Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rocket Fellow Center, New York City, New Stance Studios. Joined as usual with John. How you doing, John? Doing great, thanks.
Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah. Are you in New York now?
Are you back in the Yeah, fully in New York, yeah? Working at Marquette. Working, chefing it up. Doing it all, yeah. Chefing it up.
Exactly. All right. Behind me, I got Joe Hazen rocking the panels. What's up? Hey, how are you doing?
Welcome to the show. Yeah, yeah. And uh, see, we do not have Quinn today, unfortunately. He is uh under the weather, so uh everyone wishes uh Quinn to get well soon. But uh fortunately, if you go down to the Los Angeles area, we do have uh Jackie Molecules.
Jack Insley, how you doing? Yo, good. Yeah, good. And of course, uh, as usual, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, K-Pas, what's up? Hi.
Brodo, Mr. Bonebroth himself. How you doing? Hello, hello, I'm doing great. Yeah, good.
It's fun to be here. Yeah. Uh, and so, all right. So this uh, you know, since this is the first time on your show. Oh, and by the way, uh, should any of you be listening live and you want to call in a question to us or to Marco, call in to uh 917-4101507.
That's 917-4101507. And John, why don't you tell him uh, because they didn't need to be a Patreon member to do that. Why don't you tell them uh why and how? Go to patreon.com slash cooking issues. You've got a or you can find there a couple different membership levels.
Each membership level you get different perks, including access to the Discord, some you get access to the live stream. Um yeah, a whole bunch of things, discounts with the people that we work with, like Matt at Kitchen Arts and Letters, uh Nick at Groven Vine, and just a whole bunch of others. So check it out. Patreon.com slash cooking issues. All right.
Uh by the way, you're supposed to be, because Quinn can't be trolling, you're supposed to be trolling the Discord now to see if anyone's I'm in the Discord right now. I love it. Uh by the way, uh something so as I was rereading, this is not part of the week in in review, but as I was rereading the the Brodo book, which is your most recent book, right? Yeah. Over a little over ten years.
Yeah. 12 years. But uh so I was rereading that, and you're you're a mason jar fella. Like in like in the I'm a what fella? Mason jar.
Oh, mason jar, yeah. You're a mason jar fella. I also am uh, as they say, living that mason jar life. Although, like, I don't I'm not a mason jar cocktail. Like all those weird like things, but uh all of my stuff is stored in mason jars because I hate uh I hate pantry pests.
And you know what they can't chew through? Glass. You know what I mean? What's the other brand though that's kind of cool with the the glass lids? Oh, uh we'll see.
There's another one you're talking about. Starts with like uh what the heck is the name of the I like those things? Brooks Brooks uses those. I really're fancier. Yeah, they're fancy.
There's the glass top. There's Mason, there's Anchor Hawking, but those are both, and then there's uh it's not like Heckerling, right? Because that's Amy Heckerling. Uh I I don't remember. The metal clips aren't convenient, but you don't need it.
You just set the glass you know on top and you don't have to clip it. Oh, whack, whack, whack, yeah. Well, there's there's two, right? There's the old ones that have the flip top groshi thing of a jig, and then there's the one with the little metal clips. Yeah, but like people don't trust.
In fact, you're not supposed to screw the things down when you you're working. You're supposed to rely just on the lid to seal, and then the other thing's just a backup. You know what I'm saying? Oh, is that right? Yeah.
Well, once it sucks in, you don't need to. You don't need yeah, you're not supposed to. Yep, yep. So, like, you know, we used to use uh, I forget who makes those, but the the old style with the with the with the thick rubber and the pull thing, yeah, yeah. With the glass top and the and and you're sitting there to open it, you know what I mean?
And we used to use those in vacuum machines all the time, but now I have an attachment from my I had you know, a cheap like attachment for my vacuum that just fits over a mason jar without the band. So it's just a lid and the band, and I suck vacuums on it. So anytime I get grain in, especially rice, like all the fancy rices you get are full of weevils, and you shouldn't be upset about it. You know what I mean? Weevils.
Weevils, you know, little right granary weevils. Got it. And don't get upset. You know what I mean? That's just what happens, you know?
Sure. And so, like, uh, you know, don't don't hate life. This is what life is. Why would you hate what life is? No choice, no problem.
So uh so I suck a vacuum on those suckers because I don't have the freezer space to kill them that way. You know what I mean? Yeah. And uh and they die. You know, just leave them in there, eat them and they die.
But uh what I do have, and uh maybe you can buy these, but I have um what I hate is that I wish every mason jar was wide mouth. Yeah, I think I'd agree with that. But fewer and fewer people stock the wide mouth, and it's mostly people are doing the the narrow mouth. And for someone like me who's constantly I'm not the majority of my life isn't putting a knife into and getting jelly out of one. The majority of my life is putting things into them and then dumping huge quantities out.
So wide mouth, good. But anyway, so I I built a uh a 3D printed a funnel that fits both wide and narrow, but in a in a flat way, so it's not sticking way into the jar, so it's like a double lipped funnel. So it doesn't because you here's you need a funnel for a wide mouth. Yeah, because I'm pouring like flour in. Oh, got it's a good thing.
And like grain out of like big bags, so I'll get like 40, 50 pounds of grains in. Or even like, you know, if you're pouring, I don't know, let's say broth out of a you know, it because people are too stunatic to take a ladle, yeah. Right. And they're not taking a ladle and doing it like like a human. They're not holding the jar over the stock and then ladling it in.
They think that they can pour it from the pot in. I mean, you can't because it's fifty gallons at a time. It's a lot. But I like using pastry bags too, because you just squeeze it into the what are your feelings on deposit funnels? I love those things.
The sauce guns? Oh, yeah, those things are cool. I was given one by JB Prince, and I keep bringing it in to work. That little and then people, yeah, and then they they did they disrespect it. I'm like, that costs more than you think it does.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like having kids. Working with people who don't respect the stuff that you bring into work is like having kids who don't respect anything, obviously.
You know what I mean? Tell they have to pay. Smallwares are constantly breaking in the restaurant, dropping this, dropping that. I can't. And then it's like nobody dropped it, but it's broken.
You know what? Just come and tell us. Yeah, exactly. You know? Yes.
Own it. Yeah. It's uh did you grow up you grew up in the you grew you were born Elizabeth. No, no, I'm upstate New York. Upstate New York?
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Wikipedia gets it wrong again. Yes, it does. I was gonna say though, but if you're Hudson Valley, you got New York City uh TV.
