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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So to be the first to hear our episodes, when they launched this fall, go to wherever podcasts are streaming, and hit subscribe and make sure to give us a follow at the Culinary call sheet on Instagram.

To nine times out of 10 when someone is taking the time to break away and do their own thing, it's because either have a specific point of view or a specific passion that really sort of speaks to maybe not a mass audience. But the customers that I have, and the customers that bought our house tries to culture and cultivate, I think are are those type of people who want that story and feel like if they take an allocation of an ad case made wine, that they've had something special and it's something that only they have or maybe one other person has. So that's kind of what we specialize in. And you know, I may not be business savvy to the nth degree like we're not making 100,000 cases of Pinot Grigio and you know, slogging them all over New York, but the customers that get wine from us are kind of believe in the same stuff we do, which is supporting these small farms supporting these young winemakers who have a passion for doing it. And and we supply them with a market and we allow them to get their product out there to otherwise an untapped group of people.

Happy New Year and welcome to cooking issues on the heritage Radio Network coming to you Tuesdays from around 12 I guess it's 1245. It's Dave Arnold, the host of cooking issues here with Natasha the hammer Lopez. Ready. Nice. Nice to have new features in the radio today. It's awesome. I love that. It's for the new year for all you people listening. That's the new year sound effects, calling all your questions too. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 for all your cookie related questions, technical or not. And Jackie here we have a caller Hello, caller you're on the air.

Hey, how are you guys doing? I'm a big fan of the show. Thank you. I have a question about using whipped cream chargers for rapid infusions. Right. I was wondering if it can be used to infuse and make Gallaghers

Yeah, I don't see why not. Yeah, I've never tried it but I don't see why not. We've done oils before. Yes, wait just for quickly. For people who don't know what we're talking about. Rapid infusion is a technique where we take nitrous oxide cartridges usually in these isI these whipped cream makers so you can look them up under cream siphons or whatever on the or whispers on the internet. Some people use them to get high we don't I don't particularly enjoy the nitrous high and they under pressure basically force liquid into porous items. Then you rapidly release the pressure the liquid boils out and and you and you fly Are your liquid? And so the question and we normally do with liquor, but the question is, can you do it with vinegar? And I don't see why not if you tried it yet,

I haven't, I'm waiting on a on my webinar to get here, I just ordered it through a friend of mine in a restaurant, so you kind of get a cheap way through him.

Right? Here's some some guidelines that whenever I do water bass, and essentially, I don't think that the vinegar is going to enhance the solubility, too much of most of what you're working with, I don't think it's going to hinder it, but I don't think it's going to help it. So my in general, when I do water based work, you're going to have to use probably a little bit more of the product, and then you're probably going to have to let it sit a little a little bit longer. every ingredient that you use has different kind of optimum infusion time. And so you know, for chocolate, I find it somewhere like a minute and a half or so, we It all depends on on the on the product. Some people I know do coffee for, you know, many minutes up to hours, some people I know, even overnight on something like coffee, you know, cold. And so you're gonna have to play with your amounts and how long you leave it, leave it in, but I would definitely do it longer than any of the stuff quoted on the blog for liquor. And I would also, you know, take heed of the comments that people said that you're going to want to wait, you know, you know, many several minutes after you vent it for the flavor to fully develop, because I think that really is weed. I don't know why. But I really think it's a real real phenomenon.

Okay, cool. Can I ask one more quick question? What about using them to with cucumbers inside of it to kind of make a quick pickle in the charger? Do you think that would work?

