[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. Hey, hey, hey, I'm Jimmy Carboni from Beer Sessions Radio. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network Broadcasting Live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageraidernetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:30] Hello and welcome to Cookie Issues. Dave Arnold. Your host of cooking issues coming to you land. Bushwick, Brooklyn, and the Heritage Radio Network. Roberta's Pizzeria, Happy New Year. And we got, as usual, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. you doing? And just Jack in the booth today. Just Jack. Wow. I didn't mean it like that, Jack. I meant it like that. Josh Jack. Well,

[0:55] happy New Year to everyone. And this is the 1st time we've been together. Actually, I haven't seen you, Nastasia, since I saw you briefly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but, you know, not really. So we got to talk about Jack, let's start with you. What do you, what do you do for the food wise. for the uh, for all the various uh, holidays. Food wise. Well, let's see. I can't really say anything great about the holiday meals I had, but I did have an awesome meal at North

[1:18] End Grill with my girlfriend and had some really delicious ramen. Went to hide Chen, the place by Toto. I was really good. Toto, the toilet manufacturer? Yeah. They make ramen now too. Nice. Pretty good. Toto does make fine toilets, so. different people. Yeah, different people Toto, the world's finest toilet seats, in my estimation. Study, right? That's good stuff. By the way, for those of you that don't know, Japanese toilets are by far and away the greatest toilets that I've ever used in my life, light years ahead of our American

[1:49] toilets, and, you know, as a farm to toilet devotee, I think we often, in our cooking endeavors, don't pay enough attention to the toilet aspect of it. Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, and I am, and I've said this, I think before on the air, you did. This was your response to the slow food event we had. Right, but I'm personally ashamed as an American that we don't have native toilet seat technology that anywhere approaches what they have in

[2:17] Japan. It's just, it's just an embarrassment. Speaking of Japan, I have to say I got a bottle of the Yamazaki scotch. That is a delicious product. It's damn good, yeah. Delicious. Not much smoke, but I don't mind. was really good. Yeah. Uh, yeah, I love the Yamazaki. I love which one did you get? The 12. Yeah. The Habiki also do all those. you know that those guys bought Jim Beam? Isn't that weird? Yeah, weird, right? weird world is weird. What about you, Stas? how's your holiday food stuff? It's friends and families. They don't care about food. Nothing spectacular. Like, what do you have on the Christmas? Nastasia was in Connecticut for Christmas. What do you have? For Christmas? I don't know. It was that? Oh, no, it was steak. yeah Overcooked? Yeah Oh, have to shout out. no, no, no. actually okay. Yeah, yeah. Where's your shadow, J? Greenpoint Fish and Lobster. I forgot. I went and bought oysters and rainbow trout for my dad's Christmas Eve, and it was really good. Nice. How do you do the rainbow trout? Broiled. Yeah? Good? Yeah, it was good. Hard to mess up. good piece of fish. Jack was it dry? It wasn't. It wasn't that dry. Look, shroud is one of those things that, um, like, for instance, the taste of smoked trout, love, love, taste of

[3:34] smoked trout. always too dry. Even with the oil that's in it, whatever. Let me handle it with Peter. Where at Russian place? Was that trap? Adam I don't know. I don't remember what it was. Was it dry? No, I don't think it was dry. Smoked trout is often dry, but you didn't smoke it. You just broiled it. I love trout. Trout's good. It's like one of the few kind of fresh watery kind of fishes that I enjoy. Jack, what's my least favorite freshwater fish? Oh, white onion? Yes, diamond, right? No, Tlap 1st of all, Tlapia, yeah. Yeah, 1st of all. But you don't even eat that, so you can't. It's not like, well, it's like, you know, it's the worst, as we all know. You know, I look forward. My New Year's resolution is to stop other people from eating tilapia. There's got to be some other, like, crap fish that they can grow in its own filth for almost nothing that tastes better, right?

[4:23] There's gotta be something. Something. I know. Uh, okay, uh, what did I have? Well, I had I bought two. I bought an extremely large standing rib roast, and I did my normal, like, took it off the bone, low tempted, chilled it, and then did a roast off. And that was good, but then there was too many, like everyone in my family was sick. Like on both sides. everyone sick. So I cut it in half because there wasn't as many people eating it before I did the retherm on it. And then the 2nd half, I staked off into like, ooh, I don't

[4:58] know, how big is this dust? Is that like an inch and a half, inch and a half, somewhere around there, an inch and a half, between an inch and a

[5:03] half and 2 inches? I staked off the 2nd half of the of the rib rose? because I got the full, you know, rib, right? Uh, and actually, you know what? I have to say, no matter what, I like it better when it's staked off and seared each steak seared individually and then sliced the other way. I just think it's a lot better than eating the big slices of

[5:23] prime rib. As much as I loved the 70s and 80s going to those crappy steakhouses and getting the big slice of prime

[5:30] rib. It's just always a little too cold in the center by the time you get to it, there's too much of that stuff.

