[0:00] You're listening to the Heritage Radio Network. Cooking issues will be live shortly. Dave's held up, and he'll be here as soon as he can. And it's late. You got my head all twisted. And I guess can't get it straight. Fishes, fishes, vodka You're listening to the Heritage Radio Network. I'm Sam Edwards. I'm 3rd generation Curemaster from S. Wallace Edwards and Sons in Surrey, Virginia. We support the Heritage Radio Network because we believe in the cause of what they're doing. They're supporting family raised livestock, small family farms, certified humane, pasture raised, antibiotic free. Basically, we take the products from Heritage Food USA and make them into Serrano style hands, prosciutto style hands, bacon, sausage, like my grandfather did. You can find us at Surreyfarms.com or Virginia traditions.com.

[1:10] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues here with Nastasia, the Hammer

[1:21] Lopez, coming to you live from the studio behind Roberta's Pizzeria in Brooklyn on this rainy, rainy day. I just biked here in the rain, so I'm thoroughly soaked, negating any morning shower that I took. How are you doing, Nastasia? I'm doing okay, Dave. Yeah? So last week, a big a big week for us. We moved all of our stuff, junk, crap, from the French

[1:42] Culinary Institute to the new company headquarters in Brooklyn. I can't believe I'm actually a Brooklyn guy now. I still live in Manhattan, though, for all you keeping track of this kind of stuff. But our new offices are in Williamsburg in the, uh, in the milk bar commissary in the back, they have a little extra storage space. So we've moved up from a trash room at the French culinary, which was our former lab, reverted back to a trash room several weeks ago. We've moved up in the world to back of the warehouse space, right? Yeah, anyway, we haven't set up yet. All of our crap is literally in the pile in the middle of the, in the middle of the space, waiting for a couple of weeks to see

[2:18] whether, uh, see what I can do to build it out so we can actually have a sink and uh, start cooking again. But it should be exciting, right, nostalgia? We haven't thought of a name for the new company yet. We plan on making kitchen equipment, both for professionals and for home

[2:31] people. And we're going to keep our hand in the cooking biz, right? Yeah. So any names would be appreciated for the company. We've had only terrible ideas, right? Like, it's like not even like many of them like not even able to be mentioned on the air, the ideas, right? horrible, horrible, horrible, offensive, offensive stuff. Okay, so Colin, all of your questions too, 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. We're going to be here for the next 40 minutes or so. So please call in with all of your questions, cooking related or not. Mostly they're cooking related. Yeah. Unfortunately, right. By the way, Nastasia, you keeping a surprise? What do you have for the middle music, the brake music? Did you believe this? I didn't even think of anything. Well, you had a couple minutes. You can scroll around in your iPod for some good business. Mustache has been messing with it with the music. We had 2 weeks of hollow notes and what do we have? We had some slime coming down. That a good one. Okay. Good morning, gents. writes Ure K. Sterling. I have recently become very interested in high pressure molding, without binders, no egg, et cetera, of certain starches,

[3:34] namely, different potatoes, tubers, I guess, yucca, Malanga, et cetera. I was wondering if any of you had any experience in this. And if not, where to look within the food manufacturing bids for such a request. Okay. Well, I'm gonna make some assumptions. I encourage you to write in with more details about exactly what you're trying to do, but I'm assuming if you're

[3:53] going to high pressure mold starch without, you know, binders such as egg, that you're talking about tablet formation, you know, compressing into tablet form.

[4:03] There are other things, obviously, that you can do under very high pressures, you can mold starches into plastics, but I'm just

[4:09] going to, for the purposes of this, and discussion, assume that you mean tablets. So we've actually discussed this a little bit on one of the programs a long time ago, right? Tablet making. It's actually something that we haven't done. I haven't done, but I'm extremely interested in. I need to buy a tablet maker is it's on my list of things to do because we want to make our own tablets.

[4:30] And in fact, I almost got a consulting gig a while ago where

[4:33] he would have had to make a bunch of pills, but that what happened with that? We just fell through whatever. Anyway. So the deal is, right, that the different types, I encourage you to look at this paper from 1987 by

[4:46] CE Bos, B-O-S, uh, entitled Native Starch and Tablet Formations, Properties on Compaction. And it's a good 1st, it's even though it's old, it's a good 1st starting for compression of starches, specifically starches, and native starches, because a lot of times when they're going to make tablets, they don't use native starches, they use starches either that have been

[5:08] pre-gelatinized, or they use starches that have been modified in some way, acid modified, different modifications to alter the properties of the Finnish

[5:17] tablet, to make them harder, to make them break up either easier or harder, things like

[5:22] that. But I will say this. The actual type of starch that you use makes a huge difference in how the tablet is formed. So the way the tablet is formed is usually mix up the starch with, and it's, in the, in the business, this is called uh, an excipient. It's basically the nonactive ingredient. So you would be adding in whatever the active ingredient is, flavor or, you know, aspirin, you know, uh, whatever it is, a Celsius acidic acid,

