[00:00,000] My name is Mackenzie, and I started a GoFundMe for the adoptive mother of a nonverbal autistic child. The mother had lost her job because she wasn't able to find adequate care for this autistic child. So she really needed some help with living expenses, paying some back bills. So I launched a GoFundMe to help support them during this crisis. And we raised about $10,000 within just a couple of months. I think that the surprising thing was by telling a clear story and just like really being very clear about what we needed. We had some really generous donations from people who were really moved by the situation that this family was struggling with. GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform trusted by over 200 million people. Start your GoFundMe today at GoFundMe.com. That's GoFundMe.com. GoFundMe.com. This podcast is supported by GoFundMe.

[01:20,280] You are listening to Cooking Issues. I'm Dave Arnold. We're coming to you on the Heritage Radio Network. The show Cooking Issues is a show where you call in and we solve your cooking issues, related or not. Today, Cooking Issues is sponsored by Acme Smoked Fish. Located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Acme has been a mainstay in New York's culinary landscape for over 55 years. Using old world recipes, Acme produces the finest smoked salmon, white fish, and sable that discerning palates demand. For information on where to find Acme, Blue Hill Bay, or Ruby Bay products, visit www.acmesmokedfish.com. They actually supply most of the big places in the city, so even if you don't know you've had Acme, you've probably had Acme. Now, the number to call in to the radio show, we're here between 12 and 12.45 every Tuesday, is 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. And we already have our first caller for the day. Hello? We got Jordan on the line? Yeah, I'm right here. Hey, how you doing? So, what's your question? Hey, I'm doing pretty well. You know, so, I want to throw a barbecue for my wife's birthday, and I've been experimenting with just basically trying to cook ribs in a sous vide. I've got a sous vide supreme. Oh, okay. So, I've been experimenting with cooking the ribs in that, trying to get them to the point where they're, like, where they're fairly soft and yielding, and at the same time, they'll still stay on the bone. Because my plan is to basically keep them in the machine until guests arrive, and then I just want to finish them on the grill. Right. Right? Right. That's a good call. Well, may I just say, before we go any further, that you are in luck. For being the first caller today, you have won some Heritage Foods boneless barbecue riblets. No kidding. Yeah, no kidding. So, that should go pretty well with your barbecue. But, so, here's the thing. So, typically, when we're going to do a rib, you can do a rib at any temperature between about 54-4 Celsius, which is rare. I wouldn't recommend that because it's kind of weird. People aren't used to it. All the way up to a traditional temperature of, like, 80, but I would recommend something closer to 60. It's a little bit pink on the inside still, but it's, you know, it's really, it's a good, nice temperature. And, the good thing about cooking this way, and what we're talking about is low-temperature cooking, for those of you not aware, what we're doing is we're sealing the food in a bag, and we're using a water bath to very accurately keep the temperature and cook it for a long time. Now, one of the advantages of doing it this way, as opposed to traditional, that we've talked about, you know, the advantage you want, is that the meat's going to stay on the bone. It's not going to shred and break apart. So, you'll be able, even though it's very tender, and 60, I would do it for about 48 hours, 48 to 56 hours in that range. Okay, that's the part I was having trouble with. Is, I've got, you know, I was looking at some stuff from Baldwin and a couple other things online, and everybody was saying, oh yeah, you know, 12 to 24 hours tops for the ribs, and I just, they weren't coming out where I wanted them at all. You said 60 Celsius? 60, yeah. What temperature are you? It's about 140. Yeah, 140. 60 is like a magic number, because it's 140. It's easy to remember. What temperature were you using?

[04:51,340] Oh, I tried everything between about 135 to 155, but the factor that I was not getting right was the time to cook, and I was afraid if I left it that long. I was afraid if I left it, you know, 48 hours or more, I was concerned, number one, that I was going to lose some structural integrity in the bone itself, and number two, I was just, I was concerned it just wasn't going to stay on the bone. But you're saying that even at 48 hours, it's going to stick to the bone enough that I can toss it on the grill, it's not going to fall into the rack or anything. Absolutely. Let me put it to you this way, and we'll leave it at this. Right or wrong, after 24 hours, it had the texture of skirt steak? Awesome. Yeah, right, is that right? After 24 hours, it should have had the texture right about of skirt steak, and after another 24 to 30 hours, it'll have the texture of short ribs. Okay, yeah, that's much closer to what I'm looking for. Yeah. All right, super. Cool, man. Stay on the line, because we've got to figure out a way to get you these boneless barbecue riblets, and thanks so much for calling in. I think we already have another caller, so we're doing well. All right, so... What do you need, Mike? Hello? Hello? Hey. I have some questions about preserving cilantro. Essentially, every single time I buy it, it seems to turn into an unusable pile of mush, and all the aromatics just leave it pretty much right away. So I was wondering if there's a way to render it more stable. I don't have a Roto-Vap or anything, so I'm looking for a more conventional method. Right. Cilantro, actually, even in the Roto-Vap, when you Roto-Vap it, it doesn't stay stable. This is actually an interesting question. The next segment we have, Harold McGee's going to be on. He's done a lot of tests with preserving things like herbs and berries. My guess, the problem is, is that my guess is the way to do it is going to be like a quick blanching shock, but that's probably not what you're looking for. And the other one would be to keep the moisture level not too high so it's not going to rot, you know. Right. I do dry it. Yeah, so you're drying it and still... With a paper towel. Yeah, you dry it with a paper towel. I mean, you could physically dry it, but it's not the same as fresh. What I'm going to do is I'm going to defer this question, and Nastasha's going to remind me to ask McGee. Nastasha's going to ask me to remind McGee to answer this question, but I would guess he's going to say something of the nature of making sure air can get to it in your fridge so it's not going to turn bad, making sure that it's not wet when it goes in. He might say something even like allowing water to get to the stems, but I don't know. And he might suggest something like a blanche just to kill anything that's on it, which is what he does with berries. This is not my exact area of expertise, but you're lucky that McGee's going to be calling in today because it's right up his alley, so we'll make sure to ask him. Okay, well, actually, just beyond ironic, I mean, also, the aromatics on the plant are just so fleeting. It seems like no matter what you do to it that they're just going to leave pretty much right away. I know. It's true. You know, I've been doing a lot of experiments recently with, you know, when we rotovap, a lot of times I'll rotovap.

