[0:00] Broadcasting live from Roberta's in Bushwick, Brooklyn, you're listening to HeritageRadio Network.com.

[0:20] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live every Tuesday from 12 to 1245 out of the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Brooklyn, New York. Join today, as always, witness Dasha, the Hammer Lopez, but also special and unknown guests. We didn't know he was going to be here. He was here for another radio show, which is pre-recorded, which is why it's okay that we're going to steal him. But Alex Talbot, Alexander Tyler from Ideas and Food, the one and only, is in the studio with us today. Hello, Alex. Hello, sir. are you Doing well, doing well. So calling all of your questions, and if you're a chump sucker, if you don't call in and ask Alex your questions now, too, 718-497-2128. 718-4972128. Nastasia, how was your Halloween, by the way? Are you going to ask people to text us? She's, by the way, folks, just so you know, Nastasia is typing on her computer. I'm doing work for Dave, folks. Yes, but it's during the radio shows. Anyway. That's how busy you are. Are you going to tell people to tweet if they're listening so that we can keep track of how many listeners we actually

[1:24] have? That's not going to help. Like, if I listened, I wouldn't even know how to tweet. It's not like I'm going to set up. Nastasia's trying to figure out how many people. This is an ongoing thing. We're trying to figure out whether anyone's actually listening to this thing or not. And, you know, we know a couple of you are because you're writing questions. Thank you. But iTunes is making it impossible for us to... Or they can email me. If they listen. If they listen. Okay, you're going to be swamped with all 3 emails. Anyway, today's show is sponsored again by the modernist pantry, supplying innovative ingredients for the modern cook. Do you love to experiment with new cooking techniques and ingredients, but hate to overspend for pounds of supplies and only a few grams are needed for application. Modernist pantry has a solution. They offer a wide range of modern ingredients and packages that make sense for the home cook or enthusiast, and most only cost around 5 bucks, saving you time,

[2:07] money, and storage space. Whether you're looking for hydrocarloids, pH buffers, 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 is his team and his team will be happy to source it for you. With inexpensive shipping to any country in the world. And by the way, we asked last week about this and someone from, I believe, New Zealand sent it and said it was like under 10 bucks. It was like 5 or 8 bucks or something to ship, whatever it is they wanted to New Zealand. So we were like, They got it in like 7 days or something. Yeah, so we're like, hmm, all right, nice. Nice. All right. So it's no, it's no BS. It's no horse hockey. They will ship it anywhere in the world at inexpensive cost. Anyway, modernist pantry is your one stop shop for innovative cooking ingredients. Modernist pantry, now carries iota kappa, and lambda, lambda carrot game. And what the heck do you use lambda carrigan for? You ever use that, Alex? Chocolate milk. Yep. I mean, like, do you find a need to stabilize chocolate milk often for yourself? Not really. We actually pass over it all the time. We just used a lot of chocolate. Yeah. That's it. In other words, like, from a cook's perspective, why would you want to use a land of carradin? Just because you're cool. So, folks, Kerogen and seaweed derivatives. And the deal is, is that there's a bunch of different kinds. There's Iota, kappa, and lambda, the 3 main different kind of

[3:20] kerragidans, and they differ based on, I believe it's the sulfate bridges along the backbone, how they work.

[3:26] Kappa Carragin is the one that's closest to Agar and its behavior. It's very brittle. Iota is very, very stretchy and elastic. And lambda is kind of non-gelling, or we think of it as non-gelling, but it's used as an embodying agent in chocolate milk. No carrogin mix is pure there because they're natural products. So, you know, capital will have a bit of the other 2 and and vice versa, but things are primarily, they're sold as primarily

[3:52] Iota kappa and Landa. I know many chefs, excuse me, chefs who use Iota and kappa, but I don't know any chefs that use lamb, at least not that they've told me. Anyway, fans of cooking issues that place an order of $35 or more before next week's show, we'll get a free package of Iota Carragin and. Simply use the promo code. CI, as in cooking issues, 60 when placing your order online at modernestpantry.com. Visit modernestpantry.com today for all of your modernest cooking needs. I mean, Iota, mainly puddings, right? I mean, I mean, that's it. It's also one of the only hydrocholides that's self-healing. Oh, right, true. So there's basically, when you break a hydrocoloid by shearing it, it never again comes back together. It's sheer irreversible when you break the gelatin. In iota, they will actually, the gel will heat up. Now, if you are, if you use iota to do a hard, like when I say a hard gel, one that doesn't kind of break easily like a pudding, it's kind of a weird texture.

[4:46] It is, what's that, uh, that stuff that used to get on, uh, shoot. I used to buy it as a kid. Rubber cement? It's like short rubber. but softer, but no, there's, ah, shoot. There was a candy of sorts. You know what? It's kind of like, is you know those stretchy hands that you buy and you slap them across the

[5:03] room? You like fling them across the room and they stretch out and stick to the wall and then snap back and hit you in the

[5:07] face. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like that, but without the sticking and hitting you back in the face thing. But, yeah. But most people don't use iota in levels that produce that kind of behavior. They using it in kind of pudding levels. And then you can you can put the pudding into another container, like a ramekin or something like that. And then, you know. Yeah, I mean, it benefits from that little bit of kappa to give it just a touch of structure. So, you know, when you cut your spoon through it, you can actually see it as opposed to just, you know, the blob, which goes back on itself. Right. And the reason, by the way, that people use carraginans in milk-based things is because there's a synergism between milk and carragin. And so if you would normally, to get, you have to use, depending on the actual one you use, but it's something on the order of one fifth of the amount of carragin that you would have to use,

[5:59] to thicken a milk-based system, as you would, excuse me, to thicken a water-based system with the same

[6:05] carraginen. So, you can use very, very small amounts. Industrially, this is good because it means that you're using less product, which saves you money. From a cooking perspective, the less of a thickening agent you have to use, the less chance you have, the less opportunity there is for that ingredient to

[6:22] alter, mar, or mask, the flavor that you're dealing with. Certainly. I mean, there's a couple other things. When we talk about it a lot, but it's the, you want to use the least amount of anything possible, be it salt or kerogen or sugar. So to get the desired results. Uh, you can also add the calcium to, uh, because it's iota is calcium reactant where

[6:44] is kappa is potassium. So you can, if you don't have a lot of milk. Just add some calcium. But you know what? You know what I never know? I never know. Depends on who gives you the product, but I know like certain of the kappas are pre-formulated with the potassium salts in it. It double depends. A lot of TIC gum stuff is basically idiot proof. Right. By the way, folks, this is why this is, I mean, like, I love what Martin Larish from Kymalis has done for the world by creating his hydrocollage recipe index.

[7:14] And by the way, he's getting better about going back and and, well, your recipes are in there. A lot of our, yeah, but the, um, the one

[7:22] thing he did was remove a lot of the brand names. And what I always tell people is that if you are going to specify a recipe, you should always specify the brand that you

[7:31] use. Because if you just say kappa caragin, and 1st of all, there could be anything natural like this,

[7:37] like could come in a wide variety of chain lengths, for instance, there's wide variety of properties, but also could or could not have the setting salts added to them already.

