[0:00] Today's program is brought to you by S. Wallace Edwards and Sons. 3rd generation curemasters producing the country's best dry cured and aged hams, bacon, and sausage. For more information, visit

[0:12] edwardsvam.com. I'm Erica Watt, host of Let's Get Real, the cooking show about finding, preparing, and eating food. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwood, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking, and she's coming to you live on the Heritage for New Network, broadcasting every week

[0:42] from on from when? About 12? Time to now. 1209, 1209, roughly 1245 on the Heritage Radio Network in Birdsburg, Brooklyn. Roberta's Pizzeria. As usual, join in the studio with Nastasia, the Hammer, Lopez. good. We got Peter Kim from the Museum of Food and Drink. How you doing, Peter? Yet again. Hey, what's up? You become like a, you become like the 3rd co-host. I kind of like that You know, on the chat room, you should write in whether you enjoy having, you know, Peter here. He called himself, before the show started, an abuse sponge. Remember that, Stus? An abuse sponge, and Nastasi and I noted, Nastasi adding the salient point, of course, that the problem with the sponge is, is that whatever you soak up with a sponge, in this case,

[1:29] abuse gets wrung back out on onto you again in the sink, but plus that nasty smell from the sponge. Yeah, and it gets progressively worse until the sponge just falls apart. Yeah, and you try to wash it in the dishwasher, you try. And somehow it, the stank never fully goes away. You know what I mean? Stays with the sponge. So the rest of the sponge is life. Well, where are you in a sponge's life? First of all, what kind of sponge are you, Peter? Do you have that, like, abrasive layer on the one side that gets all peeled up and nasty, the fake scotch bright? Are you a real scotch bright or chore boy or equivalent? Are you the kind that you buy in large plastic sacks that are fake? You know, abrasive on one side, yellow on the other. Wow. Yellow sauce. Whoa. For those of you that don't know Peter's Chinese. Wow, so racist. Here we go. Peter actually, Korean. Anyways. And joined not today in the engineering booth. There's no Jackie molecules in the engineering booth. But we have Liz, which is very nice. How you doing, Liz? I'm great. I'm glad that we're getting off to a grand start today. Yeah? Well, at least it's a start, right? You know, at least we're not dead yet, Rice does? It's true. Yeah. Never know. Never know. Remember, like my favorite, uh, remember back when people say like, uh, you know, uh, what kind of dishwasher? yeah, we have a dishwasher. His name is Carmelo. I loved Carmelo. He was my favorite, like, one of my favorite human beings at the FCI. His favorite thing to say was you'd say, how you doing? And he'd say, fine, for now. And because, you know, and you would always say, tomorrow you never know. And he died. Yeah. Awkward silence Well, I mean, you know? It happens. The good news is not only has it happened to the best of us, it also happens to the worst of us. Call your questions in two, 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. Uh, big news stars. An actual friend of mine, right? Who's like, you know, not in the food business, an architect, in fact, you know, our kids hang out together. came over to my house. You ready for this? Cooked a meal with a vajetti. Yeah, 1st of all, he bought some weird, like, knockoff Chinese. That's the exact one. He came over. He's like, I bought this thing that cuts vegetables

[3:50] into like little strips. I mean, I was like, you mean the jetty? I'm like, I'm familiar. And he goes, no, no, no. It's like it's like a peeler that was modified to be veggetti like. So I was like, look, look, you know, I have the real, there's no use. you don't need to like, because it couldn't spiral. It couldn't make a continuous spiral. It could only go the length of the zucchini or the length of the cucumber because it didn't rotate. It had no rotating facility. She still had a middle. Worse even than that. Basically, it's like a peeler. shunk, shunk, shunk, shunk, shunk. So unless you were like, unless you were a rotational genius, unless you were doing it the way, for instance, that like you use an Isuba to cut a vegetable into sheets, you would always end up with a very short noodle.

[4:33] So he, and he came over and cooked a dish with my least favorite vegetable, which

[4:38] is... Zucchini. Yeah. Like, blossoms, great, vegetable crap. He literally came over to my house and cooked noodles with it. I was like, listen. I was like, listen, I don't have any cheese. So he's like, the recipe doesn't need cheese. And I was like, not only are you going to give me zucchini noodles. There's not gonna be any like cheese or anything on it. So what was it, what was it? Well, thankfully, he is not one of these anticarb nut jobs. And so it was a mixture of zucchini and actual pasta. Which is actually an interesting idea because the zucchini is soaking up a sauce into flavors and stuff, and he fried it. So, like, he fried the zucchini... what you're supposed to do. That's what the veggie people say to do? I doubt the veggie people will fry stuff. is like, I just write it because it's healthier. Because you're eating a healthy squash and it's fried. So it's okay because it's fresh and it's right. What? Wait, wait. Do that again, but have it make sense. It's okay if it's fried because it's squash and squash is healthy, no matter how you prepare it. is her reasoning. Squash is solidified water with some mildly vegetal taste. It is a sponge. It's not like chicken. Fried chicken. No, it's not like chicken. No, it is most definitely not like chicken. It makes no sense. It makes no sense. I don't believe that frying is necessarily unhealthy, but I don't believe

