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,

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Hello and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave on your host of cooking issues coming to you live in the back of Roberta's pizzeria on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 join as usual, the studio witness Dasha, the hammer Lopez, Jack and Joe in the engineering room and today we have a special guest Piper from Booker and DAX Research Lab downtown he plays are you doing? Good? Yeah, it's my it's called a microphone you got talking to it. So I have another person I can brutalize on here, right? It's good business. No, good anyway, call them all your questions to someone at 4972128. That's 718-497-2128 All right. So let's get to some of the email questions that we we have already. We own now again with the not getting the right thing on my iPad. Okay. This is from Paul Kay. Hi, all thanks for your work on the Great show. And thanks for answering all my past questions. My latest questions about baking in general. I'm happy with the results of my once per month attempt at baking bread. However, I'm always a little disappointed by the small or perhaps non existent oven spring that I get. I haven't had any real life training. My only knowledge is from books but my impression from those books is that oven spring is to be expected and should be noticeable although my bread does rise nicely before putting in the oven. I guess when he's proofing as I say I'm always a little disappointed with the amount it springs during those first few minutes of baking perhaps I simply shouldn't expect to see anything dramatic Any help would be most appreciated all the best Paul okay all right. Here's a problem it first of all, I am by no means a bread expert. There are people who all they do all day all night is think about bread and so you know you always hesitate when there's people like that out there to make any kind of statement Raul but that said I feel confident that I don't know enough information right now to answer your question. So what we need for a real troubleshooting of your bread recipe first of all, we What style of bread? Are you making? What are you looking to get? Like? Do you want a dense crumb structure? A very open crumb structure? What kind of crust? Crumb structure is a gross word? Yeah, Natasha just made her crumb structure face, which is very similar to vegan face, it's like difference only I can tell. But the, so there's that right. And then, in general, I need to know kind of what hydration level you're using. So like, what what kind of, you know what style of flour first of all, what your how much water, you're adding to the flour, and then how you're raising it and forming it and proofing it and whatnot in general, of inspring is generated. First of all, most of the stuff that I that I read on the on the on the inner line, when he called Internet, on the internet about about oven spring, a lot of it is kind of BS, specifically, I don't think that some people say this because you're increasing the rate of yeast reaction at the last minute as the bread is baking. And that's what's doing it, I think that's almost almost probably certainly not the case, because you haven't spring happens very, very quickly. And probably not enough time for us to start reacting. And all of a sudden producing co2 and overdrive, I think what's going on is you need a high initial heat a high initial burst of heat in the oven to rapidly expand the gases in the cell of the dose structure and then set the dose structure before the dose structure breaks. And so what you're looking at to get a good oven spring is one there has to be a good gluten network in there that's going to allow it to hold the gas as it expands, it's going to have to be kind of formed properly. And it's going to have to have enough air bubbles in it already that can expand. Right so it's formation of the of the right number of and you know amount size of air bubbles getting them kind of big enough for keeping the structure of the dough intact, so that it can raise up and in spring getting a very high heat, both from the bottom and from the top. So with a baking stone at the bottom with a very initial high preheat. And then with steam injection, or some form of steam to get a rapid rapid heat transfer into the loads on the on the forget, I'm not even talking about the actual development of what the crust is like, which is another thing that steam to do but I'm just saying rapid heat into the into the dough. Third