[0:00] 2%, 2%, 2%. The 2%'s right over here. Oh, hey, Jenna. I didn't know you shopped here. Uh, yeah, anything to support local food. Know what I mean? I definitely do, though that's not the only thing you do in the name of good eats, obviously. Well, true. I also host eating matters every Wednesday at 5 p.m. where we talk about food policy and how it impacts all of us. Be sure to tune in. All right, you gotta cut the plug in there. I get it. Yep, I'm hashtag Shameless. You know what else you can do to support the local food community, right? Well, yeah, make a donation to Heritage Radio Network, the world's pioneer food radio station. That's right. And I got to call you out in the whole local thing. What you mean? Well, the farm report, a taste of the past. Japan eats. Those are shows that take you around the country and the world. I'll give you that. So how can listeners give their support? It's pretty easy. Just go to heritageradionetworks.org and click on the big red heart in the top right corner. It's pretty easy from there. Thanks. Hi there. I'm Greg from Kapau. Visit us at Capow.com to check out our unique collection of everyday reusable products designed to help you do more with less.

[1:13] CUPPOW.com Hey, hey, hey, I'm Jimmy Carboni 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.

[1:34] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking is just coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from like, I don't know, what is it, like 12, 15, something like that, till like one o'clock, you know, from a birth pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn,

[1:50] joined, as usual, with Nastasia, the Hammer, Lopez. How you doing, Stas? Good. Yeah? Everything good? And we got Dave Id in the booth. How you doing? Good. How you doing, man? All right, all right. Uh, it's uh, it, like, I was flying home from New Orleans, and this is the only time in my life. I fly home to a place freaking hotter than I was when I'm flying from New Orleans in the middle of the summer. I just got back from Tales of the Cocktail. Tales of the Cocktail, which is now, I don't know, like 11 years old or something like that. I've been going since, I think, like year two, the year right after Katrina is the 1st year I went. And originally they started down there because they had no money, right? And so they wanted to have it in New Orleans, which is a big cocktail town. But they're like, what time of year does nobody, but nobody want to go to New

[2:38] Orleans right now. Like the height of July. It's like, you know, you know what the other convention was? like maybe the 2nd year I went down there at the same time? Swingers. The only other people, they're like, they're like, it don't it don't matter. Like, you know, I don't got I don't got to take them out somewhere nice. We're all just gonna like, you know, meet up afterwards. Yeah, if we meet in the hotel room. Weird, huh? Whoa. Whoa. Anyway, so I just got back from there. Uh, I demonstrated the centrifuge to uh, the uh, group of the cats, which they call them cocktail apprentices, but really they're this group of people, um, you know, uh, that take care of all the

[3:16] behind the house stuff at tales of cocktails. So there's something like, I forget what it was. It was something like 200,000 drinking cups that they, they, with all the seminars and all the parties and events and stuff like that. So they do all the batching, the juicing, the coordination, getting it done. So I demonstrated to those guys. I think they liked it. I made some banana gustino, which was good. Uh, and I made a um, lime cordial. Sorry, I made an orange cordial. So I took, you know how, you know how I always say orange juice, when you clarify it, tastes like Sonny D? right? And so it's not that useful because it doesn't taste that good. Well, I've been fermenting it at home. Like I told you, maybe next time I try a bottle, if I like it, I'll bring it

[3:53] in and we'll try it on air, okay? It needs to age a little longer, I think. But, uh, so I use it, um, I'm trying to ferment it, but then the other thing I do is I take the clarified orange juice. I acid adjust it and turn it to a cordial, like lime cordial. And unlike lime cordial, you don't have to heat it because it doesn't go off as fast as

[4:12] the lime cordial, so it doesn't have to have that heated taste because a lot of people they're like, I want my, what are you doing? Just lime cordial. It doesn't taste like it's fresh. Well, it's not fresh, you dunce. it cordial. It's like a traditional flavor that's supposed to taste like it's been cooked and you're supposed to like bring it on board a ship and keep yourself from getting scurvy,

[4:30] moron, that's not supposed to taste fresh. Not every freaking drink with citrus in it has to taste like it was made like the ingredients were made 13 seconds ago. That's not the freaking point of the cordial. But anyways, this orange stuff, it lasts a long time, but let me tell you, I don't

[4:43] know, if I mentioned my, like, double acid cordial. I have? What is it then? explain it. I haven't freaking mentioned it. don't even know what it is. You can't even describe it. That's what I live with. because I don't listen to you on the show, but I'm sure. Yeah. No, I don't think I have mentioned it. So the point is, is that when you mix, when you make lime cordial, typically it's one to one lime juice and sugar, right? Just like simple syrup, that's what people do. They add peel to it, and then they heat it up to a boil, and then they strain it, and then they bottle it and that's cordial. All right, now, the inherent problem with that is, oh, by the way, is your sister going to call in today? No, she said she hasn't made anything this past week. Oh, my God. Just a key lane sight. Talk about dump meal. Just tequila? No, just a key lime pie. You don't make a key lime pie in a freaking... You dumped a, but it wasn't in a... Who the hell makes kilo? You can't make key lime pie in a slow cooker. I know. First of all, key lime pie is perhaps the simplest dish on

[5:42] earth to construct. I mean, please tell me she at least made her own graham cracker crust. I ask her. I mean, for God's sakes. Did she actually use, did she use that bottled key lime juice? I'm sure. People, people, people. You are better off using regular Persian slash beer slimes than bottled key lime juice.

