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

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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.

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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.

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Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave, your host of cooking issues coming to you live from Inverness pizzeria every Tuesday on the heritage radio network from Tuesday from Tuesday. Well, it's Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. We were joined in the studio by Natasha hammer Lopez but she had to take an urgent business telephone calls. She's out. I don't know where she is right now. But we do have in the studio with us today. Piper Piper Piper Christiansen, right? Yep. Yeah. And we are joined in the studio, but maybe it's maybe stars left because Joe is in the engineering booth today and not Jack and there's this you know, new beef. That stuff started last week with between, you know, I heard about this beef. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I didn't realize

but you know, it's okay. You know, we'll have like a east west coast rap battle thing go on or something like that something?

Yeah. Something like that. But yeah, you know, so anyways, don't have Jack, we do have a newcomer in the engineering booth. Evan, how you doing, Evan? Great. How are you doing? All right. It's like so it's first time to cook a new show. Right. All right, calling your questions to 718-497-2128 that said 184972128. With any of your cooking related questions, we'll be here to answer your questions for the next 45 minutes or so. Okay. This is from Tony O'Hara from the mixing bar in Brazil. You know, dealt with him over the years I've never been to his bar because I've never been to Brazil. I want to go to Brazil. You've been no we should do that. Yeah, I mean like to have like the great like some of the greatest fruit in the world in Brazil. I have a have whole textbooks on the crazy different fruits of Brazil. Effectively it's called it's not called crazy fruits of Brazil. It's called fruits Brazil. And it's got a kind of a weird that I really love it because kind of weird kind of like light blue cover and all the pictures of the fruit are on this like weird grid system that's like light blue. And like they're all crazy colors and some things they look like fruity. I mean, like, honestly, they're like that. It's you know, like, if you were going to come up with like an alien movie, you would look for the fruits in this fruits of Brazil book. And then the thing I really liked about the book Love it about it. I mean, is that it's very hard to get actually you can get it at the fruit and spice Park and their gift shop in South Dade. And there's a couple of Hawaiian fruit tree suppliers that sell it but the wasn't on the Amazon when I checked strange anyways, what's awesome is is that it has a section in the back called exotic fruits and you know it's in their Piper strip or fruits at the Apple Oh, because in Brazil it that craps exotic they're like an apple. Wow Apple I think what they mean by exotic is not from Brazil right? Although now I have Skipper fruit when you were a kid were you well you're you're younger, a lot younger, confused by the fact that striper which sounds like stripper is a Christian band. I don't know the band now. To tell you tell you within this you know the history of rock anyway. The history of Christian rock I don't think I'm pretty sure stripers is a is a Christian heavy metal band. Now you have someone to look at it for me. Okay, this is from Tony. Hello, heritage radio network and cooking issues team hope all's well I had a couple of questions for Dave about non alcoholic cocktails for the next show. And Piper, you can chime in here to Dave, what is your opinion about the importance of non alcoholic drinks on bar menus? In your view? What makes a great alcohol free drink? And what just doesn't work? Can you give a few examples of interesting drinks that worked for you in the past at events or Booker index either high or low tech? And what are a few solutions that you try to use to mimic slash substitute for the taste or flavor kick of booze and a non alcoholic drink. Here's an example from Darcy O'Neill. So Darcy O'Neill is the author of the book fix the pumps is kind of the you know, I would say you know, one of the leaders in a kind of soda, soda jerk sort of pump, what to call the resurgence in the past couple of years. And he's a chemist by trade. He has an excellent blog called The Art of the drink, which you should look up and fix the pumps is kind of like the classic small work with smartlace We've never done that long, you can read it quickly, on not small in terms of small importance, because I think it was extremely influential on kind of reviving old soda fountain stuff. And so consequently, you know, he spends a lot of time because you know, the soda fountain movement went hand in hand kind of with the temperance movement, people wanted to go out and do things and kind of have fun, you know, in an era where they weren't legally allowed to go pound booze and so you know, the golden age of the soda fountain is kind of the Golden Age and the non alcoholic Mark tail kind of a situation right? So anyway, so I highly recommend that you go buy fix the pumps, if you haven't already purchased it. And he has an interesting post this point you just need to look up this cognac oil and where it is. This is the steam distilled like wine Lee's I guess from the fermentation that they do and so and Darcy says that it's kind of like a really good thing to add non alcoholic cocktails to give some or not mocktails or whatever. It's really kind of a bad name mocktail. I always hated say I don't like saying mocktail. I don't like I don't like the term. I don't like that you're being mocked for not having the alcohol.

It also implies that it's kind of an or said drink. Yeah, yeah, it implies

its own BS nature. It's bad. It's like it's like not a good term. Someone needs to come out. I mean, the first person I shared who said mocktails like through mocktail um, so it's more like a Piper Who's the king of ponds by the way I don't know if he's gonna busting these ponds out during the show. But you know, Piper kind of king of ponds you know, that's you know, that's that's beneath you. Right? Yeah. That's a little pedestrian. Yeah, mocktail, but the I'm guarantee the first person who thought of it thought they were freaking genius. And now it is de facto the term for a non alcoholic cocktail. Because non alcoholic cocktail sounds dumb to

Yeah. Yeah. All right. We're still cocktails. Yeah,

yeah. Yeah, well, already.

