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

[0:09] For more information, visit Wholefoodsmarket.com. I'm Damon Bolte, host of the speakeasy. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit HeritageRadioNetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:30] Looking shoes

[0:56] Calling your questions, too! Cooking issue. Hello, and welcome to Cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live from music. What was that music? It was awesome. Oh, that was the next song on the playlist. Oh, you know what that is.

[1:18] Oh, cheese. Oh, cheese. Oh, yeah. All cheese all day here on the Heritage Radio Network with the cheese song. Hey, speaking of, you know, I met the guy who co-wrote George Clinton's new autobiography. Wouldn't that be sweet if we, like, what would it take to get George Clinton to show up at the Heritage Radio Network? Oh man. I don't know if I should say. I mean I don't know. I would pretty much do anything to get George Clinton here in the studio. We'll work on it. You know what I'm saying? I mean, can you think of anything? I mean, like, that would be like the most amazing coup ever, right, Stas? Yeah. But he would hate it because I would just sit there and like freak out the whole time and be like, I love you, I love you. You know what I mean? It'd be embarrassing. kind of bad when I meet people like that, actually. I should probably not meet them. Julian, as usual, with Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez, you got Jack over there in the engineering

[2:10] booth, and we were missed last week because I was at the Star Chiefs, so we didn't get a chance to send a special thanking shout out to Johnny and all the guys at the

[2:20] underground food collective at University of Madison. We haven't been on the air since that, right? Seems like a 1000000000 years ago, doesn't it? Seems like a long, long time. Those guys are great. We had a fantastic time in Madison. You, do you like it? They got those 2 lakes. What are they called? Don't remember. They're named after the judge sisters, right? Like Winona and something like this? No, it's Mendota and Menona. I think are the 2 lakes. Really pretty up there. Nice place. People are nice. Okay. Milwaukee nice too. Milwaukee? Stas and I and Peter from the Museum of Food and Drink, we were all up there

[2:50] doing a, you know, a Museum of Food and Drink thing. So Stas is like, I'm not driving. We drove from Chicago. Why? We'd fly into Milwaukee. only God knows. We drove from Chicago to University of Madison because, you know, I've missed demos

[3:03] before where I have like 8000000000 connector flights and like the one that we could take. Like there was like, I don't know, some some ping-pong of flights that we needed to take, you know, via Omaha or some crap to make it to Madison.

[3:14] And I was like, I'm gonna miss a demo. So, no. So we drove we flew to Chicago. And then we drove up. So I was like, I'm not driving through Milwaukee without having some

[3:23] bratwurst. I'm not doing it. Isn't that pretty much what you said? pretty much just like that. So we found this crazy place. What was it called? The old German beer hall or something like that. It's modeled on the Hofboy house in Munich. And, um, Holy crap, what a great place, right? Usinger, sausage, whatever it is. And they had this game that we played that Stas, you like this game as much. It's called Hammer the Nail or something like this. I guess so. Like hit the nail. It's called like someone like hit the nail anyways. For 50 cents. First of all, you go in there and you, you, and, you know, the

[3:57] waitress, who's very nice, didn't understand why I didn't understand this concept, but if you were to buy a

[4:03] Bratwurst with one side, right? That's 6 bucks. Six dollars. Right? If you order a beer for $5, the brat verse comes free. With a side. Right. With a side. And so I said to the lady, I was like, is it the same brat versus inside or like some sort of factory seconds or some sort of miniature bratwurst that comes with the with the with the beer or soda? only root beer, not seltzer. How nuts is that? So the lady ended up giving me a root because I was driving, giving me a root beer that I gave to you or Peter, and then also a salsa for free. But she's like, no, it's the same exact... It's but it's cheaper than free. It's negative money. It's negative money. It made no damn sense to me, but she thought that I was crazy for not understanding it. But anyways, back to this hit the nail thing. So they have a giant stump. What do you think, Stas? Like 3 feet across, 3.5 feet maybe across, giant stump at like, you know, kind of like chest height, a little bit lower. Like, you know, we'll work surface height, like counter counter height, stump. Big stump. And you buy for ¢50, a cut nail, an old-fashioned, like, you know, triangular shaped cut nail. And then they have a steel hammer, like, you know, Thor style hammer chained to this freaking stump, and then you have to go around each taking a turn whacking at the nail, and whoever sinks it last, they,

[5:22] uh, you know, they buy the next round. Well, or so, you know, so we told Peter, I don't know. he wasn't believing the story. I'm not saying that I'm not saying that he lost twice, Peter, to us. I'm not saying that. But he did. But the interesting thing about it is, is that, like, can you imagine this in New York? Like, how many times did we hit the nail wrong and it went flying across the room? It's like a bunch of eyeless people. But apparently, like, you know, those folks with their giant moss beers, they have Stein clubs where you can buy the Stein and have it sit in the club there. Sweet. Anyway, those guys can apparently hit that sucker in one whack. Anyway, Milwaukee. Hey, before we jump in, um, just wanted to maybe hear your thoughts on, um, you know, the guy from

[6:04] Kartalk passed away this week, which I didn't know that. Yeah, like when? Um, yesterday. Oh, yeah, because I just heard him on Sunday or whatever. Or was Saturday, whatever, whenever it's on the NPR. Yeah, were you a fan? I mean, I you know, I'm, I mean, I really respect what they did. I wasn't like a long time listener, but you know, my stepfather was who can't, like, who can't, you know, barely, you know, work a mechanical pencil.

