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 up culinary call sheet on Instagram.

Today's program has been brought to you by fairway market like no other market and New York City institution that sells the best local national and international artisan foods for prices that can't be beat. For more information, visit fairway market.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. Hello, and welcome to cookies you save on your host. Roberta's pizzeria on a network in Bushwick, Brooklyn, how you doing? Good. Yeah. I'm doing right. Yeah. You know, we made the we made the Kickstarter goal. Plus, we made an additional $20,000 plus over the Kickstarter goal, which means that I have to do the Lemonade Diet and then at some point in the future, do the do the Paleo diet. So what you're hearing is me uncorking my core container of crappy lemonade. By the way, I heard I missed some calls, because I was a little late, kind of as usual. So quite quickly to 74 and seven to one to 874 and seven to one to eight. Have Eddie here filming this proceedings for posterity. So maybe your call will be filmed, although you will not because you will be at home. Hey dude, Eddie Dumas we got Jack and Joe in the engineering with How're you guys doing?

Good and you were pretty energetic for being on that lemonade cleanse.

Let me JETRO let me let me tell you something about the lemonade. So for those of you that, thankfully don't know what this is, the Master Cleanse was devised by a nut a nutjob named Stanley Stanley, I think borrows sometime in the 40s and was re publicized in the 70s of the last century. And yet I went, I went ahead and read, here's the premise. You don't want to eat anything you want to cleanse your body. His first premise is that all ills are due to this thing he calls that toxemia which is a buildup of toxins in the body, right? So in fact, he doesn't believe that there are such things as dangerous germs or viruses or microbes take that aids, you know, take that cholera anything, right? The guy doesn't believe in this. He believes that all kinds of bad things that happened to us are caused by a buildup of toxins that we take in into our bodies, which is on its face absurd. And then he furthermore says that really what you need to do is clean out these things. And so he has devised a cleanse that he thinks will clean you out and get rid of all the toxic stuff and fix. Literally whatever ails you. He believes that this will fix whatever ails you. So it's, it's for every 60 ounces of water or purified or spring water, you need three quarters of a cup of organic, fresh, fresh, of course I mean I believe in this part lemon or actually lime juice does you know you could use lime juice now you can manage is possible because as he says lemons have more vitamins in them than any other fruit known demand which is a lie. And then maple syrup or organic preferably great beet three quarters of the cup because it also apparently has all sorts of terrific stuff in it. And lastly but not leastly some groundup cayenne pepper because I think he believes that you know if it's not gonna it's gonna come hot coming out clean you out you know what I'm saying? He doesn't believe in any protein in your diet because he literally believes that like leguminous trees we have nitrogen fixing bacteria in us that allow us to obtain nitrogen out of the air and then synthesize all the necessary proteins out of it. So he believes that you can go on this lemonade cleanse for 40 days if you want to. By the way stars I tried my first saltwater purge this morning was it a horrible but tastes horrible it's horrible anyway and these nutjobs also believe you should not use iodized salt because they believe that somehow it stops it from cleansing you out. Believe me if you pound a liter of you know seawater style salty water. You'll get cleaned out mighty mighty quick. But one lesson yesterday I did have a nightmarish headache because I am a coffee drinker. So caffeine if you withdraw from caffeine you get a nightmarish headache and so I guess this is part of the quote unquote toxins leaving my body but the problem is is that the whole the whole concept behind this diet is that somehow that you have an adversarial relationship to the food you eat and to the life you live and everything about who you are as a person when it is true that if I don't have coffee for a day or two afterwards I will have headache until my body clears itself of its desire to have caffeine but this is not a monkey I want to get off my back I can't wait to get back on caffeine not because I need it. Because I like coffee and because decaffeinated coffee sorry everyone out there This doesn't taste the same. It's not the same. I've side by side and coffees when people are like hey, man, you can't tell the difference. I can I can believe me because I'm not drinking like milk out like milk. Stravaganza is right. I drink like short, straight espresso shots. That's what I drink and I drink it because I like it so I will go back to drinking it as soon as humanly possible. Also have it installed so you remember it you know what it's like when you eat too much candy. It's like so much candy and how you have like the sugar high that's what it feels like to be on this Master Cleanse because it literally is just it's just you're on a sugar high the entire time. It's because you're eating nothing but sugar in the form of maple syrup. It's friggin nuts. Anyway, let me let me get what are you reading by the way says nothing did nothing on this end. I'm actually just staring at the page. What's the book? Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll by Judy Judy McGuire

Jr. McGuire. She's a co host of the mike and Judy show.

