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 heritage radio network.com bringing you the freshest radio in Brooklyn since 2009. hear directly from chefs to farmers, artists to architects, authors to brewers and everyone in between. Check out all of our shows on our website or by searching heritage radio network in the iTunes Store. Whole Foods Market is a proud sponsor of heritage Radio Network and the Department of Transportation summer streets. A three day series of events dedicated to healthy active living on the car free streets of New York City. Join us at the Whole Foods Market city picnic area on 24th Street and Park Avenue the first three Saturdays in August. Find more information at the D O T 's website, keyword summer streets.

Hello, and welcome to live cooking issues. I'm Dave Arnold, the host cooking issues here on the heritage Radio Network coming to you every Tuesday except the last three ones from 12 to 1245. I am in Roberta's but Natasha, the hammer Lopez. You know the motor of the cooking issues bus is actually going to call in from North Carolina from the Outer Banks, but I think she's having some technical issues. We'll get her when she comes in. Let me call on all your questions, by the way, all your live questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. So I'll take the first question first. And that's from Ross McGuire from Dublin. I'm excited to have a someone who listens in Dublin. I've only managed to go to Ireland once and I only got to spend a couple hours in Dublin, which is preposterous because from all accounts it's a great city, and I'm anxious to go back so very excited. I'm getting a question from Dublin and was wondering, are we still on I was wondering if you and Dave are still doing cooking issues. The stash and Dave are still doing cooking issues on heritage radio. I pick it up as a podcast and it's become a huge favorite of mine every week. And they've been a source of inspiration which we appreciate. Ross thinks he's stuck in Dublin I would say you're lucky to be in Dublin and anyways hoping that we're coming back sometime soon. Well, here we are. And I'll tell you why Ross that we haven't been on for the past three weeks. The past three Tuesday's in a row. I have been in transit. from one place to the other three Tuesday's ago I was flying back from California because I was lucky enough to go shoot a pilot for at ABC, God knows if it'll ever get get aired. But it was a cooking based thing where I was a judge. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to talk about it except for I will tell you that I have tasted peacock now, whereas I hadn't tasted it before. Peacock, as you might know, was one of the animals that was highly prized as a foodstuff from the Roman times perhaps before, but I know from the Roman times, up through the Middle Ages, primarily because it's a really amazing looking bird. Because by all accounts, it didn't taste very good. It was kind of dry and stringy, especially using the cooking techniques at the time. And I have to say it, you know, has the ability to become a very tough stringy bird, but it from my experience over the past couple weeks can be cooked properly. And then the last two weeks, I've been enroute from and to Florida, where the main business I did down there. I did actually, if you guys are familiar with the truck, you know, the food truck explosion has been going on one of the best ones around is a gastropod in Miami done by Chef Baron, Jeremiah Bullfrog, and we did a, you know, an event together in Miami, where I did cocktails, along with Chad Zilla crew, if you know that blog, and it was a really good time. But I also went down there with Harold McGee mustache to taste exotic fruits and mangoes and we had some of the most amazing mangoes, we unfortunately, because we were caught in a torrential torrential downpour both days in a row only got to sample maybe I hadn't really counted yet, but maybe 60 to 80 types of mangoes I use, I'd like to do at least 100 in a one or two day tasting just so you can get the kind of a full of variety of different kinds of flavors that a particular fruit can can do. So you know, when we did citrus, we did one day citrus that was over 100 varieties, we did a two day apple that was over 200 varieties a pair day that was 100 rise, you know, it's a nice round number, because then you could say that, you know, you've exhaustively tasted at least that many, and you really do get you really after the first 40 or 50 Get an idea of the range of flavors that can go on. But I had no idea how good a mango can be because the mangoes that are shipped up to New York all go through a process no matter where they come from, even if they come from Florida, of going through a heat treatment to kill fruit flies and any other insects that might be nesting in the you know, or you know, whatever they do inside of the mango so they're immersed in hot water and that hot water can kill some of the aromas and also prevent the natural ripening process from taking place exactly as it otherwise would have. So basically, the mangoes we get can be okay, but they're never going to be the world's greatest mangoes. So, you know, went to Florida got them off the tree, and I can in various brightnesses and various flavors, there's a couple of different styles of mango, right, they roughly break down into ones that have derived from the Indians, Indian mangoes, ones that are derived from Southeast Asian like Thai style mangoes. And then there's a bunch of Florida mangoes that are kind of their own thing. There are hybrids of those that have been brought in but also Gyptian mangoes delicious. So there's a wide variety of mangoes and I hope to have a blog post on that soon. But I you know, I was amazed at the kind of different flavors that could come out of a mango. There's one that tastes like a creamsicle many many that have like a coconut. I mean, just amazing, amazing stuff. Anyway. Oh and astonishingly heinous dosh How you doing? Good. How are you? How are the Outer Banks?

