[0:00] Today's program is brought to you by Physical Culture Collective. For more information, visit their website at physicalculturecollective.com.

[0:08] Hey, hey, hey, I'm Jimmy Carbone from Beer Sessions Radio. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageraidernetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:25] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking, and she's coming to live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly

[0:34] 12, roughly 1245, 1250, sometimes one. Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick. Not with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez today, unfortunately. She cannot be here. She is doing, she is taking Anastasia Day. So in the place of Nastasia, the place of Nastasia Lopez will be taken by our good friend Paul Adams, the head of all web empires for popular science.

[0:59] How you doing, Paul? I'm good The sidekick chair is so comfortable. Oh, not yeah, more than mine. Yeah, yeah. Well, you, uh, so Paul, uh, you might know him from his Twitter uh, handle at Popsi Eats, correct? Is that your Twitter game? That's correct. Do you not use the other one's your email, so I won't give that one out. So people won't send you random emails. So calling all of your popular science related or other or food or whatever or 4th of July related questions. 2 718-497-2128. That's 718-4972128 and with more enunciation, 718-4972128. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. What was that number again, Dave? I can't remember. can't remember what that number is. Um, yeah. So anyway, we got a boatload of questions because we missed last week. I forget what was going on last week. Oh, yes, Dax was graduating from elementary school. He won a he won a leadership award. Do you know what's do you know what's garbage, Paul? What? When I was a kid? So presumably, you know, when you had the awards at the end of school, it was that one freaking kid that won everything.

[2:04] They had all those freaking medals around their neck and they were like weighed down with like the weight of medals and just showing you how crushingly superior they were at charming the school administration than you

[2:15] were and or at taking tests or maybe they did their homework. You know what I'm saying? Those kids are now our leaders. Yeah, I don't know, sometimes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Anyway, the point being that they don't do that anymore. And the New York City public schools, they sift the awards out so that no one child earns all the awards.

[2:35] So is that person who got the science award really the best at

[2:39] science? Or is it just that the person that got the English award they decided to give her the English award instead of the science award? You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? You put it this way. So is Dax actually a leader? No, he really is leader because 1st of all, like they also give like multiple, like when I was a kid, one kid got the citizenship award. Guess who it wasn't? Dave? Yeah, did you win that award, Paul? The citizenship Award? I don't think we had that. No? David in the booth? Did you have a citizenship Award growing up? I don't know what that means. Did you have any awards in your elementary school or any of this crap? I don't think so. no. We didn't have a graduation ceremony. Are you from a hippie commune? Where are you from? No, but this was before like everybody had to be exceptional or whatever. Dude, dude, I was born in 1971, dude. before what? My point is, is it's not about being exceptional. Awards. This is why you should give them all to one kid. Awards are about punishing the people who don't get awards. They're not about awarding the people who get the awards. It's about saying, why are you so worthless? That what it's all about. And so like nowadays, I think you're right. Like they're trying to make every, so like, you know, they're spreading it all out. And I think it was probably good for me to realize that somehow I wasn't kind of working within their

[3:48] system. You know, you know what I mean? Right. Yeah, you're still not really an exemplary citizen. I'm a great citizen. I help people cook things. You're a great citizen, but not award-winning. Nah, no. Well, huh, huh? Huh? The book? The book, the book is a better citizen than you are. Yeah, the book is a much better citizen I am. Anyway, point being, he won a leadership award, which is he deserved, and he was the only kid that won. like the citizenship where there was like 5 kids. But let me put it to you this way. The valedictorian, which is his, you know, one of his dirtbag buddies is the valedictorian of the school. And the only award she won was valedictorian. Does that make any sense? That you would be the valedictorian school, but you don't happen to mop up one of the math or science or English or social study of the

[4:31] awards? Does that make any freaking sense? Like the Oscars where you win like 12 Oscars? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. But at least... I don't know. It just seems to me that you should just let the one kid have all the awards, and that's it. Right? Well, in your school. What? In your school, that's how you can do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It won't even be the best kid. I just randomly assign all the awards to one child. That's the really baller way to do it. Just randomly assign all the awards to one child. Chat room saying don't be part of the system. Yeah. No, but like, don't you think, do they think that random assignment is the way to go? Just randomly assign the awards out? It's more, like I say, it's about punishing people, not about rewarding people. Uh, at least that's the way it felt, right? So we have a lot of questions because, uh, 2 weeks ago, uh, we had, um,

[5:17] Meathead on, do you have his book? Yeah, I have 3 copies of his book. Yeah? Do you have them in 3 different locations? Are they all the same? Okay, did you have those 3 separate locations on 3 different heat levels? Do you have like one of the books over direct flame and one over the indirect flame to

[5:33] see like, yeah. No, I have the advance review copy, the regular review copy, and then...

[5:38] How much change is there between these? I have multiple copies of your book too. Yeah, do you have the advance? you're an editor. There's a lot of changes actually between the advanced. There was a lot of, I mean, even in the finished one. There was a couple of errors that I hope to God they fixed. Yes, yeah, which you caught from me actually, right? Yeah, nice. See, this is why people, if you write books, give them to people to read ahead of

[5:59] time. because once you've like written something and read it 8000000000 times, you can't stand to look at it anymore for a while.

