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

[0:06] Heritage Breed Pigs and Turkeys. For more information, visit Heritage Foods, USA.com. I am Patrick Martin, host of the main course. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:29] Hello and welcome to Cooking Agents. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking is just coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network in Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick,

[0:40] Brooklyn for the Thanksgiving Day episode. Call your questions to 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. Uh, along with my usual, uh, you know, crew here of Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez,

[0:52] I says. And Jackie Molecules, Jackie Insley in the booth. and Rebecca on the live tweet machine. We have via phone, Chris Young from Chef Steps, who has a big thing to announce, and Patrick Martin's, founder of our

[1:05] great network, and of Heritage Meets, who's going to talk a little bit about turkeys in a minute. But Chris, thanks for calling in. What do you got for us? What's going on with the chef steps world? By the way, for those of you that don't know. I think we're announcing today that Chef steps has had a secret. We've been, uh, we've been working on better Subi tools for a couple of years and uh, oh, and so we're announcing Jewel today. Nice. Okay, so for the one person who might have found our broadcast somehow who doesn't know what chef steps is, it's very easy to find out, the simplest thing to do is to just go online to chefsteps.com and register and

[1:39] it's, uh, uh, you know, you'll get like a bunch of tips, not only on modern and stuff, but on the kind of the new analytical way of thinking about cooking in general, whether they're using new techniques or

[1:49] not. It's a very analytical mindset, which, of course, I appreciate. And aside from their awesome videos and tips and whatnot, you'll find a forum, which is

[1:58] very, uh, which is very helpful for cooks all over the world. This is accurate or inaccurate. I say that's pretty accurate, and we're also taking questions on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and other social networks that I don't even know

[2:11] about yet. Nice. All right, now, so Jewel, by the way, it's not spelled Jewel, as in the Alaskan singer. Sorry, Patrick, it's not the Alaskan singer. Yeah. Disappointing I know. Yeah, Jewel, as in as in the unit of energy. Uh, and uh, just goes to show that if uh, you were wondering whether Chris Young and the

[2:35] chefs have people are metricized, whether they are metric folk, I think you now have your answer, because of the unit of measure that they are choosing

[2:43] to uh, to use there, right? You ever have any thoughts on going imperial with the naming of the unit

[2:49] thing or no? You want something that's vaguely female sounding, maybe? I't know, what do you think? What's the origin of jewel? The origin of Jewel is that, you know, sous vide's really about adding a measured amount of heat to your recipes, so you don't over undercook it. So it seemed appropriate to name our nice compact little unit after what sous vide's really about, which is heat. That's that, there you go. Now, uh, describe now, uh, most everybody here, uh, who's listening to us now, knows what an emersion circulator is. But for those like who don't. It's a device of any sort, really, that both circulates water. So, or it doesn't have to be water, but circulates a liquid. So in this case, static water baths like the sous vide supreme would not count as a circulator. And also has a heater and sometimes chilling, although very few of us have one device so that you can very accurately maintain a temperature in said

[3:47] liquid. And it ranks right up there. It's like the, it's the newest, most different kind of most important cooking innovation sense, probably

[3:57] refrigeration, is my guess. Um, what do you think, Chris? Yes or no? The accurate control of temperature in general, the most important thing since refrigeration. I would bet. Well, you know, I really think sous vide the 1st real cooking technology that's likely to really change the mainstream kitchen since the microwave, which is like really World War

[4:16] 2 technology. So it's time we do something different. I think it's bigger than the microwave though. In other words, in terms of its final impact, I think bigger than the microwave. I mean, maybe not as going to be as ubiquitous as the microwave, but in terms of, like, for instance, when your microwave breaks, you're like, I got to get around to buying one sometime, right? But it doesn't really change what you can do in the kitchen. You're just like, ah, now I got a dirty pot when I melt butter. Am I right? Yeah, I mean, the microwave is a tool that's all about convenience. Sous vide is going to give you just quality and creativity. You can't get any other way. Right. Okay. So now, we're all familiar with what an immersion circulators. Now for, again, for the 3 people that don't already know this saga, I'll give you the saga.

[4:55] So this is originally a piece of laboratory equipment. We're talking now prior to about 2004. This is a piece of or three. It's primarily with the exception of very few high-end chefs around the world scattered around the world. It is a piece of laboratory equipment. It costs roughly, if we're talking only 10 years ago, a little more than 10 years ago. They cost 2000 bucks. That's what they cost. And not a lot of chefs have them. Only like very top flight. people who are also interested in modern techniques. Right around 2004, five, you see a price drop down to about $1000 where it stays roughly within $200 of that until roughly 3 years ago when, uh, I think it's

[5:34] Nomiku, actually, uh, broke the price barrier down below 500 and it's been driven down steadily

[5:41] since, with various levels of robustness and quality and equipment, uh, along with also a robust DIY market of people building their own

[5:48] now. So it's driven down to the sub 200 or in the 200 between 150 and $200 range, you can get a circulator that's going to work. Now, I think a lot of these, like, low price circulators have kind of crush a lot of the DIY spirit, except for those people

[6:03] who always just want to build their own stuff. These are the same people that in the 70s would have been buying those RadioShack kits to make radios that aren't nearly as good as the radios you can buy for a nickel. But there will always be those people out there. And by the way, God bless those people. Polar catalog people. Yeah, I'm one of those people. Anyway, so why don't you, Chris, explain where the jewel fits into this, to the to the range of immersion circulators that's already out there. Yeah, well, so, you know, I'd say we're comparable in terms of cost, and we're obviously giving our community a big discount today for

