[0:00] Today's episode of Cooking Issues has been brought to you by the International Culinary Center For more information visit internationalculinarycenter.com.

[0:15] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. Roberta's Pizzawea. and most wick, Brooklyn. Well, we're back from Tokyo, right? Yeah, you have a good time with it? No, because you're not speaking to the microphones here. You had a good time, man? Yes, did you? Have a fantastic time. Crazy. In fact, the only problem is we have so many questions to get to that I don't know if I'm going to have time to talk about that. You said we have a one o'clock here. Yeah, yeah. Well, some other time, since we have 2 weeks, we were gone for 2 weeks. It turned out is impossible for Nastasia and I to schedule doing the cooking issue show with our work schedule over there in the Japan because we were working bar, basically, until right before the

[0:52] show, and so we couldn't really prep out for it, right? Anyway, call on your questions too. 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. All right, so let's wait, is that right? Yeah. I didn't even I didn't even listen to it. I just, like, you just turn on a speech and it just, like, sprays out of your face and you don't have no idea. Okay. Well, actually, since we don't have time to talk to Tokyo, they should go to the blog. Are we started the blog again? right? I got the 1st post I did was an apology for not putting me post-up. And the 2nd was when Nastas and I went to Jiro's sushi, along with Mark Ladner. A lot of money. Yeah, Jiro loves money. Jir dreams of the money. My favorite fire was, if the old man or the old man can watch me eat, my melon, I think is what he said. Well, you know, look, for those who don't know, this is a Jiro Dreams of Sushi is the, uh, is

[1:41] the movie that's out now, and it's this 86-year-old dude. He's 82 years old. He got 3 Michelin stars. Basically, all he does, he wakes up very early, goes to Sakiji

[1:51] market, you know, fish market in Tokyo, gets the fish, shows up and his, you know, must be 60s son, right? who must be, he's dreaming of his dad dying. So he could take over the family business. So these guys, along with like a couple other apprentices, are sitting there and this 86 year old dude is pumping out the sushi every day. But when you show up, it's like 300, $350 a

[2:15] pop, and it's one course every minute for about 19 minutes, and then they move you to another seat, and you eat your melon. And Nastasia and Mark were like, like, all like bent out of shape like pretzels, worried about like hurrying out. He's like, they want us to leave. They want to do. I could give a rats. whether they want me to leave or not. You know, you know what I mean? It's like, if, look, if you invite me into your place and I'm spending $350, it's like, you know, you don't have a right to kick me out

[2:38] in like, you know, within 30 minutes. You know. understand you. Yeah, I mean, he's not a hooker. not like you're done, you're out. You know what I mean? The melon the melon is not that I would, you know, know about that. No, no, no. imagine, yeah, anyway, whatever. But the quality of sushi was amazing. Go see the write-up on cookingissues.com versus this, which is cooking issues, the radio show. Yeah. Okay. Daniel Seattle writes. Hey, Nastasia and Dave. I love the show and music teacher and food nerds who loves listening to a restaurant shop talk. My wife and I throw big dinner parties for 12 to 20 people in our small apartment. What are the current best practices for making coffee for a whole bunch of people? Usually our guests have at least one small cup each and usually more, so I shoot for at least 6 to 8 ounces per person. Normally you do French press or a pourover or an arrow press, but those don't scale up well, even if we do a few batches and transfer them to thermal

[3:31] caross. What do you think, Daniel, from Seattle? Well, if you're willing to do a pourover technique, I think one thing you could do is switch to a much larger format when you're doing your

[3:41] pullover. So with any of these things, you're into a couple problems, like fresh coffee is always better than coffee that's not fresh.

[3:50] Duh. But there's a couple of reasons. One, is that the temperature of the coffee goes down, like that's the obvious one. And two, um, the aroma of the coffee disperses and actually the stuff in the coffee itself, the flavors of the coffee, uh, tend to physically change with time after their root. Now, um, So some of that can be mitigated by a proper carafe handling. So if you want to use one of your small scale methods and put it in a craft and have good results. The 1st trick is to add a boatload of boiling water to your carafe. first. Let it sit for a couple of minutes, cover, dump it out, add another layer of boiling water,

[4:26] you know, another thing of boiling water to it. Now, leave that boiling water in and that your carafe is very, very hot. Otherwise, even though your craft is thermally insulated. You're wasting a lot of the heat energy of the coffee, just warming up the glass walls

[4:40] or the craft before you add any stuff to it. Makes sense, right? Right. Same is true when you're adding liquid nitrogen to a craft. You end up losing a lot of the initial batch of liquid nitrogen that you add because you need to chill down the craft to a low temperature. So the 1st thing I would suggest is preheating your craft. Okay. Now, the 2nd choice you have is to scale up your mode of production. The problem with most scale ups is that you radically change the actual parameters of

[5:06] your of your brewing. By that, I mean, either the brew time or the brew water temperature. And either one of those things can really drastically influence the

[5:17] flavor, result in your coffee. So it's very hard to do in a French press unless you were to custom create some sort of a French press operation in a big

[5:25] pot. But I've noticed that whenever you're doing things in a large scale, it can still be difficult because the physical time to press something down is going to be different.

[5:33] The physical time to drain something off in a large situation is going to be different. So here's what I recommend. If you're willing to do pourover technique. Go online and purchase the large, large coffee filters that are meant to go with

[5:46] industrial, for industrial size, like bunomatic coffee machines that make 20 cups at a time. They're much, much larger, a lot more surface area than a standard one. Put it into a colander. Put your grounds into that with a bed depth that's roughly similar to what you would have in a normal pour over coffee situation. Put that colander over a larger pot that you can put into a Bain Marie of hot water and then heat your water for the coffee and pour it all over at once so that your brew time is roughly similar to what your normal pour over drip time would be.

