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[1:21] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live every Tuesday on the Heritage Radio Network in the back of Roberta's

[1:33] Pizzawia in Bushwick, Brooklyn, from approximately 12 to 1245. Here today as usual. Oh, let me should I give the number first? All right. Call in all of your questions. Two, 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. We'll take any kind of question. 18 you got, whatever you got, we'll take it. anyway. Here in the studio, joined as usual with Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez. Uh, uh, join me for my 2nd my Sunday Thanksgiving, right? Where we cooked Patrick's heritage Wachalote. That, for those of you that don't speak that, that means

[2:06] Babo, turkey, right? So he cooked up a heritage, turkey, eggs, delicious, right? What's the name of the farmer again? Reese? No, you don't. Sorry, I'm slow here. Frank Reese. Frank Reese, yeah. So it was a it was a delicious turkey. I think I didn't cook the, um, the dark meat long enough. here's what I did, folks. So I have to admit, I was going up to Mystic Connecticut, where my in-laws live. And, uh, they'd already bought a turkey by the time I told them I had a turkey. So I was like, you know what? Crap on it. let them cook the turkey, do whatever they want. It was good, by the way. They didn't horribly overcook it. They brined it, thankfully, which even though I love my man, Harold, you know I love my man, Harold McGee. He says not to brine the turkey because it makes the drippings too salty. I disagree. I disagree because I'd rather not have my breast meat be horribly mangled and overcooked, right? Yes. Anyway. bubble. You know what? Also, like traditional oven roasting, it does make a delicious crispy skin, which is hard to emulate using

[3:02] other techniques. I mean, my exoskeleton technique, I was able to get a crispy skin,

[3:06] but, you know, I'm kind of a stickler for such things, but traditional oven and skin is delicious, yeah? Yeah. It's Los Vestos. This morning on the subway on 44th Street. There was a funeral for a police officer. How is this? Do you know what they were playing? What? bagpipes? Oh, all right. So this fallen police officer. Has nothing at all to do with crispy turkey skin has more to do with the bagpipes that we were talking about

[3:34] at the end of last week's program, which, by the way, I never said we're not played at funerals. Nastasia's opinion is that they're exclusively played at funerals because the next time she saw them play was at a funeral, it reinforces in her completely illogical

[3:46] mind, that means that they're only played at funerals. Go to Scotland. Count the score, Nastasia one, Dave Zero. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait a second. You know what else people do the day that they go to a funeral? They pee. Does that mean they owe me pee? For funerals? Listen, you guys got to learn your logic. This is stuff I'm trained in. Dave, go to some weddings in the city. Find the backpacks. Look, police officers and firefighters, when they when they

[4:13] are killed or pass away and they have functioning, yes, they have bagpipes at those funerals. And because you are completely uncultured and don't understand the ways of Scotland, right, you assume

[4:25] that's the only time that it happens. That's all I'm saying. Look, don't get me started. You know, I took bagpipe lessons. Like, you know what? I like how she messes around with backpipes. I took bagpipe lessons. I owned a set of bagpipes. I know longer, you know, I didn't really progress because like you start with a thing called a chanter, and you learn to play on the chanter, which is, you know, soft and

[4:48] reasonable. And then you move up to your 1st set of real pipes. And when I moved up to my 1st set of real pipes, they weren't a very good set of pipes, you

[4:54] can, you know, they were a cheap set of pipes, so they didn't sound, they wouldn't have sounded good even if I was good, which I wasn't. As soon as I start squeezing on the bag and those drones start wailing out, Jen's like,

[5:03] nope, you're done. Jen's my wife. Anyway, uh, I hope she hasn't missed this because she'll get mad at me to tell that story. She always she always gets mad at me because she thinks I tell stories that make her seem like an ogre, but

[5:13] really it's just I'm unreasonable and she's a reasonable person. Really is how it works anyway. So don't talk crap about bagpipes. warning you. I will go off anyway. You know, look, if one of you wants to call in and talk crap about the bagpipes. Go ahead. Let's see where that, let's see where that gets you. Anyway, um, Where was I? Delicious turkey skin. So anyway, so when I got back on Sunday and I was having the 2nd Thanksgiving. I had 2 problems once we had a bunch of vegetarians over, so we had to make a vegetarian stuffing. And of course, in my mom's style stuffing, the prime component is sage sausage.

[5:49] So we had to substitute that up, but I thought it was a passable substitution, right? I have to admit it was a passable substitution. Nastasia ate it and she's not, she's not even folks making her vegan fish. Of course it wasn't vegan because it was full of eggs and all sorts of other great stuff, butter. Anyway, I thought it was pretty good. But I didn't cook the turkey in Thanksgiving fashion, meaning I didn't feel

[6:07] a need to cook it whole. So I broke it into dark meat, light meat, cooked them at 2 different temperatures, in a

[6:13] Ziploc bag, in butter, pulled them out when they were still hot, let the skin dry off so that I could crisp them up, threw them in the

[6:18] oven to crisp off the skin after they cooled down. My oven was acting up on me and went. I had it set at 600 Fahrenheit and it went down to 400 without me noticing because somehow one of the controllers had gotten switched off.

[6:29] So I was kind of irritated. And I then had to pull out a blowtorch to crisp it before I threw it back in for the final crisp being. I dont like blowtorch crisping because it tends not to dry out the skin and make it crackly the right way. It just browns it up a little bit, which I find irritating and also at least torch taste. So I shot the torch through a, um, a nicrome wire screen to act as

[6:48] a kind of a flame arrester and also a stink arrester from arresting the stink that comes out of propane when you shoot it

[6:54] onto uh, uh, turkey skin. But it was pretty good, I thought. I could have taken the dark meat about a degree high or something like that. I think. I think I could have done it about a degree higher. But the breast meat was delicious. Uh, duck meat. I mean, the dark meat tasted good at just what, you know, whatever. What do you eat on Thanksgiving proper nastasia? Some overcooked turkey at some friend of a friend's house. Wow, friend of a friend overcooked turkey. Is there anything worse than an overcooked turkey? This is why people think that turkey is bad because they eat only overcooked turkey. And Turkey, everyone's like, man, I just, I eat it because it's tradition. No, no, turkey is delicious if you don't overcook it. Turkey is delicious, delicious. thing. Okay, today's show, sponsored by 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 when only a few grams are needed per application? Modernist pantry has a solution. They offer a wide range of modern ingredients in packages that makes sense for the home cook or enthusiast. So who's an enthusiast? It's not a home cook, by the way. See, after you read this a bunch, you start thinking about it. When you're just reading it, you're not thinking, but then when you read it a bunch of times, you're like, home cook or enthusiast? Like they're at home, but they're not enthusiastic and they're using it anyway? Anyway, whatever. And most only cost around 5 bucks, saving you time, money, and storage space. Whether you're looking for hydrocolloids, 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 and his team will be happy to source it for you with inexpensive shipping to any country in the world. By the way, we verified that, as we said before, New Zealand, I think, right? Modernist pantry is your one stop shop for innovative cooking ingredients. Modernist pantry carries Nzorbit tapioca maltodextrin, which allows you to transform fat-based products like olive oil or peanut butter into a powder or