[5:45] wherever, wherever heck aspirin is, I can remember. Mix it in. And then you put it into a metal dye that's shaped, however you want it, and you compress it. Now, the compression is quite severe. Um, I don't know exactly, but it's on the order of like 18,000 PSI. in that order of magnitude, 18,000 psi. So it's easier for you to use much smaller dyes so that you don't need as much

[6:07] physical tons of pressure pushing down to make a, make a tablet, right? Now, typically also they'll add other things to it, like lubricants, so that it doesn't heat up and so that it flows well in the dye when it's compressing, right? So you'd think that you're not adding any binders, but in fact, moisture, the amount of moisture that's in the starch is very important. So it turns out that you want about 10% moisture, total moisture in the starch, which is kind of normal in a relatively humid

[6:35] environment out in the world. So even though you're not adding things like water, there are things like water present. Also, aside from the type of starch being very important, the, um, the way the starch is milled, right? Whether it's in fine granules or in larger pieces makes a big difference on how the on how the finished tablet's going to be. So it's a very complicated subject, one I'm very interested in, but

[6:57] unfortunately don't know a lot about, but hopefully I've given you a good place to start, right, Nastasia? Yeah? Anyway, okay. So, let's go to our next question. We just got something in, interestingly. Listeners will know that we are interested in the irradiation

[7:11] of corn to make different genetic mutations. Turns out, being able to call it nuclear corn. Turns out we got a, a write in from trying to find out who sent us the, who sent us the post. Here it is. J.R. Nelson sent us some interesting stuff this morning on mutation breeding. So that's the technical term, the, for, you know, new, you know, radiating stuff until she mutates and forms new

[7:36] stuff. Anyway, so the technical term is mutation breeding, which sounds a lot, a lot better. But, um, JR writes in and says he came across a news bit today, where the University of California Riverside, which is the people who handle a lot of the citrus for for a country, the germ plasm for citrus, they basically, I think, I think they run the, uh, the United States is, uh, our federal citrus program, pretty sure, for germ plasm. Anyway, I have to look it up. But UC Davis, uh, and I guess at UC Riverside, just announced they created a new

[8:05] Mandarin, uh, called uh, the Kino LS. Now, Kino is actually a very, it's an old venerated Mandarin. Delicious. Nastasia and I had it when we visited uh, uh, when we visited uh, uh, Gene Lester's citrus uh, ranch out in uh, in

[8:19] Watlow. It's great. Problem is, Kino has a whole boatload of seeds. So what they did was, is they just nooped a whole bunch of, I guess, Budwood of a Kinno. They just nuked it, and then, you know, propagated it, and they got a

[8:34] Kinno that had, that had a lower C. Now, they don't necessarily actually have to use a radiation. They just most of the time do. They can use other sports of chemical things, mutagens to ratage instincts like this to do it, but he sent that in and there's a picture of this new breed, you know, LS for low

[8:51] seed or less seeds. So go take a look at it. Another fine example, nuclear oranges of better fruit through radiation,

[8:59] right? You know, the thing is, I think a lot of people probably are freaked out by this kind of thing. And it's the same kind of un, you know, unthinking, uh, fear of things that, um, that brought us the term, uh, MMR, right? So you're familiar with, uh, well, you're not familiar with that. familiar with MRIs when you go to the hospital, you get an MRI. Yeah. MRI. Magnetic resonance imaging. You go in, they take a picture of your body. Yeah. Well, actually, that's a phenomenon called NMR nuclear magnetic resonance. And in fact, they changed the name from NMR, nuclear magnetic resonance to MRI, magnetic resonance imaging, because patients were literally afraid to get in a machine with the word nuclear attached to it. It's crazy, right? And the other thing is that a lot of people are against irradiated foodstuffs for preservation, right? Now, there are several reasons to be against irradiated foodstuffs, professor. So basically you can take food, fruits, whatever, expose them to very high levels

[9:54] of gamma radiation, right? x-rays and such things and kill all the bacteria in them, right? Make them pretty much sterile as a preservation technique, and you don't have to heat it, right? Which is great. And you can do it when it's already packaged without heat. So it's, you know, can be fantastic. Now, there are some reasons to be against this, uh, to be against radiating food. One is it can destroy the texture of the food, right? Then that's valid. What do you think, Nasasha? That's a valid, yes. Yes. But there are other reasons that are not valid. For instance, people think that somehow they are going to get cancer from eating

[10:27] irradiated food or somehow the food itself becomes radioactive. This is not a fair characterization of what happens. It's another situation where, uh, you know, adding the word radiation or nuclear makes something all of a sudden horrible in people's eyes. So hopefully they don't get that feeling with our nuclear corn in our nuclear, our nuclear mandarins, although apparently they're not going to advertise that fact. Anyway, we have a caller there, Jack? Or are they just ordering a pizza? I think they're just ordering a pizza. Yeah. We got to call her. All right, call her. You are on the air. Are there any studies that have proven that GM foods are bad? I can recognize this voice from through the radio. This is Patrick Martin's, the person who's working with us on the Museum of Food and Drink fundraiser, the founder of this radio network, and the founder of Slow Foods USA, and Heritage Foods. How are you doing today, Patrick? Good, thanks for having me. All right. So the question was, are there any references on GMOs saying that they're

