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[0:52] Calling your questions, too! Cooking issues. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cookies. Whoa! Nice. Nice. Coming you live. Are we are we in Bushwick or Bushwick, Brooklyn? What is it? The 2nd one. And you know it's Bushwick because someone's jackhammering on our roof. Don't worry, it's just a radio station. How you doing, Stas? Okay. That's crazy. You hear that? I feel like this might be like, you know, Yosemite Sam's gonna come falling through the ceiling. Yeah. Joined as usual with Jack and Joe in the engineering booth. How you guys doing? Hello. Doing pretty good. Yeah, nice. All right. Going to questions two. 718-4972128. 7184972128. We might even be able to hear you over the jackhammering. Maybe. Maybe. So I was reminded by something. I biked here, and again, being out of shape and old. It's my 42 now. Just have my birthday. Yeah. Besides being out of shape and old and having someone jackhammer above my head. I was thinking about biking. We saw someone last week and biking through the streets in New York. and they were on the ground in a bloody pile, holding their head, rolling and writhing in pain, surrounded by a group of

[2:11] people waiting for the ambulance to show up. And what's the moral of this? Wear a freaking helmet, people. If you're out there biking, wear a freaking helmet. I don't care how important your hair is to you. You know who I'm talking to, Brooklyn hipsters. Put on a helmet. What do you guys think of an engineering booth about helmets? I wholeheartedly agree. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's a bad look. like bleeding out of your head. That's pretty bad look. Yeah, it's a terrible and I'll tell you what. Like everyone they move here from wherever they came from, right? Like they go to college or they do whatever they're going to do. They move to New York and they think that biking here is just like biking when they were kids back in like

[2:52] east wherever they come from. You know what I'm saying? And here you will get hit by a car, you will get doored. Something awful will happen to you. You'll get your head cracked open, and you might even die. Where a freaking helmet. See, I drive, so I know exactly how crazy people are in cars. That's a good point. Well, you know, I'm that kind of guy. Like when I'm a pedestrian, I hate bikers in cars. when I drive a car, I hate pedestrians, but I just, I hate whoever I'm not at the time, but I try to be polite on the road.

[3:20] Okay, uh, Michael Barfus writes in with 2 questions. One, hilarious and the other one kind of normal, right? I have to say, I really shouldn't bring it up because you guys at home can't do anything about it, but this hammering over my head is really driving me bananas. at the dentist. This is what it's like for you at the dentist. Nastasia, by the way, I hope that, I mean, obviously her dentist is not a listener to the show. But, you know, Nastasia's dentist is, I swear to God,

[3:46] I used car salesperson. She will sell Nastasia any line of dental work. Anything, anything like, she's like, oh, you know what? You need to have all your teeth ripped out, and then the exact same ones put back in. You're gonna be under. Trust me, I did that work. You owe me a lot of money. And Stas is like, so I was like, hey, it's no problem. I got download shirts. It doesn't matter that, like, only one tenth of all this crap that's happening is covered and that you're paying for this lady's kids' college. She has had a new baby. Oh, nothing she needs more than Nastasia's money. And stuff she's like, but she's so nice. She's so nice. She has small hands. She's Japanese. What does that have to do with anything? I like, you don't want big meat hooks in your mouth? Okay, whatever gets the job done, Stas, you know, someone's going to take my teeth out and drill holes with me. worried about the thickness of their digits, if you know what I'm saying. Anyway, Michael Barfitz writes in. First, I live in Ohio and have pretty hard well water drawn straight from limestone bedrock. I don't know its exact composition, but it's probably mostly calcium carbonate with enough iron to make it taste kind of bad until the iron oxidizes, precipitates

[4:47] out, and stains everything, at which point the water tastes fine. I don't know, the water is kind of a pain in the butt. How is your water in California? Awful, awful. Like sulfury awful or like hard, awful? Like, did it lather when you were in this shower or no? No, no lather? And that's about as much information I want about that as possible. Okay, uh, after reading your post on Niximilization, Niximilization, by the way, is the process whereby you take

[5:11] calcium, uh, hydroxide, uh, and uh, Cal, and you uh, cook corn with it, and it breaks down the, the outside, the endosperm of the corn as well as uh, doing a bunch of awesome other things like making it taste awesome and making the hydrocollids out of the endosperm that make

[5:26] masa such an amazing thing. Anyway, and freeing up nais and a whole bunch of great stuff. Anyway, after reading your post on miximalization, I put 2 and 2 together and realized it was not my excellent timing that made my broccoli so firm and green, but the hard water I was boiling it in.

[5:39] And the reason why, for those of you that don't know, and this is going to come up later, is calcium cross-links with pectin. And when that happens, the pectin becomes much more stable towards

[5:52] being broken down in high temperatures. When the calcium crossings with the pectin forms, they, you know, they crossing pectin, then like even boiling it for what would normally make a mushy product, right? Because pectin is the main thing causing the kind of crunchiness and the hardness of vegetables. If you stabilize the pectin, it keeps stuff crunchy longer, right? Anyway. And the other interesting thing about it is that so if you're using calcium hydroxide, 2 things are working against each other,

[6:20] right? You're supposed to add a pinch of baking soda to water. If you're having problems with your vegetables turning, um, your vegetables turning, uh, what's the word I'm looking for, brown, right? Because the chlorophyll is getting ruined, um, So what happens is, is that's accentuated by acidic things.

