Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of issues. Uh host of issues. I do have many issues. Cooking issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Study, New York City, New Stan Studios.
Joined in the studio with just me and Joey today. Just how you doing. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Yeah, good to see you. Yeah, just a chill day.
Yeah, yeah. And I got to meet your son. Yeah, Dax came in. Dax, uh, you know, is my younger son. He's 21 now, and he is uh Joe's like, I'm surprised he's so tall.
He is tall, he's a tall boy. He was selling coins in the in the in the diamond district. Oh. Because like both he and his brother had this like like stash of silver coins from when they were kids, and they were like, I don't trade them in. I'm like, all right.
So I took him to the place. For money. For money. You hand them coins, they give you money. Mm-hmm.
Numisnology? Is that what that is? Like uh numismatic action from a numismatist. This dude had a $1,400 device that you put it on, it shoots a uh like a light at it, checks the density, and tells you the purity of the metal. Whoa.
Yeah, so you can't re-he's like, I don't really need it. Listen to this. So he pulls out some fake silver, drops the fake silver, and it makes one sound, and then he drops the real silver and it makes a different sound. He's like, real silver's more musical. I was like, all right.
I like it. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, I appreciate your weird little piece of kit, too. You know, I love any sort of weird piece of kit, right?
I like that stuff too. Yeah, yeah. Musicality. Yeah, baby. Uh we should go sell some coins and uh have the guy play play the music of the coins.
I have a uh 1908 silver dollar, I believe. 1908. That probably has worth beyond its just weight. Yes. These basically were worth their weight in silver.
Got it. Yeah. Uh over there in the upper left, just carved off of the body of North America on Vancouver Island. We have Quinn. How you doing?
I'm doing uh better. Good. Good. Well, good enough to be on, so that's good. Yeah.
And and uh Jack Insley is going to be calling in in in a second. I think he's coming in in a minute, but we are we are Johnless, so there's no uh there are no French speaking people. We got Jackie Molecules. How you doing? I'm good.
Yeah. I'm saying we're much better than last week. Oh, yeah? Nice. So, like, yeah, so we're Nastasioless and we're Johnless.
So this is the crew. This is the crew we got. You go to podcasts. We had we did we did plenty of these back in the day. Yeah, you well.
Nastasia was usually there back in the day. Usually. Yeah. Anyway, you know what they say. You do the podcast with the crew you got.
You know what I mean? Um some housekeeping notes. Uh, if you are listening live, calling your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. That is if you were a member of the Patreon.
And Quinn, why don't you tell them why they might want to do such a thing? Well, patrons obviously get early access and live access to the show broadcast. They get uh exclusive deals with partners like Kitchener and Letters, uh, Groven Vine, various other uh Edwards Age Meets. Edwards Age Meets. Um gotta do every day.
Obviously. They get priority questions answered, and they get some uh interesting little occasional bonuses like your your uh sister uh blueprint, uh sometimes one of my recipes, your recipes, and more detail, etc. etc. I wonder if anyone built that thing. You said someone built a similar thing, but I wonder if anyone just built the thing, the sifter.
I uh I I'm not sure yet. I I built an even dumber, more crazy thing for the next book that I'm working on. I built a miniature sifter called a row tap. And what a row tap does is it was developed, I think in like 1913 or 1919. It's just a stack of sieves and it's a motor that shakes it like in a very specific way at a very specific rate, and then on top of it is a hammer.
So that's the row. On top of it is a hammer that goes tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap to knock the stuff through. And it's just very repeatable. But the and and you can get them used actually for not that much money. The problem is they're huge and they're loud.
So I needed to build a smaller one. So I built a small 3D printed row tap, and I haven't fired it up in total yet, but hopefully by next week I'll have some particle analysis for you folks. I built it around a four-inch sieve, but that's so niche that I don't even think our Patreon would want it. You know what I'm saying? It's so niche, so niche.
So niche. You know what I mean? They're not not releasing the the row all tap all. Yeah, the tap saw. The thing is like I can't imagine why anyone else other than me would want this.
But I did uh I am building something else that's uh interesting. So I wonder what percentage of people who have mills at home who listen to this have the Como. Um thing I'll say about it, another thing that I'm built I built is that it turns out that the the pitch on the on so the way you adjust the grind on that mill is you twist the hopper and it goes up and down. And the one full turn is exactly a quarter of a of a millimeter, right? So because it's four millimeter pitch.
So no, sorry. Is one one one I gotta do the math. But anyway, so I I have like uh I have an angular thing set up so that I can actually know and a movement thing so I can know exactly how far apart the stones are set. It's four millimeter pitch, right? So a quarter of a turn is a millimeter, right?
Yes. And uh right. And so I have it down to like 0.025. I have like the the readings down 0.025 millimeter. Anyway, so that's what I've been working on food-wise.
What do you guys got for me? Well, um I it's not quite food related, but so I've been dealing with like a lot of what feel like allergy things, right? Like like crazy allergic reactor, like just congestion and all the stuff. It's been ongoing for like a year or two. So I finally go to an allergist and they give me the like the prick test with all the different reactors, like all the different food things and environmental and then the needle or the one that scrapes your arm.
It's uh I guess it's like a needle, it's like a prick, like a needle, yeah. Little needle prick. So not the one where they block, not the one where they grind into your flesh. The one where they gotcha, gotcha. Okay, go ahead.
So the guy's like, I'll be back in 15 minutes. And my arm is like exploding. Like crazy itchy. It's like almost unbearable. Huge, you know, red rash and big welt.
And I'm like, oh god, I'm I'm like, no, I I really hope this isn't shellfish or something. And then he comes back and he's like, whoa, okay. Severe dust mite allergy. Thank God. You're bullied a boy well.
Except for they're everywhere. So you're gonna get the shots? No, well, you know, I'm starting with like the uh mattress protector, like all the things you do, the HEPA filters and all the all the stuff to see. Do you have any cross allergies? Do you have anything to pollen?
Do you have anything no tree, no pollen? Nothing, just dust mites. And what are the major cross allergens with dust mites? Do they tell you? Uh don't think so.
