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.

broadcasting live from Roberta's in Bushwick, Brooklyn, you're listening to heritage Radio network.com.

Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. I'm Dave are on your host of cookie issues coming to you every Tuesday from 12 to 1245. Live from Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, calling all of your questions cooking or non cooking tech or non tech related to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 currently joined in the studio as normal with this dosha the hammer Lopes the hammer of cooking, he signs Tasha, in a couple of minutes, we're going to be joined by superstar Chris Young, who's coming live from the mainstage last yesterday at star chefs, this being the star chefs edition of cooking issues. So he did his mainstage demonstration at the International chefs Congress yesterday. And he'll be here in a couple of minutes. He's on the BQE right now. Caught in Brooklyn traffic. He's not from Brooklyn. So I think he doesn't realize how awful it can be getting around Brooklyn sometimes when you need to get somewhere right and start, right anyway. So make sure you know Chris Young, one of the authors of the mega cookbook, Modernist Cuisine will be here and he will answer any of your Modernist Cuisine or glider Did you know that he's a glider pilot? No. Yeah, he he's like an avid glider pilot like you know, catching thermals and all that not like, you know, little paper airplane gliders like the ones that he flies in. So he's an avid glider pilot. So if you have any questions about gliding, or about anything else, really, I guess, call in your questions to 718-497-2128. But think about him for a couple minutes because it's going to take him a couple of minutes probably to get here but make sure you call in. Because that's going to be fun. Okay, so what happened since last week? We had our fundraiser right yeah, yeah, so the museum and food and drink had a fundraiser at my posh restaurant, which was, I think an unqualified success in terms. I think the people really had a good time. Yes, they did. Yeah, they had a really good time. Mario Batali. Mario Batali comes to the event and is was bidding like a lunatic in the auction. I mean, first of all, I don't know whether if I don't know whether you know this out there but one of my skills is to go completely off my rocker bonkers lunatic during an auction situation. Would you would you agree that's one of my skills, great auctioneer, or at least crazy. Like if you want if if what you want for your auctioneer is crazy. Then I think in fact, in our next event is not should we think about this in our next event. I think I'm going to have as one of the auction items. I'll do an auction for you. Oh, Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, like that, like, I'll do like a charity auction for whatever your charity is. Yeah, right. Because I'm sure most people get like higher ticket items or like auctioning off like a country or something like that. I can definitely get that that money up there in terms of how much that country is going to sell for as long as they give me the data on the country beforehand. I need the data. I need to get jazzed up, I can get jazzed up about pretty much anything, so long as I have the data. Okay. Today's show again, is being I don't mean that in a negative way. I'm just saying they must like us, which we appreciate. Today's show is brought to you again by the modernist pantry. I will read the I'll read the promo word for word. Today's show is sponsored by the moderns pantry supplying innovative ingredients for the modern cook. Do you love to experiment with new cooking techniques and ingredients but hate to overspend for pounds of supplies when only a few grams are needed per application? Modernist pantry has a solution. They offer a wide range of modern ingredients and packages it makes sense for the home cook or enthusiast and most cost only around five bucks, saving you time, money and storage space. Whether you're looking for hydrocolloid pH modifiers, or even meat glue, you'll find it at modernist pantry. And if you need something that they don't carry, just ask Chris Anderson and his team will be happy to source it for you. With worldwide shipping modernist pantry is your one stop shop for innovative cooking ingredients. Fans with cooking issues that order $25 or more before next week's show will get a free bottle of pectin X Ultra SPL the miracle enzyme, simply use the promo code ci 56 When placing your order online at www modernist pantry.com visitors monitor visit modernist pantry.com today for all of your monitors cooking needs. How's that? Good. Jack? Was this from

his pretty good, good, stronger than some of your previous reads?

