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.

Bringing you peace alive from Robert is indeed Jesus God

is Dave, your host and cook? I was on the air with it. That's awesome.

We got a little piece of that. All right. All right. So

here's here's how it works folks. My headphones weren't on and usually when the headphones aren't on, no one can hear what I'm saying. So I can say whatever whatever I want and there is a waiter here bernas. Who I mean, doesn't doesn't wear the same clothing as Jesus. You know, but basically looks like you know, indie rock, indie rock Jesus. Am I right about this? Yes. Yeah. Anyway, and welcome to cooking issues. Okay. And you can come down to Roberto, which I highly recommend and have a pizza served to you by indie Jesus. On any given Tuesday. Okay, so, coming to you live from Roberta's pizzeria on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 Can we say that is that accurate? Yeah, I had a little running with the train and then jogged over here my fault I should have just left earlier but I was at home researching all of my listeners questions when your listeners when we call them listeners listeners anyway, joined as usual in the studio by with Natasha the hammer Lopez, how you doing? Ruff, ruff, ruff, well, cooking issues had a late night last night. We were doing the eater awards. And we made milk soup, right is a Colombian soup Chunghwa I think I talked about it on the air I made it in Colombia and they wanted something with eggs and pears and so we did that so it was like you know milk and chicken stock and fish sauce and little lime poached egg and some stuff like vacuum fuse pairs with with you know some What's that stuff called? Well my brain is on is on hold today you know the Spanish pepper pigment on oil and cilantro oil and cilantro and vacuum infused onions you know all that good stuff. But oh and corn nuts by the way. I'm bringing corn nuts back by the way. That's my job for the rest of my life is to make corn nuts come back because corn nuts are some delicious product Anywho. So basically, if you're ever going to do one of these events, here's what you should do. Everyone else did this right. They made up a little sign about what they were making They, you know, they swear to Christ. I shouldn't say on the air like next next to us right was red farm. The dimsum guy there made a miniature village out of dough. Different colors of dope man did not paint any of those little fields I'm talking like like absurdly detailed miniature people holding pandas, weed like flowers out of dough, all on a bed of like pink peppercorns. And like with like these weird flowers that look like tree bonsai things. The lady next to us had, you know, like 8 million year old candle drippings like Vincent Price house, a wax kind of business, spray painted gold, we had nothing means nothing. And we show up. And not only do we have nothing, we don't even write down what we're serving. So the entire time we had to sit there and give the whole long shebang spiel of what the hell we were doing. By the end. We were just dancing in our booth going milk, soy milk soup, get your milk, soy milk, right pretty much Anywho. So I highly recommend making a sign before you go out to one of these events also been a busy week we were we were up at the Harvard with the Harold McGee and John whose son who's a TA for that class. Doing the we're doing drinks. How do you think that went? Well? Yeah, like my Well, I think they enjoyed it up there. The drinks, although I wasn't allowed to serve any check this Alright, look, the Harvard undergrads now I know that like, you know, universities, I remember back that long ago universities. They get all you know, to get their privates all bunched up about underage drinkers. Right? We know. And so we weren't allowed to serve any liquor even to students who were over 21, which I was fine with. But check this. It's like some sort of weird, like, 70s beer commercial. I'm not allowed to taste what I'm working on. It's absurd, right? Absurd. Absurd. Anyway. So enough of what we've been except for I'll tell you one more thing. It's interesting. Natasha just went to see Fishbone This is not a cooking really. Oh, by the way, you should call in your questions to 718497212 Wait, that's 718-497-2128 Okay. So Miss Dasha went to go see Fishbone which was one of my favorite bands growing up Miss Dasha from Los Angeles never listened to Fishbone right or the chili but she hates anything that's local. By the way. She's like an anti local person. Like, if it was around when she was a kid. She hates it. You know what I mean? Like, you know, tacos. She hates them because she's from LA. You know what I mean? fish bone. She didn't listen to it. Why? Cuz she's from LA me. East Coast guy my whole life. grew up listening to kind of that West Coast. Scarf funk punk kind of stuff. Anyway, fish bones Seminole band. I'm happy to report to my listeners out there. That fish bones still rocks after all these years, right? Yeah, yeah, they were hardcore that their horn claim was so tight back in the day that you could have put it anyway, whatever. On to the questions. All