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.

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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.

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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Looking to cookie she says Hey Dave, on your host of cooking you just coming to you every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 Or one ish on the 100 network from reviews pizzeria in where's your burgers pizza we Anastasia Bushwick where Brooklyn where? Brooklyn. Morning Mr. St. Morning. How you doing?

It's not morning somewhere. We've been speaking since like 745

Yeah, but do people who are listening to this know that now they're listening to it at like midnight, somewhere somewhere else? They don't know what you've been doing. They don't know your life. This is a constant radio mistakes. Like they like hearing about our life. And yes, but with context. Like Like, like imagine.

You'd want to talk about this interview. Imagine

this. Imagine this. Yeah, we could bring it up that way said oh my god, can you believe what happened earlier? Oh, and that's all we say?

No, because I say that then you're prompted to say well, we've been up since that early because we've been talking about this interviews which you should all know and like

ProNet How do you pronounce the way your man Trump's? I don't know. Chi Yang? On the phone with China. Yeah, in fact, that is true. We did a after work there time before our work. See that when you're when you're when you're building something that's 12 hours, timezone away. You have to kind of arrange your calls either like early in the morning, or like late at night. There's no I guess that's not true. They could arrange it so it's early in the morning. they're late at night for them. Yeah, instead we organized so it's either early in the morning, or late at night. Anyway, this is again, people don't care, but we are working on the centrifuge. I had a tweet in earlier asking for updates, etc, etc. The updates are that we look, we've had a working prototype for some months now, but we're not going to officially release anything until or give a date until we are sure that we have the future production kinks pretty ironed out, right and ASEAN, but we are still planning on doing a pre order, it's still going to be under $1,000, you will get a pre order discount, that's still our plan. And we hope to have it on pre order, somewhere between three and five months before the actual delivery date. And then we might have a tiered early bird system where the early early birds get it for less than the later early birds, etc, etc. Right? It's not our current plan, okay? Or something like this, something similar that we're not committing bird, definitely, yeah, whether there's levels of Early Bird, we don't know. But the issue is we're gonna go on pre sales, and you're gonna get a discount, because you're buying it before it comes out. And what that's going to do is, there's a substantial amount of tooling that we need to make to get it made. And we don't have the cash to fronted, so the pre orders are basically going to go towards the tooling to get it produced. As for the specs, the specs are going to be that it is going to hold up 500 milliliters at a time of liquid or oil or whatever. But it's going to have the ability with a built in pump to pump liquid through the router, such that you can do more than 500 milliliters at a time. So the most I've ever done. And it depends on the solids content, etc, etc. But the most I've ever done in one shot is five gallons. But obviously that has you know, not that many solids in it, I did five gallons of cider I filtered five gallons of cider with anyway, we're pretty excited about it, the whole thing is going to be smaller. It's about a little bit bigger than a Cuisinart, when you say Anastasia food processor, yeah, a little bit bigger than a Cuisinart food processor much smaller than like a KitchenAid mixer. Right? easily fits under counter, easy to lift around, move around, etc, etc. You buy him like potato chips, you're not even going to want one you're going to want to You gotta want three, my right Miss dassia. Our goal is to put in anybody, they ask us, my partners, they asked us how do you know how many people are going to buy it, I said, Well, this is how many modernist cuisines sold we had a number of while ago, but I don't know where it is now. And we figure if someone's willing to shell out $500 for a book, a lot of these people don't already have the centrifuge, they're going to be willing to shell out less than less than, we don't know what the final number is going to be. But less than 1000 bucks, hopefully as low as we can go right. And so we're gonna price it as low as it can, but less than 1000 bucks to be able to do some of those tricks. And we can do most of the tricks that you can do from Irish cuisine. We've tested pea butter, for instance, all these kinds of things. The recipes are different, because now go more into depth later, but I have to rewrite some of my recipes to get them to work. In a smaller centrifuge, that's part of the work that I've been doing is figuring it out. And if anyone really cares, they can ask me to do an ABCs of centrifugation on air later in terms of the actual science and math behind it, but I don't think that was no but I never really talked about. I mean, there's there's a, there's a number of factors and incentives, we run into the same problems that people run into with, with things like induction burners, right, they compare watts of an induction burner with BTUs, and a gas stove and nobody really knows how to compare them. So comparing, for instance, something that acts more like a fixed angle centrifuge versus swinging bucket, the two main kinds of centrifuge that people deal are called fixed angle. Obviously, what that means is that they, the liquids are held at a fixed angle in the rotor, as it spins and the other kinds called swinging bucket where the products are in buckets that as you might guess, swing out when you open it when you turn it on rather. And that's and that's how they work. They have the two different kinds of rotors have different characteristics, primarily based on the fact that having an angle helps with certain kinds of pelleting ie getting solid to deposit and stay solid at the bottom of the rotor, and also fixed angle rotors definitely. Usually, the cloudy bits have a shorter distance to travel before they hit the bottom of the tube. So fixed angle rotors act differently from swinging bucket rotors, but usually swinging bucket rotors have a much larger capacity than a fixed angle rotor being at a slower RPM. So this kind of this centrifuge kind of tries to bridge the gap between those two. So it works, it works at a considerably lower G force than the than the equivalent swinging bucket would also, you know, the centrifuge gate like how well something a centrifuge separate solids out is based on a variety of factors that are inherent in the product itself. So, the viscosity, which we work on with, like enzymes like technics, ultra SPL, but also out in the speed of the rotor, which is something I can't change too much. But the other end the diameter, obviously, they work in tandem, because that's where the force comes from. But the big one, the important one that you get to manipulate is particle size. So the, the, the speed at which you set the sediment stuff out, goes linearly, as the force is increased, it goes linearly as the viscosity decreases, but it goes by, by the square of the particle size. So you really want it and also the density difference between the solids and the and the liquids, but so a lot of my recipes to get the smaller centrifuge to work like a big guy, it has to do with increasing the particle size. So I already went through and went through it if anyone didn't understand that, which I'm sure is 100% of people, because I wasn't very clear, then you can ask me to explain it later, at a later date. Like, what do you How did that guy say about particle size like that? The truth of the matter is, is that a lot of the recipes that I use in liquid intelligence for things like lime juice to centrifuge lime juice out, land uses more difficult to centrifuges, and other things, because the enzymes don't fully break everything down because of the extreme acidity in lime juice. And the way that I make that work in a centrifuge, regular, you know, the benchtop three liters centrifuges that I use at the bar is wind finding agents. And what those wind finding agents do is they is they make the particles agglomerate. Together, they become bigger as those particles become bigger, it becomes, as I said, you know, by the square, easier to filter them out, or smash them to the bottom of the centrifuge buckets. And so I do that trick with this centrifuge. And I can centrifuge basically anything so far, you know, few things aren't as good as the big guy, but pretty much the results have been good, right? So it's just a matter of making sure they're consistent so that when it shows up at your house or at your bar, you are safe and happy. Right? Those are the two main things we want you to be in that order. Safe. Happy. Yeah. Anyways, so we'll give you updates as as we know them but like if it doesn't go on, weekly look, we're still hoping to deliver it. This calendar if not early, next calendar but what a promise anything but if we don't preorder by the end of this year, I think we're in some serious trouble anyway. So expect that to happen. Right? Is your sister by the way, still on junk meals? or No? Did she do any?

