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.

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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.

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Hello and welcome to cooking issues. Roberta's pizzeria. And last week Brooklyn. Well, we're back from Tokyo residence. You have a good time. Yeah, no, because you're not speaking to the microphone. Good timing. Yes. Did you have a fantastic time crazy? In fact, the only problem is we have so many questions to get to that I don't know if I'm gonna have time to talk about say we have a one o'clock here now. Yeah, well some of their time since we have two weeks we were gone for two weeks it turned out it was impossible for nostos United scheduled doing the cooking issue show with our work schedule over there and the Japan because we were working bar basically until right before the show and so we couldn't really prep out for it right? Yeah. Anyway, call any questions 27184972128 That's 718-497-2128 All right. So let's wait right? Yeah. I don't even I don't even listen to it. I just like you just turn on his speech and it just like sprays out of your face. You don't you have no idea. Okay, well, actually, since we don't have time to talk to you, they should go to the blog. Oh, I restarted the blog again. Right I got the first post I did was an apology for not putting a post up and the second one is when to stop and I went to gerosa Sushi along with Mark Ladner a lot of money. Yeah, JIRA loves money. Jiro Dreams of the money. They favorite

if I was if the old man or the old man can watch me eat my melon think?

Well, you know, look at for those who don't know, this is a Jiro Dreams of Sushi is the is the movie that's out now. And it's this 86 year old dude. He's 82 years old. He got three Michelin stars. Basically, all he does, he wakes up very early. He goes to CPG market, you know, fish market and Tokyo gets the fish shows up and his you know, must be 60s son, right? Yeah, is who must be he's dreaming of his dad. So he could take over the family business. So these guys along with like a couple other apprentices are sitting there and this 86 year old dude is pumping out the sushi every day. But when you show up, it's like 300 $350 a pop. And it's one course every minute for about 19 minutes, and then they move you to another seat and you eat your melon. And Natasha and Mark were like, like, all like bent out of shape like pretzels worried about like hurting? Obviously. They want us to leave they want to I can give a rat's ass whether they want me to leave or not. You know what I mean? It's like, if look, if you invite me into your place, and I'm spending $350 You'd like you know, you don't have a right to kick me out in like, you know, within 30 minutes, you know, I understand you. Yeah, I mean, anxiety. He's not a hooker. It's not like he's on the route. You know what I mean? The melon, the melon. Is not that I would know about that. No, no. Imagine it. Yeah. Anyway. But the quality of Sushi was amazing. Go see the write up on Cooking issues.com versus this, which is cooking issues the radio show? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Daniel, Seattle writes, Hey, Anastasia and Dave, love the show and music teacher and food nerds who loves listening to a restaurant shop talk, my wife and I throw big dinner parties for 12 to 20 people in our small apartment. What are the current best practices for making coffee for a whole bunch of people? Usually, our guests have at least one small cup each and usually more. So I shoot for at least six to eight ounces per person, normally do French press or a pourover or an arrow press. But those don't scale up? Well, even if we do a few batches and transfer them to thermal chorus. What do you think Daniel? Seattle? Well, if you're willing to do a pourover technique, I think one thing you could do is switch to a much larger format when you're doing your pourover. So with any of these things, you're into a couple problems like fresh coffee is always better than coffee. That's not fresh, duh. But there's a couple of reasons. One is that the temperature of the coffee goes down like that's the obvious one. And two, the aroma of the coffee disperses. And actually the stuff in the coffee itself, the flavors of the coffee tend to physically change with time after their brewed now. So some of that can be mitigated by proper craft handling. So if you want to use one of your small scale methods and put it into craft and have good results, the first trick is to add a boatload of boiling water to your craft. First, let it sit for a couple of minutes covered, dump it out at another layer of boiling water in another thing of boiling water to it. Now leave that boiling water in and not your craft is very, very hot. Otherwise, even though your craft is thermally insulated, you're wasting a lot of the heat energy of the coffee, just warming up the glass walls of the craft before you add any stuff to it makes sense, right? Right. Same is true when you're adding liquid nitrogen to a craft, you end up losing a lot of the initial batch of liquid nitrogen that you add, because you need to chill down the craft to a low temperature. So the first thing I would suggest is preheating your craft, okay. Now, the second choice you have is to scale up your mode of production. The problem with most scale ups is that you radically change the actual parameters of your of your brewing. And by that I mean either the brew time, or the blue water temperature and either one of those things can really drastically influence the flavor result in your coffee. So it's very hard to do in a French press unless you were to custom create some sort of a French press operation in a big pot. But I've noticed that whenever you're doing things in a large scale, it can still be difficult because the physical time to press something down is going to be different, the physical time to drain something off in a large situation is going to be different. So here's what I recommend. If you're gonna if you're willing to do pourover technique, go online and purchase the large large coffee filters that are meant to go with industrial for industrial size, like been thematic coffee machines that make 20 cups at a time, they're much much larger lot more surface area than the standard one, put it into a colander, put your grounds into that with a bed depth that's roughly similar to what you would have in a normal pour over coffee situation. Put that colander over a larger pot that you can put into a bain marie of of hot water and then heat your water for the coffee and pour it all over at once so that your brew time is roughly similar to what your normal pourover drip time would be. And that should create and then pour directly into a thermal craft and serve out and that's probably as close as I think I can get you just off the top of my head having never done it myself. What do you think so good. Good. All right. My iPad my stuff is so long winded that my iPad turns off in between and I have to there's a way to keep an eye on that stuff. You want that for next week.

