[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 Bushwood, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for 1000s more.

[0:30] Cooking issues.

[0:56] Calling your questions, too! Cooking issues. Hello and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold. Your host of Cooking. It's just coming to you live from a British Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on the Heritage Radio

[1:12] Network, every Tuesday from roughly 12 to 1245 here, as usual, with the Hammer. How you doing? Good. And Jack in the booth. How you doing? It's just, it's just, it's the old school crew today. It's just the stars and the jack and the and the me. Nice, right? Styles likes it that way. No offense to Joe. She just feels like she likes it, like old school. Now, Stas, you have a problem with you. Oh man. Yeah. You just started it. And interesting, we brought back the song by Joel Gargano, because Joel has a question in today. sensed it. You sensed that you felt it. Did stars tip you off? No, she didn't. Really? All right. Well, before I go in, call in your questions. 2718-497, 2128. That's 718-497-2128. Jack has some good news. Jack, you have good news? Oh, right. Yeah, good news. I'm... See, I wouldn't share this kind of personal information on the show, but Nastasia is so happy that I'm leaving

[2:08] Brooklyn. I'm moving to New York City. Now, I like, well, here's here's the thing that might interest, it will always actually interest people who are from New York. Those other people just, you know, bear with us for a second. So a quirk of New Yorkers is that when you live

[2:26] in when you live outside of New York City and you ask someone from Brooklyn, you know, are you from New York City, they'll say yes, but when you're inside the city, the city is really just

[2:35] Manhattan. Styles, back me up on this, right? Yeah. And so even even Jack, longtime Brooklyn pusher, you know, not in the, you know, not in that sense, but, you know,

[2:45] like a booster. That's what I meant. Brooklyn booster. moving to Manhattan now admits he's moving to the city. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what's the reason, Jack? Um, an opportunity has come up. Yeah, yeah. Leave it there. So you're no longer going to live in Bushwick? I mean, you know, I'll be here a lot, but my home will be the city. That was my 1st home anyway when I moved to the city and went to NYU, so. Yeah. Nice. Well, welcome back. Welcome back to our side of the river jacket. This is stuff that only makes sense to, like, to New Yorkers, though, right, stuff? People, you know, you know what pisses people off who don't, you know, don't live in New York when you go to their city, and then they say, uh, you know, when you're going back, you're going

[3:29] to go, I'm going back to the city, and then you give the date that you're going back to New York, and you're like, what do you mean, the city? Like, it's a city. Like, I also live in a city and you're like, no, no, no. I in LA now. going back to the city next week. You know what I mean? People hate that. Right? Yeah. Yeah. My wife used to hate that. In fact, she mentioned that to me when we were going out like 20 years ago. I'm like, what are you talking about? And it turns out it's true. I paid attention. People do get upset. Anyway, back to Joel's question. Hey, crew, 1st off, I finally met Harold McGee at the Harvard lecturer in September that you guys did. I didn't see him there. Did you see him? No, I didn't. Maybe he was there for a separate lecture. I think I creeped him out. Remember I was that guy you read 2 live on the air. This is what Joel said to McGee. I can imagine McGee standing there and Joel Walker be like, hey, remember when you read that stuff on the

[4:15] air? and he's like, uh, he's like, uh, oh, yeah, and I wrote that song about you too. I did get a sweet picture with Harold, though, after you smoked out the lecture. No, I guess it was the one we were at. I didn't see him. Anyway. I'm sure, like, McGee always just stands there and listens. He probably didn't like, wasn't, wasn't creeped out. Carol doesn't get creeped out by that kind of stuff. No. has a strong, whatever it's called. All right. Here are the questions. How is vinegar powder made? And if I were to make my own, what would be the best approach without the flavor becoming muted by ridiculous amounts of

[4:45] anzorbit? Is a tray of vinegar and a dehydrator? The answer. Okay, so I'll hit that one first. He has 2 questions. No, no, wave vinegar powder is commercially made is through spray drying. So in spray drying, what you would do is you would mix. See, the problem with vinegar is vinegar is one of the very few, you know, acids that we eat that is volatile. That's why you can smell it so much. You know, when you put your head over a thing of vinegar. It smells like vinegar, whereas you, you know, put your head over a thing of lime juice and you're like, smells like lime juice, but it doesn't smell like acid. You know what I mean? And when you boil vinegar, you get that like aroma above it. like, whoa, you know what I'm talking about, but you don't get it with something like lime or lemon or anything like that. It's because those acids, you know, boil at a high enough temperature that they're fundamentally non-volatile, whereas acetic acid isn't. So, anyway, so you spray dry acetic acid vinegar by mixing it with a carrier, usually maltadextrin, and then spraying it into a chamber, very, you know,

[5:42] very, the higher the better, at a high temperature, and as it goes down, the mist goes down in the chamber,

[5:47] it dries out and turns into a powder. We remember we saw we went to David Michael, the flavor house, and we saw their spray dryer units. Pretty cool. anyway. So that's how they make the powdered vinegar. Now, powdered vinegar, and you can go on, you know, modernist pantry or the sanctuary or anywhere, terrace spice, uh, Kalustians, if you're here in the city, and buy various different flavors of vinegar powder. The problem is that, like I say, vinegar itself is non-volatile. I mean, sorry. Exact opposite. Vinegar is volatile. So the acetic acid is. So you have to, it's not very acidic. So you need to then dope the vinegar. vinegar powder will have the flavor of whatever vinegar was there, malt, vinegar or, you know, anything like that, but it's not actually very tart. So you'll need to augment it with another acid to really get the tartness of the vinegar bag. Now, I think you could probably freeze dry vinegar as well. And I don't know whether the acidity is maintained through the freeze drying process because I don't know the, I don't know how acetic acid works with sublimation and freeze drying is a sublimation procedure.

