Hello and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cookie cutters coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center newsstand studios joined as usual with Anastasia the hammer Lopez, how you doing? I'm good. Yeah. Yes. We have also worked in the panels. Joe Hasan, how're you doing? I'm doing great. How are you guys? Good, good. We're supposed to have Jackie molecules in the California booth. But we're worried maybe the big one hit because we can't raise them. So this is not going out live to the Patreon people. I'm sorry. But if somehow you're on the discord, if you want to call in questions to our guests at 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And of course, our special guest today is a fan of our fan favorite from our listeners of the show. Oh, nice. Thanks. Kenji Lopez, alt, how you doing? I'm good. How are you doing? Well, doing well. I'm good. Good. So, alright, so you know, you might know, the Food Lab, right, which sold I don't know what, like a copy for every person who lives in the United States. Something like this. It's something like, like, there's enough copies for like every, you know, person to have one in the country?

Which is 50 pages of one.

Yeah, part of one. Yeah. I like how you've calculated that's very good. But you've come out with a new book. And I'm kind of surprised it. You know, I was surprised when I learned that as long time ago that I learned what you're doing. But on the walk just on the walk and you say in the intro. You're like you felt kind of weird, because it's the pan that you use the most. Right? And you kind of left it out of first book. Yeah.

I mean, not not totally by choice. You know, my first book. I mean, you worked with Maria. But yeah, my first book, when I turn to the manuscript to her, she kind of took the axe to it because it was way too long. And so I'm, you know, most of the stuff that stayed in was kind of the American stuff, and American adjacent stuff. And then so there was a whole chapter on the walk in that book. Among other things that got cut. The only thing that remained in that first book is in the in the chapter isn't the introductory chapter on equipment where I said, you should buy a walk. And these are the things you can do in a walk. And then I didn't mention walk again and the rest of the book, right, so

yeah, so I mean, I remember in, you remember, like, so across the way from Maria, was, you know, whoever her assistant was at the time, right? Yeah. In the time that we were writing, she had, I think, like, two or three, I don't know which one you have for the like, the longest length of time. I don't remember. Yeah. But in that side, in the side, cabinet, was your stacks. Because you submitted like, 8 billion pages of stuff for the first book. I mean, every time and Maria would every time I showed up, she would walk me across the room and be like, monkey Kenji stack. Where's your stack? Where's your stack? So yeah, anyway. Yeah. Good times. But one thing I think it's interesting, and I think gonna be interesting for like, a lot of our listeners, if they don't already have the book, when did it come out? By the way? March 8, officially, yeah. So congratulations. Thank you. Yeah. You were a very early advocate, and continue to be of the flat bottom walk. Yeah. And I think like, this is going to be interesting for a lot of our listeners and might solve maybe some of their problems in that a lot of people poopoo the flat bottom wall as being, you know, a to scare or air quotes, depending on I actually asked my wife what's the difference? We scare quote, and an air quote, she's like, it's scare quote, when you write it, but air quote, when you make it in the air, they have the same meaning. And she's like, well, they don't have to have the same meaning. Anyway. Yeah, so it's quote unquote, inauthentic. So authenticity really has meaning anymore, but you know, like what is really authentic mean but but the point is, is that you say it just flat out cooks better does work on the kind of burners that we use unless you have an actual wok burner.

Exactly. Yeah, well, it's also it also cooks safer right it's like you know, there's a big chapter on deep frying in here because I think you know walk I think is the best vessel for deep frying pans for well for a number of reasons. Yeah, but Yeah, cuz it expands to the bubbles don't go over and out it catches, you're able to get under there more easily. You can maneuver food more easily a number of reasons why I think it's the best tool for deep learning but a flat by a round bottom walk I don't want to fill that up with like two quarts of hot oil and have a kind of teetering on a western style burner designed for a flat thing so part of it part of it is performance because you're getting more of the pen closer to the closer to the fire and you know in the ring on a Western burners designed to spread heat outwards. So when you're when the sides of the walker elevated up there, the the flame spreads out even more so you end up kind of heating up the sides of the walk instead of the bottom which is what you want right around bottom one.

