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.

You're listening to the heritage Radio Network cooking issues. We'll be live shortly. Dave's held up and he'll be here as soon as he can.

And you got my head twisted.

The guest can't get it straight. Fishes. You're listening to the heritage Radio Network.

I'm Sam Edwards, third generation KineMaster from s Wallace Edwards and sons in Surry, Virginia. We support the heritage radio network, because we believe in the cause are what they're doing. They're supporting family raise 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.

Hello and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues here with Natasha hammer Lopez coming to you live from the studio behind Roberta's pizzeria in Brooklyn on this rainy rainy day and it's spiked here in the rain. So I'm thoroughly soaked negating any morning shower that I took. How are you doing this session? I'm doing okay. Yeah. So last week, a big, big week for us. We moved all of our stuff junk crap, from the French Culinary Institute to the new company headquarters in Brooklyn can't believe I'm actually a Brooklyn guy. And I still live in Manhattan though for all you keeping track this kind of stuff. But our new offices are in Williamsburg in the in the milk bar commissary in the back, they have a little extra storage space. So it's moved up from a trash room at the front corner, which was our former lab reverted back to trash room several weeks ago, we've moved up in the world to back of the warehouse space, right. Anyway, we haven't set up yet all of our crap is literally in the pile in the middle of the in the middle of this space, waiting for a couple of weeks to see whether see what I can do to build it out so we can actually have a sink and start cooking again, but it should be exciting, right? And startup. Yes. We haven't thought of a name for the new company yet. We plan on making kitchen equipment, both for professionals and for home people. And we're going to keep our hand in the cooking beds, right. Yeah, so any names would be appreciated for the company and we've had only terrible ideas, right? Yeah, like it's like not even like many of them like not even able to be mentioned on the air the ideas right? Yeah, horrible hard. Well, horrible, offensive, offensive stuff. Okay, so call in all of your questions. 27184972128 That's 718-497-2128 we're gonna be here for the next 40 minutes or so. So please call him with all of your questions cooking related or not mostly their cooking related. Yeah. Unfortunately written, by the way, the stats, are you keeping the surprise? What do you have for the middle music? The break music? I didn't even think of anything. Like, you can scroll around in your iPod for some for some good bits stash has been messing with it with the music. We had two weeks of hollow notes and what do we have? Done? How's it going? Okay. Good morning, gents. Writes Alric a sterling, I have recently become very interested in high pressure molding, without binders, no egg, etc, of certain starches, namely different potatoes, tubers, I guess Yuka Melania, etc. I was wondering if any of you had any experience in this? And if not where to look within the food manufacturing bids for such a request? Okay, well, I'm gonna make some assumptions, I encourage you to write in with more details about exactly what you're trying to do. But I'm assuming if you're going to high pressure, mold, starch without, you know, binders such as egg that you're talking about tablet formation, you know, compressing into tablet form, there are other things, obviously, that you can do under under very high pressures, you can mold, starches into plastics, but I'm just gonna, for the purposes of this discussion, assume that you mean tablets. So we've actually discussed this a little bit on one of the programs a long time ago, right tablet making, it's actually something that we haven't done, I haven't done, but I'm extremely interested in, I need to buy a tablet maker, it's on my list of things to do, because we want to make our own tablets and men's In fact, I almost got a consulting gig A while ago, where we would have had to make a bunch of pills. But that what happened that we just felt through whatever anyway. So the deal is right that the different types, I encourage you to look at this paper from 1987 by CE baz Bo s, entitled native starch and tablet formations, properties on compaction, and it's a good first it's even though it's old, it's a good first starting for compression of starches, specifically starches, and native starches, because a lot of times when they're going to make tablets, they don't use native starches, they use starches, either that have been pregelatinized. Or they use starches that have been modified in some way acid modified and did different modifications to alter the properties of the finished tablet to make them harder to make them break up either easier, or, or, or harder things like that. But I will say this, the actual type of starch that you use, makes a huge difference in how the tablet is formed. So it's how those forms usually mix up the starch with it's in the in the business, this is called an Excipient. It's basically the non active ingredient. So you would be adding in wherever the active ingredient is flavor or you know, aspirin, whatever it is, or Celsius, citric acid wherever, wherever