[0:00] Today's program has been brought to you by Underground Meats, an American producer of handcrafted salami and cured meats in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information, visit shop.undergroundfoodcollective.org or stop by their butcher shop in Madison, Wisconsin. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from

[0:18] Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:30] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from a Brutus Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. As always, Nastasia to Hammer Lopez, joining me in the studio. How you doing? And Jack and Joe and the engineering, Booth, how are you guys doing? We're doing well Yeah? Nice. So listen, how many, how much longer do we have to go on the, uh, on the Kickstarter

[0:53] there, on the Hasset Kickstarter, the underground, uh, Collectives, uh... right back to you. Yeah, let's figure that out because remember, what they're trying to do here with is Kickstarter and is to create a HASIP plan. Now, not a haset plan for restaurants, although you could use it at a restaurant, but not just for restaurants, which is a much simpler thing, but a verified haset, um, verified haset plan for doing cured meats, and verified means that the protocol has been tested and verified by an independent lab and accepted such that anyone could use this haset plan for, um, uh, rating themselves to do, uh, you know, USDA

[1:34] approved, uh, curing of meats. And it's very expensive process, normally, 10s of 1000s of dollars. And what they're doing is they're going to pay for theirs, but then make it available for everyone to use on, you know, everyone to

[1:47] use, and therefore kind of an open source has a plan, which is a fantastical, it's a good idea. So either Jack or Joe is going to get back to us with how they're doing. What do you got? It's passed. successfully raised its goal 3 months ago. Three days ago. Sorry. Three days. How much longer do you still have to give them money? 0 seconds. Oh, man. Yeah, 3 days ago is an, uh, so they raised just, just shy of 50,000 uh, for their $40,000 goal. So congratulations. All right. congratulations to them, and I'm sorry we didn't get to pump it once more, but I'm glad they made

[2:18] it. Yeah? Yeah. I missed it. I was kind of contributing. I missed it. crap All right, we have some questions in. Call your questions, two, 718-497-2128. 718-497-2128. Had a good time last week with the ideas in food, people, huh? Yeah, they were good. Yeah. What are we doing today? Why don't we tell them what our day is like today? What are we gonna do? Pizza. Yeah, we're going to have a pizza. I'm thinking we're going to get the Roberta's greens related pizza, right? But I really meant more in terms of the Martha Stewart event. bar meeting. Okay, yes, we're having a bar meeting. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's what I think people. It's called American made. It honors American made products. Yeah? it's kind of cool. It's in Grand Central. So we're doing a cocktail. as usual. And we're using a particular apple called a Wickson. It's called a Wickson crab apple, even though I don't believe it's actually a crab apple. I believe it's a regular domestic apple. I'll have to look that up. Maybe you guys looked that up for me. Wickson, Apple. But it's very small, which is why it's called a crab. I believe it's originally from California, hence American made, not just grown in America, but a real American apple, except for... Yeah, but which is unusual, actually. Most of the Apple varieties that, you know, the old or it's not that old that this one, but a lot of the famous Apple varieties are, you know, you know, all, you know, apologies to folks from Washington and the Pacific

[3:37] Northwest who think they grow, you know, all the great apples, but most of the great Apple varieties come from the

[3:42] east coast and the north. And uh, but Wickson is a fantastic little apple because it has a very, very high sugar content and a very, very

[3:51] high, um, acid content. What that means, it's extremely friendly for cocktails. So, you know, much so you can use, like much less of it, have a much higher flavor profile. Another Apple that does that that's not American is the Ashmeads kernel, which I hope to get very soon. You're going to get some from John Riper. Yeah? Ashmeet's Colonel from Out West? Whoa. I've never had an Ashmeet's Colonel from Out West. I had them from England. I've had them from New York. I've had them from New Hampshire, but I've never had them from, uh, all right, so we'll try a

[4:19] Western Ashmeats kernel. Ashmeet's Colonel was discovered sometime in the 1st decade of the 1700s in England.

[4:25] Also, a very high sugar and acid at Apple, and just really just a real, both the Wickson, Wickson also has, not just high ass and sugar, but a very nice flavor, kind of spicy. It makes a light light, light, light pink juice. That's really pretty. Ashmeath's kernel makes a yellow juice because it's not a red fleshed apple, a red skinned apple, and just a fantastic juice. So we'll use that in a little bit. But the drink we're making with wixen today is we're taking, well, today we're using michters, and we're making a similar drink tomorrow with maker's mark, but whiskey. Is the Mickter's the rye or the bourbon that we're using? Bourbon. So bourbon in both cases. And where the problem with mixing a fantastic apple, like Wixon. Wicks and Crabapple. The problem with mixing it with straight whiskey. And then also the problem that if you're going to carbonate it, which we are. The problem is that the oak, all of the oak extractives in the whiskey, really dried, roughshod over the top of the Apple variety, and it don't

[5:20] marry well, and it just becomes a big, confusing mess, or

[5:25] cordle you, as my son Booker puts it. He calls any kind of mess, accordle you, after the, I don't know, I don't want to get into it. anyway. So the, uh, so what we do is we have to strip out some of that. Oh, and we put it through a process we call de tanning. And the way we do it, is we add various charged, um, charged uh, ingredients to the uh, to

[5:46] the, to the thing that agglomerate some of that oak and then we filter it out. The easiest one and the one we're doing for this is we take kitasan. Uh, kitasan is, uh, now my brain's erased. Kitusan is positively charged, I think, hydrocoloid, uh, derived from, usually from shrimp shells, although within the next couple of years, we'll have fungally available

[6:03] kitusans. I always forget which one's positive, which one negative is my brain's gone. Anyway, so we add we add some of that to the bourbon. We shake it up. sit around a while. Now here's the trick. We want to suck out the kitasan and also suck out the tannins and the oak extractives that are bound to the

[6:23] kitasan. So I don't want to add something that is that dissolves. I want to add instead something that just swells a little bit, but has a high surface area. So I add high acyl gel in, that's calcol gel F, which is a hydrocoloid that is oppositely charged from kitasan, but won't dissolve in the

