[0:00] Today's program was brought to you by Fairway Market. Check out Fairwaymarket.com for more information.

[0:12] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live in the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Calling all of your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Is that right, Jack? They get it right again? Yeah, that's right. Man, have this thing right all the time. Fire. I know, it's like, it's like, once I, once I remember it, I'd never forget. I wake up when I'm 90 and just start screaming that number out to people. Don't change that thing because I know I'll never remember it again. Never, never change that. I am not joined right now in the studio by Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, but Jack and I don't know where she

[0:55] is. She should be here. So she probably got caught on that L train. So we're going to have to play that shoot, see, groove, L-train song to make fun of the L-train later again, one of our, one of our favorite songs, right? So, what's going on here? We have, oh, this a new question in? Okay. So while I'm waiting for Nastasia to come in, so I can shoot the poop with her. We'll go into some of the questions I missed from last time. Jonathan Rogers. Actually, his name is Jonathan Woodruff Rogers III. I did not know that. He was one of our former interns, actually. Nice guy at the FCI. writes in a question about equipment. Hey, Dave and Nastasia. Nice bumming into you the other afternoon. I'm following up regarding at the bar, by the way. That's Booker and Dax, our bar, go visit. I'm just following up regarding some questions I have in my new gig. I'm catering lunches for a few tech startup companies Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday through the company City Grit. Since it's only 3 days a week, plus prep. I have some free time to experiment with some food, which is good. Very few people who are cooking for a living actually have the time to do a lot of experimentation, which is why,

[2:03] you know, my job, uh, director of culinary technology at the French culinary, especially when I was there full time, was so great for that because I didn't have a service to worry about. So that's, yeah, and that's why Faran shuts down his place for, uh, you know, or, you know, for half the year or whatever it is so that he has time to, they have time to do experimental work. Anyway, um, okay, also, the companies allow me to pretty much cook whatever I want, uh, with a 6 item menu that changes weekly. I have roughly $7000 to spend and was wondering what you recommend, I get some information on brands and or recommendation, recommend locations to purchase the products.

[2:37] Things I'm interested in having in my life are a deli slicer, a dehydrator, a meat grinder, a chamber vacuum sealer, a fryer, a

[2:43] smoker, or any other cool gadgets within the price range. They're getting a combi oven, and I currently have a circulator thinking about getting another one. Any information or advice will help. Thanks again, looking forward to stopping by and letting you know how it's going. Thanks again, JW. Okay. Now, $7000 is going to get eaten up pretty quickly. Uh, I love delis. First of all, I'm just getting another circulator. That's another like 800 bucks right there. Just get another one. you have two, and you can keep one running while you use the other one for service, or you can have, you know, you're never going to regret having 2 circulators around.

[3:14] Now, something like a smoker, um, I would go cheap on the smoker, the smoker, nobody really likes it, but the smoker that everyone gets is only like a

[3:24] couple, like a 150 bucks. It's like the, I forget that there's like a little chief or a big chief or something like that. It's basically just like a quilted metal box, you know, that little fine quilt pattern, metal box with

[3:36] like a heater in the bottom. And the guys over at Sam have modified it by drilling a hole in the side and putting a smoke generator with a little heater in on the side to cool the smoke

[3:45] down. But, you know, that's basically all there is to it. In a restaurant situation or even in this catering situation, in New York City, where you don't have the space for a big dedicated smoker, these things are

[3:58] light, they can be moved around very easily. And again, nobody loves them, but, you know, Wiley uses it at

[4:04] WD 50. Um, they use it at sambar. A bunch of people use this because it's cheap and it's easy to stow away when you're not using it. So that's what I'd recommend for the caterer there. Dehydrator, get the Excalibur. There's no question that you should get the Excalibur dehydrator and dehydrator is a great thing to have. Excalibur, the reason you want to get the Excalibur one. I've used some of the round ones that where the stuff goes through and all this other nonsense and I've used, I've used some various ones. Unless you can have a lot of money or to custom build one, the Excalibur is great because it gets a lot of racks in it and the racks are square, which means that

[4:39] they you can lay things out in a way that makes sense. those round ones with a hole in the middle. What the hell are you going to lay out in that? doesn't make sense. Plus, the dehydrator, it's easy to use flat sheets and dehydrate liquids to make leathers or sheets or papers.

[4:51] It's also easy to dry things on the perforated racks. It's just, you know, it's also the dehydrator is really good. The Excalibur because it's very even throughout. So the top rack is going to dry just as evenly as the bottom rack. You can use it for fermentation experiments. I mean, you know, I have one. I've always, you know, have when we have one at some, we have one at the FCI. That's the one that everyone who, anyone who buys a different dehydrator for a restaurant regrets it.

[5:18] So, uh, go for the Excalibur, uh, which I guess, you know, does that, I don't really usually recommend brands like that, but there you

[5:26] go. I actually paid for mine straight up on Amazon. Anyway, they're not that much. For the deli slicer. Now, I've been very spoiled in my life. I don't have one right now, but the Hobart model 3000 is a thick slicer. I did a video for them and they gave one to me, but I left it to school. I don't know why. I should have taken that thing with me because I love that dang thing so much, but it's like, you know, it props up like a car so you can clean underneath it. The blade pops out so you can throw it in the dishwasher. It slices like a freaking dream. Uh, butt, and it slices really, really well. In fact, prior to the Hobart Model 3000, the slicer that I always recommended people get is the

[6:06] berserba SE 12. And a slicer, meat slicer, by the way, just on meat slicer basics. The average meat slicer that we get here in the United States is a gravity slicer, meaning they're on that

[6:17] angle and you see them, if you see them a deli. They're on an angle, and you're supposed to use gravity to basically force the product into the blade and then slice as you go, right?

