[0:00] The following program has been brought to you by Rolling Press, a family run eco-friendly printing company. For more information, visit rollingpress.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushway, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit HeritageRadioNetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:23] Cooking issues.

[0:47] Calling your questions, too! Cooking issues. Hello and welcome to Cookie issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming live in the back of Roberta P3 here in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on the

[1:03] Harris Rio Network, every Tuesday from roughly 12. Now at roughly one, right, Jack? Yeah exactly. We're rough over here. We're rough, we're rough. Well, you know, when you're in a, you know, in an old container in the back of a pizzeria, you're, you know, you're a little rough, right? Right? Okay. Join as usual with Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez, and with a special guest who, uh, Jack, you want to explain the uh, the contest here? Yes. John Sisson? I hope I pronounce the last name, right? He won an auction at just food to spend a day with me here at Heritage Radio Network. So he's sitting in for cooking issues. Yeah, nice, nice. And John was a chef. Retire? long ago? 15 years ago now. Yeah. And where were we just shoving in for our... I was at the old town bar on 18th Street for about 10 years. Nice, nice. How are you enjoying your day so far? It's been great. I've heard 2 or 3 shows and I really enjoy anything and I love in the back of Roberta's here. Yeah, yeah, it's nice. I mean, it's interesting seeing the people eating their, Well, I guess they're just now eating their lunch. You'll see some weird folks have had we have people doing their hair. while looking at us, right? Like it's a one-way mirror. It's very strange. Very odd stuff, odd business. Okay, Dave, before we start the show, I have 2 big shout outs. John Riper listener, and he submitted a few questions, made a very nice donation to Heritage Radio

[2:22] Network. So thank you, John. And today, Yehunda Malka, and I hope I said that correctly, became a member of

[2:27] heritageradionetwork.org as well. So cooking issues fans showing their support. Beautiful. And we have a question from both of them, and it is Yahuda from Silver Spring, Maryland. Give some love for Silver Spring. You ever been to Silver Spring, Maryland? My car broke down there once. Joe has. Yeah, Joe, nice. Yeah, Joe, as usual. And Nastasia, this is your 1st full week of having a Twitter account, so what do you think? I like it. Yeah? In fact, you're looking at it right now or just texting Zappos. Is that the 1st time she said I like it on the program? It might be. It might be. Speaking of, we have some we have some nastasia related questions today. Justin Bray went into into the Twitter and said, how did Nastasia get the nickname the Hammer? What do you think? You gave it to me. Yeah, but I mean, like, what's your interpretation? Uh, because I'm tough on people? Why don't you tell them why you gave me? I know, because, you know, the whole point is that, like, we have this thing where I'm supposed to be nice to people other than

[3:23] her. And she is supposed to be mean to people. And see, this is the way most, you know, kind of business teams work, right? Where you have the one person who's always kind of, you know, friendly, right? So they never appear to be the jackass, right? And then you have the other one, the hammer, who basically is like, nah, all that stuff he said that you could have or that he was going to do. He's not going to do that and you can't have it. And she's supposed to do that, but it turns out, people, that she's actually only mean to me. So not true. Every time I try to be mean to people, you are not happy about it. And you're like, what are you doing? That's not that's not okay. Right. And also, she has all the subtlety, the fine subtlety. a hammer. No, but also, you know, hammer, boom, strength. Right? Yeah, right. What was the other one? Oh, the other one. Uh, was, I'm trying to find. Oh, yes, from John Powers Kirk, must be to you, although you erased it and said, can you tell Dave that you're smarter than

[4:22] him? But then with an emoticon afterwards? That kind of like, you know? Also, I would believe him, except he used the wrong your. Oh, bringing the hammer out. See, I was gonna see, that's why she's a hammer. I was gonna leave that out. I was leaving that out of the equation. can't be avoided. Well, how do I take that seriously? And how do you use the name the hammer unless you bring it up? Strong. You know what anastasia? accepting emoticons now? Look, Nastasia can do it. She can do what she like. She can do what she likes. But you know what? Like, uh, that is that is the occasional show of strength. It makes me appreciate the Lopez a little bit. Okay, call your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-4972128. Let's go to the question we already questions we already have from John Riper, new donor and member. Thank you. And as we said, I guess a couple of weeks ago, apples are better when picked riper, right? Wasn't that how it how it worked? Okay. Deer cooking issues peeps. I often hear chefs say that roasting meat on the bone gives it more flavor. Is that true or is it the same kind of perceived wisdom as searing the meat to seal in the juices is when and for those of you that, oh my god,

[5:27] Indie Jesus is back on Tuesdays. I know, I know. You know, I wish that everyone who could hear our voices could see the

[5:38] glory. The glory that is indie Jesus. Listen, and we're not allowed to play other people's music anymore, but I need a little bit of what's the buzz.

[5:47] Tell me what's happening going on for your little Andrew Lloyd Webber action. Maybe just for us to listen to during the break so that I can have some indie Jesus. We'll credit them or whatever we need to do for the sorry, John, for the for the tangent here, but now I got Indie Jesus on my mind. Okay. So as we all know, searing the, you know, searing the meat, uh, to seal in the juice is, is an old, an old thing

[6:10] that, uh, chefs and cooks say that dates back to uh, Justice von Liebig, and it was, uh, this is one of Harold McGee's great, uh, kind of personal hangs his hat on this fact is that he was the 1st to call, uh, what's the, what's the plate way of saying BS, just horse hockey or

[6:26] whatever? Yeah. The 1st to call crap on that. Crap on searing. And in fact, searing is just something that makes incredibly delicious crust on a meat

[6:35] and has nothing to do with sealing in the juices, right? Okay. I mean, searing, still obviously, good practice, just doesn't happen to seal on the juices. So back to the question. Just so you know, the background for John's question. Okay, I can see how the bones could affect the shape of a

[6:49] roast and influence heat transfer into the flesh, but I'm missing how a bone generates much

[6:54] flavor even to adjoining meat, let alone how a bone affects the flavor of roasted meat that's further away. John, I think you're dead right here. I think what the bone is, is the bone is a moderating, a moderating element from a heat transfer for standpoint. Also, I mean, I guess you can make an argument that the more you hack into a piece of meat to get rid of the bone, the more you spread it

[7:17] out, the less it's a whole piece of meat. Uh, but, uh, yeah, I think it's mainly, it's, in terms of actually adding flavor, other than the fact that I love Louis Prima's song, the closer to the bone, the sweeter is the

[7:28] meat. The last slice of Virginia ham is the best that you can eat. You know, aside from that, I don't think there's much to it from an actual flavor standpoint.

