[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-L-E. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network. We're a member supported food radio network broadcasting over 35 weekly shows live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. Join our hosts as they lead you through the world of craft brewing, behind the scenes of the restaurant industry, inside the

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[0:40] Hello and welcome to Cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking, is just coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 from

[0:51] the, where are we? Where are we now, stars? Where? Where? Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Joined as usual, Nastasia, the hammer, Lopez. How you doing, Stas? We do not have Dave in the booth today. We have Victor in the booth today. Victor, how you doing? Doing great. Yeah? Is your 1st time like being the cooking issues engineer, huh? Yes. So like, what do you like to do, Victor? Well, I like to do a lot of music stuff? in general? Yeah? What about? food? You like food? I like eating, yeah. Yeah? What do you like to eat? What's your favorite? Um, one thing that I eat pretty often is actually rice and beans. I love rice and beans. I'm from Brazil. So I grew up eating that pretty much every day. Well, would that you put that yucca powder all over everything? Yeah, sometimes. You like that stuff? Yeah, like fried yuca and, you know, meats also. Yeah. All right. Brazilian, huh? Yeah. All right, nice. All right, speaking of music, I'm actually not in a bad mood today, Nastasia, because I was listening to kind of like where I musically come from early, early 90s Connecticut

[2:01] rock on the way up. I found like an album from a band we used to play with all the time. I was listening to it, and they still kick, they still kick us. Nice. Yeah, yeah. You may not know those people, but Nastasio Lopez used to be like

[2:15] the, the non, the non-favor granting backstage queen of the... They know this. You've talked about it before. Was it early 2000? early 2000s? and all of them on the radio. Yeah, a lot of people didn't listen to that episode. Is that early 2000s? When are we doing that stuff? Yes, early 2000s. Yeah. I was thinking to myself, like, you know, like, obviously I'm too old to, like, be in the band anymore, but I do miss, like, like listening to that stuff. Like I miss just ending up in like a crumpled mess of like blood and garbage on the floor, which is how all the concerts would end.

[2:48] You know what I mean? Like extremely physical style of playing. You would have hated it. You hate physical styles playing, right? You hate it more than anything. Like, I was all about just beating the ever-loving crap out of my instrument. Like, I would get, I would get in a position where, like, once my wrist would no longer function properly towards the end of the

[3:09] show. I would just kind of lock my wrist and then move my whole arm as one unit, and then eventually try to bend backwards to have gravity, aid my

[3:16] arm and coming down to smash the springs as hard as I could. That was like that early 90s style of playing would have been your worst nightmare. Nastasia, and I, you think we don't get along now. If we had known each other in those days, it would have been a

[3:32] freaking nightmare. Call all of your cooking questions into 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Victor, where are you from in Brazil? Close to San Paulo. State of San Paulo, yeah. Not the big capital. No. Outside, so you don't have to deal with the traffic or you still have to deal with the traffic? Not as much as people who are actually in San Paulo. It's a bit better where I live. Yeah. You ever go to one of Alex Atlas restaurants when you were over there? I haven't. No? No not yet. But is it like, do you go back often? Is it super popular? Is, you know, is he one of those chefs? It's just famous. like everywhere else or is he also famous in Brazil? No, I've heard his name. Yeah. Yeah, and I do go back. I try to go once a year. if I can. Yeah, wacky fruits. Do you enjoy wacky, the wacky Brazilian fruits? A lot. Have you seen the Northeast and north of Brazil? There are pretty pretty cool fruits there. Have you seen the book, The Fruits of Brazil? It's an amazing book. It's blue on the cover, which is very weird with graph paper. you seen this book? Actually, I've seen it. I haven't read it, but it looks pretty nice. Yeah, why would you? mean, you can just buy that crap. Like us in the US, we look at it. like, 0 my God, it's like fruit from Maz. But like, you know, you're like, hey, I just buy that stuff. And I think we've mentioned this before, but there's this, you got to look this book up, people on the Amazon. It's expensive. The cheapest place I ever found it actually was there's a Hawaiian fruit, like, farm that sells reasonably priced copies of this book, but the hilarious thing about it is, is that if you look in the back under exotic fruit, like, it's page after page of things that look like they're straight out of, uh, straight out of a horror show, straight out of, um, you know, uh, whatever that one with uh, suddenly Seymour is,

[5:07] little shop of horrors. Weird, weird freaking fruits, you know what I mean? And then at the end, it's got an exotic section with the apple. Because that doesn't come from there. You know what I mean? They're like all the native fruits of Brazil and then, you know, for their exotic fruit, the apple. Anyway, you know, someday, you know, I've never been to Brazil. Stas, you ever go there? Any desire to go? No desire to go to Brazil? Why? don't know. Why? Would you though? I would love to go to school. That's my rule with anything. That's my rule with anything. Why don't you take vacations? Who has time for vacations? Like, if someone, if there's a reason for me to go for business, I'll go. But I mean, like, uh, here's the thing. I wouldn't go for like the beaches or any of that. I don't care. You know what I mean? It's just like the food, though. I wanna go for the food. Not interesting. huh? No. No. They have pretty good food at the beach, though. Really? Do I have to be near the beach to have the beach food? Yes. Do you like fish? Yeah. Will people will people make fun of me because I will be dressed in full length pants, full length

