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[1:09] Vicious, fish, vodka. Hello and welcome to cooking issues. Hi, I'm Daylon, your hosting Quickly. She's coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from 12 to 1245. Nastasia has been held up today late. I think she's fallen victim to our fabulous, fabulous L Train. Yeah, I just got a text that said Effing L train. Yeah, Effing L Train. Yeah. So it's a, you know, it's a far cry for who is that band? Shootsie groove that had the pro L-train song. What the heck were they thinking? Never heard of such a thing. Yeah, look it up. Well, maybe let's see if we can get that for our, for our, what's it called? You know, our interest song thing. So Jackson, I'm unable to remember the telephone number here. Can you give it to them? 718-497-2128. That is 718-497-2128. Call in with all of your live, cooking or non-cooking related questions, technical or not. Okay, so start with questions that have been emailed to us beforehand. This one comes from now, okay, last name's P-E-T-H-O with an umlaut. I'm going to assume that's pronounced peter, but I don't know. Joseph Petter and Corby Kummer, our friend from the Atlantic Monthly, the senior food editor there, says, Dave, an article, and there's been many, so we'll talk about

[2:33] it about sugar, suggests that sugar does not melt, rather decomposes, and that there is a time temperature relationship associated with sugar.

[2:41] My question, and this is Joseph's question. Corby just was like, hey, what's up with this? Anyway, my question is that does that mean that sous vide caramel can be created? Any thoughts on this? As for me, I will try some experiments soon. Uh, okay. So I'm going to fill everyone in. There's a bunch of research that's been produced recently by a group of

[3:00] people mainly out of University of Illinois, showing that sugar does not actually melt in a traditional sense, but rather

[3:09] melt and decomposes at the same time, right? So a traditional material with a traditional melting point, like a metal, you can take it from a

[3:18] solid, uh, to a liquid, back to a solid, back to a liquid, back to a solid, back to a liquid, blah,

[3:23] blah, blah, blah, blah, right? You know, virtually add infinitum, uh, assuming there's no oxidation, stuff like this, right? This has a traditional melting point. Oh, Nastasia just showed up, the L train. Hold a second. I'm gonna have to lift my headphone cord so she can get into her customary seat. Oh, there goes the microphone. All right, here we go. All right, now we're up to full staff. Now, um, sugar on the other hand, right? The research has shown that every time someone's tried to figure out what the melting point of table sugar is sucrose. They've noticed that it's been widely variant over to the literature. And these guys did a study basically showing that there is no single melting point that basically it starts to decompose. And that basically shifts when it melts. So how fast you heat it changes basically when it appears to melt. And all the way up to when they're using something extremely quickly where they can ramp up the temperature on the order of like five, 600 degrees Celsius per minute. And still, they're showing a shift. They have data that shows that sugar starts to break down roughly at 120 degrees Celsius, which is too hot

[4:29] for too hot for sous vide. But not, well, I forget what the temperature in a pressure cooker is, but it's somewhere in that region. you might be able to do something in a pressure cooker. I have gotten things to sugars to brown in a pressure cooker over time. But at 120 C at normal pressure, you're talking about long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time for it

[4:50] to start sugar to start breaking down. Of course, you can get the temperature well above 120 C in a pressure cooker by basically just reducing the amount of water present.

[5:00] Anyway, so sous vide, caramel. No, but very interesting research on sugar, and it basically decomposing at the time that at the same time that it

[5:09] melts, and so not having a melting point. And for those of you that really give a hoot and holler about this, look up, investigation of the heating rate dependency associated with the loss of crystalline, structure, and sucrose, glucose, and fructose, using thermal analysis, approach,

[5:25] 120 C, using thermal analysis approach, parts one and 2 of this year, along with their blockbuster follow-up. Can the thermodynamic melting a temperature of sucrose, glucose and fructose be measured using rapid scanning differential scanning

[5:38] calorimetry? So, I mean, those are with scintillating reading this morning, Nastasia. I can't tell you how excited I was to read all those papers this morning. Oh my god. Yeah. Anyway, okay. So, another question in from Steve. Uh, you know, Steve, a often writing in, although I don't have his last name, but Steve, writes in on pressure cookers

[5:57] and uh, has a question on pressure cookers and on salt. Hey, thanks, Ryan's, answering my question about pressure cookers and no, the electric one. He has an electric one. doesn't hit 15 PSI, only manages 10 to 12 PSI, but on the plus

[6:09] side, it can get really hot, so it's great for browning, and I don't have to keep an eye on it when it's cooking, still experimenting with it and having fun with the results.

[6:14] Since I last spoke about electric pressure cookers, Cuisinart sent me one of their electric pressure cookers. It does indeed do browning. It is great and that is quiet, doesn't release steam, doesn't release kind of any extra moisture into the

[6:28] atmosphere, but I was trying to run tests on it to see what the pressures related were.