[8:35] paste, actually. I mean, peanut butter is already a paste, but you can turn olive oil into a paste. This powder retains the flavor of the original product and dissolves when placed on your tongue delivering it to your taste buds. Fans of cooking issues that place an order of $35 or more before next week's show will get a free package of Enzorba to experiment with over the holidays. Holidays. I guess, yeah, we got some more holidays. Simply use the promo code, CI 64, and placing your order online at modernestpantry.com. Visit modernistpantry.com. Today for all of your modernist cooking needs. Tapico and Walter Dextrin, uh, and Zorbit Brand, Tapioca Malta Dextrin is an interesting thing. So basically, there's like a whole, you know, years of cooks who just say, eh, I need some tapioca

[9:15] malto decks, man. And, you know, tap I'm like, what are you going to do with it? And they're like, I'm going to make the powder. like, don't ask for tapioca maltodexrin. You need Enzorbit from national starch, which is very specific tapioca maltodextrin, which is tapioca maltodextrin is you take tapioca

[9:29] starch and you break it down into smaller pieces. Eventually you get down to a place where the starch molecules are broken down to something called

[9:35] maltodexerans, and zorbit is derived from tapioca, but is a

[9:40] very, its main purpose in life is not this, the turning oils into powders, but it's a bulking agent.

[9:46] It's extremely light. Like, uh, you know, the, a pound of endsorbit is bigger than, you know, a pillowcase. It's huge, right? It's really lightweight stuff So it's a bulking agent. That's what it really does. Starches are interesting because they're a helix, right? A native starch molecule for it's been cooked out as a helix, and the outside of the helix is water loving, and the inside of

[10:07] the heel, so it'll, you know, water is fine with it. And the inside is oil loving, right? Water hating. And so what happens is, is you mix and sorbit with a fat or an oil. That oil gets complex inside the starch, right inside the helix, but because it's not gloming on the outside, it retains a lot of its bulk density and it turns out to be a powder.

[10:28] Then as soon as you apply water in the form of your

[10:32] mouth, or if you try to make a powder out of something with water in it, which doesn't work, ding, ding, ding, ding,

[10:38] right? It immediately dissolves and turns back into almost nothing. So you take a very small amount of maltodextrine, which is relatively tasteless. And you make a powder out of an oil and then it dissolves into the under mouth. That's how it works. But please don't uh, try to make a powder out of an oil by just saying tapioca maltodextrin because odds

[10:56] are it won't work. There's many, many, many, many tapioca maltodextrins in the world, and most of them won't do that, right? Mm-hmm. Nastasia's like, I really don't care. I don't care. That's what she's saying or so. I really, I just I just don't care. At least that's what I'm reading out of this, guys. All right. Now, because I'm stupid, I didn't have my, um, I didn't have my thing open. So I'm going to have to flail around here for a minute while I search for, Oh, there it is. Well, I searched for my questions for the day. And, you know, I wouldn't have to search for my questions for the day, people, if you were to call in some questions, right? Just saying, okay, that's awesome. That's awesome. Okay. So, starting out. Oh, there's a caller? Hey, caller, you're on the air. Oh, great. Thank you. Um, I have a quick question about getting kind of like a crust on a sous

[11:50] vide, uh, veal rack. Okay. So I wanted to have like a herb crust or some kind of other crust after it's finished

[11:58] cooking. How should I try to do that? Okay. So there's a couple of things. Are you are you going to use actual sous vide in a vacuum bag or are you going to use low temp like in a Ziploc or something like that? Um, I was going to show you in a vacuum bag. Okay. You're going to have to do it like a test or see what you feel. If you actually put the herb crust on beforehand, you're

[12:20] going to get quite a bit of the penetration of the herb flavor into the meat from the procedure itself,

[12:26] right? So the question you're going to have to ask yourself is, um, you know, do you want that much herb into the surface of the

[12:35] meat? And if you do, fine. Put it on beforehand. If you don't, don't, okay? The 2nd thing is how long are you going to cook it? Um, in the bag? Yeah. Um, probably about 3 hours at like 56, 57. Are you going to serve it? Yeah, veal, yeah. Yeah, 56, yeah. Are you going to serve it the same day? Um, yeah. Okay. So what I would do is, is as soon as you pull the meat out of the circulator, right, I would cut the bag open, put the thing on a rack and start the outside to dry off a little bit. You know what I mean? And let it let it dry off a little bit and maybe even pat talot pat it, maybe even take a hair dryer, dry off the outside to get some of the like the tacky moisture off the outside, then rebrush with oil or whatever you

[13:24] got, right? Uh, and and then uh, you know, me and like, I would deep fry it. That's me. Because nothing's like, let me tell you, I can't tell you. I have done bunches of racks of lamb, goat, whatever,

[13:36] and, uh, you throw that sucker in the deep fryer after it comes out of the bag, if you let it dry off properly, and

[13:43] it's, it's good business because it just puts an instant crust all the way around everything. There's no kind of, there's no problems with it at all. Do you know what I mean? It's just, it's a good technique. So if you can deep fry it, deep fry it. I don't have a deep fire, but I do have range or I'd probably talk a duction burner that I could use for... How many portions are you making? Uh 80. Ooh, yeah. You're going to have a problem because the problem is if you're doing 80 portions. Um, you're going to, um, if you're doing 80 portions, you're going to have an issue with, um, the oil getting really crappy, if it's on a range, because it's just going to keep going up and down, up and

[14:23] down, and up and down, you know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, I could set up like 2 or 3 hotel pans. Yeah. I mean, is it a good oven or like a really hot oven? Probably, yeah, I can, I can probably get pretty good boiler if I'm in the boiler. I mean, in that case, I might use a different thing from what I just said. I might leave them in the bag, let them cool down. Uh, pull them out, dry them really thoroughly, then maybe like hair dry, then put them on racks, uh, like over the top of a roaster, uh, and then just throw them into a,

[14:57] like let them basically cool down, way down. You know what I mean? Throw them into a screaming oven. But I don't like, I don't, you know, the problem is if they're too down in a pan or if they're like sitting in a butt with a bunch of potatoes, you get a bunch of

[15:09] blonde spots around where they are. So, you know, put it on a rack to keep it up so that the air can get all around them in a screaming hot

[15:15] oven. And then all you're doing is looking for a nice crust formation on it. And then you can pull it and you won't have radically overcooked the inside. And some of your people might like it even more because it's

[15:27] going to have more of a traditional texture on the outside. It's going to have more of that like overcooked zone. So, you know, in general, I call that technique sous vide for insurance, and by that, I mean, you've ensured that the center of the meat is cooked properly. And then

