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

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[0:30] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking, is just coming to you live, Robert's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on the Heritage Radio Network, joined as usual, with Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Stas? But also in the studio, we have special guests. We have Jack Schram from the bar. Say hello, Jack. Hi, Dave, how you doing? We have Jackie molecules in the engineering booth. Yep. And Harold McGee, Gee, Gee, Gee, here from California. What's up? Call your questions two. 718-497-2128. That 718-4972128. How you doing, girls? Very well, thanks Dave. Nice. And Jack, how did you survive? Jack was at the Jack did the cocktail apprentice program. Jack, not I'm going to call you molecules. Yeah, I'll be molecules. molecules. Yeah. or Jackie, yeah, Jackie molecules. So Jack, Shram, Bartender, Booker and Dax, intrepid bartender, Booker and Dax, was just part of the cocktail prints program at Tales of the Cocktail. Just got back. Did you survive? Just barely, Dave. Yeah, it's a, there a, let's a hard living group of folk. It certainly is. Yeah. But it was it was a lot of fun. I learned such an incredible amount. It was a fantastic experience. Nice. Nice. All right. So, Harold, uh, you got you got anything to, uh, anything to report what brings you to our fine, fine city? I came to visit the CIA up in Hyde Park. They have a new culinary science program. So I was finding out about that. And then came down to the city to catch up on what's happening here. Now, culinary science as opposed to food science is more like your alley, the study of delicious. Yeah, the study of what cooks do to make food for people rather than what

[2:07] industrial factories do to make food for people. I see. I see, industrial industrial factories. All right. So let's get to some questions. see what we have here. Stas, did we answer the question on root beer? Did anyone remember whether I answered the question on root beer? don't think so. don't think so. Oh man. All right. Rob Handle. See, I never know whether I've answered it, and that's here, and I just got to answer it again anyway, so I'm sorry if I already interested. answered it. Rob Handle wrote it. said, I was the guy that called today about running root beer in a draft system. Of course, that was like a month ago that he actually called because I'm so behind. But I had bad cell service and got cut off. I'm aware that the persistence of root beer flavor, and I'm willing to dedicate a corny keg or 2, as well as the lines to the cause. I've had a couple of main concerns other than that. The recipe I developed has about 20 herbs. roots and spices and generates a lot of sediment. What's the best way to clarify this, so I won't have major filming issues. I'm also working with space constraints. Would I be able to safely sanitize the corny keg, pour in the boiling soda base, then seal it and keep it at room temperature? What I need to sulfide it to ensure it is safe? I would run it through a cold plate to chill and ensure carbonation. Any other concerns, I should be awareabout when setting up the system. I'm looking to have root beer and sparkling water on tap, then rotating a seasonal soda on the 3rd line. Um, You are talking about doing a hot fill. And not to be confused with Nastasia's friend, Phil, right? And I think that's going to work fine. You see any problems with that? Like, as long as the yeast is killed, the CO2 line's not going to bring yeast into it, as long as you get no back contamination or backflow, you shouldn't have any problem with the hot fill, just wait for it to be super cold before you

[3:43] carbonate it. Yeah? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone? You know that stuff. You want to, if I'll give you a couple words of advice, since that's what you hear, right? Boil the lids, make sure everything that touches the inside, including the lids, is boiled. Pour it in, boiling, cap it immediately, flip it upside down, and let it boil the top of the thing before it goes. And then if possible, blow a little bit of stuff through the

[4:12] tubes, to make sure the tubes are sanitized, while the stuff is still hot to kill everything. Ain't nothing that kills you, gonna grow in the soda. What's going to happen is you're going to get yeast and other sorts of kind of things that just make it

[4:25] either either reduce its residual sugar, increase its alcohol content or make it nasty,

[4:29] right? Yeah, I mean, funky, fruity, nasty. Not horrific. But yeah, not what you want. Yeah. Root beer ain't your funky, fruity, nasty kind of, kind of beverage. Although funky, fruity, nasty. Can you make a cocktail call funky fruity nasty? Absolutely, Dave. was already thinking about it. All right, nice. Got a caller whenever you're ready. All right, so I'll finish this and we'll get the caller. So, uh, on the foaming, um, okay, I'm just gonna put this out here. You are, as we used to say in the trade, SOL. Like, uh, like, 1st of all, anything out of a keg like that, you're going to have more foaming than you

[5:04] would uh, out of like a bottle service, but also, all those barks, not only, you have to get it 100% clear, which you could totally

[5:12] clear, meaning no particles, which you could do through a number of filtration methods or even probably with a clarification step if you had to, but that's not going to get rid of the kind of surface active crap that's in barks and roots that causes things to kind of foam up on you.

[5:29] So it's like, it's just you're an inherently foamy kind of situation. The good news is, is that root beer is a relatively low carbonation, foamy product anyway. That's why it's root beer and not root IPA. You know what I mean? No? All right, caller, you were on the air. Hey, um, I heard last week that Harold McGee might be on and I had a question that I thought he could perhaps answer. Um, I've been uh, steering a lot of my food lately with the Sears

[5:59] all, and I was reading on, on food and cooking, um, specifically this section on, uh, I think it's heterocyclic amines that are created during the

[6:07] searing process or high temperature cooking. You should win a prize. That's the 1st time that's been... Go ahead. You're the 1st person that has ever mentioned heterocyclic amines on the show, and so I believe you deserve a prize.

[6:18] Go ahead. Okay. So I was just wondering, is it smart, like, from a health standpoint, to pair seared foods with something that has antioxidants, like a drink or

[6:28] something? Um, or is it just, it's, it's not that um, that important. Ah, so um, I would say, I mean, of course, there really isn't good scientific information about a question like that.

[6:43] We can only sort of extrapolate from the knowledge that heterocycamines are formed in high temperature processing of foods, and they seem not to be good for

[6:52] us, and so you probably want to minimize intake.

[6:56] And then also, I'm not sure that antioxidants per se are going to be helpful

[7:02] because, um, you know, these toxins are toxic, not by oxidizing things. It's by reacting with with important molecules like DNA and RNA. But I think what it does make sense to do is to eat that food with, as you said, a good

[7:19] drink, with all kinds of complicated other materials in it, but also vegetables and fruits, which have all kinds of stuff that we really don't know about, but that is probably going to be there, if not to counteract the activity of something like heterocyclic a means, then at least dilute them so that they're less likely to cause problems. So I

[7:41] think bottom line, just having uh, a meal with lots of different uh, elements to it along with your wonderfully seared food is the

[7:51] is the way to go. Yeah, my favorite would be a glass of nice glass of red wine. Yeah, yeah. To start. Yeah, yeah. Which it may or may not do wonders for your heart, but it does wonders for your soul. Yes, right? All righty. Well, thanks so much for calling in. Yeah, thank you All right, bye. All right. So here's a, we didn't answer the agar noodle question, yeah? I might as well get to it. Remember the old Agar noodles that people used to make? Like Johnny used to make them and Faran made them and they would get keep the Agar kind of in a warm state and then put it through a tube in

[8:29] a ice bath. remember that? So I think someone's writing about that, but let's find out. I didn't even look it up because I was like, I got noodles. I don't need to research that. I can do that in my sleep. I had a question about a recipe on piecing together. I wanted to make spaghetti and red sauce, by the way. Spaghetti. I had a line, no more of a jetty comments today, although I had some people write me in. Um, I wanted to make a spaghetti and have you used a veggetti? No? No? No? Jack, do you own a veggetti? I do not own a veggetti. I do not own a veggetti. I use one. don't own it. No, it's like, you know what it is, though, right? No I don't. Oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. It's time for the talk. All right. I said I wouldn't do it. But what happened? Okay. So, like, you know, they, you know, the, like, the Ben Renner things that, like, you can take a potato and turn it into, like, a long strip or it can make shreds?

