[0:00] This is Chris Young, co-author of Modernist Cuisine. I'd like to invite you to check out chefsteps.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 station, where 1000000s

[0:23] strong, with folks tuning in from over 200 countries. We are education, we are entertainment. We are the future of food. May is our membership drive. Become a member and support us while receiving the newsletters, advanced invites, special discounts, and a membership card. We need your support. Visit our website and click the donate button to become a member today. Thank you for believing in us and enjoy the show.

[0:55] Cooking your shoes.

[1:21] Showing your questions, too. Cooking issues. Hello and welcome to cooking issues, Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live on Heritage Radio Network in the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. How you guys doing? Calling your questions two. 718-497-2128. at 718-497-2128 joined in studio, as usual with Nastasia the Hammer. How you doing? Yeah? You all right? Yeah. Jack and Joe in the engineering booth. Plus, a host of new people that are coming on board, we have Eddie, right? Correct. Yeah, you're going to be another associate producer over here at the Hersbury Network. Yes, the associopath producer, yes. Yeah, we're coming up with a new thing, the sociopath producer, stay tuned for that. And Dedrick in the engineering booth, correct? What's up? Yeah, that's right. How you doing? Thanks, guys. So we got a full studio today, which I like. Uh, and uh, so uh, what happened this week? I just got back from my 20th year reunion at Yale College over

[2:23] there. And you know what, Stas? The people, I was expecting like a bunch of really terrible looking people, like I expected like just like a real like poop fest of

[2:32] like awful looking folk, like, you know, totally decrepit, bloated out, nasty, like droopy, like just all bad. You know what? They looked great. Really? Yeah, they look great. Did they like your talk? Oh, yeah, I gave a talk. It's called a turbo talk, which is like a variant of this kind of like 20 slides, 20 seconds, which I can't

[2:52] pronounce like Petra Kuch, Pet, you know, something like that. Yeah, it went well, I think. I mean, I did my normal strategy, which was fit a 30 minute talk into 6 minutes. So I just spoke as fast as I could. And I didn't have any water. I went completely dry. My wife was in the audience. Jen, she said that I was turning red in the face. And, you know, you could see that like little bit of dry mouth spittle forming on the edges of my lips as I was like, you know, belting out, you know, at 8000000000 words a

[3:18] minute, what was going on. But I think it went all right. think it was fine. But anyway, the interesting fact to me is the fact that everyone looked really good. And it just kind of drove home to me. One of the issues I think we're going to be looking into the museum. I need to do my own research on is that, um, the, the problem with nutrition in this country is, is kind of exacerbated, I think, by the fact that the people who are making the rules in general are people that aren't living the problems.

[3:50] So you have like a group of extremely educated, uh, rather probably well-to-do, fairly liberal, uh, IV uh, league types. And these are like the policymakers for this sort of thing. And they all look great because they have the time, energy, and knowledge to spend on this problem. And then you have the rest of the people that are getting legislated

[4:11] at and preached at by this group of people who are the ones having the real problem. So, you know, I really think, you know, we're going to be spending a lot of time kind of delving into the stats and kind of breaking this problem down more thoroughly. But it was really, I mean, I know it's anecdotal, one college reunion, but really kind of stark, uh,

[4:31] slapping the face. In a good way, in in some sense, because I was, you know, surprised how good everyone looked, but there's a darker side to the looking good.

[4:39] Okay. I had a comment in. From Mike Mallory. Can you forward this to Dave Nastasia. Longtime listener, love the show. You answered a question about gluten intolerance that was a bit misinformed on the William McGee episode. I love it's called the William McGee episode. Not Harold. William listener. Harold doesn't listen. Although Harold might be here next week. True or false? In Brooklyn? Or on the phone. Well, he's going to be in New York City in the real life this next week because of this like science festival thing that's going to World Science

[5:11] Festival that Mustache and I are doing some sort of cocktail for. You didn't know you were going, but you are. Yeah. So anyways, so yeah, he's going to be in town. And if he is going to be in town on the Tuesday, I said that I would handcuff him and bring him into the studio. Wow. Yeah. I think he actually leaves Tuesday, so a lot depends on when he's leaving, but I don't even know that he's eating Roberta's

[5:34] before, so maybe we can woo him with, like, even maybe above the pizza level. If Harold McGee comes in, can he get above the pizza and salad level of

[5:42] cooking issues remuneration for service rendered? Certainly. I think I'll even pay 1st card to JFK. Nice job, Joe. Whoa. Wow. Joseph Baller now. Yeah, you like that? It's crazy. All right. Okay. Sorry. You answered a question about gluten intolerance. was a bit misinformed on the William McGee episode. Gluten intolerance is not the same as Celiac. It's well known in the research that a good chunk of the population mounts an immune reaction to

[6:09] gluten, gluten, but is not specifically a celiac or have like a, you know, a

[6:15] health, what would you call it? This is, I'm paraphr, a health endangering allergy or something. What do you call it anyway? Gluten intolerance is a gray area, but still measurable via lab test below full-blown celiac, which is more severe and immediate and an immediate immunoglobulin response. I say gray area because there's a huge spectrum of mucosal membrane-based, immune response, IGA, uh, things that mount slow inflammatory reactions to gluten. It's often called subclinical gluten intolerance because the body has a measurable reaction, but not a true allergic reaction. It's a different type of immune response, but you should know the difference between an intolerance and an allergy. Not all folks avoid gluten because it's bad for celiacs. That's not to say most people who avoid gluten at restaurants aren't full of sugar, honey iced tea. It would be nice if chefs knew that there isn't just black and white celiac or not. And there's a whole class of immune mediator reactions, a.k.a. gluten

[7:06] intolerance. Mike Mallory. Mike, point well taken, uh, point well taken, too simplified in the last thing, but, uh, I guess simplified for effect, which is there's a whole, uh, group of people there who are full of

[7:20] sugar honey iced tea. But I think my point last week was also that I'm kind of

[7:26] glad. Like, I don't care. I'm glad, look, people like me who have no problem with the gluten,

[7:31] like we're going to pound as much gluten as we can. In fact, I was talking to someone at the reunion, choose gluten, you know, gluten intolerant. She actually celiac. And so we were discussing this issue with them. And she was like, yeah, man, if I could eat gluten, I would be swimming through loaves of baguettes. You know, I'd be like chomping, swimming through loaves of baguettes and, you know, inhaling pizzas as fast as I could eat them because stuff's

