[0:00] Today's program was brought to you by the Christmas Tree Farmers Association of New York, partnering with

[0:05] Grow NYC on a pilot project to make farm fresh trees and wreaths available at green markets. For more information, visit Christmastrees and Y.org. I'm Greg Blaze, host of Cutting the Kurd. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwood, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:31] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live on Heritage Radio Network from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick. Uh, joined uh, every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 or so, joined, as usual, with uh, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Stas? Good. And we got Rebecca live tweeting over there in the booth with Jack Insley, Jackie Molecules, our intrepid engineer. How you doing, guys? Sorry, we're good. I can't believe we're so on time today. It's miraculous. Well, in order to get me here on time, you have to get me flying in from the passport office in Stanford, Connecticut, which we can talk about in a

[1:10] bit, but special guest

[1:13] in the studio today. Harold Muggy. That's right. That's right. He's here. I didn't give you any advance notice because I only want Die Hard fans to be able to call in to 718-497-2128. That is, and I will say it at a reasonable pace this time, 718, uh, 497-2128. Is that even right? Because I can't do it slowly. Is that right? Anyway So calling your questions to Harold McGee. I mean, probably you should keep them to a kind of a cooking related kind of a theme,

[1:51] but you know, it's up to you. You know, he's pretty open. Harold is in town because he is going to do a talk at the

[1:59] museum of food and drink lab on 62 Bayard Street this week on Thursday, right? Thursday. What time is it? And I believe you can still, I don't know if it's probably sold out, but, you know, don't listen to me. Go on the on the Mofad website and look up I think under the program. You can see, and what are you going to be talking about? Um, stuff. Peter, Kim and I, Peter, the director of the museum and I are going to just kind of chat about flavor and then take questions from the

[2:29] audience. So flavor, you're for it or against it? Mostly for it. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting. There is an anti-flavor thing going on now. It's kind of like that goes part of the theme of sugar, salt, fat, whatever order that is, plus, you know, the Dorito effect, basically,

[2:48] chiding, chiding corporations on their pernicious inclusion of those addicting flavors into food.

[2:57] So you're not part of the anti-flavor. No, it kind of makes sense, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if I was a corporation, which I guess, Stas, we are kind of a corporate. We're an LLC. We're not a mega corporation though. We're not we're not hated yet for our... are in LLC. Well, me, me personally. I have a, but Booker and Dax is an LSA. Booking Dax is an LLC. Yeah. But we're not like a mega corporation. People can't hate us for that yet. We don't have like corporate hegemony yet. You haven't reached kind of that Monsanto level yet, right? We're not, you know, mucking about with whole cultures. yet. Uh, the, so anyways, so the, uh, where are they going with this? So yeah, so you, I mean, obviously corporations want to make stuff taste better for people. I mean, it seems obvious. Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah, and you would expect them to do that. So... All right, I have a question, actually, that I know you have thoughts on from last week, unless you have something super

[3:58] pressing. I have last week's questions. I have Twitter questions for you. All right, let me tackle this one. This is in from, actually, family member of mine, Brady Huggett. Just wanted us to comment on the whole Aquabest, uh, Aquabest. Is that the name of the corporation? The salmon, the genetically engineered salmon that just got approved and the people who vow

[4:18] to uh vow to squash it. Do you want to talk about that or do you want to leave it untalked about? Do you not want to dip your toes into the water of genetically engineered salmon? Perhaps I should tell people what it is first. It's a salmon that's been, um, I believe, uh,

[4:34] they, they've basically taken, uh, and made it, I don't know whether it's an addition or a deletion of a gene. I haven't researched enough. An addition from fish called the pout. The pout. Wow, it's a nicely, does it look pouty, the fish? Is it named for its look? I've never beholden a pot pout. Yeah. Well, it's like kind of the poorly named. It's pronounced crappy, but written crappy. Which why would you want to name a fish crappy? Anyway, so it grows, it grows faster, has better feed conversion ratio than ordinary salmon, right? And so, what are your thoughts on it? My thought is, I've been following this now for, what, 15 years or something like that, that they 1st put the gene in the fish and began to talk about

[5:24] this. I'm amazed that they're still able to have a proposal in front of the

[5:32] FDA, and I'm a kind of fascinated bystander. I don't have strong feelings one way or the other. I think it's important to make sure that fish that have been engineered don't get out into the world at large. I can't see how a fish engineered in this particular way is going to be a problem for human consumers. So I want to see what happens. Yeah, there's been a lot of, um, there's been a lot of bad information, uh, out there on it. Um, the, you know, one of the interesting things is that uh, uh, the fear is that you're going to have a, uh, an American

[6:09] cray. one of the fears is that you're going to have like an American crayfish kind of a situation where these salmon get out there, start inner breeding

[6:16] with, you know, the regular salmon, and then all hell breaks loose and you get these fast growing salmon that are clogging up, I guess this is one of the, you know,

[6:25] we lose. Yeah, right? I mean, that's the that's the fear. So for those of you that don't know, what happened is they, um,

[6:34] These fish are sterile. They're only releasing one sex of fish, female, and those females are, believe it's female, and those females are sterile. So they're not able to have baby fish, right? So that's supposed to get around the thing. Stats, when was the last time you saw Jurassic Park? It been a long time. Those were also supposed to be sterile, right? Now, remember, this is a movie written from a book by a guy who's now dead. But does anyone remember how it is that the Jurassic Park, anyone? Harold, do you remember that? Rebecca, Jack, you remember how that worked? been too long. Maybe someone can tweet in how, in a fictional account, the sterility of the

