[0:00] This is Chris Young, co-author of Modernist Cuisine. I'd like to invite you to check out chef steps.com. It's a free website we've created as a place to learn new cooking techniques and collaborate with curious cooks from around the world. Sign up now at chefsteps.com. You're listening to HeritageRadioNetwork.org, a nonprofit member supported radio

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[1:20] Calling your questions, too! Cooking issues! Hello and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from Aberta Pizzeria and Bushwick, Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network, every Tuesday from roughly 12, to roughly 1245 or one. Joined in the studio, again, or normal style today with Nastasia, the Hammer, Lopez. How you doing, Stas? Okay. Yeah? Yeah. Jack decided not to join us today. I don't know what that's all about, but we have Joe. Hey, Joe, how you doing? I'm doing great. How are you guys? I'm doing all right. I was listening to the little blurb. we have at the beginning there. And, you know, they have a word for something that's both entertainment and information. It's educainment. isn't that right? Yeah, entertainment. sounds right. So are we educ- educating? How would you say that? Edutanable? Edutanumant? Anyway, whatever. Call your questions too. 7184972128. That 718-4972128. Hope to be joined soon on the telephone with the one of the sponsors from today's show, Chris Young from Chef Steps and Modernist Cuisine. And in fact, he's a bit of a coffee nut. So I have some coffee questions that I put off from last time and some also, I think, ones from this time. I'm going to hold off on those until Chris calls in so I can get him to weigh in on as well. By the way, Stas, how did Mark's barbecue, his Italian barbecue go? Really well. Yeah? Lots of people. It raised a lot of money, I think. Yeah? Uh, like, uh, how was how was the food? pretty okay. Oh, stars with her, with her, uh, Ray, Ray, Ray reviews of everything. Okay. Hey, we have a caller. All right, call her, call her, you're on the air. Hey, Dave, this is Chris from Seattle. How are you? Hey, doing all right. Doing all right. So, Joe, this is Chris Young, our sponsor from today. Oh, yes. Do we have the opportunity to take other calls in as well, or no? We have one line open still, so... All right, so for those of you that want to

[3:17] pester, Chris, with any of your modernist and or non-modernist,

[3:22] and or when he was working at Fat Duck, and or gliding, because he's a glider pilot, if you have any... Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So if you have any questions relating to any of those things, call on in. How you doing, Chris? I'm doing well, man. How are you? It's been a while Yeah, I know. When are you in New York next? Uh, I don't know when you, when are you going to invite me out for drinks? Oh, you are always welcome at the bar for James Fis. But, uh, well, I'm just about recovered from my last trip to New York, so uh, when I when I lose any sort of judgment, I'll be back out. Well, so now, are you still spending all of your time in Seattle? Now, where is chefs, chefs, chef steps? It's based in several locations or how's it working? No, we are in, we're a, we have a 4000 square foot space in Seattle's Pike Place

[4:11] market overlooking the water and so we've built out our own experimental kitchen and and tooled it up. We have our software developers and an entire production team here. We do have a bit of a hardware engineering lab just south of Seattle and

[4:25] Georgetown and uh, a couple employees uh, in Chicago and LA. other than that, we're here. Nice. Well, I have to come out and visit you guys sometime. You absolutely should. I was thinking we maybe need like an east coast west coast uh cocktail challenge. We've got we've got our own fairly talented bar staff here as well. Oh yeah? Well, I'm down for a challenge. What would the challenge be? I know you, it's your show. What do you think it should be? Man, I don't know. I mean, you know that my particular, my particular bent is towards things that, uh, look somewhat normal. Uh, huh. Like style. What do you think a good challenge would be? I mean, actually, I need a good challenge. I was just saying the other day, like I need a new cocktail problem to solve, not just a new ingredient or taste, but it's a whole new problem to solve. Can you think of any, Chris? Or should we leave this open to our readers? Like, what, what, or listeners order? I'd actually like to hear from your viewers. I've always found, I certainly find in our forum that the best, the biggest challenges tend to come from unexpected places. Yeah, although, being barbecue season, uh, you know, I'm certainly, have you done much with, uh, with smoke and cocktails? In drinks? No, I'll tell you why. There's been a bunch of people who have done a lot of work with it already, and so, you know, I tend to do the hardest work in places where I think there's a lot, a lot, lot more work to do, but there is a lot more, you know, the, a lot of problems I think I have with people when they've smoked the cocktails is they, they tend to

[5:57] use, uh, they tend to use, uh, kind of those, uh, those uh, small format, uh, smoke generators. And when they when you oversmoke a drink with that, it tends to take on more of kind of the over phenolic burnt flavors from it. And it can be hard for those. It can be hard for people to dose. I mean, I think the best results I've seen are actually from more of the smoky flavor off of charred chips and

[6:23] whatnot. I've seen good results off of that and had good results off that. I mean, obviously smoke and alcohol go together. I mean, have you done any good experiments with it or not? Well, yeah, we just, we just did a cocktail. We've done a couple things. We did a, we did one where we take charred oak chips and we pressure infuse it with an ISI siphon, uh, um, uh, to basically get uh, a rapid aging of the, of the bourbon and and that sort of smoky flavor, and that's, that's

[6:49] fantastic, and we have another cocktail where we, uh, we use charred cinnamon

[6:53] sticks, uh, so a cocktail is called Churchill breakfast. Yeah, how's that one come out? No, that one's delicious. I will happily drink that just about any day. I've had good luck with the ISI and an oak doing like a semi-char semi-oak at the same time. But my favorite way to add wood is, of course, to take an aged spirit that I like, rotovapid so that I have

[7:16] the, I have the oak left over and then add it back to my other unaged stuff. I mean, that's that's fantastic. It's a little bit pricey and out of the range of most people working, but. Hey Chris and Dave, we have a caller for both of you. Oh, yeah? Yeah. All right, caller. on the air. What's up? Hey, this is Yuba calling from Silver Spring, Maryland. How you doing? Good, good. I had a couple questions about you and Chris. First, I'd like to say, you know, Chef Steph's really impressive is an

[7:48] amazing, amazing resource. I have Myers Susie Myers to be at home. It's always fantastic to use videos. There's a breakdown that everything is done on there. It's really, really great work. So

[8:01] thanks for that. Well, thank you. So, uh, my friend and I are throwing kind of like an ice cream party, uh, tomorrow, and we didn't have time to do a lot of side by side tests, one of the recipes that we were doing, but, uh, one of the things we were doing was a recipe from the, uh, Humphrey locum restaurant in, uh,

[8:22] San Francisco, it looks like an ice cream book, and it's, um, strawberries and candied jalapeno. So, the candy jalapeno, we made by, you know, just, uh, taking out the seeds and the ribs and just, uh, cooking it with simple syrup. So we were kind of expecting that it would, there would still be some heat left over in the jalapeno, but there really wasn't anything that we could