[6:08] Do you agree with that, Nastasia? I like key limes. They're a pain to juice though, huh? Remember when I bought that miniature juicer in Mexico and I brought it back and I did an angry juice and I broke it on day one before we could ever use it at the bar? Anyway. Oh, by the way, someone sent us mead. Oh, really? At least I hope it is. The meatery in New Jersey, Noah's Vice. sent that over for you. All right, well, we're going to taste it. Maybe we'll crack it open during the break and start tasting it in. But, uh, so it's wait, what's it called? The place? Noah's Vice. Noah's Weice. I thought Noah enjoyed grapes, and that was the problem where he got naked and his kids had to cover him up. Yeah, I think that's what the name comes from. But this is made from honey, not from grapes. Noah got crunked out and dropped his drawers in front of his

[6:52] kids on account of wine. So they're saying that they're off of Noah's vice and they're on this meat action. Maybe Noah had more devices than we knew about. Hmm, Noah had more vices than we knew about. Is that like that's that's like it's somewhere in the liner notes for for some band that I don't that I don't know. I haven't thought of the name yet, but right, is my right or wrong? Someone correct me on my Bible here. Noah got wasted on grape wine. chat room, any Bible experts? Got wasted on grape wine, dropped his drawers, and the kids, like, looked the other way, so as not to become

[7:22] abominations, and, like, drape stuff over, and we're like, yo, dad, sleep that one off. I believe that is exactly what happened. That's in the Jersey Bible, which someday Nastasia and I are going to do. Yo, dad, sleep that off. You know what I mean? It's like someday we're going to do it. You know what I'm saying, Nastasia? Never got a caller. Oh, yeah, caller? on the air. Cole, are you there? Color. Don't think so. Color. Hello? Hey. Hey, how we going, Dave? Going all right. What up? Good. I have a question for you about liqueur extracts and aging. So I've been making some extracts using 195 proof grain alcohol. And the recipes I've looked at, most of them require or recommend that the, excuse me, the extract, after adding the simple sugar,

[8:15] be aged for a couple months in a dark place. I'm wondering why that would be, if that's just an old wives' tale or what the case. pay for that. What kind of bottle is it in? I'm sorry, you're barely coming in. Oh, well, there's a couple of things here. One, many, many products are actually photo sensitive. It's not just, I mean, very few products have the extreme reaction to light that, you know, the humulones in hops have,

[8:45] right? Where they just go skunky on you. But many, many things are very reactive to UV light. So in general, unless you know that something specifically is light stable, it is a very good idea to store it in the dark. Makes sense, but it seems to be more for some kind of flavor development or flavor maturation or some kind of smoothing of the flavor out over time after the extract, sugar and

[9:15] water have been kind of combined. It's basically a limoncello sort of recipe, except I've made it with raspberries or basil, and it says, add to, you know, after you add your

[9:26] symbol syrup, you know, store it for a couple months before drinking. Right. I have, okay, so I have more, I have never made this kind of thing with raspberry, but I've dealt with basil quite a lot, and aging, and I can tell you for sure

[9:40] that, um, the day you make it, right? It has one taste, the fresh kind of basil taste. And then it does go through a period of it being not, in my opinion, not as good, right? But, you know, different. And changes. And then after basil in particular stabilizes somewhere between 3 and 6 months, I can't pin the exact date because, um, I didn't taste it every day. But and that's at, you know, 40 or 50 proof. You know what I mean? And yeah. And so the, uh, and that's for a distillate, though, not for an infusion, but I'm assuming that it's a similar kind of a similar kind of an issue. And, um, it's a, it's a myth that high proof, um, high

[10:30] proof, uh, spirit don't age in the bottle. It's complete myth. It depends. Some high proof spirits don't really age in the bottle. So whiskeys tend to stay pretty stable in the bottle, vodka, clearly, stays stable in the bottle. gins tend to stay stable in the bottle, but, I mean, Saint Germain does not stay stable in the bottle. Chartreuse is, you know, stable-ish, but if you taste Chartreuse that's like, you know, 15, 20 years old, it's definitely

[11:01] different and it's not because the recipe has changed, but it's because, um,

[11:06] It's because it's aged. Now, the thing about it, the thing that, like, so as a consumer who goes into making their own, the reason it's not apparent is because, uh, you know,

[11:18] all all commercial spirits have been developed to stay stable so that their customers kind of know what to

[11:25] expect, right? And so, you know, we're really only exposed to things that have been either stabilized or

[11:33] made stable, which is why a lot of, like, you know, vodka flavors, no offense to them, but they all taste fake because they have to be fake because the real ones would be horribly unstable if they actually made it for real.

[11:44] You know what I mean? And so like a lot of the flavors that are used are in liquors are dried herbs or things like citrus peels, things that have like after some initial movement after they're

[11:55] made and they can usually be held by the companies long enough for that initial movement to happen, they eventually, you know, meld everything, gets along

[12:02] fine and they're relatively stable. But part of the joy of making something yourself is to make things that are not stable. Now, right. One thing, one thing I will also say is that a lot of things are delicious. Some things just are wretched while they're going through their awkward phase. It's like, you know, it's like the middle school of infusions, but it's, you know, a lot of things taste good, kind of all along, but just they're different at every step of the way. Usually, you love something when it's fresh because that's why you made it because it was delicious when it was fresh, right? I mean, that's kind of what happened. Your palate was geared to making something fresh, especially you're not used to tasting with a mind 6 or 8 months from

[12:45] now because you don't know what's going to happen, right? So you like this stuff that's fresh. And then as it changes, almost invariably, you like it a little bit less as it starts to change

[12:54] initially if you really liked it at the get go. And that's when you need to, like, keep in your, in your, like, in your mind in your, in your heart that this stuff might get good again later.

