[0:00] Today's show was brought to you by molecularecipes.com, the world's number one source for modernist recipes, techniques,

[0:06] ingredients, and tools. 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.

[0:25] Hello and we're back with cooking issues live on the Heritage Radio Network. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues here with this Dasio, Hammer, Lopez, and a new person joining us in the studio, Ben, who's trailing Jack for engineering here on the Heritage Rhea

[0:41] Network. Ben, why don't you tell us a little bit something about yourself here? Just quit my job to work as a radio producer. Yeah, and I heard tell that prior to this, you were a corporate attorney. I was sadly. Yeah, what kind of any particular kind of corporate law, like chopping them up, gluing them back together. Picking up the bankruptcy pieces. Ooh, fun. Fun. Fun. We got Jack over there, and Jack has kindly given us a bottle of Prosecco to celebrate. Congratulations. Yay. Oh, yeah.

[1:15] Yeah, uh, so, uh, last Friday, the James Beard Awards uh, uh, said that Liquid Intelligence was their favorite cocktail book of the year.

[1:27] Nice. Or as I texted Nastasia, because it was her birthday, by the way. So she was off in Branford partying like a rock star, right? True or false. Yeah. Uh, so, uh, while she was parting like a rock star, I sent her a text saying that I had won best hot food cold separator, which is the only thing she uses liquid intelligence

[1:44] for is separating the hot side in the cold. all she cares about. She's like, but is it going to keep... I don't want my lettuce to get wilted. By the way, for those of you that listen to me, like you can tell what Nastasia sounds like because you've heard her and that's my invitation of her. So you can see that my invitations of people bear no relationship to to kind of what's going on. Hey, Jack, are we going to saber this? don't even know if this Prosecco will saber. you want me to open it like a person? I think you can open it like a person maybe. You know, last time we sabered a bottle in the studio, it got all over the equipment and it was bad. Oh, Mimi, I'm a musician and I don't want my equipment ruined. Is that what I'm hearing from you? That was that was the voice I used. By the way, by the way, Jack. I noticed that even though today is sponsored by our

[2:25] buddies, the, you know, molecular recipes, but you didn't play Jackie Molecules. Oh we'll get there. middle of the show. I just don't want to miss it. I want to miss the Jackie molecules. It's been 2 it's been 2 weeks. So what's been going on for these 2 weeks? Well, the 1st week, Heritage, this is, by the way, this is the sound of, this is the sound of Anastasia suddenly getting happy, ready? Uh, you want to pour that out, test? Somebody somewhere just got a real shock in their headphones. Oh, speaking of shock in the headphones, if you want to call in live, calling your questions, 2718-497-2128, that's 718-497-2128. So anyway, we've been gone these past 2 weeks. The 1st week, Heritage Radio was shut down. I don't really know why, but it was. And last week, I was in Mexico. Mexico, Mexico, for the 1st time ever because does anyone consider the border towns to actually be Mexico? No,

[3:17] right? I mean, no offense to those of you that live in like Juarez and Nogales and

[3:21] Tijuana, like no offense to you, but I mean, it's like, you know, Mexico City is pretty awesome. Styles, you've never been there, right? Even though you're half Mexican, you've never been to Mexico. I have been to Mexico. Where in Mexico? I've been to Cancun and TJ. TJ. I like that TJ. It's like it's a dude, TJ. Anyway, so what were your thoughts on Tijuana? I got to be better than yours. I was like five. It's got to be better than Nogales anyway. remember. Yeah? Anyway. Mexico City, amazing. In fact, the food, obviously, you know how everyone's like the food, the Mexican food here in New York blows, like the average Mexican food? I mean, I'm not talking about cosmet or any other stuff. But the average Mexican food here blows and they're like, oh, it's too much better in California. So much better in Mexico. I mean it makes sense, right? I mean it being Mexican food. Uh, so, you know, I guess I don't really have the time, so I'm going to run out before I get to all the questions to go through, but I did purchase, for those of you that, you know, are in the

[4:15] way back machine on the cooking issues. You know, many, many years ago, I did a post on Nixtamilization, which is the process of taking corn, you know, soaking slash cooking it,

[4:27] park cooking it, and lime water, calcium hydroxide, right? Lime Cal, they call it down there. And then soaking it and then grinding it to make

[4:36] nixtamal, which is the base of masa. I mean, make masa, which is the base of, you know, corn tortillas, right? Right? And for those of you that pay attention, the hardest part about the whole nonsense is grinding the stuff because, oh, by the way, you know, the traditional grinding method

[4:50] stars is, you know, the Matati mano, the big stone, and I bought a crappy one on 116th Street, and it was useless.

[4:55] It was like a child's toy. It was so small. It was ridiculous, absurd. Like, I don't even, so I was gonna buy one there, but they're just so damn heavy, like a real one. Like the guy, this other guy who's going to sell me one, swear to God, it was like 10 bucks. Some of this, like really nice. I was like, where's the the mana? Where's the, you know, the, the actual like rolling pin style wooden thing? I mean, uh, you know, it looks like a rolling pin, but it's made of stone. And he goes, well, here's one, and he gives me like a small, and I was like, I was like, dude, dude, I know that I'm like, you know, white as the driven freak in snow, like super gringo, but for Christ's sakes, you know, that mono is not matched to that, you know,

[5:30] matate, it's not going to work. It was like Stas. It was like a 6 inch mono and like this giant, and like,

[5:36] because like you know that if it had fit, I would have just duct taped to my back and told the airline that it was

[5:41] like a, it was like, I would have told the airline that it was like some sort of growth. I mean, I'm weak. They didn't have the right stuff. The guy didn't have the right stuff. I got to go to the right. I gotta go to the right neighborhood next time. Look, I was, by the way, I spent most of my time in

