[0:00] Today's program was brought to you by Catskill Provisions, located in a small corner of Northwest Catskill Mountains, they specialize in creating raw, all

[0:07] natural, handmade food products. For more information, visit catskillprovisions.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit HeritageRadioNetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:28] Cooking your shoes.

[0:54] Calling your questions, too. Cooking issues. Hello, and welcome to cooking issues coming to you live but late in the back of Roberta's pizzeria on Tuesday and

[1:07] b- b- b- Bushwick, baby. Nice. sounds like a Bootsie Collins Bushwick. Yeah, sharing a little bootsie. Bushwig, baby. Yeah. So what happened today? Why am I late? Yeah. I was like my normal, like, it's normal. Okay, it was not because it was not because of last night's Booker and Dax's

[1:28] one year anniversary party, which was crazy, crazy party. We had, uh, we, uh, Booker and Dax, which is the bar, you know, that I have, uh, attached to

[1:39] sambar, you know, the, uh, uh, the Momafuku restaurant of great repute. And, uh, anyway, uh, we had our one year. One year we've been open one year, so we cleared away, like all of the chairs. We had a piñata full of airline bottles of St. Germain and Haribo. It was crazy. I beat it with our baseball bat. We have a baseball bat at Booker and Dax there that everyone who works at or has worked at Booker and Dax at any point signs the baseball bat

[2:05] in Sharpie, and it is, you know, it's up there as kind of a customer relations tool, but also, uh, also for piñatas. Which, you know, my dream is to have regular piñata service at the bar. We can't do it now because we don't have an area where we can just devote it to

[2:23] piñatas. You know what I mean? Wow, you'd probably be the first. I mean, imagine if you could go, this is my dream. You go and, you know, look, if you do it at your bar or restaurant, all you got to do is say, you know, just give a

[2:36] little, give a little props back because here's, here's, everyone would want to go to the, on their birthday and and beat a piñata while they're drinking that's full of

[2:46] like cool things. Not like necessarily the crap that you got when you're a kid, although the odd hot wheels car would not be bad in an adult piñata as well, you know? Uh, but, uh, you know, kind of like, yeah, adult candies doesn't have to be full of airline bottles of booze. It was provided by a booze company. And that's why, you know, ours was full of airline bottles of plastic airline bottles, by the way, total, we're safety conscious folk. But anyway, that's not the reason I was late. I was trying to find some information. I couldn't find my copy of Lowry's meat science. And by the time I finally found it, I missed the subway that I normally get. That's the actual reason. Nice. Yeah. But anyways, unfortunately, today, not joined in the studio with the Hammer, she is, she has some non-cooking issues that she has to take care of today, so she won't be joining us.

[3:34] And so, you know, Jack and Joe think, thank God, are here with us today, but, you know, I don't yell at them because they don't irritate me on a consistent basis.

[3:42] They don't they don't spend like like their their entire waking moment figuring out new ways to get me bent out of

[3:49] shape. Joe's been working on it. Yeah? Yeah, he's been he's been doing some research. Do some research? Like, has he developed some sort of crazy, you know, food aversions or does he believe in some sort of nutritional BS hype that's just going to get me all spooled up and blasted out or no?

[4:06] I'm shopping for shoes right now. Oh man, are they like, are they cool shoes anyway? Really cool. Wait till next week. I wanna have some new kicks. All right, cool. Well, if you really want to tick me off, like, you know, buy them, wear them once and return them. That's the, that's the, that's the stars jam right there. Although she, hey, I think she's grown out of it. Look, we all have the things that we do, you know, when we're growing up, it sometimes it takes some of us longer to grow out of those habits and other people. You know what I mean? That all. That's all I'm saying. Call in your questions, one, two, 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. Follow up from one of our questions before we were talking, I think, a week or 2 ago on seasoning cast iron pads, a subject that comes up quite often, and I had mentioned that

[4:48] I had read a blog by her name just went straight out of my brain. That's all right. Because you could go look it up on the last show. But, uh, she recommended using linseed oil, uh, a.k.a. flaxseed oil, uh, food grade version of it, of course, uh, because it's obviously, uh, from a

[5:04] pager's perspective, the drying oil par excellence. So it's going to polymerize much faster and, you know, I guess at lower temperatures, although I'm not, I don't have the numbers in front of me. It's going to make a nice coating in your in your pan. Now, according to Dan, whatever it is, 76 LA, blah, blah, blah, I don't know whether it also has good carbon residue content, right? Which is not just adding to the polymerization, but is going to create the

[5:27] non-stick stuff. I'm not going to get into that again. All I'm going to say is our good buddy, Michael Natkin, uh, from herbivoracious, uh, wrote a wrote in, uh, with his ¢2 saying that he has tested that with uh, with uh, flaxseed oil and he says that it's complete baller, awesome, super hard, awesome coating in his pants. So, you know, we trust him. So take his advice. I have not, I have not tested it. I want to start calling him. I wonder whether he'd be offended if I called him Captain Vegetable. Anyone remember that? It was a little known Sesame Street character called Captain Vegetable. You guys remember this guy? do not. Captain Vegetable. Like he's like, Sesame Street went through this phase where they're trying to get, I guess, kids to eat their vegetables, and so they had this vegetable guy. It's like, it is our Captain Vegetable, but he's like, it never became popular, like all the other, like, weird little Sesame Street craps, like the, like the 2 dudes with the clock, yip, yip, yip,

