[0:00] Today's program is brought to you by Kane Vineyard and Winery, a Napa Valley winery committed to respecting the

[0:05] soil, and dedicated to the creation of 3 Cabernet blends. For more information, visit Kane 5.com. This is Mitchell Davis, host of TasteMatters. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:35] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live and relatively on time,

[0:41] Reverse Pizzeria and the Heritage Radio Network in Bushwick, Brooklyn. So proud of you, man. It's actually 12 on the dot when you walked in. Right? I mean, I know we're supposed to start at 12, which means, you know, I should be here like, you know, like 1155 and stuff, but come on. Baby steps, baby, baby steps. We just made the table who's sitting by the window. Get up and move. They weren't ready to leave. They heard the scream. They heard the scream and they're like, you know, I think they're practicing some sort of musical vibe out there anyway because I saw some air strummage. Well, there was some air strummage. And so maybe I was like harshing their mellow and they were talking about whatever kind of folk hipster rock they were working on over there.

[1:14] Not that I'm against folk hipster rock. Wide, are you a fan of folk, folk hipster rock? Yeah. Yeah? See? Well, you know, gotta be around here. I said, totally. Yeah. No, it's good. I mean look, come on. It's a good genre. It's a good genre, but listen, we have Douglas Baldwin, mathematics professor and the man behind the sous vide kill curves in

[1:32] modernist cuisine. It's going to call in, what do you say, around noon 15 says? You still have your coat on. I know it's freezing here. It's not, it's not, like, cold in the studio. aren't you going to start sweating? Maybe. Don't you sweat? Do you not sweat? Do you not have pullers? Dave, don't you remember the days where Stas had like 5 space heaters pointed at her in her seat in the studio? That's true But it's not like that here is it? Never warm enough. But, you know, I feel that, like, you know, we've we've overcome that and that it's, you know, fine in the studio here. There's not a problem. Anyways. All right, so listen, stay tuned for the, uh, I mean, other words, like, if you happen to be listening live, don't, you know, tune out and be like, nothing interesting is going to happen

[2:09] in this because we're going to have, like, discussions of food safety. This is all relating, by the way, to King Ken. Why do I say king? Ken Ingbers, kind of, not question really, but kind of a statement that there's a lot of conflicting and not really kind of useful information out there about safety and low temperature cooking.

[2:24] And, you know, I have my theories, but why don't we have a discussion with Douglas Ballin, right? Yep. Right. Okay. All right. I'll hit right in with some questions before that happens. Antoine wrote in a couple of weeks ago. Who knows? I can't keep track because we're so far behind on questions about brining. Hello, Nastasia, Dave, and Jack, and why I'm going to throw wide into that. I'm not going to throw them under the bus. throw them into the mix. Uh, it's Antoine from Boca Raton, Florida. Uh, craft beer bartender, turn cold press juice bartender. Remember that discussion? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Cold pressure juice. All right. By the way, I've never used a Norwalk. I not going to get into it. Stop. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I went to Booker and Dax about a month ago and it blew my mind. Nice. I also managed to get a table at WD 50 while they was there that night and came up to our table and I was starstruck and incapable of speaking with him. Well, you know, if you have anything you want me to relate to him, you know, just tell me I'll relate next time I see him. Uh, just wanted to let you know, I greatly enjoy myself, and I was glad I got to go to both of those establishments. You know, WD is coming into its last month. I'm going on the 30th. Is that the last day? I'm going on the last day. Yeah. I don't know. when the last day... Yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be a blast. Well, you know, the cool thing is that Wiley's book is going to be a WD 50 book. You know we have to eat tonight, right? Well, yeah, but, you know, most people here aren't going to really care where, like, we have to go to dinner

[3:40] tonight means, okay, not Jermaine. Like, I apologize, people. You were not invited to the same party. We never go off on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there's tangents, Nastasia. And then there's tangents that relate to things that other people can they can't relate to where we're going to go to dinner. That doesn't make any sense. Anyways. Uh, okay, my question is, I'm going to deep fry my Thanksgiving turkey. You ever see how the public service message is where people ignite their houses when they're deep frying the turkey? No. Yeah, so what happens is that you heat up a giant thing of oil, right? On this giant fryer, and then you stick something that has too much water into it. The water instantly boils, volatilizes a bunch of oil droplets, right? So you put your turkey with too much water on it in there. The oil has been overheated, instantly it goes and like water boils out, sprays a fine mist of oil droplets in the air that are very close to the ignition temperature of the oil, and then a flame looking up over the sides, ignites one or 2 of

[4:36] those, and you have a giant turkey fireball, which, you know, not recommended procedure.

[4:42] But Antoine's not going to do that. anyway. Uh, I want to brine, uh, my turkey with a beer brine beforehand. However, the recipe calls for submerging it in a brine bath. Instead, I wish to inject it, as I've been told it is a superior form of brining. My conundrum is that I don't know what ratio of salt I should include or how I should alter it. I have attached the recipe. I'm probably going to be doing an 11.5 to 13.5 kilogram turkey. And by the way, turkeys, being an American bird, should only be roasted in pounds, my friend. I'm just kidding. I just kidding. You know, you can do whatever you want. I normally think in kilograms too, but right, turkeys, turkeys are never

[5:17] specking kilograms because they're not European, right? Right. Yeah. I don't know. do you think, Jack? I'm going to have to support you on that one. Yeah, yeah. No offense to the European listeners, or not European, worldwide listeners. No offense to everyone other than us. But with the same go for like a European animal, I guess,

