[0:06] Fishes, fish, vodka. Welcome to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network. I'm Dave Arnold, the host of cooking issues here with Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez, the person who keeps the wheels on the truck. Call in all of your questions, cooking related or not? Well, probably cooking related technology related or not. Although we will take all questions. all issues. Yeah, it doesn't. Yeah, right. Today's show isn't just cooking issues. issues in general. you know, especially coming off the holiday weekend. Call in all your questions too. 718-4972128. That's 718-497-2128. We're going to be here live for another 45 minutes or so. Today's show is brought to you by 360 cookware. 360 cookware is top of the line, stainless to a cookware that is made in America in the greenest cookware manufacturing facility in the country. It can be used to make all of your favorite recipes, but it also gives the option to cook using vapor technology, which creates a seal that surrounds food with intense heat,

[1:01] locking in vitamins, moisture, and flavor without added oil, fat, or excess water. Visit our website at 360cookware.com for more information. That's 360cookware.com. Okay, now. All right. So while we're waiting for that phone call, let's start in on the Thanksgiving and the heritage turkey, the Narragansett, have you listened last week? We received a heritage breed, Narragansett, Turkey from Heritage Heritage Foods, and I cooked it using a technique. We have a caller, so I'll go back into it in a minute, but suffice it to say, best damn turkey I've ever made in my whole life. So good, in fact, so good that no one was able to take a picture of it before it was completely gone. I swear to God, like I've never not had turkey leftovers the next day. We didn't even have that many people. Turkey was obliterated, obliterated. gone. Anyway, okay, so we have a color? Color, you were on the air. Hello? Oh, we lost our call. Hello, hey, how you doing? I'm doing fine. I'm calling from California. And I actually have a question about your hydrocolid course coming up in January. Alrighty. I'm trying to decide whether it's worth $1,500 for the course plus the flight across country and 3 nights in the hotel room. Well, hopefully you'll also eat at some good restaurants while you're here. One of the benefits of being in New York. I do that every year, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So you're asking me to sell the class. Okay. Exactly. All right. Well, here's what, here's what I, hydrocoloids. First of all, you know, I'm a little bit biased because I teach the class. Uh, you know, along with uh, Nils Noran, the VP of culinary uh, culinary arts, I guess, is this title over there. It's, you know, I realize that the classes can be somewhat pricey,

[2:45] but there's a whole lot of work that goes into it.

[2:49] And whether or not it's worthwhile, for you depends a lot on you. Hydrocolloids is a, it's a difficult subject to teach because invariably in the

[2:58] class we get people with a wide range of previous, previous knowledge, previous

[3:02] experience, and also goals, right? So when you're teaching something like low temperature sous vide cooking. You know, pretty much everyone's goals are fairly similar, and it's a matter of just showing people what's possible within the realm, within the context of cooking low temperature. You know, this is what we can do with different kinds of proteins at different times with different treatments. This is what we can do with, you know, vegetables and various technologies, ways to do things. And so, like, it's very focused and everyone is there pretty much with the same goal in mind. Hydrocoloids is such a wide open field that, um, we basically we have to hit, there's certain things we have to hit, right? Because some people in the class may have never used hydrocolloids at all. Some people might be very, very experienced. So the class has to be a balance between things that, you know, maybe you might already know how to do, like spherification. We tend to deal with it with a more, you know, in a more kind of rigorous way than you would get anywhere else. I think that's, you know, the goal, that's what, you know, we try to do in general at the FCI and the tech department in cooking issues in particular, we try to do things in a very rigorous

[4:04] way whenever possible. And I think that's a standpoint you can, you know, you always get. But aside from those kind of basic techniques, we also try to teach some techniques, there's always something that no one's seen

[4:13] before because we always try to develop at least one or 2 new things for each class. I mean, when I say new, I mean like brand new. And then, um, that the, the, you know, the other thing besides the specific applications is we try to teach a particular way of thinking about using these ingredients.

[4:27] So, you know, how to develop a recipe properly. So, I mean, I think that I've had people take the class and come back to me and said that, you know, they were able to apply their stuff right away in

[4:39] their menus, you know what I mean? I've never had anyone come back and say, you know, it was useless, you know what I mean? Or, like, what wasn't necessarily worth it, but, you know, I think it all depends on what you want to get out of it and kind of how you want to

[4:52] apply it. I mean, a lot of the people that we deal with are chefs. And so for them, it's it's straight up. I mean, I don't know whether you're a chef or not, but a lot of them is straight up, well, am I going to get enough new menu items out of it. And usually the answer is yes. Um, you know, also I'm terrible at selling myself. Am I right, Nastasia? I'm like the worst person at selling myself because, you know, I hate to sell someone on something and then have them not get what they want. Is this be helpful at all or no? It's a little bit helpful. Let me tell you where I'm at. You know, I've read things like the, you know, the hydrocolid recipe collection from Martin Lersh and I've read your primer and stuff and done some of the recipes. Uh, I'm not as interested actually in recipes as I am in understanding if I'm going to be using, you know, sodium

[5:36] alginate and calcium carbonate that what are the, you know, how does acidity affect it? How does, uh, uh, you know, temperature affect, things like that, so that I can then use those chemicals uh, on my own without a

[5:50] recipe uh, to develop new things? I mean, that's our that's our goal. Our, you know, my goal in general, and if you talk to, you know, like my brother-in-law, Wiley Dufrayne at WD 50, he hates giving, he didn't hate, but he prefers not to just give out straight recipes because he wants to foster understanding of how to use these ingredients, right?

