[0:00] Today's program is brought to you by Heritage Foods USA, the nation's largest distributor of

[0:05] Heritage breed pigs and Turkeys. For more information, visit heritagefoodsusa.com. This is Chef Emily Peterson, host of Sharp and Hot. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:29] Hello and welcome to Cooking Atries. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking is just coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick,

[0:39] Brooklyn, every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Joined again after her, you know, airplane nonsense last week, we have Anastasia Lopez, the

[0:50] hammer back in the studio today. Hey, Stas. Hi. Hi. And special guest from you might know him from such things as running the website for popular science. Ball, Adam. What do you use? At, is that your Twitter? At po... No that's your... at popsi eats.com. I don't know because it's like I can recognize the picture. So I never have to like, yes. The cat. What? Isn't the cat knows? Is that your cat nose or someone else's cat nose? My cat knows. Yes, I tried using someone else's cat nose, but they gave me a cease and desist, so I had to use my own cat nose. I know that's... He's not lying. That's very Paul. By the way, for those of you that don't remember, Paul has been a guest on this show

[1:36] before most recently for the hot girl tasting, right? Were you here for the hot roll tasting? Yes. Yes. And Paul and I both agree that, you were here for Hot Girl, right? What are you getting? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that was the one that Don Lee, right? Yeah, yeah. The Rotten Shark. Yeah, wasn't that bad as the one that you loved in the park. This is Stronging. And we told the story about Sir Straming, for those of you that didn't hear that episode, is the it is the most hardcore thing I've ever eaten pretty much. pretty much. It turns out that when you eat Hawk Carl on the radio and then take the leftover Hawk Carl home and wait for 6 months and then reopen the canister, it gets stronger. So

[2:14] Stronging strong? No, but it emptied a room. Well, and for those of you that don't remember, We talked about it, I think we originally had the tasting, and then also brought it up on a hawk girl tasting. Paul, you know, although he, you know, goes out to, I think the Catskills, right? Or something like this, you have a place in the Catskills or his family has a place somewhere outside of New York. They're using your family have a place? No, I wish. Well, anyway, he's a New York City, like born and bred kind of a guy. Upper West? Upper West. Upper West. I thought you used to. No, you have someone. I've rented places. that's what it is. renting. Anyways, brought the Sir Straming. Now, Sir Stramming, here's how you make Sir Stramming. You take yourself some herring, small ones. And you don't put enough salt on them to stop bacteria from growing. You stop some bacteria. Some, but you allow the salt loving bacteria. But then the fun thing is, you can it, right? Without pasteurizing it, right? So then the can inflates with noxious gases and you and you open it and it's rotten. I mean, it's quite literally rotten. Uh, you know, and, you know, I don't want to hear any cultural, like, oh, but it smells rotten. No, this stuff stinks. This stuff stinks. Anyway, Paul took it on a taxi ride home. Remember that? He took the leftover. We didn't even have like a vacuum sealer or even a cork container. He took an open can of sirstraming and its attendant, like, you know, uh, you know, retinue of flies with him in a cab. And the cab windows didn't open. And the cab windows didn't open. That's got to be the best cab ride ever. But it wasn't a cab to the Catskills. No, that was just about a mile. Now, yeah, but the question is, is, like, does someone try to get in right afterward? Did the cabby say anything? The cabbie did not say anything. But he kept looking at me. He probably thought it was just my personal smell. That would be pretty hardcore. If that was your personal smell. I mean, you're a corpse. Yes. And I was canned. Yeah, canned corpse. You know, my wife once met a guy and was like, this guy smells like he's rotting from the inside out. He died 2 days later. Look at Santa's little hipster today. Did you see him? Well, you know, look, you can't start making, like, Stas is not happy. By the way, who do we got over there in the engineering booth? We got Jack today. Howdy? Hey there. I was going to make a fake voice and say I was Santa's little hipster, but I didn't. Yeah, but you notice that Stas always has to have someone at Roberta's that she, that

[4:48] she like, you know, grooves on there. I mean, Indy Jesus was awesome, aka Dante. Let me tell you something. Indie Jesus and Santa's little hipster, both really, really nice guys. I'm sure. I was gonna say that. Yeah, you know, Stas doesn't care about like someone as a person. That's not what she's about. That's true Appearances. That what's important. Appearances. So anyway, Paul was here because later on in the television program, we're going to be the tasty, they're dead. I don't want to hear any, like, entomologist, like rushing, you know, like, I'm going to destroy the ecosystem of New York City or anything like this. Some dead fancy ants from Mexico. I guess we'll do we'll do the ant tasting maybe after the commercial break, yeah? Sounds good. And we have some anti-gin and to get it. Get it, anti-gin, like antigin, but ant flavored gin. Oh no, I didn't get that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. that's what it is. I was thinking like your aunt who drinks a lot of jam. Oh, well, yeah, no, when, uh, so, uh, Jonas from the

