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[0:26] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Damon, your host of Cookies. She's coming live from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on the Heritage Radio Network, every Tuesday from Roughly 12, to roughly 1245. Joined, as usual, with Nastasia to Hammer Lopez, and who do we have in the studio today? We got Jack and Joe in the booth right. How you guys doing? We're doing great Yeah, how you doing, Stas? Good. Great. Calling your questions two, 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. and I'm back on food, people. Yeah, yeah. The lemonade died is over, and God, that sucks. Man, it's just the worst. It's freaking terrible. Like, so my wife, I complain about it last week, so I'm only gonna complain a little bit about it this week, right? But my wife was like, you know, she was surprised, you know, because here's the thing. Like, Nastasia, you don't probably don't know me, right? But, uh, one of the things Nastasia hates about me is that, uh, she says I'm kind of like an animal. I'm kind of a machine because I really just don't, I don't care kind of like, I don't know, things don't phase

[1:25] me, like pain, punishment, things, right? Yeah, hunger. Yeah, hunger. So getting through it wasn't like uh, like uh, difficult from a willpower standpoint. It just sucked. and what sucked about it was, there was no point in it at all. You didn't learn anything about? You don't look different either. No, no, no, no, no, people were like, did you lose weight? I don't know, I didn't weigh myself beforehand. Why? Because this, like, it has no meaning. And all I realize is that you can, in fact, walk around with a sugar high for

[1:53] 7 consecutive days without falling over. I think we should just do a new diet styles. Stars will do this one. How about stars? You want to go on the Sour Patch Kids diet? No. All you eat is just sour patch kids and wine. Not at the same time. No, no, no. Like breakfast is sour patch kids, lunchy, champagne, dinner, sour patch kids. No. You could do it for 2 days. Yeah, probably 2 days. Yeah, I don't want to do that. Maybe in the winter. Yeah, because, like, minus the wine, like, that's people are like, can you give up wine for seven? Yeah, of course. You know, like your body is just this like physical thing that's there. You know what I mean? Like who cares whether you're, you know, right? Anyway, whatever. It was an irritant and I'm glad it's over. So you learn nothing about yourself. Uh, no. No, no. I learned that, I mean, I, I, I really don't like the idea of detoxing. I think it really doesn't make sense. I mean, it is true. You get rid of caffeine, as I said last week. You know, and yeah, you know, your body is mildly dependent on caffeine, if you consume it, the

[2:55] quantities. And by the way, 1st thing I did when I woke up on, by the way, I broke my lemonade fast with falafel. I made falafel because a couple people had asked about it on the show and I hadn't made it in a long time. So I made falafel, kind of a combination between Joe Nathan's recipe, you know, the famous writer on

[3:12] Jewish and Jewish American cooking, in general, I guess. And, uh, this lady called, uh, the Shixa Shixa kitchen. Anyway, who's a convert to Judaism, actually. And, you know, no one's a better zealot than a convert to anything. So looked at her recipe and looked at John Nason's recipe, made some good falafels. Fried them all up in the fryer. Did you talk on the show last week about how people should just get sick and throw up? Did we talk about that? I think so. Well, so the theory is this. Like, so here's my feeling, right? If what you really want to do is purge your body of everything, right? Like the best for me was the time I had that horrible gastrointestinal disease,

[3:52] right? And I lost a ton of weight there because your body is like working

[3:57] overtime to try and fight this horrible disease that you have, and you're flushing your system of everything, and you can't take anything in, but your body doesn't go into horror shutdown mode because your brain is telling you not to eat or drink anything because it just shoots right out of you.

[4:11] So your metabolism stays fast and you're not taking any calories. That's the genius thing. You know, that's what we need to do. That relates to my other business idea enough. Someone out there, please feel this. Here's the idea. Ready for this? We're going to get samples of contaminated water from around the world, right?

[4:26] And we're going to ship them to people who live in places that don't have any sort of parasites in their water. And then you're going to drink that water, like maybe like two, 3 weeks. By the way, I'm not serious. This is satire. Like 2 or 3 weeks before you go on a vacation, right?

[4:41] To that country, right? And then you have all of your horrible gastrointestinal problems at

[4:46] home in the comfort of your own home, you know, on the comfort of your own toilet, right? You know, I know some people that you know stars that could have used the comfort of their own toilet when they had some horrible GI problems on a trip last year.

[4:57] And they, uh, think about it. And then um, I mean, like, look, nothing's worse than going to an unfamiliar country where you don't speak the language and needing a toilet within 10 seconds, right?

[5:09] Yeah. I mean, that's rough even here in the States or wherever you live. Wherever you live, it doesn't matter where you live. Like, you know your own toilet. You know what I mean? Anyway, my point is, is that this would be a decent business. You know, but still as all kidding aside, people used to take tapeworm pills. Really? Yeah. What years? A long time ago. Really dumb, really, really stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid stuff. But, and then another thing, another $1000000 business for you. ready for this one? There's this product. You didn't give the name of that business. Well, so like it was actually, I was speaking to someone who was from India when I came up with the idea because they were

[5:42] saying, you don't want to go to Delhi and get this. Here's what you get when you drink the water there. They call it, uh, and this is from a native, so please don't don't write into me. But deli belly, which is a sweet name. So that was going to be the name of the business, deli belly. It sounds so friendly, doesn't it? Sounds awesome. Anyways, so I was speaking to a doctor over the weekend and we have another $1000000 idea. Check this out. How much do you think, like, you know, some sort of rich Manhattan folk person would pay for this? Here's what we do. We give you, you come into the clinic. It's a one day super detox, right? You come into the clinic, you drink this thing called a Faso soda. Faso soda is like heavily phosphate salt laden soda. You have to chug it, and literally, it rolls through you like a freaking steam train and sprays out the other end, lickety split, cleans you out, one