[5:34] What are your thoughts on the steak or staked off or the whole prime rib? It's staked off, I think. Steak dog. Definitely. Yeah, except for for sandwiches. For sandwiches served cold, you want state, you want like the whole thing and then sliced very, very thinly, but you wouldn't really do that with a standing rib

[5:52] roast because that's a freaking waste. You know what I'm saying? For a roast beef sandwich? Waste. I don't know. So anyway, but here's what one you'll like, Stas, because even though it's actually French, it's like close to Swiss. I guess maybe it could be Swiss too. You like raclette? So I did a, I did a cheat, cheating, and it's good sears all that, actually. I did a cheating, uh, Rocklette. So, you know how, like, Rocklette, you got, like, the, the, right? And then you got the boiled taters and whatever else you got, and then you melt the cheese on a broiler and then you scrape the crap off and then you put it on the stuff,

[6:23] right? But do you really want the potatoes to be boiled? Or do you prefer if they're roasted? roasted, I guess. Yeah, right. So I took the, I did, what could I get a hold of? I got a hold of Yukons. Uh, you know, planked them out, then roasted those suckers in the oven, drained off all the extra oil because

[6:40] Rucklett's got its own. And then and then so I then I put those out in the dish, graded the rucklet, and don't get angry, but I graded the rucklet, right? Shredded, rather. And then here's the thing. Instead of the corny shell, are you ready for it? ready for it? Cocktail onions. The vinegar cocktail onions, because onions and taters, good, but I wanted something crunchy and kind of vinegary to offset the fact that I was about to dump like a boatload of like super heavy, like, you know, full fat cheese on top of

[7:03] that, some gun. So did the roasted taters, then the cocktail onions, rocklet, sears all. Bueno. La bueno. Muy bueno. could have done it in the oven if you didn't have a series all, but series all just toasted up the cheese, mess, and mess. I think that's bad. I don't think I did anything. Oh, New Year's, I did the Zampone. You know Zamponi from Modena, which is the whole pig's foot. Like, uh, you gouge out all the meat in the pig's foot, then you stuff it with the same sausage mix that you would have uh,

[7:32] kotakino in, and then uh, did that with lentils. That was nice. And then on New Year's proper, right? I go, 1st of all, in the fine, I shop at the fine fair, which is my local kind of, I don't know, I'm not, I've been shopping there for a long time, so I'm not going to say anything negative about the fine fair

[7:46] people. But it ain't no fairway and it ain't no, what is their motto again? like no other market? Anyway. It's like no other market. Like no other market. I tell you a story about, like, maybe 15 years ago when the

[7:58] fairway 1st moved into West Harlem over there by the, uh, that's where my art studio used to be when I was in

[8:04] school and more than 15 years ago, almost 18, 19 years. anyway. So I'm there. And there's this guy wandering around, literally wandering around,

[8:14] Fairway going, not so special, not so special, like, like right on the border of homeless, that border, right between homeless and not homeless, not so special. That's my memory of the home. Like, at the time, like, that was kind of a game changing market. dude, what does it take? Like, what does it take for you to think a market is special? They have like an indoor, like, walk in meet? And it wasn't like the one, remember, like, we have some kind of rough indoor refrigerated meat markets here in New York, like

[8:43] big Apple down by you. rough, right? Western beef has that, right? Anyway, it's kind of awesome. So saying not so special, weird. anyway, I don't know where I was going with that. Oh, yeah. So at my fine fair, I got the last bag of

[8:56] black eyed peas in the whole place. The last, very last one to make what? you know what? Hopping John. You like Hoppingjohn? Oh my god, you take like your ham hocks or whatever, pork neck bones, whatever, smoked. Star strings. Yes, as Nastasia has the complete collection of Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer. The Bumble. Well, you have to buy all four. So the 4 figurines are Santa Claus. Uh, Rudolph, and just not happy in my work, I guess. That's, well, you guys got to know the show anyway. And Hermi, Yukon, Cornelius. and Santa, who's the weakest because he's such a jerk in that. Yeah, until the end, right? And then he's okay. No, Rudolph. you know what I mean? At the end, he's like, fine, but like in the beginning, he's like, you know, he's like, you know, not really nice to the elves when they're singing to him. You know? And then needs work. I have to go. right? And then he leaves and then it's like, he's just a jerk the whole time until the very end. Anyway, but anyway, you buy all 4 figures and then you send away and you get the bumble, which is the abominable snowman. And Stas has the entire... Bumble was shipping and handling,

[10:04] though, which is... Yeah, it's probably cost them 295 to make, so they're breaking even. Slick. Slick. Anyways. But we were talking, oh, hop and John. So Hop and John is a traditional New Year's Day thing and it's, you know, anyway, it's like ham hocks, I use pork neck bones,

