[0:06] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Oh, yeah, it's middle, middle of the road. You kind of split the difference there. Yeah, what do you think? It's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. Although most people like the loud, crazy one. Yeah, but a lot of people said they liked kind of like, you know, like mixing it up. I think middle of the road might be fine. You know, I think generally people like surprises. Oh, you know? Except me. hate surprises. No, it's not true. mean, I don't know. I mean, how was the last time you were truly surprised by something, Jack? That's a great question. I can't think of an answer off the top of my head. When you think about it, we'll get back to it later in the show. Meanwhile, call your questions in two. 718-497-2128, that's 718-497-2128. Got, uh, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez next to me here with her Vegetti. Wow. Oh, God. So, Stas, open up your vagetti here on air. Let's hear it.

[1:08] That's gonna hurt. Wow. This officially the last time I was surprised is right now. So Claire sent us this, bought us this Vegeti, which for those of you that haven't been following the Vegeti Chronicles. You tear that sucker open is a vegetable spiralizer. Now, it looks, like, um, kind of like an hourglass. It's got 2 sets of teeth, 2 sets of

[1:42] veggetti teeth, and different, uh, one's fine and one's course, and it's got a little pusher so that you don't get your fingers sliced off in the

[1:50] veggetti. Now, Stas, why don't you go ahead and shove a cucumber into your virgin. No, I'm going to use a zucchini? Start small. She's now twisting it like a pencil sharpener. Yeah. Yeah. That was sick. Good sound, guys. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we are fully experts. Let me see. That sound experts for you, folks. Yeah, I mean, it tastes like, tastes like, but look, it's good. It doesn't get that. Well, Stas is trying to avoid the middle part, the seeds here. I mean, I could see these being used in a salad. I can see. Guys, it tastes just like spaghetti. It's amazing. It's like you use stotch. It's amazing. The cucumber is kind of cool. Let's try it. try it. All right, one second. Let me see. I bet you the texture. Oh, maybe we should have peeled it 1st there, Stas. Let me see here. All right, all right. Let's see. Ready here? This is this is sampling the cucumber Vegeti. I mean, look. It's not a bad product. All the shit. As it's not, that's not a bad product. As a topping or something? Nice. Yeah? I mean, I wouldn't cook that zucchini because it's going to turn into like a massive mess. Oh, she fries it. Which makes no sense because it's a sponge. salads, that's good. Yeah, for the cucumber bread, it's good, but look at the, it all gets compacted. Yeah, yeah, there's a there's a bunch of stuff compacted into Stas is veggetti here. She better get out. All right, so what? Gross. We don't have a carrot. No, I didn't know. Maybe they have a carrot in the kitchen they can bring to us later in the show and we can spiral. That would be good. Like for topping. Oh, it's traded carrot? Yeah, I mean, look, obviously, like, you know, I got Asian on the

[3:43] mic, so I'm thinking Daikon. Yeah. Oh, color, you're on the air. Hi, Dave. Natasha and Jack and everybody. Um, my name's Bradley. I'm from San Francisco and I had a couple questions for you. I found this podcast about 7 weeks ago. Um, and I'm unemployed, so I've listened to 104 episodes in the last 7 weeks. Oh my god, get a job, man. you don't want to listen to that much cooking issues. It's gonna rot your brain. Well, I'm helping a refurb, uh, uh, do a

[4:14] some family handyman projects. So I'm listening to it while working, but, um, I, I, um, my family does this thing called Meat Fest every year for my mom and my uncle's

[4:24] birthday. They were born on the same day and we get a whole ribeye and, you know, you grill it all up. And so my goal this year was to, um, build a dry curing chamber and, um, dry age, uh, a ribeye that I got, um, and I'd seen online that, um, like, I'd go pound salt that they put, they had suggested using a tray

[4:48] of of rock salt, uh, of sea salt down below, um, as like a

[4:54] desiccant, and I was wondering if as long as, um, my humidity and temperature are controlled, if that's helpful,

[5:01] or if that, if that is just a, a kind

[5:04] of, um, a bad way of keeping, uh, humidity, uh, relatively uh, the same throughout the process. Yeah, that's a great question. So, um, Yeah, as far as my understanding of it is, the salt is more

[5:21] for, like you say, stability of the humidity, right? Because it's like the salt is going to, at saturation, is going to want to maintain a specific humidity. I had always read, so the 1st time I ever read this was, you know, decades ago in a now outdated book, what's it

[5:39] called? sausage, the sausage make or something, was by Rytech Kutas, which was made. Oh, it's got the book's got to be from the 80s or something like that. But he was the 1st one I, you know, saw recommending the salt in the curing in the in the aging or curing chamber as a as a humidity modifier. But my memory serves me. He actually has huge amounts of salt and some water there so that, you know, you could evaporate water into it or absorb it as needed,

