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.

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I'm Sam Edwards, third generation care master from s Wallace Edwards and sons in Surrey, Virginia. We support the heritage radio network, because we believe in the cause or what they're doing. They're supporting family raised livestock, small family farms, Certified Humane pasture raised antibiotic free basically we take the products from Heritage food USA and make them into Serrano style hands prosciutto style hands, bacon sausage like my grandfather did. You can find us at Surry farms.com or Virginia traditions.com. Oh, you don't know where I'm supposed to be.

Hello. Welcome to Cooking issues from the Heritage Radio Network coming to you live every tuesday from 12 to 1245. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host of cooking issues here with Natasha, the hammer Lopez the hammer of cooking issues. Here to set me straight keep me honest. Calling all of your cooking related questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. So today's show is brought to you by Sam Edwards from Syl sandwich Corporation. I've actually a little story to relate about that. I was coming home from Thanksgiving. You know I take the train from my mom's house in Westchester just north of New York down to Grand Central stop at the Murray's Cheese Shop and saw what might be the mess best marbled ham I've ever seen produced by an American corporation. And it was one of Sam Edwards is one of his hams and I took it home was incredibly delicious. I've known Sam Edwards for several years actually because I've been kind of a ham nut for for a long time. So a couple of problems with it with the ham. It's not marketed under his actual brand name. It's marketed as a serie farms and I don't really care farms I don't really I never knew. So if you go to Murray's Cheese in New York or you see something marketed as Surrey farms, it's actually an S Wallace Edwards hand and then I emailed him I was like, well, what's the deal? I've never seen an American ham that's, that's, you know, so well marbled. And he told me that he was actually getting the pigs from Patrick here at Heritage Foods when you think about that, Natasha. It's pretty cool, right? Yes, yeah. Anyway, so delicious product. We fully support Sam Edwards and his attempt to, because I've always said, I think I've talked about on this program before that American ham is delicious, and we have our own traditions. And you know, there's no, there's no reason that Americans should try to pretend to be something else. We have our own delicious country ham, and we have for hundreds and hundreds of years. It's a unique cultural product. And so I'm a huge supporter of it. My my one gripe has always been that although our cure masters are as good as any care masters in the world, by the way, we're still in a construction zone here. Roberta's pizzeria. So if you hear any hammer drilling in the background, no one is attempting to break into the studio and murder as it's just normal construction going on. Anyway. So I've always said that one of the main problems isn't the cure masters themselves, or the techniques they use, but the quality of pork available to most ham cures here in the US, as opposed to those available to, let's say, the Spanish. And so Sam Edwards, as well as Edwards is trying to change that partially by getting some material from Patrick at Heritage Foods, the founder of our radio network. So anyway, so kudos to Sam Edwards. Now, onto cooking issues proper. So some of you who listened to the show regularly might remember that several weeks ago, maybe even a month ago now, I issued a challenge that if someone could produce a raw chocolate bar, that didn't make me want to throw up when I ate it, that even remotely resembled real chocolate, or, you know, tasted good that I would eat raw food for a week while I have an update to that show. But before I get to that update, we have a caller and we have a caller All right, caller you're on the air.

How is Colin Gore down in Washington DC? And yeah, had a, I guess, not exactly cooking related. I mean, you know, in the era of cooking, but not directly related questions. I'm actually in a PhD program in material science department at University of Maryland. And we are building a seminar series for the upcoming semester. And I was wondering if you knew had any contacts at ISC GM, because I'm interested in trying to get someone from there to talk to us give a kind of presentation that's a little science sick, but also kind of cool and interesting.

All right, well, THC gums for those of you that don't know what the heck we're talking about. THC gums is a major manufacturer of hydrocolloid, which again, for those you who still don't know what the hell I'm talking about, hydrocolloid are a group of kind of thickeners and gelling agents that in the past were used almost exclusively by industrial concerns to make foods cheaper or ship better or last longer, when they're frozen, etc, etc. But in the past 10 years or so have really been used by chefs to try and either achieve special effects or increased quality so there's been a major shift in these ingredients from being seen as additives to being seen as legitimate ingredients in high cuisine. So THC gums is a major manufacturer of this in their in their headquarters is in Maryland somewhere I think someone there Beltsville rights are there. Are they in Pennsylvania? Oh, sweet. Yeah. Anyway, they're out there

in Maryland, a little bit a little bit northwest and northeast of Baltimore. Oh, yeah.