[6:13] shirt, and a wide brimmed hat with sunglasses on? Yeah, you might want to invest in a Speedo or something. Yeah, that, that, that, my friend, Victor, is something that no one on earth will ever see is me and Espeedo. Like, unless I'm dead. Then they can see me in his veto, right? Maybe we should change my coffin. Yeah, whatever. We are not going to get into that family show, family show. I mean, what do I care once I'm gone? You know what I mean? Anyway. So let's get to some questions. This from Zev. Hey, Dave, I just listened to last week's cooking issues and was disheartened, although not surprised to hear that nobody else was saddened by the Ringling

[6:48] Brothers circus shuddering. Nastasia in particular doesn't care. Would I mention this on there? I talked to a bartender who's actually glad it closed. Did I mention that? I can yeah, I can imagine. Well, she, you know, she was on the animal activist side, which, you know, do you know all the elephant, you know, they stopped having elephants a couple of years ago, but all the elephants now are on like an elephant preserve in Florida somewhere. They're just like living out their elephant ears at a Florida preserve. And whatever. I don't know. You're like, I don't even care about that. Uh, so, um, Zev says, frankly, I would have been shocked if Circus has made it onto

[7:20] the short list of things that Stas doesn't hate. But I think it's more indifference for you. It's a difference. You know, I mean, like, which is, I don't know, is that is that worse for you, indifference or his hatred worse? hatred is worse. Wow, yeah, because her hatred is strong. Since you and I both share a love of cooking and a sentimental soft spot for the circus, I'd like to invite you to join me at the Barclay Center for a show next month. My wife isn't much of a circus fan, but would begin to make it a double date if Jen and or Booker and Dax want to come along as well. Well, I can, I'll check it out. Unfortunately, Booker would rather wear a hot frying pan for underwear and then go to a show of any type. So he definitely won't go, but that, you know, Dax is a possibility. Can you imagine Booker going to a circus? I once took Booker to Walt Disney World, and we took him. at the Universal, it's Universal, right? The Universal Pictures thing that they have there. We took him to a stunt show, a stunt driving slash explosion

[8:19] show, where the heat from the fake pyrotechnic explosions was like so hot that I got a sunburn from

[8:24] it, and it was nothing but all of that. And it wasn't that he was, like, didn't like the noise or anything. He literally was bored out of his mind, turned around, had his back to the explosions. This was a number of years ago, but like, you know, he's just not a, doesn't enjoy shows, booker. You know what I mean? Just doesn't enjoy him. Dax, Dax and toy shows. So, yeah, I'll check it out. Thanks. Then we got the question that I was hoping to get some answers from people off of the chat room, but I don't think we

[8:51] did from Mark on forming Yuba. So I'll just read it. Longtime listener, food science student, writing from the wintry depths of Saskatchewan. I'm in Bark. I like that word. Don't you like that word? Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan. That's good word. Better than the word Saskatoon. Right? Anyway. Um, I'm embarking on a project to produce Yuba like films with other pulses. Last year, being the year of the pulse, now's the year of the rooster, and they don't really, was it really the year of the pulse? I know, I was supposed to do year of the starch, and I didn't really follow through. I did my own starch research, but I didn't really follow through. Anyway. Year of the pulse. We have tons of pulse products kicking around in our university, and hence the project. I've gone through quite a few trials, including Yuba making procedures, beans to

[9:36] milk to film, with one pulse exhibiting more promise than the others. My understanding is that the formation of Yube is independent of the fat and the soybean, and therefore it would mean that most pulses should be able to form some sort of a film barring the different amino acid profiles.

[9:50] I would like to know if there's any way to increase the odds of film formation, would lactones or gypsum using bean curd making, or any one of those things, or

[9:59] transbutaminates help protein realignment and skin formation. Do you think that having more water, i.e. one to 10 being to water

[10:07] ratio would affect yields, and would there also be a lower threshold that may not allow for film formation due to sufficient protein

[10:13] extraction? And is there an easier way to go about this without making 1st a milk? Would the spins all be useful? Spinsaw is always useful, right? Nostasi? No, actually, in this case, I don't think you necessarily need a spin zone. I don't think, eh, we'll talk about it, man. Um, And I would give you the names of the pulses that, uh, what the pulse that was successful, uh, but we've been using sponsored products that with branded names that have no bearing on

[10:38] species. Thanks for taking my question, love the show, love Booker and Dax and can't wait for the new bar to open. Mark, me neither. I cannot wait for the new barnup. We are looking for a space. If anyone out there knows of a place in lower Manhattan that,

[10:51] you know, is closing down or needs a bar into it. Let us know. So back to the Yuba. So for those of you that don't know kind of what Yuba is, um, Yuba is, uh,

[11:02] the same thing as bean curd skin. Most of the time, when you buy it, you're buying it dried, and then you have to rehydrate it, but it's like, it's used in a lot of, a lot of vegetarian dishes like mock duck and these kinds of

