[0:00] Hi, I'm Steve Jenkins. I work for Fairway Markets in the New York area, and we're awfully proud to support Heritage Radio, and we care so much about everything that goes on out here at Roberta's

[0:16] in their studio because they talk to people who are serious about food, and that's what we are at Fairways. We're serious about food. We just care very deeply about, about you as a, as a customer and how you

[0:29] cook and what you cook with and how you entertain. And that's why we love to support

[0:34] heritage radio because it, it's pretty much the same thing. It's wanting to find happiness through serious food and people who are serious about it and care about learning everything there is to learn about it. And that's, that's, we're kindred spirits. If it's something worth having in your kitchen, you're going to find it at Fairway. And if there's somebody worth talking to about food, you're going to find them on

[0:59] heritage radio and we will be supporting you guys for a long, long time. At Fairway, I'm your personal grocer, Steve Jenkins, Fairway Mark.

[1:20] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues here on the Heritage Radio Network. I'm Dave Arnold, the host of cooking issues in the studio today at Roberta's with Nastasia Hammer Lopez, coming to you live every Tuesday from 12 to 1245. How you doing today, Nastasia? Okay. Yeah? So next week, am I in the studio or am I in Los Angeles next week, assuming I can get this all straightened out? think you're in Los Angeles? I'm not here at all. Where are you? You're off the planet? You're on like the last space shuttle mission? Where are you going? I told you, I'm going to Rhode Island. Rhode Island, yeah. Well, it's kind of not here. Anyway, we might be doing the show from Los Angeles next week. I'm not sure. We'll keep you posted by a tweet. Call in all of your cooking related questions, technical or not, too, 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Okay, so let's take some of the questions we got emailed. I got a question from Eric Zawaki. Uh, He says, I was sketching out an idea for pork belly dish to replicate the feeling of being at a barbecue spot using the sense of

[2:21] smell. Thought of using one of the electric water pipes used for. He says, you know what, but it's for marijuana. It's like, what they are is, they're actually, well, I'll finish the question. Uh, used for you, know what? But instead of herbal medicine, i.e. marijuana, there would be applewood chips in the

[2:36] bowl, and then the smoke generator would be shot into an upside down serving vessel, stemless wine glass, for instance, covering a dish so that when

[2:43] he opened its service, it would emit the smell of being in a place with a barbecue smoke pit.

[2:47] All right, so what we're talking about here is back in the 80s, they developed these little

[2:53] miniature or 80s, yeah, 80s. They developed these little miniature electric vacuum cleaners that were powered with

[2:58] AA batteries, and they were for geeks like myself. I owned several that, so you could vacuum out your keyboards and small parts and electronics and crap like that.

[3:07] So, and then some enterprise, so there were supposed to be vacuum machines, vacuum cleaners, miniature.

[3:12] And some enterprising but extremely lazy pothead who couldn't take the trouble to inhale the smoke from their pipe because they were

[3:20] so they were so stoned that they couldn't literally could not inhale. Uh, said, dude, I could put the batteries in this sucker backwards and it will run

[3:30] backwards and instead of being a vacuum, it will uh, suck the, it

[3:35] will, it will shoot smoke. And so what they did is they screwed a, they burnt and screwed a bowl, you know, like a pot bowl,

[3:41] little one on the top of this vacuum cleaner, uh, and then ran it backwards and shot marijuana smoke out of the out of the pipe,

[3:47] right? So that's where we were from, you know, I don't know, sometime in the 90s, probably up until the very early 2000s, when a group of chefs started using them as smokers, right? So the most famous chef that I know that uses it and used it fairly early was Juan

[4:04] Rocca. I saw them do a presentation at Madrid Fusion, I believe, in 2005 or 4 or something like that. And they famously took these, uh, took these things and would, uh,

[4:16] do basically what you're saying, uh, Eric, which is they would, they would inject smoke under a cloche under like, you know, a serving dish, and then the dish would be completely

[4:24] obscured. And then when you lifted the dish up, the smoke would go out and you'd have this sensation of smoke and a really awesome visual effect

[4:31] and a really good kind of going from not seeing to seeing with the

[4:35] cloche only instead of being metal at being glass. So it's very famous presentation works extremely well. I've seen it demonstrated a couple times. I've never eaten it. Harold McGee and Wiley have both had it and they said it was a good dish. Another thing that these guys did was they took a, like a little glass, almost like a, looks like a gravy boat, but with a flat top, and they sealed plastic around it. And then they poked a little hole in it, and they put the smoke into that with a little hole, and

[5:02] then every time your spoon hit the dish, it would send up a little smoke

[5:06] ring, that was also a really good presentation, really cool. And people also use it for smoking things like you'd wrap something inside of, let's say, a bowl or a tammy with

[5:17] a plastic wrap, inject the smoke, and let's sit. Personally, I don't think that it has the same effect as actual smoking because the smoke is static. You're not constantly generating it. And after a while, the smoke's gonna settle out. I don't think it's the same as actual smoking. The other problem is the pothead vacuum cleaners are tend to be built not that well, but

[5:36] they're, um, and they tend to burn out and there's, there's kind of problems with it melting and getting overly hot. Philip Preston at polyscience makes one that's kind of more robo and built for cooking. I don't know what he called. He calls it the smoking gun. So he sells one that's kind of meant to stand up to kitchenware. The one I went to, I don't know what the kids call them nowadays. We call them a head shop, right? where you go and you buy pot paraphernalia, you know, but you have to pretend that you're using it for

[5:59] tobacco, otherwise they won't sell it to you. If you say, I need something to use with marijuana. I can't say that to me, man. You know what I mean? But if you tell them that, you know, I'm going to smoke tobacco in this thing, then they can sell it to you. Anyways. So like, um, you go to those, you buy one, but don't expect those ones to last too long, they they leak and

