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

[0:20] Hello and welcome to Cooking issues is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking issues. Coming to you live. I love the Heritage Radio Network in the back world of Roberta's Pizzeria and

[0:32] book, we're brought to you today. I assume by the modern's pantry, is that correct? That is correct. We'll be reading there. Our printer's broke, so I'll be reading it, I guess. Oh, yeah? Nice. You gonna read it with feeling with gusto? I'll do my best. Yeah? But you do have a caller. I'll find one. All right. So, anyone else who's waiting? Call in 27184972128. 718-497-2128. Call her, you're on the air. Hi. Hello? Howdy. Sorry, I'm, uh, I'm, I'm Tammy. I'm calling from Sydney, Australia. I'm a bit safe right now. Hello. I did have a couple of questions. One about meat blue. Um, one about infusing truffle flavor and one about MacGyver and a sous vide. Very good. You're not affiliated with the Today tonight show, are you? No, no, unfortunately. you know, they're the ones in Australia. They're the ones in Australia who had the anti-Miklu thing. Remember that? Did you see that? Um, sorry? Did you see, in Australia, today tonight's show was the, they were the, the people that had the anti-meat glue telecast. Did you see that back when it aired about a year ago? Weirdly enough, I saw it on your blog rather than on TV. It just kind of shows you how much TV I watch. Um, but what I was watching, though, was your um, science and cooking lecture was Harvard, um, very enjoyable. I now clarify all my liquid using a gaga. Um, but, uh, what I did notice that you said when you were talking about your

[1:57] Makume Gane, um, fish, was that, there was a small amount of ammonia produced when you were using meat glue. Correct. Um, and I was wondering about, you know, you said on the

[2:08] primer in your blog that, um, this dissipates before you eat it. Now, does it dissipate like through cooking? Is it, you know, if you're dealing with raw foods, especially fish? Is it really good to, you know, backpack it, take out the backpack and then

[2:24] weighted or like, is there any particular thing going on or?

[2:30] Yes. That's an excellent question. So for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, meat glue is an enzyme that we use to bond different proteins

[2:38] together, when it's doing that bonding, a small amount of ammonia is produced in the reaction. And in fact, you can use the reaction as a gauge for how strong your meat glue is by dipping something like raw chicken into the meat glue and smelling

[2:52] it and making sure that you have that aroma that a reaction is taking place. Uh, Moka Megane is a Japanese uh, metalworking technique where uh, different layers are laminated together and then sanded

[3:03] flat and have a wood grain kind of appearance. So a number of years ago, I did a recipe with fish, different colored fish. They're layered together. And then cut on a slicer, so you get a wood grain effect with the fish, where the very thin layers are glued together. And that recipe, I put some salt and sugar, so it's cured, but it's not cooked. And so when I originally did that recipe, I did

[3:26] notice the aroma kind of of the meat glue because it was a very thick block, I'd overuse the meat glue. And so it was noticeable, and that thing had been in a backpack all the way up until the time it was sliced.

[3:39] So to remedy that, I used much less meat glue. this, you know, the subsequent times that I made that recipe. And I also backed it to compress it, but then cut it out of the backpack and let

[3:52] it, uh, let it sit and all of the uh, ammonia dissipate. I'm only very volatile, right? So it's going to dissipate. You know, in fact, there's a baking powders that are based on ammonia that are used specifically for cookies. And yeah, and they bake out over time. But if you put them in something that's super thick, right? Or you don't cook it enough, they taste horrible because the ammonia is still there. So ammonia is volatile, we'll leave, especially in a cooked item is not a problem ever, really. But in the in the fish. Um, I noticed, you know, that it was a problem. Additionally, I've run tests where if you add a boatload of meat glue to something that's cooked in a bag that's never taken out of the

[4:31] bag that some people can detect something even on a long cooked braise. But it takes a boatload of Miklu to do that. Cool. Um, and then thank you very much. Um, and the 2nd question was, I heard that truffles

[4:48] were really good at dessert, and I really wanted to use the flavor of truffles in chocolate truffles,

[4:55] like a joke. So I was wondering what the best way maybe to infuse, because I know truffles infuse really well into butter, but then to make the

[5:04] ganache, it's just chocolate and cream, right? So, I'm not quite sure what the best way to go around that. You can use butter in a ganache instead. I mean, I've done plenty of butter ganaches. You just had to find a butter-based, uh, or you could infuse directly into the cream if you wanted to use cream, but I do plenty of

[5:21] uh, butter base worked. I mean, textures are going to change so much, but I mean,

[5:26] I've done plenty of butter, butter and chocolate, ganaches you can infuse into, or you confuse directly into the cream. A good way to infuse something like a truffle where it's expensive and you don't want to lose a lot of aromas to infuse it in a vacuum bag.

