Hello, everybody, and welcome to a brand new series on heritage radio network called the culinary call sheet where we give a peek into the back kitchen of culinary media. I'm your host, April Jones,

and I'm your co host, Darren bresnitz. Part of why we started the show was to offer an unofficial mentorship for anyone who's interested in learning about all aspects of food and video, whether that's TV, social media online, or just something you want to do for fun.

Absolutely what was once niche or a little silly, as I'm sure you remember, Darren, when we started out, this man has now become such a massive playing field for so many creatives using food as the medium.

It's something that has driven us professionally and personally, for so many years. What excites me the most about this show is that we're going to sit down with some of the industry leaders to hear how they made it and what drew them into this industry.

With 20 years in the culinary production game ourselves. We're hoping we can give through these conversations an insider's view into personal stories from the field, as well as an in depth behind the scenes look into some of the most popular food programming. In today's evolving culinary media landscape.

We'll be covering everything from how to style your food, to how to license IP, to developing your own ideas, and some tips from the masters of how to host your own show.

Yeah, it's a little bit of conversation, how to and how do you do the things that you do in color media, which I'm so excited about? I love so many of the guests that are coming on this season. We have talent from Food Network from Vice media eater refinery 29,

we've met some of the best people in the world both in front of and behind the camera. And we're bringing them all together to share their stories, their delicious adventure and their unique journey into this crazy world.

So to be the first to hear our episodes when they launched this fall, go to wherever podcasts are streaming and hit subscribe and make sure to give us a follow at the Culinary call sheet on Instagram.

Today's program 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'd like this program, visit heritage radio network.org for 1000s more. Courses

Hello and welcome to cookie issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cookies coming to you live on the heritage radio network in the back of barbers pizzeria here in Brooklyn. How're you doing this Tasha? Great. Yeah, doing well. Jack and Joe over there. I actually punched myself in the head during the intro. Yes, I'm a little stunned. Now. Yeah,

I was just gonna say after two cups of coffee, that intro song is even crazier.

You only you're only a two cup of only two. Yeah. And you call yourself in New York. And so that's what laid back life here in in Brooklyn only requires two cups of coffee and a stash and I you know being residents of the island of Manhattan, we require three. So, by the way, speaking of Joel, is he coming in next week?

He is it's gonna be a blast.

So next week, we're gonna have live performance of the cooking issue sounds like true or false?

That is true. You know, why don't I re why don't I read the email he sent us I do that. Let's see. So greetings Joe, and everyone else. I would like to formally commit to appear live on your program and titled issues with cooking on Tuesday, March 5. As a guest musician, my assistant will submit my writer too soon. It includes a variety of single malt scotches and dried figs. As a plus, you'll be graced with the presence of my wife. I think her Anastasia will get along nicely due to their joint hatred of most things in existence and obsession with shopping for shoes online. Much like Anastasia is admitted during last week's episode My wife also dislikes my Thresh about ways of the long running Musical introduction cooking intro cooking issues intro and she would much prefer if I either shut up or play something nice. I look forward to seeing the inside walls with the famous shipping container Good day to you and in You're the meats of heritage breed.

Nice. Nice. Yes. Speaking of the meat of heritage breed we also have we have a lot of non cooking related stuff the beginning of this time. Yeah, yeah. We have a contest contest contest. Become a household member of heritage radio network for $120 and get a free T shirt in the chance to have lunch with Dave and the cooking issues team. Visit heritage radio network.org and click donate contest ends March 1, is that true?

That is true.

It's Friday. All true. That's not a long time.

No, this is like a last minute rush to close out February

hell, you know, I might I might I might enter the contest to get a chance to eat lunch with myself.

That's a pretty good it's pretty good spot to be in.

Like I wouldn't be there. But speaking of which, we have is this your cookbook here Jana Hills cuisine at Blackberry farm.

