[0:00] Quieres mejo internet, cox internet de tresientas megas, tienne las belocidades, rapidas y con fiables que buscas,

[0:07] Perfecto para streaming y gaming y trabajardes de casa. Todo, por solo quuerente cinco, dolla resalme escondo regas cox mobile. Includia quipo de Wi-Fi, iguerantilla de precio de dos años entu plan. Nues peres, Gambia te oi a cox. The quiere cops mobile gig unlimited, carampier de pleciono, including cuestos cargos, belucidad de

[0:27] datos, mobiles, reduces, esposa vente qui casalmes. 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 heritagefoodsusa.com. This is Michael Harlan Turkell, host of the food scene. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwich, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[1:00] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live, Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick,

[1:08] Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network, roughly. Noon to 1250, something like that. We call it new-ish. New-ish, new-ish. Uh, joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing? Good. Yeah? We got Jack in the engineering booth. Thank goodness. I don't like to do the show without jacking the engineering booth. Oh thanks. know what I mean? I know. And we have a special guest with us today. We have Darren from meld meld. Now, meld, although it sounds like a delicious grilled cheese corporation is not. Do you like grilled cheese sandwiches? I do. What's not to like? Exactly, but I figure if you have any company name meld, you gotta like grilled cheese sandwiches. Otherwise, it's like, you know, it's gonna be problems. But anyway, they do not, in fact, manufacture, you know, it's a bad name for no offense for a grilled cheese sandwich corporation. Cheese boy. Isn't that the one that's on i95? Cheese boy. First of all, No, 1st of all, like, why are you making an a gendered thing? Like, why are you going gender on your grilled cheese sandwich? Grilled cheese sandwich is a non-gender, delicious item, in my opinion. You know, and I've passed by, not staffed only by boys. First of all, you want, like, an adult making your grilled cheese sandwiches anyway. I mean, like we do have labor laws. I'm just saying someone can call in and convince me that I'm wrong, but I just think it's kind of not a good name. Whereas, like, not a good cheese corporation, but like, Fud Rutgers is too hilarious not to like the name of, right? I can't believe that, like, there's 1000000s of dollars invested in a corporation called Fud Rutgers that makes food for people. You ever been to a Fud Rutgers? What's it like? It's sort of burgers where you top them yourself and most people put way too many condiments and ruin the burgers. So it's like a free fixings bar, I like Roy Rogers back in the 70s. Exactly. You remember the Roy Rogers? Prefixes bar, baby. So what I would do, you know, my Roy Rogers trick with the low quality salad bar ingredients they had for the free fixings, was I would

[3:12] pilot high to ruin the burger, like you say, but then I would move it aside and then I would have a salad with my burger. I would take the toppings back off of the burger. And then... Yeah, there are all kinds of kinds of good tricks. When I was in grad school, we used to eat lunch at this terrible cafeteria on campus and it would come with

[3:29] a little side salad, but if you put the dressing in the bottom of the little bowl 1st and then piled everything up on that, it would stick together and then you'd go to the table and flip it over and you'd have like, you know, 5 times the

[3:40] salad anyone else would. That's some smart business. And that, that, friends and listeners, is the kind of thinking that is going to bring to your kitchen in the near

[3:51] future meld. Now, meld, not being a grilled cheese corporation, what they do, and I'm actually,

[3:56] like, frankly, excited to see it out because we have one here, is that it's the knob that automatically turns your gas stove range,

[4:04] rather. up Can I do stoves too? Yeah, it does electric. It's not quite as perfect as it is on gas, but anything that's got a

[4:13] knob, it can turn. Uh, but you can do ranges and ovens, gas, or electric. Correct. Anyway, it turns the knob for you so that you can have adequate temperature control. We had them on the phone. I don't know, a couple months ago, and some of the stuff I thought was interesting was, you know, as more and more users use

[4:32] it. They'll be able to write more and more interesting algorithms like a rice cooker algorithm or all sorts of fun

[4:39] stuff because once you, once you have computers controlling everything, you know, not only will they take over the world and turn us into their slaves instead of the other way around, but you can do interesting things like turn your gas range into a rice

[4:51] cooker. Exactly. And so what we've got here is we've got one mounted on a little portable butane burner,

[4:58] no butane involved at this point. Oh, there's no butane on it? No, Jack kind of vetoed that given the confines. What the hell, dude, these are rated for indoor cooking. You know, I just had the same freaking problem. I have to do a freaking demo in London in like a week and a

[5:16] half , right, Stas? And I just got a text today. We can't get... I will read the text in its entirety just because of how irritating. Now, I'm not going to say who's involved because I'm not going to throw anyone under the bus specifically. But I had the same problem when we were, I was in London a couple of weeks ago where no one wants to get liquid nitrogen. And here's it. Okay, our issue with is with supplier delivery of liquid nitrogen and storage and health and safety issues in a live show

[5:41] environment. Uh, it's not even the one. That was, uh, I really need to know the details of what you'll be doing