[6:42] liquor, and you just add it and shake it and it turns milky, and you keep shaking it and you shake it over the course of a couple of hours, 3 or 4 times. And when that stuff settles out, you don't even need a centrifuge. You just pour the stuff off and you have whiskey that has been had some of the kind of harshness of it removed. And I have more aggressive techniques that use gelatin but they're extremely aggressive. Like it comes out, you know, you know, too neutral for my taste. We then take that, we mix it with Wickson, a little bit of water, carbonate it, and why not, right? Yeah? It's good, right? It's a good product. Anyway, that's what we're making today for, it's not called Taste of Martha. What's it called? American made. American made? Yeah, Taste of Martha. How many drinks we making for that thing? 8 bottles worth of Victor's bourbon, so... Yeah, this is... Yeah, what is this? This is the opening party. What's the opening party for the? some sort of festival or awards or some crap, right? Do we see awards party? Do we know anyone that's winning awards? No, we don't. It's all like little, small, mom and pop vendors. We don't know any of those. I feel like we should know all of this. I saw a quilt maker when I was up there. I don't know. don't anything about quilts. you know anything about quilts? My mom quilts. I hate it. Strong. Okay. Got one in from Zach in Pittsburgh. Hey, Zach. Howians do it? How are you? I like that. How you doing? What's the deal with canned black olives? Why are they terrible? How come we live in a time when every grocery store has an olive bar with decent oil and

[8:07] salt cured olives? Many restaurants continue to put these black balls of disgusting on their salads? I like how it's black, just a black ball of disgusting. It's not even an olive, not a black ball of disgusting olives, a black ball of disgusting. Zach, you're forgetting the sliced disks of disgusting. that go on top of the nachos. How do we defeat the canned black olive menace? Thanks, Zach, in Pittsburgh. So 1st of all, I've never, I literally have never spoken to Nastasia about, uh, Nastasia,

[8:38] about uh, this olive uh, style, and since she is from California, land of the California uh,

[8:43] style, olives. So what are your thoughts on canned black California? I really don't like them, but I had them on pizza on Saturdays? so I can eat them? You can eat them, but you... Have you always not liked them? Yeah? You like olives. So you're not one of these people that just doesn't like olives. Yes. Yeah. Right. Well, for those of you, like them? Uh, okay. Okay, listen, don't anyone get angry at me. They, they, they're, they're bad product, right? They're not a good product, okay? let's just put it that way I don't mind them. You know what I mean? It's like, here's my feeling. And Zach, stick with me here. Don't like switch off the radio and run screaming. If you think about them as if they were an olive, then they're horrible. You know what I mean? It's a horrible thing. You know what I mean? If all you're thinking about it is kind of like a squidgy, somewhat

[9:37] oily, black texture blobule, right? then I'd say it's better than a lot of the, uh, you know, hydrocolloid tricks that people pull, and it's just, it's just like a little textural thing. It has like a slight flavor. Um, and so I find them theoretically offensive, right? And I, in most applications, I would rather have real olive, you know, but I don't, I don't think that

[10:05] they're, I don't think that, Well, maybe they are an abomination that should be erased, but I don't mind them somehow. You know what I'm saying? What are they are they olives? Yeah, okay, so let's talk about how they're made. In fact, you can look up. Uh, there's a UC Davis put out... I love UC Davis. I freaking love UC Davis. They put out a technical bulletin called Olives,

[10:28] safe methods for home pickling that you can get a PDF of. There's also an online PDF available called California Alice Processing the Crop that goes through the technical literature on how to make California style black owles. But should you be a moron enough to want to make California style black olives with the olives that come off of your tree in your

[10:47] backyard? You see Davis tells you how to do it, which I freaking love, right? They also tell you how to make real olives. So they deal with all olives when they come off the tree. Uh, is they're very high in a substance, and I can't pronounce it. Everyone who listens knows that I can't pronounce it a damn thing, is oleuropean, which is extremely bitter compound that's in olives that is water soluble.

[11:11] So the trick of all curing techniques, right, is to leach out or get rid of a certain quality of that,

[11:19] all European, right, to make the olives palatable. So in a salt cured olive, traditional old school salt cured olive, you just

[11:27] take and pack the olives and salt, moisture leeches out as a result. The moisture carries with it, a large amount of the old European, and it drips down in the thing, and then, boop. And you have to wait a long time, right? Oil cured, uh, salt cured olives. Then you can rinse off the salt and pack them in oil, whatever you want. Uh, Brian curried olives, right? Typically, what you do even before you add the brine, you'll crack the olive so that, you know, because the skin is not so easy to penetrate. And then, uh, you'll put it in a water solution and the water will leach out the old European. So what they'll do is they'll change the water like once a day for, you know, depending on how much bitterness you want to extract, you want to leave some of it in, the more you

[12:04] extract, kind of not only bitterness, but other flavors are gone. So you lose more flavor as you go, right? Then after you're done with that, you then can put it in a brine solution, a salt

[12:14] solution, and do a straight fermentation of it, make kind of a delicious fermented olive, or if you're

[12:20] puny, or if you like this, you can just add a vinegar solution to it, and that will prevent further

[12:25] fermentation and you have more of a pickled olive, right? So those are kind of the things. Now, all of these things take time. And what do the California olive producers not want? To take time? They don't want to take time. So they have this genius, well, genius. This technology called lie processing. So they're using lie. It's another use of lie in the kitchen. So lie, uh, the, you know, the basic solution lie breaks down, uh,

[12:49] the all European and makes it easy to extract. So once the lie gets in there, it wipes it out in a couple of days. They can go through the entire procedure, right? Instead of weeks. They can do the entire procedure from, you know, harvest

[13:02] to, uh, in a can in like, in like 10 days, like 7 to 10 days, right? And here's here's how it works. First of all, uh, so they they don't have enough production facilities to um, to do olives, to do all the olives at harvest time. In fact, it doesn't make economic sense. They want to do harvesting throughout the year. So California olives, what happens is they're picked, and they're put in vats, but they're not even put in salt, brine vats anymore. They used to put them in salt brine vats to keep them static so that nothing happened to them. They didn't want them to ferment or change because it's not what they're looking for. They're not looking for fermenting and change. They're looking for a bland neutral California black olive. So what they do, and by the way, they're not picked black. They're picked at what's called the green ripe stage, which is ripe, but it's green. It hasn't turned black yet, even though olives will turn black on the tree. Black is purple. From anthosine, it's actually our good buddy, anthosine, or what's doing that. So anyhoo, so they're green and they're stored in this salt brown. People were like, well, look, you know, people are getting mad at us because we're dumping all this salt into the earth, right? It's bad. So they now literally just store it in giant vats, tons, like 20 ton

[14:06] vats of a mix of lactic acid, acetic acid, which is vinegar, and

[14:12] benzoate and sorbet to keep any sort of yeast or bacteria from

[14:16] growing it. So it's in a preservative brine. Not even a brine, a preservative acid bath. And they can stay there for like a frigging year for long time. Although apparently, according to the processing the crop PDF, premium quality California olives are usually processed before July.