[6:32] And indeed, I wasn't even able to get 10 PSI. I was able to get roughly, I think, 9 PSI based on the temperature measurements, which didn't quite make it to 140. I forget what the actual numbers were. So my next, it has something to do with the way that they're regulating the temperature based on the bottom. There's like a little spring that shows that the thing is in and then they're measuring the temperature at the bottom and that's how they're calculating what to do it. They're not actually measuring pressure as far as I can tell. So my next step is to open up the cuisin art, and see whether there's a potentiometer or something in there that I can futz with that'll change what the temperature set limit is.

[7:10] If there is, I'm going to adjust the temperature up to have it be at 15 PSI and see whether, because I really want my pressure cookers to be at 15 PSI. I've run a lot of tests where we check the taste of different things at different pressures. And honestly, what, 15 PSI, 2nd ring is pretty optimal for things like stocks and also for the speed of cooking and for the modification of texture and things like

[7:33] meats. So I want it to be 15 PSI. So more to work on that later, but it does seem like a great piece of equipment. I'm trying to figure out how to hack it now. If any of you have had experience hacking cuisinar pressure cookers, Please write in and tell us how to do it before I ruin the one that was sent

[7:50] me, because I would like to use it eventually in my house, after I finish messing with it, right? Anyway, thanks to Queens not for sending it. Okay. By the way, if any of you have some cool equipment out there that you wanted us to beat on and look at, send us some equipment to beat on and look at. We have a calling stage? Call, are you on the air? Hi, David, it's Colin. Hey. Hey, uh, very long radio silence. had something to ask you. Sure. Uh, so have you, you cooked with Sorrel very much? Uh, I've only, you know, you, I've used fresh, uh, and I've used the basically the red, the hibiscus style stuff to

[8:30] do, uh, beverages. Um, you know, for it's basically the, the, the acidity and the color. You know, there's a whole group of, uh, uh, Caribbean and also African beverages based

[8:40] on, uh, Yeah, yeah, like the world drinks. Yeah, I think they're great. I mean, they're, you know, the, the acidity is very kind of specific. I haven't looked up what the acid is. I think it's, I think it, I'm not, I think it

[8:55] sucks Alex, but I'm not totally. Yeah, I was going to say that. Yeah, yeah. It's at least partially that, and that's what gives it its similar kind of acid characteristic to something like rhubarb.

[9:06] So, and, you know, for those of you that haven't had sorrel, but have had rhubarb,

[9:11] they have a similar sort of feeling in its acidity. And so I would bet that their acid makeup is fairly similar. That said, I love it as a drink. I've had, I haven't had good luck yet mixing it as an alcoholic rink. The ones I've really enjoyed. I've been more like non-alcoholic drinks. Have you had any good luck with it as an alcoholic drink? No, I haven't actually tried it as a drink yet. I just sort of have some growing and have been cooking with it a lot. Right. But, uh, so the thing is, you know how it's got that really nice, bright, fresh acidic flavor when it's raw. Uh, when you cook it, it gets, it takes, it gets very excellent texture. It's just kind of like creamy, velvety kind of goop texture

[9:57] that's, that's pretty nice. Similar to like metals. Um, yeah, I'm not totally like, uh, I've only had them in, like,

[10:06] pesto, so, like, all that, but, uh, let's see. Oh, but so it takes on this kind of cooked spinach flavor that kind of muddles every, like, you know, kind of, uh,

[10:18] take some of the freshness out of that flavor that I really enjoyed.

[10:22] So I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to, you know, cook the soil or get

[10:28] it, that creamy consistency. Uh, one, because, like, one nice thing about it is you can then strain that through a cheesecloth and get rid of all the fibrous matter, because it, I don't know, it just turns into, like, like I said, into this, like,

[10:40] goop, and uh, so I'm trying to see, you know, if I could turn that into something flossy. But you want to turn the leftover fiber into something fluffy or do you want to turn the... No, no, the, get rid of the fiber, just like to, so you only have that creamy texture.

[10:57] Of the kind of leaf thickets, do we? So, so, like, it, you know, since it gets this kind of spinach flavor, is there a way to, that you

[11:08] know, like, like, cook spinach to, like, keep it, hit me fresh, but still take on something

[11:13] cooked? I've tried. I've tried the kind of, like, you know, go to raw foodist thing where you, like, put a little oil and salt and massage

[11:23] it and, like, uh, that's, there's, there's good, but there's still, there's still too much structure to really, like, uh,

[11:31] drain it out. Yeah, so those raw food things are based on a couple of different ideas and that is, they're basically to destroy structure without heat, but it's not the same kind of structure destruction you get from

[11:43] cooking. It's more akin to forced wilting. It's basically all those raw food cooked vegetable things are basically forced wilting and shifting of osmotic pressure is how they work.

