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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.

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Hello, you're listening to cooking issues on heritage Radio Network. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues where you call in with all your cooking related questions. Here in the studio today with Natasha Lopez cooking issues hammer, calling all of your cooking questions to 718497212071849721 to zero. We're here every Tuesday from noon to noon. 45 That's 71849721280 Sorry, 7718. Scratch that. 718-497-2128 that 718-497-2128 I'm not gonna put any blame here but my moustache told me to wrote down as to 120. So you know, it's the first time we've ever given the wrong number on the air. So we apologize. Yeah. All right. All right. So while we're waiting for you to call in, I will answer a few questions people have sent in. Hello, Anastasia. And David. My name is Lucy. I'm about to start college at Northeastern in Boston. Congratulations. Well, I'm very excited to get my life started in the pseudo real world of college. I'm sad we losing access to a kitchen. Unfortunately, they won't let Lucy have anything in her dorm room like hot plates. Or what else do they say she can have basically anything with it with an open burner, no toaster ovens, and no hot plates. So what is she? What is she going to do? Because right now she has just an immersion blender and a food processor but she really wants to be able to cook. Alright, listen, first of all, here's the bad news. Whoever your RA is, wherever they call those things nowadays, they're probably going to be too stupid to realize that something like an induction burner is not like a fire hazard. And so they probably won't let you have an induction unit even though they are freaking awesome and they're completely safe and you should be able to have them in college. So before you buy one, make an argument with your with your person, you should be able to have an induction unit because they don't actually produce heat unless a pan is on them. And even then they're not they're not a fire hazard the way that other things are. Okay, now it assume I'm going to make a couple of assumptions about you one you're not you know, overly wealthy because you're a college student, too. You don't really care about rules all that much. Right? So one way to get around it is if your RA is not the smartest person in the world, or they just don't care. They make things that are microwave toaster oven combinations that look for all the world just like a microwave that has an infrared heater in the top of it. So it just looks like a microwave and yet acts like a acts like a toaster oven. So that's one way because you know I'm not so much about rules. Another thing you can do they used to make in the 50s and I actually this is what I did in college. I bought it went to a thrift shop and I bought a Westinghouse Turkey oven. And these are things they used to make in the 1950s. And they look like overgrown crock pots of crock pots. Another thing you can have, by the way, it looked like overgrown crock pots. And they were meant to cook a turkey and and Thanksgiving time so that your oven would be free for whatever else you were doing. And you could cook a turkey in this countertop. Oven, I had one of those, and I used it to bake bread. In fact, I would my current wife, one of the things I did was I used to break big bread for her in my dorm room in this Westinghouse oven, and they're pretty, they're pretty safe looking. No one's even gonna know what the hell it is. And I think I spent, I don't know, $2 on mine and the thrift shop, you know, maybe look on eBay, stuff like that. So that's an option for you. Here's some more options if you're willing to get a little more involved, now's a perfect time to get started with low temperature and cvwd cooking right now, I'm assuming you don't have $800 to go spend on a new immersion circulator. And immersion circulator, for those you that are listening is basically a piece of equipment that allows you to heat water or any liquid really to a very accurate temperature. And to achieve really kind of stunning results in a very small amount of space, and have it be repeatable every single time and you don't need a big vacuum machine. To run this, all you need to do is be able to put your food into Ziploc bags now. I almost never recommend making your home or or buying one used on eBay, even though that's what I used to do, because it's actually very nice to have the brand new one. And you know, I deal with restaurants and they shouldn't really have crab together things and I want Phillip Preston from PolyScience, my friend to get as much business as humanly possible on his brand new circulator, which is now available in William Sonoma, for I think seven or $800, something like that. However, it is very easy to build your own immersion circulator. They're not quite as nice, but you can look on the on the web. I've done it myself back in the day, for as little as $50 if you're really a good eBay searcher, but even if you buy all this stuff new, you can get everything everything for about for under 150 150 $200. A good place to look for cheap temperature controllers is Arbor instruments, au b e r.com. You can also then you know, you can use things like immersion, coffee heaters, like those little things you supposed to put in coffee mugs, you get like three or four or five of those because you need 1000 watts of heating, basically, and an aquarium pump. And then once you have the temperature control with a with a with a thermocouple and a bunch of heaters and a pump, you're done. I mean, it's kind of crammed together, I will warn you about this as well. I shocked the hell out of myself the first couple times I built this because those heaters leak a little bit of electricity. But if you're willing to spend a little bit of time I could build one probably from parts in under an hour. But you know, if you've never done it before, give yourself like four hours. But you know, it's fairly easy to do. There's a bunch of websites devoted to this. In fact, in our forums, there's a section on and cooking Issues Forums, there's a section where people have posted some of their Do It Yourself circulators. And you know, that's a good way to go in a dorm because it doesn't, you know, there's no open flame and you could put out like serious restaurant quality food out your dorm with that. Now here's the problem. In order to do really good low temperature work, you need to be able to put a really good sear on something when it's done. Right now, here's what I'm about to recommend something that you're not supposed to do. See they think your microwave is safe because they've never seen someone really use a microwave now, I'm not just talking getting a case of light bulbs out of the closet and blowing them up every Saturday night, which is what I used to do. You can use a microwave to get up to 800 degrees Celsius. Well wait, I forget what that is. It's like 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, something absurd. Here's what you do, you go to the hardware store and get yourself some silicon carbide silicon carbide sharpening stones right. You put insulating firebricks around and put them in your microwave, turn it on walk away in about 10 minutes, those silicon carbide blocks are going to be glowing red, red hot, okay, because they're what's called a mic. They accept micros they absorb microwaves silicon carbide doesn't. Now you have like an amazing hot rock searing plate where you can scare the bejesus out of anything. You can melt metal you can use your microwave to smelt metal, you can do some serious thing look up metal smelter microwave there's an article on in Popular Science in 2003. You can melt metal in your microwave, you can certainly see a piece of meat in it. So just get a couple of silicon carbide sharpening stones insulate them somehow with firebreak or with Corningware on top of like little things, and then turn it up to a glows red hot and sear away to your heart's content. Do not let your dorm on fire. Yeah, it's her first year at college. Well, I mean, if it was anything like my first year of college, this will be the safest thing she's done. Anyway, I'm not saying to go do that. I'm just saying these are options. These are options. All right, Natasha, their options. You have a call. Alright. Hope that helps you see. Hi, caller you're on the air.