right. Hi, David moustache. I've got a couple of sausage questions for you today. Some sausage recipes call for the addition of soy protein or milk powder to help with moisture retention during cooking. I've got an excellent bratwurst recipe brats bratwurst recipe right now that always get good results and Juicy Results from I'm wondering if I should try and tweak the recipe by adding some milk powder or soy protein. Maybe it will be even better you know this is from Matthew and he has a second part but I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think you need to know No. What do you think? No, I don't think you need to kind of cheapen it. Me look if you're if your stuff is juicy now right? Then I don't see the point of adding like a filler or extender of milk protein milk protein. It's okay you know if I don't know I just watched wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it soy protein I definitely wouldn't do taste it does it taste delicious? Is it making your sausage more delicious? Right if your sausage is already juicy and you don't need any additional Oh my God indeed Jesus is coming by the by the station if you don't if you don't need the additional binding power don't use it that's my feeling what do you think this Dasha Alright, for those of you which is everyone who doesn't know what we're talking about, like we basically hear in the radio station. We look through a window at whomever is eating in the kind of like faux outside and closed you know backyard of Roberta's pizzeria. So, on break, we will often make comments to ourselves about the guests and or the waitstaff True, true. Okay. Okay, Matt back Matthew, when I cook my bratwurst, I usually gently poach them in beer good call before browning them on the grill. Also a good call an issue that comes up as they tend to swell and the meat ends up poking out of the ends of the casing. One suggestion I got was to let the sausages air dry a little after stuffing them. This would dry them out a little bit in this when they rehydrate during cooking. They will not swell as much. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. I don't know that. I don't know that it that the issue with sausage bursting is a rehydration of the meat issue. I think it's basically a swelling, probably swelling, swelling of the air pockets that are inside of your of your bratwurst. Now, if you make the texture denser by like vacuuming the meat before you put it in, you probably get less swelling. I think what you're doing when you, when you're letting it dry out a little bit lose some of its weight, is you're just providing a little extra space in the casing for expansion, because it's still going to expand the same amount of the same amount of errors in there. At least that's my feeling. I don't know this is just off the cuff. So or you could stuffed them a little less tight and they're not going to burst. Also, I would recommend probably poaching at a lower to I don't know, when you say gently poach. I don't know what you mean by gently I would when I do broads, or any kind of sausage. I think I've mentioned this on the air if you want to get an immersion circulator, and you can put your beer directly in the immersion circulator. Or you can put a small amount of beer in a bag with the broads and circum at 140 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 60 Celsius, that's the magic one, you should all remember. I don't care if you can't do Celsius and Fahrenheit, you should just remember 6140 Just remember that anyway, you had a magic wand, I always remember for some reason it's 57 135. Anyway, so I would serve them at 140 60 Celsius for like, you know, 40 minutes, something even longer you can go this is actually going to Okay, so look, when you're making a sausage, the whole idea of grinding up the meat is to take tougher other things and flavorful things. Make them you know, joined together into kind of a more homogenous mixture, but also to tenderize by grinding, right, and you add a lot of fat to keep the sausage moist even after it's cooked because you know, sausage, if it didn't have a lot of fat would dry out. With a circulator, you can tenderize the actual individual particles of meat by cooking longer, and you don't need mean you should keep the fat and because the fast delicious, but you're not going to need the fat just from simply a juiced standpoint from a juicing standpoint. So it's like a double win. So if you get a circulator, I will cook your broths with a circulator. You could do them in beer and then and then cook them off on your on your grill. What do you think's Good, good. Okay, key Solomon from how you pronounce that when when that guy, Winnetka, Illinois, writes in and he says per our request to please write in some questions. I'm one of those who listens every week via podcast. I have a question about taste. Well, thank you for listening. Why? Why does so much fish always have that frozen taste? I know that you can get good frozen frozen fish. What is the secret? And also Thanksgivings coming up why so much deli turkey so awful. It can't be that hard to make turkey tastes like turkey. Well,