[6:37] pre-orders, and because they got us to this point. But, you know, there was a bunch of things that we've found over the last few

[6:43] years that the Suviet experience really isn't as great as we'd like it to be. At the end of the day, everything else out there is still really just laboratory equipment that's been

[6:52] reskinned and it tends to make it more of a gadget than an actual cooking tool. And as a chef, you know, I take a lot of pride in my tools. I like them to be reliable. I like them to be useful. I like them to be convenient. So we really sat down to rethink both the hardware, but also the user experience. So, you know, on the hardware side, we shrunk it down where, you know, when we started, most of the stuff weighed around £9 and

[7:20] ours got all the way down to a pound and a quarter, um, you know, we wanted

[7:25] it to be small enough that you could fit it in your top drawer, which if your top door is anything like mine, it's pretty crowded. So, you know, we shrunk the diameter down by like a factor of 4 or 5 over the

[7:37] competition. So it's only an inch and 3 quarters in diameter and it's about 11 inches tall. So it's this really compact unit. For those of you that haven't seen it, it visually references devices for other

[7:49] uses if you get my drift. It's that sort of general shape and size. Is that you'd say it's accurate? Yeah. You mean a rolling bed? Yeah, that's what I mean. So, you know, there's a bunch of things there where we wanted it to be commute, but we also wanted to be really durable and reliable. It's going to last 2 years. So all of the all of the parts that are metal. We forged and machined out of out of surgical grades, stainless steel. We put a neodinium rare magnet at the bottom. So if you're using like a cast iron or an induction ready pot, rather than sort of fiddling around with a big, bulky clamp, you know, you just set it down and it grabs onto the pot with £6 of force.

[8:29] Um, uh, it's hard to describe how great that experience is,

[8:33] but, you know, we use these all day in our kitchen and and that's really wonderful. But I think the thing that is certainly going to be, I think it's been described as bold already on the internet today, was we actually took the controls off the circulator and put them into your phone. We put them into iPhones, tablets, Android phones. We're going to put it into things like watches, where, you know, you can easily set the temperature. In fact, we made that unbelievably simple and intuitive

[9:03] in quite a bit faster than buttons on the device. But we were trying to solve a problem that we've found over and over after trying to teach Subi cooking for, gosh, I guess I've been teaching it for about a decade, but really the last 3 or so years

[9:17] was chef steps. When, which when somebody gets into souving and is new, they don't really know where to

[9:23] start, you know, what temperature are they going to like? You know, how do they prefer their steak? We tend to think in terms of rare and medium rare and medium well. But those are really imprecise words that mean different things to different people. So, we invented something that we call visual doneness, where we actually show short film loops in our app, of what you're going to get, um, and how to get

[9:45] there, so that you don't have to translate your preferences as a cook into engineering

[9:51] parameters, you can basically express your desires in a very human way and say, well, that looks like exactly what I want. And the circulator, Jewel, is going to do whatever is necessary to get you that outcome. So that I think streamlining the app connecting it to mobile devices and leveraging the power of what we can do in the phone and in the

[10:12] cloud really has the opportunity to start to change the kitchen and put humans back at the center of the cooking

[10:17] experience. Now, now, okay, so let's just hash this out for a sec. I'm an old fogey, right? And actually, you agree with me. You hate membrane switches like I hate membrane switches, right? Yep. Yeah, we're both haters of the membrane switch. That makes you guys old fogies. Well, because everything's moving that way. But I prefer actual. I'm also an analog control guy. So like I detest ovens with membrane switches where you have to sit there and like hold your finger on a membrane switch to set a number, for

[10:44] instance. I have an oven that every freaking time I turn it on. It comes on at 350 and yet, like 90 times out of 100. I'm using it as a warming oven for stuff that's coming off and so I'm punching it down to 170 instantly. This is Fahrenheit. Sorry, Chris. But the, uh, but you know what I'm saying? It's like, I detest that whole strategy of control. So I also makes me nervous to take controls and indicators completely off of the machine, but what has your reaction been so far with your beta people on this? Are they mostly not old folks? You know, it was, I think, even when we 1st started really exploring taking the controls off the device. It was a, you know, certainly a controversial discussion even within chef steps, but the more we started testing it, the more we started realizing what we were able to deliver in terms of the user experience on an app,

[11:35] the more confident we got. And the funny thing is, we kind of expected a lot of people when we just sort of gave it to them and said, hey, turn this on and use it, you know,

[11:44] why we kind of stand around and watch them. We kind of expected a lot of people to ask, you know, where the controls, where's the on button? And like, it got asked, but very quickly, they didn't

[11:55] care. And it just was very natural. And in terms of how quickly they figured out how to use it and what it did and the way they discovered some of the benefits, we've become really convinced that people are going to love

[12:07] it. Um, it, it, you know, it is going to be a bit different, but this is the direction things are going and

[12:12] somebody's really got to be 1st um, to take this plunge and that's going to be us. Now, it's Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, correct? It is both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi because there's pros and cons to both. We're able to deliver a much more reliable seamless pairing experience with Bluetooth. You just need to bring your phone near to it, and we use proximity to basically know what you're trying to pair with and

[12:36] judge which phones controlling the device. But if you want to be out at the store, if you want to remotely turn the device on before you come home. If you want to get a notification of that your waters reach temperature where your food is done while you're out in the yard playing with your kids, Wi-Fi is much better for that. So we included both, because we don't think the user actually cares about the technology. All they really care about is the experience working flawlessly and seamlessly. Now, is there any sort of like nod to old people like me, like, is there any visual representation from across the kitchen that you've reached temperature or do you have to just have your phone up?

