[0:00] Today's program has been brought to you by White Oak Pastures, a 5 generation Georgia-based beef and poultry farm determined to conduct business in an honorable manner. For more information, visit whiteoakpastures.com. I'm Grace Bonnie of After the Jump, and you're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:28] And we're back. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave All, your host of Cookies is coming to the live, but not from Roberta's, Jack. Jackie, there? I'm here. Jack is in Roberta's pizzeria hanging out at the radio station. Unfortunately, I have to call in, but I didn't want to miss again. Nastash is also calling in. Hey, stars. Hey how are you? All right, where are you? You're in Midtown somewhere over there in the kitchen. The lair of... The Nastasia tried moving downtown, and she couldn't handle the downtown air and she can't basically survive anywhere other than in Hell's Kitchen. pretty much true to us. Very true. Yeah, yeah. How are you doing? How am I drinking you? Well, I'm not so eh, meh, meh. Nah, nah. I'll be all right. Uh, but, uh, yeah, next time we'll do it in the, in the, in the radio, in the radio show. It's been a crazy couple of weeks. The 1st 2 weeks, I was like literally flying on Tuesday and Tuesday. And so, you know, we couldn't do the radio show. Uh, and then uh, the week after that, last week, I was uh, doing foie gras, which we can talk about, uh, I was shooting a foie gras thing for vice. We were talking about the, um, foie gras band in California that uh, was passed a long time ago, but just went into uh,

[1:46] effect about a year and a half ago. And so they were doing a, uh, kind of a documentary on, uh, government intervention in food, in foodstuffs, uh, focus mainly on, well, focus 100% on the, on the foie gras thing. But I actually got to visit when I was in France. I ate a foie gras farm where they were doing the gavage on geese. Yeah? saw the force feeding. The lady would not attempt to force feed me. She would not asked. I specifically said, hey, can you stick that tube down my throat and do it? She's like, no, no, she wouldn't do it. Can you believe that stuff? You would have done it. You totally would have shoved that tube down my throat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but anyway, uh, anyone out there with a question? Call your questions 2718-497-2128. 718-497-2128, which is exactly what I just did. I just called my question in 271. I can't remember. I can't remember the number. It's been so damn long since we've done it. But anyway, we could not miss another week. It's been too, too long. So let me get to some of the questions that we had written in for last week. Brandenburg wrote in on vacuum. Maybe later we could talk about foie gras. You want to talk about foie gras later on? Sure. Anything else? Anything else been happening? Anything good? Anything bad? Um, no, nothing, nothing we should talk about on the radio. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not meant to sound ominous people. No, it's, uh, Brandon Bird wrote in, not like Brandon Burn Arena. Brandon Bird, uh, wrote in uh, about vacuum, uh, vacuum machines, uh, searing, uh, and jack. You might want to take note. I'll tell you the last thing he wrote. He said, please ask Jack to play Seltzer by Bluto. It's one of my favorites. Someone who actually likes the seltzer song, Jack. Wow, you're going to have to give it to me. I don't have the master Bluto copy. No? Oh, yeah, that's right. You played it off my phone that time, right? Yeah, we gotta get that in the rotation. Yeah. Wow. The 1st real Pluto... First real Pluto super fan. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, like, you know, the whole series of that song is that, and I don't have that problem anymore

[3:43] because this is why, like, the song is no longer current. I wrote those lyrics along with our band in like 19

[3:50] 90 or something, uh, 90, uh, man, 90, no, like 91, 92, something like that. And so, uh, the deal was back then that, you know, you had to buy your seltzer in bottles and then you have the bottle that's left in the fridge. I don't know if he, look, I'm sure many, many people who listen here probably drink seltzer, right? I mean, that's probably fair that a lot of us drink bubbly water, because, you know, if you like me, you probably like bubbly water, except my mom doesn't. My mom doesn't like bubbly water. But anyways, point being that back in the day, for those of you that are old enough to not have a soda stream or carbonation unit, you had to buy bottles of seltzer. And the problem always was is that you had, and Jack, do you like seltzer? Of course. Yeah. Stas, I know you like seltzer. You buy it in what? How many liters bottle do you buy then? Liter. One liter. Why don't you buy a 2 liter bottle of seltzer? It goes pet. Yep. Yeah, because it goes freaking flat. Unless I know I'm going to make a lot of so much worse than flat soda. So you can buy a 2 liter bottle of soda and drink it over the course of like a day and a half or something like this and you're all right. But a seltzer, even though you drink vastly more seltzer, then you drink soda, you always buy it in one liter bottles, and that's because it

[5:02] just tastes horrible when it goes when it goes flat. So the whole song is crafted around this idea. And I remember, like, I would buy cases of seltzer, and then someone would come over, and they're like, can I have some? I just want a little bit, and I would be always pissed because as soon as I cracked that bottle, that bottle's ruined. You know, it's over. You know what I mean? It's like, it's done. And so, uh, yeah, so that song was basically about that, the whole phenomenon of, of, uh,

[5:24] cell sort of going to crap in your fridge. David, if this all goes well, can we host the Pluto reunion concert? I have to find all the... I mean, I know I know where I know where 2 out of the 3 other folks in Pluto are. Uh, one of them is still in New Haven. Uh, one of them is uh, a lawyer here and uh, I've got to find a 3rd person. He was a classics student at the time. And for all I know, he's a classics professor now, he can find him. Well, if the listener demand goes up enough, we might just have to make it happen. Yeah, yeah. Play Selfser Live. Be awesome. Um, uh, and that was, that was just our one food related song. Actually, we had another song with a slightly food related thing called a weekend at Count

[6:08] Sporkula's, because sports are awesome, as everyone knows. Anyway, they're actually not awesome. Like you love, like sports are one of those things where everyone loves the idea of the sport, but the sport itself is always disappointing. You notice that? Yeah, yeah. Kind of like gin and tonics where like the idea is. So awesome, but most doesn't suck. Someone's gonna come up with a good sport someday. Anyways, um, back to uh, Brandenburg's question. Thanks so much for your hard work over the years on the show. I've been a reader of the blog for a while, but only recently took it upon myself to listen to the podcast. I had no idea what I've been missing because that's like I do. I had to listen to every damn podcast. Like it's even worse. she can't even, although she does try to zone out. It's like much more difficult when you're actually sitting next to me. Am I rights does? That's very true. Yeah. I managed to listen to your 1st 100 episodes over the past couple of months, which has some dedication right there. That is some dedication. Well, going on long walks with my dog and it's been tremendously rewarding and entertaining experience. I've learned more than I'd ever imagined from your show, so please keep up the good work. I've got a few questions for you guys. I recently acquired a chamber vacuum sealer, a VACMaster VP 112, which, by the way, is one of the machines like the lower cost machines. A lot of people ask me about. They have, I've, we've had stuff. How many people have asked me about that a lot, right? But I haven't used it, so I can't, you know, I can't, I can't comment. anyway. And the 1st thing I did was buy some fruit and some booze to experiment with vacuum infusion. Good, good man. I was extremely happy with the results, but was surprised by how much flavor from the fruit was transferred into the surplus liquor in the bag.

