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.

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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.

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Hello, you're listening to cooking issues on the heritage Radio Network coming to you live every tuesday from 12 to 1245 cooking issues to show where you call in with your cooking issues and we hope to solve them. Call in your questions to 71849721 to eight. That's 718-497-2128 This week's cooking issues is brought to you by the barter house. The barter house is a proud supporter of the Heritage radio network. The barter house works with family vineyards and small bottlers from around the world to bring only the finest and most flavorful wines to market. To learn more about barter house, please visit them on the web at WWW dot the barter house.com or call them at 917-463-3076 That's 917-463-3076 that's not our number. That's the barter houses number. And today we're actually sampling one of their one of their wines. This one is from from Oregon way. Yeah. And it's a mixture of what's a mixture of its Tempranillo yo and to not or is proud to not I think it's to not to anyway, TN N A T, we'll get to that in a minute. But the name of the wine, I swear to God, the name of the wine is Bouza Bouza. Like it's the best name for wine ever. I could see a cult following building around a wine called Bouza. I mean, it's just genius. I have never actually I don't think had a wine from way before. But it's quite nice. And in this. Tonight's a very interesting variety because several years ago, a scientist out of England did a study trying to figure out what it is about red wines that actually makes them healthy from a cardiovascular standpoint, right? And he settled on the this class of chemicals called prostaglandins that are in red wine. And he did a bunch of studies where he basically studied the a cardiovascular health of different people in different regions and discovered that people that drank a lot of wines that were high, prostaglandins basically got less heart disease. It's his findings. Right? And it turns out that the one with the most variety with the most Prasanna and ends in is to not. And so I tend to believe that all health and food stuff is horse hockey and will eventually be proven wrong. But if you believe that sort of thing, that you know that you're going to get super healthy from drinking a lot of red wine, then, I mean, obviously, there's some cardiovascular benefits of drinking moderate amounts of alcohol. But anyway, whether or not his particular analysis is correct To not as made a splash over the past couple of years as perhaps being an extraordinarily cardiovascular health cardiovascularly healthy wine, but I think it's quite enjoyable. What do you think it's really good? Yeah. Anyway, the barter house and booze. I love it. I can't get enough of it. I really can't. I might, I don't know how much this costs, but I might, I might actually buy it just so you know. I tend to refer to all liquors booze. And my wife, Jen, she hates it. She's like, it sounds so coarse. She doesn't sound like that at all. By the way. It sounds so cool. You call it booze. And like, I can't help it. We have a caller, we have a caller. All right, let's take our caller. Hello, caller, you're on the air. Hey, Dave, it's Julio, hey, Leo, oh my God, I feel terrible. I meant to do the research this morning. And I got all all tied up and do your homework. I'm a bit of a feel. It's interesting that I didn't do my homework because I actually am going back to class later. Today, I'm retaking organic chemistry at NYU, just to brush up. And so this is a prefiguration of what it's like to not do your homework and to be caught red handed not doing your homework. But, you know, I was trying to think more about it specifically, you were you're interested in Merengues that have a lower sugar content? Correct. Right. Now, do you want to be able to make them at home? Or do you just want to be able to purchase them?

Well, you know, I have a sweet tooth. So I appreciate anything sweet that I can make it home that I don't gain weight on?

Well remember what I said before, the good thing about Merengues is they're actually very, very large percentage air. So they're actually not that caloric on a volume basis. And so they're they're they're actually very very good snacks to have around. If you have an intense sweet tooth but you want to eat you want to eat something that's going to satisfy that sweet tooth but you don't want to get a lot of calories because they provide a lot of sweet sensation for the amount of calories they had. Remember I said last week and this is what I was going to investigate more seeing whether or not we could do a high intensity sweetener mixed with high intensity sweetener mixed with like a bulking agent like you know like a non nutritive sweetener that has the properties of sugar that you want to Marang I'm hesitant to do it though just because it goes against kind of what I what I'd spend my time thinking about just you know trying to always increase things from a quality standpoint not necessarily to try and get around different issues but but this time I swear it and Natasha The hammer is usually the hammer for other people but Natasha you're going to force me yes early in the week rather than wait until the last minute and even if you even if you don't have a chance cuz actually I won't be we won't be here live next week because I'm be teaching low temperature Suvi cooking at the school but I on a stack of Bibles promise to get this information and and either the next time we go live if you call in or else I will I will get this information to you somehow.