[13:16] Do I have to just accept this? No, you do need a way of indicating that it's on, that it's working, that it's cooking away, and that's where we have, we do have an

[13:24] indicator, LED, that very simply sort of breathes to let you know that it's

[13:29] cooking, and at a glance, you can tell that it's at the temperature and that everything's fine. Oh, thank God. I'm a mortar and pestle guy. I only use a mortar and pestle. old school. Well, luckily for you, you can use it by yourself as passé because you believe... You can use this as a pestle. You know, you create heat that way. stainless steel parts. I'm not going to stop you from using Jewel as the pestle. Yeah, yeah. And it's got a little indent in the top so you could put your thumb on it and to get good leverage while you use the bottom end as a pestle.

[13:56] So it's sturdy. Oh, yeah. It's unbelievably solid. And that was one of the real goals that if in fact, it's totally sealed. I've at least, on 2 occasions, over my career, dropped an immersion circulator into a water bath, both times at a very inconvenient

[14:13] time, since I had to serve like a dinner, most recently at a wedding party. And you shorted it out. So, you know, accidents are going to happen. you know, the kitchen is covered in goo. So we entirely sealed the jewel up so that if it falls into the water, nothing bad's going to happen. It's just going to keep working. And that was actually a really big engineering challenge because that meant we had to get all of the waste heat into the water rather than having a

[14:40] way to ventilate it into the air. So that was one of the real big challenges, but it ultimately actually made us much more energy efficient when we achieved

[14:48] that so that we actually preheat the water faster because all of the waste heat is also going into the water.

[14:53] Right now, now, you don't recommend it, I assume, but you could make a hot tub with this. Sorry, I didn't. I said, you don't recommend it, but you could, like, there's no shock ability here. It's like, is it med grade isolation? Can I use this for a hot tub heater if I wanted to? You absolutely could. You know, those are certification requirements and just good engineering requirements. We built the thing to be safe, durable, and basically a professional grade tool. Now, here's the last one because I know that, like, you can't possibly, because I don't know if anyone makes plugs for this, but if the plug could be certified, could you certify

[15:30] for dishwasher? Um, yeah, I don't know anybody that makes plugs with it. If you throw it in the dishwasher, I don't think anything bad would happen. That's not a test I've done, but having been intimately involved in engineering

[15:43] this, The sanitation cycle, um, you know, uh, I really don't think anything bad would happen. I guess I'm going to have to try that. I just don't think the, the, any standard plug, plug that I know of is certified to be immersed for that long in. Yeah, no, right now there's probably one of our liability lawyers listening to this radio show just completely like ripping their hair out. Now, I'll hear about it later. That's what I'm for. But, you know, it's not going to fail. And in fact, that was one of the other things is the way we engineered the heater. There's no nooks and crannies. You're not going to need to put it in the dishwasher to wipe it clean because there's nowhere for goo to stick.

[16:23] So you're saying nook and cranny advantage for a Thomas's English muffin, but not so much for a circulator? Yeah. Uh, and uh, cleaning. I actually saw the one of the beta units last

[16:36] week and you can unscrew the bottom that Patrick is

[16:40] going to use for a pestle. By the way, clockwise only as you're pestling or you'll unscrew the base, by the way, right? I mean, uh, the, the, but will you undo it and you can pull the, uh, the, uh, impeller out similar to like an aquarium pump motor, right? Yep. And then the inside of the heater is just a seamless stainless steel polished tube. You can stick a sponge in there and just wipe the surface clean if anything were to scald onto the eater. All right. Take us through an £18 turkey process. How what's the breakdown? We'll go through that in a sec. If Chris has time. I know he's like announcing everything. We'll keep him on, but let's just finish the business here first. Like they, uh, wait, I had. Oh, and the part of the reason that you can sell it for reasonable prices that you guys decided to go big. You think you're going to sell a lot of these things, right? Well, to do the things we wanted to do, you really had to make a commitment to mass production. I mean, there's parts that are ultrasonically welded. You're going to start forging massive amounts of stainless steel. Um, you know, to make a real consumer product like that, you have to make a bet that, that people are going to want it, um, and that you're going to sell enough of them to justify, you know, your investments into robots

[17:46] and, and, uh, massive production tools. And by robot, you don't mean that you're just buying a bunch of Roomas. No, I mean, this thing has been designed to be mostly assembled in a very automated way.