[7:31] I've done rapid infusions in an easy canister, you know, the whipped cream canisters, but the results in

[7:36] the chamber vac seem to work comparably well to the EC infusions, though I didn't do a controlled test. Have you done any experiments to see how these 2 techniques compared to each other in terms of flavor extraction? Do either offer advantages if the other lacks? Have you ever tried doing a pressure infusion in an ISI and then immediately transferring to a chamber of Act to get further extraction? All right, so let's handle that one first. So they are a little bit different. Uh, and, you know, come November time, when my book comes out, I've written like extremely long winded, uh, uh, you know, um, chapter on the difference between between the 2 of them, but you can get comparative comparable

[8:13] results. In fact, I came up with the pressure infusion idea as a result of thinking about the mechanics of vacuum infusion. Here is the difference. When you're using a vacuum machine to infuse. You're putting a fruit or whatever into your booze, you're sucking a

[8:30] vacuum, and the infusion hasn't started happening yet, right? What you're doing is sucking the air out of the fruit. So the fruit's got all these air holes in it, you suck the air out, right? But no infusion has happened. You might be now, at some point, you're boiling probably, unless it's really cold, you're boiling some liquid out from the fruit onto the surface.

[8:47] So you're getting probably some transfer of literal fruit juice into the liquor at that

[8:52] point, like right at the get go, right? But you're not infusing anything into the fruit yet. All of a sudden, you let the air back in and wham, the air pressure comes in, obviously, it hits liquid, liquid is incompressible, so the liquid gets forced into what used to be air holes in the fruit, and now you have liquid booze inside your fruit, right?

[9:13] So now you have fruit that has some booze in it. Now, maybe some flavor in the liquor at this point, probably not that much. If you suck a 2nd vacuum, You reboil that liquid out of the fruit, and now you have both a fruit that's infused and a liquor that's infused, right? And yes, this is similar to what you get in, uh, in an easy, but the issue is, is that the pressure differential in a vacuum machine is only ever about £15 per square inch, whereas the pressure that you can use to force things in, and actually increase the rate of, uh, of diffusion and the rate of things moving around is much higher

[9:49] in, in an easy bottle, right? And it, what I've noted is that the higher the pressure, when I increase the

[9:57] pressure in an easy, the higher the pressure, the kind of more rapid the effects of infusion are.

[10:01] So you're getting a more rapid effect. So, I would say that the EC is a lot more flexible because you have a wider pressure range you

[10:09] could work on. And it's also easier to do longer term things in an AC because you can keep it under pressure for a long time. And also, you can, I would guess that you can do multiple easy things without losing as many volatiles as you would if you were sucking a constant vacuum on things, which can cause loss of

[10:27] volatile through distillation. So, I think there's different, but they can be used, uh, they can be used similarly. Also, AC, you can do warm, whereas a vacuum, you can't. So you can speed infusions by doing things warm or even hot. And another thing that, I mean, the main disadvantage of the EC. Right? There's two. The 2 main disadvantages of the ECR. One, you're limited in volume. You can only do what your canister will hold, right? That's the main one. And the 2nd one, is you have to spend money every time you do the infusion, because you have to buy the cartridges. So those are the 2 main disadvantages. The main disadvantage. For instance, if you're getting a comparable result in your EC to your vacuum, I would say, and you want more infusion, I would

[11:10] say add an extra cartridge. Bang, you're going to get more infusion. I normally do all of my infusions with 2 cartridges, all of them. Sometimes I do 3 but they don't let me say that. And then, uh, uh, you know, after that, I can also, instead of letting it

[11:26] go one, two, 2 minutes. I can let it go three, four, 5 minutes and really ramp up the, the, uh, the infusion. The reason I don't is most of the time when I'm doing a rapid infusion, I'm doing it specifically for the effect that it has, which means that what the rapid infusion

[11:42] does, as opposed to traditional infusion, is it, uh, it can pull out flavors, uh, in in different ways. It was hard to explain. So, for instance, in a hot pepper. Uh, you have the flavor of the pepper and then you have the heat from the pepper. In a long term infusion, you get a lot of the heat and the heat, a lot of times can drown out the flavor of the pepper, right? In a shorter infusion time, you get more kind of equal levels of heat and

[12:08] pepper flavor, right? So now I can do one of 2 things with the rapid infusion now. I can either let the rapid infusion go longer, and then it's more like a traditional infusion, which means it's going to have more heat in it, right? as opposed to pepper flavor. So the heat will rise in relation to the pepper flavor, or I could just add a ridiculous amount of pepper and keep the time the same. And that's in general what I do. So when I'm trying to do rapid infusions, I'm usually trying to take advantage of some sort of

[12:37] differential infusion that happens over short time scales. And so instead of increasing the time, I increase the amount of ingredient that I'm infusing. So when you're tasting 2 things, you shouldn't just taste for the strength of the overall infusion, right, which can depend on a number of variables, but you should taste on the balance of

[12:56] the infusion as well. But vacuum and EC are doing somewhat similar if turned on their head kind of

[13:03] thing. That makes that makes sense, does? Yeah, it does. All right. Now, I have another question on vacuum ceiling, garlic, and botulism. This is a good one because we've gotten this one a couple times too. I usually do low temp sous vide cooking for immediate service at home, but since I got a chamber

[13:18] vac. I wanted to do cook chill freeze cooking for economy and deliciousness and time saving, my friend, time saving. When my chamber vac arrived, I stocked up on chicken breasts that were on