Oh yeah,

that was great. We love her. Yeah, good. It's cool book.

Yeah, well, this is just I just mentioned that because it's on videotape here and I want you guys to know what nostos is doing I've heard all this I like I like what you know what you actually do? I know you didn't because I hadn't done the assault stuff yet. Not at hand report at the back not you haven't heard any of it. I hadn't I hadn't read the Burroughs No, I hadn't read it yet. No, no, you just I just want people to know out there now recorded on videotape. Exactly what goes on in a cooking program. Okay, Adam, call them a follow up from last week. Just want to thank you to take time for answering my question on last week's podcast can be pleased and this is the person who who was asking whether they could save this stuff at the back of their fridge big because the wife is pregnant now. Remember, just wanted to thank you for taking the time to answer my question on last week's podcast, you'll be pleased to know I threw out the stock and stewed fruit. Although I'm still surprised there isn't a more scientific way to determine the food safety refrigerated items. Thanks again for the program. I've learned a lot cheers Adam. Ryan Berkeley writes in about hams dear Dave, and Stasha Jack and I'm going to add Joe and Eddie. I impulsively ordered a whole country ham several months ago from fish field farms in Kentucky's actually scratch that actually order to country hams due to an accidental click. You shouldn't be able to do that you shouldn't be like, is it because I think that happens to us at Booker index because our internet is so slow that you hit click a couple of times you ever double bought something? No, no, it shouldn't be allowed anyway, but don't worry. Anyway. The problem is I don't have a meat slicer. And it seems a little silly to order one just to eat these hams and cutting them with a chef's knife has been a nightmare even after I do a bit of amateur sharpening. What's the best way to cut this ham other than buying a meat slicer? Should I get a longer knife? How about some kind of holder apparatus for the ham or maybe just take my seven inch chef's knife in for a proper sharpening. Thanks for any guidance Ryan from Berkeley, California to well first of all, congratulations on the purchase of a good hand fish feel makes an excellent hand. I've visited their plant well Once they are they do like a semi ambient cure where it's ambient you know another is not temperature controlled during the first portion of it they they used to anyway I don't know if they still do this but they really only cure one time a year and then they run out a good product all around a good also, memory serves a nonsmoker not a smoked ham. And I'm trying to remember I think believe they also do bag here so the bad hams are wrapped in bags as they're being cared for portion of time anyways. Good hands. Seven and chef's knife is not the tool to attack this with first of all go out and get a longer chef's knife for this sort of deal anyway, but what you're going to want to do is get a thin blade slicer, I do not I do not recommend any meat slicer on I've ever used other than a professional meat slicer. The little ones that they sell. They're they're crap. I mean, a pardon me if anyone out there sells them for a living but they're crap they don't work in at least the ones that I've used, they just don't work. Well, you're gonna want to like a professional meat slicer is super super baller. It's awesome, right? But they're very big. You have to clean them and it's not so easy. And sometimes newer ones are easier to clean the Hobart model 3000 slicers easy to clean, but it's very expensive. So here's what you should probably do traditional old schools now in America, we've come to eat our hands like this. Cut cross crossways. Right, the way you normally would get prosciutto if you go to a deli cut crossways. And this produces a cross section of what's going on in the muscle and it's very tender, it comes apart. But European advocates have European ham folk have long advocated for slicing the long way. So you get a little piece of a bunch of different muscles and you can get these long strips, they are a lot to hear. But I had an expert make me some the other day and it was quite good. But gotta remember European hams are not cured in the same way that ours are in the way that they're hung. So they don't have the same necessarily slicing characteristics because they're not the same shape. frenchville and other hands are hung with the point with it with the hawk and down so that the cushion that big part of the meat kind of gets full and fills up because it's more normal for it to be served American style. That