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[2:01] Hello and welcome to Cooking Agents. This is Dave Arnold. Your host of cooking. You're just coming to you live on there. We're doing Network from Avertis Pizzeria in Bushwick. Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, Brooklyn. How you doing, folks? Calling your questions too, 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. Join in the studio, as usual with Nastasia. Lopez, how you doing, Stas? Good. Yeah, everything good? And and, of course, in the booth, we got Jackie molecules. Hello, hello. Now, Jack... Now, Jack, there's going to be sad times for cooking issues because good news for you, you're going to go out on tour pretty soon, right? I am. There's a lot on the horizon for me right now. But if you're on tour, that means that you're not going to be in the booth. Well, you know, they'll be the ghost of Jackie molecules. Um, no, I I do hope to kind of call in from some of these cities. I'll be in, let's see, I'll be in London. I'll be in the east of England, some weird little town Ipswich, I think. Then I'll be in Paris and I think Barcelona and Iceland. Oh. Yeah. I wanna go to Iceland. Me too. Yeah, I'm excited about that one the most. We are playing shows in like the weirdest places in Iceland, so that'll be fun. Yeah, if the listeners want to check out the music. It's Odetta Hartman 222, which I think I've shamelessly plugged on the show before, but that's the record that I produced. I play with her live. And we're hitting the road. So what's up with the 222? What's the meaning of the tut2? Well, let's see. Her birthday is the 22nd. Her number is two. That's just where it starts. And then we had this thing where we would always send each other screenshots when it was 222

[3:45] p.m. on the phone. back and forth just as a kind of like whatever thing. And then it turns out she researched the number 222 and it's some weird, like, numerology. It's like an angel number of, the meaning behind it is like a divine collaboration kind of thing or something.

[4:01] So, I don't know, there are all these coincidences with the twos. So we just went and then the record itself is 22 minutes and 22 seconds long. By chance, that 1st of all, you're lying. Well, okay. The final mix down. Listen, the final mix down was like 21 minutes and 40 seconds and I was like, I'll be damned if this isn't 2222. It was close enough, you know? That is not by chance. Yeah, shaving. No, it was close enough by chance. It was close enough by chance. Right, right. Thanks. Yeah. Wait, so how many 2s are in the album? Only three. You got a 4th 2 there. Yeah, I know. It's just kind of hanging two. Hanging two. All right. All right. Well, anyway. Uh, yeah, yeah. My last show in the studio will be the week of the 24th. So, I don't know, what day would that be? The 19th or something, June 19th. That'll be a sad. Yeah. Will pop champagne. Oh, oh, and uh, me, me, me. For Stas, mostly, not for me. Mimi, me's in the back provided by Peter Kim, the director of the museum of food and drink coming off of

[5:02] his, uh, uh, I'm sure you went on some huge bender because you just finished your the, uh, spring benefit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, actually, no, I, I, the next morning, Alice Waters came and visited the

[5:14] museum, and then I had to do this shoot for CBS Sunday morning on

[5:18] the Chinese takeout box. You didn't liquor yourself up for the Alice Waters meeting. No? think that was a yes. Yeah, that was a yes. That was a secret. yes. Yeah. He was actually, he wasn't using liquor. He was chewing cot. Is cot actually illegal here in... It is highly illegal. So I know nothing of it. Yeah, your old lawyer day is coming back. It was highly illegal, Dave. All right. So we got some interesting stuff we're going to do here on the program today. We're going to call into Harold McGee. He's on the line. Oh, he's on the line? All right. Well, and Daniel Gritzer is going to come in later to help answer someone else's question on niximization. But Harold, how you doing? I'm doing well, thanks. How about you guys? Oh, good, good. Harold was the 2016 recipient of uh, what was the exact... MoFED

[6:04] honoree. 2016 honoree. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you might know him as the person who knows everything about the science of deliciousness, or at least has taught us everything about the science

[6:14] of deliciousness. If you haven't already purchased on food and cooking, the keys are good cooking and gone on

[6:21] Bookfinder and also purchased the curious cook off of someone else's used bookstore that do that now, stop listening to us and go buy that right now.

[6:28] Are you ever going to republish that on your website, The Curious Cook? I know like, you have excerpts out there? Yeah, I should really do something about that, shouldn't I? Yeah, because it doesn't even, it's not like, it's not like republishing the old information from on food and cooking in the 1st edition, which I know you're like, I'd have to go

[6:48] revisit it. This is more about just experiments. You could write literally like a 2 paragraph addendum being like, this is no longer 100% what I think, but this is how I went through the experiment at that time. It'd still be useful for people, no? Yeah, yeah, that's true. Just my just my personal feelings. All right, so I met someone at Booker and Dax. Um, recently and she had said that uh, her, I think it was her mom, uh, had just had a virus and had knocked out her olfaction. And the doctors, you know, said that, you know, it might come back 100%. It might come back partially, it might take weeks, it might take months. And I told her that I know someone, you know, you, Harold, who had a similar, a similar problem. And so I just thought I'd have you on to talk about kind of what that was like, especially for someone who, you know,

[7:40] his food is such a big part of their life and kind of how you made it through it and kind of what

[7:45] the, whether there was any sort of thing you could do to help yourself out while it was going on.

