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.

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

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

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

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

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Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live on the heritage Radio Network approximately 12 to 1245 every Tuesday. I'm joined here in the station today with of course Miss Dasha hammer Lopez and cooking issues own webmaster and friend Jerry lavish. Hello, Jerry, how you doing? Hey, Natasha, busy texting your buddies, too busy to do a radio show or in session. Alright, call in all of your questions to 718-497-2128 that's 718-497-2128 with any and all of your cooking or non related cooking questions. So before we start, I'm going to address a little blog business. For those of you that go read the blog. And I encourage you even though I haven't been posting as regularly as I should, I have like 15 posts that I need to write. And it's not that I'm lazy, although that's also true. It's actually do have a lot of other stuff going on. And I need to get the ability to just jot off like a couple 100 words it hit and hit post. But so far, I haven't been able to do that as much as everyone in the world tells me. I should. Right. Right. I for some reason, I just can't do it. Anyway. So one of the things is cooking issues, has a forum section that has apparently been overrun. I'm putting Jerry on the spot here, but it's been overrun by spam. And we are actually attempting to solve this problem. Right Jerry? It's actually solved it solved. See how little I know it's been solved. So Barzilay and all the rest out there. Please come back. We love you. And we want that stuff to survive and flourish. So we have a guest who's where you know you're running it and and also Vicki is running it Victoria or it just it's just, it's just just Jerry Jerry's the man. Jerry is a new father, a computer consultant extraordinaire, and we forced him to do our blog work on the site. Jack has had a caller I heard coming in. Yeah. Hello, caller you're on the air.

Hi, hey. My question is fairly simple. I make pizza dough and every time I do it, it seems to shrink when I try to roll it out.

Meat well give me your exact procedure.

I just make a regular dough we use a KitchenAid usually no food processor with the dough hook and little rest and stuff arise, how long they want to go to roll it out, it rolls out pretty good. But as soon as I pull back with the rolling pin, it sort of sneaks back into a smaller piece.

Yeah, the first thing I look at is, your dough is probably fairly stiff, I would move to a higher hydration more more water in the dough probably is going to help you. And I don't know, like, I'll tell you this, I'll give you another thing is I would move away if you can, from using a rolling pin, I find that to me, it negatively affects the texture of the of the pizza, it's good. To me that texture is much better when it's kind of you don't have to be able to flip it in the air like you know, like a like a but you know, basically using your fists and stretching it is helpful to me, I always liberally flower it before I before I start, you know pulling it out. But I'll tell you my procedure in a nutshell and see if this helps I use a fairly, I don't use as high a hydration goes as the Naples style guys. I'm somewhere usually in in the area of like 70 75%, which is too stiff for real pizza aficionados. But that's kind of what I do, I use a fairly high protein flour. And so for every 1000 grams of flour, I'll have in it roughly 700 grams of water or 750 grams of water in that range, seven 750 and a little bit of yeast and I allow it to do a very, very long initial rise. And another another thing that's even more important than the kneading Is it a really good way to get textures to make the dough the night before break it into your pizza size chunks and then throw them into quart containers covered in your fridge. It's called retarding the dough that's also going to improve your dough texture and flavor by allowing the yeast to act on it longer, but you have to use a smaller amount of yeast. So for your texture, texture, rolling back, I would say one of the main things is, is if you stretch it out, it won't pull back as much as always going to be a certain amount of snap back. But when you roll it I think it's going to snap back even more. Is this making any sense? There's it's not useful at all.

Well, until I try it, no parts of it makes sense. My general procedure I start off with the you know the sponges pretty wet. And as I'm needed, I continue that flower until basically it's sticky, but it's not tacky, but not sticky, right? That sounds like like a post it note sort of stickiness point. All right. When I tried to do it, I mean, I'm not sure what it was, you know, try to push it on the board, sort of make a disk and let it hang and send it out that way. I find that works pretty good until I lay it down flat and then you know, it's like elastic on your underwear sort of prints back in real fast.

Maybe you're not proofing it out enough maybe you gotta let it rise a little longer. You always are gonna get a little bit of a little bit of a snapback can be done you can you pull a window on it if you've done the window test especially on well. I can get to Luton window without any problems. Yeah, so it sounds like your dough is okay. It's maybe you know overstretch it a little bit a little bit thinner before you drop it because invariably I get some snapback. I don't get like rubber Bandy snapback. Is the dough

warm or cold? When you rested the rest of it room temperature and you're resting in the fridge.