I promise here's your penalty for not doing the homework. Oh what's a good what's a good recipe for kale? I you know I live near the Farmers Market on Union Square and there's beautiful kale out now.

Right? I always like I say I always I've had kale raw in raw food places and I don't really like it raw I would recommend cooking it like you like you would basically cook any green which is just you know I actually like kale when it's kind of overcooked I always chop it I don't bother removing the large I move just the end of the stamp I don't take the whole vein out but I know some people that take the vein out of the center of the kale and then trap it I'll usually saute I would usually saute onion and then at the last minute throw in the garlic and then throw in the kale which will provide provide its own moisture as it cooks down and then you can decide whether you want to add any sweetener I definitely hit some acid after it's done cooking down I would add a little acid at the end of brighten it up and you know make sure you add enough salt What do you think Natasha you cook greens like that right? How do you do it

with oil and garlic and salt and cook it down? Like I just said yeah, good for paying.

Remember once in Italy having something very similar to kale and then prepared it with pine nuts and raisins.

Not necessarily familiar, but it sounds delicious. I mean, you know I like any kind of cooked green although you'll be upset with typically when I do it. I cook a lot of meat into it as well and mix beans. I mean, I grew up eating. Basically every week my mom would make an escrow dish where she would take escrow and we would we would do the onions and then the garlic and then and then basically hot sausage and bacon and cook it down and Then we would then we would add the escrow, which is a really good bitter green. And that would counteract with the, you know, with the bacon, and then we would add some acidity, I would usually add it in the form of mustard or that you could use vinegar or lemon and then we would finish it off actually with beans with, you know, with white beans, because it's super hearty greens and beans and bacon. I mean, you can't really go wrong. As soon as fact as soon as the weather starts getting a little bit colder, I'm gonna go ahead and go make that because that's, you know, childhood childhood memories.

Comfort, comfort. All right, well, thanks. Alright, well,

thanks for calling and I will get the answer.

Okay, I'll call you not next week, the following week. And good luck with your class next week.

Thank you so much. All right. Thanks, Dave. Bye.