[7:45] I mean, it's... I mean, if you look at a lot of CP Kelco stuff, they've got CP Kelco and different variation, but

[7:51] Jelen, they've got JJ, which RJ has sodium citrate in it, which is a squestrian, which allows it to be easier for

[7:58] gelling, but whole other ball game. Right. So always say the brand you're using. Anyway, we have a caller, a caller. You're on the air. Dave. Howdy. This is Mike. I'm a commercial brewer and I'm interested in possibly doing some molecular stuff with

[8:13] beer, and I'm wondering, what you think? I'm thinking maybe like, you know, doing a black and tan, but have one beer,

[8:21] have maybe some, some alginate in it. So when the black, you know, it would be more like a lava lamp, then a

[8:27] black, traditional black and tan, or maybe making some little alginate balls with something sweet to go in, maybe a sour

[8:35] beer, so they'd float around. What do you think about that? You mean as a commercial thing? Uh, yeah, just as a way to serve beer, you know, in, uh, you know, just in a fun way, working the molecular kind of stuff into, into beer. Do you think you could have one beer that had something in it that would, you know, do more like a lava lamp

[8:55] in a glass or, uh, I mean, the way lava lamps work. The way lava lamps work is basically, it's an oil and water phenomenon, right? So you're taking you're taking 2 admissible like liquids. Basically, once a solid, it's a wax, really. And you're heating it, and when it heats, it floats up and then cools and goes down. That's why it looks that it looks so awesome. I mean, the real question with a beer is how would you get the, how would you get the 2 beers to

[9:21] be to not mix unless you had an envelope around them? So then that comes to your 2nd question is, could you do something with alginate? And the problem with algernate? There's a couple problems I have with alternate. One, I don't think it tastes good. It doesn't taste good. It makes things taste less than the original. You might as well not use it. It's a flavor thief. I'm going to steal that free. I'm going to write it down and it's now stolen. There you go. you. The other problem from a commercial standpoint. And people have made, obviously, people make balls of things. The famous the famous ball commercial ball drink is orbits, right? Orbits is geland-based. Now, the problem with orbits was the beads were solid. They weren't liquid. It's very hard to do a liquid-based thing in a commercial way that's going to last a long time. By the way, we're in a construction zone, if you hear that hammering in the building. That is actually Dave building a new roto app. Yeah, exactly. So, but you're going to have problems with color stability in these

[10:20] situations. So most gel systems are somewhat porous. And so over a fairly short period of time, you're gonna get color bleaching out. Now, the guys who do this professionally with orbits took care of this by having, uh, the, basically the

[10:33] relative levels of, the things are going to change the osmotic balance of the liquids very, very, very close to identical.

[10:41] so that they got very little color bleed over time. But you're going to have huge problem in a black and tan kind of a situation, keeping the tan and the black portions together, or it's really kind of like brown and light brown. It's not really black and tan and brown. kind of coffee. Yeah. So you could mean like, you could, look, it's obvious you could do, here's something you could, another problem is, is if the center liquid is carbonated, right, you're going to have problems with air pockets developing on the inside of your membrane show, which, you know, I've done it with carbonated

[11:12] liquids, and you definitely get an air pocket. Some people are not an air pocket, carbon dioxide pocket. And some people use this like on purpose. They do this on purpose. But, um, But it's a problem from a commercial standpoint. So you'd have to probably move to a still-based inner liquid. And then I would do the reverse. I would do a reverse verification, and you can use something nicer. You could do pectin, which is like pretty nice texture. You would basically form your liquid, freeze it in a larger format, so you get a more lava lampy thing. And then you'd set it, you'd set like an envelope of pectin around it. You could use alogenet as a 1st test because it's a lot easier. Jell-in actually is our go to. For for that. For all encapsulation. All right, you have to use deionized water and like go crazy otherwise. You don't, you see equestrants? sequester the hell out of it? Yeah, so we actually talk about it in our book. There's a good plug for our book, ideas and food. There you go, buy it. But we use roughly .5% low asshole gel in and we use .05% sodium hexametophosphate in a water bath. Boom, done. How's your water in your area, though? It's fine, but we've gone to Plano, Texas and done it? And when we did it without adding the little sodium hexometophosphate, we had a disaster. Because they've got crazy calcium water, but with this question in there, and then we just drop everything into it and you get a beautiful skin. And once you get good with it, you can actually lower the amount of gel in in there to point 3% and really get a very

[12:38] Silky's sexy skin. 0.5 of Jellin, low asyl gelin is equivalent to about 0.8.9% agon. Yes, but with the, and also with the sequestion in there, it actually tenderizes, softens it a little bit, it softens it. So it's a really unique gel as an exterior skin. So what I would do is, if you have a vacuum machine, I would take your black, whatever you're going to use is like your stout situation

[13:01] there, and I would decarbonate it in a vacuum machine. Then I would, uh, then I would, um, add some calcium to it because I don't know what the calcium level

[13:11] and beer is, use glucinate, not, uh, not,

[13:15] not chloride because it's horrible. And, uh, then uh, do what Alex suggests, which is get low acele, Jelann, uh, make a solution of that with a sequestered sodium hexametophosph phosphate, a.k.a. shrimp, which you can get, probably a

[13:29] modernest pantry, although I haven't used them. Modest pantry? I haven't. I think via Twitter, we've been referenced to them and Sean. They were here in Brooklyn, right? I have no idea where they are. I think so. If not, I'm promoting the wrong people. Anyway, but do that. And then you might get an interesting effect, lava lamp like where the carbonation, if you use a higher carbonated liquid, like instead of what you would normally use, like an IPA or something like that, and it might float the ball up to the top.

[13:51] Yeah, and if you use that, uh, no, iota carragin and really low, low amount for your encapsulation, the product, it'll actually give you that lava like texture as well.

[14:00] Oh, nice. Well, go check out the books. I'm sure this is in the book. Ideas in food, the book. Perfect. Check it out. All right. Thanks for Kong. We have another caller, caller you were on the air. Hi, um, this question is for Dave and Alex, obviously. Um, I was wondering, what do you, what do you guys think is the best way to cook over the blam? Cook well, I couldn't hear you. A leg a lamp? What is the best way to cook a leg of lamb, according to you guys? What kind of equipment do you have? Um very basic. I'm not extremely experienced. All right, then the best, then clearly, the best way, if you don't have the equipment to do it properly is to bone it out. Roll it flat, remove certain parts of the muscles that aren't

[14:41] going to cook properly, and then quickly grill it. wouldn't you say it or no? I'd give it a yogurt marinade too, just to get the flavor. tenderize it, tenderize it, and give it a quick grill. Just break it into pieces. And you can try and seam it out, but it sounds like that might be a bit of a stretch. So just cut it into smaller pieces. Or get the butcher to seam it out for you. Like, in other words, like, you definitely want that thing to get flat. Leg of Lamb, if you cook it whole, is gonna be tough and overcooked. If any kind of traditional cooking technique. I've never had one that was really done properly. And there are people who like raw blue lamb in the middle, but they're not that many because the texture isn't necessarily good,

[15:17] right? I'm not a blue lamb guy. I actually like it medium rare, even medium is it kind of silkens out a little bit more. Right. So but I would definitely get it as flat as possible. And and as Alex said, break it into pieces and then and then cook it that way. unless do you have a need to serve it whole or you have some sort of like primal cuts dinner that you're

[15:37] going to be doing? No, no, I've been served at home before and it was okay. I've had a lot of people who have grilled it whole, but if that's not the best way to do it, then doesn't really bother me. Or slow roasted. Yeah, maybe whole grilling gives you some things that you're not going to get any other way. For instance, we all enjoy certain overcooked pieces of meat that are crunchy and kind of burnt

[16:00] and delicious on the edges of things, right? It just renders, in my opinion, like those whole cut things, unless you're very good at it, and you have a two-part flame and you're cooking it over a high, and then you move it to lower, vice versa, however you believe, or slow roasting. It's very easy to get a large portion of the meat that's kind of dry and overcooked, especially the non-fatty areas.