[07:44,020] For those of you who don't know, low-temperature distillation, we do it in a rotary evaporator. We do it with alcohol just because it's the only way to really lock down those aromatics, and when you do it with water, you really, those aromatics, they leave very quickly. We've recently been doing experiments with freezing with liquid nitrogen to try and keep those aromatics, and it works pretty well. But, you know, I'm not ready to necessarily make any statements on it. Do you have liquid nitrogen lying around?

[08:07,520] No, I don't, but that doesn't mean I couldn't get some. Right. I mean, you could try. I mean, like, that might be good, keeping it ultra-frozen like that. Now, it's going to go black as soon as it thaws out unless you blanch it beforehand, but then you won't have the aromatics. So you're always going to trade because we do a lot of work with liquid nitrogen where we powder fresh herbs. When you powder the fresh herbs, when they thaw, even with liquid nitrogen, they go black because you've ruptured the – when you blend them, you rupture the tissues, and so they go black. You're going to get that characteristic not-so-good aroma, so what we'll always do is blanch in boiling water and shock, and then that'll preserve it. But you're still – you're going to lose some of that. I mean, I haven't – again, I'll ask McGee this, but, you know, it's very hard to get that fresh-off-of-the-plant kind of flavor. But this is – I'll bring up both of these things with McGee because I know he thinks a lot about this, specifically this problem, especially because he grows his own stuff because he lives in California, you know? Right.

[08:59,280] So I apologize. I'm going to have to defer to later in the segment, but we'll get an answer for you. Does that sound good? Wait, who am I speaking to, by the way? Yeah, absolutely. My name's Chris. Hey, Chris. Thanks for calling in. We'll get some answers for you before the hour's done. All right. Also, I just had a quick question about sous vide coffee. I've been just taking my coffee grounds and putting them into a bag and basically doing a high-duration, low-temperature. Right. Like around 68C. Similar to like Kyoto – so higher than like a cold coffee, higher than Kyoto-style coffee. Yeah, much higher than a cold coffee. But, you know, it sort of doesn't leach out all the astringency or anything like that, provided you don't do it for two days. Yeah. How do you like it? I like it a lot, actually. You know, it seems to strike a good balance as far as having a lot of coffee solids in there versus a lot of the nasty stuff that people don't like. And then you coffee filter it and drink it, or what do you do? Right, exactly. I just do a coarse filtration. Huh. Well, we'll test that out. I've done the cold, and I've done a lot of work with, you know, like espresso-type stuff, but I've never done any kind of in-between work. We've done it with tea. We've never done it with coffee. That's interesting. You know, you should post something to our forums, and let's get a discussion going on that. Now, I'll try and, you know, at www.cookingissues.com forward slash forums. Post something like that, because, you know, I think that's interesting. I'm sure a lot of the people, you know, who troll around will think that's interesting, too. Maybe we can get something started, huh? All right, great. All right, cool. Thanks a lot for calling in. All right, bye. Do we have another caller? We do? Yeah. Oh, hey, we have another caller. Great. Hello? Hi. Hey, who am I speaking with? This is Nathan. Hey, Nathan.