[7:53] delicious. But, uh, but can't. Anyway, but you know, again, thank goodness for the people who don't consume

[8:00] it for no parent reason because they create a huge industry that allows people like are good

[8:06] piper to be able to eat better products. Yeah. But anyway, point well taken. Now, back to the mystical myth. Oh, stars. So you went to the Rhode Island, correct? And you went to go see, now you can't, you can't, can't. Don't, you don't eat horseshoe crabs, but horseshoe crabs, you think that they're kind of interesting when they're on the ground on the beach. They're actually horrifying. You know, I know that they're interesting and fascinating and they're a throwback, a living fossil. So I don't want to get any comments about how I'm maligning them. horrifying, horrifying, like little creatures. So what'd you go see? We went to a hotel where they were having a meeting, a meeting event for these guys. And we were supposed to be in a boat, but they made us put on waiters. I told you that was going to happen. I know. But it wasn't covered. It was just a couple, a couple, like every couple feet. It was a crappy weekend, so it was kind of ruined. wasn't out. It was pouring. They were, yeah. Yeah, so Stas did not, you have to do it again. I know. Yeah, so here's what happened. So in the span of my young life between 8 years old and 10 years old. I witnessed some of the most horrifying biblical proportion natural events in kind of the history of New Jersey and kind of the little

[9:25] eastern seaboard thing there, right? So, like, we didn't have that many hurt. In 77, we got hit by my name, David, was pretty bad, not bad by, you know, Sandy standards, but, you know, I was like, okay, I was little, so it seemed like a big deal. Then, uh, when I was 8 years old, we went to, I went to Cape Cod to a

[9:41] thing, to a camp and witnessed one of these things by mistake. And it was, I had to wade ashore

[9:48] and, and the entire ground in the bay was, was just coated with these monstrous, monstrous, monstrous, monstrous, monstrous horseshoe

[9:58] crabs, and you couldn't avoid them. And as an eight-year-old, you know, not being versed in horseshoe crowds. You like, I'm a Joe, Joe, a god, right? And furthermore, I learned a couple of years later that the horseshoe crab blood, which is copper-based and not iron-based in terms of its oxygen

[10:15] carry ability. Yeah, yeah, blue or green or whatever it is, was incredibly valuable at the time in research. And so I thought I was going to make a business of going back. I thought I was going to become a millionaire, like destroying all these dreaded horseshoe crabs and milking their blood out of them for

[10:30] profit. It didn't happen. I don't know, it didn't happen. And then, like right after that, the cicadas, or right before that, my brothers, remember, the cicadas came out in Bergen County, New Jersey, and coated the ground and made a deafening, awful, terrific like din of horrible cicada, like

[10:46] it's just crunching of stepping on cicada, the worst thing ever for a guy that hates bugs.

[10:51] And supposedly happening now, but now is not, it's not biblical. Has anyone called in and being like, 0 my god, the cicadas. No, right? Have you heard it? Have you seen people running and screaming covered by cicadas? School buses full of horrified children? And it's not like it was 2 cycles ago, 34 years ago when I witnessed it. And then the 1981 gypsy moth plague that hit the east coast and deforested a whole bunch of stuff. So, you know, what I'm looking for is a bunch of like kind of biblically bad natural signs to come on. I don't really want that to happen. anyway. So you didn't get you didn't get that, huh, Stas? No, it was unfortunate. Yeah, well, you know, maybe maybe this stuff is best experienced when you're a kid. Yeah. You think? Yeah. Yeah. Now all we got is you can't walk in the woods because of lime disease. It's not as visual, you know what I mean? Yeah. Oh, in old line, by the way. last week after the after the thing, the heart of Lyme disease, and apparently Lyme disease is still going strong there. Like hardcore. I was hoping kind of to get it so I could get it in the official place. I'd be like, I got my line disease in Bradford. No, man, I got my Lyme disease in line. Bang. I'm just kidding. You don't want to get Lyme disease. horrible. can cause permanent central nervous system problems if not treated properly. Yada, yada. Do not take this as a making fun of the disease. It's horrible. Okay, Lucas Wright fan, all about ice cream. Hey, cooking issues, radio team, big fan of the show, especially Dave's tirades against ever-changing and contradictory health fads. Here's the question. I'm a big fan of Fiori de Latte ice cream. milk, cream, sugar, and nothing more. You like that style, Stas? Yeah. Yeah? Where do you have it mostly? Not here. Well, when you go to Italy because you're an America hater, like, where do you normally get it? The small towns. Small towns, small towns. Which I had when I was a kid and could never forget. Every time I see it at a restaurant or ice cream shop, I order it. The thing is, the texture is always somewhat disappointing, correct you are. Correct, you are. Wait, actually, this is not from, is this one from Lucas? This is not from Lucas. This is from Jose. Man, Lucas, your question's coming later on. Jose, I apologize. This is your question. Uh, where am I? Okay, every time I see it at a restaurant ice cream shop, I order it. The thing is, the texture is always somewhat disappointing. Either they pump it up with excessive quantity of hydrocolloids, making it pasty or gummy, or it is slightly granular, probably globules of fat clumping up and making butter or ice crystals, frankly.

[13:10] You know, the issue here is, um, Yeah, is the texture is a big problem with this style life. We' get into it. I've tried to make it at home multiple times. I have a DeLongi with a built in freezer, but I keep getting the slightly granular result, which is not

[13:26] surprising, since after refrigeration, the cream fat rises to the top. By the way, that's a, right there, it's a classic sign. It's underfrozen. The problem with, the problem with the home ice cream freezers that have the built-in refrigeration units is that they just simply aren't very

[13:42] powerful. Like, if you look at Carpagani clololite, used to make a version that has a similar capacity to your DeLongi, but the machine is a good 3 times bigger. And the reason is because they have a, like, a serious compressor built into it. And the small compressors, like if it doesn't ice over, like instantly, as soon as you turn it on, it means that it just doesn't have the, are you allowed to say

[14:03] cojones? Is that? Yeah. cojones. It doesn't have the cojones to freeze it down fast enough. And so if you look at the ratings on the DeLongue. People are talking 25, 35 minute batch times for a load of ice cream. And in ice cream, you really want to batch time. I mean, look, commercial people, they're doing batch times with seven, 8 minutes on ice cream, longer on

[14:23] surveys, but like seven, 8 minutes on ice creams. And the reason is, is a faster freezing means smaller crystal sizes. So you're a little bit hampered because you're dealing with larger crystal sizes to begin with. because you're long freeze times. Then secondly, if you turn it off too soon before it freezes, you know, a little more completely than what you have it now, you have a big liquid phase and that liquid phase is going to cause some of these problems and also exacerbate your crystals because the rest of

[14:48] the stuff, as you put it in your freezer to harden, right, will quiescently freeze into much larger granules.