[6:49] Um, The other thing, and I looked up and people have done

[6:53] it, is you can mix, um, you can make a sauce with vinegar in it and then dehydrate the entire sauce, right? Because then there's enough structure of other stuff in the sauce that you can dehydrate. And I saw on the internet that somebody did that with like their their favorite buffalo wing sauce. They poured the buffalo wing sauce and the dehydrator dehydrated for 2 days and then powdered it. I mean, I've never done it, but you could you could do that, but don't use Enzor, but remember, Enzorbit is going to be an expensive carrier to use for this kind of

[7:23] thing. And Zorbit is a particular type of tapioca maltodextrin that is, um, made specifically to have very, very, uh, very low

[7:33] density and it's used as a bulking agent and it also is used to make powdered oils. And the reason it works is because they starch helix, right? The inside of the starch helix is relatively hydrophobic, and so fats and oils can go inside of that

[7:50] helix without gumming up the outside of it. So it remains bulky and powdery, but the oil is somehow stored on the

[7:57] inside. As soon as you add water, it breaks down and turns to, you know, it turns, you know, it debulks and turns like

[8:04] into into nothing, which is how the absorbit powdered oil trick works. So you can't, you can't do it with uh, insorbit, or at least it's not, uh, you know, you get a cheaper form of maltodextrin to use as a bulking agent if you're

[8:17] going to do the dehydration on it. But anyway, I hope that helps. Second question, uh, Joel had was, um, uh, it's always been the kitchen rule to let

[8:26] Cambros' stocks cool with the lid off. The school of thought on this is twofold. It will cool faster because there is less insulation, and also the condensation built up on the lid, if left on could promote bacterial growth. I hate cooling stocks with no lids because it increases the potential for items to be dropped in them during the cooling process.

[8:42] Not a question about cooling techniques, but I want to know if there's any danger in slapping a lid on hot

[8:46] stock and cooling it in an ice bath, the room temp, and then putting it in the walk-in. Well, okay. I mean, look, is there any danger? So. If the product is way above the temperature that of bacteria, right? And I don't think you're going to have a problem with the lid. I mean, in terms of bacterial contamination, if you slapped it on it when it was really hot

[9:08] and, you know, the vapors coming up would be hot, it would hit it and everything would be

[9:13] okay. And, you know, presumably that's not the real problem. The real problem is, is that it takes forever in a day to cool, uh, to cool stock with a lid on because, um, a huge amount of heat is lost through evaporative cooling.

[9:28] So, you know, if you were to put a lid on top of stock when it's cooling, it would super drastically increase the amount of time it takes the stock to get down to room temperature. Because,

[9:44] um, you know, the, the, I mean, evaporative cooling is such a large percentage of how, how the stuff gets away. When you think about it, like radiation, very low, in conduction to the air, very

[9:55] low, in terms of ways to get rid of heat, conduction even to ice

[9:59] water through a Cambro is not super great because the Cambro is not so great at heat transfer, right? Um, you know, a metal metal container uh, in ice is good. Um, but that, as long as there's hot vapor coming off, you're, you know, very drastically cooling is setting up a temperature gradient, setting up

[10:18] convection so long as the stock is a thin thing and really increasing the rate, it which cools. So I really think it's all about rate of cooling there. Now, if you could guarantee a rate of cooling that's fast enough, then a totally sealed system would be fine, I would guess. Yeah? Oh, just as a note, it really is evaporative cooling. I poured Piper and I ran some tests today. We did a quart container of product, which is not the same as camera. much smaller. We did a quart container of water with and without a lid, drastically different cooling rates. And then also I poured like a teaspoon, a little bit of oil on top of another, a 3rd one, and it's the same as putting a lid on it, drastically damp the rate because you can't get evaporation off

[10:58] the top, but there's oil on top. I wonder whether that's why the guys in, uh, so you know, in, um, you know, in Tibet, they put, uh, like a melted yak butter on top of tea. I wonder, so a lot of it is because speaking to this guy, I think I mentioned this in a show previously is that I had a little, like an actual Sherpa as a driver, like his last name was

[11:18] Sherpa, and he was from Nepal. I think I talked about it. yeah. But and he was saying that the interesting thing about the food there is that if it doesn't have a lot of fat in it, people

[11:27] are like, what's wrong with you? I need the fat to survive. you know what I mean? Because they need to burn a lot of calories, I guess, when they're up that high. But I wonder whether also you get like wicked evaporative cooling up there because of the low pressures. And I'm wondering whether or not the butter is an insulation effect as

[11:40] well to keep the tea hot or longer. You're like, man, I don't care. I'm talking to your brother-in-law. Yeah, you're talking to my brother-in-law? Yeah. Right now while we're doing the radiation. All right, okay. Got this in, a note from John Riper, friend of the show. Nastasia, another great show last week. Day's quick riff on BLTs reminded me of an easy way to make them better. Hey, listen, John, don't get me started. BLT, you can make one different. I don't know if you're going to make it better. That's a tough way to open it. Yeah. I mean, look, in other words, like, you can make a different sandwich. It's like here's what I have to say. Like, you know, you make a lot of bitters, like for cocktails, and it's like, I can make a different, I can make a bitterers that I like a lot, but I'm not going to make a better Angostura because how can you be better at being Angostura than Angostura

[12:26] is? You know what I'm saying? Waiting to see what he's got. Yeah, okay, here we go. Junk white bread is, of course, the way to go. Yeah. Back in the days when it helped to build strong bodies 12 ways, we'd

