[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 heritagefoodsusa.com. Hi, this is Celia Kutcher, host of Animal Instinct, and you are listening to Heritage Radio

[0:17] Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for 1000s more.

[0:32] Hello, and we're back. It's Dave Arnold, the host of cooking issues coming to you live for the 1st time in a long time here on the Harris

[0:39] River in Bushwick. What is it? What are you say? You not gonna do it for me? Oh, what? Brooklyn. On the Heritage Radio Network. Joined, not as usual. Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez is caught on a train back from... No, I'm in a, no, I didn't take the train. You told me to find a good place, so I'm in a crappy hotel room. What's up, crappy hotel room? Are they about to kick you out? Are you are you staying past your checkout time? I did the late checkout. Oh, what's up, late check? Stop, are you leaving the hotel door open? The whole, the room dear room. Georgia room. Oh, hello, Peter. Oh, yeah. So everyone who, you know, we've been gone for like a month. What they really want to hear is a bunch of inside jokes, I don't understand. Oh, they don't. Yeah, so joined via phone from Harvard at

[1:25] Boston and Cambridge, actually, because Harvard and Boston, never the 2 shall touch. How you doing, Stas? Good. I'm actually at Leslie, the school next to Harvard. What do you mean? Leslie didn't invite. So Mark Ladner was doing the, uh, like the public lecture and the, uh, what's it

[1:46] called, the, uh, student lecture for the, yeah, for the, uh, you know, the Harvard Science

[1:51] cooking uh, class there. Stas and I were there last week doing it with Harold McGee. But, um, why are you not, why is Harvard not putting apart? What are you doing at Leslie? No, I'm joking. I'm at Arbor. Oh, okay. All right. And how was the lecture? Uh, it was good. It was good. He got through all his demos. Okay, by the way, another inside joke. This is like, Nastasia, you got to understand. So Nastasia likes to joke that I never make it through the demos that I intend to do, and that's just because I plan more demos than I have time for in case I get to

[2:27] them, and then I just keep moving until I get through what I get through. That's my MO. I've done it forever and we'll continue to do it until I stop sucking air into my body and breathing it back

[2:35] out again. Yeah, now, yeah. So, but Stas, you know, like, inside jokes. You guys gotta quit with the inside jokes. These people are listening on the internet. I just said, I'm so glad he made it through the demos. No, no, no, no. liar. Anyone who knows you knows you're a liar. It was a dig. It was a dig, dig. Anyway, what was the subject of the demos? Uh, heat. What about that? Anything like related to what? He used the stairs all, did a full steak in 10 minutes by turning it every 30 seconds. Uh, there was a Putinesca pasta making demo and something else. Do you do that just so we could say Pututo in front of the students? Yeah, he had to explain what it where it came from. Yes, it's pasta like a who might make and eat. Yes. Pasta in the variety of a hula. I think that's it's literally what it is, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's the one time I get to use that accent legit, legit. Jack, how you doing? Oh I'm good. Yeah, why don't you tell us what's been up with the Heritage Radio Network during the hiatus? Just hard at work making a new website here. I know, but you got to tell them about the tweeting in. They can tweet in live now in case they. so many things. So next week it's going to launch and we'll announce all the cool features, but there'll be a little chat room in the live player. The website itself is completely overhauled and just it's a pleasant experience, this new website. But if you're in Brooklyn or New York. We're having a big, big party next Monday, the 21st from 5 to 10 PM at Roberta's to celebrate the new website launch. It's free, free 99. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Free? What do I get free? You get to come into the party. What's in the party? It's the back garden of Roberta's. So there's DJs. Drinks are $20 the pop. Drinks are $37 per beer. Wow. That's how we make up the difference. Wait, wait, wait. So you're saying you get in for free, but you pay for beers, but they're not $37. They're not $37. No, we're actually asking a suggested donation, which is 10 bucks, and that'll get you a 6 point beer and a shot of tequila. Nice. Wow. And I'm old enough to actually pay the suggested admission as opposed to being that guy who's like, I suggest nothing. Exactly. You know what I mean? You don't want to be that dude. Yeah, yeah. You know what? I'm almost like, I had to be... I never actually had the cojones to go and do that like at

[5:00] the at the Met. So I would always just walk outside for half an hour looking down at the ground to find someone who would drop their button on the way out to

[5:08] go there. So I wouldn't have to be like, I don't pay nothing. You know what I mean? Because then, you know, because then, the look, you ever, then look. Oh, they give you the look, yeah. You've seen the look? As a museum person myself, which we'll get to in a minute. you know, I know the look. I'm familiar with it. It's not a good look. Not a good look. So next week, I guess not this week, next week, here's what you can do. Let's say you're one of these people who's listening to the broadcast here and you happen to be listening, well, it's live, but you can't call in. I don't know, maybe you're at work, maybe you're goofing off, you can't call, whatever. Elliot. Uh, not calling you out, but, uh, you know, you can tweet your stuff in and we can respond to it live on the air, right?

