[0:00] Today's program is brought to you by Regional Access. Regional Access is a regional distributor committed to creating sustainable economies throughout the

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[0:50] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming new live from Reverse Pizzeria in the back of... Well, no, I reverse P3. in the back of Roberta's. In Bushwick, Brooklyn, on a very snowy, snowy day here in New York joined with Joe in the booth. Hey, Joe, how you doing? I'm doing okay. How it going, Dave? I'm doing all right. Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez, not here yet because, well, Joe, is there a polite way of saying what the name of that website is where you can check on the

[1:16] L train? Um, is the Ltrain Eft.com? Oh, there you go. is theLtrainf.com. If you go to that website, you will find that, yes, in fact, it is, which is the train she takes. For those of you that have never been to the New York area and taken our lovely subways, The F-Train travels between kind of the hipster portions of Brooklyn and 14th Street in

[1:36] Manhattan. And that's what, uh, it's often effed. Right, Joe? It is pretty often eft. Highly trafficked, but there's only one line, so it gets pretty effed. It gets effed up in the in the in the snow. Although why would it get messed up in the snow? It all underground. the hell? Yeah, it's underground until you get to like East New York, so... Oh, that's where it got messed up? I can only assume. Hey, look, I took an above ground train to get here and ain't no problems on the J line. The J is the most reliable train in New York apparently. Wow. Joe, you're just fond of knowledge. MTA knowledge. They, uh, if they want to start putting me on the payroll, you know. You should get together with my son, Booker. He, you know, he's a similar font of knowledge on MT, although very opinionated. Man, Kitty hates that. great. He hates the... I don't know why he hates a day. He takes particular dislikes to certain trains based on the actual motors, the actual

[2:27] manufacturer of the motors used to propel them. He can tell by the sound of a subway car. He like, that's Austin propulsion in that. He's like, I don't like that one so much. And he's like, that's it, you know? And it's like a sign of the cross. It's over. It's done. So while we're waiting for Nastasia to show up and see how her day has been going, we got some folks here, we're doing a, a, well, why don't you, why don't you go, go around the room

[2:50] here and we'll, we'll, ever introduce ourselves, tell them what we're doing today. Hi everybody. I'm Lara, and I have an app called Days, which allows you to share

[3:00] a day's worth of photos and gifts at a time. a visual diary. Not dazed, like, dazed and confused, like, days, like, days of our lives. Like days of the week, days of our lives. Yeah. So this is a project called Days in the Life, in which I follow around and photograph a creative visionary like yourself, Dave, for a day of their life, just a normal Tuesday, and then we share that out with

[3:23] everyone. You'll be able to see a day in Dave's life. Nice. Yeah. Becky, wanna introduce yourself here? I'm Rebecca. I work with Dave and Anasasia over at Momofuku and Booker and Dox. So just hanging out for the day. Nice. You can't come in. Hey, Stas. L Trade messed up, huh? No, ACD messed up. Really? Yeah. That's weird. All right, so Nastasia's here. and we're ready to begin. Call your questions two. 718-497-2128 that's 718-497-2128 for all your cooking or non-related cooking questions. And we're next Tuesday is what? Hey, Stas, you can climb over me. Christmas Eve, right? Ooh, are we in town? I'm not. Are you? Well, I mean, in other words, they quit... In all fairness, I told her to do it. So the question is, is this our last show before Christmas? So we're not going to do the Christmas Eve show? Yes, you wanna do it by yourself? Wow. I don't think you can, Dave. Oh, we're shut down? We're shut down. All right, pulling the plug. This is the Christmas Eve show. This is the Christmas. Alright, it's Christmas show. All right. So, uh, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. And that means this is our last opportunity on the cooking issue show to plug the seers all. Searzol. Go to Kickstarter.com. Search Searzol, and for $65, you too can be one of the 1st people to own this magnificent handheld broiler that we're making, right?

[4:42] How's it going? We're going to setting out the holiday cards, right? And what's it going to say? Sears and greetings. That's how Piper is. For those of you that tune in before, you know that Piper, Christington, king of puns, has done the holiday card verbiage, not the art, but the verbiage, and it's

[4:59] Searson's greetings. And we're mailing those out when today? Tomorrow? Tomorrow morning yeah. No, sweet. All right. So, to some questions. From Brad Spawn. We got in on the Twitter. Recommendations for a 1st low temperature book, books that have some veg recipes, especially are

[5:15] appreciated for ours is a mixed household. It's tough. I mean, um, there's really only pub- in published

[5:23] bookland that's, you know, dedicated, there's a, I mean, the only one I can really think of is the under pressure, the, um, the one that was put out by Keller and Roman, and there's

[5:32] some good veg recipes in there, but, you know, modernist cuisine. I'm sure they're at home, one has some, but that's kind of a more of a hefty tome. Look, the recipes are going to be fine in the under pressure thing. I disagree with some of their points specifically with some of their safety standpoints, but there's a lot of stuff online as

[5:51] well, and it's just ever increasing the amount of amount of stuff. You guys seen any newer, low temperature. By the way, the reason that everyone, Rebecca was like, I don't have to introduce myself. everyone who's in the studio, boom, like you're here, I'm going to call you out. Say, do you guys, do you guys know any, like, good, we haven't done, like, this Lucky Peach done anything on that? It's just as it comes, right? Most of the stuff that, you know, I work with, it's kind of as it comes, not specifically, um, you know, low temp or not. I'm trying to think of another one. There's, I mean, 1st book. So I'm assuming you don't want to spend like $158. Like, you know, the one Roka one is still a classic, which came out although Bruno Gouseau, the kind of grandfather of

[6:25] low one of the grandfathers of low temp cooking, detests that book because he says the temperatures are too low. In fact, he says that it's a book that attempts to poison people. It's a great chef's book. But I would get the under pressure. Um, you know, I have, dude, the ideas in book have a lot of low temp in it? don't know. I don't know. You know what? And go to chefsteps.com where they can put a lot of content online. It's not in the form of a cookbook, but they have a lot of content online for you to check out. That's put out by our good friends like Michael Mackin, Chris Young and who else is on that one? Grant, right? Anyway. Um, and obviously chefs who use a lot of low temperature work like grant and stuff. I'm, you know, sure have a lot of stuff in there, books on it. Anyway, sorry, I could not be of more help. Is that not very? I feel like I wasn't very helpful. Yeah, like Styles, like, I don't care. I don't give a rat's ass interesting. Okay. Also, we got in. Uh, do you remember those, uh, you remember those, um, uh, those uh, cocktail university things we did? Those videos we did. So, uh, delete uh, Leap Row, uh, Leapers 500 wrote in and says the saxophone during the cocktail university segment sounds like Michelle Pfeiffer and Sean Connery stopped off for a drink in the Russia

[7:30] house. Be like, I mean, like, that's good, I guess, right? I mean, like, I wouldn't mind if Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer came and stopped by. would make them a drink. That's great I wanna be there. Yeah, I like those guys. I mean, I don't really I don't know them. I like the theory of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've never met. I mean, like Sean Connery kind of like... Can we find that? Can you find that, Joe? The saxophone and the whatever one? I'll do a little searching around. Joe, speaking of, I didn't bring it up before because, you know, I was waiting for Stas, I was a little pre, you know, preoccupied, but what's up with Jack and the porn music, you're trying to get people to donate money for the holiday seasons to the Heritage Radio Network

[8:06] using, fundamentally, porn music. Well, sometimes you have to appeal to not people's, like, hearts and minds, but to, you know, their senses

[8:13] in other ways, if you really want them to give you what they want, right? Yeah, but I mean, like, it's marketing. I mean, like, yeah, okay. So, like, it's known things, like, we're going to, like, use, uh, we're going to use 70s style porn music. No, I think it's just that's Jack's personal taste. There was really no marketing scheme here. But I will pass the review along to Jack. I'm not saying in a negative way, by the way. Can we play it again real quick? because Stas didn't get to hear it. Can we play the? Okay, yeah, let me boot that up. Yeah, let's basically, it'll just come on in a minute here. Well, he's going on behalf of our family of hosts, staff, and the 1000000s of listeners who have tuned in since 2009. It's got a little bit more of a hip hop vibe. No, wait, it gets more porn as we launch our daily in-house news coverage. Please consider making us a part of your end of year. It sounds like the intro to a very wide film. Maybe that's what I was thinking. Not like an actual very white song, but like an intro to a very white song. Yeah, it's going to go into slow your roll after that or something like that. We should play that. Yeah, Jack should have recorded that with all of his vocals pitched down, so he sounds like Barry White. Oh my god. Holy crap, can we do that? Then we would have had the money rolling it. Oh my god. Well, if Phil Bravo, if he would ever come in here and do it, like he could do the Barry White voice. A little goofier than Barry White. Yeah, very white, rest in peace with your magnificent voice. Okay. So, you know, did a presentation at the Food and Wine thing for all of Annex publishing. We'll talk about it a little bit, right? Because it's kind of interesting. So, uh, for those of you that, you know, I don't know, I don't know, I've heard me spiel about this before, uh, I

[9:50] spent a lot of time thinking about um, cocktails that other people don't spend a lot of time necessarily thinking about or didn't gin and tonic. Apparently everyone's thinking about gin and tonics quite a lot now. Like it's a huge, huge thing, but I've been working fairly consistently on the gin and tonic for, you know, almost a decade now.