Okay,

which which reminds me I just want to tell listeners that we now have iPhone and iPad compatibility for the live stream so you guys can tune in live on the go. Oh, hell

yeah. Yeah. All right. Jonas from Switzerland writes in about meat. Hello, Anastasia. And Dave, I'm a chef has been working with the suevey technique for some time in 2011. We tasted various foods and cvwd water baths and publish the results we like in an iPhone app called suevey degree Celsius. How the hell do you search for the degree symbol? Crazy? I don't know how you do that. I have no idea anyway, recently I've been asked to present low temperature cooking and the science behind it at culinary schools one of the most stunning examples when presenting it presenting CV there's of course low temperature cooking for long periods of time as in spareribs or beef shins, veal neck, etc. One question is often come up I don't know how to answer is up to what temperature or for how long do collagenases Enzymes remain active when cooking cvwd Okay, and then he brings up two articles one is studying the effects of heat on meat proteins by dornburg 2005 which says that temperature is between 53 and 63 degrees. The collagen denaturation occurs followed by collagen fibers shrinkage and then on 497 It quotes an article from 1970 that shows the collagen ace which would be an an enzyme by the way ace is enzyme always in collagen ace would be an enzyme that breaks down collagen could remain active in the meat at cooking temperatures below 60 degrees, whereas faster heating up to seven degrees Celsius they were inactivated. But then to contra distinct to that he says in the abstract for effective prolonged heat treatment from 48 to 63. On toughness and cooking loss of pork, which is a recent article. The residual activity of cat has been exactly different enzyme by the way. In low temperature, longtime treated pork with mainly affected by temperature showing the highest activity between 58 and 63 degrees Celsius. So what's up with that? How can we go for that? And how can we go and how long does it have an effect? Is it 60 degrees? 63 degrees? Can you help me You've sussing this crap out. Best wishes from Switzerland? Jonas. Okay, first of all, for those of you that couldn't follow a damn word, I was just saying. The argument here. The question is, in low temperature cooking is the majority like there, there are enzymes that are still working in low temperature cooking, and those enzymes break down various proteins in in the meat, okay, and the two main protein fractions, we're looking to break down our connective tissue fractions, which is mainly collagen, and muscle protein portions like actin, myosin, the actual contraction portions of muscles. Now, collage kinase is an enzyme that is present causes awesome stuff that mustache likes to look up in the internet, like gas gangrene, the thought of like a gangrenous lesion and is sending to stash it into queasy results. Now, now look, yes, these enzymes keep working. And enzymes, especially protein breakdown, enzymes have a huge impact on the texture of fish that's cooked low temperatures, why fish can go pasty and mushy. And for a long time, it's been theorized that these enzymes are also a lot of what's going on in tenderizing, low temperature cook meat, I just don't believe it, I just don't think so. I think it has some effect, right. But I think it's not the majority of effect. Furthermore, there's two main categories of enzymes you're looking at here. collagenases, enzymes, like I say, break down collagen, but in the recent literature, they're very, very, they're not very often mentioned at all. The others are different. They're cat husbands, which break down the break down the muscle proteins. And those are in their contained with normally in intact muscle inside the lysosomes can be released on cooking. And there's recent studies on that, that there are released and they maintain some activity. And so they can, they can probably act towards muscle protein, you know, tenderness, but it's probably not the majority of the effect of majority of effect. And low temperature cooking is probably just a thermal degradation of collagen over long periods of time at elevated temperatures. That That is my feeling. Also, these articles are