[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 Damon Bolte, host of the Speakeasy. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit HeritageRadioNetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:30] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from a British Pizzeria in Bushwick,

[0:39] Brooklyn, on the Heritage Radio Network, every Tuesday, this time, exactly at Freaking 12. How do you like that Jack? Incredible. Yeah. On the Heritage Radio Network. We can stay probably till what? It's like 1250 until we get the evil stairs. Yeah, you got a full show today. Yeah. Well, we need it because we have so many dang questions and we haven't been able to establish a ketchup

[0:58] episode. Although someday we should literally do an episode about the condiment

[1:02] ketchup. Yeah, so many people was going to sponsor, a ketchup sponsor was going to sponsor. Yeah, but then we had all kinds of like turmoil about that. Too fast a turnover. Joined, as usual, witness dossier, the Hammer Lopez. Howdy. Hi. And we got Jack in the engineering booth today. Who was that? who the other person in Engineering Booth was from the back of his? Maggie, and it's her 1st day, 1st hour as an intern here. Wow. Well, have her say hi. Dumping it right in. Hey, Maggie. Yeah? Where are you, where do you hail from, Maggie? Brooklyn. Brooklyn. Are you hipster Brooklyn or old school Brooklyn? Like suburban mom, Brooklyn, or ex-suburban mom, Brooklyn? Wait, so you like you are next suburban mom? No, my mom is. Oh, so you moved here from the suburbs. Yeah. which ones? New Jersey. Ah, the great state of New Jersey. The Garden State, like a Nice Jersey or a Turnpike Jersey. Uh, nice jersey. No offense to turnpike jersey. Call your questions in too. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. We have a plethora of questions to answer. Going to London, by the way, on Monday. We have an event at Imbibe, live, 2015, uh, on Monday at the Hotel Dandelion, which is not spelled

[2:23] like we spell it. Is that how the Brits spell dandelion, you think, stars? Maybe. It's like dandelion, right? Dandelion. Like a lion. Wait, a lion. We spell it like a lion. They spell it a lion. They spell it like Lyon. Like Dandy Leon or something like this. Maybe that's maybe it's French. I thought it sounded like you were saying dandy loin. Like a dandy loin. Ooh, a dandelion. That would be kind of a gross thing for us to talk about here on the, it would fit quite well with

[2:50] the uh, with the jetty monologues, though, that we went through. Not to reopen old wounds. Okay. So, let's what? What? Nothing. What? Nothing. Yeah, nothing. By the way, but before we start, even though I don't have time to talk about anything other than stray cooking, Nastasia and I are devotees of the illegal

[3:17] firework, and Nastasia just found out that she will have access. I didn't buy. I made the trek to the great state of New Hampshire where one can live free and die and purchase almost any kind of firework with the exception. Jack, no bottle rockets in New Hampshire. Really? No. No, no. You can buy a, you can buy a 500 grams worth of black powder packed into tubes in a box that shoot 200 feet into the air and explode in

[3:41] balls of fire. But a bottle rocket? That's dangerous, bro. Wow. Yeah. Like makes no sense, right? It does not. It makes no sense. Like the rules are so crazy. They also don't allow, this does make sense. They don't allow MAs and cherry bombs. They don't want little kids like blowing their fingers off, I guess. Bottle rockets, why? Because kids shoot them at each other? mean, that's what we used to do. I don't know. So, Stars, I found out, though, that Pennsylvania, the rules in Pennsylvania

[4:07] are, by the way, for those of you that don't live near the New York area, like New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and I think

[4:15] Delaware, are like the firm block of stick in the muds regarding fireworks and their enjoyment.

[4:21] Like there's just not available here. Connecticut recently changed their laws, allowed fireworks again, and then disallowed some again. So now, in Connecticut, you can only buy like, you can't buy Roman candles. You can only buy fountains, those things on the ground that shoot up sparks and you're like, man, I wish this would blow up in the air. Red stars, isn't that what you're thinking when you see it? Man, I wish this would blow up inside of the air. What about Rhode Island? No, Rhode Island is part of the, it's part of the like block of evil. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, imagine if Rhode Island, here's a suggestion to you, Rhode Island, our smallest state, why don't you allow, 1st of all, you

[4:57] have like lots of great places to like fireworks in Rhode Island. Why don't you make them legal in Rhode Island? And then literally the entire New York, Connecticut, metro area, instead of having to drive all the way to New Hampshire, could go to the great state of Rhode Island to buy their

[5:13] fireworks. Anyway, Pennsylvania, Jackie, might find this enjoyable. The place closest place is right near Port Jervis, New York. It's only an hour, 50 outside of New York or something like this. No, Rhode Island is the same as Connecticut. Oh, you can buy the ground sparklers. Yeah, okay. Wah, wow. But anyway, but my point is, uh, in Pennsylvania, it is illegal, if you are a Pennsylvania resident, it is illegal for you to buy the

[5:37] big, bad aerial fireworks that we all want, right? However, if you show up in Pennsylvania and provide an out-of-state license, they will sell you anything. Anything. Wait, even if it's like a New York license? Yeah. That's what's messed up. They don't care. If it's legal in your state or not. I mean, how do they know where you're going to light it? But for some reason, if you show up with a Pennsylvania license, even though you swear on a stack of

[6:01] Bibles that you're going to light these things off in a state where it's legal, right? If you are a Pennsylvania resident, you are, as we like to say, SOL. You can apply for a permit as a Pennsylvania resident to purchase them. laws are so, so weird, you know what I mean? I mean, I realize that fireworks are dangerous. Lots of things are dangerous. Fireworks are also, what's the word I'm looking for? awesome. Awesome, yeah. Yeah, awesome. I think that's the word else. Do you know that I looked it up. The National Fire, uh, the NFPA, National Fire Protection Agency,