[11:16] things. I think it's a fantastic ingredient, but nothing is as delicious. One of the most delicious soy products is fresh Yuba. And I guess you can buy fresh Yuba. I usually make it when I make it. It's kind of a pain in the butt, uh, making Yuba because you have to get these kind of like, um, what you do is, is you make a relatively thick soy milk. So I would think that a thicker soy milk would actually be better for you, Mark. I mean, at least this is my memory. It's been probably a year since I've made Yuba. But then you get a relatively wide pan, because what you're trying to do is you're trying to create an actual skin, very, very much akin to the skin that forms on top of hot milk. And you heat it to kind of a temperature where it's, what's happening is, is that the proteins are aggregating at the surface of the

[12:02] milk in this large sheet, along with the lipids. And according to the research, I read some of the carbohydrate that's in it, some of the sugars and

[12:13] carbohydrate that's in it. forms a protein skin. You pull it off, and then another skin forms. And you can do this again and again, but one of the interesting things about Yuba is that as you are depleting the protein from the,

[12:27] as you're depleting the protein from the, from the soy milk, the Yuba is actually changing over time.

[12:33] So, uh, It's super interesting, super delicious. You hang them up to kind of semi-drive, but just like fresh, warm

[12:40] Yuba with just like a little bit of like a sauce drizzle over the top, fantastic. Um, I wasn't able to find any references for making. And by the way, the what's her name? Andrea and Wynn, if you want to, she has a soy and tofu book that I believe has decent instructions for Yuba, although I was too stupid to take a look at my copy, but before I

[13:01] came. Um, the old shirt leaf book on soy probably has an explanation of Yuba, but I would probably go with

[13:07] the with the NWIN book. Um, to look at it, but if you've never made you, but well worthwhile. Now, as for what's actually going on, your questions with the fat. So some of the studies I looked at show, indeed, that the fat does matter. So it is primarily the protein and protein will by itself form a skin, but either too little or too much fat in the Yuba will negatively affect your

[13:35] yield and also, obviously, the texture of it. Now, the larger... It's kind of interesting. when they do the studies looking at the soy milk as it was being made, they noticed that the protein was being depleted, duh, because it's protein film, but then the lipid fraction of the soy milk, I

[13:56] think, was actually static or going up. And that's because not as much of the fat was being incorporated into the skin, uh, as was in the in the bulk phase, but it

[14:04] was, don't quote me on this because I was reading this research kind of in a flurry this morning. But it was the larger, which makes sense, fat, fat globs that were globules that were getting incorporated

[14:15] in because they're the ones that are floating up close near the surface. So it's an interesting kind of enrichment product. Now back to your problem. They've also done research on Yuba and on tofu for the ratio of what's called the 7 S to 11 S proteins, which are the ones that are studied a lot for tofu formation. And those numbers and there's similar proteins are published for other pulses.

[14:38] And you can kind of look them up and see what your, uh, like 7 S 11 S ratio is and try to, and maybe look at the fat.

[14:47] And I mentioned on the, when we started talking about this last week, an article that has kind of the breakdown of what the soy is versus other

[14:55] pulses, so you can look at them and try to assess kind of what's best.

[14:59] Now, as for using a curting thing, When you're when you're adding a curting agent to tofu, You don't add curting agent to make Yuba. Um, you're favoring aggregation, but it's not the same aggregation that happens in, um, that happens when you're making Yuba, which is, I guess, uh, heat

[15:20] denaturation as well as partial dehydration and aggregation at the surface where the where the dehydration is. It's my guess. You know, plus the fact that that stuff, I guess, as it denatures, I guess, floats up near the top and aggregates. So, is it possible that, like, some slight amount of self-aggregation through, like, like partial coagulation might help? Yeah, but it might ruin the whole thing too. You know what I mean? As it heats. I mean, like, I don't know. Like, I would try it. Because obviously I would try it, but I don't know. On the other side, transgutaminase would probably help as long as it was below a threshold that would,

[15:57] like what I would do you would incubate the milk with the transglutaminates to like slightly increase how aggregated the proteins are, crossing like the proteins are, not enough to gel it, and then heat it to a point where you wipe out the

[16:09] transglutaminates, and now you just have your modified proteins so they could link together up at the

[16:13] top. And I would try to get a fat content fairly similar to what soybean is. make sense to us? Do you like Yuba? No. Really? Not really. But like in any form? Or not the fresh Yuba? Actually, I like books as Yuba. Sloppy Joe. Sloppy, a Yuba Sloppy Joe? What does that mean? Like, he wraps the fake sloppy Joe in the Uber, he hacks Yuba up and mixes... Yeah. Hacks Yuba up. Uh, okay. Now got to go to last week's questions. Give me one moment. Hey, you want to take a commercial break and come right back? All right, we'll come right back. Some more cooking issues.

[16:59] This episode is brought to you by Jewel, the immersion circulator for sous vide by Chef Steps. If you're listening to this show, you're probably a pretty good cook. Maybe you already know that sous vide is the best way to get a kick-ass juicy steak. And with Jewel, a new sous vide tool from chest steps, you can do so much more. Smoky tender ribs, homemade yogurt, creme brulee, bright crunchy pickles, vibrant purees, even smooth, creamy ice cream, all perfectly cooked every time. Jewel is sleek and small enough to fit in your kitchen drawer, and it's operated by an elegant smartphone app that's been designed to remove the

[17:34] guesswork, gets you cooking faster, and give you the information and inspiration you want when you want it.

