[0:00] Today's program is brought to you by Heritage Foods USA, the nation's largest distributor of Heritage Breed Pigs and Turkeys. For more information, visit heritage foodsusa.com. I'm Linda Pelaggio, host of a Taste of the Past. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:31] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the British Pizzeria and Bushwick, Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network. As usual on Tuesdays from nah, nah, nah, around 12, somewhere in the 12 area. 12, 12, 10, 12, 12. Hey, look, it is my fault because, you know, obviously, people show up to work on time. However, in my defense, the J and M are skipping all of the stops that are related. I mean, Jack, no offense. It's one of the problems about being out here and theoretically well served Brooklyn. See, Manhattan is not theoretically well served by public transportation. We are actually well served by public transportation, at least south of 96. Rice does? Yeah. That's why she lives over in Hill's Kitchen. That's one place on Earth. does not hate, is Hell's Kitchen. It's true. She claims, I don't know if you know this, Jack. She claims that the actual son is nicer, like a mile and a half west on the west side of the

[1:36] island. Oh, yeah, better coordinates, sure. What? It's a mile and a half away. It depends on how many tall buildings there are between you and everything else. Crazy people, crazy people. It's funny when they said there was that Manhattan henge where the sun was going to align with the buildings and it would set perfectly in between the grid. I was driving to Philly and all these people are in the middle of the street blocking traffic with their phones. It's completely overcast. Are you about to sing the Age of Aquarius? It sounded like you were sitting. Yeah, the intro to the age of Aquarius? Run the moon, right? How does it go? It's like something like that. It's in like a 7th house and Jupiter aligns with Mars. Something will happen across the planet. But I think love, I think, I think love rules the earth, which goes to show it never happened. Never going to happen. I think that show made me uncomfortable. Why are they running around naked? What that all about? It's not shocking. why I don't want, you know? Not necessary. Hey, I do want to jump right to our 1st call here with Lou from Beacon. Now, this is not a question. This is just a call. That's right. It's just a it's a guest. It's a guest. Lou from, well, but it's pronounced beacon, isn't it? Beacon, yes. Beacon, hi, David. It's actually Lou and Dean. We're both here. And you are a brother duo, correct? That's correct How's that working for you? Working with your brothers. It's gotten better and better over the years. I'm trying to imagine my 2 kids working together. and only if their job was to fight each other would be the only

[3:00] way. I stopped growing and he didn't. So we stopped fighting a long time ago. Oh, nice, nice. All right, so listen, um, rather than me giving the, uh, so they've developed this new uh, brewing device, but rather than me give the spiel for your product, why don't you just roughly tell people who aren't familiar with

[3:16] it kind of what you got going? Sure. So, uh, so Beacon, you know, we're, um, we've been focused on unlocking, you know,

[3:24] higher quality, highest quality, made to order a craft beverage. We come from the coffee industry and the technology was originally born from coffee when Dean invented it. But the process uses vacuums to pull the air out of the granite material. And when the vacuums are released, the liquid goes back in size, called rain. It stands to reverse atmosphere confusion. And what we realize is that, um, is an open technology that, um, really optimizes

[3:53] flavor extraction from coffees, teas, infused waters, cocktails, um, it allows beverages to be created that have never been able to be created before.

[4:01] And so, um, the patents and the technology is, um, very broad reaching. We're focusing 1st in the restaurant arena, and interest of working with chefs, a mixologist, and baristas, to create great content for the platform, but ultimately, the idea is that this is an internet technology

[4:18] that will bring into the home. So one day, all those recipes that exist out there can be replicated by any consumer. And now, it's not spelled like beacon that, why don't you spell it for people so that they can find it on the

[4:32] internets. Sure. It's B-K-O-N. The website is Beacon Brew, B-K-O-N, B-R-E-W, and um, we just spelled it a little bit differently,

[4:42] but um, it, it announced as in beacon, like a beacon of light. signal a, um, a, um, a pep finding, um... Right. Now, so the, the, the, one of the fundamental

