[0:00] Today's program has been brought to you by the International Culinary Center, offering courses that range from classic French techniques

[0:06] and culinary pastry and bread baking to Italian studies to management, from culinary technology to food writing, from cake making to wine tasting.

[0:14] For more information, visit internationalculinarycenter.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:34] Vicious, vicious, vodka. Oh, you dirty rat. You got me on this corner and I don't know where I'm at. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live every Tuesday from Roberta's Pizzeria on the Harriet Radio Network from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. And, hey, guys, you guys did a cover of Amos Milburn, Victor's Vicious Vodka? I didn't do a cover. Plexophonic did. No crap. Our good friends plexophonic. Michael Landa, yeah. Yeah, for those of you that follow this sort of thing. You know, I'm a lover of the old kind of cocktail jazz phenomenon. Amos Milburn wrote a lot of good songs about drinking liquor, you know, a subject of which I'm fond, but we're no longer allowed to use his,

[1:19] it's not, for a long time, a lot of our listeners thought it was fish is fish is vodka. In fact not the case. It's vicious, vicious vodka. Oh, you dirty rat, but because we did not pay BMI ass cap, fees, we can't use the original, but so that

[1:33] covers awesome. I'm loving that. Yeah, was a surprise in my inbox. So is that, so now we're cool. We can go back to, I think we can, I think we can use that. I mean, unless anybody wants to send in something else and one-up that track. I don't know how you would, but. No, I mean, that's it. That's perfect, beautiful. Unfortunately, today, not joined in the studio with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. Her plane should be somewhere over Boston right now. She's flying back from Oktoberfest. She was in Munich, and believe it or not, possibly the only human being in Munich right now who doesn't like beer.

[2:05] Is that crazy? Why would you go to Oktoberfest? don't like beer. She doesn't like any beer? I told her, no. I was like, I said, Nastasia, look, you know, they're not going to serve you champagne at Oktoberfest. It's not going to happen. You know what I mean? But luckily, we have Jack and Joe in the studio with us as usual. And today, a crew from CNN, who's shooting this, we'll see, we'll see what happens with that. By the way, you know what this means, Jack. There was actually an opportunity to record on video for all time Nastasia's vegan phase. Maybe that's why she's not here. You think so? You think she changed her flight or somehow somehow caused a delay on the airline so that she would not have to have her vegan

[2:46] face video? Maybe Joe can make a vegan face. Well, Joe, do you have, I mean, Joe, you don't, you don't strike me as kind of hardcore as nastasia is on the dislike of the vegan? No, I accept all people's dietary preferences. I'm not a, I'm not hater. Oh, isn't that nice? Isn't that nice? All right, listen, call your questions live too, 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. But let's get to some of the questions on the email. Okay. Kevin Scott wrote in and he enjoyed our suggestions on CenterFuge. He says, thank you very much for answering my questions about Centrifuges, a couple of shows back. Based on your advice, I've ordered a headed to Rotanta 460 R, which should be delivered in October. I'm pretty stoked and we'll poach a bunch of stuff on my blogs as soon as I start experimenting and cooking with this new gear. Well, Kevin, you decided to buy a pretty sweet little machine. That's the same machine that I think that's the exact model, perhaps, that Wiley uses. Oh, no, you have the R, the refrigerator. So you won up Wiley Dufrayne. Uh, I think that also might be the one that uh, Tony Canoyaro uses it uh, 69 Colbrook Rowe. Good friend of ours, good friend of the program. So, good call. I mean, expensive, a lot more expensive than my, you know, buck, you know, buck 99 center

[3:59] views or not really. I've spent myself personally at least $200 on a centrifuge once, but that's about as high as I can go. Anyway, good luck with it. I'm sure you'll love it. It's a great machine. Got another question from Ed. Who wants to know about ice cream. What up, guys? Love the show. Kudos on having a, well, there's a curse here. Kick butt, kick butt radio show. and not just because it's about cooking related stuff. Wanted to write in requesting some advice on stepping up to a large capacity ice cream freezer.

[4:31] I've been using the Lolo Muso 4080 for 4 years plus, and I can't recommend it enough for home ice cream enthusiasts. By the way, the uh, the low is that if the one that you've seen, it's kind of higher end. It's around 600 bucks, I think. It's usually stainless steel. Fits on a countertop, has its own refrigeration unit. My only gripe, obviously, with it is its batch times are around 30 minutes, so I bet you could trick it out by really getting a cold base and not freezing quite as much.

