[0:00] Today's episode has been brought to you by Roberta's, located at 261

[0:04] Moore Street in beautiful Bushwick, Brooklyn, for more information, visit www.roberta's pizza.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwood, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:27] Cooking issues!

[0:50] Calling your questions, too! Cooking issues! Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live every Tuesday from 12 to

[1:05] 1245 on the Heritage Radio Network in the backup. Roberta's Pizzawia in Bushwick, Brooklyn, calling your questions live to 718-497-2128. That's 718-4972128. Joined as usual with Nastasia De Hammer Lopez. And we're jackless today, right, Joe? in Puerto Rico. Jackson, Puerto Rico. What you doing in Puerto Rico? Vacation. Yeah, hanging out with his dad. Really? Yeah, right? Yeah? Wait, like, just like, I mean, do they have like family there? Are they just hanging in Puerto Rico? Apparently Jack took the week off and then his dad's like, just come to Puerto Rico with me. Sounds a little fishy. Yeah, sounds like it, you know? But anyway, I hope they bring back some good rum. I like Puerto Rican rum. You like Puerto Rican rum, Joe? You like Puerto Rican rum? Oh definitely. Nastasia doesn't care because she's not listening. I'm actually trying to help Joe out, so... Snippiness here,

[1:51] snippiness people? This is what I deal with on a regular band. like constant undercurrents of snippiness, constant undercurrents of snippiness. Do you like Puerto Rican rum? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Can you name a Puerto Rican one? No. Okay. Ron Abuelo. Okay. No, wait, no. Wait, it's Ron Abuelo? that the Puerto Rican one? No, I gotta look it up. Now I've gotten all confused. By the way, a horrifying news. I was researching today. Champagne consumption down worldwide 5% this year so far. You believe that? That is crazy. I mean, like, I figured Nastasia and I have made up for at least that 5% drop just us, just us alone. I mean, champagne. I mean, not the champagne industry need the push. Do you in the French drink half of the champagne in the world, so I'm told? I mean, I mean, it's from there. I mean, it makes sense. I bet you we drink well over half the world, you know, Zinfandel stuff. Yeah, you know? And I'm not just talking like white. I talking reels info, though. well, well over half. You go there, the French, I have no idea what you're talking about when you mentioned him. At least I used to. been to France in a number of years. But anyway, my point is, is that champagne is one of the few drinks. This is my push for champagne. This show's not brought to you by champagne. Is it Joe who's bringing this show to us today? That would be Roberta's Pizza. Roberta Pizzeria is bringing us the show today? sure are. And Roberta serves champagne, do they not? Yeah, I believe so. I think we got a bottle of Prosecco for the 100th episode, right? All right. Yes. Yeah, we might have. Look, I like Prosecco Fine, but I love champagne. I love champagne, right? Any sort of sparkling wine. This is kind of the one of the very few things that Nastasia and I can agree on is love of sparkling wines, but maybe this show is

[3:24] part in part brought to you by champagne, since they sell Roberta's pizzeria champagne, go drink it. It's one of the few drinks that is kind of always apropos, right? Right. You know, graduation, do you want? Champagne. Like around dinner time? What about after dinner? Champagne. At a brunch? champagne. Cocktail thing after work? Got your bar champagne. Any bar, really, right? Champagne. It's not a crack against, you know, our cocktails. It's just you'd rather just have the champagne. A sad occasion. You need cheering up. Champagne. Yeah. So very few situations where champagne is not,

[4:00] see, people make a mistake. And they only drink it around the New Year's time as though you need to be celebrating something to drink champagne. And that's just not the case. Champagne is always delicious. Very few things I don't like. I like, look, I will not have champagne with my bagels and locks. It's disgusting. I do not like champagne with cured meats. In fact, I love them both quite dearly. They are 2 of the things that are closest to my heart, but all you need is a little bite of bread in between, and you're okay. So you, what happens is someone serves me a glass of champagne. and a platter of cured meats. Typically what I will do is I will take a couple sips of the champagne. I will then have a bite of bread. I will then eat the entirety of the platter of cured meats in, you know, depending on the side. I can I can eat upwards of uh, a quarter of a pound of prosciutto every 2 minutes in that range, right? Finish it, have a couple of bites of bread and then go back to the champagne. I think that's the way you should do it. But this is not only champagne. I also really enjoy a good cava. Do you like kava? cava is actually my, when I buy, I buy cava because it's actually inexpensive. But if somebody else is buying, I drink champagne. Yes. Actually, I owe a mustache, a bottle of champagne. No, just good wine, I think. the champagne's good. You don't like champagne, you wanted red wine instead? No. No champagne would be good. Well, what was it? you didn't know this, you thought the singer of Cat in the cradle was Cat Stevens. And it's not. some other guy. Anyway. Okay. was it? can't remember. Somebody look it up. Okay. Josh Whitlam writes in from Somerset. By the way, Somerset, land of apple cider and cheddar. Do you know that? Land of apple cider and cheddar. Anyway, it's kind of like where all that comes from. Anyway, he writes in. the 1st comment we've gotten from the UK on liquid on the liquid nitrogen. The unfortunate thing happened with the nitrogen with the teenager who lost her stomach. Anyway, maybe something more discussed on the next show. I know, David, I talked about it on the last one. Crazy. What one does, uh, wait, say. What does one do to stop a party or group of people who clearly know nothing about the stuff they are trying to ban? I'm just talking about the liquid nitrogen, attempted ban liquid nitrogen. People are talking about putting a ban on something that resulted in a horrific accident once. They're so worried about it, then they should surely take the surely best initial steps would be to install a certification system that qualifies the staff to use