And I'm supposed to have been visited, I suppose visited there many times my main. What's interesting about him also, for those of you listening out there, they will sell to individuals. They're one of the few manufacturers that for some reason takes an interested in this and they have what's called at least they used to a chef's kit that you could buy stuff from them, and so 10s T IC gums, and you can go to them. The unfortunate thing about TSE gums, is it all of their products have horrific names like salad dyes or 210 s and pick a Lloyd and you know, all the all these like horrible sounding, they sound like parasites, diseases and insects, but they make really good products. The other thing about them is that they are they're a blender, their GM blender is solution providers, so they don't provide straight up raw materials the way let's say Dow Chemical, would they blend their own proprietary mixtures and their own sources, and they sell them so they won't tell you exactly what's in their mixture, which is the other interesting thing. The main thing with and I'm going to answer your question I'm just explained, everyone else doesn't know what TSE comes as the tip gums are the one we use most is a product called salad dizer either the 210 s or the 310 S. And this is something actually that anyone should have around their house. It's a mixture of gum arabic, and xanthan gum, both natural ingredients, and it's fantastic at stabilizing a motion to oil water emotions for later to dilute later. So we use it to make simple syrups with oils and fats in them. Salad dressings, sauces, it's fantastic stuff that goes in cold it's really easy to use. It's not too you know finicky so that's the part of theirs we use the most. Now the downside? I no longer have a real contact on the East Coast. My old contacts got riefler moved to be the west coast and Asia rep for tip gums, but they have a hotline called Gum Guru. And if you email us, I will try to remember though, if anyone's ever met me, I'm horrible at email. But they're all really nice people down there, and I'm sure they'd be happy. If you find I don't have his contact info anymore. But if you call Scott riefler out on the West Coast, he might to say who because he's a really good guy. And interesting. He used to give the culinary talks on the east coast. So if I contact him, he might know who his current incarnation on the East Coast would be. Because it'd be an easy easy trip for them. But yet tip gums good people.

Yeah. All right. Thanks a lot.

No problem. Yeah, so if you need any more help, again, contact us. Most likely a question on the blog is the best way to get a response because that's the only thing I'm kind of guaranteed to respond to. But, you know, they're good people. And I'm sure they'll, they'll respond. And actually, for those of you out there who have GM questions, like they are one of the few companies that if you ask them for a problem to it, you know, a solution to a particular problem. Like, I have XYZ salad dressing, it has these situations, which product do you recommend? They will unlike most companies, they will actually get back to you with an answer. They have a what's it called system system called GM guru on their tip gums website. So it's a good, good, good place to go a good resource and find people. All right, well, thanks for thanks for your question. Okay, now back to the raw food, raw food challenge. So what I said was, is that if someone could produce a raw food, raw chocolate, that was even remotely delicious at all, it really didn't leave a bad apple taste in my mouth, that I would eat raw food exclusively for a week. Now, and astonishes here not just to hammer on new people but to although she never actually does that. But but to keep me honest. And one of my interns grace, who's actually has her final today she's going to graduate the French Quarter, we're going to lose another fine intern actually, several we're losing Piper as well. Another fun intern. She brought some a you remember the brand name is Tasha. No, I don't remember some rough. It's like, you know, it comes in some sort of craft paper crunchy label thing from Whole Foods Market and it costs like $1,000 a bar or something like that. But I ate it and I wasn't revolted. Right, right. Right. So it looks like I might have to actually do this. Because if there's if there's anything on earth, I hate, it's a welcher. Right? You certainly Welch's on Betsy, you know, you could be a serial killer. I could find something redeeming about you. But someone who Welsh isn't that's not really true of someone who Welch's on bets. It's like, you know, that's like the worst thing in the world, right? It's terrible for you. Yeah. Well, for you to know, you like a wheelchair,

I don't like it doesn't occur to me. What? I haven't dealt with a lot of them.