the heck aspirin is, I can't remember, mix it in. And then you put it into a metal dye that shaped however you want it and you compress it. Now that compression is quite severe. I don't know exactly, but it's on the order of like 18,000 psi like on in that order of magnitude 18,000 psi. So it's easier for you to use much smaller dyes, so that you don't need as much physical tons of pressure pushing down to make make a tablet right now, typically also add other things to it like lubricants so that it doesn't heat up and so that it flows well in the dye when it's compressing, right. So you think that you're not adding any binders. But in fact, moisture, the amount of moisture that's in the starch is very important. So it turns out that you want about 10% moisture, total moisture in the starch, which is kind of normal in a relatively humid environment out in the world. So even though you're not adding things like water, there are things like water present also, aside from the type of starch being very important, the the way the starch is milled, right, whether it's in fine granules, or in larger pieces makes a big difference on how the on how the finished tablets going to be. So it's a very complicated subject. One I'm very interested in, but unfortunately don't know a lot about but hopefully I've given you a good place to start right and yeah, anyway. Okay, so let's go to our next question. We just got something and interestingly, listeners will know that we are interested in the irradiation of corn to make different genetic mutations. Turns out we ain't gonna call it nuclear corn. Turns out we got a a write in from trying to find out who sent us the who said just the post. Here it is Jr. Nelson sent us some interesting stuff this morning on mutation breeding so that's the technical term. They were you know, new radiating stuff until she mutates and forms new stuff. Anyway, so the technical term is mutation breeding, which sounds a lot a lot better, but Jr writes in and says he came across a news bit today where the University of California Riverside which is the People who handle a lot of citrus for our country the germ plasm for citrus, they basically I think, I think they run the the United States is our federal citrus program. Pretty sure for germ plasm. Anyway, I have to look it up. But UC Davis and against it UC Riverside just announced they created a new Mandarin called the quinoa LS now quinoa is actually a very it's an old, venerated, Mandarin delicious and stylish and I had it when we visited. We visited gene Lester's citrus ranch out in in Watlow. It's great problem is Kino has a whole boatload of seeds. So what they did was is they just nuked a whole bunch of I guess budwood of quinoa, they just nuked it, and then you know propagated it and they got a Kyno that had that had lower Seika. Now they don't necessarily actually have to use the radiation they just most of the time do. They can use other sorts of chemical things mutagen strategy and things like this to do it. But he sent that in and there's a picture of this new breed Kino LS for low seed or less seeds. So go take a look at another fine example. Nuclear oranges have better fruit through radiation. Right. You know, the thing is, I think a lot of people probably freaked out by this kind of thing. And it's the same kind of, um, you know, unthinking fear of things that that brought us the term NMR. Right. So you're familiar with a? Well, you're not familiar with MRIs when you go to the hospital get an MRI. Discussion? Me? Yeah, yeah. MRI, magnetic resonance imaging. Yes, you go in and take a picture your body? Yeah, well, actually, that's a phenomenon called NMR, nuclear magnetic resonance. And in fact, they changed the name from NMR, nuclear magnetic resonance to MRI, magnetic resonance imaging, because patients were literally afraid to get in a machine with the word nuclear attached to it crazy. Crazy, right. And so the only thing is that a lot of people are against irradiated foodstuffs for preservation right. Now, there are several reasons to be against irradiated foodstuffs, because we have so basically, you can take food fruits whenever expose them to very high levels of gamma radiation, right? X rays and such things and kill all the bacteria in them, right? Make them pretty much sterile as a preservation technique. And you don't have to heat it, right, which is great. And you can do it when it's already packaged without heat. So it's, you know, can be fantastic. Now, there are some reasons to be against this. To be against radiating food. One is it can destroy the texture of the food, right? That's valid when you think Lusatia Yeah, but there are other reasons that are not valid. For instance, people think that somehow they are going to get cancer from eating irradiated food, or somehow the food itself becomes radioactive. This is not a fair characterization of what happens. But it's another situation where, you know, adding the word radiation to nuclear makes something all of a sudden, horrible in people's eyes. So hopefully they don't get that feeling with, with our nuclear corn and our nuclear, our nuclear mandarins, although apparently they're not going to advertise that fact. Anyway, we have a caller there, Jack. Are they just ordering a pizza? I think they're just ordering a pizza. Yeah, we got to call it all right caller you're on the air.