[6:06] You need to put it down. And so you can't catch that somebody has like mislabeled all the fractions or something like this. And it's more difficult than you think. It's not just a matter of the spell check, although that does help. Editors are important. Editors are extremely important. They're extremely important. So listen, let's get to some questions. And then later, Paul, a long time ago, Paul got in

[6:27] the in his popular science, you know, mail bucket, one of these new Breville, what do they call

[6:34] it again? They call it control freak. The control freak, which is, you know, an induction hob that, okay, I'll give you the quick story now. going to talk about it later on in the program. But the quick story is is that Breville, I don't know how much of this is. I sure it's public. public knowledge, right? Breville bought, they, I don't know whether it was a controlling steak or a big steak or the entire, uh, culinary business from, um,

[6:55] polycience. They bought like the culinary wing. I think a good portion of it. I don't know whether it was all of their circulator line or just some of it, but they bought it. Okay. So, um, then they were going to come out with this new induction, uh, hob. I hate that word hob. Yeah, Hob isn't that good. What do you use? I say cooktop? Cooktop? There's not a good word. At least when you say cooktop, people who've never heard the word before can sort of piece together what it might mean. Yeah, seriously, like, if I just walked up to these people who are eating their lunch over here and I was like, hey, would you like an induction hob, they'd be like,

[7:29] hob, hob? Is that something British? Is that British thing? It sounds Anglo-Saxon. Yeah, it doesn't, it sounds like something that a Brit would say that an America would never say. induction, but burner is not right. Induction is close. Anyway, let me think about it. Anyway, induction thing, I'm a jig it. And the idea of this induction thing of a jig it is that it's a much more

[7:53] accurate and has more control and more whiz bangery than other induction thingamajigits. And we'll talk about it later, but the interesting thing about it, about it. The interesting thing about it is they teamed up with Philip Preston, who is the guy, you know, who owns

[8:07] polycience, the guy who brought circulators to chefs originally, the, you know, the one. You know what I mean? Who was, and he actually just came out with a, some sort of,

[8:17] I, if you look on the, on the Twitter. someone will look at it for me. He just came out with a new kind of SUV documentary that he put out in a book or something like this. But anyway, they teamed up with him on some of the control algorithms for the unit. So it's also co-branded polyscience. Yes, it is. It was a long way to say that it's Brevel co-branded polyscience. Did I mention that I've recently, did I tell you this, Paul? I have no idea why, but recently, I have become like most favored nation status for Breville. So they sent me a bunch of things to test as well. So I've tested the unit myself. Fantastic. Anyone that wants to make me most favored nation status for testing equipment. I will love you forever and my wife will hate you forever. So it's kind of a, you know, but she's not in the food business. So if you're in the food business, you know, probably better to have her hate you and me not hate. I don't know. Or maybe the other way around. I don't know. But anyway, we could talk about it, we could talk about it later in the show. Also, I have a request. Paul, do you know of a good mead? A good mead. Yeah, no. Me neither. Here's the thing. I want a good meat. There has to be a good mead. I have had bad me, but not in many years. The meads that I've had are I also read a lot about, you know, making meads and they tend to get stuck because, um, I guess people don't put enough nutrients in, uh, and I think also people are trying to ferment it out to too high a, uh, too high an alcohol level. So they're shooting for like 20% or something like this. I've never had a dry mead really. Yes, what I want to try is a dry mead that clocks in

[9:45] at, like, you know, like 8 to 10% alcohol. That's what I want to try. I want to try like an eight, somewhere between 8 and 13% alcohol, dry meat. Heres the other problem with meat. People have, you know, written, oh, you know, honey is very acidic. It has a pH of 3 point high 3s somewhere, right? It's like, people, there's not that much water in honey. So like when you dilute it down. I guarantee that they, that they, whatever you're going to call it, mead must, whatever you're going to call

[10:14] it when you delete it down, is not in the, in the, in the 3s somewhere. You know what I mean? Meat is simply, unless you, unless it's infected with some bacteria that's going to

[10:24] create, uh, a sourness, like you would get in a, um, a sour beer, like some sort of lactic acid bacteria or something like this.

[10:31] Oh, now I have, oh, my God, I have, you know, you know, the bacteria lucana stock,

[10:37] meseranteroid, so however you pronounce it. Whenever I say lactic acid bacteria, and the word luconostock goes through my head. I've said this before, I have, the song, Lukenbach, Texas, goes through my head, but it's Lucana stock, Texas. And it just keeps looping through my head. And I'm hearing with Willie and Whalen and the boy, it's over and over and over. Thank God you're the only person that happens to it. Maybe someone else out there feels mean like, yeah, no, give me a 2nd to get the song out of my head. Wait, wait. Okay. So it's not like sour, right? So it doesn't have enough acidity to back it up, right? It's not going to be a problem. They say it drinks like a white wine, but a white wine has like a lot of acidity, you know? This is why I'm doing these experiments now with fermented orange juice, and I'm hoping to

[11:20] try because the fermented orange juice has a, like the orange juice itself has a fairly good acidity for something like

[11:27] a, a wine. You know what I mean? Might be a little high. I had to test it. I bought a titradable acidity kit so I could actually test it and see what's going on when it's done to see where it hits and all this stuff. But like I want to mess around with that. And also people tend not to make, when they make fruited meads, they're shooting on the sweeter side. They're not adding enough to make it really acidic. Anyway, I'm working on these problems, but what I want to taste is a good commercial need, a good, preferably dry, a little residual sugar is okay, but preferably dry because I want to see what it tastes

[11:55] like. Mead. So someone can say, hey, this, this is what it means should taste like. suspect that is out there. There's a meter in New Jersey that was on the network not too long ago. Yeah, well, why don't they sell their freaking product in New York City? I called Astor. I call warehouse. I call Garnett. I called Discovery One. I call all of these like little shops here in New York. I called... like, do you have meat? They're like, meat, meat? I'm like, no, Mead, Mead, Mead. And they're like, no. Except for Astro has a couple, but they're sweet meats. I don't want a sweet mead. I don't want something that is like something that just crunk up kids that can't take the alcohol. You know what I'm saying? Right. Tell me if I'm wrong. Just someone tell me a place in New York City where I can walk into a store and buy delicious mead.

