[0:00] Hi there, I'm Greg from Kapal. Visit us at capau.com to check out our unique collection of everyday reusable products designed to help you do more with less.

[0:09] CUPPOW.com. I'm Linda Pelacio, host of A Taste of the Past. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:31] Hello and welcome to Cooking Interest. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network in

[0:37] Brushwick, Brooklyn, out of the back of Alberta's Pizzeria, in what looks to be a container that was pasted over with wood.

[0:44] Jack, why did they like fo wood this container up? Why not? Well, I mean, like, it's a container, like, you know, living. A raw container? Like corrugated. It got like, you know, 5000000000 year old reused, like, you know, upstate barn beams. Well, it looks nice, and it probably diffuses the sound a little bit because if you just had the container, it would kind of sound like maybe being in a shower or something, you

[1:05] know? Mm, I don't know. I don't know, what do you think about the faux wood finished that? I like it. Yeah? Like a cabin. And a cat, yeah? Excavating for a mine. You got your sweet, sweet clementine your head? Yeah, joined as usual with Nastasia, the hammer. Lopez, how you doing? Good. Yeah. And in the engineering booth today, we have the intrepid Jack Insley. We also have Rebecca, the what's her official title with Booker and Dax? She's a booker index intern, but she's focusing very heavily on social media, which is what she's doing now.

[1:33] So you should all tweet on us, please. At what handle? At cooking issues and... Heritage underscore radio. What's with the underscore, Jack? You couldn't get it away from those like weird, like, you know, It's a constant battle, Dave. The underscore. If somebody in the cooking issues army can like, you know, reconquer the regular heritage radio, Twitter handle.

[1:55] We'll do something for them. Listen, I'm not saying you should find these people and threaten them. I'm just saying if you did find them and threaten them. We would gladly accept the handle without the underscore. But we're not advocating that you threaten them. You know what I'm saying? Correct. By the way, calling your questions two, 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. I actually had to call in yesterday. I was on the cut in the curd program. Yeah. Plastic wrap. Hey, I have to do something before we start the show. I have to give the biggest shout out ever to Kevin Scott, who gave us a very generous donation. Thank you so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so much, Kevin Scott. Is that you vaporizing his enemies? Yeah, that's what just happened. They're gone. Yeah, Kevin, all your enemies, totally, totally vaporized. By the way, speaking of that, not speaking of vaporization, but who's who's kapau? New? Yeah. Yeah, they're new. And it's spelled with a C, like company. like company pal. Not like when I spell Capao, I spell it Batman style, which is K. C-U-P-P-O-W. Wait, like, cup. Pow. Yeah. Like, take the cup that you're drinking out of and don't smash into smithereens because that would be against the mission of reuse,

[3:05] reduce. Actually, I guess it's reduced first, then reuse, then recycle. That's the order that we're supposed to do everything, right? It's cool company, though. Check them out. Capau.com, and you'll hit more on the break from them. What do they what do they sell? Coffee socks. Coffee socks? A coffee sock. What the hell is a coffee sock? Where do the coffee sell? Well, they got travel mugs and... Let me tell you something about coffee. I'm tells my coffee. No feet. No feet on coffee. Don't require socks. What is that? Is that like a coffee mug sock? Yeah. So you don't have to throw away the... What's a freak? What's a freaker? don't know. That sounds like something. What's a freaker, Jack? It sounds like something you would know what it is. Um, I could guess, but... Speaking of which, what was that country Sufi music you let us in with? Ooh, I'll play something on the brick. That is, actually. Thanks for the free plug. I just produced a record for my wonderful girlfriend Odetta Hartman. It's called 222. It's like psychedelic, banjo, bluegrass, weird stuff, and it just came out last week, and it's gotten some nice reviews,

[4:07] and yeah, check it out. Odetta Hartman. Odetta Hartman. 222. Did she own Odetta Hartman.com? She does. Nice. But it does have like a little bit of Sufi Twang to it, don't you think? A little beer, beer, beer. I used to listen to so much koale music back in the day. So much. All right. So let's get to some questions. I know we had a lot left over from last week. Um, I don't, I gotta remember what they are, though, because, uh, you know, because I'm a bad human being, right? And because I spent almost every single waking moment working either on the new booker and Dax project, which I was going to announce today, because someone

[4:47] asked us to announce it today, but I don't think I'm quite ready. Maybe, maybe next week. You out there, we're Twittering in. Some people know already because in private, I'll tell you what I'm doing, but I don't want to announce over the air

[4:57] because, I mean, not like it, whatever. And what do you think stars? I'd say, announce it 2 months ago, but... Why? liability. No, why not? I don't know. Why? Because it's gonna happen. Regardless. Do we have the not the next project coming in soon? Do we know what the ETA is in that, the minor one, the cube? Yeah, it can come out by Christmas. Oh, really? Well, we do have a product coming out that's not that's not a big deal, though. I, people will like it. Okay, okay, so listen, explain it. Listen, listen, listen. Listen, this is very difficult to wrap your head around, okay? Listen. So, okay, when you shake a cocktail, right? It's been known for a long time among kind of higher end bartenders that shaking with a large cube. And by large we're talking like 2 inches across, right? Uh, creates a better texture. right? So I was doing a, I do events a lot. And what would happen is, is no one would ever bring the big ice cubes to the event, right?