[14:33] Now, remember, that's freaking July. So they're sitting in a static bath since, I don't know, when are they harvest? like November or whatever, around then, right? Okay. So you get them out of this brine thing, right? And then they put them, they used to do it as a processing. Now they just have kind of like automatic tanks that can do it, big automatic tanks that can do it. So you dump it a tank and you flush it with lie, right? Now, here's the trick. You need to give it like a bunch of different lie bass. You drain off the lie and you add more lie. Drain off the lie and add more lie. And in between, during that process, you're bubbling air through it, right? And it's the air added to the olives, along with the lie breaks stuff down, right? And makes more of the polyphynolic compounds in the olives available to kind of

[15:16] agglomerate, and you add air, and the oxygen helps them oxidize, and that's what makes the black color. the olive is the air. So if you were to do a lie treatment with no air, right? Then you would not have a black olive. And in fact, the UC Davis document when you're making, if you should ever want to go home and make the California black olives yourself, what you do is you put the

[15:33] lie in it and then you drain it and let it be exposed to air for a while, then add more

[15:37] lie. B, b, b, b, b, b, b, b, b. So you keep lying it, and you cut them open and you look, and as soon as the lie hits the pit, you've

[15:43] leached out enough of the oleuropine. It's much faster than it is. much faster than any of the other techniques, but it

[15:48] also gets rid of almost all of the oleiropine. I mean it has almost no bitterness left. And as a side benefit, leeches out almost all the characteristic flavors of the olives. So you have tasteless paddle left, right now? Now it goes through a rinsing procedure to get rid of the, uh, to get rid of the lie. And they have accelerated mixing systems with air that blasts the stuff out. Now you got rid of the lie with water. They dump all that crap. Then, uh, they do a light brine solution, and they have to brine it. They have to get the brine solution, you know, up in increments. Otherwise. The olive will shrivel, and then they can that sucker at a high, high, high pressure. Oh, before canning, they add a little bit of, I forget what it is, but it's some sort of iron compound. And the iron compound is there to fix the black color so the black color doesn't fade or change over time.

[16:34] So, uh, on the internet, they will falsely say that that, that, that the, uh, this ferric thing is added, so

[16:42] that to make the black color, because they're not turning black naturally. That's not true. It's really just a preservative. Not that that's better, but I prefer accuracy to inaccurate statements. And so there you have your uh, California uh, black ripe olives. Nice. Nice. Let's go to a commercial break.

[17:18] Underground Meats is an American producer of handcrafted salami and cured meats in Madison, Wisconsin. They use small farms from southwest Wisconsin to source their meat. The animals are raised on pasture for their entire lives by farmers who care about animal welfare. While underground meats uses European traditions, they also use ingredients from the upper Midwest to try to create new types of salamis, experimenting with both ingredients and techniques. The salamis are made using heritage breeds, mostly red wattles, Tamworts, Berkshires, and mule foots. Try their award-winning cured pork shoulder and goat salami. To learn more and purchase products, visit shop.undergroundfoodcollective.org or stop by their butcher shop in Madison, Wisconsin. And we're back. How you doing? Good. Oh, I like I like that. It's like, it's like, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you the lead in again. Be, be, be, be, be. Like, that actually was renamed Fishes Fishes vodka, right? the real name of the song. Well, yeah, I mean, it's very closely related to the vicious vicious vodka, the Amos Milburn cut, which we, you know, which we used to use. We got a caller, Dave. Got a collar? All right, caller. Call her on the air. Hello. Hi, Dave. Howdy. I have a question for you about natural pickles. Okay. I've done naturally fermented cucumbers with great success, but I just bought a bunch of uh,

[18:57] bunch of different vegetables at the farmer's market and I want to naturally ferment them all. I was wondering if, uh, if you have any pointers for other kinds of vegetables, uh, what are good vegetables, what vegetables I shouldn't

[19:11] do, is cooking vegetables going to screw up the process, can I do any fruits? Just anything you can uh, advise. Do you own the Sander Cats book, by the way? I've heard of it but I don't have it. Yeah, you should you should get it. It's worth the money on this stuff and I'll tell you why. Uh, he is gone through a, and even if you don't necessarily agree with uh, everything he says. He has gone through and tested a huge variety of

[19:40] specific fruits and vegetables under specific curing regimens, right? Now, so I highly recommend that you go and even actually, you know, if you want to cheat, if you do the Amazon look inside. You can look inside and like find like various tips on various different things. The thing about cooking, um, vegetables or fruits beforehand, for instance, putting cucumbers in a hot bath, right? It, like a lot of what that's doing is trying to kill enzymes and bacteria in the, or D nature enzymes and kill

[20:14] bacteria, in the product that might soften the vegetable before the pickling process is

[20:20] complete or during the pickling process, right? So in cucumbers, you know, that's one of the reasons, you know, that they'll do a quick boil on them to do on the outside. And a lot of vegetables the same way. But like if you're doing something and you want it to stay extremely extremely crunchy, like raw crunchy, on something that's hard. Like, let's say a carrot, you don't want to do it so long that you have a problem. I don't really know if there's an advantage at all, frankly, to boiling a carrot before you pickle

[20:47] it because I haven't tried. You know what I'm saying? But this is the kind of thing that sand or cats would probably be great on for, for, for looking up. The other thing, uh, when, you know, if you're dealing with something

[20:58] has a tendency to soften, right? Then you can add some sort of positive, uh, you know,

[21:07] uh, positively charged ion to it, like uh, calcium or something like this. And that's going to strengthen the pectin in the cell walls and, you know, let you have a crunchier product over time.