[4:55] Batch time of 30 minutes, not really ideally. You really want to batch time, you know, below about below 20 Definitely, you know, remember the faster it freezes a smaller, crystal size, smaller the crystal size, smooth the ice cream. Anyway, everyone apparently who has the Lilo loves it. So you're not alone in your love of levelowness. In fact, I went and read a whole bunch of user review sites, and I couldn't find anyone who said anything negative about it. Well, in the price range. It's clearly the best. Exception being good old-fashioned, rock salt and ice, ice cream making, which is a pain in the butt, but makes some fantastic ice cream. That's how I do it at home when I'm not going all teched up on it. Anyway, um, regarding the low. A thing takes a beating, frees a small batches quickly and isn't too tough to clean up besides, and besides the non-removable bowl, which is the bad part.

[5:41] Anyway, I've been looking at used carpagani freezers in the 40 to 50 quart batch range. Anything to watch out for when I'm buying it used and how old is too old? What the hell? You went from, like, you're going from a LELO machine to a 40 quart batch machine.

[5:58] Okay, so here's what I'm gathering. You opening a professional ice cream business. Now, the problem, okay, used equipment is great. Except if you need to rely on it for your business. So, you know, if you're gonna get a 40 quart machine, you probably need that thing to run all of the time.

[6:18] Now, you might be able to find a company that bought one. Carp Johnny is a great brand. So I'm not, you know, don't worry about that. But you have to make sure that the one that you're buying is, I would not buy one that's really, really old, because unless you have someone who's going to refurbish that thing, if you have a professional or a Carpagani, you know, service person who will stand behind the machine and refurbish it, then, and, you know, of course, assuming it uses, you know, the normal, you know, modern refrigeration or it can be swapped in normal, modern refrigeration gases, um, you know, it, it, it's fine because you have someone who's going to stand behind it and the parts

[6:53] are relatively available available. But you have to make sure and check with other people who have the machine that the particular one that you're looking at isn't a dog, right? So, for instance, even the most loved ice cream, small ice cream machine that I've ever, you know, uh, had pastry cooks talk about, which was the, is

[7:11] it Carpagani, coldalite, like lab 100. That one has, you know, a critical expensive part that keeps breaking, the plastic face plate where the draw, the ice cream draw comes out of. And when that thing breaks, it's a lot of money to fix it. And, you know, in a restaurant, you can stop it from breaking, but in the school, ours used to break all the time because students were brutal on it because it's not the students, they don't care.

[7:33] And we're not allowed to yell yell at them, you know, too loudly when they do things that are rough to the machine. But that said, all of the parts for most of those carpagani things are available, but it's good to ask other people who've used a particular machine to find out what parts fail, how much those parts cost to

[7:47] replace, and then making sure you can get it serviced. If all of those things seem fine, then a used machine can be a great deal. And I poked around and there are some people around who sell refurbished units that they'll stand behind. But if you need to rely on something for your business, I wouldn't go by some,

[8:08] because yes, you're going to save a lot, a lot of money, the question is, can you afford to be wrong? So anytime you buy something on eBay, I mean, I've gotten bitten in the butt

[8:17] before too. I try, you know, I try to buy something that costs 10 grand new, and I'll buy it for, you know, a couple 100 bucks, and I'm hoping I can fix it, and sometimes I can, right? In fact, almost all the time I can, but sometimes you can't. Uh, you know, you know, the biggest burn I ever got was I wanted a really beautiful in-line refractometer and the company straight up said they wouldn't support it anymore. So, you know, I would definitely not buy anything used if the company doesn't support anymore that has specialized parts. For instance, electronics boards. Because then if those things go bad, you need to buy a whole nother unit to swap out the parts in

[8:49] it and can be, it can be difficult. That said, you can get a great, great deal. So it's all up to you. It's very hard to make a recommendation on this. Anyway, another question. Also, I've been starting to wrap my head around and experiment with hydrocollards in my

[9:04] recipes, lowering my egg content and adding lambda carragin and locust bean gum. Can I disperse my hydrocollides in a regular blender? Any other particular hydrocollage that you would recommend? One tip of advice I can give, fried chicken flavored ice cream, may get you punched in the face by one of your friends. One of your friends literally punched you in the face when you made them the fried chicken ice

[9:24] cream? What did you tell them that punched you in the face? Jack, that seems extreme, right? Yeah, fried chicken ice cream seems extreme. Well, I mean, that doesn't seem punchy. Maybe punchworthy, though. Right? No. I mean, you know, you know, I mean, like what, what food thing would cause you to punch somebody in the face? Ooh. That would have to be much more rancid than that. Yeah, I mean, I I mean, I can I can think of one, oh, say, for instance, check this out. this is punchworthy, right? So you take a rotary evaporator, which is, of course, the vacuum still that I use to do my distillation. And you can, um, literally deodorize, without sterilizing, by the way, you can deodorize the most foul rank, disgusting, putrid thing you could think of. Just totally rip all the aroma off of it, right? Then turn that, turn whatever it is. your choice into an ice cream, right? And then you serve them the ice cream and they won't know that it's some vile, rancid putrid thing. And then you give them the distilled essence of vial. Now that you should get punched in the face for. Right? I mean, that, you know, punch me because, you know, I should probably be thrown in jail for that. That's awful. You know what I mean? Fried chicken ice cream. Maybe the guy doesn't like it, but you know what? You gotta watch out. Your friends, your friends are too violent. Your friends. too violent. Anyway, on the Carraginans. Now, uh, carraginans are a class of seaweed-based hydrocoloids, polysaccharides, and they