It's actually not that human down here. Give

me a break. I have you know, I've been there. I have you know, I've been there before.

You know, I would tell you the truth is actually not that human. So

it's not human. No,

I mean, now I know. It's about 85 right now.

Yeah, but nothing feels human when it's 85. Tell me when it gets up to 95 degrees. Check back and here's what I don't want to know. I don't want to know is it comfortable? That is a useless piece of information to me. I want to know the exact temperature and humidity because you know, 85 degrees, even when it's like a zillion percent humidity, especially because I know you're stepping into an air conditioned house when you step into it. So you're like man feels great. This air conditioned house.

No, I'm outside right now. I'm on a porch. You're on

a porch right now. Yeah, and it's not human.

I mean, there's a little bit of moisture in the air, but not what I was expecting.

Well, it's not 95 degrees yet. When's it gonna get up to be like, that was

like three like two o'clock, two o'clock. Alright,

so at two o'clock, three o'clock. You know, I wish that everyone could be on the air so you can call me back? I can hear you gasping for breath while you tell me how not human it is in the Outer Banks. Up there. Okay. Yeah. Super. I mean, look, I like I say I've been there and maybe like I happened to be there on the only summer that is so hot and humid that you want to die. In fact, like even the green flies which suck half of your blood in the 30 seconds that you're outside. If you're out near sunset. We're too tired and lazy to come kill me. But I somehow doubt that. Anyway,

I'll check back with you. Yeah, you have a lot of

dancing. Yeah, well, I just answered Ross McGuire. Question on, do we still exist? And happily for us, we still we still do exist. Okay. So, by the way, I will give you the number in case someone just realized that we are live again. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. But I do have a lot of questions that came in in the interim while we were away. So I'll go right to it. Howard writes in with a question about papayas. I have a question about papayas. I've been eating a lot of papaya lately, which I can't get down with you on this because Howard, because some reason papaya is that one of the fruits that I haven't learned to love, I just had can't do something about it. There's not not me. I love love, like, like an unripe papaya as a crunchy element and salad, things like that. But I haven't figured out how to love. I don't hate them. But I haven't figured out how to love a ripe papaya. What about you? dystocia? Yeah, I

feel the same, but I do. I do. Like the fact that they're good for stomach ailments. So

well, okay. I mean, you know, how I feel about taking things for food as medicine. You know how I feel about it, but, but maybe it works. Who knows? God only knows. I certainly don't. Okay, I've been eating a lot of papaya lately. And usually, this is Howard, by the way, not me. And usually I peel and cut up the whole fruit store in the fridge. I've noticed that when I get to the bottom of my container, there's always a papaya jelly, presumably made from the papaya juices. Do you know what's going on there? Is there any way This phenomenon can be put to good use IE in a cake, jello, etc. All right, Howard, because I don't eat a lot of pies. I didn't have a lot of experience with this. So I had to do myself some research. My first theory was, you know, one of the main things in papaya that is useful is a a Protein Protein breaking down enzyme a protease calpain, which is used as a meat tenderizer. Now, usually when you break down proteins, what happens is is they break gels, you break proteins down and they lose their strength, except in certain situations, you can partially break down a protein and as they actually cause it to gel, and actually pop Aina is used in certain tests for that for gelling soy, soy proteins. So at first I thought maybe that was what's going on, but then I was not there's not that much protein in the papaya and I don't really know how that would work. Then I was thinking perhaps you were getting a low temperature yeast or bacteria in there that hasn't met No, but then I came across an article that you are going to enjoy called stability studies of papaya pectin, pectin. esterase. All right. It is a known fact, in that papaya has extremely active pectin. esterase enzyme in it. I only known about I've only known about the protein breaking down enzyme and the pain but and to anastasius point, a lot of people take papaya because of it has lots of bioactive molecules and more than many fruits. Okay. And pectin. esterase is in a lot of fruits habit, but I guess not in the same quantity and not the same activity. What pectin esterase does is actually joins pectins together, making them bigger, and actually doesn't do that. No. Does it join them? No, just just strengthens them. I don't think it actually polymerize them. Who knows, I don't know but it makes them stronger. And what happens is is that papaya can self gel based on the activity of this pectin, pectin esterase. Once the once the juice has been released from an I will read you the first paragraph of this, the pie Peck demonstrates that the pectic enzyme which has important influence on the quality and stability of processed papaya products, a short period apple pie is pumped into puree a gel is formed. This gel formation has been attributed to the enzymatic action of pectin esterase by Yamamoto and Inouye in 1963. packs and esterase is also of great concern to the citrus industry since it has definitely been established. It can cause clarification of citrus juices undulation of concentrates, which is interesting to me. I've never thought of using it as a as a way to clarify Of course I have I use the opposite enzyme I use I use a shoot pectin esterase anyway, yeah, I use I use one that breaks down. I use one that breaks down pectins to clarify things but anyway, so that seems to me to be your answer. I don't know what it's basically doing is making a stronger pectin out of it a pectin gel. So I don't know that you could use it in cake or jello but maybe you can make up a pie a juice and have it gel on its own as a good jelly. I don't know what the texture of of it is. But Howard hopefully this answers your question it's very intriguing something that I might study more maybe I'll even learn to like papaya What do you think Stasha