[12:38] take, that's what they used to say, about the junk white bread. We take Wonder Bread, I guess, right? We'd take 2 pieces, slather on. Is Wonder Bread back yet, by the way? Twinkies are back. Really? We did a little news piece on it. Thank God, Nate, because I told you, because the deal is. So you like Wonder Bread then. That's not that I like it. has nothing to do with whether you like it or not. It's Wonder Bread. It like it needs to exist. You know what I'm saying? Like when a French person comes to the United States and you want to, and you want to like show them like what it meant to be a kid growing up, you get Welch's grape jelly, peanut butter of your choice, mine would be probably

[13:14] skiffy, skippy, because although my mom was quite choosy. She did not choose JIF. Chunky though, right? Really? I like either. But it's an interesting choice. You only a chunky man? only chunky. See, here's my feeling. Like, I like chunky, but I think if you want to go full American on someone, you got to give them, I think you got to start with the creamy and move into the chunk. I don't know. don't know. And it has to be Welch's grape jelly. Yeah, right? And so you get the wonder bread, the Welsh is grape jelly, and the peanut butter, and then you hand it to them, and what you have to say is, and you got to remember, French people don't like Concorde grapes, and they don't like peanut

[13:49] butter. They're they're freaks about it. They don't like either one of those things. They like good bread. And they love good bread. They hate Wonder Bread. And so, and so you hand them the, the, the, the, the sandwich, right? Which is like, that's like, how many of those did you pound when you're growing up? Stas, how about you? A lot. Yeah. Like, and you can't, like, kids these days, that's not America anymore because a lot of the schools, you can't bring peanut butter to anymore. But that was, that's the sandwich. And, and you hand it to them. And what you say to them is, hey, look, I don't expect you to like this, but if you don't, you can't wrap your mind around this sandwich, then you can't wrap your mind around America, period.

[14:24] And then you just walk away. You know what I mean? And then they eat it and they're like, this is dead abilities. That's not a French accent. That's not even French. ZC is a, ZC is horrible. There you go. That's a little better. Okay. So anyway, so back to back to John. Okay. So back in the days when it helped build strong bodies 12 ways. We take 2 pieces of bread. Wonder. Slather on some mayo and a couple of tomato slices, add bacon, and then instead of lettuce,

[14:47] see, here's it, instead of lettuce, we cook a sunny side up egg in the rendered bacon fat and slide it onto the bacon and tomatoes, when you want a sandwich, it's greater than some of the

[14:55] of its parts, this is it. Now, I agree that that might be a good sandwich, maybe even a great sandwich. I don't know that it's going to be, you know, I think I should have a different sandwich, Jack, what do you think? Yeah, that's much more like a bacon egg and cheese variation. Ooh, I like bacon egg. The words bacon, egg, and cheese are like some of the greatest words in the world. Bacon, egg and cheese. So it's like a bacon egg and cheese with tomato. On Wonder Bread. On Wonder Bread. Do you like a, speaking of wonder bread. Do you like a grilled cheese sandwich with a tomato on it? Yeah, actually, that's always what I get. Now? I do, yeah. I like it. Styles probably hates that. I don't like it so much. Really? Because why? Because it's wet. Just don't like it. But I mean, is it the wetness? Like, I'm trying to analyze. I don't like the taste of a tomato on grilled cheese. Even like a dried tomato? Right. Don't like it. Tom Fisher writes in, Dave, Nastasia, Jack, and Joe. Sorry for not updating you last week on the eggnog. Uh, you know, so we had a question a couple weeks ago about a traditional eggnog that's made and then

[15:53] let to sit for, you know, several weeks. We got to make that soon stuff. I know. Yeah. Piper made that weird tahi one. That's terrible. Pipe. Yeah, I love Piper, who works with us, you know, but, uh, he puts freaking tiki bitters and

[16:05] everything, and he wants to tiki fly everything. He made this eggnog. He's like, this is really good, right? And Stas and I are both like, no, it's garbage. It's garbage, right? It's garbage. What do you remember what was in it? No. And you know, look. But it was on Pebbleite. It's very terrible. Oh, it looked terrible. Oh my god, so bad. Piper's come up with some really good ideas recently though. Piper did a, I don't know if we talked about it. We did it at the event we did at the Center for Discovery. Sour cream simple syrup, right? Which is, like, it's, that's Piper's, like, genius invention of the, of the recently. Concord grape and vodka. That's a good drink. It's good. We're going to make that one for Absolute for

[16:47] Perno Ricardo in a couple of days. That's a good drink. It was a good drink. But the tiki eggnog, not so much. Although, interestingly, I did enlist Piper's help to answer this question. So let's get to it. As you recall, I made a large batch of age, aged eggnog, but was concerned, as it appeared to be very thin, about the consistency of whole

[17:03] milk. The recipe calls for it to be aged for a minimum of 21 days. Now on day 12, the eggnog is thickened slightly to the consistency of heavy cream. I'll check in again next week to let you know how it's going, but just for the sake of discussion. If it did not thicken on its own, what would I do? Thanks, Tom Fisher. Uh, okay. So, so I talked to Piper, as you may know, Piper, who works with us and who makes terrible tiki flavored eggnog. I worked for CP Kelco, which is the Carragin Masters for a while. And so, um, and right off the bat, you're going to, you know that that

[17:37] Carragan is going to be the way to go to really fix a milk system up very well because

[17:41] Carragan has synergistic effects with milk, so you don't have to use very much of it. Now, There are, so I wouldn't use things like Xanthan, even though Xanthan's really easy, it's going to snot it up real

[17:52] quick. And eggnog's already got textural issues for me. And if you want something creamy and smooth, you don't want any of the, you don't want any kind of snot rocket feel to it, right?