[6:07] I mean, with, I mean, the one problem is, is that it's over the course of 2 days, we're going to be dealing with a wide range of products.

[6:15] So, I mean, like, for instance, with Alginate, one of the things we deal with in general, Alginate, you know, as you've, you know, alluded to,

[6:20] for all those of you that don't know what the heck we're talking about, sodium alginate is a seaweed derived

[6:24] hydrocolloid, like a geling agent that stays liquid until it hits calcium, free

[6:30] calcium at which point it forms a gel that, you know, that is not broken neither by heat nor by anything else, basically.

[6:37] I mean, it's just the gels there forever. The unfortunate part about sodiumalgenate is it tends to suck up flavor, have very kind of poor flavor. The gel itself. You would never eat a block of alge in it because it just tastes wretched. Anyway. But so, uh, as you know, it's affected by acid. So yes, we get into that, right? But, you know, like, you know, it's more saying the level we're going to take it to is, look, you know, you can't have

[7:00] acid too much acid because it's not, it's going to cause the alginate not to set. And then, uh, you know, furthermore, you need to use uh, something called a

[7:07] sequestrate, to sequester the calcium that's freed up in the water as the acidity increases, or use a buffering agent such as sodium citrate. We'll get into that kind of stuff and like sodium hexametophosphate, but it's, you know, it's not, I mean, it's, there's only a certain level of actual technical information we can get into in the class

[7:22] because we're, like I say, we're dealing with people with a wide range of backgrounds and goals. You know what I mean? So we're going to deal with it, but, you know, I'm not going to say that it's the same as reading scientific literature on the subject, you know, which

[7:33] we can point you to. You know, you know what I mean? Well, it's said to be literature doesn't necessarily apply. I find a lot of it is just, to get to the, where I can use it in my cooking, uh, is a bit obtuse. Um, Yeah, just uh, probably. I'm a culinary instructor and I really don't like giving out recipes. I mean, that's that frame of mind. I'm, I want to teach people principles. I'm going to teach them, you know, how to think about the food and then go ahead and do it. Uh, without having to follow a recipe, uh, line by line, some sort of prescription. So that's sort of, and it sounds like you're doing that in the class, so you're not doing recipes that you are.

[8:11] going more into the principles. Right. And we've had really good luck with culinary instructors, by the way, taking our class. So to get the school to pay for it. Anyway, it's a nonprofit. Sorry. Yeah, all right. Well, anyway, I hope to see you in January and thanks for calling. Okay, bye. All right. Okay, so now, back to our Thanksgiving real quick. Wait, oh, we have another caller? Caller, you are on the air. Hi there, dude, it's Colin Gorgan from down here in DC. Howdy? Uh, I have 2 things, I want to ask. I know there's probably a break coming up, so maybe pick whichever's easier. We'll power through it. do it. All right, okay. So 1st thing I want to do. All right, I'm making oyster mushroom soup oysters, right, out of, kind of dropping them in an

[8:58] alternate bath and making these kind of like snotty little oyster looking things that are full of delicious briny oyster

[9:05] soup. And uh, I want to make the kind of that alginate skin on them, a little more perolescent, a little more like, you know, oystery, not like, thin, uh, translucent, kind of snotty thing you get from the

[9:22] algae. Right. Okay, so, but, like, like, hard snot. It's not like, it's not like a Xanthan, it's not. not adding a lot of Xanthe. Oh, yeah, no, no, they like, they come out great. It's just they're clear, right? Right. And I want this, I want that very surface kind of skin to have a little bit of, like, be more translucent

[9:38] than transparent. Okay. Give it some... here's a couple of ways we can go. First of all, are you doing forward algernate or reverse algernate? Reverse. Okay, you're doing, so you're doing, and they're frozen beforehand? Or not frozen? Not frozen. Okay. Just out of curiosity. I do a lot of mine, I'll freeze just because it makes it easier. Like you freeze the mixture and then you drop it in and you don't have to worry about it. Yeah, good idea. Yeah, so I'm... Definitely had crumbs, like, you know, forming them. Yeah, basically 98% of the time I'll pre-freeze them because it's not that long of an extra step and it just makes your processing much easier. Okay, now to your prolescent problem. There are a couple of solutions. So you're looking to add something to the alginate bath, both the modified the texture and the look. Okay. Now, if you want to just modify the look. I don't recommend this, by the way, by what I'm saying to you, I don't recommend, but you can go the

[10:25] Kike de Costa method. Kike de Costa, as you might know, famous Spanish chef. Uh, adds a lot of metal dust to a lot of his stuff, right?