[6:26] He used to like listening to it. I mean, like, uh, I definitely enjoy Dewey Cheatham and How, right? Which is like their, their, I guess, fictional, but maybe now real law firm, Dewey

[6:37] Cheatham and how? Because, you know, they had a, you've listened to car talk before, right? You never listen to it once? Oh, God, they were on for like 25 years or something like that, weren't they? Wow. That's too bad It's funny, sometimes I call cooking issues like the car talk for food. I wish. I wish. Now we need to get like snappier, like, you know, things at the end and I don't know. We have to have our listeners only ask one question on the phone. Well, but the card talk guys, they talk to, they talk to like one person for like 8

[7:06] years and then just, the thing is, is like, the thing about them is that they can do really well or, you know, did really well is like completely make fun of the

[7:14] listener. Right? We don't do that. We don't make fun of our listeners the way they did, but it's good nature what they were doing, but they're basically called everyone incompetent who called in, right? I mean, pretty much that's what they did. You big fan, Jack? Yeah, I was a fan. I mean, absolutely. I mean, we do make fun of maybe like Roberta's staff members, though, right? Yeah. That's okay. Talking about Santa's Little Hipster. Indie cheese. Indie Jesus? Speaking of which, you know, we have a question in today, Jack, on maybe we can get it during the break on Roberta's pizza dough. And we need to find whoever, like, the current, like, not when I mean current, like, all time, but, like, the actual this

[7:49] 2nd, like, resident expert on the pizza day. Oh yeah, we'll get somebody on the line. Yeah, because I want, like, I want to answer this question properly. I think I have the answer, but, you know, since I'm in Roberta's freaking pizzeria and the guy calls to ask me about, you know, Roberta's Pizza dough, it would be dumb for me to, you know, speculate, right? Yeah. I do have a caller on the line that's probably not going to ask about Roberta's pizza. You never know. You never, never know. Color, you're on the air. Hey, Dave, how you doing? doing well. Hey, um, I have a question about making uh, homemade soda and actually bottling it in glass bottles with one of those wing style cappers. Sure. Um, and I want it to be shelf stable at room temp, preferably with no benzuay or any additives or anything. Not that I'm against using that. I just, it's kind of my shtick. I want it to just be water, flavorings, and fear too. So how do you recommend going about doing that? Is even practical without some crazy equipment? Yeah. Well, you're pretty much hosed. How many do you need to make? Uh, I would like to make a bunch, like for the holidays. Like how much is that? good size around, like probably upwards of a 100 bottles. Yeah, and how much, here's the thing, right? Um, you need to kill yeast on the inside of that thing. Right? And, uh, it's been a long time since I've researched it, but, you know, your 2 main problems, there are some, I think, there's nothing dangerous that will grow in it, but, uh, you know, there are, um, certain, um,

[9:22] there are certain yeast that will grow in it and will ferment the sugar out or that

[9:27] will there. I think there's also, I forget, it's been a long time since I've researched it, because I've had to research self-stability of sodas before. Um, you know, there's, uh, I think there's some bacteria, nothing dangerous, but stuff that's going to ruin the flavor of the soda and also make it not clear anymore,

[9:41] uh, assuming that it's clear. So like all of these things are going to cause you problems, right? Um, So there's a couple ways around this. I don't remember what the percentage is, but you could probably hit it. I mean, well, of course, they're not sodas anymore. you can hit it with alcohol to stabilize it, but you need a relatively large amount of alcohol,

[9:59] like, so it's nowhere near a soda anymore. You know what I mean? to try and stabilize it. Or you could attempt to pasteurize it. Now, I don't know what the

[10:09] increase. So for instance, if you were to heat to pasteurize on the inside of a bottle,

[10:14] uh, you're gonna get extremely high internal pressures on the inside of that bottle, like very high pressures on the inside of that

[10:22] bottle. So, I mean, so one of the limitations when you're going to pasteurize a soda, is you'll notice that a lot of the, you'll notice if you go to

[10:33] like a, let's say you go to a supermarket like Whole Foods, it only sells sodas that don't contain preservatives, right?

[10:38] Okay. So you go to one of these places and you buy a soda there, you'll probably notice that most of those natural sodas are relatively

[10:46] undercarbonated compared to, let's say, coke or 7 up, right? Sure. And, um, one of the reasons is, is because it's more difficult for them to, um,

[10:58] pasteurize, the higher the level of CO2 that's in the bottle, the more difficult the pasteurization becomes.

[11:04] So, you know, you could you could try. I mean, I don't know what temperatures you need to reach, but you could put the suckers inside of a pressure cooker and

[11:13] like see if they blow. You know what I mean? Are you doing bottle conditioned or not bottle conditioned? What's that? Are you bottle conditioning it or are you force carbonating it? Uh, it would, it would be coming out of like a, uh, liquid bread setup, you know, 2 liter? I just be throwing it through a funnel and Buic old bottle. Right, so you don't need the yeast to be alive or anything like that. Okay. So, yeah, I mean... There are some other natural, it's been, again, it's been like over a year since I've had

[11:43] the research. I don't remember, but there are other, like, natural slash preservatives that kind of dissipate inside the bottle over time.