way, what I recommend you do is D bone the ham or cut the cushion off the top of the hammer and then use the separate P use the pieces on the bottom for different and then once you have it as a more manageable piece, trim away a portion of the skin make sure it's very cold when you slice it and then you can slice off thin slit thin slices with a like a long flat slicing knife which are they're flat, they're easy, like one that's meant for slicing fish or that but like any long slicing knife, but you're going to want significantly longer because you want long draws on it, you don't want to do a lot of sizing on it. So you're going to want to get one that's long, like 14 inches or more. I haven't measured one recently but long. And if you're gonna attack something with a chef's knife, you're gonna want mean with a hammer doesn't really matter. You don't need a long chef's knife because there's no place you can really get into it with it. But go ahead and and next. Next, you know super gift giving holiday like invest in a sweet you know, they used to say in all the Mac cooking magazines, you know, you know an eight an eight inch knife is good enough or whatever. Let me tell you something once you get yourself a good 10 inch chef's knife good quality one right that feels good in your hand and I don't care whether you prefer Japanese Western Japanese or, or western style knives. Like my one of my favorite Believe it or not as a as an old French style. So but yeah, like really old carbon. But once you start like using attention, it's such a joy, right? Oh, for sure. Yeah, tennis knife got a lot of attention if go for tennis. Anyway. Hope that helps. And by the way, just keep eating the ham a little bit every day. That's what I do like ham, like little scraps and stuff like ham and eggs like no one's ever made a better combination and country ham and eggs. I don't think I don't think so. Anyway, Peter writes in another follow up. I'm the fellow from Minnesota that dropped the call dropped a call on you two weeks ago. Sorry about that. The answer to your follow up question. I remember he was asking about different ways to treat deer meat because he got a lot of deer meat in Minnesota, which is a problem I wish I had here in New York. To answer your follow up question. We get a range of deer throughout the season so you'll get anything from fawns to old DOS, when you put them in the bag. The gamey flavor has been a bit intense and as such I've been using pretty strong sauces to counter them think Juniper bears with current preserves? Do you have any other strong flavor combinations that could hold up to the gamey power of an old dough? Well, it's interesting question. I mean, usually, when you're talking about gamey flavor, people recommend like the pre soak in some sort of an acidic merit if I hadn't been able to elucidate the chemistry of it of why I mean I don't know I don't know that it's a similar chemistry to what happens with for instance fish when you add vinegar on them and it kind of deactivating some of the nasty smells that are there. I don't really know but it's unit versus I wasn't I read, I went back and reread after the hunt which of John's forces book on Louisiana game cookery and didn't find any sort of stuff mean, a lot of what I read about the taste of gaming is in Deer has to do with well, there's natural gaming is because deer has a flavor, thank God, it's delicious. But there's also kind of an off flavor that can happen based on slaughtering and kill steps. And I read a number of scholarly papers that were not very helpful because all they basically said was stuff that you already knew, which is you need to chill the sucker down very quickly and that a lot of bad deer flavor comes from the fact that the deer hangs out in the back of the pickup truck too long before it can get cooled down. But other interesting thing they said was that, in general, people prefer check this out. So between those and bucks, right, people prefer dose and dose are slightly more tender, at least in the studies that I've read. There's one contradictory study out of Poland, but most of the ones said that and even furthermore, they have a different kind of flip flavor breakdown. But I can't I don't know whether it's due to diet. This study didn't go that far. But interestingly, although younger doses were preferred to older dose, older dose are preferred to younger bucks, even though the younger bucks are probably more tender. People just prefer the domain. Strange, right? What have caller Oh, we'll get back to some more dear stuff in a minute. Caller, you're on the air.

Hello. Hi, this is Steven denzinger. from Indianapolis. Are you guys

doing all right? How's Indianapolis?

