[0:00] Today's program has been brought to you by 360 cookware, American made green manufactured cookware using vapor technology. For more information, visit 360cookware.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushway, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org with 1000s more.

[0:26] Cooking your shoes, go!

[0:51] Calling your questions, too. Cooking issues. All right! Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday, live, the cooking issues on Heritage Radio Network and the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Calling all your questions live too, 718-497-2128. 784972128. Hey, Jack, what do you think by the intro? Sorry, it really got you jazzed up, huh? Yeah, yeah, you got to like that. What's awesome is how different the 2 songs are. We got to like swap them back and forth. Well, see, I'm thinking the 1st one, the kind of interpolation, we can use that on the break. It's kind of a jazzier calmer break song. think so? Yeah, I think so. Do you think I blasted out the view meter over there? Am I okay with the intro? You did. We went red. Went red. my next band. Who wrote that? Who wrote that? Who did that? That was Joel Gargano, right? Yes, it was. Yeah, all right. I probably mispronounced his name. I mispronounced everyone's name. I didn't have my own name, I'd mispronounce my name, right, Stas? You have two 1st names. I do have 21st names, although I tend to forget it since my last name's been my last name since as long as I can remember. Joined as usual with Nastasia Hammer Lopez, but also today her sister, the mini Hammer. She who just recently started attending the Yale University. My old alma honor. didn't take a mic. She said, I don't know. It's a sister thing. They're both sitting here on computers, crazy, crazy. And Jack and Joe in the engineering room. Hey, how do you doing? Call your questions live too. 718-4972128. 718-497, 2128. It is the Thanksgiving edition of cooking issues. And Stas, what are you doing for the Thanksgiving? A bunch of people coming over. Yeah, I don't think how many? I don't know. And what kind of wine are they going to bring? No, those people aren't coming. Saturday. Oh, right. So who's coming? Who's coming for the real Thanksgiving? A bunch of people that don't have families. Okay, here's the thing. If you want to get invited to Nastasia's apartment for the Thanksgiving or for any event, just guarantee that you will, A, be late. And B, if you are going to bring something, make sure that you get

[2:52] nostalgia to buy all the ingredients and you cook it by messing up her kitchen and or bring any one. 5 liter $5 bottle of wine, right? Isn't that what it what it takes to qualify to be one of your friends? They've started bringing water. No way. like, I don't, like, pulling spring? Like, I don't feel like drinking tonight. So I brought water. then they drink. Who cares what they feel like doing? Exactly. I want drink. People, people. I assume that anyone listening to this program is a cook or likes to cook anyway and has some sense of what it means to be

[3:24] A, A, a proper host. Like, for me, the worst thing that could ever happen to me, much worse than, like, accidentally, like having the building fall down and me being naked in front of a bunch of people, which is horrible, but, like, much worse than

[3:37] that or worse even than, I don't know, I'm trying to imagine something worse. Uh, but like running out of food at a dinner party. I would rather die. They run out of food. I mean, it's like the worst thing. You know what I mean? I was raised at like then that just means that you're low quality. as a person. You know what I mean? not that they ate too much. is that you're puny and weak. Right? So anyways, and as a guest, showing up empty handed, the only thing worse than showing up empty handed would be showing up with a bottle of water. Like, if you don't want a drink, And you're going to someone's house. If you're not a drinker, fine. bring a dessert. Bring a cake. Cheese. Cheese. Yeah, if you're gluten intolerant, bring cheese. If you're lactose intolerant, bring a cake. If you're both, I have to think harder. You know what I mean? But bring something, for Christ's sakes, bring a gift. Bring jewelry, bring, bring a book. Bring anything. Show up empty handed, show up with water. Just say I don't want to come. If you don't want to go to the person's house, right? If it's too much of an investment to spend, you know, 15, 20 bucks a bottle, you know, on a bottle of good

[4:32] wine, they just don't go. Just say no. Oh, I enjoy your company, but I want to just bring some water. Hey, crap on you. Then stay and clean the whole goddang thing. People. Where do people come from? What the hell is wrong with people? Happy Thanksgiving. Okay. We got this question in from Alex in Florida about bidders. Dear Jack, Dave and Nastasia 2. I've been curious recently about making my own bidders. At the bar, do you use a traditional Angostorus slash payshodes? or do you have a recipe of your own? I want something that would make a brandy old-fashioned, really pop, and maybe another interesting flavor while I'm concocting. What's the ideal proof to start with? And how long do you age for ideal flavor extraction? Extraction, and would an ISI whipper be able to speed up the process or just throw the flavors off balance? Thanks and help for your show, Alex from Florida. All right, well, look. No, we do not make our own bidders at the bar. We use Angosturas, and Pesho is just a little note to you. I detest pay shows bitters. I think they taste like cough syrup. I will tolerate them in traditional drinks like Sazerac, but I

[5:34] just I'm not a fan. In fact, at the bar, we didn't serve it to customers because it's illegal, but I prefer to use actual

[5:41] robotussin to mix with. Uh, so we were doing like, we were doing Sazerac's, uh, drinks that we were calling, uh, we call them robo sack, actually, was the thing. And then when we flamed it with the red hot poker, uh, in an homage to the Simpsons, we were calling

[5:56] it, uh, the flaming Mozarak. But anyways. So now a huge pay shows fan. But if you want to make your own bidders. First of all, I recommend that to get a ballpark of what you're doing. Go out and purchase Bitters, a spirited history of a classic cure all with cocktails, recipes, and formulas by Brad Thomas Parsons. You

[6:16] know, go ahead and read that. That's the book on Bitters. He actually comes to the bar. He's a nice guy. Uh, good book and, uh, you know, don't, I couldn't look at my copy because I have it at the bar for our bartenders to use the

[6:27] reference. I couldn't look at my copy this morning, but go take a look at that one. Most of his recipes are a little bit low on proof. Angustura, when it's finished, starts at 45. I mean, is it 45% alcohol by volume, if that gives you kind of a ballpark. The higher alcohol, anything that you do, when you're making a bitters is going to change it. It's not going to make it necessarily better or worse, but it's going to change it. So, um, Brad usually does a two-part extraction, right? Where he'll do an initial extraction into pure ethanol, uh, and then, not pure, sorry, sorry, into like liquor, like a 100, 100, 100, 101, some