[11:50] You know what I was looking at actually recently, but I haven't, but it affects the flavor of it, is rowan berries, which are mountain ash. are used in liqueurs and they're astringent in red. They contain naturally sorbic acid, and sorbic acid is a preservator, a preservative with

[12:12] anti-microbial, and I believe anti-yeast activity that you could just say that you made rowan berry flavor. And then if you, you know, and then I, I don't know whether there's enough levels in a standard decoction of the stuff to actually, um, prevent yeast growth, but I mean, it's at least it's from a fruit, but it contains the actual stuff that you used as a preservative just in natural

[12:39] form so that you can just say I use rowan berry. I don't know if that's helpful. Right, yeah. I mean, well, I guess what I'm trying to figure out is that if I sterilize all the equipment and

[12:49] then purge the bottles with CO2, fill them really quickly and then cap them immediately, presumably there's really no oxygen in the

[12:57] bottle? I mean, is is that correct? Um, is that a good way to handle it or just? Are you going to give people the liquid bread carbonator cap? No. Yeah. Because one way to do it is to, um,

[13:10] you basically, you would fill the bottles hot so that they used to be dead. You'd heat the, you'd heat the, um, Yeah, I see. You heat the product, right? pasteurize it beforehand and then carbonate it once it's been pasteurized so that you don't have to worry about pressure problems.

[13:27] And you could do that in a soda bottle. Now, presumably everything that's inside of the bottle is pasteurized, but, you know, no matter how hard you work,

[13:36] there'll probably be some yeast. Will it last a lot longer? Yeah, probably. In other words, it'll probably make it state. The answer is it's probably going to be a lot more stable if you do it that way. If you put the stuff into the plastic bottles that you're going to carbonate with with liquid bread. You like totally, you know, you know, sterilize the, you know,

[13:53] sanitized the bejesus out of the glass bottle, store them upside down, uh, and then, uh, you know, with a cap over them

[13:59] or whatever, or upright set up with a cap over them, pasteurize the stuff in the plastic bottle, chill it, then carbonate it without opening it to the atmosphere and decant it in.

[14:08] I mean, that's probably your best bet, but it's not a guarantee. You know what I'm saying? Okay, yeah, yeah. Does benzoate just remove that hassle? Yeah. Okay. All right. Fair enough. But a lot of people don't like it, but you're only using it in like a small amount. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. Thanks so much. All right, thank you. Good luck with it. All right. All right, thanks. Bye. All right. Uh, and speaking of uh, carbonate stuff. We got a couple carbonated questions. We might as well take them, right? Did we deal with the pear cider last time? Jim? Can't remember. It's been so long. Hey, Dave. I do have Anthony Falco, the head pizza guy from Roberta's on the line if you want to do that. Let's do that. Yeah. You there, Falco? Hey, yeah, how's it going? Hey, thanks for thanks for talking to us. I just got to scroll down in my questions and find the Roberta's related question. Kevin is using your recipe from the book here. And here's here's what Kevin says. I have a question on sourdough starter and pizza. I currently use Roberta sourdough starter pizza dough recipe from the book, presumably, with a kettle

[15:11] pizza, wood charcoal burning pizza oven for those you don't know. It's like a ring that converts like a Weber style grill into like a, into a pizza oven. You can load in and out of without lifting the top. And I don't get the same oven spring with that as the crust, as I do with a regular

[15:27] yeasto recipe. So he's saying that what he's getting is a fairly flat dense crust, and he says that he's feeding a sourdough starter only weekly with 45 grams of AP and 35 grams of

[15:39] water. And both recipes are two-day cold ferments, and he brings them up before baking them, blah, blah, blah. My feeling is, is it's too acid, right? It's like he's allowing a starter to get 2 acid, so it's going slack because of too much acid. Because remember, is that you think that's it? Yeah, I mean, this, if you're feeding your, uh, sourdough starter weekly, it's not, it's not, um, gonna do anything. Um, he's going to need to. I mean, it's fine to speed your sourdough weekly. Uh to keep it alive. That's like uh life support. If you want it to be awake to, like, actually, you know, do the heavy lifting of the, of the living of your, of your bread, which it sounds like it's not doing, is he's going to need to feed

[16:28] it, um, a couple days, twice a day, a couple days before. Um, he, he makes the pizza, and the way he'll know it's ready to go, it will be like bubbly and frothy and light.

[16:45] You know, if it looks like just soupy wet flour, then, you know, it's, it's, somewhere dormant inside that mixture is, is the, the

[16:57] ye, the combination of the yeast and the bacteria that he needs to, to leaven his dough.

[17:02] But, unless it's actually, you know, there's a, the percentage of those

[17:08] yeast, and bacteria that are awake and ready to fucking rock and roll are, excuse me,

[17:14] sorry. Um, is is going to be really low. And so he needs to bring that percentage up by feeding them, you know, multiple waking them

[17:23] up because if he's, I'm assuming he's, if he's feeding it weakly, he's keeping it in his refrigerator. That's what I, he doesn't say, but I assumed. And like, I'm super glad I'm talking to you because I didn't even think that the sucker wasn't rising at all.

[17:34] Like it was like not active enough. I thought it was probably inactive because they were dying and his dough

[17:40] was too acidic, so the gluten was not, you know, was not as extensible. It was losing some power out of that. You know how like when sourdough goes too sour, it like, you know, it can flatten out and the, but then the crust would also be too, would it be too white, right? It wouldn't look right if he was actually going to acidic on it. Yeah, I mean, there would just be a lot of things would be off. But to me, if it's, when he says this, and and lack of spring, I mean, I, you know, I'm assuming that he's cutting it open and there's no crumb, you know, when he says it's dense, but it's like, and the crumb would be the, those little holes

[18:16] in the indication that like fermentation is happening. Yeah. I think it's exactly... What are your thoughts for someone like this who's not going to not, you know, pro baking, doing it, feeding it once a week, and keeping a relatively small amount?