[5:40] So that you, yeah, right? Just put it in a vacuum bag, suck it. And then basically everything stays contained in there and you're not going to be volatilizing a lot of the aroma of the truffle. Cool, I didn't think about that. If you have access to a vac machine. If not, you could, if you have access to a vacuum machine. If you don't, you could, you know, use a ziploc or something like that. Okay. Um, and my 3rd question was about McGovern a sous vide machine. So there were discussions. I had one really late, really one night, um, with my friends about how expensive to these machines are and so on

[6:17] and so forth. Um, and somebody suggested using uh, modifying a deep fryer with a dial setting, um,

[6:26] and a really high quality tropical fish tank water pump. Right. Would you recommend or just, or, you know, not recommended or, you know, how, how well do you think that would work? Um, Well, fortunately, there are tons of people out there that are

[6:43] selling kits right now for doing, basically, what you really need is a temperature control. I mean, the pump, yes, you can use an aquarium pump. There's any one of a number of pumps you can get in the sub, $20 range that will circulate, right? The problem with a deep fryer, a couple problems with deep fryer. Well, it depends. Like, I don't know what kind of deep fryers you're looking at, but most of the deep fryers that they sell here don't have exposed elements. And if they don't have an exposed element, you're not going to get very good heat transfer. So you're gonna get a lot, uh, it's gonna be hard to get, uh, you know, a nice steady, um, steady temperature. Do you know what I mean? You might get some porpoising or it's going to take a long time to get up and be accurate. If you have something with an exposed element, great. it'll work fine. The problem I have with deep fryers or any contained vessel like that is you're really limited in the size of, um, size of, you know, what you can cook. So, you know, what you basically need is

[7:39] a PID temperature controller. These can now be had for on the order of $30 US, right? You're going to need some sort of a solid state or regular relay. Again, these now can be got for like 7 bucks, a like a type

[7:57] K thermocouple for temperature measurement, waterproof one. That's another seven. So now you're at like 14, 30, 35,

[8:05] uh, a pump for, um, you know, another 20. Now you're at 55 and then you're going to need the heating element. Now, heating element, you could really use anything. There's lots of really cheap immersion heating elements out there. The trick is just not to electrocute yourself. Yeah, I mean, I did a project once just for giggles where I, you know, walked up a bunch of stuff that I had gotten on eBay and I bought a bunch of immersion coffee heaters,

[8:33] a really cheap, like, you know, $3 ones you get at, you know, at the local dollar

[8:37] store and it worked. You know, you want to try to get at least up to about a 1000 watts of heating, which is what the, you know, standard commercial ones do. But, um, but, you know, I stuck my hand into the uh, into the water and because there's a lot of leakage current out of those things because they weren't very well constructed. Do you know what I mean? I mean, no one's expecting you to stick. Yeah, right. No one's expecting you to stick your hand into your cup of coffee. And so they don't care so much that there's a little bit of leakage coming out of the

[9:04] heater, right? But you care very deeply whether you get electrocuted when you're putting your hand into

[9:09] a water bath to pull out a piece of food. So that's something to look at. But, you know, there are tons of, I don't know, in Australia, but I know here in the US we have a bunch of suppliers. And there's a, you know, I know that there's suppliers in Australia because I've been thwarted by trying to buy something and found out it was an Australian website.

[9:26] So I know that there's people out there that are selling this kind of stuff. So you should be able to get everything all told working for under $100. Now, um, the problem then is like trying to get a nice enclosure. And that's where a lot of the DIY projects that are out there are really kind of cool because they

[9:46] find like, you know, you know, like with DIY stuff, there was a, there was a rage, I guess it's still a rage to put everything into an altoids tin, right?

[9:52] Like projects that could fit in an altoids tin. So the miracle, yeah, right? So the miracle is finding the cool box to put everything into. And I forget what it was. There's some acrylic box out there that is readily available that works really well with a bunch of

[10:07] off the shelf parts to make a circulator, but I can't remember what that box was. But, you know, thank God for the internet. Thank you so much, by the way. Yes, I shall go and try that. And if I got electrocuted, you'll know about it. All right, super, thanks for calling in all the way from Australia. So, yeah. Yeah. All right. Thanks very much. Oh, wait, we have another color? Three who have been waiting. All right, call her. You are on the air. Hey, Dave, how you doing? How you doing? Pretty, pretty, pretty good. I'm actually, now that you got a call from Australia. I'm calling from Moscow, believe it or not. Wow, this is awesome. It is great. Moscow, welcome. And hey, great. Actually, native New Yorker living in Moscow, and I have a question for you. I'm redoing my kitchen, and it's basically a simple equipment question. What do you get? What can I, what can I, what should I get in terms of a gas burner so I can, you know, have some, you know, enough BTUs to cook in a walk, for

[11:03] example? Or, you know, and of course, the last question, and I'm sure it's be your favorite is the espresso. I need an espresso machine and what should I get? What's the water like in Moscow? Um, it's pretty bad. I use I'm going to probably be using bottled water. Okay. So, I mean, one of the great joys of having a decent water supply is that you can get a plum

[11:23] espresso machine, which is, I love, instead of having to, like, constantly dump water in the back. I'm assuming you could probably filter or, you know, the problem then with also with certain filtering techniques like reverse osmosis on espresso machines. You really don't want RO water for your espresso because it's too pure. You know, it doesn't have enough minerality in it. So if you're working from bottled. You can retrofit a commercial machine to use bottled. I don't really know what's available in Russia in terms of