It's a room temperature. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, I usually make enough. So I wind up dividing it up and freezing parts of it. And then I thought refrigerator next day, let it come to room temperature in the room. And does it stuff the same stuff, you

let it do its actual second, like it's proof out in the room. So it's actually rising and it's dead at room temperature not cold at all when you do it. Because if it's cold at all, it will snap back. A lot more has this interesting, you know, Here's a technique that no one no one say I do this, right, no one's gonna say I do this. But when I make pizza, usually I'm making eight fairly large ones at a time and I don't want to make them to order. So what I'll do is I'll actually use a very minimal amount of flour just enough to get it on my fist so I can pull it out into shape. And then I throw it onto a piece of parchment paper. It'll semis the pizza will semi stick to the parchment paper because it's it's, you know, I hadn't flowered the parchment at all, so the dough will kind of stick to the parchment a little bit, which prevents any contraction. I'll then make my pizza on the parchment and I'll shove the parchment entirely with the pizza onto the stone for the first 3540 seconds up to a minute of baking depending on how hot My oven is, just until the bottom forms a crust and releases from the parchment. Then I'll quickly shove my peel and pull the parchment out and finished the bake out on it. A couple advantages this one I think I saw of your snapback problem with it too. You can make a bunch of pizzas and put them on sheet trays and stack them up in your kitchen ready to bake so you're not making pizzas every time you have to throw it into the oven. And so to me, those are huge advantages. The one thing you have to be careful of especially because my oven goes up to 850 degrees is the burning of the paper. So what you have to do is after you put the pizza down, even after you do the sauce and whatever is to trim around the dough with scissors I sit there's very little pizza overhanging the edge and that will prevent you from getting a lot of scorching or or burn marks on the on the paper and then remember to just get it out of the oven you know after after it unsticks so in my oven that's 45 seconds or so. In your oven maybe longer I don't know how hot your oven gets me Yeah,

I it's about 525 Yeah,

yeah, so you could let it go a little longer, but maybe that would help too and also solve the problem of having to stand around in the kitchen the entire time your family's eating pizzas Well, it's only two of us that's not a problem for me it's like always like 14 people and so I mean you know it's it's a nightmare to make them you know, as they go in and just just punches me up but anyway, give that a shot. See if that helps out.

I just use an AP flowers out okay, or should I be changing my flower

I mean, I've heard people make with all different hardnesses of flower and I think obviously your hydration is going to change a little bit but I you know the my favorite pieces that I make are made with Sir Galahad which is a fairly high protein like really good other than just the protein quality just a really well milled nice flower from King Arthur but it's not unfortunately generally available when I'm making it at home I use a hacker's which is a fairly they're AP is a fairly high protein AP I wouldn't use like a southern style really soft AP if you're using like a good northern style AP that's a little bit harder. I think it's okay or you can use the better for bread stuff that but I never use the King Arthur is better for Beretta. I either use their Sir Galahad or I use hackers. What about like kappa zero

double zero?

I've never used it. I've never bought it. Do you like it for pizza? Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of people are very particular on it. But like, you know, I'm lazier than I seem. And

we have different flowers.