[13:04] Um, I think that when people write recipes, I think that they make a huge mistakes when they talk

[13:12] about, um, uh, things that need to be aged. With the exception of things that are kind of dangerous until they age out. I think, uh, you know, they know because they've made it a 1000000 times, uh, that, you know, they might as well not taste it between now and, you know, in a couple of months when it's when it's

[13:28] ready. The truth of the matter is, when you're learning, you should taste a little bit as you go so that you can kind of get a feel for kind of what's changing and then get a feel for what you like and what

[13:38] the stability is. Because that's really the only way to learn. If you, you know, if you if you just put something down and then don't taste it again and then you don't know what's happening. No, that makes sense. And what I was planning on doing is actually letting it, uh, letting this batch age for a couple months, uh, and taste it as it goes and then make a fresh match in a couple months from now and then actually be able to taste them side by side, uh, 2 month old versus afresh, uh, extract and uh, mature. So, uh, okay, so it's not a, it's not an old wife's tale

[14:06] that, uh, that something's happening to even just a simple syrup and uh, and an alcohol extract, something's happening over time. some things are pretty dang stable, but a lot of things move. So it's also recipe by recipe. And I don't know whose recipe you're following, but, you know, it's also a habit that you have. If, let's say you make a lot of infusions and it's been your experience that these

[14:28] things like move around and aren't really stabilized for, um, you know, like a couple of months, then you just start writing into all of your recipes to do that, whether or not you've actually tested it for that particular item or

[14:39] not. You see what I'm saying? And the same thing, by the way, goes for every recipe that cooks right,

[14:45] chefs right, or even, you know, like bloggers or anything like this. Once you have some experience in your life that leads you to believe, uh, you know, that X, Y, or Z procedure is what you need to do, then even if you don't maybe even sometimes do it yourself, you just include it in every recipe you ever write so that uh, nobody comes back and like, maybe

[15:05] they can tell people to age it and it needs to be age, even if you haven't tested

[15:09] it. I swear. like I do this. You know what I mean? It's just a sad fact of the way the world works that you have to present these complete recipes to people for everything, for foods, for drinks, and you have to guard against these kind of attacks or

[15:23] worse, like having someone think that your recipe is bad. And so you include things in recipes that you haven't actually tested on that particular recipe. Or if you have tested, you haven't tested an AB where you left that step out. It's just it's the nature of the beast. Awesome. All right. Well, thanks so much. All right, let's know how it works. Talk to later. All right, bye. So back to this cordial. So where we left off was this. If you take 50% lime juice, right? Now lime juice is, uh, we clarify first, obviously, it's 6% acidity, okay? And now you add sugar, you add the equal weight of sugar. Assuming that the lime juice has no sugar in

[16:00] it, which is a little bit of a lie. You have a 50-50 simple syrup that's acidic, right? It's a cordial, cordial. Now, what's the inherent problem in that? since you weren't listening to me, I'll tell you. Right? The problem is that if what you want, if

[16:17] most, a lot of the drinks that I make have roughly equal amounts

[16:22] of, uh, one to one simple syrup and, uh, like lime or lemon juice in it, right? one to one. If anything, there's a little more acidity, a little more lime juice, or a little more sugar than there

[16:32] is, sorry, a little more lime juice, or a little more lemon juice than there is simple syrup, right? Right. Problem is, if you put a half ounce of that cordial into a drink, it contains the same amount of sugar as a half ounce

[16:46] of simple syrup, right? Does that make sense? Okay. Okay. Does it contain the same amount of acid as a half ounce of lime juice? No? No, why? It's more? Because it's more. No, because there's more sugar in there. The sugar is taking up some of the space. So you have to add some extra acidity in the form of citric and malic

[17:05] acid back to the cordial to get the acidity such that it has the actual acidity of lime juice. So what we do is we dope this orange juice, normally you have to add 32 grams of citric acid and 20 grams of malic acid to every liter of orange juice to have it have the same acidity as lime.

[17:26] But you have to add a little more to make up for the space that the sugar is taking

[17:31] up, and then when you pour an acid adjusted or double adjusted in the case of

[17:35] orange cordial, every half ounce of that stuff is the same as pouring half ounce of simple syrup and a half ounce of like acid, like lime juice.

[17:46] Uh, But you've only, you've added a half inch ounce less of total liquid. it? Get it? Got it? Good. You know what else? I had a question about New Orleans. I just deal with the question about New Orleans now? You didn't do anything interesting? No cooking interesting? Nothing? Ninda? Nada? Did you leave the city? No. You were trapped in the city with this like dead heat? You couldn't borrow your buddy's car that you paid to fix? All right. So, uh, Steve from Los Angeles is going to uh, New Orleans and he said, uh, I'm going to be in New Orleans this coming weekend. Unfortunately, I'm missing out on Tales of the Cocktail. Are there any new, new, the key here is these new bars or restaurants you saw this year that I should check out? Steve from Los Angeles? Well, I actually only went to one new restaurant because I only had really, I had 2 dinners there. One was a spirited award where it's not like a normal, a spirited dinner where it tells

[18:41] a cocktail, you go and like it's paired with like, it's not a normal dinner, right? But the 2nd one I went to was at a new place. Get this. It's I didn't even know he had done this. You know, John Besh out in New Orleans. Yeah, so John Besh teamed up with Ron Sanchez, you know, from here, and they have a restaurant called Johnny Sanchez, Johnny Sanchez.