[10:04] And actually, it figures in the, like the last chapter of the cocktail book is all just gin and tonic and kind of, you know, like full riff on the gin and tonic.

[10:12] And what's that? That's actual people. That's actual children laughing. I thought that was like some sort of special effect that they were playing. Anyway. So, uh, the concept is. So what do you do after you do the normal gin and tonic? And my new idea, and this is what we were presenting at food and wine, is to make a gin and

[10:28] tonic that doesn't have tonic in it, right? It just hits the same flavor nodes as a gin and tonic. So, and in fact, we made one that doesn't even have gin in it, but it tastes kind of like a gin and tonic with a little bit of

[10:39] a more of a holiday note, a little peppery note. Stas hates it because she hates junipery flavors, and then this has a definite junipery flavor in it. So, what are the notes we have to hit? You have to get the resiny pine from the juniper and the gin, plus, you know, some other botanicals that are in it. You need acidity, you need bitterness, right? I add a little salt. And so, and you need sugar, right, for the time. So we have almost all that. In one ingredient, Shazam, which is the 5 flavor berry. Oh, they also make Omeiji tea out of it in Korea. So it's Korean, Chinese, and also to a certain extent, Russian, where they call it Limonique, Limonique, or something like that. Say with a crazy accent. Come on, Stas. Well, you never hook me up with the accent. I can't do it. What do you mean? I've heard you do it a 1000000 times. stars is half Russian. I have never done that. Oh, yeah? How does your mom how does your mom call? Oh, I'm not going to say anything. All right, so you're lying to me. Wait, here's what sucks. Thank God. Oh, yeah. Hey, I'm Dave Arnold. You are Dave Arnold, aren't you? I am Dave Arnold from Booker and Dax. All right. But like, I feel like if I'd known they were going to play that, I wouldn't have gone to such like a high pitched squeal going in, I would have started, you know, you know,

[11:51] it started a little lower. They're like, hi, I'm DeVar. Yeah. Okay. So we use this Cassandra Berry, which you have to order it. I've order it online. We got it on Amazon and it's kind of fresher if you, like, the local spice shop seller. really desiccated. hard to get good flavor out of it, but it has all of those notes. It is itself sour, and they call it 5 flavor berry because it has, you know, it's a little bit salty, it's pungent, it's, uh, it's aromatic. I mean, it's got it's got all of those flavors in it. So what we did is we, it's the easiest drink in the world to make. We blended a small amount of schazandroberry with vodka because it brings its own gin flavors to it. Then to augment the acidity and tone down the kind of juniper notes on it. We also made some straight in water. And then combine those 2 to produce this,

[12:38] Cassandra. So we didn't add any acid. We didn't add any gin. We didn't add any quinine for bitterness. It was all right there in, you know, in that one thing. We did have to add a little sugar and then we carbonated. It also a cool kind of pink color. You like a color anyway, right? Yeah, it's a good color. I mean, if you liked gin, you think you would have liked it? Yeah. Yeah, it's like gin. The only thing it's not in a normal gin and tonic that is here is it's a little more

[12:59] Christmassy because it's got a little more of a pine note to it, even though it's not a pine tree. It's not a conifer at all. Cassandra. although it is very early, it's from a basil angiosperm line. It's closer to the whatever. Anyway. But it, yeah, yeah, it's pretty good. So anyway, Kazandra, that's what we were doing this week, right? Is that pretty much all we did is interesting. other than work on the seer soul, seer soul, seer soul? Yeah I think so. Yeah. All right. It wasn't making a Santa. Oh, Jesus. So Stas and Piper have a side business going on with vomiting wine zombies,

[13:31] right? Did you buy wine zombie.com yet? It's taken. wine company? called Wine Zombie? Did you buy pukingsanta.com? So the wine zombie sits there and vomits. And for 2 years is all Stas and Piper. literally, like, you think they're sitting around thinking about cooking problems? No, it's like every day. zombie, zombie, zombie. like, I know that, like, you know how, like, like, like, in some people's head, like, there's like a, like, one, when I, one of the 1st car, the 1st car I ever bought was a, was a 76 Pontiac Bonneville, right? And a James Brown tape got stuck in the tape deck because it's back in the tape deck days, you know, in the 90s, and it was just James Brown all the time. So whenever I was driving, all I would listen to was James Brown constantly. And I feel that you and Piper, your mind is like that, but instead of James Brown, it's wine zombie. You're like, wine zombie. Why? What the people want. The people are you and Piper. I want one too. Thank you. Oh, geez. Oh my god. So the wine zombie is a zombie mask with a pump in it that pukes wine on a, you know, continually, continuously, pukes

[14:34] wine like a fountain. And she's sitting there like, you know, puking. And so then this year, for they're like, you know, the problem is the wine zombies really only, it's a Halloween thing.

[14:45] How do we stretch this? How do we stretch the wine zombie? How do we do it? How do we make some more money off this off this the best idea we ever had, the wine zombie? And here's how. You buy a 5 foot. By the way, 5 foot sandas are creepy. Let's tell you something, 5 foot Santa is creepy. You buy a 5 foot Santa. what is it? puppet? What is that thing? It's like a... It's a cinematronic. Oh, so strong. Cinematronic. Oh, so strong. Oh my god. Did you make that over to say that in the box? Oh my God, such strength, such strength of punning. So you buy this thing. And then you stick the same pump that you have in the wine zombie into the Santa, and you have Santa puking, and then you get your friend Phil Bravo to be like, oh, man. with a little with a little voice box that's in Santa, right? The problem is, is that they're not really willing to take it far enough. So Santa is standing upright and the pump, he dribbles like wine all over his beard, which is freaking gross. No one wants to. And so instead of, and I want your 2 feedback on this. Instead of doing like the right thing, the honorable thing, and make Santa bend over while he's puking so that the poor guy cannot spill his stuff all over his beard.

[15:51] And by the way, puke on beard is nasty. I don't want to, no one wants to drink that stuff. They're having it come out of his pipe. And it's like, if it comes out of his pipe. First of all, I don't really know that it's ethical to have a smoking Santa anymore. like at all. Like, but, like, secondly, like, you know, if you're, if, if it's coming out of his pipe, it's not puke, nobody pukes out of their

[16:10] pipe, nobody pukes out of their pipe. And they're like, and they're like, what, and they're like, what about Popeye? like, when's the last time you saw Popeye puke at all? I already gave the party that we're giving it to the circumference of Santa, so he

[16:22] can't. No, you bend his legs back. No, it like... That's like a sound. No one's gonna understand the puking, they're gonna be like, oh, Santa is Santa fountain. It's not like a projectile situation, though. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. My point is, is it, no, look, look, if you just had a Santa with the pipe. Yeah, you're a liar, liar. Water. Yeah, they have their own whatever. Mean water-based. You mean non-alcoholic. Or water. Alcoholic. Or water. Can you drink the fake vomit? Yeah, it's all food grade. So you could just put like a bunch of glasses near there. That's the way that they did it with the wine zombie. Yeah, that's the way they do it with the wine zombie. Like, imagine a chocolate fountain, but instead of puking zombie, or in this case, Santa. But I'm saying you just bend his butt back, tilt him forward, so he pukes down into the bowl, so there's no beard hit. Because if you see a pipe, if you see liquid coming out of your pipe, your 1st thought isn't puke, but then you have Phil Bravo's voice making puking

[17:17] noises, and anybody that's ever puked knows that the pipe is popping out of the mouth. No, not even Popeye is keeping the pipe in his mouth as he's puking.