I mean, shrimp cocktails.

Oh, good point, the shrimp cocktail. I haven't thought of a shrimp cocktail. By the way. No offense to the shrimp cocktail. The shrimp cocktail holds a certain kind of, you know feeling but the crappy crappy pre packed shrimp cocktail like horseradish. Ketchup makes like a crappy shrimp plastered into a parfait glass is weak. Like I would much prefer to have a very nicely made cocktail sauce and then dip a well cooked chilled shrimp into it rather than have it all kind of pre glommed into A into A into a crappy glass. My wrong No, I agree. Yeah. So again, shrimp cocktail. Maybe doesn't deserve the title either. And

just letting the shrimp defrost on the plate. The cook Trump

Oh, you hate that? What about when you bite into it and you had that little bit of graininess because it wasn't fully thought What about the one where they thought too much water and it inflates with with fresh water and starts dripping everywhere?

leaves everywhere. Is that your favorite? I like it with eggnog it Yes.

Piper referencing the fact that mustache and I did not like his eggnog Yeah, yeah. Okay, so mustache mustache back back in the studio but still dealing with whatever the the aftershocks were the telephone call she had to deal with. I hear there's a mic over on that side. How you doing stuff? Yeah, yeah, everything okay. Yes. Relatively Yes. Yeah. Nice. Sweet. I like in everything. Okay. So here's Darcy's recipe for aromatic cognac syrup. Five ounces of D alcohol lized it's a weird word right? The alcohol was the alcohol iced white wine. I like to pronounce the extra H I don't know why when it went into wine, white wine, I like to add the I don't know why because I'm stupid. I think that's why four tablespoons of wine jelly, four tablespoons sugar, seven drops, cognac oil would you can get on the Amazon by the way, I don't know the quality or not three drops of Kameel essential oil, three drops of green peppercorn essential oil and two teaspoons glycerin for texture. So Darcy in his post where he talks about clinico I recommend looking into it is it you know, it's all about trying to mimic the mouthfeel the aromas that make you think that there's alcohol in there and then some of the biting bracing nature now I haven't gotten that far into it. I mean, the stash will remember we did a we used to we were doing a school project with nose Noren years ago. We've got to start that up again. I'm not going to do that in my cocktail book. But it starts starts things that when I mean start something up that I mean like today, this is a this is a people out there, this is the classic stuff that this is the reason why I yell at Natasha on air sometimes and it makes me look like a bad guy. Because she'll sit here and make a face like I'm like a taskmaster ogre saying that we should maybe at some point revisit starting an incredibly fun project. So yeah, so that makes me the jerk. Anyway. So the big jerk now fun feature anyway, so school project, and we had some the idea of school project is is that you know, we take pictures of people doing this Scandinavian ritual, the school where they do a cheers with aka VT, or any shops and really they do the shot and you look in someone's eyes, you take the drink, and then you look back. And so we did these triptych pictures and it was fun, it's fun project. But we had some people we wanted to school who didn't drink alcohol. And so then one of our problems was, well, how do we mimic that in our our mimicked ones were kind of bad. We wanted them to taste like Aqua vt. So it was Caraway infusions. And then to make that like kind of ah, doing a shot of aka VT. We added menthol to it, like menthol crystals remember a couple years ago when everyone was putting menthol crystals and everyone Yeah, everything we were we were some of those people's menthol everywhere man, the people who took that shot, they made that kind of menthol face, you know that menthol face, I don't know. I didn't like it. But so when we're designing, in fact, we don't have what Piper and I have done some non alcoholic drinks that we want to put on the menu, there's a couple of things that you need for a non alcoholic drink. It can't be as sweet as soda. If it's as sweet as a soda, people tend to feel that they're getting a soda. sodas are generally in the range of about 10% sugar by wait around 10 breaks somewhere between nine and a half and 12 right 12 Like a toothache. But if there's a lot of bitterness and flavors going on, it can be that high. So what you need to sometimes do is tone back the sweetness because most cocktails like they are in fact less sweet than that if they're carbonated. Now, a non carbonated cocktail can be that sweet. But it's counteracted by the fact that there's alcohol in it, which is going to cut from the sensation of the sweetness. So the issue is, is you want to do things on the dry side. That's why tonic water is so fantastic because the quinine and tonic water cuts the sweetness perception. tonic water is typically a little less sweet. And then it's on the less sweet side of mixers anyway, rocking around nine and a half percent sugar by weight 9.5 bricks for all you techno techno freaks out there. So I think adding bitterness back. The other thing is if you can make something incredibly fresh, even if it wouldn't just kind of be conceived of as a soda if it doesn't feel like a soda because it's entirely new and different from anything anyone's had before. And you can dial back the sweetness a little bit I'll give you an example. Piper and I clarified some watermelon juice a while back and we made a very kind of light and then we added lime to it in with the peel in it the peel adds that kind of the essential oils of a fresh peel which takes it less out of the soda realm and into kind of the cocktail and did a carbonated watermelon soda. That would have been good as a as a non alcoholic drink. I make a strawberry soda with freshly clarified strawberry juice that has huge punchy flavors. Let's not overly sweet no one would confuse that for a commercially made soda. And so they would appreciate that the care and time had been made in you know put into it for for it to be kind of registered as someone it's like a worthy of the same feelings as an alcoholic drink. The other thing is if you if you can tolerate small amounts of alcohol like if you're doing it just because you don't want to drink and drive. Then you know you can add all kinds of bitters which have alcohol in it, too. Like we make hops, bitters, hops tincture actually, that you can add that adds like the real feeling that you're having kind of a berry thing to without having a beer. If you are if you don't want anything at all alcohol at that makes it a little more difficult then you can only do things like bittering agents and spices and not actual bitters and tinctures that are made with ethanol. But mean, it's only if you're being very strict because the actual amount of alcohol you're consumed is less than you would consume from eating, for instance, anything that is fermented or anything anything else paper that I'm missing here?