[7:14] tomannosaurus rex, whatever it was, or the, no, velociraptor, I believe it was, in this case, how that was, how that life will find a way, as Jeff Goldblum

[7:22] said, in one of his more irritating roles. Anyways, the point is, is that they're engineered to be sterile. And some of the people who are against this fish. Uh, basically are, they point out a,

[7:37] an, uh, a study that was done that proves, proves that this fish can actually interbreed with regular fish, and so

[7:46] the, the fish was supplied to them by the, you know, by the company that makes them. However, they supplied them with genetically engineered, yet non-sterile fish, specifically for this study. So the study, the study was to show that if you didn't have a sterilized fish, could it interbreed with the regular wild population of

[8:09] brown trout and salmon? Because they're worried about the brown trout, because remember these are being raised inland. So the question is, is can this salmon hybridize with inland, like lake and

[8:21] river, brown trout, should it, like, make it out into the thing? And they found out, yes, it can, if they were, if they were not sterilized. And albeit only poorly, even in that case. And yet this is, you know, touted as being, you know, how, you know, they, that, that there's, you know,

[8:38] there's, that somehow, uh, that it's possible for the ones that they're going to raise to go out into the wild. you read this stuff? Yes, yes. Yeah. So it seems pretty ironclad, but I'm glad that there are people out there, you know, pushing, making sure for the rest of us. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but but what I don't like is just like the false, like the falseness of, uh, leaving out important details. Yes, like the fish that they tested that could interbreed only poorly actually weren't the fish that people are actually raising, they were, they were, they had a, you know, whatever, whatever. It's just people, like, it's very hard to get, you know, any good information on either side.

[9:20] All right. So, uh, you want to do some Twitter questions or are we going to do? right. So Nut Milk King wants to know, Dave, any thoughts or info on dry aging turkey? Best duck I had was at EMP, and it was aged for a week. That a different meat, obviously, by curious. Obviously, but curious. I like how I like how Nut Milk King is by curious. That's great. Uh, I'm never Asian turkey, which by the way, like, uh, I messed up the Thanksgiving turkey a little bit. It was still delicious, but I did mess it up a little bit. We could talk about that later. They were heritage breed, Turks, Turkey, Turks, Turkeys, and they were, I thought they were delicious. Did you try it or were you too busy? It was good, right? They're good. Did you try the confit and the breast? No. You didn't try the comfy? No. Comfy was good. Anyway, I can't feed the legs out this year. Uh-huh. Next, well, the problem is, is that it was very hard to arrange them into a bird and I didn't have a bag big enough to do the breasts. And so like I tried to do a traditional cooking technique on the breasts. Next year, if I do a similar thing, which I probably will, I'm going to have to bust out the meat glue. I just didn't have the meat glue with me where I was. I didn't I didn't adequately plan. I thought that just giving it time would, but I didn't adequately plan my

[10:37] equipment regimen to do it that, anyway, my bad. Still delicious. Finished in the tandoor? Oh, yeah, I did one in the tandor, and I didn't end up deep frying the other one. ended up doing the other one in the oven, but yeah, the tandor. Okay, here's the issue with the tandor, right? So I had the bird around the stuffing plug, right, with uncooked breasts, but the stuffing plug was hot. So I was hoping the stuffing plug would cook the breast meat from the inside out while I was going into the tandor.

[11:03] Now, the tandor goes back to, you know, what we've said many times is that you want very

[11:07] high instantaneous heat input, but low average heat input. So the way you do a tandor is in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out. Um, you know, but the cool thing is when it's in, it's getting hit from all sides at once. So I bought a pair of cheap vice grips and vice gripped on the bottom of this, put the turkey on, wrapped it with a stuffing plug, tied it real

[11:29] tight so it looked kind of like a turkey football. It didn't have any bones in it except for the, well, the bones and the coffee because they were already cooked out though, right? But the breast area had no bones. Uh, then a ball of tinfoil to separate it from the next

[11:42] thing, and then a layer of tinfoil in the vice grip, the tinfoil to stop

[11:46] the, the, the intense heat from the live coals from burning the bottom side of the bird.

[11:52] But there was just so much grease that, and the turkey was so large relative society, the size of the tandor. And I so stoked the tandor with colds that it was like, it was like a freaking disco inferno inside of

[12:07] the tandor, which was like... And then when I left it in there. So usually like when you're cooking in a tandor, and you start getting flames off of like whatever grease is in the thing, you, you can, you close the bottom, uh, like air vent a little bit, you damp that up a little bit, and then you put the lid back on the

[12:25] top, except for the little place where the skewers are coming out, and that deprives the enough

[12:32] oxygen usually that you don't get enough, like a large kind of a flames, but not when you have this much grease pouring off of the turkey.

[12:39] So then I pulled the turkey, you know, I had it actually 2 skewers through it, right? So I could do a double grip so the trick to any having a tandor is having a place you can put the skewers to rest in between your firings of

[12:53] the of the tandor that's not like the ground or something else. I have a spiral staircase next to the tandor. I was like putting them on the spiral staircase. But I went to go readjust and it poured hot grease like all over my finger. You could still see the wrinkle marks in my finger from what used to kind of be a normal

[13:08] fingers. That was unpleasant. But it tasted good. It was good. I would do it again, albeit a little bit differently. I would dry the bird more, uh,

[13:19] beforehand, and maybe, maybe not maybe cook it all low temp with the bones in, which is anathema normally.