[17:26] How do you clench your teeth around a pipe and keep the pipe in your mouth while you're blowing trunks out? I think you should have done some research during Santa Con. You could have really like found some good models. Oh, hell yeah. off of. Yeah, yeah. You know what? And this is a thing. I mean, no offense to the Santacon people, but, you know, I have 2 kids and like one of them is still a believer. You know what I mean? And it's not cool to have Santa puking on the ground I have Piper send a video of what it looks like. It's not even a pipe. It's not even a what is it? I'll send the video. We'll watch it at lunch. All right, all right. So anyway, you can call in or tweet in with your thoughts on puking Santa. But Phil's Bravo, Phil Bravo's voice is quite good. Maybe, can you just, can you call in and do the voice? Yeah, let's see if you can. SK calling, do the voice. All right, cool. Now, we have an actual normal question in, from M. Deer cooking issues. I am a lover of most all foods. I am a size 12 plus model. So eating is really a part of my job. Because of health reasons, I've really had to cut out a ton of foods. I get really bad heartburn, which has been tearing up the lining of my esophagus. I need to basically cut out all spicy citric, high fat, and carbonated food and beverages out of my diet. Rough. That's rough, right? So she says the worst things are any kind of pepper, which I recently just grown to love using,

[18:42] chocolate, that sucks to give that up. Citric fruits are basically any fruits other than apples. Although, why not apples? Apples can be highly acidic. But we'll get into this in a minute. Acidic vegetables such as tomatoes, onions, et cetera. High fat meats. I've been eating a lot of wild salmon, although wild salmon, very high in fat. It's interesting. I've done some research and chicken breasts. Why, why, why, why, why, Sam, that's why people like salmon. Salmon in general is a high fat fish. You can get leaner cuts of salmon, but usually the more money you spend on salmon, the higher the fat content is. That's why people like the, like a lot of the coal water salmons that are caught in the, you know, in the rivers up there in Alaska and Canada and all that because they're fairly high

[19:16] fat. And in fact, like, you can literally just look at the price range of salmons, wildcot salmons, and they correlate with either with marketing, like copper, whatever, but a lot of times

[19:28] they'll correlate with fat content. Anyways, um, and, you know, look at smoked salmon. That some fatty stuff. And I'm saying it's in a great way. It's a good way. you know, good product. I like fat a lot. Anyway, uh, spices like curry or anything that is intense in flavor. I now eat a lot of easy to process grains like couscous and quinoa and brown rice. Quinoa, like, I still can't wrap my head around the word quinoa. anyone else have a problem with that? That's impossible to spell. Yeah, right? Virtually impossible. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, right? It's not just me. If you go on YouTube, they do these pronunciation videos and they do one for

[20:02] quinoa, and they call it Kenokanoa, which is... I like that. I'll tell you, if you called it Canokanoa, like, that's like, that sounds like some sort of like awesome Samoan thing. Canoka noa. Canoka noa. Or like, or like Manalao, macadamia, manala, macadamia, nut. I love that. I mean, that's I don't really know what the accent is over there. But, like, but, like, Monala, it's like an awesome word. So coconut, cooking. I say it again? Coconut. That's so much better than Kokomo. Remember that crappy beach boy song? It'd be a lot harder to pronounce, but it was Canokanoa within the Kokomo song. Yeah. No, no, no. Right? Styles once hung out with the Beach Boys lawyers at, yeah, she was

[20:40] at, she was at Nathan Mirvold's lab for the modernist, because one of the

[20:44] monitor's cuisine dinners with Mark Ladner, and they were sitting next to the lawyer for the Beach Boys. Apparently, like, they aren't, like, happy go lucky fellows. Oh, we were also sitting next to the more interesting Google founder. Cheated on his wife with a small Asian woman who worked with him. I feel that this is not maybe safe for, well, safe. the opinions of Nastasia Artastasia is alone and do not represent cooking issues or the heritage radio network. Uh, the, uh, so, but you said he was also wearing the glasses. for the 1st time, yeah. It was early. It was like a couple years ago before anyone else had the glasses. was a prototype. And what was your thoughts on the glasses? stupid. That's why we call her the hammer. That's why we call her the hammer. So he was like, well, better or worse than a segue? Oh, way better. better, yeah. I don't know. love a good segue. I've never been on one, but I'm... Do you like seeing the tours, the Segway tours? People with hold like the head segue goes like this and all the other segue stuff. Yeah, I get irritated when I see people wearing Google glasses, but not when I see people on a segue. Have you ever seen you ever seen someone double up? I feel like that would be the perfect combination. I feel like they do that. at the Google office. Yeah, they Google up and segue up. Yeah. You know, at the Google Office, I did a demo at Google and they have these kind of awesome Google colored bikes, and the idea is that no one's going to steal the Google colored bike. I was like, I want a Google color bike. And like they, like, you can just bike around all over the campus there. The Google campus is in, I've never been to the one here in New York, but the one in California is freaking amazing. It's like, it's like, it's like pre-bust awesome, like volleyball chords and like food and everything. I've been to the one here Google's one of them investors. We love you, Google. Yeah? How's the campus here? It's good. So I think you should really go there. Some of like some of the best features, I think, are the food programs that they have there. Like they have like five. what They want any demos. Yeah, I mean, they have like 5 what is it called? the, like, food carts and like, trucks inside. They're parked inside of Google. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I have a friend who works there and I'm trying to get invited to lunch. I've eaten at the Google one and I spoke to their head chef and they haven't had a very interesting program. It's pretty cool. I mean, they should have interesting stuff. They got more money than God. Okay. Anyway, back to M's question. I now eat a lot of easy. Okay. Like couscous and quinoa and brown rice. I loved using Near East boxes. For those of you that don't know, Near East is a brand of, uh, like boxed, um, Middle East,

[23:12] Green, like couscous, book brown rice, little

[23:18] flavor, flavor packets. And, uh, I loved using them, but they have a lot of garlic and citric acid and fats. Now, M, we looked at some of the labels for the for that. And then, and we didn't have, we

[23:32] got to call her, but let me, let me finish at least the question before I go to the answer. Is it Phil? I'm not sure. Let's find out if it's Phil. Okay. Now, I looked at the labels for these, and they don't, like, they didn't seem that high in, uh, the ones I looked at

[23:44] didn't aren't high in citric gas. You got to remember, also, and we'll get we'll get into PH in a minute. I'm also looking for an alternative cooking fat as opposed to olive oil, and we're all like, do you not like olive oil? If you don't like olive oil, if you don't want the flavor, I mean, just go with something that has a high smoke point, like, you know,

[24:00] um, like rape seed or, you know, or canola, uh, or something like that. Although I at home almost, I got to be honest, I exclusively use olive oil. I use olive oil and then I have, like, real, honest to God, fry fat for my deep fried fryer. But I don't stock a lot of different oils except for flavoring oils. You can keep a lot of different flavor when I was around. What are you used to cook with, does? All the way up. Exclusively? Or better. But, uh, but uh. Uh, I, uh, uh, I want to buy it. Can we get the website, polyunsaturated a-hole? I want that. anyway. I'm also looking for, okay. I eat a lot of different beans because they're good for my heartburn, but I don't want to translate this all into gas, which I've never had a problem with before. So I'm looking for an alternative uh, for a non-meat uh, protein uh, that has a uh, low

[24:49] pH, presumably you mean low low acid, so high pH. Now let me tell you something. Also, if you increase the gas you have, I was doing some research on GERD, gastroosophgeal reflux

[24:58] disease, and apparently downstream gas can actually cause a your esophagus to open up a little bit, so you definitely don't want to add gassiness to the