[6:17] yip. those guys? Yeah I got those guys. I thought they turned cookie monster into like the veggie monster, though. Is that true? Oh, God. Someone find out whether this is the case and get back to me. That's like a that's a deal breaker right there. The veggie monster? That's the worst The veggie. You know what? Hell no. No. You know what I mean? God, no. Unacceptable. It's just not right. Uh, Don Rollins writes in. Hello at cooking issues. I'm going to start working in a bar that uses thin half moon ice. What can I do to keep the ice from overdiluting my drinks? All right, well, here's the deal. Uh, the half moon ice. I mean, it depends on the machine. I am assuming if you're using a commercial machine that, uh, well, here here's the issue. A couple issues. So ice and dilution is related to a number of factors. If you're shaking, The main problem from the half moon ice is going to be shards that are broken off in the in your shaker, and those shards that are broken off actually aren't going to over dilute your product right away, but when you strain them through your regular hawthorn strainer, which is the one with

[7:27] the spring going around it. Those crystals make it through, and those things will melt quite quickly, and then they'll produce it in your glass, right? Because normally when you're shaking a drink, You don't serve it with with ice. So the dilution is fixed from the moment it's poured out of the shaker, except for these crystals that are going to melt out. And so the solution around that is to, um, is to just dump, um, is to just, you know, uh, put

[7:51] it, when you're pouring it, pour it through a double, you know, a T strainer. And that's going to get rid of those crystals of ice. It will hurt somewhat the foamy head that you can get out of a shake and drink, but you know, there you have it. Also, uh, when you're stirring, right, when you're stirring a drink, uh, it doesn't really matter what kind of ice you're using except for things look nicer, don't look nicer. As long as you realize that the smaller the cubes and the faster you stir, the faster you're going to dilute. So all you have to do is adjust your uh, your times, your stirring times, uh, according to the type of ice that you're using. So you can do a stirred. I mean, if you use very, very fine ice when you're stirring, the chilling is so rapid that it's difficult to get a consistent stir out of

[8:37] it. But with any normal size ice, it's possible to get a nice consistent stir. If it's probably wet ice, in which case you should probably make it a practice to, um, when you put, when you pack ice into something you're going to stir with, put a strainer top over and shake the excess water out of it, snap the excess water into the sink before you do your stir, this can

[8:57] help, uh, alleviate some of the excess, uh, water of dilution you have on the outside, if that's a problem for your drinks. Or just assume that you're going to use the relatively similar amount of ice every time, and therefore the water load from the water on the outside of the ice is going to be the

[9:10] same every time you do it. It's all about consistency. With a stir drink, it's all about consistency. So as long as you can make it repeatable, you can make it good. With the shake in drinks, I really feel that a large cube is going to produce a better

[9:24] result. Actually, what you really want to do is a large cube with a small, a couple small cubes in there. And I think we've talked about it, so I'm not going to, you know, go into it again unless somebody writes it and says, please go into it again. But, you know, what you can do is usually in a bar or a restaurant, there is some freezer

[9:40] space, and depending on how many shaken cocktails you make at night. It could be economical from a space standpoint, definitely from a resource

[9:49] standpoint because it costs very little to freeze ice cubes if you have the time space. is to go get the ice cube molds, the 2 inch by 2 inch ice cube molds, get the ones from cocktail kingdom, which are made from, I believe they're made from a polyurethane, not from a

[10:03] silicone, test that I have not verified myself, but that were done by Eben Freeman.

[10:08] Uh, you know, uh, the famous bartender years ago where that certain silicone molds can impart a taste to the water, uh, that the ice cubes, uh,

[10:17] that when you freeze ice cubes, it can impart a taste to them. I've never done this test myself, but this is what he says. And so that is a feasible way to generate cubes for shaking. However, when it comes to beautiful presentation ice, my friend, you are

[10:29] SOL. Then you'll have to do some either like buy, I used to have it brought in, which is expensive, which is what we do, or start a freezing campaign with igloo coolers and

[10:39] whatnot. We could talk more about that if someone's interesting. But if you're just interested in overdiluting. It's not going to be much of a problem. Just make sure that you strain your shaking drinks through a T strainer. Caller. Caller? Oh, reverb. Caller. You're on the air. Hey, Dave. My name's Nick. I'm calling from Seoul, Korea. Oh, hey, Nick, that's awesome. Uh, my questions about cold smoking bacon. I've been cold smoking bacon in this large old file cabinet with

[11:07] a smoke daddy attached to the side of it. Smoke that degenerates and pump smoke into the cabinet chamber and hence cold smoke in the meat. I suppose. Uh, it's been working pretty good. Actually, I've been able to produce fairly good bacon with it. What concerns me though, is that even with cold smoking, the woods still combust. Right. Incinerated, sending all sorts of undesirable, nasty elements into the air and ultimately onto my bacon, I suppose.