[16:23] Fatty areas can take a lot more abuse because fat is delicious when it's high

[16:27] cooked. The other problem with the leg, like is the leg is composed of a bunch of different muscles and they don't all operate. They don't all, when I say operate, cook the same way. And so, um, this is my problem with, you know, there's certain people who are very famous and whose product is good. I had it, who are big, big believers in what's called whole hog cookery when it comes to cooking pigs. I am not a believer in this. I've done certain tests to try and cook whole animals properly, but in general, unless

[16:57] you are willing to go through Herculean efforts to try and have all muscles cook when they're still attached to the animal.

[17:03] Different muscles wanna be cooked differently. That's just the way it works. The whole hog, aren't they? It's all chopped up together at the end, isn't it? Yes. And that's how they cover up the fact that the loin doesn't taste good. So wait, so it's whole hog, but we're going to put it all together. So it's really blended hog. It's really, yeah, it really is blended hog. not whole hog. It would be much better if they took it into pieces and cooked each piece the way they wanted to, then chopped it up and put it back together again. So whole hogs a farce. But not in a good, not like a stuffing way. Not like in a stuffing way, but more as in like a false false pretense. Yeah, I just don't think it's, I don't think it's a goal we should aspire to. I don't think it's, you know, and look, I love Ed Mitchell. Do you know what I mean? How can you not love Ed Mitch? I love Ed Mitchell, but I just don't necessarily see why I should aspire to attempt to create something that's good

[17:45] by, and it is good, but I just don't see why I would attempt to create something that's good that way by doing something that's against what the meat wants to do, which is the loin wants to be cooked for not a long time.

[17:55] And the, and the, you know, the cuts that have a lot of connected tissue want to be cooked for a longer time. And then mix them together if you want. Crisp up the skin, mix them together. So basically cook each part separately and then bring it together at the end. I'm a huge believer in cooking each piece of meat the way it wants to be cooked. Do you have a conversation with the meat first? you like a meat whisperer? I do. I get up. put my ear next to it. Are we helping all the way by with your lamb? Anyway, hopefully this helps with your lamb. Thank you. All right, call her. You're on the air. Oh, they dropped off. thought they dropped? We missed him. Maybe that's our job, Nastasia. See, this is like classic Nastasia. Nostalgia is like, you're answering this person's question. So the next person dropped off. There is no caller. go to break. Oh, go to break. See, Nastasia? Your viciousness is incorrect. This is why we call her the hammer folks, just because she is vicious. Anyway, calling all your questions too. 718-497-2128 718-497-2128.

[18:58] Sugar pie, honey butter. You know that I love you I came up myself. I love you and nobody else In and of my life. go Give me just your picture, love. And I kissed it a thousand times. Or with your eye, I'm coming running to you. Time till you're in run the screen. And there's nothing that I can do

[19:50] Gave up myself. That's the whole life.

[19:58] To the party, but show the party. And welcome back to Cooking Issues,

[20:10] Mistash. How's your Halloween? Fine. What were you? 70s person. Yeah, you were supposed to be a cop, weren't you, or a donut? Cop in a donut, but Mark had to work. Her boyfriend had to work. That too bad. So you were a 70s woman, but I thought you hated like... I wasn't sexy at all. Nastasia, Nastasia, if she was wearing the sexiest outfit in the world, would put a pair of long johns with elephants on underneath it to

[20:32] desexy. This is her MO, folks. Happy Halloween. Oh, by the way, I brought you some sour patch kids because if you ever want Nastasia to like you and you think she's going to hate you, which odds are she will. She meets you. You said if I were a fish if you were fishing for me. Yeah, sour patch. So I have some for her for tonight. What about what about you, Alex? How was your Halloween? It was good. It was my daughter's 1st real big Halloween. How old is she now? She's going to be 3 in December. Nice. was she? She was a cupcake princess? Of course. Really? But you don't like cupcakes, do you? I can eat a cupcake. Really? Yeah, I'll throw throw down the banter against cupcakes, but long and short. I can choke a cupcake down really quickly. Well, because it's small. It's small. It's edible. If it's done right, it's good, but more often than not, cupcakes have a lot of tunneling at them. Well, we have a lot of what? Tunneling. They're just mixed improperly. So they have air tunnels? not my problem. My problem is the incorrect icing to volume ratio. First of all, I like cake. Cake is delicious. See, I like icing. So you'd get along with Aki. Aki likes cake or actually you wouldn't get along with her because you guys would fight over the cake and I could just eat all the icing. Yeah, see, what I like is like a glaze icing. That's weak. Cupcakes. You know what? Okay, we can all agree on this. Anyone that makes a miniature cupcake should be wiped off the face of the earth. Agree. Okay. Except, you know, it's kind of like a miniature cupcake, but are actually good, but only if they're super fresh, it's Mad

[21:53] Lane's. But they're not iced. They're not iced. They're cake. They're cake. But they're a size that's bad. They're a surface to volume ratio that's bad for a cakey thing. And they go quickly. Yeah, they're awful. they're old. Yeah, I mean, they're awful like 30 seconds out of the oven. Yeah, and my here's another question. Do I like black and white cookies only because I grew up eating them or is it are they actually delicious? There's a few good ones out there. But there's a quest form. has that same quest. Because they're basically a semi-staled cake and a cookie form with icing on top, a glaze icing, I might add. And, you know, I grew up because I grew up around New York loving the hell out of them. And it's a better ratio. And if you think about it, it's actually taking the top off of a cupcake, inverting it and putting the glaze on the inside. Yeah, but it's a good tasting icing, not a crap tasting icing. glaze. Well, depends where you go. And most actual black and white glazes are well. Look, if you hand me a black and white cookie that looks like it's got icing on the top that was knifed on and not poured and let

[22:50] to set, I will stab you in the eye with your icing knife, right or no? You will. Yeah, I mean, it's not in black and white at that point. No, it's something frosted. an abomination. It's not iced. It's frosted. Right. Okay. That's fair. All right. So we're going to have to go to some of the, oh, by the way, calling your questions two, 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. I'm doing pretty well considering getting over a thing, right? Yeah. Anyway. Did you memorize that? I finally memorized it. Wow. It's good, right? It's not on my It's not on my sheet like I normally used to have it. Okay. Three questions came in from Andrew. One. How can we know Umami exist? Do we have taste receptors committed to these umami specific amino acid? Yes. Yes. The research was done in the early 2000s, like 2000, 2001, 2002. We have taste receptors for Umami. It's no longer a question. It's fact. And also, it's also exciting. I mean, you can trigger those umami receptors on the on your palate. Yeah, and they've looked at it, you know, you know, yeah, crap's real, real deal homie. Okay, two. If you could design, invent a machine without monetary constraint to aid in cookery or cocktail making to create a dish drink method wildly amazing, what would it be? A robot version of myself? I'm kidding. No, what would you do, Alex? Shoot. I'm not sure I need a lot more people, like me, a lot more people that you don't have to tell what you want. It's not that I'm particularly good or bad anything. It's the hardest part when you're cooking anything is conveying your intentions, your intent, right? Not intention. your intent. The hardest, when you're talking to someone, you're like, do it like I want it to get

[24:27] done, and then it doesn't get done what you like the way you want it. It's like a really good chef. What they can really do is get, besides cooking themselves is they can get other people to cook things the way they want them done, right?