Geez of this one are of different ones different sponsors? Yeah, you know, I'm never gonna hear the end of it. Like, listen, if you're going to sponsor the show, right? And you're going to make a piece of equipment that I've never used before. Right. I'm just saying it's hard for me to get enthused. I can't make a claim for a piece of equipment that I've never used. It's like not in my nature. It's I can't do it. You know what I mean? Like I don't mind shelling out and selling stuff that you know that I know, I agree with that. I know they make a good product, right. So like, you know, I don't know Polly signs. I like their circulator. So I don't mind shilling for them. You know what I'm saying? But if I've never used your stuff before, how am I going to sell it? Jackie's? You're still mad at me about that.

Sorry, no, I'm not bad. All right. All right. Okay, I'm impressed that you've memorized seven of the 10 digits in the phone number.

Oh, yeah. By the way, guys, I still don't have the phone number for the show memorized. I've had listeners who have it memorized. I don't have it memorized. But I'm getting very, very close. I'm just missing the middle three digits and then we're going to be good. Okay. Who said this question. By the way moustache, I don't have the name on the EKG me. You'll find it. So I have a question from about EKG, maybe you could give me by the way is the fish killing technique that we that we use that we studied Japanese style. And there's different levels of EKG mean, it could mean really just means fish killing. But, uh, we use a particular technique called Shinken. UK, which means destroy the spine. And the idea being that by destroying the spine of the fish, you, you, you basically what happens is, is that the spine keeps sending messages to the muscles even after you've killed the brain. And so those messages that are getting sent to the muscles reduce the amount of ATP that's available, if it's in the muscles because the muscles are using the ATP, the faster you use that up, the faster you go into rigor, the faster you go into regular typically the harder you go into rigor mortis, and fish muscle is so strong, that you know it the strength of the contraction is strong enough to actually damage the muscles. So when it comes out of rigor, if it if it goes into rigor very hard and very fast, gets damaged gets mushy. So if you're going to serve a piece of fish, certain fish and you do this thing, spinal cord ablation Shinken Nuki you can get a firmer textured fish. So that's that's what we're talking about. And here's the question. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on emoji me and how much wood could really improve the flavor and texture of fish caught on a rod and reel. I'm going to the Gulf Coast next week and hope to catch king mackerel, red fish, blue fish and maybe some flounder and speckled trout. By the time a fish is landed, I will have been I will have been struggling against the line for maybe as long as 10 minutes or as few as 30 seconds. Big fish will be gaffed then hauled up onto the fishing pier. At that point the customer the areas to whack it over the head and dispatch it, then throw it in the cooler. My question is, to what extent can ICA GMA improve the outcome, the fish will be stressed regardless of how its subsequently treated. My plan would be to bring the fish to the player up here, then either knife the brain or simply cut through the backbone blood vessels behind the head, then cut the tail destroy the spinal column and then bleed in icewater. An alternative would be to filet immediately if the cooler is too big for a whole fish fingers crossed because he wants a big fish. Are there any downsides to cutting the fish into large chunks and destroying the spinal column and each then bleeding and icewater? Any procedural suggestions would be appreciated. Okay. It's an excellent excellent question, Andy. Hey, Andy, this is an excellent question, Andy. Because one of the things I've always wondered on EEG Gmail is the effect of post catch stress on on an animal. And now, obviously, you want the animal to be as little stressed as rested as humanly possible. And that's not necessarily possible when you line catch something. I've had only one experience with a line caught boat, EKG made game fish in our waters, and that's when striped bass, so I did a shoot with Dave Chang, for his iPad application, I don't know if it's out yet or not, I don't know. Anyway. And one of the production assistants there, fishes off of Montauk regularly went out on a boat and got Lyme caught stripers and did EKG may with the spinal cord ablation on one. And then basically, you know, whack over the head Gill cut, throw in a cooler with the other. And there was a definite difference in taste the EPG may one being better having a better texture. So that's only an n of one. So it's very hard to know whether or not in all cases, I mean, in other words, anytime you get the fish and you do the EKG, may you're you're increasing the quality as much as possible, would you like there to be less stress as the thing is being caught? Sure. But I think it's it's definitely getting, you're definitely going to get some help, at least in the very small amount of experience I've had, with line caught fish EKG May, there was a there was a difference. And, you know, obviously the ones that are struggling 30 seconds are going to be the best. Also, you know, I would guess that the bigger stronger fish, the stronger fish is the kind of the more of effect you're gonna