[5:58] that, like, it's like all these, like, weird tit for tat things. You know what I mean? Like, well, uh, I'm gonna go on the treadmill so that I can pound 50 Snickers bars. The hell is that? It doesn't make any sense, right? Edith Snickers bar. If you want a Snickers bar, work out if you want to work out. They're unrelated. Fry your squash if you think it tastes good. Don't fry your squash because somehow that lets you fry something as though fried squash is going to be as good as fried chicken, which is not. Although it was good in this case. Does anyone there, does anyone in the world think that fried squash is as good as fried chicken? those of you who eat chicken. Anyone? Anyone? No. No, you don't. Like tempura? I mean, like, look, there are like, okay, look. Like if I was going to deal with zucchini and try to make it as good as possible, right? I would squish the ever loving hell out of it like you would with an eggplant, right? Right? So that you would get rid of all of the sponginess of it, if you were going to fry it. And then I would somehow batter it and try to make a nice texture out of zucchini and then batter it. So it didn't become. See, I'm not afraid of oil, but who likes like oil sponges? Who likes to eat non-crunchy oil sponges? You see, like the batter of a properly fried thing absorbs a whole hell of a lot of oil, right? But it is what? It is what? What is it? Crunchy, right? It is crunchy. So it is delicious. You know, I like zucchini? Core it. Keep it whole, core it, stuff it with meatball. That sounds good. That's good. That sounds good. Well, it's like a non-bitter version of stuffed bitter melon. You like bittermelon? No. Why? Peter Kim is making his shrug his shrug shoulder because she's racist. Like, that's his little thing. Look, I'm showing solidarity with all sponge-like vegetables out there. Wait, do you like bitter melon though? Yeah, I like bitter moan. Do you? I also like zucchini. What? In any in any guys? When someone serves you, when someone hands up and is like, I saw a tank, you show up at their house and I go, I saw

[7:59] Cade zucchini for you. Yeah, that's my side contribution to your dinner party. Yeah, I know you bought meat or something that tastes good. Expensive. Yeah. I know that like someone else brought wine, something that's delicious and it's going to make your conversation tolerable. But like, but like you're like, you know, what did I bring? I brought burnt on the outside, yet still soggy and oil soaked, rancid zucchini product. right? How many times out of 10 when you get zucchinis, that what you get? Always. Oh, nobody else, they don't know what to do. And on that note, we have a collar. All right, caller. You were on the air. Hey, Dave, Natasha, Jackie, everybody. Um, hey, I was just curious if you'd be willing to share maybe some uh, weeknight staples for uh, for your listeners. Yeah, I'm a, a father of 2 young girls and, um, you know, always looking for ideas on quick dinners to knock out that are

[8:51] delicious. I'm familiar with your, uh, you know, your steak and the garlic bread deal and whatnot. But, uh, yeah, I'd be curious, uh, what what you like to knock out. How old are your girls? Uh, I get a 4 year old and a 9 month old, but uh, the 4 year old

[9:05] eat, eat just about anything so far. Hey, let me, uh, well, good. So you're not in a picky situation yet. I mean, most of my choices are actually based on how picky, uh, you know, especially my older kid, but did, how many months is the young one? Uh, she's nine. So she's starting to eat a little bit of some solid foods here. Listen, before I go into your question, have you heard the fantastic new news that now they say that everything they told

[9:29] you, go online. Don't take my word for it, everything that they told you about not having of not exposing kids to potential allergens is exactly wrong. The new wisdom. So for years, including when my kids were little, I wasn't allowed to expose them early on to things that might be allergens, even though at the

[9:47] time, I was like, this is a load of crap. I was like, not only is this a load of crap, intuitively, it is a load of crap, intuitively, you want to expose the kids to a bunch of

[9:58] everything such that they can kind of hack it as we go on. This is the, you know, this is the, uh, you know, we killed almost everyone on this continent with

[10:07] our, with our blankets full of like, disease kind of thing that, like, constant exposure to low levels of things from a young age seems to make you more invulnerable to them later, right?

[10:16] So, right. So now they've come out and said that, yes, in fact, with the exception of honey,

[10:23] uh, which, you know, you could get botulism from, uh, you know, feed them feed them everything from an even earlier age than we thought before. Uh, you know, we hate to be the ones here that said, we always freaking thought that. The sad thing is that I couldn't act on it when I had kids because if I was, you know, you're not a doctor. What do you know? You know what I mean? I mean, if you're wrong and your kids end up with some hardcore allergy, they're going to be like, well, it's because dad thought he knew best and didn't feed him freaking peanut

[10:49] butter like you're supposed to. But now they're like, in fact, the allergies are caused by this kind of stuff. you been reading this? I have not, but yeah, no, it makes sense though. Yeah, look into it. Again, like, uh, do not mistake cooking issues for medical advice, but look it up. You know what I mean? It's a fantastic new thing because I have a new niece in the family and yeah, we're all remarking on that. In fact, last night at dinner. So, uh, so apparently you're a meat eater. Yeah, I do have a circulator. Do you have a rice cooker? I do, I do. So, like, I use, I do a lot of stuff, uh, with the rice cooker just because it, it holds things so

