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[0:29] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues, Dave, are on your host of Bridges coming to you live from Roberto's Pizzeria. on the Heritage River Network in Bushwick, Brooklyn. How you doing, Stas and I? Good. Yeah. Yeah. You're doing better than I. How you doing? Great. Yeah, uh, you know, we made the uh, we made the Kickstarter uh, goal. Plus, we made an additional $20,000 plus over the Kickstarter goal, which means that I have to do the lemonade

[0:57] diet and then at some point in the future, do the do the paleo diet. So what you're hearing is me uncorking my court container of crappy lemonade. By the way, I heard I missed some calls because I was a little late, kind of as usual. So I'll call you a question with two, 718-4972128 that's 718-4972128. Uh, have Eddie here, uh, filming these proceedings for posterity, so maybe your call will be filmed, although you will

[1:24] not, because you will be at home. How you doing, Eddie? Me too. doing well. We got Jack and Joe in the engineering booth. How you guys doing? Good, and you were pretty energetic for being on that lemonade cleanse. Well, let me get intro. I mean, let me tell you something about the lemonade. So for those of you that thankfully don't know what this is. The master cleanse was devised by a nut, a nut job. named Stanley Stanley, I think, Burrows, sometime in the 40s and was republicized in the 70s of the last century.

[1:52] And, uh, yeah, I went I went ahead and read, here's the premise. You don't want to eat anything. You want to cleanse your body? His 1st premise is that all ills are due to this thing he calls

[2:03] a toxemia, which is a buildup of toxins in the body, right? So in fact, he doesn't believe that there are such things as dangerous germs or viruses or microbes. Take that AIDS. you know, take that cholera, anything, right? The guy doesn't believe in this. He believes that all kind of bad things that happen to us are caused by a

[2:21] buildup of toxins that we take in into our bodies, which is on its face absurd. And then he, uh, furthermore, says that really what you need to do is clean out these things. And so he has devised a cleanse that he thinks will clean you out and get rid of all the toxic stuff and

[2:39] fix literally whatever ails you. He believes that this will fix whatever ails you. So it's, it's um, uh, for every 60 ounces of water, uh, purified or spring, you know,

[2:50] water. You need 3 quarters of a cup of organic, fresh, fresh. Of course, I mean, I believe in this part. Lemon, or actually lime juice, does. You know you could use lime juice? No, you could do lime juice, possible. Because, as he says, lemons have more vitamins in them than any other fruit known to man, which is a lie. And then maple syrup, or organic, preferably grade beef. 3 quarters of the cup, because it also apparently has all sorts of terrific stuff in it. And lastly, but not leastly, some ground up cayenne pepper because I think he believes that, you know, if it's hot going, it's going to come hot coming out, clean you out. You know what I'm saying? He doesn't believe you need any protein in your diet because he literally believes that like leguminous

[3:41] trees, we have nitrogen fixing bacteria in us that allow us to obtain nitrogen out of the

[3:46] air and then synthesize all the necessary proteins out of it. So he believes that you can go on this lemonade cleanse for uh, for 40 days if you want to. By the way, Stas, I tried my for salt water purge this morning. How was it? horrible. It tastes horrible. It's horrible. Anyway, and these nutjobs also believe you should not use iodized salt because they believe that somehow it stops it from cleansing you out. Believe me, if you pound a liter of, you know, seawater style salty water, you'll get cleaned out mighty, mighty quick. But, one last thing yesterday, I did have a nightmarish headache because I am a coffee drinker. So caffeine, if you withdraw from caffeine, you get a nightmarish headache. And so I guess this is part of the quote unquote toxins leaving my body. But the problem is, is that the whole, the whole concept behind this diet is that somehow that you have an adversarial relationship to the food you eat

[4:38] and to the life you live and to everything about who you are as a person. And it is true that if I don't have coffee for a day or 2 afterwards, I will have headache until my body clears itself of its desire to have caffeine.

[4:50] But this is not a monkey I want to get off my back. I can't wait to get back on caffeine, not because I need it, because I like coffee. And because decaffeinated coffee. Sorry, everyone out there. This doesn't taste the same. It's not the same. I'm side by side in coffees where people are like, hey man, you can't tell the difference. I can. I can, believe me, because I'm not drinking like milked out like milk extravaganzas, right? I drink like short, straight espresso shots. That's what I drink and I drink it because I like it. So I will go back to drinking it as soon as it's humanly possible. Also, have it, Styles, you remember, you know what it's like when you eat too much candy? It's like so much candy and how you have like that sugar high. That's what it feels like to be on this master cleanse because it literally is just,

[5:38] is just, uh, you're on a sugar high the entire time. It's because you're eating nothing but sugar in the form of maple syrup. frigging nuts. Anyway, let me what are you reading, by the way, Stas? Nothing. Nothing. I'm listening to you. just staring at the page. But what's the book? Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. By Judy who's Judy McGuire. Oh, Junior Maguire. She's a co-host of the Mike and Judy show. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, she's great. We love her. Good. It's cool book. Yeah. Well, this is just, I just mentioned that because it's on videotape here, and I want you guys to know what nostalgia is actually doing. I've heard all this class. I like what you're doing. I like what you're doing. I like what, you know, what you actually do. No you didn't because I hadn't done the salt stuff yet. And I hadn't reported any of it back. You haven't heard any of it, actually. I hadn't read the Burrows. No, I hadn't read it yet. No, no, I just want people to know out there. Now record it on videotape. Exactly what goes on in the cooking use program. Okay, Adam called on a follow-up from last week. Just want to thank you to take time for answering my question on last week's podcast. You'd be pleased to, this is the person who, um, who was asking whether they could save this stuff at the back of their fridge because the wife is pregnant

[6:42] now. Remember? Just wanted to thank you for taking the time to answer my question on last week's podcast. You'll be pleased to know I threw out the stock and stewed fruit, although I'm still surprised there isn't a more scientific way to determine the food safety

[6:52] refrigerated items. Thanks again for the program. I've learned a lot. Cheers, Adam. Ryan Berkeley writes in about hams. Dear Dave, Nastasia, Jack, and I'm going to add Joe and Eddie. I impulsively ordered a whole country ham several months ago from Finchfield Farms

[7:05] in Kentucky's. Actually, scratch that, I actually ordered 2 country hams due to an accidental click. You know, you shouldn't be able to do that. You shouldn't be, yeah, like, is it because I think that happens to us at Booker and Dax because our internet is so slow that you hit click a couple of times. You ever double bought something? No. Yeah, they shouldn't be allowed. Anyway. But don't worry. Anyway, the problem is I don't have a meat slicer, and it seems a little silly to order one just to eat these hams and cutting them

[7:26] with a chef's knife has been a nightmare even after I do a bit of amateur sharpening. What's the best way to cut up this ham other than buying a meat slicer? Should I get a longer knife? How about some kind of holder apparatus for the ham or maybe just take my 7 inch chef's knife in for a proper sharpening? Thanks for any guidance. Ryan from Berkeley, California. Well, 1st of all, congratulations on the purchase of a good hand. Finchfield makes an excellent ham. I visited their plant once. They are, they do like a semi-ambient cure where it's ambient, you know, in other words, not temperature

[7:54] controlled during the 1st portion of it. They, they used to anyway. I't know if they still do this, but they really only cure one time a year and then they run out. Good product all around a good. Also, memory serves a non-smoke, not a smoked ham. Uh, and I'm trying to remember. I think believe they also do bag cures. So the hams are wrapped in bags as they're being cured for a portion of time. Anyways, good hams. Seven inch chef's knife is not the tool to attack this with. First of all, go out and get a longer chef's knife for this sort of deal anyway,

[8:24] but what you're going to want to do is get a thin blade slicer. I don't do not. I do not recommend any meat slicer on, I've ever used other than a professional meat slicer. The little ones that they sell their their crap. I mean, pardon me if anyone out there sells them for a living, but they're crap. They don't work. You know what I mean? At least the ones that I've used. They just don't work. What you're going to want to, like, look, a professional meat slicer is super, super baller.