Are there any studies that have proven the GM foods are bad?

I can recognize this voice from through the radio. This is Patrick Martin's are the person who is working with us on the Museum of food and drink fundraiser a founder of this radio network and the founder of Slow Food USA and heritage foods. How are you doing today, Patrick?

Good. Thanks for having me.

All right. So um, the question was, are there any references on GMOs saying that they're actually bad?

Well, I just read this quote from Bill Gates that says, I hate that all these sustainable food groups keep saying that our work is bad, you know, through the Gates Foundation, and that keep falsely accusing, you know, GMO foods being bad. So of course, I'm going like, well, there's got to be a study somewhere. But I haven't ever found one. And I've asked people and no one can think of a study that proves that it's bad.

Yes. Because there isn't one. Yeah, I mean, here's the problem. I think a lot of people you know, way back in the day in the in the 80s. Right? You know, if you're familiar with Jeremy Rifkin, right, I mean, he would come out against any of these kind of genetic things, and basically, in his mind, all things trace to some some form of awful Armageddon at the hands of people that are doing genetic, genetic modifications. Now, there, there are arguments, I don't really I don't really know them well enough to, to give them to you in any sort of form. That doesn't seem derogatory to them. If that, you know, give you an idea where I am, there are arguments that there are things that can possibly go wrong. So one of the problems with GMO, one of the problems with GMO crops, right is a here's one isn't real one one of the pros of GMO crops is that you get your Monsanto let's say or someone else and you own a GMO crop. You now have a patent on that crop, right? You own it. So then, one of your seeds some of your genetics can get float over, you know, into somebody else's field, right? And contaminate their field with your genetics. And then you know, you're selling your product because you're a normal farmer. And then Monsanto comes in sues you for stealing their genetics and all you've done is save your seeds year after year. And some of Monsanto seeds have gotten mixed it not because you've bought it or stolen because their seeds have fallen onto your property. Right. And so there are some legal ramifications of GMO that have put some farmers in some pretty tough spots as a result of of that kind of transfer. Right. I mean, there's also the possibility that someone could release a some sort of gene into the environment that turns out to be harmful 1015 years down the road, but the same could be said, of breeding a plant, you know, normally or any sort of normal the there's always the possibility with new with new breed. So the real question is, aside from patent infringement, and the legal issues that are involved in there, the question is, is how is genetically How are genetically modified products, fundamentally different from the breeding that's been going on for hundreds of years, in fact, is espoused by the same people as being great as that that hate the GMO right, those same people love the fact that we have 1000s of cultivars that have been bred over hundreds of years and are being preserved generation after generation, that's considered an absolute good by almost everyone in the field, everyone, including the people who are doing GMOs, because it gives them a base of gene plasm to work from end to end to add weight, you know, to things with but you know, most of my criticism of it just comes from the fact that the GMO stuff is usually shooting and stuff that I don't care about, if the other problem is, is that it can add to monoculture problems, if they come up with something that basically if there's Fireblight out there, let's say and they come up with a product that is resistant to Fireblight. And it becomes the only product out there. Well, then when the next disease comes they'll get wiped out, right. So there's, there's all of these kinds of arguments and how it can be bad, but I don't know if any fundamental reason why they're why they're bad. Does that make sense?

Yeah, well, thanks for your time.

Did you agree or disagree?