[11:52] But when you're cooking something, you're actually cooking and breaking down, you know, the pectins and all of those things. So it's actually a different thing. And I wouldn't think that you can get around the change in

[12:07] flavor. But what you could do, if you if you like the cooked spinach flavor, in addition to the fresh flavor, you can do what I always do for blueberry things, which is like mix some fresh back with the

[12:19] cooked. Do you know what I mean? So like whenever I'm working with blueberries, like blueberry pies and blueberry tarts, I'll have my cooked blueberry

[12:27] component, and then I'll also always put fresh blueberries back in because I really like the brightness of a fresh

[12:32] blueberry. But I also like the texture of the cooked blueberry goop in a pie, let's say. So you might be able to augment it. You know, do you think that would work or no? Probably. Maybe, because that, it's like, that's the thing is when you strain it out, then I feel like probably going to be strain out all the fish stuff as well. I don't know. I think you're gonna get some of it in there. I think I think you should try. Another thing you could try to do is try to get some of the, like the hibiscus, although it's red, bright red, you know, like that, like, and then make a tea of that because even though it's dried and then heated in tea, it's pretty

[13:02] bright and then you could mix some of that mixture back in and get some of that brightness back. Okay. And so what, you know, what kind of things lead to these, more

[13:14] like, I don't know. In green, vegetables, or, you know, how, like, uh, in spinach and basil, when they, when you keep them and they get kind of dark, you know, they, are they

[13:26] oxidizing, or like, what's going on, that really changes their flavor? Uh, I don't really know what the change in flavor is ascribed to, although I will remember to ask McGee that, but most of those green things, if you remove their characteristic top notes and aromatics have a very similar

[13:41] cooked spinach smell. So when you when you do rotary evaporation on basil, and you blend it. And then after everything is sucked off, you get this kind of cooked spinach smell. And that is, that is something that McGee knows exactly what it

[13:54] is, and it's a couple of compounds that I should remember, but I can't, I can't, for the life of me, remember what they are, but a couple of compounds that give that specific smell, and all those green things have it in it. I'm going to try to remember. And the next time, for next time I'll try and I'll try and bust back on what it is. So it's probably not something just coming from being oxidized that you could get around by doing it under vacuum or having some kind of shielding

[14:18] gas. Well, the browning is caused usually, I mean, by if it's turning dark, there's a bunch of things going on. There's enzymatic browning, so if you cook it quickly enough. If you blanch it whole without breaking it, you should be able to keep some of the green

[14:30] color, then there's, you know, then there's other things like the chlorophyll can get eventually broken down, cooking

[14:36] long time, then it's going to go olive drab. So there's a bunch of different color kind of changes that can happen. Um, when you're doing it. I have to look specifically at what you have to kind of see what's going on. But I wish I can remember what the flavor thing was. We'll have to ask, nostalgia, you're going to remind me to ask McGee next time, yes. Yeah, you're not going to remind me. You're not even writing it down. You're just forgetting it as we speak. All right, now she's now she's using her texting for good. Thank you. All right. So, uh, hold on a second. I got to go back to for a 2nd to Steve, because Steve had his question about pressure cooking, right? And so he then says this thing about salt. Steve also has a question, he says, I have a question about salt and bitterness. What is happening to the bitter flavor when you add salt to a grapefruit, for example? Is it blocking the bitterness or destroying compounds? And then he has an experiment basically he does with tonic water, adding salt to tonic water, remove the bitterness, or change the bitterness, and then freshening up coffee, i.e. the bitterness by adding a pinch of salt, but would love to know exactly what's

[15:33] happening. Well, Steve, I don't know that it's known for certain. There are some papers that have been written about it. The one that I read was the influence of sodium salts on binary mixtures of bitter tasting compounds by

[15:44] Keast, 2004. Um, and they seem to indicate he, he, she, they seem to indicate that, um, that salt is actually acting, uh, the, basically the ionic strength of salt

[15:55] is, the, you know, the fact that it's charged is acting on, at the site of your bitter receptors and altering how you perceive bitter, literally altering how your taste buds perceive

[16:05] bitterness. And the argument, one of the arguments there is a study that was done a while ago where they put, if

[16:11] they, if you mix salt and bitter together and put it on your tongue, it is less bitter

[16:15] than if, and then if you just add bitterness, right? But if you add bitterness to one side of your tongue and salt to the other, you

[16:21] could still taste the bitterness, basically, and the thing they're showing is that you need to actually have the salt at the site where the bitter is being received.

