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[0:09] For more information, visit Whole Foodsmarket.com. I'm Greg Blaze, host of Cutting the Kurd. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwood, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:30] Hello, and we're back after a one week, week, hiatus on cooking issues. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live from Bert's Pizzeria in Bushwick. Ooh, Brooklyn. Join as usual in the studio with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, sir? Good. And we have Jack in the engineering booth. And also for the 1st time in the junior booth, Wyatt, how you guys doing? We're great Yeah, so why, what is it that you, that you do here at the Heritage Radio Network? Washington Full Service radio on Thursday nights. Mm, nice. Sweet. Awesome. And by the way, Jack, did we ever get, did we ever get cutting the curd schedule to call in and have

[1:10] it cutting the cooking issues? Yeah, hopefully he's gonna come on the 2nd half today. Oh, nice. All right. All right. So, uh, this last week I was gone because I was in uh, Nastasia's home state. Actually, my home state. But we moved out, you know, I moved out when I was at 3 and Nastasia had to stay in Covina long enough to see the filming of Good Burger before she came out to the sweet,

[1:32] sweet, east coast. I had no idea that Goodburger was filmed in your hometown. Yeah. So for like years, did you walk around going, buggity, buggity, buggity,

[1:41] boogity, boogity, boogity, or no? No, I think it was when I was in elementary school. It was filmed. It was like 96, right? 97? Yeah. Yeah. Classic, Sinbad. Do you remember? the movie at all? Sin Sinbad. Sinbad is in, I think it's a relatively late role for Sinbad, but he is the teacher who's a little bit

[1:59] crazy who gets hit by, like, hit by the car by Dexter's car. And he's got these...

[2:06] heat lapels and a sweet, sweet pro in that movie. My kids now are now obsessed with the burger. White points out George Clinton also in that movie. George Clinton was one of the dancing crazies in the in the institution. Yeah, you're like, holy crap, that's the actual, yeah. The movie has like lots of like little kind of classic nuggets in it, you

[2:28] know? Uh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Classic. Classic, uh, good, good burger style movie there. But the problem is I can't get my kids to stop imitating and repeating portions of it.

[2:42] There's a good burger, like in Union Square or something, right? They're not related, are they? They're not related, they must be somehow related. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I don't even must have come first. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but the question is, is, like, you know, can you start a restaurant called Good Burger

[2:59] and, like, not worry about infringing on Good Burger the movie? I mean, obviously it's helping you. If people assume that you have Ed's special secret sauce, you know, in your burger, then I assume you are ripping off some of the IP of the

[3:12] movie, and, you know, you should kind of be punished for that. have to do some research on that. Yeah, yeah, someone check into this for us and tell us whether good burger in the restaurant. I mean, I mean, I don't know that I want to be associated with a restaurant where, you know, one of the employees takes a bath in the running strawberry milkshake

[3:30] machine. And I also don't really get the wisdom of having strawberry be your only flavor of milkshake. I mean, for years, you know, Wendy had the, had the frosty and only one flavor, chocolate, and I'm always a vanilla shake kind of a guy, but you ever had the

[3:46] frosty stars? No. Jack, Wyatt, ever had the Wendy's? I actually love Frosties. Yeah, here's the deal. Why the hell do they give you a straw with that thing at all? Oh I know. doesn't work. Never, never, never, never. I mean, yeah. Those of you that have seen me in like a full, like, spitting red-faced rant. No, that I have lungs. And like, I can suck strong enough to completely collapse the straws under the force

[4:08] and vacuum from when I'm sucking on them. Even a perfectly round one that I haven't matched with any sort of pre-anger. I can just like take a perfectly round straw. Like, even if it had protective casing on it and suck that sucker flat in a frosty. And what this means to me is that the frosty should just be served in an open cup with a spoon. Yeah. You know? Anyways, but I'm told now that they have vanilla frosties. I mean, I don't know what that's all about. Like they have extra space in a Wendy's restaurant now or they have an extra flavor of frosty. I don't know. I don't know. But if you guys were going to pick one flavor of shake, would it be strawberry? I mean, not as your personal flavor, but as like you have to sell to customers. No. No. And this is why Mondo Burger almost took Good Burger out of business. I mean, because they just think about stuff like that. Whereas, you know, all those other guys have is Abe Vagoda. By the way, I would go to any restaurant. Is David Vagoda still alive? Oh, it's a good question. a look. I love me some Abe Vagoda. Even back then in the 90s. They were saying that he was about to die, which is kind of rough to say to your fry cook. But anyway, good good times. Do people in Covina talk like that, Stas? I don't know. I haven't seen the movie. Fast head. If goat is still alive. Sweet. He's 93. I love Ava. I love me some A Vagoda. You know who Ava God is, right, Stuff? Do you love A Vagoda? Ava Goda, one of the one of the people name checked in, I think, was it Hello Nasty that the BC's checked, Dave Vagoda? don't know. anyway. Love me some Avigoda. Okay, so, oh, but yeah, so where was I? I was in California and it turns out, I went to someplace in California that I visited when I was like a very, very small boy, the coastal

[5:42] redwoods, which were sick, amazing. And by the way, that's where they filmed Return of the Jedi. Like the Ewok forest. So if you've never been to the coastal redwoods before, don't worry, the forest moon of whatever it is, what is it, Endor? Endor, Ewoks, anyone? Anyway, so if you look at Return of the Jedi, where they're flying through on the speeders and smashing into the trees and crap, like that's where they filmed it. And these trees are, I mean, my wife took all the good pictures because she's got the iPhone 5 and I'm on like a flat 4 with like a like a cracked out camera. But like, so I'll put some pictures up, but holy crap, there are some impressive sons of guns. I live in a 20 story building and these trees are almost twice as tall as my building. The tallest tree I saw was like top like 375 for the Redwoods. And it makes like these awesome Douglas firs that are only like 300 feet tall, look like puning tens. You know what I mean? Meanwhile, any tree here would look like a shrub compared to the ones you have