[12:42] That's all I wanna know. Did these guys bring meat onto the radio when they came? They did, it was delicious. Thanks, buddy. It was dry. It was crisp. Thanks. Who was it? Noah's voice metery. Noah's Vice. They talking about Noah getting naked and his kid's covering him up after the flood? Yeah, it was like a biblical reference. No, his voice was meat, I guess. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, although I thought it was grape juice. I thought very specifically it was grape juice, wasn't it? Grape juice? I don't know, I didn't go to Bible. someone Bible me up. Anyway, but the point being that, uh, do we have any around that we can crack open? I'll give them props. Are they going to, can they send us some? Can we taste it? Can someone get me this? Yeah, please. The other thing is, um, I want to taste real maple sap beer as well. And there's a place called Lawson's, I think, called Lawson's Peerless, but it's like you can't get it. It's like the Pappy Van Winkle of fermented beverages. You can find it in Montreal. What, maple beer? Yeah. Solely maple beer. I don't want some sort of like, hey, I made a regular beer and I put a little maple syrup in called a maple beer. I want fermented maple. It has to be reduced 1st because maple sap is, you're supposed to use end of run maple sap. not good for making sugar. It's going to be too metallic. You ever had end of run maple syrup. The stuff that's beyond B grade. Yeah, sea grade. Yeah, it's hardcore, like metallic, like... I thought I was going to love it because I love bee so much. And then I was like, I talk to this maple supplier. He like, yo, I'm not allowed to sell that, man. It's like not like, it's like doesn't fit the U.S. standards for what is maple syrup. I'm like, brother, I don't care. Can I buy it? And he's like, I can't really. Can I buy it? And so he brought a cord in for me to try. And I was like, you know, man, you're right. I don't like this stuff. I don't, I love B. Do you like to see? No, I don't like the sea. No. But the C is what you want for maple beer. Well, no. I don't want to take it all the way down to, uh, you don't want to take it all the way down to syrup. So I think they take it about halfway lesson. They'd have to take less than halfway, right? So they're doing roughly a 41. They're doing a roughly 40 to one. That depends on what you want the bricks to be, right? But if so, then if you did it like a quarter of as much, you'd be at, I'd have to do the calculations. But like somewhere like uh, a 3rd of the way, somewhere between a 3rd and a half of the way there, right? Uh, to probably, if I was going to guess, I'd say they take it to probably like 15 bricks or something like this. And I think if you're boiling it only to that level, you don't lose. They call it niter, which is like the weird, like, stuff that scum that forms on the maple thing as you're boiling it down, that they skim off, that it probably has some sort of protein and nutrients and other stuff that helps the yeast get

[15:17] going. But then you're supposed to ferment it that way rather than just buying syrup and watering it down, although apparently you can do that too. Right. But that's what I want. That's what I want to try. And it's using a product and of run maple sap that is otherwise relatively useless. I have consumed a bottle of that in Montreal. How was it? It was interesting. Interesting means you hate it. Why do you hate it? Did they hop it? First of all, like, did they hop it? And if they hopped it, why did they hop? Everyone got a hop. They did not hop it. It was sort of... flat tasting. It didn't have a lot of nuance, as I recall. Do you think it's because they chose a poor yeast? I don't have a lot of other maple beers to compare it to. Hard to say. Anyway, if any of you guys out there have a good source for a maple sap beer that you think is both delicious and that we can actually get a bottle of, we hear

[16:12] the cooking issues would appreciate it. Yeah? All right. 2 bottles? 2 bottles. At least two. At least two. Here we got a caller. Caller, you're on the air. Hey, Dave, how's it going? Anto from Boca. Hey, how you doing? Good yourself. doing well, doing well. Cool, man. So I had a question here about celery juice. Okay. I've been making a cordial at my bar with like a 40%

[16:35] sugar and uh, for some reason it keeps jellifying like within either a matter of hours or a few days.

[16:42] In addition to that I'm also trying to clarify it. I hit it up with some pectinase, and for whatever reason, it's not stripping at all, and I put, like, in a separatory funnel or not. Hold up. Just give me the exact procedure. You're taking the celery, and then what are you doing to it? Juicing it, straining it, hitting up some type of days,

[17:01] uh, like a .2% solution or whatever it is, the 2 grams per liter. Um, and then nothing separating at all. I wonder whether it's the strands don't get broken up by the pectination. It's somehow being stabilized by what's in the strand. I, you know, uh, uh, you're using the

[17:21] Pectnex Ultra SPL. Okay. So Pectinax Ultra SPL wipes out, or can wipe out a lot, lots of

[17:30] pectins, also does hemicellulose. I haven't looked at the composition of celery,

[17:37] but in other words, I don't know if it contains like lots of actual cellulose, which I don't think it will break down. It seems like it would. Maybe, in which case, you might be making yourself some, like, you might be, it might be stabilizing itself with, like, you know,

[17:50] microcrystallin, well, it wouldn't be microcrystallin, but you might be stable. It might be stabilizing itself. I'm talking right out of my butt here because I have no idea, but I'm just trying to guess why it wouldn't, why it wouldn't stabilize. hear what I recommend. You want to do it entirely cold because you want it, or no, you're making it cordial. You heating it? No, I'm not heating it. The flavor of celery infuses fantastically well. I recommend you just, uh, uh, do a very, uh, fine slivers of celery, boil and strain. You're going to get a lot of celery flavor out of it in color, and you're not going to cloud it out. Wait, I understand. How is it you're recommending during this? Well, like, when I do gins and stuff, when I'm doing like, or when I used to do a lot of seller agents, I would just, I would just cut it extremely fine. Like, you know, cross fiber, because remember, it's got a lot of fibers, but it's actually very porous along the length of the celery.

[18:45] So as long as you like, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check. You'll be able to get just by heating it in the syrup that way and then straining the solids out, you'll be able to get a very strong celery

[18:56] flavor. without a lot of the clouding effects because you're not busting up all of that stuff that would otherwise cause

[19:03] problems, but you're extracting a lot of the flavor. Like you might, it will probably stay almost entirely clear from the get go. Okay. But you got to remember when you cook celery a long time. I mean, cooked celery obviously has a different flavor. So remember, if you're doing a celery cordial also, if you're trying to emulate something like Dr. Brown's celery soda, Dr. Brown's celery soda, which, in my humble opinion, is one of the greatest soda

[19:27] flavors, all times, all times. Fantastic. Fantastic all times. Celery seed, celery seed, is actually a celery seed soda. So if you want to emulate some of that, I also recommend throwing a little bit of celery seed into that. I just, you know, I just made, I haven't been on the show since that. I just made candied celery, which is also delicious. You should try that. And the candy, the candy celery, I did the, the, um, the gradual replacement method where you, you blanch it first, then you peel off the strings, then you put it into a one-to-one simple, bring it up to the boil, let it sit for a day or two, take it, bring it up to the boil, boil it down a little bit, add it back in for a little bit of the

[20:03] boil, and just do that again and again until you get it down to where, you know, when it cools, it'll get stiff.

