[0:00] Today's show is sponsored by Bob's Red Mill. With natural foods, they support organic, vegan, paleo, and gluten-free lifestyles. Learn more about their commitment to good food for all at bobsredmill.com slash podcast. This episode is brought to you by Jule, the immersion 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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[0:53] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network. every Tuesday from like, I don't know, what is it, like 1215 to like 1245, one o'clock. Uh, you know, from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Join as usual with Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Nastasia? Yeah? Yeah. Got Dave in the booth. How you doing? Also good. Yeah? How do you pronounce your last name? Tada sure. Tadishure. So it's like not like the full Italian pronunciation. Give me the Italian. Not in this country, I guess. Give me the Italian. Tatascuri. Hey, hey, but you pronounce it Tatishore? Like dinosaur, but with Tata? You know, funny story. I one time met Ben Stein, the comedian, and he asked my

[1:41] name and I told him and he was like, oh, like Dinah Shore. For real? Yeah. So that's one thing I share with Ben Stein. Yes. Nice. All right. Why did you meet Ben Stein? I don't know. was like wandering around the campus of my school. That seems like he was there for he must have been there for a show or something. This was at this was at a school which shall remain unnamed in central Pennsylvania many, many years ago. Did he, was he doing his, uh, his Bueller bit or was he doing

[2:09] his, uh, his, his game show bit or what? No, I think actually, I don't know. I don't think it was a comedy show. I think he was just there to speak about life or Nixon or whatever he has

[2:21] to say. Yeah, he's quite a conservative dude. He's like super conservative dude. Yes, shockingly. Like super conservative. But like regardless of anyone's political beliefs, everyone loves Bueller, Bueller. what school did you go to? was Penn State. Nice. Penn State's great. Why do you not what? No, no, but Dave, what school did you go to? What, me? Oh, Nastasia, like Nastasia went to Stanford. Yeah, yeah, but this is my, this is what I hate when people ask me what school I went to. What school do you go to? Oh, it's in Northern California. Like how Northern? We talking like Eureka? We talking... So you went to like, you know, what? You're like, stay in food. No, no, they're like, what is in Palo Island? You keep going. East Palo Alto, though. like went to like a like a CC in East Palo Alto. That's what you've done, like, Connecticut? It's not true? They're like, where do you live? Connecticut? Because I actually lived in Connecticut. No, no, no. agree with this. Yeah, yeah. You'd say where you went. Here's the issue. I'm 45 years old, almost 46 years old. I mean, where I went to school, pretty immaterial, other than the fact that I met my wife there. Yeah. But Penn State, which is where my grandpa who just died, came from the lion, you know, whatever, like they have great ice cream, apparently. They have like the ice cream program. Like, if you want to learn how to make ice cream on a commercial level, like you go to Penn State, you ever have their ice cream when they were out there? Did you enjoy their ice cream? Yeah of course. All right. They have great ice cream and a pathological state of denial going on up there. About other things. Yes. Look, that all right, I got you. All right. There's been a caller who's been waiting, right? All right, well, I'll take that caller, and if there are more callers calling your questions, 2718-497-2128, that's 718-497-2128, and call her you're on the air. Hey, uh, this is Darren, uh, a young fan from the kingdom of that one. Hey, nice. Can you hear me, okay? Until now, the quality's been kind of bad on my side. Let me ask you a question. In the Netherlands, are they super worried about sea levels rising? Oh, man, I'm so sorry, I really can't hear you on my end. Maybe I should try and call you back. No, yeah, call back so you can hear what I hear. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? I feel like the guy who switched from Verizon to Sprint. Can you hear me now, color? Give a call back. Give a call back and we'll try it again. In the meantime. I think you have another color. I have another color? Yeah, there's another call. All right, call her, you're on the air. Hello? What's going on with these people? We're having some bad luck with the calls today. Listen, you tell me, are you there? Hey, how you doing, caller? Oh, hi. Yes, I can kind of hear you. How's it going? I had a question about pressure cooking stocks in aluminum pot. Sure. Um, I'm opening a restaurant that's gonna be doing a lot of soups and we're hoping to do pressure cooked chicken stock. And the biggest one I can find that's not like insanely expensive is like a 41 quart all-American special cooker that's, but they're only made in aluminum. And I was wondering if there's any concerns with that. Because I noticed on, in, uh, one of your posts from a while ago in the blog, you guys

[5:32] used like a steel steel insert when you guys were using. Yeah, a lot depends on what you're going to do. Like, okay, so there's there are people who are worried about aluminum in any event. I'm not one of those people, but like you do need to be worried about aluminum in excessively basic conditions or anytime you're setting up sort of like kind of a galvanic cell between metals or like if you have heavy detergents going into it or if you have, I guess also, I mean, I wonder what, I guess extreme

[6:01] acids too, whatever. But anyway, so aluminum, though, in chicken stock, I don't think is going to be that big of a problem. You know, I'm sure you've used over the course of your life, various qualities of aluminum pots, and what, you know, what you notice is that they get, um, they get pitted out, especially like the lower quality ones, get pitted out a lot, and that metal's going somewhere.