[15:40] you just focused on crust formation, and as soon as the thing is brown on the outside and crusty, you pull it, and the inside's going to be good. Great. Should I pre-seer it before I put it in the bag? I will. I mean, I almost always do. I don't know, uh, because I think it's going to speed up crust formation afterwards. But, you know, I've run some tests. We run tests every time I teach a SUV class, and typically the crust formation is marginally better in the one that's seared before and after,

[16:11] but, I mean, don't salt it beforehand before you cook it. You know what I mean? Um, because that, you know, uh, that's gonna, um, make it kind of cured. I think the searing beforehand. Um, I like it, but I mean, it's a matter of personal, personal taste. I haven't done. I know that it does speed the browning on the 2nd seer, but I don't know by how much. Do you know what I mean? Yep. Um, Speaking of salty. I was thinking about maybe trying to phosphate brine with it. Would that be a horrible idea or? Uh, I mean, the thing is,

[16:46] is, is it's gonna, it'll hold more water that way, but you, you're gonna go sous vide, so you're not

[16:50] gonna overcook it. You have no reason to inject more water into it. Okay. And it's going to firm up the meat as well as, it's going to firm it as well

[16:58] as, uh, increase water. So since you're going through the trouble of sous vide it, I wouldn't, uh, I wouldn't phosphate it up. Okay. Great. Well, that was really helpful. Hey, good luck. know how it goes. All right, thank you. Bye. Okay, uh, Teddy uh, Teddy DeVico writes in, and his uh, his blogspot.blog is teen teen chef Teddy. But he's been running in for a couple years. I wonder whether he's still a teenager. He has to change his, he has to change his blog then. Anyway. Hey, David Nastasia. Dont ask Estasia. She doesn't care about your problems, Teddy. Just me. Just kidding. No you're not. Were you saying you don't care about his problems? Is that what you're saying? Okay, all right. I need help making sweet potato fries. No matter what I do, blanch fry, fry, or just fry, fry. The fries get too much color before they get crispy. I know this happens because sweet potatoes, high sugar, and moisture content, but I cannot figure out how to get around this predicament. Maybe a soak and acidulated solution, uh, first, then roast, then fry, fry technique would work. What are your thoughts? Thanks for the help. Well, it's a true story, Teddy. It's sweet potato fries. They get too much color to them, right? So, there are a number of things that are done, uh, basically because of a thing called

[18:12] reducing, reducing sugars in there, that even more than the regular sugar, which causes browning, there reducing sugars in

[18:17] it, cause browning. Um, you know, which is i.e. not sucrose, but the, you know, invert in it. So, there's been a couple of studies based on trying to get the sugar, total sugar content of

[18:28] the, at least of the surface of the potatoes down somewhat. And there's a study that was done where potatoes were soaked by themselves, you know, just in water versus in salt versus in, um, in, uh, my brain. Ascorbic acid, which is, I think, what you're thinking about to stop the browning from taking

[18:48] place enzymatic browning from the... Whoa. Something just flew into my mouth. Ouch. Um, right? versus citric acid versus acetic acid vinegar. Interestingly, the most sugar was leached out of the potatoes by soaking them in a dilute. Excuse me. That bug really did me wrong. And that flew right in my mouth by soaking in dilute vinegar. Um, right? So here's what I would do. Then a 2nd way to get the sugars out is by blanching. So I would soak these suckers, these potatoes is what I mean. In a vinegar solution after they've been cut for, you know, a weak vinegar solution for a couple of hours. I would throw salt in too, but just because salt is delicious. And it also helps with color problems in French fries, but I don't know why

[19:37] or how. Then I would pull them out of that. Then, uh, actually, you know what? You might not want to put the salt because it might reduce the amount of sugars that are pulled out. Yeah, interesting question. Don't know have to look at it. Then I would blanch them in water, and that's going to leach out even more sugar. Uh, and then uh, I would go through the, um, 2 step frying process. One at a lower temperature to do your cook through and to form the crust, pull it out, let it cool down. Bugs in my throat. And then after that, I would do the final Friday, crisp it up. But you do have a tough road to hoe. I was looking this up, actually. And there's an interesting problem where someone was making potato chips and they did something completely counterintuitive. Uh, they were trying to minimize uh, oil uh, into the potato chip, which is a horrible idea because oil. delicious in a potato chip, necessary and delicious. But they check this out. They took the potato after they they had blanched it and dried it. You know, just dried it like on an oven or dehydrator. And they threw it into a sugar solution. sugar solution, strong, like 23% sugar by weight. And, uh, 2 sec for 2 seconds, and then immediately they let it drain for 3 seconds and immediately fried it. And they said that it was good. They said that it actually, um, they said it absorbed less oil, which I don't know why I'm interested in that. But the fact that it didn't brown appreciably or didn't scorch in the

[21:06] fryer when they were making potato chips was very interesting to me. The other way, by the way, and I doubt you have access to this because very few people do, to decrease the colors to decrease the frying temperature of the oil. But the only way to do that is to, what? He's 15, Teddy. Was or is? And he's a Taurus. What does that mean? When is Taurus? April. It's like me and your wife. Well, my wife, I think, changed because they changed all the zodiac. I did not change. I am still Aries. Anyway, Aries. So, um, okay. So, uh, as I was saying before, I was interrupted by this astrological uh, thing,

[21:44] the uh, for Teddy. All right, all right. Um, so vacuum frying is the other way to go. So you can reduce the temperature at which you can set the oil by reducing the pressure, thereby allowing water to boil out because water boiling out of their product is what stops the oil from penetrating,

[22:01] right? And things don't get crispy until the water is left, right? So you can reduce the temperature at which that happens by putting everything under a vacuum. The problem with that is, is you need some hardcore equipment. And the other problem with it is, is that what typically what happens is, is you fry the thing under a vacuum, you then

[22:20] let the air back in, and whammo, all the oil is injected into the porous section of the fries, and so you get really greasy, soggy fries. So this happens with potato chips, although it's not a big deal of potato chips, but happens in french fries all the time. You're worried about french fries, which is why vacuum frying can be difficult other than the fact that it's very hard to do.

[22:39] Like the morons that do vacuum. excuse me, I didn't mean that. What's the word for moron that's friendly? nincompoop. The nincom poops that make kind of the consumer level vacuum frying situation didn't put a cold trap in between the fryer and the vacuum pump.