I haven't asked her but she said she's gonna keep on Keisha, because we got some we got every

other week so call every other week we call in so we didn't frighten her away. Did you explain to her that I I realized that she didn't write the junk meals and therefore she shouldn't feel bad about me insulting the dumped meals. Yes. We had a caller. We got a question in about the duck meals. Maybe I hit that one first even though we're away by another thing. Remind me after we come out of break mozzerella you cook anything interesting, by the way over the week? No. No. What did you do this? Oh, you went to a wedding? How was the food of the wedding? Good. Come on. Really? Good for a wedding or good?

Just because they had like a whole pig and a robber. They went all out.

Oh, how's the whole pig? Good, good. Friend. Look at what I'm doing for you people is I'm reading the stasis face and I actually saw that she enjoyed it. How was the skin? Was it chewy? Or crunchy? Crunchy? Really? I love a crunchy skin. I love a conscious kind of how big was the pig?

Not like that big?

Oh how many people 23 Who is she? That was just the appetizer? Oh she she showing a pig it's like maybe two feet long. And anyone there who's cooked a pig knows that until the pigs get like longer than that. It's all like bones anyway there's the skinny little mothers that we're gonna you know pigs baby pigs and that there's not a lot of meat on them right? Right The good news is is that they're fairly I don't think a little guys dry out as easily right so it wasn't as dry now a lot of fat come out of skin. Did you meet the year? No. Who? Who? Who at the wedding. There's always one who had the wedding. Nobody Come on.