Yeah, you don't? Well, you're on the West Coast. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you have some really, really good flowers out there. You have that real artisanal milk, his name has flown out of my head for some reason in San Francisco. You can also go to King Arthur the website. Yeah. And they'll sell Sir Galahad over the web. And that makes a great great dough but it might be prohibitively expensive to ship it, you know, on a batch per batch basis. But if you made a lot of if you make a lot of pizza, I know they sell 50 pound sacks. That's how we get it. But anyway, I hope that the paper sounds like a good idea though. Right? give that a shot next time around. Right thanks. Remember parchment, not wax. All right, thanks a lot for calling in. Okay, bye. Okay, we had an interesting comment in on the extremely fascinated with this irradiation of seeds thing. And it turns out there are other people fascinating, fascinated with too. So it turns out that after we dropped the you know, the bomb in World War Two, I think horribly, especially the second one. We then went on to do a whole series of nuclear weapons tests in, in the atmosphere underground underwater in the 50s and 60s, which make for some amazing viewing by the way, if you've ever seen the videos of them, it's just completely compelling. Awesome, spectacle, horrible idea, but completely compelling, awesome spectacle. So one of the things they did was they irradiated seeds, and that the reason they radiate it was to see whether or not we could read germinate our seeds, after we had been hit with a nuclear weapon right now our seed store store is going to be obliterated, or the three people that survived the war, if they happen to have some corn with them, can they grow it again? Okay, so that's a you know that that was kind of the testing. But they found out they got some interesting mutations from this. And they started purposely radiating seeds in an attempt to find seeds, and shoots and leaves and plants in general, because you can also get mutations on the branch of things called sports, right and fruits. So they were trying to get new varieties to find a peaceful way to use nuclear radiation. And this spawned an entire movement. Now I'm fascinated with it, but I don't really know that much about it. And we got a tip off from Tom Metcalf, or listener Tom Metcalf, who tipped us off to another person who seems extremely interesting. I've never met her, Paige Johnson, who's a garden historian, and she has a blog called Garden history girl.blogspot.com. I've never liked dot blog dot blogspot sense. So we're at Black back. Anyway, she is apparently apparently from reading it like one of the world's experts on nuclear on atomic garden. She calls them atomic gardens. So I encourage you to read everything she's written on it, she's going to write a book on it. And if you happen to be in London on the seventh of June, she's going to give a speech on it at some, like Royal Horticultural Society who had a thing of a jig and I wish I was in London, because I'd love to go it turns out we used to do we used to have these things called atomic gardens, here's what they would do. Right? They would stick a a pipe into the ground full of like, you know, some some horrible, you know, gamma radiation, you know, some radioactive element with cobalt, something I think they would sink it into the Earth into a lead enclosure so that you could go look at the garden and the garden was arranged in concentric circles around the radiation source. And then soon as you walked out with your Geiger counters, after you've collected your irradiated stuff, they would mean Me Me, me, me, me, me, me, me raise the radiation source backup and start nuking out the the produce again, and there's pictures on them online amazing stuff. Anyway, so thanks Tom for that update and we're sure to hear more about atomic gardens and I wish I could go see that speech and you could also go to the wedding in oh well he doesn't say is that the seventh? Is that the same time? He doesn't care yeah I can you know people keep saying though the wedding I'm like I know someone's getting married it's no it's like people really care about this royal wedding. Unfortunately yes, more so than the than the die and Charles thing now come on, right. Anyway,

it's a natural extension.

This is not the this is not the royal wedding show if you said the Royal Wedding if yours in 2.0 if you if you tuned in to listen to information about the royal wedding and whether or not what's your family has gone into an anorexic friendly frenzy as a result of all the cameras on her you've turned to the wrong place. I'm saying this like this is like when people tell me I don't you know I wish that my television was in good working order but I no longer have cable because I told my wife she could cancel cable if I could do XY and Z never thinking she would actually pick up the phone and cancel cable so I am cable list I know nothing. Thank goodness about anything. It's gonna be on regular Wait, you have an iPad? Yeah, but you can't stream the news that is not the news that I used to watch now Now what this is also not the does Dave Arnold know what's going on in the world program is only about well not only about cooking anyway, call in all of your questions 27184972128 committed Wow 718-497-2128 cooking issues?

Right. The following is a public service announcement from Heritage radio network and tune into hot grease every Monday at 3:30pm. Hungary strives to bring sustainability localized sourcing and other forward thinking schools of culinary thought to the minds and kitchens of everyday folk. Each week, Nicole Taylor's conversations cover the entire spectrum food enthusiast from internationally renowned culinary masters to moms on a budget looking to impress their tiniest critics. Again, that's every Monday at 3:30pm hot grease on the heritage Radio Network.