[13:27] I don't know I got to figure it out, but I would definitely tandor it again because I like the flavor of the tandor. Yeah. I have ambitions to start tandooring. You should you need to own a tandor. First of all, you have a house in a backyard. Yes. So, tandor. Uh, you know, I'm sure there's someplace in in San Francisco that sells them, but the place in New

[13:47] Jersey, ships and the problem is that the shipping charge is a little bit high, I think. Uh, hey, I got to get a tandor. Tandor is the best. I love the tandor. Hashtag vertical grilling. It's the best. You know. It's the only question is, is, is, uh, so like I, when I do steaks, I put the, you know those like crappy fish grills that you can buy or veggie grills that you can

[14:07] buy? I have a bunch of those and, um, those usually have a place where you can, uh, like where it folds down and you put a clip over it to hold it down. And so that's a perfect place to shove a skewer through. So typically what I'll do is I'll throw like a steak or anything like that, you know, pieces that can't be skewered easily and put them in the basket and then put them in the tandor, suspend it over another skewer and close it. And so that's the way you do things that aren't normally tandored. Yeah. Yeah, that's how you vertically grill things like that. Yeah. Anyhow. Wait, but that doesn't answer the question. Dry aging turkey. do you think? You got to play with it. I mean, I've never done it before, so I would do it once. Maybe plan on doing it for longer than is probably ideal and see if that's the case. Maybe check it out as it's going, but I'd hang on to it for, I don't know. 10 days, something like that. Would you, would you salt it ahead of time to stop any sort of anything that's kind of growing on the outside? Uh, I don't know, maybe wipe it with vinegar every once in a while? Trying to kill out every Yeah. Yeah. Just keep it clean. What about, uh, what about choosing a bird that whose meat is inherently darker?

[15:29] Is that going to be good? Like a heritage style bird? as opposed to a butterball? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, of course, butterballs have other stuff. floating around in there. Diacetile and oil. Do they actually put butter in a butterball? No idea. No idea. Haven't looked at the ingredient list. recently. You know how I bet you was trying to dry age of turkey? Johnny Hunter. I bet you Johnny Hunter's tried to dry age of turkey. Maybe he'll ride in. All right. Anyway All right, what else do we got? What else we got? Actually, I got to call it. Oh, caller, caller. You were on the air. Hi Dave, this is Jeffrey from Custom Mesa. How you doing? Uh, better now that I have the sweet Jackie Molecules, uh, ringtone on my phone. Nice. That means that means is member. Yeah. We'll play the ringtone maybe at the break. Except for when people call and I answer at the right time. I instinctively say, Jackie molecules, and then they hang up because they think they have the wrong number. Well, you know what, though? you want to talk to those people? Do you want to talk to people? Do you want to talk to people? No, no. It works out. Yeah, it's perfect. Um, I called in about uh, blanching French fries for a shorter amount of time. Okay. A couple weeks ago. And when I was following up with that. Uh, it seemed as though, so I tried a few different times for the blanch and basically pushed to the, the lowest amount of

[16:58] time, or sorry, the most amount of time I could get, uh, without them starting to all shatter.

[17:03] The theory here was, by the way, the call was about, you know, when you blanch it as long as, you know, I usually do to get the best textural effect in the

[17:14] French fry, the potatoes are so loose that they're really beat up by the end. And so then like kind of getting around this. Go ahead. Right. Um, so yeah, so about 9 or 10 minutes, uh, was sort of the furthest I could go without, you know, a large amount of them shattering.

[17:29] Uh, and so in about 10 minutes, it seemed like the, the starch was pretty well gelatinized, had a decent uh, salt penetration. So then I tried a few different oven temperatures and had kind of some interesting

[17:43] results. So that 300 uh, it was pretty, pretty consistently got like hollow fry. Right. Uh, up at 350. They were a little more sort of dense, but the people that were kind of blind trying them. They liked the 350, uh, and then 400 was my favorite, uh, no hollow fry, pretty, pretty

[18:04] soft, kind of good, uh, you know, pillowy, uh, potato texture, uh,

[18:10] so, so 400 seemed to be the way to go just for, you know, another 10 minutes uh, before frying. Was the 400, was the 400 less time than the than the 3 and change that had the hollow

[18:22] fry? No, they were all. I did them all for 10 minutes just to see what what would happen with that. So that was I was curious. strange, right? So, I mean, Harold, you remember like the problem of French fries, obviously, is one of breaking the starch 1st to get the texture that you want, but also moisture

[18:42] control both throughout the fry and at the crisp surface, right? And usually hollow fry is the result of over drying, at least in my theory, it's of over drying, and so you lose kind of the substance

[18:58] that's on the inside of the fry, and it basically just has this crisp outside. But it's kind of odd, right, that you would have hollow fry at 3 in change or 300 for 10 minutes and

[19:10] then not hollow fry. You know what? I bet you your case hardening it. Is there like a dehydration effect that's happening at the lower temperature? Well, I think the high, yeah, I think the lower temperature is probably more effectively dehydrating the entire fry, and you must be getting some sort of case hardening effect at the higher

[19:28] temperature, and you're probably also, uh, you're probably evacuating moisture at such a high rate at the surface. It may be your, no, I'm not saying it's like searing, where you, there's a fake ceiling of the crust. I'm saying you're probably doing something to dense up the surface of the fry. There's got to be, right? It's the only explanation I can think of. Right? interesting. Yeah, so, am I, am I, uh, dumb or, or just, uh, masochistic

[20:00] to after I, I go through all these steps to make a French fry, uh, adding an additional stuff and that feels

[20:06] normal? No, it shouldn't be. No, you shouldn't be. No, that's good. That's good. I mean, 1st of all, like there isn't normally a drying step anyway. So you're just having that drying step take place in an oven. Right? Uh, and by the way, like, this is how everything in the world happens through observation, like, if you had asked us, I presume, Harold, I mean, if you had asked