[5:44] Norway Food Labs came and did the thing in Greece. And we'll talk about Greece maybe after the commercial break. We talk about the nerd tale. We gonna do that now? Nerds. All right, so, uh, I'm the only one that actually probably saw that. Can you do that again? Remember that show? Oh, yeah. Who was the what was the name of the guy who did that in Revenge of the Nerds? I remember not thinking that was funny because like that was my life. So whatever. Now look at now look at me. Nerd. Anyway, so we're shutting down the 54 Eldridge lab, and we have, and I've moved my lab to an undisclosed location in Connecticut. Um, bigger and better? Much bigger, better, man, it doesn't have air conditioning. It's a garage. Let's be honest about it. It's the garage. It's a garage. I notice you're selling an air conditioner in your nerd sale. Yeah. Well, Stas wants me to throw away everything and just buy new. I don't know where she thinks I'm getting the money from from the nerd sale. Yeah, no, she wants me to sell a microwave, which I'm not selling the microwave. She wants me to sell a microwave for like $5 to someone who's going to come pick it up on the street so that I could buy a new one for $80. No, I never said five dollars. So anyway, why don't you describe the nerd sales test? We're selling a bunch of really cool equipment. at the nerd sale at 54 Eldridge next Tuesday between 2 and 7

[7:07] p.m. Cash and Carrie, cash only. We're not moving anything. That's about it. As they say in the auction business, as is where is. Yes. As is... where responsibility for what happens after it leaves. For instance, we have a, unless Peter, like, claims it beforehand. We have a the small Chinese puffing gun. It is inherently dangerous. It is being sold as an objet dart. It is not an object of art. Okay. Object. It's not. It is not a functional. I will never recommend that someone use it to puff grains. It is wholly and entirely unsafe. It is merely an object of admiration to have on

[7:52] a little piece of serial history to have on your on your mantle. It is not to be used to puff Siri. Maybe more clear. Do not use it to puff cereal. Do not seal it and heat it, right? Is that pretty clear? It's very much like the ones that Chinese street puffers use. It is, in fact, that is not to be used. Yeah, it is not to be used. Right. Because I don't consider it safe, right? And this is not one of those nod, nod, nudge, nudge, wink, wink things. Like, I built an entire encasement unit so that I could use it, and it turned out to be very difficult to operate it in this encasement unit.

[8:27] And I still felt nervous when I was using it. So I'm going to go ahead and say, don't use it. And the reason why I'm selling it, if I was comfortable using it, I would be using it all the

[8:39] time. Yes, but because I am not comfortable using it, I am telling you not to

[8:45] use it. Okay, so then we have a 3D printer. Oh, this 3D printer, its name is Bruce. State of the art. Its name is, it was like 6 years, 7 years ago. At least. It's a Z-Corp. Color-ish. printer. Yeah, the Z-Corp 450? Uh, yeah, but it's context brand. It's the one that was labeled as, um, anyway, it's never been, uh,

[9:10] it never had, uh, fake stuff putting it. So, you know, it's never had, but Z-Corp, I don't think supports it directly anymore. It can be made to work. It's as is where it is. So you can see all this stuff at bookerandax.com slash nerd sale. We have a palette jack. We have a palette jack. We have a small set funnel. We have street razors. We have a Buchner funnel. Don't get the Buchner, but the subfunnel is useful. Yeah, I don't like Buuchners. But you can come by. People think they're useful. We have a small dishwasher, a life-size Santa. A life-size Santa, not just a life-size Santa, but a life-size Santa that was featured at a, that was designed by Nastasia and Piper to pump

[9:54] out hot, uh, Christmas, uh, mulled wine, and it spews Christmas mulled wine out of its mouth into a bowl as though it's puking.

[10:04] Now, you need to supply your own circulator to make it work, but it's still got the piping and the place in Santa's butt to load up

[10:12] the mold wine, right? So you supply a circulator. Is the piping still there? Or no, like the flexible hose? I mean, it's easy to it's easy to re-rig it. But, you know, such famous people as Mario Batali have drunk, right? wasn't it? Was that a Del Posto or was that it was Lucky Peach? Lucky Pete. So like some, some, some Momafuku people and their like fancy folks all drank a holiday cheer out

[10:38] of... from that was puking out of Santa's mouth. Does it come with the tape deck or is that gone? With the little gone. There used to be a voice recorder. and, you know, dirtbag friend of the show, Phil Bravo with the deep voice, had lots of pithy sayings that Santa would say about him puking up too

[10:56] much, too much mole. too many cookies. And then he would be throwing up mulled wine. So that's in the sale. So if you go to the website, you can see photos and a list of things. Straight razors are sharp. Did I mention this? I don't know. Should we sell those? They're really sharp. I mean, they're straight razors. What are you using for in the lab? No, what happened is that, like, when we opened the lab, I took all of my tools out of my apartment, because it's unreasonable to have that many tools in my apartment, and I used to use straight razors. And then I picked that on my face. One of these used to be used on my face. The other ones I picked up at a, at a sale on the, on the, I think, I don't think they were my grandpa's. Otherwise, I wouldn't sell them. I think I picked them up at a sale. We have a carbonation rig that you built. No, no, no. We have an actual McCann carbonator. Carbonator, okay. Uh, which I think it might need one or 2 things tweaked on it, but it should it should work. We have a, yes, a roofing torch without the hose. We have a minute walk ice machine with a cold plate installed in it, by the way, so you can use it directly for cell serve. Now, there's a hole drilled in the side of it for the cold plate, which I consider a feature. Anytime I buy an ice machine. I immediately drill a hole in the side of the ice machine so that the cold plate will fit inside. If you buy this ice machine. Now I have one at home, which is why I didn't take it home. Uh, and mine has a hole drilled in the side of it. If you take this, I'll tell you this. I'll throw in the condensation pump. Boom. That's a steal. Boom. Minitawak. Manitta walk. under counter. ice. Nice. It's strong. It's very strong. It good. And an aluminum cold plate. Anyway, okay, enough on the nerd sale? Yeah, next Tuesday. There's a broken printer. There's a broken printer, lots of toner. There's a lots of toner and a broken printer that Nastasia melted one day because she was cold because it was a 1000000000 degrees below

