[00:00,000] Vicious, vicious, fucker, oh, you did it, got me on this corner, and I don't know where I'm not supposed to meet my baby. I'm 20 minutes late. You got my head all twisted. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network. This is Dave Arnold with Cooking Issues, a show where you call in and talk to us about your cooking issues. Every Tuesday from 12 to 1245.

[00:49,080] Today's show is brought to you by The Barter House. The Barter House is a proud supporter of the Heritage Radio Network. The Barter House works with family vineyards and small bottlers from around the world to bring only the finest and most flavorful wines to the market. To learn more about Barter House, please visit them at www.thebarterhouse.com or call them at 917-463-3076. I've actually never had The Barter House. We're here with Nastasja Lopez from cookingissues.com and AJ Ede, one of the people who was our interns. He's now graduated.

[01:19,080] So, you guys ever had this wine before? No. No? No. No? All right. So, we're just going to open it on air and try it. While I'm doing that, I was like, there you go. We're going to drink this. It's kind of warm. It's a white wine here. It's a Chardonnay from New Zealand. And we're going to, it's kind of warm. We're going to drink it Chef Cesare Casella style, which means with ice. So, I'm going to pour this out here. And while we're trying this wine to tell you how delicious it is, I'm going to tell you the call-in number to call in and ask us any kind of question you want. 718-497-2128. And so, if you have any cooking issues, please call and we'll try to fix them or at least talk about them. Now, just to give you a little background, what we do is we're at the French Culinary Institute, which is a cooking school in downtown New York. And I run the technology department, which means that any kind of new technique or ingredient, we deal typically with chefs. But basically, anything kind of new or off the wall or kind of weird or any sort of strange problems, we deal with those. And we solve them for various chefs. We work with a lot of great chefs around the city. So, you know, if you have any questions about sous vide cooking or low-temperature cooking, which is, you know, kind of a new style of cooking that's making a lot of waves in restaurants right now or any kind of new age thickener, new ingredient, or if you want to rant because you hate these things and want to engage me in an argument on the air, we appreciate that. I love rants. I especially love ignorant people who don't know what they're talking about, calling and saying things about how I use a bunch of chemicals. So, if you want to do that, I encourage you to call up and we'll have this discussion on air with a lot less profanity than you would if you came to my lab and had this conversation. But anyway, first things first, let's try out this delicious wine. We're drinking Cairner Estate 2008 Chardonnay from New Zealand. Hold on. What do you think, guys? Yeah? Yeah. It feels old school like a working lunch, having wine at lunch. People don't do that anymore. You know, when you visit Europe, they still have wine at lunch and then we, like Americans, drink wine like we do at dinner when we're at the lunch and then we're blasted for the rest of the afternoon. Unless actually what happens is in Europe, nothing gets done after lunch, which is, I think, actually the more accurate thing. I think nothing in Europe happens after lunch, but it's kind of pleasant, right? We're sitting here in Brooklyn in the studio. And anyways, so while we're waiting for someone to actually pick up the phone and call, oh, and if you call and it gets really, it gets problematic, like, you know, there's yelling and stuff, Nastasha is the hammer just as she is on our website, www.cookingissues.com, where when things get out of hand, Nastasha, who brings her fantastic mix of Russian and Spanish, brings the hammer down on people. She loves doing that, so please call and get out of hand. We really appreciate it. Nastasha hasn't been able to crush someone recently, so she's looking forward to it. So anyway, so what do you think? What do you guys want to talk about before we get any callers here? Maybe you should talk about your Roto-Vap, your new Roto-Vap. Yeah, I saw the post go up last night. Oh, yeah. Okay, so here's the deal. For those of you who don't know what a Roto-Vap is, which I'm guessing 99.99% of you, what it is is it's a piece of distillation equipment which allows us to do distillations, to make booze, basically, illegally, because you can't distill here in the U.S. You know, without a distiller's license, it's a huge pain in the butt, but it allows us to do distillations at a very low temperature. And what's great about that is the flavors are the purest, cleanest flavors that you could possibly imagine. Am I right? You guys drink it all the time. I mean, it's not something that we can get flavors. I mean, commercial beverages are delicious, but it's just we get different kinds of flavors in the Roto-Vap. And they're kind of hard to commercialize because a lot of times they don't last very long or they're difficult to produce or they would be expensive. Anyway, we've been using this equipment, of course, like anything else, is super expensive. It's many, many thousands of dollars. And, you know, I'd used kind of a beat up old version that was older than most of my students. In fact, we got off eBay for, you know, I got off eBay, I should say, for almost nothing and kind of crowded together and got it to work really well. So, well, the corporation that makes them, Bukie, the first name in rotary evaporation, Bukie, no, Bukie came to visit us and they make the kind of the butt kicking ones. And they, because we were going to go on this show, the Jimmy Fallon show, and I told them I didn't want to, I didn't want to have one of their crappy ones from the, you know, early 80s being the one that everyone saw. And so they brought a really nice new rotary evaporator and they let us keep it, which is fantastic. And so the guy sitting next to me, AJ, who spent many, many hours flying our old, you know, kind of beat up rotavap is quite jealous because he's no longer working with us at the school. And now it's so much easier to do all of our work, right? That's true. Yeah, yeah. What are the advantages of rotavaping? Well, all right. Well, the disadvantages are it's illegal, right? So the, you know, the reason why you don't see it in a lot of restaurants here is because the chefs are confined to using it, making non-alcoholic drinks. If they make an alcoholic drink and try and serve it in their restaurant or their bar, they're endangering their liquor license.