It's because they're universally reviled and hated. Anyway. So. So I can't Welsh on this. So now, I had a couple of hours, I gave myself a couple of outs in this bed because they said that not only Yes, I did. If you remember, I said not only does it have to be delicious, but it has to actually be raw. And there is a lot of research there. A lot of people out there who basically say there is no such thing as raw as raw cocoa beans. Because of the processing that they go through on the way they all go above this kind of magic temperature of 108 degrees Fahrenheit, where all enzymes are supposed to be destroyed. Before I go on a little rant about that. Not all enzymes are the first of all, there are enzymes that are destroyed below 118. And there are many, many enzymes that last WELL, WELL, WELL, WELL, WELL above 118 degrees Fahrenheit, and how fast an enzyme is denatured is not only a function of temperature, but a function of temperature and time. So to think there's some sort of magic brick wall at 180 degrees Fahrenheit, where no enzymes can pass through that brick wall is absurd. I mean, beyond absurd. Ridiculous has how much basis in science 000 basis in science. Now that's one thing about raw foods. Second thing about it is I don't know why enzymes like what why should I preserve an enzyme in in food I have not seen a paper yet. That tells me what the benefit is of preserving all the enzymes and putting I'm willing to be proven wrong and this like anything else, I'm willing to be proven wrong. But you know, first of all, a lot of enzymes are going to be deactivated in the gut anyway, not all of them, but many of them are going to be deactivated in the gut. Many enzymes are bad you know, they do damaging things do not all enzymes are little beneficent proteins that are like wandering around your body only fixing things that went wrong. So I don't understand really the whole premise behind raw food either but that is not that is neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is, I said that I would do it and I know many fine people. It's like the the first the first defense of a prejudiced person, right. I know many fine raw food people anyway, it's true. I know many fine raw food people. But I promised I'd do it so so I will. Now but I have to reach Searching Oh, the out Yeah, sorry. So yeah, chocolate turns out that 99% of the according to the data that I could gather, which may or may not be true 99% of the stuff labeled raw chocolate in, in markets and food markets is in fact, not raw, because there's almost no one out there with processing equipment to actually produce the cocoa butter. So even if you obtain raw, completely raw, like controlled fermentation, so the fermentation never went 100 above 118, which is possible, you know, although not likely, but possible and never been roasted. So it's not going to develop any of the roasted flavors that you would get it to make chocolate, you'd have to express cocoa butter to add cocoa butter back to even if you're using just grinding raw raw nibs, you'd have to add cocoa butter back to it to get the chocolate consistency. And the cocoa butter that's pressed is pressed in such a way that the temperature basically, you know, has to get above you know, 118 degrees Fahrenheit using the equipment that's out there. So most people who are providing, you know, these products to the raw food manufacturers probably are misrepresenting what they're what they're providing. And this is the data that I'm able to gather on the internet. Now there's an there's an interesting guy by the name of Ben ripple, Ben ripple has a thing called big tree farms out in Bali. And I've seen him present a couple times I met him although he would never remember this at a taste three, which is a, an event that a you know, the Mondavi that TED conferences used to have along with him with Mondavi and I spoke at it a couple of times. And Ben ripple spoke at it. And his deal is as he wants, he goes to a poor farmers in barley and other you know, places over there, and wants to get them some money for their product. And so as far as I can tell, he doesn't really care so much personally about raw food, but he sees it as a niche market where he can all of a sudden raise the value of these products as farmers are producing by producing a very specialty product for a very niche market, where he's not competing with bigger growers, or, you know, bigger countries, bigger industrial concerns. So he has been a supplier of raw cashews for a long time to raw cashews. And he spent a lot of time and energy trying to produce a true raw chocolate. So apparently, if you get your cocoa products from big tree farms, which has been ripples corporation, you have a guaranteed certified raw product, I don't know what the heck the price is, apparently, it's a lot lot higher than most of the raw, raw chocolate products that are out there. And I think he's a raw, you know, he supplies to manufacturers. But so anyway, I don't know whether the one I got was real or not, but it's weak to try and get out of it just by saying that it probably wasn't actually a raw chocolate, so we're gonna do it. Which means that I won't be eating the family meal or French culinary. Well, me and my family because who else cooks at my house? Yeah, nobody. Now here's the thing. Now, do we have a? Here's do I follow raw food just based on 118? In which case I can have sashimi, right? Or do most raw food people are also like veggie vegan style folk right now if I what I'm saying is is that to be raw food doesn't necessarily mean I have to go vegetarian, right? I mean, not that I could go vegetarian for a week is not a problem vegan for a week might be a problem. The problem is I'd have to find unpasteurized milk and you can't it's hard to buy it here in New York. If you can get to there certain farms you can buy direct from farms, but here in New York City, it's difficult to get unpasteurized milk, so I couldn't have unpasteurized milk. But I mean, I don't see any reason why I can't have you seen sashimi. Right. Natasha? Do you see any reason? Or carpaccio? I can't have Parmesan with my carpaccio though, because the occurred from Parmesan cheese is cooked to a higher temperature than 118 Fahrenheit during the accounting process. So I couldn't have Parmesan with my carapace with my my ruin it for me, because really, that's the taste of carpaccio anyways, that is the parmesan and the olive oil. So also, so that's the first question, do I follow their rules? Or just the 118 degree rule? That's the first question I have to figure out. The second thing is I have to plan this for a long time, because I'm definitely not going to buy any BS raw food product off the shelf. There's just some hyper processed crap that has like, not doesn't have a good taste, where the only criteria for its manufacture was it had never been heated, because I hate products like that. I'm also not going to have any substitute products. No, no, you know, raw food product pretending to be something that's cooked, right? The challenge is, can I make everything truly freakin Delicious, right, truly delicious, and also raw and wanting to be what it is, instead of an imitation of something else. That's a real challenge. So it's going to probably take me a month or so to figure out a good week's worth of recipes, learn a whole bunch of techniques. I'm gonna have to read every raw food cookbook there is. You know, I've read sarcomas one of sarma mon guys has cookbooks. She's She's nice. She's nice. Maybe I can call her and ask for some advice if you're still talking to me because I supposed to help her with a bunch of dehydrator projects he was working on and we never got back to remember that in Stasha. Yes, yeah. So if you're still if you're still taking my calls, I'll call her and try and try and work on that, but I'm going to shoot for a goal somewhere in Prague probably February or something Yeah, since that's such a crappy month anyway, we'll do a raw food. We'll do Raw Food Week in stock so you're gonna end this or No? Sure I'll do it with you if it happens really,