[6:17] uh, they they melt because they, you know, whatever. They're not they're not high quality, as my son would say. They're they're low quality products. Anyway, so I hope that helps. Okay. Ryan Santos wrote in and he says he's looking for some guidance in cooking, pork blade steaks, sous vide. They're crazy marbled fatty. I was thinking of trying more of a pork belly type approach than a pork chop steak kind of approach. Any insight would be appreciated. Well, I've never actually cooked. So basically what the blade steak is. I mean, if I'm right about this, which I assume I am, is it's basically a steak cut from the pork shoulder, not the picnic shoulder, but basically the front shoulder of the

[6:53] pig and has a little bit of the blade, the, you know, blade bone in it. And I have cooked whole pork shoulder before, and it works quite well. But, you know, I've never cooked just a blade steak that way. The problem with any of these kinds of cooking, when you're doing sous vide or low temperature for a long time, is it contains lots of different

[7:13] muscles, and it's very hard to get all the muscles perfect at the same time, because if there's a muscle that has less connective tissue in it, then that muscle is going to lose its texture and get kind of a little mushy by the time the rest of the muscles are going to get are going to get done.

[7:27] And you have that same problem with pork belly as well. Now, with pork shoulder, I don't think you're going to have to go nearly as long as you would have to go for a pork belly, right? So pork shoulder, you know, you can test and see how you like it. I would choose a relatively low temperature, like between, I mean, it depends on how you like your pork, between 58 and 60 Celsius, which is, you know, 140 and below.

[7:49] Although the port camps council still believes that you can cook pork to 160 degrees Fahrenheit and have it be juicy. Do you think that's even possible, nostalgia? that even it's not, it's like physically impossible, right? I mean, like, unless you slather it with some sort of external juice. It's not going to have its own juice. But anyway, so I would cook it between I would cook it between like 138 and 140 Fahrenheit.

[8:12] And you, you know, try cooking it for, see whether or not 12 hours is enough, actually, whether it's, or if that's too chewy, then try it for a

[8:20] day, and if that's too chewy, try it for two. I would not go over 2 days. Honestly, I would probably go for like 24 hours. I like a little texture in my meat, though. I don't want it like 2 kind of mushy. And I pretty sure that some of the muscles in that steak are going to turn kind of fibery mushy. So there's a kind of, when you overcook something low temperature, it doesn't have the same characteristics as overcooked meat in general,

[8:43] overcooked, low temperature meat doesn't go dry, right? It goes, what I, the way I say it's kind of like it just loses its texture and turns mushy. So what'll happen is when you bite into it, like it'll be, uh, the 1st bite will explode kind of

[8:57] with, with juice, but then as you keep chewing, it'll taste almost like little fibers, like a paste, mush in

[9:02] your in your mouth. You've had it before, noastasia. It's an accurate description. And it turns to kind of like just, you know, kind of pace in your mouth. To me, unpleasant. Some people actually don't mind it, but to me, it's like a, it's a huge, it's a huge problem. So that's what overcooking means in low temperature kind of a sous vide environment. Um, but tell us how tell us how it works out because, uh, I'm interested. I've never done it before. It looks like a very inexpensive cut of meat. Another thing I would do is I would cook it in a vacuum. I would suck a kind of a medium kind of a vacuum on. I wouldn't go too hard. I would then take this thing. I would cook it all the way through to whatever tenderness you want, then I would let it cool down,

[9:43] 100% cool down, and then put a righteous hard sear on the outside because you'd want. I think you want to, um, you want to basically have it taste kind of traditional,

[9:54] probably, have a look a real nice crust on the outside and be soft on the inside. I think it would be the way to go. Also, some tests that we've run recently. Don't salt the meat beforehand. This is kind of obvious, and I don't know why I never thought of it before, but we were running a bunch of tests where, and

[10:11] typically, if I'm going to do what's called direct serve, where I'm going to cook it, and then serve it right after it's right after it's been cooked. I will salt the meat before I sear it, and then put it in the bag, and then cook it. Problem is, is that if you're storing the meat for a long time overnight or the next day, the meat's going to get cured and it's going to lose some of its

[10:29] juiciness. It going to get firmer like cured meat. Duh. So the basic rule is if you're going to keep something for a long time, the exception is braises that you're going to cook for a long time, really

[10:40] braises the meat out, in which case you can salt it beforehand because it needs to be seasoned throughout. But if you're going to take a piece of meat and serve it like a steak, you don't want to salt your meat before you serve it, all

[10:51] right? Um, and we'll talk about that in a minute because apparently we have a caller, caller, you were on the air. Hey Dave, how's everything going? going all right. I'm glad to hear that. I got a, you know, quick question. I saw, you know, I've been getting more into fish, and I saw that you had did a little thing on Ikajime, I believe it's called. And it kind of really fascinated me, but I don't fully understand it. How could kind of destroy, it seems like you destroy the spine and something, it makes the fish taste better. Are you, are you, do you fish? I don't fish. I just you know, I'm just now getting into seafood a little bit more. All right. This is a very, this is very glad you asked this question because I just shot something with Dave Chang last week on

[11:29] Ikigima. hadn't done Ikajime work for a while, and then I just came back and did some just this week. this is very, very good question. So, Ikigime is basically just the entire range of Japanese fish killing techniques.

