[0:06] Fishes, fish, vodka. Oh, you did that. Hello,

[0:17] you are listening to cooking issues on Heritage Radio Network. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues where you call in with all your cooking related questions here in the studio today with Nastasia

[0:26] Lopez, Cooking Issues Hammer. Call in all of your cooking questions to 718-497-2120-718-497-2120. We hear every Tuesday from noon to noon 45. That's 718-497-2128. Oh, sorry. 7718. Scratch that. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. I am not going to put any blame here, but Nastasia told me to wrote down as 2120. So, you know, it's the 1st time we've ever given the wrong number on the air. So we apologize. Yeah, all right, all right. So while we're waiting for you to call in, I will answer a few questions people have sent in. Hello, Nastasia and Dave. My name is Lucy. I'm about to start college at Northeastern in Boston. Congratulations. Well, I'm very excited to get my life started in the pseudo-real world of college. I'm sad to be losing access to a kitchen. Unfortunately, they won't let Lucy have anything in her dorm room like hot plates

[1:24] or what else do they say she can't have? Basically anything with an open burner, no toaster ovens, and no hot plates. So what is she what is she going to do? Because right now she has just an immersion blender and a food processor, but she really wants to be able to cook. All right, listen. First of all, here's the bad news. Whoever your RA is, whoever they call those things nowadays, they're probably going to be too stupid to realize it's something like an induction burner is not like a fire hazard, and so they probably won't let you have an induction unit, even though they are freaking

[1:54] awesome and they're completely safe and you should be able to have them in college. So before you buy one, make an argument with your with your person, you should be able to have an induction unit because they don't actually produce heat unless a pan is on them.

[2:06] And even then, they're not they're not a fire hazard, the way that other things are. Okay, now, assume, I'm going to make a couple assumptions about you. One, you're not, you know, overly wealthy because you're a college student. Two, you don't really care about rules all that much, right? So one way to get around it is, if your RA is not the smartest person in the world or they just don't care. They make things that are microwave toaster oven combinations, that look for all the world just like a microwave, that have an infrared heater in the top of it. So it just looks like a microwave and yet acts like a, acts like a toaster oven. So that's one way because, you know, I'm not so much about rules. Another thing you can do. They used to make in the 50s. and I actually, this is what I did in college. I bought, I went to a thrift shop and I bought a Westinghouse turkey oven. And these are things that they used to make in the 1950s and they look like overgrown crock pots. Crock pots, another thing you can have, by the way. They look like overgrown crock pots. And they were meant to cook a turkey in in Thanksgiving time so that your oven would be free for whatever else you were

[3:05] doing, and you could cook a turkey in this countertop oven. I had one of those, and I used it to bake bread. In fact, I wooed my current wife. One of the things I did was I used to break bake bread for her in my dorm room in this Westinghouse oven, and they're pretty, they're pretty safe looking. No one's even going to know what the hell it is. And I think I spent, I don't know, $2 on mine in the thrift shop, you know, maybe you could look on eBay, something like that. So that's an option for you. Here's some more options. If you're willing to get a little more involved. Now is a perfect time to get started with low temperature and sous vide cooking, right? Now, I'm assuming you don't have $800 to go spend on a new immersion circulator. An immersion circulator, for those of you that are listening, is basically a piece of equipment that allows you to heat water or any liquid, really, to a very accurate

[3:46] temperature, and to achieve really kind of stunning results in a very small amount of

[3:50] space and have it be repeatable every single time. And you don't need a big vacuum machine to run this. All you need to do is be able to put your food into Ziploc bags. Now, I almost, I never recommend making your own

[4:02] or buying one used on eBay, even though that's what I used to do, because it's actually very nice to have the brand new one and, you know, I deal with restaurants and they shouldn't really have crab together

[4:12] things, and I want Philip Preston from Polyscience, my friend, to get as much business as humanly possible on his brand new circulator, which is now available in William Sonoma for, I think,

[4:21] 7 or $800, something like that. However, it is very easy to build your own immersion circulator. They're not quite as nice. You can look on the web. I've done it myself back in the day for as little as $50 if you're really a good eBay searcher. But even if you buy all the stuff new, you can get everything, everything, uh, for

[4:39] about, for under 150, $150, $200, uh, good place to look for cheap temperature controllers is Auber

[4:46] Instruments, A-U-B-E-R, uh, dot com. You can also, then, you know, you can use things like immersion coffee heaters, like those little things you're supposed to put in coffee mugs. You get like 3 or 4 or 5 of those because you need a 1000 watts of heating, basically. And an aquarium pump. And then once you have the temperature control with a thermocouple in it, a bunch of heaters and a pump, you're done. I mean, it's kind of, you know, crabbed together. I will warn you about this as well. I shock the hell out of myself the 1st couple times I built this because those heaters leak a little bit of electricity, but if you're willing to spend a little bit of time, I could build one probably from parts in under an hour,

[5:18] but, you know, if you've never done it before, give yourself like 4 hours, but, you know, it's fairly easy to do. There's a bunch of websites devoted to this. In fact, in our forums, there's a section on and cooking issues forums. There's a section where people have posted some of their do-it-yourself circulators. And, you know, that's a good way to go in a dorm because it doesn't, you know, there's no open

