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Hello, and welcome to cooking Ejuices Dave, I'm your host of cooking

just coming to you live every tuesday on the heritage radio network from Bushwick Brooklyn and pizzeria Warburtons Tuesday got some special special guests super excited got semi regular Paul Adams the freelance now Paul Adams the freelance drone slash food master that's me have as usual Anastasia the hammer Lopez How you doing? Got Dave in the booth? What up? Nothing, but I'm sure you'll all be excited. Direct from the West Coast San Francisco the Twin Peaks mission slash snowing Valley area

Harrow. I do pretty well. Why don't you

go? Well do well. So actually, this is like a first I think Anastasia might have sent you the questions. Uh, you've actually had time to look at the questions beforehand. A couple of couple. Yeah. So like you'll people will get to see exactly how much better Harold is this sort of stuff than I am for calling your questions for Harold McGee, or for myself food or not food related to 718-497-2128 that's 718-497-2128. So before I start in the saga of the spins off the centrifuge that we're working on, Paul was like, Hey, can you do cold brew coffee in this benzo? And I was like, Well, it's been all all. So I'm sure I can therefore Yeah, therefore, yes. So we did a test yesterday which was relatively successful because we're able to do it very quickly, much more quickly than normal. extremely successful Yes, because you're using espresso grounds which infuse very quickly but then you can spend a mountain centrifuge bubble but but this morning, as I was doing another test of it, I wanted to do a much larger quantity. So I was going to do like, like two liters right or the maximum capacity you could probably do if you're Paul does five to one coffee to water so you the maximum you can do is about 403 to 400 grams of coffee in the in the bucket before Right before it'll fill and so that you know that limits you to about two liters or somewhere in that range of liquid yeah so it can spin it all but it cannot pump it all it is not a pumps all so I have to think of a new technique for doing larger quantities because oh my god that the coffee grounds are like sludge they this build up and they settle and you know the heavies the fines keep me float forever that's the problem the fines flow forever but the heavies they go and like so just compacted in my pump tubes and had to break so I'm gonna have to think of a new technique things like this one I try when I get home I'm gonna go buy a cup of pounds of coffee here's what I try to do. Get this I want to put the get this so what Paul does is he vacuum infuses his cold brew to get a jump on actually getting the liquid into the into the ground coffee Correct? Yeah, we do it with with a regular garbage FoodSaver right now like a decent vacuum machine or anything?

I've tried both which is fine. You have the FoodSaver lid that fits on a mason jar I do and and a half gallon mason jar. It's very easy.

Yeah are half gallon mason jars pressure rated? Are you flirting with death? Flirting? Okay, well, I'll put FoodSaver is not gonna probably suck a hard enough vacuum to kill you. And it's not going to shatter that that thing. Although, you know, safety that you know, I must say from safety safe. What you probably should have a mesh net around it or like tape it with electrical tape. Like glass is always okay until suddenly. It is not. It is not like have you noticed that? Do you know that? If I was talking to you about this, when I was a kid, right all the way up until probably the time I was in high school. And definitely if you bought all the older stuff. Pyrex meant what it said Pyrex fire, like RX glass like borosilicate glass, it was clear, not greenish tinge. And you could put that sucker on the stove that used to sell stovetop, Pyrex boards to look at glass. That's fundamentally labware like a beaker, you're supposed to put it over a Bunsen burner it seems real because you're the it doesn't crack as it doesn't expand enough to get to a crack as it goes up right in your head. You're familiar with this radio, old time Pyrex tea, you know, I used to have those TEA TEA vessels and I was new Pyrex, you put new Pyrex on a stove, it will explode it is no longer borosilicate glass and some awful human being some terrible awful garbage enemy of quality Satan mongering bastard like kept the name Pyrex on this non bore silica glass and when it explodes, it also doesn't explode into pleasant little pieces, like you know like safety glass, would it it shards out into your kitchen all over your food. And, and another thing is that you might not know about glasses that glass can have a lot of built in stresses in it that you know aren't apparent and the cracks can slowly propagate from and what happens is as cracks propagate all of a sudden they can reach a critical point where they propagate extremely quickly. So I remember once in grad school, we had a Pyrex new variety this back when it was relatively new that you couldn't put Pyrex on the stove. And it was sitting on the counter like a day after we had used it and just bomb exploded and shattered glass all over our kitchen. Yeah, so I only use now for cold measuring when you have to see through things. But yeah, they're they're Satan. They're the devil and they should be taken to task for what they've done to what used to be a fine old brand name. What do you think? You're here? Yeah. So anyway, so back to the vacuuming so you vacuum to speed up the cold brew coffee? Yes,

