[0:00] Today's show is brought to you by Bob's Redmill, sharing nothing but the best in whole grain nutrition and committed to their mission of good food for all. Learn more at bobsredmill.com slash podcast. This episode is brought to you by Jewel, the emerging circulator for sous vide by chef steps. Order now at chefsteps.com slash J-O-U-LE.

[0:28] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly

[0:37] 1245 reverse pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Calling all of your cooking related questions or otherwise, really. 27184972128. That, 718-497-2128, joined, as usual, in the studio with Nastasia of the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Nastasia? Good, how are you? All right, it's been a while, right? Two weeks is we missed last week? What was I? Was I I was away? You were I was away. I was here? I was not here. Then I would have been here in the studio. You weren't here, here. You weren't here here, but you were in New York. I was not in New York. You stepping out on us, Dave? No, I was not in New York. Oh, wait, there's some, no, I had to go to a doctor. That's it. With my son. I had to take my son to. That's what it was. And Dave joined as usual in the booth with Dave. How you doing? Good, how about you? Like, you know what the problem is? Is it like, you have no catchy nickname? You have no catchy nickname? Maybe someone in the You haven't given me one yet. I know, but like, Anastasia's microphone's wandering away. Like, I know that Nastasia enjoys not speaking into the microphone, so that no one can hear what she's saying, but this microphone in particular is conspiring against her

[1:42] today. And like, that noise you hear is Nastasia trying to tell her microphone, what,

[1:47] what? And look, it's just like curving away from her, throwing the hate down Anastasia. You know what? Nastasia, that is a wise microphone. That is a wise microphone moving away from you. I don't know, Dave, that that's going. Wow. Dave just did a serious, like, like, spitting bubble gum

[2:04] solution, and he pulled the microphone out of its socket and then jammed it into the socket

[2:09] sideways. What? That's pretty good. Yeah, no, gotta love it. That's why I get the big books. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right? He really wanted Peter Kim on. Who did, Dave? Why? He didn't need a whipping boy? Miss Peter, you know? I'm sure Peter will come on. He's a good foil for you, of course, too. Yeah, nice. And he'll actually say things, unlike someone I know, Nastasia. I think you would hate it more if I said a ton of. I like how you say hate it more. Like the baseline is hate. The baseline is hate. I think we should try, though. I mean we'll never know unless you try, right? right. No, it would drive him crazy. We've had people on who take away from him. What do you mean, take away from? You such a jerk, Nastasia. That would take away from you. don't consider it like that. I enjoy having people on. talking to people. That's when you start mouth, mouth. See, people, Nastasia, Nastasia just is one big pile of just evil feelings. No, it's a funny story. Why can't we do? Because it also deals with somebody else. No, we never have to bring that part up, ever. Look, I'm intrigued. So when you're talking, when someone's talking to you, and you're really mentally nervous and you're not nervous, nervous is not the right word, but like mentally excited, like your brain's turning really quickly, and the other person is saying something, and you've, in your mind,

[3:28] like anticipated everything that that person's going to say, and you can't wait for them to stop saying it so you can face something else. Even if you're listening to them and absorbing and enjoying what they're saying, it's like you like want the conversation to already be like 3 or 4 minutes ahead because you know what that person in your, well, and also in your head,

[3:45] like, you know, in your head, like you've mapped out the whole conversation, sometimes it changes. But I've seen this not just in me, but in other people. So it's this mouth puppeting where you're literally like, in order to stay focused on what they are saying instead of racing ahead, you literally mouth the words that they are saying as they are

[4:03] saying them. And so it's incredibly irritating to people when, you know, anyone does it. So, like, Nastasius caught me doing it on several occasions. And so she's punch me right in the face. She's supposed to punch me right in the face when I do it. Right in the face. Right? Anyway. Uh, so, but Nastasi just being like evil. No, no, no. See that's the thing. I'm not evil. See, she has this idea that, like, I want people on and then, like, I get mad somehow when they say something because she thinks I care about, like, my voice tan, which is not the case. If I sat here and didn't just spew a continuous line of words,

[4:45] Nastasia would just sit there with a look on her face and say not one thing. You said when Harold was on that, you're just like, if he takes too long, you like cut him off and who said that?

[4:56] It was you. It was you. You're an evil person. Dave Chang did not say that. Dave Chang is never listened to this show even one time. Or it was at an event that you were all co-hosting. You're just, like, 1st of all, also, Nastasia will take an offhand comment. Like, seriously, if this dude out here with a baseball hat that's eating a pizza right

[5:19] now came in, met us for the 1st time and make a comment. If it was Timastasia's liking, she would bring it up for the next 15 years in defense of some crazy idea she has or the other.

[5:30] It's just a case. It's just true. Oh, now now she's doing the, okay, I'm just, you know, okay. Go home to mom. Go home to mom. Wow. Wow. Wow. Just kidding. Wow, jeez, Louise. Anyway. So, um, a little bit of sad news, but I'm not gonna do the sad part of it. My grandpa died over the weekend. He was almost 98. He was 97. Is this the one in Florida? Yep, he was David Eugene Arnold the first, the 1st of the line. I'm the 3rd and last in that in that line because my wife was like, it's got to stop somewhere.

[6:12] It's going to stop with you. So, like, I'm like, I'm David Eugene, Arnold, the third. Of course, my dad's number two. But, um, yeah, so he was uh, 90, uh, he was 97, almost 98. And Sharp, sharp up till the end. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see him. It's just old age. He was in his sleep. just died. Uh, he had been, he, he'd broken some um, bones over the past year and so he, he no longer could get around a lot. And so like once you're like lying in bed most of the time, like, you know, you tend to degenerate fairly quickly. to go to Florida? Um, I hate the funeral hasn't been. going to have to go to Florida. But the, um, anyway, I didn't get to see him as much as I'd like in the past 10 years or so, but it's one of

[6:55] my, uh, I'll share some food stories. So, and I've said like a lot of these on air already, but, you know, in honor of him, I'll say, you know, say them again. The, um, he, he grew up in, uh, kind of Pennsylvania. so his brother actually worked in a pretzel factory during the Depression, and it was from like that branch of the family that, you know, all

[7:17] Arnold's, true Arnold's, love pretzels, and hate fake pretzels. hate, like, non, like, hate pretzel sticks because they're not pretzel shaped, hate pretzels with added fat in them because they taste like

[7:29] crackers. They don't taste like pretzels. And so like, you know, from him, I've inherited kind of that kind of side of, you know, love

[7:35] of pretzels. But he also used to tell me stories about how he and his brother, who died at like the age of like

[7:42] 101, would, like during the Depression, like people in the neighborhood would cut open pumpkins and just ferment them.