Hi, Dave, good to talk to you. This is Derek calling from Seattle. Hey, Derek. I'm looking for some tips on doing soothing pot rose. So I like things that are done a little bit lower temperature. My wife likes things that are done a little bit higher temperature. So I'm trying to find the sweet spot where I get something that's kind of has the texture of a traditional braise, which is what my wife like. It's something that's not quite so dry. laid out.

Okay, you're here. Are you using a vacuum machine? Are you using zip locks? Or what are you using?

I'm using a vacuum machine and then a used lab circulating? Oh, yeah.

Which one by the way? Which Which company?

It's a Fisher Scientific. Okay. So

that's probably most likely it's, it's an old PolyScience. Because they used to build fissures as well as I think VW Rs, I think anyway. So here's what I would say. Yeah, yeah. The thing to be careful of, obviously, with use circulators is that a lot of times the bearings and things go bad. Here's what here's what I would recommend. There's no way to get a completely treated first of all over reduce your sauce before you put it in the bag, that's the first it's the first thing you always need to do over reduce it well beyond what you think in normal. A normal brain should be because the meat when it cooks in the bag is going to release juices and seriously watered down your juice. That's the that's the first step. Okay. And it's a classic mistake people make. The other one is is that, you know, although you can go as low as 57 degrees or even lower when you're doing this, right, most people prefer more of a traditional temperature, I find a happy medium is somewhere between 60 and 62. Celsius. Okay, once you get up, although some people cook as high as 71, I think once you get above 65 or so you're losing a lot of the benefits of, of low temperature cooking, but then in that 60 To 60 to 63 zone is a nice happy medium, it's just barely still pink, it's still got a lot of moistness to it, and you're going to have a I think you're going to have a good result. But some people go as high as 70, even in the bag, and you can try that too, it's still going to retain more moisture than it would cooking in a traditional in a brace situation. But just make sure to over reduce your sauce. And I think a happy medium is going to be somewhere between 60 and 62. I would also really burn the hell out of not burn. But you know, I mean, really roast the hell out of some scrap meat and throw it in the bag. And it's gonna give some of those higher temperature flavors that your wife is craving, but still retain from the texture that you want. Does that help?