yeah, fresh ground coffee is full of co2. So you pull that out with the vacuum so that liquid can then

entering the grounds fresh ground fresh roasted stale coffee and got nothing in it got to be pretty stale, really. You'd have to test on it. That's the whole goes for the whole point on scaling right as it gets, but that's what's like scaling presumably as you no longer have a positive pressure of co2, you get more oxygen in which causes rancidity which is presumably where the cardboard flavor comes from Harold Yeah. I mean, to me, so mean it has like like anything else I'd probably always co2 but there's like it probably is one of these. I'm making a making a ski jump shaped with my hand you know going down like this so it's always some Yes, but you probably the most at the at the get go like you ever you ever pulled an espresso shot with coffee that you were you have your roaster you ever pull espresso shot right after you roast it and he and you get that insane like insane. You don't you're not it you hate crema, right, Paul? You're anti crema FirstEnergy was? Who's the answer a lot of people don't like crema. Are you an antique crema person who will know you know those people though? No, no,

I've never met an anti crema. Chris Yamas.

Chris Chris Young, anti chemist, anti chemist. Yeah, yeah. Well, because a lot of that like some of the more bitter compounds are some of the stuff that gets like into that emulsion and float up to the top of an espresso thing, right? So I think people are against kind of that and they prefer the flavor of the stuff underneath and we can run some tests next time you're over I'll get my micropipette and we'll we'll fraction based on height in the in the coffee. Right when it's hot, right we can do This but I think it's slightly different when you use hyper fresh beans and a lot of people used to tell you not to use hyper fresh beans because they didn't like that that offensive I think it tastes good I like it. So anyway, so then so then you let it sit and then you use straight we use coarse ground cloth, how long does it take you?

I use fairly fine ground coffee I let it sit under vacuum for 10 minutes, at least the vacuum and then until the spins all I had to let it filter for several hours

like a chump. Yes, but you had to let it filter like a chump anyway, so what I'm going to try to do see whether you see whether you like this, I'm going to put the coffee into the rotor dry. And then use the Force centrifugal force to like, like force the liquid into the into the coffee under pressure and then see if I can just continuously make it without having to do the vacuum step. And this way The coffee will pre pack in. I'm a little worried that like in an espresso situation, I'm going to get channeling and I'll just keep extracting out of the same pieces of coffee as I go through. But this is all something that needs to be tested. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Or I could just you know, the thing is, I would like to do it continuously. I mean, I could just keep doing it in batches, but I would like to be able to continuously right anyway. Okay,

good. What packing the coffee and pre wet rather than totally dry. Yeah, no,

but I'm more worried about like as it like as water works its way through the coffee it will be removed it will be extracting crap from sin coffee as it extracts crap from st coffee. That channel is now easier to extract through. And once everything's hydrated and swollen. And so then it seems to me that because water is going to take the path of least resistance the same way that when you poorly pack an espresso puck and you get the channels around the around the outside they're going to have something similar happened. And I don't know who knows test. I have to get a refractometer Do you have the tables to read? Coffee off of a regular refractometer? Often non non coffee? No, but I have a coffee reflectometer Wow. Wow. Wow. Very fancy. Paul Adams super fancy man did an aristocrat did you have to pay for that? Did you get that? Popular Science back in the day? Popular Science? Nice. You know what people being a writer is like a good like a magazine writer. I mean, I guess not anymore. Now web good deal, right for that kind of thing. Extremely for drones and refractometers. If that's what you know. Yes. Yes. Do you want to call? Yes. I would love to take a call call. Are you on the air?