[6:09] right? So it would only be a desiccant until it turns completely to liquid if you are in an extremely human environment. Otherwise, it could be, you know, used the other way. It just keeps something at the same relative humidity. I forget what it is because it's been a long time, but it's somewhere in the mid 70s, I think. Is that right? Have you looked it up recently? It's like 77% or something like this. Yeah, I saw like 80 to 85 is what I saw. So around there. Yeah, I mean, some people just believe in the mystical power of salt in the aging

[6:38] room period. So David Burke, you know, when he years ago did his steakhouse in

[6:44] Chicago, did an aging room and he literally tiled on the walls, giant blocks of salt, which were pretty impressive, I have to say. And I think he was serving stuff on that, you know, on that Himalayan salt block stuff. Yeah, and it was pretty impressive. I don't know if it made a bit of difference or not because, you know, obviously, you know, there was no side by sides, but, um,

[7:06] it was impressive to look cool. So my setup is I've got a 4.4 cubic foot, Kenmore, um, mini fridge that I've, um, I'm rewiring to, um,

[7:19] include a temperature controller, and, and I'm taking out the thermostat for the fridge and rewiring it to an Arduino, um, along with a fan and a humid fire.

[7:31] But so if I have like that kind of setup and they're all, you

[7:34] know, with, you know, maintaining within normal The salt is like a fun extra but not necessarily something that I need. Well, yeah, except for this. What? So what is the, if you're running the coils in the fridge,

[7:51] right, that will automatically remove enough humidity to keep your humidity low enough, right?

[7:57] Then if you have a humidifier to add back in, then you can achieve any humidity you want without the

[8:02] salt. Right? Uh, I mean, a salt can maybe act as a buffer there, but it's not necessary. The, um, if you weren't running cooling coils that were going to automatically

[8:15] dehumidify the, the, if you didn't have some way of removing humidity and adding humidity, then whether or not salt would be helpful would depend on what the ambient relative humidity of your area is,

[8:29] right? I forgot where you said you were calling from. but it's San Francisco. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, you're pretty, I mean, like, you're just air is pretty nice there, right? Yeah, um, I mean, it's it's pretty pleasant. It's it's a little damp, um, just because of the fog, although, you know, it's been nice recently. I guess it depends on what block you're on, right? Everything's a microclimate in San Francisco. Exactly. Yeah, I moved from the, the, the foggy side of the city to the warm side of the city. Um, and it makes a huge difference of about 5 to 7 degrees depending on the day. That's so crazy to a New Yorker. You know what I mean? That whole concept is so crazy to a New Yorker. Anyway, um, so, so yeah, I would say that, you know, if, in the, in the fridge, you have the, like, uh,

[9:17] it, will it dehumidify the fridge as it's working or is it some, is it totally sealed? Like, is it old style so you can see the coils or is it new style? So you can't see the coil? So I haven't taken it fully apart yet. It's about half taken apart, I'm like in the process of building this, and one of the reasons why I was asking was because, um, you know, if I have to put a pyrex

[9:38] panful of salt at the bottom, that's gonna change the way I configure it. Um, but it, it, it doesn't really have. It's pretty, it's pretty sealed in there. Um, there isn't really. You know, there, there's, there's like, um, there's the, uh, there's the freezer component of the refrigerator that's got like 2 coils, but I was

[9:59] going to try to take that out. Right. Well, except remember though, uh, these units usually have like the single compressor and they're running everything off of the one. So if you take the, you're not going to use the, you're not going to use the chilling of the fridge at all. No, no, I'm going to use the chilling of the fridge, but I was going to try to take the, like one of those like mini freezer components in there. Usually that mini freezer component is actually what provides the chilling for the entire fridge. And

[10:26] it's just, yeah, and it's, I mean, if it's the one I'm thinking about. And then, um, what happens is, is they they concentrate and insulate the freezer area so that it stays frozen and then the rest of it kind of doesn't. And that's why stuff that's up near that freezer box, sometimes freezes over, like things like lettuce and ice. Because remember, they're making these things by the bazillion and they need them to be as cheap as possible. So they only have one refrigeration system in them, not two. And they're always, uh, you know, it's basically just like a, um, like a balancing act to get the temperature, right, um, throughout the box. So, um, you know, the, the, you could shield

[11:07] off, like the coil there a little bit so that it's not really chilling too much, if you don't want to chill too much, but it's condensation onto those coils, and then the melt

[11:17] off, and you got to drain the water out from those coils that's going to dehumidify that chamber for you.

[11:23] Because if anytime you're freezing, anytime you freeze water out of the air onto a

[11:27] coil and then, you know, put it through a saw, thaw cycle and drip out. how a dehumidifier works. You know, I mean, that's literally what they are. And so, um, you know, having that in some,

[11:40] like in contact with the area in the box is going to definitely provide, uh, the dehumidification that you, that, you know,

[11:49] therefore, that you could add the humidity back. Otherwise, um, I mean, otherwise, if, and if you can't use that to hit the numbers that you want, then the salt might be something that's useful for you.