Does it doesn't work as well as the vacuum does? At least I don't think I mean, I haven't done? I mean, I tested it once it works. But you know, I think Do you have a vacuum machine? or No? I did not know, all right, well, then it's probably going to be one of the better things you can, you can do. Another way to do those kinds of, you know, Flash infusions, and we call them quick pickles too, but you have to be careful because when you're when you're pickling, you're actually kind of doing an exchange of fluids and with with all of these rapid infusion techniques, you're basically you're not exchanging any any fluids, right, you're just injecting fluids into what used to be air holes. So you're gonna, you're gonna need a fairly strong flavor base to do it. And you're also going to need, you're going to, you know, not think of them as being preserved in any way. And they're also things like cucumbers tend to get floppy because you inject it right away. And it hasn't been time for osmosis to kind of start up and for the, the actual cucumber cells to leach out their, their liquid, because you're going to put something in that's high in salt, let's say and, or sugar or both. And the the liquid is going to start migrating out of the out of the cells of the cucumber, and it's going to start getting floppy. So for like really crunchy, crisp results. You're not going to want to let the stuff sit around a while and it will work. If you're going to do it that way, though. I would say rather than use it the way that we say I would make it cold so that it doesn't bubble out as much when you're when you're when you're releasing it because the goal is to keep liquid in and not to have it kind of bubble out if that makes sense.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, thanks. I'll post up on the blog with the vinegars if they work out well and let you guys know