[21:19] Um, like what vegetables do you have? I have carrots, Brussels sprouts, beets, onions, and

[21:30] broccoli. Yeah, I mean, all that stuff should pickle should pickle well. I've never I've only ever done vinegar pickling onions, though. I dont know what I've traditionally pickled on. I'm sure it'd be delicious, but all of these things are, you know, well, actually, you know, you have onions inside of kimchi, which I've done a 1000000 times. But like, but these, um, These are all things that I, like, highly recommend that you,

[21:52] you just go get his book or do the Amazon look inside because I don't know specific

[21:59] recommendations, and there might be a particular trick for a particular vegetable that I would

[22:05] miss, and why, why miss it when you can just look it up on his thing? Does that make sense or no? Yes. Uh, you mentioned calcium. What kind of calcium would you recommend? That's a good question. So, you know, calcium chloride tastes horrific, but you could use it

[22:21] in small quantities. In fact, they add calcium chloride to canned tomatoes. That's why canned tomatoes don't break down when you cook them the same way that tomatoes break down when you cook them. And they're added usually at a low enough dosage rate that you, you know, you don't taste it with the rest of the stuff. Although, you know, I have a mental block about adding something that you know tastes horrific, but, you know, you could add a little bit of calcium chloride, or you could do a dip in pickling

[22:55] lime, or add a small amount of pickling lime water, which is calcium hydroxide to it. That'll increase the calcium and make things more crunchy. That also has a flavor, but you know, you want to add kind of minute quantities. So it's calcium hydroxide, calcium chloride. And that's why it's called, by the way, pickling lime. You know, this, it's the same thing that's used in, um, in

[23:15] Nixtamalization, um, which is known as kal when you're in Mexico, but it's all, it's all the same stuff or Thai red line paste, all the same product. It's calcium hydroxide, which is basic and very, very, very weakly soluble. So you could do a soak in in a pickling lime solution and then do pickling and that should firm it. Um, anything like that, calcium lactate, uh, calcium

[23:36] lactate, glucinate is the least flavorful of the, or least disgusting of the calcium, but also the, um, also the, uh, hardest to dissolve and the most expensive carrots actually have a high amount of calcium.

[23:48] The modernest cuisine guys told me once that the inside of a carrot, the little pithy part in the middle, extremely high in calcium. So, I mean, I don't know if any of this stuff's going to be necessary and something like a carrot, but might be helpful in broccoli, for instance. Okay. Yeah? But yeah, but tweet us in at at cooking issues and let us know how this stuff works out and whether you've figured out any good tips or

[24:12] tricks because I like to hear these things. I will. thank you very much Cool, thank you. Okay. So we have a question in from Joshua. He goes, Deer, Nastasia, Jack, and Joe and me, Dave. Nice. Nice to be included. Should we answer the question in that order? Well, you can. If you know the answer. It starts with Dave. Oh, it did start with David. No, but here's the thing. We should answer in that order. If any of you guys know the answer to this. I don't know. give you some sort of prize. jump in. Yeah? I was recently at Booker and Dax during my 1st trip to New York. It was nothing short of incredible. Welcome to New York. come back again We like we like tourists to come to New York. That's how we make our money in New York. What do you think this is? What about your tourist lane? Well, back in the day, here's the thing. I used to live in Times Square, right outside Times Square in the garment district, Stas, you live really close to it now, right? And this is not, I don't think this is my idea. I think this goes back to an old, like New York Times magazine thing from decades ago. But the concept is that you have a tourist

[25:10] lane where you're allowed to kind of stop, pivot. Yeah, take pictures, do whatever it is that you do when, you know, you're in the city for the 1st time, and then a kind of a commuter's walking lane, where if

[25:24] you if you slow down it all, or if you swerve or move in any way other than to get out of the... then yeah, then you get shouldered instantly. like viciously shouldered and you're not upset about it because, babe, it's my bad. I was in the commuting lane and I got viciously shouldered. You know, kind of like bikers do on the Brooklyn Bridge. Brooklyn Bridge. Anyone's a biker out there and you bike on the Brooklyn Bridge. You a freak show. You just like confrontation and you just, you just hate mellow times because that's what it would be like. It would be like that. If you put a tour, if you put a commuter walking lane into Times Square, you know, you would have the same situation with angry people you have on the Brooklyn

[26:03] Bridge. Uh, and by the way, another, maybe it wasn't the tourist lane that was the idea, but in the New York Times, they just, they basically said that we should have these zones where

[26:11] uh, people who live in Manhattan aren't allowed to go. And Times Square would be one of them. And we're just not allowed in there because we just get angry and that's our freaking problem. Like, that is not built for us. That's not for us. is in Times Square, though. Yeah but they're not for us. You know what I'm saying? It's like a Manhattan person is not allowed to get angry at tourists in Times

[26:33] Square. That's unreasonable. Like it is there for them. You are just a chump who, like, happened to plan his commute through the, like, one of the

[26:41] busiest, tourist places in the world. You're bad. Your fault. Anyway, um, that had nothing to do with cooking. Here we go. I was recently at Booker and Dax, my 1st trip to New York. It was nothing short of incredible. The ham and pork buns were both outstanding, but the drinks were out of this world. Well, thank you, Joshua. I appreciate it. I would consider buying a centrifuge just to make the gin and juice again. You can make it without a centrifuge using Agar clarification. Anyway, while there, I tried some orange juice with a lime juice acid profile.