[10:33] So you can get food grade, basically perolescent powder that's relatively flavor. I'm not recommending this. But I'm saying like as the fastest way. So he did a famous dish where he did an oyster that he literally put silver dust on, like an oyster oyster,

[10:47] not like what you're saying, I believe. been a long time, been many years, but that looked, you know, that was from shiny stuff. You know what I mean? And it gave her an interesting look. I'm not so much about adding stuff that doesn't have a sort of a flavor impact. Now, if you want to go flavor impact, you can do that. It going to look good. not going to affect the taste, so you can get food grade silver, either from like, well, usually leaf, if you get it from an Indian source, like an

[11:09] Aervedic source, or you can get food grade powders. I't know where Kik got them, probably somewhere in Spain. Now, if you want to add more of a shimmer to it, and you want to modify the texture of the alginate, right? So that it doesn't taste like solidified snot, right, technical term, right? Nostasia solidified, it's not anywhere. So, uh, what I would do is emulsify some oil into the alternate base before you drop. So what you're doing is, yeah, so that's going to, this is an old semi-established technique, but one that's not really talked about a lot because everyone knows that the texture of an alginate gel is not so great.

[11:42] If you add a little oil, multify a little oil in to it, right? All of a sudden, now your teeth are going to break it better, it's going to look better, it's going to feel softer. And as long as you're careful with it. You're not going to destroy the integrity of it too much, right? And so that, I mean, to me, much more than the than adding metal does to it, like that, because you're improving the actual

[12:04] product other than just the visuals. It will also, you know, because you're emulsifying stuff in, it'll get a shimmery, you know, more of

[12:10] an salad dressing, a shimmery look to it, but you're actually also going to need a better product. Just make sure that you're emulsifying oil into the alginate and not the other way around because the alternate needs to be the continuous phase. Anyway, and what was the other one? Let's see whether we can tackle the other one real quick before I go to break, although Nastasia and Jack are going to shut my head. Yeah, I want to ask if you ever, so your juices that you clarified with your peck

[12:34] necks got, you know, nice clear juices. Have you ever tried reducing them or making a glaze or even like a caramel out of that reduced

[12:42] uh juice? Oh, yes. Do you know if the Technic, the Technics has a negative effect on that? No, we do that all the time. I mean, I've never done it over heat because like, you know, we're all about trying to preserve the original flavor of it. So I typically will reduce in my rotary evaporator, but I've made some of the most ridiculous

[13:01] reductions. So like typical applications we've done, like fresh apple reduction that we've clarified and taken it down to a syrup. We've done fresh strawberry. In fact, I don't know whether I talked about it on error, but it was a result of a question someone asked on

[13:13] error once. I made a candy where we did, I reduced a fresh clarified strawberry juice down, you know, without heat down to about 33

[13:21] bricks. And then you stirred that into a candy base that I had made that let cool, you know, somewhat so the strawberry wasn't flavored, crazy, crazy good, crazy good. And we've done blood orange. You like the blood orange, right, nastasia, where we reduce it to a syrup post-clarification. So it's an excellent application. I don't know what the results with heat are because it's going to taste a little bit cooked,

[13:42] but, you know, so there's certain clarification steps that if you can cook it, you might as well cook it.

[13:46] But on the other hand, Pecnex is very good, especially on things like Apple and whatnot. So yes, the quick answer is yes. So, well, yeah, I was just curious then. What if, uh, All right, if I wanted

[13:58] to kind of kick the remaining starchy bits and the solid bits out of some, like, uh, sweet potato slurry and try to caramelize the remaining sugars

[14:09] left. I know he even talked last week about, uh, like this is something I've been thinking about for a

[14:14] while, because you know how, like, when you bake a sweet potato, you get this delicious, sometimes, sometimes you get this delicious, like, caramelized stuff that oozes out,

[14:21] and, like, drips on the pan. I want to, I want to make that, but, like, in large amounts. So I figured, especially when I had saw a paper a couple months ago about, uh, you know, there being a lot of analyzes in sweet potatoes, so you could maximize, you know, how much

[14:37] sugar is in them, maybe break down some extra starches, and then I go figure out a way to kind of turn that into, like, you know, remove enough of the kind of solid matter to get, like, a sugary

[14:49] liquid, I can simmer down and turn into a caramel. There's no question in my mind. There's no question in my mind at all that you can juice a sweet potato and then clarify it. No question. And then, though, the sugar's away in there. Now, if you wanted to get sweeter, uh, you could add some, um, some brewers, some amylase to it. You know what I mean? Some alpha beta amylase, you'd get a brewer supply shop, add it to that and just basically mash it out like you would a wart for beer. You know what I mean? And then the question is getting the right balance, then clarifying it and cooking out the mash before you set

[15:20] the start. The key is, is that to spin out or to get, to clarify out the extra starch before you gelatinize it. You know what I mean? Because then after you gelatinize it, oh, everything's a pain in the ass. Would you rec- uh, you know, rear, I mean. Do you think tech connects would be a good rap for that? or are there... No, you know, we, I could tip physical separation to you, you know? I mean, physical separation is what I would try first, but I mean, because I don't know how much of it's soluble. I know how much of it is stabilized by by the pecking, but it's something we could

[15:45] try, if Nastasia remembers to write it down, we'll give it a give it a whirl. But yeah, definitely doable. Definitely doable. But now, now, yeah, I mean, do you think, I mean, could I just try throwing it through a juicy, for instance, afterwards, would that be possible? Because I was like, I would juice it right away. juice it right away and then do any procedure you're going to have to the juice because it's just going to free up more of the

[16:07] enzymes. So do all your juicing. I've never tried juicing a sweet potato before. I didn't really know if I could expect it to squeeze a lot out. I don't know what your yield is going to be. I don't know, but, you know, you could also juice it, treat the pulp, treat the pulp with

[16:20] Pectinex and rejuice. Yeah, okay, yeah. Either way, yield's going to be better than what you get chipping out of soup stairs and you toss them another.