[9:19] So if you if you were to take that, make it less expensive, shape it like an oversized pencil sharpener that could, let's say, take a cucumber sized thing or even maybe even a

[9:31] daikon. So, uh, and you could twist it, and it turns said, uh, stick shaped, uh, uh, item, veg

[9:42] into uh, strips. And so someone was like, those are kind of like noodles. Maybe I could use it like a noodle. And so instead of just calling them kind of threads or filaments, decided to say they are spaghetti, which in fact, they're not the same shape as spaghetti. Spaghetti is what shape does. What shape is spaghetti? No, what shape is cross section? Yeah, it's round. It's round. Does it veggetti produce round things? So does it produce spaghetti? Could it ever produce spaghetti? Because spaghetti is not merely pasta in a long form, people. Spaghetti has a freaking cross section, but someone in there in their infinite wisdom. decided that this is just like a spaghetti. Maybe they're thinking of spaghetti squash, which, by the way, I think, used as a spaghetti, whatever. I am not going to get into it because everyone here likes spaghetti squash. surrounded by spaghetti squash lovers. But, uh, they decided they were going to call it a Vegetti. A veggetti. And the non-brand name of the jetty is spiralizer. And so people have written, a lot of people, actually, as it turns out, have written cookbooks on spiralizing vegetables because the

[10:48] Vegetty people won't let them use their name because they don't want to, we, look, we had Vegetty don't want to become the Kleenex or spiralizers, all right? You know what I mean? basically what's happening. So you've never used one? You have any thoughts? I need to go out and get one Wow. I'm sure someone listened to this would be more than happy to send a

[11:08] veggetti. You know, are they sponsor yet? What's going on? I don't know, man. I don't know. I don't know. in touch with us. Yeah. Anyways, I had a question about recipe I'm piecing together. I wanted to make spaghetti and red sauce with the flavors of a tequila sunrise. Jack, give us his specs for tequila sunrise. Tequila sunrise, 2 ounces, repo. I don't know, Dave, we don't do sunrises at the bar. Yeah, right? But do you have to keep it all layered so that it looks like, is it sunrise or sunset? Sunrise? Sunrise. Yeah, yeah. See, it should really be like, if it's sunrise, it should really be like creme Yvette. Because sunrises are not... They're like bluish gray sunrise. I don't think that would be incredibly delicious, though, with the Crime event. I think I detest it. In general. I think it's, I mean, like, I'm sure somebody likes it. Uh, not me. Like, do you like crime a bit? Not especially. Harold, do you like it here? Nope. Do you like fruity pebbles? Fruity pebbles? Oh, you don't have fruity pebbles? Oh, it's the Fred Flintstone branded cereal that looks like aquarium

[12:17] rocks, like multicolored aquarium rocks. Anyways, like, it tastes just like that, but somehow Fruity Pebbles at least has crunch. anyway, I'm not a fan. I'm just saying. Okay. So I think I should call it a tequila sunset. I'm just gonna go ahead and say that. Okay. How do you think the alcohol and the acidity of the OJ would affect the amount of agar you would need to add to the liquids? Ah, look, as long as you're not going above, like, yang, yang, like, 15, 20% ABV? I don't know, you might need to add a little bit of extra agar, maybe, but not, but I mean, technically you

[12:55] should technically you wouldn't because whatever, it doesn't matter, but I wouldn't worry about it too much because I wouldn't put the alcohol level that high anyway.

[13:02] One thing I will say is you cannot have something that's at high alcohol and boil and sufficiently hydrate the

[13:10] agar. So you will need to hydrate the agar in the juice slash whatever, water base,

[13:15] um, start it cold, boil it, let it simmer for a while for a couple of minutes. Then you're going to want to temper the alcohol into that mix, not the other way around because you don't want to get pre-gelation. And then you want to keep it warm enough to put it through whatever you see or whatever it is you're using to make the noodles, the

[13:33] noodles. I was also wondering how you think the texture would come out. The Agar noodles, frankly, they're a little brittle and they break kind of easy. So, um, you know, you might want to switch or add, uh, like a softener, like a texturizer to it. Like, it's not specifically something that people use for it, but, like, LBG or any sort of, like, uh, softening thing is gonna make it a little more spaghetti-like. Plus, also, you never make spaghetti with this either, because the noodles are always a bigger thing. They're more like udon. Right? You know what I'm talking about. These, like, these agar noodle things are a little more like udon. But I would follow, you know, any of the Martin Lairsh still puts out the text, what does he call that thing? The textures. What do you call that thing? It's like a compilation of every chef's recipes on hydrocoloids. He still puts it out. Just check and see what kind of ag on noodles, learning that one and see what happens. All right. Justin wrote in on from prom springs on an anti-griddle. Hello, Dave Nastasio, Nastasia. Nastasia. Do you believe that? How many years have I worked with these stars? Can't get your name right. All these years later. Nastasia. Jack and whatever interlopers. Oh, what, what up? Harold McGee is now an interloper, Jack, you count because it's double jack. He doesn't say Jackie molecules in here, said Jack. As I was searching the inner web for instructions on building my own anti-griddle somewhat unsuccessfully. For those of you that, does he still make them? Does Philip Preston still make the antic riddles? don't know. I haven't seen them in a long time. Grant Aikens, who, you know, from a linear, an aviary, and next, who, by the way, was at

[15:03] Tales of the Cocktail. and paired a cocktail with seared beef. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, not for its antioxidant properties, I assume. I don't think so. Yeah. And he brought the giant porthole, which holds like something like, you know, it's like a frat party should get that thing.

[15:18] It was like, how many gallons did he say it held? I want to say you said 70 liters, but yeah, something ridiculous. A lot of cocktail. A lot of cocktail. A lot of cocktail. Big, big freaking, what's it called? porthole. Yeah. Uh, and he was blowing his the caramel balloons and whatnot. Yeah, fun. you think he had a good time? I don't know. Did you see him in any of the parties afterwards? No. No? Me neither. I didn't really go, though. I was like, I was like holed up in the in a closet as I as I want to be. Anyways. So, uh, Philip Preston made this thing, uh, anti-griddle for, uh, um, Alinia way back in the day. I don't know what they made it for. My impression was he made it for a linear when they were opening, because I guess they didn't have LN at the time, liquid nitrogen or something, and they wanted a chilling

[16:02] technique, because remember, at that time, which was at 05? Somewhere around there, yeah. Yeah, that was an interesting period of time in the US because the guys in Spain were already like, you know, you know, using liquid nitrogen, like

[16:17] it, like it had no cost and like, you know, Faran had like, you know, 5 doers of it in, you know, and like, you know, uh, Danny Garcia was like, you know, just like, you know, whatever, just turn on the tap and walk away from it, like, you know, like California 5 years ago with water before you guys went

[16:33] totally uh, totally dry on. But, um, So anyway, I think he wanted a way to replicate some of those effects without having to have liquid nitrogen.

