[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. Hey, hey, hey, I'm Jimmy Carbone from Beer Sessions Radio. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network Broadcasting Live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Raider Network.org for 1000s more.

[0:36] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking, and she's coming to you live, Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick,

[0:42] Brooklyn, on the Harris Radio Network, every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Join, as usual, in the studio with Nastasia, of the Hammer Lopez. Hi, Gustas. Good. Yeah? Yeah. And got Jack in the booth. How you doing? Good. Ooh. Ooh. You hear that? Yeah. What's up, reverb Jack? That's my new nickname, Reverb Jack. Reverb Jack? Well, you switch between reverb Jack and Jackie molecules. Speaking of which, we had a suggestion in about the

[1:12] hammer, and Peggy from Australia, you know, we have some listeners in Australia, which I enjoy. We've never been. Have you ever been to us? Would you like to go? You don't want to go to Australia? Why not? Far. And I hate their accent. What are you, Booker? So far. For an English speaking country. Don't wanna go. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, what? Wait, you only want to travel for a far distance if they don't speak English? I just don't have any interest in Australia. I really don't. What about New Zealand? I would go there before, but I no, don't have any interest. I need to kind of know what's poisoning you against a whole continent. The accent. Oh my god. Well, that fits in... Listen, people, this is just like now you're getting a little taste of what it's actually like to be with Nastasia

[2:01] Lopez. So, uh, Peggy from Australia uh, wrote in. She had a question, but she also says that we need a new ringtone for you, Stas. And it's called, I just don't like it. And the artist, it's old, is a drag queen who goes by the name of Pauline pants down, but making fun of an extreme right wing person named

[2:25] Pauline Hansen, right? Uh, who was uh, had a political party called uh, or still there called one nation. And among other things, they believed in, uh, in like not giving the aborigines any rights and like basically turning Australia into a big, like, you know, Anglo dominated

[2:41] universe, no immigration, all this other stuff. And, uh, so one of the lines from this thing is my language has been murdered. My language has been murdered. So very, very apropos. Jack, do you have that? Can we can we hear the? I't like it, chorus? Yep. All right, what do we got? we go. Me now? It means I don't like it. When you've turned my voice about, I don't like it. When you boat one nation out. My language has been murdered. My language has been murdered. My shopping trolley murdered. My grocery is just gone. I don't like it. When you've turned my voice about, I don't like it. When you boat one nation out. My language has been murdered. My language has been murdered. My shopping trolley murdered. My groceries are just gone. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, races, rubbish, races. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, races. Spanish. I'll like stop the heat. Well, you know what? I can't win with this. It keeps like egg cup. We don't like shopping trial. You also, do you not like British people because they call their luggage rollies? and jumpers and all that. What's a jumper? Sweater. Why is it a jumper? I don't know. It's like the opposite. You like pop into a somewhere. You don't jump into a... Anyway, so, but that sounds like it was actually her voice being used, whereas there's other versions where it's him singing as her. So anyway, what do you think? That could be your theme song? I like it. I like it. You can't hear the Australian accent too hard in it. Dang. What's like, look, okay, okay, okay, okay. I know our accent sucks too. Okay, okay, okay. Listen, the worst, actually. What? What? What? What? Listen. Jack, back me up because you are a musical sort, right? 9 times out of 10 when, no matter what language, no matter what accent you have, when you sing, you pretty much sing in Neutral

[4:39] American. So British... Right. So you're just going to say, what's the most music? Wait, unless you're like Green Day or some of these American bands that then put on some other weird accents? Yeah, but what if the Green Day accent doesn't even exist? Like that's not even a real accent, right? don't know what that is. Right? I mean, it doesn't really exist, but like, you know, the Beatles basically sound American most of the time. Yeah, but I'm saying. So in other words, like the language of music, which is, you know, melodious, is like a kind of neutral American thing. The counterexamples actually like a lot, like Billy Bragg, who could not sound less American, of course, of

