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[0:51] Rakutin. Join today for free. Go to racketon.com or get the app. That's RAK-U-T-E-N. Broadcasting live from Roberta's in Bushwood, Brooklyn, you're listening to HeritageRadioNetwork.com.

[1:13] I'm Sam Edwards. I'm 3rd generation Cure Master from S. Wallace Edwards and Sons in Surrey, Virginia. We support the Heritage Radio Network because we believe in the cause of what they're doing. They're supporting family raised livestock, small family farms, certified humane,

[1:31] pasture raised, antibiotic free. Basically, we take the products from Heritage Food USA and make them into Serrano style hands, prosciutto style hands, bacon, sausage, like my grandfather did. You can find us at SurreyFarms.com or VirginiaTraditions.com.

[2:02] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network. Every Tuesday from 12 to 1245, approximately in the studio today in

[2:12] Bushwick with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, who's looking up some last minute questions that you guys have sent in. How you doing, Nastasia? Fine. It's a, yeah, right, you sound really fine. And fine. Anyway, it's a crappy day out here in Bushwick, and I had a crappy bike ride, but I won't talk about it. I won't bore you with it. Calling all of your questions too, 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 for all of your questions. Cooking or not, really. Tech or not, any questions will take them. Anyway, 1st question in on the email is from Mike Anonymous. Oh, shoot. I should talk about today's sponsor. Today's sponsor is the same sponsor as last week, which is the modernist pantry. I'll read their little blurb, because I'm obliged, and I'm going to talk about it a little bit. Whether you're looking for hydrocolloids, ph modifiers, or even meat glue, you'll find it at modernist pantry. And if you need something that they don't carry, just ask. Chris Anderson and his team will be happy to source it for you. With worldwide shipping, modernist pantry is your one stop shop for innovative cooking ingredients. Fans of cooking issues. Oh, by the way. So this last week we ran a promotion, and so rather than read the little same blurb, because it's the same thing as that. I'm going to give a follow-up. Chris wrote into us and said, we got a good response from last week's show. He says we have a group of avid fans from around the world following us. That's very gratifying, right, Nastasia? Yep. Yeah, she doesn't care if she's doing something else. Since a bunch of people didn't hear the podcast in time to take advantage of the free meat glue. Monitor's pantry is going to run the special again this week and leave it opening until, leave it open till next week's show. So all of you that call in for this entire week until next Tuesday's podcast can get the free sample of

[3:45] Meat Glue from Modernist Pantry, and the code that you need to enter, the promo code is CI, as in cooking issues,

[3:52] 54. That's CI 54. Uh, and please let, uh, let them know that you, uh, oh, also. Tell them, you know, obviously they know that you listen to this show if you put in CI 54. Tell your buddies too. It's gonna make it seem like we have a lot of listeners. In addition, we mentioned last week, we were hoping that they were going to be able to get Pectinex SPL, which is the miracle enzyme that we use for almost everything.

[4:14] We use it for clarification, either with or without a centrifuge, although it really only clarifies thinner

[4:19] juices like apple juice without a centrifuge. We use it for French fries, make them really crispy, and we use it for

[4:26] auto-supreming citrus, and things like that. They're going to be carrying that in a week or so. They don't have a pre-order page yet. Oh, but keep your highest peeled because they're going to start carrying it, which is really great because we hate carrying that stuff, right, Nastasia?

[4:41] You can still get it for the current time being through the FCI, through the French culinary

[4:47] contact Erve Malavere, but I'm looking forward to a worldwide supply in small quantities from Chris

[4:52] Anderson at the modernest pantry. So thanks guys, and make sure to go to www.modernpantry.com. Modern Ist, pantry.com, and type in cooking issues, CI, 54. 54. Yes. 54 for your free Meek loose handle. Anyway, uh, 1st question in is from Mike Anonymous. We've gotten stuff from Mike Anonymous before, right? It's a good name. Wouldn't be awesome if that was his actual name, like Anonymous, that would suck growing up, right? No that's my name. Anyway, okay. Mike says, I would like to hear your thoughts on what new technologies we can expect to find in the home kitchen in the near future. I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on induction burners as I hope to update my stove in the near future. Sincerely Mike Anonymous. Okay, interesting question. I get this question actually quite a bit. I'm, you know, for a living, I'm mainly concerned with what goes on in restaurant kitchens, but I also am interested in what's going on in

[5:44] home kitchens. Here's what I think. Here's what I think. Regarding induction burners. They're awesome. They are really, really awesome. There's a number of problems with induction burners that have stopped them from becoming kind of, you know,

[5:57] set from saturating the market. If you currently own an electric stove. If you don't have gas, the very next thing you should do after listening to this podcast is go home, tear out your electric range, whether it be a ceramic top

[6:11] or, you know, one of those little curly, curly resistance heater jobs, tear it out of the wall and throw it away and buy an induction unit right now. I mean, like before you do anything else, because if you're already running electric for your range, you have no excuse. Electric is expensive. It's very inefficient compared to an induction burner. and it heats up your kitchen, and it also takes a long time to heat up and cool down. It has a weird porpoise effect. I do test cooking with normal electric ranges. If you've never used an induction burner before. They're kind of miraculous. They, um, They heat up almost instantly and they cool off almost instantly. Uh, and, you know, everyone's like, me, me, well, maybe my pots won't work. You can buy a little slug of iron. Coon recon cells, one, for instance, that you could put right on top of an induction burner and turn any pot, a clay pot, an aluminum pot, whatever, into an induction friendly pot.