No. Because again, what you gotta figure out is like certain things. I don't know about dust mites, because I even though that w I did, I think have that, it wasn't that bad. Like my main things were like certain trees and grass and like certain grasses, right? And those those have cross allergens, right?
So a cross allergen to what I had was cherries and low quads, right? So because it's like the protein is similar enough that it you can get set off by that. So then I was like, oh, I took shots actually for trees, dust, and grass, but it cured me of cherries and low quad. So now I can have cherries and low quads again, even though that wasn't actually what I was allergic to, is a cross allergy. You know what I mean?
But I don't know what the cross allergens are, or if there are cross allergens for dust mites. Because let's say there is a major cross allergen that you care about, then you would need the shots. You know what I mean? Hmm. I'm looking up, it up.
It says it could be the shellfish, but I I've never noticed anything with food. I don't know. I just interesting. Why? Because they're also bugs.
Because they're also bugs. Yeah, maybe. But yeah, who knows? You can't trust Google anymore. All these AI overviews are trash.
Yeah. Yeah. You look you know, true. Uh so uh and any food related stuff? You've been eating, you've been feeling better enough to eat what?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm feeling I'm feeling fine eating. Let's see. If I've had anything or made anything good, not quite. I mean, Nastasia's event that took me out last week was great, but yeah, but you know, of course, because it's Nastasia, she won't like speak about it with anyone or allow anyone to speak about it.
She she's she's right. She's a giant weirdo. True fact. Um you know what I did. So last week on the show, we had no thanks to you fools, we had Nick Wong and uh from uh Agnes and Sherman.
Nick Wong, of course, was you know one of my interns back at the French Culinary, worked at Somme for a long time, then started UB Preserve in uh Houston, and then now he has his own, you know, other stuff too. Now he has his own restaurant, it's about a year old Agnes and Sherman. He did a pop up with uh at Golden Diner with Sam, who's been on the show before, right? Uh, which is weird. They did not know each other, but they had the pop-up, which is kind of bizarre.
But they had both, you know, they had Momo in their past. Anyway, went to the pop up delicious. Delicious. So someone asked about uh Nick's uh cheeseburger fried rice. Cheeseburger fried rice was on the pop up.
Listen, here's the thing I'll say about cheeseburger fried rice. It's delicious. One. Two, I didn't know what to expect, but when it came, I was like, oh yeah, that's what it should be. You know what I'm saying?
It has the smell of a big Mac. It's not just a cheeseburger. It smells like a big Mac because it's got the sesame on top, right? I'm sure you could order without the sesame if you need to, but it smells and tastes like you're eating a fried rice Big Mac. It's ridiculous.
It's got two slices of American cheese on bat on it on the top. Every once in a while, they said, because I asked, you know, uh him and his partner, I was like, hey, you know, people must love this, right? He said, Yeah, every once in a while, people will they'll either like crush it or they won't take a bite at all, and they'll be like, that's not what I expected. And they're like, it says cheeseburger fried rice. What were you expecting?
And they're like, I don't know, not that. But they're exactly wrong because it's exactly what you should expect it to be. You know what I mean? That's I I agree. Yeah, yeah.
And uh, so like, yeah, what was the other with it? There's a lot of delicious stuff. They did a collab, which was like kind of a um a uh uh like a taquito with uh lamb neck in it, and they did the Sean style, famous food style, like uh, like uh cumin like spicy lamb for the inside, and they used uh Nick's uh salsa macho, which is his like Mexican chili crisp sauce on it. That was Dow's Dax's uh favorite, and then we had his scallion waffle, and we also had one of Sam's pie uh so for those of you that don't know, Sam was on the show. One of the things that everyone has to get when they go to his places are these giant pancakes, these huge freaking pancakes, right?
And so that's one thing he's known for, like with all this kind of butter on it on top, and then Nick's got these scallion waffles, and so I said they should have a fight, but in fact, they'd already made merch with them holding hands. So we had both, and I was like, they're holding hands now, but as soon as you're not looking, they're gonna fight. You know what I mean? But they can't really they're really separate, you know what I mean? They really are.
They can they can coexist. They don't need to fight. And in a real life, who would win? A waffle or pancake? Who wins a fight?
A normal waffle, normal pancake, who wins. Oh, I don't have to say anything. I mean, I think that's a really that's a mood thing. You're either in the mood for pancakes or you're in the mood for waffles. Really?
I don't know. Joe, Joe's Joe Joe has an answer that's not mood-based. It's the waffle. Waffle wins? I think the waffle is gonna win.
Yeah, I think so too. There's a little bit more density to it. You mean like an actual fight situation? It's an actual fight, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. It's a brick house right there, man. Yeah, yeah. What do you do?
The DDT? Was that what was that move? Oh, yeah, with the wrestling move. I don't remember. Yeah.
But you know, this is true. Like Quinn was thinking about if they which would he prefer to eat. And you guys are actually thinking about it, like, you know, you know that famous uh Louie Jordan song, um, Beans and Cornbread. Beans and cornbread had a fight. Beans knock cornbread out of sight.
But uh, who actually wins? Beans and cornbread. And at the end they do hold hands in hand, beans and cornbread, hand in hand. I forget one of them wins like decisively. Yeah.
Obviously, also if you abstract this a bit more, obviously, anybody from a waffle house could defeat anybody from an iHock. Well, we sort of that's good. Yeah, yeah. Uh listen, no offense to the internet. When I was a kid, I loved the international house of pancakes, IHOP, right?
Boysenberry syrup. Yeah. Just like the syrup caddy was like, we're like, oh, syrup caddy. I'm like, I would be lying if I didn't say that my desire to have a mayonnaise caddy uh at at existing conditions wasn't based somewhat on the syrup caddy at IHop. I would be lying.
But um you know, the condiment caddy. However, I went to IHOP once as an adult, and I'm like, nah. I just wasn't feeling it. You know what I mean? It does it wasn't but the scooped out butter.