Yeah, cuz I haven't extreme. And I was surprised because there's also different. There's different levels of flatness, right? There's those ones where it's just a little bit flat. Right? But that's not what you're talking about. You're like almost have like, six or seven inches. Yeah. So it's almost like a real it's almost like a like a two quart sauce pans bottom or something like that with much wider sides, much wider sides, but I'm turning into the flatter part. Yeah, it's so it feels safe on like a regular spider, because I have to say, I actually kind of agree with you. And I have extraordinarily high output burners. Right. So what's

that for? What's that for? Because that's the way I live. What's the number? Oh, was it hard to

measure? Because the person who installed the stove didn't put a regulator on? Okay. Okay. And so our gas comes in at slightly higher pressures. And I'm not saying that I have a commercial stove, because that would be illegal for me to tell you that I have a commercial commercial stoves require regulators. Otherwise their outputs not regulated. Right. You know, and they don't explode set. Yeah. And so it's real high, it's above, it's around there. They're over 35. They're like, 40. You know, like,

it's under context. Like, in most homes, the like, my I have like a kind of semi fancy regular home range. And I think the highest printer and that is like 18,000. Yes,

this is predictable. Yeah. So the problem with it is as you say that, and in fact, I easily overdrive, even like an eight, an eight inch skillet, I'll overdrive and you'll the flames will come out if you go a crap on it, right. But it's true that even with all of that output, I still have, and this is the problem I think you're gonna have with the round walk, and I want you to talk about because you talk about it in the book quite a bit, is that I get water problems in the bottom of my round bottom walk, because you know, I have enough power that I can use a ring, right, but it hits, it hits, it does like a Friar Tuck running Friar Tuck situation in my walk. And it's a problem.

Yeah, I mean, for you, for some certain dishes. It's definitely a problem, you know, actually, on the cover of this book, The the illustration to the illustration here, you know, I did a sketch of this. And then the artist went added in the initial illustration, all these flames were pointing outwards. And that was the only time it was like, make the big difference point towards the middle of the walk. Yeah, was to get hot. It Yeah, it can, it can be a problem, I certainly I certainly run into that problem, I you know, I think having a flat button helps there, especially because you can you can move it around, you can slide it around the stovetop more. Whereas, you know, the round bottom, generally, most burners have like a, it'll, it'll settle into a place that's naturally in the middle of the burner. And it's difficult to keep it stable by moving it around and getting it in there. But yeah, you know, that those problems are mainly issues when you're doing specific types of stir fries, right, the kinds of the kinds where you particularly want to like, capture a lot of WOC A, and get that kind of that specific kind of stir fry flavor for a lot of like, you know, homestyle dishes or simpler dishes or dishes from, you know, that aren't from like Southern China where you don't need these gigantic flames, or non restaurant style dishes, it doesn't pose as much of an issue, you know, because you don't, you know, as long as you're cooking in batches, and as long as you're not letting everything just sit there and steam in its Steam itself. It's not, it's you can work around it. But you know, but because of that, in some cases, you know, you find that an electrician or an electric or an induction cooktop actually works sometimes better, you know, if the ring is doing the right if the ring is not the right shape, and it gets cooked up, and it really spreads out the flame wide. I think induction or resistive coil is always going to have the heat right in the center down there. So that can sometimes work better. But if you know if you're really serious, and you really want to get this like restaurant style cooking, you're gonna you're going to invest in like an outdoor burner, you're gonna need this base.

But yeah, they're pretty sick. Those real outdoor burners are are pretty sick. They're

pretty. Yeah, they're fun. They're fun if you have the outdoor space.

And if you live in New York, you can just go buy the real thing. You don't need to go on the internet and buy Oh, yeah, just go

to Chinatown. Pick up the burner. Yeah, the real cheap,

you know what I mean? So let's but Well, before we get into that, let's get into that. I

do want to clarify that like 95% of the stuff in this book is doesn't matter what kind of cooktop you have, like it's designed for home use. Like you shouldn't fall into this trap, which I often see especially on the internet of people saying, Oh, I can't cook and walk because I don't have a restaurant range. Right? That's That's clearly not true.