[11:25] actually bad? Well, I just read this quote from Bill Gates that says, I hate that all these sustainable food groups keep saying that our work is bad, you know, through the Gates Foundation, and

[11:36] they keep falsely accusing, you know, GM foods of being bad. So, of course, I'm going like, well, there's got to be a study somewhere, but I haven't ever found one and I've asked people and no one can think of a study that proves that it's bad.

[11:49] Yes, because there isn't one. Yeah, I mean, here's the problem. I think a lot of people, uh, you know, way back in the day in the uh, in the 80s, right? You know, if you're familiar with Jeremy Rifkin, right? I mean, he would come out against any of these kind of United things. And basically, in his mind, all things trace to some

[12:06] some form of awful Armageddon at the hands of people that are doing genetic, um, genetic modifications. Now, there, there are arguments, I don't really, I don't really know them well enough

[12:18] to, uh, to give them to you in any sort of form that doesn't seem derogatory to

[12:24] them, if that, you know, gives you an idea where I am. There are arguments that there are things that can possibly go wrong. So one of the problems with GMO, one of the problems with GMO crops,

[12:35] right, is, here's one. This is a real one. One of the problems with GMO crops is that you could, you're Monsanto, let's say, or someone else and you own a GMO crop, you now have a patent on that crop, right? You own it. So then, um, one of your seeds, some of your genetics can get float over, uh, you know, into somebody else's field, right? And contaminate their field with your genetics. And then, um, you know, you're selling your product because you're a normal farmer, and then Monsanto comes and sues you for stealing their

[13:06] uh, genetics. And all you've done is save your seeds year after year and some of Monsanto's seeds have gotten mixed in, not because you've bought it or stole

[13:14] it, but because their seeds have fallen onto your property, right? And so there are some legal ramifications of GMO that have put some farmers in some pretty tough

[13:22] spots as a result of that kind of transfer, right? I mean, there's also the possibility that someone could release a some sort of gene into the environment that turns out to be harmful

[13:35] 10, 15 years down the road. But the same could be said of, um, breeding a plant, you know, normally or any sort of normal thing. There's always the possibility with new with new breeding. So the real question is, aside from patent infringement. And, you know, and the legal issues that are involved in there, the question is, is how is genetically, how are genetically modified

[13:55] products fundamentally different from, um, the breeding that's been going on for 100s of years, in fact, is espoused by the same people as being great, as that, that, that hate the GMO,

[14:07] right? Those same people love the fact that we have 1000s of cultivars that have been bred over 100s of

[14:12] years and are being preserved generation after generation. That's considered an absolute good by almost everyone in the field, everyone, including the people who are doing

[14:18] GMOs because it gives them a base of gene plasma to work from it and to add, you know, to things with. But, you know, most of my criticism of it. It just comes from the fact that the GMO stuff is usually shooting at stuff that I don't care about. If the other problem is, is that it can add to monoculture problems. If they come up with something that, basically, if there's fire blight out there, let's say, and they come up with a product that is resistant to fire blight, and it becomes the only product out there, well, then when the next disease comes, they'll get wiped out, right? So there's there's all of these kind of arguments of how it can be bad, but I don't know

[14:49] of any fundamental reason why they're why they're bad. Does that make sense? Yeah, well, thanks for your time. mean, do you agree or disagree? Yeah, no, I mean, well, I mean, I would, of course, instinctively, I always think that I want to find something that, you know, maybe

[15:04] that at least to say the jury's not out yet as to whether or not a lifetime of GMO consumption is

[15:11] bad. And, you know, but right now, you know, other than that, it's true, you know, it's to say, like, if we don't own our seeds, then, you know, is that bad, but it relates to the patent infringement. I mean, would you go so far as to say the jury's not out as to whether or not it's healthy or not? I'm always willing to be proved wrong on anything. I'll say that I haven't heard any argument that shows that it's detrimental to us from a health

[15:39] standpoint. And, you know, and people say, well, if you don't know, then you can't do it, but there's plenty of things like that in the world where we weighed the risks and we do it, you know? Um, I think, um, you know, sure, I'm willing to be, I'm willing to be proven wrong, but I think it's like everything else in this field. The GMO is a tool. It's a tool. And it's, um, and it's been used incorrectly by a lot of people to do a lot of awful stuff, you

[16:03] know? And I think that what we need to do is not focus our

[16:08] enmity on the tool. Don't don't look at the at the hammer as the as the bad thing. Look at the carpenter swinging the hammer as the bad thing. You know, so it's like, look at the way these tools are used and get angry about that and not about the tool itself. Exactly. Okay, interesting. I agree. Can't argue with the expert. And Patrick and Nastasia and I are going to be working very soon. If anyone out there is listening, we're going to be doing a search very soon for an administrative fundraiser for the museum of food and drink,

