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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Hello and welcome to cookie issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking he is coming to you live on the heritage Radio Network broadcasting every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick. joined as usual, Anastasia via hammer Lopez how're you doing? Good. I like little the fact that there's people out there who like imagine like why you are the hammer and all they need to do now is look at Lenin's wife's picture right now. And they know did you see someone wrote in and said that? We should just make T shirts with Lenin's wife. Yeah, we made T shirts and you people don't buy them you pee but what was their name again? Lenin's wife. No one can remember because this if the sassy can't remember then how am I supposed to remember like Anastasia is like half rasa Ukrainian like you know, a potent self hating mix there. Yeah, potent. And of course, as usual, we got Dave in the booth. How you doing? Good. Are you doing all right? So am I supposed to I have a piece of paper on our desk, and it says pre roll ad but since we've already rolled perhaps I can post pre roll you want to post pre roll this? Yeah, that's how we do while you're listening to the post pre roll calling all of your questions cooking or not, you know, preferably cooking related questions to 718497 Wait 718-497-2128 Is that right? Yes, it says 184972128 is like I don't even actually think about it. It's almost like you know, it just kind of like pops out. We got one what a caller. Yeah, heritage Radio Network. Well, I'll do the pre roll while they're figuring that out. Today's program is brought to you by modernist pantry, providing magical ingredients for the modern cook for free videos, recipes, tips and tricks visit blog dot modernist pantry.com All right. Caller you're on the air. I think to be losing Dave. Caller caller you're on the air. Caller Hello. Hey, how you doing?

Hey, so I am a cook in New Orleans and I recently did a pop up with ramen. And the issue that I had is so I followed the recipe. Basically, Ivan Almond book, right? And flour the noodles with cornstarch. But after doing like a bunch of batches, on the sides of the like the wire basket, the cornstarch start to build up and like warm this like, you know, paste. Yeah, but it would. I was wondering if you had any like suggestions on how to avoid that?

Well, okay, so give me the exact give me the exact procedure your tissue you're taking like the new one like you're dusting them? What's the point? Again? If dusting them in the cornstarch, just give them a little bit of a like gluey outside? Or is it just a separation thing.

So I'm hand making the noodles. And I don't want them to stick because if I don't use any cornstarch and they stick, right and so when I go to break them up in the water with chopsticks, they sort of crumble into short little pieces. And so the cornstarch helps to avoid that problem. But then, you know, once I do a bunch of batches that sticks to the wire basket,

how much kind of how much part dehydration do they go through before they the before you boil them? How much? How much like how long have they been sitting out? Like before you boil? In other words, like are they dried sufficiently where you could sit there and do like a pre tap on like, on like a drying rack where you could just put your like the load on a drying rack and go pack on on a sheet tray and like knock off the excess cornstarch though do you already do that? Or what?

I might be able to do that? Um, yeah, so I just made them day off so that they'd be fresh. So they basically just sat you know in the cornstarch side dust.

Right? So I mean the other issue is is that like if you're getting buildup on the basket aren't like how are you loading? Are you loading direct into the water? Are you loading into baskets and dropping baskets?

directly into the water?

Yeah, okay, so what you're getting is just straight boil off building up on the sides of the baskets. What about on the on the external sides of the pot? If what do you what are you cooking him? And what kind of what are you doing? Do you don't have a pasta maker right? I mean, like a pasta pasta boiler making

it in a pasta maker and then dusting them with cornstarch and then

I meant to cookie you don't have like a pasta you're not using like a like a modified pasta deep fryer. You know what I'm talking about those pasta boilers?

No, it's just, it's just like, it's far with salted water.

Yeah. So like, and how often you skim in and stuff off the top.

Not Not very often. Yeah.

