[0:00] Today's episode of Cooking Issues is brought to you by Wilma Jean, Delicious Fried

[0:05] Chicken and other Southern Comfort Food Classics, Great Burgers 2, located at 345 Smith Street in Brooklyn, Wilma Jean 345 for more information.

[0:15] Hi, this is Celia Kutcher, host of Animal Instinct. And you are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for 1000s more.

[0:34] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to your live from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

[0:46] Joined with usual Nastasia Hammer Lopez, fresh off another trip to the Harvard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was great. Yeah, no, I like it a lot. I also joined, well, 1st in engineering. Who do we got? You got Jack, as usual, Insley. We got a full crew back here today. Who do you got over there? We've got G, Paul, who's here, training to engineer and Wyatt Burns, who's been with us for the past few weeks. Wyatt, yeah, I'm familiar with the world. Who, for the 1st time, provided you with a list of unanswered questions. Isn't that groundbreaking? Sweet, but they, okay, listen, I don't want anyone to get ticked off here, but we have in-house, Daniel Gritzer, formerly of the Fantastic magazine, Food and Wine,

[1:27] now, at Sirius Seats. Do you have a title over there or just like, you know, they're calling me culinary director. Wow, that's fucking that's a that's a high title. I didn't drop. I didn't actually drop an F bomb. Just careful. I said, for, for, was what I got to. Fantastic. Fantastic. That's it's a high title there. Yeah. So you running that thing? What does that mean? No, I'm not running things. I work with, you know, Jake Henji Lopez. Sure. He has his title is chief creative officer, right? He was. When I came on board, I think they finally decided to make things a little bit more official. So he's now managing culinary director. So he and I... we usually managing means they handle the ad side in magazine. No, like you can have like a managing editor. Doesn't managing editor handle the like the integration of ad side into edit? Well, yeah, okay. In print magazines, it's true. The managing editor does often straddle those lines a little bit. Here it just means... Yeah, they're just making up titles, aren't you? He's making making crap up. He, you know, he manages the culinary portion of the or the recipe portion, the cooking portion of the website. isn't he moving to like Botswana or something crazy? Where's he moving? If San Francisco is Botswana, yeah. I've never been to Botswana, so I can't say. have been to San Francisco. Yeah, no, he moved out he moved out to the West Coast. Yeah. Yeah. All right. like San Francisco. San Francisco is a good town, right? And it's a good place to visit the Redwoods, which are some of my favorite places in the world. That's true Yeah. Yeah. And, like, basically, all of this here in Nevada is crazy towns full of, like, crazy craziness and, like, wildfires and stuff. Really cool. I like that stuff. But that's not why we brought you here. 1st of all, why don't we tackle, we'll tackle tomatoes like midway through. You wanna get what? No, you have to say what slow food means to you. Oh yeah, there's a cool announcement here. So at Heritage Radio and Roberta's on Friday, we're having Alice Waters and Carlo Petrini here to celebrate 25 years of slow food.

[3:25] It's pretty cool, right? Yeah, it's a long time. you know, right? Yeah, I mean, what do you think slow food's meant for food over 25 years? I mean, look, what year was it 25 years ago? Wow. What's that? Jeez. 86. No, no. We're a decade. 99, right? 1989, right? 1989, 89, 89. The year I graduated. 89, you're right. 89. Okay, so let's all look back to what food was like in 1989. I mean, let's look at like where the high-end, where like people who cared about ingredients and stuff, where where we were as a culture in 1989 versus where we are now. And I think what's what's interesting about it is,

[4:13] is, uh, you know, even in the early 90s, like the concept of, um, kind of caring about where food came from was much more advanced than

[4:21] Italy where slow food was born. much, much, much more. I mean, than it was here in the US at that time. But, you know, you look at the influence of groups like slow foods, America. Let's give a shout out to Patrick, who is, you know, Martin's one of the founders of that. Uh, you know. And I think it's done it's done a lot. It's hard to say, you know, they were there kind of at the beginning. So I think, you know, big player. What do you think, Daniel? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's so many people who can be given credit for so much that's happened in the food world in the past 25 or 30

[4:54] years from Alice Waters, who will be here. But the slow food movement, I think, if you look at, if you look at the state of the food world today and the things that people talk about and even the trends that some people now get annoyed with, um, in terms of them being marketing

[5:11] lines. So, give me some annoying. Well, you know, everything's farm to table, and then people say, okay, well, everything's farm to table because everything comes from, you know, that kind of thing. Well, you know, like, you know, we extended that, right? It's farm to toilet now. Farm to toilet. Yeah. That's going to be the new back page of the National Glossy. Yeah, you know, remember, that's mine. Farm to toilet. Like other people, I've given it to other people, but farm to toilet. That's all me. And no, that actually fits in with like the great, you know, like American, like

[5:38] American, uh, thinking about uh, diet and like the problems with American diet and food. Like one of the early people who was interested in that was, uh, the Reverend Sylvester Graham, like, you know, would not have actually enjoyed graham crackers, but was very interested in stopping us from masturbating and having excess

[5:54] sex, and he thought he could do this by reducing our meat consumption to almost nil and having us eat only kind of whole, uh, you know, whole grain

[6:03] breads like cooked without like external leavenings, uh, kind of like really what we would consider like poorly made products. And so like, you know, he thought that this would like de-inflame our passions, get rid of like the national problem at the

[6:15] time, which was dyspepsia. So he, you know, his his conception. This is Jacksonian America now, is that dyspepsia is one of the great problems. It leads to things like adultery, masturbation, things like this, things that he sees

[6:25] as actually kind of morally reprehensible. Remember that dieting in general and detoxing and I've written about this, although I've never published it. all tied in with body hate, and moralism about kind of what we what we do and what we eat and hatred of the body and of

[6:42] a physical self. I'm talking to you detox people. And, um, and so, uh, you know, that he was very much interested in pooping. You know what I mean? And so like, like the early times, it was farm to toilet. So I think over the past, you know, 25 years with this farm to table stuff, we've really been ignoring the toilet part. It's, yeah, it is definitely the one part of the process that's generally ignored in the food

