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

[0:20] Fishes, fish and vodka. Hello, and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cookies. coming to you live from roughly 12 to 1245 every Tuesday in the back of Roberta's Pizzeria

[0:34] in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on the Heritage Radio Network. Call all of your questions too, 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. Jack, I hear we already have a call. Is this true? Caller, you are on the air. Hey, I had a reverse verification question for you. Messed around with it for the 1st time this last weekend and had a miserable failure

[0:54] before I waste a bunch more. I wanted to see if you had any recommendations. All right, before you start, for those of you who don't know what we're talking about. Spherification is a technique where you make little balls out of things using

[1:06] hydrocolloid, the most famous one is sodium alginate. The problem with that is that the balls turn solid over time and they're unpleasant if they're solid because the

[1:15] algernate steals all the flavor. So there's a technique called reverse verification where you basically form just a thin layer of

[1:21] alginate gel around a liquid and it stays liquid in the center forever, but it's a more difficult

[1:27] technique. All right, so shoot, what's the problem? Okay, well, I guess, 1st of all, working with the distilled water for the bath, um, I guess

[1:37] my, uh, sodium citrate maybe is what seemed to be settling out of it. Um, I didn't notice it until after I had blended it and was trying to pour it into the bath. I didn't think there was enough left in the bottom. I went ahead and proceeded with it anyway. Uh, so it may have been a, uh, a week, uh, sodium, I guess, using both the sodium algenate and sodium citrate in the, in the bath. Um, how sensitive is that to, um, Okay. All right, so again, so people don't know what we're talking about. In your, when you're doing a reverse verification, your flavor has a calcium source in it, and the bath that you drop that flavor into has

[2:19] alginate, and then usually something to stabilize the alginate in it. And that algerate then forms an instant kind of envelope around your flavor. Now, before we go any further, the sodium citrate should not settle out,

[2:32] are you you're using, you said, distilled water? Correct. Distilled water in a stick blender? Right. So sodium citrate shouldn't come out of it, and you shouldn't have a problem with the algernate in the bath. Um, the, uh, I mean, I don't use, really,

[2:49] citrate is, is, soyum citrate axe in 2 ways. It's a PH buffer, right? Because the algerate doesn't want the pH to go too low. If it does, it'll start gelling and turning goopy and ropey on you. And it's a it acts somewhat as a sequestran, which means it it binds excess calcium in there. But a lot of that sequestering activity is really due to more of its buffering capacity. If you want a really good sequestrate, you want to move to sodium hexametophosphate shrimp, which is available, I believe, through our one of our

[3:21] sponsors, modern pantry. But what kind of failure are you getting out of it? Are you getting, is the, is the bath turning ropey and nasty on you? Or what, what's the failure mode? It was, uh, the vap was pretty, uh, it was pretty thick but clear. Right. Okay. And what is the failure mode? What's what's exactly is happening? Um, I, I guess when uh, when I'm dropping the, the base into it, um, I'm actually getting different results. I tried with 3 different things in the same bath. Um, I was using a rum, uh, using calcium lactate and a little bit of xanthem gum, and it was dropping into it

[4:01] and almost immediately dispersing. On the surface? very near the surface. Yeah. Right. Okay. Okay, next. I'm wondering whether your problem is you're not getting. I'm wondering where your problem is you're not getting a good drop out of it. One of the problems with reverse spherification is you need to have a fairly thin alginate base in order to get the stuff to drop in properly, and if

[4:23] it, if it's, if the, if it's too viscous, right, you'll just get like a pancake effect on the surface where

[4:30] it'll maybe it'll hollow out a little bit, but it'll just spread wide, and then it'll form like kind of wisps of gel within it. Was it gelling? It just was dispersing? No, it was, it was gelling, and when you, when you're describing wisps of gel, that's almost exactly what the, what the rum base was doing. Right. I think your main problem there is you maybe need to go thicker on the, on the rum are add some heft to the, because also, remember, alcohol is fairly light compared to, uh, so you add some heft to it. I mean, with either sugar or glucose syrup or something like that to add some heft so that it wants to go down, add some viscosity to it,

[5:04] like even over and above this anthang gum. Another problem with Xanthan, did you did you get all of the air out of the rum before you dropped it in or was it still cloudy? Um, it was, uh, the rum was just a little bit cloudy. I let it sit for several hours, but it was still a little bit cloudy. Do you have access to a vacuum machine? Uh, no, I don't. Right. So you're only really, your only really way to do it is to wait for it to kind of settle out. But if you don't want to add Xanthan, you could add other, you're going to need to add some Xanthan, but you could add some other bodying agents like glucose syrup or like corn syrup, something to give it some extra density so it wants to