[7:35] And assuming equal cooking, if you took a cube of meat that was far away from the bone or close to the bone, other than the inherent muscular differences between them, I don't think there'd be much difference

[7:47] of flavor. What do you think? Yeah, see? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's, I mean, like, is that one of the things you still believe, Nastasia, in your, in your kind of, like, you know, panoply

[7:57] of, uh... Oh, you don't think about it. Okay. You know what I mean? what does it have to do with Zappos? Nothing. Has nothing to do with Zappos. I don't care. By the way, the other thing I had back on you being smarter, the smart one of the two,

[8:11] which, I'm not denying, by the way, but my feeling, I just get a secret feeling that John

[8:16] Powerskirk is, in fact, just another biscuit hater. like you. another hater of biscuits. Anyway, I actually like questions like that. I mean, and I would love someone to call in and tell me I'm an idiot moron that in fact the bone really affects the flavor, but I don't think so. Because what? It's not going to happen. Wait, oh, we're getting a picture of Indie Jesus if she's going to tweet. She's not going to get a good one, though. It looks like the Messiah is delivering pizza. Look at that. Okay, well, tweet it out. I would just like to go on record and say Dante is a really great guy. Before I do this, Jeff. Well, there's no denying that he's a, I mean, like, would Indie Jesus make him a bad person? No, no, just in case listeners think we're, you know, I just want to put it out there. Great guy. All right. I mean, I don't know the man. Other than that, I wish he would deliver me pizza. Oh, he might. He's working our station. Oh, this is awesome. Okay. Tom writes in. Hi, Joe, Joe, you get the call out first. Jack, Nastasia, and Dave, my family wants more bread than my wife and I can bake. And so she's wanting a bread machine, but these are bulky and expensive for a grad student in a small apartment. I'd have trouble justifying the purchase if the machine only makes bread. Are there other uses for bread machines like low temperature baking, carrying sous vide,

[9:23] et cetera? Alternately, could I use some other device to bake bread? And if it turns out you're a fan of bread machines, what's your favorite? Thanks, Tom. Tom, I am not a fan of bread machines. My grandpa had one and it was kind of sweet. He always used to bring over these like strange square loaves of bread with the bottom ripped out where the little mixing thing was in the bottom of the bread

[9:44] machine. I never was such a fan of my grandpa's loaves. And so I never developed a deep abiding love for bread machines. I will say this. When I was an undergraduate, one of the ways I wooed my wife

[9:58] was, I went to the thrift store and I bought, you can't buy, don't buy the old ones if you have a family because, you know, all of the insulation is made out of asbestos and the cords are made out of

[10:08] asbestos and I'm sure they're fire hazards. But they used to sell these old things called turkey ovens because the idea was on Thanksgiving that you had very little oven space and you need to cook a bunch so you would cook your turkey in this separate

[10:20] oven, and it amounts to a cross between a crock pot and an oven, and it looks like a giant Dutch oven with a plug coming out of it. And turns out they get hot enough and they can make a passable loaf of bread. You have to cut a special plate to fit into the bottom so you can pull it out in and out easy, but you can even put like a quarry tile into one if you knock the edges off the quarry tile and fit

[10:41] in, and they get hot enough to make a decent loaf of bread and they're small, somewhat portable, cheap. They can still be had at thrift shops if you want to dare the old plugs or rip the old plug off and put a new one

[10:51] on. And that's how I used to bake bread. I was an idiot, moron, and I didn't go get a stone. I used to rip the backs off of notebooks, the cardboard backs off of

[10:59] notebooks and bake my bread on noses my sheets. And yes, the bottom had a slight cardboard he taste, but I was 18. I was 18. anyway. Uh, you a fan of bread machines, uh, John? you ever use one? Mostly for the dough only. Oh, because it's a good mixer of the dough? use it for mixing dough and actually I'm a big fan of the no need recipe. Oh yeah, the Lahey, no need recipe. Yep. And that's great with the steam that's generated in a cast iron pot. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of us nowadays, a lot of us nowadays are shifting towards the super long, like whether or not you're a firm advocate, and we're talking about

[11:37] Lahey's book, what's it called, Bred My Way. And also Bitman, who wrote a bunch of articles and at times about it, and he kind of, you know, Nastasia worked for him for like 25 seconds. 30 seconds? How long was it? a month. Yeah. Anyway, so, you know, fabulous breadmaker. I mean, I mean, if anyone lived in New York prior to when Lahey opened Sullivan Street bakery, like you know that when his bakery hit, we were all like, wow, that's good bread,

[12:02] right? Right. We were all at me. Wow, that was good bread. It still is good bread. Uh, but uh, it's kind of a miracle in uh, in kind of uh, bread. I think it, you know, was a harbinger of a lot to come in the way of, not that there wasn't good bread here in New York. There was good bread in here in New York, but I mean, I think his style of bread was kind of new and we really in

[12:19] here and we, I think everyone really appreciated it. And his book made a lot of ways. But I think one of the reasons it's become so popular is that in addition to his no