[18:01] Staz, no snot rocket. hate the snot rocket. So, uh, you're going to want uh, Carragin. Now, there's 3 different fundament, well, there's more, but like the 3 carraginans you're most likely to come in contact with are kappa

[18:12] carraginan, iota carraginan, and lambda carraginan. And actually in cooking, you're most often just going to come up with kappa and iota. Kappa makes hard brittle gels. You're not going to want that in this. Iota makes softer gels and is used in things like yogurts to get because it also the gel resets. Now, you're not looking to gel. You're looking to thicken. And the prime thickening carrogen, and the one that's used in chocolate milk, for instance, lambda carrogen, and or maybe small amounts, small, small, small amounts of, tiny amounts of iota. Now, Piper told me about the stuff that he used to use when he was working for CP

[18:49] Coco, and he stole, I maybe bought some, I don't know, stole some. called GenuVisco. They have such crappy names, right? Who wants to put something called Genu Visco into their product? Anyway. Genu Visco. CSM2, C like cold, S like soluble, M like milk. So it's cold soluble in milk, so it doesn't need to be heated. And the good news there is you can add it after you've made your product because it doesn't need to be heated. So GenuVisco, CSM 2. And you're going to want to use that in the ratio of between 0.one and 0.25%. So anywhere between one gram per liter and 2.5 grams per liter. Now, the problem is, is that CP Coco has set up a, um, a thing with La Sanctuary in California. So La Sanctuire is a distributor of CP Coco products. Piper checked, and they don't have the GenuVisco CSM 2 on their website. Maybe they can get it for you. The closest thing that they have is Jenny Visco J-DS, which you use in even lower quantities, 0.02. So two tenths of a grand per liter. And the problem with that, aside from the usage, is it's mainly Iota, and I think you might have, I don't think that's cold soluble in milk. So you can probably call CP Coco and get them to send you some as a sample or pester

[20:09] the sanctuary and maybe they'll get it for you, but that's how I would go. Should we take our 1st commercial break? We'll come right back after this commercial break with cooking issues.

[20:43] 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, tam works, 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. Call your questions 2 718-497-2128. 718-4972128. Speaking of underground meets, had a question in from Brandon Hopkins saying, hello,

[21:46] hammer and the nails. I'm the nails, I guess. Yeah, near the hammer. That means you're going to hit me over the head. like you don't. Yeah, call it quick if you want to grab that first. Oh yeah? All right, caller, you're on the air. Hi, David, this is Johnny Clark on Memphis, Tennessee. How you doing? All right, how you doing? I'm doing good. Great. Uh, I had a question about uh, preserving little. And using Morton's kosher salt with that. All right. I know, what I found was, there's like a 3% uh,

[22:17] sodium pair of cyanide, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. Um, and 97% starting Colorado, of course, um, and when you, the sodium pair of, cyanide, hit,

[22:33] is, uh, makes an acid, it forms, uh, toxic gas. Well, where like as far as I know, Morton's kosher salt is 100% sodium chloride,

[22:46] where's that other thing coming from? It's anti-kiking. Let me, let me, let me do a quick, uh, it would definitely be much less than that amount, but let

[22:57] me, let me just check up. In the kosher salt, they add an anti-caking. And Morton's kosher salt, but have anti-cooking agent. I mean, look it up here for you real quick. Um. I also have another question about um, something, but go ahead. No, yeah, yeah, look, uh, ask me another question and I'm, uh, because normally, like, I would think that they would use, I mean, I've never heard of using, uh, sodium ferracyanide as a, as a, it lists that on the package. No, I had the, uh, search through the, um, more

[23:38] than the MSDF and it would not, it, I found it after a long search.

[23:46] But it contains 3%, which, uh, I don't know which makes

[23:52] it affects gluten tolerance, so I don't know about that either. No, it would have to be much like if they were to put something like that in, it would have to be much, much, much lower than that. Um, but I'm gonna look. I'm definitely going to look that up. In fact, the reason that I'm pausing as I say this is I am in the process of trying to look it up as we speak. Uh, but anyway. Um, what's your, what's your 2nd question while we're, while we're, while we're looking it up? I'm trying to package, uh, anaerobically some, um, cured meats, and, you know, they have to be

[24:37] sliced, then, and I've done it, just, uh, in the vacuum machine, and they lose

[24:45] color after being sliced. Anything that could help them maintain color? So you're doing a normal... Right, and you're doing a normal cure with uh, with uh, nitrites, vacuum packing it, and then slicing it. It's, uh, it is cured. I mean, it is Brian. I'm sorry. And um, then it is. Uh, smoked. And to internal of about 145 150. And then, then it's packaged. After it cools. Right. So, I mean, color fade is a well-known problem in cured meats. Um, Because of light. And I years ago had done some research on how to ameliorate color fading of cured meats. Um, I mean, obviously the, the main thing to do is not to expose them to light. Any nitrite cured meat is going to uh, gray out on you if you, if you expose it to like. That's why, you know, when you go to the store and you see the old bacon, it's all gray. You know what I mean? Because you lose the color in light. But, um, I'm going to have to, uh, it's been many, many years since I've read the papers on, um, any attempts to make the pigmentation in

[26:16] cured meat light fast. I mean, if you store it in darkness, it shouldn't fade on you at all. But I don't know of a way off the top my head to preserve the color if you're going to have it be exposed to light in a retail environment. Now, I'm sure there is, because I remember reading about years ago. This is a big problem that meat producers have, right? And so I'm sure it's been solved, but I'm going to have to, um, I'm going to have to put that one on the, uh, I'm going to have to put that one on the, on the, on the side, do some more research for you

[26:50] and, uh, and talk about it maybe next week when we come back. Stas, you will send an email to yourself for next week for you're done. All right. So I'll do some research because it's something that I read about years ago, but I just don't have it on the tip of my

[27:01] head, tip of my head. doesn't make any sense. Anyway. But, like, I'm interested. I was able to find that it is used as an anti-caking it, but the, uh, it's going to have to be

