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,

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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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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.

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Hello, and welcome to cooking issues on heritage Radio Network coming to you live every tuesday from 12 to 1245. I'm Dave Arnold, your host and cookie issues. You can call in all your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 Most of the time we take technical questions, but we'll we'll take any question today. Actually, Natasha is not in the studio with me. She is live from where the heck does

your family live? Natasha, near Pasadena in California, Southern California.

So not not even in Pasadena like near Pasadena? Yeah, a very small town. Anyway, so Natasha, got up early in the morning, gathered all your questions, and is joining us across the country live. So how's it going over there and stuff? How's the weather? Good. It's

good. It's raining. Do you miss me it?

Wow. Wow. Okay, so now Yes, of course. Of course. We always miss you when you go Natasha. Okay, just just messing around. Alright, so we have quite a bunch of questions to get to today. So let's start out. Steve. Okay, I'm gonna try to pronounce his name. mignon. Yeah. What do you think Mr. ATIA? You speak Italian? Steve mignon? Yeah,

I think I think that's fine. Yeah, that's good.

I just got a thermal circulator. Congratulations. And for those of you that don't know that's what allows us to do most of our low temperature cooking because it keeps our water temperature is very accurate. Great for the restaurant, great for dinner parties. Great for cooking for your family. I use it all the time. I have to Natasha has done it. Philip Preston from Polly science is listening. Natasha Lopez would be great marketing tool for to for you to give a circular to just saying maybe for Christmas. Maybe for Christmas. I'm just saying. It's not too late. You know. I just gotta throw circulator around but using it to cook short ribs for my family for the holidays. Also good idea. I did not have a lot of time this week to experiment with cooking temps and times. And I want some advice on which to use my father who's a big skeptic of any new cooking technique. And with you, Steve, I know what that's like. We'll be making short ribs the old fashioned way. So we're going to have a short rib cook off. Now, Steve's seeing different techniques between 55 degrees Celsius and 60 degrees Celsius anywhere from 24 hours to 72 hours, Steve's leant towards 58 degrees Celsius for 60 to 72 hours, you're not going to need to go that long anyway. But I'll get to that in a second. Steve ideal finished product would be a medium rare short rib that is fork tender. He's not looking to replicate prime rib or filet texture, which is good because they shouldn't be the same. But we'd rather have a more fork tender falling apart meat, any thoughts? He says he knows that I recommend 60 degrees Celsius for 48 hours, which is 140 for all your Fahrenheit heads out there. But what's the final result with those numbers? Thank you. Okay. Now, a lot, a lot to talk about here. And unfortunately, we're gonna get into some technical minutiae for all of you, people who are going to space out of this, but look, here's the deal. Here's, here's the good news and the bad news. I would not pit a low temp short rib, side by side against a regular short rib because I think they're different. And if someone shooting for a good old fashion, stick to your ribs, short rib, the old fashioned short ribs going to have kind of a beefier taste, it's also going to have more of a pull apart texture. The low temp short rib is Anastasia you know this? Yeah, the low temp short rib is going to it is going to be soft and tender, but it is going to slice more like a steak. Right, right. Natasha? Yes, yeah. And it's not going to be rip apart like a, like a, like a regular short read. But if you want something, I wouldn't go 58 degrees. 58 degrees is it's pretty rare. I think people want a little bit of a meteor taste, they want it a little more cooked, but slightly pink on the inside. I mean, you could go as low as 57, which is about 135 Fahrenheit. And then you're in the kind of the, the medium. That's an A medium rare zone. But people aren't really expecting a short rib there. So what I would do is I would serve it entirely differently from the way your dad serves his short rib, I wouldn't try to replicate I would just recognize that there are two entirely different products and and serve it accordingly. mean I wouldn't like shred it up and serve it over a pile of like some kind of starch product, what moustache you've eaten a lot of these things mean and from someone who's doesn't come at it from the same perspective. I do. What do you think about the traditional versus the low tech?

I actually haven't had a lot of traditional short ribs. I mean, whatever short ribs I've had have been at home and well, we all know that.