[6:30] Prevention Agency. Anyway, the people who make the fire codes, they have a whole campaign, you know,

[6:36] ban consumer fireworks, right? Because people are injured and some people are killed every. You know what the majority of the one single thing that causes more injuries with fireworks than any other Jack? Any guesses? Um, like, I don't know, drinking? Well, yeah. Sparklers. Oh, I see. Sparklers. Really? Yeah. How do you injure yourself on a sparkler? Well, like the classic case is some parent gave their three-year-old a sparkler and then turned away, turned away, she walked into

[7:03] their into their house, dropped it in a trash bucket, burned down the house and killed somebody. Yeah. There was a funny moment once where my girlfriend, we were at her country house and she wanted to light some incense in the kitchen or in the living

[7:15] room rather, and she lit a sparkler instead. Wow, that's different. They look kind of similar, I guess. They do. They look exactly the same. Yeah. So, so like, then do you have all sorts of evil ideas of pranking temples? Go to go to like a, uh, you know, a temple and put a bunch of, uh, people like, what? What? It's supposed to be peaceful, Tom, sparklers are nice. It's crazy that most fireworks are allowed in southern and Midwest states. No, no, no, no. It's every state, but like the New England stick in the mud states. And, you know, New York, mid-Atlantic, California allows some, I thought. No, they're the same as Connecticut and Red Island. First of all, like California, like irresponsible in a lot of places to light fireworks because of the immense, like, fire hazards because of the tremendous drought going on. I mean, a lot of it has to do with the fact that wherever there's a lot of people in close

[8:09] proximity and the assumption is no one has any common sense and you can hurt a lot more people when you're, you know, I'm not saying fireworks should be legal in New York City. too is fine, which is even more dry. I guess it's flat. And like desert. Not that you don't have trees, whatever. I not going to get into it. not going to get into it. Like, you know, where my, where, you know, where I used to go where my wife's family was living in Arizona. I mean, what are you gonna burn down? You know what I mean? Yeah. Burn, you know, burn some teddy bear choya down. Thank God. Those things are the devil. You know what I mean? Anyway, Tom wrote in. No offense if you like teddy bear choy cheese. Like, you know, someone's going to be like, I like teddy bear choya. Well, then go kick one and have it go through your freaking foot and like try to have fun, get all those spines out. Nobody likes Teddy Bertoya. don't know. You know what choyas are? The little captains, the really fuzzy ones that the teddy bears are the ones that are so insidious that the claim, not true, is that they kind of jump out and get at you

[9:01] because, like, you brush up near it. They'll go through like leather shoes. Those spines will somehow work their way through. you know how Choi is spelled, right? It's spelled Chala. Okay. Yeah. anyway. Tom wrote in about, apparently, I missed the piece question. So, unfortunately, you missed answering my question on centrifuging piece. He also had the 100 hour oxtail question where the bag was inflating. I haven't figured out. So the thing was, he was cooking the oxtails at a fairly high temperature, high enough to kill bacteria for like 100

[9:30] hours, and the bags blew up kind of like one day into the process.

[9:33] But what I don't recall, you should write back. I don't know whether the, it's weird when bags, when sous vide bags blow up way down line in the process. So it could be a couple of things going on. Like, one, if like, if there's bones in the thing or uncooked veg, like air could be coming out of that over time and inflating, but usually that's going to happen relatively early in the process, like a couple of hours in,

[9:54] not like, you know, 20 or 30 hours in. It's also, I guess, possible that like some thermophilic thermophilic bacteria are surviving and blowing up. I don't know. I have to do more research on thermophilic bacteria. For teddy bear choya. I got an actual teddy bear sitting at a Shabbat with a hollow bread. You wrote Teddy Bearhala? You wrote Teddy Verhala. No. S-C-O-L-L-A. S- S-? I mean, sorry. C-H-O-L-A. Not, although Teddy Bear Hala is my new, imagine if you wanted a teddy bear hala and someone sent you a teddy bear choya and you opened up the package and got all those spines embedded in

[10:32] your, like, face somehow, like it came off into your face, that'd be a complete nightmare. Second question I had on centrifuge is, um, via my university, I had the fortune of using a centrifuge to make some peea butter. I used fresh peas and didn't get them to blend too thoroughly. I assumed 2 hours at 16, thousand and a half Gs, should be able to puree the peas, but unfortunately it didn't change their integrity. Blending should have been done better, but is there something else I should have taken into account? The recipe calls for frozen peas, which might have destroyed the cell structure and allowed better blending, perhaps. What is worse is that one of the containers broke mid midway through centrifuging, destroying the goodwill on their side, forever using the centerfuge again. I have to look for another place. Would this be cause because I used something solid, EGPs instead of the usual liquid? Or is this just wear and tear and unfortunate to happen with me? Yeah, you just got some bad luck. The other thing that can happen is if you use the wrong bottles. If you use a flat bottomed bottle that's not meant to go into centrifuge or you use a sharp conical bottle and you put it into a round bottomed rotor, you know, anytime you have to deform the bottom of it, like you want the bottle shape to match the shape of the bottom of the

[11:38] rotor. So if you don't do that, then yeah, it could be your fault for using the wrong, you know, flask or vial, but presumably, they gave it to you, right? So, or maybe you bought it. I don't know. The other thing is you could use one with the wrong composition. But again, the fact that it's a solid shouldn't matter because, you know, the bottle's supposed to get smashed against the bottom of the rotor and stay that way for the rest of the thing. But they do have wear and tear and they do eventually break. So I don't know, but, you know, that, I don't know. Regarding the other problem you had of it not working, 16,000 G's, 17,000 G's is not nearly, not nearly, not even close to being enough G's to actually rupture the cell structure of, you know, or to break apart the, you know, the plant structure of

