[0:00] This special program was brought to you by the dairy farm families of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin milk marketing board. Did you know that today Wisconsin produces more than 600 varieties,

[0:10] types, and styles of American, international style, and original cheeses that win more awards than any other state or country?

[0:18] To learn more, visit eatwisconsincheese.com. This is Chef Emily Peterson, host of Sharp and Hot. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:40] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from Roberta's Pizzeria on the Heritage Radio Network in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

[0:49] Every Tuesday from late, really late today, huh? Son of a gun. Well, supposed to be around 12 to about 1245. Speaking of, uh, 1250. I dont know. What time? 1250, Jack? Yep, 50. Well, we got 50-55. We got we got our boy, the fearless leader of our of our network, Patrick Martins, has a book coming out soon. And he's he's coming in to talk about it, man, around 1240 or so, right? Around 1240. So we'll round out the round out the program with a little bit of discussion of the

[1:19] of Patrick's new book. So I'll do that later. Also, we're being we're being brought to us by Wisconsin cheese right now. Wisconsin milk marketing board, yeah. Wisconsin, but you know, like I was thinking about, if you were to actually count all the cheese heads as like a separate cheese

[1:32] variety, You'd have 100s of 1000s of varieties of cheese in Wisconsin. You know what I'm saying? You know, sweet cheese heads. Everyone loves it. You know, I used to have a cheese head hat. I don't know what the hell happened to it. Remember that we used to have the cheese head hat at FCI? It was originally Jeremy's, who was from Wisconsin, Chef Jeremy, who then, like, kind of donated it to us, and then somehow, I think someone stole the cheese head hat. You can't keep one around. People love the cheese head hats so much, even though they're viciously uncomfortable because foam rubber hats are just like so uncomfortable. You ever wear a foam rubber hat for any length of time? You want to take that on as something you're going to do, like wear the foam rubber hat for a long time? Yeah. We shouldn't spend too much time on it, but I did learn recently that cheese head is a racial slur toward the Dutch. Ooh, well, they make some Dutch style. They make some Dutch style cheeses in Wisconsin. So maybe that's, I don't know. in Wisconsin. It's no parts racial slur. Who said it was a racial slur against the Dutch? The internet. The internet. And did was there any actual, like, angry Dutch person somewhere? I mean, I'm sure somewhere. Yeah. It's just, you know, there's like a database of racial slurs and it was listed. German soldiers used to call the Dutch cheese heads. is what they say. Well, in in in German? K's a cult? Oh, we got to call her. Yeah, all right, call her. on the air. Hey, Dave, it's David from California. How you doing? Yeah, good. I got a question about pressure cookers. Um, I'm up at altitude and, uh, I can't use, uh, I really can't use an electric pressure cooker, so, is there some way that, uh,

[3:02] is there some way that I can, uh, get a setup without getting 2 DIY, uh, that I can, uh, I can sort of have a setup that I can walk away

[3:13] from that I can, you know, set for, Um, uh, my, my, my pressure that I need and then walk away from it, uh, but have that extended uh, pressure that I need at my altitude. Right. So 1st thing you have to do. So, I mean, so obviously at altitude, you can use even like an electric pressure cooker to get to the temperatures that we can down here on

[3:38] our, on our, you know, low altitude setting, right? The 1st thing you need to do is you need to calculate the uh, the pressure difference between where you are and uh, and sea level, right? I mean, what you need to, what you need to do is you need to figure out how many, how much excess PSI you need to get to that same temperature.

[3:57] What? Three PSI. Three. So you need to pull about 18. You need to do about 18 PSI, relative PSI to be getting to my to my atmospheric levels down here where I am. Yeah, okay. Now, there's a couple of ways you can do this. All of them are obviously not recommended by the manufacturers, right? So on the electric pressure cookers, like, uh, the cuisinart, you can, they're not actually sensing, um, pressure. They're sensing temperature. So you can mess with it, right? I posted an article on that once. I don't necessarily recommend you go and do that because, you know, risk of danger, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, I've seen that article and that's above my head anyway. So then the next 2 like depending on, I don't know of a good way to alter the Fagor

[4:52] style pressure cookers that have the little twist knob on them. I don't have a good way to modify those, but if you use

[4:59] old style jiggler weight pressure cooker, so Iwatani used to make them, American pressure canter still makes them, right? American pressure cancer is interesting. Like, the problem with it is it's aluminum, and so if you're going to do a lot of acidic work, some people don't don't like it, some people don't like cooking

[5:13] in aluminum, and also, like, a lot of them are very big, but the American pressure cooker,

[5:18] canter, corporation. They're the only people that have a gauge that I really trust, right? Now, they're an old jiggler style, which means that it's going to be venting, which is not ideal, right? Because, you know, if you've read my stuff on pressure cooking. I don't really like pressure cookers that vent, if you're going to do things like stock. That said, that said, what you can do on any sort of jiggler style is