[6:10] LN, just like food safety, et cetera. The fault is clearly with the bar, and a lack of incorrect training about LN, and I'm sure if they know

[6:17] it and that we do everything to prevent it, a repeat of that accident in the future. Why isn't there a ban on cigarettes, the dangers are clearly spelled out to us, that we still make our own choice about whether to smoke it or not, rant

[6:26] over, love the show, Joss Whitlam, Somerset. Okay, okay. Josh, I agree with you in vast majority of it, except for this one thing. And the big issue here. And this is the reason why this incident in the UK, where this teenager lost their stomach after consuming liquid nitrogen, which

[6:43] is ridiculous, no one should ever serve liquid nitrogen to someone, but the difference between that and the incident that happened in Germany several years ago where a cook brought home liquid nitrogen and blew themselves to pieces, you know, blew his hands off and damaged his leg and was put in a coma and said, is that in this case, the accident happened to a

[7:02] customer and the customer wasn't assuming, wasn't necessarily assuming any extra risks, unlike, unlike cigarettes. Now, um, as far as the actual practitioners are concerned, assuming that they know all the risks, then, I think you're absolutely right in your point, but the, the issue is, it is

[7:17] true, you should, you should always take the utmost care to ensure that your customers are not exposed to any extra

[7:23] risk that they don't know about, right? I mean, and so that's that's always the argument of why you need to put a label on the bottom of your menu that you're consuming something that's raw or

[7:33] undercooked. It's only if they don't have an expectation

[7:37] of otherness. So when you go to a sushi restaurant, right? It's assumed you're eating raw fish and that you realize that there's certain inherent dangers, or that if you order a steak rare, that there are certain inherent dangers,

[7:48] although not much. But anyway, and so the question is here is the customer taking on a risk of which they aren't aware. But in the large part, I agree with you. Okay. And K. Ingber, longtime listener, friend of the show, wrote in and said he enjoyed the CNN broadcast. you. I think they're going to re-air that guy that re-air that broadcast as sometime right before, right before the Christmas, right before the Christmas. Said I was serious and fun in the right proportion. I usually have it exactly opposite. I'm usually ridiculous and serious in the exact opposite proportion of

[8:18] what's of what's reasonable. Okay. Uh, number three. Ryan Santos wrote in and said an industry friend of mine just got an ultra low freezer. It currently runs around -118 degrees Fahrenheit. I've never had something like this at my disposal. I'm curious if there are any cool techniques or applications with it. Thanks, Ryan. Okay, I did a little conversion there, and minus 118 degrees Fahrenheit is roughly -83 Celsius. Now, what you're looking at here is you're in the range of an ultra low freezer, a super freezer. And, um, here's the big here's the big deal. Now, these freezers, which are used in labs, but also in the storage of meats. Store something at what I've heard in the industry called below the eutectic point or below the glass transition, temperature of the foods that are involved. Now let me explain what that means. 1st of all, you have to get in your mind, there's 2 there's 2 separate things that happen when something is freezing,

[9:13] right? One, or 2 separate things you have to worry about. One is the storage temperature at which you're keeping an item. right? And the other is the rate at which something freezes. Now, these ultra low temperature freezers don't necessarily freeze things that much faster, then you

[9:31] can freeze it using a regular freezer, right? For fast freezing. You need a blast freezer or a fluid bed freezer or emerging directly in a cryogenic

[9:41] liquid, like liquid nitrogen or something of this nature. Right? Now, the reason that's important is, is that if you freeze something slowly, right? As you're freezing, large ice crystals grow, large ice crystals themselves can be damaging. So you have very a small number of ice crystal nucleation sites and they form relatively small number of relatively large ice crystals.