[16:28] That argument, I don't think, is actually true because I don't know that your tongue can't distinguish, like, a pattern of excitation. In other words, like if salt and bitterness are in the same area, it could modify, even if it's not actually modifying your bitter

[16:42] receptor. But these guys have an interesting study where they say they tested a bunch of different bitter compounds. And many of them were debittered slightly by

[16:52] salt and mixtures of them were debittered by salt, but there's a couple of bitter compounds, one in

[16:57] particular, they can't remember the name of, they checked, that salt did not affect. And so because salt was able to affect certain bitter compounds and not others, They're saying that it is not a cognitive, i.e. like a brain integration effect on salt modifying bitterness. Rather, it is a modification of how the bitter molecules are being perceived at the taste

[17:17] receptor sites. I still don't think that this is necessarily like slam dunk as an argument of what's going on because it could be that

[17:25] certain bitter receptors are more apt to be cognitively interpreted along with salt as being less bitter as opposed to

[17:34] others, but I don't know. I haven't really read it thoroughly, but these guys seem to say that the salt is actually modifying the way your taste receptors taste of bitterness, but I'm willing to hear arguments from

[17:46] other people. Yeah? All right, with that say, why don't we go to our 1st commercial break? This is the way we lay it down on the L Tray. But yeah, help me out now. Yeah, yeah. Hey, yo, black I need up, I mean, immediately, right away. Every single day, I swear, I'm gonna find a better way, my enemies are destiny. This the meat and grilling me. Yesterday, they're calling me and beat me down with me. I was like, I missed the negativity. It's hard when you pack it. That was hard attacking. No time for money. No time for hiding. Now I got my crew where we about to end. Shake the cops, let's go get these, all you all down. Do nobody better. Sometimes I am a player. Because I am a fool. No energy to button, but I gotta have. Lazarus, he was the man who died through the power of faith. Open up your eyes and spy. Lazarus better yet. Open up your hall, y'all imagination. on the train Riding on the train I don't got no problems. No more, no more, no riding on a train. gonna train out reach my estimation show Even truly immediately, you're not away. Yeah, shootsy groove. Shoots a groove, much like the actual L train taking forever to get to the destination. Get to the Dan Chorus guys. Seriously. Seriously. Of course they would like the L-train anyways. Uh, Ian. Oh, by the way, in case you weren't there before, call in your live questions too. 718-4972128. That 718-497-2128. All right, now, Ian writes in with a question on vacuumed fish. Dear Dave, I'm curious about using sous vide for raw fish portions for storage. I've heard this is not a good idea. I don't know from whom, but we'll talk about that in a minute. And in practice, I found that fish can develop all flavor after a few days. I'm sure it has a lot to do with freshness of the fish before packaging. I bought fish from Japan that has been packed in plastic and it was impeccable, but it has probably been packed immediately after it was killed and prepped.

[19:49] Just wondering if you have any specific information on storing fish, sous vide, do's and don'ts, and Ian enjoys the program. Thank you. And another question came in that I'm going to just smack these together because they're very similar. John writes in also that that fish. And he says, hello, I have a quick question I'd like to pitch for tomorrow's show. I recently purchased an immersion circulator. Good call. And this weekend, I would like to cook a couple of monkfish loins. I don't have a cryovac, and I haven't tried this before, but from what I've heard, monkfish is good fish for low temperature cooking. My plan is to wrap the fish in plastic and then pop it into Ziploc bags. Am I at a significant disadvantage versus vacuum sealing here? And I was hoping to get a suggestion for an appropriate time and temperature. Thanks so much. Okay, I'm going to start with John. No, John, you are not at a disadvantage. In fact, in some ways you're at an advantage. I find that in tests I've run where we vacuum fish, if you put too much of a vacuum on

[20:43] fish, you can affect the texture. So I really like fish cooked, either wrapped in plastic or just directly in ziploc bags with oil. I presume you're wrapping it to preserve the shape of it, and then putting it, if you wrap it in plastic wrap, a couple layers of plastic

[20:57] wrap, and you can go on www.cookingissues.com, low temperature

[21:02] primer and check the ways of packing without a vacuum machine, and you can see a rolling technique, you don't need the ziploc at all, actually. You can cook it directly in a plastic wrap. And that's a great technique or cooking in a Ziploc is a good technique. So in some ways, I think you're at an advantage for that, because you're not going to destroy the texture by over vacuuming it. As for times and temperatures, they're kind of all over the

[21:24] map. I haven't personally cooked monkfish, so I can't tell you, but I, you know, like the

[21:29] one Roka style technique, which is also, I think, put out by some other people, is they use a 60 degree Celsius, which is

[21:35] 140 degree water bath. Uh, for um, uh, for about 12 to 15 minutes. And this is Delta T temperature. They're not trying to cook it all the way through to that temperature. They're shooting apparently for a core temperature of about 48 degrees Celsius, which is pretty low. Another person cooks at about 57 degrees Celsius, which is about 135 for 30 minutes. That's not Delta T and that's significantly higher. That's what I do, like, striped bass at. So that's like a really firm tasting. And then another person really enjoyed 48 degrees C for one hour, which seems to me not the way I would go. Like, I don't think I would like it quite that low, the monkfish. I think I'd probably like it higher, closer in the 50s, but I could be I could be wrong. And I wouldn't necessarily cook monkfish for a full hour just because I think it might start breaking down. I don't know what the enzymes are like, but a lot of fish have enzymes in

[22:26] them that break them down if you cook them for too long and make them mushy. Another note is that one of the reasons temperatures for fish can be so all over the map is a lot of fish go through basically 2 zones where they taste good. A very low temperature range where, you know, it's kind of fudgy and almost translucent, uh, and uh, like Juan

[22:44] Roke and a lot of like, you know, new school people like that, but a lot of people hate those fish, uh, cook that way.