[7:03] medium-proof bourbon, or spirit. Then he will take the solids out of it, then resteep those solids in water at a high temperature

[7:11] boiling so he'll do a room temperature infusion into liquor for a week, 2 weeks, a couple days, whatever. depends on the product, then take the solids out, boil them with water, reduce that, add that back to the

[7:22] alcohols to do a two-part infusion. If you do ISI, it's going to change it. Some people on the internet use very high proof alcohol and extract for less amount of

[7:30] time, and none of these things is going to make anything better or worse. If you're using an ISI bottle, which is a technique I developed a while ago for infusing very rapidly. That's going to change the infusion. What it's going to do is anytime you do a rapid infusion technique at low temperature like ISI or any form of pressure, it's going to typically extract volatile notes more than it's going to extract the deeper, baser, more bitter notes.

[7:52] So if you're going to do a coffee infusion with ISI rapidly, it's going to extract more of the coffee aroma and less of the inherent bitterness. Very long-term extractions and high-proof ethanol are going to extract a lot of the stuff, including all of the bitters. So it all depends on how you want to extract it, which flavors you want to pull out. You know, if you extracted a lower proof, the flavor balance will be different if you extract for the same amount of time at a higher proof or longer. is shorter at a higher proof. So the short answer is there's no answer. One thing I will say is a lot of people where they really mess up is they change the amount of

[8:24] liquor that they use to the product or they use low quality or impotent products. So if you're sourcing a really crappy gentian, for example, or

[8:34] really crappy or old spice, you're never going to get the same amount of flavor, even if you ramp up the quantity, then you would if you did, if you got a higher quality

[8:43] product or a fresher product. Similarly, if you were to just say, listen, I want to do it faster, so I'm going to add twice as much,

[8:50] gentian, let's say, to something, or if you're doing, I don't know, gin or something, or a root or something. add twice as much, right? That doesn't make it twice as strong or the same amount of strength in half the time.

[9:00] It changes the flavor. But again, it doesn't make it any better or any worse. But as a ballpark for a more traditional bitters kind of a flavor, go look at uh, go look at that book, uh, Bitters. And then if you want to try something that's maybe less on the deep notes, but has a lot

[9:14] of more of the aromatic notes, and you want to do something quickly, try doing the ISI infusion.

[9:18] When you're starting, do individual infusions of the flavors to see how they mix so that you can mix them, then see whether or not if you combine them at the same time, you get the same extraction,

[9:27] a similar extraction, because you probably won't. Adding different spices, it's going to change the overall concentration relative to the liquid, the alcohol

[9:33] present, it might change the flavors and the way they melt. It's a very complicated kind of a thing. And so you have to practice, but once, but make sure, when you're doing it, that you keep extremely accurate, copious records of exactly what you did so that you can reproduce

[9:46] it, the worst thing in the world is to come up with something that's delicious and then you can't reproduce it. I hate that. Hate it. Absolutely hate it. Well, I had one more note, but I forget what it is. I don't know. Couldn't have been. I mean it probably was extremely important. It was probably the most important thing that I was going to say. Like the rest of it's just fluff compared to the one thing I was about to say, but it's gone. It's out of my head. It's history. Sorry about that. Anyway. Okay. Um, moving on. Red writes in. Cooking low temperature pork shanks. have been giving me some issues. I've done them twice now with the same results. Funk, not funk in a good way. See, funk, like a long, long time ago, funk just meant kind of like smelly, like behind smelly, smelly stuff, like funk. That a nasty funk. and then funk became kind of a good thing, kind of like James Brown funk. And now I think funk is bad to being back to being a bad thing. At least when it's cooking, funk is bad, right? You pro funk or anti-funk. Anti-anti. Yeah, okay. Uh, funk. The 1st time, although there's a town in Nebraska called Funk. Did you know that? Funk, Nebraska, there's university, the University of Funk. Can you imagine? Yeah, I mean, like, I don't understand why everyone in the world, if I had known about it when I was applying to school. I was saying crap on Yale. I be going to the University of Funk. Uh, but anyway, uh, the 1st time, uh, my funky, my, my funky shanks, uh, were cooked with an Asian style marinade, no dip at 85 degrees, uh, no dip at 85 degrees Celsius, meaning dipping them 1st to 85 degrees Celsius to

[11:03] kilo bacteria on the outside. So there's no dip. And they went into a water bath at 60 degrees Celsius for approximately 48 hours. The 2nd time was with no marinade and a 3 minute dip at 85 degrees Celsius into a bath at 60 degrees Celsius for about 48 hours.

[11:17] All the pork shanks were cooked with the full skin on. Note, interesting though. Red changed 2 different variables, right? Changed the marinade and the dip. So what we don't have is we don't have marinade plus dip, whether or not that equals funk, right? Okay. Anyway, all the pork shanks, we also, I don't know for, for instance, whether or not both had the exact same kind of

[11:39] funk, because there's various kinds of funk. There's kind of bacterial funk, which usually gives kind of a cheesy, almost

[11:46] sauerkraut, or blue cheese, or definite off note that's usually caused by lactobacillos that are growing in your

[11:51] bag, either due to not heating it up fast enough, having some contamination. Well, that's what it's due to. having some contamination, not heating it up fast enough to kill them before they can produce their nasty aromas. But secondly, certain meats can have a certain kind of function. For instance, dry age meats have a certain kind of funk. And also, if you've ever made, if any of you ever, out there have ever made a pure pork stock. Styles, you ever made a pure pork stock, like without a lot of browning flavors in it, without a lot of everything,

[12:14] like, if you just like cooks like straight, like pork with like no skimming of the stock beforehand, all the bones, sometimes you get like that weird kind of, I don't know how to describe