[11:28] well. So, you know, you can bust out at any point, like, right when you get home, you can throw, like, any sort of thing that cooks in the rice cook. In fact, I'm kind of lying. I dont really tend to cook finished dishes in the rice cooker. I tend to have, um, I have a bunch of Korean stone bowls, the

[11:45] Tolsos, and like they're super fast to bust stuff out on. Problem is, is they're not kid friendly. You know what I mean? So usually what I'll do is just have like a boatload of rice and then I'll take whatever I have in the fridge left over from the last couple of

[11:57] days. I'll hack that stuff up and throw it into the stone bowl with like a quickly improvised sauce because I always keep in my pantry,

[12:06] like depending on what kind of moods I'm in, cans of coconut milk, cans of tomato paste, like, you know, a bunch of stuff that I can just bust out sauces quickly, crack an egg into it with a tulsa, but it requires you buying

[12:15] tulsa, which is probably not what you want to do. And again, your kids can't really have that. I don't know, Styles, what do you like for quick? Pasta. Yeah, Stas is a pasta queen. It sounds like pasta, pasta, pasta queen. But the kids get sick of pasta after a while. I wouldn't know. Because you never get sick of it? Because I don't have kids and I don't get sick of it. You never get sick of pasta? No. Ever. No. Never. Because there's lots of ways you can... Back before I had kids. And even when I had kids, one kid, when I was used to live on 38th Street and my pasta machine was out, I was in a routine where twice a week I would make pasta,

[12:51] mean, like make it. Uh, and I, you know, I would ignore all the relaxing steps when you were rolling it out and so I could, I could make pasta by the time the water was boiling.

[13:01] That was fun because it gives me a sense of accomplishment and it's like a fresh pasta thing, but it can be done in under in under 45 minutes. I mean, the thing is, honestly, now it's

[13:12] like, by the time I'm done working and, you know, my wife is home, I really only have 15 to 20 minutes to cook dinner.

[13:21] I mean, like, you know, Rachel Ray with her 30 minute meals. I don't know where she has the luxury of such time. You know, it's like 15 to 20 is about the limit. So, like, that's why a lot of pre-cooking is really good. We got into habit. Um, uh, you know, a couple of months ago, we sadly fell out of it

[13:38] where, like on a Saturday or a Sunday, uh,

[13:42] we'd or, you know, we'd roast 2 chickens instead of one, right? Because it doesn't take any more energy to roast 2 chickens than one. And then, um, you know, we would do the old school rip apart the carcass, maybe, you know, maybe make a broth, do some chicken salads, do some stuff like that.

[13:58] And now even on Sundays, like if I'm, you know, up in Connecticut, I'll bust out the tandor and I'll always make extra of everything and then use the leftovers. Like a really good leftover. Like, oh, I know I said it before in the radio show, but seriously, like show up at home, throw the potatoes in the oven.

[14:13] Baked potato bars so freaking delicious. So delicious. And we'd all, everyone has forgotten how delicious the baked potato bar is. had that last night. You did? I love it. You didn't tell me that. How was it? Good night, good. You know what I bought a couple weeks ago? okay you ready for it? Bakos. I went out and bought the I went full 70s and got bakos. What are bakos? Bacon bits. Bacon bits. Bacos, texturized vegetable protein in the form of bacon bitlets. And it brought back some good memories. Dax, who did not grow up on them, thought they were crap. thought they were garbage. I enjoy them. Anyway, so baked potato bar is good. And if you do make the baked potato bar, save a couple of extra because if you chip those, they fry fantastically very quickly later without any

[14:55] pre-prep, even after they've been, especially after they've been refrigerated. Is any of this helpful? Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Well, let us know if you come up with anything good. Send it on in, you know, to the questions. We talk about it on Eric, et cetera, et cetera. Call back, tell us your experience. And remember, now you can feed your kids everything. Yay. Okay. You know, like seriously, that's like a big one for me. Anyway, all right, thanks a lot. Okay. Let's see. I had some unanswered questions. What? What? I just like looking at Peter. Oh, what is Peter doing with his shirt? He's just mocking me. Well, yes. Okay. So I had some questions that went unanswered last week, and my phone is not wanting me to see what they are. Uh, okay. I just moved into a new apartment, a decent, if a little shabby, pre-war building, aren't they all, right? Aren't they all like, are you not in a pre-war building? No, nope. 70s. 70s. So does 70s buildings have like all the roaches and stuff that are pre-work? No? No? What about the, what floor are you on? Six. So it's too high for the giant water bugs. I guess so, yeah. You never see the giant water bugs that high unless I guess it's like a really old building. What about you, Peter? You get the giant water bugs? You're in a shabby pre-war building. You just get the mini roaches? Yeah, get roaches. Yeah. Oh, Liz, while I'm talking about this. Is it possible to get Sam Edwards on the phone? Let me work on it. Because I have a question that he can answer. See whether he can. I'm not saying because I didn't call. I didn't know ahead of time that he was going to be the sponsor, but since Sam Edwards is sponsoring the show, and I have a question on country hams, if he wants to spend a couple of minutes on the phone with us towards the end of the program, we