[22:54] So there's no possible way on God's earth that it can actually work as a vacuum fryer because it can't possibly recondense the liquid that it spews off. So the only way around there is either use a cold trap or to use an aspirator pump that can reduce the pressure, even when there's water vapor coming out of it all the time. Problem with an aspirator pump is, is that if you make a lot of water vapor like you would when you're frying. Think of the steam that comes out of a fryer. You're, uh, you're gonna, you're gonna, it's gonna start sucking wind and it's gonna get up to atmosphere pretty quickly. Anyway. But here's here's my question, Nastasia. This is to you, since you're the only one that's here, even if, you know, only in body. Uh, uh, why don't they do this? Why don't they, towards the end of the frying time, ramp the temperature

[23:43] up, and at the same time, release the vacuum slowly so that there's always water boiling out of it until they reach atmospheric, then they should be able to get most of the benefit of vacuum

[23:52] frying. Most of the frying will take place at a lower temperature, right? But, uh, you know, at the end, when they're pulling it out of the oil, it's an atmospheric. And so it's not going to get that injection. What do you think? Sounds good, right? No one in the literature has tried something like that. I wonder whether there's a technical problem that makes it impossible. Anyway, apparently Nastasias just slapped her watch, which means that we are going to our 1st commercial break. Call your questions too. 718-497-2128 718-4972128 Cooking is used.

[24:51] I can think of younger days. When living for my life. Was, everything, man could want to do. I could never

[25:15] see too much.

[25:22] I was never told How

[25:28] about the sorrow?

[25:32] And Can you make a broken

[25:43] heart? How can you stop the rain? Oh, Al Green, welcome back to cooking issues. So, the reason we played that song from Al Green is one of the questions I got anonymous was, Dave, what is a cure for a broken heart? And I thought that the Reverend Al Green, although he provides actually no solutions. If you actually listen to the song, he provides no solutions. But maybe they didn't finish the sentence and it's like a broken... He's like, how can you mend a broken heart? And the related question, how can a loser ever win? Right? These are kind of related questions that Al Green ask. I'm just saying that their question. Maybe they were asking how to put together a broken heart of an animal that they

[26:33] were. Well, that's what I'm going to have to. I'm going to have to assume, look, I'm not an expert in mending broken hearts, but I am an expert in cooking hearts.

[26:39] So I think I'll shift it to the related question of Dave, how do you cook? How do you cook hearts? Or why do you cook arts? What do you mean weak? First of all, the heart is an extremely underappreciated culinary... I had amazing heart at myelino. you have it that day? No, what kind of heart? Pig heart. Yeah, pig heart is good. With peppers and onions. Peppers and onions. Peppers. Peppers. Sausage and pep and hots. Anyway, so it was good? So good. How did they make it? every single day, I don't know. And was it, was it, was it all moist or was there some crunchy? Almost, yeah. So that's a, you know, good way to cook. Hearts are delicious because they're, and for all you freaks who don't like fat, you're probably not listening to my show. But if you are, uh, you know, uh, very, very lean and very kind of like, it's got that really that kind of bloody taste, but without being kind of so bloody, the way that like sometime, I like blood sausage, but some people don't like it because of the extreme

[27:35] bloody, bloody flavor of it. You know what I'm talking about? You know what my personal favorite heart is? Chicken hots. I love them. Chicken hearts. You know, they're so delicious. And yet, like, chicken hearted means like crappy. Like, why would you why would you? I mean they're so delicious. Chicken hearts. You like chicken hearts? I don't know I've had it. Oh my god. Do they taste like duck heart? The only heart I've had. Duck heart's delicious, right? Yeah, chicken heart is like slightly smaller than a duck heart, which means, I don't know,

[28:03] they're slightly smaller. You can eat more of them. Look, I love duck hearts, but I grew up eating chicken hearts. And my favorite way is to, is to see, you know, a giant skewer full of chicken hearts. you know, think of, if I can get a skewer of chicken hearts, that means there's that many fools out there not eating the hearts of their

[28:22] chicken, that they're eating all of those breasts and legs and not eating the heart. Um, Anyway, I just like it simply like roasted and then, uh, you know, with like some chimichurri sauce or something. Stuff's just so good, chicken hearts. Anyway, you know what? We haven't done a lot of experiment with low temp hearts. I mean, I've done it a couple times at home, but not enough to report. hearts. Anyway, can't mend them, can cook them. Uh, you know, but whoever's out there with a broken heart, time heals all wounds, mainly because you die. at the end. So, you know. In other words, like that's what makes it tautologically true. Yeah, it's like, it's like, it's always true. It can't be any other because we all have a finite existence. So it's always over at some point. Oh, heavy, heavy subjects here. Wait, can you just comment on Indie Jesus today? I'm not, what, the show is not the indie Jesus shit. We're talking about the waiter here who is still looking like Jesus came up and someone must have told him. I know he's not a listener. Someone told them that we did it because he gave Nastasia the stink eye, but most people give Nastasia the stink

[29:25] eye because she throws off the I hate you vibe. He gives most people this thing. Oh, really? So how the heck is he Jesus-like? If he throws a stink eye. Jesus doesn't throw a stink eye. He needs to work on that. It ruins the look. Anyway. Okay. Uh, follow-up from Aaron. Hi, Nastasia and Dave. called in last week. When I said still loving the show, I didn't mean to say I thought the show would turn to crap. I was just saying. You answered a question of mine before with Harold McGee at that time. I was blown away that I was able to get expert advice so easily, mainly for McGee, I assume, if he means his expert advice. Uh, and, uh, so anyway, so, uh, the question that was asked last week, uh, I think last week or week before was on plating.

[30:07] And by the way, thanks for nothing for all you people giving advice to it, you know, for plating, because we got 0 responses on that, right? Anyway, the local his local library is pretty well stocked with cookbooks, so he can get ideas there, and he liked the response regarding thinking about the visual aspects slightly earlier during the preparation of the food. I think the 1st time I think of the visual aspect is I put food on the plate. So it definitely should shift to earlier. I will definitely look at learning specific techniques such as canelling. And ultimately, Aaron Hope's, the standard way to get really good plating is a turnout, 100s of plates of food under the guidance of a chef who has the expertise. Yeah, but it requires you work in a professional kitchen to do that, which is kind of a pain in the pain in the

[30:44] patoot. Right? I can stay patoon on this, right? Yeah. Anyway. Uh, thanks for the follow-up, Aaron. Okay, here's one for you. Howdy Dave and Anastasia. My 11 year old daughter, Sarah Beth, loves your podcast. I didn't realize we were a family show. like that. Now we have to watch what we say. Well, me and you. You're the only one that's dropped curses on this station. You talked about vaginal... listen to yourself. Listen to yourself. First of all, I was talking about Lysol, which was an historical reference, and not anything to do with anything. And you just pulled it out apropos of nothing. Jack, you know, can go over the thing, but I believe Nastasia is the only one that's ever cursed on this program. I've cursed. Oh, all right. Well, I haven't, which is strange. And Chris Young has too. He cursed? Really? Yes. Oh, you potty mouth people. My 11-year-old granddaughter, uh, granddaughter. My 11 year old daughter, Sarah Bett, loves your podcast. She wants to be a chef and go to culinary school someday. We listen to you all on the way to swim practicing back. Nice, swim practice. I wish I knew how to swim. You know how to swim. No, I don't. Then the more I try to swim. It's like, it's like, uh, you'd think, because I'm not exactly the leanest guy in the world. You'd think that I would float like, like, like, easily, but the more I try and tread water, I somehow corkscrew myself