[18:28] What are your thoughts on keeping it at a higher hydration level so that it kind of wakes up faster? And then like doing like a... Yeah, his his, his, he's retarding his yeast. If he's putting in the refrigerator, he's retarding it. So, you know, if you, you're following our dough instructions, um, we are, are mixing, and resting and mixing, and then we're retarding the dough for, for a

[18:53] long uh, fermentation overnight. Um, but if it's already retarded, then the whole thing is just gonna be too retarded. work Yeah. I know it's all bread baking terminology, but it just sounds funny when you say it that way. Yeah, um, so, you know, he's got, he's got to get it awake. So he's got to bring it out the room temperature, and it's really a visual thing, you know,

[19:17] and, and, and, and you can smell it too. So it's a visual and olfactory uh indications are going to be there before you put your sourdough in. It should be like, literally like, you know, foaming, like, bubbling up and like, you know, you can see all the little holes in the

[19:35] top. When you shake it, it's like light and and and like the consistency of foam. It's actually a foam that is what it is because it's a, you know, a liquid with a lot of, uh, you know, uh,

[19:48] air caps in it. So it is a foam. And so, you know, if it's, if it's dense and and like a slurry of just flour and water. It's just not the beast and, you know, they're in there. It's just not awake. In my experience with the sourdough starter. If I wanted to use it after having it in the refrigerator for a week, I would give myself 2 days. I would bring it out like, you know, 3 days before I was going to start in the morning, and you know, I would feed it, and then, and at night, and leave it in a warm place, like, you know, preferably, 75 degrees, 75 to 80 degrees. And then, uh, and then that night, I would feed again, and the next day, I would

[20:28] feed again, and then, uh, that, that last feeding that night before, I would expect to see some, some activity, and a lot

[20:35] of like, boozy smell coming out of it by the end of the night. Right. No way to cheat it in one day though, huh? Back to life out of the fridge. No, I, I, you know, like, so, you know, you're,

[20:50] like, when I use commercials, I'm crossing my fingers, you know, every time. It's like, you know, it's, you're dealing with these living creatures, you know, and you're trying to convince them to do something for you on a, you know, microbiological

[21:02] scale. So, you know, it's, uh, sourdough is, is, you know, it's very

[21:08] tricky, and, and, uh, you know, I tell people this, in, uh, in my pizza class, and like, just, you

[21:14] gotta get, you gotta really become familiar with this process with just commercial yeast before you start playing with sourdoughs, and then once you start playing with sourdoughs, I mean, everyone's is going to be different,

[21:25] so you really got to get to know yours. Um, Right. So, Yeah, I mean, that's, that would be, that would be my guess. I mean, if he has, uh, you know, if any of this is wrong, if I've just speculated way too much, then he should email me at

[21:41] Anthony at roberta'spizza.com. I would love to continue to get him going on the right path. Well, we really appreciate it. And also, uh, did Millennium Falco Pizza made by you or name for you or both? Uh, it was, it was a, uh, invention of mine, uh, from the early days in the pizza kitchen, um, and it's an homage to my, uh, Sicilian, uh, great grandmother who used to make pizza from

[22:08] scratch and she used to make it, similar to that, you know, but not in around, you know, kind of neo- neo-Neapolitan kind of way, but she used to do it in Japan, like a, like a thicker crust.

[22:19] But it was like that. She put the bread crumbs and the onion, sauce and, you know, uh, see, that's, that's the way she would make, uh, pizza. So, it was kind of

[22:30] homage to that. Nice. Listen, we really appreciate you coming on and straighten this out for Kevin. Hopefully he can get his stuff in order. Maybe he can come up with his schedule so that if he's going to do it every week, he could bring it out a couple days before, feed it up, use it, put it in the fridge, you know? not that much harder. No, absolutely not. I mean, he just needs to bring it out. that's just based on the information I have is bring it out a little early and just get it, get it woken up. You know, it's a little retarded, get it a little, you know, little more, a little more ready to rock. All right, well, thanks so much. Let's go to a break. We'll come back with more commercial, more commercial. More cooking issues, I wish. All right. Thank you. Hey, and also, if, you know, if listeners want to listen every Tuesday at 7 PM, Roberta's radio. They have their own show, Roberta's radio, and you can hear a lot more from Falco. And with that being said, we'll be right back.

[23:34] Today's program has been brought to you by Whole Foods Market. Are you a locovore? Our Northeast Regional Forager for Whole Foods Market sure is. She spends her time traveling around the New York City metro area, sourcing the best new or interesting artisanal and handcrafted local products for our purchasing teams at the local store level.

