[0:00] Broadcasting live from Roberta's in Bushwood, Brooklyn, you're listening to Heritage Radio 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 around 12 to 1245 from the back of Roberta's

[0:32] Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on the Heritage Radio Network. Hey, Jack, our engineer, Jack, in the booth, as always. My headphones appear to be not working. Ah. Thank you. Join as usual in the station with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez cooking issues, Hammer, and usual resident meaning. Caller just called back. What? The caller, our caller called. Hello, caller. You are on the air. Hi, Dave. Just a quick question about the con specifically. Since it's a time of year where you can get whole unshelled pecans. I like to get a bunch of, you know, pecans and other bolt nuts and cracking myself. And bulk nuts. It's either the pecan itself or that reddish stuff. The inside, like the pits, sort of? Right? Right? Something just, it's bitter and math dry and and just kind of not acidic, but it just really drives out my mouth. What's up with that? All right, so the skin of nuts like that. And pecans is one, the one I think it's been more studied is walnuts. The skin, the kind of the silvery, the reddish brownish skin around it, has a lot of tannins in it that are going to dry out your mouth and can be bitter.

[1:49] And the same, it goes true for a lot of nuts, which is why, for instance, when you use

[1:53] hazelnuts, You often heat them briefly and then rub the skins off. So you, I mean, pecans are kind of a pain. I don't really see a lot of recipes where you're supposed to take the skin off of a pecan. Um, have you ever seen that in a recipe? I've never seen that in a recipe. No. No. Me neither. But the strange thing about this phenomenon is that, and I know more about walnuts with this, is that different cultivars of walnut will have radically different astringency and bitterness associated with that skin

[2:26] layer. So, you know, it all depends on exactly who you're getting it from,

[2:31] et cetera, et cetera. You could try to a hot roast and rub between towels. Any percentage of that skin that you get off of there is going to

[2:41] decrease that perception. The downside is, is that it's not going to look like a pecan anymore

[2:49] for, you know, for what people are used to doing. If you notice this specifically in a person that you're buying bulk from. No, I just usually get them, you know, diamond, diamond or whoever, just in a bulk bag. And when I do the pecans, I really notice the bitterness. I don't really notice it so much for the other nuts, oddly enough. Yeah, do you uh, not even for walnuts, huh? Well, I mean, a little, but pecans, like, sometimes they just really zing me or whatever. Well, you know, lots of, like, so, you know, we used to make a lot and hopefully we will again. Uh, pecan oil and pecan butter in uh, in the centrifuge and the bottom layer of that has all of that stuff that you

[3:31] are talking about. The, uh, you know, because the skin layer settles to the bottom when you're centrifuging it. And so, you know, that's one way to get rid of it. Do you live in the south? Yeah. I mean, what I would do is search out a, you know, a really, like, I looked online once because we were looking into selling nut oils at school a couple

[3:52] years back, and I found a couple of very, I can't remember their names, unfortunately, off the top of my head, but a couple of super high quality producers, you know, that will give you fresh this year's crop right when they get

[4:04] it, uh, and just, I'm sure loads higher than whatever the commercial stuff is. And strangely the prices weren't that bad. You know what I mean? Yeah, you might want to look into that. And then the folks that I spoke to on the phone, uh, where, you know, and this is the good thing about dealing with real people is they actually grew the darn thing. So if you tell them your concerns, they can they could probably steer you the right way. So does age affect it also? Well, uh, age, I don't know about age and um, astringency. I mean, obviously nuts as they age get rancid. Uh, and, you know, they they tend to not be as good. I mean, um, and that's why, you know, it's always best to vacuum pack, uh, you know, in

[4:50] can, so you don't crush them too much, but it's always best, uh, best to vacuum pack. things that are high in oil content. So a lot of nuts when they're commercially produced are vacuum packed for that reason or nitrogen flushed or any one of a number of things you can do to remove the oxygen so that you don't have oxidation

[5:06] problems. So not so definitely unstable. I mean, I'm sure you've had, um, you know, you've had some nuts sitting out for a while and you try to get the, they turn stale, obviously, and then you try to

[5:16] uh, get the crispness back by uh, roasting them for a minute, letting them cool down, and the taste just isn't the same. It's just they've either like gone stale permanently or gone rancid because they have such a high oil content, you know? Yeah. Very cool. Do you think this is anything like when you get a funky batch of pine nuts, you know, you get that pine nut mouth condition. Probably not. I haven't I haven't researched what that is. I think that's probably something, uh, like very specific, and I don't know that might be, and I don't know anything about it. So I, you know, I hesitate to speculate, but for instance, I'm told that it's a fungal problem, like a bad pistachio, and that those are actually extremely toxic because of high levels of

[5:59] afletoxin, uh, that are uh, pleasant. And anyone that's ever bitten into a bad pistachio knows that it's like one of the most horrible things that could possibly happen to you. So definitely don't eat that. No, don't eat that. In fact, we used to make a pistachio oil and butter, and what

[6:16] we, you know, at the school, we would get these £3 tins of nuts, right? From a reputable person. And so, uh, one time I had an intern make a batch of pistachio butter with it, and they just threw the tin into

[6:28] the uh, into our grinder, and then into our centrifuge, and the stuff tasted awful. Then from then on, I said, hey, look, you have to throw all of the pistachios onto a sheet, a big sheet tray, and you have to look at them all, and we took out all the ones that had yellowed, you know, with age that weren't green

[6:46] anymore. All the ones that look shriveled, and the stuff tasted great. So, you know, I know with pistachios, they're extremely fragile. Uh, you know, and and most suppliers, you know, if you're buying uh, bulk shelled nuts, they don't, they're not giving you the, they're not giving you necessarily 100% of the best, even if they're a reputable manufacturer.

