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[0:51] talkspace.com. match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com. Save $80 with code space 80 at talkSpace.com. This episode is brought to you by Jewel, the immersion circulator for sous vide by chef steps. Order now at chefsteps.com slash J-O-U-L-E. Hello, everybody. This is Jerobi from a tribe called Quest slash Eats Rhymes in Life, and you're here listening to Heritage Radio Network.

[1:26] Hello and welcome to Cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cookies. It is coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from like 12 to like 1245 or one. Ah, November's Pizzeria in Bushwick. Brooklyn, joined as usual with Nastasia Hammer Lopez. How you doing, sis? Good. Good. Got Dave in the booth. How you doing, Dave? Good. Yeah? And special guest today. We have Ariel Johnson from formerly of, where'd you go originally? You went to Harvard originally, NYU originally. NYU originally, where you knew I met you 1st there, right, when you were with Ken Kersh? Yeah, that was like 9 years ago. Right. And then you then you moved on to UC Davis, where you did your your doctoral work on cocktail bitters. Yes, among fermentations and flavor chemistry. And still and stole me some data from, or did stole me some time on her GC mass spec machine to take a look at what the

[2:15] Sears all does to me, which is very helpful. Then did a stint at uh, mad over there in uh, Nomaville in the in the Denmark, right? Yep. Recently got back from that and is now some sort of like, what do they call it? Like, what's the title over there at the MIT? Oh, a director's fellow at the media lab? Right, but like more of the quantitative side of the media lab, right? Yeah, the like science-y. So not decide where you say that my refrigerator is going to call me on a Thursday and take me to the movies on a Friday and then pick up lettuce for me on a Monday.

[2:50] I mean, only if we're like trying to optimize the flavor of that lettuce as well. Are they still doing that? Oh yeah. Why hasn't that happened already? Like, why can't, why can't my refrigerator ask me out on a date or babysit my kids for me and then get me lettuce?

[3:03] Like, wasn't that the dream? I mean, I think that was the dream, but, like, I mean, some of what you're seeing now with, like,

[3:10] nests and other of these, like... Nest keeps my house warm or cold. Yeah, but like, if the, if the, like, database goes offline, then you're, then

[3:20] you're, well, no, reverse. It reverts to a normal thermostat. Yeah. So I think I think you could have a talking refrigerator, but maybe they're applying more things to the back end right now.

[3:30] Nastasia, do you want your refrigerator to talk to you? I would just like a full-size fridge. That's all I want. Wow. See, you know what I love about Nastasia? Small baby steps. Well, because why solve a like social problem with a technological solution? Well, I mean, certain technologies. Natasha's problem is clearly just needing a larger fridge. Like if I could, yeah, but like, there are certain problems that I would like to solve. Like, for instance, if I never had to shave again, it would be awesome without

[3:56] having to, yeah, but that looks, I look strange, right? Why would it look laser in your face? Do you only want to understand that, Nastasia? Not face. Ooh, you know people that have lasered their down theres? Yeah. Yeah, that's like a normal. Remember, I grew up in the 70s. Like, I'm the, you know, the last of a, the last of a generation.

[4:13] So you would like a faithful lizard that perfectly optimizes, like, two-day stubble amounts of scruff? I wouldn't mind, mean, like, look, once you're past the point of trying to have any sort of like, I can grow hair, therefore, I'm manly, or I need to get into a club, and I'm not 21, which, you know, by the way, I

[4:34] couldn't when I was, you know, when I was, you know, 20, 18, 1920, I could not grow facial hair like I can now. And so therefore, you know, it was no use to me then and now it's no use to me anymore. I just assume go smooth faced. I mean, not like baby. I don't want a baby face, but like, I don't know. What do you guys think? Are you pro, like, what's your stubble feeling? Like for me, it's just laziness. How do you, how do you like? I have sub on my legs. What do you feel about dudes with stubble? Would you prefer totally smooth face or not? Don't care. I don't really have a strong preference. Anyway, that's a technological solution that if it was, it would be weird, though, for me to go laser my face. I mean, it wouldn't be the weirdest thing you've ever done by a long shot. No, not be the weirdest thing I've ever done, but it would be like a weird thing. But if it was simple. You know? I don't know. Like a like a pill that you take? Like if my refrigerator can shave for me. Right. So what's the dumbest thing? You can't say this. you can't. So like, what about, like, what are the what's the current MIT media labs thoughts on 3D printing and food? You know how I feel about it? Um, no one's actually brought it up to me there. So so far we've dodged that bullet. I am not a fan of 3D printing and food. I think it's kind of senseless. Yeah, yeah, but don't people up there love that kind of stuff? They love 3D printing for like prototyping. Who doesn't? That's just a good idea. But, um, there's enough like vending machines in the media lab that they have not yet that I've

[6:01] seen tried to 3D print their food as well. Are they the kind of people that still like try to like run all the vending machines from their Twitter account? Like, what's it like over there? Well, there's this amazing, uh, like Slack connected webcam called the food cam. So if you have like leftover food, you put it in a particular place and hit a button and then the entire lab gets a blast with a photo of that food. But why would they do that? For free food. Oh I see. Grad students do. You know who we love that? Nastasia is the queen of please take my half eaten food. Does that mean that like... This is ideal for that. You just put it in a place and then someone gets a notification and comes and gets it. Nastasi, you should get, you should go work there. Like, if Nastasia, I've seen Nastasia on more than 4 occasions, attempt to give mangled sandwiches to homeless people. She's always failed. Nobody turns out nobody wants a mango sandwich. It just goes to show Nastasia how hard up the MIT media grad students are. If they're willing to pound a half mangled sandwich

[7:03] with like literally like, you know how when you pick up a sandwich that's mushy and you get those fingerprints in the half that you have from trying to squish it and

[7:09] then trying to control it so that the stuff doesn't slip out of the back while you're eating in the front? If you can pick up somebody's sandwich that that has happened

[7:17] to and start eating it, like that's a new level. Well, I think, I think, I think with the, with the food camp, it becomes the sort of like competitive thing of like how many, how much of my calories, like what percentage can I get just from free food?

[7:31] So it becomes like a point of pride that you don't pay for anything. You just eat what is there? These are people in MIT, right? Yeah, these are like students, grad students, engineers. My point is, is that they should have, like, they have, apparently, the brains. They shouldn't be like Nastasia and I trying to get like the cheapest, freest stuff. They should just like become the new overlords of the tech world instead with that energy. Well, I think that comes a little later for, I thought everyone, I thought all the overlords of the tech industry were like 20. They're like 25. don't know. But what do I know? Old man. Old man blues. All right. Well, and they save time becoming that way by eating free food. I think, might be their rationale. They literally think it's faster to go on their phone. Find food. Go to where the food is, consume the food, tweet to their buddies at 8, rather than just

[8:24] hit, send me a freaking pizza. Well, and it's free. I don't know. I'm just saying I feel that the youth is wasted on the dumb. I think is where it is. This doesn't make sense to me. Have you eaten this free food? Mm, I've eaten donuts from the food count? The one that's not donut. A donut is like Nastasi. I would eat a donut that was left over in a box of donuts. That's not the same thing. Would you eat the half eaten donut? No. No. Are people kind? Do they break the food in half or do they slice it or do they mangle it? No, I'm not sure. It sounds like we'll have to have an experiment where we put out food of

[9:03] different... Different degrees of manlitude and keep track of how much of it gets taken and how long it takes for each piece to get taken. Right. I think the best would be like, if there's other types of food particles near it, and a fork stuck in it. Well, I mean, also, bear in mind, there's a lot of like 20-year-old dudes around, so the, the, like daring each other to eat something gross factor can't be discounted.