[5:37] flame, and you could put out, like, serious restaurant quality food out your dorm with that. Now here's the problem. In order to do really good low temperature work. You need to be able to put a really good sear on something when it's done, right? Now, here's where I'm about to recommend something that you're not supposed to do. See, they think your microwave is safe because they've never seen someone really use a microwave. Now, I'm not just talking getting a case of light bulbs out of the closet and blowing them up every Saturday night, which is what I used to do. You can use a microwave to get up to 800 degrees Celsius. Well, wait, like, I forget what that is. It like 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, something absurd. Here's what you do. You go to the hardware store. Get yourself some silicon carbide, silicon carbide sharpening stones, right? You put insulating fire bricks around and put them in your microwave, turn it on, walk away in about 10 minutes. Those silicone carbide blocks are going to be glowing red, red hot, okay? Because they what's called a micro, they accept microwaves. They absorb microwaves. So looking carbide does. Now, you have like an amazing hot rock searing plate where you can sear the bejesus out of anything. You can melt metal. You can use your microwave to smelt metal. You can do some serious thing. Look up metal smelter microwave. There's an article on it popular science in 2003. You can melt meal in your microwave. You can certainly sear a piece of meat in it. So just get a couple of silicon carbide, sharpening stones, insulate them somehow with

[6:55] fire brake or with, you know, corningware on top of like little things, and then turn it up till it glows red

[7:00] hot, and searware to your heart's content. Do not light your dorm on fire. It's her 1st year at college. Well, I mean, if it was anything like my 1st year of college, this will be the safest thing she's done. Anyway, I'm not saying to go do that. I'm just saying these are options. These are options. All right, Nastasia, they're options. We have a call. All right. Hope that helps, Lucy. Hi, caller, you're on the air. Hi, Dave, good to talk to you. This is Derek calling from Seattle. Hey, Derek. Uh, I'm looking for some tips on doing sous vide pot roast. So, um, I like things that are done at a little bit lower temperature. My wife likes things that are done at a little bit higher temperature. So I'm trying to find the sweet spot where, uh, I get something that kind of has the texture of a traditional braise, which is what my wife

[7:45] likes. It's something that's not quite so dried out. Okay. Here, are you using a vacuum machine or using Ziplocs or what are you using? I'm using a vacuum machine and then a used lab circulating bath. Oh, yeah. Which one, by the way? which company? It's a Fisher scientific? Okay, so that's probably most likely it's an old poly-science, because they used to build fishers as well as, I think, VWRs, I think. Anyway. So here's what I would say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The thing to be careful of, obviously, with used circulators is that a lot of times the bearings and things go bad. Here's what I would recommend. There's no way to get a completely tradition. First of all, overreduce your sauce before you put it in the bag. That's the 1st thing you always need to do. Overreduce it well beyond what you think a normal brave should be because the meat when it cooks in the bag is going to release juices and seriously water down your juice.

[8:35] That's the 1st step. Okay? And it's a classic mistake people make. The other one is, is that, you know, although you can go as low as 57 degrees or even lower when you're doing this,

[8:45] right? Most people prefer more of a traditional temperature, I find a happy medium is somewhere between 60 and 62 Celsius,

[8:52] okay? Once you get up, although some people cook as high as 70. I think once you get above 65 or so, you're losing a lot of the benefits of low temperature cooking, but then in that 60 to

[9:02] 62, 63 zone is a nice happy medium. It's just barely still pink. It's still got a lot of moistness to it and you're going to have, I think you're going to have a good result. But some people go as high as 70, even in the bag, and you can try that too. It's still going to retain more moisture than it would cooking in a traditional, in a brave situation, but just make sure to over-reduce your sauce. And I think a happy medium is going to be somewhere between 60 and 62. I would also really burn the hell out, not burn. But you know what I mean? Really roast the hell out of some scrap meat and throw it in the bag and it's going to give some of those higher temperature flavors that your wife is craving, but still retained from the texture that you want. Does that help? Uh, yeah, I will say I've done it in the uh, in the rain, but I think I did it at about 65 for for 24 hours. I think 11 issue that I have is it didn't quite soften up enough for

[9:47] her and and and I'm typically using grass fed beef. So I'm wondering uh what sort of difference that makes. So at 62, you're going to want to go for 2 days. about a little under 2 at 60 you're going to want to go for 2 days. So I think maybe you should also try going a little bit longer. So like a good number for like a short rib. You know, slightly different, a good number for a short rib would be 60 degrees Celsius for 48 to 5050 hours, somewhere in that range.

[10:10] And so 62 to 63, you're going to want to go around the same amount of time. I wouldn't go as high as 65 because that's right where you're going to squeeze a bunch of water out, so you might as well go a little higher if you're going to go 65. It stay in the 62, 63, 60 to 63 range in there for about 2 days. Sounds great. All right, give it a shot. All right. Thanks a lot. Thank you. We have another caller? I think we do. Hello, you're on the air. Hi, yeah, my name is Dennis and I'm a big fan of you guys. Do you mind if I ask, like, a career question, a cooking focus question? Sure. Okay. Um, speaking of fan, I, uh, I am of you. I gotta say, I'm kind of jealous of what you do. Um, you know, just thinking about food all the time and experimenting, being on sort of that intellectual side, you know, things. I'm a cook right now. I cook at a very, um, well-regarded restaurant in DC, but I'm really a lot more interested in more of a research or teaching role, something in more academic

[11:10] setting, potentially eventually. Right. And I was wondering, if you have any advice or how you got to where our bills you have or what you

[11:19] did, may have helped you get what you're doing right now. That's an excellent question. So I knew that I didn't really want to be a restaurant chef because it just wasn't in me. It's not in me to go and pound out, you know, a service every day. I'm not organized enough to be a real restaurant chef, which I think you really, really need to be. The one skill that I did have that's really helpful, still have, I hope, is that I can read anything almost and understand what's going on.