thing is proper slashing pattern in the dough will allow heat to get in and allow it to expand more like physically allow it to expand more. So there's the slashing patterns that you make on it. There's proper formation of the dough, proper proofing of it, like like and making sure that the dough has the proper structure to get it to work properly. But very difficult to figure out exactly which one of those problems you have, most likely your ovens not tricked out enough for it. I mean, I don't know, I don't know what kind of what kind of oven you're using. There's an interesting book that I haven't read before, but that gets very high recommendations. And I want to read it called bread science to chemistry and craft of breadmaking which came out fairly recently. And there's a bunch of chunks on the you know, on the internet that you can read or that on their on their website. And then I would look at you know, a fresh load from those other kind of like large kind of conglomeration of bloggers who get together and talk about this stuff. I mean, if you're if you're just baking occasionally, sometimes it can be difficult to wade through all the information that they they provide, and of course, a lot of its red herrings because everyone, you know, like all of us are just experimenting all the time. But anyway, I hope that helps them see like makes sense. Yes. No? Yeah. All right. Hello, and good morning team cooking issues. I like that team cooking issues, not cooking issues, team team cooking issues. Appreciate that. Okay, can you describe the pros and cons of open and closed bass for low temperature cooking a friend is tempted to purchase a CV supreme rather than PolyScience immersion circulator, for home use, because the salesperson suggested that an open bath will cause the temperature to fluctuate and cause a loss of control. The guy was a schmuck. Thank you, Matthew in Chicago. Well, I don't know the man that you're discussing. Personally, I didn't see him but based on the one statement we have of his which is that an open bath circulator is going to have large temperature fluctuations. Yes, he is a schmuck. So if the rest of his thinking is in line with the thinking he gave you right there, then yes, a schmuck call is in order that the main difference between the Soviet supreme and the UN a real immersion circulator isn't necessarily whether it's covered or not because it's very easy to cover a you know, a bath when you when you use an immersion circulator. The main difference is in the circulation itself. Now to go back for a second in case I don't know the case like someone's scrapped you down to a chair and this your torture is to listen to this radio show, and you haven't listened to it before. What we're talking about are pieces of equipment that allow you to do low temperature cooking, cooking at very precise temperatures that are very close to the actual temperature you want to cook to. Alright, so that's low temperature cooking, and the main piece of equipment that most of us use to do that is the immersion circulator. And what that does, is it keeps water at a very, very or anything really in liquid at a very accurate temperature and allows you to do all these new effects that you have for low temperature cooking. Now, there's, you notice the word immersion circulator. So there's circulation of water, and the circulation is what allows you to get very even temperatures over the entire bath, you know, within like, a couple tenths of a degree. Now, if you don't cover that circulating bath, what's going to happen is you will get evaporation off of the surface of the of the of the bath, right, and so you'll be losing a lot of heat. And if you didn't have adequate circulation, you will get a temperature stratification in the bath, right mean, no, no doubt, obviously, you'll get temperature stratification, but adequate circulation is going to prevent any real stratification of temperature, once you get any reasonable depth below the bottom of the above below the surface of the water. Now, if you have an unstirred bath, right, the situation is horrible what happens if you do not cover and unstirred bath, you will get constant evaporation off of the surface. And you will get in essence over time a temperature gradient established as well as water evaporates off the top of the bath. And by evaporating cools it because it's evaporative cooling, and so you'll get a you'll get a temperature gradient set up that probably is fairly static over a long cook. Once it settles out, I would guess