[10:03] More importantly, those ice crystals are being formed by

[10:07] water leaving typically, leaving the cell matrix or the food that you're freezing, dehydrating the cells, just like you were dehydrating them, and forming crystals in between the

[10:17] cell in between the cells of the meat. So you're increasing the amount of moisture. It's in between the cells. You're dehydrating the cells, concentrating bad things that can go on, and causing large crystals that can puncture the cell membrane, which all means that when it thaws,

[10:30] it will leak out. It will leak out its fluids and you'll have drip loss and the normal things that you associate with damage due to slow

[10:38] freezing. If you freeze extremely rapidly. One, you get small ice crystals, you get a bunch of ice crystals. And if you freeze quickly enough, you can get ice crystals on the insides of the cells. And so you don't have as much dehydration of the cells and the structure of the meat or produce remains intact. And so that's what fast freezing can do for you. Now. Here's the other thing. A lot of times people quote the freezing temperature of a

[11:03] food and food doesn't, in fact, have a one single freezing temperature. What happens is, is as you start approaching the initial freezing point of a food, Water will start to pure water will start to crystallize in the thing. At a certain point, you're going to reach a situation where, let's

[11:20] say, let's make this very simple. Let's just say we have salt water, all right? So it's not food anymore. salt and water. If you have just salt, sodium, chloride, and water, what happens is as you chill it, their ice crystals will start to form. And as ice crystals form, what you're left with is more concentrated salt water solution. That concentrated salt water solution has a lower freezing point. So the temperature goes down a little more, and then you have an even more concentrated, and it goes down and

[11:45] down and down until you reach the point where salt can no longer become more concentrated in the

[11:51] liquid. You've reached what's called the eutectic point. It's a point at which that temperature is the lowest that system can get and still have them remain together. At which point you freeze out solid water and sodium chloride crystals,

[12:04] right? So it's frozen out solid. That's the eutectic point. In real food. There are a bunch of little eutectic points where things freeze out, right? Once you get below, and any point during that freezing curve, there's still some liquid water in there, right?

[12:19] And what that means is, is that as temperature fluctuates in a freezer, that liquid water will melt and recrystallize as the temperature fluctuates.

[12:27] And so ice crystals will tend to grow over time and make your food crappier

[12:31] over time. So there's quality loss there. Additionally, that water that's in there is super concentrated with regard to enzymes,

[12:39] acids, salts, and all those things that can carry on chemical reactions. So even though temperature is a lot lower. So the chemical reaction rates are a lot slower. The concentrations are increased a huge amount. And so awful reactions can take place in your freezer. Once you get below the eutectic point of the last thing that's going to freeze out, they're still actually what's called bound, unfreezable water. And that unfreezable water is the unfreezable water that's next to things like

[13:05] hydrocoloids next to things like protein. And the reaction between the water molecules that are right at the surface of those

[13:12] things, and those molecules themselves prevent the water from actually becoming a part of the crystal ice

[13:17] lattice that's around them, and so you have unfrozen water even below the last eutectic point,

[13:22] right? So the next thing you hit there is called the glass phase. And when you hit the glass phase, which is that low temperature there, everything stops moving around. Basic. I mean, it moves, it bounces from a thermal standpoint, like the molecules are moving around. But the water molecules stop moving physically and stop undergoing chemical

[13:39] reactions for all intents and purposes at that point. The product is stable. Enzymatic reactions are stopped. Oxidation reactions are stopped. All the reactions in it that are related to food quality. Stop. Ice crystal growth and uh, uh, and remelting and changing, stop. So once you freeze something fast and accurately using a different technique other than that low temperature freezer, you put it in that low temperature freezer and it stays good almost indefinitely. It basically doesn't move in quality. And Mark Ladner, Del Posto, has one. He freaking loves it. I mean, he loves it. He originally got it, I think, because they were buying super frozen tuna. It's called Super Frozen. They were buying super frozen tuna, and that stuff stayed like super primo in there. I mean, like no oxidation, no nothing. It was beautiful, beautiful stuff. And so he used it for that, but he's also used it for to store really, really fragile, I think, things like mushrooms. I think things like truffles in a much better state than they could be stored any other way. So it's an awesome find. And it's one of those things that I wish I had. Harold on the phone. Okay, so listen, Joel, we have calling in for you to read an excerpt on the

[14:49] Myard reactions from his most important book on food and cooking live from California, Harold McGee. Hey, Dave. Hey, how you doing? Hi, Harold. So this was a specific request. The person, Joel, who wrote one of our theme songs that we use here on the show. As a thank you for writing the theme song, wanted you to come on air live and read a section from

[15:15] on food and cooking. on my art reactions. Yes. So you prepared to do this? I am. I have a question, though, because that paragraph does refer to the previous paragraph on caramelization, should I just allude

[15:31] to caramelization, or should I start there? Hmm. Hmm. The more the better. I think the more the better, I think. I think just go for it. This is, by the way, the 1st reading we've ever had on, so, you know, give it some feeling, Harold. This is like our 1st reading ever. I'm very excited. Well, you know, it's a 1st for me too. So I'm a little nervous. I'm not sure I'm going to do this. I'll give it a shot. All right, beautiful. All right. caramelization. The simplest browning reaction is the caramelization of sugar, and it's not simple at all. When we heat plain table sugar, essentially just molecules of sucrose,

[16:10] it 1st melts into a thick syrup, then slowly changes color, becoming light

[16:15] yellow, and progressively deepening to a dark brown. At the same time, its

[16:21] flavor, initially sweet and odorless, develops acidity, some

[16:27] bitterness and a rich aroma. The chemical reactions involved in this transformation are many, and they result in the formation of