It was like one part of like 16 pieces that are happy at the cocktail.

There was no one like me there who walked up ripped off the year started eating Oh, no. You know what? I said this before Anastasia? You better get yourself some new friends now you need new friends. And we find this funniest thing we Judy for more than writes in. This is regarding don't meals couldn't help a pause to jot down a note while listening to you shout down dunk meals. It is true. I got mighty angry over the over the dumb meals. You don't have to trust my opinion, though, since I don't mind wraps. Whoo. She goes on to say yes, it's essentially edible cardboard, but I can't help myself if I don't want all the bulk of the bread here. Here's key this is why I know I can trust her. I may be a garbage individual. But I'll call her rap a sandwich nicey I have infinite respect for someone who comes out because I say to myself all the time, I may be a garbage individual. But props, props, right. Major respect. I got a lot of love from all in right now. I know you guys feel that maybe Americans test test kitchen, which is you know, you know, America's Test Kitchen. Affiliate Yeah. can be a little tone deaf at times. And it's true. But I've spent seven years reading cookbooks cover to cover and cooking mostly dishes. It makes sense, when only one person is eating 98% of the time. And you have no access to outdoor cooking. So those are the things cooking cooking for yourself a lot of the time and no access to the outdoors. Okay, okay, so I've cooked my way through America's Test Kitchen slow cooker cookbook, which I guess it is their answer to junk meals. And certainly not all the dishes are winners, but some dishes like shredded BBQ chicken that is literally chicken and a slightly slightly dark. But some dishes like shredded barbecue chicken, there's literally chicken and slightly doctored with barbecue sauce, talk about a dump meal. But in other words, like she's saying that a lot of them aren't winners. There's a lot of them that she's saying I guess, blow, but I kind of really want to send you guys a copy because she says something interesting. The mailing address which will send starts at a million okay. I'm sure they will do a look inside on Amazon a good chance this morning. Because as I said normally the time when I would be looking inside that for you to make comments, and Stassi and I were talking to the factory in China. Anyway, I'm sure they will do a look inside. But here's another important paragraph. The first lesson was that most slow cooker recipes are mediocre at best, best because most of the time, one cannot simply dump a bunch of ingredients into a slow cooker and walk away. True. Obviously, that's why I was yelling at your sister about not browning the meat before him because that's garbage. One needs to develop flavor using a host of mostly new and interesting techniques that are contained in the book. So apparently America's Test Kitchen has a bunch of new techniques that allow you to just dump a bunch of crap into the slow cooker and get a good result. Microwave spices first and aromatics tomato paste, etc etc. Part cooking hearty vegetables in a microwave blah, blah, blah. So anyway, so we'll take a look at it. And you know and it says obviously soy sauce and tomato pays for secret weapons for building flavor as a yell that your sister for the teriyaki sauce, but we'll try it. We'll try it. So if you send us that duty, we'll take a look at and see right yeah, I like a response. And next week, we will have Nastasia sister, the correspondent coming in with her Don't meal. No,

she's gonna call him again.

Let's call him calling with her dumb meal. And hopefully, Anastasia you can warn her a little bit beforehand. I think she knows now like that. I'm gonna have some violent reactions. Yes towards some of the stuff. I know last week we covered the shiz question on Burmese tofu right to trick people into

thought we got to nothing.

I thought we covered it. Okay. I wanted to call remember I wanted to call Frances lamb but I couldn't get in touch with a few weeks. We talked about it right.

I think that was when I was driving. Yeah, you talked about it.

Alright. So anyway, so if I if I didn't get to your question on the on the Burmese Stouffer, which essentially not tofu, it's essentially a trick people into right. And I've got I've never tried it, but there's also Italian variants of chickpea polenta is called Panella. I haven't tried those either, either, but I'm sure it worked, but it's definitely not a tofu style thing. It's much more like a polenta, but it sounds delicious. I've never had it. You also had a question on using molds that I'm not sure to make tofu ripened like cheese. And usually the cheeses that are the molds that are used for fermented tofu is aren't classic Western cheese molds, but they have run tests with like penicillin row 40. But they've bolstered its problem is that a lot of those flavors in cheeses are fat breakdown products. So in general, they have to dope the tofu with fats first, and sometimes what they do with milk solids as well, which kind of defeats the purpose but they'll dope the tofu with fat such that the molds can make similar fat acid fat fat breakdown, lipase stuff flavors that you would get from cheese, but it has been tested I think in the 70s I don't know anyone that does commercial stuff. Short leaf in his, in his, his wife who I can never pronounce her name. They have all the soy books and if you look online, they have an exhaustive search of the literature bibliography fee on. Cheese is a tofu inoculated with different molds. So I go check on that and and shot if I didn't get to your actual question accurately just send back again. I know it's taken forever. I feel better. I feel better. Right assessing me we've had a bunch of weeks where we've had a bunch of crap going Yeah. Chris Daggett to Chris's gravlax question. I

don't think so.