now. Cool. Yeah, I hope so. I hope it works out for you. Thanks for calling in. Thank you. So on a non cooking related note. i We just spent the last 10 minutes brushing muck off of my feet. My Wait, well, yeah. Anyway, it turns out that, you know, here in New York City, we had some snow not a lot really by normal standards, but for some reason, like they decided not to plow it. And Manhattan, they totally cleaned out. So it's safe to take my bike that I shattered the rear fender on, just before Christmas, and having that time to fix that I'm lazy and stupid. And so then I rode across and of course, as soon as they get over the bridge in Brooklyn, it's like it's like mucky snow mo snowmobiling on my bike. And so like my tire backside is sprayed with muck that has nothing to do with anything. Okay, onto onto real cooking issues. Questions. By the way, we had some people ask us, How are how are holiday? We were both Christmas folk. So how was our Christmas and New Year's? Excellent yours and Stasha was good. Yeah. Not Excellent. No, it was good. Good. Yes. Okay, then with that, I will get right to the questions. So while back Thanksgiving time, we had a question from a listener who asked why he wasn't dead because his mom used to basically take cookie cookies, turkeys and salt them and put them out to in the in the kind of the back porch to kind of cure for a couple of days, you know, not in refrigeration. And the question is why why not? Why not death Why didn't death ensue? And you know, I think it has a lot to do with kind of the air drying effect that happened on it and the salt levels and the herbs and XYZ all these things kind of you know go to stop kind of bacteria from growing on the outside which is where most of its going to grow because the inside sterile yada yada. Go back and listen to the podcast for the gory details. But we had someone write in Mark Rosenblatt also from Brooke Lin says, uh, his mom used to do that in Long Island but not with turkeys did it with ducks, and would do the same thing with duck. And so, I will I will relate, I will relate what he says. He said he grew up in Riverhead, and eastern Long Island in the 50s. and Duck farms were plentiful. So as his mom would cook the ducks instead of Turkey, and fully prepare two or three ducks two days beforehand, and listen to cure outside and wonder why they never got sick. Her technique was if she would put whole cloves of garlic inside which are anti anti microbial rubbed it, but I would never trust it to be antimicrobial, but it is rubbed the exteriors the duck with a thick mixture of olive oil and crushed garlic. Of course, that's actually like poison waiting to have could be poison where you haven't from a botulism standpoint, but probably I'm probably not. Anyway, I mean, you know that garlic oil is one of them. It's like a dangerous can be a dangerous thing anyway, then coated the entire bird and a blanket, of course, of course, kosher salt, and thereby stopping any botulism from happening and wrapping the duck in wet newspaper. And, you know, because he used to deliver newspapers, and so the newspaper would dry out and his brother wants ate the newspaper and got really sick. And so his question is, is with the newspaper, the wet newspaper, which does dry out with that somehow, kind of be a host for the bacteria and stop it from growing on the duck? I don't think so. Because you never want any sort of any kind of host for bacteria. If you can help it growing next to something that you're going to eat like there's no, there's no beneficial protection from the newspaper. I wonder whether or not the sickness was because of some sort of poison in the ink like lead or some sort of crazy nonsense in the ink? I don't know. I mean, it's interesting question, but I definitely wouldn't eat the newspaper in the future. But the newspaper even if it's wet, if it's placed against a lot of kosher salt, you shouldn't get too much bacterial growth on it. I think the salt is really what by the way, these ducks were rinsed very thoroughly after they were after they were cured before they were cooked. I shouldn't think that the newspaper would help but it is interesting that your brother got sick. I wonder whether anyone who knows poisoned me waiting. But if he knew that if it was gi situation was a GI but very interesting. Thank you for writing. Okay, now a question about venison. Hello, hope you had a good holidays. We did. This is from Andy he says he was lucky enough to take down a deer. We've he's a bow hunter and he took down a deer this year. And he's elbows deep he says and venison and he psyched about it. He patched together a circulator DIY circulator, though circulator, he knows what we use to cook things very accurately precise temperature is usually in a water bath, but sometimes in federal oil. And he wants to do a bolus venison loin as his first big meal out of it. And then are there any differences in the temperature timing for this as opposed to beef? And he's thinking about 55 degrees Celsius for about an hour or a little longer. Any thoughts? Any? I think that sounds about right, that's just about the right temperature, even even a shade lower like 54 Five or something like that for a tenderloin usually in beef, I should think that venison would be about the same. They The trick with venison, in general, is I don't know how old the animal you got was, but if there's any sort of tendency to a livery taste in the meat at all, which shouldn't be in the line. But you know, in other cuts of venison, you're definitely going to not want to cook it for too too long, or those livery notes can be accentuated sometimes. Like when we cooked yak for a long time. Those livery kind of those gamey notes actually kind of I think worked with the with the, you know, with the meat, but I don't know that you necessarily want that in the venison. The only other question is, is if some meats can feel tender, but then, you know, when you cook them, they're tough even at these low temperatures, but I should think that venison loin isn't going to be that tough. I would cook a small piece of it at 55 for an hour and see whether you like I wouldn't go much longer, because if it does cook like beef, which I'm assuming it probably will, then it's going to start getting kind of fibery after that and won't be as good, but please write in and tell us how it is. And I'm curious to hear how your homemade circulator works out. Okay. We had a nother question. This is an anonymous question. I said, Why does an egg that we stored in a mason jar with white truffles not cobbled properly. The yolk was cooked perfectly, but the White didn't set up at all. The egg was not very old. If anything was only around a week old. She said no, I'd never heard of that. This I've done a did a preliminary web search. You know, in scientific literature search I couldn't find any sort of active principle in in, you know, truffles that would stop an egg white from setting my only theory is that is it was it was it stored at room temperature which would accelerate the breakdown of the of the white to a thin white and make it so it doesn't set as nicely in a cuddle preparation. But other than that, I can't see why a white wouldn't set whereas the yolk would because typically the you know, typically the White would set much earlier White would set start setting in around 60 degrees Celsius at 140. And be you know, basically custard a nice set it around 62 degrees Celsius, you know, and then the egg wouldn't start setting the yolk wouldn't start setting up until you know, it would be running at 62 and would start setting up at 63 Gay creamy And then get, you know, get really firm, around 65 or so now, you know, there's there's so many recipes for truffled omelets that I'm I'm curious, it's got to be some sort of weird something going on like was the mason jar at room temperature? I can't think of anything. I can't think of anything anyway. But I will definitely ask around. If any of our readers have heard anything, please, please tell us. The other interesting point that this anonymous caller brings up is that they cook food on noodles at salad for a brunch. And they toss it in Meyer lemon vinaigrette, they had some leftover, and so they decided to dehydrate it, and then puff it. And they noticed that the ones that have been soaking in vinegar seem to puff more than the normal ones that have just been cooked and and you know, blanch and left out and tried. And so is there any question? Why would they puff bigger with the acid? And I have no idea actually, it's interesting. I did a preliminary research on that. And I couldn't find anything specifically with acid and puffing. But it might be possible that there's some sort of effect when acid obviously weakens gluten, but I don't know if it's going to weaken gluten in products that have already been cooked or not. So if you if you somehow are weakening the gluten structure, and the and the Udaan hadn't been completely overcooked, because remember, when I puff anything, I overcook the bejesus out of it. So perhaps there's some sort of weakening there. And perhaps it only works on wheat versus on wheat based noodles versus for instance, puffing like a tapioca starch or something like that. That'd be the that would be the kicker if you did a test and you said okay, look, I'm going to do a buckwheat noodle, of course that is going to put wheat in that tooth, I'm going to do like tapioca or some other kind of noodle and puff it with an acid and see whether that also works then if it also puffs more with an acid and that situation that obviously it's not the gluten, but I hope this anonymous reader will give us some more information because I'd like to I'd like to experiment on this more. But I love observations like this, maybe we'll learn maybe we'll all learn something right. Here we have a caller Hello, caller you're on the air.