[17:59] And that's so that the thing's reliable. You know, you want everyone to have a great experience, and it turns out, you're going to get a better result if you let robots do most of the manufacturing. Nice. All right, and if we pre-order it now, when do we get it? We are shipping in May. Okay, and what's the, what do you, what's the pre-order cost versus what you have to pay if you wait like a chump? So if you're already a shaft steps premium member, which is a $19 one-time fee, and I think a lot of people on your show probably are, they're going to pay $180 between today and January 15th. To anybody else, it's

[18:34] 199 and we include a chef steps premium in there. And again, like, you don't ever pay again. It's once. Um, and then uh, after that, retail price will be $2.99. So that's a substantial discount, yeah. Yep. You know, like, we're building these for people in our community. We want chef steps, community members to have a better cooking experience. So they're the people that got us to this point. We're going to make sure we take care of them. All right, and can you stick around, even though you're announcing a lot, or do you have to run and do the next press thing? I am happy to stick around if there are questions about jewel or turkey or anything else related to the kitchen? I'm happy to commit. Alright, let's do it. We got Patrick Martin's here. Purveyor of heritage turkeys. Are you the largest heritage turkey purveyor in the country? Depends how you define heritage, but of the true American poultry association

[19:24] poultry? Yes. So who is it that sells what you consider to be Trump heritage turkeys that is bigger? Well, I wouldn't say who, but they are various degrees of heritage. And actually, we're looking forward to the USDA enforcing breed claims. Best smartest people were the Berkshire people. A lot of cow people do it too. They just breed in certain physical traits that make it immediately recognizable, like a

[19:48] 6 spotted Berkshire, 6 white spots on the tip of the feet, nose, and tail. That certifies that it's a pure Berkshire. All right, now, I will tell you how I'm doing my turkey this year. And Chris, you see what you think on this. Actually, I have a test right now. I bought a regular turkey leg. So, you know, I'm a big fan of uh, of making the bird look like it's a whole bird because I'm an American and anyone who doesn't make it look like a whole

[20:10] bird. Somehow it's not very American. You with me on this, Chris? I'm with you. Yeah, the guy, see how to look like a bird. This is something that a French person can't possibly understand. Norman Rockwell is an American, yeah. The Northern Rockwell and Turkey. Yeah, he's got to be like, and the other thing is, is that, uh, you know, you'd like it if all the different things are done at the at the right thing. So the simplest way, in my estimation, to do it, the way I've been doing it

[20:35] is I will, well, the last time or 2 is I will do a simple debone where I cut down the back, rip out the

[20:43] bones. I actually leave, I think, the leg bones in, and then inject, uh, turkey,

[20:49] uh, turkey stock brine into the breast meat and just kind of rub salt

[20:54] over, and then drape it over a plug of very hot stuffing and then throw that in the oven at high temperature so it cooks from inside out. And frankly, that's only an additional like 45 minutes of work for the cook and it cooks unbelievably fast because you're cooking it from both sides. So that's kind of what I would recommend for anyone who's not going to, do you have any problems with that technique, Chris, for someone who's not going to go through all the trouble of low temping the whole turkey? Yeah, I mean, if you're not going to low temp, but that's a great way to do it. It's better than, like, I've also had, like, in the old days, like when I had once where the turkey was bad, and I had to rush

[21:31] out. We didn't have the time. and so this is a long time ago. This is like maybe in the 90s, like early 90s. And, uh, literally, we were like, what are we going to do? I was like, I'll tell you what you're going to do. You're gonna go buy a turkey. I'm going to spatchcock that sucker, break it open, cook it flat on a

[21:47] rack, and then kind of squeeze it back into bird shape for Thanksgiving. And you know what? It was not a bad was a good turkey. You know what I'm saying? Because spreading the turkey out like that or heating it from both sides. is already a big win in terms of time. Um, this year, what I'm doing is I'm going to uh, do the same thing. I'm going to bone it on the back, then I'm going to rip, leaving the skin intact. I am going to rip the legs and thighs out of the bird, and I am then going to confit said skinless thighs and legs. Low temp the breasts and skin like an Edgar suit kind of a thing, and then chill it all down, jam the

[22:24] confit legs and thighs back into the bird casing, drape that sucker over the plug of

[22:31] stuffing. And then I think I'm gonna do... I gonna try to do two. I'm going to try to do one in the tandor for finishing and one in a deep fryer. What do you think, Chris? You think this is a good plan? It's a good plan. I can't help but just listen to you and think you would have made a phenomenal torturer

[22:45] in the in the uh mid uh medieval era. Yeah, well, possibly. But you're going to rip the bird apart. I'm going to rip the legs off, cook them at a low temperature. You take a lot of glee in that, but that sounds like a good plan. Well, whenever I'm doing live demos, which I haven't done a live demo of like breaking down poultry in a long time, but back when I used to teach at the

[23:08] FCI. And I think one of the things I used to have to do is I forget what I, but one of the demos that I would always have to do for the students is I'd be breaking chickens

[23:16] down. I think showing them how to go all the way boneless, like you know, break it down. Not Jacques Papan style. He has his own way. Anyway, people, some people would always get discon, a little disconcerted because when I'm demonstrating how to remove the thigh from the

[23:31] body. I always kind of indicate on my own body, if I don't have a chicken with me, kind of where the knife should

[23:37] go, and people are like, oh, oh, you know what I mean? I'm like, but yeah, it's like, you know, it's an animal. You breaking it down, you know? Is there a difference in technique between hens and toms, like nine, £10 birds, you know, especially with the sous vide machines? Oh, that's a good question. I've never cooked that small of a, I don't think I've ever cooked that small of a bird. What do you think, Chris? You ever gone very small on these things? Yeah, um, actually, that's probably about the size I'll be cooking. I'm going to be cooking a £10 heritage turkey myself and what I'll be doing. I'm expecting it to be about 5 hours in the sous vide