[16:38] right, Patrick? And then in about, what do you think, Nastasia? 6 months time. 6 months time, we're going to be doing a fundraiser much like the one we did here in New York at Del Posto several weeks

[16:49] ago. We're going to be doing one in the Bay Area. Am I right? Do we have the location hammer down, Patrick? No, but we have a few people who would like to do it. And, you know, we've expressed interest from shape beneath, although they're dealing with their 40th anniversary. When is their 40th? Yeah, 40th anniversary. So anyway, you know, it's going to be interesting and I think there's about 10 or 12 chefs that have already wanted to participate. So it's going to be pretty kick-ass. Yeah, so for those of you lunatics who missed out. You know what? I was thinking about this If we had just told people on the air that, you know, you're going to have like one of the greatest meals ever. It costs $250 and it didn't have anything to do with fundraising. It should have sold out, right? It's like, it's like we don't even basically even need to tell them that it's going for a good cause because the meal is, is that good? Am I right, Patrick? Yeah, it was really one of a kind. I mean, everyone was saying that no one had ever had a meal like that, especially with all that talent. Right. So when we do it on the west coast, you fools better not miss it. Am I right? You're right. All righty, all right. We're going to go to our 1st break, calling all of your questions too. 718-497-2128. 718-497-2128 cooking issues. Oh, Al Green.

[18:00] I'm so in love with you. Whatever you want to do. Is all right when you... Because you...

[18:18] Make me feel so brand new.

[18:28] Want to spend my life with you? Miss same thing. Baby Since we've been together. Oh, loving you forever. Is of what I... Let me, the one you come by.

[19:01] I'll never be... Following is a public service announcement from Heritage Radio Network. Join Linda Palacio for a taste of the past every Thursday at 12 p.m. as she indulges her curiosities about food, cooking, drinking, and dining of the

[19:24] past by taking a journey through culinary history. Linda interviews authors, scholars, friends, and chroniclers to learn about what was eaten, where, and how. From as long ago as ancient Mesopotamia and Rome, right up to the grazing tables in Delhi counters of today, the show underscores food as a lively link between present and past cultures.

[19:45] Again, that's Thursday at 12 p.m. on the Heritage radio network. Welcome back to Cooking Issues, calling all your questions too. 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. So Richard, uh, uh, Kokovich called, uh, wrote in a comment on an ongoing discussion on the Aeropress coffee maker here, and it's got to be the most embarrassing thing for me in the world that it's like a $30 item that we've discussed multiple times on this dang show, and we've had multiple questions about it.

[20:20] It's so easy to get. I can literally go on Amazon. One would show up at my doorstep tomorrow morning, and I can know from firsthand experience how the dang thing is working, and instead through laziness and inertia, we have not done it. So let's make a pact that today, even we've even been offered to, given one by some of our listeners, and we're just too lazy and stupid to take them up on it. So, when this show's over, one of the 1st things I do before I order a delicious pizza from Roberta's a salad, which is what we always get as our

[20:46] post-show meal here. I am going to go on Amazon and Amazon Prime order us an

[20:52] AeroPress coffee. Yes? Okay. Richard writes in and says, hi, I've been using my AirPress for all my coffee needs, and he switched from the French press, and the comments that we've had on the show about the AirPress's filter and flat taste are in his

[21:04] experience accurate. A couple of months ago, he had some guests for breakfast and whipped out the 51 ounce French

[21:09] press and the air press and the difference in flavor profile was noticeable. The French press tasted brighter than the Aero press, but the same beans. One of our listeners also mentioned that he thinks the filter is to blame because the paper is basically absorbing the coffee oils,

[21:22] right, and absorbing some of the flavor. And Richard uses the filter several times to try and, I guess, saturate it with flavor. so it doesn't suck anymore out. But he thinks that's the reason that the taste is flat. And so he suggests that all of the listeners out there, and we'll get one of these 2s, maybe, is the coava disk, C-O-A-V-A, metal

[21:42] adapter, filter disk for the Aeropress coffee. So go check that one out and check out the forms on CoffeeGeek.com, which is, you know, I think probably one of the best websites for coffee that there is.