So it's so bad. Yeah, I just wasn't. I mean, look, maybe they've changed their game. I shouldn't, you know, look, there's generations of people, and I don't crap on businesses, but I just remembered it so my childhood memories. I used to get what they used to call a pig in a blanket, which was just a uh pancakes wrapped around breakfast breakfast sausages, right?
And then I would eat the hell out of that as I was a kid. This is a 70s, you know what I mean? Maybe I just didn't know any better. I don't know. Um they had good colors.
Wasn't it like that that that aqua and orange? Yeah. You know what? Maybe I don't know. Maybe I just had a singular bad experience.
I will go back sometime to an international house of pancakes. I have still never been to a waffle house, though. So I have no idea how they are. Covered and smothered. Yeah.
Yeah. Never been, though. Never been. Uh someday. I mean, maybe not.
Maybe I'll be dead. Maybe I'll die, and then I will on my deathbed, I'll be like, no waffle house. Never happened. You ever been to a waffle house, Jack? Of course.
Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, I have two many a time. Yeah? Yeah.
Do they do they have better than I have? Really? Do they have those up in Canada? Did you go back when you used to get out more, Quinn or no? No, I haven't been.
No. I don't think they've uh I don't think they've uh made it past our our northern uh wall. Well, I I've said this, I've said this a million times. Uh, but they used to have something which I don't believe was Canadian, but it was called the Royal Canadian Pancake House. And they had like two or three locations in Manhattan.
And this is where Sylvester Stallone went to fatten up for Copland. And they used to have absurd, absurd size uh portions. And the thing that I actually liked the best there wasn't their pancakes. It wasn't that all of the waiters had a button on it said ask me about my sausage. It was a different era, right?
You know what I mean? Imagine a waiter coming up to you with something that says ask me about my sausage on their lapel. You're like, no, that's not all right. No, thanks. Uh but they used to do an entire hala French toast where they would slice into the hala.
They had something that separated the slices, but they kept it like attached at the bottom, like a blooming onion, but a hala. And then they would they put the whole freaking thing into the into the you know the goop. They lifted it out and they deep fried the whole thing and they brought it to the table like this giant giant French toast blooming onion thing was nuts, nuts. And uh they realized that their portion sizes were ridiculous, so they did the you know, the thing where if you want to share, it's an extra five dollars. But you're like, fine.
You know what I mean? It's like I just don't want all of this. I don't need no one needs this much carbohydrate on a plate at once. You know what I mean? Ask me about my sausage.
They went out of business. Um that's what happened. That's what happened there. They're out of business. By the way, uh speaking of carbohydrates, next week I'm going to be uh at the Rochester Cocktail Revival.
I'll still be doing the show right afterwards. I go to Rochester on a train. Uh and I hope to visit uh Flower City. Longtime listeners, they always bring us good schwag. I'm wearing their bread hat today.
So maybe I'll stop by because I don't think in all the times I've been to Rochester that I've gone and actually just gotten a loaf of bread there. So I hope to do that when I'm there, and maybe I'll maybe I'll see you fools when I'm up there. Maybe get a different garbage plate than I normally get. We'll find out. Um get this.
They're having me go up there to do a talk, and they're not making me do any demonstrations. I was like, really? Whoa. Yeah. I was like, I don't need to bring 500 pounds of equipment, like, you know, source gas, like, you know, carbonate, like uh, you know, 50 liters of garbage.
I thought nope. I don't need to bring a bunch of powdered acids. Nope. I just gotta show up with uh, you know, whatever I'm gonna wear, do the talk and leave. It's a first time.
I feel like a normal, you know, normal person can do a normal talk. It's kind of feels good. You know what I mean? Anyway, uh, so that's what I'll be up to next week. Uh all right.
So uh Quinn, what do you what do you got for me? Well, I managed to get uh some cooking done this weekend, two sort of experiments that went okay, but they need some development. I've got a dessert and a savory. What do you want to what do you want me to run down first? I mean, I don't know, man.
How would I know? I don't know what either is. Well, okay, the savory was a smash burger variant, inspired by like many different things that uh, you know, George Motz has discussed, or you know, that concepts that exist out there, but I've never seen them combined. I tried to make a freako Oklahoma Smash Burger. And it was good.
So for those of you for those of you who don't know, correct me if I'm wrong. Oh, the Oklahoma is his standard one where you put the onions and you smash the extremely thinly sliced onions into the burger so that it melds into a unit uh while it's cooking. And then you flip it over and he would normally put the cheese and then you can see. Yeah. So the the bottom layer is the open surface of the beef patty, and then there's sort of a bunch of onion strands around the edge.
And then when you flip it, it's like a a full layer of of thin onions. Right. Now I don't remember whether we said it on the show or whether I was talking to him about it when I was talking to him afterwards because I went, you know, I've been there since he was on the show last. Um but one thing that is um good about this technique for those of you that have problems with smash burger sticking to your spatula is the onions act like a non stick layer so that you don't need a slice of parchment. So at home, when I'm when I'm smashing a burger down, and actually just so that I don't mess up my counters, I tend to uh I tend to gather all of my meat on squares of parchment so that I can move them around without raw meat touching everything.
And then I smash the parchment down and peel the parchment off. But with the onions, you they act as their own non stick. All right, so then when you flipped it, now you have the onion side down, then you freecoed the cheese on top. Normally George would put a dome over it and steam the cheese. Well, no, I tried mixing a hard cheese into the onions.
So that it all sort of freak out together. And then I also put like a melting cheese on top after the flip. But I think one, I didn't add enough cheese. And I think two, I think next time I'm gonna apply the cheese like directly to the griddle right before the smash. So that side never really goes Free Coat.
The edges go a little freco. Yeah. But the actual like big side of onion is there's still too much moisture. Well, the Bernice burger, which is the f one of the you know, one of the famous Connecticut burgers, the Bernice burger cheeseburger, is the one where they freak the American cheese. It's like you know, some specific variety of American cheese that they freak out and turn up into the cheese wings, but they do that by getting the cheese away from the burger.