[5:46] Right, Jack? And Jack will be monitoring it. Yep, right? Uh, or some combination of uh, uh, Jack uh, Stasia. That's like the combination of YouTube. So I'm going to have to match that up to Jack Stasia. We'll look, and then we can interact without you having to necessarily call it. Although, please, still call in if you can. Yes. And keep it to one question for a call. Wow, yeah, see, Jack's the hammer. We really should just mash you 2 together. You'd be like superhero if there was like a combination like Jack Stacia. What do you think? It's the jackhammer. Oh, my God. Oh, so strong. Oh my goodness. I was so strong. So strong. All right. Well, to, you know, I have so much, like the thing is, is like, I'll tell you what, we'll answer some questions and then we'll go back to like, because we've done so much in the

[6:33] month that you guys have been gone. But the thing that to discuss 1st is I have with me. Oh, by the way, calling your questions to a 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. Here for the next, I don't know, half hour or so. Uh, got with me Peter Kim. Peter Kim, everyone. You got the fake clap laugh, clap track. Oh, Peter Kim from the museum of food and drink. What are you now, the executive director? Yeah, something like that. The title changes every week. was the Galactic Emperor before. Oh, I like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we don't yet have a fully operational battle station. Fully operational battle station. So we can't, you can't be the... I wish we had that much money, but why don't you tell them what's going on? Exciting, uh, exciting news in the world of the Museum of Food and Drink. Well, we are about to have a fully operational museum gallery. This is something, obviously, we've been really looking forward to doing since we started working on MoFed, really in earnest, I guess. Well, you started really 4 years ago. getting a space finally, to be able to put on our 1st brick and mortar exhibition. And so, yeah, I mean, you guys might have seen the news in the New York Times last week, but

[7:46] we're opening October 28th. We've got a 5000 square foot converted warehouse in Williamsburg and doing an exhibition on the flavor industry, which is, you know,

[7:57] a pretty crazy story to tell. It's something where, you know, I've been surprised actually getting to know it. Uh, you know, these these flavorists, they really, um, pretty much every time you're eating, uh,

[8:08] there's there's something that they've done to tweak your food, and it's a $25 billion industry, but nobody really ever stops to think about that. But think about, like, the thing I like to think about is like, it's $2500000000 is a drop in the bucket. If you think, I mean, think about what percentage of, like, what percentage of the foods that we eat have some sort of what we call like flavoring

[8:27] system. You know what I mean? Hey, guys, can you crumple more paper next to the phone, please? Like, what things have a... I was joking. I have like a flavor system in them, right? It could be our patient caller who's waiting task. Oh, really? All right. We talk about the flavored industry in a second. Call her, you are on the air. Hi, Dave, congrats on the museum. This one's great Oh, thanks. I have a question. I know that I think I've heard you say that you used to be pretty into home brewing. Oh, yeah. Well, a while, like, a long while ago before, so Dax, my youngest son is 10

[8:56] now, and I stopped the minute he was born because, you know, like the mess was just so intense that, um, you know, I was getting in, it would not have been good. Yeah, so, I mean, I'm just kind of turned out myself. So I was just wondering like what kind of stuff you were into and if you have any kind of, you know, New York City apartments type tips or anything. Yeah, okay. So let me ask you this. What methods do you have like, what's your stove like? Um, crappy foreboarder. Okay. Like the like the wimp, like standard wimpy New York City, like been there for like 40 years, gas burner?

[9:33] Like 67 years, but yeah. No, well, you might get lucky. If you get old enough, you might get lucky, but probably not. Okay, so your 1st issue is going to be, it's going to take a while to get the, the, the, you know, the, the work down to where you want it to be. So I would, I mean, what I did was I limited myself to 5 gallon kind of batches, right? I did all grain because, I mean, please, I did all grain. You know what I mean? I started with corny kegs because I had a bunch of corny kegs around, which meant I actually did a batch, you know, a batch size smaller than five. I was doing like 4 or something like that. And, um, uh, you know, like most people, when they start, I was

[10:14] interested, never really got past like super high OG. I wasn't like hyper bitter, but I was like pretty high OG, like very carbonated stuff that I