[6:01] We would have them at the bar, and but we wouldn't have them at the event, and then I would lose my mind, right? Because Nastasius heard me say this a 1000000000 times. Does it make any sense to donate your time, to get people to donate product, and then show up and not do the best job you can just because of an ice cube? Does it make any damn sense? Rebecca, does that make any sense? She's not on the mic right yet. doesn't make any sense. Makes no, makes no, as Chuck D, as is a quote, so I'm not, it's just not my curse. makes no goddamn sense at all. That's him talking about the New York Post, which he detested back in the day. Anyway, so you shake with the big ice cube and you get a better result, but the big ice cubes aren't necessarily sitting around. So it struck me that it's not the actual ice cube that's important. In other words, it doesn't need to be ice. It's just the shape. So then I started looking at building fake ice cubes, right? But they're not ice cubes. texturizers, right? So are they cold? Stas, I love the. I love you for this because it dead. No, they are not cold. They are not ice cubes. Neither do you put them in the fridge. They are unlike or the freezer. They are unlike a whiskey stone. They are, in fact, designed to have almost no effect on the dilution of your cocktail at all, right? No effect. Let me say this again. They have no effect on the dilution of your cocktail at all. You still have to put ice. But, but the good news is, is you don't have to freeze the big ice cubes for shaking anymore. So like at a well? Like, so if you come to our ice well and look at it at Booker and Dax, it's full of ice cubes, big ice

[7:35] cubes that you're basically throwing away after one shake and they're melting into nothing, right? So it takes up a bunch of freezer space and you have to melt all this ice. Whereas you could just use the small, crappy ice and get the same texture as if you had a big ice cube just by throwing in this, what are we calling a cocktail

[7:52] cube? It's like texturizing cube that has no freaking chilling ability. Get it through your head. It doesn't rock. No, because a rock will affect the dilution. No, but think of it as like it does not. Think of it as not existing other than as a texturizing effect, okay? It, it, oh, it has the same density as ice. It has, it feels the same in a shaker as ice, but it has no chilling effect one way or other. Okay? All that's doing is making it better. Justin wants to know how can it not mess with your dilution? Ah, that's an excellent question, Justin. because it has very low. In other words, it will mess with it slightly. It will theoretically, if it is warm. It will slightly cause slightly more dilution, and if it is cold, it will cause slightly less, but it itself has very low,

[8:37] specific heat, so it doesn't store a lot of energy, and it's also an incredibly poor conductor, an insulator as well. So it doesn't transmit heat or suck heat in readily. So it's an insulator and it has a low specific heat. So it has almost no effect. No noticeable effect on dilution, but excellent question. Justice. So anyway, so before Christmas, those are going to be in town, but the big goal is to launch the big product on a pre-sale by Black Friday. You think we're going to do what it says? Think we're going to make it? You a Black Friday fan? Am I? 3 years. No, no, our Thanksgivings have been ruined like 3 times straight, but like

[9:17] the, the, the fact of the matter is, is that anyone retail knows, you do like huge numbers at the end of the, at the end of the year. You know what I mean? Sure do. Yeah. BJD wrote in. Hey, Hammer, Dave, and Jaymal, which is your which is your nickname for the molecules. Is that the 2nd time I got a JMO? No, we just didn't get to the question last time. Oh, okay, good. I've seen nitrogen push cold toddy coffee around. Is that something I could do with my EC Whipper? If so, what's your suggested procedure? Send for my iPhone BJD. Okay, so, um, look, there's a couple different things. And people say, people, I wish people would get over. Listen, I want you next time you see someone and they're not clear. Is it cool to tell people to like lightly smack people in the face? Like a little bit? Probably not. Well, like punch him in the arm. Do it with your eyes. Oh, give them like an eyeball SmackDown. That's what Stas does 100% of the time. If Stas's eyeball smackdowns are effective. I would be like crushed into like a disk on the ground, like a thin, pasty disk, right? Anyways. Uh, so do not, and do not allow anyone else to confuse the difference between nitrogen. A, the relatively inert, uh, diatomic gas that we breathe in and turn to a liquid so that we can freeze things and nitrous oxide, the uh, bubbly, soluble, sweet, narcotic, uh, um, I should say anesthetic uh, product that

[10:48] we um, used for whipped cream, right? So you could use nitrogen to push coffee around, but I would guess that you want to use nitrous. And the reason you want to use nitrous is because it creates the kind

[11:01] of, um, nice texture in a coffee drink that you lose when it's not hot, right?

