[0:00] Today's program is brought to you by Heritage Foods USA, the nation's largest distributor of heritage breed pigs and turkeys. For more information, visit heritagefoodsusa.com. I'm Mike Telemeco from Food Talk. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwood, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:30] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you. Pre-recorded. From the Heritage Radio Network and Roberta's Pizzawilla in Bushwick, uh, uh, uh, Oakland. How you doing, Stas? Joined as usual, Stas, how you doing? Good. Yeah? Yeah? Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez people, you can't call in to speak to her while she's wearing it, but

[0:54] she is wearing, for the 1st time this year at the radio show, her marvelous Christmas hat. I think we got a tweet us or something that her hat, because the hat is like... You and I hear with it. yeah Yeah, really? Yeah, there is, strangely. Who did that? I don't know. Me? It is a it is a fantastic Christmas hat. It is completely unrelated to the phenomenon of the ugliest, ugly Christmas sweater, of which you also have several. Yes. Yes. But this is actually a legit, awesome Christmas hat. It turns her entire head into a festive Christmas

[1:32] tree, totally covering the sourness that comes out of the mouth attached to the hat.

[1:37] Whoa, wow. Wow. Wow. Yikes. Oh, and join Christmas. Great Christmas. joined in the booth with our good buddy, Jackie Molecules. What's up? Jack Insley. How's it going? It's great. I'm in a really, really, really good mood because the cooking issues listeners have gone like above and beyond with their donations to the network and it's awesome. Nice. It's so awesome. They really represented so well. There are too many of them for me to even shout out. It's crazy. But just know that every time those come in where everybody in the team is like super, super stoked and we can't thank you all enough. Awesome, awesome. So I just came from a, by the way, so we're recording this on

[2:21] Monday instead of on Tuesday because Nastasia has to go up to Boston tomorrow to get a... Why are you flying out of Boston? Don't get me started. Like, you know, I thought you were going to Boston to go to Boston. getting a flight. From Boston? Let me guess, $50 cheaper. No, a lot cheaper. Like how much cheaper? Like $150 cheaper. How much is it costing you to get to Boston? It's $30 on the bus. So, I'm going to do this math here. What's your time? So $120 By the way, if you want Nastasia to throw away 4 hours of her time in each direction. No, I fly back into New York. Oh okay. All right, all right. whatever. I don't even want to don't even get me started. Don't get me started. So you'll enjoy this, Nastasia. So, earlier today, I had to do a series of videos for Vox for the Museum of Food and

[3:16] Drink. right? It's part of our contractual obligation with Infinity. And, you know, food science demos. No one asked me to just sit around and talk about, I don't know, something. It's always like some sort of tech and science-y stuff, right? So they said, hey, you know, yeah, let's, you know, we're going to do liquid nitrogen. I'm like, really, really? Jack, you know what? I'm like really? You know how many times I've done liquid nitrogen demo, Jack? Yeah. So many. Many. And so I figured I was going to mix it up a little bit. Stas, you're going to like this. You going to want to pay attention. You already you already heard? Well, Peter ruins everything. He's supposed to come on the show, Peter from Kim from the museum of food and drink. He's like, oh, yeah, I'll come on the show. No, I'm busy man. Not busy. He sucks all of my time this morning. He going to suck all of my time this afternoon. He's too busy to come on the radio show with us. instead, just calls and ruins the surprise for you. But you folks here haven't heard yet. So here's what it is. So I'm like, you know what? Liquid nitrogen, as we all know, is amazing, but it has 3 main safety issues.

[4:09] One, it can it's cold burns, right? You could get cold burns from it, and that could either be from ingesting it, which you should never, ever, ever do, or from, you know, getting it poured

[4:18] onto your pants or some other thing, right? Uh, you know, you can get it on your hand, you know, because the Liden Frost effect, it'll just roll off. won't do anything. But you know, there's Cole Burns is there. Asyxiation is a big one. Remember, Mirvold almost killed himself in his car with liquid nitrogen. And so we have all these safety rules against asphyxiation. But the other one is Jack, and he guesses, you know this one? Nope. Explosions. Oh yeah. So he can do the explosion noise again. So, yeah. Yeah. And in fact, years ago, and we always talk about it. There was a German cook who took liquid nitrogen in a sealed container home from the

[4:50] restaurant and it exploded in his girlfriend's bathroom and like took off one of his legs, one of his hands, most of the other hand, put him in a comb,

[4:58] et cetera, et cetera. Because the pressure just keeps building and building, right? But I've never actually done the demo. Because I've always wanted to do the demo, right? So I take, I swear to God, the name of this stuff. I'm like, listen, we're going to blow up, you know, we're not in front of a big audience. We're going to blow up a plastic bottle with liquid nitrogen to show how dangerous it is, right?

[5:22] So I take this thing. It's called harmless water. You heard of this? Harmless water. It's some sort of one of these coconut waters, but it's in a non-carbonated bottle, right? So it shouldn't be a problem. You know what I mean? So anyway, so I'm like, eh, meh. So I get, I'm like, I'll get a Cambro, because Cambros are made out of, you know, polycarbonate. They're strong and that stuff's not supposed to shatter. It's supposed to bend. It's made out of polycarbonate. Okay. So, okay, I get a big Cam, bro, I get this little harmless water, right? And some liquid nitrogen, and, you know, I have safety goggles and all this. So I pour the liquid nitrogen into the harmless water container, and I screw it, and I quickly dump

[6:00] it, quickly, into the camera, and then I back off and go down, right? So that my eyes aren't over the top of the thing. And I was like, nothing happened. Like literally nothing happened. So I like tapped the thing. Nothing. slosh it around. Nothing, nothing. Finally, I swear. And then like, it's nervous. Do you ever light fireworks when your kid's does? I never let them know. Jack? No. Really? I feel like we've all been raised on every planet. Yes, they were around. I never lived them. Okay, okay. So anyway, so anyway, if you light a firework and it doesn't go off, you're in a dangerous situation.