It's, it's pretty good weather. It's actually nice out here for once. So, question for you. I am cooking for somebody who is neutropenic at this point. And I was curious, do you know what is neutropenic diet something that's

now let me give us a neutropenic. Okay, so

when you take chemotherapy, if you have like leukemia, or something that wipes out your game essentially wipes out your bone marrow, so you cannot produce white blood cells. So you have no no real immune system. So food safety at this point is extremely, extremely important. And so I was curious on your opinion about, first of all, some safe practices, like maybe boiling poor containers before making soups or whatever that I could do in this situation. Also, I was curious about yogurt. And because it has a lot of bacterial cultures, but they're good bacteria. And everything I read says don't give neutropenic yogurt, but because of competitive growth, I would assume that there was no pathogens in there, but I'm not sure.

It's an interesting question. Okay. So let me just say at the get go, not having studied the problem, I like I'm going to hesitate to make any actual pronouncement or so the only dietary restriction is absolutely nothing that would compromise the immune system. There's no dietary restrictions from a food standpoint.

Right. Okay. Yeah.

Right. So it's kind of just like a very hyper version of what you would do with a pregnant person. Right.

Exactly. I was listening to a few of your podcasts, and everything that I heard about pregnant people I was applying to this situation, kind of, but I'm still

right. I mean, if you want to serve somebody like super safe, just as a as a note, I'll say the same thing I say when I talk about cooking for pregnant people. As immersion circulator is a fantastic investment for I don't know if you already have one, but an immersion circulator is a fantastic investment for for this for this sort of diet, because now I don't go pushing the dunkel pushing the edges. Do you know what I'm saying? But

don't try the 54 degree stuff maybe are right.

Right, exactly. So don't push, don't push the envelope. But, you know, all of a sudden, for this person, you can cook, you know, a bunch of stuff that is, you know, amazing that they can't otherwise have because they have to cook the crap out of it. So I mean, I would definitely focus on things like 62 degree, eggs, applications like that, you know, you're going to be more careful than they otherwise other people would be about making sure there's no cross contamination and stuff like this. But you have the ability then to serve this person, foods that they couldn't ordinarily get when they were when they were out. Now, with yogurt, I mean, my initial inclination is that you're right, there's competitive bacteria in yogurt, that are going to prevent most of most pathogenic, you know, pathogens from growing in it. But if if the if the, here's the issue, a lot of doctors out there will just say, No, you can't have it. Why? Because they haven't done the research. And so rather than tell you no, you can't have it because I haven't done the research. I would say that if someone has said you can't use it, I would go and see why they said you can't use it. Right. I mean, I'm all for making an informed decision on this, but I don't know all the factors. So it could be that some doctor out there who has a lot of knowledge and maybe even some clinical experience has seeing problems with yogurt and patients who are on chemotherapy, right. And so I don't know that, but I've seen it go the other way to where doctors have made knee jerk responses to questions about foods just because they don't have a lot of food information. They're not cooks. They're not they don't study this thing. They don't really know much about food. And so I, I can't make a statement about it one way or the other, except for figure out what the source is, and then make a judgement. I mean, I have no problem overruling a doctor who just speaks from a knee jerk perspective, you know, but on the other hand, I've had it go the other way, where people are like, No, I've, you know, I've seen actually clinical problems because of X, Y, or Z. Now, when it comes to boiling core containers, quart containers can very easily stand up to boiling liquids. So that's not going to be fact that, you know, it can't actually interestingly is the lids, the lids are made from a different material than the core container themselves, the core containers of polypropylene can easily stand up to boiling water. In fact, I don't believe they'll melt down even in a pressure cooker. Although I think you're getting close, I have to look it up. Whereas the lids are made of polyethylene, which melts at a much lower temperature, which is why when you nuke stuff, in core containers, the lids expand and blow up and the containers are fine. So you're going to have a difficult time sterilizing lids of core containers with boiling water, I would just use a sanitizing solution. If you're worried about it. If your soups are extremely hot, they should self self obliterate whatever. Yeah, right. But it's a very good idea to keep a sanitizing solution bucket around the kitchen and just be ultra aware during this time of cross contamination and making sure that things aren't tripping on each other, making sure things are sanitized properly. I mean, if you can, you know if you can, I don't know what you make, but you know, presumably, you know it because you're worried about it, you're gonna do a good job, assuming that you're being vigilant. You know what I mean?