[06:40,820] So consequently, they don't do it. And the stuff that's done with water just isn't as exciting enough, especially if you've ever done liquor, it's just not exciting enough to warrant, you know, an $18,000 or, you know, depends on, you could get one for five grand, but all that money, space and training just to do two water-based things. So that's why you don't see it a lot here in the States, although there are a couple of restaurants in Chicago that use them.

[07:03,100] But it allows you to separate flavors in a way that, you know, you've never done before. So we do, you know, as you guys both know, because I've forced you to do it many times, we'll do a chocolate liquor that has, you know, just cocoa, you know, the flavor of chocolate with none of the bitterness because the bitterness doesn't distill, just the Roman flavor does. So you have this, like, chocolate booze with no sugar in it that's, you know, delicious. Or we'll do, you know, very spicy peppers, habanero peppers that have no spice in them. They're just, you know, the floral, amazing floral aroma. You know, this kind of stuff. Or fresh herbs are kind of my favorite because they're just impossible to redo any other way. So, you know, something like, although Nastasha doesn't like it, you know, cilantro. By the way, Nastasha, who's here, I assume she's going to chime in at some point with some of her likes and dislikes, which are the most preposterous dislikes. You know, it turns out this lady who's in the food business now works with me, who likes everything. I basically like everything in the world with the exception of natto, which is, you know, disgusting, the Japanese fermented soybean product, natto, which is, you know, I don't think even in Japan they like it. I think they just pretend that they like it because it's supposed to be good for you. But Nastasha hates every damn thing. You're like, oh, I like delicious things. She's like, no, I don't like that. I hate that. Whatever it is. If it's delicious, I hate it. So, speaking of, oh, Nastasha pounded that wine. Jeez. I poured everyone a full glass. Right? We're talking for like 10 minutes. I got a half pour. You did not get a half pour. Come on now. She crushed the wine. Yeah, she obliterated that wine. Just, you know, mutilated. Anyway, so. It's good, though. Yeah. Well, apparently you think it's good. You drank the whole damn glass. Here, here, AJ, pour some more. Anyway.

[08:48,600] So, while I'm waiting for someone to call in, I will now talk about, because, you know, nothing better to do. I'll talk about some of my pet peeves. So, related to cooking, my pet peeves. So, like one thing I hate, and if, you know, I've been on this network a couple of times on other shows, and I always get to say how much I hate the word molecular gastronomy. Well, here's my opportunity to say it right now, and however long and however angry I want to say it. Do not use the term molecular gastronomy. You know, if any of you out there have heard the term before, molecular gastronomy, you do the best to erase this term from your memory. It's an awful term. I'll give you some reasons why. One, it's meaningless. It has no meaning. What does it mean, molecular gastronomy? What the hell? First of all, gastronomy is the worst word. It sounds good in French, you know, gastronomie. Gastronomie. It sounds like gas and tropronomy, gastronomy. It sounds like gastropod. It sounds like you have gas. It sounds like you're going to get gas if you eat it. Gas. Molecular sounds disgusting. It doesn't sound delicious.

[09:52,860] So I don't, you know, I don't really see the point in tagging something you're going to eat with a term that sounds inherently, inherently disgusting. And remember, this term is pioneered by this guy in France named Hervé Tisse. Hervé Tisse, who, as I said, you know, I was on the show here last week. I said, you know, I won't say anything negative about him except for he's a charlatan and a farce. And so the thing is, is that he thinks molecular gastronomy sounds good because he doesn't really speak English that well, right? He thinks in English the word food sounds gross, right? Seriously, he's like, food sounds disgusting. Food, maybe for a Frenchie, but, you know, I like food. Do you like food? Yes. Food's delicious. Yeah. Anyway, so it's a term that has no meaning. It sounds disgusting. It's basically a marketing term for this guy in France, Hervé Tisse. None of the chefs who are being described as doing molecular gastronomy want to be described as doing molecular gastronomy. And it puts you in a pigeonhole that I think is wrong. First of all, either all of us are manipulating molecules, in which case a guy cooking over a campfire is doing molecular gastronomy, or none of us are manipulating, you know, molecules. I don't know anyone with, like, a scanning tunneling microscope who's sitting there, like, adjusting individual molecules in the pie that they're making. I know at least one.