[8:51] It's awesome, right? But they're very big. You have to clean them and it's not so easy. And sometimes newer ones are easier to clean the Hobart model 3000 slicers, easy to clean, but it's very expensive. So, uh, here's what you should probably do. Traditional old school, now, in America, we've come to eat our hands like this, cut cross crossways, right? The way you normally would get prosciutto, if you go to a deli, cut crossways. And this produces a cross section of what's going on in the muscle and it's very tender and comes apart. But European advocates have European ham folk have long advocated for slicing the long way. So you get a little piece of a bunch of different muscles and you can get these long strips. They are a lot chewier. But I had an expert make me some the other day and it was quite good. But got to remember, European hams are not cured in the same way that ours are in the way that they're hung.

[9:50] So they don't have the same necessarily slicing characteristics because they're not the same shape. Finchville and other hams are hung with the point with the with the hawk and down so that the cushion, that big part of the meat kind of gets full and fills up because it's more normal for it to be served American style that way.

[10:06] What I recommend you do is, um, debone the ham or cut the cushion off the top of the ham and then use the separate piece, use the pieces on the bottom for different, and then once you have it as a more manageable piece, trim away a portion of the skin, make sure it's very cold when you slice it, and then you can slice off thin, thin slices with a, uh, like a long, flat slicing knife, which are, they're flat, they're easy, like one that's meant for slicing knife, but

[10:34] that, like any long slicing knife. But you're going to want significantly longer because you want long draws on it. You don't want to do a lot of sawing on it. So you're gonna want to get one that's long, like 14 inches or more. I haven't measured one recently, but long. And if you're going to attack something with a chef's knife, you're going to want, I mean, with a ham, it doesn't really matter. You don't need a long chef's knife because there's no place you can really get into it with it, but go ahead and next,

[10:59] you know, super gift giving holiday, like invest in a suite. You know, they used to say in all the Mac cooking magazines, you know, you know, an 8 an 8 inch knife is good enough, whatever. Let me tell you something. Once you get yourself a good 10 inch chef's knife, good quality

[11:14] one, right? That feels good in your hand. And I don't care whether you prefer Japanese, Western, Japanese, or Western style knives. Uh, like my, one of my favorite, believe it or not, is a, is an old French style sabotier, like really old carbon. But once you start like using a 10 inch knife, such a joy, right? Oh, for sure. Yeah, 10 inch knife. Got to love a tennis knife. Go for ten-ish. Anyway, I hope that helps. And by the way, just keep eating the ham a little bit every day. That's what I do. Like, ham, like, little scraps and stuff, like, ham and eggs, like, no one's ever made a better combination than country ham and eggs. I don't think. I don't think so. Anyway. Peter writes in another follow-up. I'm the fellow from Minnesota that dropped the call dropped the call on you 2 weeks ago. Sorry about that. The answer to your follow question. I remember he was asking about different ways to treat deer meat because he got a lot of deer meat in Minnesota, which is a problem I wish I had here in New York.

[12:07] To answer your follow question, we get a range of deer throughout the season. So you'll get anything from fawns to old does. When you put them in the bag, the gaming flavor has been a bit intense, and as such, I've been using pretty strong sauces to counter them. think juniper berries with current preserves. Do you have any other strong flavor combinations that could hold up to the gamey power of an old dough? Well, it's an interesting question. I mean, usually, uh, when you're talking about gamey flavor, uh, people recommend like the pre-soak in some sort of an acidic, uh,

[12:31] married, but I haven't been able to elucidate the chemistry of it, uh, of why, I mean, I don't

[12:36] know, I don't know that it's a similar chemistry to what happens with, uh, for instance, fish, uh, when you add vinegar on

[12:42] the minute, kind of uh, deactivating some of the nasty smells that are

[12:46] there. I don't really know. But it's universal. I wasn't, I read, I went back and reread after the hunt, which is John's

[12:51] Folsest book on Louisiana game cookery, and didn't find any sort of stuff. I mean, a lot of what I read about the taste of gaminess and deer has to do with, Well, there's natural gaminess because deer has a flavors. Thank God, it's delicious. But there's also kind of an off flavor that can have it based on slaughtering and kill steps. And I read a number of scholarly papers that were not very helpful because all they basically said was stuff that you already knew, which is you need to chill the sucker down very quickly and that a lot of bad deer flavor comes from the fact that the deer hangs out in the back of a pickup truck too long before it can get cooled down.

[13:23] But the other interesting thing they said was that in general, people prefer, check this out. So between does and bucks, right? People prefer does and does are slightly more tender, at least in the studies that I've read. There's one contradictory study out of Poland, but most of the ones said that. And even furthermore, they have a different, um, kind of a flavor breakdown, but I

[13:46] can't, I, I don't know whether it's due to diet. They study didn't go that far. But interestingly, although younger does were preferred to older does. older does are preferred to younger bucks, even though the younger bucks are probably more tender. People just preferred the dome. Strange, right? What happened? Oh, we'll get back to some more deer stuff in a minute. Color, you're on the air. Hello, hi, this is Stephen Benzinger from Indianapolis. are you guys today? Doing all right. Indianapolis? It's uh, it's pretty good. The weather's actually nice out here for once. Um, so uh, question for you. I am uh, cooking for somebody who is neutropenic at this point. Uh, and I was curious. You know, is the neutropenic diet, something that's... Now, hook me up. Give us a neutropenic. Okay, so when you take chemotherapy, uh, if you have like

[14:35] a leukemia or something, it wipes out your, uh, essentially wipes out your bone marrow, so you cannot produce white blood cells, you have no, no real immune system. So, uh, food safety at this point is extremely extremely important. Yes. Um, and so, uh, I was curious on your opinion about, uh, 1st of all, uh, some safe practices, like maybe boiling pork containers before making soups

[14:58] or, or whatever, uh, that I could do in this situation, uh, also, I was curious

