan can't do that, then you should break it over your knee and throw it away.
That's my feeling about it. What do you think, John? I agree. I was just gonna wait for you to stop talking so I could say that. Like when you're looking for sheet trays and pans like that, you want to look for like the gauge, and the higher the gauge and the stiffer the pan is gonna be.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just like that's why commercial sheet pans are cheap, but they make because they make a bunch of them, but they're actually relatively high quality because even the ones that are crappier gauges, I mean you should get the thicker gauge one if you can afford it. They have a wire that goes around it, a rolled rim and a wire. Yeah, don't get the ones that don't have the wire.
They're rolled around it and it's just you know what I mean? Uh that's what you want out of it. Yep. That's the feeling you want. Make them say, uh, na nah, na na.
You know what I'm saying? That's what you want out of a sheet pan. Uh but about cooking though, not just like like equipment. What about like cooking stuff? Anything you recommend, John?
Like freezing stock in ice cube trays. Yeah. Or other kind of like flavored things, compound butters, things like that. I also don't cook at home on my days off. Like that's what I'm doing most of the time.
It's a pain. Um I get delivery. But yeah, it's terribly expensive. But um, I think also like just making good bases of things ahead of time, like a really good tomato sauce that you can freeze well and flatten a Ziploc bag um is good, just like as a hack that you can just kind of pull out and it's ready to go whenever. Um that's more about how I think about cooking.
Like when I'm at home, I'll spend time making like one nice big thing and then breaking it up so I can use it many more times in smaller amounts. Yeah. I mean, one thing I notice a lot for myself, just like when you're reading a professional recipe of who who's ever's professional recipe versus a recipe for home. Like I'm reading, like someone asked for a recipe I'm gonna give later, and it's like when I'm looking at it, there it people you freaked out. Remember the first, the first like kind of popular American book that came out that had like truly just straight professional recipes, but was meant for like home weirdos to buy as a coffee table book, was that I remember was the French laundry cookbook.
And if you look at the French laundry cookbook, right, right, it's like it's got all of the sub steps as though you were a restaurant. And I'm even looking at my own like drink recipes when someone asked for it, is like there's a lot of sub ingredients in it. And so people this is the this is what doesn't translate from restaurant to home. Is that in a restaurant where you're reusing a sub ingredient for a bunch of different preparations and you just need that sub ingredient to always exist, then your recipes are built around using that sub ingredient, right? Whereas if you're making, you know, so like for instance, I I use this ingredient polydextrose, or I use glycerin and I use different acids, right?
So all of my recipes are built around using my standard pre-made units of that stuff. Whereas if you were actually just writing a one-off recipe to make it, I could just tell you add this many grams of powder, add this many grams of this, add this many grams of that, and base it all together instead of all of these sub-recipes. So I think one of the key things that's different cooking at home is you very rarely, unless you're like saying what John is saying, you're making all these pre-recipes, you very rarely, and it can be daunting for for you know home one off home recipes to make all these sub things. What do you think about that? Yeah, agreed.
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, because like you know listen, I'm sure many people are not as lazy as I am, but like I would much rather reuse a sub-ingredient that I already have than make a whole new sub ingredient if it is all possible and it doesn't like make me, it doesn't make the menu look too homogenous. You know what I'm saying? Because it's just Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, it's just such a hassle. Um such a hassle. I'm sure I'll think of something else or uh if anyone has any anything to uh bring in. What there's got to be some crazy I'll try to think of it as as as we're going on. Hey, Quinn, you said uh before we got on the air, you said you wanted to say something to uh Pat from upstate about the uh uh at Matilda for about uh acid and phosphate.
Oh yeah, the question about acid phosphate or phosphoric acid, either way. Um that makes me pretty much every recipe that you find using it is like, you know, a sort of fountain drink or a derivative uh, you know, beverage therein. But I've I have used phosphoric acid flash acid phosphate and some desserts, obviously. Um and I do like it when there is no obvious organic acid choice, but you want like a really subtle acidity. So like I paired it with uh chocolate or uh even figs, because like figs aren't really acidic at all, but like just a little bit of it just brings a little balance to that fruit, and then it doesn't taste just like I don't know, a random flavored lemonade or something.