[10:54] have they're used quite often in ice cream because uh, they react with milk. They have a synergistic reaction with milk. And what that means is you can use a very small amount of

[11:03] carraginans to enhance your ice cream. Now, there's 3 basic styles of carragin out there. There's kappa carraginen, which is brittle, uh, and you wouldn't you wouldn't want to use kappa carraginen, because you're not looking for something brittle. It's more, that's more, that's like more like an agar gel. In fact, it's very, very closely related to Agar, although it's heating,

[11:22] you know, properties are different. Iota carragin is a great one. What am I saying? Of course, they use capacaric. They use capacarian all the time. You wouldn't want to use a lot of it. You not trying to gel it hard. Iota carragin is interesting because it will reform a gel after it's set and been sheared. It's also very, very soft. So a mixture of kappa and iota are great for things like fake tofu set flavors or puddings, right? Great. Lambda is the 3rd one. It doesn't actually gel, but it provides a creamy kind of mouthfeel. So if you want to just increase or make more creamy, the

[11:59] mouthfeel of the melted product, lambda is going to be fine. It'll also make it a little thicker, which will probably slow the meltdown characteristics of the ice cream. Typically, you include some other carraginins in it, like Iota or kappa. And in fact, Carraginians are standardized based on the application. So you could probably find a blend of carraginans from a

[12:20] manufacturer, CP Calco is the one that I usually deal with because they have a very wide range of it that specifically blended for a certain set of ice cream properties. Now, uh, carraginans in ice cream are typically there to modify the crystal properties, to stop it from recrystallizing and have the crystals get big over

[12:36] time, and to make it smoother and to prevent meltdown. The secondary thing that you add to it, like locust being gum or guargum, is usually there to prevent within the gel structure of the

[12:47] kerraginen, to prevent the water or the whey from the water from leaching back out and ruining the texture of the ice cream.

[12:54] It's called way off, you know, with a not way, like, you know, una botea way, way like whey protein and milk. Anyway, um, so that's why they usually use 2 gum systems. They used to use Guar a lot, but as I've said on the show many times, Guar is now extremely expensive, because the fracking industry wants so much Guar. So fracking is, you know, where you inject high pressure liquid into rocks to shatter them so that you can get more stuff out like

[13:19] petroleum. And Guar has this cool property that it reacts with borax, right? And when you react with borax, it forms a gel, but the gel is pH dependent. Now you can't use this for food because you're not allowed to use borax and food anymore, even though it used to be used for things like caviar and whatnot. Anyway, so it makes this gel. Here's why you want to do this, right? So when you're fracking, this has nothing to do with food. Don't worry about it. When you're fracking, what you want to do is put something like a silica sand, which is called the prop in, and that's going to keep the, when

[13:47] you, when you bust open a crack in the rock, when you frack it, you need to keep that frack and crack open so that when the liquids come up, right, you can get them out. So you have to pump into the high pressure fracking fluid,

[14:00] this like grains of sand almost or silicates, prop, but you need to carry them. And so you need something that's thick. And so they use guar that's been interacted with borax so that it will

[14:10] be a thick gel that they can pump it under high pressures. They then change the pH when they're done and the guar melts away to a liquid. That's why they use so much guar when they're fracking around. Do you know that one, Jack? had no idea. There you go. And Jack, of course, and apparently the network in general, anti-fracking. Yeah, we can have that discussion later, but... Well, you know, I'd say for the most part, you know. Well, you have

[14:32] a like a giant no fract sticker on the windows, you walk in, so I'm assuming you're, you know, anti-fracking. Most of most of the network is anti-fracking, yeah. Do we actually have a pro fracking comp? mean, I'm anti-fracking. I don't even know anything about the environmental issues, but I want my guar to be cheaper. So that's your reasoning. Yeah, I'm the ice cream loving, uh, anti-fracker. You should lead that charge. Because, you know, Guar, that Guar and Locust being gone are extremely closely related, but Guar has the cool property that when it's mixed with locust, when it's mixed with gel and gum, low

[15:05] acel gel and gum, which is the one I use, forms an ice cream that both can be lit on fire, which is awesome.