[20:09] And then you throw it, throw some extra sugar on the outside of it, put it in the D high until it kind of, like, gets stiff. Man, is that stuff. Oh, the texture like? The texture is like candied. It, the texture that I took it to is is like a, not as firm as a, as an apricot, but firmer than an Australian

[20:28] glacier apricot. A little bit a little bit less firm than candied pineapple. No crunch left. No crunch. I've also taken the strings out, so no strings. And also, this is my secret trick. Are you ready for the secret trick? and I would do this with your celery cordial as well if it wasn't going to be acidified. I added a pinch of to the last boil. I added a pinch of malic acid. Right. Brighten it a little bit. Yeah, you know, that's what they did. We were talking on Twitter a couple of weeks ago about, is there a genetic predisposition to like or dislike celery?

[21:01] And someone from Monel chimed in saying that Andostronone, Androstonone, is flavor that's present in celery and also in boar saliva. I like I like me some bor saliva. good, yeah. So what kind of people like bor saliva and celery? The same people? The same people. If you don't like boris saliva, you might not like celery. Look, I think we've had this discussion on the cooking issues before, but you know how there is a genet, there's a genetic, look, there's a genetic component clearly to certain things like cilantro, right?

[21:32] Like, right? But it does, it's not a genetic thing determining whether you're going to like it or not. It's a genetic marker showing that you're going to perceive it in a certain way. There are plenty of people in Mexico who have the gene to have it taste

[21:45] soapy to them and they still love it because they were raised to like it. Yeah, we got on the trail of this because there were a lot of people complaining online that celery is totally watery and

[21:54] tasteless. They are completely wrong. They are completely and utterly like that is wrong. Are these the same fools that say that bay leaves don't have flavor? Possibly. Fools. Fools. I was just going to add in for you as well. Don't know if you've ever tried the going back to your meat question. There is also, have you ever tried the zombie killer? No. B nectar? The hopped meat? Good. So it's a little bit drier. Is it good? That one's good. I recommend that one. It's within that 10% that you were looking for. Can you get it in a store? Can you just go buy it or do you have to get it shipped to you? Uh, I mean, I can buy it down here in Florida so I don't know how available it would be there. Yeah, I'll look around for it. The other problem is here in New York. we have the issues where no one knows where me. So I don't think meat can be sold in beer stores here. And so like, uh, because they don't add any malt to it, or there's another, and it's not cider, it doesn't fall in any normal category. So I think it's in a wine category and the wine stores don't want to sell it because they can't push it and the beer stores can't sell it. And so everybody gets hosed. But so maybe it's maybe it's easier outside of New York, you know, someplace that has different laws. Maybe somebody needs to open a meat store. They allow it to be considered a beer, perhaps. Maybe, or you know what else? like there's a there's a certain minimal malt content that you need to add to things to have them be a malt beverage to the same

[23:19] malt beverage on the Well, next time you look at it, see whether it says malt beverage somewhere on the bottle. It's a not a lot. You don't need a lot of malt. So like some of these guys doing the maple stuff, dope it back with some malt too, so it can be a malt beverage, so it's easier for them legally. It's just another one of these things where the legal stuff gets you into really ridiculous trouble. Like, we should just have our taxes based on, like, the fact that it is alcohol and what content alcohol is, not like whether or not it was made from barley or made from whatever.

[23:45] Our laws are so arcane and strange. You know? Anyway, Dave thinks once again. always helping him with solutions, man. All right, thanks. Well, let us know how it works, all right? Yeah, thank you. All right. So let me see. John Reiper wrote in, longtime listener. Props to you guys for the great series of guests you've had on recently. Thank you. Does that include Paul? you. Yeah. Are there any rules of thumb for the shelf life of various hydrocoloids? Less than, by the way, I hate that word. Less a thin. Do you? Less of thin. Why? Because it looks like it doesn't it doesn't look right. It doesn't look English. No, it's fine, Dave. You like? David, what do you think of the word less a thin? Uh, kind of makes me uncomfortable. There you go. All right. Less of thin seems to conk out after just a month or so. Uh, that month or two. because it's like incredibly hygroscopic. So it's like pulling stuff out of the air. It clumps up. You need to store that stuff in completely vacuumed out,

[24:45] like, low moisture with, like, silica package. The stuff just like sucks up moisture, like nobody's business. I don't think it actually goes bad though, does it? Does it suck a moisture? It doesn't like, it clumps and becomes, even if you store it with silica gel, in a vacuum without compressing it, like in a jar. Haven't done that. I buy liquid less a thing. I don't use it. So I don't have that problem. When I used to use it at the school, we used to just throw it away all the time because people would open it and it would clump and then I would throw it away. I make my own cooking spray out of oil and alcohol emulsified with a little liquid lessetin. And do you call it Paul instead of Pam? It's good idea. Yeah. What, do you like it better than the one that you just buy? Mm. It allows me to vary my oil. But I mean, do you think it makes a difference? No. Okay. You just want to do it. This is why I love Paul. Okay. Are there any rules of thumbs on the various shelf flights of hydrocoloids? Less thin. We mentioned, are there others that need replacing in anything short of 5 years or so? Look, I think some of these things, basically they're like, you know, they'll be around for the next ice age as long as they're kept dry. Like, I have used. I have personally used Alginet's, that are 10 years old. You know what I mean? I, uh, Jelen, I've probably used Jelen at 7 or 8 years old. Um, You know, so it's, um, I, you know, I just, I just don't worry about those things. And certain things like enzymes have a shelf life, but the good news about

[26:20] enzymes. The good news about any of these things is they're kind of like medications, there is a shelf life that they have to put on because they have to put it on, but typically it's, it's not like, um, it's not

[26:33] like, uh, a balloon that, like, after certain date, like, it has lost all its error. pot was kind of like a blue next. It slowly degrades. So if something, let's say that you were going to have a hydrocoloid, and let's think of a method where it might

[26:45] degrade, there's some moisture in the air, maybe it hydrolyzes over time, breaks into smaller units, doesn't have the same kind of functionality it used to, it's possible, right?