[7:05] It only takes a couple bad nuts to really ruin things. Yeah. Anyway, good luck with that and let us know how it works out for you. All right, thanks a lot, Dave. Keep bringing the awesome. Thanks. All righty. so let me see. I am I'm late as usual. And we are being held to our time today because there's a live show coming on to Heritage Radio Network. And so I'm going to read the promo after the 1st break. I'm just going start going into questions. Okay, Andy writes in. Hey, Nastasia and Dave, I recently acquired a massive £21 free-ranged age country ham from Nancy Newsom at, uh, her name's Nancy Mahaffey, actually, from Nancy Mahaffey at Colonel Newsom's

[7:46] hand. And there's a bunch of cursing about how delicious it is. Holy effing sugar honey iced tea delicious, which it is. I actually happen to like that ham a lot. Had incredible marbling. I want to figure out a way to get the best yield from the ham while eating it over a few months. Start into the less meaty side of the ham, less meaty side would be the, you know,

[8:04] they calls it the forward top side, I think. Serrano style, i.e. along the length. But I'm thinking about boning it out and bonding it back together, prosciutto style, and then slice it across the face of the ham. I practice deboning on a smaller home cure at ham. So I think I've got good butchering method, but how does the home cook press and bind it back together? I assume some form of meat glue, any recommendations for a witch style to use, et cetera, et cetera. The bone will leave a big hole. How do I ensure that I can press the hole completely shut? As a side note, um, this ham is much thicker than either the serrano or the prosciutto, but I can't think of

[8:37] the way that would affect the preparation. First of all, a couple notes. For those of you that don't have don't eat American country hams, Colonel Newsom's hams out of Kentucky is one of my favorite producers, they've been producing for a long, long time. The recipe is several 100 years old. Nancy Mahaffey is the current proprietor and cure master of that place. They have a distinction that they only cure one time a year at the traditional time in the winter. And then the hams are aged, however old they are. She sometimes has hams that are over a year old, but in general, you can judge the age of the ham based on how long after the winter it is right now. So the hams that she has left over now are a year old, if you can get them. They're good. Another thing is that she has been working with heritage foods, our parent people's,

[9:21] uh, to get some high, very high quality, um, ham in that has a lot of marbling. So she's been doing that. I think Benton's has been doing that, Benton's hams, and Edwards hams. I've had, I haven't had, I've had a little bit of Nancy's. It was good. I had a lot of Edwards one, which was excellent. Uh, and they're all good because I've said for many years that uh, American Hammasters, we, you know, they have the ability to cure. They have the know-how, their, their, you know, their, their masters at it. But what has been lacking is the quality of the raw material. And so these people have been joining up with folks like Patrick Martins and trying to kind of rectify that and be able to produce a ham that has the same kind of quality in the meat as the highest

[10:01] end European style hams. And I have to say they are some incredibly delicious things. Where you say, as a side note, that this ham is much thicker than either the

[10:12] serrano or the prosciutto, it really does affect the preparation. has a lot to do with the way American hands are hung. American hands typically were designed. Even the, you know, the country cured ones to be eaten in slices and then briefly

[10:24] cooked or cooked and then sliced. And so they want them to be a little wetter than you would on your average European ham. They're hung in the opposite direction from a normal European ham, and they're not squished flat. And so they have the cushion, that big part of the meat, the cushion area, is a lot

[10:39] thicker than it would be in a European ham. And what that means is, is that you're going to have a wetter center typically on that. And so it's going to be more difficult to get a perfect slice out of an American style ham that way than it would be to get out of a European

[10:54] ham. And you're also, because of the way American hands are hung, and aged, you're going to get more of a variation in salt level and

[11:02] density and water level between the outside of the meat, especially towards the face, towards where it was cut off of the animal weather,

[11:10] there's no skin, and the center of the cushion where it's going to be the softest. So it does affect preparation. It's not better, it's not worse, but it does affect it. Now, onto your real question here, which is, how do I, well, you already have a boning technique. The best way is to go, uh, F Dick cutlery makes a, uh, what looks like a long gouge that you can use, uh, like a tunnel boning thing that you can get in. And that's what a lot of the people use to get the bones out effectively. I have to say that boning a prosciutto and a country ham is the only time in my life I've ever

[11:41] broke in a knife, at least that I've ever broken it when it wasn't breaking it on purpose. So, you know, they are difficult to bone depending on how old they are, right? Younger one, like seven, 8 month old, not going to be a problem, but year, year and a half, it can become kind of a nightmare to bone out and keeping one piece. Assuming you have a good technique to bone out that take the bone out, you're going to have a hole in the center. And even the professionals here, when they bone it, are not going to

[12:04] take be able to squish that hole flat. And the reason is, it takes an immense amount of pressure to do that. So in prosciutto, the Parma, what they'll do is they'll age it bone in, like God wants you to. They'll remove the bone, and then they'll put it into a ham mold, and the ham mold has a water cooling, because otherwise the ham would heat up too much, and it would affect the flavor of the ham, and they put it under immense pressure inside of a metal mold that's, you know, very well

[12:35] cooled, in order to compress it into that ham shape, exclude any oxygen, or anything else from the inside of that gap. I don't think you're going to be able to do that. I just don't think it's possible. Another problem with enclosing that hole. is you could be sealing something and you might want to let it dry out a little more in there, especially on an American hand that can be a little wetter on the inside than European ham. You're also going to want to make sure you cut off any kind of bad areas or taint around that.