Yes, yes, this mustaches family can overcook even short ribs apparently. But so in other words, I wouldn't try to pit them against one another, although it's admirable. I have done it many times. And the traditional short rib is going to have a more traditional short rib texture, it's going to be beefier, because it's going to be cooked at a higher temperature. But it's also going to be the meat fibers themselves are going to be overcooked, I would choose 60 degrees. And because it's actually like the 60 better than the 57, right? Yes. Yeah, I would do 60 And I would do it. If you at 60 degrees if you cook it for 24 hours it will have the texture of skirt steak. At 48 hours it will be a firmer but still tender. short rib at 72 hours it will be to my taste too mushy, it will have lost too much of its texture. So I will go in between 48 and 72 I would say somewhere in the range of like 56 hours at 60 would be a good number. I would sear the meat both though sear it quickly put a crust on it beforehand. The key to this technique is over reducing your sauce before you put it in the bag. You must over reduce your sauce. It has to be like almost gloppy because what's going to happen is you're going to bag it with the sauce the meat is going to give up its own juices into the bag and water down the sauce it's going to taste like Potiphar like a boiled beef, which is not what you're looking for. So you want to over reduce the sauce a couple hours before you serve it. I would then after it's done cooking, I would let it chill down. Don't chill it right away or the meats not going to absorb a lot of the juices again, I would put it on the counter for about 20 minutes, then you can put it in water for about regular tap water for about 20 minutes. So that's an extra step it does make it taste better, according to Bruno Gousto and according to our independent taste test afterwards, then you can ice it down. I would then open the bag you know several hours before you're done ready to cook scrape off the sauce it's rendered warm it on the stove correct the taste and temperature of it will likely need to be defatted it will most certainly need acidity might need seasoning correction. Put it back into a Ziploc bag with the short rib. Don't let it you know we sorry first then sear the sort of short real quickly from cold right to put a little extra crosscut it's going to look green and kind of weird. Throw it back into the bag and then return it at like 5557 for up to four hours but you could probably like two or three hours reabsorb some of the new sauce you've put in. It's going to be thick and juicy and delicious. And that is going to be a bang up delicious short read but it won't be the same thing as a traditional showroom. Any any comments and stuff on this? No, that's

good. And then he should let us know what his family thinks of his in his dead.

Yeah, well, here's the thing. I mean, like, it's like anything else, the low temps, short ribs, it's not, there's some things that are just better, right? That mean that's the case, there's some techniques that are just better. And then there are techniques that are just different. A traditional short rib is different from a low temperature shorter, but traditional short rib, you're basically almost boiling out the meat, the fibers themselves are horrendously overcooked, and then you render the college and into gelatin, the gelatin plus the delicious braising sauce. By the way, the braising sauce is then reinforced with that gelatin, right, so you get an incredibly anxious sauce. And that's what makes the deliciousness of a short rib. But those short ribs can't be sliced, those short ribs don't have the same texture as low temperature, low temperature short ribs aren't as anxious because you don't render out the gelatin, the gel, the collagen breaks down. But when you slice into a low temp short rib, you'll see that the collagen hasn't rendered out, you can still see where the collagen was it's just become soft. So that stuff doesn't render out into the sauce and doesn't give that incredibly anxious texture to the sauce. It also doesn't individually moisten each fiber of meat the way it does in inner traditional brace. Furthermore, in a low tech because you can see a slice as the fat doesn't render out. So you're gonna have to slice off some of the fat. So it's all a question of what you're looking for. If you want something that you can slice into a beautiful presentation is incredibly tender, but not the same as official short rib, and you realize you're gonna have to make up for some of the stuff you're going to lose incredible beefy flavor, I would put some cooked rendered meat into your sauce beforehand, don't just rely on the on the short ribs himself to provide that beef Enos because they won't be there because you're not using a high temperature technique. So I would just try to keep in mind the benefits and disadvantages of each technique realize that they are just different techniques and doesn't have to be a competition. You know, ask your dad Steve. Does it really have to be a competition? Anyway? Happy wild colors.

I do. Someone just emailed me and said that they can't get through. I don't know.

Is that true? Jack? What do you know about this? Jack, our trusty engineer. We're short staffed today in the in the radio. I see nothing. Hi, did I give the right number. Anyway call it if you can hear me call or try back again at 718. What does it Jack 7187184972128.

Yeah, Natasha, maybe tell them to try again. Yeah, because

John Stuart. I hope it's the John Stuart.

That would be amazing. But I assume not. So well. John, if you're listening to me, You are the John Stewart. Anyway. Season stashes so bad with customer service. I swear swear you gotta learn Neverland. Okay, so we've got John on the line. We have John on the line. All right. Hi, John. How you doing? Hi, there. Hey. Question for me.

