[0:00] Today's program has been brought to you by Whole Foods Market, a dynamic leader in the quality food business, a mission driven company that aims to set the standards of excellence for food retailers.

[0:09] For more information, visit Whole Foods market.com. Hi, this is Joe Campanelli, the host of In the Drink. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:31] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Your Shoes coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network in Bushwick, Brooklyn, in the back of Roberta's

[0:42] Pizzeria every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Joined again with Jack. How you doing, Jack? I'm great Yeah, you're back. Where were you? were you on the vacation? Where were we? I was on vacation. I was working. I was performing at Bonnaroo. Ah, performing, but like... The Heritage Radio or for your band? For my DJ performance collective. We are called full service. So there were 16 of us. Are you, in fact, a full service DJ collected? Let me ask you a question, Jack. Now, you know, just based on what you're what you play here, you don't like, you know, spin like wedding hits, right? That's not your gig. Yeah, okay. But let me ask you a question. Yeah, you can ham, sure. Let me ask you a question. This thing that people do now, nowadays at parties where they play like 30 seconds of a song that I really love, and then they throw it into some other song that I may or may not like, but then it's only ever like 30 seconds at a time of a song,

[1:35] what's with that? What is that? Well, I mean, I guess that's, you know, if you're looking for a professional DJ, right? Or if someone's making a career as a DJ, you have to do something that sets yourself apart from somebody that might just have

[1:48] Spotify because anybody with Spotify could just play a song that everybody knows. Yeah, but to keep up, no, to keep a room grooming, how many of these people, when they're switching this stuff up, keep people's asses pumping the entire time. They don't. They always flub it. It's always messed. guess it depends on where you are. And do I really want to hear 30 seconds of hypnotized or do I want Biggie Smalls to, like, you know, bash me all the way through on that thing? Fair point. Yeah. I mean, I still, you know, I just don't, I just don't get it. I just don't get it. Because if you, like, like, like old school DJs, right? They weave stuff in and out, but they're really just kind of, like, you lay down a long, a long, long, long track that you can just keep grooving to fundamentally all night,

[2:26] right? And then you can layer tunes in and out of that, but it's not like they're literally playing the tune for 30 seconds and then just doing the

[2:32] CrossFade, right? Which is what I feel people are doing now. Or lot of remixes and stuff. All right. So, I mean, I don't know. Do you think it's not weak? Tell me why it's not weak. Why it's not weak? Why would I just describe, like, 30 seconds of hypnotized and then crossfade into some other song? doesn't even necessarily have. The way you're describing that doesn't sound so good. You'd think that these DJs, when they're doing this, would notice everyone's leaving the dance floor. Well, that's your answer. If people are leaving the dance floor, then you're failing. Yeah. Another thing. Any of you getting married out there, enough with the brown-eyed girl. Seriously. Jack, can you dance to brown eyed girl at a wedding? I don't really dance at weddings though. There you go, DJ. What about you? What about you, Stas? I haven't been to a wedding in a while Yeah, but when you go out dancing, what do you like when they play like those like, those songs that are good songs, but they're, like, you want songs everyone's butt can gyrate to, right? And that's pretty much it. Good gyrating beat, buff, buff, buff, buff, buff, enough water on the sidelines so people don't die. You can like finger snap to brown-eyed girl, I guess. Yeah, but everyone, look, unless you are freaking Fred Astaire. You're not going to stand around in front of, you know, your friend's family and God forbid someone that you're trying to get in bed with and snap your fingers.

[3:44] Probably. Yeah. All right. Listen, we have more time later on this, Jack. Do you have Chris on the phone? No, we can get him on the phone right now. I'll talk about the question a bit, and then while you're getting on the phone, we'll try to do this here. So I got a question. Actually, it was into the, uh, into the Twitter, uh, by, uh, Chuck Schneider asking, um, about a recipe that was published on chef steps for

[4:07] me qui, you know, partially cooked. You like that word? Don't like it says. You don't like it? ? What does it sound like to you? Anyway, well, I can't. Chris is not on the phone yet. I thought you were going to talk about it. Well, I mean, he has to hear the question, so I'm not going to, anyway. So it's about Miqui sandwiches, like, you know, partially cooked. And the question is, I've got Chris on the line. Hey, Chris, how you doing? I'm doing well. How are you, Dave? All right. So I got a question about one of your chef step recipes. And I'm presuming it's yours because when someone asked a question you commented. So I'm assuming that means it's probably your recipe. It's for the meat, yeah, the meat qui salmon. And the question was from Chuck Schneider. It was, dear folks. I love the flavor texture of this, meaning your recipe, but curious how

[4:51] it compares to both raw or traditional cooked product safety wise. Now, uh, just for, you know, uh, you want to, like, give me, give me like the 32nd, like,

[5:02] rundown, the difference between this low temperature salmon and the one that was, the ones that are popularized by like the Roka style cooking that was, uh, you know, came into Vogue, I don't know, around 2001, 2002, is that this one

[5:14] is uh, cooked, well, cooked in quotes. I'm making air quotes around the microphone and then refrigerated afterwards and actually kept, which is non, not the way

[5:24] that, uh, you know, the early low temp and sous vide jockeys were doing. So with that in mind, why don't you give us the like 32nd rundown of the recipe? Sure. Well, the important thing to recognize that it's not only cooked or far cooked, but it's also lightly cured with

[5:38] salt, and so you have 2 factors improving the safety. You've got a bit of salt, but in combination with the heating is more effective at providing a margin of safety

[5:49] than heat alone. And for various reasons, we actually tested this recipe with an independent food research laboratory where it was challenge tested for a 2 week

[6:00] period. And we actually showed that although the heating temperature alone wouldn't

[6:04] ensure adequate margins of safety, The combination of the salt and the heat together showed that the recipe was actually quite safe against the usual