[21:53] I mean, I used to go to it all the time. Uh, so anyway, good, good to look at. That brings us to coffee. Last week, what day was it? Nastasia? Tuesday? No, the coffee thing we did? Saturday. Saturday? Saturday? Oh, yeah, Saturday. So Saturday night. I judged, along with, um, you know, a couple of people, the, the latte, a latte art championship. So for those of you, I don't know, who've been buried under a rock for the last, you know, 4 years or so, latte art is where you draw pretty pictures in

[22:23] a in a latte, uh, and there's 2 different with milk, and there's 2 different ways of doing it. There's what's called free poor, where basically you just take a cup with espresso in it and you're pouring it, pour the milk into it. The milk has to be foamed in a very specific way to create something called a microfoam that doesn't have any big bubbles in it, right? And the coffee has to be perfect with a nice crema, and you do what's called a free pour, where you pour, and you can make

[22:45] swans, and Rosettas, and tulips, and hearts, and all this. And, you know, we judged on a various criteria like how good the contrast was between the darks and lights, how symmetric they were, how much of the cup was being used, and these guys are pretty good. They can, they mean like, I can't do it. I'm going to be honest with you. can't do it. But, uh, what's really interesting is, um, is I was talking, and one of the judges is, was the 3 time, uh, Brazil all-time

[23:12] champion barista, I, I, her name just went out of my head, but I'll look it up, and she was, uh, she, she was telling me we were talking about coffee, and I haven't really been involved

[23:21] uh, with hardcore coffee espresso research in a long time. And one of the things that's happened in the past, uh, 4 years is, um, for those of you who don't drink espresso, start drinking espresso, but, you know, what used to be a shot of espresso was a little under an ounce

[23:35] uh, per shot, right? And so if you were going to use, like, you would use like a 13 or 14 grams of coffee, ground coffee to

[23:43] make, like, an ounce and a half to an ounce and 3 quarter double, right? That used to be kind of standard. Now people have updated it. It's like crept, and now it's gone up to like 16 grams of coffee and they're pulling like an ounce out of it or less.

[23:56] And so that's, you know, or streto, but restretos have gotten preposterous over the past couple of years. Like, you just get these tiny, like, little wisps of coffee on the bottom of your

[24:06] cup and they're delicious, right? They can be delicious. Um, but I'm just interested if any of our listeners, if they want to chime in, what they think about this creep towards

[24:14] hyper restratos and uh, what that's doing. It's definitely making us plow through a whole boatload of coffee. And so I started playing with it home and I kind of, I kind of like these like, like super restratos. I'm trying to find a good middle downs. Anyway, that's just a, that's just amusing. Okay. Roy from Chicago, and I was supposed to talk about this at the top of the program. Roy from Chicago, uh, wrote in, what happened to the blog? Are you still doing posts? A couple of things have happened to the blog, Roy. One, we were hacked about a week ago and our site periodically keeps going down because of the

[24:47] hacking. So I know, and I apologize to all of our listeners out there that sometimes it's difficult to get into the

[24:55] site and we're looking at it. We're trying to hire a contract killer to go find out who it was that messed with our blog and execute them in a slow and painful fashion.

[25:06] Yes? Yeah. Yes. He's still in post. Well, yeah, the 2nd thing is, is that, uh, is that there has been, let's just say, a dearth of post recently. Um, I'm working to remedy that I have a post up right now that is still in draft phase about

[25:25] how about the museum and I have at least five, six, seven posts in the wings waiting to be posted. Part of the reason that we haven't been posting, and these are just lame excuses is because we're working, we were working before very hard on the museum, fundraiser, and then for the past 2 weeks, we've been working very, very hard on trying to figure out our new company and how we're actually going to make a living and not, you know, leave

[25:49] our homeless, become homeless. Like that's kind of the main thing right now. Um, So, uh, yes, we will be, we will be ramping up, as I said before, uh, I will be contractually obliged to do for a

[26:01] month, we're going to stick to that starting next week. I make it my pledge. I'm also going to try to start doing a lot of shorter posts. I've kind of been slammed into these like two, 3000, 4000 word posts and

[26:13] it makes it very hard, especially because I like, uh, trying to get them as accurate as possible. And so it's difficult. These are just all stupid excuses. So, Roy, my apologies to you, and we will be up and running, hopefully hacker free, and also more regular in the near future,

[26:31] Nastasia. Yes. Any comments? No, you said at all. Yeah. That sounds like me. All right. Long time listener and actually person who went to our fundraiser, Colin, wrote in. and he says, dear Flav, uh, David Flav. I like that. David Flav. I always have to read his things relatively word for word, so you get a feeling for his question, although sometimes I have to excise curses from them. Anyway, egg yolks are kick ass. I think I can say that. right? Egg yolks are kick ass, low temp egg yolks, especially kick ass. I have a few questions surrounding the gooey, gooey golden orbs of goodness. I want to end up with sheets of duck egg yolk that can be handled and drape over goosebreast. For chicken eggs. I saw Alex and Aki. That's Alex Naki of ideas in food, friends of ours. Recommend 63.8 degrees Celsius, and my chart says more like 66 C. I haven't tried either with chicken eggs, but I tested them with duck eggs and found that 63.8 didn't seem firm enough. I took them to 655 instead of 66, since it was preset into his old analog circulator. That yoke was still a bit gooey. I thought, but don't have any examples to compare it to other than the photos. The duck egg yolks seems a bit fattier to me, which might explain why it didn't seem as firm. Freezing after rolling out the yolk did help make it possible to cut and handle for about 10 seconds, but the whole sheet quickly got soft and goopy again. Strong enough to hold its shape when draped, but still a saucier consistency than I was expected. Here are my questions. That wasn't the question I was a prelude. I've seen eggs cooked whole, and then egg yolks removed for sheet rolling. Well, egg yolks cooked the same consistency, is separated with raw, putting a ziploc and circulated to the desired temperature. This is what I did since I had other plans for the whites. Did I throw off the pH perhaps? I don't know. I've never had a satisfactory answer for this column, but I'll tell you this. Egg yolks cook separately from egg whites, do not have the same texture as ones that are cooked in the whole egg and then the whites used for some other purpose, but removed after

