[0:00] Today's program has been brought to you by the International Culinary Center, offering courses that range from classic French techniques and culinary pastry and bread baking to Italian studies to management, from culinary technology to food writing, from cake making to wine tasting. For more information, visit

[0:16] internationalculinarycenter.com. Broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn, you're listening to Heritage Radio Network.org.

[0:30] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking, and she's coming to you live every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 at the Heritage Radio Network in the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Butchwick,

[0:45] Brooklyn. Jack decided not to show up today because... Well, we had the fundraiser over the weekend and now he's just too big for us, right, Joe? Yeah, he's doing presidential things right now, I'm guessing. Yeah, he's just, you know, he's like smoking, you know, tobacco rolled in $100 bills and all kinds of crazy stuff over there in the heritage radio headquarters.

[1:06] But thankfully, Joe is with us, and as always, Nastasia Hammer Lopez, how you doing? Good. Yeah. Apologize that we were not able to do the live cooking issues with Harold McGee over at the Harvard

[1:17] because we just couldn't do it. I mean, that's all there was to it. We couldn't do it. We were prepping out. The class started as the show would have been ending, and that would have

[1:27] been that would have been a big poop show had we done that, right? True. True. So, speaking of McGee, Harold McGee and I will be in London, and we're going to go to the Poddale in Favisham, where Nastasia and I

[1:41] went, like, a year and a half ago, maybe. Yeah. was 2 years ago? Two years ago? Two years ago? And it is... Well, okay, look, okay, look, all right, fine. Geneva, New York, is where all of our, when I say R, I mean, the good old US of A, where all of our apples are stored. And the way you store an Apple is by planting trees, right? So they don't just like literally store. I mean, they also store seeds and liquid nitrogen like sperm banks, but a lot of people don't really believe in that because

[2:10] they think that the seeds might mutate over time, et cetera, blah, blah, blah. People like to own the freaking trees, right? Then also, if you have the trees, you can see how they respond to various things. The reason that our tax money goes to it. It isn't because people, uh, the people who decide the tax money stuff think that, you know, we should have wide variety of delicious apples. They're more worried that some crazy apple disease is going to come through and kill every apple, except that one crazy variety that they saved, right? At least that's the original genesis, the reason there's money behind this project. And so all of our apples are in Geneva. And Geneva, New York, has the greatest collection of apples anywhere in the world.

[2:46] But, but the Brogdale and Favisham and Kent, England, an hour outside of London, is where they have the largest culinary

[2:55] Apple collection. So the way they get around this is, is there's a crazy guy, Phil Forceline, who used to go to Kazakhstan, which is where

[3:01] apples come from, and he would gather all kind of wild apples. I don't know how the hell he smuggled the seeds back into the U.S. or went through some crazy quarantine situation or whatever. Uh, because they have huge genetic diversity of uh, different Apple varieties, as well as other fruits, actually,

[3:16] in this thing called the Tianshan fruit forest, which stretches from China to Kazakhstan.

[3:20] And it's a huge kind of apparently incredibly beautiful, awesome place. And one of the places on Earth actually that I really want to go. Anyway, so he went there and just collected a bajillion different kinds of wild, you know, malice, apple species, and planted them in at

[3:35] Cornell, up in Geneva. And it's, uh, it just so that obliterated the Brogdale's collection in terms of sheer numbers. But Brogdale has the culinary Apple collection to beat in the world.

[3:46] However, however, I'm extremely partial to the flavor of apples as grown in upstate New York.

[3:52] So we've been to the Apple collection, but when we went to the Broaddale app collection, Nastasia and I, I have a sidelined by the fact that they also have an incredibly awesome collection of pairs. And actually, you know what we missed last time, is there should still be a couple plums on the trees. See, here's what, but it's nut season, so they can have all the nuts. In fact, we're going to miss the nut festival. I mean, it'll be the nut festival with Harold and I there, but we're going to miss the official nut festival by a couple of days. The, here's what's amazing about the Brogdale and why anyone that lives anywhere near London and uh,

[4:27] doesn't, or hasn't been to the Brogdale a bunch of times, honestly should be incredibly ashamed of themselves. They should just be, you know, you should be, I don't know, you should wear a hair shirt and a dunce cap and go into the corner and just, you know, beat yourself with sticks out of, out of, you know, anguish that you've missed, this huge portion of your life so close to this amazing resource and you haven't gone yet. say it's accurate? They could join you, can't they? I don't know. I don't know exactly what time it can be. McGee and I, well, 1st of all, though. So the Brockdale, unlike us, where our pairs are in Corvallis, Oregon and our berries are in Corvallis, Oregon, and we have our apples in Geneva, New York, and our

[5:08] collections of germ plasma are spread all over the all over the country. Uh, the English basically can only grow stuff in Kent. Come on, no offense. But you can take offense if you want. But anyway, so their entire collection of stuff is at this one place.

