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.

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has been brought to you by the International Culinary Center, offering courses that range from classic French techniques and culinary pastry and bread baking to Italian studies to management from culinary technology to food writing from cake making to wine tasting. For more information visit international culinary center.com You're listening to heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritage radio network.org for 1000s more.

Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave on your host of cookies coming to you live on the heritage radio network in the back of Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Join us always want to start in Amarillo parents we got a jack and Joe in the engineering booth. Thank you. Thanks. It's good to be back. Actually was a late this morning, not from my normal reasons. But thanks to Hurricane Sandy, my building still no longer has heat or hot water. And so we pretty much boil a giant pot of water on the stove all day every day. So I forgot to turn off the stove. And I had to bike all the way back home and turn the stove off to prevent my house from burning down. But call all of your questions into someone 84972128. That's 718-497-2128. Now the first week we're gone because I was in Portland doing a cocktail demo and I had to set up actually during our show. And last week, as those of you in this area will know or in the US will know we had a little bit of a hurricane here in New York City shut down all of lower Manhattan for about three four days and destroyed a lot of people's houses in Staten Island and you know, out on the shore and queens and the Rockaways and so we've been spending the better part of the week kind of dealing with that. But anyway, back to business we have a lot of questions already emailed in because we've been gone for two weeks so I'll just start getting to him. By the way any any news from UNICEF anything good? Nothing, no. Discussion. I did the today show two two days, three days out there three days after the hurricane right? Yeah. And so like they thankfully they put me up in hotel along with my family which has saved us from better part of half of the problems because it's actually like well, he didn't have cell service in the Lower Manhattan people don't people understand not really that it's not really the power loss. It's a huge problem. It's it's lost, we lost you know, all service No, luckily, obviously we're all safe. So we have very little to complain about compared to most people but the thing people don't care about New York City you Is that we have in New York City, a large population of elderly people who are able to live alone, because there are a lot of services in New York that you wouldn't ordinarily get if you were living very spread apart in a suburb, let's say. So we have a lot of people who are kind of right on the verge of being able to live alone, who are elderly, you have some sort of disability, but then you shut down everything, including power and water, and some people are living, you know, on very high up floors, and they have to now walk or get things. It's just it was a nightmare for those people. And that's, you know, those are the kinds of people you don't necessarily think about if you don't live in a city, right? So anyway, terrible. So the guy by my cheese for him was saying he went and visited some of my cheese. You know, his mother in law, the day after the hurricane was visiting his store that was shut down. And she's probably an ad in her apartment alone, crying her eyes out in the dark by herself, because she couldn't call anyone because a lot of us don't have landlines anymore. And he's had no idea what was going on. Had no news had no one she was afraid to go outside. Crazy. Anyway, enough of that. Joseph, and we never got his pronunciation name is the pronunciation of his name. Joseph pedo wrote it about Cambodian food. I'm interested in expanding my knowledge of Cambodian foods and was wondering if there's a cookbook slash resources you can recommend to help with my adventure? Thanks. Well, unfortunately, Joseph, I only have myself personally one cookbook that deals specifically with Cambodian food. And it's actually as a kind of, if the book is mainly about Vietnamese cooking, I wasn't able to dig it out. So I can't give you the name of that right now. But it looks like one of those crappy 80s cookbooks that used to get back in borders in the bargain shelf. In fact, I purchased it in the bargain shelf at borders in the early 2000s. And it's one of those books that looks like that. It's on Vietnamese and Cambodian food. And surprisingly, it is very good book. And they I found on Amazon, that they reissued the Cambodian portion of it. And I can't see what they what they call it, but it's it's anyway, I think it's the food and cooking of Cambodia, over 60 authentic classic recipes from undiscovered cuisine. And it's part of it, you should just get the one that's Vietnamese and Cambodian. And I asked, you know, the person who hadn't started a job before dishdasha was Vietnamese is Vietnamese. Still Life and her name is Mindy. When and she looked at the Vietnamese section and said, yeah, the Vietnamese section looks good. And and then someone else said on the on the reviews on Amazon, so the Cambodian section looks good. Another one out of print that I would like to get if I could get hold of it. It's out of print. It's called the Elephant Walk Cookbook. There's one that looks very short. And I don't know how in depth it is. But you can fund some humanitarian aid in Cambodia by buying a book called Kinbote, Cambodian cooking humanitarian project in collaboration with act for Cambodia. Anyway, hope that helps. Again, it's something that I don't know as much about as I should we don't really have that many Cambodian restaurants or do we know? Vietnamese? Yes. pretty huge. One by the FCI Cambodian which one now remember, Mills used to go there. No, that's Malaysian. Yeah, no, no. Yeah. Malaysian that's like the Malaysian joint that a lot of chefs used to go to my my son actually Booker and DAX who hate almost everything. Love Janya. Love it. Bread probably. Crispy squid. Oh, crispy squid and their chicken soup noodle soup call. Oh, I have a caller caller you're on the air.