get. Now listen, I really need you when you go to, this is what I want you to do, please. And if you can do this for me, I want you to catch two blue fish. I mean, I know you can't control it. But I want you to catch two blue fish, I want you to do EKG me on one. And I want you to not do EKG me on the other one. And I want you to tell me whether there is a difference on blue fish specifically, the reason I'm interested in blue fish, blue fish is one whose texture and flavor can go off relatively quickly after it comes out of after it's killed. And I want to know whether EPA Genie can help with it because it's also a fish that really isn't eaten I don't think in Japan. And so it could be really an American kind of test on this. Because I love blue fish, some people don't like blue, I love blue fish. And I've never been able to get EPG made blue fish. So please, please test that. Now, instead of whacking over the head. After you get the fish and bring it over, I would immediately I would spike its brain. And the reason is, is that stops it from flopping around. And it's very easy to hit as opposed to trying to do a guild cut. Right, you could hit it over the head and then do the guild cut. But I think you're better off spiking the brain that like kills it like this and takes away the stress. And then you have an easier time getting to the spinal cord. Now cut the spinal cord and a tail. I'm trying to learn how to go through the head of the fish to get the spinal cord. So you don't necessarily need to do the cut before you do the spinal cord ablation. But I'm not not quite there yet, because that's how they do it on tuna. But so I would, I would put it through the head first, then do the two cuts, put it through the spinal cord. And when you get it through the spinal cord, if you've never done it before, you can see the fish, it'll do like a shimmy as the needle goes down so you know exactly how far the needle has gone down and through the fish so you know where you are. Now I would if the cooler is not big enough, I think you're gonna have some problems. Here's why you don't want to cut open the fish, cut it in pieces. First, you want the blood pumping, basically, you want the heart to help pump out the the blood to really, really, really clean it out. So if you can, please don't chop it into pieces before you get it into the cooler. Maybe actually, if you can get down to the water, you can just bleed it in the water where the fish is I don't know how high up the pier is or whether you can get to the water. Now their suggestion, got it right there. After you do the EKG may got it. As you after you open it up, bring a stiff brush with you. And then go under. Take your take your knife and go and cut along the membrane that's on the underside of the spine to expose and cut open the blood vessels that are running underneath the spinal column and scrub that underwater with a brush to get all of that goopy stuff out because that goes off as well. I would pull the gills out immediately and then take it and ice it and put it in the thing. I think that's going to be like Uber maximum quality. What do you think's done? It's good, good. He also wanted to know one other thing though. Yeah, I haven't. I haven't read a second. No, but there's one more after that one more after the other one that I'm about to read. Right. Okay, so and he also has a question on canning and pasteurization is two part question. He says most canning recipes call for the sealed jars to be processed for 10 minutes in boiling or simmering water supposedly to kill any nasties and ensure a safe product and the low temperature charts on the on the blog cooking youtube.com which I read Laser dedicated towards meat and poultry. I say that anything over 74 degrees Celsius is instantly safe. Do I need to process in the water bath for 10 minutes to achieve sterility, or as a 10 minute cook more for textual reason. And then be I did not use enough pickling liquor in a couple of jars and subsequently, not all of the pickled green beans are fully covered with a liquid. Is that a major problem? Okay. A couple of things going on here. So if you're going to count, okay, we're talking about pasteurization versus sterility, okay. When you're processing something, in, first of all, if you're going to can an item, if you want to achieve sterility, right, you have to you can't just boil in simmering water, you have to sterilize that thing, which means you have to pressure cook it using, you know, recognized canning procedures. And those counting procedures are based on I think what's in what's in the can or what's in the jar, and how big the jar is because you have to guarantee a certain temperature for a certain length of time at the center of your jar in order to kill any spores that are in there. So there are certain bacteria and the one they're really worried about in Canning is botulism, which, which basically form spores and can't be boiled out with normal boiling, you have to go well over the boiling temperature and actually sterilize, okay, now, the reason you can do canning at lower temperatures without a pressure cooker in certain situations is because you have enough acidity present in your product to or salt or combination of salt and acidity, to ensure that no botulism is going to grow in there. And if that's the case, you just need to kill off some of the easier to kill bacteria that aren't spore forming. And all the spore forming bacteria don't grow because of the very high salt content or very high acid content or both. So