[16:41] So the anti-griddle is, in effect, a flat plate that chills things down. And the big thing that Grant used to do is he used to make like creme anglaise, pour it on the thing, stick a stick into

[16:49] it, make little creme anglaise, lollipops. Lollipops. Um, anyways, uh, wow, that was a long tangent. I haven't even finished the question yet. I came across a forum in which someone was discussing creating a high pressure environment. So, yeah, it's not the question's not even about the anti-griddle. Interesting. I came across a form in which someone's discussing creating a high-pressure environment inside a pressure cooker by putting dry ice inside. This got me wondering if that technique would work for rapid infusion in the same way as an

[17:17] easy canister, but on a larger scale. I've heard most of your ransom rays concerning the pressure cooker. So you're the obvious one to come ask, assuming I haven't modified anything on my cooker, is this safe to

[17:25] try? Is it safe to try? Is it safe? Well, uh, whether or not it's safe to try depends on how fast your pressure cooker can eject the excess pressure and how much CO2 you put

[17:43] in, how much dry ice you put into it. I'm going to go ahead and say no. Plus also you can't modify a pressure cooker to withstand much more than about 20 PSI because the side gaskets will blow out. There's 3 or 4 safety features on every pressure cooker. And I wouldn't, you're not going to get it above about 20 PSI and you're

[18:01] pulling, I'd have to go back and look at my charts and liquid intelligence to find out, but in an EC, you're getting like 60, 70, 80 PSI. What you want to do is get a corny keg. Get a corny keg and, you know, you can use CO2, you just have to wait for it to flash off, but it'll work, you know, much like nitrous, but you have to wait for it to flash off so it doesn't have any

[18:19] petillons left when it's done. But I would go corny keg and then you could do 5 gallons at a time and you can get a corny keg still for, you know, not very much. What do you guys think? Modify the pressure equipment. no right? No, I'd be worried about, you know, condensation freezing up in the in the valve. Yeah, just kind of blocking it. So you, so I wouldn't mess with it. You ever have one of the other safety features? I've had them all fail on me I've had I've had every safety feature vent one way or the other on more than one

[18:48] occasions. You know what it's not? Pleasant. Not pleasant. Dave, anytime you're saying something is potentially unsafe, and you're saying it, I would highly recommend you do not do that thing. Yeah, yeah. and there's no winks and nods here. It's not a good idea. And I look, I'd be willing to figure out a way that I thought it would be safe, except for the fact that I'd also don't think it'll be

[19:08] effective, because you're not going to be able to get the pressure high. Yeah. Anyway. Hey Dave. Yes. A weird question emailed to Heritage just now for Greg and Queens who says, Harold sounds like the nicest guy on the planet, but does he have a freaky side? Whoa. Should I let Nastasia answer that? Maybe. What? Harold, so why don't you describe to us your freakier side? No. I'm

[19:43] not going to, Dave. Dave, just have Harold come to Tales with you next year. Harold's been Details. He's been to Tales. Did you see the freaky side? That's the place that comes out. Oh, no, you didn't, Dave. Hey, you know? Yeah, you know, we got to take you to Vegas and I'll know. then stays in Vegas. You know I've never been to Vegas. You haven't? Nope. Wow, that's a kind of a crazy question. I think it, yeah. Did it say who was? Greg in Queens. There you go, Greg. There you go, Greg. So take it take it as take it however you want, but you're not going to get anything out of him on the air. That's for sure. But in fact, I will say this, and Stas, you can back me up on this. He is, in fact, the super nice fellow that you hear here on the radio. Like, that's, like, legitimately, that's legitimately the, uh, the herald that you will that you will get if you meet him in the real life. Oh, Justin, last thing you said in a PS, because Stas 9 to get off our butts. is your next book should be called Enemies of Quality. We're still working on a t-shirt. You know about the enemies of quality? It's, uh, well, an enemy of quality is someone who does things to hurt the

[21:01] product, like food or beverage in a way that's just, you know, like not so much purposeful, but just

[21:08] neglectful. Most enemies of quality are just neglectful. Because they're not looking out after quality. I mean, that's Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like uh, like imagine buying a loaf of uh, crusty bread and then putting it in the fridge. With that person. Or a plastic bag. Oh, well, yeah, because it, because of the, uh, well, do you, what do you like these modified plastic bags that allow for venting or

[21:32] are you still, we're about right after baking, putting in a plastic bag, devil, Satan. Yes. Yeah, yeah. horrible. Terrible. But like, what about do you do you like these bags with the venting things or no? Um, not really. Nope. First of all, Harold lives in like one of the in like one of the greatest places for just keeping things on the counter. Like in San Francisco, you can just keep anything just like on the counter, right? Well, you can, but I mean, the, I mean, it's not as humid there as it is here right now, but it is like 50, 60%, which means that

[22:02] the loaf of bread is going to get, the crust is going to suffer with time. But there's nothing you can do about that, really, except just keep

[22:12] the bread as optimally as possible for the whole loaf and then crisp it up in the oven. Are you also suggesting that people eat their bread in a timely fashion? Uh, that is advisable too, although these days when people make these gigantic, you know, like £4 loaves. It's a little hard to do that. But. Yeah, but, you know, that's why I like it when people sell quarters. You know? So what are your thoughts on bread boxes? Um, in my experience, they're great

[22:43] for if you if you have a kitchen where there's a lot of traffic in and out, it's nice to kind of keep

[22:48] it out of the way. But I like to just take a paper bag, cut cut one part of the loaf, put that face down on a cutting board, and then just kind of put a

[23:01] bag, paper bag loosely over the top. And it doesn't look as nice as a bread box, but I think it does about the same. That's the Harold McGee bread box right

[23:11] there. You want to take a commercial break and come right back? Is that to me? Yes. All right. Jackie Molecule is coming right back with cooking issues.

[23:31] 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

[23:48] farming, you would have. And at Heritage Foods USA, you still do. Heritage Foods USA exists to promote genetic diversity. Small family farms and a fully traceable food supply. You see, we believe the best way to help a family farmers to buy from them, and heritage foods is honored to represent a network of family farmers, artisanal

[24:11] producers, whose work presents an immeasurable gift to our food system, and to biodiversity. The meat we celebrate, whether it's heritage turkey, Japanese steaks, Berkshire pork, or Navajo churro lamb

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

[24:29] humanely, and allowed to pursue their natural instincts. It's a simple fact. Animals raised according to this philosophy taste better. And as we like to say, you have to eat them to save them. visit us at heritagefoodsusa.com for more information. You gotta slit their throats to save them. Well, it's true. And oh, welcome back to cooking issues with Harold McGee. Harold wants to say churro. Cheryl, you give me some churro? Churro. Nice. Nice. Right? Okay, maybe you can do that. Would you be willing to do like a, Hey, Jack, you want to get Harold McGee? Maybe you can say something nice about the radio station. Maybe you would. don't know. Maybe he would. I'm kind of calling him out. I didn't ask in advance whether he'd be willing to. Maybe he'd say something nice about us. I don't know I don't know. Sure, sure. Give me a script. He's like, I have nothing that I actually want to say that's nice. But if you have something nice to say, ma'am, I'll read it. No, I don't know what you need. That's true. You want to help out? All right, nice. All right. Sam right saying, hi, guys. I'm trying to create a mother of vinegar just for kicks. When you say it's like mother of all vinegars. It sounds like, yeah, vinegar mother. What factors affect besides speed and appearance of the mother's formation. By the way, I saw on a video, and this is my new thing. This is amazing, for those of you that aren't allowed to curse, like, let's say you're around small children or in a place, this guy had an explosion happen right next to him in a video, you

[25:57] know, the kind of videos I watch, and he goes, mother, father. I was like, genius, how have I not thought of that before? Have you used that before, guys? I've used it a couple times. Mother, father. So like I can use that in front of the kids, which is genius anyway. I don't know what maybe. Oh yeah, vinegar mother. Anyway, uh, wine type, vinegar type, vinegar starter, light, heat, cetera. in particular. Will a mother be able to form in a small glass vial? Harold? Small glass vial isn't the ideal environment because

[26:31] vinegar mothers develop at the at the vinegar air interface. And if there isn't a lot of space up there, if there isn't a lot of surface area,

[26:41] it's going to take a lot longer. So I would suggest a broader necked vessel of some kind. Also, temperature is pretty important because vinegar,