[25:08] problem because it might potentially increase your symptoms. Anyway, my questions are, what kind of mild spices are there to flavor rice grains, chicken and fish? I use dill a lot and turmeric and cumin. You know, dill is delicious. Nils Noran, you know, my Swedish chef friend. He loves the dill because he's Swedish, and if you don't love dill, they put you on the top of the mountain, let you freeze to death. Wiley Dufrayne hates the dill. Did you know that? No. That's a little secret that I probably shouldn't have told you. Wiley DuFrane. not like Dill. You heard it here first, unless you are Wiley. Also, okay. Alternative cooking fats, the alternative cooking fats without being processed, blah, blah, blah. Okay. And good marinades for meat, and M hates soy sauce. How do you hate on soy sauce? How do you hate on soy sauce? What about miso? We were having this conversation before. If you hate soy sauce, does that mean you necessarily hate miso? No, because I don't care for soy sauce particularly as a marinade. It works for me, but like, I don't use it when I eat sushi even. And I like miso. Right. So miso makes an excellent marinade and curing device, right? Miso and some other liquids, preferably probably for you not too acidic liquids. And, um, and, you know, some sugar, maybe

[26:16] then there to like counter the saltiness of it. But miso might be a good thing. We'll get into this in a second. I'm going to go through your question and then I'll answer it after the call. I like to keep natural organic. I know that low fat dye is going to make me lose weight, but I need to retain my curves by eating good amount of mild food. I feel like I just haven't been eating enough because I don't know how to, uh, what to do to make it taste good, uh, or eating and effing up my diet by getting too much fat on the plate because fat can increase the symptoms

[26:41] of uh, uh, gird, gastro-esophageal reflux. Help, M. All right, so we're going to get to the answers. And I love that someone's like, I can't eat enough anymore because they can't eat the foods that I want. This is like an interesting question. We never had a question like this before, but right now, call her, you're on the air. Boom. Hi Dave. This is Benzinger from Indianapolis. How you doing? Doing okay. How about yourself? All right. Uh, I just got back on a, uh, from a 3 month trip to the country of Lebanon. Oh, nice. And, um, I ran into something that I was curious about. They store this stuff in the fridge. You know how like garlic oil is not good because of botulism. They have a spread called tomb, which is the Arabic word for garlic. And it's literally raw garlic, oil, salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Why is that safe? Is it because of solids content or is it because of something else that I'm not sure of? Because they store it in the fridge for like weeks, 2 weeks. Is it a puree? It is. Okay, so, and how much salt and how much lemon juice? Uh, salt to flavor, lemon juice to turn it white. It's a, it's a, it's a yellowish color. You add this, you add the lemon juice and it turns it a nice white color. Right, so both both the flavor. But both the acidity and the salt are going to inhibit the botulism, right? So, I mean, the issue with garlic oil, specifically, is, and is it heated or not heated? It's not heated. Right. So when you garlic grows in the ground. So, you know, botulism is ubiquitous and, uh, meaning it's everywhere, and it gets on the garlic and you can't kill botulism by normal heating. So, you know, the idea that you that you put garlic into oil, like a whole clove or something, then maybe even heat the oil, killing all the other competitive bacteria that are on the garlic,

[28:28] uh, like lactic acid bacteria, things like this, uh, and but not killing the spores for things like botulism. And then you have it sealed from the air by the oil, but locally, the garlic still has a fairly high water activity because the garlic cloves are

[28:42] entire or the pieces of garlic are entire. And so you can have botulism growth on the actual garlic. Like that's the issue, right? So, uh, if you were to, um, add, if you were to make a puree with acidity and with salt, assuming the levels were high enough, you

[29:00] would, um, be, um, inhibiting the growth of botulism. Secondly, if you're not heating it, there are probably other bacteria, like lactic acid bacteria that are good competitors against things like botulism, causing, did it

[29:15] taste, did you notice any kind of lactic flavor? Was there any fermentation going on in it? I didn't notice any. No, it's because usually they make it fresh, but if there's any extra leftover, they put it in the fridge. Right. And so botulism is going to grow very slowly in the fridge anyway. And if there are other bacteria present that haven't been killed by a pasteurization step, then they probably provide good competition for the for the botulism so that it doesn't

[29:38] grow, plus the salt and the fact that it and the lemon juice and the fact that it's been pureed so that the acidity and the salt are in, you know, close contact with all the water bearing parts of the

[29:49] stuff, because they're not going to be in the oil because they don't like to live with the oil. So all of the lemon juice and all of the salt are going to be chilling out with the garlic, which is the water phase stuff anyway. And so you probably get the maximum preservation from all 3 of those things making it, you know, not making it not kill you. Right, okay. Now, I don't know what the exact levels are to have it not kill you, but like all of those things are very helpful. If you were going to make it at home, you could probably put pink salt

[30:14] in, if you really want to make sure botulism is not going to grow. Okay, would that effect the flavor quite a bit though? You think so? No, I mean, the flavor from curing on pink salt is more a reaction, I think, with the meat. I don't think it's gonna, uh, I don't think it'll affect it, but like, you, I mean,

[30:32] it's, it's, I'm always a little loath to give out recommendations that are safety recommendations without like actually researching

[30:39] the documents on it to make sure that I have the levels right, but, um, you also got to remember, botulism grows really, really slowly in

[30:46] the, in the fridge. And is it, is it, is it like put on bread raw or is it, or is it used in cooking? It's put on bread raw. I mean, it's a really good product. I'll mix it into salad dressings and things like that if I have extra. But, uh, usually what they do is they just put it on with, like, pickles and tomatoes and show up, uh, and and have sandwiches with it. Yeah, yeah. So, uh, I mean, that's also the reason oil and garlic is so bad and normally is because typically people won't use it quickly because it's not like a spread, you know what I mean?

[31:20] So it'll be sitting on the shelf for a long time. Right. That's good. Yeah. So how long does it typically take for garlic oils to become dangerous? I don't know. I don't trust, like, there's some research out there, and if you talk to the food safety experts, there, they lead you to believe that the growth of

[31:36] botos can be much faster than you think. So, uh, if something is inherently unsafe, it's like I'll just use it fresh or

[31:43] or not, you know what I mean? Because who wants to mess around with that? I mean, the good thing about botulism, if there is a good thing about botulism, is that, you know, is that you can destroy it with heat. So if you're using something that is possibly contaminated with botulism, but you heat it thoroughly. The toxin, um, from botulism is, um, is heat labile. So it will break down. But, you know, because typically the way people die is they'll eat a bunch of home canned mushrooms, which are low acid food.

[32:11] You know what I mean? You know, they're not getting it from tomatoes or, you know, things like this that have a high acidity.

[32:16] So the acidity and the salt are really helping you out here. Okay, thanks a lot, dude. All right, good luck with the tomb. Alright, thank you. All right. So back to this. M, look good news for you. Good news for you on the carbonated beverage front. I looked up an article called the effects of carbonated and or caffeinated beverages on acid and non-acid reflux and symptomatic perception among different phenotypes of GERD by Jose Remy's, uh, troche

[32:41] and uh, Amira A. Azamar, uh, Jacome, from, what is this from? 2012, from Gastroenterology, volume 142, issue 5, May 2012. So here's a here's an interesting thing. Uh, caffeine does, in fact, increase the amount of time that your esophagus spends at a

[33:01] pH below four, so it does increase the damage that's going to happen to your esophagus based on that.

[33:06] But carbonation, although it does increase your burping. And so you think that it's actually going to cause an increase in acid in your esophagus, their research indicates that in fact, it has no effect. So unless you know that you are specifically have a problem with it. Uh, and there's all different kinds of uh, of GERD, but uh, carbonation, you might not have to give it up, which I would be very thankful to not have to give up carbonation. And remember, like, yes, it does form an acid. CO2 is forms carbonic acid, but it's not very, very acidic, right? Uh, then another thing on, um, another, it's interesting articles I was looking up. The effects of dietary fat and calorie density on esophageal acid exposure and reflux symptoms from 2006. What's interesting is, uh, and you might not know this, uh, but when they're doing the research on it, um, it shows that increasing the fat content increases the symptoms that you feel, right?