[5:35] or, you know? No, I'm just saying, it's like, it's like, we dress for the weather here in the US, even, even though I cook in Celsius, like with low temperature stuff, when I'm doing oven work or deep frying work, I cook in Fahrenheit and I dress based on

[5:50] Fahrenheit. I don't like, hey, it's 20 Celsius outside. What does that mean? It means nothing. You know what I mean? It means nothing to me. Whereas, you know, give me the exact temperature in Fahrenheit. I'm like, oh I get it. I got it. You know what I mean? So, I don't know, it's just something when something is very American, like a turkey. I like, you know, I revert to my kind of old school brought up American ways. That's all. Fair. Yeah. Um, I would also like to hear your recommendations for any other Brian solutions you liked or thought were noteworthy. Happy Thanksgiving. Shalom, adios, and keep on rocking in the free world. Uh, okay, well, the, uh, unfortunately, I accidentally didn't paste and copy, paste the recipe in, but I'll tell you roughly how I do it. So when you're soaking a bird or if you're dry salting it, right? You typically make a concentrated salt solution, and some of it's absorbed in, and most of it's not, you throw the rest away. When you're doing a brine pump, right? And by the way, that's the only way the flavor of the things like beer is

[6:47] going to really permeate, because otherwise it would just be on the surface of the bird anyway. Although, you know what, I had an interesting phenomenon. Later day I was roasting a chicken. You know how when you roast a chicken, you stuff the cavity with herbs and like maybe like a citrus, like a couple lemon wedges

[6:59] of lime wedge and the whole damn thing, like taste of the herb and the lime wedge? Like, why is that? When you're brining with it, that's not the case. But when you cook it, somehow, you know what I'm talking about? And then my wife asked me, she's like, how does that work? I was like, you know what? I have no idea. I have no idea why that works. Weird, right? Anyway. So anyways, and again, I refer you for brining to the genuine ideas blog, which is done

[7:25] by, what's his name, Greg Blonder, and he's done to the best of my sleuthing the kind of greatest body of work on the specifics of brine

[7:34] penetration. Uh, it's kind of a gross word. Anyway, when you're injecting, it's a totally different game. When you're injecting what you do is this. You calculate what percentage salt you want in the finished thing. right? Then you calculate what percent. Well, first, actually, you calculate what percentage you're gonna pump to. So, like, for instance, like, you could pump anywhere between, like, you know, 5 and 15% of the weight of an item with

[8:04] a brine, right? So you choose kind of what, how much like liquid you're going to jack into this sucker, right? And so a lot of people like Kenji Alt Lopez doesn't like Brian because he figures that you're injecting kind of non-flavorful things and blah, blah,

[8:17] blah, and it's going to leak out anyway. But, you know, if you're going to inject a flavorful thing, there you go. So usually, um, you know, it doesn't make too much sense to pump

[8:25] it over the increased water holding capacity of the thing anyway. So, you know, you're not pumping it because you want to sell a higher weight product, you're pumping for

[8:33] flavors, so you might want to be on the lower end of the pumping spectrum somewhere like five, 8% of the weight, maybe 10 up, maybe up to

[8:39] 10. wouldn't go over 10. Anyways. So then you calculate, like, what percentage of the animal bird, in this case, weight, you're going to inject into it. Then you calculate what you want, the finished saw content of the bird to be. So let's say you want uh, like a percent salt in the thing. Well, then you calculate the weight of the liquid you're going to inject into it plus the weight of the bird, subtract out some sort of like idea for the weight of the bones because you're not going to count that

[9:07] stuff. Add that much salt to the weight of liquid that you're going to put in uh, and make that liquid, whatever you want. Uh, if you're going to add sugar or whatnot. inject it, try to inject it all around the bird to get it, you know, roughly everywhere, then let it sit for a while to

[9:20] equilibrate, and there you have it, right? Uh, and so, you know, that's not going to be exact, but that's really how you figure it out. So you have to figure out how much salt you want in there. But, uh, I'm trying to think. I would guess it's somewhere. I wouldn't go over a percent. Right? Maybe like, I wouldn't go over a percent, maybe like a percent. I don't know. What do you think, Sal? 100%? I dont know, somewhere around it. But look up. Look around the internet for like kind of what percentage you want, but I think it's about right. Oh, and do a test beforehand. Like, whenever you're going to do something like this, go buy a fresh turkey breast, right?

[9:55] And a leg. And then just follow what I've just said, inject them with the relative percentages, let them sit for, you know, overnight in zippies or, you know, for a couple of hours

[10:04] and zippies in your fridge, cook them out and taste them. That's the best way. What do you think's that? That's what I would. That's literally what I would do. I think everyone makes a mistake. They don't do a test for us, especially when it's so easy. Thanksgiving bird very important. You don't want to have it like, you don't want to F it up. You know what I'm saying? By the way, you think it's okay to say F instead of the F word. But it's like an exact replacement. So you might as well be saying the F word now. I feel like the F word is not that bad. Hey, Dave, I do have Doug on the line. He's hanging out. All right, cool. Let's get him on the air. We start. talking about this stuff now. Still there, Doug? Hey, Dr. Baldwin, Dave Arnold here. How you doing? Hello. I was doing very well. Good. Good. Long time, no see. I think the last time I saw you is when Nils and I did that thing in Denver many, many moons ago. Yeah. That's been quite a few years. Yeah, fun. Yeah, yeah. So what do you have going on? Anything you want to pitch or plug before we get into the nitty-gritty here? Yeah, sure, on Black Friday, a new Sioux Weed course is coming out, Chef. That's what I worked with everyone on, so that's going to be exciting. Nice. Which one's black, the one right after Thanksgiving. See, I like you. You know why? Because, like, I'm dealing with people that are like, you don't want to hit the Black Friday. You want to hit the cyber Monday. Cyber Monday is a load of horse crap. It's just an opportunity for people to, look, 1st of all, Black Friday is just an opportunity for people to overspend for no apparent

