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I'm Steve Jenkins. I work for fairway markets in the New York area. And we're awfully proud to support heritage radio. And we care so much about everything that goes on out here at Roberta's in their studio. Because they talk to people who are serious about food and that's what we are at fairways we're serious about food we we just care very deeply about about you as as a customer and how you cook and what you cook with and how you entertain and and that's why we love to support heritage radio because it's pretty much the same thing. It's wanting to to find happiness through serious food and people who are serious about it and care about learning everything there is to learn about it. And that's that's we're kindred spirits. If it's something worth having in your kitchen, you're going to find it at fairway. And if there's somebody worth talking to about food, you're going to find them on heritage radio when we will be supporting you guys for a long, long time at fairway on your personal grocer Steve Jenkins, fairway mark,

barbecued beef

Hello and welcome to cooking issues here on the heritage Radio Network. I'm Dave Arnold, the host of cooking issues in the studio today at Roberta's with Natasha hammer Lopez coming to you live every tuesday from 12 to 1245. How you doing today? And Sasha? I'm okay. Yeah. So it next week, am I in the studio or my in Los Angeles next week, assuming I can get this all straightened out.

I think you're in Los Angeles. I'm not here at all.

Where are you? You're off the planet. You're on the glass space shuttle mission. Where are you? Where are you going?

I told you I'm going to an island.