[10:21] whatever. Uh, and, you know, black-eyed peas, and you simmer that. I use I use both. I use peppers, I use red and green peppers, and you just simmer the heck out of that, and then

[10:31] you eat, you know, onions, obviously. I add a little garlic. I dont know if you're supposed to. I had a little thyme. don't know if you're supposed to. Um, and, you know, simmer that until that's done. And the cornbread. And the collard greens. Delicious. Collard greens, money, Hop and John, I think also money or luck. and then the cornbread gold. New, right? That's why the day before with the Zampone, right? You're supposed to do the classic accompaniment for that in for the Italian would be lentils. Lentils also little coins. Money. Money. Money. I have a caller who's been patiently waiting. Well, what are you telling me? Call her, you're on the air. Hey, I have a question for you about the Spears all. Okay. I've been loving mine so far. I've taken it camping. I use it in my office, make like eggs and toast. Where do you live? A little bit of burnout on the screen. Okay, where do you where do you live, 1st of all? What's that? Where do you live? Jacksonville, Florida. Oh, nice. Okay. Um, and so I was wondering if it's possible to, I mean, I know it'll avoid me warranty or whatever, but if I switched the metal screens out for like

[11:40] molybdenum mesh or something, if that will mitigate the, um, the bulging and burn out. Okay, on the rear screen? Uh, I don't know either or. Well, the front screen, if the rear screen doesn't have a problem, the front

[11:55] screen's never going to have a problem. Okay. that's that's just like, that's like the truth. There's a, I forget why. There is a reason that we don't use, um, malydanum. I forget what it is, why we don't use it. Um, I researched a bunch of, I guess this is good a time to say as we're looking into the possibility of the metal you want to use in in to

[12:24] plate. First of all, you don't want to make an entire screen out of one of the different

[12:28] metals because most of them don't have the strength to stand up to stuff, you know, things the way

[12:35] that, you know, like a Conthal or a 693 is going to. But, um, you know, what you're really looking to do is plate with a metal typically. And so what we're looking at is Palladium. Palladium is what you want to use. Uh, for its, um, it's high, high temperature and, um, food safe because, you know,

[13:00] they they use like that series of metals in, um, in things like dental

[13:05] work. So like you want something like that. And so we're looking into, um, we're looking into the possibility of

[13:14] making, uh, palladium coated rear screens, uh, that would be just a straight swap out in the

[13:21] seers all. So, you know, if you happen to know a metal, uh, plater, they could plate your rear screen in Palladium for you if you can't wait for us to do it.

[13:31] And if the rear screen's coded in Palladium, that nothing else is ever going to happen to it. It won't cook any different, obviously. But, um, anyway, so that's kind of like long and short what we're looking, what we're looking at, um, doing is doing that. And then, you know, we anticipate that you would never have to replace the, um, the rears. And at fronts, you would only have to replace if you smash them into something or something like this. Now, uh, you know, if you were plating one or two, you know, you might as well just plate the front end

[14:07] rear because why the heck not, it's going to cost. I doubt they're going to charge you any more for plating 2 screens than they do one because I'm sure most of the cost is going to be the setup time, but that's what I

[14:16] would, that's what I would do. The crucial thing with the rear screens, or the front and the rear screens, is getting the spacing somewhat correct. So if you were to get a rear screen out

[14:27] of, you know, some other mesh, but you didn't have the same kind of percentage of open area or you didn't have, you know, that fundamental kind

[14:36] of relationship correct, then it would, um, it would cause problems. I wouldn't worry about the warranty too much. You know what I mean? Right, okay. Is it making any sense? I forget why off the top of my head why I ruled out malindinum. I mean, because I looked into all of those. I forget why. Um, but yeah, I mean, the one to go for is uh, Palladium. Okay, sweet, can you, can you just get solid poladium screen somewhere or do you have to get them plated? Only if you're constructed out of money. I don't think any, I don't I don't know of any. I don't know of anyone that makes Palladium wire. Uh, I'm, maybe somebody does, but, um, I don't know anyone that makes it, but the cost would be intense.

[15:22] You know what I mean? Maybe, again, not for one screen. Like, if you can get someone to send you a sample, they may find, but like, there's no way that I could, like, there's no way that I could ever afford to make, like,

[15:32] solid, the palladium screen, that one screen would cost more, probably, as much or more than the rest of the sears all combined. You know what I'm saying? Um, you know, as is 693 is kind of spendy. And then it's like 693 costs a lot more than Conthal does, which is the which is the metal that the most of the screens are made out of. Um, yeah, and I, you know, I looked into just the per pound cost on Palladium and it's just bananas. And then furthermore, you'd have to get it, probably have to get custom wire made and then a custom cloth woven out of it and then making the screens out of

[16:09] it. So it's just really expensive. Whereas, like, plating, you're, you know, you're paying for the setup cost and then for the thickness of palladium that's coded onto your onto your screens, which is, you know, not that much. Okay. And Palladium is very, very, very corrosion resistant. And very high, very high temperature, and, you know, rated fairly easy, doesn't, you know, I've done scratch tests on it and all this other stuff, and it's, it's,

[16:39] it's, it's pretty, it's pretty good. Again, it doesn't change the cooking of it at all. It's just gonna protect that rear screen from, um, having too much deformation. And if the rear screen gets deformed too much, that's when you start seeing problems with your front screen.