[7:07] conversation. Only it's not, if you talk to someone and they go to a restaurant, how was it? It was good, but in the morning, oh. You know what I mean? So, I mean, people actually treat the farm to toilet movement. I think, though, that the toilet thing started in Italy too. Like, they talk about pooping and how it feels and what the food, like, it's part of everyday conversation. I agree with that, but you also don't hang out with Germans. Do Italians have the shelf in the toilet? Oh, the toilet shelf. The toilet shelf. It's for inspection. Is that what it's for? Oh, yeah. I have like to avoid backsplash. No, there's a famous book put out by a guy named Alan Dulles, Dundas, who's now dead, who did a study of, kind of, fecal expressions and fascination with toiletries in German, in German

[7:55] folklore and in, you know, culture. It's a fascinating book, and it's called Life Is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder, which, you know, comes from an old German expression that I won't get into here.

[8:06] But, um, yeah, it's good one. How do they inspect it once it's on the shelf? Well, that, you know, have you ever had like that style of toilet and you're like, who designed this freaking thing? It's it's like a skid machine. It's like a Skidmaster of 5000. Who designed this thing? And it's because some people like to inspect the business after it's done? It's just a terrible idea. Americans, we want the stuff to go away. There's actually another famous book. What's it called? Oh my goodness. It came out of, I think, out of Cornell. I forget the author's name. Rem Coolhouse, the famous architect, along with the graduate school of design, recently participated in the architectural Bianale for

[8:42] the and one of the things they did is they had a bunch of small books, each on a room of the house, and the one that my wife bought me. Of course, was the bathroom because I have an intense fear of public restroom. I had to test them. I especially hate, listen, anyone out there who owns a restaurant or any sort of public place. Put a trash can near the door and make sure there are towels there, not just those hand

[9:03] dryers because I'm going to use a towel to open the doorknob in your

[9:08] door and I wish to throw that towel in a trash can because I have a mental problem that I can't touch the doorknob in a public restaurant. I'll be locked in that restroom until somebody else comes in if there's not a source of paper towels nearby or if I don't happen to have a receipt in my pocket, probably too much information. toilet paper, you can use toilet paper. Yeah, yeah, you can. like it'd have been a situation. situations. I just don't like it. Just put a towels and and a trash can by the door. you with me, Daniel on this? I'm with you. I think that they need to facilitate that for anyone who wants to use a paper towel to open the door. That's a common, common thing. Especially because I'm about to go cook your food. You know what I mean? Or I'm about to go, wouldn't you prefer that I didn't touch that doorknob? Wouldn't you prefer that? Yeah, you would. Uh, now, the, so anyway, Rim Kulow did this thing. And, you know, along with some other people. And, you know, their point is that Americans, they're focusing on, but Westerners in general, like we do

[10:02] everything, uh, well, backass words. So we poop into water and wipe with dry things instead of pooping into a dry hole and wiping with wetness. And there's a fantastic book from the 70s that was redone, I think, or maybe it's late 60s and redone in the

[10:18] 70s called, you know, the bathroom, and it's a complete ergonomic study of like how different cultures, like with angles, diagrams, pictures.

[10:26] One of our good friends, all of our good friends in the food industry is using the squatty potty and loves it. You know that is? Really? Yeah. Like the kind they have in Japan? Well, because it's better for your, better for your muscle, put you in a squat position even when you're on a Western toilet. First of all, how 1st of all, who is it? can't. And his girlfriend made him throw it out because she was embarrassed by it. Why? Who cares? Wasn't it, like, hard plumbed into their cell? No, no, it's just like it's like a stool on either side of your thing of a jean. And your legs are like up your knees. It's a well-known fact to anyone that's been to my family's house that I'm a believer in the wet on wet, full waste of water because I have the Japanese toilet seat, which are, I think, the highest... They're the apogee of toilet

[11:06] technology. I don't know why we've allowed ourselves to fall behind. I discussed this on the show many times. I wish I knew who was using his squat toilet because that's interesting information. And how do we get on? Oh, farm to toilet. Okay. Right, so the contribution of Carlo Petrini and Alice Waters. And Daniel, welcome to the Tangential Radio Hour, where we just go off on Tangents for no apparent reason. I just want to point out that I think that's the most Nastasia's ever chimed in. Oh, come on. No willingly. She loves some poop talk. He loves some poop talk. Yeah, come on. Like, because you know why? She okay. Mustachi's in the food business, right? So she actually, I'm going to give a little secret that you're not going to be mad about. You're not going to be mad about this. I'm not like, this is nothing you wouldn't be willing to stay on air. What do you not like when you go out after work? Oh, going out with food people who want to talk about food? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's, you know, now she gets to exercise the other subject. Poop. She doesn't care about religion or politics. So you got your poop and you got your reading. Right? And then there's, you know, other less polite things, but, you know, whatever. Uh, okay. So here's what I figure. Like, I think we should get, now, the reason we have Daniel here today is because as, uh, we've said many, I've said many times, is that tomatoes, refrigeration, with

[12:20] a caption of, I think, like grape tomatoes and whatnot, which I don't really care about because I don't think it really degrades the taste of the seed section so much,

[12:26] but, and there's very little pulp in one of those grape tomatoes. And so, like, I've always stored those in the fridge because why the hell not. But I've always said, storing tomatoes in the fridge, uh, enemy of quality,