if it happens,

I mean if it happens, you call me a welcher. Yes, geez, I just told you that the worst thing in the world is a wheelchair. Anyway All right, so we're gonna go to our first commercial break but calling all of your questions to 71849721287184972128 cooking issues so much phone call your name I don't want to I am gonna have a punk have to have a guide gotta

read and Welcome back to Cooking issues. Dave Arnold close to cooking issues long as Sasha Lopez here from revertas pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, calling all your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. I have a question in from Paul says, Hi Dave. It's well known that baking soda can be used to speed up mired reactions and Browning, is this just about phos or something else at work? And then is there anything that can be used to slow down such reactions, mired reactions, for reasons not worth going into, I'd like to be able to keep simple broths and soups safely warm for up to 18 hours. Naturally, they begin to deteriorate after this long, especially those with vibrant vegetable colors, any tips or suggestions or something I could throw in? Thanks, Paul. Now, I'm gonna have to break this down a little bit. And you know, I know Paul, you probably don't have the time to call him during the show. But this is something I'd really like to kind of figure out exactly what what you mean here. My art reactions, right are the Browning reactions that are, you know, typically go on they're very complicated, but they have to do with reducing sugars, certain kinds of sugars in proteins, usually, in we're always in the presence that not always but usually in the presence of heat, right, typically higher heats. So we associate kind of toasty brown bread, bread flavors, brown flavors, cooked flavors, and a lot of the flavors on the outside of roasted meats and things like that, as are my art style flavors right. And you know, the brown on French fries, the crispy skin, all that these are things we associate with with Meijer. These reactions are indeed speeded up by the addition of alkaline ingredients. So for instance, pretzels, famously, pretzels are cooked in an alkaline water before they're baked to increase the Browning in them and they also give a characteristic kind of alkaline taste. Now, also egg whites will brown if cooked for a long time, even though they're not cooked at a very, very high temperature because egg whites are Alkalyn so that my reaction is speeded up and and that's that's the you know the thing behind having eggs, these eggs that are cooked for a long time and turn brown. And so at the school, you know, we do a lot of cooking with eggs and pressure cookers and the eggs turn brown because of my own reactions. So yes, basic conditions, alkaline conditions, which baking soda will produce do speed up Browning reactions. Now, that's not the same browning reaction that happens in a in a vegetable soup. So if you're doing a broth with vegetables in it, and I presume you mean green vegetables, right, green vegetables are talking about. So if you're doing like a vibrant green vegetable color, those right are not broken down because of my hard reactions, right. So like an herb, an array of blended herbs, for instance is breaking down because of an enzymatic reaction. So you can stop those things from going brown initially by destroying the enzymes. Now the problem is, is that then further browning and kind of all of drabness takes on because the chlorophyll in those vegetables is being destroyed because there's there's a magnesium that's inside of the chlorophyll magnesium gets displaced by a hydrogen ion usually in the presence of an acid right or over long you know long cooking times and that causes the chlorophyll to brown and you lose the vibrancy of the color right so I'm trying to figure out exactly which you know which one of these reactions you're worried about now, adding something basic like like you know, baking soda or something to a green vegetable broth or puree should preserve the chlorophyll now, one of the reasons not to add you know, you know baking soda to if you're cooking let's say green beans or broccoli to the water. One of the reason against it is because although the green is going to be very well preserved, because the magnesium is not going to get displaced from the chlorophyll is that they go mushy very, very quickly, because the other effect that's going on is that the cell walls of these vegetables are made up of pectin and hemicellulose. And the pectin right is, is very resistant to breaking down in alkaline in acid conditions, but breaks down very, very readily in an alkaline condition. So you add baking soda water, and you get very green mushy vegetables, you had acid to the cooking water, and you get olive drab, very, you know, firm vegetables. So it's like you can't win. But if you're doing a puree, right, then you don't care about the fact that it's going to be mushy, because you're gonna puree the sucker anyway. So you might as well add a pinch of baking soda, just gotta make sure that you don't get any off taste. And this should help preserve the green color for a lot longer. Now, also, the other thing is, if you store your, your, your soups at a lower temperature, you should be able to preserve the color faster. Now, I haven't done any controlled tests of storing a broth. That's not not