[6:35] Like, that's what you you don't want that. If you light a firework, you want it to go off because it does, you have to go dispose of a dud and it might not be a dud. It might come on and like shoot you in the eye or burn them, whatever. You get me. So, I'm in a fire, I'm in a dud fireworks situation here, right? We're talking like a minute and a half later. And all of a sudden, part of this is these harmless water bottles are, A, obviously, not harmless. And B, much stronger than, for instance, Fiji water bottles, which I know I can blow up with a

[7:02] measly like 110 PSI. Because I've done that. I've held a Fiji water bottle and exploded it while I was carbonating in it like, you know, anyway. So all of a sudden this bottle starts freaking growing, like growing and like starting to look more like a watermelon.

[7:17] I'm like, and it was, when it finally went, it

[7:22] shattered, the, 1st of all, the bottle like disintegrated like a balloon. The Cambro freaking shattered and sent Cambro pieces everywhere and it was the loudest. It was like shooting off like 3 or 4 shotguns all at the same time. Thank God they got it. I was like, we're going to run a test, but you're going to film this because I might never do it again. You know what I mean? And the video, it's horrifying. But so again, no one out there needs to try this. The video is horrifying, but kind of hilarious because what you see is you see me looking at it, trying to figure out what's going on. Then you see the explosion and then like a 2nd later, I'm like, oh, and I fall over. Like that would help. Anyways. So keep your eyes out for that video. I don't know if they're going to actually put that section of it in there, but, you know, you know how I like to do the I like to do the what not to do in a semi-controlled environment. Very important. Very important. Although, Jack, do you know how many times, and I've said this before, and I've told people not to do this. You know how many times I've done demos where I'm like, absolutely never do what I'm about to do. And then they leave out that part and just have me doing the bad thing. It's happened to me so many times. Every time I do it, Nastasia sits there and she shakes her head back and forth. how many times is it going to take before you learn? You know? Yeah. It's because nothing really bad has happened. Well, I'm going to edit an episode of this show, Dave, and just things that you say not to do, but I'll take out the disclaimer, you know? Yeah, yeah, Dave's top 10 tips for the year. Look who's back. Oh, yeah, it's a Satan's little hipster. Santa's little hipster. The, uh, you know, we, we, uh, for those of you just uh, tuning in for the 1st time to our show, we enjoy poking fun at the friendly uh, staff of

[9:00] Roberta's. as does everyone, right, Jack? I mean, it's all it's all love. All love. Um, I have been really hurt. What do you mean? That's why my wife doesn't trust me anymore. Yeah. I've lit myself on fire. It's been a while since you really hurt yourself. It's been a while since I really damaged myself. Yes. Yeah, unless you count slipping with the with a mall and shoving it through my toe or any of those other

[9:24] things. I wasn't cooking at the time. It's been a long time since I've injured in the kitchen. Is that true? Didn't I slice myself open recently? That was, yeah. But I was cooking at home. 2 or three. No, that was when that was in the basement. I made my Christmas cookies yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. Do you make Christmas cookies anymore, Stas? Or were you ruined that one time that we tried to make all those Christmas cookies for the trees? My parents do. make any. Oh my god, what kind of Christmas cookies do your parents make? Sugar. Just sugar? And fudge. Do you like fudge? Really? For real. Do you actually enjoy eating fudge? Jack, fudge? Yeah. Really? I do. small doses. There you go. Small doses. And they see you've actually hit a thing that I like it. Like, I can have small doses, but I would never be like, I'm going to tuck into this giant block of foot. You know what I mean? But I've seen people do it. Like, I could eat an entire tray of brownies. Yes. But I only want like a little bit of fudge. And have we had this conversation? What kind of brownies are you guys? Are you guys the dense brownie people? Are you cake brownie people? Dense for me. Dense, dense, dense. I like them both. I like them both N-committal, but nuts or no nuts? Um, I like nuts in a brownie, but I would always choose not nuts. Okay. Like, I don't mind it. I don't mind the taste of it, but the problem is, is that they can get a little

[10:44] soggy, and to me, a brownie should be almost uni textural. I don't really need textural variation in my brownie. So like no chocolate chips. A lot of brownies have like chocolate chips in them. Yeah, not mine unnecessary. Yeah, no, no, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I like chocolate chips. And I like brownies, but I don't need them in the same sitch. What about you, sis? Yeah, I can go either way. You know what else? I'm not a huge I like it fine, but I'm not a huge fan of it. not a huge fan of the hyper, like, solid block of chocolate poured on top of the brownie thing. Yeah. Or the frosting eat stuff. fudge on top of a brownie. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot lot. There's something about a brownie, even a dense brownie that allows you to eat almost an unlimited amount of it.

[11:28] And I don't know what that is. You know what I mean? as opposed to like fudge, which fudge is self-limiting. You're like, you eat a little bit, you're like, okay, I'm done now. was good. Now I'm done. So anyway, so that kind of leaves me in. So the cookies that I make, I always make 3 cookies. I make sugar cookies because the kids like to use the, we use the gun, the spritz gun. You like those? I've never used one. You know, the secret, right onto the aluminum pan. Because otherwise you'll pull up the parchment or whatever. Anyways. Um, and the dough has to be the right temperature. But yeah, they love the gun. They always make the same damn rosette, and then they try to make the Scotty dog. We have Scotty dogs, rosettes, Christmas trees, but all the shapes always end up messed up. rosettes, it doesn't really matter because they if they bleed, they bleed in the circles. So who cares? Anyways. Um, So I make those, I make the almond. Remember the riturellis that I make, I make those. I burnt out actually my next to Mattic. like, the motor came back on, but I was trying to grind all the almonds in my nixtomatic, next to maw maker, and it was rocking, and then all of a

[12:27] sudden it stalled and went, poof, and smoke came out of the back, and I was like, no, because

[12:32] when's the next time I'm going to go to Mexico? And I would give up my corn grinder just because I was trying to be a bonehead and making almond cookies. That sounds like some stupid crap I would do, right? It is, yeah. And then I make the, I make these cookies that, like, theoretically, they're not good, but they're like my favorite cookie and everyone also seems to kind of like them. Is that, is it these cookies that are like my great great grandma's recipe from like the 1800s? They're like a, you know, like black and white cookies aren't really cookies. little cakes with icing. These are like that, but they're chocolate and they're made with clabbard milk. And so you make a clabard milk and you put this chocolate icing over the top called bonbons, but they're really dry.