[12:38] and, uh, Daniel came out with a series of the articles on, uh, on

[12:43] serious seats, basically telling me to, not me personally, but people like me to shove it. And but it's more nuanced than that. So we're going to get into the Great Tomato smackdown. We got to get some reverb on that next time. When we come back out of the, we come back out of it. You try it again. The great Tomato SmackDown. Tuesday. Anyway, maybe we'll do that after the 1st break. You know what I'm saying? And so I feel that like, you know, I read all your posts on it, so we'll get into a little bit now. And this is going to give you time during the 32nd commercial break to read all 6000 words or whatever it is of tomato technology that you have. What is it, like 5000 words? don't even know. Hey, look, you even look. Just see, this came out like a waterfall. I know. People kept asking for more. Niagara Falls. Well, yeah. telling me I was wrong. Yeah, well, look, look. They listen. There's 2 things. I would say this, as a spoiler, is that I, I, after reading it, I, you know, like some of

[13:39] the stuff is very hard to dispute, and I think people that could just call people out is wrong, you need to learn this. This is the greatest thing you can learn in life, I think, is the best thing in the world that you can ever do is to be proven wrong, learn from

[13:53] it, and grow. You know what I mean? It's like I've learned the best things when I was wrong, you know, especially because I've tried, you try to be right. You try to do as right as you can. And then when you're proven wrong, it means that you've grown. that's a win. But I think there's room for both of us at this tomato table because

[14:10] you're people. Another thing I hate about people is they read something like, you wrote a lot of words, and they come back with one with one overarching statement that encapsulates everything. That's not the case. That's not the I mean, like, for instance, we have to talk about what types of tomatoes, how long, what you're doing, what your house is like, blah, blah,

[14:29] blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, that's really the thing is there's so many variables. And really what, I mean, I started where you were. I was a don't put the tomatoes in the refrigerator guy. Because you're not an enemy of quality. I like quality. I like good tomatoes. And that's what I'd always been taught, and it seemed that that made sense to me, and it sort of fit with my anecdotal experience. But I'd never tested it. So, you know, we decided well, let's put it to the test. Let's see what actually happens. So all summer long I was buying tomatoes of different types and different quality levels and putting half in the fridge and half on the counter and just keeping track

[15:09] of and then tasting them blind and keeping track of what the results were.

[15:14] And it started to emerge that this thing wasn't really holding up in my tests as much as the rule to never refrigerate

[15:22] tomatoes suggested it should have. And I couldn't ignore that. So, yeah, so then I wrote, wrote about it, and I think

[15:30] there, a fair number of people simply didn't want to let go of the rule or consider the possibility that the rule may not hold as much as they think it does.

[15:37] Right, people wake up, learn, and pay attention to what people are doing, especially if they're being rigorous about it. So, uh, I've had like so many people tweet at me about your articles and I've had people write in about

[15:48] it. And so, by the way, we're going to get into it in depth after the 1st break. But calling your questions for Daniel regarding tomatoes or anything else. Two, 718-497-2128. 718-497-2128 to talk to him live here in the cooking issues studios. Now, before we get into that, so where do you live? Now I live in Queens and Jackson Heights. Remember they bought a house? Yeah, yeah, but where's your farmer's market? Where are you buying your tomatoes? Oh, well, a lot of them I bought at the Jackson Heights Farmers Market, which is run by Green Market. Well, it's a lot of the same... Stokes is not there, but I did get I did get a big round of tomatoes from Stokes. Which ones? Uh, I got a flat of mixed heirlooms and I got a flat of their red,

[16:34] uh, their like regular red tomatoes. The 2 tomatoes from Stokes, to me, are the only ones that I ever, The only tomatoes I buy other than just crap tomatoes. I can say those small yellow ones? No, I buy the German stripes, which are large, kind of modeled yellow and red. And the Aunt Ruby's German green, which are green, relatively large, and then get a pinkish red blush that goes around them. And I've been buying these, these exact 2 tomatoes from them for, you know, it's over, it's got to be, I don't know, like 10 years or something, like

[17:09] nine, 10 years. So I wait for them every year. I know exactly what they look like when they're the way I want them to

[17:15] be. And like how long it's going to take them to get them where I want them to be. You know what I mean? So, like, for me, it's like this, a lot of heirlooms, and we can get this in discussion later, aren't very good to begin with. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, so we'll talk about all this. And then we'll also talk about the implications for the, remember growing

[17:34] up those, like, those rectangular plastic boxes. Oh, yeah, the clamshells of, yeah, with, well, the rectangular, like, mesh boxes long. They had four, 3 or 4 really kind of sallow looking tomatoes, and then they were overwrapped with plastic, and then they had like an image of like a nice tomato on the plastic wrap.

[17:53] You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, like, that's what I grew up with as a tomato. Or, like, the diner tomato, which is that. You know, those things are the size of like, yeah, well, I don't know. You can't see my hands, like a handball. They're like small, crappy, medium small. Their size are like a little larger than a Campari tomato. Yeah, which I think are a fine supermarket tomato. tastes good. Yeah. Yeah. People hate on those things. They actually they taste good. And they're year round. They're not bad to eat. They're not all that bad. No, okay. So let's get to some questions, though. And Daniel, please feel free to chime in, have some, you know, technical technical cooking questions. I got to get to. Otherwise, I'll hear clamorings. So Jasper writes in from Sweden regarding rotovaps and vacuums. Now, if you might recall, Jasper's written in a couple times about rotavad problems. he's making building a road of app setup. For those of you that don't know what a rotor app is. Yeah, rotary evaporator is a vacuum still that allows you to

[18:51] do, like, distillation of flavors at very low temperatures and under vacuum, which means there's no

[18:57] oxidation and there's almost no heat damage to the flavors. Very pure flavors. And you can do it with a, you know, you can do it with a normal condenser,

[19:05] it's a piece of laboratory equipment. If you buy them used, you have to be very careful to clean them, blah, blah, blah. I use them at Booker Index, the bar. I have to use a very much more complicated way of doing it because I can't distill

[19:14] with alcohol, so in order to keep the flavors intact, I need to use liquid nitrogen and

[19:18] special kind of condensers. So yada, yada. So, uh, that said, that is what a road app is. They ain't cheap if you, you know, they ain't cheap. I 1st saw one, uh, the 1st time I, wait, I, when I 1st started working at the French culinary, even when I was