[7:48] And one of my great food regrets is that something like 20 years ago when I went to visit him once, he was making dandelion wine and all these

[7:59] like weird wines that were like, you know, hearkening back to his youth. And I was too stupid and snooty at the time. Maybe it's 25 years ago to like enjoy them. And so I was kind of a dick about them. And if I could only go back and like taste them with an open mind. I would be such a better human being than I am now. You should always take into account like the culinary heritage of your, of your, you know, of those who have come before you. anyway, a couple more things about them. So he was a radar designer. And during, uh, before World War 2 was working for Westinghouse, it was actually, uh, I think running or on the design team that designed the famous uh, radar at Pearl Harbor that was ignored by the military as

[8:37] the as the Japanese were coming in to attack. So his radar actually saw the wave of planes coming in that was ignored. Interesting fact, but he kept on doing radar design over the years. And from that, I have several food related stories. One, he would tell me about the people and my dad, I think, also knew about this because he did some radar work, you know, when he was young, uh, just like his old man, uh, how they would, at Thanksgiving in the early warning, uh, in the early warning radar stations, uh, you know, way out up in the

[9:05] boons, they would put a turkey at the focus point of the, um, of the

[9:08] big uh, radar dishes, the giant early warning radar dishes and fry, and not fry, you know, microwave turkeys with giant radar dishes.

[9:18] He also said that, uh, so the, the thing that runs a radar is a magnetron, which is the same thing that runs a microwave oven, and

[9:24] the, the, the lore is that a Raytheon tech, uh, you know, the company Raytheon, Raytheon tech, noticed that a candy bar in his pocket was melting when he was getting close to these microwaves, and that's how he came to think of the microwave oven as being a kind of good

[9:37] idea. Anyway, so the other story, and this is not food related, that related to the microwaves is that, um, is that the story, and this may not be true, but that, uh, so young soldiers used to fry, like this flash fry their nads when they would go out at night as a way of like temporary birth

[9:55] control. But that's got to be apocryphal because who would do that? What lunatic would do that? What else? He, um, He was the one who I wanted to try years and years ago to convince to help me build a room size

[10:07] microwave and he always refused to help me, just like my dad always refused to help me build lasers that were actually

[10:12] going to damage people. Now you can buy them on eBay. What more food? So he was the one that told me about the chicken gun. Have I talked about the chicken gun on air before? So yeah, so I'll say it again briefly. So in, in they, they used to use um, a compressed air cannon to fire birds into windshields. This has been covered on mythbusters, but it used to fire birds into windshields to test the windshields for impact resistance.

[10:34] And I forget why Mythbusters cared about it. But the thing that always intrigued me, as I said before on the show, is that grandpa said that

[10:40] he, the janitor would come take the birds and cook them afterwards. And so I've actually built, I have it sitting in Connecticut, and once it warms up again, I'll start firing it again. I built a chicken gun so that I could fire last year I built it for that pilot that I never got used for anything. So I have a chicken gun. If anyone wants to like meet a fire stuff out of the chicken gun. I'm pretty sure I can do whatever I want with the footage now. We can fire stuff out of chicken guns and cook them to see what kind of nice tenderizing

[11:07] effect firing a bird out of a chicken has. Wow. Is it the chicken sound effects? You know, so there's that. When I was in grad school, I built a chicken gun based on a Delta 88 spring. That's a car for at least you that don't know old cars. Uh, it didn't work so well. Compressed air is really the way to go. Anyway, I now own a compressed air cannon. Um, what else? Last, but not least, almost every day, or not 2nd to last, but not

[11:32] least, almost every day, he would mix himself a drink that he called the Bonnie Prince Charlie, which he assured me was a kosher name for this drink.

[11:40] It was actually a rusty nail, which is scotch and trambouille. And if you want to, if you've never had drambouille, Trambouille is a mixture. a scotch base with honey, they say heather honey, and some spices, although, in reality, what a rusty nail is, or as my grandpa called it, a Bonnie

[11:55] Presh Charlie, is essentially a scotch old-fashioned. So you can whip yourself up some honey simple syrup if you don't want to go out and buy the jambouille and make yourself a scotch old-fashioned. He had it built. He always built it on the rocks and you can do that. You could stir it down if you wanted a little more dilute. The standard recipe for rusty nail or Bonnie Prince Charlie, as he called it, is

[12:14] 3 quarters, a trambooie, and an ounce and a half of scotch, which is preposterously sweet, especially if you're going to drink it as an

[12:20] old-fashioned, if you're not going to stir it down. So I would shade that drambouille back or up to scotch or both. Uh, and last but not least, he was the person who said to me, uh, in his mid to late 90s that if God wanted you to drink skim milk, he would have made it come out of the cow that

[12:36] way. Anyway. And so he lived to be... I always thought he'd be 100 styles, but he never made it to 100. I always assumed, like we always assumed, oh, we don't need to go down to Florida this year because he's obviously

[12:46] going to make it 200. I was wrong. you know add it to another long list of the things that I'm wrong about. So, do you do anything cool this weekend? No. No? Nothing? Nothing good? You, Dave, anything? Any food related, anything? Food related. No. Not really. No? So I've been doing some interesting food related stuff, which maybe if I have time, I'll talk about later. So a person who listens on the radio, Nick Devlin in the UK has introduced me to the idea of this software console, which is

[13:17] a physics modeling program. So I've been doing some, um, I've been doing some, um, modeling, some heat, heat modeling on low temperature cooking. If we have some time later, I could talk about some of my preliminary problems and

[13:30] results because what I really need from the cooking issues crew, meaning you

[13:34] guys who are listening, is, so I have to write this book. Maybe I'll talk about it now really briefly. I have to write this book on low temperature cooking. Now, the book is supposed to be specifically low temperature cooking

[13:45] for that's useful in a home, right? So not like the crazy stuff that, you know, I was doing back at the French culinary institute and not stuff where it's a 1000000000 steps to get a result.