[10:33,380] So, I had a question. I remember a post you made a couple months ago, I guess, on cooking issues, about how carbonation was perceived. And you mentioned sort of offhand that you tried stuff that was carbonated, or not carbonated, but force gas with NO2. I'm wondering about other gases that you've tried dissolving in liquids and what that tasted like. All right, well, you know, N2O nitrous and CO2 are the two readily available gases that are soluble to a large degree in water. I don't, you know, and also alcohol, and also CO2 is very soluble in alcohol. And also, I don't know about CO2, but N2O, I guess CO2 as well, is also soluble in liquid fats. So, these are, you know, they're very soluble, which is why you can put a lot of it in and why you can get a big effect. Other gases, you know, other ones that I know of that, you know, are food-grade aren't as soluble. So, you're not going to get the same kind of – now, you could definitely get some sort of maybe aroma or flavor out of putting some gases in. And some noxious gases can clearly go in. But I haven't experimented with any other gases because, basically, you know, you get the effect of carbonation, which is what I'm looking for, out of the CO2. And then we use the nitrous as kind of a balancing act. So, if I want a lively beverage, I want a lot of bubbles in it. And the number of bubbles in it is determined by the total pressure dissolved gas in it because that's what's determining how fast it's bubbling, right? And also the bubble size for a given liquid and a bunch of other things. But if you added that much CO2, it would rip your face off. You know, your nose would be – we've had – I like, actually, overcarbonated things. But, you know, I like my face being ripped off. But the thing is, in order to make it a really lively beverage but more mellow, we add the N2O. The side effect of the N2O is that it's sweet, right? Now, there are situations – like, I'm sure people have heard of beer gas. So, beer gas is a mixture of CO2 and straight nitrogen. And the reason that they put the nitrogen in is because they want to keep their kegs at a high pressure so that they can push beer out at a reasonable rate. But they don't want to increase the bubble load by adding too much CO2. So, they're adding a relatively insoluble gas, right, nitrogen to it so that it can – so that it basically just adds extra pressure. I believe also it's nitrogen and not CO2 that's in the Guinness widget that's sitting in the bottom of the Guinness. And I think what's going on there is they're literally just forcing some bubbles into it to create kind of a creamy head even though they're not increasing the actual total amount of CO2 in it, right? So, there are reasons to use other gases, but I don't know anything that would help necessarily in a carbonation setting. Do you have any ideas of things you want to try? No, I was just wondering because you said, you know, CO2 is kind of sour tasting and 2O is kind of sweet tasting if there were any other things that would sort of give you other flavors without being boiling this, obviously. I'm sure we could put some, you know, sulfur-containing gases in that would dissolve in just fine, but it would make it taste god-awful. You know what I mean, but I haven't – you know, maybe someone will, you know, call in or post something they think is good to try. But they're the two readily available food-grade gases that dissolve to a fairly large degree into your, you know, into beverages. So, those are the ones – that's why we use them. Gotcha. Cool. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks for calling in. All right. So, that brings us pretty close. I'm going to talk about one thing before we go to our first break. But coming up on the next – right after the next break, Harold McGee is going to be here. He's going to help us answer some questions. One thing I wanted to address, we had an email question – oh, for your calls, by the way, please call in to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128.

[14:24,080] So, we had a really interesting question come in via email. And don't worry. All the email questions we'll get to. So, don't worry if I'm not doing yours first. Someone called in Matt – how do you pronounce Matt's name? Hass? Hass? Hass? Hass? Hass? Hass.

[14:39,180] His restaurant group is using someone who grows their own cattle and is using ultrasound to check the marbling of the meat while they're alive. So, basically, you're taking a cow. They're putting an ultrasound on the cow and they're trying to measure the fat content of the cow. So, the idea is trying to get a higher percentage of prime marbled meat than you otherwise would and said he had never heard about this technique before and he wanted to know something about it, know about these guys running tests. This is kind of – I don't know how well – I don't know how often it's used nowadays but using ultrasound to test the fat level of animals has a fairly long history. They've been doing it since at least the 80s and there's a bunch of different ways. So, basically, lean muscle meat and fat have different properties for ultrasound. The speed of ultrasound – ultrasound is just basically any sound wave faster than you can hear over about 20,000 cycles per second and it can penetrate through tissue which is why they use it to check for babies, for ultrasounds and for medical diagnostic stuff. They can take pictures of it. But even simply without an image, you can tell based on the speed that the ultrasound is going through, whether it's going through more fat or more lean. You can tell because fat also reflects ultrasounds in different ways. It also can, I think, shift the frequency as it goes through. So, there's several different techniques they can use with ultrasounds to take a live animal in a very quick, easy-to-do way out in the field with a piece of machinery and take a picture and figure out kind of a best guess as to what the inside of the muscle is like in terms of its fat content.

[16:22,640] And for – in general, there's a lot of interesting work being done with ultrasounds and a review paper you might be interested in is Ultrasonic Innovations in the Food Industry from the Laboratory to Commercial Productions by Alex Patist et al. And that was in – what journal? The Journal for Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies in July 2007. Thanks for calling in. Please post a question to the blog on that. I'm interested in talking about ultrasound and meat quality more. And this is our first break. You're listening to Cooking Issues on Heritage Radio Network. Two, one, two, three.

[17:07,120] Everybody, let me tell you the news. Everybody, let me tell you the news. Everybody, let me tell you the news.