when you are boiling something or simmering it for 10 minutes, and you're just ensuring you're getting to that high of a temperature, that's not really a sterilization procedure. So the question is really what are you trying to guard against you could, you could cook for a longer period of time at a lower temperature and kill everything that's in there from a vegetative standpoint and therefore get a different texture, right, but only if your product is inherently safe from a sports standpoint. So make this very clear, very, very, very, very clear. If you are going to sterile if you want to sterilize something and make a shelf stable product that you can leave on an unrefrigerated shelf for an infinite length of time. You have to either Kennett using a pressure canner using recognized procedures for pressure canning or you have to ensure that you have enough salt or acidity in that can to ensure that no spores, no spore forming bacteria are going to grow after you do your initial kill step spore spore so and if you if if you have that you can cook at a lower temperature for longer and basically effectively pasteurize the product but not sterilize it. On the second part of the question where you're worried about there not being enough cooking liquor in the you know, pickling liquid in it. That could conceivably be a problem. If it doesn't diffuse in fast enough, you could get possibly some growth of a product in the portion of the thing that's uncovered. It's very hard to say without knowing at first, but be very careful when you're canning to ensure that you're not going to grow botulism let's take our first commercial break

guys got a brand new place. I'm feeling squished gonna don't miss the link and check it out. Check it out and believe me the Kessler speaker Stephen capstones. Some guests with the Fed Stop stop taking place so keep an eye out for O stands for Okay gotta be gotta be welcome back,

we welcome back to Cooking issues. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 Chris Young is still on his way still caught on the BQ E, which for those of you who don't know are fine neighborhoods over here sucks. Right Jack?

It does does suck especially flushing of sucks.

And that's kind of where it's close to where it's close to where we are how we were just getting off here. Yeah, you know Roberta's like I tell you why Roberta's is designed basically solely for hipsters, and the only train really to services. This place is the L which is the hipster line. You know, we were like they threatened to shut down the l didn't even Stasha for like for like a week or something like that. Then you save every weekend. It's shut down. So what are the hipsters going to do?

There's there's a website that we can plug called is the L train fucked.com.