[14:01] Like, you know, like my motto has typically been massive amounts of work for marginal amounts of improvement, right? So us? Like, that's my motto. Massive work, minimal improvement, improvement, but minimal compared to the amount of work I put in. And so this book has to not be that. So the mental theory of this book is going to be massive amounts of kind of thinking, research, thought, hemming and hawing at the outset, and then to use to make simplified recipes that people can do at

[14:30] home. And a lot of, a lot of it is, I'm going to focus on things like kind of like party tricks, right? So like how to cook like your holiday roast or your, um, or like a crown roasted pork, things like this that really kind of, you know, have died out because they kind of suck

[14:46] traditional, well, roast not, but like crown roasted pork, because they kind of, they're never quite right. You ever had one stars? Crown roast? You know what they look like, though. They look awesome. You've seen them in 70s pictures, no? So you take the whole, like, so imagine like a rack of lamb, but pork, but frenched out and then turned into a

[15:01] tube. It's like a, like a monarch's crown, and then you stuff it full of stuffing in the middle, and then you like roast that sucker up and you serve it, and

[15:09] like, it's just, it's a super baller 70s. I mean, and previous, but like, you know, I remember it from the 70s. It was like a thing people did back when A, pork was a little fattier and B, people were okay with things that were just cooked into

[15:21] oblivion, you know what I mean? So you'd have this thing. But the problem is, is that, remember when I used to do the whole fish, fry whole fish? So the problem with frying a fish, uh, a whole thing, or frying anything that's

[15:33] bent, is not only that it's large, and so you're going to tend to overcook the stuff on the outside, uh, or undercook the stuff on the inside, the problem once something is

[15:42] bent is that you have very, very, uh, different, um, kind of thicknesses. So the outside gets overcooked way before the inside does, especially if there's like a lack of air circulation on the inside, let's say, a crown

[15:54] roast or at the bent part of a whole fish, let's say, if you've bent a whole fish into a U shape, which is something that I do a lot.

[15:59] So one of the great things about low temperature cooking is you can pre-cook the whole thing all the way through to a low temperature,

[16:07] right? And then you can let it cool down, and then you can roast it on high heat and you're just looking for the color on the outside. We call this like low temperature or sous vide for insurance purposes, and you can do something like a crown roast really easily and not worry that you're either going to overcook or undercook the middle.

[16:23] It's great, right? Um, Problem is, is that I've been trying to figure out exactly how to tell people to cool it down.

[16:33] Similarly, even if you're doing like the classic, like every, every night low temperature that I do is like steak. Not every night, obviously, I don't have steak every night, but like that's my kind of usual, like, every day. I'm going to use a circulator meal is like steaks, right? So with steaks, I always tell people, and I've said this before in the air, a little bit. I tell people to, you know, cook the steak, whatever you're going to do, 55 degrees, then let it cool down. Uh, you know, I actually force the circulator down to about 50 degrees so that when I sear it, it doesn't go too high in temperature. Now, the problem with this technique in general, is that if you're gonna, if you're gonna do it, you have to use relatively thick

[17:09] stakes, like inch and a quarter, inch and a half . Anything thinner than that. And even if you drop the temperature from, let's say, 55, which is what I cook to, Celsius, you drop it down to, let's say, 50 Celsius, you're still going to overcook the

[17:21] center if you, um, if it's thinner than that. So already, like you're kind of limited because you have to use these thicker meats if you want to do this kind of a

[17:30] technique. So, I mean, in the past, I've done techniques for smaller cuts of meat. where you low temp it and actually chill it down, keep it in the fridge, then bring it out and like flash fry it a couple times or pan it a couple

[17:42] times and the inside comes up to temperature. The other problem with a thick steak, if you drop the whole thing down to 5 degrees, let's say, to 50, is that once you sear it, yeah, you haven't overcooked it, but the inside's a little

[17:53] cool, and you've had it before stars, when people do low temperature meats. And like one of the issues is it's not warm enough on the plate, right? Because when you integrate the temperature across the whole thing. anyway. So it turns out that from a. I remember that fish we saw that was fried that was still alive. No, it's gross. separate story. We could talk about that. That's a classic preparation where you keep the animal's head alive and its gills alive. You wrap it in moist towels, and then you fry its body so that its head still alive while its body's cooked, which is... That's why the worst thing. pretty cool. What? in person. That's probably the worst thing I've seen in person. Yeah, I'll like, let's let's forget the cruelty. I also don't like the texture or taste. Right? I mean, in other words, like, no, man, I don't look, I'm not being straight up, like, I don't mean to be, like, horrible about it, but, like, not only is it

[18:40] a, not only is it horrific, right? Not only is it horrific, it doesn't even get a good... Yeah, what's the

[18:47] point even? If it doesn't taste good. Yeah, there's a huge cultural difference, though, because, like, you know, there's, you know, 100s of 1000000s of people who want their fish, like, crunchy like that. You know what I mean? No, what's the point of keeping it's just a trick. It's just a party trick to show like freshness, right? It's just a party trick. To play God. Yeah, it's like a party. It like a cruelties party trick. I mean, look, um, whatever. Yes. Sorry, I didn't mean to derail you. So, no, so, like, no, Nastasia is the one that brought up the Nastasia brother. We were talking about whole fish, couldn't circulate. So she was just thinking about that. Yeah. I 1st saw that when I was a kid on an episode of a show called That's Incredible. It was either that or Ripley's Believe It or Not, which was an 80s show. And in that one, it was a little bit different. They didn't fry it. they did was they fileted it, left the body there, and then they replaced the filets on the living body of it. Also. And so you're sitting there and the gills are like, bip bop, bip bop. You know what I mean? And the fish is like, what the fuck? You know what I mean? Like, oh, man. Anyway, so back to the food. So here's the issue I need your help with people. Um, it turns out that the technically best way. so when you're cooking a piece of meat. Uh, the rate