Right, right. Definitely. And do you have time for like, one or two more questions? Shoot me. Okay, first one, the I'm actually building the a, I'm a about to be a med students, we're not gonna have a lot of money. So I'm actually building the immersion circulator from the Seattle Food geek website. And I was wondering if you thought that that one was a good model, besides the fact that if you turn it on that side of the water, it overheats, and blows up?

But yeah, well, you can fix that, you know, by just strapping an extra over temp an over temp thermometer to the heating element. Which one? Is that? Is that the one that's built in the acrylic case?

Yes, it is. Yeah, we're trying to figure out a different thing for the acrylic because I don't have a lot of time to build it. And people that are building it, for me are not as familiar with how to heat the acrylic to bend it. And I'm, I've never done it either. So you know, just just in case, we're trying to figure out a better box for it than the acrylic. But

what's the total? What's the total cost of it when you're done?

70 bucks, 80 bucks.

That's pretty cheap. It's pretty cheap. I mean, I've never used I've never used it, the only circuit I've used only commercial circulators. And ones I've built myself, I'll say that the ones I've built myself. You know, like the first one I built was with, you know, coffee, you know, immersion coffee heaters, and they leak electricity. And so I got shocked whenever my hand went into the bath, but you know, the temperature equipment temperature monitoring equipment now being what it is, I mean, you're going to be able to get the accuracy with the home. So you're not from a safety standpoint, you're not going to have a problem. It's just a question of whether or not you liked the usability of it compared to a right you know, compared to a standard one, but look, if it's the only thing you can afford, again, it's 80 bucks, do it. You know, do it and and, you know, I've seen a couple where people have found like, kind of prefab boxes that were used for other things that kind of work. You know what I mean?

Just drill a few extra holes in them or something like that. Yeah, when

you're drilling acrylic you got to be careful drilling acrylic when you're drilling acrylic, it has a tendency to shatter because acrylic is very shatter prone as opposed to other things like lexan also, you can't wash acrylic with alcohol because it crazes and goes nuts. When you're drilling with acrylic, you're going to want to get a special drill bit that has a different point it's much more pointy and you're going to want to make sure that you have the acrylic backed up with a piece of wood or something else so that there's it doesn't flex a lot as the drill bit goes through and it's going to prevent shattering because it's really irritating once you shatter a piece of acrylic you're going to keep propagating that crack crack especially if it's at a stress point.

But it would have helped to keep the acrylic before drilling

and now in fact no in fact the problem is it heats and gums and then your drill bit catches and then it cracks. I would just mean if you can, I would put it even in water on top of a block of wood and go through it but acrylic I'm just I'm telling you is acrylic like acrylic drills beautiful When you do it right, but then, you know, when you stop paying attention is when you drill a hole through it and shoot a crack across it, you know what I mean?

Okay, and I have one more quick question. And so I'm starting to get something done. But I was curious about if you so I have another friend that's going gluten free. And I'm giving them suggestions for thickeners. xanthan gum guns and Agra, Agra and things like that to replace, you know, starches that are that are, you know, that have gluten in them like wheat flours and things. But I was curious if what was the source you were talking about one time that there was a source from national starch or something like that was that was just like 100% amylopectin or something like that. That was?

I mean, I don't remember exactly what what we were talking about. But Nash the national starts Corporation, other than having an awesome name, national starch was they have a lot of different starches that are specifically geared towards certain things. And they are very aware of gluten because it's a huge business. So they have a you know, they have a lot of knowledge about it. And a lot of their databases are online. So depending on your particular application, I'm sure you know, they, if they don't have a starch that will fit what you need. And probably nobody has the starch that will fit what you need. I mean, they they are made. They come by their name, honestly, national starch.