[5:38] just, um, what they're fundamentally doing is they have an orifice of known size. And then they put away a certain weight on it and by doing that, they know kind of at what pressure the steam is going to force the weight off the top and then have it sprayed down,

[5:53] right? So what you can do is increase the weight. So if you're going to have like an American pressure can or situation, you can just, you know, add weights to their jiggler weight. And in fact, the American pressure canter is nice because the jiggler weight has like 3 different holes that you can

[6:09] use, and they have 3 different weight settings, depending on kind of, you know, how hard it needs to push that to go up. So you take the highest one. And then you add enough weight. It has to be down low, so it's not off center or anything. And then you look at the gauge when it starts venting and you can set it to, since you only need 3 PSI over pressure, right, you can do that because none of the safeties on a pressure cooker are going to start engaging until well over 3 PSI over their

[6:33] limits. All right? Now, you've talked about the the pressure sterilizer before, and I was looking at that, um, is it, have you ever tried to control that, uh,

[6:47] with a, uh, an induction burner? Um, yes, but not, I didn't try very hard, right? So, yeah, you can, you can put a pressure cooker in, uh, in a, in a, in a temperature controlled oil bath on an induction burner and you can do it, right? So the question is, if your induction burner is good, is pretty good, right, then you, you know, let's say it

[7:14] can with, you know, it can maintain, you know, plus or -4 or 5 degrees, then you could just use the sterilizer, uh, or even, uh, you know, like

[7:24] a like a heavily modded, uh, regular one with a jiggler and just, uh, yeah, and have it just go to that temperature and you can verify that it's reaching the

[7:32] temperature. by looking at the gauge. And I've had, I would say, moderate success. I was using it because I wanted very even heat transfer when I was doing custards on, I was trying to do pressure

[7:43] cooked, uh, durian custard, and I was never able to succeed and remake the one batch that I made by accident one

[7:49] day. still a lifelong disappointment for me. But, yeah, you can do it. But I think, you know, you're going to be easier, um,

[7:58] like on a repeated basis, just being able to try and do it on a

[8:03] stovetop, uh, by modifying that that jiggler weight. Now, if you if you're moving to something like a coon recon, right, in a coon recon,

[8:11] the uh, the pressure is determined by the um, spring, there's a, there's a spring that, um, there's a spring that force it, that you push down, right? Uh, sorry, there's a spring that pushes the uh, the valve down, and as it, as the pressure increases, it pushes from the inside, against the spring, up, up, and you see 1st ring, and then you see 2nd ring, and then after the 2nd ring, you still have more pressure, and then after another, you know, amount of time,

[8:41] then the coon recon starts to vent out through that valve, right? My guess is that that venting doesn't happen until around 3

[8:50] PSI overpressure over the 15. So I'm guessing you could probably get 18 out of a coon recon before it starts venting, although I'm not sure. Now, here's where things get hinky, right? You could, you could put a stiffer spring into that coon recon thing or, and I'm not saying I recommend this, you could perhaps stretch that spring to give it a little bit of a permanent set, so it's a little bit

[9:14] bigger so that you have to put more compression on it to get it to the right pressure levels, but unless you have some adequate way of measuring, let's

[9:24] say, using an oil bath for measuring purposes beforehand, right? Then if you had an oil bath to measure beforehand, you could set it to a temperature that you knew was 18

[9:32] PSI, which I forget, the number's going to be somewhere around 250 something Fahrenheit, right?

[9:37] You could see where it hits. You could stretch the spring out a little bit, reassemble it, and then put it at 250 and see where it hits on the valve and figure out roughly how much you've adjusted the pressure that way.

[9:50] Does that make sense? Yeah, okay. I mean, I don't not I can't recommend any of this crap. But if you have a good induction burner, I would set it to about, do you remember, do you happen to remember offhand what the temperature is for atmospheric for, sorry, for 15 PSI at

[10:05] sea level? It's like 250 something, right? Yeah, it should be 250 pretty much on the dot, right? Yeah, somewhere around there. So I would, if you have something, like, let's say you even have a, uh, well,

[10:16] you could, you could do with a circulator, actually, set it to, just don't do it in plastic, right? Set it to, uh, to don't, I mean, if you have an old metal circulator, I should say, uh, set it to 250 Fahrenheit and, uh, you know, put the thing in the oil bath and just wait a while and see, well, well, let me start this way. What kind of pressure cooker do you have? Uh, I have a Kung Ricott. Okay, good. So set it, set it, you know, in that bathroom. If you have an induction burner that can do a pretty accurate 250, set it, uh, with, you know, with like, you know, it's not a lot of water because you don't want it to take a long time to heat up, you know, like, you know, like, you know, a finger or so of water, wait for it to heat up and see where the where the pressure thing

[10:52] hits. And if it hasn't made it to vent level yet, if it's just like, you know, it's over the 2nd ring, but not quite venting yet, then you can kind of figure out where you are, then obviously let it cool down and do your

[11:04] modification. The good news is if you hose it, you can buy that spring and it's not that expensive. Like that spring, you can buy it from Coon Recon. I've had to buy parts from them. I forget whether you have to email them directly or not. But I know an interesting thing. You know, maybe we should ask someone like Coon Recon to make a special spring for people who cook at altitude. You know what I'm saying? Because for them, it would cost nothing. That would be that would be nice. Yeah, but I'm pretty sure you'd be able to tweak it. But, um, why don't you give that a shot? And if you could call back with your results, I'd appreciate it because I'd like to know whether things like this work.