It's not mine puts the stations because there's

there's a hint on the cover which is it's almost rap season people. It's almost ramped season everyone knows Miss Dasha love. You know why she hates ramps? It's not because they're not delicious because they are. It's just because everyone else likes and that's why she hates them. A little bit. I like to have a little bit of Anastasia lore in each in each episode. Lord, Lord, Lord, okay, call your question is 278-497-2128 That's 74 972128 I have this question from Mark barter about wonder flour behind Anastasia Jack Joe and Dave 116 episodes is still going strong. It's true. Well, kind of. Okay, you managed to shed some light on the enigmatic oil solidifying Katamari with tempura not enough light. I mean, I wish I could actually get the product here in the United States of America. Anyway. Now I've got a new mystery for you. Can you enlighten the dear listeners on the secrets of Wondra? You know, but okay, well, I'll read the question. I've tried to maybe I should try to not have tangents one things going on? I think so. I don't know. I can't I just can't I can't to. I can't do it. Anyway, I understand why wonder is great for making gravies. But why is it supposed to be so good as a fry coating or for making pie pastry? If it's described as a pregelatinized? Or instant wheat flour? Does that mean that is simply a retro graded starch? Or is it the very opposite a pro graded starch? Like pro not programmed like poorly professionally graded anyway? Because it is a mechanically modified starch rather than a chemically modified starch? Can I realistically make my own one by taking a low protein cake flour and hydrating heating it? To which to what temperature? Surely you have a business saying I have a visceral I can never pronounce it. viscose a milligram and I don't have one anyway. Drying it after you cook it and pulverizing it is diastatic malt flour critical component. And finally, I haven't able to find a retail equivalent to wonder here in Australia. Should I look instead for an Asian African Middle Eastern equivalent until next time, Mark butter. Okay. So for those of you that aren't hip to the Wondra what wonder is is a it's a wheat flour, so gluten folks can't can't mean anti gluten folks can't use it like Piper so weird anyway. What it is, is it's it's two things. It's pregelatinized Meaning it's already been cooked, right? But it hasn't just been milled down to a powder. So you can't just use a pre milled powder. It's also agglomerated. Right, so the two key things about Wondra is that it is pregelatinized and agglomerated. I want you to keep that in your head because we have a caller. I'm gonna take the caller's question and then come back to one draw. Caller you're on the air.

Hey, I got a question about country ham.

Oh, I love questions about country hands. Excellent. So I

know you're a big fan of country hams uncooked. Yep. And I was lucky enough to be in Louisville a week or two ago and picked up a ham at Finch Ville farms on my way back. Oh, first

of all great place. I visited them. Great, great place good ham.

I'm hoping it's hanging in my basement. And with just two people in the house. A big ham is gonna last a long time. Yes. So there's a lot of stuff I want to do with it. I want to cook some of it. I want to make broth with some of it. I want to eat some of it raw. My question is how do I go about picking this large ham and using the different pieces making different pieces and using them for different things?

