[0:00] Broadcasting live from Roberta's in Bushwick, Brooklyn, you're listening to HeritageRadioNetwork.com. Today's show has been brought to you by our good friends at Tech Serve. Visit techserv.com for more information.

[0:23] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cookie issues. in the back of Roberta's Pizzeria on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday, roughly 12 to 1245. Joined again this week by Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez. Nice. At FYI, I'll have you know that Heritage Radio Network, and I was something about copyright. Is it copyright? Copyright issues? We're moving towards using... We have no issues. just decided to do this. Yeah, well, you know, I just want everyone to know that Jack is working on some of the music you're listening to while you're waiting for me to show up, right? Is that true? You're writing the music? Oh, yeah, that's always been mine. yeah. Yeah nice. Shout out to check. Uh, But, uh, I also I brought, you know, Jack told me to bring in some of my college bands. We might hear some of that later, some of my college band stuff, since there's no copyright issues with that. And Jack, I know they're not a sponsor, but can we listen to the 1st Ranch Grass Fed Beef song later on? Whoa, you might have to wait until they sponsor. Oh, come on, really? They'll be back soon. We've got a tech serve commercial for you today. Really? It's good one. grass-fred beef is like the best song. It's my favorite. I like sing that jam as I'm walking around the streets. I'll tell Brian that Brian Kenny. It's good. It's good stuff, right? It's awesome. You should have seen the face Nastasia made when she, when I told her we'd be playing your band today. Oh, was it worse than vegan or similar to? On par. On par with a vegan face? Yeah. So another thing last week when I started the show, I was so out of breath that you could literally hear me gasping for

[1:51] air during the 1st segment. This time, I'm a little more rested because I almost died on the bike ride over, which is part of the reason I was a little later than even normally.

[1:59] For those of you that, well, everyone who listens to the show knows that Nastasia hates hipsters more than almost anything else on

[2:04] earth besides good weather. And, um, But you might not know that Nastasia and I both ride fixed gear bicycles.

[2:13] Now, for those of you that, you know, are going to cry foul that were actually secret hipsters, we both ride folding fixed gear

[2:21] bicycles, which were about the least hip bicycles on Earth. But today when I was demon pedaling down the downslope on the Williamsburg

[2:29] Bridge, I threw my chain. And for those of you, a fixed gear bicycle, throwing a chain is can be really dangerous because it can lock your back wheel and send you flying off onto

[2:40] the thing. Anyway, luckily I didn't die and I did make it here on time. So, well, no, I mean, late, but, you know, not dead. I made it not dead. right? Good. Anyway, call all your questions too. 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128. I want to start with. I had 2 separate comments in the questions today about a new circulator that's on Kickstarter called, what's it called,

[3:03] hairstyles Namiko? Namiko? Did you know who made Naniko? Why didn't you mention this to me? Why you knew this and you never mentioned it to me? You knew he was making a circulator? I read it this morning. Anyway, so I went on the, I go on the thing and someone's like, hey, look at the circulator. And I, and I look at it and it's like one of the creators is, is bam. First of all, we pop. If you're out there, we pop. We pop, we pop, slash bam, soupy pot, is one of our former interns, worked with us at the FCI. We love WePop. We pop's good business. So, uh, WePop, whose name is WePop, which is the greatest name on all of all times, decides that he needs a nickname and goes by Bam, which is not even partially as cool as WePop, true or

[3:47] false. You know? Anyway. So, uh, WePop is out there making a circulator, and 2 separate people, 2 separate non-WePop people

[3:54] have uh, written to see what I think about it. And you go, it's Namico, you can look for it on Kickstarter. They need an extra, I think, $40,000 in the next, how many, like 14 days or something like that? Anyway, they need another of like $50,000. They got 160,000 or so out of 200,000 that they need to get their Kickstarter money. Uh, but he's designed, this uh, this immersion circulator looks a little bit like a shower head. It looks kind of like a we pop design, right? It's got one knob. What is it? Can you find out what the price is supposed to be? Yeah, find out what the price is supposed to be? My one comment on it as opposed to the ones that I use. It's, you know, it's a little bit less powerful. It's 750 watts instead of a thousand, but it's made for home people.