[19:00] And Miles Landrum, who is Nick Wong,

[19:04] our, you know, one of my favorite interns of all time, who's at the French culinary is now at Sambar, is they went to school

[19:10] together, and so he's the exec there. So I went there. It was good. You know what they had that I like? First of all, for some reason in New Orleans, like ever since Cochon, which is like one of the famous, you know, favorite restaurants that we, you know, go to down there, like pig ears and

[19:23] like they're big on pig ears and pig parts. So, you know, Chilekillis, right? So these guys, instead of using tortillas, they do like a pig ear

[19:32] chile killis. What do you think? I don't know. What do you think? I thought it was good. What? No, pig ears. I love pig ears. And I love chili killers. So like doing an interpretation, like a chili killer's interpretation with pig ears. I thought was good. I enjoyed it. Yeah, that we also had, uh, we had some squash blossoms and we were, we were, we were saying how ridiculously, uh, you know, how squash blossoms

[19:57] here. It's like so sad when you go down in Mexico and there's 1000000000s and 1000000000s of squash blossoms for almost nothing, but it was good, very good. Yeah. So that's the only new place. I recommend. I can recommend it. I didn't get to go to, um, uh, what's it called? Shia, which is not named after Shia LeBeuf, which is the place where they make their own Peter. everyone goes crazy for it. and get to go. You know what I like? Do you like tourist things, Nastasia? sometimes? Do you know what? Like, everyone, when they go down there, there's a place called, I don't even remember the name of it, I go to the central

[20:24] grocery, that they make them, the muffaletta, that's the one that all the tourists go to, right? And all the locals, they're like, you're a jerk. Why are you going to the place that all the tourists go? You got to have our mufflet, R, this, that, blah, blah, blah. is a sandwich. They make in New Orleans and it's all about the chopped up olives and, you know, pickles and stuff that goes in the, in the, in the, it's all about

[20:42] that with this giant, giant, huge loaf of bread with the sesamees on top. It looks like a giant overgrown sesame bun with like, you know, the meats and the cheeses and then the chopped up olives. olives at Pepis and like pickled stuff on it, right? But you know what? Freaking, it's good. A crap on you. I enjoy it. Crap on all of you haters out there who just because, like, you know, since, you know, since whenever this has been the place people go, So what? Still good. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? Here's another thing. I don't know whether you knew this. New Orleans, Louisiana is possibly the, the, like, apogee, the height of personal injury lawyer advertising.

[21:26] I turned on, I was waking up in the morning game dress, so I turned on the TV, and it was one of these shows where everyone's trying to figure out who the dad is, and nobody knows. There's like 8 guys up on stage and nobody knows which ones the dad and they have the paternity test and there's all sorts of screaming and yelling and bouncers and stuff like that. Mori Povich. And, uh, and the commercials for the personal injuries attorneys are just amazing.

[21:50] It's like almost like it's an art form. My favorite, there's a, there's a guy in Morris Bart, which is the one that, remember it was in the news a while ago that this kid was obsessed with this personal injury attorney and they wanted him to come to his birthday party, but he wouldn't come, but he sent a life-size cut out of himself

[22:06] and like a pen. You know what I mean? So this kid's birthday party. But there's a there's an attorney there named Chip Forstall, who's got like this like polished, like bald

[22:16] head and go online. and look up Chip Forstall videos. He's hired all of these local, Louisiana, uh, musicians to sing various renditions of chip

[22:30] force, chip force doll. He's a man of integrity, and he wants to be your attorney. He knows the law, Chip Forstall, takes care of it all. personal injuries, big or small. But he do it, they do it in Dixieland jazz. There's a rap one that's not on the line yet because that's the one I saw down there. There's like, there's like some sort of like Mardi Gras version. They have like, they have a gospel version of Chit Forstall, takes care of it all with like real musicians. It's the craziest thing. Like, I went down there thinking that Salino and Barnes was kind of the height of personal injury attorney

[23:01] advertisement because Nastasi and I, to get an idea of what our actual life is like. We never discuss anything serious. We just will sit down, silence for like an hour or so, like staring into the distance with dead eyes, and then all of a sudden we'll just start singing the Selino and Barn song. Selena and Barnes, right? Injury attorneys, right? Give me some. 800 what? 777777? No. 888-8888. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we'll sing it. Call eight. Anyway, so anyway, so I feel bad, yet another thing, that New York, you think you're the best at something, and you go somewhere else, and it turns out that we are mere

[23:38] infants. Children, like weaklings, when it comes to personal injury lawyer advertisement. And I found out, I think, why, in New Orleans. I looked it up. I was so intrigued by it. I looked it up. And when it turns out that in New Orleans, and if Parish is down there in Louisiana, the judges that are hearing these

[23:58] cases are elected, right? Right. So they need to have campaign and get this. Unlike any other state in the union, the threshold for a jury trial for this stuff is $50,000. So any case that's below $50,000, let's say $49,999, people like Chip

[24:17] Forstall get to go directly in front of a judge who they're allowed to contribute to their campaigns regularly and they need to get elected and be like, hey, yo, judge, why don't we settle this for like

[24:26] $4995? You know what I mean? Like 49 k, then, you know, I'll give you some money. We'll all get out of here. This guy will get his money, boom. Hence, you have such awesome advertisements. I think it's worth it. Anyway. I don't know. little bit, a little bit of legal aside for. Wait, you want to take a break? We'll drink some meat and we'll come back with more cooking issues. Yeah, we got to call her then, too. Oh, we got a caller? I take the collar and then we'll go to the. you want to know? All right, call her, you're on the air. Hi, how you doing? Doing all right. This is Shane here. from Dublin, Ireland. Oh, hey. Good to hear from you. How's it going over there? Great. It's gray and cloudy as usual. My favorite. love that. Yeah, grand cloudy, man. I wish I could live in a place that was always gray and cloudy. Yeah. Listen, I love the show. You guys are great. I've learned a lot Thanks. What do you got for us? What are you calling about? I'm, um, I'm trying, I'm looking at uh, restaurants equipment and uh, I'm doing a lot of low temperature cooking and I want to um, get some equipment in, I

[25:32] can't, for searing, for searing meats and vegetables and I can't use charcoal because fire restrictions and it's

[25:39] difficult. I just wanted to know if you have any recommendations for, for other equipment that would be

[25:46] good, like a, a cast iron pan is too small for my, for the volume I'll be doing. So, like, I looked at induction planches and things like this. I don't know if you have any recommendations for good searing equipment that's not charcoal.