[23:56] Part of our commitment to our local suppliers includes assisting them with the process of getting their

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[24:11] market stores. Today, New York, tomorrow, the world. For more information, visit wholefoodsmarket.com. Hey, my name is Sam KB. I just moved to New York, and you're listening to HeritageRadioNetwork.org. You recognize that voice? No, who is that? From Underground Meats. Oh, yes, Johnny? Sam. Sam. I wasn't listening. I did say my name is Sam. I wasn't listening. I was looking at those things. Oh, geez. Sorry, Sam. I wasn't listening. Now I know what it's like to be stars. Boom. Boom. Boom. Oh my god. Except you weren't shopping for shoes. I wasn't shopping shoes. I was looking at the next question. All right, go to Payless. That does not require online shopping. So John Stewart from Madison met us when we were out there and said that he thought that it was at times shocking how mean I

[25:12] am too. Nastasia. But let me just say in my defense, you got to know her. I don't know if that's a defense. I'm just saying that like, you know, the people are only only hearing what they hear on the radio. Like, you know, like, you know, when it's like, you know, they can't see that she might be sitting there with like a

[25:34] needle like poking me the entire time. You know what I mean? Not happening. Not a literal needle. Everyone, everyone's out. Uh, now Stas is giving me the head wag back and forth. Okay. Kevin Scott writes in about freeze dryers. Hey, have you guys played around with the harvest, right freeze dryer or heard from anyone who has? It looks like a reasonable alternative to lab freeze dryer, but it's difficult to tell how well the thing is built and how consistent it will be over time. Thanks, Kevin Scott. Now, uh, Kevin. So I, someone asked me once uh, before on the, uh, on Twitter, I think, actually, and I was a big Twitter, like, you know, back and forth about it, uh,

[26:20] I, you know, I have not used it. I did look at their website. This was, what was that? It was like a year ago or something? It was like a year ago. I looked at their website. And the layout of the machine. It's fundamentally fairly similar to the old, uh, vertis, uh, freeze dryers with the with the door that opens up. you know, and the things that I was researching at the time where, you know, in any freeze dryer, like some of the important things you have to look for are

[26:49] the how many leaders, the cold trap is, right? Because in order to freeze dry, you need to be able to remove the water from the product. And if you, if you can't thaw out your cold trap in the middle of your freeze drying run, it's

[27:04] just you can't do it. So, you know, you're limited. The quantity of product that you can freeze dry is not just limited by the size of the chamber that you're freeze drying

[27:13] in. It's also limited by the size of your cold trap. Uh, so that's one thing to look at. And another thing in terms of quality is the quality of the product is the temperature of the cold trap. And, you know, from everything I've read, colder is better. Now, the ideas in food guys, Alex and Aki, gave us a food, a freeze dryer, you know, before they moved,

[27:36] but we haven't had time to play with it yet because there's a problem with the,

[27:40] there's a problem with the vacuum gauge. So I need to get that working. So I don't have a lot of practical experience with it. But from what I can look from a purely specification level. The, uh, the, uh, harvest rite seems like uh, a good deal. And I, you know, because it's only, I think, like maybe 3 or 4 grand or something compared to like 20 for a

[28:00] regular one. So if anyone has any experience with it, I appreciate a tweet in or a call in, uh, you know, to

[28:07] let, uh, let them know what, uh, what's going on, right? Okay. Now, Jim wrote in a while ago. This is for one of the older shows that we're trying to catch up to. Tell us if we've done this already, had a bumper crop of pears this year, so I made a batch of

[28:22] pear cider, wanted some sparkle in the bottle, so I added a little sugar to each, capped

[28:26] it, and left it alone. One month later, I opened the 1st bottle and it sprayed everywhere. Spent an hour cleaning the kitchen. That's a lot of spray. I don't want pair. Hey, listen, you weren't making cherry, cherry wine, but that would have sucked, right? Maybe you did add cherries to the pair and it's bright. don't know. Well, probably not, right? Probably not. Okay. Clearly I added too much sugar. And now they're all too carbonated. Any way to get the rest of these bottles open without an explosion or are all 20 bottles lost. There is clearly yeast sediment at the bottom of each bottle that creates many nucleation sites for carbonation to explode. So I wonder if I should try disgorging it first, freeze a neck and cold salt water, et cetera, any advice greatly appreciated. And for what it's worth, what little was left did taste good. Peaceful thoughts, jam in Durham, North Carolina. Now, that's a good question. I've never done Disgorgement before, but I mean, it's been, people do it for 100s and 100s of years. So presumably you can, uh, you can do it. Um, you know, with the salt and ice bottles upside down. You have to wrap it. You gonna have to rack the settlement. You're going to have to keep the bottles pointed, you know, at that angle, and you can look at pictures of the way they do it in champagne for reference, and then just keep rotating them,

[29:38] uh, you know, over the course of, I don't know, however long it takes to get the sediment down in the bottom of the bottle, and then do your freeze off and cap and blast it

[29:47] out, um, and assuming that you have a long enough neck in it to hold all the sediment, you should

[29:53] sediment. You should be able to do it. Um, you know, another way is you, the problem is you want to keep, you know, kind of oxygen away from another way to do it is to literally open these things inside of inside of a giant plastic bag inside of a bucket,

[30:11] uh, and then, um, you know, cap it so that you're not so that, you know, the CO2 is going to come off. It's going to form a CO2 layer. And then let it settle over the course of a couple days in a plastic bucket or a

[30:23] carboy, right? And then, um, rack the stuff off the top and then force carbonate it instead of

