[0:06] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. I am Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network, coming to you approximately from 12 to 1245 every Tuesday here in the studio today with Nastasia the Hammer

[0:19] Lopez, cooking issues, as always. She's the Hammer. How you doing, Nastasia? I'm fine, how are you? Haven't seen you. How was your holiday weekend? It was good. Yeah? Uh-huh. I went to Fire Island. Oh, nice. was that? Fine. Did you get poison ivy? Nope. Fire Island is a, they should light, but I'm not going to say is it. Obviously, they should not lightly fires there, but they should get rid of this, some of that poison ivy. The worst case poison ivy I think I've ever had, I had in Far Island. In fact, the doctor said it was the worst case of poison ivy that he had seen in at least 5 or 6 years of practice. My entire arms swelled up. I looked like the Incredible Hulk was bright red instead of green. It looked like I had one giant hulk arm, but it was instead of like muscle. It was a giant sack of water. Well, because they had these blueberries, you see, that are growing all on Fire Island. I picked all these delicious blueberries, and luckily was able to make possibly the most delicious blueberry pie I've ever made before my arm swelled up into a giant balloon. So I guess it was worth it. What do you think? I don't know. Did everybody enjoy it? Oh, they loved it. There you go. That was a long time ago. That was in 2001. Long time ago. That's the last time I was that far island. They still have deer whose fur being eaten off by mange. There was one that was following me. It was really freaked out. Yeah, but was it all gross looking? I didn't, I walked the other way. I didn't look at it. It was at night. Um, yeah. Well, look during the day there. mangy and disgusting. Vermin. Anyway, Colin, all of your cooking related questions too. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 coming to you live from Bushwick today. So today is, here's some like, like an airplane in the background? Yeah, it's weird. Today is the last of my week-long, my days of week-long raw vegan diet. I have been on a raw vegan diet since Tuesday of last week. Tuesday right after we finished the low temperature sous vide class. So we put ourselves into a meat coma, in the low temp sous vide class, eating like a bazillion short ribs, and then right after, I went on raw vegan, and, you know, because for those of you that haven't heard, I made a bet on this radio show that no one could produce a raw vegan chocolate bar that I would even think tasted remotely of chocolate.

[2:33] Um, Because frankly, I figured it's impossible because you have to roast chocolate, you see. chocolate beans, right? First of all, the, you know, the, the, you know, the cacao, right? It comes down, it's ferments. So often right there in the fermentation process. It gets above the arbitrary number of 118 or whatever you're

[2:52] going to choose for something Fahrenheit or something to be raw. Now, it's kind of odd that you could possibly overcome

[3:00] what makes it raw during a fermentation process. It's the raw thing is supposed to keep the enzymes alive and it's actually life, but, you know, bacteria and fermentation taking place that is causing this temperature rise. But we'll leave that aside. So often the temperature will go above 118 right there, but that can be controlled. But then there's a step of roasting of chocolate. Where it's roasted and that's where a lot of the characteristic flavors are developed. So I'm like, well, you can't do that. So, hey, what the heck? you can't have, you know, real raw chocolate. not going tastes like chocolate because crap ain't been roasted. So our former intern, Grace, brings me this stuff, fine and raw chocolate, and I

[3:32] tasted it, and I had to agree that, although it was not, you know, anywhere near my favorite

[3:36] chocolate, or, you know, even a chocolate that I would choose to eat on a normal basis, this texture was wrong, et cetera, et

[3:43] cetera. It was a little soft, you remember the chocolate, right? It still tasted like chocolate, though. I mean, you could eat it. wasn't good. I mean, I could eat it, though. In other words, like, I felt like I lost a bet. So then the problem was now I can't welch. Like, it's impossible for me to well, just, like, you know, not an acceptable situation. So I had to do it. The problem was finding a one week period where I wasn't obliged to do a demonstration where I had to cook. And so this last week, right after that, uh, right after the sous vide class was the only week we had where that was possible. So I've been raw vegan for a week and I break my raw vegan fast. Uh, tonight when I land in Austin, Texas, and I think I'm going to eat an entire cow when I get there. You know, actually, it's not the meat that I miss the most. It's like bread. And like starch. I mean, think about it. No rice, no bread, no starch. Um, you know, anyway. So I'll share before we get into the questions. Maybe I'll share a little bit of the, although I'm going to post on it. Hopefully today or tomorrow. I'm going to share a little bit of the raw vegan thing. So the whole reason that you're supposed to eat raw vegan. You know, if you believe in this sort of thing, is that not cooking things

[4:50] makes keeps the enzymes alive. The food's alive and their food's alive, therefore it's more healthy for you. The vegan argument is an argument against animal proteins and either for moral reasons and also for health reasons. So it's a combination of like moral and health reasons. Now, here's here's the thing. I don't believe it. I just don't believe it. Like, 1st of all, you make your own enzymes. You make your own enzymes. We make our own enzymes. You know what I'm saying? Like, you produce your own enzymes. I don't see where consuming something whose enzymes are preserved is necessarily going to be

[5:21] that much more beneficial in general, right? Now, even assuming that you need to consume all sorts of raw enzymes, even if enzymes are good for you, even if they are necessary,

[5:30] right? There's nothing to say that every scrap of food that you consume has to be teeming with these enzymes, right? Also, there's plenty of things that aren't heated, that don't have enzymes in them. You know what I mean? Like, it has to have enzymes. It has to be like, you know, a living thing. So like why your salt needs to be particularly raw, which they care about. You know what I mean? It's like, I don't understand. And why every last damn thing, because it's been shifted

[5:54] from, the enzymes are good, to cook foods are toxic. Like, that's where the shift is taking place. Another thing that I don't believe. So let me just say this before I even get started. Um, there are some people who who think, by the way, eating raw vegan, I know I'm not supposed to make it seem post-apocalyptic, but it is a hardship.