[6:26] shot. You do that. We also flush you from the other side just for good measure. Zen, get, here's the good part, Stas, total dialysis. Right on the spot. Bam. Bam. Oh my god. Detox. Oh my god. They would pay whatever. Yeah, whatever. $10,000. whatever. Show up, detox in a day. You know, we'll do your nails the same time. You know what I mean? Little manicure. You can get that Chinese lady we used to do their hair. Oh, dude, you're giving away the secret. Then say where? You know, only the smart people know that they should go to the, like any place that has a Chinatown. If you go to the Chinese hair salons, this is a new, this is in the States. I't know what it's like around the world because I don't I don't get my haircut around the world. But the best head massages in the world for almost nothing. Yeah, right, Stas? Eight dollars. Yeah, don't don't give away. don't give away all our secrets Well, only give away the cooking secrets. All right, now, 2 actual cooking questions. First of all, before we get to cooking questions. I would like to say we have this in from Aaron Will, very, and we love this guy. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm just going to read his note, right? To Nastasia et Ali, which I like. I like, I know some people named Delhi. Anyway, I want to say congratulations to every, this is, by the way, about the Kickstarter, the puffing gun. Oh, we should talk about the puffing gun later if we have time about what we puffed. Yeah, that was awesome by the way. Oh my god, you, like, 1st of all, like, those things exploding. How, how like loud and impressive is that explosion stuff? You know what? Give me a minute and I have a video on my phone. I'll patch it through to the board. Oh, come through on radio. All right, sweet. Alright, cool. Okay. So this is about the puffing on thing. I would like to say congratulations to everyone who is involved in the project on reaching the goal. Thank you very kindly for the invitation to the MoFad Puff Party. See, because Aaron Will is a backer of our Kickstarter. It makes me incredibly proud to be a part of something I so strongly believe in. I truly believe in the long-term applications and massive positive ramifications that such an entity can and most likely will create. In all honesty, I am a poor yet passionate cook out here in Oregon,

[8:25] but only because the momentary circumstances allowed for the expenditure, I was able to donate my entire paycheck this last month to the

[8:33] MOFAD Kickstarter. You hear that, people? Entire paycheck. As such, along with scheduling and staffing issues, I have no feasible way to monetarily

[8:41] fund a trip to join the festivities, to follow this month on the 13th because we're having a big puffing party on the 13th of August. I would, however, hate to see my invitation ticket and spot on the fire marshal's max person limit list to the event to go to waste. If there is any possible way to auction off or resell my ticket to again benefit the

[8:58] MoFAD so that someone else could enjoy the experience. I would greatly appreciate it. Again, I truly regret I cannot join the amazing group of like-minded persons that is sure to converge for the event. I hope to hear from you soon, and that you all have an amazing time at the event, Aaron Will, from Scratch Restaurant in Lake Oswego, Oregon. By the way, everyone go out and patronize the scratch restaurant out there in Lake Oswego, Oregon. And also, he says, P.S. If Dave and everyone wants to come out to the pair repository, still the invitation stands. I'd love to go, but it's right around now. I got we have so much stuff going on this fall. It's like the worst fall ever in terms of stuff. Um, but maybe if I finish my book while the pairs are still on the vine, I can go. Stas has this look on her face like, I want to stab you right out. look. But anyway, Aaron, listen. Thanks. This is, uh, it was, um, we're very touched over here. Yes, well, we should have someone get his ticket. Yeah, well, and we'll think of something nice to do for you as opposed to a ticket. Okay. Well, we got a caller, but maybe before we take the caller, we'll play this little clip of the puffing gun. We'll see how it sounds. Fire. Fire. I guess it's better when you're looking at the video. Yeah, probably. Caller is on the line. All right, call her, you're on the air. Hey man, how you doing? This is Christian from Detroit. How are you, Dave? Hey, you doing all right? So got a question for you. I know you like to cook some weird things and whatnot. Um, was trying to uh, make some mayonnaise this weekend with turkey eggs and made mayonnaise

[10:36] that 100 times and never had a problem. I was curious if different game eggs start to make creating mayonnaise difficult or different. Huh. That's interesting. So you say you have done turkey eggs without a problem? No, I've never done turkey eggs before. I've done, you know, regular eggs and made mayonnaise of the 100 times, but I'm wondering if like wild game eggs or something like

[11:00] that, has a like different protein comp, uh, makeup or something like

[11:05] that, that would. Yeah, I mean, that's a cool question. I've never had a turkey egg. Do you actually have a stock of turkey eggs there? I have a stock of turkeys, which then produce the turkey eggs, so it's a good relationship. How do they taste as opposed to a chicken egg or duck egg or something? They're super custardy. So you know how a duck egg gets a little rich. This is like kind of custardy with, and it's a little bit thicker as you kind of would expect from like a bigger bird. It's, uh, but it's super delicious, especially on top of like pasta and whatnot. Huh. And so, and do they, have you put them in a circulator? Do they cook it roughly the same temperatures? I haven't put them in a circulator, so I couldn't tell you that one. I would love to know that. Well, the short answer is, I don't know. But I mean, with regard to mayonnaise, but I do know that the different birds do have different protein fractions in their eggs and that they respond differently to certain

[11:59] treatments. For instance, you know, one of the things that I have experimented with different egg varieties is treating them with lie.