[11:39] Yeah, I, I, I'd like my coonery con to work. I, you know, I'd be willing to get all American uh, sterilizer, uh, if I need to, but. They're a little harder to work with. I mean, honestly, I've only used the really, really giant one and I use it because it's really giant, but it's not nearly as, you know,

[11:58] it's a lot more of a pain in the butt because it doesn't have any gaskets or gasket

[12:02] list, which is good for some things, but not necessarily good for ease of just using a pressure cooker all the time because it's got these little

[12:09] screw dads that you screw down. It looks like you're like a submarine bulkhead or something like this with these like screw dads that you have to screw all the way around. You have to make sure that they're ceiling, because if you don't, you know, do it like you do a tire lug nut. If you don't like go across in a star pattern, you can like torque the lid of it. And, you know, they are aluminum. I mean they're really good at what they're good at. And the gauges are really good, but I don't cook with mine. I use I use it for experiments. So if you can get your coon recon to do what you want it to do. I would get your coon recon to do it what you want. You might want to buy a spring 1st and then dork with that spring so that you're

[12:42] not like high and dry in case you do something horrible. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's not an expense. And also, if I don't know, like, you know, I often disassemble my coon recon for cleaning, so it's pretty easy to get to the my memory is it's pretty easy to get to the spring. You just unscrew the, unscrew it from the bottom, hold onto the thing, unscrew it from the bottom. You should be able to pop the entire assembly out for cleaning. And there's just no way of taking a direct temperature measurement in the

[13:10] Kung Rukong. There is, but requires drilling a hole through it. Okay. You know, the other or temporarily disabling one of one of its safeties. So, like, there's a there's a rubber safety plug in the side of a coon recon. a little blue silicone rubber plug. You need to replace it every once in a while anyway. Mine blew out. That's what I knocked knocked in at the lab like a year ago and like sprayed chicken grease all

[13:33] the same. Remember that stuff? Remember it well, right? So if you get an extra one of those plugs? You can under, like, drill that plug, but under, like, only a little bit and then shove a thermocouple through that plug down into your product and do a direct measure of temperature.

[13:47] But then you're going to want to throw that plug away and put a fresh plug in when you're done. I mean, that's a, I wouldn't run it all the time that way, but it's a temporary way to get it exactly where you want it.

[13:56] And again, those plugs aren't that expensive. So if you get a rebuild kit from Coon Recon, they'll send you the, if you tell them what you need, they'll send you that plug. And again, I would drill out your old one because it's always nice to have a fresh plug. you know, they'll probably send you a new gasket at the same time. I forget exactly what I got, but I got a complete rebuild, including the stem assembly with a spring. I got the, uh, the plug and everything. Or you could just get a new plug and measure the temperature right before it starts to

[14:23] vent so that you could, you know, do it without any spring modification at all.

[14:27] You might be able to get the temperature you need with no modification, you know? Okay. But you see, you know what I'm saying? You understand what I'm saying about that plug, that little that little blue plug underneath the, if you pull up

[14:37] the, uh, the coon recon come with a plate that fits over the top, little, like little rattling plate that's meant to deflect steam down should all crap, you know, go

[14:45] wrong. I lost mine years ago, so I don't have one of those plates, but then, you know, on that little thing

[14:50] on the inside is a blue, as a blue silicone plug that is removable from, it's removable by popping it out.

[14:57] Okay. All righty. Let me know. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. So, okay. Alright, let me know how it goes. Okay, thanks, Dave. Appreciate it. All right, cool. Alexander? Oh, wait, we were talking about, says? Uh, nothing. We're talking about cheese heads, but... Oh, yeah. we're done. Anyway, my point is, my point is, is it like, I would like any Dutch person to call, to call in and say whether or not they're actually offended by, uh,

[15:26] by. a challenge. That is a challenge. I want I want someone who's actually legitimately offended by this to call in because I don't think that such person

[15:33] exists. We have a caller and he's in studio with a book. All right, hold on a sec. We have Patrick Martins in the studio. What? Hey, what's up? Nothing. And he's here hawking the Carnivores Manifesto, the new book by Patrick Martins, with Mike Edison, who, by the way, was the editor-in-chief, I believe, of