[30:29] bottle instead of like, uh, instead of conditioning it, bottle conditioning it, force carbonate it back to level it was. And if you're lucky, you know, you're not going to have too much oxidation over that period. But that should also work if you don't want to go through the Disgorgement. And that's probably what I would do because I would be so angry and I would want to do it right away that the thought of sitting there and rotating them day after day would like drive me nuts. So I would probably just stick them inside of a plastic bag and go spray. Make sure your plastic bag doesn't smell bad. A lot of plastic bags have weird kind of, you ever smell inside of a plastic bag? Yeah. I mean, Stas and I do it because we're like, who are you to tell me not to put my face inside of a plastic bag, right? Really hard days, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. You know, her oven, very small. I don't even have an oven. Oh, come on, you don't have enough anymore? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. How am I just figuring this out right now? Your most recent apartment has a door person, but not a... Microwave confection. How's that? Not good. I put a pumpkin in in the ceramic cracked. What do you mean? What ceramic? The whatever the microwave has as a base. Oh, the plate. plate, yeah. That's so weak Is it yours or is it the landlords? The owners. I need to get a new one. I need to ask for anyone. Look, are you even allowed to rent space in New York? It doesn't have like cooking appliances in it. Yeah that's weird. Yeah, yeah, you are. I've seen like just the hot plate in some apartments, you know? You mean like a dorm? No. Is there a space for an oven that's now filled with some other stuff? Dishwasher, which is crazy. Why do you need to wash dishes if you don't ever cook? I mean, I cook a lot. I found a way to get around the convection. What's that No, like smaller, smaller trees and stuff. Huh, huh. So this person was like a raw foodist? No, most apartments in the building have this thing. But yet they pay for a doorman. Yeah. That's very odd All right. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna just ignore it because my brain is fried. So a couple of weeks ago, we had a couple of people give advice on why they,

[32:41] we had this issue where this, you know, I forget who it was, but they were rendering fat using kind of the modernist cuisine technique of putting the fat in a

[32:49] jar and then rendering it in the pressure cooker with a little baking soda,

[32:54] right? Remember that? And then I had a speculation and Chris Young said, yeah, he didn't know why. But then I had a couple other people write in. But I don't think we've ever figured it out yet. Eric, I didn't get, you know, his last name, a lot of interesting ideas and some links to some articles about, um, he was specifically focusing on

[33:12] the, uh, how the change in temperature can change the, um, the solubility of gases over

[33:20] time. But, uh, you know, and then uh, Dave Kleiman wrote in, says when he when he does confit in a

[33:26] jar, then it bubbles for hours even after you take it out. So one of the, you know, the thing we're going to have to figure out, if we can't even figure

[33:32] out, is, is the stuff actually cold when it's still bubbling or not, because that means something, you know, other than that. And the assumption is, is that it's sealed inside of the jar and it's bubbling inside of a sealed jar. those are the 2 assumptions. So I don't think we've gotten to the bottom of it yet. But, you know, if I ever have enough time on the radio, I could read Eric's entire response, but I can't because, you know, because Stas gives me the, the,

[33:54] the finger wag. Do you know that? Stas, like you should just market your finger wag, you know? Anyway. Um, Andrea Peroti writes in regarding

[34:05] uh, sous vide cooking and selepton derma. I just got my very 1st emersion circulator and a nova in the mail, and I'm excited, but I don't have a vacuum machine. That's fine. You don't need a vacuum machine to do most of this stuff. 90% of the stuff you do. I like to say, it's my favorite phrase. 90% of the stuff you can do with a circulator. You dont need a vacuum machine for. Can you please recommend some of your favorite must cook as soon as you get a circulator food? Foods. Thank you very much for the work and knowledge you share on the radio. I wish learning stuff could always be as fun as listening to cooking issues. That's very nice. Very nice. Stas is giving me, I doubt that face. I wish you guys, we need, like, you know what? Can you guys capture some of these faces and then we can just like flash them onto the internet. I'd be more interested to see like an artist interpretation, you know, someone that just listens to the show. Oh, yeah. They can draw some faces. I know. That's why it would be fun. Who knows what they'd make you look like. Oh my god. Anyways. Let me eggs, right? So specifically, like, you know, banging out like 162 degree eggs for like a party or a 63 degree

[35:03] egg, Celsius, of course, is like the miracle, creamy egg that you can't otherwise do. And then steaks for parties, I think, is pretty, you know, a pretty good

[35:11] one that, you know, I would do like a thick rib steak at like 55 Celsius. Cool it down to 50 and then, well, I would hit it with a C result. But, you know, you can finish it however you want on a super hot thing. What size do you have a circle? What are your favorite things to do in the circuit? I don't really use it. Hi, what's wrong with it? The hell's wrong with you? Brain damage. It's the new one and I just don't like it, you know? You wish you had gotten one of the old ones? All right. well we'll work on that. So, those, I mean, those are like right up there, then like reheating, like, or keeping mashed potatoes warm is a fantastic application of

[35:49] it. all depends on what you like to cook. I mean, the 1st thing, you know, most people, the 1st thing out of the box that they do with it is proteins or eggs, I would say,

[35:58] right? Some, something like that. Uh, and, uh, right. PS just came back from Turkey, managed to get my hands on a couple 100 grams of celeb, the one to make Don Derma, not the less than 10% celeb hot drink mix. I don't know. Yeah, that hot drink makes it, says it's celeb, no relation. Maybe it has some in it, but it just tastes like some sort of a grainy beverage. Does that sound gross? Grainy beverage. Grainy beverage. For those of you that don't know what we're talking about. Celeb is the orchid, the orchid bulb powder that is used to make the stretchy Turkish ice cream. Uh, and then he wants to know, would we like to play with it? Sure, I love playing with it. You know, the person who did the most work on celeb, so I 1st heard of a celeb from Harold McGee when he was doing work with us at the French