[5:24] So it's kind of one stop shopping for everything, small fruits, and, you know, the English, they know gooseberries like the nobody else. They have like the gooseberry collection, but not the time of year. Anyway. Apples, pears, nuts, plums, cherries, Kentish cherries. Anyways. So my point is, is that I'm going to temperate fruit paradise on Friday. Like my plan, my plan lands. McGee and I, he's coming from California. I'm coming from New York. We're meeting at Heathrow and taking a train directly to Favisham. I'm going to throw away all. I'm not even going to wear clothes. I just going to dress myself in fruit and then take that fruit because we're going to our good buddy, Tony Canoyaro,

[6:03] and Ria's wedding. Congratulations to them. You know, one of my favorite bartenders in the whole world. Yeah? Yep. Yep. Okay. Call your questions live. 2 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Joe, who's bringing the show to us today? It would be the International Culinary Center. The International Culinary Center. I'm doing actually a demo with them tomorrow. you coming to that thing or no? You're going today to figure? going to go there today and talk to them, but I mean, I don't think our viewers care about it. You're going to be there? We're doing a demo for Pepsi, Pepsi, PepsiCo, right? Pepsi. Anyway, okay, questions. Hey, Dave, Mastasia, Jack, and Joe, although Jack doesn't care about your question, Ron, because he's not here to listen to it.

[6:40] I'm just kidding. I'm just messing with you. Uh, Several shows back, we pop, we pop, you know, we pop super pot, our intern, and the, one of the current founders and designers, I'm assuming, of

[6:51] the uh, Namako emerging circulator. Some of shows back, WePep called to talk to you about the Namaku. Namakuanam Ko. Co, right? K? K? Coop. Okay. The emerging circulator designed for use in the home kitchen. Needless to say, I was extremely excited at the prospect of having an affordable low temp cooking solution out in the market. Recently, I was on the polyscience website and found out that they now offer, also offer a home version called the creative series. And it's called like, yeah, it's all like sous vide, and there's a sous vide creative and a sous vide professional, and then there's the old metal one, so it's kind of confusing, but you go on the website and you look at it. I think it's live on the website. I haven't seen one in real life. anyway, hold on. So the Namaku will be $140 cheaper than the sous vide creative

[7:30] on polycience. Uh, the heater in the Namaku is going to have less wattage, 750 versus uh, 1100. Although, I really think Phillips is a 1000 watts. The heater itself is a thousand. I think it's 1,100. But anyway, whatever. But the pump is more powerful in the

[7:45] Namaku, 10 liters per minute versus 6 liters per minute. The Nahu claims it can actually get water to 100 degrees C, while the creative goes to 99 degrees C. I mean that's a meaningless stat though. I mean, I wouldn't even pay attention to that. That's a meaningless stat. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know, that's you know, don't worry about that. You're not going to want to put these into anything other than water anyway. So the old metal ones with stainless steel. Let me finish the question 1st before I go crazy. Okay. The rest of the specs, as far as I can tell, are about the same. Not sure if you had a chance to play with either, perhaps a Namaku prototype, but I'm hoping you can give us your honest opinion on which one you would get.

[8:16] I'm not planning on getting one until the holidays. So the fact that the Namaku isn't actually out yet will not affect my purchasing decision. Also, I'm currently a student at the ICC, and I hear you'll be teaching a few classes this month. Is that true? I'm in level 6, uh, which is the last level. It's the level that the students cook in the restaurant. So at the school, there's there's 6 levels. The last 2 levels cooking the restaurant. So the, you know, the 1st 2 you're kind of learning stuff, the 3rd one, more learning stuff. 4th one, you're doing family meal for the whole school and 5 and 6 in the restaurant. Okay. If you're around, I'll be sure to say hi. I'll be the giddy Chinese guy with the sweaty palms. Thanks. I love the show, Ron fan. So Ron, obviously not a, if you have sweaty palms, not a good chocolate worker. Shouldn't work with chocolate. Don't go into pastry, my friend. I mean, I guess you could, but I mean, if you have sweaty palms, it's going to be difficult working with chocolate and pastry, correct? I mean, there are certain people who are to known things. Certain people have warmer palms and they have a very difficult time with things like chocolates. Just a known fact. Anyway. Okay, before I even get into this, uh, look, we pop as a friend of mine. I love myself, WePop, and Philip Preston is a friend of mine, and I've known him for many, many years, and he's been very supportive.

[9:24] So it's very hard for me to come. I, you know, I can't, I almost can't come down with any sort of recommendation, uh, on one versus uh, the other because it's just, it would be crazy for me. You know what I'm saying? What do you think, Stas? I mean, that's kind of like, you know, Philip Preston has been. We're going to get one in December. Wait, the Philip, the new one? Pop is sending us. Anamaku? In December? All right, I haven't touched... I haven't touched the new creative series yet. But I sent a note over to Philip and I was like, Philip, what should I know about the creative system as opposed to the other one? And his response was, is that this new one, the 499 one, is designed to have a good control, very good temperature control, just like the other one. Have it be quiet, right? So I guess it's quieter for a home kind of situation. So the pump's not as loud, also not as fast, right? Less, it's less demanding use, right? Because it's not meant to run all day, every day like ours do, which isn't to say you can't do a 72 hour cook, but, you know, the way these things are treated in professional kitchens is crazy. They're running almost 247 sometimes. you know, all the time. So the current one's not designed to run all day, every day. It's got a lower cost, you know, 499. So I don't really know actually what the Namaku is coming in. Is it really $170 cheaper? Is it really $320? I don't. I don't know. I mean, it's hard to say. Also, you never know if it's going to be sold at William Sonoma. Williams Sonoma later is a retail price and then Williams Sonoma is going to give you a deal or something like that. So it's very hard to say what the price is going to be. The new polycience is going to have the same safety