[5:48] in order any ingredients you need, and here's what it says. Liquid nitrogen is possible. We need more details for risk assessment and method statement. If you could tell me more about your demo and how a video you could send. We need to answer such questions as how do we ensure liquid nitrogen has evaporated from the glass,

[6:02] et cetera. You look at it. We dump out the glass and we look at it. Furthermore, when you add a liquid to the glass that had liquid nitrogen in it, If there is liquid nitrogen present, it will continue to smoke. You know, I've been to Booker and Dax. I've seen them manage the liquid nitrogen in the glass problem pretty well. Yeah, the only person that I'm aware of that was injured by the customer that was injured by the use of liquid nitrogen, the liquid nitrogen was intentionally placed in the glass and handed to her. Yeah, that was weird. Intentionally placed in the glass and handed to her. In all of the UK, is like on Flipdoodles, about using LN, right? It's a completely valid technique to use it, and they're all going freaking

[6:48] pretzel, because some jackwad intentionally poured liquid nitrogen into some lady's drink. It's nuts. Well, you know, oh, there's all kinds of things we use that have created a problem when misused, but when used properly produce

[7:06] grave results, right? Yeah, you know, I got to put a caller through who's been patiently waiting. let's put that thought on pause. All right, but I'm going to make hammers and bricks illegal because people hit each other with them sometimes. Call her, you're on the air. I can't hear you, man. Oh, hey, there you go. Can you hear me? I can hear you a little bit. Yeah. All righty. what's going on Hey, I'm a biodynamic CSA farmer down in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. which is in the eastern panhandle just outside of Washington, DC. And the reason I'm calling you is, I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but the old wine CSA people, the original grassroots CSA

[7:46] people, are having a pretty hard time nowadays in the DC area, those of us who hold

[7:54] to the original standards of CSA, which is a soil farm and a group of people gathered around the farm to get food of equality that's not being produced by the open market system.

[8:06] Right? Um, are being beat out by, um, out, outright, uh, commercial vegetable distributions, CSAs that aren't even organic, CSAs that don't have a farm or a farmer, uh, aggregators, which are things put together by the USDA that scoop up a bunch of crops from, um,

[8:26] Just, I guess, commercially oriented farms. Put them out in share bags like a CSA does, but that's kind of all beside the point. I've been doing CSA since, I think 1990 was our 1st CSA. And, um, it's hard to hold on to a community in the DC area because it's such a, there's so much turnover in the area and so much

[8:52] uh, house flipping and so people in neighborhoods change rather rapidly. But, uh, I, the reason I'm, I'm calling you, Dave, is because I've been listening to your program for a really long time, and I realize you have a, a really, um, great understanding of how the restaurant businesses

[9:12] work, and uh, there's myself and several other farmers out here in West Virginia. They're probably going to go belly up this season that we don't find an outlet other than CSA for our produce. And uh, being tied to the land, try still trying to support a couple dozen CSA shares.

[9:31] sold this year instead of our CSA's been up to 350 shares some years. I think it's 24 this year. Oh, my God. I wonder if there's some easy way for farmers who, like I said, are tied to the land, running around with irrigation hoses for 6 hours a day and

[9:50] whatnot, to contact chefs who are interested in very flavorful local

[9:56] foods. Well, first of all, to me, it would be the DC area. Give the name of your of your farm in case anyone in DC is looking to, you know, contact you. What's the name of your farm? It's fresh and local CSA. It is in local harvest. It is on the web, especially local, CSA.com. And it's 15 years on this soil with biodynamic techniques. All the produce is outrageously flavorful because of all of the minerals that are in the soil and available to the plants now. And how's the croppier looking this year? Were you hit by the same, like, late, late kind of spring that we got up here? Are you guys doing all right for crops? Well, we're okay with crops, but everything was late this year and it was, I don't know how it was for you. But for us, it went from freezing nights to 90 degree days in the same

[10:48] week, I believe. Yeah, it was ping-ponging like crazy. I didn't, I've never seen anything quite like it. But, um, well, let me say this. I think that, you know, New York has a fantastic model in our green market. And, uh, you know, for a long time now, uh,

[11:07] the, the advantage of the green market, right, is that you get kind of what I like to call a critical mass of suppliers

[11:15] together. Now, the average person on the street thinks of the green market as a place that they can go

[11:19] by veg, but, you know, all the chefs I know think of the green market as a place where they can interact directly with the farmer as supplier, right?

[11:30] And the advantage from the farmer's standpoint is, obviously, they know in advance that they have to bring X, Y, and Z because they know the chefs are going to buy it because they have communication prior to them arriving at the farm. And, believe it or not, I think it's fairly efficient for the farmer because they, either they or, you know, someone that they're having doing

[11:49] their their truck for them, really only has to give up one day. You know what I mean? Uh, to go and interact with uh, the chefs. And the chefs, it's very easy for them because they know that let's say you grow fantastic peppers,

[12:05] right? And then they'll get the peppers from you, but let's say they know that they really like the, you know, the purple basil from some other

[12:13] farmer. They can go get that. And so you get a critical mass together. The chef can make the run to the green market. Here, the main ones are Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday. We're a huge market. But you know what I mean? But even one or 2 of those days would be enough to sustain it. But I think what you need is a critical mass of like-minded farmers. I mean, do you have a structure like that in DC for a green market the way that we operated? Because I think that's really the method that's allowed a lot of farmers here in New Jersey and the Hudson Valley really kind of stay connected with the chef community.