[6:21] Guess where? Uh, you know what I mean? It's like, some of it's getting scrubbed out, but, you know, some of that stuff's getting beached out. Most of it happens when you can form like a galvanic connection, like an electrical connection between dissimilar

[6:34] metals and a liquid medium, i.e. your food. Now, in chicken stock, which, you know, isn't especially acidic or basic, I doubt that you're going to have that many

[6:44] problems, and I myself am not worried about, I'm not worried about it in very, very long cooking items. I've had some things discolor when they're cooking in the presence of aluminum foil in

[6:55] sous vide, but we're talking like, you know, days. you know, or at least many, many hours. So like a short run in a pressure cooker, I don't think is going to cause that much of a problem. Now you could get people on. See, back in the day, people used to worry about aluminum pots because there was increased aluminum content in the brains of

[7:17] autopsied Alzheimer's patients. And so then the question was, did aluminum cause Alzheimer's or not, right? And this is a big problem because aluminum's in like a lot of the baking powders that we use. I think it's also one of the main ingredients in, you know, an aluminum compound. I think in underarm deodorant. And so we come into aluminum in kind of non-natural formats. Okay, pretty often. You know what I mean? Um, and so they did a lot of research, and I think it was determined that, you know, that it is true that Alzheimer's patients put more aluminum into their brains, but it's not that they, that you and

[7:59] I necessarily are getting aluminum into, through the food we ingest, and depositing it in our brains, and that's causing Alzheimer's. In other words, I think the current research shows that it's a, it's a result rather than a cause, if that makes sense. So, you know, what you need to worry about more is like, is it affecting the flavor, I think, of other

[8:21] stock? And you know what? Honestly, I've never noticed it. I've never done a side by side in the American pressure canner versus like, um, because the other problem with the American pressure, you know, pressure canner is that it is a big ship to steer. So you have, it takes a while to get her up to pressure and then it takes a while to stabilize it out. You know what I mean? And you have all those fidgety, fussy knobs on the top of it that you, you know, tighten it down like a submarine bulkhead.

[8:49] Actually, I wish it was like a submarine bulkhead. Those have just that one big knob. These have like all those little like, you know, those little black knobs. So it can be kind of fidgety to get it going, but it does make a whole boatload of stuff once you're done. The other thing you have to be careful with on those units is they take a long time to cool down too. Long time to cool down. So, like, it's not necessarily for anything that you need to do like a natural temperature drop on just because you're going to be there forever. You know what I mean? Whereas, you know, for stock, I don't really, this is true. You might get more, you're probably going to get a cloudier stock if you force cool it rather than let it like come down naturally, but you might be able to cut your recipes a little bit

[9:33] shorter, and then to account for the fact that it's going to take a long time for the thing to kind of drift back

[9:38] down. But back to what I was saying, I've never noticed an aluminum flavor on something that is cooked solely in an aluminum pot that is not acidic,

[9:48] it's not basic, and also doesn't have any other metal implements in it. You know what I mean? So, you know, I've noticed in kind of mixed metal situations, you know, where I know the aluminum is

[9:59] leeching. I don't know whether it's my mind telling me there's a taste or not, could be, you know, it's hard to say. Um, But that's just my, you know, my general impression because, you know, in general, you know, I, everybody knows that a lot of their stuff in a restaurant, you know, maybe not a high-end restaurant, but

[10:17] in like, you know, medium restaurants is cooked in aluminum because large aluminum pots are so much cheaper than large stainless steel pots, so much cheaper for a given level of, you know, quality.

[10:26] And so, you know, unless, you know, what was the last time you were at a restaurant where

[10:31] someone like had the soup and was like, oh my god, they cooked this in aluminum. You know what I mean? Now, that said, I think it would make sense to do, like, some side by side, just kind of for fun to see whether you could blind, you know, triangle

[10:45] test to see whether you could taste a difference. But I kind of doubt it outside of the, you know, the very basic things that I mentioned here. I'm kind of, you know, it's interesting. The people who make that pressure cooker, they make it for 2 reasons. They don't really call it a cooker, they call it either a canner or a sterilizer, depending on what lid you're using. And for those of you that look it up on online, it is by far the biggest pressure cooker you can

[11:07] get, um, you know, they don't call it a cooker because I guess presumably like they're like, who coaxed that much, but the, um, because they're not aimed at pros

[11:17] necessarily. And almost, I've never seen, you know, a modern, um, non-stainless,

[11:25] uh, you know, sandwich, uh, pressure cooker. So it would be hard to do a side by side, which is, I guess, one of the reasons I've never, I've never really done it, but you could do a standard soup side by side, I guess, um, aluminum versus stainless and see what's going on. But that's probably also because they don't, they're not expecting you to cook in it. what I, you know, cooking quotes, like cook a stock, is probably why they don't have a version of it with like an interior

[11:46] hard anodized shell. You know what I mean? Uh, because that would make it a lot easier. Now, if you want to go super fancy, you could take it to your local,

[11:54] uh, you know, local anodizer and and they could make it like whatever awesome color you want along with the hard anodized coating. You could have like the sweetest pink pressure canter in the whole world. You know what I mean? Um, but, um, I don't know whether... puddings for it, but I didn't, I haven't looked into the anodized. Yeah, you know, it's not that expensive to get something anodized, but what I don't know is whether or not the food anodizing people do have like a special bath or whether there's any sort of food

[12:20] gradness to like what an anodizer does because I've never looked at. I have looked at getting parts anodized before. Because, you know, like a lot of aluminum par cards, people want them all different colors because they

[12:30] want, like, you know, they want this piece to be red and this piece to be green because, you know, they're spending a lot, a lot of money on their

[12:36] cars, so like everything has to be just so. And when you have an aluminum part, anodizing is the way to go. Or if you look at like mag lights, you know, back when people were buying a bunch of mag lights, uh, before they got swamped by all the LED people,

[12:48] like, think of all the anodized, cool colors mag lights came in. You know what I mean? Or still come in, I guess. Right, right. So it is possible, but I don't know the cost. Great. And then, and then you guys, you recommend the canner, right? Because the top of that has doesn't have the jiggler valve. It just has like the regular sort of um, non-steam releasing valves. Okay, so the way that the can, there's, there's two. The canner and the sterilizer. The sterilizer is kind of a pain in the butt because it's got a long kind of tube that comes out of

[13:15] it, and that tube is to guarantee that you vent off all of the air that's inside of your pressure cooker.