[13:28] sale and cooked them at low temp at 62 for one hour with garlic, olive oil, and some

[13:33] weights. That's herbs that I like to pronounce it oids. Uh, that's my standard technique for uh, cook serve low temp chicken. I let them rest for 20 minutes at room temp and submersion in cold tap water for 20 and then show them a nice water for 30 before moving to the freezer. Man, somebody's really like red up on their fogus. So that's the full gouseau chilling technique, by the way. So for those of you that aren't like a hip to cooling curves on low temp work. Uh, you know, you and I thought this was a load of horse crap. But, uh, you know, years ago when uh, Bruno Gousseau, who's uh, the, you know, the chief, one of the chief guys at uh, cuisine solutions

[14:06] there and kind of the, you know, one of the uh, grandfathers of uh, low temp

[14:11] cooking. You know, he told me that you don't want to chill meat incredibly quickly when it comes out of the bath, because you want it to reabsorb the liquids, uh, more,

[14:19] that you want it to chill slowly because if it chills slowly, it reabsorbs more of the cooking liquids that it exudes as it, uh, as it, you know, as it cooks, it exudes

[14:28] liquids, if it cools more slowly, then it will put it back in. So he has this ramped cooling thing and Mills and I were like, ah, it's crap. It's this crap. And then we ran the test and it turns out to work. But anyway, so you've been doing your homework on the cooling. But anyway, it was only a few days later that I realized that there's a botulism risk cooking with garlic

[14:45] in a vacuum. I'm reasonably sure that these are safety, but appreciate any clarification you could offer on the relationship between botulism,

[14:51] temperature, and vacuum level. Okay. Uh, I'm going to say this, before I get into a long winded explanation, uh, so that someone in my life lose track of what I'm saying, it's fine. It's just not a problem. The problem with botulism will not grow in the freezer. Botulism will not grow at 60 degrees uh Celsius, right? So when you're cooking, the problem with botulism is that botulism isn't, botulism isn't destroyed by either freezing or by

[15:25] cooking at normal temperatures, right? So it, it, it, well, you know, you can kill the vegetable, uh,

[15:33] be more clear. There's 2 things that happen. There's vegetative cells, active bacteria. And then the reason that brotchulism is such a tricky little weasel to work with is that it also forms spores. So whenever you start killing off botulism cells. botulus and bacteria rather. Whenever you start killing off botulus and bacteria. Some of them turn into spores. And those spores are extremely resistant to being destroyed by heat,

[15:59] have to pressure cook to get rid of them. And that's why when you pressure cook something, all of a sudden it's shelf stable, right? Okay. So, and you're not going to do that. So the issue is, is that as long as you heat it, right? You're not causing anything dangerous because you're cooking and destroying vegetative cells. And as long as you uh, cool it and then keep it frozen, um, and you did

[16:24] it a reasonable amount of time, there's no way for those spores to red germinate into vegetative cells, then go from that stage to reproducing and producing uh, toxin,

[16:34] right? So long and short of it is, you're okay. The dangerous, the really dangerous thing, would be to cook garlic. And the reason why everyone picks on garlic is because people a lot of times will throw garlic into

[16:49] oil. Garlic has a fairly high water activity, and it comes from the soil. So it's, you know, and botulism is ubiquitous means it's everywhere, but a lot of times in the soil, you throw it into oil, the oil environment seals it off from oxygen, you have botulism growing on the garlic, and, you know, you're done.

[17:05] Well, you could be done. That's why that's why it's always garlic and botulism because it's common. You want to do it. It doesn't look dangerous, et cetera, et cetera. So as long as you're doing this, what you're saying, you're fine. Now, if you were to uh, store those suckers at room temperature, well, you could get hosed. You know what I mean? That's incredibly dangerous, but you can store, there's, there's nothing inherently dangerous about garlic in oil as long as you're keeping everything at safe, uh, holding

[17:35] storage temperatures. Make sense stuff? Yep. Okay. Let me see. And final question. I know that you like to sear low temp meats in a scorching scary hot pan. I heard you mention the standard consumer range won't get quite hot enough to produce the level of sear that you prefer. true. Until my sears all, uh, tell my sears all arrives. I'm left searing a cast iron pan over either my gas range or my gas

[17:59] grill at Weber Genesis E 330, which I haven't used that one. Today I tried searing ribeyes, which is always a good call. I love a rib eye. a good steak. Then I brush with clarified butter and a cast iron pan that I preheated on the grill for 20 minutes. My infrared gun style thermometer indicated the pan was 820 Fahrenheit when I put the steaks in. Immediately they smoked up like a bastard. It was intense. What lipid, if any, do you coat your meat steaks with before Siri, and you have a preferred temperature range that you aim for. Thanks for the show and best witches, Brandon Bird. Okay, yeah, it's kind of smoke like a bastard. This is why like I, you know, like my wife, uh, gets angry sometimes, like when,

[18:34] I, I, I'm not even going to, again. At one time, I bought a, uh, I think I told us on a show once. I tell us one of the show once where she was like, yeah, you did. Yeah. I'll do it really quickly. It was her birthday and I wanted to make some really good steaks. So I bought a charcoal, uh, like a mini charcoal hibachi, which does. Did I ever end up giving that to you or is that one too burnt out? No, I think you... No, yeah, yeah, I have it. Yes, yeah. Or do I, maybe that's a different one. You've got the little Joe that we got for the school. We tried to do the same thing at the school. Remember? Right. And everyone was all pissy about the smoke. Because everyone gets so pissy about smoke. It's like everyone wants to be all like, you know, tough and like, as soon as there's a little bit of smoke, people get all whiny. You know what I mean? It's so ridiculous. You know what I mean? It's like, I don't think they're going to be started. I mean, look, I under, look, I'm a firm believer in like air quality in general, and, you know, some issues with, uh, I remember, I've talked about it a bunch of times, like that preliminary research years ago on, uh, cooking fumes, uh, from