Hi there. This is Colin Gord down in DC called in a couple of weeks ago asking about you know, possibly using some pic connects to clear up some sweet potato.

Yes. And we talked about that because we ran some tests. I couldn't get it to work even with a centrifuge. Did you get it to work?

So I got basically I've been toying with it. I have never, like I've seen a lot of interesting things that you know, weren't wasn't what I was going for it but now I'm calling into, like, maybe get some tips on where to go from here. Alright, so So

what was your experience? Is? What do you get what you do? Tell me what you did.

So what I did was, I mean, first thing I did was ran just a sweet potatoes through. I really had a Champion juicer. So that was perfect. You know, I had never used anything that was like a tuber before, but it was or wasn't expecting a whole lot because not like, nice and juicy seeming like an apple but still got like maybe 60% yield. Pretty, pretty sweet. It's pretty good. At least compared to was expecting, right? And then so once you have the juice you know how to in a glass jar I saw and you could see that there was a lot of start settling out, right?

Yeah, a white statue powder at the

you get like a white starchy powder, and then stuff that is kind of like acts like starch. But it's also more like orange like the potato. Right? Those were still kind of adhered this. I don't know.

I know what you're talking about. We had the same thing happen, then what do you do,

then? Right then first time? I just hit it with some additional amylase. Some additional Turriff was alpha or beta?

What are you getting a brewery supply?

Emily? Yeah, from the home like at homebrew stores they still a little I think.

I think they're actually mixes with alpha and beta. Emily's. I'm not sure I'd have to look it up. But yeah,

and then I don't have enough. I don't have my notes in front of me. But then I you know, put it in sealed it up in a mason jar, put it in a circulator bath, to a kind of lower lower mashing temperature to try to convert a lot of the starches or sugars because it was going for like a sugary syrup to simmer down into a kernel. Right? And

how much are the starchy? Did you agitate it?

No, I left it sick because I wanted to start to settle out to the bottom. So to kind of recap this stuff up.

Remember the MLS if you'd agitated would actually help break down some of the starch? No. I thought maybe not.

A good plan. Yeah,

I mean, like, what I would like before we go further one here, the rest of what I would do in the next test, I would cook the starch out a little bit then cool it then add the amylase because then you could burst it because the amylase might have you have intact cells in there. The amylase is going to have trouble getting to the getting to the starch maybe unless it's been cooked. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah.

What kind of temperature and release there for a Oh, that first step.

Oh, I don't know. I'd have to go look at my, you know, a good book is The eat like for starches in general and pasting and all that is, in all this is Egan Egan press has a book on starches. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're great. They're great series of books. All of those. Yeah, I got to hydrocolloid one while back. Yeah, there's Darkspace pretty good. There starts books, good. They're nutritive sweetener books pretty good. And you can get them all for 99 bucks online. Actually, if they still run that deal. It's hard to find, but you can get them all. So so then what do you do? You settled it out? And then did what were the stuff tastes like?