[12:26] need kind of recipe, which is seen as a low work and therefore American friendly way to do things, we're all of us going to much longer, longer, longer rise times in our bread

[12:41] baking, when we have the time to do it. And so I think that most of us now, especially build into our regimens, if we're going to bake, whether it's pizza, whether it's bread, you know, we're more apt to plan a day or to an

[12:54] advance and so we can do some of these longer. It's not that they take more physical time in the kitchen. It just takes more actual clock time for these things to happen. And so I see a big shift. And I think that's one of the reasons that's become popular. But I never thought of having one just to need the dough. It's an interesting idea because you don't have to like mess with it, like you do it, because the KitchenAid makes a horrible mess when I'm... Yeah. Hour and a half you have dough and then you can bake it off in your in your turkey roaster. And your turkey roaster. You know, I bet you could probably get bread machines in the thrift store around the eBay too. Probably, right? As anyone who's ever heard me before knows. a huge fan of the buying stuff cheap on eBay and then, you know, fixing it all with duct tape. Although Nastasia, our New Year's resolution. No more duct tape. Well, no more ghetto. Yeah, no more. Yeah, yeah, right. I mean, like, we don't want to be the people whose boxes is stuck together with duct tape. We want a new box, right? Fair? Yeah, fair. Oh, speaking of which, Nastasia. we need to convince some company to let us test out a vacuum machine so we can shoot the

[13:53] cocktail book. Okay. Anyone out there runs a vacuum. I happen to like the minipeg. We never got we were supposed to shoot a thing from minipac and we never did it, right? follow up with him. Yeah, right, all right. mini pack. M Pac makes a good vacuum machine. You know, well, this is interesting. All the vacuum machines work. It's just whether or not you like the people like the programming and like the features. The mini pack, what I like about it, and we're going to talk about vacuum machines in a minute. What I like about the mini pack. And I'm not saying that they should ship me one. But what I like about it is it has a really good chamber size for the actual footprint of the vacuum,

[14:20] which to me is important because, and to a lot of our listeners is important because, you know, what you end up getting limited by in a vacuum machine is the chamber size of the vacuum.

[14:29] Anyhow, okay. Uh, you think I'd answer Tom's question? Yes. Okay. I don't think they're accurate enough to do low temperature cooking, by the way, to go back to your other

[14:38] question, and they're not also meant for, I think, complete, although they can take a merger. I'm sure the gasket in the bottom. They're probably built like a blender in that way. They could take a full thing of water. I, you know, and look, theoretically, you could probably take a bread machine,

[14:51] uh, PID control it with an external thing, like rip out the plug, put the heating element. I mean, because I've done that to, you know, the Wyatt steam table bass that, you know, we all use like the big electrics, did it, just click on and off, on and off. I modified one of those to do low temperature cooking once with a thermometer and a PID. And you could do that with a bread machine. You could probably even rip out the, you know, motor, slow it down somehow so that it could just

[15:14] stir, uh, and then put a grate over it so that you could throw bags into it, and you could theoretically hack the thing into a into a low temperature cooker. The problem is, is that the, I mean, if you look at the loaf size, it's kind of like tall and loaf shaped or round and loaf shaped, I

[15:28] think. I think my grandpa's was square, but I think they're round most of them, right? Now are they're square shaped. vessel that they bake in. They're square, either a vertical square or the horizontal square, like the traditional loaf, but the mixing doesn't work nearly as well. No, I would go vertical if I was going to get it. So what I... Yeah. But the point being that it's not a large volume for low temperature cooking. And so I think you'd have trouble, not from a power standpoint, probably, but from

[15:52] a from a cooking area standpoint, converting it to a low temperature cooking machine. anyway, okay, okay, okay. Uh, now, here, here's a, here's a long one. And I, this is uh, from, uh, Mark Krasnow writes

[16:06] in, who's moving from New Zealand to, uh, to Hyde Park, I guess, I guess, or not whether it's moving, he's going to start teaching at the CIA's new culinary science program in Hyde Park.

[16:14] And we're friends with some of the folks. And by the way, I don't know whether we, do we announce this last week that I'm actually like the French culinary or the international culinary center and

[16:23] and we have parted ways. don't think you did. Yeah, yeah. So just so everybody knows, uh, my, you know, long-term tenure at, uh, you know,

[16:32] what when I was hired was the French Culinary Institute. Like we're now no longer working together anymore, but we're all still very

[16:38] friendly, right? Yeah. Anyway. So I am no longer the director of culinary technology. But very proud of what we did there. We did a lot of excellent stuff and we wish them all the best. Okay. Anyway, uh, so if CIA wants to hire, No, I'm just kidding I just messing around. I don't know, I don't have time. No, I'm done out of time. Anyway. So Mark Raznow, I currently teach viticulture at the Eastern Institute of Technology in Napier, New Zealand. I wonder where that is. I wonder where Napier is. Do you know? No, I'm very bad with my New Zealand geography, but loves Zena Warrior Princess. Okay, I currently teach viticulture at the Eastern Institute of Technology in Napier, New Zealand, but we'll be heading to the

[17:18] States in May to start teaching the CIA's new culinary science program in Hyde Park.