[16:38] can, you know, let me see what I can do. All right. Just moved into a shabby pre-war building in Brooklyn, the kitchen is new and that's nice, but there's one major drawback. As with most New York City apartments, there is no hood over the stove, and every time I try to roast a chicken or sear a steak, um,

[16:58] oh my god, my phone, when I was trying to move it, thought I wanted to define the word steak. I know where the steak is, iPhone, jerk. Every time I try to roast a chicken or sear a steak, the hard wired smoke detectors go off. I thought maybe I could recalibrate them, but no dice. I've opened windows, employed fans, but nothing I seem to do prevents the problems. Do you have any advice short of moving? This is driving me effing nuts. Uh, thanks, uh, Matt Banbury. Okay. Yeah, it's a it's a big, big problem. Like the laws are that we have to have a smoke detector. But the problem is, is that smoke detectors are not designed with kitchens in mind and...

[17:37] They install them over the stove. Well, there's, I mean, some people's apartments, like you got your stove, you got your bed. You know what I mean? It's like, there's no logical kind of separation. And it's true that some places, even with the windows wide open and like a fan in them, which I recommend, they're still

[17:57] going to go off. Now that, you know, look, there's a couple of ways around this, you know, you can, uh, certain manufacturers of cooking detectors, as you know, I like to call them, have a button on it called a hush

[18:13] button, right? And a lot of them do. And yours might, you might not know about it. So the thing that says, uh, the test button on it, right? So some manufacturers, and you can look up online, you can look up yours. I know, like, I think the brand Kitty, you know, makes some that do this, where if you press the button once,

[18:33] right? Just press it. It will beep, it will go beep once at you, and for the next 8 to 10 minutes, depending on the detector, it is not

[18:42] going to go off, right? based on what you're on what you're doing. unless it has what they call, and I'm going to put this in air quotes

[18:50] that you can't see because you can't see me, but excessive smoke.

[18:55] So basically it goes from being a cooking detector to a, yo, this is really messed up detector. Now that, problem is I, many times my life would set this off. And let me just go on a little bit of a rant here for a 2nd because as I was looking this crap up. I was getting so angry about it. The cooking people, people who manufacture these cooking detectors and the idiots who talk about them online. Assume that the only time you make smoke is when you're doing something improper in the kitchen. False. False. There are many cooking techniques that, when done properly, create boatloads of smoke. Do you know what I'm saying? Have they been to a traditional kitchen? Do they only eat bull crap, like made in like 50s style with no freaking crust, no freaking texture, no freaking Zaz, no freaking

[19:45] life? It is not only when you are making a mistake in the kitchen, you create smoke. And this is the error that causes people to create cooking detectors because people don't cook. People are bad, right, at cooking. Dave, I've got 2 ideas. So one is, this is a solution I employ at my place. I have a small Weber gas grill that I got that I use if I need to do some really heavy, like smoky stuff, and that I can put right by the window and have the fans suck the air right out. That's one thing. don't put it outside your window, do you? No, I don't put outside the window. But I set up a table right in front the window with, you know, I have that big window fan. And then I'll set up a cross, you know, a crossbreeze thing going from the other side of the apartment and then grill right in front of the fan and the smoke goes right out. Is it a good, also a good point is that you have to figure out what the air patterns are in your

[20:34] apartment. So like my current, my current apartment, the air pattern, come, unfortunately, the natural direction is to come into the kitchen. But my old apartment, the natural direction was to go out of the kitchen. So that's one of the things to do. I'm lucky that I have my kitchen sits in between 2 windows on opposite ends of the

[20:52] apartment. So when I have the fan going on one side, then I usually don't have

[20:56] problems with that. It's generally neutral. Generally there's no flow. It'll flow through. The smoke will flow. Whichever direction? The smoke will come out of my oven or whatever and go out. Yeah, so we have to test which way the air wants to, you know, which way your cross ventilation works. So that, you know, that's definitely one thing. Here's something I don't recommend doing, although it's all over the internet, is

[21:14] a plastic bag, rubber bands, or a shower cap over your smoke detector while you're cooking because the

[21:21] part it's measuring particulates, right? So you can put that over it and the particulates can't get to it, but you have to seal pretty well for it, for it to work. And a good number of people have had success with that. But the problem is, is now you're literally shutting down your detector so that when you go to sleep, if something's going on, you have

[21:38] a problem. But back to our other things. Some, and yours might already have it, have this thing where you can tell the smoke detector, I'm cooking, don't go off for like only 8

[21:50] minutes. I don't know who can only cook for 8 minutes, but that's reasonable. Most of the time when the smoke's happening, it's like high intensity, short duration stuff, right? Um, You know, Barbara Kafka in her book, Roasting, right? Which started the kind of super high temperature roasting kind of phenomenon in people's houses. How the hell are you not going to have smoke when you're busting your oven up at 45,500. How you gonna do it? No matter how you cook, jerks. Anyway, the other thing is, is that maybe you can, if your smoke detector doesn't have that, maybe you can replace a smoke detector with one that does.