[12:24] it. porky aroma. Anyone in the studio know what the heck I'm talking about? Yeah, I've had enough pork. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about? pork uncovered by any sort of my yard flavor, and also kind of without any flashing off of the volatiles and kind of no

[12:36] removing, can have this kind of like porky, skinny, kind of like, you know, when you when you make a very strong gelatin solution, you get some of that kind of like weird that aroma. So I don't know whether that's what you're describing as funk, in which case that one, that's a separate issue. we're going to assume on bacteria is what we're dealing with. Anyway, all the pork shanks were cooked with a full skin on. My question is, what is causing the funk? I would have thought that the 85 degree C, which is very high in Fahrenheit land for your Fahrenheit folk. Dip for 3 minutes would have taken care of any surface issues. Do I need to skin them? and is the temperature just too low? I've also cooked some at 85 degrees Celsius for 12 hours with no issues, except being overcooked for my taste. Think of trying 70 to 5 degrees C for approximately 12 hours the next time. I've had great success with lamb shanks at 62 degrees for 48 hours. So I'd appreciate any insights you might have on this. PS, my wife and I will be taking trekking off to the European Union a week after

[13:27] Thanksgiving and we'll be in New York on the 28th and 29th before we leave. Our plans are to stop by and have lunch at Zambar, and then at Booker and Dax for lunch and cocktails. We also have reservations for WD 50 that evening. Red. Listen, red. Booker and Dax does not open till 6. Does not open till six. I'm sure Wiley will let you come get a cocktail at Booker and Dax at 6 before you go off to

[13:51] WD 50 or after you go to WD 50, come by Booker and Dax National Cocktails. But we don't open the bar until six. I will also say this, not to shortchange your ability to come to my bar and have drinks, but

[14:04] WD 50 also has an extremely interesting bar program, and I really am a big fan of their

[14:09] cocktails, and it is my feeling that in general, restaurants don't get enough play for their bar programs. For some reason, cocktail writers tend to overlook restaurants when they look at their cocktails, when they look at interesting cocktails, they tend to focus solely on standalone bars. And it's stupid. It's dumb because restaurants have what's interesting about restaurants is they typically have a large back of house

[14:32] system and often in really good restaurants. Chefs and bartenders will talk to each other and communicate. And the bartender will have access to some interesting ingredients from the back of the house that they wouldn't ordinarily have at a normal bar. So check out the cocktails when you're at the WD 15. Okay, back to your funky question. Um, I don't know. It would be interesting to see if you did the marinade because as you'll see later if I get to it. Some marinades have antibacterial effects. I'm assuming that's what's causing it is not just kind of the natural inherent porkiness that you're talking about. I'm assuming what's causing it is a bacteria. And the only explanation I could have is that your bags got crowded, and that even with the C, with the high C dip, you

[15:10] may be, I C. You know what I mean? High temperature dip, uh, that there were parts of the bag that got bacterially contaminated, whether it was from getting stabbed with a knife, whether it was from bags being packed closely

[15:20] together, or if you had multiple portions with sauce in them, inside of a single bag, and then that part couldn't be penetrated by the

[15:27] by the hot water when you were doing your dip. In other words, one of those things must be the cause because that's the only time I've ever had funkiness happen. And at 60 degrees Celsius, you should not have any sort of funkiness. Now, definitely 75 degrees C. There's a bacterial problem, the penetration is going to be fast enough to kill anything and stop the, stop it from going, going south on you. But I would think that 60 degree Celsius is also hot enough to have that happen, unless they're really tightly packed, in which case I would really make sure that your packs are very, very far separated in your bath to make sure that you're getting adequate circulation around

[15:59] it, because usually it's lack of circulation in the bath, that's the problem or a very large, large, large thing, that's the problem.

[16:05] On this, by the way, I have to say a little bit how I'm going to cook my turkey this year. How are you cooking your turkey stars? I don't know yet. It's like, what does your mom do just throws it in an oven at like one degree? What's the technique from your at your house? She wakes up at 6, puts the turkey in for 8 hours. Yeah. Turkey jerky? How is it? How's your mom's turkey? How was the turkey nutty? Don worry, you're not gonna listen. How is it? It's all right. That's the that's the thing. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Will you slather that sucker in gravy if it happens, right? Right? Is that what goes on? Jack, Jack and Joe, how about you guys still over there? What are your turkeys like? My mom's process is pretty similar to Nastasius. Yeah? So good for sandwiches, but not so good on day one? Yeah, lots of gravy is necessary. Yeah? Yeah. All right. Well, listen. Normally, for the past several years, I think what, 3 years we've been doing it, Stas, I've been doing my, like, bionic turkey, where you completely bone a turkey inside out. And then you make like an aluminum hollow, pseudoskeleton, and then you pump hot oil and butter through the pseudoskeleton after you've brined it, that you puff the turkey up with an artificial aluminum foil kind of carcass, and then you pump hot butter through it, cook it from the inside out, and then finish it in butter, and then do a flash fry on the

[17:19] outside to crisp up the skin. And if I do say so myself, it's a delicious, delicious turkey. It's good. It a delicious bird. Hey, oh, but so here's the thing, though. Like, uh, my stepfather, uh, although the only things he likes are wine and fishing and cigars, and I guess

[17:36] third, like my family, uh, the, uh, like the, or fourth, whatever it is. I think we make it the fourth, like there. And the dogs are maybe just below or just above us or below me. Anyway, uh, so he hates anything that's uh, a big uh, a big

[17:51] Mishi gosh. You know what I mean? He's like or a big jambota, as he says. So, you know, I fried my 1st turkey at my mom's house and like a little oil spilled on the lawn and killed a patch of grass, which no one has walked on in 22 years. And yet I heard about it. Dave, you destroyed the lawn. he went to his bedroom, right? Oh, he went to his bedroom and fell asleep. I ruined all of Thanksgiving. All of it. totally ruined. And then next year, my mom's like, hey, Dave, or 2 years because I alternate with my in-laws, right? Hey, Dave, fried the turkey again, but didn't tell Gerard, my stepfather. I was like, have you told Gerard that we're going to fry the turkey again? She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem, no problem. She doesn't talk like that. She's a world-renowned doctor. Anyway, so we, um, we, uh, I bring it. Gerard doesn't know we're going to fry the turkey. Also a world-renowned doctor. doesn't know we're going to fry the turkey again. Immediately, even before we start cooking, goes upstairs and falls asleep. I didn't want to kill the grass, so I did it on the flagstone, and I got oil on the flagstone, and so