[13:04] Now if you wanted to try. I mean, I encourage you to try and tell me what happens. Yes, you could sprinkle some meat glue in that thing. Put it between 2 plates on a hydraulic press and press it flat. I don't know what kind of results you're going to have. It's not typically something you would do. And I just might make this suggestion is that because American hams weren't necessarily cured in order to slice in one whole piece, I would remove the section below the

[13:30] bone, and then you just have the section above the bone that you can slice as its own. It's going to have a little kind of semicircle mark in it, but that's okay. And then the bottom piece, which is a lot tougher anyway, is going to, you know, maybe be served as a

[13:43] separate separate preparation. Anyway, my thoughts. What do you think, Stas? That sounds good. Do you want to take a break? It's 24. I don't know. Do I want to take a break? You just want to go all the way through? I'll take one more and then I'll do a break. Okay. Uh, I don't I don't have the person's name. but it's another faithful, faithful listener from iTunes and also a big fan of heritage radio in general. Big shout out to Harris radio. I have 3 brining questions. Is there a rule of thumb for the brine to Brian's strength to soak time? I'm looking for a general brine. I can customize to accommodate the amount of time I have to brine. Some days I can do an overnight. Some days I want to do an hour soak. This edition of herbs or other flavors in a brine come through in the end, product. I see many recipes for complex brines with multiple flavor editions. Is this just showing off? And is there a brine concentration that could reduce the risk of salmonella or other bugs? I refrigerate and cook properly but I'm curious. Thanks. Okay. I am embarrassed to say, this is a subject that I should have researched long, long ago,

[14:42] but have not. Here's the issue with brine strength and soak time. There's a couple things that are Brian is doing. Salt takes salt first. Salt is flavoring your meat, right? That's one thing it's doing. And also salt soaking through into the meat is altering the protein structure so that it can hold onto more water when it's cooked and thereby provide more insurance against overcooking.

[15:05] Now, I've definitely over brine things, but you know, I haven't done the research. And what I'm saying is, is that I'm going to have to do more research before I can thoroughly answer this question.

[15:17] It's one of the few things that even though I've been doing it a lot and I'm supposed to be a technical related cook who pays attention to this sort of nonsense.

[15:24] Uh, I have literally always done this by uh, making a brine dipping my finger in it and tasting it. And I always make my brines pretty much the same, which is make them tell they're salty as the ocean and for chicken or poultry. I then add sugar until I can just barely taste the sweetness and then go. I don't find that other flavors do too much to it, except for they flavor the outside quite effectively. In vacuum bag situations, you can get some permeation in, but not a lot,

[15:51] but, um, I promise, Nastasia's writing this down now. for me to do some research, maybe I'll go look in the modernist cuisine and see what they have to say about

[16:00] it and get back to you on that next week, right? Nastasia, making a note? She's pretend typing. By the way, folks, that's nostalgia's pretend typing, right? So I'll tell you when she's actually doing what I'm asking so that I can properly answer you

[16:13] sometime, but that wasn't it. Okay. So with that, let me go to our 1st commercial break. Call your questions two, 718, 497-2128, 718-497-2128.

[16:35] I've been holding that so long, I've been sleeping all alone. Oh, I miss you. I've been on the phone. I've been slipping all along. I won't keep skin.

[17:04] Welcome back to cooking issues. By the way, Jack, I don't know if we're going to get to it, but you had a shout out for good intern music. You like that? Anyway, we'll get to it in a minute. Okay, hello, Nastasia. My name is Jamie and my research on roto apps. That's road reevaporators, for all of you not hip to the fact, have led me time and time again to the cooking issues blog, which I have not updated in a long

[17:28] time, and I apologize more on that later. I am looking into using a roto vap for distilling produce from our 72 acre farm. I had a few questions that I was wondering if Dave may answer. Currently, we were looking into buying a larger Roto app for a line of spirits we intended

[17:41] distill in the near future. Depending on yield, we were looking into producing everything from start to finish, without rectifying any existing base spirits, i.e. by neutral spirits, uh, made off

[17:50] site and infusing them with uh, stuff and then redistilling them on the road of that. I understand the equipment will distill alcohol out of a solvent while maintaining the flavors to the truest form, which is

[17:59] true, that's the case. I just want to know how much can we rely on the road of app to get a low wine mash, low wine is a low

[18:07] alcohol product, or the 1st distillation run off of a normal thing, to an 80 proof