[6:10] It is a huge hardship for someone who doesn't normally do it. You know what I mean? Especially if you have 2 incredibly picky kids. Now, I wasn't able to cook or prepare a raw vegan for the kids because they weren't having it. They had like one or 2 nights of raw vegan. Jen, my wife, sometimes went into the raw vegan with me, but I, you know, yesterday I made her hamburgers while I ate raw vegan. I ended up actually like, you know, okay, well, I'll get into it. One, they say that you get this, that you get more energy when you're eating raw vegan. I felt, I am what we call a very energetic non-athletic guy, right? I have a lot of energy, but I'm not athletic. Uh, and I felt like I got hit over the head with a hammer with this diet because I lost

[6:51] all, I lost all of my energy. I was passing out tired at night. I was kind of grumpy during the day now. I talked to someone. like, well, you need to eat it for a couple of weeks to get the effect. Well, if I need to eat it for a couple of weeks, are you sure you're not just going into some sort of starvation euphoria and thinking you have more energy,

[7:07] right? I mean, it is true. You do lose weight on this diet, right? I did lose some weight on this diet, but, you know, and for that, it's probably effective. If your only goal is to lose weight, your choices are so constricted and your body's ability to process what's going on more on that later. Like your body's ability to process what's going on is sufficiently reduced, that you will, I mean, at least in the one week period, who knows if you maintain it for a long

[7:30] time, lose a lot of weight. I also feel like I've lost a lot of muscle mass. I don't know that I have less energy, it's just because I have less energy, but I feel significantly weaker than I did physically weaker than I did a

[7:42] week ago. So, you know, I consumed what I consider to be a fairly healthy

[7:47] all-around diet based on the diet, the dietetic principle of eat everything in moderation. I prepare most of my own food or eat good food. So, uh, and you know, I think a hamburger is healthy, right? And that's my feeling. So this is not a diet that I would say that you should go on for, I don't believe it's healthier. That's what I'm saying, than my diet that I normally have. It's not just that it's a hardship. I don't believe it's healthier. Even if it were easy to do, I would not do it by choice. Right? So that's that's said. Um, You are going to get in a very good relationship with your toilet if you follow this

[8:24] diet. Let me just tell you, this stuff flies through you on this diet. You can't, like, there's no getting around it. You know what I mean? It's, it's, it's, it's crazy. And it's also extremely expensive. Now, it doesn't matter, like, this is not an argument against it, but it doesn't seem to me to be, like,

[8:39] a, This is not an argument against it, but it's not an argument for a diet for the people. Everything costs 8 bucks. like everything. Like a little thing of dip, 8 bucks, a little thing of crackers, 8 bucks. Anything that's raw vegan, go to the store, look at it. Look at what it costs. 8 bucks. You know what I mean? Like maybe you can get like a little tiny bar, snack of something that's less, but unless you are just straight up consuming raw fruits and

[9:03] vegetables. And by the way, if you eat nothing but raw fruits in the morning, you crash, you get a sugar

[9:08] hind, you crash like a mother. You know what I mean? It's just like you're, and, and, you know, probably a little rambling today because I'm still in the raw, in the raw vegan mode. I had uh, one good meal at pure food and wine,

[9:19] sour melon guys' restaurant. I called her because I was like, guys, can't deal with this anymore. I have to have someone else do this for me. I went in, but their meals are extremely, extremely labor intensive. You know, I had had these high hopes that I was going to be able to make a lot of really interesting

[9:30] stuff raw vegan and my time just ran out and I had to do it anyway. So my rotary evaporators packed up, so I couldn't do any low temperature,

[9:38] you know, brand easy that, you know, are raw vegan, even though they're delicious. I've had them before. I know they're good. I didn't get to make the, you know, the raw vegan black sapote ice cream that I wanted to get. But, but all of these things are very, very, they're very, um, they're esoteric. You know what I mean? would be hard to do this in the real life. What you end up actually eating is a boatload of pineapple, like blueberries, dried fruits, and then avocado, tomato,

[10:03] sauerkraut salads for dinner. I mean, and, and, and, you know, uh, I feel I, the whole week I've been feeling like, um, I don't know, like, I, like, I'm just kind of trudging along, waiting for it to be over. Like, you know, I'm not I'm not myself. So I'm glad I did it. I have the experience of it. It's not for me. I don't necessarily think that I'd recommend it to anyone. I think it's incredibly expensive unless you are very have a lot of time to plan to do it. So that has been my raw food experience. What do you think, Nastasia? I think that's too bad Dave. Well have I been incredibly mean? I only dealt one day with you. This is the 2nd day. Was that was I mean? Yeah, you were you were an asshole. You're not allowed to say that on the air. That's, you know, this is a family program. Yeah, yeah. You know, you know, Nastasi says one thing comes out and it's, and it's a curse word. Anyway, why don't we go to our 1st commercial break and we'll come back. Call your questions too. 718-497-2128. 718-497-2128 cooking issues.