[28:15] cooking. Uh, I don't know why this is. Wiley Dufrene asked me this, I don't know, maybe 5 years ago, and I didn't know why then. 4 years ago, maybe. I don't know why now. I've asked Harold, we don't know why, but when I'm doing a lot of these things, I will cook the, we will cook the

[28:32] yolks um, in the egg and then remove them and use the whites as like uh, as a cooked whites as an ingredient. There are dishes that I've done with egg yolks, where I've mixed egg yolks with transglutaminates and salt, and then put them into a zip, and then cook them to create a sauce, but I've never done it for sheets.

[28:49] You can, if you want to cook them separately. You can firm them up a bit by adding translutaminates, Activa to it, it'll firm it up, especially if you cook it to the higher temperatures. But if you add salt, that's going to make them hold less. So you're not going to want to add salt before you cook them, you can add salt after you cook them. does make them look cool. makes them look like icing when you add the salt. Okay. 2nd question, if putting separated but intact raw eggs in the bag is okay, will the yolks also achieve the

[29:14] desire consistency, if they're broken, mixed together first? I've tried holding them whole versus splitting them. I haven't seen that much of a difference, but I think it might make a difference. So if you're gonna try and do it in the bag, I would hold them whole. Um, three, what procedure do you use when you make yolk sheets? What I do is I cook them to about 66 degrees, or thereabouts, for an hour, chill them, break out the yolks, smash the yolks together, roll them between 2 sheets of plastic wrap, and

[29:40] then cook them out. Yeah, I agree that Alex Anaki, 63.8 is too low. That's going to be just barely set and not really good for sheeting unless you kind of freeze it out

[29:49] first. And fourthly, last question on the eggs. What are the difference between duck egg yolk and chicken egg yolk and how may this be affecting the texture I'm seeing? I don't know. They are slightly different. We've been keep cooking on the same temperature at the school, but I haven't done enough textures tests with duck egg yolk to know for certain, same with quail. I do know that the proteins are slightly different, which is why it's easier to make transparent eggs with lye with duck eggs than with chicken. But, uh, come back to us when you get some more experience and see whether you agree. Do we have a collar? Caller, you are on the air. Hi, this is hi, this is Brian. How are you guys? Doing all right. How you doing? Great. Got a question. I don't have a smoker. Thought about buying those Bradley smokers. Um, but I'm interested in doing some hacks, uh, at at home, um, uh, in either my Webber, uh, or in my oven or in indoors.

[30:43] So I'm wondering if I want to do a DIY smoker setup, both

[30:47] for cold smoking and hot smoking, um, any suggestions? So you want to do it without um, without buying the Bradley. Basically, you want like as as inexpensive as is humanly possible, right? Um, but safe relatively. I like relatively safe. Assuming you have an outdoor space, it's not going to catch on fire. I have a little balcony. Right. Oh okay. So you're an apartment, you know. Not a lot of space. M space. I know how that is. I know how that is. All right, so hot smoking. Right. Hot smoking is relatively easy. So with that, you could probably modify the Weber just by putting like a hot plate that you get at, you know, the CVS or the Rite Aid, whatever, cheapest, like find one on the street, whatever, modify a hot plate to use as your heat generator, and you could generate smoke that way, and

[31:38] it probably work in a Weber. You know, they used to sell, I'm sure they still do, basically just cylinders, which were, you know, modified drums, like 30 gallon drums, and they, and they had a, you know, just a crappy electric heating element in the bottom of them that you could adjust the temperature of so that your heat wouldn't go either too low or too high, soak the

[31:57] chips, and put them in, in aluminum foil or something like that, put it on the, on the heating element and go, right? And so then, you know, the next level on that is if do you want a temperature control that on the hot smoke side, right? Then you could do stuff like, um, add a PID controller, uh, that instead of adjusting the smoking temperature would address probably the

[32:17] draft, the vents, right? And like turn on a fan and extract smoke out to adjust the temperature, something like that,

[32:23] right? Uh, so like, you know, that is, you know, relatively cheap and easy. Now the question is, if you want to do legitimate cold smoke, What you have to do is separate the smoke generator from

[32:33] the uh, from the actual cabinet where you're, where you're smoking. So typically what people will do is they'll build a box, fireproof, preferably, that, but you could use almost anything, and put the, as long as it's not going to melt, and then put the, uh, the heat generator in the smoke generator rather in that, and then just take pipe, like cheap, uh, uh, cheap, you know, galvanized duct

[32:57] pipe that you could get at, uh, you know, Home Depot or any one of these places, and then connect the duck pipe from the smoke generator to whatever you're

[33:04] going to smoke in. And again, that what you're going to smoke in can be anything that is kind of food grade that's going to take the heat. So people use refrigerators, people use, uh, whatever, you know, uh,

[33:15] as long as it contains the, as long as it contains the, the smoke. Then you, um, then basically, you know, if the smoke's not cold enough, you either extend the length of the pipe or I know some people have like put water over the pipe or packed ice around to try and get the temperature down.