[15:12] But also, not because it's combustible, not because, you know, it's a fluid

[15:18] gel, so it won't melt down. It's great bru label ice cream. And, and, you know, I know Jalen, every chef does an ice cream that you can brulee with Kelco gel F. But the cool thing about the guar is when you add guar, it also gets a stretchy, snappy kind of a characteristic, which is characteristic of

[15:32] select on derma, the Turkish orchid ice cream, which, you know, 4 or 5 years ago everyone was trying to duplicate. Anyways. So there you go, Guar. But really cheap guar, really tastes terrible. It's beanie. It tastes like kind of like a black eyed pea flour, which I love black eyed peas, but not the flour. Anyway, okay. So yeah, I would try other things like try locust bean gum, try doing a fluid gel, try adding a little bit of gel in. Small amounts of gelan will really, really, really increase the holding time, i.e. decrease the meltdown of your ice

[16:04] cream and it makes them absurdly smooth. Just look up Calco gel F, low asyl gelan, fluid gel, how to make a fluid gel with it. They're ridiculous, ridiculously smooth. The smoothest ice creams I've ever made. The problem is add too many stabilizers and you decrease the flavor release. So a lot of people think gelato, for instance, is this all natural lovey dovey, no blah, blah, blah stuff. In fact, it's the most highly stabilized stuff in the world, which is why it has that texture, and which is why they have to add so much

[16:31] freaking flavor to gelato because otherwise the flavor would be masked. Okay. What do you think, Jack? Is that a good answer? Yeah, definitely. take a break. Oh, okay, going to our 1st commercial break. Call your questions too. 718-497-2128 cooking issues. So I could love you twice as much as I do. You're listening to I wish I were twins by Plexophonic on heritageradionetwork.org. For us to idolize you each time I face you

[16:57] with 2 hearts twice true. What couldn't fall lips do? When 4 years till you say that I'm yours, da da dum. I wish that I were twins. You great big baby gins. So I could love you twice as much as I do.

[17:43] I wish that I were twins. You big, big, baby again. So I could love you twice as much as I do. I'd have for love and arms to embrace you. The International Culinary Center is a proud sponsor of the Heritage Radio Network.org, the ICC with locations in New York and

[18:10] California, provide cutting edge education to future chefs, restateurs, 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. Is that you guys with the music? Yeah, you know. Is that like what is that? Like some sort of hammer dulcimer thing? What is that? Dramatic flourishes. We didn't make it. That was a friend of mine. Really? Morris in Kansas City. Yeah. I'm just not used to hearing Dorothy talk with the kind of, you know, inspirational stuff behind her. Yeah, crazy. Nice. All right. So, uh, you had a Twitter question coming in? We do have a Twitter question. So this one's coming from C. Schneider, it seems. I don't know how to pronounce that. Prime rib cooked in circulators. Suggested time temperature? If cooked chill, should I reheat from room temp or tight from fridge? All right, so here's the thing. Here's the issue. The question is, how are you going to serve this thing? I probably have mentioned this on air. I mention it in every SUV, low temp class that I ever do. The last thing on earth you want to do is cook an entire prime rib, low temp, and then just do a flash

[19:19] seer on the outside and carve it and serve it because you have one huge field of pink meat all the way across.

[19:27] I'm sure I've mentioned this before on the air. I ruined Christmas once at my mom's house by doing that. I mean, it ruined. I mean, in my family, though, if you ruin the prime rib, you ruin Christmas. And it was perfectly cooked all the way across, but nobody wants a perfect field of

[19:42] one texture of meat all the way across. So you can do the whole prime rib, low temp, if you're going to slice it into steaks and

[19:51] then, and then sear them off because you have crust on each side, and then it's beautiful. And in fact, that's the way I cook rib steaks. So for ribsteaks, I mean, I think I've given it before, but for just a rib steak, what I would do

[20:03] is optionally sear it beforehand, put it in a Ziploc bag with a little bit of melted butter, circulate it at 50, either 55 Celsius or 55.2 Celsius for, you know, a couple of hours, drop the temperature to 50 Celsius for a half hour to 40 minutes, right?

[20:22] Don't hold it too long because I can't recommend as a safe, you know, holding temperature 50. Uh, pull it out of the bag and put it onto something hotter, hotter than, you know, the hottest thing you can

[20:33] find. Typically the hottest thing you can find in a house unless you have a really butt kicking grill or a deep fryer or a smoking hot cast iron pan, typically the hottest thing you have is not hot

[20:41] enough. So I'm talking hot, really hot to put a fast sear without overcooking it. And the reason you drop the temperature down to 50 is so that you can get that good sear. So that's a steak. Now, let's assume you're talking about a roast. What you should really do is use a technique. I call low temperature for insurance. And what I mean, my insurance is cooking insurance. So, you might want to put an initial sear on the outside of the meat just to kill bacteria and start flavor development.

[21:07] Um, circulate it. You could do it in a Ziploc bag. You could circulate oil if you have one of the old school fryers, and do the entire rib, the rib roast, 255, 55, 2, and probe test

[21:21] it, or use one of the programs like sous vide toolbox that you can get on the internet to figure out how long it's going to take to get it up to temperature and give it a little bit longer than

[21:29] that so it's cooked all the way through. Now the entire rib is cooked all the way through. Okay? That's what I call it. Now, you don't have to worry anymore about the inside of the

[21:39] rib because when you're cooking a rib in a traditional way, you have 2 different problems you're working with.