Rhode Island. Yeah. Well, that's kind of nice. Anyway, we might be doing the show from Los Angeles next week. I'm not sure we'll keep you posted via tweet, calling all of your cooking related questions technical or not to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Okay, so let's take some of the questions. We got emailed. I got a question from Eric Xu wacky. He says I was sketching out an idea for a pork belly dish to replicate the feeling of being at a barbecue spot using the sense of smell thought of using one of the electric water pipes used for he says you know what, but it's for marijuana. It's like what they are is they're actually often the question used for you know what, but instead of herbal medicine, ie marijuana, there would be apple wood chips in a bowl and the smoke generator would be shot into an upside down serving vessel stemless wine glass for instance, covering a dish so that when you open it service, it would emit the smell of being in a place with a barbecue smoke pit. Alright, so what We're talking about here is back in the 80s, they developed these little miniature or 80s. Yeah, 80s, they developed these little miniature electric vacuum cleaners that were powered with double A batteries. And they were for geeks like myself, I own several that. So you could vacuum out your keyboards and small parts and electronics and crap like that. So, and then some enterprise so they're supposed to be vacuum machines, right vacuum cleaners, miniature, and some enterprising, but extremely lazy pothead who couldn't take the trouble to inhale the smoke from their pipe, because they were so they were so stoned that they they couldn't, literally could not inhale, said, Dude, I could put the batteries in this sucker backwards, and it will run backwards. And instead of being a vacuum, it will suck. The it will it will shoot smoke. And so what they did is they screwed eight they burnt and screwed a bowl, you know, like a pot bowl, little one on the top of this vacuum cleaner, and then ran it backwards and shot marijuana smoke out of the out of the pipe. Right. So that's where we were from, you know, I don't know, sometime in the 90s, probably up until the very early 2000s When a group of chefs started using them as smokers. Right. So the most famous chef that I know that uses it and used it fairly early was one Roca, I saw them do a presentation at Madrid fusion, I believe in 2005, or four or something like that. And they famously took these took these things and would do basically what you're saying Eric wishes they would, they would inject smoke under a close under like, you know, a serving dish, and then the dish would be completely obscured. And then when you lifted the dish up, it would, the smoke would go out. And you'd have this sensation of smoke and a really awesome visual effect. And a really good kind of going from not seeing to seeing with the clothes only instead of being metal or being glass. It's very famous presentation works extremely well. I've seen it demonstrated a couple times I've never eaten it. Harold McGee and Wiley have both had it and they say it was a good dish. Another thing that these guys did was they took a like a little glass almost like a looks like a gravy boat with a flat top and they sealed plastic around it. And then they poked a little hole in it, and they put the smoke into that will look with a little hole and every time your spoon hit the dish, it would send up a little smoke ring. That was also a really good presentation really cool. And people also use it for smoking things like you'd wrap something inside of let's say a like a bowl or a Tammy with with a plastic wrap inject a smoking lead sit personally, I don't think that it has the same effect as actual smoking because the smoke is static, you're not constantly generating it. And after a while the smoke is gonna settle out. I don't think it's the same as actual smoking. The other problem is that the pothead vacuum cleaners are tend to be built not that well. But they're and they tend to burn out and there's there's kind of problems with melting and getting overly hot. Phillip Preston at PolyScience makes one that's kind of more Robo and built for cooking. I don't know what he call he calls it a smoking gun. So he sells one that's kind of meant to stand up the kitchen, were the ones I went to, I don't know what what the kids call them nowadays, we call them a Headshop. Right where you go and you buy pot paraphernalia, you know, but you have to pretend that you're using it for tobacco, otherwise, they won't sell it to you. If you say I need something to use with marijuana to return food or to remove, you know, I mean, but if you tell them that, you know, I'm going to smoke tobacco in this thing, then they can tell it to anyways. So like, you go to those you buy one but don't expect those ones to last too long. They leak and they they melt because you know whatever they're not. They're not high quality as my son would say they're they're low quality, low quality products. So I hope