My favorite title of any program here on the heritage Radio Network hot grease. Love it. It's not the best title ever. I wish we could come up with a company name is good. It's hot grease. Awesome hot recent anyway, call it all your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 71849721 to eight. All right, so an interesting question in from Paul. Paul says, Hi. Hi. I'm Jewish and we're currently celebrating Passover. The first night of Passover comprises a Seder night a big family meal with many reading songs and central to this question symbolic foods Yes, this is this is true. One of the many symbolic foods that appears on the central Seder plate is a roasted slash burned egg in its shell which represents the Passover sacrifice from 1000s of years ago. Preparing it is a royal pain in the blank blank blank as it has a tendency to explode and create a smelly mess. In the past. I've roasted it in the oven raw and this year I first boiled it then roasted both times it exploded. I then tried making which is a nightmare. I then tried making a small crack in the shell and this did not work either. Do you have any suggestions as to how one could do this reliably without having a huge cleanup job afterwards? Cheers, Paul. Interesting question. For me, especially for several reasons one I used to when you're in college, I found a microwave and then he threw it away because the cord had been broken and they didn't know how to fix it so I just fixed the cord it was a $0 fix and I had that's how I had my microwave in college right I didn't really use it to cook food we used it to see what we could blow up in a microwave right so of course we did all this stuff that's now since become commonplace marshmallows CDs which are awesome for about like like half a second they form like like lightning fingers like the emperor is zapping you from Star Wars. You know the the grape trick. Light bulbs are always the best. We found a case and a half of light bulbs and I must have blown up the entire case and a half 300 watt light bulbs are freaking amazing because they light up for a long time before they heat up the envelope of the glass and then explode. One time actually I had one blow up such that it didn't shatter. It just blew a hole in the side of the glass. So have like one of those high speed photographs. I can't believe I lost that anyway. One of the fun things to blow up in a microwave is an egg. The problem with an egg is it doesn't reliably explode in the microwave when you nuke it and you can nuke it for like, like three or four minutes. And just when you think it's not going to blow up, you walk up to turn off the microwave and bam, she blows up and I have to tell you, it is extremely impressive and there's no piece in there bigger than your pinkie and Yes, Paul it Pinky pinky nail that is and Yes, Paul It does smell god awful. So I feel for you. However, I have roasted eggs in the oven many times without them exploding. And I haven't done any particular prep work on them. And I'll tell you what, why and what so LVTs you know a person that we like to make fun of here on on cooking issues. He's a French dude who you know talks about it. He's the guy who keeps saying molecular gastronomy is a good term no matter how much we tell him that that term is kind of disgusting sound anyway, it's his philosophy is feeling anyway, that is 65 degrees Celsius egg has a perfect runny yolk in it because he cooks them in the oven. Right? Anyone who has a circulator out there, anyone out there in circulator land knows that a 62 degree egg is running and a 63 degree egg is set at a 65 degree egg is most certainly not running in the center. And it's this may sound like a crazy like angels dancing on the head of a pin for people who don't cook using circulators and low temperature. But this is this is like I don't know, I don't know, what's the equivalent of it's, I don't know, it's crazy. It's just nuts. Take

it 250 or 400. Yeah,

big. It's like, ya know, it's like cooking a cake and like a pizza oven at like 800 or like or like, or like deep frying water. The only person I know does that is Alexander tat Talbot using methylcellulose Anywho. So it's crazy. But to the reason why it doesn't work is because you get evaporative cooling off of the egg when he puts it into it because he doesn't need an oven at 65. And as it's evaporating off, the temperature in the egg drops. And it's actually only 62 inside the egg, which is why it works for him even though it's theoretically flawed technique. So to prove and test this I cooked a bunch of eggs in the oven at a fairly low temperature though at like, you know, 250 303 25 in that range Fahrenheit. Now we're back on Fahrenheit, God's God's way to bake anyway. So excuse me, all you Celsius people anyway, don't worry, I could meet in Celsius. So what's interesting is you can look at the eggs, if the eggs don't have marks on the shell from where water is evaporating out, and you can see them because they'll develop little brown spots on the egg where the stuffs evaporating off. Because as water evaporates out of the out of the shell out of the egg itself, it undergoes mild reactions that are very low temperature like similar to the way they would if you cook them in a pressure cooker. Or if you did humming eggs by putting them in a pot and letting them cook overnight in a bread oven to eat, you know, for your for your Sabbath meal on Saturday night, right. So they should turn brown right in the shell even without burning, right? Which is amazing. And but if you don't notice little, little bits of water, or pinhole brown marks all around the eggshell, it means that that eggshell is sealed. So maybe your eggs are coated with something like wax, or maybe you have a really I use typically use crappy supermarket eggs that break really easily. Maybe you have like a free range egg that is really like has a really good shell like I know, Wiley dufrane, right now is doing an egg and he's using some really fancy eggs. With really happy chickens, those happy chickens have very thick shells. So he's having a really pain in the butt problem, shelling them all. So I don't know what temperature you're running at Paul, but try running at a lower temperature, it's still going to turn brown even at 350 or 325. Because the mild reaction is going to be happening at those low temperatures. So don't worry about having those temperatures not be that high, roasted lower. And I've never had one blow on me using that technique. If you roasted higher, you might be able to build up pressure fast enough to have it explode. Apparently you can because you've told me you do. So anyway, Paul, give that a shot and let us know how it works out. How's that sound? Sounds Good day. Good advice.