assuming that humidity of your room remains constant Now, aside from the fact that what I just said that you must at all times cover a non circulating bath, and that you don't need to necessarily cover circulating bath to to get an accurate temperature, it is always good practice to cover a circulating bath always good practice because you lose so much energy through the top of the to the top of the bath. You know as things evaporate that a sometimes in larger bass situations, your circulator might not have enough power to get it up to the temperature that you want. Because they only typically have between 750 and 1000 Watts heating power to you are going to take a lot longer to come up to temperature than you otherwise would. And three, you're going to be evaporating off stuff like like a mother. And so even over a relatively short cooking times, you're going to lose water over long cooking times, like overnight, you could potentially boil or not boil but evaporate all the water out of your bath and your product can be ruined and forth in a in a circulated bath. If you've done a bad job and not put a rack or some sort of weight on top of your food such that it's, like definitively sunk under the surface of the liquid. You know, if you cover it, even if a little bit pokes up, you'll still get a fairly close temperature as long as the things totally sealed and covered up to what you want just not as effective a heat transfer mechanism. So it's always a good idea to cover a bath. The only exception being if you're have a reheat bath at a relatively low temperature during service and you're going in and out of it all the time. But under other circumstances, I always always always recommend covering the bath. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Are you doing a session? Yeah. Anything anything good happening? No. We got some good news on the on the Booker and DAX front Tristan, Willie, you know the opening or you know, the guy who opened if with us, manager but one Best Bartender in the country according to either you guys or click on the click on the on the Kabataan there right. So that was good news. Right? That's great. Good business. Love Myself. Interestingly, a little too tall for my taste. But other than that good man, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay. We have a question in from Matt mincer on Brian's Hello cooking issues, folks. I've got a question or three about Brian's when I barbecue pork or chicken, I make a brine with a heavy dose of my dry rub in it. The theory being that the water is being drawn into the meat. And we'll carry some of that flavor from the spice with it. But I was listening to one of your podcasts where Harold McGee said that the flavor molecules from spices are probably too large to penetrate the cells of the meat. The question I have is, am I wasting my time and my spices by adding into the brine? Has anybody studied which flavor molecules will penetrate the meat, if any? And finally, how much brining is too much. It seems at some point the as Moses would reach equilibrium, anything more we give diminishing returns? I'm sure it depends on the cut of meat. But is there any rule of thumb Thanks, Matt. And a PS I wrote a few weeks ago about using mason jars in my centrifuge. And for the record, they work about 75% of the time the other 25 and not so much I'm assuming what that means is like awful things happened right? And when you assume Piper that what he means is awful things have happened. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that's my guess. So yeah, it's it's pretty good Piper's first time on the radio he you know, he's not so much with the with the radio thing. He's he's a he's from Vermont. They don't have radios there yet. Right. Is that true Piper. So, so here's the deal. I think you're pretty much right and Harold's pretty much right. And that most brides don't really penetrate the meat to have Very large distance and so you're probably wasting a good bit of your spices however, like brining something almost like we're getting some sort of feedback action you get into here and that Jackson sort of feedback actions Piper's phone is Piper's phone. Nice. Vermont. So the thing is, is that, I think you could probably get pretty much the same reaction by doing your brine and then rubbing your spices on after it comes out of the brine. I mean, that's what I would do. Salt obviously gets carried into the meat, because it's extremely small molecule. You know, I don't really know what the penetration effects of something like sugar is, nitrates penetrate in, obviously, otherwise curing wouldn't work. But larger molecules tend I think, not to make it into into the meat. I think that's, that's accurate fact, acids tend to do certain work, but they tend not to penetrate far, which is why you get kind of a different texture on the surface of a meat or any place where there's a cleft in the meat where things can get into it, you can get effect from acids and inter muscular connections and stuff, but you're not going to get an effect from something like that in the dead center of a piece of meat in any reasonable amount amount of time. I think you're right, I think that you know, there is a diminishing, diminishing return time, but that diminishing return time is going to depend almost primarily on the thickness of the piece of meat you use and the brine strength that you use. So there's no real no real rule of thumb on brining the same way that would be on let's say, kind of curing where everything's been written down by you know, the USDA and the various curing authorities on I mean Piper you know, any rule of thumb a you disagree with anything I've said know that a nice nice and neat some of your paper you need like you do disagree with me, you're going to be like mustache or you don't disagree with me on air and then later you're gonna tell me I'm a douche. No, he'll tell me. He'll tell you that I'm a douche. And then you'll tell me and I'll yell at us. Is that how this is gonna work?