I didn't have any TAS yet. And Jack, this is Eric from Oakland. And a couple pressure cooker questions. Shoot. First, looking into buying one I do mostly cooking around the house for two to maybe upwards of eight to 10 people what size pressure cooker should I be looking at?

Well, excluding the huge ones made by like the American foundry like the pressure canner style ones just get the largest one can get I forget what the leader rating is. But I prefer I have the really tall. Khun recon not the really fat wide one. But the tall Khun recon and

handle or the long handle are the two small handles on the side.

I used to have a long handle but it fell so many times on the floor that the handles have all broken off. And so now I have to put the lid on with a you know by holding it with pot holders and everything like that. But yeah, it used to have a long handle on it.

Alright, so

that's probably the 12 Quart varieties on hmm, probably I mean, the good thing about the tall one is that it the pots surface. Isn't that why it means so you're not going to use it as a fry pan obviously, but the pots service is not that wide so you don't get a lot of scorching on it. And also because of that, you can have smaller volumes in it and still pressure cook fairly effectively as opposed to the ones that are really wide which sometimes when you're getting it up to heat you could get some scorching around the center part If your burners aren't big enough, you know what I mean?

Yeah, the question I had was you were talking a lot about cooking down garlic and onions to sort of concentrate and maybe take the bite out of them. Do you put liquid in wisdom so that you can bring that thing up the pressure? And what's the procedure for doing

that? Yes, you put liquid in, I used to use for garlic, and onions I, depending on what you're gonna do, a lot of times I use milk. I don't know why it's just a habit and works nicely. And I don't know whether there's any functionality to it, but it curves up. But usually end up hearing it anyway. And so it ends up being good. So for some reason, I've always used milk.

But how do you fill it up? Do you cover the onions, the

garlic? No, no, no, you just need enough to you bring it to a boil while you're stirring it so that you don't scorch the middle, close it, bring it up to pressure very quickly, and then lower it so that milk doesn't squirt or you could use broth. Or, or or you could use water even but, or you could put the you could put the allium whatever, garlic, onion in a bowl, like over a trivet inside of it and just have it not touch the water at all. All those will work. So and then eat but remember, it's not going to have necessarily the same flavor that you're used to because you're taking all of the pungency pretty much away. But the good news is, you're interested in trying that out because of that, yeah, you can eat a ridiculous amount of garlic that way without it, you know, destroying your your pores. Now for those of you out there who might be like health obsessed with garlic, I, I think that if you believe that garlic has some sort of amazing health giving principle, that you're probably obliterating that by doing this, but you know, I don't care about that sort of thing.

You have time for one more question about fluid jokes here quickie. All right. Me trying to make a brand new fluid gel for Thanksgiving dessert. And reclick. It's my test batch was 300 milliliters of brandy. 2.4 grams agar plate, two grams of salt point four grams and nutmeg, 90 grams of sugar, bring to a simmer, cook off the brandy, ice bath, select set, and then blend, right. And after about a day two days in the fridge. The gel started really loosening up. And I'm wondering if there's anything I can do about that?

I'm amazed that it set? Because you didn't mean I would it formed a really nice fluid gel at the beginning or no?

Yeah, it was pretty, pretty thick and had a good texture and I could squeeze it out of a bottle and get a nice little color.

You must have really boiled off a lot of the alcohol then.

Yeah, I did. I boiled it until I lit the pen on fire and blew it till the fire went away.

Ah, yeah, okay, good. Because two things ag are won't set in that high of a proof of alcohol and to AG our needs a higher boiling point. And you can get just out of when you bring a brandy to the boil to hydrate properly. So yeah, so getting rid of the alcohol was a good thing. How much acid was in it, you said

there was no acid in it. And it's separated

on it just separated, it wouldn't come back together when you started.

Not really separating, it's just loosening up. It's not as is like, thick of a gel. It's more of like a sauce now?