maybe maybe it was we tried a lot of pies we find one that we

like that's possible try a couple 100 Popeyes there were a couple down in Florida when we tried it but you know, I just didn't even look at him. I didn't even bother, you know. Use another one. Here's another one. Here's one that ticks me off guava right? People just say people just say guava mean to hell does that mean like the different guavas tastes so stupidly different? That to just say guava? I mean doesn't really make any any sense because I've never been a huge guava person as a fresh fruit. I've had lots of guava juices that I like but um, you know, I have never been a huge kind of fresh guava person. But then the last two times we visited Florida tastes we had really kind of interesting guavas. Right. Yeah, but like, unrelated in taste to each other, right. I mean, some were very acidic, like the cast that we had some were kind of yeah you know so lacking in acidity that I found them kind of sweetened, insipid. I really hate fruit that just has sweet with no acidity. Do you know what I mean? Don't you? Yes,

I know you do. Oh, I

detest it. Hate it. No, I would much rather Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, I'm that guy walking around eating the unripe berries off the trees in hoping I don't die. I don't actually do that. I only do it if I know what the barons and getting poison ivy getting poison ivy. Yes, yes. That's a story for story for later. Okay. Erin Oster, formerly of salumeria. Where's he now? Oh,

gosh, I don't remember another Sesame Place.

Good job. Good job remembering anyway, Erin also writes in about round kambrose and coffee, I hope all's well I was seeing you the other day I'm writing because I have a question for Dave. I think only he can answer although it's probably not true. Is there any advantage for making iced coffee via the 12 to 16 hour steep method in around Canberra versus a square one a Canberra for all of us who don't use kambrose is basically just either square around plastic food containers that have marks of like quarts and liters on the side. And they're very common in professional kitchens. You know, we typically use the for the seven and the 22 litre 22 Quart kambrose the most, but they you know, that's what that's what he's talking about anyway, wants to know whether there's a difference in using the round or the square. The steep method is the here's the statement method he uses at ground coffee to room temperature at ground coffee to room temperature water, stir and let it sit overnight at room temperature next morning, filter the coffee through a superfine mesh. And what you're left with is super rich and deep coffee with all the top notes of the coffee and supposedly less bitterness. This is a study that's been this is by the way, a type of coffee has become extremely popular over the past several years. And a lot of really high powered people are investigating it. I know Harold McGee is investigating it. Don Lee's investigating a bunch of people are investigating it. You want all of the recipes, they all seem to say that they use circular containers, he's wondering whether the circular versus around makes a difference. I don't think that it makes a difference in terms of the steep, but I haven't done it myself. So I don't know whether or not the actual filtration becomes more or less difficult. I'll give you a story. When we're using an enzyme to break down the pectin in juices like apple juice and then letting it sit down in the bottom of the container. What ends up happening is we always use round containers because when you pick up the container and move it to start, you know decanting the clear stuff with it doesn't have the particles off of the top. If you have a square container and you pick it up the corners start mixing the fluid, as you turn it, it acts almost like a mixer because the fluids in a square shape. And as you turn it right, the corners kind of start moving the fluid. Whereas if you use a round container and pick it up, you can pick it up and spin it. And basically you don't end up stirring the product, you move it very little. So the grounds don't get kicked up, the particles don't get kicked up off the bottom. So if you're getting advantage with this coffee in terms of your filtration, by being able to dump relatively clear stuff off of the top of for all the particles go into your fine mesh strainer, right? If that's going to increase your filtration efficiency, or perhaps even change the taste of it. Right, then I would definitely recommend going round. But if you're you know, stirring it right before you're going to pour it anyway, right? You haven't let it settle for a long time and you're not extremely careful to just you can't just to top liquid off the top before you start. Then I would say it doesn't matter whether it's square around I don't think it's going to actually make a difference in terms of how it infuses. It's just a question of how you're going to pour the liquid off the top. That makes sense. We think Mr. Atia Yeah, that