[5:15] course he's not. You like that stuff, Jack? You into the old? Yeah, good stuff, right? How about like the Michael McDonald accent? How does that go? That's I'm not going to do it. Wait, the guy from the Doobies? No, the guy the, you know, the piano playing, singing soulful. That's the guy from the doobies. Oh, maybe yeah, maybe it was in the doobies. I can't do the doo. The doobie, because the doobie, you have to like, yeah, like you can't like, you can't outdoobie the doobies. You know what I mean? Even George Clinton gave a shout out to the Doobie Brothers. You know what I mean? Anyway. My language has been murdered. Anyway, so should we get to that? So should we, now that you've insulted her entire country and said, you have no desire to go there? didn't insult her. Oh, look, I didn't install use. I just insulted your whole country. That's all. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. You lived there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were born there like it's part of your heritage and your culture and everything. But you know, it's not you. I dont like it. your whole country. You know what I mean? It's not right. I can't believe you don't want to go. What about you, Jack? I, with all due respect to everybody there. I'm with the stars on this one. On my list of places, it would be kind of low. I mean, convince me otherwise, I guess. don't know. I mean, you know, it's like, how many marsupials do we have? like one or two? Like a possum? Like the worst marsupial. We have like the worst marsupials. Like, what do you want to do with them? What about platypus? You like the platinum? not anonymous? Like, what's the point? You don't, what's the point of anything? What are you going to do with them? You're like, I'm going on a temple tour, Thailand, and you're like, I'm going to go see marsupials. Like, what? Temple Tour of Thailand. Look, I'm with you. You go off the coast in New Caledonia, very rich in strange conifers and strange plants in general. Look, all I'm saying is, is like, you know, since when are you interested in freaking templates? No, I'm saying what sounds, the distance is, you know, the best. Kangaroos hopping on the outback. You don't want to see the outback? No, I don't have any interest. Some of the oldest living things on earth are out there. Great Barrier Reef? Don't care. The Great Barrier Reef doesn't get in for you? sounds good. All right, thank you. I go to Hawaii, like, Hawaii. Like for the for waves and stuff? No, I'm not, you're not catching a wave and sitting on top of the freaking world styles. Let's be honest. Oh, geez. Is that a call we got to save me from like my hateful crew here? Yes, caller, you are on the air. Okay, this is Jasper calling in from Sweden. Hey, how you doing? Good. How you? All right. So you're having problems locating which chiller to use, right? Yeah exactly. Yeah. So, uh, for those of you that, uh, follows been taking a while, so Jasper's putting together a roto app set up in

[8:04] Sweden, and he's looking at uh, Buki, who are, uh, you know, manufacturers of the roto apps, and they also make a lot

[8:10] of uh, chillers. And the question is, how cold does it does it need to go? So my old work, when I back before I was using liquid nitrogen in my

[8:19] roto app, I was using a polyscience chiller, the polyscience chiller, made it down to about -20 degrees Celsius, which is

[8:26] about... very low. So what happens is, is that what you do is, is you have a relatively large reservoir of either glycol or alcohol,

[8:37] right? And you get the whole reservoir down to a, you know, -20 and change. And then during the distillation process, the condenser heats up. But, so like, at the beginning, like, if you do your standard thing where you're putting a liter of spirits into your into your

[8:59] thing, plus whatever you've added. So like a liter of spirits plus, let's say like 200 grams of like peppers or herbs, whatever, right? So usually off of that leader, if I start with 40% alcohol, I'm going to end up with roughly somewhere between 600

[9:19] mils and 700 mils of distillage. So those are usually my parameters. That's usually where I'm working, okay? When I'm doing alcoholic distillations. So when I'm running the poly-science chiller, I'll start out my distillation at like -20 or

[9:34] so, and by the time I'm done, I'm much higher temperature, like -4

[9:40] -5, right? Which is where the where it can maintain forever because that's where it's, that's where the chilling power is equal to the um, uh, equal to the heating power of my uh, thing, right? Okay. So the The thing is, is that early in the distillation, when you get the much more fugitive stuff, right, the stuff that boils more

[10:05] easily, and it's harder to capture, more important to have those low low temperatures at the beginning of the run versus at the end of the

[10:13] run. And so, um, I never minded so much that the temperature would rise over the course of the run.

[10:21] Now you don't want it ridiculously underpowered or having a very, very small reservoir because then the temperature changes are immediate, right?

[10:28] So, you know, the one that I was using, the reservoir was a lot. It was like, uh, I want to say, like, 7 liters maybe, if uh, uh, 7, 8 liters of uh, stuff in the reservoir. And so, you know, I had a good bit of, um, a good bit of stuff that was down at temperature to start my my distillation run with. Now, I also remember, that when you are, um, you know, when I was doing lower temperature, uh, or I should

[11:00] say, higher temperature distillation using a chiller, I also had the, uh, I was pumping product uh, out of my column as it was going.

[11:08] So as it was heating up, I didn't really have a lot of danger of the stuff that was in the receiver

[11:14] flask, revolatilizing and going up through my stacking out through the vacuum thing. So you can, um, you can get around that problem either by chilling your receiver flask, right, which

[11:25] works. Um, or putting a pump onto uh, that onto that spherical joint at the bottom where the receiver is or a 3rd option that I never did was just install

[11:37] uh, like a small dry ice uh, trap in between. So for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about. So we're talking about a big distillation rig that's hooked up to a vacuum pump. And typically, one of the issues on these vacuum pumps is they get, if you, if you start pumping vapor through the vacuum pump that is with your product, you're losing flavor, one, and two, you're, you know, you're degrading the vacuum level because it can't really

[12:01] pump, you know, vapor other than dry air. It doesn't want stuff recondensing in. So there's a little bottle called a wolf bottle. And the wolf bottle is a something that goes in between your vacuum controller and your, um, and, and