[15:03] about, uh, yogurt. And, uh, because it has a lot of bacterial cultures. Uh, but they're good bacteria and everything I read says don't give neutropenic yogurt, but because of competitive growth, I would assume that there was no uh, pathogens in there, but I'm not sure. This is an interesting question. Okay, so let me just say at the get go, not having studied the problem. I like I'm going to hesitate to make any actual pronouncement here. So the only dietary restriction is absolutely nothing that would compromise the immune system. There's no dietary restrictions from a food standpoint. Right. Okay. Right. So it's kind of just like a very hyper version of what you would do with a pregnant person, right? Exactly, yeah. I was listening to a few of your podcasts and everything that I heard about pregnant people. I was applying to the situation, kind of, but I'm still. Right. I mean, if you want to serve somebody like super safe, just as

[15:58] a note, I'll say the same thing I say when I talk about, um, um, cooking for pregnant people. As immersion circulator is a fantastic investment, for, I don't know if you already have one, but an immersion circulator is a fantastic investment for, for

[16:11] this, for this sort of diet because, now, I don't go pushing the, don't go pushing the edges. Do you know what I'm saying, but like. Right, don't try the 54 degree stuff, maybe, or... Okay. Right, exactly. So don't push, don't push the envelope. But, you know, all of a sudden for this person, you can cook, uh, you know, a bunch of stuff that is, uh, you know,

[16:35] amazing that they can't otherwise have because they have to cook the crap out of it. So, I mean, I would definitely focus on things like 62

[16:44] degree, eggs, applications like that. You know, you're going to be more careful than the otherwise, other people would be about making sure there's no cross-contamination, stuff like this.

[16:55] But you have the ability then to serve this person, foods that they couldn't ordinarily get when they were when they were out. Now, with yogurt, I mean, my initial inclination is that you're

[17:09] right. There's competitive bacteria in yogurt that are going to prevent most

[17:15] pathogenic you know, pathogens from growing in it. But if the, if the, here's the issue. A lot of doctors out there will just say, no, you can't have it. Why? Because they haven't done the research. And so rather than tell you, no, you can't have it, because I haven't done the research, I would say that if someone has said you can't use it, I would go and see why they said you can't use it, right? I mean, I'm all for making an informed decision on this, but I don't know all the factors. So it could be that some doctor out there who has a lot of knowledge, and maybe even some clinical experience, has seen problems with yogurt and patients who are on chemotherapy, right? And so, and I don't know that. But I've seen it go the other way too, where doctors have made knee jerk responses to questions about foods just because they don't have a lot of food information.

[18:04] They're not cooks. They're not, they don't study this thing. They don't really know much about food. And so I can't make a statement about it one way or the other, except for figure out what the source is and then make a judgment. I mean, I have no problem overruling a doctor who just speaks from a knee jerk perspective. You know. But on the other hand, I've had it go the other way where people are like, no,

[18:26] I've, you know, I've seen actually clinical problems because of X, Y, or Z.

[18:30] Now, when it comes to boiling core containers. Core containers can very easily stand up to boiling liquids. So that's not going to, in fact, you know, it can't, actually, interestingly, is the lids. The lids are made from a different material than the core container themselves. The core containers of polyproplane, it can easily stand up to boiling water. In fact, I don't believe they'll melt down even in a pressure cooker, although I think you're getting close. I have to look it up. Whereas the lids are made of polyethylene, which melt at a much lower temperature, which is why when you nuke stuff in cork containers, the lids expand and blow up and the containers are fine.

[19:04] So you're going to have a difficult time sterilizing lids, of core containers with boiling water. I would just use a sanitizing solution, if you're worried about it. If your soups are extremely hot, they should self, uh, self, uh, obliterate whatever. Yeah, right. But it's a very good idea. Uh, to keep a uh, sanitizing solution bucket around the kitchen and just be ultra aware during this time of cross-contamination and making sure that things aren't dripping on each other, making sure things are

[19:34] um, sanitized properly. I mean, if you can, you know, if you can, I mean, I don't know what you make,

[19:40] but, you know, presumably, you know, because you're worried about it, you're going to do a good job, assuming that you're being vigilant. you know what I mean? Right, right. Definitely. And um, do you give time for like uh, one or 2 more questions? Sure, excuse me. Okay, uh, 1st one, the, the, I'm actually building the, um, uh, I'm uh, I'm uh, about to be a med student, so I'm not going to have a lot of money. So especially building the immersion circulator from the uh, Seattle food geek website. Um, and I was wondering if you thought that that one was a good model besides the fact that if you

[20:12] turn it on outside of the water, it overheats and blows up. essentially, but. Yeah Well, you can fix that, you know, by just strapping an

[20:20] over-temp, um, an over-temp thermometer to the heating element. Which one is that? Is that the one that's built in the acrylic case? Yes, it is, yeah. We're trying to figure out a different thing for the acrylic because I don't have a lot of time to build it and people that are building it for me or not as familiar with how to heat the acrylic to bend it and I've never done it either. So, you know, just in case we're trying to figure out a better box for it than the acrylic. But um... What's the total cost of it when you're done? Uh, 70 bucks? 80 bucks? That's pretty cheap. Uh, that's pretty cheap. I mean, uh, uh, I've never used I've never used it. I've used only commercial circulators and ones I've built myself. I'll say that the ones I built myself. Uh, you know, like the 1st one I built was with, you know, coffee, you know, immersion coffee

[21:11] heaters, and they leak electricity. And so I got shocked whenever my hand went into the bath, but, you know,

[21:16] the temperature equipment, temperature monitor equipment now being what it is. I mean, you're going to be able to get the accuracy with a home. So you're not from a safety standpoint, you're not going to have a problem. It's just a question of whether or not you like the usability of it compared to a, you know, compared to a standard one. But look, if it's the only thing you can afford to get, it's 80 bucks, do it. You know, do it. And, uh, and, uh, you know, the, I've seen a couple where people have found like kind of prefab boxes that were used for other things that kind of work. You know what I mean? Just drill a few extra holes in them or something like that. Yeah, when you're drilling acrylic, you got to be careful drilling acrylic. When you're drilling acrylic, it has a tendency to shatter because acrylic is very shatter prone as opposed to other things like

[21:59] Lex hand. Also, you can't wash acrylic with alcohol because it crazes and goes nuts.

[22:05] When you're drilling with acrylic, you're going to want to get a special drill bit that has a different point. It's much more pointy, and you're going to want to make sure that you have the acrylic backed up with a piece of wood or something else so that

[22:16] there's, it doesn't flex a lot as the drill bit goes through. And it's going to prevent shattering because it's really irritating. And once you shatter a piece of acrylic, you're going to keep propagating that crack, especially if it's at a stress point. Okay. Would it help to keep the acrylic before joining? No, no, no. In fact, no. In fact, the problem is it heats and gums and then your drill bit catches and then it cracks. I would just, I mean, if you can, I would put it even in water on top of a block of wood and go through it. Acrylic, I'm just, I'm telling you, is acrylic, like acrylic drills beautifully when you do it right, but then, you know, when you stop paying attention is when you, you know, drill a hole through it and

[22:53] you shoot a crack across it. You know what I mean? Okay. Okay. And I have one more quick question. I'm sorry to take up so much of your time. Uh, but, uh, I was curious about, uh, if you, so, I have another friend that's going gluten-free, and I'm giving them suggestions for thickeners, like zanpen gums, and

[23:08] agra agra and things like that to replace, uh, you know, starches that are, um, that are, you know, that have gluten

[23:15] in them, like we, we, flowers and things, uh, but I was curious if, uh, what was the source? You were talking about one time, but there was a source from national starch or something like that was, that was just, like 100%, uh, um, amylopectin or something like that. That

[23:30] was... I mean, I don't remember exactly what we were talking about, but the National Starch Corporation, other than having an awesome name, National Starch,

[23:39] was they have a lot of different starches that are specifically geared towards certain

[23:46] things, and they are very aware of gluten because it's a huge business. So they have a, you know, they have a lot of knowledge about it. And a lot of their databases are online. So depending on your particular application, I'm sure, you know, they, if they don't have a starch that'll fit what you need, then probably nobody has a starch that will fit what you need.

