Hello, everybody, and welcome to a brand new series on heritage radio network called the culinary call sheet where we give a peek into the back kitchen of culinary media. I'm your host, April Jones,

and I'm your co host, Darren bresnitz. Part of why we started the show was to offer an unofficial mentorship for anyone who's interested in learning about all aspects of food and video, whether that's TV, social media online, or just something you want to do for fun.

Absolutely what was once niche or a little silly, as I'm sure you remember, Darren, when we started out, this man has now become such a massive playing field for so many creatives using food as the medium.

It's something that has driven us professionally and personally, for so many years. What excites me the most about this show is that we're going to sit down with some of the industry leaders to hear how they made it and what drew them into this industry.

With 20 years in the culinary production game ourselves. We're hoping we can give through these conversations an insider's view into personal stories from the field, as well as an in depth behind the scenes look into some of the most popular food programming. In today's evolving culinary media landscape.

We'll be covering everything from how to style your food, to how to license IP, to developing your own ideas, and some tips from the masters of how to host your own show.

Yeah, it's a little bit of conversation, how to and how do you do the things that you do in color media, which I'm so excited about? I love so many of the guests that are coming on this season. We have talent from Food Network from Vice media eater refinery 29,

we've met some of the best people in the world both in front of and behind the camera. And we're bringing them all together to share their stories, their delicious adventure and their unique journey into this crazy world.

So to be the first to hear our episodes when they launched this fall, go to wherever podcasts are streaming and hit subscribe and make sure to give us a follow at the Culinary call sheet on Instagram. Don't know where I'm supposed to be? between a man

and got twisted you're listening to heritage Radio Network. This is Dave Arnold with cooking issues show where you call in and talk to us about your cooking issues every Tuesday from 12 to 1245. Today's show is brought to you by the Porterhouse. The Porterhouse is a proud supporter of the Heritage radio network. The Porterhouse 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 hearts a barter house, please visit them at www the barter house.com or call them at 917-463-3076 I've actually never had the butter house. We're here with Natasha Lopez from cooking issues.com and AJ E to one of our one of people who was our interns. He's now graduated. So you guys ever had this wine before? No, no, no, no. All right, so we're just gonna open it on air and try it. While I'm doing that, I was like, there you go. We're gonna 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 at Cieza a shift Cesare Casella style, which means with ice so I'm going to pour this out here and well we're trying his 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 718497 to 128 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 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 sushi cooking or low temperature cooking which is a you know kind of a new style of cooking it's making a lot of waves in restaurants right now. Or any kind of new new ah 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 rant So I love 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 and we'll have this discussion on air and with with a lot less profanity than you would if you came to my lab and had this conversation. But anyway, so let's let's first things first, let's try out this. This delicious, delicious wine. We're drinking Coronavirus state 2008 Chardonnay from New Zealand. What do you think guys? Huh? 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 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. Natasha is the hammer just as she is on on our website, www dot cooking issues.com. Where, when things get out of hand, Natasha, who brings her her, 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. Mr. Bhatia hasn't been able to crush someone recently. So she's, she's looking forward to it. So anyway, so what do you think what do you guys want to talk about? Before we before we get any callers here? You want to

maybe you should talk about your roadmap, your new roadmap? Yeah. So the posts go up last night?

Oh, yeah. Okay, so here's the deal. For those of you who don't know what a road map 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 in the US. You know, without a distillers license. It's huge pain in the butt. But it allows us to do distillations at a very low temperature. And what's great about that is is the flavors are the purest, cleanest flavors that you could possibly imagine. Remember, I write you guys drink it, drink it all the time. I mean, it's not, it's not something that we can get flavors and commercial beverages are delicious, but it's just we get different kinds of flavors in the road of Apple, 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 1000s of dollars. And, you know, I'd used a 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 a few bad I should say for for almost nothing and, and kind of crowded together. Got it to work really well. Well, the corporation that makes them bugey, the first name and rotary evaporation, Bukit Nobuyuki came to visit us and they make the kind of the buck kicking ones and they because we were gonna go on this show the Jimmy Fallon show, and I told him, I didn't want to, I didn't want to have one of their crappy ones from the 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 wrote of AP 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? It's true. Yeah, yeah.