[12:09] Harold McGee and I used to do an alkaline egg where you soak it in a lye and salt solution and then you cook it. And then even after you cook it, the egg remains translucent, right? And so, and then, and then McGee and Nils and I used to, used to substitute that out, uh, and, you know,

[12:24] Lute Fisk is the lie, is the lie, uh, cured fish. So what we would do is use the egg as a lute fisk thing and then just serve an actual smoke trout next to it along with some salt. It was good. But the um, but the point is, is that the uh, duck eggs, chicken eggs, and quail eggs all responded differently to the

[12:42] treatment because the protein uh, makeup is slightly different. So duck eggs responded really well to that treatment. Uh, you know, uh, and so did quail, but uh, chicken eggs were much more difficult to get to work with that because the proteins tended to fall apart more when they were treated with the

[12:59] lie. So they didn't gel up as nicely. So I know from that experience, that, yes, the protein fractions are slightly different. Now, you know, mayonnaise is mostly concerned with the emulsification properties of the yolk, and I would assume that, uh, you know, because the yoke has so much more emulsification power in it than is necessary to make any sort of reasonable quantity of mayonnaise

[13:27] that, unless there's some real unforeseen thing in a turkey egg that I can't, you know, fathom that, uh, there's no reason why it wouldn't

[13:35] function, um, the same way in something like a mayonnaise. Does that make sense? Yeah. So maybe I just stink. Well, I mean, like, I have to, uh, yeah, I have to keep playing with it, but it was really weird. I mean, no matter how much, you know, like the little bit of acid or the little bit of water. I just, I couldn't get it to come together. I'll have to, you couldn't get it to start the emulsion. No. Yeah, I mean, I've never researched the turkey. That's a really interesting question. I'm trying to think of like what it could be that would not allow it to happen, but like, you know, I can't. So in other words, like you sit there, you make it with a chicken egg, no problem. And then you make it with a turkey egg and it's big problems. Yeah, it's it's super weird. And then, you know, like I've tried everything, like I let it sit in the fridge, let everything separate, pulled the yolks back out, tried to slowly add it back in, tried the cold method, tried room temp method, could not get it to come

[14:34] together. So I'll have to keep playing with it and see. Maybe there's something in it that's, that's, maybe there's something I've, I have no, I have no clue, but maybe someone out there knows, you know? Maybe I'll send you some turkey eggs and then we'll have to. Oh, that would be awesome. We'll play with that. That would be awesome. Also, like, uh, I wonder whether, have you tried, um, so one way to find out whether there's something in the turkey egg that's shafting you is to do like

[14:58] one-to-one turkey egg with chicken egg and see whether or not you can make that

[15:02] work, right? I mean, maybe there's some sort of crazy inhibitor. But again, like I just feel that like something just weird might be, something weird might be going on, you know? Yeah, I agree. I mean, it seemed weird to me. I couldn't imagine that the emulsification would be that weird, but

[15:18] I, or that different rather, but yeah, it was, it was pretty strange. Huh, yeah, well, that's very interesting. I would encourage you to keep us posted because I want to hear how this works out or get us some turkey

[15:29] eggs and we'll mess around. We will make mayonnaise out of them. Yes. and you can you can put them in the suit and see, see how they do. Oh, yeah, I do, yeah, I want to extend you to them. See, what you need to do is you need to do, like, you do the range. So it's gonna set somewhere. I mean, obviously, you know, if you cook with a circulator, you know, a chicken egg set between 60, so they runny of 62 and they're set at 64 Celsius. And so like, you know, I usually just run like that range to see whether like how things are relative to relative to the chicken, which is, you know, of course,

[15:59] standard standard egg. Right. standard egg. Yeah. Cool. All right, awesome. Cool. So I look forward to the turkey and we'll post back. Yeah, sounds good. Thanks, man. Thank you. All right. So, what were we talking about beforehand? We were talking about... Puffing gun. We have a number, something else. Something else we were talking about? I can't remember. Okay, uh, Ryan writes in, uh, at cooking issues. How does the pressure pickle technique burst the vacuules make sense with the chamber, but I'm a little confused with this. Referring to the pressure, uh, rapid pressure pickling technique I put up on the cooking issues blog

[16:35] uh, the other week? And I think I described it last week on the air, right? How that works, like you, so the idea is, is that normally when you're infusing a liquid into a solid, use a vacuum machine, you suck the air out, using the vacuum machine, you have it in a liquid, air comes back in,

[16:51] air smashes the liquid into where the air pockets used to be in the thing and you infuse it. So the problem with doing that in ISI is that when you release the pressure, all of the stuff that you infuse in boils back out again and you get almost like a net 0 in terms of

[17:05] infusion. It doesn't look infused away an awesome, like, you know, vacuum infused thing looks. So I solve that by putting the um, products in Ziploc bags inside the ISI so that the soluble gas, CO2 or N2O doesn't get into the

[17:20] uh, product and therefore won't boil out as violently. So the question here is, how does that burst the actual air holes? I don't think, in other words, like, I think what, what, here's what I think is happening in, in this technique. In a vacuum, when you're using a vacuum machine to inject a liquid into an air hole. What you're doing is you're removing almost all of the partial pressure of air on the inside of the air holes

[17:45] in the pores on the inside of your liquid inside your salad. When the air comes back in, you have a maximum external pressure is 60 of

[17:54] a six, sorry, 15, roughly PSI pounds per square inch, forcing the liquid into those things. In an ISI, you're talking about 60 or more pounds per square inch, at least 60, 70, depending on how much you