Well, well, so actually, the interesting thing was, you know, had left it smashed out for a good long time, just to, you know, kind of, I mean, partially because I didn't come back for a day. And unfortunately, what happened, what had happened is the waterbath had evaporated below the temperature probe. So boiling the hell out of that set, first

rule, first rule, first of all of running a circulator, folks out there in internet land, is always Always cover your circulator so that you don't especially on a long cookout to not evaporate all your liquid off. It's a classic problem. Yes. Well, the good news is is that you'll never do that again.

Oh yeah. Glad to cut it in time for you know burnouts the heating coil anything but but but but the magic thing is that it looks like this boiling this, like boiling step at the end has caused the kind of sugary, syrupy water to separate out in a way that I have not been able to replicate.

Oh, yeah.

So I figured out what it was just sort of setting the starches and sort of at the bottom there and yeah, that was the only time that I was able to get a very nice kind of trend solution. Caramel

out of it. Okay, this is very interesting to me. The you got to try to replicate it. I had the same thing happen once the worst thing in the world is when you are cooking, and you do something wrong, and you don't you don't aren't able to like you know, replicate it, and you love the result. This has happened to me. I made a durian caramel by accident and a pressure cooker. That was incredible, like had no sulfur note who tasted like durian but wasn't offensive to like the most mild Western noses awesome rich not burnt. And we went through probably 1515 durian trying to get that back and we've never been able to do it. So I wish you better luck with the your death we should try so we will try some of the beta amylase now families to see what we can replicate but I definitely wish you more luck in replicating it and you should call back again and tell us tell us what happens right now though. We have to I've been told that I have to get over it we're going to break but call back and tell us what happens on we're interested in cooking issues

so much bone if you're getting down we're gonna have a pump gonna have to have we're gonna have to guide you all right. God.