[7:05] And if you factor in the cost of a range and the kind of electrical savings and the fact that you won't be

[7:10] air conditioning your house to make up for the fact that you're dumping all the extra heat into the house,

[7:15] um, it really saves money in the long run, even if you have to get rid of a few pots and pants. So if you're already electric, please go get an induction right now. If you run gas, there's a couple of problems with induction. One, we are kind of the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. We have natural gas leaking out of our pipelines. Like, we have so much natural gas that, you know, your local utility can't even tell if there's an appreciable amount

[7:39] leaking, just because it's dribbling everywhere. It's preposterously cheap natural gas in this country. If you live outside of this country in Europe, for instance, or I don't know what these situations elsewhere where natural gas is a lot more expensive and electric is more competitive from

[7:51] a, from a, you know, from an energy standpoint, energy user standpoint, also you should move to induction right away. In the US, um, cast is so cheap, uh, that it's kind of hard from an economic standpoint to make the jump right away. Now, induction is faster, as fast as gas. Let's put it that way. And in some cases, faster because you're directly heating the pot, instead of having gas, heat the pot. It's incredibly more efficient than gas. So for a smaller amount of energy usage, you're getting a lot more heat on the pot. So we have a standard kind of commercial style range in our amphitheater at

[8:28] school, and we put like kind of a standard home induction unit next to the commercial

[8:32] range, and the home induction unit boils water faster than the range does.

[8:36] So you really can't compare BTUs of gas output to how many watts are going into your induction burner.

[8:42] You need to compare how fast they boil water. And a decent sized induction burner is usually faster than a decent sized gas burner and typically doesn't heat up your house a lot. So it's fantastic that way. But it has a disadvantage that gas is a lot cheaper. Also, people aren't used to using an induction burner, and they can't see kind of how much power they're putting into it, so there's a little bit of a learning

[9:03] curve, and the other problem is inductions are a lot more fragile. A gas unit is never going to break. And you might have to remount the gas jets or whatever, but basically that sucker is going to work from now until your kids are old. Do you know what I mean? And so those are the 22 main things, but I really, really like inductions. Was that call for us? No. Just a random call. You forgot to turn off your phone? Really? All right. Uh, in terms of other things that are good for uh, Home Kitchen, I sincerely hope that um, sous vide is going to become more popular. Actually, low temperature cook. I can't believe I made that mistake of all people. Low temperature cooking is going to be more important. And I'm hoping that a lot of people have circulators. I am hoping circulators, emerging circulators come down in price, simply because when you throw a party, they make you look like a complete rock star because you don't have to spend a lot of time in the kitchen while your guests are there. The food comes out, always perfect, always good. I love them. I use them all the time. I used one last night. I use one this weekend. At home, I'm talking. I use my circulator all the time. For reheating also, it's very good because it's not going to ruin your food on a reheat. The problem with it is not only the $800 price tag. The problem is that, you know, there's not that many cookbooks and sources out

[10:16] there. I mean, our blog, I'm supposed to write more on this subject, but it's not as many recipes out

[10:21] there, as there could be, and not as much knowledge as there could be. And part of the problem is, is that it's hard to get a major publisher to put out kind of a simpler

[10:30] book because not that many people have the unit. Yeah, it's kind of a catch 22. So, you know, you don't want to come out with a book that then requires you to buy an 800 piece of dollar piece of equipment to own the

[10:39] book and, you know, so it's one of these like chicken egg problems. But, you know, I think there's enough information there on the internet, enough early adopters and people who are willing to experiment that within 10 years, you're going to see circulators drop in price again and also become a lot more common in home kitchens because they're really good in home kitchens for the same reason they're good in a restaurant kitchen.

[10:59] You're going to mess up your food less often. You're going to have more control, delicious results, without a lot of time, when you want to be eating with your family. So I think that's going to be a huge thing. As for other innovations in the in the home, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I hope that our refrigerators and freezers get better, right? Although, I have you know, for those of you that have never been in a professional kitchen before, commercial fridges and freezers, typically, there's a couple exceptions.

[11:24] Like, I like the guys at Randolph. They're the worst. They break all the time, they're loud and they're completely inefficient. So home fridges and freezers are actually already quite good compared to commercial ones, but I think they have a long way to go. I'm hoping more people have really butt kicking blenders in their house, which we'll talk more about blenders in a minute. Anything else you can think of that we usually harp on, Nastasha? I think you covered it. Yeah? Yeah, nothing else. I mean, I, you know, you guys, like, in the home, no one's gonna go. Hey, look, should you get liquid nitrogen? If you have a lot of parties in an outdoor space? I mean, yeah, I mean, you need to follow the safety rules, but I like liquid nitrogen a lot. Do I think it's going to be in everybody's house? No. Everyone who drinks seltzer should have a professional carbonation rig right now. Like, if look, if let me put it this way, if you carry more than one case of seltzer home a week, you should get a professional seltzer rig or at least one of those soda streams tomorrow. First do the induction. After you get the induction squared away tomorrow, go out and get the carbonation rig. I'm trying to think of what else I have. Most people aren't going to get commercial units, you know, restaurant units in their home like I have. Most people aren't going to get a large deep fryer at home, although I love mine. I have a £35 deep fryer and a fry like a mamma jam. I'm much better than a home fryer, but I don't think people are going to get that. I don't think most people are going to get the $400 blender, although I advocate it, right? Um, In the future, there might be a one stop machine that can be a really good rice cooker and a pressure cooker. That might be good, save some countertop space. But, you know, people aren't going to get freeze dryers and homogenizers and all that stuff at home just because there's not as many applications,

[12:51] there's not a, um, they don't warrant the counter space in the time. And, you know, the energy involved. You know what I mean? Yes, now my iPad turned off, so I have to go find the next question. Okay. Well, I do have a question on blenders. Should I take the question on blenders or should we go to the 1st commercial break, you think? I'll take the question on blenders and if I have to run long, I'll run long. Okay. So, uh, a big hello from James in Australia to the entire cooking issues team. And by the way, James wrote in a question and then answered the question and then asked a separate question. So I'm just going to go over the question. We'll see how it works out. James is after a new blender, but down in Australia, Vitapreps, which are the blenders that we use up here in New

[13:28] York and all of the US, really. Vitapreps are insanely expensive, like more than 1200 bucks, uh, which is slightly less than the uh, polycience, uh, immersion circulators cost over there. And there is no secondhand market, which there really is, and people don't tend to give up their Vitapreps unless they're dead unless they're broken. A home style model is a VitaPrep because VitaPrep makes a home version and a commercial version. You know what the difference is? Almost nothing, except the warranty. They give you a crappier warranty on the commercial unit because they know that you're going to beat the ever-leving crap out of it. Anyway, the home unit is just under $1000. My other options are a home grade blend tech, which is another good blender, uh, that comes in around $800, but there's a locally made option, a Breville that's about $250, which is also available in the