Yeah, I will say I've done it in the in the rain, I think I did it in about 65 for 24 hours, I think one, one issue that I have is it didn't quite soften up enough for her. And I'm typically using grass fed beef. So I'm wondering what sort of difference

that makes 62, you're gonna want to go for two days, about a little under 260, you're going to want to go for two days. So I think maybe you should also try going a little bit longer. So like a good number for like a short rib, you know, slightly different. A good number for short rib would be 60 degrees Celsius for 48 to 5050 hours, somewhere in that range. And so 62 to 63, you're going to want to go around the same amount of time, I wouldn't go go as high as 65. Because that's right, where you're going to squeeze a bunch of water out. So you might as well go a little higher if you're gonna go 65 and stay in the 60 to 6360 to 63 range in there for about two days. Okay, sounds great. All right. Give it a shot. All right. Thanks a lot. Thank you. We have another caller. Yeah, I think we do. Hello, you're on the air.

Hi, yeah, my name is Dennis. And I'm a big fan of you guys. Do you mind if I ask a career questions? I couldn't focus question. Okay. I have a view, I gotta say, I'm kind of jealous of what you do. You know, just thinking about food all the time, and experimenting, being on sort of that intellectual side, you know, things. I'm a cook right now, I cook at a very well regarded restaurant in DC. But I'm really a lot more interested in more of a research or teaching role, something in more academic settings, potentially, eventually. And I was wondering, if you have any advice, or how you got to where our fields you to have or what you did, may have helped you get what you're doing right now?

That's an excellent question. So I knew that I didn't really want to be a restaurant chef, because it just just wasn't in me, it's not in me to to go and pound out, you know, a service every day. Also, I'm not organized enough to be a real restaurant chef, which I think you really, really need to be, the one skill that I did have, it's really helpful to still have, I hope is that I can read anything almost and understand what's going on. So from a research standpoint, you want to be able to first of all, you you want to be very curious, you want to be able to absorb things, and you want to be able to focus on problems very, very closely. That's like, that's the first thing to do. I mean, to do precisely what I do right now to be involved in just the food world in general. I think, you know, if you're not going to be a cook, then you know, then and you still want to be in, in the, in the field. I mean writing, if you can write is a very good is a good way to do it. I mean, I know a lot of people that, that have done that, you know, for instance, my sister in law, what you know why they do friend's wife, my sister in law, which is actually my wife's sister, she, you know, went to French culinary where I teach and she's now the you know, Editor in Chief of the Food Network magazine. So I mean, there's lots of, there's lots of different pathways, whether it be in writing or immediate now on the research side, you know, there's a couple of things you can do there. I know some people that do you know, consultancy work or they have, you know, specific high tech catering, kind of catering opportunities where they don't necessarily want But they want to spend more time researching, because in a catering thing you can, you know, focus on one job, and you don't have a daily pound out of service and you can get more time to focus. The main problem with the kind of cooking that I do at the French culinary is that it's very hard to do when you have a daily service to grind out, because you just don't have the time to focus on, on solving problems that, you know, in, you're not necessarily going to be able, if you take a job at a big company doing the kind of cooking in that way, you're not necessarily going to be able to focus on problems that interest you. But there are places that have jobs like that, like cuisine solutions, who does a lot of low temperature work, they hired someone who that I know who went to the French culinary, and he gets to do a lot of research, a lot of interesting work. So there are opportunities out there. But I think to just to do this kind of work, you just you need to be able to, it's like well, Wiley does two wildly reads all patent, you know, patents constantly is constantly reading. So I think you know, if you're very curious, and you always want to learn it helps if you can write, but it's not necessarily, you know, a prerequisite, but I'm sorry, I couldn't give any more specific advice. But that's that's kind of what I did. That's great. All right. Well, well, thanks for Thanks for calling. And you can you know, always post anything to our to our forums or to the blog. And you know, we'll try and help you out. I like anyone to get in this field that that can,