[10:58] system, as the old one did, plus a float, which I never was a big fan of float, the

[11:03] float. so the float is basically in there. So in case your water runs low, the float drops and turns off the circulator. I've never been a giant fan of floats because it just seems like it's another thing that can fail as opposed to having the strap on. There's a scrap on. There's a strap on thermometer, you know, a temperature

[11:22] sensor on the heating element itself, such that it goes over temp. It will shut the equipment off. So I guess Philip, I guess enough people wanted to float plus that safety system. So he put it in. Um, and uh, it's kind of, it has a smaller pump than the, than the $800 one. So it's going to have a reduced capacity on the note of capacity, by the way. Capacity is one of those things that you can't really ever listen to what anybody

[11:47] says unless they're extremely specific about what they mean by capacity.

[11:52] So your capacity is going to be limited by the wattage. There's 2 things that limit your capacity. One is your ability to circulate water. That is rarely the limit, except for in very large tanks or in viscous fluids like oils, which I wouldn't necessarily be circulating with these guys

[12:08] anyway. So the pop output is not usually the limit on your capacity.

[12:16] Usually the limit on your capacity is the wattage. And that said, also, when you're judging capacity, the question is not how many liters of

[12:26] liquid. It's how many liters of liquid, plus product, at what temperature in a vessel with what kind of

[12:34] insulation? So there's so many, uh, there's so many variables, but the physics are what the physics are, and you can figure out, uh, how

[12:42] much, uh, wattage, roughly, wattage you need with some back of the envelope calculations. So for me, the main the main thing is, when I was talking to WePop, the the new circulator, the Namaku is,

[12:53] you know, it has a smaller capacity, and it's designed to have a smaller capacity, a 750 watts, and their feeling is, is

[13:00] it's enough wattage to get away with most of the things that you're going to want to do in your house, but they opted to have a more powerful pump, whereas Philip was like, I don't care about the

[13:08] pump. Uh, but I want to keep the same waters because I don't actually know why, uh, why the

[13:13] namaku, why they took the waters down to 750. Weepop told me once, but I can't remember what his explanation was because not, I mean, it could have been fitting it into the package because it's a very thin stick package. And Namuku also is very small, right? And we haven't played with it yet. I mean, small is good because small means it takes up less space in your bath. Anytime you can take up less space in your bath, it's probably a good thing. Um, just because that space you can't be cooking products in. Um, so that might be an advantage for the Namaku, but really I hesitate to make any recommendations until I play with them, play with both of them. I will say this. Uh, it is an extremely exciting time uh, to uh, be a cook because now almost anyone, you know, look, it's still expensive, you know, even even if it's $350, it's not like I'm going to go out, you know, you're not going to go out and

[14:00] buy, like buy them like their potato chips and pretzels. But it's in the realm of things that many, many people buy. I think it's a huge, there's a huge price difference between 800 bucks and

[14:09] uh, 400 bucks or 350 bucks, right? Yeah, it's big difference. Big difference. I mean, Nastasia might actually consider purchasing one instead of other, uh, yes. I said, you might consider actually purchasing one. Yes, yeah, we will leave it at that. We'll leave it. We'll just we'll just leave it right there. Yeah? Okay. so you're right. That's pretty much, I mean, that's all there is to say about that, yeah. All right. When we get it, we will tell. When we get it, when we get it, we will tell the pros and cons of each. One, if you know me, uh, uh, my, one of the main problems is, is, uh, I'm going to find it difficult to lie. So, Ray? I mean, like, you know, it's I mean, I can lie about many things, but not about recommending equipment. It's a weird thing. And oh, and I know I'm not teaching a class this week as far as I know I'm doing it. You're doing TV next week. So we get intensive? Last week of September. Is that next week? No, 2 weeks from now. Oh, so I will be in, I will be in, it might class, is the class full? I don't know. I don't know if you want to come here, spout off some crazy stuff. It's not, actually. It's actually the best course that we've ever taught. I mean, like, not the, it's good, course, for people who want to learn low temperature and sous vide. I'll put it this way. I'm proud of what we do in the course because we can, we can do things that are very difficult for you to do in either a home or a restaurant

[15:30] kitchen just for time and space reasons. Anyway, so I guess we're teaching that in a couple of weeks last week of September. So that's when I'll be in there, Ron. I'll be in tomorrow but I'll be dealing with the Pepsi people. Okay. Should we take a 1st one, right? Signing books, yeah. Signing books? What books? Anyway. Techniques. Coming right back with cooking issues.

[15:53] You're listening to Misa Mores by Jack Insley.