[6:27] And it has that little handle that you push down. Rookie mistake. If your slicer is not very good or your slicer is not very sharp, you have to apply a good bit of pressure on the item to get it to slice properly as it goes

[6:40] through. This is a horrible practice and causes the bottom of your meat or whatever you're slicing to kind of wedge out as it's getting

[6:48] cut. It's called like healing out at the bottom. And it's, you know, it's a sign that you're, that, A, you're not, slicer's not great. B, it's not that sharp. And C, you're pushing too hard. A properly sharpened slicer should not, you shouldn't have to push on it at all. Uh, and part of that is having very good sharp blades. And prior to the Hobart Model 3000, the slicer that I always recommend it was the berserba SE 12 because it had a really good blade and pretty

[7:14] solid, um, a pretty solid uh, carriage mechanism. But, you know, nowadays, I recommend the Hobart, but you're going to be able to get the berserba a lot cheaper than you're going to be able to get the Hobart 3000 and the berserba is a great machine. It just doesn't clean quite as easily. The, uh, you might be able to get the bazerba used, I haven't priced one in a long time, but it's going to be a lot cheaper than

[7:35] the 3000. The 3000 those primo. In Europe, they actually use something called a vertical slicer. And a vertical slicer is great because instead of using gravity to force the product into the blade, the

[7:47] product just sits like it normally would, and the carriage literally moves and feeds the stuff in slice by slice.

[7:55] And these make perfect slices again and again. And actually, the 1st slicers that were made by, you know, Burkel, Van

[8:02] Burkel, back in, you know, when he invented the meat slicer, were vertical slicers. And in Europe, they continue to be popular and they make fantastic slice quality. But for some reason or other, we tend not to use them in the US. Um, I don't know if you wrote down uh, vacuum machine, but if you can't remember if, yeah, vacuum sealer, if you're going to get a vacuum sealer, I mean, uh, go for one, you can get a good price on. If you're going to get a smaller one, I like the mini packs because they have bigger chamber size, just look at the chamber size. I mean, all of the hoo-ha programming and stuff. I don't know that you're going to use it that much in your application, but get one with a big chamber size. The mini pack and the smaller units especially have a good chamber size and their price seems to be okay. For catering, I would stay away from any of like the really cheap ones because they're going to break when you least want them to break. Get one with a, with a, with a, the actual good German work equivalent to the German, which is, um, the name's out of my head. my gosh. I speak about it all the time. The name of the pump starts with a B. Anyway, uh, the, um, the pump in that is what's

[9:03] serious, and you got to make sure you get the good hardcore German uh, vacuum pump oil-based pump in that. Otherwise, you're going to be asking for problems. Um, okay? So get those. Uh, make sure you have a Vita Prep or two, um, and that's really, you know, all the really other super high tech stuff. I mean, it's kind of like gilding the lily. You know what I mean? I mean, like all the other stuff. I mean, the core stuff I just told you is the basis of almost everything that we

[9:30] use, with the exception of liquid nitrogen. Get yourself a liquid nitrogen doer. Did I mention that? Get a liquid nitrogen doer. You're not going to regret having liquid nitrogen. All right. Nastasia made it. What was the uh... Here, get over the microphones. People can hear you. So apparently as we... Well, don't push my microphone away. You could climb over, go under anything other than pushing the microphone away from me while you're talking. She does not know where her body is in space, by the way. Like, Nastasia has no idea where her body is within the space around her.

[9:59] So I'm not going to blame her. Like, I don't think she literally did that on purpose. Same way that she doesn't understand where doors are when she slams him in your face, which is a constant thing with nostalgia. Yeah, you slam. You walk through doors and then like look like you're going to hold them open for people and then slam them on their faces or on bicycles and stuff because you don't really pay attention to people or the world around you as you're walking.

[10:18] Wow. Well, I was stuck in the Grand Street station and no one could find Phil Bravo this morning. No one knows who Phil Bravo is. No one knows who Phil Bravo is. We've talked about him before. Who's Phil Bravo? He's a friend of mine and he didn't go to work today. So, and he was last seen with me. Wow, well, that's so did you kill him? No. No, he was actually, he was with Tristan all night. Phil Bravo is a very cheap man. So I'm sure he followed wherever the liquor was cheapest. By the way, for those of you not hanging out in New York right now, it's James Beard kind of

[10:47] week and everyone's going out crazy partying except for me, I was home asleep with my family last night. I was home by midnight. Yeah? So Phil went out with Tristan until I heard Harold McGee was partying like a rock star last night with Daniel Patterson and Chris Constantino,

[11:01] 3 of our good friends out there hanging out, having fun. Oh, speaking of James Beard. Congratulations to Tozy. Santosi. Yeah. Our good buddy, won that PDT. You know, great bar, won best bar. Who else won? You remember Daniel Hum won? Yeah. I'm sorry for all of our friends who were up for awards that did not win, but congratulations out to those people who did. Yeah, right? Okay. How long were you sitting at the Grand Street Station? It would stop for like 15 minutes. I was going to be right on time and it was, we were stopped there with doors open and I was like, could I walk from here? But then, you know, that minute when you're like, what if we go right now? I do not know. Yeah, I know that minute. It's like but you always get burnt by that minute. There's nothing worse than sitting in mass transit, not being able to control your destiny. Thinking at any minute this sucker might move again. And with the door was open and every 2nd you got to decide whether... Yeah, yeah. Every minute, and then it was one of those electronic things. So they just said train traffic ahead. I was in the Grand Central the other day. On Sunday going to the Bronx Zoo, which, by the way, is not an eating zoo. You don't get to eat any of the animals that are at the Bronx Zoom. My kids were joking about that as we're there. Anyways, the, uh, when you, the trains were not running out of Grand Central. The whole thing was shut down. It was incredibly calm. No one was flipping out. No one was anything. I've never seen Grand Central.com. Metro North Train. All them were shut down. for like 2.5 hours. The only person not com was my son, freaking out. Okay. Uh, question another question from last week. Don writes it about soda. You may remember that I met you at the B-AR. That's beverage Alcohol Resource School in September at the Astor Center. I am in the planning phase to open a bar, and so does slash carbonation has me at a conundrum. I don't want soda guns. I wouldn't mind bottles, but that's a very high cost and a storage problem. I love the look and ease of ISI soda bottles, but the cost of chargers is