[15:53] High Times. Yes, he was Yeah. And but then also did a bunch of, he'd done a bunch of other good books with, right? He wrote Joe Bastanich's restaurant man with him, which was a New York Times bestseller. Yeah. It was about the underbelly of the restaurant world and what it's like to open restaurants and it was a fun book for him to write. He also told me that Hugh Hefner hates women. Hugh Hefner hates women and he hates to Hefner. He's worked with all of them. Who's the guy from Hustler? I forget a lot of... He loves him. He loves all those guys, but he never liked you. Well, he said that, you know, for whatever else you think about Larry Flint, right? When there's many things you could think about Larry Flint, He said that Larry Flint legitimately, not when I say likes women. I mean, I don't I mean, I'm not going to try to portray Hustler as, you know, a paradigm

[16:36] of, I mean, put it this way. Larry Flint enjoys the company of women. That's what I mean to say, not likes them in sort of a, you know, reasonable way. I see what you mean. Yeah. Well, yeah, he, uh, he's really been on that dark, dark underbelly of, uh, of life, of culture. And that's why I thought he was great guy to partner with for the book because I was not looking to do a traditional. Oh, this is sustainability, and these are labels that you need to be looking for at the supermarket.

[17:01] They're basic truths out there. Uh, you know, gastronomy. Carlo Petrini always said gastronomy is not a strictly opinion thing. There are facts in gastronomy. Some things, you know, that's why 95% of all cheese people think

[17:14] Parmigiano Regiano is the number one cheese in the world because there's certain agreement about that. Yeah, although, although, you know, that's something that's been cited so many damn times and I don't... I don't understand it. The best cheese for what? It's not the best cheese to like, to like, you know, put on a piece of bread when you're eating it. Right. I mean, Parmigiano is an amazing, amazing cheese. I love it. I, you know, but I hate all sorts of best, best this or that. Like if you were gonna... I mean, what's the best cheese to have with a glass of port? It's still, like, I think everyone agrees that. The best cheese they have with a glass of port, Stilton. Well, I do agree that certain best top things are bad, but like,

[17:50] you know, I don't like top 10 lists where if you do top 10 restaurants in New York City, the top 10 should always, that should be the same list every year with rare exception that someone gets bumped on or comes on or

[18:03] bumped off. And so I do know what you mean about picking the best, but I like to know what's the best terroir for wine in America. We should start ranking those things. Because if we're ever going to see ourselves, like France does them and Italy does them, we have to look at ourselves as a gastronomic mosaic around the USA and

[18:22] recognize expertise where it exists. Georgia makes the best peaches, as does Western Michigan, as does Ohai. But New Jersey, that's not the best peach. And by the way, for all the talk about the best tomatoes coming from New Jersey, I don't know if they actually

[18:37] taste it. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa. Now, you're telling me that you've had a better tomato than either the Aunt Ruby's German

[18:47] green or the German or the German stripes from Stokes? Is there any tranes? Yeah. Well, that's a good question. I can say I crossed the line here, but I mean, I think that's better because it's local, although I do have a chapter in my book that

[19:00] says eat the best, not the local. I mean, I think I agree with you, like, on one level, I agree with you in that, I think what Europe has done really well is, say, look, here is a product that has certain

[19:13] characteristics, and let's let's, like, enumerate and preserve these quality characteristics, right? So, in other words, like prosciutto, you know, department, like, we can all agree what the best prosciutto de

[19:26] parma is in stylistic terms, and let's protect that and like give it a label that makes sense,

[19:32] right? It's not saying it's the best ham in the world. It's just saying, you know, Within Parma, there's a hierarchy. Or there is a particular style. It comes from here. We're the best at it. You can't make it. You know what I mean? Is that, I mean, I think that maybe we're agreeing. Yeah, maybe we do agree. I think we agree on most things. I agree. So, yeah, I think you'll agree when I wrote one chapter was called Alphabet Soup, and it was about your Museum of Food and Drink, and I, my last

[19:57] line, our museum. Thanks for making me the vice president. I did say it's a giant leap for mankind, and it really is, because I was saying

[20:06] the fundraiser the other day. You know, if you had said it was 1600 and 2 guys like you and me were sitting around. and be like, let's do a museum that involves animals and all that. Like, what should we do wild animals from Africa? And is that the future? Or do you think food museums is the future? Back then, almost everybody would have said food museums is the future. And yet, not only has it not been the future. There is not one food museum in the world. They can maintain itself, right? And there is a natural history museum in every major city in the world. So it's just funny, how it's 100% to zero. There is not one food museum that's like a real big picture food museum. It's a travesty. It is a, it's crazy. Who would have ever bet their money that there would not be one food museum. But that was just one chapter in the movie. So let's talk a little bit about the carnivores manifesto. Is it out right now? It comes out on June 10th, and unfortunately, you cannot buy it on Amazon because my publisher, Hatchet. Is that more with Bezos? Oh, you're the time ever. It's gonna be over soon. Oh, it was last time that you never know, but either way, you can buy it on Barnes and Nobles.com or most importantly, you could support your local bookseller. Or can you buy it from Harry's radio? Yes, it will have copies for Heritage Radio. Of course. Five from here. and then the radio station makes the, makes the, the profit. The profit, yes, that's true. That'll be a huge, huge financial. So let's but let's talk about this. I'm presuming that this Amazon thing's going to blow over because that's bad for both Amazon and the publisher. Well, Hatchet is put down the hatchet. They said we will not tolerate this type of price pressure anymore. And so they are, you know, this sounds like one that could last a little longer than last time. So you're telling me they're mad as hell and they're not going to take anymore? Yeah, they're just not going to take it. So let's look at one of the chapters. You mentioned it a little bit, but when you were writing the book, we were talking, and this is kind of the one that's going to generate the most heat for you