[11:47] So from a research standpoint. You want to be able to, 1st of all, you want to be very curious. You want to be able to absorb things and you want to be able to focus on problems very, very closely. That's like, that's the 1st thing to do. I mean, to do precisely what I do, right? Now, to be involved in just a food world in general, I think, um, you know, if you're not going to be a cook, then, you know, then, and you still want to be

[12:10] in, in the, in the field. I mean, writing, if you can write, is a very good is a good way to do it. I mean, I know a lot of people that have done that, you know, for instance, my sister-in-law, uh, you know, Wiley

[12:21] DuFrey's wife, my sister-in-law, which is actually my wife's sister, she, you know, went to French culinary where I

[12:25] teach, and she's now the, you know, editor-in-chief of the Food Network magazine. So, I mean, there's lots of, there's lots of different pathways, whether it being writing or in media. Now, on the research side, you know, there's a couple of things you can do there. I know some people that do, you know, consultancy work or they have, you know, specific high-tech catering kind of catering opportunities where they don't necessarily want it, but they want to spend more time researching because in a catering thing, you can, you know, focus on one job and you don't have a daily pound out of a service and you can get more time to

[12:55] focus. The main problem with the kind of cooking that I do at the French culinary is that it's very hard to do when you have a daily service to grind out because you just don't have the time to focus on solving

[13:05] problems that, you know, and you're not necessarily going to be able, if you take a job at a big company doing kind of cooking in that way, you're not necessarily going to be able to focus on problems that interest

[13:15] you. But there are places that have jobs like that, like cuisine solutions, who does a lot of low temperature work. They hired someone who, uh, that I know, you know, who went to the French culinary and he gets to do a lot of research, a lot of interesting work. So there are opportunities out there, but I think to, you know, just to do this kind of work, you just, you know, you need to be able to, you know, it's like what Wiley does too. Wiley reads all patent, you know, patents constantly. He's constantly reading. So I think, you know, if you're very curious and you always want to learn. It helps if you can write, but it's not, you know, necessarily, you know,

[13:43] prerequisite, but, um, you know, I'm sorry, I couldn't give any more specific advice, but, uh, that's, um, that's kind of what I did.

[13:52] I don't know if... Really? All right. Well, thanks for thanks for calling. And you can, you know, always post anything to our to our forums or to the blog and, you know, we'll try and help you out. I like anyone to get in this field that can. Surely will. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Hello? Hello, you're on the air. Hi, this is Dan from New York. Hey Dan. Hey, so I just have a, I guess, a question. I'm cooking this chicken. I got a heritage chicken for the 1st time, and it smells a little, I guess, sulfuric because it has, I guess, blood in the bag. And I was wondering, what should I do in terms, will that affect the taste or how should I cook that or should I even cook it? Well, it smells like, like sulfur or like, like, like,

[14:30] like rotting, smell like it's rotting? No, just like when I when I asked before, they said it was something about how it's packaged with the blood and it's just a little strong. So it is kind of old, um, because I had gotten it through this roundabout way. And yeah. So I was just wondering, do you think that's safe to eat? And if so, should I worry about the flavor at all? Was the bag, did the was the bag inflated at all? was it? No, no, I mean, the bird looks beautiful itself. It's just... And the bag was still tight. Yeah, still tight, still everything. It was a cryo bag, right? Correct. Okay. Does it doesn't smell blue cheesy at all, right? No, it's just like it has a strong arm. It might not even be so free. It just smells like something, and I was kind of curious if that would be in the taste. All right. Well, if you smelled rotten chicken before, then, you know, and it smells like that, then I would avoid.

[15:18] Um, you could try just giving it like a quick dip rinse in in, um, in, uh, in water, vinegar, a little bit to try and see what happens to it, pull it out, see

[15:28] how, see how it smells. I have been in your situation before, where you really want to cook something. You really want it to work and you really want it to be delicious because you've been thinking about it, right? So, um, and then like you've handed over to your wife and they smell it and they're like, are you freaking cracked? Are you going to serve that to me? Do you know what I mean? So that's another that's another good thing to do. Like, if you feel nervous about it, I wouldn't, I wouldn't bother with it. Or if you really want to, I would test it on yourself. I would cook it for yourself. I've done that before too. Test it on yourself and just eat it yourself and see what you think rather than subjecting your friends and family to it. I'm sorry that I can't give anything kind of more specific because I can't smell it,

[16:06] but, you know, as a general rule of thumb, never serve to someone else, anything that even makes you a little bit nervous. I mean, that's kind of a rule that I like to live by because I do serve bizarre things quite often and I want people to trust me. So, you know, as far as I know, I haven't gotten anyone horribly

