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[0:30] Cooking issues.

[0:55] 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 from the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick,

[1:10] Brooklyn, on Heritage Radio Network, every Tuesday, except for next Tuesday and the Tuesday after that, because this is our Christmas and New Year's

[1:17] episode, here, as usual, with Nastasia Hammer Lopez. Join in the studio with, at least temporarily,

[1:22] Erin from Heritage Radio, Jack and Joe. How you guys doing? We're great. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, Jack, how was the Puerto Rico? That was awesome. Yeah, what do you do besides drinking and eating? What do you eat? What did I eat? I eat a lot of chicken and rice, obviously. But I went to Viacas, which was which was amazing. is that? It's an island off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico, which was, it's mostly a wildlife refuge, and it was protected by the government up until 2003, and then it became open to tourists. So still not too many people have caught on. It's pretty remote and incredible. Is that the one where the other half of it, the shooting range? Navy testing grounds, sort of. Yeah, bomb. Yeah. So we save the wildlife on half of the island and then bomb them into oblivion on the other half? There was a hilarious sign that said, no swimming in this area, live explosives. Nice. Like, okay. Well, you know, we used to have that over here for those of you that haven't visited our coast. When I was a kid,

[2:15] it used to be, they were still finding World War 2 munitions off the coast of Sandy, what is it, Sandy Hook in New

[2:21] Jersey. Any New Jersey that's out there? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, there used to be all sorts of explosive stuff left over from World War 2 just sitting in the middle of

[2:28] the, uh, in the middle of the bay there, uh, because I guess they would drop them off the shists when they were loading. Nice. You know, quickly, I had a question. I almost called into cooking issues. All the red wine I was served in Puerto Rico, right? Right. was all served chilled. Well, how chilled? Like pretty, like white wine chilled. Really? Yeah. And it was across the board. everywhere we went. Was it hot? Was it hot as hell? No, not really. No? Well, you know, the French typically serve red wine much colder than we

[2:55] like, we have a habit in the US, you know, except at the, like, you know, even at even at the higher levels of dining here in the US, we have a habit of serving our red

[3:03] wines a lot warmer than they would in, let's say, France or other parts of Europe. And you know, certain red wines, like the 1st couple times I went over there, were actually very, it was kind of difficult for me to get accustomed to. Like, for instance, over there, you know, Gigandas, they serve much, much colder in France than we would have it here. So much so that I got an argument. Don't get an argument with a French waiter. not going to help you out any. But, um, But yeah, I mean, I wonder whether or not it's particular. I mean, you know, have you had like the red wine in France and thought it was too cold or? No, yeah, I have had red wine in France and it was not like this. So this is just like a Puerto Rican thing. Was it overly tannic? No? No, not necessarily. Was it enjoyable? It wasn't bad. I just, I like my reds room temp. Yeah, I mean, I like it, you know, I like it on the Colts. My wife likes it a little colder than I do, the red wine. Like, you know, she'll she'll pull a Cesare and drop an ice cube in to, you know, kind of like, you know, if it's

[3:53] at, because my house gets really freaking hot because I have the old, uh, you know, the old radiator heaters

[3:58] that uh, that make it like a 1000000 degrees inside your house in the wintertime, so you have to open the window. You know what I'm talking about? Yes. Yeah. Anyway. Sorry, we got a caller. Oh, got a color? All right, caller, you're on the air. Okay, hello, Dave. This is Nell from the Brooklyn Pharmacy. How are you? I'm doing right. Oh, good. I have a question for you. Shoot. Okay, I'm trying to make red velvet,

[4:21] whoopie pies without using a ton of nasty red food coloring. And I've purchased online beet powder, which is a

[4:31] beautiful sort of vermilion fuchsia color. But I'm trying to figure out how to boost the color in

[4:39] my, in the, my little Whoopi pie cakes. I have, what I read online was that, um, part of the reason they started calling them red velvet is because it was a chemical reaction, between cocoa

[4:52] powder, and an aftis. So we have soco powder, and we're using natural rather than Dutch process, um, and buttermilk. Hmm. Well, I mean, the, yeah, the, I mean, the color of the Dutch process is actually because of the alkaline nature,

[5:09] right? The super dark thing is a is a result of the alkali processing in the Dutch process stuff. But yeah, so red. I never thought about it. The beet powder doesn't add a flavor to it. No. And how much chocolate, how much chocolate do you have in it? Uh, it has like a cocoa, yeah. Yeah, it's a substantial amount, enough that you can taste it, but it's not. It's not like a devil's food. It's not overwhelmingly chocolatey, but you can taste that there's cocoa in there, which I like. I can kind of don't want to ease off the cocoa powder either. And what's the liquid in it? Is it is it buttermilk? Buttermilk, yeah. Right. But there's soda in it, correct? Yes, and baking powder. 22 to one baking powder just soda. Right. I mean, like, typically for every cup of buttermilk or so, you're going to have about a teaspoon of soda and then probably twice that of

[6:00] powders. Is that true or no? No, in this instance, it's a half teaspoon of soda and a teaspoon of powder. Per cup of buttermilk? Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. Well, so here's what, I mean, obviously the soda is neutralizing the buttermilk. I mean, that's what that, that's what the whole soda buttermilk reaction is, right? Okay, right. Right. So, but beats, I'm assuming that beats, the more alkaline they go, I think beat coloring is an

[6:27] anthocine and like most of those other pigments like that. So the more acidic they are, the redder they are, right? This is why, you know, in a pickled beet, they're so bright, bright red, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then the more alkaline it's going to go, the more purple and more blue, it's going to shade. Now you're always because of the brown counter shading of the powder, cocoa powder. You're always going to stay on the redder side rather than the more blue and purple

[6:53] side, but I mean, I'm wondering whether or not you're shading it. I wonder whether or not you're shading it more towards the, um, more towards the alkaline, but that ratio. That shouldn't do it too much because typically you're adding a lot more soda than that. typical ratio in like a pancake batter would be like a teaspoon of soda per, per, uh, you

[7:15] know. Right. So, you know, and that, that, you know, I've usually, although I've never done the experiments, taking that as a fairly, you know, like, you know, one-to-one kind of swap.