What I think I think it is helpful to say, honestly, like, you know, try the flat bottom. Oh, yeah, you know what I mean? Try the flat bottom. If you're having bad results on your stove, try the flat bottom. Yeah. Another thing so I don't know if you whether you keep track of this, but in New York, there's a proposal to limit or to basically stop having gas being put into new residential stuff right in Northern California. Same thing when I was living there. Yeah. And so a couple of people who you know I interact with on the Twitter are huge into Chinese cooking and they're like, basically say, Look, that's it's racist. So like, it's racist, because their position is that induction sucks. Norwalk cooking sucks in their opinion. You know what I mean? Now, I've used and I had this arguing with them. I was like, I've used the five kilowatt Nuff said. Just so you guys know, in case you don't, the average high power induction burner that you plug into a regular wall socket maxes out at about 1700 watts. Okay,

which is the equivalent of around I think 6000 BTUs. If, if your

gas was actually efficient, right, it's as good as a 20k burner about, it's about this, it's about equivalent to the power out of a 20k burner. And you know, and there's a lot of efficiency things, but they're pretty damn good. You know what I mean? Like, the real ones, the ones that the cheap induction units, like the thin, cheap ones, they throttled down as soon as they get warm. That's the reason to buy the expensive induction burner is that it keeps putting out its power forever, without throttling down, like the cheap ones throttle down without even telling you so you wouldn't even know. Right, right. You can hear it. Yeah. So then, anyway, but if you've ever used like a five kilowatt like wok burner, where the actual induction unit is shaped like the rock, there, we are ridiculous. There's

so you need special wiring for those.

Yeah, yeah. But I mean, if that's what you want to do, and you have electric, and then he was like, no, they're no good. I was like, Listen, man, I don't know whether he's actually use the super wok burners. Because they'll cherry it, they'll cherry a walk in, like what I mean is, so induction, people can't heat metal pass what's called the Curie point, as soon as, as soon as the iron heats up to the cherry red point, it loses its hysteresis loss wins on the induction stuff, and so itself limits, but when it's glowing, you know what I mean? So it's like, but it was harder than you need. So much to cheer you up that walk like that. Yeah. And I was like, the no one needs this much power. It's crazy. It's crazy.

I mean, I might, you know, on my trip here, you know, I'm traveling around doing some live demos and stuff. And I'm packing I pack a a case with an induction, an induction wok burner, so it is, you know, rounded to fit the bottom of the walk. And it was like 500 bucks on on WEBstaurant when it goes into a regular socket. Yeah. 1800 watts. And it's perfectly perfectly fine to cook on. Well,

it's going to do it's going to do any recipe as well as any normal home stove would. Yes. And so if your aim with your book is typically tail allow people at home to do you've never focused on the crazy you focus on things that people can do in practical.

Yeah, yeah, it works differently, right. So it's it, it's cupped to shape the walk with the induction element only heats up, you know, the bottom may be what I don't know what diameter is 10 inches, eight inches, something like that. So if you want to heat the sides up, you kind of got to like roll it around a little bit but the same as you might want to do on like a Gatling. So you know, so for things like when you're stir frying and you want to add like a sauce around the edges and you want it to immediately sizzle, you kind of have to heat up those sides. So you work with a little bit differently than you would a powerful gas flame. But but you can certainly get

good results with it. And you use a Cantonese in that or do you use the handle? I

use a handle walk? Yeah, I mean, I recommend a handle walk for pretty much anyone just because Cantonese walks, I get candy chefs use them. But I think for home home cooks like having that handle is has a layer of safety to it. You know, because, you know, as a chef, if you're cooking in Cantonese, or if you've ever worked in a restaurant, right? It's like it's an automatic thing. You have a towel and you're always touching things with towels, whereas most home cooks, or at least a lot of home cooks don't do that. So I always recommend a handled walk anyway.

Yeah, I cook if Cantonese at home. Okay. I don't know why. That's because it's round, I think. Okay, yeah, but maybe I'll go get a flat one. After reading your book. I was thinking he says, You know what,

you can get round flat, you can get round handled walks as well.