Yeah, no, I mean, that? Well, I mean, I would, of course, instinctively, I always think that I want to find something that, you know, maybe that at least to say the jury's not out yet? Well as to whether or not a lifetime of GMO consumption is bad. And you know, but right now, you know, other than that, it's true, you know, it's to say, like, if we don't own our seeds, then, you know, is that bad, but it relates to the patent infringement? I mean, would you go so far as to say the jury's not out? Whether or not it's healthy or not, I'm

always I'm always willing to be proved wrong on anything. I'll say that. I haven't heard any argument that, that shows that it's detrimental to us from a health standpoint. And you know, and people say, Well, if you don't know, then you can't do but there's plenty of things like that in the world where we will weigh the risks, and we do it, you know, I think, you know, sure, I'm willing to be immune to be proven wrong, but I think it's like everything else in this field. The GMO is a tool. It's a tool. And it's, it's been used incorrectly by a lot of people to do a lot of awful stuff, you know, and I think that what we need to do is not focus our enmity on the tool, don't don't look at the at the hammer as the as the bad thing. Look at the carpenter swinging the hammer as the bad thing. You know, it's so it's like, look at the way these tools are used, and get angry about that and not about the tool itself.

Exactly. Okay. Interesting. I agree. All right, and argue with the expert.

Right. And Patrick, and mustache and I are we're going to be working very soon. If anyone out there is listening. We're going to be doing a search very soon for an administrative fundraiser for the museum of food and drink. Right, Patrick? Yep. And and then in about what do you think mustaches six months time? Six months time we're going to be doing a fundraiser much like the one we did here in New York and Del Posto several weeks ago, we're going to be doing one in the Bay Area. Am I right? Do we have the location hammered down? Patrick?

No, but we have a few people who would like to do it. And you know, we've expressed interest from shape beneath all that they're dealing with their 40th anniversary. So yeah, 40th anniversary. So anyway, no, it's going to be interesting. And I think there's about 10 or 12 chefs that have already want to participate. So it's gonna be pretty kick ass.

So for those of you lunatics who missed out, you know, what boasting about this, if we had just told people on the air that you know, you're gonna have like one of the greatest meals ever. It cost $250. And it didn't have anything to do with fundraising. It should have it should have, it should have sold sold out, right? It's like, it's like, we don't even basically even need to tell them that it's going for a good cause. Because the meals is that good. Am I right, Patrick? Yeah, it

was really one of a kind. I mean, everyone was saying that no one has ever had a meal like that, especially with all that talent.

Right? So when we do it on the West Coast, you fools better not miss it. Am I right? You're right. All righty. All right, we're gonna go to our first break, calling all your questions to 718 4972128 That someone a 4972128 cooking issues oh our green

um so what are you all here they're all brand new spend my life is saved since we invented what is the one? Following is a public service announcement from Heritage Radio Network. Join Linda Placido for a taste of the past every Thursday at 12pm as she indulges her curiosities about food, cooking, drinking and dining of the past, by taking a journey through culinary history, Linda interviews, authors, scholars, friends and chroniclers to learn about what was eaten, where and how, from as long ago as ancient Mesopotamia and Rome, right up to the grazing tables and deli counters of today. The show underscores food as a lively link between present and past cultures. Again, that's Thursday at 12pm on the heritage Radio Network. Welcome back