[12:23] a peas. Not enough at all. You need to blend it a lot better. I would use frozen peas, as they said, or freeze your fresh peas, which is

[12:31] going to shatter some of the cell structure due to the action of the ice crystals. In fact, you know, you might, I've done even for some things, repeat freeze thaw cycles. Because each time you freeze in thought, you destroy the structure a little more. Make sure you blend the hell out. Remember, like 20,000 G's mean, well, 45,000 G's isn't even enough to pop air bubbles. You know what I mean? On the surface of some centrifuging stuff. 20,000 G's is not even enough to clarify lime juice on its own. So it's not even enough to pull cloudiness out of lime juice, right? You need like 27, man, 2027,000 Gs to do that. And that doesn't even pull everything else down. So 16,000 Gs seems like a lot, but in fact, is not enough to completely obliterate the structure. And remember, if you're actually talking about really obliterating cellular

[13:20] structure. They go to many, many, many higher Gs in that. I would have guessed that like 50,000 G's would be enough to do what you want, but, you know, I don't know, because it's a guess, but again, I wouldn't say. I would just say that you know, your solution would be better blending. Alex wrote in from Toronto regarding carrots. I have Dear Dave, Nastasia, and Jack. I have a question about carrots. See, I like that. Someone says right about what it's about, carrots. In a recent Cooks Illustrated, I haven't read this one. You know, I was a subscriber for like decades. Somehow, like, it was always given to me as a gift. don't get it anymore. You ever happen? Like someone's like, I'm just not going to give this to him as a gift anymore. Does that happen to you on magazines? Do you buy it now? No, I make somebody else get it for me. Why don't you? Oh, but you could join NPR and get it. But you don't want to join NPR. You just want someone to get it for you for a gift. Well, anyone out there who likes Nastasia. Just get her a gift. My sister's already taken care of it. Oh, she did? So you're you're covered in the future. It's so weird. Like, like so many things like that other people like. you hate. How is it that you like the New Yorker? Is it because you liked it before you knew other people liked it? Maybe. Maybe. Yeah? Very unusual for you to like something that's well liked. SNL? Yeah, I guess that's true. Especially both of those things are kind of New York. Well, SNL is not New York centered. I mean, it happens to be here, but it's not like a New York thing. But you hate almost anything associated with New York that's popular. Because you have to look at the people around you every day that like it. Yeah, but I can read the New Yorker and watch SNL by myself. What happens when you're on the subway and you see someone reading the New Yorker? You're like, oh, don't ruin it for me. Is that what happened? Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. Anyway. In a recent Cooks Illustrated, I think it was 3 or 4 issues ago, they published a recipe for braised carrots that involve, you like the word braising? Neutral, neutral embracing? Okay. Braves carrots that involved par cooking them at a low temperature, then finishing them in a hot pan. They say they're holding the carrots between 120, 160 will induce enzymatic activity that will firm up the structure of the carrot.

[15:18] They call it persistent firmness, and they exploit it in this recipe so that even when the carrots are subsequently overcooked in the pan, they still come out with some

[15:25] texture. I have tried this using my circulator, and as far as I can tell, it does make a difference. making for a more meaty texture in the final product. Is this a known thing? If so, will it work with other vegetables, presumably at other temperatures? Are you aware of any easily accessible resources that could tell me more? Yes, it does work on other things. Oh, also, I'd like to say I was able to crush the saltine challenge with 10 saltines, not six. No, this is Alex from tomorrow. I'm just being like, you know, I figured like he's got to feel pretty good about that. So I was giving him... He was able to eat 10 saltines in one minute. That's how I figured you have to use an announcer voice. Whoa, it's a callout, Alex. It's callout. Film yourself, pounding the tent. And the question is, I don't understand, like, what version of the

[16:09] salting challenge gets you to 10, unless you did 22, but 52s is a lot harder

[16:13] than, my guess, 4, 4, and three. I mean, 4, 4, and two, 4, 4, and two, right? Four a cracker, four, the only way to really challenge it is to do multiple crackers at once. Because Jack, have you done the Salt Team Challenge? No, but I'm going to. Of course you are. But you got to film it. I will. It's not real. I think I can crush 10. No, you can't. The most I've seen. I think the most I've seen is either 10 or 12 is the most I've seen. Well, I guess 60 seconds is a short amount of time. The guy I say, the guy, the most I've ever seen is 12 and he did 444. That sounds like what my strategy would be Jack, you must show an open mouth before the end of the... Yeah. Open mouth. Yeah. I'll have it by next week The rules are there can be like particulate matter jammed into your molars, but there can't be like a bunch of stuff rolling around on the inside of your mouth and definitely... When you shoved

[17:04] up like, you know? You can't shove a whole cracker in the side of your face. No, but like if it's like Plus you're going to look like a chipmunk. see it. No chipmunking. No chipmunking. Yeah, although I enjoy that. I enjoy this like this like cheating strategy. You know, Yale had a drinking game and I used to kind of use the, I used, you can't chipmunk on that either, although people tried. Anyways. Um, I have a caller, by the way. Okay, what was it? Let me finish. Yes, yes, go it. but hold on a sec. Rather than trying to generate more saliva. I just forced down the dry crumbs. It hurt, but it worked, and I won the bet. Yours, Alex from Toronto. See, swallow through the pain is another interesting strategy. It might work well for me. All right, so I'm going to take this caller and then I get back to the end. Have you done this challenge? Yeah, can do it many times. Whoa, what did you what did you get? I got them all in, but not swallowed. How many? not going to get into that. She wasn't able to make the six. Hey, call her, you're on the air. Hey, this is Bradley from San Francisco and I wanted to call back. Uh, you'd given me some advice on um, uh, me curing chamber and uh, coffee, uh, Zapaka, uh, a couple months ago. Oh, yes, a copy, yeah. Both turned out really well and the advice was super helpful. Um, uh, the one thing that, um, so when we, when we were making the, the coffee drinks, instead of using cream, um, I had some non-dairy friends, um, and we had some almond milk