[7:25] Now, um, you know, on the other hand, it's like, you know, if you have a lot of residual acid left over from the buttermilk, it can

[7:31] taste, you know, you're, you're unused to actually drinking buttermilk, uh, straight, but I'm wondering whether any residual acid

[7:37] would, and I have to think about it. Like, you've tried adding some extra acid to it to see whether or not just whether it shades up or down or no. No, but I was thinking the next thing I might do is add a touch of vinegar. Just a little, tiny bit, like not enough to flavor it, but perhaps enough

[7:55] to boost the acidity, a tiny bit. Right. I mean, vinegar, obviously, is, is, um, what's the word I'm looking for? volatile. So, you know, some of that's going to volatilize off during the, during the, the, the bake. Of course, I don't know, you know, I don't know, you know, when the when the business is done. I mean, like typically anthasignans, when you mess with them, you can shift their color even after they've been messed with quite substantially.

[8:19] Also, I am not sure. I mean, obviously beats retain their color when they're cooked. So, yeah. So you just want to, like, you just want to keep it on the on the acidic acidic side. I've never actually made the red velvet per like actual instructions. It takes a boatload of color. They put a whole boatload of red in that? Oh, it takes so much. It's really, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It does. That was, well, that was how I read something online. That was how they came about, is it was, was a means by which they could shell, um, extract some food coloring. Right. So you were meant to, you know, I think the original recipe, you can find this online somewhere. You were meant to dump an entire bottle of red thread coloring into the cake to make it red. That's great. That's great salesmanship right there. That's, you know. Uh, yeah. You know? Yeah. It's like, you know, when you enter contest, it's all about, you know, how many boxes of Rice Krispies can you dump into a recipe? You win, you know? If your recipe requires 13 boxes of Rice Krispies, then you've won. But if I was going to do this, I would A, I would test, I would make regular vanilla cakes flavored with beet powder, not even vanilla, just like white cakes, flavored

[9:25] with or with the addition of the beet powder. I would probably do 3 different ratios and then, you know, for flavor to see where you are, then take the highest one

[9:36] that you could do without a major flavor impact. And then I would push the acid over three. So I would bake probably a total of 6 cakes in a white cake recipe. Like small. like you don't have to bake a whole batch. You know what I mean? Like, in fact, you could make one batter and then, you know, do, you know, 3 at a time and do a small test.

[9:56] And then and then on the basis of those results, you know, try try to do one that you think is going to be way too little, one that you think is going to be way too

[10:05] much and one that you think is somewhere in the middle. And then usually within a couple of iterations of recipes like that, you can hone in on exactly where the magic number is, which is a technique that we use when we're testing out low temperature cooking

[10:16] recipes the same way. We try to make sure that, oh, that one's too weak. I know that one's too strong. Once you establish the boundaries, then you can hone in very, very, very quickly.

[10:27] It's just like that old game of, uh, uh, what's that game called, nastache, where you have to guess a number and you have to guess, you guess higher and then lower? Is there name for it? I don't know. No, it's like a, yeah, county fair game where you count, you know, you guess the number of beans in the jar. Right, right. but you know, you want to go in the in the least number of steps. So you want to make sure that you, that you go too high, too low, then you cut that in the middle and find out where that is, and then you keep, you keep going. And usually you can get very accurate, you know, results on one or 2 variables within about 3 or 4 tests. Do you know what I mean? Assuming they're normal variables and it's not like some strange hydrocolid interaction. But I'd be curious if we tweet tweet the tweet at cooking issues and let us know what happened because I'm curious about the results of the beat test.

[11:12] Okay, all right. All right, thanks for that. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Have a good one. You too. Good luck. I think the game's called Guess the number. Jag always likes, you know, the backhand, the backhand slap. He's just mad at me about the cold wine. Cold wine. Okay. Did you didn't have any good pork over there? Don't they don't all? Oh, yeah, of course. Do they do the zinc cooked pork there or is that a Jamaican thing? I think that's a Jamaican thing. But they're like these beach side shack things and we had a bunch of crispy pork skins. What do you call it? Why am I forgetting? Chicharone? Yeah, thank you. Chicharron. How do they do it there? Do they do it hyper crispy or fatty, fatty, crispy? Pretty fatty crispy. Yeah, like that. I like them all. There's no there's no real kind of kind of any sort of crispity, crunchy pork skin product that I find

[11:57] objectionable. I kind of unless they're, you know, poorly done. Uh, but yeah, it's delicious. All right. Well, welcome back, Jack. What are you doing for what are you doing for the holidays here? I'll be sticking around here. Not too much. Yeah? What about you, Nastasia? I'm going home for 3 days Home is not... See, that's the thing. at what point in your life is home New York? Yeah, I know. The place that I grew up. Ah, yes, yes, all right. Okay. We have some questions in. This was actually to Nastasia. Christine doesn't care what we think, what I think. But anyway, she says, how's it going? This is an email, I guess, sent to actually to Erin, right? I'm hoping to get some advice from Dave as a Christmas present for my husband because apparently I'm an influence on him, which is, you know, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Christine. Anyway, Ryan has my 27-year-old husband's been a musician and teacher for the past 10 years, but food has always been a big part of his

[12:47] life, and he's recently realized that it's a passion he wants to pursue. He's been tearing through days podcasts, learning and experimenting with local and regional cuisine. We live in Singapore, and volunteering at soup kitchens to try out his chops. I really always wanted to go to Singapore. Yeah. Singapore here has like amazing. Yeah, my garden's going soon. Really? I mean, Singapore apparently has like, you know, obviously has like great, you know, street food. Like, apparently it's amazing. And apparently very, you know, easy to visit so long as you don't spit gum on the street, in which case you're getting to get whipped with a, you know, whipped dipped in horse urine. Anyway, uh, he has endless resources, but the biggest question on his mind right now is whether or not to go to culinary school.