[4:56] things similar to like old school vacuum infusion where you're doing like pulse cycles of vacuum to 1st infuse liquid in and then draw it back back out again, presumably the patent has to do with

[5:08] the combination of that with the heating element and the processor control of it. I would be explain, but we have a whole range of intellectual property, but, um,

[5:17] It's the, the, process is, is, is quite simple, although it's a little bit more complicated than just pulling a vacuum. Specifically, it has to do with just the phases of the vacuum, the depth of the vacuum, the time that it's applied,

[5:34] um, and or controlled, um, with the, uh, intervals in between where it goes back to normal atmosphere. So that's really the key of the technology is the by controlling the vacuum and the depth of each specific vacuum phase, it allows it to penetrate

[5:53] a determine distance, essentially, into the cellular structure of the material. Let's say if we have 33 that are in sequence with a pause in between, it allows us to draw the gases out, the solvent goes in, then we

[6:11] go with the next one, go a little bit further and keep going through the cellular structure, drawing the flavors actually out through the pores of the

[6:19] material. The material itself is acting as a filter. Like, uh, water purify is, um, ed rock. Right. Right. So, and presumably you have different programs written for different kind of products and there's like a

[6:36] lot where you have like a recipe system in it that there's more of user just types in what they want and then you pump it out the other

[6:42] side. Yes, yes, it's, uh, the, the recipes are predetermined, predesigned by the content partners. Um, um, there's specific flights that we've designed that allow a, uh, a very turnkey application as far as finding the best recipes for a specific type of beverage.

[7:05] We've done a lot of research to make it easier for people to use the tool the right way and to find the optimal setting.

[7:12] Right. Now, are you able to pull the vacuum levels that you need with a, like a diaphragm or a wobble pump or do you have to have like a larger pump in there or what are you guys using? Uh, we're using a small diaphragm pump that's, uh, was designed for medical equipment. Right. Now, so presumably with a diaphragm pump, you're not taking to like as deep a vacuum level as you would with, let's say, like a rotary vein pump in a

[7:39] commercial in a packer, but also you can't suck those kind of volumes anyway. I mean, those kind of vacuum levels anyway, because a lot of what you're doing is at temperature, so you're going to get boil off a lot before that. So it's a lot of the art of it figuring out how to get enough of a vacuum delta and still have the high temperature without a lot of boil off or what?

[7:58] Absolutely. Absolutely. All that is based in the code of the recipe. There is certainly a relationship of the water temperature to the depth of the vacuum. Also taking the material and the solvent into account as well. Right. So, um, uh, we certainly don't want to go into a full-on boil uh, with by creating a very deep

[8:22] vacuum as that will also reduce the temperature of the liquid if we're working with something hot.

[8:28] We're working with that ambient beverage, we can go quite a bit

[8:33] further. But there certainly is that relationship, what's optimal. One of the things, Dave, that makes us really unique and very much an internet of things play, from a model standpoint, is all of the, all the code that goes into controlling different parameters, the water temperatures, the whole times, the different vacuum pressures, different vacuum durations, and it differs between just 2 different

[9:01] coffees or the same coffee, 2 different roast profiles. And, but the beautiful thing about it is because it's,

[9:07] because it's, because it's code. Um, and based on, uh, you know, our 1st product line,

[9:13] it was built, is built exclusively in commercial space by, um, by

[9:16] Frankie. And because of the level of engineering that has gone into this. What's amazing about it is that when that beverage is recreated, it can be recreated. So going back to your question earlier about how there's other methods that have been around for a long time of using manual pumps and manual

[9:35] methods or partial manual methods to pull vacuums on materials and

[9:41] liquid. This is all about understanding how we control those parameters, how we put them into code, and ultimately how we allow them to be replicated. Um, um, based on all the factors that allow you to achieve a precise, um,

[9:57] some beverage. In the same way that when you put a bottle of stone beer, you don't need to be in San Diego to drink

[10:03] it to know exactly how good and how perfect it should taste. That's our goal of what we're trying to do when they made to order side. And presumably also, like, if some knucklehead hits a recipe that's a water base and they have an alcohol in there,