All right, as take our first email question, because I believe we're still drinking the booze, I will let you know whether or not our heart feels any better when we're done finishing the Bucha whether the procyanidins in the Tannat are actually helping us or not. But we have a question from Gabe in New York City. Any advice for making chocolate at home wellgate You ask the right people. There is a website called Chocolate alchemy.com which caters to making chocolate at home. And basically what they everyone uses as a small when you're making chocolate. One of the steps is the the grinding of the chocolate, right there's a bunch of different steps when you're making chocolate assuming you already have beans, cocoa beans, beans that are roasted. So you want to break those down first do a grind and then basically they could ground to a finer and finer dimension. The whole point of grinding down chocolate is so that you don't feel the graininess of the chocolate after it's ground you want to get the particle size very, very small, down to like you know 2020 microns or so. And what that does the same time that you're grinding, you're doing a couple things. One, you're reducing the particle size of both the chocolate and the sugar that you've added. You're also making sure that the cocoa butter is totally covering all the particles so that it's nice and smooth and you don't have any cocoa particles that aren't coated with butter. Okay, now, that said basically chocolate, you can't make chocolate just out of cocoa beans out of nibs because chocolate bar chocolate has more cocoa butter in it the fat from cocoa than is in the whole bean. So you're going to need to get a hold of some cocoa butter, right? Usually you get the Deodorized Cocoa butter because most cocoa butter you get apparently I'm told wasn't good cocoa butter to begin with. So they have to deodorize it but anyway, that's what I use at the school, you get cocoa butter, you and you get cocoa nibs. Now there's two pieces of equipment you need, you need a basically a Champion juicer, right, because Champion juicer also makes things like peanut butter and that's the way we use it when we're when we're doing chocolate. So Champion juicer has a bunch of little teeth and just grinds up the nib. So you throw the nibs into the Champion juicer and just like you're juicing carrots or making peanut butter, it grinds it to a paste and you keep grinding it with the champion until it warms up and kind of liquefies. It's a king hell mess but it's you know, it's it doesn't take very long. And then you put melted cocoa butter and the ground of chocolate that you have along with sugar, usually a little bit of powdered lecithin, which is an emulsifier very small amount, like you know, I think less than half a percent or something like that, eating less. And usually some vanilla, you want to make sure that you don't use any, you can't do use things like honey because it'll soak in water. Water is the enemy of chocolate. So you want to make sure there's no chocolate in it at all. I mean it sorry, no water in it at all. So you know, no, honey, no. Nothing with water, not vanilla extract, you want to use straight beans or even vanilla sugar if you have it if you have it that you like. And you want to put it in this machine called a santha which is basically a very small version of the chocolate. I don't know how you pronounce it Milan J like a chocolate mixer. It's basically two little stone wheels that roll on a round stone surface and just grind chocolate if you look up chocolate melons share millions and millions and who knows. Anyway, you look at as basically two rocks that rotate around on another rock. And that over the course of a long time makes the particles finer and finer and finer and finer and finer. And eventually you get chocolate now, and I believe we might have a recipe for ketchup flavored chocolate on our website, but just you know what, don't start with that start with regular chocolate, go to chocolate alchemy and look up look up some of their some of their