Okay. Called in a long time ago, I have made gravlax secured skin and avian salmon a few times before, but have now been asked to make it for my sister's wedding, which hopefully didn't already happen. You know, otherwise, we're host I'm concerned that I'm producing something that is safe to eat and we'd like to know about the principles which make it safety. The procedure for curing fish is to prepare a mixture of salt, sugar, black pepper, and Bill sources vary quite a bit in the ratio of these ingredients and also in the ratio of curing mixture to the mass of fish being cured. Spread it over, longitudinally sliced salmon filets with the skin on place the two Falaise together and wrap in clingfilm and cure in the fridge for about 48 hours. Flipping every now again, which by the way, I emailed Niels and that's pretty much his recipe. I haven't knows his recipe knows no one. Here I'll give it to you before I continue, Neil's uses 1.5 sugar to one salt. If you use the kosher salt blend until it's fine otherwise it doesn't melt properly. Neil's mixes a salt and sugar mixture with chopped dill and black pepper. Even though white pepper is more traditional Mills hates white pepper because of the moldy taste hates, hates hates it hates. Actually, I'm not a huge fan either. You like white pepper? Because it's moldy tasting. And do you care about seeing black pepper on your product? Now to me it's a sign of there's black pepper there and I love black pepper. I hate white pepper, you know that loves white pepper. wildly, wildly differing, loves white pepper. Not a huge fan of black pepper. You know what I think he is wrong.

I think Trump would probably love ya pepper. Whoa, I'm

gonna tell Wiley you said that you think Trump is a white pepper fan? That's not what I said. He said, I think what you said anything. Thanks. See that's very Trumpian yourself. You don't actually like I'm not ascribing to any opinion. But I've heard some people say Trump likes white pepper. I get all my information from the internet. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Wow. So years, and I am I sensing some there's a there's a racial overtone to the to the pepper argument. All of a sudden, I hadn't even never even never occurred to me. Although I guess it fits white being moldy. Anyway, even though white pepper is more traditional ID bone, scale the skin and leave the leave it on as the skin and here's the key thing that Neil says, as the skin is really good to sear after it's cured when you remove it before you slice it, but it's cured. He likes the seared cured skin. I rub the mixture and put the flesh sides together. don't weigh it down. Just make sure to turn it off for 24 hours or less if it is a smaller salmon. So anyway, so that's noses direct from Mills is mind and nose grab looks pretty damn good. I mean, if I had to say, give me some Swedish crap, I would go to Mills and say Mills, can you cook me some Swedish crap? When you do that? I haven't seen those in a while. Hopefully I'll see him soon. Okay, I also understand that there might be some risk of contracting parasites that you what's the worst word for parasite in your mind, Anastasia. mean, you don't mind the word parasite, you just hate all the things associated with it, worm Spore, like what else any sis cysts, parasites, which can be mitigated by using fish that have been frozen to below a certain temperature for an extended period of time, probably not attainable in Humphries, or actually it is the the issue with a home freezer, is that you just need to freeze it for an extended period of time. So like if you're a home freezer, and you can measure it with a thermometer, but your home fridge freezer probably easily gets down to about minus 20 Celsius, which is minus four Fahrenheit. And that's fine, but you have to leave the free fish in that for a long time. The problem with that also is that probably your fish has already been frozen and multiple freeze thaw cycles really kind of beads up the texture of the of the flesh. I think your best bet is to get stuff that you can guarantee is previously frozen. I mean the issues there are definitely parasite issues in salmon. And those parasites are not necessarily killed by the salting or by the refrigeration. They will be killed by freezing. You know the thing is, is that a lot of times if you talk to people in the store, they're like What do you mean it's never been frozen? It's fresh and like they don't realize that you're like come on, will you please just tell me this sucker has been frozen because then I don't have to worry about it. People still have in their minds they think that never frozen is like a positive thing for fish. Whereas a lot of fish especially farmed, which is a lot of what you're saying is going to get unless you're getting the wild caught. It's much better for them to freeze it properly at the source and ship it then to go through the whole cold chain unfroze Did you know and I mean, like, a lot of all your sushi that you eat, supposedly has been frozen to kill parasites. And so freezing is not what it once was like very high quality frozen fish is kind of the best that you can get for some of these bigger things unless you're catching it, you know, right away unless it's off of a day boat or something like that. But you're, you're not getting unless you live in Alaska, or in Washington, you're not getting salmon anywhere close to its source, you know what I'm saying? So anyway, so I would just buy stuff that's frozen ahead of time, so that you don't have to worry about it. I would like to prepare in slices in advance. How far in advance can I prepare it? And will slicing in advance increase the risk? Somebody might get sick from the fish? Yeah, of course, anytime that you're taking something that's a whole muscle and cutting it, you are introducing the possibility of adding bacteria. So if you get like any kind of contamination on it, Listeria or whatever, you're increasing the surface area on which it can grow. And you know, the knife, if it's not fully sanitized? I mean, are you going to get someone sick? Like maybe not, but you know, yeah, you definitely increase the increase the risk now if you, I don't know if you want to cheat it, and you can add something that will kill bacteria like nitrites or something like this, but I don't really I don't know a lot about cure fish safety, but definitely, you're increasing the risk. It's still a small risk, right? Anyway, also, if you have any values for the ratio of curing mixture to fish and the composition of the mixture anyway, I gave you a nose and stuff on that, but not sure how to answer on the safety look, I would slice it, I would slice it pretty soon thereafter and keep it really cold. You know, keep everything really cold like a Oh, sanitize your knife. It's probably not going to be a problem. But yeah, anytime you're doing something like that you're increasing risks that maybe someone in the chat room has something to say on that. Okay, should we take a you want to take a break, come back and work with us. Let's take a break and come back with some more cooking issues.