[24:37] So it's very, very hard to kind of tell someone what you want them to do. So like, you need a translator. You need we need to build a translator. Yeah, something that I could just walk up to somebody and they would know what it is I wanted them to do. Or just speak into a box and then it tells other people so that it just, you don't have to do it. You speak into it and say, all right, I want X, Y, or Z, and everyone else finally understands it. Yeah, you know, it was even rarer and more awesome is when you say something and someone comes back with something better than your intent.

[25:04] That happens more often not in my world. But, uh, you have any, we'll keep that one on hold. We'll think about that for the rest of the show, any machines that we want that we that are just costing. I mean, there are things. I mean, obviously, like, I love there's, I want a twin screw, uh, twin screw, uh, extruder, right? I don't own one because they're fantastically expensive, but it's a machine that already exists. Sure. You know, I want, there's a bunch of things I would like a super critical CO2 extractor. They're just fabulously expensive. I would like a spray drying column as tall as, you know, as, you know, a barn, but taller even. And it's it's maybe a little hard to store. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. like no monetary constraint. But it's design and vent a machine. I don't have any things that I want to invent that are I'm not doing as a result of monetary constraints, more time constraints in the fact that it's hard for me to. And plus, David Chang will shoot over here with needles and stick them in my eyes if I tell you what we're working on.

[25:59] may happen. Yeah, it might happen anyway. Anyway. Three, can a food saver adequately compress watermelon for dishes like Keller's melon,

[26:07] mango, steak, tartar, our food savers awash, or do they have good use? No, they cannot, in my opinion, and Alex might be different. His opinion might be different from mine. I do not believe a food saver adequately has enough of a vacuum to do a good job at crushing watermelon, the air

[26:24] sacks and watermelon. What do you think? Not in the least. I mean, what we're doing is, and I think that's the, I think the, one of the big issues is is the term compression is is partially misguiding. right? I mean, we're not compressing per se, but we're removing air. Right. So if you don't remove the air, ain't nothing going to happen. You need a good, good vacuum. Now, the cheapest way to get a good vacuum, because I'm assuming you're not going to go buy a couple $1000 vacuum machine, and although I want you to, I don't think you will. I haven't because my wife would kill me if I did that. And you haven't built it yet? Well, okay, not one with a sealer, but what I have done that you can do fairly cheaply is buy a

[26:59] refrigerator or refrigeration vacuum online for like a 100 bucks. You can get a, you know, an oil seal rotary vein vacuum pump that's used to evacuate

[27:08] compressors for refrigeration. Since they need to make a whole boatload of these and people don't like think they're

[27:14] fancy, they don't cost very much. You can get them for like a 100 bucks. Where? eBay. Yeah, get like the good ones like Robin Air is a good brand. There's a couple of good brands out there, some cost more. There's some cheaper ones that are knockoffs. They can, they can, without breaking a sweat, achieve below 10 millibar vacuum. is not horrible at all. Yeah, great. I use one in my Rotov app, for instance, one, I have a better one that can get down to like 4 millibar. But so the, so, and they're pretty fast, which is awesome. So then you, uh, basically you hook a hose, like a rubber hose, uh,

[27:44] 2 and you get a piece of plexiglass at the, at your local, like, Home Depot style place with a rubber

[27:51] seal, sticking on a round bane Marie. Don, stick it on a square one because you will crush it. Uh, and uh, you have a vacuum compression system all in for like 150, 150 bucks in that range. works. Do it. Um, do they have a good used food savers? Sure. They're a good way to package food for low temperature cooking at home. I prefer ziplocs. Um, they're uh, relatively okay for things like coffee. Yeah, right? I mean, we used, you know, before we knew any better, and before we could achieve more, I mean, we used a food saver for a year, when we were out in Colorado, you know, messing with

[28:26] this stuff were out in up in Maine, we used a food saver. That was that's what we could afford. Yeah, I mean, like, it does a decent job of packaging things, and the food saver, if you buy the roll bags, I mean, the one thing I always used it for was like very, very long striped bass because there's no, um, there's no maximum length on a food saver bag as long as it's less than a roll. And so, you know, I would bag like, you know, 36, 40 inch stripers in the 10 inch wide bags. You jam them in. If you tried to pull it out, the fins would rip the bags, but you know, you put them in and you could bag whole fish that way. You could do a school of fish, actually. Yeah, in a row, in a row in a ring. Anyways, they have a use. I like them. I mean, they are, you know, it's my 1st vacuum packaging system. They're also really good at resealing a bag of chips. I have not used it for that. Yeah. And it's actually interesting. You can use the seal bar just for itself if you want to just start sealing thing. Yeah, which you should. I mean, I have a sealer now at home, just a sealer because it's faster. Okay. Yeah. Um, I use a sealer all the time for potato chips. Okay. Uh, oh, MPS, congratulations on the book deal. Thank you very much. We didn't leak that, by the way. That was leaked by the publisher, the fact that I have a book deal, one on cocktails and one on God knows what. Okay, another umami style question from Jason, Dave, traditionally, before combo is used in stocks, we are told to wipe it with a wet cloth. Doing so removes a great deal of white powder found on the surface of the kombu sheet, which I understand are glutamate crystals. Since kombu is generally used for its high concentration of glutamates, why would I want to wipe the

[29:52] surface, glutamate crystals off or glutamate crystals off before using it, seems counterproductive. Man, I agree. I don't wipe. I don't wipe combo. We have a color. I agree. I don't wipe it. I'll take the collar and then we'll go back to it. Caller. You on the air. Hey how you doing? Doing all right. How you doing? This is Amy in California. Howdy. Uh, not last week, but the week before, you posed the question about using the, was it the nitrates and the

[30:20] nitrate for, uh, twin tits? Uh, four. Right. Yeah. Do you have experience in this? Uh, no, I do, however, have uh, a very noticeable sensitivity to nitrates, and

[30:36] if, killing them that way would introduce that into the meat, it would mean that not only can I not have preserved

[30:45] meat, I wouldn't be able to have work at all. Huh. Well, let me see. It's a, it's a, I hadn't thought of that. It's an interesting question. So, Alex, I don't know, like, so there's some research where there's some research where they basically, in order to kill feral

[31:02] hogs, in, I believe it was Australia, New Zealand. to go back and look at it. They would put tablets of nitrites and nitrates around. The pigs would eat it. They don't have the ability in general to reduce the stuff back. And so they

[31:17] basically, they lose their ability to convert, you know, their hemoglobin back into oxygen, or hemoglobin, and they die. So, uh, but they do it in a way that doesn't make them uh, hyper excited. They don't, you know, they don't go crazy. They don't feel like they're being killed. They just pass out. Okay. Okay? So the question is, can this be used for a humane killing method, right? So, and then now the question is, is, well, there are people, and I hadn't thought about this. So thanks so much for calling in. There are people who are sensitive to this sensitive to nitrates and can't have it in cured meats. And the question is, is would it, if it's used as an anesthetic, would it also have an elevated

[31:56] level in the meat? I don't know. That's a very good question. That's an excellent question. Um, You know, it's kind of like, uh, the real question I'd have is what are the levels? You know what I mean? So, like, what levels do you think you're sensitive to? Um, I don't know, but more than one slice of ham. Right. And for the week following, I have difficulty moving my fingers and

[32:26] toes. It's like I've rented arthritis week. I mean, is it similar to like what, like, do you become like cyanotic? Do you go, like, do you have the, like, do you go blue or no? Like, I have no idea. I haven't researched at all. Actually, my, I get, I get swollen to my extremities. So my hands and my feet get swollen. And my points hurt to move. Right, right. Well, again, I don't know anything about this because I haven't researched it. Um, but, but... And I haven't found anything about it. It's just experimental with me. I had weird symptoms, and one of the things that I found out when I took it out of my

[33:05] diet, was that, you know, if, you know, I can't, I can't have bacon for breakfast anymore.