[11:26] reason just because, like, they feel that Christmas season is open and they can spend a lot of money now. But like, why do we need to add other, like, full of crap opportunities? Just stick with the original, stick with the Black Friday. You know, it's your nod to American consumerism and just let it go with that, you know? Makes sense to me, but. Yeah, me too. You know, I'm hoping another reason is that, you know, we have this next batch of sears all is coming in and we're hoping to get them in the stores by in stores in Amazon by Black Friday, but, you know, there's always a question

[11:54] because, uh, you know, it might get held up at customs because we're riding right on that line, in which case we might have to wait

[12:01] till cyber Monday. And if that happens, Nastasia and I will pretend that that was our intent. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Perfect. Yeah nice. And so why don't you describe the course really quickly? Oh, so it's, uh, they already came out with the sort of, uh, beginning course that covers. How would you do it without a circulator? And then the uh, new course beyond uh, the basics. Assumes you already have a water bath, do we stream a circulator, whatever, and then I cover, Oh, theory about how meat changes with temperature, how what part of the

[12:37] body on the animal relates to how it cooks. I have, we have a really cool mat, that's, uh, logs, time and different temperatures and has, well, islands for tough cuts and tender cuts, things like this. uh, I think people really like it. And it has a nice food safety section, uh, as well. Nice. Well, I appreciate a nice food safety section. So, I'm gonna give you the quick background for those of you that, I don't know, like, haven't listened to this before, don't know the players involved. Uh, about 8000000000 years ago, which means I think like 2008 or 2007 or something like

[13:14] this. Um, there were some questions posted on Egullet, uh, about, um, many questions about Suviet in general. And at that time, there was, you know, I think you, Douglas, were already working with it when you were a PhD student, right? or when you were post-docs, right. And you were working on it. And then on Eagle, there was Nathan M, who was kind of like in these, you know, reading the

[13:40] Eagle of Post and posting to it. I mean, not the, the average person at that point didn't know that Nathan Muirvold was a guy who was interested in cooking and also was going to release

[13:49] Monet Cuisine. was kind of unknown at that time. You know, he was known to people, but not kind of the way he is now, in the food world, that is. Um, So people start posting questions. And then somehow you 2 got together and he, I don't know, he somehow convinced you to actually do the math to figure this stuff out.

[14:09] Is that is that about right? Because you're a mathematics professor, which people might also not know. Yeah, so I kept reading all these things about, you know,

[14:18] different recipes and I thought that doesn't sound very safe, so I went ahead and did the calculations as deep. Well, how long would it take to pasteurize while it eats up, and well, I'm a researcher. So I just went research y all over sous vide cooking. Wrote up my web guide and then came out with my sous vide for the home

[14:37] cookbook. Now I've joined chef steps. So it's a it's been an interesting trajectory. Nice. All right. Now, I know you and I personally have had this kind of argument before, and so we're going to have it now, not an argument, but discussion. Uh, and so what prompted this is that, um, one of our listeners, uh, for a long time, uh, Ken Ingber wrote in and said, hey, listen, there's a lot of conflicting stuff out

[15:03] of the, you know, coming out there about what's safe and what isn't and is this

[15:08] technique dangerous? Is it not? blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, now. And I think there is a lot of kind of horse crap around it. My opinion, why is because, um, people aren't actually like talking about the same things. You know what I mean? Like, people aren't actually like, they're talking, and I'll explain to the listener, and then you tell me whether you agree, and then we'll talk about, like, what we think about this. So, uh, there's 1st of all, there's safe and then there's safe. So, uh, you know, the, there's most cooking is relatively unsafe, like as a

[15:47] process, unless it's very well controlled, right? There's lots of potentials for bad things to happen, for bad things to get on your

[15:54] food and for them to get into your body and to cause illness. This is why people get food poisoning all the time, why they get sick. As a whole, right? Low temperature cooking, vastly because it's more controlled, vastly more safe than

[16:11] uncontrolled home regular cooking. vastly. You know what I'm saying? Oh yeah, I agree. Yeah, and without, without, much more predictable. Exactly. Exactly. Right. So someone, you know, does something wrong when they're cooking at home, then, you know, they're much more likely to make a mistake that's going to get them

[16:32] sick, not by using like traditional cooking methods. Caveat here. Now, so when you're cooking in a restaurant, professionally, in fact, we also do unsafe things all the time, but there are food codes that try to prevent us from doing those unsafe things.

[16:50] And if we are going to do those unsafe things and try to get us to tell our customers that we're doing something unsafe, like not cooking their hamburgers all the way.

[16:58] Right? Which is why we are theoretically obligated to do things like put thermometers into the center of things to test whether or not the temperature has gotten up to a high enough point that bacteria are killed so

[17:11] quickly that there's no question that this project is going to be safe. And in general, that's why quick serve and fast food restaurants hammer the hell out of your food. And in general, why their food can't possibly be as good as a restaurant where they take the care to try and do it right.

[17:25] We agree so far. Okay. Now, the fact of the matter is that safety, when it comes to writing a Hasset plan and safety, when it comes to dealing with someone who might be immunocompromised or in a

[17:40] hospital, or when you're dealing with packaged foods that have to go out to a consumer where you have no further control, have a much,

[17:46] much higher standard of safety than stuff that you cook at home on a normal basis.