Hi, this is Peter Kim, the executive director of Mofaz, the Museum of food and drink. We're a nonprofit founded by Dave Arnold, the host of cooking issues here on the heritage radio network. And we want to take people on a Learning Adventure through the world of food. We just opened both Ed Lab, our gallery space at 62 Bayard Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where we are currently showing flavor, making it and faking it. Flavor features some very cool sensory interaction, flavored tablets delivered tastings of vanilla and umami. And the Willy Wonka inspired smell simply lets you compose over half a million different flavors. So come on by and visit my fat lab. We're open five days a week and tickets are $5 for kids and $10 for adults. Learn more about the Museum of food and drink at mo fed.org.

Peter cam huh, Peter, can you know that the entire time he was talking about talking about us and cooking issues and he was like making snide faces. He's just like, you know, I mean, I can see his face. I could see his face of disgust as he mentioned cooking issues. I could feel it so Peter, I know so Peter, we got to get his butt back in here. So we asked him to come today and I was too busy Mee Mee Mee Mee Mee Mee working on the on the next exhibition that we're going to do, which they're going to do a Kickstarter later on. To make money for the next exhibition. Don't worry, Mr. estimator, Kickstarter face, you're not involved. So the Stasi hates Kickstarters, which we can get if anyone ever wants and starts eating it, too. If you want the Stasi to rent, like get her started on?

And I'll tell you, they're a good idea, which I did want.

Someone asked you should you do one you're like, yeah, yeah, so fun. Sometimes it looks sometimes it's necessary and personal. There's some people who enjoy interacting with people and for them, maybe it'd be good for you living nightmare. Some people may be okay. Yeah, you don't I mean, yeah. Also, if you were gonna do a Kickstarter, and you didn't actually have a product you needed to deliver if it was not actually a product.