here's the here's the deal with deli turkey. It's just bad. You know what I mean? It's like they, they they're forced to kind of overcook the turkey. You know, per the regulations that they do and so to make up for that they have to like hit it with a bunch of stuff to keep the moisture levels high enough after they overcook it. And it's just you know, it's just not Turkey and then they slice it for pasta it's just not it's just not Turkey it's not Turkey What do you guys think? Anyone anyone here think that's that's turkey? No, no. And you know where you should get your turkey this year? Right? You should get it from Heritage Foods. Actually. I know what Heritage Foods turkeys are delicious. Do we still have those are they sold out yet?

No. We've still got some Yeah, it Patrick just got back from Kansas City.

What is that like the turkey capital? Yeah,

it's Turkey. Turkey

capital Turkey capital. Yeah, the turkeys here at Heritage and you know not to pump our own brand and nothing but the turkeys we get here are pretty damn good. I mean, I didn't pay for mine last year. I stole it from Patrick actually when he wasn't looking but it was delicious turkey. Also speaking of pumping, you know who came to the event yesterday. Tim Lustig from JB Prince, Chef superstore came to our event and gave us a sauce funnel to use at the event sauce funnel. By the way, sauce gun is basically a funnel with a little stick that sits in the bottom of it. These things should cost like $1.50. But they cost like $150 for some reason. And so everyone always resists purchasing one because there's just so damned expensive and if you're working at a school, they tend to get lost. However, they are like the world's greatest thing. I wish my hands was constructed constructed out of them because you can just dump unbelievable like accurate fast portions of anything liquid out of the sucker so we did you know our 400 portions of soup, and I didn't spill a drop until someone asked me a question and I leaned over on the funnel and actually opened it onto the table. Did you see that? You didn't catch that they got because she would not let me forget it anyway. So it's gone. Like the greatest thing in the whole in the whole damn world and you can purchase it at the JB Prince I'm gonna get back to me whose questions is keys question after our first break.