[10:15] like you have to know when you're, like, it has to know from the pumping curve that stop. I'm boiling before I thought I was going to, things like this, right? I mean, presumably that has to get built into the kind of lease somewhere, right? Absolutely. I mean, it's keep in mind it's a semiautomatic piece of equipment. So there's obviously plenty of room for user error. There's obviously, there's certainly going to be visual cues. The more... Hello? Or you get used to seeing, and identifying very quickly, whether things are right or wrong. It's not to say that we can't actually mix hot water with an ethanol base and make a beverage because we can. Um, and we've done we've shown that with hot toddies, which is quite interesting. So, um, you know, there's, it's not just a single beverage in itself, but the system allows for a crossover.

[11:06] So going from a T to a spirit, and then a T and a spirit combined it to the same recipe, it's quite, quite intriguing. If, for instance, we have a drink that, um, that we make using, um,

[11:17] buffalo trace because it's, uh, a little bit sweeter, and we get this beautiful Madagascar vanilla bean, and this, um, both

[11:23] Rishi tea, and as well as this, um, It's, uh, this beautiful black tea from Rishi tea. We put it in the porta filter with the bourbon. So that bourbon is, let's say, 75 degrees, and there's 6 ounces of it. And then we add 8 ounces of 200 degree water. So now we're somewhere between, let's say, 140 degrees, math is in a strong suit. Um, but we are able to extract within about 90 seconds, labors from that bourbon and tea. I'm sorry, the flavors from that tea and vanilla into the water and the bourbon is we have increased the temperature, but we now have the bourbon and they're acting as a solvent as well.

[12:01] But to your point, the digital part is only one side. The other side is the arc. And that is the arc that occurs on the content partner side, whether it's a coffee roaster, a tea company, or a chef or a mixologist is creating a

[12:17] recipe and has the knowledge and expertise of how to source and curate and prepare the ingredients.

[12:23] And then the 2nd part is, um, understanding the parameters and having the right code, having the right recipes. So when you put the 2 together, the magic occurs. Now, I never knew. is it is it Frankie or Frankie? It depends where you are in the world. In America, we call it Frankie. Frankie, and in Europe, it's Frankie. It's F R A N K E. Um, one of the reasons we chose to work with them is, as you

[12:50] realize this technology was going to be very broad reaching and had applications in, um, in home applications and vending and bottling way

[12:58] down, you know, way down the road. We knew we needed to be, um, we needed to be flawless in the food server space where the content would be created. And as an example, when we looked at other boutique companies that were bringing technologies to market, a lot of them were building these technologies

[13:12] in garages on their own, which really is very exciting. And definitely has an appeal to it, but there's obviously a lot of

[13:21] cost and a lot of risks that go into it. We chose Pronky because they're a multi-billion dollar organization. And as an example, when McDonald's wanted to do Mick Cafe, and they said they needed 1000s and 1000s of locations activated in one year, and these machines can be down for more than 4 hours, and they need to be call centers and service networks set up to protect

[13:41] us, and machines have it built to a certain spec. It was fronky that won that and executed on it. So our equipment is being built on the same, uh, the same caliber on the same platform. I mean, the interesting thing about that particular company is they're freaking huge, right? But in terms of the US, their penetration from, like, I don't know, in the QSR world, but in like the fine restaurant worlds, really only in the coffee sector. Like, but they have a huge business outside of that in Europe and all over the world.