[12:01] Okay. Great. Well, that's really helpful. Um, and then I had another question. You had, um, an episode, I think it was like 96, you, uh, we're talking about a coffee cocktail called a Shake NATO. Um, and um, you, you said you were cold, you were cold brewing the coffee directly into the

[12:23] liquor, and I was wondering if that was, uh, just grain spirits or what, or like, you know, uh, as close to that as you can get, um,

[12:32] yeah. And I was wondering what what liquor you were doing the cold brew in, the extraction in the ISI. Um, it depends kind of on my mood. What I use most often is, uh, a dark rum, the one that I, and of those, the one I use most often

[12:50] is, uh, called Ranzacapa, which, uh, it's called 23. It's not 23 years old. They use like a Solera system. So like, you know, one micro liter in a bottle is probably 23 years old, but

[13:01] it's a good, nice, um, it's a good, nice dark rum. And I like it because it goes, it goes well with the clubs. But, you know, that said, I've done it into totally neutral as well. Depends on what you're shooting for. Like we're shooting for like a cocktail and the coffee flavor is extremely intense. So, you know, 2 ounces of, but I also wanted a little bit of that kind of rum sweetness on the nose. But if you don't want that, you could use, you know, you could use a neutral, a neutral spirit. But we were using regular 40 proof, um, 40 proof liquor. In fact, the recipe for the ISI, the one I always use is the one that's

[13:39] in in the liquid intelligence. And if the book. And if you don't, you know, if you don't, I'm pretty sure you could do a look inside on Amazon and snag the recipe, um, for the, I think it's called

[13:51] Café Zacapa is what I call it in the book. And it's just, but you could substitute any kind of liquor you want. The key there is that a coffee infuses so quickly into the alcohol that you just have to be pretty accurate with your grind, you know,

[14:07] and pretty accurate with your timing. Otherwise, it can just go intensely bitter. Just intensely bitter, you know? And the whole idea of doing it that way is so that you don't need to add like a boat ton of sugar back to it to make

[14:20] it, to make it, um, good. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah, um, there's a, uh, race in San Francisco called beta breakers. Um, it's like uh, the most San Francisco San Francisco holidays. Everybody wakes up at, uh, you know, 7 AM and does and pre drinks for the race and then gets in costume and runs this race completely drunk and

[14:42] it's, uh, a complete mess. Um, but I do a, a pre-breakfast. I was thinking about drinking or like making this as the cocktail. Last year we did a Kentucky breakfast. Is it going to be something that, you said being precise, is that going to be something that is too

[14:59] difficult? You think is going to be too difficult to do, um, ala minute for a bunch of people? Um, you know, at at 7 in the morning kind of thing, or is that, is it going to be, um, would that be a good application of that? Yeah, I would make the coffee liquor the night before, let it sit. And then, you know, and it's, it's nope, I've done, well, just as we did that cigar event, how much of that stuff do we bust out? A lot, right? So it's no problem. You can bust out like a lot, lot of it. Um, it's, and it'll hold overnight, no problem. Um, and then just shake it, shake it in the morning. Uh, you know, and then you could do the either the milk, the version with milk or the version without milk, depending on, you know, kind of what you feel

[15:41] like. But already, like, you know, man, running when you're drunk, that's painful. Why do people do that to themselves? Oh no, it's so much fun. So, like, what we do is, so, like, last year, I made strawberry

[15:53] buck reed pancakes with bourbon, uh, whipped cream and had Kentucky breakfasts, and you're only going like 2 miles, and you

[16:00] don't, like, actually run. You more like walk and drink more. It's like, it's like a, it's like a 2 mile. It's like a bar crawl, except there's no bars and you just bring all of your alcohol and everybody's drinking in public, and it's the one day of the year where the nudity ban is, like,

[16:17] is, um, not in effect. So, you know, there's costumes and naked people and people thrown

[16:23] up. And it's, it's, it's the most San Francisco of San Francisco events. This is like Santa Con? This is like this is like our version of Santa Con without frightening the children or maybe with frightening the children, but not frightening. Well, we do Sanacon. So like, you know, we we're on that bandwagon too. This is like our own special thing. Um, but, you know, you, it's, it's, it's just this massive. they shut down the streets and they like have like, you know, um,

[16:47] it's, it's just massive. And I know you hate block parties and being outside, but, um,

[16:52] it's, it's, it's really, you know, if, if you ever wanted, you know, people do all sorts of weird stuff and it's just kind of

[17:01] insane. Um, collective insanity. A quarter of a 1000000 people show up every year to do this. That's a lot. That's quite a lot. Anyway, so listen, try that. Try that recipe out and tweet us at cooking issues. Let us know how it worked out and let us know how this your caring chamber worked out. Yeah I will. Thank you for letting me Bogart the show. All right. We got another call. Actually, a few more calls, yeah, so let's take the next one. All right, cool. Call her. on the air. Hey, I just wanted to give you a little bit of encouragement and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. You have to continue the intro with your show in the full New York WWE introductory