[13:25] We might be heading to Sydney in 6 months, and the most respectable, most reputable school he's found there is LeCordon Blue. And I don't know anything, by the way, about La Cordon Bleu in Australia, right? So I don't even know whether it's run by the same people or whether it's licensed out or anything like that. Just, you know, word. I don't know. Although we have some Australian, you know, I don't know if we still do. We had some Australian listeners. Maybe they can tweet into cooking issues and, you know, see what they what they think about that school and how it is. Anyway, while he's still trying to find his niche, he really enjoys using molecular gastronomy techniques and

[13:56] is partial to comfort diner type food. Listen, uh, Christine, you know, I don't know, you probably don't, but like for all you out there, you know, I dislike the word molecular gastronomy intensely,

[14:06] dislike it. I know what you mean though. I know what you mean. I know what you mean when you say. Just like answer my question. She says, answer my freaking question. I'm not into this stuff. Stop at the aside. Yeah, she's like, I don't really care. My husband wants to know. I don't really care Right? So this is the equivalent of like my wife asking this question. Yeah, all right. Oh, geez Stas. Stas loves Stas loves to give it to me. tell you what. Anyway, wait, okay, okay. The biggest question is whether or not to go to culinary school. Okay, let's just handle that right now. So your husband is a musician and a teacher. Now, here, I don't, again, I don't know how it works in, in Australia, but here in, uh, here in the US, there's a, you know,

[14:46] obviously I, you know, taught at a culinary school for many years, uh, specifically technology at the French Culinary Institute, now the International

[14:54] uh, Culinary Center. Uh, and many of my good friends, uh, and relatives and, you know, business partners like Dave

[15:01] Chang and and why they Dufrayne actually went to that school. And it's an argument that I get into constantly with chefs about whether or not you should go

[15:10] to culinary school. Now, there's a huge generation of chefs here that say, no, you shouldn't go to culinary school because it costs a lot of money and you can just go work your ass off instead. Right? And that's the argument. And so, you know, and to which I always reply to them. Yo, name someone in your generation and by your generation, I mean, between 35 and 45, right? Name someone in that generation that's, you know, made a huge name for themselves here in the U.S. who didn't go to culinary school. And the fact of the matter is that almost all of them did. Right? Almost all of them in that generation did. Now, just take that, take that, that where it is. So there's a huge group of chefs who have gone anti-culinary school mainly because of the giant price tag associated with it. So they assume that the price tag is just too high. And here's the truth. Like if you expect to go pay a huge amount of money and somehow make that back as a line cook,

[16:13] then, you know, I don't know that that necessarily is money well spent unless your parents are going to pay for a vocation that you're going to have for the rest of your

[16:21] life, right? Would you say it's fair styles? The other issue, I think, that a lot of chefs here have in the US who are, you know, at the top, top level, you know, I'm not going to name any names in this, but, you know, you've spoken to a bunch of

[16:34] them, is that a lot of people coming out of culinary school now are going into it because of the popularity that food has in the media these days.

[16:43] And so there's an expectation among, uh, this is not me talking because this is, it's not me talking. But, you know, that there's an expectation, uh, among the younger generation, or even among career

[16:56] changers, who are going to culinary school, that they're going to go to culinary school, they're going to come out, all of a sudden they're going to be doing interesting work in a kitchen, and they're, you know, or they'll get a TV

[17:06] show or they'll get a this or they'll get a that. When really, most of the time, it is a

[17:13] crazy, grueling, brutal job that, you know, 9 times out of 10 isn't glamorous. In fact, the glamour of it comes from, you know, just getting

[17:24] brutalized day in day out with large amounts of work for very small remuneration. So that's the kind of argument. I think that, that, you know, a certain group of chefs will make against cooking schools. But however, I don't think they see the other side of it, which is there are a whole group of people, for instance, who might not necessarily want to be a line cook, want to be exposed to a professional cooking school for another reason.

[17:47] Maybe they want to own a restaurant without having to go through all this stuff and they have the money to start a restaurant, right? It's a valid reason to go to cooking school. Maybe my sister-in-law, Miley, who now runs the Food Network magazine. Uh, you know, decided to go to cooking school so that she could be a better um, food journalist. And it certainly has, you know, served her in good stead. She's had, you know, been nothing but, you know, going up since the moment she

[18:12] went, she's going up beforehand because she's an incredibly driven, talented person. But in other words, but the school served her in good stead. So you just have to really analyze why it is you want to go to cooking

[18:22] school and what you hope to get out of it and go in there with your eyes wide open of what exactly you're paying for.