[6:34] in there. I also visited the sequoias in Yosemite, Yosemite amazing, obviously, but what I didn't know is kind of how awesome the kind of Sierras are. I went to, and also we went to Lawson Volcanic Park, which is a national park in California that nobody knows about and nobody was

[6:48] there. Like, nobody. Nobody. Like we like saw like maybe one car, 2 cars in the hour and a half drive, we were driving to get to where we were going in Lawson State Park. And when I told the person at Lassen, I was like, oh, you know, my friend, you know, McGee told me I should, you know, come and check this out. She was like, you didn't know about Lawson? I was like, no. She's like, it's a national park. I was like, but I don't live in California. She's like, it's a national park. We're national park. I was like, 0 my god, they have such a chip on their shoulder. If you go to Lassen, which is in like upper upper east of California. Do not mention that you're going to Yosemite because I went to Yosemite. The, uh, the lady at the, at the visitor center was like, I was like, yeah, yeah, we just got from

[7:24] Lassen, Lassen. She's like, Lassen? I was like, it's a national park. She's like, nope, doesn't ring a bell. I'm like, it's in California. Nope. Like I said, like Lawson is like the forgotten state park. But it's pretty cool for those of you that are in that area. And I was just really, you know, surprised and amazed at the variation

[7:42] in beauty in California, especially your coniferous forests. Anyways, so that's what I was doing. Oh, I cooked some good stuff on the camp, by the way. I cooked a crap ton of stuff with the sears all. Boat ton of stuff with the sears all. I made pizza with the sears all, because I was in one camp for 2 days, so I did a 24 hour rise on the dough and then flash it off with the sears all, and I had with me some schmoreza, some smoked schmoreza,

[8:05] and you know, instead of mozzarella and some parmigiano and some tomato paste and anchovies, some oil, crushed it all up. And the next day, Stas, ultimate camp food, by the way. Uh, risotto a la, a la, uh, with porcini, with risotto alfungi. And so I had like the super expensive dried porcinis, which are like, you know, super expensive but super lightweight. Some Parmigano, which doesn't need to be refrigerated, obviously. I bought the, you'd be happy styles. The Italian Brodo cubes, like the little, like, you know, stock cubes that I normally won't use, but for camping are great.

[8:35] And it just busted that crap out. Kids didn't like it because they don't really like mushroom risotto, but to hell with them. You know what I mean? I made them like leftover grilled cheese sandwiches. By the way, was on that did a picnic with the Sears all only, did grilled cheese sandwiches on the banks of the Smith River with a Sears all. Sweet. And now you know how on the 1st night when you go camping, you have ice, so you have that's when you have your steak or whatever. Yes, it is some sweet steaks. Sweet steaks. Sweet, sweet steaks. Anyway, okay. Two, uh, what did you do this last week? How are this? How are the series all doing? Are they in the air? Yeah. They are. They're in the air. All right. So that's that's the that's the current update there in the air from China on the way to the good old Etaz Unis here.

[9:18] Anyway, let's get some questions. Uh, la, la, la, la, la. Nick Malin writes in, uh, and thank you, Nick, for providing the name Mal in. I like that M-A-L- I-N. He spells his name like Fallon, but writes it like, whatever. Uh, about green meat. Hey, Dave. Uh, uh, I'm writing on behalf of a chef steps forum question that has seemingly gone unanswered. After 72 hours in a circulated water bath at 54 degrees Celsius, in what is 54? I can never remember what 54 is. It's like 129, 130 or something like that, somewhere in there. Uh, the vacuum sealed short ribs were green on the outside. No smell, no funk, just the color was off. I did not add a salt or oil to the bag pre-cooking. I simply had dried off the shorties before bagging them. Then after I sealed them. I placed them in simmering water for a few seconds to rid any surface bacteria that can cause

[10:13] funkiness with long cooking times, and that was it. I gave them a quick sear, which I will assume be doing with my sears all and enjoyed them. People in the format suggested air leakage or presalting effect, but like I said, I added nothing to the bag and there was no leak. So I would love to hear from you. Thanks. Nick. PS, thanks for hating wraps as much as I do. eat a damn sandwich, people. All right, this is an interesting question. And I will start by saying that I have some links to point to, but I don't have a definite answer, but I will say this. In the many, many years that I cooked boat tons of short ribs,

[10:51] sons, sauce, and with sauce, sous vide, because that was one of the standard things that we would cook in the low temperature class. We would cook short ribs 8000000000 different ways and sear them off because it's kind of, A, it's one of the classic low temperature things and whatever.

[11:05] Anyways. And also not just with short ribs, but with steaks and other whole pieces of meat, whole cut like this, is they often do take a greenish tinge, take on a greenish tinge on the very outside of the

[11:20] meat that goes away when you sear it the 2nd time. And it looks really, really bad. In fact, you know, one of the arguments that I always would say to people, because, you know, it used to be a big argument. Do you see her before? Or do you see her after? And, you know, the answer I always have was, of course, both, but if you had to choose one, you choose

[11:39] here after, because the surface of the meat not only doesn't look like it has a nice crust, but often looks discolored and messed up and it gets fixed by like a quick

[11:48] sear, because as you say, like that coloration is not necessarily come along with any sort of

[11:54] off-flavor or funky flavor. Now, when you cook something low temp for a long time, especially when you get as low as 54 in that range, you often have the problem of super funky blue cheese, nasty meat stank,

[12:05] which comes from lactic acid bacteria in their relatives that are growing and often cause blow off in the bag if you get

[12:12] floaters. But as you say, you might want to go more than a few seconds, but a dunk in simmering water does a lot to,

[12:18] a, kickstart the temperature right at the surface of the meat and to stop any bacteria that are at the surface from kind of penetrating in.