[26:01] It's hard. So are you allowed to have, and I don't know what the economics are there, but do you have natural gas or

[26:07] not even natural gas? Uh, I might have natural gas. I'm trying to get the lines installed. So I might and I might not. I'm interested in both natural gas and electric. Okay, so the deal is, I mean, anytime you're going to do like heavy searing work on low temperature, no matter what the source of the heat is, you're going to make a crap ton of smoke. And so you're gonna need, like, regardless of what the regulations are, anything else, you're gonna need really good ventilation. So that's just a given. I'm just going to stipulate that right there. Okay. It's it's

[26:46] hard. So like in the in New York, where now like they allow certain things they didn't used to, what everyone used to do in the

[26:52] back in the day, was they would have these, uh, these gas, these gas grill situations, right? And then they would just, uh, the manufacturers knew you would do this. We would just throw wood on top of the gas and just get it completely roaring. But then whenever, obviously, someone's coming in to inspect, it's just a gas, it's just gas. You know what I mean? And you would throw on wood in quotes for smoking. You know what I mean? And then that would, that's how you kind of get around it. those guys would jack the heat um that way. Um, a lot in terms of your, I mean, if you can get gas, and you're going to do a lot of this work, I would invest in like a deck

[27:30] broiler and the deck broilers are just like a salamander, but they're stacked.

[27:36] Like, it's like, it's like 3 salamander stacked together, and it's much more than 3 times as

[27:42] powerful because if you've ever used a salamander, you just have that sweet spot right in the middle, and then it kind of radiates out, whereas like the deck

[27:48] broiler, You have a giant sweet spot, and you can, they really scream. They really scream. And so I would recommend something like that. But that's only going to work kind of in an overfired situation. So if you're looking to finish, um, you know, uh, and you want to go electric, I don't have a lot of experience doing, um, hardcore searing on, uh, I've never used, for instance, an induction, um,

[28:14] plancha. I've never used it. Um, and, uh, so I can't really, you know, I can't really, um, speak to it. I'd say that think a lot about what you're, any electric thing that you use. I've never used, and I've used some of them. I've never used an electric broiler that was worth spit. You know what I mean? Um, there's just, there's not enough, there's not enough um, power output. I mean, the good news about using induction is it's so efficient in terms of heat delivery to

[28:45] the to the pan or the or the ploncher or the griddle, if it's specifically built that way, that, um, you know, even though, you know, you only have a certain amount of power you can suck out of the wall, it's providing a lot of that power to actually, uh, to heat the food item that

[29:00] you're that you're talking about. Now, when you're doing low temperature cooking, as I'm sure you're aware, one of the main issues on the finish is

[29:10] that unlike a traditional pan sear that you do before you're cooking or if you're

[29:17] going to pan sear and then finish in the oven, traditional style. The meat, when you put it in, is pretty or whatever it is, is pretty floppy and can make good contact with the

[29:27] service of the pan. or the griddle or the whatever. And what that means is you get a nice, even sear off on the thing. And it makes a lot of smoke. However, if you're doing a post sear and you put that same piece of meat onto a griddle, then you're

[29:42] going to have very dark marks exactly where you're touching the pan, but unless you have a pretty hardcore weight on it, right?

[29:48] Uh, you're not going to have an even, um, an even Siri closet. So how do we get around that? We paint a lot of oil on the meat and we try to hope that there's some sort of connection between, you know, bridging the oil to the

[30:01] meat. But then as soon as you do that, you now have a lot, lot more smoke than you did back

[30:08] in back in the day, back before, you know, back, you know, old style. So you can't really, you can get it to work that way, but you can't really win that way. And what happens is, is if you're sitting there in a kitchen and you have only screaming pans, you're constantly having to wipe it out, because just the amount of oil that you have to put on

[30:27] is just, you know, kind of intense. Now, some people, uh, you know, like we used to, when we were doing duck breasts, when we were cooking low temp, we made very, very sure that when we put them in the bag, we flattened it all

[30:38] out so that then when we took the duck breast and put it in the pan afterwards to do the crisp up on the skin, that it was all going to be in

[30:44] contact and it would render right. But if you don't, you're pretty much hosed, right? Some pieces of some products, and I know that, you know, people get mad at me about it. sometimes sometimes the best way to do is to deep fry it. You know, if you you deep fry it, you get like instant sear all the way

[31:02] around, and the problem with it is, is that nobody notices as long as your oil is impeccable. But when you do a fry finish on something and like a steak and the oil is even a little bit over, it's

[31:17] like, it gets kind of, it gets kind of ugly because they start to taste that oil on the outside. If, um, if not, then as soon as you pull it out of the fryer, if the oil is good, you have, you know, someone

[31:28] wrap a towel around it, get the excess, uh, uh, uh, fat, you know, grease off the outside. And by the time you cut it, no one ever knows that it's been in oil. They just want to know why the crust is so nice. That is particularly useful on things like lamb racks, which are very hard to post

[31:44] finish and hard to get a nice crust on the outside without overcooking using low temperature kind of

[31:50] techniques. So in my mind, things like lamb racks, big bone in pieces like that work extremely well in the deep fryer, but you just have to, I mean,

[32:00] like people don't like to think about it, and also they don't like, you have to make sure that your oil is impeccable.

