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.

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Welcome to Cooking issues. This is Dave on on your host of cooking issues coming to you live in the back of Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 Calling all of your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 Is that right Jack? They get it right again. Yeah, that's right. This thing right all the time fire. I know. It's like it's like, once I forget, once I remembered I'd never forget. Yeah, I'll wake up when I'm 90 to start screaming that number up. Don't change that thing. Because I know nothing ever again. Never never changed that. I am not joined right now in the studio by Natasha hammer Lopez But Jack and I don't know where she is. You should be here. So she probably got caught on that L train. Damn L train. So we're gonna have to play that. Shoot C groove L train song to make fun of the L train later again, in one of our one of our favorite songs. Right. So what's going on here? We have a new question. Yeah. Okay. So while I'm waiting for Anastasia to come in, so I can shoot the poop with her. We'll go into some of the questions I missed from last time. Jonathan Rogers. Actually, his name is Jonathan Woodruff. Roger is the third I did not know that he was one of our former interns actually nice guy at the FCA writes in a question about equipment. Hey, David, this dosha nice bumping into the other afternoon I'm following up regarding at the bar by the way. That's poker index our bar go visit. I'm just following up regarding some questions I have. In my new gig. I'm catering lunches for a few tech startup companies. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, through the company city grid. Since it's only three days a week plus prep, I have some free time to experiment with some food, which is good very few people who are cooking for a living actually have the time to do a lot of experimentation, which is why you know my job but direct recording and technology at the French cold area, especially when I was there full time was so great for that because I didn't have a service to worry about. So that's yeah, that's why Firaon shuts down his place for you know, or you know, for half the year or whatever it is so that he has time that they have time to do experimental work. Anyway, okay. Also the company has allowed me to pretty much cook whatever I want. With a six item menu that changes weekly. I have roughly $7,000 to spend and was wondering what you recommend I get some information on brands and or recommendation, recommend locations to purchase the products. things I'm interested in having in my life are a deli slicer, a dehydrator, a meat grinder, a chamber vacuum sealer, a fryer, a smoker or any other cool gadgets within the price range, they're getting a combi oven I currently have a circulator thinking about getting another one. Any information or advice will help. Thanks again, looking forward to stopping by and letting you know how it's going. Thanks again. JW. Okay, now $7,000 is gonna get eaten up per day quickly. I loved Adelies. First of all, just get another circulator that's another like 800 bucks right there, just get another one. So you have to, and you can keep one running while use the other one for service. So you can have you know, you're never going to regret having to circulators around. Now, something like a smoker, I would go cheap on the smoker, the smoke, nobody really likes it. But the smoker that everyone gets, it's only like a cup like 150 bucks, it's like the forget that there's like a little cheat or a big cheat or something like that. It's basically just like a quilted metal box, you know, little fine quilt pattern metal box with a with a heater in the bottom. And the guys over at som have modified it by drilling a hole in the side and putting a smoke generator with a little heater in on the side to cool the smoke down. But you know, that's basically all there is to it in a restaurant situation or even in this catering situation in New York City where you don't have the space for a big dedicated smoker. These things are light, they can be moved around very easily and again, nobody loves them. But you know, Wiley uses it at WD 50. They use it at sambar. A bunch of people use this because it's cheap, and it's easy to steal away when you're not using it so that's what I'd recommend for the caterer there. dehydrator get the Excalibur there's no question that you should get the Excalibur dehydrator and dehydrator is a great thing to have. Excalibur is the reason you want to get the Excalibur one I've used some of the round ones that where this stuff goes through and all this other nonsense and I've used I've used some various ones, unless you're gonna have a lot of money or to custom build one, the Excalibur is great because it gets a lot of racks in it and the racks are square, which means that they you can lay things out in a way that makes sense those round ones with a hole in the middle What the hell are you gonna lay on it, it doesn't make sense. Plus the dehydrator it's easy to use flat sheets and dehydrate liquids