[33:10] And it runs in my family. My mother had problems with it. My sister has problems with it. My brother's in denial. Okay, I mean, it's interesting. I mean, I'm definitely going to look into it just because that's the kind of thing I like to look into. But, um, the, the thing is, look, there's a certain amount of small amount of

[33:29] baseline uh, nitrates in and nitrites in things that we consume. That's why they can reduce like a £10000000 of celery down to a powder and use it to false cure bacon, or it's real cure, falsely say that they haven't added nitrates to it. So there's got to be some small level that you're okay with and that's exceeded in whatever you're eating in the form of hand. So the real question is, is what is the increase in muscle muscle content of nitrate in a pig that's been slaughtered this way? I don't know. We'd have to check it out. Yeah, research. Research definitely needs to be done. Someone in the US needs to think it's an interesting problem who has a livestock research. And wants to dive into this one. And wants to dive into this one. But thanks for bringing that to my attention. definitely look into it. Thanks very much. Can I ask you one other favor? Sure. Um, with Thanksgiving coming up? What veggies would you recommend for, low temperature, sous vide? Oh, Alex, you're going. I'm trying to think how, how, how many different things I could have. All set to finish just pull out and go. You can have, I was like, have the potatoes in there, pull them out, mash them, and they're good. Yeah, well, you should pre-match. you should cook a pot. I would cook a potato, basically, traditionally, mash it, put it in a bag, and then reheat it. Smush it flat and reheat it. Carrots are traditionally genius in a bag and good at Thanksgiving, sweet potatoes. Brussels. I mean, everything is at Thanksgiving is overcooked anyway. So, I mean, she's trying not to overcook it. But the point of good Thanksgiving sides are that they're overcooked. Oh, Jesus. I mean, come on, the Brussels sprouts there. I mean, they're caramelized, they're roasted. I mean, they're tender. They're just overcooked. Everything is controlled, overcooked. Are you a fan of a super overcooked broccoli that Steingarden likes, the hour and a half long cooked broccoli? I like tender broccoli, but I don't like brown broccoli. All right. But anyway, I would do any of those, any of those are good. Remember, if you're going to cook a vegetable in the bag and you're not adding a lot of liquid to the bag as a flavoring, or even if you're adding a liquid like oil instead of water, it takes a lot longer to cook something in the bag than it would because there's not as much available water.

[35:39] So it's going to take more on the order of what it would take to roast at a vegetable in terms of time. And you also want I mean, if you cook it at, you know, lower than what, 85, it's not cooking. Yeah, no, no. You can cook something at 70 for like 4 weeks and it's still going to be crunchy. It changes its taste. Certainly, but it that texture is still just gnawable. Yeah, yeah. Definitely true. We used to do that demo. It fun. People get freaked out. Just leave it there all week. Pull it out. All right, so back to the combo here. I never wiped the combo off. I don't wipe the combo. I, which I mean, I'm looking for that. I mean, that's why we're using it. Right. somewhere in the back of my head, even though I reread my McGee, and he said that it is actually, that is what the crystals are on the surface. I have a little nagging thing in the back of my head that says that it's that current research says there's something else. But even so, I just don't wipe the dang things off. All right, 2nd question. How often from Andrew? How often should water in a low temperature from Jason Rather? How often should water in a low temperature cooker circulator be changed? Well, that depends on how dirty it is. I mean, you're keeping it hopefully at a temperature where bacteria are continually being killed. Um, but that said, I usually dump it out at the end of a service or at the end of a

[36:50] cook. And then and then put it in fresh. You need to change the water. Okay? If you cook something in the bag, there is still aroma transfer. Yes, that's true. And so unless you want to have, you know, but what kind of bag, but look, honestly, like, I used to test bags based on their aroma transfer characteristics, and some are bad, but some are pretty, some are

[37:11] pretty. There are waters where you can have. That's why people cook multiple things in the same water. Do retherm in the same water. You think it's bad practice? I don't think it's a bad practice, but I mean, if I would change your water daily. especially in, I mean, if you're doing like one thing, then you're fine, but if you mean, if you're churning through a lot of stuff at restaurants. In a home situation, after I'm done cooking, I dump the water out. Right. You don't want to have standing water lying around. Not so much. It's not that much water anyway. No, I mean, sometimes it can be a pain in the butt. If you know you're going to cook the next day. I am not changing the water because I'm gonna turn it on again in the next one. Yeah, from a bacterial safety standpoint, as long as your cooking temperatures are above 55 or so, you're not

[37:49] going to hurt yourself. Right. It's just a question of whether or not it's going to be nasty. That, that, I think it's the nasty factor. You also don't want any flavors or aromas on the outside of your bag because it might drip water into something that you're going to serve when you're debagging. That is a good point. So I would just change it. I mean, look, don't go changing in the middle of your procedure. Like that. No, no. But you know, might as well just change it. Any. Uh, call her, you're on the air. Hey guys. This is Rolf calling from Philadelphia. Love the show. Thank you. Excellent. Question about, as long as everybody's asking about umami today, and you'd already talked a little bit about

[38:28] combo, what about wrapping and marinating things in combo? Do you need how much moistening do you do before that? Uh, can you do this after making dashi or at that point is it really spent? How long can you really leave it, you know, wrap? What's the, what are some guidelines for protocols? I've only used fresh combo that's been lightly soaked to make it more pliable. I've never used kombu that I've made dashi with. Have you? No, we use the, the, we'll call it spent combo for, well, cutting it up into noodles and for salads and stuff like

[39:04] that. marinate that. But like, but for instance, okay, I'll give you our basic technique is that you take and you have to soak it a little bit to get appliable, typically. We don't even we don't even soak. I mean, more often than not, we've got, you know, let's say we're gonna do fish. It'll kind of fit on there and then put the next layer and vacuum seal it and it wraps around it. Well, you know, Nils used to do duck breast all the time. Look, here's how you know whether you got it right. Leave it overnight, by the way. It's long enough. But they, like, uh, when you, I think. Yeah. When you peel off the combo, you should get little strings, coming little mucousy strings, separating off between the surface of your product and the

[39:41] combo, this means that you've done a good job. I would, I would not use combo that's already been, um, used in Dashi. It's going to be spent. In the same sense, I wouldn't use Niels's duck breast combo to make dashi. No, but that combo is delicious, sliced up and used as a salad, because we've done it. If your combo is good. Some combo, you don't want it eat by itself because it's texture is no good. The flavor is good, but the texture is no good. But we took the duck, because we actually, he actually cooked actually in the bag with the kombu on. Sounds amazing. took it off, and then the combo was cooked already, and then we sliced it and used it as a salad. So it's good. I think it's a fantastic technique. It's not just for fish anymore. You know, I've never done it on anything. It's not a protein. We've done it on vegetables. How is it? It's delicious. And then we flip that around, too. I mean, we think about Italian combo. What was that? Prosciutto. So we'll actually, we'll actually thinly slice the prosciutto and then cure and, you know, put it on fish, put it on vegetables and let it infuse with the flavors as