[19:33] part-time there, you know, we were researching all equipment, and I knew I wanted to do some, um, some vacuum distillation, so I built a really crappy one, you know, like out of parts that I found around, uh, found around, and it really kind of sucked, but it gave me like a taste for

[19:46] it, and then I saw the Rokas do a, a demonstration at Madrid fusion where they did the oyster thing. It was the 1st time I ever seen the distilled dirt going in distilled dirt water that they put on oysters. Is there surf and turf? I was like, must get real one. Okay. So, uh, Jasper writes in. I've previously sent a question that is still unanswered. I apologize. Consequently, I would appreciate if Dave can have his expertise and opinions on this question, namely, in regards to selecting a vacuum pump for a

[20:10] roto app. Uh, though I'm already in the process of buying one. So now, Jasper's looking at, okay, so you need a vacuum to run a vacuum still. This is obvious, right? That seems apparent. Right. Because when you lower the, when you lower the, the pressure, when you lower the, the pressure inside of a system, you decrease the temperature at which things boil, just like going up to the top of a mountain, you decrease the temperature at which things boil, things

[20:32] boil a lower temperature, therefore you can shift the distillation point down to a lower temperature. That's the whole principle of what's going on here. Now, the deal is you need a vacuum pump thick in one, get to a low enough vacuum pressure that you can really reduce the boiling point, especially if you're going to do cooking with

[20:47] it. You need very good vacuums because if you're going to try to make things like syrups and you don't want them to get too hot, they have a very high boiling point. Think of when you're boiling candy down, you're boiling down, the temperature goes up and up, you need a better and better vacuum to be able to maintain its low temperature, right? So the other thing you need is you need a vacuum that can, one, tolerate some moisture because you're

[21:06] gonna mess up and you're gonna, you're gonna accidentally suck some moisture up into your vacuum pump, so it needs to tolerate some

[21:12] moisture. And three, you need it to be powerful enough that it can suck the vacuum fast enough. So a lot of people make a mistake. They try to get either these little things called aspirators, which run off of

[21:24] faucets, and they, um, they're kind of weak. They don't have, they don't, they're not strong enough. can't suck enough of a vacuum fast enough to really be useful for what we're doing. And then other people go the other way, they get a really vacuum that sucks a lot, but can't get to a low enough vacuum level. So like a vacuum cleaner or a hood has a huge amount of exhaust, you know, can exhaust a huge amount, but it can't do it to a very low vacuum. These are the problems. So, uh, Jasper is looking at buying either the uh, Buke V700 or V710 pump, which is their standard laboratory vacuum pump. I have the V700. It's nice. It can get down to around 10 millibar, so atmospheric pressure is about 16,

[22:01] uh, 1600, you know, uh, you know, 1000, sorry, 1065 millibar. So it gets down pretty low. But it can't really get that all the time. It can really get to about 20, especially if your road of app is leaking and it's kind of a pain in the ass. Leaky wrote a vap, by the way, for those of you that don't know. Leaky Roto app. key cause of flavor loss and a distillation. Leaky wrote of that because your air is sucking in through the leak and stripping flavor up and out through your pump. In real life, when you're using a vacuum pump in a rotary evaporator distillation, your pump should run down to its

[22:30] pressure and then never turn on again. That's the best of all possible worlds. And then you're losing no flavor. Think about it. You're evacuating it down to a certain level. You're supposed to boil everything off and then recondense it in the condenser. You're not supposed to have to suck a vacuum again. supposed to be like closed loop. b, b, b, b, b. doesn't work that way. So the pump always has to run a little bit, but it shouldn't ever run that much. But the more much more expensive pump, the pump I have is the one that, you know, he's saying the

[22:55] 700, the cheaper one. Um, And do you know how to make this? By the way, I'm running the show for the 1st time off of my new iPhone 6 Plus. Fabling. Oh, check that out. But unlike the my iPad, it keeps turning off on me. Do you know how to go into settings and make this thing not automatically turn off? Because I keep looking down and then I have to use my finger to sign in. Oh, it's only finger sign in now? No, I still have password on it, but like, it's irritating. Every time I go to look at the question. I say something. I go down and I see my lock screen. It's no fun. So anyways, so the 710 is a much bigger pump, if you could afford it, I would go for it, if you could afford the, you know, footprint, I would go for it because it's going to be better for things like

[23:34] syrups because it can get down to a much lower vacuum pressure. It has another level of pump on it. Both of the, and also, you know, there's a thing in vacuum pumps. Daniel, I'm sorry about that. you have to listen to vacuum pump technology, but there's, one of the problems when you're doing a vacuum is, is that you suck. How long is it gonna stay on now? Forever. Really? It says, woo. Uh, so there's a thing in a vacuum where if you get moisture inside of your vacuum system,

[23:58] right? And you're not pumping a lot, you can't get down to a low level. So they have this thing called a gas ballast. That after you're vacuum system, let's a little bit of air in so the sucker can, look, look, look, look, a little pump all the time, draw dry air with it and expel out

[24:10] your, your, your moisture. Get it? Okay. Okay, I think so. Yeah. So when you're running a gas palace to get the moisture out of your vacuum pump, the bigger vacuum pump can still reach a lower vacuum pressure,

[24:21] right? It's just, put it this way. got more balls. Sounds good. Yeah. All right. So if you can afford it, take it. The other question is, you need a vacuum controller, and he wants to know whether he should get the

[24:31] V 850, which is the one we have, which is basically just a standard vacuum controller, hits a set point, stops, or the