to make leathers or sheets or papers. It's also easy to dry things on the perforated racks. It's just you know, it's also the dehydrator is really good the Excalibur because it's very even throughout so the top rack is going to dry just as easily evenly as the bottom rack. You can use it for fermentation experiments. I mean, you know, I have one have always have one we have one at som and have one at the FCI and that's the one that everyone who anyone who buys a different dehydrator for a restaurant regrets it. So go for the Excalibur which I guess you know, does that I don't really usually recommend brands like that, but there you go. I actually paid for mine straight up on Amazon anyway, they're not that much for the deli slicer. Now I've been very spoiled in my life. I don't have one right now but the Hobart model 3000 Is a Sick slicer. I did a video for them. And they gave one to me but I left it the school. I don't know why I should take that thing with me because I love that dang thing so much. But it's it's like you know it props up like a car so you can clean underneath it, the blade pops out so you can throw it in the dishwasher. It slices like a freakin dream. But it slices really, really well. In fact, prior to the Hobart model 3000 The slicer that I always recommend people get was the Bizerba SC 12 slicer, meat slicer by the way just on meat slicer basics. The average meat slicer that we get here in the United States is gravity slicer, meaning they're on that angle and you see a Mishima deli, they're on an angle and you're supposed to use gravity to basically force the product into the blade and then slice as you go right and it has that little handle that you push down. Rookie mistake. If your slicer is not very good or your slicer is not very sharp, you have to apply a good bit of pressure on the item to get it to slice properly as it goes through. This is a horrible practice and causes the bottom of your meat or wherever you're slicing to kind of wedge out as it's getting cut. It's called like healing out at the bottom and it's you know it's a sign that you're that a are not slicers not great B is not that sharp, and C you're pushing too hard. A properly sharpened slicer should not you shouldn't have to push on it at all. And part of that is having very good sharp blades and prior to the Hobart Moto 3000 slicer that I always recommended was the Reserva se 12 Because they had a really good blade and pretty solid pretty solid carriage mechanism is But nowadays I recommend the Hobart but you're gonna be able to get to observe a lot cheaper than you're going to be able to get the Hobart 3000 and the reserve is a great machine just doesn't clean quite as easily the you might be able to get the Reserva use. I haven't priced one in a long time, but it's going to be a lot cheaper than the than the 3000 3000 nose primo in Europe. They actually use something called a vertical slicer and a vertical slicer is great because instead of using gravity to force the product into the blade, the The product just sits like it normally would. And the carriage literally moves and feeds the stuff and slice by slice. And these make perfect slices again and again and actually the first slicers that were made by, you know, Burkle van Berkel back in, you know, when he invented the meat slicer were vertical slicers. and in Europe, they continue to be popular and they make fantastic slice quality, but for some reason or other, we tend not to use them in, in the US. I don't know if you wrote down vacuum machine, but if you can't remember, if you have vacuum sealer, if you're gonna get a vacuum sealer, I mean go for one you can get a good price on if you're gonna get a smaller one. I like the mini packs because they have a bigger chamber size, just look at the chamber size, I mean all of the hoo ha programming and stuff I don't know if you're gonna use it that much in your application, but get one with a big chamber size the mini pack and a smaller units especially have a good chamber size and their price seems to be okay for catering I would stay away from any like the really cheap ones because they're gonna break when you least want them to break get one with it with a with the actual good German or equivalent to the German which is the names on my hand. My gosh, I speak about all the time the name of the pump starts with a B anyway, the pump and that is what serious you got to make sure you get the good hardcore German vacuum pump oil base pumping that otherwise you're going to be asking for problems. Okay, so get those make sure you have a vital prep or two. And that's really you know, oh really other super high tech stuff. I mean, it's kind of like gilding the lily you know what I mean? Mean? Like all the other stuff I mean, the core stuff I just told you is the basis of almost everything that we use with exception liquid nitrogen get yourself a liquid nitrogen to her. I mentioned that get a liquid nitrogen to her you're not going to regret having liquid nitrogen. All right. Natasha made it what's the grand here we get over the microphones people can hear you so apparently as we wrap up, well, don't