[26:52] Sure. Basically, it's just gonna get less efficacious over time. It's not going to like be good one day. There's no safety issue. So it's not going to be like good one day kill you the next, right? So, I mean, like the only shelf lives that I really worry about are shelf lives that are either due to

[27:10] quality. Like this stuff's going to go rancid on me, but these things in general don't contain fats. And then two, um, is it going to lose, uh, if it is going to lose efficacy? The other one that you want to worry about on shelf life is kitasan. Kitus, anything that comes in a liquid format, like, I don't know about liquid lessithin, they are usually, if they're sold to the shelf stable thing, They are mostly shelf stabilized, but they're not permanently shelf stabilized. So things like kite sand, if you don't store them in the fridge, they'll throw they'll throw a mold flock after a while and you have to pitch them or things like this. Um, you know, so I would worry about mostly liquid prep, things like enzymes, like Pex and X Ultra SPL, tend to uh, degrade slowly in terms of their efficacy. So you have to add more. So in general, it's good to keep those things refrigerated and also to use them in a relatively timely manner. But if you're not using them industrially and you're not counting on a gram being a gram all the

[28:04] time 100% of the time, then, eh, what do you think, both? Transgluterminates is the big one for me. Oh, yeah, that's true. What do they put on it? 6 months? As long as you reseal it, though. I've used stuff. I think they say a year, but Kalustian sells it unrefrigerated. Wiley Wiley Dufrayne, uh, you know, uh, chef extraordinary. My brother-in-law goes in and repeatedly tells them not to do

[28:29] that, and they think he's some sort of, like, insane, like, homeless man. He doesn't look like a homeless man. But they think he's like some crazy person. Like, you know, like, uh, like, I don't know, what's the chef equivalent of a cat, like a cat lady? A transglutaminease refrigeration proselytizer. Yeah, he's like, you have to refrigerate that. And he told it to him like 20 times and they're like, okay, bye. It does still work. buy it there. Really? Yeah. Well, what's true is it doesn't need to be frozen. It's supposed to be frozen, right? But it doesn't need to be frozen if there is no water present. So if you have actually packaged it in a place where there is 0 water present, then freezing

[29:09] it in theory, shouldn't do that much to help it or to hurt it. As soon as there's any moisture present, the freezing prevents the it from gluing itself to itself, you know, or gluing it or like gluing itself to the

[29:21] case or whatever. You know what I mean? Whatever. The wet dog test is good. Wet dog test always good. Famous cooking issues, wet dog test. Sprinkle some on some chicken, chicken, chicken breast, my favorite,

[29:34] a chicken, thigh, chicken, I think is the most effective because it's relatively neutral. If you put it on there, rub it in, and then sniff it. Don't huff the freaking stuff, but if you sniff it, it should smell like wet dogs or if you don't have a dog, like a wet wolf sweater. We got a color? Call her, you're on the air. Oh, hey, how are you? This is Rob. coming from a North Fork of Long Island. Big fan of you guys. First time calling in. How you doing today? Doing well. Doing well. Good, good. Um, I got kind of a kind of a random question for you. Um, I'm actually out here vacationing with some friends and um, been getting really into the foraging scene and um, made a bunch of stuff that we forage locally up here. We got these really cool uh, we made an escabesh of wild mussels that all of us gathered, probably about a 100 of them. There's really cool little guys that have like sort of ridges that I'd never really seen before, but they were like delicious. Who were they mussels or were they arc shells? What's that? Were they mussels or were they arc shells? Were they white with ridges or were they the classic, like, like, blue and blackish muscles? Pretty classic looking with just with these little ridges that looked a little different. But yeah, classic looking muscle. All right, cool. Sorry, go ahead. Uh, we had that and some some wild herbs that we found and uh, these little wild carrots with these sort of little lacy flowers on the top. Okay, be careful with wild carrots. Do you have an expert with you? Uh, we don't. And I'm actually calling, uh, we don't really have internet access out here, but my phone works and a couple of people aren't feeling so good and I just figured you guys... Are you joking? Are you joking with me, by the way? Is this a joke? Are you calling to test me or not? Uh, no, I'm I'm I'm serious. Okay, listen, you have to be careful. Paul, look up, someone look up carrots right now. Are they unbelievable? What family? Are they on Bela? I can't pronounce it. Umbrella? You have to be extraordinarily careful with with Umbleis because there are some extremely, extremely poisonous versions of Umbleis, like things like wild parsley and wild carrots, very, very dangerous to forage. Do you have any left? Uh, we got a couple, yeah. You need to take a picture. You need to take a picture of it, and you need to send it to a poison control person to make sure that no one,

[31:52] now there are some that are relatively different in terms of what they, uh, you know, what's in them, uh, or what's not. And I'm not an expert, so I cannot diagnose it, but you want to make sure that someone didn't consume anything related to water hemlock or any one of the

[32:07] other umbelaci family that are no good for you. In general, any APA, so they're not. They safe? Yes. Look, look, look up, look up searching, look up searching for... because we're sort of out here. We don't really have internet. Look up searching for. Oh, the Paul's looking it up for you. And David, you look it up too. Look for wild carrots dangers. The APACA, also known as Umbelifer. Yeah, so it is one. commonly known as the celery carrot or parsley family. Okay, you need to be careful. So take a picture of this. Can you, if you can text it to, uh, uh, I mean, I don't know how do you get, uh, or just call shoot. should we do here? I can, uh, I mean, I, I'll probably just drive into town because I'm a worried, you know, the couple of the girls have diarrhea and,

[32:57] uh, go, go, go right now. Go right now, please. go right now, bring it with you. Have them test it. When you get better internet access, try to get a positive ID, you have to be really careful when you're foraging for wild