[6:35] So you had a pinch of baking soda to your water. The water becomes slightly basic and that preserves the green. So you get bright green vegetables. The problem is, is that basic conditions also destabilize pectin, make it break down much faster. So the problem is you get mushy products. So mushy broccoli, if you add baking soda to your water. If you use calcium hydroxide instead of baking soda, the calcium, by cross-linking with the pectin, cancels out the problem that you have with the basicity of

[7:01] the normal basic things like baking soda, because calcium hydroxide is basic. And therefore, you can have green things that aren't mushy by cooking them with a pinch of calcium, hydroxide

[7:10] of the water. Anyhoo, anyhoo. So the calcium in Michael's water is causing his broccoli to not go crappy. That was a long way of saying that. Just explain what the hell we're talking about here. Okay. This made me wonder if I've effectively got less basic lime water on tap. Well, you have water high in calcium anyway. Uh, what sort of benefits for being prepared in or with hard water and uh, uh, what other sorts of stuff benefits from being prepared in or with hard water? And what should I do about the iron in it? I know I'll definitely only make pickles with hard water in the future. Okay. Well, I mean, we all know hard water, it depends on how hard your water is, right? So, I mean, the obvious thing about additional, and it also depends. In your specific case, your hardness is coming from calcium. So one of the benefits you're going to get from it is increased firmness in vegetables that are boiled in it, okay? Even though as you're boiling it, so the calcium is kind of precipitating out. And so you have those probably. I'm guessing those nasty rings around the outside of your pants. I actually forgot to look up how to get rid of the iron in a normal way because I was focused mainly on

[8:18] the calcium. You had me with calcium and then my brain went on Fritz and I didn't look up the iron. But, um, the obvious problem, right? So, I mean, you probably know what the problems are. But the obvious problem is things that you want to get really soft. things like beans, right? So, uh, beans have the problem that, uh, you know, you're trying to get them

[8:37] soft, and if you add anything that contains calcium to the water or too much calcium to the water, the beans might never, ever go soft. And the same thing happens if you accidentally if you let's say you're making baked beans. And like me, you like a little bit of vinegar in your baked beans that have that

[8:52] acidity and you make the mistake, as I only ever made once, of adding the acidity early in the cook process. And then you realize your beans never go hard. You ever have anyone try to make baked beans for you. don't like baked beans, right? Because you got brain problems. Are you like, you ever had anyone give you one that was like hard? Because they added the acidity early in the cook process or they cooked with really hard water or even worse, both. So, I mean, that's obviously a detriment. But the other place where I see you have a really, really large advantage with hard, hard water. And if it's basic, basic water is in noodles, and in some bread formulation. So making something more basic and increasing the calcium and other minerals in water, tends to increase the tenacity of gluten

[9:37] structures, right? So you get firmer does. Now this is especially true when you're looking at noodles, specifically Chinese noodles. So if you if you do the research on consway, which is a mixture of, I think, potassium, uh, carbonate and sodium by carbonate, or some mixture of those things, basic things,

[9:54] uh, often with calcium. These are added to noodles to enhance the gluten structure of the noodles, which makes them more elastic and stretchy. And also, in certain cases, makes them kind of a bright yellow. So if you see those kind of, they're called yellow alkaline noodles, and they're made by adding conway. However, the speculation is that this technique derived from trying to mimic the product that was made from people who had wells with exceedingly hard and alkaline

[10:20] water. So you could see a significant benefit in certain types of

[10:25] noodles and also certain types of bread does. Now, if your water is too hard, obviously, you can, you know, go too far over that edge and it's no longer an advantage anymore. But I would guess your main points of diversion in terms of being lucky with your calcium water is things like vegetables. Also preserving fruits and preserving tomatoes, I would suspect that if you use a canned tomato, if you have enough calcium in your water, you might not need to add as much calcium chloride or other form of calcium to the

[10:58] to the mix to get the tomatoes to stay hard. And this is going to dovetail nicely with another question we have later in the show. But you might also, you know, be able to uh, do things like have Barry stay together better if you're making preserves out of them, assuming that you have extra water added to it, which you typically wouldn't,

[11:17] but but there you have it anyway. In fact, uh, anyway, I'll do your 2nd question and then I'll go to the other question based on

[11:24] Barius, which I was going to handle later. What do you think? Good? Yeah. I have to I have to always, I never know, like, whether I've been talking for one minute or 15 minutes, so I have to look over it. This is what I'm doing. I always ask nostasia whether that's okay or not, is because I have no idea what I've just said. So I have to ask her whether it's okay. have to look up for my shopping and say yes. So what are you shopping for today? anything good? I'm not shopping. Okay. If anyone out there, which I doubt, works for the Zappos Corporation... Oh my gosh, I've never bought shoes from them. This is what I want someone to confirm. I want someone to break whatever sort of customer confidentiality you have. And just send us an email says, yes, we've received the orders. Yes, my name is not on file. Payless. I told you. Okay, Michael, 2nd question. Second, how safe is it to use transglutaminates in 1st aid? This is a hilarious one, right? So transgutaminates. I'll just finish the question first. I'm going to try to not go tangential until I finish the question. It's my 42-year-old resolution to try to not go hyper tangential before finishing the question. Oh, 42. On the one hand, it seems like it could be good. quickly closing cuts and preventing them from easily being pulled back open. On the other hand, it seems like it could be extremely bad, potentially sealing in anaerobic

[12:37] bacteria, or else short circuiting the natural healing process and causing terrible or awesome scars. I guess it depends on, you know, your view of terrible or awesome. You know, there's people who make scars on purpose, like a form of, you know, body art there. I don't expect it to be replacement for stitches if they're needed, but ordinary wince and slap a