[12:48] Yeah, well, there are several really good markets in DC, but they've been closed to new farmers for a lot of years. And so that's, uh, that's the problem. Huh, it's a really interesting problem. You know, I'd love to hear kind of, you know, and I haven't heard that flip side of it either. Like, I don't know whether there's a lot of farmers who would, you know, be itching to supply New York chefs, but

[13:11] can't because they're getting shut out of our green market system. Specifically, the Union Square

[13:15] green market is the big one we have here, which we've seen on 14th Street. I mean, there's a bunch of others that chefs also go to, but that's a kind of main one, but, you know, it's a very interesting question. I think it's something that needs to be kind of, uh, it needs to be kind of addressed and I would encourage, you know, any chefs in the DC area to, you know, reach out to you, anyone

[13:33] that's like listening. you know, what, you know, you have something to do? I mean, I totally agree with that. And I think, you know, just giving a perspective from Seattle, which is where I'm

[13:42] from. Um, you know, Pike Place Market, it's 100 and something years old. It's kind of the big famous one that people know about, but there are a lot of other markets. And I think, you know, if you're looking for where the chefs are going in Seattle, at least it's not there, it's probably, you know, more like the Ballard market on Sundays and

[14:00] and there are a few others. But, uh, you know, they've they've expanded to the point that, uh, even though pipe place

[14:08] may be shut out to to new vendors. You know, some of these other markets around town are available. And I think, you know, your, you're more likely to see uh, Seattle chefs probably walking around and sampling what's uh, what's available in Ballard than you are at Pike Place these days.

[14:25] Right. I mean, one thing I know for sure is that chefs will, chefs will seek out and go through great pains and trouble to seek out the good ingredients. However, once they seek it out. The supply chain to them needs to be relatively convenient because it needs to be, it needs to be able to be gotten to the restaurant like on a kind of a regular or semi-regular base. Now they'll deal with, you know, they'll deal with, I don't have any potatoes this week. you know, they, you know, the whatever. We got a, we had a failed crop field. They'll deal with this. You know what I mean? But it's more like, you know, they can't drive, you know, 50 miles to go to go get

[15:04] there to go get their stuff because they're simultaneously getting from a bunch of different suppliers. So, I mean, I think it's just a question of figuring out how you can, uh, you know, gather like enough, like-minded farmers in, you know, in some sort of new venue, and it doesn't have to be like super organized, or even super nice, as long as the chefs know that it's going to be there and know that they can count on sending like one

[15:32] person, uh, over there and they can, and they can pick up what they need from like 4 or 5 suppliers that they've, um, developed a

[15:40] relationship with. Um, but, you know, one thing I know about chefs, at least the people that like I deal with, and I know is that they are monsters for

[15:50] quality, and they love, absolutely love having personal relationships with farmers.

[15:55] Love it. You know? completely agree. Yeah. Yeah. So let me throw in there. I don't have any problem driving down to DC if we're talking about some sort of scale. Right. Yeah, it's just a question of making, of, like, making it of, of, like, you know, germinating the idea of planning the seat, like, reaching that critical mass. I mean, there's going to be, the real problem is, is that either way, from the chef's side and from the farmer's side, there's going to be like a time period where everyone's sucking wind trying to get

[16:25] enough enough of a critical mass to make it worthwhile for everyone. And I mean, I hope someone in DC, you know,

[16:32] hears this or, you know, I mean, if you're calling someone else and has like some sort of, uh, uh, and you know, and you know, Jack, this is something that heritage radio could take on as a as a problem too, because, you know, a lot of people

[16:45] on this network are interested in this kind of problem as well. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Why don't you leave your information with Jack? And then we'll, um, we'll try to see if we have anyone that, um, is more of a specific expert in this,

[16:59] but, uh, Yeah, absolutely. So info at heritageradionetwork.org is going to be the best way because we're going to drop the call and go to another caller, but definitely shoot us an email and we will stay in

[17:09] touch. All right, thanks so much for gone. It's an interesting subject we have that we haven't addressed here on the radio. All right, thanks so much. All right, cool. Thanks, Jack. So back to mail to have one. Oh, we have another caller? Is the 2nd caller on the line? Oh, call her. on the air. Hi. My name is Rob. I'm calling because I'm looking to set up a giraffe soda system. Right? I wanted to know what sort of things. Well, you're cutting in and out. I heard you're setting up a draft soda system and you want to know certain things, and then when you actually said what a certain things was, you cut out. Sorry, I started to. Yeah. Specifically, I...