[5:54] um, the Merced Market, which is like, you know, one of the main, main markets in Mexico City, with these, with this group of uh, women who were making, um, they weren't hand padding the tortillas, so they weren't like full Abuela, but they were like making

[6:07] like, they were pressing out with a fresh masa. The squash blossom, quesadillas there are ridiculous. Like, we were all sitting around, like, a bunch of us were sitting around saying, how much would this cost in New York, right? So you go to the farmer's market, you buy a little plastic thing of the crap of squash blossoms. How much is that thing, Stas? You shot for that kind of crap? Seven? Yeah, right? Okay, so imagine this lady had what amounted to a, like, it was clear, so it wasn't gross, but a, like, large garbage

[6:39] bag full of them, right? And remember, she bought it like 50 feet away because they're at a market, right? Rough chops, she has a giant comal. She just throws a giant, like, giant, like... Well, so here's what she does. She throws a giant giant pile of the stuff on the komal and just starts it going. She has like a spatula and like a thing of like fresh oil because, you know, they also her fryer next to it for doing like gorditas and

[7:00] stuff looks like an upside down sombreros, so it's got a big flat rim and there's like a basin that

[7:05] if imagine a walk with a giant wide brim on it. So, like, uh, like a gardening hat. you know what I mean? But upside down. And so that's what she was like frying. And so she had a thing of fresh oil there. So she just went, hip, hip, and like, like with the spatula, put a little bit of oil on the, uh, on the Florida Calabasa, a little salt, right? And then she and this other lady were like the mystical masters of shredding like Oaxacan string

[7:27] cheese because they literally picked up a block of the cheese and just was like, and it was like these like threads of

[7:33] cheese. So like they cooked it down. She made the, she She also was like super quick and consistent on making these very kind of long, very long, like foot long, uh,

[7:43] like kind of narrow, um, uh, tortillas that she would like put on the

[7:47] command. And then that's it. She would slap the cheese on the thing with the Florida Calabas, put the thing as salt, and that's it. And that's really all it needs. That's, I mean, like, but you're not used to having squash blossoms like this because you need to stretch them. So you stuff them with things or you, you know, you dip them in batter and you fry them like a pancake or, you know,

[8:05] any one of these numbers, who the hell can afford that? What is their taste? Is it a zucchini taste? Like, what is it? So much, you know how I feel about zucchini. I know. But what, yeah, but like, how do you describe? I mean, it's kind of... I don't know, I can't really describe

[8:19] it. Delicious. And 1st of all, it exudes juices, it's juiciness, but it's not watery, and it still maintains some of its crunch. I mean, that's what's so disgusting about zucchini, right? So it's like, you know, I don't know, it almost has like a, it's like a savory, it's not meaty because it's not that kind of chunk, but it feels substantial. considering we ate like 8 bazillion of these things. And plus, like, the cheese that they were putting on, it was like so much nicer than the crap that we get in the Super

[8:43] Mercado, as they call them, at my local fine fair, which is not necessarily a good place to buy this sort of product. But anyway, here in New York, it would have been like, you know, a $20 freaking quesadilla. And that's the thing. You know what? It would be worth it, but no one would pay it because it's not high-end food. Like no one wants to pay that kind of money for something just because no one can afford to have the squash blossoms in it.

[9:04] I hear there's some places here that have very cheap squash blossoms, but... I don't know. Maybe, okay, honestly, maybe each quesadilla had like one. 5 of those containers. So you're looking at like $7.5 worth of squash blossoms in each quesadilla. crazy though. That's the way you want to do it. And I said to the lady, well, through an intermediary, because I don't speak Spanish, I was like, I was like, hey, you know, do you, uh, you know, do you get these all years? It's a spring thing, because it was weird spring. She was like, oh, you're, I was like, oh, you bastards, you bastards. And another thing. Try this in New York. So, like, at a different market at the Mercado San Juan, where they have this, like, they have the place called Los

[9:41] Coyotes. It sells all the weird meats and stuff. I had the, uh, Jack, you're not drinking your

[9:45] prosecco. making me angry. Um, They had the uh, the ant eggs, the Eskimo, and like all the other weird stuff. So I bought some because I went there thinking that they were going to prepare them because I was led to believe that they had them prepared

[10:00] in, you know, tacos and whatever. And no. So I had to buy them raw, but I'm not going to buy it, right? So then they're burning a hole in my refrigerator, like for a day. And as I'm leaving, I'm like, you know what? bet you those ladies will cook it for me. Oh wow. Yeah. So imagine doing that in New York. I walk up, they're like making this stuff. First of all, these for those of you that like, you know, are professionals out there, you would love these people. I walk up to them. They have nothing going. None of the equipment's on. They have none of their mees, nothing, nothing. Like 8 in the morning, right? When they open. So I'm like, how long should I come back? She's like, Kinsey Minutos. like, really? So 15 minutes, we go back and they're screaming. They already have stuff out of the out of the door. They already have people being served. There's a lot to be said for the Mexican street kitchen. Amazing, amazing, man. Anyway. So, uh, so I was like, you know, where is koschinar with my best, you know, kind of gringo accent. Yeah, she freaking cooked them for me. They were good. Look, I talked to Rick Bayless about it on Friday because he was at the Awards award ceremony because his podcast won. And, you know, he was like, look, you know, they're good. They're a little mealy like that. Like, if they've previously been frozen, like, next time I go, he says he has the source of like the

[11:06] hyperfresh, like the hyper hyper real, the Verdad. You know what I'm saying? So like next time I go, we'll get it. She also made us like these awesome, because I bought at the market, like a whole boatload of wheat lo cohe, like nice wheat lo