that helps. Okay, Ryan Santos wrote in and he says he's looking for some guidance and cooking pork blade steaks cvwd, they are crazy, marbled fatty was thinking of trying more of a pork belly type approach than a pork chop steak kind of approach, any insight would be appreciated. Well, I've never actually cooked. So basically what the blade steak is, I mean, if I'm right about this, which I assume I am, is it's basically a steak cut from the pork shoulder, not the picnic shoulder, but basically the front shoulder of the pig and has a little bit of the blade, the blade bone in it. And I have cooked whole pork shoulder before and it works quite well. But you know, I've never cooked just a blade steak that way. The problem with any of these kinds of cooking when you're doing Suvi or low temperature for a long time is it contains lots of different muscles and it's very hard to get all the muscles perfect at the same time because if there's a muscle that has less connective tissue in it, then that muscle is going to lose its texture and get kind of a little mushy by the time the rest of the muscles are going to get are going to get done. And you have that same problem with pork belly as well. Now with pork shoulder, I don't think you're going to have to go nearly as long as you would have to go for a pork belly, right. So pork shoulder, you know, you can test and see how you like it. I would choose a relatively low temperature like between me depends on how you like your pork between 58 and 60 Celsius which is 140 and below, although the port camps Council still believe that you can cook pork to 160 degrees Fahrenheit and have it be juicy, do you think that's even possible and stashes that even? It's not? It's like physically impossible, right? Yes. I mean, like it unless you slather it with some sort of external juice, it's not going to have its own juice. But anyway, so I would cook between cooked between like 138 and 140. Fahrenheit. And you, you know, try cooking it for see whether or not 12 hours is enough, actually, whether it's wet, or if that's too chewy, then try it for a day. And if that's too chewy, try it for two, I would not go over two days, honestly, I would probably go for like 24 hours, I like a little texture and my meat I don't want it like to kind of mushy and I'm pretty sure that some of the muscles in that steak are going to turn kind of fiery mushy. So there's, there's a kind of, when you overcook something low temperature, it doesn't have the same characteristics as overcooked. Meat in general, overcook low temperature meat doesn't go dry. Right? It goes, what I will say is kind of like it just loses its texture and turns mushy. So what'll happen is when you bite into it, like it'll be the first bite will explode kind of with with juice. But then as you keep chewing, it'll taste almost like little fibers like a paste mush in your in your mouth. You've had it before and stashes inaccurate descriptions. And it turns to kind of like just kind of paste in your mouth on to me unpleasant. Some people actually don't mind it. But to me, it's like it's a huge, it's a huge problem. So that's what overcooking means in low temperature kind of a Suvi. environment. But tell us how tell us how it works out. Because I'm interested, I've never I've never done it before, it looks like a very expensive cut of meat. Another thing I would do is I would cook it in a vacuum, I wouldn't, I would suck a kind of a medium kind of a vacuum one, I wouldn't go too hard, I would then take this thing, I would pick it all the way through to whatever tenderness you want, then I would let it cool down like 100% cooldown, and then put a righteous hard sear on it on the outside because you'd want I think you want to you want to basically have it tastes kind of traditional, probably have a look real nice crust on the outside and be soft in the inside, I think would be the way to go. Also some tests that we've run recently, I don't salt the meat beforehand. Here, this is kind of obvious. And I don't know why I never thought of it before. But we were running a bunch of tests where and typically when if I'm going to do what's called direct serve, where I'm going to cook it and then serve it right after it's right after it's been cooked. I will solve the meat before I sear it and then put it in the bag and then cook it. Problem is is that if you're storing the meat for a long time, overnight, or the next day, the meats gonna get cured, and it's gonna lose some of its juiciness. It's gonna get firmer, like cured meat, duh. So the basic rule is if you're going to keep something for a long time, the exception is braises that you're going to cook for a long time really braise the meat out, in which case you can solve it beforehand because it needs to be seasoned throughout. But if you're going to take a piece of meat and serve it like a steak, you don't want to salt your meat before you serve it. All right. And we'll talk about that in a minute. Because apparently we have a caller caller you are on the air.