[17:22] I very much enjoy your show and I love the fact that you folks know your science. Thank you. A colleague of mine, Chef Marques, has told me that he noticed the meat's fully vacuum for sous vide cooking seemed more tender to him than those with less vacuum during sealing. We recently conducted an experiment to test this hypothesis using the gluteus medius muscle, dissected from whole top sirloins. Triplicate samples were sealed at 3 different levels. Uh, in, uh, in an audi- in an audio, uh, VMS 53 sealer. which I don't have any experience with that. But they were done at a medium vacuum and full vacuum at the lightest vacuum they could do. Now, I'm not allowed to talk about any of the specifics of the paper because it's in review. So I won't do that. I'll just talk about the other parts of it, which are important to me. Anyway. One of the pieces of information we needed to write up and publish the paper was the actual

[18:09] pressure experienced by the food at different ceiling levels. I contacted the manufacturer, but they could give me no numbers as to the actual vacuum that would be affected by a pump

[18:18] strength, because it was affected by the pump strength, age, size, stuff to be sealed, leaks, et cetera. What they did tell me was that the number on the dial does not correspond to the percent vacuum, but

[18:28] is rather the number of seconds that the pump runs. Therefore, I had to check the pressures on the dial of the machine in our kitchens during ceiling. What I found was surprising at least to me. Full vacuum pressure. The dial set all the way occurred at about 30 seconds, regardless of the setting on the dial, suggesting that the pump has only one

[18:46] speed, and that full vacuum would actually be achieved at numero 30 on the 1299 setting, which is totally

[18:52] misleading, in my opinion. Okay, 1st of all, let's, let me hit that before I go on, because it's a long type thing and I want people to keep track of what's going on here. Older style vacuum machines. And we're talking about chamber ceiling vacuum machines that we use to seal foods and bags typically for low temperature cooking or if you go into a supermarket and you're buying meats that are cryo bag or whatever,

[19:11] all right? vacuum ceiling. Older style vacuum pumps have a time random and they run their pumps for a certain length of time. After that length of time, they seal the bag, let the air come back in, and it's done. Newer style vacuum. And for those ones, literally it's just a timer on it. And so you're just setting it for a length of time. Newer style vacuum machines have in them vacuum sensors that are actually sensing the level of vacuum that's being stored. They are still, however, not accurate as to what is being experienced by the food in the bag. They are accurate about what the vacuum level happens to be right where the sensor is. Now, how can those be different, right? Like, they seems like vacuum should be the same everywhere. And on an instantaneous basis, that's true. However, many of our foods have trapped air on the inside of them. Leafy greens, have lots of air on the inside of them. Anything with bones. There's lots of air on the inside of a bone. And so many of our foods have trapped air. And, you know, one of the biggest demos that we used to do for low temp sous vide at

[20:16] the, at the French culinary in our, in our, in our classes, and I think we've done it at the Harvard lecture, she throw a marshmallow into a vacuum machine, and the marshmallow expands, and everyone's like, oh,

[20:25] that's cool. the marshmallow expands because the air on the inside's expanding and it can't get out. What's interesting about the marshmallow experiment isn't that they get big. It's that they start shrinking again about 10 to 15 seconds after you start sucking the vacuum. And what that tells you is is that the air inside the marshmallow is slowly leaking out. And what that means is that the eventual pressure that your

[20:47] food will partial pressure of oxygen in an atmosphere, that your food will feel on the inside of the bag, is dependent on how much of the trapped air that you get out of that

[20:56] food, and that is not measurable by a gauge on the inside of your vacuum machine.

[21:01] Now, in your experiment, where you're using presumably whole muscle cuts, without a lot of slices in them that are not all jammed together in a bunch of different pieces and there's no bones in it, right, then you can start making assumptions like whatever the gauge is telling

[21:16] you is fairly accurate. But here's another point, right? So the gauges in a typical vacuum machine that have analog gauges are horribly

[21:26] inaccurate and horribly inaccurate. And especially when you get into the range of interest, which is where you evacuated over 90 to 90 and

[21:36] change percent of the error that's available in there. Those gauges are because there's much less for them to measure than there is for them to measure at full

[21:43] pressure. So they're horribly inaccurate in those in those ranges. And so it's difficult, not impossible, but difficult to gauge with an analog gauge exactly what's going on with

[21:52] one of these machines. Now, you could put a fairly accurate digital gauge in there and measure it. But again, it's not necessarily going to be indicative of what a customer or a user is going to experience on a piece of meat when they're doing it.

[22:06] Another thing is, is that I don't like that some machines measure in percent vacuum. Percent vacuum is a horribly imprecise term, even in the imprecise world of measuring the vacuum on the inside of a vacuum

[22:18] machine, because the closer you get to 100% vacuum, right? The more widely variant, the actual numbers that they're measuring are in terms of millibar. So it's difficult to measure that way. So instead, I like the ones that measure in millibar. Here's another thing that true that a lot of companies won't tell you unless you ask them. Some companies that have gauges on the inside of their vacuum machine will actually measure the pressure up to a certain

[22:42] level and then just throw on a timer. They're like, so, you know, the old mini packs work that way. They'll actually measure the vacuum level up to about 90 98%. And then after it's at 98% vacuum, it just starts counting off a timer. And you know how I know this because I defeated the machine, stuck my finger against the vacuum thing, let it go up to 98%, released my thumb so the air was streaming through the machine

[23:06] and atmospheric pressure and watched the numbers, keep taking on up to 99.9% vacuum.

[23:12] This is how I test these kinds of things because back then I had more time than good sense on my hands. So anyway, so that's how it works. Okay. So back to back to your question. Or back to your what you discovered. We found large and statistically significant differences in the century sensory parameters between the medium and high vacuum levels. We compared with the minimal vacuum levels, but very few differences between the medium and high vacuum samples experienced

[23:37] the same pressure. This suggests that more time at full vacuum has diminishing returns as far as improvement of sensory

[23:43] properties in a relatively non-porous food like muscle foods. Um, okay. And then I have a lot of comments on that, but I'm going to wait for a second. Your question after that is, is this mode of action typical of vacuum sealers, or do most actually have settings that correspond to the actual pressure in the ceiling chamber?