[11:33] So I was wondering if there's a way to prevent or drastically reduce that. Mm, yeah, here's the problem is, is that, uh, the smoke flavors that, you know, that we all love are due to the pyrolysis of the meat, which is taking place

[11:51] at uh, elevated temperatures, right? And so, I mean, there are definitely, you know, if you go way over on temperature, then you

[12:02] can you produce more of those nasty things, then you get more also more of those burnt acrid,

[12:07] uh, you know, those burnt acrid kind of flavors that none of us like. So you definitely want to control temperature, but I mean, the unfortunate truth is, is that there are, you know, what are, you know, deemed to be carcinogenic and unhealthful components that are generated purely as a

[12:25] result, while the same things that we like are being produced. Now, you can filter the smoke, right? Which, I guess how they do, when they're making liquid smoke, they can, um, they can, they, they recondense the smoke back to a

[12:39] liquid, and then they can fractionate that into, uh, it's different parts.

[12:44] And then um, then they can separate out some of the things that are carcinogenic. But the, um, it's, you know,

[12:54] very, would be very difficult for you in the way you're doing it. However, you know, you, I don't know. I haven't done my, my research, uh, you know, recently, I probably, I probably

[13:06] should as what the current feeling is of the actual level of risk or whether anyone's done, uh, risk, uh, you know, risk increased studies based on smoke in meat and

[13:15] consumption. I don't know if those studies have been done yet because I haven't I haven't read them. My feeling is, is that in the near future, and by that, I

[13:24] mean like the next 10 or 20 years, that, uh, you know, air quality is becoming a lot more important, not just food club,

[13:31] but air quality in kitchens is becoming more important. And, uh, you know, the the research that came out, you know, several years ago on, um, the deleterious effects uh, of uh, wok oil smoke

[13:44] in uh, in women in China, in particular, and uh, increased cancer rates because of it. I think like more of those kind of studies about kind of airborne things in your kitchen are going to become important. So, I mean, I would definitely invest in some good ventilation in any rate, but it's

[14:01] going to be difficult to eliminate, I think all that stuff entirely. Does that make sense or no? Uh, it does. I've looked at vaporizes. I don't know if that's a step in the right direction or. Yeah, I mean, the problem is the vaporizers are not. I mean, the whole point of the vaporizer is the trying is they're distilling their, their, they're releasing things without the burning, right? So, I mean, right, they're built for they're built for liberating THC from marijuana to be blunt. Uh, but the, you know, I don't, I've, I, obviously, have I put woodchips in them before? I have one. Uh, but I, you know, but I haven't used it. It's in years, it's packed away in my in my storage closet. I get one out. I can get one out and test it. You want me to test it? I just don't think it's going to generate. I think it's going to generate the temperatures needed to make the smoke because, I mean, the whole point of the vaporizers, to have a controlled heat so that you're not getting that kind of combustion, and

[14:57] the flavor, the actual flavor components that we're making in wood are due to a high temperature pyrolysis, you know,

[15:07] reaction that is taking place, you know, not at like 400 F, but like at 400 C, you know, 400 Celsius, which is like, which

[15:16] is a lot higher. Uh, I could try to dredge up at some point, uh, some literature on um, the difference in the relative things that are being, you know, released

[15:26] from uh, from wood smoke at different temperatures. But the issue is I think that I think that they're inherently linked, that you're making the stuff that you don't want while you're making the stuff that you do want, that you get, you know, that they come kind of hand in hand. Um, but, and I don't know of any good way to uh, filter it, except I wonder whether you could draw the smoke through water and get rid of something. I don't know. I had to do some research. It might be, it might be possible, but I think you're not gonna, you're not going to be able to generate the flavor you want without generating the unwanted stuff that, you know, that you don't want.

[15:58] That's my feeling. I could be wrong. I'd like to get some other input on it. have to do some more research. Alrighty. All right. Well, listen, uh, should be back on Twitter with anything you find, and if

[16:09] I, if I can find anything interesting, I'll talk about it on the next show. All right, thanks. Thank you for calling in from South Korea. You want take our 1st break? We have another caller. Oh, we have another caller. All right, caller, you're on the air. Hi, Dave, this is Nick from Denver. How's it going? Going all right. Denver doing? Good, good. Um, so I had a question about, um, it was uh, Nathan Mirvald's new book. It was modernish cuisine for home. Right? Um, and I was going to do his short ribs recipe and, um, he commented on, uh, using zip top bags for, uh, I

[16:44] think, a long period of time with low temperature cooking. And he mentioned that for safety and reliability issues. He recommended only using, um, a vacuum sealed bag. And I was just wondering if you could comment on that, mostly for the safety issue. Well, why did he say it was unsafe? Do you remember? I don't have the book. Oh, so he he just mentioned that it was unsafe. And then he uh, on his uh, on his recipe page, and then he referenced another page in the book, but it didn't really go into any more detail on

[17:14] what, on why it would be unsafe. What temperature are you cooking? Um, it was going to be 60 degrees Celsius for about 2 days. Yeah. So, it, it, it, it's an, it's an interesting point. I've heard other people say that there is some sort of a safety issue with it. Now, here's something I know for a fact. Uh, Gran Aikets, maybe 4 years ago, posted a video online using Ziploc bags, uh, and got an angry call from

[17:43] SC Johnson Wax, a family company, and saying that they're

[17:48] not, uh, they're not set up to be used for that, uh, X, Y, Z, X, Y,

[17:53] Z, because they haven't tested it, right? And so I don't know where this, the safety issue on zippies came in uh, regards to cooking because they're rated for reheating. They're made from polyethylene, without plasticizers. So, and they're rated to be in constant contact with your food at normal ambient temperatures indefinitely.

