[0:00] Today's program is brought to you by Firesider, a health tonic based on the traditional New England

[0:05] cure all of raw apple cider vinegar and honey. For more information, visit firesider.com. Hey, what's up? This is Jack Insley, host of full-service radio. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this show, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:32] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network from Roberta's

[0:38] Pizzawea, in where? Bushwick. Bushwick, Brooklyn. Bushwick. Give me the face. Give me the bushwick face. I can't anymore. Ah, she's dead inside. Now, this let me take something about stars. Once she gets to a certain point, she's just dead inside. You know what I mean? You no longer even worth disdain. Like disdain takes energy, people. does. Calling your questions two, 718-497-2128. 718-497-2128. Sadly, we are not joined today in the Yeah, I don't know where she is. Oh, no. Yes, Rebecca. Our live tweeting guru is not here. She quit already. Wow. strong. Well, it wouldn't be the 1st time, right? It wouldn't be the 1st time. But we have Liz in the booth today. How you doing, Liz? I'm great. I'm just going to answer your 1st few calls here and get the get the show on the road, man. You got so many fans, so eager. Here we go. So kind, so kind. We have a caller right now? Yeah. So today, Nastasi and I are going to taste the cider that I made. Maybe if we have time, talk about how, you know, how I made it, how it's a little different from regular cider. I had some other things if we can get, if we have time to get to it. I have the new Pharos Grinder from Orphan Espresso, the coffee grinder, and I can do a little on-air review of that, spoiler alert. I need to, I needed to do some modifications to it to make it exactly kind of the way I wanted to, so we could talk about that later if we have time. But we have a caller right now? We do. All right, caller, you are on the air. Hey, Dave, Nastasia, not Jack, unfortunately. This is Antoine from Book Raton. How y'all doing? He will be sad he missed your call. Um, today's question is about uh, simple syrups, how to make some shelf stable, and then also, I took your

[2:23] order recipe, and unfortunately, whenever I mix it with acid, it like clumps up, and I didn't know if you had any work around with that. Yeah. So that, usually when you get clumping on that, and you're using it like in a shaking cocktail, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, usually what that means is you have kind of a high amount of nut solids left in, which, by the way, one of my favorite words, nut solids. You like that one style? It's kind of a good one. That's on the, that's a Nastasia approved term, nut solids. But the, um, there's a couple of workarounds on it. Um, like, you you put the tickleoid in? Yes. You could hit it with a little more, uh, you could hit it with a little more Xan fan. I don't really think it's the, I't think the jacking, the Arabic's kind of help much. I mean, you could try just upping the level in the in the overall system, but usually it's the, um, usually it's the Xanthan that you need

[3:19] to up a little bit, but not a lot, right? So there's very little xanthan in tickaloid 210 or 310 It's mostly Arabic, but I think a little bit more Xanthan might help. I mean, maybe adding a little, maybe upping the entire system might help a little bit, but it's definitely a question of like high,

[3:38] high, high nut solids. Um, I'm trying to think of what we used to solve it just by post-blending it, right? St does. Like, so, like, in other words, like, when we originally made our, like, when Stas and I were doing, like, pecan bourbon sours, we started originating with pure pecan oil.

[3:54] Pure pecan oil will not break at all. with a tickleloid. But when we started adding pecan nut solids back, we would start getting clumping. It would unclump if you just went, and like hit it for a second, but you can't really do that at a bar. So I would try to up the, I would try to up it a little bit and see, see whether you can, um, see what you can get. I'm trying to think of what else would stabilize it. Huh. Let me think on it. I think of anything else, I'll get back to you. But try that and let me know, let me know how it works, because I hate that, the cloudy look, that puffy look on the inside of a drink. I hate that so much. Don't you hate that? Yeah, like you, for instance, like in your recipe, you call for like it's one. 75, tickle load and then .2 grams, Xanth, and how much more would you recommend, like, I guess, going up? What was the base? What was the water base? Uh, just, just the water, like I, I mean, how much water for that much? Oh you're talking percentages? Yeah, so. What? 660 of water. Yeah, I mean, look, try doubling the

[4:57] Xan fan and see what happens. It's still a very small amount in the finished drink. You just want the poor ability of the Orja to remain high. And, you know, obviously, like blend the crap out of the Orja before you do it. How are you getting rid of the solids? I'm straining them like 5 different times? Yeah, it's kind of everything I can. Centrifuge is really good at this. But I'm just saying. Unfortunately, I'm holding out for a good one I've heard is on the way. Yeah, we're, we're, we're, even though we haven't officially announced what it is yet. We're still, we're already kind of taking suggestions on names. So check out this one. I don't really like. Okay, so, like, the obvious name is Clears all, right? Right? That's the obvious name. Clears all. But the problem is, is that unlike a Sears all, which literally, Sears all, like, if it's a food stuff, it is cereal, right? With a series all. I mean, this isn't gonna clear everything. It's just gonna do like a lot of the stuff that we need done. So I wouldn't call it like it clears all because I'm a truth in advertising sort of a fellow, even though it does make a certain sort. You know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway, so I will try to stabilize eventually. I should try to stabilize eventually some, um, just plain strained, um, nut milk orjas, but it's got to be just upping the