So I think that's what you're gonna need. You're gonna need to get the cheese away from the burger in general. You know what I mean? Like out to the edges. I think if I do if I do the hard cheese as a diameter that is as big as both the patty and the frilly onions that spill over.
Yeah. I think that's what I want. I don't know. And it might scorch up. I don't care if the I don't know.
I think there's a reason you don't see that. I don't know. Let's see what happens. But I think there's a reason you don't see that. By the way, uh can anyone think of things that are cooked with resistance heating today besides pancodies?
I couldn't think of anything. So in other words, panko is the only remaining. Yeah, yeah. The way panko is cooked is there's two metal plates. The panko dough, you know, is between those two metal plates, and they apply an electric current across the plates, and I squared our, you know, losses, resistance heat losses are what bakes the panko.
And in my mind, that's the only thing that is that I know of that you regularly buy that is that is cooked that way via resistance heating. But I was wondering if anyone can think of anything else. I mean, it's a dumb way to cook. Oh my god, it was not developed for that purpose. No, it's just like I think everyone thinks of every way you can heat anything, but that's the only thing left that people actually do it with.
You know what I mean? It's just like but it's a crazy way to cook things. You know what I mean? It's just nuts. But whatever.
Um, so that was your that was your smash burger. What kind of what kind of uh roll did you use? Uh my uh my brother bought King's Hawaiian. Oh so you like a you like you like a sweet roll, huh? Your sweet roll man?
Uh I mean I didn't I did not have a say in the in the button selection. I see. Uh do you know what's good? Um I haven't had one in a long time, are the Portuguese sweet rolls. We used to get those, yeah, they're good, huh?
I used to get them all the time in Cape Cod and Rhode Island stuff. Like, but like, I don't do they sell those in New York. There used to be a place in Lower East Side used to have uh smash burgers on the Portuguese boards. I like English muffins. Oh, I like an English muffin too.
At the large English muffin sandwich size, English muffins great for a burger. Yeah, whoever at Thomas's brand who's like, you know what, we just need to make these a little bit bigger. It's a little bit bigger. Smart. No, very smart.
Now, here's the question. When you do your Thomas's, are you still, are you still, do you use the bagel setting so it just toasts the top so that the bottom is still soft? I'm a big believer in the top and bottom of the bun being soft and the toast being what is touching the interior. Yeah, I think I do the same thing because I like a little bit of moisture on that crunch. Yeah, yeah.
So like uh, but the you know English muffin. And my teeth on the other side are just going softly through. Exactly. Exactly. I think you know, people who don't love an English muffin for a burger, I think one of the issues is I think they're toasting it on both sides, and it's just too hard.
You know what I mean? It's too hard. Listen, you it's not a Benedict, right? It's like in a Benedict, you can toast it. I don't know that I do, though.
I might still broil it or you know, toast it on one side only, but whatever. I think an English muffin's a good, a good product. I have a I use a toaster oven. Yeah, which one? Umrr Proctor Silex?
Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I don't I know the brand. I don't use that one. There are certain toasters and I think toaster ovens that don't have a real bagel setting.
It's not real. Do not get a toaster that doesn't allow you to toast one side only if you so desire it. It's a it's a huge advantage. I use it so often, you know? That's why I do it, because if I do those the ones, the slots, you get cooked to both sides.
Yeah, they have slot based ones that will just on one side? Yeah, so what it'll do typically in a dual slice toast toaster, right? Yours actually four elements, and it'll just fire the middle two and leave the outer wings off. There is a toaster. I did a toast I I did a an episode of uh uh you know, a pilot for something, and I had to test like 19 or 20 toasters.
This was like six months ago, but I don't think they're ever gonna put it on, right? So I can talk a little bit about it. There's a new no, they released that video. They did. No, they released it.
I never saw it. Huh. Yeah, it's been up for a while. Oh, it's one of my uh family favorites of yours. Oh.
I gotta go contact those people because I I never heard anything about it. Like they didn't tell me it was going up, and you know, no one no one tells me crap. It was okay. Yeah. Yeah, it was very, very amusing.
Yeah. You like the uh the death trap uh antique toaster, eh? Yeah, I did appreciate that toaster. It's from the 20s and it's got this amazing mechanism on it. But like, you know, really the issue when you buy any antique uh electrical item is you really have to make sure that the contacts, you have to you have to kind of um take an emery border, you know, uh uh steel wool to the contacts so that the contacts aren't corroded.
Because the the resistance, you know, for something like you're doing, Joe, the resistance could ruin the sound, make it scratchy. But in a high power electrical thing, you're getting a huge loss across that contact heats up. I've had solder melt. I've had like all sorts of crazy things happen when uh contacts aren't done. But they have a they had a toaster in there that had a very most toasters have the same BS design of their heating elements.
In fact, most of the internals are probably all made in one factory. This one toaster, but it had too much garbage on it. Like it tried to act like a phone, but it actually had a uh heating element where the bottom heating, the bottom portion of the heating element, which which requires more heat because it was a vertical toaster. And if you think about it, right, the the bread at the top is getting heated by the hot air coming up and by the direct radiation, whereas the bottom one is only getting the radiation. So they actually changed the pitch of the heating element from the bottom to the top so that it was evenly toasted from top to bottom.
It was a most even toaster. Is it and they're the only people that had designed their own heating element. So I was like, win. You know what I mean? Anyway.
Uh I don't know. I gotta get in touch with those fools because I didn't know that they put it up. Huh. They probably emailed me, Quinn, and I just never saw it. You know what I mean?
They probably did. Yeah. Uh all right. Um anything else? Anything else?
Oh, yeah. What was your dessert? Well, I I tried to make a simplified semi freddo. Because I've made semifrito several times before. Uh when I republished my book in 24, I had a formula for converting any of the gelato recipes into a semi fredo.
I generally prefer a semifrito where the structure is Italian meringue based. So I tried to make one this week where the only structure is a whipped cream, and then the only flavor was a jar of jam. Yeah. They get a little greasy. To me, like straight greasy straight whipped cream has like a weird, it's hard, so when you bite into it, it's kinda hard, and that that I think that's what makes it seem kind of greasy to me.
