[0:06] Fishes, fish, vodka. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. We're recording on a Monday, but we're going to be broadcasting on Tuesday, so if you're listening to it now, you're probably not listening to it live.

[0:18] But if you happen to have read our blog post, you can call in your questions too, 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. This is the last cooking issues before the big museum fundraiser event. It's going on at Del Posto next weekend on Sunday. You can still go and buy your tickets at Mofad, MOFAD. That's a museum of food and drink. Mofad.eventbright, B-R-I-T-E, uh.com. That's mofad.eventbright.com. Anyway, we are privileged today to have a special Colin guest. Harold McGee is going to be the ultimate master blaster of the science of deliciousness is going to be joining us via phone. Unfortunately, we're working very hard on the museum event. And so Nastasia cannot be with us today in the studio because, in fact, she is delivering produce to WD 50 because Wiley

[1:13] DuFrame is going to be working on the dish today for, you know, doing some preparatory work today for his dish. So no nostasia, but we do have Harold Harold, you there? Hi, I'm Dave. Good morning. Good morning. How are you doing? I'm doing okay. How's the West Coast treating you? Uh, it's, it's okay. This last week has been really rainy and cold. Today, it was sunny to begin with, but the sun has disappeared, so it looks like it may be another grim week.

[1:40] I'd love it then. You know, I hate the sunshine. Well, but you know, 50 degrees, you want a little a few rays. Yeah, all right, all right. Yes, if it's going to be 50 out, it might as well be a little bit exciting. Okay, so you want to start hitting these questions? We have a bunch of email questions in. Sure. Before we start, someone wrote in, one of the questions, they want to know the secret of Thai iced tea. The mysterious spices in Thai iced tea. And I have to say, I don't know, because I'm not a, I don't really, I don't drink it. Do you drink it? I'm afraid I haven't for a long time. I did a couple times years ago and uh,

[2:22] yeah, I just can't pull back the, uh, the flavors. Yeah. And so, I mean, I think that, you know, this is the kind of question Aaron wrote in with it. I think this is the kind of question, um, you know, I would hate to give just a research answer off of the web of what belongs in

[2:39] it because I don't have the actual taste memory in my head to know whether it's right or

[2:43] not. It's not something I've worked on because it's not something that it's just not something that I've, you know, focused on ever, but, you know, I'm sure that we can find the answer. I mean, if you, you know, if you see PIM when you're out there or something like that, we can probably get the answer of what the, what the stuff is, but I would hate to, I would hate to guess on something like that. Yeah, yeah. No, same here. All right, Aaron, so I apologize, but I will not be able to answer that question this week because I just don't want to give an answer that's

[3:13] BS. I'd rather not give a B. I'd rather give no answer than a BS answer, right? Yeah, and also, I mean, uh, uh, for

[3:22] Aaron to do his own research, uh, shape him would be a good place to start. Uh, David Thompson's book on Thai cooking is uh, seems to be the the standard. So there are a couple of, you know, authorities you can start with and then kind of move on from there. Yeah, I'm sure Thompson has a recipe for it in the book. I have it at home. I just haven't been home to to look at it, to get the recipe out of it, but his book is, you know, as far as I can

[3:48] tell, quite well respected. I know that he's done all of his research on the, on kind of the, on the old manuscript. So he has a thorough knowledge of current Thai cooking and historical Thai cooking. So. And in fact, I think he has a new book this last year on

[4:04] street cooking, street tie, which might be an even better place to look. Yeah. And that's where we'd probably go anyway if we were just going to give you. wouldn't be our answer. It would be his answer anyway. Yeah, exactly. Or check out PIM's PIM's site. Now, I'm going to knock out one question right away and Harold, you can chime in because you've had some of this stuff. But, uh, Rick writes in and says that his roommate, Zach's advisor, just purchased a new rotary evaporator for the lab and has agreed to let them use it for a few days for food purposes and they want to take maximum advantage of everything that they can do in

[4:41] it. And, uh, you know, they want to build their own, but they're not ready for it quite yet. And so they want to know what we should do. Like, uh, he just wants to distill basically as much as possible. Um, he wants to get the flavors of Falernum, uh, into it. Maybe. He wants to do, um, Martell Cordon Blue is right for something. I've actually wrote a vet, and Harold, you've had it. We did a event with Mandy Aftel where we wrote a F Martel with Frankincense. I't know whether you like frankincense, but Martel does roto that quite well. Uh, he wants to do something with maybe uh, absinthe, any of these things, oak, dirt, grass, cigars, uh, peppers, like

[5:18] Wajillo Ancho and stuff like that. What do they wrote of app stuff do you like, Harold? Pretty much everything you've done. I love what you do with habaneros, for example, that's an amazing experience to be able to separate the

[5:34] heat from the aroma. Right. Yeah, I mean, I've done dried and and have you ever had any of the dried pepper? I prefer the fresh pepper ones because I like the floral note that they have more. Yeah, yeah. Um... And then, I mean, the dishes that I've had, uh, that have really stuck in my head. In fact, the very 1st one is probably still the, the one I remember best, uh, is the, the

[6:01] Roka family did a, um, an oyster in a jelly that was flavored

[6:07] with, uh, earth. Uh, so, um, uh, one of the ideas on the list here

[6:14] was, uh, along with oak and grass and cigars was dirt and dirt works, although, uh, you and I had it, I think, um, when, um, uh, the Roccas were visiting the