you climb over go under anything other than pushing the microphone away from me while you're talking. She's not know where her body is in space. By the way, like the star she has no idea where her body is within the space around her. So I'm not going to blame her. Like I don't think she literally did that on purpose. Same way that she doesn't understand where doors are when she slams him in your face, which is a constant thing that this Yeah, you slam you walk through doors and then like look like you're gonna hold them open for people and then slam them on their faces or on bicycles and stuff because you don't really pay attention to people or the world around you as you're walking. Oh, well,

I was stuck in the Grand Street Station and no one could find fill Bravo this morning. So I

was no one knows who filled Bravo is. No one knows who fill Bravo is talked about him before. Who's Phil

BrahMos a friend of mine. And he didn't go to work today. So and he was last seen with me. Wow. Well, that's uh, did you kill him? No, no, he was actually it was just an all night

I feel Bravo is very cheap, man. So I'm sure he followed wherever the liquor was cheapest. By the way for those of you not hanging out in New York right now it's James Beard kind of week and everyone's going out crazy partying. So for me, I was home asleep with my family last night. I was home by midnight. Yeah. So Phil went out with Tristan. Oh, God. Oh, no. I heard Harold McGee was partying like a rock star last night with Daniel Patterson and Chris Constantino. Three of our good friends. Out there hanging out having fun. Oh, speaking of James Beard, congratulations to Tozi Yeah, our good buddy went one that PDT. You know, great bar one. Best bar. Who was one you remember Daniel Humm, one? Yeah. I'm sorry for all of our friends who are up for awards that did not win. But congratulations out to those people who did. Yeah, right. Okay. So how long were you sitting at the Grand Street Station?

It was stopped for like 15 minutes, I was gonna be right on time. And it was we were stopped with the doors open. And I was like, Could I walk from here? But then you know, that minute when you're like, what if we go right now?

I do not. Yeah, I know that minute. It's a bet you always get burnt by that minute. And there's nothing worse than sitting in mass transit, not being able to control your destiny, thinking at any minute, this sucker might move again. And with the doors open, and that every so every second, you have to decide

whether Yeah, yeah, every minute and then it was one of those electronic things. So they just said train traffic ahead.

I was in the Grand Central the other day on Sunday going to the Bronx Zoo, which by the way, is not an eating Zoo. You don't get to eat any of the animals that are at the Bronx Zoo. My kids were joking about those were there anyways, the when the trains were not running out of Grand Central the whole thing was shut down. was incredibly calm. No one was flipping out. No one was anything I've never seen Grand Central, North Metro North trains all for like two and a half hours. The only person not calm was my son, freaking out. Okay. Question. Another question from last week. Don writes in about soda. You may remember that I met you at the BA er that's beverage alcohol resource school in September at the Astor Center. I'm in the planning phase to open a bar and soda slash carbonation has me at a conundrum. I don't want soda guns. I wouldn't mind bottles but that's a very high cost a storage problem. I love the look and ease of isI soda bottles. But the cost of charters is stratospheric. I liked the work you've done with carbonation system using the compressor and plastic bottles, but how practical are they in the working bar? It seems to make a huge sticky mess pretty quick, what is Booker and DAX doing for carbonated beverages unrelated note, I tried to carbonate and a groaner using the ASI soda bottle and I just got a glass of foam. What can I do to prevent that love the show Don Okay, carbonation in a nutshell, the only thing that's really currently available on the market right now that does really good carbonation, my level of carbonation, what I think is an acceptable level of carbonation is, is using soda bottles. With the carburetor cap manufactured by the liquid bread Corporation coming out of a five or 20 pound co2 tank, you need to pre chill it much colder than refrigerator temperatures, right? Like till it's almost frozen. And then you need to you need to carbonate it three times before service. A one liter bottle is what I recommend a one liter bottle will hold roughly five pours of drink. And so you do a