[31:58] into into the water and actually, the more I try to tread the fast pricing. I mean, if you throw me overboard, I, you know, I can, I won't die right away, but, you know, I wouldn't call myself a swimmer. Anyway, my wife makes fun of me about it constantly. Anyhow, Sarah Beth is doing her science fair. Now you swallowed the bug. No, I'm just sick. Thanks. Thanks for coughing on me with the sickness. She's doing her science fair project called make mine medium rare. Heat conduction and steak. It's all about determining cooking time for beef steaks to get to medium rare, medium and well done for various thicknesses of steaks. Now, listen, you put numbers here, which are the normal numbers for rareness, i.e. medium rare is 145 degrees, medium 155, and well done 170. Let me just say right off the bat, these numbers are like crazy wrong, crazy high. For me, medium rare is not a... 145. Wait. I can't do my I can't do my math in my head anymore. crazy. 57 is 135. So for me, medium rare is more like 135 Fahrenheit in that range. And all of the temperatures that people register are typically above it. I don't know why, but if you served me 145 degree steak, medium rare, I'd be like, nah, not so much medium, right? Okay. We are trying to find out what the relationship is between thickness of steaks and the cooking time to hit those temperatures, all other things,

[33:28] hell constant. We will be using 3 boneless cuts of meat. One inch, one. 5 inches and 2 inches thick. The bibliography, reference for the experiment is from Harold McGee's, The Curious Cook, pages 33 through 34. Excellent book, out of print, unfortunately. I keep telling them to bring it back or give, you know, put it on the web or some other kind of crud. So here's our question. We are trying to decide the best way to cook the steaks to keep the only variable in the experiment, the thickness of the steaks. There are 2 suggestive ways to cook the meat, boiling them in water or cooking them in a 300 degree oven, which would be the best method to use to control the temperature that the meat is cooked

[34:00] in to keep exactly the same for all 3 cuts of meat. We don't have sous vide equipment or anything. We do have a gas range, convection electric oven, and pots to boiling, and a 6th grade science fair budget. Thank you for the great podcast. Okay, so 6th grade. So here's here okay, here's the issue. Couple issues. Let's go into it. One, um, the relationship between thickness and to really get the relationship between thickness and how long it's

[34:25] going to take to get to a particular temperature when you're cooking at a particular temperature, uh,

[34:30] involves uh, doing some differential equations, which is, you know, hey, you know, when I was growing up, that was well beyond what they taught a 6th

[34:37] grader. Who knows what they teach a 6th grader nowadays. Anyway, you need to know some differential equations for that to actually calculate it. Um, and then it's done, uh, basically, you know, on a computer that just does the iterations and does it and find solutions for it. Um, But roughly, and the shape of the meat that you use radically changes

[34:58] uh, the amount of time it takes to uh, for something to get up to temperature. So most things are modeled as either one of 3 things or something in between. And those 3 things are flat slab, which is like a steak, right? Or a cylinder, which is like when I, when you make like a roulade or a sphere, which, you know, does a sphere, right? Now, luckily for you, right? If, well, I should say, luckily for you, I don't know if you have an iPad. If you have an iPad or an iPod, right? Uh, there's someone that wrote a, uh, there's someone who wrote an

[35:33] application uh, called Sous vide Dash. Now it's 5 bucks, all right? And I have you know, this is how much I love the listeners here. I spent my own 5 bucks and I bought the application to look at it, right? And Nastasia, you know, getting $5 out of me is like squeezing water out of a rock. You know what I mean? And even Moses had trouble with that. You know, Moses, right? the Moses, right? The 1st time, God's like, strike the rock, and because the Israelites were thirsty, right? We should I do this in like Jersey, Jersey Bible? in a minute. So he strikes the rock. And then later on, that, like, you know, years and years, years, years later, the Israelites are thirsty again, they've been wandering around for 40 years, blah, blah, blah.

[36:14] God's like, hey, Moses, go to the rock, talk to the rock, and water's going to come out of the rock. So Moses walks up. He's like, hey, last time I had to hit the freaking rock to get the water out. I had to hit it to get the water out. I'm going to hit it again. Hits the rock. God's like, oh. Oh, hitting the rock. I said, talk to the rock. And so, uh, you know, Moses is like, hey, you know, I thought, you know, if I'm going to talk to it, I might as well punch you, hit it with a stick. It's going to be better. It's like, hey, Moses, don't think. I said, talk to the rock. And that's the reason he didn't get to lead the Israelites into the promised land. How messed up is that? I like how he covered Jesus and Moses on this show. Hey, hey, where do you call opportunity? Old and New Testament. Well, bring it. That's from Dave Arnold's Jersey Bible. Uh, so the, uh, uh, uh, stupid. Okay, so, um, but you can download, uh, for 5 bucks. You can download the sous vide dash, and what it does is it actually plots on a graph, you put the type of meat you're using, and the reason

[37:21] the type of meat that you use is important is because different fat levels, different meats have basically different specific heats,

[37:28] how like how hard it is to heat them up to a different temperature, and also probably different rates of thermal conduction through them based on fat and all these other things.

[37:36] So you want to, you want, you know, to enter the meat, right? Then you can enter the shape of it, uh, which is, uh, you know, usually like some form of a flat slab or a, or a cylinder or a sphere. Uh, and then, and the other cool thing is this program can customize all this stuff. So there's there's a, there's a, a coefficient that's basically a shape coefficient that that changes the equations based on

[37:59] uh, what the shape of the thing is and uh, a pure flat plane is uh, is uh, the coefficient is 0 for a, you know, pure cylinder, infinitely long cylinder, coefficient one. And for a sphere coefficient is two. But, uh, in reality, right, the equations really only modeled for these kind of pure things, but in reality, what they do is, is they're like, well, an egg, it's not quite as, you know, it's not quite a

[38:24] sphere. It's more like, you know, a sill and sphere. And so they're like instead of it being a two, right? It's got a coefficient of one. eight. But the cool thing about this program is it allows you to dork

[38:34] with, if you go into the expert level, you can dork around with the

[38:39] coefficients, and you can see how changing that coefficient changes the rate at which things

[38:43] heat. But not to spoil it for you or anything. But the, um, if you double the size of a flat slabs we're talking now. infinite flat slabs, big steak. If you double the thickness, the amount of time it takes to get it to temperature will be roughly 4 times greater. Every time you double it, it goes up by a factor of four, because it goes by the square. they're asking how they should cook it. I'm going to get to that. I'm being thorough. Uh, geez. So, uh, here's the other here's the other bad news about it, though. is that in terms of the way the meat looks, and when I say that, the way that the

[39:19] myoglobe and the proteins in it are going to get denatured, which is what provides a lot of the color in the meat, the way it gets denatured is radically dependent on how long it takes to cook the product.