You know what I mean? Yeah, I was able to get I didn't go crazy with the cream. Like it's still balanced out. Obviously much richer than a gelato, but there was still a decent amount of milk that I used to sort of blend the jam smooth and incorporate everything. And people liked it, but I did the math with the jam being the only sugar source.
You know, it's like twenty-seven percent jam. Well, that was the most of the jam is added sugar. Well. Huh. Well, what flavor was it?
Uh raspberry. Yeah, raspberry is a low sugar fruit. You know what I'm saying? So yeah, but uh again, but you also can't taste a good you also can't calculate simply based on like what percentage of it is fruit, right? Because you don't know how much they boiled it down, right?
Sure, but I'm saying I know that there's three grams of fruit sugar that isn't added sugar in the remaining what is it, thirty thirty seven grams of material? Right. But I'm saying you'd have to back calculate how much actual raspberry that is. If you want to figure out how much actual fruit is I guess. But I'm saying sure, but saying still it is you know, much lower like you know, my berries and your gelato, and therefore the derivative semifrito is like fifty percent fresh fruit.
So there's still just way less fruit flavor per gram than I'm used to. I see. I see. Uh don't you think semifredo is a really dumb word? Dumb, right?
Semifredo sounds like I c I call it I call it I call it semi freddy. Yeah, I think it's funny. Well, whenever I hear Fredo, I think of the godfather. You know? And so when someone says semi Fredo, first of all, it's like what does that even mean?
Semi. Why semi? And then I'm like, I just have in my mind, I'm smart. You know what I mean? Because he like wants to like, you know, like uh Fredo is such a such a nice guy, you know, trying to go fishing with the kid, gets capped in the back of the head.
I'm not spoiling this. I'm sure everyone's seen the Godfather trilogy, right? Wow. I haven't actually. Oh man.
I haven't. You've not seen the Godfather trilogy. At least see one and two. I've not seen any Godfather. At least see one and two, dude.
Dude, at least see one and two. For real. No, I mean, Jack, you've seen all these, right? Oh yeah. Yeah.
I mean, you could skip three if you needed to. You know what I'm saying? You can definitely skip three. But you kind of need to see one and two. Let me tell you this.
What if I told you that it was actually a history of an olive oil company? Would you then watch it? I mean, maybe. It's just it's one of those things where it's referenced so much, you feel like you've seen it via osmosis. Yeah, but you haven't.
But you haven't, though. It's like, you know. Um look, they are long movies, but you know, you don't have to watch it all in one shot. You know what I mean? You could like take a break.
I don't know. Gotta see that, man. Yeah. Oh, that's a shock. You know what?
The shocks just keep coming. Um, so you've don't you don't feel success with your partially Fredo'd, you're you're uh you're not completely Fredo'd. Again, like again, yeah, people liked it. I like my hope was if I could keep it simple and then just calculate all the ratios for a bunch of common jams, it would be like a nice gateway recipe for people. But with this result, I have a bunch of things I would like to add, which makes it more complicated.
So it's like uh what's the point? Yeah, especially also what's the point because you own several ice cream machines. But I mean, when was the last time someone was like, I own an ice cream machine, but instead I'm gonna make a semi Fredo? Not often, right? Not often.
I mean, I I like them because they're a different texture, and I like layering a semifrito with a bunch of mix-ins, which I wouldn't normally do with uh with a a churned dessert. Speaking of which, for those of you who have gone to Dairy Queen, what are your feelings on Blizzards? Pro? Love a blizzard, yeah, pro Blizzard. Jack, you're pro Blizzard?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What do you mix in? Are you Oreo people? I like a little MMs usually.
Yeah. Oreo. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like one time they did the Oreo with the chocolate base.
That was good. Yeah. Oh. Yeah, that's you choose. They have the blizzard machine and you can blizzard it up.
You know what I mean? I will say this also, in terms of commercial items. Um, I need to go back and re-listen to the episode with uh with the the woman who invented uh all the Carvel stuff because she gave the recipe for their magic ice first of all for their crumbles. Uh and she gave the recipe for their icing. I forget what it was.
It was ha it was cream and ice cream base, right? It was whipped cream and ice cream base or something like this. I anyway, like I love Carvel ice cream cake. I like everything about a Carvel ice cream cake. I love everything about Carvel ice cream cakes.
I do too. But um I am very suspicious about when it's out of the freezer and how it still stays in form. Well they're big. They have a big mass because they're so thick. Even when they're not cold.
Carvel? Mm-hmm. Well, I don't know what they use for stabilizer. I mean, um, one of the ways to stop ice cream from melting, Quinn will tell you, is put a lot of air in it, high overrun. But um Carvel is, you know, uh famously low overrun, very famously dense.
Um, so I don't know what their stabilizers, what they use anymore. But I love Carvel. But I was also saying things that are low quality, not low quality, things that are not considered to be fancy that I actually like. I love fast food milkshakes. We call them fake shakes in the house.
But I love them. I always feel sick when I'm done eating it, but I still I love them. That weird flavor. You guys like those things? Is that include a um a frosty?
The one just frosty? No, frosty is is is functionally different. Frosty is halfway to sauce serve. Frosty is an in-between product. Took me a while to get my head on it.
You like you like a soft serve? Oh, yeah. You like the frosty. I like sauce serves and I like frosties. I think if you said to me you can only ever have a frosty or a fake shake, I would take the fake shake.
Hmm. My s my we we we love Carvel. I grew up my whole life with Carvel cakes, but my son cannot have the cake because of the chocolate. Uh the um the cookies. There's a coconut in it, and we found out.
Oh man. Yeah. Found out the hard way. Yeah, we sure did. So what are you going to Baskin Robbins?
No, no, no. We still go to Carvel. We just get soft serve. It's great. He just can only have it with um, you know, limited toppings.
Oh man. Someday they'll fix all that stuff. I hope. He'll be able to have whatever he wants. Quinn's first on the crispy list, but then after that, we'll we'll take care of the other people.