[34:05] But they did not the actual damage. The actual, it's actual chloric density that is determining like how much the actual pH of your of your esophagus is going to go down. Whereas your your mental symptomatic perception of it is going to increase with fat, which I thought was really interesting. Of course, unfortunately, fat and calorie density go kind of hand in hand. I also looked up the issue with the

[34:34] captation. I assume you meant spicy peppers, not black pepper, although I don't know. And yeah, that looks like that's going to be a problem. I was hoping that I could get some data for you that shows that maybe you have a way out that you

[34:46] could eat some of these foods, but other than carbonation. I't really have any good news there for you. Um, on the, so let's go backwards on your questions. On the marinades for meats. I would try miso. Um, it's it's gonna be good. The problem here really fundamentally is, is that most marinades, it depends on why you marinating a meat. If you're marinating meat for flavor, then... Okay, give me one more second. If you're marinating feet for flavor, That's one thing, but acids and marinades are actually there to break down proteins, things like

[35:16] buttermilk. And so that, you're not going to get that kind of tenderizing effect. But what I would suggest, if you want to just marinate for flavor, then you could do things like misos, like

[35:26] salts, uh, that don't have so much of a tenderization effect, but just go get yourself

[35:30] uh, an immersion circulator so you can do low temperature cooking. If you do low temperature cooking on that stuff, you can get the textures that you like, um, or that you, you know, feel are enhanced by marinades without having to actually fundamentally alter the muscle structure of the meats that you're

[35:43] cooking. All right, hold a second. And then we'll get back to, we'll get back to some alternate stuff in your other questions in a minute, but call her, you're on the air. Hi, this is Patrick calling from Brooklyn. Hey, Patrick, how you doing? Good, good. I have a question, a sort of another sort of food safety question that, um, I cook about 8 lobsters, uh, steep parsing them in September, uh, froze everything, I've eaten everything, including the stock, but what I, I, I took out the tamale from the 8 lobsters, mixed it, whipped it with butter, and then froze it, and it's, but it's pretty amazing sweet stuff, sort of tastes like monkfish

[36:23] liver or, Uh, sea urchin, you know, together with the butter. It's been so good that I've been, uh, waiting to use it for the right, right occasion, and I'm starting to be, I'm paranoid that keeping something like a, uh, car cooked lobster liver. Mixed with butter in the freezer may not be safe over the long term. No, it's in the freezer. It's safe. The question is, what's the quality going to be like? And so when you have water in contact. Remember, butter already, butter keeps well in the freezer, butter's water content is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20, but they're kind of like kind of locked

[36:59] in in my cells there. So, but when you have a, you know, a fat and a, um, and a product there, especially one that contains its own enzymes and whatnot, assuming you haven't wiped them all out, is

[37:13] that, uh, you could get rancidity. So rancidity is not going to hurt anybody, but it might be a quality issue. And a lot of, a lot of like how rancid it's going to go depends on, um, depends on, and that's why a lot of times things like frozen cured pork becomes an issue because there's salt in it already, right?

[37:33] But and you're freezing it and you expect it to stay good, but in fact, the quality goes down, right?

[37:39] Because unless you're freezing at extremely low temperatures, what ends up happening

[37:43] is, is that all of the water soluble stuff becomes concentrated in a very concentrated water phase and the unfrozen part of your

[37:49] food and enzymatic reactions and rancidity and all those kinds of things still going on. None of these are safety issues. Okay? So, yeah, just flavor. So what I would do is I would, I would, like, uh, I would unwrap a, a, you know, before you have the big party where you're going to bust out the awesomeness, right? Do you, you have a, how do you, how do you pack this stuff in zips in fact? What do you have? I have it in a crop that's in, then, it's in a, uh, a

[38:14] ziploc that I basically took all the water, the, the air out of with the,

[38:18] uh, with the, with the meth dunking method. So it's basically here. There's very little contact with air. That's very good, right? So you have a very good chance that it's still good, right? Because air is your mortal enemy with these sorts of things for a variety of reasons. You want contact in the bag to prevent freezer burn. Not that it's as huge an issue with you because you're going to probably break it all down anyway. But what I would do is I would crack the, I would take out the zippy. I would I would just crack a piece off of the edge of it. And the worst of it's going to be where the air interface is on the zippy anyway. So like the rest of the quality is going to be higher than that. If you chip off a little piece of it and taste it, you know, you know, in

[38:57] like the week before you're going to use it, you know, and then keep the other stuff frozen solid, then you should get a good indicator of the quality.

[39:05] You don't want to bring it up and down a bunch of times because that's going to ruin the quality, the more you freeze off free saw, but

[39:10] that, you know, as long as you just pull it out, crack off a little piece with, like, you know, a knife, you know, just don't cut yourself. And, uh, uh, you should be able to get a firm indicator of quality. But from a safety point, I would not worry. Okay, great. Well, I mean, this is a pretty awesome ingredient. I'm just, I've been, I've been waiting, waiting for the right chance to use. And how long has it been since summer? So it's been like 5 months, 6 months? It's been, over Labor Day, I took 8 lobsters on the plane. I actually use your the clove oil method too. Oh, yeah, nice. It worked well for you? Yeah, work pretty well. I think the concentration was, it would, I want to try it again, you know, because it was, it was, it was a preliminary method, but it definitely seemed to, um, affect a lobster's flavor in a positive way, and

[39:55] I, I sort of, I have this grand vision of going back up the main, returning with more, trying again, and, and crazy. I, maybe a pot, possible idea of making fish sauce with, with, with lobster,

[40:07] lobster, uh, carcasses, because I haven't seen that time before. The interesting thing about, um, I have a new, I have a new technique for lobster that I use. Yeah, the lobster, the reason lobster tastes good in Maine is because, well, if you talk to a main person, it's because they have hard bottom, whereas like Cape

[40:26] Lobsters, like there's a mud bottom, and so like, you know, the lobster, the lobster folks from Maine are like, I

[40:31] would never eat one of those mud bugs from the Cape. And then you're like, oh, come on, man. Honestly, they do have some good tasting lobsters in Maine, but lobsters start deterior deteriorating the minute they're pulled out, right? So and like, so when they're sitting in tanks for a long time, they deteriorate. why, like, you know, if you if you get the guy from the lobster boat, that's why the lobster, plus also, obviously, depending on the time of year, whether you like a shedder or what, depending on how long ago the lobster molted, that can also

[40:55] obvious, it's an obvious effector of quality, but they, you know, you want the lobster to be as fresh as possible. This was why they probably tasted good. You flew them back and cooked them right away. But that wasn't a total aside, you know, because I go on tangents. But the, I have a new lobster technique. Uh, from maybe like a year ago or something that I do. If you don't want to do clove oil, you could try this one out. Um, what I do is I uh, I spike the, I put the lobster in a, in

[41:21] a uh, baking tray, right? Uh, with glass baking. I don't have to use glass, but I use it because it's non-reactive, a glass baking tray with like a little like wood block under its carapace. And then I cut through the carapace, like destroying all of

[41:35] the, you know, most of the ganglia that are around there. basically just bisect the head, right? So now you've wiped out the head and then I break it apart. And then I take the shells, and I make the shells into a lobster stock, and then I add the meat from the lobster

[41:57] stock, and then poach it off that way, so you don't lose any of the flavor, and I've been getting good results with it. Anyway, there's a different thing to try sometime if you want. Yeah, I'll be sure to try it. I'll let you know how the lobster tamale butter taste. Yeah, so yeah, send that send send us a link to the Twitter account. So at cooking issue. So you know how it tastes. Okay, great. Thanks so much, Dave. All right, cool. Thank you. Call her, you're on the air. Hello? Hello? Hi, it's Brian. How are you guys? Hey, doing all right. How you doing? I'm all right. Doing okay in the snow? Yeah, yeah. So, um, I got, all this conversation about botulism has made me paranoid about this, um, pressed eggplant pickle, um, that I, that I made, um, uh, a couple months ago when the weather was, was nice and we had lots of

[42:45] eggplants. So what I did is, I pressed, I, I sliced the eggplants in, and then I salted it, and then, um,

[42:53] basically I, I, I, I drained it, and then I added a bunch of vinegar to

[42:59] it. I mean, this is a traditional sort of Italian recipe, and then you take, and then you put

[43:04] some, uh, some olive oil and some garlic and some pepper over it, and then you, uh, and then

[43:11] you, you cover it. Um, and I've also seen it done with mushrooms as well. Um, so basically there's not much, there's not really any water, uh, or very little water in there. Should I be worried about botulism? I mean, I put them in cans, but I haven't done a heat pack. I didn't do a heat pack process because it was a cold process. Right. Well, I mean, I have a jar of those eggplants in my fridge right now. They're delicious. You know, I mean, I have a commercial variety, but they're Italian. they're delicious, but, um, they're acidic, you know, uh, so like, I mean, the main, the main thing there is, you know, your, your, your 2 main saviors there