[17:11] The International Culinary Center is a proud sponsor of the

[17:14] HeritageRadioNetwork.org, the ICC with locations in New York and California, provide cutting edge education to future chefs,

[17:23] restorateurs, and wine professionals. We're proud to claim Dan Barber, Bobby Flay, and David Chang among our honored alumni. This is Dorothy Can Hamilton from Chef Story. Check out our ICC website at internationalculinarycenter.com. And welcome back. Okay, we have a question in from Paul who says, for ethical dietary reasons, I've been baking croissant with

[17:51] margarine. They turn out very nice, but I'm wondering if I can get something closer to authentic if I adjust the fat in

[17:56] the, in quotes, because it's not butter, butter block. The 2 main problems. I think I face is that one, as far as I can tell, it's impossible to get unsalted margarine. And two, I'm guessing margarine, I am guessing margarine has a higher water content compared to butter. Secondary issues could include altered melting point issues with saturated fat or transfant content, et cetera. I'm wondering if it might be possible to approximate something closer to unsalted butter in water content and reduce salt levels by making a mixture of margarine and vegetable shortening, or possibly trying to match the water content by evaporating moisture from margarine, but likely increasing the salt levels on a per volume

[18:33] level. If it matters, the dough is relatively wet, moderately enriched with a small amount of fat and some sugar, given a very quick mix with low gluten development, but then spends 12 plus hours in the fridge for a rise in

[18:44] a developed gluten flavor. Any thoughts, thanks. Paul. Okay. So, um, Yeah, here's the thing. First of all, you know, you have to be making sure anyway that you're using a margarine that has, uh, um,

[18:56] that if you, if you don't want the butter, I'm assuming you don't want, assuming you want vegan, right? That's the assumption, right? And so, uh, you know, there are, and therefore, I'm sure you're aware of the fact that many margarines contain, um, milk, um, actual milk in

[19:13] the, for flavor in it, milk products in it for flavor. Some are artificially butter flavored, and I'm sure you can get just a plastic fat without the flavoring,

[19:21] but... Right or wrong. Great, yeah. Okay, so here's the thing. I did some preliminary poking around. It's been a long time since I've researched, um, margarine, um, because I do eat

[19:35] dairy, and so I'm a margarine. I'm a hater, right? I'm a hater. But the key thing, uh, I don't know, so, uh, margarines, I guess, can have

[19:46] different, uh, different water levels in it, but the key thing about a margarine. So butter is what butter is, right? It's butter, it's butter fat, right? From cream. And the recipes that we have are written around the properties of

[20:02] butter. So butter is actually less than ideal for certain things. For instance, if you're going to do, if you're going to do puff paste, and you have to keep the dough temperatures relatively proper. Otherwise, the butter gets too hard relative to the dough, right? Because butter isn't necessarily the best actual physical form for everything you're going to do. So when you make a margarine, you get to choose a lot of the exact properties that make it important

[20:28] for, so there's table margarines, right? And those are meant to spread mostly like butter. And the main characteristic that you're looking at other than like nowadays, they're much better at it. Like margarine used to taste really Christ awful because they couldn't deodorize it properly and it just tasted of awfulness because the way you make the margarine, is you press

[20:47] any old crud, meaningless it's specified, but you press any old crud and you extract oil from,

[20:53] um, you extract oil from things like seeds, soybeans, whatever. Usually with some crazy solvent, you know, some sort of like light petroleum fraction, which you then get rid of. You're then left with oil, plus gum, and sludge, and oil breakdown products, which are like one of the things they can do with, so if there's too many free fatty acids in there, they add

[21:16] lie to it, and that turns it into soap, and then they wash the soap away. So there's, and by the way, none of this I'm against. I am not saying I'm against that. I'm definitely pro, you know, that kind of a technique. So then they wash away all the impurities and then they usually deodorize it. When they're going to make margarine, they sometimes do the deodorant deodorization step at the end. So then you're left with these raw inputs that have various different fatty acid profiles. And then they hydrogenate them to different levels and different amounts and different ways to obtain, um, different properties of fat, and the most important property of fat, other than the taste of it, and

[21:51] how it crystallizes, how a particular fat crystallizes, because that really affects its property is quite severely. But the, you know, the other really important thing is called the SFI, which is

[22:01] the, uh, what does it actually stand for? Geez, solid fractions index, I think, or solids. Anyway. So what it is, is it's a chart, and you can see it. And it's how much of a given fat is liquid at any given temperature because because the fats are not one unitary type of thing.

[22:24] They don't have a definite melting point, right? And that's why butter gets softer as it gets warmer. It doesn't just instantly melt. It gets soft, it gets goes from hard to soft to melted because there's a range of

[22:36] different, you know, compounds in there that have different melting points. And so the, there's the, where that curve, the melting curve is, and then there's the slope of that curve determines uh, over what temperatures fat

[22:49] is is plastic, is workable. So, the good news about margarines is that they can choose that exact profile for baking.

[22:59] And the profile they choose for baking is different depending on the application that you're

[23:05] going to use. So they make ones called baker's margarine that are specifically designed to not be too

[23:12] hard, so they don't rip through layers of your product, but also not to melt at all until you are baking with them.

[23:21] So, uh, you know, and there's different ones depending on exactly how the dough is supposed to work. So, you know, in the very industrial scale, they'll have a different one for a puff pastry than they will for a Danish or for

[23:31] croissant, because they work slightly differently. Uh, so, because a lot depends on you, the idea of being not to tear the dough when you're rolling it out. and what you're looking for. But the most important thing with those margarines is that they not melt out into the dough and cause adhesion of the layers to themselves before they're baked out.