[8:45] discern, both in the jalapeno itself. And then in the syrup, you know, that had kind of like the infusion afterwards. So we were wondering if that was, because the recipe was kind of imprecise, it was just like one jalapeno. It didn't say how big, how much, um, and, you know, they can vary in terms of their heat. But is you, do you know if there's some issue that the, the cap space and it gets kind of neutralized when you go to that

[9:10] process? make a difference if we more... I'd like to, I want your little clarification here. Is

[9:18] the, is the jalapeno going in a dairy base and is that when you lose the heat or is it after you poached it in the sugar syrup that seems to be

[9:25] diminished? Uh, it seems to be after the syrup, it went in the syrup. I mean, there was, there was nothing, there was no trace of anything in the syrup either. Besides for the kind of the, the, um, floral notes of the jalapeno itself. Did you eat the jalapeno? Did you eat a portion of the jalapeno beforehand to verify that it wasn't deep spicy? No, no, we didn't, but that, you know, that's that's a fair point because with milk kind of takes away the heat, right? Well, the, the, capsation is fairly soluble in, in fact. So when you, when you put, you know, when you put the, the, the, the, the chilies in an, an ice cream base, absolutely, it's going to diminish the fat. I've made habanero ice cream. It would be inedible if it wasn't dissolved in that much fat. But if you're losing the heat in the syrup. There's really only 2 things that come to my mind and didn't jump in here if you see it differently. But one, my best bet would be, my, my, my 1st guess would be a jalapeno that just wasn't very hot to begin with. Yeah. Um, and the 2nd thing is, I don't know how much syrup you were using, but you're going to dilute some of the capsation down in that

[10:27] syrup and, and if you take a fairly small amount of capsation to begin with and dilute it down in a large amount of syrup, um, it's not, your

[10:36] result's not going to be very hot. So if you want a little bit more heat, I might look uh, you know, I might look to using something other than a jalapeno.

[10:44] Yeah, but that said, if you take a jalapeno and slice it thin, even in a

[10:49] relatively, like, if it's a, you know, a good, you know, a good one with some strength. And you slice it relatively thinly, and do a boilout with it in the sugar syrup, you should be able to pick up a good bit.

[11:00] I mean, the good thing about, you know, sugar syrup is, you can continue to heat it for a while. So, you know, what I typically do with heat. I tend not to use green, when I add heat to

[11:12] things, most of the time in drinks and in ice creams and things like this, I want to add

[11:17] more of a red flavored heat. So I tend to use red things. Uh, so, but you just keep tasting it. And what'll happen is, is I, is it'll, it'll be the right amount of spice and then eventually it'll over, it'll over extract and get too spicy. So I just keep tasting, tasting, tasting, and then throw it through a course chinois to strain it out as soon as it's at the place where I like it. Um, and that tends to be what I, what I do. It's almost impossible to measure peppers because they're so variable with regard to their heat levels, even from pepper to pepper, unless you're dealing with something preposterously hot, like a

[11:53] habanero where you know that it's going to hit you with a wild fat. But even then, you can be mistaken. We can get an ahi dulce, which looks for all the world like a habanero and smells like it, but doesn't taste like it very much and isn't

[12:05] hot hardly at all. Um, you know, so like peppers can be extremely, extremely variable. And so, you know, I would always get a couple of extra, chop, chop them, throw them in while you do the heat and be aware that what Chris says is

[12:18] right. When you then mix it down with your milk and cream base, it's going to reduce the heat even further. So you might want to just have some spicy crap sitting around that you can dose back

[12:28] into spice with. But you have to be careful because usually then when you're dosing something back, you're dosing. If you're dosing a dry spice, let's say, those things get radically hotter when you infuse them.

[12:37] So the red pepper flakes, you get at a pizza parlor. You can eat them on their own without too much trouble. You infuse them for a long time in a liquid and then they can start blowing your top off. Right, Chris? I mean, you're... Yeah, no, the basic issues when they're dry, you tend to swallow them before they have time to rehydrate and start diffusing out the capsation. But if you rehydrate them 1st so that the capsation can easily hit the soft tissue in your mouth. You're going to be a very unhappy person. Yeah, I mean, that's a classic mistake people do when they're making sauces, is they'll throw in a bunch of dry chili

[13:07] flakes, and they're like, oh, it's not hot enough, and then they'll throw in some more dry chili flakes.

[13:11] Well, it's still not hot enough, and then they'll throw some more and then 15 minutes later, they're done, you know? Yeah, you got to you got to wait and you got to give it time. That's not as much of a problem as fresh, but. Thank you. I had a dream question also. Maybe, you know, up your up your challenge. I was wondering if, uh, we wanted to kind of pair some of these things with alcohol drink. Um, and then I was thinking, did you, have you ever tried to do like an alcohols version of an ice cream float? Oh yeah. Oh yes. So, so you made kind of like an alcoholic, um, like a fizzy,

[13:45] frothy drink and then, you know, just some ice cream in there. Yep. Delicious. Anything in particular, any good combinations that you'd recommend? I mean, there's the obvious ones. root beer. There's some couple of good root beer liqueurs out there. You can make your own root beer flavor, and you can do a classic root beer float. That's probably the 1st one I ever did. Uh, you can mean, I mean, I would imagine that, uh, you know, a recarbonated rum and coke would make a good float if you want traditional flavors. Uh, I've done, um, you know, if you like vinegar cocktails, uh, like a really nice fresh fig ice cream

[14:17] with uh, with like a slightly vinegared carbonated soda cocktail is nice and works as a non-dessert kind of a

[14:26] thing. But there's, I mean, Chris, have you ever done, what flavors do you try with that? I haven't done it. I haven't done a ice cream, an alcoholic ice cream float, but I'm immediately thinking of how

[14:38] to, how to do something like a boozy cream sickle. Oh yeah. Well, we have a drink now. I mean, like a carbonated, well, Jen, I don't know how Jim would go with ice cream. You might have to switch to a different spirit, but orange, we have a drink on the bar menu now that's clarified orange, orange juice, uh, where we add a citric, uh, and Malik blend to it to give it the acidic characteristics of lime

[15:01] juice, and we use that, we use that in a daiquiri variant where we milk wash the daiquiri to give it a nice heavy, so it tastes like an

[15:07] Orange Julius. We call it Dr. J. But that orange base, we don't clarify for the daiquiri because we want it to be foamy. But it clarified, you can, you, I've made kind of gin, like a gin, so I would make like a celery, a celery ice cream or sorbet, and then do like

[15:24] clarified orange with mallet and citric, and like liquor of your choice, carbonated, carbonated, and poured

[15:31] over could be quite nice. You know what I would try? I've been playing, we've been playing with this a bit lately, is old school phosphates, and using phosphoric acid is our seasoning with various citrus, citrus juices, and then carbonating them, and I've kind of got a hankering to sort of make an alcoholic mandarin,

[15:50] mandarin, soda, that's getting a test, extra city, not only from the citric, but phosphoric. Have you ever worked with phosphoric acid date? Yeah, but the problem is, is that Nastasia hates it. And so like whenever I want them, go towards... Well, in that case, we're done. No, I mean, but the, I mean, the issue is, is that, yeah. Well, Chris, you know this, like, you, you, you, if someone asks you to work on something, you work on something, but then if the people around you are constantly saying how they hate things, it like makes it kind of a pain in the butt to work with, the same way