[10:24] forced carbonated afterwards. Um, you know, I pretty much was able to use. The only thing that I had to get that I didn't have at the time was the mill. the, you know, to do the, uh, to, you know, coarsely uh, grind up the, um, the grains because I had already a turkey fryer, right? Even though you can't use that in a city. Those pots. I know there's people who hate aluminum, whatever, you know, whatever. If you're one of those people that don't use it, you know, don't ask me. you ask me. So I'm telling you, I use the giant, like, aluminum turkey fryer pots, and those suckers hold. I got to remember, I got to look back. I think they hold roughly 6 gallons. So you can you can put a good amount in and still, you know, boil down a bit. You're going to need uh, I'm assuming you're gonna, you're not investing in any like recirculated mash stuff right away, so you're probably

[11:15] right? No, but actually, I don't know. I do have a circulator, so is there any way not to completely ruin it? Or um, just kind of like holding a temperature for a mash with that. You know, it's been so long since, uh, it's been so long since, uh, since I've done it that, uh, you know, I didn't have a circulator at the

[11:35] time. I considered starting up again when I did have a circulator. I was looking at doing a recirculated match even before they had circulators, but I just never, I never got into it. I was just doing stuff based on the old, you know, choose your strike temperature and then, you know, bring it up and then you can, you know, adjust the temperature by, you know,

[11:52] uh, in it got cooler. I did the old traditional kind of got cooler, you know, 5 gallon got cooler one. I don't know if they still call it that. You know, the big 5 gallon igloos that everyone uses. Yeah, that's what I used. That's the other thing I had to buy. You know, I don't know what the issue, because it's been so long since I've researched it on kind of what the effects of like positive or negative of having that much oxygen flow

[12:20] through, if you're going to use a circulator to get it going, you know, whereas the old systems,

[12:24] I just don't know. I just don't know. I mean, maybe it'd be good, maybe it'd be bad. It's been, I haven't even, like, I haven't even put the flow chart of how to do it in my mind as something I planned on doing in years and

[12:35] years. You know what I mean? Like 10 years. Um, but I would definitely start, um, I would definitely start with the, the good old-fashioned, uh, got cooler, uh, technique. Uh, corny kegs are a good place to start because uh, it's easy to get the stuff in and out of them, although, uh, I had to cheat. I opened it up and cut the tubing down so that I could rack better. You know what I mean? Or just buy a carboy. I just didn't have, I didn't have a lot of room in my apartment. You know, corny kegs are very, like, uh, space uh, efficient. You know what I mean? Because they're relatively thin. They're tall, but they're relatively thin and they fit in my cabinets. And so, like, I could do everything in a corny cake, although I know most people are gonna think I'm a jerk for doing my primary in a corny cake. I never tried doing the primary in 5 gallon buckets. I know a lot of people enjoy the bucket fermentation. I've never, I just never done it. But the good thing about the corny was I had 2 cornies, one from my primary. And then I would rack over into the other guy and then I would force carbonate that guy and it was on tap right away from the get go. So I never bottled. I just kept a sucker on tap. You know what I mean? And I wasn't taking it anywhere. I was just drinking it in my house. And so that was a good kind of a, a solution. I mean, I don't know. Is that just helpful or no? Yeah, absolutely. I was just kind of interested in hearing your background with it more than anything. Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, I don't know if you're like me, you're

[14:01] going to want to go, obviously you're going to want to go all grain because otherwise, why would you do it? You going to want to control as many of the aspects as you can. If I had stayed. Yeah, I'm already there. Yeah, if I had stayed in it, even another 6 months, I would have attempted to malt. You know what I mean? And probably another 6 months after that, I think before I would have attacked the recirculating mash, I would have attacked the malt. And then probably after the malt, I would attack the mash. And then I would, but the problem is you only have your apartment space. Everything has to pack away. Everything has to be closet friendly. Can you, there used to be an outfit out of Ohio that made really nice fermenters out of Sankey

[14:38] kegs. And like they made things that you could kind of repurpose as fermenters and boiling things. And like that was kind of the next step up, and that's what I would have done if I'd stayed in it for another like year, year and a half because they can kind of fit in a closet.