[4:39] and good luck to good luck to Wepop, right? Yeah. Good luck. I mean, I love myself some WeePop. you know? I wish that instead of coming out with a circulator, he would make some of the food products I want him to

[4:48] make, like wee popsicles, wee popcorn. You know, right? I mean wouldn't that be great? You wouldn't want that? I like that he's doing this. Well, can he do both? Can't he have wee popcorn? It's pretty amazing that he came up with this so quickly. Well, he does rapid products. It doesn't, I don't think it's not in production yet. Yeah, it's like a, it's like a rapid, it's a, he has a rapid prototyping work on it. And we pop, aside from going to school for culinary, went to school as an industrial

[5:15] designer, currently living in Bangkok, and I thought doing like training, like stock training. Last time we spoke to him, he was doing stock training. We pop, man of man of many pops, we pop. Lovely pop. Okay. So that's all I'm going to say about Namiko right now, right? So that's both questions I answered. Yeah, okay. Okay. I suppose this is really a food issue rather than a cooking issue. But I was curious to hear your opinion on the perspective, large soda ban in New York. It seems Dave is a bit of a bubble addict, and well, I know this might be more of a political issue, I figure it couldn't hurt to ask Pat. Well, listen, Pat, and anyone else out there, you are welcome to ask us food and issues as opposed to cooking

[5:56] issues, and we have no problem making pronouncements or getting political,

[6:01] right? I think it's, oh, and by the way, what we're talking about here is Bloomberg has proposed a ban on selling sodas,

[6:10] sugarful sodas, larger than 16 ounces. So in New York City, uh, 20 ounce soda bottles would be illegal or to

[6:20] sell, uh, sugarful ones, you could buy sugar less ones. Uh, and uh, like big go. Well, heck, no, big gulps, I think, are still legal, right? There's some sort of weird thing, like certain venues can sell it, like convenience. Anyway, there's all these kind of weird things. But restaurants wouldn't be able to sell sodas larger than 16

[6:37] ounce. And the theory behind it is that, you know, their feeling is that sodas are empty calories, a term which I detest, I detest the word empty calorie almost as much as I detest the word junk food. And because I think it's stupid. There's no, there's no foods that are inherently evil. There are bad habits, right? There's no such thing as food that's inherently evil unless you add literal poison to it. Or somehow you're destroying the earth actively by eating it, you know, like on purpose. Like, you know, I don't know, or like, you know, that you're told that eating this piece of food will cause someone else to suffer in another country on purpose.

[7:12] I mean, like there's no literally very few literally junk bad foods, just bad habits. anyway. So rather than trying to change people's habits, right? Rather than through education and habit changing, uh, they want to stop New York City residents from consuming calories in the form of soda by literally limiting what can be

[7:34] sold. Um, think it's dumb. What do you think, Nasasha? Have you thought about it at all? No, never mind. What do you think? To be clear, though, this is sugar sodas. not just carbonation, right? Yeah, but they're not going to, in other words, I can go, yeah, correct. I mean, it's not anticarbonation. It's basically trying to make a stab against the rise

[7:53] in diabetes here and across the country. What about non-carbonated sugary drinks? I'm not sure. I know that juices are exempt, which are extremely high in calories. I know that like, you know, your 8000 quart milk beverage from Starbucks is exempt, you know, that has like 50,000 pumps of syrup in

[8:14] it, and, you know, has a 10000000005 calories that they call a coffee, but isn't actually a jug of milk.

[8:20] Like that one is exempt. Um, To be fair to people who are thinking about it, There are a lot. I mean, people do consume a lot of soda and people are fat and people do have diabetes. You know what I mean? On the other hand, I think this is an incredibly poorer way

[8:39] about, you know, of trying to fix it. It's on the order of, you know, I don't know, you know how they

[8:48] say people are just treating symptoms rather than causes. They're treating like a simple symptom rather than rather than,

[8:55] you know, any sort of the root causes. The problem is, is that people's dietary habits in general are bad. And I think the reason why our dietary habits in general are bad is because we have this demented idea about food anyway, that there's these such things as good foods, you know, or like junk food, versus like food that's really good for you, and then

[9:18] people all of, you know, people feel that, well, I'm not eating healthy anyway, so I'm going to go completely ape shit, and then they drink like 85 quarts of soda and

[9:27] go horrible instead of just having everyone try to meet in the middle, a sensible diet. You know, like you don't try try to be some, you know, ascetic vegan monk who only eats like, you know, half of a vegetable once every 3 days and consider that healthy, which I don't find that healthy,

[9:41] right? Or versus someone who pounds 85 Big Macs a day. I don't consider that healthy either. You know what I mean? Like neither of those is healthy. Healthy is meeting in the middle. And I think, uh, you know, the way to get us to start thinking that way isn't to put a ban on something, i.e. to make it more, when you put a ban on something like that, you're basically making it more enticing to

[10:01] people. You're saying, oh, you can't have this, it's forbidden, so it must be good and fun and awesome. You know what I mean? I think the way to do it is to change the education,