[16:31] Can't be worse. Give us a give us a holler. Tell us how it works. Yeah. Alrighty. Thanks for calling. So do we are we going to go to a break? Okay, we're going to break. We be right back with cooking issues. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Feel good. So much bone, brother. How you feeling, man? I call your name. I don't want people to know you're in here. How you feel, fella? Hey, yeah. Sure, getting down. Look at him! We're gonna have a bunk, good time. We're gonna have a fun good time. We're gonna have a fun, good time. We're gonna have a fun, good time. Now take 'em up, Fred. We gotta take you high. All right. I want to do it again. You wanna do it again, huh? Gotta take you high.

[17:39] Brother? Now, I want everybody. Let red blow up my two courses. And then I want to wave in, let's go and do that with dinner now, all right? I'm gonna get that fella with a little horn over there. Go, James, hold on, man. Fred, can it take us higher? Take us higher. Fred! Man! Man!

[18:17] Welcome back to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network, a show where we answer all of your cooking issues, or, as Nastasia said today, just your issues. Call in all of your questions too, 718-497-2128-718-497-2128. Uh, here live in Brooklyn. Okay, so back to Thanksgiving for a minute. Because I didn't get to finish what I was saying. So we got this, you know, Patrick gave us this, gave me, I should say, Nastasia didn't get to eat me. But I got my own. Oh, you did? Heritage Breed? But how was it? Did you ever cook it? Little bit. A little bit? A little bit or a lot bit? Was there any moisture in it at all? Was there a similarity with like a hammer? Was it was it like was it like a solid block? No. There was some juice left? Yes. You could eat it without gravy. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so as I said last week, the one that we got, when I got was a Narragansett bird, clocked in around £15, I think, £15 or so. So smaller than my normal, you know, gigundas bird, but, you know, because heritage breed. So I did the bionic turkey, boned it in, you know, boned it inside out without cutting the skin, made an aluminum skeleton for it, made, you know, aluminum leg bones that we cut holes into. So they're like a sprinkler system, hooked it up to a circulator, piped hot oil through the, through

[19:40] the Aerzot's leg bones to cook the legs from the inside out at the correct temperature. I set my circulator at 675 for a final temperature in the

[19:49] leg afterwards, pumped through all the aluminum about 66, which is where I wanted it. Then after about an hour and 20 minutes of that, dropped the whole bird, still with the leg pumping through to get it inside a lot, threw it into a big thing of duck fat.

[20:01] When I say oil, I meant duck fat. In duck fat, cooked it all to about 6 started it a little higher at like 66 and dropped it to 65 and then finally a 64 for the finish off of the cook.

[20:11] Uh, so 64 and a half . cooled it down in the fat, like it was in the fat, like it was a confit, ripped it

[20:17] out. And because my parents, well, my stepfather, actually, is petrified of any sort of cooking operation and doesn't understand it. I decided I was going to finish the bird in the oven rather than my preferred technique, which is 1st deep

[20:28] that frying, and then failing that, ladling hot fat over it to crisp up the skin. So anyway, so I'm like, all right, listen, my stepfather's name is Gerard, so I'm just going to call him Gerard from here. One time I fried a turkey, you know, on the, you know, out on the lawn, right? And a little bit spilled over and hit a little bit of the grass. And he now claims that I started a major forest fire that day. And he says the grass is still dead there,

[20:50] which, 1st of all, let's say it was, who cares? I mean, they got an acre of land, like a little patch of dead grass. Make it the turkey, you know, cooking spot, right? Anyway, not a big problem, but this is the kind of thing that totally flips him out because he does, like I say, even though he's got one of the best palettes for wine that I've ever

[21:04] met, of anyone I've ever met and like loves food. Petrified and doesn't understand anything about cooking at all. Like, doesn't know the sharp end of a knife. You know what I'm saying? anyway. So this year, Oh, and then a year after that, I was like, well, I won't carry your glass, kill your grass. So I fried it. Basically, against my wishes, my mom said fry the turkey again. This is years ago. And I fried it on the patio, on the flagstone, and some oil hit the flagstone, and this was one of those subfreezing Thanksgivings, you know, up in New York,

[21:29] and he was out there. I don't know what the hell he thought he was doing, hosing down Flagstone and below freezing weather because the water was just freezing up as he was trying to get the oil off.