[32:07] So those are kind of what I'd use. There's no question that an induction, an induction range can get cast iron, pans, hot enough. The problem with the cast iron pan on the induction range is, and I think we talked about this last week or the week before, is you really have to, um,

[32:23] not, like, have it screaming right away because you'll notice on most induction things that you that you use. I mean, maybe the commercial ones, I haven't checked their burner pattern, but the burner pattern on inductions is relatively

[32:35] small. And so they tend to work well on things that have a big,

[32:41] fast heat conductive surface. So like the aluminum sandwich pans that have like the slug in them that the induction works with,

[32:48] that the stainless that the induction works with, and then they have an aluminum, big billet, and that aluminum spreads the heat out relatively quickly. So you don't get major, major hotspots with the induction with

[33:00] it with cast iron. You're going to tend to heat the local area and it's going to take longer for it to be total even. Now, that point is moot if you have it on the induction thing for like 5 minutes and heating up. But then, you know, you have something that's screaming hot all the

[33:17] time, and unless you're going to chill it in between or let it cool down in between orders, which isn't really feasible in like a heavy environment, like when you're going to get an order

[33:27] in, you don't necessarily want to have to keep your pan going up and down and up and down. So most, you know, most people want, like, if they're having a griddle, they want a high heat griddle, uh, uh, you know,

[33:36] that, or a planchet that's running now. You know, the advantage there, uh, you know, and the reason plonches are so good is they can stay really hot, but remember, plonches grain the grease down and out. So, you know, a quick, you know, you take your your spatula and you scrape off the extra grease and now you're not smoking up your whole kitchen with the extra grease from before while you're waiting for the next order to come in.

[33:55] But that said, plonches aren't designed for searing meats that have already been cooked.

[34:01] You can with like a little squeezy bottle of oil. So you take a little squeezy bottle of oil and then, you know, hit it and it can work, but you just have to get some practice. If you have a buddy that has one, I would definitely go to use it before you invest in it to make sure it fits your cooking

[34:15] style. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. So just quickly then, on the, I mean, I see a lot of, a lot of planches and units on giving different surface temperatures, like 230 degrees. This is Celsius and 250 degrees and for a conduction heat source. Do you know what kind of, what kind of temperature I'll be looking for for a post? I'll do a priest here to help the unevenness of the meat issues, hopefully. And I'll do a post here. I did, so on the cooking issues blog. I think it's there. I might not have put that picture up and I'll go look at it again. I once did a test where I was actually testing the the temperature of the cast iron during the thing to look at what, and this is on a standard old cast iron pan, you know, like maybe 50, 60 years old, trying to figure

[35:04] out like what the best initial temperature is. Greg Blonder, actually, who called into the show, his his blog, you know, he did a test and he has a thing, I think, with

[35:15] me, Head Goldwin when he was on the show. Uh, you know, he did a test with a probe underneath showing that in most cases the temperature drops very quickly right at the surface. Um, you know, because obviously it has to boil water off. Um, and so, you know, he seems to think he seems to think it doesn't matter that you get that hot. My research that I did shows that an initial very high heat in the pan does help.

[35:39] So I was getting the stuff up into the range of like 500

[35:42] or something which is, which is, uh, see, 400 is 360 is 200,

[35:49] right? So I was getting, I was probably getting up to like, yeah, to, I was probably getting up in, you know, closer to, what were you saying? like 260 to, what were you saying? Uh, they were, it ranges from 220 to maybe 250 is the ones I've seen.

[36:04] Yeah, I mean, look, I never, the ability to go hotter is always better because you can always turn it down, right? But my, you know, it was, I had to wait until these things got very, very hot before I started seeing diminishing returns.

[36:18] I mean, eventually you get, you know, obviously, what's called the Liden Frost effect, and it takes, you know, a little longer for it even to know that it's searing, right? That's like I can stick my hand in liquid nitrogen and pull it out because um, because of vapor forms. But in actuality, what tends to happen is, is that your plancha is a slug

[36:35] of metal, you put the meat down on it, and like you get, it chills it right there eventually. And then you have to wait for the heat to come back in order to get up to its temperature. So they're storing heat a little bit. I know some people have moved to very, very thin plunches, which work almost, I guess, like a Mexican

[36:52] Comal, and those things don't store as much energy. And so then they're relying a lot more on how much energy you're combusting in heat to get their incredibly quick recovery rather than a thermal mass that allows it to

[37:04] recover. So you can kind of play either way. But I'll say this, and I might have said this on air. But I remember it was well over a decade ago. I interviewed Jose Andreas, relatively soon after he had opened Atlantico, and I was doing an article on planches for food arts magazine at the time, and he said, I said to him,

[37:23] and, you know, I knew all about planches, and I knew that they had this, like, you know, a central heat, and then it would spread out, and it was colder, and so people could then, you know, spatially arrange the stuff that wanted lower heat, over on the edge of the plancha, and stuff that wanted higher heat or searing heat in the middle of the plancha, right?