[11:42] And, um, there's a whole range of them, but they're, they basically accomplish 2 things. One, they are meant to bleed out the fish properly, right? Because Japanese fish, they all about getting the blood out of the fish. And the 2nd aspect of it is preserving or enhancing the texture of the fish based on how it's killed. Okay? So there's there's 2 There's, there's, the spinal cord thing is one aspect of Ikejime called shinkenuki. So I was running through all of the techniques. So there's a technique that we haven't experimented with up until now, but it seems like a very good

[12:16] technique, and so I'm going to do it from now on. They make a little curved knife, right? And so the 1st thing you do is you take the live fish and you impale its head with this curved knife and you destroy the brain, right? And so what that does, right? Normally what I would do instead of doing that is just sever the spine, okay, with a knife. right under the gill flap, sever the spine. And what that'll do is disconnect the brain from the rest of the

[12:44] muscles so that the brain's no longer controlling the muscles. Two things, though. One, it takes a little bit to get the knife in there, and also, it takes a lot of force to accurately break the spinal cord

[12:56] there. So you might miss, in which case you're going to cause stress to the muscles. The fish has more of a chance to flop around because you're doing more adjustment while you're doing that. And so there's more chance that you're going to drop the fish, which causes stress to the fish into the muscles. So my new theory, and also when you sever the spinal cord that way, the brain is still alive in the fish. And so if you're going to serve the head, there might be some detrimental effect on the taste of the head, although I don't know this, I haven't studied

[13:20] that. But in general, I think just for humanitarian reasons and also for ease and speed of killing, which equals better flesh reasons, the best thing to do is to take this knife or an ice pick or whatever, go into the

[13:33] brain, right, you know, above and behind the eye, and basically take its brain out, right? Now the brain's gone. Then, I would cut the spinal cord at the top and the bottom when you sever the spinal cord near the tail and near the

[13:46] front. What you're doing is, 1st of all, cutting all of the, you're cutting the connection from the brain to the spinal cords.

[13:54] Now the spinal cord is isolated from the from the brain, right? And that's good for reasons, I'll tell you in a minute. But two, you're severing the blood vessels that run down along the bottom of the spine. And what that allows you to do is really bleed this sucker out. So if you cut just in the front, that's the equivalent of what's called gill cutting, which is what we do kind of traditionally. But if you cut in the front and the back, basically the fish can pump the blood out of its body more efficiently.

[14:16] And eventually we're going to stick it in water, like salted ice water, and then it's going to pump out and pump clean water into its system, and you're going to get

[14:24] a really nice, pure bled out fish, which is what the Japanese really like. They don't like that that taste of what they would call the chi line, which is that bloodline that runs along, like on a fish that you see, the dark stripe in, like a tuna. They would prefer like the lighter flavor of the thing that's been totally bled out, right? So that's the that's the basically the bleeding technique. Now the next technique, the further technique is to then take a needle, thin needle, like a wire, and run it up the spinal cord, right?

[14:51] So not in the center of the spinal cord, but at the bottom of the spine is the blood vessels, and at the top of the spine, is basically where the spinal cord is running. And it's a straight shot all the way up. And so you stick a needle through the spine and it basically wipes out the spine. And that's kind of the interesting technique that because we can kind of intuitively understand what's going on with all of those 1st steps,

[15:12] right? With the bleeding. And, you know, those all kind of make sense. It's this taking out the spinal cord with the needle is a thing that is kind of weird and we don't, like, why would you do that? The answer is, is because the spinal cord, even though the brain is not sending messages to the spinal

[15:29] cord. The spinal cord has its own way of sending out messages to the muscles. There's things called central pattern generators that are in the spinal cord

[15:37] itself, telling the muscles to basically to swim, right? And they don't swim because they're no longer coordinated by the brain, but they're sending impulses to the

[15:46] muscles, causing those muscles to contract. Now, when the muscles are have these impulses going to them to contract. What happens is they lose their energy quicker. The ATP, which is the, which is your energy source in fish muscles and your muscles and my muscles. So, by depleting the ATP, right, as ATP is depleted, and the energy stores and the muscles are depleted, that's what causes the muscles to go into rigor mortis, because rigor mortis basically, you know that you need energy to contract your muscles.

[16:15] You also need energy in the form of ATP to release your muscles. So as you lose ATP in a dead muscle, they just ratchet tighter and tighter and tighter and

[16:24] tighter and they can't unratchet. can't open up. So it turns out that the faster you go into rigor mortis, the faster you deplete your energy, the harder the rigor mortis

[16:34] is. And fish muscle is strong enough to do damage to itself with rigor mortis. So when it comes out of rigor mortis, right? If you haven't shoved the needle up the spine, then your fish turns softer, it's less firm, right? So when you put the needle in the spine, what you're doing is preserving the texture of the fish, you're going to get less gaping in

[16:53] the muscles, less dripping, less weeping, and it's just firmer. The weird thing about Ikigime, and some Western chefs can't wrap their heads around it, is that it takes longer for the fish to be in prime condition after you do Ikigime. Right when you do Ikigime. If you eat any fresh fish that was just killed. It's going to taste kind of almost crunchy. You know, almost like crunchy, like giant clam sushi kind of crunchy, right? Uh, and then um, or like, you know, gia duck or gooey duck, rather, clam, that kind of crunchy. And then you have to let it age. And a Western fish, one that hasn't done had the needle up the spine, is going to come out of rigor faster. And so for a small window, you might prefer it. But when you taste it, you can tell that it has kind of a mushiness that's come from this hard rigor that isn't in the fish that has had the needle gone up the spine.