[18:19] Uh, and they're rated for reheating the food. I don't know of any any published data, saying that there is anything that's leeching in or out of polyethylene ziploc bags.

[18:34] And by the way, if you smell a ziploc bag as opposed to smelling polyethylene film, polyethylene film, has to have the thin stuff like

[18:42] Saran, oh, it's not Saran, but you know what I mean? The plastic wrap. They have solvents in them to help them get them into those thin sheets and roll them out quickly. And those have an odor almost always. Uh, whereas uh, zippies do not. So, you know, I always consider them relatively neutral. I don't really understand where the safety issue comes in so long as your temperatures are down like 60 and

[19:06] 50 where, as far as I can tell, polyethylene is fine in those service ranges for continuous duty, right?

[19:15] continuous duty. Now, uh, I could be wrong on this because I haven't looked up the studies right now, but this is my

[19:23] feeling. Here's the issue on, uh, on polyethylene. Is it is polyethylene, unless you have one that has a special vapor barrier in it, like a multi-layer film technology in it,

[19:37] polyethylene, not such a great vapor layer. That's why I use the, by the way, the ones that are rated for freezer because they're supposedly a better vapor barrier. But you can get oxygen migration through a ziploc bag because they're not as, depending on which one you use because they're not as, um, they're not as gas impermeable. So there could be perhaps a quality issue over time. Also, remember, there is residual oxygen inside of a Ziploc bag more so than in a vacuum. But you also have to remember that when I'm vacuuming down a lot of products, I mean, red meat's not so much, but

[20:10] like on other things, I'm not sucking a hard vacuum anyway, because I think it's deleterious to the meat quality. So I don't really, like, there is an issue where, you know, someone could take a Ziploc bag and put the temperature too high and then you get melting, right?

[20:25] At 60, I don't really see that that's a problem. Also, there could be an issue with residual oxygen in the bag, however, over a

[20:32] 2 day cook period at 140 degrees, Fahrenheit, 60 Celsius, ain't nothing growing in that thing. Do you know what I mean? You know, perhaps it might be deleterious on, on its capability to be stored for a long period of time, but if you're not using it for extremely

[20:48] lengthy, lengthy storage, right? I don't see that it's that big of a deal. You might get, uh, you know, perhaps slightly more oxidation in there than you would otherwise, but again, not a safety issue. So I don't, I don't really understand where this comes from. And I've heard other people talk about it unless it's like, and Nathan is not the kind of guy who, uh, so there are many

[21:12] books, and I won't, I won't name them in particular, uh, and authors and people in

[21:17] general, who, they're, when they write, they say things that are untrue, uh, and they know it's untrue. If you go and you call them on it, they say it because, well, it's too complicated to explain what's really going on to the average cook,

[21:29] right? And I don't want them to make a mistake and do something that's dangerous. So I'll just tell them it's unsafe to do something, even though it's not true. And I've had this conversation with authors, with chefs and with teachers. And I think that's a, I think that's a crap way of working. You know what I mean? I think it's just, I think it's doing a complete disservice. Nathan's not that kind of a guy. So for all I know, he has a reference somewhere about it being unsafe, but I'd love to see it, because I consider low

[21:57] temperature, and by that, I mean kind of 60, even up to 63 and below in a

[22:02] zippy, to be fine practice, I only do it on short-term cooks, but I don't, and he, I know, is fine with it on short-term cooking in the range of several hours, but I don't know, I don't know what study he's referencing to say that it's going to be bad for longer periods.

[22:16] It's a long-winded answer. I sorry, but it's kind of an important subject. Yeah. Then I feel like I didn't answer your question at all, but, no, that's pretty helpful. pretty helpful. All right, all right. Well, look, try to find it in, you know, tweet on in to the cooking issue. See if you can find his reference for that or where he references it

[22:33] from because this is a discussion. I love to have, either with him or anyone else, on

[22:39] it, because it's something that I'd like to get to the bottom of, because the Ziploc bag is a fantastic tool for all of those people who can afford a

[22:46] circulator, especially at the lower price point now, who make your own, but don't have the several $1000 it takes to make a vacuum machine.

[22:52] And zippies are still the best way to cook things like fish that you don't really want to vacuum or poultry that you don't really want to vacuum. Or if you don't have time to chill down your meat after your initial sear and you want to do zippies to cook a steak. I mean, zippy, you know, zippies are great. I love them. Even though the S.C. Johnson Wax family company does not want me to use them for this purpose. I find them incredibly useful. So I'd really like to know if I'm doing a bad thing. Sound good? All right. Sounds good. All right, thank you, brother. Thanks for calling in And let's go to our 1st commercial break.

[23:32] Just want to take a moment here to thank Joel Gargano, for the cooking issues theme song at the top of the show and our friends, the meatballers, for this beautiful version of

[23:42] fish is fish is vodka. You're listening to cooking issues on heritageradionetwork.org.