This is a house that Jack This was a land that it worked by hand. It was the dream there was a room that was filled with love. It was alone now remember this house

guest Jack and that was a house that Jack built by Aretha Franklin actual request from one of our listeners you can call on your request. We'll take them we don't care. We liked that song. And Jack especially likes that song because it's the house that he built. That's for leak them. You know, Aretha Franklin, afraid of flying in such a severe way that she has to drive a bus wherever she goes to go on tour. Did you know this? Did you know this? Anyway? Today's episode number 62. Which by the way, 62 You can now cook a low temperature pork belly and listen exclusively to cooking issues broadcasts while you do it. I don't recommend doing that. But if you stayed up for 60 to basically you know, cooking issues straight, cooking your pork belly low temp, you would have a nice pork belly. Well, it's just that's how many hours of BS that we've spewed over the 62 hours. Well, we don't have a full hour but it's like well, it depends. Look it I'm just lying. It depends on what temperature you do. Anyway. Today's episode is sponsored again by our friends at modernist pantry supplying innovative ingredients for the modern cooked 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. I wish we could call these guys you know the school doesn't have any of their hydrocolloids left right now they have nothing and I have to go to an eight we're doing look what after this episode, we're going to do an event with Nathan Myhrvold at the FCI and maximum delay and we could use some modernist pantry love right now because they have no cocoa JLF Joanne left they have no flavor free guar anyway, that's it it's pathetic. Anyway, modernist pantry offers 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 buffers, 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 inexpensive shipping to any country in the world monitors pantry is your one stop shop for innovative cooking ingredients. Modernist pantry now carries ingredients for curing including two types of Craig powder and pure sodium nitrate fans of cooking issues to place an order of $35 or more before next week's show, we'll get a free package of break powder number one, simply use the promo code ci 62. That's ci 62 and placing your order online at modernist pantry.com Visit modernist pantry.com today for all of your monitors cooking needs. So when I buy color color, alright when it when we're done the color I gotta talk about pre powder color. You're on the air.

Oh, great. Thanks for being late. I was too

nice. All right. Well,

yeah, let's fill your shoes got the number memorized. Even beautiful.

So what do you got? For me?

That's had news for you. I fix the popping for them issue. Oh, yeah, it's still in a jar backed it with a few tablespoons of water. Works great now.

A few days just nice. So basically, so the thing was like they were to dry couple a couple tablespoons of water for like, what size like a liter mason jar or something like that? Yeah, yeah. And then just let it Aquila braid for a couple of days at regular ambient temperature. Who's, that's your phone is beautiful. And so now now you pop entirely evenly all the way across.

I still have a lot of windows just sort of nervous does that.

By the way, it works really wonderfully Nice. Nice use of the actual technical term for unpopped kernels Did you know many people do not know that and unpopped popcorn kernel and now I guess also, by analogy sort of kernel are called widows, which is an interesting fact. Yeah.

You mentioned that one before and I don't know who knows. So bringing back coordinates, we went to the Peruvian restaurant in Sonoma, right the big deep fried Peruvian giant corn. Yeah, it was the size of the cornet the way later, much better than a coordinate.

Love the Perugia Peruvians have like several different kind of fried corn like some of them have like a weird papery husk which are actually kind of like in some of them are in weird shapes and they're bigger but like the Peruvians have forgotten more about corn than we'll ever know in terms of pop like like crunchy corn snacks, you know what I mean? Peru like, you know, Peru is one of those places where, you know, I need to go everyone when you when you know you go to South America, they're like, You need to go to Peru, you need to go to Peru. That's where it's happened in Peru, but I've never been so I'm looking looking forward someday. The one thing that improved and I don't know whether I've mentioned it here that's crazy is they have these it's not corn. They have these crazy freezed air freeze dried potatoes that they make up in the mountains. That tastes like unwashed goat for that accurate and stuff unwashed goat for so I think I actually asked this on the air once I'm looking for anyone out there who has a knowledge of how to actually make these. These like naturally freeze dried potatoes from Peru tastes good and I haven't had anyone tell me how to do

it yet. Do you remember what they're called?

The cinta cinta something at jams or jackal look it I'm sure he sits here. Well, we're doing looking looking up this stuff. Anyway, but yeah,

so my main question, the reason I called I have a boatload of Nori, it's raw nori. What do I do with it? I want to make like my thought of making like a nori cracker or something like this, but the stuff tastes it's got the texture of a wallet.