[27:09] I have done a literature search and can't find any standard acid amounts

[27:12] in citrus varieties except for citric acid, any help or a recipe would be great. Also, I used to live in England, and I love the English style bacon rashers that are in full English breakfast. Do you know what cut specifically is used and where I might source it? The only butchers near me just repackage what they are sent, therefore no custom cuts. And if there is anything special about the cure. Thank you for all your help, Joshua. Okay. Um, well, so, Jack and Joe, you want to try and hit that guy? Ah, I got nothing, Joe. I'm going to take a stab at the bacon one and just say it's a thickness thing. It's just pork belly. Okay, well, I have to admit, Stas, you got anything on this? I have to admit, I was locked in so much on the 1st part of your question, and I forgot to even look into the 2nd part of your question, which is horrible. However, I will say this. Um, and, you know, I, I, you know, I like that stuff. Bacon, uh, only in the US, uh, does bacon really mean, um, just the belly cut of the of the pig. And in fact, you used to, in England, have a whole, the whole side of the pig, the flitch would be done, cured in the, in the manner of bacon. And I presume that they do pump styles, but also dry styles. And like one of the famous when you look up is Wiltshire cut or Wiltshire style baking, because that's one of the famous cures. I have the actual old, old techniques in a book by a guy named Nichols called Bacons and Ham. And I did a short review of Bacons and Ham on cooking issues at books from 1917. It has a picture of the author, Nichols, dressed as a flitch

[28:48] of, I love the word flitch of bacon, as a flitch of Wiltshire bacon, and it's got a fold out pig with all the parts in it. And if you remind me, if you send in a tweet next week, I will specifically look up how to do the

[29:01] Wiltshire style or maybe Jack and Joe can look it up. Like that's the classic English bacon style, the wheelchair stuff. Oh, that's an amazing book. It's on the book. Part of it's on the blog. The last time I checked, which was 3 years ago, Google hadn't uploaded it, but maybe you guys can see if

[29:17] they have uploaded bacons and hams because it's one of the all-time great books. The guy has a real sense of humor about bacon. You know what I mean? And he was a producer, and it's just an awesome, awesome guy. Anyways, so as to your 1st question. Um, so you say you can only find citric acid. And the reason is, is that most fruit juices are, uh, most fruit juices are specified in terms of the titratable

[29:39] acidity as expressed as grams of citric acid per 100 milliliters of product.

[29:45] That's how it's done, right? And so it's expressed as an acidity percentage of citric acid. And luckily, or not luckily, you know, coincidentally, the majority of acid in orange juice

[29:59] is, in fact, citric acid. And it's usually somewhere in the range of 0.8 to like

[30:07] one% in that range, 0.8 to one% acid for a standard acidic orange juice that you have lying around.

[30:14] So I use 0.8. Now, what that means is that there are um, 8 grams of citric acid in a liter of, um, in a liter of orange juice, or there are 0.8 grams or close to a gram of citric acid in

[30:32] 100 milliliters or, uh, of, um, of orange juice. Now lime juice, right? Lime juice and lemon juice are both roughly 6% acidity. So 6%, like, so there would be a lot more, right? And so lemon juice is almost entirely citric acid. So if you wanted orange juice with the same acidity as lemon

[30:59] juice and the same acid profile as lemon juice, you would add roughly 5 grams of citric acid to

[31:07] 100 milliliters of orange juice. And you'd have roughly lemon juice. If you wanted to do lime juice, lime juice has a different acid profile, it is

[31:18] roughly, it's also roughly 6%, but it's 2 parts of citric to one part

[31:23] Malik. So to make lime juice, acid out of water, you would take 4 grams of malic acid, sorry, 4 grams of citric

[31:31] acid and 2 grams of malic acid, and also a pinch of succinic acid, which is the real thing that makes it taste like quality lime juice,

[31:38] but you know, that's just a secret between all of us. Anyway, sustainic acid very difficult to get. The other 2 you can just get at a homebrew shops or wine supplies. So you add that and you get it. So when you're trying to take orange juice up to lime juice, acidity, assume that your 100 milliliters of orange juice already has in it, one gram of citric

[31:58] acid. So you need to add another 3 grams of citric acid, hmm? Is that right? Three, four. Yeah. Add 3 grams of citric acid more, and then 2 grams of malloc. Let it dissolve, and whammo. You have orange juice with the acid profile of lime. Yeah? Yeah. And you needn't worry, by the way, and I'll go more into this if you buy, you know, in a year's time when my cocktail book comes out, if you buy, I'll go into excruciating detail about why it's useless to use pH meters to measure the acidity of

[32:33] juices and that really the measurement that you want to use. The only thing that's important is the titratable acidity as expressed in grams of citric acid per 100 mils. And even though different assets have different levels of acidity, that really is, you know, to a 1st order of magnitude, all you need to know, because your mouth doesn't taste pH. Your mouth tastes how many acid molecules are present. Now the different acids do have different profiles. So lemon juice, which is primarily citric, has a very fast citric attack and then decay, whereas malic acid has a

[33:06] longer, a longer resonant time on your tongue. And so malic acid tends to uh, tends to last for a longer amount of time, but has less of a punch, less of an attack. So they are slightly different, but there you have it. What do you think? Good, good. Anyway. Do we take another break or no? We've got another question here. What do you got? Some of your general rules of thumb for keeping leftovers and then subsequently reheating them. Well, it depends on the leftover, really. I mean, so like with meats, uh, with meats, you want to make sure that you don't let oxygen hit them so you don't get the warmed over flavor when you reheat them, right? Because it's an oxidative thing. So if you have a meat with fat on it, the fat's exposed to air, you then reheat it. You can get oxidative damage to the oils, and

[33:47] you get these kind of cardboardy off flavors, and it's known as warmed over flavor, and that's considered bad. So you want to store that stuff without without heat. But, you know, if you have a, you know, look, in the future, maybe everyone will have a circulator just like sitting around kind of running so they

[34:01] can they can reheat stuff. In general, I think an unfortunate thing that happens is we tend to,

[34:08] well, at home, I tend to store everything in quart containers, right? So you'll make a stew, you'll make a soup, you make whatever, you'll pack it into a court container, and you'll put it in your

[34:16] fridge or, I don't know, if you don't have core containers to pack it into it. And those are relatively difficult to reheat because they're they're thick. So let's say you were to make a stew or some sort of whatever, you know, whatever you

[34:27] want and pack it in, and then you try to reheat that, well, it doesn't really work. And then you break it out, you put it in a pan and the stuff in the bottom of the pan starts to scorch, right? You've had this happen, right, Stas? And it's irritating. And the only alternatives are to like sit there and nuke it a 1000000000 times and stir it while you nuke it to try, which is irritating, right? Here's a better solution, I think, is to put your stuff in ziploc bags and then flatten them when you seal them. Now the entire package, the entire Ziploc package is only, you know,