Awesome. Thank you very much, David. Appreciate it.

All right. Have a good one. You have another caller. Caller you're on the air.

Hi, Jarvis. I'm calling from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Hey, what's up? Andy? You know, I've never been in Milwaukee. I've been near Milwaukee. We've never been to it.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I mean, I drink the beer. I own the tools. But other than that.

I had a question regarding sausages. Our owner has a farm that has megaliths of pigs. And we're trying I'm trying to make Italian sausages out of it. But what's happening is the sausages themselves are coming out really batty because of the fat content. I mean, I'm still I'm using Michael Ruhlman, Xhosa coutries. But for the Italian sausage recipe, right? But what happens is after a case it I hang them to dry, I do prick them. And then when I need to render it in the hotel pan first to get the to get the initial fat off. But when I put it on the grill, there's still more fat to come off. And then also the casing splits as well. So I was wondering the question about the the actual sausage and then the casing as well as how to make a hard, nice, sturdy, crispy casing on the grill. Hmm.

Well, you know, I actually the casing problems when I wish I'd studied more. I was just talking about this witness Dasha, how the Germans make the greatest sausage casings, right. So that's and that's snap of a good sausage casing when you bite into it, and the meat just explodes. Awesome. But okay, so we'll get back to that in a sec. So the first of all, what's the diet? Like? Are they being fed kind of a standard grain diet? Are they being what are these pigs being fed? What What's the characteristic of the fat? Is it a hard fat or is it really soft fat before you process it?

Well, it is kind of it gets it kind of melts in my hand if you don't work best in a room temperature kitchen. Right? So it is kind of, it's kind of softer. It's not that soft, though. That makes sense.

Yeah, it does. So I mean, for for sausage production. A lot of times, you're gonna want a little bit of a firmer fat just because well, it depends also everything like everything depends when you're having like when people are making salumi with like, dried stuff, they want that the nice stuff that really stands up to the you know, so they they prize so that's why things like the Bayeux dyfed Like with this really soft, fat varicose they make awesome hands but harder to make straight drives. That's awesome. I love their dry sauce please don't call me and say that they don't make good grades. I'm not saying that but like the texture that the fats a little bit more difficult. I think you know one thing is are you really chilling the heck out of the meat before you grind it?

I guess I guess not. I mean, I put it in the cooler until I need it. It is cold it's definitely not not warm or you know my hand is definitely not as warm as I mean it's it's cold yeah, but it's not like you know it's not like detailed where the surface is starting to seal up a little bit but I mean, I guess I could leave it in there a little bit longer. I could put it in the freezer for for for a second just to kind of give it a deep shield but not freeze it.

Yeah, yeah, you know, so what I when I'm making sausage, especially if I use a softer fat or like if I'm using a non pig fat like duck fat or something like that. You need you need to get it really be really cold otherwise. And you know, as I believe it might even say in the charcuterie book, you know, it's hard to tell when you're making a sausage, what's happened to the fat during the grinding process, you can only really tell Once it clicks, and you start bleeding out a lot of the fat that otherwise stay in. So what I would do is, I would, I usually pre slice the meat into the strips that I'm going to feed into the grinder, then I lay them out on sheet trays, and then I throw the sheet trays in the freezer, and I wait until they get basically pliable, but hard, right, almost par frozen. And then, and then I feed them in. And if it takes me too long, I'll even have a couple of ice chips that you know, you don't want to add water. But I'm saying look up, just keep that sucker cold. Also, if you're using one of the big meat grinders, I would I would throw all the parts in ice water before you grind like polio meat grinder apart, throw it nice water, get that whole sucker cold before you grind. So then, you know, flick all the extra water off, put it together, take your par frozen meat grinder and my guess is that's going to take care of 90% of your problems. That's my guess. Okay. Now on the casings breaking apart, are they breaking when there? Are they breaking on the drying step or when you grill them? When we want to grill them? Yeah, I mean, if a sausage isn't like full, like, typically, I will pre cook a sausage before I before I hit it on a grill just because you're gonna get much less splitting. I mean, the best way you could do it in a combi. You could do it in. You could do

it. I was using the sorry. I was using the circulator. Yeah. Perfect. 60 degrees for an hour.