[6:18] And that should create and then pour it directly into a thermal craft and serve out. And that's probably as close as I think I can get you just off the top of my head having never done it myself. What do you think, does? Good. Good. All right. My iPad, my stuff is so long winded that my iPad turns off in between and I have to... Is the way I can keep it on? That mustache, you want that for next week? Okay. Hey, which reminds me. I just want to tell listeners that we now have iPhone and iPad compatibility for the live

[6:47] stream so you guys can tune in live on the go. Oh, hell. Hell yeah. All right. Jonas from Switzerland writes in about meat. Hello, Nastasia and Dave. I'm a chef who's been working with the sous vide technique for some time. In 2011. We tasted various foods and sous vide water baths and published the results we liked in an iPhone app called Sous vide Degree Celsius. How the hell do you search for the degree symbol? Crazy. I don't know how you do that. Yeah, I don't know. have no idea. Anyway, recently, I've been asked to present low temperature cooking and the science behind it at culinary schools. One of the most stunning examples when presenting it. Presenting the CV method is, of course, low temperature cooking for long periods of time, as in spare

[7:22] ribs or beef shins, veal neck, et cetera. One question has often come up. I don't know how to answer, is up to what temperature or for how long do collagenase enzymes remain active when cooking sous vide? Okay, and then he brings up 2 articles. One is studying the effects of heat on meat proteins, by Thornberg 2005, which says that temperatures between 53 and 63 degrees. The collagen denatriation occurs, followed by college and fiber shrinkage. And then on 497, it quotes an article from 1970 that shows that collagenase, which would be an enzyme, by the way,

[7:55] ace's enzyme always, and collagenase would be an enzyme that breaks down collagen, could remain active in the meat at cooking temperatures below 60 degrees, whereas faster

[8:03] heating up to 70 or 80 Celsius, they were inactivated. But then, uh, to contradistinct to that. It says in the abstract 4 effect of prolonged heat treatment from 48 to 63 on toughness and cooking loss of pork, which is a recent article, the residual activity of Cat Hespin, which is actually a different enzyme, by the way, in low temperature,

[8:24] long time, treated pork was mainly affected by temperature, showing the highest activity between 58 and 63 degrees

[8:29] Celsius. So what's up with that? How can we go for that? How can we go and how long does it have an effect? Is it 60 degrees, 63 degrees? Can you help me sussing this crap out? Best witches from Switzerland, Jonas. Okay, 1st of all, for those of you that couldn't follow a damn word I was just saying, the argument here, the question is, in low temperature cooking is the majority, like there are enzymes that are still working in low temperature

[8:52] cooking and those enzymes break down various proteins in the meat, okay?

[8:58] And the 2 main protein fractions, we're looking to break down our connective tissue fractions, which is mainly collagen, and muscle

[9:06] protein, portions, like act and myasin, the actual contraction portions of muscles. Now, Calagenase is an enzyme that is present, it causes awesome stuff that Nastasia likes to look up on the internet like gas gangrene. It's the thought of like a gangrenous lesion and is sending nastasia into queasy results now. Now, look, uh, yes, these enzymes keep working, and enzymes, especially protein breakdown enzymes have a huge impact on the texture of fish that's cooked low temperature, and it's why fish can go pasty and

[9:38] mushy. And for a long time, it's been theorized that these enzymes are also a lot of what's going on in tenderizing low temperature cooked meat. I just don't believe it. I just don't think so. I think it has some effect, right? But I think it's not the majority of effect. Furthermore, there's 2 main categories of enzymes you're looking at here. Collagenate enzymes, like I say, breakdown collagen, but in the recent literature, they're very, very, they're not very often mentioned at all.

[10:04] The others are different. Their cat hesbans, which break down the um, this break down the muscle proteins, and those are in, uh, they're contained with, normally in intact

[10:16] muscle, inside the lysosomes, can be released on cooking. And there's recent studies on that, that they are released and they maintain some activity. And so they can, they can probably act towards muscle protein,

[10:27] you know, tenderness, but it's probably not the majority of the

[10:31] effect. The majority of the effect in low temperature cooking is probably just a thermal degradation of collagen over long periods of time

[10:38] at elevated temperatures. That is my feeling. Also, these articles are, you know, there are a lot of them that are done are review

[10:46] articles, and so it's like you're comparing apples and oranges when you're comparing temperatures because they're denaturing proteins in different environments, you know, purified or not

[10:54] purified, in different muscles, and the presence are different fat. They're measuring different temperatures, i.e. the temperature they're cooking too versus internal temperatures. And so it's really impossible. You're comparing apples and oranges. And I read them and, um, they didn't make uh, too much, uh, I wasn't putting too much of a weight in it. Does that make sense, Sustache? Uh, okay, but when I was researching this stuff, I did look up a new, there's a new enzyme out, um, that is called uh, collagenalytic protease

[11:23] MCP 01 that comes from a deep sea bacteria that can break down proteins at low

[11:28] temperatures like in the fridge. So that might be something new to look at because that's a very recent, uh, that's a recent thing. That's, you know, 2012, I think. The other thing is, is that the muscles that these guys choose to do their tests on, and this is

[11:42] a problem with all meat, all meat texture things. They always choose muscles that freak and suck. Like the 2 articles that you put in. They use a lot of them, a semi tendinosis muscle, which is like eye of round. It sucks. It's a crappy muscle. And the reason they choose that crappy muscle is because it doesn't have a lot of variation in the