[21:44] You're working with getting a good crust on the outside and you're working with making sure that the inside is cooked, but not overcooked. So it's 2 separate problems. So by doing the initial cook step, the low temperature step. You have gotten rid of that 1st problem. You know the inside of the meat is cooked. Now all you need to do is worry about the crust. Take it out of the bag. You can refrigerate it all the way down if you want to, and cook it on a later day. Just make sure it stays sealed in whatever you want. You don't want a lot of oxygen, touching the already cooked fat and meat. Okay? Now, uh, you could also just drop the temperature, uh, or by pulling the

[22:21] roast out and letting it sit for an hour or so before you do your final roast off in

[22:26] the in the oven, or, you know, any one of these things. But once you let it cool down somewhat. Now, crank your oven so it's screaming hot, and just put the roast in, and now all you're worried about is developing a delicious brown, crunchy crust with a little bit of the overcooked stuff on the outside that we all actually love.

[22:44] You know, as much as I talk about low temperature cooking and getting all the cooking

[22:48] stuff right, the best part of a hammer or a roast is that like kind of overcooked, crackling fat stuff around the outside. Let's be honest. As long as there's a whole bunch of juicy, delicious stuff on the inside as well. And so, you know, that technique is low temperature for insurance where you've ensured that you've cooked the inside properly, but then make sure that you get a nice delicious crust on the outside is the technique that I'd use.

[23:12] Did that answer the question, Jack? I think I answered the question. More than enough, yeah. Yeah. Definitely. All right. Got a question in from Andrew, I'm going to mispronounce your name, Andrew. Andrew, Janji, Jan. J J Jan. J J J Jan. I'm guessing that's not. Really? Oh, you come here and look at the next break. You tell me I got it right. And Andrew, you write in, tell me how to pronounce. know what? You know who one of my favorites is? Writes in all the time. Rob Treypaz. You know why? Because he knows I can't pronounce anything properly, and he put Trey Pah's pronunciation. So now I see his name and I just think Trey Pas. See? Nice. See? Just me or Trey Pod sounds like something that could be delicious. Well, it does because it sounds like it does. But it reminds me of cray pods, cray pod. remember cray paws? They're those like, really kind of like, really saturated color, oily crayon suckers. Oh, yeah. But imagine if they were delicious and edible, that would be Trey Paz. Right? I wish. Yeah. Cray paws to tray pas. Anyway, so Andrew, we'll just call him Andrew. His Twitter handle is at Wordloaf, which I can pronounce, has a question for us. I was supposed to get to last week. Why are highly saturated fats better for frying slash crispness? Is it just better stability slash smoke point or something more? Thanks. Okay, I love this question. I love it because I don't think you can say that there's any one fat that is the best fat for frying. There's okay, so look. Okay, so saturated fats are fats that where all of the carbons

[24:44] and the fatty acid are fully saturated fats are ones where all of the carbons are joined by single bonds. An unsaturated fatty acid is one where there's double bonds in the carbons. And, you know, mono unsaturated means one double bond and poly unsaturated means multiple double bonds. Now it's the saturated fats, right, are the more plastic, more plastic, i.e. solid

[25:05] fats, because the more saturated something is the higher the melting point,

[25:10] right? For a given length of fatty acid, right? Because fatty acid chains are measured by how many carbons long they are. And then after that, by how many double bonds they have in it. And then after that, by where in the chain the double bonds are. Okay. So it is true that the saturated ones have a higher melting

[25:28] point and they're the solid fats. And the double bonds in unsaturated fats are much more reactive to oxygen, and it's oxidative breakdown that causes rancidity, and all sorts of other, you know, issues that make oil taste bad. So, you know, in a world where you're going to abuse your fat, right? Theoretically, saturated fats are going to last longer. It doesn't always work out that way, though, right? What I really want, what I really focus on when I'm choosing a fat is not the smoke

[26:00] point really, although it's important to have it, you know, be the smoke point to be high enough that it's going to break down. It's not even how long the fat is going to last, although again, crucially important from an economic standpoint and making sure you can at least make it through tonight's frying.