[6:27] FCI, and it wasn't the same. Well, they didn't give it to me. He wouldn't give he said he was going to give it to me and he didn't, probably because it wasn't the same, maybe. Yeah, yeah. So in fact, I had it and it wasn't as good. And I think with something a flavoring that you wrote a vap that isn't a standard food ingredient. It's more of an environmental aroma. I think you have to just nail the concentration just right. Otherwise, it tastes like dirt instead of like the forest. Well, and also they were using a water-based distillate, and the water-based distillates tend not to be fixed very well. So if they're opening and closing the bottle and it has to be transported, I mean, I don't know what kind of freshness problem they have with that just in terms of

[7:12] loss of the volatiles, but I mean, it's a huge problem with non-alcoholic

[7:16] rotovapt products is that they just tend to, the aroma is so fugitive. They tend to just go, you know? Could that have been it? Was it overly dirty or was it just not as just unbalanced? What was it, the one? Well, it's a good question. I was guessing that it was the concentration because it did seem to be just

[7:35] stronger. But it could have been stronger because, you know, the wrong things were

[7:40] were popping out. And, um, so it it could have been that it was just, uh, you know, he, he had to prepare the distillate and then bring it with him, and who knows how many days old it was, and that may have been the problem. Right. Well, okay, if you have a Roto app for just a couple of days. I would, obviously, I would recommend trying something that you could do no other way. And that would be some sort of fresh herb, right? Some sort of fresh herb that you distill. And I would drink that right away. Make it very, very fresh, very, you know, summery spring like, uh, that's like, you know, the one that we do with the um, with the Thai basil and cilantro and uh, the cucumber and the orange, right? Something like that with those flavors because you can't recreate that with normal distillation because the temperature is too high and it's going to alter the flavor of the herb. So I would definitely do that. I would then do something like a pepper. I would choose a fresh one that's floral, kind of red, so you can get the floral

[8:34] note, so you can see what it's like that the spice doesn't go through. I would then do horseradish because horseradish makes an intensely, intensely pungent because

[8:43] the, the, the, pungent principle of horseradish does distill, and that's going to last you a long time.

[8:48] So you'll have that for a, you know, a good long time. Then, then just start doing wacky things like de-oaks, some liquors, um, you know, try some of the culinary

[8:57] preps like uh, dirt or earth. Just remember, you're going to have to, uh, some of the things that are more aromatic, like horseradish

[9:03] or um, or habaneros or whatever you do, you're going to have to totally break down and clean all the grease out of the rotovap

[9:10] joints uh, before you run the next batch because you'll get contaminated. There's also, if you've never run one, unless your roommate knows how to run it really

[9:17] well or the, or the, you know, the professor knows how to run it really well. There is a learning curve associated with it. Don't set it to the automatic distillation. Sit there and actually constantly force the distillation so that you're getting the fastest rate possible. Set your chiller as low as it can possibly go. For alcohol, you're going to want to set it around -20 Celsius. We now use a cold finger distillation distill with liquid nitrogen and we can do water-based distillations that way. But, um, have some fun with it. Tell us how it worked out. Right? That's good advice, right, Harold? Yeah, yeah. Always fun. Good stuff. I've never done a cigar. I don't know. I've done smoky stuff. I've never done a cigar. Anyway, an unsmoked cigar, you think he means, or like the ashes of cigar? No, it must be unsmoked. I mean, the, the, the fermented leaves, that's the, that would be really interesting. Right. Right, but it's not characteristic, what you think of as cigar, the smoke. It's different. It's a completely different. Well, yeah, it's the cigar box smell rather than the, yeah,

[10:19] than the smoke room, which which I think is a good thing. All right, here's a question for you, Harold. Does using reduced fat milk lead to a higher weight, higher weight production in when you're making

[10:32] yogurt? Like if you're going to break it? Well, it shouldn't. Because if you're using a reduced fat milk, usually reduced fat milk is um, supplemented with uh, whey solids, which include uh, lactoglobulin, which is uh, a whey protein, not the, the caseine proteins

[10:55] that curdle, but uh, white protein that's soluble, but when

[11:00] you, when you heat the milk, uh, which you should do at 180 for 30

[11:06] minutes before you make the yogurt, that protein denatures and helps uh, give the yogurt body and and uh, water retaining uh, ability. And so reduce fat milk is going to have more of that protein. And it should, in fact, release less weight rather than more. And the heating then is necessary to alter the whey proteins. That is a necessary step because that was one of the questions before. Yeah, in fact, if you, uh, if you just make the the yogurt without the preheating step, you'll, of course, still get uh, curdled milk, but it's not going to have the kind

[11:42] of um, thick, pleasing consistency that you really want. There you have it. And then as a separate question, what makes a marinade effective, obvious factors are time, but what about oils, ratios of oils,

[11:58] acids, or other liquids or the consistency of the herbs and other aromatics? Joshua would like to know? What do you think? Well, um, yeah, different ingredients are going to provide different

[12:10] things, uh, and uh, consistency, for example, you're going to get a lot more direct contact

[12:16] with uh, the meat that you're marinating if the uh, material has been finally comminuted. So if it's if it's ground or very, very finely minced and instead of chopped or whole. Um, uh, if it spices, then, uh, you know, some of the aromas are going to get out into the liquid and we'll get into

[12:38] the into the meat that way. But there's not much that happens beyond the surface unless you're actually going to leave it in there for days. So that's something to keep in mind. Or if you vacuum bag. Uh, yeah, yeah. Or Jacquard, obviously, if you Jacquard it or inject, then you can have the stuff happen very quickly. I mean, I've noticed, okay, so a lot of people, they'll do a buttermilk marinade, which, you know, chicken is fairly