[33:30] So now you can get a really nice cold, cold smoke. Um, but uh, then if you want to actually then increase the heat in the smoking cabinet, you have to put in a separate element to provide heat to the cabinet. Does that make sense? What do you mean by separate element? Well, once the smoke is cold, once the smoke is cold smoke, then if you actually want to cook at the same time with the smoke, you actually have to heat the

[33:54] cabinet. Or, you know, or you could just reduce the length of the pipe to the thing, I guess, to jack the heat

[34:00] up, or vent it less. It'll eventually will accumulate, uh, will accumulate, uh, this stuff. There's a whole bunch, and I haven't built one, uh, and since literally since I was in high school, it was the last time I built, which is, you know, a long, long time ago, I built one for my mom, but, um, uh, it's been a long time since I've built one just because I've been in the city this whole time,

[34:19] and I don't even have a balcony, which is pathetic. Uh, you know, on the cheap side for a smoker. If you want to get buy one that's a hot smoker that works fairly well, and I know Wiley used it, but it doesn't have anywhere near good temperature

[34:31] control is, uh, the, uh, I think Little Chief is the name of the smoker, and it's basically a box with a heating helmet in the bottom. And that thing works great. And I know people have customized that one. I think there's little chief, there might be a big chief. They've customized that one to get lower temperatures. I know Nils did some work with that. And like I say, Wiley's been using that for a long time. So that's a good entry level. Just do just could buy that and then have the pipe set up as well. And then hack it. Yeah, buy that one and you can start with hot smoking and it works great. And it's small and is like relatively friendly, like sits out and plugs

[35:03] in, it's not huge. It's like, you know, can fit on a tabletop. And, uh, and, and that, like I said, that's the one that Wiley used for a long

[35:10] time and, and we got one up to school and Nils used it. And then, um, and then you can start hacking with that to try and get the temperature down by adding, uh, adding different controls or venting it

[35:20] more or trying to remove the smoke generator from the cabinet. Mm-hmm. Got it. Um, I have another barbecue related question if I can ask you now. All right. I've been reading about this Japanese charcoal, the bin show ton charcoal. what's the what's the deal with that? It seems like it's kind of smokeless. It lasts a long time. Um, you know anything about it? It looks really cool. It's an extremely expensive stuff, you know, and so what they'll do is like they'll cook with it inside. I mean, like Japanese, they're cooking inside with charcoal and have for a long time. I guess they're not as culturally worried about the carbon monoxide poisoning as we are. Like if you look at any bag of charcoal produced in the US, it has warnings all over

[36:02] it, never to ever even think of lighting it indoors, right? Right. And so, uh, those guys, uh, the Benchoton guys. I mean, they cook inside all the time with it. And in fact, they did a demo to school a couple of years back. They had a really awesome, uh, they they built a sand pit that the Benchiton was cooked in. They built the fire with the benchiton charcoal in the sand pit and then were cooking over that. Um, And I got to play with the charcoal with the

[36:27] Benchiton and look at it. And indeed, it does have very low smoke output, right? But here's the deal, right? Uh, it's, I can't, I could not discern the difference between binchoton and high quality uh, American produced hardwood charcoal. right? So if you go and you look at the bag of charcoal that you bought, and it looks like chunks of wood that are black, right? You were going to be able to get the same results. This is my opinion talking here. This is not that I've done a side by side, but having lit a whole bunch of, uh, of like good old-fashioned, like hardwood charcoal, like it does, to my mind, the same kind of job that the

[37:07] Binchoton does. It's just not nearly as expensive, right? The, the, the one that's not going to work the same way as the benchiton or the compressed briquettes, right? Those are gonna... Right, it doesn't look like wood. And those things have usually been treated often have been treated with something, right? So they operate fundamentally differently than these ones that look like chunks of wood. Now, the other reason why the Japanese system is theoretically smokeless, right, is because the way that they cook in it is they'll stick their food on the end of a skewer, embed the skewer in the sand, uh, not over the

[37:41] binchiton, but next to the binchiton, right? So the heat, the heat from the, from the benchiton charcoal is radiating out and cooking it, such that the fat from the meat is not dripping onto the