[17:41] fashion because that was the 1st time I heard your show. In fact, I think I, I just happened to find your podcast and I, the 1st episode was one that, uh, Nastasia stole Christmas trees. Oh, yeah. But the intro, I'm sitting in my bed listening to the intro, I'm thinking, what in the

[17:57] Sam, hell is this? And then, of course, it turns into a great show with Ranson Rave. So don't let anybody change your introduction because when I started listening to the backlogs, as soon as I told

[18:09] them a backlog, it was like, hello, this is Dave, and this is like your NPR, and it was like, is this the same show? This is not right. There's so much more aggressive ideology here that I want to hear. So don't let anybody change that. Anyway, my question was, how do you uh, clean your um, cast iron, do you use soap is the uh, is the question? Yeah, I use soap. You know, I use regular kind of, you know, the dishwashing stuff like you have on

[18:34] the, on the counter, not the, not the powdery stuff, obviously, but just like regular kind of hand dishwashing soap. I mean, I don't let it soak there forever, but I use, I just use scotch bright and that soap and then wash it, give it a rinse, and then I always, almost always, throw them back on the burner for like 15 seconds on high

[18:56] heat just to heat it up, get all the water off the pan so that it's dry, so it's not like

[19:01] sitting and do it. And I've never had a problem. You know, my, you know, ever. I mean, it's, I think it's the old, the old, uh, cleaners,

[19:10] like alkali-based cleaners, uh, or alkaline cleaners can hose it because it can start breaking down the

[19:16] surface. But that polymerized oil surface isn't, isn't, you know, dawn ain't cutting that grease. Do you know what I'm saying? Totally. Um, and, you know, I think aggressive scrubbing can probably

[19:29] be uh, might be able to cause you a problem, but like the regular, like, uh, you know, I don't use steel wool on it, but I use

[19:38] scotch brights and, you know, choreboys and stuff like that on them. And, um, because otherwise they get all gunked up, you know, and mine stay like pretty, pretty slick. And I've used it on. I have old, uh, polished pans, like an old, I have an old

[19:54] Griswold that's polished and, um, you know, that I've had for, uh, probably, you know, 25

[20:00] years and and it was probably 40 years old when I bought it. And I've never had a problem with that. And, um, And I have a bunch of lodge stuff that, you know, is newer, the kind of pebbles surface that's not polished.

[20:14] And it's also fine that way. Of course, that, you know, that those newer pans take a lot longer to build up to a complete,

[20:21] like, awesome nonstickness than the old school ones, but my seasoning never comes up.

[20:26] In fact, they're the ones that pans I use most often. So I have, I scrub them all, all the time because I have um, I have like 6 of those uh, like fajita pans and they just like they, they stack so easy. And so I keep them right on a ledge above my burners and spam of am if they're easy to get to. So I use them a lot, but... But anyway... But, yeah, you know, if you're going to be an excitable New Yorker, and frustratedly excited when somebody tells you that they don't like biscuits, there's no way you can go back to the NPR

[20:57] intro because eventually you're going to get all excited. So just stay with the excitement. Alright. Fair enough. What do you think, Jack? Sounds good. I got another call waiting. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for the call. What do you think, Stas? Stas are shaking her heads. Even though this is radio, not TV, she is merely shaking her head up and down, which is classic stars. But thank you for calling in and uh, no, and next time, we'll go back to cooking issues. Call her, you are on the air. Hey, how's it doing, Dave, Nastasia, Jack, and the rest of the crew. Hope everyone's well. Yeah, doing well. We're enjoying the nice weather, but Nastasia hates nice weather. Do you know why Nastasia hates nice weather? This is nice weather. What do you mean? It's not raining. gloomy. But oh, you like gloomy. Nastasi hates nice weather because she doesn't like it when people enjoy going outside. I used my Twitter, and I was feeling great, and it was sunny out, and I said something on Twitter. I was like, I'm a change man in the sun, and then somebody tweeted at me and they were like, don't tell Stas that. Yeah. Because she hates when people enjoy the outside, especially hipsters. Anyway, sir, go ahead. Sorry. Oh. I'm also a vote for your enthusiastic opening, but that's a side note. Awesome. My question today is, if you're aware of any other modernist technique that you can make black garlic outside of the long and slow method.

[22:16] Did you write in the black garlic question? Yeah, okay. Just how would you go making guitar

[22:25] like if there's a quicker way of doing it? Because the world is so crazy. This happens so often. Like we have a question someone sent us on black garlic, uh, which is totally separate. So, and, you know, what's unfortunate? We have to get, I don't know if you can get Johnny Hunter on the, um, uh, on the phone, Jack, but he has, I was literally talking to black art. He was on the show a couple of weeks ago, and I was talking to him about black garlic, because they make it, and then he said, yeah, someone makes it in like, in like a couple of days, and I think they just do it by jacking the temperature hire. But I couldn't remember what the protocol was that the guy used.