That's great. So he's you did it like that pulled it out? And they were still breaking apart on you on the on the grill?

Uh huh. Correct. Hmm.

I don't know. Maybe it's just maybe with the I don't know, I have to think about that. Usually. Usually, that's a recipe for keeping it together. Like too much air in there. Maybe when the stuffing process he said he said he prick them though and got the air with either air? Or maybe the fat bubbling out maybe moisture content, but you said you dried off this stuff? I don't. I don't see why. I don't see why unless they're mechanically damaged. If they're like, obviously, everybody knows, if you try to cook the sausage raw on the grill, you're gonna break the skin. Everybody knows this. But if you part pre cooked like that, and they're not broken when they come out of the circulator. Right? No. Maybe try a little less drying time before you grill them off? I don't know. Okay. I don't know, I have to think about maybe maybe someone else who has some experience in this can troubleshoot that, but I think I've solved your fat bleeding problem, I think that will help a lot, everyone, everyone tends to underestimate how cold they want their meat to be. And the answer is very, very cold.

But even when I paddle, you know the the recipe calls for you to paddle the vinegar into the into the grind after you grind it. That's going to bring the temperature down a bit. But I should also put the bowl and the paddle into the freezer as well.

Yeah, everything should be everything should be like just cold. And in fact the most like so like there's two so when you're grunt when you're grinding sausage is like the first time when like everything can go to hell in a handbasket in this situation, right. And also, I find that like pre cutting the meat into strips like that and sending them out, like gives me another opportunity to make sure I'm not putting crap. I don't want my sausage, but like pieces of Grizzle or whatever. Because I don't like to put that in, even though I know you can whatever I don't like to do it. And then the second time you can mess stuff up is either on the primary bind when you're mixing it together if you really want to bind the sausage a lot, or if you're doing if you're doing an emulsification step for an emulsified sausage, and both of those heats the enemy. But I guarantee that's what's what's happening. But I'm pretty sure that what's happening to you is happening at the grinding stage. Okay. All right. Good luck. Let us know what happens. All right. Hey, Dave. Yes, so

we've got another caller. But really quick, I want to shout out somebody who became a member listener of cooking issues, Irene Lee. And she had a really nice message I thought I'd pass along she said, I thought you guys might be entertained to hear that we usually listen to cooking issues while we're on our way to and from restaurant depot, which I assume you're familiar with. The place is a real bummer. No one knows how to park. No one can phase all their barcodes the same way. And a lot of the food is scary, like really freaky and weird. But it's part of our reality because it's our best option for dry goods, paper and cleaning supplies.

She's from Boston is that Irene from Boston? We have a question in from letter.

I believe so. Yeah, it is. She is from Boston. Yeah. Nice. All right. So thanks to Irene for becoming a member and then real quick, like listeners of putting issues who can't make our big fundraiser August 11, which is going to be awesome. And we'll all be there. You can get $10 raffle tickets which is for a dream trip to Seattle all expenses paid flight and hotel three meals of your choice at Tom Douglas restaurants. So that's from Chef Tom Douglas out there. In Seattle, so it's Hrn Hawaiian bbq.eventbrite.com For raffle tickets. Nice. Yeah. And we have a caller.

Hey, caller you're on the air. Hey, Dave. How you doing?

My question is the guy who's having the problem with the sausage, do you think there's any issues? overstuffing just put too much pressure on the casing.

And it could be and I hadn't thought of that. It's Yeah, there's definitely a possibility. I mean, you're from Chicago, not from Butcher Packer or Yeah.

I buy from Butcher Packer but not from them. Yeah.