[7:49] Yeah, it was not fun. And I think you might remember it because it was a couple of years ago when, um, uh, we had just finished lecturing at Harvard and I was coming down to New York City to participate in a country ham tasting where the whole point is to taste and notice qualities

[8:13] and uh, uh, like a week or 10 days before I came out to Harvard. I just woke up one morning, made a cup of coffee and realized I couldn't taste my

[8:24] coffee or I couldn't smell it. Um, and uh, that was scary because I'm in the middle of writing a book about smell.

[8:33] And uh, so I have a friend who uh, was at the time the director of the Monel Chemical Census Center in Philadelphia, you know, center that specializes in taste and smell.

[8:50] And I wrote him immediately and said, uh, yeah, what do I do about this? And he basically said, uh, it's a very common problem that lots and lots of people over the course of their lifetime do lose their sense of smell for a period of

[9:08] time, that it's happened to him. And that there's really nothing that specialists in the field can do to help or to comfort

[9:21] you. You know, there's just no predicting when it's going to come back and how. So he said, just relax and try to enjoy the other qualities of foods. And, um, so I I did that. And what I found, I did find that my, um, my interest in eating really declined, you

[9:44] know? It's, uh, smell is such a big part of it that I would just, uh, not see the point of working really hard to make something nice for

[9:54] dinner anymore. Um, so what I did end up doing, though, is uh, just noticing that, um, if the, when you can't smell food, then the other qualities become that much more important.

[10:09] So I found that um, if a food was uh, undersalted, or if the meat was kind of, you know, tough and dry and not very interesting, that I just, uh, it made that particular dish really unappealing, and I just didn't want to eat any more of

[10:27] it. So, uh, my my feeling is that, uh, you know, investing in the idea that it's going to come back at some point, and you have to keep yourself healthy in the meantime, and eat reasonably, uh, then what you do, uh, if you're cooking for yourself, or if you're cooking for someone else who has

[10:48] this uh, problem, is just to make the food as appealing in all its other aspects as

[10:55] possible. And so that means, uh, the seasoning, it means, uh, I found myself using lemon

[11:02] juice, and lime juice a lot more than I would have in the past. I liked crunchy things and really smooth silky things, uh, but stuff that kind of dried out my mouth, you know, just, uh, that didn't do it for me anymore. So, tannins, you like laid off tannins and a lot of tannic stuff? Uh, yeah, yeah. One thing I remember doing that sounds a little, uh, well, it is kind of peculiar, but, uh, you know, I, uh, I live in California. There's a lot of citrus around all the time. And so I was trying to, you know, eat my oranges, get my vitamins. And I noticed one day when I peeled my orange and then it took me a few hours to get around to eating it, I got distracted by something

[11:52] else. You know how the, um, the skin around each segment dries out? And it turns out if it dries out enough, instead of being chewy, which was not something that I was interested in without any sense of smell, it becomes really

[12:09] crisp. And then you get this kind of burst of flavery when you bite into it, that made eating oranges, something as simple as eating oranges, much more interesting to me.

[12:19] This was on like a navel or like a Setsuma, like a more of a Clementine kind of a situation? Oh, actually, it was, to begin, I 1st found it in, um, uh, in the smaller

[12:30] ones in tangerines, uh, Clementines, things like that, but it also works for navels. And then I discovered that MFK Fisher actually wrote about this, you know, decades and decades ago. She was living in France. She, she wasn't getting, uh, she didn't have the money to uh, eat uh, spectacularly well, but she found that if she left uh, a man, peeled a

[12:53] mandarin orange, left it on her radiator until it dried out, uh, she got that wonderful release of flavor.

[13:00] Anyway, so little things like that. I found could make a really big difference. And then I also am a believer in the idea that, you know, the more effort you make, the more you kind of, uh, make your olfactory system think that

[13:19] it's uh, expectations are high for it, that it'll come back faster. So I would just really concentrate on trying to smell things even when I wasn't really getting anything. And I don't know if that makes a difference or not, but at least you have the feeling that

[13:36] you're, again, making an effort, exercising the system, even if it's not responding the way you want it

[13:42] to yet. No, to be, so people know, at the beginning, this wasn't like, oh, I have a stuff he knows. This is like nose clear knocked out though, right? Like knockout. Yeah, yeah. No, I, that was the scary thing, is that I had no other symptoms. If I'd had a head cold, then sure, it kind of makes sense that my sense of smell is a little impaired, but I