Yeah. So you remember you remember the Mormon commercials? Uh the Church of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints put out a whole bunch of commercials about not lying. I don't remember. Yeah, and they were constantly playing on Channel 5, uh which became Fox, and Channel 11, which is W P I X.
P-I-X. Yeah. And so like uh it was. Do you remember where your kids are? I love those old ones, too.
I am the kid, you jerk. TV is my best and only friend, moron. Of course I know where I am. Moron. Yeah.
It's 5 p.m. Have you done your homework today? I'm like, no. No. Anyway, like that's how it worked.
But there was you never you don't remember these Mormon commercials? I don't. Who broke my window? I don't. No.
Who broke my window? And then the kid comes up because they're playing stick ball, and the kid breaks his window. And the kid just comes up and goes, goes, and he goes, like, uh You knew I'd be angry. Weren't you afraid? You're going to have to pay for this mess you've made, but I'm proud of you, boy, for you have displayed honor.
Like it's amazing, right? It's like these commercials were great. You don't remember this one? How about you tell one lie it leads to another? You tell two lies to cover each other.
You tell three lies. Oh brother, trouble up to your knees. Oh man, Dave. Dude. My apologies, but no.
Not ringing bells. Did no one watch TV? And I spent a lot of time in front of that boob tube back in the day. What was it? Gilligan's Island?
Gilligan's Island, Three's Company. I mean, all that stuff. Three is Company too. Uh Barney Miller. Oh, yeah, dude.
Uh. Are any of those people still alive? Abe Vigo's gone. I do. What about Hal Linden?
We're showing our age, bro. Dude, dude, I don't care how old you are. Go listen to the Barney Miller theme song. Kick's bus. I mean, look, it's no, yeah, dude.
Anyway, all right. So back to the uh week in review. What do we got? What do we got for the week? What is food news this week?
Food news. Yeah. You're cooking, you started cooking again in a restaurant, dude. Yeah, I'm just, I don't know. I'm working the past, expediting, blading.
Oh, so you're just in this zone. Yeah, basically. So your mind is this. Yeah. I yeah.
It's it could it's wild how it's just like it's busier than most other restaurants I've worked at, and it's just such like a complete break from my personal life. There's no time to think about anything other than working. It's kind of nice. Yeah. My expediting days are very much behind me.
Yeah. I mean like do that. Like uh I don't know how people like do anything that's like intense for a long time anymore, but like every once in a while it's nice to just erase your brain. Because your brain has to be erased. Exactly.
Right? Yeah. It's like stuff is flowing in it. That's why back in college, when I, you know, and afterwards, when I used to play out music, it's the same way. Like when what I the way I always felt was that like I'm not even there anymore.
It's just like you know what I mean? Like zone, you get in the zone. Yeah, and you're meditative. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Yeah. Or anyway. Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah, so yeah.
But you know, all the time is a lot. Yeah. I mean it's temporary until I open the next place. It's a burnout job for sure. Yeah.
Yeah. Only a couple months, yeah. Yeah. All right. Uh yeah, are you still about do you have time uh to work on the sanguinees on the side?
Not yet gonna start that in about a month. Yeah? Yeah. Sanguiche. You gotta are you gonna tell us are you gonna keep them a trade secret fool?
I don't believe in trade secrets, yeah. Bingo, yeah. Bingo. You know why? Because if they're willing to do the work and make it, God bless.
Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Um speaking of trade secrets, before we get out of well, we'll get into it later. Um Stas, what do you got for me? Uh I'm thinking still.
Come back to me. All right, right. Mr. Molecules, what was what was the week in review in Los Angeles? Um stomach is uh killing me right now because last night Kevin from Nomana and a few others went to Chengju Taste and uh went hard on the Sichuan.
Yeah. You went hard in the paint. Did you get the now? Let me ask you a question? I've never been to Chengdu Taste, but is it actually a taste of Chengdu because you've been to Changdu.
Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is. Pretty authentic. Can you get fresh green in the United States?
Do they ship it in frozen? The fresh green uh peppercorns. I don't know how they how they get it in, but we did have um like the fish in uh green chilies. Uh well, and I like the green, you know, the you know the sauce they make that's like swimming in s in green Sichuan peppercorns. Oh my god, I love that stuff.
Yeah. But I've never had that in the States. I've only had it in Shenzhen. I've never because I've never been to Chengdu, I've never been to actual Sichuan province. I've only been to Shenzhen, where of course, you know, all the billionaires pay all of the good shifts from all the other places to go, but I haven't even been to Shenzhen in years and years.
For all I know, Shenzhen's not even there anymore. I'm sure it is. I'm sure it's even bigger and better than it was in the past. All right, Stas, you got something for me at this point? Um food stuff, but um had to be food, I guess.
Yeah. Everything's food adjacent because if you don't eat, you die. Did you know that? Uh yeah. Oh, no, that was before that was Brooks.
Um, I went to the Benjamin with friends, supposed to be really good. It's fine. Oh man. Dude, when okay, so like who here actually uses fine to mean good? Has anyone you've ever met used fine to mean good?
No. No. Absolutely not. I don't know. Like this is uh here's another one that you'd have to know me to know this.
In my family, tasty is also bad. Means has taste. Not good taste. So my stepfather, Gerard, he's always like, that's tasty. I'm like, throw it out.
My mother-in-law says interesting. Oh, yeah, that's the worst. That's the worst. I mean, yeah. Someone says a drink is interesting, I th I pick it up and throw it away.
You know what I mean? It's like, no, interesting. There look, occasionally there's a product. Occasionally, there's a product where you don't know what you think of it yet. And so you can't come down on it.
There, you know, it's like when it's like for uh again, showing my age, but back when you used to buy an album, you're like, don't ask me about it now. I have to listen to it four or five times to see where it settles with me. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, I think interesting could be fine. Like I put some Anis hyssop into rhubarb for a rhubarb crisp, and it was interesting, and it was also quite good.
Yeah. You know? Yeah. So I think they could live side by side. Hyssipiss.
I have some. I just Anna's hyssop is so cool. I think came back from last year by itself. Yeah. Reseeded, yeah.
Nice. And it's pretty vibrant already. No work. Pretty cool. No work just came back.
Yeah. I love things like that. You know what I you know what's supposed to come back all the time, but I always had problems with rhubarb. Rhubarb never grew well where I was. Oh, really?
Yeah, but I love rhubarb. It comes back like crazy. Yeah. You get you like uh how old is your rhubarb? Well, m my wife does the garden at her school where she teaches, uh, and it's a pretty large garden and um huge bushes that just come back.
I mean, she brings home bunches of it all the time. Nice and nice and fat and red. Yep, f fat and red, a lot of green too. Um, so I love the I love. Yeah.