[26:13] The crucial thing you need to 1st decide is what am I frying and how am I eating it? Let me give you an example. Donuts, when they're hot, always tastes good, right? I mean, I've said this many times on the show, like any any fool monkey can make a hot donut that tastes good, right? Also, yeast raised donuts are much easier to

[26:36] make taste good than a cake donut. And the reason is that it has to do with oil absorption. So cake donut absorbs much more oil from the fryer than

[26:47] a yeast raised donut does. And so the quality of the oil makes a big difference. Now hot donuts, like most hot fried things, as long as the oil is of good quality, right? are delicious. Let's be honest, frying is God's cooking technique, okay? But, um, as they cool, right? If you fry in a liquid fat with a donut, it's

[27:11] gonna taste greasy. And as you eat it, you'll get that greasy feeling on your mouth. What you want in a cold donut is for the oil to solidify for it to be a fat. So when you're frying donuts, you use solid fats, right? Now, when you're frying a potato chip, you need a liquid fat, because what you don't want is the waxy feeling of a solid

[27:34] fat when you crunch on a potato chip. So no matter how stable a solid fat is, if you're frying a potato

[27:40] chip, which is meant to be eaten cold, you use a liquid fat, right? So whether a fat is better or worse depends on the application. I'll give you an example of how hardcore this is. I don't know whether I've ever spoken about this on the air before if I, you know, if I have just turned down, you know, whatever, just stop listening. But listen, uh, If you remember, wow, which is Alestra, that, you know, came out, I don't know, about 20 years ago or something like that. Um, it was being licensed by the Fritolay Corporation and they were putting it into potato chips. Now, Alestra is a fat that you can't digest, right? It's modified fat that you can't digest. and they can literally turn any, any

[28:16] fat uh, into oluster. They could modify it such that you can no longer digest it. Now, if you use a liquid-based olestra, right? So it's so it's unsaturated. It's, you know, it's a liquid at room temperature, actually, more importantly. And here's where it's going to get gross. I'm sorry people, but if you eat a lot of Olestra, there's liquid at body temperature, to put it politely, it runs straight through you and you can't stop it.

[28:44] Hopefully you understand what I'm talking about, so I don't have to get more graphic with you. So the solution, right? And because of that, Alestra got a really bad name and nobody wanted to eat it and the product ended up dying, right? But the solution to that was they used a fat that had a very

[29:03] high solid fat index, SFI, which is how you rate fats, solid fat

[29:08] index or solid fat content. They had one that raised a very high SFI at body temperature. Now, the downside of that is that the potato chips that you made with it were extremely

[29:17] waxy. So that when you ate them, they had a waxy mouthfeel. It was such a problem that they built special impingement ovens that would blow air down on the potato chips as they were coming out of the

[29:27] line and that would blow the surface coating of Alestra off of the top of the potato chips. So it wouldn't have a waxy mouthfeel. So everyone who complained about the olestra chips that they could taste the olestra. It's not that you could taste the olestra, it's that you don't like potato chips cooked in a solid fat. Okay? So anyway, so that's that. And I've complained on the air many times about cooking

[29:51] oils, and the fact that what you buy in the supermarket is basically just a refined,

[29:58] bleached, deodorized fat. And that's basically, that's how they, you know, that's how it's termed in the biz, refined, bleached, deodorized fat. And they're not that tweaked out. So if you buy a liquid like that in the supermarket. They tend to be poor, you know, fairly bad frying oils because they're not that protected against oxidation. And they're just, they break down fairly quickly, no matter what the source is on those liquid

[30:25] fats. The fats that I use to fry in are super tweaked out. So a lot of them are lightly hydrogenated, which means that they only take the double bonds out of the

[30:35] most reactive species. So as you're hydrogenating something. You can actually hydrogenate only the most reactive species and therefore increase the oxidative stability of the rest of the oil. They also have all sorts of, you know, awesome stuff like antioxidants added to them. And consequently, commercial fry oil isn't like 2 times better. It's like 10 times better from a stability perspective than the crap that you're buying in the supermarket. Another thing that people don't think about. The freshest, and it has nothing to do with the question, but I just want to say it. The freshest oil isn't the best oil. You've all noticed that there's a sweet spot in frying. And the reason is, is as you're frying something. A layer of steam forms around your food, and there's a water, and also your food has a lot of water in it. And oil and water, as you all know, don't like to mix. And so you actually don't get that good a heat conduction with extremely fresh oil into food. Once the oil starts breaking down a little bit. Then the oil can, it forms its own emulsifiers and can really stick, really get in there and provide a lot more heat to the food. So oil that's been used a little bit, and you know, old school cooks know this, is actually a much better, more effective frying medium, faster transferring heat energy to your food than brand new oil.

[31:53] And so real hardcore commercial people know exactly where that sweet spot is, and they adjust the systems, let's

[32:00] say, in a potato chip line so that the potato chips absorb, which absorb a lot of oil, something like 50% of the

[32:05] weight is, you know, oil. As they go through the fryer, they're absorbing just the right amount of oil so that they're adding fresh oil all the time and never have to drain

[32:14] it and the oil is always staying in the sweet spot. How awesome is that? Anyway, let's take one more commercial break. Call your questions two. 718497, 2128. That 718-497-2128.