What are the advantages of verta mapping?

Well, all right, well, the disadvantages are, it's illegal, right. So the you know, the reason why you don't see a in a lot of restaurants here is because the chef's are confined to using it making non alcoholic drinks if they make an alcoholic drink and try and serve it in the restaurant or their bar, they're endangering their liquor license. So the 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 cubic you could get one for five grand but all that money, space and training just to do to waterbase thing 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 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 it forced you to do it many times we'll do a chocolate liqueur that has you know, just cocoa you know the flavor of chocolate with none of the bitterness because the bitterness doesn't distilled just a Roman flavor does so you have this like chocolate, chocolate, booze with no no sugar in it. That's delicious and horrible. Do you know very spicy peppers habanero peppers that have no spice in them. They're just near 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 Natasha doesn't like it, you know cilantro. Further by the way, Natasha who's here she I assume she's going to chime in at some point with some of her likes and dislikes which are the most preposterous dislikes in though she turns out this lady who's in the food business now works with me who likes the likes everything, basically like everything in the world with the exception of Notto, which is you know, disgusting Japanese fermented soybean pug Notto, which is, I don't think even in Japan they like I think they just pretend that they like it because it's supposed to be good for business. Tasha hates every damn thing. That you're like, Oh, I like I like delicious things. She's like, Nah, I don't like that. Whatever it is, and it's delicious. I hate it. So speaking of holding the stash of pounded that why Geez. Important. Everyone a full glass, right? We're talking for like tank, half pour. If you did not get a half pour. Ma now. She actually obliterated that one. Just mutilated anyway. So it's good, though. Yeah. Well, apparently you think it's good to drink the whole damn glass? Here your age a porcelain, porcelain, porcelain. Anyway. So the so while I'm waiting for someone to call it I will now talk about because nothing better to do. I'll talk about some of my my pet peeves. So related to cooking by 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 do not use the term molecular gastronomy if any of you out there have heard the term before molecular gastronomy, you do the best to erase this term from from your memory. It's awful term. I'll give you some reasons why. One it's meaningless. It has no meaning. It what does it mean molecular gastronomy what the first of August random is the worst word it sounds good in French gastronomy. But the me sounds like gas and croak Tirana. Me gastronomy sounds like gastropods. Sounds like you have gas sounds like you're gonna get gas if you eat it gas. Molecular sounds disgusting. Doesn't sound delicious. So, 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 by this guy in France named LVTs LVTs. 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 and what you know and farce. And so the the thing is, is that he thinks molecular gastronomy sounds good because he doesn't really speak English that well, right? He he thinks in English the word food sounds gross. Right? Right. And seriously, he's like food sounds disgusting food maybe for a Frenchie, but you know, I like food. Do you like food? Food? Delicious. Yeah. Anyway, so. So it's it's a term that has no meaning. It sounds disgusting. It's basically a marketing term for this guy in France. LVTs. None of the chefs who were 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 is wrong. First of all, either all of us a manipulated 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 a, like a scanning tunneling microscope was sitting there, like adjusting individual molecules in the pie that they're making.

I know, at least one.

So but you 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 because, you know, they're not doing the kind of food that is labeled as molecular gastronomy. So, you know, people, 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, we do but you know, a lot of the best applications of these things, you would never know that, that 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 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 that are best, right? I mean, you don't necessarily want to know. So I tend not to do things like spray foams all and everything, which is like everyone's like, Oh, you do foams and then a foam. So But anyway, 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 skill to have, but it's not, you know, I very rarely do it, you know, a only when it's kind of when it's called for and you'll foams are nothing, 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 against just trying to take the weirdest thing that they can find and turn it into a foam and then destroy it.