Yeah, it's very dry. It's a very dry acidity. It's extremely dry. You know what I mean. I've never used a phosphate though, so I don't know, like electric yeah, I don't know how I don't know how much the buffering when you're making the phosphate affects the flavor of it.
So I mean I'm sure it's saltier. But I don't know. You know, I use just phosphoric acid. Yeah, I guess I just yeah. So the phosphate might be different because it's good.
When it's you've had the phosphate. I've never used a phosphate. I mean, yeah, that's what I have. I you know I I bought Darcy, you know, ages ago. He's being a Darcy O Darcy O'Neill, uh chemist and uh be beverage thinker in Canada.
Uh yeah, so like the old school things were acid phosphates buffer because it's a very strong acid, but I use it in relatively small quantities and I can measure it very well. So I use like uh liquid 85% phosphoric acid. Um, but it's you know, strong. Um like I say, like, you know, I would use it at you know the s the acid I would use at uh uh about half of what I would use of citric. About half.
You know what I mean? At l or less, half or less of what you would use in citric, um of phosphoric. Um writes in, can we get some uses? But hey, Jack, did you have anything from this week? Did you say anything?
Did we do anything from this week? No, we just jumped right in, but I don't really have any No? I don't have anything that major. I was gonna shout out Thunderbolt because we had uh gluten-free friends visiting and staying with us from out of town, and it's so nice to be able to go to a place like Thunderbolt and just have all the bar food you want without worrying about a thing. Yeah.
No, nice. Yeah. Uh yeah, I saw w was Mike there. Was he already back in LA? I saw him, he was in New York last week.
No. Yeah. Uh he wasn't there. Speaking of which, going back to Chris Go for a second, right after World War One, so the first Crisco book came, Chrisco was invented, I forget the exact year, but the first big Crisco cookbook came out in I uh Marion O'Neill, I think was her name in 1913 or 1914. Right after World War One, right?
So it's still like mentally thinking about rationing, Chris Gow published a gluten-free pie uh crust, but not because of the need to be gluten-free, but the need to not use wheat. So I wanna uh I I don't have it memorized or I'd give it to you folks. Uh but uh maybe I'll make it sometime. Sounds fun, right? I mean, I can't make anything actually gluten-free in my house because my my house is like is like a a horror house for gluten.
It's like there's a fine layer, fine film of gluten over my entire my entire abode is like, you know, just a glutathione. But um anyway, uh old fat old fashioned villain writes in and says, Can we uh get some uses for a soxelet extractor and a theoretical build of the hot poker. Well I'll get to the hot poker in a second because someone else asked about the hot poker, but a soxilate extractor is an interesting thing. Uh can we get some uses for it? I have not come up with a use.
I own one, right? And they're cheap to get on Amazon. Uh the thing that sucks about them. So what a soxlet extractor is is this. You so it they look real funky.
They look amazing. I kind of want to just run one in the bar just for just for giggles, right? So what you do is is you you heat uh a solvent, let's say alcohol or water if you want, you heat it, and it it goes up, up, you heat it, the vapor goes up, it condenses and then drips down into a container as a warm condensate. So whatever temperature it condenses at, that's the warmth that it gets to. Now you can run a vacuum soxelet and get the temperature way down if you want to do room temperature extractions.
But anyway, so it then extracts and you have a thimble that the condensate drips into and that thimble is filled with whatever botanical or whatever you want to extract out of. And fresh solvent, because it's just condensed so it's fresh, drips onto it. Once it reaches a certain level, there's a tiny tube that comes out of the bottom of the soxelet up and over back into the heating vessel and it forms a siphon and it siphons all of the liquid that you've just infused down into the bottom and then it reboils and keeps so that what it does is it allows you to get a fresh extraction each time the soxlet thing fills and drains. It's fresh solvent. So it allows you to get a much higher percentage of uh compounds out of your material than you could by just doing a straight one off, right?