[16:20] that, like, we don't do a lot with cherries because I'm allergic to it, you know? So it's... That's a horrible thing to be allergic to. I know, I know it is because cherry is our God's best fruit, I think. They're certainly my favorite, and have you not had therapy for that? I, I, I think I, you know what it is? It's, uh, what happened was, is that, you know, I have, uh, I'm being punished. I'm being punished for all of those years of making fun of people with allergies. And so they're like, oh, world's greatest fruit. Now you're allergic to it. Enjoy. I think that's what happened pretty much. So this is karma. Yeah, yeah, bad, bad, bad carbon. When you are carbonating things, be aware. When you're carbonating, is that you can probably go a little bit higher alcohol and a little bit higher sugar than you would for a drink drink, but

[17:08] the more alcohol you have, the harder it's going to be to carbonate properly. When we were making carbonated drinks at the bar for consumption,

[17:18] straight drinking consumption. We use ratios of between one.75, uh, 2 up to 2 ounces, that's 60 mils of uh, of high proof spirit in a total uh, cocktail base of 5 ounces just for for your, you know, general edification. Anything stiffer than that, and it's going to be more difficult to, um, it's going to be more difficult to carbonate

[17:45] properly, and also when something's stiffer than that is balanced out with acids and sugars. It's going to tend to taste syrupy, and the 1st couple of bites might be good, but I mean, drinks might be good, but as it goes down, it's going to be more cloying. So just so you know, now, if you're working on a float, you could probably go a little harder than that, but also realize that an

[18:02] alcoholic based soda will foam even more than a regular soda when poured on an ice cream

[18:07] base. Just... Yeah. Well, because alcohol tends to foam anyway. Like when you're carbonating cocktails, it foams so much, you know? So my, like, there's already a foaming issue with it. And then, obviously, floats are a foaming issue. So it's just, you know, it can become a big foam. It, delicious though, but it can be a big kind of a foamy mess. All right, Chris, while you're on the air here, let's, I have some coffee questions in. So 1st of all, we had a question last week. Someone was asking about frothing frothing milk without getting an expensive frother. And I'm actually, you know, in modernist cuisine. You guys have a recipe where you stabilize foam with whey

[18:49] protein, isolate, and sucroester, sucrose esters. Will that actually make latte art foam with an arrow latte? Is it dense enough? Does a sucrose ester make it fine enough? Uh, the way protein helps you probably more than the sucrosestors. Just so you could probably leave the sucro sectors out of that and still make it work. It's possible to make a latte foam that you can pour latte art with using an air latte. There's a fair amount of technique. What I found is you generally sort of, uh, we need to be warming it as you go, and you want to be working, though,

[19:24] the, the arrow latte one really sort of more at the bottom, you're going to try to drag a little bit of errand. But then mostly what you're trying to do is just have the aero latte sort of buried deeper and constantly sort of breaking up the bubble so that you're getting a smaller and smaller microphone. So I tend to be moving the arrow latte around the bottom of the pot, slowly bringing it towards the surface, but I've sort of brought the arrow latte to the

[19:48] surface at about the same time that the milk is the right temperature. The real thing that most people make a mistake with, in my experience, if you want to get a really wet foam, that's velvety and silky, and you can't really see any individual bubbles, and it's going to, you know, sort of have that viscous pour to it, is don't overeat the milk. The milk really shouldn't be much hotter than about 45, 50 Celsius at the

[20:13] most if you really want to have a, have some milk that's really easy to pour, uh, pour latte with. If you start getting the milk up to like 60 Celsius, 140 Fahrenheit. It's going to be really dry and when you go to pour it, all the foam's going to slide back to the pitcher and hot milk's just going to come out beneath it. Um, and so I found that that's really almost more important than anything else you add to the milk.

[20:33] So you can't get it to an arrow latte. You can't get it to the temperatures that you would get if you were actually pulling it from a steam wand. When I talk from a steam one, I very rarely go much hotter than that myself, but I don't tend to drink huge milky beverages.

[20:46] So like if I drink a traditional cappuccino or a 5

[20:49] out latte, um, I generally won't heat my middle much hotter than about 45

[20:55] Celsius, and that gives me just this really nice melt texture. Almost every coffee shop I go into, I, I, I tend to have the opinion that they, they oversteam the milk so that it's piping hot when you're carrying around this sort of bladder busting

[21:07] sized coffee. But for me, that's not a very pleasant drinking experience. Well, my wife, for instance, she likes the taste of the foam done, uh, kind of lower

[21:17] temp. She prefers the coffee to be hotter. There's no really no way around. I mean, like, can you do like a quick nuke and like not, no, you're just automatically ruined as soon as it's heated up? Well, the thing to do there is your espresso is going to come out

[21:30] funny hot, you know, nearly boiling, right? No, it's the milk. Have a hot cup. Um, and and then don't, if you're going to drown it in a huge amount of milk, yeah, your, your hose, um,

[21:42] you can probably get the, with the steamed ones, you could get the 55 comfortably and still get a wet foam.

[21:48] Um, But my experience is that you go much hotter than that. The foam starts to get really unstable. It starts to get dry and it just isn't as pleasant to drink. Now, I mean, I always pull, uh, I always pull like a hefty amount of hot water tap on my espresso machine before into my cup to preheat it. But is that not standard practice? Well, so I suppose standard practices is have the cups on the top of the espresso machine so that they're they're nice and hot. They, they, you know, they design the machine so that the boiler heat, uh, heating the top surface, but, um, if you want it really hot, yeah, just, you know,

[22:23] do some of the boiling water out of the boiler into it. More than anything else, I just like it when it's served in a warm cup. There's something really nice about how that feels when you're when you're drinking it. Well, that's also, you know, cups in general, which is why, you know, paper cups are the devil. Yeah, but paper cups have the advantage that they go in your car real nice and, you know, that, that, I know that that's, you know, more of a west coast thing to drive around so your, your drive through Starbucks

[22:51] and and get your, your, your, your, what is it? I think a 30 some on out, Starbucks uh, uh, latte now. Wow. So, you know. with one double in it? That only has one double of coffee in it? Oh, I have no idea. never ordered that beast of a drink. It's like the Trento or something. It's like the big gulp of the latte world, and I think it's like 2 shots. Yeah, so I'm sure somebody can call it incorrective because I've never had it. Yeah, so that doesn't happen in New York because here what you would have to do is walk past 5 Starbucks to get to your car, then drive to the Starbucks, double park, go into the Starbucks, get the thing, come back out, put it in your car, and then you