Chain of Command

jeez, all right, listen Hey Jack let's go to our first commercial break come back with more cooking issues

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Did you guys steal that music from like the Hayden planetariums like universe movie that they play right when you show up?

It sounds like it maybe like Wizard of Oz on loop or something to I'm not sure.

Yeah, it's it's crazy. I think that's what it is though. It's like you know, you go in there like there are billions of styles and it's like really really detail Can you can you play me over that we lead the live music? I want some of that some of that like universe you're not saying like the spinning right and stuff

maybe we can like fade that in with fish is fish is vodka

don't mess don't mess with the fishes fish song All right. I mean that's the you know the oh, by the way, we haven't talked about that. Right? You want to talk about this song that got sent in the fishes fishes vodka.

Yes, it's uh, you know, because we couldn't play video is vicious vodka we have we have a sound alike song and so does the title and it was composed by someone on Twitter Jack Do you remember the name of the person? Jack doesn't remember you guys are bad people yeah we didn't know credit but next time are

you guys were horrible yes yes I know we'll get we'll get to we'll get we'll get we'll do another commercial break come back with a fourth thank you anyway. So we got one in from at class cooking issues any ideas on time and temperature for cooking cod sperm sacks low temp? You gotta love a question like that. Cod sperm sacks low temp anyway to prevent coagulation of dairy also a second question any way to prevent coagulation of dairy in a high acid system. So here's the thing con sperm, I would never say cod sperm when you're actually going to serve it to someone. I mean, the term that we would use in food circles would be milk like Uncle Miltie. Milk cod milk. I have not myself cooked cod milk. I've seen it many times. I think I've had it. You've had the cod millet right says Did you enjoy the cod milk? Yeah, yeah, you got it. You got it with a Japanese style. That Yeah. And then what do you what's that place in San Francisco? Where your friend? Which friend? Does a lot of Chris Constantino. Yeah, we had Milt there. All right. So I guess yeah, anyway, it's got like a texture similar to like a brains or something like that. But I have no idea how to cook it. How to cook it low temp. I mean, it's got such a delicate structure that I would worry about vacuuming it. I would guess that it coagulates somewhere in the range of where an egg white would coagulate. So you'd probably want to cook it at like, I don't know. 62 Something like that Celsius. But I don't know. Because it you're supposed to steam it or fry it or something like that. It's supposed to be a delicate kind of puffy, puffy texture. What do you think? Perhaps you think that's a good? What do you do? Have you ever ever cooked to God? No. No, I actually wasn't listening. Now it's like, what's the what's the hell what Piper is because Piper is not trying to buy shoes on Zappos and somebody else we know Facebook who shall remain he's not on Facebook. He just like that he's not on Facebook. And so he's looking up oil polymerization for me. Anyway, so no, I do not have a good time or temperature on it, but I would assume it would be somewhere in that range like 62 I don't I've never cooked I've never really done even low temp on my favorite kind of you know fish fish gonad part which is row I've never done any really low temperature cooking on that although I should because I love shadow shadows my favorite things to cook you don't like the shadow? What do you need to shadow something about?

Isn't it Greg blue eyed really grainy?

Well, if you well if you overcook it, it's grainy. Yeah, I had it when it was really grainy. Who cooked it for you're gonna even call restaurant? No. No, all right anyway, but the second one it just so happens at cliffs that we have here Piper who is family is involved with CP Kelco right we have the man to tell you how to prevent the coagulation of high acid dairy systems Piper with with some pectin give me some stabilization knowledge. Drop it on me.

Let's see. Protein protection through what pectin

by listening. Alright, look, the question was Piper snapback. Finally, the question was, how to do high acid dairy systems without coagulation. And the answer I gave it to you just describe which pectins is you like pectin to preserve high acid dairy systems,

pectin and CMC.

That's carbide. carboxymethylcellulose. Follow you who don't know what the hell CMC is and think it's a brand new truck. So he's using carboxymethyl. Right. Is that true? Right. carboxy methylcellulose? Yeah, we're who but who makes that stuff? Actually, CP Kelco. Makes it Yeah. All right. Can you buy that from modernist pantry? I think you can. From a Piper puts CMC in every freaking thing like a first of all, he's uh, his body doesn't do so well with the gluten so he, you know, use

it for film forming and gluten free bread, and also viscosity without having to deal with yield point, like Xanten

yield point, for those of you that have no idea what the hell we're talking about yield point. So if you take xanthan gum, it acts a little bit like a fluid gel, you sit it on a surface, you tilt it, and it acts like a gel until you put a certain amount of shear on it, at which point it automatically thins and turns to a liquid. That's called a yield point, something where the yield point acts like that, as opposed to something that is merely thick, but will flow under all circumstances. So two easy real world examples that don't involve hydrocolloids that you can think of are maple syrup, no matter how cold it is, it just flows but slowly it doesn't have a yield point. Whereas ketchup, right, ketchup does not flow until stuff until shear is applied to it and has a yield pointment it breaks so that's, that's what a yield point. So Piper is looking to strengthen something in a system with Having a yield point he's using CMC and pectin but uses Pacific pectin, don't you?

There are a couple of different types of vector you can use. I like c beta pectin, which is from beats,

right? What's the beta? What's the beta refer to for those who that are out there in the in the pectin land? Like Piper worked at CP Kelco is like, like, what were you research? What were you in the research lab? Like busting stuff out? Yep. And so Piper will put packed in and just about any damn thing and CMC, and just about any damn thing. So give them just give them a recipe, since you're not going to tell them just give them a frickin recipe.