[11:06] or when it hasn't been just made, especially espresso, which has that kind of, like, you know, that liveliness. And so it puts it puts it back in. So sure. I mean, you do it, just put it. I have actually a couple of nitrous pushed pushed recipes in my in the book in Liquid Intelligence. You just, you know, just shake it and shoot it, right? You know what I mean? unless you're looking to use your EC whipper to push out a larger quantity out of a bottle, in which case you got to go through a rigmarole and

[11:32] blah, blah, blah. Does that makes sense? Jack, Does that make any sense? I've got to call her on the line when you're ready for it. All right, caller, you're on the air. Hey, Dave, this is Devin from DC. I just got back from my honeymoon in Japan. And, of course, we went to the Sakiji fish market, we saw the Ikejime, which was awesome. Um, and my wife is an awesome person. So she insisted that I buy a yanagi when we walk past the Aratsugu, um, stall in the outer

[12:03] Takiji market. Nice. Um, and it's one of the, you know, sweet traditional single bevel, uh, deals. And yeah, yeah. I'm really excited to use it. Um, my question is, I've never honed a single bevel

[12:19] knife, and I actually don't know if that's even something that you do. I have the, some DMT, uh, whetstones, but I also have a ceramic, um, uh, steel, and would you just put the flat side against the flat part of the, the, the honing

[12:39] steel or do you not even hone uh, yinagi at all? Okay, so, uh, I do things compared to what a Japanese person thinks is reasonable, I

[12:50] am uh, the worst human in the world, complete enemy enemy of quality. I do not follow. I'm just letting you know straight up. I do not follow traditional sharpening procedure on any of my traditional Japanese knives, which DMT stone do you have? I have a set of 3, like, uh, medium fine and extra fine, I think. Yeah, but do you have the interrupted ones? The interrupted pattern? You have the interrupted pattern or the solid pattern? The one with the polka dots. that interrupted? Yeah, the interrupted pattern. Okay. Do you have the really really big one? No, they're like 5 inches long, maybe? Yeah. Well, like for something like this, I find it's a lot easier. I know it's an investment, but like the only one I use, really, is the very big one that has 2 sides on it, and it's the

[13:40] fine, extra fine, so that's green and red in the DMT colors. And I used the big ones. It's just going to make your life a lot easier. But even so, most Japanese,

[13:51] remember, you can't you can't switch. you can't mentally switch between European, American grits and Japanese grits. It doesn't work, right? Uh, but those guys are all using uh, very, very fine-grained uh, water stones. But you don't need you don't need to do that, frankly. I mean, I've been doing it for years and no one's ever said, hey, Dave, your Yanagi's not sharp. Instead, they're like, holy crap, that's a sharp. You know what I mean? Uh, and uh, the good news is, is that even though there's a mystique about this, uh,

[14:20] the Japanese knives are the easiest knives to sharpen in the world, which is, you know, I guess why they can make them out of a steel that requires so much freaking

[14:27] sharpening because you have to touch it up all the time. You know what I mean? Uh, so I would, I don't do anything other than, uh, I finish on the, on the extra fine and I just, um, you know, on the flat side, I will go almost 100%

[14:43] flat. Like, like, basically flat. Like I would, but I won't, I won't put any force into it at all. Like when I'm going on the green, when I'm going on the less fine one, I'll maybe lift it up slightly to take any

[14:54] burr off. Like when I'm saying slightly, I mean like a couple paper, a couple, think this is the paper off the back edge. Just so I'm not putting a mark on the back of my knife. And then shoom. But then on my last one, it's literally just like gliding over, over that thing. It should be almost nothing. You know what I mean? Uh, you're really just taking the burr off on that on that side. And it's, um, because remember, when you look at the back, it should be slightly con cave on that side anyway. So you should, it's not like you should be getting a bunch of scrape alongs across the back of the knife if you're doing it right. And you'll find that it's the easiest knife in the world to sharpen. It's so easy to sharpen and it's so freaking sharp. Sometimes I will, I will run the knife backward. I have a leather strap, so sometimes I'll just like lightly drag it backwards on a strap to take off anything off the edge

[15:45] that it's done. But I don't I don't go to any hyperfine stuff. I don't do any like honing or polishing of it. And because you're doing it like every time you use it. You know what I mean? Every time you bust it out, you touch it up and you go. So, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. I guess I guess it's a commitment. Which is fine. It's like, literally, it's like, it's like a minute. especially if you're used to it. And this is the problem I have with a lot of like big systems. So I have, um, one of the, um, I forget the name of it, but it's very popular, uh, sharpener that you bolt down and you have like the thing that holds the exact angle and it goes up to like 8000000 that goes up to like basically what looks to

[16:24] be, it feels like that it's not abrasive at all. Like it's like finer than even than toothpaste and anything. And, you know, you scrape it along the thing and it maintains the angle and stuff. You're never going to use it. every day because it's a, it's a, it's a thing. It's a rigmarole to use it, right? Whereas I have a big DMT, the big DMT thing that's flat. It doesn't throw off grit. I don't need to soak it like a Japanese water stone, right? So literally, I just rinse off any grit that's on it, throw it on my surface, shap, shap, shap, shap, shap, shap, shap, shap, shap, and I'm ready to cut, and then you have a

[16:57] yanagi where every time you draw it through a piece of fish, you are a happy person, right?