[10:10] change the way we think about food in general, stop thinking about, you know, what, you know, foods as being inherently healthy and unhealthy. Think of habits as being healthy or unhealthy. That's my feeling on it. I think this is an incredibly poor way to go about legislating health. I think we shouldn't be legislating dietary habits. I think it's not the government's business in general to be legislating my dietary habits. That's just my feeling. You have any thoughts now that you've heard me spew about it? agree with you. What do you think, Jack? I think it's, I think any effort is better than no effort, but I don't think it's going to go through anyway, so it doesn't

[10:45] really matter. Yeah, it doesn't really matter. But, you know, it's like, I mean, like an effort would be to try and help somebody. This like, it's also, there's these undercurrents. It's like really, they're not aiming. They're not aiming this legislation at, you know, the, all the, the thin, uh,

[11:01] rich, uh, um, people who go to the gym 8 times a day who live in the wealthier parts of New York.

[11:08] be honest about it. That's not who they're facing at, right? Instead, they're trying yet another social legislation against poorer people who, you know, don't have that much

[11:18] money, and they're basically assuming that these people, the only way we can help them is through

[11:25] legislation, because clearly, you know, we're not reaching them any other way. In general, I detest any sort of social legislation directed at particular socioeconomic groups because it smacks to me of all the stuff that when we hear about it when it was legislated in the 1800s, and the

[11:42] 1900s were like, damn, that was racist and crappy. Do you know what I'm saying? And now we look at it now. It's like, well, we're just trying to help them be more healthy, right? In 50 years, won't we not look back at it and say, damn, another, you know, another basic, uh, racist, uh, you know,

[11:57] socioeconomic put down. You don't think so? But at least it got the conversation started, did it not? We're all talking about soda and portion size now. But you know, but look, portion size has been addressed by people like Marion Nessle for a long time. The question isn't, I mean, portion sizes have definitely gone up. The question is, why does the average lower middle class person in another country who still has the means to buy an absurd amount of soda if they wanted to,

[12:23] right? Why is it that those people aren't buying huge sodas? Why is it that those people aren't getting fat and why is it that our people are, right? And it's a mental issue. It has, you know, like, it's like, oh, the portion size has got bigger as though it was an elephant that suddenly started growing

[12:39] when in fact people are ordering the larger portion sizes. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like, so to try and to try and staunch the the tide by saying, well, no, it's the soda that's it's the soda that's to blame. It's not the soda that's to blame. It's the fact that we're ordering larger sodas to blame. Burger King clearly is making money by selling larger sodas. And McDonald's is clearly making money by selling larger sodas, right? Which means that the way that we purchase things is demented. No? Well, one last thing. I had to go to Long Island to see some friends, and it was really late, and the only thing opened was Burger King. hadn't had it in a long time, right? So I pick a value meal and they said, do you want a medium or large? So I'm like, you know, the medium. And that medium drink was enormous. I couldn't even imagine what the large would be. Large is large. Right. You know what I mean, though? Like to sell a. could swim in the large. Yeah, to sell a 32 ounce medium drink. is just kind of ridiculous. should at least regulate that. Well, I mean, look, you don't have to drink the whole damn. only I, I'm the only person I know who feels obliged to finish everything I order, right? I mean, you're not obliged to, and 1st of all, unless you're with Nastasia, that 32 ounce cup has about 22 ounces of

[13:46] ice in it. You know what I mean? That's very true. Do you order your drinks without ice? She says it's because she doesn't like the feeling of ice against her teeth. It's really because she's a psycho and wants every nickels worth. know her. She's cheap, just like I am. I really don't like ice. But you're using a freaking straw on it anyway. What does it matter if there's ice in it? Okay, call, listen, by the way, come beat me down on this. Beep, beep, beat the hell out of me on this. Call her. on the air. Hi, yeah, this is James Ray. Love the show. Listen to it every week. I have a question. I have a vacuum reduction rig that I set up. Um, I thought it would be less fussy or persnickety than a uh, roto vap system. Probably. It's been extremely persnickety. Um, It's, uh, I mean, basically I had to add a 20 gallon water reservoir to it to keep the water

[14:39] cool. Whenever I get, you know, whenever I try to do something that's a little jammy, whenever it gets to a point where it could kind of get where I want it,

[14:48] it starts bumping, even though I've got the pellet in there that's spinning. Um, So, do you have any advice that I could use and kind of reining this in? Is there a kind of a best practice that I'm missing out on here? All right, here's here's the here's the deal. One, uh, the, the, the things that you've noted are known, known actual things

[15:09] that some of them are going to be very hard to get around. Um, it takes, if you just look at the numbers, right? The heat of fusion, which is what it takes for you