[13:05] friable, along the fibers, you can get some penetration. And if you vacuum bag it, you especially can. And when you cook it that way, I find sometimes it gets like acidic brines, for me, if you're not going to take the next step and overcook the meat in a traditional

[13:19] way, if you're going to do sous vide work on it, it just is too mushy to me. You lose too much structure. What do you think? Yeah, no, I agree. Uh, that's, that's uh, something you see, you know, if you, if you do a typical wine marinade and overdo it, then what you end up with is the surface layer that you can just scrape off because

[13:37] the, the meat has, has denatured so much. And you don't want that. Um, so, uh, uh, using one of those the methods that you mentioned in order to speed it up if you really want some

[13:50] penetration. And otherwise, you know, put the flavors in the sauce. Right. I mean, I tend to, when I marinate, I tend to, you're right, exactly. I put acidic flavors and things like that in the sauce with rare exceptions. And I put the functional ingredients for the water holding capacity for proteins,

[14:08] salts and sugars and things like that, in the marinade or brine. I mean, that's typically what I do. Yeah, yeah, because salts are going to get into the meat. Flavor molecules are much bigger. Salt breaks down into ions, they're tiny little particles that can move in and out of the meat pretty easily, but flavor molecules are not going to do the same thing.

[14:29] Caleb has a question about smoking sausage. He purchased some cherry chipotle pork sausage. That's like a cherry chipotle. It's got a ring to it there, right? And he's pretty excited about it. What simply smoking the sausage as he would for a brisket or pork ribs. Would that be a valid and delicious way to cook it? don't see why not. Do you have any thoughts on that? No, sounds good to me. you know, get some cherry wood. I mean, the trick with the smoking, right? I mean, the trick with any sort of sausage cookery is that when you're cooking off a sausage,

[15:00] typically what happens is you overcook the hell out of the sausage and you're relying on the high fat content of the sausage and hopefully the

[15:07] crafts, you know, the crafts, you know, person who made it, making sure that there's enough fat in there, such that it stays juicy even when it's

[15:14] overcooked, right? So if you can, I would try to control the smoking, such that the sausage itself doesn't get much above 140 when you're doing it. And I think then you're going to have like a really, you know, fantastic product. When we're cooking a sausage, what we'll typically do is water bath them at 140, which is 60 in Celsius land, and

[15:35] then and then grill them or fry them or pan them to get that nice, you know, kind of crusty outside to it.

[15:42] So I think a lot of it's going to be about the temperature control. Yeah, no, I agree. I think that's one of the most common sins in the kitchen is overcooking sausages and losing all the, you know, all that craftsmanship that goes into mixing

[15:56] the, the fat with the, the meat just goes away the moment that you overcook it to the point that all

[16:03] the, the juices are squeezed out. Yeah, what's the point, right? Right? Yep, yep. Just because it's a sausage. Right. Yeah, but just because it's a sausage doesn't mean you should mistreat it. You know what I mean? And it's so easy not to mistreat it, especially if you have a circulator on board. You know, you can just, it makes life so easy. Anyway. All right. So we're going to go to our 1st commercial break. If anyone should be around listening and it's, remember, we're recording on Monday, not Tuesday, call on your questions

[16:28] too, 718-497-2128, 718-497-2128 cooking issues.

[17:03] You'll only come by tonight Lean a hungry time.

[17:10] Nothing new, I've seen it here before. Watching a wedding. Wish she's sitting with you, but her eyes around the door. Somebody pain to see What you think that you get it for free. The following is a public service announcement from Heritage radio network. Every Sunday at 430 PM, tune in to Burning Down the House. Architecture is the laser focus of burning down the house, a weekly discourse on all things built, destroyed, admired, and despised. Each week, Curtis B. Wayne, your host, invites a posse of authors, critics, builders, designers, and other architecture

[17:54] fiends to reflect on various topics related to perhaps the most functional of all art forms.

[18:00] Again, that's every Sunday at 4.30 p.m. on the Heritage radio network. Hello and welcome back to cooking issues. Call on your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Curtis Wayne, host of the show not to be confused with Wayne Curtis, noted rum scholar. Weird, huh? Harold, you still with us? Yes indeed. Beautiful, beautiful. All right. So where were we? We had a question. I will read it to you from Colin Gore. He often asks us questions, but this one is specifically for you. Harold, the sweet potato is a delectable amalgam of starch pecked in sugars and other components. This I know. This mixed composition of sweet potato guts makes it a very versatile tuber. What I'm fuzzy on is why adding some acid. lets say vinegar to hot sweet potato puree improves the film forming properties of the puree upon drying. Without the vinegar, the film is glassy and brittle. But with the vinegar addition, the final film is essentially a kick ass, sweet potato fruit rollup. I saw a recipe for Abulato, which calls for the addition of some vinegar to the simmering potato starch solution.