things. Now normally when you're making chocolate, you grind until the particle size is right. And you also you're also like flashing off volatiles in this so you want to make sure that you are releasing just the amount of volatiles that that you like. Now a chocolate maker can do this by running it in this in this breakdown machine Milan J whatever it's called santha whatever. And this one by the way was not made for Trump is made for grinding up lentils. They're they're Indian anyway, so that you grind it for for a little while with the lid off and that's going to release volatiles and allow you to kind of get where you want it If I was going to let you flash off some extra water, and then you're going to want to cap it, and in order to get the texture, right, right, in other words very, very smooth, you're going to have to run it for two, three days. Now that might affect the and I'm sure it will affect the flavor of your chocolate. But the guys at the school our pastry department to school now does this as part of their demonstration for the pastry department. And they've gotten some pretty good stuff that tempers the tempers fairly well. And it's a lot of fun to play around with, you're looking at an initial investment, roughly $500 for a Santa and a no Champion juicer. But from there on in you could basically make whatever you want now that there's it's also an interesting time for chocolate because there's a lot of companies that are started making some smaller batch chocolates around. So you know, for many years now Chef Torres has made you know, the dean of our pastry studies has made it his own chocolate first in, in Brooklyn in DUMBO. And now at a larger facility in Manhattan. You have mass brothers makes chocolate in Brooklyn. And there's a new company actually just starting out called Cacao preeto that we visited Anastasia and I visited when was it Friday Friday. And they're you know, associated with the razor and shiny nice people here in Brooklyn. And they're actually starting a new line, they bought the the remains of the Scharffenberger, the old scharffen Berger chocolate line, and they're going to be making some new chocolate. What's interesting about what they're doing is that basically the name preeto is the family name of the one of the founders of the company, Dan Preston and his family has done cacao plantation sugar plantation for a long time in the Dominican Republic. And so they're actually going to have complete vertical integration, they can play with breeding selective breeding they can play with, they can play with different fermentation techniques. You know, they basically can control it from from soup to nuts, which is pretty interesting. It's very rare. And so they're going to launch in January so we'll see kind of what that complete control and vertical integration can bring because they're going to bring they're going to do I think mainly liquors and and chocolate bar chocolate. So we'll see how that pans out. But having visited their setup, it's a very, very good setup. And they're going to be using some kind of new equipment and custom built equipment. Dan actually used to build some equipment for troublemakers in fact, he built some parts for the mast brothers line. So anyway, so that should be it should be interesting. But you know back to selecting your beams have been the main problem is you know, when you're making your own chocolate is a crap in crap out you know what I mean? And so you need to get a hold of some good quality nibs to do your work and the final product that you make in chocolate is very dependent and finicky depending on every little aspect of what you do can can affect it so it's it's a field wellworth investigation and study and Gabe I wish you luck in your exploits anyway with that I think we go to our first commercial break please remember to call in your questions at 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues so much phone call your name I don't want to know if you're getting down but gonna have we're gonna have we're gonna have God