[15:20] to when you're melting ice, right? When you're melting ice for cooling, you get the heat of fusion per grand back. The heat of vaporization's a much higher number. So to recondense water that you've boiled off, it takes an intensely larger amount of energy

[15:37] than it does to melt the ice. I think it's on the order. It's on the order of 6 times. I forget the exact numbers, but it takes about 6 kilos of ice,

[15:46] assuming like perfect efficiency to condense one liter of water. Well, actually, I've been able to, I've got kind of something like a wart chiller in

[15:57] there and I've got it hooked up to another pump that is pumping water through

[16:03] my, uh, my aspirator. So I've got, and I've got a high end. I've got the really kicked a butt aspirator. Um, so, but it's, but it's still kind of annoying, like the whole thing, like I said, very fussy. Like, I mean, I get every once in a while I get what I want out of it, but I kind of have to sit there and fiddle with

[16:23] it. Well, how much how much ice do you have? stir on it that I got before that was digital, which was a huge mistake. Um, but yeah, so I, yeah. You're chilling your aspirated water though, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, like, because I set up a rig like that with a bunch of aspirators and a flow jet pump, which I might have talked about at one point, like, you know, early on in this

[16:46] shit that I got. I stole off of a meth lab website, you know, so it's not kind of as nice as the built together aspirators, but kind of functions the same thing. And I tore through ice and that thing with the pumps, pour through it. Um, on bumping. Remember, you're gonna, like the magnetic stir rod will beat down bubbles after they happen, but the bumping is happening because there aren't any bubbles in

[17:09] it. and you superheat it, and then all of a sudden a large bubble forms and creates a bump. So it's, it'll, it'll stop frothing, like the, the, the spinning thing will uh, stop frothing on your initial

[17:21] boilout or it'll help, but it won't help with bumping. What you need to do to help with bumping is to install a very, very

[17:29] fine, and you're going to, as you get more and more of syrup, you're going to need this. very, very, very, very fine tube down into the product with a needle

[17:38] valve and let the minutest amount of air in to initiate bubbles in the product as you're making it.

[17:48] And it's the tiniest, tiniest bleed of air. And it'll raise your temperature a little bit because you won't be able to suck as good of a vacuum as you would otherwise. And but it's gonna radically, it'll strip some flavor out of it, but you've already really reduced it quite a bit

[18:03] anyway. So a lot of the volatiles are gone. But it's the only way to really prevent massive amounts of bumping. In fact, when you're doing hardcore reductions with of things like port wine, Madeira in a

[18:16] roto app, or orange juice or apple juice or whatever, when you get down to the last stage in a

[18:22] roto app, you're constantly needing to bleed small hits of air into the system to get it to boil again properly instead of like the, instead of the distillation dying out and then and then bumping.

[18:35] So you don't even need to continuously let air in if you just have like a little thing you can go and let a small amount of air

[18:42] in and it'll initiate some violent but non-bumping boiling after that

[18:46] happens. And then once it settles down again, give it a small punch of air again, you'll initiate violent but non-bumping

[18:53] boiling. And that's really the only effective way to get that last little bit of water out. Cool. Okay. Thanks a lot. Hey no problem. Tell us how it works. All right, I will. All right, cool. Thanks. All right. Well, I guess I spewed enough about the, uh, uh, about the, the soda ban, uh, whatnot. We could talk more about it later. Look, I encourage anyone to call and beat our faces in for this, but, you know, do it, do it. Anyway, let's go to break.

[20:13] Hey, cell, sir. Been in my fridge so long. It seems that partial pressures made you taste all wrong. Hey, seltzer. Think I'll add a lemon. Make you taste much better. Why don't you ID that track for us, Dave? That is, that is, that is seltzer. A track that one of my college bands, Pluto did. I'm playing bass. That was 1990, I think, 1990 or 1991. So way back in the day when, you know, I was playing bass on a daily thing. But the concept of this is that you had a bottle of seltzer in your fridge, and you drank portion of it, and then you let it sit there, and it turned to crap,