makes sense. All right.

Now I have many more questions but I'm gonna go to my first commercial break we'll come back and answer I'm calling all your questions to 718-497-2128 that someone 84972128 cooking issues

confusion Welcome back to Cooking issues call your questions to 718497 to 128 That's 718-497-2128 Jack Good choice of break music. Very good.

Yeah. Are you dancing?

Oh, yeah, I was feet pounding fist pumping it was that was that Jack was that UniStar should pick that.

No, no, I was Jack.

Nice. Good call. We should let him pick it. Anyway. Chris Anderson right same with a vacuum sealing question. Hey Dave, now the mini pack 31 MVS, here's rates 31x chamber vacuum sealer with gas flush. Wow, that's nice. The 31, by the way, is a small unit, which, you know, I'm not saying that I'd like to get one for free, but I'd love to get one for free. It's, I think it's the best unit of that size that's available right now because it's very compact, but it has a much larger chamber size for its size than the equivalent other small small units that I've had think it's like the best home vacuum unit, you know, or small, small commercial in most restaurants, I think would kind of outgrow it pretty quickly because of its limited size. But for you know a house will be perfect hint hint. Right. Anastacia Yeah, yeah. Anyway, what gas flush means, by the way, is that, after you seal a vacuum on it, you pull a vacuum on it, and you seal it, the air comes back. And if you have gas flush, you can fill that bag with an inert gas, usually nitrogen or depending on what you're doing co2, whatever makes different mixes of gas. You know, if you're doing fish, and you want to be, you know, you want to really ruin everybody, you can put carbon monoxide in there to make it keep red. Or if you want to do that to meet, if you want to rip off your customer, you can do that too. Anyway, don't do that. So what were the gas flows, you can do that. And the cool thing is you can then package things like potato chips, and they don't get crushed, because you know, there's extra gas in there. But it's totally dry gas. So you're not, it's not going to go stale. It's not going to oxidize. I mean, it's good stuff. Anyway, I have some, he has some bulk flour and a few other powder like ingredients he wants to vacuum sealed to prevent oxidation. His concern is that fine particles are going to disperse throughout the chamber either during the vacuum or during the nitrogen back backfill. Any tips for preventing this? Well, you're not going to have a problem with the powder during the vacuum cycle. I've never, the only thing I've had even minor problems with was some spray dried vinegar powder, which is extremely fine, and really wants to fly all over the room like you can't, if you pour it into a container, it like you know it comes out of the container and chokes you, you know, like it's crate crazy stuff. And I vacuum sealed that with only minimal kind of dust issues, like hardly any problems at all. Because the vacuum isn't getting like first of all the bag is there, the vacuum isn't sucking directly out of the bag, it's sucking, you know through a hole, which then is dispersed over the entire chamber. So you get very little actual movement of particles out of the bag. And it hasn't been in my experience a problem. Here's where the problem happens when you take a very fine powder, and you vacuum it on a high vacuum. When when you let the air back in, the stuff gets squashed really flat. And so you can have caking and pelleting problems with the powder like it forms clumps when you uncut the bag to use it later. And that's been my main problem with things like transglutaminase, or with the vinegar powder is that I get clumping after I vacuum. Now, I'm trying to think of a decent way to because what happens when you do a gas flush is the gas comes in via like, depending on your unit, like one, two or three little tubes that are in the bag. And they come in with enough force to really kind of like I've had bags that weren't like, you know, held on property rocket across the machine and spray their contents everywhere. So you're going to want to and I don't know whether you're going to be able to get around this problem, what I would do is because you need it to go in the bag and not just fill the entire chamber right you need the gas to go directly in the bag, you could try to put little diffusers over the front of the gas jets, turn the flow way down and the pressure way down so that you don't get a lot of spray. But you might have a problem doing doing a gas flushing that said, you're only going to need a tiny bit of gas in there to prevent it from compacting and therefore causing clumps. So you might not need that much gas. But you're definitely going to need to put kind of diffuser plates on it or it's going to kind of fire across and going to cause problems. But you're not going to have a problem if you don't use any any gas flush on it. He writes on a related note, do you have any experience? Oh, my iPad just turned off? On a related note, do you have any experience with oxygen absorbers that are sold in little packets? Like desiccants? Do they actually work? And are they food safe? All right, a couple I don't have if he's talking about oxygen scavengers that like physically prevent oxidation by being in the package and just having a stronger affinity for the oxygen than your food does. And they I don't know whether the particular ones you're looking at our food safe. I've never used them but they clearly definitely make food safe oxygen, you know scavenging packets. And I will tell you a story that I probably shouldn't tell you because it was told to me by someone who must have had too much to drink who works for an oxygen scavenging package company a couple of years ago. When I say a couple like eight years ago, they once were doing an oxygen scavenging package right a little paper insert that's that stuffed up oxygen for a major candy manufacture that worked with peanut butter, let's say, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Let's just say they were that I'm not saying they were, but let's just say it was that. And what happened was, is they would put these things in to prevent the peanut butter from going rancid. And nobody liked the taste of these Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Because, you know, they just didn't taste right. You know, they tasted not like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. And what it turns out is, is that the characteristic taste of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup is due to a certain amount of rancidity in the peanut butter. And so you know, one person's rancid is another person's resist. Now, I love Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and I'm sure a lot of you out there do as well. You wouldn't necessarily love it if I told you that what you were liking is rancid peanut butter because rancid has a negative connotation. However,