[12:52] stratophuric. I like the work you've done with carbonation systems using the compressor and plastic bottles, but how practical are they in a working bar? It seems to make a huge sticky mess pretty quick. What is Booker and Dax doing for carbonate beverages? On a related note, I tried to carbonate Negroni using the ISI soda bottle. And I just got a glass of foam. What can I do to prevent that? Love the show, Don. Okay, carbonation in a nutshell. The only thing that's really currently available on the market right now that does really good carbonation, my level of carbonation, what I think is an acceptable level of

[13:21] carbonation, is using soda bottles with the carbonator cap manufactured by the liquid bread corporation coming out of a

[13:31] 5 or £20 CO2 tank. You need to pre-chill it much colder than refrigerator temperatures, right? Like, until it's almost frozen. And then you need to uh, you need to carbonate it 3 times before service. A one liter bottle is what I recommend. A one liter bottle will hold roughly 5 pores of drink. And so you do a bunch beforehand and they get going. The reason that you're foaming is several fold. One, you probably don't have enough water in it, right? The 1st mistake people are making when they're doing drinks is

[14:05] to is to not add enough water to the carbonated drink. They treat it like you'll make a drink by shaking, which isn't actually shaking might make a drink cold enough to carbonate. In fact, shaking will make a drink that's kind of barely cold enough to carbonate. The problem is shaking a drink will make a drink that's too alcoholic to be really successful over the long term as a

[14:24] carbon a drink. What do I mean by this? If you take a drink, a like Negroni, 1st of all, instead of stirring the Negroni, if you're going to carbonate it, you must shake it because stir

[14:33] Negroni, A is nowhere near cold enough to carbonate properly. You're going to foam all over the place and B, it's nowhere near diluted enough to carbonate properly. So the 1st thing you're going to have to do when you when you make an agroni carbonated is to shake it. Then you're going to, uh, it's still going to be too alcoholic and it will taste good for the 1st sips, but the problem is, is that you can't have like 32 or 3 of those because it's going to

[14:54] get not just because it's going to mess you up, but because it's going to be, uh, somewhat cloying over

[14:59] time. If you just take that Negroni that you made that way. And just as the test. And, you know, I was talking to Toby Chikini about this. And he's saying the same thing. It's like, add a little bit of soda water to that and see how much more kind of delicious and refreshing it

[15:12] is, just lightening it a little bit. If you were going to make a carbonated drink. I tell you what our ratios are at the bar. Our ratios for a drink for a 5 ounce pour. R ratios are one. 75 ounces of strong. That's of straight liquor, and 3.25 ounces of

[15:33] water or a week, like, including like simple syrup and juice and all that. And everyone's like, 0 my god, that's so weak. Listen, it's not. I've done tests again and again and again and again and again and again and again. And those ratios are the ratios that make, in my opinion, a good drink. If you have more alcohol than that, you need to get it ridiculously cold to carbonate it properly and you're really

[15:56] going to put people on the floor, right? I mean, I've done straight, you know, 40% liquor carbonated stuff before, but they have to be basically

[16:06] minus -18 Celsius to work properly. They don't balance well, and you can't have that very many of them, and they hit people like a ton of bricks. You're much better using the ratios that I just told you, getting it cold till it's almost frozen and doing it. The way we do it at the bar is I have a very special refrigerator, the Randall FX, right? And what it can maintain very, very accurate temperatures. So I set that thing to be 23 Fahrenheit, 22, 23 Fahrenheit, which is what I think is the good place between 20 and

[16:40] 23, Fahrenheit, which is where I think that carbonated drinks should be. I think it's like 23 is what we said it at. And then I let them chill in there until they're chilled a couple hours. And then before service, I carbonate them and they stay in there and I keep refluffing it after I do everyone. The ISI chargers is going to cost you too much. It's not going to work out. Most people's carbonated drinks, I think, are only very lightly carbonated compared to what kind of I

[17:06] want. And one of the reasons is because they foam too much. because their drinks aren't cold enough or they're putting it through a keg system, which causes a lot of foaming. Alcohol in general foams a lot. And so you're kind of, you know, barking up a hard tree. Plus, you need to carbonate alcohol more than you carbonate water for the same sensation of carbonation. So not only does alcohol foam more, but it also needs to be carbonated higher. So you get double the foam and so everything seems very, very filamy. Your solutions are reduce the alcohol proportions slightly, and chill it much more than you're chilling at now. But to me, bottles are the way to go in a bar until we finish our system and get it done right, right?

[17:44] Which I'm working on right now. I just ordered. I built one that works and I'm building another one that works, which hopefully we're going to take to Japan with us. You want to bring that to Japan? Because we need another thing that can break when we go somewhere, right? Right? Nothing's better than stuff that breaks. You like breaking stuff? That's awesome. Awesome. Okay. That answered that question, right? All right, why don't we take our 1st commercial break and come back with some more questions? No, I'll rock the house party at the drop of a hat. Yeah, beat a body down with the luminum back. A lot of people maybe don't just hear me rock the mind. Baby, staring at the radio, saying up all night. Today program was brought to you by Fairway Market. Whether you are cooking for one or for a crowd, Fairway Market literally has everything you need for a fantastic meal. But if you don't feel like cooking, no worries. They cater. Check out fairwaymarket.com for more information, and be sure to check the new blog on our plate for weekly specials, health

[18:38] tips, and recipes. I think you missed a point.