[6:15] pathogens. And so we feel pretty confident in recommending it. It was only 40 degrees C though, right? 2nd rundown. Sorry? The cooking temperature was only 40 degrees C, right? That's right. 104. Yeah. So... Like, in fact, for many bacteria, that's, so people, let's just get this straight, straight off the top. Chris, but you know, for those of you that don't know, I don't know how the hell you would be listening to this if you don't know who Chris Young is, but Chris Young is one of the founders of Chef

[6:44] Steps. And if you haven't gone to that website yet, I recommend you go right away. Or I would wait 35 minutes and then go. The other, you know, also, you know, one of the authors of Modernist Cuisine, the greatest cookbook achievement of all times. And, uh, there's

[7:03] a bunch of things when you're when you're doing food safety, you know, Chris will chime in in a second. And there's a lot of interesting, interesting words about how the health departments across the country and nationally handle food safety in modernist

[7:15] cuisine if you haven't had a chance to read those sections yet. Um, I especially like the submarine thing. You like that? It's not really food safety, but that submarine thing changed my life. I will talk about it later because Chris is limited on time. Someone remind me to talk about the submarine thing if I haven't already. Is that everyone's favorite section of monitors cuisine or not, Chris? With the with the butt die. It's probably not. Maybe yours. Oh, no, it's definitely one of mine. I mean, like, I mean, that's like crazy. I have to get into it. I'm sorry. So the thing is, is, you know, how, how, how, how much are like germs, let's just call them on people really spread about, you

[7:53] know? And this doctor, the naval doctor on board a submarine, gave exams to the sailors and then said that he was testing their their

[8:02] nether regions there behind for something, and instead put a phosphorescent powder dye in their butts, and

[8:10] then, like a day later, walked around the submarine with a UV lamp, and the entire freaking sub lit up from the phosphorescent stuff. pretty much accurate. And I was like, the funny thing is, I don't think it's mentioned who that story came from, but the person, the sailor in question who told us that story was the

[8:29] the, the renowned Craig Vintner, uh, the decoder of the human genome during his time in the Navy. So he's actually the source of that. So, so presumably reputable. I think so. Nice. I like that. That's strong. Strong. So you heard it here first, folks. Okay. Back to what we're saying here. Here are some true statements. The, the, any food safety um, organization in the world? Their job isn't to figure out the minimum possible thing that's safe from a bacteria or whatever

[9:03] standpoint for a particular recipe. Their job is to provide bulletproof, uh, uh, you know,

[9:10] guidelines such that no one can mess things up and no one's going to get food poison. And such, all of the rules are always overkill 100% of the time. 100% of the time. Um, Now, the, uh, but here's the, here's the thing. There a little magical thing and the 2 magic words, because I was going to get in an argument with Chris about like, you know, the levels, blah, blah, blah. He said the 2 magic words, which were challenge study. Now, if you, what a challenge study is, is you, you, you actually usually incubate whatever you're going to cook with the pathogen of choice, and

[9:42] then, uh, you do your procedure to it, and then they test it, uh, with a certain number of uh, of iterations to prove that that the bacteria of interest doesn't grow. And if your procedure does that, then it's safe. accurate or no? Yep, yeah. And so that's that's exactly the approach we we took. We were working with a food retailer who was interested in this recipe, and so they funded this, and that recipe was actually put to the test,

[10:10] and, and certainly heating alone as a control would fail, and, and if your, if your salmon was unsafe, um, you would increase the risk slightly. Although in my opinion, you know, what we found from that is it's probably not any safer, even if you skipped the salty and

[10:25] stuff and eating and eating most sushi. But if you add the salt in combination with heating and you start out with a reasonable, you know, obviously you shouldn't have a horrible, nasty product, but if you start out with reasonably fresh salmon, you know, so that you get as a typically a reputable supermarketer or fishmonger, and the combination of the salt and the low heating, followed by the

[10:47] chilling in refrigeration, was adequate to provide an appropriate margin. Now, would you avoid pre butchered filets? Well, uh, in general, we prefer, you know, it's always the less processing your ingredients have had, generally speaking, the safer they're going to

[11:05] be, because there's less opportunity for surface contamination. So, it depends on how concerned you are. If you're very, very risk averse, um, then, you know, maybe

[11:14] that, you know, maybe you do want to basically have everything as pristine and handled as little as possible. But you know what? I eat salmon sushi in Seattle, and there was a study that said that one out of 4 pieces of salmon sushi have viable and a

[11:27] sacid worms. So, you know, we all do that pretty regularly. You know, most of the time, you know, we take some risk and it doesn't hurt us. Right, right. But, I mean, and these are really minor rips. Well, okay, so here's the here are the 2 bacteria. ask you about because I'm sure these are the ones that people, one of the, some of the concerned was botulism and listeria, right? So both of those were tested in the challenge. No, we didn't do that because we were going to have adequate refrigeration. And you were not going to have, so with botulism, you have to undergo spore outgrowth.

[12:01] And, and our process does not allow nearly enough time to basically trigger

[12:06] spore, uh, score germination and outgrowth. Well, but there's no botulism out. So you're saying that the soak and the pack time prior to cook isn't enough to cause any germination? No.

[12:18] I mean, the whole, the whole process is salt, salt, salt, the filets in a brine, you cook the,

[12:25] you vacuum, seal them, and cook them for an hour, and then they're rapidly brought down the refrigeration temperature. So you're only in the danger zone about 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the sizes of your piece of salmon, maybe an hour and 15 minutes, including the cool down time. That's just not a very long time for bacterial growth. Uh, now, obviously, if you load it up with, with, with, with viable uh, botulinum, um,

[12:50] bacteria, rather than the spores, or if you load it up with a little steria bacteria. But those are fairly, fairly rare and they shouldn't have grown too large numbers to begin with. So really what you're going to be concerned with are, are, are, is equal contamination in the form of colliforms and salmonella. And you generally want to look at salmonella because if you're killing the salmonella, It's a very, very good bet that you're killing the other, uh, other potential uh, illness causing bacteria. I mean, it would seem to me that like. Salmonella doesn't grow so well in the seem to me that salmonella doesn't grow so well in the fridge, but like your hope is that you're not going to get a listeria growth.