And welcome back to Cooking issues calling all your cooking questions 27184972128718497. To one to eight Jack in the control room tells me that we might be able to go a little bit long today because we had some questions coming in over the New Year's break. But it's been a New Year's break. I know. I know. We've not been writing a lot when I say we I mean me have not been writing a lot in the blog recently. I just wanted to spend some time with my family over the holidays. All right now. We're gonna get back on the stick and well, you know, I'll be I'll be writing some stuff real soon. We hope so. Please, no, no, no hate mail about how I haven't been writing anything. Okay. Speaking of sweet potatoes, we had, you know, Colin called him with a sympathetic question. We have a an actually a question about sweet potatoes, which is good. And it comes from Eliza Kwan Beck. And she writes My boyfriend and I have been having an ongoing discussion about the difference between taro tapioca, manioc yam and sweet potato. They spent a summer backpacking through Southeast Asia taking cooking courses in every country we pass through Vienna sounds nice. Yeah, I'd like to do that. And in Malaysian Borneo, we took a cooking class and made Berber chacha, which sounds awesome. I've never had it or heard of it, but I'll In anything called Berber chacha, which is a coconut yam taro porridge flavored with ponden leaves I love Pantone. Pantone is a leaf that has a little bit of a kind of a vanilla taste for those of you that don't know you can get it in, in Southeast Asian groceries to tie groceries or you know anything like that. And it comes usually frozen. And sometimes the frozen one can have a little bit of a fishy taste when it's thought out. But it's using a lot of dessert preps and we used to make a really good sugar cookie out of it instead of vanilla, we would we basically blitzed the leaves with butter, heated it and decanted the butter off and use that to make cookies. And they were like this amazing green color like pistachio green color. And with like that pond on the pond on flavor that you can't, you know, really replicate without the leaves because I think the extracts are crap. You know, the flavorings. Anyway, that's off topic, but delicious. And so, you know, she basically gotten to the bunch of arguments about, you know, what these different things are, what the different starches are, where they come from, etc, etc, etc. All right, Eliza. First of all, this is give me a great opportunity to pump a series of books that I think everyone should own, as many as they can. And it's the Brooklyn Botanic Garden that is Brooklyn Botanic Garden series. And they have a series of small guides that are all really, really cheap, you can get them online actually, if you go to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, if you become a member, they send you like 10 for nothing, and they're like, you can get them for like five to 12 bucks. I mean, they're amazing, but the one I'm going to talk about today, and it has snappy titles, which I really enjoy, like a snappy title is called buried treasures, tasty tubers of the world. And and what I like about these guides is you can read them kind of in one, you know, quick session, you know, I don't know when you're sitting on the hopper or something. It's only like 100 pages, a lot of good pictures, a lot of good information. And so I read it this morning, not on the hopper please and but I recommend that series they also have a really good book called The best apples to buy and grow successful. But here here's my and they have a lot of really more rare interesting tubers, corms, rhizomes, everything in that book that you can go take take a look at. But here's the quick breakdown. I know I'm gonna get some of this wrong, so please no hate mail. You can just correct me if I'm wrong. The sweet potato, which I can't possibly pronounce the Latin names it's like it. It familia patatas I can't pronounce it but Tatas anyway sweet potato is is from a South America. It's been cultivated for many, many years, like 10,000 years. You know, it went early pre Columbian times, probably to Polynesia. And then, you know, after, you know, the kind of great Columbian seed exchange, whatever went the other way over to Africa, it's grown all over the world. They grow a lot of it in China, it's fed to pigs, they make starch for noodles. It's also it's, you know, incredibly delicious. The white varieties of it are still just a sweet potato. The bonobos are still they're just sweet potatoes. They're the same style different cultivars, they're they're less sweet. That is a sweet potato. Everything is usually in the New York in a sorry, and in a United States supermarket things labeled yams are actually sweet potatoes. Luckily, the US government requires it somewhere on the box it also say sweet potato, even if it says yam. Okay, the actual Iam Dioscuri a lotta is from East Asia. But it made it to Africa well over 1000 years ago, and then from there to the West Indies, you know, in I guess the 1500s or so there's many, many varieties of it. The Yam is distinct, right? The Yam, unlike sweet potatoes can be eaten raw. The yam has to be cooked. Okay, you have to you have to cook again, can't can't eat a raw. I don't really know much about yam starch. I think most of the stuff that I see is starch is a sweet potato starch, which is entirely different from potato starch, entirely different from tapioca, manioc, cassava starch, okay. So that's kind of sweet potato versus yam. Now, Taro, right. Colocasia esculenta. Right. You have to like you have to cook that stuff because it contains some calcium oxalate I think it's a quorum it comes from India but went to Southeast Asia a long, long, long, long, long time ago. Right? That's what taro chips are made out of. In Hawaii. That's what puoi is made out of taro cakes you get in, in China. Like that's all Taro. Right? There's a different thing called giant Taro. Right? This from Sri Lanka that went also to the Pacific Islands also needs to be cooked because of calcium oxalate, and if you eat it, it'll like it'll taste like like 1000s of sharp little needles, and it's very unpleasant. So it's very, you know, don't want to do it. Want to cook it to get rid of it. Sometimes you want to cook it, you want to cook it. I think that's with a pinch of baking soda helps neutralize I think, but I'm not sure. I don't I don't do a lot of work on it. Okay, then. Kind of the answer to Taro from the South America is Yahia. Right? It's the same family as Taro. And so basically, like your idea and Taro, you can kind of interchange those two things, right? So anyway, so that's that now an entirely separate ball of wax. Next is the and these are all the same damn thing just from different different names, different places, manioc, cassava, tapioca and Yuka. Right. Those are all Mannahatta polenta. I can't pronounce any of this. So please don't come back on me. These are like, you know, relatively recent ie like 1000 BC they're all this from South America but a spread all over the world. Like now there's two kinds, right there's the there's the the sweet kind and then the not sweet kind and they all contain certain amounts of compounds that turn into cyanide. So you definitely want to cook them but all the varieties usually you buy in supermarkets now. You can just cook them and eat them. You don't need to like grind them, soak them overnight to get rid of the cyanide compounds and wash them and then you know, process them. But in the old in the old days you did or you die anyway, but most of the varieties that are cultivated now, you don't have to do that. And so that's where tapioca starch comes from, which is what they make little pearls out of in bubble tea to the best of my knowledge. And it's also what you know, tapioca starch is very interesting. It's a different shaped starch from many other searches. It's it's got a characteristic what's called kettle drum shape. You're gonna want to look up a good source for different starches is national starch Corporation and or the international starch Council. I think it has a website and the Egan press mentioned earlier book on starches, which you can get from the American Association of cereal chemists has a good stuff on tapioca starch, tapioca starch, aside from it's interesting kettle drum shape is world renowned for being very bland. So it doesn't cause a lot of flavoring to you know, two things because it's bland. It also is used in puff snacks because it has very good expansion properties because it has a nice amylose amylopectin breakdown. So you know, anyway, also those things you go manioc, cassava tapioca, you'll often find a thick coating of wax over it because if not, they kind of turned to crap pretty quick in the in the supermarket. So how was it how's that Natasha that was very informative Quick, quick rundown make any make any dang sense at all? Did did alright, let's say another break. All right. So listen, we're gonna take another commercial break but calling your questions 27184972128 That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues so much bone jam gonna have a look gonna have Oh, my God All right. Guys, data I want everybody read. Now, all right.