Yeah, if it's a nonprofit,

you know, think it's better. Yeah, you know, I mean, it's like, wherever anyway, Rachel from Hong Kong wrote in Hey, Dave, Anastasia and David in the booth, and any other special guests No, no other no special guests today because Peter apparently doesn't think that we're worthy. Worthy, not even not even the chance to talk about low fat and a free lunch is enough to entice him in little bit late to the game and only found out about your podcast this January spent the last six months powering through the entire backlog. Yes, I'm one of those nut jobs. Wow. You know, I feel for anyone that you have friends with you know what I mean? So like a lot of screaming and ranting your way through yeah bit gutted that I didn't quite make it to wish Jackie molecules bond by your voyage but now I'm taking comfort that we still get to hear him on the heritage radio outro for now, we gotta get jack to record some more Outro So we just beat down the back wall here that somebody beat almost punched through the back wall like Kool Aid style. Did you call up the Kool Aid? Oh, yeah, remember that? Oh, whoa, man. Maybe you are quick on the button today. That is some strong Kool Aid. Oh, yeah. Noise have my coffee. Yeah. Sweet. What kind of coffee do you like? Black? But like, like, Do you are you expressive man or an American cup of coffee man? Um, well, summertime, I do cold brew. I like Americanos. I don't like I don't like milk. Really? I like milk, but none of my coffee. Yeah, great. I like milk formed into cheese. Oh, which we're supposed to talk about later. Nice segue. Yeah, but I gotta finish. Gotta finish Rachel. So I know how you feel about vacuum sealing chicken for low temp cooks. But texture aside, because my theory is is that especially the higher the vacuum. If it's cooked in a vacuum bag, it affects the texture of the chicken and makes it spongy and gives it that you're more apt to have that feeling. I'll describe it this way. That when you bite into it, it's excessively juicy at the beginning but then turns to fibrous pulp as you chew, you know I'm talking about and you felt it. That's my feeling. But texture aside, assuming I've pulled a hard vacuum on a bag of chicken breasts, and cooked it through to pasteurization time and temp, how long will the cooked chicken then keep in sealed bags refrigerated before spoilage occurs. I tend to batch Cook, and I've had bags keep almost two weeks smelling and tasting. Okay, so far, but recently I had a batch smell off after six days. I reckon it's an anomaly might have effed up to seal on that batch. Well, the question is, if you effed up to seal on that batch, the one that smelled off like did you get? Did the bags blow? In other words, did they inflate? So a lot of times, if something's gone wrong, there's two things that can happen. You can just see that you have a loss of seal. This especially I forget to say, Did you burn them? Did you burn them? I can't, I can't see. So if you if you don't, let's say you. Let's say you have chicken breast and evidence before I get to your safety question. Let's say you have chicken breasts and the bone, there's still a bone attached to them. Now, if you suck a very, very hard vacuum, like like that, like like wait to the machine gets down to its full vacuum and then allow it to suck for an additional 30 to 40 seconds, right, you'll evacuate most of the air most of the air out of the bones. And then you'll you know, you'll be able to get a good seal and you'll be able to have the bag stay tight. However, if let's say that chicken was a little bit warmer than the rest of the chicken, then it's never going to get down to the super low vacuum, you might not pull all the air out of the bones. And that case, when you cook air will seep out of the bones because bird bones are hollow, and you'll get a puffed bag. Right. So that's one way you can get a puff bag on a chicken. But let's assume that didn't happen. Right? You can sometimes you can get a pinhole leak, right. And usually if you look at it really closely, you'll see there's a little fold in the bag seal where it didn't seal right, or the edge of the bag got too close to the edge of the bar. And sometimes you can get a little pinch or a crimp mark in the in where the sealer is towards the edge of the bags, you'll notice you don't have a good seal. Or there'll be like a little piece of herb or something that cut across one of the vaccine points and you can see and there you'll see you'll get leakage in and what you'll have is a not tight bag that usually won't give you a blown bag. A blown bag happens when there's bacterial growth in the bag. And it literally inflates from gas that's being produced. And if you get a blown bag on anything, that you weren't specifically trying to get a blown bag on. So for instance, like if you're making sauerkraut, you're trying to grow lactic acid bacteria in an anaerobic environment. In that case, if the bag doesn't blow, it's not working properly, right. So anytime