[27:13] the back to the sign, I think. It's going to have to be at a super low level. And I also see that it's added in... What do you mean super low? I mean, I'm going to have to look up. I'm going to have to look it up. Um, E535, sodium ferrocyanide. I don't know how much is in there, but my mom studies it with 3%. Maybe maybe it's 3% of the anti-caking agent, but it can't be

[27:42] 3%. Yeah. So then the question is, what percentage of the salt is anti-caking

[27:48] agent? You see what I'm saying? Yeah, as I understood, it was it was 97 and three. Yeah, no, it can't possibly, like, 3% of sodium ferro cyanide, which is prussic, like, I think it's basically the same as prussic

[28:06] acid, would be, it would be death to us. Um, has to be, I mean, when it interacts with the

[28:14] acid. Yeah, it's gonna, I mean, like, it's gonna have to be a much, much lower percent. Um, But I'll look it up. I'll look it up and I'll tweet that one out and then I'll also talk about it next week when I come back. Okay, can I send you email of any things I find? Yeah, sure. Yeah, the best way for me to see it. send an email to the regular radio, email, or just tweet, tweet me at at cooking

[28:42] issues, and then I can, I'm much faster because I see my tweets pretty much every day.

[28:46] Okay. And the email... Which one what do we use now, Stas? We use, uh, what, uh, Lopez.nastasiagmail.com? lopez.nastasia gmail.com. Yeah, shoot it my way and I'll definitely take a look at it because I'm interested to know how much cyanide they're allowed to put into our

[29:06] salt. All right. Thanks, baby, have a good day. Now you too. All right, back to Brandon Hawkins. He writes, Hammer and the Nails. I was wondering if you have any suggestions for a really good salami maker. Thank you, Brandon from Phoenix, Arizona. Now, the question is, what do you mean by good salami maker? Now, do you mean like the people that make salami, like a producer of salami? In which case, I've never had the, you know, Jack, have you ever had anything from the underground meats collected? Yeah, it's very good. Hey, thanks for sharing it, brother. Thanks. We'll get you some more. Yeah, yeah. I've never tasted it. I'm sure it's good I'd like to try it. I'd like to try their award-winning goat salami. Would you like to try their award link? Yeah, I would like that, but no, nothing for us. Anyway. All right. I mean, I like here in New York. I like the Salamaria Bielace guys. I think they're really good And, I mean, I think they're excellent, in fact. And, um, I love their products. And they were some of the, like, early, they were really early in the wave of people in America trying to make actual high quality salumi.

[30:09] So a lot of people who, you know, in the past decade or so

[30:13] have, um, started making, um, so let me owe a lot to them because a lot of people learned, uh, and a lot of people who, like a lot of people who have taught other people, have learned from them. And so, you know, they're they're one of the, you know, I think one of the people who deserve a lot of credit for what's going on in the, in the

[30:29] U.S. today. I mean, another early, an early salami thing, although I haven't had his products was Bertoli, cooking by hand, which is a book we talked about before, had a really interesting section on salami in it.

[30:41] I think that's, you know, that cookbook, I don't know if people read that. Did people still read that cookbook? Does Mark like that book? I don't know. I don't know. I thought it was at the time it was a classic. I haven't read it in a while. Um, uh, the, uh, Chris, Chris Costantino, our friend, uh,

[30:55] Bocolone makes a good product out of uh, San Francisco, Armandido Batali, Mario's dad. You've had his stuff, right? Stars? Really? He has a salumi place in what's it called? What's that place called? Seattle. And, you know, good products. I had some of his stuff. It's a lot of good, but if that's not what you mean, maybe you mean equipment to make salami, in which case, for a curing box, I mean, the cheap way to go, you go

[31:18] to like Auburn instruments, or anyone get like a PID control for your, and they have a humidity controller for your, for your fridge, or maybe you

[31:25] mean the sausage stuffer. Sausage stuffer. I really don't think there's any need to spend like a boatload of money on a sausage stuffer. I've used the really expensive ones that are like 100s and 100s of dollars for the £5 press, and then I've

[31:38] used the, you know, $89 one from Northern Tool or Grizzly or whoever happens to be selling them like to hunters. And the build quality is maybe a little better on the ones that are really expensive, but they stuff sausages just the same, you

[31:54] know? And so like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, unless you're a pro and you're doing it every day. I mean, it's a little bit harder to sanitize, uh, the crappy hunters ones because the welds aren't as good and so it's a little bit more difficult to sanitize, but otherwise I would just stick with the $89 sausage

[32:09] stuffer. What do you think, does? Sounds good. Answer the question. All right. All right. Okay. So, uh, interesting thing in from Michael Napkin. And this fits in. This is like this like 3 things kind of fit into this farm to toilet kind of movement that we're, you know, dealing with

[32:27] the, uh, or if you have a composting toilet, I guess, toilet to farm to toilet,

[32:31] right? That was what we're going to have. like Peter Kim from the Museum of Food and Drake was joking that we're going to do the farm to toilet show.