[17:40] Browse, chef steps, amazing recipes, and helpful guides. Choose your perfect doneness for any meat and get notified when your food is ready. You know you'll get great results, so you can focus on sides and sauces, or just pour yourself a cocktail and chill until you're ready for a delicious dinner.

[17:55] For more information and to order yours now, visit chefsteps.com slash J-O-U-L-E. Did I really tell people to chill? Really cocktail in that? People. Uh, yeah, I mean, like, whatever. You should never listen to yourself on the air. Like, have you ever listened to the show? And it's horrifying to listen to yourself, right? Well, I don't talk much, but you're funny. Looking. Okay. Oh, speaking of sous vide. So, I built this. So I'm going through a lot of the same problems writing the low temperature, well, sous vide. Remember, I said it before on the air. I lost that argument, right? It's, it's, it's sous vide cooking now. Whether it's in a vacuum or it's not, the imprecise, evil weasels, and marketeering jackwads of the world have won, and everyone freaking calls the technique sous vide, even

[18:56] though, like, I very rarely use a vacuum machine. Am I still bitter about it? Am I still angry about it? Yes, it's not sous vide cooking for the most part, but, you know, whatever. Like, I don't know, what other things are like that are like completely imprecise and yet

[19:10] have like they win? And it's French word. Like, it's so weird. You know what I mean? I mean, look, obviously, I understand maybe low temperature is not like, you know, a rousing word. No one's like running to the, you know, running off to make some, I'm

[19:25] gonna make low temperature blah. you know what I mean? Maybe the French uh, term, juice goddamn, that uh, Bruno Gousseau uses a jusca, the exact temperature. He's like, the temperature is not always low. It is the exact temperature. I'm like, he doesn't talk like that. He's got a, you know, an older French man voice, but like, in a nice French man voice, but you know what I mean? different French man voice. But anyway, so he's just got them. And I'm like, jusqueton, tom, not tempton, jusqueton. Anyway, so like, uh, that doesn't work in English either. Or either. And, uh, yeah, so sous vide, I've lost that. But I've been working on it, and one of the, and this actually kind of dovetails with a question we had a couple of weeks ago, um, for those of you that do cook in a sous vide, now I'm talking in a vacuum machine, or, you know, using things that are vacuum packed,

[20:13] or, uh, in an immersion circulator at all, at lower temperatures. One of the kind of problems is that red

[20:19] meats in particular, um, look kind of bloody to a lot of people. And so most of us tour cooks, you know, don't like Trump eat our steaks well done. Although I was told, who is it that told me that Obama also liked the steaks well done? Was he lying to me? Was he just trying to be like non-partisan and like tell me that, like, is it that presidents have to eat their steaks well done because, uh, because they're so worried that they're

[20:48] going to get the poops while they have to run the free world? Is that what it is? It's like, it's like in space, you're not allowed to have anything that's cooked, you know, rare in space because getting the craps in a space capsule is like the end of all

[20:59] ends. Like, you know, you get all that stuff sprayed all over the inside of the capsule is like the end of times for you. It's the same thing being president. You told me that the story you heard was that they used to have like a setup for doing low temp cooking at the White House. They got rid of it. They got rid of it, right? Didn't care for it. anyway. Well, you know, who needs it if you're gonna cook everything well done anyway, right? If you're just gonna like, if you're just gonna take like every piece of protein that you

[21:24] have and like, you know, burn the hell out of it, well then why do you need to do low temperature, am I right? Anyway, anyway, disappointed. eggs though, right? If you're gonna do brunch, it's the only... Yeah, but I guess, but you know what? I guess how small is the White House kitchen? Did you get to see it? Like, uh, I mean, is it, I wonder whether it's big or whether it's small like the James Beard house. I mean, the thing about, like, if, I mean, maybe they have a big enough staff. They can just have someone sit there and do the eggs, maybe they do it, Kenji, Kenji Lopez, all style, and they just dump all of the eggs in at once

[21:56] and, like, let them separate out. You seen that where he poaches like 10 eggs at a time and then pulls them out. Anyways. Point being that, or maybe they just don't do eggs Benedict. I mean, if I was the president of the United States, I'd be like, you know what I feel like while I'm running the free world? I feel like some eggs Benedict. And then the next day, I'd be like, you know what, I feel like, eggs Florentine. I would just do every single poached egg on an English muffin kind of

[22:19] prep that I could possibly have prepared for me, like at any time, day or night, because poached eggs. If I had someone on staff who would constantly bring me poached egg

[22:28] preparations, like that's what would happen. We'd have to rename them American muffins if I was president because that's how many of them I would eat. You like English muffin. You like an egg Florentine, right? What do you like better? Benedict or Florentine? Florentine. Really? Uh, because you like the spinach. Huh. But how much do you hate it when they don't press enough the liquid out of the spinach, and it bleeds that disgusting black spinach water all over everything, and it sops into the freaking English muffin, and it's just like a