[21:53] personally is a 3rd chapter to hell with local. Eat the best. And so, uh, it's my my invitation. Thank you. So, I mean, this is a really interesting thing because usually people, and this is something I

[22:07] hate kind of about all commentary of all subjects everywhere. Uh, is uh, someone who thinks about you and thinks about uh, kind of heritage uh, foods in general is

[22:20] gonna, they paint paint you with the same brush that they paint everyone, who is involved in the kind of, or was like the, for instance,

[22:27] the one of the founders of Slow Food USA, which you were, right? Paint you all with the same brush. That is, you're all locivores. You all believe, you all have a unified, uh, you all have a unified view of what uh, good food is and what's important and, you know, what we should be doing, not the case.

[22:42] I think the average person, like this person here that's drinking some sort of iced coffee outside the studio, if I were to ask them whether or not you or someone like you would be a, like a confirmed locivor, they would

[22:54] say, yes, but in fact, no. Some food was never about eating local Carla Pacino founded soap food. If the best anchovies came from Sicily, and the best lentils came from Puey, France, and the best, you know, whatever. I mean, he would go anywhere around the world to get the best meal he could. And whereas he always wanted to reward local terroir and local gastronomy. In fact, he was probably the major reason that Barbaresco and Barolo's became so powerful in the mid 80s, early 80s, they were terrible wines, late 70s.

[23:27] He was a big proponent. So you should always try to reward and improve your local terroir, but by saying that,

[23:34] you know, no offense, New Jersey has the best tomatoes when perhaps another region, or let's say peaches, it's just not the case. You're actually propping up a 3rd rate product. You're hurting the farmer, you're hurting your own gastronomic

[23:48] experience, and I just think it's important to be the best. And to recognize that each region of this country makes certain things. I mean, would you eat? I know pigs that wouldn't even hunt for local truffles in Oregon. You know, they would refuse to hunt for them because they're not very tasty. Listen, I'm not going to get in the in the in the throwdown on Oregon truffles. They're not the same, clearly. It doesn't mean that they're bad. There's not the same. But you shouldn't need a organ truffle and be like, this is a fantastic truffle. Shave these and use them like you would truffles because it's local. That's ridiculous. They have a long way to go, and maybe they shouldn't even be focusing on truffles. They should be focusing on other things that the climate is adapted for. You know, and I just think local is a distance. It's not, I guess, gastronomic term. Local is just a distance. Is there any moral problem to buying stuff at a distance if you can afford to pay for

[24:40] it? You know, I mean, it's an interesting thing. I mean, I think, you know, money is a big thing. I have a thing, one of my chapters is 140 turkey. I was gonna ask you about that. To claim, you know, the $140 turkey. Well, let's say the $10 turkey, the $22 a pound turkey, it ate, genetically, it's been manipulated. And the most important chapter in this book is called Survival of the Faddist. These big corporations, they breed for genetic

[25:11] misfits, if it leads to more profits. So they suffer on that level. They are so sick from their bad genetics. They're forced to grow so fast, so much faster than they can, that they need antibiotics, pumped into their feed just to survive. That's an unhealthy turkey. People shouldn't eat that. And whereas we're not perfect, and we know it's always a slow turning of the

[25:35] wheel, and it's not an overnight thing, to tell a poor person that they should

[25:39] eat, an unhealthy turkey, is classist and borders on racism even. I mean, it's a it's a classist thing. The poor person should be told the same thing that the rich person is told. You will be unhealthy if you eat that turkey. Now, everyone eats a BLT with bad bacon in it that comes from a

[25:58] cural system. We're not a utopic book that, you know, we understand about reality, but the rich person should be told the same as the poor. You don't have a dual standard for what you tell them. And if that one, that turkey is a sick turkey and is unhealthy for you, that goes for rich and

[26:14] poor. We might have to eat less meat in this country. That's an answer, but we certainly should never make a different argument. to someone because of how much money they have in their bank account. An unhealthy animal is an unhealthy animal. And this is the, okay, this is... It's a long and tough argument, which we should have against. come back on again to have an argument about this because it's hugely, and this is like one of the museum topics in general. It's hugely difficult. But on more personal level. I mean, I think right now, I mean, I think it's obvious that, you know, the average person, you know, where everyone in the family, if there's more than one adult in the family has to work, you know,

[26:51] more than they would have, uh, you know, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, for less money, and they want to put food on their table, there's a huge disincentive to

[27:00] spend, um, culturally. just talking about meat. This is the carnivore. No, on meat. But like, you know, if you want to be, if you want to be, you know, a member of America, have your kids not think that they're living in privation, right, then, you know, the

[27:14] the image of American cultures, that we have, you know, the meat on the table. You get the chicken when you want it, you can have the beef when you need it. I mean, this is like, this is still like the cultural, uh, you know, ideal of what it means to be a semi-prosperous American. So it's very difficult to tell someone that they shouldn't go buy a product that makes them and their family feel like they're doing well or doing okay.