[19:32] walks and women in China and increase, uh, levels of cancer. But, um, whatever. I'm not talking about that. I don't know why everyone, as soon as there's any smoke, people are like, it's smoky. It's smoky in the kitchen. How many times have you ever got in your lifestyle? So many, but then the fire, the fire or whatever thing goes off, you know? Yeah, they're doing more chaos. She's like, why does everyone get so worried? And then once the fire thing goes off, People, like, crazy, set off the fire alarm. Oh, you set off the smoke a lot. And he says he can cook. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Well, it was so freaking irritating. I was like, this is why your food tastes bad because you're not willing to set off the damn smoke detector when you're

[20:12] cooking something. You know what I mean? see, I would rather take the hit. and set off the smoke detector and have the steak taste good. Excuse me, that's where my priorities are, right? My priorities aren't with the, look, okay, okay, backpail a little bit. You can't piss off the people that are going to eat so much that they're not going to enjoy the food because then you're shooting yourself in the foot. It's all about the enjoyment of the food. But I just get so irritated that people can't, people can't just, I don't know, you know what I mean? It just, you know, it's a constant source of irritation. Jack, what do you think about this? I'm still tripped up on spores and that Nastasia didn't freak out when you said. Wait, what happened? Oh, spoon. Yeah, and Sasha hates a sport. Anyway, uh, so here's my thing. Yes, it's going to smoke like a bastard. That's just a fact of life. Uh, you can't really measure the surface of your pan and get an accurate

[21:04] uh, temperature of what's going to happen because the temperature of the pan will probably drop fairly quickly once you put the meat on

[21:09] it. As for, but it's good. good, it's good. I mean, mine usually are rocking somewhere around uh, 650 or higher. See, depends. Like cast iron at like 700 is thin. You're going to get more char out of like a giant stone rock at 800. I mean, it all depends on how fast it can, it can deliver this stuff. So cast iron. I don't know, that should be fine. In other words, like that temperature should be fine, but it's going to smoke, and you're going to need more oil than you think. What I typically do, I typically use olive oil, by the way. And what I will do is I'll put the pan on. I get it hot. I'll pour oil literally into the pan. It will immediately start smoking. Uh, and you just want to be careful because it might ignite here. Carefully, put the steak into the oil. The reason is the pre-cooked steak, it doesn't conform to the surface of a pan, like a raw one does. So if you just brush with oil, you're liable to have blonde spots, whereas if you had like a good, you know, 8th inch or something in the bottom of your pan, you'll hit all of the points and you'll brown all the way across the thing.

[22:12] But just be aware, we'll catch on fire. There will be flame and there will be smoke. And you should just tell whoever's looking at you and calling you incompetent to shut the hell up and sit down and get ready to eat the steak.

[22:22] That's just my feeling. You know what I mean? Yep. All right. take a quick break. Oh, you take a break? All right, we're going take a quick break. be right back with some more cooking issues.

[22:39] So, you get... Why do passes is the only farm in the United States that has its own USDA inspected red meat abattoir,

[22:54] a slaughterhouse, and its own USDA inspected poultry abattoir, a

[22:59] slaughterhouse. We partner with Whole Foods to deliver our high quality, meat and poultry, from Miami, Florida, all the way to Princeton, New Jersey. One family, one farm, five generations, 145 years, a full circle

[23:14] return to sustainable land stewardship, humane animal stockmanship. For more information, please visit our website, whiteoakpastages.com. Oh, yeah. Abattoir. The way that man says abattoir makes me want to go get something slaughtered. You know what I'm saying? Seriously, guy's awesome. A lot old-fashioned. Love that guy. All right. David Wright saying about P.I.D. controllers. So for those of you, I don't know, maybe this is the 1st time you've tuned in or whatever. PID is, uh, is the type of controller, stands for, I think, a proportional, uh, integrative and uh, derivative, I think, or something like this, uh, controller that's used to do all of the uh, immersion circulators, and because what they do is instead of the temperature, like, going

[24:04] up and then uh, overshooting the mark, like a standard thermostat, and then going down and up,

[24:08] but porpoising back and forth, they, like, ramp up and then they stay solid on on the, uh, they stay solid on the temperature that you want. That PID controller. And that's what we all use for our immersion circulators. Come, mistake people do is they think they want to add like a PID controller to things like a deep fryer, which you don't.

[24:25] The reason is a deep fryer, you want to go as fast as possible. It's all about recovery time. PIDs aren't about recovery time. They're about accuracy. So always remember when you ask for PED, make sure that you actually want one that said, you often want one. Okay, uh, 2 Danish questions. And I always have this problem. You think Dana is a man or a woman? Ooh, man. Why? Oh, PID. I feel like it's mostly men's best, but you know what? Like, you're probably freaking right, but it just pisses me off so much. This goes back to that article that that lady wrote years ago. Were you working with me or Mindy, Mindy was working with me. Were you working with me when the times, right, in that article, saying about like technology in the kitchens, like about boys and their toys? I was like, it's ridiculous. It's so great. Like, you know what I mean? It's like, why is it, why is it that, why is it associated with men? It doesn't, you know, you know, uh, whatever. Uh, I want to build an electric kettle for brewing beer. a brew in a bag style, brew in a bag. I think brewing a bag came out after I had stopped my home brewing, but

[25:27] fundamentally what you do is you put the, I guess you put the, you put your grains in a fat ass sack, as

[25:33] Ludicrous would say, and then put it into the kettle that you're eventually going to use, and then you can pull it out instead of having to have multiple containers to do

[25:40] it in. Yes, here it says, brewing bag eliminates the traditional 3 vessel system and uses the kettle as the mash ton and boil kettle.

[25:46] Uh, you like ludicrous stars or no? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, he's pretty funny. I don't like, some of us does good. So, like, some of the stuff, I think, is really good. And then some of the stuff, when it's too, I don't know. don't know. don't know. I like it when he's got more of a sense of humor about himself. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm going to use an old keg as the kettle, and I'd like to use a 240 volt 5,500 watt heater element to heat up to 10 gallons of water. And by the way, Dana, I didn't have the time to do the calculations, but I'm sure you already had. There's plenty of Google calculators out there where you can calculate the, um,

[26:19] the heating rate, Uh, you know, you assume a certain efficiency for the heater, but you can calculate the heating rate uh, for a particular volume of water with a particular watt edge of heater. So I'm presuming that you've already checked that, but that sounds good. Uh, I'd also like to use a PID controller so I can accurately hold the water at mash temp for 90 minutes, then raise it to mash out temps, mash

[26:40] out, so when you're mashing, uh, when you make a beer, you take the grain, uh, the grain has, uh, been, uh,

[26:47] the barley has been, uh, malted. The malting means that it started to germinate. The enzymes are there, therefore, to break the carbohydrate in the barley down to sugar, right?