[14:51] You have to throw a bunch of stuff away and mash all of your, like get rid of all of your stuff so you

[14:55] can put it in a club. Oh, the other thing I did. I put a temperature control on it. I, uh, I put my cold water system, uh, through a solenoid with a temperature control so that I could control the temperature of the fermentation, assuming that I wanted to drop it low because my house was always above kind of the ideal temperature at that

[15:12] time, even for the uh, ALE strains that I was using. So anyway, there you have it. Hope that's helpful. Yeah, cool. All right, so Peter, back on the, you want to get, want to, 1st of all, give a, you want to give a shout out to some of the people to help with the museum, yeah. Yeah, hold on. But you're actually, you usually give this shout out, really. Well, no, you're here. the museum. They give the sh give the shout out. Give me the give me the... Well, why don't you give me my phone that had the... No, that was actually the wrong list. Those are people who didn't want this out. Who said they didn't want to be mentioned. This is a list. That's why they're in red. Below the red, below the red. So, so just so you know, like, I was about to give a shout out specifically only to those

[15:54] people who asked to not be conventioned. Yeah, yeah, nice. She's just trying to throw monkey rent and things. Yeah, so we're just going to give to the to the yes. Now, these are people that have helped us in various ways. Yes. Yeah. So, uh, Bill and Mada. I mean, super thanks to Bill. He's actually on our board now. You want it to say a little bit? Yeah, Bill's awesome. He runs IW group. It's advertising from focuses on minority demographics. Awesome guy. Good man. You got me into the vice President Biden's house. So I'll take that. And Peter, like, who is like, you know, the joke master general made a box of cereal with Biden's face on it called Cheery Joe's.

[16:34] Yeah, he liked that. Yeah. I'm sure he, did he, did he give you a bear hug? Did he squeeze the life out of you while he was holding? Tell me those pearly whites. Yeah, yeah, nice, nice. Harold McGee. You guys, anyone who listens to the show doesn't know Harold McGee, just go look it up. Just like drop, turn off the thing, go on the other section of the internet and look up Harold McGee. He's been helping us out a lot with kind of ideas and just, you know, general plus. Also goes by MCG. That his stage name. Uh, yep. Yeah. Sarah Marsh. Yeah? I'm going to bring these people out. describe what's going on. Also, I made some, you know, great supporter. Yep, Sam Tigan. Yeah, he hooked us up with some great fabricators too and he's been, yeah, awesome. Yeah, Ryan, whose last name, I can't pronounce, so he goes by like Mr. Lion, Dandelion, but I'm going to give it a shot.

[17:21] Uh, Cheti Yarwar Donna. Man yeah. Bartender, well known. Romy Freelan. Yep, also a great supporter. Yep. Pedro Mendes. Yep, Pedro's coming from Texas. Right? John Cooper. Yeah, John's an Australian, uh, yeah, awesome, awesome guy. Yeah, Jen Beeler. Yep. Old friend from law school. Jenny Wang and the modernist pantry crew. Yeah, you know that, you know that whole crew? We bought a bunch of stuff for our tastings from them. We used to be affiliated here at the radio program. monitorspantry.com. don't like us no more. I don't know. I guess they still like us. Jack, did they not like us anymore? I can't answer that. Wow. Wow. I like them. Me too. modernestpantry.com. Remember we used to get to say that all the time? Yeah, it was great. Anyway, thanks to all those people for supporting MoFad. Yeah, means a lot to us. It's a project that we're all really passive. Yeah, but why don't we tell these people who may or may not, like, know what the hell we're talking about what the project is? Yeah, so we're opening the world's 1st large scale museum. They'll have exhibits. You can eat. called the museum of food and drink. It's a project that Dave's been working on for over 10 years, me about 4 years, and it's something that we think really needs to happen. And we're actually now at an extremely important moment where we're about to open up our 1st 5000 square foot space in Williamsburg

[18:35] in about a little over a month. And we have a pretty awesome exhibition planned. The flavor industry is going to involve tastings and smellings and, you know, Dave's putting together some pretty cool exhibits for that. Yeah, Peter, this part they already heard. You gotta get to the new stuff. Remember we had a couple right in the middle. The new stuff is what they're going to see when they get there. So for instance, we're gonna we're gonna have Stas is like, what the hell? So they, uh, I, I, like, I'm just imagining your face stars. How far are your shoulders crammed up into your ears now? What? What? Right? You're giving them a big shrug. Her shoulders are above her head, right? Yeah, yeah. her head is like, you know, on the floor compared to where her shoulders. Oh my god, Peter, she's giving she given the fingers. Not the finger, like the middle finger, the, the, the, you know, the thumb against the, the thumb against the rest of the finger. There's only the slight headstake horizontally. Yeah, the lower lip pushed up. You know what I'm talking about. Exactly. Yeah. So anyways. So the point being that what are you going to see when you get there? You're going to see, well, we're allowed to say some of it, right? Yes, some, but you got to keep it a little vague. The New York Times really wants to have the. Oh my god. You know what? People, this is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Backlook. back in the day, right? It used to be the, you know, like, well, if the New Yorker is writing about it, we don't want to write about it anymore. But like, like, seriously, like, like, isn't, you know, most of the drivers we have now, is