[20:09] at which uh, something heats up is dependent on the temperature delta,

[20:14] okay? So the difference in temperature. That's why, like, you know, it takes a long, long time for the inside of a meat to get up the last couple of degrees because once the

[20:24] meat, once the main body of the meat has started heating up, you have very small temperature difference between, let's say, the part of the meat that's in the very

[20:33] center, from the part of the meat that's right next to it. And once the temperature difference is very small, the heating the temperature increase rate goes down and down and down. So your, the rate at which temperature can increase in a piece of meat is related to the difference in temperature between the heat you're

[20:48] supplying and, I mean, between the temperature, you know, region that you're supplying heat from and the temperature region you're, you're putting heat into.

[20:56] So, um, When you push a piece of meat down only 5 degrees, right, you're pushing it down and you haven't pushed it down that far, then when you're searing it, you put a very high temperature delta onto it,

[21:10] right? You know, the surface of the meat's going to get up very quickly to about 100 degrees C, that, you know, it won't go above it until it crust forms, but that piece of meat there is going to be about

[21:19] 100 degrees C. So you're going, you've reduced the inside of the hole inside of the meat by 5 degrees, but you're applying an

[21:26] excess of 50 degrees temperature delta to it, and that forces a pretty big temperature spike through the meat.

[21:33] So you have to chill the meat down quite a bit in order to have it not overcooked when you're searing it. So the correct answer is to actually force a large negative temperature delta into it. In other words, put the meat into cold water for a couple of minutes and then pull it out of the cold water and then sear it, and then it all averages out. The problem is, is that it's technically, right, that sounds like technically more of a pain in the ass. If I have to pull out a piece of meat out of a circulator and then throw it into,

[22:02] you know, a pot of water in the sink with the cold water tap on drizzle and then time it for 3 minutes, then pull it out and then sear it, that seems like a huge pain in the ass, right,

[22:11] Estasia? So the question I have in my mind is, is that if this is the technically best way to do

[22:16] it, and it doesn't require thermometers or measuring anything just requires timing, is that too much for people to do at home or is that a reasonable step? Is that still like something that people will be like, oh yeah, I'll go do that. Or is that like, ah, I'd rather just not do that? You know what I mean? Like, that's the, so I'm going to have to run a bunch of tests. I need some mental advice from people out there over what is considered reasonable steps for people to do on an everyday kind

[22:45] of, uh, cook. What do you think, Stas? No? I mean, also, like, you know, how do people want to fit, assuming that people aren't going to go buy a seers all, uh, or even if they are, like, what's the best way? Like, do people have a problem with deep frying finish? Do people not want a deep fry at home? Do people want to pan their stuff when they're finishing? Do people want to be able to oven finish this stuff? I gotta figure out what people want to do. Because I have to separate out in my head what I would do from what I think other people want to

[23:15] do and then just provide them with the best protocol for what they want to do.

[23:19] Does that make sense to us? anyways. Because you're willing to do a lot. I'm willing to do a lot for something that's only a little bit better. You know what I mean? And also, like, I have access to like, I have access to stuff that most people don't have access to. So I'm going to assume that just because I've organized my life that way. Um, You know, like, I'm assuming that in warmer weather months, people can finish on a grill. So, you know, I'll have a lot of grill stuff in there.

[23:44] I'm assuming people are going to want to finish some stuff in an oven, but, you know, panning because it makes so much smoke is kind of a pain in the butt and also, deep frying, although it's technically superior, I just don't know what people are going to say. We got we got Robert in the chat room saying, sear using sears all or in a pan, never fried. Well, who said that? Robert in the chat room. Okay, so what does Robert have against frying? Robert, what do you have against Brian? See, the issue with frying is, remember, for meats that don't have a crust, the only issue with frying is if you

[24:12] have, once your fry oil becomes even a little bit degraded. It leaves a kind of a fry taste on the outside, but like nice, not

[24:22] hyperfresh because then it doesn't have good properties, but like oil that's in perfect condition, has no kind of

[24:27] off flavors to it. You deep fry like a rack of lamb. Like you do a rack of lamb and you deep fry it for about, I don't know, a minute and a half ,

[24:35] 2 minutes, you deep fry that rack of lamb, and the crust is perfect all the way around. So nice. But then you have to, like, if you don't like, if there, you know, then you towel it, you paper towel it, then you can brush with, you know, butter or whatever else you want. Same with steaks. Like a good steak that's like deep fried all the way around, gets a perfect kind of crust all the way

[24:54] around it. But, um, if your oil is even a little bit bad, it's no no good at all. Um, anyways. Robert's listening his reasons. He says, it's messy. What do I do with the oil? Dangerous kids around, expensive. I'm lazy. Wife won't go for it. Those are all good reasons. fair. Do you remember, uh, do you remember when Lucy threatened uh, Lionel in, I think it was the, the Peanuts the Christmas special, when he's like,

[25:24] why, you know, why should I listen to what you say? And she goes, I'll give you 5 reasons and puts up her fist and he goes, those are good reasons. Remember that? Love that. Dave Peter just said he got you a middle seat on your flight to El Paso. there anything you're doing in El Paso that you can tell people about? I don't know what I'm doing in El Paso. I'm going to El Paso pretty soon. Middle seed, that's brutal. What? Middle seed. brutal. It's a it's a fun fact that anyone who works with me anytime anytime people want to send me somewhere, they like to put me in the middle seat in the back of the airplane, on

[26:00] the seat that doesn't recline, you know that one seat on the airplane that doesn't recline? They'd like me to be in the middle in the back, and if they were able to, they would always organize it for rough weather flights.