[14:02] had had no other issues whatsoever. Just realized one day I was drinking my coffee and I wasn't tasting coffee. Was there any moment during this time when you found anything delicious? Uh, well, yeah, in a kind of, um, you know, partial way. I mean, potato chips, because they're salt, and actually potato chips, sea salt and vinegar potato chips. Because that was really hammering my taste buds and the crispy, crunchy piece of it was really wonderful too. That was sort of my, my go to, uh, you know, just to get calories because I really wasn't interested in, um, in eating. Did you, uh, did you do any of the texture only, uh, kind of famous dishes like uh, bird's nest or any of that stuff? No, no, that I should have done that. I should have done. Hopefully you will not have the chance to do it again. Now, the other thing is, did it come back slowly or my memory

[15:13] serves it came back somewhat gradually over the course of like a week or something, right? Or even longer than that. I mean, it was several months before it came back. Uh, and then one day, uh, as I say, you know, I would try to make an effort to smell things, I would just kind of

[15:28] snort uh, trying to get the air rushing through my nasal passages

[15:34] harder. And one day I just noticed that there seemed to be a little bit of a hint of flavor. I think it was again in my in my morning cup of coffee. And it would then just go away and I wouldn't get anything at all. And I was thinking, well, maybe I hallucinated it. And over the course of several weeks, it slowly came back to the point where I didn't have to snort. I would actually get it just by normal breathing. Huh. Mm, scary. So, uh, do you want to, I actually have a question that you probably have some uh, answers to. Do you want to stay on with me or do you have to scoot off up to you? I could stay on for another 10, 15 minutes or so. All right. Here we go. Got a question in on Nastasia's favorite. And she didn't actually punk you with this, Peter, but Peter also likes this. I'm gonna jump in. We actually got a caller for you and Harold. All right, we'll do that. We'll take the call first. All right, caller, you are you are on the air. How's it going? How's it going, man? I was wondering if there's any way to make cream on

[16:42] churnable. Unchurnable? or unturnable? not turned into butter at all. Oh, um, Harold, do you know of anything? Uh, unsurnable. Well, um, no, I, I mean,

[16:57] starting with homogenized cream helps, that makes it a lot harder, but I think it, it would still, you know, if you, if you went at it hard enough, it would still, it would still

[17:07] churn. I mean, you could probably stabilize the ever-loving crap out of it, right? I mean, if you were to dope it with, um, I mean, It's got what? It's uh, 70, roughly 70% water, 66, 60, 65, somewhere between 60 and 70% water in the cream that you

[17:29] have. So you could probably boil that a little bit to extract out some of the water, take pure water, hydrate some sort of, uh, like, uh, some sort of thickener, and maybe that would help protect it in the way

[17:42] that, uh, in the way that starch prevents, um, uh, from curdling when you when you cook it. I don't know, Harold. Do you think anything like that could help like styrically hinder the fat agglomerating

[17:58] or no? Yeah, no, I think, I mean, the fat globules themselves are pretty stable to heat. So, uh, yeah, just uh, putting enough interfering material in there to get in the way of the globules touching each other. That would probably be it. Right. I mean, you could probably turn the entire thing into a fluid gel,

[18:19] right? If you wanted to. And then if you did that, I wonder whether or not, I wonder whether or not you could prevent it from, I mean, the texture would be weird. It wouldn't be cream, but you might be able to stop it from having the

[18:34] ability because the individual, I think that the particles that you would have, you know how big the fat globules are, like, Harold, like, like roughly in micrometers, I have

[18:44] no, uh, micrometer, I have no idea. I think it's on the order of tem. Unhomogenized. Right. So if you homogenize it smaller, Yeah. Okay. So the limits of your tongue are roughly 20, right? Which means that if your fluid gel particles are somewhere between the order of 10 and 20,

[19:08] right? You should be able to lock a number of fat globules inside of the particles in the fluid gel and maybe prevent them from agglomerating because

[19:19] they'll just be kind of trapped up in something that stays as a coherent unit.

[19:24] That's just a, this is a complete guess right out of my, right out of my behind. I have no idea, but it's something to try. Uh, you know, what do you think, Harold? Is this any of this reasonable or no? Yeah, yeah. No, that that sounds reasonable. Sounds like a good experiment. Yeah, all right. Yeah, appreciate it. Going in a frosty factory. So, I don't know if the temperature or the constant movement is

[19:45] going to affect those, uh, the, like, fluid of the, of the fat in it at all. And that was my only concern. Oh, if it's in a fact, if it's in a fact, yeah, I'm sure you could just use some sort of steeric inhibition or something stabilizer, but you'd have to worry about, you'd have to worry about whether it's still going to flow fluidly or not. The fluid gel will flow fluidly if it's a low enough fluid gel, but I think the lower the concentration on the fluid gel, the more it's a regular liquid with some particles in it that are stabilizing it versus particles with some liquid around them, you