[17:44] This is especially true of fish that do a lot of swimming, hard swimming. So like stripers, tunas, uh, you know, uh, any any kind of bass, any hard swimming thing, but also things like fluke. You can make a difference. There's some evidence I haven't tested. Every fish that I've tested tastes better with with the needle up the spine. But there's some evidence that certain fish like place, for instance, don't benefit from the spine, but I haven't, I have never tested a fish that didn't benefit, and I've tested blackfish, stripers, hybrid bass,

[18:16] um, uh, what else? Uh, fluke, uh, a bunch. You know what I mean? And so I've never had a fish that didn't benefit. Is this making more sense now? We still, is he off the air? I talk him off the air? I think I talked him off. I took like AT&T cut his cut his phone off by the time I got anyway. So, um, there, like the benefit is huge. The problem is, is that it's big. Well, we have a new color. Well, maybe I'll talk more about Ikjime in a minute because it's a fascinating subject, but we have a new caller, caller, you're on the air. Hi, Dave, this is Andy from Chicago. Hey, how you doing? Good. How you guys say? Doing well, doing well. I didn't get to Chicago this year for the NRA. I missed it. How was it? Did you go to the Internet? I did not go. not in the industry myself. So I missed it. I heard it was pretty big, though. Yeah, I love going to Chicago because I really like I really like eating in Chicago. It's a great eating town, so, and I like walking around in Chicago, so I'm sorry I missed it. Anyway. Yeah, great town. I'm actually really excited. I got reservations to a Linea in August, so I'm pretty pumped about that. Oh, great restaurant. You ever been there before? It'll be my 1st time, but, you know, Grant's been getting all that press recently, and I saw it on Bizarre Foods, too. so pretty excited. Yeah, I've been reading a lot about it. Yeah, get ready because like if you get the full tasting and the wine, you're there for hours and they're going to roll you out in a barrel, you know what I mean? You're going to be like... Yeah, I'm pretty excited about it. We're doing the whole, you know, the ultra bangs. You have an early reservation? Uh, I think it might be like a 6.30 or something like that. Yeah, I don't remember. Yeah, do a couple of meetings, right? Yeah, no, well, I once did that thing at like 9.30 at night, uh, and had the full tasting and the entire kitchen wanted to Ikigime made me stick a knife in my head because they, we weren't out of there until like 2.30 in the morning anyway. Wow, wow. Yeah, we're definitely on the earlier side. But I think I might have to take the day off from the next day. Yeah, recover. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So what's your question? My question about curing salt. I'm doing a prosciutto style ham in my attic right now and uh, when I, when I got to ham last December, I went over to the spice house in Chicago, which is a great spice house, and they only had one type of curing sauce. I forget which it was, but the guy there said that the other kind, which is essentially saltpeter, was illegal, to sell in the United States, which I didn't think was true, but, uh, you know, so I got the, I got the one he

[20:41] had, and, uh, you know, I'm just, I'm just wondering, what, what's the difference between the nitrate and the

[20:45] nitrite? Which one is saltpeter and why would he have claimed it was illegal in the United States or somehow not able to be

[20:52] sold? Uh, yeah, well, he's wrong kind of on both counts. You are lucky to live near a place called Butcher Packer. If you're going to get stuff for curing. You should deal with the guys at Butcher Packer. They're really good, and they will sell to you, not just to kind of industry types, and they have all the

[21:11] different things. There's there's 2 There's a bunch of different things you can buy, right? The 2 curing salts that they're sold are either called insecure one or insecure 2 or prague powder one or prague powder 2. and there's another thing you can buy called Morton's Tender Quick, right? Most of them, the Insecure One and the Prague One, and the Tenderquick have as their base, nitrite, sodium nitrite, right?

[21:35] Saltpeter, like, is an old form of nitrates that can be used, but, you know, sodium nitrate, right, is not the same

[21:44] as like what they would say, saltpeter, straight saltpeter. Sodium nitrate is not illegal, right? The effect of battery is. You're only supposed to use nitrate, right? on things like country hams or like prosciutto.

[21:59] If, well, you know, in Italy, they don't use nitrates at all in the, in the prosciutto, you know, uh,

[22:04] protective department, things like that. But in an American country ham, and there are some American country ham people that don't use nitrates either, right? But the deal is that think of nitrate, right? Which is like the insecure two, right? Think of nitrate as kind of time release nitrite. Because what happens is, is that you rub the cure into the surface of the

[22:27] meat and the nitrite, right, gets used up fairly quickly as it goes

[22:33] through. Turns to NO, does its curing thing, right? The nitrate. Right. The nitrate then takes longer to convert to nitrite, which then converts to, you know, the NO, which does

[22:45] its, which does its thing. So nitrates are long acting nitrites. And they're only used on whole muscle cut, long cured items like country legs. Right. So you never use a nitrate on like a bacon or on anything like that,

[23:02] um, because those are usually pumped or even if they're not pumped, they don't need to cure that long. Does that make sense? Yeah, definitely. So if I went with the sort of more quick release version, you know, obviously

[23:14] there, I would, I would imagine there's slightly more risk of, you know, botulism or something like that,

[23:19] but, you know, as long as the rest of it's done properly and cured properly, it should be okay,

[23:23] right? Well, you're they're not really going to get, um, you know, watch. someone's going to come and say that I'm wrong, but you're not really going to get botulism in something like a ham. You're going to get botulism in something like a sausage or like a sausage where it's mixed

[23:38] together. First of all, like hams are sufficiently dried and sufficiently

[23:43] salted, supposedly, to get rid of any risk of botulism, right?