[24:13] bath and then I'll pull it out and give it a couple more hours in my smoker. Are you bagging it or are you breaking it? Um, I'll probably bag it. I'm not going to split it down. I'm going to keep it whole and then I'll hang it from its legs so that the weight of the bird sort of stretches itself out while it's in my

[24:31] smoker. Are you going to fill the cavity with anything while it's cooking just so that, or like, how are you going to make up for the compression? Are you going to do zip like a large zippy? like they make those big zippies. Like, what do you? You know, usually I can just sort of wad up some parchment, paper, plastic and sort of stuff it in there. Um, I, I, I, I will put the stuffing um, in the smoker and and have the juices drip onto it. That's when I'll introduce the stuffing. Nice. Now what temperature are you going to cook it to? Uh, I, so, you know, this is always the compromise because, you know, you're not just cooking for

[25:04] yourself and I really don't want to, you know, hear complaints from the rest of the family.

[25:09] So I think I'm going to end up at about 150 Fahrenheit. What's that in Celsius? That's about what, 65? Yeah. USDA claims it has to be 165. So that's, that's just wrong. 10 degrees well, yeah. That's just wrong. Yeah. I mean, it all depends on time and temperature, but let's not get let's not get started. Let's not get started. Yeah, we can go on a whole rant on this. Let's not let's not start. let's not start with this But it's, you know, it's an interesting question. The temperature you cook it too. It is so it is so personal, but on Turkey, I would much rather, if I was going to choose one temperature, shoot for the minimum temperature that's not going to piss people off on the dark

[25:50] meat rather than trying to hit the optimum temperature on the breast. I mean, that's a good choice. a good call. My answer to it is the 2nd you cut into the meat and the juice runs clear. Within 10 seconds of that. You were never allowed on that microphone again, Patrick. Never. Never. Who cooks like that? Well, Nastasia comes from a long line of turkey overcookers. Not you personally, right, Stas? But like, how did, like, you say in your household, it was as soon as no more juices ran, that's when you knew the turkey was done. It's like right before the turkey catches on fire. Yes. Yeah. You know, you know what's interesting? I haven't spoken to Jeffrey Steingarten in a while, but I think he tried to do one once in a self-cleaning oven, but I couldn't get the interlock off. I think. I don't know. That is not going to end well. No, you have to defeat the interlock before you hit self-clean. That's like, hey, listen, no one out there listening to us. Don't go and defeat the interlock on yourself cleaning oven. At least don't say that I told you to do it. Do you clean your pans in self-cleaning ovens? I'm so lazy that like when I get like an aluminum baking sheet. Like, the other day, I did a bunch of a whole fish, right? And I had a bunch of drip downs and then they got all burnt onto the baking sheet. I was like, to hell with it. I just cook the stuff in the self-cleaning oven. Am I too lazy or is that like okay? No, I think that's being smart. Yeah, right? Who likes cleaning crap off of those things? Not me. Don't do it, don't do it to your cast. Do not do it to your cast iron. Do not do it to your Teflon. Hey, Tim's got a question in the chat room for Chris. He wants Chris to recommend the max capacity container that he would recommend. Oh, yeah, and give us the wad that he bought it. on the jewel. So for the jewel? Yeah. I presume. So, you know, with these things, it's always dependent on how well insulated your vessel is, but with a

[27:43] typical poorly insulated pot, I'd be very comfortable recommending up to 10

[27:49] gallons. So almost 40 liters. If you're using a well-insulated vessel, like a Coleman cooler, then you're going to get away with a lot more. I, I, you know, I personally heated up 70 plus liters in a Coleman cooler with an even lower powered unit. So you're not going to have any problems. Um, you know, at some point how big you need to be. In terms of actual power, the rated heating power is 1100 watts. And remember, over 99% of our power actually goes into the water, which is unusual. The more important thing is like, that's about 25% faster at preheating water than the competition.

[28:28] Right, just so everyone knows, like there are actually lower powered units now on the market. But for years, the industry standard as like as developed by like, you know, Philip Preston's original poly-science models,

[28:40] it's 750 watts of heating, roughly 750 watts of heating power,

[28:43] uh, was the norm. But the other important thing, and people don't think about this, uh, is how aggressive the PID programming

[28:51] is, because you can make, you can make something like laboratory style, which means 0 overshoot allowed, or you can go aggressive, which is kind of better for

[29:01] cooks and you'll get like a couple of tense overshoot, but it'll quickly settle out on you.

[29:05] I assuming you went more aggressive, right? Uh, yeah, we, we absolutely teen to, uh, uh, tuned it to be very, very aggressive. Yeah, which is better for cooks. I mean don't let anyone tell you any different. Anyone that says any different is just wrong. Usually I'm very nice about things like this, but anyone who says anything differently other than other than you should go on the aggressive side and allow the couple of tents overshoot, they're just not correct.