Yeah. Yeah, no, but I think that's right. I think and that's the other problem is some people who actually kind of liked the term. I mean, the danger of this with, as with any technique is that someone will take the techniques and just do something just to do it. And stuff doesn't taste very good. But then everyone who uses the techniques, get paint gets painted with those with that brush. And I think that, you know, that's the main problem. So you don't want

the 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, you know, if you're, if you're using it, just to use it, and that's, that's not a good, that's not a good application. Like if I handed someone a frying pan, you know, they could make really crappy food with that frying pan. You know, if I hand someone a centrifuge, they can make really crappy food with that centrifuge, centrifuges selling of separate things based on their density. It they're just tools and so the the the trick is, is to is to be open to using these new tools but the same time to use your head and say, Why do I want to use these new tools and only 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 silicon chip because you know, it's my job but we try not to Alright, so pretty soon we're going to be going out on our first break so in advance 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 you were listening to cooking issues on the heritage radio network

and you don't know when you can get your body tested Is that why you gotta go to gotta go gotta go gotta go to you got take off and take off Welcome back, you're listening to cooking issues on the heritage radio network to call in and ask us a question call in it's 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 and 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 things the best, you know, examples of that is french fries. We did a many many tests. How many do we do? Oh, no, no, that was 20 on that one day we've done 30 On the second day we've done like probably 6060 and change which is not a lot for you know for commercial you know place like McDonald's who does you know 1000s of tests but you know, 6070 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 eat doesn't doesn't matter how much oil is actually in it you just don't want to taste greasy right so he wants like it'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 ascending is a doughnut doughnut is a difficult problem. Any idiot can make a doughnut that's hot. That tastes good. because it's delicious when it's hot, the challenge is to make a fried food doughnuts or french fries, whatever that is good when it is cold. It's especially true with doughnuts because they're supposed to keep with 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 that thing is cold. And so, you know, many of you out there who make french fries are familiar with the, with the double frying technique, which is you know, it's attributed to the, to the Belgians, right, it's a double 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, that's like, you know, not necessarily the you know, the best way to do it, the best way to do it, is to do an initial blanching step, where you you kill the enzymes and cook the potatoes in a blanching step in water, salt and water, which also flavors the potato right. And then typically, in the old ways, we would then dehydrate them a little bit which is allows for the crust to get more it gets rid of some of the water which means that it stays crunchy or longer. Then fry it once and then fry it twice again. So it's you know, 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 have you blanch it you know, Heston Blumenthal, the famous chef in England says you should blanch for a long time till they till they break apart. So we ran all these tests. And if you go to cooking issues.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 pectin X SPL that you can also get from cooking youtube.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 at a 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 three times 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. All right. Hello. Hi, how are you? All right. I'm good. Um, I was wondering what the benefits are of a chilling a drink over dry ice. Ah, okay. This is an excellent question. Who am I speaking to? Oh, this is Carolyn. Massachusetts. All right. Well, first of all, here's the things about 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 for drinks. And for many things are hard to carry over a bridge. It's very hard to carry over bridge I've done it. 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 can burn your tongue. It's just not very good. So one of the one of the pitfalls is that you don't want little pieces of dry ice. Now friend of mine, Tony conigliaro, in a bar six nine Colebrook row was making daiquiris where he put chunks of dry ice in a blender with a daiquiri mix and blended them and they I have to say he got them to come out quite well, although the technique makes me a little bit nervous. The The other thing about it, though, is if you let it chill long enough to 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 eyes. But here's a really good technique for dry eyes. 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 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 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 oh sitting on your counter because your guests are morons. And they don't drink fast enough. Right? Right. And so it's sitting there on the counter getting warm. And you're sitting there and you're you're you're pinching yourself and you're kicking yourself and always because you know the drinks 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. The party I went to last week. Yeah, 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 dried eyes. Now, you throw a chunk or two drives in there. Don't go overboard. You don't want to freeze the drink, right? And then it's just going to sit at the bottom of a picture. Don't use something too wide. Like you know, when you were kids you had to sherbert and a dry ice right? That's a little bit too wide. You want to get to kind of a narrow picture just throw like you know, a couple rocks of dry ice in there. It lasts a long time. Dry ice has actually has a lot more cooling capacity than ice does. Whereas liquid nitrogen actually doesn't it's a lot colder but liquid nitrogen is cooling capacities, somewhat similar dyes dries can show for a long time. Throw a couple 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 gonna 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, if you know it's got the good show with the mist people like to show and it's easily accessible. Yeah, it's easily accessible. It's really good technique, especially in summertime, you can have an ice cold, delicious, even very traditional drinks, right? Like gin and tonics. For anyone who knows me knows that I have a lot of gripes with Gin Tonics, right? Because they're usually either they're under carbonated or they're 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? 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 tonic water, buy your gin. Get some lime, mix it up in a pitcher, right, a pitcher gin and tonics, put it go out in your picnic bench or wherever, right you know, throw a couple rocks and 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, no,