to Cooking issues calling on your questions to send 184972128 That's 718-497-2128. So Richard COVID called wrote in a comment on an ongoing discussion on the AeroPress coffeemaker here. And it's got to be the most embarrassing thing for me in the world that it's like a $30 item that we've discussed multiple times on this dang show. And we've had multiple questions about it. It's so easy to get I could literally go on Amazon when would show up at my doorstep tomorrow morning. And I can know from firsthand experience how the dang thing is working. And instead, through laziness and inertia, we have not done it. So let's make a pact that today even we've even been offered given one by some of our listeners, and we're just too lazy and stupid to take them up on it. So when the show's over, one of the first things I do before I order a delicious pizza from inverters and salad, which is what we always get as our post show meal here. I'm going to go on Amazon and Amazon Prime order us a an AeroPress coffee. Yes, yes. Okay. Richard writes in and says, Hi, I've been using my AeroPress for all my coffee needs. And he switched from the French press. And the comments that we've had on the show about the about the air presence filter and flat tastes are in his experience accurate. A couple of months ago, he had some guests for breakfast and whipped out the 51 ounce of French press and the Aeropress. And that difference in flavor profile was noticeable. The French press tasted brighter than the Aeropress. But the same beans. A one of our listeners also mentioned that he thinks the filter is to blame because the paper is basically absorbing the coffee oils right and absorbing some of the flavor. And Richard uses the filter several times to try and I guess saturate it with flavors, so it doesn't suck anymore out. But he thinks that's the reason that the taste is flat. And so he suggests that all the listeners out there and we'll get one of these two is maybe is the CO avva Dis Co A V A metal adapter filter disc for the AeroPress coffee. So go check that one out. And check out the forums on coffee geek.com which is you know, I think probably one of the best websites for coffee that there is I mean, I used to go to it all the time. So anyway, good. Good to look at that brings us to coffee. Last week what there wasn't a structure Tuesday. No, the coffee thing we did Saturday, Saturday? Oh yeah. Saturday, so Saturday night, I judge along with a couple of people the the latte a latte art championship. So for those of you I don't know, who've been buried under a rock for the last, you know, four years or so, Latte Art is where you draw pretty pictures in a in a latte. And there's two different with milk and there's two different ways of doing it. There's what's called free pour, where basically you just take a cup of espresso in it and you're pouring it. Pour the milk into it. The milk has to be formed in a very specific way to create something called a microphone that doesn't have any big bubbles in it. Right and the coffee has to be perfect with a nice crema. And you do what's called a free pour where you pour and you can make swans and Rosetta's and tulips some hearts and all this. And you know, if we judge on various criteria, like how good the contrast was between the darks and lights, how symmetric they were, or how much of the cup was being used, these guys are pretty good. They can they mean like, I can't do it, I'm gonna be honest with you, I can't do it. But what's really interesting is, is I was talking and one of the judges is was the three time Brazil, all time champion barista, I finally got to her name is went out of my head, but I'll look it up. And she was, she was telling me we're talking about coffee. And I haven't really been involved with hardcore coffee espresso research in a long time. And one of the things that's happened in the past four years is, for those who don't drink espresso, start drinking espresso. But you know, what used to be a shot of espresso was a little under an ounce per shot, right. And so if you're going to use like, you would use like a 13, or 14 grams of coffee, ground coffee, to make like an ounce and a half to an ounce and three quarter double, right, that used to be kind of standard. Now people have upped it. It's like, crept, and now it's gone up to like 16 grams of coffee. And they're pulling like an ounce out of it or less. And so that's a ristretto. But ristretto is have gotten preposterous over the past couple of years, like you just get these tiny, like little wisps of coffee on the bottom of your cup, and they're delicious, right? They can be delicious. But I'm just interested, if any of our listeners, they want to chime in what they think about this creep towards hyper Stratos. And what that's doing is definitely making us plow through a whole boatload of coffee. And so I started playing with at home and I kind of I kind of like these, like, like super Stratos, but I'm trying to find a good middle balance. Anyway. That's just a that's just amusing. Okay. Roy, from Chicago, and we're supposed to talk about this at the top of the program, Roy from Chicago, wrote in what happened to the blog, are you still doing posts a couple of things that happened to the blog ROI? One, we were hacked about a week ago, and our site periodically keeps going down because of the hacking. So I know, and I apologize to all of our listeners out there that sometimes it's difficult to get into the site, and we're looking at it we're trying to hire a contract killer to go find out who it was that messed with our blog and execute them in a in a slow and painful fashion. Yes, yeah. Yes. He's still in post. Well, yeah. The second thing is, is that is that there has been, let's just say, a dearth of posts recently. I'm working to remedy that. I have a post up right now, that is still in draft phase about how about the museum and I have at least 567 posts in the wings waiting to be posted. Part of the reason that we haven't been posting and these are just lame excuses is because we're working. We were working before very hard on the museum fundraiser. And then for the past two weeks, we've been working very, very hard on on trying to figure out our new company and how we're actually going to make a living and not, you know, leave our homeless become homeless, like that's kind of the main thing right now.