[18:13] finish liquor? I'm assuming, so 80 proof, 40%, finished liquor. Has Dave ever heard of distilling one's own base spirit through the

[18:20] Roto app? I've read that Dave personally buys low-end vodka, sometimes high-end, uh, to pay the taxes, uh, and not run into any legal issues with that aside, could it be done from the

[18:29] mass straight to the Rotavap, um, running it through again and again? Thanks, Jamie Oaks from Jamie at Tamworthgarden.com. Tamworth Garden. I'd love a garden full of Tamworth pigs, wouldn't you? Be delicious garden. Good. Okay. So here's the deal. First of all, even though I do buy pre-made spirits and redistill them, and therefore pay the taxes on it, it is still illegal. So it's still not legal for me to do it. You know, the reason it's illegal is because of tax bases, tax purposes, right? That's the reason that distillation is illegal. And our legal system hasn't figured out a way in most areas to kind of get around

[19:08] that. Although things hopefully are changing soon and have been changing in certain places. That said, the laws specifically are written to prevent someone with a 72 acre farm from taking all of their produce

[19:19] on site, converting it into liquor and selling it without paying taxes. So if you're going to be doing it, um, either just don't, you know, tell anyone that you're doing it, uh, or get

[19:28] a permit to do it, uh, because other, otherwise, like that's exactly the kind of thing that, uh, that those, those guys are looking at. Now, um, I have done, uh, you know, distillation uh, with uh, wine before. I've never distilled anything below about who starting alcohol content was below about 12%. So the lowest alcohol content thing that I've really ever. I mean, other than water, right? Other than just water-based stuff. is about 12%. And I was easily able to get brandies well above 40% on one pass, period. Bang. And it's because, um, uh, the way the Rotav app works, uh, you know, when everything's under uh, vacuum, you can get, um, uh, you know, it's been a long time since I've researched the curves, but you can get, uh, there's a certain uh, inherent,

[20:25] like theoretical reflux rate on the inside, so it doesn't work the same way as with normal distillation with plates and plus the vacuum shifts everything around in terms of what boils off first, et cetera, et

[20:33] cetera. But I have taken, well, let's take port, which I do all the time, like 18 to 20, put that in, and I'll

[20:40] get, I'll get a 100 proof brandy off, no sweat. No sweat. So, um, 100 proof. sorry. Yeah, 100 proof. So, yes, that's definitely feasible. Your speeds are going to be quite low because unlike a normal still, you're going to need to provide,

[20:58] uh, if you want to keep the temperatures extremely low to not affect the flavors of your fruits, you're going to have to use uh, a cooling power other than tap water. If you're using a cooling power other than tap water, you are going to have

[21:11] to, um, you're going to have to chill it. that's gonna be really expensive to chill all that stuff down. Alternatively, you can keep your temperatures somewhat higher, right? Uh, and then, uh, when your temperatures are higher, then you can use regular tap water or, you know, lime water, whatever process, you know, process water, stream water, whatever you have, to chill your roto app down, uh, and keep your margins uh, high enough on

[21:33] your, uh, the temperature between the, the water bath and the, uh, and the cooling water uh, large enough to be able to do a good job. But you have to test to see whether or not the stuff is going to taste the way you want it. Before you invest in a 20 and 30 liter rotary evaporator. I highly, highly recommend you

[21:51] invest in a small rotary evaporator because the process scales up quite well from a small

[21:59] roto app to a big roto app. So, you know, invest a couple of grand in a small Roto app or go find someone that has one that you can use. So you can see whether you like the procedure before you invest in something as big as a large rotary evaporator,

[22:12] right? Because there's a lot of, it takes a while to get to learn it. Another problem about doing base wines, like you're saying, is that most rotary evaporators don't have a way to separate heads from

[22:23] tails. And you're going to have a big, big problem on this. So what you're going to have to do, I mean, I designed a pump for my rotary evaporator that allows me to taste the distillate as it

[22:32] works, as it as it's produced, so I can do easy cuts between heads and tails when I'm doing a distillation, right?

[22:38] It makes my life a lot easier, but it's not something that's standardly available. If you need to do that, what you're going to need to do is over the course of your distillation run on the 1st pilot run, you're going to have to figure out for X number

[22:50] of milliliters or liters of stuff that I put into the distillation flask. I got to throw away the 1st X amount. You're going to do that by opening your system every, you know, chunk of time and tasting it to see whether you've gotten rid of the

[23:05] heads, and then at the same time, you're going to have to start tasting to see when the tails come in. And then hopefully that recipe scales from small to large. In my experience, it has scaled percentage wise. As long as your temperatures are the same. Your, uh, you know, your, the, the product that you're putting in is the same and the vacuum levels that you use are the same. these are all things that are going to have to be tweaked out. So I wish you the best of luck. And if you have any more questions, please write them in because everybody knows I love a Rotav app. Did I read the promo yet? Today's show is 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 and packages that make sense for the home cooking

[23:50] enthusiasts, and most costs only around 5 bucks, saving you time, money, and storage space. Whether you're looking for hydrocoloids, 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, monitors pantry as your one stop shop for innovative cooking ingredients. Fans of cooking issues that place an order of $50 or more, 50 gone up, huh? Fans of cooking issues that place an order of $50 or more before next week's show, we'll get a free home-sized package of any ingredient of your choice. That's pretty cool Any ingredient. Nice. Simply use the promo code CI 65 when placing your order online at