[33:10] carrots while parsing and stuff like that. You need to really be like 100% sure of the diagnosis. I don't want to worry you too much because there's lots of stuff that can just give you a stomach ache and you're probably going to be all right, but please don't mess around with it. Hang up now, go. Please tech, please, um, uh, uh, please tweet at cooking issues. I want to know that you guys are okay, all right? All right, yeah, we kind of had to use the extra well water. It smelled a little funky, too. I did it. Let's hope it is. Let's hope it is. Yeah, get going right now. I hope it's the well water. Sure you guys are okay, but please take care of it, all right? All right, thank you. Bye. For urging issues. Yeah, I hope they're okay. Saving lives on cooking issues. Well, who knows? I mean, let's hope, let's hope it's the wall, well water. I mean, well, bad well water will get you really sick. And the odds are that the stuff that they forage is not poisonous, but

[33:58] I've never foraged that stuff, and I've never become an expert in foraging that type of plant simply because there's all these warnings on wild carrots and

[34:08] parsley. So it's Paul, you also forage. you know, you stay away from that stuff too, right? Yes. Yeah. I mean, I haven't had occasion to stay away from it, but I would stay away from it. Anything anything that looks like, uh, like, uh, like an umbrella, like I stay away from it, where the flowers look like an umbrella, I stay away from

[34:26] it, unless I planted it. Let's take a quick break and come back with more cooking issues.

[34:48] Hey, this is Gavin Van Vlack and Physical Culture Collective, Bushwick, Brooklyn. You are listening to the Heritage radio network. Gavin Van Vleck and Jenny Livingston and Physical Culture Collective bring you an alternative gym experience right in Bushwick. It's fun to move around, and to move around in a way that you wouldn't normally get a chance to do. So, like, a lot of what we do here is, you know, on the ground or standing, you're not, you know, you're using

[35:21] equipment, but you're not using machines. I grew up in very alternative cultures. I grew up in the punk rock and hardcore scene. Muay Thai was something that very much resonated to me. And it was like, yeah, this is this is something that I can get around. This is a sport that's for me. Learn more about classes and membership options at physicalculturecollective.com or visit them at 857 Broadway in Bushwick, Brooklyn. And we are back. hope those guys are okay. I'm sure they are Okay. Let's get to some questions. By the way, longtime listener. Brandon Johnson sent in a package for us to look at it, but I'm going to talk about it. I'm not going to talk about today because I don't really

[36:04] know, I don't really understand what to say about it. give me a give me another email. Let me know, let me know what you want to talk about on that. Quinn wrote in. I've been looking to make an outdoor tandor oven for home use. This is like safety day on cooking issues. I've been looking into making an outdoor tandor oven for home use. My main problem is that I have not been able to find an ungalvanized trash can needed to contain the clay pots, fire

[36:25] bricks, and vermiculate, which is a good word. It is a good word. Vermiculate. It's weird. Why? Like, it sounded like because it's like loose, like worms have gone through it? Is that why it's vermiculate? Probably. I feel okay with that word. Yeah, me too. It's the only vermi word that I like. You don't like vermatelli? It grosses me out because I know it means like wormatelli. They don't like worms? I like them. like them in the garden. Do you like to eat worms? Vermiculture? That's not my thing. I know that you're a, you're a, you're a true, you've taken Jeffrey Steingarden to his. I mean, I've eaten worms, but I'm not like, oh, you know what? Worms, just what I really want tonight for dinner. Just doesn't come up. I like the word vermicos. come up yet. Yeah. And it won't because it's still not the most efficient way to raise protein. Is it really? More efficient than just like agriculture. I mean, you gotta feed him something, right? Yeah, but you don't have to feed them something that you would otherwise use for anything else. Worms go really well with chilled monkey brands, right? Chilled a monkey brains. See, you make me like, like, you make me bust out the accent because anytime someone pulls out anything from Indiana Jones

[37:37] in the Temple of Doom. I have to go with it. You know what I'm saying? Can't stop once, though. Can't stop me. can't stop one. Shield a monkey brains. Snake, a surprise. That guy is awesome. I wish I could remember that actor's name. Let's get him on the show. Oh my god. he's still alive, I'm going to get the guy on the show. You know who the, my favorite, like, a deep, deep voiced dude from the Indiana Jones series, though, is the, uh, well, his name just went out of my

[38:01] head. The guy who says bad dates in the 1st one? Yeah, bad dates. I love that guy. And then she kisses him and he starts singing, I am the monarch of the seas. Monarch of the Sea. Remember that? No, I don't. Great. Are you not an Indiana Jones fan, Paul? I am. I've yeah, I closed my eyes during that. I remember that. Yeah. Except for Karen Allen kisses him. Yeah. Yeah. Her... yeah, yeah. Yeah. Dude, you didn't close your eyes, though, when the propeller chopped up the Nazi, right? Of course I did. You close your, well, the one that I saw it when I was entirely too young and the face melting really like kind of wiped

[38:35] me out. still haven't seen that. You still haven't seen the face melting? think you can handle it now, Paul. I think you take it now. My main problem is that I haven't been able to find an ungap. Well, back to Quinn's question on tandors. I haven't been able to find an ungalvanized trash can needed to contain the clay pots. Uh, I've heard that galvanized metal gives off toxic fumes at high heat. Is this true? Yes. galvanized hot, you know, galvanizes covered in zinc, zinc vaporizes at a fairly low

[39:02] temperature. Uh, it makes kind of like white and yellow, uh, weird wispy craps on the outside of the metal and you get a fume that comes off of it. I myself, you get what's called metal fume fever. And I myself have had this. It didn't obviously kill me or wipe me out, but when I 1st learned to weld. Uh, in college. They limited my access to the welder. So I put all of my money together, and I bought one of those like Home Depot 110 volt MIG welders, and then I brought it at college into my dorm room and was welding all night in the

[39:37] bathroom, and I was welding, I was making parts. And so I was welding galvanized nuts onto pieces of metal all night. I was in my bathroom, communal bathroom. People would come in and I would stop welding. They're like, what are you doing? And I'm like, they wouldn't let me use the welder at the shop. So I'm there. And like, in the morning, thank

[39:57] God, well, I got sick. But thank God, not terribly. No one in maintenance had any idea. I didn't realize this, but the, the, the, the slag coming off because it was flux core welding, you know, because I didn't have gas because I really wasn't rich, you know what I mean?