[21:38] Anyway, he ended up, it ruined Thanksgiving for the 2nd time. For turkey related reasons. I mean, I've ruined Thanksgiving many times for other things, arguments and whatnot. But anyway, so this year I was like, it's going to be somewhat normal. I'm going to throw the bird in the oven. Everything's going to be fine. I decide my mom has this clay, this clay, you know, like a baking sheet, almost like a rumor toff, but it's made

[21:57] by, you know, it's clay baking sheet. I'm like, oh, I'm going to throw this in like a pizza stone. I'm going to throw this thing in the because it's got sides, right? So it'll catch the drippings. I'm going to throw it in the oven. crank the oven to 500 degrees and then I'm going to put the turkey in and the bottom's going to get brown just like the top because that's what, you know, the bottom never gets brown properly when you're doing this kind of thing. And my mom's like, no, you're going to set off the smoke detector. I like, mom, she just got a new one put in. I'm like, 1st of all, here's a note to everyone out there. Like, I know safe, smoke detectors, safety, all that crap. Like put a dang, some sort of switch. They are cooking detectors. These things are cooking detectors. And my mom's cooking detector is hooked directly to the fire department. So as soon as you start cooking, like the engines come, and then in Westchester, where my parents live, they charge you, the city gives you a big fat bill, if they show up at your house and there's no fire.

[22:40] Really? Yeah. So it almost makes you want to light a fire. like whenever they come. You know what I mean? I didn't say that. I didn't recommend that. Anyhoo. So, like, you know, I'm running around the house, like, it's like sticking these like plastic covers, these defeaters over

[22:51] the, uh, over the, the cooking detectors. And here's what's demented, right? They don't want to put a switch on it in case you should turn it off and then go to bed, but instead they give you a plastic thing to defeat it,

[22:59] that you have to remember to get on a chair and remove the plastic thing. Does this make any dang sense? It should be like your virus protection when you get on the computer where you say, okay, I will turn it off for the next 20 minutes. You know what I mean? something like that. Anyway, I hate those damn things. My wife installed one once in my apartment in New York, even though we're in a fireproof building, and my only memory of it is it going off and me getting so angry that I literally jumped up and one hand punch fisted it, like, you know, like, oh, yeah, yeah, like

[23:22] street fighter move, like punch the, the, the, and like rain down on the floor in like little pieces. And I was like, I'm sorry. I had to apologize to everyone. I was like, sorry for the outburst, but I have this like visceral reaction against cooking detectors. Anyway, uh, you know, anyway, whatever. Here's the thing also, when you're cooking in the kitchen, right? You know if there's a fire. It's not like in your bedroom or in a hallway at night. You know when you catch something on fire in the kitchen, right? Anyway. And plus, everyone's house is underventilated. So there's always smoke. Whenever you're doing any sort of good cooking operation. So either everyone in the world is setting up... And houses, have those crappy little like Home Depot, Brone, nothing against a Brone corporation, like vents, and they fire them up, and they never can get all of the, all of

[24:06] the, uh, the smoke out. So either everyone is cooking poorly. Maybe true, or everyone is enduring smoke, more probably true. And then a good portion of those people, like someone in the house is freaking out about the smoke. Right? It's irritating. whole thing's irritating. Anyway, whatever. So I'm like, it's going to be fine. We put the little defeaters over the cooking detectors, fired up the oven to 500, which is the highest that thing would go, convection, threw in the baking sheet, got it all nice and hot, throw the turkey on, and for

[24:32] once the turkey actually fit in the oven because I didn't bring a £30 turkey with me, or, you know, I brought like a £15 turkey. Put it on All of a sudden, smoke all through the freaking house. Smoke everywhere. Smoke, smoke on top of smoke on top of smoke. And I'm like, you know, whatever, smoke. I don't care. Everyone's flipping out. Open it up. The dang baking sheet, the clay baking sheet had shattered in

[24:54] two, and all of the drippings and fat and everything from the turkey that was crisping up in the thing were on the bottom of the oven, basically smoking like smoking like the

[25:04] devil. And so I didn't get to fully brown the turkey. And yet still the most delicious bird I've ever made in my life. Once we got through the whole, you know, ruining Thanksgiving aspect of it. So, to report back on the Narraganza turkey, do not overcook the turkey, but the bird definitely

[25:18] had like, it was like turkey squared. It tasted like turkey with turkey flavor in it, even though I hadn't reinforced it with anything. It didn't put gravy on it. I brined it lightly before we cooked it, but, you know, no big deal, but it had a very meaty flavor, enjoyed by all, including my stepfather's 90 or 91-year-old

[25:34] ex butcher father who spent his years, you know, butchering animals back in the old days back when meat had had real

[25:41] flavor. So that's my report back on the Narragansett Turkey, and don't try to crisp that thing on top of a, on top of a clay baking sheet because bad things will happen.

[25:53] Anyway, do you want to catch back up on time and take our 2nd break now? Sure. All right. You want to talk about the class? Oh, yeah, yeah, okay. before we go to break. I have a class coming up, and again, you know, apparently if you listen to the 1st segment, not so good at the self-promotion, but this is actually a very inexpensive class. If you happen to be in New York City tomorrow, and you want to learn how to make some holiday cocktails that you can make at home, and some that require liquid nitrogen and rotary evaporation, then for the meager price of

[26:21] $125, and you'll get how many drinks are you making, some preposterous number of drinks? Hell, it's cheaper than a bar almost, because we're going to give you snacks and everything too. I mean, when you think about it. It's 2 hours. 6.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. I'll be there. Nils Norn will be there, and we're gonna, you know, make some drinks that go on fire. We're going to make some drinks that are cold. We're gonna, what, you know, anyway, it's tomorrow, and you can sign up by going to www.what? freshculinary.com or something? I don't really know. I know this kind of stuff. No, you have to go to the international culinary center from the French colon. Oh, I don't know. don't know. Google, David Mills, holiday cocktails. Anyway, it should be fun. and if nothing else, you will have a lot to drink. So check that out. Call in your questions. We're coming back for another segment, 718-497-2128, 718-497-2128 cooking issues. How you feel, brother? You feel good. Play so much, bone, brother. How you feel, man? I call your name. I don't want no people to know you in here. How you feeling, fella? Yeah, yeah. Sure, getting down. We're gonna have a punk, good time. We're gonna have a fun, good time. We're gonna have a bump, good time. We're gonna have a bump. Good time. Now take 'em up, Fred. We gotta take you high. All right. I wanna do it again. You wanna do it again? Yeah, that's it. We gotta take you home.