[20:28] us what would happen when you jacked the temperature, I would have said more hollow fry. That's what I would have said, you know, not knowing. But this is why it's very hard to answer questions from a theoretical

[20:39] basis and you need to actually do the test and pay attention to what goes on. You know? This is why you should always beware of people who tell you that they have the answer to something unless they actually run the specific

[20:50] tests that they're telling you about. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. So what about, I was wondering then about getting better salt penetration with that limited blanch time? Would it affect the, the way that the Pectinex is able to affect, uh, you know, the starch and everything if I added salt to that bath? If I do that, you know, the hour long hecton X ultra. Well, I'm very, I don't know how much the salt is going to affect the enzyme, but just on a theoretical

[21:24] basis. I am suspicious that in the absence of the high blanching temperature that you're

[21:29] going to get too much more penetration than you will just by upping the salt content in your blanch water. What do you think, Harold? Um, yeah, I'm, I'm not actually, actually clear on this part of the system. Oh, so they like the real like hardcore French fry technique, right, is so you know how the modernist folk, they do the ultrasonic bath to mess with the surface

[21:57] of the fry. So like the one that, you know, we do is soak it in, um, in a pectinex bath, which, uh, you know, kind of disrupts the surface of the fry. But, uh, and that's our 1st step prior to, so you know

[22:13] how like you, you rinse the starch off. Normally, in water, you soak it. Some people soak it for a long time to extract excess soluble sugar from the potato. Then you do your water blanched step with salt, to put salt in and do the pre-cook on the starch, then the question of drying, which we just addressed, then fry one, then sometimes freeze, depending on what you want, and then fry two, right?

[22:36] This is how you make a French fry. It's just how God would make a French fry. Anyway. So the point is that, um, on the enzyme soap thing, I don't think, for instance, just soaking a potato and salty water, I don't think is going to get appreciably more penetration than just upping the salt content of the hot blanch water because it's so much faster, the hot

[23:00] blanch water. I would just jack the salt level in the blanch. I'll give that a try. And thanks thanks to your recommendation. I'll now be finishing fries in an outdoor Cajun fryer. Oh, yeah. Let us know how the Cajun fire works. And they, I got to give a kind of props to them. I called their owner the night before Thanksgiving. We had that thing delivered. We're setting it up and it wasn't, it wasn't lighting. So I called them, weren't in California. I called them like 715 in their time to the, they just give like the home phone number for emergencies. So I called the owner and he answered the phone, kind of talked me

[23:38] through banging the regulator on the tank and got it working. So. Did it work well? It worked well? It worked well? Yeah, nice. It's beautiful. Good to know. Thanks for that. And you can buy the, you can buy the Cajun fryer at Bass Pro shops, although we're not affiliated. Yeah, come on, now. I got a bunch of questions in the chat for Harold if we want to start getting some of those. All right. Shoot. All right, we'll go with the most recent one first. How about this? Interested in hearing Harold's thoughts on the bean liquid egg substitute Aquafaba. Right. Yeah, I've gotten more emails about that than anything I can

[24:18] remember, at least in recent years. So it's the liquid from a can of kickpeas whips up into a nice meringue. And as far as I can tell, of course, there's protein in there and starch, but apparently there's also a fair amount of

[24:38] saponons, which are molecules that are good at

[24:44] foaming, so that you've got stuff in there that wants to

[24:49] foam and then stuff in there that's going to stabilize a foam, like the dissolved starch and protein. And the combination is this, you know, unexpected boon to vegan meringue makers. So for those of you that don't are not aware of the kind of genesis of on food and cooking, Harold's, you know, 1st book. It was as a result of him studying the fart inducing principle of

[25:17] beans. And so it's part of that, this opponents as well? Or is that simply the polysaccharides that you don't digest it bacteria? I don't think saponins are flatulogenic. No. Well, that is a fantastic word. That's a very good word. That's fantastic word. You like that word it does? Yeah. Even Nastasia likes that word, and that's so unusual for her to like a word. She has like her happy styles face on it, you know, unusual situation like this. So I got some more in here we should get to, right? right, let's see. Our old friend Elliot. Hey, Harold, can you talk about fermentation of herb stems and milk? Herb stems, sorry. Herb stems in milk. Which herb? No, no, no. He here. He can probably answer that. I know for a fact that, Harold, you've done work with amaranth stalks, but not in milk. No, no. And there the aim is to make something as stinky as possible. I think that that's not likely with with this one. I mean, in milk, you would get a lactic fermentation. Maybe the herb stems would be carrying, naturally occurring lactabacilli,

[26:23] lactococci into the milk, and so they might help seed it. But I don't see what what the connection would be between the herb stems and the milk. I bet you that's the word style. Hey, it's lactic cockeye. But the, the, well, I mean, one for one. Yeah, well, some, I mean, some, like, if I guess it depends on the herb, like, cartoons will break it, right? I mean, it's like depends on... Yeah, yeah, that's true. Um, But I'm thinking Herb Herb's that I would think of would be more like, you know, parsley and things like that.