[12:57] bandit on it cuts heal well enough without professional attention. So can it be done safely? And if so, is it worth the effort? Thanks. I love the show. I've been tearing through the archives. Okay, so for those of you, we haven't talked about it in a while, so I'll mention what it is in case you don't know what it is. Transglutaminase is an enzyme that cross-links proteins, okay? So it literally takes 2 amino acids from 2 different protein

[13:24] chains and covalently bonds them together to form a kind of protein

[13:29] aggregate polymer, right? It's covalent bond. It not an ionic thing. Once it's made, it can only be broken physically. Even cooking it, right? Doesn't denature or with denatures of protein, but it doesn't break that bond. So, um, what, uh, you know, what 2 things were joined by transgutaminates let no one put asunder. You know what I'm saying? Anyway, so our bodies have transglutamine as in them. This is a natural part of your body. In fact, blood clotting, to go back to wound stuff, blood clotting, what happens

[14:01] is, is there's an initial thing that you form thrombin, right? Uh, how does it work? You have fibers, right? Thrombinax on it, it forms these aggregates of fibers. Then those aggregates of fibers are glued together into big clots by

[14:15] transluthaminace in your in your blood system, in your body, in the presence of calcium. So going back to calcium again, transputaminating your body is dependent on calcium for proper activation. Okay? Now, microbial transcontaminates, which is meat glue, which is the stuff that we use to bond different pieces of meat together.

[14:36] One of the amazing things about it. other than the fact that it's not derived from an animal, is that it, in fact, it's kind of unusual, right? To have something that's derived from a microbe that actually bonds things together instead of breaking the part. I haven't thought about it, but most of the stuff that I get actually breaks stuff apart. Huh. Anyway, uh, I get what? And what? Oh, tangentos. I thought you said something far more inappropriate. Anyway, so microbial transplutaminates can bond stuff together without calcium. So, the theory is then, can you use this thing to bond your skin together? And, well, the idea, I mean, you're not going to have a problem with anaerobic stuff. But the idea, I mean, people have asked me before, and it's hilarious, but also kind of like horrifying that you would take this

[15:22] powder for cooking and like kind of glue yourself together with it because everyone always asks when we're teaching meat glue, like whether or not it will glue your skin

[15:30] together. And the joke we always make is that, well, if you sand your forehead until it's bloody, and then sand your hand till it's bloody, and then bandage your hand to your

[15:40] forehead and let it sit there without moving for 4 hours, then yes, you could probably buy it. But then you could always rip it off, you know, because the bond that you make with transgutaminates is usually only as strong as the bond between 2 adjacent pieces of muscle,

[15:52] right? It doesn't bond it usually as strong as, you know, the whole muscle, unless it's in the presence of a lot of salt, et cetera. whatever. So, and also in microbial transgutaminates and stuff that you buy, Activa, especially if you get the RM, there's milk protein in it, which you don't want to like have in your

[16:09] wound, all this other stuff, although you can get one with straight gelatin. But, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. So I went and looked it up, and there's a company that in, I believe, you know, sometime in the early mid 2000s called Lifebond, L-I-F-E, B-O-N-D, um, is making some goop,

[16:26] some, uh, some transgutaminates gelatin goop. And they say that it's almost completely biomimetic. I, well, the word is self-evident, biomedic, and it's an awesome word, even Stas is sitting there going, biomedic, biomedic. In her head. I can see you're saying it. So like, that's, I don't know what kind of robot voice it is anyway. Uh, they're making this goop that you can put into your wounds and um, and actually it speeds healing. One of the things they're looking at is in battlefield situations where you need to like stop big wounds quickly and put things together in a way that can

[16:59] stop like high pressure arterial bleeds. They're working on it. So, uh, it's very interesting. You know, and I'll read you from uh, from their patent, most high pressure hemostatic devices currently on the market, and high pressure hemostatic devices mainly means can stop blood in a high pressure, like an arterial situation. That's translated right down. Uh, or sideways. Currently on the market, are nominally, nominally, if at all, adhesive. And their point is that transglutaminates plus gelatin is adhesive to your tissue, massage making a nasty face here. Good examples of such devices are quick clot ACS, and heem con bandage. The 2 hemostag devices currently supplied to members of the U.S. Armed Forces. The mineral zeolite crystals and quick clot, uh, sponge cause absorption of the water molecules in the blood that's concentrating the clotting flactors and accelerating blood clotting.

[17:51] So they're literally putting like an absorptive powder on you. They just like soaks it up and causes quick clotting, hence the name quick clot. Uh, the kitasan mixture that makes up heemcon has a positive charge that attracts red blood, red blood cells, which have a negative charge.

[18:05] The red blood cells are drawn into the dressing, forming a seal over the wound and stabilizing the wound surface. So these guys at LifeBond have anticipated your question and are now making transgutaminates-based wound dressings, and we'll see how that goes in the future. But do not put Activa RM in your cut before you slap a

[18:22] Bandit on it. Or if you do it, do not say that I recommended that you do so. Let's go to our 1st commercial break.