[18:51] That's a baseline right there, huh? Oh, yeah, that says that's your homage to MCA, huh? You know, I didn't even know it sucks. I didn't even know that he died until a couple days afterwards, but that's the end of an era, right? Yeah, indeed. And an interesting tidbit there is a Tibetan doctor advised him to go vegan in the last month

[19:12] or so. Damn. So, so, okay, I'm just putting that out there. What's the meaning of that? I'm just putting that out. Well, you know, they were saying when Steve Jobs passed that he was he was vegan stubbornly and then it may have not been the best idea. But look, it turns out that, uh, turns out that we all

[19:31] die eventually, like this is one of those things that happens, like, regardless of whether you eat vegan or not, turns out you're going to die. It's one of the hard things to kind of like kind of get a handle on, but it's true. And one of the things that bothers me is any sort of health claim related

[19:49] to diet. While it's true that I think I could construct pretty unhealthy diets out of any sort of

[19:57] food taste or food thing. Like, I could construct an incredibly unhealthy vegan diet. I could construct a healthy vegan diet. I could construct an incredibly unhealthy meat-based diet. I could construct a healthy one. I mean, it's like, you know, the idea that you could, I mean, 1st of all, when you're really sick, I know I would be grasping at anything to try and make myself be better, but my semi-healthy self telling myself now in the future

[20:23] is, 1st of all, when you're sick, it's already too dang late. I'd like to hear someone, not too dang late. I mean, obviously, if you have a long-term chronic thing, you change your habits, you get better, right? I mean, I just, I'm very, uh, I don't like, in general, the notion of people selling dietary cures

[20:43] to the illness. That's my point. I mean, I would love to hear someone call in and tell me that I'm the world's biggest jerk off for saying that, but in general, my philosophy, not backed by science, but my philosophy is that the healthiest diet is to eat a wide variety

[21:03] of interesting foods in moderation that make you happy and sated. Yeah? Yeah. Now, if you're happy and sated, uh, eating vegan because you don't want to take in animal products, then you should eat vegan, right?

[21:19] Yeah. You know? Um, speaking of which, go on the uh, Amazon and look up uh, Michael uh, Napkins book. I'm curious to see how it's doing. Hopefully doing quite well. We'll give you a follow-up on the thing. We talked about his book last week and his kind of slap across our face for talking

[21:37] about people's dietary choices. Okay. Uh, longtime listener, Ken, Ken Ingber writes in, uh, 2 things. One, he wrote an article about a coffee trip that he took

[21:49] to, you know, New York. We read it. We couldn't read it online. you know, on the air because it you know, it was long, right? But apparently he's going to get it published in Coffee Geek, maybe, which is nice. Right? But just to give you a preview in case it comes out on there, he had enough shots of espresso during a day to basically turn him into a Christmas

[22:08] Chihuahua. Just like, you know, shaking, caffeinated. I mean, I didn't see him afterwards, but I'm assuming, I know if I had that much caffeine in me, it would be a

[22:17] nightmare. And I'm a very caffeinated fellow. Okay. Ken Wright in. I am making a French dinner this weekend. Of course it's 2 weekends ago, so we missed it. I'm making a French dinner this weekend. I want it to end with good humor, good humor is a pun in this case. In particular, my dessert will be a cream sickle brulee. Uh, crème brûlée with blood or orange foam. I aspire to get my guests weeping a la alinia over their childhood memories of a good humored creamsicle, but I will settle for an appreciative groan.

[22:39] So how do I make a foam with juice? I combine the juice with liquid less thin and put it in my espresso milk froth there. I got no foam in less than did not mix with the juice, but instead stuck to the spring coil frothing device and it's next to impossible to clean. Liquid legend is nasty. Lesson in general is pretty nasty. I only I very rarely use Letheson, by the way. You ever see me use it? No, I don't use it. I imagine modernist pantry has some magic powder. But the dinner is Saturday. So I do have a lot of time. I have Agar Agar in the house, but don't think that's suitable. Can I just use a little egg white and live, the guests use, ask if I'm using raw eggs. Uh, follow-up to that. Cancel my request on the phone unless you find it interesting. I was unsuccessful using Lolesithin, despite multiple assurances on the internet. I'm throwing this away. I'm throwing it away as it is not pleasant to work with. is as pleasant as roofing tar. I used egg white and gelatin, the foamer, hot and cold and immersion blender, had some success with gelatin, but it was a lot of fuss and didn't do it because it was a pain in the butt. Okay. I assume something like, 1st of all, it would work. As I said, I did not have time to order from modernist pantry. Oh, well. Well, Ken, you know modernist pantry has quick shipping to anyone in the world. In fact, someone else wrote in, we'll get to it later, basically saying that it was quick, but

[23:48] versus whip, you're quite right. Versa Whip is what you should probably use for that. And Evan Freeman, our friend Evan Freeman, had a blood and sand recipe with

[23:59] a orange foam on top that was, in fact, made with Versa Whip. And his recipe is 200 grams of orange juice and 2.5 grams of versa whip. He doesn't say what kind of versa whip because that's like Eben. won't tell you what kind. You know what I mean? Thanks Eben. Anyway. Uh, 2.5 grams of versa whip, which is a lot of verse whip. It's like, you know, it's a lot, right? It's over a percent. In general, I try to add gums in the percent or less range, but in this case, I don't think it matters

[24:26] because it's going to be whipped up. And a half gram of Xanthan gum. And the Xanthan is there to provide body to it and to hold once it whips up.

[24:34] The 1st of whips are whipping agent, but the worst of whips is not going to hold the foam. right? The Xanthan is there to hold the foam. Uh, after the verse of it whips it up, okay? And then use an immersion blender with a whisk attachment to whip it into a foam and ladle on top. Another thing you can do, that's incredibly simple and doesn't require ordering anything online and creates a very

[24:54] dense, orangey, orangey foam. You're going to want to acidify it a little bit. So orange plus a little bit of lemon to make it, you know, more like a sour orange, right? Set that into an agar gel, pretty stiff, like 0.8 to one% agar gel. Blend it in a blender. Now you have a fluid gel. If you mix that with straight cream in a whipper, in an ISI whipper, when you squirt it out, you get a dense, dense foam, and the

[25:24] agar fluid gel stops the cream from breaking, and you actually can have the a really dense, cream sickle like fluid