[11:49] equipment, but what level of espresso machine are you looking at? classrooms. I'm willing to pay for a little bit here, but I can definitely not do, don't have the space to do like a whole pump setup. Right. I mean, there are lots of, I mean, so the prosumer units. Hello, you still there? Yeah, the prosumer units that are out there, I haven't had a lot of experience with them, I have experience with the smallest commercial

[12:16] units, which are like the single group guys, and they're fairly

[12:20] compact. I don't know if you have the space for them, but I mean, they're good. I only have, I only have mine's from the, you know, the 80s or 90s, 90s, I guess,

[12:30] because, you know, I don't have the money for a new one. They're having had a dual group espresso machine. The single groups aren't as temperature stable. I don't have a lot of experience with the newer, uh, like, for instance, one

[12:42] Keningbur, our uh, listener who's trying to get me to get the Breville one. I don't have experience with that guy yet. I don't know how good it is, but you know, the things are going to be looking for are temperature stability. I mean, you might want to go if you're if you're into, like, tricking stuff out. I don't know whether it's still considered pulling a good shot, but there a lot of people have modified Sylvia's in a very small package,

[13:02] Ranchilias, I'm sure it's been superseded. But the espresso geek community, they've, you know, done a lot of modifications on home machines to get them to pull a really good shot. It's just a little more fidgety than having a pro machine. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, I mean, I would do one of those single shot pro machines, you know, like a restaurant style. I might go for that, but then I would need a pump, wouldn't I? Well, a lot of, they have a lot smaller pumps. The company that makes most of the pumps for the machines, you know, here is a company called Procon.

[13:31] And the reason the pumps are so big is because it's the same size pump, uh, it can handle literally gallons per minute, even though you only need to put out like 60 milliliters over the course of 25 seconds or less,

[13:43] really 30 mil. You know what I mean? So, um, so they they throw away a lot of their output, and that's one of the ways that they regulate pressure. Procon knows that the pumps are oversized and so they built a much smaller pump unit. I don't know whether any of those have made it into the newer machines

[13:59] yet because the big pumps are literally way overkill in terms of size. It's unneeded. The other style of pump that's used is a vibrating

[14:10] pump. Most of those are made by a company in Europe called Oka. And those basically, it's a little solenoid track, check, check, check, check, check, check. you can hear them, the vibrating pumps, and they just go back and forth. The problem with those is that it's thought that their pressure isn't as even as the larger rotary

[14:25] pro con pumps. And so some people have a gripe about whether or not it's possible to get the same shot quality with those. I don't have a lot of experience with them. I don't know that the argument that people make that they can't pull as good a shot

[14:36] is good or not, but those pumps are radically smaller. And if you have a problem with a shot of that, what you can do, if they don't already do it, is put something called an accumulator on the backside of the pump, which is basically just a chamber there. You could probably modify a soda bottle or something to do it. And it'll just even out any sort of vibration by having like an air, you know, an air cushion there. Right, right, makes sense. Yeah. And so you could go, you could go that way. As far as, do you have a Chinatown in Moscow? Never been to Moscow. No, no, they do not have a Chinatown in Moscow. That's that's one of the things. I mean, I could probably get, you know, if I if I can get something installed, that would be good. I mean, I do go home quite a bit, so I can always top down to Chinatown in the city. Yeah, I mean, because it's very simple and very cheap here to get a walk burner, you know what I mean? Like a ring, basically just a ring of fire that you hook up to a gas supply. And then all you'd need is an adapter to go to whatever the common gas plumbing is that you have in Russia, and you'd be good to go. But those are so true. Now, you could, I mean, I've never done it. I've never set up a straight up walk burner, but I see them all the time on the streets here in Chinatown. They're just so cheap compared to trying to build that thing yourself because you'd have to bend the, you bend the black pipe into a circle, drill all the holes, tap them, put all the nozzles in, and then get your gas,

[15:56] you know, your gas supply screwed in. It seems like a big hassle, especially if you're going to be home anytime soon, probably easier to get it that way. An adapter can't be that hard to come by. When you're in the States, if you know what kind of piping they have in Russia, I don't. You could get, you could get something, McMaster car here probably sells an adapter, a metric pipe to, you know, a standard US pipe taper, probably not that hard

[16:19] to get stateside and then bring it back again. That would be the way to go, I think. I mean, I mean, if I if I was going to go for something slightly more commercial, like, you know, they had these, you know, the 5 the 5 burner, you know,

[16:30] gas gas tops right now where you can have the walk thing in the middle. Is there any way to maybe just buy one of those and try to jack up the BTUs or is it just, you know, is that just for show? Um... Well, I haven't I'd have to play with one. I mean, the thing about a walk is it uses a preposterously high,

[16:46] you know, number of BTUs per hour. It just dumps energy into the wok, and that's how it works. So a lot of the limitations in a particular burner have to do with how much gas is actually being supplied to

[17:00] it, like how much gas can you supply to it? And then can you combust it efficiently? So you probably have to, um, I mean, you might be able to mess around with it,