[9:28] Are people over there just high all the time? Not that I've seen, but, um, anyway. All right. So, uh, a thank you out to WePop soupy pot, who, uh, you know, one of the founders of the Nomaku, uh, Jack

[9:41] Shram. Did I already say this last week? Jack Shram, uh, our uh, head bartender. Although, by the way, speaking of head bartender, as I said, Booker and Dax's last day of business in the current incarnation will be on October the 15th, so of 2016, so you should go check it out if you want to get your Booker

[9:57] index style drinks on prior to October 15th, because no date has yet been announced when we will open another one. Yeah. Anyway. So Jack Schram, our head bartender, was in Thailand, saw Wipop, one of the founders and creators of the Nomiku, which did not win best new device, our best technology thing at the Taste Talk Awards, but he's in good losing company because

[10:18] Museum of Food and Drink. We also lost yesterday. Uh, the CIA, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me because, I mean, the CIA, not the, you know,

[10:26] the, the culinary institute of the arts, they, um, they're so much bigger and like older than we are. So it's like even like to be in the category is like, that's great, but I mean, how the heck are we going to beat out the CIA for best, like, food cultural institution. Like, how the hell are we gonna do that? You know what I mean? Does that make any sense? Makes no sense. Or southern food ways alliance was in there. Anyway, so we pop, like, you know, for those of you that know me a long time personally, because I don't think I talk about it on the air. I have this obsession with cleared and stained animals. You know what that is? Yeah, so like for those of you that don't know what you do is people also call it something stupid, like diaphanizing or something dumb word like that, but clear it and

[11:04] stain. What you do is you take typically a small animal, like a fish, a

[11:07] rat, or a frog or something like this. And you soak it in potassium hydroxide, which is a very strong base, and that denatures a bunch of the proteins and softens it up and basically renders the entire animal transparent.

[11:20] totally transparent. You then soak the animal in dyes, and the different dyes, like, uh, like, um, there's a

[11:29] blue, which is the blue, they use in, uh, in, uh, slide standing. There's a lizard in... Crimson.

[11:36] Yeah. They use that one and they use one of the blues. Like, uh, bromfinal blue. I don't know, one of the blues. That's for a pH indicator. I don't know. Yeah, no, there's several blues. They use one of the blues. And they soak them and then releash them out and the different dyes have preferential affinities for different tissues.

[11:51] And so they can soak them into, for instance, the bones or the nervous

[11:55] system, and then leach them back out. So you have the transparent animal with the color of the bones and the color of

[12:00] the, and I freaking just love these things. So we pop sent one back encased in acrylic, this little, this little fish. But the problem is, it's technically very difficult to do it on really large specimens because like a diffusion. I don't, I guess, I guess the outside turns to total mush before the inside is totally done or maybe you can't lead stuff out fast enough because I've always had this dream in like a, in like a teaching butchery,

[12:25] like especially fish butchery, because it's like hard to totally visualize where all the bones are in a fish, to just have a completely like cleared and

[12:32] stained like striper. That'd be amazing. Yeah, you know what I mean? like full-size striper. I mean, do you think you could like perfuse it the way they do when they're like embalming corpses? Well, when you're bombing a corpse, right? You're not, uh, the problem is is that as you're doing it, you're destroying, you're not destroying, but you're reducing the structural integrity of the animal,

[12:50] right? So, like, let's say you were gonna perfuse it. Like, I don't know whether this stuff would collapse. or whether or not. I mean, but it's an interesting idea. I just think nobody's ever attempted big, big animals as far as I know. Like, you know, the ultimate would be, like, the cleared and stained, like, cow. you could show, uh, like, you know, like 3D butchery on. Has anyone done the 3D cow butcher program yet that you know of? Not that I know of, but I think there should be. You know, an app for that? Yeah, there should be an app for that. I wanted to, because all you need is like, you need to just scan the cow. I'm sure this has happened, scan the cow and then just reassemble. You have a 3D cow, and then you take, like, you know, a knife and you just make your, do your online butchery of the cow. It's not the same as real butchery because real butchery involves like moving the meat around to get to the right bones. Maybe you could build like a haptic feedback. Knife. That's just that's just crazy. Like the new iPhone 7. No, the thing is, is like disconcerting. You would have to, no, you would have to, because you would have to, like, have scans of all the confirmations of the meat as it was peeling away.

[13:53] I mean, like real butchery requires the manipulation of the meat as it comes off the bill, but strictly as a

[13:59] sectioning, It would be interesting to be able to like fully section it out. You know what I wanted? Nastasia and I talked about this a while ago. One of the I wanted to make 3D toys for the museum. Like, imagine like little pigs and cows that are magnetic, and you pull them apart at the, at the meat

[14:13] boundaries to buy it. I have something like that. Yeah, I got in in Japan. It's a bonito that will disassemble with Velcro so you can see where the different loins for Katsuobushi come from on the fish. for chefs or for kids? I'm not sure. You know, it's a little expensive for a kid's toy. Well, yeah, as most Japanese things are. Like Masono once made a, and they might still make it. They make a child's chef knife, which is basically a

[14:39] Masono where they just took the front tip off of it. Like, literally, it's like school scissors for chef knives. like with the, but, slice the, slice the hell out of your finger, which is what your kid's gonna do. Your kid, I mean, like, it's interesting. like, learn the hard way and then don't do it again with a Masono? I mean, it's like, like, to me, it's like this is like, you know, Nastasia and I might think this way. It's like, okay, they're not going to stab my eye because it doesn't have a point on it anymore. But what's the 1st thing a kid does when they when they when they take a knife. They put their fingers flat. They don't, like, they don't roll their hands and they don't necessarily look at what they're doing. So it's like, I mean, I would doubt that the average 1st injury that a kid gets is stabbing

[15:26] their their brother or sister's eye with a knife. I would imagine a kid's 1st injury is coming straight down onto a finger. Yeah, I mean, does it come with a fingertip reattachment kit? No, it should like it should come with those cutproof kind of gloves. But then how how the heck, those things are useless to me. Like, if you're in like large scale butchery where you don't need like a lot of like dexterity with your left, let's assume you're right handed.