[32:39] We're not. We're not going to do that. And then I was joking with Jack that we need to start the farm bed, farm to toilet movement. But anyway, I think it started. The farm and toilet movement? When this morning? Just now, yeah. Yeah, just now. farm to toilet. Okay, but Michael Nackin writes in, our good friend. And Nastasia bought like 8 copies of his book. I did. Like, you bought it for all your friends? And family, yeah. Nice. Uh, he wrote in and he said, uh, what, you know, what do you, what do you make of this? And it was this. Go on amazon.com and look up by Bernard Jensen, tissue

[33:15] cleaning, like tissue, not like blow your nose tissue, but like your bodily tissue. Stas hates the word tissue as it pertains to bodily parts, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tissue cleansing through bowel management. Yeah, that's Stas is making the bowel face. Tissue cleansing through bowel management. Uh, and you got to go. And, you know, and Michael's, basically, it's like, like, holy crap, take a look at this. You got to look at the cover. The cover of this, uh, is, uh, it's like a yin yang thing, right? One half's in color, and one half's in black and white, and the center of the yin yang goes through the backside of like what looks to be a 10-year-old naked boy's butt with like an image of the colon, like you might have inside,

[34:05] like, like right there at the center of the yin yang thing. And on the left side, the black and white side. It's all industrial pollution and like airplanes and power plants and factories. And on the right side in color is like all apple trees and sunlight and

[34:19] Boyd's and all sorts of nice stuff, right? And so right off the bat, just like you look at this picture and you're like, this guy's going to be a nut job. And so the awesome thing about it is you can look at a lot of it in the Amazon look inside thing. And so, here's a choice, a choice tidbit, and I appreciate, you know, Michael bringing this to my attention, because this shows, like, here's the thing, right? It's like, it's like any one of a number of, like, the master cleanse idiot that we spoke about before, that there's all these people who follow these cleansing regiments, and they're written by lunatics who have this idea that one single problem

[34:54] is or one single issue is the reason and a solution to all of our problems. And it's part of this really, really pernicious magic bullet thinking, this, this, like this, this idea, which really, really honestly dates back, you know, 100s of years, but in the US, most prevalent sense, uh, you know, gram and uh, and kind of like this, uh, and then later the, the sanitarium, the, and the, uh, the sanitarium movement and the, um, like the water cure movement and the, uh, prohibition movement, all the temperance movement, all of these kind of

[35:29] things stem from this font of evil pernicious thinking that is modern humans have degenerated,

[35:39] right? And we've lost kind of touch with ourselves and our bodies, right? And so we need to get back to that by purging and cleansing ourselves of all these toxins and problems,

[35:51] right? And today that manifests itself in juice cleanses and other sort of BS detoxifying crap, right? That you hear all about you. Back in the day, it manifest itself with eugenics and mass genocide. You know what I mean? But it's like, it's all like the same problems that there's a degeneration of, by the way, people are going to say I'm being hyperbolic, but it really comes from the

[36:17] same. And if you read, if you go back and you read, uh, where like a lot of these like super crazy things come from. They spring from an idea that human beings have degenerated and that there is this higher earlier self. And it's also, unfortunately, mixed in, if you look at the history of it, mixed in with good tinges of

[36:37] misogyny. There's usually a good dose of anti-Semitism thrown in there. Like, there's all sorts because, you know, back in the, uh, 1800s and early 1900s prior to the, prior to Nazis when a lot of the, like,

[36:51] classic in quote, like, well-known literature onto generation was being written that has to go. And in fact, there's a guy, Nordau, is the classic author of the book, Degeneration, which is kind of like the cornerstone of semi-modern, uh, pseudo-scientific thinking on the generation of human beings, literally says things like, uh, literally says things like, uh,

[37:12] impressionist painters, just because that's the era he was writing in. impressionist painters. The reason they paint the way they do is that their eyes have degenerated, and they can't see the world, like you and I can see it. Like, really, like stupidity on that level. Remember, this is the same time people were going around measuring people's skulls to try and prove that the

[37:31] Northern European was vastly superior based on the geometry of their skull,

[37:37] right? And their brain heavy, like all of these sorts of things. And you could tell what a criminal was like by the bumps on their phrenology. you know, all of these are part and parcel of this idea that there was this this great old thing that we've degenerated to. And they, like this current feeling of that right now that manifests itself in detoxing, right, has its roots in this same sort of demented thinking,

[38:03] right? And people just don't connect the dots of where their ideas come from.

[38:07] So here's a quote from, uh, and he's not talking about, you know, eugenics here, although Kellogg, who was one of these

[38:14] guys, you know, the serial guy Kellogg was a believer in eugenics, as were a lot of these, uh, uh, early, like a lot of these early people, crazy.

[38:21] Anyway, here's the quote that I love. The bowel wise person is a blessing and source of inspiration to family and associates.

[38:29] His cheerful disposition comes from having a vital, toxin free

[38:33] body, made possible by the efficient, regular and cleansing action of a loved and well cared for bowel.

[38:40] Every person who desires the higher things in life, must be aware of proper bowel management, what it is, how it works, and what is

[38:48] required, in so doing, you will discover many secrets of life.

[38:52] That's a great quote. Yeah, yeah. So if you just get your pooper in order, like, you know, all that cancer problem you have,

[39:00] gone. Anyway, thanks, Michael, for that little bit of craziness. I appreciate it. I encourage all of you to go look at that crazy cover that person has. But on the subject of poop. Got 2 good poop stories. One, Nils Norin got back from Bali recently and went to a

[39:15] Kopi-Lulock farm, and I hadn't realized. So Kopie Luak is the coffee that comes up from Indonesia, and what they do is, is these civets, right? Which are these, they're called civic cats, but they're not cats, and it's Piper reminded me this morning. They're weasels. They're weasels. They're weasels, Piper, like Piper is a hater of many animal varieties, hates beavers. They're on, in quotes, the list, right? Hates weasels of any variety. Anyway, hates rodents too, as we know. We were threatening to put a woodchuck in a car with him. Remember that? Anyways, do not threaten or do not even joke with Piper about putting a woodchuck or any form of rodent in a car that he happens to be in.