you know, there are a lot of them that are done a review articles. And so you it's like you're comparing apples and oranges when you're comparing temperatures because they're denatured. And proteins in different environments. You know, purified or not purified in different muscles in the presence of different fat. They're measuring different temperatures, ie the temperature they're cooking to versus internal temperatures. And so it's really impossible, you're comparing apples and oranges and I read them and they didn't make too much in numbers. I wasn't putting too much of a witness that makes sense to start. Okay, but when I was researching this stuff, I did look up a new, there's a new enzyme out there, it's called Hulot college analytic protease, MCP, oh, one that comes from a deep sea bacteria that can break down proteins at low temperatures, like in the fridge. So that might be something new to look at. Because that's a very recent, that's a recent thing. That's, you know, 2012 I think the other thing is, is that the muscles that these guys choose to do their tests on. And this is a problem with all meat, all meat texture, things, they always choose muscles that freakin suck, like the two articles that you put in, they use a lot of them. semi tendinosis muscle, which is like I have round sucks, it's a crappy muscle. And the reason they choose that crappy muscle is because it doesn't have a lot of variation in the muscle. So it's easy to run tests on, but it's not an accurate representation of what's going to happen when you're actually cooking meat that you would rather eat. Okay. Now, another thing about the college collagenases enzyme enzyme thing that you cited and it was cited a couple of times, was invented in 1970. It's really old research and then read some more recent research that said, you know, I don't know that that's still you know, that's not I don't think it's really current research. But I found this awesome website that you should all go to right now. www dot Beef research.org Beef research.org Beef research.org and look for a ranking of beef muscles for tenderness. It's from the University of Nebraska, and it's an awesome PDF, basically, where they tell you in very fine detail what The problems are with running studies on tenderness and what tenderness means. And the difference in tenderness when it's measured by a machine versus when it's measured by a person. And it ranks the different muscles, which is awesome. And then they have a supplementary website, which is freaking fantastic, called bovine.unl.edu. Now, if you go to that PDF, I told you, they mistakenly put a www in front of bovine dot UNL. And then you can't get to the page, forget the www no www.bovine.unl.edu. And they have a three dimensional cow with the muscles on it, and the meat and the skeleton and you can click any one and get any one particular muscle and spin it around in 3d and like go in and out. And they have videos of a butcher breaking down every single cut that they have in that thing. So it's a fantastic resource. I can't believe I haven't seen it until now. I hope that all of anyone who's listening here is well finished listening to us. And then after we're done talking, go and check. Check that out. And first of all in Nebraska, they know their meat. Am I right? Nebraska meat? I mean, come on Nebraska. Possibilities. Endless. That's the state model. Yeah. Did you know that? No, yeah, shout out to Angelica bazzar. Our Nebraska in turn of all times all times. Okay. Question Three from Paul about invertase from, it's an enzyme heavy show. Enzyme heavy show. And remember, Ace means enzyme people's people's. Alright. Hello, Anna stache and Dave What? No, Jack No, Jack. Anyway, I would like to ask about invertase. I only really know of it being used in those terrible cherry cordial bonbons. But I'd like to know if it could be used in interesting ways in other applications, or if there's a similar product that can similarly break down a less or non sweet sugar to be used in a more savory application. PS huge fan. Thank you. Great info that I'll be using one day after I finished my upcoming training with Daniel blued. Well, good job. We're gonna Daniel balut. Badass. Well, you know one of those, you know, major, major badass is Daniel blue. Okay.