[11:12,860] So, but, you know, you get my point. It's kind of, it's pointless. And it's also, I think, what most people don't realize is that these new technologies are being used in restaurants all the time. It's just they don't know it because, you know, they're not doing the kind of food that is labeled as molecular gastronomy. So, you know, people assume that if you're using new technologies for cooking that you're actually, you know, making crazy food, making things that are wacky, making, you know, things. And we do do that, too, just because, you know, I mean, we do. But, you know, a lot of the best applications of these things, you would never know that a technology was used to do it. So we serve you a delicious drink that's, you know, strawberry flavored, and it's crystal clear, and it's got, you know, amazing effervescence, and the liquor tastes, you know, super fresh, unlike anything you've ever had before. And you're not thinking, hey, hey, this, you know, these people used, you know, $30,000 worth of equipment and spent, like, five hours and did, like, all these new techniques. You're like, this is a delicious drink. And I think those are the applications that are best, right? I mean, you don't necessarily want to know. So I tend not to do things like spray foams all into everything, which I think everyone's like, oh, you do foams and foams. But, you know, I think that's kind of the, you know, being able to make a good foam is kind of, you know, it's an important, you know, skill to have. But it's not, you know, I very rarely do it, you know, only when it's kind of, when it's called for. And, you know, foams are nothing new either, right? I mean, foams, take, for instance, the head on a beer. That's a pretty old foam. I think what people are doing is just trying to take the weirdest thing that they can find and turn it into a foam and then gastronomy. Yeah, right. Yeah, gastronomy. Yeah, no, but I think that's right. I think – and that's the other problem is some people who actually kind of like the term – I mean, the danger of this, as with any technique, is that someone will take the techniques and just do something just to do it. And the stuff doesn't taste very good. But then everyone who uses the techniques gets painted with that brush. And I think that, you know, that's the main problem. So you don't want – They need the marriage of technique and flavor? Yeah. I mean, it's like saying – you're only supposed to use these techniques to try and make flavors better or to try and achieve some sort of effect that you like. If you're using it just to use it, then that's not a good application. It's like if I handed someone a frying pan, they could make really crappy food with that frying pan. If I hand someone a centrifuge, they can make really crappy food with that centrifuge. Centrifuge is something that separates things based on their density. You know, it's – they're just tools. And so the trick is to be open to using these new tools but at the same time to use your head and say, why do I want to use these new tools? I want to use them when they actually make the food better, not when they're just a silly gimmick. Although, again, occasionally we will fall into the silly gimmick just because, you know, it's my job. But we try not to.

[14:09,660] All right. So pretty soon we're going to be going out on our first break. So in advance of that, let's have a cheers to the Barter House, a proud supporter of Heritage Radio Network. Don't forget to call in with your questions at 718-497-2128 to ask us anything you want about new cooking techniques, old cooking techniques, anything you want.

[14:31,980] You were listening to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week. Welcome back. You're listening to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network. To call in and ask us a question, call in at 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. So before we left, we were talking about the fact that new techniques and technologies in the kitchen are used for a variety of reasons. Some of the best applications of them are actually ones where you wouldn't necessarily know anything is going on. I think one of the best examples of that. We did many, many tests. How many did we do? A lot. About 20. No, no, no. That was 20 on that one day. We've done on that second day. We've done like probably 60 and change, which is not a lot for a commercial place like McDonald's who does thousands of tests. But, you know, 60, 70 tests, making my interns do French fries over and over again is kind of a pain in the butt. But what it's about is it shows a mindset. The problem is French fries are problematic, right? Here's why. You want French fries to be, one, you want the outside to be crispy and crunchy, right? You also want it to be not – it doesn't matter how much oil is actually in it. You just don't want it to taste greasy, right? So you want something that's crunchy, not greasy. You want the potato to actually taste like a potato, potato flavor and have an actual potato texture that's nice on the inside. Not, you know, not overcooked, not undercooked, not hollow. You want also the French fries to stay good when it's cold. I've repeatedly said a monkey can make a French fry that's good when it's hot. Same thing as a donut. A donut is a difficult problem. Any idiot can make a donut that's hot that tastes good because it's delicious when it's hot. The challenge is to make a fried food, donuts or French fries, whatever, that is good when it is cold. It's especially true with donuts because they're supposed to keep. But French fries, our task was I want the texture on the outside and the texture on the inside to be good right out of the fryer and to stay delicious even when that thing is cold. And so, you know, many of you out there who make French fries are familiar with the double frying technique, which is, you know, it's attributed to the Belgians, right? It's a double fry technique where you fry once to form the crust and to cook it and then you fry it a second time to make it crispy again. This is kind of, you know, that's like kindergarten French fry as far as we're concerned. You know, that's like, you know, not necessarily the best way to do it. The best way to do it is to do an initial blanching step where you kill the enzymes and cook the potatoes in a blanching step in water, salted water, which also flavors the potato, right? And then typically, the old ways, we would then dehydrate them a little bit, which allows for the crust to get more – it gets rid of some of the water, which means that it stays crunchier longer. Then fry it once and then fry it twice again. So it's, you know, a several-step process. But these make delicious fries. But the problem is with the drying step and with the blanching, a lot of times we would get hollow fries or they wouldn't be consistent. So we tried to figure out the absolute best, best, best way to do it. And, you know, how long do you blanch it? You know, Heston Blumenthal, the famous chef in England, says you should blanch for a long time until they break apart. So we ran all these tests. And if you go to cookingissues.com, you can see what we ended up with. We ended up soaking the fries in an enzyme, a natural enzyme, not some sort of GMO nonsense, but an enzyme called Pectinex SPL that you can also get from cookingissues.com. And what it does is it breaks down the pectin on the outside of the French fries and allows for the starch on the outside of the fry to swell very quickly and form a really nice crust. It also means you don't really have to dry the fries after you blanch it. So you soak it in this enzyme for a couple of hours, blanch it in boiling salted water to make it taste delicious and get cooked, and two times fry after that. And you have arguably the most delicious French fries that I've ever had. What do you guys think about those fries? They're delicious. I don't even like fries. Yeah. Okay. So it looks like we have a caller, right? We have a caller? All right. Hello? Hi. How are you? All right. I'm good. I was wondering what the benefits are of chilling a drink over dry ice. Ah, okay. This is an excellent question. Who am I speaking to? This is Carolyn. I'm from Massachusetts. Massachusetts. All right. Well, first of all, here are the things about dry ice. Dry ice, for those of you not in the know, is solid carbon dioxide, right? It's a lot easier to obtain, a lot easier to store than liquid nitrogen, which is actually our preferred chilling method for drinks and for many things. But hard to carry over a bridge. Very hard to carry over a bridge. I've done it.