[12:02] muscle. So it's easy to run tests on, but it's not an accurate representation of what's

[12:06] going to happen when you're actually cooking meat that you would rather eat. Okay? Now, another thing. Oh, but that collagenate enzyme thing that you cited. And it was cited a couple times, it was done in 1970. It's really old research. And then I read some more recent research that said, you know, well, I don't know that that's still, you know, that's

[12:25] not, I think it's really a current research. But I found this awesome website that you should all go to right now. www.beefresearch.org, beefresearch.org. beefresearch.org and look for a ranking of beef muscles for tenderness. It's from the University of Nebraska. And it's an awesome PDF, basically, where they tell you in very fine detail. What the problems are with running studies on tenderness and what tenderness means, and the difference in tenderness when it's measured by a machine versus when it's measured by a person, and it ranks the different muscles, which is awesome.

[12:59] And then they have a supplementary website, which is frigging fantastic, called bovine.unl.edu. Now, if you go to that PDF, I told you, they mistakenly put a WWW in front of bovine.unl, and then you can't get to the page. Forget the WWW. No www, does bovine.unl.edu. And they have a three-dimensional cow with the muscles on it, and the meat and the skeleton, and you can click

[13:27] any one and get any one particular muscle and spin it around in 3D and like go in and

[13:31] out, and they have videos of a butcher breaking down every single cut that they have in that thing.

[13:38] So it's a fantastic resource. I can't believe I haven't seen it until now. I hope that all of anyone who's listening here is Well, finish listening to us. And then after we're done talking, go and check check that out. And 1st of all, in Nebraska, they know their meat. Am I right? Nebraska meat? I mean, come on, Nebraska. Possibilities? Endless. That's the state model. Did you know that? Yeah. Yeah. Shout out to Angela Kabatsar, our Nebraska intern of all times, all times. Okay. Question 3 from Paul. About Invertes from Enzyme Heavy Show. Enzyme Heavy Show. And remember, Ace means enzyme, peoples, pebbles. All right. Hello, Nastasia and Dave, what, no jack? no Jack. Anyway, um, I would like to ask about Invertes. I only really know of it being used in those terrible cherry cordial bonbons, but I'd like to know if it could be used in interesting ways in other

[14:27] applications, or if there's a similar product that can similarly break down a lesser non-sweet sugar to be used in a more savory application. PS, huge fan. Thank you. Great info that I'll be using one day after I finish my upcoming training with Daniel Ballud. Well, good job working with Daniel Ballud, badass, you know, one of those, you know, major, major badasses, Daniel Blue. Okay. Uh, from Paul. Okay. Here's the thing. Invert taste for all of you that don't know what's going on. Invertase is an enzyme that breaks down sucrose, which is a disaccharide, right? It's got a fructose and a glucose, right? And basically, the invertase breaks that down into glucose and fructose. Now, invert taste, invert sugar, which you can buy as

[15:10] trimoline or things like that, are very useful in confectionery because it can minimize or prevent crystallization or

[15:17] minimize crystal size, increase the moisture holding capability of a product. So it's good. good stuff. It's useful. Now, the way this is used in bonbons, the terrible cherry bonbons that you're that, you know, you refer to, is you make a fondant. Now, fondants are crystallize, they look like solids, but what they really are is a network of sugar crystals with a sugar syrup in between those crystals,

[15:42] right? And when you add the invert taste to that and then coat that fondant in chocolate, let's say, what happens over time is the

[15:51] sugar, the sugar is broken down into invertes, it loses its crystal structure and reverts to a

[15:57] semi-liquid syrup, right? So what you're using is the fact that is that you have this syrup is being bound with sucrose crystals. You break down the sucrose and then you have this liquidy center. Right? Now, the invert taste is used for other things. And so I looked up that, I looked up the website for those guys, and it says it's used. You can make invert with it, which is better than acid, you know, acid catalyzed inversion, which is what you normally do when you're making cooking sugar because it's more controlled,

[16:24] et cetera, et cetera. Sugar. If you make, if you invert sugar that way, it's less apt to turn brown when cooking as opposed to acid catalyzed inversion, it's also used in fruit juices and jams, to increase

[16:36] sweetness, an increased resistance to crystallization, things like that. Okay. But you can't really, I think it really only works on glucose and sucrose. I't know of any other enzymes that would do that. If you wanted a slowly liquefying center. What I would recommend is using an enzyme that breaks down pectin or breaks down any hydrocolloid at a relatively slow rate. So I would get a pectin that sets relatively quickly. Stir in some SPL to it, set it, and you could get it cold fast so the pectinase doesn't break it down too quickly. Then you could enrobe that pectin thing in something, and then the pectin would dissolve over time. You get a liquid or something like that where you broke down a hydrocoloid structure instead of a sugar structure. Does that make sense, though? You could also probably do that with something that breaks down as starch, the same way that undercooked, like, undercooked, like, custard things can liquefy over

[17:27] time if the starch gets broken down. Anyway, those are my thoughts. Take it, take it, take it or dump. Right? Okay. Anyway, let's take our 1st commercial break and come back. Call you questions two, 718-497-2128. 718-497-2128 the cooking issue. If you want to be a great chef, you can't learn everything from within the walls of a classroom. That's why the French culinary institute has evolved into the International Culinary Center. When you come here, you don't just learn basic culinary skills, you come to understand and to feel the whole culinary

[18:07] world. You have to network. You have to observe the true meaning of world-class performance. You have to intern at some of the world's great restaurants. At the international culinary centers campuses in New York, California, and Italy. We will expose you to the whole of the culinary world, one that is evolving daily at

[18:25] a very high speed. The international culinary center offers a wide range of courses, including culinary, pastry, and bread baking, to Italian, wine, management, culinary technology, and food writing.