Yes, sir. So yeah, I just want to say, big fan. I've just discovered you guys a month or so ago and have now listened to all your backlog. And it's really, really fun. So you guys have inspired me to build my own immersion circulator. And get some specification supplies. So I've been doing that for the past week or so here. So I'm experimenting with both of those. And I hope to use both of them in a New Year's Eve dinner that I host every year. I mean, people it's gonna be 12 to 14.

Okay, good. That's a good number to start with a circulator. Okay,

yeah. So I mean, last year, I did a so I guess there's three questions I have about that. So last year, I did a beef tenderloin. You know, traditional cooking, it was good 10 OF WANDS a crowd pleaser. And I guess, you know, Suvi is appropriate because I can control the town's internal temp very well. But I'm wondering if there's something I guess my question is, what do you think is the protein that is most improved by suevey? Cooking? You know, I wonder if I should be more ambitious than just the tenderloin?

That's an excellent question. And strangely one I haven't really thought of so let's just break it apart between Soviet and the low temperature, right, because most proteins can be done well. You know, when I say well, I mean properly, low temp and to good effect depending on what you're shooting for some proteins I don't like very much in in cvwd in a vacuum bag, because I find that affects their texture, chicken most notably, and certain fish, but are you going to be zip locking? Are you going to be doing vacuum?

Just Ziploc I don't have a vacuum device

I use by the way I use Ziploc at home. That's what I use. And I'm assuming that your circulator is going to be able to do like about a degree or so. I mean, are you going to PID control, it's gonna so it's going to be a

PID control that should be accurate within you know, 10s of degrees.

A couple tenths aren't good. Okay. So as long as you have good circulation will be accurate across a bath. Okay, fine. So you can do pretty much anything you want. Here's the good. The good news about tenderloin is that it's fairly easy. You want to go super low temp on a tender law When we're talking like 5550, for like as low low, right, and I wouldn't cook the tenderloin hole, I would cook it in, I would pre slice it out it sear and put it into ziplocks and get it ready to go. Here's the main problem with the tenderloin. And one of the great things I love about cooking steaks in low temp, because that's by the way, like, in fact, I might do this soon. It's one of my favorite like dinner party things because it's going to be really easy for you to do like you're going to be a rock star. And it's also going to be easy, right? I prefer a big thick rib steak, like thick, you know, and so and so. And the bad news about the tenderloin is if you do it, if you cook so much more than about 40 Like 45 is ideal. If it cooks much longer, like an hour and a half or so, because there's no connective tissue in the tenderloin, it's going to start to feel kind of fibery. So for someone who's not used to it, or is used to overcook tenderloin in general, they'll think it's fine. But you know, you probably won't think it's as good as as it could be. I mean, you can do a bang up job on the tenderloin. But it's just, you know, you have to be careful not to cook it too long. I mean, one of the great tenderloin applications, low temp is the beef wellington where you can cook the whole tenderloin, like, you know, for a short period of time all the way through, then wrap it in a puff and then hit it really hard in the oven so that you don't overcook the meat because it's already cooked, you don't need to worry about it, you know, technique we call low temperature for insurance purposes. But if you go instead of going tenderloin, if you go rip steak, and then and I like to serve the rib steak, you know, what I'll do is I'll buy like a standing rib roast for a party, then I'll slice it into steaks, right? You know, usually I'll take the bone off, maybe render that to make some meaty stuff, then take the steaks, cut them real thick, then I sear them. And I actually sear them a lot longer than I normally talk about to put up put a heavy crust on them, because I make them so thick that you're not really losing that much meat by doing it, it really gives a nice kind of crust and meaty flavor on the outside your salt pepper the heck out of them, then I throw them in a bag with butter, I throw garlic and some people don't don't like that, but then I use the butter afterwards to make garlic bread. So they have no waste situation right, then, then the advantage of a rib steak as opposed to a tenderloin is a rib steak can cook for you know, like a minimum for real thick steak of, you know, an hour and a half or so but up to like 4556 hours, your windows a lot longer. And you're not going to have you know, so people don't sit down or if or if something happens, you're not working right at the edge, you're not worried about the texture going bad on you. Right? About an hour before service are. So I would turn the bath down to 50 to me Don't say I said so. But 50 Celsius, so that the whole temperature the steak drops down a little bit. So that when you put a real monster sear on the outside, when you take it out, you could put a really good crust on it without raising the internal temperatures too much on the on the center of the meat, then, you know, you just you know and you can do that steak by steak. So you so for a party, you could if you have like you know, four steaks that you're serving out, you know, really thick ones you could do to slice them down, send them out, and you know, then do the next then, you know, take a five minute break, do the next two while you sear off the next two and bring them out. And it's you know, that's the way I run my dinner parties and stuff. You've been to my house for steak, right?