Yeah, but I mean, but uh, yeah, but I used to have one I was like crap on this because like when you touch it, because my ring is not big. I don't have a professional burner. And so I always felt more stable with a Cantonese rock. Okay, because I'd always been like, I'm going to use the round bottom because I'm shopping in Chinatown where I live and so like, you know, but me and after reading a book, I'm like, maybe I'll go get a flat one. Wherever, whatever is more comfortable to handle, you know, I'll start doing the tossing toss, beginning that toss you toss. You do mention the old Modernist Cuisine thing about the steam doing extra cooking on the toss. And I have to take some issue with that. Okay, I just don't believe a lot of people talk about steam in cooking. And I think by and large, it's hokum? I think

because so you're talking about the idea that when you toss. So the thing that they said in modern cuisine, which I quoted, and I think I quoted directly in my book, where I might have referenced it, any paraphrase that you referenced it Yeah, is that when you toss when you're when you're cooking a walk, there's this hot column of steam that's coming off the food and when you toss your food through it, some of the steam re condenses on the food and gives it additional heat. Yeah. And then it falls back down and steams again and so you're you're kind of cooking it extra fast, like a

real reclaimed, reclaimed heat kind of situation. Right? Okay, so what's the issue? Because I just don't believe that that's the case because as soon as the surface temperature of the food is is above the temperature of boiling water, then it's a wash. Steam only adds heat in when the thing is not actively Exposed. Selling

water. Right? Right. It's the food. You think the food when you're tossing it in the air, you think it's going fast enough that it's not cooling down, and then you don't think there's a chance that it's cooling down when it comes out of the walk enough that the steam is going to reheat it again, even a little bit.

If it does, I think that at that point, first of all, people anytime you see steam, that's not steam. Right? Steam? Yeah, that's yeah, water droplets. Yeah, that's water droplets. That means it's already condensed, it's already given up all of that massive amount of latent heat. So as soon as you see steam, it's over. You know, I mean, that's why and I write this as well, in the book, in case I ever finished my book that I'm writing, right? What I say is that the most dangerous is the steam you don't see because that's actually been anyone who's ever taught it. Yeah, right. Anyone that's ever opened a combi oven too quick, you know, some of the old ones that don't have locks, and you put your hand in or anyone that's like, immediately lifted off a steamer basket and tried to go in and looks okay. Toast you're gonna need because that's the steam that's gonna get you.

Yeah, because it's way hotter than the vapor you You're, you're seeing Oh, yeah, well, and it has all of its latent heat.

You know what I mean? So anyway, but yeah, so I just never, I never believed. Like, there's also people who believe that steaming things. And I know, you know, this is wrong. Steaming things is faster than boiling them. Ah, no, it's not. It's just not the case.

I never understood the argument is that is that they're saying because the steam can get hotter than water? Is that the arc? It's

all the latent heat. So like, so like when steam condenses? Right, right, is why it takes so much energy to boil water, right? When either you make steam or it condenses. It's a lot of energy. And so it's true that the most rapid transfer of heat energy is a steam condenser bouncing back on a cold surface, right. But as soon as the surface is at the same temperature as the steam, all of that massive heat loss and gain is over is over. And then it's just oh, what's a better heat transfer mechanism?

Water? I mean, water water is denser. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So I've always hated that argument. Yeah.

I mean, you know, what I think is fair to say. And I mean, I get it. Yeah. I mean, you know, we talked briefly about this. And then that was one of those parts in the book or is like, not 100%? Sure, I should include this was like, alright, Modernist Cuisine. That's a pretty good source. I can, you know, I can, they can back it up. You know, but but, you know,

I believe no more more data is needed. I believe nobody ever about anything, we can never

write anything because everyone's wrong. You know, but the thing that I think you can say for certain is that you know, one of the reasons why you toss food and one of the reasons why a wok is so useful for stir frying, as opposed to you know, a saucy a or a skillet is that you know, the wide shape and getting the food out into the air does encourage the evaporation of moisture from its surface, you're giving it more convection, you're giving you're giving it more opportunity for that moisture to come off. And that's that's really what's important as far as getting the food to cook rapidly,

right? Kind of a natural fluidized bed kind of a situation. I believe that that I believe. Now, another thing we call the book. Yeah, I'll take I'll take. I'll take a little bit of umbrage in your torch choices. You okay, you like the Itani? Yeah, I will say this. So having done I mean, obviously, you know that we do a lot of short shorts. Yeah, we do a lot of care. The Watani. So you recommend so the Itani has a butane torch. The nice thing about butane torches is you can get them anywhere. And they're cheap. They're relatively cheap. Yeah, they're relatively cheap canisters are like a buck. 99 Yeah, you can get them anywhere. Like in other words, when I say anywhere, I mean any country in the world, like whereas like our propane cylinders, your or you know, like, whatever map you can't like their country by country their country specific. Right, you can get certain other gases but they're they're not very good for torches at this point.