[17:03] So is it worth like, you know, 45 seconds to a minute to prepare yourself when you're

[17:08] going to cut an expensive piece of fish anyway, such that you get a cut that makes you want to cry? It's so much fun to cut, the single draw through, without that line, because you had to push the other direction. Don't you hate that line when you have to push in the other direction? Yeah, you hate it. So it's like, it's totally worth the time. And so it feels like a commitment when you're starting, but when you're actually using it, it's like so much more fun to cut that way that it's like you're not

[17:30] going to, you're not going to think about it. Yeah, cool. Thank a lot. All right, no problem. But I'm sure someone will write in that I'm an enemy of quality and a terrible person for the way that I

[17:38] sharpen it. have another call that just came in. All right, caller, you're on the air. Hey, Dave. Dan, Seattle, or just south of there anyway. I've been doing pork belly at 65 degrees,

[17:54] uh, Celsius for 24 hours, and as long as I do it with a drive, uh, it comes out perfectly.

[18:00] Okay. I mean absolutely perfectly. But I'm trying to get, basically, to do, um, Ivan Ramen's pork belly in the sous vide. And I cannot reduce it enough to keep the texture from going completely weird in the bag.

[18:18] Huh. So, how reduced is the, like, tell me, tell me what, what, what liquids are going in the bag? Okay, so it's soy sauce, sake. And I mean, I mean, he calls for mirror, but good mirror is so hard to find in the US. I just had more sake with more sugar. Okay. Garlic and ginger. It's nothing real complicated. And I mean, I reduce it. I mean, as much as I can, we do, and still, and get more of it out of the pot, then I leave stuck to the pot. Right. And it's still... I

[18:51] mean, just the texture of the pork comes out completely different. Like how so? Like more spongy or more like it's poached? Yeah, yeah, it's okay, so like... When I do a drive up and I've done 3 or 4 different ones. Um, it's one of the best, best things I cook. Um, I mean, it comes out perfectly firm, but perfectly tender. It's just It's just still sliceable. Right. And you sear it off for, you know, a minute by whatever's

[19:27] convenience that day. I just got the, uh, Palladium screens for my series all, and that is a very good trick. You know, can you sear it off? I mean, it's just, it's just absolutely amazing, but I cannot get this soy

[19:44] sauce sake flavor profile. How much liquid is coming out of the regular dry rub bag when you're cooking? Um, Probably 2 tablespoons of fat and one tablespoon of

[20:00] liquid. I mean, guessing. I mean that's cooking more or less an 8 ounce portion. Right. Now, are you on the dry rub? Are you letting it sit for a while before you bag it? Like, how much? No, I am... I just do a fairly high salt percentage, like 13rd salt,

[20:17] two-thirds, two-thirds of whatever the spices. I mean, 5 spice works great. And I just, you know, mix that up, pat it on the belly, pat it on there heavy. Uh, and straight in the bag, and then, you know, just the results are too good, you know. Yeah. And you're vacuum metal with your vacuum level's the same in both cases, you think? Well, it's exactly the same bag on exactly the same machine, and I mean, I've done this with exactly the same piece of pork, because, I mean, like, Costco sells, we'll sell you a whole belly, you know, basically £5

[20:50] of belly, and you, I'm pushing that out, and, um, you know, uh, put 2 or 3 or 4 things on

[20:56] it, put it in the freezer. Well, how much, how much liquid would you say is going into the bag when you're doing it this other way? Probably... 2 to 3 tablespoons. I mean, I'm really trying not to put too much in there. I've been trying to put less and less since I try to get past this problem. And the less you put in is the, therefore, the better the texture or no? It doesn't seem to matter. I mean, any any starting liquid at all, and it and it just doesn't work. Um, are there some people, there's some people, I rub my sugar, man. Soy sauce powder? I mean, clearly, you can't tell saki. Oh no, there is. There's there's there is soy sauce powder. spray dried soy sauce and there's um, and there's also, um, yeah, there's granulated soy sauce. But your dry rub has sugar in it or no? My driver, what? Your dry rub also contains sugar or no? Uh, I don't think any of my dry rubes contain sugar. I'm just trying to... I don't know. I don't know. I'm trying to figure out what the differences are between them. You would think that like an extra tablespoon of liquid isn't going to necessarily make that big of a difference, right? So I'm just trying to figure out what it is. I mean, that's why I just been shaking my head about it, but I mean, you know, I, with the driver up and I've done at