[20:36,080] So the dry ice you can get usually from an ice supply house or sometimes from welding supply shops. And when you chill a drink with dry ice, right, there's a couple problems. You don't want to serve someone little chips of dry ice because that's bad. It's cold. It can burn your tongue. It's not very good. So one of the pitfalls is that you don't want little pieces of dry ice. Now, a friend of mine, Tony Canigliaro at Bar 69 Cobra Grow, was making daiquiris where he put chunks of dry ice in a blender with a daiquiri mix and blended them. And I have to say he got them to come out quite well, although the technique makes me a little bit nervous.

[21:13,820] The other thing about it, though, is if you let it chill long enough, the drink is going to become slightly carbonated. So I wouldn't chill a drink with dry ice that you didn't want to have a little bit of bubbles in it because it's going to get a little bit of bubbles in it when you have dry ice. But here's a really good technique for dry ice. Oh, and one of the prime advantages, obviously, is you make the drink. You get the dilution exactly the way you want it with water for a pre-batch drink at a party, let's say, right? And then now the dilution is perfect. Now your only job is to get it cold. Now, you can do that in the freezer by putting it in the freezer. But if you put it in the freezer, then it's hard to have it out and it's going to turn to crap while it's sitting on your counter because your guests are morons and they don't drink fast enough, right? And so it's sitting there on the counter getting warm and you're sitting there and you're pinching yourself and kicking yourself and all this because you know the drink is getting too damn warm and there's not anything you can do about it, right? And that's kind of a torture, right? Am I right? Right. Like the party I went to last week, yes. Oh, awful, yeah, right? And the drink is sitting there dying, dying on the counter because it's getting warm and there's not a damn thing you can do about it unless you have dry ice. Now, you throw a chunk or two of dry ice in there. Don't go overboard. You don't want to freeze the drink, right? And it's just going to sit at the bottom of a pitcher. Don't use something too wide. Like, you know when you were kids, you got the sherbet and the dry ice, right? That's a little bit too wide. You want to get kind of a narrow pitcher. Just throw like a couple of rocks of dry ice in there. It lasts a long time. Dry ice actually has a lot more cooling capacity than ice does, whereas liquid nitrogen actually does. It's a lot colder, but liquid nitrogen's cooling capacity is somewhat similar to ice. Dry ice can chill for a long time. Throw a couple of rocks of that in there. Give it a stir. After about 10 minutes, 15 minutes, that drink is going to be lightly carbonated and it's going to stay cold the whole damn night. And then if you have a problem, like you're running out of dry ice, just crack off another little piece of dry ice and throw it in. Plus, you know, it's got the good show with the mist. People like the show. And it's easily accessible. Yeah, it's easily accessible. So it's a really good technique, especially in summertime. You could have an ice cold, delicious drink. Even very traditional drinks, right? Like gin and tonics, for anyone who knows me knows that I have a lot of gripes with gin and tonics, right? Because they're usually either they're undercarbonated or they're not boozy enough. And it's supposed to be a summertime drink. They always turn to crap. Always turn to crap, right? Yeah, you have to drink them very quickly. Yeah, so even if you want to go completely traditional, you don't want to do anything, go buy your bottle of tonic water, buy your gin, get some lime, mix it up in a pitcher, right? A pitcher of gin and tonics. Put it, go out on your picnic bench or whatever, right? Throw a couple rocks of dry ice in there. That thing will stay carbonated and cold and everyone can get shellacked on delicious summertime gin and tonics without having to worry about, you know, that last flat, nasty, warm sip of crap that they think they like it because the tastes are delicious, but they're just always executed poorly. Does that make sense? Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah. What's your favorite kind of gin? Oh, now that's a question. It's like asking me to choose which one of my children I love best. I'm kidding. Different gins are good for different purposes. And, you know, my kind of, you know, I like Hendrix for some applications. You know, it's kind of, you know, it's pricey. I think. Yeah, that's my favorite. Yeah. You know, a lot of times for mixing, my hand instinctively reaches for Tanqueray. I don't know whether that's because, I don't know, because, I don't know, just because it's a nice high proof. It's easy to mix with. But I know bartenders that are partial to, you know, any and every kind of gin. My dad was an old school Bombay. He wasn't a Sapphire guy. He was a, you know, white label Bombay guy. And that's actually where I got my love of tonic water and highly carbonated beverages was from sitting next to my dad. Well, he would make a gin and tonic and I would have just a lime and tonic. So, you know, start me early. You got to start your kids early. Give them tonic water early. Get them started out. Very good. Oxley is also good. Well, yeah. What is? AJ's just messing with me. I have nothing. I like Oxley. I like Oxley. Oxley's fine. Yeah. It's different. It's a different. I don't think it's a traditional gin taste. But a lot of people I know like Beefeeder. I mean, there's a lot of it's personal preference. I recommend going and tasting a lot of gins. If you have friends that don't like gin, then a good gateway gin is Plymouth because it's light on a lot of botanical flavors, especially the juniper that people find objectionable in gin. And so you can kind of start them out with that. So that's why we call it, you know, the gateway gin. And it's available. That's the best kind. Great. Well, thank you so much. No problem. No problem. Thanks for calling. Our first official caller. That's awesome. Yeah. And I think we were able to help. See? Anyone out there who's listening, just know. Wait, but how much is dry ice? It depends. I think that here in New York, it's a little more expensive. You actually had to buy it last time. How much was it? I didn't buy it. They ordered it. Yeah, it's on the order of a couple dollars a pound and you have to buy, I think, like 20 pounds or something like that. So you're looking at like a $40 or something investment. But it's a small price to pay for a delicious beverage. It comes wrapped, you know, at a party. I wouldn't say to keep it around all the time because, you know, you can't store it in your fridge. I mean, if you can, it sublimates. And so you lose it over time. There's no way to store it for long periods of time at your house. But you show up with just like a, you know, like a disposable styrofoam cooler or cooler. You put it in. It'll last for hours and hours and hours. In fact, it'll last for, you know, a day or more depending on how well you store it. And, you know, it's pretty easy and I think especially applicable to, you know, summertime parties. What about the handling of dry ice? Well, okay, so dry ice, first thing you should not do is the first thing that many, many people do, which is take a chunk of dry ice, put it in water, seal it in a soda bottle and throw it and watch it explode. This is not considered safe practice.