a chlorophyll base. But I haven't really done a control test on any of this, this is just off the top of my head. But it would be interesting to do a, do a test where we stored just in an open vein, you know, a soup at, you know, 70 degrees C, let's say for 12 hours to see what happened to it. I don't know how much more appreciable Browning you would get. Other than maybe you're also getting an increased Browning during during evaporation like a concentration, I'd have to see. But I'm kind of interested in the problem. So if you email another question into the radio, maybe more specifically, like what recipe you're dealing with, and exactly kind of what's going wrong. I'd love to take a look at it because it seems like an interesting problem, right and stuff. So anyway, but let me do another thing is that I did some more research on one of the products that we like to use is a stuff called Thai red line paste. And Thai red line paste is basically limestone. I always thought that it was naturally red. And there's been very little up till now that I'm able to find in the way of English language references on this time ingredient other than it's used in soups and banana, like this banana soup to preserve this. So all the breads goes back to the the machinists, right. So. So what we do is we use this Thai red line pace, which you can get in an Asian grocery store, you put it into water, you shake it up, it settles out, and you use that water, we vacuum injected into bananas, and it makes a banana stay firm, even when you cook it so you can make like a Bananas Foster. But the bananas they taste cooked and delicious and sweet, but they don't get mushy. And you can also beat the crap out of them in the pan without them breaking apart. So it's one of our favorite recipes. We've been doing it for years. I do it all the time. I love it. Bang, bang, bang, right. But I haven't really found up till now any English language references on it. I always assumed that the stuff was natural, that naturally read, but I found finally an English language blog called Chi simmers. And it's written by someone named Lila, but I don't know her last name. And she said that that red is actually Tumeric that they add to it, although I don't know if that's true or false. I don't know. But that's what she said. And she also made some interesting points, that it's that the Thai red lime and I hadn't thought about this before is basically calcium, calcium hydroxide. Lime, which is the same stuff that's used for next almost next to lamentation, right, which is the you know, the process used to turn corn into masa and harmony by soaking in an alkaline condition and I've been wanting to go get cow, which is what they use in Mexico to do this for a long time. And we've had it in our fridge the entire for all these years, we've had the next nixtamal lysing product in our fridge in the form of Thai red line paste for years and years, and we've never done it so we're gonna have to run our Nick formalisation experiments with the Thai red lime. See, see what we get out of it. But she also does something very interesting, which is that if you add it to fry batters, right, that fry batter stays crispy after it's been fried for a long time a lot longer than it would if you just use regular water in the batter. So I'm going to try to do some tempura batters with this Thai red lime and see whether we can get a batter that does indeed blind taste crispier with this versus not because I was not able to find any papers, any you know, any scientific papers on adding Alkalyn ingredients to to batters to try and increase their Christmas I wasn't able to find it. So I don't know I'm gonna do some research. That's something that you know, could be very, very, very interesting, but it's you know, it's more crap we have to do what do you think is Stasha? Yes, good stuff. Yes, this stuff. But this brings us back to the other point about the about the this stuff this line is that being calcium and being hydroxide it's both Alkalyn but has calcium present. And and what is calcium due to cell walls? Mm hmm. She's gonna calcium strengthens the pectin, right. So in the presence of a lot of calcium, you're going to cross link the you're going to cross link the the pectin in there. And it's going to be resistant to breaking down either by heat or anything else. And so what I'm wondering is if you use calcium hydroxide as your addition to the boiling water, can you get a vegetable that stays green and is also crunchy? So that is another round of experiments we have to run I was not able to find anything on that either. But now I only searched for half an hour or so. Which is part of the reason that I literally ran in here panting with my hands frozen off about 10 seconds before the radio show started mushed into stashes chagrin. The other reason was I couldn't find any gloves on the way out and that's why I you know, my hands I feel like I could crack them with a hammer and they break into tiny little pieces. But so a lot of interesting experiments were brought up by your question about vegetables and bras and my yard and keeping things green. Anyway since it's it's about time we go to our second commercial break call in your questions to 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues so much gonna have we're gonna have we're gonna have God God read now all right back in attendance Hi