[11:17] cohe, and so she cooked that great, great place. Love Mexico. Oh, reason I brought it up, I bought, um, a nixtomatic grinder. The hard part about making masa is grinding it. And the corona hand grinder, which is the best thing I was able to get sucks. The last time I made, I threw it out. I went to make Masa the other day out of rye, which, by the way, like I say, it's stickier, if you read the post, it's sticky, the, I forget what the post is called on cooking issues, but apparently it's back. You can get it. It's not just... Oh, the forum is now Cielis. Oh okay. Anyway, so if you read it, uh, you know, you'll see that I make, I

[11:52] nixtamalize rye, basically, and make, but rye is a lot stickier than corn is. And so I was trying to grind the rye in the corona. like, you know what? Boop, throw it away. I'm like, I'm done. I'm done with you. I'm done. And so then I bought the Knicks dematic, but I don't have a good supply of corn yet. So I'm getting the good supply of corn and I'll give you some updates on grinding masa with a

[12:10] mixed dumatic and maybe some new stuff, but I will say this. The nixtomatic grinder also makes a ridiculously good nut butter style. If we had had that back in the at the SCI, our lives have been so much easier. Do you remember like all the times putting those nuts through the champion and then spinning them in the Vitapre? This stuff comes out like smooth as silk, like one shot. You know what I want to make that no one's made for me ever? I want to go to the store. I going to buy planters mixed nuts. You guys, planters mix nuts, fan band. You like the players mix nut? Yeah, I like some nuts. Yeah, yeah. But the mix nut is like you grow up, if you grew up eating nuts. If you weren't one of the, if you weren't allergic to it, right? Which when I was a kid, did you know anyone was allergic when you were kid stars and nuts? Nah, it's new. It's like past 15 years or something. When I was a kid, you know, in the 70s. Like every person. The idea that you would... Yeah, well, it's always, you know, but the idea that you would not be able to bring a peanut butter sandwich to school, people

[12:58] be like, what? What? What? You know what I mean? It's like, you know, like, that's not, that's, it would be ridiculous in the 70s. Now it's common because, you know, the rise analogies. Anywho, here's what I want to do. I want to take just a straight up can of mixed nuts, straight up planners, pour it in this thing and make mixed nut butter. wouldn't that be good? Why has no one made the mix up better? Are they salty? Because it's really salty. Are you saying you don't like salty? No, like overly salty. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You eat the mixed nuts, do you not? Yeah. So I'm not, I mean, so you're saying you wouldn't like that level of salt as a nut butter? Jack weigh in. Yeah, I'm torn, but I feel where you're coming from, Stas. It might be a little too salty, but I'm down. I think it'd be a great idea. I love mixed up. It's a very easy thing to freaking test. All I need to do is on the way home, buy a can of mixed nuts and dump it. by the way, it's in the can. Remember the old official can? Yeah. Yeah. and dump it in and see what happens. And then I can report back. But let's say it is salty. I mean, okay, so you want like a cracker with less salt on it? By the way, do you like you like the salt teams with the crack with the salt, right? Otherwise, they're called saltines. kind of like flavor on it, you know, like that salt doesn't taste like real salt. What does it taste like? I don't know. tiny, tiny salt. Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you talking about... okay, okay. There's 2 things we're looking at here, right? There's the planners mix nuts, which are the standard old school kind of processing versus the dry roast, which has the dry feeling

[14:18] on the tunnel. We talking about the salt taste of the dry roast? I don't I don't have never had the dry roast. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, of course. I mean, I don't know the difference. I have to look it up. By the way, Secret Star is not a big fan of peanuts. Not peanuts now. She likes pecans. Pecans, almonds, yeah. You're an almond fan? What are you, from California? We're not supposed to be into almonds these days. Why, what's wrong with almonds? take all that water. Oh. Well, what about Marconam? It's from Spain. I mean they don't seem to have a water problem. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I mean, that's it's, you know, I don't not familiar with their problems. You know what I mean? Like, I need to research their problems. But, uh, so a lot of uh, what's the, what, how many gallons of water does it take to make an almond? I don't know, but I think it's like, it's a lot. It's like a gallon per omen or something. Something insane. Yeah, yeah. But the thing is, is like, let's say you're in almond trees, right? Let's say, let's say you're a 60-year-old Californian almond

[15:15] farmer and you have made the mistake of planning a low fat variety because that's what people like. My feeling about a lot of California almonds. They make some delicious. I, please don't, I don't want to hear about it. But my point is that I like to hire fat almond varieties, right? And it becomes especially apparent once you start grinding them, you can really see kind of, remember when we used to make almond oil and all that? We used to get the, those California almonds and we had to supplement the oil in them because they were such a pain in the butt anyways. But you have all these trees. We can do, let them die. I don't know, maybe. I don't know. Hard problem, right? Yeah, maybe just cut them in half. You know what? You know what? I have a connection through McGee to the

[15:51] end, through labor, right? Oh yeah. Yeah, whose dad's an almond, an almond farmer. to the California nut board. Why don't we figure out what their response to this is? Why don't we figure out what the California, like, you know, not almond nutboard, because it's a big business. Let me see what they say about it. They got to have some sort of wrap on it, right? Yeah, I mean, I don't think any of the water restrictions apply to commercial farmers.