[5:43] sit and you're going to need to make sure that the stuff you're dropping in doesn't have air bubbles because the air bubbles are just going to sit on the surface and prevent a good drop from forming. What percentage of alternate and what brand are you using? Um, I don't know what the brand was. It came from one of your sponsors when you mentioned a moment ago. Um, and I'm, I was using, uh, what is it, uh, 2.5 grams to, uh, to 500 grams of water? Uh, 2 to 5 is 4 to one. So, so 0.4%. Yeah, sounds 4 grams in a liter? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds right. Yeah, that's right. yeah, right. That's really low. I mean, in other words, um, so, I mean, everything depends on the

[6:30] alginate. I've never used modernist pantry's alginate, so I don't know kind of what's going on with it, but, you know, Algernate's coming, a variety of viscosities from a low viscosity

[6:41] algernate to a high viscosity algernate. The one I use, I use a medium and a high viscosiogenit from FMC biopolymers, the one that I typically use when I'm doing this. And with those, you want to, with, for the high viscosity one, I usually want to be around 8 grams in a liter. In order to get like a good gel to form.

[7:00] And the other one, maybe even, you could go a little lower with the high viscosity one, like, you know, seven grams per liter, uh,

[7:08] but yeah, like down at .4, it's going to be hard to form a quick thing and that might also be causing your dispersal problems. If you, and by the way, alginate, especially if you have all the stuff in the back, you can heat it to get rid of the bubbles. And in fact, when you heat it, you're going to be decreasing its viscosity. So if you're having viscosity issues. You can do reverse verification into hot alginate bath. It's not going to hurt anything. You don't want it to be so hot that it's going to boil the alcohol out of your rum, right? But assuming that that's not a problem, you can go that way. Let me give you another thing you can do, depending on what size of balls you want to make. You can, you can, if you have a silpat, you can just take, and this way you don't need to thicken it at all. You can just take drops of and put drops onto a silpat and then let them freeze up. If they're small enough drops, they, you know, they'll pancake out, but you'll still be able to get a good drop on it. And then just put those drops in one by one, they'll thaw almost instantly, especially if you're using a hot

[8:04] alginate bath, and that'll let you get it underneath. But I would try to get your alginate bath higher than 4 grams per liter. I would get it up to like, you want it as low as you can, obviously, but you might want to try like seven,

[8:17] 8 grams per liter. Uh, try it hot, make sure you get all the air out of it and try to put a little more body into

[8:23] the, um, into your, into your, uh, rum. How much calcium lactate per liter were you adding? You're using calcium lactate or calcium lactate glucinate? Uh, I was using calcium lactate. Okay, how much? And I was at I was at 30 grams per liter. 30? Correct. Uh, says 3%. That's that's high. Is that what they, is that what they told you on the website to add? Correct. Yeah. Could you taste it? I mean, that's enough calcium, in other words. should work. Yeah, I could, I could taste it a little bit. Right. In general, I mean, that's high. You could get the calcium lactate glucinate. It's gonna make a softer gel, but the 1st thing I would do is get it

[9:08] geling properly. Once it's geling properly, then start dialing the calcium back.

[9:13] And so what I would do then is I would make your rum mixture first, right? And then I would hold some back with no calcium in it at all, right? And then, and then take your one and add the calcium to it. And then as an experiment, just keep adding the uncalcium stuff back to it until it doesn't gel right anymore. And then you'll you'll get a feeling for exactly how much calcium is going to be required in that application. Okay, that sounds like a good idea. That's what it'll do. Another problem with reverse verification is that if the if the balls touch each other underneath the alginate bath, they'll glue each other, they'll glue themselves together because of that, in other words, the

[9:53] alginate will start bonding and then they'll be hard to break apart. So you want to make sure when you take them out to very quickly put them

[10:00] into basically like a pure water solution to get them separated and to rinse the extra alginate off and then to store them in a back basic, the best thing to do is to have enough of your

[10:11] flavor base left to store the balls in the flavor base. If you store the balls in the flavor base, which has some calcium in it, they'll last forever or until they spoil, right? If you store them in water, then all of the very quickly, all of the flavor and color will be leached out of them. And somewhere in between is to store it in a basically a sugar and alcohol solution of the same relative sweetness and same relative alcohol level as your balls.

[10:37] And that's kind of the intermediate. So when I, the thing that I use reverse verification for most is maple syrup balls that I put inside of

[10:44] pancakes. And when I do that, I basically store them in the maple syrup. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, good Good, good. Okay. So give that a shot. Good thing. Yeah, thank you so much. Awesome show. Listen to you guys all the time happen for a while. Thanks so much. We appreciate it. All right. So how you doing, Nastasia? Good, how are you? All right. All right. What's up? Nothing, just looking at cues. Oh, we got cues? What going on? I think it's fine. All right. All right. So, uh, anything new happening in the world of uh, cooking issues slash Nastasia Lopez the past uh, week? No, Dave. Nothing? Nothing. Had nothing going. Actually, we've been working. We've been with you like 24 hours. Yeah, we've been at the bar. Like basically nothing new can happen except we've been at the bar, right? I mean, that's basically the only new things that happen. I tried yesterday. So we've had some calls from a show that wants us on maybe in

[11:38] California and we've been doing some crazy tests for that. yesterday I had to make a hurricane. you're familiar with the hurricane? It's like, you know, nowadays, a god-awful rum drink is invented by a guy, Pat O'Brien, apparently, in New Orleans, who was given a whole bunch of rum. Right after prohibition, he opened up and

[11:56] basically he couldn't buy the good liquors from the distributor unless he also took rum, which at the time nobody really wanted.