[20:15] know? But again, this is you're stretching way back on my memory banks for how to dork with things. Yeah, um, well, I appreciate that, okay. All right. Let us know, tweet on in. lets know what happens. Ooh, look, and we're joined. We have, which is like a full house here. We got Daniel Gritzer in because I had a question later. So, Harold, so Daniel, how did Daniel have a seat? This is a question. Thank you. Oh, what happened? What happened? We got married. Oh, you got married? Oh, yeah. 's that? How do you like being married? I like it. It's good Yeah, it's all good. All right. You know what else, Dave? What? It's episode 250 today. Yeah? Nice. Nice. Nice even number. serendipity here. It's a good way to celebrate 250. It is. And McGree, man, McGee. That's good. Yeah. Peter Cam. Oh, yeah, and Peter Kim, yeah. Wow, wow. Okay, over here. So, speaking of the curious cook and the fact that you should republish it, Harold, we have a question on, and it's written this way, Jerusalem fartichokes. Jerusalem fartichokes. I will read the question. This is from David in Ottawa. Uh, We've been making uh, confit J-chokes at the rest. I like J jokes. Yeah, that's a good name. good rapper name. It's a great rap name or song. Yeah, J Chokes. Nastasia, of course. Listeners will remember that Nastasia wants Gastrointestinally poisoned her friends by feeding them quarts of mildly cooked Jerusalem artichokes in like a salad

[21:46] format at a picnic thing. Literally, she knew. No bathroom around anywhere. Literally, she knew that this was like, you know, uh, fermentation, like, uh, you know, extravaganza going to happen in their guts in the, you know, within the next couple of hours. The reason she knew is because she had done it to herself. Yeah, she, just so you know what I deal with people. Anyway, basically, we just poached the J chokes and clarified butter when we cooked them, a sticky white scum floats to the surface. That's my next band, sticky white scum. As the lion cooks are wont to do, we ate some. It's sticky, sweet, sticky, and delicious. Here's the question. Do you think this scum could just be purified? These are in quotes, Harold? Small chain, fruit of sands, and starch-like inulin, that McGee describes politely as causing abdominal discomfort.

[22:39] When we ate it, there was no noticeable effect, but also, we're the kinds of people who eat the scum raft from the top of a pot of poaching

[22:45] J chokes. So perhaps we don't make the best control group. Any thoughts? I guess I can munch down on a full glob of this stuff and see what happens, but I'd rather have an educated guess before risking dinner service ruinations. Regards David in Ottawa. Okay. Well, it's interesting that they're poaching it in butter. I know, you know, indulin is really soluble in water, and that's why, you know, you say boil them in a big pot of water after you let them age for a

[23:10] while. But you guys got any thought, you got any thoughts on this, Harold, Mr. Inulin, man? Well, I mean, the scum rising to the top, that sounds to me like it's, uh, it's going to be probably as rich in stuff other than Inulin. I mean, proteins and, uh, you know, surface active materials. Uh, so, you know, my my sense is it's not going to be especially uh, enriched in stuff that's going to cause trouble. Well, yeah, except for Jerusalem March jokes themselves. I looked it up because I had the benefit of knowing that I was going to be asked this question, like, you know, an hour or 2 ago, but it, uh, they're like 20% annulant or something crazy like that, right? They're like, they're high in Inulin. And Inulin itself forms, or can, in certain circumstances, form a gel. I didn't read it carefully. I didn't realize it was in butter. Um, so that's a different, that they're doing it in butter, so the, I mean,

[24:05] obviously the scum floating to the top. probably water soluble stuff expelled from the chokes, right? The other thing is, is like, like everyone can tolerate a certain amount of this garbage, not garbage, you know what I'm saying, in their system,

[24:16] right? It's a soluble fiber. That's the daily deal. It's soluble fiber. So you can't digest it. The definition of fiber, I think, basically is that you can't digest it, right? That's really, it doesn't have to be fibrous, doesn't have to be a

[24:31] fiber, as long as it's, oh, my God, I just, in my mind, now I'm thinking of the sandlock, because whenever I say fiber, fiber.

[24:39] Really, so you know that, you know the sandlot? No, no, I'm missing the ref. Forever. You never seen this movie? Jack? Anyone seen this? Yes, of course, forever. Anyway, so the point being that it goes into your gut and then the microbes in your gut,

[24:55] they can digest this stuff just fine. They produce a whole boatload of gas and there you have it, right? But the more you eat of it, probably the more accustomed you get to it, the less of a big dose that your gut

[25:06] microfloor get, and the more you can handle it. wouldn't you say that's true, Harold? Uh, yes, that's that's certainly the fact when it comes to uh, beans that's been studied in uh, bean flatulence. Not to my knowledge with inulin flatulence. The other thing to know about the particular bugs that you're

[25:28] feeding, is that it's the befitted bacteria that are especially fond of inulin and fructous sands and things like

[25:36] that. And they're, uh, of all the bugs in our gut, apparently the ones that are uh, doing us the most good most of the time. So I actually think that, you know, throwing a few slices of Jerusalem artichoke into your

[25:50] daily diet is probably a really good idea. Yeah, that's the, those are the bacteria that they dope into Jamie Lee Curtis, Jamie Lee Curtis's feminine poop yogurt, right? I don't know about that. Activia, right? Am I wrong about this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's what they do. I think that's what they put in. I don't know why it's only for women. can't men also benefit from this is, is there some sort of a gender? No, from the bacteria doped yogurt to make you poo. Is there is there an actual difference between the genders in