[26:57,700] In fact, the problem is with CO2, you know, dry ice, it will, it will, if sealed, it will do one of two things. It will turn to a gas and it will slowly increase in pressure up to about 800 psi or more or explode, whichever comes first. Usually explosion comes first. So it's not a good idea to seal large quantities, although – never mind. It's not a good idea to do that. Another thing is it's very easy to get burns, cold burns, from handling it for too long. So, you know, while it's fun to sit there and play hot potato with dry ice, you know, I would use gloves when I handled it. It's a lot safer that way than liquid nitrogen is in terms of, you know, liquid nitrogen, there's always a danger that it's going to get underneath a glove. And really damage you, whereas dry ice is not such a problem. I'd also, if you're going to chip it, I would wear glasses, safety glasses, because you don't want little pieces of dry ice. It's very hard and you don't want little pieces flying off and hitting you in the eye. At least I don't want that. Yeah, it's awkward. Yeah, it is awkward. I'm blind and frozen. Yeah, yeah, it's not such a good idea. And, you know, it would be a bad idea to move into a living room and chill it with dry ice because your house will fill with CO2. Okay.

[28:11,460] So, we're coming up on our second commercial break. If you want to call in with problems, dry ice related or not, technical or not, for instance, let's say you want to talk about fish sauce. I love talking about fish sauce. Our number here at Cooking Issues Heritage Radio is 718-497-2128.

[28:31,220] That's 718-497-2128. And you are listening to the Heritage Radio Network, Cooking Issues.

[28:42,040] How do you feel, brother? Feeling good. You feel good? Feeling good. It's true. You pay so much, bone brother. How do you feel, man? I feel all right. I'll call your name. I don't want those people to know you're in here. How do you feel, brother? Hey, jab. Sure did in time. Look at him. Ha!

[29:00,700] We're going to have a bunk a good time. We're going to have a bunk a good time. We're going to have a bunk a good time. We're going to have a bunk a good time. Let's take him up, Fred. We've got to take you high. All right. We're going to do it again. You're going to do it again. Yeah, let's do it on time. We've got to take you high. Brother? Yeah? Now I want everybody to let Brad blow up by two courses. And then I want to wave in. Let's go until that beginning now. All right. All right. I'm going to get that fella with the little horn over there. You're going to change horns on me. Yeah, it's a change horns. Let's go. Brad, can you take us high? You are listening to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network. This is Dave Arnold, and we are taking calls and fixing people's cooking issues. So who do we have coming up here? We have a call coming in? Hmm? We have a call. Yeah. Hello? Dave? Yeah?

[30:17,380] Thank you. Thank you. I really am excited to have you, you know, at least live via this method. Well, hopefully we can help out. Who am I speaking with? John. Hey, John. How are you doing? So what do you want to talk about? Well, the two best things I bought for my kitchen this year, one was a cook tech.