[17:10] like, uh, drill the orifice out bigger to get a bigger gas supply, but then you'd need to figure out a way to get enough air to

[17:15] it and make sure that it's combusting uh, efficiently. Otherwise, you're just throwing gas away. You need actual more heat in there. So if you were going, you know what I'm saying? So you, um, I mean, anything's possible to do. I'd have you use regular natural gas there in Russia, right? Yeah, yeah. It's pretty, it's pretty basic. Yeah, I mean, um, you know, you can always up the up the burner side. I mean, the good news is, I guess you don't need it to throttle down very low because you don't care about low heat outputs with a

[17:42] lock. So you can just have it, I think, scream. Uh, yeah, I mean, if you increase the, um, the, I mean, if you increase the orifice, we just got to make sure that you have enough ability to to combust it.

[17:54] If you put too much gas through the smaller burners, you know, you'll just see the flame jumping out, but you'll see you'll have a big unburned area before it goes out and you're just basically pumping gas into the

[18:05] air. Do you know what I mean? Right, no, that won't be good for the kids. No, but what you can do is, if you can see, if you can look up the size of a regular walk burner, You can get one of these things, so it's all nice and finished, rip out the old burner and throw a new one in. Do you know what I'm saying? that has the real kind of, you know, the fortitude that you need. And this kind of stuff I've done all the time, or I've added a couple of extra 20,000 BTU. Like I added a couple extra 20,000 BTU burners in my salamander underneath so that I

[18:32] could have over and underfired salamander one time for a project I was working on. So you can always add more burners with extra knobs on it. And those things will combust great. You know what I'm saying? So like if you have a space that you could drill in and add more heat, as long as you can get it kind of in a basic ring shape, you'd probably be good to go. Yeah, that seems that seems the way to go because then it won't, you know, won't be sitting out on the side or something like that, taking up space. So what, in terms of other equipment, if you had, you had your go to equipment and you were going to, you know, get something new. I'm happy to go esoteric, but you know, what would you do? I mean, I mean, you need a vacuum machine circulator. I'd love to have, uh, if you're, if you have a like, like infinite amount of gas supply, I mean, I've always wanted to have a tandor in my house, be awesome.

[19:16] You know what I mean? I got that at the country house. I was going to put it in the ground there. Yeah. out of the old docha. That's a great thing for out there, putting them in the ground. Yeah, I mean, uh, things, I mean, uh, I have a Paco Jet variant. I mean, I wish I had a real Paco jet. you know, vacuum machine obviously is awesome circulator. You need a... circulating is probably the thing to go for if I was going to go. Yeah, really good blender. Like a Vita Prep. You know, next time you're in the states, bring one back. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. and here's a good question. You know, in terms of buying, because buying equipment is because things are just outrageously expensive here. If I was to buy things, you know, in the city, is there places to go that you know that

[19:54] does, you know, that does 220? I need 220? 220. You can buy direct from Vita Prep and have them drop shipped on 220. Uh, I don't, you know, and also poly-science will direct drop shift you to the states, a 220 unit, and then you could bring it in as a carry uh, back, you know, uh, without having

[20:14] to worry about it. But I don't know of anyone that does direct direct to the customer sell of 220. I mean, you could deal with a JB Prince or something like that, and they could probably special order it from you, but poly-science on a circulator would probably do that and

[20:27] vita prep. I mean, the thing that's killing you is the taxes and the importing. You know what I mean? not the item itself. Vitaprep knows how to make a 220 Vitaprep. You know what I mean? Because I spoke to them about it. And, um, you know, same with polyscience. I mean, their stuff is, you know, it's pretty simple for them. It doesn't cost them more to make a 220 unit. No, they sell them over here, but I mean, in the States, let's say they're 500 and here they're a thousand. Well, over a thousand. Yeah, by its stateside, it shouldn't be that much of a price penalty here, maybe only like 10% instead of 200 or

[20:58] 100%. Hey, Dave, we got a few more callers on the line. Oh, all right. All right, Dave, thanks a lot. I appreciate it. Can't wait to try the bar. All right, thanks so much. Right, bye. Hey, color, you're on the air. Hello? Hello? Yeah, Dave, I have finally acquired a circulator after putting that off for half of forever, and I'm getting ready to drop a leg of lamb, and at least... Hello? Oops. Hello? Phone is doing very weird thing. That's all right. still got you. Okay. Um, so 1st this up, 1st question. If I'm doing a cashmere type leg of lamb in the circulator, can I put yogurt on it before it goes in the bag or

[21:40] does that go wrong in some impressive way? All right, so you can, um, I have done kind of buttermilk. I haven't done yogurt in the bag. I've done buttermilk. I mean, you're gonna get some, I mean, it's already curdled. So, you know, how's it going to curdle some more, right? I mean, it might break. The sauce might break. But, you know, the main thing that you're going to want to. So when you're adding yogurt to something and I have much more experience, not with lamb, but with chicken, like if you're going to do like a chicken

[22:10] tikka, for instance, you know, the yogurt

[22:15] is the acidity is basically there to tenderize.