Yeah, well, it's me, but it's already in sheets. You mean it's rolling? It's

not? No, no, that's wrong, or like picking out the ocean and dry?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, you could,

I'd like to leave it raw, if I could. Yeah, make some sort of snacks or something out of it?

Well, you mean you rehydrate it and then get it thinner. And when it dries out, it will be less leather quality, and you probably just have too thick of a layer of it. You know what I mean?

It's one, one, whatever the I guess a leaf of France thick. I re hydrated it and put it in the dehydrator for a couple few times just cycled it to try to make it weaker. And it's been really helped a lot. It's still freezing index.

Still. Yeah, yeah, freezing my break it down. I don't know, I don't have any experience with it. Another thing. I mean, obviously, you could, you could shop it, and then and then put it into a mat and then dehydrate it and it'll it'll stick together. You know what I mean? Like, I'm pretty sure that's how they make the thin thin sheets, right? The lava sheets is they get a bunch of it, and then they just spread it out thin. Right? I don't have any experience with this. I'm gonna have I'm gonna have to put my thinking cap on on this one.

Yeah, I thought I'd try to maybe fermenting. What else could I do? I was gonna grind it into flour, possibly in big crackers. Yeah, like a flat crack or something like that. But you haven't been alright,

I'll tell you what I'll do some time. During this week. I'm gonna try to remember to look up some seaweed processing technology. And I'll try to talk about on the next week's show.

Wonderful. I appreciate it. Thank

you. All right, yeah, talk to you soon. All right, I have another caller. Apparently. Caller, you're on the air.

Hey, Dave, and Associates, Brian, how you doing

doing well, doing well, what's up.

So I saw that on the Modernist Cuisine blog that they posted. Ei why style what they call a vacuum concentrating system. And basically what it is, is a vacuum pump. They either do with a vacuum pump, or what they call an aspirating nozzle that hooks up to a vacuum to a flat that has one of those magnetic stirring bars in it. And basically, it allows you to do vacuum kind of reductions or concentrations of liquid. So I guess it's not a roto fab, but it's a kind of DIY pack. And I'm wondering what you thought, if you had a look at at that post, and what you thought of and what you thought of it is there anything I can do to improve what they they have here work.

So here's the here's the here's the dealio it works, it's not it doesn't do distillation in the sense that you it's very difficult to save the distillate because you don't have a cold trap. So the way an aspirator works is you have a jet of liquid water typically that goes down and the actual speed of the jet going down, sucks the air out carries the air with it and goes down much like you would you know if you spray air, you can suck paint up into that and then spray it out right so that's what's going on with an aspirator. Now, the in chem labs aspirators are used as a very cheap vacuum source and classically what what you would do is you would screw the aspirator into water faucet, you turn it on, and you just dump water down into the sink to produce your vacuum. Okay, now they people don't like to do that anymore because it wastes ginormous amounts of water. Water. And it's considered, you know, not necessarily green to do that anymore. So people have built aspirators, with circulating pumps that they can circulate, and they can keep the aspirators going without wasting a lot of water. Now, the downsides of an aspirator as a pump is that they're not very quick pumps, it takes a long time to pump down to a vacuum. Second thing is an aspirator pump is limited in the number of in the depth of vacuum, you can pull by the vapor pressure of water at the temperature of the water. So you like if you're using an aspirator, the trick is to get as cold water as you can, for instance, ice water works great, and then recirculate it to achieve a vacuum. Now, if you don't have a cold trap, you're not going to, like I say be able to recapture. So it's basically for reduction. And in order to get a good reduction and stop a lot of bumping, you need to do a lot of stirring and agitation of your liquid, which is why they use a magnetic stir plate hot plate, right. So it totally works for that. And you know the temperature of your liquid is going to be determined by not by the temperature of the hot plate, but by the ultimate pressure that your vacuum is able to maintain, right. And so you can kind of you can measure that if you want to. So this works. And it's very important that you use an aspirator pump for this technology because it's one of the only types of vacuum pump that that can get contaminated by vapor ethanol vapor or water vapor without crapping out on you, right. And so that's why they use that kind of a pump for that. Because they're actually not the cheapest kind of pump, there's a much cheaper vacuum pump you can get that does a much better vacuum, but it can't handle the content, it can handle the contaminants the way that way an aspirator pumpkin. And by contaminants, I mean all the stuff that I like to save in a row to that. So definitely, if you look be an eBay ninja, get yourself a hot plate, they're not that expensive, get an Erlenmeyer flask with a take off on it also not that expensive. You know, a cap and the aspirator you can, you can either buy them, they're not cheap, because they don't come up that often. With the circulator pump in it already, I mean, you can get it, but you can buy the actual individual aspirator units and hook up a pump yourself. And I recommend going to any meth head like methamphetamine production website by you know, by like these tweet tweet junkies, and because they need a vacuum source to do some of their distillation work. And so, you know, they have kindly put plans out there where you can go basically to the Home Depot and build an aspirator pump for fairly fairly cheap, you know, because remember, they need to be able to do this stuff without getting caught, you know, in trailers and whatnot. So, you know, they have that pretty locked down.