[19:06] So I assume that the vinegar modifies, interacts with the starch in the sweet potato and other sweet potato components are just along for the ride. What is your hunch on what is being modified? Uh, and uh, we'll hit that first. By the way, for those of you who don't know, the Abulato is that, I think it's how it's pronounced. don't know. Those are those potato starch sheets that you can wrap things in. You can you can buy them. I think, I forget where they're made. Are they made in Japan or Spain? I don't know. really use them, but that's what they are. Any thoughts on this, Harold? You know, this is really interesting. I need to play with this. My guess is that he's right that it's an effect on the starch, you're getting some limited

[19:48] hydrolysis, and that kind of plasticizes the starch, so that when you dried all the way down. You know, you've got some, you've got more, um, uh, small sugar, uh, molecules and small portions,

[20:03] small, um, pieces of starch that help soften the, the film, uh, so that it can't form as, uh, as brittle as

[20:12] she does he describes, and, uh, probably the same thing is going on with the sweet potato. Normally, starch, I'm sorry, acidity, um, uh, makes vegetable matter of various

[20:25] kinds uh, harder, uh, by limiting the degree to which

[20:30] the, the, um, cell wall components can be removed. But in this case, it's the opposite effect. And because he's seen it in a pure starch uh system, my guess is that he's right that that's what's going on. Right, but it seems strange that you would have hydrolysis with just a little bit of acid, you

[20:53] know? And conversy, though, it's just not like a protein where you're shifting the, you know, the isoelectric point by adding a

[21:00] little by shifting the pH a little bit and then radically changing its properties. It seems odd. Maybe he's adding a lot of acid. I don't know. What do you think? Yeah, well that's it. I don't get an idea here for how much acid is being added. But, you know, it doesn't take a whole lot to, uh, uh, to change the hydrolysis rate. You'll get you'll get hydrolysis of starch in in neutral water just from the water itself. So it might be that, um, uh, just shifting the pH a little bit, uh, can can make a significant difference. So it's similar to adding a little bit of acid to a sugar boil when you're boiling it. It's going to increase the breakdown if the longer you boil it, the higher the breakdown. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And yeah, that's the other thing that's missing here is any sense of timing, you know, how long it takes, whether this happens kind of immediately or whether you have to kind of incubate it to let it

[21:52] happen. Because any breakdown of the starch into shorter chain, uh, you know, uh, sugars and dexter and things like that is going to plasticize the, the sheet somewhat, right? Yeah. Of course, so with adding a maltodextrin. But maybe, you know, this is easier, I guess. Yeah, that's true. If you, uh, if you add small, uh, small molecules, uh, as another ingredient, then you could get the same effect without without the, the acidity and without the flavor of vinegar.

[22:20] And that might be an interesting alternative. And vinegar is also an interesting choice because although that's, for instance, what I use in my candy boils and it's traditional, um, it's a volatile acid. So why, you know, it would be, it's interesting that you would choose a volatile acid, maybe as a self-limiting measure. I don't know. Yeah. Interesting. Because I'd also have to I've never done a test of boiling vinegar, testing the pH before and after and seeing how much of the vinegar, the acidity is reduced by the boiling.

[22:49] you know, once you recorrect for the liquid loss. Yeah, yeah. I've played around with that a little bit. Not, not really systematically, just kind of, you know, with my left hand while I was doing something

[23:02] else, just to, just out of curiosity. And it seems as though the the pH anyway is relatively constant. You know, as you as you boil it down, boil a 5% solution down, which surprised

[23:16] me. Because it should get more acidic, right? You'd think so, but you, as you, as you say, you are boiling

[23:23] off, um, acetic acid as well as water as you boil. So it boil, basically, you lost vinegar at almost the same rate as water. Right, right. Interesting. I mean, I know for a fact that when you spray dry vinegar, you get the taste of vinegar, but not the acidity, so you need to augment the acidity with a separate acid. When you're making, let's say,

[23:42] vinegar potato chips and you're sprinkling vinegar, powder, which is spray dried with a

[23:49] multidextrin carrier. When you do that, you have to add a supplementary acidity to get the acidity back to where you want it. So, I mean, it's volatile enough. And then, uh, Colin's 2nd question because we have we have pumped your your awesome walnuts on the on the show. So he has a question here. Is there anywhere on the east coast that a fellow can find walnuts, low in tannins and astringency? Is it merely a matter of harvesting walnuts in an immature state, uh, on

[24:13] uh, San Giovanni's day, as many Nochino recipes call for? I did not know that. I don't know what species grow in Italy where those recipes originate. And we have black walnuts locally. interested in finding nearby sweet, sweet nuts, as yours are likely off limits. I would be delighted if you could enlighten us further on the matter. All right, let's have the talk on walnuts. I don't think there's anything off limits about California walnuts. I think they'd love to sell more of them. The problem was finding a source on the east coast of the good stuff

[24:44] because, you know, that ranges from good to not so good. And you can tell just by looking at the nuts, how astringent they're going to be, the

[24:52] lighter the seed coat, the milder they're going to be. Um, uh, and of course, you want to make sure by looking at them as well, that they're fresh, because that's going to be the other problem. You know, if they've been shipped across the country, then who knows what kind of shape they're in once they get there. Immature walnuts are wonderful, but they're nothing like the walnuts we're talking about here. They're wonderful, crunchy, they're not that astringent, but boy, you have to wear gloves in order to deal with them, right? Staying the heck out of your hand, right? Yeah, yeah. They do have that the fruits do do give you that wonderful kind of aroma. that's nothing like a standard, you know, dried walnut, uh, aroma, but, uh, yeah, it's a completely different experience and a mess. Right, well, I try. Well, as a kid, I used to play around with that stuff. That stuff does not come out of your hands. It just doesn't. because we had a bunch of walnut trees around. But the, um, okay, so at your house, we tried the red walnuts, which people are pushing, but those weren't the miracle