It's complicated. All right. High concentration solution of beta pectin. Like, like maybe 5% is mixed with, you know, the solution, you want to acidify. And then it's continually mixed for like an hour or so. And then you slowly add your acid. It depends. I mean, there's so many specifics.

There's like it's incredibly difficult, incredibly,

without an accurate pH meter. I mean, you're gonna you're gonna just try and pour juice and like lemon juice into it. What's he trying to make?

Well, I'm assuming he wants to do like, you know, Cal pico water or something like that, or like some sort of like acidified dairy beverage, I'm assuming that's what he's trying to do. I would

say, make one high concentration solution of beta pectin for an HM pectin and, and then add it in increments of like 1% total weight with the with the dairy and then slowly acidifying, you'll see that the flocculation point is going to it's going to decrease.

Alright, so there you have it. I wouldn't. That's not so much a recipe you can take to the bank. But paper we'll work on it. We'll get it out to you. By the way. I was looking at while paper was talking I was looking at Aaron's last name who made the song his last name is Robertson. So Aaron Robertson thank you for the fishes fish is Vargas on Whoa, now abrupt end on the clap guys. Jesus killing me. Okay. Now another interesting thing was brought up a couple weeks ago I didn't answer was a an oil polymerization technique that's made in Japan other thing from Japan called kata Mara 10. Put it which I guess Tim put who means like, like kind of like tempura right and put it in blue. speak Japanese anyway, couldn't have been Buddha is a powder that you and I saw the video of it on on the on the internet. Amazing. What they want to do is, is you ever have like a liquid fat and you want to dispose of it and throw it in your trash, you can't because it's a liquid. So what you do is you add this powder to it, and it instantly polymerize as turns to a solid which you can then scrape out of the pan and you can throw in your regular waste trash. Now that's crazy. The I don't know how the hell it works. It says it's some sort of algebra thing, some sort of algebra seaweed, like nonsense. But I was like nowhere it was able to find what's actually in it, what is actually doing it. And it's clearly some sort of me it's probably clearly not clearly, I guess, some sort of polymerization where the oil is being linked. I doubt they're they're like instantly hydrogenating it because I don't know of any way to do that. Because it's not a system where they're adding heat. They're literally adding a powder to the oil and it's turning to a solid, which is nutty. I don't know how the hell it works someone out there please if you know what this reaction is, and what's causing it, because remember, there's ways to do it in like that I found that are very, very non food grade. But the question is, how do you do it in a in a food grade way such that you're not doing something crazy to your pen? Like are they somehow some sort of instant saponification reaction where they're turning to soap I have no idea someone please tell me. The only way I know how to solidify a fat like that hardcore solidified is to add large amounts like upwards of 10% by weight of mono and diglycerides when that looks so you could take a liquid fat add 10% mono and diglycerides to it and you know heated a little bit and then when it cools it will thicken and turn to a solid and you can scrape it out. And that's that's the only way that you know that I've done it in the kitchen before but I don't I don't really I don't know. Anyway, so we're looking that up and we'll take a second break we'll come right back with cooking issues