[36:44] Culinary Institute on alternate ice cream textures. Celeb was one and the French pins and needles ice cream was another one. Uh, and uh, so he 1st talked about it and then Kent Kirschenbaum at the experimental cuisine collective at NYU did a lot of work on it uh, back in the day. So he's actually characterized a lot of the polymers that are in it. He a polymer chemist. So you might want to look up, he might have published something on it. I'm not sure, but, you know, he's always happy to talk celebs. So you can talk to him, but I love it because I haven't had it in a while. I actually just like, I like using it, right? So that he they substitute now, Conjak, which is, I think it's Conjak they use, which is, you know, another glucamanin. But anyways, yeah, I mean, I always love to love to play with some. Anyway, Stas is giving me the, the, the, the, stuff, people don't wear watches anymore. Why is that still a valid thing to do? Do you know what it means? I know, but like, what if you did that to a kid? Would they have any idea what that is? I don't think so. Right? They wouldn't know. It's weird but true. Yeah. J. Travis writes in, hey, guys, sorry this is a long one. I've tried my hand on doing a bird porchetta on in the on chicken with great

[37:48] results and this year I am attempting to do a show stopping turkey version for Thanksgiving, inspired by Kenji

[37:53] Lopez's, my version goes like this. Disassembled, and I haven't seen Kenji's post on this, but I have a lot of experience rolling birds, a lot of experience rolling birds. Disassembled bird, brine breast meat, grind dark meat into a loose sausage, roll the

[38:07] breast around the ground sausage and fashion it into a roll with cling wrap, then into the freezer. Take it out, wrap it up in the skin. Uh... What? Tie off and seal into the bath at the dark meat temp, take out when done, refrigerator, because he's not using TG, right? Not using translutaminates. I always use TG in this. I would use TG, TG better. Takeout when done, refrigerate before opening, reserve pouch juices, and fry up to

[38:32] crisp skin. It's amazing, but my question to these. When I get to my aunt's house for Thanksgiving, I cannot deep fry this thing in her bustling kitchen. How much am I going to sacrifice this great skin if I tent it and then gently reheat it with with roasting it at her house, would it benefit for me to drop the alkalinity in the cooking bag a little, maybe serve it chill with aioli greens instead, help J.

[38:54] Travis. Well, 1st of all, you can't serve a Thanksgiving turkey cold. Sorry, you can't. You know what I mean? You're already pushing your luck by not serving it in whole bird format,

[39:02] right, Stars? Yep. Right. Now, I have done, uh, tubed, uh, Thanksgiving roles with stuffing in them, and they're good. And by the way, this is a good way to get actual stuffing on the inside of the bird if you should like that, which I do. It tastes delicious, even if it's microbiologically unsafe, because you can roll hot stuffing in and then do a cook right. Not with this protocol. There's safe ways to do it. you know, and I've done it. I have time to get into it now. I think your main problem here, if you're going to do a roast off, is that you're going to overcook the breast meat. This is why there's the fundamental inversion in this technique that you see also

[39:37] interduckens in any situation like this. Dark meat should go on the outside. So instead of sausaging it, right, I would pound out the dark meat into a thin

[39:51] layer and then roll the breast meat on the inside of it. That way, even if you're brining it, right? You don't, if you're going to do a roast off step, which by the way, by the way, other than

[40:03] frying roasting is going to give you, yeah, roasting is going to give you good, good skin. So, but you're going to need to roast it for a lot longer and you're going to overcook the breast meat. I mean, pretty much. That's it, right? Another thing you can do is you could wrap a layer of pork sausage around the outside and then the skin around it. But I would use TG. But I would swap it up and I would have the dark meat on the outside because it can withstand the roasting comparatively better than the

[40:27] breast meat can. Does that make sense then? Yeah. And then what? We already have to end. Yep. It's not even 50 yet. Well, what time do we have to leave? What time what time do we have to leave? Jack. Five minutes. Five minutes. All right. I'm going to rip through them. Brett wrote in about MSG. Hey, Davis, Dasi Jack, and everyone else who's there today. I have a question regarding MSG, but not the typical one worrying about bogus health concerns. Rather, I'm curious how to make the best use of it. Do you have any general tips or guidelines when it comes to cooking with MSG? Is MSG a universal augmenter of flavor? Are there particular types of foods and dishes where it really shines and others where it should be left off? How should I go about balancing it with the salt being used to season the dish? I look forward to your insight Thanks, love the show. Brett from Portland, Oregon. Okay, I typically, the thing with MSG is, if you add too much MSG, it's the same kind of feeling you get as when you add too much like seaweed or dashi, everything to me, and I've said this before on the show, starts taking on kind of a dashi kind of a note, I've used it in cocktails before, but really only in savory cocktails, and I found that it adds, it adds a savoriness to certain cocktails that you're like, ah,

[41:36] that's nah, it's not good, right? But we did, I did a bitter melon cocktail that wanted a savory note and the MSG was good in it. That's what we did that thing that somebody dubbed Doritos Bitters at the MoFat event like a year ago. So, and things like cocktails. I mean, I think it has relatively limited application for things that are savory in foods. I mean, you just have to be careful that you don't want it to become a prevalent flavor. If it becomes a prevalent flavor, then you're overdoing it. I tend not to use it in the kitchen, except for when I'm making things like snack foods, but because they really, really need it. They need to get punched up by a little MSG. Uh, I mean, naturally, you probably could reduce the salt level little when you add MSG, which is why everyone's rushing to add, like,

[42:21] like, good label, MSG substitutes when they're making low salt things. But like I said, I once had an Alfredo that was low sodium, Alfredo and I had other, you know, MSG like things, not sodium versions of

