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,

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Hello and welcome to cookie issues. This is Dave on your hoster cookies coming to you live every tuesday from toe to toe 44 Actually, we might be able to go to one today. Yeah. Hello. Oh, extended edition cookie issues here live with Natasha hammer Lopez, and Jack and Joe in the engineering room. Hi, guys. Hi. So I actually I actually had banged my headphones off during the during the intro there. Maybe we should tighten up our headphones.

Yeah, well speaking to Joel I kind of wanted to read this email he sent me he's, he's thrilled we're playing the song he wants to take us off maybe on that offer and do a live recording. Then he says he's got all these other tracks he wants to give us including a Harold McGee tribute song and other stuff. He's written about pigs. He says I've been writing songs for a long time now my wife hates them. Let's hope you like it.

I want to hear they're old and

I wanted to can we just like get a copy of the Herald like how fast can we get a copy of the Harold McGee tributes

like right now?

Right now, Joel? If you're listening, we need that right now.

Joel if you're out there, let me see it nice. For those of you that listen to the prince's Black Album back in the day. So anyway, so and also apparently we had like some sort of lit a fire a firebrand performance going on on the show prior to this because the mic was totally loose. Like the mic had been like blasted off of its like Gimbels here and was like, you know, practically lying on the floor. It was the gun show. Apparently a you know, a Rattlin time had leaked by the microphone. Is this the microphone? They use this one?

Yeah, one of them? Yeah.

Yeah, I think it was. I think it was over two inches. So anything good going on. No, not really. No, really literally nothing good is happening. Well, you know well that makes that makes what we do sound very interesting related to the Christmas party. A Christmas was a long time ago, you're referring to the month ago holiday party. And I found I were talking, I found out where the invitation was. You know how whenever they send you your fake paycheck that doesn't have that says, This is not a paycheck. I don't get that anymore. You because You have someone else throw it away for you. Yeah, I don't get no they asked me. Do you want it sent to you? That's what it was on. Okay, well, because you don't get it. They literally have to they have to print it. But by law, it's printed like so someone throws it away for you. Because you probably said keep it the hell away from me. And that's where the holiday party was. That's where the holiday party invite was on the pay stub. So you in fact were

canceled last night where it was and no one got back to me or paper.

I like it. Well, Piper didn't want to see you Piper saw you all day didn't want to see you at night. You

know, Piper was asking me where is it? And whatever.

I did not go because I was sick as a dog last night. I was like I gotta also even have like an instance sore throat like, I'm on like heavy meds now. I'm like super heavy meds. Wow. Anyways, speaking of heavy meds, we're on track for our Kickstarter. I can't tell you people what it is yet. But I was testing out the thing that we're using at the pizza party I had because every year my kids birthday, I have pizza party at my house where the kids make the pizza and I was using it. They were it's not a pizza oven doing but I was using it. We cranked out these freaking kids. We cranked out 20 Freaking pizzas in like in like two hours and they ate every last one. And we only we didn't have that many people. I don't know where where the heck all that pizza went. That's crazy. Yeah. Also made some fake Twinkies. Vaguely. So like, you know how the Twinkies hostess is out of business? Right? Right. Right. And you know how it is not only shopping for Zappos, folks, she's playing the music from the website. First of all,

it was Sirius radio was on before

trade awesome listening to a competitor. Yeah, terrible. First of all, anyone out there who designs a website and puts music on it, have your head examined DO NOT SERIOUS radio, whatever. Okay? Unless you are serious radio or Pandora, or heritage Radio Network,

click for hours to come on. We don't just you know, autoplay things because we're not bad people. Exactly.