[18:44] he went out and it was one of those subfreezing Thanksgivings, you know, back before global warming, and he

[18:49] starts, and he starts hosing down the deck, which starts freezing over to try and get the thing off. So 2 Thanksgivings ruined. So I'm not bringing the roboturkey. Last year, I brought the roboturkey. I cooked it at my house and brought a pre-cooked robo turkey to the to the house. But you know what? This one, I'm just going to say crap on it. I'm not going to do it. But here's my technique that I'm going to try to do that you guys can maybe do for the fast turkey. Ready for this? Ready for this? It's a variant on what I used to do back in the old days. The way I would cook a turkey is, I would bone the whole turkey out, completely bone it, like you would a

[19:19] chicken, you can look at Jackie, Jackie Peps, that's French for Jacques Pepin. Jackie Peeves has a recipe for it and chicken. So I would roll the, you know, a bonet, stuff it with stuffing, tie it back together as a roll, and cook it really quickly. It cooks very, very quickly, right? Now, remember, you don't want to store stuffing in a turkey because you can get all sorts of bacterial contamination

[19:37] that then isn't destroyed by heat. you know, you can make your family sick, all this, blah, blah, blah. Go look it up if you don't believe me. anyway, it's a bad idea, but here's what I'm going to do this year. I don't want to break the turkey. In other words, I'm not going to. I'm not going to bone it by cutting down the skin on the back and totally unfolding it like I normally

[19:51] would. I'm going to inside out. I haven't told my mom this yet. I'm going to inside out boning it, bone it like I would for a roboturkey, right? Now here's the baller move. I'm gonna, my mom's stuffing is great. I don't even care what you think. Your mom, you think your mom's stuffing is good, or crap on your mom's stuffing. my mom and Mike's good stuff. everyone likes their own mom's stuff. You like your mom's stuffing stuff? Yeah, no matter what, no matter how overcooked your normal bird is, everyone loves their parents stuffing, right? Jack Joe. Yes. Okay. So I'm going to take my mom's stuffing. I am not even going to touch it. I going to let her make it. I'm going to sit there and be like, hey, Ma, I have more sage. As this, but by the way, parents don't use sage. They use poultry seasoning because they grew up in like the 50s and 60s, so they use that stuff just called poultry seasoning. anyway. So we're going to make the stuffing mix. I'm gonna heat that sucker up in the oven until it's done. mix it with a little bit of gravy. Done, right? Hot, hot like hell. Now, remember, I cook a lot, so my hand's completely impervious to heat. I was teaching at the French culinary the other day, and I was had someone infusing something in a bottle in a stove, and I was like, take it out of the, take it out of the

[20:45] pan, and they're like, I can't, too hot. So I just reach over, picked it up, and held it for a couple minutes while I was talking to prove that they was a chump. Anyway, so like, it's just because I have no feeling. It's really a stupid trick, thanks, because you have no feeling in your hand. Anyway. So Mistachia says I have no feelings in general. She says I'm a monster and not in a good way. Not like when I say someone's a monster, it means they're good at something. Like when she says it's a monster, she means like they should be relegated to a pit with wailing and gnashing of

[21:07] teeth if you read the Bible. Uh, so, um, anywho, uh, so I'm going to take this hot stuffing, and I'm going to, I'm going to take my inside out bird, and instead of using aluminum foil, I'm going to shove like boiling hot stuffing into the bird, so it starts cooking from the inside

[21:21] out, so the stuffing's already above the cook temp. So the stuffing is actually going to act like a heater and then throw it into a hot oven. And that turkey's going to be done, lickety freaking split, and it's also going to be brined beforehand, so it's not going to be able to cook. That's gonna be my turkey this year. What do you think? Take pictures. Ah, take pictures. You know I won't. I'll try. I'll try. But anyway, so that's what I'm going to do for this year's bird. Oh, by the way, guys, Nastasia. Okay, so we had the CNN in for a while before the hurricane. And they're doing a half a half hour thing. expose. Expose. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Hopefully, no, don't worry, folks. There's no exposing of of me. Thank Christ. And so anyway, so like the, uh, uh, it's a show called the next list, the next list. What am I? So someday I'll be the now list, but anyway, but like what are the next list? And, uh, yeah, so anyway, so it's going to be on uh, on the, what's it called? CNN, on Sunday, no, but on Sunday at 2 PM, Eastern Eastern Standard Time. Well, it's when the show is aired. What do you want out of me? So apparently they're airing promos, but please watch it and tell, and somehow, I don't know, please watch it. Yeah, email let us know let us know what you think. I'm super happy. I'm excited that they decided to do the... Yeah. Oh, Jack's on it? Mustasia managed somehow to be sick or cooking a chicken every time that they were like,

[22:42] by the way, the little quotes marking might say, are you on camera? Because literally, like, you think Nastasia's face is buried in her computer normally. She like took and built like a cardboard. Do you know what dogs wear when they when they're when they bite themselves and you put the cone on their head to stop them from biting themselves? You guys know what I'm talking about? She like put one of those around her head and then like tape that to her computer monitor so that no one would ask her any questions. I think even though they were with us for hours and hours and hours, Like, not once did Nastasia peep on the dang thing, just so she could maintain the fiction amongst people

[23:13] that, like, somehow I'm always yelling at her and she never gives backsass. Does Nastasia not give back sass? Oh, yeah, okay. Or at least she has her sister in mortal mortal terror, not saying anything. Okay. Joel Gargano wrote in, you know, from the famous song you just heard before. He says, I know I write it often. I know, but this is for good reason. This is regarding the song. A while back, Dave asked people to create an intro song for the show. This is my original song that I allow you to play without threatening you with legal