Hello, gentlemen in the software? How are you guys? Great. My question is, is there a safe way to cook sunchokes I have tried cooking them on low temperature about 25 overnight, and I still have had bad experience. So I'm wondering, is there any, you know, morally conscionable way to cook them and to serve them to my guests.

You my friend have called on the right day Herald wrote a whole chapter in his second book on the fat flatulence inducing powers of the central and if she wishes to pipe up, Anastasia Lopez purposely poisoned one of her friends undercook sunchokes on purpose. So I will just and by the way, for those of you that don't know, sunchokes they, in the majority of people, right Herald cause severe gastrointestinal distress if eaten in large quantities. So I hairline take it away. All right?

Well, I'm afraid, at least from my understanding of sunchokes and experience with Santos, you can make them less difficult, progressively less difficult by cooking them, cooking them cooking them. But when you do that, they lose texture and they get sweeter, sweeter, sweeter. So they become less themselves and more like, I don't know, underground candy or something like that. And it's I don't find that particular flavor, especially nice when it when it gets to that stage. So I would say that, you know, there's the the saying in medicine, the dose, the dose makes the poison. I would I would just, you know, figure out how many slices you can actually take and and serve that number. And just Yeah, otherwise you're not going to have the central experience. Yeah, that's a good Central. Yeah.

So they mean like that, for those of you that don't aren't familiar with not thinking about sunchokes all the time. The culprit in sunchokes is a long chain polysaccharide insulin. And Yulin is a it's actually a bunch of linked up fructose molecules. It's long chain fructose. The other common thing we use it has a lot of lot of inulin is agave. So when you have long, long, long, long, long rows to Gavai you convert the onion and agave to fructose, which is why agave syrup is a high fructose product. And that is of course, the main fermentable but the only fermentable in tequila and mezcal. So yeah, if you more you break it down as sweeter That sucker is going to gonna get both. So what's your Have you tested your dose response relationship parallel with the essentials?

I can I can actually take like, a medium sized one, or a couple of smaller ones and really not feel it. But But also, I don't mind feeling it a little bit. Because you know, it's a way of knowing that you're, you're keeping your microbiome happy.

Well, I was going to ask you, is there a difference in different people's so the reason that it causes all those problems down there is that your body can't digest insulin, but the microbes in your gut have no problem digesting insulin. And when they do so they produce gas and you know, that causes extreme discomfort, especially in some people looking at this dasya Lopez and

I was helping their microbiomes

that's that's

question, Does this mean that you could actually ferment the sunchokes and ferment out some or have the insulin that way as a possible way of of getting rid of some of the undigestible

mean, yeast won't eat it, but there's probably a bacterial fermentable to it, right?

Yeah, yeah. But they're they're going to do what cooking would do, they're going to break down the long chains into small molecules, and then use those for energy. So you're again going to kind of eat away the structure of the of the route and turn it into something else. I mean, it could be really interesting, but it'd be delicious.

Have you tried this central block core token ember? I have not tried? I have not have not tried it to follow you try that sucker? No, where is it from? I don't think it's a European thing. You know, that's the French word, right? So I'm assuming it's somewhat, it's from a French speaking country, a Francophone country,

but one of your enzymes do,

I don't have an insulin breaking enzyme. Although we can call Kazmir and see what's going on. I'm we're I have a cellulase enzyme, but I haven't had time to play with it. Because of all the spins, all stuff I'm doing, I want to try to take the strings out of salary with it, well, then let it remain crunchy. That's my goal. That's one of my life goals.

But that's called cellulase. Yeah. So

Harold, do you think there's a difference between different so for instance, like certain bacteria can ferment and produce gas, while the different group of bacteria can ferment the same product and not produce gas? Is there a difference between different people's microbiome? And so if you consume a lot of something, could you favor a bacteria that maybe doesn't produce as much gas when it's eating it? Like if you're getting some sudden rush from something that can be like, oh, man, they take it in and then like that, that colony will get superseded by a different microbe? Or is that not possible?