I never forget when when um, because uh when I was at the French culinary, we the demo kitchen was rather price sensitive. And so I would be the Harold, our stock person. He would get like the regular rhubarb in. I was like, no. Like the imported red stuff, you mean the extra fancy stuff that looks like a crayon.
It's like so beautiful and like, you know, red and big, fat, juicy, you know what I mean? Yeah, where do those come from, though? They're like Holland, right? Like Holland peppers and barb? They came from the storeroom from Baldur.
Yeah, exactly. Where do they grow that? Baldur. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh Baldur's weird. Like sometimes it has amazing stuff, and sometimes they're like, no, I can't get it for you. What is that? I mean, I had I had a conversation with my Baldur rep the other day, and he said something that really kind of blew my head off, which is and it's it's kind of bizarre if you think about it. And I never heard somebody like actually put it into words.
But in the world of like farming and produce, he's he's like, it's sad but true. When the quality is bad and the yield is low, you pay more. And when when it's really a bumper crop and it's super great, the price goes down. Uh which is just bizarre. It's like pay more for the shitty stuff.
Yeah. Yeah. And he's like, I hate to tell you, but like, because I was moaning about the quality of the fava beans we're getting from uh California. And he's like, it's been really a rough year for favas, so they're very expensive and they're kind of shitty. So what's bad about a bad fava?
What's bad about a bad fava? By the way, is anyone actually allergic to favas anymore? Is that still a thing, Favism? I know you had that on a table. I heard of that.
Really? Yeah. Allergic to fava? Yeah, that's what they said. You sure they weren't just like pretending being a bigger phone.
I mean, I can't be sure, but that's yeah, you can't be sure. I I always question. That's a real thing though. It is I believe it. Yeah.
But uh you never hear about it anymore. That's like one of those ancient Greek maladies. Yeah. Dried favas too, it doesn't matter. I mean, you can't have favas, yeah.
So uh so uh what makes a for a crappy fava, other than I other than having to prepare and starchy and hard, you know. I mean, they're just they're just mealy and gross, you know. Uh so if you filled this whole room with in-shell favas, this entire newsstand with in-shell favas, was that two servings? Yeah, exactly. The yield is so low.
Yeah. And that's why I was complaining. It was like I'm overpaying, and then I'm spending all this time and energy to double shuck them. Uh, and then the yield is sh and then what I have is also sh and I'm paying a ton. And he's like, Yeah, that's sad, sad but true.
Like, that's the way it is in the in that world of produce. Sounds like you're winning on every front, man. I I was just like winning all day. Just to hear somebody say that, like you're gonna pay more for something sh. Right.
Well, there's something to be said, right? I mean, that's why like uh Nastasi used to shop there too, because she used to live in the we never lived there at the same time, but in Hell's Kitchen, we both lived. I lived in the Garment District, she lives in Hell's Kitchen. And there's uh a couple of cut rate produce stands there. I have some cut-rate produce stands down by me now, which by the way, New York City is an incredibly expensive place to live.
However, we do have like cheap cut-rate produce. Yeah. You know what I mean? Because when I mean the fruit vendors, yeah. Five beautiful mangoes for five bucks the other day.
Yeah, and they were incredible. So it's the outdoor vendors that we have, which by the way, if you want to know the history of it, why not go to the Museum of Food and Drink? Go to the Museum of Food and Drink and Empire Stores. Go learn about the history of vending. Because it's not just hot dogs, PS.
It's like also uh there's what we call like hand foods, which are things like hot dogs that you eat, but also like groceries, you know, and vegetables. Used to be a lot of that was vended out because, hey, PS, no supermarkets. Anyway. So um back to what I was saying, like produce can be very cheap here. Um, and sometimes pretty good because it's, you know, uh, for those of you that remember uh when uh the secret life of groceries were on, stuff is short coated.
So we used Nastasi and I used to go to a place called Styles. Remember Styles Stas? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And they'd be like, they either don't have it at all or it's free.
Oh, interesting. So you would go there, and you know, I know Nastasia is a lover of uh artichokes, and were they the best artichokes ever? No, but you could walk home with enough artichokes to kill everyone in your building for n for almost nothing, and you know, prep them out, and you know, you know, boil them all down, and you know, you know, artichokes for days. Avocados, New York is the cheap avocado capital of not being in California. Of not being in California.
Well, you're cutting up what stuff? Oh no, did we have to do that? Nothing. There's a huge delay. Oh.
It's okay. Wait, you used to get what? I'm just saying that we can get artichokes here for cheap, but they're like delicious. Oh, me, me, me. Have you ever known when you receive Yeah, yeah.
Me, me, me. Um my dad used to tell me, what is it, Castroville is where the artichokes are? But they don't have the festival anymore, right? Or is it Castroville Garlic? I can never remember which is which.
Gilroy Garlic Festival. Gilroy Garlic, Castroville artichokes. We have them here cheap as well, but they're delicious. Oh, me, me. Yeah.
Okay, listen, you know what? It's like half of being in New York, nine tenths of being in New York, is about taking the punishment and coming out the other side. But it turns out you don't come out the other side, you come out in the box. You know what I mean? Good news is the bad news is we're all gonna die.
The good news is it's gonna happen. Stop worrying about it. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's coming. Yeah.
For all of us. Yeah. Ding ding. No one's made it out yet. Nope.
Yeah. Uh all right. So uh uh so Marco, you're saying you had some stuff this week. What do you got for me? You're doing some broto-related brodo-ness.
Um, you know, this has been a couple of years now that I've been obsessing over uh this little green drink thing I make at the at the Brotto window. Um and uh Lonnie's at the Union Square Green Market, they have an incredible variety of uh sauteing greens. Um and I probably get like 16 or 18 varieties of them. What's the worst one? Uh I don't love the red mustard, if I'm honest, but I throw it in there anyway.
But the Lamb's Quarter is great, and they have a thing called vitamin greens, and they have all the chards and kales, and it's it's just extraordinary, those guys, what they grow and the varieties. Um, and I basically just blanch them all with stems and all, even like the cavallanero. I use that stem too. I use the entire thing end-to-end. Uh blanch the hell out of them in salty water, shock them, and then chop them up and toss them like a salad, um, and then fill a cup halfway with these blanched greens.
Um, throw in a whole wedge of lemon, a big squirt of roasted garlic puree, a shot of good extra virgin olive oil, and some sea salt and some broth, and heat up the whole thing and then blend it in a blender and serve it hot in a cup as a as a drink. And I'd like to say it's like uh it's what AG1 wishes it could be, because it's just like incredibly vibrant and super tasty, and it just feels like uh your body's very happy when you take that thing into your gullet, you know. And it's green. Super green, like you wouldn't believe. So which broth are you using?