[26:56] And then, uh, so, you know, that's, that's how that works. But you have, what you have to do is eventually raise the temperature enough to kill the

[27:05] enzymes and killing the enzymes off, it's called mashing out so that you don't necessarily

[27:10] get, at least that's my memory. It's been a million year since I've had to do this stuff. So anyway, back to the question. See, then boiled in. That was a long way around my actual question, so I've been listening to Dave a bit too much. Yeah, so again, he's saying his question, we're presuming it's a he is so long that he's been listening to me because I do the same thing fair. I know there's a lot of info in the forms about electric brewing, but all the info seems to assume that the reader possesses some electrical

[27:38] knowledge, of which I have little, not none, but little. So I assume it goes like this. Well, then he has a like a directional kind of diagram here, which I'm not going to go into. I just going to tell you the right way to do it. So a heating element, it involves a heating element. The PID controller, the solid state relay, and the plug into an outlet, right? Now, here's the issue. You're using a 240 volt thing. So you're going to want to be careful. 110 is not inherently safe, but it's more safe than 220 or

[28:10] 240 or wherever you want to call it. So you just want to be a little bit careful when you're using voltages like that. Uh, especially because uh, you're going to be switching the, you're going to be switching

[28:20] the, that kind of high voltage. So it's gonna be present near where you're working. Heaters are dumb elements, right? So all the heater wants to be have happen is to get plugged directly into a wall, right? And so what you want to think about it is, is that the PID controller and a solid state relay, all they are is a switch that is going between the

[28:41] wall current and the heater. So here's how it works. First of all, make sure you have a PID controller that can run off the 240. Otherwise, if you need to, you can run off 2 circuits. You can run the PID off of a wall socket and you can run the heater off of a 240, but it's not necessary. Many PID controllers can handle the direct 220 slash 240. Most of them run at 2 at like 120 to 240 and between 50 and 60 cycles. So you could take it to Europe if you need to. Anyways, but just read the specs on it. So then you take an extension cord. Now, remember, this is not the advice of a trained electrician. Electrocute yourself at your own peril. This is just how it works. So then you take the, um, and depending on how you use it. So for instance, in a normal 110 line, you have a power, and then you have a return, and the power has got the full 110 on it, right? 125, whatever you want to call it, 120, wiggling up and down, AC, alternating current. And then the other line is basically dead. It's a return that you send the power back to ground onto the circuit thing. So you could touch on an AC, regular 110 AC line,

[29:48] 120. You could touch the neutral and, you know, lick your, don't do this. Lick your finger, touch the neutral and touch something and you won't get shot, right? Now, standard household to 20, that's not the case. Both lines will be hot all the time, but they'll be going opposite of each other, right? So you have 110 on, or 120, let's say, on each line, but

[30:11] you can remember AC is a wave that goes up and down. So they go opposite each other. So it goes all the way up to you get 120 plus 120 to 40. So there's no safe. There's no safe line, right? So you're going to have to do it a little bit differently than you would with a 110 line, but it's fundamentally the same. So you need to apply power to your PID controller. Then the PID controller has, uh, let's say, one, two, maybe this three, four, say, has

[30:41] these. It has power, right? Which is going to be your AC power lines that you got to attach to it from the plug from the wall. It's then going to have a thermocouple input, right? Which has 2 connectors on it. Make sure you hook it up because especially if you're using a K-type thermocouple, it's very easy to reverse them. Um, because the, the red one, now I always get messed up. I have to remember it, the red one, which you think is positive is actually the negative, but I have to, I have to go and look at it again. I'm pretty sure that's true. Uh, and then you have, uh, usually a relay, well, usually there's a small solid state relay in the PID controller itself, but that relay is not intended to handle the power of switching something

[31:22] big like a 5000 watt heater, right? So that's why you need, sometimes it just says it puts 5 volts out or whatever, which is fine, or 12 or whatever. fine. Uh, that's why you need the solid state relay. Now, the reason you want a solid state relay and not a regular relay is I hate that clicking, 1st of all, like they're, they're fairly cheap now. And the real relays, they sit there and they click. And also, uh, the real relay, especially a big power

[31:49] relay like that, doesn't like to be turned off and on very rapidly, where the solid state relay, there's no actual moving

[31:55] parts, it doesn't matter. It can turn off and on as much as it wants. So like your PID controller, if it's sitting there pulsing the heater off and on, it's not going to bother. not going to hear a click, it's not going to have a mechanical issues. That's why a solid state relay. So what you do is, is you have the power, the wall, power goes to your, uh, wallpower goes to your PID controller. Your thermocouple goes to your PID controller. One wire, the in and the out, go to the low voltage side of your solid state relay. And then on the other side of your solid state relay, you have, um, one side of power from the wall going to one side of the heater. And then on the other side of the heater coming out of it, you have it go to, one of the, the output of the solid state relay. And then the input of the high voltage side of the solid state relay then goes, uh, to, uh,

[32:51] to the wall. Sminging sense to us. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what's happening is that you're putting power to the PID controller. The PID controller is sending a low voltage signal to the solid state relay. And the solid state relay is in effect like just flipping a switch that is opening and closing a circuit between one of the 2 wires in the high voltage circuit that is the heater.