[11:13] If I heat up, I can't cool down With the drop is spinning round and round, round and

[11:25] round, it goes. Where it stops and nobody knows. Every time you call my name. I heat up like a burning plane. Burning flame, full of desire. Cause me, baby, let the fire get higher. Heritage Radio Network is about to celebrate the 100th episode of the main course with Patrick Martins and Katie Kiefer. The main course is welcome talent that ranges from Temple Grandon on animal handling to Eric Asimov, the New York Times wine critic, chefs and farmers, distributors, and

[12:02] restauranteurs. Everyone who is involved in the food industry gets to put their ¢2 in on how and why we eat what we eat. Check out the archives for more information on fast... Check out the archives for more information on the fascinating roster of guests that have graced the table for the main course, and be sure to tune into the 100th episode Sunday, June 6th, at noon on the Heritage

[12:23] Radio Network. Hello and welcome back to Cooking Issues. Dave Arnold, calling all of your questions too, 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. So, Nastasia, we have a column coming out in Eater blog tomorrow, supposedly. And, uh, and that, uh, that's going to basically be the same as the, as the radio show, just in uh, blog format, separate from the cooking issues blog, which, you know, we, I hope

[12:49] to get my my raw vegan post up soon, along with all the other 15 posts that I have in back,

[12:54] log that I haven't written. But I am now on with Eater, we're going to do, I think, weekly where we answer questions. So some of these questions that I've gotten by email, I might, if I don't have time on the radio show, I might defer and answer them on the eater blog. And, of course, you can put your questions to the eater blog now instead of having to email Nastasia and we'll get emailed to me. Some of them will get answered on the air, and some of them will get answered on the eater blog. What do you think, Mustasia? Yeah. So we're thinking of calling it, uh, what we're, what we're calling it? issues cooking with Dave? Issues, issues cooking with Dave? that's nice Yeah, nice. You like that issue's cooking with Dave? Yeah. Yeah, great. Okay. Marty, you wrote in. He says, he doesn't deep fry that often. I'm sorry, Marty. you should deep fry more often. I don't deep fry that often. I'm looking for ways to preserve my fry oil. Online. I saw some articles about rosemary extract being an effective antioxidant, especially a product called Inelens 4. Do I have any experience with this product? I couldn't find a way to obtain any, and do you know if it's available to consumers through any sort of

[13:52] hippie dippy health food store? No, I hadn't heard of that, in fact. But I did look it up. And Rose, you know, it's basically, that's the kind of trade name, and I don't know where you can, I don't know where you can get it, but the actual thing that it's in rosemary that's being used as an antioxidant is, I'm going to pronounce it incorrectly here is

[14:13] carnosic acid, right? So carnostic acid is derived from rosemary, there's a large amount in it. I assume it's in any kind of rosemary oil or extract that you can purchase on, you know, in Whole Foods or any one of those other

[14:27] stores. The problem is, is that the one that they use is an antioxidant and oil. And apparently it is a fairly effective antioxidant to prevent rancidity. Um, The problem with it is, is that they deodorize it. completely deodorize it. So it no longer smells like rosemary when they when they add it. So if you add it, and they're adding it in fairly small amounts. I don't know what percentage of rosemary extract that you buy in a store is going to have, you know, is going to

[14:51] be the, you know, the actual antioxidant, but, um, you know, it's in the parts per million kind of range. The question that I wasn't able to answer, it definitely stops rancidity development and storage, right? Uh, you know, the breakdown of the uh, of the, you know, into free fatty acids on storage. But I haven't been able to find that much information yet on the frying temperatures, whether or not it basically withstands frying temperatures and will actually help you at those

[15:16] temperatures, prevent oxidation breakdown, uh, you know, of the of the lipids, those kind of temperatures. But it's very interesting. So it might be fun to drop. And it's also, by the way, in sage, not just in rosemary, and there's lots of antioxidants in sage and rosemary, but it might be interesting to go to Whole Foods, buy some

[15:32] in this rosemary oil, put a couple drops in, and then do a side by side, kind of temperature abuse. It would be a little hard to, it'd be a little hard to do it completely accurately because, um, you'd have to ramp, you'd have to ramp the temperatures up and down the same in 2 baths of oil, which would be difficult unless you had it in like a 3rd bath of oil and wrapping it up and

[15:51] down. So it'd be difficult experiment to kind of do unless you were, unless you had a professional lab. But it seems it seems interesting. So if it was going to work, I would say that just rosemary oil should do the trick, but again, no experience with it, but it sounds interesting,

[16:06] you know? Yeah, rosemary, I will. Rosemary oil. Uh, maybe Chesroy can do that. You think? Yeah, I mean? You know, our friend, the chef, like, basically has rosemary growing out of his pocket for many uses at any time.

[16:20] He has rosemary coming out of everything, right? like rosemary out of every orifice. Man is like, the man, the man sprung from a rosemary, a rosemary bush. Anyway, okay. Mike Anonymous, which I like that name. Mike Anonymous writes, and he has 2 questions. One, one's on meat and the other's on popcorn. So meat. I'm trying to buy all my meat from local farmers, and that usually means that it's frozen. Unfortunately, that is true because they don't sell it as fast. They don't have the pipeline out, so they slaughter it, maybe hang it. Hopefully, then freeze it and have it for sale. That's just, that's just the way it works because they just don't have product all the time and they can't, you know, get it out of the pipeline that

[16:56] fast. My general question is, is the rule about not refreezing meat an issue of safety or quality or both? More specifically, my question is, can meat be refrozen after defrosting and manipulating 2 specific examples? He's thinking of, can he defrost a pork shoulder, make a sausage, Italian, for example, and then refreeze it

[17:13] in a suitable size. And the same question goes for dumpling fillings and other ground pork products. Can you defrost a rack of ribs, thinking of McGee's oven method for barbecue

[17:22] ribs, and refreeze them after cooking. Good shout out to McGee, and refreeze them after cooking. He would like to cook several racks and stash them away for a future meal. Okay, it is not a safety issue, Mike. It is a quality issue. Every time you freeze meat. Um, the meat is dehydrating as it as it freezes. Water is leaving the cells, especially the way you freeze in a normal home freezer. Water is leaving the cells, and then also the ice crystals that are formed can puncture those cells so that when it rehydrate, when it thaws out, it essentially has to rehydrate.