Welcome back to Cooking issues still time to call in your questions to 718497212 weights and 184972128. So we got a question from Kurt, that he had a question about egg substitute. And he says as his grandparents have gotten older, he started to watch salt, fat and cholesterol in their diets much more. Although I have to tell you that contrary to health, like if I get old enough, I'm going to eat nothing because I already eat nothing but fats and all this stuff. Anyway, if I make it to that age, I'm definitely gonna start loading up on all this stuff people tell me not to eat. But they've tried to use egg substitute, and are generally happy with the result in almonds and scrambled eggs but less so in baking. Can you tell me more about what is in egg substitute as well as when it is appropriate to use instead of egg. Now, the only thing I know much about egg substitutes is egg substitutes, like actual straight up single ingredients that are used to substitute for certain properties and eggs. Right? So it looks like you're talking about an egg substitute that can literally be substituted for an egg and like an omelet, I'm more used to dealing with products that are substitutes for eggs. Like in baking, where you say, Okay, I have an egg protein that needs to hold something in a specific way. So like I need to imitate the foaming properties of egg white, let's say. So then I would say okay, then I know what to add, I'm going to add some something like Xanthan for thickening and I'm going to add a some sort of aeration agent like methylcellulose versa with something like that, right? So like that kind of stuff I know about or, you know, Xanthan to hold things together or you know, either in gluten or an egg replacing recipes. Or, you know, I need something that's going to provide the emulsification of egg yolk so I'm going to add probably soy less than or something like that. Like these are these are things that I kind of like understand, but like straight up egg replacer I don't have a lot of a lot of information off the top of my head. So I'm gonna but the thing is, do we have a way to actually make sure that I look this up before next week's radio? Show? We're gonna keep the question yes. So we'll just we'll pump it over and then next week's questions, but it's something I'm interested in looking I'm trying to figure out like what they could make you know, that actually looks like an egg on the plate that works like an egg on the plate and why it wouldn't work in baking. So this is something I'm willing to investigate further and deserves more time than I was able to give it this week Kurt so I will check up on that and stash will pump that question over on to the next week. And another one I got that was kind of difficult from Scott choleric is it Uh, you know, we talked, I think a little bit on the Thanksgiving episode about the Dragon Spirit candy, the Poshmark. Right, didn't we? Yeah, yeah. And so in that recipe, you know, it goes to cooking candies. In that recipe, you add acid at the beginning of the recipe, and what happens is, is that the the longer it cooks, the acid continues to what's called inverted sugar breaks the sucrose, which is a disaccharide, down into two monosaccharides. And that reaction is sped up by the presence of acid. So the longer you cook in the presence of acid, the more you break the sugar down into the sucrose down into into glucose and fructose. And that has the, those sugars don't harden up the same way when when the sugar cools down when the sugar syrup cools down. And so you end up getting a softer product, the longer it cooks, the softer it is. So Scott was working for a chocolate tear, or is working for chocolate here part time or as a chocolatier, I should say. And he is told that the faster you cook a caramel to a certain temperature, the softer the product will be. So it's the exact opposite of what we've what we've been, you know what we have with regular sugar syrup, right? And so he says, I understand that temperature. And candy is a function of boiling water off so that as long as the accurate final temperature is reached, right, the product would be the same. And this is something I think I probably also said on that on that thing is that, because I remember we also had a question on caramels or something like that. And it's true that if you cook too, if, if you if the only ingredients are sugar and water. And this is why maybe if I was