[22:18] And so you're looking at kind of a tenderizing effect that they have. And some people love the texture of, and let's go back to buttermilk because I have the most experience with it. Buttermilk, poaching in a bag. The problem with it is, especially on a very, very long cooking

[22:35] time, is that the meat can tend to mushiness, especially because you're not going to overcook it when you're using a water bath. Does this make sense? Yes. Yeah. So you're going to want to guard against mushiness in the meat on long cook times with

[22:53] with acids in the bag. That said, you can have really, really spectacular, very soft meat results that some people really, really like. It's just, it's a question of whether for you personally, it tends to get to the mushy side. All right, and do you have any guidelines on, like, at what point it's likely to really start going south? 24 hours, 48 hours? Yeah, 24, look, on a leg of lamb. Okay, so I mean, the inherent problem with the leg of lamb is that the leg has so many different muscles that all

[23:28] want to be treated differently. So why Lego Lamb is very difficult, um, piece of meat to have it all come together um, at the same time. If you cook a leg of lamb for 24 hours, there will be some muscles in the leg of lamb that are delicious, the ones that have more collagen in them,

[23:45] right? And then more connective tissue in general. And then there are other muscles. ones that in the leg of lamb that are good with a very quick grill, let's say, those ones are going to taste

[23:59] fibery if they're cooked for 24 hours. That said, Sauce can make up for a lot. You know what I mean? And so it's a question of what you're going to try and shoot for it. I mean, look, look, in the end, your result is probably going to be better than what most people can attain anyway, but what you should start doing when you get

[24:19] circulate and you start playing with it like you're doing is really focusing on kind of the minutia of what the textural differences are when you cook a piece of meat that long.

[24:31] If you have the time, which, you know, I don't know whether anyone does. I mean, not now, but ever later. Get like the same piece of meat. Put it in 5 bags and then cook it for cook, you know, cook each one, drop one in, you know, put one in, then, you know, 8 hours later, put another

[24:45] in. And so you can get a feeling for what a couple of hours here or there can do when you're cooking a piece of meat over a long period of time. And it's really worth the experiment to do it. Do you know what I mean? And okay, on a related question, um, very closely related, some portion of the chicken that I get in the Costco

[25:08] multi-pack, right? Turns out to be absolute rubber. A particular piece of the chicken? Yes, I mean, like, you know, um, I don't know if you're a cocko sharper or not,

[25:21] but you know, like, they sell 6, um, 6 vacuum pouches

[25:27] of, of raw chicken breast. And out of a. Each vacuum pouch has 2 baths. you're buying 12 rests and one, you know, in one package. Right. And like, on some random basis, some number of those are like 7 times tougher than others. That's bizarre. And presumably they're all being cooked in a similar fashion, you repeated this

[25:55] enough such that it's not just, like, you know, one guy cooked improperly or something like that. I've had this problem at least 5 or 10 times. It's very odd. Is it substantially different size, the one that's tougher? Uh, they may be bigger. I mean, it's it's one of, um, it's, it's tricky to tell because I usually split them width wise. So, um, like when I'm grilling them hot, I can get the inside and the outside done at the same time. Let me ask you this. Does it taste better? Well, the texture is so funky. You almost don't get to the taste if that makes any sense. Yeah, because when you bite it and it's just wrong. Yeah, because, you know, older birds are radically radically tougher, but I doubt they would sift some older birds in with the regular

[26:41] younger, because it doesn't make economic sense for them to do so, but older birds typically will taste much more like

[26:46] chicken. You know, like I went, you know, if you go abroad to a place that slaughters their chickens much older, they're all much

[26:52] tougher, and so they can be hard for us to eat because we're used to a tender chicken. And yet the flavor of chicken in them is greater. You know what I'm saying? And that's why a lot of old French recipes work lousy with American chickens. Right, exactly. And, you know, why our soups are so bland. You know what I mean, compared to like, because you get a real stewing hen, you know, and you get a lot of flavor out of one of those things,

[27:12] but, you know, they're kind of tough as nails to chew on. But I wonder whether it could be an age thing. I mean, it's possible that it's, I mean, Costco, I'm sure Costco is like, you know, getting regular factory farm chickens and that they're not going to

[27:25] be. There's not a lot of variants, you know? This is the basic, I mean, it's foster farm chicken. Right, right. And, you know, there's probably not a lot of variants in age or, or, and I wonder whether it could be like a pH thing, like a slaughter pH thing.