[19:58] it real, whatever. I not going to get into it. The rules are the rules, people, and we can't talk, but I'll let you know this. We went to Monell a while ago and saw that this device they had called an olfactometer, and an olfactometer, it was a really stupid name because it doesn't actually meter anything. It's not a meter of any type. What it is, is it's a device that delivers sense. And so, you know, we knew that we needed to, because we were doing it the flavor industry here in the history of the flavor industry. And so we knew we had to do something where we delivered a sense in a way

[20:28] that were, you know, very interactive, but we didn't really know kind of whether these basic ideas that we wanted to do were

[20:34] feasible. So we went and saw it and saw when they'd warped up. And so now I'm building a bunch of these in my house, which is what I'm spending most of my time doing

[20:41] now is building these tubas. Well, I call them stink tubas. We won't call them that the exhibition because that's kind of gross. kind of grown on me. Stink tuba? Because it should be like boom, boom, boom, boom, of smell. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh, there's going to be uh, Peter has learned how to make uh, tablets. well, my god. If we were on any sort of like watch list, we were totally on it now. We have tabletting machines. Yeah, powders galore and the stink removers. Oh my god. Yeah, we have like all we have like we've been buying so much stuff that could get us on a DEA or any sort of like terror watch list for this

[21:18] exhibition. But it's going to be good. Family friendly exhibition, folks. Yeah. little preview. The reason the flavor industry is interesting is we're only the exhibition itself is only going to be about, what, 1,800 square feet or something like that? Yeah, 2000 square feet. So we needed to choose something that we could do in a fairly small amount of space that address something important to the museum. Everything the museum deals with is going to be not just science, which I'm interested in, but history, culture,

[21:46] economics, yeah. you know, the environment to certain extent. And so, um, the kind of rise of the flavor industry over the last 100 years

[21:58] is an historical fact, it was really predicated on this one simple idea that, uh, molecules, that molecules are food, uh, you know, are flavors and

[22:07] tastes, uh, and that a flavor and taste is really nothing but a specific uh, molecule.

[22:13] Now how it's presented to you is different, right? But really, you know, there's kind of this correspondence between them and that kind of unhinging of flavors and aromas and tastes from the actual substrate of the

[22:26] food is kind of what allowed the flavor industry to rise and become a dominant force in our kind

[22:31] of in our food now for, you know, for good or for ill. And so, you know, we're not, you know, it's not an expose. more just an explanation of kind of how this came to be, how it works,

[22:42] how you know, how your sensory equipment works, and we're going to highlight a couple of, you know, interesting historical examples, you know, MSG. And we're not going to go super rant on MSG the way that I would if we were doing it on this on the radio program. Right? Yeah, but we're still going to clear up, you know, uh, debunk some of the stuff that has, uh, you know, some of

[23:02] the the, more uh, the, the whacker claims around MSG for lack of better words. Yeah, you're going to spray some, you're going to spray some scientific febris all over all over that. But the, uh, also, um, uh, vanilla. Vanilla is super interesting because it was one of the early flavors that was synthesized and

[23:22] has a very interesting kind of economic history. So look for that kind of stuff, right? Yeah. Okay. Anything else? Oh, go to. So yeah, if you want to learn more about the exhibition and about the space we're opening up in October,

[23:34] lab.mofad.org, that's lab.mofad.org. Our ticket pre-sale is going to start September 28. So yeah, you should go on our mailing list, if you're not on it already. you'll get the announcement. No, yeah. Okay, listen, so I haven't, like, the entire season of my garden and everything is, we totally missed. I don't even know what I've talked about and what I haven't. But I have this interesting spice. I know you've tasted it before, but you tasted it again, Jack, you want to taste this spice? I absolutely do. All right. So I can't actually use this one's dried. I can't use this at the bar because it's not you know, grass. It's not generally recognized as safe just because it's not part of the list, but it has been used for a long time. So this comes off of a tree in my backyard called Lindera benzoin, the spice bush, that's actually extremely common, and it

[24:17] was, the settlers used this bush to kind of determine whether or not you had, if the bush grew there, they knew that your ground was fruitful,