[12:48] zero. We had no heat, man. The thing is, is that Dave designed the layout of the lab. I did not, no, this is crap. Nastasia pushed the printer up against the heater and then flipped it on full blast. Whose desk was it under? Whose desk? On a desk. Okay. That's a layout. The layout. Give me that crap. I put it one place, you pushed it in. And melted it. whatever. It doesn't matter. It's melted. The end of the day, it's melting. It still works. It's an object dark. It's an update. Yeah, it's an object of Nastasia's distaste for electronic equipment. Uh, you know, and her ability to melt it. Anyways, enough on the on the nerds. Wait, we didn't tell them how to get to it, did we? No, no, Booker and Dax.com forward slash nerd sale one word. I'm putting an early bid on the broken printer. No bidding, all cash. Okay fine. voice come voice serve. Yeah, we're not holding items for anybody. Wow. Sucks. But how are people gonna, here's the problem. If's going to run like this, how do people know if they've missed it? Like, like, they could show up and someone already took the 3D printer. Well, that's what a yard sale is like. Let me tell you something. I'm gonna go ahead and recommend that if you buy the 3D printer, you might want to get the palette jack. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's what we got it for, right? Yeah, but somehow we didn't end up using it and we just threw the palette jacking to that room. We also had something else really had. Oh, did you, what's the story on the vac machine? Yes or no? I think, yes, I need to make sure. All right, we have a vacuum machine. Don't worry, Paul. The freeze dryer. We are still going to fix. That's up in Connecticut. You and I are going to fix it. Okay, good. All right. No, the vacuum machine is from Del Posto has sealed meats for the likes of Mark Ladner and Mario

[14:26] Patale. Uh, but it currently has an issue. The vacuum pump has, I think, a seal in it that needs to be kind of fixed. And, you know what, Styles? I just never did it Anyway, enough on the nerd sale. So we have some questions in this one, I'm going to deal with last. Oh by the way, you can call in your questions too. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Uh, Kylie Bennett wrote in from um, Blackberry Farm. They sent us some stuff before. Nice people. Nice people. I'm interested in making Jell-O shots from scratch of the GNT,

[15:00] Campari, et cetera variety. And I'd like to use bronze sheet gelatin. Is there a basic ratio you can provide or help otherwise? Uh, thanks, uh, kind of event. Okay. Are you a Jell-O shot aficionado, Paul? I don't think I've ever had one Come on, really? I've had Jell-O. And I've had shots. But you've never had a Jellified shot? Not really. No? All right. Well, here's the thing. If you're using leaf leaf gelatin, right? Uh, You're using bronze leaf gel. The interesting thing about leaf gelatin is that the weights of all the different grades of gelatin are different. Because the assumption is that a leaf should gel the same

[15:41] amount, regardless of kind of what grade you use, but a leaf of bronze gelatin weighs a lot more than a leaf of like gold or platinum or silver gelatin.

[15:50] Also, you can't go straight based on that, I mean, they're designed to kind of set the same, but I've only ever really

[15:58] done, uh, gelled, uh, booze

[16:02] style things. Like I used to, like years ago, we made I made a champagne jelly that I would carbonate in the bottle and super high PSI and then cut open after it chilled and they would have carbonation on the inside.

[16:11] Yeah, it's kind of fun. But you have to choose kind of what texture you want. There is, in fact, and I forgot her name, but there's a literally a cookbook devoted to Jell-O shots, and I believe it has a

[16:23] name like Jell-O shots or something like this. It came out in 2011, uh, and they, you know, they have, uh, and she has a website, the person who did

[16:31] it, and they have a bunch of, uh, recipes there. Also, Kevin Lou from the Craft Cocktail book. He did a post on Sirius Eats about Jell-Oh. Unfortunately, he was using actual Jell-O. Knox, by the way, people knock, knocks because it's not some fancy sheet junk. It's actually an incredibly high, like strength quality gelatin. It's like it's like right in between kind of gold and platinum. It's like got a very, very high bloom strength, right? So it's actually... something like that. Yeah, 220s, I think. It in the 220s. But it, um, and here's something else I like a lot

[17:06] about, uh, Knox, is that you can weigh it very easily so that, which is super easy to weigh because it's a powder. Whereas whenever you're using sheet gelatin. You have your best bet if you're going to use sheet gelatin. It's like, I guess why pros have not, not, don't have a lot of problem with it. You't need to weigh it because it's already there in sheet format. If your recipe calls for some integral number of sheets. But most of the time when I'm doing gelatin work. I don't know exactly how much liquid I'm going to have, uh, because, let's say, a, I'm trying to clarify strawberry juice back in the day back when I used to use gelatin to clarify.