No, I think it is possible. And you're reminding me of some research that was done back in the I think it was the 90s on people's tolerance to beans, which which have some of the same problems for the same reasons, indigestible carbohydrates, and I think what I recall is that people could, with time, tolerate more. So and that could be one or two different things, it could be other microbes getting in on the act and using those carbohydrates and not generating gas, or it could be other microbes in the community taking advantage of the gas that's being produced by the microbes that can digest in Yellin, and turning that into something else. So they could be taking up the hydrogen as soon as it's generated, and using it for their own metabolic processes.

So either like, whatever the mechanism there is some sort of gut, like adaptability to these non fermentable carbohydrates. So we just go like build your sub build a tolerance. Hey, though, the awesome thing about building a tolerance of my friend is that then you can pull the real estate and the Stasi only went half way. She had a horrible experience with sunchokes she and Piper cooked a boatload of them because they hadn't thought about it. They hadn't read The Curious Cook, apparently. And, and they had like a horrible night of gastrointestinal distress, because they were they're basically just eating a big pile of cooked sunchokes and sauce, right. And then Miss dasya invited her friends to a picnic where she served the exact same dish to them, and then just picked around all the sunchokes without like, making a big deal about picking around it and they weren't looking so and so that's how she did it. But if she was a real baller, right, if she was really going to push the envelope of evil, she would slowly slowly slowly build up a tolerance to some shows whereby she could eat like a lot of them and then she could be gustily, like forking them into her face with with you know, complete lack of concern the entire time and then and then her friends would be chewing on that stuff and then they would get wrecked. Yeah, that's life goal, my friend right there. It's just a thing full of life goals. Brilliant. Yeah. and actually so I had another fun it turns out Did you know this? Not all life goals are worthwhile on the phone. I don't know. Baby is nice. Alright, thanks guys. Hey, no problem. So the I achieved a life goal finally. And it was horrible. It was horrible I made out like so for years I've wanted to make Hugo who go to puppets free tests like french fry juice, because it's where I used to say to DAX all the time we were joking about because he knows Spanish and I don't so I would just make up random Spanish words. And so that was French by Jews. So I have this new enzyme that allows me to completely like liquefy and then sacrifi things distillers enzymes and using sand extra in terms of meal from Nova times. And so I cooked some french fries, they're pretty good. They were okay, they weren't my best french fry. I didn't SPL soak them but they were like a real double you know, triple Cook, fry good. I ate one verify they tasted good. And then I blended them with like a little bit of water and some enzymes and mash them out in in basically like you would for liquor like liquid liquefied and they were completely liquid. Sweet, sweet, sweet. And then I spun them in the spins all and I got French fried juice and it was just wretched tasted terrible. I was assaulted. No, maybe I should have assaulted by his taste. And I was like, and they are much like, you know, Harold was saying before, this is just like, you know, like, all these years, I've been thinking about it. And it's just wasn't what I wanted. It just was not good. I mean, maybe if I had had a really high powered centrifuge that like make it totally clear, like, you know, I would need like 40 or 50 I probably need like 40,000 G's to really do what I wanted there. But even so, like, I wasn't like you don't know, like, when you're working on something, it's going somewhere and you're like, Oh, this is going somewhere. I tasted like this. And I was like I've been wasting my brainpower thinking about this. This is like, you know, not I'm not gonna say it's the worst mistake I've made but it's like, you know, not what was wrong with it. The sweetness just tasted Yeah, it was just tasted bad. It just didn't it wasn't what I wanted to have happen. It wasn't like it was in my mind. I don't even know what I want. In my mind. I'm eating french fries, and there's some like, like terrifically refreshing drink that I'm having. And in my mind they combined the same way that french fries and ice cream combined. Right? Like French fries and ice cream are delicious in combination like have you ever taken like a Sunday and just jam some french fries into it and eaten it it's good it tastes good. But like it's good. I mean take my word for it but they are don't just go try it it's easily tested hypothesis but the Yeah, this is just not good. I did not because I you know look how many there I've carbonated so many things I have a pretty like I feel at this point I have a pretty good judge of will his carbonate properly. And there's nothing pleasant Avila is not like fermented. I could barely I could ferment french fry beer. But the problem is, is that anything that has leftover oil that's left to ferment, that oil is eventually going to go rancid, especially when there's only a little bit of it there. So maybe