[40:43] well. But it doesn't make the strings though, does it? We have not gotten strings. No, no. But do you get strings with the combo on the vegetables? I haven't gotten strings on the vegetables. I've just done it for the flavor of the of the combo itself on the vegetables. Excellent, excellent question. I mean, have you have any experience, caller, with the combo stuff, or are you just calling to ask about it? Because it is a great technique. Yeah, it's it's something I had read about and I've been making

[41:06] Dashi, uh, quite a bit lately and figured, what the heck, I have all this stuff sitting around, may as well

[41:13] try it. You may as well indeed. You might want to find the Japanese typically use different combos for wrapping than they do for making

[41:21] dashi, but in a small amount of experiments that I ran, I

[41:26] think if the stuff tastes good for dashi, tastes good for uh, it tastes good for wrapping. I don't know why, I don't know what the reasons are for them using the different ones for different applications, but if it tastes good for

[41:36] dashi, it tastes good for kombu wrapping as well. would agree with you. So I'm just looking for mucus strings. On skins of protein, that's what I found. I've only done it with fish and duck though. But that's, like, then you know, you get that, that look when you peel it off and it just, like, right? You know what I'm talking about? I haven't gotten the mucous strings on our fish, but we've only done maybe six, 8 hours or so on fish. Oh, yeah. Okay, so the 1st time I ever saw it demonstrated was a guy that did Saba sushi, which is mackerel sushi, and he would basically form it up, put the combo over it and let it cure pressed overnight, and then he peeled it up and you get

[42:11] the... we know what the strings are? have no idea. Note the self. Yeah, good thing to research. But anyway, take a look for it. Also, you should you should try to look for the incredibly delicious flavor that you'll have. There is that. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for the call. It's good stuff. Okay, hello, Dave and Nastasia and Alex, although Dan didn't know you would be here, so he didn't call you out. Hello from the West Coast. I appreciate your show. You guys have the best food podcast I found. Thank you. Thank you so much. Right now, it's apple season in San Francisco Bay Area, and I've been thinking about a dish I had at Mugarites in Spain several years ago. This was a local cheese plate served with calcium fossilized apple. The app was peeled, the stem left on and cooked in what we were told was calcium water. As a result, the inside of the apple was soft and scoopable, and the outside had a skin a bit like a dried apple, and I thought it was amazing. So how does this work? I was hoping that it might be within the range of a dedicated home cook. I found something called fossil powder, when the guys who make fossil powder claim it's safer, safer than calcium oxide out of Australia. But there wasn't any information out there about ratios or procedures, what do you think of this technique? This that meal is the only time I've ever seen or heard about this being done? Okay, well, 1st of all, never use calcium oxide, which is like dangerous stuff. You throw it in water and it heats up and does all sorts of nasty things. What you want is calcium hydroxide, which is

[43:32] where you take calcium oxide. Someone else adds it to water, deals with the high temperature and the powder leftover. Uh, which is what Mugritz uses. Right. And we actually saw Anthony presented Star Chefs on that whole

[43:44] topic and then Pauly Brandt from Corton extrapolated off that using instead of calcium hydroxide, he actually used soaked sun chokes in a solution of calcium lactate.

[43:54] work? It did work. And we wrote about, there's actually a whole piece on our website on it. And what it is, is it's not so much the calcium hydroxide, but you're getting the reaction between the calcium and the pectin in the vegetables or the fruits.

[44:07] Yeah, you know, I've done, I've done, I had something on the blog about, you know, if you add baking soda, which is basic to, if you add baking soda to water,

[44:18] your vegetables stay green, but they get mushy. If you add calcium hydroxide, which is basic, they will stay green, but they will also stay firm because there's calcium in them. Uh, you know, traditional use of calcium hydroxide to make vegetables. I mean, it's been used for 100s if not 1000s of years in places like Thailand,

[44:34] where, you know, calcium hydroxide in the form of Thailand paste has been used to firm up the outsides of bananas. It's used in pickling to firm up cucumbers. You're not going to get hurt, you can't OD on it because calcium hydroxide is not very soluble in water. It's really, really bitter. Horribly bitter. Yeah, but it's not that soluble. So typically here's what you do. Porous vegetables, though. Porous vegetables suck it in like there's no tomorrow and you have problems. When you're using a calcium solution, what they do commercially is they'll soak it for a while. They'll get the calcium interaction, then they'll soak it in pure water to get rid of the excess calcium.

[45:13] That's what they do. We played that game. I mean like, look, you don't like calcium hydroxide? I'm not really making a smoothie with it tomorrow. No. What about tortillas, brother? I like the results, but I mean, in like we did Asian Paris. soaked in calcium hydroxide for a number of hours, then rinsed it off and then roasted

[45:33] them, and fortunately had a bit of an inherent bitterness to them. And then we actually then switched back to calcium chloride. Chloride. Chloride's better than hydroxide. But I am still going more towards what Mr. Lee Brandt was doing, which was with lactate, which

[45:49] is... Hey, listen, why don't we forget all this crazy calcium crap and just go buy some pectin

[45:55] methylester, uh, pectin methylesterase, novo shape. You can stick blueberries, uh, and raspberries into uh, pectin

[46:04] methylestrace, a.k.a. Novo shape, which is an enzyme, and uh, boil the hell out of them and they

[46:09] won't and they won't break. You ever done that? We have not. It works like a charm. I was looking for it yesterday because I have to do something with pears. I didn't want them breaking up. Anyway, it's totally safe to do it. It's about, look, Calcium hydroxide supersaturates extremely quickly. So you're not gonna get more... I mean, the amount of calcium that's used is going to depend on how what the absorption rate of

[46:34] the of the product is. That's why the limiting thing is actually not the amount of water is the amount of calcium hydroxide to product that you put in. You also need to make sure you've got a fair amount of pectin in that product. Otherwise, it won't firm. It won't firm. Yeah, yeah. That's a great technique. I mean, I'm saying this. I've never had it. We had a blast with it. We did it with white sweet potatoes, and then we did it with orange sweet potatoes that we broke apart, soaked them, and then we braised them in

[47:00] a, like a meat jus, and then glazed them. And they had this regular shape to it. It was soft on the outside, textured on the outs or soft on the inside texture on the outside. You ever, you ever, uh, I bet I never had it movie. It's never been. No, I have not been. I'd love to go. Okay. We're gonna have to rip through the rest of these questions because we're running late as usual. Hello, Dave and Nastasia. Thanks for your advice on modernist style cheese sauce. I ended up using. This is from Matthew. I ended up using a version of Mirvold's mac and cheese. It involves sodium citrate, which is a melting salt, and Iota carragan, and work really well. Good. glad. My question today is, if you've ever tried these vegan cheeses that a guy named Dr.