that's a question. It's like asking me to choose which one of my children I love. Kidding. Different gyms are good for different purposes and your mind kind of, uh, you know, I like Hendrix for some applications. You know, it's kind of a kind of, you know, it's pricey. I think that's my favorite. Yeah. You know, a lot of times for mixing my hand instinctively reaches for Tanqueray and I don't know whether that's because I don't know it's because I don't know just because it's a nice high proof it's easy to mix with I but I know bartenders that are partial to you know any in any and every kind of kind of jam. My dad was an old, 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 Yeah, 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 getting started out.

It's also good.

Yeah, what is he just messing with me? I have nothing I like honestly, I like oxy. Oxy is fine. Yeah, it's it's, 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 beef eater. I mean, there's a lot of it's personal preference. I recommend going and tasting a lot of Jen's if you if you have friends that don't like gin, then a good a good gateway gin is Plymouth because it's light on a lot of a lot, a lot of botanical flavors, especially the Juniper that people find objectionable, and gin. And so you can you can kind of start them out with that. So that's why we call it the you know, it, you know, the gateway gin, and it's available. Well, thank

you so much problem.

No problem. Thanks for calling. Our first official call. That's awesome. Yeah. And I think we were able to help see anyone out there who's listening. Just know, but how much is 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 was 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 2020 20 pounds or something like that. So you're looking at like a $40 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. But because you can, you know, you can't store it in your fridge at Subway, I mean, if you can a 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, you know, like a disposable styrofoam cooler or cooler and put it in and 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. In fact, the problem is when 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 corners, although, nevermind, that's not a good idea. It's not a good idea to do that. Another thing is it's very easy to get burns, coal 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 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 not such a problem. Also, if you're In a trip it I would wear glasses safety glasses because you don't want little pieces of dries it's very hard and you don't want to wear pieces flying off and hitting you in the eye. I don't want it 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 eyes because your house will fill with co2. Okay, 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 that's 718-497-2128 and you are listening to the heritage Radio Network cooking issues

so much bone in here if you're getting down but gonna have we're gonna have we're gonna have we're gonna have God I want everybody who goes right.

Back into debt, you're listening to cooking issues on the heritage Radio Network. This is Dave Arnold, and we're taking calls and fixing people's cooking issues. So who do we have? Who do we have coming up here? We have a call coming in. We have a call. Yeah. Hello, Dave. Yeah.

Thank you. I really am excited to have you, you know, at least live via this method method.

Well, hopefully we can we can help out Who am I speaking with? John? Hey, John, how you doing? So what do you wanna talk about? Well,

the two best things I bought for my kitchen this year one was a cook tech. I bought a cook Jack and that's the induction unit just terrific. But the other thing I bought was a mini pack Toray which one? The NBS 31

Okay. Miss tell our users for a quick second so we're talking about an induction induction unit which is basically it it's the most kind of it's the most efficient way really to cook it uses electricity. But instead of having a conducting conductive heat like make a lot of heat in your kitchen, it literally heats the pan by using an oscillating, oscillating magnetic electric magnetic field. And it's 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 the other piece of equipment talking about a vacuum packing machine made by a mini pack and this particular one he's discussing the the NVS 31 is a really great size for the house. It lets you do a lot of really fun things it's really professional piece of coming sorry go ahead

and one of the great things about it I mean aside from trying to do SUV eat or something like that is the fact that you know just leftovers oh yeah you know 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 Pasco that selling huge packs of meat you can repackage meat into usable sizes. But that comes down I know on the on your your website you're gonna start doing a section on on vacuum sealing and vacuum packing.

Yeah, we haven't done it yet. Just because I've been I've been busy but it is the next step in this in the low temps smoothie primer list of vacuum packing is the next next one. Yeah.