[22:14] least I've done 5 spies. I've done this, um, uh, more or less

[22:20] Taiwan from Pensi's. I've done, um, Yeah. I've done barbecue. I mean, they all just work. Amazing, but one drop of liquid, and it just goes to heck. Well, that's the thing. I wonder if, like, in other words, let's say you were to do that. I don't know how like willing you are to mess with it, but let's say you were to do your dry rub next time, right? And you were to just throw, like, a tablespoon or 2 tablespoons of, like, uh, like, or no, stock, like whatever. like whatever you have. Like, and then see whether or not that is, uh, like also bad. Because remember also that, like, how much spice are you putting in? Is it such you have to brush it off at the end or does it all melt melt in? And like the spices are going to be absorptive. I mean, you have a, you're putting an absorptive thing into also something that has less water in it to begin with.

[23:06] So I'm wondering whether or not. Like the only, the, so the thing is there's, there's added water, there's sugar. I don't think the ginger's making that big of a deal. I guess it's potentially possible, but I don't think the ginger's doing too much to the texture. Uh, you know, I've been wrong many times, but the slight amount of alcohol, I don't think is going to do anything to it. Um, especially since you've reduced the heck out of it, right? I mean, I mean, again, you know, I just, I try to reduce it until I'm like, just terrified of burning it. Right. And remember, with the amount of sugar and other solids in that, you'd also think that the water activity of that stuff would be quite low with all the added sugar.

[23:46] I would run a test to see whether or not just adding a couple tablespoons of neutral liquid to your bag totally ruins the texture, in which

[23:53] case you're in a situation where you might want to go all powdered, and they do make powdered everything, right? Or another thing I would do is you could add a little, like we said before, add a little sugar to one of

[24:01] your. I would like next time you do it and you portion them all out, I would take one bag, I would add sugar to your dry rub, to the sweetness that you think you're going to get. I would do another one, throw in a couple tablespoons of water, see whether that, what that does to the texture. Obviously the taste won't be the same. And then you could kind of work from there, figure out which one it is. At the same time, you can go online. I know a lot of powdered soy sauce, spray dried soy sauce, granulated soy sauce. I seen them. I've seen them all The, um, I had one last thing, but I forget what

[24:30] it... I have one last thing, but I forget what it is. Geez, okay. Oh yeah. Do they taste both like they have the same level of salt in them when you're done? Um, Well, I mean, they're just such different tastes. It's sort of hard to judge. Right. Because another thing is, is that salt in the thing is going to firm up the meat. So if it's a lack of firmness, it might also be that you're just low on salt, in which case,

[24:54] uh, I would, you could like throw salt, but I don't want you to over salt it. But if the soy sauce one is not as salty as the one that you normally make, then what you could do is salt it down, put in the reduced

[25:06] stuff and go, and it might bring you back to where you once belonged. You know what I'm saying? Got it. So those are the things that I would try. I would try to try to make a judgment in your head about how salty the soy sauce one is when you're done. Uh, see whether sugar has an effect, because I don't think we have, I don't think I've ever really cooked a lot of meat in a bag with a lot of sugar. I don't I don't know that I have. I'm sure someone has on Twitter here. they'll chime in. Jack, is anyone chiming in on this stuff? Not yet. Someone chime in on this show. Chime in. Chime in on the boards. But anyway, let us let us know how it goes. Thank you very much. Alrighty. Hey, Jackie, you left it. yeah, let's take a really quick break. I've got a caller on the line, so call her, stay tight. We'll get to you in just a second. First, a few words from Capau. Americans throw away 58000000000 disposable cups every year. A lot of those cups will still be around long after you're dead. Kind of dark, I know, but I'm Greg from Capau, and we decided to do something about it. We created the only glass travel mug that's 100% U.S. made. You can check it out alongside our complete line of everyday reusables at

[26:09] kapau.com. CUPPOW.com.