Well, I don't really drink soda, but I like sand bitter. So whatever your way to,

like, well, let's make the bitter noise there. Yeah, well, that's the thing. I mean, so like, you know, like, so it's the bitter base of Campari. With it's the bittering agent, what you do is, is if you have the sweetness there and you add bitter to it, and all of a sudden it becomes more adult. And you know, it's bitter lemons a good one. It's kind of like a, you know, it's kind of like tonic but with more oils dispersed in it, so it's cloudy, but it's got bitterness and it's more grown up, it was slightly less sweet. It'd be more grown up anything like that like a sand bitters or, you know, make it would be kind of a good, I think, a good choice. Also, if you just want a like more lightly alcoholic drink, then go carbonate yourself some Campari and soda. That is delicious. All right. Next question. Oh, by the way, if you're looking for cooling things other than menthol, we haven't done a lot of experiments but you're going to want with if you actually want to simulate alcohol, you're going to need to stimulate to trigeminal senses, kind of, and I am not a fan of session buttons or things like that to do it. But there are sugar alcohols that can be somewhat cooling on the palate that you might want to use. And things like cubes have a cooling effect. There's also you know certain herbs like Teradyne can have kind of trigeminal scents kind of be want to mess with that stuff back there to give people the sense that there's something's going going on. Yeah, okay. Eddie Shepard writes in he has a new vegetarian book that he that on on the iTunes and do you have the title of it status? I don't have the title of it. No, I don't have the title of it. Oh, here it is. Is a new digital cookbook on the iTunes called vibrant vegetarian, so I'll check that out. I haven't had a chance to read it yet. See what see what's going on. Vibrant. Authoritarian. I am a fan of alliteration. Piper. Do you like alliteration? Yeah, love it. Yeah, everyone likes alliteration. You know that in the old days. You know, before you know English was polluted by the Norman Conquest in 1066. You know, English poetry. Old English poetry was a strictly alliterative and non rhyming, you know, thing based on kind of a very complex structure of meter, and alliteration like old school Beowulf, is it completely unintelligible, but it makes you pine for the days when alliteration was kind of the way to go. And we still have that sense of alliteration in our leg. That's why rap in American English sounds so awesome. Especially American English without kind of our flat or flat pronunciation of everything. It's why rap is so amazing here in America. And when you ship it, I mean, no offense to MC solaar. But I mean, you know, French, French, no offense to French rap, but you know, you're not you know, anyone with me here? I agree. Yeah. What about you, Joe?

You with me on this? Can't say I really listen to much French rap. But yeah, you maybe you can make me a mixtape or something.