[17:40] And so I always hated having to snip pieces of the gelatin off to try to get it to work right. You know what I mean? Yeah. There's also a sense that sheet gelatin is more cool because pros use it, but in fact, sheet gelatin is made from powder. Is that true? Yes. Yeah, I don't particularly. I mean, I use I think sheet gelatin is sometimes easier to use because you can bloom

[18:03] it, pick it up and throw it in, but powder gelatin is great for measuring. I mean, that's what I use. When I'm cooking, I use Knox brand powdered gelatin. I buy it in big cans and there you have it. But back when I was at the French culinary Institute, we stocked sheet gelatin and I used sheet gelatin and it was also good. But of course, we stocked the high end, the platinum. So it was very kind of close. Like the, the, um, the knocks and the platinum were pretty close weight for weight. so you could kind of substitute them back and forth because they had the same kind of a thing. So since you're using bronze. Uh, the, the Jell-O shot lady recommends uh, for a, a Jell-O shot that is firm enough to cut mold, stand on its own, and look crisp, i.e. of

[18:47] very, kind of a hard jelly. She is a 2 packets of knocks, which is 14 grams of knocks to a 500 about ML recipe, 2 cups, right? total base, including the sugar, everything, right? 2 cups. Now, what does that translate in terms of sheet gelatin? Well, according to some people, like Monitor's pantry, they say about 3 sheets of gelatin equals a packet of knocks, but according to the Jell-O shot woman who tested it in Jell-O shot recipes, she used about

[19:23] 3.5 . And that looks more accurate based on calculations I did, trying to do bloom strength and weight to Knox, kind of converting back and forth. I would say you're looking in the, you're looking in the 3.5 sheet per um, cup range.

[19:38] Yeah. Does that sound good? Sounds right. Yeah. 3.5 sheets per cup in that area in that. Yeah. Range. 4 Jell-O shots. That's going to make a firm a jelly. All right. Yeah? Okay. Uh, and I forgot to set my phone to not turn off. Here we go. Okay, next question. Did I already answer last week, Jack, the Ziploc question? don't believe so. Okay. Hello, lovely people. I did some insight. I think I mentioned it. Michael had some problems with Ziploc's breaking. I think he just got a bad batch. Ziploc freezer bags. You ever had a problem with those breaking? Do you use those cook, Paul? I use them. Low temp? ever had a problem? Time and temperature. He's only cooking in the 50s of Celsius. And so it should last an infinite amount of time in the 50s of Celsius. You had a bad one. You had a bet. Off brand or Ziploc storage bags will fail at higher, low temperatures.

[20:31] Yeah. Storage bags, I've had fail. Other brands I've had fail. Cisco, food safe, Cisco brand, like bags, fake ziplocs. I've had a, I had like 100% failure rate on those. They fail. Uh, but an actual ziploc, an actual branded ziploc freezer bag with the not with the fake slider on top, but a standard ziploc freezer bag. Very, very, very rarely fail very rarely. So, uh, you you got got a bad batch and you should go yell at somebody. But the 2nd question was, do you need a puffing gun to make puffed rice cakes? The white, light, airy, bland, tasteless style of food item. Well, you give such a such an enticing description of it, I can see why you want to make them, right? Um, The, when you're making those puffed rice cakes, they,

[21:29] uh, they have a special machine for those things that decompresses inside of a

[21:34] mold, and that's how they do it. However, you can look up on the internets. There are papers on how to do it in a microwave. What you do is, is you take cooked and then dehydrated starch. You then lightly missed it after it's, you have to cook it, overcook it, dehydrate it, right? Not totally, but to, I forget what the moisture content is, but you just end up knowing after a while. Actually, cooking issues, you can still look up the post. That one's not selling Cialis, I think, at this moment. So you can still look at them. Oh, really? side is totally clean. Oh, wow. It's no longer WordPress. Where am I going to buy my Cialis? I thought you stocked up. Oh yeah, yeah. So anyway, so you can go look at the puffing section, it'll tell you, it'll show you pictures and you can

[22:16] get because, you know, even though I wrote it many years ago. It turns out puffing hasn't changed much. But if you take salted water and lightly, lightly missed the grains of dehydrated

[22:28] grain and then toss them together and then put them inside of a mold and puff them in a microwave, you can get them to bond. This is a unknown thing. But your results may vary. Uh, Uriel wrote in on glycemic load. He goes, dear, Dave, Nastasi Jack, and anyone else that I may have forgotten unintentionally, like, for instance, you Paul. Yeah, you forgot Paul. You know? I have a question about glycemic indexes, retrograded starches and resistance starches. My wife is on a low glycemic index diet, and I am in charge of cooking. Illogi diet really isn't that bad with one notable exception, potatoes. Potatoes. Potatoes have a glycemic index of 80 to 100 depending on the method of preparation and a high glycemic load. This is very unfortunate because potatoes are delicious. Correct. are delicious. I find them to be delicious. I've read all sorts of conflicting information on the interweb saying that certain techniques can lower the GI of potatoes by converting the

[23:24] Starstream resistance starches when you cool them and reheat them after cooking. Alternatively, some sites say that the glycemic load is lowered when serving potatoes with saturated fats, which makes no sense to me at all. I haven't been able to find an explanation of what's going on from a reputable source. Most sites that deal with nutrition read more like religion than science. I'm hoping that Dave might be able to explain what the deal is and whether I can make delicious stuff with potatoes without compromise my wife's diet. Thanks. Uriel, PS, does Nastasia like potatoes? Oh, nice. And when are you going to announce a new project slash Kickstarter, you tease something on the air, and then radio silence. I don't know, when does in August, right? It's not a Kickstarter. It's not, Stas is like, it will not be a Kickstarter, but we will announce the new thing. We have something we're going to announce before then, the cube. We've even talked about the cube, but that's not the next major project. I don't consider that next major project. And he's waiting for the enemy of quality t-shirt. I know. We're working on it. We're working on it. Okay. So here's the short answer. One, if, uh... You know the old, uh,