[17:36,140] It's just a rhythm, man. Hey, baby. Let me tell you the news. Hey, baby. Let me tell you the news. Let me tell you the news. Let me tell you the news. Hey, baby. Let me tell you the news. Hey, baby. Let me tell you the news. Hey, baby. Let me tell you the news. Let me tell you the news. Let me tell you the news. Let me tell you the news. Let me tell you the news. Let me tell you the news. Let me tell you the news. Let me tell you the news. Hey, baby. Let me tell you the news. Let me tell you the news. Hey, baby. Let me tell you the news. Hey, baby. Let me tell you the news. Let me tell you the news. Ain't too sharp One more time Ain't too sharp Ain't too sharp You're just used Let me dance I want a branch I've got to talk Just let me walk I've got to I've got to I've got to Tell you that Yeah, everybody Let me tell you that Yeah, everybody Let me tell you that Ain't too sharp

[19:27,960] Ain't too sharp Ain't too sharp You're just used I want to dance I've got to branch I want to feel Loving you You've got to feel Just got to We know it's another Yeah, you've got to feel Give it to me

[19:57,960] Riblets Hello, it's Dave Arnold You are listening to Cooking Issues On Heritage Radio Network The show where you call in With your cooking issues And if we're lucky We get to solve them Our number here is 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 And we're coming to you live Every Tuesday From 12 to 1245 Eastern Standard Time And we have a real treat today Because calling in As our call-in guest Is Harold McGee And Harold McGee For those of you That don't know There's probably a couple Of you that don't know Is the ultimate All-time master blaster Of science As it relates to Delicious things in the kitchen So not industrial science But the science Of how to make things Taste better And he's calling in From San Francisco Harold, are you there? I am Dave Hey, good to talk to you How are you doing? Likewise Pretty well, thanks How about you? Yeah, I'm doing well Doing well So actually, you know Harold, we have a caller Calling in right now So you want to just Take their question real quick And then we'll Hit some of the email Questions we've got Sure Alrighty So who do we have? We have Derek on the line Hi Dave Hey Great to talk to both of you Big fans Both you Dave and Harold I was thinking the other day Would it Would you get more flavor Out of your stocks If you started with Distilled water Because it tends to It pulls in stuff Such as carbon dioxide Would it be more Would it pull in more flavor From whatever meat Or what you were using As the base? Do you think? Harold, what do you think? I wouldn't think you'd get Much of an effect Because it's going to become Non-distilled water Pretty quick As soon as you put stuff Into it And you typically What do you think, Harold? I agree completely Yeah There's I mean It's distilled And nice and pure But the moment you put Anything in it It's not And the difference Between I think You know A few parts per million Of minerals In tap water And distilled water By the time you've Made the stock Is not going to be detectable I mean Maybe it depends also On how hard Your particular water is I mean The Japanese chefs Insist that there's A huge difference In kombu stocks If the water Is excessively hard And so they say That you know The European water It's hard for them To make a good Kombu stock So they use Bottled water And of course For beer brewing It's important But I just I don't I don't know That for regular stock Right, Harold? I mean Wouldn't you think I mean Yeah, the thing about kombu Is that it's so delicate And you're extracting For a relatively short Period of time You know Just a few minutes And so I think You know Something where you're Throwing in Meat bones And vegetables And cooking for hours It's going to be Much less important Of course You know If you do the experiment You taste them blind And you You know Get back to us We'll post it Because You know There's no I always say that You know Whatever I think Is you know Secondary to what You actually observe When you do it Awesome Alright Exactly Alright Well thanks so much For calling in And before we go To anyone else Harold I don't know If you heard Before We had someone Calling you And wanted to Preserve the The kind of The aromatics In cilantro And I said That you might Be the best Person to talk To about The best way To keep Cilantro In top condition To try and Make it smell Like you just Took it out Of your garden Do you have Any tips On that? Boy It's tough With fresh herbs Because Those flavor Compounds Are really fugitive And the cells Are delicate And when they Dry out You know Everything gets Scrambled up Inside the cells And in the case Of cilantro You know The more that You beat it up If you try to Make a pesto For example The flavor Actually becomes Much milder And so What you want To do I think Probably is Just dry it As gently As possible Just to Minimize the Damage to the Cells Right He says He was Doing it With a Paper towel But also I think People store It too Tightly A wrap You almost Want those Like those Bags that Allow air To go Through them Right Because I Think he's Also having Loss in The refrigerator I think He said They were Turning brown And kind Of muddy You know What do You think Well yeah I think You know If it's A matter Of keeping It alive You know By preserving I thought You meant You know Drying Or something Like that If you Just want To keep Them alive Then yeah What I would