[17:52] Oh my goodness. One second. Like, it's literally like, I hear the word specifically, and then all of the actual specifics are trailing off. Yeah, give us a ring back if you get. Wait, wait, wait. you there? can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you now. Cell service is a wretched thing, is it not? All right. So okay, so what are the specific problems you're worried about? I'm looking to set up a pre-mixed system where I'll be running a root beer syrup that I

[18:18] made. Right. 20 ingredient root beer syrup that has a lot of, uh,

[18:22] solituce ice. Right. We're so close. It was so close. So close. Pre-mix system with root beer. All right, listen, I can't hear what your actual questions are, but you

[18:40] get, like, you can call back with the questions or I'll tell you some of the problems with root beer.

[18:45] Root beer is known. The world over by anyone that's ever made it to be the absolute hardest thing to clean out of your lines,

[18:54] right? So, like, if you're doing, if you're doing a corny keg with root beer, like, you need to throw all of the rubber in your tank needs to be thrown away if you want to switch

[19:03] flavors, all of it. You know what I mean? So you got to throw away the ring gasket, uh, even I know some people replace uh, the uh, the ceiling parts of the uh,

[19:12] of the ball lock valves because they say that anything that is even mildly absorbent will absorb flavors from the root beer. This includes the polyethylene tubes that you use into your cold plate. I know that you can wash the actual cold plate out, but it takes kind of a

[19:30] lot to do. I'm assuming these are the kind of problems. You might be having a phone. I'll address another problem you might be having. If you're using, so the answer there is just, you know, dedicate a system to root beer.

[19:41] You know what I mean? Dedicate a corny keg to root beer, dedicate. Remember, I'm a huge advocate of 2 cold plate circuits for every flavor, not

[19:48] one, two. So I would always get a cold plate that has at least twice as many circuits as you have flavors. And the reason for that is twofold. One, the extra trip through the, uh, and this is gonna address the 2nd problem that you might be having with root beer. The 2nd trip through the cold plate gives it a longer

[20:07] line, and that longer line tends to slow it down a little bit and cause less foam out on

[20:12] the output. The other problem. The other thing it solves, it gets it colder and getting it colder by a good chunk by several degrees, also reduces your foam out on the

[20:23] output and plus makes it colder, which, duh, do you want your root beer warm

[20:27] stars? Do you like root beer? Oh, wow, good. I like it too. That's not to like. Exactly. much like grilled cheese. In fact, root beer and grilled cheese. might go well together. Anyway, um, so, um, the other the other problem you're going to have is, uh, with foaming. So anytime you're making your own root beer flavors with, you know, tree and bark pieces, these things tend to foam like a

[20:52] loony tune. They're really foamy. And in fact, foam is one of the characteristics of root beer, a

[20:58] foamy mug of root beer. But the problem is, is you have to keep it somewhat in line. And I would not suggest adding, you know, um, like silicone derivatives, um,

[21:09] anti-filming agents, just because I haven't found them really to work, at least in alcoholic beverages. I mean, they'll kill foam maybe in a glass, but they're not

[21:17] going to kill, I don't think it's going to cause your foam out problems on a thing. I think what your main issues are with filming is realize you are going to have some filming. Then, instead of, you have to get a very good pre-mixed soda valve, I recommend the ones that

[21:30] CN Becker makes, but, you know, you can get, uh, and by the way, kudos to you for doing

[21:34] pre-mix because I think most post-mixed soda sucks. But, like, uh, anyway, so I would get a very good valve by Becker. It's going to have, like, a very long in the back, torpedo shaped compensator that's going to gently take it from the pressure in the tube to atmospheric

[21:50] pressure, and it's going to save you a lot of your foam out problems. Like I say, cold is going to solve your film out problems, but also clarity. So if you don't have a centrifuge, which I'm assuming you don't. Centrifuge is going to knock out a lot of your particulates and really help here, but I would just take the trouble to really filter your bark stuff

[22:09] through, like, you know, the finest strainers that you have, like coffee, even if it takes a 1000000 years. And eventually, I would get a centrifuge because it can spin all the particulate matter out and that's really going to solve a lot of your foaming problems. I'm assuming you had one of those 2 problems. If you didn't, call me back and we'll talk about it. And Jack, should we come back right after the commercial break with our demonstration of no. Let's squeeze one more call who's been waiting and then go to break. All right, caller, you were on the air. Hi, I thought a question about acids in draft cocktails. Oh, nice. I'm sorry, not draft, but I want to carbonate in bottles and cocktails. But all the suggestions, all suggestions you have liquid intelligence require fresh lime juice. And as we know, storing fresh lime juice makes me the devil. So I'm curious about acid alternatives that will bottle well and keep. I'll give you a couple. I will give you a couple of suggestions. And this one, you know, I hadn't really thought of by the time I wrote the book, but, you know, I like fresh lime juice. I also kind of like lime cordial, right? And lime cordial, you know, so, and literally at the bar, what I, what we do to make the line cordial is I take the leftover clarified lime juice that we have.