[13:23] One of the things about a pressure cooker that is not talked about that often, except for, I guess, by pressure cooker, Kanya Shenti, is that you want to actually allow steam to escape

[13:34] for, uh, like, you know, you know, a minute or 2 um, at the beginning of the cook. And the reason is you want to purge all the dry air out of it and have it all be steam. Now, it seems like, you know, it seems like that doesn't make

[13:48] sense, and at 1st blush, when I thought about it, it seems like it wouldn't make a difference, but from what everybody says, it actually makes a

[13:54] difference and the pressure canter people, the pressure sterilizer people who are using, you know, sterilizing implements to use for surgery, especially care about this sort of thing.

[14:02] Uh, and so, you know, in general now, and if you look at like a

[14:07] coon recon, for instance, like, you know how, like when... Yeah, right. So when it comes up to temperature, like the side valve hisses for a while, before it shuts off, and

[14:17] that's, you know what I'm saying, that's a little side valve, and that's inherent in the

[14:22] design such that you get the dry air out of the pressure cooker and all that's left in there is steam.

[14:29] And so that's why it does that. So, you know, if you if you wonder, like, why the hell did they design it this way? Why didn't they just seal it? And that's the reason. So with these guys, they have what's called a very nice geared pressure sensor on the top of the pressure cooker, right? One that's far more accurate than the crappy ones that you get in, you know,

[14:51] in a standard home pressure cooker. But then they also have a weight on them and the weight looks a little bit like a round tinker toy with different size holes drilled in it. And depending on which hole you put on top of the vent valve of the pressure

[15:06] caner, it puts, it's a different radius, and therefore a different amount of pressure that's going to be pushing up on it, and therefore you can adjust the over, like when the steam starts venting on it based on the

[15:19] weight, the weight and the circle diameter of that little tinker toy. Uh, so what you do is you leave the tinker toy off for a little while, let a lot of steam come up, and then once

[15:29] a steam comes up, you put the tinker toy on, and then you adjust the pressure such that the tinker toy is not venting anymore, and you're just using the pressure gauge to determine the pressure of

[15:40] the um, of the stock. See what I mean? So that's how that's how you do it. But it's still considered advisable to, um, to let that thing vent. And I did a bunch of tests where like, you know, I artificially increased the weight of the tinker toy, such that you have to keep the weight centered or it's kind of a

[15:58] mess. but I artificially increased the weight of the tinker toy. One thing you have to be careful of a professional kitchen is some knucklehead is going to lose that weight. They're going to lose it. Then you are hosed. So back when it was living at the French Culinary Institute, I literally tied, I tied it to the handle of the, which is not smart in a pro kitchen because the health inspector is going to be like, what's this piece of string tied to

[16:22] you, it's not in a surf anymore. You know what I mean? But like, but like, just to make sure that I wasn't going to lose that little thing, because the whole piece of equipment is functionally useless after you lose that, you know what I

[16:34] mean? It's just one of those things. Can you say tinker toy one more time? Tinker toy. Do you not have Tinker Toy? When I was a kid, one of my best toys, I had, unfortunately, was made of plastic because, you know, this was the, like, the

[16:45] mid 70s, but they used to make giant tinker toys out of plastic that you could literally make things you could sit in,

[16:51] right? So I was fortunate enough to have a set of these giant tinker

[16:56] toys and I can still, like, you know, if you were to scale them up to my, you know, you know, adult size, like the long tinker toy pipe would be like

[17:04] 4.5 , 5 feet long, like big. You know what I mean? I mean, when I was, I'm sure it was only 2.5 feet long because I was, you know, like shorter,

[17:13] but, you know, anyway. So hopefully this has this hopefully this has been helpful. What I would like you to do, if you do some experiments, I would like you to either call back or tweet over on at cooking issues and let me know how it works out so that I

[17:25] can, uh, help, uh, you know, further cruise in their in pressure cooking endeavors. Great. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hey, Dave. Yeah, did we get that other fellow back? Yeah, other fella. you still there? Hey, how you doing? Can you hear us now? Yeah, I can hear you pretty okay. Nice. before was better, so I was listening, but looks like it's forgiven. So, uh, hi, just Tasia. Hi Dave. Um, I mean, I'm fans calling from the Netherlands. I relatively recently discovered the show. Um, and your men's kick butt, uh, backlog of shows, uh, which I listen to on my commutes to my engineering internship. So thanks a lot for that. I recently made a chef steps chicken pot pie. Yeah, by the way, I'm a college student. So I've got like low budget, but hopefully not low quality questions for you. All right, nice. like low budget. Nastasia likes low quality. like low budget. All right, great. So, um, I really enjoyed uh, chicken pot pie, uh, cooking my girlfriend this weekend, and, uh, I have loads of time on the weekend to go crate days, but I don't even have access to a kitchen generally during the week. Um, so I'm currently thinking a lot about preparing food in advance and preparing good food in advance. Um, so what can you recommend and when you're considering something like a chicken pot pie? Is that best to store in a semi or post-cooked piece or in its constituent sort of pieces like