[18:33] orchata, that was like Khalifa Farms, almond milk orchata, and so we substituted that, and people actually preferred the almond milk

[18:40] orchata version of the Café Toba instead. But it was a huge success. I wanted to thank you. Do you think that's a, you think that's a regional thing or do you think that they, did they actually prefer the taste or do you think that's a San Francisco thing? No, no, I prefer the taste. Like, it, it, um, it added kind of like a nice, like, cinnamony note to

[19:01] the, the coffee thing. Um, which was, which was really nice. Um, and, uh, it's, I don't think it was a regional thing. Um, because it was like the overwhelming choice. But what if you had added cinnamon to the cream? you think that would have changed it? that live in San Francisco that our younger people aren't actually from San Francisco? So, you know, for the... But you think it was just the spiciness of it, though? Like, do you think adding cinnamon to the recipe in general would make it better or no?

[19:29] Um, maybe. I mean, because I think that, um, we didn't, I,

[19:36] I, I didn't try it, but, um, you know, uh, I think if you have like a latte and you add, you know, cinema on the

[19:42] top. It's like a nice flavor to it, so, um, but, But I think that that was like the, the, the kind of flavor that came through with the, the orchada

[19:52] that um, really worked well. That's nice sometimes. Um, and so, um, I'm planning a, um, an all offal dinner party, and I, I had a question because in the

[20:03] past, you talked about feeding clams, um, you know, to kind of change their flavor, and I, I'd read that you can feed meal worms

[20:11] in all, in order to kind of like enhance their flavor before doing it.

[20:16] And I wanted to do like a mealworm toffee for for dessert. I was wondering if you'd had any experience with that. Well, I've never prepared meal worms. Let me ask you. Oh, by the way, you know the old legend that mealworms can eat their way out from the insides of lizards and stuff that you feed them

[20:33] to. You know that, that, you know that old legend, right? I mean, I've worked in a pet. My only, like, you know, I've worked on a pet shop and that's never happened to any of the lizards

[20:44] that I've fed meal worms too. Yeah, I know, but you're familiar with the urban lead. It's been proven false, by the way. Like, uh, in the in the book uh, by Mary Roach Gulp. She like goes with some scientists, I think, and they disprove it. So it doesn't happen. Although I personally thought it happened to me when I was a kid. It's just that my lizard happened to die. I happened to be feeding a meal worms and something happened to eat its eye, but they're like, you know, not related as it happens. Right. But to go back to just straight meal worms. So in other words, no one should worry that in eating a mealworm that it's going to somehow burrow out through their body because it just it doesn't actually happen. This is not a thing that actually happens. All right. Yeah, I mean, well, the idea that I had was, I was going to cook them, add them to a toffee and then kind of break it up and then put it at the bottom of the panna cotta, so it gives

[21:31] it like a little bit of crunch when it when it gets unmolded. Um, and I wanted, like, I had heard that you could do it with, like, you, like, cinnamon was, like, something that, like, you could feed

[21:43] them and then, then you purge them for a couple days and then cook them. Well, see, that's the thing. purge them, if you're going to purge them, then, like, I don't know whether or not, like, they're actually going to get the... I mean, unless you're just talking, maybe they get it on the outside of them. I don't know, but are they washed? Or is the idea that you can feed them, purge them, then wash them and they still have the flavor? I mean it's possible. At that point, you fry them. I mean, in order, but they're never, they're fried basically live without going through a wrench. So the question in my mind is is, is there cinnamon on the outside of these guys or do they actually flavor themselves from the inside out? Remember, like my whole fascination with this stretches back to the Henry Winkler movie night shift, right? Where, you know, one of the characters, Well, who is in that movie? Look that up, Stas. One of the characters in that movie used to always carry a tape recorder with them and be like note to self, one of which was note to self, feed the mayonnaise to the tuna before you kill it, right? Before it so it makes itself into tuna salad. So I've had this idea in my head since I was like a little kid. Um, But with mealworms, I mean, you'd have to, like, try it because in any

[22:50] event, it makes a great story, right? Uh, but, um, the other thing is, if you're feeding it only food great stuff, is there a need to purge it? Um, I mean, I don't know. Like, what I'd seen on the internet was mostly, you know, if it was like a solid thing that had, you know, that didn't have too much water, if you fed it to them for a couple of days before, it would, they would, you know, their body would taste slightly like

[23:18] that, similar to your clams. Yeah, the other one, it's obviously famous is the idea of feeding

[23:25] snails, uh, specifically things like rosemary for use in uh, paella. I've tried it on 3 separate occasions, all miserable failures. It left my my bathroom stinking, like dead snail and rotting rosemary. So I've never had any luck with snails. But I would give it a shot and see what happens. I would try some. I would try. I would just for your own for giggles. I would try some purged. I would try some unpurged, right? And I would also take some and rinse them off in water and pat them dry before you fry them to see whether or not it's really just cinnamon that you fed them that sticks to the outside of their bodies

[24:08] that's doing it. You know what I mean? But in any event, like, if the cinnamon flavor comes through, it would be a, it's a good story. You know what I mean? Yeah for sure. I mean, hopefully meal worms in general are just like a good, like, talk about the dark kind of thing, so... Yeah, yeah. Although, you know, it's interesting. Nastasia didn't give you the scrunch up face on the meal worms, but she did give you the scrunch up face on the word offal, which isn't to say that she doesn't like the

[24:37] meats. She just hates that word. Offal. Right, Stas? You know that, you know, I know Nasasha hates hipsters, but what is the group of people that hates things because other people like them?