[24:23] right? So let's taste this there. Chew on it. It kind of looks like a poop pellet, by the way. It does. Oh, it is a poop pellet. No, but it has like a flavor of like kind of pink peppercorn. Yeah, pink peppercorn, exactly. And like a little bit of a juniper, kind of a resinacy note to it. Isn't that fantastic? I love it. isn't that amazing? is amazing. Crab grows in my backyard. You know what? I was worried that it was going to be all fibrous. No, it's delicious, right? I'm look, like, unfortunately, I'm not there this week, and I hope I picked like a small amount. I'm going to go back and try to pick a whole ziploc bag. My garden is full of it, and if, you know, I'm going to try to get as much as I can and keep it. I mean, but I could go sweet, I could go savory. It like a pink peppercorn. It could go sweet, it could go savory. Yeah, really good. Lendera bands win. And so, you know, so what I do is, is, and, you know, I just look around, like, what do we got? You know what I mean? Another one I was kind of lucky. Like, so we had these things called, uh, uh, called uh, May Apples, which is an American kind of mandrake, and uh, poisonous. poisonous. But, but cool leaves, cool leaves, but poisonous. leaves, poisonous, roots, poisonous, unripe fruit, poisonous. But I've been waiting for these things to ripen up. I had all these fruits, right? And I was like, man, not quite ready to pick. I leave for a week. I come back, the deer ate them all. All, all, all. So I go through all these like things. Oh, except for three. I found 3 ones that were too crappy for the deer even to bother with. And I picked them off. And I swear to God, I am glad the deer ate them all because if they were even mildly poisonous, I would be dead right now because of how many I would have eaten.

[26:03] I would have eaten so many. It's unclear whether the seeds are poisonous, but the pope is like, because you know what the thing is, is that most temperate fruits, right? Most, and, you know, I'm here in New York. on Connecticut, temperate land, right? Most temperate fruits have that kind of temperate fruity flavor, you know? You got your apples, you got your pears, you know, you got your cherries, which I can't have, bastards, you got your plums, you got most of these things

[26:27] like they like none of them taste tropical. Do you know what I'm saying when I say that? There's a tropical flavor, yeah. Yeah, these taste tropical. Whoa, nice. Yeah, these taste like, uh, they have a bit of that, you know, like the real, like, fruity tropical sour guavas, those little guys. Like they have like some of that going, but they're just tastes amazingly tropical. I would have eaten myself to death on those. Are you saying that you're generally more of a fan of tropical fruits over temperate fruits? No, I love I love boats. It's just you're not used to having a local fruit that in in my area that has that kind of tropical note to it. And so when you did, you would just gorge until you died. you know? I wonder what the tropical note is, right? I mean, I'm sure that somebody in the flavor industry could help us out with it. what is, you know what I mean? Like what's the common thread between a papaya, banana, a mango, guava? I mean, like, obviously we have, like, a sort of understanding that those fruits come from the same region or, you know, at least the, you know, the same band around the world, but... Right, but they're in widely

[27:23] variant. Yeah. Why, why, why? What is it about them that there's like, you feel like there should be a common thread between all those

[27:29] food? Hey, let's sit on that for 12nd, take a very, very short break and come right back. Alrighty.

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[27:48] 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

[27:57] farming, you would have. And at Heritage Foods USA, you still do. Heritage Foods USA exists to promote genetic diversity. Small family farms and a fully traceable food supply. You see, we believe the best way to help a family farmer is to buy from them, and heritage foods is honored to represent a network of family farmers, artisanal

[28:20] 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 chops is the righteous kind, from healthy animals, of sound genetics that have been treated