[15:49] If you don't need a lot of dexterity with your left, or if you're like really in guts and goop with your right and you don't need like, like, yeah, you could hold a big, like, a big freaking knife with one of those things and you don't need that much kind of, like, feedback in your

[16:03] hand, but how the hell are you gonna, like, like, do fine work with those cut resistant gloves on? Like fine work. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's like the trade-off. And with little kid fingers? Little kid fingers inside of those cut resistant gloves? How the hell are they gonna learn properly with? Well, they need like a thinner space age polymer. Kids need to come with extra hands. Well, yeah. It's like when kids do really gross things. you wish you could just pop their hands off? and put on. Yeah, put fresh hands on. I'm like, those hands are no good anymore. I've seen my kids fall, like, in the street, like, like, down where

[16:41] Nastasia and I used to work, and we would just want to, like, we wish we could just unzip them and just put a whole fresh them on the outside, because this is, like, the idea of cleaning off all that garbage is

[16:50] just, catch a really molt like snakes. That's true. Or lobsters. Well, yeah, lobster is gross. Lobsters have to starve themselves and shrink out of their shell, break through the

[17:03] carapace and come up. That's why they don't taste as good right after they should. That would be less ideal for children then. Yeah, right? Yeah, yeah. I think so. Have you ever had one of those high-pressure d- shelled lobsters? No. You know about this, right? If you put the, if you kill a lobster with like the super high pressure pasteurization thing, apparently you can just

[17:23] like, like remove them from the shell. They just pop out? I guess. I don't know, like, this is what, like, the modernist cuisine, I think, had a picture of them. Like the whole lobster, it's just the meat completely articulated, but with no shell. I thought maybe they had some intern that had to like pick every piece of meat out with tweezers and then sew it back together. That sounds like a Nathan Mirville thing to do, but I don't think that's what they did. Maybe someone in the chat room will know. The, uh, speaking of shells, was I mentioning

[17:51] this? I was doing some tests of pressure cooking eggs and vinegar. Okay. So obviously it decalcifies the shell and vinegarizes the egg. But I haven't had 100% success. I've had marginal success. How do you define marginal success? Well, I did it with just vinegar. And the eggs were quite hard. I mean, like quite hard coming out. like quite hard. Um, good, a little bit of that gross calcium taste had penetrated the actual egg, but the, the, the shells were after an hour and 15 or an hour and 20 and the pressure, the shells were completely peelable

[18:28] offable. They were actually, interestingly, there was still some Maillard on the, um, on the egg, which leads me to believe

[18:36] that uh, the vinegar hadn't penetrated to dealkalize the white

[18:42] until like fairly late in the game. Like maybe it cracked and penetrated. I don't know. The 2nd time I tried to make flash, you like mustard eggs? explain? Stas. you have mustard eggs? So you take like vinegar and mustard. Some people use mustard powder, some people just squeeze mustard into it, and other spices, like pickling spices, like coriander, and, you know,

[19:02] alliums and crap, and you throw hard boiled eggs into it, and you just let it

[19:06] sit, and they turn yellow and vinegary. It like a pickled egg. Oh, like a beet pickled egg, but not with beets. With mustard. And super tasty. It is, they have a little sugar too, because if you were to give me any day of the week, you say, here, have this thing that tastes like beets or here, have this thing that tastes like mustard,

[19:25] Nastasi, which one do you choose? Mustard. Absolutely, mustard. Absolutely mustard. Dave, would you ever choose a beat over a mustard? Watch out. no not in this case. Yeah. Because, like... I love beats, though. Really? Yeah. You don't like beets? I like beets. But I mean, you say I like beets means like I really like beets. Like, do you like playing in dirt? I don't think that's a fair analogy. No. Was this a person? I mean it's like literally the same flavor molecule, yeah. Yeah, like the Jazmin. Jazmin, the flavor compound from dirt,

[20:03] which by the way, Harold McGee says that there's a museum. He went to a micro museum in Holland. Have you been to this? I've heard of it but I haven't been to it. Yeah, he said they have a bacterial culture that makes pure jazzmine. So it's open. Yeah, it's like just bacteria, but it smells like dirt. But anyway, that same thing is in beets and tilapia. So in beets, we learn to like it because it's characteristic of beets, but if that smell bothers you in other things, then it can bother you in beets. is mostly concentrated near the surface. That I don't know. That's an interesting question Like, if you, like, like, I, well, Saxi and I have similar beat problems. And it's mainly with when they don't peel them freaking things, right? When they undercook them or they don't peel them, that's when it's the biggest problem for us. But like flavor wise or texture wise? Well, actually, I don't mind a crunchy beet. I like beets in vinegar, but I would guess that the vinegar in the same way that helps make tilapia not taste

[20:58] like, well, it's different, right? That's a TMA, whatever it is, trimethylamine, right? With the, uh, The beets and vinegar, does the acid also knock down the

[21:08] jasmine or have you perceived the jasmine less? Mm, I mean, it's so pungent that it's possible. You're just not experiencing... other flavors much compared to acetic acid. I mean, it's possible that it could, like, protonate something and then, like, reduce its volatility. I would have to look this up and follow up with you on it. Yeah, do that please. My favorite beat is the par dehydrated roasted beet. Nice. Those are good. I like those. Yeah, we had like a beat just kind of like that. Yeah, I don't know who came up with that technique. I 1st had it. I 1st had it like 4 years ago or something like this. I know that a couple people were doing it. Mike Sherin was the guy that made it 1st for me. I think ideas in food did it. People did it. You know, I'm talking about that technique, right? They're like soft and chewy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. chewy beets. Chewy beets. Yeah, we had a dish like that for a while. Did you like it? It was super good. Yeah. Delicious. What kind of beach did they grow up there? Do you have to have some local beat? Yeah, they are local beats. We get a lot of these, like, elongated beets. I'm looking at Nastasia's face, her reaction to elongated beef. Dirty elongated beats. Sounds interesting. No, she's just lying. She's making crap up. All right. How do we talk about this? Why are we talking about this? I haven't wanted that myself. I forget. Call on your questions. 2718-497-2128. 718-497-2128, especially any questions you have about aroma chemistry, and or cocktail bitters chemistry, and or MIT media lab, shenanigans, or whatever else. Oh, speaking of which, uh, shenanigans, we're going on Thursday to taste the waters at Saratoga.