everybody read now All right

I'm gonna get back and Welcome back to Cooking issues calling your cooking questions to 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 coming to you live for another. I don't know what half hour or so. All right, let's go to some email questions. So Brian writes in from New Zealand and says he just made a batch of lemon shallow and added his sugar syrup to the infused alcohol cold so it stayed clear. And then it and then basically I mean go into this in here The question the question is when you make lemon shallow lemon shallows, basically you soak, lemon peel or zest in alcohol, sometimes high proof alcohol sometimes not until the flavor is gone. And then afterwards, you add sugar, you strain and add sugar, right? Basically, Limoncello. I don't actually drink it. So I don't know a lot from firsthand experience. But that's that's what limoncello is. Many of the recipes on the internet tell you that if you add sugar, to sugar, you know sugar syrup, or sugar solution to your lemon jello, and the sugar solution is still warm or hot, that it will turn cloudy. Whereas if you add it when it's cold, it will not. And then the question is, I don't know if that's personally true, but everyone says it. So I'm sure that it must have some truth. And then the question is, is there any is there any taste differences are going to be any taste differences is going to have any impact on texture, aroma, flavor, etc. That's, that's Brian's question. Now. I'd since I don't make lemon cello, I haven't had first hand experience. But it's very interesting to me that lemon cello would turn cloudy when you add warm stuff, as opposed to when you add cold stuff. Now, I did some preliminary research in the scientific literature this morning on this problem and it was not able to find anything unfortunate I guess it hasn't really been studied. Usually when liquor turns cloudy The reason liquor turns cloudy, when you dilute it is because there are oils that are soluble in high proof alcohol, but when the when the proof has been diluted, right, when the alcohol level goes down, all of a sudden those oils are no longer soluble and they end they precipitate out of solution into oil droplets and they become cloudy, right? This is known as the ouzo effect. So if you take ouzo sand Buka, any one of these kind of usually fennelly based things that are high in in oils, and you dilute them or you know what to call absent, it will it will go white, cloudy. Now, also, we have this happen a lot when I do distillation work, I do distillation at low temperature, we bring a lot of oils over. And those oils often will cloud our beverages when we dilute them, or when we chill them. Usually it's when you chill something that it goes cloudy, because all of a sudden, chilling it reduces the solubility of the oil, and also diluting it reduces the solubility of the oil. Right? Now, here's my question, and you'll have to write back and an answer this, my guess would be that this is the only thing I could think of that would make it cloudy as that oils would suddenly become not soluble. Now, if you were to add, if you were to add sugar syrup when everything is cold, let's say it was cold and clear and you add it, my guess is it will go cloudy right away. But maybe the oil droplets you form are big enough that they settle out. I've heard people say that when it becomes cloudy like that and stays cloudy that it's bitter, that would mean that the oil stay in. So if if what's actually happening is you add the cold syrup. And it forms oil droplets right away that are large enough that the oil droplets can coalesce. And then you can get them off of the product and have them go clear again, because I've had that happen with liquor too. I've had liquor that had so much oil, when so cloudy on me that after a period of a couple of days, it settles out. And it's clear because the oil separates out and the lemon oil would have a bitterness. So So basically, my theory and this is completely not backed up because I've never done it is that if you if this phenomenon is true, perhaps what's happening when you add warm when you add warm syrup, right, it doesn't actually cloud as much as it would if you added cold syrup, but that those droplets are smaller and thus more stable. There's therefore there'll be more lemon oil in it, and therefore it might be more bitter, which is what people report on the internet. Whereas if it's cold, the droplets formed are larger and then might coalesce and get out of the beverage as it sits for several days before before you've finished bottling it but I don't know, I've never run the test. And I would welcome anyone to either call in who's done this and talk to me about it or else write into the blog or to the forums because it's it's an interesting subject. Usually the exact opposite happens and cold things cloud up when you dilute them more than warm ones do. So it's definitely an interesting question. I wish I had more of a finished answer. Okay, Derek from San Francisco writes in and this might have been a long one this might go over the over the break, but he read it and it's just like, oh geez, I've read a number of articles and recipes, usually General Tso's chicken or sow what everybody thinks ourselves. Okay, well, I'm going to differ in starch on this one, about the Velveteen technique for cooking meat, but no one's given a reasonable scientific explanation for how it works. How does validating improved improved meats texture, which are the typical ingredients cornstarch, cornstarch, eggs, egg white wine, etc, play a significant role. Thanks in advance, Derek. Okay. Well, I don't I don't cook this way. But I did do a lot of research on this one. It's, it's very interesting.