[18:51] dough balls and the filling? That's a good question. So I've never stored a, I mean, I've had chicken pot pie. First of all, let's just all be clear. Nastasi, you like chicken pot pie, right? Love. Dave, you like chicken pot pie? Best. Yeah. Chicken pot pie is good. I'm going to let's put this all on the table. I like an actual chicken pot pie, i.e. one that has a bottom crust and a top crust, one that was at one time. Right, right. Now, in a modern person, right? Okay, so like, are you but you're American, right? So you've been you've hung out. Have you been to school in America? No, no, I grew up completely in Europe. Oh my god, you're one of those spy-like people who sounds like an American, but isn't from here. You're crazy. Are you a spy? Yeah, half American, half Dutch, but I grew up in football. All right, all right. All right, all right. Nastasia therefore likes you because of the whole Swiss thing. But listen. So, like, in America, a crappy pot pie, even though I feel that we

[19:45] are, like, you know, one of the, you know, bastions of pot pie nests in the world,

[19:49] like, there's this terrible idea where they take a hotel pan and they put the pot pie mix into the hotel pan and just put the crust on top.

[19:57] So just be sure we're not talking about that kind of 2nd tier of pot pipe. Okay. So the issue with the pot pie and storage, once it's baked, is just making sure that the crust on the bottom doesn't get kind of overly soggy.

[20:10] So, um, you know, the, but, I see, I wish I'd run some more tests. I don't buy frozen like pot pies. I admit when I was a kid. I had plenty of, you know, was it Swanson or Stauffer who made the pot pie. Swanson who made the pot pie. I had plenty of those growing up, but yeah. So what's the best way? It's probably similar. I'm trying to think of what a pie. I'm trying to figure out whether you should just make the crust and freeze it and then blind bake or whether or

[20:40] not I don't know how thick you could get and actually literally cooked a pot pie from frozen entirely from frozen. You know what I mean? I'm trying to, it might actually not be so bad. You know what I mean? Like, so if you're looking at a, uh, I'd have to, I'd have to get, uh, our friend Nick Devlin to run some, um, console,

[20:58] uh, uh, stuff, but I don't know how long it would take the standard pot pie, because the, the goop is, like, I'm a believer in

[21:06] pre-cooking the goop out. Basically, the chicken's already cooked, everything's cooked, right? So then basically you just need to thaw the goop and then cook the shell. You might be able to freeze. You might be able to freeze an entirely raw pot pie and just do it.

[21:21] I don't know though. Anyone on the uh, anyone on the boards, uh, Dave? who has cooked a frozen a pot pie and then cooked it. I'll let you know, chat room. Yeah, see what the chat room has to say, chime in on this. But I would see I would think it's possible. Well, if I ever try, I'll let you know how it goes. Um, and, and like, when, when you, like, consider, um, like, I know, whenever you're traveling or

[21:46] whatever, and you want to prepare meals in advance, and if you just know you have, uh, not that much time during the

[21:51] week, like, I mean, it sounds like an excuse, but I really honestly don't have, uh, access to the kitchen. What sort of recipes can you recommend, uh, to prepare, like, on a whole weekend because I'm happy to cook the whole weekend? What do you have? What do you have for reheating capabilities? I often have access to a microwave. Sometimes a stove, but that's about it. So I'm like in a pretty dire situation. Right. I mean, I mean, the obvious ones are things like, I mean, soups, like you want something that doesn't degrade, right? But are you looking for an idea that isn't just like the standard non- non-degrading, like anything that is a stew

[22:32] or, or, you know, something like this is kind of a, like, easy and easy call? The problem with those things is reheating. So, like, if you're in, if you're, let's say you're in a dorm room or wherever, some sort

[22:45] of, like, you know, non-ideal circumstance and you have a court container

[22:50] of soup, that sucks, thawing those out sucks. Um, you know, the real, but the problem is, is if you take, let's say, something like

[23:00] soup, and you would, you know, freeze it in a Ziploc format, which is what I tend to do or chill it in Ziploc format flat. So like the easiest way to reheat something that is not, you know, a large object like a

[23:13] roast is to spread it into a ziploc as thin as possible and then freeze them in flat sheets on sheet trays.

[23:20] Then they become basically thin bricks that thaw out extremely quickly. And also, yeah, they heat up very quickly. But the issue is, is you want to be careful when you microwave it because if you have oil in your thing, it can locally overheat and melt out the

[23:36] Ziploc, because Ziploc bags, their, their melting temperature is extremely, where they lose their structural integrity, it's not a safety issue, but it's extremely close

[23:47] to the boiling point of water. So it's very easy in a microwave to locally overheat a

[23:53] Ziploc bag and have it lose its integrity, and that kind of sucks. Uh, but you can do things like, um, you can do things like, uh, and I've done this recently, where you take the frozen ziploc, and you score it, and then you break the thing into sheets and then put that into the microwave and sheet format, and they just melt down into your bowl, easiest

[24:14] pie, or if you happen to get a hold of a, you know, a, you know, a cheap circulator, or even sometimes

[24:20] just, uh, hot water in, you know, out of a tap, you can thaw those bags very, very

[24:27] quickly, and then put them into something to reheat them like a microwave. But it really, really sucks to reheat quart containers of soup in a microwave. I don't know if you've ever tried. or stews. No, I've never tried those. It's horrible. Nastas, you've tried that, right? And it's horrible. You get that giant chunk and then it starts spinning, and then you shove the spoon into the core container to try to get it to, and then it spins around and it spurts up into your freaking eye, and you think you're like, oh, it's only going to be 5 minutes until I got dinner on the

[24:54] table, and then like 20 minutes later, like, it's a microwave. I thought it was quick. What's your problem? You know what I mean? I hate that. Hate. Hate. But another good thing is you can do sauces. So you could do you could pre-do certain pasta sauces and whatnot can also be bagged out in the same way so that if you have access to, let's say,

[25:11] um, just like a simple hot plate, you could boil out your pasta and then you could have your sauce pre-bagged, you know, pre-portioned pre-bagged, and you could be thawing that in hot water as you

[25:22] go, and the noodles themselves will do a major bit of reheating on that sauce as long as it isn't dead cold.