Not a not a roasted broth. Uh or the brown doesn't cover it up. It does the brown doesn't cover it up at all. I mean, there's so there's so much green matter in there, like nothing's gonna get rid of the green, and it's just it looks like it's uh glowing green, you know. It's pretty wild.
So I mean, you know what? I think uh people don't people don't you gotta shock those sons of guns. I don't still to this day, really, if I'm being honest, everyone's like, well, why does it set the color? I'm like, you know what? I don't know.
Like so, like part of it is like uh in f in f in like um vegetables that aren't gonna be blended, right? Uh that you're you know, you're blasting the air out, like the the quick, the quick heating in the in the water kind of um fills the what would be air with liquid so the green that's there, you don't degrade it because you shock it before the chlorophyll can break down. But you're somehow making it more present, almost like a fruit acid peel. You know how like people with tattoos they'll get the fruit acid peel so that their tattoos pop. It's kind of like that.
You know what I mean? You're just removing this layer of air to stop you from seeing it. But and I understand that you're protecting you know the chlorophyll by limiting the amount of heat, and you're also killing the enzymes that would make it go brown. Make it go brown. But I still don't understand like why it's like so much what it is.
You know what I mean? And how you know how you can take it, you know. I mean, if you don't know, who knows? I'm sure I'm sure every everyone, but I've just never researched it enough. I'm sure I could figure it, like, figure out a story where I actually felt like I understood it a hundred percent.
Like I understand what everyone says. Yeah. But I it's not like I feel like I understand it a hundred percent. But uh, yeah, the difference is incredible. Like, and the thing is like, you know how like um you're like, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's toast.
You know what I mean? Like it starts once it's gonna go, it's gonna go. And so like I think people fall down, where they fall down is not doing the cooling. You know what I mean? They feel like it's gonna be fine if you just take it off.
It's gonna cool down in like 15 minutes, it'll be fine. Nope. And it's gonna go, it's gonna you're gonna lose it. You know what I mean? Yeah, they're never filling the ice bath with enough ice and water.
Like, I think people don't really understand the amount of energy of the cold energy required to like really cool down, you know, a big batch of boiling greens. It's so hot, you know? Yeah. Because there's cause there's a lot of attendant water still stuck on them and they're stealing off. So how about this?
When a chef agrees uh to get a cold draft machine because their bar program wants it, but then they realize it's their only ice machine, and then that's what they have to use to chill everything. Uh the worse the ice is for a bartender, the better it is for a chef. I mean, that's just what it is. You know what I mean? Oh, is that right?
Yeah. Yeah. You I mean, like, whenever I'm cooking and I want stuff to get cold fast, I want the I want small crappy ice. Yeah. You know?
Yeah. Melt and get the hell out of my strainer. You know what I mean? Like um, you know what I'm saying? Cold draft things, even the even if they melt all the way down, you're always fishing the last little pebble out of the freaking, you know, it's like, oh God, damn.
You know what I mean? Anyway. It's ice, is ice still having a moment. I mean, it really had a moment for a while. I feel like it's kind of gone away out of the conversation a bit.
Well, I mean, one of the things that I always kind of focused on was in my chunk of the bar world is kind of demystifying everything. Like try not to get too hyped up on anything, right? But I mean, ice needs to be I think ice is visually important. And there are technical aspects to ice that makes some ice better than others for certain applications. You need a big cube and a cocktail to get the texture where you want it.
But in general, frozen water is frozen water, unless it's from really bad water. You know what I mean? Like, you know, you haven't changed your filter in a million years and your ice cubes are completely cloudy, or the water is like super hard, and I don't know, maybe you live in Florida and everything tastes like like sulfurous swamps. No offense. Uh and like as cold as it could possibly be, where if you pour it into my coop uh and there's little bits of ice floating on top, like tiny tiny.
I love that. What is is that is that acceptable for a for a a cocktail geek like yourself, or is that a no-no? It's a complete matter of opinion. Okay. Right.
So it's not there's not a right or wrong there. There is a wrong. The wrong the wrong is anything that's unintentional. Oh, interesting. That's that's I like that.
Yeah. So it's like, you know, there are people who only double strain. When by double strain people, I mean so you're shaking, you have a hawthorn over the top, which fits over a strain. And then through a tea strainer. Yeah.
Uh and um there are people who do that because they hate ice crystals. And well, I just don't like when something looks messy on top and it they don't look like they did it on purpose. That's when I'm like, no, not okay. You know what I mean? I just get it this it's never cold enough.
And I'm like, shake the shake that thing like crazy. Okay, listen, you need to get uh your team on the juice shake. You know about the juice shake? No, tell me. So instead of using ice as your dilutant, you you write the specs so that you can use um ice cubes made of juice as the dilutant, right?
So you have to balance it differently because you're using like large quantities of juice. You need some dilution, right? So you do both? Well so in other words you can write the spec however you want. So you know it'll contain less like syrup, it'll contain less um it'll contain less syrup, it'll contain maybe a little less acid depends on what you're freezing.
And then you can freeze something like that you juice fresh. And those cubes, they stay good for a long time. We pre-weigh the amount that we need for the cocktail to get the dilution right. Usually we'll throw in one quote unquote hard ice cube because the nice thing about frozen juices are they're soft. Like you know when you freeze um broth or freeze anything that has a bunch of solids in it, the ice isn't very hard.
Right. Right. So when you put those in the shaker, they break up instantly they go they turn into a slush. They chill everything down. It's like honestly like when we do juice shakes we have to we have to wrap our tins in towels because our hands get so cold.
So the drinks just get preposterously cold. How precise can you get with the notion of dilution though? Oh very well surface area of the cubes matter a lot I would imagine. Um within reason no uh that's kind of the weird thing. It's like it's just the most everything is just driven by the alcohol level of the of the cocktail when you're starting and the and the beginning temperatures.
The the main things is if you have like really bad ice with a lot of water on the outside of it, like that'll um that'll dilute instantly. It doesn't actually dilute more as you're shaking. The dilution happens right at the beginning. Interesting. Or if you have one big cube with no small cubes, then the surface area is so small relative to the volume of ice that you're using that it takes a lot longer.
Right. So, you know, uh you we you know recommend one big cube or something that looks like a big cube for texture, and then a couple of small cubes so that the dilution rattles along. But anything between shell ice and and a cold draft will dilute roughly the same in a shake and drink, not stirred. Right. And that becomes part of the formula of building that recipe.