[14:13] US. It's 2000 watts, 500 watts more powerful than the blend tech, and the consumer vitamixes. Uh, and so the question is basically, and it's the hemisphere model of Breville. I going to have a lot to say about this. And then he basically, um, Well, okay, so he comes up with another one later called a Samic. Uh, is that what it's called? You gotta find it for me, Nastasia. It's called a CMAC, which is from Australia, CMAC blender, which looks like a really professional kind of butt kicking unit, which

[14:42] is I think we is going to go after. And his question is basically, what's the difference between all these blenders? What the hell's the deal with blenders anyway? How to choose a blender, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. So, the reason we like Vitapreps in this country is twofold. One, they are strong. They're very powerful, especially the new Vida Prep 3s and they have an even more monster one that's very, very powerful. You can't go on wattage rating alone. The wattage is kind of a BS unit, a BS unit of measure of how that's basically just saying how much energy is it sucking out of the wall. If you put, you know, a 1000 watt light bulb on a wire and then attached a 200 watt motor to it and

[15:21] to hook that up to a blender, you know what you have there? A 1200 watt blender, even though you're throwing away a 1000 watts of that

[15:27] as light and heat. Do you get what I'm saying? So don't take the watt edge as the rating. What you really care about is how much power is the blender delivering to your

[15:37] food. Um, and, you know, that basically translates into how fast is the tip of the blade moving relative to the food that you're

[15:45] blending? And we talked a little bit about this last week when we were talking about rotor state or homogenizers, and they put so much more energy into your food because they can stop your food from moving so that you can smack it with a moving blade, right?

[15:57] So we talked a little bit about why a rotor state or homogenizer for a given amount of

[16:01] wattage, energy you're putting into it, can deliver more shearing power onto your food. So don't go directly on um, don't go directly on the wattage. What you have to figure out is what the speed of the blade is

[16:15] going to be underload, right? That's really the important thing. And Vitaprep does very, very well at that. BlendTech does very, very well at that as well, which is another unit you can get in the US. It actually has a slightly wider blade in most Vitapreps, and I think it's a better tip speed, so. So theoretically it gets a better product. But here's where Vitaprep really wins over all other blenders in the

[16:36] U.S. that I've used so far, and that is the user interface. If you're making smoothies all day, right? You want to press a button and you want to have that smoothie just get made, and it's going to go through a bunch of profiles to make sure they think it's blended properly, and you don't want to have to scoop and mix around with all kinds of things. Um, blend techs are great at that because they're designed for juice bars. And that's why they have a lock on a lot of the juice bar market in the

[17:00] U.S. because any monkey can throw a bunch of bananas into a blend

[17:05] tech along with some protein powder and a bunch of other crap. Press a button and walk away and you get a smoothie that's smooth, it doesn't have a lot of chunks and particles in it, right? Vitapreps, on the other hand. Typically, they used to have a kind of a bad blender pitcher style that required you to use a tamper to kind of move things

[17:21] around. Otherwise, it tends to choke up at the base, right? Which is kind of unfortunate. The benefit of that choked up based on a blender at the bottom of a

[17:30] vitaprep, that people don't talk about, is that you can get a smaller amount of liquid to blend properly in a

[17:35] vitaprep than you can in the equivalent blend tech, because you have to fill the blend tech up above the blade level before it starts blending properly, and it's a much wider area down there than it is in the

[17:44] Vitaprep. But that said, if you're going to blend a whole bunch. The Blentech has a better geometry at the bottom of its, the bottom of its pitcher to get the stuff going. Vitaprep has a new pitcher that is has a similar geometry. Anyway, that's, you know, a little bit here or there. But where the Vitaprep really wins is on that interface. It's got 2 flap switches and a knob. When you're a cook, you don't want to have to have your boss come in and program, I'm going to make a pesto into your freaking blender. You want to have a switch so that you can, and then go in high and spin it high when you're going. That's what you really want. And Vitaprep is the best at giving you immediate feedback with, you know, potentiometer knob that tells you, you know, that lets you set exactly how fast you want it to be at this minute.

[18:26] Flip it between high and low with big old style goofy paddle switches, with very minimal electronics, right? And that's really where the Vita Prep is awesome. Even though that, uh, that little potentiometer thing goes crappy a lot and you have to replace them after a couple of years, they start getting all wonky on you and then you'll turn it on and

[18:45] it'll bring, without you turning it, everybody hates that and you'll eventually spray stuff all over your ceiling. The user interface is so good that people love it. And this is why, and I called the guys at Blentech, frankly, maybe 5 years ago, 4 years ago, and I was like, look, you have an awesome piece of equipment, your user interface sucks. What you need to do is build a unit for chefs. It just has a knob and, you know, and 2 buttons, like the Vitaprep has. And they said, yeah, but this really gives control to that. I was like, listen, shut up. I'm telling you, a cook wants 2 flip switches and a knob to change the speed. So anyway, the CMAC unit looks very good. It is also completely electronically controlled, so I'm sure it does really well in the juice market. Um, you know, uh, James said that he, you know, he said that basically all of the reviews he gets off of raw and

[19:28] vegan like websites and kind of, you know, impugns their their taste a little bit because they've already made such a poor life choice

[19:34] and being a raw vegan, his word is not mine. And while that might be true, James, they are like raw vegan people know a boatload about juicing because they have a whole subculture that basically turns everything they eat into a liquid and drinks their food in liquid form.

[19:49] So whether or not you agree with their life choices, they know from juicing and blending, and the Australian website that he sent me to, which is Battle of the

[19:58] Blenders dash pumpkin, if you want to look it up on the internets and the YouTube, and the Australian dude in that actually has a really nice term for, instead of high-speed blenders, he calls them power blenders, which I really like, because it

[20:10] makes, it makes it seem like your blender is a puny blender, unless it's a power blender, right? So he has this one, this Australian one called CMAC. if there's anyone in Australia, I would love to try a CMAC, like, I don't know if I ever get to Australia or if anyone ever wants to send one to us, I'd love to try it. It basically electronically senses whether or not you're blending properly and adjust the speed automatically. And while that sounds great, I still want the control. I want the flap doodle and the control. So I'd love to be able to have that electronic BS, but I'd love to also be able to shoot it in the head and be able to run my blender like a normal blender.