[22:51] I'm excited about that. I've been reading a lot about the watch. So for those of you that don't know, Saratoga is a town in New York, where the millionaires used to go in the 1800s, and it remained a very popular spa resort. It was one of the 1st spa resorts based on waters, water in the United States, not the 1st, as they claim, not the first, but one of the

[23:12] first, and remained popular until very recently. Actually, interesting. It didn't start necessarily as like a water cure, as a hydro, as a hydro, whatever they call

[23:21] it, apathy, like. Yeah, didn't start as one of those. It started as just people believe in the curative nature of water, but it was started before the hardcore temperance movement. But like this part of those areas did get taken over by some temperance cruise, but they had full booze and all

[23:36] that. And then later, horse racing, and theoretically they ended the potato chip. I guess when we were there, we should have some potato chips. Do you believe that garbage? They're like, we invented the potato chip. That is freaking nonsense. That is nonsense. Potatoes have been around so freaking long. You're telling me that nobody anywhere in the rest of the freaking world was like, you know what would happen if I cut these freaking things thin and then fried them until the water was

[23:58] gone? You think that some moron in freaking Saratoga was the 1st person to ever freaking do that? I got that very much. I highly doubt that. seems statistically improbable. Yes. And another thing, speaking of the same thing, same thing. It's like, look, I, I, here's what I can, here's it. I wish people would never attribute things to, like, things like that that are just dishes to a particular

[24:23] era a particular time. What they should say instead is X, Y, or Z is popular because of X, Y, or Z, right? So the potato chip became a thing in the United States because of what they did in Saratoga. makes sense. That seems viable. That's a reasonable thing to say, an interesting in and of itself. Boom. Right. Like, here's another one. Arnold Palmer, who just passed, just died. Do you like pastor just dead? Dead. So I like Stas. Stas? Right to the point. Yeah. Pass to what? Past where? Past what? Pass the piece. He's dead. Right? You're like, anyway, so Arnold Palmer was like 87, died. And, uh, my wife pointed out that, uh, they asked me once about the Arnold Palmer for that 30, 30, what's it called? 30 for 30, the ESPN thing, 30 for 30. Anyway, I was like, he clearly. Yeah, me too. He clearly not the 1st person to mix iced tea and lemonade. Like, clearly, these are 2 beverages that you see next to each other on

[25:22] a kind of on a constant basis. It's non-alcoholic, like name. Well, and if you put like lemon into sweet tea, you're already like 60% of the way there. You are absolutely correct. And if you have ever been to the South, like sweet tea, like coming out your freaking ears, you know what I mean? You like that stuff? Um, there's a time and a place for it. I hate this stuff. But then in lemonade and then like, you know, whatever. But undoubtedly people drink a lot of it now because of Arnold Palmer, which is a more interesting story. Thank you for that, Arnold Palmer. Yes, thank you for that. I don't know anything about golf. Nor do I. Would you ever play golf in Assassin? Okay. I'm with you on this, but what is it that you don't like about the golf? waiting for people. So you're already assuming that you're going to be faster than everyone else? I mean, I don't like mini golf, so... Oh, okay, look, mini golf is an entirely different thing. Like mini golf, like. You typically can't drink during mini golf either. Really? Not that I know of. So you're saying this is kid friendly. So you're saying this is a niche that has not been filled? The adult mini golf. Hmm, I think you might be onto something, Booker and Dex? I mean, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. The only mini golf that, you know, the last time I saw mini golf was on Billy

[26:40] Madison, and he definitely looked like he was drinking when he was beating the crap out of that clown. Okay, let's take some questions here. Hello, cooking issue squad. Is there an ideal way to cook long grain rice? And I didn't, we didn't get any follow-up from them, right, on the, from Quinn on the rice stuff, so I'm going to do the best I can. Is there any ideal way to cook long grain rice. So the texture doesn't turn out so clumpy or mushy. I'm aiming for something light and fluffy. See, that's the thing. Everyone's aiming for light and fluffy. No one's ever like, I want to make a I want to make a congee, I'm a paste this sucker out, and I turn it into a paste. Maybe they should want to. You like I like a rice paste. I like a good congee. I love a congee. Although you wouldn't use that that kind of rice. No, but I like, but also, remember, like, long grain, like, laborrima style, which not

[27:24] really means its own variety of rice, but, like, they break easily. So there used to be a whole cuisine based on brokens. You know, and like the idea of the broken rice grain is, you like light and fluffy, though, right, Stas? Yeah. Do you do you like, I know that your favorite is like Italian style rice, right? Isn't that? But like, what's your favorite? How do you like your rice best? Light and fluffy. But, like, white, like... Like, just plain... Oh, you like jasmine? I love jasmine. Can I ask what is Italian style rice? Actually, risotto. Oh. When

[28:00] you have regular white rice, does it need to be like as hard in the center as you like your risotto? No. So you just like plain, like, rice cooker, rice. Do you have a rice cooker? No. I'm not big enough fair rice cooker. I use my bathtub as a rice cooker, but it only holds one cup. Alright. Uh, I'm embering something light and fluffy with the grains intact. I follow a standard procedure for washing the rice multiple times. By the way, that never freaking works. You know what I mean? It's like, people shouldn't like so much starch, you're going to leach off the surface. testify, never works. Never works. Here's it works. Here's the thing, right? Just people who write recipes for cooking rice shouldn't tell people like me to rinse it until the rice runs the water runs

[28:43] clear. Because you know what the water never, ever does. It never runs clear. Never. Never. Like, you should just say, rinse it 3 times. Like, you know, blah, you know what I mean? It's like, unless you own a stream, and you can suspend the rice in a flowing freaking stream, rinsing it

[29:07] till it goes clear makes no freaking sense at all. That's what your new refrigerator should do. Mince my rice forming? In a stream. In a stream. What's the what's the Japanese name for the pre- the no rinse rice? Musi, Musi mess? I don't know. Anyway, I never used it. Um, why would I pay extra? I know how to rinse fries. You know? Obsessively and methodically. I don't live in California where every drop of water is a precious gift from the heavens. Using my. Oh, I'm using my. There you go. Dave with the rice knowledge dropping it. I follow the standard procedure of washing the rice multiple times, followed by soaking it for 15 to 30 minutes, then drain and add fresh

[29:43] water to a one. 5 to one ratio of water to rice. By the way, the ratio of water to rice. Everyone gives water to rice ratios, but it's entirely dependent on the evaporation rate that you get out

[29:56] of, because you're never cooking your rice in a 100% sealed vessel. I've run some tests many years ago. I don't remember what the results were. I mean, unless you're watching cooking a race and a pressure cooker. Even so, yes. Or in the best way to do it would be, and I think someone did this. I forget whether it was America's Test Kitchen, so they did it in Sudeed bags. Okay. in retort bags. You could do it that way. Anastasia and I ran a series of tests years ago, but they were kind of inconclusive on sealed bean cookery.