[22:49] And another one slightly higher, usually 50 for salmon, it's like 50 Celsius, right there, salmon, ping, 50. That's more traditional taste, and a lot of people like that. So it can be kind of confusing. But, uh, I would, if I had to do it and I only had one shot, I would probably do the 60 degree Celsius for about 15 minutes. Obviously, it depends on how big around

[23:08] the, uh, the thing is small. That's probably for a fairly thin portion. Okay. Back to the question of fish in a vacuum bag. Very interesting. I looked up an article this morning, modified atmosphere packaging of filleted rainbow trout by Begonia Jimenez in 2002 out of Brazil. And basically, the story is, is that the big flaw of her test, by the way, I'm assuming, begonia, woman, right? I hope. Yeah. But going you with an Enya, by the way. Yeah, be going, yeah. Anyway, slightly flawed because she doesn't give her vacuum procedure. She just says what equipment she vacuumed it with, and all of you out there should know that how you apply the vacuum is vitally important

[23:53] to A, the texture of the fish, but also how much oxygen you remove. But basically saying that, um, Indeed, there is spoilage in the vacuum bag. There's microbial growth, even of aerobic stuff due to residual oxygen left in it. Uh, you know, you you don't, I'll read you exactly what they said about the sensory equality of different fish. She did overwrapped, that's French for plastic wrap, I guess, Portuguese for plastic wrapping, vacuum packaging, and map, modified atmosphere packaging, where they actually introduce things like CO2 that actually prevent bacteria from

[24:24] growing rather than just removing their oxygen supply. Okay, although the vacuum packaging kept, this is their sensory panel. Although vacuum packaging kept lower levels of T bars. basically that's some BS acronym for oxidation because there's no oxidation because there's less

[24:39] oxygen than modified atmosphere packaging. It gave rise to a faster loss of fresh fish flavor. a freaking tongue twister. Faster loss of fresh fish flavor intensity along with the deterioration of the visual aspect of the fillet. So basically her point is that, um, that you still lose some of the fresh flavor of fish if it's stored for a long time in vacuum

[24:59] bags. But don't store fish for a long freaking time. You know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? Like, what, like, all this good. What are we talking about? Get your fish. pack the fish, cook the fish, eat the fish. You know, I've always said that, you know, one of the problems people have is they try to get this extended shelf life and they're like, hey, can I buy the fish today and

[25:18] then like, you know, cook it next year and still okay? No. No. No. I mean, you can get some extension of shelf life. It's true, but when you're shooting for maximum quality, don't do

[25:30] it, don't do it. All right. Derek writes in with an interesting question that I'm just going to say right out hand. I don't know the answer too. Cookies and creaming. Hello, everyone. I have quick question. Most cookie recipes, when you cream the fat, usually butter, and sugar together. And that's, you know, for those of you that never creamed anything. I mean, I'm serving that most of our listeners have creamed something before, but, you know, you take your

[25:51] KitchenAid branch stand mixer or anything, actually, whenever you want. And you beat the hard butter and the sugar together. A fork like my mom. You can't cream with a fork. How the heck you can't convince her otherwise. Look, the whole point is to beat air into it. You're beating air into it. How are you going to beat air into sugar and butter with a fork?

[26:10] If anyone out there, please send me a video where you effectively cream butter and sugar with a fork.

[26:17] I, like, you know that, you know the Impossibles that are the Incredibles, that kid dash, who's like the fastest kid in the world, like maybe he could do it, or like some sort of like bionic super person could effectively cream with a fork? No, yeah, I've met Ukrainians before. You cannot cream with a fork. You mean like something like biscuits maybe or pie crust? No, cookies. Infrigging insane. Insane. I'm just gonna go ahead and I'm gonna go on record and call that insane. Anyway, the whole point of that is to add air to your cookie. And then the reason that you add the eggs, Oh, oh, sorry. I didn't even finish the question yet. Uh, most cookie recipes where you cream the fat, usually butter, sugar together. The recipe then instructs you to add egg before the flour. I screwed up recently, I added the egg halfway through adding the flour. It did not seem to mess up my recipe. What's the deal? Okay. All right, Derek. The deal is you usually add the eggs, especially in things like cakes because the eggs can add additional leavening, additional air trapping while you're beating them in as opposed to the flour, which I guess they figure doesn't.