We hope that you've you're not getting a little brown marks that evaporative release has also released depression.

Yes, yeah, exactly. So if you're if you're if you get those little pinholes, it means you're releasing pressure, you're not going to blow it if you're not getting pinholes you're building pressure. She she's going to blow right and just put cracking the shell in one place. Especially here's another thing if you if you actually if you boil it beforehand, you might be having some water trapped inside might be harder actually to get the water out of the center. I wouldn't I put them in raw and you might be plugging the plug in maybe yeah shows Well, I put them in raw uncovered, like, you know, on directly on the rack, which I shouldn't do because they might break. And that's that's how I do it. And I haven't had one blow yet, but maybe we should Well, next time it's somebody else's house. By the way. I'll try it at a higher temperature. And I thoroughly recommend that if you are going to blow up an egg in the microwave. If you if at first you don't succeed. Try again. It takes longer than you think if every four eggs maybe one of them will blow up and please do it in somebody else's microwave, right? You know, someone that you don't like, like next time you get invited to someone's house to a party that you hate and there's a million people there and you can't believe he got invited there. Just toss a couple eggs in the microwave walk away. don't really do that. Don't do that. I'm getting a look like I can't believe you're recommending this. I'm not I'm not I'm just kidding. You're getting

ready to replace your microwave. If the last thing to do in the current microwave would be to blow open and

you would not believe what my microwave looked like it had all kinds of scorch marks on the inside. I mean, you know, I I've done every awful thing you can do to a microwave.

Well, I want to repeat that I could probably make the statement that no animals were harmed during the process of his testing.

No, everyone always asked me to, like, you know, to have you put a Live X, Y or Z No, no, no, like, especially vacuum machines. Every one every every class I've taught in cvwd Not the you know, the one for professionals who come in because they got a lot to worry about anyway. But like every class I would teach on it, they ever someone would ask me have I put a Live X, Y or Z in the vacuum machine? I'm like, no, no, no. Although I do have a friend of mine, and this isn't one of those a friend of mine, but it's really me a friend of mine who threw a cockroach infested piece of kitchen equipment into the microwave because he just didn't know what to do is like, like this, put it in the microwave. Turn it on, they pop like popcorn is what I'm told. Yeah, I haven't done that in the microwave, but apparently that that is a true nuff back story. Okay. Rolf wind writes and he says, Hello, Anastasia doesn't care for me likes you better. Anyways, writing to me. All right, fair. I have a non tech question for the show. Sometimes not today. Today is a tech question. I've read widely disparate opinions on the suitability of previously frozen meat for making cured pork products. Specifically, I want to cure pork belly, which is a very good idea for bacon and pancetta and gel for guanciale. Glenn Charlie is one of the world's great products. The stock has given me a squeaky face. How the heck could you give me a Squinkie face on why Charlie? I over ate gone today, so I don't like it anymore. I've over eaten lots of things. Yeah. You don't want doesn't mean you don't like it but you like bacon? And you like pancetta, yes. And you don't like one shot? No, not really. It has like a sock flavor. No,

that wasn't that was like moldy.

I'm here to say no, that is not the case. I prefer. There's a bunch of the artisanal Guan trolleys out there I think a bit too dry. I like a little like a moister one truck. For those of you not hip to the fact guanciale is cured pork Chow. You can cure it either flat or you can cure it rolled up or you can cure it flat and then roll it up. I like them all I the one I use is rolled up it has a higher fat percent and they make something similar in the south called JAL bacon, but it's doesn't taste the same to me because it doesn't have the same spice make sure that you should get one Charlie. In my to my test. There is no finer topping for pizza in the world. And guanciale. guanciale might be the best thing you can put on a pizza if going back to pizza. And what I like to do is if you saw it on there, it doesn't need a lot of heat. You can just throw it on there raw and it'll it'll crystallizer in chunks. I slice it really thin because it's mostly the fat and I like the texture of the fat when it's real thin and basically just the heat looks at it and kind of shriveled it up a little bit but doesn't make it hard and doesn't take away from the anxiousness of it

lardo mptf.

I have Yes, I have. I like Lara was also a good product you like LaDonna Stasha. So you like bacon, pancetta and lardo, but not guanciale, folks, now. You know what I have to deal with on a daily basis?

I guess you don't like carbonara?