[18:36] For more information, visit internationalculinarycenter.com. Jack, was that you? That was me. Give me some whole culinary world again. Give me some. Oh, man. My radio voice. I love it. I love that. That's good business. Guys, real quick, before you go on, So we were at Bonnaroo covering the event this weekend and the gastropod truck dude said hello. Oh, Jeremiah Bullfrogs? Yeah, I go up to him. I'm like, hey, can we interview your heritage radio? he's like, oh my god, you're the voice. It's cooking issues. the producer. Nice. Yeah. listens every week. Really? we on the air right now? Yeah, we're on the air right now. Yeah this is how we do. We talk on the air. how the radio works. Yeah, we're a big fan of the Jeremiah Bullfraud. We did an event with him. maybe a year ago, almost exactly a year ago, in Miami, and I love, like,

[19:25] like, the crew that comes to frequent the, his gastro gastropod truck. Turns out to be like a really great crew of customers. We really had a great time at their event. I like loved the crowd in Miami. I thought they were really really fun. anyway. So you interviewed him? What did you use it for? We did a piece on Bonnaroo that will be up on the website today. Is Bonaroo the thing with the people, the young people who they meet each other and the ladies like, I'm going to rock your

[19:49] world? No, it's the guys you threw Googa Mooga. the big music festival in Tennessee. We have a call coming in, though, so... What's the one I'm talking about? Batteroo? The one where people get high? No, the one on the on the on the, like the one sheets on, on the street and it's like, I like to, I like to mess with chickens. Yeah, no, that's bad, dude. Bader room? Hey, caller, you're on the air. Hello? Hi, I'm Chris from the UK. Hey, how you doing? Good, thanks. So? Yeah, doing all right. All right. Good. I have a question on egg-free custard. e-free meringues, as in Il flaton. How would you best go around it? Well, uh, uh, okay, so for a meringue like texture, you're

[20:35] going to want to use, uh, you basically, you just need something that's going to be a whipping agent, it's going to hold, right? So you can use a protein that acts in a similar way to egg whites. And so for that, I would use something like VersaWhip, and you can get either one that's soy-based or one that's casing-based. I mean, way-based rather, not casing, way-based. So, uh, and, you know, those ones, they, they whip, when you're getting one of those things, the issue is, is that they sometimes take a long time to whip

[21:03] up and they don't cook off the same way. So they're not going to hold their structure when they're done, the way that a meringue will, but

[21:11] for like a very quick serve something. Like if you just want that texture, it'll work. On a custard or on a meringue that's gonna hold. I mean, the issue is if you want to go egg free, presumably is to go vegan. So I can't recommend something like a gelatin or some other set. You could. It's not the vegan, it's a problem. egg allergy. Ah, okay. Well, I mean, you could then set, if you were going to whip something with a versa whip, you can then set it with gelatin so that it holds after it chills

[21:40] down, and then you could have something that holds up over time. Or you could use an alternative, if you did want to go vegan, you could use an alternative hydrocolloid that would hold the meringue over time. And then what you're just doing is using the versa whip as a whipping aid, you know, as a, you know, foaming agent. So then you would have a Miranda holdover time. If you wanted to do something that was going to be heat stable. Like if you were going to cook off a meringue in an oven, then you'd have to probably go a little more hardcore because you'd need a hydrocolloid that could withstand heat.

[22:13] And so for then you might be able to move to something like an Agar, but you'd have to make sure that it whips up before it cools

[22:20] down or if you want, or if you want really heat stable because Agar will melt. You'd have to go with a gelan, but you'd have a real problem. I've tried doing it, whipping up gelands, um, whipping up geland gels, uh, you know, so that they're stable before they set. Another alternative, the whipping to setting a gel in a foam is to use a slow setting, sodium

[22:41] algenate, foam. I don't like to do it. I've done it. The problem is, is that I don't think sodium amalgenate tastes very good, right? So what you would do is you would use a whipping agent and sodium algenate, and then you'd whip it into a foam, and then you'd add a little calcium at the last

[22:55] 2nd and then it would, you know, it would set into a foamed gel.

[22:59] You know what I mean? And that one, I've done it. You have to be careful to not be able to taste the alginate, right? Um, the other, for the custard, um, I'd have to do,

[23:13] uh, I'd have to do some research. I've never thought of, of egg list custards. I mean, the way that I would you know, off the top of my head, right? You can, without egg, set things into custard like textures, using something like iota

[23:26] carraginen, especially in the presence of milk, very small amounts of iota

[23:30] carraginen will produce kind of a custardy texture. The problem is iota is a little elastic. So you want to have it just set. And so you would use iota and maybe a little bit of kappa carragain in to make it into have a little more of a break to it as opposed to iota, which is going to be a little more rubbery.