[16:55] Okay, I got you. Cool. All right. That was, that's a perfect answer. Thank you. All right, thank you. All right. Wait, what were we talking about for? Guitar strings? Yeah, no, I think you were going into the questions. Oh, we were about to go into the questions? Oh, nice. All right, cool. Well, you know what? Today, it's not mainly questions. It's people giving us feedback on stuff that, you know, which I like. It's like New Year feedback, which I appreciate. Um, This inn from uh, James, uh, Nazarov. Um, I think. Hey, Dave, Nastasia. And wow, insert names here. Well, it's just Jack today. Just Jack. Uh, I just wanted to, uh, write a follow-up to my Twitter question last week on how to keep the bottom of a booth

[17:43] encroot from getting soggy. Remember that? who's doing the beef tenderloin wrapped in the pastry and then cooking it because soggy bottoms, which is like soggy bottoms. Is that, was that the name of George Clooney's group in that, in that movie, whole brother where art thou? Soggy bottoms? I don't know. He doesn't strike me as a Cohen brothers kind of a... Jack doesn't strike me as a Cohen. more of a Corn Brothers character, unless of a Coen Brothers watcher. yeah No, I'm a huge Coen Brothers fan. Yeah? What were the name of those guys? Soggy Bottom boys? Soggy Bottom boys, yeah. That wasn't my favorite. I like that movie a lot, but it's not my favorite. You didn't like all the, like the, you didn't like the allegory aspect of it? I did. No, I really, they haven't done a film I don't like, but I really like a serious man. No one else loves that, but I like that. which one's that one Um, there weren't too many known actors. just kind of a, and there's no real plot. That's why people didn't like it. was it? It was probably like 4 years ago. Oh, yeah. See, that's I haven't like, you know, you got to go way further back from me to know I've seen them all. You know what I'm saying? Okay. The challenges posed were thus. There was a six hour drive ahead of us. I was unable to bring equipment, namely my circulator, and the tenderloin to be cooked was at the final destination already. This is an interesting problem. Although, you can always... Although maybe it's maybe they don't want, maybe like, maybe you're dealing with someone like my stepfather, Gerard, who's like,

[19:02] ah, the Mishigosh, what the heck? You know what I mean? Stas knows these people. Hey, your family's like that, right? They give you problems. problems. I understand that. The home kitchen, I was to be using, had limited equipment and the absolute worst electric range

[19:16] ever. And by worst, I mean, it's 40 years old, has hot spots all over the oven, and only 2 burners seem to be able to draw any power if the oven is on.

[19:24] That does suck. That's crap. And I suppose they didn't have enough ventilation feeder to throw logs into the freaking oven and light them on fire. That would be sweet. Anyway, um, don't do that ever. Anyway, I have made the buffon crout for several Christmases running. Each being, each being progressively made from larger portions of Tenderloin. Last year was two thirds of the muscle, and this year was the whole dang thing. I added dang, dang was me. Despite using the same method, the larger the cut, it seemed the softer and wetter the bottom had become. That's because that's interesting. I wonder why. I wonder why. Um, Soft and wet at the bottom had become. I didn't want to go to the root of cheating. There's so many recipes for Wellington suggests and adding a layer of craves between the pastry and the other ingredients. Your suggestion of a layer of rusk didn't sound overly appealing either. I wanted to keep the flavor simple and knew the range I was to use would fight against me as much as possible. I took your advice and pre-cook the tenderloin entirely. With an uneven oven, a lack of circulator, or large pieces of cookware to brown on. I browned the tenderloin carefully under the broiler, then brought it up to 130 in the

[20:26] core in a 300 degree oven, let it rest for 15 minutes, and then chilled it for 4 hours. All right, that's good. That's good pre-cook, right? Pre-cook. She done. The mushrooms and shallots are pureed raw, which is interesting, and cooked long and slow in butter. The rationale being that cooked dry as possible meant little moisture could escape and exacerbate the sogginess problem. I cooked under the brink of being dry and crumbly. My culinary school instructors would have a kitten over that. Despite not wanting to use rusk, I ran with your idea of an absorbent, this is an interesting idea here. You might like this because you like iTalent. Well you don't really like a town. It's northern Italian though. don't like them. be like the food. And the place. Yeah. Um, although nails would come back and say that this is actually a Swedish thing. Anyway, I blitzed some dried porcini mushrooms into powder. Right? When it came time to wrap the pastry around the tenderloin, I spread out the duxelles on the pastry, then lightly sprinkled the porcini powder on top of the duxelles,