[27:18] So it's the idea of generating all of your air bubbles early in the process. So 1st creaming to create volume, then adding eggs, usually one at a

[27:27] time to increase the volume and the evenness of the mix to get a light, fluffy, aerated mixture before you add your

[27:31] flour, and then bake it, right? Boom. That's the reason. Now, if, A, your recipe doesn't need a lot of extra aeration or, like, you know, want to narrated. You know what I mean? What? Like, I like cookie. you know, like, for instance, like, when I'm making a brownie, right? When I'm making a brownie, you get to choose the texture based on how you, how you do it, you can go from basically like dense, like fudge master general brownie by melting your butter all the way up to creaming and then beating your egg and then folding your

[28:00] flour. You know, you can do a wide range of textures based on your creaming and or egg adding procedure. So I'm assuming that with your recipe. First of all, I don't think that when you add the egg is going to matter, like even like a speck, unless you're beating it enough after you add the egg to aerate it more.

[28:18] Do you know what I'm saying? Does that make sense, nostache? You know what I'm saying? And also, I think adding the egg is going to help you incorporate the flour, but on something like a cookie where there's so little moisture

[28:26] anyway. It's not like you're going to develop gluten, you can hit it hard enough to get all of the flour in to the recipe without developing gluten.

[28:34] So I think it really is not going to matter much unless you want it for an aeration effect, which I don't think is going to be a big deal in many cookies. What do you think? I think you're right. All right. Score one for me. All right, now, question in from Eve. Uh, Eve uh, Burgazen, who, by the way, it was a co-student. What do you call it? Classmate of our former intern, Tim

[28:57] Oogamuga. ugamuga. remember Uguma? Yeah. Yeah. We call them Aijima, like High Hachi. anyway, whatever. He, like, tall dude, looks kind of Amish, although he isn't, and, like, and, like, made fireworks. Really? Yeah, I saw him recently. Tim. Anyway. Hello, Tim, if you're listening. Uh, and eat. I'm a graduate of the SCI culinary arts program. I work in the pastry department, a craft restaurant. I have an idea and I'm wondering how to execute it. A cold torch. Is there a way to take a tank of liquid nitrogen, a small tank, so that it's portable like a blowtorch and figure out a way to project it into a small stream, much like a blowtorch? It'd be cool to create frozen shells around things. Do you have experience with something like this? Okay. I did not have experience, although there are people that do have experience. What you want to look up something called a brymil can, B-R-Y-M, I think, I-L-L, and they're used by dermatologist to freeze warts on people. It's a technique called like cryosurgery or anything like that. And it's basically, it looks like a little oil gun, but it's a little liquid nitrogen

[29:56] canister, and you get different nozzles, and it sprays small amounts of liquid nitrogen into freeze small surface areas. A similar technique was used by the Arzacs, you know, Juan Marie Arzac and at all,

[30:09] where they were basically freezing spots on plates so they would have a hot plate. They would freeze one spot on the plate and put like an ice cream on that and a hot thing on the rest of the plate so that

[30:19] you could have a nice hot plate for your whatever. And then a cold section for your ice cream on like savory ice cream is plated out. They were also using it to inject into chocolate to make these like weird chocolate balloon shapes. If you want some serious chilling, though. These are like spot chillers. You're gonna want to get something called a snow horns, no horn. And what they are, basically, you hook them up to a CO2 tank, and they just spray out like

[30:43] a fog of like hyper cold CO2, and that's used for kind of flash freezing

[30:49] things. Look up snowhorn. I think they might be loud. I don't know. I don't have one. They're needing another expensive. We could get one. What do you think? Yeah. Weren't we going to use our liquid nitrogen to help people with their awards when we were in strapped for

[31:01] cash? Or sperm bank or something? That was your idea. is always sitting there thinking, like, we got no money. You know, a friend of mine, a friend of mine had a medical procedure, and so he, and it was wiped out his, it wiped out his,

[31:15] his sperm because it was bone marrow transplant. And so they had to save his sperm and liquid nitrogen. And he, like, me, has a problem with, like, you know, paying attention to things like bills. So they kept on sending him messages. We're gonna thaw out your sperm. We're gonna kill your your future offspring. If you don't pay. And he didn't pay. And he got the note like, like, he, like, he got a stack of them all at once. And he opened them and like the last one was like, all right, you know, this is it. We're gonna do it. And it's like, it was like dated like, you know, like saying that they were going to do it on a Friday and he read it on a Saturday. And he was like, so he ran

[31:52] it in person on Monday and they, luckily, like hadn't thawed this stuff out. He paid his his back sperm storage fees and has 2 lovely children now. Anyway, Kevin from Virginia Beach writes in. I heard on this past week's show, that you and I, Nastasia, you and I, and McGee were having troubles riding in the rain. I've used right in the rain, and that's spelled RIT by