[24:30] modernestpantry.com and indicate in the comment box one ingredient you would like. Visit modernistpantry.com today for all of your modernist pantry cooking needs. 50 bucks though, huh? I guess in exchange they get to get any anyone that they want. Yeah. Okay. All right. By the way, Nastasia. Have you ever heard of Wolfman Jack? Oh, good. I was I was thinking on the way over, like, you know, like radio people I used to listen to when I was a kid, and whether you'd heard of them, if you hadn't heard of them, I was going to be incredibly

[25:00] depressed, like you're a 3 year old, and I'm 9000000 years old. You know, uh, uh, okay, I'm going to go to question, because otherwise, I'm going to run out of time. I was going to tell a story about my cherry allergy and my hoping that by getting my tonsils out, I could fix it, but how all my hopes were dashed and I'm incredibly depressed about it. Anyway, Jason Molinari writes in. Uh, 2 questions. Recently, some new studies have shown that many or most plastic leech estrogenic chemicals, which have been shown to be harmful to fetal and young mammals messing with development.

[25:31] This is a particular concern to me, given that I have a 2.5 year old girl, I should probably say 2.5 . Yeah. 2.5 year old girl, and we often eat sous vide food. I understand research seems to be incomplete, but you may have access to other articles or studies which I do not. Should I be freaking out, or is this another item blown out of proportion? And then there's a link to the relevant study, and you'll have to, you'll have to excuse me for one minute while I call up said relevant study. But the relevant study is... Oh, no,

[26:04] please tell me I didn't close it. Okay. is astrogenic. That's a good word to start with anything, right? If you're writing if you're writing anything, a book, magazine article, anything, start it with the word estrogenic. Most plastic products released estrogenic chemicals. A potential health problem that can be solved. And this is a fairly recent article, I think, from July of 2011. And look, this article was new to me. I read it this morning, and I read some other articles on this subject, but the point is basically that there's a whole clash of chemicals called endocrine

[26:36] disruptors that mess with your hormones and can do things like cause early puberty in girls or can have kind of delayed sexual development in

[26:48] boys, it just messes you up all around, kind of. And so as a result of this, many people have stayed away from, for instance, baby bottles containing the

[26:56] ingredient, what's that? containing the ingredient, BPA, Bisphenol A. So this is something that's been kind of bubbling under the surface. People have been worried about certain plastics, but the theory has been that the plastics that don't contain known endocrine disruptors are okay. So what this study did was they took a whole boatload of different plastics. And basically they sent the researchers over the course of 4 years out to various supermarkets and food chains, purchased both empty and full plastic

[27:34] containers, and then subjected them to a bunch of tests to try to see whether they could leech crap out of these things, including microwave heating, including soaking it in alcohol, including soaking it in salt, things like that, different various heating machines.

[27:49] And unfortunately, and then what they would do is they take the, whatever they did, you know, whatever whatever the liquid was, they used to leach, and they would apply it to see whether or not it bound, um, to have an assay, to see, they have an assay for uh, you know, for estrogen,

[28:03] um, uh, estrogen, uh, estrogenic products. And they said, is there a reaction on this assay that we can see that there

[28:10] are active components in here that could be endocrine disruptors? Okay. Bad news. I'll give you the bad news. The bad news is, according to this study, many things that you would think are safe, including baby bottles that are labeled BPA

[28:23] free. In fact, can leech crap out. And even plastics that are free of plasticizers. For instance, polyethylene, can have additives added to the plastics that make them release some form of, you know, like estrogenically active compound into foods under certain

[28:42] conditions. So that's the bad news. This is very new research. So I really don't know what to make of it. I looked up some of the other relevant articles on it. Um, and, you know, there's, there's just not really uh, enough. No, part of the problem is, is that there's no kind of no, no,

[29:02] no, minimum level at which kind of where this stuff is okay, uh, and, you know, and the research is still being done. The good news was I couldn't look over the charts thoroughly and like really digest them, but it looks like things like plastic wrap had fairly low levels compared to other

[29:18] things of having things leeching out of them. PETG bottles that were free of BPA tended to leach stuff because the actual monomer itself is it has some activity, some mandocry disruption activity. And if it's not fully, if it degrades over time, that can that can leach out, apparently, according to the article. And so I, I don't know, I just don't know. Uh, it's kind of, uh, it's an interesting subject, and I hope to look uh, into it um, more. Um, I was a little upset to find that things that I knew were free of these sorts

[29:56] of, uh, um, endocrine disruptors in terms of what the actual makeup the plastics were when tested, uh, had some activity in them. I don't know that this stuff's been retested. I got to look into it. anyway. Two, and on a lighter note, can you give me any ideas for some pan sauces, it might go with low temperature fish, meat and poultry. So it's not cooked in a pan except for a super quick sear. There usually isn't any deglazable fond in the pan. And let's face it, a low temperature fillet of cod can be pretty boring even if flavorings are used in the bag. Okay, a couple things you do. One, take the bones or whatever else, and make a stock. If you're doing chicken or doing fish, you know, well, fish, you're not going to brown it. But, you know, chicken, you brown out the bones, make a stock, reduce it and make a sauce that way. In fish, typically what cooks are going to do is they're going to add something that's very high in umami to a

[30:45] finished sauce. That's why a lot of times when these fish came out, you'd see a lot of things with miso sauces, with soy-based sauces, sauces that handle out of those brown notes and those kind of brown characteristics that you would want that you don't get in those high, high temperature things, but it's true that a

[31:01] plain, low temperature filet of cod can be pretty boring unless it's so low temperature that you haven't killed the worms and the worms are still moving around on the inside of a cod.