[13:10] So you have to drink something with them, but you keep eating them and eating them and eating them. You know, cookies like that? Do you like those Italian hyper-dry, like vanilla cookies with the egg? That is what my grandma makes. Sicilian, yeah. I love those. you love those? You just keep drinking and drinking like water with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you still want more. Weird, weird. Anyway, that's what I did. Nice. Oh, and I got back from China. We haven't talked about China. Oh yeah. Centrifuge. We have a lot of stuff to talk about. That's why we don't need collars. I saw you said that Chinese takeout in China tastes like Chinese takeout here. Oh, yeah. Well, also, when I said that, I was quite disappointed because I was supposed to have gone to this, like, awesome Sichuan restaurant where this, where the waiters know how to, like, they can do that mask trick where they change

[13:51] their, their opera masks, like back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And instead, the meeting ran late because it turns out it takes a long time to explain to people how to build a centrifuge. And so instead, I got like this little thing of Chinese takeout and I was like, I can't believe this. And then when I ate it, I was like, I cannot believe this. This tastes like I walked across the freaking street. you know, to like the local Chinese takeout and, you know, got there, you know, local, it was

[14:21] like, it's crazy. It was comforting for me to hear, though. Yeah? I think so. All right. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, um, I mean, I had a lot of good I had a lot of good, good, interesting, interesting food on there. Like, I think I said also on the Twitter. I had some really cool steamed bun varieties that you don't get over

[14:39] your, or that I have never had before. So I need to do some investigation on that. I'm thinking, I don't really have any time, but, you know, one of the things I'm interested in is starches. So like being over there really made me think I need to up my starch game. So I want to, like, I'm going to start categorizing. There's, I have a couple technical books now on Star Trek. I need to read to get a handle on it because you ever notice that people, they say the same. If you look up people's descriptions of different starches and what they're good for and what they're not good

[15:08] for. They're always extremely vague. You ever do that? You probably don't do this. I hate starches. What? I hate the sound it makes. Oh, oh, oh, but you love starches. You like noodles. Oh, you mean like star? yeah. Yeah. So but anyways, but like most of the, most of the, you know, popular writing on using different variety of sorts, it's like, you know, you got, you got your sweet potato, you got your your water chestnut, you got your

[15:35] Caltrop, which is the other kind of water chestnut, which is a, they're entirely different species. You got, there's a zillion different starches. You got your tapiocas, your potatoes, and not even to mention your modern or modified starches. Anyway, I want to go through that before I really get into the kind of like bun thing. I want to go through kind of a starch, the starch extravaganza. And there's actually, there's an interesting book from 1919, I think, that has like these lunatics just took pictures of like 500 different starches. It's on the

[16:04] internet. Maybe I'll post a link to it so people can see like this like start, that person didn't give a rat's behind about cooking. Anyway, uh, look forward to hearing more, or don't, to hearing more because remember, you know, at

[16:16] Clefs who writes in sometimes, uh, on the Twitter, he's from Japan or it lives in Japan. He came up with this interesting problem. You ready for it? I'm going to try and tackle this, probably not over the break. I won't have time, but he, I think it was buckwheat, either buckwheat or rye. wants to make something, the texture of fresh mozzarella made out of that with the flavor, the flavor of, I forget whether it was rye or buckwheat, texture of fresh mozzarella. And I was like, you know what? That sounds like it would be good. You know what I mean? And I think I know how to do it. It's like a mixture of like soy milk, cashew cheese, uh, LBG, kappa, and

[16:49] like I got to figure out how to get the, the, the, the flavor of the buckwheat without having too much of an additional starch. Anyway, I'm working on it. Just so you people know, I'm working on it. Is there any way to set up like a, like a, like an open source like where like you're like, this is the thing you have to do to include the

[17:07] information like, I'm going to come up with like standardized starch recipes to test out the different stars things and then, you know, uh, do them and

[17:15] then I, there's no way I could have other people. I don't know. sure that exists. I don't know how to do it. I'm just terrible communication with people. That's the thing. What are you doing for Christmas does? Going home for 2 days? Two days? Two days, huh? Long way to go for 2 days. out to LA? Well, not really. Covina. Land of Good Burger. What about you, senor molecules? What are you doing for the holiday? drive to Long Island for the night? Yeah. That's it. All right. All right, let's take some questions. Hey, Dave, Nasasi, Jack, and the rest of the crew. It's just us today. Just us, Alex, from the Bay Area up near where you went to college this does. You have any love for the Bay Area? I hate the Bay Area. All righty. What do you really think about it? Merry Christmas Bay Area, people. Nastasia hates you. I have a question regarding pressure cookers and induction cooktops. I had a fagor duo earlier. Yes, yes, I'm aware that they don't make a great stock as I read from your

[18:07] cooking as great of a stock as I read in a cooking shoes climber, but I was thinking of maybe getting a giant mason jar of sorts and sticking the bones and trapping all of that within the lid if that was a possible method of retaining more

[18:19] flavor. It is. In fact, modernist cuisine does that all the time. They were the 1st people, I think, to, you know, demonstrate that to me is the idea that if you don't have a sealed pressure cooker, you can just seal things inside of

[18:31] something in the pressure cooker and it's, you know, same, same, same. Um, Unfortunately, I also live in an apartment that has a rather terribly old electric stove.

[18:41] I was wondering if buying a single separate induction top would be

[18:45] advisable since it may offer better controls. And if so, are there any recommended brands? Uh, yeah, they're awesome. I love them. I don't have any, like, kind of brands. I have had some dye on me, but I think they just get better and better. The main problem with induction cooktops, frankly, is the inexpensive ones. I mean, you could buy really expensive ones. How much was the, what did we end up selling ours for us does? 800, 900? Yeah, but that's a real one. You know what I mean? like 220 or whatever. doesn't, you know, you need a separate. The ones that go into 110. The problem that people have with it and it a lot depends on how old you are and how good your hearing is because they make this horrible noise.