[13:24] Your hope is that you get rid of enough listeria or that you inhibit its growth with the salt combo enough that it doesn't grow in the

[13:31] fridge because that's the only one that... But the other reason is we're looking at refrigeration temperatures of 2 to 3 degrees Celsius. And so provided, you know, provided you respect that and you provided you only have a 2 week shelf life, um, listeria is a minor

[13:47] concern. I, you know, you can't say that this is going to be a product that's good for for a month or 6 weeks because now even refrigerator temperatures,

[13:55] wisteria would start to become a concern. So you always, you have to keep in mind, um, what time scale are you talking about too? If you're going to basically cook it and chill it down and serve it within one to 2 days. Right. This just isn't a very risky procedure. If on the other hand, you're a retailer and this might be in your supply chain for for a week, you really want to know you have you have a larger margin of safety during refrigerated storage.

[14:21] Okay, so also people should label their back. Everyone should label their bags, but I think people at home don't do it very much. Label your bags, and do you recommend an ice chill down or no? I mean, people at home do weird things with their fridge for starters, you know, just realize that, you know, any, almost anybody's home fridge that I've ever seen would be condemned by a health department.

[14:40] FairPoint, Dave. Yeah fair point. Uh, and then the other side of it is I read a really weird thing. Like something like 25% of the population changes the temperature of their refrigerator seasonally based on how warm or cold it is outside. Why would they do that? I have no idea. I, like, my brain melted a little bit when, when, when I read that finding for a large appliance manufacturer. And so, you know, this, this was a recipe that was, you know, meant for chefs and meant for enthusiastic home cooks who are going to be knowledgeable about food safety and be reasonable.

[15:15] And so as long as, you know, you use high quality ingredients as long as you do salting and cooking for for relatively short amounts of time, and then as long as you chill it down and keep it in a cold refrigerator, as long as you consume it within a week, this is a very, very safe rest.

[15:31] Okay, so here's what I'm going to say, because in case people don't look at the recipe right away. Your brine percent was 10%. So stuff's not going to be growing in that brine during the brine procedure and the brine procedure done cold, correct? Yes. Okay. Once you take it out, don't let it sit on the counter in the bag, do your cook step and rechill it. you know, lickety split so that you stay in the in the evil window as short as time as possible, correct? Yep. And label the bag and keep it in the coldest part of your fridge or, you know, if you can, maybe even on like an ice pack in the fridge.

[16:00] Good point or not good point. Yeah, exactly. And but challenge study done and proven,

[16:07] proven does not decrease the safety level of the fish that you started with appreciably. Proven that it had proven that it was adequately safe at 2 weeks. Right now, people, bear in mind that safety levels are done for a different thing.

[16:20] So there's, like, what we're talking about here is something that doesn't appreciably add to risks, as opposed to completely eliminating risks that are early. So don't dip your salmon in poop and do this recipe. You need a different recipe if you're going to dip your salmon and poop beforehand. I don't want to see that recipe. Hey, but that no, but all kidding aside. I mean, like a lot of the recipes out there, a lot of the the rules out there where they make you hammer everything are done with

[16:51] the with the fact in mind that you might be horribly contaminated with, you know, quite literally with poop.

[16:56] Yeah, and, and, you know, the funny thing is we worry about the risk of, say, a

[17:01] famine miqui or a rare, a piece of chicken that's still slightly pink, but the Indian

[17:06] is, we all eat salads with foraged ingredients, and, you know, we've all had grit in our salad. I mean, that's not just dirt. There's other things mixed in there. So one of the, one of the things is you really have to, you know, look at a recipe and say, well, what level of risk am I really taking from

[17:24] that and where we think, what we tend to think is risky as cooked? Uh is often not the riskiest thing we do. Yeah, yeah. Do you have to hightail or can I bring up another thing with you real quick? Yeah, I've got a few minutes. Go ahead. All right. So, I had another question in. This is from John Riper in Seattle, and he's actually got another question. I'll take later that Chris doesn't need to stay on for, but I saw also, I don't know who was over there is doing it, but I know you've done a lot of work with

[17:50] cheese, and he had a question about his cheese curds. He said the sources I've seen for cheese, you know, cheese curds and cheese, all use calcium chloride when they want to fortify the calcium levels of milk for firmer curds, presume. By the way, people, what happens is during the pasteurizing and storage process of milk that you buy in the store, you know,

[18:09] some of the calcium is rendered no longer available. You need the calcium there for the binding of the, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a

[18:16] divalent, uh, cadion, you need it there to bind the uh, curds together. If's not there, you won't get a firm curd. And so people add sometimes calcium if they're going to use store-bought milk, uh, to increase the firmness of their courage. And his question is, why aren't they using calcium lactate or calcium glucinate? Is there a good reason or is it just price? Almost certainly just price and that you're adding very small concentration so that you don't tend to notice the slight bitterness? Right. I mean, even I, who hate calcium chloride. I mean, the recipes I saw, they're using like a 100th of a percent, you know, something tiny. So no one's going to taste that. No, you know, and then, you know, that's, that's such a minor level of bitterness that, uh, um, you know, even super tasters who are people who are hypersensitive

[19:02] to, to bitter. I would be surprised if they're really picking up any substantial bitterness from that. And then the other thing, yeah, so that's my opinion. I think it's mostly just the price and convenience factor. Calcium lactate on a commercial scale, is just a lot more expensive than

[19:17] calcium, uh, chloride, and it's also less readily available. Right. So 0.01%. I mean, that's actually, that's got to be too low. a 10th of a gram in a liter. Right? Yeah, that's a 10 to a gram in a liter. Because you do have calcium already present. So the one of the things to recognize is you're really just fortifying. Yeah, I would, and I would say that that is almost an order of magnitude below the taste

[19:43] threshold. I would suspect that's pretty near or below. I haven't actually seen any studies on what the threshold is. I mean, I'm just saying bitterness. Imagine imagine dissolving a single gram of calcium chloride into a liter of water,

