[0:00] This episode is brought to you by Jule, the emerging circulator for sous vide by Chef Steps. Order now at chefsteps.com slash J-O-U-LE.

[0:18] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from pretty latest time, but actually, we're only doing a half hour show, I think, this time, but from roughly 12 to, you know, roughly 1245, like, you know,

[0:31] 1255. Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick. Brooklyn. Joined, as usual, with Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Nastasia? Yeah, we got Dave in the booth. How you doing, Dave? I'm good. How are you doing? Doing all right. Oh, we just got some birch syrup in from Zan. says, hey, cooking issues. Greetings from Alaska. Here's some birch syrup from my hometown. Enjoy. And then, I guess they're from Homer, because it says Homer couple taps tree. So I assume that's Homer, Alaska, yeah? Now, the only birch syrup I've ever had before was, and I think I mentioned this on the air, which is maybe

[1:06] why Zan sent it to us, the only birch syrup I've had before was flawed. And by flawed, I mean, like extremely acidic, as though something, either the sap was extremely high

[1:16] acid or something had grown in it, and I didn't know whether that's just the way, what you hear

[1:22] a crinkling in the background is not mouth noises. Please don't be afraid cooking issues people. Nastasia unwrapping the bird syrup. It's wrapped in bubble wrap and aluminum foil to prevent the alien rays from getting to it. One thing I'll have to say, Zan. It takes a lot of guts to wrap stuff in aluminum foil because you never know. Some lunatic might be like, I can't see through it with my machine, so I'm gonna open it up. You know what I mean? Did I ever tell you about the time I ordered that espresso machine? And they didn't drain the boiler. And they'd originally packed it okay. But then when they shipped it to me, a little water had dripped out. So UPS completely unpacked it, and when they packed it, they were like, ah, that's wet. And they threw the entire thing back in the box without the packing.

[2:02] and then rattled it around over and over and over again. And when they showed it up, every single panel was shattered and broken. I got that espresso machine basically for free and I'm still using it to this day. Ooh, this looks nice. Take a little taste here. Mm, that's good. It is actually tart, but this one is not flawed. So birch syrup must be inherently tartar than, um, what's it called? Maple. But I think this is delicious. This is a much superior product to the one that I that I tried before. You get to dip your finger in that. It's pure syrups does. She's drinking it. I'm not coming. I'm not gonna go there. know. I'm not going to go there. So what do you think? What do you think, though? It's good. I like it. think it's delicious. And it looks to be about, I have to test it. It looks to be about 66 bricks. And the company, for those of you that are keeping track of such things, is Bridge Creek, uh,

[2:55] birch syrup, uh, 100% pure birch syrup made in Homer, Alaska. Well, thanks so much. I always love doing a taste test. Tomorrow I fly out to Portland to have some truffles, so more on that next week when I'm back. Anything good going on, Assasia? No. Have we talked about the Houseguest Olympics? No. All right. This is something I think that now, this is something that Jen and I did back when we were in our early 20s, but I think it's just as valid now. And I meant to talk to Nastasi about this. This is super valid for you, especially for Nastasia because she has so many poor houseguests. But Jen and I used to, we always wonder when people come over,

[3:35] like, who raised you? You know what I mean? Like, where did you come from? Like, how did you show up at my house completely empty-handed, make a huge mess and then just hightail it out and like leave me with all this garbage, right? Like, how did that happen? Right? Dave, you have this problem? Do you invite people over to your house? Yeah, but I've never really been stiff like that. that I can recall. No, you have good house. here's what you do. There's dinner, but there's also people who come and stay at your place. And so what we did is we started kind of the houseguest Olympics, and we would rank people when they came over, and we didn't tell people that we were ranking them. Maybe a little bit we did, but it's like we were like ranking people and we really got a sense for kind of who people were with this kind of a houseguest Olympics. Like the person who clearly wins the Houseguest Olympics is my cousin Nathan, who whenever he shows up, Nathan, yeah, he shows up with stuff, the guy doesn't like