[25:54] nuts. They were nice. They were good. The red walnuts. Maybe you could say something about those, but it was these very lowest stringency. Why don't they just, why don't they just ship only that? Like, is it more difficult to produce? Is it a tree by tree variation the same way it is with acorns? You know, some acorns are more bitter than others, uh, and you just have to know the tree. I mean, I don't really know much about walnut propagation is walnut clonal. This is done by graft? Is it done by seed? Is it just lucky shots? Like, why isn't every, as a separate ancillary question? Like why are California almonds so low in oil? Why? Why? Why do they grow them so low in oil? But Leonard's like, could they make all the walnuts this delicious and they just don't? I think so. I think it's for the most part a matter of variety. And, um, uh, you know, there's a particular guy I go to at the farmer's market out here

[26:43] who uh, has several different matches. He's got red walnuts, he's got the really light skinned walnuts, and he's got darker ones. Um and they're priced accordingly. The red ones are more expensive than the light ones which are more expensive than the dark ones. And, you know, you just, you can take your pick. We like the light ones best though, right? Yeah, because they have the just the nicest flavor, the nicest, nutty flavor. Um, I think the reason, though, uh, the red ones are awfully good. The red ones have, instead of having tannins in the, the, the

[27:21] brown uh, seed coat, they have um, anthacyanins, the same pigments that give color to lots of fruits and vegetables, grapes, things like that.

[27:31] Um, they're, they're very delicious too, and they're not nearly as tannic as um, uh, as standard walnuts. I think the reason you didn't like them as much is that that batch of red ones wasn't as fresh as my batch of pale ones.

[27:47] Ah, so they're just as walnutty. Yeah, yeah. No, they're they're delicious. All right. Well, I stand corrected then on the on the red nuts, but what's this farmer's name, do you know? I don't, I don't, um, uh, I know it's on his truck and I'm just not able to, to pull it into memory at the moment. He's at the ferry market, the ferry channel market. No, he's actually at the Alamany farmer's market. Well, go look for the sweet nuts at Alamany Farmer's Market. But why can't they, why, like, I think it's just freshness? It can't be. Like, why do they only why do they even grow the darker skin? Is it just easier? Yeah, I think it's, um, and and it may be that it's just a matter of, uh, you know, farmers covering their bets if they just all grow the

[28:35] same variety and there happens to be a problem with that variety. It's the old, um, you know, monoculture problem. Um, and also, I'm just not exactly sure which variety is which here. It may be that this is a new one or it's an old one and it's not as productive. There might be all kinds of reasons for the predominance of the darker, mortanic nuts. Right. I really don't know much about walnut culture at all. I don't know how long it takes for a tree to come into bearing or, I mean, I know they bear for a long time, but I don't know kind of what the farm cycle is on a walnut tree.

[29:08] Why are almonds from California so low in oil? Do they do that on purpose? That's a good question. You and I have tried to figure that one out. Why are almonds from California just not more delicious? No offense, California. They could. I mean, they're, I mean, talk about uh, tannic tough, thick skins. Um, uh, there, there's no mistaking uh, California almond. Uh, and I don't know, again, it may be a matter of uh, agronomic yield rather than uh, quality, um,

[29:45] I'll I'll look into that. I'll ask some questions. Because I would pay more for more. in fact we do. We pay more for European almonds that are higher in oil and more delicious. Yeah. Anyway. All right. Aaron writes in from Hull. And he says that he's going to be curing some bacon next week and he intends to use Michael Rulman's charcuterie recipe for it, which is 450 grams of

[30:10] salt to 225 grams of sugar to 50 grams pink salt, pink salt. I'm assuming he's using the insecure number one, which is nitrite, not a nitrate. You want to make sure that you know which pink salt you're dealing with. And he's going to coat the pork belly with some of this mixture and leave it in the fridge or freezer for some number of days before roasting it until it reaches an internal temperature

[30:30] of 65, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, kosher salt is hard to come by where I live, is sea salt like, um, Malden, a, I think he means Malden, it says more than here, but Malden's

[30:40] a suitable substitute, suitable, but extremely expensive. I mean, the main thing you're going to want to do is, I mean, I don't really think it makes that much of a difference in that people have all

[30:54] these questions about whether or not certain salts are bad for curing. It's true that sea salts probably have some sort of extra minerals in them, but I don't know what they add to the brining process.

[31:05] And pickles, it's extremely important not to use certain salts because they can discolor the pickle, but I don't know that it's a big deal in

[31:12] a brine for a bacon. Do you, Harold? Uh, I don't think so. I know that it is an issue in the curing of fish,

[31:20] whitefish, like cod, because the calcium and magnesium salts can end up causing the cod to yellow, but with

[31:28] the bacon, that's not an issue. Ham guys swear that the type of salt that they use makes a difference. In fact, I'm wearing a Finchfield farms country ham hat right now. They say it makes a difference, but I don't really know what the basis is.

[31:42] I could go research. I have Fidel Toldra's book on dry cured meat products and I could look into the effect of the different salt components. But I am sure that you will be fine. If your wallet allows you to use Malden, then go ahead. Oh, maybe they meant more sea salt. Any sea salt's going to work fine. I would like to try a bacon cure with maple syrup for a friend. Should I just add some maple syrup to the freezer bag? I'm planning on doing this by eye until it's pretty evenly covered. Does this affect the curing process in any way that I should know? Well, you're going to be doing a wet cure in that, and you would substitute maple syrup for the water and sugar, and then put salt into the maple syrup, I assume, right, Harold? That sounds right to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Number 3 was how long should I leave the bacon to cure? I'm guessing the amount of time will be a function of the size shaped weight of the meat I am curing. Could you give me some guidelines? I don't have any in my head. I believe that the charcuterie book, Michael Roman's book, has some guidelines in it. You can accelerate the cure by putting it in a vacuum bag, but usually penetration is based on the