Because maybe think of someone else. The same guy who was asking you about deer before is stocking out his his butcher supply stuff because he's gonna they're gonna be butchering more deer this year. And I was thinking he's like, Do you have any recommendations for other stuff? I need sausage stuffers and stuff, but I've only ever really used the I've only ever used like the five and I guess the 10 pound guys that were crank guys. So I don't really know anything about bigger ones than that. Do you have any experience with that?

Not that big a bigger one. But those crank stuffers you know, even if they're

they seem to work great.

You know, I've had I've had a lot of success.

Yeah, me too. I've used the expensive ones. And I've used the cheap ones from like grizzly and the cheap ones from grizzly seem to work. Yeah, they worked fine. You know, what I don't like are the ones that look like the ones that look like weird horns.

But never use those. No,

I mean, me neither. But I just don't like them. I saw I've seen them. And so I guess I'm also well, you know, while we're talking I'm answering part of Peters question. But yeah, I don't like those suckers. But so and another thing I think that most people, when you're going to set up a big butchery thing, get a bandsaw I didn't see that on the list of stuff, get a bandsaw everyone loves a bandsaw. Right. Extremely dangerous in the kitchen because people don't think about how dangerous they are. And it will cut your finger off as fast as it will cut off, you know, a rib. But if you are accustomed to wood shops, and you know how you know danger works, then I think bandsaw is a good, good thing to get for your butcher setup. I mean, you know how dangerous Yeah, yeah, I mean, like, swear to God, if you're gonna slice up a bunch of hams like, especially country hams bandsaw. Anyway, so what was your what do you have a question? Are you just talking sausage with me? Well, it's like, you're cutting out a little bit homesick. Start again.

Yeah. I wrote in. I'm the guy who goes to Alabama sometimes to go fishing. I did that. Jimmy on the blue fish. Oh, beautiful. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. So I didn't get a blue fish is here. It's kind of a crappy fishing gear. But I did get a like a 35 pound big drum red fish, which was great. And it's, it's a little tough. You know, the bigger they get, obviously, the tougher they get. And so I was thinking about doing it low temp for tender isation doing kind of a test with four chunks. Over a five hour period you tested at 123 and four hours. Does that seem like good? Yeah. Have you ever had an experience with big tub? Fish? tenderizing them?

Yeah, well, I'm cooking well, okay. So I mean, the problem with fish and low temp cooking is that usually, for most fish, you cook them for a long time, and but they don't get better. They just get kind of mushy. So they don't care. Yeah, they don't get tender. In other words, like the hardness is still there, but it's just also mushy. There are a couple of fish that can stand long cooking times, like stripers. I know stripers can take long cooking times in circulators. And, and they're one of the few fish I think tastes okay, at higher temperatures like 57 Celsius, which is like 135. So like, you know, like, that's the kind of fish that usually I'll cook a long time. It's also luckily the fish that I usually get in larger sizes like 3640 inch stripers and I cook them hold on, you need to cook them a long time. Because they're tough, you know, you need a quick, long time because they're large. Yeah, right. Because they're large. They also tend to get tough when they're big, but it's good because you're not overcooking them. So if you're cutting something into filets, I don't think there's any reason to cook it for a long time when you cook it through it and you should be done now prove me wrong. Like please you know cook cook it but I find that most fish when cooked for a long time tends to degrade rather rapidly like I don't really like salmon it's cooked more than like 20 minutes or so. You know even in a circuit if I'm doing like a higher thing like if I'm doing like 5050 in change for like a cold poached thing you know what I mean? We're I'm gonna call it back down so I'm gonna cook it through. I still don't you know like it cooked too long. No, unless you go all the way the other side to cannabis and

thinking maybe, you know, maybe it's more along the lines of the stripe. I'm thinking it's definitely more along the lines of the strike for that it would be the salmon. So Right. Yeah, I'll give it a shot and let you know.

I'll tell you the striper can take two striper can take two and a half hours while you're waiting for the Senator to cook through cook like The larger ones that I cook take two and a half, three hours to cook through at 57. And they don't they don't turn to crap. They're fine. So if you need to cook that one, yeah, yeah. So and we'll also fry the outside but like if I you know if you know, they can take it it will it will work. Alright, cool.