[12:16] your, your condenser column. And what you can do there is you can just put instead of like a standard wolf bottle, you can basically make a little like super cold trap so you can put like a little bit of dry ice or a little bit of LN in there and then you have a secondary trap to recondense any stuff that's going to go

[12:34] through, and then right at the end of the run, you can just, because it's a small trap, it's not your main trap, you can pour your liquid into the wolf bottle to thaw out anything you've

[12:46] got in. So those are the options that you can do. But, uh, so, uh, you wrote into me on Twitter, I think, like last night or something, uh, but I haven't had a chance to try to talk to Tony yet that, uh, Tony Cinellaro, our good friend uh, over uh, 69

[13:00] Colebrook Row, instead of townhouse and the drink factory in um, in the UK who's has a couple roto apps and does, uses a chiller that only gets down to, what did you say? Minus what? Nightclubs 10. Yeah, 300 watts. So it surprised me a little bit that it was that higher. That's not, that's just not true. just don't believe that. I just don't believe it at all. I neither do I. Neither do I. Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll... I got, I got that, the fact, uh, data from

[13:26] beauty you themselves. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, look, what I would do is I would, if you find the drink factory, the drink factory, you know, I was going to tweet them out later and then CC you on it, or you can CC me and the drink factory on a tweet and just say, hey, look, we're looking to get a

[13:45] chiller and Bukey lied to us and said you had this. And they'll tell you exactly what setup they're running. I don't believe because Tony likes to run his distillations even lower than I do,

[13:56] right? So, you know, I'm running my, you know, look, it's a little bit of a lie, right? So, like, I'm running my water bath at 50 Celsius, and he's typically running or used to be back when I was working with him on the

[14:08] rotovaps. He was running his bath at like 40. Celsius. Now, as you know, the temperature of the water bath and the distillation rig is not the same thing as the

[14:18] temperature, the distillation is taking place at because, you know, the harder, the harder you're distilling, you know, the greater the temperature difference between

[14:26] the um, between the water bath and the actual product. And I, and I don't know what kind of glass he uses, but I only use fairly thick

[14:33] wall plastic coated glass. And so I have, I have one of the, one of the higher temperature deltas between my bath and the product. So, you know, my standard operating procedure is to always place the back of my

[14:46] hand, um, because the front of my hand is too callous. That why I use the back of my hand to test everything styles. Did you know that? I always use the back because, yeah, because I can't sense temperature with my fingertips

[14:56] anymore just because, you know, whatever. So I use the back of my hand on the on the neck of the rotating distillation flash to judge the true temperature of the vapor because that equalizes out pretty much where the vapor is. So that can give you an idea of what you're, um, kind of where where you're distilling. So, like I say, it's hard to judge, but I know that he likes to run his stuff down at like

[15:16] 40. So if he's running his stuff at 40, like even like the way that Buke wants you to do it,

[15:22] like, they want at least 20 degrees, uh, what do they want? No, they want 40, right? I think they want 40. They have 40 indifference, yeah. Yeah. And so like that wouldn't even work. because it would need to go to even to 0 based on his. And if it only went to 10, you could, even though Europeans tend to have a hatred of ice machines compared to Americans, like you could just use a freaking ice bath at

[15:45] that point. And so it wouldn't make sense. Do you know what I mean? It doesn't make sense to me. 10 degrees Celsius? doesn't make any sense to me at all. No, it doesn't make for me either, but however, do you have like a number because I understand everything you say, but what I can't figure out is like a chilling power at -20

[16:05] C, like a number for that because I don't have a good feeling for that. It's like 300 watts, okay, or it's 200 watts, okay,

[16:12] or I mean, it, it, it, it's quite a lot in price if you go from uh 200 to 400 watts at -20 for it. So it makes a hell of a difference. Right. So I would look at, so let's say you have like a, I don't really, I don't remember anymore, but let's say you have like an 8 liter bath, right? And I would look at what its performance is at like minus five, Celsius, and I would kind of maximize that

[16:38] number, and then I would, um, and then I would just see, I don't think mine had 200 watts at, I don't think mine had 200 watts at

[16:48] -20. I think it was like 100 and... many, many, many years. I could try to go look up the old numbers on my polyscience, but, you know, its sweet spot was down around -5 or -6 Celsius.

[17:01] That's where the majority of its power was. And then, um, and then it just, you know, the power went down, you know, listen, people, like anytime you reduce

[17:10] the uh, temperature on a refrigeration unit like this, you reduce the number of actual

[17:15] watts of cooling power it has, even though you're not reducing the usage of power that the machine has, it just becomes less efficient.