[18:27] And I think that's the, you know, that's the, the, the key to it. fair? Yeah? Okay. Kind of a long-eded answer. But it's a question, it's an important question. I mean, obviously my livelihood was based on cooking schools. And so when you go, if you take my course, for instance, on low temperature and sous vide cooking at the cooking school, you know, I think that was worth

[18:49] it. I think that I don't forget what we charged for it or at the school charge for it. I mean, it wasn't cheap. It was expensive, but we gave you a lot of value for it. I mean, the other thing is, you know, the reason cooking school is so expensive isn't really that people are getting, I mean, that I know of, people aren't getting astoundingly rich off of the cooking

[19:06] school. It's that there's, there's a lot of bodies that have to be hired to, you know, produce a lot of food that isn't necessarily getting sold at, you know, market rate. And, you know, we got to buy a whole boatload of chickens and we got to buy a whole boatload of, you know, it's

[19:20] just, it costs a lot to run it. It's not that cooking schools typically, with the exception of something like CIA, which is actually a dot EDU, are typically for-profit, but that doesn't mean that they are

[19:30] rapacious, right? Okay. Other questions include, is there such a thing as too old to become a chef? Hey, let's hold real quick. We have a caller. Okay, caller, you're on the air. Hey, this is Josh. There's actually 2 of us here. We're calling to settle a dispute. Maybe you can help us. Uh-oh. Okay. Um, so at your suggestion, we're now using the DMT sharpening stone. Okay. I feel like it does okay for me. My buddy, as a, was it a Glaston? I'm saying yeah. I'm saying, nice, and he feels like it gets sharp, but it doesn't stay sharp with this stone. But is there any beef to

[20:11] that or what would be causing that? So, okay, so for the for those of you that don't know what the hell we're talking about. DMT is a diamond, sharpening stone, and I use it, are you using the interrupted red green? I'm sorry? You're using the 2 sided red, green with the interrupted pattern? Yes. Yeah. Okay, so we're talking about a fine slash extra fine, which doesn't really have much meaning, but you can go look up the equivalent micron values

[20:39] or the abrasives on it. Sharpening stone. And what I like about this particular stone is that it's extremely lightweight. It stays flat forever, doesn't need to be trude. And it's just in my mind, extremely easy to have and use. Uh, so it's not something that you have to like worry about and soak or like that's not really heavy in your kit. It doesn't, you know, so it's very low maintenance, I think, does a good job. The question we have here is, is someone is sharpening with it and thinks that they can get the stuff sharp or

[21:09] doesn't necessarily stay sharp. The only way to really tell is the question is, what were they sharpening on before? Are they using like a Japanese, like a very, very fine great Japanese water stone? What were you, that's what we were using before. And my theory is that it gives like the illusion of sharpness by micro is grading it more than actually owning the

[21:28] edge, much like a razor deal. Right. So, I mean, this is the big, the big argument in sharpening is what are you, what are you trying to, trying to accomplish, right? So for most rough and ready kitchen work, what you really are doing is not taking it to a super hyper fine polished

[21:47] grit, and there are, it's very, very sharp, but there are some kind of

[21:52] micro imperfections in the, uh, in the blade that help when you're cutting things like

[21:59] tomatoes. And so, um, you know, there, and so, so in fact, you can have something that is, uh, that cuts very well, even that's not done,

[22:10] uh, you know, sharpened to uh, the same grit, let's say, as, you know, it's not a polished grit. Is this making sense? Uh, so, However, the hyper polished ones, I have my doubts that most people with their hand are accurate enough to

[22:26] do uh, to get an edge that is super, except for like a traditional Japanese

[22:32] knife where it's fairly easy to get the, the angle exactly right. But, you know, are good enough to get a hyper polished edge that's so true along it that is also at the right angle that it's not going to get rolled if you take it to a

[22:44] hyper hyper polished edge. I don't know, it's an interesting an interesting fact. like, you know, someone someone would have to settle it with a microscope and just look at it. I mean, I became several, you know, years ago, especially as people started ruining my knives by picking them up and using them for brutal tasks, that I was

[23:02] fine only going to the level of grit that you have on the, on the, you know, the finest part of that DMT, DMZ, or whatever it is, the Diamond Stone, right? Because it's easier for me just to do two, three swipes at the beginning of a prep session than it is for me to worry about the

[23:20] hyper polish. Now, I used to go, I used to use an edge pro. I don't know if you know that system. Uh, Edge Pro, you can go down to extremely fine, highly polished grits and have

[23:31] with very, very accurate edge angles. You ever use that system? It's like a guide, right? Yeah, it's a guide on a rod and you set the angle, extremely precisely. And then you just go through all of your knives that are at that at those edge ratios, and you can take it down to, you know, you take it down

[23:50] to basically to almost like to below toothpaste. You can go up to mirror polish on that thing very quickly. And I used to use that except for I found that I just wasn't sharpening my knives as much because I had to bust the equipment out and do it. And yes, you know, you'd have those crazy hair splitting stuff. Now, so I used to do... I used to leather strop everything as well after I was done because, you know, I was also using a straight razor at the time and, you know, and so it's just something that was part

[24:18] of part of my repertoire, but I found that it was just, it was too much for me to keep going all the time doing it. And then I moved to the Diamond Stone and found that my average sharpness was increasing just because my maintenance sharpening was so fast.