surely well. Thank you.

Thank you. We have anyone else. Yeah, hello. Hello. You're on the air.

Hi, this is Dan from New York. Hey, Dan. Hey, so I just have I guess the question. I'm cooking this chicken. I got a heritage chicken for the first time. And it smells a little, I guess sulfuric because it has like his blood in the bag. And I was wondering, What should I do in terms of that affect the taste? Or how should I cook that? Or should I even cook it?

Well, it smells weird. Smells like, like sulfur or like Like, like, like, like rotting smell like it's rotting.

Just like when I when I asked before they said something about how it's packaged with the blood. And it's a little strong. So it is kind of old? Because I've gotten it through this roundabout way. Yeah, so I was just wondering, do you think that's safe to eat? And if so, should I worry

about the flavor at all? Was the bag was a bag inflated at all? It was?

I mean, the bird looks beautiful itself. Yeah, it's just in the bag was still

tight. Yeah. Still tight. Still everything. It was a Crayola bag. Right. Correct. Okay, it doesn't smell blue cheesy at all right?

No, it's just like it has a strong or it might not even be sulfur. It just smells like something. And I was kind of curious if that would be in the taste.

All right, well, if you've smelled rotten chicken before, then you know and it smells like that, then I would avoid, you could try just giving it a LIKE A quick dip, rinse in, in, in in water Vinegar Vinegar a little bit to try and see what happens to it, pull it out, see how see how it smells. I have been in your situation before where you really want to cook something you really want it to work and you really want it to be delicious. Because you've been thinking about it. Right? So and then like you've handed over to your wife and they smell it and they're like, Are you freaking cracker, you're gonna serve that to me, You know what I mean? So that's another that's another good thing to do. Like if you feel nervous about it, I wouldn't, I wouldn't bother with it. Or if you really want to, I would test it on yourself. I'll cook it for yourself. I've done that before to test it on yourself and just eat it yourself and see what you think rather than subjecting your your friends and family to it. I'm sorry, they can't give anything kind of more specific because I can't smell it. But you know, as a general rule of thumb never served to someone else. Anything that even makes you a little bit nervous. I mean, that's kind of a rule that I like to live by. Because I do serve bizarre things quite often and I want people to trust me. So you know, as far as I know, I haven't gotten anyone horribly sick. I'd like to kind of maintain that record. I think it's kind of a good call but you know if you feel comfortable with it by all means cook it yourself and see you know, eat it yourself and see what you think you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. All right. Thank you all right. Thank you have a good one Peter. Always makes me nervous. Natasha to to cook something if you think it might be bad, right bear? The bear was not bad. We're talking about the bear we cooked in the thing. She Natasha is nervous that the bear had trichinosis. Which is indeed possible. trichinosis is a worm that infects muscles. It's an awful disease it's measured in number of worms per square per cubic centimeter muscle mass terrible disease to get however, you kill it by cooking it which is what I did in the star show you should have eaten that bear mustache apparently not taking Jeffery Stein guards advice last week, some of the best advice you'll ever hear on on learning to become a good eater. Jeffery Stein garden, one of the best best eaters that I've ever met that eat everything, you know, so long as it say he would eat something. It's unsafe because that's Jeffrey but you know, as long as it's safe. You should try it. Anyway. So I think we're coming up on our first Yeah, first commercial break here. We're coming back at you in a couple of minutes cooking issues. So much bone in here We're gonna have we're gonna have we're gonna have oh my god god I want everybody read now all right