Yeah. I mean, they're also even within you know, even within the US, they're, they're harder to get. I think they're less less widely available than the than the butane, right?

And if you're going to get we a portable gas burner for picnics, and by the way, the even tiny that you recommend for the picnic burner was what I call

are the three horsepower with the three CP or 15k.

Yeah, they're great. Yeah. All right. And those take butane that

and that would be one of the recommendations for people who are who have induction who do want to work with gas is to get a yeah, that you were telling me there's a couple manufacturers that make 15k Yeah, 15k PTU butane burners, I

got the one from the other manufacturer because it's half the price. Okay. Yeah. Like you know what I mean, but yeah, the 15k and by the way, people don't be fooled. There is a there is a 7000 Roughly BT EU picnic burner. There is a 12,000 Roughly BT EU picnic burner, and there is a 15 and most 99.9, you can't walk into the street and buy one of the fifteens almost everyone is maxing out at the twelves and a lot of them have the sevens and it's not clear which one you're going to get especially if you buy from like, the less fancy brands like like the not even tiny brands, you have to really look up and see what you're getting. And don't listen to the salesperson. They are the worst. I almost like I got an argument, I walked into a store that claim they had the 15,000 on their website I walked in, I was like, yo, where's the 15? are like this isn't if it seems like it's the same gas. And like, I'm not asking what gas it takes. I'm asking. I want the one that with the right amount of power. And they're like, because I need it for the bullet. So I'm doing tests, you know what I mean? By the way, you can measure the BTUs output of your of your stove just by turning it on for a specific amount of time weighing it before and after, you can see exactly how much gas it's consumed. You do the math, and then you can calculate the efficiency based on how much water but if you want to know what my life's like, that's, like right now. Anyway. So make sure you're getting the right one and don't believe someone to do all the same. Because they they ain't

so but back to back to propane versus butane.

So on the Iranian butane torch, they're not a bad torch with this proviso. I can't tolerate having something in my kitchen that requires two hands to turn on and turn off. And so the Iwatani you have to turn on the gas right then click it on. And then you have to if you're very good, if you have good dexterity you can use like the where your thumb and your hand come together and you can turn the gas off with one hand. Yeah, but it stays on and I want my top my kitchen torches to be either off or on I

mean the You mean the gas. Even after you let your finger off the trigger the gas keeps coming out. Trigger all the gases it has the electric starter. Yeah,

yeah. And to me that is like, but where it is good is that it's a bushier flame. And so as opposed to the Bernzomatic torch, and you say the 4000 Come on, man, you're gonna get to get the 8000 Come on, man Come on. But the bushy or the flame, the less of the net and kind of nasty torch case you'll create. So you do want to push your flame a with honey does have a bushier flame and you also don't need that much power for what you're doing with it. So, but and, you know, we've been speaking to our torch manufacturers and asking them why had no one has built it. And I know why. But I don't have the time, the rest of our time together to talk about it. It's just stupidity. But why they don't make a butane that just turns off when you let go of it.

Right, right. I mean, you know, for me the recommendation for the Watani it's mainly about practicality, right? It's like if you want to if you want to learn if you want to go down a torch rabbit hole, like you can read your stuff, right? Yeah. Or talk to you and you'll go down a rabbit hole and there's a lot of things to choose from for me like they were tiny. It's like, as far as like the combination of the ease of accessibility to the candidate canisters and just being able to order like a 40 or $50 thing off of Amazon or wherever. Like I think for most home cooks like that's the most practical approach to take and is what I do at home like I don't I got I have a you know I have a I think I have an 8000 at home and I'm pretty sure I do. But you know it's in like a plastic case I don't leave it sitting out of my kitchen all the time. I was having a tiny it's just like in my fits in my cupboard easily I just pull it out when I need it and it takes a second and I just find it a lot. I mean these your storage wise and you know, shopping wise and all that stuff, but everybody's different. Obviously,

I always have my torch out and all of my burners are standing pilots and I O is the first thing I do when I get a standing pilot burner is I killed the pilots. Uh huh. And then I just I mean, I know I shouldn't kill all the pilots. And then I Torchlight them. Yeah, because I just I just don't need all that extra heat my household got

it. I have my my stove. My house came with a broken stove. And it doesn't have any ignition so I have like a little like a piezo I hate those little clicker clicker thing. I love it.