[26:29] the what the yogurt does to your body? Clearly we have not studied this. Clearly nobody knows. Stasi, you know anything about this? Have you seen the Kirsten Wig imitation of Jamie Lee Curtis pooping herself on Saturday Night Live? Worth a watch. Okay, so the other thing is, is that a lot of this is in small amounts, obviously, this isn't going to do much. It's if you gorge on this stuff and you're not used to it, is when you're really going to have the hammer come down on you, right? Exactly, yeah. yep. And the raw, the more likely that is. Yeah. So Peter Kim, uh, is using, was using chicory root, which also is extremely high in Inulin, uh, for making uh, tablets for the museum of food and drink, and originally we were worried about the dose level of, um, uh, soluble fiber that these uh,

[27:20] inulin these folks at beginning. So Peter graciously ate about 15 times as many pills as the average guest could hope to

[27:29] consume and what happened to you? I got myself a stack of magazines. some candles. I had myself a nice little indulin feast. No, it was fine, man. It was fine. Yeah. And basically we did some calculations on what typical tolerance levels are for Inulin and figured that even if a small child ate 100 of these, they'd probably still be okay. So, um, and I, indeed, was all right. Yeah. But yeah, yeah. No, nice. Oh, here's a question I have for anyone that's ever thought about this. So, uh, where else do we uh, deal with inulin a lot, anyone, anyone? 1st of all, Inulin, Inulin, basically long chain fructose, okay? Long chain fructose. Let's just get that out of the way. So agave. Yeah. Inulin, agave. And artichokes, right? Uh, regular artichokes? I don't know. I don't know, chicory root, Jerusalem artichokes. Uh, agave. But my point is, has anyone made a distilled spirit with Jerusalem artichokes? Like a super long bake, like you do for agave, for agave piñas, and then make them into a liquor? You ever heard of anything like that, Harold? anyone? No, that sounds like a great idea. Right? I think I know who's going to do it too. Well, I don't know. Do you have a like, they grow in rather northern climes, right? It's not a southern vegetable, isn't it? Like, isn't it? can I grow it here? Yeah, yeah. Sure can. So, you know, like, I don't have a ready access to it. Maybe I'll try it this year. I'll try to mash them out and do some distillation. But anyone out there, I'm sure someone in the cooking issues world is just the kind of lunatic who has tried it. And so like, you know, let me know, but I think we could have a new distilled spirit on our hands. What would you call that? J. J. Choke? J. Farka? Jay. Oh, well, you remember, you gotta defart it because you're gonna, you're gonna be cooking the, you're gonna be cooking the ever-loving snod out of it. Um, I don't know, sun, sun, sun booze. Why do they call sunflower? Oh, they're related to sunflowers? Yeah, yeah. It's, and it's a native, if I'm remembering correctly, it's a native of one of the few food

[29:39] items that come from North America. There you go. It's our, you know, it's the north, it's the north part of North America, because remember, Mexico is North America people. Yeah. But it's north part of Northern America is native, uh, it's like Aragave. Only, you know, you don't have to wait so long to harvest it. And I wonder where they, I wonder whether there'll be a lot of big flavor differences between different, I don't know,

[30:04] someone's, if someone's done it and they're going to be like, Dave, the reason no one makes is it tastes like

[30:08] garbage. It tastes like garbage. That's why. You know what I mean? But we should probably have like a, uh, someone who's done a lot of distilling of raw materials do it 1st so that we, we, you know, get rid of the control of this person just doesn't know what the hell they're doing with distillation.

[30:25] You know what I mean? Anyway. But I think it'd be much more interesting to do it, the old school way. actually cook it until it until you get sugar and then ferment it rather than because you can just hit it with enzymes. And then that's it. You know what I mean? Also, uh, like uh, Inulin breakdown, I was looking up today, really, really rapid at low pH, right? But the fact of the matter is, you have to get below about pH 4 before the hydraulysis of

[30:51] indulin to fructose is very rapid at normal cooking temperatures. And who wants their Jerusalem artichokes to be, you know, more tart than a tomato? Yeah. You know what I mean? Doesn't sound right to me. Would you want that, Harold? I mean, like, hey, you could speed it up by adding acid, but on the other hand, now all your Jerusalem artichokes

[31:12] tastes like acid. You know what I mean? I don't know. don't know. I usually fry mine in Elestra myself. Dude, don't be going off against alestro. Have we had this conversation on the air already? Are you making me redo a conversation we've already had on the air? Seriously? Jack, do you remember me ever talking about Alestra? I do. You do because you've heard, you live, you work with me in the real life. Have we talked about it on air? Jack stepped away, but I don't remember. Yeah, well we probably have. There's nothing wrong. But there are many things wrong with Olestra. Like they bind fat soluble vitamins, so you have to dope yourself with them because otherwise you poop out all the fat soluble