Hello and Welcome back to Cooking issues. I'm Dave Arnold erosive cooking issues call in your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. And while we're waiting, let us take a question from an email question. So Bob good writes in, and he says I liked your write up of herb grinders on the website. But how do they fit in? How do they compare to a mortar and pestle at home and keeping wife his wife's motto is clutters the enemy sounds like our wives would be good friends. So for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about herb grinder is the euphemism for a marijuana grinder that pot you know, pot users pot heads, as I lovingly call them use to kind of grind up their marijuana before they roll it into a cigarette or stuffing into pipe, whatever they're gonna do with it. They're a fantastic way to grind up small quantities of spices when you don't want it. You know, coffee grinders, they don't really work for small quantities because the blades don't don't hate your spices. They're fantastic. And you can look on our website I ground I don't know what I do like 10 different spices 15 to 10. Some of the so you can see kind of what results you get on different spices. Now, the question Bob has is listen, I already have a mortar and pestle at home. So why do I need this, you're probably you know, Bob, you're probably right. If your mortar and pestle is small enough to be handy. They work pretty well. Unless you have a big problem with your mortar and pestle with spices bouncing out of it. I don't know that you need to have this as well. This is mostly useful for someone like me who's at a cooking school and you don't want to lug to lug around your mortar and pestle. Or if you're going to be cooking off site. They're incredibly tiny. So you could stick it kind of in your you know, right next to your pillar in your utensil drawer. So it's useful having around at home, I use my mortar and pestle. But when I'm at school, I use the herb grinder. So I hope that was that was helpful. I think that answered that question. Ray Mack double oh seven asks, he was thinking about cooling sauces and then vacuum putting them in a vacuum bag and storing them into its freezer until needed. Are there any downsides to storing sauces this way? Not, not really. I mean, it's a really good way to store something because when you once you put it in a vacuum bag, you're not going to have any water loss or kind of freezer burn problems, as long as the vacuum bags that you're using are, you know are oxygen impermeable, they're meant for for freezer storage, you want to get ones that are meant for cooking and chilling. And then the great thing about bagging back, sorry, backing down sauces, is that you can then throw those bags directly into hot water and reheat them in the bag without the possibility of scorching them, or are you having any sort of problems. In fact, you can reheat several different kinds of sauces at the same time and the same water if you have them all in bags. So it really is a very good way to do it if you're doing large quantities and you know that they'll really last a long time that way. And he says he's assuming that a motion based sauces would not be a candidate for this process. I would guess that's probably right. You can freeze emotion based sauces if you stabilize them, you know, with with different stabilizers but I've never really experimented that because I haven't tried to get extended storage out of sauces and bags that way, man, it's not kind of my focus is always on kind of achieving new new quality benchmarks instead of trying to necessarily extend the shelf life. But if I was doing it for my house or for a restaurant where that was useful, I'm sure I would have researched how to make an emulsion. Kind of not breaking the bag. There are people that have done that kind of work. So it's definitely definitely possible. So oh no, I would go ahead and do that. It's also a great way to store fruit purees. They, they're the sauces all of a sudden they store flat in bags, they're frozen, they're really easy to reheat. So I think that's a really good. That's a really good technique. Now before I answer the next question I have, I just want to say that last week New York Magazine really shoved it to me they really gave me the shaft because they wrote up my favorite tomato that I weighed every freaking year. I Wait for this tomato. It's the aunt Ruby's German green tomato from Stokes farm. They're at the Union Square Greenmarket. They're on Saturday and I think also Wednesday so their data there. And their aunt Ruby's German Green is the greatest tomato I've ever had my favorite tomato in New York Magazine wrote their particular one up as the greatest tomato in New York. And consequently, now they're completely wiped out like I got there at noon. And they said they've been sold out since 10am. Because everyone from New York Magazine apparently who reads the magazine went and bought all of this all of Stokes farms tomatoes, so I was pretty bent, pretty bent about that. Luckily, for me, their second favorite tomato of the you know, in New York Magazine was the German stripe, which by the way, and Ruby was a real human being and it would be Arnold no relation to me. And you know, she not only came up with the with it with the rubbish German Green, I believe she was also the source or one of the sources for the German stripe, which is a huge red, yellow and red beautiful tomato. And the Stokes also has that's my second favorite of their tomatoes. Yeah, but apparently your landlord maybe throw them away anyway. So anyway, so but Stokes Stokes is, is excellent, but they didn't write up Stokes's as being the second best. So they cleaned out some other farmers German stripe, and cleaned out his Ruby. So I spent this weekend eating stripes, which are also excellent, excellent. But it brings me to my pet peeve, which is, first of all, you can't just call out a tomato variety and say it's great, right? You know, because I've had aunt Ruby's German Green, which is a large green, kind of like weird shaped tomato and the bottom gets a pinkish red blush when when when it's ripening up because you look at the bottom of a tomato, not the part attached to the plant to see kind of that it ripens from there first and travels up towards the where it attaches to the plant, and also softens the bottom first and gets goes harder as it goes up to the top. So when you're judging the rightness of a tomato, you want to look at the bottom first. Right, see how she's going. And you have to know what an ant Ruby looks like they should start I think it should start getting that pink flush at the bottom and I think it should be getting a little softer. The guys at Stokes disagree with me on this because they don't want you mangling their tomatoes by picking them up and squeezing them because that is a rotten thing to do their tomatoes don't do that. Now