Yeah, look look like you know, MC solaar Galactica. It's all it's all good. But whatever. Not as cool. stuff isn't as cool. It's like alliteration. It's like, it's like Beowulf sounds so awesome. A lot. We got data and got to die. But you know, it's like, very visceral. You know what I mean? It's like, anyway, okay. I think that's the first line of Babel. If I can't remember, it's been it's been 25 years. Okay. I don't know what the hell's How do you get on that vibe or vegetarian? Or here we go. The question I wanted to ask is about dry ice. I use dryers for a number of culinary applications for fast freezing carrying aroma, etc. I also don't currently have access to liquid nitrogen piti piti piti. But in the UK, it's not all that easy to get hold of dry ice. It isn't widely available. So generally, you have to order it in reasonably large amounts, at least 10 kilograms at a time. That's 22 pounds for you us folks out there, which is inconvenient and quite expensive. Get this Piper 80 bucks for 10 kilograms 80 bucks, 80 pounds or 80 bucks. He says bucks. I'm sure I'm sure if he's in the UK. He has a little key set for pounds so he could do it. We must have done the conversion for us. Yeah, it's nice. Thanks. Nice, especially if you are cooking for small numbers of people at a time. I wondered if you had any experience with producing your own dry ice for culinary uses. I've seen online that some equipment is available for making dry ice. These basically seem to be simple things which attach to co2 tanks. Do you think these might be a good route for making small amounts of dry ice around a kilogram at a time in a more affordable and convenient way? Also, do you think something like these bits of equipment could be made at home rather than bought? I know Dave is both very handy with this kind of DIY stuff and also self proclaimed cheapskate so I'm hoping you'll have some tips on this. All the best Eddie Shepherd. Okay. So what you're looking for Hear me? Yes, I have, yes, I have done this, you're looking for something that works on something called the Joule Thomson effect. And the Joule Thomson effect, fundamentally, is that most gases will, most real gases, when they expand, you know, rapidly and don't give off, don't have the time to give off heat to the environment will chill. And in fact, it's so much so that you can convert co2 at room temperature to dry ice because remember, dry ice doesn't want to exist as a liquid in at atmospheric temperatures. atmospheric pressures rather, doesn't want to exist as a liquid. Okay, so here's how here's how it works. Now, there are plenty of people on the internet who say that you can make dry ice by taking a co2 fire extinguisher and putting a bag over it and then squeezing the trigger for a while and then killing the stuff off. And you probably can make some dry ice this way. However, this is extremely inefficient process, right, so that what that what the items are, what you need, first of all, is a siphon tank. So in the US are sold as 50 pounds co2 cylinders with a siphon, what that means is, there's a tube extending from the top of the tank all the way down to the bottom so that the pressure on the top from the gas is forcing the liquid through the tube and you're actually spraying until it depressurize as you're spraying liquor and liquor, liquid co2 out of the out of the tank. So that's the first thing you need is a siphon tank. siphoned tanks are also good. If you're going to fill a lot of your own co2 tanks, you know, it's good to have a siphon tank and it's easier to fill out of a siphon tank, trust me. The other thing you're going to want to do is well, then then the commercial ones, you screw a brass valve on it that can handle the high pressures, right. And then that brass valve is designed to more efficiently expand the co2 and convert the maximum possible amount of it into dry ice, there's then a sack attached to that which allows the extra gas to shoot out and then collects the dry ice as a snow in that sack. Now there's various you know, and that's the cheapest one that's like 100 bucks that one. And then there's various kind of levels above that, that you can make it yourself from the valve once you own the valve. And you possibly can make the valve yourself but I don't know I don't want to I haven't done it. So I don't want to get into it. But then they they kind of route it through a wooden box or a plastic box, and then the dry ice in packs into the box and compresses itself into a brick. And then you can make a brick that way. And I'm sure that once you have the drill Thompson valve scenario thing that you could modify it from a sack collector, because the snow is kind of a pain in the butt, it goes away quickly to a brick maker. Now here's the downside. This isn't inherently inefficient procedure. So first of all, you know, if you look fridge and Matt from Bell art in the US makes these makers and they caution you that it's really only converting the liquid once once you're out of liquid, you're not really converting that much more into dry ice. And the amount of liquid in your tank is not the same as the weight. So at atmospheric, a normal cylinder at you know, at regular room temperature, only like two thirds of that or a little more 70% of that is probably liquid and the rest is a form of compressed gas on top. So already out of a 50 pound cylinder, your yield is down to you know 70% of that. Now, take into that that on your usage base usage basis. The best you're ever going to get is about 45 46% of the weight of the co2 that you spray out of it as dry. So that's of that 70 less than 50% of it's going to turn into dry ice. Right. The other thing is suckers loud me put this says again, sucker is not quiet. You know what I mean? It because you're opening a tank and spraying it out as fast as you can as loud. I mean, you've done that before Piper's loud. Yeah, it's loud. It's loud. It's irritating. You don't want to do it at a bar. Or in your living room at night. No, feels dangerous. Yeah, it's no, it's not the fun anyway, me it is fun. But it's not fun for other people who don't think that kind of thing is fun. And certain ones are, are much less efficient than others. So the thing is, you got to figure out how much is it going to cost usually on a 50 pound cylinder, you don't buy it, you rent it. So you have a rental fee on the cylinder. And then let's say it's a 50 pound cylinder. Let's say that 70 Let's say you get a third of 70 is like what 72 divided by three Piper it's like 20 like 25% Let's say you get 25%. So a quarter of 50. You gotta get like 12 There are 1212 and a half pounds of dry ice out of a 50 pound cylinder. So then the question is how much you paying for the cylinder if you're if your pay. The good news about the cylinder is is that you can keep it there for eight years, not eight years because you need to rehydrate test but you can keep it there forever. And then make the driest when you need it. And there's no sublimation of the dry ice when you know you make it when you need it. So there's no loss that way, but you have to figure out like what your overall cost would be to buy more More than you need, have it, sublimate, use it and then have it go away. versus, you know, you know, you're gonna get 12 pounds of co2 out of this tank, and I was dry side of this tank, and then is it cost effective. And I just don't know I haven't done the math in a while but I remember when I when I broke my dry icemaker I didn't buy another one if that's any indication. Of course, I had liquid nitrogen, so there's not as much need. Here's another thing. If you have a walk in freezer, fridge, you should before you make the dry ice, the colder your cylinder is, the higher the yield, you're going to get out of it because the more of the product will be liquid. If a caller Oh, caller you're on the air.