We don't like we don't invade your home is but because you happen to come to our website. You know, perhaps in error. We hope not. We don't invade your home anyway. So 20 hosters out of business. I bought a box for Christmas for holidays for my kids with Twinkies because they'd never had one and I grew up with Twinkies. I was like a kid's head Twinkies. My wife tell you to buy my kids Twinkies. And so anyway, they loved it and all of a sudden because it's not available anymore become their became their favorite dessert on Earth by Christmas time. They were up to $25 for a box of 10. I think the MSRP on that sucker was like 450 or something like that. So I bought two for Christmas. But then I decided I'm gonna buy the pet. You can buy pens that make Twinkies. They're Twinkie shaped pens, everyone on the line on the internet. They make the fake Twinkies by molding aluminum foil around spice bottles and then using that, but as like you know my kids want if Makino if my kids want Twinkies, I'll invest the money in the pan. So I've got the pans and I followed Todd Wilbur, you know, Todd Wilbur, you're familiar with time over time, Wilbur. He has like a since I think the 90s or something 80s 90s has had a bunch of books called like top secret recipe. And a top secret recipe. It's like you know, he figures out like what's the real herbs and spices he's not useful? not from around here. He doesn't sound like that. He's from like New Mexico or some crap but he's like, What are the herbs and spices in like Kentucky Fried Chicken and stuff like that? So he posts in fact, he has a recipe I haven't tested it for Heinz ketchup fake, like Heinz ketchup. You know, whatever it's by go by Heinz. Heinz is delicious ketchup product anyway. Unless you don't like Heinz, but I think Heinz is a fine ketchup prize that your favorite ketchup, so I

really don't care.

Are you a freak? Are you a freak? I really how do you work in the cooking business and not care about the ketchup tastes different? I don't care. I don't care. You don't care. So I can serve you poop in a bottle of ketchup. Ketchup?

Ketchup. I don't know. Whatever is on the table. I don't care. Like I really don't care about that kind of stuff.

What the hell's wrong with you? How could you not care about it ketchup? It's not alright. It's not they taste different. That's like, Hey, look. You know what? You know what? You know what starts? I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what I owe Staz I still owe her a bottle of good wine for a bit of loss. I'm just gonna get her anything because what does it matter? It's wine. No, it wasn't his wine. It doesn't matter. It's wine. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter what kind of grapes went into it doesn't matter how it was made on air

ketchup tasting.

They're different. They're different. Jack

I like Sir Kensington's. Wow, they're friends of the network. No, honestly, I don't know. I mean, usually you Got Heinz right? I mean, I know when I say something that's not Heinz, and I'm usually kind of disappointed. Yeah,

because Heinz ketchup no offense to Hans Corporation. They make fine canned tomato products, but hunts doesn't taste like Heinz doesn't. I don't care, though, is that you're supposed to care about every aspect.

I know of what the world

is. Maybe we can do a new show at one o'clock called I don't care with the Stasi, you

know, it's just everything. We're in the Stasha tackles the world to she doesn't care. Man, God, dang. So anyways, making the Twinkies but the problem was the the issue is, is that is it that the kids don't want a good sponge cake filled with, you know, a some sort of cream filling that dad can come up with? They want freaking Twinkies. So I'm not trying to you know, it wasn't trying to work on that. So I had to use his fake recipe, which is boxed pancake and whipped egg whites for the Edit pretty is pretty dang close to a Twinkie actually. You know, like it like Booker was like, real Twinkies that are slightly better, or slightly better. I was like, that's perfect. You don't want it to be actually better than a Twinkie. You want it to be just slightly less good. So it tastes like you're actually shooting for the Twinkie Anywho. But the feeling was so freaking thick. That follow the recipe, this feeling is marshmallow fluff, Crisco, trans fat free Crisco, a little bit of powder, sugar and salt with a little bit of water in it. And I guess the water level wasn't over whatever. I don't know. It was so freaking thick that the both pastry bags that I use exploded the hostess brand Twinkie. Like bags No wonder they went out of business the bags exploded and sprayed filling all over the table. It's friggin nightmare. For you next next time I do it. I'm going to make a thinner a thinner Twinkie mix. But now that I own two pans, I guess I'm gonna have to

know everybody cares about Twinkies so much. You know why? You know, but yeah,

I mean, it's like, it's like, it's like anything is taken. You don't care about 20 Don't

care about Twinkies.

You don't care about what do you care about? Tell me something you care about. I mean, I give me my thing.

go above and beyond they make Twinkies because now they're out of business. They never had a place in my life. I never