[26:09] They can't, but they always would if they could send me through a cell of thunderstorms. Why do you think that is? People hate me. Like, it turns out Nastasia once booked me on, I still told the story before on the air, but Nastasia sent me on Spirit Airlines,

[26:27] right, when somebody else was paying. When somebody else was paying, they're like, yeah, just book your flight, whatever you want. She could have flown me 1st class on like a real airline. Like, you know what I mean? It wouldn't have mattered. They wouldn't have blinked. She spent, she sent me spirit back when like, and I sat next to a woman who had a fake service dog that was like

[26:50] all, like, I was like, what the hell? Like, spirit's the one where they... How do you know it was fake? Because she told me. Oh, she told you. She's like, you just say it's a service dog, and if they argue, you sue him. I'm like all right. And the dog and the dog run to take your seat? Dog, yeah, I was like, I was like, why am I here? Why does this exist? And the only reason she did. If Nastasia had been going with me on that trip, which she was supposed to, we would have had nice flights. We would have had nice flights. She's like, I don't know why. I don't know why I got that flight. Because you hate me. No that was a real dumb move. Okay. Uh, we have a question in from Gordon. I've heard Dave talk glowingly about squid-based Japanese fish

[27:33] sauce, Ishiri. all squid-based. Some of the Ishiris that are, they're all from Ishikawa. Some are mackerel based, but the one that I happen to like is not just squid, but they use the squid bodies. It's the squid guts and the squid blood, and it's delicious. Anyway, I've heard him talk about it. I sharing many times on the podcast. I've been trying to find a way to buy it and I am stumped. Dave, is there any way for me to get my hands on this stuff? I'm a regular Joe consumer, not a restaurant or slash business in the US, Seattle. Thanks. Okay. So, um, there is a store and I have not tasted this one. But there's a Japanese fish sauce. I don't know what it's made out of. It's not one that I've tried, but it's a Japanese style fish sauce, uh, that the Corti Brothers, uh, C-O-R-T-I Brothers.com. They sell it. They call it Shaturu, S-H-O-T-T-U-R-U, but I've never tried it, so I can't really say much about it. I will say that the company that used to bring in the two, my 2 favorite Japanese fish sauces. The one is Ishiri, which is fantastic. Although I've tried some Ashiri's that I didn't like as much. So, you know, this particular one. I don't even know if they carry anymore. They carry one that looks similar to it. Um, and the other my other favorite fish sauce is is IU, uh, AYU, which is a Japanese freshwater fish, um, typically served like, you know, grilled on skewers to look like it's swimming. We had that when we were in Japan. That fish sauce is incredibly delicious. Um, It's mutual trading company. Now, there's a New York mutual trading company. There's they have branches all over the country. There's a New York mutual trading company that has a, um,

[29:09] that has a uh, a showroom here in New York. I call them and they don't have stock on the IU and they don't have a PO in for

[29:18] it and they're out of Ishiri now and they're not going to get it back in until April. However, the Los Angeles, uh, one, the Los Angeles Mutual Trading uh, company. They might have it, because I asked, and the woman said that they have entirely different systems, and so they might have it in stock. So I didn't have a chance to call them because I was on my way out and they were just opening as I was leaving the house. you know, because I'm on New York time there in LA time. So I would call Los Angeles Mutual Trading. They have a showroom in Los Angeles, so they might be willing to send it to the showroom and then ship it to you from

[29:53] there. But just so you know, the IU fish sauce, which I highly, highly, highly recommend. Their stock number on that is 1604, and the Ishiri, which looks similar to the one that they used to carry, but might not be the exact brand. I mean, I can't read any congee on it, is item number 20340, uh, on the mutual trading company. But check the LA branch and they might ship it to Seattle out of their Los Angeles showroom. Anyway. Um, even you like those fish sauces. They tasted good. They're good. Um, okay. We have a call, a question in from UM. I'm assuming that's UM and not UM, right? That'd be amazing name. What's your name? Right? That'd be awesome. Towards the end of last week's cooking issues, uh, was 2 weeks ago now. Dave started talking about collagen and meat texture. I find this topic fascinating. I would like to add my vote to have him speak more on the topic. I, of course, want to hear more about the new bar, seeing as Booker and Dax was my favorite bar, and I felt dejected and alone since it closed. Thanks for the show, UM. Well, uh, they, we're in the same place with that, with the dang bar, figuring out a new place to open. I never thought, I knew it was hard to find a space in New York City, you know, in the, in the area that I want to, but I didn't know kind of how hard it was going to be. Like it's frustrating that you literally have people who are willing to pay for something and

[31:16] no space to put it into. It's so frustrating. New York is such a pain in the butt. Maybe you should not look outside of East Village. Like where? I don't know. Like where? What neighborhood would you go to for a bar? Only Hell's Kitchen. Oh yeah, like this is not a Hell's Kitchen kind of a bar. Nastasia frequents a bar called the gaff. The gaff. The gaff. Sounds like a college bar. you would be right It is except for there's no college students in that area. So what it is, is reaching recent college grads. Or really old ones that wish they were still in college. Wow, that's rough. It's not a finance pro bar, though, right? Very often. You used to. I used to a lot. But it's not a finance bro ball. No, no. Losers. Those are my favorite kind of bars. You ever go to my old bar, the Holland? No. You got to go... I want to know whether I want to know whether it's still good. It's frightening to look into the Holland. Super frightening, but super friendly. at least, you know, was a decade ago when I used to go decade and a half now. Anyway, so we're looking we're looking for that. As for Collagen, I mentioned it briefly, and I'm going to mention it in regards to another question that we have, but I've been doing a lot of research

[32:22] on muscle structure, texture and taste for the upcoming book. And, um, so, and I think I mentioned this briefly on the air a couple weeks ago, is that, um, everyone always says, oh, the collagen and meat is what makes it tough, right?

[32:40] You've heard that a 1000000 times, stars, right? Yeah. But, you know, kind of, if you don't think about it, you're thinking more about like connected tissue you can see, aren't you?