Well, I haven't had that happen, my guess is that the the way you're forming a fluid gel is you're breaking the particles into very tiny, tiny bits that have some affinity for themselves, but are floating around in a fluid so that when you when you move through them, they your they share apart quite easily and then regain their affinity for themselves when they're standing still. So my guess is that they that more water was squeezed out of the the gel particles and so the individual gel particles are becoming denser and the water phase is increasing. And you might therefore be able to bring it back by adding a little bit of saying it's going to absorb some of the water, like Xanthan, but I don't know that that's the case. That is my guess as to what's going on. What percentage fail was it?

Should should I percentage? Well, assuming brandy has the same density as water, which is not a shot for point 8%

point eight. Yeah. So right around point eight. It's nice, but like small increases in water around that point, are going to decrease the viscosity a good chunk. And so that's that might be what what's happening is the balance. The water might be simracing more out of the gel and just decreasing the liquid balance I mean, increasing the liquid in the balance slightly. That's my guess.

Okay, should I try a little bit?

No. Doesn't work. You mean if you're going to make it again I would just make it day of and that way you don't have to worry about it. Or if you up it, you could always up it and then keep a little bit of a liquid around And then dilute it to the proper consistency at the moment that you're going to serve it, if that makes sense.

Yeah, it was trying to make Thanksgiving day a little bit easier and much beforehand

as possible. So yeah, you can set it a little thicker, like fairly, fairly thick as long as your blender can take it. And then just keep a little bit of a liquid around and then just kind of stir in a little liquid to get the get the bounce where you want it.

All right. All right. Thanks.