[17:50] And if it doesn't rehydrate 100%, or if the cells are damaged too much, you get a huge what's called drip loss. You get a lot of liquid dripping out of the meat. So you're going to see like the sack with a lot of liquid, liquid dripping out of it. And the more times you repeat the cycle of freezing and thawing, the more you break

[18:06] down the tissue and the more liquid you're going to lose. In fact, that is a technique that, you know, people use to break apart cells. freeestaw, freeestaw, freeestaw, freeestaw. Now, Assuming that when the meat thaws, it doesn't drip like a lunatic and it was frozen well the 1st time, right? By the way, but back on safety for a second. Freezing is not, it arrests bacterial growth, but it does not kill the bacteria, right?

[18:32] So as long as you have the product safe the whole time, and then you cook it, refreezing it is not, is not an issue. Even if you thaw it completely, and then refreeze it completely. As long as you didn't temperature abuse the product. The product is going to remain safe. Okay? So the safety concerns are the same safety concerns you would have with anything else. The freezing itself doesn't alter the safety of it. Okay? Now, if you take a product that's cooked, like really cooked, like a stew or a braise or something like that, the cells are pretty much cooked

[19:04] anyway. And so you could probably freeze it after that procedure and then, you know, like, you know, cook it and then freeze

[19:10] after that procedure without too much of a quality loss, especially if you were going to freeze it and something like a vac bag or like a very, like,

[19:18] close ziploc where there's no oxygen. You're going to want to keep the oxygen out because you're not going to want it to go rancid during the

[19:24] 2nd freezing, and you're not going to want a chance for the moisture on the inside to be able to sublimate out or recrystallize on the outside and get freezer burn.

[19:32] But as long as you do those 2 things, you might get some quality loss on refreezing. I mean, I'm not going to say that you won't get a quality loss, but I would say that you would probably get less quality loss on something that was

[19:44] cooked and then after cooked, portioned and refrozen. So, you know, it's all a question of whether or not you get a result that you like. I mean, I think it's optimal to not have to freeze if you don't have to, especially if

[19:58] you, you know, your home freezer is not very good, but sometimes there's just no choice. You might want to try a very fast freeze by bagging and then putting the bags into a very heavy brine and

[20:07] ice solution and that'll drop it like a rock, freeze it really quick. But, um, I think McGee also posted some stuff on that online, but it's just like you would do for ice

[20:15] cream. Just make sure that the salt can't get to your food and the water can't touch your food. We have a color. Oh, we have a color? All right, caller. I'll get back to your popcorn in a minute, Mike Anonymous. Caller, you're on the air. Hi, I'm Marcus from Venice Beach, and I just have a question about different Salumis. You know, you have the, uh, the, different type of salumes. I always wonder if you could speak a little bit about that. You know, um, I know it's a very broad topic, but, well, what in particular do you want to talk about with it? Well, you know, you have the sapasata, you have the salame. What makes the difference in time and so on in recipe? All right, well, I mean, the recipes, all right, so if we're talking Italian products, I mean, they're all, they're all extremely different, right? So the fundamentally, let's say we're just going to deal with pork products, right? So when you're starting with pork products, like the 1st thing you're going to choose is kind of what, assuming you all have the same quality of pork is going to be your fat lean ratio, right? And then how finally the parts are going to be cut up, right? So you can go all the way to like an emulsified product, like with a mortadella or something like that, where it's basically emulsified fats and

[21:25] meat, you know, and muscle, or like very coarse. like most of the supers we call it. Hey, New York, we call it super sun. Anyway, like most of the stuff that I get, you know, it's fairly coarse, right? Down to something like, uh, you know, like uh, like the hunter saucers and the cacciatore sausages that are a little bit in between. So then you have like what the fat lean ratio is and then how they're cut up. The next most important thing for that, for these kinds of products is the spice and or sometimes wine mixture that's added to them, right?

[21:57] So that's where a lot of the characteristic stuff is going to come into play. The next thing after that is then how much they're needed by hand. So some of the stuff that we think of as traditionally, like if you go to a deli and say salami, right? that they're, or they're very finely bound together is because they've been needed with salt. So they bind together and form a very kind of, uh, you know, compact, uh, like mass, and they're usually fairly finely chopped. Whereas you'll get some coarser products, and I'm not even talking about whole muscle cuts, like, you know, copas or anything like that. So it's like, um, So the coarser ones tend to be not needed as much, so they don't pack together as much. And then the next step after that, obviously, is what size

[22:43] you pack in? So the thinner something that is going to be packed in, the shorter the drying time, but therefore, also, to my opinion, sometimes the less complex the taste, right? Then there's so many stuff. The next step after that is, well, a lot of times these guys, like in Italy, or in a lot of places that aren't commercial, they'll, they'll do what's called wild. They'll get a wild fermentation going because these sausages, aside from usually in the

[23:09] US anyway, adding some nitrites to it to kill botulas. Botulism, by the way, is derived from the Latin for kind of sausage because you can get botulism in these things if they're not cured, you know, cured properly. So the nitrates are in there to prevent that. But they, the, so they have salts and nitrates to prevent that. But then also bacteria are growing in there, and the bacteria that grow in there drop the pH and make it acidic. That's where the tart tangy nature of these sausages come from. So the temperature of fermentation and what kind of bacteria in that also make a huge difference on the type of product you're

[23:43] going to get. And so, the combination of all of those things together, then along with, you know, the environments,

[23:50] age the microflora in a place where it's aged, or what are going to give you all the different kinds of results.