[32:48] Most of the times, does? Yeah. But it's not that at all. It's like every muscle has 3 basic layers of connected tissue. They have the silver skin, which goes around the whole muscle and that you take off, right? Then they have the connective tissue that goes around each individual muscle fiber, right? And both of those things are pretty constant. The one, because you take it off, and the other one, because like different muscle fibers,

[33:15] they, you know, the amount of connected tissue around the individual

[33:19] fibers varies, but doesn't vary, and the cross-links in it vary, but don't vary that much as much from muscle to

[33:27] muscle. What does vary quite a bit is that is the intermediate kind of connector tissue, which is around what's called, I don't know how it's pronounced, but I'm going to say the

[33:36] paramecium, right? And so that's the individual bundles. What? Paramesium. Now paramecium is the protozoan animal. And paramecium, although I assume that because it's myofibrile is the muscle thing. I see it's myo, like myoscin, like muscle, but it's like, um, so the paramecium is the, is the connected tissue that goes around uh, the bundles of muscle fibers. And so when you cut across a piece of meat and you look at it and it looks like little columns, you know what I'm talking about styles, right? The grain, it's the actual connective tissue that surrounds that grain. And that connective tissue, that collagen is extremely variant between different muscle types, right? And so you have very weak, uh, slash, you know, lower amounts of total, um, uh,

[34:28] paramysial collagen, and let's say a tender piece of meat versus a a non-tender,

[34:33] uh, you know, piece of meat. And so it's breaking down that collagen, which is important. And so, part of what I'm going to be looking at when I'm doing the book is, um, kind of different ways to mitigate the effect of, um, the, uh,

[34:51] parameceum's uh, collagen on it. And that's why I said before, that while, like a lot of people's studies on the effects of salting or of marination or of various different things, um, take into account, uh, some effects, like for instance, if you're doing studies for marination or salting on chicken breast, chicken breast has a very

[35:12] different, um, structure for the, you know, the, um, the intramuscular connective tissue than does uh, chuck meat. And so what I want to look at is Ken, and I've always been an advocate, like I said, a couple weeks ago for not salting meat, uh, if it's

[35:29] going to be eaten a, eaten like a steak, and be cooked for a long time because of the firm texture. But this might all get overridden because most of my tests, all of my tests were on relatively tender cuts of meat. And so what I want to look at is the effect of marination and salt penetration on meats that have very large amounts of, um, uh, I don't know how

[35:52] you call, collagen in the paramiceum, because maybe if you break those down in the larger grain things, you can actually have a larger effect on those pieces of meat, then you would in something that has, uh, like a finer structure

[36:05] of uh, muscle bundles. Anyway, so that's what I'm looking at in collagen right now, but I have no results to report back. But I better soon, or my editor is going to tear my freaking head off. I have to finish with all of my research soon. So I'm doing these like parallel researches, Nastasia, on one on temperatures and techniques in terms of with my physics

[36:25] modeling and then on marination salting structure and collagen structure on the

[36:30] other. So I'm working on those 2 kind of things simultaneously, but they better in a couple

[36:33] of months, end up in a book where I'm hosed. Hosed, people, hosed. Also on the subject, the people are asking all questions about stuff I'm researching, which is lucky. Eric writes it about grad fed beef. I recently bought a quarter share of grass fed beef from a local rancher. Should have bought it from Hearst Ranch, grass fed, grass fed beef abattoir. Unfortunately, it tastes very strongly of that gamey off flavor that grass fed

[36:57] bees so often, seems to have vegan face, Nastasi. You haven't made your vegan face. Oh my god. I hate to go off in a tangent, but I love going off in tangent. You know this. So for some reason, I was, I don't know why. I think it was because of something that, uh, I saw on the news this morning, uh, you know, morning Joe was on, he started talking about Lenin. I don't know why. And they say, so I went on Wikipedia for a minute. I did, you know, you know, every couple of years, you have to re-up yourself on knowledge that you used to have. So someone's like Lenin. I, okay, I've forgotten most of this stuff I know about Lenin. So I did a quick Wikipedia on them. And for those of you that want to know what it's like. I forget her name. I can't believe, look it up, Nastasia, Lenin's wife. Lennon's wife. So Lenon's wife. I looked her up and the face that this lady has in every single picture is Nastasia's standard face when she's looking at you. Like, it's just her standard, not like her facial features, but just the look in the mouth and the

[38:00] eyes is if you want to know what it's like to have Nastasia sitting across the table while you're trying to explain

[38:06] something or while you're trying to like figure out what's going on in life. That's the look. That's the look. What's her name? Nadesh, Nadesh, Krupskaya. Yeah? Yeah. Classic right? Yeah. That look on her face. Oh my god. Like, that's... That one she's smiling, though. If you saw the picture, the nostasia was showing me and said that that she's smiling. It's like, there's one picture I saw of her with Lenin where she has like a pissed off smile on her face, kind of. But like, like some of the pictures that she has, like that's, it's like her suppressed vegan face, I think. Anyways. Hey Dave, actually, before we get to the question, you want to take a quick break? I'm sure we'll take a quick break, come back with more cooking issues.

[38:57] Bob's Red Mill has been milling whole grains since 1978. When you millhole grange, you get all three parts, the brand, the germ, and the endosperm, the brand, or the rough

[39:13] age, makes up about 14% of the whole grain. It's the outer skin of the edible kernel. It contains large amounts of B vitamins, some protein, trace minerals, phytochemicals, but most

[39:23] importantly, dietary fiber. The germ is only about 2.5% of the kernel. It's actually the sprouting section of the seed. What's gonna grow into a plant? It's usually separated during milling process because it contains most of the fat and therefore has a shorter shelf life. The end of sperm is the main energy storage unit of the sea. That's where the growing plant gets its energy before it can start photosynthesizing and making its own. It makes up a huge portion of the grain, about 83%. And it's the main source that's used for white flour. When you make white flour, you get rid of the germ and the brand and just have the white

[39:57] endosperm left. It contains almost all the carbohydrates. It also contains protein and iron and some of the other B vitamins as well. It's kind of what you classically think of when you're thinking of flour. So all that's there when you're milling with whole grains, but when you mill whole grains, you also get the brand, which is the kind of rough edge and gives

[40:16] that, that's what gives that kind of color to it, also gives you extra fiber that helps you to be regular, and you also get the

[40:22] germ, which adds the fat and the flavor, which we all like from whole grains.