[43:49] are they're salty and they're acidic. And so that's what's making them safe. I mean, the, the, the real problem is like uh, in mushrooms where people don't add acidity and they do it, you know, low acid or they don't add enough acid

[44:04] or enough acid and salt. Uh, and then they get rid of um, competitive uh, bacteria. Did you do a cooked step at all? Did I do a what step? Did you cook it at all or no? There was no cooking. Right. So again, like, you know, as I said before, that's probably actually helping you because if there was, if you didn't add enough salt to prevent any sort of growth or enough acid to really prevent growth, then probably you would get lactic acid bacteria growing in

[44:28] there and it would function more like a traditional pickle. Remember, when you're pickling vegetables in water, they're essentially in anaerobic, like sauerkraut and kimchi are essentially anaerobic

[44:39] activities, and things like botulism are being prevented by combinations of competition from lactic acid bacteria because they haven't been

[44:49] destroyed, and through salt and through the acidity, either added acidity in your

[44:56] case from vinegar or the acidity that's produced by lactic acid bacteria. And you know, I don't want to really go on the record saying what's safe and what's not because, you know, like, I

[45:05] can't. But the fact of the matter is, is that a lot of your problems are going to happen if you destroy the competitive bacteria through heat processing, because the heat

[45:13] processing, typically that you're going to do, unless you're doing retort canning, is not enough to kill the spores and things like

[45:18] botulism. You know what I'm saying? I hear that, but even even with this one, um, because it's covered with olive oil, does that make it more prone to, um,

[45:28] uh, to, you know, nasty bacteria? Well, the olive oil covering it like instantly now you're in an anaerobic, uh, you're in an anaerobic uh, environment without, right? But the question is, what's going to grow in that anaerobic environment? So you're, you know, there are nasty things that grow in anaerobic environment,

[45:49] perfringians, uh, you know, botulism, you know, some spore forming nasties like that. There's microaerobic things that can grow in those environments like listeria. And so then the question is, but there's also good things that grow in that environment, like lactic acid bacteria, which is

[46:04] all you know, all the great lactic pickles in the world are based on. So then the question is how do you favor the growth of lactic acid bacteria and disfavor the growth of the other nasty ones and salt, right? acidity and not killing the, because unfortunately, it's fairly easy to kill the good ones because they don't form, they're not spore forming.

[46:26] Lactic acid bacteria, you wipe them out and they're wiped out. So if you're not wiping them out to begin with. They're still there. And even just like having, even if you cook something, if you expose it to oxygen and then put it to the air and put it back in, there's more lactic acid bacteria hitting it because again, they're ubiquitous, but it's, it's this kind of pasteurization in place in oil phase with low acid and low salt. They're really favoring nasty things like botulism,

[46:52] um, fringes, all these other things. So, you know, I don't want to say 100% because I don't know how much salt and how much vinegar there, but if

[46:59] it tastes acidic and salty, you know, and you've gotten rid of some of the water through

[47:04] pressing, and, you know, uh, you know, it seems like fairly, I mean, especially if you're following a traditional procedure, it seems like you're probably pretty safe.

[47:15] A lot of times the safety issues happen when you take a traditional preservation method, let's

[47:19] say confit. And you, you know, I'm making quote marks in the air, modernize it, right? And so typically what modernizing it means is like on a

[47:29] comfit, is cooking it less, meaning you have a higher water activity, because you're not cooking a lot of the water out, or be reducing the

[47:36] salt or reducing the cure time on it. And so like, or taking the herbs away because the herbs also have some bacteriostatic effects that are in comfy. So by removing all these hurdles, you can take what is traditionally a safe product and

[47:48] make it an unsafe product. So, but if you're following a traditional method, you're not trying to go hyper low salt and you're not trying to do a bunch of other things like

[47:55] that. Um, you know, there are, there are safety, there are safety methods built into centuries old techniques because when they did it other

[48:07] ways they would die. Yeah, this is a, this is an old school method, and um, but if, if the can had some, um, some gas coming

[48:16] out, does the botulism release gas? Oh, hell yeah. Not always. That's the thing. some forms of botulism are going to release gas. So that's why you're always told not to open, not to eat cans that produce gas. Some, but that, but gas is not a guarantee of

[48:33] no botulism. I mean, I mean, sorry, lack of gas is not a guarantee of no botulism because there are botulism strains that will not make gas. But if there's gas, also lactic acid bacteria can make gas. So, uh, you know, it's, um, like Surstraming,

[48:50] the, the crazy Swedish fish that, like, you know, you're not allowed to bring on airplanes, although I did. Uh, like, you know, that stuff, the cans are bulging and when you put the can opener into it, the can like explodes with with some foul smelling gunk. So there's other things that make gas other than botulism. But, uh, you know, that's why, but, you know, if, if a can bloats and you don't know why you pitch it because cans are supposed to be sterilized. So if you're going to can some to commercially sterilize. So if you can something, you're expecting a no bloat situation. You know what I'm saying? Right, right. Okay. So like a pickle, like when you pack a pickle, right? Let's say you make a pickle. And you pack a pickle. even like a lactic pickle, and then you're going to can it after it's done, right? So there, what you're doing is you're killing the lactic acid bacteria. So there should be no more bloat. And then even if you if you get bloat on that, the assumption is it's something nasty that you didn't kill like botulism and it's no good. You see what I'm saying? See the difference? I got it. Another pickle related question. So it, I've, I've read that you can use way to kickstart, uh, uh, uh,

[49:53] a pickle, um, and kind of keep it, keep it going, going that way. Um, but that seems to

[50:00] be kind of counterintuitive because that is, it sounds like a different process, which would create an environment that wouldn't be friendly for lactic acid bacteria.

[50:08] Well, uh, I mean, like, remember, like, cheese is grown, I mean, cheese, like, cheese is fundamentally, like, a lot of the ripening in cheese is, uh,

[50:18] our lactic acid bacteria and other things. I mean, it depends on what kind of cheese you're making, but no, the way is a good substrate to grow bacteria. Yeah. Oh, okay. So I can use my uh, from my yoga away from my yogurt, uh, as

[50:35] a, as a kind of Kickstarter for my pickle and. Oh yeah, it's full of lactic acid bacteria already. You know what I mean? Especially if it's way from yogurt, you know, and you haven't heated it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's already precultured. I don't know whether or not the particular strains that you have are necessarily the ones you want in

[50:51] pickles, but yeah, you've already got a, you already got a raging lactic acid colony there. So already you've kickstarted it and you have you have the inhibition of uh, negative uh, bacteria like, uh, like, uh, botulism

[51:04] or or, or pfringians. Would it be possible to pickle uh, with using whey, uh, as a, as a starter, and so you don't have to add salt or I don't have to add as much salt? I don't know. I don't want to I'm not gonna, I don't, I can't, yeah. I don't want to go. I want to cosign on that. Although there's a lot of people that do very low salt fermentations, but, you know, I've never done a lot of research on

[51:29] on their actual, like, absolute safety. Okay, great. Thanks for all the help. I think I'll be eating the eggplant pitbull. I'll let you know if I'm still around. Yeah, if your vision goes double, go to the hospital. That's blurred vision is one of the problems with botulism. I'm just kidding. But I'm not. I'm kidding but I'm not. All right. have a good one All right. So let me rip through the rest of M's questions because I got a couple of questions I got to go to and they're going to pull me off the air pretty soon, I think. Okay. So on the meat, look, do you not like soy? Soy? I just, you know, who sent this the tofu book, Adrian wins tofu book? I just finished reading it, and now, at Stas is, now she's, she's, she's going to make the face because I'm going to go on a tofu cake in the new year because it's been many years since I've made tofu regularly, and I realized how much I love fresh tofu, and M, if you like to cook, fresh tofu, making your own tofu, I've never found a tofu supplier here in

[52:22] the, they're here, but I've never looked them up that, that I really, really love. I love tofu that you make, like, that you make. It's awesome. Like, go ahead and make that, and you can put a whole bunch of things other than soy, which you hate on tofu, and fresh tofu is

[52:37] amazing, and it's also not high in acids, and it doesn't cause the bloat out that you, you know, that you would get from the other

[52:43] things. It's fun to make. Then you can go, you can morph from that. Make, you know what I used to make. I've only made it a couple times a years ago, but I loved it. was Yuba. You ever made Fresh Yuba? Anyone here? Yuba, Fresh Yuba, you know, which is the tofu skins is not the same thing as the dried stuff. It's just not the same stuff. The stuff that's never been that you just make fresh and you eat fresh is just phenomenal