[6:10] Xanthan a little more. Try upping the xanthan and the batch you already have and see what happens and just tweet on back. Let me know what happens. Or if anyone else in the Twitter universe there has had experience adding some more stabilization to it. Um, just let us let us know. Also, how do you recommend doing like stabilizing just other simple syrups that I might make as well. Oh, yeah, yeah. affecting the flavor. That depends on, um, well, okay. So like, uh, you mean stabilize them. Like shelf stabilizing. Right. The main the main problem in simple syrups is the is kind of yeast and mold formations, right? So, you know, it's all a question of what you want to add. Like a little bit of benzoit will kill like most of the yeasty stuff and stop that from happening, but, you know, how long do you want it to last? A few months at least? But like, like, make them, like, and what are we talking? Like, how, like, can they take heat? Can you throw them in like a vac bag and just like poach them at a low temperature to kill the yeast and then keep them in your

[7:12] fridge? Nothing dangerous is going to grow at 50% sugar. Do you know what I'm saying? So like, so like what I would do is like throw them into a, into a bag, like circle them at a relatively low temperature that's not going to mess with the, with the flavor, but is enough to kill, you know, any kind of yeast kind of stuff, like, you know, mid-50s

[7:31] somewhere, Celsius, and then throw that in the, in the fridge and then refrigerated, uh, you know, uh, once it's been pasteurized, it should last. You know, I don't think, I mean, someone can get back and tell me I'm wrong, but nothing bad should

[7:46] grow and no molds will grow after you do that because they're not going to survive that and no yeast are going to grow. And I've never had I've never been contaminated with any sort of like vile bacteria. It's all been kind of yeasts and molds and that little bit of heat will do it. Or you could just hit it with something like benzowit, but then you've added benzowit to it. You know what I mean? And so then, like, you know, some people will say they can taste it or some people will think that you're an evil human being for doing

[8:14] it, so, you know, just, you know, go the other way. What do you think about adding like the tablespoon of vodka grown? Oh, I don't know if that's enough. I thought people had good luck with that? I haven't tried it out yet. I didn't I didn't want to ruin it. I mean, experiment anything with that. I mean, I don't think it's going to ruin it. I just don't know if it's enough. You know what I mean? Like, so you're looking for hurdles. And so if you figure, I mean, you have to figure out how much of your, I mean, half of this syrup by weight is, um, water,

[8:48] but, uh, that you got to calculate how much water is in it because the density of a regular simple syrup is roughly

[8:54] one, one. two, one. roughly. And so like a liter of that, a liter of the product will be, uh, will weigh one. 23 kilos, half of which is water. So there's roughly 600 and change mills, 615 mills of water in every liter of simple syrup. Right? And so then you'll know what your alcohol content is. And so like, you know, a couple tablespoons in, you know, is not ever going to get you too high up. But the question is, is, is a little bit of alcohol enough to kill, uh, or to prevent yeast and mold from growing so long as the sugar content is so

[9:33] high. And that, I don't know, because I don't know how close you are to the threshold. Now you could, you could make rich symbols, right? And those are even more stable, but mold as anyone who has stored maple syrup for long periods of time, not in the

[9:46] fridge will tell you mold will grow on the top of maple syrup. Okay. And it makes it disgusting. you ever had moldy maple syrup? I have. It's gross Maple syrup? No moldy maple syrup. Oh, no, I've never had moldy maple syrup. It's the worst. you know, as good as maple syrup is? That's how bad moldy maple syrup is. I would say, like, I would say here's how I think I would rank these kinds of things. Rotten pistachios the top, right? the worst thing in the world, a rotten pistachio. Stas, do you agree? I've never had one of those bad pine nuts that wipes out your palate for a 1000000 years, but a rotten pistachio is way up there. Maple, like moldy maple syrup, not that bad, but pretty damn bad, especially considering how good you think it's going to

[10:30] be. Liz, what's your least favorite bad thing? Uh, I would have to go with when you when you get like the bad pistachio. That's like disgusting. It ruins your whole day. I would agree. I would agree. And you know what? It's always like you've eaten a lot of pistachios and then you get that one and you were happy. You get in that kind of choo-choo, choo-choo train rhythm of eating pistachio, pistachio nuts. And then you get that one and you're like, ah! But you know, the thing is, is that you can kind of look at them and know. So like we used to buy like the can shelled pistachio nuts and always our syrups were never like as good as they could be. And so then we like would dump. this is why one of the reasons everyone hates me. is I would say, okay, from now on, you're dumping every pistachio nut onto a sheet

[11:13] tray and you're putting eyeballs on every last pistachio nut because you can look at them. They look, 1st of all, the color is not right. A lot of them get a little yellow and oxidized and whatever, they're still okay, but you know, the wrinkle, it's the wrinkly ones. When you're showing them yourself and you look down, you see that wrinkly pistachio nuts. Don't eat it. Don't eat that nut. You know what I'm saying? I just want to blindly shovel them in my mouth, though. I appreciate that. So what you need to do, what you need to do, Liz, is you need to become rich enough that you can have someone who pre-sifts your pistachios for

[11:43] you. And then you can blindly shovel them into your art. Do you feel the compulsion to break them open or do you can you just have shelled pistachio nuts and you're okay? I think I'm okay with the shell. I mean, no, I mean, you know, you don't mind having someone pre-shell them for you? no, I wouldn't mind that either. mean, it's life goals right here. Right, right. It means, for me, there's something about like sitting there and like cracking open the things that I kind of enjoy. I know Nastasia never watches stuff. you ever watch James Bond movies. Sure, yeah. So there was Topo, the guy who was in the one of the Federal on the roof movie, Topo, was one of the good guys in one of the James Bond movies where they had to climb up some monastery, I think, in Greece.