[23:31] could drink it for the next hour and a half while you look for your parking space again. It just reminded me of why I'm glad I don't live in New York. Yeah, but on the other hand, we walk everywhere. Okay, anyway. back back on the coffee. Oh, by the way, so Scott from Guelph wrote in, uh, commenting on that question from last week, and uh, Scott says, uh, I wanted to write in, firstly, I'm making decent milk foam without a steam wand on high-end espresso machine. I found a fairly good and cheap technique. You can buy a small French press style coffee maker, some specifically designed for milk. You add the cold milk to the bottom of the press, so it comes up over the mesh screen, and you rapidly pump the screen up and down in the milk and make it fairly dense

[24:09] and stable foam. You can then heat the milk inside the glass container in the nuke. The foam doesn't overheat and pop since the air mixture doesn't absorb microwaves as well as the still liquid milk at the bottom. With my setup, it takes about 45 seconds to get to the proper temperature for a cappuccino and the foam seems to work best if you use very cold skimmed milk, although you can get a richer but less impressive foam with higher fat

[24:27] milks. I do not like skim milk foams. What do you think about that technique, Chris? I think the biggest challenge I would be concerned about is as you sort of nuke it, essentially that you're going to have the dry foam right to the top and it's going to drain out. So, I suspect with a lot of care and attention, you can sort of swirl it and keep the foam wet and together,

[24:47] but, to me, uh, I'm, I, I, I've seen the technique. I've never been able to get it to work where I can get a nice, evenly wet, dense foam from top to bottom of the

[24:57] pitcher that I can just free pour to get a nice rosette. But, you

[25:02] know what, it totally works. You don't even, if you just want an okay milk foam, and you don't want to spend a lot of money, you can use any French press to do that. Uh, skim milk does work best, but it tastes unpleasant in

[25:16] my, in my, my opinion, I'd use 2%. It's a skim milk's a bad product. Let me just say this right now. Skim milk should not exist. Why? It's horrible. It's just a nightmare. I mean, like, like, if you want to, like, dehydrate it and get the milk powder for using something else, maybe, but why would you ever want? I mean, it's horrible. You know, my 90, how old is he now? 94 almost year old grandpa is is only drinks full fat milk. Like, this, like you're not saving that much. It's just wretched. It's just a wretched, thin, gray, awful thing. Like I say, I'm sure it has some culinary applications, but as an actual product to consume,

[25:52] it's wretched. Do you disagree with me? I don't drink skim milk. Yeah, no, it's horrible. Uh, so, uh, now, uh, Scott writes in also, uh, separate issue we had, Chris last week was, uh, someone wanted to uh, serve a non-alcoholic uh, drinks to their wife uh, uh, who is pregnant, and uh, and so, you know, ideas of drinks that you could sip for a while, uh, you know, and sort

[26:14] of, instead of having an alcoholic drink. Scott writes in, uh, there are de-alcoholized wines that aren't appalling, but what I wanted to share was making your own drink out of the spice,

[26:23] Sumac, Sumac. This is an old idea and is usually referred to as sumac lemonade. You basically steep the sumac in hot or cold water, add sugar to taste. Sumac is high in Malic acid. And so it has a wine like bite to it. The flavor is somewhat woodsy and floral, it makes a very refreshing summertime drink. Sumac grows wild around here. Hes from Guelph, Canada. I wonder whether he's involved with the university. They have a great dairy department there. Yeah, they do. Yeah. The flavor is somewhat woodsy and floral, it makes a very refreshing summertime. drink. Sumac grows wild around here and many people harvest it themselves. Sumac trees grow on the sides of the road and they spread out as clones of the parent. The spice comes from the red cone shaped spears that adorn the tree and you are supposed to harvest them when the weather is dry or the malic acid gets washed off during the rain. I did not know that. I did not. did not know that. I've been tempted to ferment some sumac lemonade, but of course that won't help you if you are up the spout, which I learned last week means

[27:08] pregnant, as well as broken, or pawned. Uh, keep up the awesome show. Scott. Actually, I love Sumac. In fact, one of the flavors of I shouldn't say this. We have, we do a lot of sumac work, which is not for the public yet. I happen to love Sumac a lot. But you work with a lot, Chris? I haven't used Sumac in well. I enjoy it, but I, uh, you know, I think the last time I was using it was when I was working in this

[27:33] for this classic French restaurant, and we were using it with lamb, and I think I made that dish of a few 100 times too

[27:39] many, uh, to want to keep working with Sumac. What do you? I mean, it's kind of a really distinctive flavor that that's interesting. I guess uh, I've just never really had a reason to play with it. Yeah, it's not only Malik. I think there's probably some oxalic in there as well. It's got that kind of like sorely kind of hit to it too. Um, But, uh, but I don't know that. It's just coming off the top of my head, but, you know, it makes, as, you know, ascot points out, it makes fantastic. It makes fantastic still, but it makes really fantastic sparkling drinks.

[28:09] Really good So, something I've, I've, I've made in the past, but I think it's a great non-alcoholic alternative is, is, I'm a huge fan of elderflower blossoms, and maybe that's from my time in England, because it's a pretty popular drink over there, but, uh, if you can get uh, sort of elderflower cordial, uh, the, the syrup, or you can make your own, a blend of that of lemon juice, and then I'll make a, a, a simple syrup infused with uh, Douglas

[28:34] spur, and a blend of, of the lemon juice, the elderflower cordial, um, and the Douglas for a

[28:40] syrup, and then dilute down with water and ice. I think that's a fantastic combination that, uh, uh, has a lot of, sort of, you almost could think of it as sort of the, the, the Riesling of the faux wine world because it's got that really aromatic bouquet, a nice bit of acidity, and and a slight,

[28:57] the, the, the slight resinous pine flavor is a little bit unexpected, but quite pleasant. Yeah, I've never done pine and elderflower. That sounds good though. Um, I wonder, is it really... I think, to bring the 2 together. Is there, is there anything in, I have to, someone do some research and make sure there's nothing in pine tea that pregnant people can't

[29:15] have? Uh, but that sounds delicious. I'd like to I'd like to try that. Another good thing for Sumac. We used to, uh, we used to grind uh, Sumac finer uh, along with uh, the salt and use it uh, as a French fry spice. It's really good on French fries. Uh, you know, it brings some of that acidity to it. And uh, it's almost like, you know, if you're not gonna, if you're not gonna douse your French fries and ketchup, Sumac's nice. I mean, if you're going to douse me in ketchup, it's really no point. Hey, Dave, it's Jack. Hey, Jack. Hey, so I see here women who are pregnant or could become pregnant or advised not to drink pine needle tea in

[29:50] general for fear it could cause abortion. Wow. And Jack, welcome. you were in the studio. Oh, here, yeah, hey, what's up? Hey, Jack. Well, you know, there you have it. But so good if you don't want to have alcohol, maybe not good if you're pregnant. Don't know. Or leave the or leave the pine out. Yeah, leave the pine out. leave the pineale. Because I know I've never done lemon and elderflower, but yuzu an elderflower. I know is delicious with pear, pear juice, with yuzu and elderflower, very good. I mean, carbonate that sucker, too. But here's something that you're going to know more about again, Chris. You got caller, by the way, Dave. Okay, call her. take the collar and then we'll go back to coffee. Call her, you're on the air. Hey guys, it's Chris Kohler from North Carolina. How you doing? Good. First, I wanted to thank Chris for chef steps. He's always answering my questions on the forum and it's a great resource that everybody that listens to this, you know, radio