[14:55] So under, like, so under frozen stuff tastes fine, kind of straight out in the machine because you just pound it and it's kind of like soft

[15:01] serve and you're not noticing the crystals as much, but on hardening those under frozen ice creams are going

[15:07] to, it's going to accentuate that crystal problem. Now, you have a 3rd problem in that you're dealing with, you're dealing with an ice cream that doesn't have any inherent added emulsifiers from egg yolks,

[15:19] right? Now, what you call uh, what you call a fiore de latte ice cream, which, by the way, is not made out of a

[15:26] fiord de latte, uh, cow's milk mozzarella, also a delicious product, right? Different product It just means flour of the milk, right, Italian speaker? Check this out. Stars. Oh, God, you was told this story. Grew up. Knowing Spanish. Why? Because she's half Mexican and grew up in LA. Right? So it makes sense that she would speak Spanish. If I was half Mexican and grew up in LA, I would speak Spanish, my

[15:50] kids speak Spanish because they grew up in New York. Me, I'm an idiot. I don't speak Spanish. Here's what she says. I learned Italian in college and forgot the Spanish. What the hell's that all about? I learned it from a boyfriend, even worse. to make it less embarrassing for you. My God. Wow. Yeah. Anyway, okay. So, uh, before I get this, so what you're calling uh, Fiord latte ice cream is what we in the states call, Philadelphia style, Philly

[16:17] style with no egg yolks, no nothing, it's just milk, uh, typically milk, cream, sugar, uh,

[16:23] vanilla with no stabilizers. Now, the classic examples of this stuff in the US used to be briars. So Briars is a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania style ice cream, and they used to tout the fact that they were made with only those ingredients. And they had a very, very fast freeze time. And so the results were good straight out of the box if you lived close to Philadelphia.

[16:44] If you tried to buy briars and you live far away from Philadelphia or wherever their packing plants were, or if you made the mistake of buying that half gallon of briars ice cream and then not consuming the entire half gallon the instant it was open, it turned to crap.

[16:57] And that's, and the reason is, is because there's no stabilizers or emulsifiers in it to prevent crystal growth in your

[17:02] freezer where it freezes and thought freezer. So they got around the 1st problem, initial graininess by, um, just having a very, very fast freeze time in commercial, uh, continuous freezers, but they couldn't get around the secondary problem of it turning

[17:15] to crap in your crappy home. I'm not saying your home freezer's crappy, but your crappy home freezer. Because it, because it is. Yeah. They couldn't get around that problem without Amos fires. So what did they do? Very, very quietly. I think like sometime in the last decade, they started doping briars with stabilizers, like

[17:34] kerogen and things like that. Carragin is a good one because you can use extremely small quantities of it. Okay, now, to get back to your point. Uh, usually on Philadelphia style uh, ice creams or in, if you're a latte, they're fairly high fat, and that high fat is to get around the fact that you are,

[17:52] now I don't know a lot about Fiord latte, but I do know a lot about Philly, because I used to make Philly style ice cream all the time. Uh, you know, my my family doesn't come from there now, but I have a lot of them that come from outside the Philly area, your and Pennsylvania. That's why I love pretzels so much. anyway. Uh, one of the tricks is it has a higher fat content than you would get out of a standard custard ice

[18:11] cream. So you typically, you know, instead of like from my ice cream, I typically use one to one milk to cream, uh, but for custard-based ice

[18:20] cream, and, you know, the gelato heads are going to use probably even less uh, cream than that, they're going to use more

[18:26] milk, but more egg yolks and more sugar for a gelato style.

[18:29] And don't let anyone tell you that in gelato, they don't dope that stuff with, don't dope that stuff with stabilizers. And by the way, I'm going to go out another limb and get my head chopped off by people. I like American ice cream every bit as much as I like Italian gelato. In fact, because I grew up with it. I have a soft spot for a properly done American ice cream that can't be taken by anyone else's ice cream and gelato.

[18:50] And I've eaten it in small towns in Italy, in large towns in Italy, in tourist traps in Italy, and in the place where I was like, you must go have their

[18:58] gelato. In Italy, right? And usually, what it is, is heavily loaded with stabilizers. super doped with flavors,

[19:08] right? Like, that's why it has those intense punchy colors because they have so much. It's just so much of muchness. And it's good, but I wouldn't say that I would always want to have that over like a good old-fashioned scoop of and and I like I like the quote unquote

[19:23] French but American style ice creams, which means custard based, and I also like, uh, love a good Philly style ice cream. Okay. Now, so in a Philly style ice cream, you're going to go higher on the cream. So you're going to probably go 2 to one cream to milk in that range. once you get in that range, you're running into a couple of big problems. One. If you overturn that sucker, it'll get kind of very buttery

[19:44] tasting and you'll notice that, which is why, by the way, the ice cream machine I recommend for use at home is standard old rock

[19:52] salt, ice, ice cream makers. They make an unbeatable style. They're pain in the ass, but pain in the butt. But they make an unbelievable ice cream. You know, just saying. But even with those, you have to be careful in very, very high cream recipes about

[20:08] overturning. If you overturn your ice cream, it has a very characteristic buttery flavor that's different, uh, from a

[20:17] grainness caused by ice crystals, and you'll definitely get a kind of butter note, uh, on

[20:23] it, and I think sometimes the overturned stuff has a little bit of a shockingness to it, but I don't