[24:38] V 855, which is automatic distillation. Listen, I have no idea. I would always wanted to have the 855. And if you know someone at Bukey. Let me tell you, it's the same freaking unit. All they got to do is like flip some switches and like do a firmware update and they can convert. They won't. They won't do it. But it's just a software difference. It's the same piece of hardware. Isn't that isn't that just a kicker? It sounds like Apple. Yeah, right? They're just crippling products. They cripple. Why? Yeah, why? Still. Still no USB on this damn thing. You know what I'm saying? Call her on the line. Oh, color. you're on the air. Hi, Dave, how's it going? No, they're all right. up? Hey, I had a couple of equipment questions. I hope you could help me with. I'm curious in a cheap home ice cream maker. I think I've heard you say before you like the rock salt ones. So which one? The rock salt? Yep, yep. That's all nice. Yep. Is there any particular model you like or what should I look for? All right. So I'll tell you that this, the sad truth is I want to love the, whatever it's called, the white mountain, which is the kind of the white mountain. the name of it, right? I can't remember. Yeah, I saw I saw that on uh, I think shoved ups like Router or something. Yeah, it's good. I have one right? Uh, it's really good. It's expensive, right? But it's like, it's it's oldie timey, and the scrapers that it uses are wooden. Okay? Now, I had a thrift store, like I forget the name of it, like Revco or something like this, a thrift store motorized. I also, I was stupid. I thought my kids would want to get into ice cream making with me and crank that thing. And so I bought the hand crank one. Yeah, yeah. I bought the hand crank one, thinking that, oh, we would sit around the table and crank ice cream. Hell no. the table by yourself. Yeah. Hell no. Hell no. Yeah, I sit there by myself cranking on that thing. So, like, if I could go back, I would definitely get the motorized one because I have better things to do with my life than watch my kids watch me crank an ice cream machine.

[26:30] But the, uh, so aside from that, though, uh, like the White Mountain is really good, but the old crappy, I think Revco, I don't

[26:40] remember one that I had had uh, plastic, like scraper dashers on it that actually did, I think, a better job of getting the ice cream off the side of the freezing tin.

[26:50] And so I think that, so one of the problems with rock salt and ice, ice cream freezers,

[26:57] right, is you need to be able to effectively scrape the crystals off the side of the metal container or you get like

[27:04] weird like chunky crystal problems in it. And that's why those companies who make those things don't recommend that you salt the hell out of your ice. They give you like a salt recommendation and they give you a freezing window that's actually a lot longer than I like. Now, with my old Revco, with the plastic scraper blades, until that sucker died, like I could churn out like easy, like 12, 15 minute batch times on that thing and still get good scrapage on the sides, whereas my feeling is with

[27:33] the, with the scraper dasher things that they have on the white mountain, that if you were to push the times that fast by salting the hell out of it, that it would lose its scraping efficiency.

[27:41] So I've never been, but again, like, you know, I haven't played with the White Mountain as much because, you know, years

[27:48] ago, I would make ice cream like 2 times a week in my old Revco one. I paid, I think, 3 bucks for that ice cream maker on the thrift shop. I'm so sad when that thing died. And, um, and so I used to do it uh, all the time. I also bought the really big white mountains, so I don't know whether I would have had better results if I had used a smaller one. Uh, because when I go, I go big usually, uh, unless I'm buying something from a thrift shop. It's just, you know, it's in my nature. I can't help it. Um, so anyway, so that's that's my thoughts. Am I answering any sort of question or am I just saying things I can't tell? No, no, I think I think I'm helpful. I know what you're talking about with a scraper. My parents had an old kind of crappy one too, and uh, I know you're talking about with the chunky kind of crystal thing. Yeah, although I bet you could modify White Mountain. Yeah, that's because you retrofit. The other thing that I wanted to ask you about is I was reading some broad posts for a while ago about the, um, the little tiny centrifuge. Yep. Um, what do you think about that now that you had a chance to use it more? Can it do much and how does, how does the yield going to compare to, like, I love, uh, your guys, who's pino techniques have been doing a lot of

[28:56] the trying, like, add our clarification? I wonder how is the yield gonna be? Can you use it for much more than clarification, kind of just what are your current thoughts on that machine now? Uh, well, it's not good for anything where you care about the solids because it's very hard. So most of the time when I work with solids in a centrifuge, you're actually dealing with kind of a stratification of layers and you're not going to want all of those layers. And so it's useful to have large buckets, so you could scrape the different layers off. So, like, let's say you're making like pecan, you know, you grind up pecans. You can get the oil layer, then you can get the fine nut layer, and then you can get the,

[29:34] like the, like the, the outer, you know, skinny layer at the bottom, and it's very hard with a machine like this. 1st of all, it's not going to do enough separation so well, but it's very hard with a machine like this to do any real separation.

[29:46] So it's really only useful for things where you want the liquid on top. And you have to spin it a lot. I did do a hostino once of, uh, for a large group of people and I was, uh, back when Tristan was a bar manager, Booker and Dax, and we were in a basement in

[30:02] Bogota spinning for hours and hours and hours and hours. Oh, God. But if you want to do something like lime juice, where you only need like, uh, where you only need like, you know, a couple

[30:17] ounces and you're good. you know, right? Yeah, yeah. We did it for Hurricane Sandy, too, remember, for the Today Show? Oh, really? Oh my god, that was a nightmare. Uh, yes, yes. I've never, like, I've never been so, like, visibly, like, just not in a good mood on

[30:35] a TV appearance ever, right? Like visibly just like making Halloween drinks in a not good mood. But anyway, it's not that big of an investment. Um, so, you know, if you want to jump in and get it, you know, I'm sure, you know, sooner or later

[30:52] there'll be a much better alternative, but, um, it's not a horrible thing to play around with for things like lime juice or small amounts of grapefruit juice and things like that.

[31:00] Yeah, okay, great. Thanks, thanks so much. Really appreciate it. the inside. Hey, cool, no problem. Thanks for calling. Okay, new tagline. Am I answering questions or am I just saying things? It's hard to know. I don't know. I can't tell. So anyway, back to... Well, wait, let me finish Jasper's question first. I'm going to break. So, uh, look, the 855, the key thing with that is automatic distillation, uh, depends on how they run the

[31:29] automatic. for those of you that don't, when you're doing a distillation, just like when you're making candy. I tell you, the boiling point goes up as you're boiling stuff off as there's less water in the product or less

[31:36] alcohol, depending on what kind of distolation you're doing, especially when you're doing alcohol distolation, which is what you're going to be doing, let's be honest, is the boiling point is constantly changing.