[26:53] acetabacteria, kind of enjoy a moderate temperature, not too cool, not too warm, like 20 Celsius, 70 or

[27:02] so, Fahrenheit. So if you can keep it in a place like that. That helps. And you want a cheesecloth at top of it so that you don't get the vinegar, excuse me, vinegar

[27:14] flies, and what else? You gotta get the alcohol content right. Yep. Yep. Yep. Uh, man, I would, uh, something I didn't get a chance to look into, but my bet is

[27:26] that uh, white wine or something like that would be, would work faster than red because, you know, red wine has all those phenolics. They're probably, to some extent, antibacterial, and you might have to overcome that. I'm sure someone's done the study, right? Yeah. Have you ever had the people who like, we had, we made a kombucha and the kombuchas, this one's got a lot of alcohol in it because of the way we made

[27:50] it and you taste it and you're like, you have no alcohol because it's all turned to vinegar. It's like been like acetobactor hit like a baseball bat. You ever had that happen? No. but I can imagine it. Yes. Well, I don't have to imagine it, because it happened to me. I was like, listen, if you like I like vinegar beverages, so I'm cool with it. tasted like, you know, do you like heavy vinegar beers? Gron Cru and all that stuff. Can you pound a whole hyper vinegar one? I like the medium grade, like medium amounts of vinegar, like

[28:17] rodenbach style, but not the straight vinegar suck ones. I don't know. Yeah, it depends on how much. I mean, a little bit. Uh, like a half. Oh, and in the right circumstances is nice. Yeah, not... Stas you? Do you like the drinking vinegars? Like, uh, yeah, like uh, Andy Ricker, he is nice. yeah I like those too. Me too. Yeah, Jack Nice. molecule. right. Jackie. Jacks agree, though. Delicious. Yeah, nice. All right. What about Routh Beer? I'm not a fan Uh, you know, I no, I do like it. Smoke, you like smoky beer? You can drink a whole one? No, but at Samia, in Williamsburg, they did a weird smoked onion. Dude, yes, I had the same one. so good with the smoked beer. Delicious. Incredible. What? 1st of all, why do you need smoke on smoke? What's the smoke on smoke? Did they serve it with a smoked cheese? And then you smoke a cigar with it? Like, oh, like, so much smoke. It worked in the circumstance. You got to try it, Dave. You got to get over there. good. All right. Yeah. Well, you know, Nastasia, a little known fact. Nastasia 8, you ready for this, Jack? E. Nastasia ate in Queens over the weekend. What? Queens. Wow. I was like, 0 my god. She like died or something. Someone said there was an imposter. She's like, yeah, I was overeating in Jackson Heights. I was like, damn. Did a helicopter bring her there? He's like, you know, because this, to get Anastasia to cross the river other than for this show, it's like, I prefer Queens to Brooklyn. I would go to Queens faster. You got to say that closer to the microphone. So everyone here in Brooklyn can hear you. I go to Queen. Queens is fine. Brooklyn hate. Wow. There it is. Wow. I love the molecules, man. Okay, by the way, Harold McGee, I don't think, has heard the Jackie Molecules ringtone. you bust it? Oh, yeah, give me a minute. All right. Tell me when you're ready. And I'll hit with some with some questions here. Pedro, how do you think you pronounced P-A-I-V-A? Portuguese? Pyva? Pyva? Pedro Pyva? Good afternoon, cooking issues team. My name is Pedro from Lisbon. Portugal. I've never been. Id like to go, though. I really like Portuguese cheese. You like Portuguese cheese? I do. And I've never been either. Really? Well, you know, if you're out there, Portugal, if you're out there, let me hear you dance. Harold McGee would like to go to Portugal. One of you needs to reach into your wallet and, like, figure out some sort of conference that you're going to fly him over there so he can hang out and eat all of your delicious thistle

[30:55] rended cheese and pound a whole boatload of port. And if you need some chump named Dave to come along too. Well, you know, hey, that's, you know, all the better. You know what I mean? Jack, Jack, the bartender, you like some port, right? I certainly do. we should start putting it in some cocktails. Well, D got the white, the white port. Did any of that work? We're still working on it. getting there. Yeah. Carbo application is looking good. Yeah, carb application. We have a gin and tonic question later if we get to it. So anyway, okay. In fact, it's this one. And I would like to submit a question about gin and tonic. Here we go. You ready? Jack of the bar, you will also win on this one since you do this every dang day. Well, except for the past week when you were Tales of Cocktail. Gin is now a big trend in Portugal, and it is really easy to buy a decent gin and a decent tonic. Most people claim to know how to serve the best GNT and that for each gin there is a perfect serve. Hmm. Well, that's a very, that's kind of a, it's more the Spanish trend, right? The big goblet style. Do you like the big goblet style? I'm not a huge gin and tonic drinker, but I mean, I enjoy pretty much any

[32:05] GNT if I'm just sipping on it casually. I never casually, I never, I never casually sipping. However, in the YouTube clip, the gin and tonic Dave Arnold's cocktail University, the gin served is totally different from the one served in the other side of the Atlantic, starting in the glass. No one uses flutes. Ours are closer to a small fish tank for a goldfish. Yeah, I know it. I don't understand that It's because carbonation must not be as important over there. Normally we 1st put and swirl the ice in a glass to cool it, then we flavor it with botanics, junipers, zest of orange, lemon, or even strawberries, then pour the

[32:37] gin and finally the tonic carefully to keep the gas of the tonic, which you can't if there's ice in a big fish bowl.

[32:42] Let me tell you something about, let me tell you a little something about bubbles, my friend. Like the vast majority of bubbles are lost at the surface of the glass, right?

[32:51] At the surface. So what a flute does for you. It actually doesn't do a good job of presenting the volatiles to your nose, which is why real champagne freaks, like our good friend

[33:02] Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, prefer to drink their shampizzle out of a white wine glass. I right? Yeah, because the aroma is better, and in fact, a lot of people, a lot of Conyacenti, like their champagnes,

[33:14] uh, too warm for my taste and wide open because they actually want to dumb the bubbles down because it lets them taste the wine more.

[33:20] What about you? For me, it depends a lot on the champagne. I just had this wonderful experience of a 25-year-old

[33:27] Vauve Cliquot served from a humongous bottle. It had no bubbles left whatsoever, but it was delicious and like no other champagne I'd ever had. But if it's a, you know, a young one and really bubbly and really sparkly. Um, I actually like flutes. I mean, because you can enjoy the visual spectacle as well as the taste and smell and spurts. Yeah, yeah. You know, Liger Belair, the champagne scientists from LA, who lives in... How do you why do you pronounce that town that way? As we would say, Reams pass? Uh, but it's, um, uh, he did the studies on the traditional coops, which we use for cocktails and

[34:12] uh, flutes and his, I believe, said maybe we should do white wine glasses is a good compromise.

[34:17] You read those studies? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's Mr. Champagne. What a job. What a job. So let me ask you this. On that 25-year-old, uh, Vouv clique, uh, how is the acidity? It was bracing. It was very high. That's part of what made it so wonderful because otherwise it was kind of caramel y, ready, you know, all those, it was rich, but also had a nice backbone.