[32:31] Every night you're listening to Russian lullaby by Plexophonic on heritageradionetwork.org. Just a plaintiff, little tune when baby starts to cry. Rock-aby, my baby. Somewhere there may be, I'll land that's free for you and me and a Russian lullaby. Like what you hear so far? Support the network and become a member. Membership helps us bring you the best food radio in the world and gives you access to 1000s of dollars in discounts at the sustainably minded businesses that support us. To become a member, visit

[33:13] heritageradionetwork.org today. And welcome back to cooking issues. We have a caller, caller, you're on the air. Excellent. I was calling with a question about iced coffee. Okay. Um, I was wondering, is there any difference between all of the fancy cold

[33:32] brew uh, coffee methods that people talk about now and just brewing coffee and then putting it over ice

[33:40] afterwards? Oh, yes. Oh yes. Oh, yeah. I mean, look, I have to say, like, I'm not, uh, I haven't done a lot of personal experimenting with uh, cold brew techniques, but uh, I do know from, um, you know,

[33:54] a lot, uh, brewing kinetics are really complicated and interesting.

[34:00] And so a couple of things happen. When you're extracting at a higher temperature, you shift, uh, the different proportions of different things that you're leeching out of the coffee, okay? So that the hotter, and if you think about espresso. Let's just take espresso. the only thing about espresso because that's something I know a lot about. Even minor temperature shifts in something like espresso can radically change how the espresso tastes.

[34:27] So we, you know, anyone who makes a lot of espresso knows that if your temperature is too cold, you get a sour shot because of what's getting extracted

[34:35] out of. And if it's too hot, you get a bitter taste what's extracted out. So the temperature, then the temperature also radically changes how things are infused in general, like percolation rates.

[34:49] Everything is changed by temperature. So, yeah, so you're definitely extracting different ratios of things when you're doing it hot versus cold.

[34:57] Also, what you do extract from coffee isn't stable. So when it's extracted at higher temperatures, the coffee will go through different kind of, I don't know how you'd put it, like auto-hydrolysis or whatever, of

[35:12] the flavor components and will change differently from one that had never been heated. That's what I suspect based on discussions I've had with, you know, coffee experts like Andrea Ily and stuff like that. is his words, not mine. So, uh, and there are plenty of people who love the cold brew coffee and plenty of people that don't, you know, uh,

[35:31] and, you know, when I make an iced coffee, I make ice coffee with, I don't drink it, 1st of all. My wife drinks it every day. I like espresso. That's what I drink I'm trying to get into loving other types of coffee, but I'm weird. I a weird guy. So I love espresso, but when I make iced coffee, I make it from espresso and that's to my wife's taste, but there's no right or wrong here, but they definitely are

[35:54] different. Okay, thanks a lot. Ain't no problem. Um, Okay, got a question from last week. I should address. Uh, Benjamin Petrazik writes in, uh, Dear cooking issues. In your Harvard lecture, you say that the home chef should get comfortable with Agar Agar. Any starter recipes either for a dish or for a drink. Okay. So if you're using Agars, another seaweed powder. I love it because you can get it in any grocery store by the powdered Agar, don't buy the flake stuff. The flake stuff's not as predictable. and just don't don't buy it. buy the powder stuff. It's just as natural. It's not any more, you know, more or less natural. get the powdered agar. Also, get yourself a decent scale, one that can do 10ths of a gram because you're going to, some of the agar recipes you're going to be

[36:38] using, uh, are going to go down that low. So, Agar starts gelling in about the 0.2% range. So that's 2 grams per kilo, and you use Agar all the way up to

[36:51] about, you know, .8 or .9 all the way sometimes up to one% by weight. So that's the range you're going to use. Agar, you want to disperse Agar. And remember, whenever you're using a hydrocoloid or anything, you know, that has that is a large molecule, you want to disperse it, i.e. get them all

[37:09] separated so that they don't glom together before you try to hydrate it. So Agar, you put into cold liquid, you disperse it with a whisk or whatever, then you heat it up, you heat it up to the boil, and when it boils, simmer it for a couple of

[37:21] minutes, and then you can let the temperature drop. Now, the main things you can do with it, or you can set a gel, and it's a cool gel because it can be reheated all the way up to about 70, 75 Celsius before it starts to break down

[37:33] again. So that's pretty awesome. Two, you can blend, uh, uh, Agar gels, and I would use about a .8, you know, 8 grams in a liter, 8 grams in a kilo. 0.8% fluid gel. You set the gel and you blend it in a blender and it forms a puree. So you could take any liquid you want and form a puree that you can plate out into, you know,

[37:53] that looks awesome. It looks like mashed potato on the plate, but when you eat it, it goes to a sauce, which is fantastic. That same fluid gel, you can make an orange juice fluid gel or

[38:02] a lemon juice even fluid gel, and then use that to reinforce a whipped

[38:07] cream, which is awesome. Or if you use a very small amount with something like lime juice or lemon juice, like 0.2,