I mean, I yeah, I mean, like, like, once you have like, free cornstarch in the system, like the stuffs going to like, like boil around because remember, like it like it's going to it's going to do that. So I would try to knock off the stuff on the outside, right. And I would skim like fairly often. So like, like, let's say you like normally, not normally but if you're if you're fortunate enough to have an actual like pasta cooker, right or it's got like a water in and then like a like a drain off so that you can take the scum off the top it like basically automatically discharges the water because your water is always going to get starts here and starts here and starts here. You know what I mean? Like as you go, and so, and I've never owned one I've used my regular deep fryer as a pasta cooker before, but it doesn't have like any of the fancy stuff. I've never owned a real one you ever used a mustache you ever seen like Mark used to have one of them? Does he does he have those? Now if you have like the fancy like like does he have the fat fancy ones that look like deep fryer for the pasta boiling? not know, but they're going to is that the way they're going to do it? Or the how are they finishing custom course mount custom fit fancy for we talked about pasta flyer Mark ladders new new venture, when's that opening says two weeks two weeks. So you're going to you're going to invite me to anything any opening we'll talk about on the air. So like I would say I would skim more often I would try to knock the cornstarch off. The problem is is that I there's very few things I hate worse than trying to get cooked starch off of off of fry baskets. Yeah, it's a painful process. Oh yeah, that's definitely something that you want to hire somebody else to do if you can, like you know trying to think if there's anything else like any free starch like that is going to is going to do that that's why I was asking kind of like what level of dryness they are when they when they get out like I know like I do the same thing if you can keep them if you can keep the noodles separated for even a couple of minutes before they go into like larger things like I can't picture your layout you can use less stuff to coat them you know what I mean? Like the faster they have to touch each other the you know the more of insurance you need on the outside but then remember like what we put the coating on the outside like the coating is absorbing some of the moisture from the outside of the pasta almost acting like an instant dehydration on the on the surface of the of the noodle. So like after, you know even like three 30 minutes, you should be able to like wrap a tap tap, like prior to service to try to knock stuff off of it. And then, you know, because like, you know, I know people like fresh pasta makers, some pasta makers, for instance, use cornstarch on large not cornstarch of cornmeal on larger things like ravioli. And like when they sell them to you, they're swimming in freaking you know, cornmeal. And so then it's a question of always getting it off, but like, how are you storing and storing them in? Like, are you are you pre portioning them and then storing them in like, in like fish tubs? Like what are you doing?

Right, just Yeah, I had them pre portioned. Just yeah. And electron.

And are you getting any clumping problems at all now?

No, not not as far as like, I guess, you know, maybe it's like too much cornstarch. But there's no clumping issue.

Yeah, well, so like, the good news is you have no clumping issues. So so what I would do is just keep dialing it back until you start having issues. And the more you dial back the cornstarch in the finished thing, like the less often you're going to have to clean that disgusting stuff off the outside of the of the baskets. I don't know if there's anything that will just straight eat that. Like, you know, like, you know, I tend not to keep around the around my place like tons of super caustic things. But like I know like the French culinary like at night like those guys would just dip everything and like hyper disgusting caustic chemicals to like burn everything off of everything. By not saying I recommend that because I don't And also, like it's not efficient to like self clean that stuff off of things because you soak up a lot of energy. And like, I've discovered that aluminum pans are ruined by self cleaning. Did you know that? Not another Yeah, you throw an aluminum like a sheet pan into a into a self cleaning oven. And it just wipes the temper. It cleans it because like I hate cleaning. I hate cleaning everything. But like I super hate cleaning couple things. I hate cleaning or fryer baskets. And I hate them. And I hate cleaning off. I hate cleaning off like sheet trays that have had like oily crap baked into them, like over the course of a whole like, you know, night hate it. And so like I always thought, well, maybe I could just burn and you know, I don't know if your fry baskets have the rubber on them. But if you have the ones that don't have rubber, like theoretically, you can self clean. I don't know what it'll do to the chrome coating on it. But if it's chrome coat is supposed to you know, some are actually like they're supposed to be stainless steel, but some of them aren't really do you have noticed that? Like some of them aren't really

the ones I have. I have the rubber things on the handles.