[26:43] You see, man, standing in a boy, he said, brother won't see, baby. So I had to play a little tiny piece of that because, um, it's such a, it's such a cool coincidence. You asked about that music before the show started. I told you I produced that album for Odetta Hartman. So the name of the album is 222, and it just happens to be episode 222 of cooking issues. What? Isn't that weird? 220? We've done this 222 times, Dad. Shockingly, yes. Oh man. That's your girlfriend's voice. That's it? Dude, you gotta you gotta hang out with the Sabri brothers, man. Yeah. Sweet, sweet, mockful saber, you could do some, some, uh, koala chance with that. I'd be sick. Put, put, you know. What? Nothing. No, I remember what you listen to. I think he's the dead one. I forget which one of the famous Sawbris is dead. Maybe it's Mach Bull. don't know. Anyway. Oh, call, call. yeah, call her, call her. on the air. Hey, hey, hey, Dave, how are you? Doing all right. Okay, so I had a friend ask me this question, so I'm calling you because I couldn't figure it out. So, he had about uh, 15 leaves of fresh bay that he infused

[28:05] into, um, some leather bee gin from Chicago. 2 ways. Once he blanched it, and the other time he didn't, and both times he stored it in an airtight container, and it was a really great green color initially, but then turned a nasty brown after a couple days.

[28:20] I'm familiar with Nasty Brown. That's my nickname. That's right So his question is why did that happen? He thought at least the blanching would have killed those those enzymes and he could have had a great color. Well, like, uh, like, why

[28:40] is it oxidizing over time in straight gin? I mean, a lot of times you'll get oxidation, so I'm trying to figure out how

[28:47] to how to prevent it. You would be, you would if you blanched it enough. Well, okay. I mean, bay leaves are tough suckers, right? Because they're so thick and waxy. Like, I don't know how long he blanched them. Um, but... I have never had good luck with... I got to be honest, I've never had good luck with bay leaves because it takes forever to infuse them. And they don't nitro muddle well. Um, and they're so tough. Why are they turning brown? I mean, certain things are going to turn brown like, like, uh, what if you dried it first? Dried at first? Yeah, but I guess that kind of kills the fact that you're using fresh, right? But what if you what if you dried it first? Because, you know, like, that's an easy way to keep mint really, really just not from turn brown, right? is to dry it before you before you put it in to this stuff. Or, um, like, why is it that chlorophyll from spinach in, like, chartreuse just never turns brown? Why? Right. Right. Do you think if he tried a different infusion technique instead of maybe like a vacuum infusion and ISI,

[29:54] you would hold the color better or? He's just doing natural regular natural infusion, right? So I think it would just it would accelerate it, but I don't think it would prevent anything from happening. And also, Bay Leaf isn't appreciably watering it down. So it's not like you're changing the, you know, the environment of it. Um, I don't think of bay leaf as being hypergreen anyway. Do you, Stas? No. You think of it as being olive drab, right? I've used Fresh Bay. Tastes good, hard to get into, did it taste good to stuff? Um, I don't know. I haven't tasted it. I think he said it tasted okay. So he's like, he's letting you look at it, but not letting you taste it. is so wrong. It's so wrong. No, no, no. Okay. Uh, he's texting me. He says, it makes it awesome. Oh, okay. And did it taste any different after it turned brown? Ooh, I don't know. Let's see what he says Yeah. Because, like, most of the time when things are turning brown, there's

[30:54] a there's a concomitant, uh, uh, oxidized taste as well. Right, exactly. He says that it doesn't taste any different. Yeah, then you know what else? You could also, you could freaking cheat. You know what I mean? You can just add some some like chlorophyll, some green style, go like go Chartreuse on that. No one accuses no one accuses the Carthusians of being bastards just because they put a little spinach juice into

[31:17] their product. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, how do you think they do that? They put all those dry brown herbs into it, right? Because I've seen the buckets that they pull the herbs out of and then they, you know, they make it all nice and green. Well, I guess they distill it. comes out clear. And then they add, yes, like, they say it's chloro- they chloro- it's chlorophyll. Okay. Where would I find that? Modernistfantry.com? They probably, you know what? If they don't have it, they'll probably buy it. And also there's like all kind of people who think that chlorophyll is going to save their their guts from like, you know, the ravages of whatever they do or do not do to them. So people, you can buy it on

[31:53] Amazon. You can buy chlorophyll powder. Okay. And, you know, instead of making, you can make it from spinach, right? And there's plenty of like, what's it called? YouTube videos on how to get the green out of spinach without the kind of nasty black

[32:06] stuff to color things green. Pl plenty, plenty. Uh, and that'll probably punch the, punch the green up. As long as the flavor of the of the liquor is not going oxidized and bad, then I would just cheat with the color rather than like worry your head about it too much. Okay, awesome. That's great. Thanks so much, Dave. Hey, no problem. All righty. So, uh... Okay, caller, you're on the air. Hey, is Elliot Patner from Chicago? Hey, Elliot, what's I hear you got in an argument with someone over who is the true Elliot. Apparently there's like, you have dueling Elliots. Yeah, there's some beef born out in the chat room. I don't know what's going on with it. Nice. Yeah. I got a question for you about cooking some sausages this weekend. So I made 30 lamb sausages. Uh, yeah, last night, and I'm gonna be cooking my, um, a weber grill and, you know, weber charcoal, weber gas, you know, I have a

[32:58] stoke top available to, thinking about doing like a poach and a grill, but I need some advice on

[33:02] timing everything. Okay. Uh, what, like, what are we talking here? Like, Mergez, what size are we talking? Yeah, well, it's a, it's that kind of mixed, but it's a regular, like, hog casing. Okay. So what I always do on this, I would go, um, a lot depends

[33:20] on like whether you need them to look 100% perfect, but I always prefer like the, the high, the high heat finish. So like, they know, if I were you, it's no offense to people in their, in their gas grills, but I've never had a gas grill that I was like, yeah, that's really freaking hot.