[30:40] and that likes your blog would absolutely love. Thanks, Chris. Nice to actually hear your voice. Yeah, uh, it's great, you know, getting to ask you guys a question. I just got a bunch of ramps and I want to know what to do with them. I've always kind of avoided them because, you know, I feel like they might be overhyped

[30:57] or that they're like, you know, a little too, you know, whatever, but, uh, what do I do with these things? Well, so Stas hates. Nastasia hates ramps just because other people like them. Just a caveat, right, Stas? That's right Yeah, that's why I've always avoided them. All right, Chris, give me some ramp, give me some ramp, drop some... No, there's obviously the pickled ramps, charred ramps are nice. I would, you know, one of the things I would do is I'd like to make a nice sauce from them. So I would I would char them slightly, uh, puree them and turn them into a fluid gel. So do you have any agar or gelan gum? Yep, got it, Agar. Would you charmed us on the grill or should I just use the blowtorch? Uh, you could do it with a you could do it with a blowtorch. If you check out the chart rapini video on chefsteps.com, you'll, uh, you'll sort of see a nice technique that we use, and so I just give them, uh, a, a, a, a light charring, then, then puree

[31:51] them, uh, I would let them down with a little bit of water rather than uh, a stock, just because I think the flavor is fantastic, uh, adjust the seasoning. And then if you wanted sort of a, a, a thicker puree that, that, uh, that you could drag that would stand up and have some body to it. With Agar. I'd probably set it with about one% and then puree it, um,

[32:13] and, and civet. Uh, if you had jelly and gum, you might be able to go down to about

[32:18] .75% for a, for a fairly thick puree. But what's nice about the fluid gel is it's not going to be gloopy or clowing in the

[32:25] mouth is going to be very clean and really let the charged of ramp flavor come through. One thing, though, is definitely, don't add the salt or any acid to the puree until right before serving or you're going to end up just coloring the sort of vibrant green. green appearance. Cool. Yeah, and one other thing in general, when you're using ingredients like that is, since you're going to have, since you're going to charge

[32:46] extra for them, and people want to know what they taste like, and they're expensive, and they only come around once in a while, usually you should use them in things that highlight them. I mean, that's, you know, just common practice when you say... Yeah. You know, it's, it's, you know, there, yes, that's true and I agree with that. The other thing, though, is people can get a little bit overly precious, and so if you sort of follow to its logical conclusion, you get this sort of farce of, of, of, of, of a cooked ramp on a plate with nothing

[33:13] else, um, because, because it's so special that we have to highlight. It's like, uh, you can do a little bit more to it and still really show up the ramp. What you might end up doing is composing a couple different textures. So the pickled ramp, the ramp puree, um, you know,

[33:28] some, some, some, some very thinly sliced ramp, um, all of those could be, could be really nice. What do you call that dish? You call that rampant up? I'll leave the puns to you. Yeah. Yeah. Again, we at Booker Intacts are the world expert punis. Yeah. All right. What do you like? What do you like for ramps? What do you like pairing rams with? Well, I don't, I don't, I've never, uh, I never used them uh, at the French culinary, uh, because I just never did. I would only ever cook them at home. And so then I usually just, I just do them as a, as a side, I do like

[34:05] a, uh, like a quick saute, and then a little bit of sugar down like I would with uh, asparagus, salt, and like a little bit of correction with acidity at the very end as it comes out and just serve them kind of glazed and wilted like that. But because I'm doing it at home, you know? Well, 2 things just came to my mind, Chris, actually. Somebody in our forum mentioned that if you have a lot of ramp to do about like a £10 case, ramp kimchi, and that sounds fantastic. So that would be very cool. sounds really good. The other idea that comes to mind is it's going to definitely ship the flavor a bit, but if you do end up making a ramp puree. Enrich it with a little schmaltz, a little a little roast chicken fat. And that's just going to make it incredibly delicious. You just wanted to say schmaltz, Chris. I did. Actually, I have a notepad here with words that I want to get into our conversation. It's sort of the subliminal programming going on. Well, Schmaltz is a good one. You know, people don't have the schmalz on the table anymore. That's like so old school. I think Sammy's Romanian is the last restaurant in New York where you can go have like

[35:09] the big thing of schmaltz on the table. Well, and it's it's really easy to do. If you if you take like your roast chicken carcass and then pressure cook the heck out of it, you're going to have all this fat on the

[35:21] top and most people throw that out, which that's kind of a crime. I mean, you should you should skim that off and save it because roast chicken fat's awesome. Oh, yes. Oh, yes, it is. It's delicious product. All right, so I hope that answers the ramp question. Yeah, thank you guys. Thanks, Chris. That's the great work. Thank you. All right. You know there's a schmaltz brewing company? that can't that can't be good. I don't want Schmaltz in my beer, Jack. There is. I did not watch them all. I mean, like, I will go places other people will not, but Schmaltz, my beer, is not one. Although, I will taste it. If someone ever hears this, who can get a hand their hand on a can of schmaltz beer, set it our way, and we'll definitely, I'll get bread and schmaltz and drink the schmaltz beer with it. Uh, okay. All right, here we go, Chris. Coffee, right? For those of you who don't know, I think because I think people don't really know, and this is actually an interesting question, although we shouldn't spend too much time on it because we have a bunch of actual questions to get through, but... Maybe we can take a quick break too, unless you want to squeeze this out.

[36:18] Yeah, that squeeze us out for a second. So like the, uh, in the modernist cuisine, there are certain sections that different ones of you in the, you know, in the big one had more of a hand in because it's kind of more of your

[36:29] thing. You had a giant hand in the coffee section, correct? why I'm pestering with the coffee questions. Yeah, no, I, I, I, I, I, I'm a big fan of coffee, I, I would like to say that I stood on the shoulder of some giant people like Jim Hoffman, uh, World Reef champ

[36:45] and, and run square mile coffee in London and Tim Wendelbow. I had some, uh, some really wonderful people, uh, help out extensively with that chapter, but, uh,

[36:54] we, it's at least something I'm passionate about. they tried to make it a great chapter. Right. So now there's 2 questions we have from last week that I didn't

[37:02] answer, one on mocha pots and one on arrow presses, but before I get into it, Let me just say that my, my, uh, you know, expertise, if you can call it that in coffee, is almost exclusively related to

[37:13] uh, espresso shots, because that's what I drink, and that's all I drink. I drink a lot of it, but that's what I make and that's what I think about a lot. But before we even get into this, I think everyone should probably go check out, if you don't

[37:28] mean modernist cuisine, I read it the section on coffee actually today, but also go to look at VST, Mojo to Go, and what they have done with like linking refractometers and initial coffee weights to kind of targeting where your brew is, and probably read Scott

[37:47] Reyes' book on everything but espresso. If you're interested in kind of the mechanics of non-espresso brewing. Would you agree with that factor? No. I would actually recommend both the Scott Reyes books. I think they're 2 of the best books written on the subject and certainly influenced our thinking on coffee. So, but his everything, but a special book. I think is the standard by which other books will be judged. I wish ours was not good. Right. But I mean, so I mean, the key is, and we're going to talk here about arrow press and mocha pots. But the key is to is to understand that each one of these things has a lot of variables involved in

[38:24] it, and each type of coffee maker that people still use on a regular

[38:28] basis can make a delicious cup of coffee. However, they're not interchangeable and they won't make the same cup of coffee. And so the question is figuring out how to control the variables accurately to get it consistent and the best of that style of coffee that you can get.