Wow, busting. Sad F bomb F bomb what I mean, Jack already told about they can go to it. And the answer is pretty much. Yes. Yes. Well, here's the here's the real question. Do you need to get somewhere than the L train won't take you? If you don't need to get there in a big hurry. The L train will be fine. I think that's pretty much pretty much as much as you can take the J Yes, you can take the j if you enjoy a 20 minute walk. Okay. Hello, another adifferent Andrew writes, oh, by the way, Andy emailed us while I was talking about that and says how long do you want to age the blue fish and or macro when you catch it? I don't know. It's a really something you have to kind of test I would after you get it home, I would take and cut them into two filets. I would taste some right away. And then I would like keep it a day and then test it there. I doubt it's going to take longer than a day to be good. We most people who eat blue fish, they want you to eat it right right away. I mean, like if you if you ever grew up fishing on Cape Cod, or you know, you grew up on near Cape Cod in the summers and people fish for you, which is what happened to me, they would give you blue fish. And because it was considered a trash fish, you know, when I was growing up, and they would tell you to eat it right away. And strangely, it's known as very oily fish and they would tell you, it would always grill it always 100% of the time will be grilled. I've never had it cooked any other way on the cape. And they would tell you to put mayonnaise on the fish. And here I think I've mentioned this on the show before but they say they don't talk like this because they're from Cape Cod. Oil gets out oil. That's how it works. But the man is on a fish because oil gets out oil doesn't make any damn sense to me at all. Makes no damn sense. But that's I'm just telling you that's what they used to say. I know you know mackerel and other oily fish you don't think of as aging necessarily, but some of the most interesting best macro I've ever had was Saba sushi, which was basically mackerel that had been aged overnight wrapped in kombu. Like he fought like the chef society was Sasaki so formed you know basically a roll with a vinegared rice and the mackerel wrapped it in combination overnight, which was delicious. So I think it's just you have to see, I just have to test it if you're gonna test it and you're gonna tell us how long they aged rice does. If she's not listening, doing a radio she asked me to do something and you know, I just actually did that was that was like a half hour ago. Condensed this question? Oh, yes, she is condensing because she is doing work for the radio show people so I apologize. Okay. Andrew, Andrew, different Andy rates and I have a few questions I've stored up rather than emailing you one little question each week. Hope that's okay. So firstly, I was wondering about the mechanics of cartouches. And whether there's really a reason to use one over just putting a lid on and what we're talking about here. A cartouche is not in cooking parlance is not like an Egyptology term and cooking parlance. A cartouche is a piece of parchment paper that you cut into a circle. And then you cut a little circle in the middle so that it just fits into a pot. And usually you're going to use that in when you're braising something you'll put that in and, and or if you're cooking certain times you'd cooking vegetables, you'll do that you'll put a little bit of water, you know, sugar and whatnot. You know, butter, whatever in your vegetables and you'll put a cartouche over it and cook it now. The theory of them is that it allows a certain amount of moisture to leave through the central hole in the in the paper right kind of like a parachute, let some of the steam out. So you get a slow reduction right without getting like it's not super fast. It's kind of a controlled reduction. And also it keeps basically 100% humidity environment. Oh For the portions of the paper that are covered, so you're not going to get on a braised item, for instance, you're not going to get a lot of drying out of the meat that is not directly centered over the hole. Right? That makes sense. So is there a big difference between that and just putting a lid on? I don't know. You know, I've never, I've never really done the test, I can tell you how many times at home I've made. I've made the cartouche roughly zero. You know what I mean, like on the order of zero is how many I mean, that's not true. I used to do it sometimes for that, for the heck of it, I just don't know that there's going to be that much benefit over keeping the lid on, I'd have to run a side by side test and see whether it really controls the evaporation rate any better, or whether or not it actually prevents kind of subsurface drying of the meat. Maybe just something when Chris makes it here from the BQ we we can we can ask him about Yeah, I'll put that on the list of things to talk to you