[23:58] I'm suspecting that my vacuum machine is rather old and not exactly top of the

[24:02] line, and then newer ones might be more adjustable. I figured you guys being experts on the equipment side of things might be able to help me out with this question. I think it would be very interesting to redo this study with an actual measured half vacuum around 50 500 KPA. Although I only think in millibars, which is millibars, like 1065, 1065

[24:20] millibars is atmospheric, normal, like standard atmospheric pressure, and 0 is full vacuum. So anyone that wants to discuss in a way that I understand has to go in millibars or my brain just, you know, there's only so much I can keep track of people. Okay. Back to your other statement. I, I actually believe exactly the opposite of what, uh, your paper, um, uh, what you what you're suggesting. In other words, I think that the higher vacuums actually decrease the quality of

[24:48] the foods, okay? And what you're saying is extremely interesting because, and, you know, we haven't done it in a controlled way, the way you have. But we've done it in over many iterations of the sous

[25:02] vide, low temperature class that we've taught. And what's very interesting is, is that is that the likes and dislikes, because you're talking in your thing, tenderness and juiciness, which are terms that are so loaded that I hate, I hate using them.

[25:16] And the actual, whether you like it or not, splits kind of down the line where some people really like the low

[25:24] temperature, low vacuum pack samples. In fact, ziplocs, I think are the ideal for those people. I'm in those people And then you have the camp that seems to like the higher vacuum one. And whole muscle red meat cuts are the least affected by the vacuum level in terms of sensory

[25:42] perception. Chicken and fish, like salmon, are the ones that are kind of affected the most. Here is the deal. When you, and this is why tenderness and juiciness aren't necessarily good indicators. When you chew into something that's cooked that's bagged and cooked at a high vacuum level, it explodes with juice in your mouth, and then in my

[26:06] feeling, turns to mush because it almost has a fibery characteristic that you don't necessarily get at the lower vacuum levels. So in the people that like that, that's perceived as being juicy, because you get this explosion of juice, and is tender, because it's soft, for me, it is lack of

[26:23] structure. And when the more you chew, the 1st 3 bites, 1st 3

[26:29] choose, rather, are extremely filled with juice, but the last 3

[26:34] chews are kind of dry and pulpy. So to me, I like the quality better at much lower vacuum levels.

[26:42] So it's difficult to equate, like statistic, like actual statistically measurable

[26:46] things like how much juice is expressed or how much force it takes to drive a, you know, a probe through a piece of meat, much harder to do, much easier to do that than to actually say, well, which one's better and which one's

[27:01] worse? What do you think says? Okay. And with that, let's go to our 1st commercial break, cooking issues.

[27:12] This is Fishes, Fishes, Vodka by the Meatballers.

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[28:37] For more information, visit rollingpress.com. And welcome back, calling your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-4972128. What do you like better? The crazy or the mellow? You like the mellow? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Uh, this is from Yahudo just became a member. Thanks, Yahuda, in Silver Spring, Maryland. I don't like that applause anymore, Jack, because they're really tentative about starting it up. I agree. The one that where like people are right into it, right? Or like the one class. Like the, like the, like the one like the, the sarcastic one. That one? Or just get like the golf clap in there, maybe. Get the old Bronx. You know, the old Bronx, like the, give him a raspberry, like, wah, wah. Anyway, no, but switch it up, Jack. Nostalgia, like, you know what? She's trying to live up now. Now that someone asks why she's called the hammer. She's dishing out... Always been so nice to me and now... By the way, Jack, did you get the date for Valentine's Day or what? I went dateless on Valentine's Day. Oh, man, do you have a pity party machine in there? Like a little sound effect more for that? Oh, that was you. nice All right, beautiful. Yeah, so what do you guys do for the Valentine's Day? I hope Ben cooked a good dinner for Andre there. I don't know whether I gave him good advice or not. I haven't heard back yet, which means I probably didn't, and now he's a hater, right? Right? I gave him bad advice. What did you do, Dave? I went to Del Posto Nastasia, where so I know that you weren't with your date on Valentine's Day because he was serving me dinner.

[30:17] Excellent dinner at Del Posto. As usual. Anytime Dave can tread to ruin my happiness, he does. Oh, yeah, because Mark was gonna be home with you that day. No, he was supposed to be home earlier. It is true. Oh, you know, this is such a loado. It's so crisp. I have a text. Oh, yeah, yeah. From him that says, Dave is still here. I'm not going to be back by 11. It wasn't Anthony, we have 2 tables over for me. It wasn't Anthony Weiner, 2 tables over for me, and it was the reason that they had to say. It was a guy with his nose and sees every week. sitting at a table, you know, it was like a known that I like his food. Like, he has to worry about me and stay at the restaurant. That was his excuse. Please. Oh, fair, fair. You know, I'll take that hit. I'll take that hit for Mark. Tell about Brooks's cookies. Oh, yeah. Brooks, uh, you know, look, Brooks, uh, who also signed on in Norton, congratulations, he got a book deal. I'm sure he will actually deliver his book on time. Oh, and they give me that, even Brooks said, Brooks, one of my favorite one. Yeah, he would actually, being a, you know, a punk rock musician, but, you know, I really appreciate his pastries. So here's what he did. So it's a Del Posto. You know, what do they got? They got like 8000000 stars in New York Times or something like that. And, uh, so, you know, you're eating in a relatively formal environment, right? It's probably the most formal Italian Italian-based restaurant in the city. Is that true? Or like Maria, too. There as formal? Yeah. Okay. Anyway, formal. And so Brooks comes out and it's my anniversary, like I said, of going out

[31:45] with dating my wife, you know, our relationship is 21 years old now and can drink. Uh, and uh, so he comes out and literally like takes these cookies. It puts all these like beautiful plated things on the table and then throws cookies at

[31:59] the, like explodes cookies at the table such that I'm almost positive that some cookie shards hit Anthony Wiener in the head.