[18:49] Hi, I'm Steve Jenkins from Fairway Markets. I've devoted my idiot career to the old ways, the old recipes, the old tools, the old geography of where serious foods come from for centuries, and I've strived to make these wonderful things available to New Yorkers for 37 years, so it's a

[19:09] fete accompli for us to support heritage radio network. And I hope you will too, and I hope you'll keep tuning in. For more information, please visit Fairwaymarket.com. You in such trouble. Are we back? We're back. And welcome back. I never know because the jack will always throw in like, and like, I'll sit there and I'll gear into it. I'm back. And then like it's like, oh, it's like, hey, I'm Jack. Maybe I should bring it back every time I'd say, and we're back. And then you can come in, you know? Hey, I want to give a quick shout out to Ben Lambert, though, who just became a member mere seconds ago. Cooking issues listener. Thanks, Ben. Thanks. And you know what I was looking up? Probably no relation. In fact, I'm sure no relation. Lambert radiating bodies. No relation, I'm sure. You were just looking that up? Well, yeah, in fact, I can talk about it a little bit. Nice. Uh, so, um, is those you that listen to the show might be aware. We're working on a new product that's going to have the name, some form of Sally something, probably. And it forms as a little handheld salamander, right? And what it does is it diffuses and converts the flame from a torch into mostly

[20:26] IR infrared heat. It makes it very, very even, and the advantage of this unit is that it's on almost instantly because the screens that make up the unit have a very, very low thermal

[20:39] mass. So it turns, you know, cherry red almost instantly, like a couple seconds, right, Stas? Anyway. But when I had the initial people testing it, they were having some sort, they were having problems using it because they weren't thinking about, and we're going to do a video about this. Maybe I'll even post it on the blog eventually. We're shooting some tomorrow. The problem with it is, is that people are holding the unit as far away from the food as they would hold a normal salamander, right? And the fact of the matter is is that you have to hold it much closer than you would a normal salamander. And the reason, the reason for it, you know, is that most people aren't thinking about how heat from something like a salamander actually works.

[21:23] So for those of you that don't have a salad man or don't even know what the heck I'm talking about. A salamander is a form of a commercial broiler, right? And the way that most commercial salamander's work is they have a series of bricks that have a bunch of holes in them.

[21:38] Gas comes out of the bricks, and through the little holes, ignites and forms an infrared, like an infrared kind of plane of heat, right

[21:48] there where the brakes are. And the thing is very long, usually, like on the order of 3 feet is typical for a salamander. And I'd say the bricks are maybe 6.5 , 7 inches across. Okay? So you have a strip of bricks that's about 3 feet long and 7 inches across. Now, the difference now, so take that, right? And so a long time ago back in the days when Michael Batterberry was still with us, and I was writing a lot for food arts, that, you know, for those of you

[22:16] that don't know who Michael Batterberry is, go and look them up right away, he and Arianne were like, you know, huge influences on my life in terms of my career and a lot of other people who

[22:24] are in the food business. You know, they've done a lot of good that they don't bother taking the credit for. Anyway. So back when I was writing for food arts. I had to write an article on what's called deck broilers. And deck broilers are things that actually most even restaurants don't have. But if you have a steakhouse or large hotel, you're apt to have a deck broiler. And what a deck broiler is, is imagine a bunch of salamanders, like where

[22:46] the bricks are stacked next to each other to form, instead of just a strip of these bricks, a square, okay? And it always amazed me that even though each individual brick in a deck broiler has the same amount of energy that's leaving it per square centimeter, deck broilers are fantastically more powerful than salamanders in normal

[23:09] operations, and also very, very even. And that's why they're really good for things like steaks, right? Why? The question is why? And the answer, and also, one of the problems with salamanders is that salamanders have what is called a sweet spot, and it's a line that runs all the way, you know, across the center of the long

[23:27] axis of the salamander. And the issue is, is that a deck broiler is acting pretty much like an infinite plane of heat.

[23:35] That's right. This is where we're going back to Lambert. not going to get into the nitty-gritty of it. But in an infinite plane of radiating heat, right, of IR of IR radiation, right? If you have an infinite plane or something that's approximating it such that basically the food can't see that literally see the edge of the

[23:53] of the heater, then the amount of energy that the food is receiving from the heater is roughly independent of how far away it

[24:01] is. So everything heats evenly, and the amount of heating is just a function of the output per square centimeter of the heater. Does make any sense at all? Okay, good. So, uh, deck broilers act like an infinite plane, and then anything within it is going to get heated evenly, and it doesn't matter within a couple, you know,

[24:21] centimeters how far away it is, right? And this goes back to, you know, my son Dax is obsessed with this archer named Byron Ferguson, who, you know, Byron Ferguson, his motto

[24:31] is, if I can see it, I can hit it. And Byron Ferguson can take an arrow, pull it off of his back, and he can shoot an aspirin out of this guy. Literally, his wife throws aspirin into the air, and Byron Ferguson pulls an arrow off of his back and shoots it, like as it's leaving his wife's hand practically, and his wife is so used to this that she doesn't even flinch. Imagine like, imagine what Jen would do if I was going to try to shoot an aspirin out of it. She should rightfully run run for the hills. You know what I mean? Like, this is not some sort of William Burrow situation with his wife with the apple on his head. Like this guy's real deal. So check him out, Byron Ferguson. anyway, if I can see it, I can hit it. And the same thing goes true with heaters. If you can see it you can hit it. So under a salamander, when a piece of meat is sitting there, it can see the

[25:11] heater, and the heater can see the food all the way along the long line of it. So that section is working like an infinite plane, right? But the sides on the edge that are relatively narrow, it doesn't act like it. And the more the further you get away from something, and the less it looks like an infinite plate, the more it acts like a point

[25:29] source, and a point source, the amount of energy you receive, like, goes down as the square of the distance from it. So anyway, long story short, the small salamander only acts like an infinite plane when you're very, very close to the object, right? And so long story short, you have to hold this object extremely close to the food when you're

[25:48] cooking it. So that's why I was thinking about it. And that's a kind of a long digression based on Lambert. But you should also think about this when you're when you're cooking in general. And think about how large the heat source is compared to the food you're