Yeah, no, not for steak. But I've had the steak that you're talking about before. Yeah, the one

where I drop it. Well, yeah, you made it. We did it at the school and you made it and that's that's a it's a crazy. It's a crazy awesome way to have a dinner party. Right. Anastacia Yeah, it's delicious. Yeah. So I mean, I would do that over over tenderloin. I mean, these used to be and this is like, you know, it's not me being misogynist. I'm just like, This is what I used to hear, right? The ladies, they liked the tenderloin. And, but I think nowadays, you know, I think you know, even people who used to go on those old you know, sex based stereotypes, which I never buy into, but you know, that go on it. I think everyone realizes now that a dude, a dude thinks it's, like, mucho sexy for a woman to tear into a rib steak. I write about this? Yes. Yeah. It's like, it's like, it's like it's become kind of chic for women to order like, you know, a neat Scotch at a bar, because it's a sign that you know you that you that you're a buttkicker my wrong about this. I agree. Yeah. Anyway, is this helpful at all, by the way for your dinner party?

Oh, that's a great, great suggestion. Well, so what temperature you'd so you say 50 C to like, finish it off. But what about the, you know, few hours cooking beforehand? What temp? I don't use there.

Okay, so I would do my personal some people I know like to do as low as some people cook really low, which I don't, but like 55 to 56 in that range, like so a good like middle ground is like 55.2 55.5 If you have a chance to practice on one rib steak before you do it, so you can get a feel for what it's like that 55 Five, it won't be squashy at all in the center, especially if you cook it long enough. It will be good. 56 Sometimes it's a little too tight for people. You know, especially for rare heads. It's a little too tight. But like 55 Five, the squeamish people if they look at it, they might say that it's under done, but once they eat it, they're gonna like it and and rare heads aren't going to be, it's a good compromise, right? Especially if you drop it so that the temperature goes lower and you put a good hard sear on it. No one's if their eyes are closed, no one's going to quibble with the texture. It's just a question of how it looks. And then of course, you know, even though I make fun of uh, you know, a lot of Mr. Bhatia is partial to any kind of a talent, any kind of doesn't matter what it is, if it's Italian, it's good. So you know, so yeah, right. Yeah. So So I bust on her all the time about it anyway. So But that said, when I do steak at home, I go Italian style, and I drizzle some delicious olive oil over it. And you know, some crunchy wall in salt, and I've never had a complaint. So

sounds delicious. Okay, great. So that's very helpful. I appreciate it. So the other question is about then specification. So one thing I want to try to do is sort of a deconstructed billini. So I'd like to do like a reverse purification of peach, right, and then drop that in Prosecco, right. So I'm, you know, obviously very new to this. What I've found online basically, is that the idea is I'll put some calcium lactate in the peach puree,

get calcium, don't get just straight line taking calcium lactate glucan. Eight, because it has no taste. Calcium lactate has some taste.

Okay, so that was my third question. That is what is the difference in lactate and like the agglutinate. Okay. Okay, so then. So then I'll basically then freeze it. So the ratio was about 2.5%. I think for the calcium lactate glucan, eight,

to two and a half, somewhere in there, that's good. You have to warm the peach puree to get it to dissolve properly. Okay, not hot, you don't have to make it hot. But you should warm it. I mean, sometimes you don't need to, but you just want to be sure you know.

Okay, and then just drop that into a sodium alginate bath. That point 5% is I think what I found point