[30:24] I was trying to do, I was trying to, you know, you know, beans, how do you say beans in a bottle

[30:29] in Thai, it's like festioli or something like this? You remember how to say bottle Italian? Fagioli, fiasco or something like that? Fajoli fiasco? I don't know. That sounds plausible. Anyway. Anyway, it's like you stick the beans in a bottle. You familiar with this? And you add the water and you just put a little olive oil into it, and you throw in a couple of

[30:47] herbs, and you just throw the, put the bottle in the oven uncapped, and then it just like absorbs the, and then you shake the beans out of the

[30:55] bottle. And so basically it's just a method to, uh, A, cook the beans very slowly and beans, uh, B, beans. Now I got, I'm channeling Cesare Casella beasts. Uh, to reduce the uh, amount of liquid that's evaporating out of the product while it's while it's cooking so that it can be more. anyway. So I was trying to do different various ways of doing it. I never got, I never got it perfect. That culminated in a test I ran where I did pressure cooked. I making quote marks with my fingers that you can't see over the air. But, um, where I did uh, pressure cooked beans directly in an ISI whipper with a blowtorch. Like super not safe. Remember that, Nastasia? I shoved a thermometer into the top of an ISI and

[31:39] then like blowtorched it. And then, how, like, what's the pressure rating for that safety valve? High? Okay. You know what I mean? I forget how, I forget, like, multiple times. What a pressure cooker can take. Oh yeah. We cooked beans from dry in like, I want to say like 5 minutes, right? It was like stupid. It was dumb. I should go back and look at the video. We did it for, um, we did it for a 1st week feast. I was making nachos at someone's desk from. Oh, yeah, yeah. From scratch. And for me, from scratch means we start with dry beans. So we started with dry beans for the refried beans and just blowtorch the thing. But looking back, like even like recommending to someone that we do that was like a really terrible, terrible idea. They tasted. they tasted good. It tasted fine. Even Nastasia said it tasted fine. Remember the look on the guy's face? There's a guy next to us, the guy, okay, so like, when they were shooting it, the dude next to us, they wanted him to keep working like it was a normal work day while I was doing it. And I'm sitting here, like, I turn him. I'm like, hey, this is probably not going to explode. And I start blowtorching the steel container. And he was like, what the what? And we start dumping liquid nitrogen on the desk, like behind it, making the margaritas. He hated us. Like, I hated us. Anyway. Um, So back to this thing. one.5 to one ratio, there is no such thing as 100% ratio. What there is, is if you use one. 5 to one on a particular style of rice. Odds are that that particular style of rice is going to have similar, right? So the longer something cooks, right? Probably, I'm guessing, although it's not necessarily, do you add more to brown rice than to white rice? I'm trying to look at, I'm trying to see in my head the water levels for the cups on the side of my rice cooker. But anyway, I would guess that the longer a rice cooks, the more water you need to add because of the increased evaporation. Also, the wider your pan, the more water you have to add for a given amount of rice because the more surface

[33:38] area and therefore the more evaporation because your typical pot is not actually sealed. And in fact, here's another lie people tell you constantly that I've kind of said on the air a bunch of times, but anyone that thinks you're generating any pressure on the inside of a pot is sorely

[33:54] mistaken unless it is completely sealed because even one half PSI of overpressure on the inside of a pot that's 8 inches across, right?

[34:04] Let's say your pot's only 8 inches across. So half of 8 is four, four, 4 squared, 16. Right? So that's R squared, and then pi, six, so just say times three. 48-ish. So 48 and a half divided by two. 24, 24. So about £24 is pushing up out of an 8 inch pot that

[34:30] is um, that is not sealed at a mere half PSI. That's a lot of weight. Yeah. Most people's lids don't weigh 24 pounds. That's right. So you'd need a perfect ceiling and you would need a £24 sack of garbage on top of your of pot to get a mere half PSI of overpressure. But it is true that you are vastly reducing evaporation by covering

[34:54] it, vastly reducing evaporation, but you're not stopping it by any means. Just by surface area. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, correct. So anyway, so one. 5 to one is like, you can't go based on like a ratio like that. Um, let me get back to the question because my phone decided I was done. Okay. The cook surface is nice and pretty fluffy, but as I get closer to the bottom, it gets more or less clumpy and mushy. Is it a matter of changing the ratio or the soaking time? I forgot to say, they soaked by 15 to 30 minutes. Um, Or are there other variables that work, such as the age of the rice or humidity levels? Ultimately, I'd like to use it for making delicious fried rice. Any helpful tips or suggestions would be most appreciated. All right, look. If you want to make fried rice. Right? I almost don't care if some of this stuff's broken for fried rice. You know what I mean? Or a little mushy, but you might want to consider it. You'll say what type of rice you're using. You might want to, no one, does anyone do, like, um, fried rice with, like, a basmati style? I mean, if someone must, but it would taste good, no? too thin, too thin. I mean, I suppose once you like cool it and then fry it, it could, like, the texture would be not as

[36:10] good, maybe. Right. I mean, the problem with something like, let's say, like, like Nastasia, kind of the rice of choice in my house is jasmine rice because I enjoy the smell, right? The problem with jasmine rice in general, for this kind of style of cooking that we're discussing here, pot, pot cooking is that it has a, it's long, it's longer grain, so, but it also

[36:33] is, um, stickier, right, than a lot of other long grain varieties of rice, and so it tends to have this problem of having some of the grains at the bottom be

[36:45] mushier, um, when the top is perfect, right? And also, I don't think jasmine rice is going to respond. Well. I don't know. I haven't tested, but I don't think it's going to respond well to the technique you would use for

[36:57] Basmati rice, which would be boil it in copious water, drain it just before it's done, and then let it steam out. You can, if you're really worried about it. You can do a, um, like a half and half where you do a partial absorption cooking of your rice and then steam it to completion.

[37:15] And that will that will cause the bottoms to not get mushed out. Well, and I was thinking, I mean, maybe this is a stupid question, but why not just steam all of

[37:23] it? You can. Jasmine Rice can be steamed. If you're going to steam jasmine rice, right? You need to go thinner on your layer and wide. So like that would be another thing. I think, like, in general, I said this last week. I think that in general, I think what you're going to minimize textural difference between the bottom and the top of the rice simply by not having the layer be so thick, but you're always

[37:48] going to have a tendency for the bottom rice to absorb more waters because it's in contact with water longer. So the top is essentially steaming, while the bottom is essentially done. So, um, yeah, like I said, like one thing you could do, if you want to have partial absorption cooking because it's faster, right? is you could, uh, you could, so there's always water above the surface of your rice when you start cooking. Yeah. So you could, in essence, lift it slightly so it's off the bottom, so that it cooks down and then it's not touching the sort of the really cute kid looking on our window. So it's not touching the bottom of the rice when it starts to

[38:24] steam and then it steams the rest of the rice. Right, so you need like a pot with a false bottom that lets you boil for a certain amount of time, and then the water level gets low enough. Yeah, activate something. Yeah, but a lot of this also, like, you could probably do the, you know, what a lot of people do is they'll, towards the quotes end, They'll open it, fluff the rice, i.e. turn it a little bit, close it and let it equalize and steam out for the last little bit. Right, because of the stuff that was on the bottom is now at the top. Now steaming. Now steaming, and like they finish it out that way. So that's always to do it. But while I was researching this, I looked at a couple of interesting papers. One is called, um, the formation of cracks in rice during wedding, and

[39:01] it just look at, it has a bunch of extra stuff, but unfortunately that one I couldn't like copy and paste in to take a look at it. But that, so it turns out that... You couldn't access the full? Yeah, paper? Yes, you can. you don't even need to pay for it. It's there on the on the inner web. And the interesting thing is, is that, so pre-soaking the rice, it's not, what happens is, is that the surface of the rice

[39:22] cracks, like fairly soon after you start soaking it. And so it's those cracks that allow water to get

[39:31] in like really, really quickly. And therefore, even a small soaking time can drastically decrease the amount of time it takes to get water in to make it taste cooked.