Right. And I guess my question to you is, how much how much are you extra 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 and the highest vacuum amount when I'm sealing things. And I know you've got to it can vary and you And you can see all them from like, zero to 100. But I was just curious, what are your recommendations,

here's the base the basics of it. And you can, if you go on www dot cooking, issues.com and search for, I don't know what to search for actually in a special look up like, on the back thing, we do anything on how the texture of meat is affected by by vacuum. So you know how much vacuum you apply really depends on on what you're what you're trying to do. So if you're if you're trying to do texture modification, then you want to apply the heaviest vacuum vacuum possible because you want to get all the air out of your product before you do it. If you're if you're vacuuming to put something in the fridge or freezer, then you want to 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 can really prevent it by putting a good hard vacuum on of course, your product has to be really, really cold before you vacuum it otherwise, you're not gonna be able to put a good a good seal on it. Now, if you're going to cook. The problem is, 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 on on a product, I find it tends to change the texture of the meat when it's correct. 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 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 five read taste. And it turns almost How would you guys describe it like almost like, you know, you've done it, you know what I'm talking about it, the texture isn't good on the on the sixth and seventh true, let's

say it's like putting a brick on it and just a normal, normal manner of cooking it pushes all of the water out. And so it just becomes a grainy interior.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not 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 around the food. And if you if you're going to bag poultry, the same I actually prefer to do poultry without vacuum in ziplocks. But poultry and vacuum, if you're going to do it, I would recommend doing a low vacuum and just for yourself, if you have the time, sometime I would take like three identical pieces of steel one at like 98, one at 99 and then one at fullback 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 time to do it. I would even 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, nice machine.

I mean, it does so many things so well. And the fact that you can, I mean, I've done blueberries last season that low, you know, a low vac, but it preserves them, you know, without the ice and without all the other issues that come up when you try to freeze anything.

Oh, yeah. And you know, another, like, easy application is you could portioned 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 of leftover 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 even trying and out of ruining 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

think it's gonna be the next big thing. Oh, so you know that it just if somebody could teach how good vacuuming is in I understand FoodSaver sort of guided the way for you know, the whole consumer public to begin thinking about this stuff but it's really an amazing kitchen tool.

Oh yeah, no, it says no question that we I hope that they become more and more prevalent maybe the price is coming down I know many packs working on it. I'm not a big fan of the FoodSaver I like the professional ones a lot better but right right but I hope to get that next section the primer out soon. Maybe if I had some time over the Fourth of July break I'll work on stashes laughing because she knows that I won't

just I also ended up buying a suit lead supreme. And now I see that they're not them but the Poli science people are coming out with a new circulator. Have you seen their new circulator?

Yeah, yeah, it's good. Is it Yeah,

I liked I liked the Soviet supreme, because it's easy and you can just sort of stick it away but

have you ever used a circulator? Like a regular you will love the let me tell you something. It's it's just boatloads boatloads better it's just you know, when you move from a nonstick bath to a Third bath. Plus that it's so much easier to put away this thing's the size of like, it's like, you know, in between a stick blender and a regular blender. It's you know, it's, it's. Yeah, I mean, I'm not I'm nothing against the seaweed supreme. I've never cooked with it, but I mean, I use circulators

it works very well and, and I've just been, I've been doing a lot of like lamb chops. Yeah. And you just hit them right on when when you do it at like 140 for like an hour and, you know, some minutes and then then serum off. It just becomes so perfect.

Get your hands on just tested 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 vital prep blender. And I've never heard someone say I've regretted buying that circulator. I've never heard it. Maybe maybe someone somewhere has said that, but I've never heard

it. The cvwd Supreme it doesn't actually have a third bath, right?

It's not stirred. No, it's an unsteady bath. It's not that it's not that it does a bad job. It's just to me, it's big, it's bigger than it needs to be in your kitchen. And it doesn't it doesn't have circulation. So if you're doing a longer cooked item, you're going to be probably be okay. But if you're doing shorter term items, or if your stuffs coming in and out of the bath a lot you know, I think you're always thinking better officer circulation. So it'd be like one bag one bag at a time. I mean, the circulator is going to be more money a little bit. I mean, I think the Soviet Supreme is about 500 now and a circulator is going to come in just under eight but you know to me it's I mean it's easy for me to say because you know I you know I've had for a long time but for me it's another $300 Well well spent but

right there's nothing wrong with suevey algebraic and it holds product in there very well and I've not had any real issues