[40:16] I was using flux cord welding. Uh, the slag and the little metal balls pitted all of the porcelain and tiles in the

[40:24] thing, made little melt balls in it. But, They had no idea who or what to blame because it's not in the realm of mental possibility that some knucklehead idiot student has gone welding all night in the bathroom.

[40:39] It just doesn't freaking compute. So I got off Scott, uh, scot free on that one. Anyway, fume fever. Metal? Well, yes. I meant as far as the administration is, I got my comeuppance because I felt very sick. anyway. If so, perhaps it would be wiser for me to buy a tandor oven instead. You can also, what people do with the galvanized ones is they'll do a burnout or buy a bucket that's regular steel with paint on it and do like a

[41:05] long, hot burnout of the bucket. It makes really noxious fumes, but usually you can do it away from wherever you are. That's what a lot of people do when they're making like, I've done that myself. So, like, later on at a different location, we were making 55 gallon drum

[41:20] grills. Different. Different, well, on a roof actually. And we cut them and we were torch cutting them and that's nasty because the fumes are disgusting. But then you just basically prop them up and you do massive, massive burnouts in them and you burn the paint off and then usually you're okay, which is another way to go. But you recommend going to get to Gulati Jr. home Tandor Model 100. I have not, go go to the next, go to the biggest one that he recommends for home. That's what I would recommend Quinn. Good luck with that. Um, We got a question in about, uh, from Judy and Malden Mass. We have time. Oh yeah. in Malden Mass, and she shares my aversion to the outdoors. It's the sun that I hate. I like being outside if there's no sun. I like overcast days, I like forests. Anyway, she writes, I'm recently unemployed for 4.5 months and I've motored through the episodes. I only have 33 left to listen to. My goodness, that's a lot of motoring. It's a font of information unlike anything else. I've certainly had a lot of aha moments. Recently, I joined Sweet Green and opening their new store in downtown Crossing here and it's pretty much changed my life. Up until a week ago, I've always had an aversion to raw kale. since a friend, a decade ago, tried to pass it off as cooked. This is not a friend. This is not a friend. A friend who tries to pass off raw kale as cooked kale, not a friend. Enemy. Why would you do that? Why would you do that? Nowadays, I come around on this, though. I still can't say I love it. So what's the deal? Why is if they had so damn hard to cook kale correctly? I'm not sure I've heard of the existence of a wilted kale dish. It's not hard to cook it correctly. It's just everyone thinks that you can just cook it for a couple minutes and then go. It's like collards. You gotta cook it for a long freaking time to have it actually taste good. It's not, it wasn't, like, when it's developed as a variety, it wasn't developed to be, like, you know, a spring roll rapper. It was, you know, or like a lightly wilted thing. It was meant you were meant to cook to be Jesus out of it. unless it's extraordinarily young. So now people pick all this kale, it's extraordinarily young, and then they can do it like lightly on a pizza or in a salad or something like this, and it's not so terrible, but like kale is meant to be a

[43:26] big old, tough mother of green that you chop up and you cook the ever loving snot out of it. That's it's not hard. It's just, for some reason, we've forgotten what kale is for. And what's her name? Mimi Sheridan, who I often disagree with, just did something on NPR about this. Yeah, and you can go look it up. But anyway, I think she's sour. Really? Yeah. Anyway, but she's right about the kale. And she blames herself. She's like, I was on the kale bandwagon, but crap on what's happening right now with kale. That what she said. Crap on crap on it. And I was like, you know what? Maybe I do like you after all. Yeah. It's essentially an industrial garnish. use it in supermarkets because it never wilts. Industrial garnish. That's, like, is that it's more of an album than a band name, right? Right. Or a hit single. Additionally, one thing I've always, one thing I've always stumbled upon, never been able to successfully execute is Christina Tozi's buttermilk

[44:21] cake. It never comes together just right. I tried to bake it anyway. I flip it onto a cutting board and it's all over. I know that anytime I've seen this recipe, Toes, he emphasizes the importance of keeping everything chilled, thinking on this after listening to cooking

[44:33] issues. I wonder if the cake should be like grinding meat where you initially freeze your bowl and beater. Any insight on this is I would be much appreciated as I'm a fan of pineapple upside down cake and making the milk bar version would be

[44:45] incredible. Thanks for the inside Judy. And then I asked for more info. And she said, it's the cake texture that's coming out wrong. I originally tried making Tozie's barely brown butter cake for her apple pie layer cake. I think it came out very loose and messy, even though the surface looked cooked. After hours of listening, listening, it's simply a little tingle down my spine to be called out on cooking issues. Okay, well, I emailed Christina, and I said that you were having problems, and she said, the secret to the cake is to really value the creaming process and ingredient

[45:14] corporation, um, step, sort by step, because the non-fat buttermilk we use in our cake

[45:20] recipes. So, listen, because the non-fat buttermilk we use in our cake recipes contain so much water that you have to be very careful about streaming it in little by little into the fully creamed butter, sugar,

[45:31] eggs, and oil. The buttermilk often looks to force a separation, but your job, as a baker, is to force a

[45:38] homogen homogenization. It takes longer than most expect 2 to 3 minutes, and it's a crucial step to achieve before adding any of the dry ingredients.

[45:46] XOXO Christina. Uh, this in from Steve in Los Angeles. Hey guys, I'm having trouble shopping around for succinic acid. Most of the offerings available online or in tablet form, and there seems to be one available on Amazon who has it in powdered form, but the bottle says for lab

[46:01] or R&D use only. Is this one of those warnings that's just there because of the extreme concentration? Or is it cool to use? Although you say you're going to use it for champagne acid? I don't put succinic in champagne acid. I put it in lime acid blends, but, you know, the champagne acid is tartaric

[46:17] and lactic.