would have if my kids weren't now obsessed with it, and they're obsessed with it because they can't have it. You know, it's the same thing that everyone cares about X, Y or Z as soon as it's gone. Or soon as somebody's dead, they care about a lot more. So same with Twinkies, especially because my kids now like they love any kind of dessert. So they get the Twinkies. And then they they're like, oh my god, I love it. I can't have it. I need it. You don't I mean, I don't personally care about Twinkies that much except for I care about, you know, my kids. Yes. And they care about the 3d. So you still have not named something you care about. So further proof that the stashes next show that you're going to do on your own is just like anything, anything in the world, I don't really care. I don't really care. Our good friend, our good friend video that wrote in saying he had a cookbook recommendation because we're talking about Indian cookbooks. But he took a very interesting tack. Instead of recommending a book about Indian cooking, he recommended a book that is printed by an Indian person in India about vegetarian cooking, but it's not strictly speaking Indian cookbook. It's kind of interesting. He says, I'm behind on schedule podcast. But regarding Indian cookbooks, the unique book of vegetarian cooking by Suraj Joshi is an impressive book. And I don't know if and then he added later. I don't know if it's published in the US. But her son's a friend and the book is good. He she also did an all spinach book called potluck preparations. I like that pilot preparations anyway. No, no, Sam is not available in the US. But I did. I did look it up. You can't get it in the US. But an interesting and interesting take of a non Indian necessarily, it has like Mexican food, Chinese food, and any food anyway. I said I would read on the air and there you have it. At class right in what is a good way to keep taro of potatoes and other starchy foods firm after cooking, or maybe just firm the surfaces? Well, I mean, the classic way to keep things firm. And this goes back to the the first instance I read about this was Jeffrey Stein garden. And I think it was in his original book, The Man Who ate everything, which I think I told us that on the air I always keep confusing with The Man Who Mistook His Wife for his hat. So like, the titles of the day. It's not it's not by him. It's by Oliver Sacks. But like somehow I always confuse the two titles. And so it was like The Man Who Mistook everything for his hat or ate everything with his hat anyway, I always get confused, but the man who ate everything, which was probably when I read it, one of the most and you know, it still is in other words, but you know, when I read it, especially was one of the most important food books that I ever read. Really, I mean, really, you know, fantastic book. You know, it's compilation of all of his article is articles from Vogue, not all of them, but many of them, in which he says that you should care about everything, and you should try everything. And he's told you that personally, himself anyways, so he has a section on on potatoes mashed potatoes. ticular and I think also French fries and whatnot but mainly mashed potatoes. And it was extremely influential article on keeping them firm and together by heating the preheating them at a temperature to activate the pectin, methyl esterase enzymes that are in the potato, and there thereby provide structure to it later on in the Cook process. Bang. Okay, so, so the that it's a long way of saying pectin methyl astray. So here's what's going on, in in. I mean, the problem with starch is it starts swells, it's going to burst and leak out, right. But you can harden it somewhat and protect it somewhat by by strengthening the the pectin that's holding the whole thing together. Because even though there's a whole boatload of starch and potato is still has a lot of pectin. They're Holding, holding things together. Now, pectin, naturally, what happens is it what it's, it'll cross links with calcium to get to get stronger, right? So you need calcium present. So this is why like, you know, we use calcium to firm up vegetables, or calcium chloride is used to firm up tomatoes, right? So when you if you're, if you're if you're making canned tomatoes, you add calcium chloride, even though calcium chloride tastes terrible, you add it and that small amount of calcium allows the pectin to crosslink. When it crosslinks, it gets firmer and then doesn't break down when it's cooked. However, you have to use the not all the pectin has, has the ability to crosslink that way, you have got to demethylated, right. So you got to use pectin, methyl esterase, which is an enzyme, which makes the pectin more readily cross linked by the calcium. So it's two part process, you need to activate the enzymes that are in the potato already, usually by heating up, I think it's like somewhere near 60 Celsius or something like this. And then maybe a little higher 6065 says and you need to have calcium present. Now there's some calcium present there already, but you can use the enzyme pectin mirthless rate, which you can purchase from Novozymes. I don't know if modernist pantry stalks it yet, but you can buy that and then add some calcium to it or you can just use calcium and the natural enzymes that are in there. To crosslinking Yeah, good job. Yeah. Okay. Andrew Campbell writes in Raleigh burns night is fast approaching any tips on a more modern preparation of haggis or cooking Oregon's suevey? And we don't have this on the show. I don't think

so. How is I have two cans. We should eat it soon.