[24:35,260] The stems To get A fresh End And then Put them In a glass Of water And then Put a bag Around the Glass Right You know Put a Rubber band Around the Bag And that Gives you It prevents The cilantro From drying Out in the Refrigerator Keeps them Cool Gives them The supply Of water They're not Going to be Happy in the Dark So that Won't last Forever But it's Better than Nothing And there You go There's the Answer From the Source We got Another Interesting One That I Think Is up Your Alley Harold Jeff Salts Writes In Wrote To Nastasha You know We Take Email Questions As well And says If we can whip Cream with sugar And we can whip Egg yolks with sugar Then why can't We whip Creme anglaise And just to verify This morning Before we came out To the show I tried to whip Some creme anglaise And indeed It does not whip You know I also know That there's some Problems Sometimes people Have problems Whipping Even straight cream That's been Heated I mean What do you What do you Think What do you Think's Going on here Well in the Case of the Creme anglaise It's true That cream Can be Can be whipped And egg yolks And egg whites Can both be Whipped into a Foam But that's True of The raw Versions Of those Things Creme anglaise Has been Cooked So And in the Case of Cream With cream It only Whips If it's Cold So The conditions Aren't right The proteins Have been Denatured And the Temperature Is wrong But I Didn't I mean I took The creme Anglaise And cooled It down To like Back to Fridge Temperature Still Doesn't Whip There's Something About Heating Cream And then Cooling it That made Do you need To wait A long Time What are You disrupting In cream That stops It from Whipping Like that Boy With cream All by Itself I mean In a Creme Anglaise Of course The cream Is The surfaces Of the Oil Droplets Are going To get Coated By the Egg Proteins And by You know Whatever else You might Have in There Sugars In the Way So it's Just going To make It much More Difficult In the Case of Just plain Old cream Heating it And then Cooling it Back down Offhand I can't See why That would Make it Harder To whip Yeah I mean I've never Done the Experiment Myself But I Know People Who have Done It And said That They Were Able

[26:51,720] Where that Is But I know That The fat Inside the Droplet Takes a While to Get organized Again after It's been Heated You know You heat It up It becomes Molten Inside And then As you Chill it Down It begins To crystallize And I Think Maybe It just Takes a While For you To get That The optimum Crystal Structure So that When you Whip At the Edges Of the Crystals Break Through The Membrane And Begin to Stick to Each Other And You Get A Good Foam That Makes Sense Almost Like The Theory Of Aging Ice Cream Base Right Yeah Yeah All right Jeff Well I Hope that Answers Your Question Let me See Whether We Have Anything Ah Here's One That Harold You'll Enjoy Val Called In And said I love The radio Show I'm Traveling To Turkey In Three Weeks I Was Wondering If You Had Any Suggestions As to Where I Could Find Some Good Celep Donderma Flour In Turkey And For Those Of You That Know Like Part Of The Current Interest In Celep Here In The United States Is Due To An Article That That Harold Wrote A Number Of Years Ago In The New York Times On Stretchy Ice Creams And Celep Is An Orchid Powder That Is Available In Turkey But Can't Be Exported Because It's Not That It's In Danger But They Don't Allow exports Of It And If You Add This To Ice Cream And Beat The Ice Cream Vigorously It Forms A Stretchy Stretchy Ice

[28:27,800] From Me What About You Harold Do You Know Of Any I've Never Been To Turkey Either So Yeah I Don't I Really Don't Know Yeah There Are A Couple Of People Who Who Blog Who Know Turkey And The Middle East In General Really Well And Who Blog And You Might Check Their Sites And Ask Them One Of Them Is Anissa Helou A N I S S H E L-O-U I Forget The Name Of Her Site But She Knows That Part Of The World Really Really Well And She Could Probably Give You Some Good Advice Right And It's Important To Get A Good Source Because Different Salad Powders Are Very Different In How Much Of The Active Principle They Have In It And You Know Also They Sell Some It's Just Meant For For Drinks And

[29:23,920] Interns And They Packed It One Time Though My Intern's Mom Got Stopped In The Airport For Coming From Turkey With A Vacuum Bag Thing Of Powder And Spent Three Hours Talking To A Very Irate Customs Official About How It Was Not Any Sort Of Drug Product They Were Trying To Bring In And It Didn't Make It In But I Would Get As Much As You Can You

[29:53,920] Need To Buy And Val Asks One More Question What Would The Results Be With Salop Ice Cream If You Frozen And Spun In A Paco Jet Alas This Will Not Work The Paco Jet I've Never Had Any Luck Trying To Paco Jet It It Needs To Be Manually Beaten After It's Frozen You Need To Manually Freeze It And Then Manually Beat It And That's The

[30:23,920] Bits And That's The Absolute Reverse Of What You Want To Do With Salop Ice Cream You Want To Create This Network Like A Gluten Network In Bread Dough And That's What Gives It That Wonderful Stretchy Quality All Right So We're About To Go Out To Our Second Break Before We Do I'm Going to Give You The Number To Call In One More Time 718 497 2128 That's 718 497 2128 We're Coming Back With Harold McGee This Is Cooking Issues