[18:08] put in, pounds per square inch, pushing on it. And that is enough to crush air bubbles down to almost nothing. So you force the liquid into it, right? Now you're not forcing anything solid, like soluble gases in there. You're just making those air bubbles tiny and forcing liquid in. When you release it, right, those bubbles expand and leave your product, let's

[18:31] say cucumber, right? And take with it some of the liquid. But they also, as they're leaving, they keep on then leaking out because you've made pathways for the liquid to get to them during the compression

[18:41] phase. The 2nd time you hit it, right? This is why you pause for 5 minutes. The 2nd time you hit it with a charger, you reinject that liquid into those gaps, right? And the 2nd time you release it, very little gets sprayed back out. And so you have fundamentally an infused product. That's why you need to hit it twice with that. I hope that makes sense. That makes sense? Yeah, cool. All right. Let me see. Well, you have a bunch of, you want to hit all the circulator crap now? Scale circulator, John. you want to take a break? Talk about what you what you emailed Barack Obama. What? Oh, you know, do you guys look? I look, look, this is great. Dave answers no emails. If you send me an email, I'm not going to answer it. Do have I answered an email for you ever, Jack? We've never had one email interaction. Yeah, no, no. And I've known you for how many years? Like 3 or 4 years. Yeah, yeah. No emails. No, no. I hate email as a thing. But, but, but, uh, the, the, uh, Obama machine emails me like 3 times a

[19:40] day. The form that, like the, but they changed the names to each person. So it'll say, hi, Dave. Yeah, where'd this come up? What many think it is? I was looking for his. Oh, you were looking for the questions anyway? Yeah, so like anyway, so like he's like, I only respond to Barack and Michelle Obama's emails. And I never get responses, but Beyonce, well, Beyonce was on behalf of Barack Obama. I was like Beyonce, you never write anymore. So anyway, yesterday or 2 days ago was Barack's birthday. Right, yeah, happy birthday. So what did you say? I was like, what did I say? I was like, happy, happy birthday, brother. Next time we go out the beers are on me. No response. No response. Anyway, I am like, I personally am like, I'm not a fan of the fake personal. You know what I mean? And he asked for money a couple weeks ago and you told him, I have this mopad thing that I have to give. Yeah, the fake personal emails are hilarious. It's like, I love it when an ATM machine thanks me as though it's not a machine. Yeah, ridiculous. No one made me think of that. All right. It looks like a really quick break. All right, come back with cooking issues.

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[21:27] Visit them on the web at techserve.com or in New York City at 119 West 23rd Street. Learn more about their in-store classes and incredible insider program. Make stuff happen. Tech Serve. We back? We're back We're back. Bob and Portland rides in regarding the egg, the egg cracking thing we had last group. By the way, you know, like someone like walked up to be a pastry chef, that's what everyone has an egg cracking thing. So, uh, Bob writes, hey, Dave, Nastasia and friends. What's up, friends? Hey, here's my nearly foolproof egg cracking tip. I hold the egg in the palm of one hand and begin wrapping it with the knuckle of the other hand, like I'm knocking on the door, gently at 1st and gradually increasing until the egg cracks. And then insert my thumbs and spread the shell apart. No egg white on the side of the bowl or the countertop, Bob in Portland. And, uh, you know, it's made, you know, the pastry chef was saying, you know, you get the,

[22:22] the, the tap very gently on the table at the, at the, at the widest part of the

[22:27] egg and put your finger in, open it. let me tell you something. I am a freaking gorilla monster in the

[22:35] kitchen. Like, if I spent more, and these people, like, just to give you an idea, like, of kind

[22:40] of like my way I am in that thing, like, uh, I just, I like to do everything extremely quickly, right? Stars are shaking your head. Like, I can't, like, I can't, like, I should spend each time and give every egg the respect it deserves as I crack

[22:56] it. But like, you know, I just crack the hell out of those eggs really quickly. You know what I mean? The only time I really pay any attention is when I'm separating eggs out. And even then, I don't pay that much attention. And so, for instance, when I'm when I'm separating eggs out, because I'm gonna like make like a zabayon or I'm gonna make like a meringue or something like this, right? I never crack the damn yolks. You know what I mean? Like when I throw them into the pot, sometimes I crack them. but I don't really care. You know what I mean? I never crack eggs when I egg yolks when I'm making fried eggs, right? Do you have that problem? And I'm a freaking gorilla. You know what I mean? Like, I'm the worst person in the world. And so she was this pastry chef saying that, like, that's typical for someone who, like, hangs out with savory people all the time that, you know, like, you know,

[23:40] just crack the crap out of stuff and put it, put it through a strainer to make sure that there's no pieces of shells in. She was like, you're a bad person. Who was that? I forget who one. but it's true though. Bad person. Bad person. At least with regard to that. Okay, now we got a whole bunch of stuff. We're having some sort of like circulator extravaganza, all sorts of stuff coming in on circulators, right? Because we had a circulated question last week on the Seattle food gig thing, right? So first, before. Before we do circulators, Dave? you coming to the party on Sunday? Sunday. Yeah. don't know. Am I come? don't know. Actually I think I'm away this Sunday. But should we announce the party? Are there still tickets? There's still tickets. Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. That's what I was looking. Yeah, it's not it's not monster trucks, though, right? do we have? There will be there will be monster trucks. Holy crap, monster trucks? I'm confirming right now. Oh my god. Are we gonna do this thing at Yonkers Raceway? Where are we going to do this? That's basically where the party is yet. No, it's in the back garden of Roberta. It will be awesome. Whole hog roast cocktails, et cetera, et cetera. So if you email us now and you confirm that you found out about the party by listening to this show, I'll give you a special discount code. Just ask for me. Yeah, what kind of discount they're going to get? Uh, you know, it's flexible. Flexible discount. Oh, I like the flex discount. Yeah. So info atheritageradionetwork.org. And if you're not in New York, get a raffle ticket, win a trip to Seattle. By the way, I don't know whether you guys know this, which I'm sure you do. Like, this radio station here, this is a 501 C3 kind of an operation, and, you know, Jack, Joe, Eddie.