[31:07] Nastasia, did you know that cod has all sorts of worms in it? Are you ever going to eat cot again? You know, whenever students, the 1st time they butcher cod at the, at the school or wherever, the 1st time you butcher

[31:17] cod, and you see the little worms coming out of it, you're like, I like to, you know what? You've been eating cod your whole life. We cooked the worms out. Speaking of cooked, the worms out, that reminds me of bleach the rabies out, which is Kent Kirschenbaum, our friend at NYU, professor at NYU, his favorite thing that I ever said was

[31:38] bleach the rabies out when I have a new centrifuge, and he was just on Sid the Science Kid. Well, if you next time you have a little kid. Sid, the science kid is like, you know, a show on the TV that little kids watch. Anyway, cool that Ken Sons said the science kid. Okay. I hope that was a good answer. Is that a good answer? Yeah. From Jason Mullen, right. Okay. We have a question in from Matt. how do you think you pronounce that? Hasa? Has? Has? Has? Has? Okay. Love the show. Use iTunes to listen. In regards to braising jus color. This is, by the way, a response where we said, does anyone else have a good way to get the sauce color?

[32:17] Remember? Yeah. So this is a response from Matt. He also has a response for good plating ideas, I think. Okay. and then a question. Okay. So, uh, in regards to braising uh, color, braising sauce color. I learned a technique from Paul Bartolotto, who learned it from George Robuchon on refreshing sauces. The technique is good, not only for color, but flavor as well. But for every service, bring the sauce to a boil. And in a separate pot for a red wine sauce, reduce a half bottle of wine, along with aromatics and roasted shanks of meat scraps or scraps of meat. I don't know what shanks of meat scraps. When the wine is very close to being reduced, crank both pots and slowly incorporate the base into the reduction. Do this 2 ounces at a time, and when you're done, the sauce will be very ruby and have all the flavors reinforced. The color will last for around 5 hours. We did this every service with all of our sauces. Good tip. Good tip. On the topic of fancy presentation for the home cooking. This is a really good tip, by the way. I hadn't thought of it because we're stupid. That's why. YouTube, some baller chef demos to see how they played. French chef.tv has some demos as well, as well as the Alinea slash next videos. That's a really good idea. So so stupid. Everyone on YouTube now has like famous people doing plating work. Why am I such an idiot? And why didn't you suggest that to me? We're useless. Anyway, thanks, Matt. Those are 2 excellent. A good tip and a really good idea. Anyway, finally, I have a question. Is there a specific formula for savory ice creams and sorbets? I have formulas for sweet versions where the solid sugars and liquids are balanced, adapted from Sebastian Canon, who's from the French pastry school, are

[33:52] a competitor in, what's it called? Chicago. Also seen on Michael Lisconis's blog. Ran into Michael Scottis the other day at Sambar, by the way. Oh, yeah. It was? Well, and he told me it was his birthday. What is it? Happy birthday. He's like, oh, I saw Michael Scott's there, his birthday. I know I'm going into to see what's going on. you guys say hello, you're not going to say happy birthday. Nice. So I didn't say happy birthday to guy. him and his wife, Heather, is the GM at Aldea, George Mendes's restaurant. Anyways, now I feel like a jackass for not saying happy birthday. But I was commenting his last, you know, it's pastry chef Armageddon right now. Johnny Ezzini from Jean George is leaving JG, and Michael Escanis is leaving La Bernadan. And I was like, when's your last day? Like, he's like, December 30th. I'm like, what are you, a sissy? You can't go all the way to the 31st and finish lawyer. LeBron Dan's closed on New Year's. I was like, oh, oh. Anyway, uh, good guy, Michael Scott. Okay. All the sorbets and ice cream using this formulation are great. The only thing I've changed is maybe adding non-fat milk protein, a.k.a. dry

[34:53] milk to certain sorbets, although that's going to make them more milky, which is going to make them more like a sherbet, right? Anyway. Do most people substitute isomalt for sucrose or just make a yummy base and hit it with liquid nitrogen? Okay. You can't just hit a base with liquid nitrogen and get a really good result. You can get a sore because the sugar is there as a texturizing agent, right? You need that sugar there to get a proper texture. Otherwise, even with liquid nitrogen, it's gonna be hard. It's not gonna feel right in the mouth. I wouldn't substitute. I mean, you can substitute isomalt. Some people claim that it gives you the runs if you eat too much, but that's never happened to me and I've eaten a bunch once

[35:35] just. The reason is you just don't digest it as much. That's why they say that. I would move to isomalt. I'm going to have to remember. I'm making this up Uh, it's something like 50, 30 to 50% is sweet as sucrose, so it is substantially less sweet, but