[40:26] Learn more at bobsredmill.com slash podcast. 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 guesswork,

[41:04] gets you cooking faster and give you the information and inspiration you want when you want it.

[41:08] 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.

[41:23] For more information and to order yours now, visit chefsteps.com slash J-O-U-L-E. Holy Houstina, what a long break. will not shut up. That man will not shut up. Yeah, he's got a lot of opinions. God, a guy will not be. Hey, stop, speaking of opinions. What do you think of the word wheat germ? I think it's okay. Because it's delicious, right? But like normally you would hate it. It's just you're, you're, you're okay with it just because we germ happens to be good. Like, I love adding wheat germ to pancakes, muffins and all that stuff. Remember, I keep it in the fridge, though. That stuff goes rancid. Do you buy the big, you don't buy it? you buy it? I always have it. I use it a lot though. If you're not going to use it a lot. You probably get the smaller container. I like that stuff. Oh, before I forget, Jeff over at Copperworks sent us to the show a couple weeks back. I took it home. So, you know, Nastasia and Dave never got to try it. But, uh, Copperworks makes this, um, I think it's called, uh, it's their whiskey. It's all American malt. It's like they, they basically, I looked them up on the, and Jeff from there sent it. I looked them up on the internet. And, uh, I think this, the story and they'll, hopefully, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, is they actually brew a good tasting beer.

[42:41] So not like, uh, like, uh, distiller's water, stiller's beer, like a good tasting, like malt, like beverage, and then distill that. Uh, and then age it. And so he sent us a bottle of that stuff, batch number two. That stuff is delicious. The stuff is delicious. I loved it. And, uh, my wife loved it, and so we we were drinking it, and then I wanted to get a bottle for my stepfather, because it was his birthday, and, but it turns out that they don't ship to, they don't ship to New York. So how did we get it? So I gave, I gave my stepfather the, the bottle that we had drunk through, like a quarter of, and I was like, sorry, went, wap. you're gonna like it. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy a bottle because you, anyone who lives around New York can get it, right? You can online order it to ship to New Jersey, Connecticut, or Pennsylvania, but whatever. What? What going on with us? The waitress's outfit. Yeah, it's whatever. We're not going to comment on people's outfits unless it's Santa's little hipster. Yeah, this isn't the Oscars coming out. Yeah, oh my god. Anyway, so thanks so much, guys. Thanks, Jeff, the Copperworks, you make a delicious product. And not standard American whiskey tasting, which is what I like. Like they're not doing just another riff on a standard American product. You know what I mean? Yep. It's like not just another bourbon or, you know, it's good or a fake or a, you know, another fake scotch or whatever. It's good. Not that you people, other people are making fixed cuts. not what I meant. You know what I mean? I think it's a it's an excellent product. That's not who's making that face again. Making that shut up face, that Lenin's wife face. What her name? Too hard to say. You're like, you're like, half Russia, Ukrainian. I don't remember the name. The only the only words you can say are like prostitute. That's the only... And and feminine hygiene products. You know all the words for feminine hygiene products in Russian. Yes. and anyway. So, um, back to the question. So, if you remember, back before the break. Eric, Eric with a K, by the way, bought a quarter share of

[44:40] grass fed beef and it has an off flavor that he's having a tough time getting rid

[44:45] of. So is there any treatment I can apply to the beef to eliminate or reduce that taste. I've tried heavily seasoned recipes like chili, but still failed to mass the taste. I've got a freezer full of beef out here. So I'd love to be able to enjoy it. Can't wait for the spins all, Eric. Okay, what I need to know from you, to fully answer this question is what muscle cuts you have cooked and what you have so

[45:06] far? So the bad news is, um, The bad news is, is that game flavors and

[45:14] off flavors in commercially raised meats. So typically, they vary animal to animals. So a particular animal, like might have a much higher score for off-flavor or gamey flavor than other animals,

[45:28] uh, that are raised in exactly the same way in exactly the same

[45:33] uh, pastures. And so it's really hard to kind of know. Now, I also need to know exactly what you mean by gamey, right? So a lot of people, what they associate gaming flavor with is kind of a livery taste, right? And that livery taste is often associated. The literature, by the way, if you've read it, which I don't recommend because it's all over the place. Like, you know, no one seems to agree. And it's, it's very

[45:58] confusing, and there's also like 100s and 100s and 100s of pages on it, uh, because people uh, care about it. But the only answer in terms of choosing meats is that you can't really know from

[46:08] grass fed or not whether or not it's going to have a gamey or a liver flavor. It's just animal, it's animal to animal. There are effects, right? Age of the animal. The older an animal is, the more likely it is to have a liver flavor, an

[46:22] off-flavor, gaming flavor. Certain diets can increase the range, but really you're kind of in a crapshoot animal animal. But the good news, maybe for you, is that it also depends on the exact muscle you're using. So, uh, for instance, flat iron steak, which is a muscle in the chuck uh, portion. The flat iron and Chuck in general has a higher proportion of muscles that might have that defect, but a muscle, other muscles in the

[46:51] truck might not have it. So you might have just been unlucky, and cooked a couple of the muscles. For instance, the flat iron, the infrastinatus that have a higher gamey livery off flavor than other muscles, and the rest of your muscles might be better. Um, I've had it happen also, although I don't think there's been a lot of study on it, but I don't

[47:11] know, eye of round, I've had that happen before. I don't know which muscles you have, what muscles you have left, which ones you've already cooked. So knowledge of which muscles you use might, A, make you feel a little bit better about the muscles you have left. Like, I don't know. I don't know whether you're a cook the, cook the cheaper ones 1st so you have the fancy ones for later, or if you're a cook the fancy ones now, so you have the cheaper ones later. I just don't know I don't know how you're doing. Now, um, once you, you know, you're in

[47:39] this situation where you already have a cow that has a known kind of, and I'm assuming it's like livery, gamey flavor, all that I don't know. See, the interesting thing about grass fed animals is that, you know how stars, how everyone says, and I've mentioned this on a show too, that everyone says the

[47:52] flavor. I said it 1000000s of times, the flavor of the animals in the fat, right? And so what people think most of the time, at least me, is that they mean it's in the marbling,

[48:01] right? And so you're going to have less meat flavor and a less marbled piece of meat, theoretically, right? Because it has less fat in it. It turns out that the fat, fat includes is very, very important, but it's a lot of the flavor isn't, it doesn't have to do

[48:16] with, those kind of lipids that you see is marbling, but rather the lipids that are actually in the cell membranes of the individual cells, because those are the, the, the poofas, the

[48:26] polyunsaturated fatty acids, that tend to give a lot of the flavor characteristics to a particular animal or not, right?