[25:10] These guys all need the, you know, Aaron, who comes on every once in a while. These guys all need to like eat. They need to purchase food. You know what I mean? Like the, we need to, we need to keep this place on the air. So it helps to uh, it helps to uh, go to these events. And guess what? It's a win-win because you're going to have a good time and we get to keep providing programming. Am I right about this? Yeah, we can get coffee in the morning. It really helps. Yeah, please these guys need their coffee in the morning. I think I've got Piper on the line. Ooh, Piper. So, Piper, let me hello, Piper. Hey, Dave. So, uh, Alvin Schultz, uh, who uh, did uh, some time at Booker and

[25:43] Dax the Bar, uh, hanging out, figuring out the stuff, uh, and also a longtime listener here. Had a question for you, looking for food recommendations. You went to like Ho Chi Minh, right? That's what I was telling you. Oh, you didn't? Where did you go? Yeah, you only went. So never mind. So you don't have any recommendations for Alvin, huh? Well, well, where did you go good in Hulu? In case he makes it over? By the way, street food, honestly. You know what? You know where he is? He's in, he's in Phuket, and I want everyone, like when I was, when I was in Stas, this exact same thing. You know how we pronounced it when we were adolescence, right? Anyway. So wait, so what do you have there? Street food. He didn't go to any restaurants? No. He said he was mostly in his hotel room. What? Yeah, because it was too hot to go outside. How hot was it? Is it true, Piper, that you spent all of your time in your hotel room and only went out after dark to get street food? No, I spent from noon till like 2 in the hotel room. There's too hot. Man. Stas is shaking her head and making the Piper your busted face, which is another face that none of you will ever get to see. All right. Well, I apologize for making you call in when you have no useful recommendations for

[26:55] Alvin. Sorry about that. That's my favorite call in the history of the show. All right. Sorry, Piper. You know what? I love Piper, because you can call Piper up and, like, say something like that. like, you know, I don't know, do that. And he's fine. Keep inside, he's crying. Oh, Piper, good man. Piper's a good man. Okay. Alvin also writes in, do you have any info on the history of

[27:23] Petuga style mescals? Uh, no, but except for the fact that, you know, I've always told the same story that, uh, that they put basically in the distillation flask so that kind of, uh, it

[27:35] reflux uh, distills on a piece of meat. So different places would use different kinds of meat. So pachuga obviously used the chicken breast, but other people threw other kinds of meat into the kind of vapor chamber above where the mezcal was

[27:49] distilling and that's where that comes from, but as to why you would do that, only God knows. I don't know this story. But, you know, I know some people from Del Mague and some other, like, you know, Ryan Fitzgerald and all these guys. I can next time I speak to them, Alvin, I'll get some history on that stuff for

[28:05] you. All right? And Alvin's last question. What does Rotovap collection flask? What does Rotovap collection flask boil late in the run how to fix? What does that mean, Stas? You figure out what that means. Oh, why does it? No, no. What what collects? Alvin, I got to say, I don't exist. What? It's like a riddle. It is a riddle. It's a complete riddle. Hey, by the way, one last non-cooking related thing. So I have I need the next drink that I come up with the bar that we don't have a name for. You ready for this one? So Tristan Willie is, you know, one of the bar manager at Booker

[28:42] Index, and his last name is Willie, right? So here's my favorite tongue twister. I'm going to name the next drink this, ready? Willie's real rear wheel. Say that. Willy's a real rear wheel. Wow. You can't say it's impossible. So I'm going to have that be the name of the drink. No, no, I saw it. tongue twisters because, you know, I have kids. And so we're doing tongue twisters. I looked it up. Willie's real rear wheel. And so I'm going to write that, just as the drink name, and it doesn't look imposing. Write it. It looks completely harmless. can't be said. And so, like, customers are going to be, like, really... See, when

[29:17] they were on their 3rd job. Willie's... name it. So that's my next plan. Okay, back to cooking related questions. So, uh, circulators. Okay, Matt writes in. Hey, Nastasian Crew. working on a new product that will hopefully make soothie cooking not just cheaper, but also better than current immersion circulator technology. Ooh, coming on, coming on strong against the, uh, against our boy P Preston and our boy, uh, WePop SoupyPot. a.k.a. supapi pot from Nomiku. Okay. My question for you guys is what would you like to see improved about current immersion circulators? Are there any pain points or missing features you can think of? Also, where can I send a demo unit once I get one, as I'd love to get your feedback? Well, the address for Booker and Dax Equipment Corporation. If anyone ever wants to send us free stuff, uh, is 54 Eldridge Street storefront. Yes. One, New York, New York, one, 002. So anyway. So, I don't know, like, that's a good question. Like, what's a hassle about circulators? I mean, there's a lot that's kind of a hassle about them. But there's a lot that's great about them as well. I mean, probably the power, be nicer to have more power sometimes. I don't know. I mean, I'm so used to them, so used to it. Cleaning them could be a little easier, right, Stas? I hate cleaning them out. You hate, well, Stas never cleans it out. She doesn't give her rat's ass. You have one at home. easy to clean. What? The new one is easier to clean the old one. What the plastic one? Yeah, because it's got less parts, but it's more It's harder to clean in some ways because there's just more parts that you can't see whether they're dirty because they're inside the