[34:56] uh, you know, like a set, a couple centimeters thick, maybe. And then you can heat up some water to a simmer, turn it off, throw your packages in. You dont want to boil zip block bags because they can hit the sides of pans and break, and they reheat very quickly and very evenly. If you have a rice cooker that is induction, fired with induction, right? And it's a grain product that you're trying to reheat. Throwing a couple tablespoons of water into the bottom of your rice cooker and then just dumping the product in and breaking it up and hitting the reheat cook cycle is a

[35:24] fantastic mellow way to reheat stuff. That'll work. I mean, should you have to reheat rice? That's the best way, even though, I mean, the best way is to make fried rice. Fried rice delicious. Do you like fried rice? Yeah, 0 man, good. Really? You like fried rice? We need a sound effect for when Nastasi likes something. Yeah, fried rice is straight up delicious. I mean, I don't know. how you could not like it. It's delicious Anyways, do you like the egg mixed in or the chunks of egg? Really? I kind of like both, so I mix some in, and then I cut up, I make some like, you know, some omelette style stuff and throw the chunks in as well. Yeah. Anyhoo. So, but if you want to reheat it, normal style, rice, I use the zoji Rushi, which is awesome piece of equipment, induction fuzzy,

[36:03] neuro-fuzzy rice cooker, 18 cup, and I tell you what, you look at the price tag, and you're like, 250 bucks for a rice

[36:08] cooker, I use that sucker so freaking much. It is such a freaking machine. It does such a great job on rice. But anyway, also that can reheat things like lentils or drier things like beans that are more difficult to reheat. I mean, things that are liquidy beans, you don't really need it. Although I guess it could. I've never used it for that, but it's really gentle and because it's induction heated and has a fairly accurate thermal control. It doesn't ever scorch, never, ever, never scorch. Never, never scorch. The other alternative is to spread things very thick and then hit them with super high heat and crust them up. Like, do you like, do you like the reheat pasta by like frying the bottom of it to get a real nice crust on it or not? Depends. The problem is if you've overcooked the pasta at all, it mushes and then turns to crap. Gotta hate that. I hate that. Do you hate that? I hate that. What do you think, Jack? These good suggestions or no? This is great. All right. Do we need any morally? We need more reheat, reheat techniques. think that's good for now. Alright. We also wanted to know what your tailgate would look like as it's kind of tailgate season right now. Oh man. He doesn't like football or fantasy. I don't like fantasy. No offense. Like, in general... like fantasies in general? Like in general, in general, I'm like, that's just a fantasy. No, that's not true. Like, I have an imagination. I'm not a... I don't I don't dislike fantasy football. I feel that, you know, stars bringing up personal stuff here. I just feel that we have enough work to do at Booker and

[37:34] Dax equipment company trying to get some of our projects off the ground that we don't need to fill the time with fantasy football. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I want everyone to see. I want everyone to hear Nastasia Lopez saying she does not do fantasy football at work. That was you and Piper sitting together with some sort of stats

[37:52] up, discussing the relative merits of the Manning Brothers, and discussing your fantasy football picks as though it was some sort of urgent problem that needed to be

[38:01] addressed. It was happening that it was Thursday. It's like Thursday is the day you need to be ready. Wait, which is it? The Thursdays of day need to be ready and it's really urgent and a big deal or that you don't do it at work. Oh my god. Fantasy freaking football. Fantasy. I'm like, I'm like, we have real life projects that are going sour and you're working on fantasy football. Uh, so my tailgate, if I was gonna do it. I mean, I would bring a bunch of my sears all so I can finish some stuff off. Are you allowed to run your car during the tailgate or is that considered like really bad news? Bad news, right? That's ruin the environment. bad form, yeah. Yeah. what do you what do people do? Bring a bunch of batteries to run their circulators? I think they found it off a generator. They run it off a generator? I mean, look, I would probably do like some serious brats and burgers with either like a grill or searsal or both. And I would just crank out some super high quality products like that. I would take, I would make a bunch of carbonated cocktails, and then I'd get a bunch of, you know, probably bottles, or do people prefer cans at these things. I don't think you can bring glass in. So cans. So we would do probably some bottle cocktails for me, you know, in plastic bottles, right? Uh, you know, carbonated because, yeah, although how many people are at tailgates are not driving? Oh, I think they're all driving. Well, hell, I'm not going to start in that crap. Well, I think there's some that don't drive. they just come with the crew. All right. Well, for the people that can't drink. Here's something. If you want beer and you can't drink. I do this hops tincture right now that you can add the seltzer water and it gives kind of a beery feeling to it, but it's a much higher quality product than like, I just feel bad buying

[39:38] O'Dools. It just seems weird, right? But anyway, I would probably do a salt, uh, salt and ice chilled, uh, beer section where I get it really accurate. I get it just down to the freezing point of the beer. Yes, there. You know what I mean? Just right. Super cool. to our tailgate on December 8th. Yeah, it probably won't happen. But listen, it's like the, uh, wow. So the trick is, American, like, I don't want to hear anything from a beer aficionados saying,

[40:04] beers isn't supposed to be cold. American beer is supposed to be cold. It has no flavor, so it's supposed to be really, has flavor, but it's supposed to be cold, right? Ice cold. Ice freaking cold. And actually, ice is only about zero. You want that thing slightly more than ice cold. So a little salt and ice in there. So that's how I would probably rock out the tailgate. What do you think? That sounds good. Yeah, people will come to that, right? Burgers. Brats. Brats. Brats. If you might hate fantasy football, like Nastasia hates vegans. Uh, no, because I don't have anything against it when it doesn't intrude on work.