[22:54] messy, like, gob of garbage on the bottom of your, does that irritate the hell out of you? Anyway, I forget how he got into this. Oh, so one of the problems when you're, yeah, when you're, when you're cooking low temperature, one of the problems is, is that

[23:05] the, the color of the meats is often off-putting to, um, people. So, as, you know, one of the prejudices that we, as cooks have to overcome a lot of the time with people we cook for is that, um, and I have to overcome this

[23:24] myself. This is, I'm talking about myself, but I think also for a lot of our listeners, is we feel like we know what you would like if you had your brain screwed

[23:32] in straight. You know what I'm saying? Like, or your head screwed on straight. So it's like, I know for a fact that you would like the taste of this steak better if it was cooked,

[23:42] but for God's sakes, below 57 Celsius, right? Like, I prefer to 55, I can understand if you don't want a 55, but for God's sakes, you don't want it higher than 57. You really don't. You know what I mean? And, like, you know, and we all have this feeling, people who cook this way, that if I just put a blindfold over you and gave you the steak the way I want you to want the steak, that you would want the steak the same

[24:05] way. But the problem is, you can't really cook that way. You can't cook based on what you think somebody else should like. You have to cook based on what they actually like. And if they see meat that looks too red for them, for whatever reason, whether they're a germaphobe, like Trump, whether they grew up eating shoe leather,

[24:22] so that they need shoe leather in order to feel like that stuff's going to be good, who knows why? Like maybe they grew up eating their steak drenched in A1 steak sauce. Were you one of those people's sauce? Were you a ketchup? Whoa, on steak? Ketchup on? Whoa. What does it matter? With scrambled eggs? No. It matters because of the addition of Worcestershire sauce makes it more steak-like. I'm just saying, if it's like a piece of something, with like sugary tomato stuff on it. Sugary vinegary tomato stuff. Look, I'm with you, but like my point is, is that, but so food was horribly over, no offense. Food was horribly overcooked in your house, yeah? So you needed to cut things into small pieces and douse them and stuff to make them palatable, right? They still frankly have a nice meat tape. Look, meat has a nice meat taste when it's overcooked. It's just a texture of it that is objectionable to us kind of sous vide and low temperature jockeys, right? We would prefer the rare steak. But on the other hand, right? I mean, this is what I think the average person who, the average person who looks at a rare steak

[25:24] cooked traditionally, right, uh, thinks that it's going to be that bloody, squidgy, you know that when I say squidgy, you know what I mean, right? That squidgy texture on the inside of a steak. Well, the issue is that the color of a steak is

[25:39] only, um, I mean, it is related to, but not directly related to the temperature

[25:44] at which the steak is cooked to, right? So, uh, you can have a vacuum pack steak that's cooked for a long time at a temperature that is not squidgy, right? And one that you might actually accept as medium rare, let's say you're a medium rare person, but it still looks too rare for you to

[26:01] eat, and so you're put off by it. And the reason for it, the reason this happens, is that the actual, well, there's a number of reasons. One, uh, the protein that's in, and we talked a little bit about this, but the protein that's in uh, steak and meats in

[26:17] general, uh, that causes it to be red or not is uh, mild globin. Myoglobin comes in 3 basic forms in meat. It comes as the oxymyoglobin, which is a red one. We talked a little bit about this before. And the deoxy myoglobin, which is what you get inside of a vacuum bag, it's kind of purplish, and

[26:37] met myoglobin, which is kind of the brown stuff that happens as it oxidizes, right? And what color the meat? and again, we talked about I just ran some more experiments, in fact, this morning, the color of the meat, as it cooks is directly related to the state that the myoglobin is in as you cook it.

[26:57] So I cooked. I took a thin piece of eye of round,

[27:02] which, by the way, I think, is a garbage piece of meat, like on its own. You ever just eaten, like tucked into it. You take, so like something like an eye of round. You know, I, you know, the round, round the, like, the back end, the back side of the leg of the cow there, that

[27:14] area, and the eye of round is a relatively lean cut with relatively little going on.

[27:20] If you long, but people want to cook that one low temperature because it doesn't have that much connected tissue so they think they

[27:26] can. It's also very lean and all these idiots who are like super pro, excuse

[27:30] me if you're one of these idiots, but like who likes super lean, lean meat, like think it's going to be a good piece of meat, but it's just not very interesting piece of

[27:38] meat. Like, it doesn't offer a lot of textural variation across the meat. It is not good if you overcook it. I mean, it's good kind of as a London broil, where you just char the piss out of the outside, and so it's like kind of

[27:50] crunchy, and then slice it thin, real thin on like, and then like, and then like put sauce on it or something like that. Anyway, I digress. So I had these pieces of the of the round, and I cooked them to very accurate temperatures within a 10th of a degree, I did a temperature ramp because I built

[28:07] it. I built my own kind of, the reason this came up is I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to take pictures for the book. If you go on cooking issues, the blog, it still exists. We haven't done anything with it in years, but there's a section called low temperature or

[28:21] sous vide primer. And in it are a series of pictures and charts that I developed when I was working at the French culinary to teach low temperature and

[28:28] SUV stuff way back in the day, like 0809, something like this. or even earlier, 07. And we put them up on the blog when the blog started in 10 or whatever and we started it. And, um, I'd worked a lot on trying to take pictures of meats at various kind of