[38:43] Would you agree with that, Chris, or no? Yeah, I think that's what's interesting about it is, you know, you have this raw material, but depending on how you extract the, the, literally 100s, if not 1000s of compounds in it, you get a very different drinking experience, and, and to those who care about coffee, it can be incredibly

[39:01] interesting that something as simple as the difference between a pour over and a French press give you such a very different outcome. Now, on the, on the French press variant up to new, newer style AeroPress, the 1st question. Hopefully an easier question, this is also from a person who doubled up on a question. I recently acquired an arrow press and a burgrinder. This is why the acquisition of additional materials would lead to a domestic dispute.

[39:25] So what we're told is he cannot purchase a more expensive machine other than the

[39:29] AeroPress and the Bergrinder that he has. And I've been experimenting with different amounts of coffee, different grinds, and different water temperatures. Small changes seem to make a big difference to the taste. I would greatly appreciate your comments on how the various factors affect the result. The AeroPress website suggested making a very concentrated initial brew and watering it down will get a better result than adding more water. Why is this? Also, why does grind size seem to make such a difference? One post I found online recommends inverting the press and very carefully making sure that the foam on top of the coffee made its way into the final cup. Although you don't like that stuff, right, Chris? That stuff that floats up, you're not a fan, right? I'm not a huge fan of breaking. I like to skim the raft off. Um, in the case of French press before, uh, before plunging it to prevent it from sort of overbrewing and over extracting while it sits on the

[40:14] table. Right, right. Well, in fact, the person who wrote the question, Alex also agrees with that because they found the results of the turning it upside down a bit oily and harsh, but perhaps my

[40:22] palate is immature, says Alex, or perhaps I need better beans. Any advice? I enjoy tinkering with different options, but would love to understand the basics of what's going on with different grind sizes, temperatures, and concentrations. Keep up the good work. Alex from Toronto. Well, I mean, very, very simply put in in an arrow press. When you do the AeroPress, I do, I do a full stir down, let it sit and then, and then do the fresh extraction. Is that what you do or no? I mean, that would be what I do because you're putting it through a through an extremely fine membrane filter. So the idea of it sort of over extracting once you, once you

[40:54] essentially, uh, uh, um, strain it, as it were, uh, it's irrelevant. So, yeah, a stir down there for even wetting of the grounds and a

[41:03] more, uh, uh, in a sort of a more uniform extraction is going to help. This is one of these things where you can very easily start chasing your tail. Um, and uh, and I'll, infer to say that I've, I've used arrow presses. I, I, I like them. I think they're interesting. There's a lot of great techniques online. Um, but I'm not an expert on AirPress because I don't make it all that often. Um, you know, a couple things that I can point out is the water temperature has a huge impact. Generally speaking, the cooler your water, the more acidic you're going to get, the hotter your water, the more you will pend towards the bitter side. Um, something around 98 Celsius. I think the aeropress folks actually recommend a slightly lower temperature. Um, but something in the upper 90s is going to be about right. You'll have to find where that sweet spot is for you with everything else held constant. But in general, as you lower the water temperature, you're going to tend to find it more acidic, and maybe a little bit under extracted, and as

[41:58] it's hot or water, it's going to get a little more bitter and over extracted. Right, and the finer the grind, the faster you will extract, and the course of the grind is little. Finer grind tend to, you know, favor, over extraction,

[42:10] course, grinds, favor, under extraction, that interacts with water temperature as does contact time. So the problem is you kind of have to choose which of those you're going to keep fixed. Well, you adjust the others, otherwise you start to get really befuddled and lose track of

[42:25] where you are and what you're trying to tweak. And in the arrow press, the quantity of water you add to the quantity of coffee should not change the extraction appreciably because you're not getting close to any sort of

[42:38] equilibrium. That should just change how strong the coffee is relative to pure water.

[42:43] Would you agree with that or no? Yeah, it's going to change your brew strength. And this is what the guys at extract modo have done some phenomenal work is most people tend to tend to, you know, it's surprising how tight the

[42:55] ranges that people actually consider sort of a well-balanced cup. And, you know, you can use a refractometer actually quantify this and say that you actually want to get sort of, you know, an 18 or so

[43:08] percent extraction from the grounds, um, that would be for espresso. I actually suspect it will be similar for, uh, for, for aero

[43:17] press, but I've never really looked. Yeah, I mean, the rail numbers are between around 18 and 22 for non-expressive. between 18 and 22. Uh, you know, And that varies a little bit culturally. Norwegians, like, you know, what I've heard is Norwegians and Scandinavians, they were slightly higher. They also like... Americans, I think, are tend to be 18, 19% of our friend Jeffrey Steingarten told me I'm a fool for liking 18%. Why, what does he like? Uh, higher. Yeah, sounds like Jeffrey. That sounds like Jeffrey. But of course, the Elys like it lower, right? That's why Ely's use like the actual Ely family. And you should also go look at espresso, the chemistry, the chemistry of qualities. A great book on espresso only. I mean, it came out a long time ago, so I don't know kind of how up to date it is, but they

[44:03] favor kind of very low numbers. They use, you know, very, like, longer shots with lower, uh, lower initial doses, but... Yeah, they talk. I mean, if you talk in terms of sort of brew ratio with espresso, like, and that, what massive a shot do you get out of from what massive ground in a particular time frame?

[44:23] And, you know, that you'll find that the Italians in general sort of like, um, you know, something that's, it's, it's, uh, uh, usually they'll use smaller dosing to begin with, and they'll, they'll pull a slightly faster

[44:36] shot, and the brew ratio won't be quite the same as what,

[44:39] what, they'll do like, you know, closer to 2 to one brew ratio. So maybe a 7 gram dose, get a 14 gram shot out. Whereas you have a tendency in this country because we drown our beverages in so much

[44:52] milk to use much higher dosing, maybe 18 or 20 grams, and then like a one and, you know, this will

[44:59] vary depending on style, but, you know, somewhere closer to like a one. 5 maybe even towards the restrato of a one to one brew ratio and it's going to make a much, much stronger coffee. Um, maybe even a little bit better. You're going to lose some of the acidity, some of the floral note. But then if you drown it in a gallon of milk, it has a chance of sort of standing out. Yeah, but even as the, so, I mean, you know, Ily, Andrea Ily told me once, yeah, when I asked him, so, and we're talking now like 10 years ago. So, you know, kind of in the early period of the huge expansion in

[45:28] the in the coffee scene out where you are in Seattle, I guess you weren't there at that time, but you are from that

[45:33] area. whatever. So, uh, and, you know, he, I said, what do you think about what these guys are doing on the west coast of New

[45:39] York of the US where they're using much higher dose rates than you are and pulling shorter shots? And as you say,

[45:46] he's, you know, he's like, the florals are going to be reduced. I happen to think that a circa 2003, you know, like kind of pan West Coast, so take Vivace as like kind of the one that we all kind of heard about over here, right?