[28:09] Brother? Now I want everybody. Let bread blow up my two courses. And then I wanna wave in, let's go and do that within us now, all right? All right, all right. I'm gonna get that bell with a little horn over there. You got James Horn on me. Fred, can you take us higher? Take us higher. Fred! Red! Bam!

[28:39] Welcome back to Cooking Issues, Dave Arnold and Nastasia Lopez, here in the studio, waiting for your call at 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Coming to you from Bushwick, Brooklyn. All right. I have some questions from the from the email. We haven't answered any email questions today. Have we yet? No? All right. I have a couple of questions, Chris S. says. I really want an ISI or EC because they're switching. switching to they're switching to EC here in the U.S. or they're switching to ISI. EC. EC. Yeah, they're both. Like in Europe, they're ISI and here they're EC or vice versa or something like that. So they're both true. We're just going to say EC from now on. And you all know what I'm talking about. Whipped cream makers that we use for like either whipped cream or rapid infusion technique, you know,

[29:27] developed a couple months ago. So the question Chris has is, which is the best one of these EC things to buy, EC

[29:35] Whip. First of all, don't don't buy the I mean, nothing against, but don't buy the seltzer one. It's the most limited. Make sure you get a cream one. And there's all different kinds. There's Prophy Whip. the gourmet whip, like 9 million. They all have crazy names. But in general, the big deal, the newer ones have silicone grip rings on them so that you can grip them when you're

[29:54] wet as opposed to the older ones. So I'd look for the ones that have the silicone grip ring. I should know like exactly what all the line models are, but I don't. The only big difference, really, is the thermal whip, the thermal whip

[30:05] is looks like it's like a three-quarter of a liter or something, but it's actually smaller. It's a half liter and it's insulated. And with the thermal whip, the thermal whip is very useful for people who are working on a line or in an area where they need to keep something hot or cold and they don't have access to either keeping it in the fridge or in a

[30:22] Bain Marie of hot water for service, right? So if you need to keep something hot or cold for a long time, then get a

[30:28] thermo whip, but they're a lot more money and their capacity is lower. Now, I would definitely, I mean, you're more limited if you get a smaller size, but it's also going to cost you less to do a recipe in a smaller size than in a bigger size because you can't just, when you're doing an infusion, in an AC bottle,

[30:47] you, you know, the amount of product in it and how many chargers you put in it are variables, and so you want to keep your recipes the same all the time. Most of my recipes are written for half liter, uh, half liter containers, um, you know, but you can scale them up to liter containers. If you can only buy one and you know you're going to need to make a lot of product at one point, maybe you have to get the leader

[31:07] size, but it's an interesting question to answer. I use mainly half layers. By the way, for any of you, like, we're, like, literally in a construction zone here. So if you hear any like hammering, like don't say that it's not Jack's fault. our engineer. He's not like doing construction, it's but there's only so much sound insulation that we can do. And so there's like, you know, it's because they're making Roberta's pizzeria here even better than it was before. That's why. so it's worth it. Second question, Chris, has, is if you put pineapple in an EC with alcohol and charged it, would you get both flavored alcohol and alcohol

[31:37] infused, fruit similar to using a vacuum machine, I have tried it, we've done it, and yes, you do get some infusion into the pineapple itself. I don't know that it's, I have to redo it again. It works. I don't think it's maybe as effective at getting the stuff into the pineapple as the vacuum machine, but it's pretty close. Like it does actually work. And in fact, I'll probably be demoing that tomorrow. The caveat is you want to make sure that you use nitrous so that the pineapple doesn't taste carbonated. And I think you're gonna boil more of the liquor out when it bubbles out than you would using a vacuum.

[32:10] So I think the vacuum gets a stronger infusion into the pineapple. Pineapple is also interesting because a lot of its aroma, once it's extracted, is very fleeting. especially in distillations and things like that. So you're going to want to probably, you know, balance. Like, I wouldn't keep pineapple for a long, long time, even though people do. I think it like loses some of its good aroma. But I hope this hope that helps. Okay, Teddy DeVico wrote in and he said, what are your thoughts on getting the sous vide supreme? Is it as accurate as an immersion circulator? Thanks. No. No, it is not. The sous vide supreme. Another little gripe you've heard me say before. Sous vide is cooking in a vacuum environment in a vacuum bag and seal thing using a vacuum machine. Sous vide Supreme has nothing to do with sous vide. Sous vide Supreme is a low temperature cooker that's basically a non-stirred water bath, non-stirred water

[32:56] bath, have limits of accuracy because they're not stirred, right? I'm not saying it's a bad piece of equipment, but I'm saying that there are limits to its fundamental

[33:04] accuracy and over very long periods of time, it probably gets a fairly accurate result. If you don't stir and you leave it. I mean, if you just leave it sit, it'll probably equalize over a long period of time. But in general cooking, I would say there's not going to be nearly as even or accurate as an immersion circulator, which is typically good to a couple tenths of a degree across the entire bath.