[26:56] And I'm not sure that they have any active, um, active

[27:00] principles and act, cartoons. Yeah, they've got a lot of tannin. I think that's what causes the coagulation when you're doing them a blanc. Well, is that the, is well, what's the, what's the rentering thing in, in the rest of the thistle family all about? Isn't carts? That's in the flower. Yeah. The cartoon flower. Yeah. And that's a separate, that's an actual enzyme. That's right. Yeah. That is almost identical to the enzyme in calf stomach. Yeah, crazily enough. PS, all you people that hate genetically modified food, all your cheese is made with genetically modified

[27:34] Renit. Caller. Caller. You were on the air. Hey, Dave, I had a question for you on the turkey in a bag from Thanksgiving. We had the debate and didn't know if it was, it started out. we thought it was a cheap gimmick. where you cook the turkey in a bag? You talking about the oven bags? I kind of like large, I don't know. It's a baking bag. Fold all the moisture in. And then we concluded that it might be like a poor man's comedy, and we can't decide.

[28:02] The science is going on inside the bag. Okay, well, every, and Harold will, you know, can, you know, every 20 years or so, uh, 20 to 30 years, as far as I can tell, bad cooking makes a

[28:17] big, uh, a renaissance. So a bag paper bag cooking was big when I was a kid. Uh, it's not paper anymore, but bad cooking. and by the way, bad cooking, not like sous vide bag. We're talking bag, like a large on papillote style bag is big now. I have a book from the early, early 1900s from Alexis

[28:43] Sawyer's, like, son or grandson on paper bag cookery back when paper 1st started to be uh regular paper 1st started to be non-toxic so that it could be used uh in in kind of

[28:55] cooking. So this suddenly comes back again and again. Usually things that come back again and again have some merit. I would say, although I don't necessarily know what that merit is. Have you thought about this at all, Harold? Well, I'd actually look at it the other way around. If things kind of come and go, they they go because they don't work so well. Right? And then come back because people forget. Well, I mean, you know, specifically the question here is like, is it like a poor man's combi, right? Like, are you keeping the steam in? I don't know. Like, I used to, I mean, the paper bag chicken. that I used to make when I was a kid, my memory of it is that it was good. It doesn't steam the bird in the sense that

[29:46] the, the, the, the skin gets crispy. So it's not. This is a different kind of bag, I'm guess, we're talking about. This one's much more plasticky, and I have a, my mother-in-law loves doing it, and I have to keep convincing her, if you're going to do the bag, at least open it

[30:00] up so the skin can get crispy, because while the turkey's cooked. Her skin's never... We're missing the best parts. I think this is the, I think it's nylon that these baking bags are made out or something like that. You know, some polymer that can take high temperatures. And I think the thing about them is that they, you are essentially, because they are impermeable, unlike paper, you are trapping the steam and you're not getting evaporative cooling, so the

[30:31] temp, you're essentially steaming or boiling, the bird. You do get, I think, some radiant heat through the bag so that it can kind of crisp up in spots. But because the humidity is so high in there, it's limited. So they're not, they don't, you don't poke holes in this bag. No. You, you, I think you are supposed to leave the end, uh, that you tie

[31:00] off, not not tied off tightly. So you are, you do lose some, but I think the effective surface area of whatever opening there is is so small that it's negligent.

[31:12] So you don't have the, you don't have the ability to lose enough moisture to have a, what they call high relative humidity, whatever that means at elevated temperature, but elevate it to the point where it's browning efficiently.

[31:25] Yeah, yeah. That would be unfortunate. Yes. I know you can cook a paper bag chicken. and have the chicken be crispy. But you have to use the old school big paper bags and, you know, you have to put plenty of butter on the skin of the chicken. But again, maybe I was just wrong. Maybe you're asking me to remember what stuff tasted like when I was like 8 and 9 years

[31:49] old. That was like, you know, 10. That's when I was, you know, doing my paper bag work. And it is true that using the modern silicone sealed parchment paper on

[31:59] Papillote style, you get basically exclusively steamed results out of things like fish. Do you like unpuppy oat cooking in general or do you hate it? I don't, I mean, I like it if I want to cook fish and not have my house smell

[32:15] fishy. So I'll cook it on papillote and then let it cool down so that, you know, it doesn't, the moment I open it up, it doesn't just fill, fill the space with fish smell. Well, what about the idea of that? Like, you know how like when you make an excellent like dashi, it's all about that moment, that aromatic

[32:35] reveal? Don't you like that aspect of the on puppio? Oh, yeah, yeah. That's nice in somebody's somebody else's house or restaurant. What do you like? What do you think style is about your house filled with fish now? No. No? You know what I detest? Uh, the, the oil overheated fish oil is the worst. That is the worst. That stuff never, except for when I'm when I'm doing sardines in a pan, I don't mind it. Because there's just something so, I mean, I don't like it the next day, but there's just something so marvelous

[33:04] about sardines cooked on a high heat. Yes, yes. You know? Yep. And I have my favorite places to go to get that. San Francisco. Really? What is it? Well, actually, it used to be Encanto, which is now closed, but coxcomb does sardines also. So Chris Constantino's place. Nice. Yeah. I'm sure he can cook a sardine up. Stas, what are your thoughts on sardines? like them a lot. Do you also like canned sardines? Um... Okay, James Beard, right? Among many had many faults. One was preferred electric. No, I'm not talking induction. I'm talking crappy resistance electric range tops to gas. true story. Also thought that canned sardines were far superior to fresh sardines. Now, he's from the Pacific Northwest, right? So you presumably he could get good sardines. So this is just craziness. Like, I think that they're not the same product. I don't think they should be compared. I don't think that they're similar. Not only do I think that they're like different. I think they are dissimilar products. Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. I agree. I love canned sardines and I love aged canned sardines. You know, you can get vintage age. Yeah, we've tasted them together, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're right. You couldn't do that to a sardine sardine. And, uh, yeah, they're they're they're just, uh, they offer different experiences. Do you pick out the weird calcium bonelets from the canned