Right okay. So with a with a country hand and by the way, even though a Kentucky ham is a Kentucky ham, they're extensions of the culture from Virginia ham and in fact, a lot of the people who are whose families are very old ham carriers in places like Kentucky and Tennessee are actually direct transplants from from Virginia. So the culture of Virginia ham stretches across and is no country hamsters as we know them. Which means that this current phrase I'm about to give to you applies to Kentucky hams as well as to Virginia hands but the old joke goes that the definition of forever is to People in a country hand because it lasts so long and you can use it for such a long time that it almost never never goes away. I haven't found that to be the case because because I so much of it whenever I have one in the house, the first thing you want to make sure is that you're keeping it properly. So in the old days, Morris burger who's from burgers, Smokehouse in Missouri you know what they used to do back in the days before refrigeration was they would cut slices of the of the ham out and then wipe lard over the cut surfaces so they wouldn't lose too much moisture. And they would hang them from thin from thin like wires in their in their. In their shed to stop a vermin from being able to get down to like a thick rope to get it so that's how they used to do it in the old days. But I mean typically what people do when they have a country ham nowadays is they'll cut the cut the cushion, which is the so if you look at a country ham, right, if you look at the face, the face of it's the the part that was actually attached to the pig that's not skin, that part is typically very, very dry. And so unlike a prosciutto which is designed to have a fairly even salt and dryness level throughout the entire thing of the meat in American country ham, typically the face is going to be very dry on the reverse side of the face. You'll have the cushion and the cushion is the kind of thick muscley part and because of the way country hams are hung in the US they tend to be a lot thicker and therefore a lot less dry than the rest. So what a lot of people will do is remove the cushion right off of the off of the ham and then slice that one separately for more of your presentation pieces you're eating, you're eating it as a crudo situation. And then you will take the the face section and use it for stocks and whatnot. I tend to do very very little cooking of it because mean it just gets so it gets so tough and salty when you cook it but it's amazing like sliced and put over over eggs you know and then just letting a little bit of heat headed or as a substitute for things on pizza thrown in at the end of the of the cook time usually on the pizza to just sizzled up a little bit. You know I what I used to do I had meat slicer so what I would do is I would bone the thing out hole and then just slice it and enjoy all that all the different portions but at home it's very difficult to bone out a country ham so the way to do it is to take it and to locate where the kind of the joint is in there right saw through that with a hacksaw. If you ever meet saw that's good saw through with the hacksaw. The backside of it has some meat that can be sliced once you get that little piece out but there's less and less meat as you get towards the edge of that bone. I would trim off some of that very outside fat you want to keep the majority of the fat there but the skin itself sometimes can have a little bit of funky flavor and sometimes you can have little areas of taint and uncured stuff running down the bone sections of it. So you want to remove any parts that you don't like and then the parts of the tail you can use for trim it can be added to ground hamburger meat anything like that, or stocks and soups, the face also because it's so dry stocks soups or like graded sometimes if you really dry it out and then the cushion for your more you know fancy applications once you saw through the the ham at that joint then you can then you can either cut the cushion off hole or take a knife and and deep bone it just takes a while and be careful not to the only time I've ever broken a knife in my entire life of cooking is on an American country

ham okay you so you don't you say you don't cook them but they recommend if you're going to soaking it

yeah that's true we should if you're going to cook it the salt level is too high so you need to get some of the salt out of it and equalize the salt content especially in the face. So you know my grandma my grandma used to do in Virginia was she would throw it in a pot of water let it get all you know that she would soak it in a couple of changes of water almost like you would do like bacalao you know or a lot depending on where you're from. It's not necessary if you're going to if you're not going to cook if the issue with the cooking also is the recommendations on an American country ham because of USDA guidelines. Here's what's perverse American country hams are ready to eat product you do not need to cook them. However, in terms of safety, however, like our traditions come from England on this and in England hands are traditionally cooked even though our hands are more akin to the hands that you would get in terms of in Spain and and parts of France and Italy in terms of their actual dryness and their their usefulness in that way. And so we tend to cook them even though they don't need to be cooked. And in the old days the way you would cook them is you might soak it for a little while in water and then you'd stick it in a giant lard can with water bring the temperature up and then just let it ride overnight you wouldn't be and so the actual inside of the ham wouldn't be cut to that high of a temperature because it doesn't actually need cooking. They're just softening it and cooking it a little bit. You see what I'm saying? So the recommendations that are on the packages for country and because they're based on USDA cooking of meats are absurdly high. It is not possible to make a country ham that tastes good following the recommendations that are on the package. The other problem is, is that we're used to eating ham in general sliced extremely thickly and you don't want a piece of country ham sliced that thick. So if you are going to cook a ham and it cooked hams are good on things like biscuits or fried and put on eggs. You want to slice it extremely, extremely thinly and country ham is not meant to be you know, your main source of calories at a meal. country ham is meant to almost be a seasoning it's a seasoning meat. Do you see them saying? Yep. Good. All right, good. Well, thanks for calling in. And I always love any sort of country ham questions. Thanks for your answer. Thank you are We have another caller caller, you're on the air.

And we are here. Nice. Hi, we're Tom and Tom back in Chicago. Thanks for taking the call. So we have a whole big head split lengthwise that we want to serve. Hold on, I have two questions. First of all, we want to do it in a circulator. And one of the best way to handle a whole case having a circulator. And second of all, I want to smoke half of it. And I want to know how the smoker and the circulator play together.

Okay, so how big is the pig's head?

It's like an adult pig head.