[19:23] Does the noise bother you starting? Yes, I hate it. Yeah. Jack, you ever, you know what I'm talking about? Nope. Yeah. So like every inexpensive induction burner that I've ever used just goes... Yeah, no, I do know what you mean. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? And so like, if you're like me, like an old fart that can't hear worth spit

[19:44] anyway. Like, it doesn't really matter. It doesn't bother me so much, but, you know, Nastasia like can't stand that. It's like hearing an ice cube that's like on metal. Or no, remember that they dry ice on a hotel pan? Yeah, that's horrible. Man, I used to love turning on the ultrasonic homogen homogenizer and watching everybody run. And, you know, there's got to be some benefits to have listened to too much loud music in your headphones for

[20:11] years, and it's, I can, I can be around things that are unpleasant constantly. I mean, look, I do it every day. Oh, boom. Uh, uh, if so, what are recommended brands? My other question is in regards to the instant pot and all the other electric pressure cookers that were on sale recently from Black Friday. I don't know the instant pot. Do you, stars? Jack, have you heard of the instant pot? Nope. Hmm. I don't know the instant pot. But I have used electric pressure cookers. In fact, I know the designer of the Cuisinart electric pressure cooker. And I think they are convenient and they're good and you don't have to, one of the things you have to worry about, although it's not as big deal with an induction top, is

[20:50] just remembering to throttle the throttle it down so it doesn't, you know, doesn't scorch or overpressurize.

[20:59] My issue with the electrics, I think they're very convenient on, you know, mind blew up eventually, not exploded, died. That's more, you know, didn't explode because I've had that happen too, as stars, members. It wasn't around Christmas time when we blew up that pressure cooker, right? We had a stock fountain. Awesome. Good times. Um, So the problem is, is they are a slightly lower pressure, so you'll need to recalibrate your recipes, and I really prefer to cook at 15 PSI, uh, then I

[21:25] think I forget what they, though, a lot of those run. They run like seven. I don't know why they run lower. I think part of the problem is that they're not actually judging pressure. They're actually controlling the temperature and they're controlling the temperature a little bit higher, and I think that's really the reason. And that's why I was able to take my electric pressure cooker and fool it into getting a higher pressure by just altering the sensor so that it was wrong in the temperature and

[21:48] inject it up to the normal pressures that you want to use. Now, um, again, that voids any warranty, but it does work. The other problem with the electric pressure cookers, frankly, is, is that a lot of times,

[21:59] like, uh, and, uh, you know, I use Coon Recon, uh, but it was a gift. didn't have to pay for it. And it's a good pot, though. So the good thing about a good pressure cooker pot that's not like electric kettle is usually you can get the pot itself up to really high temperatures really quickly over a normal sort of a

[22:17] stove, and so it allows you to like, you know, it allows you to saute the onions 1st or if you want to do a pre-seer or like brown the meat beforehand or something like this, that's a huge

[22:27] advantage, whereas I always found that with my electric pressure cooker, I would have to brown the meat or do the onions somewhere else because it was just taking for freaking ever.

[22:35] And who wants to sit around for a whole point of the pressure cooker a lot, not always, but a lot of the time the point of the pressure cooker is I can have something done in like 15, 20 minutes.

[22:43] And so who wants to wait 15 or 20 minutes for the onions to freaking sauté so that you can then have a pressure cooker thing done in 20 minutes and it's like doubling the freaking time it takes to make something. Who wants that? Do you want that stuff? No. You don't have a pressure cooker, do you? Why? don't click that way? You don't do braises? No, I don't. Do you don't like braces? Usually one for one person, so... Oh, me, me, me. This, by the way, Stas is like, like trying to do some sort of like Christmassy blues crap. Because, nostalgia, every day of the week,

[23:15] nostalgia's like, I got to get home because I'm cooking for like 30 people. in my house. What do that take? Like... That's what I'm saying. The pressure cooker is 20 minutes, 20 freaking minutes is what I'm trying to tell you. It seems like a lot of work. seems like a lot of work. If any listener wants to send Nastasia a Secret Santa gift. No. No. wow. No. Wow. Wow. Wow. Uh, yeah. Okay. Let me see here. Got a question in 3 related questions. Uh, and we're supposed to have the questions from last week, but like with this whole blowing things up at the thing, I, you know, where I'm all just

[23:51] combined. So these are the questions I have. One of the amazing things about low temp cooking has been being part of the online community that has put in so many hours working on and sharing techniques and ideas. The technique has been largely ignored by the cookbook publishing world and they're saying are there about 4 books. Is that true? I don't know. There's the Thomas Keller. There's the original one Roka book. There's modernist cuisine, modernist at home. What do they have now? They also have they have modernist in the small cafe, modernist in the bar. Modernist in the bar. Modernist in the kidding. And yours may be. Well, no, I don't have Kenji's book, has some stuff in it. I'm sure the ideas in food guys have some in their books. Well, what about, uh... A couple.

[24:36] Yeah, I'm saying, ideas and food. Oh, yeah. I don't know. I'm sure there's more, but you're right. There's not as many as there could be. There's also some European ones, but... Wow, the Roka one's a European one. There's that weird German one where the temperatures were like twice as high as they should be. Remember that one? No. Anyway. It's a long time ago. Anyway, the uniqueness of the term, um, wait, wait, wait, wait. ignored by the cook publishing, the uniqueness of the term has allowed the online community to connect and build a body of knowledge that we can now benefit from.

[25:07] I agree that sous vide, as a word, is a low quality description for low temperature cooking, however,

[25:12] is impossible to Google low temp techniques and temperatures. That's true, I guess. Is it worth giving up the benefit we have received from the term in order just

[25:21] about accuracy? I don't know. I never say it. But again, yeah, you're right. Like I have benefited from Google search analytics with things like cooking issues as one word or like Booker and Dax. Yeah, I mean, look, it's too late. I've been saying this for a long time. It's too late to go back and, you know, not have had relations with the dog on this

[25:44] one. It's like, you know, um, I just think

[25:49] it's it's bad because it's not, it's like not accurate. It's less important now, I guess, because people know it all, but it was really a big deal when restaurants were

[26:00] getting, uh, you know, finds and shut down for using sous vide and people were confusing the 2 techniques because low temperature cooking with a circulator

[26:09] had no actual regulations on it. It was just a vacuum machine that had the regulation. So it was dragging an entire set of techniques into like

[26:16] a, like a kettle of nasty hot water when it didn't need to be. And I think, you know, especially when I was talking to Philip Preston back in the

[26:26] day and other people. I was like, why are you marketing a Why are you marketing a piece of cooking equipment that can be used without a vacuum machine and you're hanging the name of it

[26:38] and the name of the technique on this other much more expensive piece of equipment that you don't need to invest in right away?