talking about caramel sauce, don't have to look it up, you know, I probably spoke too soon. If the only ingredients are sugar and water, right, then the final temperature is strictly a function of, of you know how much water is in there, right. So no matter what, you know, the water content is going to be the same once you reach the final the final temperature. And that may or may not be true if other ingredients are in there and changing so and so altering the boiling point, like if things break down and become soluble, are no longer soluble, then they will or they will no longer affect the boiling point, I don't know how much that's going to affect the temperature right. Now, the other problem is, is that there's a lot of stuff in a caramel, there's milk solids, there's fats, there's all these other things. And each one of those right affects the final texture of your caramel. And I downloaded a couple scholarly articles but didn't have a chance to necessarily wade through them. And I'm trying to figure I was trying to figure out why it is that cooking it for longer is going to make it make it harder. And I haven't found any yet except for to say that you know that the sugar is only the sugars, the sugar and how much it's cooked. There's only one of the things that's affecting the texture, like something that's going on, as you said with the with the milk, milk solids might be a factor like if you cook the milk solids too quick, or they don't get converted enough that might affect the texture, something going on with the fat, although I doubt it might affect the texture based on that, you know, you would posited that, you know, there's one cook that that used to work at this Chocolatier where he used to cook very, very quickly. And he always had to cook to a higher temperature because his caramels were coming out too hard to say too soft. So he needed to cook them. No sorry to harp anyway, again, we're getting all bent, confused. But the point is, is that I would guess and if you cook it really quickly, you liable to go to a higher temperature anyway. I think it'd be unusual were cooking something faster means you got to a lower temperature because I would think that you'd have hotter stuff at the bottom. And when you pull it you get a higher rise. But I don't know. So it looks like it's probably a more complex, more complex problem, then, you know, then first blush looks at and unfortunately I was I would have talked about it with Harold McGee. I spoke to him yesterday, but he's kind of in transit. He's finished up his whirlwind book tour. By the way, Harold McGee has a new book out called What's it called the keys to good cooking, right? Yeah, he's a good cooking was was on the New York Times bestseller Harold McGee, good friend of cooking issues, good friend's blog, good friend of ours. And so go buy his book. But anyway, next time I speak to him, which is going to be at the end of the week, I'm going to try and ask him about this because it might be something that he researched in, you know, and all of the all the stuff that he's been doing recently for his book, but it is an interesting question. And you have me a little bit stumped. So anyway, so that is all of the questions for today. And so I want to this is a personal plea if any of you out there have good and we're going back to the raw food raw food challenge, if any of you out there have any suggestions for me? Should we write this stuff up on the blog as we do it or no? Mustache had doubts that I'm actually going to do it. The starship doesn't think that but not for the reason that you guys out there you guys out there in radio land think I'm a welcher which means that you think I'm a bad a poor quote, a low quality human being as my son. Yeah, no, I don't think you're a wheelchair. Well, I think you have a lot. Yeah. A lot of stuff to do. Yeah. Okay. Well, look, the fact the matter is, is that it Doesn't matter like it like a wheelchair is a wheelchair, if you say you're going to do something, and you don't, then your wheelchair doesn't matter if you're too busy because the same like saying, Well, I would pay you but I don't have the money. No, you're a wheelchair, you made a bet and you couldn't deliver. So we have to do it. Right. The question is, are we going to have the time to write about it? That's the thing. But I'd like to write about the the experience of trying to try to go raw food. But we're definitely