[14:11] I wonder why they never, like they sell autoclaves, they sell, you know, all sorts of stuff. I wonder why they don't have the penetration in the other segments here. It's an interesting thing. Ive always wondered about with those guys. Yeah, I can't speak to their business. But what I can say that, uh, you know, they definitely have the infrastructure, and, um, they've been incredible, they've been an amazing partner, and incredibly, um, um, I guess, uh, non-traditional in terms of um, stepping out of

[14:39] their, their big infrastructure organizational um, uh, norms to be very innovative and adaptive with us as, as entrepreneurs. So, um, it's really sort of the best of both worlds and that, you know, where um, beacon gets to still be essentially involved in the innovation, um, and ideation and marketing standpoint, um, with them, but they bring, um, you know, decades and decades of

[15:03] experience and, you know, unbelievable infrastructure that we could never, uh, um, practically, you know, uh, pragmatically raise the money

[15:11] or or build. All right, so you don't have a unit yet that people can futz around with at home. Where can they go? Like, who's who's buying these things now? How much they cost? Sure. So this is a pure commercial unit. Um, the, uh, the, the market price that these should be, um, finding being sold for somewhere around the 14 K mark. Ouch. Ouch. Now, now, if you look at it from a commercial standpoint, you really only need to put, you know, you know, 20 teas through it a day to

[15:41] break even within a matter of months. And we have customers who've gone from, as an example, on the tea side who had no tea beverage business, they were just dry tea sellers. Maybe they did maybe 10 hot teas a day because they weren't promoting it to putting this in and now having 70 hot teas a day. So it's going to be transformational. The other thing is, just to point out is that, because it's an open technology, it allows you to deliver that level of

[16:06] quality across any beverage. And so it allows you to do things that you can never even do before. As an example, our infused water capabilities are unmatched and really, you know, they cannot be achieved by anything else. Um, our ability to do, make to order iced teas. We can brew loose leaf tea and concentrated over ice to make the fresher taste in iced tea in 90 seconds. To do that would take 8 minutes. So you wouldn't even be in the game anywhere else than doing it. So from a business standpoint, it's purely, it's a money maker. It's a commercial machine. It's that we're focused on. We've just started putting in market. We got our NSF certification late last fall. And there's numerous companies that have been purchasing them. There's dozens, um, well, over 50 that, uh, swim from

[16:55] 1500, that have already been purchased, that are, uh, going into market. You can begin to see it at Whole Foods in Chicago. They're doing great things with it. She actually sent down Empire State South. We were going to be with him. Actually, this Sunday, Panther Coffee in Miami. They're rolling out multiple locations. We're going to be with them actually on Wednesday. Um, there's uh, Brennan Danes, uh, Philadelphia, really innovative. You have to watch them. They have uh, they've got some incredible investors and um, incredible model. What they're doing in sort of the health, best food, health QSR model is really disruptive. They're building an entire, they're using it for their keys and their, their infused waters. Um, Gabriel uh, Creuter, um, up in uh, um, in Midtown is opening up a new restaurant. He has one. It's uh... does your website have a list of places? Like it's like that, so like if someone lives, I don't know, if they live, I don't know, where do they live? Is Cleveland? They live in Cleveland. Like, can they go on your website and find someone like, you know, close to them that has one or no? Not yet, but what I can say is that there's, um, that, in addition to the

[18:08] boutiques that it's very likely you're going to see some, some significant, um, multi-unit players in the craft beverage

[18:16] space that, um, are going to make this more accessible on a nationwide level. So it's, right now, a lot of the, not a lot of the buy-in, as within any new product, is in this innovative, that

[18:28] innovator demographic, which is actually represents about, about 2% of your market, the next stage is the early adopters. And that we're really sort of still in that innovator cusp early adopter phase of people who are using it, but the results have been,

[18:42] you know, we're seeing increases of sales at 165% within established beverage categories

[18:51] of people. Right. Now, one last question, but then we have to go to break. Are you worried at all? I guess not because you're working with Frankie, but are you worried about being clovered, where like some big person buys you and then crushes the technology into tiny pieces? No, and that's exactly why we partner with Frankie in that we're, you know, we're building this thing to bring it around the world. And most importantly, we're building this to populate the beacon, the craft cloud,

[19:14] which, um, once that content is up there, it's going to allow us to answer your question from before, it's going to allow us to move very quickly into the home space because the content will exist. The home model is much simpler for us to build. And so, we already are adding content partners like RCP and counterculture coffee, and it just, it's like apps. And one says they're there, when home units come out, you're going to know exactly what you love, and you're going to pull those apps down. And someone can really pull recipes that you've created, Dave, and they can have their own cocktail or water, a coffee recipe, and they hit that button as long as they have the ingredients during the game.