[42:33] it, obviously, because they're trying to reduce the sodium. And to me, it tasted Asian. It tasted like dashi. So I'd just be careful of it that way, but don't be afraid to use it. You know, I would add small amounts of it because you don't want it to become noticeable or overwhelming. Noticeable MSG, I think, is more offensive than noticeable salt, right? What do you think, Stas? Yeah. Stas still thinks she's allergic to MSG, you think? Are you over that now? I'm over it Good, thank God. Jacob Farkas writes in about Citron. My name is Jacob Farkas. I emailed you last year about a molecular gastronomy class. I was teaching at the school I work for. You know how I feel about the term. That's fine. We're not going to get into it because I know the time. I was hoping to have the students visit Dave, but you mentioned that his lab was not a place for high school students. Definitely not, right, stars? Or anyone, really at this point. In any event, I have a question about infusing vodka with Citron using the nitrogen cavitation method, although remember, it doesn't use nitrogen. It uses nitrous oxide, and the shifting solubility of nitrous oxide, which is relatively soluble gas at relatively lower pressure. So I really prefer if people call it nitrous rather than nitrogen cavitation, which is a different kind of lab technique for rupturing cells.

[43:33] Anyways. And I, you know, I had someone that kind of misunderstood the technique and was actually trying to measure cell rupture as a function of effectiveness

[43:41] and infusion. I'm like, it's not it's not the same. Anyway, nitrous. Uh, I have a one liter whipping siphon. I would like to make a half to one liter of infused vodka. Can I use the method and what ratio of citron to vodka? and for how long should I let it infuse? Well, I haven't actually done that infusion before. So I can't give you specifics, but if you have a standard recipe that you like. In general, when you're doing rapid infusion. What's happening is, um, you are trying to pull less of the kind of bitter and detergenty nodes out of

[44:11] the, um, out of peel, specifically in citrus, uh, like less of those kind of notes out. And so what you're gonna do is add a lot more than you would normally, and then use the rapid infusion to pull a lot of the top notes out. So I would say that if you have a typical infusion, It going to last, you know, a week or 2 weeks, uh, in a bottle, I would do 50% more

[44:35] of um, 50 to 100% more of the Citron. And then I would do a rapid infusion with 2 or 3 chargers and I would do it for like 4 or 5 minutes, see how it

[44:49] is. And if it needs to go, if it's not strong enough yet, then I would do another 4 to 5 minutes. Now, if it's too strong, then you're going to want to do like one minute, 2 minutes. A lot of my recipes are one or 2 minutes, especially on things that are extremely bitter, like coffee or chocolate. But the, you know, the thing with citrus is you want to ride that edge of where it takes on that ugly detergenty note. Now, bear in mind, I am not a fan of such beverages as Limoncello, and also bear in mind that every commercially available citron flavored vodka you have is flavored with essences and not with straight peels, right?

[45:23] Yeah. So give it a shot. So what I would do is make a small batch remembering that you can't scale up and down. So but you can, of course, add more. So you could do a test batch with a small amount and then add more to that batch and re-hit it again without, without stuff. But if you, you know, what I typically will do is I'll make a smaller test batch and then I'll scale it up once and that'll get me close enough to what I'm doing that I can make a recipe that I can make again and again and again. Uh, okay. Uh, Philippe Lament wrote in, uh, book is finally coming out. So stoked. I have a sticky question for you. I'm trying to make an alcoholic ice cream for a Paco jet. I want to retain the raw alcohol taste. I've been using cognac and Calvados. Do you have any suggestions on ratios or stabilizers I can use to have a nice consistency? All right, so you're going to have to make a fluid gel with something like a geland to pump up the consistency of it because you're not going to get it frozen hard enough.

[46:10] Typically for ice creams, that have a good, that don't melt down very much when they're warm, i.e. are going to have, you know, properties that you like. I like to do a half a percent, one half of one percent. 5 grams into a liter of something like Kelka Gel F. And that is going, that'll stabilize it. Remember, don't heat it with your alcohol because you want the raw alcohol taste, make a separate fluid gel, and then mix your alcohol in. Hopefully that's going to work for you. John Cherney, uh, painted his, it has a searsol, and he says it looks great because he painted his propane bottle gold because he

[46:40] hated, uh, the green on the, uh, series. He dislikes the camping green color. So he sent us his pimped out gold sezol, right? So us. Uh, and then uh, LA Nassar, by the way, who said, thank you, rhymes with NASCAR, right?

[46:54] wants to know about carbonating Opelvine. So Apelvine is like the higher alcohol version of apple cider where you dope with sugar to get the alcohol content of it

[47:02] higher. wants to know whether or not I've done it. I haven't, but what I would recommend, he was going to do priming sugar, right? And bottle condition it, Ellie, what I would do is just get the liquid bread set up or use a soda stream, carbonate a small amount of it on your own right

[47:16] now. and then taste it and see whether you like it. If you do, then you could try the sugar stuff to carbonate it, or you could just force carbonate it and call it, call it a day. Ross. That's going to do it. Ross, I'm going to read your story about Aruba next time because it goes also with King Inbert, Ken's story about how there's not enough good information for safety on SUV, which is an important

[47:41] thing. I can't rush through it, so we'll get it next time, along with Daniel's questions from San Jose about rose petals. And that was cooking issues.

[47:55] Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or S 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 at heritageradionetwork.org. Heritage Radio Network is a 501 C3 nonprofit to donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.