No, I do like but I use pen Jetsons that have been which by the way on carbon. Please. Look, I'm all for authenticity, right? But we are in the US of AI here. And he's the smokiness accentuates the dish very nicely. Thank you. And I think bacon tastes delicious in the cupboard. I know. Yes, it does. No, you're wrong. I'm not wrong. I'm not saying it's authentic. Right? Authentic? Like, you know, okay, authentic carts don't have motors in them. And yet I enjoy a cart with a motor on it to help me carry this stuff around. Authenticity isn't everything. I'm going to

tell you that you may like bacon, cream and noodles, that's a good thing, but it's not carbon.

So saying it's not authentic, but it's delicious. So for everyone out there saying that you like somehow you know your taste buds are shot or you know, it's just because you're an American or just because x y and z Hello smoking is tastes good in that dish. It's not carbon on me. It's delicious. Yes, see, Jack said that's for last week's comment. I'm here to say I'm also I'm a firm believer in having the authentic dish the way it's supposed to be prepared without any embellishments without any changes, preferably in the location and by the people who make it so you know, because a lot of times it isn't just the preparation it's the specific ingredients if someone has in a particular place cooked differently, they taste differently the environments different their cooking utensils are different. The way they handle ingredients is different. So if possible, you should go taste the taste the dish made by the people who are supposed to make it however, once you've tasted that and you have a target in your head, feel free to do anything you want to it including using bacon which is straight up delicious. Okay, I can't believe we've totally we've totally sidestep Paul's question. Okay, so he wants to cure pork belly for bacon and pancetta and Chow for guanciale. But the heritage breed meats that he likes to use are available to him only in the frozen form just freezing alter the muscles in such a way as to change the salt curing process and does the method of freezing make a difference? Aside from these specific specific questions, any insight on meats or cuts or applications that are especially freezing friendly or unfriendly? Thanks he likes to show in the blog regards Roth well thank you for liking the show in the blog we appreciate hear it here's the story first of all it used to be in the United States that all the cuts of meat that you were going to use for curing all the pork was frozen for a deep freeze actually for a while to cure any Trigonella in advance of curing it which also is going to kill tricking Allah you know the parasite, very few you know the worm, I live a disease as measured in Worms per cubic centimeter muscle mass right anyway. So previously, most if not all, the meat that we cured is frozen right now it turns out that we there's a color Yep, this is going to take a while so we're off I'm going to come back to your question and you take the color and come back and we'll talk about freezing and and meat caller you're on the air

Hi Dave it's Brian in San Francisco how are you?

I'm alright, how you doing? Good.

So I got a bunch of gift certificates to like Amazon and Crate and Barrel and stuff because I got I got married pretty recently. Congratulations and thank you look into get some new pots and pans and just kind of upgrade from the crappy mishmash that I have and I'm having some trouble trying to figure out exactly what to invest in. I want to get stuff that's gonna gonna last and what are your recommendations?

Are you looking for like a standard pot and pan set?

I don't necessarily need you to set but you know I particularly I have some pots that aren't aren't very good. I have one pan that I like I have some better nonstick that are kind of old and decrepit. And they're not so nonstick any any longer. I have thought about cast iron, but I'm not sure that that's the way I want to go for for everything.

Okay, here are my thoughts and then you can bounce some stuff off me one. Ditch the old ditch the old nonstick get a new you should everyone should have at least one nonstick lying around. I have a fairly big one and a fairly small one. Assume that they will get obliterated over the course of a couple of years and that you have to show them what is 14 like 14 I have like a 14 I have big burners 14 and an eight right. Yeah. And so I get those. And then I assume that those things are going to be gone after a couple of years of you still not saying to get a cheap one. I don't know whether scam can fix the problems that they used to have Scampton us to have some problems, but they're fairly easy and they actually have a warranty on them. So if you break them, or you know, ruin the coding, you can send them back right, invest in with one invest in one good pressure cooker. If you get a good pressure cooker like Kuhn recon, even though it's very expensive, the pot itself is quite a good pot, and so you can cook with it or without scorching on the bottom. If you're doing onions or something before you're going to add liquids to it to do a braise or a pressure cooker. Right? Get one piece of cast iron prep. I have a whole bunch of cast iron but get like, Well, I would not get a new piece of cast iron I would get. I would go to seriously go to a thrift store and find a piece of cast iron that has a polished face on it. Current cast iron has a pebbly surface, it's called as cast, whereas they used to sometimes do a machine surface finish are sanding on the inside surface of the pen. And those ones when they're seasoned are like glass. And they're awesome, right but they can't find a manufacturer enamel