Yeah, yeah. And it's remarkably consistent. Um, drink to drink to drink, it's just one of those things that, you know, thank God. Otherwise, imagine how much harder business would be. Yeah.
You know what I mean? Yeah. And people can taste the difference between a couple of mills dilution. You really can, which blew my mind. That's something I learned recently.
Uh speaking of learned recently, so Broto, you know, the the the the the the book that the book that broke people's minds on broth came out what, twelve, twelve years ago? Yeah, eleven probably because the window launched twelve and then it took me a year to get the book out. Right. Okay. Wait, isn't that crazy?
I know, dude. It's not so fast. Speaking of which, did uh Michael Harland Turkell shot that one? Yeah. Did you shoot all three of your books?
Or just that one? No, he did a good food day and then he did Brodo. And the first book was done by John Kernick, which is uh, you know, uh an o uh an old timer now. I haven't seen uh Michael in a long time, but he used to hang out at the Voldemort network where you know we used to uh He teaches at NYU, I think now. Yeah, he did, but on the photo side of it, I think, right?
Yeah, I think he was starting a vinegar company. That's why I ran out of it. That's right. That's right. He was early on the vinegar vinegar, yeah.
Yeah. Very early on the vinegar. Yeah, he's a good guy. I enjoyed working with him. Uh anyway, so back to uh Broto.
So what so for people, I'm sure peep you know, people have read the book. What uh what have you learned about broth in the past twelve years that is not in the book that you wish if you were gonna buff it, if you're gonna buff it up, what would it be that you feel that you learn change? Yeah. Or not change, but well this it's not that you were wrong. It's that you grow.
Otherwise you'd be dead. You know what I mean? Yeah. Um you know most of my learnings came around the process of like commercializing it because like that's just so mind blowing. Like that one of the best things about Broto is the fact that I started learning again because I was trying to bring this to market in a bigger way.
And like uh you know scaling up and doing it commercialization is like that process is pretty wild. Um in terms of like home cooking and making broth, I'm not sure it's like it's a very basic traditional process. So it's like I haven't I haven't learned a whole lot. I mean everybody overcomplicates it. It's just like you know what bone and is it stock and is it broth and like all these stupid questions that have come over the last decade that just frankly annoy me because it's just like you know this is a this is a very simple traditional thing making broth.
And like and it's very forgiving and you could do it with whatever the hell you want, you know? Like there's no, you know, like you said, there's no right or wrong thing. It's like what's intentional or not intentional. And it's like, I'll make a broth out of anything at home. Like I'll I'll empty my my, you know, all these rubbery vegetables into a pot, and like maybe there's a carcass and like, and it's gonna be fine.
You season it with salt and you know, steep in some herbs, and it's just like it's the possibilities are infinite, and there's no right answer. Uh, and people need to stop overthinking it. There are some wrong answers, though, right? There's not always a right answer, but there are some wrong answers. Sure, like you could uh of course, you know, like you could try to make a lot of broth with like one carcass of like a Costco chicken.
No, the students used to do that all the time. And it's just like, yeah, it's gonna be watery and it's gonna be gross, and it's not gonna show you gelatin, and it's not gonna have any like umami flavor that's gonna make you go, wow, that's so delicious. So of course you can mess it up. But um So the mentality of of this of the crews at the time who were doing their overly water watery, especially veal stock, right? Mm-hmm.
Brown veal stocks with standard, right? Not fully escopied out, like no tomato, like straight veal stock. You know what I mean? White veal or dark? Uh roasted or they would do both.
They would do both. I always found white veal to be weird. Pointless. It's like it's it's it's like it's like white pork stock. What do you think?
It's just weird. I don't like totally white socks. It freaks me out. I mean, except for chicken, which you call out is yellow because it gets golden though, right? Which by the way, do you think even unroasted bones in a chicken, it gets golden.
And maybe because of the carrot helps that too. Yeah. Uh, and if you put skins of the onion, obviously that helps as well. So is that your next band stuff? But here's the onion skins of the onion.
Here's one of the biggest pet peeves I uh of uh broth making that has been happening for a decade now, which is many people think uh beef broth should be made with marrow bones. You're like waste of the marrow? And it's just like it it couldn't be further from the truth because well, two things. One, those bones, it's very easy to strip the meat off. So typically they're super clean and there's no meat on them.
And then two, marrow is pure fat. So like you cook it and it ends up just floating to the top and getting skimmed off, unless you do a rapid boil to you know incorporate the fat into the broth, which I don't love either. Um so it's just like absolutely the wrong choice of bones, and so many people think that it's the right choice. Because it looks like a cartoon. I I'm not sure why, because I think they they they think marrow is healthy and bone broth means bone, and somehow they think bone broth made with marrow bones equals good healthy broth.
And it's just completely wrong. Do you uh do you think that the what they sell as stewing hens in um the Chinatown markets is old enough to get like an actual like old school, like Jewish broth? Uh I don't know because I never got stewing hens from Chinatown, but um there was an organic egg farm out in uh North Fork of Long Island, and they reached out to me and they were like, Do you want to buy all of our spent hens? And uh hell yeah, I do. Um, and I think I bought like a hundred of them or something and put them in the freezer because they freeze really well.
But boy, those things are are robust and they do make the best broth. You joined them before you freeze them. Uh did I do what? Do you mean you hack them up before you freeze them? No, I froze them whole, yeah.
And I cooked them whole too, because like I cook them overnight and it's like they take they take a long time to release their their gelatin and and break down so there'll be enough production and go down. You don't need to worry about the extra air in the totally in yeah the balloon concept yeah. Yeah I always like uh I never buy I wish I could I wish I had could have some spent hens to play around yeah it's hard they're hard to get that's what Steingarten wrote that whole thing on chicken soup like I don't know twenty something yeah 30 years ago or whatever. Well I'll have to find I'm not sure I know about in the first Steingarden book uh which I can never get the title of right but because I always say it's the man who mistook his wife for everything in a hat or whatever it is you know what I mean like I vaguely remember that's but anyway but like it's the man the man who ate everything I guess right yeah anyway so yeah so uh one of those is like him trying to make an actual legit stock now back then in the 90s you know like this stuff was even harder to get yeah because there's also no community there was no internet or no community no way that you could find like minded individuals you know what I mean totally I mean I think that's the thing that you know you know for all the ills of quote unquote ills of modern society just the ability to find people is I think an unqualified good you know what I mean um I've been trying to get a I've been trying to find spent hens for the actual production of Brodo because we we go through a lot of bones. And people go through a lot of chickens.