[23:48] The nitrites, in the nitrates and the nitrites, do a couple of things. They ensure that you're going to get that cured color, right? That cured color will come just from long aging, right? Which is why you don't need it for prosciutto de Parma, or for American country hams, if you age it long enough. But if you have a shorter aged ham. If you've ever seen a shorter aged ham, when you cut it, parts of the area will be kind of gray and they were undercured, right? And so you can you can see that that kind of thing happening, but you're still not going to get botulism because the inside of the meat, unless you hit it with a

[24:20] knife, is relatively sterile, right? And plus, you know, the whole thing. You guys are so heavily salted and, you know, should be okay. If it's done right, yeah. So it's if it's in your attic, right, the ham, then assuming that your attic is not really air conditioned,

[24:37] right, during the summer, if it gets hot, does it get hot? It gets, I mean, we have an AC but it still stays relatively warm up there. Like what? Like, you know, probably 80, something like that. Okay. So you're getting close to American country ham temperatures. I mean, one of the primary differences between prosciutto and, you know, Italian style prosciutto and an American style, right, is

[25:01] the temperature and the humidity. So an American ham is going to be done in a fairly high humidity, fairly high temperature

[25:07] environment. Think Virginia in the summertime. You know what I mean? Or think. And by the way, just because you don't smoke it doesn't mean that it's not an American style because many American hams are not smoked, right? you know, plenty of them. So, you know, that's kind of just a choice that people may. How old is it right now? Right now it's about 6 months, 6, 7 months, something right around there. I got it in late December and it started hanging in in like early January, basically. Nice. Is it hanging upside down or is it hot pointed down or is it hot pointed up? No, it's hot up in a prosciutto style. I weighted it as I salted it, so it's got that nice flat, you know, prosciutto, uh, look to it, but it's, uh, you hock up. Right. You might want to, um, lard over the face of the meat at this point. Okay. How long ago did you do that? I did it pretty early on actually. Right. I mean, you want to let some of the moisture come out of it beforehand, but then when you lard over the face,

[26:04] now you're stopping a lot of the moisture from leaving on that side, and that's one of the things that Americans don't do that I wish they did do because the face side of the meat gets too dry.

[26:14] But you didn't debone it yet, though, right? Bone still in? No, bone still in, yeah. All right, cool. Yeah, so how long are you going to hang it like a year or longer? I'm thinking like a year. Yeah, I'll probably dig into, you know, I might try it in December, maybe maybe January. I actually did a, did another one before the, just like a month before this one that, uh, was skin off and, uh, you know, more like a £12

[26:38] like, bone or, uh, I don't know, femur and ham, you know, that I got from a guy. So that one's gonna cure more like 6 or 8 months, I think. I larded over that one too, because it was basically, you know, no skin on it. It's some fat spill, but I put a nice coating of lard over that one. So that one I'll probably break into in the next month or so, but this one I'm going to wait till at least 2012. Right, yeah. And you know the ice pick trick, right? Shove an ice pick into it to smell it, see how you're doing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, cured aroma, that's kind of, you know, obviously it takes practice,

[27:08] but I'm just looking for a cured hammy aroma, right? Yeah, and you can search also to make sure that you don't have like a taint along the bone line or anything like that. By the way, I've had many hams that have like a taint, like a little bit of like an uncured part

[27:21] that along the bone, and it doesn't affect the rest of your ham. I'm sure you already know this if you've already, if you already done this. By the way, a good place to look, for a country ham curing, there's a guy named Norman Marriott, who's a, who's ex, he's emeritus at, I think, Virginia Tech, and he has a good online PDF on ham curing, in a ba-, in case you want to try, like, total American

[27:44] style at some point, bag curing, which is actually kind of kind of interesting, maybe doing American stuff for your next one.

[27:49] How much did this guy, how much did this guy weigh before you cured him, the big one? It was right about £25, I believe, yeah. Nice. Nice. It was a good one. It was a good butcher from Central Illinois. He supplies a lot of the local Chicago restaurants. And the other one is, the other one I got was from this great Amish farmer in central Indiana where I spent a lot of time, uh, real, you know, purely pastured, uh, real, real natural pork. So I'm excited for both of them. They should be pretty tasty. Nice. Sounds like it's going to be delicious. I certainly hope so I'm waiting for ready for it, man. I want it to be 2012 right now. Yeah, waiting's the hard part. That's why you got to keep making them so you never have to wait to have your next one. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to wait, you know, next December, once the temperatures drop a little bit. I'm definitely getting on another one, so. Beautiful. All right. thanks for coming. quick question. What's your, you have like a favorite country, you know, maker who you buy from regularly or who would you recommend if I were to get

[28:45] one, if I were to buy an American country, Ham? What do you think would be a good place to start? All right. there's a couple of really good ones. The problem is you got to make sure you get the good ones from them, which means you can't, you have to call, physically call and ask, like, how the particular ham is so

[28:57] that the, like, my go-to hams are, I like S. Wallace Edwards, right? He has he has one that's now called a Suriano, which I don't enjoy the name because I hate like pretending that it's like some sort of Spanish thing, but

[29:09] he is currently making those things with Patrick here from Heritage Food, his heritage pork.

[29:13] They're unbelievably marbled and they're very well made. I really like those. They're kind of smoked in a Virginia tidewater style. And I think he puts pepper on. I think they smoke even the Seriano ones, but they're delicious. He might make an unsmoked one. I really like Nancy Mahaffey at Colonel Newsom's over in Kentucky. You know, their recipe goes back a long way. I've heard that she's now experimenting with some heritage pork. In fact, I tasted some. It's delicious. Her ham is hung in an area that has kind of like a lot of

[29:41] like funky molds. It's kind of like she's near a swamp and her hams have a very faint wisp of kind of like a blue cheese note that I