[20:39] The other one also from Down Under, but available here that he mentions is Breville, Breville makes a good quality blender. I'll tell you a little story about this. I was doing a demo with Chris Young in Florida for the Miami food and what's it called? South Beach Food and Wine Fest with Chris Young from the Modest Cuisine. And this lady, we were, we were fluffing, we were, you know, fluffing for a bunch of food network stars like

[20:59] Giada and stuff. This little cake comes up and he's like, he, she raises her hand. I think she's got a question from me or for Chris. We're like, yes, little girl, what's going on? She's like, I made this pasta necklace for Giada. I'm like, oh, jeez. So I had to save the pasta necklace. And I mean, I couldn't tell the kid, listen, I've never met Giada, and they're going to hustle my butt out of

[21:16] here and like, you know, basically flush me down the toilet before they bring Giada on with her entourage, but I was like, look, kid, I'll leave the pasta necklace around this

[21:24] thing, and I'm sure Giada will see it. So hopefully Giada got her pasta necklace. Anyway, that's aside the point. Breville was sponsoring one of the things there and they had the rep there and they show me the blender pitcher. And she says to me, you can't break it. Go ahead, try to break it. I said, really? She's like, yeah, this lady had never met me before. So I said, okay, all right then. So I put it on the ground and I jumped up as high as I could and stomped on the blender like 3 and 4 times. And I was able to shave a portion of the blender off because it was on concrete. I was able to shave a corner off of the blender pitcher, but the blender pitcher did in fact not break. So one of their marketing claims is that the blender pitcher is very strong, and indeed, it is. Whether or not the blender itself, it can get close to a Vita Prep. don't know. I've seen some favorable reviews, but I've never actually blended with it because we didn't have the stuff on hand to blend. And those are my feelings on blending. Oh, by the way, one more thing. Do not read any any magazine out there. whether or not they're my friends. Like popular mechanics, they're a friend of mine. Uh, you know, I've worked with them. Um, you know, Cooks Illustrated. I'm fine with those guys. Never believe anyone's blender ratings. They don't know what the hell they're talking about. They give you stupid reasons to like or dislike a blender. The only thing that matters is, can it take, can it take a sauce that you would have had to strain through a tammy and make it so that it's

[22:43] silky, smooth and delicious? Can it get the particle size down below or close to about 20 microns so that you taste this stuff

[22:50] as being smooth? And very few blenders can do that. The blend tech can do it. The Vitaprep can do it. I'm assuming that the CMAC can do it. I don't know if the Brevel can do it. But it's not whether or not it can make a margarita because in a kitchen, that's not really the test we care about. It's can it make a sauce smooth. So we'll take a commercial blake, break, think about blenders, and we'll be back.

[23:21] This with leather, Chris, Mr. Pepper,

[23:26] Freaks, fly together. Make it all a big boy scream. All right. All right. Turn it up now. Oh, all right. Shut it up now. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh What up to?

[23:51] She's always collamping. Byzine after camping. I just wanna watch you dance. All right. Oh, right. Turn it up now. Turn it up Shut it up now. Do you wanna ride on the world to see? I'll be your mistress, see, OD. Comb your hair touch your diary Oh, shit, babe, on the honey beat. She can really kill me. She can really do me. She can look more through me. I think I'll be more screaming. You are the mother, love. There's a meaning in the way I'm the people who make it. And welcome back to Cooking Issues. Call all of your questions too. 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. That song goes out to Colin because Nastasia has broken some secret code in Collins messages when he comes in that he likes that song. That true or false? you know, Nastasia's good at those secret codes. But here is a longtime listener Collins questions on the ultrasonic homogenizer. By the way, an ultrasonic homogenizer is something that vibrates very

[25:24] rapidly. It uses a Piso, like a Piso, transducer, vibrate very rapidly. And you can use it for a couple of things. One, you can make an ultrasonic fog with it, which is how humidifiers work. You can clean jewelry with it by shaking with it. That, how an ultrasonic jewelry thing works. A homogenizer uses very focused, high power sonic energy to cavitate, make little bubbles and actually rupture things.

[25:47] So that's what an ultrasonic homogenizers. I have one. And when you run them, people run screaming from the kitchen because they make horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible noise. Yeah? Horrible. Noustache is nodding. Yes. Okay. Collin wants to know. Couldn't one use an ultrasonic homogenizer such as a Branson, uh, or the new poly-science sonic prep, which I'm sure is a relabeled Branson, uh, because not very many people make these things, uh, as a highly effective toothbrush. As the only rigid bodies in the mouth, full of soft matter, the tooth, as the only rigid bodies in a mouthful of soft matter, the 2 services would likely get the most

[26:22] cavitation action. You can safely immerse your hand into an ultrasonic bath. So I was wondering if the more sensitive skin on the mouth might fare as well. Obviously, you would reduce the wattage, so it acts more of a cleaner than a dismembrator, which is something that takes the membranes off of cells, which is another thing they call

[26:36] them, sonic dismembrators. I would certainly work better than those tongue scrapers and would cavitate the bits, bits of mixed business from between one's teeth better than floss. Modern chefs would have no more excuses for halitosis, praise the day. And he's wondering if this is true or false. Don't do that, Colin. Don't do that. Colin don't do that. Look, I have one. And, you know, I had for a while until it broke an ultrasonic toothbrush, but they're basically vibrating very softly.

[27:05] If you take an ultrasonic homogenizer, and it's a demo I used to do to show not to mess around with them. I would take the probe and stick it into a dish towel and fire it up and it would catch the dish towel on fire from the friction of it going back and forth.