[25:31] gel. And we've done that many times. And that's my favorite kind of citrus foam because it has that awesome mouthfield whipped cream, which you can't beat. You can't beat the mouthfield of whipped cream, right? In fact, it's even denser than whipped cream. It's like dense and creamy, but also orangey and acidic without breaking. that'll hold for a while. So next time you do it, or if anyone wants to do it, like, I think that's a good, uh, that's a good way to do it, right? Yes. Yes. It's actually like, I don't really care. I don't care. No, so this his book, Michael Natkins book, got 10 five-star reviews. Wow. goes on. It's beautiful. Yeah, it is beautiful. So maybe we should buy it. How much is it? 1629 Prime on Amazon. You know what? I'll make sure we book him for one of the other shows where we do more you know, authors of books and stuff like that. And he used to be an engineer on the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. What? Whoa. What do you mean? He, where is it? He was a software engineer making dinosaurs for Jurassic Park. That's baller. Yeah. You know, my wife was saying, should we let the kids watch the Jurassic Parker? too damn scary? I think the guy gets eaten. The postman from Seinfeld gets eaten, right? I was pretty young when I saw it and it was pretty awesome, though. Well, how young is young? I think I must have been like, I'll have to look it up. I'll actually go look up the release date. Yeah, be a real answer. it up, Jack. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so everyone should go out and buy his book. We're going to buy a copy of the book and Jack's going to try to get him booked onto a show. Yeah, and let's have them build it down. 7 years old. Sorry. I was seven. Seven? Man, I was like 85 when that movie came out. Okay. Chip writes in regarding circulators. He misses the hammer and Dave and Jack, but does not miss Carlos. Wow. Really? Yeah. Hardcore. Man. I like a guy who respects loyalty. Miss the hammer, like Mr. or Missus. Oh, maybe Miss the Hammer and Dave. Yeah. And Jack, but not Carlos. He does say, but not Carlos. messed up. He's not saying hello. Anyway. Anyway, anyway. All right, regardless. Uh, he says, I know you're not the biggest proponent of DIY thermal circulators, but my wife won't let me drop a G on one

[27:36] yet, so I had to do my best. I'm familiar with this problem, chip. I made the version on Seattle food geek a while back, but quickly found that the pump being submerged was the slash A problem. And when I was cooking potatoes, I guess it went south on him, he was cooking potatoes for the modernist cuisine gnocchi recipe. So I wanted to move it out of the water. Finding a pump that would, A, handle the heat, and B would be self priming was a bit of a challenge, but if there is a need, it is sold on eBay. So I found one there. That's that's that. That's almost every dang thing on eBay. Almost, almost everyday thing on eBay. I used an SSR, which is a solid state relay for all you folks out there. By the way, in case you're the person who listens to our show doesn't know what a circulator is, it's a device that keeps water

[28:19] usually or any other liquid, but with a DIY, definitely only use water and try to keep it clean. At a very precise temperature, which is invaluable for doing kind of modern, low temperature cooking, which is, you know,

[28:31] I use it all the time. They're about 800 bucks now at the JB Prince or at the Williams Noma. And so a lot of people have been making their own. By the way, I am not against DIY circulators. In fact, I applaud anyone that wants to build something themselves. It's just usually you end up with something where you've spent a lot of hours building it and it's not quite as

[28:55] functional. I think there's so many people working on the DIY circulators that I'm pretty sure they're pretty good by now, but he's quite right. The main problem is the the pump. Uh, let me go on to keep on going, uh, I also, uh, this is chip again. I also had the case for it, laser cut on pinoco.com. panoko.com is pretty cool. You just send them like the pictures and they can laser cut stuff and they ship it back to you. So it took a little more, so it looks a little more like a retail product. I still need to address some of the visual issues with it, but what as? It works for now. I like what is. Victoria says that. Our former intern works with us a lot. Anyway. Anyway, I thought I'd share. Thanks for the great show. Modern's pantry does have fast chipping. Thanks, Chip. I looked at Chip Circulator. I't know if it's available online. Damn thing does look pretty good. One thing I'm going to say, if you're going to build a circulator, The main parts are a controller. controllers can now be had for $30 or less in that range on eBay and

[29:46] at Auburn instruments. Some people buy controllers with relays in them. I don't recommend using a regular relay because it's another failure point that I don't enjoy having. I don't enjoy failure points. I use a solid state relay, which he uses. They're not that expensive. They can be had for very cheap at this point. Um, and an immersion heater, which you can basically crib from almost anything. you know, a hot water heater, whatever. I don't know what these guys are using DIY, a temperature sensor, again, only a several dollar problem now. And then the case. That's the hard part. And the pump pumps break a lot. And real circulators basically have a long shaft, and they just sit there spinning a stainless steel blade to do the pumping, and it ends up being good over the long term. I've had most of my plastic in and out pumps like the one you're using here fail over time, but, you know, good luck with it. It looks like a good job. looks like you did a good job, right? Yeah. Yep. You want to take one more commercial break? Let's take another commercial break. Call your questions. Two, 718-4972128. That 7184972 or three.

[30:58] Hey, ladies and a place are calling out to you. When there was a city, can't you answer what? For the beat, then you'll ever know. And I got more hits, than so, to,

[31:10] to, to, to, to, to, ripping on TV with the hair, to, to. We're scrolling out, just like the great kid, and I'm always out looking for a female. On the dog, on the drag it to the rim. Put on, bitch, wheel in a deal and make a little bit of a spin. I'm real. I'm telling. Your

[31:30] body's all time, and your mind is appealing. Staring at the cracks of it, I'm on ceiling. to be the base that I'm doing. I'm talking to the girl, telling her about knowing. Talking to the kid. I'm telling her if he lied, that you know that I never did. Ladies, get funky. All the ladies in the high. Nice one, Jack. Nice one. Uh, Nastasia, for those of you that don't know, likes to just kind of like make weird judgments about things,

[32:01] decided parrots are like this too, by the way. Just aside, does not like my shirt, right? And the reason is I'm wearing one of my favorite shirts, which is a hunting shirt. It's Blaze Orange. And her opinion is that it makes me look like a uh, prison uh, work gang who, the reason prisoners wear orange is the same reason hunters wear orange is to be seen

[32:24] easily. The hunters do it so they don't get shot and the prisoners do it so that they can get shot if they try to escape.