Dave, how's everything going on? All right. Glad to hear that. I got a quick question I saw you know, I've been getting more into fish and I saw that you had a little thing on you could Jimmy I believe it's called right and it kind of really fascinated me but I don't fully understand it. How could kind of destroy it since like you destroyed the spine and something. It makes the fish taste better.

Are you Are you do you fish?

I don't fish I just you know, I'm just now getting into seafood a little bit more.

Alright, this is a very this is very glad you asked this question because I just shot something with Dave Chang last week on E Kojima hadn't done EKG may work for a while. And then I just came back and did some just this week. So this is very, very good question. So EKG Mei is basically just the entire range of Japanese fish killing techniques. And it has a whole range of them. But they're they basically accomplish two things. One, they are meant to bleed out the fish properly, right, because Japanese fish they are all about getting the blood out of the fish. And the second aspect of it is preserving or enhancing the texture of the fish based on how it's killed. Okay. So there's there's two, there's the the spinal cord thing is one aspect of EKG may called Shinki Nuki. So I'll just run you through all of the techniques. So there's a technique that we haven't experimented with up until now, but it seems like a very good technique. And so I'm going to do it from from now on, they make a little curved knife, right. And so the first thing you do is you take the live fish and you you impale its head with this curved knife and you destroy the brain, right? And so what that does, right normally what I would do instead of doing that is just sever the spine. Okay, with a knife up right under the gill flap, sever the spine and what that'll do is disconnect the brain from the rest of the muscle so that the brain is no longer controlling the muscles. Two things though. One it takes, it takes a little bit to get the knife in there. And also, it takes a lot of force to accurately break the spinal cord there. So you might miss in which case, you're gonna cause stress to the muscles, the fish has more of a chance to flop around, because you're doing more adjustment while you're doing that, and so there's more chance that you're gonna drop the fish, which causes stress to the fish into the muscles. So my new theory and and also when you sever the spinal cord, that way, the brain is still alive in the fish. And so if you're going to serve the head, there might be some detrimental effect on the, on the taste of the head. Although I don't know this, I haven't studied that. But in general, I think just for humanitarian reasons. And also, for ease and speed of killing, which equals better flesh reasons, the best thing to do is to take this knife or an icepick or whatever, go into the brain, right, you know, above and behind the eye, and basically take its brain out right now the brains gone, then I would cut the spinal cord at the top and the bottom, when you sever the spinal cord near the tail and near the front, what you're doing is, first of all, cutting all of the you're cutting the connection from the brain to the spinal cord. Now the spinal cord is isolated from the from the brain, right. And that's good for reasons I'll tell you in a minute, but to your severing the blood vessels that run down along the bottom of the spine. And what that allows you to do is really bleed this sucker out. So if you cut just in the front, that's the equivalent what's called Gill cutting, there's what we do kind of traditionally, but you cut in the front and the back the basically the fish can pump the blood out of its body more efficiently. And eventually we're going to stick it in water, like salted iced water, and then it's going to pump out and pump clean water into its system and you're going to get really nice pure blood out fish the Japanese really liked they don't like that, that taste of what they would call the Chi eyeline, which is that bloodline that runs along like on a fish that you see the dark stripe and like a tuna, they would prefer, like the like the lighter flavor of the thing has been totally bled out. Right. So that's the, that's the basically the bleeding technique now that the next technique, the further technique is to then take a needle, the needle like a wire, and run it up the spinal cord, right, so not in the center of the spinal cord. But at the bottom of the spine is the other blood vessels and at the top of the spine are is this is basically where the spinal cord is running. And it's a straight shot all the way up. And so you stick a needle through the spine, and it basically wipes out the spine, then that's kind of the interesting technique that because we can kind of intuitively understand what's going on with all of those first steps, right with the bleeding. And you know, those all kind of makes sense. It's this taking out the spinal cord with a needle is the thing that is kind of weird. And we know we'd like why would you do that? The answer is, is because the spinal cord even though the brain is not sending messages to the spinal cord, the spinal cord has its own way of sending out messages to the muscles, there's things called Central pattern generators that are in the spinal cord itself, telling the muscles to basically to swim, right. And they don't swim because they're no longer coordinated by the brain. But they're sending impulses to the muscles causing those muscles to contract. Then when the muscles are have these impulses going to them to contract, what happens is they lose their energy quicker the ATP, which is the which is your energy source, in fish muscles and your muscles in my muscles. So by depleting the ATP, right as ATP is depleted and the energy stores and the muscles are depleted. That's what causes the muscles to go into rigor mortis because rigor mortis basically, if you know that you need energy to contract your muscles. You also need energy in the form of ATP to release your muscles. So as you lose ATP and a dead muscle, they just ratchet tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter and they can't unwrap it they can't open up. So it turns out that the faster you go into rigor mortis the faster you deplete your energy the harder the rigor mortis is and fish muscle is strong enough to do damage to itself with rigor mortis. So when it comes out of rigor mortis, right, if you haven't shoved the needle up the spine, then your fish turns softer it's less firm right? So when you put the needle in the spine what you're doing is preserving the texture of the fish you're going to get less gaping in the in the in the muscles less dripping less weeping and it's just firmer The weird thing about eg man some Western chefs can't can't wrap their heads around is that it takes longer for the fish to be in prime prime condition after you do you can Jimmy right when you do eat good Jimmy if you're any fresh fish that was just killed it's it's going to taste kind of almost crunchy you know almost like crunchy like like giant clam sushi kind of crunchy right? And then or like you know GIA duck or gooey duck rather clam that kind of crunchy and then you got to let it age and a Western fish one that hasn't done had the the needle up the spine is going to come out of rigor faster and so for a small window you might prefer it but when you taste it, you can tell that that has kind of a machinist that's come from the this hard rigor that isn't in the fish that has had the needle gone up the spine. This is especially true of fish that do a lot of swimming Hearts swimming. So like stripers tunas, you know any any kind of bass any hearts when we think but also things like Fluke you can make a difference. There's some evidence I haven't tested every fish that I've tested tastes better with, with the needle up the spine. But there's some evidence that certain fish like place, for instance, don't benefit from the from the spine, but I haven't. I have never tested a fish that didn't benefit and I've tested black fish stripers hybrid bass. What else flew a bunch, you know what I mean? And so, I've never had a fish that didn't benefit. It's just making more sense now. We still dizzy off the air and I talked him off the air and talk to him. I think I talked him off. I took like 18 T cutters cut his phone off by the time I got anyway. So they're like the benefit is huge. The problem is, is that it's big. But we have a nuclear. Okay, well, maybe I'll talk more about EKG may in a minute because it's a fascinating subject. But we have a new caller caller you're on the air.

Hi, this is Andy from Chicago. Hey, how you doing? Good. How are you guys?

Doing well doing? Well. I didn't get out to Chicago this year for the NRA. I missed it. How was it? Did you go on?

I did not gonna I'm not in the industry myself. So I missed it. I heard it was pretty big,

though. Yeah, I love going to Chicago because I really like I really like eating in Chicago. It's a great eating town. So and I like walking around Chicago. So I'm sorry. I missed it anyway.

Yeah, great town. I'm actually really excited. I got reservations to Alinea in August, so I'm pretty pumped about

that. Oh, great restaurant. You ever been there before?