Yeah, so you can't do any of that stuff. That stuff anyway. But yeah, no, no weather like, I don't know, what are some sort of hardcore oven cleaner? We'll get that stuff off. Because that stuff's more effective, I think on fats and proteins than on starch. I don't know.

Anyway, any other like starches that might work, but any better.

They're all going to clump up on you. You know what I mean? Like, I'm, uh, you know, it depends on what you're going to, you know, the good thing good news about cornstarch is, is that it's freakin cheap. You know what I mean? I mean, if you want to, if you want to stay like wheat on wheat crime, you can use pure wheat starch, you know what I mean? And that way, you know, you're, you know, you only have one brain in that and so, you know, one less allergen to worry about. But, you know, it depends you're not looking for functionality, right? Like you're not, it's not a functional aspect of the noodle. Like, you're not looking for it to have like a, like a velvety texture on the outside. Right.

All right. It's just, it's just like, Yeah, some people were complaining that, you know, it was kind of gummy. And then I checked the thing. And sure enough, you know, it was caked on there. Yeah.

Yeah. So I mean, like you like, I mean, it just, I would just try to use less of it. I don't think any other particular starch is going to change the, the cuz it's not, you're not looking for a particular quality of starch. Like if you want to starch like I really like potato starch a lot. But that's in situations where like, I'm frying or crisping things up. And I want the specific like, swelling capacity of potato starch. You don't care. You don't I mean, you're just trying to separate stuff off. So if you can afford the extra cost, try wheat starch that way, it's just one less thing to worry about. But cornstarch is nice and cheap. Okay, I hate the way cornstarch fields Yes. Yeah, right. Anastasia hate I hate the way cornstarch fields as squeaky field. It doesn't bother you. It bothers me. That noise that cornstarch makes when you're when you're taking a when you lift it out of the thing and you squeeze the box, and you squeeze that cornstarch box, that friggin noise, man I hate that noise, man. All right, well good luck with it. Let us know how it works out. Alright, thank you

clumping issues was not the working title for this show.

It was years ago we were like but you know, then we it's not just clumping is not the only thing we're worried about. We're worried about, you know, anti clumping. So, so the Stasi you'll enjoy this on the way here. I was listening to all like not listening. My iPhone decided to play for me all the stuff that I listened to that you hate. Like, like Kenny Rogers you hate it when Kenny Rogers comes on? Oh my god, you know, because you hate my reaction to it. Yeah. Like Calgary. The county came on you hate when I'd talked about coward of the county. And then Smokey Robinson came on and you hate when I listened to Smokey Robinson because I like his lyrics. It's like all the stuff that you hate. I like the music. I hate listening to it with you. Yeah, it's more me you hate the music. Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah, that's about right. And it's like another call. Yeah. Caller you're on the air.

It's time for Mr. Again. Hey, how you doing? I'm good. I just wanted to weigh in you were talking about sort of your cookbook, low camp and the finishing steps last week. And and I wanted to weigh in and just say that I would definitely be interested in your thoughts on that best, the best ways to finish low time products, because I've had a circulator for a couple years now. Something I get really great results with. And then sometimes I have disappointing results. So

Right. I mean, it's yeah, it's a big, it's what I'm actually working on right now a lot. Like on Sunday, I ran a bunch of tests. And I'm trying to do like a lot of like, test without this. Here's all just like, because I can have things for people to do like without the series or without anything that's hardcore. I'm trying to like do hardcore everything, to see whether I can get good, good results, but like low temperature cooking almost always fails in the finishing step, don't you think?

I think that's right. Because especially with like steaks I find and you were talking about sort of dropping down the temperature before you do this. And that sort of sort of clarified things in my mind, because I think that's sort of where I was falling short.