you get a blown bag, something terribly wrong has happened. Anyway, I recognize an anomaly. I might have messed up the seal on that badge, but I'm also curious as to what makes stuff go bad and the absence of air and any pathogens since it's been pasteurized. For reference, I tend to cook my chicken breasts in flattish 200 gram bags. Like it's pushed to the grounds at 62 degrees Celsius for about two to three hours. Thanks in advance and for all your time doing the show every week. It's been an awesome source of information. I'm not entirely sure I'm going to listen to now that I've wiped out the backlog a backlog here's Rachel from Hong Kong. All right. So there's there's a lot of stuff going on here. First of all, as regards the shelf life, I'll read this is from the the Minnesota This is Minnesota Food Code. I don't know why Minnesota that's the first people that came online when I when I popped it up right. So it's the Minnesota Food Code requires the shelf life under refrigeration of products that are vacuum pack caged in a retail store, right? So that will be like what you so they be limited to 14 days. However, food manufacturing places that are inspected by USDA, or state get 30 days or longer. And the reason is, is because they don't trust retail operations to have the levels of safety and quality on the products as they go as they go into the bag. And they don't trust the pasteurization procedures and the cold chain holding ability of a retail outlet to guarantee safety for 30 days or longer. But if everything is done, right, right, then they're like, oh, yeah, 30 days, no problems. So you can keep stuff that long, as long as you're cooking stuff properly and maintaining it. Now, as for bags, they appear to have been pasteurized and still still blow off and go bad. Now you're quite right. Most spoilage bacteria, especially things that stink and smell bad, do not grow in anaerobic environments, ie they will not grow in a vacuum. And in fact, that is why people are worried about the safety of vacuum cook products. Because typically, when things spoil in an aerobic environment, ie with oxygen, when they spoil in an aerobic environment, they smell terrible. And so you can use slime Enos. Like as it grows slime, you can take smell and all these things indicate that bacteria have been growing on it, and that's no longer good nor safe to eat. The problem is that in a vacuum, that's not the case. So in a vacuum, you can get pathogens that grow. They're particularly worried about things like botulism, Listeria perfringens, these sorts of things that can grow in the absence of producing a smell, or slime Enos. And sometimes in the absence of producing a gas that would indicate that there has been growth at all. And that's why people are worried about the safety of vacuum packed foods in general. Now, when things go wrong in a bag, usually it's due to improper pasteurization. And so that can happen and then you can get the growth if you don't kill all the vegetative cells, typically in a pasteurizing procedure and 62 degrees Celsius for two to three hours. And something that is fairly flat is more than enough to properly pasteurize a chicken breast more than enough. Typically, right, if you get blow off in the bag, you're you're getting something that can grow in an anaerobic environment that's not spore forming. So we're talking about lactic acid bacteria. Most of the time, you're going to kill lactic acid bacteria 100% of the time, if you pasteurize it, you're going to kill the lactic acid bacteria, and they're not forming spores, so you shouldn't have that kind of a problem. Typically, when you do have that kind of a problem, I ascribe it usually either, as you say, to a leak, where bacteria can get in, or to a situation where you have like two or three bags touching each other. And in fact, the temperature on the inside of that bag didn't actually get up to where you think it should have fast enough. So sometimes that can incubate bacteria in the bag, in which case it probably tasted bad right when you took it out of the bath, or it hasn't killed everything, and it can grow later. Or you have like a knife jab and some bacteria have survived on the inside of the meat that somehow got there. It didn't pasteurize all the way through because you had layer on layer on layer, and then it grew over time. The other thing is, is that I, I have this sneaking suspicion that in certain cases of this, there are other things going on. And so if you go to this book called Principles of modified atmosphere and CBD product packaging, edited by Jeffrey Farber and Karen Dodds, if the pH inside of the bag and so this has happened enough that it warrants some, some thinking at a pH greater than about 5.8, right? There are things that are like thermophilic and mesophilic that might be able to survive and can grow in anaerobic things, for instance. And this is just, you know, off the top of the Wikipedia and this book's head, I haven't researched it. And Taro bacteria