Good luck. Good luck. Let us know how it goes. I will. Sure. Okay. Brian zerbies, wrote in about circulators. And so first of all, I love the show and my cooks listened to it during prep. I feel sorry for them, but thank you for making them. Listen to it. Two questions. First, what do you think about the current surge in popularity of street foods, mainly food trucks? tenders, but then listen, instead of the sappy Wiebe stuff. You can't force bartenders to do anything. So whatever. What do you think about the current surge in popularity is fried foods, mainly food trucks? And second, do you think it's practical to use SUV eat on a food truck? As a chef looking to open a truck in the next year here in Indianapolis? I want to plan slash prep cook most of my protein smoothie in an attempt to create an awesome dish. And to I assume you mean decrease my production times without losing any quality for my guests? Alan Sternberg Well, hell yes. It's good to food truck. I like food trucks, actually. I mean, here in New York, I don't really get to eat at a very very often. I don't know Do you ever eaten the food trucks? When I was in Portland? I ate in some they're not really food trucks. I'm more like kind of food kiosks kinda. But I think the great man you know, I've had chef Jeremiah bullfrogs gastropub stuff down in the Florida and the Miami. I think they're, I think they're good. I think it's, I think it's awesome because, you know, they allow it they allow, the thing that's good about him is it's not just like schlock artists, jerk wads, who are who are opening um, you know, it's like people who want to do a very finely focused item at an inexpensive price. A lot of people I know who are doing it are focusing on quality. And so anytime you're going to bring quality and speed to a lot of people a reasonable price. Hell Yes. Bonus. Right. So yeah, anyway. So soothing in a truck, or low temperature in general, a truck is a fantastic idea. As you know, as long as you can get the bottlenecks going and get a circulator that you can run in a truck or a CPAP, or something to do your return. Or, like, like do you can do if you plan your menu item properly, you can go from zero to finished in a normal procedure straight out of a refrigerator. I'll give you an example. So I know I always talk about steak because I like cooking steak, but here's steak. So I worked on a steak where I did, I did it was a very thin rib steak like fairly thin. I forget the exact thing on the about three quarters of an inch I had it exactly calculated. But anyway, so what you what you do is, is you fully cooked the thing through to 55 degrees 55 to celsius in a circulator cook it long enough to get the tenors, ation effects you want for me, it was about two hours in a bag in zippers actually, so I didn't have to deal with, you know, board health stuff, then chill it all the way down in a fridge. Right? You know, don't throw it directly in ice water, let it sit out to reabsorb some of its motion recycling, throw it in a fridge, get it down in an ice bath, get it down, store it in the fridge at refrigeration temperature. Right. Now, here's the trick. It's coming out cold but it's thin, right. So what you do is you drop the steak in a deep fryer, just drop the steak directly in a freakin deep fryer right out right out of the right out of the fridge into the deep fryer, two minutes on the button. It was all calculated based on thickness anyway, two minutes on the button, pull it out. Now you've overcook the outside. So unlike normal Suvi finishing you need to rest this steak now. So it's two minutes in the fryer, two minutes rest on the plate, slice and out bang. And those steaks were perfect all the time. Now they had a little more of a cooked region on the outside than you would have in a normal Suvi or low temperature steak. But they were just warm on the in the middle than they were perfectly cooked throughout and literally four minutes total and only two minutes of cook time from fridge to plate without having to have the steak sitting around in a circulator without even having to have a circulator at service time at all. So if you get your portions done that way, then you can you're all of a sudden you're like Master Blaster genius. So like fried chicken, get your chicken pieces such that they just get warm in the center. And let's say a two minute fry time. So you have to calculate what that is pre cook all your white meat to 64 let's say be on the safe side of the aisle like 63 cook all of your leg meat to 66 Although 65 is what I like to do, but 66 is good. And then have the slices so that they'll they'll warm through. Then you can dry them out, batter them show them down and now you can fry them from cold you know and then bend them mmm without having to hold warm so in a truck I would definitely do that rather than having to have a lot of warm holding I would try to do mostly things that you could finish it, you know, in whatever your finishing operation is me, for me would always be frank, so frank, but like that, that gets rid of an extra step for the truck, we're just gonna make it a lot easier or if you want to do really high end stuff, you could always hold things in a circulator. But it's it's great for that. Anyway. Right. Dave Anastacia, this is in from, from Andrew. And his last name is Jen jiggin. Ken jiggin. And I'll get to the