[31:14,540] Let's Keep Me Up Time Gotta Shape The Bigger Mama Keep Me Up Time Too Much You Know You're Out Of Sight Hey The Way You Do The Things You Do The Way You Kiss Me Too The Way You Do The Things You Do The Where You Kiss Me Tear My Heart Delight That's What You Know You're Out Of Sight You Got A Sweet Disposition You Always Right You Got A Sweet Disposition You Know You Know You're Always Fine You Know Just What You're Doing Baby You Know You're Out Sight You're Too Much You're The In You're So Him Baby You Are Listening To Cooking Issues On Heritage Radio Network I am Dave Arnold I'm Here In the Studio With Nastasha Lopez And On The Telephone We Have Harold McGee So You Have One Last Chance To Call In At 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 Now Sweeten We We Will Give Away Another Packet Of Riblets If You Call In Anyway So Harold We Have A Couple More Email Questions We Have To Get Through So Why Don't We Take Take Care Of Those She We Had Someone Call In Actually Last Week Or Write In Last Week Who Is Interested In Doug Baldwin Formula For Calculating When Meat Is Going To Be Done I Know You You've Done Some Work On It So Douglas Baldwin Has This Kind Of Rather Complex Well Not For Him Because He's A Math Professor But Complex Formula For Determining The Heat Of When Meat Is Going To Get

[33:39,220] What Do You Think Is The Best Thing Is Just Cook A Couple Of Things And Get A Feel For The Size Of Thing And Then Just Go That Way What Do You Think Yeah I Agree It Is True That You Can Calculate How Long It's Going To Take For Something To Heat Up In A Water Bath And It Takes A Lot Longer Than You Think Because The Difference Between The Temperature Of The Bath And The Temperature Of The Food Is Relatively Small And That Means That You Know There's Not Much Of A Push Behind The Heat On The Outside So It Takes Quite A While But The Calculations Great They Can't Account For All The Variables That You're Going To Encounter Like Variations In The Thickness Of The Meat And The Effect Of The Wrapping Whether If The Wrap Isn't Perfectly Sealed If You've Got A Couple Bubbles Here And There It's Going To Slow Things Down So I Agree The Best Thing To Do Is Just To Have Several Packages And Check Every Once In A While Give Them A Good Long Time And Maybe Use The Formulas As A Guide But Test It Yeah I've Never Had Really Much Of A Need To Know Exactly How Long It's Going To Take But Also Nathan Mirvold Posted A Bunch Of Things A Number Of Years Back On E-Gullet Oh I See We Have Another Caller Who Do We Have On The Line Hello Yeah Hi How You Doing I'm A Chef Working On The East Coast And I Have A Couple Of Questions About Sous vide Cookery Into A Couple Specific Situations We're In Right Now That We're Trying To Fine Tune Right I Don't Want To Mention Anything Specific Because We're Still Operating Under The Radar Right Right So Right Now We're Working With A Couple Different Cuts Of Meat Some Have Been Really Successful Some We're Still Trying To You Know They're Very Good But They Still Could Be A Better Right Right Now We're Working With A Thick Cut Pork Chop Which Is Kind Of Cut From The Shoulder End So It Has A High Fat Content And You Know We Try Cooking It Around 52 54 Degrees Celsius Or Anywhere Between 4 Hours 12 Hours Up To 24 Hours And The Problem Is That The Fat Isn't Breaking Down In An Appealing Way You

[36:05,560] And It Would Be Very Palatable And You Know At Those Low Temperatures It Would Just Kind Of Be Like Hammy And You Know Just Not Have A Nice Mouth Feel So We Upped The Temp Up To 70 Degrees Too High And We Ran It With A Thermocoupler Just To Check The Temp We Pull It At 54 Degrees And That Was Better Yeah But Still That Too High Right Yeah Exactly Yeah It Was Still A Little Like It Got A Little Hammy You Know It Wasn't Perfect Then We Brought It Down To 64 Degrees And That Was Kind Of A Nice You Medium We Were Kind Of Happy With That And We Just Basically Would Run It In The Thermocoupler Until We Hit 54 Degrees Celsius On The Inside So I Was Any Comments On That Or Any Ideas Directions We Can Go So Low temp That's Not Going to Really Render Out When You're Cooking Low temp And That's Kind Of One Of The Main Things To Work Around When You're Doing This Kind Of Work And In Fact Harold Will Agree That's One Of Things You You Don't Particularly like Some Of These Dishes Because We Don't Get Things Like The Like

[37:16,700] Pre-Sear On The Meat That's Going To Start Getting The Flavor Going And Also You Notice You're Going To Pick Up A lot More Color A lot Quicker On The Finish But You Might Do Something We Do Called Low temp For Insurance Purposes And So What That Is You Cook The Meat To A Medium Like You Want The Inside To Be Whatever You Want To Be You Know 50 High 50 And Change Or Like 60 Somewhere In There Right You Cook It Through Then You Chill The Whole Thing Down Then You Throw It In A Blazing Hot Oven Right Now You're Just Focused On The External Texture Of The Chop And You Can Pull It As Soon As It Looks Good Because The Inside Has Already Been Cooked And It's Going To Be Warm Enough And So This Way You Can Serve Something Where You Get A lot Of The Benefits Reproducibility You Know Fairly Quick Turnaround Time On A Pork Chop That You Would And Get More Of A Traditional Flavor Out Of It Where You Know But Still Get Some Of The Benefits Of Low Temperature And So This Works A lot On Bigger Cuts Or Things Like That Where You Just Want