[32:06] Actually, that's not true. He was like 3 tables over. I was like, Anthony Wiener. Anyway. So, yeah, so shattered these cookies and kind of broke the format, which I kind of liked. You've had that presentation, right? No, I haven't. just heard about it. And people like it, right? Because they're not expecting it. First of all, Del Posto, like Del Posto, the guy can't use a crumb scraper. The guy comes out with like a napkin folded up between 2 spoons, which means it takes him 18 freaking years to scrape the crumbs off of your table. You know what I'm talking about. Like Jen dropped a little spot of wine and they brought out the extra tablecloth that cover the one

[32:38] spot of... when that happens. Yeah, here's the thing. For all the, I understand that's part of the formal code. But you're probably making my wife feel worse that you had to bring out a bib for the

[32:48] table, then a little spot of wine. Yeah, if you spill it, then cover it. But, you know, whatever. But whatever. I like it. But my wife was like, man, I'm messy. I'm like, yeah, you are, because normally I'm the extremely messy one, let's be honest. Anyway, so like there's all this formality and then Brooks comes out and explodes cookies on the table and you're

[33:04] like, what? And then you eat the cookies. His stuff's good Oh, yeah, great for him. like all props. props, props, props. Okay. Dave and Dave and Crew, because it just, you know, didn't want to get in trouble with the with the no Joe. So instead of just, you know, saying it all out, just said, and crew. Hey, crew, how you doing? Anyway, this is Yhuda. I'm currently transitioning between careers. I've been working as a high school teacher for the past 7 years and I'm now back in school for something totally different. While I was still teaching, a friend and I separately yet simultaneously began teaching ourselves how to be better cooks, mostly via

[33:35] process of experimenting with recipes and techniques are seen beyond our skill set, while also focusing on fundamentals of culinary knowledge. Joined by a mutual love for cooking, especially for others, I guess cooking for others, that means nothing. Who likes cooking for themselves, really? Do you like cooking for yourself, Don? I do actually. Really? Yeah, I'm thrifty and saves a lot of money. Oh that's true. But I mean, like, you know, whenever my wife's on vacation, I just make poached eggs. Like if my kids aren't around, like if I'm alone, it's just like poached eggs. And not

[34:01] even like, you know, maybe it's because my wife doesn't like poached eggs, but I like, I'll sit and like poached eggs. Weird, post eggs, toast, toast on sauerkraut, always. So you just eat push eggs. Toast and sauerkraut. That's it. And weird. I'm a weirdo. forget about it. Okay. Okay. especially for others. We started a small catering outfit. We have done in-home multi-course dinners as a hobby slash side business, interpreting dishes from the books from books like the French laundry, which, by the way, you know, people forget

[34:28] how, like, revolutionary the French laundry cookbook was back when it came out. The original French laundry cookbook, like in in English for America, yeah, the giant one. Yeah. In English for people at home, like they were very in American English anyway, very few books prior to

[34:46] that, that were literally, what was going on in the recipes of, you know, at that time, probably the top kitchen in the entire

[34:55] country and not at all dumbed down. Like you had to get the anchovies. You had the bony anchovies, you had to soak the anchovies and milk. Then you had to, you know, rub the answer. you know what I mean? It's like, and it was all the steps. And so I think people tend to forget, you know, kind of how groundbreaking that was. Anyway, uh, Alinia, uh, also excellent, interesting book, uh, published book, you know,

[35:19] what Grant almost, I guess, self-publishing that or get, or doing it himself and then getting it published, right? I mean, I think he did a lot of, not in the way that, uh, in Mirabold. anyway, whatever. Monest cuisine, everyone knows greatest cookbook achievement of old times. Uh, and others for kosher uh, dinners, uh, who would otherwise, uh, diners who would never otherwise get the chance to try the kinds of foods found in those books in those restaurants.

[35:38] We are still learning, isn't everyone, hopefully, and that's that's so true. If the day you stop learning. hopefully you don't stop learning until you die and hopefully you die only a long time from now. Okay, and love your show. Both of us had questions answered last week. I'm now working during the day managing the kitchen of a different business while attending college at night, which brings me to my current list of questions.

[35:57] Neither of us has the time or money to attend culinary school. Well, I can, to an extent, teach myself to cook better by the very act of cooking more,

[36:05] making mistakes, and trying again. I know that I can never effectively run a busy restaurant kitchen. Is that organization and efficiency taught mostly in school or on the job, what would you recommend I do to build these skills on my own? Well, it's very, well, you can learn to cook on your own, but it's very difficult to build the actual skills of working in a restaurant when you say on your

[36:29] own, literally on your own. Uh, I mean, working in a restaurant can build those skills or going to culinary can build those skills. I mean, I think one of the reasons to go to culinary school. And, you know, uh, Dave Chang, uh, you know, my, my, my business partner is, uh, you know, he's, he's anti-everything. Dave Chang is mainly anti-the idea that a whole young generation of cooks goes to cooking school

[36:52] and uh, I'm paraphrasing him now, but they go to cooking school and then they think that uh, all of a sudden they're going to become a celebrity chef and get rich and then not have to work the hours on the

[37:01] line. And that's not true. And somehow people think that cooking is somehow glamorous when in fact it's grueling. Back me up on this, John. It certainly is. Yeah. So, and this might be interesting for you as well as a professional that, you know, weigh in on this. But I think school can serve a function for someone who is a career changer who just wants, who has the money,

[37:27] right, and just wants to jump in, and your goal isn't to be a line cook for 5 years and then do X, Y, and G.

[37:35] Your goal is to be an owner sooner rather than later and to never spend all that time on the line. Maybe going to cooking school is a good bet for you or as a parent buying, you know, a younger kid, a career.

[37:47] I see it as can be a valuable, uh, valuable thing that way. Now, they, a lot of the chefs that I'm friends with who spend a lot of time saying that you don't need to go to culinary

[37:58] school. The interesting thing about them is that to a person, they've all gone to culinary school. Uh, in, in the generation I'm talking about now, which is, you know, 25, let's say 25 to 42. That age range. Like most of these people who are really successful actually have gone to culinary school. I think in the generation just above them, you have a lot of success stories that haven't, who just came up through normal kind of apprenticeship situation. But really in that age range, most of the high flyers that I know of, they go to culinary school. But, you know, that said, every cook on

[38:31] Earth respects someone who just shows up in a kitchen and says, I will do whatever.