[12:25] Now, when you describe green, you also have to describe kind of what color of green you mean. Because there's also, and I don't think this is what you're talking about. There's the phenomenon of iridescence in cooked meats specifically cured cooked meats, but it could be in non-cured meats as well. And this is a physical structural phenomenon that you get, you often see it in deli meats. You seen that before stuff, right? Like, that's not something to kind of worry about, although some people don't like the look of it because they think it means it's spurled, but it's not

[12:52] spurled. It's just iridescent meat. And there's a lot of literature actually on iridescent meat. But that's not what you're talking about. I'm assuming what you're talking about. It's not bright green, it's more of like an army blackish green. You've seen that before on the surface of the shortest, right? It looks disgusting. Yeah. And so then the question is, well, what causes that? Short answer, I don't know. But I did some initial research. There's uh, most of the greening in meats is, and I'll send you to a couple of articles that are available on meat

[13:19] coloring in general. This one doesn't have so much about greening, but look it up. It's on Purdue.edu's site, they have a meat color PDF that is pretty good review on meat

[13:33] color, and unlike the reviews that I've been using from like 4 years ago or whatever, which is

[13:38] the last time I seriously investigated meat colors. This one's available free online. So if you go to uh, www.cfs.purdue.edu

[13:46] and search for their a meatcolorpdf. you can take a look at that. Um, another good resource to look at is uh, look up uh, the meat industry services. Can you believe that's of corporation meat industry services? They have a, uh, thing called color defects in meat. and it's an update, and it's a good PDF, and you want to read about that, because I think typically, it looks like greening colors in meats are due usually to sulfur. And so self myoglobin. And either sulfur or hydrogen peroxide are the 2 kind of things, both of which

[14:27] are usually present as the result of bacteria that are there on the meat. Now, uh, and some of the bacteria are things like uh,

[14:40] Weisella, viridescens, which is, uh, you can look to, there's uh, an article called, uh, I guess it's

[14:46] Weisella. Maybe it's vaisellum. Anyway, um, if it's German, it'll be Faisella viotessens in meat products, uh, a review by uh, Marta Discova, uh, which is out in 2012, which talks about it, which causes like kind of very vivid greens, um,

[14:59] in in meats. Um, but, and there's also uh, a specific greening in meats that has a high pH. So I don't know if you had a particular piece of meat. For instance, meats that are high, have a high pH, i.e. are not acidic enough and cooked in that are stored in vacuum environments, having known situation where they can have greening take place on the surface, but it can also happen in other

[15:25] environments, if bacteria are there, and apparently it doesn't take very much sulfur presence. They form like, I guess they form hydrogen sulfide or they break some sulfur off of sulfur containing amino acids in the proteins. That's where that's where the sulfur's coming from, from the from protein breakdown on the surface. Um, So, you know, and I don't think it's been studied that much in long,

[15:46] long term, uh, low temperature cooking, but some of these bacteria, greening bacteria, if that's,

[15:52] is what it is, uh, you know, take a long time to kill, uh, even at relatively elevated temperatures and actually can be strengthened by uh, an initial heat shock.

[16:00] So it could be something there. I don't know, but I know that Siri makes it go away. Check out those articles and anyone who else who can get back to me and give me a better answer, please

[16:09] do. call her. Call her. on the air. Hey, Dave, a huge, huge fan of the show. This is Ray. formerly DC now living in crown height. Oh, Crown Heights. I just had a comment. I enjoyed last week when you were talking about raw onions. I think an emailer called about getting a metallic taste. And I'm not sure if this is relevant to what they were doing. But I know Rick Bayless of Mexican cuisine fame, talks about rinsing the onions after he cuts them and serves them raw. And I've noticed a big difference in doing that. Well, I would presume that's true because, uh, you know, the, the, the kind of harshness in onions, okay, so look, right? So there's some, there's some chefs like, uh, like, you know, um, Michael Palambino, who's like, I remember, I saw him like, go ape, ape crap on someone because they cut their onions beforehand, right?

[17:02] Because, you know, the longer an onion sits after it's cut, like the more this kind of problem happens. But the, you know, truth of the matter is, a lot of us have to cut onions beforehand for

[17:10] me is or for whatever, or if you're going to serve it like in a salsa where it's going to be cut and served fresh and not cooked again. And um, You know, like, I think almost all of the stuff that's happening in an onion happens after the tissues are broken, right?

[17:24] And so it's a reaction between what's going on in the broken tissues and juices, and in this case, carbon knives, carbon steel knives, or any sort of like non-passivated kind of steel

[17:35] surface, or other metal ions, for that matter. And so, yeah, I would bet rinsing helps out because I think it probably gets rid of a lot of the free surface crap that's been kind of liberated, probably even like a light

[17:45] soaked. I mean, the problem is onions are so porous that if you soak them too long, they'll just soak up, uh, they'll soak up, you know, water, which I don't think is what you want. But yeah, I would bet that works. I mean like... Yeah, I usually just give them a quick rinse and that seems to seems to do it, especially for salsa or anything. Yeah, anything wrong? Nice. Awesome. So, uh, love the show, and I like all the the side notes, and I don't know, uh, I think it's been on the internets for a little while, but the James Brown miso soup commercial. Pretty awesome. Think you might like it if you haven't seen it. Wait, James, like, so someone took which James Brown song did they take? Which one? I think this is the one you guys used to use on your commercial breaks a long time ago. I don't know which one is. They kind of remix it, and it's a Japanese commercial, and it's, it's bizarre, but it's highly entertaining. And it makes it sound like James Brown is a huge fan of miso soup. Not that he wasn't. have no idea. Oh no, it's him. It's it's him. Dave, I'm going to break the rules real quick and just run this. You do this. It's over. Oh, man.