We haven't eaten one yet. Your sister had it when she was in Scotland. Yeah. Yeah. And she loved it. Right. I have a Scotch flavored haggis. That she liked the haggis. You know why cuz haggis is delicious. Haggis. I'm going to say this cooking issues the show is going on record as saying that haggis is freaking delicious product. And you don't actually don't have very long left. I think Bobby Burns day is what the 25th or something like that something anyway. You know, Bobby Burns, the famous poet from Scotland who wrote such deities as Auld Lang sign? Oh, yeah. Anyway, so like if they celebrate his, I guess his birthday every year in Scotland and you have haggis and you drink scotch and you and you. He has a poem about haggis that you're supposed to read before you get to haggis. So for those of you that are haggis deficient in your knowledge. I'll give you that. Here's here's how they grossed you out with with the haggis, right? This is what they say. It's like the heart and lungs and all of the goopy crap and stuff inside of a sheep and it's stuffed into a sheep's stomach and cooked and then you eat it right? That doesn't sound so appetizing. No Speak for yourself. Right? But it's a lot of people that doesn't sound appetizing. In reality, what it is, is it's one of any number of dishes that's produced with the pluck. So when you when you're the pluck is all the stuff in the center of an animal. So typically, that would constitute hearts, lungs, liver, kidney, all that stuff, all of the the awful meat that's there. Not awful with an A with a no. And and another famous dish like that in the US is scrapple. Right? A dish that I also think that everyone needs to eat much more often assuming that they eat meat. Now, all of these awful dishes are meant to use the pluck in a way that use it just use it but they what they do is you make the stock with it. And then you use the stock to cook a grain. So in the case of haggis, it's oatmeal mixed up with these with these cooked pieces of meat and the stock that it comes from stuffed inside of the sheep's stomach, which is the lining like a pudding case, right? And then cooked you know more so the whole thing slices out like a big like oatmeal like oatmeal, meatloaf mush. It's freaking great. It's great. Whereas like you know, scrapple is all of like the pigs parts, like the hearts lungs all that well. Not anymore but liver chop dump and then made a stock and then you take in trouble with the pieces and you put it into cornmeal, right? Which is like, you know, just a better version of polenta. And then when you fry it to get the gelatin from the stock melts, this is scrapple. And it gets all gooey and delicious. And you know, it's great. It's fantastic stuff. Now, the trick is people are grossed out by some of these meats. And so it first of all, you can't serve lungs in the US at all loves the lungs as traditional artists got you ever had lungs? No, they're good, but they're spongy as blank, I have to be honest, they're spongy. So like a typical Italian dish that my father stepfather used to love when he was growing up, his dad was a butcher, and he would bring home the hearts in the lungs, even though he wasn't allowed cuz he wasn't allowed to sell the lungs because he would slaughter his own sheep was a mixture of hearts and lungs like that from around the Naples version that was a thing and it tomato sauce. And so he used to love it, because the chewy parts of the heart and the and the spongy parts of the lung. Anyway, couldn't get it, but you can't have long hair in the US. But the trick to making this thing modern, is if someone doesn't necessarily see back then you're making it because you wanted to use all those meats, if you don't necessarily want for instance, the stronger taste of liver, in your in your scrapple or in your haggis, you can just omit it if you want to, you know what I mean, it's not going to be the same, it's not going to be traditional. But this idea of a very flavorful stock made from gelatinous, and, you know, flavorful like meat that you cook in the stock grind up and then mix with a grain like oatmeal and then cook them in like a pudding way or a loaf is freaking valid, even if you were to use high grade stuff. So we made a high grade haggis, at the FCI a number of years ago, where we used meat that you would actually normally just eat and cooked it along with some awful that we could put in and do it. So you know, so there you have it now in terms of cooking in general low temperature, with with Oh, and if you want to know about scrapple you can buy William Boyce Weaver's book country scrapple, which is tedious, but exhaustive and like thoroughly researched on scrapple and its importance in America and tracing it back to, you know, tracing it back to Germany, Europe and all of its roots over there anyway. Okay, it's Pennsylvania Dutch thing Dutch meaning Deutsch not Dutch, meaning Dutch from Holland anyway. So. So the trick with in general with modern cooking, they're so modern. When I was saying modern, I meant modern. From a taste perspective, if you want to go modern, in terms of cooking low temperatures, suevey Do you have to remember that you still have to cook the thing at a high enough temperature to cook the oatmeal out. So you're probably not going to do an extremely low temperature cook. Same way. Same with scrapple. For polenta, you know, you still need to cook out the plants, you need to go to a higher temperature than you normally would. But you could do it in a bag if you want it to to keep all the flavors. And the issue is is that a lot of times with awful and with variety, variety, meats, if you're using variety, meats, a lot of the old style preparation of these meats is to try to get rid of some of the inherent aromas, let's say that they have or flavors. And so you'll have recipes where things are soaked in milk beforehand, to draw out stuff or they're parboiled first to draw things out. And if you don't do those sorts of things mean remember that local cvwd When you put something in a vacuum bag tends to concentrate aromas over time. So if somebody has an aroma that you're trying to get rid of, or a taste you're trying to get rid of, you don't want to put it in a bag right away, because it's just going to seal the stuff in. The second thing, the reason you'd want to do low temperatures to lean on one of these things is because you want to make it more tender than you otherwise would be, you have to look at how tenderness really works when you're doing low temperature cooking. So let's say you're gonna cook up a regular piece of muscle meat that has a lot of collagen, right? And you don't want to cook it to a high temperature because you want to not overcook the muscle that's within it to you know, over medium rare or medium, let's say. So you do low temperature for long time and long, long time breaks down things like skin, things like connective tissue. And this is why this is a good technique for things like pork tails that have a lot of a lot of collagen a lot that can break down into gelatin overlong cooking, right. But and it keeps them whole because it doesn't melt them out. It just just converts them to gelatin in their own place without actually melting it out the way you would in a traditional brace. So it's fantastic for things like that. meats like heart are not tough because they have a lot of collagen. They're tough because the muscle fibers are extremely strong. So cooking at low temperature isn't going to soften it the same way it would soften let's say a short rib. What's going to happen with with heart is you're actually going to break the muscle fibers down by extreme long cooking but that's a different kind of tenderness now. Back when stars used to pay attention to the cvwd class at We would go through that like five times, well, more like once in the rest type your way through it. But the but one of the classic things I want people to taste when they're tasting low temperature cooked meats, is the difference between tender and mushy because they often get confused. And when I cook a piece of steak for too long, for instance, to me, it's no longer tender. When the muscle fibers themselves start breaking down, it becomes mushy, and you've tasted that right does. Yeah. You care about that. All right, wow. So she's not mushy. So she's not talking about that on the show. But the but the so the point is, is that you can tenderize something like a heart, but I think a lot of the tender is tenderizing you have to be careful that it doesn't edge over into the mushy zone. Also certain things like liver if they're cooked for a long time, in a bag, accentuate delivery flavor, and in fact, cuts of meat like I have round that when they're cooked for a long time also tend to become livery so I wouldn't cook something that's livery for a very long time in a bag because if you do you're going to you're going to accentuate that that livery note anyway. Hope that's helpful that seem helpful at all. Yeah, what time is I came to see the cloud 25 So should we go to our first break? We're gonna first we're gonna break call into someone a furnace energy we're doing