coated cast iron you want we want one that's

why no enamel is fine metal enamel is fine for enamel coated cast iron, I would only get a Dutch oven. That's what I have. I have like the laku say dutch oven, but any one of those enameled stove any one of those guys, it's going to be fine. What I mean is like I would get one I would for everything else, I think the cast iron is going to be a pain in your butt unless you want to get a muffin pan or something because they're really heavy to lug around. I would get but I would I like having a cast iron skillet for biscuits and things like that. And just because every once in a while I just feel like it I feel like having cast iron because you can put it on the stove and crank the heat really high and walk away from it and not worry about it because it's not going to work out on you and it's it's going to be good. But I would get one from a thrift store or from a in use source. So long as it's not been scrubbed. It's not too rusty and the service is glassy smooth, and it's hard to get nowadays because they're rough and pebbly but I will get separately from your enameled one right? I wouldn't subject an enameled one to the super high heat that I would suggest a black put a black cast iron skillet on right now for your standard pots and pans. I would go for any high quality pen that you like the that you liked the look of I use all clad at home and they stood up to years of constant abuse. I don't have any fancy all clad but I'm not shilling for all clad either. It's just this is what I use at home and I get a fairly wide variety. You're gonna need a couple sizes of sauce pan and you know at least one small like, like a skillet and then Uh, you know, a larger stock style pot, I wouldn't spend a lot of money on a giant stock pot, that giant stock pot is the thing you should have, it's cheap, because you're only going to cook liquids in it. And it does not matter the quality of the pot if all you're going to be doing is boiling water in it unless it looks so ugly that you can't stand you know, looking at it in your house, right? So all like I tend to go cheap on my huge pots that are only going to have water boiling in them this making any sense what I'm saying?

Yeah, what do you what do you think? Um, so like, I understand what you're saying but the every every day pan and are those what are those made of like the all class

aluminum core with them, they have an aluminum core and they have stainless steel. And a lot of them I think now that a lot of the clouds have the ability to go on induction fairly efficiently. They have like, I guess it's either magnetic stainless or the stainless itself is good enough with induction that they can run induction or they can run or they can run off of gas or electric but you need that aluminum slug in the center for rapid and even heat conduction.

Also the Alclad has an insane warranty. Really, I've sent I've sent two burns back I've never had to send my step my my nonstick back twice and they sent me a brand new one

my one gripe with all clad is that it the inside of the pan, you can see where the handle is riveted on now I've seen in the school. I've seen those fail from extreme abuse, but at home they've never failed. But the one problem with them is is they are difficult to clean out around the rivets. But that's my only real. That's my only real gripe every other handle would you say? was horrible. Hell yeah. the only the only time the only pans I've had that have had welded handles on. I've broken those welds off so the rivets I've never broken

Barkeepers friend is also something that makes it easy to clean.

Yeah, get rid of so spend your money on the stuff that is going to see a lot of high heat you're going to be frying saw tang with don't spend the money on something it's going to see mainly water. The exception being I would spend the money on on like a coon recon pressure cooker if you can, if you can afford it, they're expensive. They're like, two $300 for one pump. That's expensive. That's like what he's got to look. He's got to also buy all these other pots and pans, you know, for price of one. You know, Kuhn recon and get the big one, by the way, you know, you could get a whole set of a starter set of all flats, you know,

but the pressure, what do you what do you think about copper? You know, I've seen some like copper lining,

do you enjoy cleaning things a lot, we just interior copper lining. Usually the copper slugs aren't big enough to have that much of an advantage. Copper is a better heat conductor than aluminum. Copper is the ultimate material from a heat transmission standpoint and they have a nice hefty weight to them. They're extremely expensive, if the copper is showing they're very hard to clean and keep clean. And the other problem is, is usually a lot of people have copper pans, they don't have enough copper in them, so you're not really getting the advantage whereas the aluminum slug pans have a real thick slab of aluminium on the bottom of them. And you can look look at the bottom of your pan before you buy it. You should see it's going to have like a little basically shelf of aluminum underneath it. You can see it in many pans the bottom of the pan should be like a quarter inch thick. Yeah, they're thick and that's what you really really want so I wouldn't spend I wouldn't go the extra money on copper unless you like to polish things like Thomas Keller's like that he likes to polish things well, but that's the only reason I think that's what I