So, yes, we will be we will be ramping up as I said before, I will be contractually obliged to do for a month. We're going to stick to that. Starting next week. I'm making my pledge. I'm also going to try to start doing a lot of shorter posts. I've kind of been slammed into these like two 3000 4000 word posts and makes it very hard especially because I like trying to get them as accurate as possible. And so it's difficult. These are just all stupid excuses. So Roy, my apologies to you, and we will be up and running hopefully hacker free and also more regular in the near future. Natasha. Yes. Any any comments? No, you said it Oh, yeah. That sounds like me. All right. longtime listener and actually person who went to our fundraiser Collin wrote in and he says Dear flavor, Deva flavor like that. David flav? I always have to read his things relatively word for word, so you get a feeling for his question, although sometimes I have to excise curses from them anyway. Egg yolks are kick ass. I think I can say that. Right. Egg yolks are kick ass low temp egg yolks, especially Kik, as I have a few questions surrounding the gooey, gooey golden orbs of goodness. I want to end up with sheets of duck egg yolk that can be handled and draped over goose breast for chicken eggs. I saw Alex Anakee That's Alex Mackey of ideas and food friends of ours recommend 63.8 degrees Celsius, and my chart says more like 66 See, I haven't tried either with chicken eggs, but I tested them with duck eggs and found that 63.8 Didn't seem firm enough. I took them to 65 Five instead of 66 since it was preset into his old analog circulator that yolk was still a bit gooey, I thought but don't have any examples to compare to other than the photos the duck egg yolks seems a bit fatter to me, which might explain why it didn't seem as firm freezing after rolling out the yolk did help make it possible to cut in handle for about 10 seconds but the whole sheet quickly got soft and goopy again, strong enough to hold its shape when draped. But still a Saucier consistently now is expected And here are my questions. That wasn't the question I was pretty lenient on seeing eggs cooked whole and then egg yolks removed for sheet rolling with egg yolks cooked the same consistency is separated with raw put in a ziploc and circulated to the desired temperature. This is what I did since I had other plans for the whites that I throw off the pH perhaps. I don't know I've never had a satisfactory answer for this column. But I'll tell you this egg yolks cooked separately from egg whites do not have the same texture as ones that are cooked in the whole egg and then the whites used for some other purpose but removed after cooking. I don't know why this is a wily do frame asked me this, I don't know maybe five years ago and I didn't know why then I four years ago maybe I don't know why now I've asked Harold we don't know why but when I'm doing a lot of these things, I will cook the we will cook the yolks in the egg and then remove them and use the white says like as cooked whites as an ingredient. There are dishes that I've done with egg yolks where I've mixed egg yolks have transglutaminase and salt and then put them into a zip and then and then cook them to create a sauce. But I've never done it for sheets. You can if you want to cook them separately, you can fry them up a bit by adding transglutaminase Aktiva to it it'll firm it up if you especially if you cook it to the higher temperatures. But if you add salt that's going to make them whole less so you're not going to want to add salt before you cook them. You can add salt after you cook them because it doesn't make them look cool. It makes them look like icing when you add the salt. Okay, second question if putting separate but intact raw eggs in the bag is okay will the yolks also achieve the desired consistency if they're broken mixed together first. I've tried holding them whole versus split them I haven't seen that much of a difference but I think it might make a difference. So if you're going to try and do it in the bag, I would hold them hold. Three what procedure do you use when you make yoke sheets? What I do is I cook them to about 66 degrees or there abouts. For an hour children break out the yolks smash yolks together, roll them between two sheets of plastic wrap and then and then cook them out. Yeah, I agree that Alex Anakee 63.8 is too low. That's going to be just barely set and not really good for shooting unless you kind of freeze it out first. And fourthly, last question on the eggs. What are the difference between duck egg yolk and chicken egg yolk and how may this be affecting the texture I'm seeing? I don't know. They are slightly different. We've been cooking in the same temperature at the school but I haven't done enough textures. tests with duck egg yolk to know for certain same with quail. I do know that the proteins are slightly different which is why it's easier to make transparent eggs with lie with duck eggs and with chicken butt. Come back to us when you get some more experience and see whether you agree caller do we have caller caller you're on the air.