[18:51] How do they, I wonder what... It sounds like you're saying Wiz Khalifa. Yeah, maybe he is. I don't know How do you know he is? That

[19:07] is awesome. Uh, yeah, that's uh, that's uh, sex machine. By the way, you know who was playing bass on that is Bootsie Collins. Bootsie Collins was a very young guy on the tour bus when James Brown was working on

[19:20] that, and he ended up, that was kind of one of his, like, big, early bass gigs was a sex machine, which is maybe why it's got such a... I mean, look, all of James Brown's bases were awesome, but I mean, I have a special love in my heart for Bootsy. But that is a classic. I would love to, like, figure out, like, by listening, if I can figure out what clips of his voice they took to make him say miso soup.

[19:39] And I like how it's not really, doesn't sound like it was really mixed by a native English

[19:44] speaker because it's not exactly how I would have imagined James Brown screaming

[19:48] miso, but it's perfect, though. I like it. It makes it even better. Jack, you already knew about this and you didn't tell me? I did not know about this. All right, well, you've just, I'm now going to probably waste several hours of

[19:59] noastasia's life once we get back to the lab, like, playing that and then, and then figuring out in my head exactly where they chopped it up. So thank you. Thank you for throwing away several of mustaches. Precious. As she bows her head down. All right. Thanks for your time. I appreciate it. and keep going. Rock on, guys. Love it. All right, Jack, should we take a commercial break? Yeah, give me 12nd here. All right. Come right back with some cookie issues.

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[21:20] And we are back. Let me get a couple of questions from... Oh, yeah, going with McGee and I are doing the Harvard lecture next week.

[21:35] We're going to do the class lecture, which I normally, are you going up the stairs? think so. I'm doing the class lecture, which, you know, McGee and I have done for the past, what, like 3 years now, 4 years, 3 years? Like for the initial one, like, uh, and uh, this year we're not gonna blow anything up. Right? I'm not gonna going to cause the entire Harvard science center to be

[21:58] evacuated. Remember the depressed looks on those like, on those undergrads, or grads, whatever they were in their lab jackets with like staring at the ground and

[22:07] like, in the dark and cold when we evacuated them from that building? Yeah, good times. Not. And, uh, the, um, anyway, so I'm gonna do that, which is the normal class we're gonna do. I'm going to do some, hopefully some new demos, but I think it's just going to be rappity slap, you know, demos, which shouldn't cause too many problems like I normally do. Hopefully they're fun. We got a couple of demos that are really good for that kind of thing. Like, um, maybe I won't spoil it. If you think anyone's, no one's listening is no, he's going to be at the Harvard. I don't know. We'll talk about it afterwards. But I have a couple of demos that I really enjoy. Like, when you do demos, like the good, like the bad thing about doing demos over and over again is that Nastasia tells you that you say the same crap over and over

[22:46] again. No, the same anecdotes. I don't, it's not true. It's not true. It depends. Like certain things like are, so here's what here's where I'm going with this. So like the deal is, is that, you know, you know, when you've been teaching a while, you come up with demos and you see kind of what really demonstrates

[23:03] something, and so like a lot of the things that you think are going to demonstrate stuff, they don't really work, but then other ones that you don't know, they do, like the oil and

[23:09] water. They did such a good demo, the oil and water, heated oil and water. Anyways, and so, uh, you know, like, the good news is you would teaching is you come up with these demos that, you know, you really, like, people really stick in people's heads. And if you do them for long enough or enough times, you really get to get a feel for what it is that sticks in people's heads about it so you can really kind of like, you know, jigger the pedagogy around that crap. Um, and so anyway, we're building a, we're building up a list of demos and we're going to bust some of them out at the, at the Harvard going to be good. be good. But then for the public lecture, McGee and I are going to do a lecture we've never done before. It's going to be, although you probably heard some of the same crap because it's the stuff I rant about all the time. So if you're in the, if you're in the Cambridge area, I think that one's on Monday, Monday evening, we're doing a public

[23:57] lecture and the subject of the public lecture is going to be, what the hell's been going on the past kind of 20

[24:02] years? Like what's really going on? You know what I mean? And so it's going to talk about how, um, you know, the use of science is not just related to kind of these new technical and modern cooking

[24:11] things. It's going to be kind of how, you know, we don't think that what everyone's doing the same, kind of, you know, analyzing the difference between kind of like what Wiley does, what Grant does at a linear or what other huckster things are, like kind of where this movement is

[24:25] gone, and kind of what it means and what people are actually trying to do when they do it, as well as talk about kind of what's different in food now in terms of who's going into

[24:33] it, as was going into it before. So this kind of a discussion. And I'm sure I'll make some digs at my favorite targets, like Air VTs and whatnot. And I think we got to find. replay that video I did at Portland of the, remember the stuff that we, that video we made with Piper on like the crappiest cocktail of all time using all like the week, week, week, molecular gastronomy techniques that, that I have no problem labeling

[24:54] as that because I think they're just PT Barnum huckster crap and just making. So I did a lecture at Portland Cocktail. was that, 2 years ago? year and a half? Two years. Two years. And we did a video that was like all of the crappiest things you could think of like to do to a cocktail, like just the worst, worst cocktail. And, uh, and so we went through this whole 2 minute video. I can't remember whether there was music or not. There might have been music. If not, I'll put music on it because it needs some sort of stupid demo music in it. And then, uh, and then at the end,