We're gonna try this cookie issues. Welcome back. 718-497-2128 is 718-497-2128. We actually had a question about our songs. And we're going to talk about them later. For those of you that actually know that song already, which Oh, I won't spoil it. I won't spoil it. Okay, so we had a question about carbonation. One of my favorite things. I've never actually written about it on the blog. I guess just because most of the research I've done on carbonation, I did kind of so so long before I had the blog that I just never bothered writing about it. But you know, maybe someday, if I ever get the time we'll write a primer on it. Again, I will write a primer on this what I mean to say. So the question is, do you have any thoughts about the EC slash ISI? Like you both are correct, but I think they're moving towards moustache which one of them? They're moving towards EC. Do you have any thoughts on the EC twist and sparkle carbonation system? It seems like it solves a lot of the problems you have with soda siphons and it's cheaper and smaller than the Sodastream but still does use small cartridges long term I'd like to get a system with a 20 pound co2 tank and this is from Sam and Yes Sam you should get a 20 pound co2 tank at the very minimum of five pounds co2 tanks and minimum anyway. But I'm a student and I'll probably be moving a few times the next few years so it's not practical purchase at the moment. I'm also considering as a gift for my parents who buy fizzy water by the case but are not going to be interested in driving around with big co2 tanks. Hey, they're not that big Sam they're not that big. I live in a tiny tiny apartment. Right I live in a an 800 square foot apartment with two rambunctious kids and and I have not one but 220 pound co2 tanks in there. Anyway, I'm not saying you have to do it. I'm not trying to make you feel bad. I'm just saying you can do it. I know You can do it, Sam. Anyway, a couple more questions, I can't seem to find the answers to how much water can I carbonate with the eight gram cartridges this system comes with? Are the cartridges proprietary? Can they be purchased more cheaply from someone besides EC or in bulk? And how well does it work? Okay? I can't tell you that you can buy it from someone else. But all of those cartridges are pretty much, pretty much the same. EC is no guarantee, I shouldn't say it's, I'm gonna get my my butt handed to me by the EC Corporation, cuz I'm friends with those guys. But you know, they claim that their cartridges are all very accurately weighed out, etc, etc, they're very pure, you can only get really one bottle of water out of the eight gram cartridge. And therein is the rub. So for me, it's more of for bars, who don't want to invest in a carbonation system to maybe do drinks. And for me to really carbonate a drink, it's going to take two cartridges because I have to blast off some of the stuff. And so I hate to say this, but I think if you're going to make a lot of seltzer at home, and you want to a smaller system that you know, it's going to cost a lot very quickly to run through cartridges if you're actually drinking a lot of soda water. And EC is going to come tear my head off. But I would definitely in that situation. If you don't want to go for five or 20 pounds co2 tank, I would go for the Soda Stream, I'm gonna get my butt handed to man. So hey, you're telling the truth. And I will go for the Sodastream I know many people that have it who don't want to have the 520 pound co2 tanks, you get a lot more charges out of the out of the refill. Because you're just gonna get you're gonna run through co2 cartridges like the end of the world is coming with with the twisted sparkle. Now the advantage of twist and sparkle is that you can do liquor and other things in it that they tell you with the with the Soda Stream that you can't do because of filming problems. I've never I don't own a Soda Stream. But I'm thinking that I can modify one to do drinks like pretty cheaply, just by adding a little extender tube to it. But I would definitely consider getting the you can get the starting level SodaStream I think for under $100 like $79. And I think it'll pay for itself pretty quick in terms of in terms of chargers, but I've probably just cut off my nose to spite my face we probably will never work for easy again. But Sam, those are my those are my feelings. It. It works. It works fine. As long as you chill it. Really, really chill your liquids keep your levels accurate, but I usually put two chargers in to really get a really strong charge in it because I like it really, really really fizzy. And so I really feel like you're gonna blast through cartridges with it. I can't believe the same as on you're gonna get I'm gonna get in trouble anyway. Here we have a caller caller, you are on the air.