Wow. So big. You can can't do you have a vacuum machine capable of bagging it have access to one? Okay. Yeah. So I mean, to two schools of thought about this, if you want it to taste, if you bag it and cook it in a circulator, the meats gonna hold together nicer, which is going to make it easier to do like a whole a whole prep. The problem is when you cook it in a circulator that way, and you pull it out, usually the skin is going to get a little bit damaged. And so you're going to have I'm assuming you're going to crisp up one or both sides of it and have the the skin side be crispy, right or no? Yeah. Yeah, so the the the issue on a lot of things like pigskin is it gets extremely delicate during the cook process. And so what you're going to be doing is a two part Cook, right where you're going to be cooking and gelatinous using the skin and the meat and Hello, Tim Cook, and then you're going to be doing a crisp off process. And you just have to be careful that you don't damage the surface of the skin in the in the in the process. And it's why you might want to think of doing instead of a circulator, if you have access to a combi you might want to think about doing a combi or but you know circulator will work fine, you just have to be careful careful with this game, as long as you can bag it, you should be all right, the vacuum level is not going to hurt. Meet in a pig head. I've never done a pig, I've never done a head with the bones in it. So I'm not you're going to draw some of the stuff out of the of the bones. And I don't know how much void space there is IE how much bag problems you're going to have around things like the teeth, which means you're going to have to put oil into it to take up any spaces that are in the teeth section. This is making sense or no. Is it making perfect sense? Yeah. The only other thing that you have to think about now is whether you want it to be more of a traditional low temp cook or whether you want to taste more poached Allah what you would get in a head cheese, right? And so if you want it to taste more poached, then you're going to have to put some stock in with it instead of oil. It's a totally a question. If you do it that way, it won't hold together as well as if you do it in oil, which is essentially what I would think of as a dry cooking technique, even though it's in a bag underwater,

right, like the approach Tenshi saying is the opposite of what I'm going for here.

Okay, so then don't liquid in the bag, just oil and then you'll get more of a dry cook thing I would unbag the pig's head when it's when it's hot. And although remember when it's hot, the skins most delicate, right because when you take a pig skin and you cook it, it's extremely delicate because it renders out to gelatin, then when it gets cold then it's it's it's fine again, you can work with it because the gelatin resets. So if you the reason to unbagging hot is to flash off some of the liquid off off the surface of it so that it's going to be able to pick up a smoke better right. But if you're going to have a long time between when you're going to cook it and and when you're going to finish it then you could cool the whole thing down gently unbag it and then I would I would like kind of bring it up to 10 below the excess moisture off the surface if you can in like a in like a low convection you know with the door open so that the moisture leaves the skin section and then you're going to need to do either a roast off or the after you blow the moisture off of it. Put it in your smoker smoke it up it should take a smoke fine after after it's been cooked so long as it's not wet on the surface.

Okay, so in general is like one of my big questions listening to you for years is so if I'm going to do it, if I'm going to do a cut of meat in the circulator and in the smoker, I want to circulate first dry it off and then put it in the smoker.

Hmm I mean, that's just the way I would approach it. But now that you say it, I see no reason why you can't smoke it and then throw it into the bag. I mean, it seems like it would work either way. I mean, the issue. I mean, presumably you have a cold smoker, right? Yep. Yeah. I mean, the only advantage I can see of smoking it afterwards is you have no, there's no safety issues involved, because you've already done the kill step. And if you were going to smoke it hot, then I mean, it depends on how long you're going to smoke. And if you're gonna smoke it only for a little while, pick up a little bit of flavor, you're not going to get like a huge cook through on it, it's not going to be a problem. But you know, on the other hand, if you're looking for the opposite of a poached flavor, you're going to want to evacuate some of that moisture off of the surface of the meat anyway, in which case, I think it might be advantageous to do the drying after it's been a little bit of drying after it's been cooked along with the smoke process. You know what I mean? And then and so you can smoke it, then Crispin Oh, we lost him. Oh, you didn't? Okay, you're gonna smoke it and then crisp it or no?

Yeah, I think that's the plan. Yeah.

I mean, you look, you could do it either way. And I'm also assuming that you're going to do a pig's head at a relatively elevated temperature compared to normal low temperature cooking. Yeah,

yeah. Well, how would you do that?