[33:22] So, also, immersion circulators are a lot, they can, they can do various different sizes and they take up less space in the kitchen. The Souviet Supreme. I realize is a couple $100 less than a circulator, but if I was going to get one, I would save up the couple 100 extra dollars and get an immersion circulator. I would personally, and I shouldn't ever say this, I would rather have like my own, like, DIY, like, you know, home ghetto

[33:46] circulator than the Supreme. But that's me. That's me. Don't take this. I'm sorry, I apologize. It not a bad product. I'm just saying that I'm very pro circulation. Another thing you might want to do is put an aquarium pump into a sous vide supreme and have it

[33:57] circulate and then I think you'd get rid of all of its shortcomings. That's another solution. That's like a $25 solution problem. Oh, we have a caller. Caller you were on the air. Hey, Dave, it's Roughly Shockingford. How are you? Hey, doing all right. I'm glad to hear that. I got a question for you. I'm illegally distilling alcohol. Good. Yeah, but, you know, when I saw it, when I originally was directed to cooking.com,

[34:22] I found a kindred spirit in you. So, what I want to know is, I want to do a Dr. Pepper infusion, because as we all know, Dr. Pepper is the champagne and beverages. Yeah, it's not, yeah, champagne. We got to think of another. It has champagne for my favorite beers. We got to come, we need like some sort of sham soda term. Yeah, Dr. Pepper, good product. Okay. Dr. Pepper is the preferred drink of the booth at Heritage radio network as well. Wow. Sorry to hear. Yeah. So, okay, so what do you want to infuse with Dr. Pepper? I just make basically a neutral grain spirit. That's all I distill right now. And it comes in around like 45, 50%, and I wanted to just, I bought an ISI, and I wanted to infuse Dr. Pepper flavors into booze.

[35:06] Well, okay. Well, I mean, the problem is like a liquid liquid. you know what you should do is just buy Dr. Pepper syrup. Yeah, you should, like, like, you should just, like, I don't know whether you can, like, uh, Dr. Pepper, I, is that Coke or Pepsi? I think it's actually like a, it's not owned by either of them. like a Nestle or something. Right, but they locally, they always go through a, you know, in other words, like even if you're an independent locally, you either go through a Coke distributor or a Pepsi distributor for your bottling. So like, like you, anyway, my point is if it's ever on tap anywhere, which it is, right? It means you can buy the syrup in a bag in box situation. And so those syrups are typically very high bricks because they're mixed in low quantity so that you can get many, many, many gallons out of it. And then you could just do the real deal. You know what I mean? So you're talking adding, you know, like a very small percentage of product. So you could still, you could make a straight up Dr. Pepper, you know,

[36:06] booze and not take it, you know, below uh, below 40%. If you're starting with, if you're starting with 50, you could take it not below 40 and have straight up Dr. Pepper

[36:15] liquor. You know, and then carbonated. would be possible to thin the Dr. Pepper syrup through a centipede to like clarify it or no, that one more.

[36:24] Well, okay, so, so, okay, so it's an interesting question. So clarification, right? Typically, clarifying is just going to get rid of stuff that makes it not light not pass through it. Dr. Pepper, the only reason light doesn't pass through it is because it's so concentrated. Like everything is actually in solution there. you know what I mean? So, like, if you want it clear, right? the, the, then you'd have to, I mean, the problem is, is that like the sugars wouldn't come through and like some of the bittering agents wouldn't come

[36:52] through. So if you redistilled Dr. Pepper, all you get is kind of the aroma. You know what I'm saying? which isn't necessarily which isn't necessarily what you want. Another thing we could do. I don't really know the recipe, although I know it has prunes in it, which is

[37:06] why like the fake ones are called like Dr. Thunder. Uh, you know what I mean? you know, reference to your butt, I guess. But the, but the, but I don't know the actual recipe of Dr. Pepper, but I'm sure this is something that is like a

[37:20] known like thing on the internet that we can look it up. And then if we figure out what the flavor profile is, Well, then you could start doing distillations with the aroma components of

[37:29] it and then try to mimic like the sugar acid balance of something like, for instance, in the prune and get it get it to come across. And then you could use something that's like less color. Also, there are white prunes, right? So if you're going to use a prune, like, most prunes are purple, because most plums that are made into prunes are purple, but there are white plums that are made into prunes,

[37:49] you can't get them commercially. I think there's some French ones. They were stretching my memory a lot, but I believe like Brignol prunes can be white. I'm not sure. But anyway, so you can get that kind of dried fruit flavor and you can add some kind of plum essence back to it to get a plummy thing in a clearer liquid if you start from 1st

[38:07] principles. But then you're going down a much longer road, rather than if you just want like straight up fast delicious, you get yourself some liquor, and you get yourself some Dr. Pepper syrup,