[34:41] sardines or you eat them? That's part of the part of the deal. Yeah, yeah. You and Booker both. What about you, Stas? Do you like that? Do you mind that, you know what I'm talking about? The backbone? The back, you ever, do you pull the backbone out of your canned sardines? Or are you the fancy folk that buy the skinless boneless? I don't know. Scamless boneless, I guess? I have to admit, I like gooseballs. I don't like I don't texturally because it's gritty. It's not that it's crunchy. It's gritty because the bones have dissolved, and all you have are these little kind of calcium bitlets left. Not a fan of the calcium bitlet. What about in the engineering booth? Rebecca, Jackie, we're going to weigh in on the calcium bitlets. I got nothing for you. Nothing? You guys don't eat sardines? Don't like sardines. What? No, I like sardines. Wait, Rebecca, you don't like you don't like any form of sardine? don't think so. Maybe. Uh, Caesar salad? What? No, no, no. No, I don't even like that that much. That is an anchovy. Ah, I knew it. As soon as I was said, I knew you were going to. That is an anchovy. I apologize. All right, so so, okay, so you're saying you don't like anchovies either. Not particular. I don't like little slimy fish. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. She also doesn't like bubbly water. Oh my god. I can't say that on the edge. Oh, geez. Spoiled. But here's my point. A good anchovy is not slimy. Like, look, here's what you don't want to like start your life in anchovies. Go buy a can of salted anchovies. Just straight salted anchovies. Maybe you should make me some. Stas, you like anchovy pasta, yeah? Yeah. Do you make it with the with the crappy can stuff or do you make it with the with the salted stuff? I make it with the salted stuff. You make with the salt stuff, Harold? I do too. Here's another thing. The white anchovy that like, you know, like the cured white anchovy. They are not the same thing. I do not like people saying that they are better than salted or salted and then away old anchovies. I think that they are different. And frankly, I am a weirdo, but I could eat more salted anchovy than I

[36:48] could, the cured. I don't know Everyone loves them. I love them. They're good, but they're not the, they're not the same product. They shouldn't be compared. You agree? No, it's this wonderful bounty. This cornucopia of different fish products. Yeah, they're all different. Yeah, yeah. Hey, hey, people, is cod the same as salted cod? No. No, they're different. They're different products. Another question here in the chat room. What do you got? What are some is an easy one? What are some of Dave and Harold's holiday gift suggestions for an aspiring home cook? Already have a circulator and a good set of pots and pans? Longtime listener, 1st time question. Well, if you have money, you should wait for us to release the centerfuge. Boom. Exactly. That was the setup. All right, right. As a nice setup. But what do you think, Harold? What do you like to give people probably food related? A hypodermic needle style thermometer. For, you know, you can stick it into any size piece of

[37:47] meter fish. You don't see a hole afterwards and you can check like 30 different places in 30 seconds. Right. And by the way, so there are things on the market that are referred to as hypodermic that really are

[38:00] not. Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah, if it looks like it could put a hole in you, without leaving too much of a mark, then that is what... what we're looking for. However, I don't know whether I said this on the air or whether I've just said it to other people. Don't ever use that thing as a candy thermometer, don't ever put that into deep fry oil because you will ruin it. Yeah. Very quickly. And they're not cheap. They're cheaper than they used to be. They're under 100 bucks now, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Like between 15 and 75. Yeah. Yeah, but then you're still into it for a thermocouple, thermometer. So you need to buy the probe and the thermometer. Or do they come in the package? You can get the package, but the probe is plug-in so you can buy replacements. You can buy one on a wire and all kinds of nice things. You will be tempted to use it as a candy thermometer. Don't. You'll be tempted to test the temperature of your deep fryer over it. Do not. Do not. Not do that. I've ruined more than two. Uh, yeah, all right. That's good. I have to shout out Renee Casper, who just made a donation. Looks like all the way from Norway. Norway. That's awesome. I like that. Never been in Norway. Me neither. Me neither. I love to. No? Yeah. Been to Sweden. Never been to Norway. Never really been to Denmark. Yeah, I've just been to Copenhagen. Like, that doesn't count. Crack on them. It's like it's like the Jersey of Denmark. Just kidding. It's not. All right. Holiday question here unless you have one. Chat room is live here. So Harold and Dave, can you advise on the minimum AV, the minimum ABV for aged eggnog. The Dr. Lancefield recipe seems to work out at about 15% ABV, but other recipes on the web aim for 20. Well, if 15 is good, 20 is gonna be fine. I mean, how low do you want it to go? That's the question, right? Yeah. I mean, that one's the one from the Rockefeller, right? The one that the one that is being quoted is the one from the Rockefeller University, that's the

[40:03] Lancefield one, the one that they actually did a challenge test on. So I think that's the one that they were referring to. So this doctor at the Rockefeller, she had this eggnog recipe and they made it every year and someone was like, hey, man, is it safe,

[40:17] Mama? And they're like, well, this is what we do for a living. And so they did a challenge test. And they looked at the kill rate and how long it took to kill off the stuff with a certain level

[40:25] of initial bacterial load and a certain ABV and et cetera, et cetera. And it was, you know, on the order if it was aged for, I forget what it was, like a couple of

[40:36] weeks, that it, you know, becomes safer and safer. Same like mayonnaise, same like using eggs in any cocktail where you're not actually killing the salmonella quickly. So the answer is, is that there are 2 separate problems. One, what is the ABV required to maintain bacterial static, uh, uh, that bacteria stack nature of it, right? And to, uh, like at a given ABV, how long does it take to become safe if it were contaminated at the get go?