[48:33] And so, um, the, you know, the, the, the short story is, is that, yes, that those characteristic flavors can be different in grass fed and maybe you don't like those, but they're also variant depending on exactly what they were eating.

[48:47] So you can't just make a categorical statement on grassfit versus not. Now, as to your actual question, which I have not answered yet, how do I get rid of that,

[48:56] the short answer is, I don't know. But I'm wondering, and I started looking into it, but I haven't been able to run any tests, and if you have a lot of it, I would recommend, um, you know, some some basic

[49:07] tests, I would think that, um, if these are oxidation, um,

[49:12] some people seem to think that some of these reactions can be oxidation reactions.

[49:17] Um, and so perhaps an antioxidant might help. Perhaps you might be able to shift these aromas by shifting these things to a more acidic

[49:27] environment. So actually cooking them or marinating them prior to cooking them in an acidic environment. Like a lot of game people, they recommend vinegar soaks and or buttermilk soaks, which are acidic. And so like if the, if the, you know, the old uh, wives tales are to take

[49:42] gamey meets and to do an initial, like, leech uh, of those flavors, either a lot of people do like a quick boil, but I think that's mainly to get rid of rotten

[49:50] parts uh, or, you know, overly developed parts. Um, but like in acids, maybe an acid might help. So I'd look into that, although I don't really understand the mechanism of

[50:01] it, that seems to be what people do over the years to try to mitigate the effect of gaminess.

[50:05] Okay. Nastasi's like, you've said enough. Check. should do one more. Got time for one more quick one. One. One. One. Oh, man. But I have I have Melissa, who has a goat cheese question, which I'm interested in, but maybe I'll talk about that next

[50:24] time. She has a problem with goat cheeses because they kind of harsher palate. I don't have a problem with goat cheeses. I have a problem with other, I'll do this one real quick, but I have some egg questions I got to get to too. Oh, screw the eggs. They all my friends. Well, see how Nastasia treats her friends. You see it, people? But I had a lot of good stuff to say about days. Anyway, we'll do Melissa real quick. Melissa from Hamilton, Ontario. Hello, Dave, Nastasia, and Dave. I enjoy foods of all sorts and generally do not have issues when it comes to trying new things. Goat cheese, however, is the main exception. No matter how hard I try. I can't help have a near visceral reaction whenever I eat goat cheese. No matter the quality or supposed goat cheesiness. Not only does it taste awful, but it blows out my palate for an extended period of time. My question is, do you have any idea why this is happening or what would be causing it? Thanks, love the show, Melissa from Hamilton, Ontario. Uh, short answer, no, but I will say this. Um, People sometimes have, um, reactions to specific, I mean, the fact the matter is, is that there are things, uh, you know, many things, fatty acids, for instance, that are different in goat milk than in other

[51:30] milks. And I'll relate to you a similar experience. And so I've come to recognize specific things that affect my palate. So aged, um, full fat cheese is undergo uh, lipid oxidation, and some of those lipid oxidation products, right, uh, affect my palate like in a pretty hardcore way.

[51:51] They make... Does this have new stars, like taste buds pop? You know what I mean? like they'll hurt and like pop out. Yeah. So, like uh, aged full fat cheeses, do that to my uh, taste buds. I ate them anyway because they're incredibly delicious. But they literally blow out my palate, i.e. my taste buds pop out and

[52:10] like I'm in pain, but I eat it anyway. And so like, For me, if someone says, is this a full fat cheese and ate cheese or

[52:18] not? I can eat it and be like, that's full fat cheese? I know because I'm in pain. You know what I mean? I'm eating it anyway. So, like, it's very possible that there is some sort of, um, product in there that you react to, uh, and you shouldn't be embarrassed. You know what? Like, I hate melon. You don't have to like go cheese, right, Stas? Yeah. I mean, if you're generally, I tell my kids, I'm like, you're allowed to have like one or 2 things that you don't like. But the problem is, is when they don't like everything. You know what I mean? And it sounds like you just don't like it. You know what I mean? That's cool. Like if you if you don't like something. I have, you know, I think everyone's problem with people not liking things is when they don't like it for mental reasons.

[52:55] You know what I mean? is when you, like, the theory of, bothers you, but it doesn't sound like the theory of goat cheese bothers you. It sounds like actual goat cheese bothers you. In which case, you're clear of that. What do you think, Dave? Yeah, go with your gut. Yeah. All right. So I had some questions on eggs, which I'm not going to get to about like freshness of eggs and then why we refrigerate them versus not. And I had a huge rant I was going to go off onto on eggs that we don't have the time for. Do we have even a little bit left? No, because I know eggs are like your thing. No, not for that, but if Scott wrote in about a slushing machine. Do I have time for a quick selection machine question? All right, so, Scott, next week I'll talk to you about bricks and slushy machine, but I'll give you a

[53:34] short short, I'll give you the short of it now on the way out. He had a question he didn't want to ruin his slushy machine. You want your slushy cocktails if you want to do bar style and not like crappy daiquiri, which are only like 7%

[53:46] alcohol. When I'm doing them, they're between 14 and 15% alcohol. Uh, 85 grams per liter of sugar and 0.6 to 0.9% acidity.

[53:57] Boom, boo, yeah. use those as a ratio. We'll talk more about it. Next time on cooking issues.

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