[39:45] anyway. Then there's another piece, though, that I read. And it wasn't cited a lot, so I don't know whether people agree with it, but this is interesting. It's called the, uh, and I mentioned this last week. I don't know if anyone looked it up, but I didn't talk about it. The impact of pre-soaking on flavor of cooked rice by E.T. Champagne, a kale bet

[40:03] garber. Uh, this is in uh, was printed. I don't have the date on me. But anyway, you can look it up. And they did it. They did it as part of the ARS Research Center in New Orleans, which is maybe where the rice is. Maybe that's where we keep our rice cultures. ARS is the USDA. So anyway, so I mean, that would make sense. So it should be real, right? I would just read the beginning. Soaking rice and water for 30 minutes longer before cooking is traditionally practiced in Japan, Korea, and other Asian countries. This paper is going to piss Japanese people off, like piss them off because they're so hyped up on like the specific techniques that they use. You know what I mean? That like, anyway, so anyway, check this out. When soaked, the rice grains hydrate, develop cracks and water is absorbed. Soaking facilitates uniform cooking and shortens cooking time. This is why a lot of times why we say we do it, right? Because water absorbs in faster, you're not going to have a hard center of the grain

[41:00] and a mushy outside and also it shortens the cooking time for those of you that are interested in shortening cooking time. But of course, shortening the cooking time is no big deal because you're increasing the freaking soaking time. Hello? Uh, and a lot of people have run tests on things like uh, cooking time versus soaking time on beans. Obviously it's much faster. Pasta, faster. Everything pre-soaking makes it faster. Okay. The cooked kernel, after soaking is usually less firm. Uh, I guess, I guess they mean when it's done. The present study was undertaken to determine the effects of pre-soaking on the flavor of cooked

[41:36] rice, and whether the flavor differences are associated with textural changes that can influence the retention of aroma compounds. So this might be interesting to you. 11 samples of short, medium and long grain milled rice, representing scented and non-scented rice, and a wide rate range of amylose contents, were presented to a descriptive sensory panel. For the set of all rice samples, undesirable, ready for this nastasia? Undesirable sewer slash animal flavor, significantly increased, and sweet taste significantly decreased with pre-soaking for 30 minutes.

[42:07] Simmer flavor. were you familiar with that defect in rice? Animal slash sewer flavor? Did they say what temperature they soaked it at? Uh, I think they did it. It's either this or another study. This is just the abstract. methods. I' sure they did. I mean, I did look at them, but I don't remember. For individual rice samples, significantly higher sewer slash animal intensity was observed with pre-soaking for the 2 basmati rice

[42:32] samples, and one of the US long grain rice samples. When pre soaked, sweet taste was significantly lower in one of the basmati and jasmine rice samples. The US medium grain rice and one US long grain rice. Okay, so basically they're saying that Animal and Sewer was in the Basmati and a couple other long range. So maybe the short grain, Japanese style rice don't get the animal sewer, and sweetness was decreased in the long range. So maybe it's just soaking on shortened medium grained Japanese style rice is okay. But longer grain rice is if you pre-soak them. They bring on the sweet, sweet animal and sewer, especially scented ones. But then they add, uh, pre-soaking also resulted in significant increases in some negative flavor attributes and significant decreases, in some positive flavor

[43:16] attributes for the set of all rice samples. The effect of pre-soaking on texture as measured by TPA hardness. I don't know what TPA hardnesses. Texture penetrator analysis. I think something like that. And chewiness did not explain the observed increases in negative flavor attributes. An increase in free sulfur containing amino acids with pre-soaking could have resulted in an increase of their breakdown

[43:36] products, thereby contributing to the increase in sewer slash animal flavor. The decreases in sweet taste and some positive flavor attributes were likely the result of masking caused by the increase in sewer animal and some negative flavor attributes.

[43:47] Interesting, huh? Very interesting. Never thought about it. didn't think about it that way before. And I have to look and see, they say, I'm wondering what they'd, they said short, medium, and long grain, but I want to see if they actually use like a Japanese style one. Right, yeah. Wouldn't that, isn't this going to, is next going to stir up a, like, a, you would think this would stir up a controversy? kicked a bit of a hornet's nest. Right now, Dave. I think it's kind of important. Yeah, yeah. Because, like, I typically, like, when I feel like I'm treating my rice nicely. I'll pre-soak it. Certain rice, you have to pre-soak, like, uh, sweet rice, like speaking rice. Italy rice is all about the soaking when you're making a dough, but you never think of Italy as having like a sewer animal or like a lack of sweet

[44:26] flavor, right? So, like, of course, all that stuff's par cooked. I couldn't see whether they par cooked or parboiled this rice, just parboiling, decreased this like animal soaking thing. Who knows? Who knows? Who knows? We need some follow-up on this. need some follow-up on this. You want to take a quick break, Dave, and come back? Yeah sure. All righty.

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[45:54] For more information and to order yours now, visit chefsteps.com slash J-O-U-L-E. I can imitate that idiot, J-O-U-L-E. Are we really playing, like, me on this show, like, they don't hear enough. They got to hear Mia in the promo, too. Dave Overload. Dave Overload is right. All right. So we have another question in. Now, this is from Cafe Bezalou in where are they? I forget where they said they are in Seattle. So I'm going to go ahead and say that I'm not necessarily going to be able to answer this question. But, uh, in fact, well, let's just get to the question first. you know, Ariel, maybe you have some information on this. What do you know about dairy chemistry? Fair bit. Nice. All right. So then this is your question because, well, you know about butter chemistry style? None, nothing. In fact, this is a question. The question that these guys are asking is not something I'd ever considered before, which I enjoy. So in fact, that's often the best kind of... it's the best. But the problem is, is that, like, it's also not the kind of question that a cursor cursory review of literature could answer because it's not something that is, um, a lot of other people

[47:12] have worried about. Right. And we'll get into it. Why? So what I tried to do for you guys was I tried to get in touch with Professor Goff at the University of Guelph, like the dairy

[47:23] guy whose ice cream pages I've read for years and years, but I didn't try to contact until this morning, so he didn't get back. So like if he does ever get back to me and wants to call in, I'm

[47:33] going to read your question now, but then I'm going to, I'll re-follow up if he gets back to me. I would like to have him call in or call into the show because I kind of like to talk to the guy because I've used his ice cream information so freaking

[47:45] much. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, the man, the myth, the legend. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. It goes like this, the question. Hello, Dave Anastasia. And by Dave, presumably both dates. Presumably. Uh, yeah. How did you enjoy it? By the way, we'll get into it later. My wife and I have owned a bakery in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle for the last 16 years. We specialize in, uh, Vien Noiseries. Now, listen, Vienna has makes delicious pastries. Did you know this? Have you been? I have not been, but I've flown through the Vienna airport and the airport pastries are slightly less bad than regular airport pastries. So hopefully that'll work well on the... Nastasia, have you ever been to an airport? You actually, now, you would like it. You actually would like it. Like, because I know I've seen every European, you feel like you, like you've seen every European city, but like Vienna actually has a really cool feel to it.