From Paul, okay. Here's the thing. invertase. For all of you that don't know what's going on. invertase is an enzyme that breaks down sucrose, which is a disaccharide right? It's got a fructose and a glucose right? And and basically the invertase breaks that down into glucose and fructose now, invertase invert sugar, which you can buy as trembling and things like that are very useful in confectionary because it can minimize or prevent crystallization or affect, you know, minimize crystal size, increase the moisture holding capability of a product so it's it's good, it's good stuff. It's useful. Now. The way this is used in bonbons, the terrible cherry bonbons that you're that you refer to is you make a fond on now finance are crystallized. They look like solids, but what they really are is a network of sugar crystals with a sugar syrup in between those crystals, right? And when you add the invertase to that and then coat that fond on in chocolate, let's say what happens over time is the sugar sugar is broken down into invertase, it loses its crystal structure and reverts to a semi liquid syrup. Right? So what you're using is the fact that is that you have this syrup, it's being bound with sucrose crystals, you break down the sucrose and then you have this liquidy center, right? Now. invertase is used for other things. And so I looked up that I looked up the website for those guys. And it says it's used, you can make invert with it, which is better than acid, you know acid catalyzed inversion, which is what you normally do when you're making cooking sugar because it's more controlled, etc, etc. Sugar if you make if you invert sugar that way, it's less apt to turn brown when cooking as opposed to acid catalyzed inversion. It's also used in fruit juices jams to increase sweetness and increased resistance to crystallization and things like that. Okay. But you can't really I think it really only works on glucose and sucrose. I don't know of any other enzymes that would do that. If you wanted a slowly liquefying center. What I would recommend is using an enzyme that breaks down pectin or breaks down any I hydrocolloid at a relatively slow rate. So I would get a pectin that sets relatively quickly stir in some SPL to it, set it and get it cold fast so that pectinase doesn't break it down too quickly. Then you could enrobe that pectin thing in something and then the pectin would dissolve over time you get a liquid or something like that, where you broke down a hydrocolloid structure instead of sugar structures. That makes sense. You could also probably do that with something that breaks down and starts the same way that undercooked like undercooked custard. Things can liquefy over time if the starch gets broken down. Anyway, that's my thoughts. Take it, take it, take it or don't. Okay. Let's take our first commercial break and come back. Call your questions to sit 184972128 That's 718-497-2128 the cooking issue

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Jack was that you? That was me Give me some whole culinary world again.

Oh, man, radio voice. guys real quick before you go on. So we were at Bonnaroo covering the event this weekend and the gastropod truck dude said hello. Oh Jeremiah bullfrog. Yeah, I go up to him. I'm like, Hey, can we interview you for Heritage radio? And he's like, Oh, my God. You're the voice. It's cooking issues. You're the producer. Nice. Yeah. Every week.

Really? Are we on the air right now?

Yeah, we're on the air. Right. Yeah, this is how we do we talk on the air. That's how the radio works. Yeah, we're a big fan of the Jeremiah bullfrog. We did an event with him maybe a year ago, almost exactly a year ago. In in Miami, and I looked like like the crew that comes too frequently. His gastro get hot. gastropod truck turns out to be like a really great crew of customers. We really had a great time at their event. I like loved the crowd in Miami. I thought they were really really fun anyway. So you interviewed him what you use it for?

We did a piece on Bonnaroo that will be up on the website today is Monterey the

thing with the people the young people who they meet each other and he's in the ladies like I'm going to rock your world.