[17:21] So, um, So yeah, so I would bet that like 200 watts at -20 is fine. As long as you have like, you know, a corresponding, you know, big wallop of

[17:32] power when you get down to -5 and then you get kind of a natural gradation as you go. Because remember, towards the end of your distillation, you're pumping mostly water and you don't really want freeze up on your coils. You want it to drip down into the receiver. But I'll, like, either tweet me and and also tweet the Drink Factory or I'll try to remember later on today and see what kind of unit they use because I know that, you know, they're running them day in and day out and they use only stuff that you can get in

[18:00] Europe and I guarantee you that they do not use something that only gets down to, uh, to 10. Yeah, no, it doesn't make any sense. No matter what buke he says. Remember, Bukey makes great equipment. They're not cooks. You know, you know, it's... Yeah, it's that simple. Okay, um, thank you very much for your um, information. I will make a tweet, then, CCU on that one, Tony. All right, we'll figure it out. Thanks a lot. Alrighty, cool. Bye bye. Bye. All right, now back to back to Peggy's question in Australia. And by the way, uh, she, I don't, what's this, what's this, what's this emoticon? Happy face. But it's not a happy, it's like a happy rising sun. I think it's a new Gmail, happy face. Yeah. So, like, I don't know how to use a emoticon. So I literally just write out what the emotic con is. And my favorite is... Smiling palette poo. And have we mentioned on, we've mentioned on error how much I'm upset that Siri won't come out and just say smiling pile of poo unless you text it to me, right?

[19:06] Jack, have we talked about that? Really? So it turns out that if, like, let's say Booker or Dax sends me a bunch of emoticons, or let's say Stas does it because, you know, she has the same kind of mentality that they do, sends me an emoticon, and I do as well, come on,

[19:23] to be honest. Like that says, that smiling pile of poo, right? Smiling pile of pills. And then you say, please read me, Siri, please read me Nastasia's, uh, you know, uh,

[19:34] text and it'll go, Nastasia Lopez wrote, smiling pile of poo, smiling pile of poo, smiling pile of

[19:41] poop. But if you just go Siri, say smiling pile of poo, she won't do it. Is that right? It's weird. Isn't don't we, isn't it a machine? It's not a human, right? Well, she'll read you what you get, but she will not be told what to. That's the equivalent of someone who like sings NWA lyrics and drops

[19:59] N bombs like they're, like it's raining and doesn't like, and, oh, but won't say it. Oh, I won't say it if you just ask me to say it, but if I'm quoting an NWA lyric, well, then I can just say it left and right, which is not true. It's not true. Either you can say it or you can't say it. to have some morality and that's where we have it. Well, then she shouldn't say your tense. She should be like, Dave, I won't repeat what Nastasia says because she has foul language, right? Or like some sort of like substitution like you do when you're quoting rap songs. Jack, you substitute when you quote rap songs. Yeah, of course you go with the silence on the word, yeah. Oh, really? You blank yourself out. Do you know what? Who is like, remember when Nine Inch Nails used to do their radio, edit stuff, and they would literally just blank out the freaking song during

[20:38] the, during the curses? I was like, wow, that was strong because, because like, up until that point, most radio edits, I knew they would just insert a different word, you know, I mean,

[20:48] or record a separate version, but like the, he's like, I'm not going to change my song, man. You're just going to get silenced during that part. He said, Trent Rezner for as much of a jerk as he probably was. Like, he made some baller moves, yeah? Oh yeah. Yeah. All right. Anyway, back to this question. I don't know. How do I get into what is wrong with me? Do I need to take some sort of medication stuff? I think you do. Oh, we talked about this before. Therapy. Uh, okay. Peggy again writes in. I love my little Anova circulator, but like some others who have written into, I have big issues with the landfill aspect of low temperature

[21:19] cooking. I use Ziploc bags as much as possible, but they have limited reuse before they fail. By the way, Dave, great job on nailing down S.C. Johnson about cooking in their bags. That was a long time ago. Remember that? When I finally was like, hey, can I cook in the freaking bags I can, right? They were like, yes, you can. Using rolls of thick bagging material and a domestic sealer, I can start with a stupidly long bag length, and for each

[21:41] you sacrifice only an inch or so from one sealed edge. More environmentally friendly as well as frugal, but washing all these used greasy bags, you like greasy or greasy? I like greasy. I know. Me too. Yeah, greasy. Bags of either sort is just nasty. Which is true. Pondering reusable options. Is there a preferably non-toxic, and this is where this rising sun smiley, like, uh, although

[22:06] the rock, I'm not going to get into it. High temperature melting wax that could be used as a coating for meats, assuming it was possible to formulate such a

[22:13] wax, would it be theoretically able to transfer heat well enough? It would have to, uh, uh, it would be great to have a coating slash skin that I could peel off, remelt and reuse.