[29:27] Yeah, no, it's a better user. I mean, most people, it's just how fast can I get this water preheated and we set up to make it as fast as possible. And our limiting factor is ultimately down to UL certification. The power cord has to get absolutely huge once you go over 10 amps of power. So that's why you're not going to see any real domestic circulator delivering more than about 1100 watts. Right. Yeah, you're allowed, you're allowed 1500 watts total draw on a plug for normal to do normal stuff. And that's why that's why hair drivers are the AR. why everything's the way it is, right? Yeah, and then it goes down to how thick do you want your power cord and you've got to allow tolerances for not everybody's voltage is what it's supposed to be, but

[30:14] um-ba-dum-ba-dum. So, like, technically speaking, I would, you know, have loved to make it even more powerful and there's no reason we couldn't have made the heater more powerful. It's down to certification agencies. Hey, buy two, throw them in. Okay. Caller, too. Oh, oh, all right. Caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, this is D from New York. I ran into in the bar yesterday. Hey, nice. How you doing? Well, thanks. Um, so my question is, uh, I still have to say hi to everyone

[30:42] else on the Nastasia and Jack and uh, Chris from, from the chest course. I'm very excited about the jewel. So my question is unrelated, unfortunately, to Thanksgiving or circulation. But in executing the will of a, unfortunately, disused old family friend, I've come across some old bottles of alcohol, like a champagne, a dot bottle of Don Perignon from the '60s, and a

[31:04] takai, like, maybe the fetus variety of takai, like, Noble Rock wine from the '70s. Nice. And I think they're both, I don't know if any, if they're, um, good at all. The wine looks like, and the champagne looks like it's probably flat and might have some sediment in it that may even be, like, quirk residue. Well, I was wondering if you haven't any ideas what to do with it or... Okay, where was it stored? Where was it stored? Uh, I think it was stored in the dark, but it's really been long enough that, you know, at room temperature, but it's been long

[31:36] enough that I'm not confident. But it wasn't, was it in a basement? Was it in a cool room temperature situation? Uh, Probably in a closet, uh, or a cupboard. for probably most of the time, but... Like a high cupboard? Like a high cupboard? Please, not a high cupboard. Please tell me it was not a high cupboard. Yeah, yeah, because a little known fact, people don't think about your high cupboards in your kitchen are much, much, much hotter than your low cupboards are.

[32:03] And in general, high cupboards much hotter than low cupboards. But, um, yeah, well, here's some more questions for you. The eulage on the wines, do they look like fairly normal or has there been a lot

[32:15] of liquid lost? It doesn't seem like there's been any liquid loss in the Takai, and there may be some in the champagne, but I haven't compared it against another bottle to

[32:25] know. It does look like it's pretty flat, though. Well, it's hard to tell if they're sealed, right? It is, yeah, they're both still sealed. You have exactly 2 options. Drink it with some very good friends and then have an experience or sell it. These are the only 2 options. Now, I, uh, my stepfather has a similar problem because he's the owner of some uh,

[32:49] 85 uh, uh, Roman A Conti. And this bottle of wine that he has is worth, I think, it's over 10 grand now. It's like, so it's, it's, you know, to me, it would be impossible to drink it, but on the other hand, for him, since it's not replicatable,

[33:05] it would be impossible not to drink it. So he's put himself in a situation where it's not possible to not drink it. In your situation, though, since you don't necessarily know how the storage is. I don't know what the price is going to be. Chris, do you have any experience with this kind of stuff? Uh, not a lot. I'm actually kind of enjoying learning something here from you, Dave. Uh, but the, so, like, I know, for instance, you know, my my stepfather stuff's been kept, like, in a super temperature controlled kind of

[33:33] seller environment for sense, it was new since 85. Um, and so like his stuff has maintained his value if he wanted to auction except for he did what, they did once have a flood, which put a watermark on some of the labels, which, you know, doesn't hurt the wine, but

[33:47] like freaks some people out. So I don't really know. And I don't know what the market, what year is the, uh, Don Perry? is it vintage or not vintage? Uh, it has a year on it, if that's what you mean. I think it's 62. I don't know anything about years on champagne, but if it's a vintage champagne, there are people who, all they like to do is go drink vintage champagnes, and so if it's been kept in fairly decent condition, you at least have yourself like an amazing party to have with your friends, but at the very least, something like that, you should get

[34:19] like a serious on a file in, and there are, I, you know, I don't frequent them, but there are lots of wine discussions where someone can tell you, 1st of all, on champagne,

[34:28] obviously. Uh, uh, obviously, you know, Nastasia's interest is peaked. But, uh, you know, they don't make a vintage champagne, and they won't put a year on the champagne unless they thought it was going to be a good aging

[34:41] uh, bottle. Uh, the sweet wine. You're probably going to have really, I think you might have really good luck on the sweet wine too, since a lot of those will have very, very long aging potential.

[34:53] It's simply a matter of, uh, the temperature and the conditions in which it's kept. But if you ha if your eulage is good, you know, if the if the air gap in the bottle is good, you have a good shot. You know what I mean? Yeah, I'm not so worried about the, the, the, the, the tokai, and I think, uh, you know, I'm, I think people tend to overestimate the impact

[35:15] of, of the storage temperature too. I think fluctuations in the temperature that are actually the bigger deal, but I think

[35:23] of Tookai like, is going to probably be very drinkable. Yeah, I mean, the oldest champagne I've ever had was a good

[35:33] bit. I mean, in terms of like actual time since it was bottled to when it was,

[35:38] I I've had them from the early 80s, I think, but I've never

[35:42] had, so that's, and that was last year. So that's, uh, but you're talking a good 20 years older than that. I'm sure it, I'm sure, look, I'm sure it has that. I'm sure it has value. You might want to sell it. Um, And if you live in New York, I mean, there are laws about it, but there's also a lot of wine dealers who won't necessarily pay attention to the law.