[16:35] 100s of different reaction products, among them separate organic acids, sweet and bitter derivatives, many fragrant volatile

[16:44] molecules, and brown blurred polymers. It's a remarkable change, and a fortunate one. And the beats to the pleasures of many candy and other sweets. Even more fortunate and complex are the reactions responsible for the

[17:00] cook and flavor of bread crusts, chocolate, coffee beans, dark beers, and roasted

[17:08] meat, all foods that are not primarily sugar. These are one of the Maillard reactions after Louis Camille Maillard, a function, who discovered and described them around 1910. The sequence begins with the reaction of a carbon molecule, and an amino acid, an unstable intermediate structure is formed, and

[17:32] the spent undergoes further changes, producing 100s of different byproducts. Again, a brown coloration and full intense flavor result. Myard reactions are more complex and meaty than caramelized flavors, because the involvement of amino acids adds nitrogen and sulfur atoms to the mix of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and produces new

[17:57] families, molecules and new aromatic dimensions. Hell yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Nice. Nice. Nastasia's got her happy face on. which is good. How you doing over there, Harold? I hear you're coming to the Museum of Food and Drink fundraiser. Yes, yeah, I'm going to fly out to the east coast this coming weekend and we'll be sticking around for about 10 days. So yeah, we glad about that timing. Actually, it's not a fundraiser. And being corrected. It's just a thank you for people that already signed up for membership. But or who have been involved in the past. We're excited. So, wait, can you, do you have a second? You want to talk about this recent stuff on cooking sugar

[18:40] crystals or do you have a 2nd or no? I've got a couple of minutes. Yeah. Yeah. So actually, the passage I just read about caramelization, uh, has been somewhat superseded. Uh, because in that paragraph. I say, you know, when you make caramel, what you do is you heat sucrose crystals, which are solid, until they melt, and then, uh, the melted sugars, uh, start to undergo these other reactions, which turn them

[19:08] brown and um, develop other flavors and so on. And that's, that's still basically true, but, uh, very interestingly, uh, I think it was 2010 that these 1st results came out. A carbohydrate chemist at, was trying to figure out why it is that nobody's free on the precise melting point of sucrose, which is crazy, you know, table sugar is such ordinary familiar

[19:37] stuff, it's used in so many different things. It's the solid. It's pure. And so it should have a very well-defined melting point. And yet when you look in the literature, there are dozens of different melting points and they're kind of in a range,

[19:52] but, uh, you know, not not precise. And she wanted to know why it is that, uh, uh, melting point of sugar was so hard to measure. What she discovered was that technically speaking, sugar doesn't have a melting point.

[20:06] Which is amazing. Uh, that is that, um, if you heat sugar and you melt it. And you've then uh, uh, let it solidify again and then try to melt it again. The melting point that you get the 2nd time around is lower. Uh, that is, it takes less heat to melt the sugar after it's been melted once, and so on and so on. So the more often you melt it, the lower the the melting temperature becomes. Unlike, for example, water, where, you know, the melting point is 32 degrees Fahrenheit and it doesn't change. And so what she discovered was that every time you heat sucrose, and that includes keeping it at room temperature, it's actually degenerating.

[20:52] It's actually degrading. So the suprose molecules are slowly breaking apart into 1st its constituent parts, which are one molecule of glucose, one molecule of

[21:04] fructose, and then those sugars break down into other things.

[21:09] And what you discovered is that process is happening at a significant rate, even at room temperature, and

[21:15] certainly if you heat it up enough to melt it, you're accelerating that, and that means that what you end up with is, uh, a block of table sugar that, in fact,

[21:25] is, uh, no longer pure, and gets progressively less pure, the more often you do it.

[21:32] Uh, and so I looked at that and I thought, that's really interesting. I wonder if I could, uh, caramelize sugar, solid sugar just by keeping it at a, you know, moderately out, for hours. And so I put some sugar crystals in the oven at about, uh, I don't know,

[21:50] 220, something like that, uh, which is way below the melting point, those

[21:55] who grow. Took them out after they were in there overnight, and sure enough, they turned brown. They're solid, but they caramelized. Now, why did, but you also had an effect where the inside liquefied. Do we ever figure out why that happened? Why it changed, why it was differently affected on the inside of the crystals on the outside? Uh, I don't have the equipment to, uh, you know, to determine why exactly, but I have a

[22:20] theory, and my theory is that, um, so these are the big sugar crystals that you can buy, you know,

[22:26] in, in Chinese groceries. Uh, they're, you know, like uh, half inch long and and quarter inch thick, like,

[22:34] and um, I don't know exactly how they're, they're manufactured, but I'm, I figure it has to do with, you know, the kind of thing that they're doing when you make ice

[22:45] cubes. Uh, they, the crystallization happens, the solidification happens kind of from the outside in, and you end up with, at the core of the

[22:54] crystal. just as you do with a, with an ice cube, a lot of stuff, you know, dissolved gases

[23:00] and and even purities of various kinds. I guess is that there, there's this little pocket of impurities at the center of the sugar crystal. They, uh, hasten the breakdown of sucrose molecules, and so the, the caramelization begins there and proceeds uh, furthest there.