about cartouche because I'm sure that they've studied that because they did a bunch of in depth studies of classic cooking techniques. And you know, they like to debunk the classic cooking techniques so we can actually get him going on on coffee as well get him get it get his motor going on coffee. Okay. Monitor questions about the method you talked about some shows ago with using gelatin and meat glue to make noodles. By the way, this is a why they do frame trick. One of the great properties of gelatin, as I'm sure you know, is it's fantastic flavor release. Is is still the case in this application. Also, is there any benefit in using this method over other thermo irreversible gels for making noodles, I guess? Now, that's an interesting question. I've had the noodles and the noodles are delicious. Also, they fry really well better than any other kind of hydrocolloid noodle I've had. As for the flavor release, I mean, it seemed to me that they had a good flavor release, because it's just my recollection, it would be okay, gelatin. Anytime you use a gel, you you care about whether or not that gel has a good flavor release. So for instance, alginate gel doesn't break up in your mouth very well. doesn't leak out a lot of fluid. So is basically the worst for flavor release. It's a flavor thief, it's, you know, it's kind of its alginates are the enemy of flavor, which is why you either want a very thin or very soft alginate shell, or you know, a lot of something very, very flavorful. Otherwise, you're gonna get a lot of the flavor sapped out. And that's the problem a lot of times with things like alginate things like gelatin have very good flavor release because they leak a lot of moisture, they break very easily in the mouth, and they and they're used to very low concentration so they tend to mask flavorless. Gelatin is kind of the gold star standard for flavor release for a number of reasons. It breaks very easily in the mouth liquid comes out, and also it melts at body temperature. So when you eat it, the gelatin literally melts in your mouth and turns back to a liquid flavour release doesn't get much better than that, right. So in this scenario where we're basically what we're doing is we're taking transglutaminase meat glue, stirring it in with the gelatin, the Miko is crosslinking the gelatin so that the gelatin are no longer melt not only at body temperature, but it won't melt even at deep fried temperatures. So one of the things that gives gelatin its great flavor release, the fact that it melts in your mouth is not going to happen. However, it still breaks up very nicely in your mouth almost like a pasta. So is it going to have as good a flavor release as straight gelatin? I would bet not. But it you know, it is going to have a better it does have a good flavor release. And that's just from kind of, you know, me, me knowing that for meeting it. Meaning Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, the finally, although it's not really finally because he asked a fourth question, by the way, when you when you guys write it and you say finally, make it the final question, ask as many as you like, but make the final one the last one. All right. Just kidding. I'm just kidding. I don't really care. Okay. In your posts on enzymatic peeling use a combination of two enzymes. I used pectin X Ultra SPL, which is the one that they're selling on monitors pantry, and petconnect Smash XXL, which was the first one of the enzymes really that I was using for breaking down pectin. And when I wrote the post on peeling things with enzymes, I use both have you found that peck the next smash XXL is not really necessary? In other words, can you do it just with Titan X Ultra? SPL? Yes, you can. So I no longer bother sourcing pectin X, smash X XL. I find that if you just add a little bit more of the pectin X Ultra SPL, that it works fine. The reason I initially used both was the people at Novozymes the enzyme person at Novozymes said that the one that was most optimally used to make an enzyme called peels on whose only job it was was to break down the kind of membrane around citrus fruits. And also the albedo, the white part in citrus fruit, right? That's all that thing was built for peels on, they stopped making peels are and Chris Young is coming to see him coming around. They start making peels on. And so what the enzyme specialist at Novozymes said was, why don't you use a mixture of Smash XXL and ultra SPL, but then later, it's just slightly more effective. So I just use a little more of the one enzyme than you would have the two combined and it works fine. We use about four grams per liter Ultra SPL in our in our solutions to do our peeling. So that's going to work fine. All right. We are joined in the studio by none other than Chris young author of Modernist Cuisine. friend of a friend of mine friend of the friend of the cooking issues, and are one of our West Coast buddies. What's going on Chris?