[36:03] Like, there are some states where you're allowed to sell the wine back to the same person you bought it from, but nobody keeps

[36:09] records, so nobody knows. You know what I mean? But I don't know what the value is on that. You'd have to go look it up. You know what, though? I look at something like wine seeker or something like that to try to find out. Yeah, you know what else I would do? If I were you. New Year's or whatever is, it depends. Like, don't open this in the presence of a bunch of like, you know, like, like swill masters who are just gonna like, you know, pound this stuff like it. Well, what you do is in a situation like that. Yeah, you need Oh, yeah. Well, that's I tell people that all the time. Your 1st step is to go get different friends. The 2nd thing you should do is buy a backup bottle of

[36:44] decent, but not crazy stuff, whatever you can afford to have, right? And I take Chris's suggestion of mind. Tokai is going to be fine. The champagne has a good chance of being sublime, but read up on drinking old

[36:57] champagne, so you know what to expect and what to get. And then have a backup bottle so that if you have a bottle of swill on your hands, you always have a backup,

[37:05] then nobody's ever going to be unhappy with that. Chris, what do you think about that? I think you should never have the regret that you never had enough champagne in your life.

[37:13] Bingo. Bingo. All right. Well, listen, here's what you're going to do. You're going to decide whether you're going to sell it. You're going to look up the price. You're gonna decide whether you're going to sell it, or whether out of deference to, you know, your past relative, that you're going to drink it and have a good time, and you're going to call us back after the event, and you're going to let us know what happened. All right? All right, now, cool. one more question that's Thanksgiving and Chris related. Okay, okay, on the line. Call her, you're on the air. Hello, hey everybody, this is Steve from Indianapolis. So my question, 1st of all, regarding the circulator and the centrifuge coming out, shut up and take my money. Wow, nice. Thank you. And no problem. Uh, and and secondly, um, I'm a, I'm a med student in Indianapolis right now, and I'm actually involved in a food, uh, kind of like a food education program for not only the med students, but the local

[38:09] community. Um, how, what is the easiest, like, sous vide recipe that you would say to kind of get people on board with circulators because I'm, uh, I'm trying to, uh, I'm trying to say like, hey, it's the best kind of slow cooker for, uh, like amazing meats and things like that. You can do really cheap cuts of meat and things like that. So, um, I'm just trying to, to consider how to present it and I just wanted some suggestions. Chris what do you got? Well, I think a couple things. I think one of the things I I like, people who aren't familiar with sous vide. I don't find it super helpful to call it like a slow cooker, partly because of the slow cooker, you always get the same stewed texture. I mean, that's what a slow cooker does. You get you get stewed food. Um, and and with sous vide cooking or an immersion circulator, you know, you can have just basically

[38:58] awesome uh, food in of any sort of texture and style. For me, usually what convinces people is either like a perfectly cooked piece of fish. So maybe, you know, out here in Seattle, it would have to be salmon, that, you know,

[39:14] you cook sous vide and then lightly pan sear it so that, you know, it's perfect. It's, you know, delicious, it's approachable. And, you know, what what sous vide really does is take away the fear and risk that you're going to ruin a piece of fish.

[39:29] A lot of people, in my experience, are pretty intimidated with cooking fish, which is healthy and delicious. Or the other thing that I think is always great is giving them a pork chop that's cooked at a proper temperature. I mean, most people have never had a good pork chop. Everything they've had has just been ruined because of silly USDA recommendations that

[39:50] aren't scientifically sound. So you take a pork chop at, cook it at 60 Celsius. Don't overcook it when you sear it. finish it on the grill, finish in a pan, and that, you know, you know, people will be a little freaked out, like, is it okay for the pork to be a little pink in the center,

[40:06] but, you know, it's amazing. You never knew pork could be that good. Well, here's an interesting point. If you're going to do 60, 60 is fine. If, like, there's a, there's, there's 2 ways, there's always 2 ways to, well, many, but like 2 main ways is I'm going to pull it right from the

[40:22] circulator. I'm going to sear it, or I'm going to drop it for a while if you see it. I think 60 is good if you're going to do like a relatively quick finish sear on it out of the bath. I would go a degree or degree, like a degree or a degree and a half maybe even higher if you were going to drop the pork chops down to like 50 or 55 and then ride them before

[40:46] you, before you see them at the end. Do you agree or disagree, Chris? Yeah, no, I think that's reasonable. Yeah. Uh, like when I have

[40:54] med students over, just trying to convince people that this thing is really good. Um, I've been doing chicken breast 6263 so that I can, um, kind of not have it be as intimidating. Uh, but uh, yeah, I like that idea a lot. Here's what I wouldn't do. So like some of the special effect textures on things. Like, people aren't ready to wrap their minds around the fact that it's different. So like, one of the classic things people do 1st is like a short rib. And I think short ribs done, low temp are delicious. However, they're not the same as what people expect from an actual braised

[41:30] short rib. And if you go into it thinking what I'm about to have is a braised short rib, then the sous vide one will come up short because it won't have the same kind of intense meatiness that a traditional braise is

[41:42] going to have. Neither will the texture be what they associate. So most of the time, if you're handing someone who's thinking in their