[19:46] I don't know if they want any recipes that we created, right? Anyway, gentlemen, thanks so much. Look at our beak, it's bkon.com, right? Beacon? Yes, you got it. Check it out, check it out. Really interesting new technology. Thanks for coming on the show. We'll be right back with a little more cooking issues.

[20:21] 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

[20:48] 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 farmers to buy from them, and

[21:07] heritage foods is honored to represent a network of family farmers, artisanal producers whose work presents an immeasurable gift to our food

[21:15] system, and to biodiversity. The meat we celebrate, whether it's heritage, turkey, Japanese steaks, Berkshire pork, or Navajo churro lamb

[21:25] chops is the righteous kind, from healthy animals, of sound genetics that have been treated

[21:30] humanely and allowed to pursue their natural 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. You have to eat them to save them. Love that. You have to eat them to save them. Well, not that particular one because he's dead. You know what I mean? But, you know, in general, I get it. I get what you're saying. Welcome back to cooking issues. Stas, how you doing? Good. Yeah? Anything good happening today after the show? Oh, uh, Nern sale. You gonna say, say it? No, you say it. You got the you got the reverb on me, Jack? Oh yeah, here we go. That happens at 2.30? Oh, yeah, I thought you said two. Yeah, we'll be there at two. Yeah, around two, 230. You know, bring cash in a truck because I'm not touching it. I wore a light blue shirt today. I didn't wear my... I want to see this happen where you're... I wore... I mean, I take, you're saying I have to take the shirt off? Or we're just

[22:37] going to be, we're going to be sipping old boo straight out of the bottle. Yeah, I have the waivers to sign, I have everything. Yeah, yeah. If you buy something that's dangerous, hey, it's on you. It's on you, baby. You know what I mean? Also, one more thing. I have a request. First of all, I missed this question. It's too late because I didn't know when the thing was, but Julian wrote in saying, I'm traveling

[22:56] to San Francisco for the WWDC, which is, I think, the Apple developer thing. this year. And I'm lucky enough to have some free time, but I didn't realize before the conference and it just started. So he missed his free time. So tweet to him, a tweet to me for him, any suggestions you have for his remaining time in the San Francisco Bay Area of places to go. I need to go back there soon. I forget why, but I have to go back to San Francisco soon, and then I can have my own fresh recommendations. But I hope you're having a good time there, Julie. Why't you tweet us and tell us where you went, whether you enjoyed it? Ray says? Did you enjoy it? Did you have a good time? Okay, also, I have a request. This goes a request out. To anyone who listens to this show who lives in a mountainous region. I'm interested in Turkish coffee that is produced at altitude. And so if you live in kind of like your in your like 6000, uh, that's like around 2000 or 1800 meters or somewhere in there, like the boiling point of water should just about be at optimum coffee extraction

[23:53] temperature. And I want to know whether your Turkish coffee is especially delicious. I don't know, you're natural libre fan styles. you've seen that movie? Today is especially delicious. I want to know whether it's any different from us, you know, chumps down here at sea level

[24:08] producing, uh, producing coffee. So tweet me in. Let me know because I'm... You got to tell the Turkish coffee man story. Which one? I mean, the copper maker story. You didn't do it. Well, when I run my own test, I'll talk about the guy. Like, I look, I have a nice, look, for those of you that are actually Turks, you're

[24:26] going to get mad if I call the Turkish coffee maker an e-brick because you use the term e-brick to mean something else. But here in the United States, when we refer to a Turkish coffee maker. We call it an e-brick. And the Greeks, who don't care about what anyone calls anything in Turkey. They call it a brickie, right? He's like a brickie. Mine's from Greece. It's very nice. Nastasia bought it for me, and it was very cheap because as we all know, the economy in Greece, not se bueno. But I'll tell a story later because I got to get some questions. But I'm very interested in Turkish coffee and I am very interested in rubbing it in the face of snobs who think that Turkish coffee is not a good product or can't be a good product because it doesn't fit their particular idea of what good coffee should