[24:24] Joel Robuchon slash, uh, Wiley Dufrene, uh, Jeffrey Steingarten, Jeffrey

[24:29] Steingarten brought it back, tech potato cooking technique? The super buttery one? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So that one, look, I would your, I don't know. This would have to be measured by a scientist, right? Uh, and they have techniques for measuring it, uh, but what they do is they take enzymes and they break it down and see how much darch remains after they break it

[24:48] down. I think, I think the one that they use is called termamile from Novo Symes is the standard for like testing resistant starch. I could be wrong. Uh, so those potatoes are cooked to set the starch granules first,

[25:03] right, which is going to make more of the stuff resistant to, uh, um, digestion. At a low temperature. They're set, I think, somewhere in the mid 60s of Celsius or something like this. Do you remember? I do not remember, but... Yeah. They are then cooked, right? And then mashed. Now then the starch grain, it'll form little beads. It's very kind of bead formatted. And then Robuchon then takes that and Wiley used to do this as well and fortifies it with obscene amounts of butter. Obscene, like 50% butter. And then it's chilled in a fridge to form to coagulate back to a solid mass. When that happens, you should get a lot of retrogradation over time. The advantage is here, is that then you just scoop it up and reheat it, and the stuff that has retrograded,

[25:47] won't, won't, you know, re won't un retrograde in that. And so you should have more resistant starch, but I don't know what the actual answer is. The fat thing, um, you know, there was that article on rice. Remember that, Paul, didn't you send that to me? I haven't tried it. Did you try it? How did you test whether or not it made more resistant starch? I didn't. I tested whether it tasted okay when it was reheated. Oh, sure, did it? It did. Yeah. Well, so the deal with oil is that, remember, so when you're looking at resistance is

[26:20] all, like, glycemic index is all about how quickly your body or how effectively your body can break down the starch in there, right?

[26:27] So millopectin is easier to break down the namelos. So a star that has more mellopectin versus amylose. I don't know how it works in potatoes, do you? I don't. I know, but like, I'm sure it's fluffy versus waxy. It is going to be different, right? So you're going to want to select a potato that has less. I mean, we can look this up. I don't know. I forgot to look that up. But anyway, so Milo pectin is going to higher Milo pectin's going to increase your glycemic index. Also, how literally available it is to your digestive enzymes is going to affect the index. Also, things like fats in your body are gonna, like, slow down the rate at which you break things down and so can decrease the

[27:02] index. All these things affect what's going on. Retrogradation affects what's going on. But what's going on with the rice when they were cooking it with the oil is Amylose forms a helix when it's right, a double helix when it's native. And oil can get into that and form a complex, which then they say is more resistant. Now, I don't know whether that's true or not, but that's what they wrote in the paper. But that's how tapioca, uh, Enzorbit brand tapioca maltodexter works, is that it's this short chain, fluffy, um, uh, you know, um, what I'm looking for,

[27:37] Maltodextring, which is starch breakdown product that complexes with oil. So we know it happens, right? Right. Yeah. I don't know. The answer, short answer. don't know. Needs more testing. Needs more tests, but I don't have the facilities to test it, but it's possible. Like the stuff in the nutrition. This, I mean, like, the facts are the facts. Whether or not something is going to be more or less healthy is a different story. That I can't comment on, right? Right, yeah. It seems likely that fat promotes retrogradation or

[28:06] prevents prevents the enzymatic breakdown of the starches if it's complex. But the thing with the rice is they're complexing it before it's cooked. Right? While it's cooked. While it's cooked. before it's, before it's de-nativized, I guess. I don't know. Another interesting question is, I wonder what happens with the oil in like in like an arborio when you're or not

[28:27] in arborio, rather in a risotto when you do the pre-fry. Does that do anything? Who knows? Not me. Should we take our break? Sure. And we'll come back with more cooking issues.

[28:51] Hello out there. It's Steve Jenkins. I'm with Fairway Markets. White Leghorn, Red Wattle, Bourbon Red, Navajo Churro. Wow, these aren't names you're likely to hear at a fairway butcher counter or any other counter today, but before the rise of factory

[29:14] farming, you would have. And at Heritage Foods USA, you still do. Heritage Foods USA exists to promote genetic diversity. Small family farms. and a fully traceable food supply. You see, we believe the best way to help a family farmer is to buy from them, and heritage foods is honored to represent a network of family farmers, artisanal

[29:37] producers whose work presents an immeasurable gift to our food system, and to biodiversity. The meat we celebrate, whether it's heritage turkey, Japanese steaks, Berkshire pork, or Navajo churro lamb

[29:50] chops is the righteous kind, from healthy animals, of sound genetics that have been treated humanely, and allowed to pursue their natural

[29:58] instincts. It's a simple fact. Animals raised according to this philosophy taste better. And as we like to say, you have to eat them to save them. Visit us at heritagefoodsusa.com for more information. And we are back for the uh, ant tasting slash, grease talking slash whatever. We have a we have a caller. We went to break with the caller. I hope is still waiting patiently. All right. Caller, you were on the air. Hello? Hi. Hi, this is Claire. Hey, Claire. How are you? Hey, Claire. Good, how are you? All right. Dave, I wanted to tell you that at 2 o'clock PM today. Office wide salt team challenge is going down. So for those of you that don't know, the saltine challenge is, um, where you uh, see whether you can consume without any uh, form of