[38:25,200] Lowest Temperature You Want Cool It Down And Take It From Normal In A Hot Oven And Just Get That Outside Where You Want It I Think You Might Be Happy With The Results Because A lot Of Times We Want A more Traditional Tasting Especially On Something Like A pork Chop What

[38:55,200] To Try Yeah I Be I Be Careful With The Lower Temps Like 52 54 Here's Why I Mean Will You Kill Bacteria Down There Yeah Probably But One Of The Issues Is When You Load up A Circulator And You Hit Those Fairly Low Temperatures If The Circulator Is Crowded At All Sometimes The The Pieces Of Meat That Are Near Each Other They Be Shielded From The Temperature For Long Enough At Those Low Temperatures That You'll Get Lactic Acid Bacteria Growing In So If You'll Look In The People Who Post On Sous V You'll Notice People Saying Oh My Thing Smelled Like Sauerkraut My Thing Smelled Like Blue Cheese And It's Because They're Not Killing The Lactic Acid Bacteria Fast Enough So When You're Doing Those Low Temperatures I Would Recommend A Quick Dunk Of The Bag Into Maybe Into Simmering Water Just To Kill All The Lactic Acid Bacteria That Are On The Outside And And Then Go From There If You're Having That Problem I Know That Some People Are Having That Problem And Just Real Quick I Know You Have A lot To Cover But Do You Have Any Sort Of Guideline Basic Temperatures That

[40:06,000] What's Your Brazing Temperature I Do A Lot Of Brazes At 60 Because The Lower Ones People Don't Really They Want Their Brazes Much Lower Than That And When I Go Higher Than About 63 I Start Feeling Like I'm Losing The Advantages At Low Temperature So I Tend To Stay In That Range But The Best We Have Cooking Charts If You Go To Cooking Issues Dot Com And Look Up Low Temp Charts There's A chart That Has Basically All Of Our Temperatures On It Temperatures And Times That We Work With Yeah And That's That's Pretty That's Pretty Up To Date So I Would Check That Out And Then Let Let Let Let Let Let Let Just Knock Something Out Real Quick Harold Before Because I Want Talk To You Something About Because Harold And I Are Going To Tales Of The Cocktail Oh Wait We Have Another Caller So I Can't Talk About Tales Of The Cocktail All Right We Have Another Caller Coming In Harold Okay Hello Okay How How are You Man All Right I'm Here To Ask You A Question All Right So I Know You Are Talking Sous-Vide But I Don't Have A Sous-Vide At Home Right But I Do Have An Oven Okay So My Entree Into Kind Of The Technical Side Of Cooking Has Been To Kind Of Fudge It At Home Right I'm Trying To I Brine My Meat Usually Before I Roast It So Are You Familiar With This River Cottage Meat Book Yes I Have In The River Cottage Meat Book He'll Talk About How He Describes A Two Part Roasting Process One At Like 425 And Then It Comes Down 50 75 Degrees For Like The Longer Roast To Cook Through Right You Know To Make The Crust And Then To Cook The Meat Through Right So But I Found At Home After Brining That It Didn't Work What I've Been Doing Is Roasting A Chicken The Whole Time At The Same Temperature So I Wanted To Know What What You Guys Thought About That Two Temperature Versus One Temperature And About That Process Because I've Been Getting A Good Brown On The Meat And Cooking It All The Way Through With A Lot You Know The More Technique I Applied To It The Worse The Results Got All Harold Okay Well My Feeling Is That You Can Get A Good Result In A Lot Of Different Ways And It Just Depends On The Details Of What You Do And What You're Looking For In The End So The High Temp Followed By Low Temp Is Pretty Standard Way Of Doing Things Gives You That Initial Blast Of High Temperature Starts The Browning On The Surface And Then You Turn The Heat Down To Cook It Through More Gently If You Left It At The High Temperature Too Long Then You'd End Up Over Cooking The Outside While The Inside Was Still Cooking Through But With Something Like A Chicken Which Is Relatively Small And Which Cooks Relatively Quickly I Find That You Can Get Good Results With All Sorts Of Techniques You Can Stick Chicken In At 500 Degrees And Its Done Really Quickly And It Comes Out Pretty Juicy Because Even Though The Outside Temperature Is So High The Rapidity Of The Cooking Means That You End Up With A Reasonably Juicy Inside You Can Also Cook At A Low Temperature When You Say That You're Cooking At The Same Temperature Constantly Is It Like 400 Degrees 375 It's Like 350 375 Right In There Yeah And Put It In Like 45 Minutes And You're Happy With The Browning That You Get On The Skin It Works Because I Think The Brine The Brine And Then The Drying After The Brine Allows It To Brown Easier Yeah So You Take It Out Of The Brine And What Do Do Let It Sit In The Fridge For A Day To Dry I Brine It Overnight And Then In The Morning You Know With My Cereal I'll Take It Out And Dry It Dry It And When I Come Home Make It For Dinner Yeah So That's The Those Are The Little Details That Can Make All The Difference In The World If You If You Brine Without The Drying Then You're Going to End Up With A Soggy Chicken At 400 Degrees Or 375 And You Really Need That High Temperature To Bake Out The Moisture And Get The Browning Going But If You've Already Pre-dried It Then That's Not An Issue And Then It Forms That Kind Of Pellicle You Know And It Gets Brown There The Skin Gets Kind Of Clear And Tacky My Other Question To You Is If You're Cooking That At 500 Really High Really Fast Do You Have To Rest It Then Like Is There Tin Foil Is There Do You Have To I Mean How Does It Cook Through That Fast Resting It