what you need to do is make fresh fry, french fries, LME Newt and then shake it whatever with whatever you want to

get that out. Yeah, yeah, I'll try that. I'll try that I once made a french fry booze. It's not really, it's not. It's not French fry juice. Unless it's literally the juice of a french fry. It is not who go to puppets fritas unless it is literally French fried juice. I have made french fry infusions that were okay. But they don't last they go rancid. You need to do it all a minute. They taste really bad after it. And interestingly, you know that that flavor of old potato, you know that flavor that potato that you had in the fridge? You took it out and you eat it that nastiness? Yeah, I don't know, what causes that? Do you know what causes that? And I

think it's Muthiah now release a sulfur containing aldehyde from theanine the, you know, acid,

and that's the flavor of old potato.

I think it's the it's part of the flavor of freshly made potato, but I think it becomes stronger and stronger and swamps out the other more delicate things. Is it?

Is it very volatile. Is that why when you fry a potato that you've had in the fridge? It tastes good? Like is that why you can like refrigerate like, like let a fry go cold in between first and second fry? Or do you have to store it frozen, like if you take between first and second fry, you can put a fry in the fridge till it gets that nasty texture and then when you fry it, the crisp fry, then it's good again, is that because it's volatile, and it just gets driven off?

I think probably what's happening is that you're you're driving off maybe an excess of that. And you're also generating all those aldehydes from the frying oil, which which are going to dominate but they're the aldehydes from the frying process are polyunsaturates so they're really reactive. And I think that's part of the reason maybe the the true experiment didn't work is that they're, if they're sitting there for any length of time with stuff that can react with them like proteins in particular that it's going to happen and they're going to go away you

All right, I got another caller with a question for Harold.

Good caller you're on the air.

Hi. Speaking of foods that cause discomfort. This is Jeff Jeffrey in Costa Mesa. I had an experience recently that reminded me of when Harold's sense of smell was wiped out for like a month. Not not nearly as bad. But for about a week, everything that I ate had a bitter aftertaste. And it made and it made eating very uncomfortable and, and I went into like a mild depression because food was not something I look forward to. So after scouring the internet and my memory to try and think of what I may have done or eaten to cause this, first I just figured I had a brain tumor. And my my taste receptors are all screwed up. But it looks like it was I had been counting pine that Oh, yeah. But it had been a couple of days since I had eaten a pine nut. But that seems to be the culprit. And I'm wondering if that sounds accurate. And why

are found boyfriend Nick long got taken out by a pine nut?

Yeah, and I think Francis lamb also get taken out by a timer, or at least had a bitter one. And then and and I don't know, I'm not sure it lasted for a week. But but he was concerned.

So do you know they give you research? The it's typically it's one of these kind of like, very, it's kind of, they're always like it's the Chinese pie nuts. But is that actually true? Is there like China's from China? Yeah, no, it's

a it's a particular species of pine from which these particular pine nuts come that. And they contain apparently naturally, some compound that that reacts with our taste buds and gives us that kind of bitter hangover. And I haven't looked at the literature for a couple of years. But as of a couple of years ago, they had no clue what that molecule was and how it active so

they don't know anything. So like, like, my guess is it gets into your bitter receptors and lets them fire on other things. Right?

That would make sense. Yeah. Yeah, that may be what you have to do is because our taste cells are constantly being replaced. Maybe you just have to get you have to slough those off. Just wait it out for ya.

So unlike miraculous, which is a temporary bind and gets washed away, or gymnemic acid, which is a temporary bind and gets washed away, you're saying this might permanently F those taste receptors, and you have to wait for them to get regenerated.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But like I say, I haven't looked at the literature for a while it like

jams them open. That's the theory

or something. Well, I mean, that's, that's my theory,

I shut the crowbar. And that keeps it keeps it open all the time. Yeah. Yeah.

So Harold, from what you'd read, is it does this affect everybody if we that particular species of pine? Or is it only certain people that react this way?