[25:24] like, literally, we just flash up, this sucks, this sucks. remember that? This sucks. This is terrible. This is everything that's wrong with cooking and cocktails. This is the worst thing in the world. And literally after the demo, someone asked me for the recipe. It is the worst. Worst. One of the worst moments of my life. It's like, it's like I always tell people, um, and should any of you out there who can hear my voice have to do a

[25:50] demonstration for a camera where someone has the ability to edit you afterwards. Never show them what not to do because you think you're helping. So like when someone's showing me in person, like I appreciate it when they specifically do something wrong and show me how to do it

[26:08] wrong so that I know not to do it that way. So I show someone how to do it right or what I think is right. And then I show someone actually, I'll F it up, I'll make it wrong on purpose so that they can see it happening wrong. And then hopefully let them taste and see how screwed up it is when they do it wrong. Inevitably. Editors use the wrong thing and put it up without explanation in video clips. Inevitably, if she's inevitable. So if you are ever in a situation where someone can edit you and you're not in the editing

[26:35] room, never demonstrate what not to do. You've seen how many times you've seen this, does it? a bunch. And then you're like, no one knows any way to shut up, Dave. That's what you say. You say, eh, I freak out about it and you're like, nobody gets a crap. Nobody knows. Anyway. Ruben wrote in about cherry pits. Deer shipping container occupants. I scored some delicious sour cherries this summer and have a couple of questions on putting them to use. One, I'm planning to make a sorbet with the cherries, puree, sweeten the 28 brakes, chill spin. Sounds good. Any thoughts on what sugar will ensure a good texture? I understand the mechanics of freezing point depression, and I normally experiment, but don't have enough fruit left. I've got dextrose fructose, liquid glucose, et cetera. I would just look, I would just look up like a recipe. I don't have kind of the ratios in my head. I would just, I forgot to look this aspect of it up. But, obviously, you can make something more sweet and make it softer or use invert and have it be

[27:30] softer because of the increased freezing point depression. I would look up somebody else's recipe and see kind of what they add. I wouldn't add, I wouldn't add too much. I'm sorry, I forgot to look up the numbers now because that stuff that I wouldn't want to quote out of my head. I just don't do it enough. But two, here we go. Here's what I actually looked into for you. I have a lot of leftover pits. Any tips on working with them to safely make, how do you think you pronounce it? O, right? No I a pit. Noayo or ice cream. I'd like to extract the most flavor, but I have no idea how to dose them to avoid cyanide toxicity and can't find any seemingly reliable information. I've seen some comments that roasting the pits eliminates the wrist, but not much in the way of justification. Can't say how much I enjoy the show every week. Thank you all, Ruben. So what we're worried about here is that any of the stone fruit, uh, and it's really the kernel, you know, I mean, not

[28:21] the, not the, not the, not the meat and not the, not the roughly crap. You know what I'm talking about? The roughly crap on the pit. You know what I mean? The kernel. So when you taste them, and this is like, uh, you know, any stone fruit, apple, you know, pips, um, all that stuff, uh,

[28:40] what the problem with it is, is that it contains uh, amygdalin. Amygdalin, when you chew on it, enzymes can convert the amygdalin into sweet, sweet cyanide, which is poisonous, but also benzaldehyde, which is the aroma we get

[28:55] from, from like, you know, that almond extract. Benzaldehyde, which is what we like in it, in an amaretto cookie or something like this. Now, if you're just throwing a couple of apricot kernels, which is typically what you buy here in

[29:07] the States, into a batch of almond cookies, then, you know, it's not going to be a

[29:12] problem. But when you're doing a boat ton of apricot pits, in fact, the Sinai level

[29:18] can, or whatever, what are we using again? You were using cherries. You can get enough problematic crap. cyanide to cause problems. So man, and there is not a lot of information out there. So I will defer to, you know, chemistry, drink Meister, Darcy O'Neill. So if you're not familiar with Art of the Drink blog, you know, Darcy is a chemist and kind of drink person. He's the person who wrote Fix the Pumps, which is kind of the game changing book on bringing back the art of the soda

[29:52] jerk. Uh, and um, And fix the pumps is uh, old slang, soda jerk slang for check out the stacked lady at the

[30:01] uh, bar. fix the pumps. I think that's what it is. that's my memory So he, in August 31st, 2011, put a big post up on Cherry, specifically, I think, cherries, but any sort of stone

[30:15] fruit, and cyanide in liquor specifically, and goes through the different steps you can

[30:20] do, and there's a 2nd post on how to get rid of it. His take on it, because he did some calculations based on the number of milligrams per milliliter cyanide in standard pits that he was able to get off the

[30:30] internet, and like the amount that's there. Yes, it is possible to, um, have a dangerous level and that he wouldn't necessarily keep it around and recommend consuming

[30:39] it, even though people have done it for a long time. Here's what he said. Though in the 2nd part where he says how to mitigate the problems. One, if you leave this stuff a long time. So here's what he says, I'll just read his quote, because he talks about how to get rid of it via distillation, which is possible. He also, by the way, just says by, you know, oil of almonds, wheel, which bends aldehyde in it and just have it done with. But because he's thinking that someone is trying to make that flavor, not that someone has a product that they want to get the best use of, right?