[35:49] uh, glucose syrup is even less sweet than um, than isomalt. And I don't know whether it gives you the poops or not. I don't think it gives you the poops, the glucose syrup. So I would go with glucose syrup, which is what you can use are very low DE, um, uh, corn, you know, corn base or syrup. Everyone says corn syrup, you know, look, it's 1st of all, if high fructose corn syrup is what's causing the entire world to fall apart, you know, whether it is or whether it

[36:17] isn't. Not all corn syrups or high foot dose corn syrup, let's just say that right now. Anyway, so a low DE, in other words, non-sweet corn syrup would be the way I would go as opposed to using isomalt. Although I have used isomalt as well. And it works. You just need something that has the water binding properties of,

[36:35] although nice. Anyway, of and the texturizing properties of sugar. Otherwise, the texture is not going to be right. Anyway, I'll try to find some recipes or if you're having problems working out a formulation, just give us another holler and I'll call one of my buddies and figure out the exact numbers.

[36:50] Okay. Question in from Ellie. This is, you know, we remember we had a problem pronouncing. Yeah, she pronunciation guide now. Ellie, like Eddie, but with an L. Okay. I am now on my 2nd immersion circulator unit from eBay in the last 3 years.

[37:07] I'm thinking I should have spent the money on a new one from polyscience instead. Yeah, you know what? I think I said this a 1000000 times. I used to I used to buy circulators constantly off of eBay and then spend all my time keeping them running. And the 1st time I got a new, excuse me, something wrong with my face. I knew polyscience. I was like, wow, this is what it's like to not be a

[37:27] D-bag. Anyway, what? Right, right? No. Anyway, Nastasia's tapping her watch, meaning I have to hurry. Yes, you probably should have. Anyway, the one that the one that's now, the one I have now is a very nice looking digital Lauda with barely any cosmetic damage and it holds the temperature perfectly.

[37:43] For all intents and purposes, it looks barely used. I've had it for maybe 2 months now, and it used to work almost silently, just humming along. Now it seems to be developing a slight grating noise. Nothing very noisy or terribly annoying, but I remember you mentioning that some immersion circulators develop that noise after long-term use. The problem is, I do not remember if you said it was something that could be fixed with some WD 40 or is a problem that will get worse and worse until the machine is unusable in a month or two. Any help is much appreciated. Okay, 1st of all, I don't know which laudi you have. I used to buy loud as all the time. They looked awesome, and they looked barely used, and they all died. They all died on me. What died on them was the Triac. And the ones that I'd use, most of them. I had somewhere the motor went, where the inside, the triac would burn out, so it wouldn't heat anymore. It would still run. The kind of noise you're getting depends. You have to make a decision, uh, and the new loudest probably that doesn't happen to, uh, or newer. Um, you have to figure out whether it's a bearing noise, which it sounds like, like it's a bearing noise, hard to describe, or whether it sounds like the shaft is rubbing on something. If the shaft is rubbing on something, try to bend the bottom a little bit so that the shaft no longer touches any metal

[38:48] parts and that just stop it and then you're good to go for a long time. If it's the bearing making the noise. Then you're kind of in a world of hurt

[38:57] eventually, I have kept them running for months and months and months by spraying with WD40, but remember WD40 ain't food grade. So you don't want to do it too much. And it's very easy to test. Hit the bearing with a little WD-40. and if the squeaking and scraping goes away then it's your bearing. If not, then the shaft is touching on something. Hold on, which jack tone is? Oh, we have a collar? Color, you are on the air. Hey, Dave and Nastasia. This is Sarah Beth's dad. Hey, on Anne. Hey, how you doing? Nice. Good. Did we answer did we answer the question or no? Did work? You did. You sure did. We ended up, uh, so we ended up putting the meat in a uh, boiling water. So now we joke. going to go boil up some steaks for some friends. So, yeah, yeah. So, um, we got 3 different cuts of steak from the same lie. Uh, so it was pretty, hopefully the marbling would stay consistent. And then we put it in a double boiler. So that way the meat didn't hit the bottom of the pan. Right. And then got, got a, got a probe. Just one of the instant reed thermometers that only registered at the tip. And then we put that horizontally into the meat. And um, numbers were almost dead on with the, with the 4 times. And we haven't, we haven't attempted the uh, the equations yet, but uh, we downloaded the app and all that stuff, so we're playing around with that right now. And your numbers, your numbers, uh, jibed with the applications

[40:21] numbers, roughly or? No, no, with that, with that, um, roughly 4 times, you know, the, the, the inch was just

[40:28] about roughly, you know, equal to, you know, when you add in the, the inch to the inch and a half to the 2 inches, it was like a pretty straight, straight line with the times.

[40:38] Really? Yeah, yeah. It shouldn't be straight, though. it shouldn't be linear Yeah, well, that's what it that's what it grafted out of. That's why we're going to, we're going to break out that app and play with that a little bit and see, you know,

[40:52] because it, because it, um, you know, that's what it showed, but like you were saying, it shouldn't be linear.