[23:46] But I've had, you know, Wiley's done both pectin-based sets and Iota slash kappa carragin and mixed-based sets of custards that I thought were

[23:55] very, very good, you know, almost like a panna cotta texture. You know what I'm saying? Uh, and yeah, and those can be totally achieved with uh, various uh, hydrocolors. But I would stick with something kind of simple, like carragina is relatively simple to work with, and mixtures of, the great thing about iota is also that it'll reset after it breaks a little bit, but a mixture of mainly iota at a very low

[24:20] concentration and um, and a little bit of kappa will give you a nice uh, custardy uh, texture. You know, you'd have to adjust the firmness a little bit. You know what I mean? But you could get there. And those are all available, I assume, from the modernist pantry folk. I don't know. And then if you needed some thickening of it, right? If it didn't feel thick enough with whatever ingredients you're adding, I would thicken it with a, I wouldn't try to thicken it with the, in order to

[24:44] increase the creaminess of it with the iota in the kappa, then you would move to more of a thickening agent, something like an LBG, locust bean, or just a

[24:54] traditional, something make it thicker, like add more of something that's unctuous to it. You know, you don't need to go to hydrocholid route on that. But that's the way I'd approach it. Okay, thank you. All right? let us know how works. Thank you. All right, thanks a lot. All right. So, uh, Paul K wrote in on meat cooking whole muscles. Hi, Dave. I was at an event a while ago where I saw a steak. I think an entra coat being prepared on a barbecue by which I think he means grill. I think he means grill, as far as our turns. Anyway, in a way I'd never seen before. Rather than cutting the steaks and then cooking them, an entire cylinder of beef was barbecued, rested

[25:27] out, and only then cut. It seems it was incredibly efficient, as the result was very beautiful. Every steak had a perfect gradient from crusty on the lateral edge to a disc that was essentially raw in the center. Normally, you only see the sort of gradient once you cut into the steak. One, is this technique well known, and if so does have a name, two, what cuts of beef would you recommend for these techniques? And three, do you have any tips on how to make this work well? When cooking 4 kilograms of beef at a time? I can imagine that cock ups can be expensive. Cockups, that's a good way to say mess ups. I like that because it's kind of almost dirty, but not. Uh, I guess it'll be critical to start with beef at room temperature. Thanks, Paul. Okay. Now, when you're, when you're dealing with it means, I mean, essentially what they're doing is roasting the meat on a grill. Right? It's basically roast meat. Think about like prime rib. Prime rib is delicious that way. So basically, what you're not basically, what you're doing here is using the grill to instead roast something. And I think the most, um, similar idea would be like a rotisserie where you pull off something that's rare.

[26:26] You know, I mean, before it's cooked all the way through, because then it would just be done manually. I would assume that these people who are using the grill were constantly turning the

[26:32] meat, and it's fundamentally different from a long, when most people say

[26:36] barbecue. What they're referring to is long, long, long-term cooking, where the

[26:41] meats cook totally all the way through, right on a grill versus just straight grilling, where the meat can be pulled off at any doneness, including

[26:49] rare, in the middle, and you're just getting a nice crust on the outside. When you're doing it, you could use something that would one would normally barbecue with, right, i.e. a lower temperature, but just do it less long, in which case you're treating it more like a

[27:03] roast. But you'd need to get the temperature high enough to get a crusty finish on the outside. Does that make sense, Nastasia? But I'm not exactly sure what you mean. So right back in, tell me more about it, kind of exactly kind of what's going on and where it falls in the continuing between grilling and barbecuing or whether or not I have the right idea about what

[27:20] you're what you're referring to. Because I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to, so I don't want to, you know, go the wrong way, right, Stuff? Yes. She's like, I don't really care. whatever. Uh, okay. Aaron Lawton writes in from Portland, Maine, on chili oil and botulism, all-inclusive greetings. I like that. doesn't want to, you know, doesn't want to make any statements on who may or may not be

[27:39] here. Just the all inclusive greetings. Everyone but Jacket says, actually. Anyway, it doesn't release. I listen to your show every week via iTunes and appreciate the distraction. It serves. distraction. It's good. I have long stood over questions about chili oil. My wife underwent a heart transplant a couple of years ago, and food safety is a pre-eminent concern in our cooking. Hey, my mom runs the heart transplant program, pediatric heart transplant program at Columbia Presbyterian. My mom, you know, hardcore badass. She's the cardiologist there. So, uh, you know, uh, heart transplant uh, patient's close to my close to my, Well, I wasn't even thinking about that. Just dumb. Anyway, you know, anyway, I think it's something I think about. Okay, we love making spicy Sichuan food, which recently frequently calls for chili oil. I would like to make the oil myself due to my cheapness, something we also share. Cheapness, cheapness. All of us here, really cheap bastards, right, Stas? Yeah, really cheap, really cheap. She'll walk to the airport rather than take a car, even if I'm paying for it. However, I have it overcome with fears of botulism. We are both in our 20s and have years of cooking eating ahead of us. Can you allay my fears of contamination and provide advice on botulum free chili oils. The chili oil I tried came from Land of Plenty by Fuchsia Dunlap. By the way, Fuchsia Dunlap, good friend Harold McGee was showing around China, apparently, Fuchsia Dunlap, badass. That's what I hear. Although I don't own her book, which only used heated peanut oil and dried pepper flakes with optional ginger.

[29:05] Barbara Trop also has a recipe which adds orange zest and garlic, Chinese black beans and sesame oil. Okay, so look, the danger here is with the garlic. The problem with botulism in oil is this. If you add something like a fresh herb or garlic, and garlic grows in the ground and frequently has botulism contamination in it. When you're cooking, even if you cook the garlic off in the oil, enough water remains in the garlic to allow botulism to grow in it,

[29:34] right? And when you have botulism in oil, there's no off taste, there's no nothing. So what happens is even if you heat the garlic, um, you let it cool, you store it not in the fridge, and the botulism spores because you've killed all the vegetative bacteria, the bacteria that are actively operating. The spores re-germinate and create botulism toxin, which then it very bad. Very bad, bad. So how do you get around this? If you don't use the garlic, you're fine, right? Also, if you remove the garlic from the oil, and there's only completely dried items in the oil when you're done, like dried pepper flakes, as long as you haven't reconstituted them with water,

[30:13] then you should be okay. But if it makes you nervous, store in the fridge, every, uh, you know, store in the fridge, and if it gets more than a couple weeks old, you can reheat the oil to 80 degrees Celsius for 10 to 15

[30:27] minutes, or 20 minutes for meat product, and botulism toxin is heat labile, i.e. it's destroyed by heat.