Hey, Dave, than Seattle. Two questions. We'll actually wanted to comment. You were talking about fish sauce last weekend? Yep. Have you ever had the red boat fish sauce became available from Vietnam and like the last 18 months or so? Yeah, I

like it a lot. Okay.

You didn't mention it on the show. And I mean, I think it's much bigger. Anything that's out there deserved one. Yeah, no,

no, here's the problem. And it thank you for calling an image. The reason is, is because the taste test that I had done was before that stuff was available. And then so when I thought taste test, I just went back into my mind to the old taste test. And it wasn't in that lineup because it wasn't available yet. But yeah, that's that's excellent.

I was just curious about that. And then my actual question, I made the full modernist chicken stock a week or three ago, and it came out fantastic. But it took me 100 years to actually fry all the ground chicken for the amount of stock I was making. Because actually deep fried, it was my interpretation what the recipe says to do.

Yeah, that's it. I forget who originally I mean, I remember Wiley told me that about that. And that was a protocol based on something that's like a 10 year 12 year old protocol for someone out to Europe grinding and deep fried. But I forget who originally came up with the I forget who originally came up with the idea. But yeah, okay, go ahead.

Okay, so came out fantastic. But a home stove, and I've got a pretty good home. So the time to actually deep fry several pounds of ground chicken. I mean, it went on forever. It if I put the ground trick, if I spread it flat on a sheet pan in the oven, can I get somewhat close to the same effect? And how much oil and and it first gets a time and temp?

Yeah, well, I wouldn't, I wouldn't spread it flat so much. I think like the whole, the benefit of the deep fry on the grind is that you're getting maximum surface area of stuff that's browned. And so I would kind of leave it flat as fluffy as you can. And then I would put them on on like as many pans as you can fit in your oven and just pan them in. And I would do like whatever you don't want. The trick is you don't want to scorch it. So I would I would probably do somewhere in the range of 375 400 Fahrenheit, sorry, your turn on my oven in Fahrenheit. But like somewhere in that range and let the let the stuff roast off like you would a normal bone, I don't think it's going to require that much high, although you probably could go higher because it's so small that mean the grant but I would still stick in that range just because I don't think it's going to be necessarily beneficial to crank it to 500 or 550. And there's no reason to go lower. So I would I would be somewhere in that 375 to 425 range. If you have a convection that will help blow some of the moisture off and get it Browning faster. But I would definitely leave it kind of fluffed up because the whole concept of that recipe is to is to get browning on the maximum possible surface area of a product.

Well give that a shot on my next go. Thank you very much.

They ended up doing favor tweet me in at at cooking issues and tell me how it worked. I will I will thank you so much. Thank you. I hate you. I just wanna go to our first commercial break. We're gonna come back when first commercial break all the questions to 718-497-2128 cooking issues.

Like what you hear so far, support the network and become a member. Membership helps us bring you the best food radio in the world and gives you access to 1000s of dollars and discounts at the sustainably minded businesses that support us to become a member of visit heritage radio network.org Today Brooklyn slate company is a collaborative effort from Brooklyn graphic designers Shaun Tice and Parsons graduate student Christy had DECA. After visiting Christie's family slate quarry in upstate New York in the spring of 2009. The two grabbed a few pieces for us as all purpose boards back home in Brooklyn. They found a number of purposes for the slate and began gifting pieces to friends. The response was so overwhelmingly positive that the to struck out to produce a line of slate products. They now make regular trips to the family quarry in upstate New York to handpick their favorite pieces of black and red slate. Some of the slate is sourced from the quarry graveyard, a collection of odd shaped pieces that were ultimately destined to be ground for uses road cover or baseball diamonds. They then transport the pieces to their studio in Red Hook Brooklyn, where they do additional cutting and clean the stone to be food slate. Every single piece of packaging that comes with their products from the envelope to the burlap bag can be repurposed for other uses. The end result is a product completely unique and cut, shape, color and overall presentation. For more information and to order visit Brooklyn sleep.com. Now through December enjoy 10% off your purchase at Brooklyn slate.com With discount code heritage,

and we're back. I like the Brooklyn slate people, we actually accidentally shafted them. They donated a bunch of stuff to the museum a couple of years ago and then we had to tell them that that you know, we didn't have our 501 C three status in order so we love them and thank them and our sorry about that. I think it's on them.