five, it depends on your alginate. If you have a really strong alginate, then point five would probably work. If you have a weak alginate, then you might have to go as high as point 8.9, it all depends on your alginate I try a couple different, a couple different ratios. Also how long you let sit in the alginate bath that the skin is going to keep growing on it. What I would do, okay, if you can make them beforehand, you put them in the alginate bath, you let them sit for however long depends on your alginate and whatnot, fish it out carefully, don't let them touch each other, the glue the glue to each other, okay, you're gonna want to rinse it off in water, and they get the excess alginate off of it. And then you can put it into a calcium bath briefly just to make sure everything's set up. Now you can let them thaw in the calcium bath, you can let them thaw in peach puree, you can let them thaw inside of your champagne flute if you want. But what you can't do is let it thaw in. You can't leave it in the alginate too long, and you can't let it thaw and stay in a regular straight water bath or calcium bath because the the the sugar and the flavor and the color are going to leach out over time. So through the shell Yeah, yeah, it's its water, its water. You know, it's it's semi porous. So you're going to leak the stuff out, it becomes like a membrane and you have osmosis across that membrane. And you tend to lose color and flavor and sugar and acidity like and doesn't take that long. So I mean, yeah, don't worry about it when you're making it. But I'm saying don't store it for hours and hours. In a water bath, you can store it directly in your calcium based peach puree. Right, which is always good. Or you can let them finish throwing in your champagne flute. The only the good news about letting us on the champagne flute is it's easy to get in without breaking. The bad news is is that if you have a broken one, you're not going to know until you pour the champagne and so you know, turns out you can never win, you know, you'll notice

and then how long I mean when you prep something like that and then put it in the peach period like leave it sit in the peach puree. How long was it good in that situation? Oh, how long ahead can I make these

long time? I mean, you know I've never done it with the big ones to kept them a long time because I just do them for like an event or for the classes but you know we've I've had reversed reverse verification, maple syrup balls that we've kept for Natasha how long we kept those things like a week? Yeah, yeah, like a week. As long as it's isotonic, right? If you're storing it in the same stuff it's made out of and there's some calcium there. Then you'll you'll be you'll be okay until the stuff goes bad. Okay, we got to take a break. Oh yeah, we'll go into our go into our first commercial break. Thanks for your call in and good luck. Let us know how it works out.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you

so much. If you're getting down We're gonna have we're gonna have we're gonna have we're gonna have God God I want everybody who goes right back in attendance, Welcome back to Cooking issues calling all your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 coming to you live for another segment or two. And by the way, Harris radio network is on hiatus Anastasia gets used the word hiatus you like that? We're on hiatus next week. And we'll be coming back to you. I guess that means in in the new year. So this is this is our holiday edition. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I wrote. Yeah, I said that earlier, goes to show what I know I was busy and building a new computer at home and my head's been stuck in the sand. Sand is the polite word anyway. Well, we're talking about low temperature cooking. And again, this is the first time you've ever heard me rant on about it. Low temperature cooking doesn't mean that you're cooking something to a low temperature doesn't mean raw. And you know, rah, rah cooking, we're gonna get into next year and stuff. We have to set a date. We have to set a date for our raw cooking extravaganza our week. Last week of January. Is that what is it already set last week of January? We don't have anything to do. And I think it's I think it's a good time. We have no other events. No. All right, people, people. Last week of January is cooking issues. Raw Food Week extravaganza that not just raw, by the way because I can't stand to be called a sissy in public. Well, it's not true. I let it let it slide all the time, but not when it comes to food. So you know, you can call me a physical coward. You know, you can call me like a relationship say see, that's fine. But food sissy, no love anyway. So anyway, so we're going to do the raw food challenge the last week of January, I've already purchased with my own my own money, and Excalibur dehydrator, because all the schools were stolen. We're sourcing a Champion juicer. I am, you know, but I'm gonna go on this for a second before I answer the next question. Unless the caller calls in I'll take them right away, because that's service for you. The so here's some things and Stosh. We have to massage and I've read now what like, like eight, nine raw food cookbooks?

Yeah, yeah, no, don't, don't get. Okay, be nice.