[23:20] And so it's true that I've got some pictures on my website of, um, sugar crystals of that size that, uh,

[23:28] are liquid on the inside. They're solid on the outside still, but they've got liquid caramel on the

[23:34] inside and you crack them open and the caramel leaks out. Wait, so you think those big crystals are formed not from a single nucleation site

[23:42] out? You don't actually think they're single crystals. You think they're form like ice cubes with multiple nucleation sites? Uh, that's my guess. Like I say, I don't I don't know what the manufacturing process is exactly. So yeah, I don't know. You have time for... What do you think? I don't know. I have no idea. I've tried to grow crystals on strings, you know, for my kids, and I've never gotten a crystal even approaching what you can buy in a store like that, not even approaching it. And I'm not talking like, I'm not talking like, I waited a day or a week. I'm talking like 3 weeks. You know what I mean? Like, long waits. And, um, But that said, I didn't put it under into, for instance, like a heated atmosphere with force evaporation. You know what I mean? I just had it out on the on the counter, and presumably at some point, the solution. I mean, it'll eventually evaporate, I guess, 100%, but I mean, I did not have any luck growing big crystals. And I tried a bunch of different things too. I tried. Hello? You're cutting for a second. you there? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you tried me. I hear you. Yeah, yeah. We lost you at, you tried, and then you were about to say what you were trying. Okay, yeah. So it seems to be part of the problem is the viscosity of the sugar solution that takes so long for molecules of sucrose to get onto the surface. So I tried things like, uh, you know, adding uh, ethanol alcohol to the, to the liquid to, to

[25:12] sin it. The solubility of sugar and and methanol is not that great, and I thought that would, that would be pretty good, but it didn't work. I had lots of different things and I have no idea, they might make those big beautiful crystals. Yeah. Well, that's something for us to look up. I guess for next time. Next year. Yeah. You have a, you have 30 seconds because someone wrote in with a question that actually you, I mean, you're an expert in most of these questions, but specifically on this

[25:38] one. Do you have a 2nd or no? All right. This was from Brett Adams saying, on the theme of Mexican food, I have a question about dry roasting chili's, which also applies to whole spices. Most recipes begin by roasting dried chilies, hydrating them, then blending them into a sauce. The dry roasting is supposed to help bring out their flavor. My two-part question is, what is about dry heat that makes the ingredient more delicious? And B, if I'm going to be cooking the chili later when it's in the sauce. Won't the flavor boosting aspect of heat happen then, or is there something particular about dry roasting the individual ingredient? First, it doesn't occur when it's part of the sauce. The only thing I would guess is that the higher possible temperatures in a non-wet situation. I mean, I know that you studied this. Yeah, that's exactly it. The, the, um, various, the chili or whatever spice it is you're using, are in it, a

[26:30] spice, concentrated, and so you apply heat to that, immediately gets way above the boiling point, and you start to get caramelization reactions, browning reactions, the aroma

[26:42] compounds react with each other, uh, because you're at such a high temperature. If you, uh, if you hydrate them and and essentially steam them or build them or something like that, then you get a completely different set of

[26:55] reactions and they're not as extensive because the temperature is much lower. Right. So, one of these other things where people, it's like, it seems, they're not, it's not a better or worse. It's a, it's a different situation. I mean, like, I know that if you take coriander and you dry roast it, you lose some of the citrusy things that can be

[27:12] nice. I mean, so in other words, I tend to use like a combination. I know when I'm making liquors, I'll tend to use a combination of untoasted and toasted spices when I'm doing

[27:20] it just to accentuate the different kind of components, right? I mean, it's not a better or worse phenomenon, just a different thing, right? Yeah, yeah. And same as true in Indian cooking, for example, you use some spices. You, you, you use uh, a certain amount of the different spices, but you use portions of them, ages in the cooking, and

[27:42] then often the very last step is to fry some spices very

[27:46] quickly, at the very end, and then pour them on the top. Or whatever it is, sizzles away and you end up with all these different layers of fragrance. All right, well, as always, Harold, thank you so much for calling in. A pleasure to have you in the show. We're going to take our 1st commercial break. We'll be right back with cooking issues.

[28:16] You're listening to Andy's Biscuits by Pamela Royal on the Heritage Radio Network.org.

[28:37] 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 heritageradionetwork.org today.