[4:29] dessert. So, like, at the end of dinner, when everyone's eating dessert, he's in the in the dish like area, cleaning all of the dishes. And so he shows up, brings you stuff, has good conversation, doesn't talk about stuff that pisses everybody off,

[4:44] like we'll talk. You know how when you have that one? Not like cooking issues. Not like cooking issues. You know how that one person, there's always that one person that you invite who doesn't say anything and you're like,

[4:52] 0 my god, who's gonna talk to that one person doesn't say anything? You know who that guy is? Nathan. Nathan's that guy that will go talk to that person at your house and not make it

[5:01] awkward, that there's that person in the corner that's just basically, you know, capillary

[5:05] action sucking all of your wine even out of the bottles. You don't even know where it's going, but they're in the corner, like sucking up all the wine and not saying anything to anyone. Nathan's the guy that'll talk to them and clean your dishes. So that is like, that's like gold medal, like 10.0 floor routine, like house guest Olympics. But I recommend to all you people out there that you start keeping track of the

[5:23] Houseguest Olympics. And then if you let people know, maybe people get better. Maybe people get better. Doesn't that sound nice and assassin? You should rate all your friends. Would they all fail? No, they're not as bad as you think. Like, if they're not as bad as I think. they're not as bad as you tell me they are. They were a lot younger back 8 years ago when I met you. Yeah, but no, it's like, Nastasia, he says something, they're not as bad as you think. The only thing I know about them is what Nastasia tells me. They were bad 8 years ago. Uh-huh. So you're saying they've graduated, no offense to the Yellowtail Corporation, but they've graduated

[5:56] beyond. Yes. They're no longer come over to your house and say, I'm not bringing any wine because I'm not drinking

[6:03] today, and then they drink wine anyway. That hasn't happened in a while. Many years. Like 2 weeks? No. All right. Anyway. House Sketch Olympics. So, uh, we have uh, some questions in. Vincent wrote in from Michigan regarding salting. We didn't deal with any, the only thing we dealt with was rabbits, right? Yeah. Right. Right. Okay. I only recently found out about cooking issues. and been listening through the back catalog. I'm only at episode 120, but everything's been good. By the way, what episode are we on now? have no idea. Dave what episode is this? Let me check the archives one sec. First, I would like to thank you for opening my eyes to the wonder that is the music of Daryl Hall and John Oates. That's straight out to you, Nastasia. Although you went to go see them in concert. Bad. Well, bad for what reason? Were they actually bad or you just, they disappointed you because he kept on trying to be younger and hitting on the women. And what's it called? Jamming. Oh, you hate jamming? Yeah. You hate all forms of jam. No, I mean, they're not a jam band. As far as you know, is that the 1st time you ever saw them live? Yeah. How you know that they're not a jam band? Well, don't jam bands, like, if the jam bands jam bandits played like that on the radio, right? No, I mean, they don't usually jam bands don't usually get played on the radio. Well, ever. The Almond Brothers. Wait, is the question whether Hall and Oates is a jam band? The question is, is why would you assume that home, I mean, I would assume that they're not because they're like 80s, just like, you know, 80s? Like, I assume that they only come out of like boombox stereo speakers. That's what I assume that they come out of. But, I mean, like, no, I mean, like people, what you hear from the Allman Brothers is like Rambling Man. That song's only 2 minutes and 35 seconds. Grateful Dead. Grateful Dead is not played on the radio. Yes, it is. What radio plays the Grateful Dead? when I was a kid. Yeah, they play them. Like what? They play like the shorter songs like Touch of Gray or... No, Touch of Grey was like their lead. Yeah, that's the least Grateful Dead song on Earth touch of gray. That was like after like they'd already done anything they were going to do. You ever hear like, you never hear like Casey Jones on the radio, do you? I do. What radio? Not when I was there. You don't listen to the radio. I did back when I was younger. listen to the radio now. Not now. No offense, radio people, but the point is is that when I was growing up, when I was growing up, nothing. When I was growing up when, like, when the Grateful Dead was actually playing, you know what I mean? And not just like doing like, you know, reunions, when they were all like half of them are dead, back when they were actually a band and no one had died yet, miraculously, that stuff was not on the radio at all.