So velveteen is a procedure whereby you usually take small chunks of meat, you marinate them for a time in an egg white. The main thing that's always there as egg white and and usually also corn starch. And sometimes wine. Salt is usually always present some people add a pinch of baking soda as well. And some people do a pre marination in baking soda before they add it to the velvety mixture the the egg white mixture, and the claim is that it produces a more tender result. If you look. Basically after you do your marination in that egg white, no gunk, you then take it and either drag it through hot oil to set the egg white on the outside or else through boiling water to set the egg white on the outside and then proceed to stir fry the recipe as normal, right? A couple of things are always true in these recipes. One the pieces are small, which means that marination effect is going to be able to penetrate quickly through the whole thing. Okay, that's that's the primary the primary thing that's true. Now, why does this work What the hell's going on? If you look at some of the videos on the web, people say that the egg white is sealing in the juices when you see her. I have extreme doubts as to this I mean one of Harold Maga you know big initial proofs in on food and cooking the original one is that you know searing does not in fact seal in the juices because you can see a whole crapload of sizzle in the pan and the sizzle is coming from a fat burning water and the water is coming from you guessed it, the meat. Now having seen pictures of these chicken pieces stir frying that have been vetted, I can tell you that there is a lot there's a crap ton of moisture escaping from those things. Now. The egg white coating could protect somewhat that you would more preferentially get the water out of the egg white first before it makes it to the chicken or whatever, thereby producing less, less moisture loss inside of the meat just like a batter would. In which case yes, it is protecting the meat from losing its moisture. However, there are a couple of other things that are going on as well that are very interesting. If you add baking soda, baking soda is Alkalyn. And baking soda can actually tenderize meat and we'll talk more about baking soda in a minute and general alkaline conditions in general. But egg white is also alkaline. In fact, what's interesting is is that if you go to a Chinese market here in the US eggs are often not refrigerated. Eggs as they age, in a non refrigerated environment don't necessarily become more dangerous, but they do become more Alkalyn. So an egg, an egg white that starts off in the mid 70s. pH wise by the time it's kind of, you know aged and become older can have a pH upwards of in the nines, very alkaline, right. And so perhaps a soak in a very alkaline egg white would have tenderizing effect, similar to the effect that a baking soda rub can have. Because when you lower the pH you're you're basically increasing the rate of kind of protein and collagen breakdown. So this could be an additional tenderizing effect, that would be offset by any sort of wine that you're adding. So any sort of wine would have acidity would tend to counteract any tenderizing effects from the baking soda. So I don't know how those two things are for the baking soda or from the egg whites, I don't know how those two things would necessarily interact. The other key component in this is the salt. So whenever you add salt to a meat, you are basically increasing its water holding capacity. So even though you think of salt as something that dehydrate something over time, when you are adding salt to meet, you're changing the amount of water that that protein can hold on to. So you're actually increasing the amount of water that holds on to so there's a bunch of possible effects here. And I don't know where because again, I searched the you know, before like I searched scientific literature for limoncello tried to search the scientific literature for velveteen. It just did. There's nothing there. So I searched on bicarbonate solutions and tender zation. And there's a there's a lot of anecdotal evidence on bicarbonate solutions that sodium bicarbonate is baking soda, by the way. So there's a lot of anecdotal evidence on that. And people have done tests and marination and bicarbonate solutions causes tenderize meat via two different mechanisms actually one straight tender zation presumably because of the alkaline nature, and also the ionic character, they it's changing the water holding capacity of the proteins, but also, when baking soda is heated, it decomposes, forms carbon dioxide gas, and so it makes a porous structure in the meat and actually creates porosity and the meat that can be interpreted as tenderness. Those are two different two different things that can be going on. Egg White, perhaps is having some of a similar effect in terms of tenderizing because it can be Alkalyn. Salt would tend to tenderize I don't know where the wine would fit in. And thirdly, just straight enrobing in a protein mixture of egg white would help to protect the chicken from overcooking. A third thing that we would be happy I mean a fourth or fifth who knows how many I've done Another thing that might be happening is Alkalyn things brown faster. So if you have something that's Alkalyn In fact, there's people who do studies on adding a little bit in Holland did did it Netherlands they did a study where they added baking soda to ground meat. And they found that at Brown a lot faster because alkaline conditions, increased Browning rates, right. So for instance, you take a pretzel, pretzels or boiled in either baking soda or lye Alkalyn conditions before they're baked and that's why they have that really dark, dark color and also that characteristic pretzel taste. If you cook a pretzel without boiling it and alkaline conditions, it doesn't taste like a pretzel it tastes like you know like a bagel or something that's hard you know. So you definitely need that alkaline condition to get that really rapid Browning I tend to hate it when it's applied to meet we ran a bunch of tests when you know when Harold McGee comes to do his lecture at the school we do a bunch of tests where we cook baking we put baking soda into ground meat and he Ed Brown fast but it tasted god awful me terrible, did you taste that one to Sasha terrible, very small amounts of it added to added to onions can radically change the Browning characteristics of onions make them brown very quickly and you know made them actually lose more water to is very is very interesting. So these Alkalyn shifts and Alkalyn alkalinity really have a huge effect on proteins and how they brown similarly when you're making noodles, a lot of a lot of you know Asian noodle recipes will use something called can sway which is basically Alkalyn an additive and it makes the gluten more stretchy and also makes the noodles yellow because you're basically shifting the functionality of the of the gluten proteins by shifting the pH towards more alkaline conditions. So long story long and long story confusing is that you know the Alkalyn Egg White might be making it brown faster it might also be it might as well be tenderizing if it makes it brown faster than you think it's done faster meaning you're not going to overcook it as much so that could be another reason why perhaps in meat is more tender when it's when it's cooked this way. So it's a very complicated subject I don't think it's been adequately studied. I don't I haven't done any side by side taste test so it's hard for me to say for certain what's going on but these are my best and worst guesses as at what what's happening anyway. So that brings us to our second break and call in your questions at 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues was got to be with you together