today's theme song putting issues is by Joel Gargano. The break song is fish is fish is vodka by the meat ballers. You're listening to heritage Radio network.org.

The International Culinary Center is a proud sponsor of the Heritage Radio network.org. The ICC with locations in New York and California provide cutting edge education to future chefs, restaurant tours and wine professionals. We're proud to claim Dan Barber, Bobby Flay and David Chang among our honored alumni. This is Dorothy can Hamilton from Chef story. Check out our ICC website at international culinary center.com

ALL Yeah, back with cooking issues. What's up guys?

Mike, come back with Dorothy

Yeah, coming back into Oh, yeah.

Shout out Dorothy

speaking about coming back. The blogs back on the air.

I don't even believe that. Is that true? It

is. We don't get it clean. I'm gonna clap for that. Man although I just got tweeted out this so what happened is is that our good friend Paul Adams decided to take who you know writes for Popular Science decided to and he you know, he tasted so strongly with us remember that? What oh my god so well. So strumming is this? Is this like horribly was it's like horribly stinky. Even I had issues with it. It's incredibly stinky fish that is not salted enough to totally kill everything and then ferments inside. It's from Sweden ferments inside the can and so like a bulging can is actually the sign of a good sir strumming. And you like keep it in his can for a year. And you open it and pungent. pungent. You were there for that right? Yeah. Did you eat it? Yeah. Did you like it? No. It's, it's intensely freaking salty. And the smell is beyond what you would think is possible in something that you would put in your mouth. It's like, it's, it is like, I've never seen flies attracted to something so fast. Remember that? There was like, No, there was no flies anywhere. And all of a sudden, like we were swarming. We're like beating the flies away. And only I ate it a couple of times. I got it down. We had like the rye bread. We had Aqua VT and all this other stuff. But only Harold McGee, who's like, doesn't have the vomit. Note that the last one I had remember that doesn't have to vomit note. That was his complaint. It was his complaint. Yes. They didn't have the vomit note from the first time or the other two times he had had it. The only other guy who was pounding sir strumming was Paul Adams. So much so that he was like, You're not gonna throw that kannaway Aria, he also doesn't talk like that. He's like, you're not gonna throw that kid away. He's like, I'm gonna take that back to the office took it in a cab with him. I am sure that this cabbie like if this cabbie had been armed. Paul would have had a problem. You You know what I mean? Because this is this thing. He's saying that RAM anyways. So our good buddy Paul, he got the cooking issues back, back online, we finally got the passwords. We have control. But unfortunately in a stash I don't know if you heard this this morning, but someone said that we are reinfected already. And it's like, you know, you try and do something.