[16:23] sick. I'd like to kind of maintain that record. I think it's kind of a good call, but, you know, if you feel comfortable with it, by all

[16:28] means cook it yourself and see, uh, you know, eat it yourself and see, see what you think. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. All right. Thank you. All right, thank you. Have a good one. You too. It always makes me nervous, Nastasia, to cook something if you think it might be bad, right? Bear. The bear was not bad. We're talking about the bear we cooked in the thing. Nastasia is nervous that the bear had trichinosis, which is indeed possible. Trichinosis is a worm that infects muscles. It's an awful disease. It's measured in a number of worms per square, per cubic centimeter muscle masks, terrible disease to get. However, you kill it by cooking it, which is what I did, Nastasia. should have eaten that bear. Nastasia apparently not taking Jeffrey Steingard's advice last week, some of the best advice you'll ever hear on learning to become a good

[17:12] eater. Jeffrey Steingarten, one of the best best eaters that I've ever met. They eat everything. You know, so long as it's safe, he would eat something that's unsafe because that's Jeffrey. But, you know, as long as it's safe, you should try it. Anyway. So, uh, I think we're coming up on our 1st yeah, 1st commercial break here. We're coming back at you in a couple minutes, cooking issues. How you feel, bro? You feeling good? Play so much, bone, brother. How you feel, man? I call your name. I don't want people to know you're in here. How you feeling, Bella? Hey, jam! You're getting down. Look at him! We're gonna have a fun, good time. We're gonna have a fun, good time. We're gonna have a fun good time. We're gonna have a bunk, good time. Now take 'em up, Fred. We gotta take you home.

[18:19] All right. You wanna do it again? You wanna do it again, huh? You gotta take it high.

[18:42] Now I want everybody. Let red blow it by two courses. And then I want to wave in, let's go until everything is now, all right? I'm gonna get that fella with a little horn over there. Hello and welcome back to Cooking Issues. I'm Dave Arnold. They're host of cooking issues. Call in your questions too. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. And while we're waiting, let us take a question from an email question. So Bob Good writes in. And he says, I liked your write-up of herb grinders on the website, but how do they fit in? How do they compare to a mortar and pestle at home? And keeping wife his wife's motto is clutters, the enemy. Sounds like our wives would be good friends. So for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, herb grinder is the euphemism for a marijuana grinder that pot, you know, pot users, potheads, as I lovingly call them,

[19:35] used to kind of grind up their marijuana before they roll it into a cigarette or stuff

[19:39] in a pipe, whatever they're going to do with it. Now, they're a fantastic way to grind up small quantities of spices when you don't want to, you know, coffee grinders, they don't really work for small quantities because the blades don't don't hit your

[19:49] spices. They're fantastic. And you can look on our website at ground. I don't know what I do, like 10 different spices, 15, 10, some of that. So you can see kind of what results you get on different spices. Now, the question Bob has is, listen, I already have a mortar and pestle at home. So why do I need this? You're probably, you know, Bob, you're probably right. If your mortar and pestle is small enough to be handy, they work pretty well, unless you have a big problem with your mortar and

[20:10] pesto with spices bouncing out of it. I don't know that you need to have this as well. This is, you know, mostly uh, uh, useful for someone like me who's at a cooking school and you don't want to lug a lug around your

[20:20] modern pestle or if you're going to be cooking off site. They're incredibly tiny. So you could stick it kind of in your, you know, right next to your peeler in your utensil drawer. So it's useful having around. At home, I use my mortar and pestle, but when I'm at school, I use the herb grinder. So, I hope that was helpful. I think that answered that question. Ray Mack 007 asked. He was thinking about cooling sauces and then vacuum putting them in vacuum bags and storing them in his freezer until needed. Are there any downsides to storing sauces this way? Not really. I mean, it's a really good way to store something because when you once you put it in a vacuum bag, you're not going to have any water loss or kind of freezer burn

[21:00] problems as long as the vacuum bags that you're using are, you know, are oxygen and

[21:06] permeable. They're meant for freezer storage. You want to get ones that are meant for cooking and chilling. And then the great thing about bagging. sorry. vacing down sauces, is that you can then throw those bags directly into hot water and reheat them in the bag without the possibility of scorching them or

[21:26] or, you know, having any sort of problems. In fact, you can reheat several different kinds of sauces at the same time in the same

[21:31] water if you have them all in bags. So it really is a very good way to do it, if you're doing large quantities. And, you know, they'll really last a long time that way. And he says, he's assuming that emulsion-based sauces would not be a candidate for this process, I would guess that's probably right. You can freeze emulsion-based sauces is if you stabilize them, you know, with different stabilizers, but I've never really experimented that because I haven't tried to get extended storage out of sauces

[21:57] in bags that way. I mean, it's not kind of my focus is always on kind of achieving new quality benchmarks instead of trying to necessarily extend the shelf

[22:06] life. But if I was doing it for my house or for a restaurant where that was useful, I'm sure I would have researched how to make an