here's here's I don't know how I got on that but here's here's the thing. They're at rubies are sublime and other people's and rubies are crap, right different tomato varieties tastes very different depending on where they're grown, how they're grown, you know, the location and type of soil and everything. It's not enough to just say I like ant rubies yet to say I like that. Although they are by and large, an excellent variety. You say I like this farmers and rubies. I like that farmers and rubies. So you can't just go and buy a variety you really have to find a supplier a farmer that you like and get their tomatoes of that particular variety. I mean, that's the thing. I think also people then they just put out big farmstand. So hey, these are all heirloom tomatoes. And like That's great 80% of these tastes like like nothing garbage, like a lot of heirloom to apologize. A lot of heirloom tomatoes don't taste that great, or they don't have that great, great a texture. And so you'll go to these farmers stands and they'll have heirloom tomatoes. And this happened to me before because I feel when I see something I've never had before I'm compelled to try it like I'm compelled to try it. That's just kind of how I am. And there's a farmers market right by my house in the Lower East Side on Sundays. And I was I saw a tomato. I was like, Oh, this looks interesting, because it had a shape of an aunt Ruby. But it was red with like, very thin, yellow, yellow stripes through it. And I was like what varieties? Because I don't know, it's an heirloom tomato. I'm like, You're You're I can't curse on the radio. I'm trying to think of something to say, you know, to insult the man because, you know, thank you now I can't ever replicate this experience. Thank you. You already mean heirloom tomato. That's I saying it's a vehicle with four wheels. Well, is it a Mack truck? Is it? Is it a Hyundai? You know, am I getting a Lincoln Continental? Or am I getting a gremlin? You know what I mean? I don't know. You know what I mean? Please, you know to like, tell them if you're not actually the farmer at the market, at least tell the people the varieties that you're selling, so that we can figure out what the hell's going on as as eaters anyway, that tomato Would not I was even angrier because I bought it and went home. I was hoping it would suck and then I wouldn't have to worry about trying to find it again. Only it was delicious. You know what I mean? And and even tomatoes, some tomatoes look fairly similar, but they're different. Like there's this tomato called the Everlast which looks like an ant Ruby, if you're not experienced with it, but it isn't. It's a little more yellow than a Ruby anyway. So that's my stupid spiel on heirloom tomatoes. Have you tasted your stripes yet? Staci? I only had one. How was it? It was good, but it was really tiny. Why the hell did you What Why did you pick it when it wasn't ready yet? I think the container I'm going in is really small. So it only allows for tiny tomatoes now. Tiny tomatoes. That's that's my next band name right there. Tiny tomatoes. All right. And we take an email question. Ryan Ryan Santos wants to know about the book called The Handbook of hydrocolloid. He says he's interested in hydrocolloid and modern cook Getting. And most of his recipes he's done are just adapting other people's recipes for using hydrocarbons. And for those of you that don't know what, what I'm talking about, hydrocarbons are a group of basically complex sugars polysaccharides, you know, gums, whatever you want to call them. They're used to thicken and gel used to thicken and gel, different products. So xanthan gum Carageenan, these sorts of things. And most people do just adapt other cooks recipes, and that's fine. But if you want to learn more, where do you go? He he was mentioning a book called The Handbook of hydrocolloids. That's like a $200 book. It's very technical. I read it. It was very useful to me. But I wouldn't be the first book on hydrocolloid, I would