[38:36] I will work as hard as I can. All I want to do is work. I know nothing, you know everything. Let me learn your way. If you do that, walk into a kitchen, very few people will turn you away. Some people might say, I don't have room for you now, but if you use those exact words, they'll say, I have a slot coming up in X amount of months, especially if you come recommended from

[38:54] someone, like you can find someone that will vouch for you that you're a hard worker, and you just show up, but you have to be willing to eat

[39:02] crap. I mean, really, not literally, but, you know, figuratively, you know,

[39:07] you have, right, John, I mean, this is how this works. Grueling. It's... Yeah. Long hours on your feet and takes endurance. Yeah, and you know, yeah, you know, those Brussels sprouts, after the 1st couple of cases, it's not fun anymore, right? And you still have to do them, right? I mean, and so anyway, so yes, you can learn, you can learn to be one of the world's greatest cooks, you know, on your own through reading,

[39:36] and, you know, but in terms of working in a restaurant, I think culinary school or actual working in a restaurant is, you know, kind of kind of necessary.

[39:44] It's a different skill. Cooking and running a kitchen and a crew aren't necessarily the same skill. They're intertwined, but they're not the same skill. I mean, I know plenty of people who are great cooks. Like, I don't want to run a kitchen. I can't run a kitchen. Do you know what I mean? I mean, I think I'm a good cook. I don't think I'm necessarily be great at running a kitchen. You know what I mean? Okay. Uh, 2nd question, for you or any chefs who might be listening or in fact sitting sitting with us right now. Have you or would think what I said before makes sense? Okay. Have you or anyone you know, ever worked in a kitchen that wasn't up to your own personal standards, but felt stuck there due to a lack of better options? As an example, I work somewhere that advertised fresh fish and pasta, but sold 4 day old fish and cooked their pasta in lukewarm water. How does one put up with that kind of frustration and is it a common occurrence? Yeah, people are bad. Cooks are bad. Most people are bad at what they do. The better you get at whatever you do in life. whatever you do in life. I don't care what it is, whether you're scientist, writer, jockey, whatever. Like, it turns out that most people, no matter what they choose to do at a profession, are bad at

[40:51] it, because they don't care. It's just because they don't care. And so there's a lot of people who are very bad, uh, very bad cooks and they they do very bad things to the food or just not as good at things to the food. So I don't know how to deal with that frustration. If the person, if you're learning something valuable, then learn what's valuable and don't get poisoned by the other bad things that are going

[41:09] on, be my suggestion. If it's so bad that you feel that you can't in good conscience, serve the food that you're working on to people, you have to leave. What do you think, John? I agree with that I mean, it's tough, right? I mean, a lot of bad cooking goes on, a lot of things that you disagree with. You got to be true to yourself and your own standards. And if the restaurant doesn't meet it. it's time to move on Right. If you're no longer proud of what you're working on. You have to go. You know what I mean? So, I mean, there's a fine line. And I think what I'm reading into what you're saying is that maybe you made a commitment to a place or to a person or to yourself that you were going to hold

[41:46] on to a job for a particular length of time. Uh, and that's also important. It's important to hold to those commitments in life and to people that you're working with so that you can prove that you can have stick tutorness and not be flighty. So it can be a difficult decision to make. So it's not something to quit a job isn't necessarily to be taken lightly. especially in this business. Someone who flits around a lot is not seen as being reliable, you know, if they know your complete work

[42:13] history. And if you're moving around, if you have a different job every, every, you know, every month, people are going, well, why can't, why don't you want to stay in one place? What going on here? You know what I mean? The exception being some of the very, very high-end restaurants that nowadays, it's popular for people to go around at the very high-end restaurants and collect dodges in them so that they can say they've worked in them. And that's a separate thing, and I think everyone knows and kind of respect what's going on there. But if you're not holding down the same job for more than a month in a row, people are going to start asking you why. And so you have to weigh in your heart whether or not the commitment you made either to that restaurant or to yourself is, you know, weigh it against the fact that you're not proud of what you're putting out there. And if you're not proud of what you're putting out there, figure out a way to get out of it as fast and as cleanly as possible, I

[42:57] think. But you should always be proud of what you're working on or, you know, because all you have is your all you have is your output. You know, all you have is what you do and trying to do the best job that you can do at all times. That's all you have. What else is there? Uh, okay. Finally, and thanks for letting me take up so much of your time. Is there any good way to keep leftover fried chicken crispy, assuming fried temperatures are all spot on, and as much oil as possible is removed post-fry? Would silica packs work to absorb excess moisture or does the

[43:26] coating become soggy, not due to moisture in the air, but from oil seeping out of the meat back into the crust? And thanks for being a great resource and for your time. Okay. It's not the oil. It's moisture. So there's a number of things. First of all, the question is, when you say keeping fried chicken, I'm assuming that you don't mean putting fried chicken in the fridge and then taking the fried chicken out later. I'm assuming hot holding fried chicken after frying for service in a catering environment. That's what I'm that's what I'm taking it because there is no way that I know of to short of under frying and then refrying for service a cold

[44:03] thing and it's still never 100%. You know what I'm saying? I'm going to assume that you don't mean a reheat off of something is done, right? So that's a separate question and we could talk about that later if you write back and that's what you're interested in. Hot holding fried chicken. Your enemy isn't oil. I mean, initially your enemy is oil, but the way the oil uptake works in frying is this. You fry something, and the oil is primarily on the outside, although there is some seepage into the

[44:29] crust, even initially, and that seepage is related to a number of things, the temperature of your frying, the temperature of the batter when it went in, how porous the batter