[20:27] know, I just made that up off the top of my head. Sounds right. Yeah, yeah, it sounds right. Could be wrong, but sounds right. Uh, okay, so that said, let's move to uh, ways to fix this problem. So typically, if you're going to add stabilizers, you want to add the smallest amount of stabilizer possible, or if you're in a natural head, you might want to go, well,

[20:47] natural, because all this stuff's natural. I hate that. I hate this so much. Why did I even say that? The stuff's natural. What I mean is if you want to go into something that doesn't freak people out is what I meant. Uh, you know, go into the Carraginians, although that kind

[20:59] of, was Carragin a freak out? I don't think, no, Kerogen's not a freak out. freak out? No, it does, no. Okay, so the good news about Carragin in it is it has a synergistic effect with milk, so you can use absurdly small amounts of it to get the effects you want. Uh, right? So typically in ice cream, they'll have a two-part system, they'll have a gelling system and a thickening system, one to prevent crystal

[21:21] formation and the other one to prevent the wave from separating from the wave, it's all way off, way from separating

[21:27] and, you know, preventing other problems. So typically you'll have a two-part system, like a carragin, maybe locust bean gum or a carragin and guar. And you can add very small amounts of that stuff and not make it gummy and do a really good job stabilizing, or you could buy

[21:40] a commercial stabilizer basis, you know, things, and add them. And by and large, you can get them that are all natural. You don't have to get the ones when I say all natural. I mean, just like seaweed powders. You don't have to go to ones that have lots of like weird emulsiers in them, things like that. Another thing you can do. I know this is going against what you're doing. The great thing about this kind of ice cream that I used to like is that I didn't cook it at all ever. It was all cold. It had a real really, really fresh taste. A lot of people heat their Philly style ice cream so that they can get the sugar in, but I just waited a lot longer for the sugar to dissolve and never heated

[22:12] it. So it had a real fresh flavor. So that's, I think, what you're shooting at. So I want to go for things that don't necessarily need a lot of heating. What you might want to do is take a portion of it, right? So, so, of the things that can't be heated that are good stabilizers, guar. Guar, doesn't need to be heated. You have to get the flavor free guar, though. Uh, another thing you might want to look at is, um, uh,

[22:35] Jelen. Now, Jelen, you do need to heat to a boil, but what you could do is just heat a small portion of the milk with the gel

[22:41] onto the boil, set it as the gel and then blend it into a fluid gel, and that makes a very good flavor release, super creamy ice cream, right?

[22:49] Super creamy. It's on a cooking issues blog. Another thing you can look at, just good old-fashioned gelatin. Unless you are vegetarian, gelatin makes a very good, you know, addition to ice creams to decrease the amount of crystallization you

[23:04] get. And you can warm a portion of the milk up to hot with the

[23:08] jet, with the gelatin, then temper the rest of your milk slash cream back into it and still have a relatively fresh taste. If you want to go Sam Mason style and all you want is the uncooked flavor, but you don't mind adding things that aren't milk. He uses barely pasteurized egg yolks and they're not cooked into a custard. And that's also interesting. It's not the same thing as you're looking at, but it's also interesting. For a last thing on a milk based only, you might want to look at, and there's a small subset. You ever been to Sicily Stud? No. Me neither. Ed you ever been to Sicily? They make an ice cream over there. Me neither. They make an ice cream over there that where they thicken it with starch. It's cornstarch thickened ice cream. And I haven't had it, but there's a bunch of people on the internet who love it. And that stuff is so stabilized. It has relatively good flavor. Oh by the way, back on gelatin. The reason gelatin is good is because gelatin has a very good, good flavor release because it melts, 1st of all, it's not free sauce stable. So it breaks up after it's frozen and thaws out. It goes away in the mouth anyway, has very little flavor impact. Gelatin is like flavor

[24:05] released part XMLs, right? Gelan, which I said before, which is microbe derived also. And by the way, I'm talking low asyl gel land, which is the hard one that you break up to fluid gels. Also very good flavor release. Starch in low levels has fairly good flavor release, but it does mask. You know what I mean? It does mask things up, but if you're dealing with straight, look, some people like it. I've done some starch-based ice creams that I hated, but they were very high starch-based ice creams when I was trying to make snappy ice creams. I mean, I like potato-based ice creams. I've done, you know, many, many versions of potato ice cream They have like a snap, but I haven't done starch, but a lot of people swear by it. Mark Bitten swears by it, or swore by it in his minimalist article, he wrote a number of years ago. But the interesting thing is, is that they're so stabilized. that you can make them with quiescent freezing and they still don't get big ice crystals, right? Which means that your machine, if it takes a long time to make ice cream, might benefit from that sort of ice cream base because it's going to turn out smooth anyway because the starch matrix is preventing large crystals from forming. So, uh, might want to give that, uh, give that a trial. There's a recipe for it on icecreamnation.com. You go check it out. What do you thinks does? Good. Yeah? You want to take a commercial break? Nice timing. Oh, yeah.

[25:51] This is Chris Young, co author of Modernist Cuisine. Together with photographer Ryan Matthew Smith and Chef Grant Crilley, we've created something exciting and new at chefsteps.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. 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 kitchen.

[26:28] 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. Free to learn. That's crazy. That's crazy. Were you talking about an ice cream machine maker before? Is that who you called? Yes, I was talking an ice cream machine? And so why don't we just do all let's do all the ice cream in one in one chunk. All right. So, uh, by the way, uh, Chris assumes that if you're listening to this that you want to learn, nobody listens to this to learn. I'm just kidding. I just messing. Love, Chris. Were we going to schedule to see him sometime? Or do we no, we sent him a torch. Yeah, we'll see how that goes. Okay. How do you pronounce? What do you guys think? I-A-I-N. Ian, huh? Ian? Let's go. Ian? Ian in Herefordshire, UK writes in about batch freezers, ice cream freezers. Hey, Dave, Anastasia. Do you have any experience with ice cream batch freezers? So by the way, folks, batch freezer for ice cream, what that means is what it says. It does it in per batch. So you make a batch, you load it in, and you turn the ice cream for a specific amount of time, and you get the ice cream out. So liquid nitrogen in a kitchen aid freezer, that's badge freezing. It's not a bad freezer, but that's batch freezing. Using the hand turned ice cream machines with rocks and ice salt, batch freezing. The opposite of batch freezing is continuous freezers. Continuous freezers, constant amount of product is pumped in all the time, and it's frozen very, very short, short periods of time. So continuous freezers, all the big folks do it, you know, commercially, and produces can

[28:21] produce with, if you use good ingredients, and you change, you know, amount of air that's in ice cream is called the overrun. And when you're using a continuous freezer, you just the overrun independently of

[28:30] the, in a batch freezer, the dashers, the spinning things or what does the aeration and provides what's called the overrun, how much air is in it.