Hi, this is Kyle. This is Brian. How are you guys?

All right, how you doing?

Great. Got a question. I don't have a smoker thought about those Bradley smokers. But I'm interested in doing some hacks at home in either my Weber or in my oven or in indoors. So I'm wondering if I want to do a DIY smoker setup both both for cold smoking and hot smoking. Any suggestions?

So you want to do it without without buying the Bradley basically you want like as as as inexpensive as humanly possible. Right?

But safe relatively,

I like relatively safe assuming you have an outdoor space, it's not going to catch on fire. I have a little balcony. Right. Okay. So your apartment, yeah, a

lot of space.

No space, I know how that is, I know how that is. Alright, so. So hot smoking, right? Hot smoking is relatively easy. So with that, you could probably modify the Weber just by putting like a hot plate that you get at, you know, the CVS or the Rite Aid wherever cheapest, like find one on the street, whatever, modify a hot plate to use as your heat generator. And you could generate smoke that way. And it probably work in a Weber you know, they used to sell, I'm sure they still do basically just cylinders, which were you know, modified drums, like 30 gallon drums, and they and they had a you know, just a crappy electric heating element in the bottom of them that you could adjust the temperature of so that your heat wouldn't go either too low or too high, soak the chips and put them in in aluminum foil or something of that, put it on the heating element and go right. And so then the next level on that is if do you want to temperature control that on the hot smoke side? Right then you could do stuff like add a PID controller that instead of adjusting the smoking temperature would address probably the draft events, right and like turn on a fan and extract smoke out to adjust the temperature something like that. Right. So like you know, that is relatively cheap and easy. Now the question is if you want to do legitimate Cold Smoke, what you have to do is separate the smoke generator from the from the actual cabinet where you're where you're smoking and so typically what people will do is though, they'll build a box, fireproof, preferably that but you could use almost anything and put the there as long as it's not going to melt and then Put the the heat generator in the smoke generator rather in that and then just take pipe like cheap, cheap, you know galvanized duct pipe that you could get at, you know Home Depot or any one of these places and then connect the duct pipe from the smoke generator to whatever you're going to smoke in. And again that what you're going to smoke in can be anything that is kind of food grade, that's going to take the heat, so people use refrigerators, people use whatever, you know what as long as it contains the as long as it contains the smoke, then you then basically, if the smoke is not cold enough, you either extend the length of the pipe, or I know some people have like put water over the paper pack dice around to try and get the temperature down. So now you can get a really nice, cold, cold smoke. But then if you want to actually then increase the heat in the smoking cabinet, you have to put in a separate element to provide heat to the cabinet. Does that make sense?

What do you mean by the separate element because you well,

once the smoke is cold once the smoke is is cold smoke, then if you actually want to cook at the same time with the smoke, you actually have to heat the cabinet. Or, you know, or you could just reduce the length of the pipe to the thing I guess to jack the heat up or vent at less, it'll eventually will accumulate will accumulate this stuff. There's a whole bunch. And I haven't built one in since literally since I was in high school was the last time I built which is a long, long time ago, I built one from my mom. But it's been a long time since I've built one just because I've been in the city this whole time. And I don't even have a balcony, which is pathetic. You know, on the cheap side for a smoker if you want to get by one. That's a hot smoker that works fairly well. And I know why they used it but it doesn't have anywhere near good temperature control is the I think little chief is the name of the smoker. And it's basically a box with a heating element in the bottom. And that thing works great. And I know people have customized that one. I think there's little chief there might be a big chief they've customized that one to get to get lower temperatures. I know Neil's did some work with that. And like I say Wiley has been using that for a long time. So that's a good entry level, just you

could buy that and then have the pipe setup as well

and then hack it. Yeah, by that one. And you can start with hot smoking. And it works great. And it's small and is like relatively friendly, like sits out and plugs and it's not huge. It's like you know, can fit on a tabletop. And, and that's like I said that's one that widely used for a long time and we got went to school and mills used it. And then and then you can start hacking with that to try and get the temperature down by adding adding different controls or venting it more or trying to remove the smoke generator from the cabinet.