[38:17] and, you know, you water it to whatever level, you want to drink it at, and then, and then carbonate it, and then you're good to go. I mean, that's like a one that's like a one day problem. Do you know what I mean? I will send you a bottle once it's all made. We appreciate it. We appreciate it. Thanks for Thanks for calling in. One another question. All right. what your favorite Simpsons episode was. Wow, you know, I haven't watched The Simpsons in a, I appreciate the 1st non-cooking question. I haven't watched The Simpsons in a long time, a long time because I used to watch it faithfully. And there are so many good ones to choose from. The one where the pig is flying through the air and Homer says it's still good, it's still good, it's still good, comes to

[38:54] mind. The vegetarian. Yeah, that's a that's a good one. The, the, when, uh, you know, when Krusty, uh, went to jail the 1st time around. That was an amazing, amazing episode, like the itchy and scratchy, the itchy and scratchy censorship one, the

[39:11] flag burning one. I mean, there's so many. so hard to choose. Think about it for a while. I'll listen next week. All right, I'll put some good thinking into that one. All right, Dave, thanks a lot. All right, thanks for calling. All right. So we see we can ritzer some more questions before we're done. Sure. Jack, we have a couple minutes here. Can I rip through some of these questions? And Jackie, you've never given me a Dr. Pepper in the studio? Wow, she's calling you out. Calling you out. Also, Dr. Pepper, for those of you there diet drinkers, a good diet flavor. Look, you know what? Nastache is sitting here crinkling up her nose. Look, people who drink diet sodas, right? And I grew up drinking. I realize everyone's going to hate me now. I got to drink diet. Listen, it's like people who drink diet sodas, right? We don't drink just one. Like, people who, like, have sugar full sodas, like, I need a little bit of a boost. You know what I mean? People drink giant sodas, they don't drink water, right? All they drink is diet soda. So they need to pound a bunch of these things to stay hydrated, right? That used to be me. Now I drink exclusively seltzer, right? So I don't drink really soda that much anymore because I drink exclusively seltzer, but realize that your diet soda drinking friends and neighbors are using it as a hydration technique, not as

[40:15] a, like, I need a little bit of sugar. So, you know, and if you're buying for a party, right? Never let a sugar soda drink or buy soda for a party. They're always wrong. This is why, at the end of the night, there's no diet coke left, and there's 8000 bottles of coke left at the end of the party. Why? Yes, you have no idea what you're talking about. Look, a diet soda drinker goes over and locates their 2 liter bottle, right? And then they drink it, right? Whereas you have like a cup of coke. Like, mark my words, let diet soda drinkers buy the non-alcoholic products for your party.

[40:49] All right, hold on a second. I got, um, I got another question from, um, I got a question from Jacob. And he had a question about a tabletop vacuum sealer, but Jacob, I'm going to answer this question next week because I didn't have time to research the one that you put onto

[41:05] the, onto the emails emails. So I'll try and research that. A lot of people are interested in lower priced vacuum machines because kind of the entry-level price for a real vacuum machine is in and around

[41:17] $1,500 and there's a wealth of new ones out there that are 3 and $400. And the question is, are they any dang good? The answer is, I have no idea, because I haven't used them, but I'd like to look at the specs and see whether they're any good. I mean, it would be great. Like, my life would be really cool if, like, I had the money to go buy all this equipment and test it for for you guys. I don't, you know what I mean? I don't have access to it because one thing I am good at, Nastasia, right, is putting equipment through its paces. Yes or no. Yes. Okay. And one last question also from Teddy DeVico is, he recently got a Twist and Sparkle, which is a new carbonation unit from EC. It carbonates liquid, and he says, it's used in drinks, but why not savory things such as sauces or broths? Have you carbonated any sauces or broth or other savory liquids? And, uh, yes, but, you know, the issues are, one, the sauce has to be good served cold because when you heat it, you're going to lose a lot of the

[42:15] carbonation. And it has to taste good carbonated, which means it has to taste good with CO2.

[42:20] A lot of times with savory dishes, when things have CO2 in them, they start tasting like they're a little bit fermented. So you have to watch out for that. I would do a quick test just by, you know, like doing 50-50

[42:30] with, uh, I mean, if you have the eyesight, twist a sparkle, just try it. The rules are, make sure it's cold, make sure it doesn't have, if it has any, like, milk in it, you're done, it's going to foam over and spray all over your house. If you if you have particles in it, then it's going to foam up and spray all over your house. Um, so it needs to be clear. Otherwise you're going to run into real problems. But other than that, the only rules are keep it cold and does it taste good. And that's basically like a general good rule for life, right? Well, for carbonating. Keep it keep the temperature where it wants to be. And what? said it's a good rule for life. Good rule for life. Yeah. Yes, I'm not going to get into it on the air. Anyway, so this then has been cooking issues. Come back, visit us next week. Tuesday this time. Vicious fish vodka. Oh, you did. Got me on this corner. And I don't know where I'm at. Supposed to meet my baby. 20 minutes late. Enhance your CTE programs with AP and the college credited offers. New AP career Kickstart courses are now available for high schools to adopt for the 2026 2027 school year. Help your students kickstart their careers with AP's cybersecurity or AP business with personal finance. Learn more at careerkickstart.org.