[22:18] You know, but I'm hesitant to tell you anything that's going to actually shoot your smoke detector in the head permanently, right? I mean, obviously, you know, like I have removed my smoke detectors and

[22:31] uh, forgotten to put them back in like, and I've unwired hardwired ones, but it's not really advisable. It's not good. Don't do it. You know what I mean? Get one that has this, um, this cooking detect undo. You know what's messed up, Styles? I was going to recommend buying a nest. You know, the nest ones, Nest Protect, because they're controlled from your phone. But what's weird is, is from what I can tell, currently the way the firmware works, when you press, it'll go

[22:56] off, and then you press don't, and it will, it will then stop. There's no way to say, don't go off. I am doing something. You know what I mean? Like, like antivirus. Like when you have an antivirus, it's like turn off your antivirus for 15 minutes because I'm installing a program.

[23:14] Like, apparently Nest hasn't figured this out yet. And even worse on the nest, is that if you have multiple nests and they're interwired, which all hardwired smoke detectors are supposed to be interwired

[23:23] now. So the reason being that if a smoke detector goes off in your kitchen, and because clearly you live in some sort of like 4 story suburban mansion,

[23:30] right, you're in your room, you're not going to hear it at night. They want your smoke detector in your room to go off as well. So they're all interwired now. That's how the codes are. But so if your nest goes off in the kitchen, it'll also go off in your bedroom, which is apparently

[23:44] irritating. Whatever. But Nest is something that could do that. Like if Nest like thought about cooks a little more, they could have a, I'm, you know, I'm cooking now, shut up for 15 minutes because you don't need a smoke detector when you're awake.

[23:58] Anyway. So do you think we gave enough ideas on what to do with this? Yeah? All right. We do have a caller. Oh, all right, caller, you are on the air. Hey, babe, this is math from Mystic, Connecticut. Oh, hey, Mr. Connecticut, where are mystic are you? Uh, I am on the, so you know, technically the stomach inside of the river. I do, which is, you know, the other side of the drawbridge. Yeah. Yeah, the other side, the other side of the Mystic Bascule Bridge. The other side of the Mystic Bascule Bridge, yes. That's right. Yeah. So I had a question about haggis. Oh, nice. Because my buddy and I throw a big Burns night party every year. And we're coming up on it. And typically what we do is we just steam the haggis as sort of like a giant ball of

[24:47] loose horn sausage in a big colander. Right. But for presentation purposes, this year, I bought a beef bum, and I want to do it in the beef bung so that we get the whole, you know, cutting, cutting of the

[24:58] hag is open. And so I'm wondering if there's enough moisture,

[25:03] like, is the bung permeable? And if I steam it, is it gonna work in the bung or should I pre-cook it, you think, and then stuff it? Huh. You know, it's interesting. I've never I've used pig stomachs before. and stuffed them, not actually strangely for haggis. Uh, but, um, because I've only done the haggis, like, um, cloth bound, actually. I think it should work. I mean, is it how big is a beef bung? Uh, I mean, you know, it's typically, I think, the type of thing they use for like a mortadella, so it can hold the, it can hold a fair amount. And the haggets we make is huge. you know, I'm talking like, you know, like something you'd strain your pasta with. That's, we typically just like pack it in there and then steam it covered in foil so that it, you know.

[25:48] Yeah, I'm going to say it's going to work. You think so? Just straighten the ball. I think it's going to work. I that, or like, there's got, like, hey, Liz, is the chat room working right now? is working. Is anyone? I mean, like, there's got to be a charcuterie expert out there who has who has done this before. We're waiting. We're waiting for our expert to tap in. Yeah. Look, look, look, I'm gonna go ahead and say that that's gonna work. You know what I mean? Um, yeah. Yeah, definitely. I'm gonna go ahead and say it's gonna work. Yeah, please let us know how it works. As anyone who is like, listen, long enough knows. Hagis is deserving of so much respect. It's so freaking delicious. It's just missold. That's exactly right. Yeah, we love it. everyone gets freaked out about it every year and then they have it and they say this is delicious. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's there's things like that. like people have less revulsion over Scrapple, although some people don't like Scrapple either. Scrapple, I mean different, obviously, also like incredibly delicious. And I know they're not the same or even really simple. But like, I mean, like, uh, haggis is delicious. What kind of oats do you use? We use like the quick cutting, the quick cooking steel cut, if that makes sense. Oh, I've never had that. Are they still made? are they coming that tin? No, so it's like a Bob's Redmail thing. Oh, Bob's Red Mill, yeah. Yeah, they have ones that are like supposedly quick cooking and so we just do that and it's always worked out great. Do you notice the difference between using those and like the standard like Scottish steel cut guys? I don't think we've ever used like the fully traditional ones. I think we've only ever used the quick cutting ones, but, you know, like quick cooking in this scenario means like, I think 20 minutes, if you were making it on the stovetop or something. So. Right. So it's not like a, it's not like the quick, quick cooking, like the flake stuff is like a 5 minute or less. Right, yeah, no, it's not like it's not, they're not blown out at all. There's still like this thing, uh, little cups, you know, so. Yeah. Oh man, I love haggis. what day is it Yeah. It is. So not this Saturday, but next Saturday. So if you want, if you're in Mystic, come on by. I wish. I'm going to be up there this weekend, but not the weekend after. Uh, man, I love haggis. Anyway, enjoy your haggis and let us know how it comes out. I will do it. Thanks. All right, thank you. All right, let's take a break and be back with more.