[24:04] I mean, they they are, I mean, they come by their name honestly, National Starch. Awesome. Thank you very much, David. App appreciate it. All right, have a good one. You have another car. Oh you too. Call her, you're on the air. Hi, uh, Jarvis. I was calling from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Hey, what's up, Milwaukee? No, I've never been to Milwaukee. been near Milwaukee. We've never been to it. Yeah, come down. Yeah? I mean, like, I mean, I drink the beer. I own the tools, but other than that, yeah. Uh, I had a question uh, regarding uh, sausages. Um, our owner has a farm that has uh, Megalitza pigs, and uh, we're trying, I'm trying to make Italian sausages out of it. But what's happening is, uh, the sausages themselves are coming out really

[24:49] fatty, um, because of the fat content. I mean, I'm still, I'm using uh Michael Ruleman's uh charcuterie uh

[24:56] book uh for the Italian sausage recipe. Um, but uh, what happens is after I taste it, um, I hang them to dry. Uh, I do prick them, um, and then when I, I need to render it in the hotel pan 1st to get the, uh, to get the initial fat off, but when I put it on the grill,

[25:14] um, there's still more fat to come off, um, and then also, uh, the casing splits as well. So I was wondering the question about the, the, the actual sausage and then the casing as well as how do I make a hard, nice sturdy, crispy, uh, casing, um, on the

[25:33] grill. Well, you know, I actually, the casing problem is when I wish I had studied more. I was just talking about this with Nastasia, how the Germans make the greatest sausage casings, right? Yeah, that snap of a good sausage casing when you bite into it and the meat just explodes. awesome. But okay, so we'll get back to that in a sec. 1st of all, what's the diet? are they being fed kind of a standard grain diet? Are they being, what are these pigs being fed? What's the characteristic of the fat? Is it a hard fat or is it really soft fat before you process it? Well, it, uh, it is kind of, it, it, it kind of melts in my hand if we, if you don't work fast in a room temperature kitchen. Right. Uh, so it is kind of, it's kind of softer. It's not that soft though. That makes sense. Yeah, it does. So, I mean, for sausage production, a lot of times, you're going to want a little bit of a firmer fat just because, well, it depends also. Everything look, everything depends. When you're having, like when people are making salumi, which like dried stuff, they want that, like the nice stuff that really stands up

[26:38] to the, you know, so they, they, you know, they prize. So that's why things like the Bayota fed, um, like with this really soft, uh, fat, uh,

[26:49] Ibiricos, they make awesome hams, but harder to make straight dried sauce. It's awesome. I love their dried sauce. Please don't call me and say that they don't make a good. I'm not saying that. But like the texture of the fats, a little bit more difficult. I think, you know, one thing is, are you really chilling the heck out of the meat before you grind it? Uh, I guess, I guess not. I mean, I put it in the cooler until I need it. Uh, it is cold. It's definitely not, not warm or, uh, you know,

[27:18] my, my hand is definitely not as warm as, I mean, it's, it's cold. Yeah, but it's not like, you know, it's not like deep shield, um, where the surface is starting to seal up a little bit, but I mean, I guess I could leave it in there a little bit longer. I could put it in the freezer for a for a 2nd just to kind of give it a deep chill but not freeze it. Yeah, yeah, you know, so when I'm making sausage, especially if I use a softer fat or like if I'm using a non-pig

[27:43] fat, like duck fat or something like that, you need, you need to get it really, really cold. Otherwise, um, and, and, you know, as I believe it might even say in the charcuterie book, uh, you know, it's hard to tell when you're making a

[27:58] sausage what's happened to the fat during the grinding process. You can only really tell once it cooks and you start bleeding out a lot of the fat that otherwise stay in. So what I would do is, um, I would, I usually pre-slice

[28:11] the, the meat into the strips that I'm going to feed into the grinder. Then I lay them out on sheet trays. And then I throw the sheet trays in the freezer and I wait until they get basically

[28:21] pliable but hard, right? Almost par frozen. And then, and then I feed them in. And if it takes me too long, I'll even have a couple of ice chips to, I know you don't want to add water, but I'm saying, just keep that sucker cold. Also, if you're using one of the big meat grinders, I would I would throw all the parts in ice water before you grind. Like pull your meat grinder apart, throw it nice water, get that whole sucker cold before you grind. So then, you know, flick all the extra water off, put it together, take your par frozen meat, grind it in. And my guess is that's going to take care of 90% of your problems. That's my guess. Now, on the casings breaking apart, are they breaking when they're, are they breaking on the drying step or when you grill them? When we when I grill them? Yeah. I mean, if a sausage isn't like full, like, typically I will pre-cook a sausage before I, uh, before I hit it on a

[29:16] grill, just because you're going to get much less splitting. I mean, the best way you could do it in a combi, you could do it in, um, you could do it. I was using the, sorry, I was using the circulator. Yeah, perfect. 60 degrees for an hour. That's great. So you did it like that, pulled it out, and they were still breaking apart on you on the grill? Uh-huh, correct. Huh. Uh, I don't know. Maybe it's just maybe with the, I don't know, I have to think about that. Usually, well usually that's a recipe for keeping it together. It's like too much air in there, maybe? when the stuffing process? He said he said he pricked them, though, and got the air out. It's either air or maybe the fat bubbling out, maybe moisture content, but you said you dried off the stuff. I don't I don't see why I don't see why unless they're mechanically damaged. Like, obviously everybody knows if you try to cook a sausage from raw on the grill, you're going to break the skin.