[23:48] Like, that's the key thing. So there's that in conjunction with the not ripping. Um, on water content. I wasn't able to find the app. So, oh, so I looked this morning trying to find anyone that sold these varieties of margarines to the

[24:06] public. Like I looked on Amazon for Baker's margarine, I couldn't find it. Chet Baker, the musician, had a song called margarine. I was able to find that. You can download that for ¢99. But I wasn't able to find less than £50 of Baker's margarine and no one that kind of

[24:20] stole, uh, to, you know, just to, you know, normally to us. So if anyone out there knows a source of baker's margarine. Um, I'd appreciate it. And so, uh, if you, I mean, and they're technically highly superior products, they just, you know, they also add a lot of other stuff like,

[24:35] uh, like oils and whatnot. you know, sorry, like butter, fake butter flavor and whatnot. Uh, now, as for your question, I wasn't able to find the optimum water content uh, for uh, the margin, but, uh, and there's a question as to what the optimum water content is in Adilla like this, because after all, it's the water vaporizing, uh, you know, and

[24:59] and in the thing as it melts that is causing the expansion to break the different flaky sections of the dough

[25:06] apart. in addition to analy croissant. Obviously, it's also leavened. So, uh, yes, and I know I've known for years that people

[25:14] want, and they love the low water, uh, European butters, for instance, like in the supermarket, you can buy plugra for this kind of

[25:22] thing, but I never have actually done the test of how important the water content is.

[25:26] I'm loath to suggest adding, although you know what? Crisco makes some flaky freaking stuff. Although, when I'm making pie crust with Crisco. It's a different kind of flaky, and there is a lot of fat melting in because I'm not a believer in hyper cold, everything when you're making pie

[25:43] crust. I follow the kind of Jeffrey Steingarden through Marion Cunningham pie crust recipe of hand rubbing and not worrying about the temperature too

[25:49] much, and no one complains about my pie crust, but you do get some bleed out of the fat into the flour in that.

[25:57] And so, and I use lard for that, which you could act, you know, which is actually

[26:00] more, when I use lard, it's actually colder because lard is much more difficult to work with than shortening is. But when I use Crisco shortening. Uh, it, you know, it works. So you know what? It might work. If you really want to lower the water content, beat some Crisco into the margarine,

[26:13] like roll it in, like, you know, whip it and then flatten it and make it into a block, it could work. But I mean, most margarines, I think, are rocking in around the 20% water range in that area, 17 to

[26:24] 20, and most butters are also in that same range. So I, you know, I doubt you're going to have, uh, I doubt, I doubt. I mean, I doubt the water is an issue, but maybe it is. What I would recommend is not obviously melting the margarine to try and get the water out of it because then you're breaking the

[26:42] emulsion, right? Right? Fair? Okay. What do you think? Is that a valid answer? Did I give anything of use? Sometimes I can't tell whether I've said any freaking thing useful at all. I can't tell. Okay. Michael from Oakland writes in again and now like making and now I feel bad. He's like, hey, guys, welcome back from Columbia, following up on the Lucuma question from a few weeks ago. Again, I make a cocktail with Lucomo, is looking for an easier to locate substitute. Something I could find in a local market, specialty market, or Latin market. You asked me to tell you whether I was concerned with a taste or feel or something else. The taste I care about. Thanks for looking into this. And so I don't have a decent. I don't have a... Does anyone out there, please help us out. Help us out. Get us a good source of Lucuma and or Lucuma substitute, because the closest thing I have is Canistell, because I never actually worked with Lucuma directly. I work with Canistell. Delicious, right? That's a good product. Yeah. Uh, so, so I've never uh, had to source it. So someone help me out, help us out. Yes, please help us out. With that, let's go to our 2nd commercial break cooking issues.

[28:00] This one's called the Paper Jam. Also by Jack Insley. But erotic. But erotic. But erotic. But erotic, but erotic.

[28:20] But not it. That erotic.

[29:11] Got Stitcher? Heritage radio network is on it, so get it. Stitcher is an award-winning provider of news and talk radio for your mobile phone. Stitcher Smart radio, the smarter way to listen to radio. We're back. We're back. Cooking issues. Joe, do you remember, did we answer the question about raw milk safety last week? Or 2 weeks ago? Oh, hmm. Yeah, just me check that out. I'm going to answer another question in the meantime. Greetings, Nastasia, Dave, Dave, that's me. Jack and Joe. From Kevin Scott in San Jose, by the way, San Jose, visited San

[29:52] Jose where other sister school is for the ICC. And you, it is almost impossible to find anything to

[29:59] freak and eat in San Jose after midnight. You know what I'm saying? You ever, I mean, you ever go hang out in San Jose? No, you're a southern California. Good, but my college was near that. It's in Stanford. How close is that to San Jose? Pretty close. to San Francisco. Really? Yeah, but no, I never ate there. Anyway, apparently like somewhere there's like the late night taco stands that are supposed to be good, but no one could point us