Hi, I'm Brian. I'm calling from San Francisco. Happy New Year to you, Dave. Happy

New Year.

Thank you. So I have two questions, which are unrelated. I'm hoping to answer them both. So awesome. Both right now. And the first question is regarding distillation. I noticed that there's a lot of kind of distillation equipment, I'm guessing I'm sort of interested in making my own kinds of essential oils. I bought a number of essential oils from from Andy Athol in the past. And

should pardon me friends of cooking issues, by the way, Mandy?

Yes. Yes, yes. And have have. I've used them and they're they're really delicious. And so now I'm interested in sort of making my own and I'm wondering what kind of setup you might recommend to begin to start doing making my own essential oils and hydrosols So that's question number one. And the second question has to do with Paxton which is I've tried making my own path to free and I haven't had a lot of success. And I've used a couple of different supermarket pectins over the counter. I've done some reading and one was said that sort of which was the liquid kind I tried in that was supposed to be okay, and the other was like kimonos or remoaners or something, something like that. And that that was just a work but I've haven't had any success. So I'm hoping that he might be able to help me with that and give a little one on one on on pectins Alright, so sources for getting them

so let's go in reverse. What's your problem with it? Not setting setting and do you you're making sure that your acid levels are high enough and your sugar levels are high enough? I mean, the main thing was pectins

I mean I use it for like compliance. You know, so it was pretty high acid

and but what about the sugar levels? It was

still pretty high. Yeah, I mean maybe and I drove it for a while

right and you get I don't have off the top my off my head what the numbers are but regular packed in in order to set needs very high solids level. And, you know, which means like a lot a lot of sugars and also acids cumquat should be acidic enough to To set it, then the question is, is how high is the solids level, which is going to be then determined by the temperatures, now, presumably you're taking the temperature high enough that your solids level is going to be high enough, that could be a source of the problem, not taking the temperature high enough. Or if you took the temperature high enough, then adding another liquid, it's going to dilute it back down below the solid level where it's going to set properly. You know, the different patterns you can get a lot of times they're going to be Apple based or citrus based. It I don't know any of the store brands, I've never used any any of them. You know, I tend to use more of like the weirder ones for kind of hide hydrocolloid applications, because that's what people ask me for. And those ones you can use in lower solids and with lower sugars, but they require things like calcium to set that's one of the pectins they use for kind of low sugar jams and things like that. Those are like, you know, the different kinds of like, low methoxy, Amedee LMA, you might hear a call?

Or how do you recommend adding the calcium to those? Oh, is

that like, you know, like a, like a glucan eight, I use calcium lactate glucan. It doesn't require that much. And there's a there's low methoxy pectin. The problem is it's very sensitive to calcium levels. So that you know, if you put too much into problem or too little, and there's low methoxy antedated, which is like less, it's more a little more bulletproof. But regular pectin should work unless you don't have a solid content high enough, which means you're like not cooking to a high enough temperature. There's only thing I can think of