[19:58] right? And you're doing 10 times less than that. I'm guessing that it's not going to be that, uh, apparent. You're doing 10 times less than that. You're doing a gram into 10 liters of, 1st of all, not water of milk. And a lot of the way, which is going to have a lot of that stuff is going to be expelled as well. So you're not going to, I mean, the calcium is going to be bound up in the free calcium chloride. A lot of it will be expelled. I mean, non-tastable. And another reason to use it is that you can use a lot less than use of the other ones, and it is extremely soluble, so you don't have any issues where you might have, I don't know, some piece of grit left over that didn't get

[20:37] dissolved because you didn't agitate it enough and it got strained out or some sort of nightmare situation like that. So I would just stick with the calcium chloride. Uh, easier to, you know, easier to purchase, cheaper and definitely not going to taste it at that level. Right? Okay. Here's not a caller. Okay, cool, hold on once. Can we have them both on? Yeah. All right, call her, you're on the air. Maybe not. Hey. Hey, Dave. It's Colin down in DC. How you doing? Doing all right. How was it? Hi, Colin. Uh, I don't know if you know this, Colin, whether you're listening, but Chris Young's also on the air with us. So it sounds like, uh, the last guy was asking something about calcium, but I just had a, uh, was making some caramelized onions, and, you know, I've seen people, you know, uh, tend

[21:26] to give a result, and uh, time of all those folks are into using a little baking soda to kind of help it along, because the basicity of it, you know, speeds up

[21:36] to browning, but also, you know, the, I tried that and wasn't very impressed because, it does make it really mushy because it breaks down the pectin, right? But I guess helps helps. If you use calcium hydroxide, Would that give you the enhanced browning, but also keep the pectin firm? Well, you're not going to brown. Calcium hydroxide is not so soluble, so you don't want to use it as

[22:04] your Yeah, like you don't want to use it for that application. No. Yeah, okay. It also, that the problem is, it's, it's the, what, what speeds

[22:15] of browning is alkaline conditions, but alkaline conditions also

[22:18] speed the, the dissolving of the cell wall. So it really doesn't matter what salt you use to raise the pH, whether you use

[22:26] couch, whether you use baking soda or calcium hydroxide. But calcium. Calcium in the interesting thing about calcium hydroxide and have done tests on this, but not with browning because they were done aqueous. Yeah, I see. So using the calcium ions to try to cross-link the the cell, the pectin in the cell wall. Yeah, that works, but it won't work for your application because calcium hydroxide. What you would need to do is a pre-soak in a calcium bath, get the calcium into the vegetables, then lower the

[22:55] pH for the browning. You see what I'm saying? yeah yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. Okay, so so so you basically do what uh what ticklers often do where they they infuse uh some calcium salts to keep to keep the pickles crunchier after after retorting? Sure, yeah. Or pressure canning. Right. So you can, for instance, you can do, you can do the calcium, uh, yeah,

[23:18] you know, you can do the calcium hydroxide in a boil, a little bit to do

[23:22] to, to prevent the browning of broccoli, let's say, and still keep it crunchy. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we've used it to a lot of other beneficial applications, it just seemed like a place where, you know, it has the, it

[23:39] had the hydroxide and it had the calcium all in one spot. Right, but if you're curious if it would, yeah, kill 2 bridges once. It would not it would not do the browning kind of stuff that you would get out of like the, uh, what was it you guys did in the modernist cuisine? Was that butternut squash that you added to the pressure cooker or was it? Uh, uh, the, the, the, we did it with carrots. We did it with butternut squash. We do it with bananas. We did it to just about anything we could we could catch. Yeah. But remember, they're pressure cooking. So they're going to make it soft. I don't know that even cross-linked pecked in. I mean, look, look at, look at, uh, canned tomatoes. They keep their structure and they've been canned. So it is possible to use calcium to cross-link depecting to keep it somewhat intact at retort temps.

[24:23] That's a good point, Dave. Yeah, 2 parts, 2 part process, or let's go back to the thing we were just talking about, Chris, the calcium, a little bit of calcium chloride, because I don't think it's going to take much. You know what I mean? Yeah, and you... Again, I think in with the complex sort

[24:40] of Myard flavors, I don't think bitterness. I mean, you have other things that are going to be slightly bitter too. So I think that'll just fit the flavor profile. So, yeah, maybe, maybe taking your onion slices and, and if you have a chamber sealer, just do a, do a vacuum infusion of, of, of, some calcium water. Hard water. Uh, and on one last note. Similarly, so, you know, calciums, your divalent ions will be, like, will cross-link some

[25:09] different, uh, different types of stuff we use. And have you seen that uh with Guargon much? Do you see much of a effect of calcium and other

[25:21] stuff in the viscosity? Well, I've never seen any. I've never seen any ion interactivity with glar. Have you, Chris? I mean, it's not No, and I haven't worked with Guar as much as I have locust bean gum, but. No, that's not, I'm just trying to think this too, and I don't, I wouldn't expect much. I mean, Locust being Don McGuire. I was kind of curious since, uh, you know, I do a lot of, like, energy research, and what, I was looking at, you know, uh, just water, water impacts of hydraulic facturing, and of

[25:54] course, you use tons of guargum there. And one of their problems in reusing the water is that, you know, you get an effect of all these geological salts, like calcium, flurides, and everything that's underground, causing stuff in their fluids to

[26:12] cross link and get sicker and get all this stuff. Well, don't they use... from kitchen suspect. Right. fracking fracking. isn't it borated? Don't they use boron? Yeah, boron as well. But, uh, you know, it seems like, like blondes or codium. Those those are things will add, but that's not present in a large amount in the geological

[26:37] formations. Whereas the calcium, there's tons of it. So that'll, you know, actually end up in, uh, you know, it can be like, uh, you know, 10%

[26:47] salinity just of calcium salt in some cases. Right. I mean, yeah, it's kind of curious. I won't say I'm ever... Calcium levels that high. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I'll look it up. It's interesting to me. I don't know that much about fracking. I know that Guar is used because you can rapidly shift the viscosity. it. That's the gimmick. Right, right? I don't know how that happens, but I know that whenever you use Guar, Guar is a thickener, and we ignore calcium, and I use Guar in