[41:49] mind traditional short rib, a low temp one, and a traditional braise, and you serve them in the style of a traditional braise rather than as something different and new, most people will choose the

[42:00] old-fashioned. And so like, that's what I would not do. Okay, excellent. Yeah. I mean, I've been presenting it as a slow cricket because I didn't necessarily know what to say otherwise, but no, I like this a lot. This is really good. I'll recommend one that we've found is really popular. If you're doing chicken. We have a smoker-less smoked chicken breast on chef steps, um, that's done with souveed and a smoky brine, and uh, it'll, you know, most people absolutely love it and can't believe it didn't come out of the

[42:29] smoker. Is that the liquid smoke? It does use some of the liquid smoke. Okay, excellent. excellent. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, guys. All right, run out of time, Dave. All right, I got to rip these guys some questions real quick. I gotta get to it. This is from John Baker in Dallas, Texas. I want to get to it before we go out. They says measurement of flour. It has become common wisdom that volumetric measurement of flour is not the most accurate method due to variances in the packing of flour

[42:54] particles. Measurement by weight is the answer to the problem. true. But how much of an impact does the moisture content of the flower have on weight? I'm not a food professional, but I've never heard anybody make reference to humidity

[43:04] in the flower throwing off their recipe. Maybe it's an immaterial difference in the end. Okay, since I don't have time to go too deep into it. Thank God someone else has done it. And everyone, he doesn't get enough props, but this guy, Greg Blonder, has a website called

[43:18] genuine ideas, which I think is quite nice. Do you like this one, Chris? Do you been that to that blog? Maybe I lost Chris. And he says, brilliant, smart things. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so you're going to go look at him. He has one on flower where he has done all of the measurements, and the answer basically is that in the normal range of humidity inside of a

[43:40] house, flower is fairly stable. And if you go into like rainforest. It suddenly starts absorbing more water, and if you go into extremely, extremely dry conditions, it will suddenly give up a lot of water, but that it's actually fairly stable in the range that it's mostly

[43:56] kept. But you need to go look at what he says. Your 2nd question is, temperature of frying oil. Standard procedure for frying is to bring the fry oil up to a given temperature before adding the food. Let's say 350 or a 375. After adding the food, the oil temperature will, of course, drop and rise again as the vessel is heated. Given that the temperature the oil drops immediately after the food is added, is because of the heat energy of the oil using to boil water, phase

[44:19] change, as opposed to a linear heating for the food above the boiling point of water.

[44:24] wouldn't it be more accurate to specify frying parameters on the heat content of the oil rather than the

[44:29] temperature? In other words, 2 gallons of oil at 350 would contain far greater thermal energy than 2 quarts at

[44:34] 375? Best John Baker. You're 100% right. And that's why anyone who has a brain in their head will use as much oil as is feasible when they're

[44:44] frying, to get a higher, better stability, and that you have to jack the temperature of lower volumes of oil higher. And that's why one of the many reasons why frying at home is often not as satisfying as having a professional deep fryer. Yeah, you mean right, Chris? You agree with that? I totally, absolutely correct. And, you know, I generally advocate actually, since you're almost always at home using very fresh new oil, which tends to be more stable and has a higher smoke

[45:12] point because you haven't, you know, abused it yet, run the oil hotter. You know, 200 Celsius is easily doable by a reasonable frying oil like canola,

[45:22] even 210, and you'll be shocked at how much better your fried food is. And just use lots of it. And Aaron has a question that Chris needs to weigh in on because it's a technique. We gotta be done. Okay, well, 2 seconds, 2 seconds. Last year I did a meat glued turduck and breast low for Thanksgiving, and since each year must be a new challenge. I want add a layer of chicharron on the outside of my poultry role this year. I was thinking that I would do 3 birds, meat glued together wearing a jacket of pork skin. Here's the process. I hope it might work. What do you think? Boil scrape and dry the pigskin in the oven, roll the breasts up, wrapped in pigskin with meat glue and let it set in the fridge overnight, low temp the whole thing, then dry the skin as much as possible, and then deep fry

[45:58] it and hope the pork skin is dry enough to get poofy and crackly. Will they already boiled pork skin, have enough proteins free for the enzymatic action of the transcutaminates? Yes. Do you think it will be dry enough after sitting in the bag to get delicious and crunchy and puffy? Crunchy? Yes, puffy no. What do you think? Definitely not. And I would strongly recommend you grind your pork skin so that it's small

[46:17] pieces the size of popcorn kernels. You will be much happier with the results. Sawing through the puff chucharone will not be as delicious as you think. I want to just chime in here with the public service announcement. I saw Dave run through Bushwick to get to this show. He ran 2 blocks and I have it on video. I think Jack's going to put it on Facebook. It's on Instagram running 2 minutes, 2 blocks for the show and it showed commitment. And I'm on the board of directors of HRN and we are now $30,000 towards our goal of raising

[46:46] $100,000 by the end of the year. And if you love Dave, consider, we just got $10,000 from the Mariposa Foundation, which is a real honor,

[46:54] Aaron just pulled that off. So consider giving even $25 membership counts and if we could get all of

[47:00] Dave's listeners to give $25, we'd reach our goal. And huge thank you to Kevin Scott, who actually gave us 500 bucks. Nice. dedicated to cooking issues. Nice. show on the network. Listen, thanks to our guests. Everyone happy Thanksgiving. We'll see you next time on cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes

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