[30:22] out. They're like, man. So, you know, I was starving one night in San Jose. So Kevin, if you can hook us up with the next time I'm in San Jose, where I should get good food after midnight, I would appreciate it. Because there's like 8000000000 people in San Jose, right? It's like a giant freaking city. It's huge Huge. Okay, so there's got to be good late 90s. It's not possible for them not to be. Anyway, uh, Kevin Wright. I'm thinking about buying a new 3 liter tabletop centerfuge for random mad science food hackery. What should I be looking for, refrigerated or not? Any manufacturers to avoid swinging bucket or fixed rotor? I'd like to be able to try out things like making nut and vegetable butters, tomato water, and clarifying stocks and juices. Our tabletop model is going to have enough oomph to handle this range of things. And while I'm asking questions, have you ever experimented with meat stock clarification in a centrifuge? I can imagine being able to get a beautifully clear stock, but is there flavor loss? I don't know if you, uh, I don't, uh, if you don't know, I can do that experiment myself once I've acquired my centrifuge. Okay, what should you be looking for? Refrigeration is nice. Um, I mean, I love having refrigerator on my centrifuge, but that said, and there are some products that it's very, it's very helpful to have, but it adds a,

[31:36] obviously they need more power and it's a lot more space and the unit is a lot heavier. So, you know, if you don't need the refrigeration, if you don't want it, you can get a much more compact system without refrigeration.

[31:48] So, And there are ways to get around the refrigeration. For instance, putting your buckets in the freezer before you load them so that they're cold. Um, X, Y, X, Y, Z. The, your product does heat up quite a bit in a centrifuge as it's spinning. And it's because of the incredible friction, um, that's just generated by the, by the, you know, this thing spinning around in the air. It gets quite warm. So we're talking the product that goes in pretty close to room temperature, can come out at body temperature really at the end of like a 15 minute span or something like that. So if you have a product that you, um, where the temperature is critical, for instance, butter or spinning cream, uh, into this kind of butter mass, which is something that Wiley does at

[32:36] the WD 50 or has done. Um, then refrigeration is probably a good idea. Another thing is because of the immense friction, centrifuge can chill very, very rapidly. So one of the advantages that I think of having a refrigerated unit is, um, you know,

[32:52] we'll do juices. When we're doing juices, I usually blend, uh, you know, whatever fruit it is in a vita prep, along with the

[32:59] enzyme, until it's slightly above water, uh, body temperature. That means the enzyme works almost instantaneously and we can spin right away. I don't have to wait for the enzyme to break down stuff at lower fridge temperatures. Now, if you have a refrigerated centrifuge, um, it chills that product as it's spinning extremely rapidly down to refrigerator temperatures, just because there's such

[33:20] good, uh, heat transfer, because of the immense amount of, uh, of uh, airflow that you're getting across the uh, buckets when you're when you're spinning. So refrigeration, if you can afford it in terms of space and in terms of money,

[33:35] then I would get it. I mean, that's that's that. Um, Whether or not any manufacturers to avoid, I really only have experience uh, with uh, Sorval, larger Sorval units and with uh, what was that Japanese one? Do you remember the name of that? That thing was awesome. No, I don't. That thing was amazing. I love that scene. I know. I think it was awesome. Or, uh, and the one in Japan, which I can't even remember, was a Japanese manufacturer, and I don't think it's shipped here to the

[34:02] US. But the awesome thing about that, other than the fact that it was awesome. It was very compact, right? It had a plexi top and there's some American, there's some manufacturers here that are, uh, I forget who, like

[34:13] Central App. I forget who makes those, but there's a couple manufacturers with Plexi tops, and they're kind of fun because you can get a strobe tack and shoot on the thing and then, you know, see the product as it's

[34:23] clarifying. It's not really necessary, but it is fun. But the also thing about that Japanese one was that the, the, the buckets, the aluminum buckets had stainless steel, thin inserts that went into it that you can just use over and over and

[34:36] they were just really, really nice unit. And really quiet, smooth. Anyway. So most of my experience has been with joans. Uh, and the Xuan is nice, is a nice unit, but it's, they're older because the company's out of business. It was bought by thermo, which makes still makes a lot of centrifuges. And then, and then the company was retired. The brand name was retired. Wiley uses a headache. He seems to enjoy that. And I think Tony Corneliaro in England also uses

[35:05] a headache and he likes it. Uh, I think Headache is out of Germany. But, you know, all these guys. Here's what I would I would say. I wouldn't avoid a manufacturer in a new centrifuge. I would avoid certain types. So, um, I don't think you need as, look, here's the other thing. So the question is fixed rotor versus swinging bucket. Fixed rotor is going to be better for things like peea

[35:33] butter, uh, and whatnot, just because of the way layers are formed in a fixed uh, angle rotor. Uh, however, uh, you know, most of the fixed angle rotors,

[35:44] you 1st of all, you can put a fixed angle rotor into a 3 liter benchtop thing, but you're not going to get 3 liters out of it.

[35:50] You're going to get a much smaller yield. And to buy a unit that can do 3 liters, that's fixed

[35:56] router, is going to be a much, much larger unit, and you're talking a lot more money. For bang for buck and most useful all around, go with the swinging bucket

[36:07] rotors, because that's the clarification machine. It works fine on nut butters. you know, how many, how many, you know, things of nut butter have we done in a, in a, like countless? Countless. too many. Nut milks, things of that nature. Uh, I've never actually done the peea butter recipe, but I think that that, uh, when Maxine Billet came to the school. He did it in our centrifuge, and it seemed to work fine. Um, but the fixed angle rotors are good for certain, they're good for certain things. And I do do some fixed angle work. Again, like all of my recipes that I work with are built around that centrifuge and around its capabilities.