then let me write about the experience.

Well, okay, so for those who are, here's a little insight into into the cooking issues team and why we don't write very often on the blog. And the reason is, is because I'm a huge jerk, right. And so I have an, of an extremely narrow point of view about kind of everything. And so I'm, I'm hard to work with when it comes to writing things is true or false. That's true. That's true. Including with myself, the only person harder on me is my wife, who's maybe one of the great editors. I mean, you know, maybe not as good as her sister, Miley, my sister in law, who runs the Food Network magazine, but pretty, pretty damn good. My wife is a vicious editor. But aside from stylistically, which I'm horrible at, you know, content wise, I'm pretty particular. So I don't know, what would you would you would you want to read about

the experience, the, from, from my perspective,

see from well, but like about what, like, couldn't be

recipes, the, you know, day one, day two, day three, how we feel, you know, the difference between and we

start a separate blog, because we're not about our feelings.

I know, but I think people who cares about our feelings, why would you listen,

you guys tell us but I don't think anyone cares about my personal feelings about anything? I think they do. I don't think so. I don't care. But I hardly care about my personal feelings about things. Why should anyone else? Why not feelings? Well, you've seen Have you seen all feelings? Now? The thing is like, like, look, here's the thing, and this is, maybe I'm gonna offend everyone now, probably. But, you know, one of the reasons, the, like, my whole issue with blogs is is trying to, like strike this balance between, you know, serving yourself and serving and serving other people. I don't necessarily see the value in saying, what, what I had for dinner tonight. You know what I mean? Unless it's instructive in some way, like, I'm not a good enough writer, or a good enough photographer, where, you know, I could spin a yarn about what I ate tonight and have it be I think of any use to anyone, you know what I mean? So the question is, how do we do it without becoming self indulgent, there has to be some sort of learning process, which means which is really irritating is that we're going to have to develop some sort of new technique or ingredient having to do with raw food stuff, mustache is now banging her head against the microphone. Because she knows what this means is she's going to have to go through hell, because now we're going to have to come up with some fancy new technique, you know, regarding raw foods, so is that your worry? Yeah. Anyway, on top of all the others, but, you know, if I if I have to languish in testing hell for a month, it's much better than being a welcher. This has been cooking issues. We'll come back next week to answer more of your questions.