[31:46] vitamins. But as long as you're using a solid Olestra, it's not going to run out of your behind without your knowing. Ellie and the chat, remember? That's a relief. I tell you, like, again, like briefly, that's the reason people didn't like the olestro potato chips was because they were made with hydrogenated fat, and they tasted greasy. In fact, they, and I've said this before on air. They had to develop a hot air curtain to blow the outside layer of fat off of the potato chips to reduce the greasiness because you're not supposed to fry potato chips

[32:18] and hydrogenated fat. Not for health reasons for taste reasons. It just doesn't taste right for the same reason that you're not supposed to fry a donut in a liquid fat because it

[32:27] just doesn't taste right. It tastes greasy. Do you like a greasy donut, Daniel? No, I don't I don't love greasy donuts. Harold, greasy. You like a greasy donut? Nope. No. didn't think so. Hey, actually, I don't know, Harold, whether you've done it if you have time. We have another question that you might have done some work on. Okay. Uh, this is from, well, I don't have to, it's from. I got a bread baking question. In particular, it's about the tangzong roux that is used to mix into a bread recipe to make fluffy bread.

[33:03] Now, what we're talking about here is like the water roux, where you pre-make a roux, and then you mix it into the bread. You know about this, Daniel? I don't. I don't bake much. So this is new to me. It's been getting a lot of, it's started out in a, in a, I guess, the early 2000s, but it's been getting more and more play. You know, the Asian style bread that is really fluffy and last long time. Harold, you've been following this or no? No I have not. Yeah. All right. Well, so then I'll just go on. Okay. So just so you know, what the basic premise here is, Well, I'll read the question first. Um, let me see. While I understand that it produces a fluffier and softer final bread product, could you explain the science of why the

[33:40] roux would have this effect on the bread? In the past, I've played with adding some milk into the bread to make it softer as well. How does this rue affect the bread versus just using milk in a recipe? Uh, and preliminary research on the webs, uh, shows stuff about superhydration. Thanks for such a good podcast. Nice. And by the way, oh, this is from Don, Don Vo in Berkeley,

[34:02] California, he actually calls you out, Peter. He says hello to Dave Nastasia, not Stas, Nastasia, Lopez, Jackie Molecules, and Peter Sandwich

[34:10] Aficionado Kim. So, Peter, you get the shout out on this as well. So basically, um, what the, the, uh, oh, and also, uh, says, uh, got the BDX

[34:18] cube and he thinks it's fantastic and has made an improved clover club for him. Okay, so here's the here's the deal. You take, and before you take a portion of water, typically it's about 5 to one, so about 5 parts water, one part flour, and it's usually

[34:31] a, you know, not that large amount of the water, but the water. And you cook it like you're making a roux. However, the traditional traditional. The way that it's written in recipes. Originally, everyone's like, oh, keep it to exactly 65 degrees Celsius, right? And, um, so I made, I haven't made, didn't have a chance to make bread, but I made one that I took to 65 on the dot and one that I boiled just to see the difference. So what happens is you're partially, when you take it to 65, you're partially pasting, partially swelling the starch, but you haven't completely gotten all the starch, you know, fully, you know,

[35:09] swell with water and paste it out yet, right? And so what you're really doing is just adding a boat ton more water to the bread than you can do any other

[35:18] way, the same, because if you had added that much water to it, without pre-cooking it, you'd lack structure. The water, by pre-swelling the starch, gives you enough structure to form the bread and allow it to cook properly without it. That's it. That's basically what it's doing. Wouldn't you guys agree, just from the description I've given, that's what's happening? Undoubtedly. So it's like a super hydrated... Yeah. So you could, so, you know, you could take something and have the workability of like a 70 or 80% hydration dough, but you could be hydrating it kind of much higher.

[35:52] Now, I don't know what the difference is. I'm passing this, Harold, you can't do this. This is boiled after it's cooled. And this is basically, uh, so this is boiled and um, this is the same ratio. It's pretty much turned to a gel after it's gone back. So that might be a hindrance to the dough. And then this here is the 65 degree and that's still more like a pudding or runny. They're very different. And so my feeling is, folks, is that don't bother. What you're doing here is you're just allowing yourself to add more water to the dough. I mean, that's basically what you're doing and maintaining the same workability. That's what's happening here. There might be some other, like, fancy dance stuff that's happening when it's, uh, not fancy dance, but, you know, fancy dance. Uh, the, um, as it's as it's coming up, but that's basically what's happening. As for the temperature, I don't think you have to be too anal because the wheat starch is just going to start swelling and pasting when it hits about

[36:52] 60, 65, C. So if you just take it off, as soon as it goes super, like, uh, thick, but, like, as soon as it starts to thicken up on you, you're going to be good, uh, because, you know, I really wouldn't worry that

[37:05] much uh, about, you know, and also, if you're going to cool it for a long time, I don't know whether or not you're working on the fact that it's retrograding to get the extra

[37:14] structure or you're getting what's called starch setback to add extra structure, in which case maybe it would make a difference. If you heated it longer or not. These are all interesting subjects, but I'd have to actually bake some bread to figure that