[24:31] Does that make sense or no? What if the leather stropping do exactly? Is that removing metal as well? I think so. I think I think what it's actually doing more. And I've never really had anyone, you know, I just, it was something I started doing because, you know, some old timer told me to do

[24:47] it. Uh, I think what it's actually doing is, you know, if you were to look at the edge,

[24:52] um, it would be fine kind of breaks in it. And I think, remember when you're stropping, you're stropping the opposite direction that you would normally sharpen, you're,

[25:00] you're, you're scraping the blade, uh, you're scraping the edge. you know, you know what I'm saying. the opposite direction. And I think what you're doing is aligning it better. I think what it's really doing is aligning it. Similar, but in a more gentle fashion than a steel wood, even though you're in a steel, you're going in the

[25:16] 4 direction, a strop, you're going in the backward direction. I never used to compound my strap, like it compounded once and then like over the years. I just kept on using it without adding more compound to it. And it really made a huge difference. Because, you know, the test that I, you know, I always do the same test is I take a relatively flimsy sheet of paper, hold

[25:37] it and see whether I can just put my knife through the piece of paper and had the paper fall into 2

[25:40] pieces because it's an easy way to find nicks in your blade. You know, even like micronix. You know, you would take it, but that cutting that paper also can, you know, misalign your edge a little

[25:51] bit. So then what I would do is I would do my sharpening, cut the paper and then strop it right afterwards and then I was good to go. That's what I used to used to do. So I always just had a leather, you know, a veg tan leather strop hanging, uh, uh, you know, next to

[26:03] my next to my salamander and just, beforehand. So can I can I reiterate the question or just phrase it differently? Yeah. Does the tool you're, with the tool you're using to sharpen your knife, change how your knife held an

[26:18] itch? Uh, yes, I think that's true. I think that's true, but I think it depends. I think in other words, I think it can be true. I don't think it's necessarily true, but I think it can be true. I, in other words, I, what I don't know is whether or not an edge that's taken to a lower grit that has, you know,

[26:37] what, what is commonly called in the, in the, in the, you know, sharpening world

[26:41] microserrations. I don't know whether those edges are any more or less long lasting than an actual polished edge. I think it is true that you can probably shoot for a polished edge versus a

[26:51] microservated edge. Does that make sense? Sure. So I'm kind of taking it in between. I'm taking it in between. taking an in-between position there. But, you know, there's I agree with what you're saying. So I think that if you could have a diamond. Diamond sharpening surface that was as the same amount of grit as a stone, a super fine one, and you actually got a fur on it, and then

[27:18] shave that fur off. It would be the same. Right. But what I'm saying with this, with this, the one that we're using, it seems like it's really

[27:26] sharp because it's really micro serrated. Well, but then the microcurations are easily like eliminated and you're left with like not that sharp of

[27:37] a actual edge. By the way, it is actually really... It is a, it is a fine grit, not as fine as the finest water stone. However, they do make an even finer one that I don't have. It's just more expensive and doesn't come into dual in a dual grit, dual grit scenario. I mean, just to throw an extra thing out, throw it into it. There's an old book that came out, I think, in the 90s that is mainly outdated in terms of the theory behind it. But it's called the Razor's Edge Book of Sharpening, and it was by a person who is a consultant to the meat cutting industry, and his

[28:11] his gimmick used to be, he would shave, he would sharpen a double bit axe, and then shave with it. And so he holds the Guinness record for shaving himself in record time with a

[28:21] double bit axe. He's probably the only idiot that's ever sharpened his face with a double, you know, shaved his face with

[28:26] double bit axe, but there you go. And his theory of sharpening is actually, if you want long-lived edges, and I think people still advocate this, although not as much, is

[28:36] you do 2 different angles. Your final sharpening is at a less steep angle. And I don't even know whether people still practice this. I still do it kind of intuitively that you really want 2 different edges. The one is the hyper, the hyper thin edge, you know, that, you know, is down. You know, it used to be like, you know, very kind of wide, you know, like, you know, 30 or so, but everyone's gone down to like 17 and, you know, below now,

[29:02] but, and then you'd put a slightly more shallow one in it that's a lot

[29:06] tougher. Uh, you know, and those that sharpening technique was written for the kind of lower quality steels that

[29:15] were, at that point, still the highest end of knife that most people had in the 90s. So the newer steels probably can take an actual finer edge all the way along without shattering and pitting. But, you know, I don't know, take that for what it is. his point was that a longer, you're going to get a much longer lasting, a sharper edge, if your very last sharpening is at, you know, a more

[29:37] oblique, oblique angle, but a very small oblique angle right at the cutting edge, does that make sense or no? Totally makes sense. Yeah. But, you know, you might want to take a look. Again, I haven't read that book in in a decade or more. But, you know, at the time it was, you know, a revelation of me, but my feeling is probably it's outdated at this point. Okay, thank you a lot. Thank you very much. All right, thank you. Uh, okay, so uh, questions. Again, from Christine. How about a quick break? Oh, all right. Come back. We'll come back with cooking at you.

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[31:23] coarse and uninterested. For more information, please visit fairwaymarket.com. And welcome back to cooking issues. Okay, more questions for Christine. Is there such a thing as too old to become a chef? Well? No. Uh, not. You know, I know someone, uh, no. No, but there, this take this. There are a lot of chefs out there who are prejudiced against people who are starting later in their career and just be aware of the fact that there is a lot of prejudice out there in the community because, um, you know,

[32:00] there, there's, um, a lot of chefs want to be able to beat on

[32:05] people who are in their kitchens in terms of uh, time and labor and their feeling is that, you know, people who are getting a later start aren't going to stand there on their feet for 12 hours,

[32:16] uh, you know, and take the heat of the kitchen and, you know, take all of that stuff. They're not going to put up with it as well as, you know, as a really young person.