[39:53] he's no sense of humor about it, that guy. Anyways, so I didn't realize that Kopi, so what happens is these civets, they eat the, uh, they eat the ripest choices coffee, uh, cherries, right? And then the bean, they digest the outer hull, and they poop out the bean, and then you harvest the pooped out

[40:13] beans, and one, they only eat the ripe ones, which is good because that means, you know, you're only getting the ripest berries. And two, their digestive system is supposed to do something cool to the to the coffee. And there's been studies on it that show that, in fact, it is altered in certain ways by going through the digestive system. Anyways, so they have farms now in Bali, and the one I think that Nils went to is Bali Polina, and Nils brought back some Kopi Luak for us to

[40:42] roast because it's a green coffee, not roasted, which is amazing. But he brought me back the special one that they don't sell. They had one lying around. This one, Stas. You saw it, right? You haven't seen it yet? I have a picture. I tweet it out. It's still in log form. Now, I don't know about anyone else listening to this program, but my hat's off to the

[41:02] civet for being able to like create a full on log after eating all of that coffee. These little suckers are eating just coffee, straight coffee, and like pooping out what looks like, um, like popcorn ball logs of like coffee beans cemented together with very little else.

[41:22] And you know that if you and I were to eat that much coffee, like we would be set on spray, like indefinitely, there wouldn't be any any log action. So anyway, I'll tweet the picture of that out and then I have to figure out. I don't have that much of it. And so I have to figure out what the best washing and roasting thing is, but

[41:39] we'll run through it. Maybe we'll put some stuff out, but I'd never seen it in log forms. That's the 2nd poop story. And for the 3rd poop story in our farm to toilet edition of cooking issues. Uh, yesterday, uh, Nastasia and Piper, at the lab, were making

[41:54] lunch, and I wasn't really paying much attention to what they were making from lunch, and, uh, as they're eating, as they're halfway through their lunch, I walk over and I notice that they both have giant plates

[42:05] of, uh, of greens and freaking Jerusalem artichokes,

[42:11] sunchokes. And I'm like, Holy crap. Are you guys for real? And they're like, what? What? I was like, you really never read the curious cook, have you? They're like, well, you know, parts, I was like, you haven't read The Curious Cook, have you? And they're like, no, even though literally, we have a copy of it in the office waiting for Harold McGee to come back and sign because we're going

[42:32] to, we're going to auction that off at one of the museum things, right? So, uh, as McGee points out in The Curious Cook, which is a book you should all go get, uh, Sunchokes are the fartiest vegetable in the

[42:49] freaking world. They're like the fartiest vegetable. They are, so they store their carbohydrates in the form of inulin, which is, I believe, a complex chain of fructose, but your body can't digest this stuff,

[43:03] all right? And it contains a bootload of it. It's like almost, I think, like, it can be as much as like 40% undigestible inulin in these frigging things, right? And so when you pound it. So if you have a couple of pieces of Jerusalem artichoke in a salad, all right, that's not that much like indigestible stuff. These guys were eating. split a pound. Yeah, you you split, you ate a half a pound a piece of completely insoluble freaking inulin

[43:33] fiber, like the fart machines. 5 o'clock, we were like, I don't feel so good. And then we were running outside and like, you know, doing our business. And then an hour later we were like, eff it. We're just gonna do it in front of each other. Just gonna roll with it. Yeah, and I, hey, people, I was the beneficiary of all this, but as it says, in the introduction to chapter 5 of The Curious Cook, which I'll read from,

[44:00] taking the wind out of the sunroute, it is strange that among North America's meager handful of contributions to the modern table, 2 of them should prove to be of such

[44:09] mixed mixed blessings. One is the persimmons, whose delights and shortcomings are described in chapter 9. you have to go buy the book. You get it on book finder. McGee, republish this sucker. anyway. The other is the so-called Jerusalem artichoke. Actually, the snappily crisp tuber of a sunflower. This vegetable does develop a mild flavor reminiscent of artichokes when it's cooked. After centuries of neglect. It's showing up again in the markets and being grown or growing itself in home gardens. Unfortunately, the Jerusalem artichoke surpasses even dry beans in its power to cause flatulence. Not all cookbooks point this out, and those that do offer few preventative tips. I've tracked down a couple of simple procedures that tone down the Jerusalem artichoke significantly. I also found that the usual explanation for the vegetable's peculiar name was demolished decades ago. There's long been a plausible alternative, and the time has come to dust it off. Well, I won't spoil because you should go read what you should go read this section. So I won't spoil about all the history that McGee goes into, but he says

[45:06] that, and it's interesting because did you know this, Jack? I don't know if you knew this. A well-known fact, though, if you know, McGee, McGee's career as a food writer started with the

[45:17] farting bean problem. Did you know that? I did know that because we did an evolutionaries life story on him, and that's that's pretty much how it opened. Yeah, all right. Fascinating. So McGee is a, you know, he's he was at Caltech, and then he went to Yale for graduate in literature, I guess. And he's looking to write something. He's right. And someone asks them about, like, why do beans make you fart? And so he researches that. And that was the genesis of on food and cooking was that. And then, uh, and then later, in Curious Cook, he tackled the even fartier problem of Jerusalem Artichokes. And if Nastasia and Piper had only read that section, they probably would

[45:57] have, A, not eaten quite as much of it. And B, they would have followed McGee's suggestions to slice it thinly and boil

[46:04] it. For the better we found out with each other because I told Piper, you can never make that for a girl for dinner and expect her to stay over. What if he had done that? I know. So it's good that it happened. Holy crap. And I asked him whether it was a painful sort of farty and he said it was a painful soda farty. Because it blows you up like a balloon. Anyhoo, so slice it thin, and boil it for like 15 minutes, McGee says, that reduces it, or McGee says, cook it for a very long time, like 24 hours in a very low

[46:31] oven. It turns black and sweet because the indulin's broken down into fructose and then it's digestible. I sent McGee a text. earlier today. I haven't heard back yet whether or not he's ever tested doing the Jerusalem artichoke in a circulator, but I haven't heard back. So we'll see. Farm to toilet edition of cooking issues. Hey, before the show's up too, we were wondering at the station, if you had to make a cocktail for Thanksgiving dinner, what would you go with?