[27:19] So, I mean, you could theoretically hook a rubber toothbrush sucker up to it

[27:24] and, uh, turn the power way down, but then you're dealing with like a $2000 piece of equipment that you're turning into

[27:31] a, um, you know, into a, uh, you know, a $50 toothbrush. They make, like, you can buy, like, a $50 or an $80 ultrasonic toothbrush. And I would definitely go that way, never stick an ultrasonic homogenizer in your mouth for any reason under any circumstance. And this is, again, not one of those. Jack, we were supposed to have like a noise that meant Davis serious this time or something like that, but we never got it. Dave is serious this time. Never stick an ultrasonic homogenizer in your mouth. Okay. H. Monterre writes in about whipped cream. Is there a way to make heat resistant whipped cream that will hold its shape when put into something

[28:04] hot, like a canal or a soup? Yes. You like that, nostalgia? Yes. One of my famous one word answers. Okay, here's the issues. And this is the typical thing that you have to do. When you're using a hydrocolloid, which is new aid thickener, a gelling agent, right? You're looking for right now the thing to keep it, keep it hot. Whipped cream itself doesn't stay when you put it into hot things. So what you need to do is make the flavor of whipped cream using an entirely different technology. So the question is, and this is basically, so when Wiley's doing is fried mayonnaise. What does he do? He makes something that's not mayonnaise, that tastes like mayonnaise, that has the texture of mayonnaise, right? But is in fact a fluid gel made out of geland, that's heat stable. So it's texture of mayonnaise in a heat stable form. right? And he can flavor it however he wants. So he does the same thing with hollandaise. He has flavor of hollandaise in a heat stable form which happens to be a fluid gel. Now, you could make a cream flavored fluid gel out of

[29:07] gelan, for instance. You can then whip that in an ISI maker, right? And you can have a very creamy mousse, or you, you know, something like that. So you would make a moose that's whipped with whipped cream kind of a texture to it that's either a fluid gel or even like a set moose using a

[29:24] gel, and make it heat stable. But without actually running the tests, I don't know what's going to make the most whipped cream texture. So you might be best off with like a gel and fluid gel stabilized whipped cream, right? So you could take a jeland fluid gel, mix it into regular whipped cream, whip it, and then see whether it'll hold when it's hot or whether the fat will bleed out. You might have to, um, actually whip, cream, uh, like over whip, like you have the problems you have to stabilize it so it doesn't over whip. So you'd have to use like a light cream, maybe, whip it with a versa whip and set it with another gel that sets when it's hot, like you can set it almost like a moose with like with gel in or with something

[30:03] else, and that's heat stable, agar, maybe, and set it and see what's going on. So there's a number of different things you can do, but whipped cream itself isn't

[30:12] going to stabilize. You're going to basically have the flavor and texture of whipped cream using an entirely different method of setting.

[30:17] So you'd have to run a whole bunch of different tests, but that's how I'd go about kind of setting up the experiment if you're going to do it. Does that make any sense? Made sense. Well, it does because she has to listen to me talk about this crap all the time, so I'm sure this stuff makes some sort of sense to her anyway. Okay. Um, so, uh, we have, when is it, Nastasia, when's our museum event? Thursday, September 29th, from 7 to 10 PM. Right. At Mopesh. At Ma Pesh, at the at the restaurant, Ma Pesh, which is on... basically taking it over. It's on uh 56th.

[30:54] Is there a party going on in our background? Do you hear that on headphones? It's really loud. 50 15 West 56th Street between 5th and 6th. All right, so Mopesh, we're taking over. There's a bar at the mesmeine level when you walk in and we have an upper story at the hotel. Apparently the hotel is called the Hotel Chambers. It's not called the Ma Pesh Hotel, although you could have fooled me. Anyway, so we're going to have an event there. There's going to be 5 bartenders. And do we have the 5th one yet or no? No, it might be you. It might be Don Lee. Might be me, Mike. Don, if you're listening, we want it to be you because I want to try and get out of one of these events without actually having to make a cocktail. But we have so maybe Don Lee, right? Who else we have? We have Evan Clem. Uh-huh, we have Kenta. Kentagota from he's actually the best bartender in the world. He won that last universe, actually, right? Assuming that there's no other good mixed drinks anywhere, you know, wherever there's intelligent life, assuming they don't have mixed drinks there. you know, which is a fair shot. The best bartender in the universe, won that at the tails of the cocktail this year. Who else we have? We have... Chad and Christie. Oh, yeah, Chad, Chad Solomon, Christy Pope. Jason Lutrell, right? Is that five? You sure I'm not missing anyone? And the gimmick on this one. The gimmick is, if cocktails were street food from X, right? So we have absolute vodka, so that would be if cocktails

[32:17] or street food from Sweden, and what else we have? We have Bombay East. I'm not sure whether Jason's going to choose Vietnam or Thailand because the thing they add to Bombay East is either Vietnamese,

[32:27] peppercorn, or Thai lemongrass. And what are the other ones we have? We have Hendrix. Hendrix, which we're doing England because it's gin, right? And we couldn't do 2 gins for me. anyway, whatever. Next. 901 Mexico. And what? Wait, did you say absolutely? Absolute. We didn't get all five. we're missing one. Someone's gonna get mad at us. Yeah, I know. Oh, makers. Maker's Mark from the United States of America, giving that one to Chad and Christie because of their Southern heritage. Anyway, there are still slots available if you want to go next

[32:57] week and you should go to what website to do that? HTTP, colon backslash, backslash, mofedmembership.eventbright.com. But I guess you just do mofad membership.eventbright.com, right? Right. And come prepared to spend some freaking money because we're going to have a donation

[33:13] bucket and we're also going to have an auction. And what we're trying to do is keep the museum of food and drink afloat. You can go look at the last post we have for the last fundraiser, which was a serious, serious event. This one's going to be just cocktails, but we hope it's going to be a lot of fun. I don't hope it's going to be a lot of fun. Do we know anyone that's going to show up? not going to give away. We're going to try to get some nice special guests that you can mingle with if you come to the event, correct? Yes. All right. Uh, so, uh, a note of what I am doing today. Well, actually, we didn't talk about Bourdain shoot, right? You didn't talk about Harvard. about Bodangsh, yeah. We allowed to talk about the Bourdain shoot? Is half of your phone broken? Folks out there, half of my earphone's broken, so it feels really weird. I feel like I'm about to I'm constantly turning around my microphone like a, oh, there we go. Um, so, uh, last week we did the Tony Bourdain shoot, and the theory of this was for no reservations was this Christmas show. And so I said I didn't want to do an ancient Christmas dinner because really I didn't think Christmas was so important as an ancient dinner source, so I wanted to do