[17:52] And they also, yeah, and you have more control over the inputs at home. it doesn't smell quite right. It's not quite as good because you're not writing a code that has to be followed by everyone. Here, I think, is the crux that we can talk about to really get into it. Nine tenths of the stuff that I make at home is not pasteurized, period. It's not. You know what I mean? I don't pasteurize fish. I don't pasteurize many meats, and I don't worry about it because, and we've had this discussion before. I'm dealing typically with whole muscle cuts, and I am, you know, fairly certain that they haven't been stabbed to death by someone who had a bunch of E. coli on a

[18:31] knife, and I'm willing to take the risk. So, so why don't, with that kind of in mind, why don't you talk

[18:37] about this to talk about the whole McGillis, since I've just been talking for such long, and we, you know, got, have, you're the guest, so you tell me what you think. Well, I think really the question is, safe for whom? If you are a healthy individual with a good immune system, uh, most foods have a low

[18:56] enough, uh, pathogenic load, that you could eat them raw, and you wouldn't get sick. So, if you just do the minimal cooking where you cook it for a little bit until the

[19:09] texture is right or you sear the outside quickly, is going to be safe to eat.

[19:14] The real problem is for the people who are immune compromise. Uh, they require very few uh, pathogens to get sick. So, if you're immunocompetent, I absolutely agree. You don't need to pasteurize almost any of the food that you eat. What's much more important is not having cross contamination, uh, in your kitchen. I mean, that will cause many more problems, not pasteurizing your food. Right. Now, if you are one of these immune compromise people, and one study shows that 15 to 20% of the US and UK population is at higher risk of foodborne illness, then you do start to need a

[20:01] pasteurized because even, uh, say, impact, chicken breast, 10% of them still would have enough passengers inside

[20:12] them that someone who's immunocompromised would have to be pretty worried.

[20:18] Right. Right. Do you think also, this whole thing is complicated by the fact that even, I'm guilty of this as well. People call in and they ask me a question, right? And I can't come out, and I'm going to have one later on the show, you know, if we have time. They come out, they're like, is this safe? Now, you know, what they should ask me is, would you cook, would you do this in service to your family? Because it's a different question. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, is this safe? I don't really know the context that you're going to do it. Uh, in. I don't know, you know, your personal history. I haven't delved into this specific science. We'll talk about this in a minute on every particular, uh, uh, you know, combination of cooking techniques that are possible. The only thing that I can really comment on, and maybe this is what I should start doing from now on is saying, would I serve this to my family or not? Uh, because I'll always, 100% of the time, like tell you that I can't guarantee that something is safe if I can't, you

[21:20] know? Yeah, if you were trying to eliminate all risk, all your food would probably taste

[21:27] horrible because you can't eliminate all their risk. I mean, there's risks from, oh, did you go through and check to make sure there's no rocks in your lentils? I mean, that's a big risk for someone hurting their teeth or, uh, how often have you been served food that's too hot that burns your mouth? I mean, that's another safety risk. So, there's always all kinds of different risks and trying to eliminate all of them. Uh, take for example, uh, shellfish. You never cook that to eliminate any viruses that are in it. You wouldn't cook shrimp at 90 degrees Celsius for, you know, 12 minutes to

[22:06] eliminate, uh, viruses. Oh, hell no. You would instead make sure people wash their hands before they're going to work with the shellfish.

[22:15] Right. Right. Which will eliminate much more of the risk. and produce something that still is edible. So I, I, I absolutely agree. I mean, it's all about, you have to balance your risk. And if you are really worried about things, like a lot of food safety experts won't eat sprouts. Because they taste bad. They can choose not to eat sprouts. Just because that's a higher risk. They also taste terrible. grow. Yeah. They taste awful. I didn't hear that too. Yeah. I wouldn't mind giving up sprouts myself. I don't think my life would be, you know, much worse. Yeah, especially like raw. I mean, they taste like they're poisoning you. Do you know? Right? Yeah. I mean, look, I don't want to hear it from some people. There are some decent sprouts out there. You know, like, uh, sauteed, uh, mung bean sprouts are good. you know what I mean? But like the average sprout. Yeah, it's good. The average sprout is an abomination. Horrible. Yeah. All right. I like your idea of what I serve this to my family, because that's a good rule of stuff. Right. Right. And then there's stuff that I haven't thought about enough. Uh, to know, like, but there's still, it goes down to the question, would I put this in front of my wife and kids, which I think is, like, says a lot about kind of where your gut is on something without, you know, coming out and saying this is safe so that should someone get sick, they come back and they're like, well, you could, you said it

[23:43] was safe, you know, which is not, you know, not necessarily, uh, you know, a good idea. Well, let me take this a little further. You know, I've had this discussion before with, uh, you know, food safety experts. Um, you know, people, you know, part of the people who work on the codes for it. And, uh, you know, their point is that, um, The average person who doesn't cook for a living or isn't, you know, schooled doesn't necessarily know what risks they're taking on when

[24:13] they're when they're eating something and that it's the goal of the food safety rules to make sure that there are no unknown risks that people are assuming,

[24:23] right? So, you know, if you were to warn people and stuff that, you know, hey, listen, uh, you know, I'm cooking this fish

[24:30] and uh, there might be increased histamine levels because of the way that I prepared it, low temperature. Are you cool with that? You know what I mean? Then they're cool with it, but they don't want a situation where someone's thrown into a situation without them

[24:43] knowing. And so they write kind of draconian codes. Uh, you know, what do you, what do you think about that? What do you think about that problem? Well, yeah, I mean, in some sense, that's the, uh, like an idea of universal accessibility. If, uh, someone's immune compromise and goes into a restaurant and order something that doesn't say it's at high risk, you would hope that they would feel safe in doing

[25:10] that. So, I can certainly see the perspective of airing on the side of

[25:15] caution. So long as we can have that caveat of, Well, yes, this is of higher risk. Let's pretend that you understand what those risks are and have this delicious food. Right. So, you know, another listener wrote in once and asked about

[25:36] the, um, chef steps, uh, procedure. I think it was chef steps, did it, procedure for, yeah, because I spoke to Chris, about fish, and the fish is not being cooked to a level that is,

[25:47] you know, it's in any thermal death curve that's widely available, but it's a series of hurdles that make it safe.