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to buy. And we're back. Okay, back on the bread. I was thinking about this for a second, I read an interesting a couple of interesting articles. They don't actually relate to the question about oven spring. But I thought that was kind of interesting. One is that these nut jobs are trying to figure out a way to determine how their bread is going to react to baking. And instead of doing the obvious thing for us, which would be to bake it, they put it in a vacuum chamber. And these guys, by putting in a vacuum chamber, they expand all the air cells that are the air bubbles that are already in the dough. And they claim that at any point in the bread making process after the initial kind of mixing and the air incorporation has happened, that they can get good correlations to the final bake volume, just by putting the sucker in a vacuum and seeing how high it can, it can raise up. There's another interesting picture on vacuum mixing in the in the bread science book that I told you about. It's available in trumpets online, where she reproduces a picture of bread that was mixed under a vacuum, it had the craziest pore structure, it was considered a bad pore structure. But I thought very interested in that like now, I'm spending all morning thinking about, like various ways to put vacuums on bread. But the other really interesting thing is, is an article, I read about the temperatures at which the temperatures at which the bread and this relates back to oven spring is setting. And so the point is, is that the protein structure in a good bread in a well made dough, the protein structure is going to hold the gas bubble integrity up to a point of about 60 degrees Celsius, where a crappy bread dough is going to hold its structure up to a point of about 50 degrees Celsius. And so and the key difference there is that that's right around the temperature that the starshoot Latinization is taking place. So the protein is really only there to hold the structure of the bread while you're waiting for the starch to gelatinous and set. And that's why and I think we've discussed about it a couple of times. In the past, you know, when you're working on a gluten free bread, like like a lot of the problem is just getting it to react properly to the initial breakout. So it's the initial bake out of it's hard because you're getting the proteins, they have to hold there until the interior the bread gets up to 50 or 60. And that's your that's why when we're doing experiments, we'll experiment with you know, things that have weird kind of pre gelling characteristics like, like you'll add something to hold structure like a Xanthan, or like a CMC, and then you'll add something to actually gel in that mid range temperature where there's other things are going to start to fail like a metal cellulose or some other sort of heat gelling property because the idea is, is that it's not that the protein is important, I don't think it's important but it's not, you know, majorly important to the final texture of the bread I think the major the major impact from the final temperature on the bread is going to be the starches and how they gelatinous however, the major impact to the formation of that final structure is going to be how the protein works and so that's the really dig diggity dig that you get when you're trying to formulate a bread without protein without without gluten proteins when you say that's Yeah, yeah. Isn't that now fibers learn to do this stuff and just say Just say yes. Okay. Joshua wrote in last week we didn't get to get to it. I'm on beer. I hope this is still the correct email and it is even though we didn't answer it last week obviously missed I forgot to email a few questions I'm an all grain Brewer cuz I didn't answer this last week that I started I'm an all grain brewers have access to greens, hops, good brewing equipment, work, etc, etc which out but for some reason, I don't know. They weren't I call it work. But I was told that brewers call it work. Okay, now you don't care. You don't do crap. Okay. Are there some interesting things I can do with these base ingredients beyond beer or, or the equipment used for it beyond low temperature cooking It's interesting I know I I love I've been trying to use mashing techniques and use the the the amylase that so you when you're when you're doing mashing when you're doing an all grain mash what you're using barley malt, typically malted barley, when you're malting barley, you're just allowing a little bit of the grain to grow you're allowing it to germinate a little bit, and then you're stopping that while the enzymes are in there that will convert the starch in the barley eventually convert the starch into sugar so that the growing embryo can can use them you kill that such that the enzymes haven't been destroyed but that the embryo isn't using all