[28:38] And so 100%, 100% overrun means that there is, for every milliliter of ice cream base, there is a milliliter of air. That's 100% overrun. It's done based on how much ice cream base you started with. And, you know, anything over a 100 is absurdly, you know, absurdly light and anything, you know,

[28:57] the more premium ice cream. The funny thing about ice cream. I don't want to talk about this. The funny thing about ice cream, ice cream is sold volumetrically, right? It's sold by the pint by the quart. And yet the cost to produce the ice cream is based upon the weight of ingredients that goes

[29:11] in and the quality of those ingredients. So anyone that knows anything about ice cream, if you go to like the corner truck, the ice cream truck, and they give you the

[29:19] soft, a lot of people associate soft serve with being inexpensive or having a lot of air in

[29:24] it. And that's really a function of temperature and mixture, ingredient mixture, not a function of overrun. So if you go to Carvel, which when I was a kid was like the awesome soft server, but it's East Coast only thing. don't have Carvel on the west coast, right? Yeah. So if you go to Carvel, which is like northeast, like, you know, soft serve ice cream, those suckers are dense. Their ice cream cone weighs quite a bit, right? But if you go to not calling you out, Mr. Softie. But some of the people have bastardized your it's a New York City ice cream truck company. But, uh, they're in those soft-serve machines. There's an orifice, and the orifice pumps the mix into the uh, chamber, uh, freezing chamber, and the uh, the size of the orifice determines how much air is pumped into it at the time when it

[30:07] goes. So some disreputable ice cream truck, uh, uh, people will put an orifice in there that generates like 120% overruns. So you're buying more air than ice cream. And you can, those cones, they're, man, that cone looks

[30:21] big, and then you pick it up and it's like a balloon floating out of your hand. It so light. Anyway, whatever. How did I get into that? Anyway, so a continuous freezer is usually only done by larger scale people. I don't consider soft serve machines, which do continuously add product. I don't really consider them to be continuous freezers because

[30:38] they don't work on the same principle as a continuous freezer. There's only one continuous freezer that's available, i.e. not a batch freezer that I know of that's available to small run people, and it used to be made by Ross, ROSS,

[30:52] which was bought by, I don't know how you pronounce it, because it's got the umla, but it's not pronounced sterleting, which is how you pronounce it if you're German

[30:59] stielting. Stolting, I think is how they pronounce it. They bought Ross freezers, but that's a frozen custard machine, in essence, is a continuous freezer. That said. Okay, back to batch freezers. And back to Ian's question. Do you have any experience with ice cream batch freezer, TS? That's a key, right? Ian. Yeah. I'm about to start up a small ice cream company selling quality ices made from local fruits and other ingredients from a bike with a freezer attached.

[31:23] I forgot that, I didn't really even read, how are you gonna, how are you gonna power that sucker? How are you going to get power to that? Pedal power. On the ice cream machine? Well, you're riding around town, putting a little generator on the back wheel? Good to go. Okay. I was local fruits and other ingredients from a bike with a freezer attached. No, I think what he's going to do. I think he means not a batch freezer. I think he means a dipping freezer. I don't think he means that there's going to be the actual equipment. Yeah, okay, I got you. Tell me if I'm wrong here, but that'd be awesome if you actually had the machine on a bike. First of all, your legs must be jacked. What's the name of that Scottish bike dude with the giant chain rings who had that movie made about

[32:01] him? You know what I'm talking about? Anyway, this guy in Scotland, I think he's Scotland. amazing biker. He like... Is that the one who won like the championship very late in life and switched the style of biking he did? Dunt biker guy. No, no, no, no. This guy has a movie about him. He, like, won a championship much later in life and he's known for having incredibly huge chain rings on his track

[32:21] bikes. so that he's like his anyway, whatever. Chain ring is the thing that you're... I mean, I can't remember his name. Nah, nah, nah. A lot of Scottish bikers out there. Well, you know, they're tough people. Okay. Okay, and I'm looking for a robust machine that can produce a reasonable output of ice cream in one

[32:39] hour. I'm looking at about 9 liters per hour. I saw the Emery Thompson, CB200. Uh, and the other side, the larger size one I have is the uh, CB350. And it looks perfect, but unfortunately is not available in the UK until next year. Do you know any others around the same size and price? The other option I was thinking about was a paco jet, but I'm concerned that it might not be robust enough. Uh, they look great for restaurants that might want to do one portion at a time, but I would need

[33:06] to uh, uh, pocotize, which by the way, Ian, is a word I detest. I would just say spin because pocket. I don't want to let those guys coin their own word. They're already charging you an arm and leg for the freaking machine and they're Swiss. everyone knows how I feel about them. Stas likes the Swiss. Yeah, so the half of us love the Swiss. I have no I actually have nothing against the real Swiss in the real life. I like to make fun of them, right? You know, watches and chocolate are great. you know. Okay. But the, uh, uh, uh, my point is, is that uh, don't don't let them have that word. Just say spin. That's what we say, spin. Uh, can uh, oh, okay. But I would need to spin the whole tub and do about 8 or 9 tubs in an hour. Can the pocket jet handle that? My budget is between 3 and 4000 great British pounds. I would appreciate if you can answer my question on the 21st or 28th of May, as I need to make my purchase very soon. PS, loving the show, just discovered a couple months ago and catching up on the old episodes. Well, here we are on the 28th to answer your question. I called the president, Mr. Thompson of Emery Thompson and asked him. And he's like, I forget whether you said 3rd or 4th generation ice cream machine manufacturers. And I watched his YouTube video on the CB 200. And unfortunately for you, Ian, that machine is kind of in a size slash price category of its own.

[34:21] I haven't seen anything else that's kind of that low. So they retail in the U.S. for about 5000 like retail for 5300 and change. That means I'm assuming you can get it for a little bit less if you, you know, if you wheel and deal.