Well, I'm not gonna go post apocalyptic. In fact, you can't cook raw food in a post apocalyptic situation because you won't have your Vita prep, you won't have your, your, you know, your dehydrator, your Champion juicer, all that. The question is, can we at the cooking issues team? Can we bring some stuff? Some stuff to the table that other raw food people haven't brought to the table yet? Yes, right. First of all, I'm going to wrote a Vapp. Some stuff, I'm going to make some hyper low temperature reductions. Now, I might get called a sissy here, because it's not going to be useful for all the raw food people out there because they can't do that. But we can do distillations at low temperature, we can do fruit reductions, things like that, well below the 118 mark. So we're definitely going to do some of that. Right. I'm also interested in using a trying to find some good recipes for the santha. The wet grinder that they use for dogs see whether we can get some new interesting recipes using the wet grinder from a raw food perspective. And I'm also I'm going to use a a bunch of enzymes mean a bunch of now because it right and especially there's nothing wrong with using a commercially available enzyme prep enzyme is the whole Deeley, right? I mean, why can't we use enzymes? Now, if I can get a hold of straight transglutaminase it doesn't have any maltodextrin in it, it's been heated. And that doesn't have any, any casein a milk casein. I don't see why we can't use some trans contaminates to glue some raw proteins together. I mean, it might be fun, right? So these are these are the kinds of things I'm thinking about for our raw food extravaganza, which we've now publicly announced so that we're not welshing is going to be the last week in January, which means we have to start cooking now you know, all those raw food recipes. There's all the all the all the raw food recipes, or you know, stick some almonds in water and you know, wait eight years and you'll be able to eat, you know, if you like the cooking instructions are so bananas and all these things because it just takes so dang long to do anyway, we will do it and we're going to do a good job. And it won't be yes, we're gonna do a good job. Okay. Kurt writes in my Cuisinart slow cooker seems to hold a fairly constant 165 degrees Fahrenheit 74 degrees Celsius went on the warm setting, is this temperature useful for any low temperature cooking applications? Or is it simply too hot? Kurt I'm sorry, is simply too hot. It's good for traditional cooks. And embraces, you know, something you could do in it that is going to be good is, for instance, if you want to do a duck coffee, but you don't want to have to worry about it, right? You can put into a bag, and even a listen, the the John SC Johnson wax a family corporation, you guys familiar with these people, they make the Ziploc bags, they're going to they will they will write in and call me a bad human being if I say you can do this because their bags can't take boiling temperatures, polyethylene in them can't take boiling temperatures. But if in fact, your thing doesn't go above 74, it should be able to handle this, okay, if you take a duck leg, and even just a couple extra tablespoons of fat, and you salt cure it with like time and herbs and whatnot for you know, that recommended procedure like overnight, you know, a day or so and then put it in that Ziploc bag, you can put it in your slow cooker and leave it for like, you know, several hours. And you can make a very good coffee that way without having to have a lot of fat. So it's really good to do stuff like that. In a similar vein, any traditional braids like that, or any comfy, I should say non traditional braids. But any comfy is great in that something like that, because I actually prefer the height, higher temperatures and more traditional temperatures. But I like to be able to do it without having to have boatloads of fat around just because it gets expensive and messy. And then you need to cool it in the fat, which is a pain in the butt. And so I think it's a it's a really good technique. But just don't tell the SC Johnson wax people on me. What do you think mustache? And yeah,

yeah, no, that's good. That's good to know, for me, because that's all I have here.