you know, if you didn't know it was rancid. And you just said there was there was like some selective oxidation and ageing of the peanut butter to make delicious Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Maybe you'd like it better, but the term rancid is so loaded that that has a problem. So anyway, long story short, they didn't use the oxygen scavenging packaging in the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups anymore because people didn't like it. So yes, they are food safe. No, I don't have any experience with them. Okay, I have a question in from anonymous Hello anonymous about sealing vegetables. I recently got an immersion circulator and cooking a lot of vegetables, and they're floating to the top is there any way to safely keep vegetables under the water so I can get the most out of my machine, I'm assuming they mean the vacuum machine because when you're cooking, I don't know. Here's the problem when you take a vegetable and you put it in a vacuum bag, or even if you try to do it in a Ziploc or whatever. Vegetables have a lot of air on the inside of them naturally right. So things like carrots, they float in water because there's air, what happens when you seal them in a bag and then cook them and heat them the air that's in them expands and escapes and inflates the bag. And then the bag floats to the top and does two things one, it makes it very difficult to have it cook evenly because the top of the bags out of the water and it doesn't get hot. And they also take up a lot of space. And they're ungainly on you know their pants, their pain in the butt. So there's a couple things you can do. If you have a vacuum machine, I recommend sucking a hard hardcore vacuum on those things. super hardcore vacuum. If you suck a really hardcore vacuum on it, you might be able to get and when I say that means whatever the full vacuum is plus an extra 30 seconds, you'll be able to get enough of the air out to get them to sink down to the bottom and stay somewhat near the bottom, they're still going to inflate a little bit when they get really hot. Another technique you can use and by the way, when you stuff that kind of a hardcore vacuum on and also any flavor you put into the bag, whether it be oil or with carrot, something like orange juice will get injected further into the carrot, you'll get more of that flavor transfer. Another thing you can do and this is from aurvey Mala Vera friend at the French Culinary Institute is you can take some stainless steel knives and throw them in you know, you know butter knives and throw them because they're not sharp, or you know, and they're heavier than spoons and throw them into the bag and seal them with the bag. And that'll drop your thing to the bottom like a stone even though it's filling with air if you have enough knives, and he does that all the time. If you don't want to end with your vegetables, you can even seal the knives in like a bottom section of your bag and then seal the vegetables on top of it. So the knives aren't directly touching. And he does this also when he's wrapping things like like when we do like reloads of meat and we hand roll them in plastic wrap and drop them those rolls sometimes have a tendency to float. So what he'll do is he'll take the roll in he'll roll it in plastic wrap and then he'll take like five six butter knives and depending on the size of the item and then he'll put those and then he'll roll another layer of plastic wrap around that and around the knives and bang those things dropped right to the bottom so it's a really good solution when you're but that mean that's basically what I recommend you got to wait the thing down even with a very high seal on something you're still going to get some air coming out of the bag at high temperatures and you have to cook vegetables at high temperatures at five Celsius and above so it really it's a tough problem but not insurmountable. So you know also you have to cook vegetables if you don't add a lot of liquid to the bag which you probably not because otherwise why are you cooking them in a vacuum bag anyway you're probably trying to concentrate the flavor of the of the vegetable and or add another one you have to cook it for a lot longer because it takes longer for the vegetable to break down even in high temperature in the absence of excess water. Okay, so Victoria send writes in about dehydrated fruit sheets Hi mustache and Dave. I'm planning on making sheets of dehydrated fruits, spices and seeds. I'd like it not to be fruit leather but to be crispy. I think the recipe I have is going to change the colors. I want to keep the color of the mixes but also have it dehydrated so it's flexible when it's baked but then shaped and gets hard similar to a fortune cookie. The base that she's using is similar to a twill base but the price As the color changes to a dark brown, is there a recipe or ingredient I can use to keep the color of these mixes after they're dehydrated or baked yet still maintain a crispy textured end product. Thanks, Victoria. Okay, here's the main problem. fruit leathers are done at a low temperature. And they always have a lot of sugar in them