[25:28] As long as it's not like a, like, it depends also. Like if you're doing a sauce that has a huge volume, right, then you're

[25:33] going to really cool down the pasta quite a bit, but as long as you're doing a sauce where it's a relatively small volume, even if it's just warm, the pasta will still be good. I know Nastasia enjoys cooking some pasta. Yes. Especially now that she's a part of pasta. I'll definitely think of this. And also, if I'm like making chicken pot pie next time or something and I'm like, I can scale my recipe, put it in like a flat

[25:57] ziploc, and then I can have easy access to it, like even if I do have access to the kitchen and just speed up that whole cooking process. That's a great, that's a great tip. Yeah, sure. All right, well, let us know, let us know how everything works. got anything else? Absolutely. I've got a couple like 11 more question. Do I have time for that? Yeah, sure, go ahead. All right, great. I'm fascinated by your spins all, and I love the low temperature tips that you've got and everything. I have a total tech enthusiast. you know, I'm an engineering student. I mean, what you gonna do? So I'd love to have like a gadget filled kitchen. So, what unconventional, like, budget friendly tools can you recommend, uh, to people like me and to tinkers? I'm also not afraid of getting some basic electronics and if my

[26:38] degree is worth anything, then I should be able to build something of relatively good quality. Right. are you, are you, what are you, doubly, Mecky? What are you? Aerospace engineering? Oh, wow, okay. So, all right, fine. All right. So, yeah, so you should be able to do some stuff. Is that still like a real baller area of engineering or no? It's like, um, basically, um, mechanical engineering with some extra thermodynamics and fluid dynamics is probably, I mean,

[27:07] it's, uh, maybe some people get angry by that, but, uh, and that's probably how I describe it. Yeah, it's a cool cool engineering field, I think. Anyway, um, I mean, so just, you know, having used most of the stuff that people use,

[27:20] obviously, you know, the 1st thing you're going to need is you're going to need an immersion circulator. Um, eventually, you know, you might want to tweak out your own version of uh, steam injection or like massive control of an oven. Like, I'm a huge believer in massive oven control. And you can do that. That's great because I've got like this awful compact oven and I'd love to develop like a front end where I can like put a profile into

[27:45] it. That would be super sick. Oh, you totally? Yeah, you and you totally can. You know what I mean? So, like, if it's especially easy if it's electric. Uh, it's not. It's not that hard, even if it's gas, you just have to be a little more careful with the kind of with the safety stuff. Um, but I've tricked out electrics, I've tricked out gas ovens, and yeah, you can do lots of cool stuff. Like, you can do, um, you can do, you know, your own steam injection into

[28:10] it. You can do, uh, your own versions of uh, force convection on the inside. You can do independently heated bottoms and tops. You could, there's, you know, with, with, yeah, all kinds of cool stuff you can do messing with your oven. As long as if you own it, it's no problem. If you don't own it, you just have to make it be able to look okay. I also always, after making this mistake several times, Uh, I always put a, uh, like a human switch in where you're just like, okay, a normal human now can come in and use my

[28:42] oven, and then I would put it into my mode where, you know, everyone's like, why can't I just,

[28:47] before, why can't I just use your oven, Dave? Why does everything have to be so complicated? You know what I mean? It's like all that kind of complaining, so it makes your life a lot easier. Just have that switch on it, like, you know, normal mode. love it. That's great. I'm gonna like, who knows when I have time, but when I do, I'll let you know how it goes. And last but not least, you might know of Dutch and Neighbor. Um, you, I don't really actually find it all that pleasant myself. Um, but are there any cool, like, food combinations that come to your mind with regard to cooking or mixing with it? Because I'd love to find an awesome use for it and enjoy it with, because it's still quintessentially Dutch. I got a lot of Dutch friends, friends and family. I think they'd be really impressed if I could like, you know, spin something up. Right, I've never cooked with it. Tristan, I mean, like over here, we now, Philip Duff, who's, you know, a liquor international liquor person, but he spends a lot of time here in the

[29:40] US. He has a Jennifer company and so he's going to be mad that I don't have this stuff just tripping off the tongue, but I've never cooked with it. We used to use it, you know, a bit at the bar and the, I don't have the speck in my head because it wasn't my spec, but Tristan Willie, our original manager at Booker and

[29:57] Dax. He had a drink called Bulls Deep. I'm sure the recipes online that is like, uh, it's like an old-fashioned, but it's one of these inverted

[30:04] angle drinks, so it's got a boatload of angostura in it. Um, we also used to do uh, Bulls, uh, Jennifer and Apricot. And that's a really good mix. So you might want to think of apricot and Jennifer because they go together quite well. But I don't have, and I've used, I've mixed with it a number of occasions. I just don't have any specs in my in my head. You know what I mean? It's the kind of thing where you're working on a project and you're like, oh, you know what? Jennifer would be good for that. But, you know, any, like, once you start, like, appreciating, how long have you been, you've been there