Yeah. So now Now what I've been doing, so I've been testing recently. Now a lot depends on on, like, let's say you're going to pan for it. This is what I've been testing recently, let's say you're going to pan finish the steak, okay. And let's say you're going to, you choose like I'm going to do, so here's the thing, if you prefer it now, this is the argument that I have all the time with people. If you prefer the meat versus posts here, the meat now, or both, I always usually recommend both. And other people. You know, like Kenji, for instance, just like, it doesn't matter. But here's the thing, it does matter. Because the, if you do not pre sear your meat, then you're going to have to sear it much longer afterwards to get the same level of crust. So then the question that I have to whoever is making the you know, the steak is what level of crust do you want, if you're a crust fiend, if you need like a real thick, heavy char on the outside of a piece of meat, well, that can really only be attained in a pan with copious like, you know, like a good eighth inch of oil at the bottom, you take it up to like, you know, basically 360 400 deep fried temperature. And then the trick with this is you can actually do without making a lot of smoke, I've been testing, pan frying. And the trick is that you bring the whole pan up relatively slowly to deep fryer temperature, which is like 365, and that rich with with a layer of oil in it, then when you put the meat into sear, you crank the hell out of it as high as it'll go. So that you maintain your heat input at that high level, like that's the trick, right? It doesn't actually help you to have your oil catch on fire and smoke, what you really need to do is bring it up to the temperature where it's searing, and then hold it there as best as you can. So anyway, so like in that kind of a regime, in order to get a good crust on a steak, you really need to do three minutes. So you do like one and a half, flip one and a half, do that twice, three minutes, and you can get a good crust. Problem is if you do that afterwards, you are going to overcook the meat, like pretty much straight up, you're going to overcook the meat. And so if you pre sear it, you can cut down that posterior to like a minute on a side or a minute and a half on the side. And you're not going to overcook the meat and when you do a pre sear your meats at fridge temperature, it's at like five degrees Celsius. And so there's very little overcook on a on a priest here now, you know, this is something has been borne out by like, you know, many, many trials that I ran back when I was cooking at the French Culinary Institute, but um, you know, I'm testing it more now for kind of home people. The problem is, is that even I don't pre sear meat all the time, because and I probably shouldn't say this. I'm like, intensely lazy and if and you're not supposed to do this, because they're not designed for it. But a lot of times I will just take the meat as it comes in the pack, right because I'm buying pre pack, cut big steaks, like like high like a lot of very nice steaks that are cut by you know, high high end producers of like things like the Piemonte Zb for these things come like you know, pre portioned, packed and the thick steaks. And I've cooked directly in those camp priests here. If you don't take it out of the pack, you know what I mean? But I really shouldn't do that and I shouldn't recommend doing that anyway, but so I do a lot of work without the pre stream but pre Syrian can help To not overcook on the posts here, but my current method is to instead of dropping the circulator five degrees, which is what I used to do, and letting it sit for 40 minutes, is I pull it directly out a couple minutes before, I'm going to serve it, and I put it into a pot of running tap water. So I'll just put the pot in the sink, turn the tap water on, just turn it on enough so that it's flowing constantly and throw the meat into that. Depending on how long you're going to sear between two and four minutes, depending on on how many times you're going to see it, you could take it up to five minutes. And that just really pushes the outside temperature the meat down without really affecting the quarter very much. And then if you go and sear right away, you know, you're wanting to half one and a half. Or if you need to one and a half, one and a half, one and a half, one and a half, you're not overcooking nearly as much in the meat and the integrated temperature of the meat across the whole piece ends up being higher than it would have been if you had just dropped the entire piece of meat five degrees, if that makes sense. So like these are the kinds of like finishing like things I'm trying to work on and try to make them as easy as I can for like working at home. But I had a fail couple failed experiments this weekend I'm working on, like a lot of the things I want to work on for home. Or like what I consider like party tricks. So like, they're like, I'm gonna have like an everyday section, which is going to be like steaks, which is basically one of the things that I do like on an everyday basis. But then more like, you know, when you're going to have like a large group over for large gatherings, like if you want to do like, if you want to do fried chicken, I actually do low temp my fried chicken ahead of time, so that I can also make onion rings and french fries without having to change the temperature to the oil constantly, right. And I can also have different sizes of chicken pieces and not worry about whether or not on putting in a bunch of wings with with a bunch of breasts because they're already pre cooked. So you know, there's going to be that section. But I also want like kind of like more party party tricks like whole fish or things like that. So I did a whole fish like a three, a three pound red snapper. And trying to figure out like the right time temperature for it, but then I was worried about the finishing. So like normally what I would do is heat up a big vat of oil. And then like set up this like incredibly dangerous like fry tray, crank it and then do like little fry for like, you know, five minutes. And I tried to do a home version of that. And not only did not get as crispy as I wanted, like I was like, I'm not going to recommend that someone at home sit here with a ladle and ladle like you know, fry oil everywhere like in a in a hot kitchen. Because, like a it's going to freak a lot of people out and be like someone's gonna get burnt and blame me for it. You know what I mean? Like really burnt. And so like I'm trying to figure out like a good way to like a good way to reliably finish a whole fish like that's something I'm interested in. Working on had another failed experiment where so I bought like just a chuck steak. You know, I'm talking about like the thick Chuck steaks where they bone out to the seven lay bone out the the chuck and they put it back together into a roast and are cutting into a steak like two inches thick. And then I cooked it for a day. I lucked out. I didn't get a livery flavoring one but I wanted to get it kind of tender. Maybe when I'm going a little long, like I probably should have done it like 18 hours instead of 24 hours. And I had a deep sear on I crossed it off. But yeah, people ended up in it. But the thing is, I serve it next to a legit ribeye, right? And people were like, the ribeye is better. I was like, Oh, well, they're like, you know, I would have liked the other one had you not given me the ribeye, but I obviously I liked the ribeye better and I was like, so you can't, you can't win like I'm trying to win somehow Anastasia and you can't you can't win. So like I was like, Oh, this giant piece of like Chuck is like a third of the price of the ribeye. And you know what, I took something it's a third of the price of the ribeye and maybe made it 80% is good but that's not like the same as as good as senator, these are the kinds of things I'm trying to work out in the in the book like where I where I hit and what I do, you know, one of the problems low temping piece of meat like that going back to college in which we were talking about for the past couple of shows, is that in a multi muscle piece of meat that doesn't have bones in it, you actually have the the outside the silver skinny pieces that surround each muscle, you know, the the mycelium, you have that in there, and that stuff does not dissolve well, low temp and so it doesn't it like feels weird. You don't talking about stringy stars. Like it's like it's cooked. It's tender, but it's like string No, these are things I'm working on. So yeah, finishing any any suggestions or ideas people have? I welcome them because, you know, I got to test them. Do you have any subject are you still there? Do you have any suggestions or things I should test out?