[30:52] liquid, 6 uh, salted top. Not don't get the unsalted top, because that's for wussies, assaulting crackers in 60 seconds or less. And by consume, I mean, you have to get it down your throat. Yeah, and I know, so we did it last night. No one was able to do it. Do you know anyone that can do it? Uh, I only tried it once, and I could get within about 10 seconds of it, but I saw it done on the

[31:17] internet. And, uh, it, that, you know, the successful people use a technique uh, called uh,

[31:23] chunking uh, where you do multiple uh, multiple crackers at

[31:28] once. And uh, the most favorable number seems to be three. I also noticed some of the successful people did some head tilting. The idea is they can store saliva in one section and masticate the dry thing. The trick is, is that your throat has a tough time getting something down if the bolus, which is a technical term that you're using for

[31:47] the, for the, you know, food wad, is completely dry. So you need to somehow segregate a little bit of moisture in your mouth so that you can coat the outside and the inside can be dry as the Sahara

[31:59] desert. But you have to coat the bowless somehow with enough moisture that you can jam it down your throat. So the best technique is to do 3 at a time. And some people do four, but then why? You have still have to do 2 more. Right. So 3 and three, I think, is the way. But I saw someone consume, I think, 12 in a minute. He did four, four, and four. Was he a big man? Now, this is the myth, size. Why are you falling into my myth of eating competitions? More serious, you know? It's all about saliva production. It's all about, and I would do a little bit of that. You can't see me, but I'm going with my mouth. I would do a little pre-formation there of the saliva. You know? The main issue with testing it actually is that the dry, salty crap really doesn't do your tongue too much good. Like, it kind of hurts a little bit. Yeah, you know? Have you did? experienced that last night. Yeah, Paul, are you experienced in this challenge? never done it. Is this one of these fads that's killing teens? Not yet. It became popular a number of years ago, and then I, like, so Dax, my, you know, younger son, read about it somewhere, and he was like, Salting Challenge,

[33:07] dad, Salting Challenge. I think it was him. And so then they then they made me do it. Booker attempted it and failed. Nastasia attempted and failed. I attempted it and failed. Oh, no, Dax attempted and failed too. But I'm close. I mean, I could do it with practice. Right now, I feel like saliva's about to drip out of my mouth because my body is gearing up for the challenge. You can see it, right? frothing. I'm frothing like a, like a, like some sort of a, what's that, a rabid dog? I'm sure they can hear. Yeah, yeah. They can hear the frothiness in my voice. But yes. So that is my, I would go on the YouTube and look up some people who do it successfully and then mimic them. That's what I would do. That's a great suggestion. Listen, I have a quick question. Yeah, what's that? So when you have, you know, stocks and I always have these dinner parties and people always bring cheese, usually

[33:56] if they bring, you know, everybody brings free and then we're stuck with 12 wheels of breed. But if they don't, they bring harder cheese. You know, we wrap it up in plastic at the end. How do you know when it's really, really gone bad, just aside from smelling it? Hard cheese is, they don't go bad, really. They just dry out and and their texture becomes unpleasant. The, um, like they'll crack, they'll lose moisture. Occasionally, if the humidity of your fridge is not good or if somebody, say Nastasia, gets some water on the outside of the cheese, when she's wrapping

[34:30] it and then wraps it, you can get a mold, formation there, which, you know, might be a mold of questionable, I'm really salivating, like, because of my thinking

[34:37] saltines. Um, you, uh, you, you know, you might have some questionable mold there, but that can probably be, uh, trimmed away. So a hard cheese. You're pretty much good until until it gets moldy, bad moldy. Uh, bree is gonna be okay until it smells like ammonia, and then it's gonna be, um, unpleasant. Uh, but the fun thing about the ammonia smell is that, is that you have to uh, wait a minute for it to warm up uh, for it uh,

[35:07] to, what are you, what are your thoughts on the big wheel of Brie, Paul? Go on with this waiting a minute. But go on with this waiting a minute technique. Oh, haven't had this. Well, yeah. wait a minute to see whether the ammonia, because when it's cold, the ammonia will be suppressed. And so you have to wait a minute for the ammonia smell to kind of become present. So you could think something's okay because a small amount of ammonia is

[35:33] not is like, you know, almost normal in some cheeses that have been aged a lot. And then, but it can become overpowering as it works. This is a mistake. So like if you go to a cheese shop and a lot of cheese shops because it's better for the cheese, store it kind of at wine cellar temperatures, you should taste cheeses at the

[35:48] temperature, you're going to serve them. A lot of people, look, when I was growing up, you're, like, you know, I, my belief was that Jesus should be served at room temp, but then, like, there's a big kind of backlash against that and that, oh, Jesus should be served, you know, at different temperatures,

[36:00] some more of closer to a cellar temperature. But, you know, I grew up liking my cheese is kind of stinky and on the warm side. But like an ammoniacal cheese, which is an awesome word. Uh, it, you know, the warmer it gets them more kind of stinky, you'll get. I guess you could heat it enough to drive the ammonia off. I don't know. Like in the oven? No, you have to make a soup out of it or something like this. I mean, breathe, you hate it. You know, it's over. But, you know, you could do one of those. you know, you guys weren't alive in the 70s. But, you know, back in the 70s, you bought a big wheel of tasteless brie, wrapped it in puff pastry, cooked the hell out of it, and then poured honey over the top of

[36:44] it and serve it with crackers. Oh, that's a seller's family classic recipe from the south, Dave. I know all about that slithered almonds on top. Yeah, so from the south, do you also eat pimento cheese sandwiches? Oh, you bet. Yeah, nice. Love it. Cheese straws. But let me let me just put it this way. I don't know if you're aware of this fact, but Brie being a French thing, ain't got nothing to do with the South. You know, Bri, cook, breed. But the 70s, you know, and in the in the fact that the South probably has preserved good of good old-fashioned American 70s fair better than anyone else. Like, that's, you know. Yeah. Yeah. But actually, I actually have to say, I enjoy that crap. Really? Oh, me too. Yeah. Like the fact that the oil separates from the brie and the puff pastry is greasy and it's on that cracker. You know what we used to? On a car is cracker. Yeah, so sometime in like the very early 80s, roasted garlic became kind of

[37:38] big, and then it was roasted garlic with that brie was like the thing to have.