[29:51] My name is Brandon Boy. Co owner of Robertos, a super duper awesome voice. Roberta is a very, very, very proud sponsor of the

[30:03] Heritage radio network. We're also super awesome. Thank you, heritage. And welcome back to cooking issues. Alan Sternberg wrote in. That was fun though, right, with McGee? Yeah. Unprecedented. I think he's never been on the show before? Unprecedented having him read aloud. Yeah. Yeah. Next time we'll get him we'll get him a landline so he doesn't cut anything out. that was awesome. I've never heard him actually read aloud from the on food and cooking. No? He's like, the thing is, you gotta know Harold people. Like, Harold, Harold is always a measured man, right? True or false. Well, not always. Well, I mean, you know, well, when it comes to food, he is. Like, in other words, like, Harold is one of those few people, and this is why I love him so much, is that Harold will never talk out of his nether parts. You know what I mean? Like, he always thinks about it. I've heard people ask Harold. some crazy nutbag questions. and he's never, he's never like, he's never like, what the hell are you talking about? Which is not what he sounds like, obviously, just hurt him. But, like, he's never liked that. You know what I mean? He's like, he's like, I love that guy. He so measured. Anyway, gladly Gladys coming to the museum event. Okay, Alan Sternberg writes in on Kimik, which is spelled QI, MIQ. dumb, right? Q-I-M-IQ. think it was invented by an Austrian. Hmm, teammate, and carbonation. I've recently been introduced to the product Kimik. Their corporate chef demoed at the culinary school where I work, but sadly, I couldn't attend. I now have several containers of it to play with and wondered your thoughts on the product. The Blackberry Merlot sorbet we may with it set beautifully and held shape at room temperature for damn near 45 minutes, even while the texture softened. By the way, my son thinks dam's a curse. I'm like, nah, you can't say it, but it's not really a curse. What your thoughts does? I agree. I guess I think when you get to maybe be a junior in high school, you could see it. Yeah. Yeah. Especially damn on its own without the, without the, without the, without the, Yeah, like seems to me it's like, you know, you know, it's right up there with root and tootin in terms of strength. Uh, anyway, second, uh, I've also been interested in carbonating a sphere or sauce, the ideal end product would be a plated element that wouldn't release the bubbles until it's in the mouth, any tips would be useful.

[32:13] Okay, Alan, let's take the 2nd one 1st since I'm much more of an expert on carbonation. So the issue with carbonation is, um, If you're going to put it into a liquid sauce, the carbonation is going to leave. That's all there is to it. So if you spherefy it, what ends up happening when you spherefy a

[32:31] sauce that's carbonated, is that you develop a CO2 pocket on the inside of the sphere.

[32:36] Now, eventually, right, you'll reach an equilibrium at whatever the equilibrium vapor pressure of the stuff is on the inside. So if you could create a sphere like algegenate in a reverse sphere, spherefied situations that actually was strong enough to hold up to it, right? then you could do it, but you'd probably be talking somewhere in the range of 35 PSI. And I don't know whether or not an alginate envelope or a pectin envelope, pectin wouldn't do it. But like whether one of those or a gel-an envelope could withstand that kind of a pressure. Now, if you did it right, maybe you could, in which case you could just set, you know, a coding of algerinate or geland around the outside of a spherefied thing, you'd get an air pocket in it, but the air pocket would

[33:19] equilibrium. I mean, not an air pocket, a CO2 pocket, it would stay there, and then it would stay carbonated for a little while. I mean, it's gas permeable, so you'd lose it eventually, but it would stay for a little while. Uh, and obviously it would be fine if you then stored that for a while in a carbonated container that was pressurized, then you could store it indefinitely until you're ready to serve it, right?

[33:40] As long as you could pour it out of the bottle. That wouldn't be a problem. Uh, but that is going to happen. If you really want to lock the stuff in there, you're going to have to go the route of heavy gelatin. So if you set a carbonated product with heavy, like heavy carbonation, I'm talking heavy, like 80

[33:57] psi, right as the stuff's going to set, which is around room temperature, then you can get a prickly feeling in the gel that you've formed.

[34:06] It's not a sauce, but the problem is, it's more of a piercing, like needle light carbonation. Less, I'm poking nastachio. I'm saying that so that can have the effect in my head of the piercing needle like carbonation. But, um, it doesn't feel the same as soda. It feels more like pop rocks. You know how pop rocks has that kind of piercing feel to it. Has more of that piercing pop rock feel. Um, you can't freeze stuff that's carbon. If you freeze a bottle that's carbonated and the bottle doesn't explode. When it unfreezes, it will be carbonated again, but the freezing itself will force

[34:36] a CO2 out and the CO2 will only be present in the unfrozen section, although at a very concentrated

[34:41] rate because, as I said, when you lower the, actually, I guess I haven't said this. When you lower the temperature, you increase the solubility of the CO2. Anyway, back to Chimique. I've never used Kimique. I assume it's pronounced Kimique, and it comes from. went on their website. Kimik is a word creation. Like, if you have to do that much explaining about your product with the name, then the name is dumb. Kimik. What does it mean? Kimik. It's a word creation stemming from the words quick and milk, demonstrating how quick and easy the product is to use. But what it really is, is they take, this is how they make it. I looked up H-A-M-A food service as the company that has the patents. And whenever you find out what a product is. You really want to know what the hell's going on. You find the patent literature on it. So if you go to HAMA Hamma, I guess, food service, go to their patent. They have a patent on the technique they're using. Here's what they're doing. Because on the, on their website. They say stuff like, we're coating each and every milk cell with gelatin.