You guys use WordPress, or Yeah, I

don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But so. So for those that tweeted that to us, we're getting that worked on. And we're going to what Paul said he might actually write some stuff for the cooking issues. We're gonna become a viable blog again,

people that's tell me where do you see it as infected?

I didn't see it was effective. So what else did we have to go to my Twitter account? She's like, I can't be bothered. I can't be bothered.

So one thing for Joel Gargano. If he's going to do a Harold McGee kind of tribute band, that maybe might want to call it vomit note.

Whoa, I don't know the Harold wood. I don't know. I mean, well, yeah, I guess you never mean, it's hard to say it's such a cool band name. Vomit note is that like, is that like the brown note? Note that you hit and you don't know whether you've been able to hold it in to go on. Anyway. That's why I played that's why I learned to play bass by the way is because you know the notes like a really good bass cab when you're playing live and you're in your amps really good. And your bass guys really good. Like you really have to squeeze tight to make sure that you've maintained control because your body is vibrating so so much. And that is that's the that's what's so awesome about playing the bass. No one with me on this, okay. Like we you went to rock concerts all the time, you

don't barely watch the drummer.

Only watch the drummer, by the way in the stash obsessed with. There's a feeling coming in the air tonight by Phil Collins.

No, everyone go online, Google the video when he's live. And he sings the entire song walking on stage and you're worried he's not going to make it to the drum set before that important part. But he does.

I guarantee I'm not worried about it. Finally, we found something that I'm not worried about that you are worried about Phil Collins making it to the drumset. All right. Josh Krieger writes in on heating elements and cast iron astonishing, Dave, two questions for you what kind of heating element is used in the PolyScience immersion? circulators? Are they PTC heaters or something else? Well, for those of you not in the heating, know, a PTC heater is a positive temperature coefficient heater. And what a positive temperature coefficient heater is, is it's a heating element. They're usually like chips or like, you know, chips and and they're arrayed you put a bunch of them and you heat that but they they hotter they get, the higher the resistance goes. But it's not in a linear fashion. So over a normal kind of heat range where you might want to control a heater, it has a relatively low resistance. And then as soon as it heats up beyond a certain predetermined point, that they they determined by what they dope it with, I think they're usually made with barium titanate, and they have a doping crap and to change the temperature at which the resistance really changed, but you hit a certain temperature, and all of a sudden, bam, the resistance goes way up, which throttles the power down. So they're called self limiting, because they can't burn themselves out. And that's an advantage. So, by the way, no, probably science does not use them. Probably Science uses standard resistance heaters with stainless steel sheets. So they use a you know, a bendable tubular immersion heater with a stainless steel sheath in them. And the way you could tell it, they use it. Actually, I don't know, I haven't opened up his new one. I haven't opened up the I haven't opened up the what's the new one called the inexpensive one. I don't remember the name of it. So be creative, I think so be creative. I haven't opened up a super, super creative, but none of the older ones use a PTC heater. The advantages of the advantage of a PTC heater is it doesn't require a secondary. It doesn't require a secondary safety. So if you look at one of the old PolyScience circulators, or even I guess, you know, the professional which is you know, the one we have it, there's a little what looks like a soft a stainless steel sausage strapped to the heating element. And that is a safety thing such that if the tank runs dry, or if anything like that happens, and the temperature of the heating element shoots up, then that shuts the system off. Right. So and the advantage, you know, that's standard way of doing it. The advantage of the PTC is it doesn't require that and also if it goes over temp, it doesn't actually shut this, it doesn't shut the system down. It just throttles the power down to a point where it's not going to harm anything. So that's the the theoretical advantage of the of them they're they're super advantageous in situations where you know that you're not going to be able to stop crud from building up between your heating element and the temperature measurement is going to use it right because then if inefficiencies can mean that your heating element can get so hot that they can burn themselves out. Not really the case in an immersion circulator. But anyway PTCS I've only recently been starting to I think really being used quite a lot and new applications. So I don't know if Philip will use them eventually, but he's not using him right now as far as I know. Yeah. Yep. Color. Whoa. Wow. Reverb caller you're on the air.