Here? I mean, I think unfortunately, I think deep frying is just beyond the pale for most people at Anything that involves like a lot of oil, or, you know, a lot of sort of splashing a lot of hot oil BM. James seems like a tall order for people.

Yeah, I know. It's a shame because deep frying is such a freaking good technique because it hits all sides of the meat at once like I might. Yeah, you know, it's a pain deep frying is so like such a good technique, as I've said many times on the show. It it like is God's cooking technique. It's like It's like it's dry. It's instantaneous, very high watt density, dry ish. Heat that crisp stuff really quickly. You know what I mean? It's such a good technique, but it's such a pain for most people. So yeah, I'm trying to think of nonprime. But the other thing is like, what are you gonna do? Like I remember, years ago, I saw, you know, one of the early books that Eric repair had come out with. I saw him give a talk at Barnes and Noble. This is long, long, long time ago, I didn't even think I was working at the French culinary yet. Or maybe I just started. And he was like, you know, someone was asking him, like, recommendations for boiling fish, right. And he says, I don't write recipes for home people to boil fish, because their boilers suck so hard that it would make me cry to have them boil the boil fish in their house. So he just doesn't write recipes for it. And so like anytime I'm thinking, well, I could try to like finish something in a broiler. I think back to like a crying Eric repair. And I'm like, you know, man, you know, I don't want to make I don't want to write recipes that make Eric repair cry. You know what I mean?