They're invited to any event that they want to

so yeah, they're good people and make they make it make good good. I like slate slate is a good product. Yeah, I mean, of course Piper thinks that he's from Vermont. Vermont. It's the New Hampshire of next door. Oh, I don't know whether you guys know this. People who people who like you know are from the northeast of the of the United States might not know that. You think that Vermont and New Hampshire which are basically identical structures like flipped and then stuck next to each other, like they look identical to each other just kind of flipped and for ending glued together, that these guys they don't like each other so much. It's kind of like, it's kind of like they don't like each other.

We're from different parts of Pangea. It's not it's not the same place at all. I mean, like physically that they

look the same just flipped. Right? I mean, Vermont looks like an upside down New Hampshire. Yeah, or vice versa, right? Yeah. And they're both literally right next to each other. Like a doppelganger. Yeah, but New Hampshire has no laws seatbelt laws, they have no seat but you don't have to have insurance in Hampshire you

know that? I didn't know I don't live free or die right? Yeah, Live Free

or Die. Turns out that whether or not you live free, you eventually will die. Anyway, interesting. Michael Mackin writes in a was enjoying the farm to toilet discussion we had yesterday last week. He goes day love the tissue cleansing through bowel management rant, you exceeded my fondest expectations. Thank you, Natasha and Piper. This is regarding their overindulgence in Jerusalem artichokes last week, which you know if case you know, but of course, you know, if you didn't here last week, Jerusalem artichokes contain a very, very large quantity of a non digestible polysaccharide called insulin. And when you eat a large quantity of insulin, you you have painful, bloating tooting phenomenon going on for a good long time. And I was laughing because had they just read the Curious Cook they would have known this beforehand. And both Piper and Natasha for lunch decided to just inulin themselves, like straight up the wazoo. Anyway. So Michael writes in, and Natasha Piper May I suggest you read undaunted courage. If I'm remembering it, right, Lewis and Clark had to over Winton over wind over winter with a maanden Indians for two years in a row in the frigid Minnesota winters. They were stuck inside the teepees for months at a time and guess what the main source of food was? Yep, Jerusalem artichokes. Can you imagine the aroma compared to that the two of you are probably like a field of daisies. So you can tell Dave to quit his whining Michael nakin. Nice. Nice. It's a good guy. Yeah, that's a good guy. He got strong. Another thing before we go any further, we're going to announce that Booker and DAX is going to have the Kickstarter launch for the Sears old Sears all Sears on Black Friday. That's right for those of you that aren't from the United States Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving when everybody is supposed to go out and consume like wild people here in the US for the Christmas season. And we have decided to put our Kickstarter on air for this year is all on Black Friday. You won't get it guys gonna talk about it a little bit.

Yeah, well, we're launching it actually midnight on Thanksgiving. Was not

Thanksgiving any more if it's midnight. Piper's the guy that came in maybe this is a Vermont thing. He's like till midnight. Is that Is that am or pm like it's it's the next freaking day. It's the next friggin Day

Mom listens to the show.

I'm sure your mom knows that it's the next day. I'm just breaking on you anyway. But whenever I say anything, Labor's like, my mom listens to the show. This is what he always says what still gonna feel like Thanksgiving at midnight on? Oh, I agree. I agree. But you know, as far as the human body is concerned, it's not the next day you wake up. That's why if you pulled an all nighter, you'd like your calendar gets messed. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, from a feeling standpoint, you're right.

Regardless, we're launching it on midnight on Black Friday.

Yeah. So the Sony late and we're gonna have it up. We haven't decided yet whether we're going to run it to Jan one or whether we're going to kill it on the 26th of December, and we decided

24th was midnight on Christmas. Why would you do that?

I mentioned it. No, I said we should have it run through. Okay.

Anyway, it will be on Kickstarter.