[26:44] So it just doesn't make any, doesn't make any sense. It would be like saying, um, you know, it would be like only having the word for sunglasses be driving glasses so that you felt that you had to go buy a freaking automobile just to use a pair of freaking

[26:58] glasses. And it's not the case. That's not really a good analogy, but I'm coming up with it on top of my head. You don't need a vacuum machine for a low temp cooking or for a circulator. So why would you tie the terms together? But again, I've lost. So whatever, you know, you can't, turns out, not only can you not win them all, you can't really win any of them. Do you know what I mean? can't win. Um, Okay. Uh, two, does Nastasia hate rabbits? No? I mean, well, to eat. pets are eating. Uh, it's fine. eat too? What are you done? You have no thoughts when we? I haven't eaten it enough. I bet it's fine. will eat it. I got a rabbit sausage once from Heritage Foods is one of the best things. I made like a pasta with it. was so good. It's a strong plug jack. It's good. Thanks. Just working that right in there. You didn't even have the question ahead of time, right? Nope. Nice. Um, So there. No, Nastasi does not hate rabbits. Alive or dead? Unless they're served with biscuits, in which case she hates that. Ooh, like a like a rabbit sausage egg and cheese on a biscuit. Sounds good. Does, except for no biscuits. No biscuits. you're crazy. She really is straight up nuts. It doesn't make any sense. How about Yorkshire pudding? I've not had that. What is that? Well, it's not really a biscuit. It's like when you take when you do you like prime rib at Christmas time? Jack, do you like prime rib at Christmas time? I think I might have prime rib for Christmas time this year. So what you do is, is when you cook the prime rib in traditional way, or if you do, if you do low temp for insurance and then do a roast off on it. You get the drippings into the pan, right? So you have these fat drippings and the thing. And then you basically take a, um, what we used to call like a Dutch baby mix, which is like a thin pancakey batter, whipped up with a bunch of eggs and you dump it into the pan with the grease and it just puffs up into this like beef

[28:49] grease. Sounds good. pop over. It's like it's like one giant popover.com. So you like pop? Yeah. So you like popovers. I do like pop. So you're not a total enemy of quality. Jack, you like popovers, right? Is there anyone that doesn't like a popover? Hard to find. What's matter? Isn't it the same share you've been using for like a billion years? or somebody big sat in it? Did somebody big sit in Nastasia's chair? I can't say. Wow. You've literally sat in this chair for almost 200 episodes. blown out. It might be this one. It's usually here and this one's over there. Donate to Heritage Radio today and help us buy new chairs. Yeah, Nastasias, Nastasia's butt. Well, thank you. Back to rabbits. That said, the online community has failed me completely when it comes to rabbits. This has evolved from, by the way, from James 5 on. So I think that's probably Jameson with a five. It's like that's the password. Anyway. I bought a rabbit at Union Square over the weekend. Went to stew the saddle, want to stew the saddle later, but I'm 1st looking to low temp

[29:56] confit the legs. Online temperatures and times are all over the map. Blog commenters complain about pasty on every almost every site I have found making any recommendations. I saw a forum post claiming that modernist cuisine calls for 66 degrees Celsius for one hour. That's hi. Other sites were doing tests around 60 to 64 Celsius, but all with an ongoing conversation about

[30:18] time and claiming that too long and the meat goes pasty. What do you think about the word pasty? Don't like it. Don't like it. Do you like it? No. What about like pate a choux? No, don't like it. No. We know what a pasty is? Yeah. Are you all of a sudden you're from that area of the country? Where were you from? From Long Island, but I went I went up to the upper peninsula this summer. Yeah, Michigan, and I had like a traditional pasty. some meat pies? Yeah. were they good? was really good. What were the crust like? it crust flaky or what? It was a little bit flaky. like oily, like exiting oil? Oh, I love a pot pie. Okay, stars. Yes. pot pie? like pot pie, yeah. Okay, so you like, hate biscuits, but like pie crust. No, I don't like the crust of a pot pie. What? Oh, man. The best part. No way. Yeah, you break it up. No, you know what? Well, 1st of all, I like a traditional freaking pot pie. Here's what I don't want. I don't want you to take a hotel pan. Throw some crumbly crust bits on top of the pot pie mix and say that

[31:23] you've served me a pot pie. That is garbage. Garbage. Pot pie. I remember when I was a kid. I used to put myself on fad diets when I was a kid. Why? Because, no, no, no. Like, literally, like, I would do, I would, like, not eat all day. I used to, you know what I used to eat a lot of when I was a kid? Steakums. You remember steakums? Steakums are like, they're like fake cheesesteak meat. It's like pulped, pulped beef that they spray onto a piece of wax paper and then free

[31:53] solid. So bad. Yeah, so you literally what you have to do is you have to take it apart frozen because otherwise it just disintegrates it back into meat paste again and you stick it on your on your electric skillet because invariably these are made with electric skills from the 70s.

[32:09] And then they kind of shrivel up and they solidify into these kind of like cheesesteak at things. Anyway. So I had everything like exactly sussed out. I was like, X number of slices of American cheese, X amount of sautéed onions, X number of steakums on this particular

[32:24] roll. With mayo and ketchup was like right at this number. I forget what the number was, but I had it right dialed in and it would be all I ate all day. Because I was an idiot. Anyways, how are I even on this? What are we talking about? Popeyes. So I remember I looked up, like, how many calories were in a pot pie? And I was like, oh my god. And you know what? then I realized calorie counting for the birds. Crap on that. It was all done. I was like, you know what? And you know, have you ever read the book Catching Fire? No. How cooking made people human or whatever. It's interesting, but they, you know, they talk about a lot of things. You know, one of the things that's 100% true is every calorie counting mechanism that is used is complete garbage. And, you know, the, you know, this person actually has uh, Rangum, I think, is actually has real data to back it up. Whereas I always use this simple thought experiment. Have I said this one before on the air? I don't know. If you take uh, Jack, you can do this over the holidays. If you take a gallon of oil, right? And you calculate how many calories we're in a gallon of oil, you gain a good amount of weight, right? If calories were actually calories. If you could actually absorb all of the calories that you eat in an equally potential way, right? Swallowing a gallon of oil would be a problematic. However, if you swallow a gallon of oil, you just crap a gallon of oil out. You know what I'm saying? And now he says it in the book in a much more kind of... Actually, what your, like, smoothie and juicing thing. I think juicing, though, you're gonna absorb a lot more. So, like, I actually absorb less than, I guess, the average person because I wolf things

[33:58] down. Stasi says that I'm inhuman. So, like, all chunks of, like, you know, anyway, his main point is that raw food diets are literally, like, you know, even a very rich Western city dweller can barely survive on a raw food diet in

[34:13] terms because they have to eat so much more because the foods, until you cook it, the food's not really available to your body, so they have to eat so much more.