[30:36] So if you heat the oil enough times, right, or high enough, you can actually destroy the botulism toxin that is already present. So the rules are store in the fridge. If you store for a long time. If you store for a long time, you can reheat. If you if it went in down, throw it out. Also, if you use only dry products, you're in a much better position. And thirdly, if you add some acid to the ingredients that you're

[31:04] cooking that have water in, then the acid, citric acid, if you don't use escorbic because escorbic will get destroyed by the heat as well, use citric acid. If it's acidic enough, the product won't support the growth of botulism. So low water, uh, low, uh, you know, high heats, all these things will help protect. Does that make sense stuff? Yes. Okay. All right. Color, you are on the air. Hi guys, Ben from Minnesota here. How you doing? Thanks for taking that call. Question about bagels and pretzels and the lie solution that I might be dipping them in. Okay. Um, I know you had kind of a nasty experience with lie and want to avoid that myself. I would avoid it. I would avoid that experience. Yeah. I was reading a paper. It looks like a lab experience experiment. Assignment, possibly from Ohio State pretzel study. If you look that up, you might find it on the net. Uh, and, and they're using a 2% NAOH, which I assume is just, is that 100% household

[32:08] live, if I buy that at the worst store? Is that what I'm using? Okay, all right, we'll get it. We'll get into the hardware store. I mean, look, if you go to the hardware store, 99% of the stuff that you buy, unless you're buying something that's packaged as

[32:24] lie. package says 100% household lie. There's no other ingredients listed, but I'm, you know, I'm wondering if there's a, you know, food

[32:34] grade lie that's made and where I would even get that. There is a food grade lie that's made. You can get it at professional baker supplies. Okay, now that being said, I have used the hardware store stuff. But I can't recommend it because I believe it's possible for it to have heavy metal contamination and stuff like that. So I don't recommend using it. I recommend getting the food grade stuff from the, um, uh, you know, from a professional baker supply, really don't use, um, like some people have asked me, can I just go use drain cleaner? No. 1st of all, there's like all kinds of weird stuff added to drain cleaner. Um, just, you know, stay away from it. Like aluminum flakes and all sorts of nasty, weird stuff. So, you know, look, if you want to run a couple of experiments with lie, then, you know, if you get the 100%

[33:25] lie. I wouldn't you, I I can't recommend that you use it. I would recommend you get the food grade stuff, but as an experiment to see what happens. It works. You know, do you have kids in the house? I do. That's why it's, I'm high in the garage, tied up real tight, you know? Yeah, you know, uh, when I, uh, you know, for those of you, I don't know, I was doing a lot of experiments with, um,

[33:47] lie and uh, different bases, especially in things like pretzels, but also for

[33:52] nixtamalization and for the hardening of uh, a lot of experiences. Right, well, that was another route I could go. I've got some Mexican markets around. Is that something that would be sold there and as what, you know? Well, they have cal- they have calcium. Yeah, they have Cal, which is, you know, um, which is calcium hydroxide, which is not the, it's not the same and it has a different taste. Uh, you could use anything basic is gonna, you know, or you could go the route that uh, McGee does where he cooks baking soda uh, to convert it to, you know, the more basic uh, form um, and and then use that. Lie is great for it. I mean, I have to say, lie works great. And for those of you that, you know, if you have a bagel, actually, you can just boil. It doesn't need the extra browning. It'll taste more like a pretzel if you add the lye. So most, I mean, some some bagel recipes I've seen, have some baking soda in the boiling water and some don't. But, you know, unless you need the extra browning and that little taste that you get from the basicity,

[34:50] then, you know, you don't need it. But the main yeah, but the main flavor that you're getting in a pretzel from the boilout. 1st of all, you get that dark brown pretzel note because when you increase the alkalinity of the

[35:04] surface, you increase the rate at which the Mayard reactions happen. You get that characteristic brown pretzel color. But also the characteristic flavor of a pretzel is having to do with that basic, that basic outside that, so when you crunch into a pretzel, if you, in your mind,

[35:20] think, uh, kind of, I don't want to hesitate to even say this because it makes it sound bad, but soapiness. You know what I mean? but it's that flavor of basicness that

[35:30] is what makes a pretzel great. And so that in the addition, in addition to never adding fat to, people who add, you know, if you add fat to your pretzel, I have a problem with you in your

[35:42] pretzels. You know what mean? So like, for instance, roll gold. Yeah, to the Deutsch, I mean, it's abomination. It turns into a cracker. It's horrible. You know what I mean? It really makes me angry. And I, if you hand me a pretzel, uh, and certain manufacturers who make, so my 1st rule is pretzels are twisted. They have to be twisted. If it's not twisted, it's not a pretzel, I call them pretzeloids, or like, you know, non-pretzel, but pretzel style things, right? But they're not freaking pretzels because for me, one of the great joys of pretzels is the textural difference between the different parts that bake differently

[36:13] because of the shape and break apart in your mouth differently because of the shape, all right? Boom. that's it. That said. pretzel is pretzel shaped. Secondly, and I'm talking mainly about hard pretzels now. I't have that much experience with soft pretzels. I'm talking hard pretzels. Hard pretzels. If you add any oil to the recipe at all in