[22:24] From what you know about materials, this is even a possibility, or am I just dreaming? Is it just me or would anyone else use something like this? I also kind of like the idea of peeling back a coating to reveal the magic, like with some cheeses. Oh, you remember the baby bells? They're still around. Yeah, you know, Booker loves those things and he likes to peel the wax and he mutilates. I'm sure you also will wax me later. I don't eat those. Even when you're a kid? What about like any wax coating on a cheese? Jack? I'm a wax mutilator. You're a wax mutilator? Big time. Oh, yeah. Because it's fun. Oh yeah. Do you like styles? Do you like those wax candies, like those wax lips? You know I like all those wax bottles that you won't let me eat. Nickel nips? No, I was buying those for my freaking brother. That's why I didn't. you wouldn't let me eat them in the car. What? In your car. said your car would get dirty. I did not. People, anyone who knows me, know that's a ridiculous thing to say. Anyone who's met me or the fact that, like, I carry my lab. That's going to be candy dust everywhere. This is when you 1st got your car. No, no, no. First of all, there's no dust from a nickel nip. a liquid wax phenomenon. I just probably knew that you were going to crumple up the wax and like, no, you know what? No one. Piper. No, I can't. No, no, no. is crap. First of all, I should record everything. You should. And in full context. No, like weird editing. Nastasia is the queen of weird editing. don't know how to edit. You know, no, I mean, like Nastasio, like, well, Nastasio will, like, do, like, a big Socratic thing where she drags you through a half an hour of arguments and, like, like, a 1000000000 conditions and then, like, okay, in the event that, you know, I was on an island and an airplane and and blah, blah, blah, and it ends up with you cutting your foot off and

[24:02] eating it. And then she's like, that's, that's what, but then when you talk to someone else, be like, Dave wants to cut off his foot needed. No. I don't. It's just like if you give me a whole bunch of things that lead up to it. Would I cut off my foot and eat it if that's what. Oh, never the one that we talk about. Please. Family show. Okay, so back to the question. Coding, wax coding. So like, you know, I'm thinking something like a botarga. Look, obviously it would be possible to get a wax coating that would melt at a high enough temperature, but I think you're

[24:33] going to have problems. Remember, if it melts at that high temperature, uh, then you'd have to get it up to that temperature to dip the uh, meat into. And if it was that hot, when you were dipping the meat into it, it would start steaming

[24:45] the, um, it would start steaming the, the moisture that was in the meat. So I think you'd have, I think you'd have problems, basically. But now, there could be, um, for instance, like a self-sealing wax or something like this that you could just press onto the wax to to do it. I think in the future, what's going to happen isn't necessarily, although I do actually kind of like the idea that you have a steak and then you peel back the wax and then kind of sear it.

[25:09] You don't like the idea stuff? I kind like that idea. What color is it in your mind? The wax red. Red? Yeah. I was thinking, not black. I hate powdered black wax everywhere, like from like, uh, like, or like,

[25:21] actually, I hate the powdered wax from like the, uh, liquor

[25:25] bottles. I hate the powdered wax everywhere, because when it gets old, it gets dry and brittle, right? Don't you hate that? And it's like crumpling everywhere and you're like, why is this happening to me? But, um, in my mind it's that weird translucent beeswax color. Oh. Yeah. like a Matthew Barney sculpture. Anyway, um, I think the future here, uh, Peggy, is that someone's going

[25:46] to uh, do, um, like a, a bioplastics bag that can be composted. I mean, that's what's going to happen right now. It's somewhat difficult for a number of reasons because they don't last long

[25:58] and hard processing and stuff like this, but someone's going to make up a bio compostable bag that works and then we just won't feel bad about it. What do you think, Styles? People wouldn't feel bad about it if it was like corn plastic, right? Right. Yeah. What do you think, Jack? Sugar plastic. Yeah, sorry, yeah. sugar plastic. Is that your new band? Sugar plastic. But there's there's people who make those resealable silicone things, but just the idea of reusing those bags and not getting them 100%

[26:26] clean. The thought of like my dishwasher, stuff full of bags with like greasy crap, and then when you don't put rinse aid in your dishwasher, and then it

[26:33] leaves those little particles. Don't you hate that? Hate it. hate, hate, hate. Okay. And she writes in a quick response to why anyone would want to eat tomato blossoms. Remember we had someone saying that and be like, you're getting rid of tomatoes. Peggy brings up a good point here. If you want to increase the size of tomatoes, you can thin out the blossoms or baby tomatoes, leaving the others to grow larger than they would have done with the competition. Well, flowers probably wouldn't kill you unless you ate lots. Have you ever tasted them? Not a flavor I'd go looking for again. I suspect the person inquiring about their edibility has not yet tried one. Garden Betty had a post on what she could find out about tomato plant toxicity, but I was unable to access her sources. Long story short, she now uses some tomato leaf in her tomato sauce as a seasoning. Uh, and she thanks us for the show. By the way, with tomato. have I ever done the distillation of tomato leaves for you? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that. So, like, for any of you, have a Rotov app out there and can do, like, low temperature distillation. At the end of the season, after you've gotten all your tomatoes in, but you still have greenery, take the greenery, and turn it into a distillate and that stuff. My greenery has small spiders. Well, we told that story on the air, right? How, like, you shipped these parasites from California into your New York garden and obliterated everyone's

[27:52] tomatoes, and now people, but yeah, but because you don't control the garden, you can't have tomatoes not planted for a year, and no one there understands that, like, in order to kill this California pest, they need to let the land lie fallow for a couple of

[28:04] years because, like, every plant that you have has this, like, agricultural nightmare, like, who knows, you

[28:10] know? I don't know, maybe it'll spread. Maybe you've ruined the entire Eastern seaboard. Who knows? Yeah? Anyway, should we take a break check? Oh, yes. All right, coming right back with cooking issues.