[40:56] No, no, every every double, every doubling of thickness should be a factor of four. Yeah, yeah. So that's why we're going to break out the thing and see if, you know, maybe something was wrong in our experiment or or just run the math on it and double check it. That's an expensive cut to boil, huh? Oh, you're telling me. I mean, if you're not going to eat it, get like eye of round or something like that because it's got very low fat content in it and it's a lot

[41:24] cheaper. Tastes bad when it's cooked a long time because it goes livery and it doesn't have any fat. So it's not my favorite cut to eat, but if you're going to be boiling

[41:33] it. I mean, how did it taste after you boiled it? Uh, well, yeah, I could have used it for my shoes. It was pretty, pretty tough. Pretty tough. You know, but what I did just for grins, I put it in a hot pan and I, you know, we seared it with some olive oil and garlic and all that, try to dress it up a little bit,

[41:49] but yeah. Once you boil it, sucker's boiled. One last question. How, um, what was the, uh, like, uh, okay, let's say thickness is the Z to mention. How large was the X and Y? Oh, as far as the size of it? Um, they were fairly consistent. So the, if we, we, we took the steak and we cut it in half, so it was like

[42:11] 2, 2 pieces for each size, and they were about 4 inches by 4 inches.

[42:19] you know, but it was it was circumference, but it was like a slab. Right, but a lot bigger, a lot bigger X and Y than Z. Yeah, okay, good. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. approximating a slab. Good, good, good. Exactly. Well, you know, I'm surprised it came out as a linear relationship, I'm

[42:42] going to, you're going to have to, like, fill me in. You have to do some tests with that app. See what it tells what should happen. That's what we're going to do. And the other problem was, you know, we only had like, what, 2 pieces for each thickness, so we didn't have a lot of data points to graph either. Right. Yeah, may I recommend in the future a cheaper cut? Yes. Duly noted. Yeah. Yeah, but my daughter loves your podcast. We were we were listening to it on the on the way to school this morning. Oh, wow. So, yeah, yeah. And and don't worry, I pre-screen most of them for the for the cursing. We try not, well, you know, we really, we try not to do it now, especially because, you know, we now label as a family show. You know, surprisingly, in the real life, I'm the one you have to worry about, but on the air, Nastasia is the one you have to worry about. isn't that strange Uh-huh. I'm not saying any I'm not saying anything. Anybody that's called the hammer, I'm just going to be quiet. All righty. Well, listen, thanks so much for calling. Do you have a separate question or no? No, no, I was just calling to let you guys know that we heard it and we, uh, we did the thing. So, uh, we'll play around with that app and uh, let you know what happened. Cool, thanks so much. Yeah. All right. All right. a good one. Bye. All right. One question we had that I'm going to actually, I know I'm going to postpone to the next one from Howard is with the holiday season winding up, I was wondering, and the reason is going to become apparent. I was wondering if you had any suggestions for kitchen gadget, equipments, and gifts with the holiday season. If you could include some things from a variety of price ranges, that would be great. And I figured this would be a good thing for us to actually discuss on next week's show and to give anyone who's

[44:19] listening an opportunity to write in with what they think good idea would be. What do you think? Smart? I mean, I have my ideas, but, you know, I can, you know, I can do more. Another thing, just to quicken. Kevin writes in, says hope all is well. Just want to drop a quick line, let you know that carbonating vodka with a soda stream system works quite

[44:38] well, and he's attached pictures. And I didn't get a chance to look at the pictures yet, but he said, I use the same tubing I use for an aquarium pump. I have connected to my do yourself immersion circulator. Um, and he recommends using a soda screen to vent out, trapped air before pressurizing for the 1st time to get the pressures high. This is a technique I've advocated for a while if you have a soda stream of putting an extender tube on the end of

[44:58] it so that you can actually carbonate with a smaller amount of liquor and actually have the tube sit below the level. Because if you don't do that, you're not going to get good carbonation. If you fill it up high enough, the problem is it's going to overflow when it

[45:12] foams because vodka wants to foam a little bit after it carbonates. But I will say this also. Kevin, keep tuned. We're going to have, uh, and I'll talk more about it, but I have some new carbonation stuff coming out that's

[45:22] going to, uh, it's going to blow everyone's mind, right? going to blow everyone's mind. How much time do I have left? What? All right. So listen, I have some questions in. For instance, I have another question in from Ellie about Algernate. I'm going to get to that one next time. Colin wrote in with some typical common kind of stuff and we'll get to that next time. And Kangbur wrote in, actually, after you got to speak to us. And by the way, I was giving, you know, Jack. He's the one that says that he no longer fast forwards because he enjoys your choice of

[45:52] Segway music so much. It was an awesome email. Thanks, man. Yeah, so Jack says, thank you, and I'm going to get more to what you wrote about. Other than that, next week. Today we're out of time and this has been cooking issues.

[46:09] Vicious, fish, and vodka. Oh, you did. When you've got Omaha

[46:23] Steaks, convenient everyday protein, waiting at home, that what's for dinner panic turns into your weeknight win. And now's the time to buy during the Omaha Steak Spring Savings event. Save big on their exclusive lineup of mouthwatering steaks, gourmet burgers, air chilled chicken, pork, seafood and more. Go to OmahaSteaks.com for an extra $35 off when you use promo code audio at checkout.

[46:46] That's OmahaStakes.com. Promo code A-U-D-IO. Terms apply, see site for details.