[8:33] You know what I mean? But anyway, I don't know. Do they play fish on the radio? Not that I know of. Not the stations I listen to. Dave Matthews? Yes, they play him. That's the Jan band. Right. Do they play long, like 20 minute songs on the radio? I read that songs? No, I don't think anybody plays 20 minutes songs. Like 10 minute. On the radio. Yes. On regular radio. On radio that these people out here eating pizza would listen to. I don't think hipsters listen to AMFM radio. They should. They should. They should listen to AM only, but only in mono. This is taking a weird turn. Yeah, anyway. All right. Vincent... was the actual question? Oh, no, he just mentioned Hall and Oates. And so we were talking about music in Holland. By the way, we've only gone through the preamble of the question. Little story, yeah, little story. Nastasio Lopez. This is a classic Nastasia, by the way. once bought tickets to see Billy Joel at one of his Madison Square Garden performances, and as anyone who knows

[9:29] us, personally knows both fans of Billy Joel. We like Billy Joel. You know, I grew up close enough to Long Island. I don't know where Nastasia got her love of Billy Joel, but like, you know, I like I love myself and Billy Joel. Nastasia buys herself tickets, Dave, you'll like this. Ticket to go alone. So, Nastasia, buys a ticket, and then... we're at an event together, literally working an event. And by the way, it was a garbage event. I don't even remember what it was. And she goes, oh my god, I'm supposed to be at Billy Joel. I just missed a Billy Joel concert. First of all, I didn't need her to be at the event. She could have gone to the Billy Joel concert. She knows it. She doesn't blame me for this. She just forgot she had the concert. But here's the kicker, Dave. This is pure Nastasia Lopez. Nastasia, will never buy again a Billy Joel ticket, even though she desperately wants to go, but she's

[10:18] going to punish herself because, no, I already bought that ticket. And I didn't get to see it. So now she's never going to allow herself to see Billy Joel again, even and this what reminds me is Billy Joel,

[10:28] a friend of mine, Lucia, you know, Lucia and Guido went to go see him last week at the garden, said he did some jams, but said he was great. Still good. Maybe someday, maybe someday, I'll buy you a ticket or maybe some like cooking issues admirer will send you a Billy Joel ticket to

[10:45] the... want anybody to pay for it. But Nastasia, the only way you get to go see Billy Joel and concert is so nice for you. Who the hell has an extra ticket? Lots of people. Whatever, whatever. I don't again, I don't know how we got it. Oh, another thing, did you know that Ringman Brothers Barman Bailey Circus is closing? Do you know that nobody cares of me? Nobody cares but nice, dude. So sad. Are she gonna go? I don't think so I might go to, there's, it's at Barclay Center in like February, March. to find someone who cares to go with me. When's the last time you went to the circus? That's one of those things that you just forget even exists anymore. And now I guess it doesn't. When Booker was very small, I took him. But I used to, I used, my grandparents lived in right near Sarasota. So they took me to see them during the during their practice when they weren't on the road because that's where both troops would train. Like they used, you know, they were like a railroad only show for a long time. So in New York. They used to march all of their animals from the railroad depot in

[11:42] Brooklyn or Queens, maybe, through the Midtown tunnel, and then they would walk from the Midtown tunnel over to the garden where it

[11:51] was, where it was going on. And so you could go in the middle of the night and watch the entire

[11:56] circus, parade all of the animals through the tunnel and out.

[12:01] It was like miniature horses. Good business. Anyway. End of an era. We should get to the question. We're on out time. Okay. So here are the questions they have. I read this article, and it states from Food and Wine, written by Oliver Schwoner Albright, years ago, like 4 or 5 years ago, where the authors, you can find it on the

[12:22] internet, it's called the juicy secret to seasoning meat, where the authors experiment resulted in the conclusion that different meats or cooking methods require different timings for salting the meat for best results.