[37:38] Sounds familiar. That's how planch is supposed to work. And he says, no, I just buy a griddle, and I set the, and so, you know, the American griddles have like the one he

[37:47] had had 4 zones, 4 different burners, right? So I'm assuming he sets one side, uh, high, and then the other side low, and then he has a gradient, he can move

[37:57] back because that's the way most people who use griddles. That's how they think, right? So they had this spatial organization of heat, much like a French flat top,

[38:05] you know, and he was like, oh, no, absolutely not. I set the entire griddle to one temperature. I was like, why are we freaking crazy? And he's like, no, I write all of my recipes such that everything only requires one temperature. And I was like, oh, all right. You know what I mean? And that kind of makes sense. So when you're doing a lot of low temperature work, you're not going to need a lot of these little kind of warming zones or places you can let things ride. You're going to want a big, even screaming mother of an object that you can just crank with. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Cool. All righty. Listen, why don't you tweet or call on in, let us know what's going on. But definitely, it's a huge recommendation. Don't trust anyone on their sales salesmanship on buying equipment. Go use this stuff. Everybody sells you a bill of goods and it's almost impossible, especially when you're shopping for something that you're going to have to cook with for years and years. And this goes whether you're going to go buy a combi oven or anything like this. Anyone will sell you anything, and everyone sounds good, and a lot of equipment is good, but the things I would ask your friends or anyone

[39:06] around. How often does that sucker break with a piece of electrical equipment, especially if you're

[39:10] going to go induction, like ask a bunch of people that have used it, not for like a

[39:14] week or for like, you know, as Jeffrey Steingarten says, like, you know, all good knives are good, just like puppies, right? It's like you want to know, how is that thing after a year? How many service calls do they have to have? And if it breaks, like how fast are they going to come in and fix it? Because you don't want to build your business around, you know, some sort of

[39:32] induction range and then it's going to die every week and a half . Now, old induction units used to die constantly, right? The reason being that no one had adequate cooling in them, and they would try to do things like put an induction range over an oven, and the heat would get so

[39:47] intentionally electronics that they would just fry. Now, I think the modern inductions of the past, you know, six,

[39:53] 7 years, they probably dealt with a lot of that, you know, fixed a lot of that problem, but you want to make sure that that's not going to be an issue for you because you don't want to be down unless you have a spare.

[40:02] Also, you know, as, you know, as they say here, you got to make sure it's got, you know, enough power. You know what I mean? You got to make sure that you like cooking with it. And so I highly recommend finding one. Any good big equipment manufacturer has someone that they can send you to to let you cook on it. You know what I'm saying? And then you, you know, like, you know, they'll know who bought it in your area and you can go check it out and see whether or not it

[40:29] suits, it suits your cooking style. You not want to be saddled with a system like that and regret it in 5 or 6 months

[40:37] because, you know, you might have to live with it for years. Yeah. All right. Well, hope that's cellful. Very helpful. Thanks a lot. All right, thanks. All right, thanks. Let's go to a quick commercial break. and I are going to crack some meat and come right back with cooking issues.

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[41:36] kapow.com. CUPPOW.com. And we are back. All right, so David, tell me, David, you want to come taste this mead? Absolutely. And then bring a cup and then tell me a little bit about it. I know nothing about it. So I'll just come and taste it. You come and taste it. And while you're tasting it, a shot, a big shout out, thank you for Neil Wallace for donating to Heritage Radio Network on behalf of the

[42:08] cooking issues broadcast. We appreciate it. All right, so while we're waiting for David to bring a cup in here to taste this. Maybe I should I'll take care of this call. Oh, there's a call question. Do I have a call? No, no. Okay, question. So, uh, oh, before I do that, Russ, I'm not going to let you, uh, let me tell you deal with Russ first. Remind me to talk to you about Harold McGee and this thing he's

[42:30] interesting, right, Nastasia? You remembering? It's gonna have a word that you're not gonna like, which I like. Okay. Yeah. Russ writes in from California. Hey, hey guys. I'm 23, basically broke and love espresso. been there, right? I mean, like, actually, I didn't really like espresso when I was 23. I didn't really like it until I was. Almost 30. I didn't drink coffee in college. I drank tea. What about you? Uh, I drank coffee in college. Yeah? Did you like tea or just coffee? Just coffee. Really? Is it because all those people in California drink tea and you hated those people? No? Just coffee head? All right. As I understand it, espresso machine quality comes down to pressure and temperature control. I'm glad that you didn't say 100% stability and you said control because back in the day when I was 1st starting, everyone thought that the best of everything was complete consistency across the board, right?

[43:28] So you want the temperature to be completely consistent across the shot. You want the pressure to be completely consistent across the shot. And in fact, we now know that, um, that's not the case, and that in general, most people prefer, um, shots where there's gradients

[43:44] in in those, uh, things over the course of the shot. Not everyone, most people. And the trick is being able to control and repeat it. So like certain of the large commercial machines were,

[43:56] uh, you know, just made genius cups of espresso, not necessarily because they were, um, they kept everything the same throughout the

[44:06] shop, but just they repeatedly delivered the same profile of temperature and pressure.

[44:09] Anyway, okay, a little bit of an aside. Not really the side. About the question, right? Unusually, it's actually about the question and not about like the price of eggs or something like that. Uh, Supposedly, Ranchilio makes a machine that does a good job of this for about $700, and the people of the interweb seem to believe that everything cheaper is crap.