[46:20] Um, and then he also as, I find I'm using the Amazon tells me that people who bought it also bought liquid intelligence and some more acids. I looked at it. It's reagent grade, Steve. So I can't tell you whether or not it's, I wouldn't trust it, it's safe. I would trust only USP grade, which is United States Pharmacobia grade or the FCC like food grade stuff. It's entirely possible that it's safe, but each chemical has its own way that it's synthesized and

[46:48] their own possible contaminants that are in it. So it could be that this facilities and everyone that makes acinic acid makes the reagent grade in a purity that's not acceptable for USP, but doesn't have

[47:00] anything that's not going to hurt you. For instance, heavy metals or other contaminants or poisons, but it's entirely possible that it has some terrible contaminants in it. So I would not use it, even though succinic acid is used in very small quantities. Um, I'll have to look and see if I can find a, um, see if I can find a, uh,

[47:16] source of USP succinic acid. It's not fantastically expensive.

[47:19] Shoot. They're going to rip us off. How much time do we have left? Oh, it's okay. You want to take one last call, actually? Yeah, call her, call her. Oh, bummer. Impatient. All right. So listen, I'm going to have to deal with John Vermont Island's fruit trimmings questions. Alex has steaming questions. Steaming questions. You want it? Okay, you want to take a quick steaming question? Or do you want to talk about the Brevel thing? long do we have? I don't know. You got like 2 minutes. Two minutes? Two. Two. Your call, my brother. We also have a chimichurri question, which I'll get next time because I found some patents on pesto, which have the most hilarious, bad translated English people. If you're writing a patent and you're gonna patent it in the English language, just pay someone to translate it properly. The language is so amazing. It's like so heartfelt on how this person wants you to enjoy this garlic product that they're

[48:11] making. and the English. It's like, it's like the translations on the Kasugai gummies, which I think are my favorite. You know what I mean? Yeah, so we'll get to that next time. And Kieran has a question on pork tonkatsu, which we'll get to next time. You want to talk about the Brevel machine real quick? Yeah, what have you done so far with your Bravel polyscience control freak? Okay, so look, it's expensive, right? How much does it cost? 1799, I believe. Okay. Here's the thing. And it plugs into a wall outlet, which means the maximum energy it can

[48:37] get. 1800 watts of power is like, I think, somewhere I calculated it once, the equivalent stove BTUs is somewhere between, like, 13 or 14,000 equivalent BTUs of flame output on a

[48:50] pan. Really? Yeah. It's, uh, the difference it has with other things is it has a probe that you can control off of and it has an actual, like, depressed, like, metal thing that measures the heat of the pan much more accurately than the glass things do. It's also bigger, it's more robust. It doesn't look like it's going to break. got vents, it's got a lot of controls, not a lot of nice bells and whistles, and it's got a PID controller that can be adjusted for the level of aggression that you want. Backing up, you can set the exact temperature that you want to heat your pan. Oh, to the degree, yes, in either Celsius or some Fahrenheit. It plugs into a regular socket, and it's as powerful as any unit will ever be that can plug into a regular socket, and it comes in a very nice caterer's case that allows you to carry the thing around. The actually, the only negative thing I can say about it is that the thing that plugs the probe into freaks me out because it's not at an angle that I can hit 100% every

[49:36] time. And so when I pull it in and out, I'm always worried that I'm going to ruin it over time, but as the band says, only time will tell. Uh, you know, I saw, was it Asia? Anyway, so the only time we'll tell, is that Asia? Could be. Anyway. So, it is, I, I, here's some awesome things you can do with it, right? First of all, I talked to Philip Preston who worked on it a little bit on the thing, but he couldn't get on because he's dealing with some people at Boeing, you know, saving people in airplanes or whatever. But there's a USB on it that is going to allow for firmware upgrades and he kind of hinted at the fact that you'd be able to put custom programming in eventually, meaning things like rice cooker

[50:12] programs, and stuff like that so that you can actually put profiles in. Now, whether they're going to let you do a ramp on temper, a ramp on rate, or whether they're going to let you hit a certain temp eventually and then knee it up or down so that you

[50:24] can do relatively different interesting rice things, only time will tell. I really want a yogurt program that goes to pasteurize and then goes down

[50:32] to... A 100 and goals. Yeah, and I think that the unit, if you get it now, we'll be able to do that, but I'm going to try to get you more stuff, but it is without a question, the best leftover reheater ever.

[50:45] The day that it came was my brother's birthday and my mom was making like old school. Did I talk about this already in the air? macaroni. They call it macaroni and gravy in Boston. It's pasta with, you know, what we would call spaghetti sauce here with all the different meats in it, right? Brazole, you know, pork skin, Brazola, whole 9 and meatballs, pork chops, sparabs, everything. cooked. And so she brings the sauce and for, and like, if you burn the sauce in, in this family, like, literally decades, decades later, I hear the story about someone who's been dead now for 2 decades, who burnt the sauce once, and they're like,

[51:20] 0 my God, do you remember when Annette didn't pay attention, and she burnt the sauce, burnt the gravy. When she burnt the gravy and you're like, yes, you know, I wasn't actually alive yet, but I remember you telling me the story of the burnt

[51:31] gravy. You can never fix the burnt gravy because once you burn the tomato and it burns in, it permeates everything, you stir it once and the whole thing's

[51:37] toast, it's done. Anyway. So you just stick anything of any viscosity on. Turn it onto the temperature you want and it doesn't scorch it or overheated. So it's the world's greatest reheater of leftovers and pasta leftovers, by the way. I hear this. What? We got a boogie. Oh, I hear we hear the gravy that way. But also, uh, I use it on my pressure cooker so that like my regular stovetop pressure cooker so that it never goes over pressure. I set it at 5 degrees above my finished pressure and it ramps up. I said it at like in Fahrenheit, like to, I said it like 263 or something like that, and it goes up to

[52:13] 250 and I could put it back down 259 if I need. But anyway, Paul can come back on sometime, we can talk more about the unit. I'm pretty, uh, like this over. Wiley loves it. Really? Yeah. Anyway, we could talk more. someone asks questions about it. We'll talk about it. Cooking issues.

[52:32] Thanks for listening to this program on HeritageRadionetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website, or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info@heritageradionetwork.org. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today.

[53:01] Thanks for listening.