Yeah. Listen, Dave, how are you doing? This is Matt from a couple of times before I have a two part question about conflict today. Okay. If kombu fat soluble, ie, if in oil, will it enhance the flavor of whatever I cook in the oil?

Okay, so we're talking about kombu, which is seaweed giant kelp that, you know, most famously used for making dashi in Japanese because he also used for curing things like fish, or you wrapped up and also Atlas nose used to do duck where he'd wrapped a duck and kombu let it sit and you develop kind of a cured layer on the outside. Okay, so, I mean, obviously, the salty stuff is not really oil soluble, right? But I don't know, I don't know about the other flavors I we've never, to my best my knowledge, we've never done an oil based combo. I know that the skin of the duck, which has quite a lot of fat picked up a lot of really good flavor from the combo, though. So I know that's the case. But you know, it's hard for me to say whether or not it's the water part of this skin that's picking up the kombu or whether it was the oil part. It's really fascinating question. I you know, you tend to think mainly about, you know, amino acids, you know, and glutamic acids in particular and other things getting liberated from kombu by the, you know, by the cooking process, and dashi. And of course, you know, it has all the polysaccharides in it, because it's a seaweed. That's what's providing the structure. But I've never thought about, I never thought about oil, please give it a shot and send us a tweet and tell us what happens. Because, you know, it sounds sounds interesting. I'd like to hear what happened.

All right. Where the question comes from, I was watching the reason to the Top Chef, and in one of the episodes, he had a fryer, and he actually had cobbled in the fryer, but didn't take it about a couple of weeks now, but is it fat soluble? Would it really work? I don't know. I had chocolate but I did do a lot of research online so I figured I call I call the person that might dance.

So he was using it not to make a crispy fried kombu but to flavor the oil. Yeah. And on research online, did they say it worked or No,

no, I couldn't find anything that said that was fat soluble over a blue Tammany? Yeah. What are the veal acids? Were fat soluble? So

yeah. So here's what I here's what I would do. I mean, although you know, crosses the blood brain barrier, whatever. But here's what I here's what or doesn't know, I always get my brain because no one does. The other does. No, it doesn't. Yeah, it's it's not anyway. So the what I would do is, I would just run a side by side test, where you, you know, and then serve it to someone to see if they can tell the difference. Even better yet to do a triangle test whether you serve them three, two of them are the same one is different and have them try and figure out which ones which and why. They will. Cool. So

yeah, got the second point, I just recently read the article that was written by the Food Lab. And seriously, it's about brining chicken and turkey and talks about how this protein, Brian like chicken stock doesn't flavor the meat per se because the particles in the chicken stock are too big to get into the protein even though the protein expands. Right. I question if you were to put kombu in the brine. Do you think that the glutaric acid or the amino acids will get inside of the protein or is it just for show?

I don't know I mean like callaloo definitely flavors the surface of the meat and causes the curing because it has salt there are there are very small water soluble molecules in common that will do some penetration. I don't know. I mean, so you know, individual amino acids are not large, but I don't know what their diffusion characteristic through the surface of, of a meat is others, you know, be like, salt is really small. You know what I mean?

Because the salts are well, the salt helps open up the protein strands,

right? Well it changes like it shifts it shifts the conformation of the protein right and so but the the I don't know, I was gonna say I don't it's another thing I don't know my my guess is that that you're not getting too much effect past the surface unless you inject it. Or if you have you know, holes in it, you know, but like it's why you usually if you're going to like with a broth or something you and you inject inject it in. I mean salts, small molecules, things diffuse through but so I guess that means I'm in agreement with the with the serious each post then Right? Okay. Yeah. Well I'm working with

cutting out not understanding.