[12:21] And he had the habit of being able to throw pistachio nuts into

[12:25] his Here a life goal for you. He could throw a pistachio nut in the shell, in his mouth, eat the pistachio and spit the shells out. That, that, my friend, skill. Wow. Skill. Movie factor. I called movie factor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, so we should all we should all work on that. Thank you very much. I wanted to just let you know that Jeremiah Bullfrog sends its regards, and you would love to get you down here. Oh my god, he was, he was. He was in New York, but the museum exhibit wasn't open yet, so he sent me a picture of the outside. I didn't get to talk to him, so hopefully he got to go inside. Hopefully the machines were running this. By the way, the museum opens tomorrow, people. Museum of Food and Drink, 62 Bayard in Brooklyn. and Jeremiah Bullfrog. Excellent, excellent man, as we all know, museum opens in Brooklyn tomorrow, complete with. And now I'm allowed to tell you about everything in it. Check this out. We have a, it's about the flavor industry. We've talked about this a 1000000 times, right? The birth of the flavor industry. We have these machines called like smell synths. They let you play. It's like an arcade game where you mix smells in an arcade game fashion, like an

[13:25] early arcade game. Like, I don't know, like space invaders. Like Space Invaders? It's good game, Space Invaders. But you're not shooting anything. It's not a first-person shooter. It's not a first-person shooter, but it literally runs off of arcade buttons and it's got LEDs, no noises. gonna be fun. Anyway. All right. So Jack Davis in the chat room likes Spindax as a name for the centrifuge. Spindax, but what about Booker? Booker will be so upset? I don't think, do you think he'll care? Do I think Booker will care? I mean, I think maybe later in life he'll care. Right now he obviously doesn't care. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. All right. Okay, we don't we don't like it. Okay, let me get into some questions unless we have a call. get into some questions. This from Brian in Seattle. Hi, Dave, Nastasia, Jack, and Rebecca. Well, Jack and Rebecca. Rebecca don't like it. Rebecca is here? Oh, nice. All right. And Liz, we'll add Liz to the list here. I remember reading in liquid intelligence that Dave uses 200 proof alcohol for some cocktail ingredients like

[14:24] Justinos. But that it wasn't generally, wait, that's what Stas thought the good name was, right? I think into the Hustino 54. Yeah, because 54 Eldridge was our old lab and Custino is like a Justino. We should at least just informally refer to it. That was actually where I like woke up in the morning and I was like... Or the Hustino 54,000. Yeah, like that. Anyway, but I think Hustino was 4000 RPM. Because it, ah, but it's not, but we could, you know, I'll just call up China and be like, yo,

[14:52] China. I know that we had, I know that we said it was going to run in more like, you know, like 5000

[14:56] RPN, but how about 5400. They're like, no, no, no, no, no. It's marketing thing. Believe me. Believe me. I think it's good, right? Custino, yeah, because he, like, Custino, like, 4958 is not such a good number. No, right? 5,400. 5400? like that. Now, well, we'll call after we get off the air, we'll go, we'll call up China. Okay. Then we'll wake them up, wake them up from sleep, they'll be, what's wrong? They'll be like, nothing. We need it to go 5400 at PM. We'll tell you later. Okay. Like Custinos, but that it wasn't generally available to the public. In looking for some, I stumbled across a California product called Clean Extract, K-L-E-E-N extract. And they're at cleanextract.com, apparently, which purports to be 200 proof food

[15:42] grade ethyl alcohol and available for shipping to the public in many states. It seems like the product is geared towards making tinctures of various herbs. What do you think about the word tinctures does? I think it's kind of gross word. Tincture. Tincture. Not as bad as spula. Spula. Tinctures, uh, uh, of various herbs, herbs and quotes. By that we mean, we mean marijuana. When someone says urban quotes, it means pot. Did you know that? Yeah, probably. Me, me, me, me. don't know these things So it comes in large sizes, like one gallon plus. Would there be any problem using it in cocktails? And if not, any interesting doors, it opens up that 190

[16:23] proof everclear does not. I've heard that pure alcohol is hygroscopic, which it is, it absorbs water out of the air. Would this just, uh, would this just extract water from the air until it hits 190 making it no better than ever clear? Leather show, keep up the awesome work, Brian from Seattle. Well, look, once you're up at 190 versus 200, the proof isn't really making that much of a difference anymore, that little bit of water isn't making a lot,

[16:44] lot of difference in terms of the flavors you're getting, what it, uh, the reason I hate Everclear and no offense to the manufacturers of the product ever clear, it sucks.

[16:52] It's just a rancid, awful, poorly made product that no matter

[16:56] how, I mean, we've all been to college, you've had Everclear dumped into Kool-Aid rice does. didn't go to those parties. What about you, Liz and Rebecca? Did you have Everclear in Kool-Aid situations? I went to the University of Missouri and we held Everclear in high regard, so yes. Yeah, okay, so okay, so let me ask you this. Even when even when it's diluted in large amounts of grape Kool-Aid, you can still smell the Everclear. From miles away. Yeah, why? Because Everclear is a poorly made product. Yeah, well, wow, yeah, Purelle. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's basically what Pirel Pirel is like poorly made. Actually, like poisonous. They denatured purelle, I think. Um, Anywho. So I think it's just poorly made. I think that's the issue. So that's my main gripe with it, not the proof. So if this clean extract is good to go. It's good to go, but you do not require. In fact, at the bar now, we use something called technical reserve that's made right here in