[23:57] You know what I'm saying? I mean, and that's, you know, that's, in a nutshell,

[24:02] basically, what's going on with most of the, with most of the, the cut up products and their differences. That makes sense? You there? I lost him. Anyway, I hope that's what he wanted to talk about. That's making me dang hungry, though. I could use some salumi right now. Man, I could use some salumi. Oh my goodness. Anyway, did that answer the question? hope so. What do you think? You make sense? that was great. Yeah. See, Jack, Jack has a good answer. Whereas Nastasia sits here, calls me an A-hole. Nistachia calls me an a-hole, on the air, and then's like, I don't know. listening to what you were saying anyway, right? All right. Mike Anonymous calls in, writes in with popcorn question. He goes, what's your go to method? high or low heat, pan with oil, microwave, or other? I make it in a saucepan with oil, heat it over high until a few kernels pop, add the remainder, and turn the heat down a little. I use a splatter screen instead of a cover as excess steam seems to make it chewy. I make it regularly, but have difficulty with consistently excellent popcorn. My problems are occasionally chewy, not life and fluffy, corn and varying levels of pop kernels. I buy my corner from a local co-op in small quantities. So as far as I know, it is fresh. I have read about people who cook it over lower heat, but that doesn't seem right to me. Nor does it seem right to me, Mike Anonymous. Now, I haven't had any experience with buying popcorn from

[25:17] co-op, local co-op. Um, you might have some issues that, because popcorn is pretty tweaked out. Like, you know, not that I have nothing for or against the, you know, the good folks

[25:27] at, you know, whatever it is, Orville, Redenbach, or whatever, but certain popcorn varieties, are much better

[25:33] poppers and the popcorn that's left over. I believe they're called widows, the ones that don't pop, the little kernels at the bottom that don't pop. I believe they're called widows. I used to know that. There's 2 basic kinds of popcorn. There's the butterfly shape that we're used to, and then there's the, I forget what it's called. I think mushroom, which is the one that they use for caramel coating because it has a larger surface area and doesn't break apart. Usually we're eating butterfly popcorn. Um, that's got a, uh, you know, they're fairly consistent, but they're grown to be popcorn.

[26:00] So there is a huge difference among varieties. And the one you get, maybe you like the taste, but maybe you don't get them all popped. I don't know. As for the my favorite technique, like by far and away, my favorite technique is the whirly pop. The whirly pop is basically a lidded hinge with a wheel on it that keeps the thing agitated while you spin it. They're like 30 bucks, um, and you just oil and whirly pop, turn it on, uh, not so high that it's gonna scorch, and you just keep turning until the stuff pops. It's got steam vents in it, so the steam seems to leave. I've never had a problem with popcorn being chewy in that. It's also a fantastic 1st coffee roaster, if you want to roast coffee in a whirly pop. Do you know what I'm talking about, Whirly Pops, this makes sense, no static? You know, it's got the wooden handle on it. And it's got like a little gear on the top and it goes down, it's got a little wire that moves around and keeps the popcorn moving on the bottom. And that's what I use. almost exclusively until my mom decided that what she was going to get me for Christmas was a

[26:58] movie style popcorn machine that is like, you know, it's meant for homes, but it's big enough to be in a movie

[27:05] theater. It takes up my whole apartment, but the kids fell in love with it. So now that's in my house and that works on the same principle as the whirly pop. It's just a smaller, uh, it's a smaller container than the than the worldly pop. It's basically, and that's the way most of the pro batch things work. They have an agitated rod with a loose fitting flap up lid with steam vents that allow the steam to leave so that the steam can

[27:26] leave. Well, it's going. You know, the popcorn kernels themselves should be well above the boiling temperature. So once it leaves, the steam's gonna want to leave. Spatter screen, you might have some issues with oil getting out or problems. I don't know. I mean, it doesn't sound like you do, but the whirly pop, if you make it often, get the

[27:43] freaking whirly pop, just go buy it. You're not going to regret it. then you can start roasting coffee as well. What do you think? Yeah, it's good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh, we have a question in from Stephen Garrett regarding pressure cookers. Hey, long time reader of the blog and listener. Thank you, Stephen. I finally got my hands on a pressure cooker, a cuisinart pressure cooker, electric model, which got christened with a pork shoulder for pulled pork.

[28:02] As I've never used one before. I was wondering if you had any tips, techniques, or recipes to fully utilize the machine. I love the look of your egg bread and was wondering how it is done and is there a liquid in the pot? Regards Steve from Wellington, New Zealand. Okay, Steve. I know a lot of people, Jeffrey Steingarten, is one who loves his Cuisinart electric pressure cooker. What I don't know is what the actual pressure on the Cuisinard is because the one failing of electric pressure cookers is they don't necessarily tell you what the pressure level on it is, right?