[23:02] So for those of you that don't know, uh, who were listening to the program. So black garlic is something and like, from all accounts that I can read, it was fairly recent in invention.

[23:14] But the basic principle is you keep whole garlic cloves, whole garlic

[23:22] heads, rather, you know, skins on and everything sealed in a container so that it doesn't, they don't dry out. And you let them go for at like 60 degrees Celsius, like 140 or thereabouts, you know, like within plus or

[23:36] minus uh five, five, six, five, 10 degrees. And you keep it for like a month or a little longer. And people mistakenly call this fermentation stars, but it's not really fermentation because it's not, it's not a, it's not a bacterial or a fungal thing of

[23:52] the crap. It's just, you know, it's it's this stuff's breaking down over time at this elevated temperature. And what you get is this kind of like awesome sweet black garlic that is awesome, but it's expensive. So a lot of people make it themselves. But, and, you know, the only way I've ever done it is in my Excalibur food dehydrator, but people do it in their rice cooker, for instance.

[24:16] And in the rice cooker, rice cookers are a bit hotter. They're at 165 degrees Fahrenheit. And I've heard people say that 2 weeks in a rice cooker might be enough, you know, on the

[24:25] keep warm function. But I forget what Johnny said. I don't know if we can get him or not, but if not, I can tweet him and have him tell me

[24:34] what the other guys were using in Madison. They're upset today, by the way, losing Madison, the badgers. They lost. Oh, yeah. Yikes. Anyway, oh, badgers. Turns out it wasn't bad. Mushroom, mushroom. Anyway, was that actually done by someone in University of Madison? Anyway, I digress. The point is, is that, yes, there is a way to speed it up. I don't know the protocols, but it doesn't taste quite the same. It still tastes good, but it's not the same because anytime you're working with these reactions that take place over a long period of time that are very complex, whether they be mired or any other kind of reaction like

[25:05] this, the flavor you get depends on every factor involved, including the rate at which it happens.

[25:11] And so, um, speeding it up, you might get something that looks the same, but it probably, and according to

[25:18] Johnny doesn't taste the same. doesn't taste bad, and it's not necessarily a question of better or worse. It's just it's going to be different. Does that make sense? Fair enough. Yeah. But if I can get him on the phone, I'll figure out what it is to speed up, because he said that these guys were getting it in like in a couple of days. Like, I think it was under a week, which would be awesome. I mean, it's not like a 10 minute thing. But, and you know what? I'm wondering, like, what else, like, what else have people experimented with? I know the Nordic food guys lab, the Nordic food lab folks, did onions and shallots the same way, and they said that those were good. You know, the thing is, is that alliums are so complicated that,

[25:57] you know, a lot of interesting stuff goes on, but I have like a rice cooker that'll

[26:01] stay, keep warm for like, you know, weeks and weeks. I should just keep random stuff in there and see what happens to it. I kept, I've only kept rice warm for 3 days. I was hoping I would get some sort of miracle rice after like 3 days of keep warm, but it

[26:16] didn't, but maybe I should have left it for like 2 weeks. Like maybe I'll just like divide up my rice cooker. Like have some rice there, some onions, some garlic, and some other random stuff and just keep it

[26:28] on, keep warm for like a month and see and like kind of note the changes that happen to a bunch of different food stuffs, you know what I mean?

[26:34] Yeah, totally Yeah, I'll give it a shot. Anyway, I'll either tweet it on cooking issues or if Johnny gets back before the end of the show, I'll have

[26:44] him figure, you know, tell us the fast way to do it, all right? Excellent. sounds good. Thanks a lot, man. All right, thanks for calling. Oh, okay, call her. on the air. Hey, Dave, how's it going? doing all right. God, I have to say I like the loud intro a lot more. Nice. Nice. So we know that our core folks, the folks that are willing to call in. They like the loud. That's who matters. Yeah, gotta play to the court, maybe. I got 2 totally unrelated questions for you, so start with the 1st one. I run a pop-up bar and I do a lot of home infusions and things like that.