[31:05] I mean, I think the reason that you're not going and buying crap to make that flavor is because you have this

[31:09] product, it has other flavors in it besides the benzaldehyde, and you want to use these things. So you know, whatever. So you can't just go buy the flavor and have done with it. But here's what it here's what it goes. Since distillation method isn't practical for the average person, here's another, though, much slower method, think months. Hydrogen cyanide can be hydrolyzed to formic acid and ammonia. Yes, formic acid, the same stuff that fire ants use to piss you off. Hydrolization is done in the presence of water. So if you just infuse apricot kernels in vodka, some of the hydrogen cyanide will decompose. But the process is very slow. Heat will help. It should also be noted that formic acid has a fruity mustard aroma. Sorry, so aging it for a long time. Okay, and this is still Darcy. Okay, I understand you're impatient, so here's one more method. A number of sources have indicated that roasting the kernels at 176 degrees Celsius for 10 to 15 minutes will drive off the hydrogen cyanide. This could work, but you have to make sure all the kernels are free from the shell and ground coarsely. I'd recommend adding enough water to make a wet mass and set aside for an hour or more to ensure that the amygdalin and beta

[32:08] glucosidase, which is the enzymes that make the sweet smell, can react. Afterwards, spread the mixture on a baking sheet and heat until dry. There is no guarantee that this method will remove all of the cyanide, but it should remove some. Dry roasting is not effective since amygdala is stable at that temperature. Also, the boiling point of benzaldehyde, which is the aroma you want, is 178 degrees Celsius, which is just 2 degrees higher than the cooking temperature. So you will most likely drive off some of the flavor component you are trying to capture. So there you have, you know, what he says about it. I'll also add that you could probably heat it. The problem is, I don't know. It's an interesting thing. If I was doing it, I would just age it for like a year. Do it and age it for a year and kind of see what happens. You know, if you're Darcy, you're lucky enough to have the equipment. You could actually test whether or not you've gotten rid of it or not. You guys can't. Anyway, so I hope that answered some of your questions on that. All right, let me see where we are here. Stan B, right? wrote in, we talked about his caramel. So greeting from France. We talked about caramel what? 2 weeks ago, 3 years ago? Three or 4 weeks ago, I asked a question about replacing sugar in a recipe with caramel, i.e. the same amount of cooked to a

[33:21] brownness, sugar. I tried to also make meringues with it and the result is interesting. Um, and I go through the recipe. I make a dry caramel, about 200 grams of table sugar, import it, well, hot on 100 grams of egg whites being whipped, almost the same as

[33:36] Thai meringue. After shaping the meringue, I cook them for 2 hours at 120 C. Quite a bit of the liquid caramel turned solid. pouring it into the egg whites. It got a bit scary scary with caramel bits making strong clingety cling sounds from the electric whip. Maybe a better technique would be add a bit of water into the caramel turn into a syrup closer to an actual Thai meringue. That should lower the amount of recrystallization before the caramel gets mixed into the egg whites or other prep. The taste was good, not great, but good and close to expectations. But soon after baking and once cooled, the meringues had a very brittle texture with a bit of crunch before turning to powder. However, after 5 or 6 hours, the meringues turn very soft, almost marshmallow like, as you had mentioned on the show, the inverted

[34:12] sugar, the inverted sugars and caramel do suck in moisture, I would advise to serve quickly or keep in your dehydrator. Um, So there you go. Update on whether or not what we say makes any sense. He also says, I appreciate your thoughts, that caramel taste can come from cooked milk salads. It might get some milk powder and toast and brown it or cooking in the oven, in butter, as per ideas in food blog posts from 2008 on that, and then see how it goes. Uh, and then as a side note, he gives us an article on uh, on, like the scientific article on pizza cheese. What are your needs in a pizza cheese? Do you like blistered bubbles on your pizza cheese is important to you? No. Apparently it's very important. If you look up, here is the recipe for perfectly brown pizza cheese as established by science. It's good interest. really interesting reading for those of you out there that are interested in why certain cheeses, you know, bubble and boiling, and I'll give you the short answer. It has to have some fat, but not that much and fairly high moisture as well as being elastic and cohesive, a.k.a. mozzarella. But, you know, you know, Stan's question was, could you use, like, a modernist cuisine style, emulsifying salt technique to make a cheese that acted like that that had a different flavor, and I think quite certainly the answer is yes. Just have to get the fat content, right? And in fact, they hinted this in the article, get the fat content right, increase the stretchiness of it by with proper emulsifying salts, but not enough to make it like melt out totally.

[35:28] And then, uh, and then just make sure you have enough water most. It should work. Yes? Yes. So we have one caller that we can squeeze in before the show ends. All right, caller, but we have more than one that we can squeeze in. No, but I think we have time for one call. All right, call her. on the air. Hey, Dave, it's Brian here in New York. How are you? Doing all right. What's up? Good. I just want to say thanks for all your information about ice cream recently, but I haven't had a chance to implement it. Um, uh, in part because um, I recently got an allergic reaction and had to go through battery of all kinds of allergy tests. Oh my god, did they do the, did they do the arm trick? come up with, is the possibility of something called, if you look it up, pancake syndrome, which is dust

[36:12] mite, Dust mites getting into flowery, flowery, powdery substances, if, if, if it's got uh, heat or, or um, humidity. So, you know, here in the New York weather, that, that might be a cause. So now, uh, based on this, and the reason it's called pancake syndrome is those people who, you know, put some uh, pancake mix in the back of their covered in every, you know,

[36:37] every 6 months, bring it out, can make pancakes, you know, sometimes come down with a allergic reaction in which they've digested dust mites, uh, unknowingly, and uh, therefore, um, come down with

[36:50] the reaction. So, um, one of the things is, is, um, got rid of lots of my flowers, and now the recommendation from the doctor is to keep it all in the fridge or the freezer.

[37:02] And so what I'm wondering is uh, with flowers and sort of powdery stuff. Is there any consequence to keeping these items in the in the

[37:14] cold, in the fridge or the freezer? Okay, I got some answers for you on this. But here's here, let me ask you a couple questions first. The test that they did, were they, were they, uh, were they bioassays or do they do skin prick tests? I freaking hate skin prick tests. Let me tell you something. Like, I am like, you know, a pasty white, like northern European mutt, right? And so like for those of you that aren't pasty white, like, you know, pasty white people have very sensitive skin.