[34:10] what, what would Jesus have eaten or what would Mary and Joseph is what I was thinking eating around their birthday? And the research we did was pretty, um, was pretty, I thought pretty interesting. We found out that they used an oven in

[34:23] the in that era in that zone in Palestine, very similar to an Indian tandor oven of today. And in fact, that style of oven was widespread all the way from

[34:33] India, where it's popular today, up through, you know, like where, you know, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, all that stuff is all the way over through the Middle East and all the way over into

[34:43] Africa. So they had this huge range where this oven, and it's basically like a conical vessel that you fire from the bottom and you load from the top,

[34:51] was basically used throughout this region. So I thought that was awesome. And I've always wanted a tandor. So Cliff and Piper, and I, you know, 2 of my

[35:01] ex interns, built a tandor, like, in like 3 hours from crap that we could find at the hardware store. First, we called all these places. you get us to Tandor? Can you get us a tandor? And, like, it was a 1000 bucks in like 2 weeks to wait, so I was like, crap on that. We built it from flower pots and sand. And actually, you can find on the internets. If you just look up flower pot tandor into any of the make sites. You can figure out how to make a flower pot tandor. And that thing worked straight up great. We used a, uh, you know, frankly, it was delicious, right? We made pigeon because one of the things that Mary,

[35:31] when, you know, when Jesus was born. Did I go through this last week? Okay, so anyway, when Jesus... Well, anyway, so we cooking this pigeon because, you know, when Jesus was born, they gave pigeons a sacrifice to the

[35:42] priests, you know, et cetera. So we cook pigeon and we boiled the pigeon in chicken stock

[35:47] first. And, uh, which was typical for what they would have done. We didn't boil it. We did it about 140 degrees or so just to kind of like start the cookoff in the chicken stock. And, uh, we then rubbed it with cumin and fennel, which were 2 spices they would have had. We koshered it beforehand, so it was nice and salty. We did the official koshering technique, which is soak it in water, like rub salt all over it, let it sit for an

[36:08] hour, and then rinse it 3 times and pat it dry, poach it off for a little bit, and then we stuck it in the

[36:13] tandor. I put a coat hanger through it and put it down in the tandor and spun it. First, I caught the string on fire and burnt my hand getting the thing out, but you know, whatever, you know, we can't have everything. So, but when we did it, that pigeon was straight up delicious.

[36:25] So if you make yourself a flower pot tandor, uh,

[36:29] with, you know, a garbage can, sand. If you can get vermic, you like get it, and cook yourself some pigeon in your flower pot tando, because that was straight up good, right? Also, I was really worried because, you know, I spoke to a chef a long time ago about tandors and he was always laughing that his favorite part of a new cook coming into the kitchen was putting him on tandor station and watching the flesh peel off the back of his hands from footing his hand into the hot tandor all the time because it's hot as the devil.

[36:52] you have to put your hand in and literally slap the bread onto the side of the unit.

[36:56] And so I was a little more than a little bit nervous that this was going to totally fry me out. So, but it wasn't not so bad. I mean, I burnt the hair off my arm, right? But it wasn't such a big deal. I didn't, I didn't run around screaming too much, right? So go ahead and build yourself a flower pot tender. What else do we make? The bread was really good that we made that. We made like an old school flatbread with like really crappily ground wheat and also with barley, but the wheat was a lot better, right? Yes. Yeah. And did we do anything else? was fun? Lizotto. No, we didn't do lentils. Like, Nastasia has risotto on our mind. She must want risotto for dinner because she's just thinking risotto, risotto, risotto. You made risotto. That dude, Bourdain is a tall dude, too, by the way. Did you know how tall that sucker was? Probably, like, 64? I don't know, he was a huge man. Tall. Also drops a lot of F-bombs while he's shooting. Did they cut that out in the show or no? I don't think so. Anyway. So look for that to air on December the 15th or something like that. Something like that. All right. So what I'm doing today. So when I went to Columbia, I don't know if I mentioned this, when I went to Columbia, I wasn't able to get any money. Uh, so, I mentioned, so, Chris Costow, the, you know, 3 star Michelin chef, uh, you know, out in Napa, gave me 150 bucks

[38:14] uh, in Colombian cash money so that I wouldn't die, basically.

[38:19] Um, and we had a discussion and he said that he is very interested in the flavors of tomato plant,

[38:26] right? So I, you know, I said, well, I've done that before. You know, I took a I've roto vapped. And also, you know, who used to be interested in that years ago is David Kinch out at Manresa also in California. It must be something about Californians and tomato plants. Even though we straight up, I'm sorry, California, we straight up have the best tomatoes I have ever had in my life. Crap on anyone else's tomatoes over the best tomatoes I've ever had are from New Jersey. Uh, Aunt Ruby's German greens and the German stripes from uh, Stokes Farms

[38:59] in in New Jersey. And I can say that they don't give me a break on anything. They don't give me anything, but these are, and in fact, I can't get them anymore, hardly because New Yorker or New York magazine or New Yorker, one of those wrote them up like 2 years ago, and now they're as the best

[39:12] tomato, and they sell out now. So I have a tough time getting them. Hurricane came through here, and it didn't do any damage to New York City, but it did a lot of damage to parts of Jersey and up in

[39:22] Vermont, and all of their tomato plants roots were underwater, and so a lot of the tomatoes kind of blew up and exploded. So the season is over early this year. Anyway, that's an aside, a sat aside. I had the last of the great Aunt Rubies, I am told, on Saturday. They were delicious. Anyway. And by the way, Aunt Ruby, who came up with this, the heirloom state, you know her last name? Tuesday. Arnold. Aunt Ruby Arnold, no relation. I wish it was. I wish she was my relative. Anyway, she died in like 1997. So, uh, Tomato Plan vodka. I made it a bunch of years ago in a rotary evaporator, and so I'm going to make it again today. going to make a whole bunch of, but I'm going to do it legally. For the 1st time, I'm going to do a legal roto app of