We go to Carpenter like once a week. I'm definitely for the. Yeah, Quinn's first on the crispy list. When they when they when they get when they when they can crispy us all up and fix all the problems, Quinn Quinn's first in line, for sure. You know what I mean?
But uh, you know, we'll we'll all get it. We'll all get it. Um wait, we had another one other thing about uh milkshake. Oh, speaking of that, do you know in a couple of weeks, right? We have bur is a couple weeks Burger King's coming.
Uh that's uh I think John's arranging that. Lymer's not informed about the scheduling. Well, at some point in the summer, we have the head test chef of Burger King coming in, and we can ask all of our flame broiled and like how things work on large scale questions. Yes, June 30th. No, I believe it's June 30th with Alex Hawke and Zach Young, the manager of culinary and innovation, U.S.
and Canada, director in culinary and commercialization of for Burger King. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a huge Burger King fan, way over McDonald's. Really?
Mm-hmm. Well the fries have gone down, but yeah. Who? Burger King? I haven't had a Burger King fry in a long time.
I don't buy fries out. Uh oh, fries are the best ones. Those are the best fast food fries. It's not even close. Burger King?
Yeah. What is it about their fries? Should we save it for when they come on? Yeah, please. I want the answers.
What I what I want is the hat. I hope they bring the hats. They still have those? What about the creepy heads? The crowns.
He can get those crowns, I think, anywhere. Yeah. As an adult, as a fifty-five-year old man, I can walk into a Burger King and be like, give me uh flame boiled Whopper and and a crown. Yeah, one of those creepy smiles of the commercial. And tell them you have a kid, a young kid.
I find it hard to lie to people's faces. I find it hard to lie about things that are ridiculous. You know what I mean? Flame broil, baby. Yeah, flame broil.
Flame broiling. Gotta be flame broiling. Anyway. All right. Uh Elliot from Berkeley wrote in and said, uh, so I've said more than once that polydextr polydextrose, by the way, is a material I use a lot where uh it's literally you take dextrose, glucose, and you polymerize it in an acid environment, I think, and they're like, isn't that the same as uh maltodextrin?
No, it's not. It's not the same thing. Anyway, so I use that uh quite a lot. Um anyway, so I and I use it to add body. So uh you said many times that polydextrose adds body or structure to a cocktail in the same way that sugar does or alcohol does.
I've used poly D now in a bunch of specs, um, but and they're always good. This is delicious, which I appreciate. Uh, but I don't really understand what it's doing. Is this body or structure entirely explained by viscosity, or is there some other phenomenon going on? And if so, what is it?
And same question for glycerin. And the answer, Elliot, is I have no idea. It's not viscosity, right? Think and think about it this way you can take a cocktail and you can add xanthan to it or guar to it. War.
You can add those things, and you have a thick cocktail, but it doesn't change and they're thick and goopy, but it doesn't fix the structure of the cocktail the way that polydextrose or glycerin or alcohol or sugar would. It just tastes thick and gross. So uh it's not viscosity. And I've measured this with I bought a Brookfield Viscometer, cheap one, and did the tests, and yeah, it uh it doesn't that doesn't do that. So what it's actually doing, I don't think is well understood.
Now Harold McGee a couple of weeks ago sent me a patent that somebody applied for where it's a mixture of two things that they say also provides this structure, but I forget exactly what it is, and it's not readily available. I gotta try to get the the chemicals in and see what they what they do. But I don't think anyone knows exactly. Um I've done as much research as I'm willing to do for the update to the book, and what I said is I know it works and I don't know why. And I don't think anyone really knows why.
But it's not just viscosity. Um you think it's some interplay between viscosity and density? No. But it it could be. I don't know, but no, I don't think so.
No. Um it's it's like uh it's like you know, when you know how people always used to say carbonation, it's really just acidity. Like, no, it's not. You know what I mean? Like if you if you take the uh the mountain climbing drug that knocks out the enzyme that you're using, like acid is involved, clearly, because it's carbonic acid, is what you're tasting.
So there is an acid involved. And according to Zucker, who's you know cantankerous and but you know, smart, he's you know, it isn't immediated in similar way that acid channels are. However, um, if you take uh the thing that prevents you from tasting carbon dioxide, the mountain climbing drug whose name is out of my head right now. Uh, uh you can still taste acid, right? Taste acid fine, but you can't taste carbonation anymore.
And it's not just a combination of acid and bubbles, because you can take nitrous oxide, which doesn't taste carbonated, and you can add uh acid to something that is uh got nitrous oxide bubbles in it and doesn't taste carbonated. So it's like, you know, every time someone says, well, carbonation is really just acid. No, it's not. It's like I can with experiments show you that that is not what is happening. Simple experiments, right?
So it's something much more complicated. And the same thing is true with body and viscosity. Through very, very simple experiments that you can do in your kitchen, you can prove to yourself that it is not just viscosity. Now, what it is, I don't know. You know what I'm saying?
Because that is not a simple experiment that I can do. But um, anyway, so you know, could there be some sort of magical thing with begin to understand like like why would alcohol and sugar, which have so like alcohol decreases it increases the viscosity, but decreases the surface tension, right? Also decreases the density. Sugar, not exactly sure what it does to the surface tension, but it increases both viscosity and density. So it if it if it was some combination of that, you have two things that provide a similar level of structure, but do it by moving the drink in opposite directions, right?
So it's like I just don't think it's simple. I don't know what it is. I just know I don't know. And I'm unwilling to say that I'm unwilling to speculate because I really have no idea. And I've tried to find out.
Um anyway. Um maybe these people with the patent have a better, you know, maybe they have a better understanding of what it is, but it could just be that they found something empirically that works because they're focused on the non-alcoholic drink space, right? So they have this combination of uh of of chemicals that uh I forget what they are, but they apparently don't add a lot of flavor and they can be used directly as a bottom agent in small amounts, right? Because the problem with polydextrose and glycerin is it's a relatively macroscopic amount of the stuff you're adding. Glycerin, you add much less than polydextrose, but polydextrose, you need to add as much or a little bit more even I do as you would of sugar.