[39:29] So I would run a couple of different tests. Ovens aren't so good because the size of the piece of meat in it, not just the thickness, but the size

[39:38] of how much moisture is coming off is going to affect the temperature. How quick the surface can dry out because you're in a dry oven. I mean, it's just the oven's kind of inaccurate. Boiling is unfortunately so kind of hardcore. I mean, you can do it, right? I would recommend getting this application to dork around with the different factors to kind of look at them. Um, but then I would, I would go boiling water. Uh, you know, if you want to try some lower temp stuff just as a test, you can do what I've said before, which is you can run uh, uh, hot water out of your tap, which is, you know, depends on your tap, might be hot enough to cook a steak, not, you're probably not going to be up to well done.

[40:17] But, um, you can do the other thing you can do is get a cooler and uh, do some uh, test that way. But the only way to do a real scientific experiment where everything is kept constant, is to have something in a rolling boil. And, you know, if you're going to use boiling water, that is, a rolling boil. And what that means is, is you're not going to want to, uh, put a big piece of meat in, because if you put a big piece of meat in, you're going to, um, If you put a big piece of meat in, you're going

[40:48] to, uh, drop the temperature of the water locally to the meat. The other problem you're going to have is you're going to want to try to keep the meat so that it's even thickness all the way around, which is going to be difficult for you

[40:58] because it's just going to be difficult because the meat's going to be moving around in the water. So, anyway, it's going to be extremely hard for you to do anything else, like bolt it between 2 plates

[41:08] with, you know, thumb screws so you can get the thickness exactly the way you want. I mean, you could do that. I've done it. It's dumb. I've done it. You know what I mean? But it is a pain in the butt. Uh, you're gonna want to try to keep the thickness as accurate as possible because it is gonna make a big, uh, a big difference. Or they're in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut area, they can borrow my circulator. I hear that? That's a good offer. But here's the other things you're going to have to deal with is the, how are you going to measure the temperature on the inside? Are you just going to do it by visual inspection, right? Visual inspection? Meh, meh, meh. You know what I mean? But on the other hand, temperature? Nah, you know what I mean? It's not so bueno. You know what I mean? Now, assuming that you're going to be into this stuff. You can get digital thermometers now pretty cheap. An easy way to do it is to get like a multimeter that has a thermocouple thing and then you can get very fine thermocouples. There down to like, I think you can get like a thermocouple for like 60 bucks and you can get a multimeter that'll read it on Amazon for like, or even just a thermometer for another like 30 or 40. So, I mean, that's 100 bucks. I don't know whether you want to go that far, but your average instant read thermometer, it has a bunch of problems. It's too big. It's not very fast. And also, it has a high enough thermal mass in itself to drop the temperature that you're reading.

[42:25] So it can be problematic. Am I being helpful at all? You're like, not really. You're not really helping hurdle on our project. I gave her the name of the program to look at. Yeah. Nostache it.

[42:39] Yeah, all right. All right. All right. Well, listen. If you have more questions, come back. There's nothing I love better than a science fair. I used to, like, I don't know whether you could probably guess this. I add some butt kicking science fair stuff. My dad is a double E, electrical engineer, and he used to help me out on my science fair

[42:54] projects, and one time he helped me calculate, um, uh, like a bunch of a mirror array to get them all focused on the same and he was showing me how

[43:03] parabo is working and all that. And so we built a big mirror array that focused 100 mirrors. I found this mirror shop that gave me stuff that for almost nothing. I was like, man, they don't need to be high quality. I'm a little kid and I don't have any money. so like, yeah, take these meas. They're almost free. And I glued the mirrors like, and then we were like, you know, lighting stuff on fire. So some other kid was coming with like with their little, with their little parabolic reflect their hot dog oven, and I walk in with like, you know, a 4 foot by 4 foot array of a 100 mirrors,

[43:32] uh, like 4 by 4 inch mirrors, uh, and with instantly light paper on

[43:36] fire. stuff was awesome. Anyway, I love a science fair. So if you have any questions, please write back and we'll address them. Yes. sort of, yeah. Sort of. What is it that you want me to say that I didn't say? Nothing, just write back and let us know how deep it is. Yeah, jeez. And look, I'm not endorsing the program. In fact, it has some issues. Like, for instance, the program, CV dash, when you look at it. Like if I change it from chicken to beef, it changes all my other settings. I was like, listen, I put the other settings where I want them. Why would you change it just because I changed it from chicken to beef? To be dash. All right. Another good place to look for that. If you can do the differential equations for her, or like I say, if she's incredibly precocious, Douglas Baldwin has

[44:18] an explanation of how the equations work on his website about SUV. Okay. Hey, Dave. Nice. is Ryan Santos. What's the best way to cook a goose sous vide? Looking to cook the legs to a comfit like doneness. Imagine 2 different times in tents, but not sure what those are. Okay, so yeah, with the goose, I break it apart. I'd, uh, you know what you could do, actually. I don't know if this would work or not, but I wonder whether you could roast the goose so that it looks awesome and then just not serve the legs, cut the legs off and then cut feed them separately. I think that would work? don't know. I would cook goose like I cook a duck, which means 57 degrees is my

[44:58] go to, and if it's a little tough, not for no, the breasts I'm talking. Once you remove the breast, cook them at 57 for no longer than an hour,

[45:07] uh, and, you know, if they're a little tough, you can do like 58. Let them cool down. Hit with the dog brush a la modernist cuisine, and then sear off the goose to render out some of the fat, make it crispy and delicious.

[45:20] I would confit the legs in vacuum. I would salt them overnight, and salt and herb them overnight. you know, get rid of the excess salt, throw them in a bag with their own fat, you know, just with what they are, uh, and cook it at regular simmering temperatures, like

[45:37] 85. And for a couple of hours, you know, until the bone feels free in

[45:41] the uh, in the thing and you'll know it's done, let them cool down in their own fat. They're ready to go, pull them up, crisp them up, delicious. Yeah. All right. Let's go to our 2nd commercial break.