bunch beforehand and they and they get going. The reason that you're foaming is several fold one, you probably don't have enough water in it. Right? The first mistake people are making when they're doing drinks is to is to not add enough water to the carbonated drink. They treat it like you'll make a drink by shaking, which isn't actually shaking might make a drink cold enough to carbon in fact, shaking will make a drink it's kind of barely cold enough to carbonate. The problem is shaking a drink will make a drink that's too alcoholic to be really successful over the long term as a carbonated drink. What do I mean by this? If you take a drink a strike, like Negroni, first of all, instead of stirring the Negroni, if you're going to carbonate it, you must shake it. Because starting to grow the A is nowhere near cold enough to carbonate properly, you're going to foam all over the place and be it's nowhere near deluded enough to carbonate properly. So the first thing you're going to have to do when you when you make an grani carbonated is to shake it, then you're going to it's still going to be too alcoholic, and it will taste good for the first sips. But the problem is, is that you can't have like three, two or three of those because it's gonna get not just because it's gonna mess you up. But because it's going to be somewhat cloying over time, if you just take that Negroni that you made that way. And just as the test. And you know, I was talking to Toby Cecchini, about this. And he's saying the same thing. It's like add a little bit of soda water to that, and see how much more kind of delicious and refreshing it is just lightening it a little bit. If you are going to make a carbonated drink, I'll tell you what our ratios are at the bar, our ratios for a drink for a five ounce pour, our ratios are 1.75 ounces of strong, that's straight liquor, and 3.25 ounces of of water or weak like including like simple syrup and juice and all that. And everyone's like, Oh my God, that's so weak. Listen, it's not I've done tests again, and again and again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And those ratios are the ratios that make in my opinion, a good drink. If you have more alcohol than that, you need to get it ridiculously cold to carbonate it properly. And you're really going to put people on the floor, right? I mean, I've done straight, you know, 40% Liquor carbonated stuff before, but they have to be basically minus minus 18 Celsius to work properly. They don't balance well. And you can't have that very many of them and they hit people like a ton of bricks, you're much better using the ratios that I just told you getting it cold till it's almost frozen and, and doing it the way we do it at the bar is I have a very special refrigerator. The Randall FX, right and what it can maintain very, very accurate temperatures. So I set that thing to be 23 Fahrenheit 2223 Fahrenheit, which is what I think is the good place between 20 and 23 Fahrenheit, which is where I think that carbonated drinks should be. I think it's like 23 is what we send it out. And then I let them chill in there until they're chilled couple hours. And then before service, I carbonate them and they stay in there and I keep re fluffing it after I do everyone, the the ISI charger is going to cost you too much it's not going to work out. Most people's carbonated drinks, I think are only very lightly carbonated compared to what kind of I want and one of the reasons is because they found too much it's because their drinks aren't cold enough. Or they're putting it through a keg system, which causes a lot of foaming alcohol in general foams a lot. And so you're kind of barking up a hard tree plus, you need to carbonate alcohol more than you carbonate water for the same sensation of carbonation. So not only is alcohol foam more, but it also needs to be carbonated higher so you get double the foam and so everything seems very very foamy, your solutions are reduced the alcohol proportion slightly and chill it much more than you're chilling it now but to me bottles are the way to go in a bar until we finish our system and get it done. Right right right which I'm working on right now. I just ordered. I built one that works and I'm building another one that works, which hopefully we're going to take the Japan with us. You want to bring that to Japan because we need another thing that can break when we go somewhere. Right? Right. Yeah. Nothing's better than stuff that breaks. You like breaking stuff. Yes. Awesome. Awesome. Okay, that answered the show that question right. All right, why don't we take our first commercial break and come back with some more questions.