[29:50] really, really enjoy. But you have to call her. She only cures once a year in the, in the, in the wintertime and uh, she sells this stuff out. So you got to make sure sometimes she has some older ones that are held over from last year. You can call her and she will hold them for you. She's great. I like Alan Benton makes some good hams. I haven't had his in a while, Benton's country ham. closer to you. Burgers, smokehouse makes like of some commodity hams, right? But they also make a, like, kind of their heritage ham, which is 12 months old. I believe it's called like attic age, but you have to call because they make some hams for Walmart. You know what I mean? And then they make, and then they make some that are, you know, that are, they're old. Yeah, real. So it's all about kind of, it's all about with, with these, with these companies like calling them up and and just talking with them on the phone and making sure that you're

[30:41] getting, because they think that you don't want it. You know what I mean? Like they think that you want a 4 month old commodity ham. And because that's what people have been asking for because people have been searching for based on

[30:50] price and they've been, they wanted kind of a less salty taste and you're like, listen, I want, you know, I want... Yeah. So burgers one's not super funky and it's not smoked. Their attic one. It's a milder kind of a ham. I think the S Wallace Edwards depends on which kind of aging room he's in, but this new marble stuff is great. Nancy Mahaffy stuff, really good. Alan Benton stuff. I don't know if Alan Benton is currently doing anything with like the heritage breeds. The interesting, the problem with American country hams isn't that we don't have the technical expertise to make the stuff because we do. It's that it's that our pork quality had been lacking for many years in terms of marbling and also the older

[31:30] you the older an animal is when it's slaughtered and the higher the slaughter weight of the animal, depending on the genetics, obviously, but for

[31:36] a given animal, the enzyme characteristics of the meat change as the animal

[31:40] ages, and they change more favorably towards making country ham. So the older the meat is that slaughtered, not only the more flavorful will it be, but the better it will age.

[31:49] So, you know, these older, bigger hams not only age better because they're physically larger, and they tend to physically have more fat, which protects them so they can age more, but also their enzyme

[32:01] makeup and their initial flavor profile is better. And so as we start realizing this, and as like some of the

[32:08] top notch American country and producers start buying better pork, I think you're going to see us competing with some of the top European

[32:17] people kind of more head-to-head. I mean, I like it anyway. I prefer American country hams taste profile because it's aged at a higher tent. But, you know, like, that's kind of the last step we need to get to is, oh, also Finchville Farm. another really good one. They're in Kentucky. So they're really good Finchville Farms. Yeah. And Finchville Farms is interesting. They also, uh, you know, basically, I think they cure, like, 11 or 2 times, they do a natural kind of cure. They're also nitrate free, as is Newsoms, right? So you should taste those 2 side by side because one smoked and one's not, and they're both Kentucky, but they're aged in very different environments in Kentucky. They make they make a really good, they make a really good product as well. Cool, I'm excited, man. Yeah, I think I'm going to buy one of those. I want to, you know, Yeah, thanks for the info, Dave. No problem. Remember though, to call those guys before you buy it. So you know you're getting the right one. All right, cool. All right, thanks a lot. So let's go to our 1st commercial break, calling all of your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 4 718-49728. When I look out into your face, you know what I see? I see a little bit of Elvis and each and every one of you out there. Let me tell you, when...

[33:28] Yeah, everybody. Hell, this is still the genie. Man, old man, what I want

[33:37] to say, is that the baby, you hear me? Elvis is everywhere, man. He's in everything. He's in everybody. Elvis is in your jeans. He's in your cheeseburgers. Elvis is in nutty buddies. Elvis is in your mom. He's in everybody. He's in the gum, the old, the bat, the skinny. The white, the black, and the brown, and the blue, people got Elvis in number two. Elvis isn't everybody out there. The following is a public service announcement from Heritage Radio Network. Tune in to Greenhorn Radio, hosted by Severn von Sharner Fleming every Thursday at 2 PM. Greenhorn Radio is radio 4 Young Farmers by Young Farmers, helmed by acclaimed activist, farmer, and documentarian

[34:32] Severan Fleming, Greenhorn Radio is a weekly phone interview session, surveying America's cutting edge under 40

[34:38] farmers. Again, that's every Thursday at 2 PM on the Heritage Radio Network. Hello and welcome back to cooking issues. Call all of your questions to 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. So how cool is now? We got a call in that let us pump not only heritage meets, but also one of our sponsors.

[35:01] Wilds Edwards. That's great Yeah, nice. Advertising. Yeah, and I also happen to believe in those products. Thank God. So, you know, it's a problem. Remember the time we had a sponsorship? sponsorships? Yeah, the reason, like other shows, like people will read sponsorship, uh, the sponsorships, you know, they, but Jack, our intrepid engineer, has to record ours ahead of time because no one ever knows what the hell I'm going to say about a particular

[35:29] sponsor, because if I think that the thing is crap or if I don't understand why what it's, you know, selling proposition is, I find it difficult to kind of sell it,

[35:38] right? You're not the only one I do it across the board now. Oh, really? Because there was a bunch of us like that? Yeah, you know. Yeah, but S. Walsh Edwards and, you know, our parent

[35:48] Heritage Foods USA are 2 things I can kind of stand behind without qualification. Anyway, um, so, uh, we were talking about before. We're talking about Ikajime? All right. What was I saying? Do you remember? I don't. You were explaining the entire process. And then you were talking about the Chang thing. Yeah. So, 0 my god. So I don't know how much I'm allowed to say. You know, Chang has this new TV show. but it's not a TV show. It's an iPad application, and you get to watch a little bit of it for free, and then you have to buy the rest of it, and it's being done by Anthony Bourdain's production company,

[36:23] which, you know, anyway. So, uh, he had me in to do uh, this segment. I don't know how much I'm allowed to say about it because, you know, you're going to have to see the iPad and stuff, but I'll say this. Before this week, I had never had real, like, line, line caught right on the boat, striped bass that had been done, Ikigime with the spike through the head and with the, with the needle through the spine.