[21:21] layering, extra on the part of the pastry that would be the bottom. So it's using the using that as like the sponge, the porcini powders, but an interesting idea. The wrap tenderloin was decorated, heavily vented, egg wash and chill for 2 hours. The result turned out fabulous. It was baked at 450 for 10 minutes, and then turned down to 325 until the core was reheated up to 120. While the hotspots that led to some over browning, hotspots in the oven led to some over browning on the top. This I also believe caused the uneven leavening end or minor tearing or the pastry near the venting. The result was otherwise spot on. No juices escaped beyond the mushrooms and the pastry was crisp all the way around. Only some minor butter leakage was to be found, butter leakage. butter leakage. Stas is making her butter leakage face. On a sheet pen afterwards. The tenderloin was succulent and juicy and the duck cells were moistened by any escaping juices, thus leaving the pastry dry on the bottom.

[22:08] Thanks again, James. See, I think the key there. Excellent work. uh excellent work. I think the key there is the pre-cook on it. You're getting rid of a lot of those juices that would be flowing out and getting into the

[22:19] pastry. And it's not like it's on the initial cook is when you're losing most of those juices into their pastry anyway.

[22:25] It's not like those juices are making the meat any juicier. They're just making your pastry soggier. So I think that's a good way to go. Uh, and then we got next question in, hello, uh, New York. I finally got an emergency. is a question, not a comment, I think. You want the comments 1st and the question, you don't care. Are you, yeah. Are you doing the joke one too? No. I'm offended that you don't think I read them and you're like... All right, so I got a question. Someone sent someone who... You saw it over the break too. I know. Someone, look, someone who is challenged in the arts of writing

[22:57] emails, requesting things in English requested something from Booker and Dax, the bar. I'm not going to read it. What if they hear? And then like they hear that we're insulting what they wrote? But it was the craziest request for an email ever. Although a delicious sounding dinner, I might say. You don't think it'll be good? No. No? Nope. You don't want like a side of one in the, no? All right. It's not like, I'm gonna put it this way. It's not like the one that I tweeted out. It's not spaghetti and potatoes. Like the one that I got tweeted out, that my son was... Ow. A starch and a meat. Starch, meat. But that meat would never go with that starch. No, no. Whatever. Whatever. I can't tell you guys what we're talking about because I don't want to insult anyone, but whatever, crazy email. Crazy. Anyway. Okay, I finally got an emerging circulator. I'm now in my messing around stage, messing around stage. That sounds like a weird, like, kind of relationship time. by messing around stage. And then I'm messing around stage, I bought a sirloin tip and dice it into fairly large one.

[24:08] 5 to 2 inch cubes. I cooked everything for about 8 hours and the meat became dot, dot, dot, dense. Dense. Not dry or tough, but certainly not melting your mouth tender. I'm wondering since sirloin is comparatively lean cut, would it ever become as tender as say, um, ribsteak or filet? Now, listen. Listen, filet is only tender because it's got no connective tissue in it, right? Fillet, if you cooked filet for a long. saying this right now, so everybody knows. If you cook filet for a long time, low temp, what happens is it turns to paste, turns to like

[24:42] mush because it has no connective tissue to hold it together, and it has nothing to render out and get and get gelatinous, right? Um, To me, like, you know, the one that can tenderize a little bit is like a

[24:54] ribsteak, you can tenderize by long cooking or anything else that has more connective tissue in

[24:59] it where the underlying meat itself is still tender. So skirt steak, you can cook for, um, you know, like 24

[25:07] hours and it'll just get more and more and more tender, right? What is it? What's the other one I'm looking? No, you want to cook skirt day for 24 hours. Like 8 hours. Oh, am I stupid? Stupid? What am I stupid? What I meant to say is you take like a short rib and you cook it for like 24 hours, it'll have the texture skirt steak, and if you cook it for another 24 hours after that, then it'll start having the texture

[25:28] of steak. So it's all about the breakdown of, uh, connect the tissue there, but you would never typically want to do any longer cooking on like a

[25:37] tenderloin. In fact, I never pasteurized tenderloins because I don't like to cook them longer than about 45 minutes to an