[30:37] your whole life, you said, you've been there. No, you Switzerland, you grew up. right, but you're half Dutch. Are you a fan of salty licorice or no? Uh, yeah, yeah, I am. I'm pretty partial to it. So you like most Dutch things, just not Jennifer. Uh, well, uh, Dutch culinary. I might get some hate for this, but, uh, it's a little on the basic side sometimes, but no, I like some of these kind of Dutch delicacies and sweets and things that are typically Dutch, yeah. Alright. So, um, anyway, I think like, you know, once you start, uh, the more you use something, the more you like it. the more you like it, the more you find uses for it. Yeah, that's exactly what I figured. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I mean, who of us are really born loving most of the things that we end up loving. You know, very few of the things. You know, we're not born loving coffee, I don't think. We're not born loving a lot of the things that we end up liking. So yeah, use, find a couple of uses that you like, you know, put a peg on those and then branch out from there and you'll find more and more that you like. The real trick, once you like something, is finding something that a non-lover will like. That's the real trick. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah, okay. That's great. So thanks so much for all the tips. Love your work, love the show. Both of you and Nastasia. Um, I've got your uh, liquid intelligence book because I'm kind of getting into cocktails at the

[31:56] moment, sort of new to me, a bit of my toe in. But yeah, thanks for all the great work and I'll call in if I have any more questions

[32:02] or uh, yeah, just to let you know how everything goes. Great tips. Thank you. All right, Dave, should we go to a commercial or we have another car? You read my mind. Yeah, let's take a commercial and then we got a caller on the line waiting. All right, cool. Coming right back with cooking issues.

[32:29] 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 brûlée, 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,

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[33:22] For more information and to order yours now, visit chefsteps.com slash J-O-U-L-E. Bob's Red Mill has been milling whole grain since 1978. One of the nice things about Bob's Red Mills. It's the only that I know of, national supplier that's easily available for lots of interesting, hard to get,

[33:44] grains, and other seed products. So, you know, before Bob's Red Mill became widely available, you couldn't go get something like quinoa very

[33:53] easily or you couldn't go get spelt easily in small quantities. But now you go to any one of the huge number of stores that carry Bob's

[34:01] Red Mill and you can get smaller amounts of these really interesting fun things to play with. Learn more at

[34:07] bobsredmill.com slash podcast. And we are back. Man, will not shut up. So many commercials. What is with that now? Also, that commercial, not very good. Which one's spelt? You were spelt all over yourself. Listen, while we're, well, all over myself, I like that. Like interrupting myself. Uh, look, we're going to take a caller, but in the meantime, I brought back this hot, sour candy called um, uh, Winnie's

[34:37] Acid Ups from Mexico, Nastasia. eat another one while we're talking. You don't like it? Why not? I don't know. There's a weird flavor. Not the hot or the spicier the sour. But tamarin. It's tamarind. Over top of it's tamarind and chili powder. Do you not like that Lucas powder? I like the chili powder. I like yeah, I like that. It's the tamarind, I think. You don't like tamarind? Yet another thing. All right, you have a color? Caller. Caller, you're on the air. Hello? Hi. Hi there. This is Paul Rathelson from Underbelly in Brooklyn, and I have an idea in response to a question that you fielded in a previous

[35:16] podcast. I also have a totally unrelated question. Nice. What would you rather have first? Your choice. Okay, so my idea, you were asking about home friendly ways of browning proteins after low temperature

[35:30] cooking. Um, I just wanted to mention something that I've been doing. I don't think there's a new idea, but I don't hear about a lot of people doing it. Um, I just mix together a secret sauce of, uh, dextrose and baking soda, and just apply that to the protein before browning it, um, and it enhances my art reactions, and, uh, it can give you a really nice crust in, I think, less than half the time that it normally

[35:56] takes, you must use, um, slightly less hot pan to do it in. Um, I don't know if that's something that you've experimented with. So, uh, you know, um, the baking soda as a basic, literally basic thing, um, it, you know, speeds um, my art reactions. So, um, and I think maybe even some non-my, some non, uh, Mayard Browning reactions. So they, obviously, like adding a reducing sugar is going to speed my

[36:28] yard, and also it will literally caramelize, which speeds browning. And you're going to have the more basic environment.

[36:37] So that's going to enhance browning. So this is the, a lot of people have done this with, um, or tested this. In fact, there's some, I think they were from the Netherlands, actually, going back to the last caller that used to do this on browned meats for things like ragouts or like

[36:53] bolognese or something like this. Um, to enhance the browning of the meats, especially in situations where it's hard to get good browning because of excess

[37:03] moisture. Like when you're doing ground meat in the bottom of a pot. Um, there's also, you know, obviously the, um, you know, chef steps

[37:13] into modernist cuisine crew are very pro, uh, a little bit of baking soda in, um, in veg in a pressure cooker to enhance the kind of, uh, brown kind of cooked flavors that you get in those environments as well.

[37:27] So it's known there. I've done some experimenting with meats that way years and years ago, but my problem with it has always

[37:39] been, it's like very hard to get it such that you can't tell that there's been baking soda on the outside.