[28:42] temperatures and I always found it was very hard because it, like, how much oxygen was on the meat really changed kind of the way it looked. And so today, I built like a plate heater, like a super accurate flat plate heater, um, and was taking pictures of the meat and meat that's cooked even very accurately and very

[29:01] quickly, uh, just up to 50, 50 or 55 degrees Celsius, which is rare, rare, rare,

[29:09] rare. Brown when it was cooked in full oxygen. So my recommend- my recommendation to you is that let's say you have, uh, this goes against some of my recommendation, for any of you who've known me for like a decade or

[29:23] more. I always recommend that when you're vacuum packing meats, right? Uh, that you, especially if you've just started learning how to vacuum pack, that you let

[29:33] meat sit in the vacuum pack for a half hour or an hour before you have to cook.

[29:39] Why? The answer is because a good chunk of your vacuum packages will be bad. If you've just started learning how to vacuum a good number on the order, I've seen some students where like 10% of their vacuum packs are bad because they haven't figured out how to accurately align the bag along the

[29:57] ceiling arm. They are, you know, get little pieces of pepper or spices into the seal,

[30:03] uh, for whatever reason, they they don't get a good seal. And over the course of that half hour to hour that it sits before you cook it, you can sit in the fridge or whatever, you'll notice where leaks happen because the bag will start to come away from the

[30:18] meat. You'll also notice if you're bagging something with bones, you'll notice that the bone,

[30:23] like if a bone accidentally punctured your bag, which is, you know, you should take care of the wrap bones and things like cellophane, uh, you know, not polyethylene wrap, uh, to

[30:33] try to protect them, but, or to stop them from puncturing your bag. But that half hour, uh, can mean the difference between getting a leaker and leakers can be okay in the sense that sometimes not enough product leaks into your bag to ruin your meat, but they can also be

[30:48] catastrophic. I've had like leakers where they leak so much that they might as well be in the water bath, which is gross. You've seen those bags, right, Stas? They are disgusting. So I made that recommendation, but for something like a meat, a steak, that you're going to serve at a relatively low temperature, let's say 55 degrees Celsius around thereabouts. Um, I recommend cutting it out of your vacuum bag. If it came in a vacuum bag, uh, doing maybe a pre-seer, uh, but wait, but before you do any of that, just let it sit out for like 20 minutes, 30 minutes on a rack, in your fridge, out, wherever you're

[31:28] going to do it, let it oxygen up. Let the meat get as much oxygen in it as possible. Now, this is not good for long term storage stability, right? Because you want as little oxygen as possible on the meat for long-term storage ability. But in terms of the color development of the meat as it cooks, you want to have it

[31:48] out and like oxygen going into it for a while. And so how fast it diffuses in is something I'm still trying to look up and I'm trying to figure out a way that I can steal,

[31:58] borrow or beg an oxygen probe so I can actually measure the time it takes for oxygen to get to the middle of the steak when you've taken it

[32:04] out. If anyone knows anyone out there who can lonely one or has one, has to be one that I can actually measure like

[32:10] with a probe, an, you know, an IR, one, a fiber optic one. Um, optical rather. Um, You let it oxygen up like that. Then I would do a ziploc bag instead of vacuum for your cook step because it's going to have less depletion of oxygen because you're not going to have subjected it to a vacuum and then have it go right in the bath. Like, boom, right in the bath. And then the faster the heat travels through that, while there's still oxygen there, the better off you're going to be. So let's say you're going to cook your steak to 55. I know it's a long explanation, but I'm thinking a lot about it and, you know, this is a problem people have. Let's say you were going to cook a steak to 55. The real life truth is that you're going to take that steak and you're going to sear it

[32:52] afterwards. And so the stuff that's, you know, not right around the edge. In other words, even up to like a quarter of an inch is going to be a couple of degrees higher than 55, So what I would do is I would throw it in at a higher temperature. I would throw it in at like 57. Um, 57, maybe even 58, 57 is probably safer. Let it sit for like 10, 15 minutes, then put it down at 55, let the bath drop to 55 as it would. This is for a thick steak, by the way. Thin steak, just put it right in a 55. Thin steak, right in 55. talking thick steak. Uh, it'll come in. You won't overcook the center. You'll overcook by a couple of degrees, a little bit of the stuff around the side, but you're going to have denatured that, um, uh, myoglobin faster, um, then it can deplete its oxygen as

[33:39] as as it's uh, packaged that way. And you're better off there, you're going to have a better chance of getting a better colored meat for your customer that doesn't like that cherry red.