that haven't had all the water driven off because they're done at low temperature. That is why they are always flexible. Okay, the higher temperature products you're doing their Tweel batters right, are based on driving off the liquid and almost, you know, turning the sugar into, you know, almost like caramelized sugar, which is why they're brown right? Along with, you know, if there's any other things that turn brown in it, like milk, solids, and whatever. And when they are heated, you're basically melting it, and then you can form it, and then you let it cool. And it gets hard again, right, that's how fortune cookies work. But that's why they turned brown. So one thing I would do to change it and still have it be crispy, is switch from sugar to isomalt. If you use isomalt isomalt Browns a lot less than sugar when it gets cooked up to those higher temperatures. I'd also say you could switch to a non Tweel like, almost like some of these dehydrated maltodextrin things. Problem is they might not be as flexible when they when they when they dry down. What I would like you to do is send me the actual recipe you're using because I looked up some there are some crunchy fruit, fruit sheet recipes out there based on you know, fruit, isomalt and maltodextrin. But I don't know exactly the recipe you're using. So I don't I can't really troubleshoot it. But my guess is is that your your flexible recipes that don't get too hard, aren't cooked to a high enough temperature. And your other ones are getting browning of the sugar from cooking at a high temperature and you might be able to solve it by moving to an isomalt although it will make it less sweet. Anyway, so hopefully that helps and give us a call or give us a an email with the recipe you're using. And maybe we can help you even more. In a similar vein. Mike writes in and says hello. Has cooking issues been taken off the air? No, I have not been taking off the air. He misses it. We appreciate that we're back, don't worry. My question is how can I help keeping my homemade marshmallows from sticking together after I've cut them and cover them with cornstarch and powdered sugar, he uses a one to one ratio of cornstarch and powdered sugar to cover the marshmallows after they're set. He has been using a recipe that he found online. And I wish I had it with me some reason when I pasted it in the the URL didn't show up where I tell you whose recipe he used. I've increased the size of the recipe 30% to fill a half sheet pan. And I always use a scale to measure thereby saying he doesn't think it's a problem with the recipe. Do we have any help? Okay, the recipe that he's falling online which I apologize I don't have the site for because it didn't show up on my on my iPad. Uses as you know most of these do, and it's an egg white and gelatin mixture with sugar that you cook up, you know, to Kenny stage and you beat it in the gelatin the egg white sugar, it sets up as a foam and then it's cut and or dolloped or whatever input into a cornstarch and sugar mixture. Now, if you're if your marshmallows are too wet, right and you need more structure, you can up the gelatin one you can or you can increase the cooking temperature of the sugar to a certain point, right. But if you like the texture that you're getting, and all you want to do is make it less sticky. Right? Then what you need to do is work on the coding problem. Now all marshmallows are too syrupy on the inside really, you know too sticky on the inside, you know to have them not stick if you're actually going to touch the inside of a marshmallow. Otherwise, it would be the same as the marshmallows that are in you know, cereal boxes which are 100% desiccated right, although I liked those Do you like those Natasha? Yes, yeah, yeah, me too. I mean, they're not really marshmallows. And by the way, I mean, they kind of are I mean, they're marshmallow like things, but they're kind of more like little Morakniv with marshmallow tastes a bit so I got addicted to those suckers when I was a kid. And I want to call one of those cereal companies to see whether I could buy just a marshmallows for a project I was working on I was trying to make the world's first meat based breakfast cereal with pork rinds. It was called pickles and beanies. It was it was sweetened pork rinds with little pork round pieces with with bean shaped marshmallows. And this was you know, back, you know, I don't know high school or college or something like that, you know, 90 early 90s. And, and they would not ship me or let me buy any marshmallows from this before I had enough technical knowledge to do it on my own. Isn't that mean? It's really mean so many weird. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, I'm not going into the cereal business they could have at least just sold I was like, Listen, I'll choose whatever the closest marshmallow you have in your like line of like cereal marshmallows to a kidney being shaped. And you know, this is before I even knew how to make my own pork rinds. I mean, I've literally like either in college or like right around, you know what I mean? is like, they could have helped me out a little bit. It's awesome