[12:03] And so he had to find something to do with all of that rum. And so he mixed like a couple kinds of rum and passionfruit syrup and pomegranate syrup. And, you know, some other stuff. And there's the hurricane. It was served in giant glasses. basically to get you F'd up, which is how it works now in New Orleans anyway, but the quality is just even lower than

[12:21] back then. New Orleans, you know, is like the home of the crappy fake daiquiri shop. In fact, last time I was in New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail, one of the bartenders was working at a dinner that I was at. I forget who it was. And she had ordered a daiquiri machine to come and a fella who showed up to tweak out the daiquiri machine. I had no idea what an actual daiquiri was, and we made and served him an actual daiquiri. He was like, no, no, that's not a that's not a daiquiri. Like a daiquiri is basically Kool-Aid and like rum in one of these frozen

[12:52] machines. horrible, horrible, horrible stuff. The current hurricane is made with a powdered mix that might as well be Kool-Aid,

[13:00] uh, but it just doesn't taste quite as good as Kool-Aid does if that if that's humanly possible. So it's just a horrible, horrible thing. Anyway, so we tried to make what we thought was a good hurricane. So I basically took pomegranate, smacked out the seeds, muddled them because I didn't want to blend them to get the bitterness in from their little pips on the seeds, added them to passionfruit puree, hit it with SPL, and spun it out in a

[13:25] centrifuge, and got an amazing bright red, awesome flavored kind of passionfruit slash pomegranate syrup that, you know, is tart enough to use in place of lime

[13:36] juice in a daiquiri style recipe. Made it, actually tasted quite good. Problem was that the show wanted me to do something carbonated. So I carbonated and it tasted awful, right? Pretty much. You agree? Yeah, I don't really like most carbonated rum drinks except for like dark and stormies and things like that because the ginger really helps it out, but like I think I said this before in the show, like carbonated rum often ends up tasting like Cisco, if you remember Cisco, which was a carbonated 20% alcohol beverage from

[14:02] the 80s or 90s. It was just dreadful, dreadful, dreadful stuff. But then at the behest of some of the bartenders sitting, Tristan and Nick at Booker over Booker and Dax, our bar, was like, let's make a Jenna Kane. And we made a jinna cane. We made like a gin hurricane, and that was delicious, delicious, delicious. anyway. So that's the kind of crap we're working on nowadays. Okay. So, uh, go, call in more questions, by the way. 7184972128. 718-4972128. We have a coming in on last week's show from Paul, uh, who in, uh, it's about the, remember we had someone who wanted to know how to tell whether their mom was allergic to a particular kind of fish because their mom was allergic to fish scales.

[14:43] And we, uh, or no, sorry, not fish scales, to, uh, fish with scales. And we had a discussion that basically the scale is just a marker of where the fish is in the evolutionary

[14:51] chain and so they need to stay away from that particular whole group of fish. Paul enjoyed our explanation of it, but had an interesting way to very simply find out whether or not it's got

[15:03] scales. And that is, is it kosher? Paul says, check the internet to see if a particular fish is kosher, i.e. if it's permissible under Jewish dietary laws. There are always tons of Q and A's on the internet about what is and isn't kosher. Kosher fish must have scales as well as fins. Please note that the inverse is not necessarily true. It could have scales but not be kosher, but this might definitely be an easy 1st test for her.

[15:26] Kosher equals definitely has scales, so your mom definitely can't have it, and not kosher equals might not have scales.

[15:33] So, in other words, if it is kosher, your mom can't have it. But just because it's not kosher, doesn't mean your mom can't have it. Makes sense. Very good. Thanks, Paul. That's a good idea. And then, you know, beyond that, go and look up where it is in the evolutionary chain, and see, you know, where it fits. Is it a, you know, tiios, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. Uh, two. For Matthew, and this question goes out to the good people in the engineering room, Jack and

[16:00] Carlos, I'm a big fan of your show and spend plenty of time listening to the archives. It always helps my dishwashing slash house cleaning time go down a little smoother.