Now, and you can adjust the temperature, like I say, either by adjusting the solvent or by adjusting uh the pressure if you want, but you have to jerry rig a uh uh a vacuum soxlet. I've done it pain in the butt. Anyway, uh when you buy them online, by the way, if you go on Amazon and buy the cheap soxelet, which is what I did, the heating mantle sucks. Sucks. So it works okay for water, but it's just so underpowered.
I mean, sorry, for alcohol, it's just so underpowered for uh water. That said, I was trying to make something that I thought was amazingly delicious with the soxlet. So, and I didn't come up with anything that I didn't have uh just as good a way of doing any other way. So I I haven't yet found the killer application for it. Uh so there it is.
Uh John H. writes in uh can we talk about the home carbonation setup? I've got a CO2 tank and I carbonate water in old plastic topo chico bottles individually, but I'd like to know uh my dispensation method, uh dispensing method, I guess. Uh I'd like I kind of uh I'd kind of like a fast food uh joint style way to just put a cup under and push a button. I don't have a push button.
You have to pull the tap in mind. You have to pull the tap. Um but I don't know where to start. Uh I know I may uh you may have already spoken, but I like to hear more. All right, John, here's the thing.
I just switched my system about six months ago, and I'm gonna switch it again. Not the carbonation system. The best carbonation system in the world is a McCann uh Big Mac carbonator. It holds a bunch of water, and the trick with it is is that you you just gotta get you know, you get a filtered water supply to it, make sure it's filtered. Oh my God, like when you go to a place and they don't filter their water, oh God.
It's just awful. You know what I mean? So you filter the water, it goes in at room temperature. You put CO2 into it at about 100, hundred and ten, 100, depends on you how you like it, but like 100, hundred and ten psi. Uh, you make sure you purge all of the air out of it before you start, and the way you do that is you fill the entire thing with water and you bleed it so that the entire thing is filled with uncarbonated water, then you turn off the water supply in, then you drain all the water out under high pressure CO2, then you turn on the pump, it carbonates.
Now you have carbonated water. Now you gotta get cold. So the issue here is is you need a relatively long line. I used to use cold plates, so I would take a long line coming out, quarter inch ID, uh braid reinforced, no PVC in it, because that also stinks. Ethylene, PVA only, no PVC.
Uh I I've had people say that you can't taste it, and I don't know what's wrong with their taste buds, but I can taste it when it goes through the PVC lines I use. So through two circuits of a cold plate and out. And if you really want, you can glycol chill the taps and all that's good. So that's what I did for many years. But at home, it kind of sucks because ice makers are uh ice makers are not uh good to have at home if you don't like the noise and if you don't want to waste huge amounts of water and electricity because they just keep making ice all the time.
You can't put the cold plate in the freezer because it'll freeze. An ice maker, a you know, a home or commercial ice maker that's not in the freezer, keeps the ice at temperate temperature, it's never gonna freeze your stuff out. So for years, I just had an ice maker that would drop ice can in a continuous basis on top of my cold plate, and you can build it with a cold plate, but then you have to keep icing it. So that it's not ideal. So when my ice maker crapped out on me after, you know, 15 years, I replaced it with this thing, Linder pygmy, and you have to look it up, L-I-N-D R, I think it's Hungarian pygmy.
It's a little beer tap, and it doesn't use ice. The issue with cooling is is that it actually takes quite a lot of energy to cool eight ounces, let's say, of liquid down to serving temperature immediately. So that's why ice is so good. So when you have an ice bank, you can pull cup after cup after cup after cup. Uh you can buy an ice bank.
They're relatively expensive, and I think they're a little bit loud. So I will, you know, people have altered. I was thinking about buying an ice bank and then ripping out the circulating pumps and fans and replacing them with silent circulating pumps and fans. But it seemed like a lot. So I tried the linder and it works.
The problem is only the first cup is good, then you got to wait two minutes and then you get another great cup. And if you pull three cups in a row, the third cup is meh, right? So I have a new system coming soon that you know I'll look at and then I'll tell you about. But is that enough for now, right? That's enough for now.