[48:37] And I swear to God, their pastries are freaking phenomenal. Like they, and you like pastries, right? They're really good. Like I have to say, they're really freaking good. I had the schnitzel. It was good. you know what I mean? At the official place. It was good. Their Vorst was very good. But man, those guys know how to make pastry. You know? I don't know. Anyway. So, um, and I know that's not what. I mean, the croissant originates from possibly Vienna and the retreating Turks. What'd you call me? Anyway, but the other thing about Vienna, it's so crazy is that it's like at such a confluence of culture, and it's like right on that, it's right at the border between, you know, it definitely feels like a Western European town, but it's right at the border between Eastern and Western

[49:25] Europe. And, uh, and like far to the south there too, right? And but the thing about it is, is that it was the center of Western European culture for a long time.

[49:37] and still has that like supercultural feel to it, plus pastry. Plus pastry. plus pastry. Plus, like a very high concentration of urban vineyards. Is that true? Yeah, yeah, They had like the city planners in like the 18th and 19th century. Like, put all these interstitial grape vineyards. Anything any good, making anything good? Or is it all garbage? No, no, no, it is good. And like people have been tending it for like 100s of years. Yeah, so it's this like urban sort of, uh, like AOC. So you can get wine from Vienna, yeah. And you've had this wine. A long time ago, yeah. I know more about it as a historical curiosity of winemaking, but yes, you can get this one. Nice. You had it when you were at Davis? They shipped over. Hey, did I tell you I had a Norton I liked? you? Yeah. I forget the name of it, but I had a Norton I liked. And someone was supposed to ship us some Nortons. We're waiting people. We'll credit you. We'll give all kind of love. I'm interested in I'm interested in the Norton. Anyway, you know, the U.S. great. don't know, Norton, the U.S. great. What's the other name for it? Cynthiana. There's another name for Norton that is used in Virginia. Anyway, but I forget what it is. Muscadine, is it? No, no, no, totally different. No, no. Norton does not have a, um, Norton does not have a kind of a

[50:55] fox. Oh, it doesn't a non-fox? No, they like, but Norton gets a bad rap. And I said this on the air before, but I think the reason Norton gets a bad rap is because no one is, I think the window of greatness, what I've read from people who actually know about

[51:10] Norton, is that the window of greatness of Norton is like short and not right away.

[51:16] So it's not like great right away. And it's not great if it's really old. You want to hold it for, you know, like 3 to 5 years and then drink it. But then if you can do that, then Norton really can kind of hold its own. People are so freaking prejudiced against alternative, uh, grapes. Yeah, they really are. You know what's really weird is that everyone and their and their sibling is like interested in the

[51:43] tiniest, like Italian or French grape that they grow 3 of, and everyone's like super jacked, and no one wants to look for the awesome weird American grape. Yeah, we need more, like, pride in our, by university. I mean, and I think it's because, I think it's because at least all those weird European grapes are

[52:04] all like under cultivation for wine making. Yeah, they're all vinifera, right? And so, you know, this Norton is not Vinefera. And so, you know, people are like, oh, so it can't be good because a lot of wine from, you know, other styles of grapes, um, you know,

[52:20] foxgraves here are wretched, to be fair. But anyway, whatever. Enough enough enough of that. We're back in Vienna. We specialize in, and I can't say the word again with the Frenchness. So I'm just going to say Vienna style pastry, such as croissant, panel

[52:36] chocolate, et cetera. Sorry, Nastasia. They apologize to you for loving the croissant. Did you know that Nastasia hates croissant? Like a flavor thing or like a mess thing? I think a people like it thing. I like chocolate croissants. There you go. So you like the pan of shadow lot. The butter we use is European slow churned, low water. That's all in quotes. 82% butter fat product from Oregon. So it's like not like, you know, it's not Costco butter. No offense, Costco. Lately, we have been plagued by what I call brittle butter. Now, remember, this is recent, okay? So it's recent. It's not their entire career recently. Normally, good butter has a stretch or extensibility that is essential in croissant

[53:16] making. As you may know, the butter and puff pastry and croissant has to stay cold, yet pliable to form smooth, even layers as it is rolled between layers of dough. So cool, right? It needs to be soft enough that it can be rolled out, but not so warm that it melts into the dough, right? It needs to stay as distinct layers, all right? So we're all good on what we're talking about here. As of late, our butter has been shattering into little chips between the dough. See the attached video. So they set a video of like the dough after like one or 2 turns and

[53:48] they, they slice it with a sharp knife so you can see the dough, 2 dough layers and a butter layer and they pull on

[53:53] it. And in the one, the good butter, sure enough, the butter pulls with it. butter pulls with it, like a fine taffy. And then when I before I knew it, I just saw the video from Nastasia and it said butter and I thought these guys had managed to make butter that pulls like taff, you know, I was like, 0 my

[54:08] god, these people are going to become billionaires. Imagine if you could have butter with that texture. It would be freaking nuts, like butter with the texture of dough. I was like, 0 my god, I'm moving to Seattle. I'm learning how to do this. But it wasn't. It was dough with the butter in the middle once I looked closer. I was going to be like, these people, like, clearly, like, you know, there is a Yoda out there, and I need to go study with Yoda, because, like, I

[54:34] was just like, it's one of those things where now it's in my head that I should be able to do this with butter.

[54:39] And so like someday I'm going to figure it out. Like, I'm going to have butter with the texture of seleptoderma. And I was just like, this is happening you, right? your mind tells you, no, this is like the same mind that caused me to walk into a glass wall a week and a half ago in

[54:53] Spain. Mine. It's not quite paying attention, but. I think they might call that the imp of the perverse. Oh, really? You look much better. My eye does look better, right? Now I just look like, you know, I got in a scuffle, maybe. You were a monster last week. Well, you should have seen me. I should Instagram out the picture of what I looked like right afterwards. Because I look like I make Frankenstein look like he had a small brow. Uh, it was it was nasty. Even Nastasi said, even though I'm happy that you're hurt. I can't look at it because it makes me nauseating. I did not say that. You literally said, I can't look at it anymore because it makes me nauseated. But why would you want to look at it because you want to see me hurt. That's the only reason. anyway. As of late, our butter has been shattering into little chips between the dough. I know that fat can come in many forms from saturated to liquid. I also know that many farmers feed their cows a mix, including canola oil to boost a fat content of milk. I also recall working in Switzerland, where the bakers had a choice of butters with the same fat content, but were rated with different melting points. The problem with our butter has been intermittent from case to case, right? which is the worst. You just want it to be one way or the other, one way or to other. Um, case the case meaning case of butter, not like, anyway, whatever. So apparently every case of butter is either one way or to other, right? But they're using the same producer. Yeah. So, uh, we we asked the producer, they say they have no idea what we're talking about and that we should ask the cows. That is a jackweed thing to tell you. First of all, like, if I'm the producer and I'm making, like, fancy, expensive, like, slow churn European style butter. And one of my users who like is spending a lot of extra money to buy my product comes to me and says, without being a jerk,