[27:19] And I've tried filtering with coffee filters, which are terrible, and Buchner funnels, which are a pain to use, and water filters, which I'm worried strip

[27:28] flavors out do activated charcoal. They do. But I read all of Liquid Intelligence and read all of cooking issues

[27:33] blog, and I'm interested in your clarification techniques, but I don't have a centrifuge. So I'm wondering if Aguar clarification works on infusions or just blended things like your strawberry

[27:45] gin for the 1st question. Right. So, I have Agar clarified liquor, but I'm not super jazzed about it, to be honest, because it strips, it just strips a lot of flavor and, um,

[28:04] and you end up having to add some, uh, water because you got to hydrate the agar in water and, um, because you, obviously, the temperatures, uh, you can't reach the hydration temperature of Agar in

[28:18] straight boost. And so I've done it, but I just don't like it. You know what I mean? It's like Agar clarifying juices? Yeah. But like doing the agar clarified booze, I've never been super, I've never been super happy with it. I tried it once because I did uh, an event in um, in South America once and I couldn't get a centrifusion. I was trying to do, I forget what it was. It was something like it was something like strawberry and gin, but as a whole, you know what I mean? And I just I just wasn't happy with it. Um, I'm not saying that you couldn't find something you're happy with. And it will work, right? But it's just the flavor is not going to be that good. Now, you could, you could, you could maybe treat it as something that's pre-watered a little bit, right? But still, I think you're going to strip a lot of flavor out. So, like, in other words, if you were going to do like a carbonated drink where it didn't matter that it was going to come out more watery, then, sure, you could take an infusion, hydrate the agar in the water, uh, and then like temper it back in, trying to keep the alcohol percentage somewhere around 20, maybe, 20,

[29:28] 30%, uh, well, I would say 20. And then, and then Agar, clarify, your yield might not be that high. Your proof will probably go up a little bit over your base level because the water's going to be preferentially held onto the

[29:39] agar a bit, and it'll clarify, and it might taste good for something carbonated where you need like a lighter flavor

[29:45] anyway. But I don't think it's going to work that well for, let's say, a stir drink. Do you think that, um, if a charcoal and a water filter would strip less flavor than

[29:55] Izar or am I just, should I just plug down for a sensor shoot? Well, I mean, the

[30:04] charcoal does clearly strip flavor. I mean, you know, you can taste it. It strips flavor. Even if you take something that's clear, for instance, so you know you're not removing particulate matter,

[30:16] then and you taste it, you can taste a difference after it's gone through a charcoal filter,

[30:21] like a Brita. In fact, we used to run, we used to run all of our Smirnoff through Britas to get rid of the, you know, any residual hospital nose on it before we were using it to do rotary evaporation back at

[30:33] the back to school. And, uh, but I was too cheap to buy the actual Britta holder. So we used to take a torch and melt the bottom of core containers and then punch the filters through the bottom of core containers. That's how cheap we are. Someone was, someone was like, you guys have such great facilities. And literally, like, we're sitting there like melting the bottom of a cork container with a torch and punching a britter through because we're too cheap to buy the pitcher for it. But whatever. Um, I mean, look, centrifuges are great. And I think with within a year, I will say within a year, there will probably be centrifuge, there will probably be a centrifuge that normal people can afford to have around within about a year, I would say.

[31:19] I mean, I'm not going to guarantee it, but I would say that, I mean, I would bet on it. If there's not, I'm in big trouble. Let me put it that way. So, you know, if you can hold out a bit longer, you know, maybe, maybe you should hold out a bit longer for the, for the centerfuge. Cool. All right, and I have another question about learning entirely different. One of your favorite subjects, country ham. Ah love it. So, uh, I was wondering, uh, if I want to serve it like a European dry cured ham, is it better to get one of the ones that have been aged for a year or

[31:52] more or one of the ones that have been gone for like 4 to 6 months, okay? No, no, no, here's the problem. The 4 to 6 month ones are, some of them are like, they're not that they're low, low quality, right? But the way that they, they, the people who are good at it anyway, at doing faster hams. They, they basically, um, they put it through faster cycles of, of, uh, of kind of, uh, of, like it would go through

[32:23] naturally, and then they, they keep it at exactly the humidity they need to, to get the, the thing as dry as

[32:29] possible as fast as possible, right? So on 1st inspection, these hams can look like

[32:35] a like a 12 month old ham, right? Right. Now, someone that's doing it. So, okay, let's just Back up a second. So if you were to take someone, let's say, like a Newsoms or an Edwards

[32:49] or, uh, you know, Finchville or any one of these kind of like style bent and caliber of hams, like completely traditional style hams, right? And you were to open one of those guys up at seven, seven, 6 or 7 months, right? So this ham would be okay then for, like, traditional American cooking, but the inside of the kind of, like, cushion area of the meat, the meaty part, is going to be really tacky. You know what I mean? And it's going to be impossible to slice without gumming. Forget the fact that the flavor won't be fully developed yet. But in terms of slice ability, it's going to be pretty tacky in there. Um, So one of the hams that's been meant to be released after, you know, a fairly shorter amount of time might seem like it's lost all that

[33:35] tack in there. However, I've noticed on slicing them, when you slice them and then let them sit, they can get kind of gummy tacky. They not going to have the same texture. And also, there's no, there's no way that you're going to get the same kind of, um,

[33:50] flavor, uh, in a quick, in a quick, uh, thing as you will in a, in a, in a slow one because you'll have the drying, but you won't have the flavor development from protein breakdown and whatever else happens, you know, lip, you know, lip oxidation, whatever in the heck else happens in the ham as it's

[34:08] aging. That stuff just takes time. And they're not accelerating the aging. They're just really accelerating the dehydration of it. You know what I'm saying? Uh, and so, you know, what, you know, what a country ham, uh, you know, really wants is to go through, you know, um, you know, a full, you know, a full cycle of at least a year, sometimes, you know, better, 2 summers,

[34:32] like the, you know, at the, in the middle of that 2nd summer, man, when they're like 18 months, that's like sweet.