[46:03] I'm so in love with you. Whatever you want to do. You're all right when

[46:19] you... You make me feel so brand new. Want to spend my life with you? Me same thing, baby. Since we've been together Oh, loving you forever. Is of what I knew Let

[47:02] me Be the one you come up into. And welcome back to cooking issues. Uh, my schedule's totally thrown off today because uh, we don't have a clock in the studio. Nice. Anyway, Todd W. Oh, let me get the 2nd question from uh, uh, 2nd question from Ryan. Secondly, I want to replicate Wiley. That's Wiley Dufray, my brother-in-law's aerated foie gras recipe. I have a food saver and a vacuum box thing, but no chamber vac. I'm curious if I aerate the foie base and a whipper, and then in the vacuum box, if that would help get the aeration going. I've had success doing this with ice cream base to aerate the ice cream. Just wanted a 2nd opinion before attempting this with expensive foi. Now, I don't have his recipe in my head for the aerated flaw, but I believe he uses

[47:45] fois fat. And you could probably use a substitute for fois fat, like duck fat or something harder than that. I forget what it was. You know, next time I ask him, I'll see him. I'll ask him, but they didn't test out all those recipes with like boatloads of flaw because it would be really expensive. They tested with an alternate cheaper fat, and I forget what it is. I don't think it was butter because it doesn't behave the same way. I think it was, I think it was duck fat or maybe a mixture of duck fat and butter. But anyway, um, the aeration that they get at WD or did, you know, um, back when they had this on the menu, uh, with ice cream was

[48:19] like the stuff was so aerated that it was like angel food cake. So if you can do that, you could probably aerate the flaw, um, I would run a test with a cheaper fat to see whether it bubbles up. You know what I mean? Like do something with, do it with duck fat or do it with butter, see if it aerates. It won't set the same way, but just see if it aerates. Let me know. And next time I speak to Wiley, I will ask him what they use as

[48:42] floss substitute when they're testing out recipes so that they don't break the bank. Okay. Todd Bryant writes in, hey there, I'm traveling abroad to Israel and Turkey. I'd like to go to Turkey and Israel, but I'd like to go to Turkey. We have done a lot of studies on Turkish food stuff and I've had some Turkish intern. Anyway, do you have any tips on how to bring back yummy and rare foodstuffs, meats, cured meats, cheeses, fresher dried fruits, spices or

[49:05] liquids in my luggage without them being confiscated by the cretins at customs. Thanks, folks, Brian. Nastasia, you're a sneak. What do you think? I don't know. I mean, just to stuff it in the bag and don't say anything. Well, that's a helpful freaking tip. I mean, what's he, what do you mean? Well, okay, look, obviously vacuum bag anything so the dogs can't sniff. Yeah, right? Look unassuming. It, you know, you know, if you, if you, if they're racist. It helps to be, uh, you know, like look like me, boring white guy. You know what I mean? That's helpful. Um, sad to say the true. Um, uh, you know, I've brought some evil stuff back in. I haven't done it recently. My sister-in-law brought an entire prosciutto back in her backpack. Yeah, but I think the dogs are much more hardcore now. I don't know what the penalties are. Steinarten has an interesting thing about this. He just says what he has. He declares it, and usually they're just too, like, whatever, to look at it. They just look at him and he pretends. Another thing you could do, like with cheeses, is you can just say, hey, their age more than 60 days. Oh, yeah. I brought a cat on a plane that was one month old, and I told him it was 8 months, and they were like, okay. Yeah, you gotta know the rules and get around it. Look, no one's good. Look, if you're going to Turkey, get select on derma is not done. the ice cream. Get celeb, the orchid powder. And, you know, I don't know, it's not drugs. So you, like, tell them that it's not, you know, whatever. I never get stopped, almost never. Once in Germany. And I got hardcore hosed. But other than that, I almost never get stopped. Man, I want people right in and see what they think about this. Now listen. Don't bring anything in it actually could cause naked epidemic, like don't bring citrus fruit from someplace to the United States to

[50:52] California, and then, you know, totally shaft a $1000000000 industry because I don't want to give advice to help that happen.

[50:57] That makes sense. Does that make sense? Anyway. Okay. Now, let me see what we got here. Okay, we got a question in from Andrew. Uh, who says, uh, see, we should post a poll on the blog asking who listens to our show on a specific date, and we can even put options for live listening and podcast, and then that way we can figure out what's going on. What do you think? Yeah, it was a good idea. All right, we'll look into it. But anyway, the main reason he's emailing is that his pressure cooker is broken and it sucks. And so he's looking to buy a new one. I've read under various posts on pressure cookers and modern cuisine's chapter on them, and I'm still not totally sure what the best option is. I know you like Coon Recon, which I do. But modernist cuisine got me worried about the spring indicator becoming inaccurate over time. And there's also the matter of choice between a model with a large thing on top or the little pin. The All-American, the All-American pressure canners what we're talking about, looks good, but he's unsure whether the sterilizer or the normal pressure cooker is the better option.

[51:53] The sterilizer concerns me because the tube from the valve going into it and how long it is, and the manufacturer says it's not to be used as a pressure cooker. What's ups us. I mean, the middle. There's a color. All right, let me finish reading this and I'll go to color. On the other hand, if I was to go to the All American pressure cooker, how practical and safe is weighing down the weight valve thing. What I want out of this is the best pop swap option for both canning and pressure cooking and cost matters in so much as I

[52:14] want, only how to buy one thing and what size should I get? Okay, I'm going to answer that in one second. Call her, you're on the air. Hi, David, it's Sasha. We're from Situate, Massachusetts. Hey, how you doing? Long time to speak. Long time to speak. How are you? All right. Two things. One, I came back from France a couple of weeks ago and brought back some foie gras and truffles and had relatively little difficulty, but a friend of mine who brought

[52:38] back more or less the same thing. But also brought back a sausage. The dogs were all over, the sausage, and then the customs people opened up everything, and I looked into it a little bit. And it turns out that there's no uniformity. It's very much discretion at the airport. So rules in one place will have no bearing on anywhere else. You're coming into Logan? Uh, I was coming into, well, actually, it turned out we were both coming into Logan, although they were moving on. Right. Is Logan still pretty hardcore? Uh, well, I had to assure them that everything was cooked and sealed as if it were in a can and they were skeptical, but they let me

[53:14] through, but I looked into it around the country. It's not uniform at all. Right. And, you know, I've had an issue actually. The only time I've gotten hammered was with a sausage. So it's interesting. I mean, maybe, and I'm assuming the sausage wasn't vacuum packed down, so it had probably more residual smell to it. No, it was it was from an open air market that you couldn't pass by. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously minimize stuff that the dogs can smell and know how to talk a good game and be prepared to lose everything, right? Well, yes, and also you need to declare everything if you, if you, if they catch you, uh, you're in trouble. You mean, yeah, they, yes, right. So say you're bringing some foodstuffs back, but just pretend that it's all legit, and then if they catch you with it being illegit, you could just say you didn't, that, is the misinterpretation, is that what you're saying? Yes, the Stunning Garden approach sounds right to me. Yeah, very good. I have another question, though. A fairly simple one, I think, which is, um, I, you know, I

[54:11] cook the turkey for Thanksgiving, and according to various charts, it should have been in the neighborhood of 5 hours, and it was done in about

[54:19] 2.5 quarter. And other people have the same, uh, same result and what's going on, is, is it that the steam from the, uh, um, from the stock underneath is steaming it and just cooking it much, much