[34:42] How far had the, uh, in the absence of massive amounts of CO2, how far had the yeasty

[34:50] Bready gone to oxidized and cherry like? It wasn't cherry like. It was it was just really rich. It was dark too. And when I 1st saw it, I thought, hmm, this doesn't look good, but it was beautiful. Nice. Yeah. Who bought it? The owner of the restaurant, which was celebrating its 25th anniversary, bought it when the restaurant opened for this occasion. Forsight, Jack. Forsyth. Yeah. Okay. Anyways, our closer to a small fish tank for a goldfish. Normally, oh, I already did this. Then pouring the gin and tonic and finally the tonic to keep the gas in the tonic. In the picture attached, which I don't have, is one of the results for the

[35:30] bloom gin. The question is, is it okay to serve it as we do or are we missing something important? Thank you for your time and thank you for the great program, Pedro. As you see, um, uh, as you see it, what should be the 1st steps into the

[35:43] sous vide world? Do you recommend an emerge, any immersion circulator in particular for CV'd? And as a home cook, what should I pay attention to? Uh, look, they're all, they're all gonna work. I'm not sure about in Portugal, like, what the, like, which ones are good for, for Europe. They're all, they're all, they're all gonna work. Just get one that, you know, you can afford that you're going to be happy with. I like the professional ones, but those are still like 800 bucks, but to me,

[36:09] like I know I can beat on them pretty hard, but I've had experience with all the lesser priced ones as

[36:12] well, and they're all going to work for you. There's so much good stuff out there on the internet. I would go to like chef steps, you know, one of those places. I have the rudiments of a low temperature cooking primer on cooking issues, which is still available. Unfortunately, apparently you can't buy Cialis on our blog anymore. Paul finally got rid of the Cialis ads. By the way, we never made any money off of that. It was just, I don't know how they got hijacked. But just go there. Now, as to the question is, are you doing anything wrong making your gin and tonics this way?

[36:40] Well, uh, Oh, no. I mean, if you like them, then you like them. Like, uh, and and it's good. I mean, like, I mean, there are certain things that are an abomination, right? So, like, if you were like, what I really want to do is take PepsiCola, which my wife saw someone do this in Shanghai once, if you want to take PepsiCola and mix it with Petrus, regardless of whether the Petrus is fake,

[37:05] Petrus or real Petrus, like, if you want to take even something that might pass as Petrus, right? So, you know, maybe it's like, you know, you know, some sort of

[37:14] closer, like related, you know, wine. Yeah, that's a mistake. You know, that's just, you're making an error there. You know what I mean? Uh, you know, I would say even, frankly, like, uh, alternating between your glass of Pepsi and Petrus is a horrible mistake.

[37:33] Uh, you know, because the phosphoric acid is not going to play nicely with the wine and the flavors of the polar are going to ride right over

[37:39] it and then it's just not, no, no. Well, I would practice 1st if you're going to do that with some yellow tail, right, Stas? and Yellowtail and Pepsi, fine. See whether you can get a decent Yellowtail and Pepsi. And then if you have a billionaire come, then sure, dump the petrus in, just don't let me see you. With a gin and tonic, it's a little bit different because the flavors you're going to be working with are all going to be good. I tend to want the purest essence of a gin and tonic possible, which means it's

[38:05] like, I'm going to start with a gin that I like, tanqueray. And I'm gonna use only quinine, sulfate, and sugar, and lime juice that, you know, we clarify, because I'm looking for a particular thing. A highly carbonated, extremely crisp, extremely dry, pure gin and tonic with a bunch of

[38:22] no extraneous crap. That's what I'm interested in. Does that make me right? Yes. No, I'm kidding. No, it just, it's, you know, that's the way I want to do it. That's the goal I've set for myself. But, you know, we don't all have to have that goal, right? There's honor in lightly carbonated fish bowls. Actually, I have to say that unless there's so much ice, like any drink that's handed to you, with the exception of an

[38:47] old-fashioned, and even in that case, because you can drink an old-fashioned quickly, if you so desire, like any drink, uh, should be small enough

[38:55] that, uh, it can be consumed by whoever's consuming it in, uh, under 5 to 10 minutes. I mean, really under 2 minutes, really, like right away. But in other words, like, I've, like, if the average consumer is taking much longer than like 10 or 15 minutes, the drink is sitting there dying. I don't care what kind of drink it is. It's dying. If it's a shake and drink, it's warming up too much. If it's a 3rd drink, it's warming up too much. It's a stir drink on a rock, it's diluting too much, if it's God forbid, you know, a tall drink in a bunch of ice, it's just turned

[39:25] into a watery mess. Um, You know, if I could change the way the drinking world works in general, and it is going this way in London and other places, it would be smaller drinks,

[39:34] drunk more quickly. Yeah? Yeah. Okay, let me see. You know, stars, we might actually make it through the question say. Can you believe that? Can you believe that? Uh, Steve. Actually, we won't. We not gonna make it. All right. Stephen from Moscow wrote in. Good to speak to you a few months back at the bar because he came to the bar. Uh, no luck finding the Viziga. Remember Ziga? Viziga, the sturgeon spine. You ever use that, Harold? They used to rip the spine out of sturgeons? Right, yeah, for Kulubiak and things like that. No, I've never played with it myself. Hard to get. Nastasia and I went to, what's that? What's the neighborhood? Brighton, right? Brighton Beach, which is like the Russian thing. And she tried to pull her like, but basically they just handed us like a chunk of frozen sturgeon that had like a little bit of spinal

[40:24] cordon. So we didn't really have enough to like rip out the whole spinal cord and do

[40:28] the uh, do this stuff. But I wonder whether there are any other spinal. Do you think there's anything special about a sturgeon's spinal cord? Is it the spinal cord itself? I think it is. Anything special about a sturgeon spiral cord that you know of? No, I mean, uh, it's it's uh, gelatinous. That's really all I know about it. And how fundamentally different is spinal cord material from like brain material, just shorter length axons in the brain? Uh, you know, uh, I should have prepared for this, but my, my recollection from, uh, Chris

[41:03] Constantino in San Francisco used to sell a uh, tuna spine, tuna backbone, that there's the spinal cord itself, which is tissue like the brain.

[41:13] It's, um, you know, nerve cells. But then there's this, um, uh, gelatinous cartilaginous material, which is sort of the shock absorber that prevents the uh, nervous tissue from

[41:28] suffering. And I think it's that shock tissue that you actually... Yeah, I used to serve that. I love that stuff. It's good. It's like kind of like real, it needs to be really fresh. Where it's like super kind of clean and seawatery. But that's not what the Vaziga is, though. I think the Vaziga is the actual chord, no? You think the Vaziga is the stuff? because the Vaziga comes in a long strip. Right, right. Yeah, no, that's that's my sense. But, but, how did you like, what did Chris do to it, to the, to the, just gave it to you and you kind of broke

[42:01] it open yourself and... Oh, I think we had that together. But he roasted the outside of it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've only ever served it raw. Like, so we would take one spine, clean off the vertebrae, so it was

[42:13] like, like, like, you know, wiped clean, like you put it in one of those, like, flesh eating beetle containers. You know what I'm talking about. And then, uh, I didn't do that though. Please, I don't want to hear about it. And then we scooped fresh ones that were like off these kind of the gross meaty carcasses and then put them

[42:29] on like they were fresh. Remember we did that? did that for Star chefs. Remember that stuff? You know, Chris roasted it and then kind of sprinkled all kinds of, uh, well, pepper and then various other herbs and spices on

[42:41] it. So it was really, really flavorful. Delicious. I remember that. Okay. So he was not able to find it. And he says it's effectively unavailable in its dry form and extremely difficult to get fresh, especially because how do you

[42:54] always, how do you pronounce? You know, the critical endangered species at CTs? Is that how you pronounce it? C-I-T-E-S. Anyway, you have to, you know, you don't want to slaughter the last sturgeon. I don't think Probably not. Here's my question regarding temperature maintenance. We'll be spending some time this summer with an Italian style, but it's not. It going to be in Moscow, not in Italy, so it can only be Italian style. What do you think about Italian style things? She gave you, you can't see what she gave you up on Italian style. She likes Italian. You don't like Italians. you like Italy. You like Italy, but not Italians, right? Another one of the things, right up there with biscuits. Even though whatever, even though whatever, I don't know, I'm not going to get into it. Uh, Italian style outdoor brick barbecue, uh, something like the picture attached, which