[36:44] So I spend most of my time thinking of recipes that fit within those parameters. So there's many things I'm sure that you can do that, you know, you can't. Now, on stock. Um, I've never clarified uh, stock in uh, in regular stock in a centrifuge, and I'm assuming that to do it, you're going to require a lot of

[37:06] G's, unless you do things like break down the gelatin in it, or add other

[37:10] fining agents to it. And then I'm assuming you'd be able to do it. But your question is, is that you're not sure if there's going to be flavor loss. There is always flavor loss and a clarification step. Let me be clear on this. There is always a flavor loss and a clarification step. The centrifuge by far is the least impactive technique to clarify that

[37:32] I've ever used. So, um, you know, agar clarification strips out certain things and centrifuge strips out certain things, but things like agar, gel and clarification strip out a lot more. Egg whites strip out a lot more. And how you clarify also determines how much is stripped out. So, I mean, even within something like the centrifuge is what I mean to say. So, I'll give you the, for instance, uh, we do gin and juice is one of the recipes we do at the bar, and uh, we clarify, I used to clarify grapefruit juice using free spell with Agar. So, you know, you use 2 grams per liter, grapefruit juice. You set a light agar gel, you freeze it for, you know, tard

[38:13] overnight and then you let it thaw into big pans. And so, you know, we used to do, you know, leaders and leaders and leaders. Like, remember that time we did, like, for the MOMA? We did a party for like 1500 or more people at the MOMA, and it was just like gallons and gallons. We filled all, we took every hotel pan in the school and filled it with frozen grapefruit juice. And Lex ants. remember that? Yeah. Wait, we squeezed them. Yeah, and your yield is lower. But the grapefruit juice you get from that technique, freestyle, is extremely clean and sweet because a lot of the bitterness of the grapefruit is stripped out, which is, I guess,

[38:47] Neringian. And it's stripped out in the Agar clarification process. So when you when you make gin and juice using agar clarification, free thaw, or quick. You do not need to add any simple syrup at

[39:01] all to the recipe. Okay? When you do centrifugal clarification on grapefruit juice, where we use an enzyme to break down the

[39:09] pectin, and then some very light finding agents, quesosol and qaida sand, which

[39:14] are designed for wine clarification. More of that inherent bitterness remains. Some of it's still stripped. It doesn't taste like fresh grapefruit, you know, like, you know, whole grapefruit juice, but it, uh, much more remains, such that I do have to add a small amount of simple syrup to that recipe to get it to

[39:29] work. And so, yes, there is a stripping of flavor. Sometimes that stripping of flavor is good. For instance, I wouldn't want the full bitterness of grapefruit juice in my gin and juice because I think it would

[39:39] be overpowering with the gin and with the carbonation because we carbonated all. So, uh, there's always uh, flavors that are removed, sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing. With the stock, you know, whenever I clarify stock, I usually I'm doing a

[39:54] bunch and so I do regular freestyle clarification on stock, just water it

[39:58] down so there's not too much gelatin in there. But, like I say, you could use a finding agent in conjunction with an enzyme called

[40:05] correlace, which breaks down, uh, correlace breaks down, uh, gelatin. The problem with, and we've done tests of breaking down the gelatin using just meat, meat, you know, proteus

[40:16] stuff, basically, you know, papayine and other things that you can get as meat tenderizers. The problem being that when proteins are broken down into very small fragments,

[40:24] some of those fragments can turn bitter and unpleasant to small polypeptides, and correlace is an enzyme that's designed specifically to break down gelatin into flavorless

[40:34] polypeptide. So it breaks them down in such a way that they don't cause bitter and

[40:40] off flavors. And that stuff is freaking amazing, unfortunately. But you take jellied stock, hardcore jellied stock, you add a couple of drops of

[40:48] correlates and the thing melts out. It melts, it melts, even if it's cold. Book, gone. And then you can reduce stock. We've done ridiculous things, like take a gallon of stock and taking it down to, you know, like

[41:00] just like almost until it's solid and it doesn't set when it cools off. So we use that for like these incredibly intense kind of beef stock things. It's amazing. But anyway, I would get a hold of correlates except for I have not been able to. So if Chris, you know, if Chris at modern his pantry can get his hands on some correlation enzyme, I would buy the hell out of

[41:19] that because that's good stuff. met him. Yeah, we did. We met him. What was it again? Saturday. Oh, yeah, we did the heritage radio. Have we talked about that? Sort of here. You think about what to say about that because I think I got one more question I got to hit before we get kicked out of here. And here it is. Confused in Houston, Co, confusing Houston miles, right, Sand? Dear, Nastasia, Dave, Jack, and Joe. I've been researching hydrocoloids. Isn't my Casey, Casey and Whistling, then? No, like that. You don't like it? I've been researching hydrocoloids and in particular, methocellulos. Since there are a bunch of different kinds of this stuff, how can one tell which is right for a particular purpose? For example, if I wanted to make a hot melting jelly, which type of

[41:59] methocellulose would I use? And what about for stabilizing a foam? Thanks in advance. Okay. This is a great, this is a great thing, and a great question. And a lot of this goes back to some original problems I had with recipes printed online, and also with Faran's