[22:12] emulsion, kind of not breaking the bag. There are people that have done that kind of work. So it's definitely definitely possible. So, I would go ahead and do that. also a great way to store fruit purees. They, the sauces all of a sudden, they store flat in bags, they're frozen. They're really easy to reheat. So I think that's a really good, that's a really good technique. Now, before I answer, the next question I have, I just want to say that last

[22:38] week, New York magazine really shoved it to me, they really gave me the shaft, because they wrote up my favorite tomato, that I

[22:46] weight every freaking year. I wait for this tomato. Uh, it's the Ant Ruby's German green tomato from Stokes Farm there at the Union Square

[22:54] Green Market. They're on Saturdays. And I think also Wednesdays, the other day they're there. Um, and their Aunt Ruby's German green is the greatest tomato I have ever had. My favorite tomato in New York magazine wrote their particular one up as the greatest tomato in New York. And consequently now, they're completely wiped out. Like I got there at noon and they said they'd been sold out since 10 AM because everyone from New York magazine, apparently, who reads the magazine, went and bought all of this, all of Stokes

[23:22] Farms tomatoes. So I was pretty bent, pretty bent about that. Luckily for me, their 2nd favorite tomato of the, you know, in the

[23:31] Newf magazine was the German stripe, which by the way, Aunt Ruby was a real human being, and Aunt Ruby Arnold, no relation to me. And, you know, she not only came up with the, with the, with the Aunt Ruby's German Green, I believe she was also the source or one of the sources for the German stripe, which is a huge

[23:47] red, yellow and red, beautiful tomato. And the, um, Stokes also has that. my 2nd favorite of their tomatoes. growing that one too. Yeah, but apparently your landlord made you throw them away. Anyway, so yeah. Anyway, so but Stokes is Stokes is excellent, but they didn't write up Stokes's as being the 2nd best. So they cleaned out some other farmer's German stripe and cleaned out his rubies. So I spent this weekend eating stripes, which are also excellent. But it brings me to my pet peeve, which is, 1st of all, you can't just call out a tomato variety and say it's great, right?

[24:22] You know, because I've had Aunt Ruby's German green, which is a large green kind of like weird shaped tomato and the bottom gets a pinkish red blush when

[24:29] when it's ripening up. Because, you know, look at the bottom of a tomato, not the part attached to the

[24:33] plant to see kind of that, it ripens from there 1st and travels up towards the, where it attaches to the plant. And it also softens at the bottom 1st and gets, and

[24:41] it goes harder as it goes up to the top. So when you're judging the ripeness of a tomato, you want to look at the bottom first, right? See how she's going. And you have to know what an Aunt Ruby looks like. It should start getting. I think it should start getting that pink flush at the bottom and I think it should be getting a little soft, although the guys at Stokes disagree with me on

[24:55] this because they don't want you mangling their tomatoes by picking them up and squeezing them because that is a rotten thing to do to their tomatoes. Don't do that. Now, here's the, I don't know how I got on that, but here's the thing. Their Aunt Rubies are sublime and other people's Aunt Rubies are crap, right? Different tomato varieties taste very different depending on where they're grown, how they're grown, you know, the

[25:17] location, the type of soil and everything. It's not enough to just say, I like Aunt Rubies. You have to say, I like, although they are, by and large, an excellent variety. You have to say, I like this farmer's Aunt Rubies. I like that farmer's Aunt Rubies. So you know, you can't just go and buy a variety. You really have to find a supplier, a farmer that you like and get their tomatoes of that particular variety. I mean, that's the thing, I think. Also, people then, they just put out big, you know, farm stands. Hey, these are all heirloom tomatoes. I'm like, that's great. 80% of these taste like like nothing. They're garbage. Like a lot of heirloom tom- I apologize. A lot of heirloom tomatoes don't taste that great or they don't have that great a texture. And so you'll go to these farmers stands and they'll have heirloom

[25:57] tomatoes, and this happened to me before, because I feel when I see something I've never had before, I'm compelled to try it. Like, I'm compelled to try it. That's just kind of how I am. And there's a farmer's market right by my house in the Lower East Side on Sundays. And I was like, saw a tomato. I was like, oh, this looks interesting because it had a shape of an Aunt Ruby, but it was red with like very thin yellow, yellow stripes through it. And I was like, what variety is this? He goes, I don't know, it's an heirloom tomato. like, you're, you're, uh, I can't curse on the radio. I'm trying to think of something to say, you know, to insult the man because, you know, thank you. Now I can't ever replicate this experience. Thank you. You know what I mean? heirloom tomato. That's like saying, it's a vehicle with 4 wheels. Well, is it a Mac truck? Is it a Hyundai? You know, am I getting a Lincoln continental or am I getting a gremlin? You know what I mean? I don't know. You know what I mean? Please, you know, like, tell the, if you're not actually the farmer at the market. At least tell the people the varieties that you're selling so that we can figure out what the hell's going on as

[26:53] eaters. Anyway, that tomato. I was even angrier because I bought it and it went home. I was hoping it would suck, and then I wouldn't have to worry about trying to find it again, only it was delicious.