[36:32] the in the dough, it takes on a cracker texture, it's not a pretzel anymore. It's like a crack, it's like a cracker sole or something. It's not right, you know, Bachman, the company, they make a pretzel that you, it looks like a real hard pretzel, but is, in fact, got a crackery texture because they, you know, they, I guess they took a hint from rolled gold, you know, or something like

[36:52] that, who adds an abomination, like amount of oil to their thing. Best pretzel that I've ever had in my whole life is Martin's Brothers pretzels, by far the best pretzels that you can get them over the mail order. made by Mennonites. They literally sit around singing hymns all day and making pretzels, but they're, I mean,

[37:08] not, but, but, you know, probably because of the fact that they, it's a religious meditation thing for them. They make fantastic pretzels. You ever had those things? I have not. No, I was kind of I was thinking of making are more like the, you know, like the ballpark, big soft... Oh, sure, yeah. Yeah, yeah, a large big chunk of salt in the top, you know. Yeah, those I mean, those are, you know, those are those are a valid product. I'm not saying anything against a good soft pretzel. Love a good soft pretz, especially with mustard. I gotta have mustard on mine. No mustard, no soft pretzel for me. No, that's good too. I agree. Yeah. So yeah, so for that, also, remember, when you're going to the baking supply, you can also get the pretzel salt, which is very nice because

[37:45] it's... Yeah, because you can't get that at the regular store. No, but the same place that's going to have the lie will probably also have the pretzel salt. Okay. All right. Check it out. thanks One quick one about blending mixed drinks. I was, I'm not a cocktail guy at all, but I was making margaritas the other night. They've winded up just fine. Then I made a crystal light version for my kids with no alcohol, obviously, and it turned into like a slush ball in water. Is the alcohol doing something to keep the ice and the water together that you can't get

[38:15] without or that didn't find it wrong. Hmm. I don't, uh, I don't know. Um, I mean, alcohol is gonna melt the, uh, the ice in a different way and it's gonna make it blend kind of, uh, faster. But I mean, obviously, you know, people make uh, people make slushies all the time. They're non-alcoholic in the 7-Eleven. Yeah. Movies work fine. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, maybe a fluke. I don't know, maybe, I don't know. I doubt there's anything in the crystal. Crystal Light actually has very little body and maybe that's the problem. Maybe if it had more sugar in it. You might have more problem with a sugar-free because you're not modifying the, uh, maybe that's it. Maybe try it with something that's got a... I just had some. I could try it just with the regular lime juice and sugar up this time without. Yeah, it could be it could be the fact that the crystal light has no sugar in it. And it could be that the crystalite has something in it to mimic sugar. Sometimes in things that contain, whatever crystal it contains now, it used to be aspartame, because there's no bodying effect from aspartame, and it's used in such small

[39:21] quantities, they often to sodas would add bodying agents to add back some of the feeling like there had been sugar

[39:27] there. And I don't know maybe that has something to do with it too. don't know. Yeah, but give it a shot with real honesty got sugar. All right, cool. All right, thank you. Okay, let's take one more quickie, commercial break, come back, and finish out cooking issues.

[40:16] In case you're wondering what's up with the weird meditation music. It's called Alone in Kyoto by Air. Ah, nice. Well, we're done with all that music. Thank God I was not alone in Kyoto. I was hanging with my family, had a fantastic time, checking out all the temples. I highly recommend them. Okay, Tom Fisher writes in. Howdy, Dave, Nastasia, Nastasia. An idiot, Nastasia, and Jack. Oh, finally. What? said hi to me. Yeah. Yeah. First call, I think. Yeah. ISI about the ISI, which is the EC or ISI, the whipped cream makers. This is the one? Yeah, okay. I'm looking at ISI whippers and just grabbed a gourmet whip on eBay, but the head is filthy and needs new seals,

[41:01] et cetera. It looks like the gourmet whip and the thermal whip share the same head, while the cream whip property has a different head. Is there any real difference among the models insofar is cooking applications are concerned. Thanks for keeping it awesome, Tom Fisher. Okay, listen, a little secret. I have a bunch of different models, all different types, and all the heads are completely interchangeable. They look different, but they all fit. They all have the same exact screw thread from the head onto

[41:22] the, what do you call it? Canister. Yeah. So they all work. And they all have the same exact screw thread, uh, with one exception, and it's not one of the ones you mentioned, of screwing

[41:35] uh, the cartridge, the thing that screws the cartridge in to make it go. They're all the freaking same. Now, what can be different is the screw-ons, I think, for the, for the, whatever the tip is called. I think those might be different, but as far as interchanging canisters, they're all same, all same, right? Same. And I don't know if there's any real difference. I mean, the thermal whip, obviously, is different because it keeps things warm or hot because it's a cold,

[41:57] cold, rather, because it's insulated, but other than that, not much anyway. So it's all good. Mix and match, but don't tell the good folks at ISI that I told you so. Matthew Leaf, it landhouse writes in. Hey, Nastasia and Dave. Hope everything's going well with all your projects. Wednesday this week, I'm serving some snacks at a charity gala for 500 people. The dish I'm serving is short rib sliders with cheddar cheese sauce. The cheddar cheese is a whiz I made using sodium citrate and iota carragin and based on mirror bolds, mac and cheese sauce. I'm thinking for large production like this. It would be cool to have the cheese sauce and squeeze bottles for service. And my idea is to keep the squeeze bottles in a steam table water bath set up. Do you think this will be hot enough to keep the cheese liquefied? Would it be better to put the bottles directly into the water section of the steam table or to set up a hotel pan with water above the steam section? I was hoping to get your advice on this is I don't know if I'll have a chance to test it out prior to the event. Okay, yeah, it works. I've done it. The one problem you're going to have is, when I, when I do, uh, water, water table subs. I use an immersion circulator, which is very accurate, it's temperature holding. And then I have a top and I custom cut holes into the top to fit whatever I'm