[24:48] Hipsters? Whoa. True story.

[24:54] Wow. That's like, that's like, thanks so much. That's like a nuclear mic drop. drops the mic and he's gone. Yeah, boom. All right. Well, good love to let us know how it works out. Did you want to know about night shift? Yes, tell me about night shift, and then you want to take a commercial break after night shift? All right, well, we'll talk about Night Shift, and then we'll go to Horse Break. Michael Keaton. Michael Keaton. Michael Keaton. It looks like a romantic comedy, is it? don't know. I don't know. purchase it with my corporate card. All right. And we'll come right back with cooking issues.

[25:27] 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 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

[26:07] heritage foods is honored, to represent a network of family farmers, and artisanal producers whose work presents an immeasurable gift to our food

[26:15] system, and to biodiversity. The meat we celebrate, whether it's heritage, turkey, Japanese steaks, Berkshire pork, or Navajo churro lamb

[26:24] chops is the righteous kind, from healthy animals, of sound genetics that have been treated

[26:30] 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. And welcome back. Hey, you know what, Jack? The one line in that that kind of creeps us out a little bit. Stas and I were talking during the break. Sound genetics. Why? creepy. You said it sounds Nazi. Sounds eugenic like. It sounds crazy. I mean, I know in the sense of animal breeding, it doesn't play that way, but

[27:02] like whenever I hear sound genetics, I'm like, you know... I think about like the genetics of sound. You know? That's a very Jackie molecule statement. The genetics of sound. By the way, speaking of Jackie molecules, I have to interject with this. So we, as a Kickstarter reward, I was tasked to make 3 ringtones that we were going to send out to the people who donated to the Kickstarter, and we got a whole bunch of people right in saying they wanted a Jackie

[27:31] Molecules ringtone. So we do. Hold on. I'm gonna find it. That's not it. Let's see. I'm just going to put it up to the mic and maybe that'll work. Let's see. Actually, I can plug it right in. There we go. So here we go. Wait, wait, wait. Ringtone. Jackie molecules. Oh. Jackie molecules.

[27:57] Okay. Jack molecules. It's a real thing. Wow. I'm gonna put that on I'm gonna put that on my phone. Yeah, I'll send it to you Yeah, send it to me and it's definitely... How much is it if people want to purchase it? Oh, it's free if you donate it to Hickstarter. Wait, wait, one more thing? That's you at the end. That's so good. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. All right. So for those of you that remember before the commercial break. We were talking about Alex's question on carrots and persistent firming. Yes, the answer is yes. It's a known fact, the enzyme that we're talking about is a pectin, a methyl esterase. And so the reason you have to raise the temperature is you have, and there's numerous studies on different veg, on what temperatures to use. And you got to remember, and I think it was a pectin methylesterase trick that Jeffrey Steingarten was using to do the firming of potatoes in his very famous and very, very influential article on mashed taters in his 1st book, The Man

[29:04] Who Ate Everything. Um, which I encourage. If you don't own that book, like, you kind of need to go out and buy it. Like, right now, just go on Amazon and Amazon Prime that book and read it. And if you've never read it before, if it doesn't change kind of the way you look at food writing and food,

[29:22] then you, I don't know. I mean, the fact of the matter is, is that I can't erase like that

[29:26] whole, the whole dialogue of how he works from my head. An important book. Super important book. And I think has really changed the way like a lot of food writers have approached what they do. Anyways. Um, so yeah, so I think that the potato trick is a pectin methylestrace trick. We've tried it with other things as well. There's also other enzymes that you can activate. The trick is the reason you need the elevated temperatures. You need a temperature that's going to not denature the enzyme, but disrupt the cell structure enough that the enzyme is liberated and can do its

[29:56] business. And so that's typically what's happening. And there have been studies on various different vegies, at various different temperatures to kind of figure out where to hit them and how to treat them for how long.

[30:07] Also, you can enhance this effect if you dope calcium into the water. I don't know if Cook's Illustrator did that, but adding calcium to the water while you're working can also increase the amount of firming you get out of

[30:20] it, but I don't know if they did that. Anyways. So there you have it, right? Seth wrote in. Good afternoon. My name is Seth Warshaw. I own a restaurant. If you want to get this caller quickly before that? Sure. Call her. You were on the air. Hey, I got a question about ice cream. I am kind of accused of being a freak about ice cream and, well, just a freak in general anyway. Um, uh, so, and I love the taste of ice cream without egg, but it's tough to get the texture right. Yep. So, the question is kind of twofold. One, is there any way to dope it up with any kind of hydrocolloid or anything crazy like

[31:00] that or 2 is it, am I better off spending some money on a, you know, a liquid nitrogen doer or trying to get

[31:08] a, a really nice um, ice cream machine that can get the batch times down under 10 minutes or even 15.

[31:14] What's what, okay, a bunch of questions. Where did you grow up? Pardon me? What part of what part of you sound American? What part of the country did you grow up in? Oh, um, uh, bright and sunny, southern California. Okay. Because, like, Philly people and people on the East Coast, like, are very familiar with Aglis ice cream, right? The whole style of egglis ice cream in the U.S. is known as Philly style ice cream, right? So there's a long rich history. But for those who grew up around here, you know, that, um, you know, the kind of classic Philly style ice cream used to be briars, right? and that it didn't contain eggs. It also used to contain no stabilizers. And that's why also all of us know that if you get briars when it's incredibly fresh, it's, it was good, but it never as smooth and creamy as like, you know, an egg style,

[32:06] uh, you know, like uh, French vanilla style, but good, but then it goes icy really quickly, right? Because it's not stabilized and it doesn't have the eggs in it. Briars has since relented and added a bunch of stabilizers to their ice cream. I guess because they realized that, you know, less than fewer and fewer people kind of, you know, were devotees of that style or kind of understood like what that style was supposed to be.