Yeah people and I was thinking like the organic egg market in this country is massive, and what's happening to all these spent hens. And I've been like, I've been really trying to find them, and I I can't manage to get a supply of them. And one thing I heard is they get sold to Canada and they get cooked and put into cans, and they eat canned cooked hens, which is weird to me. But I I just I heard they're all going to Canada. Listen, if anyone can hear, Marco's fool is here.
He needs suspense. He needs suspense. I need the spent hen. Don't send them to Canada. Quinn's not here.
We can talk crap about Canada. And I also I also heard that it's too expensive to defeather them and to get the eviscerate them. So a lot of times they just go to like some kind of pet food, something or other, because they don't want to spend the money to process them to then sell them. Right. Which is a shame.
So speaking of commercial, what's the biggest kettle you've ever used for the production? Uh 300 gallons. Oh man. Yeah, which is small. Yeah.
So like uh which is actually small. One of those it's just multiples. One of the my craziest uh memories of a was a non-working kitchen was uh I went to um oh my god, the name of it just went out of my head. The the famous, the famous uh hotel, the biggest one up in the Catskills, starts with a C, the biggest uh hotel, like you know, a borschtbelt hotel in the Catskills. They closed, and um I went to their auction, and uh you saw some big kettles.
Oh my god, they're so cool, right? Oh my god, it was like you steam jacketed, yes, but like those things are so powerful. Like 15 feet high, yeah. You know what I mean? And like there's like stairs.
I was to go look at them. I was like, oh my god, and that's what I was wondering. Like at a certain point, do you just like, you know, throw a whole cow into the kettle? I mean, like, I mean, they're massive. And uh one of the co one of the co-manufacturers in the early days, um, he didn't do tilt skillets because he said they always broke.
So uh emptying one of those, uh, that if it doesn't tilt, um, you know, the spent the spent bones at the end of a stock is like the yield is like less than 50% of broth. And then you're left with all this like hot spent bone and and and uh vegetable matter. Um, and get es you know, getting that out of the pot is like no small thing, it's a huge job. Um spent bones, their first album was hot. Uh yeah, and it's just it it's been fascinating because uh the things you don't think are gonna be hard are actually the hardest things, like putting the broth into a package is very difficult.
Uh you know, emptying the pot, it turns out to be very difficult. Do you package hot or post-pasteurized? Uh we cool it and then put it in and then put it in a retort. Yeah, pain, huh? Yeah, it's a lot.
I mean, so it's it's very manual. I guess that's right, because it has to retort. So what happens to the how much darker does it get on retort? Not not very. I was surprised, and and partly because uh the inside of our thing is aluminum, so it can it conducts heat quickly.
Uh and it's also a small amount, so the temperature it it rises pretty quick without a lot of intense heat. So it's one of the things that we're really proud of. It's like it goes up to temp, it gets washed with cold water, uh, and that happens really quickly. Unlike the the boxes, um, I forgot what the boxes are called, but Tetra, right? TetraPack, thank you.
Uh those require a lot more heat and a lot more time, and it has a negative impact on on the aroma and the flavor uh and the color. Um and what's uh cool about the small pouch of Brodo is that um it just doesn't get affected by that process. And like you could still look at chicken broth, hearth broth, beef broth, and veggie broth. And if you look at them all side by side, they smell different, they look different, they taste different. And that's kind of rare because in a in tetra pack world, um, everything starts to taste and smell the same.
Right. By the way, uh people who don't know what we're talking about, retort is is uh fancy word for pressure cooking in an accurate way. Yeah, like canning. Yeah, yeah, to kill uh to kill spore forming uh or ball jars, like you said. Like my aunt used to, you know, jar tomato sauce.
Yeah, but you know, a lot of people with tomato sauce, thankfully, fairly high in acid. Acid, yeah. But um a lot of people like if you're if you really want to be safe, you really should get a a canner if you're gonna do low acid stuff, because the one thing that you gotta make sure you do is vent all of the air out properly. So like the real ones have that like thing that go down in so that you can make sure you're purging all of the air from the top down through that that tube. Uh just because like pockets of you don't want to retort longer than you have to.
Because then you're affecting, you're not trying to cook it usually. You usually it's already cooked the way you want it, and you're you know, unless it's beans. And then you're uh you're you're trying to get it up as fast as possible. So you're timing it. And if there's pockets of of air that aren't fully steam that are left, which can happen if you don't do it right, then they don't get up to temp as fast.
And so your your uh numbers are skewed, but whatever. Arcane uh pressure cooking uh information. Uh so where broth back on broth. Okay. Uh in your book, fish fish broth.
By the way, I love how you're like, here's a vegetable broth recipe. Okay. Literally, that's almost like I'm paraphrasing, but you're like, here it is. Uh but uh I like vegetable broth. Yeah, you're like, I like vegetables as much as that.
I do. Mushroom, seaweed. Yeah. These things make great broths. Yeah.
Well, that's the one you're doing. So in the in the beginning of it, where you're like, you know, do uh an overview of like uh, you know, broths around the world. Uh you're uh yeah, you know, the one the one quick broth you bring up, I always think it's fascinating is Dashi, where you're shifting, you're shifting the burden of time from the stock to the ingredient, right? So like the katsubushi takes forever. Yeah, you know what I mean?
And so like the thin shaving and a quick steep and you're done. Yeah, but there's always time somewhere. It's just where you're gonna do it. You know what I mean? But um Yeah, that's a good point.
That's interesting. Here's what here's the one I was thinking of. It's like so in step one of uh your fish dock, right? Mm-hmm. Uh you know, clean clean the bones.
But like I would have made that step one, step two, step three, yeah. Yeah, that's all and step four. And I feel that like if you've ever like watched someone not clean the spine, yeah. Like it's a lot of blood and weird shape. Listen, people, when you have the fish, just put put put it to your nose.
Like open the fish, put it to your nose. If it smells like that iodine death from the blood that's on the back, or God forbid someone popped the bile sack into the thing. It's got that yellow smear in it. Cut the yellow thing out. Mm-hmm.
But take a knife. A knife. Scrape, scrape the inside of the of the spine, scrape it. Water. Copious.
I have a scrub brush I use and I f scrub it. I chop uh, you know, I chop them up small, put them in a big 22 quart bucket, and just run cold water over it for probably too long of a time. I'm wasting water, but man, just like letting that cold water run over it for, you know, over an hour uh until it runs clear. That's w that's how we mean that. We've been getting uh beautiful stripe stripers are running now.