[34:34] But what I asked him, when I called him, I was like, well, can, uh, you know, can this person just fly over from the UK, you know, using, you know, your awesome great British money and making us look like idiots here in the

[34:45] US with our current state of our monopoly money. and purchase one from you that you outfit for the UK and take back. And unfortunately, Mr. Thompson said, no, the problem is, is that US 220,

[34:57] US 220 is a different wiring schema from UK 220, because I guess you're using single phase 220 over there, and that they need to get an entirely different condenser unit for it.

[35:08] It's made special. They can't just, you know, kind of, you know, rejigger or hack one of their units here for you. Although he seemed to feel for your problem. And also laughed when I said, is there anything else in that price? He's like, no, because I think that's going to be a category killer when it comes out. Your next best bet is that the 350. His version of the 350 is available. That's a 6 quart, I think, or 8 quart unit. And the other ones, I don't have an experience with their machines, but I do have a lot of experience with the Carpagani,

[35:37] LB 100s. The problem with the LB 100s, or lab 100s, depending on which vintage you get, is that now you're talking a $10,000 machine,

[35:45] US. I don't know what they cost in the UK. They're great machines. They do have some known problems. Like if you get one of the older ones with the clear plastic front. They break, they always break, and then you need to fix them. The other option in the U.S. I don't know if they sell them in the UK is Taylor. Taylor machines are cheaper than the LB 100s, but having used them. I was never a huge fan of the Taylor versus the LB 100s. If you could have a good used market. They do make a smaller batch. Carpagani makes a very small batch machine, like I think maybe 2 quarts, even smaller than the one you were looking

[36:20] at, that's a vertical batch freezer and sits on the countertop. And that sucker, I've never used one, but supposedly has very, very high quality. Uh, but there's not that much in that size range that you were talking about of just a couple of

[36:33] courts that performs on a professional level. So, sorry about that. Now, in the Paco jet, I, there's a problem with Apoco jet, right? Your question is, can I get away with using apoco jet? And the answer is yes, here's the bad news. You cannot get away with using one Paco jet because what will happen? It's not that you need 2 to run at any one time. sucker is going to break. Let me let me just be very clear about your Paco jet. Your paco jet will break. And now they will fix it, right? Uh, but, uh, at least in the US, they don't do the following awesome

[37:08] thing. Oh, your Paco jet's broken and it costs an obscene amount of money and you can't buy parts from a normal person, so you have to send it to me to fix it. Oh, here's a loner that you can use while your pocket jet is broken because we know it's gonna break. In the US that doesn't happen. So they just say, guess what? Eat it, Jerko. And so you have to not have your paco jet for a long time or have to have a friend that has a paco jet. So if you're going to do this, you can do it, but you have to run 2 Paco jets at once. Also, so like pure food and wine, pure food wise, is that what it's called? Summer Melongaius's place. She has an ice cream shop that runs exclusively off of Paco Jet, and she has

[37:44] 2 maybe 3, and she's been running for years that way, and it works, but she always has one when the other one goes down. Here's the other thing. Apocaloget, loves to charge you a lot of money for the stainless steel bane Marie that you freeze the ice. So Paco Jet, for those who don't know what to talk. People always say it's like a blender. It's not like a blender. It's like the world's greatest shaved ice machine. It slowly feeds a blade into the top of the, you freeze your base solid like a rock. And then it feeds the blade in slowly spinning and advancing at such a slow rate that the crystals that are shaved off are the same crystal size that you would get using a commercial ice cream machine.

[38:19] They're fantastic. They're loud, but they're fantastic. You definitely can get throughput. You going to be running it all the time, but you need two. What a couple people have done with Paco Jets. Cleon Nils used to do it in Akavit and purer food and wine does it, is they freeze their base in

[38:34] court containers, which are almost free. Although I've been told, when I say I've been told, when I ask people in other countries, hey, I need some core containers, they look at me like I'm an

[38:42] idiot. I don't think a lot of other people use core containers, so find whatever the UK equivalent of a core container is, or buy some from the good old US of A, and freeze your base in the court containers. Core containers are a little bit tapered so you can pop the stuff out of the cork and you have to get the levels right. You pop the base out of the cork container and then you jam it into your Paco jet container and spin like that. The problem is if it's crooked, right? If it's crooked, then when your blade hits it, it'll hit one side of

[39:09] the of the base only and you can shatter your pocket jet blades. Well, kill the pocket jet, but you'll shatter the blades. Blades are like $150. However, in the long run, you are going to save money by doing court containers because you need a lot of them to do the kind of thing you're doing and just buy yourself an extra blade.

[39:25] Do not attempt to run an ice cream business with the Nemox or Nemox, whatever it is,

[39:31] Fricks Air unit that was sold as a competitive Paco Jet. It will not, it works fine for the tiny little cups that it does, but it will not work for what you want. What do you think, guys, good? Good job. Did I do good coach? Okay. All right. Should we take one more break and come back or should we power through? Power through? Power? Yeah, power. Power. Okay. Got a question in this one actually is from Lucas,

[39:57] right, if I can find it. Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Oh my goodness. I'll say in the meantime, if you want this episode named after you, you can still become a member. A few minutes left. Yeah, is that true? That's true. It still may. All right. Okay. Well, I'll take a different question while I'm looking for Lucas's question. John Stewart, not John Stewart from The Daily Show, a different John Stewart, which is his sign off line now. says hello to the Hammer, Jack, Joe, and Dave. My question is not very high tech, but is food related. We host an outdoor family movie night, and I provide popcorn. I've been making a bunch of batches in a cast iron Dutch oven on the stovetop, which takes a lot of time I'd rather spend elsewhere. This past weekend, I had the horror of actually running out of popcorn. Oh my god, my god. So clearly I need to step things up. It's taking too much time. So I looked at popcorn machines, which turn out to be expensive. You are correct. So the question is, if you wanted to make a large amount of popcorn, how would you do it? Or should I be looking at bar restaurant auctions for a used popcorn machine? Thanks, and keep up the good work, a different John Stewart. Okay. So, uh, yeah, you're a little bit. Okay, so here's what I'm assuming. One, you detest air popped popcorn because it doesn't taste good. That right? Anyone else with me on this? AirPod popcorn styles. Do you like AirPods popcorn? No. Eddie duck pipe? I'm not a big popcorn fan in general. In general? too much effort, not enough reward. It's all in your teeth. You're 20 minutes later, you're still digging it out. Well, you know, a lot of that has to do, I think, with like the popcorn varieties that they're making. I think they make ones that, like, so you get your mushroom and you got your butterfly. So your butterfly ones, your typical movie popcorn ones, and I think they have like a bigger surface area for capturing