[20:51] and then you, it tastes horrible. Like semi-flat seltzer tastes horrible. And you think you're going to make it taste better by adding lemon. who am I fooling? Who am I fooling? This is horrible stuff. Hey, seltzer. Hey, seltzer. So clear and so cool. Now you taste worse than water. Anyway, that's how that's how the song goes. We could play that more eventually, right? Not today, but... Yeah, yeah. It's, you know, it contains no curses, unlike some of my other songs. Uh, anyhow, so we're going to actually, Nostage, we're going to have to have another break later so we can play our tech serve song. Give me some tech serve song, Jack, just say tech serve song. Text serve song. Is that yours or someone else? Not a song. actually a commercial. and Joe did. It's uh, it's great. Yeah? It's awesome. You'll see. I'm looking forward to it Hi, all. Long time listener. Love the show. I'm experimenting with making my own sausages and would now like to know how much fat to add to a mixture and what type. First, I do not know how much fat is in the cut of meat I'm working with. I currently use beef chuck, but would like a way of testing any piece of meat. And second, how much fat should there be? I realize it's a taste issue, but how much would you use? And lastly, for religious reasons, I won't use pork. What type of fat is best to use to increase the total fat content? Thanks a lot. Justin in Israel. All right. Well, it is a matter of taste, but there's a lot more fat in sausage than you think. You want anywhere between, I think, 30% fat, total content, to 13rd fat, total

[22:18] content, and sometimes even more, right? But that's the range you want to hit about 13rd fat. But you hit the nail on the head, Justin, when you said, it's very difficult to know how much fat is in a product. Now, I consulted my, uh, the professional charcuterie series by uh, Marcel

[22:38] cotton so at all, which is this lunatic old French series with like these 3 lunatic old French dudes with the

[22:44] tall, like rooster chicken head hats on, like on the front, like, you know, surrounded by plates and plates of meat with that weird half French smile.

[22:51] You know what I'm talking about? That Frenchy half smile thing. Anyway, and, you know, they mainly are using pork, obviously, but they kind of reinforce what I was saying, which is you want about

[23:04] 13rd fat in the mixture. Now, when you're making sausages, the important thing is the fat should be

[23:10] hard, relatively hard because you don't want it to render into nothingness as the sausage is cooking.

[23:18] That's why when you are using pork, If you're going to supplement the fat that you're using, you typically supplement

[23:23] with back fat because back fat is hard. It grinds nicely. It doesn't have like a lot of cinners and you can get it in kind of big chunks. So that's kind of the cinequa non of sausage fats. In beef, um, I would probably for added beef fat. I would probably use, um, you know, the, like the kapa fat that's trimmed off of the outside of a rib standing rib, you know what I'm talking about? Like, I would use something like that that's pretty hard that's going to withstand kind of, you know, chopping and

[23:53] cooking, and it also tastes good. Some people, I think, use kind of suet, which is the kidney fat, but it's kind of weird and dry and it renders actually quite well. So I wouldn't use something like that. I think I would stick to the type of fat that you would find on the cap of, let's say, a

[24:09] rib roast or something similar. Now, I looked up, I found on the interwebs, that pork shoulders are approximately 75 to 25, and I think Chuck

[24:21] roast, which is, I think what you said you were using. I can't remember, roughly similar. So I would supplement with a little bit of fat. If you're using like a really fatty kind of chuck, I would substitute a little

[24:33] fat, but the classic, you know, Mid-East fat to use, especially in, you know, kind of Muslim

[24:40] applications would be lamb. And in fact, they raise in the Middle East, which I would love to have access to have never tasted, special fatty lambs that have fat that is used to make delicious sausages and cured meats.

[24:51] In fact, they have a fatty lamb with a fatty lamb tail, where they cure just this extremely fat tail and eat it almost like you would eat, I think, like a lardo. But I've never had it. So I can't really say anything about it. But I would definitely, I would add some fat to what you're using. Let me see what you said you were using again. Yeah, Chuck. So if you're getting really fatty Chuck, that's untrimmed. I mean, I don't really know of a test to test how much fat is in the meat

[25:17] proper. I mean, I guess it's theoretic. Theoretically, you could weigh it and then do a volume situation, figure out the density, but the best thing to do is just look on the

[25:26] interwebs and try and find what the fat content of that cut is. It's really also going to depend on the specific marbling content of the meat. So it's difficult. If anyone has a test, I'll try and look maybe during the week if I have time to figure out a good test and talk about next time. But I would substitute in a good, hard fat. If you have a nice fatty piece of truck. I would assume it's about 25% fat and you're going to want to add more to get it up to that 13rd number, right?