[23:39] action. I recorded all of my basement next to the furnace. Punks. Enjoy. It's a hardcore punk version that is certainly a hoot. Hope to hear it next week or soon. It's only 40 seconds. The ending is a good lead in for days, calling your questions, 2 cooking issues. Uh, and that's how I used it. I thought I used it well, right? I will say, though. You should have said 7184. Yeah, Mr. Gargano did not remember the number. No, but Dave was supposed to say it. I did say it afterwards, but I thought it would be better to get the monster truck rally voice in. I don't know. You think I was wrong? Should I have not gone monster truck? No, I think you should have done Monster Truck. Phone number. Monster Truck. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Like that? All right. If this wins some sort of contest, the grand prize must be a personal phone call from Harold

[24:23] McGee, reading verses of my choice from on food and cooking. Preferably the section on my yard reactions. That one gets me all jazzed up. I'm not kidding. I'm going to tell Harold that. I wish I'd heard that before because I just spoke to him a couple days ago. He's going to be in town, but not for a Tuesday. Someday we'll get it back in. record it and send it to this guy or re-record it. I'm going to send it to Harold and see whether he'll agree. Harold can call us anytime and we'll record that for him. And he can, yeah, but he wants a personal phone. We got to get him both on the phone. Reading sections on my art reaction from mine. I want to hear some tweets saying on my tweet, if you guys want to hear Harold McGee call in and just do an oral reading of sections of

[24:58] On Food and Cooking regarding Myerad reactions as a favor to Joel. Mustache is giving the vegan face. I vote, yes. I do too. Francois writes in regarding the ongoing question of what the hell is in Catamaro Tempura, which is the stuff that they make in Japan to solidify your fry

[25:14] oil? And he writes in, gives sense a picture of it that says, look at the label, the same as your beloved Ziploc

[25:21] bag. And it's true, Francois, that, uh, uh, the

[25:24] Katamara tempo, the, uh, tempura, the oil hardening crap from Japan, which supposedly is, in quotes, seaweed, whatever the hell that means.

[25:30] I could build like a weapon of mass destruction out of seaweed if you broke it apart enough and did it well. Anyway, whatever. That's not my point. My point is that it is made by S.C. Johnson Wax, a family company. But, Francois, unfortunately, if you go to SC Johnson wax a family company, and you look up their list of ingredients, they only give you ingredients for their American stuff, and then they send you for any other ingredients to the Japanese website, which

[25:52] is, guess what? Not in English. And then I try to do Google Translate and nowhere could I find any information regarding the ingredient list on Katamara tempura. So it is still a mystery. If anyone's listening in Japan, Please purchase a box of this, or look at the ingredients and tell me exactly what the hell's in it. Get someone from the S.C. Johnson wax.jp corporation to tell you what the hell this is so we can figure out what kind of reaction it is. Should we take a break? Yeah, but Coffee Mike just wrote us in and says the best turkey he ever made was in 3

[26:20] parts, breakdown the bird, made stock from the carcass, braise the legs in stock, and then roast the breast on top of the

[26:26] legs. All right, listen, coffee Mike, before we go to a break. There are a couple things I think that are correct. First of all, there's what's the best tasting bird? And then there is the necessity, as an American, to present a full freaking bird at the table. Sometimes I've even had like people break it apart, cook a bird for taste, and then cook a bird for looks, which I think is kind of weird because it's a waste of bird. But one thing I will say is boning out the turkey, which I'm going to do does give you the opportunity to make a delicious stock to add to gravy

[26:52] beforehand. So coffee, Mike, good call. I got a question to answer for you after the break.

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[27:57] Today's program has been brought to you by Americacraft. America and 360 cookware are proud sponsors of heritageradionetwork.org. Americacraft is an American company. Unlike Heritage radio network, they provide the best. Their 360 cokeware is made of the highest quality ingredients, like United States steel. It is made in the greenest cookware manufacturing plant in the world. America makes great cookware, and is focused on improvement. 360 cookware is their exclusive line. It's a contemporary line of cookware and bakeware intended to let you, the heritage radio network listeners, have a unique cooking experience. Its vapor seal allows food to be cooked in its natural juices, preserving all of the vitamins, minerals, and other

[28:40] nutrients without added water, oils, orph pats. 360 cookware invites you to learn more about how this process works on their website,

[28:48] www.360 cookware.com. And we're back. Hey, Jack. Sorry, guys. Terry's brought to me by what? What's the second one? We got to talk about wine? No, just keep going, right? We're gonna talk about the wine? Yeah. Well, the wine the wine was just a, that's just a leftover gift. That's over gift? Yeah. Bonus sponsor gift. That the sponsor gift is what Pesetti Pecorino. What is pecorino? How does Pecorino? is also a grape. The goat grape? Do goats specifically like this grape? They used to feed the sheep and goats on the grape. For real? Yeah, before they started making wine with it. And then they fertilize it. So. Have you visited this region? Yeah, yeah. No, size, give drop the knowledge, stars. Look at that. That one of these episodes was brought to you by Nastasia and her wine. Yeah, nice. Oh, it's an enjoyable one. makes this thing? It is a barter house wine. Oh, I thought they dropped out of sponsoring. They're still friends. Or listen. Okay. Chuck S. writes in. Okay, we're going to talk about Jersey in a minute. In a minute. Let me get a question, because I don't want to run, I don't want to actually miss the question. I want to try to get through all my questions for once. All right. Chuck S writes in. sorry, so loud. I'm looking at buying a pressure cooker. From listening to your show, it seems like Kunricon is a good brand to get, although they have never given us a damn thing,

[30:02] right? They're Swiss, right? Yeah, they're Swiss. don't give anything away. It's like the Pacojet people. They don't give anything. They take. They don't give. Nastasia loves this gift. What? Yeah, she loves the Swiss. Anyway, it seems like Kunricon is a good brand to get. I'd like to know a bit about the trade-offs with the various sizes they make. It seems like you can get a pressure cooker with anywhere from a 5 liter to an 8 liter capacity for similar amounts of money. I'm interested in using the pressure cooker to make stocks, beans, etc. Normally, I cook for 2 to poor people. 2 to 4 2 to 4 people. For instance, are there issues with buying the one of the larger pressure cookers and using it to cook small batches of food? Similarly, do you have to leave a lot of headspace when using the pressure cooker so that the smaller EG 5 liter cookers are effectively too small to make any practical amount of