[32:24] But I think that in general, that's a bad, it's a bad thing to do. It's a bad, it's a bad thing to assume about someone. You should take everyone on their own personal merits. You know, my, my grandpa, who, you know, he was kind of a jerk, but, you know, when he was 60,

[32:41] 5, he would go out into the lawn and, you know, wrap a cloth around his head, you know, rip giant rocks out of the

[32:47] ground and then do a backflip. He could have kicked the snot out of any 18-year-old prep cook coming, you know, through most

[32:54] kitchens, and he would have done it all day, just to make you look bad because that's the kind of guy he was. So I think, you know, there's no such thing as too old. There are people who, as they, the majority of people as they get older, aren't going to have the stamina, but it's not the age, it's just, it's

[33:10] just that's the way most people are. What do you think? Ferris does? Two, if there's only one kitchen gadget, you can have, what would it be and why? Well, I'd get an immersion circulator. Uh, you know, bang. I would get an immersion circulator because that's going to change the way you cook and it's going to allow you to do things that you couldn't otherwise do. If you already have an immersion circulator, and for some reason you don't own a Vitaprep blender, I would go buy that. Uh, if, you know, those are the 2 main things, uh, you know, that I have at home that most people don't have. If you're rich, I'd get a Paco jet. I love that thing or a vacuum sealer. But even if you're not rich, I would go out and get a Vita prep or an immersion circulator. You know, you know, do you have a Vita prep, yes, does? You want one though, right? Everyone wants a vite of prep. You know what? If the people, the only people who don't want Vita Preps. are people who don't have one. They're like, why do I need that? Because as soon as you have one, you're like, oh, anyway. Uh, you know, and if you have a lot of space, get liquid nitrogen. It's not really a gadget. But, you know, safety, safety with liquid nitrogen. And three, what are your thoughts on turducking? Turducking is where, you know, you stuff, you know, a bird inside of a bird, typically a turkey, then a chicken, then a duck.

[34:19] What are your thoughts on tur ducking? Is there a secret to gain to cook more evenly? Yes. First of all, do not arrange the meats in the way that is standard. It's a bad arrangement of meats. The way that they do it, typically is they put sausage in between all the layers of meat and then just overcook the entire

[34:34] thing, just overcook the hell out of it. Uh, and then assume that the grease from the sausage is going to keep everything tasting

[34:40] good. you know, and juicy. What you want to do is go turkey, then chicken, then duck. and you want to cook it with an immersion circulator, meat glue it together, debone it, meat glue it together, and cook it at roughly

[34:55] 64, 65 until the center of it, Celsius, until the center of it's about 57 where the duck is. You could put a sausage layer in between the chicken layer and the duck layer, and that sausage layer will take up the temperature difference between what you want the chicken to be and what you want the

[35:11] duck to be. And you should be able to get 65 on the turkey, 64 on the chicken, between 64, 63,

[35:19] and um, and like 58 on the, on the sausage, and then 57 on the, 5758 on the duck. Pull it out, fry it off, and you should be good to go. Just make sure that you dry off the skin so that the skin gets all nice and crispity. Crispity. And that's it, right? Good? Okay. Eric, who writes in? Uh, he's uh, who pineapple, which is an awesome uh, uh, what's that called? Twitter handle. Who? Who? Who pineapple? U pineapple. Okay. Hi, Dave. looking to make the fries from your blog. And by the way, I know the blog is broken. It is not my fault. We're trying to get control of it, and I've been told that the person who's going to work on it, swearing on a stack of Bibles. They're going to get that sucker fixed over the New Year's thing of a blap, right? True? Okay. So I know it. Anyway, looking to make the fries from your blog. I recall 14 minutes cooking in a blanch and then 2 frying. What's the temp on the fry? Okay, so my current fries are not the ones that did on the blog. I still use the enzyme. I do half inch fries now because I like the half inch fried better. So I cook it for a little bit longer. I cook it until I can't stand it anymore. First, well, 1st you soak it in the enzyme. Actually, you know, at home, I don't have the enzyme as much. So I've been doing it the normal way and they've been good. Here's the issue. The temperature which you fry depends on how much you overcook the them to begin with. The less you overcook them, and especially if you're not soaking them in enzymes beforehand. You want to do your initial fry at a lower temperature and fry it for longer. Why to get more moisture out of the out of the potato? So what you would do is you would take the fries,

[36:59] uh, you would blanch them in uh, in water, right? And then you dry them off with a fan or in a convection oven to get the surface moisture off. Now, if you're doing a 3/8 inch or smaller fry, then the drying step doesn't need to be force dried.

[37:16] You can just let it flash off some steam, especially if you've done the enzyme soak. If you haven't done an enzyme soak, right? You need to get more water out of there to get the crunchiness on it. What you're going to want to do is make sure that you dry them off, let them cool down under forced air so that the moisture

[37:31] leaves. With a half inch fry, even with an enzyme soak. You're gonna want to blast some of that moisture off. Now, depending on how overcooked the fry is, you're going to want to adjust your 1st fry temperature. Now at home, because I don't have the time to do the full procedure necessarily, because I never know I'm making french fries until it's too late, I'll omit the enzyme step, and I will just turn my fryer, initial fry temperature down

[37:53] to like, you know, 300, 270, uh, uh, 315 Fahrenheit, right? And then what you do is the initial fry. It's not a time on the initial fry. You're waiting for a crust of form. You don't want it to go dark, right? You want them to stay blonde. You know, they can take a little bit of color, but not a lot, but you want to lift the basket out and keep tapping them. And as soon as they form a nice hard crust. That's when you pull the fries out of the 1st fry, right? And the longer you can go, the more moisture you're getting rid of and the crunchier you're going to get on the 2nd time of the fry, you just want to don't do it too much. In other words, don't get too much moisture. You could go all the way to what we call a hollow fry, which I don't like. But, you know, you probably won't do it on a half inch fry. Then immediately after you pull them out, the crust will get ruined by the moisture from the potato

[38:42] leaving and they'll go soggy, and then you crisp them up on a 2nd fry at roughly 360 degrees Fahrenheit,