[30:40,860] I bought a cook tech. The induction unit, yeah? The induction unit. It's just terrific. Right. But the other thing I bought was a mini-pack Torrey. Oh, which one? The MVS-31. Okay. Let me just tell our users for a quick second. So we're talking about an induction unit, which is basically, it's the most kind of, it's the most efficient way really to cook. It uses electricity, but instead of having a conductively heat, like make a lot of heat in your kitchen, it literally heats the pan by using an oscillating magnetic, electric magnetic field. And it's a fantastic way to cook. It's not as popular here as it is in Europe because our electricity is more expensive than our gas and because our chefs aren't used to it. The other piece of equipment we're talking about is a vacuum packing machine made by Minipack. And this particular one he's discussing, the MVS-31, is a really great size for the house. And it lets you do a lot of really fun things. It's a really professional piece of equipment. Sorry. Go ahead. And one of the great things about it, I mean, aside from trying to do sous vide or something like that, is the fact that, you know, just leftovers. Oh, yeah. You know, it extends life of foods. You know, they don't oxidize. You can keep them for days longer than one would normally keep things in the refrigerator. And, you know, like if you go to a place like Costco that's selling huge packs of meat, you can repackage meat into usable sizes.

[32:05,340] But that comes down, I know on your website, you're going to start doing a section on vacuum sealing and vacuum packing. Yeah. We haven't done it yet just because I've been busy. But it is the next, in the low-temp sous vide primer list, the vacuum packing is the next one, yeah.

[32:23,380] Right, and I guess my question to you is, how much air do you extract when you do it? You can go up to, like, I guess, like 98% or something like that. And I always try and get as much air and the highest vacuum amount when I'm sealing things. And I know you've got to – it can vary and you can seal them from, like, you know, zero to 100. But I was just curious, what are your recommendations? Okay, so here's the basics of it. And you can – if you go on www.cookingissues.com and search for – I don't know what to search for. Actually, Nastasha will look it up. Like, on the back thing, we do a thing on how the texture of meat is affected by vacuum.

[33:10,600] So, you know, how much vacuum you apply really depends on what you're trying to do. So if you're trying to do texture modification, then you want to apply the heaviest vacuum possible because you want to get all the air out of your product before you do it. If you're vacuuming to, like, put something in the fridge or freezer, then you want a heavy, heavy vacuum because you want to get all the oxygen out because that's going to be one of the prime reasons that things go bad, especially on leftovers, right? Warmed-over flavor and meat, you know, you can really prevent it by putting a good, hard vacuum on. And, of course, your product has to be really, really cold before you vacuum it. Otherwise, you're not going to be able to put a good seal on it. Now, if you're going to cook, the problem is that on red meat, it's not as much of a big deal. But on fish and on poultry, if you put a very hard vacuum on a product, I find it tends to change the texture of the meat when it's cooked.

[34:03,220] And so the effect is, for those of you that never vacuumed before, is that if you have a very high level of vacuum when you're doing a piece of fish, let's say, your initial bite will be extremely juicy. But all the water will kind of, like, rush out. And then as you start chewing, I think it gets more of a fibery taste and it turns almost – how would you guys describe it? Like, almost like – you know, if you've done it, you know what I'm talking about. The texture isn't good on the sixth and seventh chew, let's say. Right. It's like putting a brick on it in just a normal manner of cooking. It pushes all of the water out and so it just becomes a grainy interior. Yeah. I mean, I don't really understand the – I haven't yet, to my satisfaction, figured out the actual mechanism of what's happening. I just know from a practitioner standpoint that this occurs. So what we recommend is that if you're going to bag fish, you want to bag it at a low level of vacuum, just enough to get the bag basically, you know, a good seal around the food. And if you're going to bag poultry the same – I actually prefer to do poultry without vacuum in Ziplocs, but poultry in a vacuum. If you're going to do it, I would recommend doing a low vacuum. I mean, just for yourself, if you have the time, sometime I would take like three identical pieces and seal one at like 98, one at 99, and then one at full vac and cook them identically and then just taste the difference. Like next time you're going to cook a lot of something and you have the time to do it, I would definitely do it. But the vacuum machine that you have is a fantastic machine and, you know, I kind of wish I had that for my house because it's got a very good chamber size to, you know, to machine size ratio. It's really a nice machine. I mean, and it does so many things so well and the fact that you can – I mean, I've done blueberries last season that – you know, a low vac, but it preserves them, you know, without the ice and without all the other issues that, you know, come up when you try to freeze anything. Oh, yeah. And, you know, another like easy application is you could portion out – like let's say if you're like me, you have two kids, you make a whole boatload of pasta for dinner and then you have a bunch left over. And you want to be able to serve them for lunch or something like that. If you bag down the leftovers after they're done, it makes it a lot easier to reheat that stuff without either drying it out or ruining it. I mean, it really is, you know, it seems extravagant for the home, but it really, you know, it really has its uses. You know, I really like it. I almost think it's going to be the next big thing. I hope so. You know, if somebody could teach how good vacuuming is, you know, and I understand Food Saver sort of guided the way for, you know, the whole consumer public to begin thinking about this stuff. Yeah. But it's really an amazing kitchen tool. Oh, yeah. No, it's no question that – I hope that they become more and more prevalent and maybe the price is coming down. I know Mini Pack's working on it. I'm not a big fan of the Food Saver. I like the professional ones a lot better. Right, right. But I hope to get that next section of the primer out soon. Maybe if I have some time over the 4th of July break, I'll work on it. Nastasha's laughing because she knows that I won't. And then just – I also ended up buying a Sous Vide Supreme, and now I see that they're coming – not them, but the polyscience people are coming out with a new circulator. That's true. Have you seen their new circulator? Yeah. Yeah. It's good. Is it? Yeah.