[23:26] And then I boil it with sugar and a couple of peels of

[23:31] lime. And right away, the cordial is good. And it actually ages after a couple of weeks, I think it's even like a little bit better. And so that's a stable acid source. Now, it doesn't taste like fresh lime, right? So it's not fresh lime flavor. But it's still good flavor. It's different than, and it takes a little bit of education because someone who's looking to have a fresh line flavor. If you give them a cordial flavor, they're like, this tastes like cordial. you're like, yes, but cordial tastes good. You know what I mean? It's the inbetween stuff that doesn't taste good. Another option is you can bolster. I'm a huge fan of including actual citrus in the drinks

[24:15] because as opposed to just acids. So you can do some cordial and then bolster it with some acids, like a

[24:21] citric malic blend. Some acid combinations, especially ones that are barely soluble. So like if you make the champagne acid from liquid intelligence, which is a, uh, a mixture of,

[24:35] um, it's a 3%, um, a 3% lactic acid and 3% tartaric acid blend, like that actually blend at that acidity tends to throw

[24:45] crystals. you know, because it's kind of at the limit of it of a solubility of some of that stuff. And I don't know why, but maybe that's why when you carbonate with champagne

[24:54] acid, you tend to get foamy drinks. Something about that lactic, uh, tartaric blend causes foamy drinks. And also, when you're bottling something carbonated, like I've noticed certain drinks,

[25:08] like Campari, the bitterness is not stable when bottled under acidic conditions. I don't know why. I've never, you know, I've never asked someone with a mass spec to look at it, so I don't know

[25:19] why, but it, you know, it's definitely true. So, you know, I would, I would start with, um, augmented citrus, so you can use like, uh, clarified orange juice, taste terrible. Not terrible. Tastes like sunny D. It tastes like tang, right? It has all of its characters stripped. But you can take that and bolster it with citric and Malik, and you can have a very nice citric, you know, citrus flavor that'll last for a while. Or if you do cordials and you can augment cordials, like I say, with

[25:48] acid to bolster the freshness level of it by increasingly boosting the acidity

[25:51] higher, so you use less of the cordial, and it is stable as far as I can tell for a long time. Great. Are there any non-citric things I should look at, like, you know, just the things that aren't citrus at all? Sure. So, I mean, like, any sort of juice can be bolstered, can have its acidity bolstered, right? So, to kind of greater or lesser effect. The trick with it is is figuring out what acids you're going to add and not adding so much that they turn kind of fake, right? But you can bolster grape juice. I mean, I tend to like things that have characteristics. They have like a character because this way, when you bolster the acidity of that, like, it helps to, like, if the fruitiness is there, the actual fruitiness from fruit is there, the acidity doesn't taste fake, whereas it can taste more like a soda-based acidity, like an actual, like a flavor, like

[26:44] an just, it can taste more like an added acidity. If there isn't some sort of natural fruit there to back it up. If you want to go dry, obviously, the cola acid, the acid

[26:53] is using colas is phosphoric acid. I would say that you, you know, it's one of the few acids that doesn't kind of scale directly, wait for weight. You know, you need to use a little bit less of the phosphoric acid. and it's typically sold in very concentrated solution. So I would take it down. Like you can buy it as like 85% phosphoric acid solution and I would take it down to like 6 or less and then start mixing with it at those lower levels because Stas doesn't like the phosphoric acid,

[27:22] right? Are you a coal ahead? Like, do you like cola? Yeah, so you like mile like a mild amount of phosphoric acid, but like usually when bartenders try to add phosphoric acid to a drink, they hit it too hard.

[27:32] And you don't like that intense dry. an intensely dry, non-fruity acidity. Um, But yeah, give those give those a shot. Great, thanks. That's very helpful. All right, good luck with it. Let us know tweet on in if you get any good results. I will. Bye. All right, back back from the break with meld on cooking issues.

[28:19] Hello out there. It's Steve Jenkins. I'm with Fairway Markets, White Leghorn, Red Wattle,

[28:26] 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 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,

[28:53] and heritage foods is honored, to represent a network of family farmers, artisanal producers whose work presents an immeasurable gift to our food system.

[29:03] And to biodiversity. The meat we celebrate, whether it's heritage, turkey, Japanese steaks, Berkshire pork, or Navajo churro lamb

[29:11] chops is the righteous kind from healthy animals. of sound genetics that have been treated 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. I would love to get Steve Jenkins and Alec Baldwin in the same room and have them

[29:38] have like a voice off. Wouldn't that be awesome? Alex, if you're out there. Get them right here on the show. That's right. Alec, if you're out there. Let me see you dance. For those of you who are friends, who like the Prince's Black album. you ever listen to that? Yeah, yeah. Bob George is an intensely weird song. If you're out there, let me see your dance. Okay, so let's look at the melt. I wish it had some freaking flame on it, Jack. Well, anyway, it's Jack. Why do you not let him have the butane in here, man? listen. It's not my restaurant. not the 1st place that has not let me use butane. It's not my restaurant, you know, I can't. Let's see it in Stas, can you make flame noises? No. So 1st off, I've got the knob mounted here on this little