So I think the answer is I don't know the answer. Um Rock Baker wrote in, I know there's a million theories on this one, but what are your thoughts on poaching eggs for a busy service? Well, here are my thoughts. Um if you're busy, right, uh, and you you don't want to like set a bunch of timers, right, and do a bunch of eggs. I I like the old school, I like the old school uh 62s in uh in a in a hot water bath just because they hold forever.
Now, if you don't like the way those are, right, if you don't like those, you could do so in-shell, because because what's amazing about the in-shell ones is is that for those of you who don't know what we're talking about, you take uh take eggs, whole eggs, and you uh cook them in a water bath at 62 degrees Celsius for about an hour. Uh the then drop the temperature. You must drop the temperature to like 57 and you hold it there, you know, six somewhere between 57 and 60, and you hold them at that temperature forever. If you keep them at 62 forever, the yolks will start getting jammy on you. And so if you want it to be runny, right, do you have to drop the temperature.
If you want it to be jammy, you cook it at 63 for an hour, and then you drop the temperature down to 60, 59, 58. And then you can hold them forever. The nice thing about 57 is that you can put your hand directly into the water and pull the eggs and the shell out and then pow, you crack them out. Now, they look a little bit kind of ghostly. So if you're not gonna sauce them, right?
Some people don't like it, so then you can drag it through hot water. The advantage for me on this is that you can use them if you want them, and they can be chilled down and reheated again. So you you don't ever throw any away. They're also not messy because the water doesn't have all of the thin white crap in it. Now, if you want a traditional egg white, uh sorry, a traditional poached egg, you know, uh it was it's it's only been the past 15 years, I think, that the average Joe like me knew that you could just crack a billion eggs into a bowl and poach them all at once.
When I was a kid and they taught you how to poach eggs, they were like, you must swirl the water and then crack them in individually, right over the surface of the water, and then you must scrape them from the bottom to make sure they don't stick to the pen and keep them all, all this crap, right? And turns out you can just crack all your freaking eggs into a bowl with or without a strainer. The only reason to use a strainer is if you want to get rid of some of the thin white, but you don't need to just crack all those suckers in a bowl, dump them in the in the freaking water, give the water a stir after you dump them in, and you're off to the races. Bang, right? And when I learned that, I was like, oh my God, I've been wasting my my brain.
And how did we who is the first person to test this way of this new way of doing it? You know what I mean? Who was the first knucklehead who was like, I'm not gonna listen to anyone? I saw it popularized by Kenji. Yeah, but no, but he did with the strainer, no other people.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, but the thing the thing is is that we're gonna say I don't we were all taught, all of us, you know, who are old enough were taught this much more complicated way. You know what I mean? But still, let's say you do it that way, and you have them, right, and you're not gonna use them all at once. Now you still have to like either chill them, keep them warm, or reheat them, right?
So then now either you need a CVAP or the other thing about these is you need to drain them, right? Because they have water all on them. So you need to still do the whole thing where you like lift it with a spider gently, drain it, like tap the bottom, get all that crap off. Uh, and then you gotta keep it warm. And you could keep it warm in a CVAP or in a Nova or in a combi oven.
Um, you know, but there's something still that I like about the show. I've done successful chamber in chamber, not chamber in chamber, but like a larger vessel floating in a water bath, you've got to double check the temperature, and you could have like an open like thing of water nestled into a larger water bath, you just gotta double check there's usually like a one or two degree difference between the actual bath and like the internal like container. Right, but I'm saying if I'm cranking out you could if I'm cranking out a hundred poached eggs, two hundred poached eggs at a service, right? And I don't want a big mess and I don't want a big footprint, and I want it to be a hundred percent correct all the time. Right?
I mean, that's the challenge. Because here's something that, you know, in the old days, you would go order you if you went to a brunch place and you didn't trust them and you got a Benedict or a Florentine or whatever you were getting your poached eggs on, right? There was a very non-zero chance that either they would overcook it if they were doing an Alamine Newt, right? And you would get an egg that wasn't runny, horror. And there was an extreme non-zero chance that they wouldn't reheat the egg enough and it would be cold in the middle, which also sucks.
Remember that? Anyone remember getting a cold poached egg where the center's not heated enough? Nightmare. Nightmare. Nightmare.
Both of them are nightmares. And both of them can be solved with temperature control. But the issue is just how it flows at your restaurant. You know what I mean? Like what the good flow is.
No one's ever returned of all of the 62 degrees or even 63 degrees low temp eggs that have been sent out that I've seen when we were at the FCI and we were pumping them out of Lake Hole every day at lunch. The only time they were ever sent back, because they do look weird to people who aren't used to the way that they look, right? Is if there's no sauce on top. As soon as there's a sauce on top and no one can see the white, they love it. Weird, right?
Anyway. I'm just telling you. Like, and I think if you maybe if you eat them side by side, but uh never, never never got a send back when they were sauced. Often if they were naked. If they were naked, you get them sent back all the time.
Exhaust, no. Um, you know, uh, you know, it the Gustavo's non uh dispute, whatever. You don't can't dispute dispute taste. Um Dr. Smokehouse says, Because uh Dave said the upcoming hot dog show guest does not have a hot dog preference.
By the way, that's Faraday. She's on next week or the week after. I believe that's May 9th. Two weeks. No, no, June 9th.
June 9th. Okay. Yeah, May 9th would be next year. Um because she does not have a preference. I would like to know the stats go to dog.
I would also uh like to make uh what meat you like, beef, pork, uh, or blend, as well as casing type sheep and size. So we should save this 22 to 35. I think we should save this conversation for when she's here and when we have you know more crew, but I will say for me, I prefer traditional sheep casing, like relatively small gauge high snap casing. Um, but we could talk more about I'm sure she has opinions, just didn't want to write them in the book. You know what I mean?