[33:50] The other thing you can do that we used to do all the time is if you pre-slice your meat, which is a good idea with steaks. you know, I like doing is you bring it out, you do your hard sear, you do your hard sear on it. I always drop the temperature down to 50 or even lower before I do my hard

[34:04] sear so I don't overcook the meat. When you slice it, you can do a real fast flash under a salamander or grill or even with a

[34:13] searsal and just decolor that top and take it right off. But anyway, one of the things I've been talking thinking about, more, since we answered that question, so I thought I'd deal with it. And then, you know, we can talk a little bit, maybe next time about the miracle of moisture management and how that affects low temperature

[34:29] CV cooking. Anyway, um, That helped no one, right? Stas? No one, no one. No one cares. Um, okay. We got a question in from Ben. I'm not sure if this is the best place to send this question. Yes, it is, because here it is. We have it, right? But I'm hoping to clear up an issue I'm having when I attempt to deep fry a taco shell made of

[34:49] nystamalized corn. Uh, so if it fills you that, I don't know, nixtimalization, uh, you know, I like it a lot. It's like super awesome. The technique is where you take traditionally corn, um, and you soak it, you heat it, partially, gelatinize it, and, um, in an alkaline, in an alkaline mixture.

[35:12] Typically calcium hydroxide or cal. Uh, and you heat it, it partially gelatinizes the, um, the starch in the corn partially cooks it. It also turns the outside of the, you know, of the corn into a

[35:26] goop, and then you wipe the goop off. It's now easier to mill, which is why it originally did, but also the goop that remains. And so like part of the art of niximalization is how much you cook it, i.e. how much of it starts, you

[35:39] gelatinize, how much you cook it out, so much, how much water is it taking, et cetera. Also, how much of the cow do you have and how much of that cow taste, that calcium hydroxide taste, which is what distinguishes a tortilla from a

[35:52] cornmeal, flavor, and then how much you rinse off the goop on the outside, because the goop on the outside, along with the germ from the corn, the fat and the other stuff from the germ of the corn is what gives masa, which is the dough for tortillas, it's amazing

[36:08] properties and why you don't need to add anything else to it to get it to work. Um, so anyway, so that's what next normalization is. I continue with the question. Uh, the problem I've encountered is that when attempting to fry the uh, nixtamalized shell after property uh, cooking the corn, um, using the

[36:25] nixonalization process outline in the cooking issues blog, they tend to puff and become tough, not crispy.

[36:31] My question lies, and the only solution I found to be effective, overcooking the corn. When I am nixtimalizing the corn, I cook it to the point where it is soft all the way through. My understanding is this is not ideal for making masa, but when I grind,

[36:44] press, and fry this overcooked, almost gummy corn, the shells are thin and crispy. Any insight on why this may be. I appreciate the time. Thanks, Ben. Okay, so... Uh, now, it's been a long time since I've done heavy

[36:58] nixtimilization work and many people, many, many people have done a lot of work over the past, oh, you know, six, what are 7 years, whatever it was since I wrote that post, on

[37:09] nixtimilization. What? Nine? No, I didn't write it. When did I write the Nixonization Post? Really? Anyways, whatever. Old man. So, uh, so it's been a while, so I, like, I don't have it in

[37:24] my, in my fingers and in my blood the way I did back then, but the, um,

[37:30] puffing is usually a good sign, when you're making a fresh tortilla, right? So like most people, and remember, there's all different kinds of, uh, grinds of, uh, masa. So a coarser masa is going to puff less on a kamal than a, by the way, did you say that you cooked them on a kamal before you tried to fry them? Uh... Properly cooking the corn, miximization, tend to puff. Let me see. When I am next, my understanding is not a different, I grind, press, and fry. You're cooking it before you fry it, right? You still have to fry, you still have to cook it on a Kamal before you fry it. Right? I mean, like, I'm pretty sure you probably already do that because you have to do that. But, um, very fresh, especially very finely ground tortilla should puff and be very kind of like light and like that's like a hallmark of a good style

[38:25] tortilla. I also like denser coarser tortillas. Those will not puff as much. So you could deal with the coarseness of grind there. I've never attempted to overcook the heck out of corn to see kind of what happens. The other thing is that the fresher of the tortilla is the more it's gonna puff. And so I have honestly never fried a tortilla, the day I've made it, because whenever I'm next to melizing, I nixtamalize for fresh soft use. And then if I'm gonna fry, I'll fry like day

[38:59] old, um, day old tortillas, not like the tortillas I just made that day because. The amazing thing about fresh massa. The taste of it is actually fine the next day. It's okay. I mean not fine. okay the next day, but what you're never going to get back is that texture. You know what I'm saying? Stasia? You're never going to get that texture back. So here's what I would recommend. One, just make sure that you're cooking it out on a Kamal, like perfect, you know, well, because you need to get rid of some of the moisture in that cooking process and to cook the tortilla together so that it has structure.

[39:33] One of the, if you say it's gummy, if it's puffing and gummy, It's got, it must be having, as it puffs, it probably has the ability to store too much residual water. It's hard for you to dry out the tortilla. Frying a tortilla until it's crispy is essentially the art of removing all of the water from it before it scorches. I'll give you an example of how I fry tortilla chips. I take, I don't, I don't make, I buy, when I'm making tortilla chips, I just buy garbage, uh, tortillas because I'm

[40:00] gonna fry the heck out of them anyway. I shouldn't probably admit that, but I do. But you can throw a tortilla chip. I think I said this on the air before. You can throw like a cut cold tortilla chip into cold oil and just ramp up the temperature because all you're doing is getting rid of all of the water that's in that tortilla.