get the first book out it will get a hydrocolloid is put out by the Eagan press. I think it's I forget how to spell it's like an E A G, A n press, which is portion of the associate of the Association of American serial chemists or something like that. It's a very thin book. It's only 6060 something dollars, you can get into kitchen arts and letters. The World's Greatest cookbook store, at least the world's greatest that I've been to. It's here in New York City up in the 90s on Lexington Avenue. And it's a great introduction to hydrocolloid, it's extremely useful. It has a bunch of tables and charts in it that talk about you know, the problems when you try and mix different hydrocarbons together. It has flowcharts of trying to figure out you know, how to choose what hydrocolloid to use for different systems. Extremely readable, extremely useful. In fact, there's that whole Egan press put out a bunch of books they have one on starches, which is excellent. They have one on sugars, which is excellent. There multiplier one I didn't think was so useful for cooks but I would definitely start there if you're hungry for more technical information after that book, you know, then by all means, go to the the handbook of hydrocolloid. But the handbook of hydrocolloids is set up as a, as a an ingredient by ingredient. Book, it's like 300, and something pages. And it's like, you know, here's Agha, here's the chemical formula, you know, for Aguilar, and then, you know, here, it's various properties. So, you know, I think it's useful to a small number of cooks, but not as useful as it could be, and not necessarily $200 worth of useful. If you can go get the Egan Press book. Instead, they used to run a deal on the on the serial chemists website, you have to really search around for it, where you could buy a one year subscription to all of the Egan press books for 99 bucks, and then you could download all of them on on PDF for just $99 And that's in fact what I did. So I have them all on on PDF like the you know, fats, which is another good one actually. And I even have the ones that are useless to me like food colorings, useless, non nutritive sweeteners, aka all the things to make diet soda and whatnot. Also fairly useless for me, but you know me once once I have access to it, I'm going to download it because that's just the way I am I'm a sucker for a sunk cost you know, it's why I don't go to all you can eat all you can eat restaurants anymore, because you have to roll me out of those things in a wheelbarrow. First of all, I like obviously, you know, I'm not gonna eat Don't be a chump and go eat the salad bar, you know, like hit the most expensive literally, I don't care whether I like it or not, I walk into an all you can eat restaurant, I zero in on whatever has the highest food costs for that restaurant instantly, instantly, and then I fill an entire plate with whatever that is, whatever it is, I pound a couple plates of that then once I'm sick of eating the most expensive thing they have, I find the second most expensive thing they have and I continue to eat that until I'm sick of that item. Two or three items down the line I'll start feeling physically sick but it's not until my wife pulls me away because she's disgusted to stand next to me that is when I stop and leaving all you can eat restaurant. I have similar problems with open bars. So I try to avoid these kinds of things now because you know as you as you get older it's it's more and more unseemly to be to be doing this sort of thing. I don't know how to how I got an oh yes it's because I downloaded even the useless books. This is this is what it's like to be made by the way that's what it that's what it that's what it boils down to. I hope I hope that answered answered your your question, and I think you want to go to one more commercial break. All right, let's go to one more commercial break cooking issues calling your questions to 718 What is it Mr. ATIA? 7180 my god I can't believe this 14972128 That's 718-497-2128