[30:05] everybody knows this. But if you pre-cooked like that, and they're not broken when they come out of the circulator, right? No. Maybe try a little less drying time before you grill them off. I don't know. I don't know. I have to think about it. Maybe someone else who has some experience in this can troubleshoot that, but I think I've solved your fat bleeding problem. I think you just Yeah, that would help a lot. Yeah, everyone, everyone tends to underestimate how cold they want their meat to be, and the answer is very, very cold. But even when I paddle, uh, you know, the recipe calls for you to paddle the, uh, the

[30:43] vinegar, um, into the, uh, into the grind after you grind it, uh, that's

[30:48] gonna bring the temperature down a bit, but I should also put the bowl and the paddle into the freezer as well. Yeah, everything should be, everything should be like just cold. And in fact, the most, like, so, like, there's 2, so when you're grind, when you're grinding sausage is like the 1st time when, like, everything can go to hell in a

[31:06] ham basket in this situation, right? And also, I mean, I find that like pre-cutting the meat into strips like that and setting them out, like gives me another opportunity to make sure I'm not putting crap. I dont want my sausage, but like pieces of grizzle or whatever, because I don't like to put that in, even though I know you can, whatever. I don't like to do it. And then, uh, the 2nd time you can mess stuff up is either on the primary bind when you're mixing it together if you really want to bind the sausage a

[31:30] lot or if you're doing, um, if you're doing uh, an emulsification step for an emulsified sausage. And both of those it heats the enemy. I guarantee you that's what's happening. But I'm pretty sure that what's happening to you is happening at the grinding stage. All right? Good luck with this. Let us know what happens. Alrighty. Hey, Dave. Yes. So we've got another caller, but really quick, I want to shout out somebody who became a member, a listener of cooking issues. Irene Lee, and she had a really nice message. I thought I'd pass along. She said, I thought you guys might be entertained to hear that we usually listen to cooking issues while we're on our way to and from

[32:04] Restaurant Depot, which I assume you're familiar with. The place is a real bummer. No one knows how to park. No one can face all their barcodes the same way, and a lot of the food is scary, like really freaky and weird, but it's part of our reality because it's our best option for dry goods,

[32:18] paper and cleaning supplies. Is she from Boston? that Irene from Boston that we have a question in from later? I believe so. Yeah, it is. She is from Boston, yeah. Nice. All right. So thanks to Irene for becoming a member. And then real quick, like listeners of cooking issues who can't make our big fundraiser, August 11th, which is going to be

[32:34] awesome and we'll all be there. You can get $10 raffle tickets, which is for a dream trip to

[32:39] Seattle. All expenses paid, flight, hotel, 3 meals of your choice at Tom Douglas restaurants. So that's from Chef Tom Douglas out there in Seattle. So it's HRN, Hawaiian, BBQ.eventbright.com for raffle tickets. Nice. Yeah. And we have a call. All right, call her. on the air. Hey, Dave, this is Andrew from Chicago. How's going? All right, all right. How you doing? My question. The guy who's having the problem with the sausage, you think there's any issues overstuffing and just putting too much pressure on the casing? It could be. I hadn't I hadn't thought of that. It's yeah, it's definitely a possibility. I mean, you're from Chicago, you're not from Butcher Packer, are you? I buy from Butcher Packer, but not from them, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just maybe thinking, like, someone else, the same guy who was asking about deer before is stocking out his butcher supply

[33:30] stuff, because he's going to, they're going to be butchering more deer this year. And I was thinking, he's like, do you have any recommendations for other stuff I need for sausage stuffers and stuff, but I've only ever really used the... I only ever used like the 5 and I guess the £10 guys, the crank guys, so I don't really know anything about bigger ones than that. Do you have any experience with that? Not a bigger one. I just needed a big, bigger one, but, uh, those, those Craig suffers, you know, even if they're kind of,

[33:58] they seem to work great. You know, I've had, I've had a lot of success. Yeah, me too. I've used the expensive ones and I've used the cheap ones from grizzly and the cheap ones from grizzly seem to work. Yeah, they work fine. You know what I don't like are the ones that look like the ones that look like weird horns. Yeah, never use those. Yeah, no. I mean, me neither, but I just don't like them. I saw I've seen them. And so I guess I'm also, well, you know, while we're talking, I'm answering part of Peter's question. But yeah, I don't like those suckers. But so, and another thing, I think that most people, when you're going to set up a big butchery thing, get a bandsaw. I don't see that on the list of stuff. Get a bandsaw. Everyone loves a bandsaw, right? Extremely dangerous in the kitchen because people don't think about how dangerous they

[34:43] are and it will cut your finger off as fast as it will cut off a, you know, a rib. But if you are accustomed to woodshops and you know how, you know, danger works, then I think a bandsaw is a

[34:55] good thing to get for your butcher setup. You know how danger works. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, swear to God, if you're going to slice up a bunch of hams, like, especially country hams, bandsaw. Anyway, so what was your, do you have a question or you just talking sausage with me? Wait, hold on a sec. You're cutting out a little bit. hold on a sec. Start again. Yeah, I, uh, I wrote in. I'm the guy who goes to Alabama sometimes to go fishing. I did the Ec Jimmy on the bluefish. Oh, beautiful. years ago. Nice. Yeah, yeah. So I didn't get any bluefish is here. It's kind of a crappy fishing year, but I did get a like a £35 big drum redfish, which was great. And, um, it's, uh, it's a little tough. You know, the bigger they get, obviously the tougher they get. And so I was thinking about doing it low temp for tenderization, uh, doing kind of a test with 4 chunks over a 5 hour period, you know, tested at one, two, 3, and 4 hours. Does that seem like good? have you ever had an experience with uh big tough fish tenderizing them? Yeah, well, low tub cooking. Well, okay, so I mean, the problem with fish and low temp cooking is that usually, for most fish, uh, you cook them for a long time, but they don't get better, they just get kind of mushy, so they don't

[36:05] get, yeah they don't get tenderer. In other words, like the hardness is still there, but it's just also mushy. There are a couple fish that can stand long cooking times, like stripers. I know stripers can take long cooking times in circulators and they're one of the few fish. I think tastes okay at higher temperatures, like 57 Celsius, which is like 135. So like, you know, like that's the kind of fish that usually I'll cook a long time. It's also luckily the fish that I usually get in larger sizes, like 36, 40 inch stripers. And I cook them whole and you need to cook them a long time because they're tough. you know, sorry, no, you need to cook them a long time because they're large. Yeah, right. Because they're large. They also tend to get tough when they're big, but it's good because you're not overcooking

[36:50] them. So if you're cutting something into fillets, I don't think there's any reason to cook it for a long time. When you cook it through it and you should be done. Now, prove me wrong. Like, please, you know, cook cook it, but I find that most fish when cooked for a long time tends to degrade.