And what are their websites?

I hesitate to actually mention the name but you know, Google like, you know, DIY meth lab or DIY aspirator they're getting in trouble I'm getting in trouble I'm, I'm being told that I'm getting in trouble anyway and it starts you shaking your head and making the vegan face but that is in fact where where I learned how to build my own aspirator pump back in the day and I'm assuming that the feds haven't figured out how to go on and kill all those websites yet. Even though it has been like six years but anyway, good luck experimenting with that and call back and tell us how it works.

Okay all all Google and see if I can get some from the methods.

Alrighty, thanks a lot. Okay, now, key song back the keys question, which I never freakin answered. Okay, so we've we've we've established that the deli turkey is awful because they start with low quality Turkey overcook it and pump it up with a bunch of crap to keep it moist. Right. Okay. So the other part of math of Keith's question was, why does so much fish always have a frozen taste? And I know you can get good frozen fish. What's the secret? Alright, there's a couple problems. Here's the thing with fish and with anything really, that you freeze, home freezers don't actually freeze everything solid, you're only freezing a portion of the of the water that's in a food right. And so when you're freezing in a freezer, ice crystals are actually forming on the outside of the cells and innocent in essence, dehydrating the actual cells in the muscles. And what that means is, is that all of the stuff in the cells, proteins, liquids, enzymes, myoglobin, anything like that, and fats and whatever, whatever's there is getting more concentrated. And as it's getting more concentrated, even though the temperatures lowing, lowering certain reactions can take place very quickly. And one of those reactions is rancidity. So what happens is fish typically contains a lot of polyunsaturated fatty acids. Those are the types of fatty acids that are very prone to going rancid. Fish also have a lot of things in them, you know, like blood and whatnot, that our Pro that that basically helped to catalyze rancidity reactions in their own fat. So that thing that rancid taste is I'm assuming what We're talking about happens in the freezer just like it would out in not me not wouldn't happen slower obviously, but it still happens even though the things frozen It's all because fish isn't actually frozen, like solid down to 100% solidity. Okay, now, there's a couple ways to solve this don't store your fish too long in a freezer that's one right to is to vacuum bag fish before you freeze it because in the absence of oxygen, it's going to be very difficult for the fat to oxidize and go rancid, right? So you want to get rid of air. You want to not store in the freezer too long if you can't get rid of the air, but you still getting rid of the air is the main thing. And the same thing happens with bacon by the way bacon goes rancid in the freezer. The unless it's backpacked The other thing is is in the really high quality fish the sushi stuff it's frozen solid, is they freeze it way down, they super freeze it to I forget what they call it, they probably call it the eutectic point or something that even though I don't even think that has meaning anyway, they super freeze it down to the point where literally all of the water is solid and the chemical reactions cease to take place at a reasonable rate. And so that happens down around minus 70 C. So if you go to like some high end sushi joints or if you go to Del Posto has won a bunch of people have these super freezers, and they store their meats in the Super freezers and there's basically zero temperature cycling everything is solid there's no re crystallizing and decriminalizing and re crystallizing and so the quality stays perfect right that's a good answer in Jackson we got one more break shedding another question we should all right we got one more commercial break call your question to wait for this

break we have a certain song dedicated to certain somebody from a certain vegan face co host all right

and you were man you'd have no other way you'd be weak as if you had the strength to walk out that door calling you back if I were you and you were man who is

Gladys Knight and

yeah, but he was that I thought it was who requested it for the statue?

No no, this is a dedication from a certain co host to a certain somebody else.