of that stuff and isn't wasting any of the starch because you want to convert all that starts using enzymes to sugar. So I've been not with much success but trying to experiment using using the enzymes in that to add other starches to do cooking related things. So to break down potatoes for instance or break down even further sweet potatoes using a mixture of amylase is from from from grains, but I haven't had any sort of luck. You know that I haven't had any sort of luck that makes me want to think that that's what I want to do for the next you know, you know, 10 years I've been much more luck with not with grain based ferments doing interesting thing but Harold McGee has been turning me on to some really interesting rice based fermentations not Japanese not koji based but you know other weird, symbiotic, like mixtures of bacteria and fungal and yeast elements. And I forget the name of it has to do these weird little they're called yeast balls that are from China that McGee kind of turned me on to that make this amazing fermented rice gruel. It tastes unlike anything ever. So I've had more luck using that in culinary in culinary applications, but haven't really had done much with beer now. Malt is delicious. And malt I think especially even the even the dried stuff that you can buy or the extract is an underused ingredient from a culinary standpoint, it's delicious. You know, malted mashed potatoes, you know, not malt like, you know, Baker's malt or like malt like you make milkshakes with but like large amounts of, you know, brewers more bit more powder. You know, DME, dry malt extract, which you don't use because you're all grain is a awesome addition, flavor. In addition to many things that I use to have a fair bit of beer. What are some interesting things I can do to play with beer for sweet or savory applications? I've been thinking about phones with Metacell at 50 and have used it and she's preparations with sodium citrate. But Metacell F 50. Beer applications are kind of one of the classic applications of Metacell F 50. Ma I think one of the effects the first application I saw Metacell F 50 is a hydrocolloid derived from cellulose, that has very good whipping properties. And it's used mainly by chefs to make very dense like kind of shaving creamy consistency foams because it makes it very fine cell foam as opposed to something almost akin to an egg white, as opposed to kind of the light airy foams that are produced by things like by things like less than, you know, Versa whip is another foaming agent, but I tend to think that Metacell at 50 makes kind of a finer kind of more egg Whitey foam then Versa whip usually does although Versa whip is also good for certain applications. Anyway. Metacell 50 also does something versus whip can't do which is if you make a if you make like a like a whipped egg white texture thing with Metacell 50 A foam, you can pipe it onto a tray, throw it a dehydrator at 135 Fahrenheit for a couple of hours, then turn it down to hold it and it'll make a crunchy like crunchy Marang crispy thing with no protein. That's amazing. Now, the first application I saw of it, what methicillin 50 was, in fact beer it was Sam Mason, who I don't know when his ice cream company starting up again, you know, does anyone know? Anyone? It's gonna be delicious, I'm sure anyway, but was he was doing back at WD 50 When he was a pastry chef at WD 50 was making a Guinness foam with Metacell 50. And as I remember, I tasted it and my feelings was it was it was delicious. Obviously cooking with beer is good. I've been using it a lot in cocktail preparations. Of course, that's nothing new. So I guess I don't have anything really new. I like this cheese application with sodium citrate. So I'm assuming you're making like processed cheese with beer. I think that would mean we'd have to add some sort of you'd have to add some sort of like casing extra casing to it you buy. I did some work with a product called rennet casein and rennet casein is is casing that's been produced from the process like where you actually rented it, and then you break it down powder it and you can reuse that to make cheese analogues. And so I've done some initial experiments with rennet casein, but I'm sure that as long as you get the pH right with the with the beer that you can make a pretty interesting kind of beer cheese. In other words, I would be most interested in something not that had the flavor of cheese, but had the eligibility of cheese but tasted like beer. And I think that would be eminently possible with beer, rennet casein and the right emulsifying soul. So I wouldn't just use citrate you'd use a debut of a call and let's keep it to one question. It's not a personal use. You wait, you're telling me it's not a personal friend telling ladies buying shoes on the internet? Or I call you on the shoes and caller you? Caller you're on the air.