[25:59] cooking, and the larger the heat source is compared to the food you're cooking, and the closer your food is to it, the more even you'll be, if you can withstand that level of heating. Does that make any sense at all? So he's like, I don't care. I really just, I really don't care, right? Okay. So let's go to that 2nd question on calcium. We have, this is a nice one. Chris writes in, hey, Dave, Nastasia, Jack Joe, and Indie Jesus. We have an awesome picture from Indie Jesus' Facebook, but apparently Jack says he wouldn't enjoy being referred to as Indie Jesus. I don't think so. Even though it's with, like, honestly, with all love. You know, I don't know. I'll have to ask him. Like, tell him it's with love. It is with love. And in this picture we have from Facebook, it's like indie cowboy. Like I said, he doesn't even like being called a hippie, so I can't really imagine how

[26:47] Indie Jesus would affect him. You calling Jesus a hippie? Anyway. Yeah, no one no one in the studio wants to go there. Okay. I have a pectin related question. My goal is to firm up small fruits like blueberries so they won't rupture and bleed out in cakes, muffins, pancakes, et cetera. I know you've mentioned this technique in the past, but couldn't find it in the backlog and we love the appropriate ratio to use in the future. Thanks so much for the great show. Definitely highlight of the week and backlog is great for Sunday morning of kitchen cleaning. Without question, my food is made of jumping quality thanks to the radio show and blog. I now regularly use enzymes, gums, and prehydrated starches, in addition to my circulator regularly with delicious and consistent results. Chris, I like that. That's what I like to hear. like to hear that. Okay. So, the enzyme in question is pectin methylesterase. And it's the opposite of, you know, kind of the SPL, which breaks things down. cross-links, pectants in the presence of calcium. Now, most fruits have naturally occurring pectin methylesterase, and will cross-link somewhat if you have calcium, especially in the presence of heat. When the cells start to

[27:57] break a little bit, release some of the pectin methylesterase. And if there's calcium present, you'll increasingly cross-link your product. That's why just a little bit of calcium and canned tomatoes. They usually use calcium chloride, unfortunately, causes those canned tomatoes to be really

[28:10] stiff, and that's why those tanned tomatoes, when you use them in sauce, never fully break down, right? You've noticed that, right, Stas? Yes. So, um, Novozymes, uh, who makes the, um, who makes the,

[28:22] uh, uh, you know, Pectonex Ultra SPL that we use and everything also makes something called Novo shape. And you can use it with calcium. I forget what the calcium ratios is, but you can use it the same way you use, um, um, um, PectionX Ultra SPL in

[28:38] the sense you can use about a, you know, one or 2 grams per liter of

[28:42] liquid, uh, that you're treating with. I would add a couple percent of calcium to the water, and then let it soak. And I've done that to raspberries, I vacuum injected,

[28:52] and then boiled them, and the raspberry stayed whole in boiling liquid.

[28:58] Now you want to make sure that, you know, that the liquid's roughly isotonic with the raspberries. So you got to add some sugar. Otherwise it'll just blast apart, you know, because of osmotic pressure. But, um, they I was astounded how well those suckers held together. Were you there for that test us? remember that? It's crazy, right? And I wanted to do that with brandied cherries, but, you know, there's a problem with the cherry harvest or there was a problem with people ordering cherries for me

[29:21] this, and I can't taste them anyway. I wasn't really that juiced up because I, you know, I couldn't, I can't taste cherries because I'm allergic to them. Anyway, so that would work. You might try, and I don't know whether or not modernist pantry ever started carrying novo shape, but they could. Oh, the only thing it's, uh, you know, between them and that is uh, the investment in a 25 liter pail that they can then break up. And we never had enough application to buy our own 25 liter pail. We buy 25 liter pails of SPL all the time. Like, we're actually basically an industrial user of SPL now. his name can carry them. That's what I'm saying, Modern's pantry. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Chris Monter's pantry. He could probably buy a pail of it if he wanted to. And then you just add calcium, add novo shape and let it soak and you're good. So I would do that. I would also just try adding straight calcium and letting it soak for a while on the

[30:10] calcium and then you can bring the heat up and see whether or not it has preserved them or

[30:16] not. But anyway, that's what I would, that's what I would do. Yeah? No? You know how they make the fake blueberries in the real life? I've said this before, yeah. Yeah, alginate. They actually, what they do is they take blueberry juice, and they make, they put a sphere of blueberry juice inside of an alginate shell of blueberry juice, and that sucker lasts

[30:36] forever. It's not real, but it lasts forever. and that's, in fact, that was one of the, like, that was one of the original thing well before anyone, like, you know, Faran was using

[30:46] alginate balls. Alginate balls were being used in industrial applications for things like fake blueberries, things like fake onion rings,

[30:53] things like that. Anyway, so there you have it. What is it? Is that good? Yeah, she's like, I don't care. I really don't care. just want the pizza. I just want the pizza. I was like, why do we do this show? Free pizza. You know how much easier it would be for me to just buy you a pizza every week? No? you know, I mean, whatever. I can afford the pizza. All I'm saying. Okay, Pete writes in, dear Dave at all. Over the years, my family and I have typically procured our hams from local country growers who let their pigs forage in the

[31:23] woods. I have often read that there has not been a case of trichinosis in the U.S. from pork since the 1950s, but given the source of meat,

[31:30] I have always cooked my country hams to an internal temperature of 137 degrees Fahrenheit.