No, it's the guys you through Google Muga it's the big music festival in Tennessee. We have a call coming in though so

what's the one I'm talking about? Battery the one that where people get high? No The one on the wall on the on the on the like the one sheets on on the street. And it's like I like to I like to mess with chicken.

Oh, that's bad. Do bad

to ruin thing they may call or you're on the air. Hello. Hi, I'm Chris from the UK. Hey, how you doing? Good. Thanks, so

good. I have a question on egg free customers and egg free morons is in it at all? Right? How would you best go around it?

Well, okay, so for Marang like texture, you're gonna want to use it, basically, you just need something that's going to be a whipping agent that's going to hold right. So you Okay, so you can use a protein that acts in a similar way to egg whites. And so for that, I would use something like reverse a whip. And you can get either one that's soy based or one that's casein based. I mean whey based rather not casein whey based. So and you know, those ones, they they whip that when you're getting one of those things, the the issue is, is that they sometimes take a long time to whip up and they don't cook off the same way. So they're not going to hold their structure when they're done. The way that a Marang will, but for like a very quick serve something like if you just want that texture, it'll work on a custard or on a moraine that's going to hold I mean, the the the issue is if you're wanting to go egg free, presumably is to go vegan, so I can't recommend something like a gelatin or some other set. You could it's not the vegan that's problem. It's an egg allergy. Ah, okay, well, I mean, you could then set if you're going to whip something with a Versa whip, you can then set it with gelatin so that it holds after it chills down and then you can have something that holds up over time. Or you could use an alternative if you did want to go vegan, you could use an alternative hydrocolloid that would hold the Marang over time, and then what you're just doing is using the Versa whip as a whipping aid, but you know, as a foaming agent, so then you would, you'd have a Miranda hold over time, if you wanted to do something that was going to be heat stable, like if you were going to cook off a Marang in an oven, then you'd have to probably go a little more hardcore because you'd need a hydrocolloid that could withstand heat and so for then you might be able to move to something like an ag bar, but you'd have to make sure that it whips up before it cools down. Or if you are if you want really heat stable because Agata will melt, you'd have to go with a gel and but you'd have a real problem. I've tried doing it whipping up Joanne's whipping up Joanne gels, you know so that they're stable before they set. Another alternative to whipping to setting a gel in a foam is to use a slow setting. sodium alginate foam. I don't like to do it. I've done it. The problem is is that I don't think sodium alginate tastes very good, right? So what you would do is you Use a whipping agent and sodium alginate. And then you whip it into a foam. And then you'd add a little calcium at the last second and then it would you know, it would set into a foamed gel, you know what I mean? And that one I've done it, you have to be careful to not be able to taste the alginate. Right? The other for the custard I'd have to do, I'd have to do some research I've never thought of, of eggless. custards mean the way that I would, you know, off the top of my head, right, you can without egg set things into custard like textures using something like Iota carrageenan, especially in the presence of milk, very small amounts of Iota carrageenan will produce kind of a custardy texture. The problem is Iota is a little elastic, so you want to have it just set. And so you would use Iota and maybe a little bit of kappa Carageenan to make it into a have a little more of a break to it as opposed to Iota, which is going to be a little more rubbery. But I've had, you know, Wiley's done both pectin based sets, and Iota slash kappa Carageenan mix based sets of custards that I thought were very, very good, you know, almost like a pannacotta texture, you know, and those can be totally achieved with various hydrocarbons. But I would stick with something kind of simple, like Carageenan is relatively simple to work with. And mixtures of AI. The great thing about Iota is also that it'll reset after it after it breaks a little bit, but a mixture of mainly IODA at a very low concentration and, and a little bit of Kappa, will give you a nice cluster D texture, not you know, you'd have to adjust the firmness a little bit, you know what I mean? But okay, you can get there. And those are all available, I assume from the modernist pantry folk, I don't know. And then if you needed some thickening of it, right? If it didn't feel thick enough with whatever ingredients you were adding, I would thicken it with us. I wouldn't try to thicken it with the university that increased the creaminess of it with the Iota and the Kappa, then you would move to more of a thickening agent, something like an LPG locus being or just a traditional something, make it thicker, like add more of something that's anxious to it, you know, you don't need to go to hydrocolloid route on that. But that's that's