Yeah. So it's, it's one of those subjects where, you know, nobody's going to pay for the research that we would all like to have. So, so it's it was basically as of a few years ago, mostly anecdotal. And, and really hard to draw firm conclusions about, but you know, because people do vary in their sensitivity to bitter in the first place. My guess is that it probably affects most people that way, but not everybody. And it doesn't affect are the people who can't detect better in the first place.

Right. Any advice on avoiding those particular planets? Hi, Fi American pine identify.

Yeah, I mean, I've actually seen now in in some stores, people will will label they've got their Chinese pine nuts for not much. And then they're European pine nuts for like five times that that amount.

Are American Southwestern pine nuts commercially available at all or no,

I've seen them a couple of times, but but only regionally. You know, I've never seen them for sale. In a in a general sort of way. They good? Yeah, yeah. I remember going to the Grand Canyon and the winter ones and in an area nearby there, there were pine pine cones on the ground and they'd already been squirrels and clearly gotten at them or js or something like that. So we cracked a few open and tasted them and they were good and there was no hangover

the how many times out of 100 when Nastasia when we saw new students in the Italian program with the FCI did they burn those freaking time? That's 100 like 99.9 times out of 100 It's pine nuts of those things is a classic thing when you're learning to cook right? You try to toast the pine Nuts. And they go from like zero to ruin like this. It's like you had to have an eagle eye on those pine nuts. Like that's what you should. Like. That's the you know, like the you must be able to have the mental ability to keep track of your pine nuts if you're going to make it in the kitchen. Yeah, they're

like the garlic of the nut world. Yeah, yeah,

they're gone. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I know what a question I had for you, Harold years ago. I don't think we ever figured it out. You are I don't remember is why it is that hazelnuts clearly have something in the middle of them. That that Browns more rapidly, and the stuff on the exterior of the nut. So that's why the hazelnuts always you can think you haven't over roasted them. And when you crack them open, the interiors are over roasted.

Yeah, yeah. Heck is that? Yeah, I still don't know. I mean, again, one of those questions, nobody's gonna pay to do the research, but it must be. So the cool thing about one of the many cool things about hazelnuts is that they're hollow on the inside. And I thought for a while that maybe it had something to do with that, that there's this surface that you don't find in other knots and the the part of the hazelnut that isn't surface doesn't get brown as fast as the surface Park. So I thought it had something to do with just surface snus. But then, you know, thought about the thermodynamics of it and decided that probably wasn't correct. So my guess is there's probably some kind of coating of I don't know, like a sugar or something like that grounds

as well. Okay, so that cavity is the place between the two cod legions right? Yeah. So in there somewhere in there. Maybe there's I don't know. It's other stuff is happening, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So I've been thinking this, not just about his thoughts, but about things in general, we shouldn't we should make a list of interesting questions like that, that no one's going to pay to actually do the research on and just put them out there so that people who have the resources and curiosity maybe will use their their cool machines to figure out something that, you know, the professionals never will.

Yeah, maybe maybe erielle. At MIT, you can get on some of these problems here that cooking issues people and start a list keep a list generated. Yeah. All right. I like that. There's lots of this is, to me, no offense to air V T's in fence offense attend intended, by the way, but like, like it's more like these questions that like aren't hadn't been answered, or somehow more interesting than like, kind of the stuff that he runs through. What do you think? Yes.

All right. I wanted to ask on the subject of different people's responses to bitterness, how much do we know not just about quantifying that, but qualitative, different types of bitterness? Like for me, I can drink extremely strong coffee, and I love it. But even a faintly strong beer is much too bitter for my sensibilities.

Yeah, yeah. So one of the interesting things about about taste receptors is that we have basically one or two for most of the taste modalities, except for bitterness for which we have dozens, and it's probably because there are, so the body doesn't really care so much to distinguish between say alkaloids, which are bitter, and, you know, hot compounds, which are bitter. It just wants you to know that these things are are these complex molecules are there, they're probably not good for you. So pay attention. And so we have receptors for all these different categories of chemicals, metals, and things like that as well. But they all send basically the same signal, which is bitterness, which is just watch out. And I think that's what's going on. You've got of those dozens of receptors, you've got most of them but there there's one that you have extra copies of, maybe not enough copies or not as many copies of the coffee one. Fascinating.