to save all the marshmallows to last in the milk, like and enjoy them.

But did you ever like open the bar? box and then break it down into marshmallows and not marshmallows.

Oh, no, no, no, no, because it was a sandwich for the family the whole cereal.

Oh, well, you know what, though? How many people in the family there five, five. They couldn't have bought you your own box of cereal.

We look expensive here like 599.

Okay, look, here's my point. My point is this. You have people in the family, they're going to eat the cereal anyway. Right? Right. So if you're going to eat the cereal anyway, there's going to be another box of cereal in a week anyway, right? Yeah, right. So if the total quantity of cereal eaten is the same over a six month period, what does it matter whether each person has their own box or not? It's not like the stuff goes bad and in a short amount of time. It's not like you're gonna be able to not finish that box of blueberry within like, you know, the six months that it stays good. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's just saying, you know, in your next life, you can bring up that argument. So that's what I'm good for to stash. I'm good for that kind of logical based argument. That's, that's what I'm good at. Okay, so back to the marshmallow problem. marshmallows are sticky on the inside. So what they are, is a problem in control dehydration, you want to just have the outside be dry, so they don't stick together. The problem with using a one to one powdered sugar and cornstarch mixture, and I read the person's recipe online. And the reason they use a mixture is they thought the cornstarch by itself was too chalky on the outside, especially because it's there in a large quantity, right. But the problem with powdered sugar is it powdered sugar is going to suck up moisture from the atmosphere and from the marshmallow and it's going to be get tacky on the outside. I just there's no way around it. Like short term, it's going to work but long term, it's going to cause problems with things getting sticky. That is my feeling. Now, you could try it with a straight up cornstarch. But then you might think it's too chalky. I did some research on industrial marshmallow production. Mike and I have the answer for you. Here's what you're going to do the next time I have not tested this, but I am so confident that I'm going to tell you on the air that this is going to work because I felt so confident that I can in fact, I might make it sometime soon. Here's what you do. You take the marshmallows right and you make sure you follow all the recipe like another way marshmallows can go bad as if you don't beat them till they're cool all that you know all that nonsense, right? Whatever, whatever the recipe says just do it if because if the recipe works recipe probably works. Now, instead of putting it into a mixture of cornstarch and sugar, right, like a day before you do it or like couple hours a day before you do it. Bake out some cornstarch in the oven to make sure it's really dry. Seal it in quart containers and let it cool down right now you have dry cornstarch. Take your marshmallows right and then dust them into pure into pure powdered sugar. Right now shake off the extra powdered sugar dust. Now throw them into cornstarch. And then let them sit there with the cornstarch on them right for like four or five hours up to a day depending on how much you want to dehydrate the the outside layer of the marshmallow. Now what you're doing is, is you're letting the sugar still be the taste thing on the outside. But you're using the cornstarch as a desiccant to desiccate the outside of the marshmallow a little bit so they won't be tacky. But you're not going to pick up as much corn starch into the marshmallow itself proper because it already has that protective layer of powder sugar. Ha ha ha What do you think? It's good. Apparently that's how the big folks do it. You know what they do is they they basically do it all under pressure and inject the marshmallow from from a tube it expands automatically is cut dropped into powdered sugar and then put into a cornstarch mixture to dehydrate as it comes out. So I'm thinking that that Mike is the way to get your marshmallow problem solved. Okay, Paul, hey, you should do one more commercial break Yeah. All right. Well more commercial break calling all your questions to 718-497-2128 That's 7872028 cooking issues. Just want your nation from time to time?