[27:37] You know what I mean? Well, I think it's more important the way you are inside the health of your body. I mean, Temple Grandon just came out with the statement that said 80% of all, between 20 and 80% of all chickens arrived to the slaughterhouse already injured because of how unhealthy their bodies are. Those very same companies dump a lot of the industrial waste from those farms into

[28:00] rivers. So if a poor person eats that chicken, they are complicit in a crime, a crime that I commit to all the time, but they need to

[28:08] know and everyone needs to kill that elitist argument because we should all strive for the good chicken. And to tell everybody, anybody that they shouldn't. Now I understand you should also strive for meat on your table to be part of the American thing, but we also can't

[28:23] uh, unwittingly shield the robber barons from criticism, the Goldman saxes of the world and the produced. I mean, look, the problem is, is that I think nobody argues that there's a whole bunch of externalities that don't show up on the price tag at

[28:37] Walmart. You know what I mean? to producing a chicken, let's say. Uh, there's a, but the, you know, the issue is, is that I think it's very hard to, it's very hard to get people to change, uh, if the price, if the price tag remains the way it is and the externalities to producing the crappy chicken or crappy turkey, uh,

[28:55] don't, like, make their way down to the price tag. I think it's a hard problem to solve. Well, it is a hard problem. I mean, I personally think pasta is, and we said there's a chapter in there. These are all 52 page essays. So, you know, they're very short essays in the meatball shop. They do it. That dinner at the meatball shop competes with the dinner at McDonald's. If you order one of their value menus, you know, like 650, 595. Meatball shop. Also, what about pasta? with ragout on it. You're using small amount of meat. Yeah, no, it's yeah, definitely. That's the truth. That's where we have to get. In fact, I write in the vegetarians, you have blood on your hands chapter that this might be the greatest manifesto for vegetarianism ever written because of how critical we are of fast food.

[29:39] Do you know Temple Grand works for McDonald's? I know. And in fact, I think that now, to be fair to Temple, McDonald's has co-opted temples, good work at the

[29:51] Slaughterhouse. And by the way, all those animals are killed very well at McDonald's, but they co-op her good image to give the impression that everything they do is good.

[30:01] When in reality, the her real effect is on those last few minutes of the animals. And that's hugely important. But the rest of the time they're deforesting. They're deforesting the Amazon, they do all these terrible things. Those animals are pushed to grow faster than they can than they should. And naturally. That's why they're cardiovascular. Skeletal respiratory systems cannot grow that fast. I've heard stats that a chicken at slaughterweight is the equivalent of a 349 human. When we start doing that to our livestock, and that's a lot of the percentage of the meat we eat in this country, 90%, 95%, something like that. That's a fact, and survival of the fattest, not the fittest, is a real issue that I think this book brings up, and I, in fact, learned it from Frank Reese, our poultry guy, who was doing this from an ethical perspective, and he's chosen to fight that fight by growing chickens that are not compromised genetically for

[31:00] profit. There's a difference between genetic engineering and you know, what farmers do. Farmers' brew for certain things too, but they're looking for a balanced animal, one that could survive in nature and reproduce.

[31:11] So this argues for that market. It also does not try to deny the fact that we eat 11000000000 livestock. We need 11000000000 livestock in this country. So we should start thinking about how those animals are raised. So, uh, to ask you one more quickie before we go. So, you know, one of the reasons that, uh, you know, that the meat that, you know, you sell at a heritage costs more

[31:34] than, um, than, you know, crap crap meat. Not only, uh, is the, there's a scale on which it's done. Do you believe that 15, uh, 20 years from now, it will be cheaper? Yeah, not as cheap as, not as cheap as the crap meat, but do you think it will be cheaper per

[31:53] pound because you'll be able to have better distribution routes, things like this, things that make that kind of thing more

[32:00] economical? No. No, I don't think it will be. I think there might be some efficiencies that come up that bring the cost down, but I learned that from

[32:08] Carlo Petrini. He says no, to raise 50 pigs, they grow slower. That's one. So that means they live longer. That's true. So you have to feed them more. And just so you know, a turkey is normally a very

[32:20] discriminating, discriminating eater. So what do they do on the corporate farms? They cut off its beak, so it can't pick. So all it can do is use its beak as a shovel, and they keep the lights on on the indoors. It never sees the outdoors. They're all artificially inseminated. So no sex is ever happening on this farm. So they have turned their face in unelective surgery into disconfigured