[37:42] So you would have the roasted garlic on the cracker with the baked brie, and that

[37:47] was, that was the shizzy right there. That was what the... With the honey or no honey? Uh, the honey became optional at that point. think. true. Yeah. honey became optional at that point All right, send us photos from your challenge, Claire. Yeah, I will. I will. I've got my eye on one person who I think can do it. Look, I'm sure that some cooking issues listeners out there have more than tackled this problem because this is the kind of thing that our listeners probably are

[38:12] excel at, right? All right. It's more... All right. Well, thanks for the help. All righty. good luck with it All right, bye. So we have Paul is here to taste some fancy ants and to taste some antigin. What do you want to do first? You want to taste the real ants or the anti gin? Antigen was, they take wood ants from Denmark, and they crush them up and distill them. That's how they make the anti-gin. Just so you know. And they add botanicals. Plus botanicals. Ants, and botanicals, antigen. Okay. let's have real ants first Okay, so eat the real ants. you go. I got 2 kinds of real ants. Do we able to find the labels on them? No, the labels have rubbed off. Nice. There are big ones and small ones. All right, the big ones, I believe, are the giant Oaxacan flying ants. And I believe the smaller ones might live in the agave somehow. Those, I believe, are the giant ants. I hope those are the giant ones. Yeah, those are the giant ones. Go to it, Paul. No, it's Paul. This is Paul. No, we all have to have the aunts, Dave. The hell, man. I paw first. It's got pretty much no flavor. Is it because they're old or you think they just have no flavor? Maybe old. There's no acidity to it? Not that one, maybe I'll try a 2nd one. Try a 2nd one. Now this is the package that was already opened, right? Right. These were purchased at the Mercado San Juan in Mexico City. That's got a little more. Acidity? Not acidity. A little like oxidized sherry raisin flavor. It's nice. Be really good with some brie on a cracker. Seriously. Try it there. Oh Jesus. These ants, by the way, are enormous. Yeah. Well, someone should take a picture of these things and tweet these suckers out. Do it, Paul. Yeah, Paul, people, people, man. So whatever. Stas, you gotta eat one too. Go do it. Do it. Oh they're fatty. Mine wasn't fatty. This was fatty. Oxidized fat. Um, yeah,

[40:33] it tastes like cooked brie with...

[40:38] What do you think, Stas? Tastes metallic. I think there's a little, I think it maybe, I think maybe they're a little old and I think the fat's getting oxidized. Could be. When did you get these? And were they freshly cooked? When I was in Mexico. That was 3 weeks ago. Yeah. Yeah. All right, next. Maybe longer. Longer. Next are the small ants, which are the size of small raisins. And they're just the thorax of the ant, right? They aren't the tripark. I need some water because the problem is the outside, the kitanus exoskeleton is sticking to my teeth. And it also tastes bad. I like to take, you just don't like the taste because of what you sociate. I didn't get any battery in mind. all battery. I think there's poor quality control. I think the ants each taste different. That is entirely possible. These are very well sealed, so they're hopefully fresher. Yes. Well, he is getting that 2nd one open to me. Why don't we do the din? Well, we have to wait. Paul something... Yeah.

[41:52] So is that a is that a have again or not a have again, Paul? I would have one or 2 more of those. All right. Small ants. Oh, these have the entire thing with legs and everything. I eat one of these. This is the entire ant. I can't do this. Paul has a face. Hmm, that's nice. Little fresh. Grassy, lemony. Yeah, that's what your ass tastes like. This is what you would expect if you're lying in a meadow and an ad crawls into your mouth. How often does this happen, people? Well, I grew up in Manhattan, so never. Central Park. What? That's a rat. All right, stars, eat one. Stars. These are better amps. Jack, come in here eat one. Yeah. That's nicer Jack, you gonna eat one of these? He's on the phone. I don't know that I would go out of my way to get these. Hey, Jack. All right, Jack. Here. Eat one of those suckers. Yeah. What do you think? I would eat one of the other ones. I'm waiting for like... What does it taste like? My friend. Eat one of the fatty ones while you're waiting. I need some water. Oh, no, right there. Oh, my God. Yeah, I need some water, that's for sure. Okay, let's wash this down with some anti-gin. Yeah, you want to probably want to get one of those plastic cups there? Yeah. It gets worse. Yeah. No, gets worse. No, no. No, no, it gets worse. But I hear, look, the ones that, um, the ones that

[43:48] uh, Alex Atla has, I think, are like totally fresh, like still, because isn't formic acid gonna volatilize? or something. Isn't it volatile like acetic acid? It is. I don't know how long it would stick around. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I've learned much by eating these. Have you learned a lot by eating these? If I ever prepare ant snacks, I will season them with chili and lime. Yeah. Yeah, but it's supposed to have its own citrusiness from the itself. So like that's just cheating. I could prepare anything. I would just rather have Fritos. You know what I mean? Fritos are delicious in and of themselves. Add chili and lime and you've added more delicious stuff to a Frito. You know what I mean? Yeah, but Fritos aren't as freely available in Meadows. No, fair. I'm sorry. I'm going to wash this ant particles down. Now Paul is tasting the anti-gen. I think you need to empty all the vials in. Okay, well, while he's getting ready to taste that. Oh, you know what? Before you do anything, water on it brings brings the flavor out. I see what you mean. Maybe an ant soda. Yeah, now I'm getting more of the, uh, now I'm getting more of the citrus, more of the...