[28:31] So hopefully the cuisinart runs at £15 per square inch, which is going to, you know, uh, which is what, you know, all standard uh, pressure cookers run at, but not all electric pressure cookers. So if it runs a 15 PSI, it's going to work just like a regular pressure cooker does for anything else. The great thing about an electric is you don't have to worry about throttling the gas up and

[28:49] down. And you rarely, I think, if ever, I've never heard it really scorch, have big scorching problems on the bottom of the

[28:55] bowl because you're not using a high, high heat. plus, you know, it doesn't take up a burner. It doesn't heat up the kitchen appreciably, so supposedly they're fantastic, although I've never really used that one. The interesting thing about the egg bread. We don't add any extra liquid to it. I would add some to the recipe. I would add a pinch of sugar or soy, not too much or it'll burn, but you actually don't need to make it in a pressure cooker. You can make it in a steamer, we found out later. Um, because a chef randomly did it in a, in a steamer instead of in a pressure cooker and it worked just as well. Pressure cooker will work, but you can do that thing just in a steamer. And it uses its own liquid. just egg yolks, uh, baking powder, uh, salt, uh,

[29:38] sugar or soy, uh, and just beaten together, and then, uh, not even a lot, just like basically mixed together, and then put into ramekins and steamed.

[29:46] You can pressure cook it. Here's what I would do with the pressure cooker. First of all, I hope the Cuisinard, I I am not sure is non-venting. In other words, it doesn't produce steam when it's working. It's basically sealed or produces very little steam, in which case you can use it to make some fantastic stocks, especially reinforced stocks and like triple stocks. So if you get bones, you can do a triple stock, i.e. you know, a fresh set of bones to get this incredibly rich stock in like an hour.

[30:10] Secondly, even if it does vent from, you know, the guys at modernist cuisine, they seal their stock in mason jars. So they can do basically the work of sealed stock in small quantities in jars without having a vented

[30:23] pressure without having a non venting pressure cooker. The one I have is a coon recon, expensive, and also not electric. So that's very interesting. Also, garlic. Pressure cooked garlic. I do it in milk typically. Blend it with for about 20, I do it about 20 minutes, then blend it with oil. That's a great pizza sauce. Nils and I are doing a demonstration in Texas. And flying out to Texas later this afternoon. And we're doing ramps, which are, you know, wild, you know,

[30:48] allium things from the US. We're doing a pressure cooked ramp ice cream. You can do onion ice cream. You can pressure cook horseradish and then puree it, you can pressure cook. Like I say, onions. Any one of those things can be modified, pressure cooked. Do we ever put the stuff on the blog? Pressure cooked, mustard seeds, you pressure cooked them in, you 1st you blanch them in water, then you pressure cooked them in vinegar, and then add sugar afterwards, toss it, and you get these like

[31:12] awesome like, they're almost like mustard seed caviar. The one thing, uh, don't add a lot of, if you add high sugar, things are gonna get really dark really fast because the sugar is gonna be an even higher temperature. So you might get some scorching. That's why I add the sugar to things like the mustard seeds afterwards so that they inflate properly and they

[31:28] and they don't, you know, get too brown. Another great one is humming eggs, which are the eggs that turn brown because of the mired reactions that happen at low temperatures. We put whole eggs, hard boil them. I don't know if you can unseal it and let it boil. If not, like bring water to a boil with the eggs, let it hard boil normally for like, you know, 6 minutes or so, then put the hot water and the eggs in the

[31:51] pressure cooker for about an hour. And when they're done, hopefully they didn't break. When they're done, you peel them and the whites are kind of dark, nutty brown and have like a toasted kind of aroma. When you cut it, the yolks have a chicken

[32:04] liver kind of a chicken liver kind of aroma. pretty cool. So these are some good things to do. And obviously, it's really great for fast braises, like pork shoulder. The one thing I have to caution you against is don't add a lot of extra liquid because you're not going to evaporate and reduce a lot of extra liquid. You should put in your wine 1st and then reduce it down so that it, you know, you get rid of the kind of alcohol aroma, you want to get off of it, and then reduce like somewhat or pull the product afterwards and then reduce it, reduce the

[32:34] stock. But I would definitely start with less liquid than you're used to. And also, you're going to get a richer, meatier taste, but the texture is going to be different because the fibers are going to be broken apart a little

[32:44] more and it's because it's cooked at a higher heat, it's, you know, overcooked, overcooked in a technical sense.

[32:49] But usually quite delicious. I actually like braises. I did a chili and a pressure cooker that was awesome. Awesome. Anyway, uh, I hope that answered your question and uh, get back to us and tell us, tell us how it worked. We wanna go to one more commercial break. Let's go to one more break and come back. Call on your questions too. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues. Some call me the gangster of love. Some people call me Maurice. Because I speak of the pompetous of love. People talk about me, baby. Say, I'm doing you wrong, doing you wrong. Well, don't you worry, baby, don't worry. Because I'm right here, radio, radio, radio at home. Welcome back to cooking issues. So I see Nostalgia gave me at least one decent Steve Miller song, along with punishing

[33:57] me not only with a raw vegan diet for a week, but giving me the absolute

[34:01] worst Steven Miller song. Oh, the... Right. It's unbelievable that Abracadabra was written by the same person or same people that wrote, you know,

[34:11] the Joker, right? I mean, I look, I'm never, I was never a huge Stephen other guy growing up, but I got to respect it. I mean, that's the, you know what I mean? Like that's real song. That's real deal. Did he say I'm a gangster of love or something? He is, yeah. that was the lyric. Although some people do call him Maurice. You know, known by many names. But the, but abracadaver is got to be the worst, the worst damn song in the whole world. Anyway, thank you for the quadruple punishment, Nastasia. Thank you so much. Okay. Brian Garrick wrote in with a next demon, alkali question in

[34:45] general. He read the article on extimalization in the blog, and he loves saying that word as much as we do. It is a great word. Oh, by the way, in case you don't know what the heck we're talking about. That's the process of taking a base, like calcium

[34:58] hydroxide is a classic, and then cooking corn in it, and it makes a characteristic,

[35:05] a kind of flavor and texture for masa dough for making tortillas.