[41:36] things you're going to like coat it with butter flavor, but your mushroom types are better for ones that are going to be further

[41:42] manipulated, like Cracker Jack style or things like that, which is like it. Anyways. And certain varieties are going to have more and less of the skin that's left on them are going to get stuck in your teeth because that's unpleasant,

[41:52] unpleasant rather. And of course, better quality popcorns. You know what they call popcorn kernels that haven't popped? Widows. Oh, that's sad. It is sad. So now you're never going to look at the bottom of that. Oh. So, uh, anyways, yes, the manufacturer that makes the real ones is

[42:08] critters. And critters makes popcorn machines all the way from the minuscule to the

[42:14] gigundous continuous popcorn makers that can do like a ton an hour and more. They're awesome. Uh, amazing, but they are expensive. You're looking at probably for a small one, the kind that's like on the cart, right? Like a 1000 bucks. Here's the other problem. I think they're about a 1000 bucks. The other problem is, is that they take up a lot of space. Now, maybe you have a lot of space, in which case, I would definitely just troll auctions for one that looks kind of

[42:40] beat, because they're kind of bulletproof. I mean, they work for a long time, right? But, uh, you know, they, they are going to, uh, they're going to require a lot of cleaning if you get a crappy one at an auction, but that is a way to go. My mom actually bought me. So the way I used to make that make it was with what's called a whirly pop. And it's still a pain, huge pain in the butt. So whirly pop is the aluminum pan with the 2 flapdoodle lids on top and the hand crank that you crank. So it makes fantastic popcorn, a lot easier than your Dutch oven technique with the shaking and the

[43:15] shaking and plus the shaking of the Dutch oven. The whirly pop, the main disadvantage of the whirly pop is you still have to sit there and

[43:22] turn it while it's doing it. Now, I also use the whirly pop for roasting coffee because I never got one of the newer generations of home coffee roasters.

[43:31] And the whirly pop. I like the whirly pop because it's, you know, it's less of an air pop, an air roasted coffee, like

[43:38] civets, roaster style, coffee flavor, and more of like a robot style or like drum roast coffee flavor. So I like it. And like I said, it also makes fantastic popcorn. But here's a modification I was going to do if you're handy. What I was going to do was put a motor, like cut the end of the thing off and bolt a small 110 motor,

[43:56] and then with a counterweight on the other side of the pot, so it doesn't tilt, and then just run the whirly pop off of a motor.

[44:04] Now, you could have that whole sucker done. Whirly pop plus motor. You could have that whole sucker done for, I want to say 50 bucks, 60 bucks plus your time, right? And that's going to make fantastic popcorn. Plus, you can be proud of the fact that you've hacked, you know, you've done a DYI solution on this. Downside is you're still going to have to listen

[44:28] for when the popping stops or you're going to scorch your popcorn. Now, the whirly pop does a fairly good job of not scorching as long as you pay attention to it. And then you could just bang out batch after batch and you could be doing other things while it's popping, right? Second alternative that works similar to a whirly pop. It's a lot cheaper. I think it's also around 100 bucks. My mom bought me some, I don't even, I forgot to look at the thing on the way out. I don't know if it's wearing or what, but someone makes a home, maybe Jack, or you can find it. They make like a little red, like home version of a movie popcorn popper that works with

[45:00] a little handle on the side that does the dumping, and it works on the same principle as a movie style popcorn popper in that there's a little basket that holds the corn, you put the oil

[45:12] in, It starts popping as it pops, it pops out of that basket into a holding

[45:16] container, and you can make batch after batch. I've used it at kids' birthday parties and it works fantastically. You still have to listen for the popcorn to stop so that you don't burn the stuff at the bottom, but the good news about this version

[45:27] is, is if you don't pay attention and you let it keep going past the time and it actually burns the kernels, it's only burning those poor sorry widows that are left inside of the

[45:37] thing. It's not burning the actual popcorn that's popped out and put into

[45:42] the uh, into the basket. Now, it also keeps the popcorn fairly warm because it's inside of the tray. The other downside of that machine is because it's covered with glass all the way around and it's slightly smaller than the ones that you would use in a real movie theater is that if you don't open the door pretty quick after it's

[45:59] done, It has a tendency to steam the popcorn that's on the inside. Steaming popcorn is a no-no. So what you want to do is drill holes in the side of that thing to allow the steam to escape, but not so much that the popcorn can fly out when it comes out. What do you think so? Good job, good. hacking equipment here. Yeah, we're hacking. And remember, if you hack it, you're avoiding the warranty and you may kill yourself and I don't want to hear about it because it's not my fault.

[46:23] Maybe it's my fault. What do you think? Okay. Uh, this is from Lucas. Lucas says, hey, Nastasia, Dave, Jack, and Joe. I went to a new Fulton Fish Market on Monday with a couple of friends with the intention of sharing the fish. This is such a great place, but no 2 words about it. It is a wholesale market. Hence, I have a lot of fish. I made some gravel locks with part of the salmon. My 1st question is simple. How long can I keep it in the fridge? Presumably you're not talking about the salmon itself. You're talking about the gravit lax when you're done, right? I love the market and it's quite a trip from the village at unhuman hours, because remember, the market is really running when, you know, you should be

[47:02] asleep, unless you're a bartender. But I'm willing to make it every once in a while, the trip that is. Any other ideas how to use this market for a small household. Now, listen, Lucas. Most people. Oh, he also says, sorry about the bike ticket, my deepest sympathies for fragile and delicate nastasia for having to keep up with you a lot. Oh, brutal. Brutal. Sincerest regards, Lucas. Oh, man. Man. Damn. Okay, so here's the thing. If you live in the village, Lucas. One of your main problems is going to be that you have no space unless you are fantastically wealthy. And if you are fantastically wealthy, then you can visit the market and then buy your fish locally at a retail price. So I'm assuming that you are not fantastically wealthy. So I'm therefore assuming that your village apartment is small, which means you also don't have a large freezer.