[24:44] Catskilled provisions has Valentine's Day literally in the bag with their seal the deal gift bag. Start with chocolate honey truffles, and then move on to breakfast in bed with their traceable organic pancake mix and New York

[25:01] State maple syrup. Sure to satisfy any ardent locobore. Check out the Catskill provisions, seal the deal package at www.catskillprovisions.com. What do you think of that? Seal the Deal Valentine's Day package. Seal the deal. You know, that is a that is an admirable name. Seal the deal. You know what I mean? And it's like even just buying it implies that you know you're going to seal the deal, right? So it's like, if you have any, if you're wondering, are you going to steal the

[25:29] deal? you get to seal the deal package, you're like, deal is sealed. Right? I mean, that's it. Deal is sealed. You know, like, I will not name any names, but, uh, you know, again, I have a bar, and one of the functions of a bar, uh, is to take 2 people who are looking to

[25:48] find uh, other people to do other things with, and to meet them to kind of grease the social wheels, as they say, and then let them go off,

[25:56] right? This is one of the functions of a bar. And, uh, you know, I was playing some hardcore seal the deal music last night. I was busting out, you know, ignition. Oh, yeah. I mean, like, I was doing, we did, we did about a 2 hour, um, kind of like, uh, like, dancing,

[26:15] dancing kind of like rap anthem set, like, you know, California, love, and all that kind of stuff. And then, you know, afterwards, I broke into like a couple, I went ignition and then a couple other songs like that. and then Barry White, at the end of the night, after we did the last call, into Marvin

[26:31] Gaye, and I'm not going to, I'm not going to call you out. You know who you are. We're not sealing the deal. Why do I go to work? Why do I get up? Why do I eat breakfast and work and breathe air if I cannot help you seal the deal? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Man, Barry White and to Marvin Gays? Like, that's like level 5 seal the deal. I know it. And you know what? You know what the problem was? The individual who I'm talking to, Maybe you should have gotten the Catskill provisions sealed the people situation because then, as we say, here at cooking issues, it's pre-sealed. Right? You know what may not seal the deal? I love we've got we got an audition video in from Joel Gargano. I wish I wish I could play this. I mean, it's radio, obviously. We can't see the video, but we've got Joel just standing here with a guitar kind of looking at the camera and he's playing an acoustic version of the cooking issues theme song. So let's let's give that a quick run before we move on. Let's do it. 12nd here. What's Joel's group again? I don't think he has a name for it. Cooking history is intro. Go.

[27:42] We're all social creators. Cook sad hearts.

[27:50] We've got some questions. Gender, we start. James just see us. Jackie Joe, too. They're all here now. To listen, and I'll follow soon. What do you think, man? I think I think we've got like an American Idol show we can put together now. Definitely. And thank you for finally giving Joe some props. Yeah, Joe, in the song. You know why? You know, I fellow front man, fellow front man. Frontmen always give each other props. Am I right, Joe? It's hard work, man. It's hard work being the front man. Right. I mean, because you have to be you have to be on all the time. I mean, you do get you get all the benefits as well, but you always have to, you know, pretend that you're like, you know, all juiced up, right? Yeah, there's there's lots of, uh, you know, just pretending you're pretending that you're actually excited when you're not. Like, like, you're ready to rock, but you're actually really ready to go to bed. Look, I tell people this all the time, and it's the same with cooking, doing demos, like being here. It's like, you know, the average person, like they're there to see you perform. They don't care whether you've had a bad day. What does that, what does that matter to them? They don't they don't give a rat's behind whether or not, you know, you know,

[28:58] your, you know, your puppy fell on your meat grinder. That's not important to them. What's important to them, they came to see a show. You agreed to provide a show. They came to see the show. So you got to get amped up. That's all there is. That's why, you know, even as much as I love, well, I'm not going to get into discussion of, you know,

[29:14] Axel Rose and the old Guns N' Roses shows. I'm just not going to get into it. I'm just not going to get into it right now. But, uh, right? You're not the kind of like, Joe, you're not the kind of like hat over your head, stare at the floor kind of a front man, are you? No, no, not at all. Yeah good. I mean, there's a show. It a show. Yeah, there's a certain place for that. There's a certain kind of music where everyone's like, hey, let's let's all, you know, let's go see someone who doesn't care whether I'm alive or dead. Yeah, let's just be sad in a room. Yeah, let's not do that. Yeah, and that was never me. Well, I mean, obviously that's not how I like to work, obviously. Anyway, okay. So what's the story? Joel's going to come in and and serenade... Joel's going to come in in March. Yeah, he's going to do the song live. We're going to record it here and he said he really wants to do some commercials like the tech serve one because he feels it may be a life-changing experience. So I'm not going to deny him that opportunity. Hey, hey, man, it's not it's not my money. Talk to the tech serf people. I'm for it. Right? Right? Damn. All right. So, howdy, everyone. Why would you choose one method of applying Activa RM over another? By the way, Activa RM is the brand name for a

[30:21] Genomoto, the MSG people's meat glue, transgutamination, the enzyme, the miracle enzyme that's used to glue or weld bond meet together. And so it's transglutaminates, and by a Genomoto

[30:37] as a company, Activa is the brand name for all their

[30:40] transgutaminaces. And RM is the one that's most commonly used, and it's a mixture of enzyme, uh, caseine, which milk protein, and, um,

[30:49] and uh, maltodextrin, okay? And you can either sprinkle it onto things, or you can make it into a paste and paint it on. Okay. which is a slurry. It's called the slurry technique, just so you guys know, in case you don't know. Uh, is a slurry better for some app, and you can buy it from modernispantry.com, even though they're not sponsored us anymore. Okay. Is a slurry better for some applications and a sprinkling better for others? Have you done any tests with commercial? Okay, that's one 1st question. Uh, look, Nils, who, uh, you know,