Yeah. All right. Well, I will say that when I use a circulator, nine out of 10 times my circulators in less than doing chrome on glaze, or a test for like vegetables at a higher temper. Like we're working on next amortization, unless I'm doing something kind of special like that. My circulator is set below, below six below 63. Really, most of the time below 62. In fact, at 60 or below 90% of the time, you know, I'll do most of my steak work in the 55 range in there, duck at like 57. And then chicken at 63 to 65 versus 65. So that range is where I am never really above that. Unless I'm doing chrome unglazed or something special, but it's really great for coffee, and there ain't much more delicious than coffee. Okay, let me see. Michael writes in and says Hello, Natasha. Here's a question for Dave. Hi, Michael. How can I make my own fizzing tablet like Alka Seltzer or airborne obviously, I'd like to be able to give it an intense flavor and have whatever mineral salt is using the tablet base not be too overpowering. I think the main thing I'm not sure about is how to bind the powder into a tablet. Thanks, Michael. Okay, there are two ways to Well, I'm sure there's a billion ways to make tablets, right? Like the easiest way isn't going to work for you, which is you put the ingredients into a gumpaste and then like cut them or you know, push them into tablet shapes and let them dry out. This is going to give you a texture similar to an Altoid right, but not kind of a hard shiny tablet. The next easiest way and that won't work for this because if when you don't think that if there's any liquid when you combine that the way you make a fizzy tablet as you combine an acid typically some mixture of citric Malic tartaric acids right? And I guess you could do lactic or soya des but typically it's either citric Malic tortorich Or a blend with a base typically something like baking soda like sodium, sodium bicarbonate, although some people use I think potassium bicarbonate or you know other mixtures of bio carbs. Right. And when they combine and liquid in your mouth, they they they fizz right? And this is the same thing that happens when you make a volcano when your kid when you add vinegar to baking soda and you get this volcanoes spews up right now. How are you going to get these in into a tablet? That's the question. Okay, the easiest way not very satisfying, but the easiest way is to buy empty gel caps. And you can get those I know Whole Foods sells them. They're basically the whole foods doesn't sell the gelatin ones they sell like a Carageenan based one but GNC or any of these places where there's kind of people making their own pills all the time where you can get them on the internet's you get gel caps, and you can fill the gel caps push them together to form capsule As in, they'll melt fairly quickly on the tongue. And if you let it sit there and go acid, but I get a feeling this is not what you want it, what you want to do, what you want is something called a tablet press, okay. And the way a tablet press works is you take a bunch of ingredients and binders they use like dextrose powder, probably some malt, sometimes some maltodextrin, whatever your flavoring is, and it may be some oil based agents, I'm not sure, but they mix it all up and then they put it into a two sided press. And then a press comes down and bang smashes it into a capsule form. And if you're really richer, you can write your name in it and stuff like that. Now, these presses they're not they're not cheap, right? They they have manual versions of them. I looked on eBay this morning. And there's someone it's a call it a tablet press, there's someone selling a hand one for 50 bucks, that I think you put the ingredients into a little cylinder and you screw it down, almost like you're screwing down like a jack and it smashes a tablet and then opens up and you have it bang, you have a tablet, I don't know how fast those are. What I used to do leather work back in the day when I was a leather worker with my wife making bags. Long time ago, I had something called a kick press that I used to use to do or you know to make put snaps into things and grommets. And they have all different dyes. That would probably be the next level up. I don't know if they provide enough force to make a tablet but I didn't really I didn't really research it long enough. All the you know the big the big machines they use like a hydraulic power and you press it they squish it down but now you're talking like a several $1,000 problem instead of a $50 problem or for the kick press if you buy used if it if it is the same kind of press that you used to do snaps and grommet work, you're talking like a you know $100 $150 problem, something like that. But that's how you make the tablets. The trick is making sure that you don't have an excess of base, it's usually okay to have an excess of acid because we like acidity in our in our tablets. It's not okay to have an excess of base fat you need an excess of acid if you don't, it's it's not going to have any acidity to it. You will have a salty aftertaste that you know that comes along with the acid and a base mixing and producing a salt. So choose a salt that you like the flavor of usually sodium salts, I think tastes better than the potassium salts and stuff. She hates the potassium salts. Yes they do. Yes, yes, she does. And she tells me all the time anyway. So is that hopefully things done a session?