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[29:12] and artisanal producers whose work presents an immeasurable gift to our food

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[29:31] 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 say them. Visit us at heritagefoodsusa.com for more information.

[29:54] Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, eat them to save them. So before we get back to the show, Dave, I don't know if you saw, but a little

[30:05] boy came up to the glass while me and Stas were doing our pre-show show that nobody gets to hear every week. Pre-show show. Yep. It's called issues. Yeah, we just complained. That's how you, that's how you fluff the crowd up with the. Yeah, because that's the opening act. Exactly. nice. And this little boy came up to the glass window here. and held up a napkin that said we love hammer. Yeah. And it said, and Jack and Dave too, in small letters. Right. You were last, Dave. But it was mostly about Hammer. Yes, well, that's typical. Nastasia, as much as she like, like, you know what? I'm like, it's not that I'm a jerk. I'm just real. That's all. You know what I mean? Like really just want to acceptance, you know? Yes. Yeah. It wants to be accepted for who she is. That is true. Yeah. Uh, hey, we got, uh, we got a friend of the program, uh, uh,

[30:58] Curious Claire writing in again. And that's, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Hi Dave. When is Raw too Raw? When is raw, too raw. That's my favorite question. I think we ever got... Yeah, so now I have the, I have that buster. Buster Rhymes is now going through my head. Everything we make we make raw. Right, isn't that what he says? I make sure everything remains raw. Raw. That's it. Can we call that up? Because I love it so much. We don't have the rights. rights to that. Even for, like, playing like, it's like, we're like, it's discussion. It's like educational. It's educational. It's like a news program talking about Busta Rhymes. Who, you know, you know why Buster Rhymes disappoints me? Because, like, you know, when you're young, like being like a homophobe, I could be like, you, well, you're young and just ignorant, but he's been around the world like a long

[31:48] time and he's maintained his kind of homophobic stance, which is, you know, not

[31:54] going to get into it. Uh, when is raw? too raw. I am scared of meat that is too red because I feel like I'm eating a live animal. At what point does it go from Mookau to dinner? Curious Claire. Okay, so what we have here is a psychological question, right? And I cooked steak last night perfectly. But then she used the seals on the cut pieces and like obliterated it. Well, how thick did you cut the pieces? It was skirt steak. So thin, yeah. Okay. So, for instance, you can like, okay, so the color of a meat is what people use to judge how

[32:35] done it is, right? But the color of the meat can lie. Uh, you know, quite clearly it can lie, because uh, the uh, myoglobin, which is what's providing the color, the primarily what's provided the color in

[32:47] the in the meat. The color that it takes on when it's cooked is dependent not just on the temperature that it's

[32:54] reached, but the environment in which it reaches that temperature. So the oxygenation state of it, also the rate at which it's heated, right? So, um, you can take a piece of meat that's cooked uh, low temperature, right? You can overcook it, right? And then when you cut it, and you let it sit for a while, undenatured myoglobin will get oxygen hit on it, and boom,

[33:18] it's what we call cherrying up, and it'll just turn this kind of bright kind of like freaky cherry color. You've seen it happen, right? St us? And this can flip people out, right? Which is why, in general, when you're doing a sliced, when you're doing a low temperature meat, it's cooked for a long time, especially one that tends to have a lighter background, like, so, you know, like a, I don't know. I don't know. But like, what I'll do is, is you slice it right beforehand, so it doesn't have a chance to cherry

[33:45] up and then people don't notice, or you can throw it, flash it under a broiler, which is in essence what Claire

[33:51] did, with a sears all, to just kind of take that color off. Now, you can do it fast enough for the seresol that you don't actually overcook the meat if you're quick. I'm sure she hammered the hell out of it because she was worried about it. But the uh, no insult, you know. But, um, the point is, is that, um, we kind of, you know, the old saw, we taste

[34:11] with our eyes first. So, like, I can I can cook a chicken, like I say, fully through, but it has that persistent pinking at the bones if it cooks slowly enough, and then people won't eat

[34:20] it, even if they know it's cooked. So the where things actually become cooked is a, it can be measured based on like what's happening with the proteins, where it looks cooked depends on a number of variables that are very hard to control.