[37:44] And you also have to put, or at least we always did, maybe we don't have to. You tell me, put some acid on it afterwards to neutralize

[37:52] it and you can't get some weird kind of foamy effects, but maybe we were just overdoing it on the baking

[37:56] soda, maybe by cutting it with a little bit of sugar. You also have to also worry if you have sugar on it, same way that if you're, like, you know, cooking with, um, any sugary glaze or soy-based thing that, like you said, you have to go with a lower temperature because

[38:09] it's easy to scorch it such that it tastes burnt. You just have to be careful. The same way you would if you had like a marinade, like a teriyaki marinade or something. You have to be careful that you don't scorch it in a pan because it's easy to do. But have you noticed, have you noticed any sort of like basic or baking soda E kind of flavor or do you neutralize it with an acid afterwards? I haven't had to neutralize it. What I have done with some trial and error is really reduced the amount of baking soda that's in the mix. So, um, What I've done for a while is about a one to 5 ratio of baking soda to, um, dextrose. And, um, then really the only issue is if you sprinkle it on dry, it's easy to overdo it a little bit, um, and

[38:54] also it doesn't really have much shelf life because it, it, uh, the, the glucose pulls moisture out of the air and gets

[39:00] clumpy and then it starts to kind of, uh, my art eyes itself. Um, but uh, what I've just started doing, and uh, which, which is kind of promising is I make that same mix, and I disperse it in oil.

[39:12] Um, so it's kind of dispersed in some neutral, uh, refined oil like safflower oil or something. doesn't dissolve, but it stays separate, and it stays apart from oxygen and moisture in the

[39:26] air, and you just brush it on real lightly with the pastry brush. And so far, the couple of times I've done that, it's worked really well. So you just resuspend right before, just like reslurry it right before you're going to use it? Yeah, yeah. Like it stays, um, it stays a really nice consistency in the oil, um, and just like

[39:42] coats the brush nicely, and you just put a little slather on after you've brought the meat, and bam. Um, I'll try it. Are you doing 5 to one? Yeah, you did say Bam, that happened. Yeah, you did, that happened. Um, but yeah, it's, uh, I'm still experimenting with the oil, but I think it's, I think it's promising, but, um,

[40:04] I think it's definitely something to experiment with. You know, maybe you can improve upon the methods, but right now I'm pretty pleased with it. Yeah, I'll give it a try. tell you something else on the same thing that I've been experimenting with, you know,

[40:15] it's out of curiosity. Um, so like a lot of, um, back in the day, the, you know, the issue with low temperature cooking, right, is that you want to put

[40:26] a, a crust or a sear or whatever you want to call it, depending on what you're looking for on the outside of the protein relatively

[40:32] quickly, so you don't undo all the good work that you've done with the low temperature cooking, right? I mean, that's the whole goal. So, um, you know, one of the issues with crust formation or searing in general is the fact that

[40:43] uh, once you've cooked something, it no longer has good contact with the pan. So therefore, when you're pan searing, you tend to put oil on or in your case, you can brush oil on and that'll help make up for some of the fact that the meat is no longer raw when you're searing it,

[40:57] right? And so this is all good practice. But it's also always been the main practice of everyone, and I recommended it and always have, that you get the pan screaming hot, right?

[41:09] Screaming hot. And the idea being that the hotter the pan is, the kind of better off you're going to do. And in experiments that I've done, uh, in general, when I was using, but the thing is, is I did my experiments with extremely powerful equipment,

[41:23] right? extremely powerful, thick pieces of cast iron, extremely powerful. I used a French gas powered crepe maker. Those things have some serious, serious, like it's seriously strong. So I don't know whether my numbers actually correlate as well as I would want to to a normal kind of a home situation.

[41:44] My feeling is is that remember that the surface of the meat, it only needs to get above the kind of browning temperatures. So when you think mentally, right? What's the fastest way to cook to sear off this piece of meat? Well, it's either charring the hell out of it in a super intense grill situation, which is one kind of flavor. Or two, you know, deep fundamentally deep frying it. And I know people don't want to deep fry, but you can get such a good crust so quickly deep

[42:12] frying, even though the oil is never really going above 360 degrees Fahrenheit.

[42:18] And so that got me to think maybe you can actually get a good result in a pan, um,

[42:24] By shallow frying, pan frying in a small amount of oil without making all of the smoke. And so last week, I actually did a test in my house where I seared a piece of meat in a

[42:39] pan, uh, and I didn't turn my vents on. You know, I have good vents. I didn't turn my vents on to see whether or not my wife could complain and all this other stuff. So what I did was, is rather than heat the pan up to screaming, which is what I normally do, I

[42:53] slowly, I put oil in the pan, cold, slowly heated the pan up to deep fryer

[43:00] temperature, like 360, right? you know, like, you know, not maybe the whole pan had maybe half cup or something of oil in it. And then once it was at 360 and I had it kind of like settled. I let it kind of heat up the entire pan come up to that. Then I stuck my meat in, and then at that point, I cranked it up full so that I would input the amount of energy into the pan that was required to try to get the oil back to its high temperature and to try

[43:29] to brown the meat, right? Then when I pulled it off to flip between sides, I let it come back up to temperature. I used an IR back up to 360, flipped the meat, did it again. Um, and then did it that way. So you weren't in this screaming hot pan, your oil never really gets that hot because it doesn't really help you to have the oil that hot. It just gets dangerous and makes a lot of smoke. And I was able to actually sear a piece of meat quite well, I think, in a kitchen environment without a vent. And I could smell the oil a little bit. I'm not going to lie, but, you know, I did it without a commercial deep fryer, without a vent. and I was able to get decent results. But I'll definitely want to check also, I'll re-look at this kind of, especially with the oil and the, and

[44:13] the, uh, glucose is kind of, um, baking soda idea. What was your 2nd question? Uh, well, uh, follow-up on that? Do you have a lot of ETOs on your home stove? I do. I have a buttload. I have a pretty wussy stove, and so the reason I get things up screaming hot is I

[44:31] just, I need to store up that energy because it takes my little burners a long time to get it into there.