[27:16] dairy and non-. Although you know, it's interesting. So, like, no, one of my old recipes was a Guar, Joan, Lo Asel,

[27:22] Joan mix, and there's definitely a synergy between Lo Asel, Jelan, and Guar that doesn't exist with locust being gum. I don't, but I was only doing that in a milk-based system and I never tried it in a non-dairy system. So maybe there is some sort of weak calcium reactivity that just I've never been aware of. I can look it up. It's not my memory. I'll go check the handbook of hydrocollage, the Nusovich classic, unless there's some newer book I need to look at, but I'll check it out. Okay, well, great. Thanks for shielding a bunch of stuff. All right, thank you. Fun keeping on. Cool. Thanks. Dave? Yeah, Chris. For having me on. I do need to run now. All right, cool. Thanks, Chris. And, you know, hopefully, this is good. is a good part about knowing people is that when someone asks a question that relates to them, we can just call them. Always appreciate it. Good talk to you. All right, thanks, Chris. And we'll take a break and come back with more cooking issues.

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[28:40] recipes, as well as offering classes with nutritionists and cooking coaches to help inspire good health and

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[29:02] And oh, welcome back to cooking issues. That was fun, right? having Chris on the phone? Yeah, yeah. Call her. By the way. Stas, what did you think of that? What? What Jack? What did you think of the phone, the phone and phone, 2 phoners at the same time? It's hard because they can't see each other. You know what I mean? I'm not answering that yet. Yeah, yeah, she's not answering that because she didn't even hear the question. No, no, no. People, people, she didn't even have her headphones on. Like that's how important her text session was that she didn't even have her headphones on. All right, let's I had a quick, like, fun little summer question for you. Roasting marshmallows. What's your technique? I use a searsal. Come on, though. I mean, yeah, come on. No campfire technique. Uh, well, look, here's my feeling on marshmallows. There are a couple schools of thought. I can think of three. There's the, I don't give a crap school of thought, right? In which case they just do it. And then there's on the either end, there's the lightly toasted puffed golden brown marshmallow lovers, right? And then there's the burnt crust, gooey inside, like, charcoal kind of lovers. Which one are you? I don't know. I'd say probably the first. But, you know, it's nice to kind of give it a quick zap in there and then you just kind of peel off that burn layer. then you can kind of go again, you know? Yeah, that's true. true. Stas, do you are you one of those freaks that doesn't like toasted marshmallows? I do. Okay, what do you, which kind do you like? We just did it on a campfire last week. And that's not what I'm asking. I said between the 2 things that you weren't listening to that I was talking about, which one do you prefer? Um, I don't know. Do you prefer it lightly toasted or do you prefer a chard? lightly toasted But both. I see people, do you see? Do you see what I'm dealing with? I don't want to say the wrong thing. There's no wrong, man. Because you're wrong. It's a choice. So the, uh, I think it's the difficulty with the lightly toasted one is that, um, a lot of times when you're doing it that way, you don't get like a gooey enough

[31:04] inside. Now, some people might want the inside to be totally raw to have that kind of chew to it, but I think that often when people do that, they're going to under they're going to

[31:12] underdo the inside. So to do that when really right, it takes more patience than most of us can muster because you have to hold it fairly high above the flame.

[31:19] You have to rotate it constantly and make sure that you don't have any one section to, you know,

[31:24] to burnt. Um, And just who has that kind of patience, especially if you're using a 4 inch stick that's a pain to turn

[31:30] around. You know what I mean? I was cheating. I put a stick in the ground over the weekend and just kind of kept it sort of close to the fire and kept it there for like 15

[31:38] minutes, so it really slowly cooked. And how was it? It was great. See, that's the thing. I think that's probably a good, that's a good technique. It just, who has that kind of, you know, that's that's more patience than I can live. I want a s'more or a toasted marshmallow. I want that sucker like now. Enter this series all. Enter the sears all, although you still have to be careful with the sears all because although it does it quickly and it's more even. You can still, you know, very quickly set the outside of a marshmallow on fire. Because, you know, the thing with the marshmallows, it's dry. There's not a lot of water there. So once it starts going brown, it can then go black and then ignite fairly quickly. So you have to, you know, you have to be you have to, you know, be gentle with it. So it's like it's either either you risk the burn or you take your time. Those are the 2 choices. I like them charcoal to be honest. Although I like a toasted one every now and again, but I don't know, I love that outside kind of charcoal overcooked action too. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. All right. So John Riper's other question, which I'll get before I get to the other question. By the way, should you have any questions in the next couple of demands, call them 2 718-497-2128 that's 718-497-2128. Oh yeah, Jack, your question. I think it's tough with 2 people on the phone because they can't see when the other one's going to talk. Exactly. You know what I'm saying? Yep. Yeah. Okay. Uh, Jack's, uh, John's uh, separate a 2nd question. What are your thoughts on equipment to create a cheese aging environment at home? Wine cooling unit seem to have good temperature control, but they don't control humidity or aim for a lower relative

[33:04] humidity than or they aim for a lower relative humidity than cheese is need. Is DIY the only way to go, or is there a VISA, meaning spending money from your credit card? Alternative, John Riper in Seattle. Well, okay. Actually, you know what I've gotten a lot of questions on recently? Is this, uh, oh, Jesus, I can't remember the name. It called the steak locker. Have you been getting any questions about this recently? Have you been say, has Mark been asking about this? It's like a Kickstarter thing. It's available right now where it's it's kind of like a wine cooler, but it's it's tweaked out for dry aging steaks, so it's got humidity and temperature control for dry aging steaks and like, you know, light bulbs,

[33:36] you can see what's on. You can put a salt slab in there, if that's your jammy. Anyways. So that's got temperature and humidity control. However, it's going to be putting it at a lower relative humidity than you want. So that's probably not going to work for you. Here's what you're going to want to do. You're going to want to go, uh, the only one I could that I know of offhand, and I've never used it, so I don't, um, I don't really know how awesome it is, but the only kind of semi off the

[34:02] shelf. So it's not 100% DIY, but it's not 100%, you know, like plug and play.