[38:47] till they are crunchy, crunchy, crunchy, and brown, right? Yes, yes. You know what? Nastasia does not like french fries. Oh, yours are good though. Oh, thank you. Oh, that's very sweet. Are you is this this party? Are you starting news? So we have a New Year's resolution, people. And the New Year's resolution is Nastasia is not going to purposely say things to piss me off, and I'm going to try to yell and scream less. That doesn't sound cool. Wait, which one doesn't sound cool? Both. No, I vote for both of them. You only get an hour of it a week. That's true. I mean, like, for you. Yeah. You know, you know, I was, I was, I was 6 feet 4 before I started working with

[39:23] Nastasia and the anger has compressed me into, into 5 foot 10 homunculus. Anyway, okay. Homunculus. Okay, uh, Gene Doe writes in. At cooking issues. Can you carbonate solidified fruit juice gelatin? Yes. When you're doing it, the way to do it is to put it into the way I do it, is I put the gelatin into a soda bottle, right?

[39:46] I use a high percentage gelatin. The reason is otherwise it's going to get torn apart, right? And then you wait until it gets syrupy, right? But not set. And then you shake it at a very high pressure. So you're talking like 75 PSI or something like that. The bottle is a real dicey, right? So you shake it at those temperatures at those pressures. You get a very high carbonation level. 75, you know, something like that, PSI, then you chill it in ice water until it sets at that high pressure. And then you cut the bottle open with a serrated knife to be

[40:19] careful. Uh, you know, to vent it 1st and then, uh, but you know, actually, you know, anyway, cut it with scissors or serrated knife. And then you can get the gelatin out. But as soon as you break the gelatin, it explodes itself from the internal pressure. But yeah, I used to make a champagne gelée like that. But, you know, sometimes it can be really prickly. The carbonation at those pressure levels trapped on the inside of the stuff can be very, very prickly.

[40:43] But anyway, yes, you can do it. Ryan Santos writes in at cooking issues, looking for sous

[40:49] vide, temperature, and time for wild venison leg, looking not for a pulled meat result, but more steak-like.

[40:54] Well, have I done wild leg before? Have that done wild leg before? The question is, is, you know, how much connective tissue there is in it and how easy it's going to be to render out.

[41:05] And the other issue on the particular piece of meat is whether or not it's going to go kind of livery gamey. You know, I would say go low, you know, if you want it to be more steak-like, go low, because the longer you cook something, the lower, you know,

[41:21] the lower the temperature that you need to go, obviously. So I would say you could probably be somewhere in the 56, you know,

[41:28] 55, 56. Assuming it works, let's say, like, uh, assuming its toughness level is somewhere near like a short ribbon, not like a lamb leg,

[41:36] uh, which is a lot more tender, I would assume, then you could do something like 50-56 uh, Celsius for, you know, like a day. You know, we did yak, but not the leg. We did it for a day at 56 and it was good, but it was gamey because, you know, it took on kind of a gamey, a gamey note, but I don't have any experience with long cooking on

[41:57] the on the leg, but it was not going to get any tougher at those temperatures, it's going to break down. Some meats that are that are wild stay tough even when you do long cooking. Like, I was really surprised that the lion meat, even though we didn't overcook it. But yeah, don't get me started. Don't get me started anyway, but they get as lion meat and it stayed tough even though long cooking and bear

[42:17] was, but we weren't cooking the leg. So I apologize. If anyone out there, hunters, and I've said, everyone who hunts should get themselves an immersion circulator right now before hunting season is over so that they can just do something other than chili with all of the meat that they get that they otherwise turn into

[42:33] tough, you know, or sausage, they can actually get some steak cuts out of these things. And I, you know, I wish that there was, and there probably is. It's just I'm not connected to it. I wish there was some sort of hunter's blog for, you know, low temperature cooking, you know, or

[42:49] some sort of site where hunters... You know, we have a hunting show that's going to debut in the new year right before cooking issues. Really? I have to make that plug. Yeah. Wild game domain at 11 on Tuesdays. Do they own a circulator? Potentially. He a chef. He's a culinary instructor at ice. as well. So, yeah, I don't know. He's been doing some venison recipes. maybe we can ask him next time. Yeah, or maybe, you know, if he doesn't already, oh, see, he probably already knows about low temp cooking, then, if he's an instructor at ice, our enemy school, just kidding.

[43:18] Uh, but the, um, uh, I should say rival enemy is strong. Uh, but the, uh, yeah, I'd love I'd love to know. All right, good. So we'll talk to him. We'll talk to him in the new year. Okay. Uh, LA Nasser writes in, uh, what is the minimum percent alcohol

[43:33] that'll allow me to keep a bottle of whatever in the cabinet versus the fridge, example, uh, uh, Falernum or,

[43:41] or Violette, things like that. You know, that's a very interesting question. You know, spoilage of certain, certain, and I'm working on this a

[43:50] lot, actually, right now with sodas that we're working on. So even things that are fairly high sugar level, uh, and even things that are fairly acidic, like a falernum, uh, you know, can spoil on you because there are

[44:04] yeasts out there. They're not talking dangerous spoilage, but there are yeast out there that can survive in fairly acidic environments, that can survive

[44:12] in, um, in, even in in high CO2 environments like soda. and can survive, you know, kind of all of those things and can survive, you

[44:21] know, somewhat mild alcohol. Now nothing is going to grow above, with the exception of very few. Very few things are going to grow above, you know, 18, 20% alcohol. So if you're doping it up to 18, 20% alcohol, you're pretty much, I think you're going to be