[32:31] See, slightly different. But none of that has anything to do with my shirt, which I'm

[32:36] not neither hunting nor hopefully going to prison today. So I don't really understand Nastasia's problem with it. Anyway. Derek Bodkin writes in about a popcorn machine. Dave and Co. Recently, I learned about Chinese popcorn in Parents. I don't Prince, quotes. I say prince, my quotes. Apparently a method where kernels are kernels are sealed in a container and superheated, then allowed to explosively decompress, popping them all at once. Here is a link, and you look on, like, look for explosively awesome on the

[33:08] internet, boing, boing, and whatnot. In your humble opinions. Is it possible to hack together a setup to do this in a home kitchen? Thanks for your help and insight and keep being awesome, Derek Bodkin. Okay. You have asked a question that I actually do know something

[33:22] about because I actually have tried to do this at home before many, many, many years ago,

[33:27] like before I had kids, so it's more than 10 years ago, probably 12 years ago, 13 years ago.

[33:33] Um, So I've been interested in a long time for uh, in a piece of equipment called a puffing gun. Now, when they were inventing breakfast cereals at the beginning of the 20th

[33:47] century and the end of the 19th beginning of the 20th century, and, you know, in that range, was when all of the really butt kicking breakfast cereal concepts were invented, except one, except one.

[33:58] So, uh, flakes were invented back then, and the way they were made is with a giant oversized, basically pasta machine where you, like, you temper out uh, actual whole kernels and you feed them through these incredibly, they're cooled and they're incredibly

[34:12] massive uh, and sturdy roll, rollers, and it just, boop, smashes them into flakes, and the flakes shoot out onto a, onto a mat, and that's it. They're done. That was invented back then. The shredder, to make shredded wheat was invented back then, and that's basically the same concept, but the roller has ridges in it. So it extrudes them into shredded wheat shapes, right? Also, at that time was invented the puffing gun. And the puffing gun, right, is an amazing piece of equipment where what you do

[34:42] is, so corn, you can pop normally. There's really no need to do this with popcorn because corn, you can pop. You know what I mean? But you can't pop wheat. and you can't pop rice the same way. You can puff it by frying, but you can't puff it the same way popcorn does. And the reason is, is that the outside, the skin of the popcorn is

[35:03] so it seals in the water so well that when you're heating it in oil, water pressure can build up on the inside of the

[35:12] kernel in the end of sperm to the point where it explosively decompresses and you get popcorn,

[35:17] right? That's what's happening. When you do wheat, it's very hard to do regular wheat because the moisture leaks out of the out of the outside, right? Because it's not as hard, the outside's not as like, no, leakproof. And so it won't pop explosively the same way that popcorn will. So the solution to this, right? same with rice. The solution to this is to heat these items under a lot of pressure. What's a lot of pressure, uh, like 175 PSI in that range, because they're trying to get it up to the same temperatures that you would get when you're frying popcorn, like 360, 3 in that

[35:56] range. 350 Fahrenheit, 360, around there, right? And so you start with a grain that has the proper amount of moisture in it, which I forget what that is. I can go look it up. It's something like 10% or something in that range, right? You then seal it, you heat it under a massive amount of

[36:12] pressure, and what that means is that the water inside is hot, right?

[36:18] And it's also under pressure so it won't boil. Then you release the pressure very suddenly and all of a sudden all that water expands all at once and it pops. It doesn't need the outside of the grain to hold the moisture

[36:30] in, the way that you would with regular popcorn. So the unit that you pointed to on the video that the guy is using on the street

[36:38] corner. I would not walk anywhere near that sucker. That sucker was so freaking ghetto, that thing could blow up at any second. I happen to know that when he's puffing that stuff, it's under at least

[36:49] 150 PSI, probably higher, right? So you don't want to, basically, what you do is, is he literally

[36:56] has a, like a, like what looks like a homemade boiler that he's spinning, and that's good, because you need to, you know, get the heat evenly transferred throughout it, right? So it's spinning over a fire that he has stoked with coal and with like what looks like a modified

[37:12] hair dryer, right? And what looks like a freaking vice grip holding the whole damn thing together, right? He looked really happy, though. He looked like happy. He looked happy because he's not dead. Every 2nd that he works and he's not dead. He's happy. Then he sticks it into, you know, this what looks like a long wind sock, which was incredibly dirty, by the way.

[37:32] I don't know that I bought. I mean it was incredibly dirty. And then puts a stick in, pulls the pin, bam, the thing blows up. Now, maybe this thing is actually manufactured by somebody to some sort of specifications, but the idea of heating something over an open fire with no protection that looks homemade to 170 PSI, 150, 170

[37:53] PSI, and then explosively decompressing it time after time outside, it freaks me

[37:58] out and put it that way. So how did I attempt to do this? I bought some pipes that were rated to 150 PSI or higher. Actually, I got like 80 schedule 80, which was rated higher than 150 PSI, made out of

[38:13] steel. I put them all together with a heater, water heater on the inside, which was one of the weak points, and an

[38:21] over-pressure valve so that it wouldn't go above the pressure that I wanted to, and a thermometer, all done with pipes,

[38:26] whether regular pipes. Filled it with corn, includes my 1st test because I was trying to, I was, I was working on a, on a,

[38:34] on doing a nuclear explosion out of candy and popcorn. And so I was trying to actually do a puffing gun thing for that. Uh, and uh, the problem was, is that the piping system that I had didn't seal properly. And so I was getting venting and steam out. I did get it up to like 120 PSI before I, and I

[38:52] literally like, like I said, I used vice grips with like a, with a pull string to pull it. And,

[38:58] uh, I, what I successfully did was spray burning hot popcorn kernels all over