[45:10] tonic and anti-gin. Yeah there you go. All right. Uh, well, okay, you ready to taste his tastes? For the record Styles did not try the other amp. Wait, which one, the fatty one? No, the little guy. Oh, the fatty one was better. Neither was good. The antigen is delicious. Yeah? Complex. Good antacidity. Yeah. So you can really taste the ant. I wouldn't name it as ant, but it is a unique flavor. The formic acid, I assume, esterizes rapidly and creates all these interesting complexities.

[45:53] Yeah, well, I don't know how much of the Native ant flavor

[45:58] is, uh, distillable. Yeah, one second. I'm tasting it. Man, it's good. It's made by a, I forget the name of the distiller in Cambridge in conjunction with the Nordic food lab. I think it's called Cambridge Distillers or something like that. Yeah, not our Cambridge, they're Cambridge. England. England the English Cambridge. Yeah, the one that's closer to Denmark. The one that came first. Although, you know, we don't like the minute. What do you think of that stuff? good. Yeah. All right. So safe styles pro anti-gin. Oh, man. We don't have that much time, right? All right. Well, listen. Jim Guineri called in and by the way, it's about center views and stuff. I'll get to that. Oh, no, this one I have to do. We have to do this. Paul, you're gonna try one on this because it might run out of time. There is a question on centrifuges in from Tom, which I'll get to next week. Um, and more San Francisco stuff that we'll get to next week. And a question on gimlets, basil gimlets from Jason that we'll have to get to next week. But Jim's been waiting. And by the way, pronounced Guarniri, which is

[47:08] why, presumably, he also enjoys Guar the band. Are you a fan of Guar the band? I heard one of the guys died. Yeah, what's your favorite Guar song? Preschool prostitute? Hard to pick a favorite. Hard to put the odorous Eurungus died. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Sad sad. sad day for sad day for theatrical hydrocolloid bands. Yeah, yeah. I told you, I heard people. I've never saw them in concert, but people would come back with blood under their contact lenses. Fake blood under their contact lenses. impressive. Yeah, very good, very good spray. Anyway. Dear Dave, Nastasi Jack, and Paul. I've been, I still have ant in my mouth. Yeah. The fatty, you get the fattiness now. like lick the roof of your mouth. You get that like slickness. Yes. It's like Crisco Slick. I have been asked by my sister to come up with a couple of interesting cocktails for her wedding. One of them will just be something interesting slash special that one wouldn't normally see at a wedding.

[48:07] The other is specifically for the champagne toast. The groom cannot stand carbonation. Whoa. And he says, sorry, Nastasi, but really that's an insult to all of us. Can't stand carbonation. Find a new groom. The groom could pre-dose with acetozolamide. drug prescribed for altitude sickness that inhibits the sensation of

[48:30] carbonation. This an excellent idea. We tested it, you and I. Does it mess up? I forget, it doesn't mess up your sense of flavor for other things, does it? No, not at all. Yeah, this perfect. Holy crap. We have just solved your problem. Give the groom this altitude sickness pill about a half an hour before the champagne toast, and they could just drink them some champagne, and everyone else will be happy, and he'll be like, why is this wine a little flat? I mean, flat, not carbonation wise, but why is it like lacking in some of the flavor that I associate with wine and why is it so acidic?

[49:00] But, but, done and done. Tell your doctor you're going mountain climbing and you need a prescription for acetozolamide. I forget the trade name. Assuming, Paul, love you, man. That's why we need Paul here, like, all the time for this kind of stuff. Let's actually finish in case this is not something that they're willing to do. So the groom cannot stay in carbonation, so they would like a non-bubbly substitute for the toast. I was thinking of pre-batching both and possibly bottling one or both. I have 6 ounce champagne bottles and a capper. I have 2 questions. First, I have liquid intelligence, know about your liquid nitrogen method for clearing the headspace. Can this be done with a chip of dry ice instead? Probably you might get some residual carbonation. You still have to wait for it to stop, volatilize, and you pressurize the bottle, which might cause problems. I guess it might have the potential to carbonate, but if the bottle's pretty full, it seems like the volume of CO2 and the headspace wouldn't be enough for perceptible carbonation. It's possible, but be very careful not to blow the bottle up. Second, any suggestions for the 2 cocktails. The only guidance I've been given is that neither can be carbonated. They love bourbon and whiskey in general, and they really like herbal infused liquor,

[50:07] Chartreuse, absinthe, Benedictine, and they prefer the toast drink to be lighter since it will be had by many who might not typically drink cocktail. Manhattan's. Duh. Just make Manhattans, right? Paul? That's not light. We gotta go. All right, we'll come back with more light cocktails. More suggestions and we'll talk about grease next week. All 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

[50:39] 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.