[30:47] stock? Thanks a lot, and I really enjoy listening to the show. Okay, look, 1st of all, I'll tell you the one I own. I own, they have 2 different main 3 main lines. The 2 main ones. They have things called pressure cookers, and the pressure cookers have handles on them typically. So do the fry prans. And then they have ones that they call stock pots, and the stock pots don't have kind of handles, long handles that you can hold. They have the little like dumbboat ear handles, like a pot has. Does that make sense, Stas? You know what I'm talking about when I say it? Okay. So what I own is the um, 7 quart or 7 liter or whatever it is, uh, pressure cooker with the long handle, and I've had it for a long time, probably 12 years or something like that. And I've beaten it doesn't have any handles on it anymore. I've broken them all off. There's nothing left on it. I've lost the vapor lid. It's all history. And I use it constantly. And that's the one that I would recommend you get for any size, any size, unless you're cooking extremely large amounts. That's what I'd get. If you're cooking beans, beans tend to have a lot of things that trap air and gas, that's what makes you toot, when you have the beans, is the fact that they have compounds in them, that you don't break down, they can trap gas, hence the gas. anyway. So, uh, to, so, like, um, so, therefore, you want a taller pressure cooker to allow that stuff when you're doing a

[32:10] release, if you do a release, I typically don't like fast release on a pressure cooker, I let natural release happen, but if you're

[32:16] going to do a fast release, you're going to want a taller head on it. Anyways, uh, the 7 uh, the 7 liter, 7 quart, I guess it's 7 liter. The 7 liter pressure cooker that I have has a bottom of 8.75 inches, which is nice for my

[32:32] stovetop. So it doesn't scorch. It doesn't have a lot of hot spots, and it's got a really high quality bottom, all right? Now I'm going to run through all the sizes, so that'll give you an idea because the prices are fairly similar. You want to get one that is going to function all around for you best. I know you normally cook for 2 to 4, but if you're ever going to do 6 to 8 or you're going to make a large quantity of stock to freeze, you're going to want a higher quantity, all right? The 3.5 quart has a smaller bottom, 8 inches. It's too small. I don't know why the hell you would ever buy that because frankly, it doesn't take that long. What I usually do when I'm working is I'll get the pressure cooker up to temperature with the lid

[33:03] off, and that way I can keep stirring it while the lid is off before I can get it up to

[33:07] boiling, and that prevents it from scorching. I know some people like just throw the ingredients in, cap the lid and let it come up. I think that's a mistake that's going to cause scorching because you're not moving the stuff around once the lid is on. If that's your style, if for some reason, like that's your level of personal laziness, then maybe you need to get a smaller one so that it builds up a pressure head faster,

[33:25] right? But if you're not going to do that, then once it's boiling, it builds up ahead of steam fairly quickly. So it's not that much longer to build up pressure in a large pressure cooker, within

[33:35] reason than it is in a small pressure cooker. Now, if you all of a sudden get a pressure cooker that's so large that your stove has trouble getting all of that material up to temperature fast enough,

[33:44] then pressure cookers that are too large are a huge problem. And I have an American pressure canner that's huge. How big is that when we have styles? It huge. It's huge. I can fit your sister in that thing. And that thing takes a long time to get up to temperature, right? So that is obviously a problem, but something like a 7 liter, uh, or, you know, does not take a long time to get up to temperature, especially because it has a very

[34:05] uh, thick aluminum sandwich in the bottom of the base that conducts very well. So it's a good, that's a good all-around size. So I get it. So 3.5 quart. forget about it. The 5 liter, 6 liter, uh, the 5 liter, uh, pressure cooker, the 6 liter stock pot,

[34:21] 7 liter, uh, pressure cooker, and the 8 liter family stock pot, all have the same 8.75 uh, inch bottom. They're just taller. And I like the taller ones because if you're actually going to do stock. I like taller, thinner things. The only disadvantage being that it's hard to brown a lot of things at one time. And if you want to do single layer braises. It's not as good, although I don't really think that's that big of a deal, right? So with that one, I'd probably still go with the one I have, the 7 liter pressure cooker. Maybe the 8 liter stock pot because I have cooked, sometimes things that are too large for mine. Anywho, um, Now you go to wider to 9.5 inches on the bottom and they make a fry pan or and a brazer. I would go for the brazer of those two, because you're not going to need the fry pan handle for that, and the brazer is a little bit taller. And if you like to do traditional braises, it's a little bit wider, so you can get your asabuko going and you can brown it. When I'm browning in mine with the smaller bottom, I have to do it in batches. I have to brown all my meat in batches, which is a little bit of a pain in the butt, right? Also, you're not going to be able to serve a braise out of it that way and your braise is going to get all jumbled up, right? So if you want to do a lot of braising, traditional style, you're going to want to get one of the braising pans and 9.5 inches across, but you could get one of the 11 inch across guys.

[35:32] Like they make an 8 quart called stock, which is, I don't know why the hell they call it a stock pot, because it's short, like a brazer, but it holds 8 quarts. And that might be a good all-around thing. If you're not worried about a hotspot because it's a little bit bigger than most of your burners are going to be able to handle, but it handles a full 8

[35:46] quarts, so it's or 8 quarts or 8 liters. It's the same size as mine, in terms of it's a little bigger than the one I have, but it's a lot wider if you tend to do braises.