And we're just getting these massive stripe bass, and it's so fun to break those things down and we're gonna. You ever get an infection from the uh you ever stab yourself? I have stabbed myself, not for a while, because now I'm super, you know, super conscious of it. For those of you for those of you don't know, the back fin on a striper is sharp. So sharp.
It went right through uh it went right through a glove I had on like a big thick silicone glove, just shredded it right off. If it had happened a minute earlier, it would have I would have been coated in fry oil. It would have been the worst, but like they're nightmares. But they're beautiful. Uh stripers are my favorite fish.
Really? By a by a long shot, yeah. Like a like uh so. The cheeks. I mean, with the collars, the cheeks.
I found uh the other day I was butchering one, and like it's hard to explain with words, but like the collar goes like into like the bottom of your chin. Yeah, and they typically cut them like right here. Um, and there's this little nugget that came out of the thing. It looked like a blowfish. I'll show you a picture later, but it looked like a blowfish tail because it was the very end of one and the very end of uh another connected to like a bone that's like in the middle of the bottom of the mouth.
And I excavated this thing. I felt like that that crazy fish butcher guy on whoever that guy is. There's a company, the one from Australia whose name is gazed me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. John knows.
That's escaping me as well. Uh come on, man. What's the padding Paddington's is the name of the restaurant, I think. But yeah. This little nugget of meat that I mined out of the bottom of the chin of the striper, it was just like it was very joyous event.
Oh man. So like our stripers, I know that for a while the fishing limits were they're on slot limits because like they were having some issues. Is it is it back up now? Is it good this year so far? I mean, look, I'm not I don't I don't know.
I'm not tethered to that community and I don't really follow what the what those you know what that's all about. Right, 'cause they went from for years it was just a minimum. Mm-hmm and then because they were doing really well, and then they went to these slot limits where you know you had to be between certain numbers. In si size wise, or vol or volume both, right? Si volume and size.
Yeah, I mean I don't know about from boats, but I know from from surf casting. You know what I mean? But uh man, I haven't cooked a whole striper in a long time. I I love striper though. I also love blue.
I love blue fish too, especially smoked, yeah, as in a pate. Um I used to do your favorite fish, shad. My favorite local fish, shad. Oh really? Hudson River Shad?
Uh Shad Row? Well, uh I don't I think the row is fine. Yeah. But uh we used to get it from the Connecticut. Oh wow.
And uh but uh did I say this on air already? They got the so like they had a a person at this place that used to go River Provisions, which is right on the Connecticut, like maybe 15 miles up from the sound. And um right by the Good Speed Opera House, right near where the S16 train goes. And um I would wait every year. Even after I moved out, I would go back and get shad.
And uh the person retired. And they're like, we can't find anyone else because it's the hardest fish to to um fillet. Oh, interesting. Impossible to fillet. I don't think I've ever filled a shad.
It's got an extra set of bones. Mm, weird. Yeah, so you can't like no normal human can fill in. That's why everyone just takes the row and pitches the fish. But they're delicious.
The the bone structure of cod is pretty weird to butcher. I remember uh back in the Grammar Seed days butchering whole cods a lot and like the structure of that bone was odd. It wasn't it wasn't your typical flat fin fish uh structure. Um but yeah, butchering fish is one of my favorite things to do. Yeah.
Love it so much. Yeah. Is that it's so rewarding. Yeah, do you it's so zen, you know? It's just like it's the best.
It makes me nervous because it's like it's such a high value thing and it's so easy to f up. Yeah, we're doing Spanish mackerels now and that that meat is so like buttery and soft and and uh those are very tricky and difficult to do well because the the the muscle is is kind of it it just it's really soft and it tears very easily. And it's also sticky, so you gotta always keep your knife wet uh so you can slide through it instead of creating like muck. Um but yeah, that's that's been my like my fun, my fun time in the past couple of weeks, butchering fish. Uh you must smell great when you get home.
Exactly. It is hard to get that off. Oh, dude. Uh so uh we have a couple of questions in the past on lobster broth. And you know, we I have opinions on lobster broth.
So you cook the shells, you cook them off. Uh I feel that if you cook lobster shells too long, that it goes over a hump and gets bad. Do you do you notice that? Well, to be honest, like I don't even I just like using the the core of it. Like, you know, you you pull that outer shell off, right?
And there's not much to get out of that outer shell, in my opinion. And I think that if you use a lot of the outer shells to your point, that stuff breaks down and it starts adding like minerality and weirdness. And it's just like I just want to use like the legs and and that the core of the body that the legs go into, scrape the gills off, and like that's where the magic is. Yeah. What's the uh what's the worst broth?
Oh, that's a funny uh something made with a a big pot of marrow bones. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the worst. Yeah. Well, it should be is it the worst because it's actually the worst or because it pisses you off the most?
Well, both, but it is actually the worst too. Yeah. Yeah. It has no flavor. It's just like, you know, you don't make broth with clean white bones.
That's not what bone broth is. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. So it's is a interesting um mentally, we're used to thinking about it's okay to basically cook an animal bone as long as you want or a a a mammal or it or a foul bone. That's my but that's my point.
I don't think things like lobster shells work the same way. They're not the same structure. I would argue same with bones. Like you can't, you know, this idea of like I cooked my broth for 48 hours. It's like bad idea, jeans, man.
No. It's not good. It starts tasting weird, acrid, and you break down the minerals and the bone and it's not what you want. All right. So what about this one?
Because uh I'm a hundred percent agree with you. You're like, don't overwater the stock at the get. Right. And by the way, use of the word uh remi for remouillage. Okay.
Everyone's yeah. Oh, and I also um that's not what this book is about, but do you also like a fortified doing doing a s like uh doing like a base stock and then another stock on top, like with the dump your squab into your chicken stock or whatever? Oh my god, yes. But you know, it's very uh you just have to be okay with like the yield on stock already is awful. You know, it's like a ton of work and you get very little, and then to take that very little and then do it again, uh so you just have to be really committed to getting that concentrated broth if you want to do like a double stock.
Yeah. But man, it is phenomenal. I love it. Well, we used to do again, like we didn't you know we didn't have to serve huge groups of people, so it was kind of, you know, I'm not gonna say a stunt, but it was good, right? Is like when we would uh like bone out like small birds like squabs, we would roast off those bones, but then we would bag them in stock so that you weren't having to use a lot of extra and you got really good contact with the bones.
Nice. And so you uh you got like a high level of extraction out of the bones, even though you were only using the squab that you were cooking. Yep. You know what I mean? Yep.