[46:01] That kind of a shot. I loved that kind of a shot, like 2002, like that kind of a shot. I thought was amazing. The last time I was out there a couple years ago, like these kind of like skim coat shots where they're like hyper dosing it and pulling out like way less than an ounce. I don't know about that style. What do you think? I'm not actually a fan of that style. I, uh, I, I probably prefer something closer to 18 gram dose, pulled in, depends on the coffee, but around 27 or so, you know, 2024 to 27 seconds, and I generally like to get like, uh, more towards like a

[46:38] one.6, one.7 brew ratio. It's not, it's not an Italian style, but it's not this really overdosed. Um, uh, you know, sort of hyper restrato shot that uh, that, that's become fairly fashionable. Is there any snap back on the west coast back towards like slightly more normal shot volumes or no? Yeah, uh, I, I would say actually there's an interesting trend going

[47:01] on, it, it places, um, like Millstead Coffee. There's a great, uh, an up and coming, uh, uh, young barista named Andrew

[47:08] Milstead who runs this place in Fremont, and he's basically going back towards smaller, uh, smaller, you know, if you order a, a,

[47:16] a, a cappuccino. going to get a 5 ounce cup there. And so when you start reducing the amount of milk you're serving. It allow you to sort of start bringing these shot doses down and the brewing ratios to, you know, maybe more normal levels or levels that really sort of maximize bringing out the florals and

[47:33] and, and, and the various aroma, aroma notes you get in the coffee and away from this shot that's really just designed to stand out

[47:40] in 24 ounces of hot milk. David got a squeeze a break in here. We have to have a break. have to, yes. All right, right, right. Commercial break. be right back with Chris Young.

[48:00] This is Chris Young, co author of Modernist Cuisine. Together with photographer Ryan Matthew Smith and Chef Grant

[48:11] Crilley, we've created something exciting and new at Chef Steps.com. Each day in our kitchen at Seattle's Pike Place market, we're working on new recipes, as well as updating classic ones that we love. And we're always looking for new techniques that make the impossible possible.

[48:28] At chefsteps.com. We publish it all online with detailed step-by-step demonstrations, as well as explanations of the science that answers the why behind the how in the

[48:39] kitchen. And through our forum, you can engage with our team, as well as a friendly community of curious cooks from around the world. If you're interested in becoming a better cook. If you want more from the creative team behind modernist cuisine. And if, like us, you're a fan of Dave Arnold in cooking issues, then we think there's a lot you'll like. And the best part, chefsteps.com is entirely free to learn. How's that for an ad? There you go. All right, Chris, you still with us, right? Yeah, I'm here. Okay, cool. So another question also from an Alex, different one. Alex Gordetski writes in about mocha pots, which actually, you know what? I'm going to go ahead and say this. I don't drink mocha pot coffee, but the real problem with mocha pots is that people

[49:22] have linked the word espresso to the mocha pot and they're just entirely different types of coffee, right? I mean, they're just not the same thing, right? And I've never taken the time to get a good mocha cup, but apparently people who like it, like it. Yeah, so I'm going to say I've been given like 3 mocha pots in my lifetime is a gift. Um, and it appears to be sort of this cult, that people who have mocha pots, it's like Tupperware or something. It's like you, they give you a mocha pot and it's like join us and I've never had a good cup of coffee out of a mocha pot. It might be possible, but I've never had it, and so I've never really captivated my interest in, and then there's just people who are, who love mocha pot. They sort of make me feel like I'm joining a cult so I've sort of shunned them. Right. Well, well, I think the thing is, is that, you know, there's a lot to control. Wait, well, let's I'll go with the question here. Okay. So we've been using this stovetop Italian mocha coffee maker for many years and we love it for a variety of reasons. So maybe Alex is also a member of the cult. don't know. Had some questions to see if we can make the mocha coffee better. First, grind. We have been grinding between espresso, espresso and Turkish. That is too fine. That is too fine for a mocha pot. All the indications that I have are that you want to go slightly coarser uh, than uh, slightly coarser than espresso. Um, water. We use tap water. Whether or not tap water is good depends on which tap you have. Uh, you know, like kind of, you know, New York City water is a little bit too soft, I think most people would say,

[50:52] but uh, I don't know how Seattle water must be good. That must be one of the reasons why the coffee stuff took off over there, right? Everybody's got reverse osmosis filters on their line in Seattle. Oh really? And then do they re- do they... In the water is perfectly good here, but, um, you know, it seems that

[51:08] what I, the numbers I've heard thrown around is something like 150 uh, PPMs

[51:13] of, of, of, of some of your, your hard generals. Basically, if you were to go get like volvic water or or dishani or some

[51:20] sort of name brand pretty middle of the road water. That's about perfect for coffee and people will go into fairly great effort of making sure their tap water is about that. Right. And then, uh, Alex asked, would it be better with hot tap, a top water, any other tips would be useful as well. Now, neither Chris nor I are mocha heads, as we said. However, Stumptown coffee has a good little thing. If you go on their website on using the mocha podcast. They say, you want to preheat the water before you put it into the mocha pot. This makes sense because it means it's less time on the stove and less time to dry heat your coffee grounds, which is not a good thing. Uh, they also say that the, one of the most important things when you're doing mocha pot work is to keep the lid of it open so that you can look down on it so that as soon as it starts blonding out on the extraction, you can pull it off before you over extract

[52:09] out of it. And then the other thing that they say is to wrap a wet towel to stop the extraction at that point almost

[52:14] instantly. I would say easier would be just to have like a pan of cold water next to

[52:19] it that you could just put the whole bottom of the, yeah, just quench it. And that's something I hadn't thought of, and that's probably a good, good technique. So I think if you add those, that's probably going to boost your stuff. Go to the top. I would use a coarser grind. And I think like those, I mean, I'm almost, you know, intrigued now to go out and go out and try

[52:38] it. You know, one of the things that's false about. Everyone who's against it says, well, you're boiling the water, therefore the water is too hot,

[52:45] therefore it can't possibly make good coffee. But the fact of the matter is, is that from the one or 2 people I've seen who've done kind of initial measurements of the temperature, it's actually by the time it's getting through your coffee

[52:55] grounds no longer boiling and not that far above what it would be in a good espresso machine.