[16:08] Can you believe someone's actually doing work while they're listening? It's crazy, right? Yeah. It's nice. I like that. Anyway, why, Jack? Do you cut off the last 5 minutes or so from any of the shows on the archives? It's important that we hear every last word that Nastasia and I have to say,

[16:23] thanks, Matthew. Well, I don't know if it's important to hear every last word we have to say, but Jack, not to put you on the

[16:29] spot, or is Jack back there or Carlos, what's the explanation for that? What going on? There's stunned. Wait, Jack's coming. We'll look into it. All right, all right, all right. All right, Matthew, we'll take care of it. Okay, so listen, with that, let's go to our 1st commercial break. Call on all of your questions too, 718-497-2128. 718-497-2128 cooking issues. It don't matter anyway. You can rely on the old man's money, you can rely on the old man's money. It's a bitch, girl, but it's gone too far 'cause you know it don't matter anyway. Say money, money won't get you too far, get you too far. Don't you know?

[17:18] That is wrong, wrong. To take what is given you so far gone on your own. But you can get along. You're trying to be strong. But you'll never be strong. But you're a rich girl Bitch, can you go too far? Because you know it don't matter anyway. But yeah, you can rely on your old math money. You can rely on the own... I take full responsibility for show cutouts. Sorry. Sorry, guys. Well, that is no problem, but I'll tell you something. I hate it when she lets it go too far because she knows it doesn't freaking matter because she can rely on the old man's

[18:01] money. It's so disappointing, isn't it? So disappointing. You know, you should stand on your own. Don't rely on the old man's money. Anyway. Apparently we have a caller. Caller, you are on the air. Hi, uh, I'm, of course, I, I'm, uh, I'm looking to do the, uh, well, I

[18:20] have a, for beer, I have my, uh, my hot water tank is controlled by a PID, and I was wondering if there was any issues with using such a large volume of

[18:30] water because it was probably about 10 gallons. 10 gallons. Well, how many watts is your heater? Uh, I've got a, I've got a two. I've got one of the 5500 watt and one's a 4500 watt and then I've got a pump that I can use for circulating back into it. to keep it moving. All right, with that kind of wattage, uh, so I mean, I'm going to do a quick calculation here, a 1000 watts, about 28 liters, assume it's fairly

[18:55] linear. Yeah, you should be fine. As long as your pump gets good movement through it, as long as your PID is

[19:01] stabilizing, uh, within like a couple of tenths of a degree, up or down, uh, which is it? Is it stabilizing properly? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Then you shouldn't have any problem. Uh, you know, just, you just want to make sure that you don't have any huge dead spots in the circulation and that when you put your packages

[19:21] in that they, um, that they, you know, that there's a lot of, that there's water circulating around them. As long as you have water circulating on all sides, you should be okay. The other thing I'd be cautious of on certain items, if you're going to do eggs, is if you're circulating that much water, you don't want it to be

[19:38] too, too violent, or the stuff's going to get knocked about in there, or you could have a situation where if you don't have the stuff properly contained, the circulation is just going to push it all to one corner of the bath, all of your bags will pile up, and then the

[19:52] bags in the center are going to take a long time to come up to temperature, which could be problematic in certain recipes.

[19:57] Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But your wattage should be more than enough. I've never had the pleasure of fooling around with a circulator that's 5 kilowatts, but

[20:09] it sounds like it should be a lot of fun. What are you cooking? You know, I'm just kind of glad to do everything. Probably, you know, I have chicken, so probably a lot of eggs. Probably what? I'm having a little bit of a bad connection. What did she say? What do you say, brother? eggs? Yeah, a lot of eggs. Yeah, a lot of eggs, a lot of chicken for the most part. All right. So if you're, uh, if you, yeah, so again, just make sure that the eggs don't get knocked around uh, too much. And the other issue, obviously, is you're using quite a lot of power. Uh, you know, um, so if you had the, if you have the PID controller and whatnot, you might want to make a secondary bath that's smaller, like, you know, 2 kilowatts and like 28 liters or something like that, which would be, is twice what was normally be used in 28

[20:53] liters to get up to temperature really, really fast, but just you don't want to be in a situation where you're pulling out those big guns all the time. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And I assume you're running that guy off 220. So if you're going to run that guy, what? Yeah. Yeah. So if you run that thing off of 120 instead, right,

[21:13] you'll get about a quarter of the power, so that'll get it down to normal range. So if you just make an alternate plug situation or run it off of 120 instead of 220, assuming the amperage works out okay, you should then be able to use it as a lower wattage

[21:26] item, it might be a problem with your pump, you might need to get a secondary pump, but you shouldn't need to get a

[21:31] 2nd heater element. Does that make sense? Yeah, that helps a lot. Now, if I was looking at, you've got me very interested in this rotary evaporator and I have money to burn. That's a good problem. How do you how do you clean them? I mean, I'd obviously have to buy it used. So how would I, I don't know where it'll been? How do you how do you clean the glassware? Well, that's a good question. So, I mean, there's 2 kinds of problems when you buy laboratory gear, and the one problem is kind of inorganic poisons, like straight up old school poisons,

[22:06] and also organic-based poisons, and the other are kind of biohazards. So most likely you're not going to have a biohazard in your Roto app, although it's