[25:04] be. And, you know, anytime somebody does something as a cultural ritual for 100s and 100s of years. I'm just going to go ahead and say there's probably something to it, right, Styles? Probably something to it. Or people wouldn't keep freaking doing it. You know, like crappy percolators from the 50s. Like no one sits around doing those anymore. You know why? I do. You use a percolator? You use a freaking percolator, one that goes gabloop, gabloop,

[25:29] gabloop, into the plastic top. You put it on your stove and it goes, bloop, bloop. Yeah. Yeah. It died. It died. Yeah, I mean, fine. You know what I mean? Or like mocha pot, like has its own kind of like advantages. You know what I mean? It has its own kind of its own kind of brew. But the fact of the matter is, is that these technologies have sustained themselves because they produce something that people freaking like. So why thumb your nose at the idea? Let's just figure out what all the parameters are in Turkish coffee. I'll let you know one thing about Turkish coffee, is that every single American I've seen do it does it wrong. They do it freaking wrong. For those of you that, for those of you that have no, I don't really have the time to go into it, but here it is. So like Turkish coffee, like extremely finely ground, almost like a powder, right? So whether you mix it into the water when it's already hot or not depends on where you make it, like whether you're doing it in Serbia and Turkey, Greece, whatever. But we're not even gonna get into that. So you put the powdered thing in. And then it comes up and forms a froth, which is called a boil, right? And in America, they always say you boil it 3 times, right? But if you look at Americans do it, they're such jokers, right? That what we do is we let it boil up and then we don't do anything, we let it settle back

[26:37] down, and then we just boil that 3 times and pour it, and then you spoon the froth off the top.

[26:41] No, you this it look. You don't have to go to Turkey, right, to know this. This is why YouTube was invented. Not really. But this is why I like the fact that YouTube was invented because I can go watch a video of like 12 different folks in Turkey making Turkish coffee and instantly realize that as soon as it froths up, 1st of all, they cook it in sand, right?

[27:04] And that's why I haven't tested yet because I haven't gotten the sand. I didn't want to buy a £50 sack of it in Home Depot because, as Asassi likes to say, I'm not a real man. a straw man. Anyway. And I was like, I don't need It's not that I can't lift a £50 of sand stars. What the hell am I going to do with the other 48 freaking pounds? Throw it in trash? Anyways, I need a small amount of sand. So you put sand into like into a pan, put it over coals and it's very even. Anyway, so it boils up. It makes a froth. You then pour that froth out right now into the cup. Then you let it froth again, then you pour that froth out again. Then maybe if you want, you do it a 3rd time, and then you pour it out and you leave a lot of the grounds in the cup. That's the way to do it. And I've never seen an American do it that way. Maybe that's why snobby Americans thumb their noses at it because they just have no idea how to properly make it. Anyway, I'm going to go through the investigation. Why? Because I enjoy it. Now, if I can get to a question before they unplug my mic and kick me out

[27:59] of here. Um, Tom wrote in. Tell me if I answer this question or not. For instance, like Jason wrote in about gimlets, and I think I answered it already. Jason, if I didn't answer your gimlet question, your basil gimlet question. write it back. Write me again and say, hey, jerk, you didn't answer it. You know what I mean? And I will. Uh, so, uh, Tom wrote in, uh, and he says hello to uh, Nastasia Jack and the rest of the crew, which is very nice. Finally up to date to the podcast. I've got 3 questions, order by priority. Uh, I've been using my sand center circulator and getting amazing results on fish and pork belly, but when I tried the 100 hour oxtail recipe of modernist