[35:10] So you get that awesome. I mean, it's just great. The base basically breaks up the outside of the corn kernel, makes it easier to grind, prehydrates it. Um, it changes the texture of it, the flavor, fantastic. Read the article on nixtamilization because unfortunately I'm not going to have the time to go through the entire rigmarole here, but we love it.

[35:28] Anyway, he's interested in making pretzels and possibly other things with basic solutions. Can you give me the down and dirty on all this stuff? It seems like baking soda is too weak, and you already covered calcium hydroxide with mixed normalization. Lie, which is sodium hydroxide, seems too dangerous per my article, and I agree that it is. I still use it at school, but I won't use it at home because I have kids at home. If I didn't have kids at home and it was properly labeled. I would do it, but I'm not having that in my house with the kids. Uh, lie seems too dangerous as per your article, but what is, but is what pretzels traditionally require. What about McGee's article about baking, baking soda? So you take baking soda and you turn it from sodium bicarbonate into sodium carbonate. Um, what about McGee's and go look it up. The great article. What about McGee's article about baking, baking soda to convert it from sodium bicarbonate sodium carbonate? Does that really work? Does it make a solution stronger? Is it safe? And what about the stuff I found at the Chinese market? There's a bottle of clear liquid labeled potassium, carbonate, and sodium bicarbonate solution. And they also have some white crystals of borax, which are labeled not food safe, but are right next to the spices. So what's safe and what's not? I don't want to poison myself or others. And as a final note, how does ateries make fossilized the fossilized veggies in Spain, like salsophy, with calcium, what's the reaction going on there? Is it the same as the banana that we cook with calcium hydroxide? And is there any other fun applications? Well, Brian, in San Francisco? A lot of questions there. I'm going to try and hit them in the little amount of time that I have left. Um, he is using calcium hydroxide. I haven't had them, by the way, so I don't know specifically, but I have talked to people that have had ateries as vegetables that are done this way. And I think also, Renny Redseppi, Noma, uses this technique. And they're basically firming up the outside of vegetables,

[37:10] using, they use calcium hydroxide to basically cross-link the

[37:15] pectin there. And that's what's going on, calcium cross-linking of pectin. They're usually done in conjunction with heat treatment, which activates the enzyme inside

[37:25] the vegetables that causes it to happen, which is pectin methyl esterase. And so the combination of calcium and the heat activating the pectin methylesterase makes a very strong outside shell, and then the inside basically is allowed to get mushy in the outside firm. Now, what I do with a banana is I inject calcium hydroxide into the

[37:45] banana and the injection of calcium hydroxide makes the banana firm all the way through. We've recently done it without the calcium hydroxide by injecting with

[37:53] just calcium and then heat treating it and getting a similar result. But that's what's going on with those. And you can do those, you know, at home, it's the exact same thing that goes on with the banana, which is, you know, traditionally done in Thai

[38:07] cooking or their Asian cooking. So yes, that's a very good thing. That's calcium hydroxide. lots of different forms of calcium. will do that for you. Now, borax is used as a food ingredient in other countries, but is not legal for food use here in the US. Now, I don't know what the specific health problems with it are, right? But there is food grade borax, for instance, caviars treated with borax. It's a, it affects the texture in a way that I'm not really, don't really understand. Borax is, I think, I believe it's a borate, like sodium, 2 sodiums, and then borate, which

[38:42] is like, I think, 4 borons and tetraborate, I think. Anyway. But it's it's used as a texture modifier, but also as a preservative. So in caviar, they'll add a little borax. And to fish roll, they'll add borax to it as a preservative. And I read on Wikipedia, so take it with a grain of borax. But, um, well, this part of it, that, that our caviar that we get here in the US is more highly salted because Borax isn't allowed to be added to it. But it's definitely used in other cultures as I've never used it as a firming agent and as a preservative. Borax, if you can get a hold of it, is also the cool stuff that you mix with Elmer's. It's an agent that helps polymerize things, make larger polymers. So I was finding a lot of articles on using borax to make

[39:24] larger like food polymers, but not, I couldn't find anything specific for, you know, normal use. But if you mix it with Omer's glue, you can make slime. Borax, nommer's glue, mixed together. Silly putty is, I think, different. Like, PV, polyvinyl alcohol is the, is the glue, is the, what glue Elmer's white glue is? And if you add borax to it, it polymerizes and turns to

[39:46] polymerized PDA, which is slime. you know, gak or whatever. The stuff that's in the, that's, you know, that slime. which I'm extremely interested in because I want to make a food grade slime. working on it, but I haven't fixed it yet. Okay. The potassium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate solution that you see is con sway. That's what's used to make, that's what's used to make the stretchy yellow alkaline noodles, right? So you add that, that's a basic solution, and that's very classic in Chinese, you know, recipes. Your flour is gonna go very yellow and it's gonna the noodles are gonna have a lot of bite to it, right? It's going to really enhance the kind of gluten snappiness of those things. That's the console that's typically used for the yellow apple and noodles. Although, I don't know how basic it is. It might also be useful for pretzels. I'm not sure. That stuff is also mistakenly sometimes sold as lie water, even though it doesn't contain lie, which is everything, everything's got to be, Brian, everything's got to be a pain in the ass. You know what I'm saying? Oh, you can say that. Like ass is different. It's a donkey. Makes no sense. She made no sense. All right. Now, the converting baking soda to, you know, the sodium bicarbonate to sodium carbonate actually does

[40:49] work and will make a fine pretzel. Bai is traditional. I've never done a side by side taste test of live boiled pretzels versus sodium carbonate pretzels.