[44:37] safe, you know, 20, 20 and above, you're good to go. But if you want to have it very low alcohol, you don't want to go high like that. I would, and people might get bent out of shape here because everyone's anti-preservative, right? But, like, one tenth of one% of, like, Benzowit, you know, will, um, prevent yeast from growing. So if you're not against that, small amount of benzoid preservative, it can do wonders for stopping yeast spoilage, which is what you're going to be looking at on, excuse me, on something like

[45:12] that. So that's it. Otherwise, just dope it up to like 20 and you're good. I assume. you know, if I'm wrong, someone will say, you're wrong. And they'll text me and say I'm incorrect and then I'll correct myself, but I'm pretty sure that's right. Uh, uh, Mike, uh, I assuming you pronounce it paez, right? P-A-P-A-E-Z, please, please. Sure. Pass, pass, pass. Okay. Uh, have you ever had success experimenting with monoglyceride flakes, uh, and with the with the pound

[45:40] hashtag, uh, hydrocoloid help. Nice. Well, it depends on what you mean by success. Mono and dylycerides are so you take a fat, right? Fatty, fat is a triglyceride, right? So it's 3 fatty acids that are attached to, you know, glycerin back bone there, right? And so it's triglyceride, right? You break off one of those and you get a diaglyceride, you break off 2 of them, you only have one fatty acid on it and you have a monoglyceride. What's interesting about them is, is they go from being completely non-polar, being a lipid to being a, you know, somewhat polar. So they are emulsifiers. They were amphilic. They love both water and they love um, and they love oil. Mono and diglycerize are, uh, are, they, as emulsifiers go, all emulsifiers are either more oil-like or more

[46:30] water-like, and when you buy mono and diglycerides, they come as a flake format, uh, they are more oil-like. So what you do is, is you dissolve them usually with a little bit of heat into the

[46:42] oil, and then you emulsify your water basin. So they're good for water, water in oil emulsions, right? So that, you know, that's what I mainly use them for. So I've made hydrocolloid beads by putting mono and daglycerides into oils and then emulsifying water

[47:02] drop, flavored water droplets into it. So I've used that. Very high levels of mono and dagliscerides can be used in um, to thicken oils, but I think it's gross. Like, you know, you're talking about like 10% monodeglycerides and it's gross. Don't do it. I mean you can do it, but I wouldn't do it. They're also obviously used a lot in baking applications. But I don't, you know, I haven't come up with something yet where, in other words, it's not part of our normal pantry. I don't reach for it the same way that I would reach for geland gum or for agar or for meat glue or for, um, you know,

[47:38] Pactanex Ultra SPL, like stuff that, stuff that I use every single day. But that's just because, you know, I probably haven't spent the time. I'm sure that if I spent the time with it, that I think it's, you know, the greatest thing since sliced bread. Uh, Matt, uh, Gardner calls, uh, wrote in and says, hey, Dave, what polyscience circulator is best for pop-ups? Uh, creative series or chef series? Maximum 20 guests have a $1000 to drop? Thanks. So, okay, so there are 3 different polyssinus circulators that I'm aware of that are out there right now, and I can never remember which is it. The creative is the new one that's 400 bucks, right? Or 45, whatever it is. Then there's the sous vide, uh, professional, which is the $800 plastic

[48:22] one, and then there's the other one that is the $900, $1000 old school metal one. Now, here's the issue. If you're doing a pop-up, you might want to have 22 circulators going, right? In which case for a 1000 bucks, you could buy 2 of the new creative one. Now, neither one of them is going to circulate as large a volume. They're powerful from a heat standpoint, but they're not as, you know, their pump is not as powerful. So you know, you're not necessarily going to get as large a bath moving as you would with the other one. They're also not guaranteed for commercial work. So if they break and they were used commercially, their warranty will not be valid. However, even though you're only cooking for 20 people, you might find that you're going to do, in a pop-up scenario, 2 different recipes, it might require 2 different temperatures, or you might want to run 2 different baths, in which case it could be useful to have 2 circulators running, in which case the only way to do that for

[49:16] a $1000, you know, with a polycience one is to go with the, um, with the new creative series. Uh, that said, um, you know, both the, you know, I haven't used a new creative

[49:29] one. So I can't really, really talk about it, but, you know, Philip Preston told me that the main difference is the pump is not as strong and it's not warrantied for commercial use. Yeah? Okay. Dave, I hate to do it. We've got an international call in the next show. All right. How many minutes? Two minutes? Like a minute. All right. Elliot Pavanaugh wrote in cooking issues, didn't hear it before. I want to make a cocktail for Christmas theme, Yule log. Any ideas? I'm thinking juniper, smoke. It's going to take longer, Elliot. tweet you out a multiple tweet for your Yule log cocktail stasha. I sure we'll think about it. You like Yule log stuff, right? And you like Christmas. We work on that. And King Amber wrote in super quick. Quick legal lesson on the name, a Kimique, which I made fun of before. David suggested it was a terrible name. Not so. First is an adorable palindrome. I don't really like palindrones, but okay. And they did a little something with the 2nd cue to make it symmetrical. So it is visually recognizable, but more importantly, in the trademark area. The clients and marketing folks typically want a descriptive name, and the lawyers want a nondescriptive name. Uh, and so basically saying it's a strong mark because it's both descriptive and nondescriptive.

[50:34] All right, fair, Ken, fair, fair. Anyway, listen, to everyone out there, I want to wish them whatever you celebrate, happy that, good cooking, and cooking your shoes. Bye. Thanks for listening to this program on HeritageRadioNetwork.org. You can find all of our archive programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes

[51:00] store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritageradionetwork.org. HeritageRadio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.