[37:30,000] It's sweet. I like the Sous Vide Supreme because it's easy and you can just sort of stick it away. Have you ever used a circulator, like a regular – No, I have not. You will love – let me tell you something. It's just boatloads better. It's just – when you move from a non-stirred bath to a stirred bath, plus it's so much easier to put away. This thing is the size of like – it's like in between a stick blender and a regular blender. It's – yeah. I mean, I'm not – I have nothing against a Sous Vide Supreme. I've never cooked with it, but I mean, I use circulators every day. It actually works – it works very well, and I've just been – I've been doing a lot of like lamb chops. Yeah. And you just hit them right on when you do it at like 140 for like an hour and, you know, some minutes and then sear them off. It just becomes so perfect. Get your hands on it. Just test it. Play with a circulator. I guarantee – I've never – here's two things I've never heard someone say. I've never heard someone say, hey, I regretted buying that VitaPrep blender, and I've never heard someone say I've regretted buying that circulator. I've just never heard it. Maybe someone somewhere has said that, but I've never heard it. The Sous Vide Supreme, it doesn't actually have a stirred bath, right? It's not stirred. No, it's an unstirred bath. It's not that it does a bad job. It's just to me it's bigger than it needs to be in your kitchen, and it doesn't have circulation. So if you're doing a longer cooked item, you're going to probably be okay, but if you're doing shorter-term items or if your stuff's coming in and out of the bath a lot, I always think you're better off with circulation. So it would be like one bag at a time. I mean the circulator is going to be more money a little bit. I mean I think the Sous Vide Supreme is about $500 now, and the circulator is going to come in just under $8. But to me it's – I mean it's easy for me to say because I've had the equipment for a long time, but for me it's another $300 well spent. Right, but there's nothing wrong with Sous Vide Supreme. No, no, no, no, no. And it holds product in there very well, and I've not had any real issues with it. I'm not saying anything negative about the Sous Vide Supreme. No, nor am I. I love it, but I may just get a second one just for the hell of it because there are times that you want to do vegetables along with the meat and at different temperatures. Well, I don't know if you have anyone in your house who is going to need some convincing that you need this, but you can tell them I said that the circulator is a good purchase.

[39:56,580] Now, can you sell me on the – what was the one that you just got? What, the Roto-Vap? The Roto-Vap. Well, if you have $20,000 to spend, yeah, call Bukie and get one right away. But like – Anyway, listen, thanks for calling. I've got someone else to come in. We're going to run out of time. Thanks a lot. Very good. Thank you. Did we lose our next caller, or are we still got him? I don't know.

[40:27,240] No? Oh, there's no one. Oh, there's no one? Oh, we had someone. Now I made – now I cut this poor guy off, John, off, because I thought you said we had another guy coming in. So, Dave, if you're going to actually have to cryovac some fish, what is the general rule of thumb for the percentage of vacuum? Fish? You know, look. You want the minimum vacuum that you can get on fish, and you want to bag fish with oil or some other liquid so that it doesn't crush the portions down. I think a lot of people, when they first get a vacuum machine, they put a hard vac on fish,

[40:56,300] and they – you know, the portion looks insane. It looks like a pillow because they've crushed the bag around it, and they're much better off, you know, doing a light vac. You know, look, I love the vacuum machine, but get the circulator first, and then, you know, play around. I think we have another call. Oh, we have another call. I think he came back, the person, yeah. Oh, yeah? Mm-hmm. It's John? No, no, no. Oh, the person came back. Hello? Hi. Hi. Hi, I'm Janelle. Hey, Janelle. Hey, I have a question about brisket. Brisket, okay. Every time I try to cook it, it comes out terrible. Is there a trick to having it come out, you know, like you get in a restaurant, you know, kind of melting in your mouth? How do you cook it?

[41:36,000] Well, I've tried grilling it, and that hasn't worked because I haven't been able to maintain a low temperature on my grill. That's very difficult, yeah. Yeah, so I, just the oven, you know, about 250 for, depending on how many pounds it is, you know, a long time. But I don't know if I should sear it first or if there's, like, a trick to it that I'm missing. All right, yeah. Okay, so I'm dealing with a fundamental deficit in that it's been so long since I've had to cook without a circulator.

[42:05,120] That it's difficult, but, yeah, so I would guess that, I wonder whether the guys in Texas put an initial sear on it or not. Probably not. I don't know. Probably not. Isn't it all about the Maillard? Well, you know, brisket's all about, okay, so a brisket is a tough cut of meat that has a lot of connective tissue, right? And so the basic technique is you're going to overcook the hell out of the brisket meat, but then over time you're going to break down the collagen. And the collagen that you break down is going to turn into gelatin, and that's going to re-moisten the meat. So, you know, one of the problems you might have had is that you might not have cooked it long enough for it to get re-moist again, but you treat it basically like a braise.

[42:49,600] Cook's Illustrated, I believe, did a brisket recipe for the house recently, but I haven't looked at it. But in general, you're right. Low and slow is the way to go, but you have to give it enough time for the collagen to kind of convert. The commercial guys do it in a very low heat in a pit, and the smoke gives it that characteristic smoke ring and then also treats it at a fairly low temperature so that it's basically doing almost like a confit thing but without the fat. It's cooking at those kind of temperatures, at those low temperatures. And you could – I mean, if you braise it, it's not going to taste like brisket. It's going to taste like a braise. It will be delicious, but it won't be the same thing.