[40:40] I mean, it's not like vegans like knock on my window and say, hey, can you stop working so that we can talk about vegetables. It doesn't happen. Uh, you know? All right. We gotta call her. Caller, you're on the air. Hey, David, Hayden from Richmond. Hey, how you doing? Good, man. I had a question about cooking meat from frozen. Okay. Um, I wanted to know what hap- what's happening when you're cooking meat from frozen, and is it ever, um, uh, negative quality thing, like if you were cooking a

[41:10] braised, for instance, like pork cheeks or maybe a pig's head phrase? Would that be a good thing or like acceptable or would you get a really mushy product? All right, well, I've never done it side by side. I have cooked from frozen on, you know, on

[41:26] occasions, on several more than several occasions. Uh, I have never done. I've never done a side-by-side. Now, there are people, of course, who always sear frozen. like they they freeze the product and then sear it. Uh, and there's some people like the modernist cuisine uh, recommendations where they just parfreeze the outside with liquid

[41:46] nitro or not parfreeze, but only on the surface with liquid nitrogen, then do their sear. And the theory there being that you're not going to overcook the interior, the meat, right? Right. You know, the results are actually slightly different. In fact, ideas in food now has a big frozen sear thing that they do, and I don't know if they cook direct from frozen or not. I think they do. But I, I, you know, there might, I repeat,

[42:09] might be a difference in, um, what happens when you're cooking on a, on a slow

[42:15] cook, going. You're talking in a bag slow, right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Because you can't really do it traditionally at traditional temperatures because you'll overcook before you

[42:25] thaw. You know what I'm saying? So you can't do it that way. Right. But if you're doing, we're talking low temp, good. So we're talking low temp. Uh, the only difference I can see is that in a standard piece of meat, a large Porsche, a standard unfrozen piece of meat that you're cooking low temperature, a large portion of the meat is in the range, uh, in kind of the middle temperature range between 40, uh, cells,

[42:49] 40 uh, Fahrenheit, you know, uh, fridge temperature, and uh, cooking temperature, let's just say, 55 Celsius for the steak that I do, right? There's a good, uh, uh, there's a good amount of meat in that range. And in that range when the meat is in there, different things can happen. Enzymes can help break down tissues and different reactions can take place. You won't have those reactions take place in a piece of meat that's going directly in the bathroom freezing because there'll be a fairly fine line between the

[43:19] cook temperature place and the place where it's, you know, 0 and very, not

[43:24] 0, but, you know, 0 Celsius and very few of those reactions are taking place. So my feeling is, but the real thing is, I don't really know how much of a difference that'll make. My guess is not that much. And if the product, if the product's already already thawed anyway, now look, if you thaw a product out. So I always tell people, they say, like, you know, how's my meat going to be that's been frozen? I say, well, when you thought it, look at how much drip is coming

[43:46] out and a meat that's been stored poorly or for too long with a lot of temperature cycling is going to have a huge amount of drip loss out of their meat, right? But frankly, you know, if you're doing a braise, you're going to be cooking at high enough temperatures that you'd get an equivalent amount of drip loss out of the fresh thing anyway because you'd be squeezing that crap out when you're when you're

[44:06] cooking it. You know, it's only in kind of steak scenarios where you get very little drip out of the cook because your

[44:15] temperatures are so low that I think it's going to make a big deal about the drip loss on thawing inside the

[44:21] bag. Uh, you know, I think it's probably going to be minimal in a braise. It's my feeling. Now, my only the only caveat with braises in general is that you want to hyper reduce any stock or any flavors or any sauces that go in the bag with the

[44:37] braves because otherwise it's going to taste poached when it comes out instead of braised. Not bad, just poached. Okay, and what about traditional? If you were going to do a traditional braise with one of the, with, you know, like a tougher cut. Not in a bag from frozen. Yeah, I don't know. I'd be more loath to do it and that, but the question is, is how long, how long is the window of awesomeness on the cook, right?

[45:04] That's the 1st thing you have to ask. And then how thick are the pieces and how fast will they thaw out in the simmering

[45:11] water? That's the 2nd, you know, in the in the bubbling water. That's the 2nd piece of the puzzle. So if the window of awesomeness, Uh, let's say you're doing like, you know, you're getting a pork shoulder and you, uh, you're making, you know, I don't know, chili or something like this and you're braising it out. Uh, you know, I wouldn't do a whole pork shoulder that way.

[45:31] Thats crazy. Now, if you, if the pieces had already been cut down, you know, such

[45:36] that, you know, they're only, you know, you know, centimeter, 2 centimeters thick, like I normally do when I'm going to pressure cook, and then, you know, you sear them off to get a little crust to have a phone to reduce anyway, right?

[45:47] That's pre-thawing them a little bit, and then you throw them in. Well, we all know that, you know, you have quite a bit of time from the time it 1st becomes tender

[45:56] until the time it's crap for that to be done and they'll probably thaw out pretty quickly. So probably not a big deal. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, totally. Yeah. So I think a lot depends, uh, and you just have to kind of judge in your mind uh, how long it's going to take the thaw out and how big of a window you have. Okay, cool. that's really helpful All righty. Good luck with it. Let's know how everything works out. Absolutely. Thanks, Dave. Love the show. All right, thanks. Okay, so we have 2 more quick ones. try to try to get in. We have from Parker Cook, who is at gun pistol man. I wonder whether he knows Byron Ferguson. Yeah. not Byron Ferguson. Who was the other? Bob Munden, the fastest he just died like a couple years ago, the fastest draw, like in the world,

[46:39] got freaking incredible. died of a heart attack in his car. when he was driving. rough. You wouldn't think that like the fastest draw like to ever have lived. Like the world's fastest gun, just in a car, heart attack. You know what I mean? Sucks, right? Yeah. Me, I don't know. I don't know, that has nothing to do with anything. Okay. He says at cookie issues. What are your guys' guilty pleasures? I love making homemade sous vide burgers, but on occasion, love a burger from McDonald's. What do you think? What do you got? Give me some good buttons. I think economy candy. Candy. Just total binge. Oh, nostalgia is a candy feed. But she's also, she also like has some weird hates. Like you hate, like, what flavor of gummy bear do you hate? What color, I should say? All except white. You only love white? I can eat red and green. But you buy saxism just for the whites? Yeah, paper gives me all the whites. Wait, so I've seen you, you and Piper plow through sacks and gummy bears. I know. And it's only for the whites. Sometimes the reds. And beans. And greens. Strange. Uh, so, what's yours? Mine? Uh, well, 1st of all, I, you know, for for many, many years, I had uh, not been to McDonald's, like 2 decades

[47:53] almost. Uh, decade and a half. And then, uh, I swear to God, once I have kids and I bought a car and you're rocketing down I95 or trying to, you're actually stopped in bumper to