the way I'd approach it. Okay, thank you. All right. Let us know how it works. Thank you. We'll do thanks a lot. Bye. All right. So Paul Kay wrote in on meat cooking home muscles. Hi, Dave. I was at an event A while ago, where I saw a steak I think in entrecote. Being prepared on a barbecue by which I think he means grill. Mickey means grill. But as far as our turn anyway, in a way I've never seen before. Rather than cutting the steaks and then cooking them, an entire cylinder of beef was barbecued rested out and only then cut, it seems it was incredibly efficient as a result was very beautiful. Every state had a perfect gradient from crusty on the lateral edge to a disk that was essentially raw in the center. Normally, you only see the sort of gradient once you cut into the state one, is this technique well known and if so does have a name to what cuts of beef would you recommend for this techniques? And three? Do you have any tips on how to make this work? Well, when cooking four kilograms of beef at a time, I can imagine that cock ups can be expensive concepts. It's a good way to say mess ups. I like that because it's kind of almost dirty, but not. I guess it'll be critical to start with beef at room temperature. Thanks, Paul. Okay. Now when you're, when you're dealing with meats, I mean, essentially what they're doing is roasting the meat on a grill. Right, it's basically roast meat, think about like prime rib, prime rib is delicious that way. So basically, what you're not basically what you're doing here is using the grill to to instead, roast something and I think the most similar idea would be like a rotisserie where you pull off something that's rare, you know, before it before it's cooked all the way through because then it would just be done manually, I would assume that these people who were using the grill, were constantly turning the mean. And it's fundamentally different from a long, most people say barbecue. What they're referring to is long, long, long term cooking, where the meats to cook totally all the way through, right on a grill versus just straight grilling where the meat can be pulled off at any doneness including rare in the middle, and you're just getting a nice crust on the outside. When you're doing it, you could use something that would one would normally barbecue with right ie a lower temperature, but just do it less long, in which case you're treating it more like a roast but you'd need to get the temperature high enough to get across the finish on the outside. That makes sense. And Stacia by I'm not exactly sure what you mean. So you write back and tell me more about it. You kind of exactly kind of what's going on and where it falls in the continuum between grilling and barbecuing or whether or not I have the right idea about what you're what you're referring to because I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to so I don't want to go the wrong way. Right. So yes, she's like, I don't really care, whatever. Okay, Erin Lawton writes in from Portland, Maine on chili oil and botulism all inclusive greetings. I like that doesn't want to you know, doesn't want to make any statements on who may or may not be here. Just the all inclusive Greetings, everyone but jacket says actually, anyway. Doesn't really, I listen to your show every week vi tunes in appreciate the distraction it serves. It's good. I have long stood over questions about chili oil. My wife underwent a heart transplant a couple of years ago. And food safety is a preeminent concern in our cooking Hey, my mom runs a heart transplant program pediatric heart transplant program at Columbia Presbyterian, a mom, you know, hardcore badass. She's the cardiologist there. So, you know, heart transplant patients close to my close to my well I wasn't even thinking about that this dumb anyway. You know, anyway, I think it's something I think about. Okay, we love making spicy Sichuan food which recently frequently calls for chilly oil. I would like to make the oil myself due to my cheapness something. We also share cheapness, cheapness. All of us here are really cheap bastards. Right. So yeah, really cheap, really cheap. She'll walk to the airport rather than take a car even if I'm paying for it. However, I've overcome with fears of botulism. We are both in our 20s and have years of cooking eating ahead of us. Can you allay my fears of contamination and provide advice on botulism free chilli oils, the chilli oil I tried came from land of plenty by fuchsia Dunlap by the way if you should Dunlop good friend Harold McGee was showing around China apparently fuchsia Dunlop badass toy here although I don't own her book, which only used heated peanut oil and dried pepper flakes with optional ginger. Barbara trop also has a rare recipe which adds orange zest and garlic, Chinese black beans and sesame oil. Okay, so look, the danger here is with the garlic. The problem with with botulism in oil is this if you add something like a fresh herb or garlic and garlic grows in the ground, and frequently has content botulism contamination in it when you cooking the even if you cook the garlic off in the oil, enough water remains in the garlic to allow botulism to grow in it right. And when you have botulism in oil, and there's no off taste, there's there's no nothing. So we're what happens is even if you keep the garlic,