It'll be my first time. You know, grandson getting all that press recently. And I saw it on Bizarre Foods, too. So pretty excited. Yeah. I've been reading a lot about

it. Yeah, get get ready. Because like if you get the full tasting and the wine are there for hours, and they're gonna roll you out in a barrel. You know what I mean? You're gonna be like,

yeah, yeah, I'm pretty excited about it. We're doing all you know, the full shebang.

So you have a good time. You have an early reservation?

I think it might be like a 630. Like, Daddy, I don't remember.

Yeah. Do a couple of feedings, right? Yeah, no. Well, I once did that thing at like, 930 at night, had the full tasting and the entire kitchen wanted to eat. He made me stick a knife in my head because we weren't out of there until like 230 in the morning, anyway.

Wow. Yeah, we're definitely on the earlier side. So but I think I might have to take the day off from the next day. Recovering. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So what's your question?

Of course, during assaults, I'm doing a pursuit of style ham in my attic right now. And when I got to ham last December, I went over to the spice house in Chicago, which is a great spice house, they only had one type of carrying salts, I forget which it was. But the guy that said that the other kind, which is essentially saltpeter was illegal to sell in the United States, which I didn't think was true. But you know, so I got I got the one he had. And, you know, just I'm just wondering, what's the difference between the nitrate and nitrite? Which one is saltpeter? And why would have claimed it was illegal in the United States or some somehow not able to be sold?

Yeah, well, he's wrong kind of on both counts. You are lucky to live near a place called butcher Packer. If you're going to get stuff for curing you should deal with the guys that put your Packer they're really good and they will sell to you not just to kind of industry types and they have all the all the different things. There's, there's two, there's a bunch of different things you can buy, right? The two curing salts that they're sold are either called insecure one or insecure two or preg powder one or preg powder two and there's another thing you can buy called Morton's tender quick right? Most of them the insecure one and the preg one and the tender quick have as their base nitrite sodium nitrite. Right. Right. saltpeter like is an old form of nitrates that can be used but you know, sodium nitrate right is not the same as like what they would say saltpeter straight saltpeter sodium nitrate is not illegal, right? The fact of matter is, you're only supposed to use nitrate right? It on things like country hams or like produto if well, you know in Italy they don't use nitrates at all in the pursuit you know, perfect the department things but in American country ham and there's some American country and people that don't use nitrates either right? The deal is that think of nitrate right which is like the insecure to right think of think of nitrate as kind of time release nitrite because what happens is, is that you rub the cure into the surface of the meat and the nitrite right gets used up fairly quickly as it goes through turns to no does its curing thing right? The nitrate or nitrite right then the nitrate then takes longer to convert to nitrite which then converts to you know the no which does its which does its thing. So nitrate IPs are long acting nitrites. And they're only used on whole muscle cut long cured items like countries. Right? So you never use a nitrate on like a bacon or on anything like that. Because those are you were pumped, or even if they're not pumped, they don't need to care that long. Does that make sense? Yeah,

yeah, definitely. So if I went with the sort of more quick release version, you know, obviously, I would, I would imagine there's slightly more risk of, you know, botulism or something like that. But, you know, as long as the rest of it's done properly and cured properly, it should be okay. Right?

Well, you're, they're not really going to get, you know, watch, someone's going to come and say that I'm wrong, but you're not really going to get botulism in something like a ham, you're gonna get, you're gonna get botulism in something like a sausage, or like a sausage, where it's mixed together. First of all, like hams are sufficiently dried, and sufficiently salted, supposedly, to get rid of any risk of botulism, right? That night, then the nitrites in the nitrates and nitrites, do a couple of things, they ensure that you're going to get that cured color, right? That cured color will come just from long aging, right, which is why you don't need it for pursuit to department or for American comprehends if you age it long enough. But if you have a shorter aged hand, we've ever seen a shorter aged hand, when you cut it, the parts of the area will be kind of gray, and they were under cured, right? And so you can you can see that that kind of thing happening, but you're still not going to get botulism, because the inside of the meat unless you hit it with a knife is relatively sterile, right? And plus, you know, the openings

are so heavily salted. And you know, it should be okay, if it's done, right. Yeah.

So if it's in your attic, right, the ham, then assuming that your attic is not really air conditioner, right? During the summer, if it gets hot, does it get hot?

It gets I mean, we haven't AC but it still stays relatively warm up there. Like what? Like, you know, probably 80 or something like that.