[43:40] unfortunately I don't have. Oh, it's going to be in Sardinia. He's going to be in Sardinia. Have you ever been? You been? No. You been? Want to go. I'd like to go. Yeah. By tradition, I will need to, by tradition. I like this is a good tradition. I will need to roast a suckling pig or half for sure, among many other things. Any thoughts on the cook for a long cook, how best to regulate temperature? We'll be in New York City next week. Hope to see you at the bar, but I missed it. Regards, Steven. So the classic one that can be roasted whole is the is the Cochinillo

[44:11] style, but they're minuscule pigs. Like, how much of those things weigh? You ever have one of those? I've never done one myself, but yeah, they're, you know, a few pounds. Delicious. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, dude, whether you want to do the, like, the super slow roast on it. it going to be hard to regulate if you don't do it a lot. You know what I mean? It's one of those things where you need to do it a lot. Temperature regulation in one of those big ovens is all about

[44:39] just, you want to build the temperature up over the course of hours and hours and hours, and then wait for it to get down to a point that you're going to be okay, throw it

[44:49] in, and then let it ride down on something like that. You're not going to refire. If it's a big retained heat masonry oven. You're not going to refire during the roast because you'll nuke off the outside of the skin. I would even, I would even maybe protect the pig for the 1st part of the thing in it with something that's going to, you know, like leaves or some

[45:06] crap, um, almost like you were burying it in the ground. All those retained heat things. Start, you want to start it at like kind of like the maximum and then let it ride down. Would you agree? Yes. Yeah. you're not going to be maintaining temperature in any active sense inside of a, inside of a retained heat masonry oven. Would you would you think so, Harold? Yeah, and it's difficult if you're not familiar with it, you know, to know how it's going to behave. Yeah, I would do a couple firings 1st and like kind of see how it does. But here's another solution. What you can do is you can, if you can muster it, because you can do it in like trash bags, you could do the whole thing,

[45:40] low temp, right? And then just throw it in a flaming hot one to crisp up the skin. And it'll be as delicious as it can be. Those of you who have heard me rant before know that I am somewhat suspicious of whole hog or any whole animal cookery because

[45:57] there, it is not possible to cook the tenderloin of a

[46:06] pig. I don't leave it there. No, I'm kidding. It's not possible to cook the tenderloin of a pig and have it not be a nasty, either pasty or

[46:14] dry. either going to be pasty, nasty, or dry, nasty, and has the rest of the pig cooked properly. And so the solution to that, unless the pig's extraordinarily young and then it bathes itself in its own kind of fat as it

[46:27] goes and then whatever, because it also can cook really quickly. But, you know, barring that, uh, you know, what the, what you have to do is hack up that dry meat and mix it with the good meat so that that's what the barbecue

[46:38] uh, guys, like, what's his name? Ed, why? why is his name out of my head? The big hole hog guy down. Ed Mitchell, Ed Mitchell. Uh, he's like, yeah, but I like the little dry chunk, which is like, why, why, why, why? Why? Why? Why? What you should do is rip all of the stuff out and cook it the way it wants to be cooked and then somehow reassemble it into a pig and crisp up the skin. Now that would be like, that would be amazing, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Alright, Dave. Oh my god. We got we do have a bonus segment coming up. All right. well, okay. Peggy from Australia, we got within one question. Peggy, you are the one that we have left. So I'm going to get you and your circulator questions. Next week on the cooking issues. However, before we sign out and I thank Jack

[47:19] Shram from the bar, from Booker and Dax. Nastasia, Jackie molecule. you didn't pay Jackie molecules. Oh yeah, I can do that real, real, real quick. All right, let's see. Who else do you have to think? But no, I'm going to say... There it is. All right. Uh, so, uh, we pre-recorded an extra 15 minutes of cooking issues, it got to some of the other questions. So if you didn't hear your question and your name's not Peggy, then it means that we don't know about it. We got them also stay tuned after this for another 15 minutes of cooking issues. Bones, cooking machines. And welcome back to the extended 15 minutes or so of cooking issues because we just knew we'd need to spend more time with Harold McGee. Harold, how you doing? Well, thanks. Great to be here. Yeah, yeah. In actuality, I don't want to lie to you. We're taping this before the initial thing. we're just starting now, but we figured we'd tack it on at the end. So I'm going to pretend that Nastasia had to leave for a minute, even though she actually hasn't arrived yet. Yeah, and Jack, is this the 1st time I've ever been in the studio early? Has this ever happened before? 100%, yes. All right. So I got some questions in that I'd like to get to. Here's one that I think Harold will particularly like. She's done a lot of work in it. Tyler Simons wrote in. Dear Dave Nastasia, and Jackie Molecules, and Harold in a question mark, because he sent it in back when I said there was only a 50% chance of Harold McGee.

[48:50] Are there any hard and fast rules for making caramel candies? I'm interested in making dairy-free caramels, and I'm curious if there is simply a fat sugar ratio that is required or something more complicated is going on. I. e.g. protein stabilized emulsion. How could I make something like an almond milk caramel? Thanks so much. Tyler Simmons from UC Davis. P S, you've spoiled me. I can't seem to find any other podcasts that are both as entertaining and educational as yours. Keep up the good work. Well, thanks, thanks for the kind words, and I know the Herald is done. I don't know if you've done with this kind of caramel. You've done with straight sugar caramelization. You done a lot of work. You ever work with this kind of stuff? I have not. I mean, I have worked with standard caramel

[49:27] candies, and with this kind of thing, it seems to me that what you do is you go into the kitchen and you give it a shot and you see what happens and you try to adapt.

[49:36] So I imagine it would behave very much like an ordinary milk emulsion or dairy emulsion, but I'm not

[49:43] sure. Right. Well, except for, I mean, again, like, somehow I didn't read it thoroughly enough because I was rushing in and I thought we were dealing with more of a straight sugar thing. I don't know, yeah, sometimes it happens to you. Like you read something, you're like, I got it. you know, McGee's going to get it. I didn't read it. was kind of a different kind of candy altogether. My one, um, my one thing is, uh, you know,

[50:05] that, casing, like, the way it Browns, the way it undergoes kind of, uh, you know, uh, Browning reaction is, I don't know if you're going to get the same effect.

[50:17] Oh, I bet you won't. And in fact, probably the protein content of the almond milk is lower than ordinary

[50:25] milk. I mean, that would be my guess anyway. But that's why you play with it. And if it doesn't work using a standard recipe, well, maybe you start by reducing the almond milk or something like that to get things

[50:38] going and yeah. Yeah, and I would presume it's, well, it depends on what you use, but I presume it's also higher fat, right? And regular milk? But not with California, almonds, boom, boom. Take that low fat California almonds. Um, they're not low fat, but they're low word in fat. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're, they're, yeah, we need to be growing better varieties in California. Yeah, why is that? They started growing and he's like, why is it that the standard California ominous incredibly low, comparatively low fat

[51:06] almond? I don't know the history of that, except that, you know, it's the usual sort of thing, probably, that

[51:12] breeders are looking for disease resistance and yield and not so much flavor. I think that's probably it. Yeah, yeah, simple as that, huh? Here's another one for you. We talked a little bit about yesterday night. Andrew writes in about chickpeas. I love the show. I'm one of those people who went and listened to the entire back catalog after discovering

[51:31] it that hurts. That's so much. Can you imagine listening to all this? Despite your warnings along the way that this was crazy. I have 2 questions regarding rehydrating dried legumes. Now that I have an electric pressure cooker, yes, I know they're not ideal, but no regrets after picking one up for cheap on Craigslist. You ever use the electric ones? No, I haven't. What kind of pressure do you have? Uh, not that old Coon Raikon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they were. I love them. I have mine. In fact, I've welded the handle back onto mine after the handle smashed off and, you know, I've lost the parts at the top. I've replaced all the gaskets on it, and it still works. Anyway. Okay. First, I'm quite happy with my go-to hummus recipe, but I find the texture to be off when I'm using my rehydrated chickpeas instead of using canned.