[32:42] actual strength of the brine you're using, which is crucial. So if you're going to add water to it, like with maple syrup, that's going to reduce the brine theoretical brine strength. And then on certain number of days for penetration, a certain number of inches into the

[32:56] meat, and it also is going to depend on the particular fat, um, the fat quantity in your piece of meat, uh, versus the lean. Do you have anything on that, Harold? Uh, no, that's that's about all I could come up with. There are charts in books. Uh, and, and uh, as you say, um, uh, days per inch guidelines. Uh, and uh, that's that's really the place to go. Yeah. And then lastly, he's just ordered a piece of equipment that allow him to try sous vide cooking at home. Congratulations. Would he be better cooking in the pork belly this way after curing or not? If so, is there anything you should look out for using this method? Okay, I happen to love pork belly cooked sous vide, uh, in which case you choose the temperature you want to cook. In general, I would do something below 65, something like 63, 62, 63, even as low as 60. It's going to take that Celsius. So 140 and up in that range. It's going to take a long time, like 3 days, two, 3 days to get tendered where you want. And then crisp up the skin. Oh, and I think he asked later, sure you leave the rind on, I would, wouldn't you? Yes. Yes, definitely. I would leave the rind on. And then I wouldn't trim it at all. I would crisp the skin up and serve it because that's the that's the best part once it's crisp. I mean, leave it on forever is what I would do. Yeah, it's going to sound a little gross. We might want to trim away the areas where the teats are just because they

[34:21] don't they don't fit the pan as well. The crucial thing when cooking a pork belly for later cooking is to compress it a little bit before you do so that you get a nice flat surface to pan the skin on to make it nice and crunchy.

[34:34] The other thing I've noticed, and Harold, I think we've talked about this before, is that when you have the pork belly isn't one specific muscle. It's a group of muscles. And some of them, the ones that are the streaky portion

[34:48] and streaky bacon, let's say. They respond very well to cooking for a long time on the order of several days. There's one muscle that runs through the pork belly in that you can really see in the cut that's called in Chinese 5 fingers or 5

[35:05] flower, whatever it is, pork. One of those muscles doesn't respond very well to long cooking and gets mushy and

[35:11] kind of tastes kind of dry. And so it's a muscle that looks a little oval as you cut through the pork

[35:19] belly. And I would take it out. you know, and cook that some other way. Have you had that experience with pork belly? Or have you noticed that? Yeah, yeah. I mean, in no matter who's made it. Yeah, if that muscle is in there, then it's just different from the others. Kind of like the shoulder. There's so many different muscles that some of them are just wonderful and others are less so. Right. I would say, yeah, I would say different and worse. All right. And with that, listen, if anyone's out there, you have one more chance to call in. 718. going to go to our next 2nd commercial break. Call in 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues.

[36:35] You'll only come by tonight. Lean a hungry time. Nothing you do, I've seen it here before. Watching a wedding. She's sitting with you when you want to ride the road. Welcome back to Cooking Issues. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Our producer, Jack, was pumping up the hall notes, this particular song because he thinks it's nice, rainy day weather, which it is here in Brooklyn, rainy. I'll say one last time. You have a couple more days to go to mofad.eventbright.com to purchase tickets for the museum fundraiser. I'll tell you a little bit about what I'm doing at the end of the show. But right now, let's get back. We have Harold McGee on the phone. Hey, would you consider the next time you're in town on a Tuesday to do the show live here at the studio? Yeah, I'd love to. Love to. Nice. Nice. I was, I saw, I saw our mutual buddy Nathan Mirville this morning. Nathan was doing his book tour. He booked out Jean George's restaurant in the morning, and they cooked some of the some of the dishes from his cookbook, and he might be a phoning guest at some point, which would be fun. It was just pushing, you know, we have some good, some good guests, you know, coming, like, apparently Grant Aikets is going to, is going to be on the show sometime

[38:01] in May, I think. I think, I guess to push the opening of the new place or what? I don't know. I don't know. I heard from his publicist. Anyways, this is what's going on in cooking issues, Land. All right. Now, we have a question for you from Tom M. My question for Mr. McGee is, does extended brining, denature, the enzymes, and beef responsible for tenderizing it? I wish to have a tender corned beef brisket, and I've considered cooking it sous vide for 131 for 12 to 24 hours, shocking it in

[38:29] an ice bath, and only then brining it. But if brining does not denature the tenderizing enzymes, then I might as well brine it for a couple of days. Then do 131 sous vide, um, followed by low temperature

[38:41] smoking and only then do a high temperature sous vide, uh, to get to college in transforming temperatures for the appropriate length of time. Am I making things too complicated? And can I achieve it in a simpler manner? Well, I'll just I'll say 2 things before I hand it off to you, Harold. Uh, one, um, you don't want to shock, you never want to shock a protein like that uh, after it comes out of the, um, out of the

[39:05] bath, because if you do, you're, um, you're basically going to, uh, prevent the meat from reabsorbing some of the juices that have been expelled during the

[39:14] cooking, and even at 131. you're going to get juices expelled. So you're not going to you're not going to want to do that. I'm also going to say that I think that 131's a little low for brisket. Um, might want to, I've, look, it's, it's, people do it all the time, very rare, long, long cookings like this, but I find that people, if they're expecting a cut of meat that is meant to be a little higher in temperature, it's better to go a little higher in temperature,

[39:39] uh, but with that, let me hand it off to you, Harold. Uh, yeah, I'd be interested to see what that's like, 131 brisket, but I have a feeling I'm

[39:49] going to, I'd prefer it at a higher temperature. Um, and then, uh, on the issue of, um, brining, denaturing the enzymes. Um, you know, that, uh, I've actually never thought of that. I know, uh, in pretty good detail what's happening to the, uh, fiber proteins during brining, and that's the, the major effect

[40:13] of, uh, uh, tenderizing effect of a brine on meat is that it, it kind of unknits the, uh, the muscle fibers and makes them uh, easier to cut through.