[46:59] Me? You. Endastasia, for that matter. Well, what point of the evening am I having it? This would be like the pre-dinner cocktail. carbonated. Ah, carbonate cocktail. Pre-dinner? I like something with bubbles. Like, uh, I mean, I don't want something really heavy that's gonna drag me down. I like starting with a carbonated beverage. What about you, Stas? What would you mean, she's like champagne. The best cocktail in the world. Champagne. Uh, but you're thinking about like seasonal stuff. Piper's got that red hot poker squash drink, but I wouldn't do that before the Thanksgiving meal. Uh, yeah. I mean, I'd probably go. I'm trying to think of Sonya would be seasonal at that time. I don't know. We can think about it for next week. We have 2 weeks of Thanksgiving? All right. Oh, and by the way, speaking of, you still have time to order your heritage turkey from

[47:49] Heritage Meats. our, our, what are they, what are, what's our relationship to them? I mean, obviously Patrick Martin's. Our founders. Our founders. So, but the meat company is our founders? Heritage Foods USA founded the radio station. Yeah. So our founding fathers. There you go. All right. But I have something on cocktails. I can get to it in a minute, but first, I got something in from Robert, I

[48:13] lax, Esquire, about the, about the Mr. Softy thing we were talking about last week. Dear Dave, Nastasia and Gang. A sincere thank you for the fantastic show, which has introduced me to many great new techniques and has improved my cooking skills and enjoyment immeasurably. That's nice. Now, this guy knows what he's talking about, because here's what he says. As a former good humor man. He was a driver of a good humor truck, which is awesome. As a former, good humor man, and now an amateur ice cream maker, and enthusiastic ice cream eater, I share your interest in Mr. Softy, which I consider to be a fantastic

[48:45] product, although it is inexpensive, and without pretense, it tastes delicious, and I prefer it to many of the more artisanal soft serve offerings now

[48:52] available. When I drove a good humor truck 25 years ago while I was in college, the sound of the Mr. Softy truck meant I would have to find another neighborhood to pedal my wares that day. Good humors offerings are simply no competition for the Mr. Softy. Boom. That's strong. The guy's like, I was selling the good humor. And when the Mr. Softy truck came, mah. But here's the problem. I have noticed that the problem of Mr. Softy product variability. Oh, anyway, as you noted last week, Mr. Softy machines allow for variable overrun and provide a way for unscrupulous Mr. Softy

[49:26] drivers to sometimes provide more air than ice cream. Through some investigation, he's a lawyer. So he was like investigating this stuff, which I love. He a fraud lawyer, which is amazing. I love this crap. I discovered that the actual problem of Mr. Softy variability has a different explanation, uh, and it kind of more sinister. So he's going around and he was noticing that some ones were really crappy and it wasn't just that it was lighter, but that the texture was wrong, right? It was a bad texture thing. So he looks up that, that he looks up that, that Mr. Softie's telephone number, right? And he beats his weight and as he notes, right? When I remember I told you I went to their to their warehouse, their supply depot, and they're not used to human beings at all. Like, it's just not what they do. And somehow, like, at the time, I was, I don't know, I guess in my late 20s or something, at the time, they were like, ah, the and they just let me buy the Mr. Softy mix. Uh, so he similarly like somehow like waited his uh, way through it and got to the president of Mr. Softy, right? And um, the guy knew about it. Like, so, and like, he made it through, I guess, because he was like, listen, I, you know, I grew up eating my whole life. I love Mr. Softy. I even used to be your competitor and I quit because your product is so much better than what I was selling. you know, so he gets through the president and and Mr. Softy knows what the problem is. and here it is, ready? The president, Mr. Softy, explained to me that the trucks are owned by franchisees, many of whom hire drivers to run them.

[50:51] The franchisees keep track of the cash receipts they expect to receive from those

[50:56] drivers by reference to the amount of Mr. Softy mix that is used. A given amount of mix makes an expected number of servings and an expected range of cash receipts. The problem, he explained, is that some drivers try to hide cash from their bosses by stretching the

[51:11] Mr. Softy mix, by cutting it with plain milk, and then pocket the extra cash. The weasels. The result is a substandard product for the consumer, less cash for the

[51:22] franchisee and less royalty for Mr. Softy. He didn't elaborate, but he told me that they were taking measures to tackle this problem. Anyway, I thought you would find this interesting. I do, Robert. It's extremely interesting. I detest food fraud in any form, whether it's by messing with the

[51:36] over. X factory. I'd rather than mess with the overrun because at least then I got a light product and I know that the guy shafted me. If they add milk, then you think, as you did, that Mr. Softty's quality is just going downhill. It's a huge problem. You know what I mean? And like, it's like, it's so old school. It's so old school fraud. It's like, you know, watering vodka or, or, you know, you know, adult running milk back in the old days. That's like, that really pisses me off. That pisses me the hell off. Uh, I don't know how they're going to fix that, but they should, you know, I guess they have to change how they're

[52:09] struggling, whatever. Anyway. He also says, it would be great if you could send a shout out to my good friend and your former caller,

[52:14] Steve from Moscow, who turned me on to the show, and which gives us weekly reason to keep in touch and discuss the wisdom we learn from each podcast.

[52:21] Thanks and best regards, Rob. Well, thank you, and on the way out, I will notice this a couple weeks ago, we were talking about eggplants and how they are kept super blue in Japanese pickles.

[52:33] And I got a note in from Jen's Genten, who says that they're blue because literally in Japan, they put iron eggplants, eggplants, little eggplant figures, figures,

[52:45] little eggplants made of iron into the pickling medium when they do it, and that's what causes them to stay blue.

[52:52] Thanks, Jen, Gens, rather. Iron eggplants, cooking issues. 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 as a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.