[25:49] Or use lamb or duck fat, I think, works as well. I've made sausages with duck fat because duck fat can be pretty hard sometimes if you get the good part. What do you think, Stas? a good answer? Good. All right. All right, Justin, good luck with that. Give us a holler back. Uh, okay. Mike writes in, greetings from Taiwan. Love the show. Whenever I download a new episode is like an old friend coming to visit. Thanks for all your hard work. That's nice, right? Here's my question. I am a spice freak. I traveled a bit through Malaysia and Sri Lanka, lucky. and always head to the spice markets to see what's available. The quality and variety are incredible. I inevitably fill half of my suitcase with spices, and then I'm left wondering how to best keep them in my Taiwanese apartment. Should I keep them chilled in the freezer or refrigerator or will condensation affect the spices much like it does coffee? I already know that buying whole and grinding to order will help maintain quality, and increase in longevity of product, but would welcome any other advice. Okay, look. Like everything else in the world, everything depends. Um, things like leaves. Spices that are leaves, fresh leaves, right? You can freeze them, but the problem is, is that when you freeze them and thaw them, they're usually damaged by the thaw procedure, and then enzymes

[26:59] in leaves, break them and turn brown. This is why, like, tender leaf herbs are very, not very good when they're frozen. So those typically, even though they're not the same as fresh, are going to be best kind of lightly dried. Once they're lightly dried, the enzymes aren't going to work anymore, then you can freeze them. Any case, the problem with coffee, coffee is very, like a dry, dry good. going to be ruined, especially due to the kind of the brewing process and what goes on by water and condensation. So you definitely don't want to have coffee go in and out of the freezer because condensation will form. If you are going to do this on an extended basis, purchase a vacuum

[27:33] machine, and even a home vacuum machine is going to be good for this kind of thing. vacuum the products down so there's not a lot of external moisture in it or oxygen. And then when you freeze it, you're going to have less damage due to

[27:45] freeze saw cycles in your freezer. The main problem with keeping things in the freezer in terms of quality is freestyle, freestyle, freestyle, freeestyle, right? And so I would say that long-term storage, I mean, I have to buy a lot of my leaf spices, like curry leaf and things like

[28:00] that, frozen here in New York because that's the only way they come in, or Kiefer lime leaves. I buy them frozen because that's the only way I can get them. And you too can store your products that way. If you need to, I would recommend vacuum packing and getting all of the air out. Even if you're going to store them on a shelf, vacuum packing once, even though that vacuum pack is going to get rid of a little bit of the

[28:21] aroma, is going to be a good long-term storage procedure because you're not going to have any spices that might be damaged by oxidation or anything like that,

[28:29] which's going to keep them more intact fridge. generally not. Meh, meh, fridge. Meh. What do you think, Stas? Yeah, bridge. Because like stuff can grow in the fridge. If there's water in it, I wouldn't store it in the fridge if there's not one. you know, it's like, eh, you know? No? Anyway. I hope that helps, Mike. Let us know. let us know what you got. And, you know, and I generally don't like the home vacuum

[28:51] machines. But I think for that kind of thing, it's probably adequate. This is my feeling. Someone call me and tell me I'm an idiot. You know, I usually am, right? Uh, Michael Napkin from Herbivores, uh, wrote in and said, uh, I've got a question for you guys making cultured butter at uh,

[29:08] a terra in New York City. Matt Leitner served a washed rind cheese cultured butter. I figured out how to make it at home. It's easy enough. I take one pint, 467 grams of good organic cream, 25 grams of

[29:20] Orion from a funky cheese. I use Calgirl creamery, Red Hawk. Fancy. Expensive. Mix, let's stand room temp till it thickens and the cream tastes funky. Took about 14 hours for me, refrigerate overnight. You actually, and it's important to refrigerate overnight. When you're churning cultured butter, If it's warm, it just, it's a freaking nightmare, getting, making butter out of it, just so you guys know. Churn, drain, need, rinse, voila. I would not I would not rinse it. I don't know why you're, uh, I love the taste of the way in, uh, you know, the buttermilk that's in, uh, butter. So like when I'm making my butter, I usually under, I usually underneath it and I usually don't rinse it at all. I'll need it in the thing and then squeeze out just enough to keep it and I love the taste of it. It will not keep as long. And it's not good for cooking at that point because it's not good for cooking because it's got more water content in it, but as something you're going to spread on

[30:11] bread. I love it with a little bit of the extra buttermilk left in. So I wouldn't overneed it, and I wouldn't rinse it. This is my feeling. But that's not his question. His question is, how do I know this is safe? I'm eating it. It tastes great, and it seems fine to me, but I'm a little leery about serving it to other folks, since I don't really have the knowledge to say that leaving the cream out for 14 hours is

[30:29] okay. Of course, people do it making crème fraiche as well, but is it safe? PS, I took Dave's advice on hitting up Corinne, our knife friends, you know, salary son, for a carbon steel knife, and the