[34:35] So, you know, you could shut your eyes. You know what I mean? Like, this is like, uh, like when I, uh, when you, when I remember when I was doing eggs, uh, like a long time ago, when you 1st started doing low temperature eggs, right? They, if you're not used to a low temperature egg, that's, let's say, 62 degrees, which is like the perfect yolk

[34:54] uh, texture and that uh, for like uh, um, eggs Benedict, right? And it had, but it has like kind of a, it has kind of a weird look on the

[35:03] white, if you're not used to it, right? So for normal folk, we would pass them through simmering water, right? But really, it's just a visual thing because once you coat that egg with hollandaise sauce, ain't nobody complaining. You know what I mean? So a lot of this stuff is really, really just visual. Now, if you're talking on a textural basis when it's done. That has a lot to do. That does have a lot to do with temperature, but also time. So if what you actually want is something that's firmer. No, it's not that. It's like, am I eating an animal? Well, you are eating animal. It's all bloody. Oh, it's bloody. blood. It's not really blood, but I know. It's not really blood. Like, you know when you put the steak on the plate and juices run out? She's like, the blood, get it off. I'm like, well, even a high temperature cooked meat, it's going to have those juices, you know, unless you let it rest. Say let it rest. And if, by God, if I catch any of you cooking meat until the juices, quote unquote, run clear, I will find you. Like, that's overcooking by so much. You know what I mean? Like, what a nightmare. Whoever invented that is a hater of food. It's like my, you know, grandma and grandpa used to have that like, that like onion soup mix on top of the microwaved, like piece of beef. You ever have that? No, but I know what you're talking about. Yeah, is it dead yet? Is it dead? Listen, Claire. Claire. Claire, the animal has died once. Don't kill it again. That's all I'm going to say. You know? Dang. Did that even answer the question? I hope so I don't know, Jack, you're back there. Did I answer the question? I don't know I think so. When is raw too raw? Look, it's like I said, it's a matter. it's a matter of taste, but I will say cooks need to take into account the reaction of their diners,

[36:47] right? So on a skirt stick, how do you cook its does? Just in a pan. Yeah, but like describe it. Oh, I salted it and then I put oil in the pan, got it hot, threw it in, flipped it. Okay, skirt steak is like what, like a centimeter, semimeter in half. How many, how long on each side? I don't know, 3 minutes each side, 4 minutes each side? Oh, so you cooked you cooked it? cooked it. Yeah. So what was happening there is you cooked it and you probably didn't let it rest before you sliced it. No, I let it rest. I slice it, yeah. Really? For like 5 minutes, not long. Well, you don't want it to congeal and get nasty. And then I cut it and there was the middle was perfect. But just seeing red. Chesare perfect or perfect perfect? Perfect, perfect. Cesare Casella, you know, one of our good friends. The man likes raw inside meat char on the

[37:36] outside. But he uses good meat, so it's fine. Me too, that's how I like it. Yeah? What are you, black and you're black and blue, man? Pittsburgh? Exactly. All right. Did I tell you what I was talking to someone? I was like, uh, she's like, I'm no offense to people from Pittsburgh. I was like I was like, hey, Pittsburgh, I hear Pittsburgh's a good town. You ever been there, Jack? Never been there. No, but I want to go. One of the managers here at Roberta's opened a place in Pittsburgh. Really? Anyway, so she goes, yeah, Pittsburgh's great if you like racists. I'm like, wow. Yikes. I did not know that. I think she was just in a bad mood. I don't know. Someone tested, call me and tell me what it's like in Pittsburgh. But I heard it's a nice town. I say her, what am I from? St. Louis or something? Anyway. Uh, we got another question in from uh, BJD. Longtime listener, several time, email her. I want to try my modern hand at Palette de Pork a la

[38:25] Bierre. It was Palette Mina. Anyway, like just pipe like plate, right? I don't know. Yeah. Of pork with beer. I've made it following Bourdain's instructions in a Lesalle cookbook. It was delicious, which probably means do not mess with success. I've circulated shoulders before smoking in the past. That worked well. I was wondering about circulating a pork shoulder dish that is traditionally

[38:49] braised. Would it end up being a final product with only the sauce reminding the diner of the original? I would present more like steak. Am I a fool? I have 10 weeks of paternity leave with a 4 month old and a 3 year old. Hey, good luck. It will be a battle. I'm hoping to dial in some recipe ideas, Sunday suppers. Listen, my memory of being with a 4 month old and a 3 year old because I had that exact thing is like, you know, I'm not planning my cooking time. I'm like trying to plan when I can go pee. You know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? It's like, when can I just, like, or a shower. Imagine, like taking a shower, you're like, oh, shower. Anyway, I'm hoping to dial in some recipe ideas. Sunday suppers with my circulator, and my new rock espresso maker, uh, well, is the

[39:33] rock, is that, does anyone know, is that the one with the 2 levers, or is that some new one that I don't know, electronic? I gotta look it up. I didn't look it up beforehand. Uh, because I was testing some new equipment. By the way, I shouldn't say is, the reason I might not be as prepared today as I normally am is because I was testing some new equipment that we'll be talking about soon that Booker and Dax is working on,

[39:52] yes? Yes, Stas, Stas, Nastasia is the sole determiner of when we discuss the specifics of what we're doing on air.