[16:15] Not yet. Um, yeah. So I do have a caller. But I 1st want to make a pitch here. Do you know about our Kickstarter, Dave? I do. Didn't we mention it? We did. We're 14 days to go, though, and it's getting to... Did we win? Did we win? We have not won. We want to be winners. How much do we need to win? So we are $12,000 away from being winners. Out of how much? Out of 35. So we're, you know, about 65% of the way there. We've got 14 days to go. There are really, really awesome perks all the way up to having your own radio show. I mean, that's a really, really awesome perk. Has anyone bought? Yeah, we've had we've had a few, actually. So that's exciting. But check it out. It's on Kickstarter. If you search Heritage Radio Network. You can see the fun little video we made. The website actually will fall apart in the fall, like the coding language. It was built on Ruby on Rails, and all of the updates just are not compatible with our version, and it's falling apart. You know what you should do, Jack? You should you should you can create a web address that's like Kickstarter slash heritage radio. . Anyway, our point is this. If you enjoy having the cooking issues radio show and enjoy Jack being a pleasant part of what we're

[17:33] doing, instead of hating all of you to death, what I would recommend is that you fund this Kickstarter, is that more or less

[17:39] accurate Jack? pretty much it. Yeah, I mean, look. How many people do we need? Like, what's the average donation here? We would have to crunch some numbers. But I mean, yeah, every dollar counts, you know? How much did you know your own radio show? Your own radio show, I believe, is $5000 for your own season. A whole season? Oh my god, dude. It's good. You get for a 1000 bucks, you can record a podcast for 5,000, you get a whole season. Let me tell you something. Any of those any of you people out there with an axe to grind? This is your chance. Can we can we say what we're going to do? What are we going to do? For our listeners. Oh, yeah, for listeners of cooking issues. Stas and I have, okay, so you guys have heard of the vegan face, right, Jack? People have heard of the vegan face and stuff, this vegan face. We haven't talked about it in a while, but she has these facial expressions that you can't see on the radio that are just different ways that Nastasia has to express her distaste for things like vegans or

[18:36] biscuits or spores, fungus. Like certain things like this that she hates. Me, for instance. So, uh, so what we're going to do is also, uh, and one of our favorite phrases, which we haven't used in a while, Jack,

[18:53] is enemy of quality, right? Oh, yeah. So we're going to make enemy of quality t-shirts that have my character. the long sleeve shirt. but we're going to get a caricature of Nastasius vegan face. And my face, it's cooking issues, enemy, enemy of quality, available soon, right soon? I says? Color. You are on the air. Hey, Dave, how's it going? All right, what's up? Hey, put me down for 5 grand because of the Jetty podcast. Is that for real? Nice. Is that real? Is that real? No. No, okay. Thanks for your call. Bye. I was curious about a given tip for modeling carbonated cocktail. It seems kind of hard to keep high level of the carbonation. Um, it just, in general, if you have any kind of tips for that. Sure. What kind of cocktail do you want? kind of carbonated cocktail would you like to bottle? Um, I was trying to, with your, um, I'm sorry, with the campaign assets? Do not bottle it with the acid. It will get very, very bitter. Okay. Very bitter. Um, because, uh, I don't know why, but, but you can add the acid afterwards, uh, when you're pouring it, but any of the other carbonated ones, uh, if you use like a lime acid or something, I haven't tested other types of acid with

[20:12] it. In other words, I didn't do a side by side of the, um, the, the,

[20:16] the comparison soda very, basically with lime acid versus with the champagne acid that I use in there, which is a

[20:22] tartaric, uh, uh, lactic blend. So I don't know whether it's a particular acid bottled with the campari that makes it go super bitter. Or whether it's any acid in general. And by the way, Aperol will also go bitter, the same way Campari does. However, it's less perceptible because Aperol is less overall bitter. So you might be able to get away with it with that brawl. That's just, that's just a beforehand before we start. Another thing you're going to want to note is that champagne acid. Um, I think it's because, uh, it's not quite as, I don't know why, but it tends to foam more. The things with champagne acid in them, which is, again, a 6% mixture that's half, 6% acid mixture, half of which is lactic, half of which is tartaric,

[21:07] to mimic the same acidity as lime juice, or lemon. I don't know why, but it tends to foam more. So that's just a note of Ben for you when you're doing a bottled cocktail. Now, if you're going to bottle a carbonated cocktail, the 1st thing you need to do is get uh, glass bottles, you need to get uh, caps that seal well. You want to make sure that the insides of those bottles are super clean. So the way to... Oh my god, you've gone Darth Vader on it. So the way to test that is to pour liquid into the bottle, turn it upside down and see whether it cheats. If it sheets out, then you got clean. If you see little dots, then there are things that are stopping it from sheeting, it's

[21:44] not, as the my chemistry teacher used to say, in high school, analytically clean, you're going to want to clean it out. Why? I mean, you don't have to. It's not like a safety thing, but any nucleation sites on the side of that bottle are going to cause a real pain when you're trying

[21:57] to fill it. Now, another thing. Carbonated cocktails, they foam a lot more than sodas do. They foam a lot more than most other things do. So what I would recommend, what Nastasi and I have done, we've had to bottom in the past. You want to get the smallest amount of headspace possible because that's going to also ruin your carbonation because it's going to bleed out, right? So get your bottles cold, very cold, not cold enough to freeze any cocktail when it

[22:25] hits because if anything freezes, that's nucleation sites, right? So you want to like quadruple carbonate your cocktails in your bottles like you do normally unless you have some better system. Then get your bottles cold, and then tilt it on its side, pour the stuff in, let it foam up, and then just keep pouring fresh cocktail in until there's no foam

[22:45] anymore. Do this in a tray, then cap it at the last minute and let them settle, and then when you're done doing a batch, recarbonate the stuff that fell into the