Let's see a question we got from Susan. Writing from Switzerland. Love your show can't figure out from your website if this is the right way. Well guess it is who you are. Is there any reason other than the color of the meat for me to use curing salt when making corned beef? Most formulas I find on the internet call for it. I don't care about the color. I'm doing an eight day Brian and plan to Suvi the brisket for 48 hours of 60 C Thanks, Susan. So it's interesting I didn't have a chance to research I don't know if you did Harold so like everyone always says that gets the cured color and flavor but then I wasn't able to find any immediate references on what cured flavor is from from a relatively quick curing standpoint in night nitrates and nitrates. Do you know anything about that? I don't

know about curing but but it's been studied in longer curing and I don't you know, I can't say chapter and verse about how long but I think it's the case you know that All these molecules are there, they contain nitrogen, which is reactive and which is going to react with stuff in the meat, that and produce compounds that you wouldn't have otherwise. And they're antioxidants. And so they're going to prevent some reactions from taking place that would otherwise and so they're going to shift the flavor of the meat when it's cooked to something a little different,

right. And I'm sure I'm sure most of the textural properties are from the salt proper. Right? Yeah. And because it's there in such large quantities, and it's affecting all the all the protein conformation, but yeah, so So you think yeah, reason to use it? Yeah.

Yeah. I can identify cured flavor.

Well, the thing is, I have you had a lot of things that are like, like, I've never I've always said, Yeah, I mean, like, one tastes like one tastes like cooked pork. And the other one tastes like cured

pork. Yeah, right. Done. 48 hour hams that

well, but have you ever done side by side? One? nitrite? One not? Yes. And the result?

Cured flavor. It's like a slightly sweet meatiness. It's hard to describe a little. It's hard to describe.

Yeah, exactly. That's the problem. And so like, you know, for years, I just would say, cured color and flavor. But like, you can't really describe it. But you know that and then you say, well, bacon obviously doesn't taste like pork belly. But then they're like, Well, that's because it's been smoked. But like, No, it's not just the smoke. It's not just the smoke, you know what I mean? It's

yeah, and I also think it's not just one thing, it's preventing some reactions from taking place and encouraging other reactions to take place so that you do shift the center of gravity of the flavor from one area to another, right,

you're gonna get substantially less oxidation and beef brisket than you will in pork belly. Yeah, I'm saying I wonder whether it has a more profound effect than on fats that are way more unsaturated like pork fat versus beef, which is as you know, much more saturated that based on what I just wonder, yeah, no, yeah. Like, you know, it's like, maybe, maybe, maybe pork is like, you know, it's absolutely necessary to use it because you're actually a lot of you're not just creating flavor, but you're, as you say, limiting things. I'm just talking about my head here, whereas in beef is a much more stable meat in terms of oxidation.

For for the fat part. Yes, but every cell has, has what do they call the phospholipid? Yes, yes, the membranes and that are and they're always unsaturated to varying degrees. So I think you've always got it and it doesn't take a lot of unsaturated lipid oxidation for you to notice it. So I think probably what's going to be important is what's in the membranes and not just what's in the storage fat?