[40:00] I would discuss it now. Really? I know. I mean, like, don't we have to see what we need to protect or no? No. No, we'll see. Let me finish the question here. Any tips on things that try with either my circulator or are okay? It says espresso in quotes. I got to look up what it, look up what it is, does. RO what? ROK, capital R, capital O, capital K. I want to master whole muscle meets that can get us through a week. I'll stop typing and listening to days, very respectfully, BJD. Okay, so congratulations on the 4 month old. Look, in my experience, which is, oh, yeah, it is the one with the lever. Uh, in my, I haven't had, I haven't used that thing for infusion, so, uh, I don't know, but I hear it's a very nice machine for making espresso, so you're going to need it. So I would keep pounding out those double shots that you can, you know, have your brain working. Um, I have extensive experience in doing braises in both the bag and in, um, in tradition. If you want something that tastes like a traditional braise, a braise, right? Then you have to extremely over reduce the sauce that you're using because the, um, there's no reduction inside of the bag, right? So what happens is, is you make a sauce that you think is

[41:22] good, and you're like, oh, that's going to be good. You use a stock, you make it rich, then you put your seared piece of meat into the

[41:31] bag, and then as it cooks. The moisture leaves the meat, right? And as the moisture leaves the meat, it waters down the sauce, the sauce is no longer the perfect flavor level. It's been watered down. And so now when you pull out, instead of tasting like a braise, the example I always use, it tastes like a pot a feu. It's good, but it's not necessarily what you're looking for. It's more of a poached or cooked in broth kind of a situation rather than a braising phenomenon.

[41:59] If you want something that tastes braised, You have to go extremely reduced on the sauces and stocks

[42:06] that you put in, like ping pong ball, kind of reduction. The other thing is, in a braise, any veg that you put in, you should

[42:14] pre-cook the veg because the veg will not cook in the bag. So typically what I'll do is I'll sweat out all of the stuff, pour in the stock, reduce, or whatever, you know, whoever sauce, reduce it

[42:28] down, until once it's hard, once it's done, it's like ping pong ball consistency of gelatinousness. Then I'll sear the meats, throw them in and go to it. But now you're looking at having a much kind of a longer procedure. Now, even if you did that, what happens is, is that let's take, uh, you could take a pork

[42:47] shoulder, or you could take a short rib, or you can take a, um, you could take like a cuckle vin,

[42:54] any like, pick any braise that you want. What tends to happen is if you were to do a side-by-side tasting between a traditionally done one and a one that's done in a circulator, most people, if you present them as being a traditional

[43:11] braise, will choose the traditional one. And the reason is that it is just a, uh, things tend to taste more meaty, uh, right? They taste more like people traditionally want them. If you bend your expectations, and you tell people that what

[43:28] they're, because, for instance, in a traditional braise on a piece of beef, that beef will get that kind of stringy braised

[43:35] texture, and the gelatin will melt out of the meat and get everywhere, and so you'll have that kind of

[43:41] gooey. You like that stuff, right? That stick to it, like stick to your ribs, gooey kind of like texture thing that people like. Whereas low temp, it's or with pork, it's the same thing. Low temp, the meat is gonna retain its shape. It's going to retain a lot more of its moisture. It's gonna have a different overall taste and texture. And if you don't prime people for it, then they tend to prefer the kind of traditional one, even though I think that

[44:04] the low temperature one is like a delicious product in its own right. And so that can be an issue. On things like confit or other long things, I'll tend to, when I want to do it in a

[44:15] bag because bags can be convenient, right? So you cook it in a bag, then you can save

[44:20] it and it doesn't degrade over time, so you can, you know, have it over the course of a week. But when I'm doing things like that, I'll typically do them at traditional temperatures. so that I have that kind of traditional taste and texture. And so you can do that with a bag. Another thing you can do, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but if you want to do these long, because I don't even have one,

[44:38] crockpot. You ever have crock pot? And when I was a kid? Did you enjoy this stuff? You could do like a traditional braise and a crock potty kind of a situation and then bag hot, exclude the air, and then

[44:49] refrigerate and you'll get a lot of the advantages of both things. I don't I believe I've ever suggested that. But anyway, it depends on what you like for, oh, I'm about to go. So listen, Stas thinks, I'm going to talk to her off air and we'll come back. I have some more questions I didn't get to. I'll get to him next week. I hope, you know, unless I need to do another catch up thing. But maybe next week we'll talk about our project that we're working on. Yeah? Well, this has been a cliffhanger, huh? Oh, yeah. Cliffhanging cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage

[45:31] Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us with questions anytime at info at heritageradionetwork.org. HeritageRadio Network is a 501c3 nonprofit. To donate and become a member. Visit our website today. Thanks for listening.