[27:03] You know what I mean? And even tomatoes, some tomatoes look fairly similar, but they're different. Like there's this tomato called the Everlast, which looks like an Aunt Ruby. If you're not experienced with it, but it isn't, it's a little more yellow than a ruby. Anyway. So that's my stupid spiel on heirloom tomatoes. Have you tasted your stripes yet, Stasi? I only had one. And how was it? It was good, but it was really tiny. Why the hell did you? Why did you pick it when it wasn't ready yet? I think the container I'm growing in it is really small, so it only allows for tiny tomatoes. Yeah. Tiny tomatoes. That's my next band name right there, Italian tomatoes. All right. Let me take an email question. Ryan Santos wants to know about the book called The Handbook of Hydrocoloids. He says he's interested in hydrocoloids and modern cooking, and most of his recipes he's done are just adapting other people's recipes for using hydrocoloids. And for those of you that don't know what what I'm talking about, hydrocollids are a group of basically complex sugars, polysaccharides, you know, gums, whatever you want to call them, that are used to thicken and gel, uh, used to thicken and

[28:06] gel uh, you know, different products. So Xanthan gum, carrogen, and these sorts of things. And most people do just adapt other cooks recipes and that's fine. But if you want to learn more, where do you go? He was mentioning a book called The Handbook of Hydrocoloids. That's like a $200 book. It's very technical. I read it. It was very useful to me, but I wouldn't be the 1st book on hydrocolloids I would get. The 1st book, again, on hydrocoloids, is put out by the Egan Press. I think it's, I forget how to spell it. It's like an E-A-G-A-N press. Uh, which is a portion of the associate, the association of American cereal chemist or something like that. It's a very thin book. It's only 60 60 something dollars. You can get it to kitchen arts and letters. The world's greatest cookbook store, at least the world's greatest that I've been to. It's here in New York City up in the 90s on Lexington Avenue. And it's a great introduction to hydrocaloid. It's extremely useful. It has a bunch of tables and charts in it that talk about, you know, the problems when you try and mix different hydrocolloids together. It has flow charts of trying to figure out, you know, how to choose what hydrocollage

[29:07] you use for different systems. Extremely readable, extremely useful. In fact, there's a that whole, Egan Press put out a bunch of books. They have one on starches, which is excellent. They have one on sugars, which is excellent. Their multiplier one I didn't think was so useful for cooks, but I would definitely start there. If you were hungering for more technical information after that book. You know, then, by all means, go to the handbook of hydrocoloids, but the handbook of hydrocoloids is set up as a, as an ingredient by ingredient, um, book, it's like 300 and something

[29:38] pages, and it's like, you know, here's Agar. Here's the chemical formula, you know, for Agar. And then, you know, here it's various properties. So, you know, I think it's useful to a small number of cooks, but not as useful as it could be and not necessarily $200 worth of useful if you can go get the

[29:56] Egan Press book instead. They used to run a deal on the serial chemist website. You have to really search around for it, where you could buy a one-year subscription to all of the Egan Press books for 99 bucks, and then you could download all of them on

[30:11] PDF for just $99. And that's in fact what I did. So I have them all on PDF like the, you know, fats, which is another good

[30:19] one actually. And I even have the ones that are useless to me, like food colorings, useless,

[30:24] non-nutritive sweeteners, a.k.a. all the things to make diet soda and whatnot. Also fairly useless for me. But, you know, me, once I have access to it, I'm going to download it because that's just the way I am. I'm a sucker for a sunk cost. You know, it's why I don't go to all you can eat, all you can eat restaurants anymore because you have to roll me out of those things in a wheelbarrow.

[30:43] First of all, I, you know, like, obviously, you know, I'm not going to eat, don't be a chump and go eat the salad bar, you know,

[30:49] like hit the most expensive. Literally I don't care whether I like it or not. I walk into an all you can eat restaurant. I 0 in on whatever has the highest food cost for that restaurant instantly. Instantly. And then I fill an entire plate with whatever that is, whatever it is. I pound a couple plates of that. Then once I'm sick of eating the most expensive thing they have, I find the 2nd most expensive thing they

[31:08] have. And I continue to eat that until I'm sick of that item. Two or 3 items down the line, I'll start feeling physically sick, but it's not until my wife pulls me away because she's disgusted to stand next to me.

[31:19] That is when I stop and leaving all you can eat restaurant. I have similar problems with open bars. So I try to avoid these kinds of things now because, you know, as

[31:27] you as you get older, it's more and more unseemly to be to be doing this sort of thing. I don't know how the hell I got it. Oh yes, it's because I downloaded even the useless books. This is what it's like to be me, by the way. That's what it that's what it boils down to. I hope I hope that answered, answered your question. And I think you want to go to one more commercial break? All right, let's go to one more commercial break. Cooking issues, calling your questions too. 718. What is it, Nastasia? 718. Oh my god, I can't believe this. 497-2128. That's 718-497-2128.

[32:10] Bad whiskey. Bad, bad whiskey. Bad, bad, bad whiskey made me lose my happy home. When I left home this morning. I promise I would think To stay real straight and sober. I swore I wouldn't drink. Bad, bad, was scared. Bad, bad whiskey. Bad, bad whiskey made me lose my happy home. Master all the pool hearts. Gave the bars and slip. before the night was over. I started in to sit. Bad, bad brisket. Bad, bad this kid. Coming back at you with cooking issues. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues. Call in your questions. You have another 10, 15 minutes to call in your questions to 718-497-2128.