Alright, nice. That's that's one episode of issues some see some secret love going on. You know, you got to play then if it's a secret. You got to pull out the Kenny Rogers the the the one where like daytime friends nighttime lovers open no one else discovers. Yeah, good stuff, right. Anyway. Okay, we have two unrelated questions from Ryan Ryan from Ryan Santos Santos. One. What's the best way to clean my circulator answer it depends on what kind of circulator you have. But in general, the new plastic ones are a little more difficult to clean out the insides of the old stainless steel ones are easy to kind of work with a we use, you can use a combination of like a CLR, which is a clear line rust remover, you can use like a light like a degreaser, and you can actually circulate these things with the products that you circulated with that you can get the tabs that are used to clean out combi ovens. Basically anything that's going to eat grease, I mean obviously basic solutions, eat grease very well but I'm not exactly sure whether or not you can put a very very basic solution onto the onto the circulators have to check it but basically you run it with detergent and a degreaser like you know commercial degreaser and then rinse it in water and and running again and hot water and they should clean up but it is a problem that needs to be addressed. I told Phillip pressing on the new plastic one. I think he should install a little shoulder screws so that you can very easily pop the back off and really clean in and out where the pump is but not yet. It hasn't done it yet. I'm sure he's gonna do it because I think it's good idea anyway, too. I experienced a weird reaction at a recent dinner I served a local baby persimmons with a green tea called Gchat. What would you do? How would you tell? Somebody actually happened to cause an extreme tenant tenant reaction and made my mouth super dry and astringent? unlike anything I've experienced? Do you have any idea what's happening? Was it a reaction in the skins in the tea? The reaction didn't happen with water, soda beer etc. was interesting. I mean Well, obviously look you have tea E T has T has tannins in it, right? And persimmons have tannins in them. And the way tannins work is they bind to proteins in, in your mouth, proline rich proteins. And those proteins lubricate your mouse. So when those proteins bind to the tannins, now your mouth feels dry because it's not lubricated anymore. And that's the stringency. Okay. Now, in persimmons, persimmons naturally have a lot of tannins in them. And what you do you know normally is you blend, like a persimmon, you let it really really ripe and the ones that have a lot of tannins, you let them ripen for a long time, the pectin starts to sell start to break down to pectin, and the tannins which are separated normally get together they complex wants to tan and gets cooked up to the pectin, it no longer has a astringency and bang does not have spinach anymore. You take apples that are very highly tannic, which are known as spitters, because you can't eat them. But they're used in making cider and whatnot. If you dry them out, when they're drying, the tissue starts to break down tannins complex with the with other parts of the apple precipitated into something that doesn't cause astringency and boom. So you are in a weird situation where you took two things that weren't very stringent on their own. And somehow the tenants in them have a higher now affinity to the proteins in your mouth than they did before. And I don't know what what would cause that whether, you know, I don't know, it's very interesting. It's another thing that, you know, I should bring up with McGee, two batters didn't come in last week. I could have asked him when I spoke to him. And by the way, I don't know we mentioned it. I did ask Harold McGee about a separate question we had last week on garlic and whether there's any units of garlic Enos that and he said no. But we also have some information, interesting information not gonna have time to get to today from our good friend at UC Davis. Ariel Johnson is going to who sent us a paper to read on that, and also has some very interesting stuff to report online. So there's a good reason to tune in next week, because there's going to be a lot of interesting line work coming out. Anyway, so I don't know exactly what's going on. But somehow the two things mixed together. have, you know, synergistically increased the ability of those tannins to bind with with your proteins in your saliva? Interesting. I just said saliva which is word and stuff aids. Anyway. Hello, mustache. And Dave, I was listening to your podcast last week. And now remember that there was a question about the white powder on combo. I did a research project last summer in Denmark, with South Denmark University and Lars Williams who's at Noma to see whether we could quantify mommy in the lab. We worked a bit on Scandinavian seaweeds and I recall the white powder on combo is mannitol might have read it in the book I don't remember search online where there's confirmation mannitol I just kind of remember that too. But I still couldn't find quickly the information on that mannitol interesting is a sugar a sugar that is discovered in Manna Yeah, you know mana mannitol from mana so interesting what goes around comes around anyway. And mannitol from kombu but the sugar alcohol anyway, but managing for calm was pretty harmless and some websites say there's a sweetness to the combo and therefore should be wiped off. Okay, side from that side from the combo. I have a question about French fries. This is from Larissa by the way. I'm now working on a research project to develop an optimal recipe for French fries. And from desio Alicia and Spain, which is you know, like a school that teamed up with Harvard to do the cooking to cooking thing. Long story short, I was an undergrad teaching assistant for Harvard science a cooking course in 2010 which is how I learned about Alicia so after graduating with physics degree at Kendall Lisa for six month internship okay so for the project I'd be consulting a lot of specific papers and your and other blog posts on what's going on we make french fries most of my findings have been similar to yours plus some interesting things for example, when we freeze raw potatoes before frying the fries are extremely hard and get harder with time. We had some fries ago really hard with time they were kind of gross. Anyway. Test ongoing anyway, I was wondering do you have any new findings since the last fries post in 2010 especially on using different potato varieties here in Spain. The two common types we get are Kennebec which are white and Agrius which are yellow after his yellow color being more pleasing the majority of people and the Kennebec come out of the fryer extremely blonde and don't turn yellow. Okay. canamex Natasha and I were hanging out with a potato lunatic at a show once and you weren't there for that one. Anyway, so I talked to the potato lunatic someone's literally staring in at the radio station going what is these people? What are they doing? You see that anyway? And she she didn't like what she she she saw she made the vegan face and walked away. So the Kennebec are good, very good potato but apparently they don't do well on storage and so for stores, they're not going to necessarily work very very well. I haven't done the research on varieties the way I want me to typically look for a french fry. You're looking for high solids, low moisture, you know starchy potato, and you know the good old fashion. russet Burbank, that we use is pretty good for that or any kind of similar kind of high starch, high solid low moisture potato The interesting thing about potatoes is that also the optimum potato isn't just a variety, it is a variety and how it was stored because potato goes through potato goes through a lot of changes during storage. In fact, older potatoes that have been stored properly, not ones that are all shriveled and nasty, but an older potato that has been stored properly is actually a better frying potato. So there are people who don't like the new crop potatoes when they come out. And we'll continue to use the ones that have been stored for a whole year under cold storage because they're not cold storage but under optimum storage because that those are the ones that they like to pay for it up nice. So anyway, also on my fry my fries, I'm going to I'm going to not repost it, but like you know, we're opening up a bar concept here soon and there's going to be French fries on the menu I'm just letting you know it's gonna be French fries on the menu. And it's not going to be the exact recipe that we have on the blog because that recipe was written for three eighths inch french fries. I now favor a half inch french fry. And the trick to a french fry is always about getting the moisture level exactly right on the inside of the french fry. If you go if you dehydrate them too much you get hollow fry. And if you don't do it enough you get a soggy frying the same time I you know, I don't want the outside to be hard and leathery. I want it to be crisp, but I want it to bite nicely and not be like I don't want to be like a rock. If I want to eat a rock you serve your rock, you know what I mean? Anyway, so and so basically in my post, I didn't recommend if you're going to use a peck the next SPL which is the enzyme that we use to break down the the pectin on this and hemicellulose on the surface of the French fry so that you get a very good crust formation. Myhrvold at all, Maxime and Chris recommend using ultrasonic bath for similar purpose. When you do that, I recommend not not drying after you do your initial blanch step I recommend not doing too much air drying because that leads us to a phenomenon known as hollow fry where you gotten rid of so much moisture that the potato on the inside just doesn't have any structure anymore it goes hollow. When you switch to a half inch fry you do need to bring some of that drawing back just to get the moisture level right so like with anything else, it's just a matter of paying attention to your ingredients and figuring out what's going on. Anyway hope that's helpful.