[41:07] And those seem to me to be uh, 2 different things, right? So you could say, I know that within 3 weeks or 2 weeks, whatever it is, 15% ABV is safe. However, once decontaminated, perhaps it could be diluted down to 10 or

[41:23] 12 or less. But think beer doesn't get nasty contaminants in it, it gets, it can get ruined. You can have yeast growth, you can have all these other things, but you're not getting anything that'll kill you in

[41:34] it, and that is down that's much lower. I think even if you were to crack an egg into beer as long as it was pre-pasteurized. I don't think salmonella can grow at those alcohol percent. What do you think, Harold? Uh, I'd want to check. I would check. I mean, this is all just theorizing in my head, but... Well, I don't know. Beer is different because there's beer is pretty lean by comparison. carbonated, though. Yeah, yeah, that too. Both of which I think work against bacteria in a way that an eggnog mix does

[42:07] not, right? You got all that protein, all that fat, higher,

[42:11] lower acidity, so I think you'd want to... What I don't understand, though, is why, why go lower? Than 15? Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, especially because the other recipes cited are higher. Going higher is definitely going to make you safer. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah.

[42:34] I don't know. Maybe it's just always wanting to play with with the border, right? See how far you can go. But I'm not, I just don't think that, I mean, alcohol contributes to the flavor of the

[42:49] drink. And I think if you go too low, it's going to be like a milkshake, right? Yes, now you've put Khalis song into my head. I got the milkshake song going through my head, which is, it's not unfortunate. guess it's fine. Scott, do you like that song? You've always hated it or just now that I'm mentioning it? Me too. Wow. Wow. All right. So, Stas, why don't you give us a Twitter question so they don't feel left out here? Uh, someone wants to know if they should crank the TS 8000 all the way up while they're using the

[43:18] steers ball. Yes. The answer is always yes. I think they were scared. Oh, don't be scared. There are things in life to be scared of. is not one of them. Um, Brunt Grupton wants to know, ever use birch syrup and a drink, so for all I've

[43:35] made is maple leaf variation, it tastes flat. Excuse me, what was that name? Brunt Gumption. Oh, that's funny. Awesome. Awesome. So, the only birch syrup I've ever had was flawed. And I still not yet received a good birch syrup. It was acidic. And I'm assuming that it wasn't the nature of the birch syrup itself to

[43:58] be overly acidic. It tasted acidic and like matter. something had happened to it. Um, But, and I said this before on the air and someone pointed out a good birch syrup supplier. I just haven't had it yet. I would love to have it, but I'm, presumably it's going to taste different from, uh, maple syrup. I don't know. I have not had any experience with a birch syrup that I can say, yeah,

[44:25] I now I know how birch syrup is supposed to act. But I'm interested in it. Very interested in it. I'm interested in all sorts of tree exudates and saps and there are various, uh, you know, things. Like someone called in before. Remember, and they were going to try to get liquid embar, uh, styracafula, uh, resin, like sweet gum resin. I wonder whether that happened. I want taste that too. Plenty of stuff I want to taste like that, but yeah, any Harold, you had any experience with birch syrup? I had some, just a taste years and years ago, and I just remember it tasting sweet and not maply, more kind of more in the direction of, um,

[45:01] just sort of brown, brown syrup, caramel, caramel flavors. Yeah. I'm gonna give a shout out to Crosby Molasses. Crosby molasses in terms of brown sugar. People think when they think of molasses, they think of, uh, like that, I believe the brand is actually grandmas, you know, sulfur,

[45:24] black strap molasses, and, um, you would never dream of putting that, for instance, on pancakes. Never. You would never think to do it. Because you're like, why the hell would I want that monstrosity on my pancake,

[45:38] right? Uh, but, uh, there is much more in the world of molasses than that. And so for those of you that are fortunate enough to be in

[45:50] the in New England area, get go get you some Crosby's molasses. That stuff is delicious. Delicious. Anyway. Okay. Dean Mussen wants to know any chance of an episode on pots and pans, Dave. So much bullshit. Advice out there on the consumer end of the market. What kind what specific kind of BS are we referring to? That's the question. So like, yeah, we could do one. I mean, uh, you know, uh, Harold and I, we used to teach, uh,

[46:21] and, you know, Harold also independently, uh, used to do. There's a bunch of different techniques that people use to measure like how, what do you, what do you want in a pan? That's the thing, right? The answer is yes, we can do one eventually. But the question is, what do you want in a pan? What do I want in a pan? Usually I wanted to not scorch. And I, you know, I mean, it depends on what you're looking to do. Are you storing heat for a long time? And then you need to just so cast iron, right? But, you know, cast iron is good at certain things and bad at others. Um, Most Teflon pans will die. Most non-stick. I never had a nonstick pan that didn't die. I'm just going to put it out there. Harold, have you ever had a gnostic pan that didn't die? I've got one that's going really well. I'm not, and I don't know how long it's going to last, but I'm, you know, not intentionally abusing it, but I'm not babying it either. And I've had it now for a couple of years. What, what, are you, do you want to uh, push it out there? What brand you were using? Let's see if I can pull it back. Uh, there are a couple, and I might get them confused. So, but I can, if you have that program, include me

[47:37] in, and I'll be waving it at my end. I'll let you know exactly, and I'll abuse it between now and then. All right. And also, like, you guys, like, you know, people who are interested, if you want to set up, you set

[47:47] a particular time to do this, uh, like, like tweet on in or email in, uh, email is probably better for

[47:54] this. Email in, like what particular, uh, uh, horse hockey. You want us to uh, investigate uh, beforehand because, you know, there might be a pan that maybe, you know, I haven't used Harold