[25:54] And they did the challenge test to prove that it's safe. So clearly that's safe. But in general, you know, I mean, and that's

[26:03] the that's the other thing. A lot of recipes, and this is Bruno Gousseau's, one of his main points, is that a lot of traditional recipes have a lot of hurdles in them that, you know, when you start removing some of the traditional aspects, like, for instance, the presalt on a confit or the herbs in a

[26:17] confit, like, you, like, reduce some of the hurdles to bacterial growth, and then, um,

[26:25] and then therefore, uh, make it make it more dangerous. But, you know, what about the fact that there are all these things that are safe, but we can't prove them because very few of us have the opportunity to do a challenge

[26:36] test. Yeah, that's true. I mean, as you said, a lot of traditional techniques have additional hurdles, things that make it more difficult for the pathogens to multiply and

[26:49] grow, and over time, often kill them. I mean, pickling and things like this where the acid slowly goes through the meat and then destroys the pathogens, uh, are much safer than you would be led to think from the current food code that just says, oh, you need to cook it to

[27:07] this temperature for it to be safe. Now, how do we know which of these we can eliminate and which ones we need to eat? Well, the science hasn't really con enough to give us those answers yet. Are you using a blowtorch in the background? love that. I love that. No, I'm not. what the signal is. It sounded like a blowtorch, which I like. All right, so the, um, but do you think that there is any possibility in the future of, of

[27:38] developing based on worst case scenarios, right? Saying, okay, we're going to take these, let's say, 5 proteins at their various respective fat

[27:48] levels and actually create a calculator that says this much salt, this many

[27:54] of, like, you know, this kind of, and then like have some sort of hurdles calculator. Is that even a possibility? And how much would it cost? Absolutely. It will take a little bit of funding of science, but that's certainly something even I would like to do in the coming decade or so is, uh, have much more advanced

[28:14] calculators like the, uh, hey, calculators, some chef stepsite. I would love to make more calculators like that that get into things like, oh, uh, if you want to make a modern uh, version of a traditional recipe, what things do you really need to make it safe and delicious for our modern

[28:33] palate? I think that's very doable and something that I want to do. But is that like a $200,000 problem, like a half a $1000000 problem or a $1000000 problem? I don't know. Depending on how cheaply undergraduates work. But that seems like something you could get funding for. See, the interesting thing that's going on now, right, is that there are people out there who are interested in data, hard data that has to do with

[28:59] delicious instead of hard data that has to do with straight safety. And so it seems that like, you know, now there's more and more ability to get funding for, uh, for this kind of work, you know, whether it be on uh, Kickstarter, like the guys, the underground food collective, you know, they're working on their

[29:18] own open source hassip or or something else. It seems like, you know, if we got everyone to chip in a couple of bucks, if we knew how much it was going to cost to do all the challenge studies and to, you know, make all the all the worst case,

[29:32] um, you know, uh, curves for these things, it is a sign that, you know, people would be willing to pony up for without even having to go to, you know, the

[29:40] feds for grant money, you know? Yeah, it would be nice. I mean, some other countries are a little more, uh, willing to do the, uh, experiments and, uh, be a little more flexible with traditional recipes. I was rather surprised when, uh, uh, New South Wales called me up and wanted my help in making

[30:02] a, uh, guidelines for their restaurant, didn't me, for sous vide cooking. They were much more willing to, uh, come to the science instead of just sticking to the traditional, uh, equivalent of their food code. Right. I mean, you know, part of the problem with that here, here, especially in New

[30:21] York is that once, once the government takes a stand on, it's very hard to back off. You know what I'm saying, especially when safety is involved. It's much easier to be reasonable if you haven't already taken a stance. Very true. And so, sad as that is, you know, that's why I think New York really got punished by being

[30:42] the 1st jurisdiction to kind of enter the fray. You know, no one really thinks that that happened in a good way, but, you know, once you're out there, you're out

[30:51] there, and that's it. Um, so, so anyway. And so, you know, there you have that. So, let me just, one other thing. Do you know of any curves? Because I couldn't find any death curves for parasites in fish other than freezing death

[31:06] curves. I couldn't find any thermal death curves for worms and, you know, nematodes and all this other stuff in

[31:13] fish. Are those things available? Have you seen them? Uh, none come to mind, but I do have 100s upon 100s of research articles.

[31:23] It's hard to remember all of them. Right. I'll look into that and shoot you an email and you can mention it some other time. Yeah, I mean, because my. You know, my feeling is is that fish that you're going to eat raw, and this includes fish that you're going to low

[31:37] temp, so that's fundamentally raw, if you're eating a variety of fish that is, that has a worm that might possibly, you know, be hosted in a human, you should freeze that sucker at the, you know, you should get it actually, you know, done by the process or frozen as if it was going to be served for sushi, and that's just a safe way to go.