[31:35] I know from talking to growers and hunters that forest fed and feral pigs, that's a great

[31:39] word, feral pig, right? Yeah. Feral pig. The style is actually, I'm surprised, she likes that word. I could tell. Let's tell my look on her face. Fero pick, do you know why? Do you know why, people? Because she loves cats and like as soon as you say the word feral, the word cat pops into her head. and she doesn't even think about the word pig. The pig just leaves and it's a feral cat, which is like inherent love. Right? favorite animal. Feral cats or just cats in general? Girl cat. Nastasia goes to me the other day. She goes, can we get a cat at the lab? I'm like, we already have you. You sit around and like, you know, bat things around and whatever anyway. attack your ankles. God I hope not. That would be an all time low. Where were we? Feral pigs. Oh, yes. Okay. I know if I'm talking to growers and hunters that forest bed and feral pigs will consume any carrion they come across. This is true. In fact, I read an article in the 1800s in West Virginia where they imported a bunch of pigs to a particular area of West Virginia that was infested with snakes, and the snakes just, I mean, and the pigs just wipe the snakes

[32:40] out, just wipe them out. ate every snake that was there. And reports of the hams made from those snake fed pigs, which they were quite good. Yeah, yeah. You can go, you can go look it up. I looked that up, you know, many, many years ago when I was researching country hands for the 1st Museum of Food. Pig versus snake. You wouldn't guess, huh? Pitts are some harsh suckers, man. This is why, like, you know, like, have you ever watched Robert Mitchram's last movie when he's like a boar hunter? I mean, like wild pigs are not animals that you trifle with. You know what I mean? Don't go messing with the wild pigs. Anyway, we'll consume any carrying they come across. Years ago, I read a study that indicated salt curing and at least 9 weeks of hanging was sufficient to destroy any trichinella larvae. Your recent suggestion that one does not have to cook your country hands, got me wondering about this again. Is this still the thinking? Have there been any recent revelations about the resiliency of trichonelysis? Love the show, Landon. PS, I have been freezing my pork for Italian style curing of whole muscles to ensure that I end up with trichinella free meat.

[33:39] I would love to not have to do that. Okay. Here's the deal. Go to, you want to go to AFIS, which is the Animal Plant Health Inspection Services section on pork. And by the way, for those of you that don't know what trichinosis is, these little worms that you can get from consuming undercooked meats,

[34:02] you know, pig used to be the big one you got from pig, but also bear,

[34:07] any kind of wild meat, right? And you get them in, and then it's the disease is measured in number of worms per cubic centimeter muscle mass, and it causes huge havoc because they invade your muscles and it's

[34:19] just, it's a nightmare. plus it's just, it's gross, right? Does anything gross you out more than that? Is that one of the grosser ones for you? Where your muscles are just invaded by these worms? awesome, right? Anyway, so that's the problem with pork. And so for a long time, that's why they had, you had, you cooked the hell out of your meat. Okay. Here is what we have to say. Here's what the Animal and Plant Health inspection services has to say on their website about trichinella and pork. Um, Trichonosis has a long-standing association with pork products. Not only in the US, but around the world, a concept which many people have about the need to cook pork thoroughly is based on the risk of becoming infected with this parasite. This concern is well founded in history. At the beginning of the 20th century, conservative estimate showed a 2.5

[35:03] infection percent infection rate in U.S. pigs. Even more alarming, where the postmortem surveys conducted in a 1930s, a National Institute of Health Report published in 1943 found that 16.2% of the

[35:16] U.S. population of pigs was infected, one out of every six. This type of information led us to considerable publicities about the danger of eating pork. The historical problem of trick and eye infection in pigs is responsible for strict federal controls of methods used to

[35:30] prepare ready to eat pork products in the US, and expensive carcass inspection requirements in Europe. These regulations are still in effect in the code of federal regulations for

[35:39] process products, and then the directives of the European Union. Actually, hold on a second. going back and rereading that. It didn't say out of every pigs, it says 16.2% of the US population of people had some form of chicken nose chickenella in their in their system. That's gross. It's gross. I don't even believe that. I don't believe that. I believe that. Not even for that. Okay, okay. Despite the historical problems of Trick and I and its association with the pork industry, major changes have occurred in the last 50 years.

[36:04] Human cases of uh, instead of saying trichonosis, they write trichonnellosis, trichonnellosis. I'm just going to call trickinosis crap on these guys. Reported to the centers for disease control, decline from about 500 a year in the 1940s to fewer than 50 a year over the last decade. Further, many of these cases result from non-pork sources such as bear and other game meets. A major decline has also occurred in the prevalence of this parasite in pigs, while prevalence has declined considerably in the U.S. pigs, the lowest prevalence rates in domestic pigs are found in countries where meat inspection programs have been in place for many years, including the EU, notably Denmark and

[36:39] Netherlands. These countries consider themselves essentially free of trickinosis. The dramatic declines in trichonine pigs reflect changes in the industry. Historically, infection and pigs was associated with feeding of raw garbage. Major trends were major inroads were made into trichinosis infection with the advent of garbage cooking laws passed between 1953 and 1954 and the

[37:01] hog cholera eradication program of 1962. Of equal importance has been the movement to high levels of biosecurity and hygienes under which most pigs are now raised. Still, opportunities for exposure to pigs exist and some precautions should be implemented. Uh, so anyway, so... That's the thing on pigs and what's dealing with. But your stuff does not adhere to this because it's from wild pigs. So for a long time, they're considering getting rid of it. Now, uh, the good news is, is, as you say, you can kill pigs, kill kill pigs. You can kill pigs. You can kill trichinosis by cooking meat for a mere 47 minutes at the core at only 52 degrees

[37:38] Celsius or 6 minutes at 55. Also, as you note, deep freezing causes the trichinosis worms to be killed and

[37:48] assist to be killed, but you don't want to have to do that. Now, unfortunately, there is no single set of, you know, you do this salt, do that that can guarantee that they will safely admit guarantees trickonosis.