[48:08] Has or, you know, uh, when I haven't used it. I can, I can look into, um, you know, whether it's just one of like, uh, so for instance, I was at Wiley's uh,

[48:18] house, uh, over the weekend, Wiley Dufrene, and he has his grandpa for some reason, even though his grandpa wasn't a cook. Oh, that's not true. Maybe his grandpa was the one that owned a donut factory, but I think that was the other side. But the, um, a real set of old school copper pants, like full, thick, full,

[48:34] thick, old copper tinned out. And I was like, I was talking to him about it because he was going to get him restored. And back at Jean George, They used to have the full copper set and back, and they probably still do, but if you walk into 59th Street and look into his kitchen, you can see in, it's like all the gleaming

[48:48] copper that Wiley said he used to have to polish. And I was like, is it that much better than cooking like on an all clad, which, by the way, is what everyone cooks with? You know what I mean? Like 99% of people that I know, uh, at home, uh, and even professionally, for some, if you have the money, they're using all clads. basically. What do you cook with the homestyles? Do you have all class? Crap, no. Really? You never stole any all class from anyone? Anyway, what about you, Harold? Like for pots and pans, stuff like that? Mostly all clouds, but I collect lots of different things and mess with them. And as you're saying, it depends on what you're trying to do. if I really want to sear something inside. And of course, I'm going to finish it with this here's all, but I'll start with a cast iron pan and I'll put a layer of aluminum foil over it to reflect back the heat that it's otherwise going to radiate as it's heating up and get a nice thermal mass there.

[49:41] Yeah, I mean, unless something is garbage, there's always something fun you can do with it. There's always some application you can have with it. Like there are places for the old school straight black iron pans too, not cast iron or black steel pans. You know what I mean? You know, there's a place for most anything, really. Like some, like, for instance, like we all think that it's good to have your pans be completely even. It's not always the case. Like, uh, like in a, in a large, like, let's say you're doing like a, a, a

[50:11] Kamal, for instance, you want there to be a, a, a gradient or a, or a plancha. You want there to be a gradient across it. You know what I mean? Like, it's about the gradient. Uh, and so there you might not want hyper even, uh, you might not want a big ingot of aluminum that is gonna like, you know, or copper that's gonna spread up anyways. Like, so there's, uh, you know, it all depends on what you're shooting for and uh, figuring out what you can do with it, but there are some pans that are just straight garbage. Yeah, everything I have. I have the best collection of garbage in Brooklyn. Well, you know what? guys should do is just like do what I did. Go to thrift shops, go to thrift shops. People get rid of fantastic pans. So, like, what you'll do is, is that 9 times out of 10, they'll throw away garbage. And you'll be like, you know what? That is garbage. So you know what you don't do? You don't buy that. But like I've gotten like amazing sabatier, like 10 inch like carbon steel sabatier knives in thrift stores. I've gotten, uh, 60, 70-year-old polished

[51:14] cast-iron Griswold pans in thrift stores for like 2 bucks. So, you know, search and you will find. You know, 11 person's idiocy and throwing something away can be your game. Yeah, me and Styles are going to scavenger hunt one day. That's what I'm talking about. By the way, a little over a mile from here is a restaurant. I got to look into. You ready for it? D apostrophe, oasis. Oasis. Is it, what is it? It's the delicious. It's oasis. You know, it's like duh, oasis. Oasis. I wonder what the hell. It like a bar and restaurant. What the hell do you think they serve over there? What made you look that up? What makes you find that? He was probably driving past it on his way. Yeah, I was driving from Stanford because I'm going to China next week to help build the

[51:59] centrifuge and I would live tweet it out except for the entire freaking country of China bands Twitter. You know, uh, you know, and I don't have a special, like, non-sedition Twitter account that allows me to, like, you know, to, you know, uh, go on the, uh, those, they have no

[52:15] sense even, we call the, the, our, the factory in China and we try to joke around with them stars. They can't play, right? No. Yeah. anyway. Anyway, point being that, yeah, I think it was in MassPeth or something. I was like, the Oasis. Yeah. I'm going go there after the show and maybe, you know, knock back some brewskies at the Oasis. Anyways, uh, are we going to get ripped off the air? We're gonna be ripped off. pretty soon. All right. It heralded any last, any super pressing herald needs in the chat room? Oh, let's see. They've been answering a lot of their own questions, which is great. And Tim Thraves is also offering everybody in the chat room, gin and juices at Booker and Dax, because he's going to be there on Monday. Somebody said, be careful what you offer, Tim. If Dave has time, thoughts on Brooke's superiority burger. I imagine those are good thoughts. Well, this, you know, I've had his burger, but I have not yet made it to the actual

[53:07] restaurant. I hear only excellent things. And so the expert on this, and Harold, have you gone yet? I haven't. right around the corner from where I'm staying, but it's always been mobbed when I've walked by. So the expert on Brooks Headley and all things, superiority burger at cooking issues is, of course, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. Stas. Does this person live in New York? That asks this question? That's, that's a good, good question. They did not specify. That's good. I really hate when people write into the show and they're like, have you ever like sharpened a knife, Dave? Or like, you know, and it's like, just look it up or go or do it. I don't understand. Yeah, the person wants to know. The food is good there. So the superiority burger is good. if you live in New York, go. What is your favorite thing on the menu there? Uh, uh, the Yuba, whatever that is. You like Yuba, huh? I didn't think I would. love you. And on that note, We're done. We are done. So listen, I probably won't be back next week because I'll probably be in China and during transport, but when I get back from China, more cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on HeritageRadioNetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritageradionetwork.org. HeritageRadio Network as a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.