[47:34] Cal makes in Williamsburg, I haven't, as of this writing, tried them, but people say they are super good, especially as cashew cream cheese. And I imagine Nastasia is making her vegan face as I write this. And she is making her vegan face. I looked up, look, I like that. I've had it when I was on that raw food for a week. I had the cashew cheeses, not his but somebody else's. They taste good. They're not cheese. Well, I mean, that's it. Is it an idea or is it an actuality? It's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a worthwhile food product. It ain't cheese. It's not cheese. No, I agree with you. I mean, it's giving you a frame of reference. Right. I'm gonna go more into this in a minute, but call her, you're on the air. Hi there. Hi, Alex and Davis. is Brian calling from San Francisco. Um, question is about cook, cookware and non-stick surfaces. Um, what's safe, what's not safe? Um, uh, sometimes I smell some off gassing when I eat it too hot. Wow, how hot are we eating? what's the deal and what should I know? How hot were you heating it? Uh, I mean, it's a frying pan. Um, I don't know. I had it on the high flame for, you know, 10 minutes or so. Oh, yeah, yeah. Probably a bad idea jeans were worn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know about the toxicity of the surface once it vaporizes. I think they assume that you're going to do it eventually, so it's probably, it's not like Viton, which, uh, you know, certain certain polymers degrade into very toxic things when they're burned. Plastic wrap. Really? Polyethylene is very toxic when it burns. I don't know, it stinks. Yeah, probably stink. But like Viton is dangerous as hell when it vaporizes. But Teflon, it's not used in pants, so don't worry. Teflon, I don't know when it decomposes, whether it's actually dangerous. I mean, I wouldn't necessarily use the I mean, the pan is toasted after that, right? I mean, I've seen him close to. I mean, I've seen cooks rip on those Teflon pans. And I know extreme heats are not supposed to be used for them because they eventually start breaking down. The Teflon coding. By the way, you'll have to just go back and tell me what the question was again, because all I had in my head was an image of a pan on the heat and it combusted. Okay, are there safe non-stick coatings? If so, which one should I should I get? Um, uh, it's a question of safety. I've never, I don't think it's a, I don't personally feel to safety question. There are people who feel, what do you think? Do you feel personally it's a safety question, Alex. I have heard it. I have not tested it, and so I feel probably not knowledgeable enough to answer appropriately. I think that's accurate. I mean, like, I think my problem, look, let me put it this way. I have several nonstick pans. I have never had a nonstick pan no matter what they say that can actually stand up to years of abuse. Well, I mean, they also think non-stick means you're probably cooking something gently. I mean, if you're, you know, roasting a ribeye in your nonstick pan, you've probably chosen the wrong pan. Because it doesn't have get a fond. Yeah, I mean, it's, you have to use the right tool for the right job. I mean, there's these hard anodized aluminum things that are supposed to be non-stick. probably fairly safe, right? I don't touch those things. Really? Why? never used one. I don't like aluminum pans. And maybe it's just a preference, but you don't like aluminum pants? Good heat conduction. I don't know, man. They may have good heat condition. You're old school anti-aluminum? You still believe the Alzheimer's story? I don't believe the Alzheimer story or I think, I think. Well, you know, you people used to think that aluminum pants could contribute to Alzheimer's because aluminum ions, aluminum was found in the brain tissue of certain elevated amounts were found in the brain tissue of certain patients who have

[51:07] been autopsy with Alzheimer's, but I believe that that lake has been disproven.

[51:12] So why do you people live with the fans? More from that, we're using some sort of acid. Oh, yeah. So whether it be a pan sauce or deglazing or something like that. And so, yeah. Anyway, I don't think it's a safe. look, maybe it's a safety issue. I'm more worried about it being a functional issue that once they're toasted, they're they're not good anymore. And then you get like micro staking in there, a pain in the butt. Yeah, they're no good anymore. They're no good anymore. I mean, look. And then like, you know, they tell you not to wash them in the dishwasher and then scan pan said that you could wash ours in the dishwasher. Guess what? I did, and you know what? The pan got ruined. So you can't wash in the dishwasher. Well, that's what they say. Yeah, they said you can't wash it. They said ours are so tough that you can wash it in the dishwasher and use metal tools

[51:52] on it. But I'm like, okay, I'll take you at your word and I'll use it in a dishwasher and I'll use metal tools. Then got messed up, like within like a year, year and a half, it got messed up. Then they came out later with a 2nd version of scan pan stuff and they're like, oh, this, you have this one actually works. I haven't tested it yet. I don't know. You got to just take it in for a changeover. Yeah. I know, but I'm not like that. Like, even think something has a guarantee. It's like, you know, I'm just so lazy. I'm not going to show up with something and say, honor your guarantee. Yeah, but yet you'll go out and buy 52 different versions of it and test it. Yeah, I'm a joke. Anyway. anyway, I hope that was helpful. Thank you. Thank you. All right, so back on this cheese thing. Here's my problem. Look, the vegan cheese is basically what you do is you use nuts, you grind them up, you ferment them somehow using some version

[52:37] of, like, either what they call probiotics, which is another one of these crazy terms that I don't has marginal meaning. And they, and, uh, and rejuvilac, which is basically fermenting sprouted grain stuff. And it ferments, and acidifies, and somehow coagulates. Although I looked tried to look up the mechanism of nut cheeses, and no one's written a scholarly article that I could find on it. Uh, but that said, I looked up the Super Cow or whatever it is, Mr. Cow website. And one of the benefits they have in their plant is they have a

[53:06] tachianized electrical panel. And I had to go look up what Tackian eyes meant. What does tackianize mean because there's a guy... Yeah, well, so Tachyons are a hypothetical particle that move faster than the speed of light that's been posited in some versions of

[53:24] physics that has obviously never been observed. And this guy claims that he can, by using these tachyons in a machine that tachyonizes

[53:36] material that he can increase the positive energy in the things around you and him.

[53:42] I read about this in Calvin and Hobbs. For real? No. Oh, anyways, so I am very, you know, tackonized. Jesus, tackianized. But that said, there is a very interesting thing about faster than light particles happening right now at

[53:57] CERN, where they think they detected a neutrino that was going faster than the speed of light. and they're currently trying to reduplicate the experiment. Those guys are no joke stuff. It should be due in November. So it's a very exciting time to be thinking about faster than light particles. All right, Matthew has another question. I periodically get in debates. Actually, we'll do this one. We'll do the one coming and then we'll finish off with this guy. And then we had this one here. Ooh, how do you open an oyster with LN? We got that. Where do you have it? Yeah, I mean, I've tried it, but the problem is, and Mirville really recommends it, but the problem I've always had is that if you try to open an oyster, shuck an oyster by using liquid

[54:32] nitrogen, is that you get partial freezing of the thing, and then... We've done it. We do like 12 to 15 seconds for oysters or clams, drop it

[54:40] in, and then let it thaw, and they pop themselves, and they're beautiful. They're unbelievable. Yeah, you're freezing the oyster. You don't have you ever done a side by side? Do it do it side by side with me. Do a handshuck. and then do an LN shuck. and like, do a triangle test, like, like, 5

[54:57] reps. and I want, I, I, I want to know if the freezing does anything to taste. Perfect. All right. when are we doing this Whenever. All right. We gotta do it. I mean, look, it works. It works great. Clams are off the hook. I mean, they're the plumpest clams. And one of the things is, I noticed that when you're shucking them this way. is there's no there's no braking at all of any of the oyster or clam membranes. So you end up with a plumper, just a visually aesthetic. You have side by side, and I've shucked them and it's supposed to. So we'll have to blindfold. You have to blindfold. Or unless unless, unless visual is part of the... No, let's do take, we'll do both. Okay. But first, we should do taste, blindfold. All right, so we'll do it. We'll do it. That's it. There's no question that it actually works. It works. It's 12, 15 seconds in nitrogen, pull it out, let it rest in the refrigerator, and they'll pop themselves, and then choose a spoon, or you can run it under