[12:32] Does this match your experience and knowledge? Is there any sort of best practice guideline for which kinds of meat or which cooking method should have salt applied at certain times? Um, And then 2nd question was, I had once read that uh, Dongpo, uh, pork

[12:46] belly, where the, I once had uh, red cooked dongpo pork belly, where the, it was fat was so soft and tender, they had almost a texture of creme caramel.

[12:55] How can I achieve this? Keep up the good word cooking shoes team. All right. So let's go in reverse order. For the pork belly, it's been a long time since I've made that, but if it's not

[13:05] soft. I think you have 2 things. Most people who do it, right? They do like a lot of kind of scraping of the skin beforehand, and some people will even needle it, and this lets like some stuff kind of come out of it. And then they do your initial typically a blanched step. And then after the blanch step, then comes the first, which is kind of a braised slash theme over a bed of like scallions and ginger, with the rock sugar and the red and the dark and the light soy sauce,

[13:33] right? Um, and then after that, uh, so the crappy recipes, which probably aren't as good, just do that until the kind of the meat is

[13:40] done. The good recipes then take it out of that, put it in an individual steamer, and then steam the

[13:46] bejesus out of it with some of the juice, but so that it's no longer evaporating anymore. And they do that until fundamentally the fat is totally kind of broken down. And, you know, everyone has their own recipe, whether they do it skin side up or skin side down. Most people I know, do it skin side down, then flip it skin side up, although I saw a place that did

[14:06] it, that flipped it 3 times, right? So I think a lot of it just has to do with that secondary steam step. I don't know how important the initial scraping or needling of it is. But it's a good product. Do you like pork belly when the skin is not crunchy, Styles, or do you only like it when skin's crunchy? When it's crunchy. Unless it's like in a in a steamed bun or something like this. But you don't like just a big chunk of red pork. I do. I love that stuff. Dave, you, you like, you like the gooey pork belly fat or do you like it only when it's the skin's been crispified? Yeah, I guess to paraphrase hollow notes, I could go for that. You could go for that? Yeah, why not? No kidding. Well, they said no can do. That's why I said paraphrase. Well, it's more like antiphrase. Nastasi is more paraphrasing. She like, no, can do. There was a steel drum player playing that song on the 59 streets. Oh, hate steel drums. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. do you hate steal drums? Is it because you hate Caribbean people or like... That's quite a leap. but no. Why do you hate steel jumps? I don't know. just annoy me. What about when they have 2 different steel drums and they can play 2 different notes at once? Don't care. What about the fact that they make their own instruments? That's pretty baller. I guess that's cool. I tried to make one once when I was a kid. You know what I was? Unsuccessful. Like, I was able to cut yourself? Did I cut myself? I don't remember. I was very young, although I remember this. If you people, if you're going to try to make your own steel drum, the most important thing is you have to be able to take the 55 gallon drum and

[15:29] then like kind of depress it out, right? And that's kind of what I didn't do. I didn't have enough heat to really be able to bend that whole kind of drum thing

[15:37] out. But I spent the whole dang day doing it. And I just remember being really disappointed because as like, you know, an 11 year old, I was like, man, steel drums are cool. But apparently you guys were like, steel drums are for jerks and not cool, man. Not cool. I don't know. What is it? I don't know what the cooking issues crowd thinks of the steel drums. Chat room? Any thoughts? I don't know. So to go back to the question of salting. Salting is both much easier and much more complicated than you'd think. Salting does a number of things. Salting obviously makes things taste better, right? So salt in general is good. When you're talking about salting meats before or after or during what you really want to do is focus on what you're attempting to do with the meat.

[16:26] So a very long of assaulting like a long time before where the salt actually gets to penetrate into the interior of the

[16:33] meat, right? For a meat that's going to be overcooked anyway, when I say overcooked, I

[16:37] mean cooked above rare or medium rare, then in general, the salt is going to

[16:43] allow the meat to hold on to more water, right? So you're not only going to season it, but you're going to allow the meat to hold on to more water. It has more water absorption. However, it also has a kind of firmer texture once it's been salted, then it would otherwise. And this is due to a number of reasons. One, and I don't think it's primarily dehydration. I think it's primarily because you're solubilizing some proteins that come out and form a gel with it. So it kind of firms up. So salting firms the meat. And you can think about this very clearly if you think about when you salt a fish. And you let it sit for a long time, the flesh gets a good bit firmer. The same thing happens when you're doing pork or a steak or something like this. And so when I'm going to eat something that is rare or medium rare. And I'm going to let it sit for a long time, right? Then I don't want to salt it more than about an hour or 2 before it's going to get eaten because I don't want the interior of that meat to firm up on me.