Body has a job. Now with aluminum back to him in rock the mind staring at the radio man up all night.

Today's program is brought to you by fairway market. Looking for one there one market, every single you need for a fantastic meal. But if you don't feel like cooking, no worries, they cater. Check out their free market.com For more information. And be sure to check the new blog on our plate for weekly specials help tips and recipes.

That's a baseline right there.

Oh, yeah. That says that's your homage to MCA. You know, I didn't even know it sucks. I didn't even know that he died until a couple days afterwards. But that's the end of an era, right?

Yeah, indeed. And an interesting tidbit, there's a Tibetan doctor advised him to go vegan in the last month or so.

So So

putting that out, what's the meaning of just putting that out there? There will be no there was saying when Steve Jobs passed that he was he was vegan stubbornly and then may have not been the best idea.

But look, it turns out, that turns out that we all die, eventually, like this is one of those things that happens like regardless of whether you eat vegan or not turns out, you're gonna die. It's one of the hard things to kind of, like kind of get a handle on, but it's true. And one of the things that bothers me is any sort of health claim related to diet. While it's true that I think I could construct pretty unhealthy diets, out of any sort of food taste or food thing, like I could construct an incredibly unhealthy vegan diet, I could construct a healthy vegan diet, I could construct an incredibly unhealthy meat based diet, I could construct a healthy one, man. It's like, it's, you know, the idea that you could, um, first of all, when you're really sick, I know I would be grasping at anything to try and make myself be better. But my semi healthy self telling myself now in the future is first of all, when you're sick, it's already too dang late. I'd like to hear someone not too dang late. I mean, obviously, if you have a long term chronic thing, you change your habits, you get better, right? I mean, I just I'm very. I don't like in general, the notion of people selling dietary cures to mental illness. Yeah. I mean, I would love to hear someone call in and tell me that I'm the world's biggest jerk off for saying that. But in general, my philosophy not backed by science, but my philosophy is that the healthiest diet is to eat a wide variety of interesting foods in moderation that make you happy and sated. Yeah, yeah. Now if you're happy and sated, eating vegan because you don't want to take in animal products, then you should eat vegan. Right? Yeah. You know, it's been in which go on the Amazon and look up Michel napkins book. I'm curious to see how it's doing hopefully doing quite well. We'll give you a follow up on the thing. We talked about his book last week and his kind of slap across our face for talking about people's dietary choices. Okay. longtime listener King in Ken Ingber writes in two things one, he wrote an article about a coffee trip that he took to New York, we read it we couldn't read it online on the air because you know, as long right? But apparently is gonna get published in coffee geek maybe, which is nice. Yeah. But just to give you a preview in case it comes out on there. He had enough shots of espresso during a day to basically turn him into a Christmas to Allah. Just like you know, shaking caffeinated. I'm sure he I didn't see him afterwards, but I'm assuming I know if I had that much caffeine in me. It would be a nightmare. And I'm a very caffeinated fellow. Okay. Ken, right. And I'm making a French dinner this week. Of course, it's two weekends ago, so we missed it. I'm making a French dinner this weekend. I want to end with good humor. good humor is upon in this case. In particular, my dessert will be a creamsicle Boulais criminally with blood orange foam. I aspire to get my guests weeping Alinea over their childhood memories of a good humor creamsicle but I will settle for an appreciative groan so how do I make a phone with juice I combined the juice with like liquid less than and put it in my espresso milk frother I got no foam in less than did not mix with the juice by instead stuck to the spring coil frothing device as next to impossible to clean liquid lecithin is nasty net lesson in general is pretty nasty I only I very rarely use lettuce and by the way you ever see me use it no no I don't use it I imagine modernist pantry has some magic powder but the dinner is Saturday so I do have a lot of time I have Agra Agra in the house but don't think that's suitable Can I just use a little egg white and live the guests user ask if I'm using raw eggs follow up to that cancel my request on the phone unless you find it interesting I was unsuccessful using lecithin. Despite multiple assurances on the internet I'm throwing this away I'm throwing it away as it is not pleasant to work with is as pleasant as roofing tar. I used egg white and gelatin the former hot and cold and immersion blender and had some success with gelatin but it was a lot of fuss and didn't do it because it was a pain in the butt. Okay, I assume something like first of all it would work as I said I did not have time to order from monitors pantry. Oh well well can you know modernist pantry has quick shipping to anyone in fact, someone else wrote in we'll get to it later basically saying that it was quick but versus whip you're quite white right versus whip is what you should probably use for that. And Evan Freeman our friend Evan Freeman had a Blood and Sand recipe with an orange foam on top that was in fact made with Versa whip and his recipe is 200 grams of orange juice and 2.5 grams of Versa whip he doesn't say what kind of Versa whip because that's like Eben he was gonna tell you what kind you know what I mean. Thanks, Evan. Anyway 2.5 grams of versatile whip, which is a lot of whip. So like a you know, it's a lot, right? It's over a percent. In general, I try to add gums in the percent or less range. But in this case, I don't think it matters is going to be whipped up and a half gram of xanthan gum and Xanthan is there to provide body to it and to hold once it whips up the Versa whips a whipping agent, but the worst of hips not going to hold the phone, right? The Xanthan is there to hold the phone after the Versa whips it up. Okay, and then use an immersion blender with a whisk attachment to whip it into a foam and ladle on top. Another thing you can do, it's incredibly simple and doesn't require ordering anything online and creates a very dense orangey orangey foam. If you're going to want to acidic acidified a little bit, so orange plus a little bit of lemon to make it you know more like a sour orange right? Set that into an ag or gel pretty stiff like point eight to 1% AG our gel blended in a blender. Now you have a fluid gel. If you mix that with straight cream in a whip or in an ISI Whipper. When you squirt it out, you get a dense, dense foam and the Ag or fluid gel stops the cream from breaking. And you actually can have the really dense creamsicle like fluid gel and and we've done that many times. And that's my favorite kind of citrus foam. Because it has that awesome mouthfeel with cream, which you can't be you can't beat the mouthfeel of whipped cream right? In fact, it's even denser than whipped cream. It's like dense and creamy, but also orangey and acidic without breaking. And that'll hold for a while. So next time you do it or if anyone wants to do it. Like I think that's a good. That's a good way to do it. Right? Yes, yes. Massage again. I really care. I don't care.