[43:30,960] I feel awful. You know what I'm going to do? You know what I'm going to do? Here's what I'm going to do. Go to – okay, listen. In a week's time – give me a week. I'm going to research this thing. Go to www.cookingissues.com, and someone will have posted a thread in the forum section. Go to the forums, and someone will have posted a section on it, and we'll figure this problem out for you so that it doesn't happen to you again, okay? I've seen really great techniques with marination, like a 24-hour marination before the actual cooking. That will keep it really tender. We're going to start a discussion on the forums of cooking issues, and we're going to get this tacked down because we have some Texans who go to the blog, and I'm sure they will tell me that anything I say is preposterous and stupid. And having had the brisket they make down there, they do know how to make good brisket. Anyway. That's great. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks for calling. All right. Bye-bye. All right. So we have someone else on the line here? Yeah. All right. Who do we got? What do we got? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hi. Hi. How are you doing? Hi. I have some questions. Is this – who is this? This is Weepop. Weepop. Weepop Soupy Pot. Okay. People who are listening, this call is coming in live from Bangkok, Thailand. War-torn. This is Weepop Soupy Pot, one of the great all-time people, a friend of cooking issues, a friend of ours. And so, Weepop, what is your question all the way from Asia? What is your question? All right. So I eat a lot of beef, right?

[45:02,100] And so sous-vide have been picking up in Thailand, and a lot of chefs are cooking sous-vide tenderloin. But I think previous caller has kind of answered the question already, and you sort of have answered the question. So why does tenderloin become really diverse and really mushy? Okay. Tenderloin is a huge problem. As you know – I can't believe Weepop was calling. I'm so happy. Weepop, I'm so happy. Anyway, so the – tenderloin is an interesting case. Tenderloin wants to be cooked at extremely low temperatures because it doesn't have a lot of connective tissue. The more connective tissue that a piece of meat has, kind of the higher the temperature or the longer you need to cook it. When you cook something at a low temperature for a long time, a lot of the initial effects of whether or not you're going to overcook something happen right away. And this is the hardest thing when you're learning to cook low temperature sous-vide to wrap your head around is that you're no longer cooking in terms of just, oh, I'm going to turn the temperature up to cook more. It's really temperature and time. And this stuff doesn't overcook just because you cook it longer. But you do get textural changes. So what happens in meat that is essentially devoid of connective tissue is that it gets – not an overcooked because it doesn't taste overcooked. But as you chew it, it tastes kind of fibery as you said. And so with tenderloin, you want to cook it at a low temperature, at the low end of the scale. When I say that, I'm sorry for all of you in America land, I think in Celsius because I work at the French Culinary Institute, you want to cook it at like 54, 4 Celsius, right around there. You don't want to go too much higher. And you want to put a sear on it. And you only want to cook it, a tenderloin, for like 45 minutes. Now, the problem here is that this isn't food code because you're not keeping it long enough. Now, but it is kind of safe. As long as you sear it, you kill all the bacteria on the outside. It actually is kind of safe because the inside of the muscle is sterile, but it's just not code. You know what I mean? But I don't know what the codes are in Thailand. We have no code. Oh, nice.

[47:08,320] It makes it perfect. Yeah? How are you doing over there in Thailand? How's everything going? Oh, well, things are going great. We have new equipments in and we're playing with food on this end. Well, ship us out there. Ship us out there. We're figuring out a lot of stuff. Hi, Wee Papa. I need to... You know I love all the Thai ingredients. How come you don't get me shipped out there? We got to go out to Thailand. Cooking Issues has to... Stasi, right? Yes. Cooking Issues has to go on the road to Thailand. Yes. Wee Papa's made me a happy man.

[47:37,080] The new David Thompson restaurant is going to open up here in about a month's time. For those of you that don't know, he has the best cookbook on Thai food in the English language, in my opinion. Didn't you buy something, Wee Papa, recently? Oh, yes. And I bought a secret royal Thai recipe that's supposedly not in print anymore, which David Thompson is actually going to use part of that book to base his new menus on. So you're going to email us the recipe or what?

[48:06,860] I think it's in Thai. It's in Thai. I would have to translate it. Oh, jeez. But yeah, it's recipes from like 1908. Oh, nice. It's extremely old. All righty. Well, Wee Pop, thank you so much for calling. I can't wait until we can see you back in the States. We've got to get you back to the States, back Stateside. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye, Wee Pop. Bye, Wee Pop.

[48:28,760] So what are we doing now? We haven't taken it over? We have to go to break. We have another caller? No, you have another minute. We have another minute? All right. So this then was the inaugural version of Cooking Issues, the show, on Heritage Radio Network.

[48:44,000] Today, Cooking Issues was brought to you by the Barter House, and the Barter House works with the – we've polished off an entire bottle of one of their family vineyard's wines here, the Kerner Estate Chardonnay, and we appreciate that they are the sponsor of the show. Thank you for listening, and come back next Tuesday. Thank you.

[49:34,900] Thank you.