[32:45] shovel. so that it can shovel their antibiotic ridden. This is an animal so sick that they need medicine in their food just to survive their

[32:52] life, and they arrive to the solder house injured. No, it will never be that cheap. That is too cheap. That is playing God that is pushing it like the Nazis did. That's a Nazi-like thing. And I hate to say that word, but it's true. going Hitler on. Well, I mean, Purdue and stuff like that, and they never say no antibiotics because they can't. Those animals would die in their little barns there before they got to wait. So you don't even think it will ever become cheaper. I'm not saying cheap ass. You don't even think it will be cheaper. No, cheaper. Yes, I said, some efficiencies would happen, and I hope that, you know, people get into this idea of buying whole lamb.

[33:28] You know, you can't get the best lamb in this country and order it in pieces. You pretty much have to commit to a half lamb cut into pieces, but you commit to the lamb. So you know what I mean? Yes, it's still an uphill battle, otherwise I don't think it'll ever be as cheap. I do think it will be a little bit cheaper and you can save money by, I say, cooking pastas, buying whole animals. And by the way, I think corporate things. I mean, McDonald's, that's still a $67 meal. A pasta is a half that price. So I know that one's going out and one's eating home. But still, it's not absolutely. It also depends on where they, how much, you know, d-buy the good oil, do you buy the Parmigiano Reggiano price uppity up, uppity up, you know. No, I mean, I just saved for meat. So I understand now, if I was making the argument that food should be more expensive all around so that we don't do this and that, that would be a problem and I would be

[34:20] wrong. But I think when it comes to meat, this country just has to eat a little bit less meat. But the way to do that is to embrace the fact that we eat a lot of meat, not to try

[34:29] to 1st question that any sustainable meat conference, should we eat meat? We do. 11000000000 livestock. Come on, let's get with the program. I'm one example, but since heritage food started in 2004, I see dozens of butcher shops and other distribution systems, the answer is starting to push at the gates. And I'm going to, I sense that things will be

[34:51] cheaper and uh, but never, never that cheap. Cheaper but never cheap. You'll never be cutting off the beaks of turkeys so that they get fat in a 3rd the time as they are intended in nature.

[35:02] That's one of my things, sex cells. Another thing people forget. Sex, animals that have sex. Turkeys are only available for eating in November, ducks and geese. How come everyone in Charles Dickens book was always eating a duck and a goose in Christmas? Because that's when cycles of the earth, earth orbiting around the sun, that's when nature gives us those animals, but we artificially inseminate everybody. And that AI, artificial exemination is how they're able to control and grow these kind of freaks is because they find a chicken so disfigured, they pull his genetic, pull

[35:33] him from the flock, not to remove him from the flock, but to artificially inseminate the next generation with his genetics.

[35:39] Maybe that's how I was made. Probably. But you were genius. They picked the greatest genius and they bred him with another genius. So they're going to kick us off the air in a sec. We do have one caller that's been waiting. Okay, I'll take the caller, but Pat, Patrick, one of the things that you mentioned quickly is that each, like, this is a pow, pow, pow, pow, book, it's like

[35:57] 2 page essay, so... Two page, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, which is Middleweight fight. which is very much like Patrick himself. Why don't you stay around here for, because we have a caller, we're going to take really quickly. Call her, you're on the air. Thanks, dude. Hey Dave. It's Brandon from Chicago. Hey, how you doing? No, thanks. I've got a question about sous vide, barbecue and cold smoking. Alrighty. Um, so I would like to make some smoked products, uh, and I don't have an actual smoker. I do have a smoker box that burns pellets, and it kicks it out pretty well. I'm pretty pleased with it. Uh, but I don't really have an environment where I can use that and also keep the heat below,

[36:36] say 215 because I'm using my gas grill as sort of the, uh, you know, place where all the smoking happens. Wait, so you have a box that attaches to the grill, like a, like a, like whatever they are, Brunson or whatever,

[36:48] they attach it to the side of the grill via, via like a port? No, it's a little tube. It's made by amazing products. I don't know if you've heard about them before, but you just, it's like a drilled out box basically. Um, that you, you put the pelt in and you just sit it under the grill brakes and uh, and just let it

[37:07] go. Right. Um, so it does a pretty good job. So, uh, my dilemma is that I'm either left to sort of cold smoking at sort of ambient

[37:17] temperatures or going above 200 degrees and getting, uh, you know, outside

[37:23] of uh, sort of temperature range where I'd like to, you know, if I'm gonna smoke sous vide meats. So I was wondering if you were going to do some like sous vide, smoked pork belly or like a sous vide pork

[37:35] shoulder. First, would you smoke it before you put it in the bag or afterwards? Uh, and then if you were gonna do it before, how do you deal with having raw meat sitting around, uh, for