[42:54] going to have my inserts be, and I've done cheese sauce many, many times. What you're going to want to make sure is that wherever you're putting your bottles, you have like some sort of a

[43:02] cage, so that the bottles don't fly around in there, they'll automatically find their own level of cheese sauce and they'll float in the top of the thing, but you have to contain them so that they don't just fly around the bath and turn upside down and then leak water into the top of your cheese

[43:15] spouts. Does that make sense? You don't want water in your cheese spout. Gross. It doesn't even have meaning. I like that. You're like, it does sound really gross though, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. Uh, Michael Notkin. Good friend Michael Napkin. Listener rather, we never met him. We never actually met him in real life. No, not yet. No, but he's like a blog friend or, you know, whatever. whatever you call it. From herba voracious writes in about smoking. Hey, Dave Nastasia, no Jack, no love for you, Jack. Even though you called him to get him on a show. Yikes. Man, crazy. I've got a question for you about stovetox. Tove, stove, top smoking. I generally just jury reek something with woodchips in a pot. I don't mind beating up. Usually hickory or mesquite. I know from modernist cuisine, not to soak the chips, because the temperature, the modernist cuisine says the lower temperature is actually not conducive for better smoke flavor, et cetera, et cetera. I'll let it rip over high heat until there's quite heavy smoke, then put a steamer basket in there with a single layer of whatever I want to smoke, onions, tofus, mushrooms,

[44:08] et cetera, and go for 10 minutes or so. I found there was a nice smoky flavor, but also a bit of sourness that I don't love as much. It is fine, amazing, actually, and dishes like uh, the frijoles

[44:17] charos, which you can see on the herboracious website. But the sourness is less appreciated in other contexts. Can you give me any clues as what's causing it and how to minimize it? Thanks, Michael. Okay, there's a couple of things that can happen when you break down wood. There's basically acetic gas and other things that are created called pyreligious acids, but I don't know if that's what you're talking about. If you look at a good website to a good website, a good article to look at is contribution of

[44:40] phenolic compounds to smoke flavor by MAGA in 1992. And this, you know, it's awesome because it's one of those, you know, still done on a typewriter, so the fonts and courier, even on the web, it's like the crappy old courier font that you got in technical documents, which

[44:53] Nastasia's too young to have looked at. Not that she looks at the technical documents now. She doesn't give a crap about it. So it turns out that the stuff that's formed at really low temperatures,

[45:04] right, is acrid and bitter, right? Which is why they tell you not to soak the chips. The stuff formed in the middle zone, up to about 750 degrees C, is kind of the heart of the smoky flavor, and things that are formed above that

[45:16] temperature are with higher boiling points, phenolic things with higher boiling points, can taste acidic. I'll read from that article. Phenol compound volatility is also a factor relative to smoke flavor contribution. The loaf boiling phenolic portion obtained from distillation of smoke was found to have primarily contained phenol creosols, and guayacols are described as hot and bitter taste. The fraction distilled at 92 to 132C contained isousinols and syringeoles. Those are the ones formed in the middle when much hotter, but they're formed in that middle

[45:46] range, had a pure characteristic smoke flavor, and the high boiling stuff had an acid chemical sensory property.

[45:52] Now, how do I recommend getting rid of, 1st of all, also, what's formed, there's a lot of different things. There's the temperature of your, the smoke makes a huge difference. which it's formed. Also, the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere where the smoke has a huge impact on the flavor. Also, the moisture in your food. Everything makes a difference. The temperature of the food, everything makes a difference. But I have a feeling this might help you. If you put a 2 steamer baskets, a deep one and a tall

[46:19] one, put a layer of ice and then your food in a top one, it's going to make a colder smoke, and I think you might get some of those higher boiling compounds to condense onto the

[46:30] ice as acid things, those acid sour tastings, and you might get a cleaner tasting product.

[46:35] That how we used to do salmon. Nils used to do it that way. We were smoking large amounts of things. We would have a tray with ice. And then on top of that, another perv tray with our food, and we would put that over large hotel pans with burning wood in them.

[46:47] And those things never came out with any of those kind of off labor. So I would give that a shot. And barring that, maybe the temperature's a little bit too high, turn the temperature down a little bit, don't let it rip so hard on the smoke. You want to hit more of a middle zone. Make sense, does? Sound good? But please let us know how that works. We got any more time here, Jack? Are we L shafted? All right, listen, Elliot Papineau wrote in. He doesn't boil his pretzels. Go boiler pretzels, boiler pretzels. Do it side by side on boiled pretzels with, you know, with some sort of basic thing versus not. Uh, you know, because I've done that test many, many times, and it makes a big difference. We still didn't get to rob Tripp as his cheese question. We did answer a bunch of his questions, but the thing is, I need a lot of time to talk about the cheese because I've been thinking a lot about cheese and cheese analogs. In fact, Chris Anderson from Modernist Cuisine. It's going to... Modest pantry. It's going to try to get me the Rennet casing, which is what you used to make completely cheeseless, cheese-based, um, cheese-based things. Uh, and we had a, you know,

[47:45] a, I'm going to answer one real quick. No, you can't. I can't, I got to go do the egg whites next week and the, and the, and the meat analogs. Anyway, this has been cooking issues. We're back. We'll see you next week. 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

[48:17] 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.