Okay, so the 580. So you're getting close to American country, ham temperatures, I mean, one of the primary differences between prosciutto and, you know, Italian style prosciutto and an American star, right. It's a temperature and the humidity. So an American ham is going to be done in a fairly high humidity, fairly high temperature environment. Think Virginia in the summertime. Right? You know what I mean? Or, and by the way, just because you don't smoke, it doesn't mean that it's not an American style, because many American hams are not smoked, right. You know, plenty of them. So, you know, that's kind of just a choice that that people make How old is it right now?

Right now it's about six months, six, seven months something right around there. I got it in late December and it started hanging in like early January basically

nice. Is it hanging upside down? Or is the hot pointed down? Or is the hot pointed up?

Hawk up in a pursuit of style and I waited it as I salted it, so it's got that nice flat, you know, prosciutto look to it. But it's haka,

right. You might want to lard over the face of the meat at this point. Okay, how long ago do you do that? I did it pretty early on actually right I mean, you want to let some of the moisture come out of it beforehand but then when you lard over the face you're now you're stopping a lot of the moisture from leaving on that site and that's one of the things that Americans don't do that I wish they did do because the face side of the meat gets to dry but you didn't do bone to get the right bone still in your bones still in? Yeah, cool. Yeah, so how long are you going to hang it like a year longer?

I'm thinking like a year yeah, I'll probably dig into you know, I might try it in December maybe maybe January I actually did a did another one before this just like a month before this one that was skin off. And you know more like a 12 pound like bone or I don't know femur and ham radio that I got from a guy so that one's gonna care more like six or eight months I think I learned over that one too because it was basically you know no skin on it some fats bill but I put a nice coating a lot over that one. So that one I'll probably break into in the next month or so. But this one I'm gonna wait till at least 2012

Right Yeah, and you know the ice pig trick right shove a nice pic into it to smell it. See how you're doing?

Yeah, I mean, you know, cheered aroma that's kind of you know, obviously takes practice, but I'm just looking for a cure. Pammi me aroma, right.

Yeah. And you can search also to make sure that you don't have like a taint along the bone line or anything like that. By the way, I've had many hands that had like a taint, like a little bit of like an uncured part that along the bone. And it doesn't affect the rest of your hand. I'm sure you already know this. If you've already. If you've already done this, by the way, a good place to look for a country Hampshire and there's a guy named Norman Marriot, who's a who's ex. He's emeritus at, I think Virginia Tech, and he has a good online PDF on ham carrying in a bag in case you want to try like total American style somepoint bag carrying which is actually kind of kind of inter maybe do an American stuff here. Next one. Definitely. How much did this guy how much of this guy way before you carried him the big one?

It was right about 25 pounds, I

believe. Yeah. Nice. Nice and it was a good one. It

was a good departure from Central Illinois supplies a lot of the local Chicago restaurants. And the other one is the other one I got was from this great Amish farmer in Central Indiana where I spent a lot of time real, you know, purely pastured real real natural pork, so I'm excited for both of them they should be pretty tasty nice

sounds it sounds like it's gonna be delicious. I certainly hope so.

I'm waiting for it ready for man? I wanted to be wanted to be 2012 right now.

Yeah, wait waiting is the hard part. That's why you got to keep making them so you never have to wake up the next one. Yeah,

yeah. I'm gonna wait you know next December once the temperatures drop a little bit I'm definitely getting on another one. So

beautiful. All right. Well, thanks for calling the

question what's your favorite country Haven't you know maker who you buy from regularly? Or who would you recommend if I were to get one if I were to buy an American country ham, I think would be a good place to start All right. Well,