[28:38] cuisine. Did I do this? Okay. I found off flavors and gas development, starting around 50 hours of circulation. The same thing happened with the modernist cuisine, 72 hours short ribs, 58 or 60 degrees Celsius recipe, which I luckily got out before they actually went off. I had the oxtail and ribs backpacked at my local butcher with a chamber vac sealer. Now I assume the reason has to do with bacteria not getting killed off, which may be due to slightly big water bath, but the short ribs were fixed in the center, and I

[29:06] measured the temperature throughout the bath with a thermometer, indicating constant and correct

[29:10] temperature every, everywhere, any ideas what went wrong. All right, yes, I have some ideas. I think what happened is, like, let's say you had a bunch of short ribs in a, you have to tell me, right? But let's say you had a bunch of short ribs in one package, right? So there's sauce and microbes and all sorts of like nastiness, right? Inside of the bag in the center of the bag, right? And I think what happens is it just took too long for the temperature, the

[29:39] kill temperatures to make it to the inside of the bag, right? So if you were to take a block. as is my favorite example. I don't know why. But if you were to take a block of meat, whole meat that had never been pierced with a knife,

[29:51] like, let's say don't cook, kill, and cook whales. But let's say you had a chunk of whale flesh, single chunk of whale flesh, because I can't think of any other animal big enough to do this, right? That is the size of like a Chevy small block engine, right? And you were to put that into a bag, one piece, right? And then you were to circulate it, right? Then it doesn't matter really how long it takes for the center of that whale chunk to get up to cooking temperature because the inside of the meat is fundamentally

[30:17] sterile, unless it had an infection, or unless you stabbed it with a knife all the way through to the center. Now, as soon as you get in a situation where, because the whale meat is extremely, you know, it's very, it's very lean. It's a whale. You know what I mean? Well, they got a lot of blubber, but I think the meat itself, the muscles, I don't know how marbled it is. I've never seen it. I never cooked whale meat, obviously, because I'm not for killing whales, but as soon as you take big pieces of lard or blubber, and you start like penetrating the meat with and like putting stuff in the middle of it, or if you start hacking up that big piece of

[30:49] meat and then laminating it together with sauce, or if you take a bunch of different ribs and short, you know, short ribs or whatever you're

[30:56] using oxtail, and you pack them all into one bag, well now you have contamination in the middle of your bag. So if it takes 6 hours for the middle of the bag to get up to kill temperatures, you have plenty of time for bacteria

[31:07] to start growing and puffing the bag out. Once the bag puffs out, then you can have a reduced temperature everywhere in it and you can continue to grow and it can go off. So I think that's what happened. Because the temperatures that you're using are clearly high enough to kill everything.

[31:21] So even if you're cooking at home and you're not going to be doing portion control work, I always recommend, if you can, to bag each uh, large, each piece, like each oxtail or each rib in a separate bag, if you can, and barring that, because also then if you lose a bag, you only lose one piece of meat, but, and, you know,

[31:42] if, uh, if that jerk who said they were going to come over to dinner, doesn't come over to dinner, you can always just chill that bag without contaminating the rest of your

[31:48] bag. How often that happens to us? Like, they're like, ah, I'm late. All the time, right? So then you could take that bag that you'd plan to serve to your ungrateful houseguest and put it back in the, you know, chill it down and put it back in the fridge. So it's convenient a lot of times, although it wasteful of plastic, to have them individually bad. But barring that, you should have all of your individual pieces of meat in a single

[32:09] layer, and I think that might solve your problem. And when I say single layer, such that the bag can get all the way around it, right? So if you have a bunch that are laminated together, even, you know, it could cause problems. that's what's happening. Second problem is on centrifuges. Via my University, I had the fortune of using a centrifuge to make some. Oh no, I answered the pe butter question. Peanbutter question, I think I answered. I remember answering a people question. Listen, if I didn't answer the rest of your questions, Tom, let me know and I'll get to them. You can ask me more questions. One more question. One more question. One more question. Okay, let's see, let's see what this one is. Hey, Dave. Massage and Jack and Annie Poppins. This is from Christian. Love the show, discovered it after my buddies at Arden Restaurant here in Milwaukee. Stas, you love Milwaukee. It's one of the things you like. Hate biscuits, love Milwaukee. Called in to get recipe for brandy old-fashioned slushies for their late night ramen transformation. My wife and I just bought a house. Congrats, and discovered the previous owners had never installed a waterline into the freezer. What the hell did this guy's doing? What are they doing? How do you not have a waterline in your people? ice makers, good. Icemaker, good. into the freezer. So we are Iseless barring a Midsummer snowstorm. Even up there, I don't think you get them. You know what I'm saying? Do you know that Dax used to, when he was roasting coffee in the in the winter? He would run out and snow chill it. He over, he overrose it. And Dax wanted to go into business selling snow chilled, Dax's dark