No. So this his book, my goal napkins book got 10 five star reviews. Wow. It's beautiful. Yeah, it's

beautiful. So maybe we should buy it. How much? Is it? 1629 1629 Prime on Amazon or what else?

I'll make sure we book him for one of the other shows where we do more, you know, authors of books and stuff like

that. And he used to be a an engineer on the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.

What Whoa, what do you mean?

He was it? He was a software engineer making dinosaurs for Jurassic Park.

That's baller. Yeah, you know, my wife was saying should we let the kids watch the Jurassic Park? Or is it too damn scary? I think if the guy gets eaten Yeah, that's the postman from Seinfeld gets eaten. Right.

I was pretty young when I saw it. And it's pretty awesome, though. Well, how

young is young?

I think I must have been like, so I have to look it up. I'll actually go look up the release date. Yeah, you're really answer that Jack.

Yeah. Anyway, so everyone should go out and buy his book. We're gonna buy a copy of the book. And Jack's gonna try to get him booked onto his show.

Yeah, and let's have him build it. I

was seven years old. Sorry. I was seven, seven when I was like 85 when that movie came out. Okay. Chip writes in regarding circulators he misses the hammer and Dave and Jack but does not miss Carlos. Really? Yeah, hardcore. Man. I like a guy who respects the

losing miss the hammer like Mr. or Miss.

Maybe miss the hammer and Dave. Yeah. And Jack would not Carlos he does say but not Carlos. Master.

He's not saying hello.

All right, regardless. He says I know you're not the biggest proponents of DIY thermal circulators but my wife won't let me drop a G on one yet, so I had to do my best. I'm familiar with this problem ship. I made the version on Seattle Food geek a while back we quickly found that the pump being submerged was the slash a problem. And while I was cooking potatoes I guess it went south on and we was cooking potatoes for the Modernist Cuisine yucky recipe. So I wanted to move it out of the water, finding a pump that would a handle the heat and be would be self priming was a bit of a challenge. But if there is a need it is sold on eBay. So I found one there. That's that's that that is almost every damn thing on eBay, almost almost every damn thing on eBay, I use an SSR, which is a solid state relay for all you folks out there. By the way, in case you're the person who listens to our show doesn't know what a circulator is. It's a device that keeps water usually or any other liquid but with a DIY definitely only use water and try to keep it clean at a very precise temperature, which is invaluable for doing kind of modern low temperature cooking, which is, you know, I use it all the time. They're about 100 bucks now at the JB prints or at the William Sonoma and so a lot of people have been making their own. By the way, I am not against DIY circulators In fact, I applaud anyone that wants to build something themselves, it's just usually you end up with something where you've spent a lot of hours building it and it's not quite as functional. I think there's so many people working on the DIY circulators that I'm pretty sure they're pretty good by now. But he's quite right the main problem is the pump and let me go on to keep on going. I also it's a trip again I also had the case for it laser cut on pinocchio.com pinocchio.com is pretty cool you just send them like the pictures and they can laser cut stuff and they ship it back to you so it took a little more so looks a little more like a retail product I still need to address some of the visual issues with it but what as it works for now I like what is Victoria says are former into works with us. Anyway. Anyway, I thought I'd share thanks for the great show monitors pantry does have fast shipping. Thanks, Jim. I looked at at ship circulator, I don't know if it's available on line dancing does look pretty good. One thing I'm going to say if you're going to build a circulator, the main parts are a controller controllers can now be had for $30 or less in that range on eBay and other instruments. Some people buy controllers with relays in them I don't recommend using a regular relay because it's another failure point that I don't enjoy having I don't enjoy failure points. I use a solid state relay which he uses they're not that expensive they can be had for very cheap at this point. And a an immersion heater which you can basically cribbed from almost anything we know a hot water heater, whatever. I don't know what these guys are using DIY a temperature sensor again, only a several dollar problem now and then the case that's the hard part and the pump pumps break a lot and real circulators basically have a long shaft and they just sit there spinning a stainless steel blade to do the pumping and it ends up being good over the long term. I've had most of my plastic in and out pumps like the one you're using here fail over time but you know good luck with it looks like a good job. So you did a good job right? Yeah, yep. I'm gonna take one more commercial break. Let's take it to the commercial break call your questions to send 184972128181 Georgia