[27:40] I haven't done enough research on tenderness in chicken versus slaughter stress, for instance. Um, to to know, uh, kind of what happens. I mean, there's a lot of research, obviously, on slaughter, stress and excessively soft, drippy meat for pork, right? But I don't really know of anything on chicken. That's interesting. Hopefully maybe someone's listening that has had this experience and has done some research. I would be very curious if anybody has an opinion, because, I mean, it's, it's, you know, if you put, you think you need 6 best for however many people you're feeding, and then 4 of them come out,

[28:16] just, 2 of them come out really funky. It really just sort of scrambles your plan. Yeah, hopefully someone will call or write in with an explanation because I'm curious. We don't have a Costco here in New York, so I don't I can't go test it myself. That's actually terrible because other than this little problem. They're really nice. And then one more question back to the lamb. Um, I got a little package of TPA, of a TPA from, um, of meat glue

[28:45] from, uh, your friends at, uh, uh, your sponsors,

[28:51] uh, haven't even opened yet. Right. When I do this Leg of Lamb, can I TPA it back into, it's, um, shape after I

[29:03] sear it? So can I see open it up, sear it, and then buy it up a TPA? Sear the inside with meat glue? With translutaminates? Uh, sear the inside. It's interesting. You can. You're not going to get as strong of a bond, right? And the meat isn't going to, unless you put like a lot of force on it with plastic

[29:23] wrapper, a vacuum machine, it's going to be hard to get it to conform properly. Does that make sense? But it can be done. Uh, you know, cooked meat will glue just not as strongly. All right, so I can, I can, I can roll it back up and actually get it to at least sort of stay. Yeah, and remember to tightly seal the meat glue and put it back in the freezer to store it after it's open. Okay, and so I did not notice what I didn't freeze, so that's very helpful. All right. Thank you very, very much. Oh, thank you very much. Thanks for calling in. Bye. All right, caller, you are on the air. Hey, Dave, it's Mike for Denver, Colorado. Hey, right, doing all right. How you doing? Good. Well, uh, my question is, is kind of twofold. We make a lot of haphazard pickles at home. Kind of like throw cabbage in, sprinkle salt, cabbage, salt. Right. And, uh, you know, I'm curious if there's a bulletproof, because some of these we stick in the back of the fridge and, you know, you figure them out a month later, you taste

[30:24] them. They're a little funky, you know, but, you know, who knows whether it's actually safe? You know, is there a, I've heard of a 5% solution. Generally safe. Uh, you know, and beyond that. You know, if you do a kimchi or something like that, will it actually keep indefinitely? You keep it for a year in there? Oh, that's a good question. I mean, indefinitely is a long time. I mean, these things tend to, um, reach a peak and then can be kept for a long time afterwards without them becoming

[30:58] unsafe. The question is, do they taste as good to you? Do you know what I mean? So basically, you know, what you're trying to do is get the salt

[31:06] level and I don't have it at the at the tip of my tongue because I always just kind of go and look it up when the when the time comes. It's, you know, fairly easy to calculate roughly the salt level that you need based on, for instance, the weight of cabbage that you have,

[31:20] right? And then pack the stuff together, as long as it stays submerged, right? So that you're not exposed to a lot of air, and the salt level is high enough. And then when lacto, lactic acid bacteria start growing in there, you're going to have enough, it's a combination of the acidity and the salt that prevents nasty crap from growing in there over time.

[31:43] And it'll stay basically. Yeah, you could keep it a year. Uh, you know, the question is, is it going to taste as good after that uh, year is up? Now, I like to, rather than having to submerge things, I'll do a lot of backpack, not to do a quick pickle, but a

[31:56] backpack to do something like a kimchi. And then you can see the bags inflate with carbon dioxide. It's great. And then, you know, you don't have to worry about air getting to them ever because they're in a sealed bag. But that's not necessarily viable for home, which is why

[32:09] people tell you to weight the stuff down, or, you know, put a plastic bag with water on top in it to wait, wait, wait the guy down.

[32:16] Um, but, uh, you know, another thing you can do to, if you're having problems with funkiness, I mean, a lot of the issues, it sounds like you're

[32:24] using a, you know, wild, uh, you know, whatever happens to be around your kitchen is what you're inoculating

[32:29] the, um, the product with. So if you were... Well, I like a I like a funky pickle. kind of why I'm curious about it, you know? Funky pickle. like that. But if you universe, but if you want something like that's consistent, then you can just save some of your pickling liquid from your old batch,

[32:46] right? And then after you mix in the salt and stuff, slop in. I mean, so like I have a brand of sauerkraut that I like, right? And so a lot of times I'll cheat because I know I like that brand of sauerkraut. And when I'm working on something, I'll save that sauerkraut juice and I'll dump that in along with the salt to my cabbage to kickstart the, you know, the particular cultures that those guys use because I happen to like it. So if you get a result that you happen to like, then you can backslop it into your next

[33:12] batch and you're guaranteed to get that same kind of a funkiness, assuming

[33:16] that you don't get a contamination, it's a robust enough starter culture so you can get it going. But in other words, same thing that they do with the sourdough you could do with a pickle in terms of starter culture like that. Oh, okay. And are you putting in salt via the raw weight of the cabbage, not the

[33:33] water? Uh, yeah, I mean, like, you know, a lot of the old recipes that you don't even add water to them. You know, they just kind of will, will liquid out over the course of the 1st, you know, day or so and then, and then you can press them. Or, yeah, I mean, you want that when you're calculating salt

[33:48] levels for to prevent microbial spoilage, right? Um, you're calculating on the final weight of total product and then what percentage salt is that, right? Not the percentage of the brine, uh, because, you know, imagine if you had even the most concentrated brine that you could possibly do in the