[33:17] See what I'm saying? Does that make more sense a little bit? It's very hard to explain on the radio. Very easy with a picture. Very hard to explain on the radio. It used to draw a picture and then tweet it or something. Yeah, I could do that. Are there any safety features you would want to add, since I have friends that would like me to build one for them? So I want to make sure it's completely safe, you know, as and not burn their houses down. Yeah, just make sure that you, uh, let me ask. I have to have an architect in the room with me. Do they have 240 volt GFI? Uh, which I would look. I would make sure that you have a GFI socket. I've never worked with 240 uh with PID. So, I mean, all my knowledge is on 120 and 120 I just make sure everything's in GFI. I put fuses and everything and just make sure you're totally safe. But I will, uh, I will, I will draw a picture and tweet it, Styles. You have a good, you have a good, uh, good idea there. Uh, any conclusion, uh, all year. Italian and Bob is a podcast. So it's good. Dana says it, give me a big idea on the podcast. I've listened to the entire back catalog twice. Keep them good working. Wow. I can imagine that. No I can't. What's up? But I can't imagine that. No, no me neither. Nick writes in about Doritos. Hey, Nastasia, Dave and Jack. I like making popcorn as a snack. That's a good statement right there, right? I mean, I like popcorn as a snack. You guys? It the best. Yeah, popcorn, good product. I like making popcorn at a snack. And lately I've been playing around with flavorings. I'm trying to recreate the flavor of zesty cheese Doritos available in Canada because they are delicious. This is also a good reason to do something. I've never had a zesty cheese Dorito. But, you know, because it's Canadian. Uh, you know, um, I got a picture of it here from Nick, and they have to write it in French as well. And zesty cheese and French sounds terrible. Fromage Mildon, like mordant. That doesn't sound delicious. Why are there so many flavors of Doritos now? Oh, that's an interesting question. So, like, um, one of the things, uh, one of the reasons why you have so many flavors, is any company that's looking, any company that has like a product, let's say Doritos, right?

[35:29] And there's a bunch of other snacks out there that you can go for, right? How do they make sure that you buy Doritos? Well, they can put 8000000000 different flavors of Doritos in there so that just more of the stuff that you see is Dorito, right? And plus you already like Doritos. And so if you see some other snack that you don't know, and then Doritos, which you're apt to like anyway, you look

[35:48] at and you're like, oh, Zefty cheese, that's in Dorito. I would try that. See what I mean? Mm. Yeah. And so, like, that's like over the past, you know, I don't know how many years, like, like, that's one of the big, that's why you see like 8000000000 different new Oreos out there too. is because, like, you know, they're, they're, they're leveraging on the Dorito name, creating all these line

[36:06] extensions to just kind of, like, you know, increase the Dorito profile across the board. Doesn't mean that they don't love the original Dorito. You know what I mean? Yep. Anyway, uh, back to Nick's question. Um, I adapted the ingredient list to what I had available at home, mixed it in a spice grinder and got something that tasted pretty good, but not much like Doritos. I use nutritional yeast, cheap and provide a chees-ish, cheese-ish flavor, salt, onion powder, and garlic powder,

[36:39] which by the way, I did set onion powder and garlic powder. I know that people like it. I hate it. Styles, what do you think about it? I don't make it at all. Jack, you really use onion powder, garlic powder. No, not a fan. I used to like garlic powder on pizza. I might have had this discussion on the radio before, but I don't mind it in like that, the kind of like burnt flavor that like garlic bagels have, but I don't even like garlic bagels, but I like that flavor in

[37:00] an everything bagel. Like, that's the only time I like that flavor, it's presence in everything bagel. I used to put it on pizza, garlic powder when I was younger. Yeah, but like not like last week. We're talking like really years ago, right? A 1000000 years ago. before I knew anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How much, how much would I, like, next week when we're back, when I, we're all together at the, at the show, should I bring a thing of garlic powder in and start sprinkling it over the pizza and see what they say,

[37:25] Roberta's? I dare you. That would be sweet, right? Or what's worse, like garlic salt. I bring garlic salt. A big container of garlic salt, and it starts shaking that stuff on its name, be

[37:36] like, what, what? Just put it on all the tables at Roberta's and see how the management responds. Holy shit. Just don't say anything about it. Just like as you walk past, just like put it down. When we get in trouble. a little bit. Yeah, minimal. Could we, it will. Is any Jesus still work there? No, no, he's gone. No, he can't straighten it out with us then. He could just his benevolence would fix everything. Anyways, use nutritional yeast, salt, onion powder, garlic powder. I only recently got some MSG and citric acid, which is one of the reasons also why the yeast stuff

[38:10] isn't there because it's any sort of protein breakdown powder to get that kind of umami crab in there. And citric acid, and I'm curious to see how adding those will get me closer to the right flavor. Uh, and then he includes my issues. The spice mix is not here to the popcorn well if it is added after cooking. Yes, it is true. A lot of the spice mix just falls to the bottom of the bowl. When I'm only using finely ground salt, I add to the pot with the kernels, and it sticks great. If I do this with other spices, they just burn, yes, because spices burn water, salt doesn't. What can I do to get a nice coat of seasoning on the popcorn? I got an answer for you on that one, Nick. That is not a problem. And do you think it's realistic to get close to a commercial flavor without a bunch of industrial ingredients? And clothes, or you can make a good flavor. FYI, I pop my kernels in a pot with coconut oil on an electric range. He then sends me the Zefty cheese details. Here is the list of ingredients, corn maltodextrin, which is just a bulking age. So we're talking about the powder, how this is the seasoning ingredient list. So, uh, maltodextrin, whey powder, salt, MSG, onion powder, sugar, cheddar, uh, and Parmesan cheeses, corn syrup salads, natural artificial flavors, color, garlic powder, citric acid, sodium case nate, autolized yeast extract, dye sodium, uh,

[39:20] icinus. can't pronounce it. I can't pronounce it. And uh, uh, dye sodium and guanalakes. So like the Autolize East extract, and the, uh, and all that other stuff, uh, is there so that they don't have to add as much MSG as, as they,

[39:35] as they want to add. That stuff's creating that kind of stuff. The cheese flavors from the sodium case, Nate, the whey powder,

[39:41] the Parmesan cheese and the cheddar. So you can just jack the actual cheese powders that you have in

[39:47] it instead of doing that, probably to similar effect. The maltodextrin is in there to bulk up the spice powder so

[39:54] that it's, you know, kind of bulk better. Um, and the onion, the sugar, uh, the corn syrup solids, maybe that's there for

[40:03] water healing, but I don't think so. And that natural artificial flavors, which is where you can put the spices in, right? And the citric acid, that's all there for the flavors that you're looking for. So you could probably mix something like that. You just got to make sure you get the MSG right. The secret that you don't have is that what they do, and this is what's going to blow your mind. What they do is they mix that spice mix into an oil mixture and then spray that oil mixture onto the Doritos. And that's how you do it. And that's how you do it on popcorn too. So the reason that movie theater popcorn is so incredibly caloric,