[37:06] rather rapidly. Like, I don't really like salmon. It's cooked more than like 20 minutes or so. Uh, you know, even, you know, in a cirque, if I'm doing like a higher thing, like if I'm doing like 50, 50 uh, in change for like a cold poached thing, you know what I mean? Where I'm going to cool it back down, so I'm going to cook it through. I still don't, you know, like it cooked too long. No. Unless you go all the way the other side, you can. I'm thinking maybe, you know, maybe it's more along the lines of the stripe. I'm thinking it's definitely more along the lines of the striker than it would be of a salmon. Right. Yeah, I'll give it a shot and let you know. I'll tell you, a Striper can take 2.5 hours while you're waiting for the center to cook through

[37:47] because like the larger ones that I cook take 2.5 , 3 hours to cook through at 57 and they

[37:54] don't they don't turn to crap. They're fine. So if you need to cook it that long. Yeah, yeah. So, and, you know, also I fry the outside. But, like, if, you know, if, you know, they can take it. it will work. All right, cool. I'll give a shot. Thanks very much. Thank you. Take care. I love those experiments you did with thank you, Jimmy, last year. They were awesome. Okay. So I think do we answer like Peter's question on the, on the, well, before we

[38:19] go back, like if you're from Minnesota and you're interested in hunting, you got to get the

[38:26] bull moose cookbook, which was a cookbook by Christian Herder back in way back in the day, he owned an outdoor shop and he had a couple of

[38:34] cookbooks, they are wildly inaccurate. He was like crazy, probably a misogynist. I don't know. I know he had some very unchoice things to say about Hollywood starlets in his book, but his book is the craziest cookbook, one of the craziest cookbooks I've ever read. Complete nut bag. Uh, and like interspersed with like how to, uh, how to, uh, you know, get a tortoise to stick

[38:58] its, uh, head out when you cut its head off answers, of course, to shove your finger and it's behind. But it's an interesting book to read. If you are a hunter and from Minnesota, because it's part of your Minnesota hunting heritage. Okay. So, on to Lucas, who now lives in Nairobi. Hey, longtime listener for Australia, who's living in Nairobi at the moment. St lived in Nairobi for a while, right? Yeah. How long were you there? How long ago? Yeah? Yeah, never been to Kenya. What? Right before you. Yeah, never been to Kenya. So, and okay. This brings up my 1st question. When I got over here, a few people told me it's much harder to bake at altitude. Is this true? Can you describe why altitude might cause difficulty in getting breads and or cakes to rise? I've had little trouble. Bread comes out, different to at home, but I put that down to different quality ingredients. The flour, the star is not the same. So for me, yeast frozen items are fine, and I haven't tried chemical rising agents yet. Okay, look, as far as I can tell, Nairobi is at 17, 195 meters, which is 5,889 feet. At that altitude. Water will boil at 937 Celsius or 200.7 Fahrenheit. Now, listen, that is true. And so things that are boiled tend to cook longer, but that's not the biggest deal. The fact of the matter is that also water is going to evaporate at a much more ferocious rate. So, uh, things just operate in in different ways. Uh, I would go to the um, Colorado State.edu. They have a whole thing on altitude baking and what to do with it. And King Arthur Flower actually has an interesting thing because they're a flower company. But the upshot is that gas bubbles are going to expand more quickly. So you generally use less leavening agent, as you go up higher. Also, because things evaporate faster, right in the oven, they will, because the oven is the temperature of the oven is, and the humidity is lower. So the water inside is going to evaporate faster. As that happens, it's going to create more steam much more quickly, right? So, things tend to rise more and pop more. It's also harder to get things to boil, et cetera. So, according to Colorado State, high altitude has its most pronounced effect on the rising time of

[41:09] bread, at high altitudes, the rising period is shortened since the development of a good flavor and bread partially depends on the length of the rising period.

[41:15] It is well maintained that period. Punching down the dough twice gives the time for the flavor to develop or perhaps just use less freaking yeast, right? In addition, flowers tend to be drier and thus absorb more liquid in high dry climates. Therefore, less flour may be needed to make the dough a proper consistency, right? Just makes sense. Secondly, I've really liked darker sugar and pretty much everything, if you're going to add sweetness, why not add flavor at the same time? Uh, says Lucas. And I think so as well. I like some dark sugar. Not always, sometimes. If you're adding a darker sugar in place of more refined sugar, for example, find muscovado in place of castor, are the sweetest levels the same or is more refined sugar sweeter per volume? Um, keep up the uh, keep up the good work. Enjoy the show. Cheers, Lucas. All right, well, volume is a... So, okay, so on a weight basis, brown sugars are technically a little bit less sweet than sugar because they have non-sucrose stuff in

[42:08] them like ash and other things that are making them brown. Now, the most hardcore brown sugar, you can get in the Codex alimenters where you looked up with is still 88% straight sugar, right?

[42:20] That's, like, including the water that's in it and the most molasses, most dark brown, and that's high. That's higher than any of the actual stats I've read on brands that I could find. So you're looking at something that's roughly the same sweetness as sugar on a weight basis. Now, volume basis has a lot to do with density. Now, the brown sugar that you buy, you know, domino, brand, brown sugar that we buy here in the States is about the same

[42:42] uh, one-to-one sweetness, uh, as regular, refined, uh, granulated sugar on a volumetric basis, but it just packed brown sugar.

[42:54] But it just happens to be that way. If you were to have a sugar of a different density, it would be wildly different. That's why I always recommend going on a weight basis with sugar, right? Wait basis. So the answer is yes and no. Okay. Irene wrote in, same Irene, I think, Jack, right? From the, uh, Mei Mei, the Mei Street Kitchen. There's, in fact, a meme restaurant outside of my house, and it's called the new meme kitchen, and I'm assuming, Irene, that yours is of much higher quality than the one outside my house. Dear Cookie Issues Crew, greeting from Irene, writing new from Boston. I run a fruit truck called May Street Kitchen with my brother, Andy, Sister Margaret, and the partner, Max. We do a bunch, we do a bunch of local sourcing whole pigs and the like, and we're opening our restaurant later this summer and hope you can come visit us one day. Our staff loves the show and the blog, so thanks for being cool and teaching us lots of cool stuff. Also, congrats on the Kickstarter. We're eagerly awaiting our puff pack and are super happy for you guys. So good supporter, right? Strong. I'll be in Boston actually in early September for a little bit. I might have my dog with me, though, so I don't know if you have outdoor seating. My question today is about MSG. We don't use it in our food or at home, but we don't mind eating it. It drives us nuts when people complain about it like nastasia, for instance. The number one complainer is our mom who claims she gets headaches and can taste it in the cheap Chinese food we occasionally eat.

[44:10] She is both a doctor and of Chinese descent, so you can imagine that it is a tricky topic around the house. We've considered just sneaking it into her food and then surprise attacking her with the truth, but I still live in her house, so that seems inadvisable. Do you know of any particularly legit or academic scientific work on the MSG myth that we can share with her? She's read a few pop sci articles and the stuff in Huff Poe and Salon, and they didn't really do it for her. Any help was much appreciated. All the best. Irene and Mei May Street Kitchen. PS. Sometimes when we're having a bad day. We re-listen to your rant about wraps. Thanks for that. That was a good rant, actually. Okay, here's what you want, Irene. First of all, look up the article, the Chinese restaurant syndrome, an anecdote revisited in 1986 Food and Chemical Toxicology, where it describes the history of Chinese

[44:56] restaurant syndrome. In brief, in 1968, Dr. Robert Homan Kwok, we counted a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, his experience of a strange syndrome, whenever he ate in a Chinese restaurant. He reported his experience one of numbness beginning at the back of the neck, radiating to the arms and back and accompanied by weakness and palpitations. He suggested that the cause might be some component of the cooking wine, the high salt content of the

[45:17] northern Chinese food, or the monosodium glutamate that was used. This letter triggered a deluge of similar anecdotes and focused attention on MSG as the causative agent. However, back then it wasn't MSG. It was called Chinese Restaurant Syndrome. And in fact, I think, you know, a lot of it has to do with the fact that people who were eating stuff that wasn't

[45:36] used, they weren't used to, or if, for instance, they go to a Chinese restaurant and pound all of the stuff without having any rice. It's not salted. They're pounding a boatload of sodium, just my ¢2 But here's another interesting thing from that paper. When the study population was screened to identify those who claim to have heard of

[45:53] Chinese restaurant syndrome and believe that they knew what it was, it was found that those subjects had a rate of reporting CRS type symptoms that was 10 times greater than the general population, and an equally greater rate of reporting

[46:06] nonspecific syndrome is presumably from this group of dyspeptic individuals that the majority of Chinese restaurant syndrome anecdotes arise.