I hate them. Why? Because they're all like they're all poorly made. So that was just a piezo unit.

It's got it's got like a little gooseneck Yeah, I hate them because

this is the part of the design that's terrible is that if you look at it, it has the same technology as like PISA lighters. So unlike a PISA lighter in a torch that's buried with so the gas comes out, and it's lit actually away from the surface. If you use your if you use that clicker in a dirty environment, that end where the piezo is gets oxidized, right? Right. It doesn't freakin light anymore. And then you're like, Yeah, click, click, click, click, click, click click. You know what I mean? It's like cooking 1000 times maybe? Yeah, they just buried the dang piezo in the gooseneck. Yeah, you wouldn't have that issue. You wouldn't have that issue,

I suppose. Yeah, but the way but the way it's set up, I can use it to like, I can also use it to like, like, kindling in the fireplace and I can because it's exposed. Right, right. Like like the, the edge of like a, you know, a fire log.

If people wanted to be a little bit better with their lives in terms of design, if it was not virtually impossible to innovate with factory production, right? You could build one that would last forever. Yeah, that wouldn't get gunked up and have to be thrown away after after six months. And I get like very violently angry when things aren't where Looking at the moment when I need them to work, you know what I mean? Like I just I just hate it so so much. Okay. Now let's talk about seasoning because a lot of people have questions on on seasoning that we're talking about,

like seasoning the wok. We're not talking about MSG yet, right? We're gonna talk about okay, we have time.

So like, first of all, like you mentioned, all the materials is, does anyone actually make an aluminum walk? I've never seen an aluminum why

I've seen aluminum walks. Yeah. So my old friend, chichi Wang, who was a writer at serious eats for awhile, she actually owned an aluminum walk, that she was a very strong advocate for and back back in the day, like maybe this was 2010 or 12 years ago when we were talking about this, but she was a very strong advocate of aluminum walks. And I clicked on her as a bunch. It's I don't, they're not definitely not common. No, no, it was. I mean, hers was like, super well, it was it was dark was well, you know, it was it was dark, and, you know, seasoned. I don't know how it came, but I'm assuming it came looking like a but it was like his name note. Nor did he know Yeah, naked. Yeah. Yeah. It's

not like one of these like, not clad. No, no, no,

no, no, no, no, it's like, you know, like a restaurant pan. How light was it? Was it was it pretty light? It was like it was maybe I would say, close to a centimeter thick. So it was it was pretty thick. relatively light, though. Yeah. Let's let him about the same way to it's a carbon steel walkway. But it

was it was aluminum color on the outside but seasoned color on the inside. Yeah, yeah. Well, this brings us to our other interesting question. There are two schools of thought. So back in the day, day, way, day back when you were, you know, writing and serious eats, and I was at the French Culinary Institute, and the modernist folks hadn't yet come out with a new book. Right, right. There was all these discussions about how seasoning actually, let's just say, Listen, get getting carbon, get a carbon steel walk, right, get a carbon steel wall? That's the answer. Right? That is the answer. That's the easy answer. I mean, Jordan, there's no reason not to. Yeah, there's no reason to get a different thing. Yeah,

unless you already have it. And somebody gave you a $200 Alclad walk for your wedding registry or whatever. It's not going to do better than a carbon steel walk is what

makes a cloud walk. Why? i You don't want to shine your light on. So if you're walking, if you're walking shiny, you're doing it wrong, right. I agree. If you're walking a shiny, you're missing

out on flavor. You're making your life harder than it needs to be. Yeah.

And you're just doing it wrong. Yeah. Right. And so in my opinion, in my opinion, and you know, you wrote the book here on walk. So you tell me I'm not I don't think I'm wrong. I definitely

would not recommend buying a shiny clad stainless steel walk. I would not recommend it.

Yeah, don't do that. So yeah, just get to steal steal us a bit. Now is there a huge difference between you think spun versus hammered versus stamped?