[40:35] right? is that you, um, is that they pop it, and then they spray or pump the butter mixture on top of

[40:44] it that has that flavor, right? So they're adding a bunch of extra oil. And you're gonna have to do the same. You don't have to add that much oil. But what you do is you mix the spice into a slurry, right? So that it's like, you know, not a paste. It has to be runny enough to coat. Then you can stick the, uh, you can stick the popcorn, uh, want it to be

[41:03] hot and you want the oil to be hot, but not burning like it's going to burn the spices. and then like swirl it over and then put it between 2 bowls and shake the hell out of it so that it coats all

[41:11] around. Look and see if you have enough. You can add some more and do it. You can actually, if you have a tumbler, you can spray it in, uh, you can spray it in while it's

[41:21] tumbling is the best way to do it, but very few people, uh, can do

[41:24] that. Let me see what you said, how you pop it again. Um, you pop it on an electric range. Yeah, so if you have a whirly pop, you might be able to turn the popcorn machine off and spin it a little bit, but I don't know how

[41:34] much, you're really going to need to get a lot of good agitation, but the secret is oil slurry. Yeah? What do you think sounds good? Good job. All right. Paul Yee writes in, hey, Dave and Nastasia, no love for Jack. I've been making my own almond nut milk for a few months and have recently noticed that the milk will separate a lot when I add kosher salt. Separate a little bit when I omit salt and stay together when I add Celtic gray salt. My suspicion is this is because the kosher salt is acidic, well, the gray salt is more basic. Do you have any guess why this might happen? Paul ye. I have a guess, but I don't have an answer. I was trying to do some research. I didn't have time to do the research on it, but I can try to look for it next time. I think the issue here is that you have, uh, the almond milk might

[42:15] be, um, susceptible to certain, uh, to certain ions and not to others. So kosher salt is exclusively pretty much sodium chloride, NACL. Uh, whereas, uh, Celtic gray salt is probably has a lot more of the other impurities that are present in

[42:35] seawater, like magnesium, uh, or calcium. And it's these kind of divalent, uh, these kind of divalent ions that can sometimes do things like

[42:45] clot, tofu and other things like this. And so I don't know, because I haven't done a test to see whether almond milk is sensitive to uh,

[42:55] divalent uh, positive ions, but that is my guess. But I was going to do some research on almond milk, but I didn't get a chance, but do some research on that poking around. pretty sure that's the, I'm pretty sure that's the answer, but I don't know. Pre sure, though. Uh, Steve from Miami writes in. Hey, Nastasia, Dave and Jack. I was wondering if Dave could dive into a few tortilla nixtamilization questions. For those of you who don't remember, nixtimization is the process by which you boil and soak grain, typically

[43:22] corn, in an alkaline mixture, typically made of calcium hydroxide. Uh, and then uh, you let that soak for a while. It does a number of awesome things, like break down the C code, make it easier to grind, partially cook some of the starch out so that it forms a coherent dough and turns the outside

[43:40] C code of the corn into like a hydrocolloid mass that helps to bind masse into the awesome stuff that we know as

[43:47] tortillas. It's the reason why tortillas are tortillas and not just cornmeal pancakes. Um, So, uh, could you recommend a good source of corn readily available in the

[43:57] US? I came across www.rovc.com. Stas, isn't that the one we used? Didn't we use Roevi? Stas. Uh-oh. You guys there? Uh, stars, stars lost the line. I guess so. Yeah, the phone got disconnected. Uh, I think Roe v is the one that we used, and then Roe v was recommended to us by the Torteria Nixtamal, which is the Torteria, the only one for a while that was doing it here in New York, was doing the, um, their own

[44:33] Nixtamalization. So I think those are the guys that we use. The problem is, is that it costs almost as much to buy from to ship this £50 sack as it does to, you know, if you're only doing it a little

[44:43] bit as it does to just, uh, the corn. In fact, the shipping was more than the corn. So I think, you know, any local, unless you're going to buy £50 sacks, in which case, yeah, go to

[44:53] them. But, um, you know, I know that, um, uh, Danny, Danny Bowen said he was using Anson Mills, but that stuff super pricey. But if you're interested in kind of super pricey heirloom corns, that's another place you might want to go. And then, do you have any experience with the Nixtomatic grinder mill or any other equivalent to grind mill fresh next to mal and tomasa? No, I wish I did. That, the Nixtomatic is the one that the, um, Oh my god, then his name just went out of my head. The guy from the famous bean place in California. Anyways, uh, Rancho Rancho Gordo beans, he has one. He says they're awesome, and you can get them in Mexico, but as far as I know, they're not available here. It looked awesome. But no, I've only ever used the corona. I've used Matati Manos. That was a pain in the acid, not recommend doing that, which is the traditional way to do it. I've used a food processor. Again, not recommended. reason is, is that you have to add too much liquid to it to get it to grind properly that way. And I've used the corona hand mill, which is made in Colombia, but is used for this sort of stuff. And it works, but it is a pain, yes. Um, it's just really a pain to do. So, uh, but everyone who, I know that's using extematic says, it's awesome. And then, next question, how long would fresh massa last in the fridge, vacuum sealed or not? I think fresh masa, Oh, here's and then I'll rant round out of this stuff. Could you freeze fresh made tortillas without a huge loss on quality, or are there some best practices, the whole fresh tortillas? PS can't wait for this series all to arrive. Thank you and cheers. Steve. All right. I'll handle all those those last 2 questions at once. Here's the thing. Once you make a tour, once you make masa. I think the masa, I think it's better to hold masa than it is to hold tortillas. Once you take a tortilla and heat it, and then it kind of cools, and you, you know, you cook it, you do it to an initial cook. I don't think it's ever the same again, ever. I think it's kind of like, you know, it's kind of like, you know, when you go, and they make crepes, and then they reheat the

[46:47] crepes, and they're not quite as good as when they made them fresh. I think it's much more so with a tortilla. I think a tortilla really wants to be eaten right after it's made. You know? Maybe reheat it a little bit, like it was made a couple of minutes ago or like, you know, an hour ago, but I think a tortilla is like on a downward spiral right after it's made.