[28:43] The following program was brought to you by S. Wallace Edwards and Sons. Edward Suriano hands are aged perfection for no less than 400 days, and hickory smoked to achieve a deep mahogany color. The Edwards name is well known for its world-class aged and cured meats. Their exclusive curing and aging recipe produces a unique flavor profile that enhances the quality characteristics of Berkshire Port. Optimum amounts of pure white fat marble and contribute to a flavor that's a delicate, perfect balance between sweet and salty. For more information, visit edwardsvam.com. And welcome back to cooking issues. For some reason, Nastasia and Peter are rearranging the studio as we speak. So if you hear like all kind of chairs like wheedling around. Stas, for how many years have you sat next to me and now you decided I'm no longer good to sit next to you?

[29:37] sitting next to you. It's just that chair, it's like, it's all wires in the spring. Stas just wants to give me the more uncomfortable chair. That makes sense. This question, in, I was recently lucky enough to have the electric drop-in combo unit, meaning a stove, fail on me, and with the help of my awesome dad, gas lines were run, holes cut, counters altered, and I am now the owner of a sturdy and simple gas range.

[30:02] Well, congratulations to you. I hate resistance, uh, fed old, uh, like gas uh, electric ranges. You ever use one of those with a squirrely? Is that what you had in California? You want to talk to the Mike style. Not your 1st time with the rodeo. You never used one? Yes, not in California. When did you have one? Like in Airbnbs. Oh, Jesus. What about you, Peter? I grew up with that. For real? Champagne Urbana was the land of... Electric. Yeah, yeah. The worst is when like stuff gets burned onto it, you know? can't really get it off. When I was a kid, we had one when I lived in New Jersey and I leaned on it with my winter coat and like melted my winter coat into it.

[30:39] And then after like when you're cooking something, you can't have it stop cooking. You know what I mean? You turn it off and it's like, I'm gonna keep cooking this for a few more minutes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, there it goes. It's especially bad for stuff like cooking sugar. Like, oh, my God, like making like candies. Because you're like, hey, it's

[30:57] pro, no, oh, oh. You know what I mean? I guess it's arguably better for keeping a low simmer though. Who would no? Well, maybe. I mean, because it can't, it can't flame out at super low temperatures, you mean? I don't know. I hate the hell out of it. And you know what else I used to hate? I used to hate the way pots and pans. And this is going back to when I was like 11. We moved when I was like 12. But even now, I remember, and I've used them since the way pots feel on them. It's just, I don't like it. Like pots don't slide right on them. They have that rapid tapi and like they're like, I just don't like it. they're horrible. All around bad. Just bad. I'm the owner of a sturdy and simple gas range. Okay, after decades using the same thinned bottom saucepots and thinned bottom stock pot. I'm getting more scorching than I'm used to. So there's an interesting thing. It is more even over the, uh, space of it because the burner itself is physically larger, right? Right. Right. Okay. So there's a theoretical advantage. Maybe that's why James Beard liked them. Maybe James Beard had thin, thin, crappy pots. And so he was getting scorching. And maybe if James Beard had replaced his pots with like a more modern pot or a thicker pot, maybe he would have not liked electric stoves. Because it's incomprehensible to me why he liked electric stoves. Yeah, that's the only advantage I could think of. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, right? Okay. I've tried backing off the heat and I will certainly keep practicing, but I was wondering if there was any advice you would share on

[32:27] sauce pots, stock pots, et cetera. Imagine finding yourself with a new gas range and wondering what would be the best use for it. I love it technical. Of course, my cast iron is more fun with gas donor. Thanks, Nathan. Okay. Uh, so, here's here's the thing. Super thin bottom pots with a concentrated gas flame are going to have problems.

[32:52] They're fine. Don't let anyone tell you any differently. They're fine for boiling stuff, right? So you're always going to need to have a pot that you can boil water for pasta in

[33:05] or, you know, anything, anything of that nature. But you're gonna, you're gonna want to go invest in a thick bottomed, uh, your saucepan should have a

[33:18] thick bottom and anything if you're gonna brown or like make a roux or um, sweat out vegetables. You're going to want something thicker that spreads the heat out more evenly.

[33:32] That's just my feeling is that you're not going to be happy with the thin bottom stuff on your range.