there's there's a couple of really good ones the problem is you got to make sure you get the good ones from the which means you can't you have to physically call and ask like how that particular ham is so that like my go to hams are I like s Wallace Edwards. Right? He has, he has one that's now called a Syriana, which I don't enjoy the name because I hate like pretending that it's like some sort of Spanish thing. But he is currently making those things with Patrick here from Heritage food, his heritage pork, they're unbelievably marbled and they're, they're very well made. I really like those. They're kind of smoked in in Virginia Tidewater style. And I think he puts pepper on I think they smoke even the Siriano ones. They're delicious. He might make an unsmoked one. I really like Nancy Mahaffey at Colonel Newsome is over in Kentucky. You know, their recipe goes back a long way. I've heard that she's now experimenting with with some heritage pork. In fact, I tasted some is delicious. Her ham is hung in an area that has kind of a lot of like funky molds. It's kind of like she's near a swamp. And her hands have a very faint wisp of kind of like a blue cheese note that I really, really enjoy. But you have to call her she only cures once a year in the wintertime. And she sells this stuff out. So you got to make sure if sometimes she has some older ones that are held over from last year. You can call her and she will hold them for you. She's great. I like Alan Benton makes some good hands. I haven't had his in a while Ben's country ham closer to you. Burgers, Smokehouse makes like some commodity hams right but they also make a like kind of their heritage ham which is 12 months old I believe it's called like attic age but you have to call because they make some hams for Walmart you know what I mean? And then they make and they make some that are you know that are real there oh yeah real so it's all about kind of it's all about with with these with these companies like calling them up and and just talking with them on the phone and making sure that you're getting because they think that you don't want it you know what I mean? Like they think that you want a four month old commodity ham and because that's what people have been asking for because people have been searching for based on price and they've been they wanted to kind of a less salty taste and you're like listen I want you know a wonky old salty yeah so burgers one's not super funky and it's not smoked their attic one it's it's a milder kind of a ham. I think the the Syl said words depends on which kind of aging room he's in. But this new marble stuff is great. Nancy Mahaffey stuff really good Alan Benton stuff. I don't know if Alan Benton is currently doing anything with like the the heritage breeds. The interesting. The problem with American country hams isn't that we don't have the technical expertise to make this stuff because we do. It's that it's at our port quality has been lacking for many years in terms of marbling and also the older use, the older an animal is when it's slaughtered, and the higher the slaughter weight of the animal depending on the genetics, obviously, but for to give an animal, the enzyme characteristics of the meat change as the animal ages, and they change more favorably towards making country ham. So the older the meat is that slaughtered not only the more flavorful will it be, but the better it will age. So you know, these older bigger hams not only age better, because they're physically larger, and they tend to physically have more fat which protects them so they can age more. But also, their enzyme makeup and their initial flavor profile is better. And so as we start realizing this and as like some of the top notch American country and producers start buying better pork, I think you're going to see us competing with some of the top European people kind of more head to head I mean, I like it anyway, I prefer American country hams tastes profile because it's aged at a higher 10 But you know, like that, that's kind of the last step we need to get to is Oh, also frenchville farms. Another really good one there in Kentucky. So they're really good. Finch fill farms. Yeah. And Finch Ville Farms is interesting. They also, you know, basically I think they cure like 111 or two times they do a natural kind of cured they're also nitrate free as as a nuisance, right. So you should take those To side by side because one smoked and one's not and they're both Kentucky but they're aged in very different environments in Kentucky. They make they make a really good they make a really good product as well. Cool. I'm excited man. Yeah yeah, thanks for the info day. No problem. Remember to call those guys before you buy it. So you know you're getting the right one. Yeah. All right. Cool. Yep. All right. Thanks a lot. So let's go to our first commercial break calling all of your questions to 718-497-2128 That's 471849723

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Hello, and welcome back to Cooking issues, call all of your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. So how cool is that? We got to call him that, that we let us pump not only heritage meats, but also one of our sponsors, as well said words. It's great. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. And and I also happen to believe in those products. So you know, it's a problem. We remember the time we had a sponsor. sponsorships. Yeah, the reason like other shows, like people will read sponsorship, the sponsorships, you know, they But Jack, our intrepid engineer has to record ours ahead of time, because no one ever knows what the hell I'm going to say about a particular sponsor, because if I think that that thing is crap, or if I don't understand why what its, you know, selling proposition is, I find it difficult to kind of sell it right. You're not the only one. I do it across the board now. Really, because there was a bunch of us like that. Yeah, you know, yeah, but yeah, but that's well said words. And you know, our parent Heritage Foods USA are two things I can I can kind of stand behind without qualification anyway. So we were talking about before talking about LGMA. Alright, what was I saying? Do you remember? I don't,

you were explaining the entire process. And then you were talking about the chain thing?