[17:48] This is specifically with kind of low temperature cooking. Now, if you're going to do it on the grill, right, then you can just undercook the inside a little bit

[18:00] more and you could salt it way beforehand, it's probably not going to affect it too much. It'll be a little firmer, but it's not going to be a big deal. But once you cook the entire piece of meat up to, let's say, 55, uh, 55 and a half . It's not that it's overcooked if you salt it a long time before, but it's just a little bit firmer and it has a little bit less of that kind of, um, steak texture that rare medium rare

[18:25] has where it stars. you know, I'm talking about where it goes from that point of being kind of like where it still kind of moves

[18:32] independently, it feels kind of like, you know, like the way Cesare cooks it. It still feels like, uh, like, and then it goes all of a sudden to being that cooked meat where it's like one

[18:42] piece now. It doesn't kind of move independently. And it's that firming that happens when you salt far in advance on pieces of meat that you want to have that texture on. And so those are the only real thing so that I take into account. So that's, you know, that's kind of the big, uh, that's kind of the big difference. So what happened is that person, uh, the one that they hated the most is they pre-salted the heck out. I think it's been 2 weeks since I read it, but they pre-salted the heck out of a pork loin, which is already kind of

[19:14] garbage-y, that garbage, a good piece of meat, but it's typically overcooked, and then they went ahead and overcooked

[19:19] it. And so they salted it. Uh, they salted it all the way through. Now it's already firm and so it's going to tend to be dry. I can't remember exactly how the pork loin was the one that they had the difference and just think about it this. If you're going to overcook it, then salting it in my mind is usually good, the way to go because it's going to hold

[19:37] onto more water. If you, and it's going to get textures. If you needed to taste more rare and unadulterated, like pure steak, and you're going to cook it for hours and

[19:48] hours, low temp, then salt, right before you're going to sear it or something like this. But that's basically what I do. Anyway. Anyone who disagrees with me, they're welcome to get on and disagree with me. Hey, before you go, you want to take a call? Yeah sure. Call her, you're on the air. Hey, Dave, this is Chris from Green Zone in D.C. How you doing? Doing all right. What going on? Uh, got a question. I have been using your milk washing technique for coffee infused booze from

[20:13] liquid intelligence for a while, and it's always worked pretty well,

[20:17] except this last time, last night, I did it exactly as always, as written in the book. And the liquid basically didn't clarify. And so I'm trying to filter the booze out of the milk

[20:30] curds, and it's, I've gone through like 3 coffee filters and it's a giant pain in the butt, and I'm wondering what could have happened. Same recipe? Yeah, exact same. Same milk? Same type of milk. I mean, I'm using full, full, like whole milk, but it might have been a different brand. The only times I've had it really fail on me was I've used ultra pasteurized milk. In fact, it was, and it might, there might be a range, right? So I'll give you an example. So, like, I normally use regular pasteurized whole milk. Um, But when I went to um, Spain last time, they got me that wretched kind of boxed

[21:15] Parmalot milk, which is like ultra high, like sterilized milk, and it did not work at all.