You know, I have both. So I'm traveling right now with it with a hammered wok. Or at least it maybe it's spun and then has had hammer marks added to it. Because the from what I know there's very few people actually still making really traditionally fully hammered walks, but, but I have one that has, you know, has hammered finish. And that but the one I use at home is spun, I haven't noticed a huge, huge difference here. The main the main difference is that when you buy a hammered walk, at least in my experience, they're pretty much always going to be relatively heavy gauge. Whereas spun walks, they get them down and they you can buy a cheap spine walk that's like, you know, that's like 18 gauge, like a millimeter thick, really, really thin and is going to be kind of flimsy and flex a little bit which which you won't get with a hand hammered walk. But as far as like performance goes, I haven't noticed much of a difference at all.

And on the thinness, like you're actually an advocate for relatively thin because you want the hotspot you actually don't want

exactly you know, you want you want it. So you want like you want Japan to be reactive, right, you want to be able to turn down the heat. And for the pan to lose its heat, you want to be able to turn it up and for it to get up pretty pretty fast. And you do want there to be you know, I'm like a Western skillet where you're looking for, you're frequently looking for very even heating, right, and you're looking for retention of heat and so that so that when you add food to it, it stays at relatively similar temperatures, whereas in a walk, it's like you're doing a lot more fast cooking and on the fly adjustment of things. And so yeah, so I recommend 14 to 16 gauges generally. So like one and a half to two millimeters or so. I think the one I the one I've been I've been using for the last 20 years as I measured it's like 1.7 millimeter or something like that.

16 I've been measuring so many pans it sucks. I hate doing 16 gauge for those you that care about this is the only gauge that is roughly similar to its fractional dimensions about a 16th of an inch roughly all metal worker guy me. Yeah, I mean, you don't want to become a metal worker. If you're not already a metal worker, but not for a living anyway, you don't want to cough out all of that. Sit at the end of every day. Or listen candy. We're gonna go to a commercial break and then we're gonna come back and talk about MSG. All right, so All right, we're back with cooking issues. This episode of Cooking issues brought to you by aura King Salman, our favorite fish. today. We have Michael fabro from aura King to tell us more about it.

Thanks, Dave. Great to be here. And really excited to talk about aura king salmon, which we raised down in New Zealand. It's a super premium salmon that's available to professional chefs and home chefs alike.

So coming from a zero waste perspective, Michael, I see that you're now using the fins for dog treats.

That's right. Yeah, this is part of a real goal we established A couple of years ago about full utilization of the animal. You know, in New Zealand, we cut filets, we cut portions, we do smoking, so you have a lot of trim. So we wanted to find a good home for that trim. So we developed the line of pet treats. We also do oil as well. And we sell these under our brand called omega plus,

or king salmon. Follow them on Instagram at aura king salmon. Everybody's favorite fish. And we're back. Okay, so listen. Yeah, we're gonna have the MSG argument, but maybe we should get some questions down because people want to ask you questions. Let's get to it. All right.

All right. Questions about MSG. Now,

we actually didn't really actually talk about seasoning the big difference in seasoning. Right? There was the argument is, is it the special iron oxide, the black peroxide, magnetite, or Magnus, whatever it is, you know, the special black iron oxide? Is that what's really causing the seasoning? Or is it oil polymerization? Right? And most Western writers have come very hard down on polymerization. Yeah. And you know, and in fact, as you point out in your book, if you look at like, skillets, right, you build up those layers by layers by layers by layers, whereas typical walk seasoning, you maybe you do it like once or twice and it does build up a seasoning but you're not like Layer Layer. Yeah, and

it's because you know, with walk with walk cooking, you have you have all these big temperature, temperature differentials, your metals expanding and contracting at different rates. And so you, it's hard to build up those layers in the first place, and they flake off more easily. And then you're also going to be very frequently deglazing, with a, you know, with sauces and with acidic things all the time. So with a lot of wok dishes, like when you're done cooking with them, even if you have you know, have a 20 year old walk, but even when you're done with them, like very frequently, you'll see a little bit of like, sort of dull silver metal at the bottom. So there's like, there's no real layers of actually, when you overheat. Um, yeah, there's no special, there's not really much sort of none of the layers of like thick seasoning that you find on a well like an old cast iron pan. Right. But what what's your what's your take on it? Well,

so what's interesting is, is there's a lot of recent work out of China, some of which has been translated into English for, you know, international journals that is focusing on. I mean, and I don't know how much of it is BS, because most science writing is BS, nothing for real. But like, iron oxide nanoparticles. So the black stuff, right, and like, like, that's the magic of the walk. You know what I mean, for them in terms of seasoning? What do I think? I think it's somewhere in between, right? So like, you know, when you are seasoning? I mean, it is true that carbon steel seems to blacken up in a way, when you season it properly, in a way that for instance, we were talking about aluminum before aluminum does does aluminum will get brown won't get black.