Yeah. So Oh, my God. So I don't know how much I'm allowed to say, you know, Chang has this new TV show. But it's not a TV show. It's it's an iPad application, and you get to watch a little bit of it for free. And then you have to buy the rest of it. And it's being done by Anthony Bourdain production company, which, you know, anyway, so he had me in to do the segments. I don't know how much I'm allowed to say about it. Because you know, you're gonna have to see the iPad and stuff. But I will say this, before this week, I had never had real like line line caught right on the boat striped bass that had been done. EKG may with the spikes through the head and with the with the needle through the spine. And we did in this time, they were huge. They were like, you know, 40 inches. And they were caught right off right off Montauk. Right in a boat. EKG made right on the boat. We had western style, which means Montauk style. So Montauk style is is your your guild you'll cut the gills so it bleeds to death, and then throw it directly on the ice and let it bleed out. Right. So that's one step above just taking the fish and throwing it into into your ice well, and letting it die by asphyxiation, which is how a lot of people do it. Because a lot of people they think that it's kind of barbaric to do all these things to the fish when you get them out, like cut their gills and stuff. But what it really is, is they just don't have the Kohonen to dispatch the fish when it comes when they take it out of the water. And they'd rather have the things suffocate to death in, you know, in a box where they can't see it. You know what I mean? Which to me, so in other words, like all of these things where you people say you're doing something kind of inhumane by, you know, sticking a knife in his head and then cutting the spine at the gills and kind of spine at the tail. First of all, like these things are done. To kill the fish as quickly as possible, right, which is the most humane thing to do instead of letting it suffocate, right? Secondly, if you're going to kill and this is something I said when we were shooting, I believe is if you're going to kill an animal to eat it, right? You are obligated to one try to reduce its suffering as much as possible while you're while you're killing it, which has the added benefit that it makes it taste better 90, in every every example that I've ever heard of, or seen the killing an animal in a way that is the least trauma to the animal makes the best tasting animal. So you're obligated to be as humane as possible. And you're also obligated to make the animal taste as good as you possibly can. Right? I mean, don't you think if you're going to kill something, if you should least taste that's why like I told my kids, you know, don't waste meat. Remember, my kids are like, Daddy, I have to eat this meat. And I'm like, yes, because a cow died for it. I'm like, yes. You know what I mean? It's like, you shouldn't really waste the stuff and you shouldn't really, you should treat it well. You shouldn't overcook it. You're obligated not to overcook it. You're obligated not to mess it up. You're obligated not to you know I think waste a lot when you when you when you eat the so anyway, so these these techniques, which some people find kind of barbaric. In fact, my stepfather who's a surf caster, he's in Cape right now he caught the biggest monster fish I've ever seen someone catch surf casting for stripers in the cape. The thing was, I don't know how long it was. It was like, like 4648 inches as crazy as over four feet long. I think it was huge. Anyways, so he didn't he didn't EKG me at one because I haven't shown him how but he's like, my fish don't like things shoved up their butts. I'm like, Listen, you know, you're killing it anyway, you might as well have it be perfect by shoving it's not up here. It's not the but anyway, anyway, you know. So even though it looks weird, he's afraid to do it because he thinks the other surf casters are going to think that he's a lunatic and going to try and come over and like, you know, get mad at him for torturing the fish. But in fact, you're doing the fish a favor by killing it quickly. And then you're doing yourself a favor and honoring the fish by having the flesh be as perfect as it can be. So we tasted these different ones and the western style fish was definitely not as good as the Montauk style perhaps the Montauk but mon toxin Long Island for anyone listening who doesn't know the kind of this coast. And it's the tip. It's where Jaws was, you know, supposedly from, there are lots of fishing boats off Montauk is beautiful anyway. So if you're doing good honor to the fish by doing it that way. The one that I know what I was talking about. Also, Western chefs need to kind of get their wrap their heads around the fact that the freshest fish isn't necessarily the best fish. There's a Chinese technique where they prize freshness above all else, and mustache and I saw a demonstration of this once where you literally wrap the live fish's head in towels and then cut the muscles of the fish Oh, can't move anymore. And then deep fry the body while the heads still alive. Now, I don't practice this at the please don't write in or call in. Because I remember that demo we saw. Yeah,