[17:52] Brooklyn. And it's 190 and that's what we use for everything just because, you know, it's pretty clean. You want clean, clean aroma. You could also, like, if you get crappy Everclear, you could put it through 18000000 runs of like a Britta to try and strip out all the nasties. Remember when we used to put, like, we used to be so cheap that we would buy, like, you know, smearnoff and pop off

[18:15] vodka and we would just sit there putting it through Brita time and time again, Brita after Brita after Brita until the stank went away so that we used it when we were

[18:22] rotovaping at the school, back when we were allowed to rotovap alcohol. well not allowed. I mean, the government said it was illegal, but no one was stopping me from teaching people distillation. Yes. Anyways. Okay. Hey, you guys want to taste, you guys in the booth want to taste cider? We need some glasses for us. Ooh, yes. Let's taste some of the cider that I made from my very own tree. We need glasses for us. Anyway, um, Okay, let me see what we got here. Truffles got an interesting question in from Arnie Olsen. I found a couple of small truffles in the forest near my home in Bergen, Norway.

[18:57] I'm sure Bergen, Norway. No offense to New Jersey, but it's the county where I used to live is Bergen County. And I don't, yeah, probably looks the same, right? It's probably just the same, probably just as nice. No, no. No. No offense to Bergen. Hey, look, you know what we are? Bergen. We the gateway to New York. We got the George Washington Bridge. So we got there in Bergen. Anyway, Bergen's a fine county. No offense to us. You know what their newspaper is, the Bergen record. Bergen record. Okay, not Norway, but not Norway. Okay. They're... Elaphomyces, granulates, known as deer balls,

[19:33] heart balls, heart meaning deer, not heart, heart, like H-A-R-T, not heart, like, you know,

[19:37] corazone. Uh, harsh truffles, oh, or uh, lycopra nuts. That's from Wikipedia, and not regarded as particularly high quality. Still, I would like to make the most of them. And my question is, would rapid infusion work to make a truffle oil? I'm not very fond of truffle oil, but I can't think of any better way to use them, and they're not super aromatic, and the texture isn't great either. best, uh, Arni Olsen. Now, listen, I tried to look these suckers up and by all accounts, everyone's like, you know, maybe they're edible, barely, maybe they're

[20:07] poisonous, mildly. So, like, nobody seems to know, but I'm reminded back of when Paul Adams, uh, our friend from Popular Science, uh, came up to Connecticut and found some bitter boli, which doesn't taste that that

[20:20] good, and he made uh, boliat butter. Remember, and he brought it into the to the radio program. it was good. So I would try rather than doing oil, which, you know, I would maybe do

[20:30] a, maybe do a deerball butter. Right? Deerball butter. By the way, uh, I, the, like Coperdon is a puffball, and the Wikipedia, if you look that up, actually says that that word comes literally from the, uh, I think

[20:46] Latin meaning, uh, wolf farts. Wolf farts. You ever eating puffballs? No. You can eat puffballs, you know. You just have to make sure you have to cut through them and make sure that they're not an immature form of another mushroom that could kill you. But puffballs themselves. They're okay. They're not the, you know, they're not the greatest thing. Oh, you know what? I went to a Polish store yesterday. And I, what I've learned, I need to talk to Lucasio, a friend of the show,

[21:11] that the polls have forgotten more about mushrooms than we're ever going to know. So many different pickled mushroom varieties. You know how, like, we just have like pickled, like, you know, like those, like the, like, the regular pickled mushrooms, and you're like, that, this is like, I didn't bring them with me because they need to be chilled, but, like, you're gonna like this one, slippery jack

[21:28] mushrooms, slippery jack mushrooms. Honey mushrooms? Yeah, yeah. when Jack comes Well, I'm glad I didn't bring it because Jack's not here to have slippery jack mushrooms, but I was going to give him some anyway. I need to learn more about Polish mushrooms. Okay, on the truffle oil thing. Look, the whole point, apparently, and I was doing some research. There is a book, not for the, uh, not for Europe, but for America, called, um, that I didn't get a chance to order because I just saw these questions last night, but it's actually on the list now, things I want to order,

[21:57] called, uh, Truffle uh, Field Guide to Truffles of North America. And this truffle is included in it because it comes from North America.

[22:04] And the reason the truffles apparently, and this is interesting to me, have aroma is because they want you to, if by

[22:11] you, you mean small mammals, find you, dig you up. Eat you and crap out the spores. So that's why they have aroma. So perhaps, um, one of the one of the problems uh, with the particular truffle that you have, the deer ball, is maybe it's not at its best, because at its best, it should have an aroma, but they have a longer persistence, then, um, like tuber

[22:32] Milanus barm or things like this. And so they're going to remain findable in the ground well past or before the point when they actually have their aroma. So if they don't have much aroma, I don't think they're going to have much of anything to try making a butter. Is that a good answer? I don't know. can't tell. You want to try the, you want to, you want to go to a commercial break? Let's go to commercial break now. We come back from commercial break. We'll try some cider on cooking issues.