[40:23] Um, I've never thought about whether the, the salt conditions are going to change the activity of the, of the enzymes that

[40:33] due to some extent break down the collagen and the, and the fiber proteins. And so that's something I'm going to go look up when we're all done. I have no idea. But as a general principle, Uh, you want to do the brining before the cooking, not after. The brining is only going to have its tenderizing moistening effects if you do it while the meat is raw. Right. And also, you can't cure cooked meat, right? I mean, corned beef is cured somewhat. So it's not going to be You can't cure cooked meat, can you? Yeah, it's, again, kind of an interesting counterintuitive sort of thing. I think probably, yeah, what's going to happen is that you will desiccate it. Uh, but, but the, um, uh, the meat is is cooked. It's done and anything you do to it with salt afterwards is just going to dry it out and make it salty. Right, right. Yeah, it's interesting. I've never even thought about trying to brine something out to it. But I mean, corned beef, typically, you'd add some amount of nitrite to it, wouldn't you? I mean, it's pink usually, right? So it's been it's been painted. It definitely won't pink out. You're gonna have it look gray. Well, you wanted these temperatures at 131. I can't do the math in my head, but that's somewhere in the mid-50s, right? 131, somewhere in the mid 50s, Celsius. Um, and, you know, we do our short ribs a lot in that range, but find that people prefer them up closer to

[42:00] 140, uh, between, you know, 140 and a little over. But I definitely don't think you need to go through like a 1000000 different steps.

[42:11] I think it's going to probably affect it, you know, like you, the more steps, the more chance for things to going wrong, things

[42:17] to, problems. What do you think? No, I agree. Um, and if there's a straightforward way to do it. Um, it's always, almost always the best way to do it. All right, so in the, uh, those are the questions that have come in. so good. We have at least 4 or 5 minutes, we can, what are you working on? Uh, I've actually been taking a little bit of a hiatus for a variety of

[42:43] reasons and um, have not cooked, uh, anything serious in, in like a month. So, uh, but spring is coming and uh, uh, I'm sure that's going to change fast. One thing I'm going to do this coming weekend that I'm looking forward to is head off to

[43:06] Spain for a last meal at El Buy. Because it's for real going to be the last, It's like real deal last now. Uh, yeah, apparently uh, July 30th, I think is the date

[43:22] now. The restaurant will close uh, as a restaurant and then reopen in the next day or 2 as a uh, uh, think tank.

[43:31] So who are you going with? Um, chef out here in California named Daniel Patterson. Love Daniel Patterson. Yeah. Yeah, his restaurant's great. Yeah. And, you know, we worked together. Um, you know, you know, we all did uh, on uh, Mandy Af tells uh, and his uh, taste that, what was it called? Taste this, taste the smell. What was it called? Smell the glove. What was it? Alchemy was in there somewhere. Yeah, alchemy of alchemy of taste and smell. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you have any articles in the pipeline that you want to, you want to let out of the bag or you want to keep them in the bag? No, in fact, that's something else I've been taking a height is from. But I'm hoping to get another curious column into the New York Times in about a

[44:16] month. Yeah, people crave it, but you don't know what you're going to do yet. Actually, it's going to be about salt. Oh, yeah? What about it? And like what kind of what kind of aspect? So many aspects of salt. Well, exactly that. The fact that there are now so many salts. Uh, and some people say that they all taste different and that, uh, for example, kosher salt is, uh, horrible stuff nobody should ever touch it. Um, uh, so I'm, I've collected um, probably close to 20 at this and, um, there, there's been a very interesting controlled study with, um, uh, professionally trained taste panel that actually tasted about 20 different salts to see if they could tell the difference.

[45:03] In what form? As a .8% solution. to try to maximize the opportunity to taste the difference because of course, if you're going to take salt and put it in mashed potatoes or something, odds

[45:18] are, you're going to have no clue. Right. And so this is an extension of a project. Was it, was it part of the Eriche things that Steingarten went to, because he was doing it in Eriche years and years ago in his 1st book on Salt. Remember that? That's right. In fact, I remember that tasting very well. Yeah, he arrived with these little vials of some of his favorite salts and some of his least favorites. And then we, there was a sensory scientist who took place,

[45:49] took part in the EREJ meetings every year. And so he organized, uh, a triangle test, uh, where basically you're you're handed 3 little vials, and you have to tell which one is different from the other

[46:03] two. And uh, we, we all took the test in a, in a series of groups, and then they tabulated the results at the end. And it turned out that of the 40 people in attendance, only one person was able to correctly distinguish all of the different salts.