[35:35] What does that even mean? Milk cell. What does that mean? Does that meaning? They mean my cells? Do they mean casing my cells? What do they mean? Has no meaning. No meaning. This is the problem when you have like someone translating from their non-native language into

[35:46] the, whatever. Anyway. It looks like an interesting product. But on their patent, here's what's actually happening. They're taking skim milk, and they're putting skim milk through a very specific temperature regimen, adding a very specific grain size and bloom strength of gelatin to it, holding it at a very specific temperature until it

[36:05] swells the way they want it. They hydrate it by bringing the temperature up, holding it for a certain length of time, and then introducing a specific amount of light cream to it, 15%

[36:15] cream, right? They then homogenize it and pasteurize it so it fills in like parmalot containers so they can stay at room temperature for a year, shelf stable. That's what it is, right? So what's happening here. And if you want to know why that makes a difference, uh, you want to go, this is the most. I love it when I find people like this. Dr. Bernard Cole's homepage, here's what Dr. Bernard Cole has to say about himself. He's from South Africa. I have a doctorate in food science from the University of Pretoria. I'm a retired I'm retired from full time employment after spending 30 years in gelatin. I am willing to assist anyone who could benefit from my many fields of experience

[36:55] in gelatin. And this is his website, and his website is just a list of like interesting and cool facts about gelatin. He's in South Africa somewhere. But it's like... gelatin somewhere. Yeah, he's like totally set in gelatin. He's like, you want to know about gelatin from pigs got you. You want to know about gelatin from cows? Got you. Got you. Gelatin. I do it. Anyway, so he's like, he's like sitting there. He's like, I don't know what he is. 70s something. I don't know. He's sitting there. He's like, I'm retired. You got gelatin problems. I got answers. He's like, you know, whatever you want to know about Jelatin he's got. But anyway, he has a page on what gelatin does in dairy situations in general, right? So what gelatin is doing is, and this is why it leads to all the cool stuff that can theoretically do, although I've never used it,

[37:36] right? Gelatin is a great foam former foaming agent, which is why it's used in marshmallows, okay? And it can emulsify, it helps in emulsifying things, right? It also is really good at stabilizing things like ice creams, which is why in your sorbet,

[37:53] although you did it in a sorbet, but it works in ice creams as well. Of course, it was an ice cream because you used kami, which is milk-based. so boop. Uh, so boop. right? Also, it protects dairy-based systems from curdling when acids are added. So you can add lemon juice and white wine directly to comique or vice versa, and you don't get curdling. And it's because, uh, you know, if you read uh, further on into uh, Dr. Cole's web page. It's because the gelatin interacts with the casing myself and prevents them from aggregating and coalescing, breaking, and falling out. So, it does that. Um, It has a lot of cool things that, uh, it also helps to make oil soluble things more soluble in dairy systems, right? And this is basically explanation. And he links to a bunch of research papers on it, but it leads to the main things that Kimi claims that they can do.

[38:48] They're acid alcohol and bake stable without breaking. So actually, I'd like to get a hold of some so we can make some cream liqueulas, even though I don't really like them. I have people asking me constantly about the cream liquors. In fact, we've answered 2 or 3 questions on cream, cream liqueurs here on the, on the stuff. So maybe we can make some baileys that won't form them. What's it called when you mix roses, lime juice, and bailey's in your mouth? It's disgusting. It has a name. Is that the cement mixer? I think it might be the cement mixer. Disgusting. Disgusting. You know, no one over the age of 21 +15 minutes should ever consume one in their life. Like, you're allowed to consume it in the 1st 15 minutes of your bar binge on your 21st

[39:23] birthday if you're here in the US, but at no other time. Um, Also, uh, that, you know, they, they say that it, it reduces butter fat because it's got a higher viscosity. Another thing Dr. Cole pointed out is that the viscosity of cream increases greatly without a gelatin. And so it can make it seem like there's more fat in it. I don't really believe in replacing fat with things like gelatin because I just believe in adding the freaking fat, but that's me. I hate whatever anyway. anyway, okay. Uh, it can replace flower, starch, or roux, partially, uh, because of that. I mean, so it's got a lot of a lot of cool, a lot of cool stuff. It stays free sauce, stable, uh, going through sous vide. So a lot of cool stuff, but I have not used it, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading Dr. Cole's website on gelatin and related products.