[31:57] You know, I mean. Oh, absolutely agree. And it's a much easier way of solving the problem. Sure, sure. But, like, for instance, like some stuff that's not necessarily prefrozen, but, you know, that you might want to cook not too hard,

[32:13] cod, for instance, right? But do those worms, I can't remember, I think it's possible for them to be things in cod that can transmit, but anyway, so things like nobody likes it. Nobody likes to butcher a cod and see those worms come out. You ever done that stuff? It's gross. The little worms popping up out of the flood. It's disgusting. But, uh, you know, I mean, that, you know, that's one of the few things I can see where, you know, you're buying a fish that does not necessarily, you know, frozen for sushi because no one's eating that that

[32:41] way, that you might cook a little under. But again, like that, but the reason that you, I don't think I could find the

[32:49] curves is I don't think anyone's bothered to do the thermal death curves on those things, you know? Yeah, I think you're probably right on that. Because when you fry a cod, man, those things are dead. You know, when you batter and fry a cod, and, you know, and that's the way Gordon's was doing it back before the cod got to

[33:04] high price and they had to buy other, you know, fish that they could batter and fry, almost any white fish

[33:09] will taste good batter. No, I mean, if you've pasteurized it for any of the bacteria,

[33:14] you've definitely killed all of the larger organisms. Yeah, all the worms. Yeah, the question I think that's why most people don't put money into it because almost all the money is going into uh, listeria, almanola, E. coli, death curves, and of

[33:31] course things like uh, botulism scores. Right, things like that. So let's get into that. A few people test anything else. Right. I know, and there might be something else that's going to crop up and wipe us out. Who knows? But the, uh, let's talk about botules in front of the, because another thing with sous vide is everyone is worried, I think, kind of incorrectly about, uh, well, not incorrect to worry about, they should obviously worry about it, but incorrectly, uh, crazily worried about, um, the anaerobic

[33:59] bacteria, like botulism, uh, and, and, and yes, it's true. You know, they grow in in these environments. And yes, it's true, you don't, um, you're, you know, you don't kill the

[34:12] spores, and so it's very easy for them to kind of regenerate. But what's not true, I think, is like the kind of level of paranoia people have about

[34:20] it because if, see, I think it becomes an issue when you're pushing the boundaries of what's good

[34:25] practice. I think that if you treat the food that's in a bag, the way you would treat any other decent food product that you care

[34:34] about, that you're not going to be in harm's way, you know, keep it refrigerated. Although, you know, they're having studies, and I'm sure you've read them, that people have gotten botulism spores to

[34:44] generate and reproduce, you know, infridge when the temperature fluctuates even slightly above, you know, even at 40, but I haven't actually read the data myself.

[34:54] But I'm really not worried about it. You? No, I like to compare it with canning. If you are going to be canning at home, then you need to worry a lot about botulism and

[35:08] how stored and how it's processed. But if you're just making up uh vegetables for that dinner tonight, then you don't have to worry about botulism at

[35:17] all. And I think it's the same way with 2 V cooking. If you're preparing it for night or tomorrow or even the next day. There just isn't any worry about or you shouldn't be worried about botulism. It's only if you want to use it for extended storage that you have to worry about it at all. And so long as you have a good cold refrigerator, which, if you're, you know, serving people in a restaurant

[35:43] that, you know, a commercial setting, you're going to know what temperature a fridge is. It's the people at home who don't have a thermometer in their fridge. I think if they would just fit a thermometer in, say, oh yeah, we're hovering around, you know, 45 Fahrenheit, and yeah, maybe we need to not store this for so long. That would be good. Right. And 11 last thing before we, I think we need to do like a summary of like, you know, summary of this, so people, you know,

[36:09] uh, one thing that that low temperature cooking does do is you do have the possibility, whereas you don't with many other cooking techniques, of actually rendering something absolutely safe for people to consume.

[36:22] And I think that's another, that's another thing where, you know, this goes awry is that we give people data to pasteurize, you know, a rare

[36:32] steak such that, you know, you could serve it at a hospital or you could serve it to someone who's, you know, you know, really whose immune system has been ravaged by

[36:41] whatever, and it would be totally safe. And so when you give those numbers, it implies that anything less than that is not safe for the average person to consume, which is

[36:52] not the case. It just goes to show that there's such an increased level of safety

[36:57] that's possible with this technique. What do you think about that? No, I agree. It's a common misconception, but just because you can process a state, if you don't process the extreme doesn't mean it's unsafe,

[37:09] if, uh, you know, logic A implies B, you need not be implies not a, not something else. So, uh, no, I think, uh, the point that you can make food much safer than with traditional methods and still

[37:25] have say, uh, medium rare doneness. is a huge advantage. I think that's what you're trying to say. Yeah. So here's, so here's, I think that, like the, the, the summary, right? If you don't feel comfortable cooking it in a particular way, because you don't, then don't do it. one, right? Uh, then two, if someone has a, uh, recipe that has a series of very specific,

[37:53] like hurdle type instructions, this level of acid, this level of time, this cooking thing, then

[38:00] probably, and it's been tested, don't deviate from it because that's the only thing we can guarantee that's safe if safety is your primary concern,

[38:09] right? absolutely. And and then beyond that, that, you know,

[38:16] really, most of the time, we don't cook to pasteurize because we're not cooking to eliminate all of the risks that are involved because we're not dealing typically a lot of us with people that are apt to get sick from that sort of thing.