[31:45] And because the boiling point is constantly changing, you need to sit there and keep

[31:49] and adjust constantly the boiling point of the, you know, the vacuum pressure that you're running the distillation at in order to keep a constant level of distillation. That's how you have to do it. Now, the 855 claims to have automatic distillation algorithms that make it so you can walk away from it. I've never used it. I don't know if I trust it to make the best possible flavor. Maybe it does. in which case it'll save you. I mean, like I have to sit in front of every liter of product I want. I or someone who is trained has to sit in front of the Roto app for an hour. Okay? So it's like, if you could just, you know, Ronco, you know, Ron

[32:24] Popil had said it and forget it, you know, then maybe it would be worth almost untold amounts of money if you were

[32:28] going to do this kind of thing a lot. One last thing you said you had, and this I'm going to get into just really quickly, Jack, before we go to the break, is you're using for your chiller. Remember, when you're doing distillation, what's the key, what's the key thing you have to remember, distillation, moonshiners? anyone? Anyone? Cutting off the tails? Well, in terms of taste, yes, but in terms of physics, in terms of physics, everything that you boil, you have to condense, right? You have to, in other words, you have to have as much chilling power as you have heating power or you'll saturate your condenser, right? So the way moonshiners do this is they always moonshine near a creek or a

[33:03] well and they just put it through a boat ton of water, right? through long tubes and a lot of water, but they're not doing it at a very low temperature. In rotary evaporation, you're doing your, your, um, your chilling, you're condensing usually at a lower temperature, much lower than tap water. Chemists use tap water at 20 degrees Celsius because they're doing their distillations higher, like 60 degrees

[33:22] Celsius, and they just dump, dump, dump, tap water through the condenser, but they're not getting a very large temperature delta between their distillation and their condensing, which means they're not getting a lot of fine resolution of

[33:34] flavors. They're not doing it. They're losing a lot of stuff through their through their vacuum stack. Okay? So, you need a low temperature, but you need to have a low temperature and a lot of power. So your piece of equipment that you own, which is a Julabo FE 500 recirculating cooler, only has 120 watts of cooling power at -10 Celsius, right?

[33:53] You're going to want to set it at -20 -23, start your distillation, and then it's

[33:58] going to that temperature is going to creep up through your distillation run. So you're going to have to do smaller distillation runs so that your temperature doesn't get too high before you get too far in or you're not going to be able to maintain your chilling.

[34:08] You need, if I was you, if it was going to spend money on something, I would spend it on more chilling power. All right, let's go to break.

[34:32] Today's program has been brought to you by Wilma Jean, from the team behind Nightingale 9, Delicious Fried

[34:43] Chicken and other Southern Comfort Food Classics, Awesome Burgers 2, located at 345 Smith Street in Brooklyn. That's Wilma Jean, Wilma Jean, 345.com.

[35:07] And oh, welcome back. All right, listen. Stas is like, we're only gonna have time for the tomatoes. Jack, we're going to have to have some sort of a ketchup show at some point. Yeah, that sounds great. Like, because I have so many questions. A whole show dedicated to it? Just to catching up because I have like... Yeah, look, I got, I got, I got... Should we put the freeze on right now? The new question freeze? What I have like, I have to go. I have like, I have a bunch of questions from Lucas. I have Sam's like, oh, you know, autolized for bread. I have cooking black bass. I have salad and choise, I have salt and penetration. Oh, well, I have, I have brine penetration and I have salt, uh, like, uh, salting. I have eggless cooking. I have I have had to make a phone that doesn't break. None of these things seem that they need it right away. Liquid smoke, ISI versus soda stream. We're going to need to do, we're going to need to do a ketchup show. A special catchup show. Special catchup show. How we got sponsored by Heinz. Oh, that would be sick. You know, stars, as you remember, we learned on the show, does not care about what brand of ketchup cheese. Actually, no, that's not true. When I was away this past week. Are you using crappy ketchup? Someone gave like a Sir Kensington and I was like, and you were like, where's my freaking? Well, if you read Patrick's book, he, you know, he, he, uh, firm believer in the Heinz being better than all their ketchup. Yeah. You know something interesting about the Heinz Corporation? They figured out a process for making ketchup relatively early on that meant they didn't have to use benzoate,

[36:41] sodium benzoate in their as a preservative in their stuff. So they were trying to push through a Benzewit a ban early, along with some governmental people so that they could squash everybody else who still had to use

[36:54] Benzewit. That's some sweet business. They're like, this stuff that we figured out how not to use is dangerous. But then everyone else figured it out. So it wasn't so imperative that they put the band through. Hey, and we're back on tomatoes. Hey, hey. Yeah. You know what? You know, Ronald Reagan taught me as a child, ketchup, that's a straight up veggie. It's a straight up serving a veggie. Sure is. Anyone, anyone old enough to remember this? tomato ketchup was considered like in school lunches. They would talk about what slow foods and that kind of thinking is Don Alice Waters and whatnot. Like, you know, back then, tomatoes were a vegetable. think about that. Oh, yeah. I mean, not tomatoes. Ketchup was a vegetable. tomatoes are a fruit. My son is like, the vegetable, another fruit, but they are used as vegetable, main ketchup, vegetable, which is nuts. Okay, so, uh, Jack, when are we going to have this ketchup show? How about 2 weeks from now? I'm out next week, so maybe the following week. Maybe we come in early and do a double episode. You want to do that? Maybe you're not here next week. Yeah, we'll have somebody here. Liz will be here. Don Lee show next. We have a really interesting Don Lee. Next week, Don Lee and Paul Adams are going to come in, and we're going to eat Icelandic fermented shark on air. No way. The one come back to you. Yeah you can come back. kind of want to try that. Who do you not like at all, Jack? Because they should be running the station. Can't say on air. Well, we'll find out next week when we show up. Well, we got 10 minutes, so let's All right, so we we either do a double show next week. Well, because Jack's gone. We kind of need Jack. For the early one? If we do a double? Well, I'll tweet out what our answer is. But we'll do a show where there's no new questions where we just do catch up on these questions that we've missed. Not catch up, catch, catch up, catch up. to our questions. All right, so people, I have not missed your questions. I have them, but right now, we must talk tomatoes. And that's actually one of the questions. So why don't you talk about your studies here real quick. Okay, so it started out, let's see, over the summer, I was actually down in