[46:19] And was that a fluke or reliably, repeatedly, was able to do it. Uh, we only did it once. So it may have been a fluke, but because of that one person was Jeffrey Steingarten. Of course, it wasn't. That's hilarious. All right. So we'll be looking forward to that. And so I'll say what I'm working on for the museum fundraiser coming

[46:42] up. I'm doing the Amuse Boosh. We like to, you know, in the back room, we always call it the amuse douche, because I think it's a ridiculous word, a moose

[46:50] boost. Anyway, so the, yeah, the moose douche will be, um, I gave myself food as medicine as my, as my theme, because, you know, everyone has a

[46:59] theme like Chang is doing a pre-19, uh, pre uh, 1491 uh, food

[47:04] in in America. So he's doing oysters and acorns. Wiley's got caveman food, Mark Ladner, Rome, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So I gave myself food as medicine. And I'm using an ingredient, I'm using, okay, so

[47:18] it turns out that Bitumen, you know, Bitumen, you know, like pitch? Piss asphalt? Yeah. It's exuded in the Dead Sea area and in Iran, and it's been used as a medicine for centuries, as has a very similar exudate pitch

[47:34] exudate, from the Himalayas called Shilaji, right? And so, which is used in Aerobic medicine a lot. She, the Shilajit is. And so this was mistranslated by from the Arab, because Arab, you know, Arab medicine was the medicine in the, you know,

[47:52] 8900s in that range, right? So this was mistranslated by medieval scholars in like the 11th century, as, because the word in Arabic is mummy,

[48:04] like sounds like mummy, and in fact, the word, English word for mummy is derived from the same root of like this waxy pitch

[48:10] bitimen. Our word comes from it. Uh, Anyway, mistranslated this uh, medicinal ingredient, mummy as ground up uh, human cadavers from Egyptian mummies, and here started the trade in medicinal mummies. So mummies were ground up by the boatload and sold in apothecaries all over

[48:29] Europe. And in fact, they ran out of reliable mummy supplies, so they would make counterfeit mummies by grinding up

[48:38] and and, you know, taking fresh cadavers, drying them out and grinding them up. And so the original pitch, right? Which was the part that the bitumen, which wasn't actually in an authentic mummy because they didn't use bitumen until very late in the mummification

[48:50] process, because it was cheap. You know, they used much more expensive stuff, right? But, um, so it got it changed from the bitumen being the important part of the medicine to the actual corpse.

[49:01] So then it got transmogrified even more so that later on it was found that if someone died very suddenly, in the prime of life, then that's the best mummy that you can get. So for centuries, up until, you know, the prime time was like 16th and 17th century,

[49:17] was prime mummy medicine time. So, but it extended for a long time, plus mummy was used as a pigment up until the early 20th century is that mummy was a specific color of brown made by grinding up mummies.

[49:28] And so, uh, and but it's come full circle again. Oh, so spawned like vampire legends, all sorts of cool, weird, weird, weird, weird stuff, which I think I'm going to write about for the blog, definitely, maybe for somewhere else. And so I've located a source of the Shilajit, which is the one from the Himalayas. It's using Arabic medicine. And so I'm going to have that as mummy. I'm going to put that onto rhubarb that I'm going to cook sous vide because

[49:56] of Francis the 1st of France. always carried with him mummy and rhubarb as some of his medicaments to help him from whatever ailed

[50:06] him. So that's going to be one component is mummy, mummy and rhubarb, and the next component is going to be when he was defeated by Charles V. Uh, they, uh, he was held captive and the Zupa Alla Pavese was invented for, for him at that capture, which is basically bred with

[50:23] uh, an egg that's cooked by broth that's put into shavings of Parmesan. So I'm going to do a little toast with a gelet of broth, a

[50:30] slow done, not really slow, but low temperature done, quail egg, and Parmesan tuile. And so the other 2 components, you will have to come to the fundraiser to

[50:42] taste to. Anyway. So I'm going to thank Harold for being on the show. Hopefully we'll get you in live next time you're in. Hopefully we'll talk to you soon, and we'll leave you with mummies. Cooking issues. Vicious, fish, vodka. Thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage Radio Network. You can find all of our archived programs on heritageradionetwork.com, as well as a schedule of upcoming live shows. You can also podcast all of our programs on iTunes by searching

[51:13] Heritage radio network in the iTunes store. You can find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for

[51:20] up-to-date news and information. Thanks for listening. Twisted. And I guess can't get it straight. The following is a public service announcement from the museum of food and drink. Dave Arnold and Patrick Martins have gathered a team of New York's most innovative chefs and bartenders to create a

[51:41] 9 course fundraiser lunch at Del Posto Sunday, March 27th. Their intent to kickstart the greatest food museum in the world. The menu for this unprecedented event is derived from educational themes of the

[51:53] museum. Chefs will draw inspiration from sources outside their normal sphere. How will a cutting edge chef handle the Paleolithic, or a dish only using pre-Colombian ingredients? What will a modern Italian chef do with ancient Rome? The chefs include David Chang of Momofuku, Wiley

[52:08] Dufrayne of WD50, Mark Ladner of Del Posto, Nils Norin of the French Culinary Institute, Cesare Casella of

[52:15] Salumaria Rossi, Carlo Maracci of Roberta's, Brooks Headley of Del Posto, and Christina

[52:21] Tozzi of Momofuku Milk Bar. Bartenders include Audrey Sanders of Pegu Club, Thomas Waugh, Death

[52:27] and Company, Simon Ford of Perneau Ricard, Damon Boltley of Prime Meats, and Ebon Clem of VR

[52:33] guest restaurants. Proceeds from the event will directly support the museum of food and drink. Tickets are very limited, and $250 per person. To purchase tickets, please visit MoFAD.eventbright.com. That's MOFAD.eventbright.com. Once again, M-O-F-A-D dot E-V-E-N-T-B-R-I-T-E

[52:57] dot com. Sponsored by For No Recard, Heritage Foods USA, Pat LaFrida Meats, Barterhouse Wines, Del Posto restaurant.