[32:27] So that's it. What style of ice cream machine do you use? Well, right now I just have the cheap $100 freeze the canister and churn it. Oh, freeze the canister. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And the batch times were between 20 and 30 minutes, low 20s, and I'm looking at ice cream machines that are the self refrigerating kind. Yep. But the batch time still seem to be up near 20 minutes until you get into something that's, you know, in the 1000s of

[32:57] dollars range. Right, correct. Okay, I'm going to go a little bit against the grain and I don't, how much of this stuff do you want to make? Is this like a family outing thing or do you want to do this commercial? You want to do this for family, right? Well, well, for me. Yeah. So I recommend, uh, I recommend uh, good old-fashioned salt and ice. I would buy the motorized one. You don't need to buy the expensive white mountain one. And in fact, the best ice cream that I have ever personally made outside of using liquid nitrogen or

[33:25] Carpagani has been with a $2 thrift store rival

[33:30] brand, ice cream, which by the way, they're owned by the same people as owned White Mountain. But rival brand ice cream maker with a motor on it that used salt and ice. And, um, I mean, I guess it depends on uh, which model you get,

[33:46] like the, the trick with the, with those style of ice cream machines is uh, you can decrease the batch time uh, by just adding more uh, salt,

[33:55] right? And at a certain point, the makers tell you not to do it because they worry that you're not going to be able to scrape the sides off enough. But I found that at least on my rival, I could jam it pretty hard and get like, you know, 12 minute batch times on it and get incredibly textured ice creams using just milk, cream, sugar,

[34:14] vanilla, and salt without doing anything else. Now, it doesn't store as well, right? And I would also jack the cream levels to the point where it almost buttered out on me.

[34:25] because that's going to also provide some textural advantages. The problem there is it's really good when it's soft, but when it hardens, it gets a little bit of a

[34:32] buttery, a buttery texture, which some people find off putting in an ice cream, right? So, I mean, I like this good old-fashioned salt and ice. thing. They can make a much larger quantity than those self-freezing things can. Uh, and in general, they're uh, higher quality product. And the other good thing about it is that if you don't want to store your ice cream,

[34:54] after you're done churning, you pull the motor off and you just add a boat ton of salt to the outside, drop a towel over

[35:00] it, and let it cure inside of its own container. You know what I mean? Without unpacking, without agitating, without going back in your freezer. So you don't need to worry about freezer space while you're, you know, while it's curing up while you're cooking the rest of dinner. A lot of advantages. It doesn't keep so well. But there's a lot of advantages. Now, back to the other side. Let's go to the stabilization side. On the stabilization side on it, there are a boat ton of things you can

[35:25] add to an ice cream like this that are not, you know, that that make it creamier. For instance, Jelan. If you were to, but it's a little bit more of a pain in the butt. You could take just the milk. I wouldn't do it to the cream. I would take just a milk and make a gelan fluid gel with it, right? Then blend it, and then add in your cream, blend it down with the vanilla. And when you freeze that sucker, it will be super duper smooth. You can go look at my stretchy, on my stretchy ice. I a stretchy ice cream post on that's also friable and you can light it on fire on the cooking issues blog that apparently you

[36:06] could still search for. I would omit the guar, just use the gel in, and I would ignore my instructions to jack the, uh,

[36:14] gel. I mean, you can jack the Jalan a little bit, but you don't need a jacket as much as I said at the end of the end of that article because I was just guessing, in fact, you don't need

[36:22] a jacket that much, but that makes a supremely smooth ice cream with no eggs in it.

[36:27] But really any sort of stabilizer is going to, is going to help you out, like LBG or something like this is going to, is going to stabilize a

[36:34] carrogenen, like adding some carrogen into it will, uh, like, uh, I would probably, I think most people use iota, and small amounts for this is going to help really smooth it out for you, which is what you want.

[36:45] You don't want to add so much of any of those things that it gets gummy though, right? That's the, that's the, the, the kind of the, the downside of it. One of the things, you don't want eggs because you just don't like the flavor of cooked eggs. Or you just don't want the eggs. I don't know what it is, but anytime I add any number of eggs. It just changes the flavor, and I don't know what it is. Right. Do you want a circulator? Yes. Okay. Uh, uh, here's a little trick Sam Mason. Sam Mason didn't used to like his ice creams to taste eggy, but he loved the texture that he got from eggs. And so what he would do is he would put the egg yolks in

[37:23] a bag and pasteurize them at a low temperature, like you could do it at 60.

[37:30] right? Celsius, 140 Fahrenheit. for just long enough to pasteurize out the egg yolks, which is not that long, really. And then, uh, and then stir those in, and then that actually, it's easy then to chill those eggs, and then you can stir those into your mix, and you're not going to get the, the, you know, blend them in, and you're not going to get

[37:50] that, uh, cooked egg, that egginess that you get from the eggs. And that's what he used to do. And ain't nobody ever argued with Sam Mason's ice cream. Interesting. I will have to try that. Yeah, so there's a battery of things you can try. Let us know how works. Cool. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, now, wait, so we were talking about Seth, who owns a restaurant in

[38:12] Teeneck, New Jersey? You ever been to T next house? I used to live right next to Te Neck. Yeah, T Neck. Uh, at Steakhouse. We are attempting to introduce modernist techniques into our kitchen. Some of our ideas have been successful and others not so much. Our biggest hurdle is that we are a kosher establishment, which precludes us from using many ingredients. Most recently, we purchased Activa TI, which does not have sodium casenates. Activa TI, by the way, for those of you that, you know, aren't hip to this. Activa is the brand name of transglutaminates, a.k.a. meat glue that we use to, you know, bond different

[38:47] proteins that usually meets together. Now, it's an enzyme. Naturally occurring enzyme. It's not some sort of horrific monster thing, and, you know, I can get into lots of discussions about how awesome it is and how it's been maligned by specifically a couple of fake news outlets in Australia, but

[39:05] I don't have time. So what's added to the enzyme is some bulking agent and also a helper protein. Now, the most commonly used helper protein is caseine. Obviously it's not kosher because it's derived from milk and you're gluing meat with milk, clearly not kosher.