[30:29] butaneless burner. So you can't see it. What we have here is a butane picnic burner, which, strangely enough, if you actually read the NFPA fire codes, this is rated as a fine piece of indoor cooking

[30:41] equipment because the butane canister is contained and it sits on a table and can't be knocked

[30:46] over. I've gone through these codes a 1000000 times when I was doing the Sears all work. But anyway, just saying. Okay, so what I'm going to do now is just the sort of 1st manual thing. So you can see the knob turned itself. All I'm doing is doing it the old-fashioned way and actually just telling it to go to a certain percentage.

[31:04] But what I'm going to do now instead is I'm going to set it. I'm going to tell it, okay, I'd like to go to a temperature of 35 degrees

[31:13] C, and that's not very warm, but it's warmer than it is in here. It's 26 right now. So I'm going to touch the end of this. And that, uh, this is the temperature probe that goes in the pot or pan, and the temperature's...

[31:29] He's holding the probe in his hand and we're going to look at the knob and it's going to, it's going to turn on. Right. So as the, uh, it's actually on high now because it's trying to raise the temperature, but as my body heat actually raises the temperature of this, it's going to start turning it down because it's thinking, oh, I've got the gas

[31:47] on, uh, and it's making the temperature go up. So there it goes. You see it starting to turn itself down. as we approach the target temperature. And is it auto tuning now or what's it doing? Exactly. So it's, it is what it's trying to do is get to the temperature I want without

[32:06] overshooting because if it overshoots, it's much harder than even if it turns the gas essentially to 0 to come down in

[32:13] temperature, it's much easier to go up. So it's biased to not overshoot and to make these very small adjustments. Right, but does it learn your range or is it constantly learning? Both. It's, it learns your range to some degree, but also if you put, you know, a big 12 quart stock pot on there, it's going to behave a little differently

[32:34] than a little, you know, half quart saucier. Now, how long is it going to continue to theoretically dump gas into the air with no flame before

[32:42] it's like, no. Well, at this point, it's my body heat's not actually quite hot enough for it. So I'll turn down the target temperature a little bit. And now it's actually has turned it all the way down. So for demo purposes, actually, these butane burners are sort of the worst of all possible worlds, but

[33:04] it also stresses a system, which I really like, because if we can handle this, we can handle anything. The reason it's the worst case is because from 0 to full blast on this is a rotation of only about 40 degrees. Right? Whereas most ranges, year it's 180, maybe even 270. And so the precision that we have to get is much higher on this. So it's actually running it at now 4%. It thinks it's one degree shy of its target. So, and like, will this thing light? Or do you still need to manually go through the click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. You still have to do that manually. So what happens is when you start up the app and choose a recipe before any cooking step, what it's going to do is it's going to say, turn it on, and you turn your knob, click, click,

[33:52] click, like you said, it goes and then leave it at any temperature or any heat level you want.

[33:58] You then hit a button on the app that says, okay, it's on. I'm handing you control. The app will then say, oh, I see it's at 47%. But actually, at the moment, I'd like it to be at 92% and it'll move it there. And then it will continue adjusting throughout the whole execution of that step of the

[34:15] recipe. And then for certain recipes like, for example, we've got a caramel recipe, there's a video of it on our

[34:22] website where you want to caramelize the sugar, but then you want to bring the temperature down, add the cream and butter. And

[34:28] so it knows that there are different target temperatures for different steps. And as you move through the recipe and do the various steps, it will adjust the temperature.

[34:38] It's sort of like you never have to touch the knob. Someone is there doing it for you. You're putting ingredients in, taking things out, and so on. When are you shipping these guys? October. Yeah, I'd love to mess with one. Yeah, we we'll we'll do our best to try and get you one

[34:54] a little sooner if we can, but yeah, some really cool techniques that we are working on. Um, So, for example, you know, people, I think, a lot of times confuse precision temperature cooking with low temperature

[35:09] cooking because, you know, people are familiar with or people who listen to this show certainly are familiar with circulators and what they

[35:16] do. Um, circulators, uh, obviously don't work particularly well over

[35:20] 100 C because, uh, Unless you use oil, but they're no longer they're no longer speced out to use oil. Exactly. Whereas with meld, we can put a pot of oil on there. And you can do all kinds of things ranging from, you know, relatively low temperature stuff.

[35:35] So we've been playing around a little bit with poaching things in oil around like 120 C, um, and then you can

[35:43] go, obviously, all the way up to, you know, frying things at 350, 375,

[35:47] 4 hours. The classic, everyone's always wanted to put a circulator for years. Can you put a circulator front? well, the metal ones. They'll handle the temperature, but they're crap at frying because they, they're, they're, even if they had the power, they're not designed to have the recovery rate that a

[36:02] fryer needs. Could you tell this guy, like, could you, is it, in other words, could you go for, for minimize recovery time, but still not completely blast out your oil?