Fair enough. Here's what I hope you have an answer to because I do not Hello cookie issues crew I've been trying to or maybe Paul's done this, although you're an east coaster, so I doubt it. I've been trying to find some info on the interwebs regarding cooking hold wild abalone and a low temperature setup. So to bypass attenders ation step normally associated with cooking abalone. The few articles that I have found usually deal with the tiny farmed abalone found in live tanks at Asian grocery stores or fish markets. However, these have a far different flavor, texture and toughness than the wild large red abalone that we harvest here in North Northern California. The brutal nature of pounding the crap out of these delicious sea animals After slicing very thin to render them tender enough to chew. And the fact that I would like to be able to cut thin thick steaks or cubes, or even cook coal and have it be as tender as the aforementioned finally tenderized. scallopini of gastropod has me seeking new methods of cooking. I have a commercial vac and a dual immersion circulator dual from ChefSteps are good buddies. So ready to go. This is a very rare delicacy for most and not somebody that they would feel comfortable with possibly wasting precious, precious abalone flesh on trial runs. Perhaps you or someone from the ChefSteps crew have tackled this issue as they are up in the Pacific Northwest and probably cooked abalone this way before. Any help would be great. Thanks, Josh from NorCal. So I don't have any experience with with you know, cooking fresh abalone. Oh, I had some delicious, fresh abalone in China, like really, really good, big, like good and whole, like and good. I don't know how they did it. And I wouldn't say this. I spoke to grant at ChefSteps when I was out there a week and a half ago, whatever, about his preparation of gooey duck, which was I think one of the greatest gooey ducks I've ever had. And I thought it was just the low temperature cooking that he had used because he used to see Vapp to do the low temperature cooking on it and then you guys have actually had I had with you that night Harold we were there the same night. And I think Paul you had to do some other time there. Gooey duck was great, right? Yes. Yeah. So he put it in a vacuum bag and beat the crap out of it. So like I was like, I was like when just that low temperature cooking like made it that tender. He's like that Then beating the crap out. And I think he used that to just heat it up without actually cooking it. I think that was how he did it. He massively tenderized it and then just warmed it, rather than cooking it all the way through. But do you have any abalone experts? I looked up high pressure processing. Most people who tend to rise whole abalone, it looks like they either do a very long braids or they pressure cooking. I don't know whether that's helped. What do you what do you got?

Well, I mean, he said, It's a rare delicacy. It's so rare that I've never had it. I've had the farmed abalone, but you know, basically out there. If you're not diving for it yourself, or you know, someone who's diving forward, you just don't see it. So I have no experience with it.

But when you're doing that, like so when you cook octopus for a long time, what's it Okay, you've done a lot of work on octopus, so let's just let's just look at at things that get tough and then need to either be quick, rapidly, or beaten and cooked rapidly or cooked very little or cooked a long time. So you've spent a lot of work on that. So let's pretend for a minute that because it's they probably have fairly similar muscle chemistry, right? I mean, like in terms of like, what makes them ones obviously much tougher.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I so I have worked with the the little ones and their meat is just so different from from octopus that. You know, I'm not sure that the information is transferable. But, I mean, so what I would try and this is another example of something no one's gonna pay to do it. So somebody do it and then let the rest of us know about it. Well, let's put

this way do you like pressure cooked octopus or now?

Yeah, it's it's okay. Okay.

You think it's mushy?

Depends on. I mean, that's the problem. It depends on how long it's been done.

What's your go to octopus?

Long, long and slow?

Yeah, yeah. She I think bagging the abalone and then figuring out what time temperature thing but it again. Here's my thing. Right. So the farmed one is going to be different from the wild one, right? Different species of what is it Halle Otis? Right. Different species? different size, different age. But if you figure out how to cook the cheap one, and make it tender, it seems like you then could limit the number of trials, you have to pull it the real deal, right? I mean, yeah. I would bet some form of bagging it. I mean, that I looked up. People pressure cooking it and they seem to enjoy pressure cooking at home. But then you mean it's going to be pressure cooked? It's not going to be? You know, I don't know. Yeah. And by the way, I'm not a huge fan in general of using protease enzymes on me, are you, Harold? No, no, yeah. But like, but is it mainly because they get mushy on the surface, but the interior is not fixed? Yeah, I'm wondering and an abalone because of the structure of the meat and the fibers in it whether or not you could do a quick, basically make an enzyme solution and vacuum and fuse it into the entire thing, and then have the tender zation happened throughout. Or even use a high pressure and like an EC or something and force the enzyme into the meat structure under pressure. That's actually probably worked better. And then, in fact, when you open that, and it foams back out again, you'll also tend to rise by internally ripping the animal apart as the bubbles come out. I'm wondering whether that might be a decent approach. If it's quick. I mean, it's these long soaks in things that much defy the outside. That's what makes it awful, right? Yeah.