[34:07] Auburn instruments who, you know, is a leader in incredibly cheap temperature control stuff, has the TH210 temperature and community controller for curing

[34:17] fridge and high relative humidity, right? So that's the key that it can do high relative humidity. And that's 190, 119 bucks from Auburn

[34:26] instruments, and you just set your fridge on coldest, plug the fridge into the temperature plug on this

[34:32] thing, and then whatever you're going to use to control the humidity. So, I mean, I wouldn't necessarily recommend like a pan with a small heater to increase the humidity in the fridge, or you could get a small humidifier that sits in the

[34:43] fridge, uh, presuming that the fridge maintains a relative lower relative humidity than you need. And then you just plug those 2 things in, set it, and you can walk away and it should work. So you buy a fridge or, you know, a working fridge. One of these units for 119 bucks and some form of humidifier that you like and and plug it in and go. Yeah? Yeah, all right. Now, we had a question in that we missed before. Tom Fisher writes, where's he, where does he live anyway? Do you know? Do you remember? Shoot, I don't remember where he lives. See if we can find it. Dear Dave, Nastasia, and Jack. I have a logistics problem. I've fallen in love with hot lobster rolls. Hot lobster roll sounds like vaguely kind of vaguely kind of dirty, right? Hot lobster roll. Doesn't it sounds like some sort of like, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I like him. I like they're delicious, but something sounds like hot and roll. hot and rolled together, I think, right? anyway. And I'd like to make them at home. The problem is the lobster meat. It seems way too expensive in both time and dollars to buy live

[35:44] lobster, just to steam them to get the meat. Frozen lobster meat would work, but the affordable sources only have it in £2 packages. I need single serving sizes of 4 to 8 ounces and I don't want to resort to canned lobster, any ideas. Uh, okay. Well, I mean, look, in a lobster roll, it probably doesn't make much difference. The only frozen lobster experience I've ever had was with Whole Foods, one day I had to do a low temperature

[36:11] demonstration, and I went to Whole Foods to buy lobster, not knowing that they somehow think that it's inhumane for you to kill a lobster at home, but it is humane to have some dude in a factory in

[36:22] Canada kill the crap out of the lobster and then freeze it for you. Does that make any damn sense to you, stars? Makes no damn sense, right? Are Canadians inherently less cruel as people towards lobsters than Americans? Jack, do you have any thoughts on the relative cruelty of Canadian lobster killers and Americans? Even Stephen, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I would bet that in a commercial environment, like, I don't know, I bet it's even rougher. At home, you know, people are like, oh, sorry, buddy. you know, and they throw it into the pot. You know what I'm saying? It is true that commercially, they use high pressure when they're doing a steam. So it probably maybe kills them a little bit faster. I don't know. I've already done plenty of work on lobster killings. not going to talk about it now. I'm not going to get into it because I don't have time. But here's what I would say. If you can buy a £2 block of lobster meat that you like. By the way, also, if you train yourself in ripping a lobster apart, there's almost no time in breaking a lobster down. Like, I remember I was Bobby Flay opened this place called Bar American. I know if it's still open like a 1000000 years ago, right? I went to the opening party, and they had this giant lobster out there, and it was crowded, so crowded. And, you know, for anyone that's grown up on the cape or grown up around the cape or on the east coast and like eating a lot of lobster. I mean, we know how to break lobsters down fast. You know what I'm saying? Now it's true. If you want to get 100% yield out of a lobster. You gotta rip it open, like break open the bodies, get to get the meat out, but in a small lobster, that's not such a big thing anyway. And getting the meat out of the claws is a little bit of a little bit of hassle sometimes. But the guy goes, I say, you know, they didn't have enough horse dervis because they had more people than they thought, right? So they had that, you know how like when they're opening a restaurant, they have like the raw bar out that no one's really eating off of. It's just there for display. You know what I'm talking about, Stas? Youve seen that a 1000000 times, right? So they had this like big old lobster, like a 3 pounder or something, you know, medium size

[38:06] for, you know, for people who get really big lobsters, but big for, you know, being served on a plate. And I say to the guy, uh, you know, one of the, I was like, hey, uh, Can I eat that? He goes, dude, if you can get the meat out, I was like, and literally, as soon as he said, if you can get the meat out, within, within maybe 10 seconds, I had to tail

[38:25] meat completely out of the lobster and I was eating it. The guy had that, what the look on his face because anyone that's grown up eating lobster knows how to get the tail out of a lobster with no equipment and like almost instantly, you

[38:37] know? You know how to do a rest, I know how to break a lobster. You go to Rhode Island enough. Anyways. My point being that you can get the majority of the lobster meat out in well under a minute.

[38:49] Now, it's then it's minutes and minutes if you want to get the rest. The advantage then is if you want to make like a, like if you want to use the bodies and the insides to make some sort of a soup or stock, you

[38:59] can, and then freeze that out. But if you don't want, if you want to buy the frozen meat, fine, let's talk about the frozen meat, which I can't vouch for the texture of it, but in a lobster

[39:06] roll, it'll probably be okay. The texture of the stuff I got at Whole Foods, maybe if I had done a high temp traditional cook, it would have been okay, but low temp, it just fell apart on me. I couldn't get it to work right. Anyhoo, uh, I would go and purchase a uh, a meat or a brand, either a brand new stainless steel hacksaw or

[39:24] a uh, meat, uh, you know, saw and uh, have it around anyway. going to be useful for hams and whatnot. And then you can just saw the uh, get really cold, get everything really cold and saw the £2 block of meat into portions and then uh, either uh,

[39:41] ziploc, get rid of the air or better yet, vacuum pack the individual portions in the fridge. And then when it comes time to cook them, just throw the individual servings of meat