[47:50] If you had a vacuum machine and a freezer, there are some kinds of fish that do quite well,

[47:55] if you put a hard vac on it for storage to freeze if you have a good freezer and a good vacuum machine.

[48:02] You don't want to cook it in the vacuum bag like that under a hard vacuum because the quality is degraded, but storage and freezing under hard vacuum is

[48:11] fine. Um, What I would say, things like this are good for 3 things. Parties, parties and more parties. When you're going to have a big party. Like, let's say you have that friend. I don't know how old you are. Let's say you have that friend and they're having the engagement party, right? And you want to blow them out, then go pick up a couple of salmon there, do like an awesome, like, you know, I used to, that was my standard thing. I would just poach up a bunch of salmons and like put them out with a bunch of different toppings and stuff. You know, I I think I did a good job. I think I did, you know, because, you know, this is what I do for a living. But, you know, like that. And then, like, that's very, very easy. Or anything like that where you, you know you're going to be serving a lot of people and it allows you to do a higher ticket item than you would if you were buying retail and to get high quality because you know you're getting it from the source.

[48:57] Problem is, is you never know quite what you were going to get until you get to the wholesale market. So it's a little bit dicey for doing parties, but that's always what I, when I always use wholesale when I know that I have a wholesale quantity of people I'm going to be feeding. Otherwise, it's all about storage or making things that are going to last a long time. Like if you, like Pauline, who hopefully I'm going to get to her question from last week, you know, she does, she catches a boatload of, well, not a boatload because she's using

[49:23] a, whatever. Anyway, a lot, a salmon, and she's making jerky and drying it. Uh, then, you know, that's another opportunity. If you want to go there and you're going to do products that are going to take a long time. Let's say you were going to buy a bunch of row and make your own batarga. Well, do not buy that wholesale. Go to, I mean, sorry, retail. Go get that stuff wholesale. Anytime you're going to make something's going to keep a long time. But I can't think of any other, like, I can't think of any other, like, normal day to day stuff. I think I'd rather buy my stuff, especially if you're buying stuff that's sushi

[49:52] great because it's already been frozen once, you don't want to freeze it again. So anyway, hopefully that's helpful. Now, back on the how how long you can keep. I mean fresh salmon. actually keeps quite a long time. The problem is you don't know how long it's already been kept before you get it. So on fresh salmon, if you're going to have a problem keeping it and you're worried about it, then I would vac it down and freeze it right

[50:13] away, because the earlier you freeze a fresh product in its lifetime, the higher the quality is maintained over time, because you don't get that quality

[50:21] back. Like if you back down a piece of salmon, even vacuing it, if you're going to keep it refrigeration in refrigeration alone is going to keep your quality a lot longer than if you just, you know, keep it in the fridge.

[50:32] But quality on something like fresh salmon, right is very, very influenced by how you keep it in the fridge. So you want to keep your fish like a professional would keep it. And what that means is like a skin side down, resting on a bed of shaved

[50:49] ice in something that drains the shaved ice into a container underneath it. And then, uh, light, light, I don't actually cut, if you have a place that doesn't have a lot of other smells, you're not worried about it. You can almost not cover it all. Put a piece of paper that doesn't touch it, you know, like over the top. But, you know, a lot of how fish keeps depends on how much the temperature cycles and how much air is blowing

[51:11] over it. If you have a lot of air blowing over it, the surface dries out too much and you can get off flavors from other things and you can transfer flavors. But if you have it really tightly wrapped over or things touching the actual fish, then you can get slimy nasty parts where this stuff touches. So you don't want anything touching it. You can wrap plastic wrap. If you have to over it, uh, but not touching the fish on a bed of ice and then check the ice when the ice melts, put a fresh bed of ice down. Remember, skin side down and not stacking a bunch of them on top and your fish will actually keep fairly well that way, but very few people. Here's why salmon goes or fish goes so bad so quickly in the fridge is people are like, you buy it from a fishmonger. They throw it into a freaking plastic bag, like it's like it's like dirty socks. And then you take it home in this dirty sock bag, and then you throw it in the fridge, and then some idiot comes and throws a bag of grapefruits on top of it, and then it's horrible. Horrible. Anyway, once you make gravel locks out of it, it's actually going to keep a lot longer. I tried to find an actual piece of information about how long

[52:08] gravel locks would keep. Gravelox, by the way, is salmon typically salt, sugar, salt, and dill cured with or without weights. You cure it for a couple of days. It does prevent some bacteria from growing, but it does not prevent things like listeria from

[52:23] growing and there's other spoilage bacterias. I've seen people say you get an actual extra two, 3 days out of it from the curing after it's cured. And I've seen people say it last a couple of weeks in there. I haven't found any hard data looking to see how long it lasts in the fridge, but from what I can see, the main thing from a pathology standpoint, from a pathogen standpoint, rather,

[52:45] it would be listeria, because listeria will continue to grow on it. But if you actually keep it under proper refrigeration, listeria should take a long time to grow. The other problems are going to be more spoilage in less safety problems. But I could not find any specific things. And nobody wants to come out and say, you can keep it for 2 weeks in the

[53:04] fridge and it won't be a problem because then if you get sick, you're going to go back to them and say, man, you said I could keep it for 2 weeks in the fridge.

[53:10] And a lot depends on the initial bacterial loading of the fridge.

[53:13] If you were of the salmon. If you're buying really good salmon, whole fish, the whole fish salmon, at wholesale market, filleting it yourself, you could see the gills, you could see the eyes, you see the skin, the quality of it.

[53:25] You know, you'll probably get a good long time out of it, but I like those other fools, hesitate to give you an exact amount of time. And speaking of the exact amount of time, I have shafted Pauline again on talking about the bacterial safety of her smoked salmon in

[53:43] Alaska. And next time, Pauline, what I promise to address this very 1st on the show. Here we go. Ready for next week, cooking issues.

[54:01] Thanks for listening to this program on HeritageRadionetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes

[54:10] 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.

[54:29] Thanks for listening.