[44:26] I'm assuming you're talking about the Ranchillio Rocky, uh, the Ranchillio Rocky is, it's a good piece of equipment. I have one. Um, it is, uh, the reason people uh, like it is that it, the bones of it are good, right? It's got a good boiler on it. It uses a good porta filter. Um, and so like that stuff is relatively uh, robust. Also, it's like an old school, like American car in that when you open up the hood, There's not a lot of junk and garbage inside of there, so you can pretty much do whatever you want. So it became very early on, like, you know, well, well over a decade ago. The machine to mod out, right? So the problem. And so then, you know, people with PID controls in, people put dual PID controls in, some people would add a 2nd boiler to it. There's a lot of stuff out there, and there's a lot of people that have already walked down the road. In fact, you can buy kids to mod it. And I have to say that a PID controlled, uh, Rocky, I mean, sorry, uh, Sylvia. Did I say Rocky before? I meant Sylvia, Rocky is the grinder. Ranchilio, Sylvia, is it's a good machine. It makes a good cup of coffee. It is a pain in the behind if you also like milk in your coffee. I don't, but my wife's a milking coffee person, and because it's not dual boiler, you have to always like turn it on to steam, let it steam up, and then you have to get the temperature back down by pushing water through the group head, and then let it stabilize again, and then

[45:53] blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, if you're making, you're 23 and you're broke. If you're also single and or and or nobody in your house likes anything but espresso, uh, the, the Sylvia is good, but apparently it's too expensive, uh, right? Because you're basically broke. All right. Now, so then you say, you took a question a while back about the rock, R okay, espresso maker, which goes for $150. I can't remember what you said about it. Well, I haven't used it, right? I can't remember what you said about it, but the consensus seems to be that it is possible to get a good espresso from it. However, it is difficult, if not impossible to do so consistently, as the pressure is regulated by hand. I'm considering buying one and adding a spring to the system to regulate the pressure. I have a machine shop at my disposal and can do this with relative ease, but I wanted to get your take on whether or not it would work

[46:36] well potentially before wasting the time and money involved. Also, any tips on looking into a professional espresso machine at auction for almost no money as you did would be much appreciated. Thanks for us from California. All right. So 1st of all, let me tackle these in reverse orders. So buying something at an auction is a really good way to go, what you need to find is an auction where nobody else there wants a piece of equipment.

[46:58] So, um, usually the way you do that is you find something. So if you go on eBay, you can buy an espresso machine commercial that is broken for some reason or another. And then if you're willing to fix it or go through the trouble of fixing it, then you can do it. I would make 100% sure that the parts are available. Like get to know someone because parts on an espresso machine can get very, very expensive very quickly. But for instance, let's say there's an espresso machine out there and the pump is broken. Most people who service espresso machines know how easy it is to get a new pump. And so you wouldn't get a big discount because they would buy it and just fix the pump rather than give you something for free, but maybe you find some knucklehead who has a machine and just wants to get rid of it.

[47:36] at an auction. So what you need to go into a restaurant auction is patience. The unfortunate thing is back when I was, you know, starting in the espresso world. It was, uh, you know, people on the on the web, the general consensus was that home people, you should just forget about making espresso, right?

[47:55] And the only people that were making, uh, espresso at home with machines that they liked were the people who were using the, um, uh, the

[48:03] Europiccolos, the the hand uh, lever machines. Now, um, so there you have it. The rock, I guess it's pronounced rock, what it is, is like a dual, what would you describe this motion, Nastasia, this? Um, like, the Hulk, when the Hulk's going, ah! And he lifts up by his shoulders and then tries to make his pecs huge by going down, it's that kind of emotion. You're grabbing 2 handles, and you're pushing down to provide the pressure, and you're pushing a piston down into a column of water that's heated, and

[48:35] then in through the ground espresso. Now, in actuality. Uh, some of the best, in fact, still the best cups of coffee that I've had,

[48:46] uh, espresso have been out at some of the best, have been out of lever machines, and they're working on uh, springs. So springs are good. The problem with modifying the spring on that machine is

[48:56] that how would you do it? You have to pull up on it, right? And then if you have the spring pulling, the easiest way to do it would be to have springs pulling the handles down, but then you're going to have a difficult

[49:06] time levering them up and then holding them there for the infusion section and then letting them go.

[49:12] So it's possible that you could, I guess, make some sort of crossbow

[49:16] scenario where you just lift it up and then crank something up and use that to kind of pull it down.

[49:21] Yeah, it looks kind of like a bow motion. Dave, you got like 30 seconds. Oh, geez. All right, all right, all right. listen. Listen, I'll get back. Russ, we'll deal again next week because I'll also talk to you. You need to spend money on a grinder. We need to worry about Grinder as much as you do about machine. So I'll get back to that. So tell me a little bit about the meat. David, tell me quickly about the meat. It's delicious. notes of popcorn at the end. Yeah, it's not as dry as it, but it's not cloyingly sweet either. I think it's good would have this one after dinner. What about you, Nastasia? Nice little spice to it. No, what are your shoes? Some flavor, some flavor in it. I don't like the spicy one. I like it. But you don't think I think it's from the, I think it's from the, that's the honey. That's used that's the note of the honey. Give a shout out to the company again, David. Noah's Vice Metery in New Jersey. Noah's Vice Medery. Thank you. And I enjoy it. I going to have some more during lunch. And on the way out, let me just say this. I was with Harold McGee. All of you go on the New York botanical garden. Go to their corpse flower cam. There's a rare corpse flower that's about to bloom any day now, and hopefully Harold and I are going to go. It smells like rotting flesh. It's a close relative of the same thing that makes conjak. And the name of it is ready for Nastasia? The name of the genus. It's the largest inflorescence in the world in the world, a morphophallus titanium, a morphophallus

[50:37] titanium. Because if your phallus is going to be poorly formed, you at least want it to be Titanic, cooking issues.

[50:49] Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritageradionetwork.org. HeritageRadio Network as a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.