[52:18] I've tried a range of cook chimes, but they transition directly from crunchy with that raw flavor to immediately paste the overdone texture that's still apparent after going into the food processor.

[52:27] I assume commercial canneries rehydrate them too, so I'm wondering what I'm missing. An ancient bag of beans, perhaps, is for the question, beans. Does the water need some kind of additive like calcium in order to retain some texture? Uh, I'd stay away from that. Like, hardening that, like, there's been a bunch of studies, La, La, La, La, Harrogant to it, but there's been a bunch of studies on way back in the day, like in the early 1900s, I think, where people were noticing that the canned beans had very different qualities on different parts of the country based on the water that was available in the canning thing, and they would run through, and they did a whole series of studies on, uh, the 2 of you need to worry about are calcium, magnesium, calcium, magnesium, like, you know, parts per 1000, uh,

[53:08] versus uh, hardness in the beans. you know, and then you'd get a situation where they're uniformly too hard and then there's the intermediate zone where some, that presumably are less well soaked or harder than other. anyway, whatever. Let me finish the question. yet another, yet another Dave going off on a tangent. Okay. I assume commercial canneries rehydrate them too. That is correct. They do. So I wonder what I am missing. Ancient bag of beans, does the water need some kind of additive like calcium? Any thoughts on how to recreate canned chickpeas or other beans at

[53:42] home? Second, when it comes to preparation without the gaseous consequences. And this is why I thought McGee would be ideal on this because for those of you, I'm not going to make him say the story again, unless he would like to, in which case he's welcome to, but the entire on food and cooking phenomenon that has, you know, helped fuel so many of us in

[54:03] our push towards thinking more scientifically about the problems of deliciousness, was fueled by the problem of farting with beans. True? It was, it was indeed. And you can say as much of that about as you want. But anyway, when it comes to preparation without the gaseous consequences, the internet is filled with anecdotal advice. What's a good evidence-based method to reduce this particular side effect? I'm mainly interested in black beans, black eyed peas, and split peas, if it makes a difference. Thank you so much, and I hope this doesn't contribute too much to more ketchup shows. Well, in fact, we're handling it in a ketchup segment. So there you have it. Andrew. So what do you think? Ah, so where to begin? Um, maybe with uh, I'm a little confused about his question because he said he's bothered by a

[54:46] pasty mealy texture and chickpeas. But then he's also talking about maybe adding calcium for texture when it sounds as though what he actually wants is an absence of texture.

[54:58] Well, you know, my impression is that what's happening is that some, some maybe have gone over while others are still hard, so maybe he's thinking the calcium's going to make them equally, but what's just going to make you equally shafted. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Go the opposite direction if you had to. Yeah, yeah. And then a hummus, who cares anyway? You going to blend the hell out of it. The hard part, listen, I'm going to let Harold, you know, do this, but what I'm saying is the hard part is being able to make a decent chickpea that you just eat.

[55:26] And if you can make a decent chickpea that you just eat and you like the texture of it when you're eating it, then it's going to make a good hummus. Yeah. Right? Go ahead, right? So there is the ancient being phenomenon, if beans of any kind sit around for too

[55:44] long, especially a too high, a humidity, they end up with this

[55:49] hard-to-cook quality that you just really can't get around. So you want to start with fresh beans as fresh as possible. Well, baking soda, fix it or no, not even. Uh, I don't think so. No. It's just the cell walls are kind of cemented together much more permanently than they would be

[56:06] otherwise. So my, like my grandpa just got more and more ornery as he got away. That's right Warnery beans. So start with as fresh beans as possible. and then soak them, pre-soak them. And then cook them long enough to make them soft. I mean, that's kind of what it comes down to. Check them every once in a while, see where you're getting to the point where the texture is close to the

[56:33] eatable that you just described and then go from there. I mean, I think one of the problems, if he's doing it in a pressure cooker. First of all, like, look, especially if you have beans of varying ages, right? But they haven't gone all the way to ornery being syndrome, uh, the kind of longer you can let them soak. the better off you are because the more they will all equilibrate to an equal

[56:58] pre-cook moisture, right? The harder you force water into a bean or a chickpea that hasn't hydrated, you know, been soaked properly, the more you're

[57:09] going to get an overcooked outside and undercooked inside. Right? I mean, wouldn't you say you also want to like avoid violent boiling? Yes, yes. Um, although if you're going to end up uh, pureing it anyway, then maybe that's not such a big deal. But, uh, yeah, it's the, we generally don't realize it, but the step that takes the longest, the process that takes the longest in the cooking of beans isn't heating them

[57:40] up. It's getting the water from the outside to the inside. And so if you take care of that ahead of time. then you eliminate all kinds of problems, including textural problems, because that soaking will leach out some of

[57:53] the ions that are holding those cell walls together. What are your thoughts on the warm water pre-soak? Um, it's quicker. Um, what? less gentle on the on the being coach. It doesn't matter on a chickpea though. Like on some beans that lose their coats. Like, don't you find that, because they rehydrate so much faster that you get that wrinkly phenomenon and they, uh... Yeah, that's true. They expand faster than the insides do, and so you end up with that with that wrinkling, which pulls it away from the surface of the bean and causes

[58:29] it then later to fall off or not to look as nice. Right. He's also cooking in a pressure cooker. And so one of the things, oh, by the way, I mean, I assume everyone knows this, but if you want your beans to cook, don't add acid to them at all until they're soft,

[58:41] right? Okay. Um, and what about salt in the soak? Uh, salt in the soak in my experience and from my looking at the literature, it slows the hydration,

[58:53] uh, but once it's hydrated, the cooking actually goes much

[58:58] quicker because the sodium ions displace calcium in the structure and that helps loosen things up.

[59:05] So that could perhaps make it more even? Yeah, yeah. But you have to allow more time because if there's salt in the in the water, then it's going to take a lot longer to penetrate into the bean itself. Now, he says he's using a pressure cooker. One thing I would be wary of with a pressure cooker is, well, a couple things. If you don't know whether it's done, you should wait for it to come down naturally. If you do a

[59:31] flash, a flash off on the pressure cooker, it really does. It's the equivalent of uniformly boiling throughout the liquid, including the liquid that's inside of the cheap chickpeas. And so I think you're going to get kind of blast apart on the on the on the thing. But that, so you have to let it come down naturally and then bring it back up. So it can, it can take more time that way, but, you know, after a couple of batches, you should be able to dial in in your time.