[37:42] And so it looked like I was allergic to every dang thing on the skin test just because that

[37:47] little, like, that little freaking thing that they scrape into your arm, like that gives me a freaking

[37:52] reaction. You know what I mean? I hate that test. I think it's completely inaccurate and crappy. What do you think? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not as tasty as you,

[38:05] but uh, I definitely got some bumps and stuff from, from all that. But then they verified it with like an actual kind of like bioassay. Yeah, they drew some blood. So, yeah. That I believe. Like those things, I believe. But back when I developed my cherry allergy, they didn't really have all that crap yet. So, like, literally, they were like, oh, you're allergic to lobster. you're allergic to. I like, what? I'm allergic to getting jabbed in the freaking arm, lady. You know what I mean? Anyway, okay. And I love the story about the pancake things. pancake syndrome. Stas, do you ever got pancakes syndrome? Yeah, yeah. Look at a pancake syndrome. And my other question before I answer, your question is, is it that you're directly allergic to the

[38:46] mites or is it the mites trigger a reaction that now you can have, even without the mites? that you're directly allergic to the mites? possibly. Yeah, it's the mice, you know, it's the, you know, if you, if you, it's one thing if, you know, you're breathing it and they, you know, might be, uh, might be, you know,

[39:05] on your bed or something like that or around your house. But if they're getting into something that you eat, and then you're eating them, then it's

[39:12] higher concentration, uh, and, and, and that's the, that's the problem. All right, so I lied. more questions. You know, it's smoking pot versus, you know, eating it. Oh, no, I thought you were going to say Bill Clinton in it, like, but they're not inhaling. But the, so here's my other, here's my, my other question, which just came into my head. What about cheese mites? or like the mites on meat, like, on, like, ham mites and stuff like that? Are those do those crossover? Is it only flower mites? I have no idea. I didn't even, I did, they, they told me dust mites, the, the, the allergist, but, you know, I don't know if they can test for all those kind of, uh, different, different variables.

[39:53] You know, they can't test for everything. Right. How bad's the reaction? Is it hospital reaction? I mean, they said it was severe reaction. Yeah. So it's hospital. So, like, what I would do is, like the next time you go into, uh, talk to the allergist, I would stop by, you know, a cheese shop, like Murray's or something, and get or whatever, and

[40:12] get, like, a, like, a really mighty cheese that has, you know, some rind on it. Don't eat it on your own. You know what I mean? But like when you're in a challenge test situation with your doctor. or unless they know. Like, you could do a search of literature and they say, no, cheese mites aren't a problem. But, you know, get some of that to, you know, just so that you can know for a fact whether that's

[40:32] going to be a problem or not. Because I'm just curious. You know, I mean, this is probably a known thing, but I just wonder how kind of how specific it is to this specific kind of might. And also, you know, if you've ever stored, um, hams, uh, you know, dry aged hams, which we're doing ham tasting next week, um, the, uh, they also can have uh, mites and you'll see like a dusty powderiness that's underneath

[40:53] the hams if you've been hanging them, depending on kind of what's around. You want to make sure that you're not allergic to that kind of stuff too. If you like, you know, long cured meat products or if you like like cheeses. Just something just something to check out. Um, because I've also found that, you know, a lot of times, you know, a doctor won't necessarily, like, think to tell you that. They might know it or they might not know it, but either way, I would check before you have to stab yourself in the NepiPen and go to the hospital just for eating something. You know what I mean? Yeah, I got to carry that heavy pen now. I know it sucks. And, you know, they expire every, whatever it is, and you have to get a new one. And you know what the thing is, though, dude. I don't know how bad off you are, but a lot of times I've had kind of mild reactions

[41:31] start, and I always carry with me Benadryl. And so, uh, and, you know, I don't know if they still make it, but the last time I bought it,

[41:38] they, uh, they used to make like Benadryl and like listerine strips. It gets into your system extremely quickly. Unfortunately, you can't do it if you have to drive home or whatever because it not, you know, it makes you super drowsy and knocks you out. And I also feel very strongly that Benadryl destroys my sense of taste for hours. So, you know, you don't want to have to take it. You know, it's, I don't take it lightly, but it's a lot, you know, because once you stab yourself at the EpiPen, you have to go to the hospital.

[42:02] I mean, that's basically it. But if you, uh, you know, if you, if all you're doing is taking Benadryl and you self-monitor for a little while, as long as you're someone there with you, you know,

[42:11] uh, I don't feel the need to, you know, go to the ER. Um, you know, because you can start. I don't know what you have. With me, my throat closes up and so you can kind of feel when the reaction is happening. Anyways, now to answer your question, do not store it in the

[42:24] fridge, and the reason not, because you don't, that you don't want to store it in the fridge is there's a boatload of condensation that can happen, especially if the thing's... Yeah, freezer, yes. So that's the I was games. Don't store it in the fridge, store it in the freezer. So I buy quite often a couple of brands of chapati flour and other kind of like whole

[42:43] grain soft Indian flowers because I like them in

[42:48] pancakes, actually, and in biscuits because of the flavor that they have, but the brands that I buy almost always have larva in them that hatch. And so eventually they'll get buggy. And if you've seen like a flower that has that kind of stuff, it gets kind of little ropey threads in it. And then if you look closer, you can see kind of stuff that's there and then you have to sift everything. sucks. And so for years, like, and I don't do it with, you know, gold brand or anything like, you know, I use

[43:15] heckers actually, but, you know, with those, because I've never had a problem with those, but I store all of those kinds of specialty flowers in the

[43:23] freezer, always. And they're fine. They're fine. Uh, you know, I, I, what I do is I wrap them. I put them in zips and I get rid of all of the air in the zip so that there's not a lot of, you know, um, uh, you know,

[43:36] when if moisture does get in the fridge, it doesn't condense in high school form on the flower. I've never had a problem with it clumping. I've never had any degradation of the quality. you know, it's it's been it's been fine. zippies, zippies work, not like mason jars that are that are fully sealed. Well, actually, in a mason jar, you have more air because you can't compress them down.