[33:34] Like that really makes me feel happy about my life, how hot it is. Have you ever encountered a gas grill that made you feel happy about your life? No, it makes me serious power for that. Yeah, power. Right. So I would, I would do like the big charcoal and I, and I would go like, you know, uh, my average temperature to finish things is roughly kind of like as close as I can get it to the surface of the sun, uh, because you can't really

[33:56] overgo on, uh, on a charcoal uh, heat like that. It's not like using a blowtorch. You can't go 2 over on it. So I would go like super hot like that. Then I would do, are the people that you're going to feed it to at all squeamish? No not at all. Okay. Then I would do 140 degrees, which is, oh, plus it's lamb anyway. well, but you have pork fat in it, right? But it doesn't matter. It not going to be black. No, I didn't use any pork fat. I used all lamb fick. Pre good supply. Oh, yeah? Was it nice and firm, the fat? Did you, like, does it, does it lamb have like a firm enough fat to really? Yeah, you know, I, I, um, I weighed out about 20%, but I think my yield probably got like somewhere between 15, 20% at the end, you know, because

[34:35] it streaked a little bit at the end, but I waited afterwards, the stuff I took out. Right. I think I'm September between 10, 15. If you're doing, if you're getting smear and you're, uh, and like you're doing lamb fat, then like low temp is 100% the way to go because that way if you were going to get like a lot of bleed out, if it wasn't going to hold,

[34:52] then, uh, then low temp, you're going to like be a freaking champion. You know what I'm saying? So most normally with any sausage, I'm doing uh, I do uh, 60 Celsius, which is, you know, 140. All right. I should be able to get that on the stove because I got an electric stove and it's got pretty good temperature

[35:10] controls. That should be fine. Oh, you don't have a circle? You don't have a circulator? No I don't have a circulator. Honestly, I assume circulator. Yeah, but you can do 140 is not that hard. So I would I would do it in water in bags. And I would put what I typically do is I put, oh, you could do a poach. Remember that time? Did we do beer that time, Styles? Yeah, you could do it that way too. You can do a you could do a poach. You can do a poach. But if you made the sausages, man, they have circulators now for like, like they're almost free. They're almost free. I got to get one of those. They're almost, they're getting. I like going over the wide fire, so they got to, they got to keep it a little rusty. Yeah, all right. But anyway, so yeah, so like, oh, you know, another thing you could do, you could do the old school. the way that people, you could get like a cooler, calculate the weight of sausage, and then the weight of your poaching liquid, and then like dump it in and let it just cook through and settle down, and then you

[36:03] could just pull them out of the out of the vat as they go and go bang, bang, bang, right? So, like, if you have like a stock that you like the flavor of and you know that it's like, um, well, you just have to calculate what

[36:14] the what the finished temperature is, and they're not that big, so it doesn't take that long to cook them through as long as they're submerged.

[36:21] So, uh, you know, like, you know, like half hour or something like that. And so... Yeah, and I got lamb stock already too. So I could put that in there and then finish them on the grill, just pull them off and put them plate. Yeah, so then you could like take the cooler, like you, like a couple hours beforehand, you put the water, you know, you put the water in at the strike temperature, which, you know, any homebrew shop, any homebrew site will tell you how to calculate strike temperature for things like mashes. And, you know, and, um,

[36:47] it's, it's a little bit different because, uh, you have, you have to assume that the thermal mass or sausage is roughly the same as water, right?

[36:53] So you figure that unlike, I don't know how they calculate. It been a long time, whether they bother doing the calculations on thermal mass for when they're doing malt. I don't know. But anyway, check it out. But and a bunch of other people have calculated the strike temperatures for cooking low temp in standard 5 gallon coolers before

[37:12] or whatever you want. So anyways, so like a couple hours beforehand, you do that. And then the temperature slowly drops over the next over the couple of hours, which is actually a benefit to you because it means that you're not going to overcook on the finish, but they'll still be warm,

[37:26] right? So win, win, win, pull them right out with tongs right on the freaking, like, hotter than the sun grill, your brothel tastes better. You can use it later, make a sauce with it, and as long as it's very, very flavorful liquid, it's not