presentation later because I butchered his name prior. I've been looking for and I apologize by the way that both of the things we're about to mention the auctions already ended because we've been gone for two weeks, but hey, who what do you do? I've been looking for a cheapest circulator on the eBay, and I found a couple of items. Do you know that eBay started by a guy who wanted to help his wife sell Pez Pez dispensers, PES pairs do you like those? I think they are gross. And I love them. Like I can't like I can't eat just one I have to eat like the whole dang package of the Pez. But they're not actually they remind me of the aspirin the bears their kids children's St. Joe's. Josephs rather, anyway, sorry, sorry, I'm sorry, on the eBay and found a couple of items, both being sold by global machinery. I don't really know that he said not sure if you're familiar, but they're selling a lot of interesting equipment. I love the name though. Global machinery. I wish we had a name. That's an awesome name. Global machinery, local machinery. Local, no global, global global anyway. Okay. The first is a PolyScience heating which circulator model 210. And, you know, the question is, Do I have any I think that's an old PolyScience like kind of heater circular with intubate and out tube. And I've used one similar similar to that. And the second one that you link to was a Blue Magic whirl water bath. It's actually I don't think likes the word whirl, I think it reminds her of something, something gross, like a leaf fungus squirrel, right? Does now. Anyway, it seems like the first one worked for low temperature cooking with the addition of tubing and a container. Not sure about the second one. Second one, by the way, for those of you that can't look at it on the web, like we can here actually, like I did before. One is a head that you stick into a bath and then have tubes that you send outside or you can chunk them the into the outlet, so that you don't go to an external with tubing and just put it in a bath. So it's it's an older version of kind of a current model circulator. But it's meant to go into a bath and then you know, heat an external source, but you don't need to use it that way. And the second is a contained water bath that has a drain that it's basically looks like a big kind of a bain marie soup warmer thing. It's it's self contained just with a port, you know, a PID controller in it. Anyway, it seems like the first will work for low temperature cooking with the addition of tubing. Not sure about the second Are you familiar and you think either is worth buying? PS I love the show and it helped keep me sane this summer while I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. Thanks, Brian. zerbies Can you believe this one's not from Andrew, by the way, this is from Brian zerbies. I got my questions mixed up. Anyway. I'll get to Andrew a second. But can you believe that this guy hiked from Mexico to Canada? That's some crazy hiking. Yeah, that's nutty bags. I will always want to do the Appalachian Trail. Someday I'll do the Appalachian Trail once my kids are in the college. I told my wife. Hey, we're gonna hike the Appalachian Trail. She's like, yes, shut up. Whatever. Yeah, because she didn't have to think about it because you got like another 10 years to worry about it. You know? I mean, would you like to hike the Appalachian Trail sometime? No, no, you don't like hiking? No, I do. I just wouldn't want to do it in the US too many too many fungi fungi along the way. Why would you want to do it in the US? I want to go somewhere abroad. Why? And why can you hike here and hike there? You're not what? I'm not patriotic like you. You're a patriot? It's a freakin Election Day. I voted already by the way now. Did you vote yes, I did. But yeah, it has nothing to do with Patreon No, I don't give a rat's butt you you really like to use really like to explore America? I don't That's That's all. This is what I deal with on a daily folks people. First of all, I don't care like I happen to love America quite a bit. All right. But even if you even if you didn't love America, the way I love America, like we have some beautiful freakin scenery here and the Appalachian Trail is not about putting on your dirndl and going to Oktoberfest. It's about natural freakin beauty goes somewhere far away and hike. then fly to wherever people seriously, Tennessee. It runs through New York. It runs from Maine to Georgia. So you would do the whole thing. Yeah, want to do the whole damn thing. Anyway, it takes a couple of months. And everyone always they start down south and they quit like they which I probably do. Two people are like crap on this and then they quit where? What depends on how far how far you got me. It's a long, long and it's tough. It's like through the mountains. And you can't carry a lot because otherwise you're carrying a lot and you can't. And so people like all that a lot of times they'll they'll bring too much on the Appalachian Trail and they'll have to throw it away or shed it halfway through. You can mail stuff to yourself halfway along so you could pick it up at these weird littles Ellen's along there to get food and apparently you smell really bad. But hey, it's no news to us here in New York. Some shower for like a week go anyway. Well, those of us don't have hot water anyway. You know, sponging ourselves off. So