[37:52] benchiton. As soon as fat and liquids start dripping onto the charcoal. I don't care what you're using, you're gonna get smoke, right? Right? Yeah, there's, but, you know, the good news for flare-ups. And I've said this forever, and Nathan Mirvold and Chris Young have basically now, you know, they say it in their book, so I feel like vindicated, is that that's where the flavor comes

[38:14] from is the flare-ups. You know what I mean? Like that, like, or at least part of the flavor that I really like comes from this combustion happens during the flare-ups. Uh, and so if you don't have things dripping on the charcoal, you might get some sort of smokiness. And if you did, that would kind of negate any sort of theory they have that is absolutely smokeless because you've got some sort of flavor off the fact that you've combusted something, right? But, uh, but in fact, uh, I like a little bit of that that smoke and and combustion and all that stuff because I think that's where a lot of the good uh, flavor comes from. But if you want to experiment with Benchiton, I think you could build a,

[38:46] like a sand thing and use, uh, like high quality American hardwood charcoal. It's not maybe as long as the binchoton because they're very careful about the shape and the way it looks because a lot of that is aesthetic in nature, right? I mean, a lot of the Binchiton has to do with aesthetics, right? Another interesting thing, it might get me in trouble about, the Japanese, like, the

[39:07] Benchriton thing is, is that I don't know that they've, uh, that the people who are advocates of Benchriton have done a lot of experiments with the American product. I think they just see the charcoal briquettes say, you know, Americans don't know Jack Doodley about charcoal, and therefore, like, this one has to be the best, not saying, hey, here's an American product that might perform the same way.

[39:25] That's just not usually how those demonstrations and discussions happen. Do you know what I mean? Got it. Got it. So it's a venture on charcoal. I might as well be putting something in the broiler because it's essentially smokeless. It doesn't seem to really, it's not quite the same in terms of barbecue is what you're saying. doesn't get those same flavors. I've never done it side by side, so I'm going to, I'm hesitant to, to, to say, yes, that's the case, but, you know, for, for me, I think that if you're not generating a lot of smoke, you're probably not getting a lot of extra flavor, except for the fact that the way that heat is being delivered is different, right?

[39:59] So assuming that you can get a lot higher heat radiation out of coal than you can out of your broiler, especially your average broiler,

[40:07] then yes, maybe it's going to give a better product, but insofar as it's smokeless, I don't think you're getting any extra added flavor, you

[40:15] know? Great. Thanks, it's really helpful. I appreciate it, Dave. Thank you. All right. Okay, bye-bye. Bye-bye. On the way out, we got one last question from Colin. Does he do we have any suggestions for how to prepare wild Canada goose? He wants to jug it in the form of jugged hairs. Jugging is a technique where you cook meat, usually in a container, with that, you know, it basically braises in a enclosed

[40:39] container, and jugged hair, and civets, and things like that? Not civic cats, but civic, meaning blood sauce with hair is the classic thing. Do we have any suggestions? He tested his sliver at 60 degrees Celsius for 45 minutes and he didn't like it. And he tried 7 hours and 58 degrees, and it was also too tough. Uh, couple of things on this. I've never cooked Canadian geese, so it's hard for me to say exactly how to cook it. I will say this. Anything that kills those vicious bastards that Canadian geese are is a good thing. Canadian geese are the most vicious, evil creatures. If you've ever had them like land in your area and attack you as you're walking towards a

[41:14] ponder lake, you know how evil they are. Plus they poop all over everything. So I encourage the legal bagging and cooking of Canada geese. So we have to come up with a recipe, Canadian geese, though. You have come up with a recipe that you like them? I think they're so pretty. You're from the west coast, right? I know, that's why. That's why. I was attacked by one as a kid. Yeah, they're evil, vicious, vicious creatures, as opposed to ducks, which are nice, and yet we eat them all the time. Geese are evil, evil. So that was Jack, by the way, our intrepid, our intrepid engineer. Okay, so here's my here's the problem you're going to have. Canadian geese, the breast meat doesn't have a lot of connective tissue. So cooking it for a long time isn't going to tenderize it very much in my, in my, this is my opinion. Now I haven't tried it. I would try doing around 63 deg- It depends on how dark the meat is. I would try doing anywhere between 57 and 63, uh, for uh, 45 minutes sounds about right. 58 is going to be too low. I'm assuming it's going to cook more like a chicken. You're gonna want to jack it up. I don't think seven, he tried it for 7 hours, 58. I don't think that's going to work. I'm going to have to Colin get back to you on this one. I'm going to do some more research on old tough game meets. I think it's an incredibly important thing for all of us to pay attention to because I'm trying to encourage every hunter in the world to buy a circulator to cook their game meats, right?

[42:34] If you are a hunter and you are listening to this and you do not own a circulator. You are doing your meat a disservice. So we got to figure out how to cook this, Colin. And so give us a call, give us a write, and let's figure this out together. This has been cooking issues. We coming back next week on Tuesday.

[42:56] Vicious, fish, vodka. Oh, you did.

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