[22:54] tray. That's what we do and we have to do it. Like we had to, who would we do that for? Jimmy Fallon or something for someone else? Didn't Dave take a bottle of carbonated stuff on Jimmy Fallon or something? And we had to do it. And that's how we did it. We just kept on pouring it in, letting it foam out, and then cap it, and then recarb the stuff at the end. Man, it's a pain in the butt, though. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. That's what I would do. In fact, that's what I have done. Yeah. Thank you very much All right, thank you. All right. So, I guess that's enough on the Mexico, yeah? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. By the way. I have a question and thankfully on the tandor, we haven't talked about the tandor at all, right? No, you talked a little about it. Yeah? For Easter, but had I already cooked with it yet? We've had a show after Easter? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I love the tandor. I loving it. So here's what people keep asking me. They keep asking me, Dave, I hear you love your tandor, but what do you think about the big green egg? And the fact that the matter is, the big green, you're familiar with the big green egg, man? It's like a ceramic grill, like eggs, well, hence big green egg, an egg shaped ceramic grill. The commado grill is the is the kind of generic term for this type of grill. And they're very well loved grills, but the fact of the matter is I don't own one. However, we might rectify that soon. I may or may not have a magazine that you may or may not have heard

[24:13] of, you have heard of it. who's going to have me do a side by side, big green egg versus tandor

[24:19] in a variety of things. wouldn't that be fun? Yeah. You come up to Connecticut and playground. What that stuff does? Yeah, nice, nice, nice. Tandor, amazing. Okay, but I have a question on the Tandora, which is where I get to it. Michael from Toronto writes in. I bought it's a multipart question, as usual. I bought a Palladium Sears all, and I've been using it for a couple of days with a TS 8000. And by the way, I'm not, I'm just going to go ahead and say you should only use a TS 8,000. Am I right stars? The 4000. I was doing a benefit for the edible schoolyards. And one of Tom Klikio's cooks was like, the seers all is not working, so I looked

[24:49] at he used the 4000. I'm like, you're a professional brother. Use the 8000, 8000. If you're a professional, use the freak in 8,000. You know what I mean? Hell, anyways. Uh, I mean, it's like over twice the B to use, like well over twice. whatever. Anyway, I bought a Padiums here, so I've been using it for a couple of days with a TS 8000 from Burns

[25:09] Medic. And I'm wondering about the gas valve on the torch. Do you find that your valve settings are application dependent or do you just run it wide open all the time? And if any of you have ever met me? The answer is, of course, wide open all the time. I mean, all the time. And the reason is, 1st of all, in the 8000, I used to think that the throttling was going to be a good thing. And you can throttle it somewhat. For those of you that don't know, the Burns

[25:34] of Matic TS 8000 is a is like kind of a propane torch. That, um, it's a trigger start. So you're like... You know what I mean? It starts right away. And I use it. I use it pretty much every day, either with the seresol or as a lighter, right? So I use I use it to light my chimney starter, I use it to light wood. I use it to light my burners in the summer when I turn the pilots off. I use it, you know, all the time. Don't turn your piles off. It not supposed to be. Anyway, but whatever, when you do, like, that's what I do. You know, I don't sit there with like wadded up toilet paper or whatever and, you know, napkins and lighting my burners. So TSA 1000 fantastic. But it's got like a little knob on the back of it that can reduce the amount of gas that goes through it.

[26:13] Now here's the problem. TS 8000 and the TS4000 and this entire style of torch that I use on the

[26:19] seers all has a what's called like a vortex tip on it. So if you look at the tip of the torch, there's a piece of brass on the

[26:26] end, and inside that brass are 4 twisted metal fins. And what those things do is they actually swirl and I guess possibly mix, but mainly swirl the gas as it comes out. And it creates a very violent, like, uh, you know, kind of characteristic kind of flame coming out of it that's not kind of not bushy, right? As opposed to, let's say, the itwatani, which has like a long flame, but more bushy, right? Because it doesn't have that kind of vortex tip on it. So the problem is, is when you throttle it down, the vortex doesn't work as well. Man, it's just straight up. It just doesn't have the velocity out of it. And so you're not getting as good a result on the sears all. So what happens is it'll work, but it'll tend to flame out more, not flame out, but if you turn a

[27:09] sears all all the way upside down. Um, you'll start getting... like that kind of a thing and it's irritating. So I just leave it all wide open. And if I need to pull back slightly, I pull back slightly. makes sense to us. Second question. PX. S, do you wear nomex sleeves? Nomex. good use of Nomex. You know Nomex, you have the fire retardant material that 1st I 1st came to my attention when I was a small child because they used to use it in

[27:33] like flight suits to stop people from lighting on fire. But it's like a standard kind of flameproofy kind of a thing. Do you wear nomex sleeves when you're using your tandor? Thanks, Michael from Toronto. I don't. The 1st time I used a tandor, I bought a set. Well, okay, so I was reminded by Nastasia that when we built a tandor for

[27:49] the Anthony Bourdain shoot, we did, like, what is that, 4 years ago or whatever, that I insisted that we all use our bare hands to put

[27:57] the bread in because what am I? What am I? Well, now you're weak. Well, no, so I'm back. back. So then, like the 1st time I fired at the tandor at home to make bread, I was like, I bought a set of those grill gloves, right?

[28:11] which are these like giant grill gloves. and I was like, because I was going to do a lot of stuff in there. And then I got back and this stuff, he says, you're half a man. You're a strong man. You're made of paper. You weak. You're useless, right? basically what you said. Yeah. I mean, that's fair. And I was like, you know what, Stas? Fair. Fair. And so, uh, so last week I went back and made it God's way, which is just sticking your hand in the damn tandor and like smacking

[28:33] the the bread onto the side of there. I'm getting really good at the non, by the way. I have very little very little fall offs. I can't wait to try to do non in the big green egg. You like naan, right? Is that your, is that, yeah, non, good bread, yeah? Yeah. Okay. Wait, so you're getting a big green egg? Well, I'm like, I'm not going to buy a big green egg, but if the big, if some, if a magazine wants to get one for me so that I can do an article on like tandor versus green