[39:04] my, all over my house. I didn't actually, I popped maybe 4 or 5 of them, but I didn't get it to be done the way way you'd want. And I think my main problem was is I tried to have a little bit of water medium in there to heat it. I tried heating it internally instead of having an external fire with rotation, which is the way that it's always

[39:21] done, is external heat and agitation. And the piping system, it was just hard to get it to seal very well, that thick

[39:28] pipe, because it was like 2 inch pipe. It was hard to get it to seal accurately at those high, high temperatures because I

[39:35] used Teflon tape, but I don't know, it just didn't work. So, uh, I'm going to build one eventually because for the Museum of Food and Drink cereal exhibition, we're going to have a cereal exhibit in the Museum of Food and Drink, which we're working

[39:46] on now. We have our 1st we have our Well, we have a new full-time employee at the museum of food and drink, even though he's not getting paid. He's not an employee, I guess, because he's not getting paid. But Peter Kim, formerly one of our lawyers at Devil Boys and Big Plimpton. Uh, Big Plampton. Anyway, so like they, he quit being a lawyer. He believes in the museum project so much. He quit being a lawyer, and he is now working a museum full time, which we're very, very excited about. So the museum will have one. There are small commercial machines that are not quite so wonky in Korea that actually make puffed rice cakes,

[40:22] alaminute. And I forget the name of them, but it's something like, like, going, going. The noise of the actual thing working is what it is in Korean, but I don't know what the noise is. So I can't tell you what it is. But you could go look that up. The 3rd and the 3rd kind of machine, by the way, for cereal, and the one that was not invented early on in the

[40:43] game, is the twin screw extruder, which basically was a piece of equipment that was invented for the plastics industry, and that's how they make Captain Crunch, and all things like

[40:54] that. They basically have a screw under enormous pressure that takes in grains or whatever, under enormous pressure, and then

[41:02] heats up the pressure and the actual screw mechanism of putting it through the thing, heats it up so that when it comes out of a dye at the end, much like a pasta dye, like a pasta extruder, but it's under such heat and

[41:12] pressure that when it comes out the end, it puffs up into Captain Crunch or kicks or whatever.

[41:20] And that's how they make all of those cereals. And so we're going to have one of those at the exhibit 2 because that's pretty badass, right? Yeah, I've always wanted one of those. I went to I went to visit Cornell years ago and they let me look at theirs. They have small pilot ones. shouldn't we get one? We should. Right? get Peter on that. Get Peter on that son of a gun. right? But we want a big one, like, that's the thing. if we got anyone out there who has used serial equipment. I called up the Purid Manufacturing Corporation, by the way, is the corporation that used to make all the old puffing guns. They no longer use those puffing guns in commercially in the US. They've moved to a system called a continuous puffer. That's a batch puffing thing. And, you know, they've moved to continuous puffers. And so all the old ones get sent back, refurbed, and now most of them are used in factories in Mexico. So I wasn't able to locate someone with an old puffing gun that wanted to donate it to the museum. So if anyone out there can get their hands on an old Puritan manufacturing corporation puffing gun. The museum would love, and we are now 501 c three, right? We're still pending? We're still pending, but believe me, we're going to get that 501 C3. So you'll be able to write off that Puritan pumping gun when you donate it to the museum and the little kids are going to be so happy when we're exploding cereal in front of their parents. Imagine that, like 10, 9, well, all the way down to one, boom, and like cereal

[42:38] spray everywhere, goggles and bowls, and we're going to have like... Better than the, what was that store in Times Square? your kids like. Which one? Pop Tart. Oh, the pop tart pop-up? Pop Tart pop-up. They weren't making pop tarts. Here's the thing. No, they weren't making them. Yeah, no, they had these machine that you could make pick your own pack and it would do it, but it's not like, I mean. they charged a lot. Charged a lot. All right. Finally. Uh, in from uh, Elliot Papineau writes in, uh, longtime listener. Dave, Nastasia, and Jack. What book, and I got this over Twitter too, actually. Cool. I'm on the Twitter now, buddy. You know, if people keep addressing me in these questions, I'm going to have to try to answer one of them. Well, I mean, try, Jack, don't try. don't try. What the hell is that? Thanks. Nastachia is so rough. By the way, by the way, by the way, before I get into this question, I'm

[43:29] going to run, you know, a minute late, like I always do, or 3 or four. But like, uh, so I say to Nastasia, like she, she says that she never answers questions here when I ask her because I don't give her the time to answer.

[43:42] I think, okay. What you mean? Is that what you is that not what you say to me? I just remember David Chang's explanation. Well, we'll get into a second. We'll get into that a second. My point is, we're on the radio. It's not like Nastasia wants me to ask her a question and then pause for like 35, 40 seconds and wait for an answer. And I'm like, you know, we're on the radio. It's not like at the dinner table where like, you know, they can see the thoughtful pause, you know, you know what I'm saying? So she says, I don't give enough time. And she's referring to another time when Dave Chang was laughing at me. Nastasia, this is Nastasia's favorite comment of all times. Is it basically, and he was talking about like a demo I was doing with McGee, where I will ask a question, then answer it, ask a question, then answer

[44:30] it without letting the other person... what color is the sky today? And Harold's like, well, and they, like, it's blue. It's blue. First of all, I'm not like that. I'm not like that. No, I guess. I'm not whatever. We can have more discussions about this later. But the final question in. What book do you recommend about alliums? I just ordered having your ramps and eating them too by Glenn Fackmeyer Jr.? Hopefully it does not suck. Now, 1st of all, I think Thakmeyer is an amazing name. Do you love that name? Fakmeyer. Because it sounds like you're mired in facts. Like, like, you don't even like facts, but like you're stuck in them like quicksand. You can't get out. You know what I mean? I like that. But you want to talk about how much have we already talked about how much you hate raps on the show? I think they're good. I don't like people's like of them. See, this is classic nastasia here. The actual product is good, but the people, the fact that people like them is no