[33:41] That's 718-497-2128. And today's cooking issues is brought to you by Hearst Ranch. Hearst Ranch is the nation's largest single source supplier of free range, all natural,

[33:54] grass-fed, and grass finished beef. Since 1865, the Hearst family has raised cattle on the rich, sustainable native grasslands of the central California coast. The result is beef with extraordinary flavor that's as memorable and natural as the surrounding landscape. And for more information, they would like you to go to www.hearstranch.com. That's one word, www.herstranch.com. And although, you know, I've never had the beef from Hearst Ranch, you know, if they want to send me some, I would love to try it.

[34:22] Um, I want to

[34:26] say that last week, apparently, I did not give our sponsor tech serve enough of

[34:31] a run because I forgot about mentioning it until the very end of the show and basically blasted through it, you know, at the speed of sound as fast as I could speak,

[34:40] which when I want to is quite quickly. And I used to do that in debate in high school, speak very quickly. It a technique called spreading for all of those who didn't go to debate in high school. Anyway, so I apologize to tech serve, a fine, a fine service for fixing your computer, tech serve. All right? Nastachi, feel better now? Yeah, that's better. Oh, and by the way, uh, Mr. Santos, his 2nd part of his question was, how do you get, I swear to God, how do

[35:04] you, how do I get a date with the hammer? And I have to say, don't bother trying with that one. Don't, you know, she's, uh, you know, I would, I would stay away from that one, right, Sazi? right? I'm just kidding, Nastasia. Just kidding. All right. Brandon asks. Using larger ice with reduced surface area will reduce the rate at which ice dilutes a cocktail, but how does that affect how long it holds temperature in a finished drink? Well, using larger ice, whole temperature in a drink longer with less dilution and smaller ice. Okay. He's not very concerned about shaking or stirring, he's mostly worried about the final drink. Okay, and how does that differ from something that has been chilled? Basically, as opposed to something that's coming from room temp, for instance, pouring a spear on the rocks. All right, here's the here is the answer to this question. As far as I can tell, that particular experiment, I haven't run in probably a year and a

[35:57] half . But my memory of it is this. A larger ice cube will, in fact, dilute less in your in the cocktail, but it will not keep it as cold. Now, what are we talking about? If you put a lot of small ice in? Stir a drink? You put small ice in, that drink will probably hover around

[36:16] the, like, one, you know, one or 2 It's going to start out at like minus anywhere between -4 and minus a half a degree Celsius, depending on how they stir it. Okay? That's going to be the range. A shaken drink is going to be in the range of -7 to -3 degrees

[36:34] Celsius if it's done properly. Okay? When you pour that drink into smaller cubes, it's going to maintain its temperature better, but it will get more diluted because of the extra surface area, especially if they throw

[36:46] it, pour it onto ice, that you didn't shake off. You didn't get the water. You'll get an initial hit a dilution out of that, that's going to dilute it right out of the gate. In that case, I actually recommend using, don't yell at me cocktail people, please. I don't want to hear it, but, I mean, it's not, of course, I want to hear it. lets have an argument. I'm just kidding. But if I was going to shake a drink and then serve it kind of on

[37:07] the rocks, I frankly think you'd be better off serving it with the things you shook with, especially if the ice was slightly

[37:13] larger as they still looked good, because you've already gotten the surface water off of those things. Do you know what I mean? You're not adding extra surface water. But, you know, I'm sure there's people that'll disagree with me. And I'd be happy to have that discussion because I'm just thinking about this off the top of my head. A larger ice cube, uh, well, you know, so if you're using small ice cubes, let's assume you're going to maintain a temperature within a degree or 2 of

[37:33] 0, um, for a while, you know, the experience I had with a big ice cube is that the

[37:38] temperature is going to go up to about, you know, somewhere in the range of 5 degrees Celsius, somewhere like that. So it's not going to keep it anywhere near as cold. So long as it's cold enough, right, then I think it's going to be, it's going to

[37:50] be, um, okay. Um, it's just not going to maintain um, the temperature nearly as well. If it maintains it enough for you, then I think that that's okay because remember, there's

[38:01] a, it's very strict. There is no melting without chilling and there is no chilling without melting. So there's no way with an ice cube to keep a drink, well, unless you use freezer ice, but, you know, stay tuned. I promised last week I was going to post on the blog, but I spent like, you know, 10 hours working on the charts for the blog

[38:22] post. So it's going to go up soon, I promise, on stirring and ice. But, um, you don't get to win. So you either get a drink that's more diluted because you had to melt more ice or you get a drink that's not as cold because it's not as diluted. basically a one-to-one. In fact, I'll spoil it a little bit. I gave a I did a test, right? So, when you're stirring a cocktail. When you're stirring a cocktail, it actually takes a long time for the cocktail to get to basically an equilibrium point where you're not really chilling that much more and you're not melting that much more.

[38:53] It's a relative equilibrium because you're always, you know, you're losing energy to the to the atmosphere. So it's not, you know, real equilibrium. But you can definitely, when you look at a chart of temperature versus time as you're stirring. It basically drops very quickly at first, the temperature, and also is diluting a lot at first. And then it basically plateaus out, and you get only very small changes from there on out. But, uh, and when you're shaking a drink, that that curve plateaus very quickly, like in the in 12 to 15 seconds in there, you're basically hitting

[39:19] the plateau. In a stir drink, it's quite a bit longer, like on the order of one or 2 minutes of stirring is where you hit the real plateau.