[33:42] And what do you guys think? Peter, what do you? I'm thinking that you should play that song from Spinal Tap right now? The Big Bottom... What is it, Fat Bottom? that's queen. Oh, it's Queen. Oh. Oh, big bottoms. That's what I was looking up. Is it on Spinal? This is Spinal Tap. They have that song. anyway, whatever. So you consider your pots to be female. Is that what you're telling me? It's just interesting facts about Peter. Like, for me, like, pots and pans are one of the few gender neutral kind of, like, pieces of equipment that I can think

[34:17] of. What gender do you think your pots and pans have sauce? Yeah, pots are probably female pants, male. Really? Really? Why? Long handles on the pans. This is an odd conversation. So I would I would go ahead and say you're going to want to get, you don't need a lot. Keep your thin stuff for for, like I say, for boiling. Also, I'm going to say you can get pretty cheaply. It depends on your feeling about them, right? They're relatively thick and they work relatively well. Uh, just aluminum pots and they're pretty cheap. They work really well. As long as you don't mind cooking in aluminum. I know some people don't like cooking in aluminum. And the truth of the matter is that those pots do get pitted after a long time, especially if you use them in a dishwasher because they get kind of

[35:09] the dishwashing surge and kind of eats them out. But I have a couple of those because they're cheap. I have a couple because I've been collecting them a long time, really good. Um, stockpots, some thin ones that I use for, for, for other things, but if you have a thin bottom, like, like 2 quart,

[35:26] like, saucepan, like, I would take that into the, into the garage or something and use it to melt wax for, like, you know, kids candle projects or something like

[35:34] that because that's what that's going to be good for. I wouldn't, it's just you're going to like it so much more once you get a real thing. And you don't have to do it all at

[35:42] once. You can get them piece by piece or find them in thrift shops

[35:45] or, you know, when people move away. I, like, I, I no longer, look, I got married a long time ago when I got married, we got our set of all

[35:55] clad. I can't imagine going out and like forking over the money to buy a full set of pants. You guys? No, right? Anyway. I mean, I guess you can you could also hack things by putting something underneath the thin bottom pan, right? Well, that's the thing, but a flame tamer, then you're back into the same situation you were back with an oven. You don't have your you don't have your reaction rate. So, like, a way to make the thin bottom pan act more like you used to, like it used to act, is to just put a slug of metal underneath your

[36:23] burner, and then it'll ride up and down, up and down. It'll act almost exactly like your your electric range did, but then you don't have the what you want, which is

[36:34] the off on that an electric range has. It makes it so so awesome. Right? No? Okay. Uh, got a question in, uh, from uh, Joan, if it is all possible. Can you ask Dave the following question? Do you ever use a freezing step for your French fry recipe? Does it still yield the same results? And do you alter your processing when freezing? Yes, I like freezing French fries, freezing French fries? can help. What freezing does is it's an additional dehydration stage. So if your French fries were suffering from hollow core, meaning that you didn't have the internal texture of the

[37:10] French fry, be potato anymore, but just hollow and crust, then freezing will accentuate hollow core.

[37:16] If you were not getting hollow core when you were uh, doing it, um, then freezing in general will make the texture of

[37:25] the the outside of the fry uh, better, right? And it'll also allow you to fry it harder before the potato kind of overcooks because you should

[37:34] fry, uh, you should fry directly from frozen. So frying from frozen and freezing in general

[37:40] is, it can be extremely advantageous so long as you don't get hollow core.

[37:46] Now, if you find that you're getting hollow core. Also, you can keep fries indefinitely once they're frozen, which is nice. Just make sure that you let them freeze almost like IQF, like individual, like on a pan, then combine them into

[37:59] portions in bags and put them in your freezer. If you find, after you're done, that you're getting too much hollow core on your

[38:06] French fry after the free step, then what I would do is if you have a dry step. So you're going to do, if you do enzyme, you'll do enzyme, if you don't, you don't, if you're doing the modernest thing, you're going to hit it with a

[38:17] ultrasonic, you know, what's it called? cleaner, right? Or not, then you're going to do your initial blanch out step where you're cooking the potato and putting salt into the potato by boiling or boiling and steaming.

[38:30] On the cooking issues blog, isn't it? I'm just going through it. just saying. No, you're not. You just trying to be mean. Anyway, then you're going to go through optionally a drying step,

[38:41] right? And this is where this is where you really get to play with it, right? So it's the length of the boil step, and then the length of the dry step is where you're doing a lot of the moisture control, and it's all about the moisture control where you're trying to balance, the internal texture of the

[38:55] fry with the external temperature of texture of the fry. Then your 1st fry, now you're going to do your free step or not. And I think freezing is almost always beneficial. So, like, if you get hollow core, just decrease your, just decrease your dry time if you're using it. Conversely, if the texture of the outside of the fry is not what you want it to be, and you're not getting hollow core yet, then increase your dry time in between your, um, into your

[39:26] blanch and your fry. I hope that helps without you having to go and sift through the 4000 words of the cooking issues. By the way, I'm not saying we're going to do this, but I was talking to Jackie

[39:35] Molecules last week, who's, by the way, in New Orleans for his birthday, hopefully he's, you know, not passed out drunk on the street somewhere. I don't think he is because it's kind of early in the day, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um, Considering putting the blog on, uh, like having it admin by the good folks here at Heritage