[21:20] So maybe there's some in-between zone in the ultra

[21:24] pasteurizing zone where it doesn't, where it doesn't work, you know, where it partially works. You know what I mean? This says pasteurized. doesn't say ultra pasteurized, but it also says non-homogenized. I don't know if that makes a difference, would it? That's interesting. I've never tried it with non-homogenized milk before. Um, I'd be interested to try it with non-homogenized, but you say it did form a

[21:48] curd, but it just didn't curd very well. No, opposite actually happened. The Kurds were much chunkier than usual. Huh. But it didn't, there was a lot of, like, normally when I do it, it forms

[22:00] a curd, and then I put it in the fridge overnight, and there's a clear layer of booze on

[22:04] top. The booze was cloudy. Oh, so there was a curd layer but the booze layer was still cloudy. Yeah. I wonder whether I wonder whether it's some sort of like, uh, excess fat in it from it not being

[22:20] homogenized? Could be. Huh. Huh. I don't know. I'll have to test it with some non-homogenized milk and see what's going on, but it could be that, um, it could be that

[22:33] the, something about the fat, not, uh, not coming. Did it still function? well just didn't look right? Did it seem fattier? I've always filtered it through a coffee filter and it usually I can, you know, filters out pretty quickly, but this time I've gone through 3 coffee filters and it's still not done.

[22:51] I hate coffee filters so much. I wish I could throw it into a centerfuge. I funded the spins off, so I hope it gets into production. Oh, me too. Me too. We're working on it. have some more announcements in the next couple of weeks, right? Stas? Yeah. Yeah, but, you know, I think it's, I think it's looking. I think it's looking better. I think it's looking good. I think I think we're going to make it happen. What do you think, Nastasia? hope so. Yeah. But yeah, it makes milk. When you do it, do you use whole milk, you said? I use whole milk, but I use whole, like, supermarket,

[23:20] like, you know, regular supermarket milk. Like, so homogenized, pasteurized milk. I know it doesn't work with Parmalot, and maybe it doesn't work as well with, without centerfuge, with non-homogenized, but it's something

[23:35] to check. And like I say, I'd be interested in throwing it into a fuse to see whether it would spin out. Yeah, I mean, I would imagine it would, but all right. Well, I guess next time I'll just try the regular homogenized stuff done. Cool. All righty. let me know All right, man, thanks. All right, cool. Nate Simon wrote in from Sacramento. What? Do you need to get to your event? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But let me just take, do a couple more, like, you know, start late and late. Uh, I'm gonna... Oh, you got, yeah, no, I won't start. late, late, but I mean, like, you know, later than I need. All right. I'm a big fan of cooking vegetables. This is from Simon. Nate Simon in Sacramento. What do you think of SackDown, Stasia? Fine. She's like, I don't care about Sacramento. Just speed it up. That's the hand motion that you can't see that she's making. Now you made me lose my place. See? I'm a big fan of cooking vegetables in the pressure cooker, which I then puree for soups. I do like the ability of the pressure cooker to caramelize the vegetables. However, most recipes recommend adding a small amount of baking soda to facilitate the

[24:36] Maya direction. Remember, though, you gotta keep straight the difference between caramelization, which is a sugar only thing in Myard, which is reducing sugar and proteins. And we all fence, say, caramelized, when we actually mean myard, but like something like a carrot actually also has enough sugar in it that at higher temperatures anyway, actual caramelization can take

[24:56] place and sugars, in fact, can caramelize on their own in a pressure cooker under the right circumstances,

[25:03] i.e. with baking soda. So in a pressure cooker, with a high sugar item, there are there is actually both myard reactions and caramelization reactions going on in a basic environment, i.e. alkaline environment, but it's something to keep track of.

[25:17] I find that even with small amounts of baking soda, less than 0.5%. I can still taste it. I call it the pretzel taste. I'm wondering if the baking soda is absolutely necessary. Could the vegetables just be cooked for a longer period of time and get the same degree of

[25:31] caramelization? Well, again, the question is, is it caramelization or is it my iron? Is there any other alkalizing agent that could be used that doesn't give that funny side taste? Thanks and best wishes, Nate Simon. Um, I don't know. I haven't run a lot of the test. You could just try to cook it longer, but longer might mean like twice as

[25:49] long and see kind of what happens. It's possible. Also like if you were to um, allow more liquid to evaporate off, then the temperature would go kind of even higher, but you'd run into some problems with

[26:03] uh, scorching uh, at that point unless you were doing the kind of trivet and jar uh, technique. I've done some like ultra high temperature ones where I have pre-reduced, gotten some, you know, liquid out and then put them