[22:17] entirely possible, I'm pretty sure that the original one I bought off of eBay had carbon

[22:22] tetrochloride in it, which is nasty stuff. Uh, so I just, um, I bought, uh, you know, a basically a glass cleaner. I think I think of the brand was Alkanox, and I just cleaned the ever loving hell out of it. If you have access, I also, in case there was a biological agent in it, I also bleached the hell out of it, you know what I mean? Basically soaked in bleach, ultrasonic cleaners, huge bunch of changes of water,

[22:48] bunch of, bunch of changes of water, and detergents that will attack both polar and non-polar things because the odds are there's a bunch of non-polar stuff there too, which might be, you know,

[22:57] vile, vile stuff. Um, so, you know, just do that again and again. Also note that if you're buying a standard rotovap with a condenser, regular coil condenser. That one's going to be harder to clean because it's impossible to physically attack all the nooks and crannies on that.

[23:13] You can't get your fist into it. Whereas if you're getting, what the heck was that? It sounds like someone just died on a roof. If you if you get a cold finger condenser, you can disassemble it basically and get your hands into it and totally clean

[23:26] it out. And if you're really lucky, you can get a cold finger condenser that also has a coiled insert

[23:32] sleeve, and then you get the best of all worlds. You can use it as a cold finger condenser. You can use it as a regular coil condenser and you can clean it, but it's very difficult to clean out the inside of

[23:42] the condenser and it just takes a lot of time and flushes a detergent in water. Um, you could maybe like a per carbonate cleaner? Like I've, uh, powdered brewery wash. £50 of it? Would that work for that? I mean, I'd look and see what, whether or not what they say on that is how it works on, um, you know, chemical deposits that aren't, uh, you know, like basically, you know, you'll be able to get rid of most of the polar stuff using normal detergents and most of the non-polar stuff, frankly, but I would just, I haven't looked at it in a long time because it's been a couple

[24:15] of been like 5 years since I bought a Roto app on eBay, uh, And so I would just look up, for instance, like what the procedures are for cleaning out,

[24:23] like pick a couple of vicious non-polar solvents, like carbon tetrochloride, and just find out what the kind

[24:28] of what the kind of decontamination procedure is for it. But yeah, you know, maybe the brewery one would work. I mean, like I say, I bought Alkanoxx just because that's what they use in labs. It's not that expensive, but I'm sure you can get a hold of it. You know what I mean? Yeah. But I would specifically look up. I would choose a couple of nasty solvents, polar and

[24:47] non-polar and just check out the basic decontamination procedures for them. Okay. And that cold finger condenser, you're talking about, is that like a Y-big condenser for a still? No, no, the cold, the cold finger one is just a, basically, it's a cone shaped sleeve

[25:06] inside, inside of the round condenser, and you fill it with, uh, in the lab, you would typically use dry ice, uh, acetone. I use either dry ice ethanol or liquid nitrogen. I actually almost always use liquid nitrogen because it's actually easier for me to get than dry

[25:23] ice, but for storage reasons. Um, but, um, the problem with a cold finger condenser, if you're not using something super cold, like dry ice and ethanol dry

[25:33] acetone, is, uh, it has a very low surface area, uh, compared to a, um, because it's not indented, like, like, you know, some of the condensers you're dealing with.

[25:43] So it's got a fairly low surface area compared to a coil condenser. I see Okay. All right, is that helpful? Very helpful. Thank you. All right. And, you know, write us back and tell us what happened with your big mega circulator.

[25:58] Will do. All right, thanks a lot. All right, 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, hate, hate to

[26:11] overspend for pounds of supplies with only a few grams or needed per application. Modernist pantry as a solution. They offer a wide range of modern ingredients in packages that make sense for their home cook and

[26:20] enthusiast, and most cost only around 5 bucks. Send you time, money, and storage space. I'm going to edit myself to have either enthusiasts, whatever. 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. Modernist pantry is your one stop shop for innovative cooking ingredients. Modernist pantry carries several types of modified stargios for thickening, including UltraText 3, UltraText 8, and Ultra Spurs 3. Fans of cooking issues that place an order of $25 or more before next week's show will get a free package of

[26:57] UltraText 3 to play with. Simply use the promo code CI 71 when placing your order online at modernistpantry.com. Visit modernestpantry.com today for all of your modernest cooking needs. All right, listen. Listen. For some reason, a lot of chefs started using Ultra Techs, you know, years ago. And what Ultra Tech is, is it's a great product made by national starch, and it's a part of a group of things that are basically they're pre-cooked starch.