[39:21] So that's the problem that we're dealing with. Okay. Activa TI, which is the one that they're getting is pure, in other words, it doesn't have any helper protein in it. Okay, there we go. Recently, we purchased ActivityI, which does not have the sodium case nate component, and therefore the bindings does not have the binding strength. The body strength is much reduced. I did find a product online called Cavamex. Covamex. It sound good? Sounds like a car website or a wine website for cava. anyway. Cava Max, which they claim is a sodium case inate substitute. As I understand it, sodium casenate is emulsifier, which is what Cavamex is as well. My question is, can I use Cavamax instead of the sodium case need to add to Activa and get the desired result of being able to glue our meat together?

[40:05] Additionally, how would I introduce the Cava Max into the mix? If this idea is not going to work? Is there some other idea that you could point me to? I hope this email finds you well. Thank you, Seth. Yes, it finds us well. Look, if it's meant to replace an emulsifier, then I would not use it as a replacement. What I would do is get kosher gelatin and just mix the kosher gelatin in with the Activa because it's going to provide a different kind, but a very fast bond strength. So Activa GS, which is not kosher because they don't use kosher gelatin. Activa GS is, um, is the greatest strength, or is it GB? GB, one of those two. Anyway, both of those actually have gelatin in them. One of them also has phosphates to keep it stable at temperature, but if you mix gelatin and you should be fine. So what I would do, um, I don't know if you have to pre-functionalize the gelatin into like a

[40:58] slurry and then paint it and then sprinkle the meat glue on or whether it'll work just straight

[41:04] sprinkled. But try it both ways, but I would do gelatin. That's what I would do. Uh, Ethan Kushner writes in about uh, reverse Agar, uh,

[41:13] a reverse uh, Alginet, I guess, and uh, lentils. A big hello to the folks at cooking issues, called in late last week, but you were tasting ants at the time, so we're on old questions, huh? I'm headed into New York right now, so I thought I'd email in. Just thought you guys might want to post the questions on the heritage radio page or somewhere else very obvious. What do you think, Jack? Should we post the questions email on our page? It's there on the about us. We have a new website coming too, so... So make it prominent. My brother is planning on getting engaged in the next couple of weeks. We probably missed it. Chumps. Uh, and wants to do a sick meal for a special lady friend before popping the question.

[41:49] Apparently, she loves bubble tea, which I know traditionally uses tapioca starch balls. Tapioca starch balls. What? So that said something. I must have said something that they riled her up, but I don't know what it is. That's good. But from his description, the tea she gets in New York. It sounds like they use a reverse Alginate Flavor Pearl in quotes. Apparently, it pops and Stas are going to get away. It pops and leaks peach juice. don't like the balls. But what about the what about leeks, peach juice? don't like anything about them. No. Like what about the idea of something leaking? Not good. Not good? Leaking? Okay. This sounds like a bit much out of some random eatery, but maybe they buy them pre-made. Either way, how would I make this? I've looked at chef steps and thought about using their recipe for reverse

[42:37] spherification. Any tips on this? When using fruit juices? Do I have to manage the pH? What's the deal with SHMP, a.k.a. shimp? And I know this is a loaded question. Any tips on macaroons? Well, listen, uh, 0 my god, I forgot to, uh, her website just went out of my head. There's a website you need to read on macaroons. I'll try to remember, and if I can't remember, I'll get it next week. Okay, I've also been trying to make traditionally coagulated lentil tofu. I soaked the lentils for 2 days, blenderized it, boiled it for a couple minutes, strained it, heated it to 160, Fahrenheit, and added one tablespoon of Epsom salts,

[43:11] far, so far, just giant pots of goo. Any thoughts? Um, And by the way, Ethan also thanks us on our

[43:19] randomness and thanks, Enastasia, for your ambivalence. Adds great balance to the show, he says. All right, so let's hit these questions one by one. On the reverse verification. Sodium hexametaphosphate, a.k.a. By the way, here's how reverse verification works. Normally, when you're spherifying using algen at the spherify stuff, you put your flavor into, you add alginate, alginate, you know, sodium

[43:40] algenate, which is a hydrocoloid, to your flavor, you drop that flavor into a calcium bath, calcium lactate, glucinate, it's the least flavorful, but calcium lactate is the easiest and cheapest to get, but it tastes terrible, so you have to rinse it off.

[43:52] Okay, so you drop it in, and instantly, uh, the uh,

[43:56] Alginet, um, uh, cross lengths, and you get this, uh, you get this firm shell around your liquid, and then you pull it out, you rinse off the calcium, and you serve these little uh, pearls.

[44:06] Problem. Want several problems. One, you can't use a fluid to do this. It's very low in pH. The reason is, is that it'll pre-gel, ruin the alginate. Like acidic things ruin the algenate. That's one thing. That's why that's one of the problems you have. Another problem is that the reaction keeps happening and you keep on gelling all the way through and eventually you get solid balls and they're gross because they have no flavor and

[44:30] alternate's a flavor thief and also has very bad texture. Okay. So that's 2 problems. So solution. One of the solutions, this problem, is these was called reverse verification, reverse verification, what you do, is you make a neutral, usually alginate bath. You can make an algae at bath that has flavor, but usually it's a neutral alginate

[44:47] bath, and then you drop calcium laden, you know, juices into it, and you get a membrane of

[44:54] algerinate around your flavorful products. Okay, here are the and the good news is, is that the product you're using can be as acidic as you want.