Matthew writes and I've heard you say a couple of times not to solve things too far ahead of time or before cooking long low cooking processes. This will eliminate some juiciness in my head I remember reading something from the GI to the contrary that the general wisdom of not wanting to assault me too far ahead, as it would cause it to leak juice is actually bunk. What's the deal? Are you like the word bunk? Oh, he also follows up and says how do you feel about assaulting me that will be braced for a long time. For example salting or grinding some beef overnight before braising so so the salt penetrates all the way through the meat I guess this also applies to salty marinade is the issue at hand at salt will turn the texture of the meat mushy or that you believe it will rabbit of its juices which I thought Mickey demand well biggies favorite McGee's like famous debunk is on searing ceiling in the juices right that's a super famous debunk right but it's not the it's not juiciness In fact, when you salt meat the literal amount of water in it is going to be higher because the the after cooking because the proteins even though you actually some moisture will come out, the meat itself will bind water better, which is what brining does which is why when you Brian chicken, it you know it, you can overcook it a little bit and it still stays juicy. Okay. So salting can help juicing us that way, and it's not that it makes a texture mushy, it just makes it firmer, more like a cured texture. And so when you're eating something like a steak, you don't want that firmness that you get from kind of curing with salt and so you want to stay away from it in braises, especially a traditional braise where you're going to cook the thing to death and you're using the gelatin the collagen breakdown in the gelatin to moisturize it. I don't think it's going to be an issue and there you want the salt in there for flavor. So I think it's okay, it's when you're going to serve something like a steak and you want to have the texture of a like you know, regular juicy steak and not have it be firms not that's actually less juicy. It's just firmers that makes sense. Anyway, so I am not in I'm in no way contradicting McGee we are we are in agreement. Okay. So alright, so there's a question coming in. I gotta answer it because it's coming up on on Thanksgiving we mentioned this is from Joe from Chicago. I shudder to think of a day when you no longer release your weekly podcast. I'm constantly learning inspired. Thank you. Thank you. Speaking of inspiration, I can't wait from last week's episode feeling compelled to make a modernist version of turducken which is where you know you wrap the turkey and the duck and the chicken and go back and listen last week if you want to know specifics anyway, but have the following questions before I ruin a perfectly good turkey. What specific kind of meat glue would you recommend for this application? You're going to want to Joe you're going to want to get transglutaminase X which is X IVA RM Rm is the one you sprinkle if you want, you can get GS GS as the one that you paint on at a paste. I'm a kind of an RM junkie, but you know, GS will work fine. Don't get any other variety for this because you know, you might run into problems, so RM, or GS and you could probably get them from modernist pantry.com To you mentioned glue into turkey skin to the flattened turkey breasts, would you recommend gluing any little layers together? Joe, I glue all the layers together. So what you're going to do is you're going to put a sprinkling of glue, every every time you put the layer of meat down, you're going to sprinkle a little glue to get good adhesion all the way through. And then what about stuffing as a layer or perhaps the core, I do use a sausage layer in the middle of the turducken between the chicken and the duck. And I do it put it there because that's where you want like a thermal barrier. So the duck doesn't want to be at 63 Duck wants to be at like you know, 5758 you know, maximum 59 And then the turkey chicken doesn't want to be anything below 63 So the sausage layer goes there because they can kind of take up that thermal difference it'll be good in that whole range. And so that's why we put the stuffing there you could also put it in the core but the problem is is won't get cooked at that temperature so you'd have to pre cook the core then or you know do something else I wouldn't put the stuffing at the core because the core is where the least cook stuff is going to be for it to retain the tube shape that is achieved primarily through meat glue and the miglin plastic wrapper would you recommend butchers twine plastic wrap? Don't go with butchers twine. If you've ever tried to meat glue stuff with butchers twine it's a bloody freaking mess. Don't do it. It's going to everything it's like just use the plastic wrap and roll it if you're against cooking in plastic wrap and take the plastic wrap off before you cook it by the way while he was doing some plastic wrap and tubes at the at the Harvard and he got heckled by a couple of students who was like using plastic. You're killing the Earth. Remember anyway. He was like one I think he just ignored them. Five. You mentioned using a thermometer Do you have any tips for using a probe thermometer with a ziploc without compromising the integrity of the bag? Is there an easy way to do it without pulling the bags out of the bath? No, I wouldn't put a ziploc through a marina would put a thermometer through a Ziploc bag. They make semi waterproof and he proved thermometers Cooper Atkins does that you could theoretically dishwasher you can stick them in a Ziploc bag. But I've had bad luck. I've had them always leak. So I wouldn't. I wouldn't recommend doing that you look in a plastic wrap situation with a large thing like a turducken. I just shove the shove it probe through the through the plastic wrap and you're gonna get a little bit of water leakage in but over the size of like a whole kind of turducken thing, it's not going to be it's not going to be a big problem. Okay, so those are my recommendations on that. And to round it out. We have a quote, I don't even know who this is from actually, but someone sent us in. Oh, Steve. Hey, Steve. So Steve says the Atwater systems failure to address actual energy availability as well known, but people seem to assume it just scales uniformly. And that strikes me as a very flawed assumption, and sends us a link to an interesting paper, which I can't actually get to in the paper is known as processing food extensively by thermal and non thermal techniques. Anyway, so the hot water system for those of you that don't know, right out water was the guy who his name was Wilbur, Olin, Atwater, and he was alive, you know, in the in, you know, he was working roughly from after the Civil War up to the early part of the 1900s. And he was the one to kind of figure it out food, energy and calories, right. So what he would do is he would eat a bunch of stuff, and then kind of measure kind of what you know what he was, uh, he they ate, he would burn it to kind of figure out how much energy it had. And then he would measure the, like his poop, and he would burn his poop and figure out how much stuff was left in his poop, he would try to figure out how much stuff he was paying out. He tried to figure out how much he was breathing out in terms of figuring out like, what, like how you're actually utilizing the energy that's in food. And so the concept of the calorie as being a really like a reasonable thing was basically from, you know, stemming from his research and going on. And the point is, is, in fact, is that it's kind of bunk. Right? And so now we all have these calorie things that we see. And they tried it, they basically just take individual units, like protein has this much calories, fat has this many calories, carbohydrates have this many calories, and they lump them and then scale them. And Steve, you're exactly right. This is completely incorrect. It's based on a whole bunch of super incorrect assumptions. You know, the people who and the problem with it is, you know, as you say that there, no one has really given an alternative to try and figure out how it works. But my favorite is this look, if you're eating a raw vegan diet, everybody knows that if you take a look at what's left, what's excreted from your body, that you don't digest it effectively, right? And everybody knows that if you drink a gallon of corn oil, you're not going to absorb that thing. You're going to be spraying some corn oil out the other side, right? So cool. Clearly the combinations you eat, how you eat, the quantities you eat, and what you're eating is going to make a huge difference. But the paper that he that he sent to us is very interesting because they did a bunch of testing on availability of energy from food cooking versus not cooking. And this is to go back to the raw vegan section we had before and a lot more typically with meats, not just with starches, which is obvious but with meats cooking it makes a lot more of the energy apparently available a lot more than just beating the hell out of it or blending in or anything like that. So another argument for cooking your meat cooking issues God I don't know where I'm supposed to be my baby. Cleaning man. You guys got my hair. Oh, twist and the guest can't get it straight.