Not too much. Very frustrated with your traffic here in New York.

Yes, not used to it. Not used to it. I like that because you know in in Seattle, everything's nice, the traffic's nice Mee Mee Mee Mee Mee

I think why I'm gonna go right back to the West Coast.

All right, one question for you. Before I before I forget, we had someone write in I don't know, if you address this in Modernist Cuisine, by the way, calling all of your questions to Chris at 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. So someone was saying you know, cartoons, you know, where you cut the paper, and then you cut a little hole in the center of the paper and you put it in the pot. So that kind of gently boils down. Any any point in that is supposed to live?

Not really one that I could possibly think of all you're going to do is slow down the evaporation keep it closer to the boiling point. But no, I don't really see any benefit to it over a lid. Yeah,

I mean, well, that's the thing. So the question is, is, uh, will you are you going to prevent any local, so if you have a very tall pot, right, and I'm just talking right out of my behind here, but if you have a very tall pot, and you have let's say, I that was my iPad folks, and you have like a, like an offset book or something like that? Sure. And so your liquids not covering the thing? Do you think it's going to get any drier? Because of the because of the steam basically hitting that one section that's not covered Is it really not going to make a difference. So you can have like a local deficit if humidity there, I mean, I don't know. That's the only I don't

see it making it in the oven. I can see there being a bit of an argument for using one in a brazen and oven on a stovetop, I don't see any benefit over a lid, I think that's highly suspect that it's going to make a significant difference there. But in an oven, you are going to slow down evaporation, you're going to raise the wet bulb temperature and you're going to get an effective higher braising temperature than if you left it uncovered. Oh,

by the way, this is something that, you know, as long as Chris is here, let's debunk this sucker right now. You are not creating any pressure in a pot by putting a lid on even a minute overpressure in your pot is many pounds of force on a large lid, you are not not increasing the pressure to the extent that you're increasing the temperature on the inside of that pot. What you are doing by preventing evaporation is getting your temperature actually up to the boil throughout rather than rather than allowing it to basically be evaporative cooler. So an experiment you should run at home is taken off in with two Pyrex dishes. Same Pyrex dish, set your oven to 350. Cover one Pyrex dish with aluminum foil tightly and then you know jam a lid into it so that you know you're not getting much evaporation off of it. And then leave the other one open. The one that's covered will boil the one that is not covered. won't agree. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Okay, so, Chris, how was your mainstage? How was your How do you feel about it? Your second time on the mainstage starships by the way, right.

Yes, this was my second time. This This was a bit interesting. I think we attempt to do a little more cooking this time and a little less dog and pony show. Which went pretty well except for the fact that we were cut short by about 15 minutes.

Yeah, you know, when you're doing a show that you set up from kind of far away you have X amount to do and you know you're gonna do a lot you don't want to get me in 15 minutes is a big deal.

No, I had to cut a lot out and we had to compress a lot of a lot of steps. So luckily my colleague Kyle was able to keep up with me as I dropped stuff, but it was entertaining. Kim came complete with his own explosions.

Oh, yeah. Well, so I didn't realize what happened apparently what happened. Okay, so we'll get into this. So one of the things look, Modernist Cuisine cost 500 bucks. Right and and that I get this Knock, and I don't have nearly the kind of crap that you guys had. So I'm sure you get the SNOC even more than this stuff, is you need a lot of equipment, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you've heard this bullshit many times,

I've certainly heard people assume that you need 1000s of dollars with the toys to do this stuff. Which

by the way, not the case. Not only is it not the case is that, in my opinion, is that if even if you don't have access to the toys, seeing what other people can do with the toys, helps you understand food in general, even if you're only cooking with a stick over a fire. That's just the way I feel about it. But so one of the demos that Chris did yesterday at star chefs was to do low temperature reductions, without having to buy a rotor that So basically your ability to do low temperature reductions in a in a restaurant situation for under 500 bucks relatively effectively. Yes,

yes, that's that was the point is how do you how do you get on eBay, a little Google food and put together your own evaporative reduction system are vacuum reduction system,

right? So it's not it's not a distillation system? Because you can't recover? No. Actually, you know what, then it's totally legal, no even to do Portner because you can't recover.

That's right. You're not recovering any of the vapors. So it's not a replacement for a roadmap, but it is fun to point out and just needle you a little thing. You don't actually need a roadmap to do what 80% of people do with it.

Yeah, although, you know, I am the the other section where I am almost always using the illegal distillate. But in restaurants, you can't because you know, you can't you know, endanger your liquor licenses. That's the main problem. So what Chris did was he set up an aspirator pump. Get a nice, Linda, that one's not a cheap one. Oh, well, we

bought that one us though. So I think if you were to buy that one new Yes, it would probably be about $1,000 new, there's no reason for it to cost that much. I saw them used on eBay for around 500. But I didn't get into this yesterday, but you don't even need that. You can even buy the aspirating nozzles that screw on a faucet and just use the Venturi effect to basically give you a vacuum and that's what 1000s of chemistry labs around the country