So here's, here's what the here's the story with it. So you know, for those of you that, you know, I don't know, don't know, here's the problem. When you're at home, often you don't have access to very, very high intensity heat source to do things like finish low temperature meats, or any anything like that. So normally a lot what a lot of people do, which I think is a horrible idea is they use a torch. And when you use a torch, you create all sorts of off flavors in in the food that we call it, we call it torch torch, torch days, and it smells like products with combustion. And indeed, you know, erielle at UC Davis did some GC Mass Spec for us and showed that in fact, you are creating kind of secondary compounds from the super high intensity high heat flame from a torch that cause these kind of off flavors. So, we developed and have a patent pending on this little device that turns the heat from a torch into a three inch, like infrared radiant, or not really infrared broiler kind of that you can hold in your hand. And so it makes kind of very quick work of that. It's also you know, reheat pizzas, whatever, do whatever you want. You know, Piper likes the grilled cheese with it. I like to finish steaks, it does great work on scallops. It's the only way I would ever cook flog raw ever again, I would never cook foie gras any other way ever. It's actually a higher heat intensity than a salamander. It's more similar to a deck boiler. But anyway, so we're gonna launch this guy. And I also like it because like, let's say, in a restaurant, it's not really for like very, like heavy duty use in a restaurant because it's small, and you have to hold it while you're working. We years we have a patent on the on the technology. So like, we could build a huge one that would be like the world's most insane, you know, grill if we wanted to, but that's down the line anyway. But in a restaurant, like if something comes out, and it's not totally finished, right, you can finish it, like you know, Spot finish things. Or if you're gone one day, and you have like one particular thing you want to do, you don't want to like have been near a hotline, you can finish something right there. Or if you're doing catering events, or you know, you're out at a picnic and you want to you know just hassling you can carry around and just put like a nice flame on kind of smaller things. It's kind of a good tool for that, right? Yeah, the grid. You know, and I like it better for things I don't like like it's first of all, it's more powerful than a heat like that. It literally plugs on a torch. So it's converting a torch to this other thing and you can take it off and use your torch as normal. Or you can put this on and use it like a sizzle. I like it better than it's more powerful than something like a heat gun torch you don't want to use cuz it makes bad taste, heat gun would be okay, but heat gun is much more kind of focused and smaller. And it's not as not as powerful. And the big thing I don't like about the heat gun is got it got a cord on it. I hate having to have cords on stuff when I'm using it in a kitchen. It's really irritating. Anyway, so we're gonna kickstart that thing and have we agreed on the on the kind of what we think it's we should not talk about price or anything like that, right? Not yet. Still, Henry, because the the deal is, is that we need pretty good insurance for this. So we have the insurance and we're gonna have to go and get it manufactured right now. Piper and I go down into the basement of Booker and DAX lab and weld all these suckers by hand. And we don't intend to do that.

No, we want to have the best product made that we can. So we're still working on figuring that out. But

yeah, so anyway, so we hope you all come by it. And so you won't have to tweet me anymore and asked me when we're finally going to Kickstarter because we're going to do it. You can see it on Al Jazeera America. I don't even know it. Was it on that was it actually? Yeah, they look okay. Did you see that?

I haven't seen it yet. Yeah. Anyway. Okay. And he started a Twitter for the booker index lab. Oh, yeah. What is it? at Booker index lab. We will be posting some photos of the series all the stuff we do there. Ooh, funky antics