[31:19] I, I got my 1st meat glue from Nils, uh, Norin and from Wiley, because they were the 21st people in New York to use it. And I think Wiley might use slurries sometimes, but Nils always hated the slurries because he didn't want to put a lot of liquid into the meats that he was

[31:32] gluing. So he always did sprinkle. Uh, so sometimes a slurry is okay. But, you know, 99.9% of the actual gluing of meats together that I do, I

[31:43] do with a sprinkle technique. You know, the pace thing is, you know, fast. I guess it's easy to dose out, but I just never a big proponent of it so much. Okay. And then second, have you done any tests with commercial grade beef cooked sous vide? I was reading up on beef grating recently. I never knew commercial grade beef is basically beef from older animals that are marble that are marble like prime

[32:07] beef. Not technically, like, in other words, prime or choice, I think, any of those are commercial.

[32:15] Couldn't a great deal of money be saved and deeper flavor realized by cooking commercial beef sous vide until tender. If so, where would a consumer find the lower grades of beef? Okay. There's a very interesting question. I have never actually run the test. I don't have any personal experience cooking older meats, but the way meat grating works is meat grating is bizarre because it's based solely

[32:40] on the goal, the sole goal of beef grating is tenderness. That's it. They don't care flavor or anything like that, except for they also grade much higher for fat, right? So the way it works is if you look at the beef grating charts and um, you see that they're on the, there's an age range and then a fat marbling range and you have to be in certain things.

[33:04] So older cuts of meat, older animals, uh, have in general, uh, tougher

[33:09] meat, and, you know, 100% they will have tougher meat, the same animals meat will get tougher as it ages, right? And so at a certain point, after, I think, you know, 24 months or it's no longer really labeled as either prime or choice.

[33:24] And but it can be extremely highly marbled, in which case it is sold as commercial, right? So standard is what's lower marble. I believe standard beef is lower marbled than choice, right? But young, right? Whereas commercial can be very highly marbled. In fact, I think it has to be more highly marbled in order. Otherwise it would be, you know, can or beef or whatnot. but is from an older animal. And it's going to be tougher and so people don't. I don't know a good source of getting it. I will say this. Jeffrey, both Jeffrey Steingarden and Harold McGee have taunted me, taunted

[34:02] me by going to Spain and having going to a restaurant

[34:06] whose specialty is old, old meat, like seven-year-old meat. And they said the flavor of it was fantastic. Now, as you point out, low temperature cooking might be a good way. to tenderize these cuts of meats that are older. Here are the caveats and what I think. In general, what I think you're going to want to do is get a well finished, highly marbled, older piece of meat and then dry agent. You know, these older cuts of meat. I think you're going to want to dry age them to increase the tenderness because my feeling is if you try to tenderize the meat just by doing low temperature

[34:41] cooking that you might have a tendency over time. Because remember, when a meat gets older,

[34:47] not, it's not just the collagen changing and the muscles changing. The enzyme components are changing, the you know, the darkness of it, the flavor of it. And so I have a feeling that the older the meat is, the more it might get a kind of livery or

[35:02] gamey taste as it's cooked for long periods in a bag. So, I might say that a dry aging of it might be a better way to do it, get like a primal and then dry age it, and then do, you know, one of your normal low temperature

[35:14] cooking because, you know, again, I find that low temperature cooking to tenderize tough meats that aren't tough because of collagen, but are tough because the muscle fibers themselves have toughened up, tends to produce mushy meat when it's cooked for a long time.

[35:27] I really, no one ever gets into discussions with me about mushy versus tender, but I think it's something that really wants to

[35:33] be talked about. Just a note, if you're going to buy muscle meat that's from animals over 30 months of age in the United States, uh, you need to make sure that uh, that all of the spinal material and any nerve material has been removed because that's, uh, you know, precautions that are taken for BSE, uh,

[35:51] bovine, sponge of form encephalopathy. Okus Krochfeld, new variant, the deadly disease known as Mad Cow. Okay, um, that makes sense, guys? Or no. I don't care. They're like, now they're being like Nastasia, like, ah, they don't care. They don't care. Okay, uh, Anna from Budapest writes in. Dear Nastasia, Dave, and Jack. Joe, you got Shafter on this one again. I mean, Joey, yeah, I said Joe, right? I've been listening to your show for over a year now and in the meantime, I'm trying to listen to old episodes as well. I still have 14 left, so I'm hesitant whether my question has already been mentioned, but I'll give it a go. Hey, if you only have 14 episodes left, I mean, we've had like 100 episodes, 100 and change episodes, right? I mean, we can we can double up on a question, but I don't think you've answered this one yet. In October, we were lucky enough to get an invitation to an Uruguayan wedding, and during a 2 week, Buenos Aires, Uruguay trip, we had a great time. My fiance had been obsessed with Dulce de Leche. by the way, I love to call it Dolce de Lace and Dolce, sorry, Dolce de