Because she wanted to be more inclusive. That's my feeling, and I'm gonna ask her about it. Do hot dogs that include brats and knocks? But no, from if a hot dog's a hot dog. Just a plain regular hot dog, not a German version of a Frank Furter.
Frank Furter? A Frank Furter, a hot dog. You know what I mean? Hot chad, guys. Yeah, yeah.
Not not not a what was it they used to uh what they used to call the the the big sausages, they call them hot beef. Remember that? At the Sabret stands out here in New York in this in the like 70s, 80s, and even I think up until the 90s, and maybe they still do it. You could get a hot dog or they had a sausage, like a beef sausage that had a little bit more spice in it that was like not a kilbasa, but it was bigger, a bigger gauge than a hot dog. But that was its own thing.
It wasn't a hot dog. You know what I mean? A hot dog's a hot dog, in my mind in my mind. You know what I mean? I am also agnostic about the uh meat mix.
But we can get more into it later. Are any of you guys? Like Nick Wong was like, has to be all beef? Don't want any other things. Don't want it.
But uh for me, agnostic. I could do it either way. Yeah. Same. Yeah.
I mean, I mean, the biggest hot dog shock of my life was when I made duck dogs because people were like, oh, duck hot dogs. I made duck hot dogs. And I was like, you know what this tastes like? Hot dog. Because the spice, once you emulsify it and you put the spices in, the, you know, the meat variety is not as present as it would otherwise.
Not that you can't taste beef, pork. You know what I mean? But it's like meat, meat base, I think it's less important than it would be for other sausages. Never had a lamb hot dog. Hmm.
I'd probably like it though. I like veal. Uh yeah, I've had veal mix in, but like I would love. Imagine if you had, but the thing is, it's not a hot dog anymore. Like, if I want merguez, I want I mean merguez.
That's a good sausage. You know what I'm saying? You guys like merguez? Sassage. Sassage.
Merguez, like, you know, spicy lamb. Hmm. Anyway. Uh, that might be one of my favorite sausages that I don't have a lot is merguez. I don't have it a lot, but whenever I have it, I'm like, oh yeah.
You know what I mean? What's your go-to sausage cooking technique? Anyone? I'm old school. If you're doing it in a pan, if you don't have a grill, I do a little bit of water in the pan, put the lid on it.
When you hear it run dry, and the reason you leave a lid on it is not just to steam it, but because it's gonna spatter like a mother, right? As soon as it runs dry, you pull it, then if you need to add more fat, you add it, then you brown, brown, brown, done. Bang. That's if you're not gonna low temp it. If you're gonna low temp it, you I throw it in the ANOVA or in a bag.
I take it up to like 60, 61 Celsius, so that I know it's like cooked all the way through, and then like flash fry it on the outside. You know what I mean? Uh but if I'm just doing one or two for me, water pan. That's the way. That is the way.
Umless you guys have a different idea. Eddie uh asked about the PB and J and said, uh, thanks for the answer, a P B and J drink. I actually do have liquid intelligence and forgotten about the PB PB and J with a baseball bat, which by the way, a riff on something that uh Tona uh Palomino made back at WD way back in the day. WD50 that is related follow-up. Would you publish the list of juices in their acidity and adjustments to lemon or lime recipes to the Patreon?
Yeah, I could probably do that as long as you guys don't like, you know, start publishing it elsewhere because my editor will kill me if uh I put it up there and you know, and no one wants the new book, but yeah, sure, I'll put it up. Um J Ma Fiveson uh says, in reference to my most recent French fry video, am I doing two dunks or three? Walk through the steps uh for this, please and thank you. Yeah, so like uh the last fry I think got edited out. Uh so the way the way it works here is is that you do a instead of a water blanch, you do an oil blanch.
Right. And the advantage here is that you're not adding any more water to the fry. You're actually doing a dehydration step while you're blanching it, right? Uh you already have oil, right? So because you're gonna fry.
So you you you know, you don't have to have a big pot of steaming water, right? And two, if it goes directly into oil, then and this is for some people's a disadvantage because it it doesn't remove uh sugars and doesn't remove starch off of the outside of it, but it makes the potato flavor a lot more than it would otherwise be. So you oil and it also doesn't knock, it doesn't beat up the fries as much. They don't get as many brokens as you do with a water blanch. So you do a water blanch for a long time, low, then you do a regular first fry, right?
Which is oil. You just said water. Do an oil blanch, then you do a regular first fry at a fry temperature, but low, and you do it, and here's the important part, and I'm gonna have him maybe post a video of it. You have to tap, tap, tap, tap, tap the skin of the fry to make sure that you've got a crust formed. After the crust is formed, but before it gets too dark, you pull it, it's gonna instantly steam itself down, and then on the third and final fry, second fry, third oil dunk, that's when they get crispy as all get out.
I salted mine after the initial oil blanch and let it sit for an hour or two, let the salt kind of soak in just so that they would be kind of uh salted through. Um WizMerd said, anchovy season is kicking off in the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm gonna try making Boca Ronis for the first time. I've looked over a handful of recipes, and it seems the steps are generally remove the head and slit the belly, remove the viscera, rinse clean, salt for a few hours uh to firm out the flesh, add acid, cure overnight, ditch the acid, and add oil, garlic, and herbs. Is this track with uh your own recipes?
And once they're covered in oil, how long would you keep them in the fridge? I see some folks saying a week, others say six weeks. I think it will last up to probably a month. I don't really make boca rounds. Fair fair point, I love bocaronas, but I actually like salted anchovies.
I love salted anchovies. So if any of you have made Bocaronis, uh anyone here made Bocaronis, no? I would go to Hank Shaw. Hank Shaw is a good uh writer and outdoor enthusiast, and he has a relatively easy to follow uh bocaronis uh recipe, and he eats them fundamentally the next day or even later that evening because he only salts it for a couple of hours and then only acids it for a couple of hours, and then once the oil's on it, he'll either eat it right away or let it sit around. So um, you know, if Hank says so, it can't be too wrong.
Uh all right. Well, thanks folks. We'll see you next week on Cooking Issues.
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