Well, it depends. I mean, so like, for instance, it depends on how traditional you want it to taste. Do you know what I'm saying. So if you want to taste more like, like a coffee, I would do it at traditional coffee temperature. When I do duck, for instance, I do duck legs at traditional temperatures just in a bag so that I won't require a lot of extra fat, and it will overcook and it won't dry out. So you know, I do duck legs all the way up at you know, at 82 in that range, you know what I mean? Like a traditional range simmering ranges. Whereas if you want it to taste a lot, if you want an entirely different result, then you're going to go into much lower range in the mid 60s, let's say but it's going to be a different result from what people would normally expect from a pig's head. And it's gonna take a long time for the skin to totally render to gelatin at those low low temperatures. You know what I'm saying?

I know exactly. You're saying that's really helpful. Thank you. All right, no

problem. Thank Hey, send us a Twitter or give a call and tell us how it worked out.

I will try to do that. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We have another caller. You know what I before I take the call, you know we used to eat all the time. Splits lamps head, like roasted in the oven. It's good stuff. Yeah, a couple of sounds anyway. Caller you're on the air.

Hey, Daniel from Austin, Texas. I recently bought a rota Vapp a beauty I think our 110 Yep. And I got a dry vacuum to come in via eBay. But I don't have a controller and I want to kind of keep my costs down. And I don't know, I recently got Modernist Cuisine, but they don't really give any guidance as where to get a vacuum controller or what to look for. I know I want something digital, but I really just don't know where to start.

Okay, so the vacuum controller that you're using a vacuum pump you're getting is an Edwards BOC dry vac or just like a Welsh dry vac. Is it piston? What kind of pump is it?

It's a piston. Okay,

so how good are you at electronics?

I'm okay. I mean, I have a BS in chemistry, I took some electronics courses, I kind of mess around with stuff,

alright, because there's, there's some good news and some bad news. Here's, by the way, if people were talking about as rotary evaporators, vacuum distillation, you know, a piece of equipment. It's used in chemistry labs and increasingly in kitchens and the premises is that by doing your distillation at under a vacuum, you can reduce the temperature and also reduce any possibility of oxidation of the product. So it allows you to do very gentle distillation with very clean flavors of things like herbs, okay. Now the the the good news is what is this for a restaurant or for your for home? It's for home. Okay? So the good news is is that you can allow it to be a little bit fidgety, right if you're doing it at home especially at the get go. Bad Bad news is vacuum controller so he we can get this done. That's not a problem. The bad news is actual built vacuum controllers are ridiculously expensive.

That's my experience and looking at money but yeah, they're

crazy. They the piston pumps that you're getting is what like the Welsh like the wobble, cry pump,

where it's taken. It's a I have it in front of me it's a fight for vacuum MVP, dry pump. I don't really know much more about it since it hasn't come in the mail yet, frankly.

Right. Okay, so is it the easiest, cheapest way to get started? Is it so any leak in a vacuum system in a rotary evaporator that happens prior to leaving the condenser unit is completely detrimental to flavor kills your flavor, but a bleed in the vacuum system in between the condenser and the vacuum pump is a fine way to regulate your vacuum pressure at the get go. And for years. Before I had a vacuum controller, I just used a needle valve like a very small you know, eighth inch NPT which is national paper needle valve that I put on to a tee off of my vacuum line and I just had my vacuum pump Going great guns the entire time, and I would bleed a small amount of air into the system to regulate the pressure, right? And so as a first approximation to the first test, right, then that'll get you off the ground running and figuring out distillation and your roadmap and all of that stuff for, you know, under 20 bucks right now, the next level up, you should be constantly searching vacuum controllers on eBay, right? Yeah. The next level above that is you can get yourself a vacuum gauge. And if you get a vacuum gauge, then you can at least tell where your digital vacuum gauge you can least tell where your system is sitting at any one point in time. Okay, the next level above that is you can build your own controller, you know, us, if you go to our instruments, they have a lot of the parts to do this for reading vacuum, and they can be tweaked out in because that was

that was something that I was wondering about, is it just gonna be a gauge plus a feedback loop? Essentially?