[38:32] And secondly, even in those cases, it's a good idea to do general things like a kill step

[38:39] on the surface of something where most of the contamination is going to take place, and that's going to kill most of the stuff that's going to go on. And that's really kind of the answer to it. And if you just do those 2 things, then cooking with these kinds of techniques,

[38:54] presuming that you're not trying to store things for a long time or not trying to get away with things that you wouldn't otherwise do in your kitchen isn't really introducing a lot of excess risk. What do you do you agree or no? Absolutely agree on all of those points. Yes, you know, you guys, do you guys have like a manifesto of this up or something like

[39:12] this? Someone needs to put something up because I don't really, I don't blog anymore, do much more internet stuff. Someone needs to just write like, hey, look, like, here's what's really going on. Do you think you guys could like put something up like that or no? Oh, probably. I mean, we certainly have some in our next class coming up. Uh, but maybe we can do up a good blog post and, uh, help explain this better for everyone. Yeah, well, you know, listen, I appreciate it. I think hopefully, you know, Ken's happy. Hopefully, you know, we cleared up a bunch of misconceptions. I think that, that, uh, people have, uh, especially when they hear people that sound like they're

[39:48] disagreeing, but really aren't, you know, in terms of what's safe and what's not. Uh, and I hope everyone on Black Friday goes to

[39:55] chef steps. What the name of the course? Uh, stupid cooking beyond the basics. Sous vide cooking beyond the basis. Beyond the basics with Douglas Baldwin. Let's take a quick commercial and come back. Thanks so much, Douglas.

[40:31] This is Chris Howell from Kane Vineyard and Winery, calling in from Spring Mountain, above the Napa Valley. Thank you for listening to this show. In our industrial world, highly processed food and wine, we support the values of

[40:50] Heritage radio network. All of us that gain encourage you to seek out individuality and beauty in everything you eat and drink.

[40:58] To learn more about us, go to cane 5.com. All right, we're back. We have a color on the line in time for one question from that caller. Caller, you are on the air. Hello? Hello? It's JD. Hey, how you doing? I'm doing well. Nice. Nice. I want you to call in, uh, a question about, um, the

[41:26] wet grinder. I sent you a tweet just to find out if you had any ideas in terms of low cost options and how well they work.

[41:35] Well, what are you trying to make? So for those of you that don't know, grinding things is difficult, and most grinding machines don't, they have a very specific range of particle sizes that they're good at taking from one to the other.

[41:51] So very few things are capable of taking whole items and then reducing them down to very, very, very tiny particles. Things are good in a range. One grinder that's relatively, well, not extremely old school, but and is capable over long periods of time, of fairly fine particle

[42:08] sizes and also good distribution and mixing, is a wet grinder. And the kind of, it's, you know, the chocolate grinders are based on this, you know, agave grinders for production of tequila traditional ones

[42:23] are, you know, or any agave spirit are like this. And also in India for grinding things like Italy and other kind of wet does. And they're called wet grinders. And it's fundamentally, a rock or 2 rocks that spin in over another flat rock.

[42:42] And they just keep spinning, and as it spins, it grinds grinds and grinds and grinds. Now, the lucky thing is that it's a common enough home product, that in India, they make home appliances to do this. And those are the ones that most people are using, and I bought one years ago, the only one that was available at the time was the Santha, you know,

[43:04] S-A-N-T-HA. Uh, it was, how much were the styles? like 300 bucks or something like that. And it's awesome. It broke because some knucklehead dropped it and shattered the rock. Remember that? Jerks. And so I no longer have one, but I think they're great at what they're great at. There's some other ones that I haven't tried. So the Santa has 2 kind of regular cylindrical stones. There's ones that have cone shaped stones that roll around. I've never used them. I liked the Santa. You know, its limitations are fundamentally its size, and the fact that if you don't have the right texture in the stuff that you're grinding,

[43:42] it has a hard time processing it. So we would use it to make like stupid, smooth, nut, uh, nut

[43:49] paste and, uh, like so much better than so much better than what people make when they made. They're like, yeah, they taste my nut butter. I'm like, eh. And then we used to like, right? Remember that? Like, stupid, smooth, but we would 1st put them through a champion, uh, or like do like a rough grind in a food processor, and then we would throw it in the Santa and have it go. But the trick is you have to get the liquid level right or it doesn't process right. So we would always dope back in, like, you know, no offense to California almonds, but they're low in oil. So we would add oil to something like that when we were processing of, you know, of something that had more oil in it. We processed better, do it that way. Same with chocolate. So we would use it to do like a simultaneous conch and grind

[44:27] of, and, you know, and grinding of chocolate. But the issue there is you have to go for relatively long periods to get the texture right,

[44:34] like on the order of 2 days. or something like this. Anyway, but am I answering the question or no? Yeah, because I was looking to do my own conscious as well as I wanted to do, um, kind of an experiment on, you know,

[44:48] taking, uh, everything popping on bagels and making a butter out of that. Oh, yeah? Well, including the garlic and everything. Yeah, I don't know how well it'll liquefy. You might need to add some oil to it, and I would definitely recommend taking everything to a fine dust in a, in like, you know, a

[45:08] vita prep or a food processor or something like this or, you know, sesame and all

[45:13] that if you're going to grind them in poppies in some form of grinder 1st because you're not going to be able to put that stuff into a

[45:19] santha and just walk away from it. It's not going to work. You know what I mean? It needs to, the Santa needs to start with something that's already some form of paste. And then once it's already some form of paste, it'll just keep on rocking. You know what I mean? Now I have that song going through my head. Oh my gosh. It was already in my head because I got referenced before, but now keep on rocking in the free world is not going to leave my head. Okay, go ahead. Um, that was pretty much it. Thanks for coming into Main Street Kitchen the other day. Oh yeah, delicious. Delicious. I had a good time. You guys, like, I, I, obviously, even though that was theoretically lunch, I obviously couldn't eat dinner that night, because we had so much, but it was all