811 No make a little bit of practice to be the best that you're another

nice one. Nice one. Mr. Bhatia, for those of you that don't know, likes to just kind of like make weird judgments about things decided parents are like this too. By the way. Just decide does not like my shirt. Right? And the reason is I'm wearing one of my favorite shirts, which is a hunting shirt. It's blaze orange, and her opinion is that it makes me look like a prison work gang. Who the reason prisoners wear orange is the same reason hunters wear orange is to be seen easily. The hunters do it so they don't get shot and the prisoners do it so that they can get shot if they try to escape. It's a slightly different, but none of that has anything to do with my shirt which I'm not neither hunting nor hopefully going to prison today. So I don't really understand the stashes problem anyway. Derek Botkin writes in about A popcorn machine. Dave and CO recently I learned about Chinese popcorn in prints. I don't print quotes when I say print my quotes apparently a method where kernels or see kernels are sealed in a container and superheated then allowed to explosively decompress popping them all at once. Here's a link and you look on like look for explosively awesome on the internet's going bowling and whatnot. In your humble opinions. Is it possible to hack together a set up to do this in a home kitchen? Thanks for your help and insight and keep being awesome. Derek pocket. Okay. You have asked a question that I actually do know something about, because I actually have tried to do this at home before many, many, many years ago. But like before I had kids, so it's more than 10 years ago, probably 12 years ago, 13 years ago. So I have been interested in a long time for in a piece of equipment called a puffin gun. Now were when they were inventing breakfast cereals at the beginning of the 20th century and end of the 19th beginning of the 20th century. And you know, in that range, was when all of the really butt kicking breakfast cereal concepts were invented except one, except one. So flakes were invented back then. And the way they were made is with a giant oversized, basically Pasta Machine, where you like you temper out actual whole kernels, and you feed them through these incredibly, they're cooled and they're incredibly massive, and sturdy, roll rollers, and it just booked smashes them into flakes and the flakes shoot out onto onto a mat and that's it, they're done. That was invented back then the shredder to make shredded wheat was invented back then. And that's basically the same concept, but the roller has ridges in it. So it extrudes them into Shredded Wheat shapes, right. Also, at that time was invented the puffing gun and the puffing gun, right is an amazing piece of equipment where what you do is so corn, you can pop normally there really no need to do this with popcorn because corn, you can pop, you know what I mean? But you can't pop wheat in you can't pop rice the same way you can profit by frying, but you can't pop it the same way popcorn does. And the reason is, is that the the outside the skin of the popcorn is so it seals in the water so well, that when you're heating it in oil, water pressure can build up on the inside of the kernel in the endosperm to the point where it explosively decompresses, and you get popcorn, right? That's what's happening. When you do wheat, it's very hard to do regular wheat because the moisture leaks out of the out of the outside, right because it's not as hard the outside is not as like leakproof. And so it won't pop explosively the same way that popcorn will. So the solution to this, right. Same with rice, the solution to this is to heat these, these items under a lot of pressure, what's a lot of pressure, like 175 psi in that range, because they're trying to get it up to the same temperatures that you would get when you're frying popcorn, like 363 in that range. 350 Fahrenheit 365 around there, right. And so you start with a grain that has the proper amount of moisture in it, which I forget what that is, I can go look it up. It's something like 10% or something in that range, right? You then seal it, you heat it under a massive amount of pressure. And what that means is is that the water inside is hot, right, and it's also under pressure so it won't boil, then you release the pressure very suddenly, and all of a sudden, all that water expands all at once. And it pops it doesn't need the outside of the grain to hold the moisture in the way that you would with regular popcorn. So the unit that you pointed to on the video that the guy is using on the street corner, I would not walk anywhere near that sucker that sucker was so freaking ghetto, that thing could blow up at any second. I happen to know that when he's puffing that stuff, it's under at least 150 psi, probably higher, right? So you don't want to and basically what you do is is he literally has a like a like a like what looks like a homemade boiler that he's spinning and that's good because you need to get the heat evenly transferred throughout it right. So it's spinning over a fire that he has stoked with coal and with like what looks like a modified hairdryer, right? And what looks like a frickin vise grip holding the whole damn thing together. Right? Really