Hi, David Annastacia and friends. This is probably the San Francisco excuse me, I have a cold. But two questions. First is lecithin. Once I found my natural food store, the soy lecithin, which looks kind of like bee pollen, it's the kind of crumbles and then but I've seen some recipes, the one liquid. So what's the difference? And I guess the first they call soy lecithin, lecithin.

Yeah, almost all the lecithin that you buy in, in is from soy. And it's not that that's the only list events out there. It's just a byproduct of manufacturing all the other soy products, they have slightly less than I've never used liquid less of the year we use liquid Piper. Yeah. Did you like it? I mean, it's like, the granules about the granules or the granules are obviously the worst, the powder is pretty good. You can buy powdered one. And the problem with the granules is first of all, I think they tend to accentuate the off flavor that you can get from lecithin if you use too much, and also they're hard to go, what would you say he's still there, they are hard to get into the hard to get into solution, sometimes the granules and the where's the powder is like, you know, easier but the liquid I mean, assuming if you can buy the liquid, if you can tolerate having extra extra, you know, liquid, I'm sure it's not live from fertile soil based, right. But if you could have it, you know, because less than would rather be in oil than in water you whenever you're talking about an emulsifier you got to look at what's called the the hydrophobic lipo where the hydrophilic lipophilic balance where you're looking at? Is it an oil loving? emulsifier? Is it a water loving emulsifier. And the big mistake most people make with less than is although it's kind of somewhere near the middle. It's not extreme on either side. Less than is an oil loving emulsifier. So if it's coming as a liquid, it's almost certainly coming in an oil based liquid. Now. I if I've never used liquid lecithin, but I would guess it's a lot easier to use because the pain in the butt about less minutes game making sure it's in the liquid property. Right. When you agree. Yes. Yeah. I don't know. We I think we lost a color because we have some sort of like weird feedback loop going on here. But back to cheese for one second. The book that you guys want to get. And I think I've mentioned it on the on the show here before is processed cheese and analogues by Adam and timimi. And that's going to have all the recipes you need it you can you can look at a good bunch of it on Google Books and see see what's going on. Finally, on the way out, we have a question well, okay, one more thing on cheese. Can sodium hexametaphosphate be used as a replacement for sodium citrates? And recipes as well as for sequestering calcium? If yes, is there a standard scaling amount for the amount used and thinking specifically about a modernist mac and cheese recipe. So even hexametaphosphate is not a single thing. It's a group of poly phosphate salts. And it's a monster at sequestering calcium. It's not a straight replacement for sodium citrate, because they have kind of different functions in a mac and cheese. They they they function, they function differently. Usually when you're making a cheese based thing you need to add not just one emulsifying salt, but two or three, your your the function you need depends a lot on the pH of your system. So certain of the salts are more basic than others. And so you need to add them to get your pH in in the right level. And also they tend to have different textures depending on which one you use. And unfortunately, it's not a straightforward thing. It's kind of a little bit of a dark art. And so it requires a lot of experimentation. A lot of it is still just people like testing recipes and keeping logbooks of what they do, but sodium hexametaphosphate and sodium citrate together you should be able to get a lot of things under your belt having those two ingredients on hand when you're doing cheese's finally, can I explain my home seltzer system? Yes, here's what you do to make the if you have the money in the time and and but now but you don't want to spend money or time later, what you do is you get an under the counter ice machine. And then you drill a hole on the side of the undercounter ice machine. This is not this isn't what I kind of have in what happened home is a slightly more ghetto version of this. But you take an ice machine you drill holes in it right you buy a cold plate go to go to Mark powers there in Guntersville Alabama cheapest get a cold plate, two circuits, one circuit of a cold plate is not enough to get yourself so cold enough for what you want to do here. Right. So what a cold plate is, is it's a big stainless steel coil that's embedded in an aluminum block and you keep that underneath ice right now one chain of a cold chain is not going to drop the temperature enough so what you do is you put the in Oh I forgot you have to buy a carburetor. carbonator is a giant tank that holds water at room temperature with a pump the same kind of pump. It's a rotary vane pump made by ProCon usually, and it's the same pump that uses an espresso machine and that's hooked up to your water supply. So you get you put your water supply free out of your sink in through a filter, you put that goes through a filter, once it goes through the filter, it gets hooked onto the pump on your carbonator right, you think a 20 pound co2 tank you want to run it about 9596 98 psi somewhere in there into the tank. Now your water mains are don't have enough pressure to inject water into a system that has that high of that high of a pressure. So the ProCon pump, overcomes that pressure and shoots the water sprays it into the tank, that spring makes such a fine surface area that the water is instantly carbonated. Now, you need to have it at 98 to 9090 to 100 psi because you're doing it at room temperature. So that's under extreme pressure. It comes out of that goes through two circuits of your cold plate, right two circuits of it and it's underneath their ice machine. So now you have constant ice supply and you have constant cold seltzer when it comes out. The next biggest mistake people make is they use a crappy picnic tap like you would use for beer. They're worthless, useless. You need to get what's called a Becker squeeze valve. You can also get Becker BEKBEC ke BEC ke R. Becker makes the best seltzer valves, no question because it has a giant compensator in the back of it that allows you to make the transition from the high pressure region where the seltzer is to the low pressure atmospheric region. And they're just there. They're free. It's friggin awesome. That's the system. So that's the system I have a 54 Eldridge at home. The problem was I couldn't fit an undercounter ice machine in where I wanted to put it because it would require too much ventilation problem I just couldn't do it. Plus, with all the tubes coming down from my espresso machine because my espresso and my seltzer rig are together right where all my filter water crap is. So I have to go through the office. It was not awful. I built an insulated box, like out of wood and spray foam and blue and blue foam. With a condensation pump, right you need a condensation pump with a condensation pump. And so now my freezer which is across the aisle in my kitchen, I pull the ice out of it every day from the icemaker, dump it into my insulated box into the cold plate. And then that's how I get my cold seltzer. And so that's my cold seltzer rig at home. It's awesome. The one with the automatic ice machine is even better now that I have a seven year old that I can boss around. He actually does the ice. So it's just like having a manualized you know a regular ice machine for me. But that's how I recommend doing it. It's the balls I never run out of seltzer cooking issues.