[34:37] That a sweet spot. You know what I mean? Question, if I have one that's that old and that naturally dried out, does it need to be refrigerated once it's been cut? No. I mean, some people do. It depends on how you how you store it. I used, like I say, I used to store mine out in my, uh, you know, hanging. The problem is, is that you can get certain insects can attack it and you can get mites that hit the, you know, that

[35:02] create a powdery residue around. That's why some of the old timers that used to spread lard on the on the cut surfaces. But, you know, the other thing is that sometimes, you know, when you bone it, there's like the, you know, you create a cavity there and like

[35:16] molds can grow in there. Um, you know, of course, you can always trim away mold, mold, that mold on the outside. as long as you trim it away, you know, isn't going to kill you. You know, you just got to, you know, I say, you know, trim it away. The thing about storing it in the fridge is that you can store it in the fridge for even a relatively long period of time, but like I tend to some, like get like weird kind of like sticky nastiness on where the paper,

[35:45] let's say you were to wrap it in wax paper and put it in your fridge. I'd get like some sort of weirdness on the surface of the meat right by the wax paper and sometimes you could pick up odors from your fridge and vice versa. Like, for instance, in the country ham fridge at some, you know, sambar. Like, they put the, for some reason, they put the milk for the coffee in the country ham

[36:04] fridge, and that milk is like unusable. I don't know how those suckers are using it for coffee. They must love ham coffee. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, the other thing is I don't have that much space in my fridge anyway, so. Yeah so I wouldn't sweat it. I mean, like, you know, just, uh, you know, I wouldn't have it necessarily resting against anything, uh, because you can get

[36:22] some like weird mole weird context. I mean, I keep the bugs away from it. Um, you know, and if you get if you happen to get mites, again, none of that stuff's going to kill you. You know what I mean? Uh, you know, just trim away anything you don't like and you're good to go. I mean, this stuff is, you know, this stuff survival food, man. Yeah, of course. And on final question. I know that Edwards uses, um, heritage breed pigs like Berkshire and whatnot. Are there any other producers using those kind of pigs? Um, I think, I think uh, Newsoms might have bought some stuff from uh, Patrick, and there's a, there's a, I just went out of my head, but there's a, there's a company that produces some really expensive and very delicious hams that are all kind of mast fed.

[37:03] I saw them at star chefs, so you can look up the people who are, but the name of the company just went right out of my head as I went to go think about it.

[37:12] But I think it's more and more going to happen because, I mean, that's really where that's really where the future of American kind of country ham excellence lies is in the feed and the

[37:24] meat itself. Like, I've always said, the curing is there. It's just the, you know, they hadn't forgotten how to do that right. You know what I mean? It's just the quality of the meat that needed to be kind of brought up. I think we're getting there. Can I chime in here? Yeah. I'm Sam Edwards, and I listen to Heritage Radio Network. Oh nice. I just really wanted an excuse to do that. Nice. All right, nice. Sam Edwards actually one of the original sponsors of the radio network. Huge supporter. He has sponsored the show from time to time, but, you know, anyway, good man. Did that answer your question? Hello? All right, nice. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Thanks a lot. All right, cool. Thank you. Okay. So we're about to get kicked off, but let me just go through what? We're not going to get take a break. Jack's gonna fake insert a break, right, Jack? Actually, you know, I have another minute for another caller. I just the lines are off the hook today. All right, call her, you're on the air. Hey, is that me? Yeah. Oh, hey, Dave, on the intro note. with whatever makes you happy. See, there's the 1st person that cared about, like, what we wanted. Stas doesn't care. Stas just made. is making her head at her migraine head. All right, I'll go with what's happy. Nice. Do you have a... Yep. But I do have a quick question for you. I made your tea time for Easter brunch. It was a great hit. Everybody loved it. Awesome drink, but there was so much good foaminess left in the bottom of the shaker. Is there a trick to getting that out? Oh, that's a good question. Well, so you got to know your, like, I don't know your shake technique, right? So when you shake, usually you shake and then uh, kind of like let it drain and then I'll do a, a snap, like, you know, I'll, like, uh, because I'm holding the, the, the shaker kind of pointed down with my, um, with my

[39:20] pointer holding the, um, holding the strainer onto the thing, right? And then I'll give it a it a snap down and that'll get some last little, little bit, little bit out. Um, and plus I always reshape. Train it out? Sorry, I couldn't hear you. What did you say? Was that are you using a hawthorn to strain? Yeah. So here's the thing with a strainer, right? So the bad hawthorns. When I say bad, I mean the cheap, like the normal kind of hawthorns that you use, you have to

[39:53] be really be careful. Otherwise, you get like too many of different larger and weird size ice crystals coming out.