[28:38] 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 in heritagefoodsusa.com for more information. Here's what Heritage Radio Network would sound like without donations. It's not as good as the show you were just listening to, is it? Give us a few bucks. Help keep us running. HeritageRadioNetwork.org. Click the donate tab on the top right corner. Yeah, and for every donation you send, Steve Jenkins will shoot a Navajo churro in the face. in order to save it. Oh, boy. Ah yeah. Stas, you love that one. Stas love. I love it. Love it. Hey, people, you know, like Soupy Sales got fired for saying stuff like that. We won't actually shoot a another true in the face for every time you donate. you know what I'm saying? Not in the face, at least. Well, so if you want to save it, you know, sometimes you got to do the hard thing, Jack. Just save it. All right. Okay, let's get to some let's get to some write-in since it's been quite a while. 10 minute warning right here. Oh, geez, Louise. Well, you know. Okay. I'll get to some MDF first. Hey, Dave, Anastasia and the team. I have a question about making Biltong curing box, a built-on curing box out of MDF Biltong. You know what Biltong is, yeah? Nope. Zzefrickan, like, dried meat. like a jerky. No, nice. Supposedly it's great. I've never had reel. I've had I've had the fake. As they say, gankers can get the fake. You can get the reel from the Biltong man. But I like, I've never had the real one, unfortunately. Anyways, uh, so it's a box to make this dried uh, dried South African meat in. I have a question about making a built-on curing box out of MDF. I just started, by the way, well, the whole question is about the MDF. MDF stands for medium density fiber board. You familiar with that? Yeah, okay. I just started drawing up plans to make a large cabinet out of MDF when a couple of scare mongers, scare mongers. Started waving their arms at me about formaldehyde, degassing from the MDF and poisoning the meat. I looked into the particular wood I will be using and it has a formaldehyde rating of E0, which is the lowest. My question is, have the scare mongers fooled me, or should I actually consider changing construction materials? This all sounds a bit crazy to me because if you Google image search built on box, It sounds like it's going to be something like not like safe for work, right? Little tongue box. 99% of them are made out of unsealed MDF, and two, most modern food pantries are made out of MDF, and often have food sitting in them for weeks slash months on end. think potatoes, onions, pumpkins. And I've never heard of this being an issue. The biltong box will be at a max temperature of 35 degrees Celsius, and the meat there will be

[31:32] there for no longer than 6 days, 35 C. What is that? That's like a hundred? 35 C, it's like... 90s? Yeah. Yeah. I know it's not super, super hot because I know the Western desert lives in breeze at 45 degrees. I think of like 40 and up is being extremely hot. Yeah? Yeah. Okay. The meat will be in there no longer than 6 days. Thanks for the awesome work you do. Keep it up, regard Rory Mearns. Okay, look, here's a couple of things. I think you're right. There's a low temperature. Most of the build-on boxes I've seen have a light bulb in the bottom to provide, you know, the relative heating. So built-on box. For those of you that Google it is basically a box that you put to hang the meat in with a bunch of air vent holes

[32:15] with like some stuff over it to stop flies and whatnot from getting in. And then a source to cause kind of convection and to keep it kind of relatively dry and

[32:23] moving. And that convective source is usually a light bulb that they put in the bottom.

[32:27] So the question is, is whether or not locally the MDF can heat up over that where the light bulb is and start producing

[32:34] some nastiness. You know, I wouldn't worry about it too much if you can't smell it, but I will say this. I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, MDF. I hate MDF. MDF is the worst. I freaking hate it. I hate picking it up. I hate buying it. I hate cutting it. I hate it. I hate it so much. Here's some other things. Here's some things some good things about MDF. Sucker's cheap. Yeah, for prototyping. Yeah, yeah. It cuts well, right? It glues and staples well, right? It's relatively uniform. Here's what sucks. Sucks. Suckity sucks about MDF. It is heavy as a mother. Even the lighter MDF is heavy as a mother. Secondly, MDF chips on the edges, right? Thirdly, if you try to screw into the edge of MDF later for whatever reason, you're screwed, because it's going to rip out. Third, should you rip out MDF, you have to put a bunch of, you know, stuff on it to get a screw to hold it again because it's not going to hold again because it's MDF. Fourth. God forbid if you have unsealed MDF and you get water on the edge of it because it's going to soak up that water like a freaking sponge and flare out like a lunatic third.

[33:40] If it's big, it's going to bow over time because the sucker doesn't hold its dimensions. I just hate it. I hate everything about it. I mean, it is cheaper, right? But I just detest it. I just, I just think it's an execrable, nasty thing unless you're going to paint it. It holds paint really, really well. You know what I mean? And, you know, I had my last cabinets at my last apartment made out of the particle board, and I screamed and yelled, and I was going to pay the upcharge for

[34:07] the Baltic just because I hate this stuff so much, and we didn't, and I regretted it for

[34:13] years because after a while, this stuff sags. It just doesn't hold its dimensions the way real plywood does. I just d... test it. I think you're probably safe, especially at those low temperatures. Wait, so how do you feel about MDF, Dave? Love it. Yeah, I'm unclear. Yeah, yeah. I wasn't I wasn't clear enough on my feelings. Uh, yeah. Anyways. Okay. Oh my god, what am I going to get to? Okay, I was trying, uh, this is from, uh, uh, Liz Myers or Lazi. Laz Myers. Lazer. I was trying to make an Agar fluid gel out of maple syrup because I love the flavor of maple syrup, but

[34:48] find it's consistency is too liquid. I want the good flavor of real maple syrup with the texture of fake maple syrup.