[36:46] Leche and piss off all my all my Spanish friends. But so I won't do that, though. Dulce de Leche. Before I got hooked as well while I was there. We had a chance to stay with locals who actually make their own Dulce de Leche from scratch, and they told us the recipe, but for some reason it does not work for us. We don't get the right consistency, and ours is runny instead of thick and creamy. I was wondering if you could tell me what we were doing wrong or if we were missing something or have a recipe that really works. Our recipe is 2 liters of milk, 2 liters of water, one kilo of sugar, one teaspoon of soda. We're told to heat the milk, the water, sugar together, once the liquid boils, we should put the soda in it and let it serve for 2 hours during once in a while. I use whole milk from the farmer's market. The 2nd time I even add some golden syrups, because I thought the sugar might help the consistency, but there's no difference. In fact, the one with the sugar syrup got runnier. We tried cooking for 4.5 hours and only 2 hours to see if it thickens, but it didn't. The liquid turns dark. I guess because of caramelization, but it doesn't get thick. Should we put butter in at some point? If yes, when, should we cover the pan with a lid? Should we stir it or let it simmer? What does the soda do, et cetera, et cetera. All right, look. I don't know what the water is in there for. I want, uh, you know, my typical way of making, uh, making the dulce de leche is to use the sweetened condensed milk, uh, and put it in a, uh, in a pressure cooker for between, at 15

[38:03] PSI between 45 minutes and an hour. I know that's cheating. The 1st time I ever saw someone make the real stuff. And, of course, they called it Requipe, but, you know, was in Colombia up in the in the mountains over there in Colombia. They uh, this like little old lady, you made it by just pouring milk in a pan. I was like, oh, whoa, you can do that. Here's here's what's going on with it. Now, if you look at Indian sweets, they have boiled milk

[38:26] salas, but they're not as brown as the Dulce de leche, because they're not adding that baking soda. Now, I've heard some people say the baking soda is not necessary. However, I think it is. What the baking soda is doing is it's not really caramelization that you're looking at. You're actually doing myard reactions to it with the high heat, right? And that's accelerated by adding the baking soda, which is alkaline. So the alkaline stuff is there to help the browning along as it

[38:54] cooks. The thickening of the dulce de leche is strictly due to the concentration of milk solids. And as the milk solids get more concentrated in the presence of the alkaline baking soda, it's going to get browner and browner and thicker and thicker. To give you an idea, standard, a standard practice would be to take, I

[39:13] don't, I think your main problem, you need, you need the lid off, by the way, because you need to evaporate water. I think your main problem right there is the water. I don't know why the water is in the recipe at all. I mean, typical thing would be to take for every liter of milk to take with add sugar, baking soda, take it down to about 250

[39:33] mils. And I think that's going to be your main problem. Do it on a volume basis, not on a time basis. What's up, Jack? Oh. You saw me get animated, huh? I didn't need to say anything. I have a question for cooking issues, actually. All right. So we spoke with Harold McGee on Friday. this series of recordings and he was one of our featured guys kind of telling his life story, which, by the way, really interesting. He's got Indian heritage. I didn't know that. But he sort of spoke about avant-garde cuisine and modern cuisine as

[40:07] 2 separate things. I was wondering how you see those as different. Well, Harold, you know, Harold and I have been having this discussion for a long time before, uh, you know, uh, Mirvold and Chris and, you know,

[40:23] Maxine and that whole crew proposed modernist cuisine as a title of their book. And, you know, the title of that book was proposed specifically because, um, specifically because, you know, no one wanted to use the term molecular gastronomy because everyone hates it.

[40:40] You know, everyone who does that kind of work hates it. pretty much in the US. And so prior to that, you know, uh, you know, McGee and I, a lot of times, you know, he would say avant-garde or kind of cutting edge or new or

[40:54] or whatnot, but, you know, avant-garde is always, you know, it was good because it always just means new and it doesn't imply technology.

[41:01] I mean, the important thing is that, you know, a lot of what's going on isn't technology related. Do you know what I mean? A lot of what's going on in terms of new creativity in food isn't necessarily technology. You know, Daniel Patterson doesn't use a whole crapload of technology necessarily or even hydrocolloids anymore, but you would definitely consider his cooking to be part of the avant-garde cooking. Do you know what I mean?

[41:25] So I think, you know, a lot of it has to do with the focus. I think modernist was, you know, uh, you know, that cruise stab at a word that they thought they could get to stick

[41:37] that that they, you know, my feeling is like every word that describes this is loaded. Avant-garde is loaded term. Modernist is a loaded term. You know what I mean? So they're all they're all loaded. And I prefer any of them to molecular. Fair enough, yeah. I definitely struck that term from my vocabulary. Yeah, you know what? It's like, yeah, we get it. You know, molecular is easy for people to wrap their head around and, you know, some people made some, you know,

[42:05] were able to write a bunch of articles and some chefs got some extra customers because of it, but it's just

[42:10] weak term. of like mixology, right? Mixology, I always hated mixology. Turns out that has a longer history and so I'm getting less and less. I mean, I can count on 0 fingers the number of times I've referred to myself as a mixologist, but I don't get as angry about the word.

[42:27] That's one of those words that I don't use, but I let it just flow over my head

[42:31] like water. You know what I mean? Kind of like food scientist? Yeah, that would, another one, like, it's like, you know, it would be nice if I was actually a scientist, but I'm not, you know, I'm kind of a cook.