[40:19] So if it puffs, it's probably going to be more difficult for you to get rid of all

[40:23] of the water that's on the inside than when it deflates. It's not going to be, um, it's not going to be crunchy. In fact, if you take any fresh tortilla and you fry

[40:33] them and you fry them at too high of a temperature, right, you'll notice that some of the tortillas will start to brown because the water has left

[40:40] them, and you have to pull them out, and you'll notice a blonding area on the other parts of the tortillas, and those will be soft, even a marginally under fried tortilla chip is gross and

[40:52] tough. Uh, so like what I would, what I typically do. And you know, a lot depends on how fresh your oil is. So if you're frying at home, I don't know where you're frying, but if you're frying at home, um, older oil tends to color your tortillas faster and younger oil tends

[41:08] to um, make them more blonde. So I always just test the texture of them when I'm pulling out, if I don't, if I'm walking in a situation. I don't know what condition the oil is in. So you just pull it out and you tap on it with your hand, like, you tap on it and you can feel instantly with the tip of your finger. I mean, if you aren't used to doing this, you're going to burn the hell out of your finger, but if you've already burnt the hell out of your finger so many times that your finger has no feeling left in it,

[41:32] like you can just tap the surface of a tortilla, just pull it out for a 2nd, let it drain, tap, tap, tap, feel the surface of it and know whether or not you've gotten rid of all the water. Obviously, also, like looking at it visually for the amount of bubbling coming out of it is a good sign for, um, how much water you've gotten out of it. But what's interesting to me is that overcooking it appears to have made it easier for you to extract all of the water from the tortilla.

[41:55] Um, and I don't know why. It's interesting that that's the case. But anyway, those are the, in this order. I would maybe grind it not quite as fine. I would, uh, make sure you're thoroughly cooking it out on a, on a, well, we say a

[42:12] kamal. griddle is what we all use. Even like I use cast iron sizzle platters sometimes to do them. Uh, two, uh, like let them sit around for a while to kind of cool off and retrograde before you fry them, uh, so that they act more like an old tortilla than a new tortilla, uh, and then

[42:29] maybe uh, take your oil temperature down a little bit and let it fry until it

[42:33] stops uh, bubbling. But yeah, you don't want them to, because you can take a tortilla chip that puffs and still fry it really crispy, like witness, if you've gone to a Mexican restaurant that fries its own chips, you'll notice that every once in a

[42:45] while you'll get like a hugely bubbled tortilla chip. It's still crunchy as hell because they fried all the water out of it, right? Anyway. You know what I hate Nastasia, when they when they when they haven't properly drained the tortilla chips and you get that tortilla chip with the bubble, but the bubble still has the oil in

[43:02] it. You know what I'm talking about? You've never had that happen. You've never been in a restaurant and they give you that basket of chips. And 1st of all, here's another thing I don't like. I don't like when the chips come and they didn't bother to unfold the tortilla, so you had that tortilla that's folded in half, or when they didn't bother to shake the freaking basket, so you have like 3 tortillas glued

[43:18] together and the one in the middle is that gummy nonsense. These are the tortilla fowls, my friend, you've had that happen, Nastasia. That is a tortilla fowl. Here at the top order of tortilla fowls at a Mexican restaurant is 1st not giving you tortillas. Smack yourself. That stuff doesn't cost that much money. Give me some freaking tortillas. Remember right? Have you noticed this recently? They, like, people have gone skimpier and skimpier on the tortillas when they hand, you like a basket of tortilla chips,

[43:42] right? What? Yeah, stuff's good. So, uh, under fried tortillas, nightmare. fried in rancid oil, so it tastes like cardboard, frigging nightmare, undersalted tortillas, freaking nightmare, and tortillas that they

[43:57] didn't, that they didn't bother to separate. So no tortillas is worse than rancid oil tortillas. Ooh, there's no, this is a good question. Would I rather, would I rather just to not have to converse with people have the loud internal head crunching that tortilla brings, even if I also have to have with it that rancid cardboard flavor of the bad oil?

[44:22] How much, how much salsa do I have? and is it spicy enough to cover the? Yeah, I guess that's the... That's the question. Like, I'll sit there and crunch on ice. I'll do anything, you know? Is it not? Well, you know, it depends, like a party or something like this? You know what I mean? You're the same way. Yeah, but you you pretend you don't like to talk, but you talk a lot. Yeah. Well, no, but, like, it depends on like whether or not, like, I know the people are not. Like, you notice, like, if we're at, like, in, like, a new situation, we sit there and she's like, well, fill my water fast because

[44:54] I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick up something and eat it or drink it, like, at a phenomenal rate, just so that my mouth is always doing something. You know what I mean? So anything, so I think like in an awkward social situation, the rancid tortilla, it's better than no tortilla. So long as there's a salsa. Because it's not worth the temporary feeling okay about munching that thing just so the crunch is like drowning everything out because when you eat that much rancid oil later on in the night, you're just like, it's

[45:23] not that, I don't ever feel sick because I'm not a human being. I'm built of like some sort of like iron device that allows me to like ingest anything without harm. But you just feel gross. You just don't feel good. You know what I mean? There's a difference between feeling sick and just not feeling good about what you've done. You know what I mean? You know, anyway. That's my thoughts on tortillas, cooking issues.

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