[38:00] However, all you need to do for curing your own stuff to figure out whether it's safe to eat without

[38:05] cooking is go to. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's code of federal regulations. Search on this one. Ready? Title nine, chapter three. Paragraph 318.10. And that one, that paragraph. I read it this morning, but it's too complicated to go to, lists all the specific curing mechanisms that you can use to destroy

[38:27] trichinosis in pork without having to go through a free step or a cook step.

[38:35] And they all are combinations of salt levels per pound of meat, a specific contact time of salt on meat in days

[38:43] per, I think days per whatever. I forget what it is. And then holding in the drawing room for a certain number of days, with a certain amount of equalization to assure

[38:51] trichinosis death. So, if you follow those rules precisely or greater, those rules are

[38:57] greater, in other words, that amount of salt or more, that amount of time drawing or more, that amount of water loss or more, then you're guaranteed a safe product from a trichinosis standpoint.

[39:09] But if I were you, if you're dealing with feral hogs, don't fool around with this one, make sure that you conform to the specifications that are laid out in Title 9, chapter 3, uh,

[39:21] subpart 3, 18, 10. But, uh, is my impression that you, when you're doing country hands specifically, you do not need to uh, freeze as long as you follow their

[39:30] rules, but please don't just take my word for it, read that chapter in

[39:34] its uh, entirety. I want some wild pig meat. You know, the only time I've ever had, you know, so interesting thing about pigs. And you say that they were eating, I think there's, you said they were, I can't go back and find it, but eating stuff they eat off the forest. Only one time if I had a USDA slaughtered pig that was eating fallen

[39:53] nut meats. It's called mask, right? So when stuff falls off the trees, which happens in the fall, pigs eat, eat it, right? And so if you happen to be in a place where you get a lot of nuts, like hickory nuts and things like that, the pigs take in a lot of, um, a lot of these kind of nut fats and their, uh, fat composition after

[40:12] a number of weeks of eating this tends to conform more to uh, these, um, these nut fat ratios. And the fact it's softer, right? Which is bad actually for certain sausages where you want the back fat to be very hard, but amazing for things like

[40:25] ham. And the closest American ham that I've had to the Ibirico fed, the Ibirico, the Biota fed, Ibirico, which they feed off of,

[40:34] you know, chestnuts falling from the trees in the Hesse in Spain. And so the amazing thing about that isn't just that those guys in Spain are good at curing their meats is that the actual composition of the fats is altered by

[40:49] the chestnuts that they're eating and it just has its amazing acorns, rather. Chestnuts. What heck's wrong with my brain today? I don't know. The hell is wrong with me? 42 what? Years old. Oh, yeah. Did I say chestnuts? The hell. And then acorns. How's wrong with me? Actually, I need to have my head examined. Anyway, although chestnuts would be delicious. And chestnut fed hogs are also delicious. But anyway, if they're eating nuts, they get this kind of soft and amazing fat. And I had one from Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. Tennessee. What the hell's wrong with me? where the pigs had been feeding. They were Tamworth hogs, and they'd been feeding on these hickory nuts that were falling off the trees, and it was, from a fat composition standpoint, probably the most amazing American country ham I've ever had.

[41:31] So, I don't know, take that for what it is. that your hams are delicious if you're making it that way. Yeah? Okay. Uh, delete Row rights in. His Twitter handle is at Leapers 500. There's 499 other leapers out there. What is a leaper? I don't know. Do you know where a leaper is? I don't know. don't know. Okay. Okay, he's going to Coachella, which is a 3 day concert, and he's camping with a gas stove for 3 days and trying to find a trying to figure out food and drinks. Here's what I would do. So the issue is, if you were to use normal ice cubes, right? You'd get a huge amount of to preserve your food. So I'm assuming you have big coolers and you don't want to have to plug anything in. Get giant ice cubes. What I'm saying, giant, I don't mean small. I mean, giant. I'm talking big. I'm saying like get a bunch of coolers and get ice cubes that are like a foot by a foot blocks.

[42:22] The larger the ice cube, the larger the mass, right? Per surface area, and your melt rate is going to be determined in part by how good your igloo cooler is, but also by how much surface area is available for the melt water to occur.

[42:34] If you have a giant block like that. It should have no problem lasting 3 days in an adequate cooler. And then you could put your food next to it. And then you could chip off pieces of it for making your drinks, right? Especially if you just practice a little bit because it'll be tempered because it'll be at 0 the whole time. So you'll be able to like chip amazing pieces off of it. So you could do shaking drinks, but you could also make amazing stir drinks with it because your ice is, because you're going to have to buy this ice from someone, right? So you go you go to whoever is, like, your local ice sculpture person. You buy a £200 block or, and you have them saw it into large, into small enough blocks that will fit into the coolers that you have, and then pack, again, pack, you know, put it on a grate so that it's sitting off the bottom, so it's not sitting in its own water, so you can drain off the extra water when you need it, and then have the food sitting next to it.