[42:43] So, uh, but I can read science. I'm not afraid of science. Science doesn't intimidate me, but just not being intimidated by science doesn't make you a scientist. You know what I mean? fair point. Yeah. We've got time for like one more. Oh man. How many shows do I have before Valentine's Day? Uh, one next week would be be two. Two more. All right, listen. So Ben from San Francisco, I'm going to get your question next week on Valentine's because I'm not going to suggest anything

[43:12] it takes more than a week for you to do, right? Uh, so he had a question he wants to do like a blowout meal for uh, Valentine's Day. And I have a lot of suggestions as someone who's cooked many Valentine's meal for my wife. Because, you know, we've been together over 20 years. I haven't been married over 20 years. We've been together over 20 years. So I know a lot about cooking for Valentine's at different stages in your life. got a Valentine's Day idea. Yeah. Seal the deal. Cat skilled provisions. Boom. Boom. Okay, so we'll handle that one next week. Um, and man, we can tell these questions. I want to devote more time to them. Timothy wrote in about some calcium. I'll do this quick. I'll do this quick. Timothy, I hope this is still the place to email questions. It is. Otherwise, I wouldn't have it. I bought some calcium citrate after reading a New York Times article in the magazine about pre-sliced apples and was curious if you or Dave had any experience with it or any recommendations for uses beyond the obvious prevention of fruit surface oxidation.

[44:10] And secondly, they've spoken on air a few times about the effects of increased acidity and sourdough. Slackness, slightly translucent, glossy, chromic, et cetera, and was curious if I can balance that acidity by adding some calcium

[44:21] carbonate, would this totally poison the bacteria and yeast living in my dough, or would I get a product with some sourdough flavor and a texture more like bread made with regular

[44:29] yeast. All right, I'm going to knock these out bing bang. Um, the, the, the article referenced in the New York Times magazine was about companies that slice up apples and then dip them in something called nature seal, uh, that causes the sliced apples to both not turn brown and not turn mushy, uh, while they sit in your

[44:47] grocery, uh, case, you know, for, I don't know, like a 1000000000.5 years. But actually, the calcium is there. The 2 main ingredients in nature seal are an antioxidant, and it's the antioxidant in it that is preventing the surface oxidation by preventing polyphenol oxidase, which is an enzyme from breaking things, from breaking down, you know, chemicals in

[45:12] the or agglomerating them, I guess, in the Apple and making it turn brown, right? So that's an antioxidant. The 2nd main active component in the, I think it's called nature seal or fresh seal or something like that, is the

[45:24] calcium, calcium, citrate. And calcium citrate is a calcium that doesn't have a nasty kind of flavor. It's mildly soluble, but the calcium is primarily there to uh, actually

[45:37] to uh, help stiffen cross-link the pectin. So the calcium is there as a pectin strengthener. So what's going on, they soak it and the surface of the apple gets strong so that it doesn't get mushy even though it's been cut. So it's not there to prevent oxidation. The calcium is there. In that case, to prevent things from getting mushy. And you can use calcium treatment, and it's better if you also use it with some pectin methylestrase, enzyme,

[46:02] a.k.a. Novo shape. again, I don't know if anyone carries it yet, to harden the outside of things that you want to stay crisp on the outside, even if they're

[46:09] cooked, and so you can look at things like Mugaritz's ossified

[46:13] vegetables, or, you know, you could add a pinch of calcium to boiling water along with baking soda to counteract the 2

[46:20] effects, so you can get bright green, like really cooked through vegetables that aren't total mush bags.

[46:26] Anyway, your 2nd hit, can you add calcium carbonated dough? Calcium carbonate is added to dough as a pH, as a dough improver, and it will affect pH, because calcium carbonate will react with acid, whether it's lactic or acetic to form either, you know, acetate or

[46:44] a lactate, and reduce the acidity. It won't poison it. However, the whole the whole point of the sourdough is that the, it depends on when you're going to add it. sourdough starter, you don't want the pH to be too low for it to be too acidic just because it's

[47:00] going to, it's going to exhaust your, uh, your bacteria and your yeast. They won't be growing well and they won't be a healthy culture. So you want to maintain the pH at the proper level, not just for the flavor of it, but for the health of the actual starter itself. That said, yes, calcium carbonate can be used for, you know, moderate adjustments

[47:18] in dope pH. All right, now on the way out because they have 13 seconds. Eddie Shepherd writes in from the UK. And I'm gonna let everyone ponder and see what they think on it. Quick question, because I was musing on this myself today. It's not a tech question, but I hope it's okay. Of course it is. So I myself, this is Eddie writing, did a philosophy degree before I became a chef, and I know Dave studied philosophy, as did Wiley. I think also maybe Chang, too. Then this week I just met 2 other chefs that share this background, which I had previously thought was a pretty obscure route to have taken to end up as a chef.

[47:47] So I wondered what, if anything, you thought it might be that connects these 2 disciplines or why you think they both seem to appeal to some of us. Of course, there may be no connection and it's just coincidence a few of us share a philosophy background, but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, all the

[48:00] best, Eddie Shepard. Eddie, this is an interesting point. What's with the philosophy majors in the cooking? I don't know. I want everyone to think about that if you care. Maybe tweet in some stuff. Email us for next week and we'll have a discussion when Nostasia's back on cooking issues.

[48:22] Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritageradionetwork.org. HeritageRadio Network as a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.