anyway, so back back to the circulars. Here's the problem with the old. I don't know how we get to the Appalachian Trail from circulators. Oh, yeah, he hates you hate you hate. Okay, listen. The problem with old circulators is this. Often, they're on their last legs. They've been used in a lab for a long, long time. And they've been packed away and the newer circulators are a lot better, not in terms of their temperature control. But in terms of the bearings that are in the motor. So the motor lifetime and old circulator is not nearly what the motor life is like in a new circulator, or a new circulating water bath. Now, add to that, the fact that the older one has also been used for a long time, and also sometimes with questionable items, right. The second problem is the electronics and the older circulators can also go bad after a long time, it's because they've been exposed to moist environment for for a long, long time. So most of the time in an old circulator, what's going to go bad is either the bearings or the electronics. And they're all fixable, most of them, but it's a crapshoot. Now, if you get one that happens to work or is in good shape, then God bless they work, you know what I mean? But especially nowadays, like like the ones you sell, were selling for about 100 bucks, and you have like maybe a 20 to 30% chance to is going to be no good. So you toss that money down the drain. Within a couple of months, the average circulator is going to be between 350 and 500. For something it's guaranteed to work, you know what I mean? So I would probably go that route, and instead, unless you like to take crap shoots, and I'm with you, I do I do like to take crab sheets Anywho. Now on to Andrew, John John Higgins challenge to jiggin jiggin. Okay, I'm gonna get to admit on Friday oil to Anastasia and Dave, thanks for covering my fat saturation and Frank question a few weeks back. I was a bit behind on listening to the podcast and just heard this segment the other day. A follow up question. If continuous batch frying operations use a blend of fresh and partially oxidized fats can a home cook do the same thing? Save the previous batch of oil and blend it with fresh the next time around? Also, I forgive you for butchering my name on the air. You are right. I shouldn't provide a pronunciation assistance. It is a hard G as in pig. Otherwise you had it right. By the way, I liked it. Someone's like G is in pig not G not G is in something else. Like he's like pig. Right? It's good saturated fat pig anyway. Finally, I seem to recall de saying he was a sample of the women's burrows, a fan of women's burrows Which reminds me of one of my favorite old food related WSOP quotes. I hate sprouts. They put them on everything they serve. Eating sprouts is like going down on a robot. Damn. Damn, here's some dance from the engineering room over there. Cheers, Andrew. John jiggin. Well, I mean, it's a robot. You can do anything you want to a robot. Right? You can't have an X rated robot. Can you? I mean it's a robot. I don't think I have ever mentioned I mean like I like almost everyone have read some Burroughs like Naked Lunch freaked me the heck out because I read it as a teenager probably will tell it like oh my god. You read this. Oh no. You've never read Burroughs. I don't think Jack and Joe your Burroughs readers, right. The hell's wrong with you people? You know great American look. First of all, anyone who's a connoisseur of the crazy has to like a little bit of the Burroughs. Burroughs when he was like you know 75 or 80 was selling his last boyfriend was like I don't know is crazy crazy. go research some burrows. He's a nut job anyway. Whether you like him whether you hate him that is one of the great sprout quotes and I believe entirely accurate. Now back to your frying question. Usually when you're frying at home, if you're actually deep frying the first couple of things you fry especially if you overheated it which is normally what happens in home frying, you've ruined the oil enough to have it be a good frying situation. That said you can save a portion of your oil and blend it back but fry the fry oil really kind of tempers itself out pretty quickly. But yeah, I don't see why you can't you know you don't want to you don't want to you don't want to add so much back that it degrades before you're finished frying. So here's the answer. If usually at the end of frying the stuff tasting bad and the stuff smelling bad and you smell that kind of fishy broken down fat aroma in your kitchen. Which by the way that smell makes me want to puke you like that's most of you makes you want to puke right? Yeah, if you're smelling that at the end of your frying, then you can't afford to have it go off any faster. If at the end of your frying sessions the oil smells entirely neutral and awesome. And when you throw a break, croutons into it and eat it. It still tastes clean. Then get you could save some of it At night it back it's not going to be a problem. So it depends on how abusive you are to your oil. That makes sense. Anyway, going down on a robot, Michael Anakin writes in Hey Dave and Estancia at all I was part of our friend Michael Anakin. Who I don't think I don't think I've ever met him personally. given them personally, I didn't know I thought he came to the bar. He I don't know. I don't think when I when I was there. I was pondering why refrigeration always breaks down while stoves and ovens are much more reliable. I'll tell you why. I think it's a freakin racket. You notice how your home fridge never breaks down? Hey, Jack and Joe is your home fridge ever broken? Yeah, right. Stars is your home for each ever broken parents, your parents, but how old was that fridge? Yeah, right. I mean, like, you know, it's the first fridge ever made, you know, without you if you ever had a fridge? No. My home fridges have never broken for a four year period. I had a commercial fridge in my house. And it broke four times. commercial refrigeration sucks. Here's a little known fact commercial refrigeration sucks. And, you know, by and large, I mean, you know, I like the good folks that you know, Randell but, and I think it's a racket. Here's what commercial refrigeration people will tell you. They'll say, does it look a home fridge, you don't have to open and close it all the time you open and close the commercial fridges and they go through a lot more abuse and that's why they break. No, it's because they build them like crap. It's a vibrate. You ever notice how loud commercial refrigeration is compared to a normal refrigerator? Is because they just don't put the stuff together as well. They don't insulate it as well. And they don't solder it as well. There's no reason why a compressor should rattle itself apart, develop a leak, throw out its refrigerant and have to be recharged every couple of years like you're doing commercial refrigeration. No reason. Anyway, enough of a rant on commercial refrigeration. Well, well, a lot of people have had their home stoves break and your gas regular old gas stove is a freegan demon. The only thing that breaks a commercial gas stoves is the little basil valve in the oven. Or if you have an electric when they break all the time, whatever, anyway, yeah, so stoves, reliable, especially gas ones. And that's one of the reasons by the way, that Americans are so rich, aside from the fact that our natural gas is so freakin cheap. And that and that the feedback loop for for a cook looking at a gas flame is one of the great kind of visual feedback loops of all time right up there with the with the two switches and a pattern of vitae prep. One of the reasons that we favor gas over electricity, and especially induction is even though it's horribly inefficient, is because they never break gas gas ranges never break anyway. rarely break. Okay. Anyway, Michael's pondering why refrigeration breaks down. And he says obviously, it's primarily because of compressors, which are a lot more complicated than just piping gas somewhere, and burning the crap out of it like a stove does, which goes back to the idea of entropy, I'm no physicist, but I believe when you're adding heat to a system, you're increasing the entropy, and therefore doing what the universe wants to do, while taking heat out of something reduces entropy. So you're fighting an uphill battle, actually, the heat and entropy are separate, right? So Entropy is a measure of kind of the disorder. And so the number of states is something can take on. Well, you know, heat is a form of energy that you're adding or removing. So changes in entropy and heat often go hand in hand. I mean, obviously, you can have ice and tropic iees, same same entropy things, same heat things, and you can have something where heat doesn't go in and out. But anyway, so in other words, they are separate. They're the two main things that you're dealing with when you're dealing with kind of thermodynamic changes, but they're not the same anyway. Anyhow, back to Michael. Anyhow, all this music got me thinking about whether you could show food by using an endothermic reaction, ie one that when it gets gets colder when that absorbs energy, the opposite of burning fuel to produce an exothermic reaction, rather than by compressing and expanding gas, I found one pattern on the topic. And it was about using a salt, potassium, and he was potassium chloride or something like that. I found one patent, interestingly assigned to the Coca Cola company. And apparently motor home refrigerators work on an endothermic reaction involving ammonia as well. Who knew? So my question is, do you know of any other commercial systems that use endothermic reactions for refrigeration? And do you think there are any potential for having them potential for them to make more reliable restaurant refrigeration or any other ideas for solving that problem? Thanks, Michael. nakin Okay, so listen, here's the deal. So, an endothermic there's, there's the two things that you point to are two different kinds of reactions. So in a normal like endothermic reactions take place, because