[30:39] DMT two-sided diamond sharpening stone, took a chance on a 7030 bevel, and I'm not finding it too hard to sharpen accurately, though agreed it is more challenging than a traditional Western or a traditional Japanese knife. I'm loving both the knife and the stone and it's easier to have a razor sharp edge every day with this setup. Well, thanks. That's very nice. Okay, so the wash rind cheese is typically the ones I looked up, use a bacteria called brevi bacterium linens. So if that's going to culture it, if that's going to be what's culturing the buttermilk, right? Typically, that's not what you would have to culture cream, you would use a lactobacillus would be in there to culture cream. Hopefully you're also getting a lactobacillus in there. I looked up, uh, you know, I looked up the kind of the characteristics of wash wine, cheese, rind cheeses, and the brevy bacterium linens as typically has a lower acid, i.e. a higher pH than normally cheeses would of that of that type,

[31:31] uh, without that bacteria. So you're talking about a higher pH situation. In cultured buttermilk, or in cultured cream rather that you're going to turn into butter, the safety the safety of it is because of the acidity that's being caused by the lactic acid bacteria as it cultures.

[31:49] I looked up some studies in general and what you want to make sure that nothing is going to be bad, is that you want the Ph to go lower than 4.6 within about 6 hours, which is the limit for toxins from staff stuff to start growing in it.

[32:10] I wasn't able to find whether or not the brevet bacterium linens has its own sort of way of killing things like staff or listeria or

[32:21] E. coli or things of this nature. I mean, I wouldn't freak out over it. You know what I mean? Like, I wouldn't flip my lid over it. I'm going to try to. Harold McGee has researched all this stuff. I need to talk to him anyway to see whether or not we're going to go taste mangoes again this year. Uh, but I'm going to try to remember to hit him up on that because it's very, uh, it's very interesting uh, question. Anyway, so apparently I don't I don't know that much about it. Right? Sorry about that. Okay. Paul Peterson writes in and says, do I have any thoughts on patented cuts of meat? And he's talking patented cuts of meat and he's talking about the Vegas strip steak. So why don't we take a break and we'll come back and talk about the Vegas strip steak? 718-4972128 That 718-497-2128. Man, I need a new computer. I guess I'm gonna have to go to the Apple Store. What? Don't go to the Apple Store. Go to tech serve. What's tech, sir? I thought Apple Store was the only choice. No, you're crazy. Tech Serve is so much better than the Apple Store. They're New York's original and still the best Apple computer, iPod, and iPhone store, and repair shop. Plus, the store is really cool. You gotta go check it out. They're located at 119 West 23rd Street. Well, that settles it. I'm headed to TechServe. Tech Serve is a proud sponsor of heritageradionetwork.org for more information, visit techserve.com. That's T-E-K-S-E-R-V-E.com. What? Go to Texer. I love that. Give me some what? What? There you go. There you go. Nice. Nice. Strong, strong. Okay. And we're remiss. Acephalopod on Twitter asked us about 8000000 times and is getting irritated with us for recommendations in Tokyo.

[34:02] Now, listen, the sad truth is, is that Nastasia and I didn't get to eat out as

[34:08] much who you really want to talk to is Mark Ladner because he spent every day eating out. Now, those of you that read the blog. Oh, by the way, there'll be a new blog post up as soon as this is over, I'm just waiting for the YouTube video to load up on Ikigime. And I know I said I wasn't going to write super long posts anymore, but it's a long freaking post on Ikigime. couldn't freaking help myself. Anyway, I couldn't help it. So it's coming up as soon as maybe during lunch I can get it up. anyway. So those of you that read the blog know that Nastasia and Mark Ladner and I went to Jiro's

[34:36] sushi, and it was good, but I wouldn't spend the 350 on it. What about you, Stas? Yeah. Yeah. Mark, on the other hand, the next day went to Sushi Sawada and said it was the best sushi he's ever had in his whole freaking life, true or false.

[34:47] Because I wasn't there. Well, there's that. I mean, so yes. So it was even better because you weren't there, but he said that regardless of the company that it was the best sushi you'd ever had, right? Right. Right. Um, uh, what did you think of the sushi place at the at the skiji market, the Iwashi place? I thought it was good. I thought was really good. It's a good place. Also fairly well known that you could see that on our blog, actually, and there's a couple comments on the cooking issues, saying where that restaurant is. This is sad, and Mark agreed with me too. And normally, it's hard. I don't want to recommend because there are friends and everything, but the Japanese, traditional Japanese restaurant, the Park Hyatt, was pretty good. I ate there twice. I thought it was really good. And Mark Ladner from Del Posto loved it, right? And you don't normally think of like, you know, Park Hyatt having like a really great, especially Japanese, and it was really good. I thought it was really, what was the name of it? Cocaway or something like that? No, I don't remember. Look it up. Let's see if we can look it up in time. Um, uh, you know, I highly recommend going to Sakiji in general and just like checking out all the stalls around it and