[34:55] I tried to set the syrup by boiling and adding 2% agar. It kind of set into a stickyish, jellyish thing, and that was okay, but the texture of the syrup got a little

[35:05] crystallized E. I was wondering if there was a better way to do this or why the maple syrup crystallized. Well, 1st of all, maple syrup is 66% sugar by weight, right? So it's a lot, like a lot of it, a lot of it is sugar. And if you add basically anything other than liquid to it, If you remove any liquid from it at all, it's going to start crystallizing because you've taken the water away from the sugar, right? So, you know, because 66 on the maple syrup is about the limit where you can not have crystallization. It's kind of, I guess, why they take it there. Honey can go a big, a good bit farther up because it's completely inverted. The sugar is completely inverted. Almost completely inverted. So, you know, so it doesn't crystallize as readily. So sugar, you can, I mean, honey, you can take up to a bricks of like 82. So what I would do, were IU, is I would make a thickener, like a very thick

[36:05] thickener, and with pure water, and then just cut your maple syrup with that thickener slightly.

[36:11] You know what I mean? And then what that'll do is, is it'll just thicken up

[36:15] the water that you have, but it's not going to cause any kind of crystallization happened. The fake syrups are made with like sugar and I think if they think they use microcrystinal cellulose and stuff like that. The other thing you could do, if you want to set it solid as a rock without anything changing it, you could

[36:32] probably, you want to make, and you want to use Agar. You'll still have to dilute it. But what you'll do is you'll hydrate the agar in pure water, and then you'll add the maple syrup to it, making sure that the temperature of the maple syrup is above about 100

[36:45] degrees. And then as the temperature drops, it will form a solid. The other thing you could do is you could make a poorly, you could do a poorly set pectin, especially because you're not using acid, you can use one of the pectins that can set without the presence of

[37:00] acid, and you could probably do some amount of thickening that way. A bunch of different things, but straight Agar isn't going to help you out, right? Is that good answer? How much more time I got, Jackity Jack? A few minutes here. All right, listen. Two, jeez, Helen, I'm going to get to your chickpeas on the next week. Okay. I do catering. This is from Noya. I do catering for bar and bot mitzvahs. I'd like to boil large quantities of fries at a time with the temperature staying below 80 Celsius. I don't know why you necessarily want the temperature to stay below 80 Celsius unless you're trying to do that starch kind of set trick that

[37:34] Steingarten does with mashed potatoes. Some people do it for fries too, but anyway, thus far I come up with hotel pans over burners or I could buy a stockpot induction stove. There must be a better way. Please help. Noya. Yes, well, there is a better way, actually. There's several. I mean, if you don't want to just get a giant pot. First of all, do you have a deep fryer? I have a deep fryer. So what I do is before I, well, of course you do. You're making fried fries, right? So, like, if you have a, I mean, if you have a, if you're going to do a lot of them, you probably have a real fryer. So what I do is at the end of the night, when you filter the fryer oil out, your fryer's empty now, right? Right? Yeah. Okay. So what you do is, is you use your fryer as the boil kettle for

[38:13] the for the potatoes. Boom. So what I always do is I put my water in. I then salt and I boil up all the potatoes in batches in that, spread them out on the racks to dry out or do whatever else I'm going to do. Then when I'm done, I drain out the water, then clean all the salt and water back

[38:32] out, and then it's ready to fry, ready for the 1st fry by the time it's coming. Super, super convenient. fryers are super fast to heat up. They heat up in like 5 minutes. They're freaking awesome. That's one good way to do it. If you have if you're doing catering and you have a combi oven, you can just throw them out on racks and steam them in a combi, especially if you have a

[38:50] combi, if you really want to stay below 80, you can, because you can set it at 100% humidity with lower than 212 and you can do them in a combi, I've done that with a lot of

[38:59] success. Um, Anyway, but you're going to have to pre-salt. If you're going to do that, you have to like soak them in salt before in our salt them or something because you're not going to get the salt penetration that way, but both of those things may or may not work.

[39:11] Let us know. And so I think Jack's going to rip me off of the freaking air in a second. So I still have to get to Helen's chickpea question, and I still have to get to Ken, Ken, who writes in on the definition of the sandwich, right? But I will give you this one. I'll give you one paragraph of that on the way out folks. And remember to tune in next week. We are going to be live again with cooking issues. And he goes, I listen to the discussion. This is Ken. I listened to discussion on the definition of sandwich, and I now feel strongly that someone ought to tell my mom that she did not waste her

[39:46] money, or I did not waste my time majoring in philosophy. Nice. All right. Cooking issues.

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