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coming back at you with cooking issues. I'm Dave Arnold, your host cooking issues. Call in your questions. You have another 10 to 15 minutes to call on your question through 718497 to 128. That's 718-497-2128 And today's cooking issues is brought to you by Hearst ranch. Hearst Ranch is the nation's largest single source supplier of free range all natural grass fed and grass finished beef. Since 1865. The Hearst family has raised cattle on the rich, sustainable native grasslands of the Central California coast. The result is beef with extraordinary flavor that's as memorable and natural as the surrounding landscape. And for more information, they would like you to go to www dot Hearst ranch.com That's one word WWW dot Hearst ranch.com. And while although you know I've never had the beef from Hearst Ranch, you know, if they want to send me some I would love to try it. You I want to say that last week, apparently I did not give our sponsor tech serve enough of a of a run because I forgot about mentioning it until the very end of the show. And basically blasted through it, you know, at the speed of sound as fast as I can speak, which when I want to is quite quickly. And I used to do that and debate in high school speak very quickly. It's a technique called spreading for all those who didn't go to debate in high school anyway, so I apologize to tech serve a fine. A fine service for fixing your computer tech serve. All right, Mr. Xi feel better now? Yes, it's better. Yeah. Oh, and by the way, Mr. Santos, a second part of his question was, how do you get a swear to God? How do you how do I get a date with the hammer? And I have to say, you don't but don't bother trying with that. When don't you know she's? You know, I would I would stay away from that one. Right. So as he right, I'm just kidding. Stasha. Just kidding. All right. Brandon asks, using larger ice with reduced surface area will reduce the rate at which I used to lose a cocktail. But how does that affect how long it holds temperature in a finished drink? While using larger eyes hold temperature to drink longer with less dilution and smaller ice. Okay. He's not very concerned about shaking or stirring. He's mostly worried about the final drink. Okay, and how does that differ from something that has been chilled? Basically, as opposed to something it's coming from, from room temp, for instance, pouring a spear on the rocks? Alright, well, here's the here's the answer to this question. As far as I can tell that particular experiment, I haven't run in probably a year and a half. But my memory of it is this. A larger ice cube will in fact, dilute less in your in the cocktail, but it will not keep it as cold. Now, what are we talking about, if you put a lot of small ice in to stir drink, put small ice and that drink will probably hover around the like one, you know, one or two, it's going to start out like mine, anywhere between minus four and minus a half a degree Celsius depending on how they stir it. Okay, that's going to be the range, a shake and drink is going to be in the range of minus seven to minus three degrees Celsius if it's done properly, okay? When you pour that drink into smaller cubes, it's going to maintain its temperature better. But it will get more diluted because of the extra surface area, especially if they throw it pour it on ice that you didn't shake off, you didn't get the water, you'll get an initial hit a dilution out of that it's going to dilute it right out of the gate. In that case, I actually recommend using Don't yell at me cocktail people, please. I don't want to hear it. But I mean, it's not of course, I want to hear it. Let's have an argument. I'm just kidding. But. But if I was going to shake a drink, and then serve it kind of on on the rocks, I frankly think you'd be better off serving it with the things you shook with, especially if the ice was slightly larger as they still looked good. Because you've already gotten the surface water off of those things. Do you know what I mean? You're not adding extra surface water. But you know, I'm sure there's people that will disagree with me. And I'd be happy to have that discussion. Because I'm just thinking about this off the top of my head, a larger ice cube will you know, so if you're using small ice cubes, let's assume you're going to maintain a temperature within a degree or two of zero for a while, you know, the experience I had with a big ice cube is that the temperature is going to go up to about you know somewhere in the range of five degrees Celsius somewhere like that. So it's not going to keep it anywhere near as cold so long as it's cold enough. Right then And I think it's going to be, it's going to be