[34:09] 30s percent, right? And then you were to put that, you know, teaspoon of that into a ton of cabbage. You haven't added any salt, right? So it's always best to calculate salt on weight of total product, water plus cabbage. And that way, you know exactly where you are, and you're never going to go over and you're never going to go under. You know, I like I mean, I like salty stuff. So the stuff that I do is probably always pretty safe. And you can get a feeling if it becomes acidic. Also, remember, the acidity is helping you and you're going to have to have a lower salt requirement, if you're acidity level is high enough. You know, it's a, it's a multiple thing. If there's no acidity, you need a much higher salt concentration. Do you know what I'm saying? Right. Yeah. Is there a good reference for that? Uh, ooh, I'm sure I'm sure there is. I don't like again, I don't have it off the off the tip of my tongue, but you know, like any one of the agricultural extensions in the in the universities, they put out a lot of good pickling

[35:06] advice and they'll usually give you both a salt level concentration and a

[35:10] pH concentration that you can deal with. I don't have like a website I can send it to right away, but, you know, it's out there and usually the ag extension guys are very conservative, so you don't have to worry about it.

[35:24] They're not pushing the envelope of what's safe because otherwise they'd be in big, big trouble. And so their information is usually reliable. Cool. I look into it. All right. Thanks so much. All right, thanks a lot. All right. So should we take a break or we have another color? Uh, no, but that's we're almost at the end here. and I have to read this because we read this. Read this. All right. Today's show has been brought to you by the modernist pantry supplying innovative ingredients for the modern cook. Do you love to experiment with new cooking techniques and ingredients, but hate to overspend for pounds of supplies when only a few grams are needed per

[35:57] application. Modernist pantry has the solution. They offer a wide range of modern ingredients in packages that make sense for the home cook and enthusiasts, and most only cost around 5 bucks, saving you time, money, and storage

[36:08] space, whether you're looking for hydrocolloids, pH buffers, or even meat glue, you'll find it at modernist pantry. And if you need something 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 unflavored popping candy, a.k.a. pop rocks. Fans of cooking issues that place an order of $25 or more before next week's show will get a free package of these exploding delights to play with. Simply use the promo code CI74 when placing your order online at modernistpantry.com. Pop rocks. Hey, so can I have a couple minutes, Jack, or we rushing out here? We got like 5 minutes maybe. All right, cool. So I met one of the guys who was on the initial development team of pop rocks at one of the classes I taught. And, you know, Mikey didn't explode. That didn't happen. But the way pop rocks are made is that CO2 is put under very high pressure and molten sugar, the sugar sets. Then they release the pressure, it explodes in the little pop rocks thing. And inside of those frozen, those sugar granules are residual high-pressure CO2.

[37:11] And that's what gives pop rocks. It's thingamajig. And although Mikey didn't explode, he did say that they put a whole load of pop rocks into a truck that developed a leak in

[37:20] transport and it did kind of blow the side out of the truck. Don't know if it's true but that's what he said. All right. So let me rip through the email question so that no one can say that I didn't pay attention to my email people. Um, Elliot Papineau, who we spoke about his knife work, uh, knife sharpening the other day, ordered a walking horse strop, followed our recommendations and bought a strop, see whether it's nice. His drop, Nastasia made out of horse butt. Horse butt. Horse butt. Also got a shout out from Dan Mayne in the

[37:50] UK, who works for Dove Bid, which is a company that I've always seen, but I've never ordered. Makes me more nervous to order off of like a real auction site than it does to order off of eBay, but he sent us some links to a tablet press, which I desperately

[38:03] wanted tablet press. If anyone wants to lend us a tablet press, uh, he can do it, but uh, check out DoveBid for all of

[38:09] your uh, for all of your bio pharma needs, uh, which, again, we have them, which I don't really understand why we all have so many, but we do.

[38:17] Also, Tom Fisher and Lansdowne, PA, said, he really loves what we're doing, and he realized last week we're answering our questions, he loves what we're doing, and that the amount of knowledge we squeezed into a 45 minute show is

[38:28] incredible. Thank you. Thank you very much. Uh, and he basically says, um, he's going in the way back machine to last year when Nastasia was against her best judgment, trying to make a pie crust with Crisco. And I said that lard is the only fat to use in such situations. Can lard be used in place of vegetable shortening in any recipe calling for vegetable shortening. Are there certain dishes where vegetable shortening is needed? And is it a one-to-one substitution by weight? The difference in vegetable shortening in lard is that, um, lard is typically a lot softer than vegetable shortening. So it's more difficult to work and you're going to be in certain situations where you need the hardness of a Crisco.