[28:59] egg, I can get you one. What? can get you one. Well, the magazine's going to try it. they can't, you want why? You have it in? Well, yeah, I know someone who wants to get rid of theirs, like, why? What do they not like about it? Nobody uses it specifically someone. Who is? Tell me who. Oh man, you're leaving everyone hanging here. Why would they not use it? What are they? Well, 1st of all, let's go through this. They live in New York City? Yeah. Okay. So they have it on the roof? balcony Balcony. It's a low balcony. But they not use it because... Someone moved out and it's still in someone's apartment. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. First of all, do they know how much these things are worth? Does the person who's left with it now much is worth? Don't tell them. They're like a 1000 bucks. Yeah. I know. The small one's like a 1000 bucks. doesn't care about money. They get a they get a salary. What the hell, what? Anyway, like, what is it? Do they not like cooking in general? Uh, not with a big green egg. No, but in general, do they like cooking? I not sure. You're not sure. All right, well, listen, yes, we'll take we'll take their big green egg. and raise them a whatever. I don't know, we'll cook them something in it. Hey, Jack, is this a good time for our Jackie molecules commercial break? Oh, maybe, yeah. think it is. Let's do it. Let's do it.

[30:22] Hey, what's up, guys? It me, Jack, as in Jack, from cooking issues, as in the guy that's probably been talking on this show. So, here on the break to tell you about molecular recipes.com, which is not only an awesome website and store and resource, but

[30:37] also they support us, which makes them even that much cooler. So I know Dave gives you plenty and plenty of information on the show, but should you need further

[30:46] resource. Should you want to get some of the things he's talking about, molecular recipes.com has recipes, techniques, ingredients, tools, all in the world of this

[30:55] modernist thing we love so much on the show. So, you know, explore the world of foams and spheres and invisible foods and mind-blowing cocktails, all that awesome stuff. There's a community of over 400,000 chef scientists and food lovers sharing their favorite recipes, tips, and tricks. Cool photos, tools, gadgets. Again, this is everything you'd be into, all in one place, molecular recipes.com, and just for being a listener of this show, you'll get 10% off any of their popular

[31:25] kits just by using the promo code heritage at checkout. That's promo code heritage. So again, check them out, molecular recipes.com, tons of really awesome stuff there. Definitely write up your alley. And we're back. And we're back. By the way, should you go to the molecular recipes.com if we recommend. Please enter the code. Let me tell you why. You got to let them know that the money that they put into the cooking issues program is doing something for them.

[31:54] Am I right, Jack? That's how it works. So, like, you're like, man, I don't like good stuff, too. I mean, that's the real reason. No, my point is, though, is that you're like, maybe I don't need the discount. end the discount code. I'm not going to bother, right? But if you don't bother entering the discount code. And then they don't know that the reason that you went there is because you heard. Who knows where you came from? Who the hell knows? Who knows? Would you know, Ben? But who doesn't need a discount? Well, apparently the person who has the big green egg that we're going to get a hold of doesn't need a discount. They don't care about money. They don't care about food. They don't care about nothing. They got a balcony in New York and nothing to do with it. Don't want to cook on a big room. Hey, you know what? You know how many people would, like me? I mean, years I've wanted to be able to cook outside in New York. Years, years, and they have a balcony with a big green egg on it. don't want to use it. It's freaking unacceptable. It's not right. I don't care. It just means you're a bad person. It just means you're no good. You know what I mean? We got a good person on the line. All right, Jack, why you tell me who we got on the line? It's Darren from Meld. Darren from Mel. Listen, I haven't, I haven't spoken to you about it yet. You on the line right now? you with us? I am, yes. Nice. So for those of you that don't know, out here on the, on the, you know, whoever's listening to this. Meld is a current Kickstarter. How much longer do you have left on the Kickstarter? I've got about 9 or 10 days to go. And next Friday. Yeah. Wildly overfunded. Don't mean, but you should do it. The reason to do it is because you're going to be correct in line, you're going to be 1st in line if you're a Kickstarter backer, right? That's absolutely right Right. So one of the things, and having done a Kickstarter before, here's, look, here's the secret of Kickstarter,

[33:35] right, is that you have to put the number low enough to, um, low enough

[33:38] so that you think you can make it, right? But then people out there in Kickstarter land, they don't understand that what you really want is to wildly, wildly surpass your number.

[33:48] And you already have on meld, which is great. But the point is, is that it's, as someone who's trying to start manufacturing something, it's vastly easier when you're dealing with larger numbers of

[33:59] units. And so not only is it, uh, it's better for the end, it's better for the end user or the person who's buying a, I know the Kickstarter is not a pre-order, but let's be honest, it's pre-order, right? I mean, let's be honest. am I right? It's pre-order. Let's stop kidding ourselves. But it's vastly better to be dealing with manufacturers with larger numbers of units. You know what I mean? Then with smaller numbers of units. Agree or discipline? Absolutely. Because there's there's a certain fixed cost up front. It doesn't matter whether you end up making one part or you make 10,000 parts, that same fixed cost for the mold is, you know, fixed cost. Right. So let me, let me, let me introduce what the product is, and then we'll talk about something. You tell me if I'm wrong, right? So meld is kind of a 1st of its kind products. So the idea is, is that a lot of us have, well, vast majority of us have ranges, right? you know, like cooking ranges that operate with a knob on the front, right? And so they require you, the human, to adjust

[35:04] the, uh, the knob, to determine what the, the heat level, the gas output most typically is going to be on said range,

[35:11] right? Well, what if you were to put a motorized knob that was hooked up to some intelligent electronics on it and then had something else control it instead, hence melt.