you let it cool, you store it not in the fridge, and the botulism spores because you've killed all the vegetative bacteria, the bacteria that are actively operating, the spores, read, germinate and create botulism toxin, which then it very bad, very bad, bad. So how do you get around this if you don't use the garlic, you're fine, right. Also, if you remove the garlic from the oil, and there's only completely dried items in the oil when you're done, like dried pepper flakes, as long as you haven't reconstituted them with water, then you should be okay. But if it makes you nervous store in the fridge every you know store in the fridge. And if it gets more than a couple of weeks old, you can reheat the oil to 80 degrees Celsius for 10 to 15 minutes, or 20 minutes for meat product. And botulism toxin is heat labile ie it's destroyed by heat. So if you heat the oil, enough times right or high enough, you can actually destroy the botulism toxin that is already present. So the rules are stored in the fridge. If you store for a long time. If you store for a long time, you reheat if you if when in doubt throw it out. Also, if you use only dry products, you're in a much better position. And thirdly, if you add some acid to the ingredients that you're cooking that have water in them the acid citric acid if you don't use ascorbic because ascorbic will get destroyed by the heat as well. Use citric acid if it's acidic enough, the product won't support the growth of botulism. So low water, low, you know, high heat, all these things will help protect. Does that make sense? stuff? Yes. All right. Caller you're on the air.

Hi, guys, Ben from Minnesota here. I do. Thanks for taking my call. Question about bagels and pretzels. And the lye solution that I might be dipping them in. Okay. I know you had kind of a nasty experience with lye and want to avoid that myself.

I would avoid I would avoid that experience. Yeah,

I was reading a paper it looks like a lab experience. Experiment assignment possibly from Ohio State pencil study. It's called if you look that up you might find it on the net. And they're using a 2% and a Oh H which I assume is just that 100% household life yeah by that? Is that what I'm using?

Okay. All right, we'll get it we'll get into the hardware store is mean. Look, if you go to the hardware store on 99% of the stuff that you buy unless you're buying something it's packaged as lie

back it says 100% household like no other ingredients listed but um you know, I'm wondering if there's a food grade lie that's made and where I would even get

that there is a food grade line it's made you can get professional baker supplies. Okay, now that that being said, I have used the hardware store stuff But I can't recommend it because I believe it's possible for it to have a heavy metal contamination and stuff like that. So I don't recommend using it, I recommend getting the food grade stuff from the, you know, from a professional baker supply really don't use. Like some people have asked me, Can I just go use drain cleaner? No. First of all, there's like all kinds of weird stuff added to drain cleaner. Just, you know, stay away from it, like aluminum flakes and all sorts of nasty weird stuff. So, you know, look, if you want to run a couple of experiments with why then you know, if you get the 100% like I wouldn't you, I can't recommend that you use it, I would recommend you get the food grade stuff, but as an experiment to see what happens, it works. You know, do you have kids in the house?

I do. That's why it's in the garage tied up real tight, you know? Yeah.