normally, most reactions that take place spontaneously are exothermic they give off heat, in order for something endothermic to take place naturally without having to add anything to it. The entropy increase needs to be so great that it basically wants wants to happen anyway. So certain salts when they dissolve certain things when they dissolve. They absorb heat make things colder, right? Because it's so favor for them to does have in that situation that it actually, it's actually overrides the fact that they need to absorb heat energy from the outside. So that's how those salts work. And that that patent that you did was Coca Cola was trying to figure out a way to make a soda machine in space. Because compressor situations, normal compressor, base refrigeration don't work properly in a zero gravity situation. So they were trying to figure out a way that they can add salts that have an endothermic reaction when they dissolve and create a refrigeration system that way, it's not so efficient to use as a continuous refrigeration system on Earth, because it's harder to regenerate the salt and after you dissolve it, then you got to remove the liquid again from it using heat to boil it down and then redo it. So it's not so efficient way to do it here on Earth. But you can use it for individual cold packs, and they sell cold packs that work that way where you have an endothermic chemical reaction. And then once that chemical reaction is over, then sometimes you can regenerate it. And sometimes you can't. But it's not necessarily so good for long term situations, the RV thing is an extremely interesting type of refrigeration, older refrigeration that we use, you compress a liquid, condense it down and then spray it out. And as it expands, right, that change in pressure, it creates the cold, right, so that that's where it comes from that you acquires heat absorbers from the outside boom, right? So it's expansion, it's two pressures, our V refrigerators work in a single pressure system. And what's awesome about that is it doesn't require any moving parts. So the way they work is you heat up a mixture of ammonia and water because ammonia wants to dissolve in water right very badly. So you heat that up and you boil the ammonia and the whole system is under one large but under one pressure, the ammonia boils off as it boils off, the water is stripped away from it, it goes up physically up like you know gravity wise up because it's now a gas goes into a condenser where the ammonia under pressure under the same pressure, the whole system is under one pressure, that's the key turns back to a liquid in the condenser and then drifts back into his own also the same pressure that has a primarily hydrogen gas. And what And strangely, very counterintuitive, we actually what happens when the ammonia goes from being a liquid in a pure ammonia environment to being added to a gaseous, gaseous hydrogen environment. Is it evaporates? And the reason it evaporates? Is it what is it there's a very low what's called partial pressure of ammonia in that hydrogen region. And so the ammonia needs to evaporate to kind of ameliorate that lack of partial pressure that it has. And that requires a lot of energy, which it absorbs from the inside of the RV fridge, then that now heavier thing trickles down where it meets the water again, and is absorbed into the water. And it goes and boilers and the whole thing keeps going like a big cycle. And all you're doing is adding heat in with the heater and removing it using room temperature air in the condenser section. So it's a very interesting system. You can run. In fact, if you have a camp that only has propane, you run your fridge and your blah, blah, what's it what's the word blah, blah, I'm looking for your stove and a refrigerator off of the one propane thing. So you can't use it. I don't know why they don't use them in, in large systems and restaurants maybe. Maybe they're I mean they should they shouldn't be reliable. I don't know why. It's interesting question, Michael. Something we should look at. Right? Something maybe to look at anyway. Okay, Mike. Matthew writes in about sausages. Hey, Dave, Natasha, Anastasia and crew. And a couple of questions on circulating sausage, this coming Sunday, which is over unfortunately, sorry, Matthew. I'm throwing a party where I'll be serving about 100 sausages. I want to circulate the sausages ahead of time to eliminate as much day of prep day of Day of prep cooking as possible, and then reheat them and sue them on the grill. Do you feel that the quality of the sausage will deteriorate if they are cooked 24 to 48 hours ahead of time. My plan is to circulate them for about an hour and a 65 degree bath. I chose 65 Since they are chicken sausages and I think that's a safe temp for them. That's true. And the other suggestions on circulating sausages any good ideas on a liquid to use in the bag with a chicken and trees of sausage. I'm pretty curious about how best to hold the circulate sausages and how long they can be held without deteriorating quality. Thanks for any help on this also, now that they listen right back because that your your event might have been canceled because it was in Williamsburg and so it might be in the future now. It was supposed to be on 1028 Right and that was right when the hurricane was hitting