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

Hey, welcome back. Hey Jack that was move on up. That's Curtis Mayfield right here. Yeah, move on up Curtis Mayfield good tune. And I like the mixture of the Curtis Mayfield with the hot grease. The song seems to work with the hot grease, right? Yes, yeah. And I'll tell you something else. I don't care whether you're a mom on a budget or not. Like, like, like pleasing your kids. They are the pickiest, little pickiest little critics, aren't they pains and that's it. That's a tough problem. Anyway, back to the questions to start. You still with us? Yes. Awesome. We got a question from Paul Kay. Earlier today, this last question and that we got and it's not really a question so much as a comment. It's kind of funny. Hi, Natasha. I thought I'd bring this article about human derived gelatin today's attention perhaps for the radio show. I'd like to hear his thoughts. And basically what it is it's a new article called new strategy for expression of recombinant hydroxylated human derived gelatin just came out. So basically, it's it's they what they do is they take the our genes, human genes for producing gelatin, collagen, I guess, or gelatin, and they inject it into a yeast, you know, they put it into a yeast, and then they grow the yeast and the yeast and just makes a hyper abundance of, you know, human style gelatin. But you know, obviously, it hasn't come out of a human. No humans were killed for the gelatin, you know, anyway. So it's like, that's, that's what they're doing. I'd like to hear your thoughts. My first thought is if recombinant technology allows greater quality control, why not use animal gene derived for common gelatin, to avoid the controversy and creepiness? I think the allergy thing is a bit of a red herring. So the reason the point here is that the reason they're using human derived gelatin for this is they're trying to think of they're, they're now looking at food applications for it. But originally, this is for things like gel caps for medicine. And the idea being that there is less power, less of a possibility of a human immune response to gelatin is derived from human tissue then from then from animal tissue. I think it's probably a red herring. I think that if it's actually a pure gelatin, protein, you know, pure pure gelatin, that's not going to have a lot of other extraneous stuff on it that I mean, maybe there's a difference, but maybe there's not I haven't read any studies on how many people are allergic to gelatin, maybe there's a lot, but I don't know, I haven't really, I didn't really have the chance to look into it. But the idea that we can have because gelatin is freaking fantastic, right? And there's a whole there's a whole group of people, vegetarians, you know, who won't eat gelatin. So, you know, whether like the idea of a recombinant gelatin, whether it be you know, bovine derived or human derived, you know, the strain of it, I think would be awesome because there's certain things that gelatin does better than anything else, marshmallows, for instance. Now you can use Carageenan mixture of Carageenan and, you know, Lucas bean and or other things gum to produce a marshmallow. But gelatin is really really good. Also for jello gelatin is really, really good. And now can you approximate jello using things like Carageenan? Yeah, but you know, you know, is gelatin gelatin is still kind of the reigning monarch of taste in you know, hydrocolloid. Like we maybe it's because it's traditional and has been for so long that we just grew up loving it, but it's, it's good stuff. So if they can make one that was price competitive, and also have very consistent quality cause another problem with regular gelatin is it's of differing qualities depending on the source where it was derived from, how basically hydrolyzed how broken down into proteins are, and that's why you have different blooms strengths of gelatin because they're naturally derived product and gelatin from a fish doesn't work the same as gelatin from a you know, a pig skin or, you know, animal, you know, cow bones or whatever. So they're all different, and the processing makes them all different. And so this is gives the possibility of having a very consistent gelatin product where no animals are harmed. I think it'd be interesting real question is Would a vegan use it? What do you think the starch what a vegan use it mean? Like question is like, what is it? Like? Why, like what other words like what would be the if you were a vegan? Would you use it? I would think you could. But I don't I don't know. Right? What do you think? I don't know.