[23:04] Today's program was brought to you by Firesider. Did your grandmother ever tell you to drink raw apple cider vinegar? It's good advice and more common than you may think. For generations of New Englanders, a tot of vinegar was a morning ritual. Taken daily, a tablespoon of unfiltered apple cider vinegar can help support immune function and digestive

[23:26] functions. To the base of certified organic apple cider vinegar, firesider added whole raw certified organic oranges, lemons, onions, ginger, horseradish, habanero pepper,

[23:37] garlic and turmeric. They let this mixture steep for 6 weeks at room temperature, to preserve the living

[23:43] vinegar culture, and delicate flavors of the ingredients. Lastly, they blend a generous helping of raw wildflower honey into the mix. The result is potent but balanced, offering layers of sweet, tart, and spice. Fire cider taste great on its own or as an addition to tea, juice, or salad. Firesider ships direct from their online store and is available at over 500 locations nationwide. Use their store locator to find one near you and ask for a free sample. For more information visit firesider.com. Firesider, huh? Do we have any of that stuff in-house? We could try. Liz, do we actually own that product? Um, the silence. The silence means no. Silence means no. Well, we'll get it in. We'll try. talk about it. But while we're on cider. So what we have here is, look, in the back of this house that I acquired in Connecticut, there is a standard

[24:36] size, what looks to be similar to a golden delicious, but it's not. It doesn't taste exactly golden delicious, but it's super high. So you can't get the apples out of it very easily. But I got one of those 12 foot pool poles with a little picker on the end of it and got enough off to

[24:50] make some, you know, like 8 gallons of cider. And I wanted to make a very kind of particular kind of cider.

[24:58] So here's what I did that's different from normal. First of all, I don't have a cider press, so I juiced it all in a champion juicer. Yes, because I'm that much of a masochist and an idiot. So I juiced it all in a massacane juicer. Also, I didn't want to have like a typical kind of oxidized cider taste. So I hit the cider with a scorbic. I hit the juice with ascorbic acid as soon as it was juiced. I did not add pectinace to the enzyme, uh, uh, SPL to it before fermentation because I knew that apples like this typically lose a lot of their character when they're spun out.

[25:29] They're not like a high, a high, like a flavor apple, like an

[25:33] Ashmeads kernel where the juice is delicious even after all the solids are out of it.

[25:38] So I wanted to ferment it on its solids. So I doped it with yeast. Um, I added a small amount of sugar because they were fairly low bricks and put them in 5 gallon buckets and did a primary fermentation for a couple of weeks at them at relatively cool temperatures because the house is relatively

[25:55] cool. And then here is where I differed after the primary, I added SPL and swirled him around to drop the stuff out. Then I put the, uh, I put the entire batch through the Justino,

[26:12] 5400, uh, to get rid of like a lot of the flock and new sediment in it that

[26:18] was left and got a pre-cleared thing. But here is another trick I used, people, that I think is, you know, I don't know whether anyone else does this, but because I was introducing that oxygen there. I didn't want a high vinegar note on it. I wanted the acidity to stay what it was and I didn't want it to oxidize. So what I did is I immediately semi carbonated it while it was warm. I didn't want to highly carbonate it, but I semicarbonated it in 2 liter bottles using a carbonation rig. You could do it in a keg if you had one. Poured them semicarbonated into bottles that I had added the dosage to, capped

[26:50] them, and then let them bottle condition for a couple of weeks. So here we have it. Cheers, cheers, folks, in the booth, Rebecca, Liz. We like. It's good, right? Yep. It's good. Yeah, very tasty for all you listeners out there. All my chat room friends. Yeah, so this is like it's still very, very tart because it's a fairly high acid. I was able to literally beat another batch of apples off the tree that are lower in acid. So I'm going to try to make kind of a less tart one, but the idea here is like for this kind of cider, a minimal amount of oxidation, right? Yeah, it's not bad. And the answer, my friends, is ascorbic acid and a little

[27:31] precarbonation before the bottle conditioning. I wish I had some cheddar cheese. Wouldn't that be good? Some really super sharp cheddar cheese. Some crackers. Oh my gods. Oh my god. You know what? We're simple people, Anastasia and I. Like, good. I don't even need like hyper expensive. I just need nice sharp. Like, would I, would I, if someone like parachuted in here with a, like, a wheel of Montgomery's, uh, you know, uh, cheddar from Neil's yard,

[27:59] like, would we turn them down? No, you would kill them and steal the cheese needed. You know, I don't even need necessarily that high quality. And on that note, we have another collar. Oh yeah, caller? Are they going to talk about killing people? Call her. on the air. Hey, Dave, this is Colin down in DC. How you doing? I'm just calling in because you got a guy calling this Alex G fellow calling in last week asking about some sweet potato caramel

[28:23] syrup. Right? And it was me that called in about that about, I don't know, 2 or 3 years ago.

[28:31] All right, so what happened? You must have been remembering back to. So, just figured I could call in and give him and everyone else

[28:38] the like just real fast update on that stuff. The syrup, right? That I've been able to reproduce pretty successfully. The biggest key really is start with a really high bricks sweet potato. If you can get heart of gold, those are your best option. Otherwise, just try whatever you can get uh, locally and just experiment and see what works. But you get best yields at a heart of gold because they're high bricks, easy work with. I cannot believe you just put that song in my head. I'm so angry that that song's in my hand. It's like it's never going to leave now. It's going to be there like... But I mean, I had the benefit. There just some retired guy, retired professor in Maryland who's got a, you know,

[29:24] uh, one acre, 2 acre sweet potato farm, and he put like 14 tons of potatoes

[29:29] in. So I got them there. I don't know where anyone else will get them, but experiment beyond that and you'll still get a good product. Just give the procedure really quickly. Just get the procedure. Yeah, so, procedure is juice them out in a, you know, cube them up, juice them in champion juicer. Uh, kind of uh, you're gonna end up with a kind of starchy juice. Add some pectinex to that and some

[29:54] ammo waste. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head. Which hamilies do you use? Regular, regular beer house hamilies? I just get the whatever they get at brew shops and just use a bunch of it. And it helps it out. Uh, circ that out at maybe 65 or 70 C for a day. And you'll see that, uh, you'll get a kind of clear liquid on the top of, uh, and a lot of the starch will settle out at the

[30:20] bottom, and a real key here is, you can't that clear liquid, reduce it down into a caramel syrup or just a, like actual

[30:29] candy caramel as you would normally. Uh, the key here is like not getting any starch in. If you get starch in, it just sort of turns more into like a pudding, which is also awesome, but not what you're going for if you're trying for the caramel.