[35:54] anyway. And what they didn't used to make that I wish I had now is coon recon makes a 12 quart stockpot that's baller. With an 11 inch bottom. That's sick Anyway, they have a new type called a top model. I don't know what the hell that is. I never use it. It looks like it's still non-venting, but I can't recommend it. Is that enough? You think I got it? That's good. All right. hope that helps. Okay. Mike Trim, what was I going to talk about now? Jersey? Jersey in a minute. Jersey in a minute. Let me get my questions done. Mike Tremlay writes in about pausing. And this is all Twitter. It's mashed together from Twitter, so you have to apologize that it's all Twitter Mash. Techniques for par cooking food and finishing together. Roast turkey, starchy purees, roast vegetables, steamed vegetables. Would like to do mashed potatoes, roast cauliflower, et cetera, ahead of time, and finish it while the turkey rests, but how to do this without losing quality.

[36:39] Soggy roast veg, dry mashed potatoes. Lots of books, lots of books tell me how to cook food. None of them tell me when to pause cooking and how to restart. That's an excellent question, right? Here's what I would say. Mashed potatoes, what you're going to want to do. Cook the mashed potatoes ahead of time. Add enough cream or butter. By the way, a lot of chefs, they don't like adding cream because it adds water to it instead of using butter, but I actually prefer the flavor of cream in my mashed potatoes to butter. I don't know why. Stagio cream or butter person. Butter. Anyway, whatever. Wiley agrees with you. I agree with me, but that's whatever. But take your mashed potatoes. And don't, you know, just make sure you do something pleasant. Like use a food mill or a ricer at home, Ricer is the easiest way to do it. You can go to any kitchen shop and get yourself a ricer, and you smash the potatoes through a ricer, and it comes out like, then it's beautiful. You don't need to do a lot of post things and you're not going to get gloopy, nasty mashed potatoes. So rice it, mix it carefully with whatever you're going to add, butter, cream, whatever. And then pack them into Ziploc bags, going back to Francois, my beloved Ziploc bags, pack them into Ziploc bags, exclude the air, and make sure they are thin on the order

[37:38] of like less than half an inch. I would say like 3 eighths, something like that, like smash them flat, do them in a couple bags. Then, um, do whatever with them. I dont care what you do with them. doesn't matter to me. your mashed potato, right? Then about 20, 30 minutes before, just heat up some water. You don't even need to be that accurate, just get a pot of water frigging hot, right? And pull it off the stove so you don't blast it out, then throw the bags in to heat up. Because you've made them thin, they'll heat up very quickly and you can serve them out. Roast vegetables are a little more difficult because it's about an interior exterior difference of things. I would par cook like anglaise, like I would par cook them so that they're actually done in a kind of a steam situation. And then I would hit them very high in an oven for a couple of minutes to finish off if you want that kind of roast

[38:24] butter, but it's not the same. What I really, it's not the same. So I don't even know why I'm telling you that because it's not the same. If you do a sous vide, if you do a low temperature cook in a bag of vegetables, you won't have any added water to

[38:35] them and you'll get some of that roast flavor because you're not losing any volatiles and stuff, but it's really hard to get roast vegetables to come back to be exactly the same, right?

[38:43] I need more time to think about that rather than just Twitter at it. Because I haven't I haven't successfully done that. I usually build around a non-roast. Or what you do is, is I just throw the, I throw the roast vegetables in with the turkey for the lasso, they'd pull it

[38:55] out and let the roast vegetables finish while the turkey is coming. The main problem is finishing the mashed potatoes and getting those to finish, right? I wish I had a better answer for your roast veg, but, you know, I only have so many answers in life, I guess. I guess I'm a low quality person. What do you think? That's not true Well, I try. I do my best. Oh, thanks, Jack. Anyway, okay. Now, listen, I gave a sort of a half, what's the word I can use? By the way, I told my son, Dax, that jackass is not a curse because it's an animal, but he won't believe me. Every time I say they wear jackass. He's like, ooh. I'm like jackass is an animal. I was like, it's rude to call a person a jackass because no one wants to be likened to a jackass. But jackass is not a curse. How do you explain to him that jackass is not a curse, whereas using it to refer to your behind is a curse. It's very complicated for a seven-y year old. Yeah. Right? Anyway. What the hell brought me to that? said you didn't want to answer this half. Half half. half jackassed. Okay. So, and how does half-ass mean anyway? How do you use half of your behind for something? Where does that come from? Okay. All right, Rob Trey Paz, and I kind of gave a semi-answer to it. He wrote in saying, I didn't hear an answer, which is a very polite way of saying you gave a crappy answer. The question was, when I cook low temperature, sous vide at home, I typically serve all that I make. I assume we can serve all that I make, or chill sealed bags to retherm them for a separate meal. Typically, I follow the 72 hour rule at 5 degrees, 41

[40:16] degrees Fahrenheit storage, FDA time and temp standards for sous vide, and my domestic refrigerator are freeze for longer

[40:21] storage. If I follow the storage FDA storage guidelines, then sear a re thermic, can I safely hold the leftovers for the next day or 2 under refrigeration, do this FDA sous vide standards, only pertain, and if you look on page 186 of

[40:33] Modernist Cuisine, volume one, I like that we now quote it like it's the Bible, one dash 186

[40:37] Modernist Cuisine. Only pertain to time spent in the anaerobic environment, i.e. until the bag is opened. Do these restrictions go away if I use ziplocs instead of vacuum bags? Okay, so let me specifically just talk about that rather than the, because I'm sure you already made your duck riettes. So I'm going to answer that specifically. Listen, when you're doing low temperature work in a bag, the FDA guidelines are built around pasteurization times for bacteria, active bacteria. And beyond pasteurization times for active bacteria, the storage is then assuming that you have

[41:09] destroyed. The storage guidelines are assuming that you've destroyed an adequate amount of the vegetative bacteria that's present, right?