[46:14] So, uh, the nice way of saying in your in your head. Now I'm not insulting your mom. I'm not insulting your mom here. Don't take it that way. A lot of papers later that were really, there's been a lot of papers. The papers that have found that there is a problem, uh, have a couple with, with, uh,

[46:30] monosolum glutamate have a couple of issues. A lot of them are that they don't successfully mask the taste of MSG and the studies that they do. The best paper I know from an earlier date that kind of disproves really kind of strong kaboom that there's no problem

[46:45] that proves that there's no problem on it. So glutamate is from Dr. Terasov in 1993. Modasodium, el glutamate, a double blind study and review, which is like baller. They put the Montessellium glutamate into gel caps, blew the gel caps off, did a double blind controlled placebo thing, and showed, in fact, that there's nothing wrong with MSG. There's someone who wrote a criticism of their, uh, of that article, and then he came out, he or she, I don't actually, maybe it's a she, I don't know, Dr. Tarasov came out and with a, with a, with a rejoinder to that called another case of glutamania, uh,

[47:18] and also in 1993. And I will just read it very quickly because it is intensely awesome because it's one of the, and I said it before the last time I went off an MSG. like you see the scientists like totally dropping the glove and just being like, listen, you D-bags. Here's what here's what it is. And give this one to your mom, have her read it. I'll just look up, look up another case of glutamania by Dr.

[47:40] Tarasov, T-A-R-A-S-O-F-F. I think it was 93, although it might have been a year later or so. Okay, another case of glutamania, and this is from the article. MSG is an amino acid found in all foods and sometimes termed free glutamate or glutamate. All organs in the human body contain MSG as it is found in the bloodstream. Boom. But the boom is mine. By far, the highest levels are found in parts of the brain. The brain is protected from the bloodstream by the blood brain barrier, which is largely impervious to incoming MSG. The brain synthesizes its own glutamate from glucose. This is an excitatory neurotransmitter, namely, you need glutamate to think, a fact which is worthwhile pondering. Boom. also mine. The brain eliminates its used glutamic acid by conversion to

[48:28] glutamine, which can cross the blood brain barrier. That is, the brain is a net exporter of MSG. The notions of exogenous and endogenous MSG are only relevant around the blood brain

[48:38] barrier outside their biologically equivalent. The turnover of MSG in the body is approximately 5 to 10 grand per hour, since it is readily transaminated to alpha ketoglutarate, which is used in the

[48:50] creb cycle for conversion to energy in several organs. Zoie. When plasma levels are increased by huge doses of MSG, in the absence of food, they return to basil levels in less than 2 hours. Unrealistically large doses can elicit mild transient sensations such as lightheadedness, stiffness, tightness, weakness of the limbs, and warmth, and burning of the skin

[49:07] face or scalp in some subjects. It should be emphasized if such effects are caused by very fast consumption in several

[49:14] minutes. In the absence of food and do not reflect a realistic eating situation. The world health organization lift its numerical limits on the use of MSG in 1987. And more recently, the American Medical Association did not support labeling requirements for food containing

[49:28] free glutamine. MSG, here's it, boom, boom, boom. MSG is ubiquitous in vegetable and meats as it is in the human body. To comprehend the issues, it is easiest to start by considering some foods which do not contain MSG, pure salt and white sugar. The crystal and MSG that is added to foods is made by a fermentation process which produces the identical optical isomer found in quote unquote natural foods. Chemically, it is the monohydrate of the sodium salt of R2 amino

[49:54] Pentani. I can't pronounce it. pen, pen, e, dioic acid. The concentration in tomatoes can be as high as .34%. Foods containing fermented, autoized, or hydrolized proteins contain much higher concentrations of amino acids. These include Parmesan cheese at equivalent of one. 5% MSG, soy sauce, and an equivalent of one. 3% MSG. So, boomity, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I hope that helps with your mom. You think that's going to help, Eddie? Yeah, it's pretty pretty hardcore stuff. Okay. Do we have we have time for a couple, a little bit? Wait, one. One? Jack, can we stay on for a couple minutes? Or Joe? No one's there, so we can do whatever we want. Bang. Alex writing about pressure cookers. My wife recently gave me a pressure cooker which I've been delightedly using to make delicious recipes. Actually, she claims to have been unduly influenced by our unborn child on the grounds that she would never deliberately give me more kitchen stuff. I've been thrilled with the results so far, but the cooker was, as we shall say, a thrifty

[50:51] purchase, and I am somewhat dubious that it performs as well as a more robust model like the coon recon. Specifically, I wonder whether it gets up to the full 15 PSI call for by the recipes. Is there any way for me to tell what kind of pressure it gets up to and how to modify these recipes to compensate for this? Thanks, and keep up the good work. Alex. Alright, Alex, you know. I feel you, man. You got the present from the wife. So you can't ditch it and get the get the higher quality one. It's all right. Listen. Unfortunately, there's no way easy. I don't know what brand you have if, you know, but you can do things like go on cooking issues on our pressure cooker

[51:27] tests and we do eggs at different temperatures for different lengths of time and you can kind of gauge by the browning that you get, whether or not you're at a full 15 PSI or you could borrow someone's pressure cooker and cook like two, either 2 eggs in them, hard-boiled eggs in them for like an hour and check the pressure

[51:43] differences or sweeten condensed milk, you can see whether or not they turn brown. Like, they'll say the leche at the same

[51:49] rate, but unless you want to tap into that sucker, I don't know how you're going to be able to test the pressure. One thing I'll say, most pressure cookers that aren't the coon recon, they need to be venting actively for them to be at

[52:00] pressure. So it's not just that little yellow button popping up that indicates pressure, it's actual venting of steam that indicates pressure. But, uh, yeah, I know it's tough. It's tough. You got the present. you't say, I love it, honey, but I wish I had the coon recon. It doesn't work. You know what I mean? It doesn't work. Uh, okay. James writes quickly about stretchy ice cream. Hey, Dave, Nastasia, and the booth crew. I like that booth crew, like that booth crew. We are the booth crew. You know, that song. All right. I've tried making Dave stretchy potato ice cream. When it works, it hits it out of the park. The stretchiness adds to the sensation of creaminess without becoming too sweet. However, anytime I vary the recipe or even occasionally when I follow the cooking issues, blog recipe, it fails to gain stretch. Have you done any more tests with this? They haven't made it into the blog. Cheers, James. Well, I've tested it and I've, no, I haven't. I've tested it and had it not work when I've used other than Idaho, you know, other than like Russet Burbank style potatoes. I've had it fail with mealy, like kind of potatoes from