[53:05] products. So I would go to that or, you know, try something like Tempeh or something like that. Uh, or if you want like hard protein. Like, I'm not a such of a satan guy, but you guys like satan? No. I'm not such a satan fellow, but you could try it out. give those give those a shot. And also, I wouldn't worry about the amount of garlic unless it's actually bothering you or the acidity of those

[53:27] pilaf products. They're probably just adding a small amount for flavor. And, uh, you know, I wouldn't worry so much uh, uh, about that. And if I have some time I'll go back and we'll talk about some more spices. You guys got any good spices? I like the ones that you were mentioning. I like turmeric. I like cumin a lot. I use a lot of cumin. I put it like boatloads of cumin in my guacamole, although apparently I'm told I'm not. In fact, Stas and Piper made a chili and it didn't have cumin in it. I'm like, well, then it ain't chili. It's not chili. It's some sort of Vermont meat stew. You liked it, right? Yeah. So I was like, I don't want to hear about the chili. All right, let me catch some other questions real quick before they rip me off here. Let's start with Sam, Sam writes in, hey, Dave, what are your thoughts on storing chicken eggs at room temperature? Does the type, grocery store, eggs, farmers market eggs, blah, blah, blah, just falling out of the chicken? Oh, falling out of the chicken? don't like that. I thought you like that? thought's that? Bloop. Stas hates that image is going to be in her head now. And our previous storage conditions matter. I have no problem storing eggs in the fridge. I just think they look badass in a tray on the counter. Sam. Okay, listen, Sam, the issue with storing exit room temperature is not one of safety. It's one of quality. And it depends on how long you're going to store them. If you're only going to have them for a couple of days, then it's not going to make that big of a difference. You're going to want to look up the haw unit. The haul unit is a measurement of how high the egg yolk sits up on the egg white, and it's a determinant of the quality of thick white versus thin white. And what happens at higher temperatures like storage temperatures out on the counter is that the thick white breaks down. And you also have a lot more transpiration at the higher temperatures and loss of moisture through

[55:01] the egg. So you're going to get more weight loss at room temperature, through the pores in the eggshell. And you're also going to get more degradation of the thick white into thin white when it's sitting at room temperature. So if you're going to use them right away, no, it doesn't matter. If you're not going to use them right away, then please keep them in the fridge because you're just going to be losing more and more of your thick white. That makes sense? Yeah. And they, I read an article called comparing comparative proteomic analysis of egg white proteins under various storage

[55:30] temperatures. And what they think that's going on is that you're getting an acceleration of the breakdown of Oval Bumen at higher

[55:38] temperatures possibly due to enzymatic reactions. Okay. Got a question on someone who just got their Nomiku, but I don't have the name of who asked it, which is unfortunate. Dear Dave, Nastasia, and Crew. I recently reviewed, I received my brand new Nomiku Circulator, which is made by WePop, WePop, SwippyPop. Bam. And I'm extremely happy with a few things I've cooked in it, 63 degree egg, 55 degree script

[56:00] steak, and 60 degree sausages. Those are all good, although cook the rib. I like the rib much better than the strip, but that's just me. For Christmas. This is very important. we had to get to this question. For Christmas, I've ordered a 2 rib aged prime rib for my small family, and of course, I'm planning to circulate it. I've heard Dave talk about this dish a few times, but I could not piece together all the advice from different shows. So I'd be very grateful if he could give a best practices for low temperature prime rib. I'm planning to do 55 for about 4 hours with the meat sliced into 2 steaks. I think this is enough to pasteurize it for my pregnant wife and two-year-old son. Uh, you're correct. It is. But advice on other time temperature combos is welcome. The issues I'd most like advice on are bone on or bone off, and best uses for those

[56:39] bones, if they're not circulated with the meat, seasoning before circulating or just after, and whether to add any fats, aromatics in the bag, whether to chill before

[56:48] searing, or just hold the cooking temperature, or drop it a bit lower, and best methods for searing. My 1st low temperature steak was pre-imposed searinus skillet, but I had some trouble with the excess surface moisture in the postsear. Besides skillet searing. The other options would be a domestic broiler or a cheap propane torch. I've kicked for the seers all, but it can't come soon enough. Are there any other pitfalls tricks you care to mention? Thanks a lot for the great information for entertainment, by the way, your previous advice to limit the oxidation of vermouth by decanting into smaller bottles worked very well. Glad to hear it. And it gave me the excuse to keep a supply of 200 milliliter cava bottles at home for when the fancy strikes. Uh, best and then we don't have your name, which sucks. But you sent it to us. So here's the deal. So on a dry age prime rib. Smell the bone. Usually when you're dry aging a piece of meat, a lot of the kind of dry age smell is on

[57:38] the on the like silver skin and like stuff right around that bone. If you cook in a bag with the bone, sometimes that flavor can permeate all of the

[57:46] meat and some people like that and some people hate that. So if you are a huge flavor, a fan, rather, of the, of the dry age funk that comes from a long age thing, just smell that bone and realize that that smell is going to be throughout the piece of meat if you cook that

[58:01] way. If you don't want it that hardcore. And if your wife is pregnant, let me just tell you, having gone through cooking for

[58:07] pregnant wife twice, same wife, 2 different pregnancies, uh, you, uh, certain smells like that can really be triggers, uh, for uh, people who are pregnant. And so you might not want to have, of making them not want to eat it. You know what I'm saying? So, if I were you and I was cooking for my wife when she was pregnant, I would cut the bone off before I

[58:29] cooked it. Now, what to do with that bone? Chop that bone up, roast it off, make any sort of gravy, render the fat out of it, do whatever you can, and make a Yorkshire pudding to go with your prime rib that can be done at the same time that

[58:41] thing is done because Yorkshire pudding is one of God's gifts of food. You just want to render out enough flavor and cracklings and fat so that when you whip up the Yorkshire pudding, make sure and pour it into the

[58:50] hot, you know, into the roasting pan that you get that awesome beef flavor. And typically that's what I'll do. When I make a prime rib, I'll trim it all out for, I leave fat on because I like fat, but I'll trim off, you know, some of the fat and the

[59:03] bones, and I'll roast them off, and I can have a Yorkshire pudding ready as soon as the steak is ready instead of waiting for 20 minutes while the rib is resting during normal cook to make your Yorkshire

[59:10] pudding. So I got you covered on that bone. That's definitely what you should do Now, what you really need to also be careful of is you don't want to low temp cook the rib entire and then serve it that way because with prime

[59:21] rib, you want a little bit of the overcooked parts around the edges, right? So if you're going to serve it as a standing rib, which you're not. Then what I what I do is, I would cook the cook it low temp, and then roast it in a high oven after, you let the temperature come all, you know, way down, and then you roast it in a hot oven to get that kind of prime rib

[59:40] feel. If you're going to stake it, then I would sear it. I would stake it before you cook it, right? This way, you're going to have some searing around the edges. It's not just one big field of same colored meat. I would stake it before you sear it. Before you circulate it. Then I would do your pre-sear just like you did, bag it. I would cook it at that 55 for, like you say, like 4 hours is good. It'll be nice and tender. Then I would drop it to 50 for about a half hour. Uh, you know, an ice cube drop it. Just throw, set your circuit 50, throw ice cubes in. The temperature will drop down to 50, hold it there for a half hour. You're not limiting the safety because you're going to eat it right away. Then I would sear it in a super hot. I would get like cast iron thing screaming hot. Don't use a torch on it. Cast iron pants, screaming hot. Open your windows, turn on the hoods. It's going to make an immense amount of smoke. It's going to be a nightmare. Then after they're screaming hot, put, you know, enough oil to make sure that you hit all the sides of the

[1:00:35] steaks. I would do 2 pots, 2 pans at once, and then do like a minute and a