[32:20] the RITE, right in the rain. Products pretty extensively, and I can vouch it. They work as advertised. As for getting your labels to stick to the wet fruit. Good luck. You know, Kevin, you're exactly right. I have right in the rain lab notebooks. I've been using them for a while. Wiley Dufrayne's been using him in the kitchen for a while. He actually gave me something. I think he got them before I did, and he likes to give them to his cooks and then throw them into stock pots to make fun of them because they don't get all messed up. They do make great products. And I actually had one, but it was packed in my freaking bag. It wasn't with me in the place and plus nostasia writes the notes and she refuses to carry a right in the rain product around. That's true. Why, how do you change it? You've never given it? I gave you like a whole stack. No,

[33:01] no, okay, people out there, people out there listening. Here what happened. I have a stack of right in the rain stuff which are meant to be cooking notebooks for your kitchen, right?

[33:10] And she's like, okay, can I write this, rip this paper out and use it a post-it note? I'm like, no, no, no. We have stacks of post-it notes. That's what happened. you know, who are you going to believe? Who are you gonna believe? Yeah, right, sure. All right. Maybe for people that haven't met the both of us, they would believe you on this. Jack, who do you believe? I'm not going to get him into it. going to get him into it. No comment. Yeah, no comment. I would beef with nastasia these days. All right. And then before I get to the related question, because Kevin wants to know, whether or not

[33:43] there, we have any recommendations for must visit food enthusiast destination similar to the Fruit and Spice Park, Kevin, I'm going to get back to that. But Rolf Wind writes in, on the same question, and he

[33:55] says, in the most recent issues, cooking issues radio broadcast, Dave ranted about the need for weatherproof fruit labeling technology, and he goes, I believe that this technology already exists. Small portable tattooing devices are used to label rodent tails and laboratory settings for animal identification sometimes just to make them look like badasses. The labels are essentially permanent, labeling is quick to perform. If 200 mice per hour can be achieved. Imagine the number of mangoes one could tattoo. True story, true story. And orchard friendly battery operated systems are available. Their fruit compatibility is suggested by the fact that thick skinned, even waxy fruits are often used as stand ins for animals during operator training. One of the many examples of this equipment can be found at animalid.com. Happy inking, keep up the good work. All right, all right. Well, and by the way, that was addressed to Dear Miss Hammer, which I enjoy. Anyway, Rolf, I love this suggestion, and you got me thinking about a bunch of different things here. The one that you pointed to is the ATS dash 3 general rodent tattoo system. The problem with it is, is it's about 3 grand and a, like, cursory view of eBay led me to believe that they're not widely available on the eBay.

[35:01] Maybe I don't know how to how to... Anyway, like different combinations of rodents and tattoos other than tattoos of

[35:09] rodents don't like show up so much on eBay. So I don't know whether or not I'm searching it wrong. But I did a quick search and you can buy a battery operated tattoo pen, right? You can spend as much as $150 or $200 on one that's professional, but they make one

[35:25] called like rabbit it, rabbit it, rabbit it, something like that. Rabbit it, like a tattoo pen. It's battery operated, right? And it's got like some sort of like, you know, a lifetime guarantee. I haven't seen how waterproof it is, right? But it's just like, you know, you take a AAA battery, you put a little ink in it, take it out in the orchard and you could, I mean, I've

[35:43] never, have you used a tattoo pan before? Yeah, I have friends who do this for a living. I should have asked them, like, use one, because you're supposed to practice on something like a banana. Right? So if we got an ink that didn't bleed too much into the fruit. I mean, I'm assuming they use, I think, like some version of like, you know, India ache or something, something nice black, you know, food grade. It's called human grade. Is that better or worse than food grade, human grade? don't know. Anyway, I'm assuming you can just sit there and write the name of the fruit out. What do you think? I'm gonna buy one. Rabbit it. It's only, I think it's like 40 bucks or something like that. Yeah. Anyway, Rolf, thank you so much for putting us on this correct line of thinking because I'm definitely not

[36:20] going to spend $3000 to tattoo my fruit, but unless someone gives

[36:25] you one. Yeah, if someone gives me like a $3000 fruit tattooing, I'm going to say yes. Then, you know, not going to turn that down. Um, right? Okay. Uh, now, uh, to finish this out, another thing we had last week uh, that was interesting was I spent a good number of minutes uh,

[36:41] insulting uh, insulting uh, like science's ability to recreate meat via 3D printing technologies.