happy though. He

looked like happy. He looks happy because he's not dead every second that he works and he's not dead. He's happy. And then he sticks it into a you know this what looks like a long wind sock, which was incredibly dirty. By the way. I don't know that I bought me and it was incredibly dirty. And then puts a stick and pulls the pin. Bam, the thing blows up. Now maybe this thing is actually manufactured by somebody to some sort of specifications. But the idea of heating something over an open fire with no protection that looks homemade, to 170 psi 150 170 Psi, and then explosively decompressing it time after time outside. It freaks me out. Put it that way. So how did I attempt to do this, I bought some pipes that were rated to 150 psi or higher actually, I got like 8080 scheduled at which was rated higher than 150 psi, made out of steel, I put them all together with heater water heater on the inside, which was one of the weak points and an overpressure valve so that it wouldn't go above the pressure that I want to add a thermometer, all done with pipes, whether regular pipes, filled it with corn glue. So my first test because I was trying to I was I was working on a on doing a nuclear explosion out of candy and popcorn. And so I was trying to actually do a puffing gun thing for that. And the problem was is that the piping system that I had didn't seal properly and so I was getting venting and steam out, I did get it up to like 120 psi before and I literally like like I said, I used the vise grips with like a pull string to pull it. And I what I successfully did was spray burning hot popcorn kernels all over my all over my house. I didn't actually I pop maybe four or five of them, but I didn't get it to be done the way you'd want. And I think my main problem was is I tried to have a little bit of water medium in there to heat it. I tried heating it internally, instead of having an external fire with rotation, which is the way that it's always done is external heat and agitation. And the piping system, it was just hard to get it to seal very well that thick pipe was like two inch pipe. It was hard to get it to seal accurately at those high high temperatures, because I use Teflon tape but it just didn't work. So I'm going to build one eventually. Because for the museum of food and drink serial exhibition, we're going to have a serial exhibit in the museum of food and drink which we're working on. Now. We have our first we have our well we have a new full time employee at the Museum of food and drink even though he's not getting paid. She's not an employee, I guess cuz he's not getting paid. But Peter Kim, formerly one of our lawyers at devil was and big Plimpton they planted anyway. So like they he quit being a lawyer. He believes in museum projects so much he quit being a lawyer. And he is now working in museum full time, which we're very, very excited about. Yeah. So the museum will have one. There are small commercial machines that that are not quite so wonky in Korea that actually make puffed rice cakes, Alami Newt, and I forget the name of them. But it's something like like, being like billing billing, the noise of the actual thing working is what it is in Korean. But I don't know what the noise is. So I can't tell you what it is. But you could go look that up. The third. And the third kind of machine by the way for serial. And it the one that was not invented early on in the game is the twin screw extruder, which basically was a piece of equipment that was invented for the plastics industry. And that's how they make Captain Crunch. And all things like that they basically have a screw under enormous pressure that takes in grains or whatever, under enormous pressure, and then and heats up the pressure. And the actual screw mechanism of putting it through the thing heats it up. So that when it comes out of a die at the end, much like a pasta die like a pasta extruder. But it's under such heat and pressure that when it comes out the end, it could pass up into Captain Crunch or kicks or whatever. And that's how they make all of those cereals. And so we're going to have one of those at the exhibit two, because that's pretty badass. Right is yeah, I've always wanted one of those I went to I went to visit Cornell years ago, and they let me look at theirs to have small pilot ones. Should we get one? Yeah, we should. Right? Let's get Peter on that computer on that son of a gun. Right. But we want a big one like this. I think like if we got anyone out there who has used serial Cookman I called up the period Manufacturing Corporation, by the way is the corporation that used to make all the old puffing guns, they no longer use those puffing guns. In commercially in the US they've moved to a system called the continuous puffer that's a batch puffing thing. And you know, they've moved to continuous buffers, and so all the old ones get sent back refurbed And now most of them are used in factories in Mexico. So I wasn't able to locate someone with an old puffing gun that wanted to donate it to the museum. So if anyone out there can get their hands on an old Puritan Manufacturing Corporation puffing gun, the museum would love and we're now 501 C three, right? We're still pending. We're still pending, but believe me, we're gonna get that 501 C three. So you'll be able to write off that Puritan puffing gun when you donate it to the museum and the little kids are going to be so happy when we're exploding cereal in front of their parents that like 10 Nine, all the way down to one boom and serial spraying everywhere. goggles and bowls and we're gonna have