[35:47] uh, just getting little bites bites to eat, buying fruit, if you have the money, if you have the freaking money to buy fruit at Sakiji. Um, and what else did we eat while we were there that was really, I mean, go to go to the chef's district

[35:59] street if you're a cook, right? What else? Anything? Oh, we went to Marantasan's Kaiseki restaurant. The Tokyo version of it. And I spoke to Dave Chang about it. He's like, ah, crap on the Tokyo version. He doesn't give a crap about Tokyo. You have to go to the one in Kyoto. But the presentation was great in the one in Tokyo, but, you know, I don't, anyway, those are my thoughts. Sorry I'm so late in giving you that information. Okay. Nastasia, Dave, and Jack. I have an odd question. While I was calibrating my circulator, I instinctively changed it to Celsius. Then I thought about it more. Generally, recipes are metric because they're easier to scale, better to control, more accurate, right? But from 0 to 100 degree C, right, to the 10th because most circulators are accurate to the 10th, there would be 1000 gradations. And from 32.0 degrees Fahrenheit to 212 degrees Fahrenheit, there would be 1800 gradations, meaning a higher degree of accuracy.

[36:48] I switched it regardless because most of the info out there is in Celsius slash metric, but for some reason, it seems that imperial measurement might be better in this instance. Am I crazy? Is it so little of a difference, it is easier to keep it metric because everything else is in the kitchen? By the way, the homemade circulator I have is running great. Thanks for the great podcast, and then you cut off who wrote it. don't have who wrote it. Anyway, we'll get it. So here's the thing. No, you are not crazy. The Fahrenheit, and I've said this a long time, is a, like, it's a finer gradation. This is why when I'm talking about the temperature outside. I always talk in Fahrenheit because, you know, like, oh, it's 20 degrees out. It's great. What? It doesn't make any sense. Like Celsius degrees don't make any sense to me for the climate. Like, I like a climate where, like, you know, like 0 is really, really, really, really cold, and like a 100 is really, really hot, and 120 is really, really hot, and -20 is really, really, really, really cold, but all those things happen. That, like a wide range. For climate, I use Fahrenheit. For deep frying, I use Fahrenheit. For baking, I use Fahrenheit, right? Because 375, it's beaten into my head like nobody's business. You know what I mean? But for sous vide work, I use Celsius. So I myself am of 2 minds. The Celsius, scaling in temperature doesn't make a

[38:05] difference, and there's no reason why freezing is better thought of as 0 versus

[38:10] 32. And there's no reason that boiling is better being thought of as 100 versus 212. There's simply no reason. There's no better or worse with the scales and there are more gradations without using tenths. when you're talking about degrees in Fahrenheit. So, you know, it's really, you know, it's it's your choice, and I use them both. Unlike

[38:32] decimal systems for scaling, there is no advantage to Celsius. There's no inherent advantage to a Celsius degree, except in keeping it consistent. And if you're doing conversions back and forth using formula, for instance, if you're doing

[38:47] like ideal gas law computations or things like this, it's helpful to use Celsius because it scales to

[38:51] Kelvin, and then Kelvin can be used in ideal gas laws and stuff. But if you're not doing that kind of stuff, it really doesn't make, you know, an iota of difference. Right? chip. Hey, Chip, that's my thoughts. Okay, so before we leave, because Jack's going to make us leave very soon,

[39:09] uh, giving a shout out because a listener wrote in, uh, Sarah Valentine from Brooklyn, but not from Bushwick, so probably not maybe not a hipster,

[39:19] right? Anyway, she wrote in saying that, wow, nuts. Well, there's also the Williamsburg hips. A bushwick hipster or Williamsburg hipster? Williamsburg. Whoa! Where do you live, Jack? Okay. Uh, so, um, Sarah Valentine writes in, friends with our, uh, you know, our longtime listener

[39:41] buddy, Ken Engber, and, uh, Ken has gotten her and her husband into sous vide cooking. They bought the and low temperature cooking, bought the under pressure. Maybe Sunday they'll buy, we pop soupy pots, circulator. But, uh, here we go, Sid wants us to give a shout out, and this is our 1st actual shout out like this, right? A shout out for Ken Ingbur's birthday on July 2nd before our next show. So this is Ken Ingbur's birthday shout out from cooking issues. See you next week.

[40:20] Thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage radio network. You can find all of our archived programs on Heritage Radio Network.com, as well as a schedule of upcoming live shows. You can also podcast all of our programs on iTunes by searching Heritage

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[40:45] up-to-date news and information. Thanks for listening. All twisted. I guess can't get it straight.