[53:00] So, you know, this is all stuff that can be tweaked out. Yeah, my guess is, you know, I'm sort of taken this weird attitude towards Moga Pots. I'm sure it's possible to make a pretty good cup and I'm sort of spoiled that I have a nice espresso machine at my disposal. I have all these other things, so I've never really looked at it, but I think you're right. I can't see why you'd want it finer. I, because I think you're having a longer extraction period. You'd actually rather have a slightly coarser grind, which is going to give you a slightly bigger margin for air of under versus over extracting, and that, and with something like a mocha

[53:35] pot, where you have to quench it, to try to stop the extraction. Having anything that gives you a little more wiggle room is going to be worthwhile. I agree. Hey Dave, quick tweet. Yep. Just FYI, Schmaltz beer doesn't actually have Schmaltz in it. They're just using it, you know, using the term. They do blood Jewish beers like Hebrew and things of that nature. All I'm saying is send it our way. That's all I'm saying You just want beer. I just want beer. I'll drink it with I'll drink it with Jimmy Carbone. We'll have some beer together. Okay. So, uh, Brian in San Francisco. This is a good one, Chris. I've wasted many cups of olive oil, grapeseed oil, and sunflower oil trying to make mayonnaise from scratch. I follow the recipe from Sirius Eats Food Lab with the immersion blender, and it comes out liquidy. I've also followed McGee's advice from Keys to Good Cooking about using another yoke to save it, but I couldn't. I've also tried the old-fashioned way with a whisk. Please give me a foolproof recipe for mayo also. What about adding flavors, garlic, mustard, and making holidays, bourlaise, and other A's style sauces. Finally, how long will it keep in the fridge? The Japanese don't refrigerate theirs. What's up with that? Thanks, Brian, San Francisco. Okay, 1st of all, mayonnaise is unsafe when it's made, unless you pasteurize the eggs. However, the longer it sits, assuming you've used the correct acid ratios in the manufacturer of it, the safer it gets. So that's why in New Orleans, people don't die from eating the mayonnaise that's been sitting out all day. But initially made mayonnaise is not safe, and you can always, as modernist cuisine will tell you, or as Chris will tell you, or as I will tell you, it's very simple to pasteurize the egg yolks before you use

[55:04] them and they still make a good mayonnaise, correct? Yep, they make great mayonnaise. Okay. Now, this technique on what's it called on, on, um, that Kenji Alt did on, uh, on the blog

[55:16] there on the food network, uh, not food network, what's it called? Food Lab is really cool. What he does, Chris, and I don't know if you've seen the video. What have you got? Yeah. So what he does is he takes an immersion blender cup, puts

[55:26] an a single egg yolk in it, a tablespoon of water, which is a mistake because water doesn't add

[55:32] flavor. I would add a flavorful liquid, but you know, whatever. I think it was just because that's what he did, whatever. I'm not going to get it. Little vinegar would be nice in there, maybe some mustard. Yeah, yeah, well, he has also adds mustard, but like just straight water, like came out with like a flavorless, because I just did it today, flavorless mayonnaise. And then he puts it into a the actual cup that comes with the immersion blender. And that turns out to be the key. So what happens is you put the immersion blender in the bottom. You hit it. And because the egg yolk is sitting at the bottom underneath the blades, you actually are slowly adding the oil to it.

[56:02] It makes us an emulsion before the bulk of the oil face starts getting mixed into it. And you can make a very stiff, banged out awesome mayonnaise in like, in nothing flat. It's actually amazing. It's really kind of amazing. So, like, that's the way I'm, when I was garmagee chef at the fat dog. That's like the way I made our mayonnaise twice a day for for service. So, um, I, I, I was unaware this was even a technique. Yeah, yeah. Well, but here's the thing. It's easy to mess up because, uh, so the results

[56:34] are getting too liquidy when Brian 1st said he was also too liquidy, my initial assumption was you didn't use enough oil, right? Because we all know that like you actually... The oil thickens it as you as you as you bulk it up. Bingo. But I did as, so then I, as an alternate test, I also did it by adding, you know,

[56:51] the, I added the ingredients in all different orders. Uh, I added, you know, very, very high proof, uh, you know, 10% uh, Scandinavian vinegar to see

[57:00] whether, or no, Polish vinegar to see whether or not overaceting the yolk could mess it and it couldn't. It was all perfect. But then I made the recipe in a court container instead of in the actual immersion blender

[57:10] cup, and it did not work because it created too much mixing of the yoke and the oil before a stable emulsion was formed. So the key to that technique is to use the actual cup that the immersion blender came with, or if you've lost that, use a mixing tin for like a like a tall cocktail mixing

[57:31] tank, because I tested it in that as well. Yeah, you just you just want a cup. We're down at the bottom of it, it's not the diameter isn't much bigger than the diameter of the end of the stick blender. And, you know, you can start with all the

[57:43] oil, or if you're, if you haven't practiced this, you can put a little bit of oil, and it almost sort of chop it up to get that initial emulsion, and then get the rest of the oil in and just start blending from the bottom slowly pulling up.

[57:53] And, uh, you know, I've, I've always found that's a very easy way to get a, a thick thing. So if he's having trouble, my guess too big of a container. Yeah, because I, it was in, I tried it 4 times in a court container, it's not possible to do it in something that's too wide at the bottom. Anyway. Oh, so I am being told that we are out of time. So I have a question about souffle with acid. Do you have anything for stabilizing a high acid souffle other than making sure that

[58:21] the base isn't too hot when you put the acid ingredient in before you fold the egg whites, Chris? Um, Not off the top of my head, you know, my general reaction when people want to talk about stabilizing the souffle, they generally mean they don't want it to

[58:40] collapse, and the problem is if you make a souffle so stable that it doesn't collapse, it's a cake, not a souffle

[58:45] anymore. Um, but you're talking about being able to add a, a high acid into, into the egg base before baking. Yeah. I mean, I mean, well, I'll talk him a little bit more about it next week. Mark Jensen also wrote in with a great use of his leftover 64 degree eggs. He makes a hollandaise without having to pre-cook and modernist cuisine style. So I'll talk about that. That's good use. Uh, and then we had someone who was having problems with their creme anglaise. Tom Fisher will get to you next week. So I'm sorry we didn't get to finish all the questions, but that's just we have so many good questions and good colors in. And you got to talk to us about the cereal puff for next week too. Oh, yeah, we have a new puffing gun, Chris, next time you're in the city for the summertime coming. I'm extremely envious. So maybe a trip to New York to come out and play with your toys. Well, you know, you guys, you know, chef steps is willing to, like, chef steps comes out here, you guys can make your own proprietary puffed snack mix in our puffer, you know,

[59:40] in the museum's puffer would be awesome. Also, we shipped a we shipped a beta test unit of the sears all out to you guys. You guys get it yet? I will check the game. I haven't seen it yet, but I'm interested. I was very interested to see the results you had on blowtorching and that,

[59:56] that, uh, you know, you, you might be proving us wrong, that we've got to reduce some revisions to MC. All right. Well, see what you think about it. and let me just say this. For those of you that still cook foie gras out there, this sears all, this is ridiculous on the foie gras. And Chris, thanks for coming speaking with us, cooking issues. 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

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