[36:13] Like, could you have like a middle? I mean, 2 burner fryers are so freaking good because they have such a high surface area to heat out. This is why everyone at home, like, I'm sorry, you're just not going to have as good a fried stuff as someone who has a tube fryer. You're just not. You know what I mean? It's not gonna happen. You don't have a cold zone. You don't have to, you can do good fried stuff, but you're not going to have, you're not going to have all night good fry the way that you can in a tube fryer. But can you... The key for we can do a really good job. The key is not overloading, and that's the key in, you know, any frying application, right? If you if you have a 2 quart pot of oil and you dump in, I don't know, 20 chicken wings, you know, it's going to be hard for even your 15,000 BTU burner on your stove at home to

[37:00] recover from that quickly. And even if you could, even if you could, you don't have the surface area of pan to oil to not

[37:08] locally, so my burners at home, they're kind of stupid high. You know, they're way higher than they're supposed to be because the knucklehead that installed the stove didn't put the regulator on it, right? So, you know, I can, I, it looks like a jet engine when I turn on my burners, which is actually... It is, but like, it's irritating because I get a lot of flame out on the low end. So it makes it hard to do kind of like the more delicate things. Not that I like to do delicate things, does. Dont worry. But like I'm saying, you know, I have I have exactly the same thing on my oven at home, which is which is great. I have this vintage sort of 1990 oven that it's a double wall

[37:45] oven. The top one is digital in the bottom one's analog. I think because, you know, digital controls were too expensive than to actually put it on both ovens. And the analog one on the bottom, the knob goes to 500, like most home oven knobs do. But the little catch that makes it stop there is gone. And you can just keep on turning it. And so I can actually crank it up to around 700 for pizza. Take that safety You know what I did that I shouldn't mention, but I literally put a, I literally put a thermostat bypass on my, on my oven. So just like thermostat, thermostat. But here was the rule, right? I had to make it such that, like, any normal, so my last oven in my last place, when you went there, uh, people are like, I don't want to cook in your oven. Your oven's too complicated. I have to know how to program a lot low PID controller to do it. I'm like, so what? learn how to program a lot, learn. You know what I mean? Learn. You know, it's like, you know, you know how to drive a car. You can't program my oven. You know what I mean? That was my attitude. But this one, one of my things was, A, it had to look like a normal oven, so it couldn't have wires and stuff sticking out of it fine. And it turns out I really didn't need a lot of control on the super high end for pizza because it just needs to be freaking hot, right? Exactly. So it's and then it's, well, is it in there for a minute or a minute and a half . Yeah, yeah. So, so the simplest method was to hell with it and just literally put

[39:10] a, a ball valve bypass onto, onto the thermostat, and then when it's, you know, when it's horizontal, I just tell people not to touch

[39:19] that. And it's a normal oven until I turn it into, you know, uh, you know, flame on mode and then it's, then it's just, you know, in real thermal runaway. Not like the puny thermal runaway that you use on your 500 degree thermostat thermal runaway. I'm talking like thermal run away. It doesn't actually run away. It doesn't melt itself into an ingot, but it gets close. It's like, you know, it's actually too hot. It gets up to 900. I have to throttle it. But anyway, back to the frying problem. So with my ridiculously high output range, right? I still can't get as good a frying in a normal pot situation because I just can't get the surface area contact with the oil

[39:55] in the pan to have it not abuse. I mean, I get slightly better results in a wok because I have a larger surface area for it to hit. Of course, the oil degrades because it's against a non-stainless

[40:06] walk. My walk's not stainless. So they rolled the grades quickly there. You can't win. You know what I mean? But it would be interesting. I'm sure you could win better if you had a control app that was taking it up to the brink of being destroyed and then, but not like

[40:21] over, because in general, 100% of the time when I watch cooks try to fry on a range, they over, they jack it too high to get the recovery rate, which I understand, but

[40:33] it always goes too far over the line and there's a kind of a porpoise effect with the temperature where it goes over and then under. And I think people underestimate how much physical abuse the oil is taking during each cycle of

[40:47] overheating along with like salt and flour and burnt particles that are in

[40:51] that. It's just like. Absolutely. And going back to what I was saying before, that's why we bias our algorithms to avoid overshooting. So we, you know, talking about frying things all night. So back in May, sort of to thank a bunch of our Kickstarter supporters, we had a Cinco DeMeld party and we were making tortilla chips on