[39:50] into, into, you know, water inside the bag, they'll thaw out fairly quickly, and then you can cook as

[39:57] desired and make it a lobster roll. What do you think? Yeah, yeah. So I was like, sounds good. I eat, don't care. I eat, don't care. Okay, now we got some more questions. Um, it takes me longer to get in my iPad now. I had to change the new password because my kids figured it out. Don't you hate that? I mean, you don't hate that. You don't know what I'm talking about. But like the kids, they break into your iPad all the time. and play stupid games that rot their mind, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, um, okay. Wyatt Burns from Brooklyn, New York. Brooklyn writes in, hey, Jack, Dave, and Nastasia. I currently make seltzer in my apartment with the leaders soda bottle technique, so that's using a liter soda bottle, a

[40:35] £25 or £10 CO2 tank and a carbonator cat. We go through it pretty quickly in the summer. So I'd like to upgrade to a carbonator system. I listen to the episode where you explain your home system and I would like to implement something similar, but I have a few questions. Okay. So we're talking about peoples is instead of having a system where you have to constantly make seltzer like a chump, so that would be either the bottle system or soda stream or similar, right? Which is like, well, well above the super chump, which is going to the store and buying seltzer, which is if you live in New York City and have our awesome tap water, you know, and you buy case after case of cell, sir, you're pretty much a

[41:14] chump. am I right? Chump. Yeah, okay, okay. Um, You said you have a McCann carbonator, but which model would be appropriate for our

[41:22] light non-industrial use? Would the big Mac be fine or overkill? Also, how loud are these things and do they run constantly or only when seltzer is being dispensed? Okay, so when you're buying a professional carbonator of people. What you have is you have a little rotary vein pump. It's the same pump that similar pump, same company, ProCon, that's used in commercial espresso machines, right? And uh, they, what, because what happens is, is the carbonator is a tank. fundamentally a tank. And the tank is hooked up to high pressure CO2. Now, remember, you're carbonating water in a carbonator at, like, 100 PSI. And the reason is, is that you're doing it at root with room temperature water. And so you need a much higher pressure than you would use if you were going to carbonate in a bottle, let's say, right? Okay. So, uh, so here you have. You have a high pressure tank and your water, even if you have a very high pressure water system, uh, which some people in the city do, depending on kind of how high their building is and where they are in the building, you're still not going to really top out much higher than like 60

[42:24] psi. So what you need is you need a motor that can pump, rather, that can force under pressure the water through and into that

[42:32] tank, and it sprays the water into the CO2 tank so that it carbonates

[42:36] instantly. Then you have a hose that comes off and you dispense. You need a good dispenser for it. Really good dispenser. That people always chintz on the dispenser, and that's where they ruin their seltzer, the chumps. There's also a very, there's a special way to uh, to hook up a carbonator for the 1st time to get it to work. And if, you know, if anyone buys one and they want me to come on and tell them how to hook it up. I'll tell them how to hook it up on the air. It's not difficult, but it'll take a couple minutes longer than I have right now. Okay. So the choices you had. The motors are all the same, and you already have the tank. So the difference in carbonators is the size of the reservoir that the

[43:08] Celtzer is in. And I would get the big Mac because it's going to turn on less. And, you know, that's what I used. I used to have a smaller one and it just turned on a lot more often. So I would just get the big Mac because if you're going to have a dinner party and someone's going to pull a pitcher of seltzer out of it, then you're going to wish you had the big Mac. Just saying, go for the Big Mac. Okay. Also, how loud are they and do they run constantly? They don't run constantly. They, what they, there's a little afloat, like in a toilet, but not with toilet

[43:34] water. There is a float that judges, when the water is below a certain level. And when that happens, it kicks on. It fills it up, you know, to its final fill level and then turns off. So I'd say that, you know, it cycles on every gallon or so of seltzer that you pull. like something like 3 quarters or a gallon somewhere in that in that range. And how loud are they? How loud they are depends entirely on the rate of water flow into the carbonator. So you need to filter the water that goes into the carbon enter. Even New York City tap water, which is famously, you know, clean tasting and good. Um, a lot of times, some, there can be chlorine in if they, if they have an upstream problem with uh, something those chlorine into the water and that makes seltzer taste like poison. So you got to get rid of that. Also, your pipes, sometimes like throw sediment and other things into the water that can affect because even minor taste defects in tap

[44:31] water get incredibly magnified by cells to the cells are making process. So you need a filter. The problem is, is that most filters, when you, when people, when they hook them up, they hook them up with a really crappy water supply line, such that they use some sort of 38s flex cable into the filter instead of like a half inch,

[44:51] uh, you know, full water copper water supply line. And what happens there is that when the seltzer is trying to pump in, it chokes up. And when it chokes up, you get very small flow of water through your filter. So you actually want the coursest filter you can that has the, you know, the, uh, that provides

[45:07] the taste that you want. So you don't want like a super heavy duty like removes cyst, removes lead. You just want an odor and taste and chlorine removing filter. All right. So it chokes up, and once it chokes up, it starts cavitating. When it cavitates, it gets really, really, really loud. And then when it comes, you'll know when it's time to change your filter, because all of a sudden your carbonator will get really, really loud. When you have a fresh filter, it's fairly quiet. If you keep it under the counter and keep the door closed in the cabinet that it's in. Another caveat. When you install a new system, there's flux and crap in the

[45:39] uh, in your copper lines, uh, from the soldering and just residue and stuff, you want to put that stuff through a

[45:46] filter. You don't want that getting into your carbonator because then the water's going to taste like poison for a while. And also your 1st filter is going to clog within like a week or less. And don't worry about it. Just the 2nd filter you're having there is going to last a lot longer. Anyway, there you go. Two, I don't have an ice maker and really don't want to use the traditional ice chest for the Coldplay. you're telling me, man. I did that for 10 years. I had an ice bucket with my cold plate in it and I had to fill it every day with ice, but you know, it's a hassle. It's a hassle. But I did it for 10 years. Are there any other techniques for chilling a water line that don't require ice? I'm considering modding a cheap mini freezer to directly chill a water bath that the cold plate is submerged in, but maybe I'm overthinking this. That won't work so well. Um, You need ice because what's happening is, is it's the actual melting of the ice that is, um, it's the melting of the ice that is providing the quick hit to make it cold.