Enough information, Joe, for now? All right. Um Rob and Nadia say, I've been playing with nitro cold brew coffee. How about nitro cocktails? I'm asking about nitrogen and the actual cocktail, not just adding a foam on top of the cocktail.
All right, so first of all, we have to be careful, because some people, when they say nitro, they mean nitrous, laughing gas. And uh by the way, I just started at the bar, we did a bunch of uh rapid infusion. I was training them using the tank and using get the get the nitrous tanks while you can before they're made illegal, because honestly, they should probably be illegal. Like people go around. So, have I talked about this on air at all?
Nitrous tanks. So you can buy a regulator for a nitrous tank, like a two-kilo nitrous tank, and and it comes with it, you can comes with an adapter to put it onto a standard EC whipped cream maker. Amazing. But what those tanks come with when you buy it, is a thing that screws onto the top of it so you can immediately fill a balloon or your mouth with nitrates. They are clearly for abusing nitrous oxide as a drug.
Like clearly. Even though on it it says that they're not. On it, it says, oh, this is for culinary use only, but they make them like bubblegum flavored and like rainbow and tuti fruity flavored. And I've run the test. When you use uh when you use a flavored nitrous, you can taste it if you just have the gas, but you cannot taste it in whipped cream.
You cannot taste it when it's in water. You can't taste it in and there is no culinary application for flavored nitrous. It's just for people that are huffing it, right? So honestly, like I don't think there, I don't know how long they're gonna be available, but you should get hold of them now because when you're doing rapid infusion with an ISI, like the important variable is the pressure that you're in. And so if you have a leak in your ISI, the recipe gets messed up.
And if you use a different size whipper for the same recipe, or if you do half of a recipe, or if you try to double a recipe, the flavor is never the same because it's a combination of pressure and time. With a tank, you can get the same pressure every time. Game changer, game changer. And also, when you're infusing with one of those things, a little particle can get caught in the uh in the vent, and it can make it so that it doesn't seal 100%. And that is catastrophic when you're doing it with chargers, like one by one, because you're just putting a weight amount of nitr nitrous in, so it loses.
But when you have a tank, a little bit of a leak, you're wasting a little bit of nitrous, but the pressure is the same. Great, fantastic. So I made a bunch of uh coffee uh stuff for an event with the tank the other day. Loved it. But uh so the question is, are you talking about nitrogen, which is doing the Guinness style kind of foams or nitrous?
I was given a nitrogen setup, but I don't use it. So I don't really have a lot of uh I don't really have a lot of input on an application where I thought that that was a huge game changer. Nitrogen is not soluble, but makes that kind of rolling head and uh can be used also uh for things like dispensing to do like uh make it seem like you've shaken the cocktail when you haven't or may give it some texture on the way out. I haven't used it that much. But uh, I mean if anyone else here has, they can they can say.
But uh nitrus, if that's what you mean, uh just you know, write back and I'll talk and talk about nitrous all day. Uh Alexander E, uh I've wondered over the years what role my CM Becker is more carbonation, more CM Becker taps, and that's by the way, that's the soda tap that I recommended for a lot of your CM Becker. And the reason is it uh they're designed for what's called premix soda. So they're designed to take a pre-mixed soda and dispense it at the highest quality possible. Like a f pre-mix means it's done already.
Unlike everyone now, when you when you work at a bar or restaurant, 99% of people have what's called a soda gun. And what a soda gun does is it has a single valve for uh the the water and then smaller valve that you push it, and that's where the syrup is. So the syrup, the syrup and the and the seltzer are being mixed at the point of the gun, which is why the which is why it's got that big hose, because it's got all the little hoses coming up from the bag and box flavors, right? They're not very good. They're just not very good because uh the little valves uh they don't compensate very well.
And so you'll when you look at someone taking soda out of a gun, it looks like almost like a torch flame coming out of it because it's right. And so a lot of CO2 is being lost on dispense, right? And that's but not great for soda, even worse for cocktails, because cocktails tend to foam a lot more because they're alcoholic than a regular one does. So it's the CM Becker valve or any equivalent valve valve with a compensator, like a lot of beer valves have a compensator on them. There's a giant bullet shaped thing on the back.