Got it? I have another barbecue related question if I can ask it now. All right, I've been reading about this Japanese charcoal the bincho Taan. charcoal and what's the what's the deal with that? It seems like it's kind of smokeless. It lasts a long time. You know anything about it

looks really cool. It's an extremely expensive stuff, you know, and so what they'll do is like they'll cook with it inside. I mean, like Japanese, they're cooking inside with charcoal and have for a long time. I guess they're not as culturally worried about the carbon monoxide poisoning as we are like, if you look at any bag of charcoal produced in the US, it has warnings all over it never to ever even think of lighting it indoors. Right? Right. And so those guys, the pincher tongue, guys, I mean, they they cook inside all the time with it. In fact, they did a demo to school a couple years back, they had a really awesome, they built a sandpit that the venture time was cooked in and they built the fire with the bench a ton charcoal in the sandpit and then we're cooking over that. And I got to play with the charcoal with a pinch of dawn and look at it and indeed it does have very low smoke output, right? But here's the here's the deal, right? It's I can't decide I could not discern the difference between venture time and high quality American produced hardwood charcoal, right. So if you go and you look at the bag of charcoal that you bought and it looks like chunks of wood that are black, right, you are going to be able to get the same results. This is my opinion talking here. This is not that I've done a side by side but having lit a whole bunch of of like good old fashioned like hardwood charcoal. Like it does, to my mind the same kind of job that the bench photon does, it's just not nearly as expensive, right? The the one that's not going to work the same way as the bench Aton or the compressed briquettes. Right, those are going to right doesn't look like wood and those things have usually been treated often have been treated with something right so that they operate fundamentally differently than these ones that look like chunks of wood. Now, the other reason why the Japanese system is theoretically smokeless right is because the way that they cook in it is they'll stick their food on the end of a skewer in bed the skewer in the sand not over the bench a ton but next to the bench a ton right. So the the, the heat from the from the bench Aton charcoals radiating out and cooking it says the fat from the meat is not dripping onto the vintra time. As soon as fat and liquid start dripping onto the charcoal. I don't care what you're using, you're gonna get smoke. Right? Right. Right. Yeah, there's but the good news for flare ups and I've said this forever and Nathan Myhrvold and Chris Young have basically now or else do they say it in their books. So I feel like vindicated is that that's where the flavor comes from is the flare ups. You know what I mean? Like that, like, well, at least part of the flavor that I really like comes from this combustion that happens during the flare ups. And so if you don't have things dripping on the charcoal, you might get some sort of smokiness. And if you did, that would kind of negate any sort of theory they have that it's absolutely smokeless, because you've got some sort of flavor of the fact that you've combusted something, right? But, but in fact, I like a little bit of that, that smoke and combustion and all that stuff, because I think that's where a lot of the good flavor comes from. But if you want to experiment with Ben Teton, I think you could build a like a sand thing. And use, like high quality American hardwood charcoal, it's not maybe as long as the bench Aton because they're very careful about the shape and the way it looks, because a lot of that is aesthetic in nature, right? I mean, a lot of the venture time has to do is a aesthetic, right. Another interesting thing that might get me in trouble about jet the Japanese, like venture time thing is is that I don't know that they've that the people who are advocates of venture time have done a lot of experiments with the American product. I think they just see the charcoal briquettes say, you know, Americans don't know Jack Dooley about charcoal, and therefore, like this one has to be the best not saying hey, here's an American product that might perform the same way. That's just not usually how those demonstrations and discussions happen. Do you know what I mean?