Welcome back to Cooking issues on the heritage Radio Network. Dave Arnold and this dosha Lopez here today's cooking issues brought to you by the barter house and they're fine wine from Uruguay Bouza Bouza with temporary you and tonight Grayson for enjoying right now. Losing reboot we're boozing on Bouza. Okay, so we have another oh, by the way, you still have a couple of minutes to call in your questions. And I know you want to to 718497 to 128. That's 718-497-2128 And a little programming note next week, we won't be coming to you live from Tuesday, we're going to try and pre record we'll put on the blog when we're going to do it in case you want to call in. But next week, I'll be teaching cvwd and low temperature cooking with Niels at the French Culinary Institute. It's actually I liked that I liked the class a lot. It's a good class, we're already we're already full for all of you cvwd nuts, so you'll have to sign up for the next the next one. But it's an interesting class we do, you know, a billion different tastings and it's it's pretty hardcore, but it's a lot of fun. And I actually learned something every time I teach it because we get to we get to you know, taste together with a group of 17 you know people and the people take the class are usually pretty hard For so I ended up always learning a lot. Even myself anyway. Okay. Sorry. Okay. We have a Swedish listener who, you know, can't call and I guess the time difference is too great for him. And he says that assuming to him, you see, Hans. Yes. He is heard as possible to make frozen slushies with a soda siphon. He's interested specifically in the possibility of a frozen Mojito. Do you have any experience with that? He says he's tried it, but he hasn't gotten good results. They were nice and bubbly, but no freezing. Okay, and he says he hasn't traded with a soda siphon yet just with the cream Weber. Okay, cream Whopper, by the way we're talking about is a whipped cream maker that you charged with nitrous oxide, and a siphon is basically a soda siphon is one that's meant to operate to make to make seltzer. Now, I don't think it should make a difference whether you use nitrous oxide or co2, because both have relatively the same weight and similar solubilities in water. So I don't think it's going to make a difference which gas you use. So the question is to the mechanisms are the two. Are they different? And this harks back to something we talked about last week, actually, which is the idea of super freezing we talked a little bit about Super freezing was last week Natasha super freezing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And maybe that's why Hans wrote in the question, here are some issues one, I don't think you can do it with a mojito because Mojito has a crushed up mint in it. And so that's going to provide a nucleation site. So you're not going to get very much super cooling. The way that this slushy thing if it works, which I have never done it before. If it works, here's how it works. You put a drink into a clean vessel, it's clean, right? The drink itself is clean, clear, doesn't have any cloudiness in it, right. So lime juice might be a problem, I'm not sure, right, you might want to, you might want to keep the lime juice separate, you know, chill your lime juice down and then take the frozen drink with everything but the lime juice and slosh it because the lime juice I think is going to cause a problem, you want to chill it below the temperature at which it freezes, right. And then you want to initiate ice nucleation so that it forms crystals. It's a technique called Super freezing, and you can look it up on YouTube. And you can see super, super, super cooling rather, you can look up super cooling and freezing. And this works. So one your lime juice is going to be a problem but your lime juice last after it's basically been flushed out to your the advantage of using the siphon is that when you are when you charge it with gas, the gas is actually lowering the freezing point of your of your mixture. Okay, so it allows you to super cool it even more, because what happens is when you when you spray it out, you're doing two things. One, you're introducing a bunch of nucleation sites and it's going to bubble and the bubble provides ice nucleation sites and you're gonna get your crystal growth. You're also as this stuff foams out of it, you are you are releasing gas. And as it releases gas, the freezing point goes up and it should crystallize faster, so you win two times. So here's what I would do not guarantee this is going to work because I haven't tried it. But I would mix your drink with water. And by the way, you're going to want a assuming you want the same sort of dilution that a daiquiri has the post that we're going to hopefully put up in a day or two on cooking issues. Part two of our of our mega cocktail post part one went up on Thursday, I think part two is going to go up probably tomorrow. You know, it turns out that shaken drinks are quite dilute more diluted and you'd think more in the range of like 16% alcohol in that range. So you're going to want to dilute it down to finish, right except for you know, holding, you know, keep in mind that the lime juice is going to do more omit the lime juice, just water, sugar syrup, and booze, right, any salt if you want, charge it with with nitrous, put it in your freezer, right? That mixture should freeze somewhere in the vicinity of like minus 810 minus nine, like minus 10. Somewhere in that summer Celsius, I had to look it up exactly, but somewhere in that region, so you should super cooled down your freezer should be fine. You're gonna have to experiment with a little bit, then immediately turn your siphon upside a younger whipped cream thing upside down.