And when you open it, the the liquid goes from the high pressure at the back of the valve on the line very gradually and in a laminar way. So it's not like nothing violent is happening to it at all. Over this bullet shaped thing and out. And then you have a little, you have a little knob on the front, either a knob or a lever that lets you adjust how fast it can come out of the compensator valve. So you can dial it back until it's just a smooth water coming out, and you're losing almost no carbonation.
So there are other valves that do it, but CM Becker, they're cheap, they're plastic, and uh that's why I use them for many years. So that's what they're for. Uh so Alexander was wondering um, you know, what what else you can do? Like Alexander wants to make alcoholic uh dispensing, and it's always problematic. You're always going to get foaming.
Yes, if you chill your taps with a glycol chiller, they'll get better. Um if you but it's very hard. You the lower lower your alcohol level. You want to get better carbonation out of a tap with an alcoholic thing. Just make sure you clarify like a demon, make sure it's cold as hell.
Use long lines, long lines, right, to have it be smooth as it comes out. Make sure the first stuff that comes out is going to be a little foamy anyway. Uh, and uh yeah, use a compensator valve. What was the last one though? Oh, lower the alcohol level.
Jack it with some poly D or glycerin or whatever, and get the alcohol level. The lower the alcohol level, the better you're gonna be with uh with that. Is that good? Smothered? Hey, ask again.
If I didn't answer your question, ask it again. Uh BNMC, and there is a remember there's a question earlier. Uh, in Dave's recent feature in Punch uh about red hot pokers, uh I I showed making the red hot pokers, uh, what's the adhesive I use? So the way I make red hot pokers now, I don't use welding anymore because I don't have ac I don't have a shop right now where I can weld. So I went online and there's uh these tubing expanders that you can hydraulic tubing expanders.
And so I buy uh don't but don't make them by the way, it's not a good idea. But uh I buy um I think they're four inches long, three-quarters of an inch diameter, 500 watt, 110 volt uh heater cartridges. They're called uh, what are they called? Heat cartridges, heater cartridges, cartridge heaters. There you go.
Um the trick is is that you want to get ones with uh and they cost more, right? You want to get a high temperature one, uh, a very high temperature one. And the difference in is not the inside, it's actually the sheath. So the cheaper ones are made with like a 304 regular stainless, and what happens is those when they get real hot, they get oxidized, and so the red hot poker drinks you make with those end up tasting a little bit like rust, like iron. Whereas if you get the ones that have ink alloy sheaths, they uh they still oxidize, but they don't get rusty.
So uh Watlow makes them get the high temperature ones. Anyway, so you expand the the instead of welding it, you put the tubing expander in and you expand it until the until that 500 watt heater just slots into it. Then I use furnace cement, which comes in little also on Amazon. It's high temperature furnace cement. It comes in these little tubs, like little mini, like almost like you remember like when you made model cars, like the testers paint would come in, like a little tub.
And so what I do is I just scrape, scrape some in and I jam the red hot poker in with the furnace cement, and I tap it down, sink it, let it sit for 24 hours. Then I put like a couple inches of sand of uh aquarium sand on top from the backside on top of it to make up an insulation barrier, right? And then on top of that, I pour silicone. The silicone can't stand the temperature all the way down at the bottom. So the layer of sand is to keep the is to keep the junction between the heater and the silicone, right, at a reasonable temperature.
And then the silicone seals it, so no pressure, no liquids wanna or vapors want to go up the rod, which is what you want to prevent, and that's how that's how I make them now. But I don't recommend it. Uh Phil says, I was making a dairy-free eggnog a few weeks ago. I used Alton Brown's recipe, uh, but I subbed out one-to-one whole milk and heavy cream with oatly oat milk. The product tasted good and had a similar mouthfeel to uh a dairy batch, but the next day it had stratified in a gross way while the dairy version was still homogenous.