Yeah, well, there's a couple of different ways to do this. Right? If you need to, if you're gonna see you have a dry pump, which means it doesn't have any oil, if you have an oil based pump, the control logic is a little more difficult, because you have to worry about switching an oil based pump off and on. Because if you switch an oil based pump off and on without, you know, just keep doing it, you have possibility of back streaming oil into your system. But because you have a dry pump, that's not an issue. So you can put a, you can just put a valve like you know, like a solenoid valve there that's rated for vacuum, and then you know, a vacuum sensor, and just put it on a loop and just have a go. The problem is, is that the really expensive nice vacuum pumps and controllers, they have the the motors are controlled, like pulse by pulse or pulse controlled. And so they can actually slow the motor down towards the end of the vacuum cycle rather than just you know, going on and off with a set number of millibars of hysteresis. Right. So that so that's what the nicer vacuum control gets gets you the really nice vacuum control bases it on the relay that no one has because it's only in the bigger systems is here's the secret is that you want to know what the vacuum level is because it's telling you what the actual boiling point is the the boiling point of your water, the sorry, the setpoint of your water bath. And a roadmap really has only a marginal amount to do with what the temperature of your product is, in the same way that when you put a flame underneath a pot of water, the flame doesn't have a direct impact, the flame temperature doesn't have a direct impact on what the water temperature is, because it's not going to go above 100 Right Celsius. So your waterbath temperature is not an adequate indicator. The only thing that's adequate is the vapor temperature, right and so you could develop a control I would put a vacuum gauge on it. But if you really want to be you know kind of you know ahead of the curve for most people is I would put a thermocouple gauge in your in your condenser and measure the measure when the temperature Nii happens between the condensing and non condensing condensing section and run your vacuum that way.

Oh, so that instead of looking at the vapor line on the condenser, I have something that detects it automatically and turns close the vacuum down to reduce the vapor line is it

Yeah, so when you Yeah, so So I would definitely start with a needle valve to get a handle on how distillation works. And then, but if you if you're used to roto vApps at all, when you put your hand against your back of your hand against the condenser, and you go up and down the condenser, you can feel where it goes from warm to cold, right, and that's where you're in, and you can visually see it as a condensation line. But you could just measure the temperature between the vapor above the condensation line and below it, you'll see a sharp break. And so if you just control the vacuum to put that brake exactly where you want to on the condenser, you can keep it at saturation for all day long. And you don't really care what the vacuum pressure is, so long as it's not wildly higher, wildly low. So I would also have a gauge so that you know where you are.

I know that's genius. Does the thermocouple have to be it can be outside the condenser I would assume. The condenser without breaking it was what I'm worried about.

Yeah, I mean, try it. Try it, because it's very simple to try it that way. So try it external to it and see whether you can get an accurate enough result. And if not, then try to figure out a way to put it on the inside.

Okay, is it worth buying vacuum petroleum, and you think you think I should wrap up with these solutions?

I mean, look, I love having a vacuum controller, but it's also made me lazy so that I haven't built it the way I want it, which is temperature control the way I'm telling you so yeah. Yeah. Well, one last thing. If you don't have plastic coated glass, then I would recommend always wearing safety goggles on that thing because it can be it could be an eye hazard if it implodes or wrapping an electrical tape.

Okay, I had one other question. I'm having some problems with the bass that they sent me. It occurred to me that I could just use my suevey as the water bass if you think there's any problem with it. It's not

a problem. It's just Messier. You know what I mean? Like, it's just like using a regular, regular circulator. I mean, I've done it in a pinch, it's just really messy and the circulator head doesn't really fit nicely with the thing. So the water bath ends up being a convenient way to do it. You know what I'm saying? It because it's built for it. But if you're having problems with the water bath, there's nothing to stop you from starting by using a circulator. I have done it. Okay.

All right. That was very helpful.

I appreciate it. All right, let us know how it works. All right, and let's go to our first commercial break.

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 their honored alumni. This is Dorothy can Hamilton from Chef story, check out our ICC website and international culinary center.com.