do. Right but then you're boiling temperature is only going to get down to what we look here's a way an aspirator works is your you shoot liquid past an orifice at high velocity it carries basically the air with it and sucks a vacuum you that you're limited in the in the vacuum that you can suck by basically by whatever the vapor pressure of water happens to be at the temperature that the water is. So the most effective way to do this is to use ice water. And so we circulating aspirator pumps are the way to go if you want to get the lowest stuff and if you don't believe in throwing water away like absurd amounts of water. Why? Because you're talking like gallons gallons and gallons and gallons. Now I'm not going to tell you to go on the internet search for Do It Yourself meth labs and see how those guys use a Flojet pump hooked up with PVC tubes to aspirators to build your own recirculating aspirator because I wouldn't advocate that you go up and look up Do It Yourself meth labs but if you wanted to, you could go there and for about you with at Home Depot, you can get a good pump that will do this for like you know, 80 bucks, 90 bucks. And then you just go by series you have to buy two or three aspirators put them in in parallel to get a higher rate of pumped down and you can do this although I'm not advocating it. But you could do it. I'm not I'm advocating the pump. Not the not the meth. Yeah, I

think that's what's coming across here David though not entirely sure. Yeah,

yeah. Well, you know what, like Intel Intel they get so tweaked out that they blow themselves up in their own lab. Like you start with like, people who are smart enough to do Origo basically right? And you know, kind of ambitious enough to build their own setups. And so you know, they have some good ideas and then they

you know, I think what I'm hearing here is you're not you're advocating buying some stuff at Home Depot, not some phenyl alanine solution

bingo. Okay, yeah, yes, yeah. Okay, so anyway, look, we learn from everyone learn learn from meth labs if they if they're there to help you. But what I was really interested in with this setup, so basically it's just an Erlenmeyer flask with a side arm, a plug in it and stirring hot plate and it's during hot plate although you know you could get away with look, you don't want to ignite it. You see you get away with you could get away with I guess you needed to stir

Yeah, you want to avoid the bumping that that sort of the Aside from stirring and getting yourself a nice vortex for greater surface area. You will get it jumping all over the place if you were just to put it in a pot on a hot stove

right I mean my only problem with the with those stirring hot plates is that a they're not cheap. You have to get them used.

You have to get them use but there was a I literally before my presentation yesterday Google eBay just to double check, and there was a huge number of them for around Under $100, and they're they're dirt simple. So there's not much that can break about them,

right. But just so you guys who haven't used one out there, they are great, not going to deny that. You know, and they and there's men, egg bars are like two bucks from McMaster carr.com, or copom, or whatever they're like two bucks or nothing. The one problem I have with them is that their heat rate is very, very slow. So they will, once they're stable, they're good and ready to ready to rock. But just know that when you turn one on, don't expect it to get up to temperature instantly. And they don't dump a lot of watts quickly into but it's not a problem. You actually that's good for you. That's, that's good.

They're designed for a chemistry lab or stability of your temperature. And accuracy is a lot more important than responsiveness. So it can be frustrating when you turn it on. And it takes 30 minutes to get to its stable temperature. But once it's there, who cares?

Right? That's it. That's my point. My point is is that is that it's going to take a cook a while to get used to the response.

Is it really all that different than a French top, I mean, a French top you turn it on in the morning, leave it on all day, it doesn't change temperature massively. And if you're used to that, you just leave this thing on all day and know that it's hot and don't touch it.

That's that's a very good point. And but my, my another point of always says, I wish more cooks in the US were used to French stops, because

Oh, that's right, I did my cooking in hildren. With the Euros. Yeah,

I mean, like, let me an amazing thing about about them is that I think it's really interesting too, because on a fresh start, you don't you don't adjust temperature by adjusting knobs you cook spatially. So you know, kind of what you know, you know what temperature your pots going to be based on where it is in space on the top, which I think is really great. I think it's really interesting way to cook. But again, not something that I think most US cooks are used to