[39:04] Otherwise your product becomes completely unworkable. That's why I tend to work very cold when I work with lard. Also, if you're using natural lard that's rendered out, it has like a liquid and a solid portion. It's much harder to use, but tastes much better than hydrogenated lard. Hydrogenated lard, the one you buy armor in the store, armor brand, hydrogenated lard, is still more plastic than Crisco, more softer rather than Crisco. But much harder than real, honest to God, lard. But yes, one-to-one substitution is best. And lard and biscuits is fantastic. lard in, I've never tried lard in, in a cookie instead of butter, because I use butter in a cookie. But anyway, yes, you can use lard. And referring back to my question last week about extracting fruit juice with a centrifuge. I noticed most brew supply companies sell peptic enzypectic enzymes. Wikipedia seems to be saying that it's used for the same person as Pectinex

[39:57] Ultra SPL breaking down Pectin when making fruit juices. Can this be used in place of, or to complement ultra SPL, or am I barking up the wrong tree? Well, they're similar enzymes, but all the different pectonates enzymes that you can buy have different kinds of activities. And so even Nolosymes, the people who make Pecninex ultra SPL have a range of different ones that have different kind of properties and different kind of activities.

[40:19] We use ultra SPL because that's kind of like the most kind of shotgun one they have. It doesn't just take out pecked in. It takes out hemicellulose and a bunch of other stuff. So any of these enzyme concoctions are kind of multiple enzyme brews that have various effects. And I use that one because it works over a wide range of pH on a wide range of substrates. You might be able to find one in a homebrew that it works really well. I'm not, I'm not sure. You know, you're not barking up the wrong tree. It's just, you know, we have a lot of experience with Pectonex Ultra SPL. And so I tend to go to that one and it's not that expensive for us to use because we buy it in bulk. Make sense? Makes sense? All right. Last, in from Alvin, Alvin, J,

[41:04] Schultz in Houston, who apparently was on Top Chef, something. I saw

[41:09] him. I looked him up, was on Top Chef something. Anyway, thanks for all the info you shared with me via cooking issues. Also, congrats on Booker and Dax. I sent a bartender friend of mine in there this week and he was blown away. I hope to stop by during the international chef conference this year myself. Please do. I have some questions about shopping for my 1st Roto app. Because of my limited funding. I'm stuck with hunting through eBay ads. Anything I should be aware of in eBay auctions for Roto apps. How do I properly clean one that may have been used in a lab? Do road of apps generate leak over time, via warn seals, et cetera. And what is the cost to restore one that may have such problems? I know Dave likes to cold finger style condenser. Does he just run those with a dry ice alcohol mix? I also have liquid nitrogen in my home kitchen. 30 liter nice, huh? Liquid nitrogen in home kitchen. Nice. Would it be better to use that for condensing? How long will a cold finger fill with nitrogen before it lasts before it boils off? And lastly, I see many auctions like this and substitute in some, you know, kind of off-brand rotary

[42:00] evaporator for Rotavap, uh, under a 1000 bucks on eBay. What's to catch with this seemingly Asian manufacturer rotary evaporator? Thanks for your help. Also, I've ordered from your sponsors at modernestpantry.com, and they're great. Extremely fast shipping and nice usable packaging. Just wish they'd give a bigger discount for buying by the pound. All right. Well, I'd stay away from that crappy, uh, you know, uh, Rotov app that's really cheap uh, because I've used even name brand Rotov apps that aren't a good ones in the past and they're leaky and they stink. And if you have a leaky roto app, it's going to be very hard to get a good flavor in it, and yes, they do tend to leak over time in their seals, new rotary

[42:37] seals, it costs about 50 bucks to buy. You just want to get everything clean and make sure that the thing doesn't leak. If the glassware is etched so that it can't form a good seal, like it's scraped too much

[42:46] an etched. You going to have a problem. But most of those problems with leaks can be fixed. But a leaky Roto app is the 1st reason why you're going to lose flavor in a Roto app. I do favor cold finger condenser, but liquid nitrogen gets eaten at a thi rocious rate in a, so every liter that you distill is

[43:03] going to take probably seven, 8 liters of liquid nitrogen in a cold finger condenser. So you're going to be tearing through that 30 liter doer. That said, that's a really good way to do it. Dry ice is going to last you a lot longer. I don't use dry ice because it's hard for me to get dry ice in New York City. I have to take a cab and go to a place and then pick it up and then come back, blah, blah,

[43:21] blah, because I don't own a car, et cetera, et cetera. So if you're in Houston, you own a car, and you have access, I would use dry ice in a cold finger because it's going to last a lot longer. And I would, you can get one on eBay. That's how I got my 1st one. And, um, you can fix most leaks. You want to make sure that nothing nasty went through it. You going to want to clean it with like, you know, alkanox or some really hardcore glass detergent, bleach the hell out of it, even though it's probably more of

[43:47] a, just a poison in it than a bio, biohazard. probably going to be more poison issue, but just clean the ever loving hell out of that son of a gun because I don't want you to be sucking in a bunch of carbon

[43:57] tetral chloride or crazy poison stuff. Poison cooking issues. Fish and vodka. Oh, you did that. Thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage Radio Network. You can find all of our archives programs on heritageradionetwork.com as well as a schedule of upcoming live shows. You can also podcast all of our programs on iTunes by searching

[44:23] Heritage radio network in the iTunes store. You can find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter, up-to-date news and information. Thanks for listening. Vicious, vicious, vodka. Oh, you dirty rap. Got me