[40:01] I like a couple of ice crystals in a drink because like I like that little crunch. The problem is is that it's hard to control with those kind of older hawthorn strainers. That's why most of the, you know, a lot of the cocktail people for a long time who were anti-crystal because there's a huge anti-crystal on the top of the drink movement for years in the cocktail world.

[40:20] And that's why those folks, you'd always see them straining through a

[40:24] T strainer, right? So they would have a hawthorn, which why would you use a hawthorn if you were going to go through a tea strainer, right? Don't ask me because I don't know. Um, except for the fact that they rest more conveniently. They're easier to hold than a jewel strainer, I think, in a tin. Uh, and then they would strain through a, um, um, a tea strainer. Now, the problem with a T strainer. It's fine for a daiquiri. Um, but for a milk wash product, which tea time is milk washers, milk washing for those of you that, you know, I don't know,

[40:51] go, go look it up in the, in the liquid intelligence, or it's been on the show before, I think, milk washing, there's a specific foam from the whey proteins

[40:58] and milk washing, and that is destroyed by a tea

[41:01] strainer. So, uh, so I never use a T strainer on that. And so that's why I use exclusively the cocktail

[41:09] kingdom's like fine the fine wired hawthorn because it's like the best balance. It doesn't let through an inordinate amount of crystals. You don't have to worry about, you know, clamping the gate of your hawthorn down so hard to the shaker that, you know,

[41:25] you're, you know, you're having like white knuckles by the end of the evening and, um, you know, and it doesn't hurt the foams. That's what I use for it. Yeah, that's what I used as well. And I guess it's just the uh, the snapping technique because after, after 2 or 3 of those on a Sunday afternoon. My technique kind of goes sideways. Well, they go down easy, right? But the, yeah, just give it a snap and that's going to get that other stuff out. I have had, um, bartenders who are used to the kind of older style, like, uh, you know, fat wire hawthorns. We call them or coarse hawthorns, I'll call them. Um, say that they, that, that they're not getting everything out of the shaker and that they're, you know, they kind of upset

[42:03] them. But then if you if you just give it that last snap on the on the way out, I think you're going to get most of that stuff back out of there. All right. Well, thank you very much. That's a great drink for anybody who hasn't had it yet. No, well, thank you. Thank you. Good vote for the tea time. T time styles, we do a lot of events because people like them, right? Yeah you made that for one of our events. It was good. Oh nice. All right, so we're going to get ripped off and we didn't get to any of the written in questions, but I will just describe them. This time in a while, it's been all callers. which I like. like that. But okay, so we got we had a follow-up on the ricotta, which we'll talk about next week. We're back here next week, right? We're not anywhere styles, right? Okay. What? We may, our company wide meeting might run one of this. No, I'm not gonna I'm gonna come here. because it's more important. And we had a question on cooking squirrel from Sam Geiger, which is going to be interesting, because I've never cooked squirrel, but I will talk about what I think. And we had a question on black garlic and what and making a tea out of the black garlic skins and what and what thickens them. And real quick, whatever. We have a Kickstarter. for a new heritage radio website that will make, especially my life really a lot easier. I do all this like horrible HTML coding every day to get these shows up. It's completely unnecessary. All right, Jack, talk about the Kickstarter. Yeah, quick. So the code's expiring on our website. It's going to fall apart. soon. So we have a new website that's going to be built. It's going to be really, really awesome, interactive, modern, mobile friendly. So go to Kickstarter, search for Heritage Radio Network. Every dollar counts. Please, please, please do it for all of us. So many perks. I mean, at the highest levels you can get your own show on Heritage radio. At the lowest levels, I make you some ringtones. What does it cost to get your own show on the heritage radio network? I think a full season is a $5000 donation. That'd be like a 12 episode, you know, season. That's pretty cheap though. They get you doing the production and all this other stuff? Yeah. Your own radio show. So you like any any one of you out here with an axe to grind and $5000 burning a hole in the bottom of your pocket can come over here. It comes with free pizza at lunch. Did I mention this? Yeah we'll do that. Yeah. No travel or accommodations, though. And for a 1000 bucks, you can do one show. One episode. You can have an hour to see wherever you want. Whatever you want. Whatever you want. And they'll push it on the, they'll push it on the what you call there, on the website. You can push it on your, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, okay. That's great. And so, you know, we didn't get to talk about. next week. The Tandor. I've got a lot of tandor stuff. I've been going tandor crazy. Maybe I'll cook with Tandor this weekend too, and we'll, and we'll get back to the cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes

[44:50] 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 with questions anytime at info at heritageradionetwork.org. Heritage Radio Network is a 501c3 nonprofit. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.