[48:05] bumper traffic on I 95, like one of the worst roads. It wasn't like that, you know, 20 years ago when I used to drive it every day. Now it's like just freaking the worst traffic mess in the world. So you're there and your kids are freaking hungry and you don't want to get off and find something real. And so the McDonald's is there. So I have to admit, I've gone to it a couple times recently. And you know what I've always loved at McDonald's is the fake milkshakes. Those fake shakes are freaking delicious. I always feel bad after I drink them, like they make me feel kind of wrong. Not guilty, wrong. Uh, but I love them. I love the texture. They're so I don't even know how they make those damn things. They're made with milk. I know they're actually milk, but for my whole life I've called them fake shakes. Vanilla, not the chocolate chocolate week, vanilla good. And, you know, or vanilla in, the vanilla in fake shake from McDonald's. You like those things? I haven't happened in a very long time. What about you guys? You guys in the booth like the McDonald's fake shake? I like the McDonald's milkshake, but I heard a rumor, and this actually might be something to look into for next week, that the McFlurry at McDonald's is completely

[49:06] vegan if you get it with Oreos, because there's no real milk in it. I do not know that. I will look it up. It's a rumor I've heard. don't know. completely false. Yeah, I mean, I will look it up. You know, I know for a fact that the fake shake has milk in it because they used to put the real symbol on it. The milk symbol, the real symbol, but I don't know about this. McFlurry. Isn't Flurry owned by the, so doesn't someone else own Flurry? Well, no, there's the blizzard, which is Dairy Queen. Oh, no, Dairy Queen. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, blizzard, Dairy Queen. Okay, so listen. So here's the real trick. Parker. Like, I don't believe in feeling guilty about what you meet. And this is, I think, the primary, this is the primary thing. I don't allow anyone to say the word, to use the word junk food in my house. And the reason is, I think that thinking about food as something you

[49:58] do to make yourself guilty or not guilty, or as a reward for being able to do something that you perceive as

[50:06] bad, is fundamentally unhealthy way that we look at eating here in this

[50:11] country. I think that, you know, there is food that I don't allow my kids to eat all the

[50:16] time, there's foods that I don't buy because they're low quality, like lunchables. I don't know. I don't know who the hell does the marketing on lunchables, right? But my kids ask for lunchables all the time. Booker, my my oldest son, you know, he has he has some some specific issues, but we're going through the supermarket. He's like, daddy, why won't you buy the lunchables? Is it because they're low quality? I'm like... He does the same thing, like, with, like, they have low, they have some low quality meats at my local kind of, you know, supermarket. And so like, why don't you buy the beef here, daddy? Is it because it's low quality? I'm like, shh. So I think that there's foods that are kind of low quality. They still have nutrients and they still be eaten. And I don't buy those, but I don't believe in any category of food being junk, just ones that you should probably eat more

[51:01] of and ones you should eat less of. But I think, you know, we as a nation would do better to think

[51:07] about, um, to not think of food that way, right? What do you think, Steph? I mean, I feel bad when I eat a ton of candy. Yeah, because you're eating a ton of candy. You know what I mean? That's like, you know what? When I went to Austin after I did my, uh, after I did my vegan

[51:24] purge and I ate nothing but, uh, uh, you know, barbecued beef brisket

[51:30] and like pounds of it, like, you know, for 24 hours straight. I felt bad. Not because my body had just come off of a vegan Persian. I was polluting it with meat, right? But because I ate too much freaking meat. I just ate huge piles of greasy, peppery, barbecued, delicious meat, but you know what I mean? your body's not set up for that. You know what I'm saying? It's like, you know, the binging thing and the worry about things. So my kids sit around worrying all the time about when they can get the stuff that's perceived as junk food. crap on it. I just don't use the term. You know what I mean? Like Twinkie is not a well-made product. I love them. Twinkies are good. Maybe that's one, but I like it twinky. Well, more accurate. what products are poorly made and I still like them? I like Twinkies, even though they're poorly made. And as an adult, I can taste that they're bad, poorly made, and I still like them, you know? Uh, maybe the same, like I can deal with those black olives. They're poorly made, but I still like them. There's plenty of products that are crap that I actually enjoy, you know? I feel that way

[52:29] about, like, processed cheese queso dip. That stuff is awesome. queso is freaking awesome. Anyone that doesn't like queso has issues. That's stuff straight up delicious on a chip. Come on. That stuff's delicious. I like, do you make your own? Do you buy rotel? Oh, you can fake it with the jalapeno slices chopped up and just chopping it on tomatoes, but rotel is the way to go. Okay. Uh, on the way out, uh, Christian Spinello from at Eat the Pig. We received your copy that you gave us of The Curious Cook from Harold McGee. Thank you so much. We're gonna have him sign it when he comes in. He's gonna be in pretty soon. of the week, I think. And then maybe we should use it. Anyway, because I have a copy at home. This is our lab copy now, but maybe we can get him to sign it and maybe use it for fundraising, right? Yeah. What do you think? Because everyone out there should go get a copy of The Curious Cook, his 2nd book, and the one that's unfortunately out of print, and I beat into his head every time I see him, that he should put some of it available

[53:27] online, because it really gives an insight into the mind of McGee.

[53:31] And Christian also asked, Dave, a while back, you mentioned olive oil from Italy that you liked, and it was a good deal. Galufo, I believe, with 2 L's and 2 S. Can you get it online? I believe you can buy, it's not sold under his name, but it's in DiPolo's,

[53:44] DiPolo's, Apollo's is a cheese shop here in Manhattan. If you should come to Manhattan, please go to DiPolo's and they will sell some of their delicious olive oils online. I happen to like a lot of olive oils from Sicily, specifically from Trapani, pronounced

[53:57] Trapani, Trapani, Trapani. And they have good salt around there, but they also have really good oils. I specifically like uh, certain, uh, you know, olive varieties of, like,

[54:07] nocholard, and, you know, things like that. Would you like do you like Sicilian olive oil or do you like other kind of olive oil? Whatever. So my point is, is that it depends year to year how the harvest is. So you really want to go to a supplier that has olive oils and

[54:19] we'll let you taste them. May I recommend Apollos? cooking issues.

[54:29] 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. HeritageRadio Network as a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.