[43:20] By the way, there's also, that's the way that, that's the way that in Japan, the hardcore sushi chefs store their fish. They buy big coolers, big fridges. They unplug them because they don't want the air circulating on the inside and then they put giant blocks of ice in to keep their fish exactly where they want them. So you should be able to keep your food good. Unfortunately for you, we don't have my, you know, you don't have my, my torch attachment yet because that would be sick. That would be sick out there because you could you could stay cooked that way. It's a little bit of a pain in the butt to cook a steak from 0 to 0 to 100 that way, but it's pretty damn good. Um, but you say you have, uh, I think, did you say you had a circulator beforehand? You could pre-bag the meats as long as you can ensure that your ice stays good. You could do a pre-cook on a lot of your stuff and then flash grill, all of your stuff, not use that much charcoal if you're allowed to have

[44:06] charcoal there. You've been to Coachella? I don't think Is that where they had the Tupac Shakur? They had the they had the holographic Tupac? Yes, that was it. Tupac was there last year. Yeah. So who are they going to hologram this year? Huh, I don't know. I mean, it would be kind of poor form to do Biggie, right? Well, I don't know. I mean, you know, be a nice holograph hologram, rather. Okay. So yeah, but it says you have a gas stove. So you should be go. If you have a circulator, I would circle a bunch of stuff in bags, put it in bags so they don't get contaminated by the fact that they're all sitting together with your giant

[44:41] ice and then just bring straight booze, do a lot of delicious dirt drinks, and then occasionally some shaking drinks. limes are fine sitting on their own. you don't even need to refrigerate those suckers, bring as much stuff as you can that doesn't need to be refrigerated and

[44:52] go from there. Your melt water is also good, so you can use your melt water for cooking things like pasta because if

[44:56] noastasia goes with you, She needs to have pasta. She thinks must, must, must. Right? Yeah. Okay. Michael Napkin. What's it called? James Beard Award nominated, Michael Notkin, friend of the show, right? Yeah. Yeah. And and as everyone knows, Nastasia loves your book. Anyway, at cooking issues, have you ever written down your carbonation rig? I need to build one for at chef steps. Uh, no. So, um, have I ever written it down? I've described it a couple times, but I've never written it down. Okay, Mark Powers. I buy all of my carbonation stuff from an outfit called Mark Powers in Guntersville, Alabama. And I love those guys because they're the cheapest people anywhere. Like, they're so cheap that it's like they're, they, they define cheap. So what you do is, is you call those guys up. You order a £20 or if you don't want to order a £20 if you want a smaller rig, a £5 CO2

[45:51] tank, it will arrive empty. Okay? They shipped a kind of nice aluminum ones. You need to get along with that a, um, what's called

[46:00] a, uh, they're high pressure regulator. Now, I don't really like those regulators for commercial use, the ones that they sell, they sell Tapright

[46:07] brand, and the Tapright brand regulators that they sell tend to get broken very easily in

[46:12] service if people are rough with them or knock them about. Uh, and then they start having problems, not safety problems, but they start having problems. So if you can afford a nicer regulator, you can go with like a smith or something like that or

[46:25] Victor or nicer regulator. The tap rights work fine and they are, by far and away, the cheapest ones you can get. I don't think that Mark Powers sells them, but you can buy cages for the Tapright regulators, and the cages prevent you from damaging the

[46:39] gauges and the regulator by banging it about. I would definitely invest in those if you can get them from them. Then all you need are the hose barbs and the hose, and you go directly into what's called a ball lock or universal,

[46:54] either universal Pepsi or ball lock fittings, and they're different from coke or pin lock fittings. And the ball lock fittings from Pepsi. You want the ones that are gray, right? They're either gray or black and one's for product and one's for gas. I think the gray is gas, all I can never remember, but this system uses the gray. And they became kind of the de facto thing that homebrewers have used when they're using the old 5 gallon Cornelius Kegs, which is how they used to make

[47:22] soda for brewing. And I used to do it back in the day, everyone does it. So it's the de facto homebrew technology of these ball locks, and they're almost free. They're like $2 for a connection. So you buy, you buy those, you buy the hose. I usually use quarter or 38s ID, reinforced hose. I forget the name of the brand that they stock at, uh, in uh, those guys stock, but it's like

[47:43] called like, like hose master or something like that. And they'll ship you all the stuff by far and away the cheapest possible way to do

[47:52] it. Then you go on any homebrew site, and you get the liquid bread carbonator caps, and then you're ready to rock and roll.

[47:59] You just need some soda bottles. And that's how we carbonate at the bar. At home, I have an actual McCann carbonator, which you can also get

[48:06] at pretty good rates from those guys. And I use, I use, in addition to what's called a primary regulator, which takes the tank pressure on the CO2, which is like, you know, upwards of £800 or

[48:17] whatever depends on the temperature. Uh, and converts it to 1st a high pressure, which I take off at usually about

[48:23] 100 psi. And then I go into a secondary regulator, which I take it off at cocktail carbonation pressure, which is generally about 40 to 42

[48:30] PSI. Advantage here is I can take the high pressure from my 100 pounder. I can drop it into a commercial carbonator. And the reason you need to run those at 100 PSI is because those things are carbonating water at room temperatures. So you need a much higher gas pressure, but they're awesome. And then I have a water filter so that the water goes in, gets injected in under high pressure, carbonated water. It goes through 2 circuits of a cold plate, not one, 2 circuits of a cold plate to chill it down. The only problem with my rig at home. is that I wasn't able to put an ice maker underneath my counter. So my, instead of having an automatic ice maker. I have an eight-year-old in the house named Dax, and he takes the ice out of my freezer and daily dumps it into the ice bucket to keep the seltzer cold. Back at the lab at 54 in Chinatown, we

[49:15] have an ice maker that dumps directly on the cold plate. And so there we have our ability to carbonate cocktails and sodas and our ability to have seltzer on tap. Uh, a day without cell ser on tap is a day without sunshine. Right? And I think that's it for today, right? Cooking issues.

[49:43] Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritageradionetwork.org. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today.

[50:12] Thanks for listening.