[41:17] So you've destroyed the listeria, you destroy the asheria coli, if you pasteurize it properly. What you're not able to destroy in regular cookings are the bacteria that form spores. So these bacteria are basically botch botulism, custrinium botulinum, perfringians,

[41:37] custrinium, perfringians, and I swear to God, be serious. Be serious. You believe that? That's the one that's on rice that forms spores that if you leave rice at room temperature. You can get really sick. Yo, be serious. I love that. It's like the best name for it, it's the best name for it, for a pathogen of all time. anyway. So they're worried about sport forming things like this because you're not destroying those sports. So a lot of the holding time is worried about spore germination. Now, if you're holding food raw, it's different. Now you worry about bacterial growth about stuff that's already present, but assuming you've done a

[42:07] pasteurization step, the question is spores. Now, most of those, uh, you know, the, or the 2 that are most common in meats anyway, uh, are anaerobic, meaning, um, as soon as you expose those things to air and reheat them again, uh, you have prevented, um, you've prevented those bacteria

[42:28] from uh, growing because they require a lack of oxygen to grow. And so what you're doing is taking away that,

[42:35] presumably you've killed the vast, vast, vast majority. You've done a D level, meaning 10 to the 6th reduction, 6 log reduction of the other pathogens that are present in there.

[42:45] So the other, like, you know, the ones that might have been there that are aerobic. So the point being that, yes, I would assume that you are okay to reheat store for a normal period of time in your

[42:55] fridge and then go again. However, as modernist cuisine points out, or as we call it, the new food Bible. Um, uh, you know, do not take my word as legal advice on how to properly preserve your health

[43:09] and safety and welfare, right? Does that make sense? Now, on the way out, before I go on the way out, because you know I always leave before I forget. Before you close out, the term half ass. I've got it for you. it to me. Evolved from half ads and ads is an acts like tool with a curved blade that shaped wood. And if you were wealthy, you paid top dollar for a new fireplace, the mantle would be shaped using the ads in the

[43:30] front as well as the backside, which is not visible. But if you weren't that rich and you saved money, you only had the front visible

[43:36] portion shaped, cheaper job being called a half ads job. That is crazy. And by the way, I don't just call that cheap. I call that smart because you could have spent some time doing something else rather than finishing the back. Although I have to say when I disassemble things and someone is taking the care to do something on the inside that no one's ever going to see, I give a little secret baller.

[43:56] You know what I mean? Don't you? Anyway, I like that, Jack. See, we got to get that more out. like that. That's awesome. I appreciate that. Okay. So, uh, Nastasia and Piper of last week's just not talking to his fame, right?

[44:09] Uh, uh, I love Piper. Piper's good business. P Piper. I love Piper. Piper's great. Anyway, we went down to David Michael Flavorhouse in New Jersey, and I saw, because, you know, we're working, well, yeah, Philadelphia, which is kind of like, you know, okay,

[44:24] yeah, okay. Philadelphia. Pennsylvania. Anyway, a lot of people who work there live in Jersey. Anyways. So, uh, we're working on some sodas at Booker and Dax equipment company. So we went down there to test out some flavors and whatnot, an amazing place, right? Really cool. I have never been in a flavor house before to see how kind of it's done professionally and it is bananas. I hope everyone someday gets a chance to visit a flavor house. It is an eye-opening thing. Let me tell you one thing that's going to make you sit before. Happy Thanksgiving, 1st of all. I wish you all good turkey, except for Michael Natkin, who I wish good whatever you're making. Michael, tell us what you're making. I'm interested. I want to know what like the most festive vegetarian Thanksgiving dishes are. Like, what's the giant baller, vegetarian, Thanksgiving, turkey, not a

[45:05] substitute, because I know, Michael, that you're not substituting. I know you don't fall into that trap of making some cruddy thing that acts like a turkey that's not. I want to know something that takes the place of a turkey in a vegetarian

[45:16] Thanksgiving that just kicks some serious behind. So if you hear this before Thanksgiving, Please let me know on the Twitter what it is that you do. But anyway, happy Thanksgiving, one and all, and what were we talking about? Flavor House. No, but after that, I was going to say, and I'm going to tell you about this really cool thing at the Flavor House. Oh my god, you're okay, listen to this. So David Michaels is the largest behind McCormick's producer of vanilla in the world. And they have like 8 bazillion different vanillas. And when I went and talked to the vanilla, one of their many vanilla experts there, they have, like, I met in, like, in like a period

[45:50] of like an hour and a half, three, 4 hours, whatever. I met like a good 3 or 4% of all of the flavor flavors

[45:56] on, on, you know, in the United States because they have like a bunch of them there. There's only 3 or 400. It's a really weird dark art of like craziness. Anyways, so like we met like their vanilla guru. And, uh, and, you know, I thought I knew something about vanilla. I mean, I've read a book or 2 on it. And I was like, I don't know anything about vanilla. You know what I mean? right? USA was like amazing. Anyhoo, so we visited their vanilla processing place. So listen to this. So they take all of this vanilla and they have barrels of vanilla. And back there, there was a crisis in Madagascar or when in 2004, something like that, they said. And it got up so expensive that like the drum of vanilla that we looked at in 2004 would have been worth like 50 grand to the one bucket.

[46:36] And they have bucket after bucket. Don' break in. They have weapons. anyway. So listen. So we're looking at this bucket of chummed vanilla because they chum it all up before they do

[46:45] their, that means chop. And before they put it in the alcohol, do the extraction. And then after they do the extraction, which is all proprietary hooha hooha, they put it in a centrifuge, and what's left is spent vanilla, and we tasted it, and it tastes not like vanilla. It tastes vaguely brown, almost like an olive tapanade, right? Almost like a black olive tapanade. It was crazy. I was very surprised. Get this. Then, what? Are you allowed to say this? Yeah. the hell. Anyway, so then check this. So if you buy the vanilla ice cream that has the little dots in it and you're like, yo, it's got dots. got the real vanilla. So listen, you buy it with the dots. Here, what they do. They take inherently flavorness, flavorless, actual vanilla seeds, little seeds, and then they take that and they mix it back into the extract that they just made to make it look real, but they're

[47:34] actually theoretically. They're not adding that much. don't worry about it, but they're accident, they're actually dumbing down the flavor, but to give you the aesthetic appearance that, that, that somehow it's real, when in

[47:44] fact, it was already real, and they added some extra BS to it to make it look more real. Cooking issues. Bye.

[47:57] Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.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. Heritage radio network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today.

[48:24] Thanks for listening.