[26:17] in, uh, in oil in it, but it's not really safe. I wouldn't really recommend doing it and I can get like much higher temperatures that way. Um, Lastly, I want to make sure that you mean, you should just try it and see whether you like the result, just do it for twice as long and see what happens. But I would also say, I don't know whether the recipes that you're using have you neutralize the baking soda a little bit. Unfortunately, baking soda doesn't neutralize to salt and water the way that like hydrochloric acid and lye would do. Uh, but, um, it does, it neutralizes to sodium acetate, which has a little bit of a vinegar, uh,

[26:57] like a, so if you use acetic acid, then it will, I think it will go to sodium

[27:02] acetate. Right? Yes, it'll go to sodium acetate. And then that'll have, that's what they use for salt and vinegar potato chips. So if you want a little bit of a vinegar taste to it. You could try to neutralize it with a little bit of vinegar. You could try to use a tiny pinch of food-grade, tiny pinch of

[27:20] food-grade, uh, sodium hydroxide, uh, and then, but I wouldn't use HCL for it. So you're still going to have an acetate ion in there when you neutralize it, but I would just be careful, as everyone knows, lie in the kitchen can be dangerous if you don't label your core containers and you taste it like a jerk.

[27:39] Lastly, Zach writes in about low temperature meets. My wife, my wife's family routinely commits war crime level overcooking of any meat.

[27:50] As a result, I'm increasingly volunteer to host or bring entrees to family events. This has led to a secondary problem. They won't eat anything that is even pink inside poultry pork and even beef. I can't bring myself to intentionally overcook, and I think they would actually like to eat things that are equipped much less if they could get past

[28:06] a psychological barrier. So is there a way with low temp cooking to greatly reduce the amount of redness

[28:11] and a cooked piece of meat without actually cooking it more? i.e. could I enzymatically degrade the hemoglobin? It, not hemoglobin, by the way, it's myoglobin, or otherwise catalyzes degradation at a lower temperature. Um, and then, uh, the 2nd point you have is, have you ever noticed that when toasting almonds, uh, that if you taste them

[28:27] while they are still hot, Their texture is odd and off putting and flavor even seems to be off. I think that's more of a texture issue. But it could be a flavored thing because they're volatiles coming out of, especially if you leave the skins on. But once they cool, they get that great crunchiness and texture, what's going on there. I think what's going on there is the protein. It's like a protein gel and when it's hot. It, um, with any residual moisture is just a little bit rubbery, and then when it cools down, it gets all nice and solid. Remember, roasting, you're actually flashing off almost all the water. So it's, I think it's basically just that protein gel. Back to your meats. The problem with meats is that when you vacuum pack or cook something low temperature in a bag or anything like this, um,

[29:09] you're a lot of the uh, myoglobin is in its deoxygen state, deoxymyoglobin. The oxymyoglobin is much more resistant to heat denaturation than, um, than, um,

[29:23] regular, um, oxymyoglobin is, uh, and so what happens is, is that you have a lot of

[29:29] deoxy left. It cooks, then when you get it out of the bag. It kind of blooms and gets red. Um, Also, in poultry, you have actual actual hemoglobin there coming out of the bones, especially in younger meat. So with poultry, get rid of all the bones, trim out those areas, cook it faster. It's been my experience at the faster rates of cooking. So in other words, thinner pieces of meat, faster rates of cooking are gonna get better coloration, well, more cooked looking coloration for you. But allow it to bloom up in a full oxygen environment, even allow it to go, if you were to do things that make it look terrible beforehand, like form Met myoglobin, i.e. put it in a

[30:09] micro oxygen environment so that it oxidizes, pull it out, and then like expose it to large amounts of

[30:13] oxygen, oxygenated meat will turn brown very quickly. And so I'm actually experimenting with the low temperature book that I'm

[30:21] doing, different ways to get around this problem since it is a problem. And so as I do experiments, I'll let you guys know. I'll give you more feedback on how to make meats look overcooked even when they're not cooking issues.

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