Yep. I said I'm working with an old friend of yours here in Chicago. Oh yeah. Yeah with Musa Oh yeah. How's he doing? Yep, he's doing great. You really good.

Nice. All right,

well say howdy for me it's been a long time i I will for sure I will for sure. And he's teaching me a lot of great stuff I'm learning and everything I ever needed to know about hydrocolloid. And so that's, that's pretty much it. So pretty radio stations or radio shelf. Thank you very much, and I'll keep listening. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks,

Jack. Putting the reverb even on me like that. Yeah, on the day. Thank you. Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. All right. So Josh Krieger second question was, I have a 14 inch cast iron skillet, I'm thinking about flipping it upside down and using it as a baking steel for pizza. Is there a temperature where the seasoning on the skillet would start to degrade ie can I use it at 550 degrees Fahrenheit without issues? Okay, before I get into that, so the pizza steel is this thing that, you know, the Modernist Cuisine, guys, were saying that they use a very thick piece of steel that they heat up and that device delivers a wallop of heat two pizzas, you know, they say in a more effective way than something like a stone, wood, and it's easier to load the heat into the stone right. Now, my question is, I don't know if a cast iron pan is not has enough stored energy to do what? What Josh wants here? But that's not the question. So I'm not going to get into that question. Because that wasn't the question. Now 550 Fahrenheit, you're getting, you're getting very close. So let's go back to what a cast, the cast iron seasoning is. So cast iron seasoning, seasoning, a cast iron pan, you're doing a couple of things. And by the way, last night, when I saw this question, I went and did a research because occasionally people like change their you know, write new things about what's going on. So I was just checking up. And I found actually a really old thread on the garden web that written by this kind of like, it's interesting dude from Louisiana, Dan, a, b, z nine la for Louisiana on the garden web. And not Louisiana, not la for Los Angeles, la for Louisiana, anyway. And he's like a retired chemist. And he has strangely on this garden web thing from like, 2007, possibly the best explanation of what's going on in Panc here and that I've read anyway, so in a pink and pink curious situation, you're taking an oil or fat, you're putting a thin layer on on your pan, and then heating it till it's past a smoke point, it starts to turn black break down. So he, he says that there's two things that are going on one, you're polymerize in the oil, right? By breaking it, breaking it down at wherever it has a double bond, breaking it down. And it's forming a polymer, the polymer is hard, right, but also breaking fat down in general, into its smaller parts and leaving carbon residues. And, you know, I looked it up and carbon residues of oils is one of the things people measure, especially in the petroleum industry, because they need to know how much soot is going to be left over when oils are burned or when they're degraded, right. So he says you want that carbon because the carbon is adding to the kind of the nonstick principle. So it's a combination of polymerization of oil, and the carbon is put down. But if you heat it too high, you're going to break down that those those polymers that you put on it, and the problem is is that the temperature at which that happens is going to depend partly on what oil was there to begin with. Along with a lot of other factors. I will say this. I have burned the seasoning off of pans in my oven. Now my oven gets hotter. Remember, I had to say before I do pizza in my my oven gets up to like 850 875 degrees, and it will easily burn the seasoning off of the cast iron pan. The self cleaning on an oven which runs a little bit hotter, a little over 900 Fahrenheit is going to burn the seasoning off of a cast iron pan. Just vaporize it. I've had pans on my stove, overheat and lost some seasoning on that one. I'm going super, super, super high heat on these little cast iron skillets that I have. So you know if you were saying 500 I'd say you're okay. If you were saying 650 I'd say not okay, I have a bunch of Pan stone bowls that get seasoned with oil. You know, Hearthstone bowls for Korean food, and I get them up to about 615 620 all the time, and that wipes out the seasoning on the bottom. So, you know, it's tough to say like, if you can guarantee your 550 you're probably going to be okay, but if you go much higher than that it's going to be problem you know but check out check out Dan a BZ nine la on the garden web so you can check it out another interesting thing is that there's another blog out there free I forget her name is Cheryl cancer I forget the name of her blog but she has an interesting post on cast iron where she actually has a whole the whole point of you know you're familiar with drying oil like linseed oil for painting yeah so like she's like why not since what you're trying to do is form a polymer why not use the oil that's actually good at that even at room temperature which is flaxseed oil linseed oil and so she seasons now all of her pants with flaxseed oil she says she gets really good results because there's a lot of people on the internet that really care about what they what oil they use and then they're gonna say it again cuz they can then ABC nine la