[38:54] Florida, and I knew I won a steak, visiting my mom. By definition, not a mistake. Um, and I knew I wanted to get started on these. the summertime. What the hell are you doing visiting Florida in the summer? unless you're going to a mango tasting. You know, there's a pool. All right. Um, so I didn't have access down there to really good, uh, you know, let's say farmer's market tomatoes. But I figured people buy a lot of tomatoes at the supermarket. So let me start this test with these. So that was the 1st round. What kind were they? They were, they were, it was, I got 3 kinds. I got a sort of your standard red sandwich tomato, um, plum tomatoes, and then some small, yeah, like cherry tomatoes, basically. And half in the fridge, half on the counter. I always brought the ones from the fringe back up to room temperature before tasting just so that tasters couldn't easily identify, which was which by

[39:52] temperature. And, uh, the 1st day after the 1st overnight, um, the

[40:00] the countertop tomatoes, the room temperature tomatoes were clearly better than the refrigerated

[40:05] ones. And at that point, I was still expecting the refrigerated tomatoes to just be terrible across the

[40:11] board because I was operating under the same assumption that everyone else has been.

[40:15] Um, on the 2nd day with the, so the tomatoes that sat at, at the counter for 2 days at that and had been in the fridge for 2 days at that point, uh, things flipped. And suddenly the counter tomatoes tasted kind of dull, um,

[40:33] and whereas the refrigerated tomatoes still maintained, um, a vibrancy, I would say.

[40:40] same level of crappiness they had before. Yeah, I mean, exactly, yeah. The bar was low here. The bar was low. By the way, when you said suddenly the song suddenly Seymour came into my head, which is an amazing song. Suddenly seem awesome, Daniel. love it. It's right there. He's right there, witness. right there with me. Oh, yeah. All right, let's continue before we get kicked off the air. Not because not because of 70 Seymour, but because of our time. Yeah. So, right. Okay, so let's see, to make this quick. So that surprised me. And I started to wonder, well, okay, it looks like there's a point at which sitting out in warmer temperatures can actually be potentially more detrimental to the flavor of a tomato than a

[41:20] refrigerator one. But, and I wrote a thing about that. But that left a lot of questions because these were your really generic, uh, big ag, tomatoes shipped from state to state, picked green, the whole thing. Sure, crap tanks. Crap tanks. So how does this does this really apply to better tomatoes? So for the rest of the summer, I was doing tests where I was buying tomatoes, pretty much at the rate that I could consume them and refrigerating half of each kind and putting the other half of the counter.

[41:50] And it continued to bear out in my blind tastings, the findings. Now, my apartment is hot in the summer because I don't have air conditioning. Mistake. Yeah, I know. I pat myself on the back for it for environmental reasons, but it's actually really stupid. And so that's, I started to home in on this, on this theory that a lot of the studies that have been done, the ones that I found, I haven't done an exhaustive search of all of the literature on tomato storage, but what I did

[42:24] find across the board, all the tomatoes that were tested were tested in cooler temperatures.

[42:30] So room temperature was defined as being below 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and then compared to refrigeration temperatures. And I was finding that in my room temperature, which was well over 80 degrees

[42:40] Fahrenheit. The ripe, the... So angry, sweating too, while he's sweating. Can't sleep, face against the pillow. Oh, man. Yeah. I've done all sorts of crazy things to deal with, deal with the,

[42:57] the heat, my ponies, including sleeping on wet sheets. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, it continued to, it continued to look

[43:09] like, at the very least in warm temperatures, once you have a nice ripe tomato, it actually seems to do better, more often than not in the

[43:17] fridge than being left out, to kind of wilt in the heat. A lot of people were still not happy with those results. They wanted more quantitative data because this was mostly just qualitative, you know, I do blind tastings and say, well, I like this one because of X and that one because of

[43:33] Y and sort of see where the, see where everything, uh, everything ended up. So then for the 3rd round, I did, uh, I tried to quantify it by

[43:42] doing, uh, a pretty large blind tasting in my office. I had people rate the tomatoes on a scale of 0 to 10 on

[43:51] criteria, like overall preference, texture, flavor, aroma. I had different tomatoes. I averaged them all out, to see, to see where things were. I also did many rounds of triangle tests because one of the things that I was finding was that in many

[44:06] cases it was hard to actually even distinguish between the counter tomatoes and

[44:09] the refrigerated tomatoes. triangle test for those of you that don't know, it's 2 things that are the same, one thing's different, and you see if they can pick out the different one. Right. Um, and I did an early round of triangle tests, uh, just sort of a test run with a

[44:25] colleague and he was about 50%, uh, correct in identifying the counter tomatoes, um, which is better than what you'd expect, um, if he were guessing at random, uh, but

[44:38] not great, not great success in differentiating. And then I did a full, a much bigger round with multiple

[44:45] tasters, trial test. It was 24 rounds, I think. And in that case they got 9

[44:52] out of the 24 rounds, correct, which puts it just about in the zone of guessing at

[44:59] random. Did you correct for where in the tomato they were tasting? I tried to, you know, admit it, like my tests were not absolutely sound

[45:08] and and, uh, you know, scientifically perfect in their, in how I designed them, but I did try to select cross sections that had similar representations of uh, seed quantity and uh, the

[45:22] pulpy part. So I tried not to give someone a cross-section that was mostly pulp with one and mostly seed with another. Right. I mean, the one of the interesting things about tomatoes is that the flavor profile changes radically from the stem end to the