[43:54] I usually keep them in their sack and then put the sack

[43:59] in a zippy, roll the and then compress it down and then get rid of it because you actually can get more air out of it that

[44:04] way. Do you know what I'm saying? Now, but here's here's the, uh, I had, I had a caveat. Oh, yeah. One caveat to remember is that like, I don't know what you're making with it, but it's going to throw off all of your temperatures. So, um, you know, if you're used to things hydrating in a specific amount of time or if you're doing, uh, you know, mixing of breads or anything like this, just be aware that you're, you know, it's not that it has that much thermal energy compared to the water that you're adding or milk or whatever, but if you have a recipe that's, uh,

[44:37] where the temperature of the batter, uh, or whatever, or and yeast on a bread is, is, uh, is critical, that you might just need to adjust it a little bit or let the stuff that you're going to use come up to

[44:48] temperature. But I haven't had any problems. And, but, you know, like I say, that stuff I mainly use for biscuits and pancakes, so. So I hope that helps. Great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm, I think I, I, I might need to get another freezer because uh, I don't, I don't have enough room for everything. They want to sneak in there. You know, I got to put my my mafa in there. I got to put my uh, I gotta put all my, my, my baking flowers. I got to put, uh, you know, all the different, you know, different stuff in there. Yeah, polenta. Well, I mean, the thing is, if you're going to use the stuff right away. If you're going to use this stuff. I mean, it depends on how long you're going to store the stuff too, right? Here's another thing that is true. Once you get, and I know this for a fact with hams, right? Once you get, like a mite, there. I mean, like for most of us, it's totally harmless and it's like they're just there. It's not because it's not like a hygiene thing, whatever. You know what I'm saying? It's just they're there. But once they're there, like, I know with him, like, you cannot have a hand for, like, it seems like 8000000000 years, and then all of a sudden you get another handman, all of a sudden they're back. So, I don't know whether you're going to have a problem where you need to kind of decontaminate your pantry somehow, and I don't really know how to do

[46:00] that, um, to kill them all. But, I mean, it might be a situation where you only have to store your long held stuff. I don't know. Do you know what I mean? You also might be able to, if it's freezer space is an option, most of these things probably can't grow in a

[46:16] hardcore vacuum atmosphere. So then if you want to go to a food saver situation, you might be able to vacuum pack your flowers,

[46:26] uh, not in a bag because that'll compress the hell out of them and a lot of sifting work for you to do, but like in a hard container, like a vacuum

[46:34] pack. might be able to uh, reduce their ability to uh, to reproduce. I don't know. I'm just, I'm just saying this is a possibility that I'm thinking off off the top of my head, and it might be easier for you to do dry storage of, you know, vacuumed containers. You just have to make sure that the vacuum is being maintained maintained over a long period of time. Or you could just take small samples and vacuum down hardened bags and then just deal with the sifting. Because I've done that before on certain things, but just be careful when you're vacuuming powders. If you use a strong vacuum to vacuum powders, you can, I don't know. like when you're dumping powders into bags, you can aspirate them. And if you're having a problem, if there's already some mites present, you don't want to be aspirating a lot of this stuff when you're baking or cooking. And that's another point I might want to make is that your allergist might not be a cook.

[47:25] And so they might not think about the difference between cooking with something and consuming it. So you might want to be extra special careful when you're working with flowers not to not to cause a lot of, you know, aspirated particles. Like, we've all done it where we fire up the kitchen aid a little bit too fast and it goes whap, whap, whap, and throws a floof of flour up in the air. That might be a little more hardcore for you at this point than it would have been like a year ago. And so you might want to also take care when you're doing that, just to minimize your exposure. Yeah. That's, that's, that's great. That's great. Yeah, um, you know, uh, got to get that of the freezer, because, you know, I got my, I got to put the hydrocolloids in there, and I'm not sure, you know, what's going to grow in, in, in what, for sure, or, or, you know,

[48:15] paprika and, you know, uh, you know, ground spices. I mean, I try to grind as much from fresh, but, uh, You know? Yeah, well, I don't know. Do they grow in that stuff? Well, again, you're going to have to experiment, but like, why don't you get back to us and let us know, let us know what happened, because I'm interested to hear what happens, especially

[48:33] Ari, the cheese and stuff like that. All right? Yeah, sounds good. All righty. Good luck with it. All right, so Jack is ripped, going to rip me off the air in a second. So here are the questions I didn't get to, and I'll get to them. Adam Rogers, the author of proof, good book. wants to know, like how high I have to pour liquid nitrogen above your head to have it, you know, evaporate before it kills you. Maybe we'll get to that next time. Have a question about fennel from Michael wants to know if we can make it taste more. anyway, we'll deal with that next week. Uh, on uh, Keel Clayberg wrote in about custard. Uh, I have answers on that, but we'll have to wait for next week. And also, a request that we get one of the Momofuku, what's it called? Fermentation experts in on the show. We should do that sometime. All right? And a question which would have been perfect after this flower thing from Sam on the

[49:24] Ottolie's step of bread baking by, you know, which is popularized by Raymond Calvell, famous bread guy. Again, we'll have to get to that next week. This has been crooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archive programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes

[49:45] 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 anytime at info@heritageradionetwork.org. Heritage Radio Network is a 501 C3 nonprofit. To donate and become a member, visit our website today.

[50:04] Thanks for listening.