That's right. Yeah. Seems like a very nice guy.

Yeah, you know, and plus, like, it like anytime someone's crying because I've produced something of low quality, it just makes me so sad. You know, I'm this makes me so sad. Oh, speaking of quality. And I'm actually sad. But here's the you know, the I've been working on fish temperatures, which is another thing people can chime in on. So I've been pushing my fish temperatures consistently a little bit higher than I would have, let's say five or six years ago, because I'm trying to get out of the polarizing range of fish cooking temperatures, which are those kind of ultra low temperatures like in the high 40s. But the problem is, is that with the exception of stripers, which I cook at a higher temperature, like I'm cooking, like this red snapper, for instance, at a little too low temperature to pasteurize it. And so I have to keep all my cook steps down to under my you know, under my window of, of safety. And so it's kind of an interesting, it's an interesting situation. So if like, you know, I've cooked the snapper for an hour and a half at a temperature that's not a pasteurization temperature is not a growth temperature, but it's not a pasteurization temperature either. And a lot of the fish has stayed in a kind of in a bad zone for a while. So you're hoping you can kill some stuff in the post finish. This is all the stuff I'm wrestling with right now. rasslin with, you don't want to give someone an unsafe recipe, unless you say hey, PS This is an unsafe recipe, you know what I mean? But anyway, there's always gonna be someone that why did give me Why'd you give me an unsafe recipe? Because that's the way I cook it at home. You know, I mean, stars just doesn't care. Oh, anyway, so I'll work on it. If you have any suggestions, call back in. You know, I was going to talk to you. Oh, we have a little bit. Okay, cool. We have a follow up from last week Jeffrey writes in about fish sauce. Remember, we were looking for the Japanese fish sauces, which are awesome. And I suggested mutual trading company. Jeffrey Cole said I called the mutual trading company in Los Angeles, and not far from there and wanted to ask you about the showroom. They do have issued a fish sauce at 760 A bottle in stock, but are out of stock on the IU at 1420 A bottle. They should have it by late March. And they can ship us UPS ground out of state I think the person who was asking was in Seattle, and call 213 is the mutual trading 213-626-9458. And if you've never had these Japanese fish sauces, you must go and purchase them right now. Scott wrote in about slushie machines touched on very briefly last week, but I'll go through the whole question now. Fan of liquid intelligence and so far enjoying cooking issues. Just wait you won't keep listening you won't. My issue is that every source I can find says the minimum sugar content of a slush machine drink should be 12 bricks, but for some drinks that's just way too sweet. I don't have the capability to push my machine to the limit because it's for personal use. I want it it's my baby and I don't want to break it. So for those of you that don't know what's going on here we let's say you're doing a non alcoholic drink then you know you have to have a certain amount of sugar in the drink otherwise, it's going to freeze solid and if your slushie machine freezes solid, the dasher which is the spinning, you know spinning doodle inside of the ice cream thing can seize up and if it seizes up, you can burn out your motor and even if you don't seize it up but you're you know it's the mixture is too stiff. It can put them odor under a lot of excess strain. So manufacturers of slushie machines tend to recommend that you have a certain minimum amount of sugar in a mix so that you don't, so that you don't mess up the mess of the machine. Now the problem here is what we'll get it, I'll get into the get into the rest. That's that's what the crux of the matter is, is that you don't want to have a drink in there that freezes so solid, that it ruins the machine. Okay, so then back to the question. My theory is that I can trade out some of that 12 bricks for higher alcohol content and still get a good slush that doesn't risk machine failure. No one online has address this specifically. And I'm always skeptical of bars giving away their exact machine recipe to the local newspaper for all sorts of reasons that could be inaccurate and costly. And machine. Yeah, people give out wrong recipes all the time. Most of the time. I don't think it's malice Do you start when chefs give out bad recipes? Do you think it's not? I think it's just they don't bother really converting their restaurant recipe to a