[27:25] They're prehydrated, pre-cooked. So you don't need to heat those starches, ultra text, for instance, to get them to have their thickening capacity like you would with a normal starch, right? So that's great. That's fantastical. Uh, the problem with ultra text is, is because it's been uh, prehydrated, pre-cooked, if you add it to liquids and you don't have like a high sheer mixture, mixer, or you can't shear it in quite a bit, or you don't mix it into

[27:49] butter, like in a burminee, or any one of those things, mix it with sugar, anything, corn syrup, whatever, it tends to uh, to glob up, to turn into kind of globules, uh, you know,

[27:58] purl up the same way as if you added starch to uh, hot

[28:02] gravy. It works exactly the same as if you add starch to hot gravy. So you need to really hit it with a blender or something like that to get it to disperse properly. And that's because when you add starch to gravy, typically what you'll do is you'll add starch to a cold liquid

[28:16] first, form a slurry, right? So that all the little starch particles get separated, and then you add it to a liquid, and then everything's kosher. You heat it up and it's good and it hydrates and all that stuff. Ultra spurse, right? Not text. Ultra spurse is a an agglomerated pre-cooked, you know, prehydrated starch. And what that is, is it looks like little kind of, it looks kind of grainy when you look at it. Instead of being a fine powder. It looks kind of grainy. and it's designed to not kind of stick together into

[28:48] balls and you can stir that one into things to thicken it

[28:52] up and you don't need a lot of high sheer mixing. Now, the reason that industrially ultra spurse isn't used as much as UltraTex is ultra spurse is a lot more expensive than UltraTex. But in most home and like high-end chef kind of things, the cost isn't that much greater and

[29:10] is not that much of a concern because you're not using that much of it. And so I would always recommend, if you can, to go with ultra spurse instead of ultra

[29:19] text, all from the good folks at national starch. All right. Does that make any damn sense? Okay. So, Chris, maybe next week, give away the ultra spurs, ultra spurs. What about commercial break? Already? been 15 minutes. Really? All right, we'll go to our 2nd commercial break. Call in all your questions. Two, 718-497-2128, 718-497-2128 cooking issues.

[29:48] What I want.

[29:53] But like a flame of birds, a candle. But can't be the blame. What I got, full stop. I thought you dream to scatter. When you pull them all together. And I can't display. Oh, yeah, well, by you. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. Well, well, well, you. Oh, yeah, when you make my dreams are true, yeah, true. On a night, one bed, breathe, come and scream up. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, Hall and Oates fest today, huh? Is that Nastasia? Carlos. That's Carlos. Carlos, good Carlos. You know, Nastasia and I have kind of like a running thing that we like... Dave completely bastardizes.

[30:56] Yeah, well, I'll rock out to it, but they like, you know, so like if you've seen what's that show, like the wedding singer, where the guy sings with all the curses. I tend to sing songs with like many, many curses interspersed in them. And so like what we feel is like, you know, you know how when you go to a concert, there's that guy who stands in the background screaming the

[31:12] song, right? So, like, we imagine that I'm like that guy screaming, but instead of giving like the rock and roll fingers, like, you know, like, rock and roll fingers, I've just got my, I was just like flipping them the bird. But I mean, like the front row, screaming along, like jamming out, like, to rich girl, giving, giving, like, hollow notes to bird, and they're like, what the hell is this guy doing? What's wrong with this guy? You see how long it takes before I get ejected from the concert? You know, those guys in the front row don't play. They pay so much for those tickets, especially on a reunion tour. They're not playing around with some joker like flipping off the band and screaming curses. Freaking rich girl. Anyway, okay. By the way, I know that was a scary sound we heard before, but it seems like Indie Jesus is okay. Oh, man. That's good business. We have checked the building. Andy Jesus is okay. Okay. That's good. Jesus Christ superstar is coming out at the end of next month on Broadway again. Dave. Yeah, but look, okay, look, Jesus Christ superstar. Aside from the fact that, you know, you kind of, as much as I love Andrew Lloyd

[32:15] Weber, and it's Andrew Lloyd Weber thing, right? As much as I love him, I have to, from a more kind of rational standpoint, hate it. Well, because, like, you know, I mean, all the people who are seriously into musicals are like,

[32:25] oh, my God, Angela, whatever, right? Even but I like that stuff. You do? I do. I love that stuff. Jesus Christ, superstar especially, but the problem is, is that in my head, I have, you know, the original kind of voice of Judas is in my

[32:38] head. And if I go and hear somebody else, and the original guy is dead, by the way, so it's not like they're going to bring that guy back. And, you know, if I hear somebody else playing Judas, I'll just be like, oh, my God, what is that? It's the same way that, you know, they redid Heat Miser, Snow Miser. Or Charlie Brown's voice. They read the Charlie Brown's voice. Horrible. horrible, horrible. Awful. Horrible. You know, it's like some things, you know, whatever. Anyway. You're gonna make me go see it, aren't you? You should take your sons. What the heck do they want to see Jesus Christ Superstar for? They don't like. It me. I like musicals. My son Booker would be so bored. He would be screaming the entire time. When's it over? Blend it over. And like they'd be singing, you know, what's the buzz? And he'd be asking me when the buzz is going to be over. I can't, you know, I can't, I can't. Anyway. Uh, question from, okay, I can't see the questions from. Oh, from Derek. Hi again. I want to make my own sherry vinegar. Is it possible to take a red wine vinegar mother and put it in sherry and wind up with sherry vinegar? Are there any other methods? Thanks for your help and insight and keep being awesome, Derek, we will try. We will try start being awesome. anyway. Okay, so here's the trick. When you're making, the answer is yes. it's going to work. But when you're making vinegar from wine, you're typically using a lower alcohol