Follow, follow, follow, follow the follow the epoch or index lab follows. Yeah, I will be saying what's going on? Hey, so Dave, I have a question. And that's basically what does the trans fat ban mean for the mass marketers of things like sweets and candy and all everything that has lots of trans fats in him? I probably just make it a little more expensive. You can remove trans fats like there's you know, like you can go into the store right now and buy trans fat free Crisco. It's just a Probably, it's probably going to be a cost increase. I mean, I would say that's, that's about it, there's no other words, the trans ness of the fat doesn't change the functionality of the fat, the transistor, the so it's what the deal is, is that when you you know, when you remake unbreakable bonds, you can do it in a way where, where the, the depending on sis and trans has to do with what side of of a, you know, a double bond, they the substituted chains are on sis meanings on the same side and trans meaning it's on the opposite side. And so, the sickness or transness doesn't affect really things like the temperature at which the fat melts or anything like that. It affects more the effects more how your body reacts to it. And so the it's in the manufacturing of fats that they produce, you know of things like Crisco and other shortenings that they produce these trans fats. So all you have to do is then get rid of the trans fats or do another process to summarize them to trans and so all I can foresee really is a price maybe a price increment and not a functionality increment. That makes sense. Yeah, it makes good sense. Okay. Got a question in from we talked enough about the Sears all there that's good. What about what's called Booker index lab? Index appliquer index who runs that you run that Piper? Ko Ronak the hammer and Piper so if you need if you don't want to like you know mustache is Twitter handle is hammer at hammer BDS? I don't think she ever looks at it. I do. Yeah. Every day. Yeah. And Piper I think has Piper be the exercises? Right? Yeah. Knocking a lot of action these days. No, nice. Alright, anyway, follow those guys in for all the whatsit who's me. Alex writes in. Hello, Dave Hamer, and the revolving cast of others, Jack, or whomever else there may be there this day. Oh, what's up? Whomever? Joe? Oh, hello. Yeah, excellent show your efforts are greatly appreciated. I've convinced my wife that a kitchen update is a good idea strong. I'm stealthily trying to put some more precise slash modern tools into the plan. We have a six burner gas range and I want to expand my options. My wife is reluctant to give up the storage or the counter space, but she is open to a flat top perhaps even 24 inch accurate steam griddle if I can find one in good shape. I can steam griddle for those you that don't I say is like a sandwich layer stainless steel griddle that has water in the inside. And it has an extremely fast recovery rate. Everyone that has it in a short order situation loves it because the recovery rate is almost instant. And everybody respects him and thinks they're great. The only downside of them is that they they can fail because they're a pressure vessel and need repair and repair on an accurate steam is expensive. So if you talk to people who don't make you know, people, other grill suppliers and you're like What about accuracy? And they're like, Oh yeah, it's it's great. The only thing that we can say is that it might break and then you're Sol anyway that's just my my two my two cents but they are good products while they look fun. And then release my inner short order cook that's the Accu stream I don't know how much he uses to get in the world where a fry pan or two will usually do you know what another good thing to get any sort of like the problem with most griddles is they don't have a super they're not really high heat enough they don't heat up quickly enough in my house I have a an actual gas fire the electric ones are garbage. A gas fired grandpa's crate maker, which is how why does this 18 inches my hands 24 feet Yeah, somewhere between 18 and 24 inches. Cast iron top heats up to if I needed to, to 615 can throttle down to you know down to low enough temperature to do pancakes that are even lower, and it's super fast and it's fairly compact. And it's on the counter gasifier things awesome. They're hard to find here in the US but next time you're in France they're not that expensive in France and you can't get them here in the US they just cost twice as much as they should anyway. I did not know how much I will get to use a griddle where a fry pan or tea would usually do instead I want to push a tea what's good on that? Crate maker is razor clamps or razor clams plancha style instead I want to push for a 20 to 35 pound tube deep fryer I've been okay with frying on the range top though the small batches and consistently adjusting the temperature recover them and then not overheat them can be a pain so a better solution is sought. I've heard you mentioned it to become a master of the fry you need a real fryer crew crew. My wife's concern is the safety maintenance slash cleaning requirements and how big it should be to be useful. Assuming I use a quality fryer oil and you should get commercial fryer oil by the way commercial what kind of life can I expect out of the oil how often is it filtered replace How should it be stored? Besides it type K fire extinguisher Are there any other safety precautions you recommend any features I should seek? Any other advice on whether or not a fryer is a good idea? Thank you keep up the good work well look. From a cooking standpoint there's no question that a deep fryer is a good idea. It's unquestionable from a cooking standpoint. Let me put it this way there is no question. Oil lasts in a home environment for a tremendously long time. If you you filter it regularly, I just keep it in the fryer and cover it completely so that it's not exposed to air or light so that you're not getting light based oxidation or a lot of oxygen oxidation in the top of it. And it lasts for a long long time and you can just test it in between fries with with like a piece of bread to taste to see whether the oil is starting to get that cardboard, rancid taste but because you're using a tube fryer and all this stuff sinks to the bottom, you can last a long time getting you know stainless steel pot and you're good like the iron ones aren't as good for keeping x anyway. Here's the thing your wife is 100% Right? These are completely not necessarily safe in a home environment. They're not rated for a home environment and let me put it this way. This might void your homeowners insurance. If you have a fire based on having a deep fat fryer in your house a commercial deep fat fryer in your house, your homeowners insurance might be void let me say that again. your homeowners insurance might be void also, if you're not set up to battle a fire from a fryer or you don't know how to use a fryer or you're gonna freak out if there's a fire. This is a dangerous proposition. I will point you at these YouTube things look up Mythbusters water on oil fire right and they have awesome slo mo images of them dumping a cup of oil into an oil fire and showing what happens is by the way, why you don't ever have a deep fryer next to a stove because you might spill oil into something and then what happens is is the water instantly vaporizes and If oil is let's say you're when you're using a fryer you should never leave it ever but you should never leave it unattended because you can see if it starting to go over over hot on you. If it goes over hot in order to thermostat breaks and it goes into runaway thermal runaway once the oil auto ignites and then if something like water hits it after it's auto ignited then you're missing it the water hitting it will cause tiny oil droplets to be at you know sprayed into the atmosphere like a like a like a like an aerosol, that aerosol will ignite into a fireball right here's the other problem about fire extinguishing an oil fire if you fire extinguisher and oil fire on if you have oil that just spills out of the fryer and hits a heating element and ignites sure then you can you can hit it with a with a type a fire extinguisher and it's not going to be a big problem. If you have thermal runaway and your entire batch 30 pounds of oil is at auto ignition temperature and you spray it what you're doing is you're spraying to oil with the with the with the extinguisher you're spraying oil at its auto ignition temperature all over your kitchen where it will then again ignite as soon as you release the fire extinguisher unless you have enough fire extinguishing power to like kill it completely and cooled it down which is why they have Ansel systems and in an Ansel system, the goop that they spray out of your Ansel system as especially saponify as the fat so that it doesn't reignite after it stops and it puts a suppression blanket on top of your fryer for like 20 seconds please look up Pyro Chem kitchen night to fire test demonstration and for an extremely boring in they're boring but you go through them and Ansel our dash 102 suppression system versus dry chemical extinguisher on YouTube, especially that second one and so our 102 suppression system versus dry Chem extinguisher and you can be it's really boring go to the interesting parts you can see a firefighter spraying a dry chemical extinguisher on on an on a thermal runaway autoignition oil temperature fire from a fryer and the disastrous results contained also for a good laugh look up William Shatner Turkey fry because William Shatner has a saved he's like I love fried turkeys to taste it's my taste i love it i fried turkeys but then he has like the safety thing where they show like an entire like garage melting down from someone putting a poorly thought and or too much oil in it. So check that stuff out. But anyway, yes, from a cooking standpoint, they're the best ways Fair, fair, fair. Okay.