[30:43] I think that's about it. If there's, if anyone else, I guess, has questions, they can follow them up, then you could tweet it out or whatever. But I just thought I'd take the opportunity to clear that up. Are you are you a part of our chat room? You should, because people might ask you questions right now. If you were to log into the chat room, people might ask you questions like right now. Yeah, I'm on it. I can, uh, they can ask questions. I'm out. I'm about for like another 20 minutes, but I'll be back if that stays live. I don't know, Liz, does it stay live? Yeah, it's always live. It's ever lively to make it. do it. I'm on it. and do it. Cool. I'll sign off and yeah. Liz, are you saying it's like Tinker Bell? You just have to keep believing in it and it stays alive? Yeah, I mean, minus the whole dust thing, but we don't have dust. We don't have dust. Pixie dust? If only Jack were here, he would know. Man, we just like, you know, like we always, we get close and we don't quite make it there. We all we just do. Hey, I could buy the pixie dust. Amazon Prime, but no, I'm not going to buy it, right? It gets so close. Hey, can I give a shout out to a listener? Anthony Scardino. I made his life. What was that? He was he's missing a clamp screw. Oh, and you sent the clamp screw? Well, no, I just responded to his email. Oh, nice. Wow, that's quite nice. Oh, by the way, I loved when you insulted one of... I loved that tweet. tweeted at him. Oh my god. Yeah. So he tweeted back his Christmas list to us, the picture of it. And the 5th thing on the Christmas list was get insulted by the co-host of his favorite

[32:21] podcast and he's like, check number 5 off. That was perhaps the greatest tweet that I have ever received in my whole life. I was on the floor. My wife was on the floor. By the way, Stas and Jack are going to try to get my wife into the program. I don't know, like for any of you out there that want to. I dont know why you would want to ask my wife a question. Christmas special. Yeah? No, no. anyway. Okay. Question name. Would Dave use equilibrium, brining, chicken fingers? In other words, brining them, I presume, from Joan, I presume that what's meant here is brining the chicken

[33:00] fingers until they are in equilibrium with the brine around them. I have never done that. That would take, I think, quite, quite a while. And then the question is, is there a fractometer that I would recommend? Um, I'm enjoying the show best regards. I don't know. I've never done it that way. Like, I mean, definitely that's the way when you're pickling, when you're doing like brine soak on meats over a long period of time. You know, you definitely, what you, you know, you, you make your brine based on the total weight of brine and meat, and then you check it with, um, you can check it either with, uh, you know, one of

[33:39] the, uh, density-based things like, uh, you know, the floating guys, or you can get a refractometer. I don't know, because I've never measured salinity with a refractometer. I don't know how accurate they are over the range of interest for

[33:52] meats because it's not going to be high. Remember, you're going probably fairly, if you're going to brine to an equilibrium point, you're down low, like, you know, 3% or less, uh, 2 to 3% in that range. Um,

[34:07] so it's going to be relatively tiny amounts. And so I don't know whether, I don't know how accurate or for octometer, a regular fractometer is going to be for salinity at those levels, but I can look into it. I didn't get a chance to look into it, but I can look into it. But, you know, in general, what I do is, you know, I only, I'm brining for a couple of

[34:25] hours. I don't do, on chicken fingers, they brine relatively quickly, and I don't really do an equilibrium thing. You think that's okay? Yeah, okay. Randy writes in. What? Someone wouldn't do this. No, we do have a caller if you're interested. I'm totally interested. Call her, you were on the air. Hey, Dave, how's it going? All right. This is Chris from the green zone in DC. How you doing? Good, good, good. So I can't wait for this, you know, 5400 because it directly relates to my question. Nice. I called back a while ago about keeping, you know,

[34:56] mint from turning green and also clarifying in filters versus whatever else. I made another batch of my herbal liqueur. I did it 2 ways. I did a different thing for the fresh and for the dry ingredients, for the fresh, I just put it in an itsy, like fresh mints and other

[35:11] herbs, and it came out bright electric green. It was awesome. It was relatively clear. All the gunks that was in there settled out immediately. I could just rack it off fantastic. Nice. And then for the dry stuff, so both spices and herbs, I did it in a circulator in the

[35:27] bag. And it came out to be a very dark green, it was a bit cloudy and I spent a while filtering it in paper towels and coffee filters. Eventually got it pretty clear, dark green. I forgot I'd mix the two. Mix them together. Not the same, you know, halfway point in the green colors. And then since I'm going, I'm sort of making my own version of Chartreuse, which I've heard is sweetened with honey, I added, I made a honey syrup and slowly added it in. It instantly went cloudy and disgusting

[35:54] brown, and I thought that maybe it had looshed or something, the way like an absinthe or an

[35:58] oozo would. Right. But then I left it overnight. And all the stuff that was still making it slightly green had settled on the