ICC a supporter of the show, but no longer have me boom, boom, boom. Okay, so listen, I have not forgotten you, I have not forgotten you. Mark, we're talking about Wondra wonder flower. Okay, so if you go back to the beginning section of the show, so Wondra is two main things it is both pregelatinized meaning has been cooked. And then wonder is cooked in a moist environment because trying to cook out a flower in a non moist environment doesn't work the same way it doesn't do the same stuff. So it's cooked in a moist environment to dilaton eyes are functionalized where you want to call it gelatinous starch. And then it is milled and then agglomerated. And what agglomeration is, is it means that if you look at Wonder, you can see it, it looks porous, it looks like I'm trying to think of what it looks like it looks like it looks like little like mini Pumicestone, tiny rocks, glom rated stuff looks different, right? And what are the benefits of agglomeration? Okay, the well, the benefits of of pregelatinized ng is, is it will go it will go into solution in a cold liquid, right. So because it goes into solution in a cold liquid, it doesn't require a lot of heat and moisture together to become functional, which is why in low moisture, things like pie crust, or like in cakes, it, it can functionalize very quick. In fact, if you look at if you look at a pie crust, under a scanning electron microscope, most of the starch granules haven't actually been cooked out, they're mostly still intact, because there's not enough moisture in that recipe to get them to do their firing. So you can, which is good, because you actually don't want a lot of structure. But sometimes you want to let you know, sometimes I don't know how having used wonder in it. But the theory being that because you're adding a pregelatinized thing, you'll get some extra storage functionality out of it, I guess it's also low protein. So I guess that's helpful. I don't know. In that in a cake, I read about its use in in in cakes. And the idea there is that you don't need to do a lot of mixing to get the starch to perform its functional equivalency. So you don't have to overbeat the dough because the stuffs already pre hydrated, right? Obviously, it's you know, main use that everyone use it for is making gravies without lumps. And the reason it makes gravy without lumps, and also can be added cold, right is the agglomeration and normal particles, fine particles have a couple of problems with them. They're dusty, right, there's a lot of dust involved. And that's one of the early reasons that people wanted to use. The wonder was to have stuff around that wasn't dusty, too. When you agglomerate the particles together. It's very easy for water to infiltrate the particles and break off small small pieces of this flour and then hydrate. And that is not possible if you just add flour and fine particles because those target particles tend to clump as they're trying to go into solution. And as they clump they form a layer of gummy crap around them. And that layer of gummy crap actually prevents the stuff on the inside from getting wet at all. And because it doesn't get wet, it doesn't dissolve. So the agglomeration helps with dissolution right? And the pre gelatinase ship pregelatinized thing means it's already cooked out. So it will thicken stuff when it's cold. That's awesome. But also normally when you use flour, you have to what's called cook it out to get rid of that raw flour taste and there is no raw flour taste and wonder because it's already been cooked. All right. So that's what's going on with the wonder the quail She's How are you going to do that at home, you can't really make wonder at home you can't. But there are a couple things you can do that you can buy outside of the US of A one thing is national starch national starch makes a product called Ultra spurs, three and it's a pregelatinized waxy maize starch, right, that is agglomerated. So it seems like there's a big thing like a lot of I've talked about on the show a couple of times some chefs used to recommend Ultra Tex, but I always recommend using ultra spurs because Ultra Tex is a pregelatinized starch that is not agglomerated, and so it can form lumps and ultra spurs is a pregelatinized starch that is agglomerated and so will not clump up on you. The only reason to use to not use spurs is spurs is a little more expensive than Tex. But for most home cooks, that's not really an issue. And the other good news is ultra spurs is available on modernist pantry.com. And they will ship all over the world. And I don't mind saying that, even though they're no longer a supporter of

Russia. I like them. Yeah. All right.