[44:38] I like to try your method, but I'm a little worried that it would just take a really long time for it to recover that heat. I have a really crappy stove that I have access to, like, really super garbage stove that I have access to that I want to try, but I won't be at that stove for another

[44:53] like week and a half . So I'm definitely going to try it on a crappier stove. Um, what I what I'm really interested in doing, and I've been trying to figure out kind of the best way to do it is, um, I want to kind of measure, I want to come up with some kind of standard measures that everyone can do for their own equipment in their own stove,

[45:11] right? So pretty much a ribeye is the size of a ribeye, you know, more or less in terms of its

[45:16] face face area. You know, a porterhouse is roughly porterhouse size. I mean, it changes a little bit, but, you know, we can kind of guess or, you know, a filet, we can kind of guess. So what I want to do is I want to try to figure out some metrics, some test you can run that, and I'm trying to think, like, do I want to have someone boil water? And you don't have to do it if you don't want to, but just to kind of figure out not only how many BTUs, or because you might not have gas, right?

[45:42] You might have electric, not only like how much heat is being used, but how much heat does your oven pan combination really put onto a piece of meat? Because that's the important point, right?

[45:53] That's what really matters. And so, uh, I'm trying to, because when you do a pot, I mean, you're testing, when you're testing like burners, the typical test you would do is just put a pot on

[46:05] and, uh, you know, see how fast it can boil water. Put a glass lid on it and see how fast it can boil water on one versus the other. And you do use the exact same pot, the exact same amount of water at the same temperature, the same

[46:16] lid, and you can get a very good idea of kind of how long it takes.

[46:21] So that's one measure, right? But then you can also test your evaporation rate. You could take the lid off and see over 5 minutes at full bore, how much has evaporated off, and it's very easy to do the math to figure out, okay, I boiled off, you know, X number of grams of, um, of water, once it came to a boil, the, uh, heat

[46:41] of fusion, uh, or sorry, the heat of vaporization of water is Y. And this is how much energy was being dumped into the pan. The problem with that is, is that you have to, I think, run it with the pan that you're going to use, right? And so I'm trying to figure out what a, and once I have it, I'll, you know, I'll say what I do, but I'm trying to figure out, then you'll know exactly how effective your stove, your stovetop can be at these kind of,

[47:06] um, at these tricks. But I want to, there's some minimum amount of energy you need to input into the oil to get it up to the temperatures to flash off enough liquid to get a good crust on a piece of meat, right?

[47:18] I just haven't figured out those numbers yet, but this is just kind of what I'm experimenting with. Oh that's great. Dave, we got to wrap it up. Oh, man. Do you have a, do you have another quick question? You said you had 2 questions. Yeah, quick question. Um, I blog about uh, advanced ice cream

[47:33] techniques, and a lot of what we talk about is using different sugars, and um, um, a lot of the recipes that I'm talking about and techniques use uh, invert sugar or uh, tremoline. Right. And a question that's been in the back of my head is, um, you know, when you're using crimoline in a solution like this, is there a functional difference between starting with

[47:52] the syrup or just using a mix of powdered glucose and fructose?

[47:57] once it goes into, once it goes into solution. Yeah, I mean, the trimolines at a very, it's very high, uh, very low liquids, right, compared

[48:06] to so, but once it's in solutions, I shouldn't think that there's a difference. Yeah, it just seems, uh, it just seems like a really simple thing and I could not get anyone to, uh, could not find any information anywhere about that. It seems like, yeah, it shouldn't be any difference, but, uh, nothing talks about

[48:24] that. And it's like, it's like easier to work with powders than to work with the group, you know? Yeah, but the goop is easy in large batches, right? When you're doing scaled out stuff in large batches, especially if it's written for that. They take the water weight into account. And so like when you're doing lots and lots of stuff and you don't want to have to make those solutions up, like having those like giant gallon buckets of

[48:43] tremoline around or whatever they come in, you know, there may even be more than that. Um, you know what I mean? They, it can't, like, I liked having them around when I was at the French culinary. You know what I mean? Sure. Yeah, I mean, I talked to, I talked to a pastry chef about this, and he was like, well, maybe, but the question is interesting to me because I used tremoline for everything, and I don't use fructose for anything. So, he didn't care. Just from the standpoint of making smaller, moderate sized batches of ice cream. It's easier to measure, you know, measuring out these powders anyhow. Yeah, you had another, you had another situation. You had to weigh out one more powder than to, like, try to get this, the gunk off the spoon. Um, and the thing that can will eventually spoil in your fridge anyhow. Right, yeah, yeah, another scenario where like cooking at home and cooking like in a restaurant isn't always the same

[49:32] problem. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. All right, well, thanks for calling in. Next week, I'm going to get Carlos to your question on sous vide cooking and Sirius Eats and Kenji versus Chef Steps. I find it very interesting. We'll talk about that next week. We'll get to Ron's curing chamber questions and more on

[49:52] Mocktails from AK and just like a host of other interesting questions.

[49:59] We got some ice questions in, but we'll get to him next time because we had callers and remember, callers always take preference cooking issues.

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