[45:11,000] Parts Of The Bird Have Gotten Pretty Hot And It Is A Chance For The Juices To Kind Of Redistribute You Know They Have Been Squeezed Out But They Haven't Exited The Muscle Completely And So They Can Kind Of Settle In And Find The Dry Spots And Redistribute And Give You Something More Evenly Juicy Okay Well Thanks You Answer I Was Just Feeling Guilty Because

[45:41,000] Felt That Somehow I Was Being Unfaithful And Now I Realize That The Drying Made All The Difference Yeah Yeah I Mean You Only Owe Your Faith To A Delicious Result Exactly Exactly The Proof Is In The Pudding All Right Thanks For Calling In And We Have Very Short Amount Of Time I Got To Knock Two Things Out With You Harold We Got A Follow Up And This Is Right Up Your Alley Chris Who Called In Before About The Cilantro Just Sent Us A Text Saying I Realized I Forgot To Mention That I Had Some Luck Preventing Rot By Washing With Aqueous Ozone It's Really The Stabilization Of The Flavor Itself That I'm After And He Thinks Maybe It's Decanal And It's So Dan Fleeting Even In Totally Unrotten Bunches Anything To Say About That Well It Just Speaks To The Variability Among People And Their Sensitivity To These Aroma Compounds Because There Are People Who Can't Come Within A Mile Of A Bunch Of Cilantro Without Smelling The Tiniest Quantities So It May Just Be That He Is He Loves The Aroma But Is Less Sensitive To It And So It's Going To Be Harder To Find A Bunch With Enough Of The Stuff To Really Make An Impact For Him All right And Then We Have One Quick Question That Came In I Promise I Get To All The Early E-mail Ones He Scott From Your Home San Francisco Wants To Know How To Make A Foam To Put On Top Of His Dirty Martini With An Olive Brine Based On A Drink He Had At The Bazaar In Los Angeles And Just Wants To Know Some Basic Pointers Can You Do It With Stuff From The Supermarket Yes I Would Get Yourself Some Lethocin The Granulated Kind And Or Xanthan Gum And Or A Combination I Would Not Add Any More Than About A Quarter Percent Or So Of Xanthan You Can Actually Add A Little More But I Wouldn't Add Much More And Anything Up To About Half To Three Quarters Of Percent Of Lecithin Put A Stick Blender Into The Mixture Hold It At An Angle So That The Blade Of The Stick Blender Is Going In And Out Of The Liquid And That's Going To Cause The Bubbling And Frothing And You Should Be A Foam If Not Just Post A Question To The Forums Or To Cooking Issues And And We'll Answer It Harold And I Are Actually Going To A Couple Days Actually Going To To Tales Of

[48:16,520] One More Cocktail Related Thing If You Want To Come Learn High Tech Cocktail Stuff Including Some Home Friendly Things From Me Personally And Nils My The Head Of The French Culinary And My Partner In Crime Here We're Doing A Class On June 28th At The French Culinary Institute At 6pm Sadly We're Out Of Time And I'm Really Upset Because Harold I Had A Bunch Of Interesting Stuff To Talk To You About With New Rotary Evaporation Breakthroughs That We Made Just Yesterday But I Guess I Have To Yeah Turns Out I Think I Might Have A Way To Do Really Delicious Distillations Water Based And Then Add It To Alcohol Quickly To Try And Keep The Aroma In I Found That Like I Can With Liquid Nitrogen I Can I Can Basically Even Though Water Based Distillations Are Normally Not So Flavorful So Fleeting That If I Use A Cold Finger With Liquid Nitrogen Do My Distillation That Way And Then Immediately Melt It Into Alcohol That I Get A Very Good Result But I Was Hoping To Talk To You About That On The Radio But Alas We Are Out Of Time So Harold I Hope You Enjoyed Calling In I Enjoyed

[49:27,440] Listening To Cooking Issues On Harry's Radio Network Brought To You By Acme Smoked Fish Thank You