[41:13] it on a burner very much like this, but with butane. all night long and were able to, you know, to keep that level of control. And, you know, was was there some degradation in the oil, you know, 3 hours later? Yeah, of course, but, um, you know, but but those chips were still good. Yeah, and by the way, fun fact about tortilla chips, for those of you out there who make tortilla chips, you should, 1st of all, you should make your own tortilla chips. Absolutely. There are a 1000 times, and I'm not talking about, I mean, you should also learn to nixtomalize things, but that's not what I'm talking about. I mean, just go buy the crappy Maseka, not the crap, but you know what I'm saying. Maseka, fresh tortillas, and fry them up because they're thicker and they're crunchier. That's the way I like. You know what I mean? And they're cheap as hell. So cheap. But, um, The true fact about tortillas is that they're going to absorb a lot of will. That's how they're supposed to work. That's what they do. So you don't need to go French fry temperature when you're cooking a tortilla. People overheat their oil when they're doing tortillas on a regular basis. In fact, next time you make tortillas, I want you to do this. I want you potato chips, the same thing. People go over temp on their potato chips. Because really, when you're frying a French fry, you have a crust and an interior, right? Right. So you need to fry at a temperature that maintains the crust without shafting the interior. That's why it needs to be so high. Whereas in a tortilla chip or a potato chip, you're making a nice crunchy thing, but it is entirely the crust. And what you're doing is a moisture removal operation. And so to do moisture removal, which is actually tough on oil, frankly. You know what I mean? E especially with cycling, thermal cycling. The next time you start tortilla chips, I want you to start your 1st batch in cold

[42:55] oil. Just like you would for a potato chip batch. And, and, and you will not be able to tell the difference between that batch and the batch that started in hot

[43:03] oil. Why? Because tortilla chips are going to absorb oil, period. It's going to happen. going to go in all the spots where the water used to be that you're getting rid of. Right. And any sort of like intermediate absorption you might get when you throw a tortilla chip into locally cooled oil is

[43:23] going to be blasted out by the tremendous water evaporation. You're going to get as soon as the local temperature of the oil around the tortilla chip gets above the boiling point of water.

[43:30] I guarantee it. Don't take my word for it. Go cook some tortillas. You know what I mean? Yeah, the water evaporation thing is a really interesting point more generally too. It's that, you know, as we've been playing with this and kind of understanding how it works and looking at the feedback loops. You know, a lot of, a lot of cooking techniques are really all about, uh, the heat being sucked out by the evaporation of water, right? So, you know, raising a gram of water, one degree takes a calorie,

[44:02] but boiling it off takes 540. So, um, essentially, when you're, when you're cranking up the heat to maintain temperature, uh, you are in almost all cases doing that to compensate for it being sucked out by evaporation and understanding that then,

[44:19] as thing, you know, as you stop seeing the bubbling and and, and all the steam coming off, uh, and then you watch as the knob is dialing back, you know, it doesn't see the steam, but it, but it, uh, it's encountering the same

[44:33] thermodynamics. Uh, you realize, you know, that's what it's really all about, um, for a lot

[44:39] of a lot of cooking techniques. And then the, um, you know, controlling those and and do getting to the right temperature and recovering and so on. Um, to your point about, you know, you you watch cooks do it at home and they porpoise, they go up and down. We saw the exact same thing. So when we very 1st started down the road that eventually became meld, the 1st thing we looked at was, well, what if we could sense the temperature in a pot and pan in any of various ways and transmit that to an app and then people could look and say, oh, it's too hot, it's too

[45:14] cold. And so we'd give people, you know, pretty good cooks, the

[45:18] simple task of bring this pot to this particular temperature. And they'd try and do it and they'd go up and they'd overshoot and they'd dial it back and they'd undershoot and

[45:28] they'd go back and forth. 20 minutes later, they'd say, all you've done is you've told me I'm a terrible cook. You haven't given me any tool to do anything about it. And that's where then the knob came. We said, okay, we've got to actually get the kind of feedback loop and get the kind of control that you get in sous

[45:48] vide and why is it that we're still out there, you know, following recipes that

[45:53] say put a pot on medium when that means, you know, what that means on your stove and what it means on mine could be 200 degrees

[46:01] apart? Right. Well, yeah, those kind of recipes that say things like, like the ones that are hilarious are the gas mark recipes where they actually, whatever, but it's supposed to mean something in the

[46:08] UK. I don't know. But, um, yeah, I mean, like you still, the issue is, is that recipes like that are still written, assuming that kind of we're all a community of cooks and we know what we're talking about. You know what I mean? Which is not always the case when someone's, in fact, I don't know, I mean, I wish I had some time. You know what, Jack, we're going to have to do a ketchup episode. Yeah, let's do one. Because I didn't get to any of the written questions. I want to talk about breaking down chickens. Because you know that I was had someone over my age. didn't know how to break down a chicken. We gotta go, though. All right, listen. and I want talk about scythes. I learned about sides. You know, the tool side, like Fear the Reaper? cutting down wheat? Yeah, the freaking amazing. I looked at it. This is a joke. Who the heck wants a side? I need to go get a, you know, a weed whacker or something. Amazing pieces of equipment, but I can't talk about it now, uh, because we have to go. But thank you, Darren, for Melt for coming in, showing us this up into the equipment. We'll do a ketchup episode 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 store by searching Heritage

[47:19] 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. HeritageRadio Network is a 501c3 nonprofit. To donate and become a member. visit our website today. Thanks for listening.