If you go it only gets black if you leave the oil, if you do the oil polymerization. Right?

Right. And even so it looks different that does you know what I mean? And so what do I think? I think it's somewhere in between. So like In the Chinese writing, I don't think they have a lot of experience with Western pans, frankly, because of what the way they write about Western cooking, I don't think they have that much experience in western pans. And so I think they poopoo our stuff in the way that our scientists poopoo their stuff. So I think, I think would be interesting to actually get like two groups of people together. And because I think both are at

play. Yeah. I mean, I can't say for sure that at least from a practical standpoint, when you cook something in a carbon steel walk side by side with a stainless wok, the flavor is known that you can I've done blind tests on this. And there's a noticeable difference in flavor, which I assume comes comes from some interaction with the metal or with the seasoning. But

right I mean, so like you want like your seasoning, you want it to be hydrophobic, when you want it to be lipo philic, right, because you want oil to smooth slick out on it and provide contact. But you But what's, you know what the most recent, I should have printed it. I didn't ask too stupid, but they've got it by the kitchen. God's gift is what they believe, if you want to search for it, people. But they're like, Well, what's interesting about lock seasoning is that it is actually sticky in certain regimes, which is useful, right, like when you're growing up on the side. Yeah. It's certain temperature regimes and, and nonstick when you need it to be. But again, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, and I think the research hasn't really been done yet. We need to bring those two groups of scientists together and have some sort of seasoning conference, but nobody cares about this because there's no money behind it. Right? All food science is driven by money.

Right? Well, well, hopefully I'll drive walk sales and people will care about they will

care about it. Alright, let's get to some questions. And then we'll, we'll do our MSH. We'll do our MSG Smackdown towards the end. Well, you know, I mean, if you hear like we're getting it's getting flipped over like you know, alright. Alright, from Patrick Ciccone. How should a walk on an induction burner be pre heated and season so we dealt with this a little bit, right. I'm typically using a wide flat bottomed wok on a portable induction burner, the duxtop 1800 and it allows you to choose between constant output and constant temperature control. I remember Patrick as I said, Earlier don't get a kilowatt meter. They're 12 bucks, I swear to God, go on 14 bucks, don't you know, whatever the evil empire Amazon Go on, get a kilowatt meter and plug your induction burner, make sure you get one that will do 1800 Watts though, you don't blow it out, you don't blow it out, plug it in and monitor your induction burner as you're using it and see what it actually is doing. And I just, I told you I just returned, one that I bought, because I was like it was regulating without you wanting it to and without telling me Yeah, it wasn't like, I'm too hot. I'm too hot. It didn't say that. It was just like you're putting out 1700 Watts putting out 1100 watts. The big difference? Yeah. Sorry, Patrick, back to your question. I haven't figured out particularly good way to preheat and not also burn the existing seasoning off. You should use a lower, lower power setting, let it heat up longer. And then crank the power when you're cooking is what you should do on that day, or is it better than I started high temp in this case without much preheating?

Yeah, so I well, I would have the opposite advice. So first of all, I wouldn't worry about burning the seasoning after walk. Because, again, like I don't care about the at least the layers of seasoning that are going to burn off the polymerize stuff that's like, I don't have that on my walks most of the time. Like I for me, like you know, walk seasoning is more of a per use basis as opposed to like a Western skillet where you're you're trying to build up this thing and make sure that it doesn't come off. I would you know, I always recommend preheating it as hard as you can tell it's smoking hot, don't worry about what's going on with the seasoning there. Then lower it add your oil, swirl it around and start cooking and then you know then if a recipe calls for the highest heat, leave it on the highest seat but you really want to get your you want to get your oil in and then your food in as rapidly as possible after you put the oil in because the danger is that your your pan is so hot, you put the oil in there and you're going to start creating these flavors that you know it's gonna start smoking and you get these flavors you don't want and there's you need to get the oil and slick it around and then put your food in. And you know if you do it that way you can you can cook an omelet in a walk and it's a brand new walk and it's not gonna it's not gonna stick you don't need the heavy layers of seasoning on it.