[37:25] out. And I didn't have time to do that this morning. I'm just as curious about the use of the word ru here. I think of a roux, you cooking flour and a fat, but this is essentially, is any roux, like a slur, a flour slurry that is then cooked, whether it's in a water or a

[37:42] thing? Not that I know of. Harold, do you know of why they use this kind? Can you any guesses on this terminology or? Oh, I think Daniel is right that Aru is flour cooked in fat. Yeah. not in water. And then added to, and then liquid added to it to, and then presumably

[37:59] the cooking and fat, right, is to prevent clumping when you add the liquid. I mean, the only purpose of the fat, right, is to prevent clumping, that's all it's doing, right? Is there any other reason for it other than it allows you to evenly heat the flour up to a higher stage of cooking? Oh, I bet it makes a difference for the flavor, you know, even a neutral oil, you're going to get reactions to take place that wouldn't happen if it was just dry heat. In, uh, yeah, okay. Fair. So different flavor from adding the oil afterwards. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Fair enough. All right. Anyway. And this also, obviously, you could do this with non-wheat starches and all sorts of other things as other people have done. It's an interesting thing. It's worth, it's worth some experimentation. Now, uh, I don't know, uh, Harold, if you have to, if you have to go or if you can stay, uh, but uh, we got a question. Daniel wrote a article on niximalization for the serious seats. Correct? What's your current title there anyway? Oh, culinary director? Culinary director. Okay. And you wrote an article on next normalization, very kindly, actually gave a shout out to an article I had written a lot. Well, yeah, because I used it heavily for information. So, um, for those of you that don't know, nixonization is the process uh, by which you um, cook, you can do it with other grains actually, but you

[39:25] part, you par cook corn in uh, in an alkaline environment. Park hook in an alkaline environment, it dissolves the coat on the outside of the

[39:36] corn partially dissolves it. You partially then rub that off. It changes the taste, it changes the reality of it. Originally, it was designed to allow you to be able to grind corn easily by hand on a stone thing called a matate, but it is the reason that

[39:50] cornmeal doesn't taste like a tortilla, and then a tortilla tastes like a tortilla, is the process of dixonalization. is also the, the changes that the corn goes through, in terms of partial cooking of the starches, going back to what we were talking about with this, with this roux, whatever you want to call it, bread technique. And the change of the outside of the sea coat into some form of weird hydrocolloid, plus the addition of the fat from the germ, because it's a whole corn kind of a situation, all of that together makes masa, which is what makes an awesome tortilla. Normally, it is a pain in the butt to make, Daniel, you posted a recipe where you used a food processor and what was your secret? I know what it is. I'm just asking you to ask, is your... Right. So I mean, the big challenge for people at home is grinding the corn properly. Um, and, uh, you know, you can try a food processor, but that comes with its own challenges, mainly that in order to get everything in the food processor to to spin sufficiently enough to grind it to a point where you can form tortillas, you have to add too much water to the

[40:50] mix, and then you have a, then you have a masa that's that's far too wet, uh, and almost bordering on a batter type consistency. Actually, more like a hummus, think of like a hummus. You can't really make tortillas from that. So then basically, adding, adding some masa, arena,

[41:09] uh, back in, which is, which is the store-bought convenience product of, of,

[41:15] uh, masa that, what do they do? They dry it somehow and turn it into a flower. Yeah, they have a large production line where they have like continuous, basically nixtamilization, goes through a soap tank, then

[41:25] they, then they, I think, I don't know, I think they dry it and grind it. I don't think that they. Harold, do you know? I don't think that they wet. I don't think they wet grind it and then and then dry it. I think they dry it and then grind it. Yeah, I'm not sure. So maybe like ground posola or something like that. Yeah. sort of like dried. Yeah. But not hasn't already been it hasn't been reboiled up to the large. Yes, but yes, the I think that's how they do it. I don't know. I used to know, but, you know, it's been a long time. I mean, look, as you point out in your article, like, just buying Maseca. Look, it's Masarina, Maseca is like the brand name, that, you know, that everyone gets, Quaker also makes one. Uh, there's a, there's a bunch of people that make them. And it is a large step above um, a large step above um, buying uh, pre-made tortillas. Once you heat a tortilla. and let it cool down again and then put it in your fridge, you have lost. You've lost. Yeah they're horrible. They good for frying. Yeah, you can fry them up. Yeah, they're good for frying. They're good. Yeah, you know, fry them, make chiliquiles, do something like this, but like for like actually eating, no freaking bueno, right? Now, they, Masa Harina is, you know, Maseca is a very, is good. It's much better than a pre-made tortilla, which most of the pre-made tortillas that you are getting are 1st insult is they are made with maseca. And the 2nd one is that they have cooked them like a week ago and added a bunch of stuff so that it can sit

[43:05] basic, at room temperature fundamentally, molding in its own, like, plastic container, you know. Yeah, you ever notice that sometimes they smell like ammonia? Yeah, because they're all doped up with stuff to stop them from going off on you. But that's, you know, all of those smells go away when you fry them. That's why those are the only chips I use for frying. There's no excuse to buy tortilla chips pre-fried tortilla chips. They're not as good. And they're really freaking expensive. Right. Unless you need a lot. I could see an argument if you were doing a party, you need to fill a huge chip bowl for your guac with, you know, That's when I start frying is when I do that. Because like, think about it this way. You're buying a 20 ounce bag of like medium quality tortilla chips is