[56:40] like I'm having this issue, can you help me out? Like, there's a thing I need your butter to do that I buy it for and it's not doing that. Yeah, you freaking look into it. Yeah, it would be horrified. I would be, I would, I would, I would, yes. I would commit damage to myself. I would be so upset, you know? And so like the reaction of this butter producer is not cool, right? Super uncool. Super uncool. First of all, they should at least be intrigued. Ask the couch. That's right up there with ask my butt, which is what I like to say. interesting question. Ask my butt. But you know, when I say it in a non-family show. I use a different word. But anyway, isn't that a nice, It's a fun way to really, it's a mean brush off, but it kind of feels good to use it, right? Styles, you said it to me. No, yes, I have. You deserved it. Okay. The problem in our butter is intermittent from case to case. Usually we can use the funky butter, funky butter would be an awesome James Brown song. It's too bad he's dead. It's like funky drummer. You just say, all you have to do is take the song, Funky Drummer, and take the word drummer out and say butter. one of his kid that does that does like mashups. Yeah, yeah. A funky butter. With truffle butter. Weird Owl's actually doing voiceovers for Teen Titans Go. Did you know this? did not know that. Yeah. We can usually use the funky butter and cookie doughs or creams as there is no adverse taste in the butter. It's not a taste issue. Okay. It must be a fatty acid compound. Presumably, these guys have control over the moisture content of their butter, so it's not the moisture content, presumably it's the fatty acid content. Lately, the problem has been more frequent, and we are unable to exchange the brittle butter for good butter. Any insight would be much appreciated as we're much in need of a solution. Uh, okay. And that's from James at Cafe Bezelou in Seattle. So I did some original research, not original. I did some preliminary, rather, research on the internets, and it is, in fact, true that the

[58:36] actual triglyceride profile of butter changes quite a lot based on the breed of the

[58:45] cow and the feed of the cow. Um, so you might, you might need to switch to a butter producer that has a, uh, a finer hold over the feed of their

[59:00] cow, right? So, like, for instance, like, but it's going to cost you a phenomenal amount more, right? So you might need to go to like crappy, uh, you know,

[59:12] crappy, the supermarket butter might actually be more homogeneous because it's probably all coming from the

[59:17] same, like, garbage industrially fed cows, right? But maybe it works for you. But the, the other side is you could probably spend a lot and I don't know whether grass feeding is good for this or not, but I mean, you can buy a butter where you know what the feed of the cows

[59:33] is. And then, like, we only feed silage, for instance. So we only feed grass, for instance. And then at least you know what it's going to be from case to case. Um, but I don't I originally looked into into some solutions. So a lot of people, when they're trying to, there's 2 reasons to feed your cows, that the literature was talking about, to feed your cows specific things. One, is some people want to lower the saturated fat index of their

[59:57] butter, and so they attempt to feed lots of poofas to uh, probably unsaturated fatty ass, to cows, to change the composition. The other is to increase the fat content. So normally, all the studies I read where they tried to decrease the saturation of the fat also led to an increase in overall fat content.

[1:00:16] So that's probably not what's happening in your case. Well, and, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong from your research on this, but I would imagine

[1:00:24] that like more saturated fatty acids would give a crumblier texture profile than... You would think that, however, however, when I was looking at it, one study, and I was

[1:00:37] like skimming through it. This is why we really need to get a hold of someone like who's like a butter technologist. Uh, one study seemed to show that, um, butter that had actually been reinforced with steering,

[1:00:50] like, like, steering acid 3 times, which is a stiff, stiff, hard, like,

[1:00:56] talent wax. Butter that had been reinforced with that was more plastic in all temperature ranges. So, um, which was totally, I was like, what? I'm like I must be misreading it. So I think maybe I was misreading it. But when I when I started getting data that was like so back and forth in my head, I'm like, boom, I can't say anything other than this is a really interesting subject to

[1:01:19] me. The other thing I would say is, is that you might, I wonder whether there, whether you can get any benefit by pre-plasticizing the butter. In other words, uh, like, I don't know how you, I don't know what you do to your, uh, butter block before you, um, before you do it,

[1:01:36] but, like, some beating, um, you know, this is just true.

[1:01:41] is that whenever I bake, I'm lazy. And so I pull butter hyper cold out of the fridge and I beat it with a rolling pin and

[1:01:49] and it all of a sudden becomes plastic. Now, a lot of this has to do with friction, right? Because you're doing heating with friction and you're beating it. But it can't, but when I thought about it, it's not really getting that much warmer. It can't all be that. I wonder whether you can, like, do something. almost like, I don't know if, is butter actually, does it have a crystal structure at

[1:02:12] all? Well, it's in other words, it has multiple melting points, right? It's like, it's not like as sharp as, uh, it's not as sharp as, let's say, cocoa butter, which is

[1:02:23] a very pretty sharp. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, and I ask that because if there is any kind of, like, pattern to the alignment of the fat molecules, then physically manipulating them could make the overall texture more

[1:02:34] plastic. Right. It's not like pure crystallization then. Right. It's got to be some combination. Some kind of like Penrose solid thing with like local order. Right. I mean, yeah I don't know. In other words, like maybe this could help. I don't know, but the other thing is, is that I know that for in, you know, for when you're using just shortening for these kinds of situations, they have specific solid fat

[1:02:55] ratios and specific temperatures with specific meltouts to get the puffiest pastry possible. But anyway, so I think it's an interesting subject. I'm going to cogitate on it over the week. Hopefully Professor Goff gets back to me or points me in the direction of a butter expert next week and Nastasia and I will come back with information about Saratoga's

[1:03:13] Saratoga's. Saratoga's By the way, the reason we're going is because water comes out of the ground with bubbles in it in Saratoga. It comes out of the ground, carbonated by whatever you want to call it,

[1:03:27] God, nature, magma. Like it's from the mantle. It's carbonated out of the ground. And I might... That's like literally your holy grail. Like, like the, I'm, like, honestly, I'm so freaking excited to go drink, put my face under a tap of water outside that is carbonated and just inhale salty carbonated water.

[1:03:52] Like I like Vichy Catalan with salty carbonated stuff. So yeah, I'm super excited about that. Nastasi and I, in different rooms, are also going to take a bath in carbonated water, which is another dream of

[1:04:04] mine. Take a bath in carbonated water. It's gonna be excellent. In the meantime, go to mofad.org and please donate to our Kickstarter for the next upcoming exhibition we're

[1:04:16] going to have. Chow, the making of Chinese American cuisine. And Dave, didn't we have a donor for cooking issues that we want to give a shout out to? Do you have that information? Uh, do not know. See if I can call it up really quickly. on the way out. In otherwise, we'll just think. Well, thank them next week. Just remind me to thank them next week, and we'll be back with more cooking issues.

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[1:05:15] Thanks for listening.