[39:56] Radio and perhaps making it semi-live again, what do you think says? Yes. You like that? semi-live. semi-live. But like, you know, we'll see. We'll see. I don't know. See what the people in the chat room, whether they want it to ever go live again. New things, new information, new cooking issues. Anyway, I hope that helps. Uh, do we, do we get anything

[40:22] for, uh, from, uh, Sam or no, Liz? No, I think they knew that we were trying to get a hold of them and it's a totally automated service, so I left a very desperate message, but we have not heard from him. But on the bright side, we do have a caller. All right, caller, you're on the air. Hey, Dave, Nastasia and Peter. I'm Justin from Baltimore. How you doing? I was wondering, how did cryo fry a scallop? Ooh, so wait, so when you say cryofry, you mean freeze, freeze it and then fry it so you don't go over the, so you don't overcook it? Exactly. So you can get the nice crisp on the outside, but have it still nice and like ground middle or not very cooked. Right. So I think the modernist cuisine guys, when they're doing that, uh,

[41:08] for, um, things like burgers and I think for burgers and that kind of stuff, they might use LN, but for duck, I think that they use dry ice.

[41:19] Is that true? I can't remember. I can't remember. But, I mean, obviously, one way to try it is to just throw the sucker, like, the problem is,

[41:29] like, LN, right, is going to freeze the whole thing all the way around, and then if you freeze it that way, you're not going to be, it's not going to be

[41:38] flat when you try to put it on a panda to, uh, to rent, unless you're going to deep fry it. You're not

[41:43] going to deep fry it, are you? No no. Yeah, you're just going to try to get a crust on the surface, right? So then the question is, how do you get it? Like, you almost want to take a nonstick surface, like a, like a, a Teflon pan, right? And then like rest the Teflon pan in LN, right? And then and then put the scallop on the pan until

[42:06] the that surface of it kind of freezes. And then it should freeze and release from the pan. I'm assuming the I've put Teflon on liquid nitrogen many, many times, and I've never had a problem. I don't know if you're going to get problems with it. And of course, the scallop itself should release even from regular steel after

[42:25] a while. So you could try it with regular steel. I don't know if you're going to get delamination problems over time or if you happen to be one of those people that's negative against Teflon. Um, But anyway, that's how that's how I would do it. You could possibly get it done even with dry ice if you don't have access to

[42:45] liquid nitrogen, but you're going to want to freeze it against a flat surface. Ideally, 2 flat surfaces at once. So you do it. But I will say this also, is that I've known many people who, even if they don't have

[42:57] like, uh, like, uh, access to, you know, fancy stuff, they will do things like, uh, sear cuts of meat. So like let's say you buy frozen meats, like a lot of the heritage stuff comes frozen, right? Because that's the way they can keep it all year. So you, a lot of people steer it directly from frozen so that you

[43:16] could sear the outside without overdoing the inside. And, um, Obviously, the modernist guys and, uh, I think chef steps and Chris and all those guys, uh, are advocates of this technique. But I encourage you to do a side by side taste test because the stuff tastes different, right? So it's not just that there's less trip loss and all this, not a scallop, it's a different kind of a situation because you're trying to maintain it raw on the inside and get a sear on the outside. I'm not saying you could use a series off for that tube. But anyway, but my point being that's what you're trying to do. So like, you know, um, so I think it's a useful thing to to do there, but I would just encourage you to do a side by side taste test because on things like

[43:55] burgers. I actually prefer it standards seared to cryos here in the test that I've run. Now, it's only been limited tests. I've only done it like maybe like 5 to 10 times as a test. But, like, I understand the advantages that they say you get from it. I just happen to prefer the taste of it when it's done standard searing. So you should do some side by side taste tests. Great. Thank you. All right, no problem. What do you say? We should end in a minute. All right, okay. Uh, quickly, uh, 80 writes in. Dave know if anyone is playing to release a homogenizer, like Booker and Dax or anyone else in the food world. And by that, I mean, I assume you mean rotor state or homogenizer. No immediate plans. The problem is is that the market, I don't think, is so big on it. Philip Preston is selling the IKA makes a handheld homogenizer, like small one. I think they're selling it. I'm not opposed to us doing it. It's just we got like a bunch of other projects on our plate before that, right? St us? You've got to get that stuff done before we get that done. Now listen. We don't have a lot of time left. I'm going to see if next week we can get Sam Edwards to call in to answer the question on

[45:01] hand because we have a question about hanging hams for equalization and pest control.

[45:06] And I know, and that question is in from Patrick. And I know that Sam has a lot of good information on pest control in

[45:14] hams, and we're talking about mites, mites, Beatles and rodents. I know Stas doesn't want to get into that now because we don't have a lot of time and Stas doesn't like talking about mites, Beatles and rodents. But we'll try to get Sam Edwards maybe for next week. If not, I'll just answer the question myself. Cooking issues.

[45:44] Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archive 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 anytime at info at heritageradionetwork.org. HeritageRadio Network is a 501 C3 nonprofit. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.