Good people. So yeah, so they will ship that all over the world. Now, if you don't want to do that, for some reason, right, you're gonna have a tough time making your own pre gelatinous, agglomerated starch, but instead of agglomerating if you don't mind cooking the product out, and you're going to use it in something like gravy. You can separate flour particles using some old school methods. And the one that I'm going to tell you now is burn money burn money is where you take butter, which will not, you know, does not solubilized the flour, right, and you mold butter and flour together into little balls. And then you can stir those balls into your gravy. And because you separated the flour particles with fat, they no longer stick together and as the butter melts, it releases small flour particles into your solution and it tends not to lump up as much. So there you go either by Ultras bursary, which is a very good substitute for things like thickening and can be used in baking applications. Or go to something like a Burma knee. If you just want a quick way to thicken the gravy and you can't get you're wondering what do you think's does Good job. Good. Ah, thank you. Ben from San Francisco writes in just about his Thanksgiving thingamajig Hello, heritage radio. Yeah, what I say Thanksgiving. Oh, cheese. My brain fried. Okay. Hey, Joe, and the rest like that. Oh, yeah. It's so much love today. I know it right. It's been from San Francisco again. Day. My apologies for not reporting back on the Valentine's dinner I made for Anjali your advice was excellent. Thank you until he has forgiven me for listening to your podcast during our vacation. Well, I'm glad I'm glad. This is what Ben said he did on the Valentine's Day not on Thanksgiving correction. I ended up cooking a rack of lamb and 55 C for two hours, bringing it down to 50 C before deep frying. I salted after unbagging from Soviet as you and others have suggested and I got better results than normal deep fried lamb fat is a bit funky, but with the side of her attitude and her Rissa yogurt sauce. Everything came out really well. I also did biscuits, biscuits stars. I also did biscuits with apricot preserves, biscuits and thinly sliced smoked pork jowl. Sorry about the biscuits and stuff. Finally I had to do finally I tried to do a jackfruit custard subida at three C but it didn't set up in the fridge, turn it into a jackfruit jackfruit Clem on Krim on glaze and I saved then ported over lemon vanilla cake and no one was the Wiser just a quick note jackfruit is awesome tastes like Juicy Fruit gum and looks like a face hugger pod from aliens. Yeah, do and there's two there's a several main kinds of Jack remember styles and we cut the jackfruit off the trees in Florida. And no one told us that like you're supposed to like cut it in and let it sit on the ground for a while. And I got the latex all over my shirt and I ruined the shirt and I ruined my knife and I was screaming cursing because I couldn't get the latex from the jackfruit off of my knife. It was a huge nightmare. We have a guess what's his name Campbell Richard Campbell and Norris leads Missouri name. We have their book on jackfruit back in my in my library on jackfruit jackfruit. If you've never had it is delicious. I don't like the the canned versions, whatever. Okay, but really good first introduction to jackfruit few people go to an Asian market and get the jackfruit chips, not the crappy ones, but the nice ones that are all puffy and delicious. And they do have a juicy fruit. No, they're awesome. Anyway, so Ben's question is my question. I'm planning to barbecue pork shoulder and brisket. I understand that to avoid the stall caused by evaporative cooling. I need to wrap the meat with foil when it stops rising intent at roughly 155 Fahrenheit. barbecue joints don't seem to ever wrap their meat, though. What if anything, am I losing when I wrap the meat or all these famous Southern barbecue joints? Just doing it wrong? Thanks again. Ben. Okay, well, let me put it that the the proof of the pudding of the Southern barbecue joints is as they say in the eating and having eaten and kind of in Texas style barbecue with actually Chris Young from Modernist Cuisine. Well, in fact discussing the stall that you're referring to doing to evaporative cooling, right? We learned one thing and we learned that That meat is delicious is delicious. You can't argue with delicious you don't I'm saying like so the barbecue joints are not doing it wrong. Similarly in North Carolina, you know, the meats that they're making there are delicious. And so it's not that they're doing it wrong. In Modernist Cuisine, they're advocates of stopping the stall by wrapping because they're advocates of doing Suvi cooking in general, however, I do not find that Suvi cooking is better or worse, it is different if you like. So the meats done in a traditional way are going to be drier in general, and are going to have a different outside surface texture than you would if you did it Suvi it will also have a different internal texture because they're going to go to a much higher temperature than they normally would see the and the meat tends to actually have a different structure. So to me, it's not a matter of better it's not a matter of worse. It's just a matter of different and what you prefer. Yeah, yes, yes. Caller you're on the air.