[59:58] But the longer you let it soak, um, the less I think you're going to have batch to batch variants unless you get a really set of

[1:00:03] uh, old, um, Ornery beans. There was a study that I forget, you were there and it was the year we were at Madrid fusing together was like 05 or something like this, 06, 05, 06, something like

[1:00:18] this. And, um, 06, like January of 06. think so, yeah. But you were quite sick at the time. everyone was sick. Everyone had gotten food poisoned or some sort of like stomach

[1:00:28] virus, like all these famous chefs had gotten like this

[1:00:31] horrible, like, you know, virus or food poisoning. Like Thomas Keller was stumbling around on stage, you know? It's kind of a nightmare. Um, but since I wasn't at the time invited to any of the fancy stuff, I did not catch any dread diseases. And so I was able to wander

[1:00:46] around at, you know, at will. But I remember one of the presenters was a Spanish chef, and I looked for the paper in advances, but I couldn't find a Spanish chef who had done some research at a Spanish university about chickpeas and various temperature

[1:01:00] regimes both in cooking and in soaking and the textual differences. you remember that? No, no. I mean, I couldn't find it. I tried to find it, but you know, that, you know, there was a great phenomenon back then in

[1:01:11] that period of time, especially in Europe. Actually, only in Europe. I mean, recently in the US, like there's been some kind of collaborations like that. But there were just all these, uh, uh, institutions who were like, yeah, we'll let, you know, real scientists talk to chefs and answer actual

[1:01:28] evidence-based kind of stuff, you know? Does that really happen anymore? Oh, yeah, a lot of, in fact, I think a lot, there's a lot more these days than back then. Well, here. Yeah, they just never happened before. I think in Europe as well. Those were back then it was something that, you know, was kind of strange to everybody. First of all, that chefs would be getting together in large numbers and sharing their recipes, sharing their new

[1:01:55] ideas rather than hoarding them, and then collaborating with people who had more technical knowledge than they did to figure things out.

[1:02:03] But that's there's a lot of that everywhere now. I mean, the classic one in the English speaking world that you we always used to talk about in classes was the Heston one. You want to talk about that for a sec? Uh, sure. Heston has collaborated with people at half dozen different universities in the UK. The collaboration that I think makes the most difference to most cooks is the one he did with Donald Machrum at

[1:02:32] Reading University. This is in the like 2005, 2006, where Heston was preparing tomatoes in the kitchen, in the standard classical French way of peeling the tomatoes, scooping out the seeds, and then chopping the wall of the tomato for some beautiful sort of

[1:02:54] garnish. And he was popping bits of tomato in his mouth as he was doing this, and noticed that the seeds seemed to have way more flavor than the rest of the tomato. And so he called up his friend Matrum at

[1:03:08] Redding and asked him, was it true that there was more, he thought, umami and acidity in

[1:03:15] the jelly around the seeds. And Machrum looked at the literature, couldn't find anyone had done a study of

[1:03:22] this, and so he and Heston collaborated on a study. And they found that not only was there a difference in the concentration of these

[1:03:30] things in and around the seeds, but that it was a huge difference. It was like 3 or 3 or 4 fold difference in glutamate and organic acids and so on.

[1:03:43] So the intensity of flavor in a tomato comes from the stuff

[1:03:46] that, in many cuisines, you just kind of toss out or put in a stock or something like

[1:03:51] that, don't even make use of. Specifically the French. He used to make fun of it. Well, I would force you to make fun of the French when we were at the French culinary city when they're talking about it. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of fun too, to remember back in the day when Ferran Adria was coming up with a new dish every 6 hours. A couple of them were actually based on taking scooping the seeds out of the inside of a tomato and just serving them all by

[1:04:15] themselves. And they were delicious. And then selling the outside to the French? For using some sort of kunkat. Is that the word? Uh, we... Hey, before I go into this, I'll ask whether you like have any, do you even know anything about thermophilic bacteria and their possible survival inside of the sous vide bags? Have you heard anything about this? Uh, no. No. I have a, I had someone a while ago who wrote in about their bags inflating after a fairly long period of time when it should have

[1:04:44] already, um, everything should have been killed. And I ascribed it to there was sauce on the inside of the bag that didn't make it to temperature in time, but then he's like, well, why did it blow up after a long period? I don't know. I wonder whether there's ever been a case of like a thermophilic thing surviving and causing gas inside of a bag. Well, how long after? I mean, hours after being put into the bath. Like, I think on like day, like on day two. Uh-huh. Well, I mean, there are spores that survive temperatures, like sous vide temperatures and are actually activated by temperatures like that. Well, in other words, while the bag was still cooking, it blew

[1:05:26] up. While it was cooking, like a day later. Like 24 hours, imagine 24 hours into the cook process. The bag just inflates. This is a, you know, someone named Michael have written this, but I still, every once in a while, I think about it. And I can't figure it out because air in bones or veg will come out in the 1st couple of hours after it heats up. Usually, you know, within 5 or 6 hours, if you have a pocket on the inside that is being too protected from the

[1:05:54] heat, such that you can generate stuff, then that'll create gas, that gas pocket will stay at a temperature that doesn't kill the

[1:05:59] bacteria because it'll be like, you know, five, 6 degrees below. It'll stay around 50, you'll incubate bacteria, and you'll go. But not like 24 hours later. Something weird. Something weird is going on. All right. So listen. like right in a minute, we're going to end our extended, but I have one more that I think would be good to end on.

[1:06:19] And you know, if you don't want to talk, are you willing to talk about your, you're looking into the burnt almond and

[1:06:26] cyanide or you're not willing to talk about it? Sure. Right. So we'll do this real quick, because I think this is a hyper interesting story. And one that just shows how badass Harold McGee is about thinking about stuff that we have taken for granted for not just our lives, but for the lives of everyone back to our

[1:06:41] great grandparents. Caleb Sexton wrote in because he sent us those apricots. You know the super high bricks apricots they have now in California? No. Yeah, I forget the name of it. I'll get it for you. like mega hype, like 2020s, high 20s bricks on the fresh fruit. What kind of acidity? Not enough acidity in my in my estimation. However, if you just, I, what I did was I sprinkled some acid on them and they were like, what? you know but you know how I am. Anyways, but Stas liked them low acidity. that's not the point. So he said, I have these pits now, and I want to use them. The apricot kernels. And he said, should I be worried about amygdalin? And then he said, well, you know, my impression is that the sweeter the, I don't know whether he meant the sweeter the apricots or the sweeter the kernels themselves, the less a megdalen is

[1:07:23] there and the less kind of worry. And it immediately made me think, well, you'll have an answer for that because we've talked about this before, but that also you might talk about your recent investigations into the smell of cyanide.

[1:07:34] Right. So the standard description of the smell of cyanide is like bitter almonds, which, uh,

[1:07:41] like, almond extract, uh, which, uh, just seems weird because if you look at the structure of hydrogen cyanide, HCN, that's all there is to

[1:07:51] it. And then you look at the aroma compound that gives us the smell of bitter almonds, which is benzaldehyde, which is a carbon 6 carbon

[1:08:01] ring, they're just so different. How can they end up giving you the same sensory perception? I was just curious. I thought it was odd. And so I went hunting in the literature, and it turns out that there's really not that good

[1:08:18] a an evidentiary trail to indicate that that's the case, that in fact, they do smell the same. And there are several sources. One of them in perfumery, one a forensics text from around the turn of the century, which was talking about how can

[1:08:37] you, if there's a suicide. How can you tell whether the person died? If it's by cyanide, then you would get this telltale odor, except that this guy

[1:08:48] says, that's the standard explanation and what you're looking for, but in

[1:08:54] fact, in his experience, Sinai doesn't leave that kind of smell.

[1:08:59] And this perfumist says that the smell of cyanide is not the same as

[1:09:05] benzaldehyde. So I know a couple of scientists who have used it, cyanide as a reagent in their research, and I want to get to them and

[1:09:18] see either whether they can give me their feeling about this.

[1:09:24] And uh, whether maybe I might take a sniff, a carefully controlled sniff, Wow. Wow, with some they can counteract it, right? Or no, if they get you right away. Uh, that's a good question. I should probably check that out before I... I would definitely check that because

[1:09:42] someday we would love to have you back on cooking issues. So I don't want to read in the, I don't want to read in the papers that you, you know, that the curious cook was killed by his curiosity.

[1:09:52] That would not be that would not be pleasant. And that has been our extended 15 minutes of cooking issues with Harold McGee. Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes

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