[36:07] bottom and what I got was just a pure brown clear liquid on top. So, in these green infusions and liqueurs and stuff is the, is the chlorophyll dissolved in the alcohol or is it just really tiny little particles floating around? What's going on? Well, Chartreuse is colored with purified chlorophyll from spinach. Sure. After it's made because they're doing a distillation. Then an age down, and then they're just doping it back with, you know, it depends on whether you're talking green or yellow, right? Yellow is obviously higher in honey. Do you try doping it with regular sugar? I mean, I wonder what was going on. Yeah, I'm not sure. I did it. I did it with sugar, the last batch I made and it still ended up being really brown. But it went from being green and stable. It went from being green and stable to brown instantly. But what was the original proof before you added the syrup? Oh, I mean, it was it was ever clear. So it was one, you know, close to 190. Oh, so it really? Yeah. Huh. Huh. So, so you were adding a good amount of liquid to it, much more. In other words, like, so it's not like you were dealing with something that was relatively low

[37:27] improof, like 50%. And then you're adding. Yeah, I've had almost a liter or a bit more, actually more than a liter of the everclear strength stuff. And then I added almost a leader of honey syrup. So there's something in there that is oxidizable that, I mean, it couldn't, it wouldn't be enzymatic because, like,

[37:48] most of, like, polyphenol oxidase enzymes are going to be inactivated at that super high, uh, at that super high proof. Like, when I say inaccurate or destroyed. Here's the other thing. The stuff that settled out eventually was actually green. Huh. Yeah. And so now I've got a layer of green fludge, and I've got a layer of brown clear liquid. Okay, so the brown is probably what color it always probably had that brown in it and it was just overwhelmed by the green. I'm pretty sure that, like, that's what's going on there. So then the question is, why did it suddenly fluck? Have you tried doing the reverse? Have you tried adding a small amount of the green to a large amount of

[38:33] water just to see whether or not it stays or whether it flocks together? Like you might, as you go through this small stage where it's still relatively high proof, but now there's some

[38:41] water? Like all the stuff might instantly aggregate. You know what I mean? Right, right. No, I haven't tried it like that. I would try it. And see what happens. Does the brown stuff taste delicious or does not taste the same either? No, it's pretty it's pretty good. It just doesn't look very attractive. Have you tried, especially with the name green zone. Have you tried, um, have you tried, um, Have you added any to water as though it was a bitters before you added any sweetener to it? add what to water? Have you ever have you ever used it like as a bitters, just adding a little bit to water before? Oh, no, I haven't I haven't tried that. I would, I'd be interested to see what happens, whether it stays clear, whether it flocks together. And someone else in the in the on the chat room maybe has some ideas on this. But yeah, this is a, it's some sort of weird thing that's happening as you're adding water to the system. So I would try going in the other direction and see whether or not you could prevent it from happening. Um, but something is going from, I don't, it could either be going from soluble to

[39:41] not, or it could be going from, uh, stable to all of a sudden flocking. Because it sounds like the stuff's flocking together. Most stuff that loose is. Yeah, I thought it was a loose kind of like absinthe or something, but I don't think it would settle out so quickly. Well, yeah, loosh stuff tends to not settle. It tends to float to the top. You know what I mean? So, like, if you were to if you were to, like, uh, oozo something out, lose it, and then let it sit for a week, you'll get the stuff usually on top, not on bottom.

[40:09] So you're getting something that's heavier than alcohol that's settling out. I mean, I filtered it through like layer after layer of coffee filters. I'm really surprised there is that much solid stuff to settle out. Well, the other thing, you know, is you could have like solids in there that then they could be

[40:25] charged. It could be like a charged particle that then attaches to the color and then spins it out. So, you know, you never, you never, it's hard to say, but I would try to do the reverse experiment, see whether you can stop it from happening. Cool. All right. Well, in the meantime, cannot wait for the, uh, thudder fuse. And also, in the meantime, make you some make you some spinach juice and do it the way the monks do it. How do I do that? Just blend up some snitch and dehydrate it? Uh, no, they uh, it's been a long time since I've done it. Like you cook it. You got to get the initial stuff out, then you blend it, and then you squeeze it, and you get

[41:01] the chlorophyll juice, and then that stuff's pretty stable. I have to go look at the protocol for it. taste like spinach? No. No, not when you're done with it. Not when you're done with it. You want to get just a clear the clear stuff out. I made some delicious parsley oil in the Justino 54, by the way. And I want to make I want to make a drink that it has tickoloy stabilized parsley oil in it. Wouldn't that be good? That be delicious. And that stuff stays green. Green for a long time because there's no water in it. all oil. Right, right. Anyway, try some of your stuff out and let me know what happens. So in the chat room, they want to know what you think about that bacon thing from

[41:38] World Health Organization. Well, tell me about it. I don't know what it is. Do you know Rebecca? They said it's a number one carcinogen now. Number one, like, oh, bacon is more carcinogenic than cigarettes? No, no, no. Okay. group level category. That's what they're saying. I mean, based on what data? I can do stuff if you want, but I don't have anything... will read it. I will read the data, but in general,

[42:07] like I am loath to believe any of that, any of that kind of, it's

[42:12] just like, why? Because main, like, if you look at it, like, some, like, someone will do a study with a bunch of kind of related risks and they'll add a bunch of stuff

[42:21] together that doesn't, that has no meaning. Like, I guarantee you that there is not some giant cohort study where the only difference between group A and group B is bacon.

[42:33] And then, and then, you know, like, you know, half of the people on the bacon side are dropping like flies,

[42:38] right? I mean, it's just I guarantee that that's not the case. I will look at the data, but I would be willing to bet a chunk of money that if I did look into it, I would come back and say that this is some horse hockey.