home recipe in a way that makes sense. I think that's mainly what it is right? Anyway. I mean, I guess sometimes, they're, you know, what, back in the day, like, back in the day, I think chess always used to hold something back from recipes, so that you couldn't exactly duplicate what they're doing. But I think that's kind of the thing of the past. I don't really feel it anymore. And maybe maybe I'm wrong. My question is, how much alcohol? Do I need to compensate for a given amount of bricks reduction to make a slush? If there's no good answer, is there a way to figure it out by experimentation without risking my machine, I do a lot of frozen bag experiments. But I don't see how these relate to the machine. They do relate. In fact, they do relate if you do the test in a frozen baggie, you can take the texture of it, just by putting it in your freezer, like a regular home freezer, that gets down to about minus 20, somewhere around minus 20. And negative four Celsius. Sorry, negative for Fahrenheit minus 20 Celsius in that range, is of a pretty good approximation of what the texture of your frozen drink is going to be like in a machine. But so it's not a bad approximation. It's not perfect, but not bad. Or do you have any good anecdotes about this, I'd be less against pushing the limits of my machine if I could get if I could access sugar and alcohol content of the final slush MIT makes with great accuracy on a hydrometer. But I'm aware that alcohol distorts Brix value. Since I use spreadsheets to measure alcohol and sugar content, I can implement whatever advice you have with some precision, Scott, okay. Here's the thing. So like there are people like Jeffrey Morgenthaler, who has, he has a long blog post on using a slush machine. And he advocates a straight bricks percentage, I forget exactly what he says 12 to 16 bricks, but he's doing 12 to 16 bricks on a finished drink. And that is not a measure of sweetness, alcohol. You cannot accurately measure sugar and alcohol with any form of refractometer or hydrometer. You can't do it. So like typically in in a bar scenario, when you're measuring bricks you're measuring with a refractometer and alcohol and sugar are incredibly confounding. Now, it could be just the lucky lucky case that you know that. It you know that in the general thing, a ratio of things that taste good, right that somewhere that they confound each other typically such that 12 to 16 bricks on a refractometer theoretical breaks, it's not actual bricks, right? It's what the refractometer reads happens to be a good level, but I would not I would not do this this way. For a recipe recipe creation, I would simply write down how much alcohol and sugar you are adding to the mix. And as I said last week, like my Brix levels in in frozen drinks are at five grams per liter. So that is see that's 8.5 bricks theoretically in that area, right is that right says 8.5 I think it's 8.5 bricks. So it's like a lot a lot lower. And then I'm doing about 14 to 15% alcohol, right and in that I'm doing about a little under like point six 2.9% of acid assuming the you know if you think about regular lemon or lime juice is about 6% acidity. And so that's what I'm shooting for about 14 to 15% alcohol and about 85 grams per liter of sugar which is like I say about 8.5 bricks and and then 0.6 to 0.9% of acid now the issue here is that drink is going to be fine textured in your machine alright, and if you're worried about it like up the outlet go to the higher end of the alcohol range the problem MS is that high alcohol drinks like that melt extremely quickly. And this is why most, like, you know, crappy daiquiri joints in New Orleans are pushing drinks that are closer to the 7% range. So you're talking about much lower alcohol content. And if your alcohol content is that much lower down like seven, seven ABV, that's when you're going to need to boost your sugar into a higher range. So then you might I haven't tested drinks in that sugar ratio. But with those drinks, I would assume that you do have to push it higher, like over 10. You know, 1011 to get it to, you know, to freeze, right? Or maybe 10. Anyway, but that's how I would do it, I would do the baggie test to see the texture ahead of time, it's gonna give you a rough idea of how the slushie machine works. And then I don't think you're going to monitor it the first time you make it like if it starts getting really thick, like dope it with a little extra alcohol to thin it out right away. But I would always dope with alcohol rather than sugar because a little pure ethanol will change the freeze rate pretty quickly without adjusting the overall balance that much. Anyway, hope that helps. That helps.