[36:45] And we did them this time, they were huge. They were like, you know, 40 inches, um, and they were caught right off, right off Montauk, right on a boat. Ikeji made right on the boat. We had Western style, which means Montauk style. So Montauk style is, is you'll you'll cut the gills, so it bleeds to death, and then throw it directly onto ice and let it bleed out, right? So that's one step above just taking the fish and throwing it into your ice well and letting it die by asphyxiation, which is how a lot of people do it. Because a lot of people, they think that it's kind of barbaric to do all these things to the fish when you get them out, like cut their gills and stuff. But what it really is, is they just don't have the cojones to dispatch the fish when it

[37:26] comes, when they take it out of the water, and they'd rather have the thing suffocate to death in, you know, in a box where they can't see it.

[37:33] You know what I mean? Which to me. So in other words, like all of these things where, you know, people say you're doing something kind of inhumane by, you know, sticking a knife in its head and then cutting the spine at the gills and cutting the spine at the

[37:45] tail. First of all, like, these things are done to kill the fish as quickly as possible, right? Which is the most humane thing to do instead of letting it suffocate, right? Secondly, if you were going to kill, and this is, you know, something I, you know, I said when we were shooting, I believe

[38:00] is if you were going to kill an animal to eat it, right, you are obligated to, one, try to reduce its suffering as much as possible while you're, while you're killing it, which has the added benefit that it makes it taste better, 90, every, every example that I've ever heard of or seen, that killing an animal in a way that is the least trauma to the animal makes the best tasting animal.

[38:25] So you're obligated to be as humane as possible and you're also obligated to make the animal taste as good as you possibly can, right? I mean, don't you think if you're going to kill something, you should at least taste it. That's why, like, I tell my kids, you know, don't waste meat. My kids are like, uh, daddy, I have to eat this meat. And I'm like, yes, because a cow died for it. I'm like, yes. You know what I mean? It's like, you shouldn't really waste the stuff and you shouldn't really, you should treat it well. You shouldn't overcook it. You know, you're obligated not to overcook it. You're obligated not to mess it up. You're obligated not to, you know, I think, waste a lot when you, when you, when you eat this. So anyway. So these techniques, which some people find kind of barbaric, in fact, my stepfather, who's a surf caster, he's in

[39:08] Cape right now, he caught the biggest monster fish I've ever seen someone catch surf casting for stripers in the Cape. The thing was, I don't know how the hell long it was. It was like 46, 48 inches is crazy. It was over 4 feet long, I think. It was huge. Anyways, so he didn't, he didn't, uh, Ikejime, it won because I haven't shown him how, but he's like, my fish don't like things, shoved up their butts. I'm like, listen, you know, you're killing it anyway, you might as well have it be perfect by shoving. it's not up it's not the butt anyway. Anyway, you know. So even though it looks weird, he's afraid to do it because he thinks the other surfcasters are going to think that he's a lunatic and going to try and

[39:45] come over and like, you know, get mad at him for torturing the fish, but in fact, you're doing the fish a favor by killing it

[39:51] quickly, and then you're doing yourself a favor and honoring the fish by having the flesh be as perfect as it can be.

[39:57] So we tasted these different ones. And the Western style fish was definitely not as good as, you know, the Montauk style, all props in Montauk, but Montauk's in Long Island for anyone listening who doesn't know the kind of this coast. Um, and it's the tip. It's where Jaws was, you know, supposedly from. They have lots of fishing boats off Montauk is beautiful. anyway. So you're doing good honor to the fish by doing it that way. Um, the one, oh, I know what I was talking about also. Western chefs need to kind of get there, wrap their heads around the fact that the freshest fish isn't necessarily the best fish.

[40:30] So there's a Chinese technique where they prize freshness above all

[40:33] else. And Nastasia and I saw a demonstration of this once, where you literally wrap the live fish's head in towels and then cut the muscles of the

[40:43] fish, so it can't move anymore, and then deep fry the body while the head's still alive. Now, I don't practice this. So to please don't write in or call in because remember that demo we saw? Yeah. The guy was on the phone the whole time, like planning a party in Chinese. Remember? I don't remember that aspect of it. But I do remember the demonstration. I did taste it. I don't think that, I don't think it really, like, the idea is that it's supposed to be the life of the fish is still there, and so you're supposed to, like, that's promote freshness or whatever. I don't think that it benefits the fish really from a taste standpoint. So now, like a huge chunk of like, uh, you know, Chinese, you know, culturally Chinese people are going to get mad at me for this, but I don't think it's, and it's kind of like, it's kind of, it's kind of

[41:29] horrible. Well, you know, it's virtuoso technique, you know, but I think it's kind of horrible thing to do. I wouldn't advocate doing it. What about you? You felt bad. You didn't want to... I don't think I ate it. You didn't need it? don't think so. I ate it. But, you know, it's like, that's a bizarre technique. So anyway, so like there's, there's a, the whole section of people, uh, you know, uh, around the world who believe that the freshest fish is the best

[41:49] fish and so preferably the head's still alive while you're eating the body, which that's just perverse, right? Like, if it tasted really great, I would say, well, I don't know, maybe, but I don't really think it tastes

[42:00] that, I don't think it was that good either. But anyway, um, But the fact of the matter is that you really most of the time want to wait for the fish to go through rigor mortis before you eat it. So the freshest fish isn't necessarily the best fish. It's the fish that is at the right time. Now, it is true that once fish reaches its peak, it doesn't stay in peak condition very long. So once it reaches its peak, you want to eat it very quickly, but it's like, the fact of the matter is, is that peak isn't the moment it's killed. You know, tuna, it takes days for it to really come out of rigor and have it