[45:34] tip. Yes. Well, that's, I would say that you, that's, I was seeing much more variation within the batches, whether refrigerated or

[45:45] countertop, than between refrigerated and countertop. Sure, like when I know when I'm serving tomatoes in the summer, I'll take the, I'll take off

[45:53] the, the end right by the stem, taste it. If that one's flavorless, I'll take off a few more slices until I get to the flavor I

[46:00] like and then I'll reserve those for another use and then put the awesome like other side up for a service. Exactly. Yeah, there's tremendous variation, even within one piece of fruit. And in fact, even in the, when I had my, the taster's blind tasting, the, the big batch of tomatoes and scoring them, I had scores for every single individual piece of fruit, and I was seeing huge spreads of scores, which is partly, there's the level of arbitrariness when somebody decides what's a 5 or what's a set, you know, people tend to be somewhat consistent within their own scoring numbers, but some people just tend to score low and

[46:31] some tend to score high. But even with that, I could see variations were happening, even within a piece of fruit that suggests exactly what you're saying, which is you have tremendous variation within a piece of fruit, let alone. Yeah, I mean, I would say I saw much more variation from fruit to fruit and within a fruit than between refrigerated and countertop. And actually, the one thing I didn't mention is my latest, my last round of testing, it had actually gotten cool in New York City at

[46:55] that point. And so those tomatoes were sitting out in average temperatures of about 65 to 70 degrees, which I had

[47:01] never, my whole theory was, okay, well, if it's really warm, the refrigerator is arguably the better place to

[47:08] go warm. fire faster. They're still, you know, quotes alive and they respire faster at higher temperatures. Exactly. Yeah, there's just accelerated aging is happening. And so you're going to have degradation. Once they've hit their sweet spot, they're just going downhill. So it's just a race to the bottom. What's amazing is that what I was finding was that even in the around 70 degrees, it was not as drastic. The countertop was did better, but it's still, I wasn't seeing this dramatic refrigerated tomatoes are absolutely

[47:37] horrible and tomatoes stored at room temperature are great spread. This rule would... No, 5 with 100% humidity in your apartment. Oh, sweet. love that. Well, maybe he stored some with his wet sheets. But they, uh, had some in the shower. So after we... Some on the toilet shelf. Oh, yeah, sweet, sweet. On inside the toilet, in the water, on the shelf, for inspection. So, let me, let me, because after reading it, let me just give you my thoughts on reading it. And then you tell me what you think about my thoughts and then you're going to kick us off the air. Okay. So kind of like my initial hatred of the refrigerating tomatoes comes from, you know,

[48:19] like childhood days of people would buy a tomato of crappy tomatoes. It's underripe anyway, has, you know, very little flavor to begin with. And then they would store it in the fridge for like a week and a half . And then, you know, after a week and a half they would slice it and it had just turned into a, now it's not as

[48:37] long as it tasteless. It's also mealy and disgusting. So it's mainly this mealiness that happens after long refrigerated storage, this tissue damage that happens after long refrigerated storage to these

[48:47] tomatoes that, you know, that that happens. You know what I mean? But so I think, you know, on reading it, I'm like, look it. So over a couple of days, you're not getting that kind of a damage to a tomato by storing it in

[49:02] a fridge, probably, right? Exactly. And so what the fridge is doing is the fridge is saying, stop. Stop ripening, right? So if you get it to your perfect place, then maybe the fridge is a good place to put it as long as you let it warm thoroughly the hell up afterwards,

[49:19] right? Right. And I think for things that don't get mealy, like grape tomatoes. I store them in the fridge for it doesn't matter. I mean, they lose quality, but they're not getting mealy on me. It's mainly mealiness that I hate. You know what I mean? And the, uh, and I think some tomato varieties like, uh, are more susceptible to that. More prone to that. Yeah, and I hate that. And the and the general quality level. I did see some millionists developing, you know, for some of the tests, like the

[49:46] big, the big tasting I did in my office. I knew which was which. So I was able to just do my own tastes and I could see that for the tomatoes that I perceived to be lower quality to begin

[49:58] with. The mealiness was more of a problem in the refrigerator. Tasters still had a harder time differentiating when they were blind. So I knew that I was I knew what to look for and I could I could see it to some degree. So, you know, at the end of the day, there's no argument that the refrigerator is a great place to put

[50:17] tomatoes. By the way, also, in case anyone wonders if they haven't read this stuff yet. He was storing them right on the counter, i.e. stem side, downs, stem side down. It's the only way to store a tomato on your counter. Please don't store it the other way. Uh, especially with an expensive tomato. So, yeah, but here's my thing. And the other thing I took away from it is it, look, like I told you before, I buy these 2 tomatoes every year, the German stripes and the

[50:44] Aunt Rubies. I know by color and feel exactly how I want them to be. So typically I'll buy them. I'll buy some that I'm going to eat today, and I'll buy some, I'm going to eat tomorrow, and then I'm going to buy some that I'm going to eat the day after that. And I leave them out on the counter and they come perfect exactly when I want them to, like an avocado does. Like, yeah, like you're buying just like avocados. buying some ready to eat, some that are have a day left in them and some that need a couple days. Right. And so I never put those suckers in the fridge because I need them to get to their perfect spot. Exactly. But if you have something that says perfect spot. I guess I might have to concede that it degrades less in the

[51:27] fridge. Wow. That's what that's what I found. I mean, grades less. It's less of an encrapping meant than having it ripen past its perfect point. Interesting, interesting stuff. You know I hate to do this, Steve. Yes, we have to go. Thank you, Daniel. Maybe you can come back for some fermented shark. Can I really? Yeah. All right, fermented shark next week, plus maybe a ketchup episode, cooking your juice. Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archive programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions anytime at info@heritageradionetwork.org. Heritage Radio Network is a 501 C3 nonprofit. To donate and become a member, visit our website today.

[52:19] Thanks for listening.