[33:59] wine, right? So sherry, which, you know, is fortified, is coming in at a much higher ABV, then is good for the vinegar. So, you're going to want to dilute to, uh, and I looked at a couple different sources, but between kind of 7 and 9% alcohol and

[34:16] 9% is pretty high, like you might want to start down lower at like 7%, uh, alcohol, okay? Uh, so, uh, so you're gonna basically figure out what the alcohol content of your sherry is and then dilute it down

[34:29] with uh, with whatever, but get the alcohol percentage down. If the alclave's too high, you'll inhibit the acetobactor and that's going to be, it's going to be a problem. Okay? Another thing that I've read, I don't know whether it's true or not, but is that if a wine is very highly sulfured, has a lot of sulfur dioxide in it, that can also be a

[34:47] problem for the acetobactor. But other than that, it should basically be no problem. Now, I looked up Sunset magazine has a big how-to on this, including the vinegar,

[35:04] and remember, I don't know whether Sunset's any good anymore, but back in the day, in the early 70s, Sunset magazine, which is from California, had like some kind of butt kicking books

[35:12] on like how to get a really butt kicking garden, how to make bonds eyes, how to bake

[35:17] bread. I mean, Sunset magazine. But it was all like desert-y. Desert E. Desert, California. It's California. California. Arizona. They read it in Arizona. It was like, yeah, like, you're from LA. I'm sure you had sunset magazine coming out of your ears in the morning. No, I think it's more of like a desert, Arizona, New Mexico, California. Hey, look, you know why it's called Sunset? Because the sun sets on the freaking west coast, right? It's the west coasting, southern west coast. Right? But anyway, the books used to kick butt. That's all I'm saying, is that Sunset books, you wouldn't think it. It seems like very consumerie, but their books I used to enjoy them as I was growing up. I haven't read them in a long time, but if you look it up, And you know who they asked as their consultant for it? Paula Wilford. Yeah, who Nastasia and I met when she was writing like some sort of a clay pot cookbook. Is that true or false? Yeah, she had just finished it. Her house was freaking full of clay pots. I'm talking like, she had a greater volume of clay pots than I have an air volume in my apartment because her house is quite large compared to my apartment.

[36:16] Anyway, um, Paula recommends that you start small. In other words, if you get your mother, you add a little bit of the wine to start with. You got to make sure that air can get to it because forming forming acetic acid, it's an aerobic activity, there's air. So in fact, when you're doing a fast procedure, so the, the, the old school way is, uh, I don't know whether it's called the Orleans or the Orleans, because I've never heard anyone pronounce it, but that's the old school way of making vinegar, where basically you take a cask, you drill holes in it, put a screen over

[36:46] it, so bugs can't get in, you let air get in. It's the air that allows the acetic acid, the acetobactor, the acetic acid

[36:53] bacteria to grow, and therefore turn your, turn your wine or turn whatever your cider into vinegar. If there's no air, they won't grow. If after they're done, you continue to allow Aaron, then the acetic acid will be lost, it'll oxidize and go out. So you have to strike a balance there. If you want to make it quickly, then what you have to do is increase the surface area that the bacteria can grow

[37:16] on. And so you can do things like mix wood chips in with the with the with the base or whatever and then have the mother on top. You don't want to swap out the mother because you have to get the population of bacteria relatively high. So what most people do to maintain their mother is remove like 3 quarters of your vinegar and then

[37:32] put, without disturbing it, put, you know, the rest back in in terms of fresh liquid, and then you could keep it going. Eventually your vinegar mother will probably fall to the bottom. Uh, you scoop it out. Hopefully a new one will form because you'll have a colony in there. We spoke about vinegar mother what it is a while ago, but it's mainly cellulose, bacterial cellulose. So it floats on top, eventually maybe it will fall to the bottom. Another thing, and you know, I'm not an expert by any means in vinegar, but after you make it, you're probably

[38:01] going to want to age it to kind of mellow it out a little bit. Some people age it just on its own. Some people age it in wooden barrels, which are getting increasingly difficult to get. The small wooden barrels are getting increasingly difficult to get. When you are aging it, people tend to pasteurize it to stop further bacterial change, for instance, that might turn the vinegar, you know, to actually consume some of the acid

[38:21] in the vinegar and ruin it. So you can either exclude error or pasteurize it or exclude error and pasteurize it and age it to get a variety of different flavors. How's that? Make sense? Semisense, partial sense. Okay. From Matthew, hi, Nastasia and Dave. I hope you're doing well and a big congratulations on the opening of Booker and Dax. Thank you. I think it's a pretty good bar. I mean, like, you know, we're still working. It's going to get better and better every day, but I think I'm proud of what we're doing. What about you? Yeah, I'm proud of what we're done. Okay, I was recently given, which doesn't mean that we're nowhere near where we want to be, but I'm proud of what we're doing.