[55:47] light lander warm water, and they'll just speed up the process. Danielle Mullen writes in was, uh, hello, was reading about some reviews of ramen places in New York City and who was making the best bowl in the city, et cetera. I'm interested in starting to cook my own noodles and broth. And I was wondering if you had a favorite way for making the noodles. Fat or thin? Do you cut them yourself, et cetera? Do you use traditional con sway or eggs? I think if you're going to make ramen, you have to use conway. Being the alkalizing agent that they use to make them

[56:13] A, yellow and B, stretchy. We use baking soda, and we use actually unbaked baking soda, but it'll

[56:19] allow me, does it go yellow? You get a slight tint, but you don't get that full. You go stretchy? Yeah. You get chew and it also makes them well easier not to overcook. Right, here's the thing. You don't want, like, uh, traditionally they're not cut. They're extruded, and look, Alex and Aki were fortunate enough to weasel an Arco Bellino, amazing pasta extruder out of the company, which is

[56:42] like is a fence. Look, if you have like 2000 bucks jingling in your pocket and you want a pasta

[56:48] scooter. Find another 2,600 bucks and then you can. No, but they have one now that's two. Yeah, it's going to be 25 for the AX 10, which is coming out, and that's including dies, etc. It does just as good a job. It doesn't have the auto cut and doesn't have as many dyes, right? It doesn't have many dyes and it's a little bit smaller, but it's the same guy. It's the same beast. It's awesome This sucker is not that much bigger than a cuisinart, by the way, folks. And it really does a number on pasta. Like, I was the 1st to think that a small posh extruder would be a load of horse manure. And I was like, this is going to suck. This thing is amazing. It's an amazing machine. Anyhoo, you can handcut them, though. But they're very stretchy, is the issue. They supposed to be stretchy. I would use Conway, which you can get in any Asian market. And then you can tell if it's working, the flower will go yellow, and all of a sudden it'll get stretchy, which is characteristic of this. Here's the trick with ramen. Ramen. You like, you know, you lightly cook it beforehand. You fry it. It partially dehydrated by frying. So you have to fry ramen noodles. That's the real, not a secret. I mean, you can look it up. That's how you do it. But ramen noodles are cooked, fried, uh, as a dehydration process, and then I think further dehydrated, and then rehydrated again. But that's characteristic of ramen. I don't know whether the restaurants do that, but they should. I have not I've not heard that frying thing. Yeah, that's how they, they, they fry them. At least that's my memory. I didn't look, this question came in right now. So this is coming from my memory. Someone call me in and tell me I'm a moron. which happens quite often. Okay, last up. Uh, I periodically get into debates with my girlfriend on the subject of using fantastic Lysol or other such sprays to help me wash pots and pans. She firmly believes that I should not. I believe they help to sterilize and get cut off of things that if I thoroughly rinse the items, it's a safe practice. This is assuming the stuff I am washing is non-porous. Am I being a jackass or what? Huh. Well, I looked up the MSDS is on Fantastic and some of the Lysols. There a bunch of Lysols out there. Um, and but before I do this, I mean, look, you don't need a disinfectant for your pen because you're about to put it on

[58:51] a flame again. You know what I mean? Let it rip. Yeah, yeah. Especially if it's that Teflon pan. Yeah. But, but, you know, what those things have in them is surfactants that help get rid of oil,

[59:05] right? All of those household products are meant to volatilize and not leave residues on your

[59:12] services. So you're probably going to be okay. If you're actually looking at a sanitizer, though. I would go with good old-fashioned bleach. bleach. I mean, bleach is great for a number of reasons. It's easy to purchase. You can use it in very dilute. Look, you're really only wanting to use between a tablespoon and an ounce per

[59:35] gallon as a sanitizing solution. I mean, don't ever go over, uh, like half a cup per gallon for normal sanitizing, um, because

[59:43] you're gonna have a lot of residual chlorine. You don't need it. Like those lower amounts are going to provide enough sanitizing to do it, soak your stuff in that. And chlorine in those small amounts will volatilize as the thing dries and leave no residue at all. then you're good. Then you're good to go. I mean, like if chlorine's not good at getting the crap off of it. You need to get the crap off beforehand. Which is elbow grease. which is elbow. But before that, do that. Now, what is in fantastic? Okay. First of all, this is hilarious. I've never seen this in an MSDS. Uh, they put this down. Color, blue, odor, fresh. That's that we can do that in MSDS, huh? Yeah, fresh, fresh. And the other one, I looked up there. The disinfectant fantastic was color blue. Odor, pleasant. MSDS, by the way, is manufacturer, material safety, data sheet. Okay. So what's in fantastic? Propylene glycol, monobutyl ether, ether? And that's a solvent and a coupling agent. It helps lock the grease and get it off, is what it is. If you feed a whole boatload of that to rats, their liver will get cancer, but it doesn't happen to us so

[1:00:47] much. volatilizes fairly quickly. It evaporates. Um, and we're not eating boatloads of it. The other main thing in it is alkodimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride, a.k.a. benzyl alconium chloride. ADBAC is highly toxic to fish and a aquatic invertebrates, but it's not going to hurt us in small amounts. And, you know, don't drink it. That's the old common sense rule. Yeah. Lysol can have a bunch of stuff in it. Uh, including um, isoprobyl alcohol, potassium hydroxide. Why the hell would it have potassium hydroxide in it? That I don't know. Weird, huh? And also more of the ADBAC and some other cool antiseptic properties. here's what I found out about Lysol. You ready for this? Go for it. You know what Lysol was originally sold as? In the 20s? Deodorant? Feminine hygiene product. I was close. You were supposed to douche with this stuff. Fabulous. really. I could I could not believe it. So it was a Wikipedia reference. So I was like, I don't trust Wikipedia on this, right? So I went and I saw a whole bunch of advertisements. Uh, and they were the, like it just goes to show how as a culture, uh, we were just an offensive bunch

[1:01:57] of, uh, people back in the day to suggest that here's how awful the ads were.

[1:02:04] They would put ads in women's magazines, and I'll read you some on the way out. Ready? By the way, before I start reading the Lysol copy from the 40s, which hopefully if you have any sort of heart or soul are going to make you be upset at the Lysol Corporation. But thank you, Alex, for being with us today. We had a great time. Good to be here. Okay, from 1949, in a women's magazine. A picture, a picture, an advertisement, a woman beating against a door and not being able to make through the

[1:02:33] door, too late to cry out in anguish. Be aware of the, of one intimate neglect that can engulf you in marital grief, too late when love has gone, for a wife to plead that no one warned her of danger, because a wise, considerate wife makes it her business to find out how to safeguard her

[1:02:51] daintiness in order to protect precious married love and happiness. One of the soundest ways for a wife to keep married love and bloom is to achieve dainty allure by practicing effective feminine hygiene, such as regular vaginal douches with reliable Lysol.

[1:03:06] Cooking issues.

[1:03:15] Vicious, fish, vodka. Oh, you did that. Got me on this corner And I don't know where I'm at.