[43:53] going to run you like four something dollars, I think, at a store, right? And you could buy one of those like well over. I forget how much those stacks of tortillas are, but they're over 20, way over 20 ounces, right? And they're thicker, better, and they're like a dollar. And it's so fast to fry them. Most of my home frying now, Connecticut, I have my deep fryer,

[44:20] but, you know, at home home, I do most of my frying and wok. The reason is, is, um, oil expansion is a lot less dangerous in a walk because it's constantly increasing its diameter as it goes up. So people, as long as you don't overfill your walk, you have a lot of safety room on oil expansion when you're

[44:37] working, and tortillas are the most forgiving thing on earth to fry, because all you're trying to do is expel the water and get them crunchy. So you oil, oil and walk. I think I've said this before, too, take the tortillas out, do the back break, snack, snack, break them, individually separate them, cut them and say, fry

[44:52] them, done. Like, I could crank out in under 20 minutes, I could have, you know, big shopping bag, 30. You know, like shopping bags full of tortilla chips. Really, like, it's one of the few things at home that I would recommend frying at home is much easier than doing any other way.

[45:09] But anyway, the point is, is that someone asked me, should I try this recipe that you

[45:14] wrote? And my answer is yes. It's like, is it worth making, like, making your own next to

[45:19] all, the next to all parts, not hard. It's the grinding that's a pain in the butt. Definitely. I mean, maybe the hardest part, aside from the grinding issue is just getting the corn. Oh, yeah, behind the corn. You look, you can't, it's not easy. It's harder even to grind. You can literally try it at home with popcorn. It's not as good, but it is doable. It's doable? Yeah. Oh wow. It's harder even to grind and the endosperm to skin ratio is

[45:47] not ideal, but to just to try it once, you can. I've done it. Um, the, so yeah, but you said you can get the corn now on Amazon, no? Yeah, oh, yeah, you totally can. It's just like a £25 bag. It's a lot of corn. But, you know, I think if you look around there, there are sources, especially I think even at farmers markets now where you have these people selling, you know, they're fancy little bags of grain, you might be able to find it or, yeah, online sources

[46:17] or, I don't know, get going, go in on it with a friend and divvy up a large bag. I mean, the other thing is it keeps forever as long as you keep it in good condition. Now you're going to make me say it forever. I've got to go, I have to see this. But anyway, the hard part is really grinding. If you try to grind, you just can't grind at the right texture in a food

[46:37] processor, even, like, you know, as the motor is about to burn out, you can't do it, it's just like a nightmare. So I think it's entirely legitimate, uh, to do your next

[46:47] symbolization, and then, uh, over wet grind it and dope it back with like masa. So like for like how much mass are you adding back typically? It depends, it really depends how much water you add to the food processor. And I was eyeballing it every time because it just, I don't know,

[47:02] didn't seem like it needed to be so precise and different. Even if I got that precise, someone else has different corn, it's gonna have different requirements. Um, so it depends, but I would say, I'm guessing, maybe you end up, it's ballpark a quarter to a 3rd, uh, Maseca, Masa Arena, and the rest is your freshly

[47:22] nextimilized, uh, masa. And I, and you get, you really do get that fresh

[47:29] Nixemal flavor, even with the addition of the Masa Arena to, to soak up that excess moisture. All right, so we're about to get kicked off here, but let me just say a couple things on the way out. Thank you, Harold, for coming on the show. Thank you, Daniel and Peter. I didn't know Peter was going to be on. You get a limited edition cooking issues, blue tape key ring there, Daniel, and hashtag always label. You can fill that up. That's feet of blue tape. And then when you're done with it, you pull this quick pin out and this fits... Yeah, this fits on the, on the hex drive of like a, you know, a drill bit, like

[48:08] a, like a Phillips head thing, and then you can refill it with tape, and you're good to go again. Uh, so thanks for coming on, talking about next to mom, man, Thanks. Thanks, Harold. Thanks, Peter. A couple tips on the masa. Masa is a whole grain, so there is fat in it. So store it like it might go rancid. In other words, don't keep it forever after you've opened it. Have you ever had that problem? Uh, anyone, anyone? Like, if you have it for years open. It's going to take a musty kind of rancid note to it. You mean the flower? Yeah, the maseca, the masa harino. I wouldn't I wouldn't open it and then leave it on your shelf for the rest of time. That's a good tip. I don't know that I've ever... This is the guess. I've smelled some old stuff and it started smelling cardboardy to me and then I pitched it and got and got new. Also, don't be too quick to add the water in the food processor. Let it grind and add in small increments because a little bit of water goes a long way. You agree with me on that? Yeah, sure, for sure. All right, thanks, everyone, coming back next week with cooking issues.

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