[40:02] tomato plan vodka, I'm going to ship it off to Chris Costa as a thank you for giving us, giving me the ability to not be dead in

[40:10] Colombia. Yes? Yeah. Anyway, I'm going back. did you ever taste that tomato plant vodka? I had still had some left. And it's weird. It's green. It tastes so green, so bizarre. I like it a lot. I mean, but you could never make a mixed drink with it. Um, because if you made a mixed drink with it, people are like, what the hell is that flavor? And you say tomato plant vodka? Um, When am I going back to Columbia? you have any idea? Yeah, second, third, and fourth. Soon. Anyway, I love Columbia. I talked enough about Columbia, but I love it there. I actually have 2 Colombian friends visit me right after this program. What is it? Yeah. So, and the last thing I'm going to talk about before I go is the Harvard. because we didn't talk about it or we did. So I'm going back to Harvard sometime in November to do a public lecture on

[40:57] drinks. I hope to have some sort of like whiz bang craziness. I'm also doing a lecture at the beverage alcohol resource program, David Wondridge's thing, which is when next week? Yeah. So if I don't know if there's still slots available for that, but it's kind of the greatest bar program ever, ever made. It's Dave Wondridge, Dale DeGroff, Steve Olsen, Paul Packle. I'm sure I'm missing. I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of other things, but it's kind of the craziest bar program in the world because you have some of the biggest spirit nuts on the planet going out and bringing like personal bottles of weird crap and you spend, I believe, the morning tasting every

[41:33] damned, uh, every damned liquor you can so you can identify it later and then there's lectures on theory. There's lectures. So I'm going to go give a lecture probably on clarification, rotary evaporation, and my general thoughts about high-tech stuff next week. Uh, and then a drinks lecture, a lecture in um, November. But at the Harvard, it's kind of a, we didn't do it last year, but it's kind of a strange course, right? I mean, Nastasia, you win. What do you think? I mean, it's kind of an it's an interesting idea. They get a whole bunch of chefs and they do a demo and then they try and turn it into a class about science,

[42:07] right? But it's kind of like, it's physics for poets is basically what it is, right? Taught through the lens of cooking, right? Now, most of the chefs who go, last week was one Roka. I't know who's going to be this week. You know, Juan Roko, if you don't know him, is kind of like super duper badass mofo, badass, you know, guy with low temperature cooking and also with rotary

[42:27] evaporation. So, you know, very big influence on me. Very big influence, I think, on all the chefs kind of of, you know, Wiley's generation, my generation, in terms of sous vide and low temperature and whatnot. They're getting like a whole bunch of people going up, but it's kind of weird to have to beat those chefs into kind of a science

[42:43] mold, right? Kind of interesting problem. Me, because I'm a schmuck, Instead, I was I was just like, I'll just do some demos around the science because, you know, whatever. But do you think that went all right in my lecture? It was all right. on the web, so you can see. I listened to it. I said, um a lot. Apparently, I don't know, Nastasia, you said I don't say I'm too much on the radio, but I

[43:01] said, um, every other word when I was at when I was at Harvard. But let me tell you something. They have a vacuum pump at Harvard. One of the demos we did at Harvard was a

[43:10] demo Johnny had told me about that he saw at Nathan Mirvold's joint with Chris Young. You take liquid nitrogen. You put liquid nitrogen into a vacuum machine and a regular commercial vacuum machine will work. And you suck a vacuum on it, and as you suck a vacuum on it, the temperature starts dropping because you're evaporatively cooling. Think about it. As you're boiling off liquid nitrogen, you're evaporatively cooling it. So when you put a vacuum on it, you boil it off so quickly that the temperature drops about

[43:33] two, 3 degrees, and that's enough to turn liquid nitrogen from a liquid to a solid.

[43:39] Now, Harvard's vacuum machine is so freaking awesome that we needed to literally bleed air out of it because it was sucking

[43:47] too hard of a vacuum too fast and just exploded into this solid bunch of nitrogen foam. That was kind of the most fun thing I did, right? That was, I mean, in my feeling, that was pretty badass. And that brings me to my last question, also from James, in Australia on vacuum equipment. I've just managed, James, says, to get a large chamber sealer, a vacuum sealer cheap on eBay. Well, congratulations to you. I've had a look at modernist cuisine and online, but all the information out

[44:14] there is sort of stick it in the bag and vac it. What are my tips on maintenance, bag size to food ratio? How to tell when you have crazy overvacuumed your food and any other ideas on what to use it for apart from packaging for sous vide and stuffing alcohol into fruit? Well, you can freeze liquid nitrogen into a solid, but that's pretty useless because as soon as you let the air back in, the thing melts and it goes back to being liquid again. Here's the maintenance. Maintenance is fairly easy on a vacuum machine. You need to do 2 things regularly. You need to replace the Teflon tape over the seal bar. You need to do that as soon as it starts burning through. Otherwise, your bags are going to be sealed improperly. You just have to buy the tape, you can buy it from a 2nd from a 3rd party, like McMaster Carr. I don't know what they call it in Australia, but I'm sure you have an industrial supply place that sells it, Teflon

[44:56] tape, or, you know, not the stuff for plumbing. It's adhesive heatproof Teflon tape, or just get it directly from the vacuum manufacturer from the thing, but that's something to do regularly. But the most important thing. The heart and soul, the literally the heart of the vacuum machine is the vacuum pump. And the vacuum pump needs one thing to work properly and that's clean oil. When you vacuum something, as you vacuum it, liquid is evaporating off of your

[45:21] product, and it's contaminating your oil with water, and it's reducing the level of vacuum you can get