brocco Rick's and Chanela Putra factions, which is also known as alteromonas putrefaction, and they can cause stank and grow in an anaerobic environment, and may not be killed unless you really make sure it's pasteurized. Right? But I have a sense that that's kind of what's what's happening. Obviously, if it smells bad, don't, don't eat it right? To make any damn sense. Anyway, Gus wrote in Hey, my name is Gus. I'm a college student in Kentucky majoring in Biology and Chemistry. I absolutely love how scientific and detailed you guys get on the show. Without my two years of biology and chemistry classes. I'm not sure I'll be able to understand half of what you guys are talking about, but that's what I love. In my spare time. I love to make a bean to bar chocolate. The Stassi hated making bean to bar chocolate. Do we make that all the time remember, we didn't just make The ketchup thing we made a couple of batches first a regular being truck remember grinding all of the cacao nibs it cacao in the champions and then all of that cocoa liquor and Ms. Everyone remember that? It was drowned out by the other nonsense we had to do. Yeah, you didn't hate that as much as you hated like all of the nut butters and they are in the sad thing

I hate was the combo tests and clarifying grapefruit juice by hand.

Yeah, well, you said you're never gonna do that again. In my spare time, I love to make bean to bar chocolate I order the raw beans and then ferment roast, winnow grind, and finally conch them I ground them by hand for a while in a mocha head day before recently upgrading to a countertop Milan chair, I usually end up with some pretty delicious results, and I enjoy the process. However, I'm pretty blind as far as the science behind it all, like sugar and fat structure tempering, blooming, etc. And we'd love to learn more. Do you know of any books or other literature that really dive deep into this? The nerdy or the better? I haven't had much luck finding anything, so any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much. Keep up the great work, Gus. Okay. So back in the day, when I used to order what I used to Xerox all of the technical books out of the science and business industry library in here in New York City, the classic chocolate work was by a fella named Menifee, and it was just known as Menifee chocolate. It's very industrially oriented. And it's also it's been updated a couple of times. And it is, I think, still one of the industry standards. But it's a extremely expensive like, like 150 $200. And B is I think a little bit out of date. However, I'm sure they have it in the light in your library at school, for you to go look at. It's not what I what I recommend, the kind of book that came out. I don't know what it was 1015 years ago, that everyone started buying that it's, it's a couple of things, it's blessedly short, you can do an Amazon look inside of and it's only 30 bucks, is the science of chocolate by Steven Beckett. There's a paperback there's a hardcover. And one of them I forget is on on amazon prime for like 30 bucks. And it's decent. It's short, it's to the point, it gives you the science, it's still focused on on bigger operations, not necessarily on kind of what you're doing. But I would get that. And then in terms of the actual and that'll give you some of the science, but in terms of the actual like putting your hands to recipes, I would go on any of the websites out there where people are doing their own kind of bean to bar stuff like chocolate alchemy and stuff, which is who we use, we were originally getting the Santa, there's a lot of different messengers out there. I would say in addition to the manager, you'd be it'd be good if you went and got yourself a Champion juicer that's still what I would use for the initial grind out of the of the, the, you know, the cacao beans or nibs or whatever you're using to do it. But yeah, so I would get a hold of champion. But yeah, get the science of chocolate second edition. And let me know what you think. I think it's pretty good. I don't think there's anything better at that price point. That's for sure. I'm assuming that you don't have infinite money to spend since you're a college student majoring in biology, right. So I'm assuming all right. Barry wrote in this kind of hard question. I don't know what to answer. Maybe like, take I wanted to get McGee on this. But you know, he's been in Spain. So I don't know, very writes in rather than wait to see if there is a show. Here's my question for the next show. I guess it was a show last week where we didn't necessarily have a shot. I don't know. How does a chef create the taste sensation of individual flavors that meld into one. For example, if I make Shrimp at Yufei, it tastes like shrimp at YuFei. But when when a chef does it on the initial bite, which when a chef does it on the initial bite one taste of red pepper, then the celery then the onion followed by the tomato as one choose each one of the clear individual flavors melts together to taste like a shrimp Eddie fey how does this How does this work? And secondly, how does a chef create an initial spicy flavor that passes and is followed by a different lingering spicy flavor later? Well, hmm. How do you create things that meld? It's a complicated it's a really complicated question. I don't really it's it's kind of hard. I've never really used kind of do those kinds of things. You know, kind of naturally, one thing you can do very is you include things that that bridge, so for instance, like if you need something to linger, and you're going to add some acidity, you want to add to draw, for instance, the front of the palate towards the back of the palate. And you know something's missing. You can add an acid, like something like lime, that's going to pull and so like a lot of spicier cuisine, you see, and I think it's not just because that's where it grows. You'll see lime in it instead of lemon. And the reason is, is that lime is going to integrate across The flavor palette longer than lemon will, because the malic acid has a longer trail out. So like when you're tasting something, a lot of times when things integrate, it's either because you've put something in with too high of a high note, like a particular spice, they just hit one note too hard. And you need to bring the rest of this stuff up to kind of beat that note down. Or a lot of times what happens is you'll have a drop down somewhere in the mid palate of you eating I when I think about flavors, I tend to think about the time progression of what goes on in something and then try to figure out kind of where things drop out. And usually that's where you'll notice things don't meld well, like, a lot of times in the middle of a pallet. And that's where, you know, that's why we tend to add a bunch of salt which rounds out all the flavor. That's why we tend to hit everything with acid at the end because it doesn't just brighten but it rounds everything out. But I don't really know how to answer your question. In other words, I guess I need more thought on it. Need more thought about how to how to round it out. What do you think Anastasia?