[30:51] machine, as opposed to stainless, which got filthy. But anyway, it's a good question. I don't know. I'd like to hear from people out there, what they don't like about their circulators and what they think need to be changed. Regarding also circulators, we had a Seattle food geek data circulator build. So Chris Hale wrote in regarding Seattle food geek circulator build. By the way, for those of you who don't know what we're talking about, very quickly, the circulator is a thing that allows you to keep water and sometimes other liquids at very constant

[31:16] temperatures absolutely necessary to do low temperature cooking, which is the greatest innovation in cooking in the last 200 years, in my opinion.

[31:23] Seattle food geek circulator build. I followed that build and shopping list and had good results, but bending acrylic sucks because we were talking about the box enclosure last week for the circulators. Drilling is frustrating and cutting it is impossible. Then it is hard to clean, not very durable, and looks like crap after a few months. If you don't have a laser CNC machine handy and nobody does, but Seattle food geek, don't use acrylic. I busted up my acrylic box last week and installed the whole thing in a black ABS. ABS is the kind of plastic that people use, but you know, remember ABS can't get too too hot. ABS Project Box from RadioShack. For this project, I recommend at least 4 inches tall by 8 inches deep. I put mine in a 6 by 4 by 3 and I spent most of the week in rewiring it because the space was too cramped. Then there was one time I plugged it in and welded my AC supply line to the relay, but I'm sure you're smart enough to keep the metal backing of the relay away from the power connections.

[32:11] By the way, one note on this. I noticed a lot of these DIY things use relays. I hate, I hate mechanical relays for this application. Spend the extra 3 bucks and get everyone listen to me, spend the extra 3 bucks and get a solid state relay. I hate that click, click, click, click that relays make, and I also hate the fact that they have mechanical things in them that can fail because of arcing when things go bad.

[32:35] So just get yourself a solid state relay. They have an infinite lifetime basically compared to a solid state relay. They're never going to go south on you unless you fry them out. And they don't go click. Hate the click. All right, so back back to Chris's point here. But I'm sure you're smart enough to keep the metal backing of the relay away from the power connections. Anyway, once you drill a hole in ABS, you can use a file or hacksaw blade to make the hole, whatever shape and size you need, it won't crack and it's easy to

[33:03] clean with some property sized grummets, the holes for the power cord and circulator pump will be vapor tight. It's a good word, vapor tight. That be a good band, right? Vapor tight. Which was never possible with the acrylic rig. As for the clamp to hold it on the edge of your pan. Acrylic is unsuitable for that too. That true. will crack. Try a piece of sheet metal or half of a sturdy plastic box held to the project box with

[33:22] screws and attach a couple of spring clamps. There's so much faster than some screws. Thumb screws, even if they aren't as versatile. As far as what kind of container you can use them on. Good luck and happy circulating from Chris Hale. And also, uh, Cryptamp writes in. For your question last week, I use an aluminum bar bent with hands over steel railing, not acrylic, uh, for uh, mounting the, uh, heater on. In fact, he has no housing at all, so he put the electronics for it on the on the outside, just attached by wires over on the other side, I think. I will say cryotamp, or cryptamp, that your situation not exactly OSHA friendly because it looks like I could get zapped pretty good if I didn't pay attention, but I'm sure it will work.

[34:00] And when I made my own circulators and didn't care about getting zapped. I did get zapped all the time. I say, look, Piper, Piper giving us crap for calling him out. He hasn't mailed the torch yet. I don't know, you know, not the torch. Yeah, okay, whatever. Okay, uh, we have in from uh, Joe Blow. Joe Blow says, people say cooking squid or octopus either needs to be cooked for very long or very quickly.

[34:27] Nothing in between. Why? What's the science behind this? And I got to say, it's another one of those things that I just, you know, it's just you take it for granted, you know, you don't know. And here's the other thing. I read a bunch of scientific papers on Squid and octopus, and most of the work on that stuff was done in the 80s, and, you know, around

[34:51] then in the mid 80s, and the people who were doing it had the typical problem of a lot of scientists when they're doing these kinds of papers, they

[34:57] just, they didn't cook it properly. So there's no, no one, no one did the right experiment from a science paper

[35:04] standpoint saying, like, what exactly is going on in the muscles between a short cook, uh, the medium and the long cook, the toughness in between. However, you can kind of deduce based on what's going on that, what's happening. So the interesting thing is squid and octopus muscle is very different from vertebrate muscles, right? So, 1st of all, there's the protein compositions are different. So there's much more myofibrillar protein. In other words, the actual muscle fiber protein in squid muscle, as opposed to the sarcoplasmic proteins, which are the ones kind of surrounding

[35:46] and in the cells that aren't the myofibrile proteins. So those are the ones that actually cause the contraction. This is because squids have some strong contraction in that sucker so they can go, right? So they have more of those myofibrillar proteins that are going to cause toughness when they denature. Also, they have they have fibers running in 2 different directions around, right? So they can squeeze, and then also radially, so they can bend and do all sorts of stuff. So they got this this kind of two-direction muscle fiber action going on. Also, the proteins are a little more soluble than they are. So they tend to swell up and bind together and shrink like a

[36:22] mother much more than, uh, like, uh, vertebrate proteins do or even, you know, fish. Yeah, well, they're vertebrates, duh. So the, so here's what happens. My feeling is that, um, If you before you totally denature those things and they shrink up, which happens somewhere between 50 and 60 Celsius, uh, before that

[36:42] happens or it happens really quickly, you're going to have a tender product that you can get on the rare low side.