[25:44] hour or something like that. Anyway. Um, okay. At the moment, I can't recall the mouthfeel of conventionally braised sirloin beef stew, vexing. Also, vexing. I like that. I like anything with an X in it. That's why Dax is named Dax. Three letters with an X. how he chose his name. Anyway. And we didn't want Rex, because Rex, my wife says, sounds like a dog, even though that's my great grandpa's name. Do you think it sounds like a dog? Yeah I guess so. What's the long of Rex? It's not. Oh. That's why I liked him because I didn't want something that was shorter for something else. And Rex was the only one I could think of that because it means king. It's short for nothing In what language? Rex Latin. Yeah. Anyway. Uh, I guess it does sound me. I guess the guys at Night at the Museum 3 thought it sounded like a dog, because that's what they named, uh, Tyrantosaurus Rex. Rex and death. What a jerk I am. What a moron. There's a name Rexford. Rexford? Yeah. Or Rexler? isn't that like a college? What's Rexford is a person's name? Seems like it. Yeah, can be a 1st name. Well, kudos to all you Rexford's out there. You don't sound, doesn't sound like a dog to me. I like the name. Anyways. This is why you should never tell other people the names that you're thinking of having for your kids. You ever notice? Like, if someone's pregnant that you know. Don't ask them what they're thinking of naming their kid. Because then if they tell you, you're gonna ruin it. Your face. Look at your face. Well, not just your face. Like, I'll make a wisecrack. I like literally ruin it. You know what I mean? And if once a kid is named and someone says something like wise crack about the name, then you just want to kill that person. You punch me in the face. You're like, wait, making fun of my kid's name, you should die, right? But before you've had the kid, it puts little seeds of doubt. They're like, I knew a guy named that once. Oh, I hated that freaking guy, right? And like, you know people that you hate. I know some names that you will never choose. should you have kids, right? So that you don't want anyone else giving you that information either. You know what I'm saying? Whatever. whatever. Okay. Okay, here we go. Also, since I was basically messing around, there are likely flaws in my method. Here is what, here's what was done to the sirloin, okay? This is Michael from Toronto saying this, by the way. I think, yes. Salted and seared the cubes. First of all, on a long cook, you're cooking for 8 hours. A lot of the density is gonna be due to the fact that you pre-salted the cubes. If you salt those, especially something that small. The salt's going to get good penetration as you're cooking. If you're salting those things out, they're going to become dense. There's just no way around it. All right? So that's your 1st thing you need to do is not solve those dang cues beforehand, solve them afterwards. Then allowed to cool slightly before bagging with lightly cooked, salted, and sliced onions, carrots, and leeks. Okay, now listen. When you're putting, um, cooked, like mirepoix, or when you're putting mirepoix or veg in, um, in the thing with it, you want to cook it all the way through till it's

[28:35] done, because 2 reasons. One, you're going to leach water out of it when you cook, if you cook it high enough. And secondly, you're never going to get any more cooking, texture wise, on those vegetables until they hit about 82 to, you know, between 82 and 85 Celsius.

[28:51] right? So they're never, like, I've put carrots in a bag as a demo when I was teaching back when I used to teach this

[28:57] stuff. I put carrots in a bag and let them circulate for a week and at, like, you know, in the in the high 50s or low 60s Celsius. And they're just they're still crunchy when you take them out of the bag. So they're not going to cook anymore. So you want to take your veg in a meat in meat and bag situation. You want to take them all the way to done. before you put them in the bag. Okay. Um, then did the Zippy, Ziploc, 63 C, 63

[29:26] C, for 5 hours. That's another like thing right there. I would not have gone for that high temp for 5 hours because what you're doing there is you're raising, you're basically cooking all of the protein

[29:38] to 60 to 63. There's no point then in, because then for another one hour, you did 56 and then 58 for 2

[29:48] hours, and then in prints, you write clearly messing around with temps. Once you've cooked at 63 for 5 hours, you're never going to undo what happened there at 63. So there's no point in going back low. If you want something that tastes like a traditional, you don't want it like rare. Uh, you know, 62, 60, somewhere in there, 60 to 62 is good. Um, you know, a lot of people like their kind of short ribby stuff somewhere between 57 and 60, um, and sometimes 62. Anything over that, it's really getting into the kind of, like, you say, denser, kind of chewier ranges. So on something like sirloin, I wouldn't go that high. I would stay somewhere in the area of like 57 highest I'd go is like 60. But on a sirloin. I mean, I'm short ribby kind of a thing. People sometimes like a little higher because they like to take like it to taste a little more traditional, but and also remember when you're doing low temp, even if you were to cook it for a long, long time, it's not going to shred out like a traditional braise wheel, it'll stay intact.