[33:36] roast, snow chilled coffee. And I was like, good luck with that, Dax. Good luck. You know, I would support him, but that's a hard, that's a hard business model. because you have to wait for snow or move to Sweden or something. Uh, okay. So we were ISO sparring a Midsummer snowstorm. You can probably have a line installed, but you can, by the way. But before doing that, I wanted to get your thoughts on making ice at home. We basically have 2 uses. One, the rapid cooling during cooking. Uh, blanching, bringing cooked ice cream base or yogurt down, standard uh, beer cooler uh, filling, and two, ice for cocktails. Considering getting a greater than $300 standalone ice maker for rapid cooling and making cubes using the cooler in freezer technique described, you know, on Dave

[34:19] Stolte's website for bar ice. How you set up a good home ice program from scratch? Any recommendations for inexpensive ice makers that could work for both the cooking and bar applications? Thanks, Christian. All right, look, this, oh, that used to be my telephone. Okay, let me give you some good and bad news. The good news is, there's no good news. Like, I would get the expensive ice maker. Well, okay, look, what do I have? I got, you know, I got I got flatback because I pronounce it incorrectly. I'm going to say it the way I say it, and then someone can write in again and tell me how to actually pronounce it minute a walk. Manitowok, Manitowok. That's the company, the ice maker company that I have at home. Commercial ice maker, I would get an undercounter commercial ice maker. And I would try to find some knucklehead who's getting rid of it. Now the problem is, they use a lot of energy, right? They use a lot of energy because they're constantly making ice, right? Definitely that what you really should do is just drill a hole in your freezer and put a water line in and then buy a, and most likely, your freezer has a space in the back for you to put the water line

[35:25] in, and most likely you can just put in a, um, you

[35:29] could put in an ice maker because I've done that before. You know, get a filter and an ice maker and do it, you know, run like a quarter inch line of copper to it. And that's just going to make ice because really you want kind of crappy ice for your normal chilling. You don't want the big blocks and then you can just do like freezer things. But if you're gonna have, what you didn't mention is that you're gonna put seltzer water on tap. Now, assuming that you like seltzer water and who doesn't, right? Like I use a cold chiller and I have that in the bottom of a commercial ice machine.

[36:00] So I always have decent ice on hand all the time because it makes it. And I use a very nice minute

[36:08] walk. And the reason I like it is because you can, it makes a nice kind of large cube, it's weird octagonal shape.

[36:14] It looks like those little Jello cup shapes, but, um, you can shut it off because they're very loud. So if someone in the house is like, oh, it's so loud, you can shut it off for like 2 hours and it'll come back on and continue to make ice. But that thing, I use it to chill, actually, when I make my big cooler of ice,

[36:30] I use hot water from the tap and then throw those ice cubes into it to get the temperature down without including a lot of gas by pouring back and forth, then put the cooler in the

[36:39] freezer and go from there. So the best from a budget standpoint is to aftermarket install your own ice maker into your freezer, because they make ice on a cycle, but don't require a lot of water and energy, and they actually store the ice without melting, whereas a commercial ice maker is constantly making ice and letting it melt down.

[36:58] The quality of the ice in the home in the inside of the freezer ones is never quite as high. So you're always going to want to make some ice in a cooler, but it's a lot less energy intensive and a lot cheaper.

[37:09] So that's my recommendations. Back next week was cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes

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