[36:49] And literally the day after that, right? The day after that, uh, Nastasia and I had a meeting with uh, a person who helped uh, in the co-founding of a company

[37:01] called um, Oregonovo, Oregonovo, right? Organovo. And what Oregonova does to give you some background is they can do things like grow blood vessels, whole blood

[37:13] vessels, right? And so most of the meat printing technology, what they'll do is they build a scaffold of collagen and then let meat cells grow into that

[37:21] scaffold. And that is, to me, as far as food preparation, gross. That's not going to make good food. You know what I mean? It's not going to make a good meat substitute. And that's basically what I was ranting against. And also, anyway, well, well, we'll get it before I fit, I'm going to start ranting again. So wait a minute. So these guys actually print undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells, get them to bind together, they differentiate, and they turn into actual organs like blood vessels that they can graft in if you need a coronary audio transplant, let's say,

[37:51] right? And I was like, holy crap, I had no idea you could do this. Do you know they could do that? I was totally shocked. Crazy, crazy. can do this. They also make human meat, tissue, not to eat, although they could. They make it because drug companies want human tissue to test out drugs on. And so it's very, it's, you know, much better than using mice tissue or pig tissue. And, you know, don't worry, no humans killed, blah, blah, blah. Anyway. And so he came to us and says, well, what do you think about the idea that we could print meat? And he's like, I can print out actual muscles in, like, shape and the way the muscles are made with fat marbling and all

[38:30] that. I have my doubts as to whether it's possible, but if it's possible, it's clearly the closest that anyone has ever even attempted to get to actually print out something that I would consider food. Because as I said last week, most meat substitutes, it's all

[38:45] about like reproducing some sort of overcooked, horrible, like monotextural pablum crap. You know what I mean? But these guys are saying they can actually do it and then, you know, and without killing the animals. So you could, you know, if they could get, I'm still, I don't understand scientifically how

[39:03] that they would do things like correct for what the animal ate or the different enzyme makeup that is in a cell based on how long it's been in the

[39:12] animal because, I think I said, like, let's say you're using a pig to make ham. Older pigs have better, have better enzyme makeups for making ham. In other words, the muscle breaks down differently. So a ham from an older pig, not just because of fat content or because myoglobin or any of those things, but simply because of the fact that it's

[39:31] older is going to make a different ham than a younger, younger pig. So I don't know how they're gonna, you know, do things like that. Meat is some complicated business. You know what I'm saying? So I don't know whether that's actually possible to correct for it, but if they could, then, you know, we could all have manatee steaks. You know, one of my goals is to have a cruelty-free manatee steak because I told you about this, right? Yeah, because manatee, right. I'm not advocating hurting manatees, please, please do not say that I'm advocating hurting manatees. I not. in his book, The Unnatural History of the Sea, the author, whose name I forget, basically says that we've actually been making animals go extinct for a long, long time.

[40:07] It hasn't been, you know, just recently. Uh, and one of his favorite examples is this thing called Stellar Sea Cow, which was uh, named after an explorer, Stellar, and it

[40:16] basically these sea cows are manatees, you know, manatee relatives. And so there's this island in the Pacific, where these manatees were just sitting eating kelp, right? kelp, you know, kelp forest. So there's cows like grazing on kelp under the ocean and they're sitting there. And it's like, you know, in a lagoon. So, like, you can basically look down and see them, and here's the messed up thing, right? No natural enemies. For some reason, this like ecological niche had developed. And I believe this is like 16 or 1700s is when this was happening. I can't remember exactly. And so here it is, these things, sitting there, herbivores, right? In herds under the water, right? Fresh and no enemies. And here it had one downfall. They were delicious, delicious. So people said that that nothing tasted as good, you know, well, I don't know, because they're on a ship and they've been eating salt and meat for, you know, months.

[41:07] So who knows? You know what I mean? It kind of like when raw food people say something's delicious and they've only had raw food for a week. So if it doesn't taste like literally awful, it's awesome. You know what I mean? So it's hard to tell. But these guys were basically saying that these were the best animals in the world because they had no predators, you would like harpoon

[41:22] one and then like the guy next to him would be like, what was that? Because they're not used to getting killed. And so they didn't even run away. So you could sit there and like, you know, kind of butcher them at will, which is awful, awful. Anyway, so it's one of the, it was made extinct in a, you know, matter of a few short decades because it was delicious. But ever since that, of course, because I'm perverse, my idea is, man, I wonder what those things tasted like. So these guys, these guys can get you the cruelty-free manatee steak cooking issues.

[41:57] Vicious, fish, vodka. Oh, you did that. Got me on this corner And I don't know where I'm at. Figure on the pulse and city winery, our proud present, the summer barbecue blowout, festival. August 6th from noon to 4 p.m. The barbecue is happening at City Winery, located at 155 Barrack Street in New York City. Restaurants featured at this event are Empire Mayonnaise, Van Dag, Momofuco Mofar, Imperial No. 9, Myeland, Mexico, Craft, Dizzy's Club, Coca-Cola, the Meatball Shop, and

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[43:05] Subzero and Wolf. Please come out and join us for a day of fun, food, and dancing. For more information, go to www.fotnyc.com.