[40:06] All right. Uh, and see very quickly. Stephen Silver wrote in. I'm not sure whether we talked about this last week or not, Stas. We might have. I feel like that man's writing with a dull pencil. Who's running? There's a man outside writing notes in a notebook with a dull pencil and it's bothering

[40:22] nostalgia because presumably she's thinking about the noise that it's making as it's going across. He's reading a book on Rauschenberg. Are you a Raushenberg fan? I don't know much. And Rick Bayless is here. This is not Rick Bayless we're talking about. another guy. This guy looks for all the world like, like, imagine the guy from Mad Man who's not Don Draper, grew a beard. It looks not a live strong sweatshirt. Yeah, if you could imagine, what's that guy's name? Do you know the guy's name from Mad Men? The his partner, the older guy that was sleeping around with the lady and the thing. It's that guy plus a beard with a Rauschenberg book and a hat and a live strong sweater. Right? So now you picture what I love. And an NFL pen. And I'm watching Rick Bayless eat his lunch, which is always nice. I love the Rick Bayless. You like the Rick Bayless? never met him. Never man. He a good man. Good man. Okay. Stephen Silver wrote in on lactic acid and meats. Could you please review the concept and prevention of lactic acid buildup when cooking meets at low temperature? We sear any meats that we cook over 3 hours to prevent it and is 99% effective

[41:16] and eliminating this issue. Just wondering if you have any updated thoughts on this, by lactic acid. I'm assuming you mean lactobacillus growth, bacterial growth. And I think the fact that you're preventing it means that you're probably following the steps

[41:27] that you're saying, you're pre-seearing the meats and you're not crowding them in the baths. I think that a vast majority of the people who are having problems with

[41:34] blowoff and lactic acid and nasty flavors in the bags are crowding their bass too

[41:39] much. In other words, they're trying to put too many things in the bath. That's what I think is happening. That is my guess. Okay. We have... ooh, we have Joe, what's the question here? I'm looking at these 2 pictures of 2 Vita Preps. You gonna give me the question? Yeah I'm here. So it's basically, let me let me pull it up, but the question is, uh, which would be a better, uh, Christmas gift of these, of these

[42:06] 2, uh, the Vitaprep versus the Vitamix 750? What's better for home use? And this is Jacob, and he's looking for something that will blend kale into soups or drinks without leaving a whole lot of

[42:18] chunks. All right. Well, here's my, 1st off, I think they will both, they will both work. For a long time. The top end Vitamix was exactly the same as the

[42:31] Vitaprep, the exception being in terms of its motor, its capabilities. The name plate was different. And the main difference between them was the warranty. So, um, you know, the VitaPrep, if you used a vita, if you used a vita mix in a commercial setting, uh, your warranty was void, right? So the vitamix had a much longer warranty for home use, right? And cost less. The VitaPrep had a much shorter warranty, but cost more, but was certified for use in a commercial kitchen.

[43:01] And that was the main difference. They since changed them. So if you look on the web at a classic Vitaprep versus the Vitamix 750, you'll notice that there's a different pitcher, blender pitcher style. The older style, by the way, here's what's really messed up. Unless you're working with a bar boss or one of the really large pitchers, both those pitcher styles will work on either

[43:20] base, so you can swap them out. The new Vitamix 750 base pitcher is designed to be wider than the old one and shorter. And the advantage of that is it fits underneath a counter. If you have like, if you have cabinets over your counter. You can fit it underneath, okay? Uh, and, uh, Whereas the old Vitaprep, one of the big pains in the butt about the Vitaprep in the house is it does not fit under counters. It hits it right at the blender top, right? The other problem I have with the old Vitaprep containers is that if you don't have the plunger in them, they don't form a very good vortex 100% of the time at the base of the pitcher unit because

[43:58] they, it's too choked up. It's a little too narrow. The newer pitcher style that they use, which again, I say you can use the same pitcher on either unit, is wider at the base and so allows for more kind of mixing. There's not as much of a choke up point, more similar to a blend tech blender. Now, here's the downside of the new size pitcher. The new size pitcher holds the same amount as the old one. The old one is better at blending small amounts of ingredients because it's got a smaller base. So the old one, your minimum blend amount was in the area of

[44:29] 200, 250 milliliters, whereas the new one's going to take more stuff, more

[44:33] product in your blender pitcher to adequately blend so that the blades are adequately

[44:38] engage with your product. If you're only blending larger quantities, that's not going to make a big difference. If you're blending smaller quantities that could make a difference. I would suggest in general, investing in the small size pitcher to go with

[44:49] it in case you're going to do a lot of work with hydrocolloids in situations where you're going to be blending 200, 300, 400, 500 milliliters of product at a

[44:57] time. So I would, if it was my life, right? What I would want is I would want the new style pitcher and a small pitcher. Now, to the units themselves. I do not like the knobs and switches on the

[45:10] Vitamix 750 as opposed to the old school Vitaprep. The old school Vita Prep, uh, like switches, that's little flap switches feel awesome to me. The newer ones are a little thicker, and they maybe think they feel a little more robo, but as Tristan said about my favorite

[45:24] jigger, They feel a little more play school because the switches are a little bit bigger. And also the knob on the on the Vitamix on the home one is a round

[45:33] knob, and it doesn't have the the paddle interface, like the, the old knob has a flat thing on it that you can spin. And, um, in my mind, no one has ever equaled the awesomeness of using the interface controls of the

[45:47] Vitaprep. Uh, but, uh, so sorry that I couldn't be more helpful on, uh, on that because there's pros and cons for each of them. And I'm sorry. My apologies again, go out to stand below. We will, I promise on 8 stacks of Bibles. I will answer your questions next time. Cookie issues.

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[46:45] Thanks for listening.