[34:20] So his point is, is that, and this is why how cooking made us human, is that there's no way that modern humans could have existed based on a raw diet because he says chimps have to spend

[34:32] like, like almost a 3rd of their day chewing things because they're eating raw, raw

[34:37] food and they have to eat so much of it and they have to chew the hell out of it. How the hell do we get on this? Pot pies. The detour was from pasty. That was my fault. Oh, yeah. All right. Well, no, it's always my fault, Jack. It's never your fault. Oh, Miko's pasty. Yeah. Anyway, if time is so important, doesn't that mean that they are cooking so

[34:54] hot that you might as well use an oven and not really low temperature? Why would the rabbit be unique in requiring such a specific time requirement unless we

[35:01] were getting the temps wrong and do you have any suggestions on time or temps? Furthermore, even traditional confit recipes do not seem to agree. I've seen people insisting that you keep the oven under 210 degrees and others calling for 350 and even 375. Times vary from 2 hours to 10. It is a time, if the time is such a factor on the low temp, Why is there no talk of pasty in the oven methods? for your help? Uh, Jameson. Jamie 5 son. JV 5 on. 5 on. Anyways, here's why. You don't notice the pastiness in a piece of meat when you simply overcook it,

[35:33] right? So the classic pasty meat that you get is tenderloin, any kind of tenderloin, if you cook it for too long, even without overcooking it tends to go pasty, and that's because the muscle doesn't actually have any real structure of its own. That's the problem. So, uh, things like beef tenderloin are always described when they're cooked too long as pasty.

[35:54] Um, and I haven't done a lot of rabbit, low temp, but I guess rabbit has the same kind

[35:59] of of an issue. Anything that, like I say, is like very low in connected tissue. I think that chicken, especially if it's vacuum bagged and cooked too

[36:08] long, goes kind of pasty or fibrousy. It's almost a fibers like become almost separated so that when you eat it, you get all this liquid at once, but then it turns into like a mush of fibers in your mouth as you

[36:19] chew it. And it's because the meat doesn't have too much structure of its own. That's the real problem. So that's what they're talking about. And it doesn't happen in traditional cooking because you just usually undercook the inside and overcook the outside and overcooking it just makes it

[36:35] hard, so it doesn't make it pasty. That's why it really only happens in these situations where you can get large pieces of meat that are all the same cooking

[36:42] temperature throughout it that you really notice the phenomenon. Um, Anyways. So the trick is, is that you want to minimize, uh, also, I think duck can get pasty. Duck can also go livery. So some the 2 faults that you get with certain kinds of meats by cooking them too long, even at the proper temperature is a fibrousness or

[37:01] pastiness. Sometimes like I say, it's more fiber, sometimes it's more paste. The worst also is like things like shrimp. sometimes have an enzymatic reaction in them at low temperatures where they just turn to almost literally a paste that's completely unedible when you cook it for too long. Um, So those are the ones that are really kind of time limited. And it applies to the lower time, lower, you know, part of

[37:23] the of the temperature scale, like where you're not going all the way to a braise, but you're in like kind of the lower tip. And it's usually meats that are low in connective tissue. Um, on the paciness. On the livery side, it's usually, um, like duck can go livery. If you cook it too long, things like, especially really terrible are like cuts of beef that like don't have a lot of fat or structure, like

[37:46] I have round, and then they tend to go livery and nasty when you when you cook them too long. Um, and so that's why I tend to not really cook things like tenderloin, low temp, uh, unless you're doing like a Wellington or something like

[38:01] this and you need to just cook it through really quickly, but I try to keep all of those times on things that go

[38:05] pacy under an hour. And you can do that in a couple of ways. So if you have something that's thick, you can, you have to figure it out, but you can basically set your water bath a little bit higher than you actually want the center to

[38:17] be and then pull it a little bit early before the thing gets up. Or, you know, you could do, you know, any number of things like that, but it is problematic.

[38:27] It's best to try to keep pieces of things that go pasty in ways that you can cook them in under an hour. I've never really noticed any piece of meat going pasty in less than an hour. Anyway, did that answer that question or not? A little bit. When you describe that shrimp turning into paste, it was really sickening. Oh, man, you know what? I used to do that as a demo when I was teaching at the FCI. I would do that as a demo and then all of a sudden one day I wasn't able to reliably make the disgusting pace anymore, but it was so

[38:55] bad. And, you know, for them, you've been to one of my demos. If I make something on purpose, it's crappy, I make you eat it. The point being that you, well, you're supposed to know what happens, right? You don't want to just take someone's freaking word for it. And so, you know, I used to enjoy watching people put it in their mouth and then everyone would spit it out because the texture was just like repulsive. Uh, but, you know, alas, I was not able to, hey, you know what I had? not repulsive. So, uh, I'm not going to name any names because that would be rude, but it's a 3 star restaurant, Michelin star restaurant in Tokyo called Jiro.