[42:33] be have it be perfect again. And so, you know, you want to really, um, it's not every fish the moment it's caught. It's every fish at its proper time. One thing that they we're looking for bluefish. you eat bluefish, nastasia? I love bluefish, bluefish. I've loved it for a long time. starting to get popular. A lot of people don't like it because it's an oily fish. They're real strong swimmers, real mean suckers. and they form huge schools and they go up a lot of times close to the beach and like my stepfather's seen it where people have been in the water and like a school of blues will come through and they'll just take a bite right out of like a swimmer's leg because they're vicious suckers and they got like

[43:09] sharp, sharp teeth. In fact, if you're fishing for blues, they use a lot of times metal liters on them because they'll cut through, their teeth will cut through other stuff and

[43:17] blues, their monsters will eat anything. But delicious. I want to try Ikigime on a bluefish because they're strong, right? So I think that they would really benefit from it. And they're one of those fish that you need to eat relatively quickly. People really say you need to eat it quickly because the flesh deteriorates. So I'm wondering whether we can improve the quality of it by doing Ikigime on a bluefish. And I'm especially interested because that is a fish that the Japanese guys don't

[43:41] eat, right? So they don't really understand the bluefish. It's not something that they eat, as far as I know. So my goal for the summer. And if anyone's, you know, hearing this, buy Dave Chang's iPad

[43:52] app when it comes out, see the Ikejime section on it because there's enough footage in that thing for you to learn how to do it from watching

[43:59] it. And so you can learn Ikigime from that and then go Ikigime some bluefish and tell me how it, tell me how it turns out. So, uh, I maybe in Los Angeles next week. I may not, because even though it's next week and we're shooting this pilot for, am I allowed to say

[44:17] any of this? don't think so. I don't think you No? It's about history and cooking. Uh, and I am going to, like, if it all works out because even though it's only a week away, for some reason, because it's me and I'm completely disorganized, we don't have the negotiations done yet, so I have no idea what's going

[44:34] on. But if I do it, I'm going to be a judge. Can you believe that, me as a judge, how do you think that's going to work out, Nastasia? You're too nice. Yeah, I mean, they should get, they should get you to be

[44:46] it, because you'd sit there and just give them the death stare the whole time, and then just shake your head. You're honest? That's what that is? Honesty? anyway. So hopefully I will be here. If not, I'll be coming to you from Los Angeles. This has been cooking issues. Have a good week.

[45:08] 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

[45:24] Heritage 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. You got my head all twisted. And I guess can't get it straight. Fishes, fish, vodka. This is behind the scenes food news with Katie Kiefer. The USDA has introduced the My Plate icon. I'm sure you've all seen that in the news replacing the food pyramid that was in use for 19 years. This colorful icon contains portions of fruits, vegetables, grains, protein, and a little side dish of dairy. It can be viewed at www.choosemyplate.gov. It does look like a plate. It's divided into 4 quadrants. They are surprisingly similarly sized. Vegetables, fruits, proteins, grains. The veg are definitely a little bit larger than the other groups, but protein was really big.

[46:26] I was surprised. I thought we were supposed to eat less meat. Each component of the plate can be clicked on for a drop down menu that explains portion size, healthy choices, nutritional information,

[46:37] et cetera. It offers significantly more information to consumers, but it is a little bit more complicated to use. We see if people actually look at it. This has been behind the scenes food news with Katie Kiefer. Did you know we have a show entirely about cheese? Take a listen. Well, I know this is it's horrible to do visual things on the radio, but if you were all sitting in the studio, you would see this wheel from

[47:03] late May is quite pale in color. It's a little bit, yeah, like a milkier, sort of a very soft yellow. And then the wheel from late June is quite golden and intense

[47:16] looking. It's a really deep, deep yellow. Um, what causes that, that difference? Well, I'm quite sure it's the grass. That's the keratin in the grass. And, um, that's giving it that yellow color, not fat, um, but definitely coming from, from the pasture. Our animals are fed. Hey, through the winter now. We don't use fermented feed because that won't work with our cheese, but so they're essentially grass-fred

[47:46] year round with grain cell. If you like what you hear, cutting the curd airs every Monday at 4.30

[47:51] p.m. on heritage radio network, make sure to subscribe to the podcast or check it out in our archives.

[47:56] Hi, I'm Steve Jenkins. I work for Fairway Markets in the New York area, and we're awfully proud to support Heritage Radio, and we care so much about everything that goes on out here at Roberta's in their

[48:16] studio because they talk to people who are serious about food, and that's what we are at Fairways. We serious about food. We just care very deeply about, about you as a, as a customer and how you cook and what you cook with and how you entertain. And that's why we love to support heritage radio because it's pretty much the same thing. It's wanting to find happiness through serious food and people who are serious about it and care about learning everything there is to learn about it. And that's, that's, we're kindred spirits. If it's something worth having in your kitchen, you're going to find it at Fairway. And if there's somebody worth talking to about food, you're going to find them on

[48:59] heritage radio and we will be supporting you guys for a long, long time. At Fairway, I'm your personal grocer, Steve Jenkins, Fairway Mark.

[49:07] Barbecue, beef. Barbecue. The following is a message from Heritage Foods USA.com. The difference between wild Alaskan salmon and farmed Atlantic salmon is just as great as the differences between commodity pork and heritage breed pork.

[49:30] Huge heritage foodsusa.com is lining up a major social

[49:33] pie of sustainably harvested salmon in July and offering it at a phenomenal price to consumers. Check out heritagefoodsusa.com for more details on how to get in on this opportunity. Experience salmon the way it should be.