But you know, when I, you know, for those you don't know, I was doing a lot of experiments with lye and different bases, especially in things like pretzels, but also for next amortization. And for the hardening of a lot of experiences. And other

routes, I could go I've got some Mexican markets around is that something that would be solved there. And as what you know,

well, they have count, they have calcium. Yeah, they have cow, which is you know, which of calcium hydroxide, which is not that it's not the same and it has a different taste. You could use anything basic is going to mean or you could go the route that McGee does, where he cooks baking soda, to convert it to, you know, the more basic form and then use that lie is great for it. I mean, I have to say lie works great. And for those of you that, you know, if you have a bagel actually, you can just boil it doesn't need the extra brownie, it'll taste more like a pretzel if you add the lye. So most, I mean, some some bagel recipes I've seen have some baking soda in the boiling water and some don't. But you know, unless you need the extra browning and that little taste that that you get from the basicity then, you know, you don't need it, but the domain. Yeah, but the main flavor that you're getting in a pretzel from the boil out. First of all, you get that dark brown pretzel note because when you increase the the alkalinity of the of the surface, you increase the rate at which the mild reactions happen. You get that characteristic brown pretzel color, but also the characteristic flavor of a pretzel is having to do with that basic that basic outside that so when you crunch into a pretzel, if you in your mind think kind of I don't want to hesitate even say this because it makes it sound bad. But sloppiness, you know what I mean? It's like, but it's that flavor of basic Ness. That is what makes a pretzel great. And so that in the addition in addition to never adding fat to people who add you know, if you add fat to your pretzel, I have a problem with you and your pretzels you know me so like for instance roll gold. Yeah, to the dough. It's something it's abomination turns into a cracker. It's horrible. You know what I mean? It's really makes me angry and I if you hand me a pretzel, and certain manufacturers who make so my first rule is pretzels are twisted. They have to be twisted if it's not twist, it's not a pretzel. I call them pretzel Lloyd's or like you know nonprint but pretzels style things right? But they're not freaking pretzels because, for me one of the great joys of pretzels is the textural difference between the different parts that baked differently because of the shape and break apart in your mouth differently because of the shape. Alright, so that's it that said pretzel is pretzel shaped. Secondly, in I'm talking mainly about hard pretzels now I don't have that much experience with with soft pretzels. I'm talking hard pretzels, hard pretzels if if you add any oil to the recipe at all in the in the dough, it takes on a cracker texture on a pretzel anymore. It's like a crab it's like a cracker soul or something. It's not right. You know, Bachman the company they make a pretzel that you look like a real hard pretzel, but is in fact got a crack retexture because they you know they I guess they took a hint from rolled gold. You know something like that? Who adds an abomination like amount of oil to the thing. Best pretzel that I've ever had in my whole life is Martin Martin's brothers pretzels by far the best pretzels that you can get them over the mail ordered made by Mennonites they literally sit around singing hymns all day and making pretzels but they're the mean not but but but you know, probably because of the fact that they it's a relatively religious meditation thing for them. They make fantastic pretzels you ever had those things?

I have not know I kinda was thinking of making more like these like the ballpark big soft Oh sure. Yeah,

yeah, Sarge big come

to salt in the top you

know? Yeah, those mean those are you know, those are those are those are a valid product not saying anything against a good soft press. I love a good software, especially with mustard. I gotta have mustard on mine. No mustard, no snow soft pretzel for me.

No, that's good, too. Yeah, I

agree. Yeah. So, so yeah. So for that. Also, remember when you're going to the baking supply, you can also get the pretzel salt which is very nice because it's because you can't get A regular store. No, but the same place it's going to have the lie will probably also have the pretzel. Okay. All right.

Thanks, guys. One quick one about blending mixed drinks. I was not a cocktail that at all, but I was making margaritas the other night. They blended up just fine. And I made a Crystal Light version for my kids with no alcohol obviously. And it turned into like a slush ball in water. Is the alcohol doing something to keep the ice and the water together that you can't get without that I didn't find it wrong?

I don't I don't know. I mean, alcohol is going to melt the ice in a different way and it's going to make it blend kind of faster. But I mean obviously you know people make people make slushies all the time. They're non alcoholic in the 70s right yeah,

well it does work fine. Yeah.

Yeah, maybe a fluke. I don't know maybe I don't know. But I doubt there's anything in the Crystal Light Crystal Light is actually has very little body and maybe that's the problem maybe if it had more sugar in it. You might have more problem with a sugar free because you're not modifying the maybe that's it maybe try it with something that's gotta