[46:35] And so you really need melting ice. You could theoretically, um, you know, use only carbonate cold water and keep the carbonator

[46:44] in a mini fridge and the water in a mini fridge. And then as long as your draw wasn't too low. You could do it, but it's kind of a pain. I'd really, I would recommend, if you have the money, I can, I currently have an

[46:56] undercounter Minitawok ice machine that is freaking amazing.

[47:01] The cold plate fits right in the bottom of the ice maker, and now I have fresh ice for drinks for cocktails or whatever else. And it just, it automatically drains. That mini minute walk under counter ice machine is I have the boardroom model. It's really home friendly. I would look at it. Otherwise, I'll have to think more. If none of these work, you have to ask me again, I'll think more. And also in your rig, do you run the cold plate before or after the carbonator? I imagine I could get away with lower CO2 pressure if the water line is already cold going into the carbonator, correct? Not really, because it's not, it's not a system where it carbonates the water now, but you're not drinking that water for a long time.

[47:35] So if you were to, if you were to keep the carbonator in the fridge, then yeah, you could have a cold plate and you could, uh, and you could use a lower pressure and push it through the cold plate 1st to chill it down, carbonate

[47:45] it and put it in, but 99%, if you, I mean, most people can't store the carbonator in the

[47:49] fridge because it's rather large. So what they do is, is they carbonate room temperature water, which is why you need to be

[47:55] 100 PSI, and then they chill it through the cold plate and then dispense. But anyway, if you have any more questions, uh, Wyatt, uh, give, uh, you know, shout them back to me. he says, love the show, and shouts to Gunwash Jack. Shouts to gun wash. Wow, it's a 1st time on this show. Yeah? Yeah. All right. I got one more question that I have to get to today. Do I have a couple minutes, Jack, or no? A couple minutes? Sorry, not really. Oh my god, Jasper in Sweden, there's an auction that's going to end today. Like 3 minutes? Okay, go. Okay. Okay. I previously bought an old Bukey rotary evaporator, so I'm not going to have time to explain to everyone what a road evaporator. vacuum still. On an auction, included was the base system, and the condenser and all this, and the boiling flask and receiving flask and all that. Look up rotary evaporator on the cooking issues you want to know. Where I live, i.e. in Sweden. It's not that common to be able to get it cheap to be able to get cheap laboratory equipment on auctions, at least not what I have experienced. Moreover, Buke is a pretty expensive brand, and it's Swiss, that's why. And in hindsight, maybe I should have opted for a new complete IKA system

[48:53] instead. Don't, they suck. Remember when we had to use that system and it sucked. It sucked. It sucked. It leaked. I hated it. Remember that? And a leaky road of app is bad flavor right there. anyway. However, now I have the R210 base. my questions are related to kidding the system to have it operational. At the same time, one of those rare lab auctions are now taking place in my neighborhood, which closed its door in a week on Wednesday, June 25th, Jack, which is why I had to get to it. So it would be great if you could answer my question before that. My 1st choice is regards to vacuum pumps. Would like to have a diaphragm one together with a vacuum controller, but the auctions do not have those. Instead, they have a couple of rotary vein pumps. Now all the ones that you mentioned are Edwards brand. Edwards are extremely, extremely high quality vacuum pumps. However, they are way overkill for the rotary evaporator application that you need. If you can get them cheaply, get them, they're awesome, but it's, again, way overkill. Are any of the, uh, especially the, like the E1, M18 and 28 because they handle vapor very well and they have a ballast in them. So then your question is are any of those rotary vein pumps a good choice in regards to your opinion? My main concerns is vapor and contamination. Should I buy a rotary vein pump and add some kind of inlet condenser or cold trap? You can, but that's a hassle. It's a real hassle. It'll be easier for you to find a diaphragm pump is going to do what you want. I use just a regular refrigerator pump, which is a couple $100, a refrigerator vacuum pump, but it's not ideal either. Do I need something extra apart from the gas ballast valve open? No, not really. You're going to have to close the gas valves out if you're doing really super low temperature stuff. Another important topic related to the vacuum pump is how important is the vacuum controller? They're pretty expensive and they do not have them at the auction. If you're not using a vacuum controller, how do you control the vacuum? You put a bleeder valve on the line so that you can control like a very, like

[50:23] a multiturn needle valve to bleed air out on a tee in the in line with the vacuum line. That's how you do it, but it's a hassle because you have to control it. You have to sit there and constantly. And it's constantly pumping, which is also not ideal because you're, because you're constantly pumping, you're sucking flavor out of your system. So I don't, I mean, I've done it. That's how I used to do it, but I don't highly highly recommend it. You also mentioned a recirculating cooler that you use for your chiller. Here's the thing. That'll work, but if I looked at the specs on it, and at minus 10 C, which is what you're going to want to run at least, it only does 120 watts of cooling. The main mistake people make with condensers is they do not have enough power to condense all the stuff that they

[51:01] can put that they can boil because the heater is at like a 1000 watts and your condenser now is only providing 120 watts of cooling. What that means is your condenser is going to warm up significantly until it gets up to about

[51:13] 20 C. Um, So I can give you more input on that next week, uh, because those auctions are over. That my feedback on the auction items that you have. In other words, if you can get that pump cheap. I would get one of those pumps cheap, but it's not the same

[51:26] thing, and I can also work more on a vacuum controller, but the circulator, it's convenient to have around, but don't expect it to do high volumes. You're only doing 120 watts at minus 10 C. So don't expect to do high volumes of rotary evaporator, work around it. And Jasper, I'll get to the rest of your questions next week after the auction is over. This has been cooking issues.

[51:48] Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.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@heritageradionetwork.org. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today.

[52:18] Thanks for listening.