[35:22] Is am I right about this? Is this right? That's absolutely right. Because you're, you know, you read a lot of recipes and they'll say, put a pan on medium, right? And we've done the experiment, you put the exact same pan on medium on a, you know, 5 or 10 randomly selected ranges from you and your

[35:40] friends, and you'll see differences of temperatures of 100, 150 degrees easily. Right. And here's another thing that you probably deal with as well. in my in my building, right? It's, actually, it's the fault of the person that installed installed my range because they didn't put in the regulator that I asked them to install after the

[35:59] gas. So like, so I have fluctuating gas levels in my range. And so the actual flame I get out of any particular burner is dependent

[36:09] upon whether someone else turns on another gas appliance or burner that's in close proximity.

[36:13] I don't know if a lot of people have that problem or that's just because the Joker didn't install the regulator on

[36:17] my stove is proper and I need to go do it. But presumably this would also uh, kind of uh, ease the uh, or uh, level out the vagaries of gas pressure as well. That's correct, yep. So one, so this is kind of like, you can go to the, the, the Kickstarter, and by the way,

[36:34] what's, what's your theoretical delivery time after the end of the Kickstarter? Uh, October. And we, we deliberately sort of held off on the Kickstarter. We thought about doing it sort of late last year, but we waited until we've got, you know, real actual working

[36:53] prototypes, and you can see them in, in some of the, the videos, but that are, you know, except for a few cases where we're still 3D

[37:02] printing a few parts. Uh, these are the final products and we're cooking on them every day so that, you know,

[37:09] we, we are confident we can deliver versus the sort of standard, you know, well, we've never done this

[37:15] before and we think we can deliver and, you know, we'll tell you later if we're going to be late. I'm familiar with that process. Uh, uh, with the sears all. But, um, the, so let me ask you a couple questions that I, that I was wondering, 1st of all, I'm not saying anything. We would love sometime to beta test one. I'm just saying, we would love the beta test one. Um, but, uh, you know, we'll even I mean, I'll buy one. I would love the beta test one, though. Um, the, not that it's past beta, I guess it's too late to beta. But the, um, The thing I'm wondering specifically, how do you deal

[37:47] with uh, things like uh, flame out. So a lot of a lot of burners when they get, you know, on the lower end of their spectrum, they can sometimes go out and not everyone has a burner with a kind of a flame sensor on it to determine kind of what's going

[38:04] on. So how does the system deal with that sort of thing? it notice that there's no more heat input and it throttles it back to light or what happens? Yeah, so it's a, yeah, it's a great question and absolutely something we have to deal with. So what we do is we are, you know, obviously just to make the thing work, we're monitoring the level of

[38:24] gas we think we're putting in and the sort of temperature response in

[38:28] the in the pot at all times. And if we start seeing a scenario where uh, it's flamed out. What's typically going to happen is we're going to say, oh, well, you know, we're not getting the additional heat into the pot at the rate we expect it to

[38:43] for for where the gas knob is. That's a problem. We're going to alert you on your app back on your phone. And then we're also going to just turn the gas completely off. So there are a number of kind of safety scenarios built into it where, you know, we think there's something wrong enough or potentially wrong enough going on that we're going to alert

[39:07] you, and if you don't respond, we're actually just going to turn off the gas. Okay. So, but in other words, is it something that can be tuned to someone? So presumably when you get it, you tune it to your range, yeah? Right. So what you do is you put it on your range, you turn it, the app asks you to turn it to the off position, to the low position, to the high

[39:29] position, so that it knows sort of the bounds of where it can turn. And then, uh, you know, from there, it's basically uh, self learning. So it'll, um, you know, it will adjust the, the gas flow to maintain temperature, whether you put, you know, a great big

[39:48] pot. We've got actually a bunch of people interested in home brewing, which is an application we hadn't even really

[39:54] considered, who've kind of come out of the woodwork and we actually made a video with a home brewer that'll come out in a week or

[40:02] so. So, pretty, pretty interesting, or, you know, sometimes you got a small pot and need a lot less gas for the, for the same temperature level,

[40:09] but that feedback loop will actually make those adjustments. Nice. Now, I had a couple other questions. Let me see what they are. Um, the, 1st of all, before we go any further, what's the, what's your, like, uh, in production MSRP versus, like, what you're

[40:26] going to get on the Kickstarter? Uh, so kicks us, MSRP uh, right now is 149. We did Early Bird Kickstarter at 99. those sold out and we're doing 9 uh 129 now currently. So you're getting like, you're getting like $20 off, which is like something, what is that? That's like, what is that, like 15% off or something, the final? Yeah. Yeah. Now, is there anything prevent you from using it like a normal gas knob if you just want to just walk up and

[40:57] use it? Nope, you can walk up and turn it anytime you want. And that was actually one of the engineering challenges was to get a motor and motor driver circuitry such that we could generate enough torque to turn the

[41:14] knob even on kind of an old, crappy, sticky range. Um, but at the same time, you could still turn the knob and not do, you know,

[41:22] backdrive the motor in a way that was going to damage it. So we went through a lot of different tests on that before we settled on the right sort of combination of motor, gear

[41:33] train and driver to make that happen. Nice. Are you anticipating any aftermarket drop-in circulation devices for

[41:40] pots or I don't remember. I don't think you had one on the Kickstarter, right? Uh, we don't. We've, uh, we've got a number of, I think, really interesting sort

[41:51] of uh, directions to go with this and uh, you know, part of it's, part of how we'll choose kind of which one we do next is, is going to be based on

[42:01] the, the feedback from this Kickstarter. So, um, certainly if that's, if, if that drop ins, uh, uh, circulation is, is something you want, you know, hit us up

[42:12] and, uh, you know, will, will certainly respond to, to what we hear. Right. Have, uh, and so what kind of numbers have you been getting out of, let's say, like, uh, oh, I don't know, like a

[42:24] 4 quart pot with, uh, you know, like 3 liters or something of water, something like this, what kind of stability are