[42:20] text stories line. Now, the products in text stores, they're all they're all good products. They're all high quality products, you know, but the problem is, is that they don't necessarily tell you what's in them. So, for instance, in Faran's methyl, in Faranza, gelan, it's just called gelan. It's not just Jelann. It's a mixture of 2 different kinds of gelan, high acel gelan, and low acel gelan. That's, I guess, some sort of compromise that you can use to make fluid gels, but also has a somewhat gelatin characteristic when it's used as a gel in its own right. And I'm pretty sure, uh, it's been a 1000000000 years since I've used his Jalen, but I think it's basically, uh, 25% of

[42:58] the uh, high acel Jalen, which is the stretchy weird one, and 75% of the low acel, which is the

[43:04] brittle, clear, you know, one that's good for fluid gels. So on methyl cell, I used to know it one time, and I've forgotten, what is the what they're actually using in that? Now, there are many different producers of metal cellulose. Metal cellulose is one of the few unnatural hydrocolloids that we

[43:21] use, and by that, I mean, the metal cellulose does not occur in nature. It's a derived product from cellulose, you know, from like, you know,

[43:30] manufacturer of cotton and things like this. And um, So they're not naturally occurring, but they're not, that doesn't make them evil. It just means they don't occur in nature. But there are a zillion different kinds. There's straight metocellulose, there's hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose, there's a bunch of different ones. The ones that, and there are several manufacturers of it. The ones that I use and have used are manufactured by Dao. And Dow, Dow's brand name is Methocell, right? M-E-T-H-O. I can't spell all that. S-E-E-L, methosell. And they and those are the ones that most chefs write their recipes around Dow Methosel. The good thing about Dow is that Dow has online or they used to. And if they don't, I can email or put on my thing, a bunch of technical documents on exactly what they all do.

[44:22] So any recipe that you get, you should try to convert it into the type of

[44:27] methosell that you want. The interesting property that you allude to with a methacell that it has is that it's one of the very few things that as it's heated becomes a gel.

[44:37] Gels as it's heated and melts as it's cooled. This has led to a lot of people, including Wiley, and ideas in food, and, you know, Nicholas

[44:44] Kurti would have, if he hadn't died before he figured out what Methosel was. Try and make things like hot ice cream, things that are solid when they're hot and then you put it in your mouth and it melts. kind of an inverse thing of ice cream. The problem is I think it's a fundamentally flawed idea, making hot ice cream

[44:59] because, like, I can go into it later. I don't have time to go into why I think hot ice cream is a fundamentally flawed idea. But, uh, so it's very interesting product because of this way that it sets as a tea to dance because it becomes less soluble as it's heated, drops partially out of solution forms of gel.

[45:14] Now, there's wide variety of ones in the

[45:18] methocell line, and not all of them form good gels, but they're arranged in the order of how they

[45:24] gel. So the hardest gelling one, but it actually, you know, squeezes out a lot of water is the SG series.

[45:31] And those stands for super gelling. And those hard geling ones also gel at the lowest temperature. The next series up and it's very, very, you know, you know, not that hot, like 120 Fahrenheit or something like that starts chilling. I forget the actual numbers. The next is the A series. So those are the 2 ones that are mainly used for gels and things like noodles that set when you squeeze them into broths and all those things. That's what those things, those things excel at that kind of application. they're used for that. The other series. I don't really use the K series that much, but it's a higher thing, the series, other series that I use, the E-series was discontinued. The e-series is good at film forming and so people are making crackers and biscuits out of them. I don't particularly like metal cell e-series. But the one that I use the most is the F series. And that's the one that you use for meringues and for whipping. So that's the one that's a good whipping agent. Okay. So the SG and the A series are the ones that you use for gelling, and the F series is the one that you use for like those meringues that you dehydrate and they stay nicely. The other thing to worry about on methocell, Dow brand methocell is the number that is after it. So there's F 50, for instance, is the one that you want to use for whipping things. That 50 is, and all of the numbers after a methyl cell, are measure of the viscosity of the product as it's made. So 50 is, it's in almost an arbitrary units, but it's a certain concentration of

[46:56] methocell has 50 times a viscosity of water at a certain country, bubble, bop. Okay? So there's F 50. But there's, for instance, you can get one like SG, 16 M, right? And here's what's freaking confusing. And I'll leave you guys with this because they're going to kick us off the air in a second. But here's what's confusing. They use some combination of Arabic and Roman freaking numerals,

[47:17] right? So SG 16 N, right, is actually an SG super gel with a viscosity of 16,000 because the M stands for 1000 in Roman numerals.

[47:30] They also have some C ones that are like 700. And so it's very confusing. Unless you just remember you got to choose the series you want. And then after you choose the series you want, you got to choose the viscosity that you want it to be. And the viscosity is going to determine also how hard the gel is going to be at the end because it's probably a longer, they're probably longer, you know, units, so they're probably a harder

[47:50] gel, and also the viscosity of the stuff as you're working. I hope that helps cooking issues.

[48:01] Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritageradionetwork.org. HeritageRadio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening. Get it straight. Fishes, fish, vodka.

[48:39] Oh, you dirty rat.