[38:16] you know, 2 grams in a kilo. That one, when you set that gel, you can use for clarification. So you take your juice, you set it. You can actually boil the agar in water and temper in the juice if you don't want to heat the juice as long as the numbers balance out right. Set it, break it with a wrist, whisk, put it into like a cloth napkin that you tie with string, throw it in a salad spinner, hit the salad

[38:37] spinner a bunch. That's like, you know, poor man's centrifuge and you'll get clear, clarified liquid out. So that's just a couple of things you can do with Agar. You can drop, you can make little Agar balls, like you would, algernate balls, but they're solid by dropping them into cold oil, which is a technique. I know, pioneered, but I guess Sam Mason, 8 bajillion years ago, but Agar is just fantastic. It works with almost everything. Agar has weird interactions with gelatin and stocks, so be careful of that, and Agar can have weird interactions with things like cassis because of the high tannin levels in it. But Agar is just fantastic. And if you have any more specific questions on recipes, give me a holler. We've got one more tweet before the show wraps up looking for a ratio for fluid gel and cream to disperse out of ISI. Oh, all right. Well, that follows up on that. So, um, what you want is, it really depends. So if you do just a straight fluid gel, uh, agar fluid

[39:30] gel or or a gel and fluid gel, and you're doing about, let's say, a

[39:34] .8% fluid gel, i.e. .8% agar by weight, uh, or 8 grams in a kilo, uh, a straight fluid gel is

[39:41] going to kind of look like weird alien slime when it comes out of an ISI. And whenever you're putting a fluid gel in the ISI, don't forget to put your finger over the tip and flick your hand down like you are trying to get the last bit of shampoo out of a bottle because

[39:55] the fluid gel is going to be a gel until you put force on it, and then you can shoot it down to the bottom of the bottle and dispense it. So, uh, I, so then I like to add like about 50% cream usually, uh, or thereabouts. It depends on the punchiness of the flavor you want, but you just get incredibly dense,

[40:11] uh, dense, uh, fluid gel out of it. Okay, so you're telling me, Jack, that I'm running out of time. So here's what I'm going to say. I had a question in also on fry oil on disposal and this Japanese fry oil disposal thing called Katamero tempuru. And, you know, tempura, I guess, meaning from frying, like, tempura. But anyway, I know nothing about it. The question was from Mark Barter. And so what I'm going to do, Mark, is look that sucker up and then report back to you next week. I also got a question, 2 questions in from Joel Gargano about which vacuum machine he's going to buy. You narrow it down to two, the Henkelman and the Sammic. I'm going to talk to him about, also about cutting boards next week, uh, because I have a lot to say about vacuum machines and how to pick a good vacuum machine, and also a lot to say about cutting

[41:00] boards, because as usual, I have too much to say about this stuff, and that's why Jack tells me I run out of

[41:04] time. But I got a tweet in that I just have to answer this week, Jack, if you'll let me on the way out. Hi, Dave, Nastasia, Jack and Joe. I love apples, cherries, and peaches. Who doesn't? But ever since I was a kid, these fruits caused my mouth and throat to itch. I figured out that I suffer from oral allergy syndrome, which is an allergy to certain proteins and fruit, particularly in the

[41:25] skin. Peeling the fruit solves the problem as just cooking the fruit to denature the proteins. I love eating these fruits fresh and peeling things like cherries is a huge pain. Do you have any suggestions on how to denature these proteins without actually cooking the fruit? Thanks for any advice. Huge fan of the show, Greg. Greg, I feel you. I feel you. When I was 30, 30 or 31. I suddenly developed an allergy to cherries that causes my throat to close

[41:50] when I eat them in large quantities and causes itchiness. Certain apples also cause this to be. Thankfully, it hasn't happened with peaches yet. First of all, I don't know if you know this, but different Apple varieties have different widely different levels of the allergens in them that cause your throat to itch.

[42:09] So certain apples you might be okay with and others you don't. And there's a scientific paper that was never written, you know, right, Susan Brown up at Cornell, who's doing the research. They know which varieties are more allergenic than the others, but I haven't been able to find public,

[42:21] you know, research on it, publicly available research on it anywhere. But fresh cherries, which I can no longer eat. I think are kind of, you know, uh, possibly the greatest fruit in the world. I love them. And I can't eat them. And to me, cooked cherries are not even cherries. It's something else. It's like cherry pie filling or something. There's nothing like a fresh cherry. And I can't have them anymore. Um, yeah, I do not know anyway, but anyone. Anyone out there who has any solution to this problem. Some sort of anything that combined to these proteins so that Greg can have the stone fruits and I can have my cherries again.

[43:02] Let us know. Cooking issues. Vicious vicious vodka. 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

[43:18] 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. Heritage radio network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.