[39:28] Um, so, uh, I did a test where instead of um, pulling basically stirring for 2 minutes until it was done, I put thermocouples in and I stirred with small ice until I hit exactly

[39:42] uh, a certain temperature. I forget what it was. I had to go look up, but I think it was like -.6 Celsius, something like that, right? And I poured the drink out. Then I took small ice and stirred it until it reached exactly

[39:55] minus .6 Celsius, poured it out. And both drinks had identical dilutions, identical. But one, right, was stirred in, I have to look it up, but it's something like 30

[40:07] seconds, and the other one was stirred in like a minute. And so, you know, that's why stirring, why we said, I

[40:14] think before, a couple times ago, there's kind of more of an art to stirring a

[40:18] cocktail because you really can affect the dilution and the temperature of the drink by how long you stir, whether you stir fast, whether you stir slow, whether you use big ice, whether you use little ice.

[40:30] In a shaker, it's so violent that basically all things equal

[40:34] out and you get to your equilibrium point, if you do it enough, basically no matter what you do. So in stirring, I mean, in shaking, rather, where you have everyone really worried about their technique on shaking, we find that it doesn't make that much of a difference.

[40:49] The most difference you're going to get, as long as you shake enough, the most difference you're going to get from shaking is actually in how you finish it, whether you strain it or not. you know, whether you push the gate down when you're pouring. These are kinds of things that make a big difference in the finished cocktail. In stirring, where you're not really adding a lot of texture, though, those things do matter, the size of the ice,

[41:06] the how fast you stir, how slow you stir, because almost no one, in fact, no one I've ever

[41:11] seen stirs a drink until it reaches its temperature plateau. And so, you know, this is spoiling a little bit what, you know, what's going to go in the blog post. So, uh, but, but hopefully, you know, the, the, this one chart that I'm going to put up where basically, you know, I pull 2 drinks at the same temperature, even though one was stirred for a minute and one was stirred for 30 seconds and they're basically identical from a dilution standpoint, will show that really, you know, that this is the fundamental rule of cocktails, is that, um, you know, there is

[41:44] the chilling and dilution are linked, inextricably linked, and that there is no

[41:50] chilling without dilution, and there is no dilution, without chilling. Now, a lot of people, they, you know, they say, but, you know, my ice comes from the from the fridge and for the freezer, rather. And we have a chart that's coming into the blog post about that as well. And it is true that there is some energy stored in an ice cube that when

[42:14] you put an ice cube from the freezer into your drink, it shows your drink a little

[42:21] bit before it starts melting. But that effect is not as big as you think, right? So if you were to stir 2 and you're going to see this chart for yourself, if you stir 2 drinks, one with ice cubes from the

[42:35] freezer and one with ice cubes that have been left out, on the, you know, on the counter until they've reached up to 0 degrees Celsius,

[42:42] you will see that the freezer ice cubes only get the drink like half a degree colder,

[42:47] right? And I really don't know whether this is an artifact or not, some scientists will have to call in and talk to us about it, but, you know, Evan Clem and

[42:55] Thomas, Eben Clem is the, you know, head of BR guest, beverage

[43:01] program, and, you know, well-known bartender and used to do a lot of high-tech cocktails, still works with a lot of these

[43:07] things. And Thomas was, you know, a bartender at Death and Co, great bartender. We all did this stirring thing at Tales of the Cocktail. And they noticed that when they used freezer ice, as opposed to not freezer ice, that their freezer ice actually took longer to chill than

[43:21] a drink down than the one that was at 0 degrees. Um, and we replicated it. And in my, in the experiments that I ran with them and one that I did separately, I found that that was also the case. I don't feel comfortable enough saying that that's actually happening, that it actually, but it's interesting

[43:38] that that, you know, that that even appears to be the case. I don't really know why that would be, except for the fact that maybe it takes longer to get the energy out from raising a temperature than it does just to melt it because melting is such a big wallop.

[43:51] So, but in the chart you'll see in the blog post, if you go to it at www.cookingissues.com. Um, It, in fact, took longer to chill a drink that was with ice cubes from the freezer, and it didn't even make it to a final temperature that was that much lower.

[44:05] So you don't really win by, um, you don't really win by using

[44:09] ice it's in the freezer. The other interesting thing about freezer ice. People think that ice maintains a temperature for a long time below zero. It's not the case. We froze a cube and you'll see a picture of it, um, around a thermocouple, and then put it into a big ice bin, and we let it sit there, and it went from -20 Celsius, which is about -4 or so in

[44:31] Fahrenheitville. And uh, it came all the way up to 0 in in under 20 minutes. So ice doesn't really maintain its below freezing temperatures that

[44:43] long, because it's such a good conductor of heat. And you're not really winning from freezer ice. And the fundamental rule, I think, holds. Remember, there is no chilling, without dilution, and there is no dilution without chilling. And with that, I think we will sign off from cooking

[45:02] issues, one more shout out to our sponsor. Hearst Ranch, cooking issues on Heritage Radio Network. Fishes, fish, vodka. Oh, you did. Got me on this corner.