[42:30] you, are you getting in there temperature wise? Uh, basically one degree. Come on, really? Yep, it's cool. That's bananas. One selfie. You know, so it's not, it's not like, you know, you're getting a high-end poly-science

[42:47] . one degree, you know, uh, you know, I love what Phil Preston does. We can't do that on a stovetop, but we can do about 11 degree Celsius. Let me ask this. What about stuff that scorches on the bottom, right? So the measurement of it, is there some sort of, is there some sort of way to measure that specifically worries about products that are going to scorch on the bottom? So there are, yeah, I mean, basically, um, you know, depending on, on, that's mostly a problem in really viscous fluids where you're not getting a lot of, uh, you know, a

[43:23] lot of, uh, circulation just from the, um, you know, from the natural convection that's happening in the

[43:29] pot. Um, in general, we haven't had a, you know, we haven't had a lot of problem with that, um, because we, I

[43:38] think, tend to keep the flame a lot lower, and if you've got a decent quality, say, you know, even, you know,

[43:44] aluminum, uh, pot that's gonna distribute the heat up the, the aluminum sides pretty well. It hasn't been a big issue for us. Um, that being said, you know, if you leave a pot of chili on for 10 hours, you know, and never stir it.

[43:59] Uh, I'm not so sure we could, you know, make make a whole bunch of guarantees there. But then you should die anyway. Yeah. Yeah. You're ruining, you're an enemy of quality, as we said. You can go buy the, you know, if you're not stirring your chili for 10 hours, like, maybe you're sick. Maybe you've fallen and you can't get up, in which case, I forgive you and there's no reason they're saying should have bad shab in your chili. But if you forget that you put chili on for 10 hours, like you're an enemy of quality. Am I right? You're a bad person. I totally agree. Yeah. One last question. So, uh, and because I have to answer another couple questions before we go, but, uh, and 1st of all, super exciting. Like, 1st of it's kind product. Amazing, no one has done it before. I'm extremely excited for it to be on the market. And for those of you that remember, meld, like M-E-L-D, Kickstarter, go check it out. But, uh, so here's the here's the here's the thing. Are you going to put programming into it so that you can essentially turn it into a rice

[44:55] cooker? The rice cooker application, like specifically doing rice, we've done a few

[45:04] tests. I think by the time we release it, we'll have, we'll be, you know, we, we will

[45:11] have, have pretty thoroughly tested that and and, and gotten the programming down. Because how sweet would that be? Everyone with one of these things, all of a sudden they can turn one of their burners into a rice cooker. It's just looking for the, you're just looking for the knee and the temperature rise, right? You put a certain gentle heat into it. You wait for the temperature rise to mean that the water's gone and you're done. Isn't that how rice cookers work or no? Yeah, yeah. So there's, that's, that's actually a specific example of a really interesting general case that we've seen in, in a variety of things we've, we've been cooking in in this, which is that, you know, when you're

[45:49] cooking, uh, something that's, you know, liquid in anywhere at all near the boiling point,

[45:54] the vast majority of the heat that, that you're putting in is being sucked out by water evaporating out the top, right?

[46:02] And so, If you have sort of a low level algorithm, whose only job is to keep you at the same temperature you want to be

[46:13] at. And that low level algorithm at some point starts saying, oh,

[46:19] I can dial back the heat. I can dial back the heat. I can dial back the heat because I don't need that much heat to maintain the temperature anymore. What that's telling you is exactly what you just said. It's saying, hey, we're not getting all that evaporation, sucking all that, the energy out. Something interesting has just happened. And so being able to do recipes, you know, that that detect those kind of effects instead of just like put it on medium heat for 20 minutes,

[46:48] right? That's, that's a game changer in terms of, of how you think about cooking and it's something that we think, you know, given that we can detect these kind of things and and have the feedback loops,

[47:01] uh, that we can do some really interesting stuff. And so you think you'll be able to have those kind of applications almost at launch? Some of some of those applications almost at launch. Some of them, yeah. But listen, I'm super excited and congratulations on already having fun at the Kickstarter. Everyone should go on and order one now to secure your place in line because, you know, it sucks to have to be on the 2nd shipment of that thing that they sell on Amazon, then you're going to be, you know, 6 months in the

[47:28] hole probably before the 2nd shipment comes in. Am I right? Yep, I think I think so. Yeah. But anyway, thanks so much for coming on. It's a super interesting product and I'm excited for it to be out in the world. Yeah, thanks. Thanks so much for having us on and yeah, we're super excited. Always been a big fan of your show and thanks for having us on. Thanks. All right. pains me to do this, Dave. What, I don't have no more time at all? It's time. Zero? Yeah. All right, listen. I'm just going to tell the questions that I didn't get chance to answer, okay? Cool. Okay. So Trudy wrote in and, you know, catching up on our stuff. about hydrocolloids and about the bloodlines in fish. I have plenty of answers, including, well, whatever. We'll have to deal with it next time. I have I have all this stuff. Sam Geiger wrote in about Coldpack Squirrel, but I thought we already talked about Coldpack Squirrel. Jack, did we talk about Colpax squirrel? All right, we'll get back to it. Uh, and uh, lastly, but certainly, no, 22 other things we didn't get to. Monty from Jacksonville, Oregon, wrote in on Douglas

[48:28] Fur, and making tea with Douglas Fur. just say this. If it's a springtime out there, Um, collect some of the fresh, uh, the fresh green, uh, uh, tips, if you can, and then do a side by side with those in the

[48:40] old, older needles, but we'll talk more about Connor Fortin next week. And in fact, I'm going to make some tea with my hemlock because I have some Eastern hemlock, which you can do. And we have some interesting comments and on some higher end vejetties from Brandon Bird and some talking about oil dispensing stuff with Joel Esposito all for next time on cooking issues.

[48:58] 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

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