[45:25] good, and therefore she does not like them or does not want to see them. Same is true with weather. She doesn't like good weather. What? You feel the same about weather. No, no. a little bit. No, I still like the, you do not like weather, good weather because other people like

[45:40] it. Because they get overly happy about it. Like with ramps, overly happy. Crazy. Okay. I feel you on the ramps thing. Thank you, Jack. Well, of course, you work in rampland. We're here at Roberta. Like Roberta's is like, you know, happy feely forage, grow, you

[45:59] know? Okay. Hopefully, send your Fat Meyers book on Ramps does not suck. With ramp season ending, and green garlic, escape season beginning. Can you talk about some things to do with alliums, nitro muddling maybe? Uh, and uh, by the way, he also has a separate question, which I'll answer, which is what are some good books on uh, aliums. I'm also having, do you understand what this is? Is that a hoe? It's like, oh, he's also having a really nice hoe made by Red Pig? Is that, what do you call that, a hoe? Some sort of garden implement there? Made by a red pig tools for my mom for Mother's Day. Hopefully your mom does. Of course your mom doesn't listen to the show, but it looks like a very nice thing. I'm sure she'll be very happy. Have you ever considered using Twitter or Facebook for questions for the show? Well, I did get from you this question. So I am going to answer both parts of it. On? I don't own any books on onions exclusively. I own 2 books on garlic that address onions somewhat, and I'll talk about both of them. The one I've spoken about on this show before, which is, it's called garlic and other alliums by Eric Block. And it is kind of, it's supposed to be a compendium of lore and science and all this, but

[47:10] it's, it has some of the lore and a lot of the history and a lot of the bibliography on garlic.

[47:14] But the science is fairly in-depth, and it serves really kind of as a review from time immemorial of the

[47:22] science behind the chemistry of alliance, which is quite complex. And some stuff on, on, like it's cookery and it's use, but it's strongest on the science. And on taxonomy and things like that, for garlic and other alliums, onions and whatnot. It's dense, right? The other book I have is called The Complete Book of Garlic, a guide for

[47:44] Gardiners, Growers, and Serious Cooks by Ted Jordan Meredith. And that book is fantastic. And you had mentioned on the Twitter that you were interested in books that talked about cultivation. And that book is a nice book to read. depressed me because I don't have the ability to grow garlic. I dont have the ability to grow anything where I live because I don't get light. I can't even have a window box because I don't really get light in my apartment. Nastasia has a plot of land. Where's that sucker? 48 street. It's in a community garden. They gave me another plot because they were so impressed with my plot. Yeah, or no one else wanted it. I guess. We'll choose to think that it's because you did such a good thing. They told me I did a really good job. But you had that Latvian lady tell you that your job sucked. That was when it was all seedlings. Now it's all out and it looks beautiful. Better than the people next door? Oh, yeah. Nastasia, by the way, has a feeling that she's great at all the things like this, but I tend to think that she probably has a good garden. I do. I do. I do. I'll bring a picture Yeah? Maybe you'll post it on our post on the Twitter account? Okay. Okay. So the point is, is that this book is depressing for me because I can't grow garlic, but it doesn't even have recipes, which I love.

[48:50] What it is, is it's a book about garlic varieties and uh, some history and some

[48:56] lore and uh, how they're used in a culinary sense. What makes a great culinary garlic and all the different varieties and

[49:04] planners' notes and how to grow them and where they respond best, with lots of great pictures, but without recipes, and clearly written by someone who cooks with them all the time and knows how to cook.

[49:14] And these kind of books are rare. Usually you either have books that are basically recipe books that have something about the actual product, right? like garlic in this case, or you have books that are exclusively about

[49:28] garlic that aren't written from the perspective of a cook. This is, you know, fairly rare in this kind of field and that it's a book written for people who are gardeners, but who garden with garlic, not because they're interested in garlic as a theoretical thing, but because they're interested in

[49:46] garlic, the cooking item. And it's a good book for that. It's great. If you were planning on growing garlic, go ahead and get it. One of the best discussions of it is, it goes to a very good discussion in that book about, um, about why you would plant different kinds of garlic and it's because different kinds of garlic are good as a season progresses. very much similar to kind of what I say about apples, that apples. There's an apple for every time and for every place. So, you know, he goes through, where I thought it was a very great discussion of kind of the usefulness of having different varieties and also

[50:19] of kind of the challenges of growing garlic and the fact that garlic, over the 1st couple years that you planted in your, in your garden is going to acclimatize to your garden. It's just really, I think it's an interesting book. I would go with that. I don't have a good onion book for you now. Garlic start as a seed? You plant the, you plant the, the one of the, yeah, you plant the clove. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Anyway, um, it talks something about using, he hasn't used the bobils that much, but it talks about using scapes and all those other things and what he uses, but it's not a recipe book, thank God. Um, as for uses, I mean, other than the ones that we always, I don't have any new onion uses, I mean, other than the ones we always, always harp on, which is pressure cooking onions, uh, which, you know,

[51:01] Mills used to make ice cream with, uh, I like pressure. I like uh, doing like dual onion soup, like pressure cooked, massive amounts of pressure cooked onions into a beef stock or veg, I guess.

[51:14] And then, uh, and then sauteing onions regularly and adding them for like mega onion soups. I like that. Straight up pressure cooked onion soup is a little light on onion flavor, right? Um, because but it's incredibly sweet. I mean, garlic, the same thing. Most of my tricks are pressure cooking, like pressure cooking, massive amounts of garlic to make sauces for pizzas that are like half garlic. I mean, I do that, you know, pretty much all the time. I make a lot of sauces that way. Do have any other good onion tricks? No? ice cream, you said? I already said that. Anything? No? No? Go get yourselves from Chinese chives. They're fantastic to cook with, wilted, sauteed with bacon. They're delicious. Um, anyway. So, uh, that is that. That is cooking issues and come back next week.

[52:07] 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

[52:24] Radio Network in the iTunes store. You can find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for up-to-date news and information. Thanks for listening. You got me all twisted and

[52:37] I guess can't get it straight.