Like out you want to get rid of as much gas as possible and also you know and also get it into your cup as fast as possible. And with any luck, you will be able to get some filming. Another thing you could do is just unscrew the lid and let it dry like that and then you should be able to get some pour it out into a into a juice stir in your lime juice, dun, dun if it works, if it works, and there's there's no guarantee, there's no guarantee that she's going to work. Okay. So on the subject of cocktails, I did an interesting study over the weekend stashing in in preference for the for the post that we're working on. shaken and stirred drinks and we've mentioned this a bunch of times but stick shaken or drinks are different, right? So one of the differences between a shake and drink and a stir drink is stir drinks typically less diluted than then shaken drinks, right? Typically a stir drink is going to have a much lower amount of water added to it than a shake and drink is to shake and drinks are aerated more because they're shaken. Right? And back in the day, I used to think it was you know malarkey that that all that aeration would stay. I thought it was very transient effect. But through several blind tests that we've done, I've been proven wrong, as is often the case, and shaken drinks are in fact different on a textural basis from stir drinks, as well as being more diluted. Now the question is, then if you're having a party, how are you going to make a shake and drinks for everyone if you want to do preed if you want to pre dilute the batch, for instance, you're going to run out of ice you don't feel like having your ice around, bla bla bla bla bla, you don't want to shake live it's a pain in the ass, etc. I mean, but eccentric cetera, et cetera. And in the school, we tested a couple of different things. One, we just served a chilled shaken drink, right that we had chilled drink that was diluted the same amount as a shaken drink. And that didn't taste like a shaking drink. We could we tasted that side by side with a shake and drink and also one that we put in a blender. The blender didn't work because the bubbles were too big. It was weird. And then we also chose one with liquid nitrogen and liquid nitrogen it turns out as it as it cools, with the vanish here as you can use warm drink as well. As it cools, it adds little bubbles because the nitrogen is boiling off and that turns out to be very close to shake and drink. I realized that most of you out there don't have liquid nitrogen. So here's the good news. I ran another test over the weekend where we took the chilled drink. We took a chilled drink straight out of the freezer, we diluted it as much as you would for a shaken drink and tune into our website in a couple of days to find out what that answer is because it's too complicated to explain over the over the radio would make any damn sense anyway, but looking up on our blog, here's the good news. Dilute the drink, put it in your freezer don't freeze, put in your freezer and then just put it into a cocktail shaker without ice and to shake it before you pour it out. That's it and you can get most of the stuff back so I ran a test over the weekend where we took chilled diluted cocktail, a fresh shaken cocktail and then a chilled diluted cocktail that we shook just in a quart container and a chilled a chilled diluted cocktail that I shook in a quart container with a bunch of I have a bunch of strainers Hawthorn strainers You know the ones with the spring the cocktail spinners with the spring I ripped all the springs off and throw them into the core container. This is a trick I learned from Audrey Saunders who was testing this to aerate her egg white drinks, you know a number of years ago anyway, so I did a one with one with the springs in a quart container and just shook the heck out of them for a couple of seconds and then poured them out and blind. The shaken fresh shake and drink was very similar to the ones that were shaken just in a quart container straight from the freezer and ones that were shaking a quart container with spring straight from the freezer. The shake and drink was a little bit different and was preferred by some people but the other two are very very close approximation so if you pre dilute your drinks store them in core containers in the freezer you know take a quart container is that's what you get from like takeout joint you know we have everywhere at the school but so you can take out joint store your drinks in the core container you know make sure there's a lot of air left in it and then as they're ready just pull them out of your freezer chaka chaka chaka chaka chaka, what drink did you make and how long do you keep it in your freezer for before you took it out? I kept it in there for like an hour, and it's probably a little cold. I was trying to make it exactly as cold as a shaken drink. If I let it sit there longer, it would have gotten a little bit colder. I was making wasn't making I was making daiquiris, straight daiquiris. And the and I use the same exact mix. So I pre mixed everything, held some aside and shook one live. And then the other ones I shook. You know, I pre shook, I actually pre shook them traditionally, and then let them sit for you know, for a while to get rid of all the texture from shaking and then froze them down. The reason I did that was I wanted to make sure that they were diluted exactly the same amount as the fresh, fresh frozen guy. What was interesting is some people preferred the one that was in the freezer, they'd prefer to because it had it was more intense because it didn't have the air bubbles in and the one with the springs was actually the most aerated. And therefore some people liked it the least because the least intense. My mom oh it wasn't daiquiri, sorrows. whiskey sours. My mom who doesn't like whiskey was it happened to me in my house at the time. She liked that one best because it tasted the least like whiskey. It was or actually no she liked the one without the springs, which wasn't the most area because everyone said that one tasted sweeter, which is bizarre just goes to show how complicated the cocktail is. My stepfather whose booze hound wine nut and amazing palette I've seen him pick mines blind out of You know, you'll walk up to him with a wine and a tin foil wrapper and pour it and he'll be like, Yeah, that's what I brought me. He's mean, can't argue with math pal, you can argue with a lot about about gerar, but not his palate. So, you know, he, he actually preferred the one that was allowed to sit in the freezer, because he, I guess it was denser, he preferred it more. And he he preferred the one that had the most air and at least we have a, we have a color. Oh, the last under the wire color comes into the water color on the air.