[42:52] Horse hockey? Horse hockey. Now all the vegans and vegetarians are like, I told you, we were right. Now, look, you know, whatever. You know what? And, like, they say Sassafras will kill you too. You're not allowed. Hey, vegans, vegetarians. You should be able to have real honest to God, saffro root

[43:10] beer, and you can't, because someone told you that it's going to cause cancer. And you know what? I don't know. I think the data is just bad. I think the data's just bad. I haven't looked at the bacon data, so I have no idea. I'm not like, I have no knowledge, but anyway, so let me rip through this real quick before I get ripped off the air.

[43:25] Uh, I'm uh, this is from Randy. I'm making a boneless leg of land this weekend and wondered if this is a good way to do it. Cook it low temp for 55 degrees C for 10 hours, then throw it in a 500 degree oven until it hits a final temperature,

[43:38] 60 degrees C. I want to do it this way because I'm worried that if I were to sous vide it at the final temperature, the time it would take to properly brown, it will overcook it. Thanks, Randy. Do this instead. Do this instead. Cook it at medium, medium rare, like 57 or something like this. and do it for a long time to tenderize it, you know, as long as you have. Then, uh, 4 hours, three, two, somewhere between 3 and 4 hours before you have to serve it, pull it out of

[44:07] the, uh, the bath, right? 4 hours before you server. pull it out of the bath. Open it up, let the surface dry off, cool it down in the open air for several hours. Right? And then, like as it starts cooling down, throw it into your a 1000000000 degree

[44:24] oven. And then you can brown it and it will have cooled enough that it won't overcook, but you'll also still be good on the

[44:31] inside. And I think that's a better way to go. That's how I typically do that kind of stuff. You can, in fact, let it cool all the way down and then just roast it in super high heat oven and be good, or you can chill it in water and do it, but that's what I

[44:45] would do. And we have, I got to read this or Ken's going to rip my head off, right? we're about to be we're about to be ripped off the air. There's something else we needed to talk about today. What was it? Oh, the pharaoh's coffee coffee grinder. I'm not going to get to talk about the Ferris coffee grinder. Is anyone interested in the Ferris coffee grinder? Stas is not interested. I think there are some people who are interested. It's very good grinder, needs some modifications. I have a, I have a bunch of STL files that people can print that I'm going to put up on the, on, on my Twitter account eventually so that people can modify their

[45:12] ferrous grinders. Okay. Uh, Ken writes. I was a little disappointed that an entire show is not devoted to my last email on

[45:19] Parmenides and the epistemology of the sandwich, although I might be a little behind on the podcast. No, we did not go into it on a whole thing. Although the sandwich has been brought up several times. I'm not gonna get into it now because I'm just going to go crazy if I do. Undaunted, I write again and ask, could this idea amount to something? Consider that most slow cooker meat recipes require initial searing in a separate

[45:39] vessel because you cannot get the mired reaction and traditional slow cooker, except for the dump and go meals. What do they call it? Dump meals? Yeah, dump, yeah. Dump meals. Terrible idea, dumb meals. Similarly, usually reverse issue is sous vide cooking. We have the ability to add various umami elements to cooking, such as anchovies, marmat, mushrooms, soy sauce, fish sauce, and somewhere in the same neighborhood are products like liquid smoke.

[46:04] Don't forget coconut amino. Do you like cocon amino stars? don't know. Coconut aminos? Do you like the name? Sure. Oh, yeah. I have this dim memory of Dave getting some press years ago for a burger, not the ketchup soup dumpling thing, but another

[46:18] process in which he cooked meat separate from the burger to extract some flavor to add later.

[46:22] So with that as a background, could there be manufactured, self-stabilized, freeze dried

[46:26] Myard powder, or a group of powders with a fairly wide utility. If this is a worthy idea to pursue, then in lieu of a MacArthur

[46:34] Genius Award, I would be happy with a Booker index. I don't know, maybe Booker Next Award. Best Kenningberg. Well, what I used to do is I would make like hyper thick, uh, I would like roast the hell out of a lot of meat and then

[46:48] just uh, make like a hyper broth of that and then reduce that down and then circulate meat in that hyper in that hyper

[46:56] broth. So the entire inside of the hamburger uh, tasted like uh, this kind of hyper broth. So it was a little bit poached, but it was okay because then I was going to pull it out and steer the hell out of it anyway. But then, because what I noticed when you're doing a lot of low temp cooking is that you never have a lot of those high heat flavors on the meat, even if you do a

[47:17] post seer on it. That's why, like, you know, if we're dealing with like short ribs and stuff, there's textual reasons as well, but taste reasons why it's never going to taste quite the same.

[47:25] So I would do it. People make meat extracts. The flavor industry makes meat extracts. And we could, and like, conceivably, you could buy like a hyper meat extract, uh, that, you know, was all brown and stuff that didn't have 8 boatloads of salt in it, which is the reason why you can't use bullion cubes, stuff like

[47:44] that, because bullion cube is MSG, which all of you know I have no problem with, necessarily, even though I don't really use it. Uh, salt, which unfortunately would analyze. And then the rest of it is like these flavors. So yeah, someone, doesn't someone make meat straight meat extract? Any of you guys British? What about Bovril? Bovril? No, what's British here? Anyway. I don't know. We'll work on it. Let anyone know. Come into the chat room. Next time I'll talk about Pharaos and some other stuff, talk about the 1st week of the museum exhibit on cooking issues.

[48:18] Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes

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[48:48] Thanks for listening.