[37:39] going to ruin the flavor of your sauce, it is too much. Yeah, it's gonna be good. But get a circulator. like, how much do they cost now, Stas? Yeah, they're like 150 bucks, right? Yeah. Well, look, I'm gonna tell you, like, whatever holidays you may or may not celebrate. get someone to get them because like it's gonna make your life so much easier with the stuff you're doing. It'll, it can, depending on what how you cook and what you cook, it can save you money in the end because, you know, you know,

[38:02] you'll never gonna... Chat room's going nuts. We got Christmas coming up and my birthdays are right around there too. be good to go. Get a circulator. But what is the chat room saying about this, Jack? They can't believe he doesn't have a circulator. Maybe he's not. People, people, chip in. Get my man Elliot a circulator. Come on. Come on. Come on. He's asked so many good questions that you guys have heard the answers. I'll say this, though. I can solve the real Elliot question. Oh. Obviously the next donation that comes in from an Elliot. That'll be the real Elliot. Oh man. Oh man. All right. Okay. So, do we do we talk about the... Do we talk about the, do we talk about Mastiha last time, Mastiha? Okay, so we got yeah, right. We talked about it. We didn't ask George's question because someone else called in about Mystica, right? Very hard to keep track of what's going on. Oh, this one actually. Uh, would be good for, um, this one would be good for the, the, the Twitter verse out there that

[39:00] what do, what do you call the people on the heritage radio say? What are they called? What's the chat room called? Oh, I don't know. We had to come up with a name for that. I don't know. Yeah, you gotta do that. This one in, because, like, I'm gonna just say right now that my opinion is not good. Here we go. Joel Stowe writes in on Chili. Hey, Nastasia, Dave, Jack, and whoever else is hanging around, which is Rebecca today. It's getting to be chili cookoff season. You fan of Chili's. What kind of chili do you? Any kind of chili? Wait, what do you mean? any kind of chili with curry? Yeah, it's not chili, so let's not get into this conversation. Oh, yeah. Remember, Stas probably makes her chilly without cumin. So, like, she's she's automatically... Wait, you hate human? that what you said? I just don't put it in. It's not chili then. I know. It's not freaking chili. get to the question. Okay, okay, okay. And I'm really looking to put some effort into finalizing my recipe this year. I haven't heard you speak on the topic at all. So do you have any special tips, tricks or modern or otherwise it might make a good chili and put it over the top? I don't know if a circulator would help at all, but maybe there's something interesting that can be done with the initial chili mixture. Do you have all a favorite brand of blend of dried chilies, a favorite method of adding extra flavor, beer, chocolate,

[40:12] marm eat, anchovies, tomato paste, beef bones, bourbons. You like using short ribs as the meat. Any tips would be most appreciated, love the show, Joel. Okay, so listen, I'm gonna want people to tweet in because I don't, I'll tell you how I make it, but I don't think that I have

[40:24] any, like, like, my tricks, like, aren't, aren't amazing, right? Like I use a pressure cooker and I over, over, overdose on, uh, on alliums, right? Because they, they, you know, get kind of totaled in the pressure cooker, right? I use like hyper reduced. What I do, it's super, it's fast. I'm not doing like chili cookoff. Like, I'm not like trying to be like the best human in the world on this. I just, I'm going for kind of speed, but I used like a hyper-reduced stock, which I blend with, I blend with a mixture of dried

[40:59] chilies. It's usually like whatever I can get, but I like I like a mixture. I like, I don't like them like hyper smoky. like I like I'll throw a couple of smoky ones in, but I like like, you know, like a mixture like Guajillo and Pasilla and like some

[41:11] others and not that spicy because my family won't won't do it, but I like a good blend of dried chilies.

[41:15] Uh, blend that with the stock and the Vita prep. Uh, and then I'll pre- I'll sear off all of the meat in the pressure cooker and then throw it in, uh, do off the alley and throw it in with the, um, throw it in with the, uh, with the

[41:30] hyper reduced stock blender with the chilies. Then I'll pressure cook that down, pull it, reduce the stock, blend in

[41:36] into, then I'm going to blend in the tomato paste, not before, and, oh, I also sometimes put in beer and or tequila. But then reduce it, then add it back to the meat and then stir it and go, that's typically how I do. I also, I also fold back the chicharones. if I'm using, I usually put some pork. By the way, I didn't mention this. I usually am using some pork in there too, and I fold some crunchy chichirones back in when I'm done. Uh, but I don't really have any good tricks, but I'm sure the people on the chat room will have excellent chili chili tricks. Is anyone giving us excellent chili tricks, Jack? Not yet. All right. So how much longer do I have? Like, no time. Alan, Alan from the UK has apples and we need to think about some Apple things for him for next week. And then we have all of this week's questions, including ones on Chickpea, Aqua Fablo, which we will get to the next time on cooking issues.

[42:35] Thank you to everybody in the chat room, and if you're listening on iTunes or in the podcast, be sure to tune in live every Tuesday at

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