[1:00:40] half , 2 minutes on each side to sear it off and serve it with the Yorkshire pudding, and I think you're going to be happy with that. Yeah? Yep. Yeah. All right. Good luck with that. Let us know how it goes. Now, do we have time? We have time for one more quick one or no? We need to do some promo stuff. But so I got, I got, okay, well, David Gabua wrote in about foie gras and cooking an Arzac egg. All right. Our callers should only ask one question. That's the problem. What? Wow, we're here. All right. Why don't you do the promo stuff? and if they rip us off the air, they rip us off the air. And then I'll talk about, at the end, we'll... right, Rebecca, go ahead. What are we talking about? Oh, the Reddit tonight. You guys are Dave's doing Reddit AMA. I'm doing an ask me anything, right? That why it's AM. I don't really understand how it works, but apparently I'm going to be at a computer terminal between 6 and 8 p.m. tonight. 6.30 and 8 p.m. tonight, answering any questions. And they showed me an example and some nuclear scientist was like there, like some sort of like, you know, anti- or I guess he's anti-nuclear proliferation, something like that. And, uh, and someone asked them how to cook lamb, low temp. holy crap, I hope, 1st of all, he was totally wrong, by the way. Do not put garlic powder on your low temp lamb. This has been circulating that you should put garlic powder in the bag for right reasons. don't do it But, uh, because it tastes kind of burnt and I don't like it. But then I was like, I hope no one asked me questions about nuclear proliferation because that's not my speciality. And it says, ask me anything. But Rebecca said, don't worry, it's not answer anything. It's ask me anything. I can be like, yo, I don't know anything about it. I don't know squat about that. I don't know anything about. I mean, I do know something about that. It's true. It's true. You don't know the answer to it, you can say you don't know the answer. you know, that's the smartest thing you could ever say. Like, my favorite thing to say, I don't know the answer. I don't know. what other promotional stuff do we got to do? I think that's it. All right, okay. So, like, until they, they're going to turn me off the air when I do it, but I'm going to read David's question on

[1:02:29] Foi. First of all, and Arzac egg. I going to do the RZA gig first. First of all, I'm a series all Kickstarter, Kickstarter supporter, so I'll be looking forward to having my very own seers all in June. Also, the wife and I had a great time at Booker and Dax in June. We chatted with you very briefly about the centrifuge. I just bought off of eBay, finished our libations and headed off to WD 50 for dinner. Good choices, Booker and D WD 50, like both of those places. We really need to make it back to NYC soon and see what new stuff you guys are cooking up there. We've got a big dinner coming up and we want to wow the 3 couples. My wife and I are inviting. I have 2 separate questions related to this, but if you only have time for one, then the 1st one is more important. I'm serving seared foie gras, but I don't have a sears all yet, I'm sorry for you, because sears all is the best way to do this. So how should I cook and sear it? I'm getting a dozen 2.5 ounce prepackaged slices of flaw and don't want to render too much fat out from each slice. Also, these guys are sensitive so I can't serve it rare. It really needs to be pasteurized. With this in mind, I was going to cook the slices, sous vide at 131 for 20 to 30 minutes, and then steer one side only. I know that each step I would lose precious flaw fat. Well, bagging the floss slices with some fat, either clarify butter or pre-rendering the floss safe from previous applications, reduce the amount of fat. each slice loses in the water bath. For steering, how about pan searing with generous amount of fat already in the pan? Maybe a full on shallow fryer, even deep fry, since my oven broiler really sucks. And my toast torch mostly sucks. The only other option is to throw them onto a gridiron to get my charcoal, weber blazing hot. not afraid to do this, even in the winter, but it will not be fun. All right, here's some answers on this. I'd be very careful. The extra fat is not going to help you. And if you're rendering 20, 30 minutes at 131 F is not actually enough to pasteurize it. So the question when I say sensitive is, are they sensitive to the fact that it hasn't been cooked or are they sensitive in the sense that they might have an

[1:04:15] immune compromised immune system, right? If it's just that they're sensitive about whether or not it's cooked or not. If you're doing a torchon traditionally, you just do a rapid, like 92nd dip in like simmering water. And I think you're probably going to get less fat loss that way than trying to pasteurize it at like a higher temp for a longer period of time.

[1:04:34] I think you're going to get a better texture. Then you can cool it down again in the bag. And then, um, and then from there, I would do, I would just do like a screaming hot on a dry pan. You're going to do much better because you're going to get a faster crust. You gonna get less bleed out from the edges. Remember, if you put it in deep fat, you're heating the edges too, so you're going to get more bleed out all over all over everything. I would put it in a dry pan. I've always been taught to put it in a dry pan. I would get it hot and put it in a dry pan if the hottest thing you own is your

[1:05:02] Weber. You could put your pan on the Weber and get it to go, but didn't do a quick sear off like that. Just be careful with it. Also, uh, since you got a dozen 2.5 uh, prepackaged slices, what I would do, and I did this when I was testing out, I had to do the 1st time I cooked it with the sears all

[1:05:17] even, I did this a test. I got like an extra slice and I just tested that sucker first. I would take your pre-packed slices, they come in backpags, so they'll probably not cook backpags. And then I would just do like uh, like a 30 or 30 or 42nd dunk in uh, in simmering water, put it directly in ice water after that to stop to cook out on it. Then after it's cold, I would cut it open. I would hit the one side and then put it on a serving tray in like

[1:05:43] a in like a warm place so that the center of it can warm up the temperature. I would try it with one. And then if you can get it done with one, then you're going to get it to work with all of them. But let me know how it works out. Okay, two. And then this is the last one I can do, but since it's for a Christmas holiday, since it's for a holiday dinner styles, I have to do it. I'm doing my own version of an Arzac egg. So, uh, Arzac, you know, their uh, famous uh, father, uh, daughter, chef team, the Arzacs in Spain, uh, and they do this egg where what they do is, is they, uh, they

[1:06:10] put, uh, uh, they put uh, plastic wrap into a ramekin, and then they put like nice flavored fats, like duck fat. It was actually in one of the early lucky peaches in the ramen thing. Uh, and uh, in the ramen episode of the, they call them episodes, issues of the uh, of uh, Lucky Peach. And they use, I think, duck fat, olive oil, and, I think, truffle oil in it. And then, but they, so they paint the plastic wrap with this and add a little oil. They crack the egg in, but they also can put in salt, pepper and spices, which is why it's, I guess, an interesting technique as opposed to, let's say, just cooking low temp in shell, which is what I normally do for poaching in shell.

[1:06:40] And then you tie string around the plastic wrap to, in case the egg, and then you can poach the egg at traditional temperatures in water, but it's never touched the

[1:06:50] water, and it's already pre-kind of oiled and spiced. So it's an interesting technique, uh, uh, Arzac A. Anyway, so just so you people, if you want to know what RZAC egg is, that was explanation. So here's the question. As far as I can tell, no one else has tried what I'm about to tell you, and this might be my very 1st culinary invention, I think, instead of using cling film for the Arzac egg, you put the egg into a spherical ice mold, and you can see these on

[1:07:14] Amazon.com, close up the mold and then inject additional egg white through the hatch on the top with a syringe until the mold is completely filled.

[1:07:21] Uh, then uh, sous vide at 190 F. Then with question mark, I've tried doing this for different time intervals. It can't seem to get the egg whites to set properly, so the egg hold the shape and doesn't fall apart. And the yolk is somewhat runny. Do you have any thoughts on strategies I can pursue to make this work? Thanks for any advice you can give. David Gabwop. Okay, here's what I would do. One, make sure you're oiling the inside of your stuff so you get good release. Injecting it might be breaking up the structure of the egg white. Like, remember in the original Arzac egg. They're not breaking up the structure of the egg white. They're leaving it entire, which is why I kind of poach it together that way. Uh, so, uh, you know, I would try to see whether you can get away with not doing that, add a fat to

[1:07:58] it instead of adding extra egg white and do it in a way that doesn't disrupt the egg white. The other thing I'd be careful of is that I looked up the website that you sent me and they say that it's top rack dishwasher safe, meaning maybe not bottom rack. Find out what kind of plastic that sucker is. Uh, because something like polyethylene is not going to be able to hold up that well. It's totally food safe, but it's not going to be able to hold up that well at simmering temperatures. If it's probably propylene, you're probably going to be okay. So just make sure that the temperature is going to be all right. And then I wouldn't even try. I wouldn't even use a circle on that, I would just simmer it the way the RZA guys do because you're

[1:08:31] gonna want a very fast, rapid set of the egg white proteins in order to get a nice surface and to get it to release properly from the mold.

[1:08:38] And with that, they're going to kick me off the air. Happy holidays, cooking issues.

[1:08:51] Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archive 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. Thank, thank.