[36:47] Then as soon as you shrink those suckers, they're going to be hard, like, like rubbery like rocks, until you cook the ever-loving snot out of them and break those stuff. They also have a fairly high portion of connective tissue in them too. Remember that giant octopus we cooked? That was awesome, right? Yeah, so like one of the, I said this like a 1000000 times, but like, you know, we got a giant octopus

[37:08] tentacle. Every octopus tentacle, by the way, tastes a little different because some are more dominant than others. And the octopus tentacle tastes different from the tip to the to where it attaches to the animal. The tip is a little more, I think, kind of like a little more gummy, a little more like, you know, and I like this stuff kind of in the middle, actually. But anyway. So, that is what I think is going on. Some other interesting things about squid and octopus, there's have a high level of protein breaking

[37:36] down, protein enzymes in them. And so I would think that prolonged heating, I haven't tested this, but I would think that prolonged heating in the 60 degree range, before you ramp it up, would also make it very tender. But here's another interesting paper for you. At least interesting to me. How gross is this? You ready for this, Daz? And I'll tell you why it's interesting. Tenerization of squid, uh, low-ligo, uh, vulgaris, which is

[38:00] low-ligos are, uh, they're a genus of squid, uh, that are mainly kind of uh, they live near the bottom of the ocean, right? low logos. And, uh, Ilex, uh, Coindeti,

[38:12] the Ilex ones are the are the more fast swimming kind of ocean east quids. Um, with Bromelane, which is a uh, you know, protein tenderizer, right? And you ready for this one? Bovine, spleen, lysosomal, enriched extract. How'd you like to sprinkle that all over your squid, gross? Gross. But here's the really interesting thing that I had never thought of before. And, um, something maybe for you guys to think about is usually when you're thinking about what's happening with protein extracts, uh, what

[38:42] you're, what you're thinking about is, um, that things get mushy, right?

[38:48] Because you're breaking down the structure of the proteins. And for something like meat, when you break it down, that's good because it tenderizes, but usually in fish, it makes it mushy. But things don't necessarily break down in kind of a very uniform way. So both of those things, the bovine, spleen, lysosome extract, and the, uh, and the

[39:10] Bromlane are protease enzymes. But the Bromlane, and you can look at that in this paper. very interesting. The Brommelane, when you treat it with it, makes the squid mushy, and people don't like it. It's more tender, whereas the, the lithosome, this the spleen, the bovine spleen extract, tenderizes it in such a way that it just reduces the sheer force the same in all of the parameters of the tasting of the squid.

[39:33] So, it reduces springiness by the same amount that it reduces hardness all the way around. It just makes it more tender, but still keeps the same textural properties of squid. So it looks like there's a whole world out there of protein breaking down of protein, you know, protonace enzymes out there that we could use to make things more tender without making them mushy, which is something

[39:53] I'd never thought of before. Another interesting thing about endogenous meaning inside of the tissue already, squid enzymes, is that they are active at alkaline pHs. So soaking acidity you'd think would make the stuff harder, and there are some research that says that it does. And another thing is is that treating squid with phosphate salts as a brine beforehand and salt in general, but phosphate salt, which I think they don't give a reason for it, but I think it's because it makes it more basic, more

[40:19] alkaline, will help the enzymes more rapidly break down the protein. So phosphate treatments of squid that take it into the slightly alkaline, like 7.4 range instead of like the slightly acidic

[40:32] range, maybe help the squid get a little softer. Uh, and wait a minute, time for one, time for one more thing? Yeah. Gun. I thought you were gonna talk about. Oh, one more thing before. You can get that thing today now. What thing? Oh, yeah, stars, I'm going to pound some lunch. They're going to have a giant calzone for lunch. I'm just going to eat this whole calzone just by myself. I read this crazy paper on... you ever notice how people, when they write papers on frying things. They always want to reduce the oil in things. It all everyone ever cares about when they write papers on frying. They want to reduce the oil. So check this out. So when you're making industrially when you're making fried things for freezing. What you do is, is you make your product, you throw in a bunch of gums and all this stuff. And then you pre-fry your product, right? And then after you pre-fry it to set the batter, then you freeze it. And then when you refry it, you cook the batter all the way through it, right? Makes sense? Okay. So, um, So it's a well-known fact that if you add methyl cellulose to batters, you decrease the oil absorption of the batters, because methyl cellulose and, you know,

[41:34] hydroxy propyl methyl cells, they have the interesting property that when they gel when they heat up, okay? So what's happening is in water, hot water, it forms a gel. And this is why it's used in pie filling so that the pie filling doesn't boil out of crust. It's used in barbecue sauces to increase adhesion when they're on the grill and being heated. It's used to make those noodles that set when you spray them into soups

[41:57] and kind of modern cooking. And, you know, dumplings that don't bump, you know, all those kinds of things,

[42:04] methyl sales. So well-known fact that if you put it into batters, it decreases oil absorption. These guys dope the hell out of it. They've patented this, believe this or not, in 2000, I did know if you could patent stuff like this in 2002. What they do is they make a really loose batter thing and then they boil their freaking chicken nuggets, like dumplings with methocellulose in it,

[42:24] then give you this kind of boiled nugget, which you then fry later. Doesn't that sound weird? Gross, huh? I kind of want to try it to see what happens. These kind of boiled methocell battered dumplings and then fried. But I don't really see the advantage because I don't really believe that I want to decrease the amount of oil that's in

[42:39] my fried foods. Do you mean like, you've had my fried foods? Do you feel that you need to reduce the amount of oil in it? No. No. See, I see, like, oil is organoletically delicious. And so like the trick is you don't want your socks stuff to be greasy, but that doesn't mean that you necessarily want to reduce the oil that's on the inside of it. Lunacy. Lunacy. All right, so the gun. So, uh, it's puffing gun, you know, uh, as I've said many times, I'll say one more time. What it is, is, is it's a chamber that you fill with kind of whatever you want.