I didn't taste the oat oatmeal version again because it looked too gross. What could cause the oat milk version to separate out and is there a way to prevent it? I don't know how they stabilize the oatly, uh, but I know oatly has a full fat and a lower fat one. I'm assuming you used a full fat one. And I'm guessing there's two ways it could separate.
Either you could get a phase separation with the the sa like the just the water phase, so it looks like separated milk, right? So like you'll get like what looks like whey at the bottom, and you'll get like a layer of solids at the top. Or you could have gotten a three-part stratification where the oil went on the top, and then you had that layer of like white stuff, and then underneath that you had a layer that looked like a serum. You could probably mix it together and have it be okay. I would say use a mixture, like look in the book uh and make a mixture of uh gum arabic and uh Xanthan gum.
And that should help keep it emulsified for longer without adding too much uh to the texture. And that that's what I would say, although uh I'd be interested to know exactly what the type of separation it was is, but it's just probably not homogenized and stabilized in a way that makes it stable at all concentrations for a long period of time. I don't know whether the alcohol itself played a role or not, because again, I don't know how it's uh done. Um Z Bank says, I often feel like cocktails containing lemon have a sharp acidic off taste that I don't get with lime. I never noticed it at top cocktail bars to find it uh common at less high-end bars and at home.
Where does that come from? Is there another acid present uh other than citric or is it like a different kind of lemon like eureka versus lisbon? I think it's probably just age. I think a lot of people are using uh old lime. I'm uh right back again.
But if what the when you're saying sharp acidic off taste, I'm thinking it might be that uh detergent-y taste that you get out of lemon juice when it when it gets uh too old. But let me know and I'll think uh more uh about it. Uh Elliot writes in for alcoholic cocktails, we have standard structures, Manhattan's daicaries, Negroni spritzes, blender drinks, old fashions. Uh what about for non-alk? Uh yeah, uh it's I do.
I do have structures for non-alks. Uh, but it's gonna take a long time to talk about it. Maybe I'll talk about it more when the book's about to come out. And as a follow-up, you write, I gather that when writing the book one is forced to cut out entire sections for length. Do you have any discarded sections you can share with the Patreon?
I don't know. My editor hasn't told me what she's gonna cut out yet, but when she does, I'll definitely let you guys have uh the parts that she cuts out. Um Justin wants to know a good way to make powdered fruit, because dried juice powders often lack flavor. I don't have a good way other than freeze drying, but I'll think about anyone on cooking issues uh that wants to uh talk about it or let me let me let me know. Uh TV Mush uh says, does agar set gel set differently depending on acidity or how quickly it is cooled?
I don't know about how quickly it is cooled, although you don't want to agitate it while it's cooling. But your recipe has uh a hundred percent tamari to twenty percent calamansi juice. That's not only very high in acid, it's also very high in salt. So I think it's probably the salt that's messing with you because certain things can mess with agar, for instance, like cassis can mess with agar in a way that's kind of uh unpleasant. Owen Kay wants the Schizandra spec, and if Joe lets me, I'll give it to you on the way out.
John the Hutt uh has a question about freeze drying. Wants to know. I haven't had a freeze dryer in so long, John, but I'll think about it. Anyone who's on the Discord with a freeze dryer, John wants to know some uh good hydrocolloids to use, but I'll think more about it when I come in last week. Uh do I have another couple seconds, Joe?
All right. Uh Owen Kay wants to know the specs on my French 75 base. So my carbonated French 75 base is uh three quarters of an ounce of gin, uh half ounce of lemon cordial, half ounce of poly D, one and three-eighths ounces water, quarter ounce of one to one simple poly D is one to one uh uh polydextrose and and uh water. And uh that's it, that's it. It's uh 10.5 ABV, 13.7% sugar, and 0.89% acid.
You chill that, you carbonate, by the way, my lemon cordial, but the gin and the lemon cordial, the half ounce of lemon cordial is six percent acid lemon cordial. You you mix that at least one to one, and you can do any ratio. Just if you don't add enough champagne to it, it'll be too sweet. But anything over one to one, it's good to go. It's completely flexible.
And I'll give you the chazandra recipe next week if you still want it, uh cooking issues.
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