[38:56] Anyway. I was recently given a cuisinart ice cream machine, the kind where you pre-freeze the canister. I have made some excellent ice cream, and with the help of some pastry chef friends, have learned to add some tweaks to my recipes that keep the ice cream from losing its smooth texture in the freezer, and stay a little bit more stable at room temperature. And the 2 things that Matthew's adding are glucose syrup and gelatin. Is there a simple formula for replacing sugar with glucose that could be applied to any ice cream recipe. My primary goal is to give ice cream a better texture, post freezer storage. Thanks, Matthew. Uh, okay. So the simple, there's no, there's no simple anything. You know what I mean? Which is, you know, always the problem. And I forgot to look up before I came in what the solids ratio, what the solids content of glucose syrup is, but I think it hovers around 80%. I think it's in there. And you have to figure out what the DE, the dextrous equivalent of the glucose syrup is to figure out how sweet it is. But the book that I recommend, and most of it's online on Google Books, is called

[40:03] Glucose Syrups, Technology and Applications, and there's a section on ice creams in there that talks about it. But basically what the glucose syrup, the glucose syrup is accomplishing a couple of things. It has a certain amount of sweetness to it, right? Not a lot, but a certain amount. It depresses the freezing point of the ice cream base somewhat, right? But also, it drastically increases the viscosity of the ice cream base. And what that's doing is it's going to give you a kind of a denser, better mouth feel and also prevent inhibit crystallization. The gelatin will also help with crystallization. But, you know, and anything you add, any hydrocolid you add is going to help. Anything that increases the viscosity is going to help prevent crystallization from happening once it's in your freezer afterwards. So, uh, basically, what you want to do when you swap it out, let's assume that you don't want to, um, let's assume that you don't want to change the sweetness of

[41:06] your of your recipe. So you have to look at what the relative sweetness of the glucose syrup is versus

[41:11] sugar. So your relative sweetness of like a 42 DE glucose syrup is half. It's half as sweet as sugar. We're using low DE glucoseries when I usually do it, like a 28 and 28 is like 0.4 of the relative sweetness of it. And that's on a dryweight basis, right? But the freezing depression, uh, so let's take glucose uh, 28 DE glucose syrup. It's a little under half the sweetness of sucrose, right? But it has only half of the freezing point depression. So you need to add twice they, like, once you take into account the water that's in it. You're gonna remove, let's say, of, you know, 200 grams of sugar, you're gonna have to add 400 grams of solids from glucose 28 DE to have the same sweetness, but you'll have a lot more

[42:04] solids, so it'll be a lot denser. So this table is available on the Google books. And you can get a sense of the relative freezing point depression and the relative sweetness for various

[42:16] different sweetness. So let's say you didn't want to add like that. If you want to reduce the sweetness of something, right, but not really reduce the, not really change the freezing point depression or change the actual viscosity of it much, you could add glucose

[42:30] syrup, and then you could depress the freezing point further by adding small amounts of

[42:34] alcohol. And there's ratios in this table in this book that you can look at to really kind of get a better idea of what you're doing.

[42:42] But whenever you're swapping out sugar. your removing body, you're changing the freezing point depression, and you're changing the sweetness. And all of those things need to be accounted for in an ice cream to balance out. So, you know, you don't want to change anyone drastically or there's going to be problems. Just what's cool about this book, the glucose syrup, technology and applications in the ice cream section, is that rather than go into really kind of technical explanations of trying to calculate

[43:10] things, They say, hey, look, calculate everything relative to sucrose. So the sweetness relative to sucrose, table sugar, and the freezing point depression relative to sucrose. And then just get into your head that ice cream should have

[43:24] a sucrose relative sweetness and relative freezing point depression, because sucrose were taking as one as unity, of 13 to 18. So something with a suit with basically 13, so 13% sugar in it is going to be hard, right? And not that sweet. And something with 18% is going to be relatively softer because it's going to

[43:48] be have more freezing point depression and relatively sweeter, right? And so by calculating the relative freezing point depression and relative sweetness to sucrose, you can play around with recipes fairly

[43:59] easily and try to get something that works for you. Does that make sense? Okay. I am being told, do I have any more questions or have I answered them all? Ive answered all the online questions. I'm being told that I am out of time. So this has been cooking issues. Thank you and come again next week.

[44:30] Thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage Radio Network. You can find all of our archived programs on HeritageRadioNetwork.com as well as a schedule of upcoming live shows. You can also podcast all of our programs on iTunes by searching Heritage

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