I just did that with uh I just boned out two whole rabbits to make rabbit balantines. Um, and then chopped up the rabbit bones, poured hearth broth over it, and then brought that down and make a gel A out of it and cut it into cubes and served it with the slices of the cold rabbit balantine. Uh and like, yeah, like super dense, and it just feels like candy in your mouth. It's like super like a gummy bear, but a good way. Before the show came on, you're telling me that the what's the what's the new trend with gummy bears that's no good?
Just like this it's like all these vitamins, and it's like it used to be you buy a powder that would check all the boxes of everything you need, like the AG1 world. It's like if you just do a scoop of this powder and drink it with water, it like checks all the boxes. It'll give you all the vitamins and all the probiotics and all the protein and all the everything you need as a human in this one powder. Uh and now it's everything you need as a human in this one pack of gummy bears that tastes like sweet candy. Yeah, I don't know.
I never tried these gummy bears, I'm sure. Uh, you know, um grooms is called, and they were like just acquired for like one and a half billion dollars because everybody's uh God bless, everybody's obsessed, and they need to get their uh they need to get their candy flavored gummy bears as a health food. Speaking of a billion dollars, how does it feel to be completely co-opted? Oh man. Because honestly, like you should be on a yacht like called Bonehead right now, just like sailing around doing whatever you want.
You know what I mean? Like in the book in Broto, I said I wasn't gonna last week I said I wasn't gonna do this, but here I am doing it. In the book, like, you know, it's like, in some small way, I've contributed to the hell of that, dude. Like, ain't no one was using the term bone broth like on the regular until you started doing that. And then all of like the whole foodie, arawani, and then all the way down to like freaking like target level and like you know, shop right level places, like have this stuff now.
Yeah. And if there was aisles, if there was uh if there was someone overwatching, you'd be on that boat. You'd have a private jet money. You know what I mean? Yeah, not quite.
Yeah. I don't know. So like gratifying, but also irksome. Uh what building building the broth business is like, or like how like not like somehow being able to protect a a wave that you still you know what I mean? It's like watching all the competitors come in.
Yeah. I mean, you know, I I don't mind that. I I the frustrating part is just like the marketing world around it, and it's just like it's the wild west with like labeling and like you know, so much broth is made with like pay. It's just there's so much weird shit going on in the broth space, and you can't expect a consumer to be able to understand it or navigate it. So it it's a little it it it's a bit of a uh it it's a bit challenging to like have people say the same thing that you say, but yet you know that it's done really differently, you know.
Um, but like ultimately it's like whatever. People like our product and they taste it and they could taste the difference, and that's what you know, that's what we're hoping is gonna make the difference, and like despite all the marketing claims, and this is called bone broth, and that's called stock and all this nonsensical madness out there. Um, there's no solution to that stuff. So we just keep on doing what we do, and hopefully it works. So uh a couple stupid questions before I answer the actual questions people have.
Anything in on the Discord, by the way? No, Roger. Okay, so um your your family, mom's side, Tuscan, right? Yes, yeah. Luca.
Yeah. Beautiful town. It is so gorgeous. I love it. I had an amazing time when I went there, like crazy stupid, like in that in that piazza.
And then like uh we had just gotten back from Pisa, which was terrible, overrun with towards like a nightmare, a complete freaking nightmare. I was like, get me out. I didn't even have time. I didn't even have time to get their chickpea pizza thing because I wanted to get it, but I was like, I must leave right now. Yeah.
So we left, we went back to Luca, sun was going down over that piazza, a bunch of burrs taking off, and it's some dudes like singing opera in the thing. I was like, get me a glass of wine and call it a day. You know what I mean? Like totally get me a cheap Al Virgo, I am done. You know what I mean?
Um, but uh amazing place. Uh so what's it uh do you hang like uh with the southern like most of Italians I know, like my you know, my family, southern Italian, like uh did the Southern Italian diaspora and the Northern Italian diaspora hang, or are you like nah crap on those guys? You know, my my dad's side is Calabrian. So that's yeah, it's uh um I don't. I mean, look, they're they're very you fight each other, you fight yourself.
I mean, the the Italians seem to be very, you know, they're they're the tribal, you know. It's like from floorida, you know, they're very like specific to where they're from, and like it's the only, it's the only place, you know. Um, but like I'm so far removed from that. I mean, I visited there a lot. I mean my mom emigrated here when she was younger and it's just like I'm I'm no authority on on you know what it's like over there well except you cook there professionally I did yeah uh all right so it looks like we're not gonna have time to get into you know what I'm gonna also so chef here was on the opening team started craft all the craft things with Colequio yeah yep you know I never have been to a craft and here's why it freaked me out I hate choice and I was told that there would be too much choice and I was like I can't I can't do choice they're like you're gonna make me choose what sauce goes on this no you choose and so I never went but I that changed a lot but now that was the opening year by the way quickly really because I was around for that people were telling me this it made me nervous.
Yeah and I stayed away. Yeah but I should have gone yeah it was it was fun back then you should go to Hearth which is you know yeah go to Hearth because it's it's fantastic. I've been there I've been there many times crazy a long amount of time to have a restaurant 2003. Yeah so let's answer a question uh from Spasco I'd like to lift the acid on my pizza sauce lift meaning increase uh I primarily run blitz can tomatoes with dry garlic oregano a small amount of sugar salt and MSG or fish sauce for Chicago style pan I cook the sauce I like to add the acid use a small amount of white vinegar I like the effect but it can add a bit of sog what do you suggest what's the answer John cook it more yeah cook it more and don't put sugar in it yeah but you know the thing is like people add too much people it takes a microscopic amount of vinegar to pop a sauce you know, or to pop a soup. And that's why like like I mean, I'm a squeeze a lemon guy.
I mean, same thing, right? Yeah, but it's a light hand yeah tiniest pit pops it it. It's a miracle. It's like salt in cocktails. It just takes a micro amount to be like, boom.
And people are like, what'd you do? Why did it suddenly get better? Sherry vinegar is my favorite for that. You know? Super bright.
You know when I dump into I dump sherry into everything, but just because I love sherry. Sherry's delicious. All right. Uh Sasha wants to know the recipe for what I we called a bodega cocktail on Eater in 2012. Dude, Sasha, that was never on the menu at BDX.
Maybe it was for a day. I literally just made that off the top of my head. I do not remember. I'd have to go find the eater video and think it was like a it was like a Michelada take. You know, but with a lot of clarified stuff in it.
Aaron S wanted to know, oh gosh, Aaron S has been asking about this drink forever. I'm gonna I I have the specs in my hand, Aaron. Maybe we'll put it on the Discord. Yeah. Anyway, all right.
Uh Chef, thanks for coming on. Come back anytime. Cooking issues.
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