[30:53] Anyways, and then postseer in butter. Will it ever be a tender stew? Well, I think you're looking, a couple of the problems you're looking at is the pre-salt on it. I would omit the salt until the end for that kind of cooking. I think 63 is a little bit too high. Um, and if the meat would be tender, as soon as it's cooked through, if the sirloin you have, it means

[31:13] typical. I haven't done a lot of cooking with that particular cut. But if it's going to be tender right from the get go, then just keep it, I would keep it low, like in

[31:23] the, in the high 50s for a long time. And then that will do any tenderization, but won't cause it to be dense, but it'll end up being more

[31:31] like, it'll be good. That's what I would do. anyway. Also, thanks for your tips about carbonation. I put together a £5 rig at home now because of you, and I can fulfill my daily seltzer quota, life-changing. Uh, and a slightly related follow-up. I added roasted turnips to my stew, uh, as I was afraid they might somehow overpower the stew with their cruciferous, you know, cruciform vegetables, uh, notes,

[31:55] i.e. 40 smells. Can we just say this? farty smells. Uh, so free for your smells. If left in a bag with everything else, is that even a possibility? I don't know. You know, I've never done, I've never done turnips in the bag. You ever done turnips in the bag anymore? No, style was like, no. Mark done turnips in the bag? No. Do you like mashed? Do you like turnips? Yeah. Yeah? I bet, you know, I bet Rutabagas would go farty in a bag. I don't think turnips are going to go. I don't think so You like haggis, neeps and tatties. I haven't had it yet. You haven't had agis? Oh my god, haggis are delicious. We should just do, you know what we should do? Like, if we ever get in a situation where we have time again and we can do normal, like, cooking stuff, like for a living. I don't really, I don't get to cook so much for a living anymore. It's like my cooking now is I'm back to being a basically a private cook. Um, because, you know, I'm focusing on bar and the booker and Dax and stuff like that. We should do like just like those like kind of weird presentations. Remember we did that haggis back at the SEI? don't think I was with you. You weren't? We did. I did a haggis. I did a high-end haggis. Good, good. And a high-end scrapple. I love all those things. Anyways. So the answer there is I don't know. Is that even a possibility? Also, our low temp mushroom's good. I cook those separately as well. Well, again, as I said before, mushrooms are not going to cook at those temperatures, but mushrooms that are infused in a bag for a long period of time with

[33:15] flavors and then sautéed afterwards. Delicious. done that many, many times. Okay, you want to take our break check? Yeah, right? Take a break. You want to take a quick break? Nah, all right, cool. All right. Dear Dave, Nastasia, Jack, and White, but why I didn't want to come today? So he doesn't like us anymore. Is that true, Jack? He hates us now? No, he's home listening. Okay. I like that. That's from... A few weeks ago, I wrote in to ask your advice on cooking bear. I followed your suggestions, and I'm happy to report that bear is, in fact, delicious. Well, it got to be better than the one we had, right? Remember how awful that was? Tasted like you were chewing on a nail. Tasted like iron supplements. I hate iron supplements. I've never had to take iron supplements. But I think I told you, when Dax had to take him when he was a little baby, like I ate him to see what I was feeding him and they're terrible. You ever had to iron supplements? Terrible. Anyway. Uh, We had 2 pieces, one with some ribs still attached to

[34:09] it and a fair bit of fat and one that was very lean, possibly a tenderloin or whatever the er sign equivalent is.

[34:14] After various lengths in the circulator, simplest turned out to be best for the tenderloin, and since the other piece was much smaller, I decided to treat it the same way. I appreciated both pieces and popped them in a circulator for about 4 to 5 hours, let them cool down a bit and gave them the final sear and sliced them up. I made a jus out of the scraps and bones, seasoned with a little soy and fish sauce, uh, and thickened with uh, 0.25% xanthan gum. Delicious. The lean piece was meaty and tender, very slightly gamey in a good way. The other piece was a bit chewy, but still very tasty. I'm hoping to get my hands on some more next year so I can experiment further. If I can get some stewing meat out of it. I can live the dream and make beer braised bear or brown

[34:50] butter basted bear. Good, right? The question is how old was the bear? That's what I was told. I was told that the bear that we ate was too old by a hunter who had experienced, I guess, young bear and old

[35:01] bear and said that that my problem was that we had old bear. Um, okay. And he also wanted, this is Alex from Toronto. wants to know, uh, more about, like, you know, what I think's important to pay attention to doing the

[35:15] food, in the food system. I don't have time to do that now. We got to do that some other time, some other time. Okay. Cooking issues team. I love the show. been listening for a long time, I learned a ton. Recently I've started carbonating drinks. And finally I have a question to send in. I've built a CO2. This is from John by the way. Recently, I started carbonate drinks. I have a question I want to send in. I built a CO2 sank setup for carbonating, but I'm getting disappointing results. Sad. I hate disappointing carbonation. Lord knows, I hate disappointing carbonation. I've been forced. I've been forced carbonating cold water, roughly 32 Fahrenheit at about 45 to 48 psi. And when I open the seal, it foams like crazy and goes flat within a minute or two. This occurs even if I let it settle for some time. I don't have a proper attachment like the liquid bread carbonator yet. I'm using a shrader valve. Shrader valves are like the valves on like bicycle tires and car tires, right? And there's a famous old website where a guy builds carbonator caps out of Schrader valves. It's like the 1st ever like carbonate in bottle site is out there since way before anyone was thinking about anything. I can't remember the guy's site right now, but it's old and venerable as websites go. Because of this, my technique is basically gas in, disconnect, shake about 20