[45:58] delicious, and I encourage you all to visit, uh, May May kitchen. You guys still run the food truck as well, though, right? Yes, yep. We also have a food truck. Yeah. And they're in, so what do you call that neighborhood in Boston? Um, it's a South BU campus area. It's the same area stop off the green line. Nice. All right. So for those you that go to Boston regularly. Although, you know what? I wish I had taken public transportation. Your city is a nightmare to drive around. I know that everyone always tells you this, but it's crazy. It's a crazy city to drive in. Did you know that? Oh, wow. I think we lost 80, but yeah, we got to get to this last question before the show ends. All right, well, I'm going to bush through a bunch of stuff. I'm going to get to as much as you let me before you pull the plug. So, Austin writes in about fireball whiskey. Quick summary. Fireball whiskey has been recalled, Sun Fireball whiskey, has been recalled in Norway, Sweden, and Finland after the North American formula, which contains propylene glycol was shipped to Europe.

[46:55] Europe has a ban on propylene glycol, and as a result, fireball whiskey creates 2 different formulas from North American Europe, one with PG, the other without. Brooklyn glycol is an ingredient that has a concentrated industrial level, at a concentrated industrial level, found things like

[47:06] anti-freeze, on a pharmaceutical food grade level. It is used as liquid sweetener and things like soda, toothpaste, and tobacco. USDA is declared it safe at this less concentrated food grade level. And then the question is, well, why is it banned in the Europe and not in the US? And considering that it's used in things like e-cigarettes, toothpaste, makeup, and soda, is this recall, retrieving, receiving undue attention and scrutiny, or is this justified, and how pissed off should we

[47:29] be that this ingredient is used in fireball? You should be more pissed off that you're drinking fireball. Yeah. I mean, the stuff is like rancid, like overly sweet, like fake, uh, cinnamon-based, uh, liquor, and it should be banned everywhere. That's the concern. That's the main concern. Yeah. You know, the stuff is like from a taste making standpoint poisonous. much more so than if you were to drink straight propylene glycol, right? And so that's that's my feeling. But inherent in the summary are a couple of things that aren't exactly true. So when people put this stuff on the, you know, on the internet and it runs rampant, like, and it's like, you know,

[48:07] like people did this with Twinkies. This whole book about it. like, 0 my god, 0 my god. It's got anti-freeze in it, right? Well, no. Let me let me let me bang this out. Propylene glycol is used as an ingredient in food,

[48:23] food application anti-freezes because it's non-toxic and it doesn't freeze. And it's also unlike things like ethanol, which is also used in food grade

[48:33] anti-freeze formulations. Propylene glycol water solutions have a better heat transferring capability in cooling

[48:41] systems, then does alcohol water solutions. And so they're just better, typically, uh, they're just better to use as antifreeze and things like ethanol and

[48:51] water. And they're using food grade systems, unlike propylene glycol's cousin, ethylene glycol, which is what's most typically used in car antifreezes, because ethylene glycol is relatively

[49:03] toxic compared to propylene glycol, which is not. Now, ethylene glycol. First of all, you should know that propylene glycol is not good to feed the cats. Now, ethylene glycol, kill cats. That's why like anti-freeze, that's why people who hate neighborhood cats like put out puddles of anti-freeze because the stuff is sweet and cats go and lap that stuff up and it wipes them

[49:22] out. propylene glycol, also not good for cats because it messes with their red blood cells and can cause this thing called Heinz bodies, no relation to the ketchup, even though it's in the red blood cells, no relation to the ketchup, Heinz

[49:35] bodies, and can be very bad for cats, but that appears to be something that is really typically only in cats.

[49:41] Now, let's head to uh, and propylane glycol, by the way, other than the fact that it doesn't uh, freeze, uh, you know,

[49:47] readily, and so it's used in anti-freeze things. It's used for a number of other properties. It's a very good solvent because it combined with polar and non-polar things. It's not really, I mean, it's slightly, I've tasted it. It's like, I don't really like it. It's like tight, it's like, you know, I wouldn't call it sweet. It's like marginally there, but it also like absorbs moisture out of the air. It has a lot of different purposes. Uh, anyways, uh, it is not banned in the EU, the EU has a very specific uh, quantity that they allow you to have. Now, this is might have been superseded, but I looked up the, you know, the circa 1996 EU

[50:24] rules, and they said that the present 25 milligrams per kilogram body

[50:29] weight daily allowance of drinking propylene glycol is based on the no adverse effect level in long-term rat studies, in which, however, the maximum tolerated dose has not been

[50:40] reached. And furthermore, this is direct quotes from the EU documents. A safety factor of 100 was used to establish this AD1 on the basis of the metabolism of propylene glycol, its total toxicity profile, and the large human experience with oral and parental pharmaceutical preparations, no, pair, pair, and

[51:03] terrell, much I don't even know that word, pharmaceutical preparations containing propylene glycol as a vehicle.

[51:08] In other words, they base a level. They're like, well, we couldn't really kill rats with this stuff. And so we took these other things, and then we multiplied that by 100 and figured that was a safe amount, but they don't talk that way because it's European. We figured that was safe, you know? And so that's what they did, whereas in the US, pro point glycol has a GRAS,

[51:25] general guarded as safe, rating, meaning it doesn't have the same limitations. Furthermore, the recipe for fireball did contain propylene glycol in Europe, but just not as much propylene glycol. And so they shipped a US formulation, which had a slightly higher amount. So I have a lot of more to get to, but we're not going to get to it because I'm being ripped off the air and this was cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes

[51:59] 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.