[47:03] Masa, on the other hand, I think, can hold a day in the fridge better than a tortilla can. So if you're going to hold one, I would hold masa. Um, So, I mean, that's just that's just my feeling. Here's my level. here's my level my quality levels. I would say I would take a, so Maseca is the, is the flour that you use when you're not making your own mase. It's like, you know, instant masa, basically. Uh, I would say the height of the tortilla is a nicely made fresh masa, uh, tortilla fresh. Then the next level down from that is masa that was made yesterday, made into a tort, and maybe even frozen. I dont know if masa will freeze. I never tried it. Masa was made into tortilla, masa was made yesterday, made into a tortilla today, fresh being. Then I would say the next down on the list, farther, much farther down the list would be Maseca Tortilla made today. Then after that would be, uh, yesterday's fresh masa tortilla, and then further down from that, uh, yesterday's

[48:07] masseca tortilla. That's pretty much how it goes. That makes sense, Jack? Yeah. All right, Stodge, you're back. be nice. Oh, did you say something? I was looking at my email. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, it's like the real life. Yeah, I was asking you questions about where we got our corn from. That was literally when I pulled the phone away from my head and looked at the email that just came in. That's so funny. Yeah, it's hilarious. Anyway, do you remember, was it Roe V Seed? I think it was. Yeah, it was. Blue? Yeah, the blue stuff, yeah. Drew writes in. Great show. makes my commute every day. I recently got a couple of vacuum pumps and a Micro Centerfuge at a State University surplus sale. Both of the vacuum pumps came from the food science department. Uh, and would you say where? Just said State University. It doesn't say what state. Um, and is it precision scientific VAC tour, Direct Drive 100, uh, which you purchased for $40. I can't seem to find much about this mall at all. Well, I found a little bit of something, Drew. And that sucker, the only thing I was able to find on that model, is that it is, uh, I have a picture of some sort of

[49:08] like 1970s looking woman holding it up in some sort of like super, It's really weird style. You would groove on this lady's outfit. like long johns with like a halter top lawn john over the long, long johns. I love long time. I know. You're like freaking long, John Silver. Just free in February, you need to buy Stas something for like a gift, long johns. Um, okay. Uh, and it looks to be a vacuum pump, uh, as you know, uh, that an oil vein guy. Oh, by the way, just so you guys know, the questions that we're going to be using, he bought another pump too. Would either of these pumps be worth trying to use for DIY, rotary evaporator, chamber

[49:48] back, or the like? Uh, that guy looks, uh, good for, uh, that guy looks good for a Roto app, no problem. I don't know if it's going to be good for a chamber back, I don't think it'll evacuate fast enough, but he's got to make sure they're still in good working order because it's definitely strong enough. And the other pump you had was a Fisher Scientific Maxima, D8A, similarly a rotary vein, oil-based vacuum pump. Just make sure this, you know, that it works right. Both of those pumps work fine. The uh, Fisher scientific one only does 7 cubic feet per minute, which is similar to the refrigeration vacuum pumps that I buy on eBay when I'm doing my DIY stuff.

[50:28] Uh, and you can do a chamber vacuum machine with them, but they're not as nearly as fast and as powerful as the big ones, but they will

[50:36] work. But you just need to make sure that you keep them clean. But anyway, so yes, those would be useful for those things. Uh, remember Daniel at Harvard does? Mhm, yeah. He said that you, the one thing you don't want to do is run those things for a long, long time unless you have an oil filter on them because they, uh, they can, uh, heat up and uh, put out

[50:56] silicone, uh, oil mist, which he says is not so good to breathe. I don't know if that's true or not, but I kind of tend to trust Daniel. Uh, Drew also writes, I've got an Eppendorf. I also got an Eppendorf, 5412, micro centrifuge, 5 bucks from the 1970s. No lid, but a child no lid. story of our life, right? But by the way, did our centrifuge ever get working or no? Um, I haven't, they use the one upstairs. I think the downstairs one is done. Yeah, it's not done. They just don't know how to fix one of the centrifuges at the bar is acting up, but we need to get that fixed. The one downstairs is better. Anyway, whatever. No lid, but a chunk of acrylic seems to be doing the trick. It works, but it looks like it only has 12 by one. millimeter, milliliter capacity, i.e. not very much. That's uh, what's 12 times one, 18 mils total. So is it worth using for culinary applications? In other words, should I invest a $10 for tubes or just put it up on eBay for sale? Thanks, Drew. Well, it's not really useful. No. Except if you want to experiment with it. You don't have another centrifuge lying around. If you were going to experiment with something like that. Would it be useful for is doing some, um, I forget the name of it. It's called like CentraVap or something like this. And what you do is you hook up one of your vacuum pumps to the chunk, you put a seal. I looked at this centrifuge online and it's small enough that I bet you it's crush proof under a vacuum. So if you just put a little seal on your chunk of acrylic and a vacuum tube to it, you could suck a vacuum. And the idea is, is that liquids in the tubes won't boil out of the

[52:20] tubes because they're under centrifugal force, which will pop the bubbles as they're form and you're boiling. And so you can do relatively rapid uh, evaporation. And so you could probably uh, low, low temp evaporate uh, products in it pretty well. So you might want to try it for a central vap application. But for actual centrifuging, nah, sucker's too small to be useful. Uh, okay. And we got one last question. We got time styles or no? Yeah, we have a few minutes. Yeah, we got to wrap it up, guys. All right, there's a long question too. Chris, you have some question about, like, I'll have to get back to Chris's question next time. Uh, he had a question about um, making up, do you like Bakalao Stas? No, I just, I talked to Mark about it this morning. I said, that sounds gross. and he said, that sounds delicious. So, you don't, well, 1st of all, like, what? Well, back a lot of foam, uh, warm, the whole thing sounded gross to me. Well, do you like brandad? I don't even know what that is. Rondat is like bakala, and and potatoes, and like cream. It's like a French thing. It's delicious, brandant, but it's not somed usually. Chris had a question on bakala foam. He wants to do a bakala foam. We'll deal with it next time. But, uh, anything, anything else? anything else going on before we head out, guys? Uh no, but I'll call you after. All right. So, Chris, I'm sorry, I'll get to your question next time. I'm trying to stabilize your, your, uh, your kind of Brondad foam there. Good to be back. Be with you next week. 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. HeritageRadio Network as a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.