[40:58] I have made sodium bicarbonate pretzels, and they were, meh, meh. You know what I mean? Like, but I've never done live versus sodium carbonate. McGee's technique definitely does work. You can also tell if it's worked because the weight changes of the sodium bicarbonate because water is being driven off. So you can weigh the sample before and after to verify that you have, in fact, converted it. Use that, um, to, what are this driven off? Or CO2. I can't remember. Anyway, I can't remember what's driven off. But then you can weigh it and weigh the difference. And then use that to make your pretzels, add it and do the boil. The reason you boil pretzels in a basic solution is because that will radically, 1st of all, it changes the flavor, makes it taste like a

[41:40] pretzel, and not like, like, you know, something else, like a bagel or something like that. You know, because a pretzel is supposed to taste like a pretzel. First of all, pretzels should be freaking twisted. I don't like pretzel sticks. I don't like molded pretzels. I don't like any of these pretzeloids. I don't like, I don't like, like, fish prep shaped pretzels. I mean, they're okay. They shouldn't be called pretzels. Pretzels need to be twisted because the way they break up. When you eat a pretzel, it's twisted. It breaks up in a very specific way, the pretzels are supposed to break up based on the fact that they were a stick of dough that's been twisted into a shape that we know as a pretzel,

[42:13] right? And so, you know, the middle knot has a different texture from the nubbins. There also bakes differently in different parts, which adds varied texture to it as well. So a real pretzel, and I've taught my kids this, since they were about, since they could speak, I could walk up to my kids and say, what's a real

[42:28] pretzel, and they're like, daddy, real pretzel is twisted, because that is what a pretzel should be. Anyway, aside from that, it needs the real pretzel taste from the, um, for boiling in a basic solution. It also that it's going to enhance the Mayard reaction. So the reason pretzels are so dark brown is because they have been boiled beforehand in a basic solution. Um, but I haven't done live versus sodium carbonate, but I'm sure the sodium carbonate is going to be good. If you can have lying around, do it. If not, I'm sure sun carbonates a fine, fine runner-up. Also, if you are going to make a hard pretzel. Please do not add any oil to the pretzel at all. Don't add any oil at all. If you take most pretzels that are bad, even twisted ones or ones on the market, I'm not going to call out roll gold

[43:14] as a bad brand of pretzels, but if I did, it's because if you looked at the ingredient label or

[43:19] Bachman, which like would otherwise be a fine pretzel because it's twisted, they're large ones, right? Uh, if you look at the ingredient label, they have oil in it and that reduces the texture of a

[43:29] pretzel, from what God intended a pretzel to be, which is delicious to that of a cracker with a dark brown crust on the outside and salt.

[43:38] That's not what you want a pretzel to be. All right, now, I have one last thing. I'm going to defer this to the eater blog, as the 1st one's going to go to the eater blog. Adam Frost adds a question about legumes and the vegetal taste that legumes have when they're raw. And since A, I didn't have time to research it thoroughly, and B, it's time for us to go, Adam, I'm going to answer your question on

[44:00] eater tonight or tomorrow, but I'm going to have to call McGee to see what he thinks, all right? So listen, your pretzels must be twisted. Your pretzels must not contain oil and your pretzels must be boiled in alkaline solution. Cooking issues.

[44:18] 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 Heritage

[44:34] Radio network in the iTunes store. You can find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for up to date news and information. Thanks for listening. My head all twisted. And a guest can't get it straight. Nicole Taylor is always the 1st to talk with new and exciting personalities in the food world on her

[44:56] show Hot Grease. Check out a little clip. Everything is super sweet in the Heritage Radio Network Studios today. We're chatting with Fannie Gearson. Fannie is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and the 2011 James Beard Foundation Cookbook Award nominee.

[45:15] Oh my god, we fry in bed style. We have to talk to dope donuts. I'm going to have to say, Fanny. I don't know if you know this. I was definitely the 1st person in Brooklyn to start talking about it. Did you know that? I knew that last time I saw you. But I didn't know that before. So we have to talk dough. I mean, it is it is a bona fide phenomenon in Brooklyn.

[45:36] I'm so excited to be part of it. And I can't believe it. I mean, I was just telling you before the show that I think about a month ago, I went to Doe on a Sunday at 2 o'clock and all the donuts. You like what you hear? You can hear hot grease every Monday at 3.30 p.m. live on heritageradionetwork.com. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast or check it out in our archives. This is behind the scenes food news with Katie Keper. This little nugget comes from Food Safety News, which is a blog that you can get every single day if you want to sign up for it. I love it. And in this one, it says, in what qualifies as ground shifting news in the food safety world. The U.S. Department of Agriculture today, on Tuesday, lopped 15 degrees off of its recommended temperature for safely

[46:24] cooking, whole cuts of pork, aligning it with guidelines already in place for beef, veal, and

[46:29] lamb. Heating steak, roasts, and chops to an internal temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit, so long as the meat sits briefly before it's eaten, is enough to ensure its safety, the USDA said. This latest revision for pork comes again on the advice of the FSIS, which is

[46:46] a food safety inspection service, which says cooking cuts of pork to

[46:49] 145 degree Fahrenheit with a 3 minute rest is as safe as cooking them to 160 degrees. The previously recommended temperature with no rest time. So now you can have a little bit of pink, juicy pork, even if you're buying commodity pork, which should vastly improve its taste and eating quality.

[47:07] This has been behind scenes food news with Katie Kiefer.