[44:38] is, and what the batter is made of, and whether you have any barriers in there like methyl cell, but no one hardly ever does, or crisp coat or some other starts. Anyway, there's number of factors. But most of the oil that's absorbed by the product is actually absorbed when you pull it

[44:49] out. And what happens is, is that as you're frying, you're seeing boiling water and the boiling water is rushing out, forming the steam and the violent bubbling that you see in frying, which is why a high temperature is

[45:00] important so that you're constantly having boiling happen during the thing. That boiling out of water forms voids, steam, and air pockets in your crust, and in the surface of your food, right? And as the food cools down. Oil is absorbed into those voids as the steam vapor contracts, turns back to moisture, and there's these voids, the oil is absorbed in. So your opportunity to get oil off the surface of the food is only during the portion where the food is coming right out of the oil and when it's hot, which is why good fry practice is to pull the baskets out of the fryer, let them drip just so you don't spray oil everywhere, and then give it those violent couple of clack, clack,

[45:42] clack, or not violent. don't want to hurt the product. But whatever the product can withstand, You give it some, some, some pan. I'm doing that saute motion, you know, that like, that flipping motion, not flipping. It's hard for me to describe, but you shake the basket a bit and you tilt the basket up on its corner so that all the grease comes out and all drips off

[45:59] that thing in the basket. Yeah, you know, get it. sometimes you can get it in the air. Depends on how fragile the product is, and get that oil off right away because as soon as it starts cooling down, you've lost your opportunity.

[46:09] So that's where oil absorption works in. But crust sogginess isn't greasiness is due to having excess grease in the in the batter. And as it cools, you'll notice the greasiness becomes more apparent, right? It's not that they're right there that the crust is changing. It's that greasiness becomes more apparent as it cools, especially when things get actually

[46:29] cold and you've used a hydrogenated fat, a solid fat, you'll get greasy mouth feel in what

[46:34] you're in what you're eating. This is necessary for foods like donuts. So a hot donut fried in regular oil is going to taste good because all hot donuts taste good. All hot fried things taste good. Even bad hot fried things taste okay when they're hot. But as it cools, a donut fried in liquid fat will taste greasy, whereas a donut fried in hydrogenated fat will taste like a donut, because it's supposed to be a little solid like that.

[46:57] Whereas a potato chip fried in a solid fat will taste, like, kind of

[47:02] slick waxy in a bad way, if you, if you fry it in a, and it cools down, right? Which is why they had problems with alestra, because in order to get alestra to not run through your system and out onto your underwear without any intervention, they had to use hydrogenated

[47:16] alestra on potato chips. This is a wow, by the way, for those of you that don't remember Elestra. And when they did that, they altered the mouth feel of the potato chips. That was the reason people could taste the difference in alestro potato chips, not because alestro itself had a bad taste. So back to your problem. So when something cools down or is held for a long time, oil can become a problem that way. Also, it's easier to detect flawed oil when the stuff starts cooling down a little

[47:39] bit or when it's been sitting around. The best test for flawed oil and that when you're frying is to always keep a cube of bread near where you're working and periodically fry a piece of plain white, like

[47:52] airy, non-crusty bread, flavorless bread in the oil. Why? Because the bread's going to cool off fast, you can eat it fast. Bread's gonna absorb a boatload of oil, and you will be tasting primarily the state of your oil at any given time.

[48:06] So you should always, like when you're using a fryer or anything, and you have any questions,

[48:11] dipping your finger and tasting the oil, if it's cold, is fine, but it, a really good test is frying a piece of bread in it. Okay. Now, uh, so the real enemy to a crust on hot on hot holding is moisture migration from the food into the crust, especially if you're packing things closely

[48:28] together. You're going to basically re-steam the crust. The crust is going to lose its crispness and that's where you're going to get a lot of your losses. If you want to get around that, especially in a catering environment, I recommend you move to a piece of technology called a CVAP oven. Even though all of my friends at CVAP have since moved on to other things, because Winston, the owner of the company, who's the guy who was friends with Colonel Sanders and invented the pressure

[48:50] fryer and invented the hot holder for Kentucky fried chicken. Literally, this is a piece of equipment, the CVAP oven, and the CVAP holding oven that was invented for your problem to keep fried chicken crispy. What it does is, is it has a Bane Marie in the bottom of it that supplies a certain amount of moisture, and then it has a heating element in the cavity, and by adjusting the temperature differential between the heating element and the cavity, and the

[49:13] Bane Marie, they can adjust the humidity of the oven, and they can, what they say is they adjust the, I'm making quote marks with my

[49:20] fingers. The crispiness level of the food. And although it sounds hokey, and to reading his documents online, it does sound hokey, crap works. I've seen it many times. I've seen them hold Kentucky fried chicken in it for hours on end without bringing the inside horribly

[49:35] overcooked and without losing the surface of it. I've seen them hold crispy fried tortilla chips in it just as a demo to prove that they could do it. So CVAP oven is your way to go on that. I don't know if their patents have run out. Otherwise, I would think of a way to hack one on my own, but they're relatively inexpensive compared to something like a combi oven.

[49:53] Anyway, I hope that's helpful and they're going to kick me off here, but on the way out, I want to say that the guys at, by the way, you

[50:00] UC USC, right? Use them to Southern California, they're the ones that you always make wisecrats about. Well, someone there in UCLA, they're developing a pill, uh, and you can look this up online that you can take it. And it's a really new, interesting combination of nanotechnology and enzymes where they're packaging multiple enzymes in like a little nanoparticle that you

[50:18] swallow, and it wipes out the alcohol. So it's literally a buzzkill pill. So you can go out drinking, and then before you get in your car, you can pop this buzzkill

[50:28] pill, and it just, it's like having like 5 livers. Anyway, I can't wait. It's going to make it awesome. cooking issues.

[50:44] 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 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.

[51:20] Goodbye.