[39:29] Nice. Not going to mention who it is though, but maybe it's Jiro. Anyway, so Nastasia and I had, I believe, it was good. I had a good time. But Stas, was that the worst the worst dish you've ever had at a Michelin starred restaurant in your life? Really? Yeah, yeah. The single worst dish I've ever had at a Michelin starred restaurant. was this mantis shrimp that we were served that was pissed. It was basically somehow like it was cooked manta shrimp, and it turned to kind of this granular paste, and it was just

[40:06] vial, right? Remember that? You could tell by the look on her face that you remember it. Like, yeah. Also the most expensive. But anyway, so the point is, is that here in the US, we

[40:18] don't, I don't really see live manta shrimp that often. How do we describe what a manta shrimp looks like. It looks like, imagine like a cross between a lobster and a centipede, but big. You know what I mean? Is that accurate? Yeah, it's kind of like a C centipede. Anyway, um, But, okay. Pasty? It had like no... Yeah, it was because it had been cooked and then frozen or something and then thawed and then it was just

[40:41] like, it was like Pat Giro, huh? Yeah, yeah. Jiro dreams of pasty manta shrimp, apparently. But the, um, Sunnyhoo. So, and I've bought manta shrimp frozen here in the US and they're just freaking awful. Like, one time by, because I used to, I once tried one, I was doing, uh, you know, like a ciapino, and so I buy a bunch of stuff to throw into the ciapino. I'm like, ah, put them at the shrimp and. Why not? Wretched. Gretchen. Um, Terrible. So in China, and apparently it's like only been the rage for the past, I don't know, a couple of years or something, I

[41:14] went in Hong Kong, I went to one of these places where you buy, you buy the fish live and then they take it and they cook it for

[41:21] you. And in fact, you can go next door to the boat and buy it from the boat and then they cook it at the restaurant. It's a really weird situation. You can never do that in the US. So in the past couple of years, like very large manta shrimp, like on the order of longer than a foot long, like big manta shrimp are all there live. And, you know, they're like 3 inches across and like over a foot

[41:42] long, these manta shrimp and they're like kind of all flopping around. It's very like, you know, prehistoric looking stuff. And the here it was freaking awesome. Now to gauge whether or not you're going to like this, right? You know, you're familiar, like a salt and pepper shrimp. They're cooked twice, right? So they're they're fried up and then fried again so that they get the they're super crispy on the outside. And when the shells are thin enough, you can eat the shells, right? You familiar with this shack? Yeah. Yeah. And so, like, you always see people peeling it and I'm like, you're losing all the flavor. Yeah. So these thin shelled trip, right? The mantis shrimp, even though they're huge like that, the ones that I had, the shells were thin enough that when they did the

[42:23] double the double cookoff like that on them, you could just eat the whole damn thing. That was awesome. It was like hacked up into pieces and served and it was just freaking. Freaking really good. That's some other... someday we'll talk someday we'll have time to talk about the interesting food stuff. Anyway, have a question in here from Steve that I don't have an answer to. So I'm hoping that I'm hoping that the internet's of people at the heritage radio can hook us up on this. Hello, everyone. My name is Steve. I just discovered your podcast recently and I love it. This is going to grow stars out, so I'm going to look at her face. I've been, and what's your face? You have a neutral face? do it again. Because I read it like when, like, a week ago. And you were like, uh... Yeah. A big fan of the cooking drama known as Hannibal on NBC. So Hannibal actually was a cooking show. It was about cannibalism and cooking. Jack, you familiar with this show? Not at all. Now can I watch TV? I guess cooking because he was a Hannibal, Hannibal a Hannibal. Sure. Listen to you, Jack. I don't watch TV. It's true. You don't like TV? No, not really. Nothing. No? I don't I don't have cable or a TV. I have a projector and I'll watch like movies. Do you have Netflix? No. I know. I'm sorry How do you make, you know, how do you stay plugged into pop culture there? Just the internet? Just the YouTube all the time? That's the thing. All the TV stuff kind of goes over my head and people talk about all the shows they keep up on. That's like the one thing I kind of unsubscribe from. So people don't uh, don't uh, try to engage Jack in conversations about the TV shows that you just watch. Boring conversation ahead. Wow. Damn. Wow. I love this, Jack. You know, I don't usually get the hater side of Jack. Rare. Rare. I mean, plenty of hate from me, plenty of hate from stars, very little hate from Jack. I'm glad you brought it for Christmas. This the season. Yeah. Stas, did you have you pulled out your Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer set? Oh my god. So Nastasia has the entire Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, like, what is it, 30 or 50, 40th year anniversary set, where you had to buy, you had to buy Yukon, Cornelius, Hermi, Rudolph, and Santa Claus, and then you send away and you get the Bumble, and Styles, I think, was the only person that ever sent them all

[44:45] and got the Bumble. It took a really long time to get them. No, we thought they were going to screw you on the bumble. I know. That is something Nastasio likes a lot. And by the way, I agree with her. All the rank and bass old, like, you know, oh my god, I wish Studs, you got to tweet out. The bumble is on the top of Nastasia's Christmas tree, like King Kong on the top of the Empire State Building. And, you know, you are hater in general, but you do pull out the Christmas, which I enjoy. So I'm on the Hannibal page here for the on Wikipedia. And apparently Jose Andras was the series is culinary cannibal consultant. Yeah, that's what that's well, right. Is that what he's getting to in the question? crazy. Yeah. Anyway, so the show was canceled because I guess there's only so much cannibalism people want to see on the TV. I don't know. And one of the things that stuck out to me was an episode where Hannibal talks about centrifuging

[45:33] Sow's blood in order to create a clear liquid that tastes sweet, that would be the plasma.

[45:38] I asked some medical professionals about it, and they mentioned that they had heard anecdotally from thirdhand

[45:43] sources, thirdhand, like that. I never tasted it. serum and plasma, R indeed sweet tasting. Sounds interesting. I wanted to try it for an awful themed dinner. I got a cheap centrifuge, just been some blood, a 6 tube,

[45:55] uh, primitive clay Adams model, 0181, which is like a standard, uh, thing. Uh, that I think was used by companies to give employees physicals for commercials, driver's license

[46:04] tests or something like this. Anyways, the capacity is horrible, but I got some pork blood from my local butcher to centrifuge, and after about half an hour, I got 0 zilch separation. This puzzled me, since this machine was presumably used to separate blood for physicals. I called the butcher shop. I got the blood from Bel Campo Meats in Los Angeles. So, you can hang out and get some, no, thanks. And they said they didn't add anything to the blood as an anti-coagulant. It's just pure pork blood. It can't really be true though, right? Otherwise it would coagulate. I think there's got to be some. I think maybe if the, doesn't the pH? I forget. It's been such a long. There's plenty of literature about cooking with blood from plenty of sources, but nothing I can find out about centrifuging it for culinary use. Since Jose Andres was the culinary consultant on the Hannibal TV series, and he hasn't mentioned anything about centrifuging blood in any of his books. I have come to the conclusion that he has all this fun information about it and is jealously guarding it and keeping it from people like me. I don't think I can afford a centrifuge with significantly higher RPMs. So I'm wondering if there is a way to chemically clarify the solids out of blood similar to the way you clarify fruit juices and to produce a clear, possibly