[37:48] hours, just, you know, kind of at, at ambient temperatures, doing cold smoking? How long is it, how long is your, how much smoke do you want to put on? How long do you need to have it in the cold smoker? And are these commodity meats or heritage meats? Like 4 to 6 hours maybe? I don't know. like a lot of smoke on it. Yeah, I mean, you could, like, what some people do is they'll, they'll, they'll put the meat on, like, uh, you know, like, or over a bed of,

[38:12] like, uh, ice almost to keep it, like, even below ambient, like, they'll put, like, a, a rack over a sheet tray with ice and then let the smoke go around

[38:18] it, and then, uh, you know, the ice isn't directly touching the food, but you can actually keep the temperatures down, like, to where it's, you know, fairly

[38:25] safe. Um, that's one way to do it. Or, you know, but the thing is that if you're going to smoke cold, I would definitely do a nitrate or, you know, nitrite-based cure so that you would inhibit any possibility of botulism happening during a cold smoking procedure, anytime you're going to cold

[38:43] smoke for any length of time, you want to ensure that you're not going to have botulism problems.

[38:50] Now, if you're going to do sous vide afterwards, even if you had caused some, you know, some botulism growth on it, you're

[38:56] gonna, you're gonna, you know, if you cook it properly, sous vide, you're going to destroy the toxins and destroy the vegetative cells, you obviously won't destroy the spores because you can't do that with

[39:06] CV, but that, you know, that's 11 way around it. But if you actually want the full sous vide texture of it, then I would

[39:13] do, I would do it before and cold. Now, if you, if you want to sous vide it all the way through and you can do a hot smoking fairly quickly, right, then you can, you'll overcook the outer sections of the meat, but you can get a good smoke on in a very, in a shorter amount of time, if you do, if you start, uh, if you do

[39:30] a, like a sous vide, cool it all the way down, you can have it almost at, you know, fridge or below temps, pull it out, let it, you know, let it dry off in the fridge so that it gets a little bit of a pellicle in the fridge instead of the

[39:39] smoker, right? And then throw it in your smoker cold. And then you can throw a hot smoke on it pretty quickly without overcooking through and then do the rest of the retherm

[39:48] in, you know, in a lower temp environment and do it that way. So it's all a question of how long you need to smoke it and how cold you

[39:55] can, you can keep it. But if you're going to do any appreciable cold smoking, I would definitely nitrate it or nitrate at first. nitrate it, right? Would you do that in a, so I usually bronze stuff before I do this? And I put in about a gram of uh, in secure number one per kilogram? Uh, do you think that'd be enough to, to, you know, kick out the, the botulism

[40:19] in the nasties or should I up the, in the, Brian, should I up the percentage? Uh, the insecu- insecure one is the one that's, uh, it's not mixed. using the pink stuff, right? I forget what the, I forget what the, yeah, I forget what the ratios are, but like any one of the charcuterie books has like brine

[40:34] levels and I would just use the same amount of insecure that you would use in like a bacon-based brine recipe.

[40:40] Um, you know, unfortunately, like I do it so rarely that I don't have the numbers in my head, but like I would just consult any, you know, fundamental charcuterie

[40:50] manual. Don't obviously consult the ones that are advocating nitrate nitrate free stuff because they're probably not then going to do something like a cold smoke on

[40:59] it. But anyone that has, you know, a brine recipe with

[41:03] Instacure should give you like a decent ratio. And I would just stick with that. I wouldn't, especially, you know, if you're doing it, um, you know, if you're doing it yourself, I wouldn't worry about

[41:10] going like a little bit over, it's not gonna, not gonna kill you as much as botulism will. All right, well, thanks. I appreciate it. All right, thanks. Let us know, you know, tweet us or call us and let us know how it worked out for you. That's what I was going to say. All right, we'll do. I was going to answer just like you did. Really? All right, cool. All right, so listen, we're going to have to go now, but I will say what I didn't answer that I will answer. Rob Treypaz called about fiddlehead ferns and ostrich ferns, actually very interesting, like potential poisoning problems with ostrich ferns that are undercooked.

[41:40] I done some research on it, and I'll get to you next time. Nigel Olsen, Nigel Olsen called in. gluten-free, gluten-free, like shoe pastry, and guess who we have on next week, Stas. Lena Klock. Yeah, who is the founder and the chief everything officer of Cup for Cup, the gluten-free flower that is that Thomas Keller is also selling

[42:02] that their company is called Cup for Cup, and she will be on the show next week. No one will ever call her a clock. So I'll I will I will wait to answer your question until then. And Ken and Gramercy talked about chewy crust in his pizza. I have a lot of stuff to say about that, but I'm going to also try to get either maybe I'll try to get Jeff Steingarten to call in on that. What do you think? Because he's the master of the chewy crust. All right? So those are the questions that I didn't get to that I will get to next week. And Alexander Saunders on the way wants to know, what is a word meaning a soul wrenching need to sear something, but frustration at the inability to do so. Perhaps something German. Tweeting your results, cooking issues.

[42:47] Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritageradionetwork.org. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.