[54:35] faster? Well, what was the cooking technique? Roasting, um, I roasted it like 325, um, uh, but I poured, you know, uh, a couple of quarts of stock into the roasting pan at the bottom. Right. I do that as well to stop from scorching. I don't know if that's going to accelerate it or not. Uh, when the, the, the numbers for how fast it's going to be done was based on open cavity bird. Yeah. It was a £19 bird and it should have been by charts about 5 hours or so, but every year. It's the same thing. I don't want to, uh, I don't, I want to time it properly. I wind up using some chart, and it's always done 2 or 3 hours early. Well, those charts are always horrible. These are horrible. They're based on like bad. They're based on bad stuff. We should get like one of these guys like Doug Baldwin or something to actually figure it out based on like circumferential measurement of the turkey's

[55:34] breast and then approximate the gap, you know, the internal void. I wonder whether this stock's going to make an appreciable difference. I don't know, but I will look into it. Okay. Alrighty? Good enough. thanks Hey, thanks for calling in. All right. Quickly back to Andrew's pressure cooker problem. Or look, the American Pressure Canner. I love them and they're the only way to go for big, big things, and they go up to higher pressures than other things. They can make it up to like a, you know, 22 PSI, which I don't really think is necessary. But I think they're a pain in the butt because you have to seal a bunch of hand knobs all the time to make sure that they're not leaking. They're made out of all aluminum, which means that you have to take care of them when you wash them with detergents and some people don't like to cook acidic stuff in aluminum

[56:16] or, you know, basic stuff in aluminum. So they need protection. They tend to take up more space in the kitchen. I like it because it's very accurate and I can run experiments with it, but from normal cooking, I don't use it. Um, the, um, I would use the, I, Coon Recon is great. I don't really care. I mean, like the spring, I don't know if it actually loses accuracy over time or not, but the spring is almost free.

[56:39] You can buy a bunch of springs if you're worried about it. and replace it. I have the one that has the spring right in the center that goes up and down, and I've used it for, you know, 6 years or something like that, and I've never had a problem with it other than I broke the handle off of it. And I shattered the plate on the top. And so it's kind of weird looking, but the thing still cooks like a demon. you know, had to replace the gasket once. Uh, I would stay away from, uh, you know, the models that, um, vent because I think it, uh, kind of reduces uh, the taste profile. get the biggest one that you can. Another thing is like some people will sell you 2 pots and then one lid, which you can go back and forth. But, I mean, I like the coon recon. I mean, they don't they don't pay me or anything, but I like them a lot. Uh, and I haven't had a problem with them kind of going uh, going south on you. I mean, I just haven't. There was, I read some QC problems, quality control problems with Coon Recon for a little while, but I think they have that

[57:35] thing. they have that thing fixed. So I would go for it if you have the money. I've never needed anything else. In fact, when I have to work at work, I bring my home pressure cooker in rather than using the crappy ones that they have there. Just saying. Not saying that they're crappy, the ones that they have at the FCI. I am just saying that they're crap. Okay. By the way, my son thinks crap is a curse. Yeah, it is when you're young. Okay. But not for an 11 year old. okay? Okay. Okay. And we'll round out on this. By the way, he has a best sign off for us ever, which is keep on keep being awesome. You like that? Nice. Anyway. Okay. So my other questions are more about your personal views on subjects. So if you need to sacrifice them for someone else's more tangible questions, that's cool. Well, I won't. I'm going to end with them instead. I was wondering what your views are on the waste involved with sous vide or low temperature cooking. I often feel guilty about throwing out ziplocs after only using them for a few hours and slightly horrified, a thought of what a restaurant that employs the method must go through, a bit hippie-ish, but I can't help it. All right. It is, it's, look, kind of an issue, but on the other hand, I mean, you can reuse the

[58:38] Ziplocs, nobody does because it's a huge hell mess to clean them out and they're all

[58:44] goopy and if you're going to save them for a long time, it's a nightmare. I'd have to do a calculation based on total final usage of

[58:52] materials and resources in terms of like the less amount of energy it takes to cook using that way versus an oven, the less you have to evacuate your kitchen because you're using low temperature instead of using something that

[59:03] uses it burns up a lot of gas. I'd also have to figure out how much plastic wrap I'd have to use to wrap the stuff afterwards if I wasn't using Tupperwares or something that seals itself. So there's all sorts of things. But it is something that I should probably think about more than I do. What do you think, says? Yeah, she's like, I don't care, you're too late. I not going to give you anything than one word answers. Only one word answer for you at this point. Anyway, my other question is what we're going to end on. My other question is about your views on using MSG and cooking. Many chefs know and actively say that MSG hasn't been found to have any negative

[59:35] effects, yet they will still go out of their way to include MSG rich foods in their dishes rather than go for the pure stuff. Now, I know that in some cases, these foods give complimentary flavors, but there are other cases, like

[59:46] Eston Blumenthal using seaweed in a shepherd's pie, where the ingredient is purely for its umami boost.

[59:52] Okay. All right, it's very interesting question. Look it. Uh, I don't use MSG. I just never got in the habit of it, but I do use a lot of MSG stuff, and I'm one of those people that happens to know because I've read all of the studies and don't use crazy post-hoc, ergopropter,

[1:00:08] hoc, illogical stuff. at least 3 podcasts about MSG. This is a separate question. If you had read the question or even listened to it while I was speaking, you would see it's a separate question. The question is, why do chefs not use it, even though they know it's safe? And I think there's a couple of reasons. I think mainly it goes to perception. I think, uh, you know, when you're a chef and you're cooking something, you have to not only cook to what you think is right, but you have to cook to what your customers think is

[1:00:37] right or you're going to alienate a lot of people. And the high-end people, right? There's a whole group of kind of farm to table, like, you know, as you said, hippie-ish people who won't consume MSG on principle,

[1:00:50] right? And so then to put that in your dish cuts off an entire group of people from using it,

[1:00:58] right? from enjoying your food. And it injects a level of controversy into your menu that you might not want to inject in. You know, it's just, you know, unless unless you're like Dave Chang, who's like, you tell me foie gras badge, so every menu on the, every menu item is going to have foie gras to shut up.

[1:01:16] Like he, he can do, does stuff like that. He'll make points. But you know, unless your point is to make a point about it. You don't want to alienate someone for something that you can do in some other way, especially if you haven't grown up using it as a

[1:01:28] spice. You get around it in other ways. There is no functional difference between the MSG, as a separate seasoning, other than it adds a little salt, as well, because there's sodium in it. Uh, and uh, the stuff that you get from sources like uh, seaweed. But I think it would be a problem for a lot of chefs to go ahead and put it on the menu because why, you know, they're in the business of

[1:01:52] making money. So making a statement like that probably isn't in their best business interest. On the other hand, maybe it is that they're just a little squeamish about you. In other words, like there's things that like, uh, there's things that you believe in, that you don't do yourself or there's things that you're not willing to go to. I don't know. Your point, I think, is that maybe they feel a little dirty using it. Even though they say it's okay, that they feel a little dirty doing it. And maybe you're right. It's an interesting question. I have to think about it and you know what I'm going to do? Go and go buy myself a package of MSG, cooking issues.