[36:22] seconds, and repeat until water stops absorbing CO2, about 5 cycles or so. Here is the mistake you were right off the bat. Here's a mistake you're making. You need to keep the pressure on that thing while you're shaking it. Five cycles of like hit and shake is never going to be enough and you're not venting out the the regular gas before you get rid of it. What you need I mean, what you need to do is you need to get rid of all of the air in there

[36:48] first. You can either do that by doing a full carbonation session, opening it, letting it spray off, or you can do it by squeezing out the bottle first,

[36:56] right? That is like, 1st off, you need to get rid of the air. I don't see in your, in your, um, in your list here where you're not uh, getting the, where you're getting the air out of it. Because if you don't have, if you don't get rid of the air that's in there beforehand, and carbonate with pure CO2 in the headspace, you're always going to get massive amounts of foaming when you open it because you're going to have small amounts of gas that are inside of the inside of there and they're going to inflate form nucleation sites for CO2 because it's basically unsoluble.

[37:27] And bang, you're going to get, you're going to lose all your CO2 right from the get go. Also, 45 PSI, 45 to 48 is quite high for water. So you're going to get a lot of foam out. If your water is actually at around 32. You're gonna, uh, 40 is more than sufficient PSI. You're also going to want to maybe throw an ice cube chip or 2 in so that you're not warming up as you're shaking. Just a little bit, even though it adds nucleation sites, it tends to keep

[37:54] it because as you carbonate, you're going to be increasing the temperature of the water because as CO2 dissolves in, the water gets warmed.

[38:02] Um, So, like, I think that's your main, that's your main thing. With the Schrader, you know, I can't, obviously, I can't see your setup, but if you, you know, I'm picturing it. I have had situations where I had to shake while I use my hands to hold valves down in place and it's possible. It sucks but it's possible to do. So what I would do is make sure you get all of the air out beforehand. Keep it cold. Whether or not your water is filtered. shouldn't make that much of it. If you can't see anything in the water. It's probably good enough from a um, from a carbonation standpoint in terms of clarity. The one thing that is true is if it's very highly mineralized. You won't it won't taste as carbonated. Okay? But anyways, squeeze the air out first. 1st thing to do. Then if you can't squeeze the air out, then do a full carbonation run and vent it, let it foam up, and then carbonate it again. Also, when you're shaking, shake while you're applying gas, because it takes a good bit of shaking while under gas pressure, not just the pressure from the headspace, but the full pressure of the tank onto it to get a good carbonation

[39:07] results, and that should work. Also, if you have time, could you describe your sink pedal setup? I know you used TNS brass, but I remember hearing on an older show that you had rigged it so you could continue to use the sync normally. Did you install a latch for this or something that could bypass the pedals entirely? Okay, now here's the problem. So foot pedals, everyone should have foot pedals in their sink. It's just the truth. Um, they're awesome because why would I want to touch a faucet when, you know, or need a hand to touch a faucet? Why would you do that? And you end up wasting less water if, like, when you're washing veg, if you just hit the pedal when you want to watch the veg. The great, right? The problem is, is that there are very few sinks that are designed to use the regular top

[39:43] valves and also a foot pedal valve. So what you need to do is buy a sink, buy a faucet setup, where the input to the spout, right,

[39:54] comes isn't integrated with the 2 the 2 mixing valves you have up top. There's plenty of setups like this. And then what you do is you just install a T valve in between the gooseneck. And um, the uh, 2 like hot and cold water mixing valves, right? And then you also have your foot valves, foot pedal valves, and you

[40:17] why those things together and put them into the input, the tea input into

[40:22] your um, into your main sink. And make sure you put check valves on everything so you don't have any backflow. The best way to do this is if you buy a faucet that has a

[40:32] setup for a sprayer, right? It depends on how it's on how it's laid out, but the one that I have, which is also from TNS brass, I can undo where the sprayer is and interpose a

[40:44] T, you know, a plumbing tea in between where the sprayer comes out and where the valve for that particular sprayer

[40:52] is. So you have to make sure that you don't have some of the ones like, um, some of the sprayers, if you press the sprayer, it automatically uh, turns off the flow to the, um, to the, to the spout. You can't use that kind. But if you have one where you can run both at the same time, you interpose a T there, which is where I've done it, and then put the input directly into that, and you're good to go. Make sense? Okay. How we doing? That's the end. All right, next time we will talk about Bryce's results using novo shape in his steeped fruit. Uh, and uh, we'll talk more about seriously? Big shout out to Ko Miles for supporting us during the fundraising drive. I love Com Miles. Com Miles. Engineer down in Houston. He's the man. He is the man. Come Miles, here's to you. Happy New Year, 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

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