[47:12] sweet, serum, or plasma. always get them mixed up. Steve in Los Angeles. So, Wow, I don't know. I've never centrifuge blood in any of my machines. But this seems to me, Jack, am I right? Like, this is something that I guarantee you, we have people. I think so. Like, this is one of the things where you don't need me. There's been there's people out there, right? There's people out there. people out there. Don Vo writes in from Berkeley, California. You have never been to Berkeley. Isn't that weird? Do you like over there? No. Nice. Wow. What's so nice. All right. Uh, and he says, uh, he says nice things about us, which I enjoy. He says, well, I do have some questions. I don't know what to ask 1st yet. Anyways, we might just ask anything, right? People ask anything. You don't have to wait till you have anything. Ask a cooking question. Anyways, I do miss the original fishes, fishes, vodka. Remember that, Jack? Yeah. Yeah. What I would like to know, and here's the question that's important. What I would like to know is where do I get the Jackie Molecules ringtone and is that still available for my phone? Ooh, I might have taken care of this for him. Uh, but email us again, Info and HeritageRadioNetwork.org. The response will be quicker if you're a donor of heritage. But shoot us an email, we'll sort it out. All right, and we'll see what Styles thinks about this. Also, this has probably been said before, but is Aubrey Plaza's character on

[48:45] Parks and Rec, a character portrayal of Nastasia. You feel yourself like, uh, it seems uh, like through the last 230 episodes, I imagine Aubrey Plaza channeling

[48:56] Nastasia. Please don't hurt me, Stas. I respect the hammer. She sounds like someone awesome to hang out with. See, you saved yourself. Although I think Aubrey seems like cool. Like, I would want to hang out with her, right? Yeah. Anyway. I tell all the cooks and bartenders I know about cooking issues while I'm not in the industry myself. I seem to confuse people when I tell them I work in IT. All the stuff on the show you guys talk about makes them think that I work in a kitchen, which is highly amusing as I feel like a total fake.

[49:26] Nice. Well, here's to making you feel like a total fake. Yeah. We do. That's how we do. I should wrap it up. Oh, all right. So I was just telling me we got to pull off it. So we should say anything specific in Christmas. We didn't do anything, any Christmassy things. Any advice we need to give for Christmas cooking? I don't know. I'll give you. You didn't get any Christmas. Well, it's because they didn't know it was going to be the last episode before. the last... Yeah they would. I'll give you guys a... Oh, war on Christmas. Stas, are you, are you, no, Stas is a pro-christmas warrior? Jack, are you neutral? I'm a solstice guy What? That's today. Happy? No, that was yesterday. No, no, no. 21st. 21st. Anyway, longest shortest day of the year, rather. A couple of things. Let me get a couple of things out of the way since I'm not having people call in, right? One, I went to China. I went to Hong Kong and Shenzhen more on that later if you guys are interested. Um, but I went specifically. I met the guy who makes the seers all. How cool is that? Also, Searsals are going to be back online in early January. What do you mean? They're out? They sold out. Freaking animals? No, no, no, no, no. The new load. They are taking their sweet time on putting them into the factories. Did you just say the new load? The new load. But is are there none available right now? Zero. We sold out of hours. And the new load is being held onto. Where is it? They can't tell me. You know how they are. We have none left to throw. Wait, someone online is selling one on Amazon for $7,300. Wow. That's a joke. Let me tell you something, people. I told Amazon that they were going to run out. We told them this was not on us. When did this happen? yesterday? I got a bunch of emails yesterday and then all morning I've been on the phone with them. Jesus. And they're in the country. Oh, yeah. They're here. They're here. freaking guys. Freaking guys. Freaking guys. And we're almost out of steak decorators. Yeah, they're coming from. Hey, listen, if you guys listen to steak decorator, We didn't do a lot of talking about it. It actually is a really nice piece of equipment, but Nastasia and I have to really feel that people want it in order for us to order another batch because they were really just for the Kickstarter people.

[51:41] But you know, I use mine every day. It's like imagine if, like, imagine if, like, lazy Susan, if, like, Susan stops being lazy, took a bunch of anabolic

[51:52] steroids and, like, you know, she became like super robo. We can't call it robo Susan because there's no motor in it. And we feel that like a robo Susan would have to be motorized, right? By the way, every restaurant I went to in China had a giant lazy season. That's awesome Yeah. Um, so I went to China to deal with uh, possibly a new next year, sometimes here's all

[52:14] thing, and also to deal with the centrifuge. And I got good news and I got bad news. The bad news is it's taking us a little bit longer to do the centrifuge than I had hoped. I'm going to go through another round of prototyping. We will start talking about the centrifuge and releasing pictures early in the

[52:34] New Year and hopefully in mid-January and telling you about all of its capabilities

[52:39] and what it can do. Um, but as usual, we don't want to put something out until we're happy with it. And so it's going to take a month or 2 longer, then we had hoped, right,

[52:52] stars? But it's going to be wheat when it happens. But remember, a lot of this is about, you know, well, we'll talk

[53:00] more wind depth when, when, when I announce it sometime in mid-January. The other thing is, is that when you're cooking for Christmas or whatever, Hanukkah, next year,

[53:11] whatever, New Year's, whatever. The primary thing, uh, and this is how I, like how I do, try to do almost everything is run a small test first. That's the thing, right? It's like you're going to have 15 or 20 people over. You're going to spend money, like a couple $100 on meat. Are you going to do some big thing of veg? Take the time to just do a couple of small scale tests first. Most of the time, it's not that big of a deal. Like if it's a poultry problem, just get like one breast or one leg and test it out. And this is the same thing. If you're going to be on a TV show, test the stuff out before you're going to, before you're going to do

[53:47] it before you try to do it with the whole thing, because I know it seems like you don't have the time to do it. But that's really the way to figure out what's going to happen. If you run just one or 2 simple tests, the 2nd time around, it's going to be so much better. That's how I figure out everything anyway. And that's how hopefully you don't ruin the holidays. So happy holidays from 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

[54:18] 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. Heritage radio network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.