[45:27] to, and also making it take longer and longer for you to get down to that vacuum. So the key is to keep the pump clean. And the way to keep the pump clean is to run it till it gets hot. Most commercial vacuum machines have a have a pump in it made by a company called Bush out of Germany and they're designed to run hot. So what you do is you leave the lid open and you run it for minutes until it gets really hot with air streaming through it, and it's going to boil all the liquid out and keep your pump oil nice and clear. If you do that regularly, you shouldn't have to change your pump oil more than about, depends on how heavy your usage is, but every 6 months to a year, you should be able to keep it before you have to change it. Okay? That's the prime thing in maintenance. Obviously, keep the unit clean. Your unit might have an acrylic lid, so don't wash the lid with alcohol or

[46:07] it could get hazy depending on the unit you have, but that's basically it. Every morning, uh, or whenever, whenever you see it, it's not working

[46:15] right. I would rip the, there usually there's a metal plate for some unknown reason, covering up the window on the pump, showing you what the condition of the oil is. And the 1st thing I do when I get a vacuum machine is rip that plate off so that I can see the condition of the oil at all

[46:27] times. And I guarantee you if it's been used, it's going to look like salad dressing. So putting, you know, put new oil in, obviously, because you don't know what happened before, and then clean your pump oil out. That's the main thing. Also, backsize the food ratio is important, but people don't think about it. If you're sucking a complete vacuum on something, the bag size isn't very important. If you use a bag that's too small. What happens is you're going to get smashed the bag around the corners of your food and you're going to get crazy portions that look like pillows. They look insane and nobody thinks those are appetizing. you see little bag marks in your food, right? But assuming you have enough liquid, like oil or whatever, in the bag, such that, you know, the bag can seal around the liquid and not deform your product, right, then having a bag that's, you know, much bigger, if you're sucking a full

[47:10] vacuum, doesn't make that much of a difference. But, 2 things. You don't want a big bag because a big bag takes up extra room in your circulator, right? You're spending extra money on the plastic, although that's not the primary thing, but the main thing is a lot of times we're going to suck an incomplete vacuum on our product. And then the back size does matter because if you have kind of a loose seal and a big bag, it gets really loose,

[47:33] right? So you want to try and have the bag be about, you know, just extend enough around your food to allow it to close around your

[47:41] sauce without or oil or whatever without it crunching your food. That said, it's not hyper hypercritical. But the reason you're going to want to not suck a complete vacuum on stuff is that the vacuum, the vacuum level that you use radically affects the texture of certain

[47:56] products. For instance, chicken. If you uh, you know, if you vacuum chicken really hard, it tastes like canned chicken after you cook it.

[48:03] If you vacuum fish really hard, it ruins the texture, makes it kind of stringy. And you can look on cookingissues.com and look for, you look under, I think it's called boring but useful technical post on vacuum machine or something like that. You can look it up and you can see our test that we ran on that. And, um, you know, Chris and uh, and Nathan had a theory on that in modernist cuisine about why that's the case. They think it has something to do with boiling. I kind of I disagree with that. I'd love to have that debate with them, but I kind of disagree with it. But that said, you know, if you overcompress something for storage, it's usually not a big deal. It's when you cook something under a high vacuum. That's my feeling is that you're going to have a problem with it. Anyway, as for other ideas, you're going to have to wait for our next installation, which I

[48:48] promise I will start working on. And I'll tell you what, Nastasia's been beating on me to do some of these CV'd primers. And I have more incentive. I'll give you a little hint because I know the French Culinary Institute does not listen to our webcast. I believe the cooking issues blog is going to be switched to my personal ownership

[49:03] soon with, you know, they'll still have, they'll still be the French culinary tech and stuff blog. But I believe what happened is, I wrote a post a couple

[49:12] weeks back, right before I went to Columbia on how to mess with pressure cookers, and their lawyer and their lawyers freaked out, right? Mustachi, true or false? Should I be talking about this? Their lawyers freaked out. And so I think they think it might be easier for it to just be my personal blog. called the French culinary tech and stuff blog. So anyway, that's that and that's cooking issues.

[49:39] Vicious, fish, vodka. Oh, you did. Thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage Radio Network. You can find all of our archives 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

[50:04] 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.

[50:20] The following messages from Bubbies. Bubby's Main Street is thrilled to announce a fall program of special dinners celebrating efforts to renovate American agriculture and the American menu. Each event will feature a conversation with persons who are deeply involved in a significant aspect of this

[50:37] project, followed by a meal that illustrates materially and pleasurably the themes under discussion. From our perspective at Bubbies, we observe and participate in three parallel movements that are gaining momentum in the New York region and around the country. New farmers supplying green markets and alternative food networks with produce and animals raised without relying on an arsenal of chemicals or industrial methods, new artisans reinventing

[51:00] food crafts, and a fresh appreciation of authentic American cooking from all regions and communities.

[51:05] For more information about these events, visit bubbies.com. That's b-u-b-y-s.com or contact Danny Finkel directly at 646-338-0422.

[51:17] The following is a message from Heritage Foods USA. 14 family farms and over 50 restaurants have committed to participation in no goat left

[51:29] behind, a new program developed by Heritage Foods USA, a meat distribution company dedicated to preserving endangered breeds. Without an end market, the majority of male dairy goats are sold into the commodity market or killed at birth. Dairy farmers are always struggling with feed prices, milk prices, and weather. Goats usually have twins or triplets, and for every female who will become a milker, there's a male buckling who will become a financial drain. It makes no sense that these males are sold into the commodity market or put to death when the United States imports almost 50% of its annual goat supply.

[52:00] Home consumers interested in participating can order goats through heritagefoodsusa.com. They will receive goats via FedEx, and home delivery is available for New York City customers. In addition to the goat, these packages will also include recipes and a DVD featuring interviews with the farmers, processors, and

[52:17] chefs demonstrating how to breakdown and cocoat. Again, for more information on no goat left behind, visit www.heritagefoodsusa.com or call Aaron Fairbanks at 718-389-0985.

[52:37] The Heritage Meat Shop has just opened in the Essex Street Market, open from 9 to 7 Monday through Saturday and 10 to 6 on Sundays. The Heritage Meat Shop supports independent family farms and animal welfare approved and certified humane raising standards.

[52:55] Most importantly, they offer a wide variety of heritage breeds. So stop by, get a sandwich, try the charcuterie, the heritage meat

[53:03] shop at the Essex Street Market.