[45:02] I've done almost straight lemon juice. It doesn't matter because, you know, the alginate doesn't, it's not going to hurt or pre-gel because the alginate's not contained in the flavorful stuff, so it doesn't matter. That's the good news. Here's what you need to keep in mind. The sodium hexametaphosphate is a, as a sequestran. It's going to get rid of excess calcium. So what you want to do is add some sodium hexametaphosphate, a.k.a. shimp, uh, to your alginate bath, to preserve it so that it doesn't go bad while you're repeatedly dropping

[45:33] uh, calcium stuff. I mean, when you're dropping calcium stuff into it. And also in case there's free calcium ions in your tap water, right? So that's what the sodium had a hexametophosphate is for. You're going to want to make sure that the alginate bath that you use is as thin as you can make it and still get good, um, and still get

[45:53] good, uh, film around the outside. And this is why you want to use a very strong alginate, because a strong

[45:59] algen, it's going to get a greater kind of bond strength even when it's a little bit thinned out. The reason is, is that you need to drop your liquid into it and it needs to drop into it. So if you have a very thick alginate, it's just going to pancake on top and you're not going to get a decent reverse spherification. Now, you can get around that by injecting it into the thing, but it's all a pain in the butt. What you want is to be able to make a nice good drop. Unless you're doing larger spoon, in which case, another way to do it, if you're making larger pearls, like larger tapioca pearls, you can literally freeze balls of flavor with calcium, then they can be any thickness you

[46:33] want, because it doesn't matter. And then you can kind of throw them into the alge in it and then pull them out and then rinse them off. Anyways. So another thing you want to make sure is that you get all the air out of the alginate bath. Otherwise, it'll be air on the top and again, you'll just get stuff pancaking when it hits the air thing and plus there'll be bubbles and it'll be a nightmare. Get rid of the air. Another thing is if you're going to drop liquid, and you're not going to pre-freeze it. You should thicken the juice. I, you know, you usually use something like something like a Xanthan or something there to keep it together and to thicken it so that it can drop in.

[47:06] It helps if you densify it. If it weighs more than your alginate bath. So things like sugar can help there. So you don't want it floating on top. You want it to sink to the bottom. So it should be denser than the alginate bath and slightly thick so that it holds together when

[47:20] you when you drop it and you can get nice big balls. If you're dropping liquid. Nice big balls. The other thing is you want to make sure you get all the air out of that because no matter how dense it is, if it's full of air, that'll float

[47:32] it and it'll float and pancake can be a nightmare. Frozen is usually the way to go. But then the other thing is, is that you can't have them touching each other or they'll join together at the bottom. So usually what I'll do is I'll drop a bunch. They'll float to the bottom. They'll rest on the bottom, then you'll immediately dump the entire bath of

[47:51] alginate into something else through a strainer and then flood it with water to separate the balls.

[47:57] And then I put it on calcium to set any residual algen on the outside. That's how I do it. Yeah. On the lentil tofu. A couple things you could do. I've never made actual tofu from lentils. You can, I don't know whether you're going to be able to get a firm set. There's a couple things you can do. You can add meat glue, actually. And I wasn't able to, I didn't have time to look up on any websites, people that do this, but you can add Activa, and that will bolster any protein to protein interactions and give you a harder set, right? So that's one. Two, you could dope it with soy, so it's a soy lentil tofu situation, and that's going to help out. Or three, there are Burmese tofu, right? You can look up, isn't really tofu. It's really just kind of cooked, uh, like the people who do it, say it's closer to like a polenta. So you cook it down and then let it set, but it sets almost like a tofu, but it's more of a kind of a starch

[48:48] reaction the way that like polenta is. So you could make like a Burmese style tofu. Or you could cheat by adding agar, which is what a lot of people do with their

[48:56] quote unquote tofus that aren't real tofu, but I think you were trying to do traditional tofu, in which case I would either bolster it with some soy or I would hit it with some Activa and see if that helps, but check out the Burmese

[49:07] tofu because people who can't have the regular soy seem to enjoy the Burmese tofu. Yeah? Okay. That's about it. What? What? Okay, tell the questions you're gonna get to next. I'll do some real quick ones. Kobe, all right. Well, Kobe wrote in about a Burns Matic Torch. So he's been listening to the show for a couple of months now, uh, and he enjoys the veggetti dialogues. He would like to order Sears all, but the propane tank does not ship to where he lives. He's not sure whether he could order a compatible Burns Matic Torch for where he lives. Can we talk about one that sources locally? I can't. Here's the problem. I can't recommend any torches that I haven't used. Uh, because, like, I can't recommend it. I don't know that they're safe. I mean, like, I would just look and see whether or not, um, I would look and see whether or not it's possible to find a torch that looks and kind of functions like

[49:56] us. We're eventually going to look in. eventually we're going to look into maybe we'll look into making our own torch, right? It's going to it's going to be a while. The other question he had was on using saltpeter instead of insecure

[50:06] or prague powder. I try to find a source in Israel for curing salts because I would not use saltpeter. Do not use saltpeter as a substitute. Then we are going to get next week to questions. We made it through, we're getting closer, right? We have a question about you making noodles with Agar Agar and the flavor of tequila sunrise. We have a question on making your own anti-griddle and modifying pressure cookers. We have an urgent question, which I might talk on Twitter or someone can, you know, send me a Twitter question. Chris had on Mint and Mint. He needs this now. So please, and on Turkish coffee, which we'll talk about next week. Quinine and root beer all next week on cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on HeritageRadioNetwork.org. You can find all of our archive programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching

[50:55] Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at

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