right? Okay, so the company Landhaus is throwing a grand opening bash in the woods barn Williamsburg where they started serving food on a permanent bases. The menu on the day is going to increase include heritage pork from Heritage Foods, and the party was supposed to be two to 6pm on 1028 The woods on South Fourth Street between wife and Kent Williamsburg maybe it's going to maybe it was postponed in which case you know please put a plug in I'm sure heritage radio will tweet it out. Will you not Jack? You will you'll tweet it out. He will he's not anything but he'll tweet it out. Okay, the thing you have to worry about with sausage is being cooked ahead of time is to get all the oxygen out of the bag. You can use a liquid but you know that a regular like a water based liquid, but I would stick with a fat Theresia. That would be a really good choice actually. Because you don't really need that much, especially if you're putting it in Zippy has to cook off. The problem with sausages held for a long time is that with any size is the development of rancidity, aka what's known as warmed over flavors. And what happens is, is that it's a auto oxidation and the further things that are that are taken out the further chemical breakdown of fats when they're exposed to oxygen and the weird thing about warmed over flavors, it happens in animal meats because it's the actual cell membrane fats, the phospholipid things that break down because you when you cook something and then hold it afterwards, you release iron from hemoglobin, and other Iron containing things that iron now becomes available to help catalyze auto oxidation just like in a deep fryer of the fatty acid tissues. So but it requires oxygen so I'd get rid of oxygen, I would add an antioxidant Rosemary is a great antioxidant but Natasha can add it because she was exposed to too much Rosemary during the time she was working with Deseret Casella, our good friend, but lover of rosemary, vitamin E, you could add any other sort of fat based antioxidant. And there's a couple things you can look at on the also if you pre sear the sausages a little bit to give a mild reaction or throw Meyer stuff that might have an antioxidant effect that will decrease warmed over flavor. And other also not storing for too long is going to reduce the amount of what's called warmed over flavor just do a search on warmed over flavor or w o f specifically, the mechanism responsible for warmed over flavoring uncooked meat in 1983. Also, you could wicked target Wikipedia if you want to also the 2005 article comparison of natural Rosemary extract and BHA BHT for relative antioxidants effectiveness in pork sausage, and the antioxidant mired reaction products. Application and sausage by Lingard and Lundgren in 2007. Take a look at that. And then we're ripping through this stuff. Dear Daniel price writes Dear Anastasia, Jack, Dave, and Joe Hi, again from the West Coast. I want to thank you all again for the show. And I have a couple of cocktail questions. First, this weekend I made a big batch of clarified Bartlett pear juice using the Ag our ag our method. For fun, I tried treating my puree with pectin X Ultra SPL and steeping at 45 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes to increase the yield. It was hard to tell if it worked is there some visual clue when using pectin X. Regardless, the Ag our method work and the juice was great. And I was able to combine it with champagne and pear brandy for a crystal for crystal clear pear Bellinis. But I have a lot of juice left Can I freeze clarify juices without significant problems? Yes, you can freeze them without significant problems if that juice was stable to begin with. So normal, you know like lime juice is not stable. So you can't freeze it and hope to preserve it prepare juice is relatively stable. And so you can freeze it and preserve it. You might want to let it sit longer, you should be able to tell it should self clarify a little bit unless it's a thick puree, which case you won't see it but you're definitely going to increase your yield by adding pectin next beforehand, sometimes dramatically. Second, I was wondering what do you think about the efficacy of digestifs? Do they really aid the digestion? Or is that just marketing? If yes? Do you think the flavorings matter? Or is it just the alcohol content? I've always thought it was kind of BS. But you know, I'm going to look into that more. I didn't have a chance this morning to look in because there's a bunch of articles about serving herbs to chickens and rabbits to see whether it increases their growth weight when you're feeding them and farms and so like that might be an indication whether they actually work in humans. So more on that more on that later. Okay, I'm gonna get I'm gonna get through these. I'm gonna get through these. Well, how about Hi Jack, how much longer do I have? Jack or Joe? Come couple of minutes out. Okay. Okay, Joshua, you have a beer question. I'm gonna get back to you on that beer next week. But okay, now Mustachio would the email that came through? I'm going to pronounce your name incorrectly. I remember you from the class because he's like he's anyway interesting stories. CO miles but ko miles but like he said he wanted to go out with you. But he gave the pronunciation. Yeah, but for me, too. I don't know what it meant,