[43:12] And then you, it has the stuff that you fill it with has a water content somewhere between 12 and 16%

[43:18] water. You seal it type, you heat it with about 200,000 BTUs of gas

[43:24] flame. You spin it so that it doesn't scorch anywhere, and it heats up to like 370 degrees Fahrenheit and like 150 to 180 psi. And then you hit you hit the sucker with a giant stick, the door flies open, the stuff explodes and puffs because the water that's inside instantly turns to a steam paper. Well, so we were testing it because we had a bunch of people suggesting what we should

[43:46] test, and things that you would expect to work well, like rice did work well, although I couldn't taste it when we were making them last

[43:53] week. I tasted them. this week, and they were kind of soft, right? I think we need to do some post-dehydration where they soft when we were puffing them. Yeah. So we just needed to do some post-dehydration before we serve them. They have a little bit of crunch to them. Yeah, but if you're going to storm for any length of time, they need to be. Yeah. Okay. So we did sushi rice, delicious. I'm told, actually, I tasted it. tastes good but the texture wasn't right when I had it. Red basmati rice puff very well. Popcorn is amazing because they puff into balls, which is pretty cool. Buckwheat was could be good. wasn't good when we did it, but could theoretically be good, right? Lentils. Okay, so then we tried, so all the stuff that should have worked, worked. Now, we have not had any luck with, with, I'm sorry, folks. We have not had any luck with our weird alternative stuff yet, right? So 1st thing we do. We were like, how about some red lentils? Red lentils? Red lentils, right? Because computers like, I love red lentils. I love them So like, you know, he doesn't talk like that. Mike kind of does. But anyway, so then like we load the sucker up with red lentils. And we heat it up and I'm standing up there and I hit it and we're up at like 160 PSI. Instantly, the entire

[45:00] heritage heritage foods USA warehouse is filled with lentil dust. The entire place is coated with burnt red lentil dust. The entire place smells like burnt red lentil dust. My, like my clothes were covered in in red lentil dust, everything was just red lentil dust. And I was like, I thought it was just a little bit. And I'm like, where is it? Every single lentil had been vaporized. Is that true, Stas? That's crazy. I don't know how you did it that day on your cleanse, everyone eating, puffing things. Yeah, yeah, I know. Like, it's time to eat lunch, guys. Yeah, yeah, I know. yeah everyone's like stuffing their face. I'm sitting there working, like not eating anything, working like a demon. 60 degrees, I play the gun. Yeah, on top of this like flaming gun. I'm sweating. I'm sweating, not eating anything, and then I can't get other people to like work because they're shoving sandwiches in their face.

[45:48] lunchtime, Dave. I'm like, well, you know, it goes back to what stars always says. I'm an animal. machine, machine. Mule, pack mule, machine, idiot. Anyway. So, uh, then, so we had this problem with, uh, we originally planned on the puffing gun to have glass around it, right? And then on our 1st Kickstarter test when we exploded our plexi, we're like, maybe we should switch Lex in. You know, maybe not a good idea to throw shards of glass into into people's eyes during that thing. So then we put Lexan up and we realized that it steams up almost instantly and you can't see through it. So then we're like, okay, so we're going to test a screen, right? So we go to Home Depot, and we put like literally like a window screen up, and then after we put up the window screen, we decide to test chickpeas and soybeans, right?

[46:33] Let me tell you something. Not only did that, that not work, but the chickpeas and soybeans blasted through the netting and like hit

[46:42] us, made holes through the netting and hit us like, like, like buckshot, like BBs, right? So anyway. So we have no luck with chickpeas. We have no luck with soybeans, although I feel that we could get it right. We did pasta. When pasta comes out of the puffing gun as opposed to pasta that you, you know, puff using the traditional chef's technique of puffing pasta. When you puff it in the gun, it looks, like, describe this, Daz. like gnarled. Some sort of like weird asteroid, like gnarled, craziness, deformed thing. It's like, it's like, imagine it's puffing like in like a 300 mile an hour wind.

[47:16] You know why? Because it's puffing in a 300 mile an hour wind. You know what I mean? It's like this pasta. like, you know, what do you even shape were those? Those like penne or something? Uh, Shisili, I think. We did a couple. We had one with their lines in it, though. Yeah, we did it if we see it. But imagine like that's puffing and flying out of the gun at a zillion miles an

[47:34] hour, and it just has this warped freakish look to it. It was weird. What do you think of that stuff? Good taste? Or the look of it. The look was weird. Yeah, weird. Some people liked it because it looks like pasta chicharro. What is that it looks like when his hands will eventually freeze up? I want to do chicken skins and things like that. Anyway, so we will let you know as we test it out. It's not next week. the puff party, right? Tuesday. Next Tuesday is a puff party. So I'll report back from the morning of the puff party next week. Cooking issues.

[48:12] 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 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. Thanks for listening.