You want to call it

Yeah, sure. Caller you're on the air. Hey, how you doing? Hi. Are we on the air? Yes. Hello. Hey, what's up?

Hi. So this is Claire. I've called in before I have the the Jedi vegetable spiralizer.

Yeah. Have you shoved anything new in your virginity recently?

kind of been I've kind of retired I think I overrated,

you've retired your VA Jedi. I'm so sorry for you.

I have to I have to take a break. But more on that later. So Dave, I have I'm in an epic battle with my sister who's on the line. Okay, and we got to see, we got in a big fight over Christmas because I made a beautiful beef tenderloin for Christmas. And then we froze some of it per the hammers instructions. And then I asked the hammer how to deep thought and she gave me very specific instructions, put it in a Ziploc bag with butter and oil and then put it in water at 128 degrees, something like that. So I do that. And then I go out to walk the dog and then to see what and then. And then I walked in the room not knowing any of this. And let me preface this by saying I'm more the environmentalists in the family and not the cook right. So I walked in and see the pot boiling with these baggies of me back back

when it was boiling out. Sorry, it was boiling.

They were they were definitely bubbling simmering a little they were not boiling. It was 100 degree.

Okay. Before we go any further was this. Was this on a stove? Or was this in a circulator? On a stove. And Claire to be to be fair to your sister, you left the building with something that was not supposed to go above 120 degrees Fahrenheit on this,

I assigned it to my mother who obviously not five

I'm not saying anything negative about your mom. So let's keep going. So sister you came in and you saw a simmering pot

breakout. I'm like Mom, what are you doing? Why are you Why Why do you have plastic hot plastic in the in the pot. And I grabbed them all with tongs or a fork thing and I throw them into the sea. Because I am concerned about the plastic leaking into the food and being toxic. So then Claire and I get into a huge fight about CBT and whether we use the right plastic or whether it's even a good idea or the technique, whatever. So then we start Googling stuff and emailing it back and forth three seven. I guess the question is, what is the proper way to be sued break back? What is

right let me let me start by saying I'm completely horrified by what happened to that poor piece of meat that never did anyone any harm. Secondly, Ziploc bags if you actually use real Ziploc bags from the you know, the SC Johnson wax a family company, or no it's just Johnson Yes, Johnson wax a family company. They're made of strictly polyethylene. The polyethylene doesn't have any plasticizers or you know, it's like it's BPA free. In all that, so, as plastics go, it is kind of the front like the bio friendliest plastic, right? That and polypropylene are the two kind of, I guess nylon, right, which we use for implants that but nylon typically, there's a lot of times a nylon layer on the inside of some vacuum bags, you're not using it using zip blocks, it blocks are pure polyethylene. They they are food safe. They have been and I have gotten confirmation from the, from the company, like in writing, basically saying that, yes, it's okay, you know, to do to the work in their bags. Here's the problem, the temperature limit for a polyethylene bag is, you know, it won't melt until it gets above boiling, but it really loses all of its strength. Once it gets over about 85 to 90 Celsius, right, it starts getting real floppy. It starts feeling like something's going wrong, like you're going to have some leaching problems. I've never, like noticed that to be the case. And typically, when I'm using Ziploc bags, I prevent them from boiling, because they're not really meant to stand it. So to eat in a ziploc find cvwd in a ziplock when it's boiling, like that could be problematic, not from a safety standpoint, so much as from like, an integrity of the of the bag. standpoint. You know, there I've been looking into ways of doing trying to do low temp work without the plastic. It's just a real hassle. You know what I mean? Either you have to circulate oil, or I'm looking into different ways of doing it, but it's just a real it's a real kind of pain in the butt. Yes, polyethylene is among the friendliest. So it's not like it's in PVC or anything like that. You know what I mean?