[52:55] Colombia, these potato creollos. So I think, uh, you know, I've had it fail when, uh, I let it store too long or when the potatoes have been sitting around too long, when the starch retrograde is too much. So I have had it fail, but I haven't done any more research, but, you know, but let me know exactly what happened because maybe we can work this in it. Maybe I can find someone who's, I don't know, who will work on the problem. Also, a good stretchy ice cream is Guar and Lo, and um, Guar and uh, flavor flavor friguar and uh, gelan. That makes a nice stretchy ice cream, but it doesn't have the potato, which I like. I like the potato. I should do more work on it. I'll tell you I'll tell you this. I wasn't able to make it with straight starch. I'll ask Piper. Piper will think about this crap a lot, right? That's the kind of thing Piper's going to sit around instead of doing the work that we're supposed to do, he'll do that kind of stuff, right? Okay. Lastly, we're going to make it all the way through. Johnny writes in about eggs and Easy Whipper. Dave, Nastasi. Joe and Jack, longtime listener. First time question asker. I love the show, blog, and bar. Thanks. And look forward to each new episode. You guys do a tremendous job. Keep up the amazing work. I'm an avid home cook and no matter how many eggs I eat, and I eat a lot, me too. Eggs are good. I can't seem to keep bits of shell consistently out of my eggs when I'm cracking them. Any tips on avoiding this? I've gotten better at fishing them out with a shell. It's like a magnet, but would like to get good at cracking them without so much carnage. Also, I know it's been covered over and over, but can you recommend a particular ISI whipper for rapid infusion for a home cook? All right, on eggs. You know what? I really don't know. I haven't studied this very much. I will say that Jacques Pepin, the famous French chef that, you know, we know, hung out with. We, you know, I call him Jackie Peps. I don't know why sometimes. Jackie Peeves. So he always used to say that you want to crack your shells on a flat surface and not on

[54:34] the not on the edge of your bowl. if you want to avoid shells. I also notice that, obviously, my shell problem is worse when I'm not paying it. When I'm literally like bull cracking one-handed and like breaking them open, that's when I do it. I think a lot has to do, frankly, with the eggs

[54:49] themselves. Some eggs seem to seem to shell out and throw bits of shell a lot more than other ones do. But I don't know. I mean, what do you think? I try the old table crack instead of the bull crack. table crack, you push it to like a china cap as well after you crack. I mean, if you're doing like a scramble, but if you're doing a sunny side up, you're kind of screwed. Yeah, you kind of shafted. Yeah. Yeah, it's problematic. I mean, honestly, like the lower quality, crappy eggs have that problem and the really high quality, thick egg problems have that for different reasons. One, because the shell just disintegrates in your hand and like falls into the other, and the other one, because the shell is so damn strong that sometimes a bit of the membrane, it can come off and go in. I wish I had a good answer on that. But I do have a good one on the ISI for you. So the ISI people themselves, or EC, actually, we've been dealing with, who make the whipped cream containers. They kind of think that you want to use a half a leader whipper. And for home use, a half liter is probably good enough. For a bar, I use a liter. The problem is, if you're going to make a lot of whipped cream, kind of a liter is nice to have. If you're doing infusion, rapid infusion recipes, you might have to use 2 chargers instead of one when you're doing

[55:54] in a liter versus a half liter if you're not changing the recipe to get the pressure up there, but I really don't think that's

[56:00] that big of a deal. The trick, you might have to change a recipe written for a half liter, but you can definitely

[56:04] work it. And if you're at home, the cost of throwing in an extra charger every once in a while isn't big compared to the cost of being not as versatile if you need that one liter to do something,

[56:14] right? So, I mean, if you're in a restaurant and you're doing it every day and you're banging out for service, those chargers add up quick. But, Lee. But if you are doing it at home, it's not such a big deal. So if I only could have one, I would probably have a one liter guy. Now, listen, I didn't mention this. Came up with a new technique the other day for the ISI Whipper. So, in a nutshell, rapid infusion, rapid infusion works this way. You put product in a liquid in an ISI at room temperature. You force the nitrous oxide and the nitrous oxide under pressure, forces the liquid into the product. You shake it around. The pressure also increases the rate at which things come out of the food and

[56:53] into the porous object into your liquids. You then vent it violently after a couple of minutes and stuff boils out and brings the flavor with it. That's how rapid infusion works. Rapid nitrous infusion in anisi, okay? Problem is, you can't use an EC or couldn't use an EC to get the flavors into a product. So, for instance, like the cucumber martinis that I made, like, you know, a 1000000000 years ago, like, you know, when I was 1st starting out in this thing, where I used a vacuum machine to suck the air out of the

[57:18] cucumber and then having it underneath gin and and and gin and vermouth and a little bit of simple. And then when you let the air back in, boom, the air slams the gin into the

[57:29] cucumber, making an awesome looking transparent kind of cucumber martini. That doesn't work in an ISI because the stuff boiling back out of the cucumber makes it look not right and it doesn't have as much of an infusion. So you can't do nice flash pickling in the ISI and have those beautiful results. I figured out a way to do it. Here's what you do. Here's the new technique. I don't know what I'm going to call it, like EC flash pickling or something like that. What you do is, you put the cucumber and the gin, vermouth, a little bit of simple salt, in a

[58:00] sandwich size ziploc bag, right? I cut them into planks, right? Then you roll, I roll 3 of those sandwich ziploc bags with the, with the alcohol in them. And I don't need much. So for 200 grams of planks or for 150 or 180 grams of cucumber planks, I use about 200 and change

[58:18] mills of this mixture, right? In the Ziploc bags, you do it just like low temperature ziplocs. You put your finger in it, you dip it under the water to get the air out. So it's only cucumbers and gin mixture in the

[58:29] Ziploc bag. Roll it up, stick it into your ISI, fill it up to the fill line with water, close it, put a charger on it, agitate it,

[58:38] you know, a little bit, just a little bit. You don't need to do it a lot. And then let it sit for 2 minutes like that. Now slow. Now, what's happening is, is that you've used the pressure from the from the nitrous or carbon dioxide. doesn't matter in this case, to force the liquid that's in the bag into the pores of the cucumber, right? They're still a little bit, little gas bubbles because they're crushed in there. So you're going to lose some of the infusion when you vent, but not as much as you would if you were actually injecting nitrous into the cucumbers themselves. You then want to slowly vent the thing up to atmosphere after about 2 minutes. Now, if you were going to, don't remove it. Although if you did, you'd look at it, you'd see there's still air bubbles coming out of the cucumber just because the cucumber doesn't know what the hell's happened.

[59:18] So for the next 5 minutes or so, you're going to see little tiny air bubbles coming up out of the cucumber into the gin liquid. So you're going to let it sit in the in the in the whipper for 5 minutes. Then add one more charger, let it sit for another 2 minutes, vent very slowly. And when you take the stuff out, boom, flash pickled in an AC and an AC whipper, cooking issues. Yeah.

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