I think that's helpful let's take one last break

all right we're gonna go to a commercial break call and all your questions to 71849721287184972128 cooking issues you feel you feel good so much phone call your name I don't want people to know if you're getting down but gonna have we're gonna have we're gonna have oh my god got it everybody. Welcome back to the holiday edition of cooking issues, calling all of your questions 27184972128. That's 718-497-2128 We'll probably maybe extend it a little bit. Anastasia, go another 15 minutes. So if you can make it into stashes door, outside of Pasadena in the next 15 minutes. You can ask her a question in person. Just kidding. Please don't please don't do that. Please don't do that. Please don't. Yeah, her mom her mom will probably you know, put some buckshot into you. Yeah. Okay. William Cole called and he couldn't get the live feed. So he sent an email in and he said Dave mentioned lab sales where you can find old road of ABS. It's a rotary evaporator circulator, which is you know, we've been talking about a lot today that you can find pretty cheap, just need to clean up and maybe fix a few fuses on I tried my Google Kung Fu for auctions or sales in the NYC area, haven't found anything. Do you have any resources that could check out to find these kinds of sales? I've never gone to a live lab sale. I get all basically in my lab equipment off of eBay. And just base it on, on finding either occasionally someone will, like flood the market that happened with roto vApps a couple times and actually recently, the market on eBay was flooded with roto VABs. So the price went down but it's Starting to go back up again. You know, there's centrifuges and things like that. Lab X is another website lab X is another place that a lot of lab people go to get lab equipment. The live auctions that I go to are mainly restaurant auctions there's not a lot of labs in New York to go out of business there's a lot of restaurants that go out of business or change owners or for whatever reason have auctions so all the live auctions that I've gone to in the New York area have been either laboratory sorry restaurant auctions or I used to go to New Jersey and Brooklyn a lot for machine shop auctions back in the day when I was in the art biz and I used to do that a lot knows I always found in the in the New York Times in the used to be at the back of the help wanted ads I don't know if it is anymore, but if you've never been to a restaurant auction it's something to behold it's a crazy, it's a crazy situation, especially if you need 8000 pans that they've been beat to hell for like a nickel apiece. Which you know, or my deep fryer. I bought one of those things for like, you know, 50 bucks, and they're crazy. I mean, you can get some crazy deals with those but I've never been to a lab one. Now. eBay, eBay the way to go and just look for if you can fix things, look for things that aren't not working, but that you feel that you can troubleshoot based on the description. You have to take chances I've had things that I couldn't fix, it's rare. I've had things that I couldn't fix for a reasonable amount of money. But you know, that's basically what I do I take my chances on eBay it's a lot better if you can go to a live auction and kick the tires for that you can look in the back of the New York Times and they will have like major lab auctions that show up that you can go to live but they're not usually in the New York City area. They're like they're around. But you know, Eli Lilly did that a while ago and there are people who who who deal with that hope that's helpful in sound so helpful, but I didn't feel very helpful was alright. Didn't feel helpful. Okay. Tentative ego writes in Hey, Teddy, how you doing? He's asking questions before. Recently watch Wiley there'll be wildly differing my brother in law friend of the blog. While he's megalomania presentation for Harvard's food science class. That's the class that Ferghana Adria is heading up at Harvard. We have a lot of good friends speak there, I think. No biggie spoken there. Wiley, Dave Chang, but didn't ask us right to stash up didn't ask us not us. No, no, no, no, no, it's you know, we know why are Trump's chumps are Trump's low quality, low quality or low quality people. This sparked an idea, I think it'd be possible to make hot ice cream using an ice cream base transglutaminase YG, which is the yogurt transglutaminase transglutaminase binds proteins together including milk protein, so it makes yogurt so it weaves less and holds together better. methylcellulose and gelatin gum? Do you think this would work? I should be receiving my sample of Aktiva soon. Thank you. No, I don't think it will work. But you know, look, here's the deal. Hot ice cream is one of those things that people have been trying to make for for, you know, years and years and years and years. First, hot ice cream attempts were made by a physicist named Nicholas Carr T. You know who is kind of one of the one of the people in the 60s who really started 70s started really popularizing science in the kitchen. He was you know, he knew McGee he was one of the original people in the molecular gastronomy conferences in a reach a, and he wanted to make hot ice cream for a long time. It didn't work out for him. While he do frame took it on for a long time as something he wanted to do was working on it a lot back in the year, I think like 2000 2001 in there and not able to do it. I've had other like bloggers and peoples and who shall remain nameless. They're recipes for hot ice cream. And none of them tastes like ice cream. I mean, the problem with ice cream. So the theory is I can make that I can make something that has the texture of a melted ice cream, right? So that's the gel and so you're making a fluid gel that holds its shape, even when it's even when it's you know, either hot or cold doesn't matter. It has the texture of like a nice ice cream base. Can you do that? Yes. Can you take a metro cell and make it firm up when you heat it? Yes, right and that's what all the hot ice cream recipes are based on some form of Metho cell that melts when it puts in your mouth and gets cooler right. But but none of them have the texture is ice cream. None of them are as hard as ice cream. They don't have the bite of ice cream ice cream has a chilling effect in the mouth is another thing I've had approximates what the what you want in your head is something that that provides that the feeling of ice cream but it's somehow reversed from hot to cold from cold to hot. And I've never and I've tasted a bunch of people's different recipes for it. And I've never had something that provided an experience that I thought was satisfying. It just it just I think it's one of those It's like the, it's like the Philosopher's Stone of of new cooking techniques every like everyone's had their hand, you know, tried to make it and, you know, just like you can't turn led to gold. I don't think you can make a hot ice cream. I can't think of a good bet to make on it, like we did on the raw foods, but I would want to have it like I hope someone could make it because I think it'd be really fun. But I've not had one so far that I thought was totally successful. While he made one he said he can get the texture of softserve okay, but not like not like the heart ice cream that's even like the super holy grail is to heart ice cream. So I hope you have success if you call the different recipes on the internet. There are several for hot ice cream. And I want you to have success. It's just I'm I'm dubious. I'm dubious as to whether or not you will be able to achieve it. What do you miss dash Am I being too? I'm not being hard. I'm not being hard. I'm just you know.